Considering Vermont\u27s Future in a Changing Climate: The First Vermont Climate Assessment

The Vermont Climate Assessment (VCA) paints a vivid picture of a changing climate in Vermont and calls for immediate strategic planning to sustain the social, economic and environmental fabric of our state. The VCA is the first state-scale climate assessment in the country and speaks directly to the impacts of climate change as they pertain to our rural towns, cities and communities, including impacts on Vermont tourism and recreation, agriculture, natural resources and energy

Bridging the Climate Information Gap: A Framework for Engaging Knowledge Brokers and Decision Makers in State Climate Assessments

Large-scale analyses like the National Climate Assessment (NCA) contain a wealth of information critical to national and regional responses to climate change but tend to be insufficiently detailed for action at state or local levels. Many states now engage in assessment processes to meet information needs for local authorities. The goals of state climate assessments (SCAs) should be to provide relevant, actionable information to state and local authorities, and to generate primary sources, build networks and inform stakeholders. To communicate local climate impacts to decision makers, SCAs should express credibility, salience and legitimacy. They can provide information (e.g., case studies, data sets) and connect stakeholders to the NCA and its process. Based on our experience in the Vermont Climate Assessment (VCA), we present a framework to engage decision makers in SCAs using a fluid network of scientific experts and knowledge brokers to conduct subject area prioritization, data analysis and writing. The VCA addressed economic, environmental and social impacts of climate change at local scales to increase resiliency and manage risk. Knowledge brokers communicated VCA findings through their own stakeholder networks. We include a qualitative impact evaluation, and believe our framework for interaction among scientists, knowledge brokers and stakeholders to be an effective structure for SCAs and a transformative experience for students

Priority species to support the functional integrity of coral reefs

Ecosystem-based management on coral reefs has historically focussed on biodiversity conservation through the establishment of marine reserves, but it is increasingly recognised that a subset of species can be key to the maintenance of ecosystem processes and functioning. Specific provisions for these key taxa are essential to biodiversity conservation and resilience-based adaptive management. While a wealth of literature addresses ecosystem functioning on coral reefs, available information covers only a subset of specific taxa, ecological processes and environmental stressors. What is lacking is a comparative assessment across the diverse range of coral reef species to synthesise available knowledge to inform science and management. Here we employed expert elicitation coupled with a literature review to generate the first comprehensive assessment of 70 taxonomically diverse and functionally distinct coral reef species from microbes to top predators to summarise reef functioning. Although our synthesis is largely through the lens of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, a particularly data-rich system, it is relevant to coral reefs in general. We use this assessment to evaluate which taxa drive processes that maintain a healthy reef and whether management of these taxa is considered a priority (i.e. are they vulnerable?) or is feasible (i.e. can they be managed?). Scientific certainty was scored to weight our recommendations, particularly when certainty was low. We use five case studies to highlight critical gaps in knowledge that limit our understanding of ecosystem functioning. To inform the development of novel management strategies and research objectives, we identify taxa that support positive interactions and enhance ecosystem performance, including those where these roles are currently underappreciated. We conclude that current initiatives effectively capture many priority taxa but that there is significant room to increase opportunities for underappreciated taxa in both science and management to maximally safeguard coral reef functioning

