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    Climate, landscape, and life history jointly predict multidecadal community mosquito phenology

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    Ecological sustainability and high-quality development of the Yellow River Delta in China based on the improved ecological footprint model

    Traditional ecological footprint consumption accountsTo truly reflect the ecological footprint and ecological carrying capacity of Dongying city, according to the lifestyle and consumption of Dongying city and with reference to Shandong Province Statistical Yearbook and Dongying City Statistical Yearbook, the biologically productive land is divided into arable land, forestland, grassland, water, construction land and fossil energy land, and the main consumption items of each category are shown in Fig. 3.Figure 3Traditional ecological footprint consumption accounts in Dongying city. This paper uses the carbon footprint to improve the fossil energy footprint of the traditional ecological footprint.Full size imageNPP-based correction of ecological footprint parametersThe 30 m land use of the study area was resampled to 500 m, consistent with the resolution of MOD17A3H after pre-processing with MRT and other tools. Correction of ecological footprint parameter factors in Dongying City for 2015, 2018 and 2020 based on the annual average NPP of vegetation (Table 1). This method is faster and more accurate than other methods, and the implementation of NPP calculations from the vegetation light energy use efficiency (LUE) framework to correct ecological footprint parameters is more applicable and accurate than other methods.Table 1 Average annual net primary productivity per land type in the Yellow River Delta.Full size tableYield factorThe formula for calculating the yield factor for arable land in the Yellow River Delta refers to NFA 2016:$$left{ {begin{array}{*{20}c} {Y_{j1} = frac{{Sigma A_{W} }}{{Sigma A_{N} }}} \ {A_{N} = frac{{P_{N} }}{{Y_{N} }}} \ {A_{W} = frac{{P_{N} }}{{Y_{W} }}} \ end{array} } right.$$
    (1)
    In Eq. (1), ({Y}_{j1}) is the yield factor of the arable land in the study area, ({A}_{N}) is the harvested area ( culture area ) of agricultural products of category (N) in the study area, ({A}_{W}) is the area required to produce an equivalent amount of this type of agricultural product based on the world average yield, ({P}_{N}) is the production of agricultural products of category (N) under the region, ({Y}_{N}) is the average yield of agricultural products of category (N) under the region, and ({Y}_{W}) is the world average production of a category of agricultural products.The NPP products from MODIS supported by remote sensing were used as the base data to correct the yield factors of woodlands and grasslands in the study area under the ecological footprint model.$$Y_{{{text{j}}2}} = overline{{NPP_{local} }} /overline{{NPP_{global} }}$$
    (2)
    In Eq. (2), ({Y}_{mathrm{j}2}) is the yield factor for woodland and grassland in the study area, ({NPP}_{local}) is the average annual net primary productivity of woodland and grassland in the study area in the corresponding year, and ({NPP}_{global}) is the global average NPP of woodland and grassland in the corresponding year, referring to Amthor et al.24.In addition, most of the land for construction comes from cropland, so the yield factor for construction land is the same as that for cropland25. The yield factors for the watershed were derived from the Wackernagel and Rees26 study.Balancing factorThe NPP model for provincial hectares was applied to the municipal scale. Among them, the NPP of four biologically productive lands, namely cropland, woodland, grassland and water, was weighted and summed to obtain the annual average NPP within the city area.$$overline{NPP} = frac{{mathop sum nolimits_{j} left( {A_{j} times NPP_{j} } right)}}{{mathop sum nolimits_{j} A_{j} }}$$
    (3)
    In Eq. (3), (overline{NPP }) is the average net primary productivity of arable land, forestland, grassland and water in Dongying, ({A}_{j}) is the area of land in category (j), and ({NPP}_{j}) is the average annual NPP of productive land in category (j).Balancing factors for arable land, woodland, grassland and water in the Yellow River Delta.$$R_{j} = frac{{NPP_{j} }}{{overline{NPP} }}$$
    (4)
    In Eq. (4), ({R}_{j}) is a balancing factor.The sites for construction are located in areas suitable for agricultural cultivation or directly occupy arable land, so the potential ecological productivity of urban construction land is the same as that of arable land, and therefore the equilibrium factor for construction land is equal to that of arable land27.Ecological footprint principles and improvementsEcological footprint modelEcological footprint model includes ecological footprint, ecological carrying capacity and ecological deficit. As the study area is within the city limits and the statistics have their own characteristics, adjustments have been made to the methodology for calculating the national ecological footprint accounts28. Based on the biological consumption account, the ecological footprint can be calculated for any land use type.$$EF = frac{P}{{Y_{N} }} times R_{j} times Y_{j}$$
    (5)
    In Eq. (5), (P) is the number of biologically productive land harvesting consumption items in a category, and ({Y}_{N}) is the average production of consumption Item (N) in the region. The ecological footprint of the construction land is measured based on the area of human infrastructure land and is equal to its ecological carrying capacity.Ecological carrying capacity is the determination of the maximum carrying capacity of an ecosystem for human activity, expressed as the sum of the biologically productive land area available in an area.$$EC = N times ec = N times sum left( {a_{j} times R_{j} times Y_{j} } right)$$
    (6)
    In Eq. (6), (EC) is the ecological carrying capacity per capita, and ({a}_{j}) is the per capita area of biologically productive land of category j in the region. According to the recommendations of the World Commission on Environment and Development, 12% of the ecological carrying capacity should also be deducted for biodiversity conservation. The population figures for the study area were obtained from the statistical yearbook and the seventh national census data. According to the recommendations of the World Commission on Environment and Development, 12% of the ecological carrying capacity should also be deducted for biodiversity conservation.An ecological deficit is the interpolation of the ecological footprint and ecological carrying capacity.$$ED = EF – EC$$
    (7)
    When (ED >0) indicates an ecological deficit, the ecological environment has exceeded the carrying capacity. Conversely, when (ED More

