scholarly journals Exploring B/Ca as a pH proxy in bivalves: relationships between <i>Mytilus californianus</i> B/Ca and environmental data from the northeast Pacific

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 5587-5616 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. J. McCoy ◽  
L. F. Robinson ◽  
C. A. Pfister ◽  
J. T. Wootton ◽  
N. Shimizu

Abstract. A distinct gap in our ability to understand changes in coastal biology that may be associated with recent ocean acidification is the paucity of directly measured ocean environmental parameters at coastal sites in recent decades. Thus, many researchers have turned to sclerochronological reconstructions of water chemistry to document the historical seawater environment. In this study, we explore the relationships between B/Ca and pH to test the feasibility of B/Ca measured on the ion probe as a pH proxy in the California mussel, Mytilus californianus. We compare the M. californianus B/Ca record to directly measured environmental data during mussel growth 1999–2009 to determine the correlation between B/Ca and seawater chemistry and discuss methods for assigning sample chronology when sampling an organism with variable growth rates.

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (9) ◽  
pp. 2567-2579 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. J. McCoy ◽  
L. F. Robinson ◽  
C. A. Pfister ◽  
J. T. Wootton ◽  
N. Shimizu

Abstract. A distinct gap in our ability to understand changes in coastal biology that may be associated with recent ocean acidification is the paucity of directly measured ocean environmental parameters at coastal sites in recent decades. Thus, many researchers have turned to sclerochronological reconstructions of water chemistry to document the historical seawater environment. In this study, we explore the relationships between B/Ca and pH to test the feasibility of B/Ca measured on the ion probe as a pH proxy in the California mussel, Mytilus californianus. Heterogeneity in a range of ion microprobe standards is assessed, leading to reproducible B/Ca ratios at the 5% level. The B/Ca data exhibit large excursions during winter months, which are particularly pronounced during the severe winters of 2004–2005 and 2005–2006. Furthermore, B/Ca ratios are offset in different parts of the skeleton that calcified at the same time. We compare the M. californianus B/Ca record to directly measured environmental data during mussel growth from the period of 1999–2009 to examine whether seawater chemistry or temperature plays a role in controlling shell B/Ca. A suite of growth rate models based on measured temperature are compared to the B/Ca data to optimise the potential fit of B/Ca to pH. Despite sampling conditions that were well-suited to testing a pH control on B/Ca, including a close proximity to an environmental record, a distinct change in pH at the sampling locale, and a growth model designed to optimise the correlations between seawater pH and shell B/Ca, we do not see a strong correlations between pH and shell B/Ca (maximum coefficient of determination, r2, of 0.207). Instead, our data indicate a strong biological control on B/Ca as observed in some other carbonate-forming organisms.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yong Kwan Lim ◽  
Oh Joo Kweon ◽  
Hye Ryoun Kim ◽  
Tae-Hyoung Kim ◽  
Mi-Kyung Lee

AbstractCorona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been declared a global pandemic and is a major public health concern worldwide. In this study, we aimed to determine the role of environmental factors, such as climate and air pollutants, in the transmission of COVID-19 in the Republic of Korea. We collected epidemiological and environmental data from two regions of the Republic of Korea, namely Seoul metropolitan region (SMR) and Daegu-Gyeongbuk region (DGR) from February 2020 to July 2020. The data was then analyzed to identify correlations between each environmental factor with confirmed daily COVID-19 cases. Among the various environmental parameters, the duration of sunshine and ozone level were found to positively correlate with COVID-19 cases in both regions. However, the association of temperature variables with COVID-19 transmission revealed contradictory results when comparing the data from SMR and DGR. Moreover, statistical bias may have arisen due to an extensive epidemiological investigation and altered socio-behaviors that occurred in response to a COVID-19 outbreak. Nevertheless, our results suggest that various environmental factors may play a role in COVID-19 transmission.


Geosciences ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 187
Author(s):  
Rolf Vieten ◽  
Francisco Hernandez

Speleothems are one of the few archives which allow us to reconstruct the terrestrial paleoclimate and help us to understand the important climate dynamics in inhabited regions of our planet. Their time of growth can be precisely dated by radiometric techniques, but unfortunately seasonal radiometric dating resolution is so far not feasible. Numerous cave environmental monitoring studies show evidence for significant seasonal variations in parameters influencing carbonate deposition (calcium-ion concentration, cave air pCO2, drip rate and temperature). Variations in speleothem deposition rates need to be known in order to correctly decipher the climate signal stored in the speleothem archive. StalGrowth is the first software to quantify growth rates based on cave monitoring results, detect growth seasonality and estimate the seasonal growth bias. It quickly plots the predicted speleothem growth rate together with the influencing cave environmental parameters to identify which parameter(s) cause changes in speleothem growth rate, and it can also identify periods of no growth. This new program has been applied to multiannual cave monitoring studies in Austria, Gibraltar, Puerto Rico and Texas, and it has identified two cases of seasonal varying speleothem growth.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-93
Author(s):  
Tan Thanh Nguyen ◽  
Duy Khanh Nguyen

Robots imitating spider’s moving have many advantages such as flexible movement, high stability, diversity in movements performed, especially in terrain  crossing, in military reconnaissance, in surveying and collecting environmental data in dangerous areas,.... In this article  with the main objective is to exploit multiple control methods to support applications of a spider robot with low-cost, a spider robot with 6 legs and 18 joints was designed. The ESPWROOM-32 module (ESP32-D0WDQ6 chip) and MIT App Inventor were used as the main tools for conducting this research. As a result, the robot is controlled via Bluetooth and Wifi to move, making some actions by self-written software running on the Android operating system. In addition, the robot has the capacity of self-propelled to avoid simple obstacles and send some environmental parameters to the software, including obstacles distance, humidity and temperature.


