Review of nature-based solutions in dryland ecosystems: the aral sea case study

NbS have gained substantial attention in the academic literature recently as a potential approach for simultaneously tackling environmental issues and addressing societal challenges. Drylands, which are among the world’s most vulnerable areas to the impacts of climate change and cover a little less than the half of the global terrestrial surface, were the focus of this study. We conducted a systematic literature review to explore the potential opportunities for the application of NbS in rural drylands across the globe. We go on to specifically consider the possibility of applying selected NbS approaches in the Aral Sea region of Uzbekistan, as a case study of a dryland ecosystem illustrating major environmental and social challenges. We highlight which NbS show the most promise in the Aral Sea region and conclude with a discussion of existing gaps in the literature on NbS in drylands, and opportunities for further research

The Application of Hydrolytic Enzymes for Biotransformations of Natural Products in Non-Aqueous Reaction Conditions

Flavonoids are naturally occurring compounds that are consumed regularly in the diet. The property of flavonoids, which they are most commonly known for, is their antioxidant activity. Other potential pharmaceutical applications of flavonoids can be related to their enzyme inhibition, anti-allergic, anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial and anti-cancer properties. Lipases have been used effectively in the production of flavonoid ester derivatives that have shown both increased antioxidant and antimicrobial activity. Enzymatic esterifications of flavonoids are performed in organic solvents that increase substrate solubility of complex organic molecules. For the esterification of compounds in non-aqueous reaction conditions, vinyl esters are often preferred as substrates compared to carboxylic acids (which can be involved in reversible reactions, due to the formation of the by-product, water). In this study a group of vinyl esters of tert-butoxycarbonylated amino acid derivatives were synthesized to study alongside a range of commercially available vinyl esters. The synthesis of ester derivatives of naringin using a range of hydrolytic enzymes has been studied. A range of small to medium sized commercially available vinyl esters (C2- C10), as well as amino acid vinyl esters were selected for the biotransformations. For the esterification of naringin, small-scale reactions were carried out for 72 hrs and the reaction mixtures were analysed by HPLC. Lipases from the species Pseudomonas stutzeri, Candida antarctica and Alcaligenes spp. performed more than 80% conversion of naringin with some of the selected acylating agents. Reactions carried out with P. stutzeri lipase were scaled up to isolate the product of the biotransformation. None of the screened enzymes were successful in the acylation of naringin with the amino acid vinyl esters. Assays were carried out to compare the antioxidant activity of naringin and the synthesized derivatives. Two of the acyl derivatives showed a greater antioxidant activity in the reduction of Cu2+, compared to naringin. Aminoglycosides are antibiotics that have anti-bacterial properties. As well as their anti-bacterial properties some have been employed for their ability to suppress stop codons, which is a useful property in reducing symptoms of some hereditary disorders. In the present work attempts were made to derivatise an aminoglycoside by acylating it with the amino acid vinyl esters, using hydrolytic enzymes. Despite screening with various proteases in different solvents, the acylation of amikacin was not succesful during this investigation.EPSR

Quantifying the “avoided” biodiversity impacts associated with economic development

Achieving global sustainability objectives such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals or Aichi Targets, including remaining within planetary boundaries, necessitates proactively avoiding a proportion of the environmental impacts otherwise expected to result from economic development. Quantifying these “avoided” impacts is important for monitoring progress toward meeting sustainability objectives, but doing so in a consistent way is fraught with difficulty. Using the mitigation of biodiversity impacts by development projects as an example, we explored the challenges of defining and measuring impact avoidance. Avoidance can be defined as either action-based or outcome-based, and classified by whether it is achieved through project cancellation, spatial avoidance, design-based avoidance, or temporal avoidance. We also examined what drives different types of project proponents to implement avoidance measures. To support empirical quantification of the contribution that avoidance makes toward conservation goals, we present a framework for structuring assessments of biodiversity impact avoidance. Our framework has widespread applicability in conservation science, policy, and practice, as well as relevance for broader policies that seek to avoid environmental and social impacts

How is peer, self and teacher-assessment perceived and understood by students in an MFL context?

