An international team of scientists are raising the alarm in a letter published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution. ‘Increasing wildfires threaten progress on halting deforestation in Brazilian Amazonia’ is co-authored by researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the University of South Alabama, which led the study. Other contributors include Michigan State University, the National Institute for Space Research in Brazil and other institutions in North America, South America and Europe.

In June 2023, the number of active fires in the Amazon reached the highest peak since 2007. Total fire counts for the first half of 2023 were 10 per cent higher than in 2022.

Dr Matthew Jones, a Reseach Fellow in UEA’s School of Environmental Sciences and a co-author of the letter, said: “Climate change has led to a rise in drought and extreme heat, priming forests to burn more often.

“On top of this, deforestation and the expansion of agriculture have damaged the integrity of the region’s forests and weakened their resilience to drought.

“As a result, wildfires have become far more common than they would be in a normally functioning rainforest.”

Previous spikes in fire counts, including the record-breaking fires for a non-drought year in August and September 2022, were associated with widespread deforestation, a primary source of fire and a strong predictor of burned area.

Deforestation rates have been falling in 2023, with alerts 42 per cent lower between January and July than in the same period of 2022. Environmental gains in the region also include the closure of major illegal mining operations that threaten the ecosystem and Indigenous communities, particularly in Yanomami territory.

Dr. Gabriel de Oliveira, an assistant professor at the University of South Alabama, is the lead author of the letter.

Dr de Oliveira said: “This year’s high and climbing fire counts, in the context of reduced deforestation, highlight a decoupling of forest fires from deforestation. “Indeed, only 19 per cent of the fires were related to recent deforestation during January-June 2023, down from 39 per cent in 2022.”

Hotter and drier climate conditions resulting from the 2023 El Niño are already impacting portions of the Amazon and may be increasing fires, consistent with prior El Niños, the researchers said.

Additional pressures may be affecting fire counts, including the lag effect of the deforestation boom associated with weakened enforcement of environmental laws under President Bolsonaro. Some areas of forest that were mechanically felled in recent years are only now becoming dry enough to burn.

Also, landholders may be burning pastures earlier in the dry season in anticipation of a fire moratorium later this year, expected under the return of stronger environmental governance of President Lula in the context of a strong El Nino linked drought.

Dr Rachel Carmenta, a lecturer in climate change and international development at UEA and a co-author, said: “Effective and equitable fire governance is essential in order to avoid further marginalizing forest-dependent peoples who are both most heavily impacted when uncontrolled fires invade the forests upon which they depend, and most impacted by one-size-fits-all fire policy such as fire-bans.”

Indigenous groups have been using fire in their agriculture over millennia but have not experienced megafires like today. The current situation is driven by large-scale actors, climate change and forest fragmentation.

Dr Carmenta said: “The role of distant consumers is huge. But the small traditional communities are often blamed, representing a double burden because they also suffer the most when invasive fires damage the forest, leaving it without the game, fruits, timber, medicines and resources they depend on.

“Identifying ways to manage these fires is essential in order to avoid further marginalizing forest-dependent peoples who are most heavily impacted when uncontrolled fires invade their territories, and most impacted by one-size-fits-all fire policy such as fire bans.”

Dr Scott Stark, an assistant professor at Michigan State University, is a co-author of the letter. He said: “While research is needed to better understand the comparative contributions of these drivers, a clear expectation is that fire incidence will rise even higher with the anticipated drier conditions over coming months.”

Dr de Oliveira said: “Nuanced science and management actions, including reforestation, forest management and agroforestry will be necessary to avert the risk of ‘runaway’ forest fire and degradation that is decoupled from deforestation.”

The authors are calling for strong, equitable and coordinated international efforts to tackle this growing threat.

In August, Brazil convened a summit of Amazon nations to address sustainable development and forest preservation in the region.

The summit’s resulting Belém Declaration established many important objectives, but it fell short of a strong commitment to achieving zero deforestation by 2030 or to substantially reducing forest fire frequency.

