Scientists devise method to secure Earth's biodiversity on the moon

New research led by scientists at the Smithsonian proposes a plan to safeguard Earth's imperiled biodiversity by cryogenically preserving biological material on the moon. The moon's permanently shadowed craters are cold enough for cryogenic preservation without the need for electricity or liquid nitrogen, according to the researchers.

The paper, published today in BioScience and written in collaboration with researchers from the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (NZCBI), Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum and others, outlines a roadmap to create a lunar biorepository, including ideas for governance, the types of biological material to be stored and a plan for experiments to understand and address challenges such as radiation and microgravity. The study also demonstrates the successful cryopreservation of skin samples from a fish, which are now stored at the National Museum of Natural History.

"Initially, a lunar biorepository would target the most at-risk species on Earth today, but our ultimate goal would be to cryopreserve most species on Earth," said Mary Hagedorn, a research cryobiologist at NZCBI and lead author of the paper. "We hope that by sharing our vision, our group can find additional partners to expand the conversation, discuss threats and opportunities and conduct the necessary research and testing to make this biorepository a reality."

The proposal takes inspiration from the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway, which contains more than 1 million frozen seed varieties and functions as a backup for the world's crop biodiversity in case of global disaster. By virtue of its location in the Arctic nearly 400 feet underground, the vault was intended to be capable of keeping its seed collection frozen without electricity. However, in 2017, thawing permafrost threatened the collection with a flood of meltwater. The seed vault has since been waterproofed, but the incident showed that even an Arctic, subterranean bunker could be vulnerable to climate change.

Unlike seeds, animal cells require much lower storage temperatures for preservation (-320 degrees Fahrenheit or -196 degrees Celsius). On Earth, cryopreservation of animal cells requires a supply of liquid nitrogen, electricity and human staff. Each of these three elements are potentially vulnerable to disruptions that could destroy an entire collection, Hagedorn said.

To reduce these vulnerabilities, scientists needed a way to passively maintain cryopreservation storage temperatures. Since such cold temperatures do not naturally exist on Earth, Hagedorn and her co-authors looked to the moon.

The moon's polar regions feature numerous craters that never receive sunlight due to their orientation and depth. These so-called permanently shadowed regions can be −410 degrees Fahrenheit (−246 degrees Celsius) -- more than cold enough for passive cryopreservation storage. To block out the DNA-damaging radiation present in space, samples could be stored underground or inside a structure with thick walls made of moon rocks.

At the Hawai?i Institute of Marine Biology, the research team cryopreserved skin samples from a reef fish called the starry goby. The fins contain a type of skin cell called fibroblasts, the primary material to be stored in the National Museum of Natural History's biorepository. When it comes to cryopreservation, fibroblasts have several advantages over other types of commonly cryopreserved cells such as sperm, eggs and embryos. Science cannot yet reliably preserve the sperm, eggs and embryos of most wildlife species. However, for many species, fibroblasts can be cryopreserved easily. In addition, fibroblasts can be collected from an animal's skin, which is simpler than harvesting eggs or sperm. For species that do not have skin per se, such as invertebrates, Hagedorn said the team may use a diversity of types of samples depending on the species, including larvae and other reproductive materials.

The next steps are to begin a series of radiation exposure tests for the cryopreserved fibroblasts on Earth to help design packaging that could safely deliver samples to the moon. The team is actively seeking partners and support to conduct additional experiments on Earth and aboard the International Space Station. Such experiments would provide robust testing for the prototype packaging's ability to withstand the radiation and microgravity associated with space travel and storage on the moon.

If their idea becomes a reality, the researchers envision the lunar biorepository as a public entity to include public and private funders, scientific partners, countries and public representatives with mechanisms for cooperative governance akin to the Svalbard Global Seed Bank.

"We aren't saying what if the Earth fails -- if the Earth is biologically destroyed this biorepository won't matter," Hagedorn said. "This is meant to help offset natural disasters and, potentially, to augment space travel. Life is precious and, as far as we know, rare in the universe. This biorepository provides another, parallel approach to conserving Earth's precious biodiversity."

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Agriculture: Less productive yet more stable pastures

Climate change will have a considerable influence on the biodiversity and productivity of meadows and pastures. However, according to the results of the large-scale climate and land use experiment, GCEF, which has been conducted at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) for 10 years, the extent of these changes depends on the land use. Grassland optimised for high yield responds much more sensitively to periods of drought than less intensively used meadows and pastures. According to an article recently published in Global Change Biology, this can certainly have economic consequences for the farmers affected.

Grassland is one of the most important and most widespread ecosystems on earth. Such open landscapes with grasses and herbs not only cover more than one quarter of the entire land surface but also store at least one third of the terrestrial carbon, are crucial for food production, and can be extremely species-rich in a relatively small area. But what is the future of these habitats? The study provides new insights into this question.

It has long been clear that two environmental changes are threatening the world's grasslands. Particularly in Europe, grasslands are now fertilised much more heavily, mowed more frequently, and grazed more intensively. In addition, farmers often sow only a handful of grass varieties that promise a particularly high yield. This intensification of land use is fundamentally changing the species composition and functionality of meadows and pastures. The same applies to climate change. For Germany, climate change will result in a shift in the seasonal distribution of precipitation as well as an increase in hydrological extremes (e.g. heavy rainfall and droughts), among other things. It is considered the second largest threat for these ecosystems.

When both changes come together, they can reinforce each other. However, nobody yet knows exactly what will happen. Most experiments on this topic have so far focussed on either the climate or land use. "What makes our study unique is that we investigated the interaction of both factors," explains Dr Lotte Korell, biologist at the UFZ and first author of the publication.

This was made possible by the large-scale and long-term experiment of the UFZ in Bad Lauchstädt near Halle, the Global Change Experimental Facility (GCEF). It consists of 50 plots, each measuring 16 × 24 m; these are used with varying degrees of land use intensity. Temperatures and precipitation levels can also be manipulated with the help of mobile roof systems. For example, some plots receive 10% more precipitation in spring and autumn and 20% less in summer than the untreated control plots. This roughly corresponds to the conditions that climate models project for central Germany.

An eight-year data series from this experiment has now been compiled for the new study. The researchers analysed the biodiversity and productivity of the plants on the differently used plots between 2015 and 2022. "This period includes three of the driest years this region has experienced since beginning of records," recalls Korell. These droughts apparently had a much stronger effect on the plants than the experimentally simulated climate change.

However, in both cases, the trend pointed in the same direction: species-rich grassland that is only rarely mown or sparsely grazed withstood the heat and drought much better than the intensively used high-performance meadows. "Among other factors, this is probably related to the diversity of species," says Korell. This varied greatly depending on the land use of the grasslands.

A diverse mixture of more than 50 native grasses and herbs grew on the less intensively used meadows and pastures of the GCEF. However, on the intensively used grassland, the UFZ team had sown only the five grass varieties recommended to farmers by the Saxony-Anhalt State Institute for Agriculture and Horticulture for drier sites at the start of the experiment. These included varieties of meadow grass (Dactylis glomerata) and perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne).

Because such grasses are bred for maximum yield and were also heavily fertilised -- as is common in agricultural practice -- the intensive meadows were initially much more productive than the more diverse grasslands. However, they were able to make use of this advantage only in favourable climatic conditions and were not able to withstand the drought as well as the plants in the low-intensity meadows and pastures. In times of drought, the grasses in the intensively used meadows increasingly died back and were replaced by other species such as chickweed (Stellaria media), shepherd's purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris), dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), and small-flowered cranesbill (Geranium pusillum). "These are mostly short-lived species that survive as seeds," explains Dr Harald Auge, also a biologist at the UFZ and senior author of the study. When the more competitive plants succumb to drought, these species take the opportunity to invade their habitats: they either migrate from the low-intensity grassland or germinate from the seed stock in the soil.

This shift in species composition is not particularly welcomed by farmers, especially because most of the new arrivals have a lower fodder quality than the grasses originally sown. The common ragwort (Senecio vulgaris), which was frequently represented among the immigrating species in the experiment, is in fact poisonous. All of this reduces the productivity of the land.

