Hasil untuk "Environmental sciences"

J. Lehmann, S. Joseph

P. F. Thomsen, E. Willerslev

The continuous decline in Earth’s biodiversity represents a major crisis and challenge for the 21st century, and there is international political agreement to slow down or halt this decline. The challenge is in large part impeded by the lack of knowledge on the state and distribution of biodiversity – especially since the majority of species on Earth are un-described by science. All conservation efforts to save biodiversity essentially depend on the monitoring of species and populations to obtain reliable distribution patterns and population size estimates. Such monitoring has traditionally relied on physical identification of species by visual surveys and counting of individuals. However, traditional monitoring techniques remain problematic due to difficulties associated with correct identification of cryptic species or juvenile life stages, a continuous decline in taxonomic expertise, non-standardized sampling, and the invasive nature of some survey techniques. Hence, there is urgent need for alternative and efficient techniques for large-scale biodiversity monitoring. Environmental DNA (eDNA) – defined here as: genetic material obtained directly from environmental samples (soil, sediment, water, etc.) without any obvious signs of biological source material – is an efficient, non-invasive and easy-to-standardize sampling approach. Coupled with sensitive, cost-efficient and ever-advancing DNA sequencing technology, it may be an appropriate candidate for the challenge of biodiversity monitoring. Environmental DNA has been obtained from ancient as well as modern samples and encompasses single species detection to analyses of ecosystems. The research on eDNA initiated in microbiology, recognizing that culture-based methods grossly misrepresent the microbial diversity in nature. Subsequently, as a method to assess the diversity of macro-organismal communities, eDNA was first analyzed in sediments, revealing DNA from extinct and extant animals and plants, but has since been obtained from various terrestrial and aquatic environmental samples. Results from eDNA approaches have provided valuable insights to the study of ancient environments and proven useful for monitoring contemporary biodiversity in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. In the future, we expect the eDNA-based approaches to move from single-marker analyses of species or communities to meta-genomic surveys of entire ecosystems to predict spatial and temporal biodiversity patterns. Such advances have applications for a range of biological, geological and environmental sciences. Here we review the achievements gained through analyses of eDNA from macro-organisms in a conservation context, and discuss its potential advantages and limitations for biodiversity monitoring.

A. Singer, H. Shaw, Vicki Rhodes et al.

The environment is increasingly being recognized for the role it might play in the global spread of clinically relevant antibiotic resistance. Environmental regulators monitor and control many of the pathways responsible for the release of resistance-driving chemicals into the environment (e.g., antimicrobials, metals, and biocides). Hence, environmental regulators should be contributing significantly to the development of global and national antimicrobial resistance (AMR) action plans. It is argued that the lack of environment-facing mitigation actions included in existing AMR action plans is likely a function of our poor fundamental understanding of many of the key issues. Here, we aim to present the problem with AMR in the environment through the lens of an environmental regulator, using the Environment Agency (England’s regulator) as an example from which parallels can be drawn globally. The issues that are pertinent to environmental regulators are drawn out to answer: What are the drivers and pathways of AMR? How do these relate to the normal work, powers and duties of environmental regulators? What are the knowledge gaps that hinder the delivery of environmental protection from AMR? We offer several thought experiments for how different mitigation strategies might proceed. We conclude that: (1) AMR Action Plans do not tackle all the potentially relevant pathways and drivers of AMR in the environment; and (2) AMR Action Plans are deficient partly because the science to inform policy is lacking and this needs to be addressed.

