October 2024 science summary

Greetings,

My knee is still healing and as I write this I have COVID. So: I am again behind on proper science reading. BUT I have some fun AI content anyway plus one flashy new paper.

AI TO GENERATE PODCASTS?!
Many of you requested updates on important AI features and this month is a biggie. Google's Gemini Notebook (https://notebooklm.google/) which among other more established features turns a body of text into an NPR-style podcast (a blog about the feature is here: https://blog.google/technology/ai/notebooklm-audio-overviews/). 
 
I would share a direct link to the audio it produces to avoid the energy use of you all trying it on your own, but my employer's AI guidance doesn't let me do that, so I'll just say: watch a little less streaming video this week to reduce your carbon footprint, and give this a go. Just 1) upload a document to https://notebooklm.google, and 2) click Generate in "Deep dive conversation". Wow. The results are conversational, natural, and interesting, with relatively few hiccups / artifacts that I noticed (although not none), although it does consistently hype up each paper (both the magnitude and significance of results are exaggerated, albeit not quantitatively). I could see this being useful to help you digest that report you can't bring yourself to read while jogging instead. Not that you should ever trust an AI summary at this point to be accurate (please don't!) - but for legit reports it appears to be much better than not reading the report at all from my limited testing.

Here are the results of four quick tests: 

1. A colleague fed in a research report which was written for a lay audience already (https://www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/2024/05/23/electric-vehicle-charging-infrastructure-in-the-u-s/), and I was gobsmacked by the quality. Not as good as a legit pro quality podcast, but MUCH better than something I would put out and a hell of a good first draft.
2. What about a peer-reviewed science article which is much more technical and hard to read? I uploaded my 2nd favorite paper that I'm first author on (since my favorite is written in plain English already) which is about how spatial resolution impacts accuracy, cost and making the right decision: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/rse2.61/full Once again it did really surprisingly well. There was one weird audio screwup, and they focused a moderate amount on an unimportant finding but also had a line I loved: “sharper images leading to sharper insights” (meaning higher spatial resolution of satellite imagery is more accurate and makes for better decisions). Damn that's good!
3. OK, but what about a paper even a proper scientist would have a hard time slogging through? I literally searched all the notes I have written in my reference library notes for the phrase "hard to read" and found this doozy looking at how cow genetics affects methane emissions: https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1005846 The writing is very technical BUT at least for a reader like me you can skim and sift out some high level conclusions so I was curious to see how it would perform. The answer is still quite well with one big caveat! The use of sire progeny groups was charmingly described as "like a bovine family reunion, but for science" and they had some great metaphors like how a microbe has a "key" to unlock the "lock" of some important sugar molecules. BUT they described the results as finding a MASSIVE and INSANE impact of genetics on methane and how it was a TOTAL GAME CHANGER. In fact, while the authors never clearly state this (though it's obvious in Fig 1), genetic impacts are MUCH smaller than the impact of diet (grass / forage vs. concentrated feed). So like a cow's stomach, this tool will regurgitate back what you put in w/o any filtering or warning.
4. What if you upload a blatantly false document? You guessed it - the tool performs the same way and makes it seem engaging and interesting. A colleague uploaded an Onion article and the tool did NOT waver or flag any parody or provide any warning, it just made it sound like real news. This one is pretty scary.

Note that there were literally no other prompts or edits to produce this, just upload a PDF and click "generate" which I find staggering. I would have believed that these were real podcasts w/ real people, and it definitely took the core content and made it interesting and engaging (albeit over-hyped). Hearing three of these in a row, there is some noticeable repetition in key phrases and style which will make my spidey-sense tingle if I hear similar podcasts out in the wild not attributed to Gemini Notebook.

As the always wise Bob Lalasz from Science+Story noted - this tool cannot (yet) simulate specific voices like a researcher or celebrity, and the output will quickly saturate and land as inauthentic. But at this moment it's both a tool that can provide some useful and engaging summaries, AND could be a way to make misinformation seem more appealing, as the Onion example shows.

