Defining a nutritionally healthy,environmentally friendly,and culturally acceptable Low Lands Diet

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that linear programming can support to define nutritionally healthy, environmentally friendly, and culturally acceptable diets, using the Low Lands as an illustrative example.

Methods

Our study quantifies the historical Dutch diet of 75 years ago, based on a cultural history research. We calculate the greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) and land use (LU) of this diet, using actual life cycle assessment (LCA) data for the 206 most consumed products, and the health score, based on ten nutritional characteristics. In order to meet the current requirements, we optimize this diet for adult males using linear programming. We compare the diet with the present Dutch, Mediterranean, and New Nordic Diet.

Results and discussion

An optimized Low Lands Diet has the same healthy nutritional characteristics (Health Score 123) as the Mediterranean Diet (122) and results in a lower environmental impact than the Mediterranean and New Nordic Diet (higher Combined GHGE-LU Score 121 versus 90 and 91). GHGE are 2.60 kg CO₂eq per day and LU 2.86 m²?*?year per day.

Conclusions

Through applying the method of linear programming, it is possible to calculate an optimal diet for the Low Lands with a short cultural distance, that is, as healthy as and more sustainable than a transition to more foreign European diets.

     

Designing a sustainable monitoring framework for assessing impacts of climate change at Joshua Tree National Park,USA

Predicting species’ responses to a warming and drying (for North America’s desert southwest region) climate provides focus for monitoring to track shifts in species’ occupancy, and ultimately identifying management options to stem losses to biodiversity. Here we describe a monitoring framework to achieve that objective. A first step is to identify which species to monitor; which species will provide the greatest information for discerning the effects of climate change versus the myriad of other stressors that may impact their distributions and abundance. To select focal species we employed two complimentary approaches. One tool, vulnerability assessments (VAs), use available scientific literature to assess exposure to environmental stressors and adaptive capacity or resilience to climate change. Another approach is habitat suitability modeling (HSM) coupled with simulated temperature shifts. This method statistically combines environmental variables at known species’ locations, such as climate and terrain, to model the complex interaction of factors that constrain a species’ distribution. All other variables held constant, simulated temperature shifts can identify species’ sensitivities to those shifts and identify potential refugia. We used these tools to assess risk of local extinction due to predicted levels of climate change, as well as to identify where to locate monitoring plots to best capture the shifts in species distributions over time. A challenge in developing a monitoring program to document the effects of climate change on biodiversity is program sustainability. One way to support and enhance the sustainability of such a program will be to couple trained biologists with volunteer citizen scientists.     

Designing a global assessment of climate change on inland fishes and fisheries: knowns and needs

To date, there are few comprehensive assessments of how climate change affects inland finfish, fisheries, and aquaculture at a global scale, but one is necessary to identify research needs and commonalities across regions and to help guide decision making and funding priorities. Broadly, the consequences of climate change on inland fishes will impact global food security, the livelihoods of people who depend on inland capture and recreational fisheries. However, understanding how climate change will affect inland fishes and fisheries has lagged behind marine assessments. Building from a North American inland fisheries assessment, we convened an expert panel from seven countries to provide a first-step to a framework for determining how to approach an assessment of how climate change may affect inland fishes, capture fisheries, and aquaculture globally. Starting with the small group helped frame the key questions (e.g., who is the audience? What is the best approach and spatial scale?). Data gaps identified by the group include: the tolerances of inland fisheries to changes in temperature, stream flows, salinity, and other environmental factors linked to climate change, and the adaptive capacity of fishes and fisheries to adjust to these changes. These questions are difficult to address, but long-term and large-scale datasets are becoming more readily available as a means to test hypotheses related to climate change. We hope this perspective will help researchers and decision makers identify research priorities and provide a framework to help sustain inland fish populations and fisheries for the diversity of users around the globe.     

Flash photolysis using a light emitting diode: an efficient, compact, and affordable solution

Flash photolysis has become an essential technique for dynamic investigations of living cells and tissues. This approach offers several advantages for instantly changing the concentration of bioactive compounds outside and inside living cells with high spatial resolution. Light sources for photolysis need to deliver pulses of high intensity light in the near UV range (300-380 nm), to photoactivate a sufficient amount of molecules in a short time. UV lasers are often required as the light source, making flash photolysis a costly approach. Here we describe the use of a high power 365 nm light emitting diode (UV LED) coupled to an optical fiber to precisely deliver the light to the sample. The ability of the UV LED light source to photoactivate several caged compounds (CMNB-fluorescein, MNI-glutamate, NP-EGTA, DMNPE-ATP) as well as to evoke the associated cellular Ca(2+) responses is demonstrated in both neurons and astrocytes. This report shows that UV LEDs are an efficient light source for flash photolysis and represent an alternative to UV lasers for many applications. A compact, powerful, and low-cost system is described in detail.     