Y. Kovas, C. Haworth, Philip S. Dale et al.

Despite the importance of learning abilities and disabilities in education and child development, little is known about their genetic and environmental origins in the early school years. We report results for English (which includes reading, writing, and speaking), mathematics, and science as well as general cognitive ability in a large and representative sample of U.K. twins studied at 7, 9, and 10 years of age. Although preliminary reports of some of these data have been published, the purpose of this monograph is to present new univariate, multivariate, and longitudinal analyses that systematically examine genetic and environmental influences for the entire sample at all ages for all measures for both the low extremes (disabilities) and the entire sample (abilities). English, mathematics, and science yielded similarly high heritabilities and modest shared environmental influences at 7, 9, and 10 years despite major changes in content across these years. We draw three conclusions that go beyond estimating heritability. First, the abnormal is normal: Low performance is the quantitative extreme of the same genetic and environmental influences that operate throughout the normal distribution. Second, continuity is genetic and change is environmental: Longitudinal analyses suggest that age-to-age stability is primarily mediated genetically, whereas the environment contributes to change from age to age. Third, genes are generalists and environments are specialists: Multivariate analyses indicate that genes largely contribute to similarity in performance within and between the three domains--and with general cognitive ability--whereas the environment contributes to differences in performance. These conclusions have far-reaching implications for education and child development as well as for molecular genetics and neuroscience.

J. Cárdenas, J. Stranlund, C. Willis

S. Cutter, B. Boruff, W. L. Shirley

J. Paul, F. Jefferson

A growing number of students are now opting for online classes. They find the traditional classroom modality restrictive, inflexible, and impractical. In this age of technological advancement, schools can now provide effective classroom teaching via the Web. This shift in pedagogical medium is forcing academic institutions to rethink how they want to deliver their course content. The overarching purpose of this research was to determine which teaching method proved more effective over the eight-year period. The scores of 548 students, 401 traditional students and 147 online students, in an environmental science class were used to determine which instructional modality generated better student performance. In addition to the overarching objective, we also examined score variabilities between genders and classifications to determine if teaching modality had a greater impact on specific groups. No significant difference in student performance between online and face-to-face (F2F) learners overall, with respect to gender, or with respect to class rank were found. These data demonstrate the ability to similarly translate environmental science concepts for non-STEM majors in both traditional and online platforms irrespective of gender or class rank. A potential exists for increasing the number of non-STEM majors engaged in citizen science using the flexibility of online learning to teach environmental science core concepts.

B. Liu, Jinyin Zhuang, Gang Wei

Colorimetric sensors and biosensors exhibit promising potential toward the detection of metallic cations, anions, organic dyes, drugs, pesticides and other toxic pollutants due to their easy fabrication, quick detection, and high sensitivity and selectivity, as well as easy naked-eye sensing. In this work, we present the recent advances (since 2014) made in the fabrication of colorimetric sensors for the environmental monitoring of toxic pollutants. To understand the relationships between the type, structure, and functions of nanomaterials as building units and the sensing performance of the designed colorimetric sensors, the fabrication of several sensor platforms based on functional nanomaterials (such as metal nanoparticles, metal oxides, quantum dots, two-dimensional nanozymes, organic probes, and Schiff bases) are demonstrated and discussed. The sensing mechanisms of the considered colorimetric sensors based on the aggregation of nanoparticles, decomposition of nanoparticles, nanozymes, fluorescence on–off, ligand–receptor interactions, and photonic structures are introduced and discussed in detail. In addition, instrument-based colorimetric sensors and advanced colorimetric sensor products for high-performance environmental monitoring are presented. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of various colorimetric sensors in environmental monitoring are analyzed and compared. It is expected that this work will be valuable for readers to understand the fabrication and sensing mechanisms of various colorimetric biosensors and promote their development in environmental science, materials science, nanotechnology, food science, and bioanalysis.