Farmers have long been aware of this kind of degradation of high-performance grassland by immigrating species. They therefore expect to have to plough up and reseed their land every few years. "However, climate change may accelerate this need and lead to additional costs," says Korell. Perhaps everything will go well for a few years and it will rain enough. However, it is also possible that several dry summers will follow one another. Climate change is making conditions even more unpredictable.

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Climate change could become the main driver of biodiversity decline by mid-century

Global biodiversity has declined between 2% and 11% during the 20th century due to land-use change alone, according to a large multi-model study published in Science. Projections show climate change could become the main driver of biodiversity decline by the mid-21st century.

The analysis was led by the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) and the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and is the largest modelling study of its kind to date. The researchers compared thirteen models for assessing the impact of land-use change and climate change on four distinct biodiversity metrics, as well as on nine ecosystem services.

GLOBAL BIODIVERSITY MAY HAVE DECLINED BY 2% TO 11% DUE TO LAND-USE CHANGE ALONE

Land-use change is considered the largest driver of biodiversity change, according to the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). However, scientists are divided over how much biodiversity has changed in past decades. To better answer this question, the researchers modelled the impacts of land-use change on biodiversity over the 20th century. They found global biodiversity may have declined by 2% to 11% due to land-use change alone. This span covers a range of four biodiversity metrics1 calculated by seven different models.

"By including all world regions in our model, we were able to fill many blind spots and address criticism of other approaches working with fragmented and potentially biased data," says first author Prof Henrique Pereira, research group head at iDiv and MLU. "Every approach has its ups and downsides. We believe our modelling approach provides the most comprehensive estimate of biodiversity trends worldwide."

MIXED TRENDS FOR ECOSYSTEM SERVICES

Using another set of five models, the researchers also calculated the simultaneous impact of land-use change on so-called ecosystem services, i.e., the benefits nature provides to humans. In the past century, they found a massive increase in provisioning ecosystem services, like food and timber production. By contrast, regulating ecosystem services, like pollination, nitrogen retention, or carbon sequestration, moderately declined.

CLIMATE AND LAND-USE CHANGE COMBINED MIGHT LEAD TO BIODIVERSITY LOSS IN ALL WORLD REGIONS

The researchers also examined how biodiversity and ecosystem services might evolve in the future. For these projections, they added climate change as a growing driver of biodiversity change to their calculations.

Climate change stands to put additional strain on biodiversity and ecosystem services, according to the findings. While land-use change remains relevant, climate change could become the most important driver of biodiversity loss by mid-century. The researchers assessed three widely-used scenarios -- from a sustainable development to a high emissions scenario. For all scenarios, the impacts of land-use change and climate change combined result in biodiversity loss in all world regions.

While the overall downward trend is consistent, there are considerable variations across world regions, models, and scenarios.

PROJECTIONS ARE NOT PREDICTIONS

"The purpose of long-term scenarios is not to predict what will happen," says co-author Dr Inês Martins from the University of York. "Rather, it is to understand alternatives, and therefore avoid these trajectories, which might be least desirable, and select those that have positive outcomes. Trajectories depend on the policies we choose, and these decisions are made day by day." Martins co-led the model analyses and is an alumna of iDiv and MLU.

The authors also note that even the most sustainable scenario assessed does not deploy all the policies that could be put in place to protect biodiversity in the coming decades. For instance, bioenergy deployment, one key component of the sustainability scenario, can contribute to mitigating climate change, but can simultaneously reduce species habitats. In contrast, measures to increase the effectiveness and coverage of protected areas or large-scale rewilding were not explored in any of the scenarios

MODELS HELP IDENTIFY EFFECTIVE POLICIES

Assessing the impacts of concrete policies on biodiversity helps identify those policies most effective for safeguarding and promoting biodiversity and ecosystem services, according to the researchers. "There are modelling uncertainties, for sure," Pereira adds. "Still, our findings clearly show that current policies are insufficient to meet international biodiversity goals. We need renewed efforts to make progress against one of the world's largest problems, which is human-caused biodiversity change."

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New roadmap to prevent pandemics centers on protecting biodiversity

An international team of 25 scientists has proposed a roadmap for how to prevent the next pandemic by conserving natural areas and promoting biodiversity, thereby providing animals with enough food, safe havens and distance to limit contact and the transfer of pathogens to humans.

Pandemics begin when disease-harboring animals, such as bats, come in close proximity with people, livestock or other animals and pass on new pathogens.

Viruses such as SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV-1, Nipah, Hendra and possibly Ebola have all fatally spilled over from bats to humans, sometimes through an intermediate host.

"The world is focused on how can we detect and then contain a novel pathogen once it is circulating in humans, rather than how can we prevent that pathogen from entering the human population in the first place," said Raina Plowright, professor in the Department of Public and Ecosystem Health at Cornell University, and first author of the paper, "Ecological Countermeasures to Prevent Pathogen Spillover and Subsequent Pandemics," published in Nature Communications.

The pandemic-prevention strategy is based on insights from a pair of 2022 papers that serve as a case study applicable to all animals that potentially carry zoonotic diseases.

Those papers -- about how bats can spread fatal Hendra virus to horses and people -- explained that when bats lose their natural habitats and winter food sources, their large populations splinter and they migrate in small groups to agricultural and urban areas.

They also become stressed, partly due to inadequate food sources, and they shed more virus in their urine.

The virus falls to the ground where grazing horses become infected; horses in turn can then infect people.

But when natural habitats can provide adequate food, especially in fallow winter months, the bats return to these habitats, aggregate in large numbers, and stop shedding virus.

The roadmap uses this and other case studies to explain the mechanisms linking environmental change and spillover of pathogens from animals to humans, and identifies ecological interventions to disrupt these links and policy frameworks to implement them.

Ecological interventions begin by protecting the places where animals eat.

"We need to make sure there's always an abundant supply of food available at all times of year, especially when animals are in stressful life history stages like reproduction and migration," Plowright said.

Next, it's important to protect where animals may roost or aggregate, as tens of thousands of bats can roost in canopies and caves, so when these areas are disturbed, these populations can splinter, move and shed more virus.

Also, cave dwelling bats may not have other caves to move to, in which case they stay put, become more stressed and likely shed more virus.

Protecting lands that act as buffers between people and wildlife is also key.

"There are trillions of microbes in nature, but we rarely actually get sick, because there are many, many barriers between us and new pathogens," Plowright said.

Lastly, for communities who come in contact with animals, it's important to ensure people have the protection that they need to avoid pathogen exposure, Plowright said.

The study's authors emphasize the need for an international agency or panel that can assess and synthesize data on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response and collect metrics on intactness of landscapes, ecological integrity and biodiversity.

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Loss of nature costs more than previously estimated

Researchers propose that governments apply a new method for calculating the benefits that arise from conserving biodiversity and nature for future generations.

The method can be used by governments in cost-benefit analyses for public infrastructure projects, in which the loss of animal and plant species and 'ecosystem services' -- such as filtering air or water, pollinating crops or the recreational value of a space -- are converted into a current monetary value.

This process is designed to make biodiversity loss and the benefits of nature conservation more visible in political decision-making.

However, the international research team says current methods for calculating the values of ecosystem services "fall short" and have devised a new approach, which they believe could easily be deployed in Treasury analysis underpinning future Budget statements.

Their approach, published in the journal Science, takes into consideration the increase in monetary value of nature over time as human income increases, as well as the likely deterioration in biodiversity, making it more of a scarce resource.

This contrasts with current methods, which do not consider how the value of ecosystem services changes over time.

"Our study provides governments with a formula to estimate the future values of scarce ecosystem services that can be used in decision-making processes," said Moritz Drupp, Professor of Sustainability Economics at the University of Hamburg and lead author on this study.

Two factors play a key role in this value adjustment: on the one hand, income will rise and with it the prosperity of the world's population -- by an estimated two percent per year after adjusting for inflation.

As incomes go up, people are willing to pay more to conserve nature.

"On the other hand, the services provided by ecosystems will become more valuable the scarcer they become," said Professor Drupp. "The fact that scarce goods become more expensive is a fundamental principle in economics, and it also applies here. And in view of current developments, unfortunately, we must expect the loss of biodiversity to continue."

According to the researchers, the present value of ecosystem services must therefore be set much higher in today's cost-benefit analyses, to more than 130 percent if just including the rise of income.

