Aspects Of Environmental Change Research Articles

A simulated heat wave—but not herbicide exposure—alters resource investment strategy in an insect

Animals are increasingly exposed to potential stressors related to environmental change, and multiple stressors may alter the dynamics by which animals acquire resources and invest those resources into important life-history traits. Stress may lead to the prioritization of current reproduction to maximize lifetime reproduction (i.e., terminal investment [TI]) or, in contrast, prioritize somatic investment over current reproduction to facilitate future reproductive opportunities (i.e., reproductive restraint [RR]). Tests of the TI and RR hypotheses typically use immune challenges as stressors, and have not been explicitly tested in the context of environmental change even though warming influences resource allocation patterns across taxa. Further, the multiple-stressor framework has been a useful construct to clarify the costs of complex environmental shifts to animals, but it has not been leveraged to understand such effects on investment strategy. Thus, we tested the TI and RR hypotheses by manipulating widespread features of environmental change—glyphosate-based herbicide (GBH; Roundup®) exposure and a simulated heat wave—in the variable field cricket (Gryllus lineaticeps). A simulated heat wave affected the life-history tradeoff between investment into reproduction and soma. Specifically, heat wave prioritized investment into ovary mass over non-reproductive tissue, even after accounting for food consumption, in support of the TI hypothesis. In contrast, GBH exposure did not affect any measured trait, and crickets did not discriminate between tap water and GBH solution during drinking. Therefore, some—but not all—aspects of environmental change may alter resource investment strategies in animals. We encourage continued integration of the multiple-stressor framework and life-history theory to better understand how animals respond to their rapidly changing environments.

People's Perceptions of the Impact of Climate Change and the Effect of a Community Development Project in Nigeria

Abstract This research aims to explore the impacts of climate change on communities in low-income countries. A review of the literature on this important and pressing global topic is presented. Since this issue is multidimensional and complex, we try to approach it comprehensively. The social quality scientific perspective has specific affinity with traditional African “holistic thinking.” The empirical part of our research concerns a study in northern Nigeria on rural residents’ perceptions of various aspects of environmental changes caused by climate change, and the impacts on the social quality of their daily lives. The protective effects of a community development project (the National Climate Change Policy Response, NCCPR) are also explored. Farmers appear to be the most vulnerable group. Climate change significantly compromises their socioeconomic security, personal security, well-being, and health. We conclude that communities in low-income countries will continue to suffer disproportionally from various kinds of climate-caused disasters. Community development projects have the potential to decrease their vulnerabilities. This article justifies a strong normative plea to the countries that have caused the human misery depicted to take responsibility by contributing to restoration payments and enforcing sustainable behavior of CO2-emitting industries.

New developments in the disciplines of environmental and resource economics

The disciplines of environmental and resource economics have been developed over decades as a substantial specialisation of economic theory and application. Environmental economics evaluates environmental goods while resource economics analyses scarce resource allocation. Given that climate change, biodiversity loss, water crisis and other aspects of environmental change are clearly evident to society, it is only natural that economists should also focus on economic sustainability. Therefore, nowadays environmental economics has become a more integrated sustainability science with a focus on resources and resource productivity and the part it plays in the circular economy. In this paper then, we consider recent developments of stock measures of capital, where investment plays a key role. Then, we introduce this special issue development and how policy and investments interact with the environment.

Six years of wild bee monitoring shows changes in biodiversity within and across years and declines in abundance.

