(Press-News.org) Forest fires are already a global threat. "But considering how climate change is progressing, we are probably only at the beginning of a future that will see more and bigger forest fires," explains Rupert Seidl, Professor of Ecosystem Dynamics and Forest Management in Mountain Landscapes at TUM.
In many places, fire is part of the natural environment, and many tree species have become naturally adapted to recurrent fires. These adaptations range from particularly thick bark, which protects the sensitive cambium in the trunk from the fire, to the cones of certain types of pine, which open only due to the heat of fire, allowing a quick regeneration and recovery of affected woodland .
AI is accelerating ecosystem models
"The interaction between climate, forest fires, and other processes in the forest ecosystem is very complex, and sophisticated process-based simulation models are required to take account of the different interactions appropriately," explains Prof. Seidl. A method that has been developed at TUM is using artificial intelligence to significantly expand the field of use of these complex models.
This method involves the training of a deep neural network in order to imitate the behavior of a complex simulation model as effectively as possible. The neural network learns on the basis of how the ecosystem responds to differing environmental influences, but does so using only a fraction of the computing power that would otherwise be necessary for large-scale simulation models. "This allows us to carry out spatially high-resolution simulations of areas of forest that stretch across several million hectares," explains scientist Dr. Werner Rammer.
Forecast for the forests in Yellowstone National Park
The simulations completed by the team of scientists include simulations for the "Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem", which has the world-famous Yellowstone National Park at its heart. This area, which is approximately 8 million hectares in size, is situated in the Rocky Mountains and is largely untouched. The researchers at the TUM have worked with American colleagues to determine how different climate scenarios could affect the frequency of forest fires in this region in the 21st century, and which areas of forest cannot regenerate successfully following a forest fire.
Depending on the climate change scenario, the study has found that by the end of the century, the current forest coverage will have disappeared in 28 to 59 percent of the region. Particularly affected were the forests in the sub-alpine zone near the tree line, where the species of tree are naturally less adapted to fire, and the areas on the Yellowstone Plateau, where the relatively flat topography is mostly unable to stop the fire from spreading.
Climate change is causing significant changes to forest ecosystems
The regeneration of the forest in the region under investigation is at threat for several reasons: If the fires get bigger and the distances between the surviving trees also increase, too few seeds will make their way onto the ground. If the climate gets hotter and drier in the future, the vulnerable young trees won't survive, and if there are too many fires, the trees won't reach the age at which they themselves yield seeds.
"By 2100, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is expected to have changed more than it has in the last 10,000 years, and will therefore look significantly different than it does today," explains Rammer. "The loss of today's forest vegetation is leading to a reduction in the carbon which is stored in the ecosystem, and will also have a profound impact on the biodiversity and recreational value of this iconic landscape."
The potential developmental trends identified in the study are also intended to help visitors to the national park understand the consequences of climate change and the urgency of the climate protection measures. In the next step, the research team will be using AI to estimate the long-term impact of the problems caused by climate change in the forests of Europe.
INFORMATION:
Skoltech researchers and their colleagues from the U.S. and Singapore have created a neural network that can help tweak semiconductor crystals in a controlled fashion to achieve superior properties for electronics. This enables a new direction of development of next-generation chips and solar cells by exploiting a controllable deformation that may change the properties of a material on the fly. The paper was published in the journal npj Computational Materials.
Materials at the nanoscale can withstand major deformation. In what's called the strained state, they can exhibit remarkable optical, thermal, electronic, and other properties due to a change in interatomic distances. The intrinsic properties of a strained ...
Researchers examined the role of primary care physicians and other clinicians in delivering vaccinations in the United States. They used two main datasets to create an in-depth analysis of services delivered to Medicare patients, followed by analysis of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's 2017 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) to determine where patients are getting vaccinated and by whom. In the 2017 Medicare Part B Fee-For-Service, primary care physicians provided the largest share of services for vaccinations (46%), followed by mass immunizers (45%), then nurse practitioners/physician assistants (5%). The MEPS showed that primary care physicians provided a majority of clinical visits ...