If also taking into account the impact on Red List Index endangered species, the value adjustment would amount to more than 180 percent.

Accounting for these effects will increase the likelihood of projects that conserve ecosystem services passing a cost-benefit test.

The research team includes three UK-based authors: Professor Mark Freeman (University of York), Dr. Frank Venmans (LSE), and Professor Ben Groom (University of Exeter).

"The monetary values for the environment that are currently used by policy makers in the appraisal of public investments and regulatory change mean that nature becomes relatively less valuable over time compared to other goods and services," said Professor Groom.

"Our work shows this is wrong. We propose an uplift in the values of ecosystems over time. This proposal could easily be deployed in the Treasury's analysis that will underpin future Budget statements."

Dr Venmans added: "Take coral reefs as a specific example. These are expected to decline in area and biodiversity as the climate changes, meaning that the remaining reefs will be much more valuable than today, and even more so as household incomes rise. This matters when we assess coral reef preservation with long-lasting effects."

Professor Freeman said: "The government is under considerable pressure from many sides for additional public investment. Ensuring that the protection of ecosystems is appraised in a way that is consistent with other public projects, including HS2 and other infrastructure spending, is critical. This is what our work aims to achieve."

The researchers say that as political decisions can alleviate the loss of biodiversity, it is important that governments are able to adequately assess the consequences of their decisions today and in the future.

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Fossils of giant sea lizard with dagger-like teeth show how our oceans have fundamentally changed since the dinosaur era

Paleontologists have discovered a strange new species of marine lizard with dagger-like teeth that lived near the end of the age of dinosaurs. Their findings, published in Cretaceous Research, show a dramatically different ocean ecosystem to what we see today, with numerous giant top predators eating large prey, unlike modern ecosystems where a few apex predators -- such as great white sharks, orca and leopard seals -- dominate.

Khinjaria acuta was a member of the family Mosasauridae, or mosasaurs. Mosasaurs weren't dinosaurs, but giant marine lizards, relatives of today's Komodo dragons and anacondas, which ruled the oceans 66 million years ago, during the era of Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops.

Khinjaria had powerful jaws and long, dagger-like teeth to seize prey, giving it a nightmarish appearance. It was part of an extraordinarily diverse fauna of predators that inhabited the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Morocco, just before the dinosaurs went extinct.

The study is based on a skull and parts of the skeleton collected from a phosphate mine southeast of Casablanca. The study involved researchers from the University of Bath in the UK, the Marrakech Museum of Natural History, the Museum National d' Histoire Naturelle (NMNH) in Paris (France), Southern Methodist University in Texas (USA), and the University of the Basque Country (Bilbao).

"What's remarkable here is the sheer diversity of top predators," said Dr Nick Longrich of the Department of Life Sciences and the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath, who led the study. "We have multiple species growing larger than a great white shark, and they're top predators, but they all have different teeth, suggesting they're hunting in different ways.

"Some mosasaurs had teeth to pierce prey, others to cut, tear, or crush. Now we have Khinjaria, with a short face full of huge, dagger-shaped teeth. This is one of the most diverse marine faunas seen anywhere, at any time in history, and it existed just before the marine reptiles and the dinosaurs went extinct."

Morocco's diverse marine reptiles lived just before an asteroid struck the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. Dust and fine particles shot into the high atmosphere blocked out the sun for months, causing darkness and cooling, which drove most of the planet's species to extinction.

Dinosaurs were wiped out on land, and a handful of surviving species of mammals, birds, and lizards diversified to take their place. Meanwhile, the same happened in the oceans.

Mosasaurs, plesiosaurs and giant sea turtles disappeared, along with entire families of fish. This opened the way for whales and seals, and fish like swordfish and tuna appeared. However, the ecosystem that evolved after the impact was different.

"There seems to have been a huge change in the ecosystem structure in the past 66 million years," said Longrich. "This incredible diversity of top predators in the Late Cretaceous is unusual, and we don't see that in modern marine communities."

Modern marine food chains have just a few large apex predators, animals like orcas, white sharks, and leopard seals. The Cretaceous had a whole host of top predators.

Dr Longrich said: "It's not just that we're getting rid of the old actors and recasting new ones into the same roles. The story has changed dramatically.

"Modern ecosystems have predators like baleen whales and dolphins that eat small prey, and not many things eating large prey. The Cretaceous has a huge number of marine reptile species that take large prey. Whether there's something about marine reptiles that caused the ecosystem to be different, or the prey, or perhaps the environment, we don't know. But this was an incredibly dangerous time to be a fish, a sea turtle, or even a marine reptile."

Professor Nathalie Bardet, from the NMNH, said: "The Phosphates of Morocco deposit in a shallow and warm epicontinental sea, under a system of upwellings; these zones are caused by currents of deep, cold, nutrient-rich waters rising towards the surface, providing food for large numbers of sea creatures and, as a result, supporting a lot of predators. This is probably one of the explanations for this extraordinary paleobiodiversity observed in Morocco at the end of the Cretaceous."

"The phosphates of Morocco immerse us in the Upper Cretaceous seas during the latest geological times of the dinosaurs' age. No deposit has provided so many fossils and so many species from this period," said Professor NE. Jalil of NMNH. "After the' titan of the seas', Thalassotitan, the 'saw-toothed' mosasaur Xenodens, the 'star-toothed' mosasaur, Stelladens and many others, now there is Khinjaria, a new mosasaur with dagger-like teeth.

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Suburban backyard home to more than 1,000 species

A challenge among three housemates to identify species around their inner-Brisbane home has resulted in an academic research paper, showcasing the rich biodiversity in urban landscapes.

UQ mathematician Dr Matt Holden, ecologist Dr Andrew Rogers and taxonomist Dr Russell Yong took a census of their Annerley share house and its backyard during the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, and discovered 1,150 unique species of animals, plants and fungi over a 12-month period.

"We asked a large number of ecologists and conservation scientists how many species they'd expect to find in this setting and they predicted only 200," Dr Holden said.

"But after 60 days of surveying, we'd already discovered 777 species.

"It shows suburban houses and apartments could have far more biodiversity than ever imagined, especially when it comes to insects."

The idea of the species count was born when Dr Rogers went to vacuum cobwebs in his room and wondered how many spiders were on the property.

"The three of us soon envisioned a plan to comb through the house and backyard in search of other critters that resided alongside us," Dr Holden said.

The survey revealed richly biodiverse creatures including 436 moth and butterfly species, 56 different spiders, eight reptiles and 56 birds.

The bird species included tawny frogmouths, laughing kookaburras, blue-faced honeyeaters, rainbow lorikeets, spotted doves and Brisbane favourite, the Australian white ibis.

"Blue-tongued skinks hibernated under the garage and at night blue-banded and teddy-bear bees slept in the hedges under the front window," Dr Holden said.

The researchers were also surprised to discover three species not previously recorded in Australia's leading biodiversity database, Atlas of Living Australia -- a mosquito, a sandfly, and an invasive flatworm, Platydemus manokwari, which is responsible for native snail population declines, around the world.

"The house was a complex ecosystem of species interacting -- we stumbled upon the moth Scatochresis innumera, which as a caterpillar spends its whole time feeding inside the dung of a Brushtail Possum before emerging as an adult," Dr Holden said.

"The Parilyrgis concolor is another moth species whose caterpillar lives in spider webs and devours spider poop to survive."

Dr Holden said homes across all urban areas could play host to similar biodiversity.

"It depends on how people tend to their homes and gardens -- keeping low maintenance trees and shrubs and eliminating manicured lawns and pesticides will significantly boost the number of critters found," he said.

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Landscape dynamics determine the evolution of biodiversity on Earth

Movement of rivers, mountains, oceans and sediment nutrients at the geological timescale are the central drivers of Earth's biodiversity, new research published today in Nature has revealed.

The research also shows that biodiversity evolves at similar rates to the pace of plate tectonics, the slow geological processes that drive the shape of continents, mountains and oceans.

"That is a rate incomparably slower than the current rates of extinction caused by human activity," said lead author Dr Tristan Salles from the School of Geosciences.

The research looks back over 500 million years of Earth's history to the period just after the Cambrian explosion of life, which established the main species types of modern life.

