Rare microbial taxa as the major drivers of ecosystem multifunctionality in long-term fertilized soils
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Chen, Qing-Lin (ORCID:000000025648277X)↗
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Soil compartments (bulk soil, litter, root and rhizosphere) as main drivers of soil protistan communities distribution in forests with different nitrogen deposition
Protists, in particular bacterivores, are essential players in the rhizosphere; thus, how their interactions with bacteria and fungi affect plant productivity and soil nutrient cycles warrants more attention. Using next-generation sequencing of the 18 S rRNA gene, we investigated the distribution of two major protistan phyla, Cercozoa and Endomyxa, across four seasons, and four soil compartments - rhizosphere, root, soil and litter. The sampling was replicated in two forests in Norway and the Czech Republic, in order to test our results across biogeographic scales. Compartment had a major influence in shaping protistan communities, over and above spatial distance and seasonal variation. Protistan diversity was highest in the bulk soil while lowest in the roots, suggesting that the plants select for restricted assemblages of protists. Accordingly, only the root compartment harboured a subset of the bulk soil protistan diversity. In addition, protistan communities showed markedly different distributions according to their feeding modes, with opposite patterns for bacterivores versus omnivores and eukaryvores. The small bacterivorous flagellates (mostly Glissomonadida) were more abundant in roots, while the larger amoeboid eukaryvores (e.g. some of the Cryomonadida and vampyrellids) dominated in soil and in the rhizosphere, and the omnivores (e.g. Euglyphida and part of the Cercomonadida), also large and mostly amoeboid, were more abundant in litter. The current view of the soil microbiome is mostly focused on bacteria and fungi: this detailed study on the community distribution of protists according to their feeding modes reveals the essential role they play in each of the soil compartments, an essential precondition for a detailed understanding of the soil food web and nutrient cycling in forest.
59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
Warming, permafrost thaw and increased nitrogen availability as drivers for plant composition and growth across the Tibetan Plateau
Permafrost-affected ecosystems are subject to warming and thawing, which can increase the availability of subsurface nitrogen (N) with consequences in otherwise N-limited tundra and alpine vegetation. Here, we quantify the extent of warming and permafrost thawing and the corresponding effects on nitrogen availability and plant growth based on a 20-year survey across 14 sites on the Tibetan Plateau. The survey showed that most sites have been subject to warming and thawing and that the upper permafrost zone across all sites was rich in inorganic N, mainly as ammonium. We further explore the efficiency of plants to utilize 15 N-labelled inorganic N over five years following 15 N addition at the permafrost table far below the main root zone. The 15 N experiment showed that deep-rooted plant species were able to utilize the labelled N. A SEM model suggests that changes in vegetation can be explained by both active layer warming and permafrost thawing and the associated changes in inorganic nitrogen availability. Our results highlight a feedback mechanism of climate warming, in which released plant-available N may favour deep-rooted plants. This can explain important changes in plant composition and growth across the sites on the Tibetan Plateau.
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
Structures of the PKA RI[alpha] Holoenzyme with the FLHCC Driver J-PKAc[alpha] or Wild-Type PKAc[alpha]
Abstract not provided
Cao, Baohua↗
Integrin alpha 6 as a stemness driver is a novel promising target for HPV (+) head and neck squamous cell carcinoma
Although the incidence rates of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) associated with human papilloma virus (HPV) infection have recently been on the rise, the underlying mechanism of its tumorigenesis remains largely unknown. Here, we investigated whether HNSCC cells with high expression of integrin alpha 6 (ITGα6), one of the HPV receptors, have a preference during HPV infection. In addition, we examined the gain or loss of function of the ITGα6 gene in HPV + ve HNSCC cells, as well as its prognostic value in patients with HNSCC. HPV pseudovirus was found to be more infective, with HNSCC cells featuring an overexpressed ITGα6 gene compared to the control cells. Overexpression and suppression of ITGα6 respectively increases and decreases stemness phenotypes of HPV + ve HNSCC cells. Furthermore, ITGα6 can regulate stemness by partially mediating AKT pathway in HPV + ve HNSCC cells. Finally, patients with HPV + ve HNSCC had a poor prognosis in cases of elevated ITGα6 expression; however, the expression levels of ITGα6 did not influence the survival rates of HPV-negative HNSCC patients. In conclusion, ITGα6 can serve as a potential therapeutic target for HPV + ve HNSCC cancer-like stem cells (CSCs).
