Local knowledge of the impacts of eucalyptus expansion on water security in the Ethiopian highlands

Lack of long-term hydrological monitoring makes it difficult to determine impacts of changing land use on the water dynamics for many catchments in Africa. Here we use local ecological knowledge (LEK) to explore the impacts of rapid expansion of eucalyptus agroforestry on water security in the Ethiopian highlands. Local knowledge about the impacts of changes in tree cover was collected from farmers (n = 30), extension staff (n = 2) and timber merchants (n = 2) in five kebeles within the Jeldu woreda. Jeldu has undergone significant land use change over the last forty years. The area was heavily deforested 20 years ago and farmers associate this time with a major change in the water dynamics. Recently the development of a new road to Goja, the main town, opened up the area as a source of timber for Addis Ababa. This has resulted in a substantial expansion of eucalyptus plots adjacent to roads on the upper plateau and in riparian areas where growth is accelerated. Poorer farmers have been displaced on to the sloping land (which used to be woodland) where there is now evidence of rapid soil degradation. The key findings were that farmers identified significant trade-offs at the plot scale between eucalyptus and adjacent crop fields. They also identified indicators suggesting the sudden increase in eucalyptus cover had accelerated declines in water availability at landscape scales. The study showed the value of using LEK for exploring immediate landscape scale dynamics in the absence of hydrological monitoring. Whilst there is a degree of uncertainty surrounding the impacts of eucalyptus, this research demonstrated local awareness associated of problems associated with unregulated expansion of eucalyptus woodlots on the water regulating capacity at immediate landscape scales in the Ethiopian highlands

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Intranasal fentanyl versus intravenous morphine in the emergency department treatment of severe painful sickle cell crises in children: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Children with sickle cell disease (SCD) frequently and unpredictably present to the emergency department (ED) with pain. The painful event is the hallmark acute clinical manifestation of SCD, characterised by sudden onset and is usually bony in origin. This study aims to establish if 1.5mcg/kg of intranasal fentanyl (INF; administered via a Mucosal Atomiser Device, MAD™) is non-inferior to intravenous morphine 0.1 mg/kg in severe SCD-associated pain. METHODS/DESIGN: This study is a randomised,double-blind, double-dummy active control trial of children (weighing more than 10 kg) between 1 year and 21 years of age with severe painful sickle cell crisis. Severe pain is defined as rated seven or greater on a 0 to 10 age-appropriate numeric pain scale or equivalent. The trial will be conducted in a single tertiary urban paediatric ED in Dublin, Ireland. Each patient will receive a single active agent and a single placebo via the intravenous and intranasal routes. All clinical and research staff, patients and parents will be blinded to the treatment allocation. The primary endpoint is severity of pain scored at 10 min from administration of the study medications. Secondary endpoints include pain severity measured at 0, 5, 15, 20, 30, 60 and 120 min after the administration of analgesia, proportion of patients requiring rescue analgesia and incidence of adverse events. The trial ends at 120 min after the administration of the study drugs. A clinically meaningful difference in validated pain scores has been defined as 13 mm. Setting the permitted threshold to 50% of this limit (6 mm) and assuming both treatments are on average equal, a sample size of 30 patients (15 per group) will provide at least 80% power to demonstrate that INF is non-inferior to IV morphine with a level of significance of 0.05. DISCUSSION: This clinical trial will inform of the role of INF 1.5mcg/kg via MAD in the acute treatment of severe painful sickle cell crisis in children in the ED setting. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN67469672 and EudraCT no. 2011-005161-20

What factors influence the rediscovery of lost tetrapod species?