Enough AI, here's a review of one actual paper I read w/o AI helping:

CATTLE AND CLIMATE CHANGE:
OK, for years people have been hyping the potential of a kind of seaweed (Asparagopsis) to reduce methane emissions in cattle. But the in vitro evidence was mixed - with potential toxicity and downsides a concern if the dose wasn't just right. George et al is a live trial with good news! They found methane emissions from cattle given an Asparagopsis additive were cut roughly in half compared to control, with 6.6% higher weight gain per unit of feed and no substantial impacts on quality or health (fat color maybe a bit better, tenderness maybe a bit worse). The methane reduction peaked at day 21 and declined afterwards, but since most cattle are in feedlots only ~3 months (ranging from 1.5-4) the decline after day 100 is pretty moot. That's a lot of potential! The only potential downsides were ~50% higher bromine residues in kidney and muscle (I couldn't quickly find guidance on safe levels). Caveats: 1) there were no conflicts declared but the authors appear to almost all work as feedlot consultants and it's single rather than double-blinded, 2) in the US the feedlot phase is only about 15% of the lifecycle emissions of a cow (and of that, some is from growing crops and nitrous oxide) so TOTAL impact on CO2e / kg beef is not as dramatic. Overall my take is 1) this should absolutely be tested and replicated more - anything that reduces the very high carbon of beef is worth pursuing. BUT 2) if this is marketed as "green beef" or license to avoid reductions, it could be net harmful for the climate. and 3) IF spraying this solution on grass worked similarly and didn't inhibit development of calves, the impact could be much higher (since ~80%ish of a cow's life is grazing prior to feedlot, and methane emissions are higher on grass than feed). So let's test that too. There's a blog about this at https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/18/feeding-seaweed-supplement-to-cattle-halved-methane-emissions-in-australian-feedlot-study-finds

As always, if you know someone who wants to sign up to receive these summaries, they can do so at http://bit.ly/sciencejon (no need to email me).


REFERENCES:
Fisher, J. R. B., Acosta, E. A., Dennedy-Frank, P. J., Kroeger, T., & Boucher, T. M. (2018). Impact of satellite imagery spatial resolution on land use classification accuracy and modeled water quality. Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation, 4(2), 137–149. https://doi.org/10.1002/rse2.61

George, M. M., Platts, S. V., Berry, B. A., Miller, M. F., Carlock, A. M., Horton, T. M., & George, M. H. (2024). Effect of SeaFeed, a canola oil infused with Asparagopsis armata , on methane emissions, animal health, performance, and carcass characteristics of Angus feedlot cattle. Translational Animal Science, 8(August). https://doi.org/10.1093/tas/txae116

Roehe, R., Dewhurst, R. J., Duthie, C.-A., Rooke, J. A., McKain, N., Ross, D. W., Hyslop, J. J., Waterhouse, A., Freeman, T. C., Watson, M., & Wallace, R. J. (2016). Bovine Host Genetic Variation Influences Rumen Microbial Methane Production with Best Selection Criterion for Low Methane Emitting and Efficiently Feed Converting Hosts Based on Metagenomic Gene Abundance. PLOS Genetics, 12(2), e1005846. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1005846

Sincerely,
 
Jon
 
p.s. This hairless cat named Sylvester lives near me, is extremely friendly, and is as weird to touch as you might guess

September 2024 science summary (nut sustainability & freshwater protection in Chile)

Hi,

I didn't read much science this last month. I had knee surgery instead (the pic above shows the cool leg squeezing machines and icing machine I got). But I've got a review of one article on freshwater protection in Chile, AND as a treat a guest review from Randy Swaty and Sarah Bixby of an article comparing the pros and cons of different kinds of nuts! They even included some discussion questions. If you are reading this and want to do a guest review just let me know!

If you know someone who wants to sign up to receive these summaries, they can do so at http://bit.ly/sciencejon (no need to email me).

NUTS! (review by Randy Swaty and Sarah Bixby):

Walnuts for the win? Well, it depends.  Being a conscientious consumer is challenging.  Just try to figure out which nuts are most sustainable.  A Google search turned up typical top-10 lists and shallow articles.  Google scholar pointed us to Cap et al., 2023 which assesses 8 nuts and 2 seeds (see article for specifics) against 3 environmental, 2 nutritional and 6 social criteria.   We did not come away with a clear answer, but learned: 1) indicators we thought of (e.g., transportation and packaging) were not included (see citation they reference Tillman and Clark, 2014), 2) walnuts and sunflower seeds generally ranked the highest with cashews ranking the lowest (by far), 3) Figure 5 was a favorite, where the authors rank nuts based on ‘regret’.  Surprisingly, while just two of the eleven criteria are nutrition criteria, chestnuts’ poor nutrition ranking knocked the tree nut right out of the least regret category and 4) seeds outperformed nuts on nutritional criteria-we’ll be looking for more data on seeds.  The authors also present some hope (mostly-as usual there’s exceptions) in Figure 6 where they report “improvement” in 10 of their 11 criteria if consumption patterns followed the baseline rank order.