60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
Supply and Demand Drivers of Global Hydrogen Deployment in the Transition toward a Decarbonized Energy System
The role of hydrogen in energy system decarbonization is being actively examined by the research and policy communities. We evaluate the potential ‘hydrogen economy’ in global climate change mitigation scenarios using the Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM). We consider major hydrogen production methods in conjunction with delivery options to understand how hydrogen infrastructure affects its deployment. We also consider a rich set of hydrogen end-use technologies and vary their costs to understand how demand technologies affect deployment. We find that the availability of hydrogen transmission and distribution infrastructure primarily affects the hydrogen production mix, particularly the share produced centrally versus onsite, whereas assumptions about end-use technology primarily affect the scale of hydrogen deployment. In effect, hydrogen can be a distributed energy vector, enabled by onsite renewable electrolysis and, to a lesser extent, by onsite industrial production using natural gas with carbon capture and storage (CCS). While the share of hydrogen in final energy is small relative to the share of other major energy carriers in our scenarios, hydrogen enables decarbonization in difficult-to-electrify end uses such as industrial high-temperature heat. Its contribution to greenhouse gas mitigation increases as the climate objective is tightened.
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
Drivers of Water Use in the Agricultural Sector of the European Union 27
Population growth and the uncertain hazards that accompany climate change have put increasing pressure on the management and sustainability of water. It has a direct impact on agriculture and its domestic and international supply chain linkages. As one of the largest agricultural producers in the world, the European Union (EU) is particularly sensitive to changes in water availability. Therefore, here we perform a structural decomposition analysis based on the recently released EXIOBASE 3 database to examine in depth how changes in water input coefficients, in final demand and in technology have affected changes in water use across crops. Crop production consumes 99% of the direct water in agriculture. Our results show that the largest EU crop producers have experienced an increase in water use that is mostly driven by changes in technology. On the other hand, several Mediterranean countries, where water scarcity has been a problem for years, have decreased their water consumption mostly thanks to an improvement in their water intensity. Results by crop are consistent with those at the aggregated level except for vegetables of which water use changes have been primarily driven by changes in final demand and water intensity.
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
Medium-Range Structural Order as the Driver of Activated Dynamics and Complexity Reduction in Glass-Forming Liquids
Here, we analyze in depth the Elastically Collective Nonlinear Langevin Equation theory of activated dynamics in metastable liquids to establish that the predicted inter-relationships between the alpha relaxation time, local cage and collective elastic barriers, dynamic localization length, and shear modulus are causally related within the theory to the medium range order (MRO) static correlation length. The latter grows exponentially with density for metastable hard sphere fluids and as a nonuniversal inverse power law with temperature for supercooled liquids under isobaric conditions. The physical origin of predicted connections between the alpha time and other metrics of cage order and the thermodynamic inverse dimensionless compressibility is fully established. It is discovered that although kinetic constraints from the real space first coordination shell are important for the alpha time, they are of secondary importance compared to the consequences of the more universal MRO correlations in both the modestly and deeply metastable regimes. This understanding sheds new light on the theoretical basis for, and prior successes of, the predictive mapping of chemically complex thermal liquids to effective hard sphere fluids based on matching their dimensionless compressibilities, a scheme we call “complexity reduction”. In essence, the latter is equivalent to the physical requirement that the thermal liquid MRO correlation equals that of its effective hard sphere analog. The mapping alone is shown to provide a remarkable level of quantitative predictive power for the glass transition temperature T g of 21 molecular and polymer liquids. Predictions for the chemically specific absolute magnitude and growth with cooling of the MRO correlation length are obtained and lie in the window of 2–6 nm at T g . Dynamic heterogeneity, elastic facilitation, and beyond pair structure issues are briefly discussed. Future opportunities to theoretically analyze the equilibrated deep glass regime are outlined.
