Tyler O'Neal, Staff Editor BIG DATA

UKCEH evaluates risk of chemicals to wildlife; huge challenge that requires new approach

Supercomputer modeling and long-term environmental monitoring will be essential, says review paper in Science

Supercomputer modeling and long-term ecological monitoring will be essential to assess the environmental risks of the rapidly growing number of chemicals across the world, according to a new review paper in the journal Science.

The analysis, led by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), says the sheer number of chemicals and substances is making it increasingly challenging to carry out the risk assessments required to check all products are completely safe for wildlife.

The EU's REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation, and Restriction of Chemicals) regulation 2006 set an important precedent - that the onus to demonstrate a chemical was safe for humans and the environment should lie with the manufacturer. CAPTION Yellow hazardous chemicals sign CREDIT Pixabay{module INSIDE STORY}

However, out of more than 100,000 chemicals on the market in Europe, only a small fraction have been thoroughly evaluated for their potential harmful impacts on humans and the environment.

Professor Andrew Johnson of UKCEH, lead author of the paper, explains that, for example, there has been a lot of evaluation of the effects of pesticides on the environment but not washing detergents, despite their widespread use. He adds pharmaceuticals do not need an environmental risk assessment, and there has been little research into the potential impacts of several key classes of drugs on wildlife.

Meanwhile, weak regulations or inconsistent local enforcement have contributed to the creation of severe pollution hotspots in some parts of the world, particularly Asia where chemical sales are more than 60% higher than the US and EU combined, according to Professor Johnson and his co-authors.

He says: "Given the many chemicals that entered the market before REACH came into force, a retrospective authorization process is trying to catch up.

"An ever-growing number of chemicals and uses for them means the challenge is enormous, and regulators are struggling to keep up. But it isn't necessarily a lost cause. We've learned from the past and chemicals are generally safer."

Along with the progress in the regulation and management of chemicals, Professor Johnson and his co-authors say another reason for optimism is the improvement in analytical techniques in recent years. Supercomputer modeling enables scientists to predict the effects of chemicals without animal testing but regulators are reluctant to rely entirely on these theoretical models.

The paper's authors - from UKCEH, the China National Environmental Monitoring Centre, Kyoto University and Brunel University - also recommend a more consistent retrospective risk assessment. This would involve long-term ecological monitoring to establish the trends in wildlife populations that are exposed to chemicals, and then carrying out forensic scientific analysis to establish if these are linked to chemical pollutants.

The paper's authors say this approach requires greater co-operation between scientists across different disciplines, and are calling on ecotoxicologists and environmental chemists to collaborate with ecologists.

One example of best practice of retrospective risk assessment and multidisciplinary collaboration, cited in the paper, is the investigative research carried out after declines were noted in bee populations. Several global studies, including UKCEH's pan-European field trial in 2014/15, showed that exposure to certain neonicotinoids had a negative impact on bees, resulting in EU bans on those pesticides.

Professor Johnson explains: "Our current system of chemical risk assessment is based on prospective rather than both prospective and retrospective analysis. Long-term environmental monitoring is not normally at the front of the queue for receiving funding, but it's cost-effective and can provide the most compelling evidence of whether our use of chemicals is sustainable."

New SwRI models reveal inner complexity of Saturn moon

Tyler O'Neal, Staff Editor BIG DATA

Enceladus' subsurface ocean composition hints at habitable conditions

A Southwest Research Institute team developed a new geochemical model that reveals that carbon dioxide (CO2) from within Enceladus, an ocean-harboring moon of Saturn, may be controlled by chemical reactions at its seafloor. Studying the plume of gases and frozen sea spray released through cracks in the moon's icy surface suggests an interior more complex than previously thought.

"By understanding the composition of the plume, we can learn about what the ocean is like, how it got to be this way and whether it provides environments where life as we know it could survive," said SwRI's Dr. Christopher Glein, lead author of a paper in Geophysical Research Letters outlining the research. "We came up with a new technique for analyzing the plume composition to estimate the concentration of dissolved CO2 in the ocean. This enabled modeling to probe deeper interior processes." Using new geochemical models, SwRI scientists found that CO2 in Enceladus' ocean may be controlled by chemical reactions at the seafloor. Integrating this finding with previous discoveries of H2 and silica suggests geochemically diverse environments in the rocky core. This diversity has the potential to create energy sources that could support life.{module INSIDE STORY}

Analysis of mass spectrometry data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft indicates that the abundance of CO2 is best explained by geochemical reactions between the moon's rocky core and liquid water from its subsurface ocean. Integrating this information with previous discoveries of silica and molecular hydrogen (H2) points to a more complex, geochemically diverse core.

"Based on our findings, Enceladus appears to demonstrate a massive carbon sequestration experiment," Glein said. "On Earth, climate scientists are exploring whether a similar process can be utilized to mitigate industrial emissions of CO2. Using two different data sets, we derived CO2 concentration ranges that are intriguingly similar to what would be expected from the dissolution and formation of certain mixtures of silicon- and carbon-bearing minerals at the seafloor."

Another phenomenon that contributes to this complexity is the likely presence of hydrothermal vents inside Enceladus. At Earth's ocean floor, hydrothermal vents emit hot, energy-rich, mineral-laden fluids that allow unique ecosystems teeming with unusual creatures to thrive.

"The dynamic interface of a complex core and seawater could potentially create energy sources that might support life," said SwRI's Dr. Hunter Waite, principal investigator of Cassini's Ion Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS). "While we have not found evidence of the presence of microbial life in the ocean of Enceladus, the growing evidence for chemical disequilibrium offers a tantalizing hint that habitable conditions could exist beneath the moon's icy crust."