Dr Salles said: "Earth's surface is the living skin of our planet. Over geological time, this surface evolves with rivers fragmenting the landscape into an environmentally diverse range of habitats.

"However, these rivers not only carve canyons and form valleys, but play the role of Earth's circulatory system as the main conduits for nutrient and sediment transfer from sources (mountains) to sinks (oceans).

"While modern science has a growing understanding of global biodiversity, we tend to view this through the prism of narrow expertise," Dr Salles said. "This is like looking inside a house from just one window and thinking we understand its architecture.

"Our model connects physical, chemical and biological systems over half a billion years in five-million-year chunks at a resolution of five kilometres. This gives an unprecedented understanding of what has driven the shape and timing of species diversity," he said.

The discovery in 1994 of the ancient Wollemi pine species in a secluded valley in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney gives us a glimpse into the holistic role that time, geology, hydrology, climate and genetics play in biodiversity and species survival.

The idea that landscapes play a role in the trajectory of life on Earth can be traced back to German naturalist and polymath Alexander von Humboldt. His work inspired Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace, who were the first to note that animal species boundaries correspond to landscape discontinuities and gradients.

"Fast forwarding nearly 200 years, our understanding of how the diversity of marine and terrestrial life was assembled over the past 540 million years is still emerging," University of Sydney PhD student Beatriz Hadler Boggiani said.

"Biodiversity patterns are well identified from the fossil record and genetic studies. Yet, many aspects of this evolution remain enigmatic, such as the 100 million years delay between the expansion of plants on continents and the rapid diversification of marine life."

In groundbreaking research a team of scientists -- from the University of Sydney, ISTerre at the French state research organisation CNRS and the University of Grenoble Alpes in France -- has proposed a unified theory that connects the evolution of life in the marine and terrestrial realms to sediment pulses controlled by past landscapes.

"Because the evolution of the Earth's surface is set by the interplay between the geosphere and the atmosphere, it records their cumulative interactions and should, therefore, provide the context for biodiversity to evolve," said Dr Laurent Husson from University of Grenoble Alpes.

Instead of considering isolated pieces of the environmental puzzle independently, the team developed a model that combines them and simulates at high resolution the compounding effect of these forces.

"It is through calibration of this physical memory etched in the Earth's skin with genetics, fossils, climate, hydrology and tectonics by which we have investigated our hypothesis," Dr Salles said.

Using open-source scientific code published by the team in Science in March, the detailed simulation was calibrated using modern information about landscape elevations, erosion rates, major river waters and the geological transport of sediment (known as sediment flux).

This allowed the team to evaluate their predictions over 500 million years using a combination of geochemical proxies and testing different tectonic and climatic reconstructions. The geoscientists then compared the predicted sediment pulses to the evolution of life in both the marine and terrestrial realms obtained from a compilation of paleontological data.

"In a nutshell, we reconstructed Earth landforms over the Phanerozoic era, which started 540 million years ago, and looked at the correlations between the evolving river networks, sediment transfers and known distribution of marine and plant families," University of Grenoble PhD student Manon Lorcery said.

When comparing predicted sediment flux into the oceans with marine biodiversity, the analysis shows a strong, positive correlation.

On land, the authors designed a model integrating sediment cover and landscape variability to describe the capacity of the landscape to host diverse species. Here again, they found a striking correlation between their proxy and plant diversification for the past 450 million years.

In his 1864 novel A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Jules Verne attributes this to his fictitious hero, Professor Otto Lidenbrock:

"Animal life existed upon the Earth only in the secondary period, when a sediment of soil had been deposited by the rivers and taken the place of the incandescent rocks of the primitive period."

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Protect delicate polar ecosystems by mapping biodiversity

Polar regions contain vast, undiscovered biodiversity but are both the most-threatened and least-understood areas of the world.

Now scientists led by the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) are calling for a roadmap of polar ecosystems to fill that knowledge gap, preserve polar life and even protect "our everyday life and our planet's health." The study would map all biodiversity in those regions, from the atmosphere to the deep sea and from land to the oceans.

The authors said concerted action is required to mitigate the impact of warming on polar ecosystems via conservation efforts, to sustainably manage these unique habitats and their ecosystem services, and for the sustainable bioprospecting of novel genes and compounds for societal gain.

'Multi-omics for studying and understanding polar life', is published today in Nature Communications. The paper is co-authored by UEA, BAS and the University of Bielefeld, Germany.

Polar ecosystems are the most threatened because they are the most sensitive to global warming. They are being lost at a rapid pace and with them all the biology that provides ecosystem services and biology-driven regulation of the climate, including the carbon cycle.

Prof Thomas Mock, Professor of Marine Microbiology in UEA's School of Environmental Sciences, is the joint lead author with Prof Melody Clark, Project Leader for the British Antarctic Survey.

Prof Thomas Mock said: "Biodiversity projections for the polar regions can only be reliably constructed if we have a sufficiently profound understanding of the diversity, ecological functions, and interrelations of polar organisms, as well as their resilience to climate change.

"These remote regions play substantial, often underappreciated, roles in the carbon cycle and drive global nutrient and dissolved organic matter fluxes. Consequently, polar environmental and ecological processes are intimately connected with our everyday life and our planet's health, much of which is underpinned by the endemic biota, from viruses to large animals.

"There is strong evidence that climate-induced changes in the polar regions are already altering species distributions on land and in the sea, with major impacts on ecosystem function."

Some species have shifted poleward, which has a knock-on effect on the food chain. Polar life, from microbes to seals, whales and polar bears, largely depends on overall low temperature and a substantial snow and ice cover, which are experiencing the impacts of global warming.

In the Arctic, temperatures are rising at least four times faster than elsewhere, destabilising the Arctic jet stream and increasing the likelihood of extreme weather events including heat waves, drought and flooding in temperate regions.

On land, permafrost melting and collapsing Arctic coastlines are dramatically altering ecological interactions and biogeochemistry due to the release of millennia-old carbon stores, trace elements, nutrients and potentially even deep-frozen ancient viruses and pathogenic bacteria.

In the oceans, the increased seasonal melting of sea ice is stabilizing surface waters too much, which reduces the amount of nutrients required for primary production to take place.

Similarly, the situation in the Southern Ocean and Antarctic continent is equally bleak, particularly for the Antarctic Peninsula, which has already experienced substantial levels of warming that has increased the loss of sea ice and glaciers.

The Southern Ocean is responsible for the uptake of three-quarters of the anthropogenic heat absorbed by the ocean and up to half of the carbon drawdown. It accounts for around 40 per cent of the global oceanic uptake of anthropogenic CO2 and around 50 per cent of the total atmospheric uptake. Furthermore, sequestering carbon by the organisms living in polar seas is probably the largest natural negative feedback against climate change.

The climate impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in both the Arctic and Antarctic serve as a bellwether for the consequences of global warming, including the persistence of biodiversity on Earth.

Prof Clark said: "Sequencing technologies have massively changed our abilities to decipher how organisms work. However the uptake in polar biology has been relatively low, especially when considering the tens of thousands of species that reside at the poles and are at threat in our warming world.

"Understanding how lots of very strange organisms living in extreme cold can help answer globally questions and provide real benefits for society. Failure to act now will result in a substantial loss of knowledge regarding evolutionary adaptation to the cold."

Genomic screening not only offers the possibility of identifying populations under stress, but it can also be used for the monitoring of invasive species, thereby facilitating early interventions.

Prof Mock said: "With the cold regions of our planet diminishing, there is a real imperative to obtain full genome sequences for diverse organisms inhabiting polar ecosystems, from the deep oceans to the permafrost on land, for both the Arctic and Antarctic. This will enable the wider application of omics technologies to polar species, which will revolutionise our understanding of evolution in the cold and adaptive responses to a warming world."

Read more at Science Daily

Nature photographers posting to social media help with protecting biodiversity

Nature photographers posting to social media are helping improve biodiversity conservation mapping in South Asia, and the method could go global.

Dr Shawan Chowdhury from UQ's School of the Environment led an international team which scoured images on Facebook nature photography groups in Bangladesh, to add to the existing Global Biodiversity Information Facility database.