However, the declaration established an important alliance against deforestation, acknowledging fire as a point of concern, highlighting the needs of Indigenous Peoples and traditional local communities, and introducing a scientific body in the style of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) aiming to produce evidence-based Amazon specific solutions.

“Brazil, other Amazon nations and the international community must cooperate and commit the support needed to rapidly advance research and governance for equitable fire-safe land management, while curbing forest loss and shifting from a commodity-based economic model to a sustainable bioeconomy that benefits all Amazonians and Amazon nations,” the authors said.

‘Increasing wildfires threaten progress on halting deforestation in Brazilian Amazonia’ is published 16 October 2023 in Nature Ecology and Evolution.

Society is moving from sustainability naive to sustainably native, a new era in which the language, practices, and values of sustainable thinking will be taken for granted. When we have a shared language, changes start to happen- a trend we can see emerging now. Solitaire Townsend, author of The Solutionists: How Businesses Can Fix The Future, has written a guide to using the many threads of transformation that are already weaving the circular economy, albeit often behind closed doors and never as fast as all of us would like. 

The Solutionists documents how debates about the value of ESG reporting and what factors it should account for, whether only the financial risk faced by companies or the full spectrum of environmental impacts a company or country creates, is representative of a transition in which people with vision, grit, good humor, and the soul to roll with rapid changes can change the world for the better. Solitaire recounts hundreds of interviews and projects that show the progress and hope that can lead to a profound change. That change is not guaranteed, but as she writes near the end of the book, “Being a successful Solutionist means stepping up to conversations that challenge you, with an openness to learn.” It’s an uncomfortable time, and the curious, driven leader can make vast changes real for their organization and community. You can find The Solutionists at Amazon, Powell’s Books, and local bookstores.

Published in Science Advances, the study explores the intricate interplay between climate change, land use change, and their impact on pollinator biodiversity, ultimately revealing significant implications for global crop pollination.

The study, which compiled data from 1,507 crop growing sites around the world and catalogued 3,080 insect pollinator species, exposes a concerning trend — the combined pressures of climate change and agricultural activities have led to substantial declines in both the abundance and richness of insect pollinators.

Crops which depend on pollination by animals to some degree make up around 75% of crops. The model created by the research team looked at which pollination dependent crops were most at threat all the way up to 2050 in the hope of providing a warning to both the agricultural and conservation communities.

Lead author Dr Joe Millard, who completed the study as part of his PhD at the UCL Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research, before moving to the Natural History Museum London, said: “Our research indicates that the tropics are likely most at risk when it comes to crop production from pollinator losses, primarily due to the interaction of climate change and land use. While localised risks are highest in regions like sub-Saharan Africa, northern South America, and south-east Asia, the implications of this extend globally via the trade in pollination dependent crops.”

The tropics were identified as having a heightened vulnerability to the interaction of climate change and land use, meaning crops such a coffee, cocoa, mango and watermelon which all rely on insect pollination are at the greatest risk. These crops play vital roles in both local economies and global trade and their reduction could cause increased income insecurity for millions of small-scale farmers in these regions.

Dr Millard continued: “As insects decline, due to being unable to cope with the interacting effects of climate change and land use, so too will the crops that rely on them as pollinators. In some cases, these crops could be pollinated by hand but this would require more labour and more cost.”

The study also underscores the importance of pollinator abundance and richness in delivering pollination services. It is evident that efforts to mitigate climate change could significantly reduce the risk to future crop production, but challenges remain.

As the world grapples with the intricate web of climate change, land use, and biodiversity loss, this study serves as a stark reminder of the interconnectedness of ecosystems and the critical role played by pollinators in sustaining agriculture and food security.

Senior author Dr Tim Newbold (UCL Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research, UCL Biosciences) said: “Climate change poses grave threats not only to the natural environment and biodiversity, but also to human well-being, as the loss of pollinators can threaten the livelihoods of people across the globe who depend on crops that depend on animal pollination.

