Assessing impacts of power plants on fish populations: A general strategy

Environmental impact statements are often characterized by extraneous data collection, irrelevant statistical procedures, misapplied models and concomitant ambiguity in conclusions. Impact assessment is difficult but when explicit objectives are not stated and specific tasks are not linked to these objectives, assessment becomes impossible. We emphasize a flexible approach that can be adapted to site-specific requirements. The strategy consists of six steps: (1) Conceptualization of the ecosystem, (2) design and execution of pilot studies, (3) refinement of conceptualization, (4) design of a study plan, (5) execution of the study plan and (6) evaluation of impact. Development of a conceptual model leads to specification of testable hypotheses directly linked to the objectives of impact assessment. Deterministic and stochastic simulation modeling can be coupled effectively with traditional statistical methods to reduce the probability of decisions which impose unnecessary risks on the environment or costs to industry.     

Fat and fed: frequent use of summer torpor in a subtropical bat

A widely held view is that torpor is avoided by mammals whenever possible because of potential costs associated with reduced body temperatures and slowed metabolic processes. We examined this hypothesis by quantifying use of torpor in relation to body condition of free-ranging northern long-eared bats (Nyctophilus bifax, approximately 10 g), a species known to hibernate, from a subtropical region during the austral summer when insects were abundant. Temperature-telemetry revealed that bats used torpor on 85% of observation days and on 38% of all nights. Torpor bouts ranged from 0.7 to 21.2 h, but the relationship between duration of torpor bouts and ambient temperature was not significant. However, skin temperature of torpid bats was positively correlated with ambient temperature. Against predictions, individuals with a high body condition index (i.e., good fat/energy reserves) expressed longer and deeper torpor bouts and also employed torpor more often during the activity phase at night than those with low body condition index. We provide the first evidence that use of torpor in a free-ranging subtropical mammal is positively related with high body condition index. This suggests that employment of torpor is maximised and foraging minimised not because of food shortages or low energy stores but likely to avoid predation when bats are not required to feed.     

A novel marine silk

The discovery of a novel silk production system in a marine amphipod provides insights into the wider potential of natural silks. The tube-building corophioid amphipod Crassicorophium bonellii produces from its legs fibrous, adhesive underwater threads that combine barnacle cement biology with aspects of spider silk thread extrusion spinning. We characterised the filamentous silk as a mixture of mucopolysaccharides and protein deriving from glands representing two distinct types. The carbohydrate and protein silk secretion is dominated by complex β-sheet structures and a high content of charged amino acid residues. The filamentous secretion product exits the gland through a pore near the tip of the secretory leg after having moved through a duct, which subdivides into several small ductules all terminating in a spindle-shaped chamber. This chamber communicates with the exterior and may be considered the silk reservoir and processing/mixing space, in which the silk is mechanically and potentially chemically altered and becomes fibrous. We assert that further study of this probably independently evolved, marine arthropod silk processing and secretion system can provide not only important insights into the more complex arachnid and insect silks but also into crustacean adhesion cements.     

Nitrate and natural organic matter in aqueous solutions irradiated by simulated sunlight

By means of simulated sunlight, the influence of natural organic matter (NOM) on the photochemical degradation of halogenated pesticides in the absence and presence of nitrate as a precursor of the highly reactive OH radicals in aqueous solutions and freshwater was investigated. Solutions of dichlorprop or terbutylazine (a) in phosphate-buffered demineralized water containing nitrate and/or NOM and (b) in natural freshwaters were irradiated by a 1000-W Xe short-arc lamp. The collimated beam was filtered using a combination of optical filters (WG 320 and WG 295) to simulate the solar spectrum under summer midday conditions. In the absence of nitrate and NOM, the pesticides were degraded photolytically by simulated sunlight. The degradation rates depended on the absorption spectrum in the UVB range and the quantum yield of the degradation. The photochemical degradation of the pesticides was faster in the presence of nitrate due to the sunlight-induced formation of OH radicals. In the absence of nitrate, low concentrations of NOM of a brownwater lake accelerated the degradation due to the formation of reactive species by NOM. At higher concentrations of NOM, the inner filter effect of NOM lowered the degradation rates. In the presence of 50 mg l−1 nitrate, NOM decreased the degradation rate significantly. In case the natural water samples were used as a matrix for the experiments (nitrate concentrations between 2 mg l−1 and 15 mg l−1, DOC concentrations below 2.3 mg l−1), NOM acted mainly as a radiation filter and as a scavenger of OH radicals. As a consequence, in most freshwater systems, the accelerating effect of NOM by the formation of reactive species is of minor importance compared to the inner filter effect and to radical scavenging.     