cancer↗
Chemical and Physical Drivers for Improvement in Permeance and Stability of Linker-Free Graphene Oxide Membranes
Graphene oxide (GO) is a promising membrane material for chemical separations, including water treatment. However, GO has often required postsynthesis chemical modifications, such as linkers or intercalants, to improve either the permeability, performance, or mechanical integrity of GO membranes. In this work, we explore two different feedstocks of GO to investigate chemical and physical differences, where we observe up to a 100× discrepancy in the permeability–mass loading trade-off while maintaining nanofiltration capacity. GO membranes also show structural stability and chemical resilience to harsh pH conditions and bleach treatment. Here we probe GO and the resulting assembled membranes through a variety of characterization approaches, including a novel scanning-transmission-electron-microscopy-based visualization approach, to connect differences in sheet stacking and oxide functional groups to significant improvements in permeability and chemical stability.
37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
Varying Contributions of Drivers to the Relationship Between Canopy Photosynthesis and Far‐Red Sun‐Induced Fluorescence for Two Maize Sites at Different Temporal Scales
Abstract Sun‐induced fluorescence (SIF) has been found to be strongly correlated with gross primary production (GPP) in a quasi‐linear pattern at the scales beyond leaves. However, the causes of the GPP:SIF relationship deviating from a linear pattern remain unclear. In the current study conducted at two maize sites in Nebraska in 2017 summer growing season, we investigated the relationship between GPP and SIF at 760 nm (F 760 ) at two temporal scales and quantified the contributions of incoming photosynthetically active radiation (PAR in ), fraction of absorbed PAR (fPAR), light use efficiency (LUE), and F 760 yield (F 760,y , defined as F 760 /(PAR in ×fPAR)) to GPP and F 760 variabilities to further understand the linearity and deviations in the GPP:F 760 relationship. We found the following: (1) For individual growth stages when canopy structure and chlorophyll content were stable, GPP and F 760 were strongly controlled by PAR in , while LUE and F 760,y had much lower contributions to the GPP:F 760 relationship; during this period, LUE and F 760,y had either a slightly negative or no clear relationship, which explained some deviations in the GPP:SIF relationship. (2) At the seasonal scale, the contribution of LUE to GPP variability as well as the contribution of F 760,y to F 760 variability increased and was comparable to the contribution of PAR in ; the LUE:F 760,y relationship showed a strong linear relationship, which strengthened the linear GPP:F 760 relationship. Both maize sites showed similar patterns. A framework was applied to estimate LUE at individual stages and as a result, significantly improved the GPP estimation, thus enhancing the SIF potential for inferring photosynthesis.
Miao, Guofang↗
Identifying Key Drivers of Wildfires in the Contiguous US Using Machine Learning and Game Theory Interpretation
Abstract Understanding the complex interrelationships between wildfire and its environmental and anthropogenic controls is crucial for wildfire modeling and management. Although machine learning (ML) models have yielded significant improvements in wildfire predictions, their limited interpretability has been an obstacle for their use in advancing understanding of wildfires. This study builds an ML model incorporating predictors of local meteorology, land‐surface characteristics, and socioeconomic variables to predict monthly burned area at grid cells of 0.25° × 0.25° resolution over the contiguous United States. Besides these predictors, we construct and include predictors representing the large‐scale circulation patterns conducive to wildfires, which largely improves the temporal correlations in several regions by 14%–44%. The Shapley additive explanation is introduced to quantify the contributions of the predictors to burned area. Results show a key role of longitude and latitude in delineating fire regimes with different temporal patterns of burned area. The model captures the physical relationship between burned area and vapor pressure deficit, relative humidity (RH), and energy release component (ERC), in agreement with the prior findings. Aggregating the contribution of predictor variables of all the grids by region, analyses show that ERC is the major contributor accounting for 14%–27% to large burned areas in the western US. In contrast, there is no leading factor contributing to large burned areas in the eastern US, although large‐scale circulation patterns featuring less active upper‐level ridge‐trough and low RH two months earlier in winter contribute relatively more to large burned areas in spring in the southeastern US.
