Marvin Boelman Letter

A letter from a former student of Theora England, Marvin Boelman, given to her on her retirement.https://nwcommons.nwciowa.edu/theorareflections/1000/thumbnail.jp

Digital Democracy A summary report for practitioners

Thanks to digital technologies, today we can bank, read the news, study for a degree, and chat with friends across the world - all without leaving the comfort of our homes. But one area that seems to have remained impervious to these benefits is our model of democratic governance, which has remained largely unchanged since it was invented in the 20th century.There has been a failure to change, despite the fact that disillusionment with existing political institutions is widespread, trust in our elected representatives is chronically lacking and election turnout is low.1, 2 At the local level, councils are facing the challenges of increasing pressure on services with tougher demands for accountability from localresidents. Membership of political parties is significantly lower than a few decades ago. The rise of alternative social movements, both online and offline, is resulting in a move away from traditional forms of political participation. Recently, a small number of national parliaments, local government bodies and political parties have seen the potential for technology to help address these issues. Has the time for digital democracy finally come

Digital Democracy : The Tools Transforming Political Engagement

This paper shares lessons from Nesta's research into some of the pioneering innovations in digital democracy which are taking place across Europe and beyond.Key findings:Digital democracy is a broad concept and not easy to define. The paper provides a granular approach to help encompass its various activities and methods (our 'typology of digital democracy').Many initiatives exist simply as an app, or web page, driven by what the technology can do, rather than by what the need is.Lessons from global case studies describe how digital tools are being used to engage communities in more meaningful political participation, and how they are improving the quality and legitimacy of decision-making.Digital democracy is still young. Projects must embed better methods for evaluation of their goals if the field is to grow

Model responses to CO(2) and warming are underestimated without explicit representation of Arctic small-mammal grazing

© The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Rastetter, E. B., Griffin, K. L., Rowe, R. J., Gough, L., McLaren, J. R., & Boelman, N. T. Model responses to CO(2) and warming are underestimated without explicit representation of Arctic small-mammal grazing. Ecological Applications, (2021): e02478, https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.2478.We use a simple model of coupled carbon and nitrogen cycles in terrestrial ecosystems to examine how “explicitly representing grazers” vs. “having grazer effects implicitly aggregated in with other biogeochemical processes in the model” alters predicted responses to elevated carbon dioxide and warming. The aggregated approach can affect model predictions because grazer-mediated processes can respond differently to changes in climate compared with the processes with which they are typically aggregated. We use small-mammal grazers in a tundra as an example and find that the typical three-to-four-year cycling frequency is too fast for the effects of cycle peaks and troughs to be fully manifested in the ecosystem biogeochemistry. We conclude that implicitly aggregating the effects of small-mammal grazers with other processes results in an underestimation of ecosystem response to climate change, relative to estimations in which the grazer effects are explicitly represented. The magnitude of this underestimation increases with grazer density. We therefore recommend that grazing effects be incorporated explicitly when applying models of ecosystem response to global change.This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under NSF grants 1651722, 1637459, 1603560, 1556772, 1841608 to E.B.R.; 1603777 to N.T.B. and K.L.G.; 1603654 to R.J.R.; 1603760 to L.G.; and 1603677 to J.R.M

Herbivore absence can shift dry heath tundra from carbon source to sink during peak growing season

© The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Min, E., Wilcots, M. E., Naeem, S., Gough, L., McLaren, J. R., Rowe, R. J., Rastetter, E. B., Boelman, N. T., & Griffin, K. L. Herbivore absence can shift dry heath tundra from carbon source to sink during peak growing season. Environmental Research Letters, 16(2), (2021): 024027, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abd3d0.In arctic tundra, large and small mammalian herbivores have substantial impacts on the vegetation community and consequently can affect the magnitude of carbon cycling. However, herbivores are often absent from modern carbon cycle models, partly because relatively few field studies focus on herbivore impacts on carbon cycling. Our objectives were to quantify the impact of 21 years of large herbivore and large and small herbivore exclusion on carbon cycling during peak growing season in a dry heath tundra community. When herbivores were excluded, we observed a significantly greater leaf area index as well as greater vascular plant abundance. While we did not observe significant differences in deciduous dwarf shrub abundance across treatments, evergreen dwarf shrub abundance was greater where large and small herbivores were excluded. Both foliose and fruticose lichen abundance were higher in the large herbivore, but not the small and large herbivore exclosures. Net ecosystem exchange (NEE) likewise indicated the highest carbon uptake in the exclosure treatments and lowest uptake in the control (CT), suggesting that herbivory decreased the capacity of dry heath tundra to take up carbon. Moreover, our calculated NEE for average light and temperature conditions for July 2017, when our measurements were taken, indicated that the tundra was a carbon source in CT, but was a carbon sink in both exclosure treatments, indicating removal of grazing pressure can change the carbon balance of dry heath tundra. Collectively, these findings suggest that herbivore absence can lead to changes in plant community structure of dry heath tundra that in turn can increase its capacity to take up carbon.The authors would like to thank Jess Steketee, Austin Roy, Matthew Suchocki, Ruby An, Cody Lane and the Arctic LTER (NSF Grant No. 1637459) for maintaining the long-term herbivore exclosure experiment. This work was supported by funding from the NSF (Grant Nos. OPP-1603677 to J R M, OPP-1603760 to L G, OPP-1603654 to R J R, OPP-1603560 to E R, OPP-1603777 to N B and K L G). We also acknowledge financial support for Megan Wilcots from the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology at Columbia University

