Search results for "1172 Environmental sciences"
showing 10 items of 89 documents
Coping with Difficult Weather and Snow Conditions : Reindeer herders’ views on climate change impacts and coping strategies
2016
Winter is a critical season for reindeer herding, with the amount and quality of snow being among the most important factors determining the condition of reindeer and the annual success of the livelihood. Our first aim was to model the future (2035–2064) snow conditions in northern Finland, especially the quantities related to ground ice and/or ice layers within the snow pack, exceptionally deep snow and late snow melt. Secondly, we studied the strategies by which herders cope with the impacts of difficult weather and snow conditions on herding by interviewing 21 herders. SNOWPACK simulations indicate that snow cover formation will be delayed by an average of 19 days and snow will melt 16 d…
Primary production calculations for sea ice from bio-optical observations in the Baltic Sea
2016
Abstract Bio-optics is a powerful approach for estimating photosynthesis rates, but has seldom been applied to sea ice, where measuring photosynthesis is a challenge. We measured absorption coefficients of chromophoric dissolved organic matter (CDOM), algae, and non-algal particles along with solar radiation, albedo and transmittance at four sea-ice stations in the Gulf of Finland, Baltic Sea. This unique compilation of optical and biological data for Baltic Sea ice was used to build a radiative transfer model describing the light field and the light absorption by algae in 1-cm increments. The maximum quantum yields and photoadaptation of photosynthesis were determined from 14C-incorporatio…
Fifteen operationally important decisions in the planning of biodiversity offsets
2018
Many development projects, whether they are about construction of factories, mines, roads, railways, new suburbs, shopping malls, or even individual houses, have negative environmental consequences. Biodiversity offsetting is about compensating that damage, typically via habitat restoration, land management, or by establishment of new protected areas. Offsets are the fourth step of the so-called mitigation hierarchy, in which ecological damage is first avoided, minimized second, and third restored locally. Whatever residual damage remains is then offset. Offsetting has been increasingly adopted all around the world, but simultaneously serious concerns are expressed about the validity of the…
Climate Warming as a Possible Trigger of Keystone Mussel Population Decline in Oligotrophic Rivers at the Continental Scale
2018
AbstractThe effects of climate change on oligotrophic rivers and their communities are almost unknown, albeit these ecosystems are the primary habitat of the critically endangered freshwater pearl mussel and its host fishes, salmonids. The distribution and abundance of pearl mussels have drastically decreased throughout Europe over the last century, particularly within the southern part of the range, but causes of this wide-scale extinction process are unclear. Here we estimate the effects of climate change on pearl mussels based on historical and recent samples from 50 rivers and 6 countries across Europe. We found that the shell convexity may be considered an indicator of the thermal effe…
Temperature controls organic carbon sequestration in a subarctic lake
2016
AbstractWidespread ecological reorganizations and increases in organic carbon (OC) in lakes across the Northern Hemisphere have raised concerns about the impact of the ongoing climate warming on aquatic ecosystems and carbon cycling. We employed diverse biogeochemical techniques on a high-resolution sediment record from a subarctic lake in northern Finland (70°N) to examine the direction, magnitude and mechanism of change in aquatic carbon pools prior to and under the anthropogenic warming. Coupled variation in the elemental and isotopic composition of the sediment and a proxy-based summer air temperature reconstruction tracked changes in aquatic production, depicting a decline during a coo…
Accounting for species interactions is necessary for predicting how arctic arthropod communities respond to climate change
2021
Species interactions are known to structure ecological communities. Still, the influence of climate change on biodiversity has primarily been evaluated by correlating individual species distributions with local climatic descriptors, then extrapolating into future climate scenarios. We ask whether predictions on arctic arthropod response to climate change can be improved by accounting for species interactions. For this, we use a 14-year-long, weekly time series from Greenland, resolved to the species level by mitogenome mapping. During the study period, temperature increased by 2 degrees C and arthropod species richness halved. We show that with abiotic variables alone, we are essentially un…
Seasonal cycle of benthic denitrification and DNRA in the aphotic coastal zone, northern Baltic Sea
2020
Current knowledge on the seasonality of benthic nitrate reduction pathways in the aphotic, density stratified coastal zone of the Baltic Sea is largely based on data from muddy sediments, neglecting the potential contribution of sandy sediments. To gain a more comprehensive understanding of seasonality in this part of the Baltic Sea coast, we measured rates of benthic denitrification, anammox and dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonium (DNRA) monthly in the ice-free period of 2016 in both sandy and muddy aphotic sediments, northwestern Gulf of Finland. No anammox was observed. The seasonal cycle of denitrification in both sediment types was related to the hydrography-driven development …
Does catchment geodiversity foster stream biodiversity?
2019
Abstract Context One approach to maintain the resilience of biotic communities is to protect the variability of abiotic characteristics of Earth’s surface, i.e. geodiversity. In terrestrial environments, the relationship between geodiversity and biodiversity is well recognized. In streams, the abiotic properties of upstream catchments influence stream communities, but the relationships between catchment geodiversity and aquatic biodiversity have not been previously tested. Objectives The aim was to compare the effects of local environmental and catchment variables on stream biodiversity. We specifically explored the usefulness of catchment geodiversity in explaining the species richness on …
Antibiotics accelerate growth at the expense of immunity
2021
Antibiotics have long been used in the raising of animals for agricultural, industrial or laboratory use. The use of subtherapeutic doses in diets of terrestrial and aquatic animals to promote growth is common and highly debated. Despite their vast application in animal husbandry, knowledge about the mechanisms behind growth promotion is minimal, particularly at the molecular level. Evidence from evolutionary research shows that immunocompetence is resource-limited, and hence expected to trade off with other resource-demanding processes, such as growth. Here, we ask if accelerated growth caused by antibiotics can be explained by genome-wide trade-offs between growth and costly immunocompete…
Precision, Applicability, and Economic Implications: A Comparison of Alternative Biodiversity Offset Indexes
2021
AbstractThe rates of ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss are alarming and current conservation efforts are not sufficient to stop them. The need for new tools is urgent. One approach is biodiversity offsetting: a developer causing habitat degradation provides an improvement in biodiversity so that the lost ecological value is compensated for. Accurate and ecologically meaningful measurement of losses and estimation of gains are essential in reaching the no net loss goal or any other desired outcome of biodiversity offsetting. The chosen calculation method strongly influences biodiversity outcomes. We compare a multiplicative method, which is based on a habitat condition index develo…