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Day: June 6, 2024
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Armenia News – NEWS.am
This piece should win all the awards in Canada and beyond. What an incredible story. https://t.co/YJSAwL0C7T
— Michael Weiss (@michaeldweiss) June 7, 2024
The increase in tropical cyclone frequency and intensity due to climate change could lead to dramatic declines in seabird populations, suggests a paper published in;Communications Earth & Environment. The authors’ conclusion is based on the impacts of Cyclone Ilsa on Bedout Island, after the cyclone killed at least 80% of seabirds nesting on the island when it struck in April 2023.
Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, including tropical cyclones. Individual cyclones can have a dramatic impact on wildlife populations, including seabirds. Cyclones directly affect seabirds in several ways, including causing significant mortality events, disrupting their nesting and breeding patterns, and altering migration strategies. The increasing frequency of cyclones is already known to have negative impacts on a range of organisms, but the impact on seabird populations is still unclear.
Jennifer Lavers and colleagues studied the impact of Cyclone Ilsa, a category 5 tropical cyclone, on the populations of several seabird species breeding on the 17-hectare Bedout Island, Western Australia, after the cyclone crossed the island on April 13 2023. They used aerial and ground surveys, conducted between April 17 and July 21 2023, to estimate the percentage mortality of three species — the brown booby (Sula leucogaster), the lesser frigatebird (Fregata ariel), and an endemic subspecies of the masked booby (Sula dactylatra bedouti). The authors estimate that 80–90% of these species’ populations — at least 20,000 individual birds — were killed during the storm, with the losses predominantly adult breeding birds.
The authors warn that this level of population loss for island seabirds may be unsustainable when coupled with the increase in cyclone frequency, as many seabirds are long-lived, have long generation times, and raise very few chicks per year. A significant loss could therefore potentially leave a population unable to recover before the arrival of the next severe storm. Such population losses can also have direct consequences on an island’s ecosystem, as seabirds transport nutrients from the sea to land via their guano. The authors emphasise that seabird colonies in cyclone-prone areas therefore need careful monitoring to avoid long-term damage to island and reef ecosystems.
What species live in this coral reef, and are they healthy? Chemical clues emitted by marine organisms might hold that information. But in underwater environments, invisible compounds create a complex “soup” that is hard for scientists to decipher. Now, researchers in ACS’;Journal of Proteome Research;have demonstrated a way to extract and identify these indicator compounds in seawater. They found metabolites previously undetected on reefs, including three that may represent different reef organisms.
Plants and animals living in coral reefs release various substances, from complex macromolecules to individual amino acids, into the surrounding water. To determine which ones could identify the ecosystems’ inhabitants and be used to measure a coral reef’s health, scientists need to prepare water samples for analysis by concentrating the compounds and separating them from the salty broth. They primarily concentrate and collect these dissolved compounds from seawater on sticky membranes. However, this method misses many important nitrogen-, oxygen- and sulfur-containing compounds produced by marine organisms. These metabolites don’t attach well to the membrane materials and are present at extremely low levels in seawater. To overcome these challenges, Brianna Garcia, Amy Apprill, Elizabeth Kujawinski and colleagues at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution tested a technique that modified the dissolved metabolites before they were extracted from seawater into a form that’s compatible with membrane materials allowing them to be concentrated and analyzed.
First, the researchers collected and filtered water samples from five coral reefs around the U.S. Virgin Islands. They then used a series of reactions to attach a benzoyl functional group to dissolved amine- and alcohol-containing metabolites. Next, the team extracted the modified metabolites from the samples and assessed their composition and concentrations with liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. From applying this new technique, the researchers identified 23 metabolites that hadn’t been identified near coral reefs by previous studies, including amino acids, amines, pyrimidine nucleosides and organosulfonic acids, which are involved in photosynthesis and organismal growth. When the researchers analyzed their data, they found that:
- The presence of diseased coral, macroalgae and crustose coralline algae had the greatest influence on the metabolite compositions.
- Some compounds, such as the organosulfonic acid called DHPS, were consistently at high levels in all locations, which suggests the presence of coral and associated organisms.
- Three metabolites (homoserine betaine, tryptophan and γ-aminobutryic acid) had significantly different levels among the five reefs, and the researchers attribute those differences to variations in marine environments and organisms.
The researchers say this study successfully demonstrates how to collect previously overlooked, ecologically relevant compounds in coral reef ecosystems that could be used to monitor them for effects from climate change, natural disturbances and disease activity.
As infrastructure ages, it becomes more susceptible to failure, which can cause safety and mobility concerns for drivers and pedestrians, and economic woes for taxpayers. A;recent study;published in;“Transportation Research Record”;shows that high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite data can detect infrastructure issues early on, which can help prevent further damage to roads in the same way that annual checkups can help prevent more complex health issues in humans.
Led by Dr. Anand Puppala and Ph.D. candidate Amit Gajurel, researchers at Texas A&M University are working on a new method of infrastructure monitoring using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) remote sensing systems. SAR allows researchers to inspect and characterize pavements, retaining walls, and embankments from space and can help determine if there are flaws that should be further inspected for repair, saving valuable time.
“If a given area would typically take five days to complete — between surveying the data and determining large and small areas of failure — when using the satellites, we could actually look at the data and make the same determinations in only two days, which can be very useful for time-saving,” said Puppala, A.P. & Florence Wiley Chair Professor in the Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Department.
In addition to saving agencies time on repairs and preventative measures, utilizing satellites to monitor infrastructure and pavement conditions has the potential to reduce costs associated with managing roadway infrastructure assets.
“We’re building this up to use as a source of data for geotechnical asset management and looking at how to integrate this remote sensing data into geotechnical asset management,” said Gajurel. “We can use SAR data for managing the geotechnical assets. This could be a great method for organizations that are looking for a cost-effective way to manage these assets.”
SAR remote sensing technology has been used to study geomorphological changes and sudden movements like earthquakes and landslides.
“When there is damage due to a natural disaster, authorities use the satellite systems to determine what caused it. Recently we started utilizing this method to look at transportation infrastructure, including highway embankments, roads, and even airport runways,” said Puppala, who also serves as the director of the Center for Infrastructure Renewal at Texas A&M University.
As most doctors and patients would agree, preventative medicine is a better option than responding to an emergency. Preventative care provides doctors with more time to create the best plan for their patients. Likewise, by incorporating infrastructure condition data from SAR technology, asset managers can be proactive in repairing any flaws, budgeting for potential issues which can save both time and money that may be otherwise lost.