Solar-powered animal tracker transforms how researchers collect data on animals in wild

by David Kearns, University College Dublin

Trials of the solar-powered device showing a range of attachment types across taxa including (a) giraffe—ossicone, (b) scimitar horned oryx—horn, (c) Przewalski's stallion—tail hair, (d) elephant calf—collar and (e) Rüppell's vulture with backpack. Credit: University College Dublin
A new solar-powered animal tracker promises to transform the collection of environmental and behavioural data, greatly improving animal welfare.


An 18-month study by University College Dublin researchers piloted the use of a solar-powered tracking device originally designed for vultures but adapted for use on large herbivores such as giraffes, elephants and wild horses.

The tracker's solar-panels proved an effective power source during the lengthy trials; demonstrating how its use could address some of the serious challenges faced by those engaged in conservation and field research.

"Incorporating solar panels allowed animals to be tagged with smaller and lighter GPS devices without losing any of the functionality of larger devices" said Emma Hart, Laboratory of Wildlife Ecology and Behaviour at the UCD School of Biology and Environmental Science.

Devices worn by animals that record their location, their behaviour and environmental conditions have generated vast amounts of data to aid in conservation efforts.

However, as researchers tag an increasing number of species, animal welfare concerns have grown.

Attaching, and later removing, a tracking device to an animal involves capturing, restraining, and in some instances sedation.

This process can be stressful for animals. Significantly lessening the impact that such tagging has on the behaviour, health, or welfare of an animal is a paramount concern for researchers.

Another issue is that the batteries that power wildlife trackers vary in size and weight, and often this limits their use as the majority of mammal species still fall outside of the minimum body weight bracket for many tracking devices.

Researchers must comply with the animal welfare guidelines that devices weigh no more than 2–5% of an animal's bodyweight.

Furthermore, variation in morphology means that certain species are difficult to tag with cumbersome units, regardless of the size and weight of the animal.

Map of the study region in the northern Namib Desert, Namibia, showing (a) giraffe locations recorded using solar-powered GPS tracking devices fitted to 20 giraffe between July 2016 and February 2019; (b) a group of giraffe with an adult female tagged with a GPS tracking unit, and (c) a distant giraffe moving between patches of vegetation in the arid desert landscape. Credit: University College Dublin

The unusual long neck of giraffes for example do not easily support the collar type attachment used on other large mammals such as lions.


The analysis carried out by Emma and her colleagues demonstrated several answers to these concerns; namely that the small size and longevity of the solar-powered tracking devices tested could allow researchers to remotely gather information on a wider range of animals and across their entire life spans without a need to replace failed trackers.

The study, carried out by UCD, the Giraffe Conservation Foundation in Namibia, and Dartmouth College, found that, once charged, the units maintained high voltage throughout the testing period.

This remained the case even in conditions with little or no solar energy, i.e. when animals were standing in the shade or during periods of reduced daylight, namely night time, winter and the wet season.

"Devices with longer lifespans will potentially lead to a greater quantity and quality of data collected per individual captured and a reduced frequency of recaptures for removal or replacement of failed devices," Emma said.

The importance of collecting behavioural data can not be overstated, as it allows new insights into how animals are reacting to changes in their environments. Such information is key to keeping conservation efforts successful.

A second paper by Emma and the UCD Laboratory of Wildlife Ecology and Behaviour highlights this, using data from the solar-powered trackers to show how vulnerable the giraffes of the Namib Desert are to the effects of climate change.

The results showed giraffe activity was constrained by temperatures above 30 °C during the day, while at night the animals' behaviour was synchronised with the phases of the moon.

"Specifically we found that giraffes were significantly more likely to be active on moonlit nights than on dark nights, with even a small fraction of lunar illumination resulting in significantly higher levels of activity" Emma said.

"The study demonstrates some of the first evidence of the strong effect of moonlight on the nocturnal behaviour of large wild herbivores... [and] it shows that ungulates [primarily large mammals with hooves] have plastic activity patterns that are vulnerable to modification by external factors.

"Our results reiterate the importance of identifying areas that can continue to support healthy populations of giraffe despite rising global temperatures and also highlight the importance of limiting light pollution when making management decisions regarding wild giraffe and other large ungulates."


Explore further Giraffes surprise biologists yet again

More information: Emma E. Hart et al. Precision and performance of an 180g solar-powered GPS device for tracking medium to large-bodied terrestrial mammals, Wildlife Biology (2020). DOI: 10.2981/wlb.00669

Provided by University College Dublin

'Good' virus for common infection
SOVIET SCIENTIFIC TECHNOLOGY

by Flinders University

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Australian researchers have shown how viruses can be used to save lives, developing the potential use of bacteriophages in bandages to treat life-threatening golden staph infections which may not respond to traditional antibiotics.


Targeting multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus ('golden staph') in diabetic foot ulcers, Flinders University microbiology researchers have joined infectious diseases and pharmaceutical partners to show the usefulness of a possible 'phage cocktail' therapy on wound infections.

A phage (or bacteriophage) is a virus capable of infecting a bacterial cell and is capable of being used in a range of medical applications including as a therapy against 'superbugs'.

Bacteriophages (phages, viruses that infect bacteria) represent an alternative or adjunct therapy to antibiotics, with S aureus a common and particularly virulent pathogen often found to be resistant and limited for antimicrobial treatment options.

"Diabetic foot ulcers are very dangerous and when infected can lead to amputation and even death," says Flinders University Associate Professor Peter Speck, who is Secretary of the Australasian Virology Society.

