Interdisciplinary citizen science on urban green ingrastructure for building sustainable cities

Green Infrastructure is a nature-based-solution with the potential of mitigating the harmful and even deadly consequences of climate change and urbanisation in our urban areas. In particular, urban trees provide us with multiple ecosystem services, such as storm water control, carbon sequestration, soil health and temperature regulation. When supported appropriately, urban trees have impactful positive effects on urban sustainability and human wellbeing, seen as improvements not just in the environment, but also in human health and local economic growth. Nevertheless, the lack of integrated studies to understand the role of urban trees and their best management has resulted in conflicting guidance and approaches to land and park management. Moreover, the lack of community awareness and engagement around urban environmental challenges is often a further barrier for improving the sustainability and resilience of our cities. Here we present a multidisciplinary environmental citizen science research on urban trees from three European cities, Chantilly, London and Birmingham. We seek to increase our understanding of the benefits of green infrastructure with special focus on trees, using multiple disciplines (hydrology, soil health, tree vitality and microclimate) to allow local communities to better plan and adapt to extreme weather events. The success of our work relies in working with leading scientists of each of these fields as well as the community, therefore creating awareness, upskilling and integrating citizens in taking role in managing our environmental issues

Higher sustainability thanks to better afforestation of Cities (HSBC)

The city represents a strong societal challenge because it concentrates more than 60% of the world population and climate change may increase the vulnerability of populations to extreme thermal conditions. The ecosystem services provided by the tree in the city, in the fight against urban heat islands are a major theme of our INRA team. An experimental training on the role of green infrastructure in cities for climate change mitigation has been developed to raise citizens' awareness of sustainable development. This training is organized in partnership with the ONG EarthWatch in the form of two-day residential workshops where the ecosystem services provided by urban trees are studied according to the vitality of trees. The "citizen researchers" in training are employees of HSBC bank who wish to support, through this action, sustainable investment in the development objectives of the company and its customers. This program started in 2018 for 2 years and takes place in 3 cities: Birmingham, Chantilly, London, and breaks down into 5 formations per year and per site. It allows us to both expand our experimental sites and multiply our measurements (20 citizen researchers per training and per city) while collaborating with colleagues from University of Reading, London and Strasbourg with CNRS for a set of identical measures, on the soil, the tree (Tilia cordata) and the climate on all the sites. This training also presents our research work to decision-makers with the power to influence green infrastructure funding for the development of more sustainable cities

The response of vegetation on the Andean flank in western Amazonia to Pleistocene climate change

A reconstruction of past environmental change from Ecuador reveals the response of lower montane forest on the Andean flank in western Amazonia to glacial-interglacial global climate change. Radiometric dating of volcanic ash indicates that deposition occurred ~324,000 to 193,000 years ago during parts of Marine Isotope Stages 9, 7, and 6. Fossil pollen and wood preserved within organic sediments suggest that the composition of the forest altered radically in response to glacial-interglacial climate change. The presence of Podocarpus macrofossils ~1000 meters below the lower limit of their modern distribution indicates a relative cooling of at least 5°C during glacials and persistence of wet conditions. Interglacial deposits contain thermophilic palms suggesting warm and wet climates. Hence, global temperature change can radically alter vegetation communities and biodiversity in this region

Postglacial vegetation, fire and climate dynamics at Central Chilean Patagonia (Lake Shaman, 44ºS)

A 19 cal ka BP pollen and charcoal record from Lake Shaman (44°S; 71°W, Chile) was analyzed to establish vegetation, fire and climate dynamics of the forest-steppe ecotone in Central Chilean Patagonia. Lake Shaman record indicates that the upper Río Cisnes valley was free of ice at around 19 cal ka BP. From this date and until 14.8 cal ka BP, a grass steppe with high proportions of shrubs associated to colder and drier conditions than present developed in this area. A continuous increase of Nothofagus accompanied by a decline in the steppe shrubs and sudden dominance of paludal over aquatic plants from 11 cal ka BP was associated to effective moisture increase but still under modern values. The replacement of the cold-dry grass-shrub steppe by a similar-than-present forest-steppe ecotone suggests an increase in temperature indicating the onset of the Holocene. At the same time, moderate fire activity suggested by the charcoal record could be related to major fuel availability as consequence of Nothofagus forest expansion. Between 8 and 3 cal ka BP, the record indicates the easternmost position of the forest-steppe ecotone suggesting the highest effective moisture with the establishment of seasonality between 5 and 3 cal ka BP. From 3 cal ka BP, the record indicates a retraction of the forest-steppe ecotone accompanied by a high pollen record variability and an increased fire activity. These late changes suggest decreased effective moisture associated with a high climatic variability. At regional and extra-regional scale, climatic changes at Lake Shaman's record are mostly associated to changes (latitudinal shifts and/or strengthening/weakening) of past Southern Westerlies that were previously recorded along Patagonia from the Lateglacial to the mid-Holocene. During the Late Holocene, a regional pattern characterized by high record variability emerges throughout Central Chilean Patagonia. This variability would be related to (1) low magnitude Southern Westerlies changes probably associated to ENSO and/or SAM or (2) the complex relationships between vegetation, fire and human occupations during the last 3 cal ka