Wild bees form diverse communities that pollinate plants in both native and agricultural ecosystems making them both ecologically and economically important. The growing evidence of bee declines has sparked increased interest in monitoring bee community and population dynamics using standardized methods. Here, we studied the dynamics of bee biodiversity within and across years by monitoring wild bees adjacent to four apple orchard locations in Southern Pennsylvania, USA. We collected bees using passive Blue Vane traps continuously from April to October for 6 years (2014–2019) amassing over 26,000 bees representing 144 species. We quantified total abundance, richness, diversity, composition, and phylogenetic structure. There were large seasonal changes in all measures of biodiversity with month explaining an average of 72% of the variation in our models. Changes over time were less dramatic with years explaining an average of 44% of the variation in biodiversity metrics. We found declines in all measures of biodiversity especially in the last 3 years, though additional years of sampling are needed to say if changes over time are part of a larger trend. Analyses of population dynamics over time for the 40 most abundant species indicate that about one third of species showed at least some evidence for declines in abundance. Bee family explained variation in species‐level seasonal patterns but we found no consistent family‐level patterns in declines, though bumble bees and sweat bees were groups that declined the most. Overall, our results show that season‐wide standardized sampling across multiple years can reveal nuanced patterns in bee biodiversity, phenological patterns of bees, and population trends over time of many co‐occurring species. These datasets could be used to quantify the relative effects that different aspects of environmental change have on bee communities and to help identify species of conservation concern.

A comparative study on the indicative function of species and traits structure of stream macroinvertebrates to human disturbances

The selection of suitable indicators is the key to the development of multi-metric bioassessment. Here, we examined how taxonomic and functional structures of macroinvertebrate communities responded to the environmental gradients in ten mountainous streams in the Weihe River and Hanjiang River basins, two subtropical biodiversity hotspots in central China. Our main objectives were: 1) to examine whether trait-based metrics performed better than taxonomic compositions in differentiating environmental gradients; 2) to test whether indicators (species and traits) were more efficient than entire communities in discriminating three site groups subjected to different levels of human disturbances. Our results showed that both taxonomic and functional trait compositions, including species- and trait-based indicators, were all sensitive to environmental disturbance. Particularly, the trait-based variables responded more sensitive to human disturbances. Indicator assemblages can be effective surrogates of entire communities in response to environmental changes. Traits- and indicators-based metrics should be considered as useful supplements in the existent bio-monitoring schemes in China. We argued that the combination of taxonomic and functional indicators should be implemented in bioassessment, as they reflect different aspects of environmental changes and anthropogenic disturbances.

Environmental Change in Southern Appalachia: Local Ecological Knowledge across Residential Groups.

This paper examines how residents of Southern Appalachia observe changes in their natural environment, the values that they assign to plants and animals in that environment, and their understandings and explanations of environmental change. We use semi-structured interviews and participant observation to determine that multigenerational residents and newcomers to the region are observing and noting change in different components of the environment and that they have different determinations of both the causes and likely consequences of that change. While multigenerational residents focus their observation and commentary on staple crops and culturally-important species, newcomers to the area concentrate on species related to recreational pursuits, giving each group insights into different aspects of environmental change. These findings are translated into recommendations for more inclusive and effective environmental and conservation planning.

Assessment of environmental degradation due to anthropogenic processes based on critical zones: a study in a basin in southern Brazil

Different land uses imposed by human activities have affected biotic and abiotic components, modifying the natural environment according to population growth and increasing the environmental impact over time. As a consequence, the relevance of studies to evaluate the magnitude and aspects of environmental changes is increasing. In this context, the Ribeirao do Pinheirinho Basin (Sao Paulo state, southeastern Brazil) was selected for this study, since it is part of a region that recharges a set of drainage channels that provide water to several municipalities (approximately 2 million people), primarily during dry seasons. Additionally, this basin has been intensively used for agricultural purposes over the last 50 years. To determine the current characteristics and to analyze the environmental changes, this study was based on temporal and spatial analyses of the components of the basin’s critical zone at a scale of 1:10,000. In association, due to water availability issues, the HOST (hydrology of soil types) classification was adopted, as well as previous data, satellite images, aerial photos and results of laboratory and field tests. As a result, anthropogenic activities have changed the depth, areal distribution, and environmental functions of geological materials. These activities have affected the relationship between rainfall, infiltration and surface runoff, resulting in a lower groundwater level and decreasing water availability. In conclusion, the adopted methodology aids in the assessment of the changes in the environmental area of study. This could be useful for environmental recovery projects as well as the establishment of environmental policies.