"The next step in our research is to bind phages to a dressing to make a truly antibacterial dressing, with specific activity against golden staph. The technology exists to make such a dressing, with a big advantage being that bound phages remain viable for a year even when stored at room temperature, making this approach ideal for use in hospitals and clinics—even in rural and remote settings."

Co-author on a new paper in BMC Microbiology, Flinders Ph.D. Legesse Garedew Kifelew says the results of the sound treatment in mice were very promising.

"This study demonstrates that phage therapy could be a potential alternative in combating antibiotic-resisant bacterial infections," says Mr Kifelew, who works in infectious disease management at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and has ties to St Paul's Hospital Millennium Medical College, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

"The phages effectively decreased the bacterial load and significantly improved wound healing in in multi-drug resistant S aureus infection—similar or superior to the currently prescribed antibiotic treatment," he says.

With diabetes on the rise, the global burden of diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) is also affecting up to 26.1 million people each year, with these ulcers the cause of almost 90% of limb amputations. The five-year mortality rate following foot amputation due to DFUs has been estimated at up to 74%.

Based on 2015 prevalence data from the International Diabetes Federation, it is estimated that foot ulcers develop in 9.1 million to 26.1 million people with diabetes annually worldwide.

In the US, the annual cost of managing DFU infections is estimated at an additional US$9-13 billion over the cost of diabetes itself. In England, it is estimated that the annual cost of managing DFUs exceeds the total cost of breast, prostate and lung cancers combined.


Explore further Virus therapy to attack superbugs

More information: Legesse Garedew Kifelew et al, Efficacy of phage cocktail AB-SA01 therapy in diabetic mouse wound infections caused by multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, BMC Microbiology (2020). DOI: 10.1186/s12866-020-01891-8

Journal information: BMC Microbiology


Provided by Flinders University

Ancient mountain formation and monsoons helped create a modern biodiversity hotspot

by Field Museum

A plant press used by the researchers doing fieldwork in the Hengduan Mountains. Credit: Deren Eaton

One of the big questions in biology is why certain plants and animals are found in some places and not others. Figuring out how species evolve and spread, and why some places are richer in species than others, is key to understanding and protecting the world around us. Mountains make a good laboratory for scientists tackling these questions: mountains are home to tons of biodiversity, in part due to all the different habitats at different elevations. In a new study in Science, researchers examined the plant life in the China's Hengduan Mountains, the Himalaya Mountains, and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Using DNA to build family trees of species, they learned that the diversity of plants in that region today can be traced back to newly-formed mountain ranges 30 million years ago, and monsoons that came later. It's a concrete example of how climatic and environmental changes influence life on Earth.


"This paper addresses the fundamental question of why there are so many species in some parts of the world and not others," says Rick Ree, a curator at Chicago's Field Museum and corresponding author of the Science study. "The formation of this very species-rich community was fueled by ancient mountain-building and then subsequent effects of the monsoon. The biodiversity that we see today has been profoundly shaped by geology and climate."

The paper focuses on plants growing above the treeline (called the alpine zone) in the Hengduan Mountains of southwestern China. "It's an incredibly interesting part of the world, it's a relatively small area that harbors one-third of all the plant species in China," says Ree. "In the Hengduan Mountains, you can see coniferous forests, rushing glacial streams, craggy valleys, and meadows just teeming with wildflowers." Some of the flowers, Ree notes, might be familiar to Western gardeners, including rhododendrons and delphiniums.

Ree and his colleagues wanted to find out how plants are distributed in the alpine regions of the Hengduan Mountains, Himalaya, and Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and how they got there in the first place. To figure it out, they turned to phylogenetic reconstructions: essentially, using DNA and key pieces of fossil evidence to piece together the plants' family trees, going back tens of millions of years.

An alpine meadow full of flowers in the Hengduan Mountains. Credit: Rick Ree, Field Museum

The researchers compared the DNA of different plant species that live in the region, determining how closely related they were to each other and how they evolved. If you have DNA sequences for a bunch of different plants, by looking at the differences in their DNA and using fossil plants as benchmarks for how long it takes new species to arise, you can make an educated guess as to how long ago their common ancestor lived and figure out the family tree that makes the most sense.


In this study, Ree and his colleagues were able to trace the origins of alpine plants in the Hengduan, Himalaya, and Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Many of the plants first evolved in the Hengduan Mountains. Then, as the Indian tectonic plate collided with Asia, slowly creating new mountains, a bunch of new habitats formed up the mountains' sides and in the valleys below. And as the new mountains formed, the region began to experience more intense monsoons, possibly because the mountains altered the prevailing winds, creating new weather conditions.

"The combined effect of mountain-building and monsoons was like pouring jet fuel onto this flame of species origination," says Ree. "The monsoon wasn't simply giving more water for plants to grow, it had this huge role in creating a more rugged topography. It caused erosion, resulting in deeper valleys and more incised mountain ranges."

"The theory is, if you increase the ruggedness of a landscape, you're more likely to have populations restricted in their movement because it's harder to cross a deeper valley than a shallow valley. So any time you start increasing the patchiness and barriers between populations, you expect evolution to accelerate," says Ree.

The snow-capped peaks of the Hengduan Mountains, with plants in the foreground. Credit: Rick Ree, Field Museum

And that's exactly what the team found in reconstructing the plants' genetic family tree: as the landscape grew more rugged over time, the now-isolated populations of plants veered off into their own separate species, resulting in the biodiversity we see today.

In addition to showing how geological and climate changes over the last 30 million years affect today's spread of plants, Ree notes that the study has implications for better understanding the climate change the Earth is currently experiencing.

"This study sheds light on the conditions under which we get rich versus poor biodiversity," says Ree. "Mountain ecosystems tend to be very sensitive to things like global warming, because the organisms that live there are dependent on a tight range of elevation and temperature. Understanding how historical environmental change affected alpine plants twenty million years ago can help us predict how today's climate change will affect their descendants."