“Our findings underscore the urgent need to take global action to mitigate climate change, alongside efforts to slow down land use changes and protect natural habitats to avoid harming insect pollinators.”

Scientists first measured oxygen in the oceans in the 1960s. Since then, they have observed decreasing levels in the mid-depths of the ocean — a phenomenon that can be explained in part by the fact that warmer waters hold less oxygen. Less oxygen in the water can lead to habitat loss for fish and other marine species that need oxygen to breathe. If the naturally-occurring low-oxygen regions in the Eastern Pacific expand in a warmer climate, Pacific Island fisheries could be significantly impacted.

Cobalt holds the clues in deep-sea sediments

“Ultimately, it would be helpful if we knew how low-oxygen regions of the ocean changed with past climate changes,” said Nick Hawco, lead author of the study and assistant professor of oceanography, in the UH Manoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST). “However, the problem is that oxygen is a gas, so we don’t have any reservoirs of past oceans to test the oxygen content. Our new study builds off of prior work where we discovered that low oxygen water bodies in the Pacific are enriched in the metal cobalt.”

“One of the biggest sources of cobalt to the oceans is where oxygen deficient zones intersect with the continental shelf, leach cobalt from the shelf, and then transport it across the ocean in a plume of low oxygen water,” said Rhea Foreman, study co-author and oceanography researcher in SOEST. “The cobalt is subsequently incorporated into minerals that are deposited onto the seafloor and preserved in the sedimentary record.”

The researchers analyzed seafloor sediments from the past 145,000 years, a timeframe that includes the last major ice age. They found more cobalt in sediments from the past ice ages, compared to more recent sediments.

“This means that there was a build up of cobalt in the Pacific during the last ice age,” said Hawco. “Because high cobalt is a proxy, or a stand-in, for low oxygen, this indicates there were probably larger regions of low oxygen waters in the Pacific during that time.”

Time to adapt

One suggested explanation for low-oxygen waters being more common in cold climates is the change in ocean circulation that accompanies climate change. Today, complex currents flowing from west to east help add oxygen to the mid-depth waters of the tropical Pacific.

“If these currents weaken, the oxygen in the Pacific would decline,” said Hawco. “This is what we think happened during the last glacial period. But we don’t know how strongly — or how fast — these currents will respond to ocean warming.”

This could mean that fish and other species are able to adapt to changing oxygen as long as these changes are slow enough, as appears to have happened in the past.

“We need to reduce emissions as soon as possible to buy time for these ecosystems to adapt to the climate change we are already locked into based on the last 150 years of carbon emissions,” added Hawco.

Researchers use the mouse as a model organism to study the structure and function of skeletal muscle, neuromuscular diseases and aging processes in muscle. The scientists are aware of their responsibility in the use of animals and have committed themselves at the University of Basel to rigorously implement the so-called 3R principles — Replacement, Reduction, Refinement — in animal-assisted research and animal husbandry.

The new method developed by Professor Markus Rüegg’s research group at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, is a further step towards reducing the number of laboratory animals. This method also opens new ways to investigate several genes simultaneously or even entire signaling pathways in muscle fibers quickly, cost-effectively and efficiently. The results of the study have now been published in Nature Communications.

The difficulty of studying genes in muscle fibers

Studying gene function in muscle is challenging. On the one hand, muscle fibers are very large and very fragile when isolated. On the other hand, in humans, they are up to half a meter long and contain thousands of nuclei. In order to change and study gene function in muscle fibers, all of the muscle fiber nuclei must be changed, which is difficult to achieve.

For some years now, scientists have been using the CRISPR/Cas9 method to study gene function. This method uses a virus to introduce the so-called Cas9 protein and a specifically designed guide RNA into the organism and thus into the nuclei. The Cas9 protein cuts the genomic DNA at the site recognized by the guide RNA. This combination of Cas9 protein and guide RNA allows altering gene function in the cell.