"We found 44,000 photos of almost 1,000 animal species, including many birds and insects, 288 of which are considered threatened in Bangladesh," Dr Chowdhury said.

"This has vastly improved habitat mapping across the country where only 4.6 per cent of land is designated as protected.

"We identified many more high-priority areas for conservation, spanning 4,000 square kilometres for birds and 10,000 square kilometres for butterflies.

"We'd been missing out on the distribution data of hundreds of endangered species in Bangladesh so this is a big result.

"This could change the way scientists gather biodiversity information in the future, especially in regions where there is a lack of reliable and up-to-date structured monitoring to inform conservation efforts."

In Australia, social media posts are being used to track pest species.

"A South Asian butterfly, called the tawny coster, entered Australia in 2012," Dr Chowdhury said.

"We've searched for additional locality records from Facebook to analyse the movement, ecology and colonisation status of this species and shown that it expanded at about 135 kilometres per year in Australia between 2012 and 2020."

Co-author Professor Richard Fuller from UQ said while Facebook had been helpful, there are some big opportunities for social media companies.

"There is currently no automated way to collect this information, and it was a very arduous task for us to do it manually." Professor Fuller said.

"We hope our research can inspire the development of technology such as an app that transfers biodiversity data posted on Facebook directly to the global biodiversity databases.

"This way, conservation scientists can easily access that data and use it."

Read more at Science Daily

Diverse forests hold huge carbon potential, as long as we cut emissions

Research results published in the journal, Nature, show that realistic global forest carbon potential is approximately 226 Gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon. The study, which involved hundreds of scientists around the world, highlights the critical importance of forest conservation, restoration, and sustainable management in moving towards international climate and biodiversity targets. The researchers stress that this potential can be achieved by incentivizing community-driven efforts to promote biodiversity.

The forest carbon potential has been a highly controversial topic. Four years ago, a study published in the journal Science found that the restoration of forests could capture over 200 Gt of carbon -- which could draw down approximately 30 percent of excess anthropogenic carbon. While this study elevated a discussion about the role of nature in fighting climate change, it also raised concerns around the adverse environmental impacts of mass tree plantations, carbon offsetting schemes, and greenwashing. While some scientific studies have supported the scale of this finding, others argued that this forest carbon estimate could be up to 4 or 5 times too high.

To address this controversial topic an international team of hundreds of researchers led by the Crowther Lab at ETH Zurich joined forces to build an integrated assessment using a comprehensive range of approaches, including vast ground-sourced data and satellite datasets.

Achieving forest carbon potential

Due to ongoing deforestation, the total amount of carbon stored in forests is ~328 Gt below its natural state. Of course, much of this land is used for extensive human development including urban and agricultural land. However, outside of those areas, researchers found that forests could capture approximately 226 Gt C in regions with a low human footprint if they were allowed to recover. Approximately 61 percent of this potential can be achieved by protecting existing forests, so that they can recover to maturity. The remaining 39 percent can be achieved by reconnecting fragmented forest landscapes through sustainable ecosystem management and restoration.

"Most of the world's forests are highly degraded. In fact, many people have never been in one of the few old growth forests that remain on Earth," said Lidong Mo, a lead author of the study. "To restore global biodiversity, ending deforestation must be a top priority."

The dataset revealed that biodiversity accounts for approximately half of the global forest productivity. As such, the researchers highlighted that, to achieve the full carbon potential, restoration efforts should include a natural diversity of species. In addition, sustainable agricultural, forestry, and restoration practices that promote biodiversity have the greatest potential for carbon capture.

Redefining restoration

The authors stress that responsible restoration is a fundamentally social endeavour. It includes countless actions such as conservation, natural regeneration, rewilding, silviculture, agroforestry, and all other community-driven efforts to promote biodiversity. It requires equitable development, driven by policies that prioritize the rights of local communities and Indigenous people.

"We need to redefine what restoration means to many people," said Thomas Crowther, the senior author of the paper and a professor at ETH Zurich. "Restoration is not about mass tree plantations to offset carbon emissions. Restoration means directing the flow of wealth towards millions of local communities, Indigenous populations, and farmers that promote biodiversity across the globe. Only when healthy biodiversity is the preferred choice for local communities will we get long-term carbon capture as a biproduct."

The researchers conclude that ecologically responsible forest restoration does not include the conversion of other ecosystems that would not naturally contain forests. "Global restoration is not only about trees," said Constantin Zohner, a senior researcher at ETH Zurich. "We have to protect natural biodiversity in all ecosystems including grasslands, peatlands, and wetlands that are equally essential for life on Earth."

Nature for climate

This study brings to light the critical importance of natural, diverse forests in contributing to 30 percent of carbon drawdown potential. However, forests cannot be a substitute for cutting fossil fuel emissions. If emissions continue to rise, the study warns, then on-going droughts, fires, and warming will threaten forests and limit their ability to absorb carbon.

Read more at Science Daily

Southern Alaska's national forests key to meeting climate, conservation goals

Analyses of U.S. national forests led by Oregon State University scientists shows that increased protections for two Alaskan forests is a key to meeting climate and biodiversity goals.

In a paper published in AGU Advances, OSU College of Forestry researchers make the case that greater conservation efforts in the Tongass and Chugach national forests in southern Alaska are crucial because of their landscape integrity, high carbon stocks and wildlife habitat extent.

"More thoroughly safeguarding those forests from industrial development would contribute significantly to climate change mitigation and species adaptation in the face of the severe ecological disruption that's expected to occur over the next few decades as the climate rapidly gets warmer," said Oregon State's Bev Law, who co-led the study.

At 16.7 million acres, the Tongass is America's largest national forest. The Chugach is the second-largest at just under 7 million acres.

Not only are they the biggest national forests, they are the most intact, Law said, and provide habitat for iconic, keystone species such as the bald eagle, brown bear and gray wolf.

"Those forests are also cool and wet, with carbon stocks that are only minimally affected by wildfire, stocks that are likely to increase as the climate changes," she said. "Protecting the Tongass and Chugach is a high priority if we want to have a chance to attain global goals relating to climate and diversity of species."

Law and collaborators in the College of Forestry teamed up with researchers at Southern Oregon University, the Woodwell Climate Research Center and EcoSpatial Services L.L.C. to look at 152 national forests and compare them in terms of carbon density and accumulation, total biomass carbon stocks, habitat for eagles, bears and wolves, and landscape integrity -- defined as degree of modification by humans.

The authors report that almost 31% of all high-landscape-integrity area found in national forests -- areas with minimal or no human modification -- is in the Tongass and Chugach, at 25.3% and 5.6%, respectively.

Those forests also combine to account for nearly half of all bald eagle habitat available in national forests, 37% of brown bear habitat and 18% of gray wolf habitat -- no other location has more than 4% of the total wolf habitat found in the U.S. inventory of national forests. All three species were once widespread and abundant across much of North America.

"Forests play an incredibly important part in trying to mitigate climate change and support biodiversity," Law said. "For six decades, ecosystems on land have annually been removing roughly 30% of all the carbon dioxide humans have been putting into the atmosphere, and forests do most of that work. But intact forests with high carbon density and high biodiversity are disappearing at a frightening pace, lost to agriculture, logging and other industries, and development."

In addition to sequestering carbon and providing wildlife habitat, intact forests provide a range of ecosystem services, including helping to keep water clean, the authors note. And in the quest to establish nature-based climate solutions, public lands have outsized importance because they are more likely than private lands to afford more stable carbon storage.

Still, at present, federal forest lands are caught up in a numbers game, and conservation has some ground to make up on the scoreboard, Law said.

"National forests account for 76% of all federal forest land, but logging and other industrial activities are allowed throughout most of that, with only about 19% classified as reserved in one way or another from timber production," she said. "That means there is a substantial gap between current preservation and the preservation targets for protecting biodiversity and carbon stocks."

Ramping up protection in the Alaskan forests offers a big opportunity for closing that gap, the authors point out. Right now, 35% of the Tongass is protected at the two highest levels as categorized by the U.S. Geological Survey and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and 57.6% of the Chugach.

