Phylogenetic Relationships among Deep-Sea and Chemosynthetic Sea Anemones: Actinoscyphiidae and Actinostolidae (Actiniaria: Mesomyaria)

Sea anemones (Cnidaria, Actiniaria) are present in all marine ecosystems, including chemosynthetic environments. The high level of endemicity of sea anemones in chemosynthetic environments and the taxonomic confusion in many of the groups to which these animals belong makes their systematic relationships obscure. We use five molecular markers to explore the phylogenetic relationships of the superfamily Mesomyaria, which includes most of the species that live in chemosynthetic, deep-sea, and polar sea habitats and to test the monophyly of the recently defined clades Actinostolina and Chemosynthina. We found that sea anemones of chemosynthetic environments derive from at least two different lineages: one lineage including acontiate deep-sea taxa and the other primarily encompassing shallow-water taxa.     

Highly Similar Prokaryotic Communities of Sunken Wood at Shallow and Deep-Sea Sites Across the Oceans

With an increased appreciation of the frequency of their occurrence, large organic falls such as sunken wood and whale carcasses have become important to consider in the ecology of the oceans. Organic-rich deep-sea falls may play a major role in the dispersal and evolution of chemoautotrophic communities at the ocean floor, and chemosynthetic symbiotic, free-living, and attached microorganisms may drive the primary production at these communities. However, little is known about the microbiota thriving in and around organic falls. Our aim was to investigate and compare free-living and attached communities of bacteria and archaea from artificially immersed and naturally sunken wood logs with varying characteristics at several sites in the deep sea and in shallow water to address basic questions on the microbial ecology of sunken wood. Multivariate indirect ordination analyses of capillary electrophoresis single-stranded conformation polymorphisms (CE-SSCP) fingerprinting profiles demonstrated high similarity of bacterial and archaeal assemblages present in timbers and logs situated at geographically distant sites and at different depths of immersion. This similarity implies that wood falls harbor a specialized microbiota as observed in other ecosystems when the same environmental conditions reoccur. Scanning and transmission electron microscopy observations combined with multivariate direct gradient analysis of Bacteria CE-SSCP profiles demonstrate that type of wood (hard vs. softwood), and time of immersion are important in structuring sunken wood bacterial communities. Archaeal populations were present only in samples with substantial signs of decay, which were also more similar in their bacterial assemblages, providing indirect evidence of temporal succession in the microbial communities that develop in and around wood falls.     

How to Make a Beetle Out of Wood: Multi-Elemental Stoichiometry of Wood Decay,Xylophagy and Fungivory

The majority of terrestrial biomass is wood, but the elemental composition of its potential consumers, xylophages, differs hugely from that of wood. This causes a severe nutritional imbalance. We studied the stoichiometric relationships of 11 elements (C, N, P, K, Ca, Mg, Fe, Zn, Mn, Cu, Na) in three species of pine-xylem-feeding insects, Stictoleptura rubra, Arhopalus rusticus (Coleoptera, Cerambycidae) and Chalcophora mariana (Coleoptera, Buprestidae), to elucidate their mechanisms of tissue growth and to match their life histories to their dietary constraints. These beetles do not differ from other Coleoptera in their absolute elemental compositions, which are approximately 1000 (N), 100 (P, Cu) and 50 (K, Na) times higher than in dead but undecayed pine wood. This discrepancy diminishes along the wood decay gradient, but the elemental concentrations remain higher by an order of magnitude in beetles than in highly decayed wood. Numerical simulation of the life history of S. rubra shows that feeding on nutrient-poor undecayed wood would extend its development time to implausible values, whereas feeding on highly decomposed wood (heavily infected with fungi) would barely balance its nutritional budget during the long development period of this species. The changes in stoichiometry indicate that the relative change in the nutrient levels in decaying wood cannot be attributed solely to carbon loss resulting from decomposer respiration: the action of fungi substantially enriches the decaying wood with nutritional elements imported from the outside of the system, making it a suitable food for wood-eating invertebrates.     