The CRISPR-Cas9 method can be split up

However, to ensure that the virus only alters the gene expression of muscle fibers and not those of other organs at the same time, the research team combined the CRISPR/Cas9 method with another method: First, the researchers succeeded in breeding mice with the Cas9 protein already present in their muscle fibers — but only there. They then introduced the desired guide RNA into the organism with a so-called adeno-associated virus, which infects muscle.

This combination causes the guide RNA in the muscle fibers to encounter the Cas9 protein, changing the genetic material as desired. “The method enables us to ensure that only the muscle fibers actually change their genetic material,” explains first author Marco Thürkauf.

Fewer laboratory animals and more efficient results

Since the adeno-associated virus can also transport several guide RNAs simultaneously, the team can now use the method to investigate several genes simultaneously or even entire signaling pathways. Furthermore, the method significantly reduces the number of experimental animals required.

“All animals used are suitable for studying genes and do not have to be bred over years. This makes it possible to study muscle fibers as well as neuromuscular diseases without using a large number of mice,” says Marco Thürkauf.

Other research groups have also already signaled their interest. “We already have several interested groups in our research community that would like to use our method,” says Markus Rüegg. “This is a great gain for both muscle research per se as well as for our goal of reducing animal experiments.”

Mathematical model

The study was based on mathematical modeling in collaboration with Utrecht University and TNO, using a moderate or an extreme climate scenario by the UN climate panel IPCC. Both the temperature and acidity of the water affect how easily or difficult sound travels through the ocean. Because of ongoing emissions of greenhouse gasses, seawater becomes more acidic, and together with the rise in seawater temperature, the researchers anticipate that underwater sound will travel further in the future in most parts of the oceans.

Changing currents

Because the supply of warmer surface water to the northern Atlantic Ocean will most likely decrease, the researchers foresee a change in temperature layers in this part of the ocean. Possenti: “As a result of this, a separated ‘sound channel’ in the upper part of the North Atlantic may be formed. This will act as a kind of tunnel, which will carry sounds much further. As a result, the underwater sound level in this part of the oceans will increase by 7 decibels by the end of this century, under a moderate climate scenario.

Five times louder

An increase of ‘just’ 7 dB, corresponds with almost five times as much noise energy under water. Therefore, sounds generated by marine traffic as well as other sources, such as air guns used for seismic surveys, will increase. Moreover, it is likely that the number of ships will also increase in the near future, adding to the total amount of noise in the oceans. Therefore, even under a moderate climate scenario, changes may be severe.

Communication

Possenti emphasizes that this louder human noise will affect much of the marine life. “In the absence of good visibility underwater, fish and also marine mammals communicate mainly through sounds. If fish can no longer hear their predators, or if whales have a harder time communicating with each other, this will affect the entire ecosystem.”

Experimental noise

In addition to this theoretical study, Possenti and collaborators at TNO and MARIN are also working on actual measurements of underwater sounds. Using breaking glass spheres, they generate sounds at a level that marine mammals use at great depth, which are then recorded from tens to hundreds of kilometers away. “Much is still unknown about the exact effects of underwater conditions on the speed of sound. But because of the potentially profound effects on the ecosystem, that knowledge is essential if we want to understand what the changing climate may do to marine life.”

The average American home produces 533 million microfibers annually, according to a 2019 study by Ocean Wise. CiCLO, a new polyester and nylon additive, promises to make those microfibers biodegrade in landfills or water, potentially eliminating these microplastic pollutants. Meet Andrea Ferris, CEO and cofounder at Intrinsic Advanced Materials, maker of CiCLO, a nutrient that attracts microorganisms to the weakest points in a synthetic fiber, where they feed and break down the material. According to the company, the result is a textile that decomposes as quickly as natural fibers like wool. CiCLO has been certified by OEKO-TEX ECO PASSPORT as not harmful to human health. While we must reduce the use of synthetics, it is also beneficial to make those materials we use less damaging when they escape into nature.