"Those two forests have historically been wetter and cooler than most national forests, and over the next 100 years they are projected to have much larger increases in precipitation and much lower increases in maximum temperatures," Law said. "Combined with a relatively low occurrence of wildfire, that makes preserving these forests in their intact state highly possible -- if there is the political will to take bold action."

Read more at Science Daily

'Biodiversity time machine' provides insights into a century of loss

Scientists have run the first proof of concept of their DNA 'time machine' to shed light on a century of environmental change in a freshwater lake -- including warming temperatures and pollution, leading to the potentially irreversible loss of biodiversity.

Their approach, which uses AI applied to DNA-based biodiversity, climate variables and pollution, could help regulators to protect the planet's existing biodiversity levels, or even improve them.

Researchers from the University of Birmingham, in collaboration with Goethe University in Frankfurt, used sediment from the bottom of a lake in Denmark to reconstruct a 100-year-old library of biodiversity, chemical pollution, and climate change levels. This lake has a history of well-documented shifts in water quality, making it a perfect natural experiment for testing the biodiversity time machine.

Publishing their findings today (7 Nov) in eLife, the experts reveal that the sediment holds a continuous record of biological and environmental signals that have changed over time -- from (semi)pristine environments at the start of the industrial revolution to the present.

The team used environmental DNA -- genetic material left behind by plants, animals, and bacteria -- to build a picture of the entire freshwater community. Assisted by AI, they analysed the information, in conjunction with climate and pollution data, to identify what could explain the historic loss of species that lived in the lake.

Principal investigator Luisa Orsini, Professor of Evolutionary Systems Biology and Environmental Omics at the University of Birmingham and Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute, explained: "We took a sediment core from the bottom of the lake and used biological data within that sediment like a time machine -- looking back in time to build a detailed picture of biodiversity over the last century at yearly resolution. By analysing biological data with climate change data and pollution levels we can identify the factors having the biggest impact on biodiversity.

"Protecting every species without impacting human production is unrealistic, but using AI we can prioritise the conservation of species that deliver ecosystem services. At the same time, we can identify the top pollutants, guiding regulation of chemical compounds with the most adverse effect. These actions can help us not only to preserve the biodiversity we have today, but potentially to improve biodiversity recovery. Biodiversity sustains many ecosystem services that we all benefit from. Protecting biodiversity mean protecting these services."

The researchers found that pollutants such as insecticides and fungicides, alongside increases in minimum temperature (a 1.2-1.5-degree increase) caused the most damage to biodiversity levels.

However, the DNA present in the sediment also showed that over the last 20 years the lake had begun to recover. Water quality improved as agricultural land use declined in the area surrounding the lake. Yet, whereas the overall biodiversity increased, the communities were not the same as in the (semi)pristine phase. This is concerning as different species can deliver different ecosystem services, and therefore their inability to return to a particular site can prevent the reinstatement of specific services.

Niamh Eastwood, lead author and PhD student at the University of Birmingham said: "The biodiversity loss caused by this pollution and the warming water temperature is potentially irreversible. The species found in the lake 100 years ago that have been lost will not all be able to return. It is not possible to restore the lake to its original pristine state, even though the lake is recovering. This research shows that if we fail to protect biodiversity, much of it could be lost forever."

Dr Jiarui Zhou, co-lead author and Assistant Professor in Environmental Bioinformatics at the University of Birmingham, said: "Learning from the past, our holistic models can help us to predict the likely loss of biodiversity under a 'business as usual' and other pollution scenarios. We have demonstrated the value of AI-based approaches for understanding historic drivers of biodiversity loss. As new data becomes available, more sophisticated AI models can be used to further improve our predictions of the causes of biodiversity loss."

Read more at Science Daily

Where is a sea star's head? Maybe just about everywhere

If you put a hat on a starfish, where would you put it? On the center of the starfish? Or on the point of an arm and, if so, which one? The question is silly, but it gets at serious questions in the fields of zoology and developmental biology that have perplexed veteran scientists and schoolchildren in introductory biology classes alike: Where is the head on a starfish? And how does their body layout relate to ours?

Now, a new Stanford study that used genetic and molecular tools to map out the body regions of starfish -- by creating a 3D atlas of their gene expression -- helps answer this longstanding mystery. The "head" of a starfish, the researchers found, is not in any one place. Instead, the headlike regions are distributed with some in the center of the sea star as well as in the center of each limb of its body.

"The answer is much more complicated than we expected," said Laurent Formery, lead author and postdoc in the labs of Christopher Lowe at the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences and Daniel S. Rokhsar at the University of California, Berkeley. "It is just weird, and most likely the evolution of the group was even more complicated than this."

Starfish (sea stars) belong to a group of animals called echinoderms. Echinoderms and humans are closely related, yet the life cycle and anatomy of sea stars are very different from ours.

Sea stars begin life as fertilized eggs that hatch into a free-floating larva. The larvae bob in the ocean in a plankton form for weeks to months before settling to the ocean floor to perform a magic trick of sorts -- transforming from a bilateral (symmetric across the midline) body plan into an adult with a five-point star shape called a pentaradial body plan.

"This has been a zoological mystery for centuries," said Lowe, who is also a researcher at Hopkins Marine Station and senior author of the paper that published Nov. 1 in Nature. "How can you go from a bilateral body plan to a pentaradial plan, and how can you compare any part of the starfish to our own body plan?"

Mapping stars

For puzzles such as this one, researchers often conduct comparative studies to identify similar structures in related groups of animals to glean clues about the evolutionary events that prompted the trait of interest.

"The problem with starfish is there is nothing on a starfish anatomically that you can relate to a vertebrate," said Lowe. "There is just nothing there."

At least, nothing on the outside of a starfish. And that is where genetic and molecular techniques come in.

During his graduate research, Formery studied early development in sea urchins -- echinoderms, like sea stars, that also start their life as bilateral larvae before transforming into adults with fivefold symmetry. When Formery joined Lowe's lab, Formery's knowledge of echinoderm development combined with Lowe's expertise in molecular biology techniques to help tackle the mystery of sea stars' baffling body plan.

The team used a group of well-studied molecular markers (Hox genes are an example) that act as blueprints for an organism's body plan by "telling" each cell which body region it belongs to.

"If you strip away the skin of an animal and look at the genes involved in defining a head from a tail, the same genes code for these body regions across all groups of animals," said Lowe. "So we ignored the anatomy and asked: Is there a molecular axis hidden under all this weird anatomy and what is its role in a starfish forming a pentaradial body plan?"

To investigate this question, the researchers used RNA tomography, a technique that pinpoints where genes are expressed in tissue, and in situ hybridization, a technique that zeroes in on a specific RNA sequence in a cell.

"First we sectioned sea star arms into thin slices from tip to center, top to bottom, and left to right," said Formery, noting that sea stars regenerate missing limbs. "We used RNA tomography to determine which genes were expressed in each slice and then 'reassembled' the slices using computer models. This gave us a 3D map of gene expression."

"In the second method, in situ hybridization chain reaction, we stained sea star tissue and visually inspected the samples to see where a gene was expressed," said Formery. This enabled the researchers to examine anterior-posterior (head to tail) body patterning in the outermost layer of cells called the ectoderm.

"This was made possible by the recent, big, technical improvement in in situ hybridization, known as in situ hybridization chain reaction, Formery said. "This new method provides better resolution of where the gene is expressed."

The research revealed that sea stars have a headlike territory in the center of each "arm" and a tail-like region along the perimeter. In an unexpected twist, no part of the sea star ectoderm expresses a "trunk" genetic patterning program, suggesting that sea stars are mostly headlike.

Mining truly diverse biodiversity

Research is often centered on groups of animals that look like us, the researchers explained. But if we focus on the familiar, we are less likely to learn something new.

"There are 34 different animal phyla living on this planet and in over roughly 600 million years they have all come up with different solutions to the same fundamental biological problems," Lowe said. "Most animals don't have spectacular nervous systems and are out chasing prey -- they are modest animals that live in burrows in the ocean. People are generally not drawn to these animals, and yet they probably represent how much of life got started."

This study demonstrates how a comparative approach that uses genetic and molecular techniques can be used to mine biodiversity for insights into why different animals look the way they do and how their body plans evolved.