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
Sediment Records Shed Light on Drivers of Decadal Iron Concentration Increase in a Boreal Lake
Increasing iron (Fe) concentrations are found in lakes on a wide geographical scale but exact causes are still debated. The observed trends might result from increased Fe loading from the terrestrial catchment, but also from changes in how Fe distributes between the water column and the sediments. To get a better understanding of the causes we investigated whether there has been any change in the sediment formation of Fe sulfides (FeS) as an Fe sink in response to declining atmospheric sulfur (S) deposition during recent decades. For our study, we chose Lake Bolmen in southern Sweden, a lake for which we confirmed that Fe concentrations in the water column have strongly increased along with water color during 1966–2018. Our investigations showed that Fe accumulation and speciation varied independently of S accumulation patterns in the Lake Bolmen sediment record. Thus, we were not able to relate the positive trend in Fe concentrations to reduced FeS binding in the sediments. Furthermore, we found that Fe accumulation rates increased along with lake water Fe concentrations, indicating that increased catchment loading rather than a change in the distribution between the sediments and the water column has driven the increase in Fe concentrations. The increased loading may be due to land-use change in the form of an extensive expansion of coniferous forest during the past century. Altered forest management practices and increased precipitation may have led to enhanced weathering and erosion of organic soil layers under aging coniferous forest.
58 GEOSCIENCES↗
Moisture‐Budget Drivers of Global Projections of Meteorological Drought From Multiple GCM Large Ensembles
Future projections of global meteorological drought are evaluated in the Multi‐Model Large Ensemble Archive, including an evaluation of the atmospheric moisture budget, conditioned on drought years. Drought is defined as 5‐year running‐mean annual precipitation below some threshold, for example, 10th percentile. Drought increases in frequency over the subtropics, in addition to certain tropical regions, consistent with previous studies. Here, the moisture‐budget decomposition allows drought to be defined as mean‐flow, eddy, or feedback droughts, depending on which term in the equation contributes the largest negative interannual anomaly. In the historical climate, mean‐flow droughts constitute most droughts at low latitudes; eddy droughts are equally common at higher latitudes; feedback droughts (i.e., droughts exacerbated by land–atmosphere feedbacks) constitute almost all droughts in water‐limited subtropical/Mediterranean regions. The future drought increases are predominantly due to increases in feedback droughts in regions where these droughts are common historically but also over the Amazon. However, over most Mediterranean‐type regions mean‐flow droughts are also large contributors, resulting from dynamics. Eddy droughts also contribute to future increases along the equatorward flanks of historical eddy‐driven jets, likely reflecting poleward shifts therein. Model uncertainty is particularly large over the Amazon and Australia, a reflection of model diversity in processes associated with land‐atmosphere interaction. Based on these results, an availability of 3‐D atmospheric data from a wider swath of global climate model large ensembles could help constrain global drought projections based on the representation of drought mechanisms in the historical climate.
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
Drivers of Phytoplankton Variability in and Near the Pearl River Estuary, South China Sea During Typhoon Hato (2017): A Numerical Study
The Pearl River estuary-coastal system in the Northern South China Sea is frequently affected by tropical cyclones (TCs) every year. Previous in-situ and remote sensing studies have found typhoons can enhance phytoplankton biomass and induce blooms in this region. However, the mechanistic links between phytoplankton blooms and typhoons have not been well elucidated due to the interplay of multiple processes along the land-ocean-atmosphere interfaces. Unravelling these interactions will have to rely on an integrated modelling system. In this work, we constructed a realistic, 3-dimensional, land-ocean-atmosphere modelling system with the marine ecosystem and sediment components for the China Great Bay Area. By using the integrated modelling system, we quantitatively investigated phytoplankton response to hydrological conditions variations under Typhoon Hato (2017), a strong typhoon case. Passive tracer experiments showed that with high river discharge induced by heavy rainfall, the residence time of Lingding Bay is as short as 15-day, less than half of that under the climatological discharge. The increase in freshwater pulse washed out the phytoplankton biomass within Lingding Bay. While for the offshore region, the source and sink terms analysis showed that the increase of phytoplankton biomass in the first week was because of the uplift of nutrient-rich subsurface water, while in the second week was because of the seaward propagated nearshore high phytoplankton biomass water. While riverine nutrients support phytoplankton growth in the third week, a large part of phytoplankton biomass was lost to zooplankton grazing, showing the system shifted from the bottom-up control to the top-down control.