Progress in environmental gentrification research and hotspot analysis based on CiteSpace analysis

With the advent of the post-industrial era, environmental improvements and sustainable initiatives that lack sufficient attention to the social justice aspects of environmental changes generates environmental gentrification. The purpose of this paper is to systematically explore the frontiers of gentrification research and the knowledge base of environmental gentrification. Therefore, based on Web of Science Core Collection Database, this paper analysed the progress and hotpots of environmental gentrification using CiteSpace, identified keywords relevant to environmental gentrification and their frequency of co-occurrence using the function of keyword co-occurrence analysis, recognized top ten clusters using the function of cluster analysis. Environmental gentrification is the frontier on gentrification research, which knowledge base and hotpots research should arouse our attention. This paper can help readers to understand the status quo and development trend of environmental gentrification better, recognize defect in the development of environmental gentrification, and provide a promising direction for future research.

Environmental Reconstructions in the Upper Tana region, Kenya

This article sets out to unravel aspects of environmental changes in the Upper Tana during the second millennium AD. This aspect has not been adequately addressed in the Upper Tana. This makes it clear that a lacuna exists in the study of communities of the Upper Tana and the way they interact with their environment in the past and present times. The objective of this article is to evaluate the relationship between human activities and environmental change in the Upper Tana from AD 1000 to 1950. It is hypothesized that the advent of iron technology and its attendant economic activities led to the depletion of indigenous forests and the general environmental degradation. The article has employed archaeological, ethnographic, oral and historical methodologies to gather data on vegetation change in the Upper Tana and other related regions. The article, argues that livestock grazing, iron smelting, slush and burn agriculture, and the clearing of forests for housing are key contributors to vegetation change in the Upper Tana. Results from oral reconstruction of the past vegetation of the area, and using the plant succession theory, shows that the lowland area of the Upper Tana is actually savanna with scattered trees probably inhabited by grazers. It is posited that the above factors, together with persistent droughts have altered the vegetation cover of the area. What we have today is colonization of less desirable stunted growth. The theory advanced here is that the vegetation change has been a result of human activities. Overwhelmingly, results the study that the researcher carried out, showed that the causes of these changes have been socio-economically associated with the expansion of agricultural communities into the area; rather than through climatic factors. Colonisation and other forces of modernistion have also contributed to the underlying problem. The article concludes that anthropogenetic factors have greatly contributed to environmental change in the upper Tana. Certainly, environmental change is a global phenomenon that has elicited research interests due to its negative impacts on human population. It is recommended that knowledge of environmental change in the past should be used to extrapolate modern environmental challenges affecting African ecosystems.

Functional traits explain the Hutchinsonian niches of plant species

AbstractAimThe Hutchinsonian niche is a foundational concept in ecology and evolutionary biology that describes fundamental characteristics of any species: the global maximum population growth rate (rmax); the niche optimum (the environment for which rmax is reached); and the niche width (the environmental range for which intrinsic population growth rates are positive). We examine whether these characteristics are related to inter‐ and intraspecific variation in functional traits.LocationCape Floristic Region, South Africa.Time periodPresent day.Major taxa studiedTwenty‐six plant species (Proteaceae).MethodsWe measured leaf, plant‐architectural and seed traits across species geographical ranges. We then examined how species‐mean traits are related to demographically derived niche characteristics of rmax, in addition to niche optima and widths in five environmental dimensions, and how intraspecific trait variation is related to niche widths.ResultsInterspecific trait variation generally exceeded range‐wide intraspecific trait variation. Species‐mean trait values were associated with variation in rmax (R2 = 0.27) but were more strongly related to niche optima (mean R2 = 0.56). These relationships generally matched trait–environment associations described in the literature. Both species‐mean traits and intraspecific trait variability were strongly related to niche widths (R2 = 0.66 and 0.59, respectively). Moreover, niche widths increased with intraspecific trait variability. Overall, the different niche characteristics were associated with few, largely non‐overlapping sets of traits.Main conclusionsOur study relating functional traits to Hutchinsonian niches demonstrates that key demographic properties of species relate to few traits with relatively strong effects. Our results further support the hypothesis that intraspecific trait variation increases species niche widths. Given that niche characteristics were related to distinct sets of traits, different aspects of environmental change might affect axes of trait variation independently. Trait‐based studies of Hutchinsonian niches thus yield important insights into the mechanisms shaping functional biodiversity, which should reinforce the role of traits in functional biogeography.