Teachers spend a huge amount of time assessing students work. In this research project, I investigate student response to teacher feedback, and compare this with two alternatives to teacher-led assessment. These are peer assessment techniques, where the key assessment tasks are completed by fellow students, and self-assessment, where students assess their own work. I conducted a series of interviews with students and teachers to attempt to understand exactly what was communicated by these forms of feedback. The research shows that students have a far less clear understanding of all forms of feedback than is commonly assumed by their teachers, and that significant modifications in practice are necessary if students are to benefit fully from the feedback provided to them. However, the research suggests the possibility that undertaking peer and self-assessment activities may assist students in developing their understanding sufficiently to allow them to benefit from other forms of assessment

Cassava: constraints to production and the transfer of biotechnology to African laboratories

Knowledge and technology transfer to African institutes is an important objective to help achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Plant biotechnology in particular enables innovative advances in agriculture and industry, offering new prospects to promote the integration and dissemination of improved crops and their derivatives from developing countries into local markets and the global economy. There is also the need to broaden our knowledge and understanding of cassava as a staple food crop. Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) is a vital source of calories for approximately 500 million people living in developing countries. Unfortunately, it is subject to numerous biotic and abiotic stresses that impact on production, consumption, marketability and also local and country economics. To date, improvements to cassava have been led via conventional plant breeding programmes, but with advances in molecular-assisted breeding and plant biotechnology new tools are being developed to hasten the generation of improved farmer-preferred cultivars. In this review, we report on the current constraints to cassava production and knowledge acquisition in Africa, including a case study discussing the opportunities and challenges of a technology transfer programme established between the Mikocheni Agricultural Research Institute in Tanzania and Europe-based researchers. The establishment of cassava biotechnology platform(s) should promote research capabilities in African institutions and allow scientists autonomy to adapt cassava to suit local agro-ecosystems, ultimately serving to develop a sustainable biotechnology infrastructure in African countrie

Reconciling multiple counterfactuals when evaluating biodiversity conservation impact in social-ecological systems

When evaluating the impact of a biodiversity conservation intervention, a ‘counterfactual’ is needed, as true experimental controls are typically unavailable. Counterfactuals are possible alternative system trajectories in the absence of an intervention and comparing observed outcomes against the chosen counterfactual allows the impact (change attributable to the intervention) to be determined. Since counterfactuals are hypothetical scenarios, and by definition never occur, they must be estimated. Sometimes there may be many plausible counterfactuals, given that they can include multiple drivers of biodiversity change, and be defined on a range of spatial or temporal scales. Here we posit that, by definition, conservation interventions always take place in social-ecological systems (SES; ecological systems integrated with human actors). Evaluating the impact of an intervention within an SES therefore means taking into account the counterfactuals assumed by different human actors. Use of different counterfactuals by different actors will give rise to perceived differences in the impacts of interventions, which may lead to disagreement about its success or the effectiveness of the underlying approach. Despite that there are biophysical biodiversity trends, it is often true that no single counterfactual is definitively the ‘right one’ for conservation assessment, so multiple evaluations of intervention efficacy could be considered justifiable. Therefore, we propose the need to calculate a quantity termed the sum of perceived differences, which captures the range of impact estimates associated with different actors within a given SES. The sum of perceived differences gives some indication how closely actors within an SES agree on the impacts of an intervention. We illustrate the concept of perceived differences using a set of global, national and regional case studies. We discuss options for minimising the sum, drawing upon literatures from conservation science, psychology, behavioural economics, management and finance

Improving averted loss estimates for better biodiversity outcomes from offset exchanges

Biodiversity offsetting aims to achieve at least ‘no net loss’ of biodiversity by fully compensating for residual development-induced biodiversity losses after the mitigation hierarchy (avoid, minimise, remediate) has been applied. Actions used to generate offsets can include securing protection, maintaining condition, or enhancing condition of targeted biodiversity at an offset site. Protection and maintenance actions aim to prevent future loss of biodiversity, so such offsets are referred to as ‘averted loss’ offsets. However, the benefits of such approaches can be highly uncertain and opaque, because assumptions about the change in likelihood of loss due to the offset are often implicit. As a result, the gain generated by averting losses can be intentionally or inadvertently overestimated, leading to offset outcomes that are insufficient for achieving no net loss of biodiversity. We present a method and decision tree to guide consistent and credible estimation of the likelihood of loss of a proposed offset site with and without protection, for use when calculating the amount of benefit associated with the ‘protection’ component of averted loss offsets. In circumstances such as when a jurisdictional offset policy applies to most impacts, plausible estimates of averted loss can be very low. Averting further loss of biodiversity is desirable, and averted loss offsets can be a valid approach for generating tangible gains. However, overestimation of averted loss benefits poses a major risk to biodiversity

Choosing prevention or cure when mitigating biodiversity loss: trade-offs under ‘no net loss’ policies