Jon's side note: In the first draft of this review they also had discussion questions; we cut them for brevity but I loved the idea and the curiosity this article spawned for them! Email me if you want to be connected w/ Randy and Sarah to follow up :) 

FRESHWATER PROTECTION:
Weber Salazar et al. 2024 is a legal analysis overview of freshwater protection in Chile. While Chile lacks a national river conservation system, there are several relevant policies including: the water code which recognizes water as a public good and establised theoretically required minimum ecological flows (via updates in 2005 and 2022), regulations of protected areas and forests, urban wetlands law (for estuaries near urban developments), and recreational fishing law. Water quality standards are weak (limiting both which pollutants are covered and where they apply). The 2022 new constitution offered a new water framework, but it was rejected (as was another consitution in 2023 with much weaker environmental protection). Granting water rights for environmental purposes has been quite limited but there are efforts to improve that. The authors also surveyed 1,612 Chileans (plus 30 semi-structured interviews) about attitudes towards river and river protection. 85% said they had a connection to a specific river (80% a river near where they lived. with tourism the most frequently mentioned connection followed by cultural and a source of water), and 99% of respondents said protection of Chilean rivers was necessary (44% favored legislation for specific rivers, 33% preferred constitutional protection, and 22% favored protected areas). There's a lot more interesting results here (more than I can fit in a short summary) and I recommend a closer look to anyone working in Chile.



REFERENCES:

Cap, S., Bots, P. and Scherer, L., 2023. Environmental, nutritional and social assessment of nuts. Sustainability Science, 18(2), pp.933-949. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11625-022-01146-7

Weber Salazar, P., Macpherson, E., & Willaarts, B. A. (2024). Towards durable legal protections for rivers in Chile. Water International, 00(00), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/02508060.2024.2346394

Sincerely,
 
Jon

August Science Summary (fire in the Pantanal)

Hi,

This month I'm focusing on a single issue (fire in the Pantanal) but also advertising a new preprint I'm an author on. Fires in the Pantanal this June broke the record for that month (we have records of about 20 years) so it seemed timely!

If you know someone who wants to sign up to receive these summaries, they can do so at http://bit.ly/sciencejon (no need to email me). Unsubscribe via the link at the end.

RAPID EVIDENCE ASSESSMENTS (REA):
I'm an author on a new preprint (not yet peer-reviewed) about rapidly assessing evidence in conservation (Schofield et al. 202X). It's the conclusions of a working group hosted by EPA which met over several online workshops to try and build consensus for a definition and approach since there are many competing ones out there. "Rapid" in this case is relative to systematic reviews - it doesn't mean doing the kind of informal scan of science literature that is pretty common at NGOs. We argue that it's important to balance speed w/ rigor to avoid either wasting effort on unnecessary detail or arriving at the wrong answer by rushing. The definition kind of hits the high points of the topics the paper covers: "REA is a structured review process that aims to maximize rigor and objectivity given assessment needs and resource constraints (e.g., time). REA aims to address requirements for timely and cost-efficient decision-making while maintaining confidence in conclusions. REA is typically more rigorous than less formalized practices such as traditional narrative literature reviews, but effort is reduced relative to comprehensive evidence assessment approaches such as systematic review. REA is transparent, well-documented, and the details of the specific methods used at each step are justified. Those who commission, conduct, and use REAs should be cognizant of the achievable levels of confidence in the conclusions that accompany the rapid application of different steps in the REA process." Let me know if you have questions, criticisms, ideas, etc. https://osf.io/u7z2g