Explore further  New species evolve faster as mountains form

More information: W.-N. Ding el al., "Ancient orogenic and monsoon-driven assembly of the world's richest temperate alpine flora," Science (2020).

science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi … 1126/science.abb4484

Journal information: Science

Provided by Field Museum

Under climate change, winter will be the best time for bush burn-offs, and that could be bad news for public health
by Giovanni Di Virgilio, Annette Hirsch, Hamish Clarke, Jason Evans, Jason Sharples, Melissa Hart, The Conversation

Under global warming, suitable conditions for prescribed burns will be shifted to late winter and early spring in many places. Credit: Shutterstock

At the height of last summer's fires, some commentators claimed "greenies" were preventing hazard reduction burns—also known as prescribed burns—in cooler months. They argued that such burns would have reduced the bushfire intensity.


Fire experts repeatedly dismissed these claims. As then NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons noted in January this year, the number of available days to carry out prescribed burns had reduced because climate change was altering the weather and causing longer fire seasons.

This public conversation led our research team to ask: if climate change continues at its current rate, how will this change the days suitable for prescribed burning?

Our results, published today, were unexpected. Climate change may actually increase the number of burn days in some places, but the windows of opportunity will shift towards winter months. The bad news is that burning during these months potentially increases the public health impacts of smoke.

A hot debate

Hazard reduction involves removing vegetation that could otherwise fuel a fire, including burning under controlled conditions. But its effectiveness to subdue or prevent fires is often debated in the scientific community.

Those with experience on fire grounds, including Fitzsimmons, say it's an important factor in fire management, but "not a pancea."

Despite the debate, it's clear hazard reduction burning will continue to be an important part of bushfire risk management in coming decades.

Modeling future weather

Before conducting prescribed burns, firefighting agencies consider factors such as vegetation type, proximity to property, desired rate of spread and possible smoke dispersal over populated areas. But we wanted to distill our investigation down to daily weather factors.

We reduced those factors to five key components. These were maximum temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, fuel moisture and the McArthur forest fire danger index (the index used to forecast fire danger in southeast Australia).


We looked at these elements on prescribed burning days between 2004-2015. We then used climate models to simulate how the conditions would change with global warming over southeast Australia, relative to a baseline historical 20-year period for 1990-2009.

To make a valid 20-year comparison, we compared the historical period to a modeled period from 2060-2079, assuming emissions continue to rise at their current pace.

Surprisingly, we found, with one regional exception, the number of days suitable for prescribed burning did not change. And in many places, the number increased.

As the fire season lengthened under a warming climate, the number of days suitable for burning just shifted from autumn to winter.
Commissioner Fitzsimmons weighs in on a national debate about hazard-reduction burns.

Shifting seasons

Our research indicated that by 2060 there'll be fewer prescribed burning days during March, April and May. These are the months when most burning happens now.

But there will be significantly more opportunities for burning days from June to October. This is because the conditions that make for a good day for prescribed burning—such as mild and still days—start to shift to winter. Today, weather in these months is unsuitable for conducting burns.

Interestingly, these results aren't uniform across southeast Australia. For example, much of the Australian east coast and South Australia would see seasonal shifts in burning windows, with around 50% fewer burning days in March to May.

Much of Victoria and in particular the southern regions saw an increase in burning windows during April to May and, in some parts of the state, through September and October as well.

Only the east Queensland coast would see a total reduction in prescribed burn days from April to October.

The smoke trap

This may be good news for firefighters and those agencies who depend on prescribed burning as a key tool in bushfire prevention. But, as so often is the case with climate change, it's not that simple.

A byproduct of prescribed burning is smoke, and it's a very significant health issue.

Last year, research showed global warming will strengthen an atmospheric layer that traps pollution close to the land surface, known as the "inversion layer." This will happen in the years 2060-79, relative to 1990-2009—especially during winter.

Unfortunately, the conditions that create inversion layers—including cool, still air—correspond with conditions suitable for prescribed burning.

For asthmatics and those sensitive to air pollution, smokier burn days could make winter months more difficult and add further stress to the health system.

It also creates an additional challenge for firefighting agencies, which must already consider whether smoke will linger close to the surface and potentially drift into populated regions during prescribed burns.

This is just one factor our firefighting agencies will need to face in the future as bushfire risk management becomes more complex and challenging under climate change.


Explore further How climate change will impact prescribed burning days

Provided by The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation

POSTMODERN ALCHEMY

'Fool's gold' may be valuable after allby University of Minnesota

This image shows an example of a crystal of iron sulfide grown in the University of Minnesota lab to extremely high purity using a method called chemical vapor transport. Note the “goldish” sheen, which is characteristic of pyrite, or fool’s gold. Credit: University of Minnesota

In a breakthrough new study, scientists and engineers at the University of Minnesota have electrically transformed the abundant and low-cost non-magnetic material iron sulfide, also known as "fool's gold" or pyrite, into a magnetic material.


This is the first time scientists have ever electrically transformed an entirely non-magnetic material into a magnetic one, and it could be the first step in creating valuable new magnetic materials for more energy-efficient computer memory devices.

The research is published in Science Advances, a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

"Most people knowledgeable in magnetism would probably say it was impossible to electrically transform a non-magnetic material into a magnetic one. When we looked a little deeper, however, we saw a potential route, and made it happen," said Chris Leighton, the lead researcher on the study and a University of Minnesota Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science.

