Reef Ecologic’s Post

Our latest work in a nutshell 🌲🔥🌳 Check it out to learn about the role of mixed forests in fire damage To know more: https://lnkd.in/dxnWUacX

Last week, international scientists and environmentalists gathered at the Vjosa Delta, Europe's last remaining wild river delta. The event, called Vjosa Delta Science Week 2024, provided an exceptional opportunity to explore and appreciate an ecosystem that remains free from industrial dams. Highlights from the Event: ➡ In-depth Research: Teams conducted extensive studies, capturing valuable data on the unique biodiversity and hydrological patterns. ➡ Collaborative Efforts: Experts from various disciplines shared insights, enhancing our understanding of natural river dynamics and their ecological significance. Why It Matters: The research conducted at Vjosa is crucial for global conservation strategies. It serves as a powerful example of the ecological richness and resilience of undisturbed river ecosystems, informing future environmental policies and practices. Looking Ahead: The findings from this week will be compiled into comprehensive reports aimed at advocating for the protection of similar natural habitats worldwide. This event has set the stage for ongoing collaboration in environmental science and conservation. 🔗 Missed the event but want to catch up on the discoveries and discussions? Check out the details here: https://lnkd.in/dz_JdBVx #VjosaDelta #Conservation #Sustainability #ScienceWeek

Are Mixed-Species Forests Less Affected by Forest Fires? Mixed-species forests have gained attention for their ecological benefits, such as higher biodiversity and resilience to environmental stresses like pests, diseases, and climate change. The diversity of tree species in these forests can buffer vulnerabilities, creating more stable ecosystems. But how do they fare when faced with forest fires? Conventional wisdom suggests that pure forests, with their uniform structure and composition, are more vulnerable to fire damage compared to mixed forests. Homogeneous stands are thought to encourage intense crown scorch and higher mortality. However, is this assumption universally true? To investigate, we analyzed data from the Spanish National Forest Inventory, encompassing over 50,000 plots and nearly a million trees measured between 1986 and 2007. We focused on plots impacted by fire, studying tree mortality over time and comparing pure and mixed stands. We also examined how species combinations influence fire-related outcomes. The results surprised us. Mixed forests are not inherently better at withstanding fires. In fact, certain species combinations in mixed stands can increase vulnerability to fire damage compared to pure stands. Species with contrasting fire-adaptive strategies can either amplify or mitigate fire impacts, depending on the interplay of their traits. Mixed-species forests require careful consideration of species compatibility to harness their potential benefits. Not all mixtures improve resistance to disturbances like fires—some may even exacerbate vulnerabilities. Our results and the different species combinations and their post-fire mortality can be found in the full article: https://lnkd.in/dXU44ZZS Peris-Llopis, M., Mola-Yudego, B., Berninger, F., Garcia-Gonzalo, J., Gonzalez-Olabarria JR. Impact of species composition on fire-induced stand damage in Spanish forests. Sci Rep 14, 8594 (2024). https://lnkd.in/d9vFTWqe This has been a common research effort between the University of Eastern Finland and the Centre de Ciència i Tecnologia Forestal de Catalunya. We express our gratitude to the Suomen Kulttuurirahasto / Finnish Cultural Foundation, the European Research Executive Agency (REA) #HEurope #H2020 projects eco2adapt and Marie Curie RISE #DecisionES, the #CERCA programme and the European Forest Institute travel grants.

In a tropical setting and considering many other variables such as geography and climate regimes, this would also be a very interesting study

