Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “ecological”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 775 records · Page 43

Accounting for herbaceous communities in process‐based models will advance our understanding of “grassy” ecosystems

Abstract Grassland and other herbaceous communities cover significant portions of Earth's terrestrial surface and provide many critical services, such as carbon sequestration, wildlife habitat, and food production. Forecasts of global change impacts on these services will require predictive tools, such as process‐based dynamic vegetation models. Yet, model representation of herbaceous communities and ecosystems lags substantially behind that of tree communities and forests. The limited representation of herbaceous communities within models arises from two important knowledge gaps: first, our empirical understanding of the principles governing herbaceous vegetation dynamics is either incomplete or does not provide mechanistic information necessary to drive herbaceous community processes with models; second, current model structure and parameterization of grass and other herbaceous plant functional types limits the ability of models to predict outcomes of competition and growth for herbaceous vegetation. In this review, we provide direction for addressing these gaps by: (1) presenting a brief history of how vegetation dynamics have been developed and incorporated into earth system models, (2) reporting on a model simulation activity to evaluate current model capability to represent herbaceous vegetation dynamics and ecosystem function, and (3) detailing several ecological properties and phenomena that should be a focus for both empiricists and modelers to improve representation of herbaceous vegetation in models. Together, empiricists and modelers can improve representation of herbaceous ecosystem processes within models. In so doing, we will greatly enhance our ability to forecast future states of the earth system, which is of high importance given the rapid rate of environmental change on our planet.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Wildfire‐induced increases in photosynthesis in boreal forest ecosystems of North America

Abstract Observations of the annual cycle of atmospheric CO 2 in high northern latitudes provide evidence for an increase in terrestrial metabolism in Arctic tundra and boreal forest ecosystems. However, the mechanisms driving these changes are not yet fully understood. One proposed hypothesis is that ecological change from disturbance, such as wildfire, could increase the magnitude and change the phase of net ecosystem exchange through shifts in plant community composition. Yet, little quantitative work has evaluated this potential mechanism at a regional scale. Here we investigate how fire disturbance influences landscape‐level patterns of photosynthesis across western boreal North America. We use Alaska and Canadian large fire databases to identify the perimeters of wildfires, a Landsat‐derived land cover time series to characterize plant functional types (PFTs), and solar‐induced fluorescence (SIF) from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory‐2 (OCO‐2) as a proxy for photosynthesis. We analyze these datasets to characterize post‐fire changes in plant succession and photosynthetic activity using a space‐for‐time approach. We find that increases in herbaceous and sparse vegetation, shrub, and deciduous broadleaf forest PFTs during mid‐succession yield enhancements in SIF by 8–40% during June and July for 2‐ to 59‐year stands relative to pre‐fire controls. From the analysis of post‐fire land cover changes within individual ecoregions and modeling, we identify two mechanisms by which fires contribute to long‐term trends in SIF. First, increases in annual burning are shifting the stand age distribution, leading to increases in the abundance of shrubs and deciduous broadleaf forests that have considerably higher SIF during early‐ and mid‐summer. Second, fire appears to facilitate a long‐term shift from evergreen conifer to broadleaf deciduous forest in the Boreal Plain ecoregion. These findings suggest that increasing fire can contribute substantially to positive trends in seasonal CO 2 exchange without a close coupling to long‐term increases in carbon storage.

Biodiversity & Conservation↗

Microbiome Adaptation Could Amplify Modeled Projections of Global Soil Carbon Loss With Climate Warming

Warming alters soil microbial traits through ecological and evolutionary processes, directly influencing the decomposition of organic matter, which significantly affects global soil carbon emissions. Yet, soil carbon models largely ignore these processes and their implications for global responses to warming. Here, we incorporate eco-evolutionary theory into a mechanistic model describing microbial soil carbon decomposition to address the question of whether such processes could have consequential effects on climate carbon feedbacks globally. We assume that a key trait of microbes, their resource allocation to production of exoenzymes (which facilitate decomposition of organic matter)—is optimized to environmental temperatures by natural selection. We find that eco-evolutionary optimization results in microbes allocating more resources to enzyme production under warming. When applied at the global scale, eco-evolutionary optimization enhances the biological realism of soil carbon models and significantly amplifies global soil carbon loss by 2100. Our results highlight the significant potential of microbial eco-evolutionary responses to influence carbon cycle feedbacks to climate change, and motivate an urgent need for more comprehensive data to accurately quantify the adaptive potential of microbiomes in response to climate change.