1. Biodiversity cannot always be conserved. Economic development activities can result in biodiversity losses, but also increase human wellbeing, so trade-offs must sometimes be made between conservation and development. An alternative strategy to avoidance of impacts through the strict protection of biodiversity (‘prevention’) is to permit certain biodiversity losses and fully compensate for them through offsets elsewhere (‘cure’). 2. Here, we build a stochastic simulation model to explore trade-offs between biodiversity loss prevention and cure, in the context of development under ‘no net loss’ (NNL) biodiversity policies. Our model implements a Management Strategy Evaluation framework, monitoring outcomes using four different performance metrics: total biodiversity, net biodiversity, total economic activity, and development activity. 3. We find that a "cure" strategy can potentially perform just as well as a prevention strategy in terms of biodiversity objectives, whilst outperforming the latter from an economic perspective. However, this does not undermine the need for a mitigation hierarchy, and the best-performing strategy depends strongly upon both the degree of compliance with the NNL policy and upon underlying ecological parameters. 4. Perhaps counterintuitively, when evaluated as advised by the technical literature (i.e. against an appropriate counterfactual scenario), we find that net biodiversity outcomes are highest when natural ecosystem recovery rates are slow (so long as development rates are also slow). 5. Finally, using the illustrative example of US wetlands, we suggest that real-world NNL policies could already be driving landscape-scale avoidance of development impacts under a "prevention" approach. 6. Policy implications. No net loss (NNL) biodiversity policy is currently being developed or implemented by over 100 countries worldwide and incorporated into environmental safeguards by multinational lenders. The socio-ecological model presented here can be used to advise decision makers about the best structure for nascent NNL policy on the basis of region-specific ecosystem recovery rates, development activity, legal compliance and monitoring uncertainty. Further, the model presents a means for estimating the degree to which biodiversity impacts are avoided by developers under NNL – an important monitoring consideration given that ensuring high levels of avoidance is crucial to robust NNL policy, but which has to date evaded assessment through purely empirical means

Effect of Ventilation Rate on Instilled Surfactant Distribution in the Pulmonary Airways of Rats

Liquid can be instilled into the pulmonary airways during medical procedures such as surfactant replacement therapy, partial liquid ventilation, and pulmonary drug delivery. For all cases, understanding the dynamics of liquid distribution in the lung will increase the efficacy of treatment. A recently developed imaging technique for the study of real-time liquid transport dynamics in the pulmonary airways was used to investigate the effect of respiratory rate on the distribution of an instilled liquid, surfactant, in a rat lung. Twelve excised rat lungs were suspended vertically, and a single bolus (0.05 ml) of exogenous surfactant (Survanta, Ross Laboratories, Columbus, OH) mixed with radiopaque tracer was instilled as a plug into the trachea. The lungs were ventilated with a 4-ml tidal volume for 20 breaths at one of two respiratory rates: 20 or 60 breaths/min. The motion of radiodense surfactant was imaged at 30 frames/s with a microfocal X-ray source and an image intensifier. Dynamics of surfactant distribution were quantified for each image by use of distribution statistics and a homogeneity index. We found that the liquid distribution depended on the time to liquid plug rupture, which depends on ventilation rate. At 20 breaths/min, liquid was localized in the gravity-dependent region of the lung. At 60 breaths/min, the liquid coated the airways, providing a more vertically uniform liquid distribution

Using conservation science to advance corporate biodiversity accountability

Biodiversity declines threaten the sustainability of global economies and societies. Acknowledging this, businesses are beginning to make commitments to account for and mitigate their influence on biodiversity, and report this in sustainability reports. The top 100 of the 2016 Fortune 500 Global companies' (the Fortune 100) sustainability reports were assessed to gauge the current state of corporate biodiversity accountability. Many companies acknowledged biodiversity, but corporate biodiversity accountability is in its infancy. Almost half (49) of the Fortune 100 mentioned biodiversity in reports, and 31 made clear biodiversity commitments, of which only 5 could be considered specific, measureable and time?bound. A variety of biodiversity?related activities were disclosed (e.g., managing impacts, restoring biodiversity, and investing in biodiversity), but only 9 companies provided quantitative indicators to verify the magnitude of their activities (e.g., area of habitat restored). No companies reported quantitative biodiversity outcomes, making it difficult to determine whether business actions were of sufficient magnitude to address impacts, and are achieving positive outcomes for nature. Conservation science can help advance approaches to corporate biodiversity accountability through developing science?based biodiversity commitments, meaningful indicators, and more targeted activities to address business impacts. With the “biodiversity policy super?year” of 2020 rapidly approaching, now is the time for conservation scientists to engage with and support businesses to play a critical role in setting the new agenda for a sustainable future for the planet, with biodiversity at its heart