Chapter 5 Priority Species to Support the Functional Integrity of Coral Reefs

Ecosystem-based management on coral reefs has historically focused on biodiversity conservation through the establishment of marine reserves, but it is increasingly recognised that a subset of species can be key to the maintenance of ecosystem processes and functioning. Specific provisions for these key taxa are essential to biodiversity conservation and resilience-based adaptive management. While a wealth of literature addresses ecosystem functioning on coral reefs, available information covers only a subset of specific taxa, ecological processes and environmental stressors. What is lacking is a comparative assessment across the diverse range of coral reef species to synthesise available knowledge to inform science and management. Here we employed expert elicitation coupled with a literature review to generate the first comprehensive assessment of 70 taxonomically diverse and functionally distinct coral reef species from microbes to top predators to summarise reef functioning. Although our synthesis is largely through the lens of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, a particularly data-rich system, it is relevant to coral reefs in general. We use this assessment to evaluate which taxa drive processes that maintain a healthy reef, and whether or not management of these taxa is considered a priority (i.e. are they vulnerable?) or is feasible (i.e. can they be managed?). Scientific certainty was scored to weight our recommendations, particularly when certainty was low. We use five case studies to highlight critical gaps in knowledge that limit our understanding of ecosystem functioning. To inform the development of novel management strategies and research objectives, we identify taxa that support positive interactions and enhance ecosystem performance, including those where these roles are currently underappreciated. We conclude that current initiatives effectively capture many priority taxa, but that there is significant room to increase opportunities for underappreciated taxa in both science and management to maximally safeguard coral reef functioning

Global wheat production with 1.5 and 2.0°C above pre‐industrial warming

Efforts to limit global warming to below 2°C in relation to the pre‐industrial level are under way, in accordance with the 2015 Paris Agreement. However, most impact research on agriculture to date has focused on impacts of warming >2°C on mean crop yields, and many previous studies did not focus sufficiently on extreme events and yield interannual variability. Here, with the latest climate scenarios from the Half a degree Additional warming, Prognosis and Projected Impacts (HAPPI) project, we evaluated the impacts of the 2015 Paris Agreement range of global warming (1.5 and 2.0°C warming above the pre‐industrial period) on global wheat production and local yield variability. A multi‐crop and multi‐climate model ensemble over a global network of sites developed by the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) for Wheat was used to represent major rainfed and irrigated wheat cropping systems. Results show that projected global wheat production will change by −2.3% to 7.0% under the 1.5°C scenario and −2.4% to 10.5% under the 2.0°C scenario, compared to a baseline of 1980–2010, when considering changes in local temperature, rainfall, and global atmospheric CO2 concentration, but no changes in management or wheat cultivars. The projected impact on wheat production varies spatially; a larger increase is projected for temperate high rainfall regions than for moderate hot low rainfall and irrigated regions. Grain yields in warmer regions are more likely to be reduced than in cooler regions. Despite mostly positive impacts on global average grain yields, the frequency of extremely low yields (bottom 5 percentile of baseline distribution) and yield inter‐annual variability will increase under both warming scenarios for some of the hot growing locations, including locations from the second largest global wheat producer—India, which supplies more than 14% of global wheat. The projected global impact of warming <2°C on wheat production is therefore not evenly distributed and will affect regional food security across the globe as well as food prices and trade

An Indo-Pacifc coral spawning database

The discovery of multi-species synchronous spawning of scleractinian corals on the Great Barrier Reef in the 1980s stimulated an extraordinary effort to document spawning times in other parts of the globe. Unfortunately, most of these data remain unpublished which limits our understanding of regional and global reproductive patterns. The Coral Spawning Database (CSD) collates much of these disparate data into a single place. The CSD includes 6178 observations (3085 of which were unpublished) of the time or day of spawning for over 300 scleractinian species in 61 genera from 101 sites in the Indo-Pacific. The goal of the CSD is to provide open access to coral spawning data to accelerate our understanding of coral reproductive biology and to provide a baseline against which to evaluate any future changes in reproductive phenology

Similar estimates of temperature impacts on global wheat yield by three independent methods

The potential impact of global temperature change on global crop yield has recently been assessed with different methods. Here we show that grid-based and point-based simulations and statistical regressions (from historic records), without deliberate adaptation or CO2 fertilization effects, produce similar estimates of temperature impact on wheat yields at global and national scales. With a 1 °C global temperature increase, global wheat yield is projected to decline between 4.1% and 6.4%. Projected relative temperature impacts from different methods were similar for major wheat-producing countries China, India, USA and France, but less so for Russia. Point-based and grid-based simulations, and to some extent the statistical regressions, were consistent in projecting that warmer regions are likely to suffer more yield loss with increasing temperature than cooler regions. By forming a multi-method ensemble, it was possible to quantify ‘method uncertainty’ in addition to model uncertainty. This significantly improves confidence in estimates of climate impacts on global food security.<br/