E. Felis, J. Kalka, A. Sochacki et al.

The environmental occurrence of antimicrobial pharmaceuticals and antibiotic resistant bacteria and antibiotic resistant genes has become a global phenomenon and a multifaceted threat. Integrated actions of many parties are needed to prevent further aggravation of the problem. Well-directed actions require clear understanding of the problem, which can be ensured by frequent revaluation of the existing knowledge and disseminating it among relevant audiences. The goal of this review paper is to discuss the occurrence and abundance of antimicrobial pharmaceuticals in the aquatic environment in context of adverse effects caused directly by these substances and the threat associated with the antibiotics resistance phenomenon. Several classes of antimicrobial pharmaceuticals (aminoglycosides, β-lactams, glycopeptides, macrolides, fluoroquinolones, sulfonamides and trimethoprim, tetracyclines) have been selected to illustrate their sources, environmental abundance, degradation routes (transformation products) and environmental implications including their ecotoxic effect and the spread of antibiotic resistance within the compartments of the aquatic environment and wastewater treatment plants. Wastewater treatment plants are indeed the main source responsible for the prevalence of these factors in the aquatic environment, since predominantly the plants have not been designed to retain antimicrobial pharmaceuticals. In order to limit the prevalence of these impurities into the environment, better source control is recommended as well as the establishment of stricter environmental quality standards. Counteracting all the above-mentioned threats requires to undertake integrated activities based on cooperation of professionals and scientists from various fields of science or industry, such as environmental sciences, medicine, veterinary, pharmacology, chemical engineering and others.

A. Arthington, A. Bhaduri, S. Bunn et al.

A decade ago, scientists and practitioners working in environmental water management crystallized the progress and direction of environmental flows science, practice, and policy in The Brisbane Declaration and Global Action Agenda (2007), during the 10th International Riversymposium and International Environmental Flows Conference held in Brisbane, Australia. The 2007 Declaration highlights the significance of environmental water allocations for humans and freshwater-dependent ecosystems, and sets out a nine-point global action agenda. This was the first consensus document that bought together the diverse experiences across regions and disciplines, and was significant in setting a common vision and direction for environmental flows internationally. After a decade of uptake and innovation in environmental flows, the 2007 declaration and action agenda was revisited at the 20th International Riversymposium and Environmental Flows Conference, held in Brisbane, Australia, in 2017. The objective was to publicize achievements since 2007 and update the declaration and action agenda to reflect collective progress, innovation, and emerging challenges for environmental flows policy, practice and science worldwide. This paper on The Brisbane Declaration and Global Action Agenda on Environmental Flows (2018) describes the inclusive consultation processes that guided the review of the 2007 document. The 2018 Declaration presents an urgent call for action to protect and restore environmental flows and aquatic ecosystems for their biodiversity, intrinsic values, and ecosystem services, as a central element of integrated water resources management, and as a foundation for achievement of water-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Global Action Agenda (2018) makes 35 actionable recommendations to guide and support implementation of environmental flows through legislation and regulation, water management programs, and research, linked by partnership arrangements involving diverse stakeholders. An important new element of the Declaration and Action Agenda is the emphasis given to full and equal participation for people of all cultures, and respect for their rights, responsibilities and systems of governance in environmental water decisions. These social and cultural dimensions of e-flow management warrant far more attention. Actionable recommendations present a pathway forward for a new era of scientific research and innovation, shared visions, collaborative implementation programs, and adaptive governance of environmental flows, suited to new social, and environmental contexts driven by planetary pressures, such as human population growth and climate change.

T. Morrison, W. Adger, K. Brown et al.

Failure to address unsustainable global change is often attributed to failures in conventional environmental governance. Polycentric environmental governance—the popular alternative—involves many centres of authority interacting coherently for a common governance goal. Yet, longitudinal analysis reveals many polycentric systems are struggling to cope with the growing impacts, pace, and scope of social and environmental change. Analytic shortcomings are also beginning to appear, particularly in the treatment of power. Here we draw together diverse social science perspectives and research into a variety of cases to show how different types of power shape rule setting, issue construction, and policy implementation in polycentric governance. We delineate an important and emerging research agenda for polycentric environmental governance, integrating diverse types of power into analytical and practical models.

N. Poff

P. Grennfelt, Anna Engleryd, M. Forsius et al.

Because of its serious large-scale effects on ecosystems and its transboundary nature, acid rain received for a few decades at the end of the last century wide scientific and public interest, leading to coordinated policy actions in Europe and North America. Through these actions, in particular those under the UNECE Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution, air emissions were substantially reduced, and ecosystem impacts decreased. Widespread scientific research, long-term monitoring, and integrated assessment modelling formed the basis for the policy agreements. In this paper, which is based on an international symposium organised to commemorate 50 years of successful integration of air pollution research and policy, we briefly describe the scientific findings that provided the foundation for the policy development. We also discuss important characteristics of the science–policy interactions, such as the critical loads concept and the large-scale ecosystem field studies. Finally, acid rain and air pollution are set in the context of future societal developments and needs, e.g. the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. We also highlight the need to maintain and develop supporting scientific infrastructures.