Mechanisms Involving Sensory Pathway Steps Inform Impacts of Global Climate Change on Ecological Processes

Human-caused environmental change will have significant non-lethal and indirect impacts on organisms due to altered sensory pathways, with consequences for ecological interactions. While a growing body of work addresses how global ocean change can impair the way organisms obtain and use information to direct their behavior, these efforts have typically focused on one step of the pathway (e.g. reception of a cue/signal), one sensory modality (e.g. visual), or one environmental factor (e.g. temperature). An integrated view of how aspects of environmental change will impact multiple sensory pathways and consequently ecological processes is needed to better anticipate broader consequences for marine ecosystems. Here, we present a conceptual synthesis of effects of global change on marine sensory ecology, based on a literature review. Our review supports several predictions for how particular sensory pathway steps – production, transmission, and reception/processing of cues/signals - are affected by environmental change. First, the production and reception/processing of multiple modalities of cues/signals are vulnerable to multiple global change stressors, indicating that there are generalizable mechanisms by which environmental change impairs these pathways steps, leading to altered sensory pathway outcomes. Factors that enhance organismal stress as a whole may amplify impacts to these sensory pathways. Second, global change factors tend to affect specific modalities of cue/signal transmission. Consequently, local impacts on ecological processes linked with cue/signal transmission will vary depending on environmental stressor(s) present and the corresponding sensory modality. Finally, because many ecological and evolutionary interactions rely on sensory processing, impairment of sensory pathways may frequently underpin impacts of global ocean change on marine ecosystems. Effects on individual sensory processes will integrate to shape processes like mating, predation, and habitat selection, and we highlight new insights on impacts to ecological interactions by employing our mechanistic conceptual framework.

Cotton and Salt: Swedish Colonial Aspirations and the Transformation of Saint Barthélemy in the Eighteenth Century

Abstract The environmental history of the Caribbean has been strongly associated with the consequences of sugar cane agriculture and extreme weather phenomena. Consequently, other aspects of environmental change at play in the Caribbean region have remained less known. However, islands such as Anguilla, Barbuda, and Saint Barthélemy had no or very few sugar plantations. The fact that non-sugar producing islands had to find other ways of supporting themselves shaped their environmental history in ways that differed from that of the sugar islands. These alternative environmental histories deserve to be highlighted when presenting the historiography of the Caribbean. In this article, the island of Saint Barthélemy serves as a case study of an island where sugar cane agriculture was absent and tropical storms and hurricanes were of lesser consequence. In outlining the environmental history of Saint Barthélemy during the first decades of Swedish colonial rule, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the article shows that the Swedish takeover resulted in environmental changes. Sweden's ambitions and expectations concerning the improvement of the island were initially high and much effort was put into the development of the economy. The rationale for the Swedish plans was to exploit the few and scarce resources of the island, but it was the harbour that became the most successful endeavour.

Response of the river discharge in the Tocantins River Basin, Brazil, to environmental changes and the associated effects on the energy potential

Climate change is expected to impact the hydrological regime worldwide, and land use and land cover change may alter the effects of the former in some cases. Secondary growth in deforested and abandoned areas is one of the main consequences of land use and cover changes in Amazonia. Among land uses, the effects of the secondary growth in water availability in large scale basins are not well understood. This work analyzes the potential effects of secondary growth under climate and land use change on water availability and hydropower in the Tocantins basin, in the Legal Amazon region of Brazil, using the MHD-INPE hydrological model driven by different climate scenarios and two future socioeconomic-based potential land use scenarios. The model projects decrease on discharge under climate change scenarios, which further cause the simulated hydropower energy potential to decrease significantly. When only deforestation scenarios are included, the effects of climate change are weakened, but when secondary growth is also considered, the effects of climate change are enhanced. Results suggest that different aspects of environmental change, such as secondary growth, may affect water production and the sectors depending on it.

