(Press-News.org) Maintaining a healthy and diverse soil community can buffer natural ecosystems against the damaging impacts of global warming, according to a new Yale-led study.
In a long-term study, researchers showed that small soil animals can limit the effects of climate change, which would otherwise stimulate the loss of carbon from the soil into the atmosphere.
The study provides key new insights into how the interactions between organisms in the soil are likely to be critical for controlling the changes in carbon cycling under current and future climate scenarios. The results were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Decomposition of dead plant and animal material by soil microorganisms generates an annual global release of 50 to 75 petagrams of carbon -- in the form of carbon dioxide and methane -- into the atmosphere (1 petagram equals 1 billion metric tons). This amounts to almost ten times the greenhouse gas production of humans worldwide. Scientists have known for a long time that warming has the potential to accelerate this process, leading to increased carbon emissions that will accelerate climate change through a dangerous feedback cycle. However, until now, little has been known about which ecosystems will be most affected and why.
The study -- an international collaboration between researchers at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES), the University of Helsinki, the Institute of Microbiology of the ASCR in the Czech Republic, and the University of New Hampshire -- was designed to shed light on this issue.
"In disturbed environments, where soil animals are not present, the feedback between climate change and microbial carbon production was strong," said Thomas Crowther, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale F&ES and lead author of the study. "Meanwhile, when the soil community is healthy and diverse, we saw that animals feed on the microorganisms, limiting the feedback effects."
In the same way that Yellowstone's wolves regulate plant diversity by controlling the number of grazing elk, the researchers found that small animals -- such as insects and worms -- can play a similar regulatory role in soil ecosystems by feeding on the microbes that can trigger increased carbon emissions.
But this "top-down" control matters only when there are no limitations to the production of nutrients at the bottom of the food web -- such as those conditions that would occur as a result of climate change, Crowther said. "As a result of climate change, there's going to be more nitrogen deposition, it's going to be warmer -- many of the things that limit fungal growth are going to be alleviated," he said. "And by stimulating microbial activity it will trigger higher carbon emissions. So when those 'bottom up' limitations are gone, the grazing animals become even more important."
The study was conducted at the Harvard Forest long-term climate change research site, where researchers were able to examine how atmospheric warming and nitrogen deposition are likely to alter natural ecosystems under future climate change scenarios.
As part of the experiment, researchers manipulated the soil communities to establish four levels of community complexity, allowing them to see which types of community would be most affected by the global change factors such as warming temperatures.
The study highlights the importance of understanding biological processes if scientists are going to be able to predict the consequences of climate change, said Hefin Jones, a professor at Cardiff University and a leading expert in climate change research. He was not affiliated with the study.
"Our current understanding of carbon cycle feedbacks to climate change stem mostly from the physical sciences; this study shows that precise global predictions can be achieved only if we understand the interactions between organisms," he said.
INFORMATION:
Co-authors of the study, "Biotic Interactions Mediate Soil Microbial Feedbacks to Climate Change," include Daniel S. Maynard, Kristofer Covey, and Mark A. Bradford of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.
ATS 2015, DENVER--Living in a rural area and being poor are risk factors for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), said Sarath Raju, MD, MPH, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, lead author of a study presented at the 2015 American Thoracic Society International Conference.
The researchers used a nationally representative sample to pinpoint COPD risk factors. "We wanted to identify the prevalence of COPD in urban and rural areas in the U.S. and determine how residence, region, poverty, race and ethnicity, and other factors influence COPD rates," ...
ATS 2015, DENVER - In 2015, an estimated 158,040 Americans are expected to die from lung cancer, making it the leading cause of cancer death in in this country. Lung cancer screening with low-dose CT scans in high risk smokers has recently been approved to help detect lung cancer in its early stages when no symptoms are noticeable. The hope is that by detecting lung cancer in the early, more treatable stages, doctors may be able to improve the outcomes of patients with lung cancer. However, in addition to screening high risk smokers, close follow-up and monitoring of ...
WASHINGTON D.C., May 19, 2015 -- Researchers have held tremendous interest in liquid metal electronics for many years, but a significant and unfortunate drawback slowing the advance of such devices is that they tend to require external pumps that can't be easily integrated into electronic systems.
So a team of North Carolina State University (NCSU) researchers set out to create a reconfigurable liquid metal antenna controlled by voltage only, which they describe in the Journal of Applied Physics, from AIP Publishing.
The team's work was inspired by a phenomenon recently ...
ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Mayo Clinic urologists will present research findings onseveral topics at the American Urological Association Annual Meeting May 15-19 in New Orleans. Researchers will be available to discuss their research with reporters who are covering the conference. Mayo Clinic studies to be presented include:
Holmium Laser Excision of Genitourinary Mesh Exposure Following Anti-Incontinence Surgery: Minimum Six-Month Follow-up.
Embargoed until Sunday, May 17, 2015 1:00 p.m. CT
The polypropylene mesh implants used in some incontinence surgeries for women can ...
Among patients with acute radiculopathy (sciatica) due to a herniated lumbar disk, a short course of oral steroids, compared with placebo, resulted in modest improvement in function and no significant improvement in pain, according to a study in the May 19 issue of JAMA.
Many patients with sciatica endure substantial pain and disability. For those who do not recover quickly, invasive procedures such as epidural steroid injections (ESIs) and surgery are commonly performed. Oral administration of steroid medication may provide similar anti-inflammatory activity, can be ...
Nearly 35 percent of all U.S. adults and 50 percent of those 60 years of age or older were estimated to have the metabolic syndrome in 2011-2012, according to a study in the May 19 issue of JAMA.
The metabolic syndrome is combination of health conditions (such as obesity, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, poor lipid profile) that contribute to cardiovascular illness and death. Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 1999-2006 reported a metabolic syndrome prevalence of 34 percent. Understanding updated prevalence trends may be important ...
Two studies in the May 19 issue of JAMA analyze the prevalence of the plaque amyloid among adults of varying ages, with and without dementia, and its association with cognitive impairment.
Alzheimer disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia, with a worldwide prevalence of about 25 million in 2010, expected to be doubled by 2030 because of increased life expectancy. The earliest recognizable pathological event in AD is cerebral amyloid-β aggregation (protein fragments that clump together to form plaque). This pathology may be present up to 20 years before ...
Among patients with acute sciatica caused by a herniated lumbar disk (a condition also known as "acute radiculopathy"), a short course of oral steroids resulted in only modest improvement in function and no significant improvement in pain, according to a study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Acute sciatica, characterized by radiating buttock and leg pain, is most frequently associated with a herniated disk in the lower (lumbar) spine, and occurs in more than one in 10 people sometime in their lives. Although oral steroids are used by ...
Scientists have moved graphene -- the incredibly strong and conductive single-atom-thick sheet of carbon -- a significant step along the path from lab bench novelty to commercially viable material for new electronic applications.
Researchers from the University of Manchester, together with BGT Materials Limited, a graphene manufacturer in the United Kingdom, have printed a radio frequency antenna using compressed graphene ink. The antenna performed well enough to make it practical for use in radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags and wireless sensors, the researchers ...
Antidepressants are associated with better rates of treatment response and remission for women with postnatal depression, when compared to a placebo, according to a new systematic review by the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King's College London.
Reports often focus on the risks of using antidepressants during pregnancy and the postnatal period but this paper, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), highlights the benefits that antidepressants can have for women with postnatal depression. Postnatal depression ...