Leighton and his colleagues, including Eray Aydil at New York University and Laura Gagliardi (chemistry) at the University of Minnesota, have been studying iron sulfide, or "fool's gold," for more than a decade for possible use in solar cells. Sulfur in particular is a highly abundant and low-cost byproduct of petroleum production. Unfortunately, scientists and engineers haven't found a way to make the material efficient enough to realize low-cost, earth-abundant solar cells.

"We really went back to the iron sulfide material to try to figure out the fundamental roadblocks to cheap, non-toxic solar cells," Leighton said. "Meanwhile, my group was also working in the emerging field of magnetoionics where we try to use electrical voltages to control magnetic properties of materials for potential applications in magnetic data storage devices. At some point we realized we should be combining these two research directions, and it paid off."

Leighton said their goal was to manipulate the magnetic properties of materials with a voltage alone, with very little electrical current, which is important to make magnetic devices more energy-efficient. Progress to date had included turning on and off ferromagnetism, the most technologically important form of magnetism, in other types of magnetic materials. Iron sulfide, however, offered the prospect of potentially electrically inducing ferromagnetism in an entirely non-magnetic material.

In the study, the researchers used a technique called electrolyte gating. They took the non-magnetic iron sulfide material and put it in a device in contact with an ionic solution, or electrolyte, comparable to Gatorade. They then applied as little as 1 volt (less voltage than a household battery), moved positively charged molecules to the interface between the electrolyte and the iron sulfide, and induced magnetism. Importantly, they were able to turn off the voltage and return the material to its non-magnetic state, meaning that they can reversibly switch the magnetism on and off.

"We were pretty surprised it worked," Leighton said. "By applying the voltage, we essentially pour electrons into the material. It turns out that if you get high enough concentrations of electrons, the material wants to spontaneously become ferromagnetic, which we were able to understand with theory. This has lots of potential. Having done it with iron sulfide, we guess we can do it with other materials as well."

Leighton said they would never have imagined trying this approach if it wasn't for his team's research studying iron sulfide for solar cells and the work on magnetoionics.

"It was the perfect convergence of two areas of research," he said.

Leighton said the next step is to continue research to replicate the process at higher temperatures, which the team's preliminary data suggest should certainly be possible. They also hope to try the process with other materials and to demonstrate potential for real devices.

More information: Jeff Walter et al. Voltage-induced ferromagnetism in a diamagnet, Science Advances (2020). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abb7721

Journal information: Science Advances


Provided by University of Minnesota

Manipulating non-magnetic atoms in a chromium halide enables tuning of magnetic properties
by Boston College

The atomic landscape of chromium halides are illustrated. The magnetic chromium atoms appear as gray spheres and the non-magnetic ligand atoms as green (chlorine), orange (bromine), and magenta (iodine) spheres. Credit: Fazel Tafti

The magnetic properties of a chromium halide can be tuned by manipulating the non-magnetic atoms in the material, a team, led by Boston College researchers, reports in the most recent edition of Science Advances.

The seemingly counter-intuitive method is based on a mechanism known as an indirect exchange interaction, according to Boston College Assistant Professor of Physics Fazel Tafti, a lead author of the report.

An indirect interaction is mediated between two magnetic atoms via a non-magnetic atom known as the ligand. The Tafti Lab findings show that by changing the composition of these ligand atoms, all the magnetic properties can be easily tuned.

"We addressed a fundamental question: is it possible to control the magnetic properties of a material by changing the non-magnetic elements?" said Tafti. "This idea and the methodology we report on are unprecedented. Our findings demonstrate a new approach to create synthetic layered magnets with unprecedented level of control over their magnetic properties."

Magnetic materials are the backbone of most current technology, such as the magnetic memory in our mobile devices. It is common practice to tune the magnetic properties by modifying the magnetic atoms in a material. For example, one magnetic element, such as chromium, can be replaced with another one, such as iron.

The team studied ways to experimentally control the magnetic properties of inorganic magnetic materials, specifically, chromium halides. These materials are made of one Chromium atom and three halide atoms: Chlorine, Bromine, and Iodine.

The central finding illustrates a new method of controlling the magnetic interactions in layered materials by using a special interaction known as the ligand spin-orbit coupling. The spin-orbit coupling is a property of an atom to re-orient the direction of spins—the tiny magnets on the electrons—with the orbital movement of the electrons around the atoms.

This interaction controls the direction and magnitude of magnetism. Scientists have been familiar with the spin-orbit coupling of the magnetic atoms, but they did not know that the spin-orbit coupling of the non-magnetic atoms could also be utilized to re-orient the spins and tune the magnetic properties, according to Tafti.

The team was surprised that they could generate an entire phase diagram by modifying the non-magnetic atoms in a compound, said Tafti, who co-authored the report with fellow BC physicists Ying Ran and Kenneth Burch, post-doctoral researchers Joseph Tang and Mykola Abramchuk, graduate student Faranak Bahrami, and undergraduate students Thomas Tartaglia and Meaghan Doyle. Julia Chan and Gregory McCandless of the University of Texas, Dallas, and Jose Lado of Finland's Aalto University, were also part of the team.

"This finding puts forward a novel procedure to control magnetism in layered materials, opening up a pathway to create new synthetic magnets with exotic properties," Tafti said. "Moreover, we found strong signatures of a potentially exotic quantum state associated to magnetic frustration, an unexpected discovery that can lead to an exciting new research direction."

Tafti said the next step is to use these materials in innovative technologies such as magneto-optical devices or the new generation of magnetic memories.


