Towards a dedicated impact portal to bridge the gap between the impact and climate communities : Lessons from use cases

Future climate evolution is of primary importance for the societal, economical, political orientations and decision-making. It explains the increasing use of climate projections as input for quantitative impact studies, assessing vulnerability and defining adaptation strategies in different sectors. Here we analyse 17 national and representative use cases so as to identify the diversity of the demand for climate information depending on user profiles as well as the best practices, methods and tools that are needed to answer the different requests. A particular emphasis is put on the workflow that allows to translate climate data into suitable impact data, the way to deal with the different sources of uncertainty and to provide a suited product to users. We identified three complementary tools to close the gap between climate scientists and user needs: an efficient interface between users and providers; an optimized methodology to handle user requests and a portal to facilitate access to data and elaborated products. We detail in the paper how these three tools can limit the intervention of experts, educate users, and lead to the production of useful information. This work provides the basis on which the ENES (European Network for Earth System Modelling) Portal Interface for the Climate Impact Communities is built.     

Seasonal succession of cyanobacterial protease inhibitors and Daphnia magna genotypes in a eutrophic Swedish lake

Lakes are well known for having a pattern of seasonal succession of phytoplankton and zooplankton. The succession of different taxa of phytoplankton results in a succession of zooplankton taxa, and within the genus Daphnia, into a succession of different genotypes (clones). One cause for this succession of Daphnia clones might be the production of digestive protease inhibitors by cyanobacteria, which usually bloom in summer. Here we report seasonal changes in the frequency and the abundance of Daphnia magna haplotypes in a eutrophic lake, which developed a chymotrypsin-inhibitor-producing cyanobacterial bloom in May. These seasonal changes were not related to changes of biotic and abiotic lake parameters. However, a very high content of chymotrypsin inhibitors was observed in May (but not in other months). This was assumed to have exerted a strong punctual selection pressure on the Daphnia population and on the direct targets of the protease inhibitors, i.e. the digestive chymotrypsins of Daphnia. Actually, D. magna from before and during the cyanobacterial bloom showed a different protease pattern on activity stained SDS-PAGE in comparison to clones from the month after the bloom. However, no difference in tolerance, measured as IC₅₀ values, to inhibition by natural lake seston from May was found between the clones from before and after the bloom. Thus, the hypothesis that a seasonal adaptation of D. magna subpopulations from either April/May or June might have occurred could not be proven. This suggests that the Daphnia population investigated here is locally adapted to cyanobacterial protease inhibitors.     

New Scintillators for Focal Plane Detectors in Gamma-Ray Missions

Recent developments of cerium-doped lanthanum-halide scintillators like LaBr₃:Ce show a remarkable performance in gamma-ray spectroscopy. When high energy resolution in combination with stopping power is required they provide excellent gamma-ray detector candidates for the use in space missions. Moreover, irradiation tests have shown that such detectors are radiation tolerant. In this paper we discuss a possible application of LaBr in nuclear astrophysics missions. We show results on recent proton irradiation tests at KVI in Groningen (NL) and discuss the damage and activation effects after irradiation. A possible implementation for a focal plane detector in a gamma-ray telescope and the expected performance is presented.     

Late Quaternary climate-driven environmental change in the Larsemann Hills, East Antarctica, multi-proxy evidence from a lake sediment core

Little is known about the response of terrestrial East Antarctica to climate changes during the last glacial-interglacial cycle. Here we present a continuous sediment record from a lake in the Larsemann Hills, situated on a peninsula believed to have been ice-free for at least 40,000 yr. A mutli-proxy data set including geochronology, diatoms, pigments and carbonate stable isotopes indicates warmer and wetter conditions than present in the early part of the record. We interpret this as Marine Isotope Stage 5e after application of a chronological age-depth model and similar ice core evidence. Dry and cold conditions are inferred during the last glacial, with lake-level minima, floristic changes towards a shallow water algal community, and a greater biological receipt of ultraviolet radiation. During the Last Glacial Maximum and Termination I the lake was perennially ice-covered, with minimal snowmelt in the catchment. After ca. 10,500 cal yr B.P., the lake became seasonally moated or ice-free during summer. Despite a low accumulation rate, the sediments document some Holocene environmental changes including neoglacial cooling after ca. 2450 cal yr B.P., and a gradual increase in aridity and salinity to the present.     

