scholarly journals Soil Viruses: A New Hope

mSystems ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne B. Emerson

ABSTRACT As abundant members of microbial communities, viruses impact microbial mortality, carbon and nutrient cycling, and food web dynamics. Although most of our information about viral communities comes from marine systems, evidence is mounting to suggest that viruses are similarly important in soil. Here I outline soil viral metagenomic approaches and the current state of soil viral ecology as a field, and then I highlight existing knowledge gaps that we can begin to fill. We are poised to elucidate soil viral contributions to terrestrial ecosystem processes, considering: the full suite of potential hosts across trophic scales, the ecological impacts of different viral replication strategies, links to economically relevant outcomes like crop productivity, and measurable in situ virus-host population dynamics across spatiotemporal scales and environmental conditions. Soon, we will learn how soil viruses contribute to food webs linked to organic matter decomposition, carbon and nutrient cycling, greenhouse gas emissions, and agricultural productivity.

Author(s):  
Alexander Myasoedov ◽  
Alexander Myasoedov ◽  
Sergey Azarov ◽  
Sergey Azarov ◽  
Ekaterina Balashova ◽  
...  

Working with satellite data, has long been an issue for users which has often prevented from a wider use of these data because of Volume, Access, Format and Data Combination. The purpose of the Storm Ice Oil Wind Wave Watch System (SIOWS) developed at Satellite Oceanography Laboratory (SOLab) is to solve the main issues encountered with satellite data and to provide users with a fast and flexible tool to select and extract data within massive archives that match exactly its needs or interest improving the efficiency of the monitoring system of geophysical conditions in the Arctic. SIOWS - is a Web GIS, designed to display various satellite, model and in situ data, it uses developed at SOLab storing, processing and visualization technologies for operational and archived data. It allows synergistic analysis of both historical data and monitoring of the current state and dynamics of the "ocean-atmosphere-cryosphere" system in the Arctic region, as well as Arctic system forecasting based on thermodynamic models with satellite data assimilation.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda T. Nylund ◽  
Rickard Bensow ◽  
Mattias Liefvendahl ◽  
Arash Eslamdoost ◽  
Anders Tengberg ◽  
...  

<p>This interdisciplinary study with implications for fate and transport of pollutants from shipping, investigates the previously overlooked phenomenon of ship induced mixing. When a ship moves through water, the hull and propeller induce a long-lasting turbulent wake. Natural waters are usually stratified, and the stratification influences both the vertical and horizontal extent of the wake. The altered turbulent regime in shipping lanes governs the distribution of discharged pollutants, e.g. PAHs, metals, nutrients and non-indigenous species. The ship related pollutant load follows the trend in volumes of maritime trade, which has almost tripled since the 1980s. In heavily trafficked areas there may be one ship passage every ten minutes; today shipping constitutes a significant source of pollution.</p><p>To understand the environmental impact of shipping related pollutants, it is essential to know their fate following regional scale transport. However, previous modelling efforts assuming discharge at the surface will not adequately reflect the input values in the regional models. Therefore, it is urgent to bridge the gaps between the spatiotemporal scales from high-resolution numerical modeling of the flow hydrodynamics around the ship, mixing processes and interaction of the ship and wake with stratification, and parameterization in regional oceanographic modeling. Here this knowledge gap is addressed by combining an array of methods; in situ measurements, remote sensing and numerical flow modeling.</p><p>A bottom-mounted Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler was placed under a ship lane, for <em>in-situ</em> measurements of the vertical and temporal expansion of turbulent wakes. In addition, <em>ex-situ</em> measurements with Landsat 8 Thermal Infrared Sensor were used to estimate the longevity and spatial extent of the thermal signal from ship wakes. The computational modelling was conducted using well resolved 3D RANS modelling for the hull and the near wake (up to five ship lengths aft), a method typically used for the near wake behaviour in analysing the propulsion system. As this is not feasible to use for a far wake analysis, the predicted wake is then used as input for a 2D+time modelling for the sustained wake up to 30min after the ship passage. These results, both from measurements and numerical models, are then combined to analyse how ship-induced turbulence influence at what depth discharged pollutants will be found.</p><p>This first step to cover the mesoscales of the turbulent ship wake is necessary to assess the impact of ship related pollution. In-situ measurements show median wake depth 13.5m (max 31.5m) and median longevity 10min (max 29min). Satellite data show median thermal wake signal 13.7km (max 62.5km). A detailed simulation model will only be possible to use for the first few 100m of the ship wake, but the coupling to a simplified 2D+time modelling shows a promising potential to bridge our understanding of the impact of the ship wake on the larger scales. Our model results indicate that the natural stratification affects the distribution and retention of pollutants in the wake region. The depth of discharge and the wake turbulence characteristics will in turn affect the fate and transport of pollutants on larger spatiotemporal scales.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Burgeon ◽  
Julien Fouché ◽  
Sarah Garré ◽  
Ramin Heidarian-Dehkordi ◽  
Gilles Colinet ◽  
...  

