Retaining natural vegetation to safeguard biodiversity and humanity

Global efforts to deliver internationally agreed goals to reduce carbon emissions, halt biodiversity loss, and retain essential ecosystem services have been poorly integrated. These goals rely in part on preserving natural (e.g., native, largely unmodified) and seminatural (e.g., low intensity or sustainable human use) forests, woodlands, and grasslands. To show how to unify these goals, we empirically derived spatially explicit, quantitative, area-based targets for the retention of natural and seminatural (e.g., native) terrestrial vegetation worldwide. We used a 250-m-resolution map of natural and seminatural vegetation cover and, from this, selected areas identified under different international agreements as being important for achieving global biodiversity, carbon, soil, and water targets. At least 67 million km² of Earth's terrestrial vegetation (∼79% of the area of vegetation remaining) required retention to contribute to biodiversity, climate, soil, and freshwater conservation objectives under 4 United Nations’ resolutions. This equates to retaining natural and seminatural vegetation across at least 50% of the total terrestrial (excluding Antarctica) surface of Earth. Retention efforts could contribute to multiple goals simultaneously, especially where natural and seminatural vegetation can be managed to achieve cobenefits for biodiversity, carbon storage, and ecosystem service provision. Such management can and should co-occur and be driven by people who live in and rely on places where natural and sustainably managed vegetation remains in situ and must be complemented by restoration and appropriate management of more human-modified environments if global goals are to be realized.     

Sea salt bittern-driven forward osmosis for nutrient recovery from black water: A dual waste-to-resource innovation via the osmotic membrane process

• A dual “waste-to-resource” application of FO was proposed. • Performance of sea salt bittern as an economic FO draw solution was evaluated. • High quality struvite recovery from black water using FO was demonstrated. • Feed pH is a key factor to control the form of recovered phosphorous. A dual “waste-to-resource” innovation in nutrient enrichment and recovery from domestic black water using a sea salt bittern (SSB)-driven forward osmosis (FO) process is proposed and demonstrated. The performance of SSB as a “waste-to-resource” draw solution for FO was first evaluated. A synthetic SSB-driven FO provided a water flux of 25.67±3.36 L/m²⋅h, which was 1.5‒1.7 times compared with synthetic seawater, 1 M NaCl, and 1 M MgCl₂. Slightly compromised performance regarding reverse solute selectivity was observed. In compensation, the enhanced reverse diffusion of Mg²⁺ suggested superior potential in terms of recovering nutrients in the form of struvite precipitation. The nutrient enrichment was performed using both the pre-filtered influent and effluent of a domestic septic tank. Over 80% of phosphate-P recovery was achieved from both low- and high-strength black water at a feed volume reduction up to 80%‒90%. With an elevated feed pH (~9), approximately 60%‒85% enriched phosphate-P was able to be recovered in the form of precipitated stuvite. Whereas the enrichment performance of total Kjeldahl nitrogen (TKN) largely differed depending on the strength of black water. Improved concentration factor (i.e., 3-folds) and retention (>60%) of TKN was obtained in the high-nutrient-strength black water at a feed volume reduction of 80%, in comparison with a weak TKN enrichment observed in low-strength black water. The results suggested a good potential for nutrient recovery based on this dual “waste-to-resource” FO system with proper management of membrane cleaning.     

Effects of endosulfan exposure and Taura Syndrome Virus infection on the survival and molting of the marine penaeid shrimp, Litopenaeus vannamei

Molting in crustaceans is an important endocrine-controlled biological process that plays a critical role in growth and reproduction. Many factors can affect this physiological cycle in crustaceans including environmental stressors and disease agents. For example the pathology of Taura Syndrome Virus (TSV) of shrimp is closely related to molting cycle. Similarly, endosulfan, a commonly used pesticide is a potential endocrine disruptor. This study explores interrelationships between pesticide exposure, virus infection and their interactions with physiology and susceptibility of the shrimp. Litopenaeus vannamei (Pacific white shrimp) were challenged with increasing doses of endosulfan and TSV (TSV-C, a Belize reference strain) to determine the respective median lethal concentrations (LC₅₀s). The 96-h endosulfan LC₅₀ was 5.32 μg L⁻¹, while the 7-d TSV LC₅₀ was 54.74 mg L⁻¹. Subsequently, based on their respective LC₅₀ values, a 20-d interaction experiment with sublethal concentrations of endosulfan (2 μg L⁻¹) and TSV (30 mg L⁻¹) confirmed a significant interaction (p < 0.05, χ² = 5.29), and thereby the susceptibility of the shrimp. Concurrently, molt-stage of animals, both at the time of exposure and death, was compared with mortality. For animals challenged with TSV, no strong correlation between molt-stage and mortality was observed (p > 0.05). For animals exposed to endosulfan, animals in the postmolt stage were shown to be more susceptible to acute toxicity (p < 0.05). For animals exposed to both TSV and endosulfan, interference of endosulfan-associated stress lead to increasingly higher susceptibility at postmolt (p < 0.05) during the acute phase of the TSV disease cycle.     

