Tag: Australia

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Citizen Science Conservation Soil and Fertilizer

The Dirt on Soil

Continuing our soil theme from yesterday, today’s post focuses on pollutants in soil.

Map of the study area and watersheds near village Kibber in the high-altitude region of Spiti, Trans-Himalaya, northern India. The colored polygons represent eight watersheds spread over c. 40 km2. The native and livestock watersheds are demarcated by high ridges, escarpments and ravines, that establish replicates of two types of herbivore-assemblages (dominated by either livestock or by native herbivores). Credit: (2022). DOI: 10.1101/2022.02.07.479355

Antibiotic-laced dung ‘harming soil quality’

Antibiotics used on livestock can impact microbes in the soil and negatively affect soil carbon, reducing resilience to climate change, claims a study conducted in India’s trans-Himalayan region. Results of the study, published in Global Change Biology, found native herbivores such as yak, bharal (blue sheep), kiang (wild ass) and ibex in the Spiti valley, in India’s Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh, to be healthier for soil carbon than livestock, which includes cattle, goat, sheep and horse. “Microbial carbon use efficiency was 19% lower in soils under livestock,” said Sumanta Bagchi, an author of the study and assistant professor at the Center for Ecological Sciences of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.

Supporting evidence in the study pointed to a link between veterinary antibiotics and soil microbial decline. “Our study suggests that conserving native herbivores together with better management of livestock can go a long way towards improved soil carbon stewardship to achieve natural climate change solutions,” says Bagchi. “Our paper focused on climate impacts linked to the use of antibiotics for livestock rearing but there are other undesirable consequences such as the accelerated evolution of antibiotic resistance which is a global trend,” they added.

Home ‘compostable’ plastic doesn’t fully break down

Compostable plastic that has not fully disintegrated in compost bin. Credit: Citizen scientist image from bigcompostexperiment.org.uk.

In a UK-wide study, researchers have found that 60% of home-compostable plastics do not fully disintegrate in home compost bins, and inevitably end up in our soil. The study also found that citizens are confused about the labels of compostable and biodegradable plastics, leading to incorrect plastic waste disposal. These results highlight the need to revise and redesign this supposedly sustainable plastic waste management system.

A new OECD report shows that plastic consumption has quadrupled over the past 30 years. Globally, only 9% of plastic waste is recycled, while 50% ends up in landfills, 22% evades waste management systems, and 19% is incinerated. Compostable plastics are becoming more common as the demand for sustainable products grows. The main applications of compostable plastics include food packaging, bags; cups and plates, cutlery, and bio-waste bags. But there are some fundamental problems with these types of plastics. They are largely unregulated, and claims around their environmental benefits are often exaggerated.

In a study published in Frontiers in Sustainability, researchers at University College London have found that consumers are often confused about the meaning of the labels of compostable plastics, and that a large portion of compostable plastics do not fully disintegrate under home composting conditions.

Soil pollution in natural areas similar to urban green spaces

Microplastic debris. Credit: Roberto Ruiz (UA)

An international study, recently published in Nature Communications, shows that soil in urban green spaces and natural areas share similar levels of multiple contaminants such as metals, pesticides, microplastics and antibiotic resistance genes around the world. Soil contamination is one of the main threats to the health and sustainability of ecosystems. The work was carried out by more than 40 authors from research centers and universities in Spain, China, Switzerland, Australia, Germany, Chile, South Africa, Nigeria, France, Portugal, Slovenia, Mexico, the United States, Brazil, India and Israel. The team has collaborated with ecologist Carlos Sanz Lázaro and Nuria Casado Coy, researchers at the Ramón Margalef Multidisciplinary Institute for Environmental Studies (IMEM), and experts in the study of plastic and bioplastic pollution.

As the article reports, soil pollution is currently associated with vehicle emissions, industrial processes, pesticide treatment and plant diseases, as well as poor waste management. It is therefore to be expected that urban green spaces are more influenced by pollutants than natural ecosystems, which are geographically distant from human activities. However, the study has shown that hazardous pollutants (metals, pesticides, microplastics and antibiotic resistance genes) can be dispersed by air transport, uncontrolled waste disposal and even rainwater running off the surface of a piece of land and into natural ecosystems.

Microplastics, typical pollutants of anthropogenic (human) origin, are also ubiquitous in soils of urban green spaces and natural ecosystems around the world. Surprisingly, as reported by Sanz Lázaro, they have found similar proportions of the form and polymer type of microplastics in natural areas and urban green spaces, which further supports the idea of a spread of anthropogenic pollutants through ecosystems. These microplastics, often originating from cities, affect distant areas by atmospheric transport, with fibers being the main form of plastic particles suspended in the atmosphere in cities such as Paris, London and Dongguan (China). The fibers generally consist of polyester and polypropylene from synthetic fabrics, ropes, and nets.

