wildfire activity and land use drove 20th century changes in forest cover in the colorado front range

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Extraction of uranium from seawater: evaluation of uranium resources and plant siting

This report deals with the evaluation of U.S. coastal waters as a uranium resource and with the selection of a suitable site for construction of a large-scale plant for uranium extraction. Evaluation of the resource revealed that although the concentration of uranium is quite low, about 3.3 ppB in seawater of average oceanic salinity, the amount present in the total volume of the oceans is very great, some 4.5 billion metric tons. Of this, perhaps only that uranium contained in the upper 100 meters or so of the surface well-mixed layer should be considered accessible for recovery, some 160 million tonnes. The study indicated that open ocean seawater acquired for the purpose of uranium extraction would be a more favorable resource than rivers entering the sea, cooling water of power plants, or the feed or effluent streams of existing plants producing other products such as magnesium, bromine, or potable and/or agricultural water from seawater. Various considerations led to the selection of a site for a pumped seawater coastal plant at a coastal location. Puerto Yabucoa, Puerto Rico was selected. Recommendations are given for further studies. 21 figures, 8 tables

Effects of bark beetle outbreaks on forest landscape pattern in the southern rocky mountains, U.S.A.

Since the late 1990s, extensive outbreaks of native bark beetles (Curculionidae: Scolytinae) have affected coniferous forests throughout Europe and North America, driving changes in carbon storage, wildlife habitat, nutrient cycling, and water resource provisioning. Remote sensing is a cru-cial tool for quantifying the effects of these disturbances across broad landscapes. In particular, Landsat time series (LTS) are increasingly used to characterize outbreak dynamics, including the presence and severity of bark beetle-caused tree mortality, though broad-scale LTS-based maps are rarely informed by detailed field validation. Here we used spatial and temporal information from LTS products, in combination with extensive field data and Random Forest (RF) models, to develop 30-m maps of the presence (i.e., any occurrence) and severity (i.e., cumulative percent basal area mortality) of beetle-caused tree mortality 1997–2019 in subalpine forests throughout the Southern Rocky Mountains, USA. Using resultant maps, we also quantified spatial patterns of cumulative tree mortality throughout the region, an important yet poorly understood concept in beetle-affected forests. RF models using LTS products to predict presence and severity performed well, with 80.3% correctly classified (Kappa = 0.61) and R2 = 0.68 (RMSE = 17.3), respectively. We found that ≥10,256 km2 of subalpine forest area (39.5% of the study area) was affected by bark beetles and 19.3% of the study area experienced ≥70% tree mortality over the twenty-three year period. Variograms indi-cated that severity was autocorrelated at scales \u3c 250 km. Interestingly, cumulative patch-size dis-tributions showed that areas with a near-total loss of the overstory canopy (i.e., ≥90% mortality) were relatively small (\u3c0.24 km2) and isolated throughout the study area. Our findings help to in-form an understanding of the variable effects of bark beetle outbreaks across complex forested regions and provide insight into patterns of disturbance legacies, landscape connectivity, and susceptibility to future disturbance

Selected bibliography for the extraction of uranium from seawater: chemical process and plant design feasibility study

A selected annotated bibliography of 521 references was prepared as a part of a feasibility study of the extraction of uranium from seawater. For the most part, these references are related to the chemical processes whereby the uranium is removed from the seawater. A companion docment contains a similar bibliography of 471 references related to oceanographic and uranium extraction plant siting considerations, although some of the references are in common. The bibliography was prepared by computer retrieval from Chemical Abstracts, Nuclear Science Abstracts, Energy Data Base, NTIS, and Oceanic Abstracts. References are listed by author, country of author, and selected keywords

Monoubiquitination of syntaxin 3 leads to retrieval from the basolateral plasma membrane and facilitates cargo recruitment to exosomes

Syntaxin 3 (Stx3), a SNARE protein located and functioning at the apical plasma membrane of epithelial cells, is required for epithelial polarity. A fraction of Stx3 is localized to late endosomes/lysosomes, although how it traffics there and its function in these organelles is unknown. Here we report that Stx3 undergoes monoubiquitination in a conserved polybasic domain. Stx3 present at the basolateral—but not the apical—plasma membrane is rapidly endocytosed, targeted to endosomes, internalized into intraluminal vesicles (ILVs), and excreted in exosomes. A nonubiquitinatable mutant of Stx3 (Stx3-5R) fails to enter this pathway and leads to the inability of the apical exosomal cargo protein GPRC5B to enter the ILV/exosomal pathway. This suggests that ubiquitination of Stx3 leads to removal from the basolateral membrane to achieve apical polarity, that Stx3 plays a role in the recruitment of cargo to exosomes, and that the Stx3-5R mutant acts as a dominant-negative inhibitor. Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) acquires its membrane in an intracellular compartment and we show that Stx3-5R strongly reduces the number of excreted infectious viral particles. Altogether these results suggest that Stx3 functions in the transport of specific proteins to apical exosomes and that HCMV exploits this pathway for virion excretion

Heat flow from the Southeast Indian Ridge flanks between 80°E and 140°E: Data review and analysis

International audienceWe analyze available heat flow data from the flanks of the Southeast Indian Ridge adjacent to or within the Australian-Antarctic Discordance (AAD), an area with patchy sediment cover and highly fractured seafloor as dissected by ridge- and fracture-parallel faults. The data set includes 23 new data points collected along a 14-Ma old isochron and 19 existing measurements from the 20- to 24-Ma old crust. Most sites of measurements exhibit low heat flux (from 2 to 50 mW m−2) with near-linear temperature-depth profiles except at a few sites, where recent bottom water temperature change may have caused nonlinearity toward the sediment surface. Because the igneous basement is expected to outcrop a short distance away from any measurement site, we hypothesize that horizontally channelized water circulation within the uppermost crust is the primary process for the widespread low heat flow values. The process may be further influenced by vertical fluid flow along numerous fault zones that crisscross the AAD seafloor. Systematic measurements along and across the fault zones of interest as well as seismic profiling for sediment distribution are required to confirm this possible, suspected effect