A composition-independent quantitative determination of the water content in silicate glasses and silicate melt inclusions by confocal Raman spectroscopy

A new approach was developed to measure the water content of silicate glasses using Raman spectroscopy, which is independent of the glass matrix composition and structure. Contrary to previous studies, the compositional range of our studied silicate glasses was not restricted to rhyolites, but included andesitic, basaltic and phonolitic glasses. We used 21 glasses with known water contents for calibration. To reduce the uncertainties caused by the baseline removal and correct for the influence of the glass composition on the spectra, we developed the following strategy: (1) application of a frequency-dependent intensity correction of the Raman spectra; (2) normalization of the water peak using the broad T–O and T–O–T vibration band at 850–1250 cm⁻¹ wavenumbers (instead of the low wavenumber T–O–T broad band, which appeared to be highly sensitive to the FeO content and the degree of polymerization of the melt); (3) normalization of the integrated Si-O band area by the total number of tetrahedral cations and the position of the band maximum. The calibration line shows a ±0.4 wt% uncertainty at one relative standard deviation in the range of 0.8–9.5 wt% water and a wide range of natural melt compositions. This method provides a simple, quick, broadly available and cost-effective way for a quantitative determination of the water content of silicate glasses. Application to silicate melt inclusions yielded data in good agreement with SIMS data.     

Impact of spatial variations of land surface parameters on regional evaporation: a case study with remote sensing data

Most precipitation in watersheds is consumed by evaporation, thus techniques to appraise regional evaporation are important to assess the availability of water resources. Many algorithms to estimate evaporation from remotely sensed spectral data have been developed in the recent past. In addition to differences in the physical parameterization of surface fluxes, these algorithms have different solutions for describing spatial variations of the parameters in the soil–vegetation–atmosphere–transfer (SVAT) continuum. In this study, the necessity to spatially distinguish SVAT parameters for computing surface heat fluxes is analysed for the Naivasha watershed in the Kenyan Rift Valley. Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) spectral data have been used to first delineate the watershed into 15 hydrological units using surface temperature, normalized difference vegetation index and surface albedo as attributes. Thereafter, semi‐empirical relationships between these TM‐based parameters and other SVAT parameters have been applied to compute the spatial variation of SVAT parameters and the associated evaporation from the different hydrological units. The impact of using watershed‐constant or watershed‐distributed SVAT parameters on the fluxes is analysed. The determination of watershed averaged evaporation with area‐aggregated SVAT parameters is feasible without significant loss of accuracy. Distributed evaporation in heterogeneous watersheds, however, can be investigated only with remote sensing flux algorithms that can account for spatially variable air temperature, surface roughness, surface albedo and the stability correction of the temperature profile due to buoyancy. Erroneous results can be expected if area‐aggregated SVAT parameters are used to calculate local evaporation. As most of the recently developed remote sensing flux algorithms are based on areal constant SVAT parameters, direct applications in watersheds are still limited. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Where Forest Carbon Meets Its Maker: Forestry-Based Offsetting as the Subsumption of Nature

ABSTRACT

The “subsumption of nature” framework focuses on productivity increases and extractive innovations in nature-based industries. In this article, we argue that it can also be employed beyond that context in order to capture the convoluted dynamics of market environmentalism. To substantiate our argument, we draw on recent fieldwork on “Trees for Global Benefits,” a forestry-based offsetting project in western Uganda. Like industrial tree plantations, this project relies on the subsumption of carbon sequestration to market imperatives in order to guarantee the quality of its carbon credits. The ecological and socioeconomic difficulties this process engenders give rise to unintended consequences and set in motion the disciplining of the carbon offset producers themselves. The application of the subsumption framework to nonindustrial sectors in this way calls attention to the interlinked socioecological dynamics involved in the subsumption of nature, and highlights potential synergies with previous work on the subsumption of labor.