Estimates of CO2 from fires in the United States: implications for carbon management

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Fires emit significant amounts of CO₂to the atmosphere. These emissions, however, are highly variable in both space and time. Additionally, CO₂emissions estimates from fires are very uncertain. The combination of high spatial and temporal variability and substantial uncertainty associated with fire CO₂emissions can be problematic to efforts to develop remote sensing, monitoring, and inverse modeling techniques to quantify carbon fluxes at the continental scale. Policy and carbon management decisions based on atmospheric sampling/modeling techniques must account for the impact of fire CO₂emissions; a task that may prove very difficult for the foreseeable future. This paper addresses the variability of CO₂emissions from fires across the US, how these emissions compare to anthropogenic emissions of CO₂and Net Primary Productivity, and the potential implications for monitoring programs and policy development.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Average annual CO₂emissions from fires in the lower 48 (LOWER48) states from 2002–2006 are estimated to be 213 (± 50 std. dev.) Tg CO₂yr^-1and 80 (± 89 std. dev.) Tg CO₂yr^-1in Alaska. These estimates have significant interannual and spatial variability. Needleleaf forests in the Southeastern US and the Western US are the dominant source regions for US fire CO₂emissions. Very high emission years typically coincide with droughts, and climatic variability is a major driver of the high interannual and spatial variation in fire emissions. The amount of CO₂emitted from fires in the US is equivalent to 4–6% of anthropogenic emissions at the continental scale and, at the state-level, fire emissions of CO₂can, in some cases, exceed annual emissions of CO₂from fossil fuel usage.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The CO₂released from fires, overall, is a small fraction of the estimated average annual Net Primary Productivity and, unlike fossil fuel CO₂emissions, the pulsed emissions of CO₂during fires are partially counterbalanced by uptake of CO₂by regrowing vegetation in the decades following fire. Changes in fire severity and frequency can, however, lead to net changes in atmospheric CO₂and the short-term impacts of fire emissions on monitoring, modeling, and carbon management policy are substantial.</p

Behavioral and Autonomic Responses to Acute Restraint Stress Are Segregated within the Lateral Septal Area of Rats

Background: The Lateral Septal Area (LSA) is involved with autonomic and behavior responses associated to stress. In rats, acute restraint (RS) is an unavoidable stress situation that causes autonomic (body temperature, mean arterial pressure (MAP) and heart rate (HR) increases) and behavioral (increased anxiety-like behavior) changes in rats. The LSA is one of several brain regions that have been involved in stress responses. The aim of the present study was to investigate if the neurotransmission blockade in the LSA would interfere in the autonomic and behavioral changes induced by RS. Methodology/Principal Findings: Male Wistar rats with bilateral cannulae aimed at the LSA, an intra-abdominal datalogger (for recording internal body temperature), and an implanted catheter into the femoral artery (for recording and cardiovascular parameters) were used. They received bilateral microinjections of the non-selective synapse blocker cobalt chloride (CoCl2, 1 mM / 100 nL) or vehicle 10 min before RS session. The tail temperature was measured by an infrared thermal imager during the session. Twenty-four h after the RS session the rats were tested in the elevated plus maze (EPM). Conclusions/Significance: Inhibition of LSA neurotransmission reduced the MAP and HR increases observed during RS. However, no changes were observed in the decrease in skin temperature and increase in internal body temperature observed during this period. Also, LSA inhibition did not change the anxiogenic effect induced by RS observed 24 h later in the EPM. The present results suggest that LSA neurotransmission is involved in the cardiovascular but not the temperatur

South Atlantic paleobathymetry since early Cretaceous

We present early Cretaceous to present paleobathymetric reconstructions and quantitative uncertainty estimates for the South Atlantic, offering a strong basis for studies of paleocirculation, paleoclimate and paleobiogeography. Circulation in an initially salty and anoxic ocean, restricted by the topography of the Falkland Plateau, Rio Grande Ridge and Walvis Rise, favoured deposition of thick evaporites in shallow water of the Brazilian-Angolan margins. This ceased as sea oor spreading propagated northwards, opening an equatorial gateway to shallow and intermediate circulation. This gateway, together with subsiding volcano-tectonic barriers would have played a key role in Late Cretaceous climate changes. Later deepening and widening of the South Atlantic, together with gateway opening at Drake Passage would lead, by mid-Miocene (∼15 Ma) to the establishment of modern-style thermohaline circulation