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    Benthic jellyfish act as suction pumps to facilitate release of interstitial porewater

    The upside-down jellyfish, Cassiopea sp. produces several hydrodynamic effects capable of altering the ecosystem which it inhabits. Not only do Cassiopea produce feeding currents capable of turning over the water column above them several times per hour3, they are also capable of releasing interstitial porewater from the benthos5. The rate of porewater release, on the order of mL h−13, is capable of increasing water column NH4 levels by almost 30% under certain conditions3. In this study, we investigated two hypothetical mechanisms for this porewater release, and found that a combination of the morphology of the bell and the pulsing behavior of the jellyfish was responsible for releasing porewater from directly below the bell via a suction-pumping mechanism.The Bernoulli hypothesis4, a low-pressure zone surrounding the animal due to a velocity gradient between the substrate boundary and the incurrent flow of the Cassiopea sp. feeding current, predicted porewater release from the substrate surface surrounding the perimeter of the animal. While porewater is entrained from the perimeter of the bell into the feeding current4 lateral expulsion of porewater due to the suction pump mechanism would produce a visually similar flow of porewater. A horizontal flow of water does occur near the bottom1, but this flow is restricted to a narrow region near the bell and velocities were low compared to the vertical excurrent jet (Fig. 4). To test the effect of Bernoulli’s principle, we measured the effect on porewater release rates of an impermeable ring-shaped barrier surrounding the animal in order to inhibit benthic-pelagic fluid flux other than directly under the animal (Fig. 2A) using labeled fluorescein per the methods of Durieux et al.3, which were adapted from those of Jantzen et al.5 (Fig. 2). If the Bernoulli mechanism contributed to porewater liberation this treatment should have reduced the porewater release rate, but the release rates observed were not significantly different from the control treatment (2.23 mL h−1 ± 1.27 s.d., Fig. 2D).The suction pumping hypothesis5, a mechanism using the exumbrellar cavity as a suction pump that draws porewater vertically upward beneath the bell and then expels it laterally, would expect to see the majority of porewater released from directly under the bell of Cassiopea sp. This mechanism is supported by bell morphology5 and the appearance of deep porewater at the benthic surface of the exumbrellar cavity5. In our, an impermeable disk was placed underneath the animal to obstruct the flow predicted by the suction pump hypothesis (Fig. 2B). Additionally, we made a 6 mm perforation in the bells of the jellyfish to interfere with the ability to form the sub-ambient pressure in the exumbrellar space necessary for suction pumping to occur (Fig. 2C). Both treatments resulted in a significant decrease in porewater liberation, with flows indistinguishable from the absence of any animal (Fig. 2D), supporting the suction-pumping hypothesis.Since the suction pumping mechanism requires pressure fluctuations in the exumbrellar space, we also directly measured the water pressure below the jellyfish. The initiation of the power stroke of bell pulsation coincides with a sudden decrease in water pressure in the exumbrellar space (Fig. 3A,B) of a mean magnitude of 43.4 Pa (± 13.6 s.d.). These pressure fluctuations appear to be unaffected by animal size (Fig. 3D,E), although the rate of porewater release is known to scale with bell diameter3. Note that the muscles responsible for bell contraction in Cassiopea sp. are roughly 2-dimensional sheets13 with a thickness of one cell14 and therefore the cross-sectional area also does not scale with diameter. Our experiments were performed on smooth acrylic rather than sand, so that the conditions here were optimal for the formation of a tight seal with the bottom. However, the magnitude of this