R. Pateman, A. Dyke, S. West

Reported benefits of environmental citizen science include the collection of large volumes of data, knowledge and skills gained by participants, local action, and policy influence. However, it is unclear how diverse citizen science participants are, raising concerns about representativeness of data and whether individual, societal, and environmental benefits are evenly distributed. We surveyed 8,220 people representing a cross section of the population in Great Britain to ask whether they had participated in environmental citizen science, allowing us to examine who is and who is not participating. Using logistic regression, we examined relationships between demographic variables, and crucially the interactions between these variables, and the likelihood of participation and whether participation was repeated. Men were more likely to participate than women. People identifying as from white ethnic groups were more likely to participate than those identifying as from minority ethnic groups; participation by women from minority ethnic groups was particularly low. Participation by those from white ethnic groups declined with socio-economic status, but this was not the case for those from minority ethnic groups. Participation was highest amongst those in education (studying at school, college, or university) and lowest amongst the unemployed. We recommend citizen science practitioners carefully consider the aims of projects and thus the diversity of participants they wish to attract. We discuss potential mechanisms for widening participation, for example, engaging participants through third parties already embedded in communities and providing a variety of tasks for people with different amounts of time and types of skills to offer. Finally, we encourage practitioners to document and publish participant demographics to monitor diversity in citizen science.

Semra Gunduc, David J. Butts, Michael S. Murillo

Agent-based models typically treat systems in isolation, discarding environmental coupling as either computationally prohibitive or dynamically irrelevant. We demonstrate that this neglect misses essential physics: environmental degrees of freedom create memory effects that fundamentally alter system dynamics. By systematically transforming linear update rules into exact generalized Langevin equations, we show that unobserved environmental agents manifest as memory kernels whose timescales and coupling strengths are determined by the environmental interaction spectrum. Network topology shapes this memory structure in distinct ways: small-world rewiring drives dynamics toward a single dominant relaxation mode, while fragmented environments sustain multiple persistent modes corresponding to isolated subpopulations. We apply this framework to covert influence operations where adversaries manipulate target populations exclusively via environmental intermediaries. The steady-state response admits a random-walk interpretation through hitting probabilities, revealing how zealot opinions diffuse through the environment to shift system agent opinions toward the zealot mean - even when zealots never directly contact targets.

Lizzie Neumann, Philipp Wittenberg, Jan Gertheiss

System outputs such as eigenfrequencies or strain data, often used in structural health monitoring (SHM), not only react to damage but also depend on environmental conditions. When trying to correct for these confounding effects, it is often (at least implicitly) assumed that only the expected, i.e., mean, output values are affected by environmental conditions. However, the evaluation of real-world SHM data indicates that environmental conditions may influence not only the mean output but also higher-order statistical moments, particularly the variances of and the covariances and correlations between the output quantities, such as eigenfrequencies of different modes or strain sensors at different locations. To address these issues, we discuss two approaches for identifying and quantifying multivariate confounding effects on output covariances and correlations: a random forest and a nonparametric, kernel-based approach. We compare the two competing methods on both artificial and real-world SHM data, finding that the kernel-based approach achieves higher accuracy, but the random forest produces estimates that are more robust and sometimes easier to interpret.