Late-season snowfall is associated with decreased offspring survival in two migratory arctic-breeding songbird species

While the effect of weather on reproduction has been studied for many years in avian taxa, the rapid pace of climate change in arctic regions has added urgency to this question by changing the weather conditions species experience during breeding. Given this, it is important to understand how factors such as temperature, rain, snowfall, and wind affect reproduction both directly and indirectly (e.g. through their effects on food availability). In this study, we ask how weather factors and food availability influence daily survival rates of clutches in two arctic-breeding migratory songbirds: the Lapland longspur Calcarius lapponicus , a circumpolar breeder, and Gambel’s white-crowned sparrow Zonotrichia leucophrys gambelii , which breeds in shrubby habitats across tundra, boreal and continental climates. To do this, we monitored clutch survival in these two species from egg-lay through fledge at field sites located near Toolik Field Station (North Slope, Alaska) across 5 yr (2012–2016). Our results indicate that snowfall and cold temperatures decreased offspring survival rates in both species; although Lapland longspurs were more susceptible to snowfall. Food availability, quantified by pitfall sampling and sweep-net sampling methods, had minimal effects on offspring survival. Some climate models predict increased precipitation for the Arctic with global warming, and in the Toolik region, total snow accumulation may be increasing. Placed in this context, our results suggest that changes in snow storms with climate change could have substantial consequences for reproduction in migratory songbirds breeding in the North American Arctic

A gradient of nutrient enrichment reveals nonlinear impacts of fertilization on Arctic plant diversity and ecosystem function

© The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Ecology and Evolution 7 (2017): 2449–2460, doi:10.1002/ece3.2863.Rapid environmental change at high latitudes is predicted to greatly alter the diversity, structure, and function of plant communities, resulting in changes in the pools and fluxes of nutrients. In Arctic tundra, increased nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) availability accompanying warming is known to impact plant diversity and ecosystem function; however, to date, most studies examining Arctic nutrient enrichment focus on the impact of relatively large (>25x estimated naturally occurring N enrichment) doses of nutrients on plant community composition and net primary productivity. To understand the impacts of Arctic nutrient enrichment, we examined plant community composition and the capacity for ecosystem function (net ecosystem exchange, ecosystem respiration, and gross primary production) across a gradient of experimental N and P addition expected to more closely approximate warming-induced fertilization. In addition, we compared our measured ecosystem CO2 flux data to a widely used Arctic ecosystem exchange model to investigate the ability to predict the capacity for CO2 exchange with nutrient addition. We observed declines in abundance-weighted plant diversity at low levels of nutrient enrichment, but species richness and the capacity for ecosystem carbon uptake did not change until the highest level of fertilization. When we compared our measured data to the model, we found that the model explained roughly 30%–50% of the variance in the observed data, depending on the flux variable, and the relationship weakened at high levels of enrichment. Our results suggest that while a relatively small amount of nutrient enrichment impacts plant diversity, only relatively large levels of fertilization—over an order of magnitude or more than warming-induced rates—significantly alter the capacity for tundra CO2 exchange. Overall, our findings highlight the value of measuring and modeling the impacts of a nutrient enrichment gradient, as warming-related nutrient availability may impact ecosystems differently than single-level fertilization experiments.NASA Terrestrial Ecology Grant Number: NNX12AK83G; National Science Foundation Division of Graduate Education Grant Number: DGE-11-4415

Monitoring scientific collaboration trends in wind energy components

This report presents a bibliometric analysis of scientific articles issued on blades and on offshore wind support structures. It uses the JRC-developed TIM software for data analysis and visualisation, drawing on text mining and network analysis to count publication activity levels and identify collaboration patterns between entities. Our bibliometric searches detected increasing densification in the co-publication networks mapped by TIM for blades and on offshore support structures. This indicated that scientific publication activity could be intensifying, and this was confirmed by experts and by literature on wind energy. Both provided evidence of growth in these two research fields, and of intensified collaboration among partners – following the wind-energy industry orientation towards larger blade designs and innovative offshore support structures. The recent EC Communication on a renewed European Agenda for Research and Innovation points out that Europe is relatively strong in adding or sustaining value for existing products, services and processes, known as incremental innovation. But Europe needs to do better at generating disruptive and breakthrough innovations. Thus, the agenda encourages cooperation between research teams across countries and disciplines, supporting them to make breakthrough discoveries. Also countries outside the EU have put policies in place (e.g. China's 12th Five Year Plan) explicitly focussing on technology innovation in the sector of onshore and offshore wind. Within this context, this analysis uses the JRC's Tools for Innovation Monitoring (TIM) software developed by the JRC to retrieve bibliometric data on blades (a component more benefitting from incremental innovations) and offshore wind support structures (a relatively new research field in which disruptive innovations like floating power plants might become breakthrough innovations) to - measure the publication and collaboration activity, - identify leading organisations and new entrants, - identify the main areas of publications of the leading players and - identify the leading countries and country collaboration patterns. The bibliometric results obtained are then contrasted with data for research funding on wind energy from the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme, to analyse the thematic focus of publication and funding activity. Results are also complemented with recent information from the wind industry and research news on the latest developments in the investigated areas. Thus, this study can support policies aiming for prioritisation and alignment of European research efforts within the wind energy topic.JRC.C.7-Knowledge for the Energy Unio