Prediction of spatio-temporal land use/land cover dynamics in rapidly developing Varanasi district of Uttar Pradesh, India, using geospatial approach: a comparison of hybrid models

Land use/land cover changes (LULCC) are one of the foremost aspects of environmental changes caused by human-induced activities mainly in rapidly developing areas. This study endeavors to evaluate and compare three hybrid models: stochastic Markov chain (ST-MC), cellular automata-Markov chain (CA-MC), and multi-layer perceptron-Markov chain (MLP-MC) to predict future land use/land cover (LULC) scenario in Varanasi district. LULC information extracted for years 1988 and 2001 was first employed to predict LULC scenario for 2015 using three hybrid models. The predicted results were compared with the observed LULC information for the year 2015 to appraise the validity of models through kappa index statistics. The MLP-MC model yielded reliable and best results. Finally, based on this consequence, the prediction of future LULC scenarios for years 2030 and 2050 was performed. The findings of this study exhibited the constant but overall increase of built up area and a considerable reduction in agricultural land. The results also demonstrate the potentiality of MLP-MC hybrid model for better understanding of spatio-temporal dynamics and predicting future landsacpe scenario in Varanasi district of Uttar Pradesh, India.

Will environmental interventions affect the level of mastery motivation among children with disabilities? A preliminary study.

Children with developmental disabilities tend to demonstrate lower levels of mastery motivation in comparison with typically developing children. The goal of this study was to investigate the effect of physical and social environmental interventions on the mastery motivation of children with disabilities. Participants included 19 children (from two classes) with disabilities between the ages of 2-4 years from an educational rehabilitation centre. The Individualized Assessment of Mastery Motivation was used to assess the level of mastery motivation; the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale - Revised and the Teacher-Child Interaction Observation were used to assess the physical and social environments. A counterbalance study design was used such that the children from the two classes received two phases of intervention, social and physical environmental interventions. The study's results point to the advantage of the social intervention, over the physical one, in improving the child's mastery motivation. However, the results lend support for the efficacy of using both aspects of environmental changes to the overall persistent score. The study findings, although preliminary, demonstrate the efficacy of providing both social and physical environmental interventions to improve mastery motivation.

The importance of invertebrates when considering the impacts of anthropogenic noise

Anthropogenic noise is now recognized as a major global pollutant. Rapidly burgeoning research has identified impacts on individual behaviour and physiology through to community disruption. To date, however, there has been an almost exclusive focus on vertebrates. Not only does their central role in food webs and in fulfilling ecosystem services make imperative our understanding of how invertebrates are impacted by all aspects of environmental change, but also many of their inherent characteristics provide opportunities to overcome common issues with the current anthropogenic noise literature. Here, we begin by explaining why invertebrates are likely to be affected by anthropogenic noise, briefly reviewing their capacity for hearing and providing evidence that they are capable of evolutionary adaptation and behavioural plasticity in response to natural noise sources. We then discuss the importance of quantifying accurately and fully both auditory ability and noise content, emphasizing considerations of direct relevance to how invertebrates detect sounds. We showcase how studying invertebrates can help with the behavioural bias in the literature, the difficulties in drawing strong, ecologically valid conclusions and the need for studies on fitness impacts. Finally, we suggest avenues of future research using invertebrates that would advance our understanding of the impact of anthropogenic noise.

Performing environmental change: MED Theatre and the changing face of community-based performance research

This article examines a programme of work produced by community-based theatre company, Manaton and East Dartmoor (MED) Theatre, addressing issues of climate change as they impact on life in rural Devon, UK. After some discussion of MED Theatre's constitution as a community-based company and the group's long-term engagement with the place, history, ecology and folklore of Dartmoor National Park, the article introduces the performance programme specifically designed by MED to collectively explore aspects of environmental change. Hot Air (2008) and Snow (2009) are the two community plays drawn from the programme for analysis. The performance analyses that follow examine how a community theatre company tackles the multiply complex, contradictory and conflicting issues of climate change. At stake in this analysis is also an interrogation of the term ‘community’ itself – as a concept and as a basis for cultural practices directed towards social change. The work of French theorist Jean-Luc Nancy on ‘inoperative community’ and ‘being-in-common’ is explored and elaborated as a critical framework for the performance analysis. Such alternative critical concepts of community – as ‘inoperative’ or ‘projected’ – are then applied in the analysis of the community plays thus enabling further investigation into the changing environment of community-based performance research.