Biodiversity & Conservation↗

Towards mapping biodiversity from above: Can fusing lidar and hyperspectral remote sensing predict taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic tree diversity in temperate forests?

Abstract Aim Rapid global change is impacting the diversity of tree species and essential ecosystem functions and services of forests. It is therefore critical to understand and predict how the diversity of tree species is spatially distributed within and among forest biomes. Satellite remote sensing platforms have been used for decades to map forest structure and function but are limited in their capacity to monitor change by their relatively coarse spatial resolution and the complexity of scales at which different dimensions of biodiversity are observed in the field. Recently, airborne remote sensing platforms making use of passive high spectral resolution (i.e., hyperspectral) and active lidar data have been operationalized, providing an opportunity to disentangle how biodiversity patterns vary across space and time from field observations to larger scales. Most studies to date have focused on single sites and/or one sensor type; here we ask how multiple sensor types from the National Ecological Observatory Network’s Airborne Observation Platform (NEON AOP) perform across multiple sites in a single biome at the NEON field plot scale (i.e., 40 m × 40 m). Location Eastern USA. Time period 2017–2018. Taxa studied Trees. Methods With a fusion of hyperspectral and lidar data from the NEON AOP, we assess the ability of high resolution remotely sensed metrics to measure biodiversity variation across eastern US temperate forests. We examine how taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic measures of alpha diversity vary spatially and assess to what degree remotely sensed metrics correlate with in situ biodiversity metrics. Results Models using estimates of forest function, canopy structure, and topographic diversity performed better than models containing each category alone. Our results show that canopy structural diversity, and not just spectral reflectance, is critical to predicting biodiversity. Main conclusions We found that an approach that jointly leverages spectral properties related to leaf and canopy functional traits and forest health, lidar derived estimates of forest structure, fine‐resolution topographic diversity, and careful consideration of biogeographical differences within and among biomes is needed to accurately map biodiversity variation from above.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Agent-based modeling and simulation for the circular economy: Lessons learned and path forward

Circular economy aims at decoupling human activities from resource use and creating wealth. However, many have questioned the link between increased circularity and sustainability, resulting in several methodological approaches being developed to answer that question. This article analyzes and discusses the insights gained from applying agent-based modeling and simulation to study the techno-economic and social conditions promoting circularity and sustainability. This article analyzes the benefits and limitations of this technology and discusses future methodology developments within the circular economy context. Moreover, six limits of the circular economy concept are used to interpret insights from the literature: thermodynamic limits, system boundary limits, limits posed by the physical scale of the economy, limits posed by path dependencies and lock-in, limits of governance and management, and limits of social and cultural definitions. Promising research avenues are to use this methodology with machine learning, industrial ecology methods, and detailed geographic information.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

Filling gaps in our understanding of belowground plant traits across the world: an introduction to a Virtual Issue

The belowground world is one of the final frontiers in terrestrial ecology. The tangling of plant roots with the surrounding soil below is a lifeline for the humble forbs and towering trees above, and roots play a key role in shaping ecosystem carbon, water and nutrient cycling (Bardgett et al., 2014). Ecologists have long sought to better understand the ecosystem-scale consequences of differing plant strategies, above- and belowground, by relating plant characteristics, or traits, to plant function (Grime, 1977; Pregitzer, 2002). While developing trait–function linkages is arguably more difficult for plant traits that are hidden belowground, root and rhizosphere ecologists continue to fan out across grasslands and forests with their shovels, isotopes, and specialized cameras, seeking a better understanding of the secret lives of roots. Over the years, New Phytologist has served as a virtual town square for scientists to discuss their hard-won observations on the interplay among belowground plant traits, microbial activity, and edaphic and environmental conditions from biomes around the world (Norby & Jackson, 2000; Pregitzer, 2002; Matamala & Stover, 2013; Norby & Iversen, 2017). In this Editorial we highlight the newest papers that update and add to our understanding of the role of root and rhizosphere traits in broader ecosystem processes. We focused on papers published in New Phytologist between 1 January 2019 and 31 December 2020 and extended this window to papers still in ‘early view’ up to the time of writing. Because of the overwhelming number of papers, we did not include those with a decidedly genomic focus or that served primarily as data syntheses, reviews, insights or commentaries.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