Incubation Temperature and Time Effects on Life Stages of Bursaphelenchus xylophilus in Wood Chips

Wood chips of Pinus strobus inoculated with Bursaphelenchus xylophilus were incubated at 3, 12, 30, or 40 C during intervals of 47, 82, and 130 days to determine the effects of incubation temperature and time on total number of nematodes and occurrence of each life stage. Nematodes did not survive at 40 C; the greatest number of nematodes was maintained at 3 C. The number and percentage of juveniles in the propagative cycle were greatest at 3 C after 47 days, but the percentage was greatest at 30 C after 130 days. More third-stage dispersal larvae, with percentages as high as 85%, were extracted at 3 and 12 C than at 30 C by the end of the study. Dauer larvae were extracted from the chips, but percentages never exceeded 5%. The percentage of adults was greater at 30 C than at 3 and 12 C after 82 and 130 days. When a 1-week heat treatment at 30 C was applied to samples at 3 and 12 C,. numbers and percentages of adults increased. Percentages of dauer larvae increased very slightly when the heat treatment was applied after 47 days, but numbers and percentages of juveniles and dispersals were affected erratically.     

Life Cycle Inventory Analysis of the Wood Pallet Repair Process in the United States

This study developed gate‐to‐gate life cycle inventory (LCI) data for the repair of 48 by 40 inch (1,219 by 1,016 millimeter [mm]) stringer‐class wood pallets in the United States. Data were collected from seven wood pallet repair facilities. Approximately 1.98 FBM (foot, board measure) (4.67E‐03 cubic meters) of lumber were used for repairing each 48 by 40 inch (1,219 by 1,016 mm) stringer‐class wood pallet, the majority (97%) recovered from damaged pallets received by the pallet repair facilities. Repair equipment powered by electricity made the largest contribution to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Steel nails used for the pallet repair had the largest contribution to GHG emissions among the material inputs, while use of recovered lumber yielded the largest GHG emissions credits. Overall, the repair process for a 48 by 40 inch (1,219 by 1,016 mm) stringer‐class wood pallet had GHG credits rather than a positive GHG emission due to the GHG offsets from co‐products.     

Developments in Wood and Packaging Materials Life Cycle Inventories in ecoinvent (9 pp)

Goal, Scope and Background This paper gives an overview on how the wood and packaging material production is inventoried in ecoinvent. Packaging materials have been a very important topic in the area of Life Cycle Assessment for more than twenty years. Wood is the most important renewable material and regenerative fuel used worldwide, and an important raw material for paper / board. Several methodological problems arising when inventorying wood for material and energetic uses in a generic database are discussed in more detail. Within the ecoinvent project, the Swiss data base for life cycle inventory data, two reports are dedicated to these two important topics – report No. 9 for wood and report No. 11 for packaging materials. Methods The whole wood chain has been modeled in a consistent way. This allows one to use this data for LCAs of building materials, bioenergy or paper production. The data represent average technologies used in Central Europe in the year 2000. A revenue-based co-product allocation approach is used for the different outputs. Correction factors are introduced for the consistent modeling of mass-based, material inherent wood properties such as solar energy, carbon uptake and land use. For packaging materials, the datasets represent European average data for the most often used materials as well as specific datasets for the production of actual packaging boxes and containers.Results and Discussion For wood, revenue-based allocation and the use of the correction factors for mass-related wood properties are shown and explained. For packaging materials, the importance of the raw material wood to the total load is shown. Furthermore trends in the data inventories for board packaging materials over the last two decades are discussed: mainly due to the increased comprehensiveness of the data, higher cumulative emissions can be observed. Conclusion For wood, the database ecoinvent provides consistent datasets for the entire chain from forestry to intermediate products such as timber, different types of wood-based boards, chips, pellets, etc. For packaging materials, the number of datasets of basic materials has been extended. A modular concept for actual packaging container datasets allows the user an easy modeling of various types of packaging containers/boxes. In the area of paper and board, a comprehensive database for the production of various types of pulp, paper and board is provided, which is representative for the average European production situation. Outlook Since wood is only limited and representative data for Europe is therefore not included, an update in the near future would be reasonable. Possible further extensions in the future could include various, final wooden products. For the data on paper/board, different levels of quality are observed, requiring a selective up-date of these data. Future extensions could include datasets for the import of pulp from overseas – especially from South America and Canada.     

