Filtering by Subject: Life Sciences
Published: 2020-12-18
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Because the 2015 Paris Agreement will not prevent dangerous climate change, there is an urgent need to develop an alternative mitigation strategy. Even if all national commitments are met and technological breakthroughs accelerate the transition to emission-free technologies, the 2°C target will still be overshot due to systemic inertia from existing greenhouse gases, warming oceans, and the [...]
Published: 2020-12-07
Subjects: Life Sciences
Mangroves are known to provide many ecosystem services, however there is little information on their potential role to cap and immobilise toxic levels of total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH). Using an Australian case study, we investigated the capacity of planted mangroves (Avicennia marina) to immobilise TPH within a small embayment subjected to multiple oil spills throughout the 1980s. Mangroves [...]
Published: 2020-11-27
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
A high-resolution climate projections dataset is obtained by statistically downscaling climate projections from the CMIP5 experiment using the ERA5-Land reanalyses from the Copernicus Climate Change service. The dataset is over Europe, has a spatial resolution of 0.10° x 0.10°, comprises 21 climate models and includes 5 surface daily variables: air temperature (mean, minimum, and maximum), [...]
Published: 2020-11-27
Subjects: Engineering, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
A high-resolution climate projections dataset is obtained by statistically downscaling climate projections from the CMIP5 experiment using the ERA5 reanalyses from the Copernicus Climate Change service. The dataset is global has a spatial resolution of 0.25°x 0.25°, comprises 21 climate models and includes 5 surface daily variables: air temperature (mean, minimum, and maximum), precipitation, and [...]
Published: 2020-11-25
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Good water quality is essential to the health of marine ecosystems, yet current metrics used to track water quality in the Great Barrier Reef are not strongly tied to ecological outcomes. There is a need for a better water quality index (WQI). Benthic light, the amount of light reaching the seafloor, is critical for coral and seagrass health and is strongly affected by water quality. It therefore [...]
Published: 2020-11-17
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Life Sciences
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has led to a lockdown worldwide. This restriction on human movements and activities significantly influences society and the environment. We examined the consequences of global lockdown for human movement and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) emissions using an air pollution index and dataset and satellite image analyses. We also evaluated the immediate (during [...]
Published: 2020-11-05
Subjects: Life Sciences
Subsurface storage of hydrogen, e.g. in depleted gas or oil fields (DOGF), is suggested as a means to overcome imbalances between supply and demand in the renewable energy sector. However, hydrogen is an electron donor for subsurface microbial processes, which may have important implications for hydrogen recovery, gas injectivity and corrosion. Here, we review the controls on the three major [...]
Published: 2020-10-27
Subjects: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
To predict the effects of climate change on marine ecosystems and the effectiveness of intervention and mitigation strategies, we need reliable marine ecosystem response models such as biogeochemical models that reproduce climate change effects. We reviewed marine ecosystem parameters and processes that are modified by climate change and examined their representations in biogeochemical ecosystem [...]
Published: 2020-10-21
Subjects: Life Sciences
Lacustrine sediments are widely used to investigate the impact of climatic change on biogeochemical cycling. In these sediments, subsurface microbial communities are major actors of this cycling but can also affect the sedimentary record and overprint the original paleoenvironmental signal. We therefore investigated the subsurface microbial communities of the oldest lake in Europe, Lake Ohrid [...]
Published: 2020-08-20
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Mineral Physics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
We measure the pressure difference during two-phase flow across a sandstone sample for a range of injection rates and fractional flows of water, the wetting phase, during an imbibition experiment. We quantify the onset of a transition from a linear relationship between flow rate and pressure gradient to a non-linear power-law dependence. We show that the transition from linear (Darcy) to [...]
Published: 2020-08-18
Subjects: Life Sciences, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health, Toxicology
We compared sediment quality in estuaries at three locations along the coast of São Paulo State, Brazil, using geochemical analyses and whole sediment toxicity tests, performed during the southern winter and summer of 2013. Each locality is afforded a different degree of legal protection, and shows a distinct level of pollution: overall, Rio Diana (RD, most polluted, Permanent Protection Area) [...]
Published: 2020-08-17
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Continental rifting is accommodated by the development of normal fault arrays. Fault growth patterns control their related seismic hazards, as well as influencing the tectonostratigraphic evolution, resource extraction and CO2 storage potential of rifts. Our understanding of fault evolution is largely derived by observing the final geometry and displacement (D)-length (L) characteristics of [...]
Published: 2020-07-29
Subjects: Agriculture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources and Conservation, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
Crop residues are acknowledged as a key biomass resource to feed tomorrow’s sustainable bioeconomy. Yet, the quantification of these residues at large geographical scales is primarily reliant upon generic statistical estimations based on empirical functions linking the residues production to the primary crop yield. These useful yet unquestioned functions are developed either using direct evidence [...]
Published: 2020-07-22
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Plant Sciences, Sustainability
Easter Island (Rapa Nui) is well known for the enigmas surrounding its unique megalithic statues, the moai, and the prehistoric (i.e., pre-European contact) Rapanui society that built them. These enigmas include, among others, the time of the island’s settlement, the geographical origin of the first settlers, the technology associated with moai transportation and emplacement, the occurrence (or [...]
Published: 2020-07-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geology, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure
It is now well-established that base-salt relief drives complex deformation in the mid-slope domain of salt-bearing passive margins, in a location classically thought to be dominated purely by horizontal translation. However, due to a lack of detailed studies drawing on high-quality, 3D seismic reflection data, our understanding of how base-salt relief controls four-dimensional patterns of [...]