The Monitoring and Assessment Plan (MAP) Greater Everglades Wetlands Module- Landscape Pattern- Ridge, Slough, and Tree Island Mosaics: Year 1 Annual Report

In the current managed Everglades system, the pre-drainage, patterned mosaic of sawgrass ridges, sloughs and tree islands has been substantially altered or reduced largely as a result of human alterations to historic ecological and hydrological processes that sustained landscape patterns. The pre-compartmentalization ridge and slough landscape was a mosaic of sloughs, elongated sawgrass ridges (50-200m wide), and tree islands. The ridges and sloughs and tree islands were elongated in the direction of the water flow, with roughly equal area of ridge and slough. Over the past decades, the ridge-slough topographic relief and spatial patterning have degraded in many areas of the Everglades. Nutrient enriched areas have become dominated by Typha with little topographic relief; areas of reduced flow have lost the elongated ridge-slough topography; and ponded areas with excessively long hydroperiods have experienced a decline in ridge prevalence and shape, and in the number of tree islands (Sklar et al. 2004, Ogden 2005)

Field experiments and meta-analysis reveal wetland vegetation as a crucial element in the coastal protection paradigm

Increasing rates of sea-level rise and wave action threaten coastal populations. Defense of shorelines by protection and restoration of wetlands has been invoked as a win-win strategy for humans and nature, yet evidence from field experiments supporting the wetland protection function is uncommon, as is the understanding of its context dependency. Here we provide evidence from field manipulations showing that the loss of wetland vegetation, regardless of disturbance size, increases the rate of erosion on wave-stressed shorelines. Vegetation removal (simulated disturbance) along the edge of salt marshes reveals that loss of wetland plants elevates the rate of lateral erosion and that extensive root systems, rather than aboveground biomass, are primarily responsible for protection against edge erosion in marshes. Meta-analysis further shows that disturbances that generate plant dieoff on salt marsh edges generally hasten edge erosion in coastal marshes and that the erosion protection function of wetlands relates more to lateral than vertical edge-erosional processes and is positively correlated with the amount of below-ground plant biomass lost. Collectively, our findings substantiate a coastal protection paradigm that incorporates preservation of shoreline vegetation, illuminate key context dependencies in this theory, and highlight local disturbances (e.g., oil spills) that kill wetland plants as agents that can accelerate coastal erosion

The response of Tampa Bay to a legacy mining nutrient release in the year following the event

IntroductionCultural eutrophication threatens numerous ecological and economical resources of Florida’s coastal ecosystems, such as beaches, mangroves, and seagrasses. In April 2021, an infrastructure failure at the retired Piney Point phosphorus mining retention reservoir garnered national attention, as 814 million liters of nutrient rich water were released into Tampa Bay, Florida over 10 days. The release of nitrogen and phosphorus-rich water into Tampa Bay – a region that had been known as a restoration success story since the 1990s – has highlighted the potential for unexpected challenges for coastal nutrient management.MethodsFor a year after the release, we sampled bi-weekly at four sites to monitor changes in nutrients, stable isotopes, and phytoplankton communities, complemented with continuous monitoring by multiparameter sondes. Our data complement the synthesis efforts of regional partners, the Tampa Bay and Sarasota Bay Estuary Programs, to better understand the effects of anthropogenic nutrients on estuarine health.ResultsPhytoplankton community structure indicated an initial diatom bloom that dissipated by the end of April 2021. In the summer, the bay was dominated by Karenia brevis, with conditions improving into the fall. To determine if there was a unique carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) signature of the discharge water, stable isotope values of carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) were analyzed in suspended particulate material (SPM). The δ15N values of the discharge SPM were −17.88‰ ± 0.76, which is exceptionally low and was unique relative to other nutrient sources in the region. In May and early June of 2021, all sites exhibited a decline in the δ15N values of SPM, suggesting that discharged N was incorporated into SPM after the event. The occurrence of very low δ15N values at the reference site, on the Gulf Coast outside of the Bay, indicates that some of the discharge was transported outside of Tampa Bay.DiscussionThis work illustrates the need for comprehensive nutrient management strategies to assess and manage the full range of consequences associated with anthropogenic nutrient inputs into coastal ecosystems. Ongoing and anticipated impacts of climate change – such as increasing tropical storm intensity, temperatures, rainfall, and sea level rise – will exacerbate this need

The state of the Martian climate

60°N was +2.0°C, relative to the 1981–2010 average value (Fig. 5.1). This marks a new high for the record. The average annual surface air temperature (SAT) anomaly for 2016 for land stations north of starting in 1900, and is a significant increase over the previous highest value of +1.2°C, which was observed in 2007, 2011, and 2015. Average global annual temperatures also showed record values in 2015 and 2016. Currently, the Arctic is warming at more than twice the rate of lower latitudes

The Science Performance of JWST as Characterized in Commissioning

This paper characterizes the actual science performance of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), as determined from the six month commissioning period. We summarize the performance of the spacecraft, telescope, science instruments, and ground system, with an emphasis on differences from pre-launch expectations. Commissioning has made clear that JWST is fully capable of achieving the discoveries for which it was built. Moreover, almost across the board, the science performance of JWST is better than expected; in most cases, JWST will go deeper faster than expected. The telescope and instrument suite have demonstrated the sensitivity, stability, image quality, and spectral range that are necessary to transform our understanding of the cosmos through observations spanning from near-earth asteroids to the most distant galaxies