How and Why to Build a Unified Tree of Life

Phylogenetic trees are a crucial backbone for a wide breadth of biological research spanning systematics, organismal biology, ecology, and medicine. In 2015, the Open Tree of Life project published a first draft of a comprehensive tree of life, summarizing digitally available taxonomic and phylogenetic knowledge. This paper reviews, investigates, and addresses the following questions as a follow‐up to that paper, from the perspective of researchers involved in building this summary of the tree of life: Is there a tree of life and should we reconstruct it? Is available data sufficient to reconstruct the tree of life? Do we have access to phylogenetic inferences in usable form? Can we combine different phylogenetic estimates across the tree of life? And finally, what is the future of understanding the tree of life?

     

Life Cycle Impacts and Benefits of Wood along the Value Chain: The Case of Switzerland

Sustainable use of wood may contribute to coping with energy and material resource challenges. The goal of this study is to increase knowledge of the environmental effects of wood use by analyzing the complete value chain of all wooden goods produced or consumed in Switzerland. We start from a material flow analysis of current wood use in Switzerland. Environmental impacts related to the material flows are evaluated using life cycle assessment–based environmental indicators. Regarding climate change, we find an overall average benefit of 0.5 tonnes carbon dioxide equivalent per cubic meter of wood used. High environmental benefits are often achieved when replacing conventional heat production and energy‐consuming materials in construction and furniture. The environmental performance of wood is, however, highly dependent on its use and environmental indicators. To exploit the mitigation potential of wood, we recommend to (1) apply its use where there are high substitution benefits like the replacement of fossil fuels for energy or energy‐intensive building materials, (2) take appropriate measures to minimize negative effects like particulate matter emissions, and (3) keep a systems perspective to weigh effects like substitution and cascading against each other in a comprehensive manner. The results can provide guidance for further in‐depth studies and prospective analyses of wood‐use scenarios.     

The Origin of Life – How Long did it Take?

We do not understand the steps leading from the abiotic early earth to the RNA world. Consequently, we cannot estimate the time required for the origins of life. Attempts to circumvent this essential difficulty are based on misunderstandings of the nature of the problem.     

A Technical Perspective in Modern Tree-ring Research - How to Overcome Dendroecological and Wood Anatomical Challenges

Dendroecological research uses information stored in tree rings to understand how single trees and even entire forest ecosystems responded to environmental changes and to finally reconstruct such changes. This is done by analyzing growth variations back in time and correlating various plant-specific parameters to (for example) temperature records. Integrating wood anatomical parameters in these analyses would strengthen reconstructions, even down to intra-annual resolution. We therefore present a protocol on how to sample, prepare, and analyze wooden specimen for common macroscopic analyses, but also for subsequent microscopic analyses. Furthermore we introduce a potential solution for analyzing digital images generated from common small and large specimens to support time-series analyses. The protocol presents the basic steps as they currently can be used. Beyond this, there is an ongoing need for the improvement of existing techniques, and development of new techniques, to record and quantify past and ongoing environmental processes. Traditional wood anatomical research needs to be expanded to include ecological information to this field of research. This would support dendro-scientists who intend to analyze new parameters and develop new methodologies to understand the short and long term effects of specific environmental factors on the anatomy of woody plants.     

Life Cycle Inventory of Particleboard: A Case Study in the Wood Sector (8 pp)