📣 𝐋𝐚𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐡 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐥𝐩𝐬𝐋𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭!  On 7-8 October 2024, the Institute for Alpine Environment - Eurac Research in Bolzano had the pleasure to host the kick-off meeting of the Interreg Alpine Space AlpsLife project. 🎉 Eurac Research, as lead partner, welcomed 29 participants from 12 institutions across the Alpine countries, including: 🔹 National parks: Berchtesgaden National Park, Schweizerischer Nationalpark, Javni zavod Triglavski narodni park, Nationalpark Gesäuse, Parco Nazionale Gran Paradiso, Parco Nazionale dello Stelvio 🌿 🔹 Universities and research institutions: Universität Innsbruck and the Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA) 🔎 🔹 Networks for environmental conservation: Asters - Conservatoire d'espaces naturels de Haute-Savoie, the Network of Alpine Protected Areas (ALPARC), the International Convention for the Protection of the Alps (CIPRA) ⛰️ We also had the pleasure of hosting a representative of the Joint Secretariat of the Interreg Alpine Space programme, who presented the expectations for the project and possible links between Alpine stakeholders. ➡️ 𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒂𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒋𝒆𝒄𝒕'𝒔 𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒗𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒆𝒔? AlpsLife  will run from September 2024 to August 2027 and is aiming to achieve 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 for 𝐛𝐢𝐨𝐝𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐬 across the Alpine region. It will establish a solid, shared knowledge base to achieve an early warning system for endangered Alpine species and habitats in 𝐔𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐭-𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐚𝐜𝐭-𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬 (UTAAs). Some expected outcomes will be the selection of 𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬 based on specific taxa, data collection and elaboration of long-term accessible 𝐦𝐚𝐩𝐬. The goal is to draw 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐜 𝐠𝐮𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬 for policymakers to implement more coherent conservation actions and strategies for the Alpine biodiversity. Stay tuned for the next chapters of the AlpsLife project! 🚀 #AlpsLifeProject #Biodiversity #AlpineSpace #Interreg #Monitoring #Data #Governance

🗞 Our colleague Leandro A. Do Nascimento reports back from the international event that brought together researchers, scientists, and industry leaders from around the globe to explore the past, present, and future of ecoacoustics. ➡ Ecoacoustics is an interdisciplinary field that studies natural and human-made sounds in relation to their environments, encompassing a wide range of ecosystems and scales, from populations to landscapes. It examines sounds both as subjects, to understand their evolution and ecological functions, and as tools, to monitor and analyze biodiversity and ecosystem dynamics. 💡During the congress, experts in ecoacoustics, bioacoustics, AI, community ecology, and conservation biology delved into innovative, multidisciplinary approaches for enhancing our understanding of biodiversity, ecosystems, and landscapes. The discussions on passive acoustic monitoring, soundscape analysis, acoustic indices, species identification, and machine learning classification were particularly insightful, especially with regards to:  🎙What is wrong and what is right with acoustic indices and other indicators, and the way forward.  🎙Estimating animal abundance from passive acoustic data.   🎙Scalable AI tools for species id and biodiversity monitoring.  🎙Developments to look out for in the future (e.g., mobile and biodegradable sensors and real time monitoring).   🎙The amazing progress towards emerging new fields such as freshwater ecoacoustics and soil ecoacoustics.  🎙Caution towards privacy and data rights when working with local communities and in their lands. 🌱 This year's Congress was a special milestone, marking the 10th anniversary of the International Society of Ecoacoustics (ISE), a community that has grown and flourished over the past decade since its inception in Paris in 2014. The event was dedicated to the memory of Gianni Pavan, a pivotal figure in ecoacoustics, whose contributions have significantly shaped the field. 🤲 Set in the Autonomous University of Madrid, the Congress was not just about science but also about community. We connected with both emerging and experienced researchers and industry leaders, gaining insights into the latest developments in ecoacoustics equipment and services.  🤩 The community is planning to take this all further by creating a transnational network of terrestrial ecoacoustics monitoring programs to advance data sharing, knowledge exchange, and establish standards and protocols. We are very excited to be part of it and also to foster new collaborations that will drive our work forward in ecoacoustics and beyond. #WEC2024 #ecoacoustics #bioacoustics #sciencefornature #biodiversity #biodiversitymonitoring #biodiversitydata #conservation #restoration  

Recent research highlights the impact of artificial light at night (ALAN) on sandy beach crustaceans, revealing significant damage to the visual systems of species adapted to low-light environments. The study, published in Science of the Total Environment, shows that beach pillbugs experience three to six times more damage than sandhoppers after brief light exposure. This underscores the vulnerability of species in dim environments to light pollution, potentially affecting their survival and evolution. The findings emphasize the need for global collaboration, as seen in the launch of the Global Ocean Artificial Light at Night Network, to address marine light pollution challenges.