difference is likely to be small, as Cassiopea sp. produce copious amounts of mucus, which can compensate for small-scale surface roughness. In addition, the duration of each individual bell pulse is short1, so given the fine pore size of a sand or mud substrate, it is unlikely that subambient pressure would have the opportunity to dissipate enough to affect the high suction impulse produced.While not statistically significant, bell perforation did lead to data suggesting a decrease in exumbrellar pressure fluctuations (Fig. 3C), which could explain the reduction in porewater release observed (Fig. 2C). The fact that some pressure fluctuation was seen despite a complete lack of porewater release suggests that a minimum magnitude of pressure fluctuation might be necessary for suction pumping to occur. Furthermore, the effect may have been reduced by the ability of injured Cassiopea to produce copious amounts of mucus, which could have acted to minimize the impact of bell perforation. These parallel lines of reasoning firmly suggest that suction-pumping is, in fact, the dominant mechanism by which Cassiopea sp. release porewater.The suction-pumping mechanism for the release of porewater has broad-ranging ecological implications. Release rates should increase additively with population density, and the rate of bell pulsation should correlate with the rate of porewater liberation. The additive relationship to population density is important, since Cassiopea can occur at high densities of up to 100 animals m−23. Furthermore, while the Bernoulli mechanism predicted that interstitial water movement would be limited to the upper layers of the benthos, the suction pump mechanism has the potential to release porewater from deeper sediment strata. This deep flushing should expand the oxygen penetration depth downward, affecting factors such as respiration and sediment stability15. Given the fact that Cassiopea are capable of moving along the substrate5,16 this also means that the oxygen penetration depth is likely to fluctuate over time, favoring organisms that are able to adapt their metabolism or are able to relocate themselves17.Given that porewater at the field site in Long Key, Florida, from which the animals in this study were collected, has mean ammonium concentrations of 72 μM, 160 times higher than the surrounding water column11, any benthic-pelagic coupling mechanisms in this habitat could alter nitrogen dynamics, especially given the fact that many marine primary producers preferentially take up ammonium, the most reduced state of nitrogen available, as a nitrogen source18. Cassiopea sp. animal size and population densities are known to correlate with anthropogenic disturbances, and it is suggested that this is due to an increase in nutrient availability in these areas6. In addition to prey capture, Cassiopea sp. could be supplementing their nitrogen demand through the release of nutrient-rich interstitial porewater, from which Cassiopea sp. can directly absorb ammonium and other nutrients such as phosphate and trace metals5. In fact, jellyfish presence significantly reduced porewater ammonium levels near the animal5, suggesting that nutrient-rich porewater was replaced by down-welling low-nutrient surface water. The observed benthic locomotion of Cassiopea5,16 may be a mechanism to avoid remaining in locations where they have depleted this nutrient resource3. It has been reported that Cassiopea sp. affect benthic nutrient transport on a more general level, increasing ammonium uptake and decreasing nitrate uptake of the bottom sediments19. Water column nutrient levels also varied significantly between presence and absence of Cassiopea sp., and also between light and dark treatments in the presence of Cassiopea sp.20. The addition of jellyfish increased the efflux of ammonium from the benthos during the dark treatments, but reduced ammonium concentrations in the water column during light treatments20. It is entirely possible that absorption of nutrients by Cassiopea sp.5 in order to meet daytime