(See also: From cities to uninhabited areas: Soil pollution is everywhere)

Categories
Citizen Science Pollinators, Molluscs and Other Invertebrates Uncategorized Weeds

2023 February Citizen Science

If there’s one thing I hope to accomplish with this blog, it’s that folks reading it will be inspired to become their own citizen scientists. Increasingly, the data collected by ordinary people, including gardeners like us is being used to inform science and policy. Here are some examples of how powerful citizen science can be.

Óðinn / CC BY-SA 2.5 CA (Wikimedia Commons photo). Image from The Historical Society of Ottawa.

Urban forest-mapping in Montreal

A Concordia project cataloging the diversity of the urban forest in a Montreal residential neighborhood is now complete, and the researchers behind it say the results highlight the importance of a diverse city tree population. The project found that private residences and institutions such as schools and places of worship usually had different tree populations from those planted by municipal authorities in city parks and roadways or sidewalks. While the city-planted trees tended to be bigger and more resilient to stressors like drought or salt, the often-smaller private trees served other functions such as providing fruit, flowers or aesthetic beauty. The full findings are published in the journal Urban Forestry & Urban Greening. The researchers solicited residents and institutions such as schools and churches around Concordia’s Loyola Campus in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighborhood. They asked them to measure the circumference of the trees on their property, photograph their bark and leaves and submit their data to the Montreal Tree Project website for analysis. Private residences were found to have the highest richness in species diversity while institutional lands—mostly schools and churches—were found to have the lowest. “From an ecological standpoint, having a diverse tree population leads to a more multifunctional landscape,” says Hutt-Taylor, now the project coordinator of nature-based solutions at Concordia’s Loyola Campus. “It can also provide a more resilient forest to events like climate change, changes in the environmental fabric of the city as well as to pests and disease.”

Drosera koikyennuruff. Credit: Thilo Krueger

Everyday Aussies help find missing plant species

Scientists have identified six new or rediscovered Western Australian plant species from photos taken and uploaded to the internet by members of the public, including a nature photographer from Jurien Bay, a pair of wildflower enthusiasts from Dongara and a farmer from near the Stirling Range National Park. Lead researcher, Ph.D. student Thilo Krueger from Curtin’s School of Molecular and Life Sciences said the newly described species were carnivorous sundews and were identified through images shared on Facebook and to the iNaturalist website, highlighting the value of such platforms for contributing to advances in taxonomic research. The work was published in Biology.

Image from EU Observer article What Europe still needs to do to save its bees. Photo: Dearbhlaith Larkin & Felipe Guapo, Carolan Lab Research Group, Maynooth University, Ireland

Citizen science initiatives increase pollinator activity in private gardens

Have you made adjustments to your garden to make it more welcoming for pollinators? If so, you have probably made a valuable contribution, according to a new study from Lund University. The researchers evaluated the national “Operation: Save the Bees” campaign, and their results indicate that what private individuals do in their gardens really can make a positive difference. In 2018, The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation launched a campaign to save bees and other pollinators, aiming to get the public involved by creating more favorable environments in private gardens. The actions that were encouraged were to create a meadow, plant flowers or set up a bee hotel. Around 11,000 Swedes responded to the call, and now researchers from Lund University have evaluated the measures. The result show that the greatest positive effect on the number of pollinating insects was if you had a meadow with a higher number of flowering species in your garden. As for flower plantings, it was favorable if they were older and also covered a larger area. Bee hotels, in turn, were more often inhabited if they were located in flower-rich gardens, if they were older, and if the nest holes were a maximum of one centimeter in diameter. Since the researchers collected the data via peoples’ own estimates, there is a great deal of uncertainty in each individual data point, says Anna Persson, but adds that one can still be confident in the results given that so many responses were received. The study is published in the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Cities.

Canada Thistle (Credit: iStock/Getty Images)

RHS asks gardeners to find interesting ‘weeds’

Helena Horton writes in The Guardian about a citizen science initiative by the Royal Horticultural Society. Private gardens in the UK may be an untapped source of scientific discovery, according to the RHS’s new ecologist, because “scientists can’t just go into people’s gardens”. Instead, Gemma Golding, who started working for the charity late last year, wants gardeners to look for interesting species and submit them to the iNaturalist app for scientists to analyse. What may be viewed as a weed could be a rare plant, or growing in an unusual place where it has not been recorded before. The quid pro quo is that gardeners will get feedback on the mystery plants they find. Armed with more knowledge, they will be better able to manage problems that crop up in their gardens.

Categories
Miscellany

November Eye-Candy, Oddities and Miscellany

Image courtesy of Desativado from Pexels.