FIRE IN THE PANTANAL:
Damasceno-Junior et al. 2023 covers flood and fire dynamics in the Pantanal and the need for integrated fire management (IFM), using the 2020 wildfires as a case study. The Pantanal burns the most in the dry season (Aug-Oct, Fig 5). From 2003-2019, ~5-15% of the biome burned each year (Fig 7); roughly half never burned and of the areas that did almost all burned no more than 4 times over 16 years (Fig 6In 2020 about 30% burned! It was a very dry year (the bottom ~5% over the last 120 years, and the worst in 47 years), but not the dryest on record (Fig 3). The drought allowed the fire to spread via soil as well as above ground. The authors believe that despite being the most severe fire on record, similar fires likely happened in past droughts. Note that cattle can both drive wildfire (by setting fires to clear vegetation) and reduce it (by reducing biomass available to burn). Key recommendations include: 1) better integration of information and decision makers (including between Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul; they worked together but not enough), 2) mobilization of additional people (federal natural resource staff, local police and firefighters, private fire brigades, NGOs, volunteers, etc.), 3) inclusion of Pantanal residents w/ traditional knowledge, 4) more research on the interaction of fire and floods in the Pantanal, 5) better fire forecasting and better communication about those risks (including to land managers who set fires).

Garcia et al. 2021 is an overview of fire in the Pantanal, and a call for an integrated fire management (IFM) program in the Pantanal. Water moves slowly through the Pantanal; it takes 3 months for rainfall in the watershed to reach the southern Pantanal via the Paraguay river. This means that near Corumbá typically there is flooding during the dry season (preventing fires in the floodplain), and water levels are lowest in December (after the rainy season has begun). But the 2020 wet season had 60% less rain than normal. That meant dead vegetation from 2019's flood combined w/ a lack of flooding provides fuel for wildfires. 43% of the area that burned in 2020 hadn't burned before since records began in 2003 (areas in gray in Fig 1). They noted that fire management in 2020 was hampered by COVID-19 (fewer firefighters were available, and had to socially distance from each other). Climate change is expected to bring more drought years, exacerbated by deforestation in the neighboring Amazon and Cerrado. The authors call for removing invasive African grasses (like Urochloa / Brachiaria) and note a 2021 IFM plan actually incentivizes planting cultivated grass. They also recommend more prescribed burns in the wet season, safe fire training for ranch workers, more funding for fire prevention, better warning systems, and increasing the participation of Indigenous people in fire brigades.

Pivello et al. 2021 is a good comprehensive overview of wildfire across Brazil. It's long and dense so hard to summarize! Natural fires are most common at the beginning of the wet season when lightning ignites accumulated dry vegetation. Fig 1 has an overview of fire by biome: the Amazon followed by Cerrado have the most fires; the Pantanal and Cerrado typically have the highest % burned (they are both fire-dependent, as is the Pampas, see Fig 2), and in 2020 the Pantanal had roughly triple the % burned and fire density as others. Pollen evidence (from a different study, Power et al. 2016) indicates fire activity in the Pantanal peaked about 12,000 years ago (people have only lived there for about 8,000 years, and grazed cattle for ~250). Introducing cattle has caused a shift from burning every 3-6 years (mostly in the beginning or sometimes end of the wet season) to burning every year or two during a relatively dry part of the wet season (see Fig 6). Conversely, fire suppresion in the Cerrado has also driven woody encroachment of savannas. In the Amazon and Atlantic Forest, natural fire is rare and very infrequent, making fire especially harmful as species are not adapted to it. The combination of deforestation and drought make it much easier for fire to spread (and Amazonian deforestation means more drought in the Pantanal). 1/3 of the forest in the Amazon from 2003-2019 were associated w/ deforestation. Indigenous people mostly used fires in small areas, but since European colonization it's used at larger scales to clear land permanently (or alternately supressed, see Fig 7 for a nice timeline of fire landmarks). Integrated fire management (IFM) is uncommon (except a few federal protected areas, mostly in the Cerrado). Only Minas Gerais and Roraima states have IFM laws. The authors recommend: 1) fire management policy should include climate mitigation and poverty reduction to reduce fire risk; 2) better fire monitoring and management systems; 3) filling knowledge gaps around drivers of fire, how fire impacts wetlands, human dimensions of fire, impacts of different fire regimes on grazing productivity and carbon; 4) better enforcement of illegal fire use (including more resources); 5) including local communities in developing fire management plans, and 6) national and state level fire policies with adequate resources for implementation (including data collection and sharing, and clear and simple rules about fire use).