We created a database of lost and rediscovered tetrapod species, identified patterns in their distribution and factors influencing rediscovery. Tetrapod species are being lost at a faster rate than they are being rediscovered, due to slowing rates of rediscovery for amphibians, birds and mammals, and rapid rates of loss for reptiles. Finding lost species and preventing future losses should therefore be a conservation priority. By comparing the taxonomic and spatial distribution of lost and rediscovered tetrapod species, we have identified regions and taxa with many lost species in comparison to those that have been rediscovered—our results may help to prioritise search effort to find them. By identifying factors that influence rediscovery, we have improved our ability to broadly distinguish the types of species that are likely to be found from those that are not (because they are likely to be extinct). Some lost species, particularly those that are small and perceived to be uncharismatic, may have been neglected in terms of conservation effort, and other lost species may be hard to find due to their intrinsic characteristics and the characteristics of the environments they occupy (e.g. nocturnal species, fossorial species and species occupying habitats that are more difficult to survey such as wetlands). These lost species may genuinely await rediscovery. However, other lost species that possess characteristics associated with rediscovery (e.g. large species) and that are also associated with factors that negatively influence rediscovery (e.g. those occupying small islands) are more likely to be extinct. Our results may foster pragmatic search protocols that prioritise lost species likely to still exist

Restoring habitat for fire-impacted species' across degraded Australian landscapes

In the summer of 2019-2020, southern Australia experienced the largest fires on record, detrimentally impacting the habitat of native species, many of which were already threatened by past and current anthropogenic land use. A large-scale restoration effort to improve degraded species habitat would provide fire-affected species with the chance to recover and persist in burnt and unburnt habitat. To facilitate this, decision-makers require information on priority species needs for restoration intervention, the suite of potential restoration interventions, and the priority locations for applying these interventions. We prioritize actions in areas where restoration would most likely provide cost-effective benefits to priority species (defined by each species proportion of habitat burned, threat status, and vulnerability to fires), by integrating current and future species habitat suitability maps with spatially modelled costs of restoration interventions such as replanting, removing invasive species, and implementing ecologically appropriate fire management. We show that restoring the top similar to 69% (112 million hectares) of the study region (current and future distributions of priority species) accounts for, on average, 95% of current and future habitat for every priority species and costs similar to AUD$73 billion yr(-1) (AUD$650 hectare(-1) yr(-1)) annualized over 30 years. This effort would include restoration actions over 6 million hectares of fire-impacted habitat, costing similar to AUD$8.8 billion/year. Large scale restoration efforts are often costly but can have significant societal co-benefits beyond biodiversity conservation. We also show that up to 291 MtCO2 (similar to 150 Mt DM) of carbon could be sequestered by restoration efforts, resulting in approximately AUD$253 million yr(-1) in carbon market revenue if all carbon was remunerated. Our approach highlights the scale, costs, and benefits of targeted restoration activities both inside and outside of the immediate bushfire footprint over vast areas of different land tenures

When are breast cancer patients at highest risk of venous thromboembolism: a cohort study using English healthcare data

Breast cancer patients are at increased risk of VTE, particularly in the peri-diagnosis period. However, no previous epidemiological studies have investigated the relative impact of breast cancer treatments in a time-dependent manner. We aimed to determine the impact of breast cancer stage, biology and treatment on the absolute and relative risks of VTE, using several recently linked data sources from England. Our cohort comprised 13,202 breast cancer patients from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (linked to Hospital Episode Statistics and Cancer Registry data), diagnosed between 1997 and 2006 with follow-up continuing to the end of 2010. Cox regression analysis was performed to determine which demographic, treatment-related and biological factors independently affected VTE risk. Women had an annual VTE incidence of 6% whilst receiving chemotherapy which was 10.8-fold higher (95% CI, 8.2 to 14.4; absolute risk (AR) =59.6 per 1000 person-years) than women who did not receive chemotherapy. Following surgery the risk was significantly raised in the first month (HR=2.2; 95% CI 1.4 to 3.4; AR=23.5; reference group, no surgery), but it was not raised subsequent to this. Risk of VTE was noticeably higher in the 3-months following initiation of Tamoxifen compared with the risk before therapy (HR=5.5; 95% CI 2.3 to 12.7; AR=24.1), however commencement of aromatase inhibitors was not associated with VTE (HR=0.8; 95% CI 0.5 to 1.4; AR=28.3). In conclusion, women receiving chemotherapy for breast cancer have a clinically important risk of VTE, whilst an increased risk of VTE immediately following endocrine therapy is restricted to Tamoxifen