Orbital variations, climate and paleoecology

One of the most exciting discoveries in the earth sciences in recent decades has been the proof that ice ages are governed by deterministic variations in the earth's orbit. These variations modify the latitudinal and seasonal distribution of solar radiation at periods ranging from 103 to 10(5) years, and alternately produce conditions for building and melting continental ice. The same solar radiation variations also govern other aspects of world climate, including the temperatures of the midlatitude continental interiors, the intensity of upwelling in the tropical oceans, and the strength and extent of the monsoons. The interplay of solar radiation, seasonality and ice-sheet changes is responsible for the complex ecological history documented in the fossil record of the past 20 000 years. But the orbital variations have occurred throughout earth's history, and have caused periodic environmental changes in both terrestrial and marine environments even during times when there was no ice. Species have responded to these changes by range migration, an evolved ability that may maintain their genetic coherence in the face of a continually changing environment.     

Pleistocene climate, phylogeny, and climate envelope models: an integrative approach to better understand species' response to climate change

Mean annual temperature reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change increases at least 1.1°C to 6.4°C over the next 90 years. In context, a change in climate of 6°C is approximately the difference between the mean annual temperature of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and our current warm interglacial. Species have been responding to changing climate throughout Earth's history and their previous biological responses can inform our expectations for future climate change. Here we synthesize geological evidence in the form of stable oxygen isotopes, general circulation paleoclimate models, species' evolutionary relatedness, and species' geographic distributions. We use the stable oxygen isotope record to develop a series of temporally high-resolution paleoclimate reconstructions spanning the Middle Pleistocene to Recent, which we use to map ancestral climatic envelope reconstructions for North American rattlesnakes. A simple linear interpolation between current climate and a general circulation paleoclimate model of the LGM using stable oxygen isotope ratios provides good estimates of paleoclimate at other time periods. We use geologically informed rates of change derived from these reconstructions to predict magnitudes and rates of change in species' suitable habitat over the next century. Our approach to modeling the past suitable habitat of species is general and can be adopted by others. We use multiple lines of evidence of past climate (isotopes and climate models), phylogenetic topology (to correct the models for long-term changes in the suitable habitat of a species), and the fossil record, however sparse, to cross check the models. Our models indicate the annual rate of displacement in a clade of rattlesnakes over the next century will be 2 to 3 orders of magnitude greater (430-2,420 m/yr) than it has been on average for the past 320 ky (2.3 m/yr).     

Human nasal protrusion,latitude, and climate

Relationships between morphological features of human skeletal nasal protrusion, latitude, and climate were investigated. Craniofacial dimensions and indices determined by Woo and Morant (1934) on a world sample of 55 skeletal populations were used as dependent variables. Sample sizes were as low as 39 in some calculations because either skeletal or geographic data were missing. Thirteen climatically related averaged variables, for each population's provenience, were the independent variables. Multivariate techniques of bivariate correlation, multiple regression, and partial correlation were applied. A strong, statistically significant cline of increasing nose protrusion, with decreasing absolute humidity and with increasing latitude, was found. Cold climatic variables appeared to be of greater importance than warm measures. Similarly, absolute humidity was found to be a much better predictor of nose protrusion than was relative humidity.     

Acacia,climate, and geochemistry in Australia

Background

Nitrogen-fixing legumes are key species in grassland ecosystems, as their ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen can facilitate neighboring plants. However, little is known about the fate of this legume effect in the face of extreme weather events, which are increasingly expected to occur.

Methods

Here, we examined experimentally how the presence of a legume modifies above-ground net primary production (ANPP) and nitrogen supply of neighboring non-legumes under annually recurrent pulsed drought and heavy rainfall events by comparing responses of three key species in European grassland versus without legume presence over 4 years.

Results

Legume presence facilitated community productivity of neighboring non-legumes under ambient weather conditions and also under experimental heavy rainfall. However, no facilitation of community productivity by the legume was found under experimental drought. Productivity of the three target species responded species-specifically to legume presence under different weather conditions: Holcus lanatus was facilitated only under control conditions, Plantago lanceolata was facilitated only under heavy rainfall, and Arrhenatherum elatius was facilitated irrespective of climate manipulations. The legume effects on δ ¹⁵N, leaf N concentration, and N uptake were also species-specific, yet irrespective of the climate manipulations. The data suggest that the missing legume effect on community productivity under the pulsed drought was rather caused by reduced N-uptake of the target species than by reduced N-fixation by the legume.

Conclusions

In contrast to heavy rain, the presence of a legume could not effectively buffer community ANPP against the negative effects of extreme drought events in an experimental temperate grassland. Facilitation also depends on the key species that are dominating a grassland community.     

Plantation forests,climate change and biodiversity

Nearly 4 % of the world’s forests are plantations, established to provide a variety of ecosystem services, principally timber and other wood products. In addition to such services, plantation forests provide direct and indirect benefits to biodiversity via the provision of forest habitat for a wide range of species, and by reducing negative impacts on natural forests by offsetting the need to extract resources. There is compelling evidence that climate change is directly affecting biodiversity in forests throughout the world. These impacts occur as a result of changes in temperature, rainfall, storm frequency and magnitude, fire frequency, and the frequency and magnitude of pest and disease outbreaks. However, in plantation forests it is not only the direct effects of climate change that will impact on biodiversity. Climate change will have strong indirect effects on biodiversity in plantation forests via changes in forest management actions that have been proposed to mitigate the effects of climate change on the productive capacity of plantations. These include changes in species selection (including use of species mixtures), rotation length, thinning, pruning, extraction of bioenergy feedstocks, and large scale climate change driven afforestation, reforestation, and, potentially deforestation. By bringing together the potential direct and indirect impacts of climate change we conclude that in the short to medium term changes in plantation management designed to mitigate or adapt to climate change could have a significantly greater impact on biodiversity in such plantation forests than the direct effects of climate change. Although this hypothesis remains to be formally tested, forest managers worldwide are already considering new approaches to plantation forestry in an effort to create forests that are more resilient to the effects of changing climatic conditions. Such change presents significant risks to existing biodiversity values in plantation forests, however it also provides new opportunities to improve biodiversity values within existing and new plantation forests. We conclude by suggesting future options, such as functional zoning and species mixtures applied at either the stand level or as fine-scale mosaics of single-species stands as options to improve biodiversity whilst increasing resilience to climate change.     

Protandry, sexual selection and climate change

Protandry refers to the earlier appearance of males before females at sites of reproduction. Sexual selection has been hypothesized to give rise to sex differences in benefits and costs of early arrival, thereby selecting for earlier appearance by the sex subject to more intense sexual selection. If sexual selection is more intense, there is a greater premium on early arrival among individuals of the chosen sex because of direct selection for earlier arrival. This hypothesis leads to the prediction that changes in the costs and benefits of early arrival related to changes in environmental conditions should particularly affect the sex that arrives first and hence the degree of protandry. I tested this hypothesis using the Barn Swallow Hirundo rustica. During 1971–2003, the degree of protandry increased significantly in a Danish population because males advanced arrival date while females did not. This earlier arrival by males compared with females was correlated with a significant increase by over 1.2 standard deviations in the length of the outermost tail feathers of males, a secondary sexual character, suggesting direct selection on both protandry and the secondary sexual character. Environmental conditions during spring migration in Northern Africa, as reflected by the normalized difference vegetation index, have deteriorated since 1984, resulting in increased mortality among males during spring migration, but not among females, and this deterioration of climatic conditions was positively correlated with an increasing degree of protandry. Likewise, an increase in April temperatures at the breeding grounds during recent decades is positively correlated with increased protandry, apparently because males can arrive earlier without increasing the fitness cost of early arrival. Local population size did not predict changes in arrival date. These findings suggest that rapid changes in climate can cause a change in degree of protandry and secondary sexual characters.     

Litter decomposition, climate and liter quality

Litter decomposition is controlled by three main factors: climate, litter quality and the nature and abundance of the decomposing organisms. Climate is the dominant factor in areas subjected to unfavourable weather conditions, whereas litter quality largely prevails as the regulator under favourable conditions. Litter quality remains important until the late decomposition stages through its effects on humus formation. Interest in the role of litter decomposition in the global carbon cycle has increased recently since (1) increased atmospheric carbon dioxide will probably affect the chemical quality of litter (especially nitrogen content), and (2) global warming may enhance decomposition rates.     

Phloem loading,plant growth form,and climate

Plasmodesmatal frequencies in the phloem of leaf minor veins vary considerably, suggesting that photoassimilate is loaded into the phloem by different strategies. The ecophysiological basis for multiple loading types is unknown. We updated the analysis of van Bel and Gamalei (Plant Cell Environ 15: 265–270, 1992) with more current phylogenetic data and by treating separately two symplastic loading types, those that load actively by polymer trapping (synthesis of raffinose family oligosaccharides—RFOs), and those that load passively, by diffusion. The results indicate a stronger association between passive, symplastic loading and the tree growth form than previously recognized. Apoplastic loading is highly correlated with the herbaceous habit. There is no correlation between RFO families and growth form. At the family level, there are no correlations between minor vein types and climate that cannot be explained by the dearth of woody plants in the arctic for reasons unassociated with phloem loading. However, at the species level, a floristic analysis uncovered a correlation between the RFO trait and species frequency in tropical and subtropical regions of the world. The correlations between loading types and both growth form and climate are subtle, probably indirect, and poorly understood.