Explore further Mixed halide chemistry can be used to control magnetism in ultrathin magnetic devices

More information: Accessing new magnetic regimes by tuning the ligand spin-orbit coupling in van der Waals magnets, Science Advances (2020). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abb9379
Journal information: Science Advances 


Provided by Boston College

THIRD WORLD USA
Energy is a basic need, and many Americans are struggling to afford it in the COVID-19 recessionby Sanya Carley and David Konisky, The Conversation

Credit: The Conversation, CC-BY-ND Source: Survey of Household Energy Insecurity in the Time of COVID

Several months into the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, lower-income families are struggling to pay their energy bills. That's a big concern during extreme events like summer heat waves, which can be deadly—especially for elderly people, young children, people of color and the poor.


We ran a nationally representative survey in May 2020 of U.S. low-income households to measure energy insecurity. We found that 13% of respondents had been unable to pay an energy bill during the prior month, 9% had received an electricity utility shutoff notice and 4% had had their electric utility service disconnected.

More than half of the states temporarily barred utilities from disconnecting customers who were unable to pay their bills due to financial hardship in the early months of the economic downturn. Still, extrapolating our findings to the national level suggests that approximately 800,000 low-income households may have recently had their electricity disconnected.

And the problem could get worse as the economy continues to struggle. As scholars who study energy policy, the environment and energy justice, we believe energy assistance should be a central part of ongoing state and federal relief efforts.

Energy insecurity affects well being

Energy insecurity is already a widespread problem in the U.S. It disproportionately affects those at or below the poverty line, Black and Hispanic households, families with young children, people with disabilities and those who use electronic medical devices. Our survey is the first to try to quantify it among low-income households.

When families cannot afford to keep their lights on, or heat or cool their homes to comfortable temperatures, they suffer physically and mentally. Risks include exposure to dampness, mold and humidity; dangerous practices, such as using stoves for space heating; and feelings of chronic stress, anxiety and depression.
Credit: Chart: The Conversation, CC-BY-ND Source: EIA

Before 2020, energy insecurity was expected to worsen due to rising energy costs, coupled with more frequent heat waves and cold spells due to climate change. Now the COVID-19 pandemic presents an additional, unprecedented challenge.


Unemployment remains high. Power shutoff moratoriums in many states are reaching their expiration dates. Many households will struggle to cover monthly expenses such as energy bills, along with necessities such as rent and groceries.

Job losses, energy challenges

We surveyed a nationally representative sample of households at or below 200% of the federal poverty line, which is about US$51,500 for a family of four. YouGov, a private polling and market research firm, conducted the survey online from April 30, 2020 through May 25, 2020 for our Indiana University research team.

The survey was taken by 2,381 respondents. It included questions about energy expenses, household energy behavior and activities since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

About a quarter of survey respondents had lost jobs, had their hours reduced or been placed on furlough without pay since the start of the pandemic. Of those with a change in employment status, approximately 15% lost their health insurance, and an additional 10% experienced a reduction in benefits. Before the pandemic, 22% had already lacked health insurance.

Households facing such hardships must choose between covering energy costs and other expenses. Approximately 22% of respondents reported that in the previous month they had reduced or put off expenses for basic needs like medicine or food in order to pay their energy bills.
Some cities and states are working with utilities to help customers struggling to pay their bills.

Energy insecurity has increased

As people spend more time at home through the hot summer months, many are using more energy for essential services. They are running air conditioners, refrigerators, cooking appliances and electronic and medical devices. And, as the school year begins, students attending school from home will need to power computers and other devices.

The combination of rising energy use and falling incomes is likely to increase low-income households' energy burdens—the proportion of their incomes they spend on energy. We expect that this trend will move a whole new population of households into energy insecurity. Some may try to cope without important energy uses, such as air conditioning, fans and refrigeration.

Federal and state governments can help. For example, Congress could pass legislation imposing a universal moratorium on utility shutoffs. And state regulators could prevent utilities from charging late and reconnection fees while the pandemic persists and people remain unemployed. Following a moratorium, regulators could also consider debt forgiveness as households recover.

Governments and organizations—public, private and nonprofit—can also offer bill assistance to vulnerable households and financial assistance to small businesses. One way would be to expand the federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, or other financial assistance programs, such as unemployment benefits and the Paycheck Protection Program. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act, provided $900 million in supplemental funding for LIHEAP, but this only scratches the surface of what is needed.

Governments should also consider increasing funding for the Department of Energy's Weatherization Assistance Program. This program represents a longer-term solution that can help low-income households save money on energy bills by repairing and upgrading key components like furnaces and ducts, and ensuring that houses are well insulated, sealed and ventilated.

So far in the pandemic, federal and state governments have focused on Americans' immediate material needs. But millions of households are currently struggling to cover their energy costs, and living without energy could be a matter of life or death. Governments have the ability to help prevent this kind of secondary disaster, and more generally to recognize that energy is a basic and essential human need.


Explore furtherOne-third of American households face troubles paying bills
Provided by The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Don't blame cats for destroying wildlife – shaky logic is leading to moral panic

by William S. Lynn, Arian Wallach and Francisco J. Santiago-Ávila, The Conversation

A lazy day at a cat sanctuary in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada. Credit: Canadianknowledgelover/Wikimedia, CC BY

A number of conservationists claim cats are a zombie apocalypse for biodiversity that need to be removed from the outdoors by "any means necessary"—coded language for shooting, trapping and poisoning. Various media outlets have portrayed cats as murderous superpredators. Australia has even declared an official "war" against cats.

Moral panics emerge when people perceive an existential threat to themselves, society or the environment. When in the grip of a moral panic, the ability to think clearly and act responsibly is compromised. While the moral panic over cats arises from valid concerns over threats to native species, it obscures the real driver: humanity's exploitative treatment of the natural world. Crucially, errors of scientific reasoning also underwrite this false crisis.