A haplotype‐resolved reference genome of Quercus alba sheds light on the evolutionary history of oaks

Summary White oak ( Quercus alba ) is an abundant forest tree species across eastern North America that is ecologically, culturally, and economically important. We report the first haplotype‐resolved chromosome‐scale genome assembly of Q. alba and conduct comparative analyses of genome structure and gene content against other published Fagaceae genomes. We investigate the genetic diversity of this widespread species and the phylogenetic relationships among oaks using whole genome data. Despite strongly conserved chromosome synteny and genome size across Quercus , certain gene families have undergone rapid changes in size, including defense genes. Unbiased annotation of resistance (R) genes across oaks revealed that the overall number of R genes is similar across species – as are the chromosomal locations of R gene clusters – but, gene number within clusters is more labile. We found that Q. alba has high genetic diversity, much of which predates its divergence from other oaks and likely impacts divergence time estimations. Our phylogenetic results highlight widespread phylogenetic discordance across the genus. The white oak genome represents a major new resource for studying genome diversity and evolution in Quercus . Additionally, we show that unbiased gene annotation is key to accurately assessing R gene evolution in Quercus .

Larson, Drew A. [Department of Biology Indiana Uni↗

Assisted migration in a warmer and drier climate: less climate buffering capacity, less facilitation and more fires at temperate latitudes?

Assisted tree migration has been proposed as a conceptual solution to mitigate lags in biotic responses to anthropogenic climate change. The rationale behind this concept is that tree species currently growing under warmer and drier climates will be more resistant and resilient to the new climatic conditions than tree species naturally growing in currently wetter and colder climates. However, we hypothesize that, by being more stress‐tolerant to warmer and drier conditions, translocated species should exhibit different functional attributes, which could induce important ecological and societal costs and overcome the desired benefits of maintaining wood production and other ecosystem services. We used principal component analysis (PCA) to analyze variation in seven traits of 106 tree and tall shrub species from contrasting latitudinal distributions in western North America and Europe to predict the potential functional changes of forest ecosystems due to the translocation of tree species from low to high latitudes. We show that species from both continents differed primarily by their position on the leaf economy spectrum (LES) and their size traits. Even though, in Europe, differences in LES were significantly correlated to species southern latitudinal positions, in both continents differences in size traits were significantly correlated to latitude. These results suggest that assisted migration by translocating more conservative species of shorter stature in currently cooler climates should decrease the buffering capacity of forest canopies, decrease facilitation for understory species, and increase wildfire risks, whose effects have the potential to accelerate climate warming through negative atmospheric feedback processes. As an alternative solution to assisted migration that may accelerate rather than mitigate climate change, we recommend that foresters gradually diversify the vertical structure and layering of the existing forest canopy to maintain a sustainable water cycle and energy balance between the soil, the tree and the atmosphere without increasing the wildfire risk.

