scholarly journals Quantifying the contribution of microbial immigration in engineered water systems

Microbiome ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ran Mei ◽  
Wen-Tso Liu

Abstract Immigration is a process that can influence the assembly of microbial communities in natural and engineered environments. However, it remains challenging to quantitatively evaluate the contribution of this process to the microbial diversity and function in the receiving ecosystems. Currently used methods, i.e., counting shared microbial species, microbial source tracking, and neutral community model, rely on abundance profile to reveal the extent of overlapping between the upstream and downstream communities. Thus, they cannot suggest the quantitative contribution of immigrants to the downstream community function because activities of individual immigrants are not considered after entering the receiving environment. This limitation can be overcome by using an approach that couples a mass balance model with high-throughput DNA sequencing, i.e., ecogenomics-based mass balance. It calculates the net growth rate of individual microbial immigrants and partitions the entire community into active populations that contribute to the community function and inactive ones that carry minimal function. Linking activities of immigrants to their abundance further provides quantification of the contribution from an upstream environment to the downstream community. Considering only active populations can improve the accuracy of identifying key environmental parameters dictating process performance using methods such as machine learning.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordi Escuer-Gatius ◽  
Krista Lõhmus ◽  
Merrit Shanskiy ◽  
Karin Kauer ◽  
Hanna Vahter ◽  
...  

<p>Agricultural activities can have several adverse impacts on the environment; such as important greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. To implement effective mitigation measures and create effective policies, it is necessary to know the full carbon and nitrogen budgets of agro-ecosystems. However, very often, information regarding the pools or fluxes involved in the carbon and nitrogen cycles is limited, and essential complementary data needed for a proper interpretation is lacking.</p><p>This study aimed to quantify all the relevant pools and fluxes of a winter rapeseed, a widely spread crop in the Europe and Baltic regions. The N<sub>2</sub>O and CH<sub>4</sub> fluxes were measured weekly using the closed static chamber method from August 2016 to August 2017 in a winter rapeseed field in Central Estonia. Additionally, nutrient leaching and soil chemical parameters, as well as environmental parameters like soil moisture, electrical conductivity and temperature were monitored. At the end of the season, the rapeseed and weed biomasses were collected, weighed and analyzed. The remaining relevant fluxes in the N cycle were calculated using various non-empirical methods: NH<sub>3</sub> volatilization was estimated from slurry and environmental parameters, N deposition and NO<sub>x</sub> emissions were obtained from national reports, and N<sub>2</sub> emissions were calculated with the mass balance method. Regarding the C cycle, gross primary production (GPP) of the rapeseed field was also calculated by the mass balance method. Simultaneously, for comparison and validation purposes, GPP was estimated from the data provided by MOD17A2H v006 series from NASA, and N<sub>2</sub> was estimated from the measured emissions of N<sub>2</sub>O using the N<sub>2</sub>:N<sub>2</sub>O ratio calculated from the DAYCENT model equations.</p><p>N<sub>2</sub> emissions and GPP were the biggest fluxes in the N and C cycles, respectively. N<sub>2</sub> emissions were followed by N extracted with plant biomass in the N cycle, while in the carbon cycle soil and plant respiration and NPP were the highest fluxes after GPP. The carbon balance was positive at the soil level, with a net increase in soil carbon during the period, mainly due to GPP carbon capture. Contrarily, the nitrogen balance resulted in a net loss of N due to the losses related to gaseous emissions (N<sub>2</sub> and N<sub>2</sub>O) and leaching.</p><p>To conclude, it was possible to close the C and N budgets, despite the inherent difficulties of estimating the different C and N environmental pools and fluxes, and the uncertainties deriving from some of the fluxes estimations.</p>


Author(s):  
Linden B. Huhmann ◽  
Charles F. Harvey ◽  
Ana Navas-Acien ◽  
Joseph Graziano ◽  
Vesna Slavkovich ◽  
...  

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 1089-1104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kjetil S. Aas ◽  
Thorben Dunse ◽  
Emily Collier ◽  
Thomas V. Schuler ◽  
Terje K. Berntsen ◽  
...  