FCC Physics Opportunities: Future Circular Collider Conceptual Design Report Volume 1

We review the physics opportunities of the Future Circular Collider, covering its e+e-, pp, ep and heavy ion programmes. We describe the measurement capabilities of each FCC component, addressing the study of electroweak, Higgs and strong interactions, the top quark and flavour, as well as phenomena beyond the Standard Model. We highlight the synergy and complementarity of the different colliders, which will contribute to a uniquely coherent and ambitious research programme, providing an unmatchable combination of precision and sensitivity to new physics

FCC-ee: The Lepton Collider: Future Circular Collider Conceptual Design Report Volume 2

In response to the 2013 Update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics, the Future Circular Collider (FCC) study was launched, as an international collaboration hosted by CERN. This study covers a highest-luminosity high-energy lepton collider (FCC-ee) and an energy-frontier hadron collider (FCC-hh), which could, successively, be installed in the same 100 km tunnel. The scientific capabilities of the integrated FCC programme would serve the worldwide community throughout the 21st century. The FCC study also investigates an LHC energy upgrade, using FCC-hh technology. This document constitutes the second volume of the FCC Conceptual Design Report, devoted to the electron-positron collider FCC-ee. After summarizing the physics discovery opportunities, it presents the accelerator design, performance reach, a staged operation scenario, the underlying technologies, civil engineering, technical infrastructure, and an implementation plan. FCC-ee can be built with today’s technology. Most of the FCC-ee infrastructure could be reused for FCC-hh. Combining concepts from past and present lepton colliders and adding a few novel elements, the FCC-ee design promises outstandingly high luminosity. This will make the FCC-ee a unique precision instrument to study the heaviest known particles (Z, W and H bosons and the top quark), offering great direct and indirect sensitivity to new physics

The role of ETG modes in JET-ILW pedestals with varying levels of power and fuelling

We present the results of GENE gyrokinetic calculations based on a series of JET-ITER-like-wall (ILW) type I ELMy H-mode discharges operating with similar experimental inputs but at different levels of power and gas fuelling. We show that turbulence due to electron-temperature-gradient (ETGs) modes produces a significant amount of heat flux in four JET-ILW discharges, and, when combined with neoclassical simulations, is able to reproduce the experimental heat flux for the two low gas pulses. The simulations plausibly reproduce the high-gas heat fluxes as well, although power balance analysis is complicated by short ELM cycles. By independently varying the normalised temperature gradients (omega(T)(e)) and normalised density gradients (omega(ne )) around their experimental values, we demonstrate that it is the ratio of these two quantities eta(e) = omega(Te)/omega(ne) that determines the location of the peak in the ETG growth rate and heat flux spectra. The heat flux increases rapidly as eta(e) increases above the experimental point, suggesting that ETGs limit the temperature gradient in these pulses. When quantities are normalised using the minor radius, only increases in omega(Te) produce appreciable increases in the ETG growth rates, as well as the largest increases in turbulent heat flux which follow scalings similar to that of critical balance theory. However, when the heat flux is normalised to the electron gyro-Bohm heat flux using the temperature gradient scale length L-Te, it follows a linear trend in correspondence with previous work by different authors

Spectroscopic camera analysis of the roles of molecularly assisted reaction chains during detachment in JET L-mode plasmas

The roles of the molecularly assisted ionization (MAI), recombination (MAR) and dissociation (MAD) reaction chains with respect to the purely atomic ionization and recombination processes were studied experimentally during detachment in low-confinement mode (L-mode) plasmas in JET with the help of experimentally inferred divertor plasma and neutral conditions, extracted previously from filtered camera observations of deuterium Balmer emission, and the reaction coefficients provided by the ADAS, AMJUEL and H2VIBR atomic and molecular databases. The direct contribution of MAI and MAR in the outer divertor particle balance was found to be inferior to the electron-atom ionization (EAI) and electron-ion recombination (EIR). Near the outer strike point, a strong atom source due to the D+2-driven MAD was, however, observed to correlate with the onset of detachment at outer strike point temperatures of Te,osp = 0.9-2.0 eV via increased plasma-neutral interactions before the increasing dominance of EIR at Te,osp < 0.9 eV, followed by increasing degree of detachment. The analysis was supported by predictions from EDGE2D-EIRENE simulations which were in qualitative agreement with the experimental observations

Shattered pellet injection experiments at JET in support of the ITER disruption mitigation system design

A series of experiments have been executed at JET to assess the efficacy of the newly installed shattered pellet injection (SPI) system in mitigating the effects of disruptions. Issues, important for the ITER disruption mitigation system, such as thermal load mitigation, avoidance of runaway electron (RE) formation, radiation asymmetries during thermal quench mitigation, electromagnetic load control and RE energy dissipation have been addressed over a large parameter range. The efficiency of the mitigation has been examined for the various SPI injection strategies. The paper summarises the results from these JET SPI experiments and discusses their implications for the ITER disruption mitigation scheme