Harnessing the potential of integrated systematics for conservation of taxonomically complex,megadiverse plant groups

The value of natural history collections for conservation science research is increasingly recognized, despite their well-documented limitations in terms of taxonomic, geographic, and temporal coverage. Specimen-based analyses are particularly important for tropical plant groups for which field observations are scarce and potentially unreliable due to high levels of diversity-amplifying identification challenges. Specimen databases curated by specialists are rich sources of authoritatively identified, georeferenced occurrence data, and such data are urgently needed for large genera. We compared entries in a monographic database for the large Neotropical genus Myrcia in 2007 and 2017. We classified and quantified differences in specimen records over this decade and determined the potential impact of these changes on conservation assessments. We distinguished misidentifications from changes due to taxonomic remodeling and considered the effects of adding specimens and georeferences. We calculated the potential impact of each change on estimates of extent of occurrence (EOO), the most frequently used metric in extinction-risk assessments of tropical plants. We examined whether particular specimen changes were associated with species for which changes in EOO over the decade were large enough to change their conservation category. Corrections to specimens previously misidentified or lacking georeferences were overrepresented in such species, whereas changes associated with taxonomic remodeling (lumping and splitting) were underrepresented. Among species present in both years, transitions to less threatened status outnumbered those to more threatened (8% vs 3%, respectively). Species previously deemed data deficient transitioned to threatened status more often than to not threatened (10% vs 7%, respectively). Conservation scientists risk reaching unreliable conclusions if they use specimen databases that are not actively curated to reflect changing knowledge.     

Will Evolving Climate Conditions Increase the Risk of Floods of the Large U.S.‐Canada Transboundary Richelieu River Basin?

In spring 2011, an unprecedented flood hit the complex eastern United States (U.S.)–Canada transboundary Lake Champlain–Richelieu River (LCRR) Basin, destructing properties and inducing negative impacts on agriculture and fish habitats. The damages, covered by the Governments of Canada and the U.S., were estimated to C$90M. This natural disaster motivated the study of mitigation measures to prevent such disasters from reoccurring. When evaluating flood risks, long‐term evolving climate change should be taken into account to adopt mitigation measures that will remain relevant in the future. To assess the impacts of climate change on flood risks of the LCRR basin, three bias‐corrected multi‐resolution ensembles of climate projections for two greenhouse gas concentration scenarios were used to force a state‐of‐the‐art, high‐resolution, distributed hydrological model. The analysis of the hydrological simulations indicates that the 20‐year return period flood (corresponding to a medium flood) should decrease between 8% and 35% for the end of the 21st Century (2070–2099) time horizon and for the high‐emission scenario representative concentration pathway (RCP) 8.5. The reduction in flood risks is explained by a decrease in snow accumulation and an increase in evapotranspiration expected with the future warming of the region. Nevertheless, due to the large climate inter‐annual variability, short‐term flood probabilities should remain similar to those experienced in the recent past.     

Land-Use Change and Carbon Flux Between 1970s and 1990s in Central Highlands of Chiapas, Mexico

6 tons C were released to the atmosphere during the period of time covered by our study, equal to approximately 34% of the 1975 vegetation C pool. The Chiapas highlands, while comprising just 0.3% of Mexico's surface area, contributed 3% of the net national C emissions.     

Evidence-based guidelines for automated conservation assessments of plant species

Assessing species’ extinction risk is vital to setting conservation priorities. However, assessment endeavors, such as those used to produce the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, have significant gaps in taxonomic coverage. Automated assessment (AA) methods are gaining popularity to fill these gaps. Choices made in developing, using, and reporting results of AA methods could hinder their successful adoption or lead to poor allocation of conservation resources. We explored how choice of data cleaning type and level, taxonomic group, training sample, and automation method affect performance of threat status predictions for plant species. We used occurrences from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) to generate assessments for species in 3 taxonomic groups based on 6 different occurrence-based AA methods. We measured each method's performance and coverage following increasingly stringent occurrence cleaning. Automatically cleaned data from GBIF performed comparably to occurrence records cleaned manually by experts. However, all types of data cleaning limited the coverage of AAs. Overall, machine-learning-based methods performed well across taxa, even with minimal data cleaning. Results suggest a machine-learning-based method applied to minimally cleaned data offers the best compromise between performance and species coverage. However, optimal data cleaning, training sample, and automation methods depend on the study group, intended applications, and expertise.     

Autonomous mobile platform for monitoring air emissions from industrial and municipal wastewater ponds

Significant amounts of volatile organic compounds and greenhouse gases are generated from wastewater lagoons and tailings ponds in Alberta, Canada. Accurate measurements of these air pollutants and greenhouse gases are needed to support management and regulatory decisions. A mobile platform was developed to measure air emissions from tailings pond in the oil sands region of Alberta. The mobile platform was tested in 2015 in a municipal wastewater treatment lagoon. With a flux chamber and a CO₂/CH₄ sensor on board, the mobile platform was able to measure CO₂ and CH₄ emissions over two days at two different locations in the pond. Flux emission rates of CO₂ and CH₄ that were measured over the study period suggest the presence of aerobic and anaerobic zones in the wastewater treatment lagoon. The study demonstrated the capabilities of the mobile platform in measuring fugitive air emissions and identified the potential for the applications in air and water quality monitoring programs.

Implications: The Mobile Platform demonstrated in this study has the ability to measure greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from fugitive sources such as municipal wastewater lagoons. This technology can be used to measure emission fluxes from tailings ponds with better detection of spatial and temporal variations of fugitive emissions. Additional air and water sampling equipment could be added to the mobile platform for a broad range of air and water quality studies in the oil sands region of Alberta.     

A survey of storm-water management water quality regulations in four Mid-Atlantic States

This paper examines and compares the management practices and regulatory approaches used by the Mid-Atlantic States of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania for improving the quality of storm-water runoff. Such practices range from simple extended detention criteria in Pennsylvania through the BMP credit system used by Maryland, to the latest "green technology" methods promoted in Delaware and the recharge, quality and peak reduction approaches of New Jersey. All practices are designed to meet EPA requirements for total suspended solids (TSS) removal, but verification of performance is not required. More sophisticated methods of evaluating TSS removal that can be used for engineering design purposes are needed.     

Barriers,potentialities, and actions for implementation of sustainable energy procedures in Brazilian federal universities

Many universities around the world have served as active centers for research on climate change. However, there are several barriers to their activities, stemming from the nature of research, resources, and the structure of institutions. This document provides an overview of barriers, potential factors, and activities to develop and implement sustainable energy processes in public higher education institutions (HEIs) in Brazil. The research was conducted from March to April of 2018 with representatives of HEIs (rectors or prorectors of research). A total of 63 invitations to respond to the Survey‐monkey survey were emailed, and responses were received from 32 universities. The research concludes by proposing measures that can be taken to make the issue of climate change more present and effective in university research and teaching activities. This includes changes in research, information dissemination, and teaching approaches to better support actions to address climate change. In Brazil, there are many potentialities in terms of natural resources, but actions for implementation are still incipient. Further efforts and investment in research and development will be required.     

An empirically tested overlap between indigenous and scientific knowledge of a changing climate in Bolivian Amazonia

Regional Environmental Change - Existing climate data for Bolivian Amazonia rely on observations from a few sparse weather stations, interpolated on coarse-resolution grids. At the same time, the...