Abstract. In this study we simulate the climatic mass balance of Svalbard glaciers with a coupled atmosphere–glacier model with 3 km grid spacing, from September 2003 to September 2013. We find a mean specific net mass balance of −257 mm w.e. yr−1, corresponding to a mean annual mass loss of about 8.7 Gt, with large interannual variability. Our results are compared with a comprehensive set of mass balance, meteorological, and satellite measurements. Model temperature biases of 0.19 and −1.9 °C are found at two glacier automatic weather station sites. Simulated climatic mass balance is mostly within about 100 mm w.e. yr−1 of stake measurements, and simulated winter accumulation at the Austfonna ice cap shows mean absolute errors of 47 and 67 mm w.e. yr−1 when compared to radar-derived values for the selected years 2004 and 2006. Comparison of modeled surface height changes from 2003 to 2008, and satellite altimetry reveals good agreement in both mean values and regional differences. The largest deviations from observations are found for winter accumulation at Hansbreen (up to around 1000 mm w.e. yr−1), a site where sub-grid topography and wind redistribution of snow are important factors. Comparison with simulations using 9 km grid spacing reveal considerable differences on regional and local scales. In addition, 3 km grid spacing allows for a much more detailed comparison with observations than what is possible with 9 km grid spacing. Further decreasing the grid spacing to 1 km appears to be less significant, although in general precipitation amounts increase with resolution. Altogether, the model compares well with observations and offers possibilities for studying glacier climatic mass balance on Svalbard both historically as well as based on climate projections.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabien Maussion ◽  
Anton Butenko ◽  
Julia Eis ◽  
Kévin Fourteau ◽  
Alexander H. Jarosch ◽  
...  

Abstract. Despite of their importance for sea-level rise, seasonal water availability, and as source of geohazards, mountain glaciers are one of the few remaining sub-systems of the global climate system for which no globally applicable, open source, community-driven model exists. Here we present the Open Global Glacier Model (OGGM, http://www.oggm.org), developed to provide a modular and open source numerical model framework for simulating past and future change of any glacier in the world. The modelling chain comprises data downloading tools (glacier outlines, topography, climate, validation data), a preprocessing module, a mass-balance model, a distributed ice thickness estimation model, and an ice flow model. The monthly mass-balance is obtained from gridded climate data and a temperature index melt model. To our knowledge, OGGM is the first global model explicitly simulating glacier dynamics: the model relies on the shallow ice approximation to compute the depth-integrated flux of ice along multiple connected flowlines. In this paper, we describe and illustrate each processing step by applying the model to a selection of glaciers before running global simulations under idealized climate forcings. Even without an in-depth calibration, the model shows a very realistic behaviour. We are able to reproduce earlier estimates of global glacier volume by varying the ice dynamical parameters within a range of plausible values. At the same time, the increased complexity of OGGM compared to other prevalent global glacier models comes at a reasonable computational cost: several dozens of glaciers can be simulated on a personal computer, while global simulations realized in a supercomputing environment take up to a few hours per century. Thanks to the modular framework, modules of various complexity can be added to the codebase, allowing to run new kinds of model intercomparisons in a controlled environment. Future developments will add new physical processes to the model as well as tools to calibrate the model in a more comprehensive way. OGGM spans a wide range of applications, from ice-climate interaction studies at millenial time scales to estimates of the contribution of glaciers to past and future sea-level change. It has the potential to become a self-sustained, community driven model for global and regional glacier evolution.


1990 ◽  
Vol 26 (5) ◽  
pp. 1079-1092 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Barry ◽  
Marcel Prévost ◽  
Jean Stein ◽  
Andre P. Plamondon

1999 ◽  
Vol 45 (151) ◽  
pp. 559-567 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rijan Bhakta Kayastha ◽  
Tetsuo Ohata ◽  
Yutaka Ageta

AbstractA mass-balance model based on the energy balance at the snow or ice surface is formulated, with particular attention paid to processes affecting absorption of radiation. The model is applied to a small glacier, Glacier AX010 in the Nepalese Himalaya, and tests of its mass-balance sensitivity to input and climatic parameters are carried out. Calculated and observed area-averaged mass balances of the glacier during summer 1978 (June-September) show good agreement, namely -0.44 and -0.46 m w.e., respectively.Results show the mass balance is strongly sensitive to snow or ice albedo, to the effects of screening by surrounding mountain walls, to areal variations in multiple reflection between clouds and the glacier surface, and to thin snow covers which alter the surface albedo. In tests of the sensitivity of the mass balance to seasonal values of climatic parameters, the mass balance is found to be strongly sensitive to summer air temperature and precipitation but only weakly sensitive to relative humidity.


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