Food loss and food waste recovery as animal feed: a systematic review

Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management - While society struggles to meet increasing food demand and mitigate food security challenges, approximately one-third of the food produced globally...     

Runoff water quality during drought in a zero-order georgia piedmont pasture: nitrogen and total organic carbon

Approximately 11% of the Southern Piedmont (1.8 million ha) is used for pasture and hay production, mostly under low-input management. Few studies have investigated in the region long-term nitrogen and carbon losses in surface runoff, which can be significant. We present 1999 to 2009 hydrologic and water quality data from a rotationally grazed, 7.8-ha, zero-order pasture (W1) near Watkinsville in the Georgia Piedmont. Annual rainfall was 176 to 463 mm below the long-term average (1240 mm) in 7 of the 11 yr. There were 20 runoff events during 86 mo of below-average rainfall (deficit period), compared with 54 events during 46 mo of nondeficit period. Mean event flow-weighted concentration (in mg L) was 0.96 for nitrate-nitrogen (NO-N), 0.97 for ammonium-nitrogen (NH-N), 3.70 for total nitrogen (TN), and 9.12 for total organic carbon (TOC) ( = 43-47; limited due to instrument problem). Nutrient loads (in kg ha per event) averaged 0.04 for NO-N, 0.03 for NH-N, 0.19 for TN, and 0.54 for TOC. Total loads for N and TOC were 6 to 11 times greater from nondeficit than from deficit periods. The observed N concentrations, while well below maximum drinking water standard limits, could pose risk for eutrophication, which can be stimulated at lower concentrations. However, the ability of headwater streams, such as the one downstream of W1, to reduce nutrient concentrations might partially alleviate this concern. The results of this study point to the need to use a long-term dataset that includes measurements made in drought and wet years when evaluating the efficacy of water quality standards.     

Development of a Specific Anti-capsid Antibody- and Magnetic Bead-Based Immunoassay to Detect Human Norovirus Particles in Stool Samples and Spiked Mussels via Flow Cytometry

Food and Environmental Virology - Human noroviruses impose a considerable health burden globally. Here, a flow cytometry approach designed for their detection in biological waste and food samples...     

Assessing the extinction risk of insular,understudied marine species

Hydrothermal vents are rare deep-sea oases that house faunal assemblages with a similar density of life as coral reefs. Only approximately 600 of these hotspots are known worldwide, most only one-third of a football field in size. With advancing development of the deep-sea mining industry, there is an urgent need to protect these unique, insular ecosystems and their specialist endemic faunas. We applied the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) Red List criteria to assess the extinction risk of vent-endemic molluscs with varying exposure to potential deep-sea mining. We assessed 31 species from three key areas under different regulatory frameworks in the Indian, West Pacific, and Southern Oceans. Three vent mollusc species were also examined as case studies of different threat contexts (protected or not from potential mining) to explore the interaction of local regulatory frameworks and IUCN Red List category assignment. We found that these assessments were robust even when there was some uncertainty in the total range of individual species, allowing assessment of species that have only recently been named and described. For vent-endemic species, regulatory changes to area-based management can have a greater impact on IUCN Red List assessment outcomes than incorporating additional data about species distributions. Our approach revealed the most useful IUCN Red List criteria for vent-endemic species: criteria B and D2. This approach, combining regulatory framework and distribution, has the potential to rapidly gauge assessment outcomes for species in insular systems worldwide.     

Climate adaptation of biodiversity conservation in managed forest landscapes

Conservation of biodiversity in managed forest landscapes needs to be complemented with new approaches given the threat from rapid climate change. Most frameworks for adaptation of biodiversity conservation to climate change include two major strategies. The first is the resistance strategy, which focuses on actions to increase the capacity of species and communities to resist change. The second is the transformation strategy and includes actions that ease the transformation of communities to a set of species that are well adapted to the novel environmental conditions. We suggest a number of concrete actions policy makers and managers can take. Under the resistance strategy, five tools are introduced, including: identifying and protecting forest climate refugia with cold-favored species; reducing the effects of drought by protecting the hydrological network; and actively removing competitors when they threaten cold-favored species. Under the transformation strategy, we suggest three tools, including: enhancing conditions for forest species favored by the new climate, but currently disfavored by forest management, by planting them at suitable sites outside their main range; and increasing connectivity across the landscape to enhance the expansion of warm-favored species to sites that have become suitable. Finally, we suggest applying a landscape perspective and simultaneously managing for both retreating and expanding species. The two different strategies (resistance and transformation) should be seen as complementary ways to maintain a rich biodiversity in future forest ecosystems.     

Pesticide toxicity towards microalgae increases with environmental mixture complexity

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Effect-directed analysis (EDA) aims at identifying the compound(s) responsible for toxicity in a complex environmental sample where several dozens of...     

Synthesis and application of graphene oxide as a nanoadsorbent to remove Cd (II) and Pb (II) from water: adsorption equilibrium,kinetics, and regeneration

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - In this work, graphene oxide (GO) was synthesized by the modified Hummers method. The nanomaterial was characterized by FTIR and Raman spectroscopy,...     

Plant chemistry and insect sequestration

Most plant families are distinguished by characteristic secondary metabolites, which can function as putative defence against herbivores. However, many herbivorous insects of different orders can make use of these plant-synthesised compounds by ingesting and storing them in their body tissue or integument. Such sequestration of putatively unpalatable or toxic metabolites can enhance the insects’ own defence against enemies and may also be involved in reproductive behaviour. This review gives a comprehensive overview of all groups of secondary plant metabolites for which sequestration by insect herbivores belonging to different orders has been demonstrated. Sequestered compounds include various aromatic compounds, nitrogen-containing metabolites such as alkaloids, cyanogenic glycosides, glucosinolates and other sulphur-containing metabolites, and isoprenoids such as cardiac glycosides, cucurbitacins, iridoid glycosides and others. Sequestration of plant compounds has been investigated most in insects feeding or gathering on Apocynaceae s.l. (Apocynoideae, Asclepiaoideae), Aristolochiaceae, Asteraceae, Boraginaceae, Fabaceae and Plantaginaceae, but it also occurs for some gymnosperms and even lichens. In total, more than 250 insect species have been shown to sequester plant metabolites from at least 40 plant families. Sequestration predominates in the Coleoptera and Lepidoptera, but also occurs frequently in the orders Heteroptera, Hymenoptera, Orthoptera and Sternorrhyncha. Patterns of sequestration mechanisms for various compound classes and common or individual features occurring in different insect orders are highlighted. More research is needed to elucidate the specific transport mechanisms and the physiological processes of sequestration in various insect species.     

Discussion: “Meadow Restoration Increases Baseflow and Groundwater Storage in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California” by Luke J.H. Hunt,Julie Fair,and Maxwell Odland

We discuss a recent paper which evaluated the hydrologic changes resulting from a pond‐and‐plug meadow restoration project in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. In the study, measurements of streamflow into and out of the meadow suggested late‐summer baseflow increased as much as five‐fold when compared with prerestoration conditions. However, the volume of streamflow attributed to the restored meadow (49,000–96,000 m³ over four months) would require that 2.5–4.8 m of saturated meadow soils drain during summer months. The groundwater data from this meadow record only 0.45 m of change over this timeframe, which is less than might be expected from plant use alone (0.75 m), suggesting this restored meadow may be acting as a water sink throughout summer rather than a source.