metabolic demand resulted in the animals reducing water column ammonium concentrations in these experiments20.In addition, Cassiopea sp. have been shown to increase spatial heterogeneity of interstitial oxygen and nutrient fluxes20, making it comparable to other biogenic processes like bioturbation. Bioturbation typically oxygenates the upper layers of substrate, increasing the nitrification zone21, and also increases 3-dimensional heterogeneity of oxygen and nutrient concentrations, allowing for more complex nutrient dynamics21. The transport of interstitial porewater from specific regions under individual jellyfish could well produce a similar effect. The porewater release rates can also be compared to that of abiotic processes, such as wind-wave driven flow over sediment wave ripples, which have been shown to liberate porewater at rates of up to 140 L m−2 day−1, or three orders of magnitude greater than diffusion alone, on shallow, exposed coastlines such as beaches22. Environmental mixing would be lower in the sheltered mangrove habitats where Cassiopea sp. are found, since at our study site wind wave height was reduced from 5.4 cm in the bay to 0.07 cm in the mangroves3. In these coastal habitats, the sediment often acts as a nutrient sink, causing certain nutrients to become limiting to primary producers. Some fringe mangrove forests along coastlines in both Florida and Belize have been shown to be N-limited, for example23,24. If these nutrients are then released back into the water column, they potentially increase primary productivity in the system occupied by Cassiopea sp. Depending on the system, this could either increase production or cause eutrophication, potentially altering productivity on a local or regional scale, as has been observed when nutrients are released from the benthos by winds25 or bioturbation26.The mechanics of suction-pumping also imply that interstitial porewater release rate will correlate with bell pulse rate. Pulse rate correlates with water temperature (Fig. 5B), which would suggest that Cassiopea sp. can release greater quantities of nutrient-rich porewater during the summer months. This was confirmed by a recent study on the related species, Cassiopea medusa from Lake Macquarie, Australia8. By extension, our model suggests that pulsing, and therefore porewater release, should cease entirely below 18ºC. In fact, at our site in Lido Key, population densities of Cassiopea sp. declined rapidly once water temperatures dropped this low (Fig. 6). This same temperature of 18 °C was determined independently to be the threshold at which Cassiopea sp. polyp feeding was inhibited10. As such, it is likely that winter minimum temperatures of 18ºC represent a limiting condition on Cassiopea sp. range expansion. Studies on Cassiopea medusa, suggested thermal stress and bell degradation at 16 °C8. As global climates warm, we can expect both a poleward shift of Cassiopea sp. Range9,27 and an increase in transport rates of porewater and its associated benthic nutrients throughout this range, leading to increased productivity, and potentially exacerbating eutrophication in some regions.We determined that a suction-pumping mechanism is responsible for the interstitial porewater release by Cassiopea, suggesting that release rates are independent of population density, but affected by pulse rate. The potential role of bell pulse rate was investigated further, and we found correlations between bell pulse rate and both animal size and water temperature. As a result, we expect that porewater liberation would demonstrate seasonal variations, with lower rates during the winter and reaching a maximum during the summer months. Cassiopea are able to release nutrient-rich porewater in the shallow quiescent habitats they inhabit, and through their feeding current mix these nutrients throughout the water column. Since this effect varies seasonally, it is likely that further study will show that these jellyfish are responsible for a complex system of nutrient dynamics in their ecosystem. More