"Even in recent molecular papers there's a question mark near echinoderms on the evolutionary tree because we don't know much about them," Formery said. "It was nice to show that -- at least at the molecular level -- we have a new piece of the puzzle that can now be put on the tree."

Read more at Science Daily

Earth's stability and ability to support civilization at risk: Six of nine planetary boundaries exceeded

A new study updates the planetary boundary framework and shows human activities are increasingly impacting the planet and, thereby, increasing the risk of triggering dramatic changes in overall Earth conditions.

For over 3 billion years, the interaction between life (represented by the planetary boundary, Biosphere Integrity) and climate have controlled the overall environmental conditions on Earth. Human activities, for example replacing nature with other land uses, changing the amount of water in rivers and in soil, the introduction of synthetic chemicals to the open environment, and the emission of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere all influence these interactions.

Respecting and maintaining interactions in the Earth system so that they remain similar to those that have controlled Earth conditions over the past ~12,000 years are critical for ensuring human activities do not trigger dramatic changes in Earth condition -- changes that likely would decrease the Earth's ability to support modern civilizations.

The nine "planetary boundaries" represent components of the global environment that regulate that stability and liveability of the planet for people. The degree of breaching of the safe boundary levels is caused by human-driven activities impacting the components. The planetary boundaries framework applies the newest scientific understanding of the functioning of the Earth system to identify a "safe operating space" for humanity by proposing limits for the extent to which human activities can be allowed to impact critical processes without risk of potentially triggering irreversible changes in the Earth conditions that support us.

For the first time, metrics for all boundaries are presented. Six of the boundaries are found to be transgressed, and transgression is increasing for all boundaries except the degradation of the Earth's ozone layer. A global focus on climate is not enough. Development of Earth system models that accurately reproduce interactions between boundaries, especially Climate and Biosphere Integrity, is an urgent priority.

The study, published in Science Advances, represents the third update of the framework carried out by twenty-nine scientists from eight different countries.

The Earth's "blood pressure" is too high

The trend of increasing transgression of the boundaries is worrying explains Katherine Richardson, professor at Globe Institute, Leader of the Sustainability Science Centre at the University of Copenhagen, and leader of the study:

"Crossing six boundaries in itself does not necessarily imply a disaster will ensue but it is a clear warning signal. We can regard it as we do our own blood pressure. A BP over 120/80 is not a guarantee of a heart attack but it increases the risk of one. Therefore, we try to bring it down. For our own -- and our children's -- sakes we need to reduce the pressure on these six planetary boundaries."

An important conclusion of the study is that more focus is needed on interactions between the boundaries:

"Focus on human-caused climate change is not enough if we want to protect the earth system from irreversible harm," says Johan Rockström, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), and original proposer of the framework in 2009.

"Next to climate change, integrity of the biosphere is the second pillar of stability of our planet. Our research shows that mitigating global warming and saving a functional biosphere for the future have to go hand in hand," co-author Wolfgang Lucht, Head of PIK's department of Earth System Analysis, stresses.

Use of biomass affects biodiversity

The need to respect the Land Use Change boundary puts focus on the increasing global use of biomass as an alternative for coal, oil, and gas. Biomass is the product of photosynthesis, the process where plants convert the sun's energy to energy that can be used by other living organisms and, thus, supplies the energy that supports biodiversity.

"Our study shows that humans are appropriating the equivalent of ~30 % of the energy that was available to support biodiversity before the Industrial Revolution," says Richardson.

"Surely, the removal of so much of the energy that otherwise would have been available to nature must be a driver of biodiversity loss. Therefore, we propose the adoption of Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production (HANPP), i.e., biomass use, as one of two metrics when assessing human impacts on biodiversity."

Better Earth system models needed

"A world that develops within science defined boundaries is the only way to navigate our current situation with rising, potentially catastrophic risks, at the planetary scale. We already recognise this on Climate, where the Paris agreement has adopted the climate planetary boundary of holding the 1.5°C limit. Similarly, the world has accepted the planetary boundary on biodiversity, when decided at the 2022 Montreal-Kunming COP15, to halt and reverse biodiversity loss on land and in the ocean," says Johan Rockström and continues:

"Our study shows, however, that this is by far not enough. The Planetary Boundaries science provides a 'guide for action' if we truly want to secure prosperity and equity for all on Earth, and this goes well beyond climate only, requiring novel Earth system modelling and analysis, and systematic efforts to protect, recover and rebuild planetary resilience."

Read more at Science Daily

Most species are rare, but not very rare

More than 100 years of observations in nature have revealed a universal pattern of species abundances: Most species are rare but not very rare, and only a few species are very common. These so-called global species abundance distributions have become fully unveiled for some well-monitored species groups, such as birds. For other species groups, such as insects, however, the veil remains partially unlifted. These are the findings of an international team of researchers led by the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the University of Florida (UF), published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution. The study demonstrates how important biodiversity monitoring is for detecting species abundances on planet Earth and for understanding how they change.

"Who can explain why one species ranges widely and is very numerous, and why another allied species has a narrow range and is rare?" This question was asked by Charles Darwin in his ground-breaking book "The Origin of Species," published over 150 years ago. A related challenge has been to understand how many species are common (numerous) and how many are rare, the so-called global species abundance distribution (gSAD).

Two main gSAD models have been proposed in the last century: R. A. Fisher, a statistician and biologist, proposed that most species are very rare and that the number of species declines for more common species (so-called log-series model). On the other hand, F. W. Preston, an engineer and ecologist, argued that only few species are actually very rare and that most species have some intermediate level of commonness (so-called log-normal model). However, until now and despite decades of research, scientists did not know which model describes the planet's true gSAD.

Solving this problem calls for vast amounts of data. The study authors used data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and downloaded data representing over 1 billion species observations in nature from 1900 to 2019.

"The GBIF database is an amazing resource for all sorts of biodiversity related research, particularly because it brings together both data collected from professional and citizen scientists all over the world," says first author Dr Corey Callaghan. He began the study while working at iDiv and MLU and is now working at the UF.

Callaghan and his fellow researchers divided the downloaded data into 39 species groups, for instance, birds, insects, or mammals. For each, they compiled the respective global species abundance distribution (gSAD).

The researchers detected a potentially universal pattern, which emerges once the species abundance distribution is fully unveiled: Most species are rare but not very rare, and only a few species are very common, as predicted in the log-normal model. However, the researchers also found that the veil has been fully lifted only for a few species groups like cycads and birds. For all other species groups, the data are yet insufficient.

"If you don't have enough data, it looks as though most species are very rare," says senior author Prof Henrique Pereira, research group head at iDiv and the MLU. "But by adding more and more observations, the picture changes. You start seeing that there are, in fact, more rare species than very rare species. You can see this shift for cycads and birds when comparing the species observations from back in 1900, when less data was available, with the more comprehensive species observations we have today. It is fascinating: we can clearly see the phenomenon of unveiling the full species abundance distribution, as predicted by Preston several decades ago, but only now demonstrated at the scale of the entire planet."

"Even though we have been recording observations for decades, we have only lifted the veil for a few species groups," says Callaghan. "We still have a long way to go. But GBIF and the sharing of data really represents the future of biodiversity research and monitoring, to me."

The new study's findings enable scientists to assess how far the gSADs have been unveiled for different species groups. This allows for answering another long-standing research question: How many species are out there? This study finds that while for some groups like birds, nearly all species have been identified, this is not the case for other taxa such as insects and cephalopods.

Read more at Science Daily

Scientists discover 36-million-year geological cycle that drives biodiversity

Movement in the Earth's tectonic plates indirectly triggers bursts of biodiversity in 36-million-year cycles by forcing sea levels to rise and fall, new research has shown.

Researchers including geoscientists at the University of Sydney believe these geologically driven cycles of sea level changes have a significant impact on the diversity of marine species, going back at least 250 million years.

As water levels rise and fall, different habitats on the continental shelves and in shallow seas expand and contract, providing opportunities for organisms to thrive or die. By studying the fossil record, the scientists have shown that these shifts trigger bursts of new life to emerge.

The research has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, led by Associate Professor Slah Boulila from Sorbonne University in Paris.

Study co-author Professor Dietmar Müller, from the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney, said: "In terms of tectonics, the 36-million-year cycle marks alterations between faster and slower seafloor spreading, leading to cyclical depth changes in ocean basins and in the tectonic transfer of water into the deep Earth.