💦 HOW TO DEAL WITH INVASIVE SPECIES, SPATIAL PLANNING AND MARINE RESTORATION IN A CLIMATE PERSPECITVE The zebra mussel is an invasive species that has invaded large freshwater systems. Research shows that zebra mussels supplants native mussels and they settle massively on hard surfaces, which are habitats for many other organisms. Therefore, the advice to environmental managers could be to put restrictions on transporting canoes from an invaded lake to another non-invaded lake. That is how one concrete message sounded during the 2nd BlueBioClimate seminar taking place at the Marine Center, University of Gothenburg, in Tjärnö, just outside Strömstad. And it was just one of several examples from the 18 presentations that show how the different sub-projects in the Interreg project BlueBioClimate have developed since the kickoff in Autumn 2023. Project partners are Göteborgs universitet, Aarhus Universitet, Institute of Marine Research (IMR), Norway, University of Agder (UiA) and DTU Aqua as the leading partner. Learn more >> https://lnkd.in/gsajDwuf #dtu #dtuaqua #BlueBioClimate Jakob Hemmer-Hansen

Dear fellow ecologists. I am currently working on a project that involves a possible solution to oceanic acidification. Our oceans are sinks for carbon dioxide and play a major role in carbon sequestration. Unfortunately, as the CO2 content of the atmosphere rises, so does the carbon load on the seas, which cause acidification. As the pH of the seas lowers (the pH scale goes from 1 to 14 and the lower the pH, the more acidic the medium), animals that use calcium in their shells (such as hard corals and invertibrates) find it increasingly more difficult to create their shells. One of the solutions to this could be giant kelp, which grows at an extraordinary rate (roughly 60cm a day!) and as an algae uses photosynthyses to fix carbon, naturally lowering the carbon load and therefore the acidity of the oceans. I recently came across some scence news which helped me come up with a solution to several problems at once to do with the utilisation of the properties of giant kelp, which I thought was ingenious. A team had made small structures to help provide homes for sealife, made from waste clay, a natural substance that forms over time under the seas and is completely non-toxic to oceanic wildlife. The problem this solved for me was where could we grow giant kelp, given that it requires a rocky substrate to grow upon. I propose that using scrap iron and steel, welded into large crosses with a spike at each end of the cross, coated in waste clay, baked, seeded with giant kelp and then dropped in the coastal oceans in areas that are barren due to shifting sands would address several problems at once, in an ecologically friendly way, providing a food source and nursery areas for wildlife including dwindling fish stocks, sequestering carbon, both in the giant kelp and the wildlife that feeds off it, deacidifying the oceans as it is implimented. This should aid in preventing coastal erosion by providing anchors for shifting sands and helping reduce storm surge erosion, therefore aiding in preventing cliff erosion caused by climate change. This would also utilise the barren areas for sustainable ecological improvement of the oceans, after all, 2/3 of the Earth is covered with water and it would be a shame to waste this opportunity to utilise what is essentially underwater desert to improve our chances of halting and possibly reversing climate change. There may be other benefits but I'll stop there. If anyone who reads this knows of anyone who could help with this, could you be so kind as to link them to this post? I'm an ideas person so I need help with this if it is indeed a viable idea. Thank you for reading this, Chris.

🗓️ Throwback to the soil sampling campaigns in Europe & the completion of Milestone 5 of BIOservicES project 🌍 🌱 Last autumn, we wrapped up one of Europe's largest soil sampling campaigns, uncovering vital insights into soil ecosystems and their crucial services. 🧪 With 25 experimental sites and over 750 sampling points across five biogeographical regions, we're diving deep into the world of soil organisms to understand their role in supporting our environment. Raúl Zornoza Belmonte, the BIOservicES Project Coordinator and professor at Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena: ‘Although the importance of soil organisms in delivering multiple ecosystem services is well-established, there is still a lack of research regarding the correlation between key soil organisms and the delivery of crucial ecosystem services in different land uses. This approach will allow us to not only reveal the connections between critical soil organisms, soil structure, and ecosystem services but also predict the effects of climate change on these systems over time and space.’ Andrés Rodriguez-Seijo, Researcher at Universidade de Vigo and coordinator of the work package Soil Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functions and Services across biogeographic areas and land uses declares: ‘Traditionally, human activities have placed pressure on soil health, mainly due to chemical, physical, or biological degradation. It’s expected to modify soil properties and soil organisms’ amount and richness. Climate change can exacerbate these effects by increasing soil temperature, altering moisture levels, and intensifying erosion due to extreme weather events like floods and droughts.’ 🔍 As we continue to explore the connections between biodiversity and ecosystem health, we aim to drive awareness and investment in soil health. Find our more about our soil sampling campaign ➡️ https://lnkd.in/dKXK8Pcg #BIOservicES #SoilSampling #EcosystemServices #Research #Sustainability #Biodiversity