Primary Care Poised to Provide Clinical Guidance, Answers About COVID-19 Testing, Vaccine Administration
Researchers examined the role of primary care physicians and other clinicians in delivering vaccinations in the United States. They used two main datasets to create an in-depth analysis of services delivered to Medicare patients, followed by analysis of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's 2017 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) to determine where patients are getting vaccinated and by whom. In the 2017 Medicare Part B Fee-For-Service, primary care physicians provided the largest share of services for vaccinations (46%), followed by mass immunizers (45%), then nurse practitioners/physician ...
Humans are no stranger to coronavirus (CoV) pandemics. Just like SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19), another member of the coronavirus family--SARS-CoV--caused the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic across parts of Asia in 2003. But, its spread was contained way faster than COVID-19. So, what makes SARS-CoV-2 so contagious?
Both SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 viruses bear "spike proteins" which get inside our cells by binding to a protein called angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) that is found in our cells. However, the SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein has been found to have a higher binding affinity (10 to 20 times that of SARS-CoV) to ACE2, thus establishing ...
An international research team, including physics from Russia, has created new glasses for protection against X-ray and gamma radiation. Scientists could select new components that improved the characteristics of the samples and allowed to reduce the amount of lead in the glass composition. Physicists engineered several samples of glasses. One of the latest results - glasses based on barium fluoride - was described by the team in the Optic magazine. But the best results have bismuth borate glasses. Its radiation protection characteristics (mean-free-path, half-value layer) are better than commercial ...
HERSHEY, Pa. -- Electroconvulsive therapy, which may be effective at lowering long-term risks of suicide and death among patients with certain mood disorders, may result in longer hospital stays and increased health care costs, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers. They said delivering the therapy in outpatient settings may make the treatment more cost-effective.
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) -- which involves passing small electric currents through the brain to trigger brief seizures while a patient is under anesthesia -- is seldom utilized in the U.S. due ...
Community Health Workers Can Play a Role in Identifying Health-Related Social Needs in Patients
Addressing patients' health-related social needs, like housing and food security, is integral to patient care. Federally Qualified Health Centers are leaders in screening for and addressing patients' health-related social needs. However, screening practices vary. This variation is relatively unexplored, particularly with regards to organizational and state policy influences. Study authors conducted in-person, qualitative interviews at Michigan FQHCs to examine how screening approaches vary ...
While several biology techniques have undergone significant technical advances that have allowed their high-throughput implementation, assessing the resistance levels of plant varieties to microbial pathogens remains an arduous and time-consuming task. In response to this, Pujara and collaborators took advantage of the naturally occurring luminescence of a deep-sea shrimp to engineer a light-producing bacterial reporter that allows the quantification of plant resistance levels through imaging.
The Nanoluc luciferase (NL) from Oplophorus gracilirostris is a small protein characterized by its high stability and strong brightness. The researchers exploited these features to produce a light emitting bacterial strain from the Pseudomonas syringae species, ...
The Earth contains about one trillion species of microbes -- only about one-tenth of which have been identified. A single human can house 100 trillion microbes, creating a single microbiome that serves an ecosystem of microbes.
Microbes connect and transform in myriad ways, creating and combining and separating microbiomes anew. How can we begin to parse out how microbiomes differ, how they are similar, how they evolved and how they may change in the future?
An international team of researchers may have the answer. They published a scale-free, fully connected search-based network to explore the connectedness ...
Kumara Raja Sundar, MD, a family physician at Kaiser Permanente of Washington, uses two media synchronicity theory principles - conveyance and convergence - as a framework for choosing the right medium of care for his patients. In this essay, Sundar discusses how operating within this framework changed his own practice and decision making during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly with the use of telemedicine versus in-person clinic visits. The theory of conveyance focuses on transmitting and processing diverse information to understand a situation. It requires time to analyze data, create patterns and make conclusions. Convergence focuses on discussing pre-processed information to achieve a mutual understanding of it. ...