Numerical validation of a Eulerian hydrochemical code using a 1D multisolute mass transport system involving heterogeneous kinetically controlled reactions

It is demonstrated that at steady state, the 1D thermo-kinetic hydrochemical Eulerian mass balance equations in pure advective mode are indeed identical to the governing mass balance equations of a single reaction path (or geochemical) code in open system mode. Thus, both calculated reaction paths should be theoretically identical whatever the chemical complexity of the water-rock system (i.e., multicomponent, multireaction zones kinetically and equilibrium-controlled). We propose to use this property to numerically test the thermo-kinetic hydrochemical Eulerian codes and we employ it to verify the algorithm of the 1D finite difference code KIRMAT. Compared to the other methods to perform such numerical tests (i.e., comparisons with analytical, semi-analytical solutions, between two Eulerian hydrochemical codes), the advantage of this new method is the absence of constraints on the chemical complexity of the modelled water-rock systems. Moreover, the same thermo-kinetic databases and geochemical functions can be easily and mechanically used in both calculations, when the numerical reference comes from the Eulerian code with no transport terms (u and D = 0) and modify to be consistent with the definition of the open system mode in geochemical modelling. The ability of KIRMAT to treat multicomponent pure advective transport, subjected to several kinetically equilibrium-controlled dissolution and precipitation reactions, and to track their boundaries has been successfully verified with the property of interest. The required numerical validation of the reference calculations is bypassed in developing the Eulerian code from an already checked single reaction path code. A forward time-upstream weighting scheme (a mixing cell scheme) is used in this study. An appropriate choice of grid spacing allows to calculate within the grid size uncertainty the correct mineral reaction zone boundaries, despite the presence of numerical dispersion. Its correction enables us to improve the convergence and to extend the numerical test to mixed advective-dispersive mass transport. However, the skewness factor involves numerical oscillations that prevent to compute different grid spacing. The use of a different chemically controlled time step constraint in both calculations induces some inconsistencies into the validation tests. This numerical validation method may be applied as well as to check a thermo-kinetic hydrochemical finite element based code, from a 1D heterogeneous systems, and 2D-3D systems provided that they are designed so as to be 1D equivalent. A one-step algorithm and the use of a numerical reference coming from the Eulerian code to be tested ensure the potential success (accuracy) of the numerical validation method.     

Differentiating the effects of climate and land use change on European biodiversity: A scenario analysis

Current observed as well as projected changes in biodiversity are the result of multiple interacting factors, with land use and climate change often marked as most important drivers. We aimed to disentangle the separate impacts of these two for sets of vascular plant, bird, butterfly and dragonfly species listed as characteristic for European dry grasslands and wetlands, two habitats of high and threatened biodiversity. We combined articulations of the four frequently used SRES climate scenarios and associated land use change projections for 2030, and assessed their impact on population trends in species (i.e. whether they would probably be declining, stable or increasing). We used the BIOSCORE database tool, which allows assessment of the effects of a range of environmental pressures including climate change as well as land use change. We updated the species lists included in this tool for our two habitat types. We projected species change for two spatial scales: the EU27 covering most of Europe, and the more restricted biogeographic region of ‘Continental Europe’. Other environmental pressures modelled for the four scenarios than land use and climate change generally did not explain a significant part of the variance in species richness change. Changes in characteristic bird and dragonfly species were least pronounced. Land use change was the most important driver for vascular plants in both habitats and spatial scales, leading to a decline in 50–100% of the species included, whereas climate change was more important for wetland dragonflies and birds (40–50 %). Patterns of species decline were similar in continental Europe and the EU27 for wetlands but differed for dry grasslands, where a substantially lower proportion of butterflies and birds declined in continental Europe, and 50 % of bird species increased, probably linked to a projected increase in semi-natural vegetation. In line with the literature using climate envelope models, we found little divergence among the four scenarios. Our findings suggest targeted policies depending on habitat and species group. These are, for dry grasslands, to reduce land use change or its effects and to enhance connectivity, and for wetlands to mitigate climate change effects.