Environmental Sciences & Ecology↗

Thermal adaptation of soil microbial growth traits in response to chronic warming

ABSTRACT Adaptation of soil microbes due to warming from climate change has been observed, but it remains unknown what microbial growth traits are adaptive to warming. We studied bacterial isolates from the Harvard Forest Long-Term Ecological Research site, where field soils have been experimentally heated to 5°C above ambient temperature with unheated controls for 30 years. We hypothesized that Alphaproteobacteria from warmed plots have (i) less temperature-sensitive growth rates; (ii) higher optimum growth temperatures; and (iii) higher maximum growth temperatures compared to isolates from control plots. We made high-throughput measurements of bacterial growth in liquid cultures over time and across temperatures from 22°C to 37°C in 2–3°C increments. We estimated growth rates by fitting Gompertz models to the growth data. Temperature sensitivity of growth rate, optimum growth temperature, and maximum growth temperature were estimated by the Ratkowsky 1983 model and a modified Macromolecular Rate Theory (MMRT) model. To determine evidence of adaptation, we ran phylogenetic generalized least squares tests on isolates from warmed and control soils. Our results showed evidence of adaptation of higher optimum growth temperature of bacterial isolates from heated soils. However, we observed no evidence of adaptation of temperature sensitivity of growth and maximum growth temperature. Our project begins to capture the shape of the temperature response curves, but illustrates that the relationship between growth and temperature is complex and cannot be limited to a single point in the biokinetic range. IMPORTANCE Soils are the largest terrestrial carbon sink and the foundation of our food, fiber, and fuel systems. Healthy soils are carbon sinks, storing more carbon than they release. This reduces the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere and buffers against climate change. Soil microbes drive biogeochemical cycling and contribute to soil health through organic matter breakdown, plant growth promotion, and nutrient distribution. In this study, we determined how soil microbial growth traits respond to long-term soil warming. We found that bacterial isolates from warmed plots showed evidence of adaptation of optimum growth temperature. This suggests that increased microbial biomass and growth in a warming world could result in greater carbon storage. As temperatures increase, greater microbial activity may help reduce the soil carbon feedback loop. Our results provide insight on how atmospheric carbon cycling and soil health may respond in a warming world.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

MVP: a modular viromics pipeline to identify, filter, cluster, annotate, and bin viruses from metagenomes

While numerous computational frameworks and workflows are available for recovering prokaryote and eukaryote genomes from metagenome data, only a limited number of pipelines are designed specifically for viromics analysis. With many viromics tools developed in the last few years alone, it can be challenging for scientists with limited bioinformatics experience to easily recover, evaluate quality, annotate genes, dereplicate, assign taxonomy, and calculate relative abundance and coverage of viral genomes using state-of-the-art methods and standards. Here, we describe Modular Viromics Pipeline (MVP) v.1.0, a user-friendly pipeline written in Python and providing a simple framework to perform standard viromics analyses. MVP combines multiple tools to enable viral genome identification, characterization of genome quality, filtering, clustering, taxonomic and functional annotation, genome binning, and comprehensive summaries of results that can be used for downstream ecological analyses. Overall, MVP provides a standardized and reproducible pipeline for both extensive and robust characterization of viruses from large-scale sequencing data including metagenomes, metatranscriptomes, viromes, and isolate genomes. As a typical use case, we show how the entire MVP pipeline can be applied to a set of 20 metagenomes from wetland sediments using only 10 modules executed via command lines, leading to the identification of 11,656 viral contigs and 8,145 viral operational taxonomic units (vOTUs) displaying a clear beta-diversity pattern. Further, acting as a dynamic wrapper, MVP is designed to continuously incorporate updates and integrate new tools, ensuring its ongoing relevance in the rapidly evolving field of viromics. MVP is available at https://gitlab.com/ccoclet/mvp and as versioned packages in PyPi and Conda.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Uncultivated Viral Populations Dominate Estuarine Viromes on the Spatiotemporal Scale