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    Astrobiologists train an AI to find life on Mars

    Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning could revolutionize the search for life on other planets. But before these tools can tackle distant locales such as Mars, they need to be tested here on Earth.A team of researchers have successfully trained an AI to map biosignatures — any feature which provides evidence of past or present life — in a three-square-kilometre area of Chile’s Atacama Desert. The AI substantially reduced the area the team needed to search and boosted the likelihood of finding living organisms in one of the driest places on the planet. The results were reported on 6 March in Nature Astronomy1.Kimberley Warren-Rhodes, a senior research scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, and lead author on the paper, has been chasing biosignatures since the early 2000s, when she realized how few tools existed to study the biology of other planets. She wanted to combine her background in statistical ecology with emerging technologies such as AI to help mission scientists, “who are under a lot of pressure to find biosignatures” but tightly constrained in how they do so. Rovers that are controlled remotely from Earth, for example, can travel only limited distances and collect relatively few specimens, placing a premium on sampling locations that are the most likely to yield life. Mission scientists base these predictions in part on Mars analogues on Earth, where scientists scour extreme habitats to determine how and where living organisms thrive.Searching for lifeBeginning in 2016, Warren-Rhodes’ group travelled to the high, parched plateau of the Atacama Desert — a proposed Mars analogue at an elevation of around 3,500 metres in the Chilean Andes — to search for rock-dwelling, photosynthetic organisms called endoliths. To fully characterize the environment, the researchers collected everything from drone footage to geochemical analyses to DNA sequences. Together, this data set mimics the types of information researchers are collecting on Mars with orbital satellites, drones and rovers.Warren-Rhodes’ team fed its data into an AI-based convolutional neural network (CNN) and a machine-learning algorithm that in turn predicted where life was most likely to be found in the Atacama.

    Aerial view (left) and ground view from a rover of a biosignature probability map of the same area.Credit: M. Phillips, K. A. Warren-Rhodes & F. Kalaitzis

    By targeting their sample collection on the basis of AI feedback, the researchers were able to reduce their search area by up to 97% and increase their likelihood of finding life by up to 88%. “At the end, you could plop us down, and instead of wandering around for a long time, it would take us a minute to find life,” Warren-Rhodes says. Specifically, the team found that endoliths in the Atacama were most often found in a mineral called alabaster — which is porous and retains water — and tended to aggregate in transitional areas between various microhabitats, such as where sand and alabaster crystals abut one another.“I’m very impressed and very happy to see this suite of work,” says Kennda Lynch, an astrobiologist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, who studies biosignatures. “It’s really cool that they can show some success with an AI to help predict where to go and look.”Graham Lau, an astrobiologist at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science who is based in Boulder, Colorado, worked on another Mars analogue in the Canadian Arctic as a graduate student, to study how biology influences the formation of rare minerals that can serve as biosignatures on other planets. “Ever since I first read Frank Herbert’s Dune as a young child, I was struck by this idea of applying ecology to planets,” he says. But up until the last decade or so, the tools and data weren’t available to address such questions with scientific rigour. “The place where we have almost unlimited data possibilities is through these orbital observations and drone imaging,” he says, “and I do see this paper as being one of many pieces along the pathway to doing these larger analyses.”Deceptively simpleThe new method will need to be verified across multiple ecosystems, Lau and Lynch say, including those with more complex geology and greater biodiversity. The Atacama, Lau notes, is relatively simple in terms of the habitats and the types of life that are likely to be found there. And on Mars, the high level of ultraviolet radiation striking the planet’s surface means that scientists might need to detect clues that hint at life below ground.

    NASA’s Perseverance rover collected its first rock sample from an area in Mars’ Jezero Crater.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

    Ultimately, Warren-Rhodes says she would like to see a comprehensive database of different Mars analogues that could feed valuable information to mission scientists planning their next sampling run. Her team’s advance, she adds, might appear “deceptively simple” to anyone who grew up watching Star Trek explorers scanning alien worlds with a tricorder. But, it represents an important advance in extraterrestrial research, in which biology has often lagged behind chemistry and geology. Imagine, for instance, virtual-reality headsets that feed mission scientists real-time data as they scan a surface, using a rover’s ‘eyes’ to direct their activities. “To have our team make one of these first steps towards reliably detecting biosignatures using AI is exciting,” she says. “It’s really a momentous time.” More

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    No impact of nitrogen fertilization on carbon sequestration in a temperate Pinus densiflora forest

    SettingThis study was conducted in approximately 40-year-old naturally regenerated P. densiflora stands in Wola National Experimental Forest in Gyeongnam province in South Korea (35°12′ N, 128°10′ E; Table 1). The productivity of this forest is low, with a dominant tree height of 10 m at 20 years of age. Over the last 10 years, the mean annual precipitation was 1490 mm, of which one third fell during summer (July–August), and the mean temperature was 13.1 °C. The vegetation growing season generally lasts for approximately 200 days, extending from early April to October. The soil texture is a silt loam originating from sandstone and shale (clay 13.0 ± 0.8%, silt 44.1 ± 1.3%, sand 42.9 ± 1.6%; n = 18). The given texture results in volumetric water contents at 13.4 ± 0.7% (m3 m−3) at permanent wilting point (1500 kPa) and 40.7 ± 1.2% at field capacity (10 kPa)55. The understory is covered with Lespedeza spp., Quercus variabilis, Q. serrata, Smilax china, and Lindera glauca.In 2010, we selected two adjacent P. densiflora stands approximately 100 m apart from each other (180 m and 195 m above sea level, on slopes of 15° and 33°, both stands face south). Following a completely randomized design, we established nine plots (10 × 10 m2 with a 5 m untreated buffer) within each stand, of which three were randomly assigned to annual NPK fertilization, three to PK fertilization, and the rest to a control treatment without fertilization. The fertilizer, composed of urea, fused superphosphate and potassium chloride (N3P4K1) or P4K1 was added manually by deposition on the forest floor for 3 years in April 2011, April 2012, and March 2013. Over these 3 years, the NPK plots received 33.9 g N, 45 g P, and 11.1 g K m−2, while the PK plots received 45 g P and 11.1 g K m−2.Tree and stand measurementsThe standing biomass of trees was estimated using a combination of site-specific allometric equations based on destructive harvesting56 and repeated measurements of the dimensions of all trees in each plot (5–18 trees plot−1). The stem diameter at 1.2 m (D) was measured for all trees in each plot for which D was ≥ 6 cm. Selecting a representative tree in size for each plot within the 4 × 4 m2 center of the plot, we measured the tree height (H) and crown base for the representative trees. Measurements were performed in April and September 2011, September 2012–2014, and October 2021. We observed no effect of fertilization on the relationship between D and H or between D and crown base, so we assumed no effect on the allometric functions for foliage or branch biomass. A dendrometer band (Series 5 Manual Band, Forestry Suppliers Inc., Jackson, MS, USA) was installed on 18 representative trees (one per plot) to monitor radial growth monthly.Three 0.25 m2 circular litter traps were installed 60 cm above the forest floor in each plot in April 2011. Litter was collected at 3-month intervals between June 2011 and March 2015. The litter from each trap was transported to the laboratory and then oven-dried at 65 °C for 48 h. All dried samples were separated into needles, bark, cones, branches, and miscellaneous components, and weighed separately.In September 2014, we estimated the biomass of understory vegetation, separately for woody plants and herbaceous plants. All woody plants  More