What mirrored ants, vivid blue butterflies and Monstera house plants can teach us about designing buildings: Almost all buildings today are built using similar conventional technologies and manufacturing and construction processes. These processes use a lot of energy and produce huge carbon emissions. This is hardly sustainable. Perhaps the only way to truly construct sustainable buildings is by connecting them with nature, not isolating them from it. This is where the field of bioarchitecture emerges. It draws on principles from nature to help solve technological questions and address global challenges. Take desert organisms, for example. How do they survive and thrive under extreme conditions? One such desert species is the Saharan silver ant, named for its shiny mirror-like body. Its reflective body reflects and dissipates heat. It’s an adaptation we can apply in buildings as reflective walls, or to pavements that don’t heat up. There are so many aspects of nature we can drawn on. Picture cities with shopping centers based on water lilies, stadiums resembling seashells, and lightweight bridges inspired by cells. Water lilies can teach us how to design large buildings efficiently with smooth pedestrian circulation. Seashells can inspire the walls of large-span buildings without the need for columns. Cells can show us how to develop lightweight suspending structures. Bioarchitecture can reinvent the natural environment in the form of our built environment, to provide the ultimate and somehow obvious solutions for the threats Earth is facing. Can buildings do the same in cities? If buildings could grow, self-repair and adapt to climate, they might ultimately become truly sustainable.

The Flower Beard competition pairs florists with some of Brisbane’s best beards. (Ekka). Image courtesy of 9News, Brisbane.

Ekka’s bizarre flower beard competition: The country fair in Ekka, Queensland, features an unusual competition – a floral beard parade. This short video (1:41 minutes) was reported by 7News, Australia.

Photo by Rebecca Last

They picked milkweed to help World War II flyers. Now they grow it to help monarch butterflies: With a couple of burlap sacks slung over his shoulder, and with his pet German shepherd Fritz leading the way, third grader Clyde Seigler scoured the searching for milkweed seed pods. In September and October each year, the pods would crack open to reveal brown, oval seeds attached to white silky fibers called floss. After Clyde collected about 10 to 12 sacks filled with pods, his dad would toss them into a truck and haul them to Scott Run Elementary School where the Seigler boys went to school, and where the sacks would be turned over to the military. All Clyde knew at the time was that the milkweed fluff had something to do with World War II — that it went into life jackets. What he didn’t know was that an army of like-minded children was searching the countryside in 25 U.S. states, as well as in Ontario and Quebec, to gather milkweed pods. Gathering milkweed was not just a public relations, feel-good project. It was an essential part of winning the war. The country urgently needed the silky floss as fill for life preservers and flight vests. Tests by the U.S Navy had found 1 pound of floss was as warm as wool, but six times as light, and it was six times as buoyant as cork. A pound of floss could keep a 150-pound man afloat for more than 40 hours. During the war, children such as Clyde Seigler collected enough floss to fill more than 1.2 million life vests for America’s fighting men and women, saving thousands of lives. The balance of this article delves into the history of milkweed floss as a “strategic war resource”, and then follows the contemporary lives of a few of the now-seniors who collected milkweed seeds when they were children.

The gympie-gympie. Credit: Marina Hurley. Image reproduced from ZMEScience.

He is growing the most venomous plant in the world at home: If you think gardening is a boring hobby, you’re growing the wrong plants. You could emulate Daniel Emlyn-Jones, 49, a British gardener who is raising one of the world’s most venomous plants in his Oxford home. The gympie-gympie is native to Australia, New Guinea and Malaysia, where it grows in rainforest areas. It’s part of the stinging nettle family. Tiny little hair-like needles densely cover its leaves. Just one poke by a single skinny needle and you will be in pain. For years. Emlyn-Jones keeps his gympie-gympie in a locked cage with a danger sign on it. He handles it with heavy-duty, elbow-length gloves. He said he wants to interest other people in unusual plants. “I don’t want to come over as a loon,” he said, as reported by Yahoo. “I’m doing it very safely.” So far, Emlyn-Jones has had only a slight brush with pain when a needle tickled him through his gloves. He insists it wasn’t that awful. Will more people decide to take up raising gympie-gympies now that Emlyn-Jones has made the news? Consumers over 18 can legally buy the plant online. Be aware, however. It’s been nicknamed “the suicide plant” because the pain it causes makes people want to end it all. One story tells of a World War II officer in Australia who unwittingly used a gympie-gympie leaf as toilet paper. He shot himself.  [Thanks to reader Carol English for sharing this story.]

Photo credit Johannes Plenio from an open source image on Pexels.

TreeFM: One of my favourite CDs is a recording made by a friend in Victoria, Australia, of ambient sound around his billabong. I love listening to the birdsong and the sound of water. TreeFM is great soundscape for those who enjoy the sounds of nature. You can chose recordings from multiple forests around the world. What a great way to relax! Thanks to Jessica Damiano’s The Weekly Dirt for this reference.