<p>The amendment of biochar to soils is often considered for its potential as a climate change mitigation and adaptation tool through agriculture. Its presence in tropical agroecosystems has been reported to positively impact soil productivity whilst successfully storing C on the short and long-term. In temperate systems, recent research showed limited to no effect on productivity following recent biochar addition to soils. Its long-term effects on productivity and nutrient cycling have, however, been overlooked yet are essential before the use of biochar can be generalized.</p><p>Our study was set up in a conventionally cropped field, containing relict charcoal kiln sites used as a model for century old biochar (CoBC, ~220 years old). These sites were compared to soils amended with recently pyrolyzed biochar (YBC) and biochar free soils (REF) to study nutrient dynamics in the soil-water-plant system. Our research focused on soil chemical properties, crop nutrient uptake and soil solution nutrient concentrations. Crop plant samples were collected over three consecutive land occupations (chicory, winter wheat and a cover crop) and soil solutions gathered through the use of suctions cups inserted in different horizons of the studied Luvisol throughout the field.</p><p>Our results showed that YBC mainly influenced the soil solution composition whereas CoBC mainly impacted the total and plant available soil nutrient content. In soils with YBC, our results showed lower nitrate and potassium concentrations in subsoil horizons, suggesting a decreased leaching, and higher phosphate concentrations in topsoil horizons. With time and the oxidation of biochar particles, our results reported higher total soil N, available K and Ca in the topsoil horizon when compared to REF, whereas available P was significantly smaller. Although significant changes occurred in terms of plant available nutrient contents and soil solution nutrient concentrations, this did not transcend in variations in crop productivity between soils for neither of the studied crops. Overall, our study highlights that young or aged biochar behave as two distinct products in terms of nutrient cycling in soils. As such the sustainability of these soils differ and their management must therefore evolve with time.</p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (10) ◽  
pp. 5341-5356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seyed Hamed Alemohammad ◽  
Jana Kolassa ◽  
Catherine Prigent ◽  
Filipe Aires ◽  
Pierre Gentine

Abstract. Characterizing soil moisture at spatiotemporal scales relevant to land surface processes (i.e., of the order of 1 km) is necessary in order to quantify its role in regional feedbacks between the land surface and the atmospheric boundary layer. Moreover, several applications such as agricultural management can benefit from soil moisture information at fine spatial scales. Soil moisture estimates from current satellite missions have a reasonably good temporal revisit over the globe (2–3-day repeat time); however, their finest spatial resolution is 9 km. NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite has estimated soil moisture at two different spatial scales of 36 and 9 km since April 2015. In this study, we develop a neural-network-based downscaling algorithm using SMAP observations and disaggregate soil moisture to 2.25 km spatial resolution. Our approach uses the mean monthly Normalized Differenced Vegetation Index (NDVI) as ancillary data to quantify the subpixel heterogeneity of soil moisture. Evaluation of the downscaled soil moisture estimates against in situ observations shows that their accuracy is better than or equal to the SMAP 9 km soil moisture estimates.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Fallah ◽  
Sungmin O ◽  
Rene Orth

Abstract. Precipitation is a crucial variable for hydro-meteorological applications. Unfortunately, rain gauge measurements are sparse and unevenly distributed, which substantially hampers the use of in-situ precipitation data in many regions of the world. The increasing availability of high-resolution gridded precipitation products presents a valuable alternative, especially over gauge-sparse regions. Nevertheless, uncertainties and corresponding differences across products can limit the applicability of these data. This study examines the usefulness of current state-of-the-art precipitation datasets in hydrological modelling. For this purpose, we force a conceptual hydrological model with multiple precipitation datasets in > 200 European catchments. We consider a wide range of precipitation products, which are generated via (1) interpolation of gauge measurements (E-OBS and GPCC V.2018), (2) combination of multiple sources (MSWEP V2) and (3) data assimilation into reanalysis models (ERA-Interim, ERA5, and CFSR). For each catchment, runoff and evapotranspiration simulations are obtained by forcing the model with the various precipitation products. Evaluation is done at the monthly time scale during the period of 1984–2007. We find that simulated runoff values are highly dependent on the accuracy of precipitation inputs, and thus show significant differences between the simulations. By contrast, simulated evapotranspiration is generally much less influenced. The results are further analysed with respect to different hydro-climatic regimes. We find that the impact of precipitation uncertainty on simulated runoff increases towards wetter regions, while the opposite is observed in the case of evapotranspiration. Finally, we perform an indirect performance evaluation of the precipitation datasets by comparing the runoff simulations with streamflow observations. Thereby, E-OBS yields the best agreement, while furthermore ERA5, GPCC V.2018 and MSWEP V2 show good performance. In summary, our findings highlight a climate-dependent propagation of precipitation uncertainty through the water cycle; while runoff is strongly impacted in comparatively wet regions such as Central Europe, there are increasing implications on evapotranspiration towards drier regions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1267-1284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theo Baracchini ◽  
Philip Y. Chu ◽  
Jonas Šukys ◽  
Gian Lieberherr ◽  
Stefan Wunderle ◽  
...  