"These in turn have led to fluctuations in the flooding and drying up of continents, with periods of extensive shallow seas fostering biodiversity.

"This work was enabled by the GPlates plate tectonic software, developed by the EarthByte Group at the University of Sydney, supported by Australia's National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) via AuScope."

The team based their findings on the discovery of strikingly similar cycles in sea-level variations, Earth's interior mechanisms and marine fossil records.

Scientists now have overwhelming evidence that tectonic cycles and global sea level change driven by Earth's dynamics have played a crucial role in shaping the biodiversity of marine life over millions of years.

"This research challenges previous ideas about why species have changed over long periods," Professor Müller said.

"The cycles are 36 million years long because of regular patterns in how tectonic plates are recycled into the convecting mantle, the mobile part of the deep Earth, similar to hot, thick soup in a pot, that moves slowly."

Professor Müller said the Cretaceous Winton Formation in Queensland serves as a prime example of how sea-level changes have shaped ecosystems and influenced biodiversity in Australia.

The formation, renowned for its collection of dinosaur fossils and precious opal, provides a valuable window into a time when much of the Australian continent was flooded.

As sea levels rose and fell, the flooding of the continent created expanding and contracting ecological recesses in shallow seas, providing unique habitats for a wide range of species.

Read more at Science Daily

Conservation in Indonesia is at risk, a team of researchers who study the region argues

Indonesia, home to the largest tropical rainforest in Southeast Asia and over 17,500 islands, is a country packed with biodiversity and endangered species. However, scientists studying the region's species and ecosystems are getting banned from Indonesia and conservation plans are being blocked. In a letter publishing in the journal Current Biology on July 10, a team of conservation researchers with long-term experience in Indonesia discuss scientific suppression and other research challenges they have witnessed while working in the region. They offer suggestions for how to promote nature conservation, protect data transparency, and share research with the public in this and other regions of the world.

"If you look at a heat map of the Earth, and where endangered species are located, Indonesia and that general region are just off the charts," says tropical environmental scientist William F. Laurance of James Cook University, who has been doing research on the environmental impacts of development in Southeast Asia for over a decade.

Laurance and his co-authors say they felt drawn to raise awareness about the issues facing conservation in Indonesia because during their time working in the region, they witnessed many instances when governments and corporations impeded research -- including their own.

For example, they write in the letter, in 2022, five leading conservation researchers were banned from working in Indonesia on the premise that they had "negative intentions" to "discredit the government." The researchers reference papers about forest conservation and wildlife management in Sumatra, for which the teams had multiple colleagues from Indonesia decline co-authorship "out of concerns that it might adversely impact their funding, research permits, or opportunities for commercial contracts in Indonesia."

"The researchers said, 'Well, no, you can't tell that story, even though it's true, and you can't identify me or include all the relevant details.' And this just kept happening over and over again. It's a climate of fear," says Laurance.

To protect environmental research in Indonesia and the contributors who work on it, Laurance and his team suggest that organizations funding research in the region require data transparency for studies that they support. They also recommend the implementation and usage of online "safe houses" (whistleblower websites designed to protect anonymity and information leakage) and anonymized journals (publications in which contributors are not named). They say these interventions could help researchers get information out to the public without worrying about the consequences of being personally tied to their findings.

The authors do note that several organizations are advocating for change, especially in Indonesia. Some examples of these groups include the Indonesian Caucus for Academic Freedom and the Jakarta Legal Aid Foundation, which are organizing to support conservation and thwart efforts to silence researchers. They also note that "scientific suppression is by no means unique to Indonesia."

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Queensland native forestry can help achieve global environment goals

Research conducted by The University of Queensland has revealed that Queensland native forestry, including timber harvesting, could actually help conserve biodiversity and mitigate climate risks.

Dr Tyron Venn from UQ's School of Agriculture and Food Sustainability reviewed more than 350 publications, studying the ecological and economic impacts of Queensland native forest management, which includes everything from fire management to timber harvesting.

"Stopping forestry in Queensland's native forests may sound like a positive outcome for the environment, but the research suggests that it would further shift our impacts offshore and increase carbon emissions, while generating little benefit for biodiversity conservation within Australia," Dr Venn said.

Since the 1990s, Australia's annual harvest of native hardwood sawlogs has dropped by 2.2 million cubic metres, as large areas of state-owned native forests have been declared National Parks or other types of conservation reserves in which harvesting is not allowed.

"Over the same time period, imports of hardwood products from less-well managed forests in Asia and the Pacific increased by a similar amount," Dr Venn said.

"In many developing countries, large international timber companies operate with disregard for the environment and often have negative impacts on traditional forest communities."

"Without realising it, many Australians buy products made with foreign timbers and threaten conservation efforts for the orangutan, Malayan tiger, Asian sun bear and Asian tapir.

The research found that Queensland's low-intensity forestry management techniques are informed by science to minimise environmental impacts.

Queensland law allows selection harvesting in some of the state's public and private native forests, which typically removes 10 to 20 trees per hectare every 20 to 40 years.

Strict rules regulate how this is conducted, such as by requiring minimum retention of trees of different sizes, including large old trees with hollows.

"Selection harvesting can restore wildlife habitat, promote and conserve floristic diversity and improve the resilience of large trees against climate change and bushfire," Dr Venn said.

Dr Venn said forestry is the twenty-fifth most important threat to biodiversity in Australia, and forestry in Queensland impacts only 0.8 per cent of Australia's 1,795 threatened species.

"There are 24 more important threats we should be focused on, including invasive weeds, invasive predators, urban development, and reduced fire frequency or intensity" he said.

Dr Venn said Queensland should continue to manage some of its forests for wood production, as recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

"The IPCC has long argued that sustainably managing forests to produce timber, fibre and energy will generate the largest carbon sequestration benefit from forests," he said.

"If Queensland reduced its native forestry in the near future, the knock-on effect would be negative impacts on global efforts to conserve biodiversity and reduce carbon emissions due to increased consumption of timber imports and carbon polluting substitutes.

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New research reveals the impact of different species and their traits on human wellbeing

New research has revealed for the first time that well-functioning ecosystems are crucial to human health and wellbeing, with human-biodiversity interactions delivering wellbeing gains equating to substantial healthcare cost-savings, when scaled-up across populations.

The University of Kent-led study, which is part of the European Research Council-funded project 'Relating Subjective Wellbeing to Biodiversity' (RELATE), set out to understand which components of nature and biodiversity played a particular role in human wellbeing.

The team, which was led by Kent's Professor Zoe Davies, analysed the effects of species' traits, based on people's feedback following a series of workshops, to identify those that generate different types of wellbeing e.g., physical, emotional, cognitive, social, spiritual, and 'global', the latter being akin to 'whole-person health'.

The team found that, in general, the vast majority of species and traits are beneficial to human wellbeing. They also discovered that each species may support multiple traits, potentially with different impacts. For example, the colours of brambles (black, pink, red) are linked to multiple positive physical, emotional and social wellbeing types, but their prickly texture generated negative emotional wellbeing. The numerous traits from across an ecological community can elicit a multitude of wellbeing responses, illustrating the true complexity of how people relate to biodiversity.

Professor Davies, a biodiversity conservationist at Kent's Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE), said: 'While we know that spending time in natural environments can improve our health and wellbeing, we still need to know more about which species, or traits of species (such as colours, sounds, smells, textures and behaviours), deliver these benefits -- and how people's relationships with biodiversity are both contextually and culturally specific. Understanding how people experience biodiversity is therefore key to successfully managing biodiversity to facilitate human wellbeing.'

Study co-author, Professor Martin Dallimer, from the School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, said: 'For the first time, through analysing people's own words and reflections, we are able to explicitly link that feeling of wellbeing with species and their traits. How people respond to biodiversity is hugely varied and if we want people's wellbeing to benefit from spending time in nature, then it is essential to make sure we are maintaining and restoring high quality biodiverse spaces for wildlife and for people. Our aim is that these findings really drive home how important biodiversity is in underpinning wellbeing benefits, particularly to healthcare and public sectors who include 'spending time in nature' as an element of mental health and wellbeing.'

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