The (shaky) case against cats

Conservationists and the media often claim that cats are a main contributor to a mass extinction, a catastrophic loss of species due to human activities, like habitat degradation and the killing of wildlife.

As an interdisciplinary team of scientists and ethicists studying animals in conservation, we examined this claim and found it wanting. It is true that like any other predator, cats can suppress the populations of their prey. Yet the extent of this effect is ecologically complex.

The potential impact of cats differs between urban environments, small islands and remote deserts. When humans denude regions of vegetation, small animals are particularly at risk from cats because they have no shelter in which to hide.

Small animals are similarly vulnerable when humans kill apex predators that normally would suppress cat densities and activity. For instance, in the U.S., cats are a favorite meal for urban coyotes, who moderate feline impact; and in Australia, dingoes hunt wild cats, which relieves pressure on native small animals.


Add in contrary evidence and the case against cats gets even shakier. For instance, in some ecological contexts, cats contribute to the conservation of endangered birds, by preying on rats and mice. There are also documented cases of coexistence between cats and native prey species.

The fact is, cats play different predatory roles in different natural and humanized landscapes. Scientists cannot assume that because cats are a problem for some wildlife in some places, they are a problem in every place.

Faulty scientific reasoning

In our most recent publication in the journal Conservation Biology, we examine an error of reasoning that props up the moral panic over cats.

Scientists do not simply collect data and analyze the results. They also establish a logical argument to explain what they observe. Thus, the reasoning behind a factual claim is equally important to the observations used to make that claim. And it is this reasoning about cats where claims about their threat to global biodiversity founder. In our analysis, we found it happens because many scientists take specific, local studies and overgeneralize those findings to the world at large.

Even when specific studies are good overall, projecting the combined "results" onto the world at large can cause unscientific overgeneralizations, particularly when ecological context is ignored. It is akin to pulling a quote out of context and then assuming you understand its meaning.

Ways forward

So how might citizens and scientists chart a way forward to a more nuanced understanding of cat ecology and conservation?

First, those examining this issue on all sides can acknowledge that both the well-being of cats and the survival of threatened species are legitimate concerns.

Second, cats, like any other predator, affect their ecological communities. Whether that impact is good or bad is a complex value judgment, not a scientific fact.

Third, there is a need for a more rigorous approach to the study of cats. Such an approach must be mindful of the importance of ecological context and avoid the pitfalls of faulty reasoning. It also means resisting the siren call of a silver (lethal) bullet.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Yet there are many options to consider. Protecting apex predators and their habitat is fundamental to enabling threatened species to coexist with cats. In some cases, people may choose to segregate domestic cats from vulnerable wildlife: for instance, with catios where cats can enjoy the outdoors while being kept apart from wildlife. In other cases, unhomed cats may be managed with trap-neuter-return programs and sanctuaries.

Finally, contrary to the framing of some scientists and journalists, the dispute over cats is not primarily about the science. Rather, it evokes an ongoing debate over the ethics that ought to guide humanity's relationship with other animals and nature.

This is the root of the moral panic over cats: the struggle to move beyond treating other beings with domination and control, toward fostering a relationship rooted in compassion and justice.

Joann Lindenmayer, DVM, MPH is an associate professor in the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts University and contributed to this article.




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Journal information: Conservation Biology

Provided by The Conversation

How Juneau, Alaska responds to yearly glacier floods
by Aastha Uprety, Earth Institute, Columbia University

A map of the Mendenhall Glacier system. Credit: National Weather Service

Every year, residents who live near the banks of the Mendenhall River in Juneau, Alaska know that sometime in summer, their streets will flood. At some point, even in the absence of recent rain, the river will rise and overflow through the roads and into houses. All of this is the work of glacier dynamics several miles away from downtown Juneau.


The flooding is caused by a glacier lake outburst flood that occurs in the Suicide Basin off the side of the 13-mile-long Mendenhall Glacier. Over many months, the basin fills with water from precipitation and glacier melt. As water pressure builds in the lake, it eventually drills through the Mendenhall Glacier and flows downstream, flooding the Mendenhall Valley and impacting the residents of Alaska's state capital. Locals colloquially refer to the phenomenon, which has occurred every year since 2011, as a jӧkulhlaup, a common Icelandic term for an outburst flood.

Glacier lake outburst floods (GLOFs) happen in many glaciated regions around the world. They can occur in many different ways depending on the landscape and ice dynamics at play. Typically, a glacier lake is dammed by ice or a moraine, an accumulation of rocks and sediments deposited by a moving glacier. When this dam fails, the water contained in the lake drains out of the basin and floods the bodies of water it feeds into. This is the process that takes place at Suicide Basin.


The basin formed after the Suicide Glacier, which used to be attached to the Mendenhall, thinned and retreated up the cliff it once flowed down, leaving behind the large bowl it had carved in the ground. Although the Suicide Glacier fully detached from the Mendenhall Glacier in 2006, the first outburst flood from the basin did not occur until the summer of 2011. It came as a surprise to Juneau residents and local researchers alike. While it was not exactly a shock to scientists, since GLOFs are common, scientists had not predicted that this event would happen.

"It was a complete surprise," Eran Hood, an environmental scientist at the University of Alaska Southeast, told GlacierHub. "It was a sunny, beautiful day and the river was going up and up and everyone was like… what's going on?"

Hood and Jason Amundson, who co-lead GLOF modeling research at the University of Alaska Southeast, explained why scientists hadn't predicted the first outburst. The Suicide Basin lake is covered by ice, including the remnants of the Suicide Glacier as well as icebergs calved off the Mendenhall Glacier, so it had not been easily apparent that the basin was filling with water. But when the river flooded, researchers immediately suspected a GLOF and traveled up to the glacier to investigate. After seeing icebergs scattered throughout the drained basin where they were once floating on water, they knew they had found the source of the flood.