Viruses are ubiquitous and abundant in the oceans, and viral metagenomes (viromes) have been investigated extensively via several large-scale ocean sequencing projects. However, there have not been any systematic viromic studies in estuaries. Here, we investigated the viromes of the Delaware Bay and Chesapeake Bay, two Mid-Atlantic estuaries. Deep sequencing generated a total of 48,190 assembled viral sequences (>5 kb) and 26,487 viral populations (9,204 virus clusters and 17,845 singletons), including 319 circular viral contigs between 7.5 kb and 161.8 kb. Unknown viruses represented the vast majority of the dominant populations, while the composition of known viruses, such as pelagiphage and cyanophage, appeared to be relatively consistent across a wide range of salinity gradients and in different seasons. A difference between estuarine and ocean viromes was reflected by the proportions of Myoviridae, Podoviridae, Siphoviridae, Phycodnaviridae, and a few well-studied virus representatives. The difference in viral community between the Delaware Bay and Chesapeake Bay is significantly more pronounced than the difference caused by temperature or salinity, indicating strong local profiles caused by the unique ecology of each estuary. Interestingly, a viral contig similar to phages infecting Acinetobacter baumannii (“Iraqibacter”) was found to be highly abundant in the Delaware Bay but not in the Chesapeake Bay, the source of which is yet to be identified. Highly abundant viruses in both estuaries have close hits to viral sequences derived from the marine single-cell genomes or long-read single-molecule sequencing, suggesting that important viruses are still waiting to be discovered in the estuarine environment.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Dominant nitrogen metabolisms of a warm, seasonally anoxic freshwater ecosystem revealed using genome resolved metatranscriptomics

In aquatic ecosystems where primary productivity is limited by nitrogen (N), whether continuously, seasonally, or in concert with additional nutrient limitations, increased inorganic N availability can reshape ecosystem structure and function, potentially resulting in eutrophication and even harmful algal blooms. Whereas microbial metabolic processes such as mineralization and dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonium increase inorganic N availability, denitrification removes bioavailable N from the ecosystem. Therefore, understanding these key microbial mechanisms is critical to the sustainable management and environmental stewardship of inland freshwater resources. This study identifies and characterizes these crucial metabolisms in a warm, seasonally anoxic ecosystem. Results are contextualized by an ecological understanding of the study system derived from a multi-year continuous monitoring effort. This unique data set is the first of its kind in this largely understudied ecosystem (tropical lakes) and also provides insight into microbiome function and associated taxa in warm, anoxic freshwaters.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

2024 Workshop - Remote Sensing and Fluxes Upscaling for Real-world Impact - Tutorial v1

The software-tutorial was developed within the 2024 Remote Sensing and Fluxes Upscaling for Real-world Impact workshop as part of the hands-on session. The workshop was supported by AmeriFlux, National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) and CarbonDew. The software provides basic tools to perform the following tasks: - gather remote sensing images using Google Earth Engine API; - gather flux data; - perform basic functions, such as plotting time-series, perform QA of the data, compute vegetation indices; - perform correlation analysis between flux data and remote sensing data; - perform flux predictions based on remote sensing data integrated in different modalities.

Falco, Nicola [Lawrence Berkeley National Laborato↗

Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence for Predictions in Ecohydrology

Abstract In November 2021, the Artificial Intelligence for Earth System Predictability (AI4ESP) workshop was held, which involved hundreds of researchers from dozens of institutions. There were 17 sessions held at the workshop, including one on ecohydrology. The ecohydrology session included various breakout rooms that addressed specific topics, including 1) soils and belowground areas; 2) watersheds; 3) hydrology; 4) ecophysiology and plant hydraulics; 5) ecology; 6) extremes, disturbance and fire, and land-use and land-cover change; and 7) uncertainty quantification methods and techniques. In this paper, we investigate and report on the potential application of artificial intelligence and machine learning in ecohydrology, highlight outcomes of the ecohydrology session at the AI4ESP workshop, and provide visionary perspectives for future research in this area.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

The Arctic

The Arctic environment in 2024 continued on a trajectory that has put it in a state far different from that of the twentieth century. Ongoing accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continues to quickly warm the Arctic, resulting in rapid changes in the cryosphere that are driving cascading impacts to climate, ecological, and societal systems. Many weather- and climate-related impacts in the Arctic are the result of compounding change, such as increased riverbank erosion, which is proximately due to increased river discharge from higher seasonal precipitation, yet is also exacerbated by thawing permafrost. However, even individual storms occur within very different ocean and ice conditions than were typically present in the late twentieth century. As a result, the impacts, including high winds, excessive precipitation, and coastal inundation, may be quite different nowadays, as exemplified by the October 2024 storm in northwest Alaska that produced severe coastal flooding in several communities. To share some of these impacts with a wider audience, select extreme weather impacts around the greater Arctic have been highlighted through the inclusion of sidebars in recent State of the Climate Arctic chapters (e.g., Benestad et al. 2023; Thoman et al. 2024).