Synthetic textiles are a plague, starting with shoppers who buy, wear, and discard clothing at an unprecedented rate. Too often, clothing becomes waste in the environment. Consumers wear fast fashions an average of only seven times before discarding them. CiCLO is an intriguing solution for the clothes that end their useful life in the landfill or as litter — it could help reduce the long-term impact of materials that escape into nature. You can learn more about CiCLO and Intrinsic Advanced Materials at https://ciclotextiles.com/ 

“Freshwater habitats in general are getting saltier for a number of reasons, including road salt and agricultural runoff, extraction of coal and natural gas, drought, and sea level rise,” says David Buchwalter, professor of toxicology at NC State and corresponding author of the research. “Freshwater insects and other organisms that live in these systems are used as indicators of the ecosystem’s health. When these systems get saltier, we see that insect diversity decreases, but we aren’t sure why.”

Aquatic animals (including insects and crustaceans) must constantly maintain the correct balance of water and salts within their body — a process called osmoregulation. Theoretically, the most favorable environment for aquatic animals would be one where external salinity levels are close to those inside the animal. That way the animal doesn’t have to work as hard to maintain osmoregulation.

However, the opposite seems to be true for freshwater insects — higher salinity is always associated with increased rates of ion uptake in insects, but it is also associated with developmental delays or death.

“We thought that freshwater insects might be shifting so much of their energy toward osmoregulation in saltier environments that they cannot grow or thrive,” Buchwalter says. “So we measured the metabolic rates of crustaceans and insects in dilute and saline environments to see if metabolic responses to salinity were similar.”

The team looked at three types of freshwater animals — two species of gammarid, or “scud,” which is a small freshwater crustacean; one freshwater snail; and three aquatic insect species.

In the first test, they measured the animals’ metabolism by placing them in waters with different concentrations of salt ions and looking at their rates of oxygen consumption. They observed that more dilute conditions made the crustaceans and snail breathe harder, increasing their metabolism, while insects’ metabolic rates were constant regardless of salinity.

Next, the team looked at whether an increase in breathing rates was linked to the transport of a particular ion. Radioactive isotopes of the salt ions calcium and sodium allowed the researchers to measure how much and how quickly the animals took up different ions.

The researchers found that calcium was the key driver of non-insects’ increased metabolism in lower salinity. In other words, the crustaceans and snail worked harder to transport the calcium ions they required in an environment where calcium was harder to find.

In contrast, the insects’ metabolic rates remained constant in both saline and dilute environments, even though they had a higher calcium ion transport rate in the saline environment. Insects seem to have very little demand for calcium; in fact, previous research has shown that excess calcium is potentially toxic to them.

The researchers think that the animals’ use of internal energy, or active transport, when moving the salts could be the explanation.

“When we see non-insects’ metabolisms increase in dilute environments, it could be due to the fact that they have to work harder to take in more calcium,” Buchwalter says. “And while it seems counterintuitive, the opposite is true for insects who are working harder in a more saline environment to maintain equilibrium, although their respiration rates don’t increase. Instead, they appear to utilize resources that would otherwise be dedicated to growth and development to ‘undo’ excessive ion uptake when things get saltier.

“Moving salt ions has an energy cost to the animal,” Buchwalter says. “So for freshwater insects, the idea that organisms should thrive in environments that are close to their internal salinity is wrong. Additionally, their low demand for calcium may help them thrive in very dilute environments where insects typically dominate the ecology. In contrast, low calcium appears to be stressful for the crustaceans and snail in this study. It is fascinating that species living in the same habitats can have such different physiologies.”

Future work will explore whether these physiological differences are based on the ancestry of the organisms tested, or the use of calcium in their exoskeletons/shells.

The work appears in the Journal of Experimental Biology and was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant IOS 1754884. First author and Ph.D. candidate Jamie Cochran was supported by a Goodnight Doctoral Fellowship. Catelyn Banks, formerly a student at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, also contributed to the work.