Drones ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 142
Author(s):  
Liam C. Dickson ◽  
Kostas A. Katselidis ◽  
Christophe Eizaguirre ◽  
Gail Schofield

Temperature is often used to infer how climate influences wildlife distributions; yet, other parameters also contribute, separately and combined, with effects varying across geographical scales. Here, we used an unoccupied aircraft system to explore how environmental parameters affect the regional distribution of the terrestrial and marine breeding habitats of threatened loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta). Surveys spanned four years and ~620 km coastline of western Greece, encompassing low (<10 nests/km) to high (100–500 nests/km) density nesting areas. We recorded 2395 tracks left by turtles on beaches and 1928 turtles occupying waters adjacent to these beaches. Variation in beach track and inwater turtle densities was explained by temperature, offshore prevailing wind, and physical marine and terrestrial factors combined. The highest beach-track densities (400 tracks/km) occurred on beaches with steep slopes and higher sand temperatures, sheltered from prevailing offshore winds. The highest inwater turtle densities (270 turtles/km) occurred over submerged sandbanks, with warmer sea temperatures associated with offshore wind. Most turtles (90%) occurred over nearshore submerged sandbanks within 10 km of beaches supporting the highest track densities, showing the strong linkage between optimal marine and terrestrial environments for breeding. Our findings demonstrate the utility of UASs in surveying marine megafauna and environmental data at large scales and the importance of integrating multiple factors in climate change models to predict species distributions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (3) ◽  
pp. e2004769118
Author(s):  
Elizabeth M. Bullard ◽  
Ivan Torres ◽  
Tianqi Ren ◽  
Olivia A. Graeve ◽  
Kaustuv Roy

Anthropogenic warming and ocean acidification are predicted to negatively affect marine calcifiers. While negative effects of these stressors on physiology and shell calcification have been documented in many species, their effects on shell mineralogical composition remains poorly known, especially over longer time periods. Here, we quantify changes in the shell mineralogy of a foundation species, Mytilus californianus, under 60 y of ocean warming and acidification. Using historical data as a baseline and a resampling of present-day populations, we document a substantial increase in shell calcite and decrease in aragonite. These results indicate that ocean pH and saturation state, not temperature or salinity, play a strong role in mediating the shell mineralogy of this species and reveal long-term changes in this trait under ocean acidification.


Climate ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (8) ◽  
pp. 96 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Alexis Barrientos-González ◽  
Ricardo E. Vega-Azamar ◽  
Julio C. Cruz-Argüello ◽  
Norma A. Oropeza-García ◽  
Maritza Chan-Juárez ◽  
...  

Urban territorial expansion generated in the last decades has brought a series of consequences, such as the variation between urban and suburban weather conditions affecting indoor temperature and increasing electricity consumption derived from the use of cooling systems. Current approaches of simulation models in residential buildings use indoor environmental data for carrying out validations to propose hygrothermal comfort alternatives for the mitigation of the effects of the external environmental conditions on the interior spaces of dwellings. In this work, an hourly evaluation of both indoor and outdoor environmental parameters of two case studies in a tropical climate was carried out, by means of a whole-building simulation approach tool during a week representative of the warmest period of the year. The integration of the collected environmental data in the theoretical model allowed us to reduce the error range of the estimated indoor temperature with results in normalized mean bias error between 7.10% and −0.74% and in coefficient of variation of the root mean square error between 16.72% and 2.62%, in the different indoor zones of the case studies. At the same time, the energy assessment showed a difference of 33% in Case 1 and −217% in Case 2 for final electricity consumption.


2014 ◽  
Vol 522-524 ◽  
pp. 38-43
Author(s):  
Nan Yang ◽  
Zhen Feng Shao ◽  
Lei Zhang

Environmental monitoring is increasingly playing a significant role in such aspects as environment protection, emergency disaster response and rescue, and macro decision-making etc. However, the intrinsic characteristics of complexity and spatial-temporal diversity, multi-scale features and heterogeneity brought from various means of data acquisition make the integration of multi-source data with high-efficiency becomes an international challenge nowadays. In this paper, the design and implementation of a vehicle-borne platform based on Internet of Things for environmental monitoring has been achieved. And then, by merging and matching environmental data and spatial data, more intensive multi-source environmental parameters and information can be obtained to act as meaningful supplementation of fixed environmental monitoring stations. The research of this paper is conductive to the transition of environmental monitoring from static methods to dynamic methods and from a small amount of data-based empirical model to sensor network-based quantitative model. Mobile environmental monitoring platform integrating with multiple sensors that can make environmental monitoring more timely, dynamic, integrated and intelligent will be the beneficial attempt and the development trend.


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