Presence of competitors influences photosynthesis, but not growth, of the hard coral Porites cylindrica at elevated seawater CO2

Changes in environmental conditions, such as those caused by elevated carbon dioxide (CO2), potentially alter the outcome of competitive interactions between species. This study aimed to understand how elevated CO2 could influence competitive interactions between hard and soft corals, by investigating growth and photosynthetic activity of Porites cylindrica (a hard coral) under elevated CO2 and in the presence of another hard coral and two soft coral competitors. Corals were collected from reefs around Orpheus and Pelorus Islands on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. They were then exposed to elevated pCO2 for 4 weeks with two CO2 treatments: intermediate (pCO2 648) and high (pCO2 1003) compared with a control (unmanipulated seawater) treatment (pCO2 358). Porites cylindrica growth did not vary among pCO2 treatments, regardless of the presence and type of competitors, nor was the growth of another hard coral species, Acropora cerealis, affected by pCO2 treatment. Photosynthetic rates of P. cylindrica were sensitive to variations in pCO2, and varied between the side of the fragment facing the competitors vs. the side facing away from the competitor. However, variation in photosynthetic rates depended on pCO2 treatment, competitor identity, and whether the photosynthetic yields were measured as maximum or effective photosynthetic yield. This study suggests that elevated CO2 may impair photosynthetic activity, but not growth, of a hard coral under competition and confirms the hypothesis that soft corals are generally resistant to elevated CO2. Overall, our results indicate that shifts in the species composition in coral communities as a result of elevated CO2 could be more strongly related to the individual tolerance of different species rather than a result of competitive interactions between species

Mixed α/β-peptides as a class of short amphipathic peptide hydrogelators with enhanced proteolytic stability

Peptide hydrogels are a highly promising class of materials for biomedical application, albeit facing many challenges with regard to stability and tunability. Here, we report a new class of amphipathic peptide hydrogelators, namely mixed alpha/beta-peptide hydrogelators. These mixed alpha/beta-gelators possess good rheological properties (high storage moduli) and form transparent self-supporting gels with shear-thinning behavior. Infrared spectroscopy indicates the presence of beta-sheets as the underlying secondary structure. Interestingly, self-assembled nanofibers of the mixed alpha/beta-peptides display unique structural morphologies with alteration of the C-terminus (acid vs amide) playing a key role in the fiber formation and gelation properties of the resulting hydrogels. The incorporation of beta 3-homoamino acid residues within the mixed alpha/beta-peptide gelators led to an increase in proteolytic stability of the peptides under nongelating conditions (in solution) as well as gelating conditions (as hydrogel). Under diluted conditions, degradation of mixed alpha/beta-peptides in the presence of elastase was slowed down 120-fold compared to that of an alpha-peptide, thereby demonstrating beneficial enzymatic resistance for hydrogel applications in vivo. In addition, increased half-life values were obtained for the mixed alpha/beta-peptides in human blood plasma, as compared to corresponding alpha-peptides. It was also found that the mixed alpha/beta-peptides were amenable to injection via needles used for subcutaneous administrations. The preformed peptide gels could be sheared upon injection and were found to quickly reform to a state close to that of the original hydrogel. The shown properties of enhanced proteolytic stability and injectability hold great promise for the use of these novel mixed alpha/beta-peptide hydrogels for applications in the areas of tissue engineering and drug delivery

Biodegradable amphipathic peptide hydrogels as extended-release system for opioid peptides

Chronic pain is currently treated with opioids that offer unsatisfactory long-term analgesia and produce serious side effects. There is a clear need for alternative therapies. Herein, peptide-based hydrogels are used as extended-release drug delivery carriers. Two different formulations were developed: the drug is coformulated within the hydrogen the drug is an integral part of the hydrogelator. Both strategies afford a prolonged and significant antinociception up to 72 h after subcutaneous administration in mice