Goal, Scope and Background Wood has many applications and it is often in competition with other materials. Chipboard is the most common item of wood-based materials and it has attained the highest economical development in recent years. Relevant up-to-date environmental data are needed to allow the environmental comparison of wood with other materials. There are several examples of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) evaluations of some wood products and forest-technology systems, but no comprehensive Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data for particleboard manufacture is available in the literature. The main focus of this study is to generate a comprehensive LCI database for the manufacture of resin-bonded wood particleboards. Methods In this work, International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards and Ecoindicator 99 methodology were considered to quantify the potential environmental impact associated to the system under study. A Spanish factory considered representative of the 'state of art' was studied in detail. The system boundaries included all the activities taking place inside the factory as well as the activities associated with the production of the main chemicals used in the process, energy inputs and transport. All the data related to the inputs and outputs of the process were obtained by on-site measurements. Results and Discussion LCI methodology was used for the quantification of the impacts of the particleboard manufacture. The inventory data of the three defined subsystems are described: - Wood preparation: a comprehensive inventory of data including storage, debarking, particle production, storage and measurement of particles, drying and combustion of the bark for energy purposes. - Board shaping: data related to particle classification, resin mixing, mattress formation and the pressing stage. - Board finishing: cooling data, finishing, storage and distribution of the final product. The system was characterised with Ecoindicator 99 methodology (hierarchic version) in order to identify the 'hot spots'. Damage to Human Health was mainly produced by the subsystem of Board finishing. The subsystem of Board shaping was the most significant contributor to damage to the Ecosystem Quality and Resources. Conclusions With the final aim of creating a database to identify and characterise the manufacture of particleboard, special attention was paid to the inventory analysis stage of the particleboard industry. A multicriteria approach was applied in order to define the most adequate use of wood wastes. Environmental, economic and social considerations strengthen the hypothesis that the use of forest residues in particleboard manufacture is more sustainable than their use as fuel. Recommendations and Outlook In this work, particleboard was the product analysed, as it is one of the most common wood-based materials. Future work will focus on the study of another key wood board: Medium Density Fibreboard (MDF). Moreover, factors with strong geographical dependence, such as the electricity profile and final transport of the product, will be analysed. In addition, the definition of widespread functional unit to study the use of wood wastes at the end-of-life stage may be another issue of outstanding interest.     

The Quantity and Turnover of Dead Wood in Permanent Forest Plots in Six Life Zones of Venezuela1

Dead wood can be an important component of the carbon pool in many forests, but few measurements have been made of this pool in tropical forests, To fill this gap, we determined the quantity of dead wood (downed and standing dead) in 25 long-term (up to 30 yr) permanent forest plots located in six different life zones of Venezuela. Downed wood was separated into fine (< 10 cm in diameter) and coarse (≥ 10 cm in diameter) classes, and three decomposition states (sound, intermediate, or rotten). The total quantity of dead wood, averaged by life zone, was lowest in the dry (2.43 Mg/ha), reached a peak in the moist (42.33 Mg/ha) and decreased slightly in the wet (34.50 Mg/ha) life zone. Most of the dead wood was in the standing dead category (about 42–76% of the total). The decomposition state of dead wood in all plots was mostly rotten (45%) or intermediate (44%); there was little sound wood (11%). Turnover rates of dead wood generally ranged between 0.03/yr to 0.52/yr with no clear trend with life zone. The large amount of dead wood in some plots was equivalent to about 20 percent or less of aboveground biomass, indicating that dead wood can represent a significant amount of carbon in these forests.     

Environmental Impact Assessment of Wood Use in Japan through 2050 Using Material Flow Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment

In this study, we used material flow analysis and life cycle assessment to quantify the environmental impacts and impact reductions related to wood consumption in Japan from 1970 to 2013. We then conducted future projections of the impacts and reductions until 2050 based on multiple future scenarios of domestic forestry, wood, and energy use. An impact assessment method involving characterization, damage assessment, and integration with a monetary unit was used, and the results were expressed in Japanese yen (JPY). We found that environmental impacts from paper consumption, such as climate change and urban air pollution, were significant and accounted for 56% to 83% of the total environmental impacts between 1970 and 2013. Therefore, reductions of greenhouse gas, nitrogen oxide, and sulfur oxide emissions from paper production would be an effective measure to reduce the overall environmental impacts. An increase in wood use for building construction, civil engineering, furniture materials, and energy production could lead to reductions of environmental impacts (via carbon storage, material substitution, and fuel substitution) amounting to 357 billion JPY in 2050, which is equivalent to 168% of the 2013 levels. Particularly, substitution of nonwooden materials, such as cement, concrete, and steel, with wood products in building construction could significantly contribute to impact reductions. Although an increase of wood consumption could reduce environmental impacts, such as climate change, resource consumption, and urban air pollution, increased wood consumption would also be associated with land‐use impacts. Therefore, minimizing land transformations from forest to barren land will be important.