A three-dimensional model for the transportation of Fe and Mn in Arha Reservoir

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Survey of dioxin sources in the Baltic Region (extended summary)

The present paper summarises the results of the project: 'Survey of Anthropogenic Sources of Dioxins and Furans in the Baltic Region'. As a part of the project, inventories have been carried out in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland by applying the toolkit for quantification of dioxin and furan releases developed by UNEP Chemicals. The main route of direct releases to the environment is emission to air. Total emission to air from Poland was estimated at 490 (88-1,300) g I-TEQ/year, whereas the emissions from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were estimated as being 14 (2.4-54), 23 (2.6-63) and 17 (2.6-38) g I-TEQ, respectively. In general, the uncertainty on the estimates is very high, and recommendations regarding further development of the inventories have been made, and measures for reducing the releases have been provided.     

Grassland songbirds in a dynamic management landscape: behavioral responses and management strategies.

In recent decades, earlier and more frequent harvests of agricultural grasslands have been implicated as a major cause of population declines in grassland songbirds. From 2002 to 2005, in the Champlain Valley of Vermont and New York, USA, we studied the reproductive success of Savannah Sparrows (Passerculus sandwichensis) and Bobolinks (Dolichonyx oryzivorus) on four grassland treatments: (1) early-hayed fields cut before 11 June and again in early- to mid-July; (2) middle-hayed fields cut once between 21 June and 10 July; (3) late-hayed fields cut after 1 August; and (4) rotationally grazed pastures. Both the number of fledglings per female per year and nest success (logistic-exposure method) varied among treatments and between species. Although birds initiated nests earlier on early-hayed fields compared to others, haying caused 99% of active Savannah Sparrow and 100% of active Bobolink nests to fail. Both the initial cutting date and time between cuttings influenced renesting behavior. After haying, Savannah Sparrows generally remained on early-hayed fields and immediately renested (clutch completion 15.6 +/- 1.28 days post-haying; all values are reported as mean +/- SE), while Bobolinks abandoned the fields for at least two weeks (mean clutch completion 33 +/- 0.82 days post-haying). While female Savannah Sparrows fledged more offspring per year (1.28 +/- 0.16) than female Bobolinks (0.05 +/- 0.05), reproductive success on early-hayed fields was low. The number of fledglings per female per year was greater on middle-hayed fields (Savannah Sparrows, 3.47 +/- 0.42; Bobolinks, 2.22 +/- 0.26), and late-hayed fields (Savannah Sparrows, 3.29 +/- 0.30; Bobolinks, 2.79 +/- 0.18). Reproductive success was moderate on rotationally grazed pastures, where female Savannah Sparrows and female Bobolinks produced 2.32 +/- 0.25 and 1.79 +/- 0.33 fledgling per year, respectively. We simultaneously conducted cutting surveys throughout the Champlain Valley and found that 3-8% of hayfield habitat was cut by 1-4 June, 25-40% by 12-16 June, and 32-60% by 28 June-2 July. Thus, the majority of grassland habitat was cut during the breeding season; however, late-hayed fields served as high-quality reserves for late-nesting female Bobolinks that were displaced from previously hayed fields. For fields first cut in May, a 65-day interval between cuts could provide enough time for both species to successfully fledge young.     

Central place foraging in wheatears (Oenanthe oenanthe L.): foraging itineraries when feeding nestlings

Summary Parent wheatears (Oenanthe oenanthe L.), foraging to meet their own needs and to provide food for a central place (CP, i.e. the nest), have to make decisions with respect to the configuration of foraging itineraries during round trips in the territory and to the directionality of their movements. These problems were studied in two pairs breeding in an agricultural area in central Swecen. All birds started a round trip by hunting from perches close to the CP and then moving to perches progressively further away in a roughly straight line until the first prey item was loaded. Loaded prey were either delivered singly (single prey loading: SPL) or with other prey (multiple prey loading: MPL). When the bird decided to return with several items to the CP, it abruptly changed the direction of its movements by making a left, right or backward turn and started to visit perches progressively nearer the CP, again following a roughly straight line. The decision to return continue loading was affected by the size of the prey as shown by the fact that prey carried singly was significantly larger than the first item in an MPL for all individuals. The distance to the CP also seemed to affect this decision as prey provisioned singly on average were collected significantly closer to the nest than the first item in an MPL by one pair. Both the size of prey loaded singly and load size of MPL increased with distance from the CP in one pair. The concentrated use of the territory in the other pair made any effect of distance difficult to detect. Great flexibility in foraging decisions was observed in cases when an individual, because of the size of the last prey captured, altered its decision to deliver an MPL and transported an SPL to the nest instead. On the basis of these results we propose a set of rules followed by predators such as wheatears when making decisions about delivering prey to a CP (Fig. 4).