Addressing the impact of environmental uncertainty in plankton model calibration with a dedicated software system: the Marine Model Optimization Testbed (MarMOT 1.1 alpha)

Abstract. A wide variety of different plankton system models have been coupled with ocean circulation models, with the aim of understanding and predicting aspects of environmental change. However, an ability to make reliable inferences about real-world processes from the model behaviour demands a quantitative understanding of model error that remains elusive. Assessment of coupled model output is inhibited by relatively limited observing system coverage of biogeochemical components. Any direct assessment of the plankton model is further inhibited by uncertainty in the physical state. Furthermore, comparative evaluation of plankton models on the basis of their design is inhibited by the sensitivity of their dynamics to many adjustable parameters. Parameter uncertainty has been widely addressed by calibrating models at data-rich ocean sites. However, relatively little attention has been given to quantifying uncertainty in the physical fields required by the plankton models at these sites, and tendencies in the biogeochemical properties due to the effects of horizontal processes are often neglected. Here we use model twin experiments, in which synthetic data are assimilated to estimate a system's known "true" parameters, to investigate the impact of error in a plankton model's environmental input data. The experiments are supported by a new software tool, the Marine Model Optimization Testbed, designed for rigorous analysis of plankton models in a multi-site 1-D framework. Simulated errors are derived from statistical characterizations of the mixed layer depth, the horizontal flux divergence tendencies of the biogeochemical tracers and the initial state. Plausible patterns of uncertainty in these data are shown to produce strong temporal and spatial variability in the expected simulation error variance over an annual cycle, indicating variation in the significance attributable to individual model-data differences. An inverse scheme using ensemble-based estimates of the simulation error variance to allow for this environment error performs well compared with weighting schemes used in previous calibration studies, giving improved estimates of the known parameters. The efficacy of the new scheme in real-world applications will depend on the quality of statistical characterizations of the input data. Practical approaches towards developing reliable characterizations are discussed.

The Effects of Tropospheric Ozone on Net Primary Productivity and Implications for Climate Change

Tropospheric ozone (O(3)) is a global air pollutant that causes billions of dollars in lost plant productivity annually. It is an important anthropogenic greenhouse gas, and as a secondary air pollutant, it is present at high concentrations in rural areas far from industrial sources. It also reduces plant productivity by entering leaves through the stomata, generating other reactive oxygen species and causing oxidative stress, which in turn decreases photosynthesis, plant growth, and biomass accumulation. The deposition of O(3) into vegetation through stomata is an important sink for tropospheric O(3), but this sink is modified by other aspects of environmental change, including rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, rising temperature, altered precipitation, and nitrogen availability. We review the atmospheric chemistry governing tropospheric O(3) mass balance, the effects of O(3) on stomatal conductance and net primary productivity, and implications for agriculture, carbon sequestration, and climate change.

Geomorphological Effects of River Valleys Anthropogenic Transformations in the Perznica Catchment During the Last 200 Years (Drawsko Lakeland, Parsęta River Basin)

Geomorphological Effects of River Valleys Anthropogenic Transformations in the Perznica Catchment During the Last 200 Years (Drawsko Lakeland, Parsęta River Basin) The studies on geomorphological aspects of environmental changes in the river valleys were part of the work carried out under the diagnosis of anthropogenic transformation of the relief of the Perznica basin (West Pomerania, Drawsko Lakeland). Human interference in the river valleys and anthropogenic changes in the natural hydrological systems in the Perznica catchment influenced the transformation of the relief and the intensity of morphogenetic processes. Numerous anthropogenic landforms were formed, including embankments, dams, dykes along the canals, ditches and canals, reservoirs basins, and peat excavations. The drainage resulted in an intensification of the river erosion, straightening, shortening and increase of the river gradient, as well as the increase of quantity of the suspended matter leaving the catchments. An increase of anthropogenic denudation on agricultural lands, due to the entering of the crops grown on drained depressions and valleys, led to the masking of the original relief with deluvial sediments and the formation and expansion of agricultural terraces on the edge of the fields.