Vladimirovich Khachaturyan Mikhail, Valeryenva Klicheva Evgeniia

In contemporary circumstances, it is evident that the activities of industrial enterprises, particularly in the Russian economic system, have a substantial and detrimental impact on the environment. Consequently, it is imperative to transform the management systems of Russian manufacturing companies by integrating sustainability management mechanisms into their structures, encompassing both environmental and economic dimensions, has become increasingly pressing. This article analyzes the distinctive features and characteristics of sustainable development tools as a potential direction for transforming the management mechanisms of contemporary Russian manufacturing companies. The primary objective of this article is to analyse and synthesize the concepts related to the development and implementation of these mechanisms within the management systems of Russian manufacturing companies. The central section presents an analysis of the fundamental characteristics involved in constructing modern Russian production from the perspective of addressing the challenges of sustainable development. Definitions and concepts formulated by Russian and foreign researchers regarding the establishment of mechanisms for the sustainable development of manufacturing companies are scrutinized. The fundamental principles of sustainable development and their potential application within the management systems of Russian manufacturing companies are succinctly analysed. In conclusion, the authors present their interpretations of how management functions (planning, organization, motivation and control) can be transformed in the context of establishing economically and environmentally sustainable production.

A. Ford, M. Ågerstrand, B. Brooks et al.

For decades, we have known that chemicals affect human and wildlife behavior. Moreover, due to recent technological and computational advances, scientists are now increasingly aware that a wide variety of contaminants and other environmental stressors adversely affect organismal behavior and subsequent ecological outcomes in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. There is also a groundswell of concern that regulatory ecotoxicology does not adequately consider behavior, primarily due to a lack of standardized toxicity methods. This has, in turn, led to the exclusion of many behavioral ecotoxicology studies from chemical risk assessments. To improve understanding of the challenges and opportunities for behavioral ecotoxicology within regulatory toxicology/risk assessment, a unique workshop with international representatives from the fields of behavioral ecology, ecotoxicology, regulatory (eco)toxicology, neurotoxicology, test standardization, and risk assessment resulted in the formation of consensus perspectives and recommendations, which promise to serve as a roadmap to advance interfaces among the basic and translational sciences, and regulatory practices.

M. Ashfaq, Dana A. Da’na, M. Al‐Ghouti

Bacteria play a variety of roles in the environment. They maintain the balance in the ecosystem and provide different ecosystem services such as in biogeochemical cycling of nutrients, biodegradation of toxic pollutants, and others. Therefore, isolation and identification of different environmental bacteria are important to most environmental research. Due to the high cost and time associated with the conventional molecular techniques, matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) has gained considerable attention for routine identification of bacteria. This review aims to provide an overview of the application of MALDI-TOF MS in various environmental studies through bibliometric analysis and literature review. The bibliometric analysis helped to understand the time-variable application of MALDI-TOF MS in various environmental studies. The categorical literature review covers various environmental studies comprising areas like ecology, food microbiology, environmental biotechnology, agriculture, and plant sciences, which show the application of the technique for identification and characterization of pollutant-degrading, plant-associated, disease-causing, soil-beneficial, and other environmental bacteria. Further research should focus on bridging the gap between the phylogenetic identity of bacteria and their specific environmental functions or metabolic traits that can help in rapid advancements in environmental research, thereby, improving time and cost savings.

Chao Wang, Minlan Li, Chang Liu

Building upon the eco-evolutionary game dynamics framework established by Tilman et al., we investigate stochastic fluctuations in a two-strategy system incorporating environmental feedback mechanisms, where the payoff matrix exhibits population size dependence. We adopt a systematic approach which is the so-called $Ω$-expansion. When the stochastic factor is integrated, it is shown that the population size for each strategy fluctuates around the interior equilibrium of the macroscopic equations (corresponding to the deterministic model of the eco-evolutionary game) and its variance converges to a constant that is proportional to the environmental carrying capacity if the interior equilibrium is asymptotically stable. The simulation results demonstrate that the $Ω$ expansion provides a valid approximation, and the reliability of the aforementioned conclusions is verified. Therefore, analogous to Fudenberg and Harris' s stochastic replicator dynamics for infinite populations under external noise (\emph{J. Econ. Theory 57, 420-441}), the dynamic stability of the eco-evolutionary game can be extended to the stochastic regime when the environmental carrying capacity is sufficiently large.