Abstract. The understanding of physical dynamics is crucial to provide scientifically credible information on lake ecosystem management. We show how the combination of in situ observations, remote sensing data, and three-dimensional hydrodynamic (3D) numerical simulations is capable of resolving various spatiotemporal scales involved in lake dynamics. This combination is achieved through data assimilation (DA) and uncertainty quantification. In this study, we develop a flexible framework by incorporating DA into 3D hydrodynamic lake models. Using an ensemble Kalman filter, our approach accounts for model and observational uncertainties. We demonstrate the framework by assimilating in situ and satellite remote sensing temperature data into a 3D hydrodynamic model of Lake Geneva. Results show that DA effectively improves model performance over a broad range of spatiotemporal scales and physical processes. Overall, temperature errors have been reduced by 54 %. With a localization scheme, an ensemble size of 20 members is found to be sufficient to derive covariance matrices leading to satisfactory results. The entire framework has been developed with the goal of near-real-time operational systems (e.g., integration into meteolakes.ch).


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (19) ◽  
pp. 3216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Maimaitiyiming ◽  
Vasit Sagan ◽  
Paheding Sidike ◽  
Maitiniyazi Maimaitijiang ◽  
Allison J. Miller ◽  
...  

Efficient and accurate methods to monitor crop physiological responses help growers better understand crop physiology and improve crop productivity. In recent years, developments in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and sensor technology have enabled image acquisition at very-high spectral, spatial, and temporal resolutions. However, potential applications and limitations of very-high-resolution (VHR) hyperspectral and thermal UAV imaging for characterization of plant diurnal physiology remain largely unknown, due to issues related to shadow and canopy heterogeneity. In this study, we propose a canopy zone-weighting (CZW) method to leverage the potential of VHR (≤9 cm) hyperspectral and thermal UAV imageries in estimating physiological indicators, such as stomatal conductance (Gs) and steady-state fluorescence (Fs). Diurnal flights and concurrent in-situ measurements were conducted during grapevine growing seasons in 2017 and 2018 in a vineyard in Missouri, USA. We used neural net classifier and the Canny edge detection method to extract pure vine canopy from the hyperspectral and thermal images, respectively. Then, the vine canopy was segmented into three canopy zones (sunlit, nadir, and shaded) using K-means clustering based on the canopy shadow fraction and canopy temperature. Common reflectance-based spectral indices, sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF), and simplified canopy water stress index (siCWSI) were computed as image retrievals. Using the coefficient of determination (R2) established between the image retrievals from three canopy zones and the in-situ measurements as a weight factor, weighted image retrievals were calculated and their correlation with in-situ measurements was explored. The results showed that the most frequent and the highest correlations were found for Gs and Fs, with CZW-based Photochemical reflectance index (PRI), SIF, and siCWSI (PRICZW, SIFCZW, and siCWSICZW), respectively. When all flights combined for the given field campaign date, PRICZW, SIFCZW, and siCWSICZW significantly improved the relationship with Gs and Fs. The proposed approach takes full advantage of VHR hyperspectral and thermal UAV imageries, and suggests that the CZW method is simple yet effective in estimating Gs and Fs.


1995 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 431-455 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven D. Glaser ◽  
Riley M. Chung

This report examines the state-of-the-art of in situ methods of estimating liquefaction potential in sands. In situ methods are especially important since “undisturbed” samples of loose sand for laboratory testing are virtually unobtainable. Various penetration test methods are examined, such as the SPT, DMT, and the CPT and variants. These methods are completely empirical in nature, and have worked well to date. The current state-of-practice is an SPT-based method. Intrusive, seismic-based tests are also examined: the cross-hole, down-hole tests, and down-hole logger. The seismic velocity-based predictors have a stronger physical basis than the penetration test-based estimation methods, but need a larger database. A non-intrusive test, the Spectral Analysis of Surface Waves technique, seems especially suited for examining sites of large areal extent.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (5) ◽  
pp. 577-595 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin H.G. Prechtl ◽  
Paul S. Campbell

AbstractIonic liquids (ILs) are well established as solvents and stabilizing agents for the synthesis of metallic nanoparticles (NPs) in general. The physicochemical properties of ILs and the supramolecular organization in the liquid state are capable of directing the growth of transition metal NPs generated in situ and to subsequently protect and stabilize them. Until now, many different NPs have been successfully synthesized within these media; however, the synthesis of metal oxide and bimetallic alloy or core-shell NPs in ILs is still relatively rare. Herein, we summarize the current state-of-the-art of the synthetic methods for these materials and their application in the broad field of catalysis, including multiphase systems, hydrogenation, dehydrogenation, functionalization, as well as defunctionalization reactions.


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