The multiple ecosystem services of urban green infrastructure and their trde-offs: a European citizen science project

The multiple ecosystem services of urban green infrastructure and their trde-offs: a European citizen science project. 3rd European Urban Green Infrastructure Conferenc

Differences in sexual behaviour of two distant populations of the funnel-web wolf spider Aglaoctenus lagotis

Generally, sexual repertoire within a species is conserved, but frequencies of occurrence of sexual behavioral acts often vary, and wide geographic distributions may favor these variations. Aglaoctenus lagotis is distributed along South America and belongs to Sosippinae, a subfamily of wolf spiders that builds funnel webs. Previous reports, based on different populations, suggested variations in sexual behavior and life cycle. Our objective was to describe and compare the sexual behavior of two populations of A. lagotis: ‘Southern Uruguay’ (SU) and ‘Central Argentina’ (CA). We carried out intrapopulation trials, in the laboratory, with 15 female–male pair matings. The most representative courtship acts in SU were web-stretching, striding-forward and forelegs-elevating, whereas in CA they were alternate-waving, web-stretching and leg-tapping. Juddering, forelegs-elevating and striding-forward were exclusive for SU, while alternate-waving and simultaneous-waving were exclusive for CA. We also found differences in copulatory characteristics such as frequencies of insertions and ejaculations. We documented body-shaking during copulation for the first time. Some sexual acts were exclusive of each population, while the shared ones differed in pattern and frequencies of occurrence. In addition to variations in sexual periods, these differences may favor divergence processes or an exceptional high level of flexibility in the sexual behavior of A. lagotis.Fil: González Pérez, María de la Macarena. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas. Centro Cientifico Tecnologico Cordoba. Instituto de Diversidad y Ecologia Animal; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cordoba. Facultad de Cs.exactas Fisicas y Naturales. Catedra de Diversidad Animal I; Argentina. Instituto de Invest. Biologicas "clemente Estable"; UruguayFil: Peretti, Alfredo Vicente. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas. Centro Cientifico Tecnologico Cordoba. Instituto de Diversidad y Ecologia Animal; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cordoba. Facultad de Cs.exactas Fisicas y Naturales. Catedra de Diversidad Animal I; ArgentinaFil: Viera, Carmen. Instituto de Invest. Biologicas "clemente Estable"; Uruguay. Universidad de la Republica; UruguayFil: Costa, Fernando G.. Instituto de Invest. Biologicas "clemente Estable"; Urugua

Pharmaceutical pollution of the world's rivers

Environmental exposure to active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) can have negative effects on the health of ecosystems and humans. While numerous studies have monitored APIs in rivers, these employ different analytical methods, measure different APIs, and have ignored many of the countries of the world. This makes it difficult to quantify the scale of the problem from a global perspective. Furthermore, comparison of the existing data, generated for different studies/regions/continents, is challenging due to the vast differences between the analytical methodologies employed. Here, we present a global-scale study of API pollution in 258 of the world's rivers, representing the environmental influence of 471.4 million people across 137 geographic regions. Samples were obtained from 1,052 locations in 104 countries (representing all continents and 36 countries not previously studied for API contamination) and analyzed for 61 APIs. Highest cumulative API concentrations were observed in sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia, and South America. The most contaminated sites were in low- to middle-income countries and were associated with areas with poor wastewater and waste management infrastructure and pharmaceutical manufacturing. The most frequently detected APIs were carbamazepine, metformin, and caffeine (a compound also arising from lifestyle use), which were detected at over half of the sites monitored. Concentrations of at least one API at 25.7% of the sampling sites were greater than concentrations considered safe for aquatic organisms, or which are of concern in terms of selection for antimicrobial resistance. Therefore, pharmaceutical pollution poses a global threat to environmental and human health, as well as to delivery of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals