Land use changes could modify future negative effects of climate change on old‐growth forest indicator species

Aim

Climate change is expected to have major impacts on terrestrial biodiversity at all ecosystem levels, including reductions in species‐level distribution and abundance. We aim to test the extent to which land use management, such as setting‐aside forest from production, could reduce climate‐induced biodiversity impacts for specialist species over large geographical gradients.

Location

Sweden.

Methods

We applied ensembles of species distribution models based on citizen science data for six species of red‐listed old‐forest indicator fungi confined to spruce dead wood. We tested the effect on species habitat suitabilities of alternative climate change scenarios and varying amounts of forest set‐aside from production over the coming century.

Results

With 3.6% of forest area set‐aside from production and assuming no climate change, overall habitat suitabilities for all six species were projected to increase in response to maturing spruce in set‐aside forest. However, overall habitat suitabilities for all six species were projected to decline under climate change scenario RCP4.5 (intermediate–low emissions), with even greater declines projected under RCP 8.5 (high emissions). Increasing the amount of forest set‐aside to 16% resulted in significant increases in overall habitat suitability, with one species showing an increase. A further increase to 32% forest set‐aside resulted in considerably more positive trends, with three of six species increasing.

Main conclusions

There is interspecific variation in the importance of future macroclimate and resource availability on species occurrence. However, large‐scale conservation measures, such as increasing resource availability through setting aside forest from production, could reduce future negative effects from climate change, and early investment in conservation is likely to reduce the future negative impacts of climate change on specialist species.     

Eco-efficiency indicator framework implemented in the metallurgical industry: part 1—a comprehensive view and benchmark

Purpose

The purpose of this work was to develop an indicator framework for the environmental sustainability benchmarking of products produced by the metallurgical industry. Sustainability differentiation has become an important issue for companies throughout the value chain. Differentiation is sometimes not attainable, due to the use of average data, lack of comparative data, certain issues being overshadowed by others, and a very narrow palette of indicators dominating the current sustainability assessments. There is a need for detailed and credible analyses, which show the current status and point out where improvements can be made. The indicator framework is developed to give a comprehensive picture of eco-efficiency, to provide methods that enable relevant comparisons as well as the tools for communicating the results. In this way, the methodology presented in this study aims to make differentiation easier and thus aid companies in driving the development toward more sustainable solutions.

Methods

The framework is based on the existing indicator framework Gaia Biorefiner, which is primarily intended for bio-based products. In this work, the framework was further developed for application in the metallurgical industry. The indicator framework is built by first looking at the issues, which are critical to the environment and global challenges seen today and which the activities of the metallurgical industry may have an impact on. Based on these issues, suitable indicators are chosen if they exist and built if they do not. The idea is that all indicators in a group form a whole, showing areas of innovation while refraining from aggregating and weighting, which often compromise a comprehensive and objective view. Both qualitative and quantitative indicators are included. The indicators are constructed following the criteria set by the EU and OECD for building indicators. Each indicator further has a benchmark. The rules for building the benchmark are connected to the indicators. Suitable data sources and criteria for the benchmark and the indicators are gathered from literature, publicly available databases, and commercial LCA software. The use of simulation tools for attaining more reliable data is also studied.

Results and discussion

The result is a visual framework consisting of ten indicator groups with one to five indicators each, totaling up to 31 indicators. These are visualized in a sustainability indicator “flower.” The flower can be further opened up to study each indicator and the reasons behind the results. The sustainability benchmark follows a methodology that is based on utilization of baseline data and sustainability criteria or limits. A simulation approach was included in the methodology to address the problem with data scarcity and data reliability. The status of the environment, current production technologies, location-specific issues, and process-specific issues all affect the result, and the aim of finding relevant comparisons that will support sustainability differentiation is answered by a scalable scoping system.

Conclusions

A new framework and its concise visualization has been built for assessing the eco-efficiency of products from the metallurgical industry, in a way that aims to answer the needs of the industry. Since there is a baseline, against which each indicator can be benchmarked, a sustainability indicator “flower” can be derived, one of the key innovations of this methodology. This approach goes beyond the usual quantification, as it is also scalable and linked to technology and its fundamental parameters. In part 2, a case study “A case study from the copper industry” tests and illustrates the methodology.

     

Electrogenesis in mouse neuroblastoma cells in vitro

Intracellular microelectrode studies of passive membrane properties and action potential generation were carried out on cloned and uncloned mouse neuroblastoma cells in tissue culture. The cloned cells were studied between the eighth and tenth months and the uncloned cells between the third and fifth weeks after primary dissociation. Electrophysiologic measurements of cell membrane properties were made by passing stimulating current pulses across the cell membrane from an intracellular microelectrode and recording simultaneously from the same electrode, by means of a bridge circuit, the changes in membrane potential. The range of responses to electrical stimulation varied from passive increases in membrane potential to repetitive firing of action potentials. A 20 fold range in spike generating capability was found. Passive membrane properties (membrane potential, specific membrane resistivity, and specific membrane capacitance) were similar to those of sympathetic neurons in intact preparations. Seventy-nine percent of the cloned cell line compared to 94% of the uncloned line were capable of generating action potentials. Less than 2% of the cloned cells showed repetitive firing whereas 23% of the uncloned cells had this property. As in several types of normal neurons, the action potential mechanism was largely, although not completely, blocked by iontophoretic and bath applied tetrodotoxin.     

The human homolog of the rodent immediate early response genes, PC4 and TIS7, resides in the lung cancer tumor suppressor gene region on chromosome 3p21

Recently, human chromosome band 3p21.3 was shown to undergo overlapping homozygous deletions in several small cell lung cancer lines further defining a putative tumor suppressor gene(s) region. We report the cloning and mutational analysis of a novel human gene, SKMc15, from the commonly homozygously deleted region in three small cell lung cancer lines (NCI-H1450, NCI-H740, GLC20). It has 11 exons ranging in size from 50 to 541 bp with an open reading frame of 442 amino acids. The gene covers 7 to 10 kb of genomic DNA; the message of 1.8 to 2 kb is expressed in all analyzed fetal and adult human and mouse tissues including heart, brain, placenta, lung liver, skeletal muscle, kidney, testis and pancreas and in small cell and non-small cell cancer lines. The intron/exon boundaries were used to analyze the gene for mutations by exon PCR-SSCP sequencing in 60 small cell lung cancer cell lines. No loss-of-function mutations were detected. The cDNA sequence has high homology, 75% at the protein level, to the rat early response gene PC4 and its murine homolog TIS7. In addition, the known partial sequence of the putative mouse interferon β2 (64 amino acids) gene is highly conserved in PC4/TIS7 (94%) and in SKMc15 (83%) at the amino acid level. The sequence TAAAT, which is thought to be involved in mRNA degradation, is present in the 3′ UTR of SKMc15 and in the 3′ UTR of PC4 and TIS7 genes. Received: 28 August 1996 / Revised: 18 October 1996