The scientific community continues reaping the benefits of Cassini's close flyby of Enceladus on Oct. 28, 2015, prior to the end of the mission. INMS detected H2 as the spacecraft flew through the plume, and a different instrument had earlier detected tiny particles of silica, two chemicals that are considered to be markers for hydrothermal processes.

"Distinct sources of observed CO2, silica and H2 imply mineralogically and thermally diverse environments in a heterogeneous rocky core," Glein said. "We suggest that the core is composed of a carbonated upper layer and a serpentinized interior." Carbonates commonly occur as sedimentary rocks such as limestone on Earth, while serpentine minerals are formed from igneous seafloor rocks that are rich in magnesium and iron.

It is proposed that hydrothermal oxidation of reduced iron deep in the core creates H2, while hydrothermal activity intersecting quartz-bearing carbonated rocks produces silica-rich fluids. Such rocks also have the potential to influence the CO2 chemistry of the ocean via low-temperature reactions involving silicates and carbonates at the seafloor.

"The implications for possible life enabled by a heterogeneous core structure are intriguing," said Glein. "This model could explain how planetary differentiation and alteration processes create chemical (energy) gradients needed by subsurface life."

CIAT builds high-resolution dataset, bias-corrected CMIP5 projections for climate change impact assessments

Tyler O'Neal, Staff Editor BIG DATA

The 7-terabyte dataset, the largest of its kind, helps envision climate-change scenarios at scales as small as 1 kilometer; a new review validates and describes the dataset

What the global climate emergency has in store may vary from one back yard to the next, particularly in the tropics where microclimates, geography, and land-use practices shift dramatically over small areas. This has major implications for adaptation strategies at local levels and requires trustworthy, high-resolution data on plausible future climate scenarios.

A dataset created by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and colleagues is filling this niche. Primarily intended to help policymakers devise adaptation strategies for smallholder farmers around the world, the open-access dataset has been used in 350 research papers. Users in at least 186 countries have downloaded almost 400,000 files from the dataset since it went online in 2013.

A description, review, and validation of the dataset, including how it was built, was published today in an educational journal. {module INSIDE STORY}CAPTION A small bean farm in Colombia's Darién region. Future climate scenarios can be modeled at the community scale thanks to a dataset created by the CGIAR research program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). CREDIT Neil Palmer / International Center for Tropical Agriculture

"Climate models are complex representations of the earth system, but they aren't perfect," said Julian Ramirez-Villegas, the principal investigator of the project and a scientist with CIAT and the CGIAR Research Platform on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). "These errors can have an impact on our agricultural models. Because these models help us make decisions, this can have dire consequences."

While the data has primarily served agricultural research, it has also been used to map the potential global spread of Zika (a mosquito-borne disease), to plan investment strategies for international development, and to predict the ongoing decline of outdoor skating days in Canada due to warmer winters.

"The use and applicability of this data have been really extensive and topically quite broad," said Ramirez-Villegas. "Of course, a large portion of the studies has been done on crops that are key to global food security and incomes such as rice, coffee, cocoa, maize, and others."

Pinpointing climate impacts

Climate-change projections are typically available at coarse scales, ranging 70-400km. But models for the impact of climate change for many agricultural plant varieties require data at finer scales. The researchers used techniques to increase the spatial resolution (a process known as downscaling) and to correct errors (a process known as bias correction) to create high-resolution future climate data for 436 scenarios.

"This is a critical resource for modeling more realistically the future of crops and ecosystems," said Carlos Navarro, the lead author of the study who is affiliated with CIAT and CCAFS.

For a given emissions pathway and future period, each scenario includes monthly information for average and extreme temperatures, rainfall, and 19 other related variables. The data are publicly available in the World Data Center for Climate and the CCAFS-Climate data portal.

"Through these scenarios, we can understand, for instance, how agricultural productivity might evolve if the world continues on the current greenhouse emissions trajectory," said Navarro. "They also provide the data to model what types of adaptations would best counter any negative climate change effects."

Global and regional models analyze climate conditions at rougher scales and simplify natural processes, producing results that may deviate from realistic scenarios.

The dataset is CGIAR's biggest Findable Accessible Interoperable Reusable (FAIR) database. It also underscores CGIAR's role in big data for development, through its Platform for Big Data in Agriculture. The dataset is currently included in its Global Agriculture Research Data Innovation and Acceleration Network (GARDIAN).

The high-resolution scale of this data is useful for scientists, policymakers, NGOs and investors, as it can help them understand local climate change impacts and therefore make better bets on adaptation measures, which plans can specifically target watersheds, regions, municipalities or countries.

In addition to the studies noted by Ramirez-Villegas above, other studies that have used the datasets include:

-Mapping global environmental suitability for Zika virus. The results showed that more than 2.17 billion people in the tropics and sub-tropics live in Zika-prone areas.

-A multi-year CCAFS study following more than 15,000 farmers across India who are testing new seed varieties to enhance smallholder resilience to climate change.

-The above study also noted how Concern Worldwide, an NGO that does long-term development work, has used the data to identify adaptation options and investment strategies in Chad and South Sudan.

-The datasets were used in numerous climate change-impact studies on crops in Africa, including cocoa in Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire, chickpea in East Africa, irrigated sugarcane in South Africa, and groundnuts in West Africa.

-In a show of the dataset's broad research potential, a study in Canada showed how days of outdoor ice-skating are in decline there due to warming.