Thoman, Richard L. [Univ. of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK↗

Identification of shared viral sequences in peat moss metagenomes reveals elements of a possible Sphagnum core virome

Viruses are an understudied component of plant microbiomes. Identifying viruses that are shared between individual plants, or members of the “core virome”, could reveal stable viral populations with the potential to modulate the composition and function of the microbiome. Here, we examined the virome associated with Sphagnum mosses, a keystone species that has direct influence over the fate of peatland carbon stores. We analyzed bulk metagenomes and metatranscriptomes generated from Sphagnum field samples collected over a ten-month period to identify virus-like sequences shared among plants. Individual Sphagnum samples harbored distinct DNA and RNA viromes where only a small percentage (< 1%) of the total number of identified viral contigs were shared among all samples. Based on taxonomic classification, the shared viral contigs represent bacterial viruses, or phage (Caudoviricetes), as well as viruses of eukaryotes, namely nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses (Nucleocytoviricota) and RNA viruses (Riboviria). We linked the shared phage-like contigs to viral regions within sequenced genomes of bacterial taxa that are members of the Sphagnum core microbiome, suggesting that these contigs represent temperate phage or degraded prophage. The putative nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses and RNA viruses were phylogenetically diverse and showed sequence similarity to viruses associated with a broad range of hosts and environmental sources. The identification of shared viral contigs suggested that, despite the compositional heterogeneity between samples, Sphagnum mosses may harbor a core virome. Future work validating the presence of the core virome is warranted as it may aid in understanding how persistent viruses impact microbiome ecology and symbiont evolution within this climatically relevant keystone species.

Metagenomics↗

Characterizing post-fire delayed tree mortality with remote sensing: sizing up the elephant in the room

Abstract Background Despite recent advances in understanding the drivers of tree-level delayed mortality, we lack a method for mapping delayed mortality at landscape and regional scales. Consequently, the extent, magnitude, and effects of delayed mortality on post-fire landscape patterns of burn severity are unknown. We introduce a remote sensing approach for mapping delayed mortality based on post-fire decline in the normalized burn ratio (NBR). NBR decline is defined as the change in NBR between the first post-fire measurement and the minimum NBR value up to 5 years post-fire for each pixel. We validate the method with high-resolution aerial photography from six wildfires in California, Oregon, and Washington, USA, and then compare the extent, magnitude, and effects of delayed mortality on landscape patterns of burn severity among fires and forest types. Results NBR decline was significantly correlated with post-fire canopy mortality (r 2 = 0.50) and predicted the presence of delayed mortality with 83% accuracy based on a threshold of 105 NBR decline. Plots with NBR decline greater than 105 were 23 times more likely to experience delayed mortality than those below the threshold (p < 0.001). Delayed mortality occurred across 6–38% of fire perimeters not affected by stand-replacing fire, generally affecting more areas in cold (22–41%) and wet (30%) forest types than in dry (1.7–19%) types. The total area initially mapped as unburned/very low-severity declined an average of 38.1% and generally persisted in smaller, more fragmented patches when considering delayed mortality. The total area initially mapped as high-severity increased an average of 16.2% and shifted towards larger, more contiguous patches. Conclusions Differences between 1- and 5-year post-fire burn severity maps depict dynamic post-fire mosaics resulting from delayed mortality, with variability among fires reflecting a range of potential drivers. We demonstrate that tree-level delayed mortality scales up to alter higher-level landscape patterns of burn severity with important implications for forest resilience and a range of fire-driven ecological outcomes. Our method can complement existing tree-level studies on drivers of delayed mortality, refine mapping of fire refugia, inform estimates of habitat and carbon losses, and provide a more comprehensive assessment of landscape and regional scale fire effects and trends.

Environmental Sciences & Ecology↗