The flooded Mendenhall River. Credit: International Arctic Research Center via YouTube

When a typical outburst flood occurs, the river rises exponentially and the peak of the flood lasts a few days. The effects are far from catastrophic—in fact, just a handful of homes on the eastern bank of the Mendenhall River usually see flooding—but the impacts are not insignificant and could worsen at any time. One example is riverbank erosion, a long-term environmental concern for locals, which is exacerbated due to the yearly floods.


Dina Abdel-Fattah, an assistant professor at the Arctic University of Norway and Stockholm University who has also studied the impact of the floods in Juneau, spoke to GlacierHub about the wider economic effects of the floods. Tourism is important in Juneau, she noted, and when the river floods, operations are temporarily shut down. Campgrounds are closed and campers are evacuated, the visitor center closes trails, and businesses stop renting out kayaks and other equipment. This all adds up to significant economic losses.

Thankfully, the damage has typically been under control. Tom Mattice, emergency program manager for the City and Borough of Juneau, told GlacierHub that the city government has developed an organized response to the floods that they are comfortable implementing.

Nearly 500,000 tourists visit the Mendenhall Glacier every year. Credit: Rod Ramsell via Unsplash

At the same time, however, GLOFs are unpredictable and constantly changing. Hood and Amundson explained that there is only so much that scientific research can predict about their intensity or characteristics. The floods in Juneau have varied from year to year. One year, the river flooded multiple times throughout the summer at lower intensities than usual instead of all at once. In other instances, water spilled over the top of the Mendenhall Glacier instead of only going through it. Any slight spike in the intensity of flooding, or co-incidence with the rainstorms that are common to the region, could impact more neighborhoods and have dangerous consequences.

Following the first flood in 2011, a team of researchers led by Christian Kienholz, a former glaciologist at the University of Alaska, began to closely monitor and study the basin. Scientists use a variety of methods to do so, including pressure monitors, aerial drones that survey the basin as it fills, remote sensing to determine the topography of the basin, and time-lapse cameras. According to Kienholz, these tools help researchers understand the capacity of the basin, how quickly it drains, and whether it drains completely—all of which are critical to making predictions about GLOFs. Photos of the basin, which allow scientists and local residents to monitor the rising water level, can be seen at the National Weather Service (NWS) website.

With all this information, scientists are able to predict the floods just a few days in advance. Once the water in the basin has risen to its highest possible level, they know that the dam will break and the water will start flowing downstream. This gives the city a day or two of preparation before the floods arrive. Impacted residents sandbag their homes and the city monitors and shuts down roads and power lines as necessary.

The Mendenhall Glacier as seen from Mendenhall Lake. Credit: Frank Towery via Flickr

A key point of Juneau's response to the GLOFs is the teamwork and co-production of knowledge among various entities including the University of Alaska, the city of Juneau, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the NWS. By fostering relationships between organizations and individuals, many people are now very well-informed about the outburst floods and the response has become routine. "I think everybody and every organization has brought a little bit to the table," Mattice told GlacierHub. "I truly feel the reason that our models are as good as they are, and our warnings are as accurate as they are, has really been the team that has come together and done all this over the years."

Local residents play a role as well and might constitute untapped potential. Abdel-Fattah explained to GlacierHub that residents who are directly impacted have mostly lived by the river the whole time this has been happening and understand the flooding potential intimately. She sees an opportunity to integrate local knowledge into the planning process. "I think a lot of people that get affected by [the floods] want to be involved," Abdel-Fattah said. "People that are affected [by natural hazards], over the long-term, know best in some ways."

Similar to residents who face a regular wildfire or hurricane season, for example, people who are directly impacted by outburst floods, in Alaska and around the world, are on alert during flood season. Gabriel Wolken, who manages the Climate and Cryosphere Hazards Program for the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, explained to GlacierHub how, like with any flooding event, the threat of GLOFs forces people to consider their safety, thinking about whether they should evacuate their homes and whether they'll be able to get into town or to hospitals. Wolken told GlacierHub, "It makes people really consider their environment, where they live, and the fragility of essentially everything that we have."

In Juneau, even though damage has been minimal and under control so far, there is still a real human impact. GLOFs are unpredictable, and thus researchers, locals, and the government never underestimate their potential. But the response to the outburst floods in Juneau— developed over years—has become reliably routine, thanks to scientific research and flourishing partnerships among various entities. Abdel-Fattah told GlacierHub, "It's a pretty good success story, I would say."


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Provided by Earth Institute, Columbia University

This story is republished courtesy of Earth Institute, Columbia University http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu.

Increasing Arctic freshwater is driven by climate change

by Kelsey Simpkins, University of Colorado at Boulder

Sea ice in the ocean in northern Baffin Bay in September 2008. Credit: Alex Jahn

New, first-of-its-kind research from CU Boulder shows that climate change is driving increasing amounts of freshwater in the Arctic Ocean. Within the next few decades, this will lead to increased freshwater moving into the North Atlantic Ocean, which could disrupt ocean currents and affect temperatures in northern Europe.


The paper, published July 27, 2020 in Geophysical Research Letters, examined the unexplained increase in Arctic freshwater over the past two decades and what these trends could mean for the future.

"We hear a lot about changes in the Arctic with respect to temperature, how ecosystems and animals are going to be affected," said Rory Laiho, co-author and PhD student in atmospheric and oceanic sciences. "But this particular study gives an added perspective on what's happening physically to the ocean itself, which then can have important implications for ocean circulation and climate."