Biochronostratigraphy and paleoenvironment analysis of Neogene deposits from the Pelotas Basin (well 2-TG-96-RS), Southernmost Brazil

This paper presents the integration of micropaleontological (palynology and foraminifera) and isotopic (87Sr/86Sr) analysis of a selected interval from the well 2-TG-96-RS, drilled on the onshore portion of the Pelotas Basin, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. A total of eight samples of the section between 140.20 and 73.50 m in depth was selected for palynological analysis, revealing diversified and abundant palynomorph associations. Species of spores, pollen grains and dinoflagellate cysts are the most common palynomorphs found. Planktic and benthic calcareous foraminifera were recovered from the lowest two levels of the section (140.20 and 134.30 m). Based on the stratigraphic range of the species of dinoflagellate cysts and sporomorphs, a span age from Late Miocene to Early Pliocene is assigned. The relative age obtained from the 87Sr/86Sr ratio in shells of calcareous foraminifers indicates a Late Miocene (Messinian) correspondence, corroborating the biostratigraphic positioning performed with palynomorphs. Paleoenvironmental interpretations based on the quantitative distribution of organic components (palynomorphs, phytoclasts and amorphous organic matter) throughout the section and on foraminiferal associations indicate a shallow marine depositional environment for the section. Two palynologicals intervals were recognized based on palynofacies analysis, related to middle to outer shelf (140.20 to 128.90 m) and inner shelf (115.75 to 73.50 m) conditions

Data Descriptor: A global multiproxy database for temperature reconstructions of the Common Era

Reproducible climate reconstructions of the Common Era (1 CE to present) are key to placing industrial-era warming into the context of natural climatic variability. Here we present a community-sourced database of temperature-sensitive proxy records from the PAGES2k initiative. The database gathers 692 records from 648 locations, including all continental regions and major ocean basins. The records are from trees, ice, sediment, corals, speleothems, documentary evidence, and other archives. They range in length from 50 to 2000 years, with a median of 547 years, while temporal resolution ranges from biweekly to centennial. Nearly half of the proxy time series are significantly correlated with HadCRUT4.2 surface temperature over the period 1850-2014. Global temperature composites show a remarkable degree of coherence between high-and low-resolution archives, with broadly similar patterns across archive types, terrestrial versus marine locations, and screening criteria. The database is suited to investigations of global and regional temperature variability over the Common Era, and is shared in the Linked Paleo Data (LiPD) format, including serializations in Matlab, R and Python.(TABLE)Since the pioneering work of D'Arrigo and Jacoby1-3, as well as Mann et al. 4,5, temperature reconstructions of the Common Era have become a key component of climate assessments6-9. Such reconstructions depend strongly on the composition of the underlying network of climate proxies10, and it is therefore critical for the climate community to have access to a community-vetted, quality-controlled database of temperature-sensitive records stored in a self-describing format. The Past Global Changes (PAGES) 2k consortium, a self-organized, international group of experts, recently assembled such a database, and used it to reconstruct surface temperature over continental-scale regions11 (hereafter, ` PAGES2k-2013').This data descriptor presents version 2.0.0 of the PAGES2k proxy temperature database (Data Citation 1). It augments the PAGES2k-2013 collection of terrestrial records with marine records assembled by the Ocean2k working group at centennial12 and annual13 time scales. In addition to these previously published data compilations, this version includes substantially more records, extensive new metadata, and validation. Furthermore, the selection criteria for records included in this version are applied more uniformly and transparently across regions, resulting in a more cohesive data product.This data descriptor describes the contents of the database, the criteria for inclusion, and quantifies the relation of each record with instrumental temperature. In addition, the paleotemperature time series are summarized as composites to highlight the most salient decadal-to centennial-scale behaviour of the dataset and check mutual consistency between paleoclimate archives. We provide extensive Matlab code to probe the database-processing, filtering and aggregating it in various ways to investigate temperature variability over the Common Era. The unique approach to data stewardship and code-sharing employed here is designed to enable an unprecedented scale of investigation of the temperature history of the Common Era, by the scientific community and citizen-scientists alike