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
Drivers of Decadal Carbon Fluxes Across Temperate Ecosystems
Long-running eddy covariance flux towers provide insights into how the terrestrial carbon cycle operates over multiple timescales. Here, we evaluated variation in net ecosystem exchange (NEE) of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) across the Chequamegon Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study AmeriFlux core site cluster in the upper Great Lakes region of the USA from 1997 to 2020. The tower network included two mature hardwood forests with differing management regimes (US-WCr and US-Syv), two fen wetlands with varying levels of canopy sheltering and vegetation (US-Los and US-ALQ), and a very tall (400 m) landscape-level tower (US-PFa). Together, they provided over 70 site-years of observations. The 19-tower Chequamegon Heterogenous Ecosystem Energy-balance Study Enabled by a High-density Extensive Array of Detectors 2019 campaign centered around US-PFa provided additional information on the spatial variation of NEE. Decadal variability was present in all long-term sites, but cross-site coherence in interannual NEE in the earlier part of the record became weaker with time as non-climatic factors such as local disturbances likely dominated flux time series. Average decadal NEE at the tall tower transitioned from carbon source to sink to near neutral over 24 years. Respiration had a greater effect than photosynthesis on driving variations in NEE at all sites. Declining snowfall offset potential increases in assimilation from warmer springs, as less-insulated soils delayed start of spring green-up. Higher CO 2 increased maximum net assimilation parameters but not total gross primary productivity. Stand-scale sites were larger net sinks than the landscape tower. Clustered, long-term carbon flux observations provide value for understanding the diverse links between carbon and climate and the challenges of upscaling these responses across space.
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
Constraints and Drivers of Dissolved Fluxes of Pyrogenic Carbon in Soil and Freshwater Systems: A Global Review and Meta‐Analysis
Abstract Pyrogenic carbon (PyC) is a significant component of the global soil carbon pool due to its longer environmental persistence than other soil organic matter components. Despite PyC's persistence in soil, recent work has indicated that it is susceptible to loss processes such as mineralization and leaching, with the significance and magnitude of these largely unknown at the hillslope and watershed scales. We present a review of the work concerning dissolved PyC transport in soil and freshwater. Our analysis found that the primary environmental controls on dissolved PyC (dPyC) transport are the formation conditions and quality of the PyC itself, with longer and higher temperature charring conditions leading to less transport of dPyC. While correlations between dPyC and dissolved organic carbon in rivers and other pools are frequently reported, the slope of these correlations was pool‐dependent (i.e., soil‐water, precipitation, lakes, streams, rivers), suggesting site‐specific environmental controls. However, the lack of consistency in analytical techniques and sample preparation remains a major challenge to quantifying environmental controls on dPyC fluxes. We propose that future research should focus on the following: (a) consistency in methodological approaches, (b) more quantitative measures of dPyC in pools and fluxes from soils to streams, (c) turnover times of dPyC in soils and aquatic systems, and (d) improved understanding of how mechanisms controlling the fate of dPyC in dynamic post‐fire landscapes interact. With more refined quantitative information about the controls on dPyC transport at the hillslope and landscape scale, we can increase the accuracy and utility of global carbon models.
58 GEOSCIENCES↗
Differentiating Between Simultaneous Loss Drivers in Earth's Outer Radiation Belt: Multi‐Dimensional Phase Space Density Analysis
Abstract We analyzed the contribution of electromagnetic ion cyclotron (EMIC) wave driven electron loss to a flux dropout event in September 2017. The evolution of electron phase space density (PSD) through the dropout showed the formation of a radially peaked PSD profile as electrons were lost at high L* , resembling distributions created by magnetopause shadowing. By comparing 2D Fokker Planck simulations of pitch angle diffusion to the observed change in PSD, we found that the μ and K of electron loss aligned with maximum scattering rates at dropout onset. We conclude that, during this dropout event, EMIC waves produced substantial electron loss. Because pitch angle diffusion occurred on closed drift paths near the last closed drift shell, no radial PSD minimum was observed. Therefore, the radial PSD gradients resembled solely magnetopause shadowing loss, even though the local pitch angle scattering produced electron losses of several orders of magnitude of the PSD.
Staples, F. A.↗