Since the 1990s, the Arctic Ocean has seen a 10% increase in its freshwater. That's 2,400 cubic miles (10,000 cubic kilometers), the same amount it would take to cover the entire U.S. with 3 feet of water.

The salinity in the ocean isn't the same everywhere, and the Arctic Ocean's surface waters are already some of the freshest in the world due to large amounts of river runoff.

This freshwater is what makes sea ice possible: it keeps cold water at the surface, instead of allowing this denser liquid to sink below less dense, warm water. In this way, the Arctic Ocean is much different than other oceans. But as more freshwater exits the Arctic, this same stabilizing mechanism could disrupt the ocean currents in the North Atlantic that moderate winter temperatures in Europe.

Such disruptions have happened before, during the "great salinity anomalies" of the 1970s and 80s. But these were temporary events. If too much cold freshwater from the Arctic continuously flows into the North Atlantic, the ocean turnover could be disrupted more permanently.

Ironically, this would mitigate the impacts of global warming during winter in northern Europe for a while. But disrupting the ocean currents could have negative effects for climate long-term and on the North Atlantic's ecosystems.

Nares Strait, between Greenland and Canada, as seen from space. Credit: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC

A signal in the noise


The main mission of the research for Alexandra Jahn, lead author of the new study and assistant professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, and her graduate student, Laiho, was to differentiate between natural variability cycles in Arctic freshwater amounts and climate change's impact. They examined the results from an ensemble of models run from 1920 to 2100.

"When we look at all the simulations together, we can see if they all do the same thing. If so, then that's due to a forced response," said Jahn. "If those changes are big enough so they could not occur without increasing greenhouse gases in the model simulations, that's what we call the emergence of a clear climate change signal. And here we see such clear climate change signals for the Arctic freshwater during the current decade."

Their results showed that Nares Strait, which runs between Greenland and Canada and is the most northern gateway between the Arctic and more southern oceans—will be the first place to see a freshwater export increase attributable to climate change in the next decade. Other straits farther south and east, including Davis and Fram straits, will be next to show this signal.

The researchers also ran the models through different emissions scenarios to see if these changes will be affected by humans' emissions choices in the next few decades. They looked at the "business as usual" (over 4 degrees Celsius warming by the end of the century) scenario and what would happen if humans limited warming to 2 degrees Celsius, the upper end of IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) targets for this century.

They found that the change in freshwater in the Arctic Ocean and the amounts moving through the northern straits were unaffected since they will be subject to an increase in freshwater before the 2040s—and the decisions made globally in the next few decades will not influence them, as these climatic changes are already in motion. But in the second half of this century, the two scenarios diverged, and increases in freshwater amounts were seen in more places in the high-warming scenario than in the low-warming scenario.

"What this work is showing us is that we're probably already experiencing the first of these changes, we just can't tell from the direct observations yet," Jahn said.

All water from the Arctic Ocean eventually ends up in the North Atlantic. But timing is everything. Being able to predict the timing of the emergence of climate change signals will allow scientists to monitor upcoming changes in real time, and better understand how changes in the Arctic Ocean can impact climate worldwide.

"It fills a gap in our current understanding, and helps us ask new questions about what physically is happening in the Arctic," said Jahn.

More information: Alexandra Jahn et al. Forced Changes in the Arctic Freshwater Budget Emerge in the Early 21 st Century, Geophysical Research Letters (2020).

DOI: 10.1029/2020GL088854

Journal information: Geophysical Research Letters

Provided by University of Colorado at Boulder

FOREVER CHEMICALS
Newer PFAS compound detected for first time in Arctic seawaterby American Chemical Society
Aboard an icebreaker ship, researchers collected water samples flowing into and out of the Arctic Ocean and analyzed them for PFAS. Credit: Hanna Joerss

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), found in many household products and food packages, have raised concerns because of their persistence and possible toxicity to people and wildlife. Because the compounds don't break down naturally, they have become environmental contaminants. Now, researchers reporting in Environmental Science & Technology have studied the transport of 29 PFAS into and out of the Arctic Ocean, detecting a newer compound for the first time in Arctic seawater.


After studies indicated that two PFAS—PFOA and PFOS—can cause cancer, a compromised immune response and other health problems in lab animals, the two compounds were voluntarily phased out by industry. However, these legacy compounds are still widely detected in the environment. Intended as a safer replacement for PFOA, HFPO-DA (sold under the trade name GenX) is now thought to pose similar health and persistence concerns. Hanna Joerss and colleagues wanted to investigate the long-range, oceanic transport of legacy and replacement PFAS to the Arctic Ocean—a remote body of water connected to the Atlantic Ocean by the Fram Strait, which is located between Svalbard and Greenland.

Aboard an icebreaker research ship, the team collected water samples along two Fram Strait currents entering and exiting the Arctic Ocean and along a path from Europe's North Sea to the Arctic Ocean. Using mass spectrometry, the researchers detected 11 PFAS in the ocean water, including PFOA, HFPO-DA and other long- and short-chain PFAS. This was the first time that HFPO-DA had been detected in seawater from a remote region, indicating that the compound can be transported long distances. Higher levels of PFAS were detected in the water exiting the Arctic Ocean compared with the water entering the Arctic from the North Atlantic. The PFAS composition in the outgoing water suggested that more of these compounds arose from atmospheric sources than from ocean circulation.


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More information: "Transport of Legacy Perfluoroalkyl Substances and the Replacement Compound HFPO-DA through the Atlantic Gateway to the Arctic Ocean—Is the Arctic a Sink or a Source?" Environmental Science & Technology (2020). pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.0c00228

Journal information: Environmental Science & Technology


Provided by American Chemical Society