Oliveira et al. 2021 looks at the impact of Indigenous fire brigades in the Kadiwéu Indigenous territory (where the Cerrado meets the Pantanal). They compared 2001-2008 (no Indigenous fire brigades) to years when they were active (2009-2018; the first 5 years they tried to suppress all fires and the last 5 they used integrated fire management). While a before/after study isn't a true control, the years w/ the fire brigades had 53% less area burned, the area that burned often (70% of the years in each period) declined by 84%, and areas with no fire increased by 86% (note the % reported in the text doesn't match the number of acres, I'm using the latter). Interestingly the number of days without rain affected the area burned w/o the brigades, but when the brigades were active climatic factors had much less influence. The authors note that the reduced fire frequency allowed forests to expand and grasslands to shrink; it wasn't clear which was their more natural historic state.

Arrua et al. 2023 asked how fire frequency and severity affected sun spiders in the Kadiwéu Indigenous Reserve. They considered fire every 1-2 years frequent, w/ every 3-4 years infrequent. Spider abundance was not significantly affected by fire frequency or timing, but the most spiders were seen 1 month after a fire (perhaps b/c of bugs that like young leaves eating the new shoots).

dos Santos Ferreira et al. 2023 found that patchy and variable fire regimes (but avoiding high fire frequency from July to December) leads to flowers and fruits being continuously available in the Kadiwéu Indigenous territory . They recommend a seasonal patch-burning mosaic without trying explicit to optimize flower and fruit production.


REFERENCES:
Arrua, B. A., Carvalho, L. S., Teles, T. S., Oliveira, M. da R., & Ribeiro, D. B. (2023). Fire Has a Positive Effect on the Abundance of Sun Spiders (Arachnida: Solifugae) in the Cerrado-Pantanal Ecotone. Fire, 6(2), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.3390/fire6020069

Damasceno-Junior, G. A., Roque, F. de O., Garcia, L. C., Ribeiro, D. B., Tomas, W. M., Scremin-Dias, E., Dias, F. A., Libonati, R., Rodrigues, J. A., Lemos, F., Santos, M., Pereira, A. de M. M., de Souza, E. B., Reis, L. K., da Rosa Oliveira, M., Souza, A. H. de A., Manrique-Pineda, D. A., Ferreira, B. H. dos S., Bortolotto, I. M., & Pott, A. (2021). Wetland Science. In B. A. K. Prusty, R. Chandra, & P. A. Azeez (Eds.), Wetland Science & Practice (Vol. 38, Issue 2). Springer India. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-3715-0

dos Santos Ferreira, B. H., da Rosa Oliveira, M., Mariano Fernandes, R. A., Fujizawa Nacagava, V. A., Arguelho, B. A., Ribeiro, D. B., Pott, A., Damasceno Junior, G. A., & Garcia, L. C. (2023). Flowering and fruiting show phenological complementarity in both trees and non-trees in mosaic-burnt floodable savanna. Journal of Environmental Management, 337(February), 117665. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.117665

Garcia, L. C., Szabo, J. K., de Oliveira Roque, F., de Matos Martins Pereira, A., Nunes da Cunha, C., Damasceno-Júnior, G. A., Morato, R. G., Tomas, W. M., Libonati, R., & Ribeiro, D. B. (2021). Record-breaking wildfires in the world’s largest continuous tropical wetland: Integrative fire management is urgently needed for both biodiversity and humans. Journal of Environmental Management, 293(April), 112870. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.112870

Oliveira, M. R., Ferreira, B. H. S., Souza, E. B., Lopes, A. A., Bolzan, F. P., Roque, F. O., Pott, A., Pereira, A. M. M., Garcia, L. C., Damasceno, G. A., Costa, A., Rocha, M., Xavier, S., Ferraz, R. A., & Ribeiro, D. B. (2022). Indigenous brigades change the spatial patterns of wildfires, and the influence of climate on fire regimes. Journal of Applied Ecology, 59(5), 1279–1290. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.14139

Pivello, V. R., Vieira, I., Christianini, A. V., Ribeiro, D. B., da Silva Menezes, L., Berlinck, C. N., Melo, F. P. L., Marengo, J. A., Tornquist, C. G., Tomas, W. M., & Overbeck, G. E. (2021). Understanding Brazil’s catastrophic fires: Causes, consequences and policy needed to prevent future tragedies. Perspectives in Ecology and Conservation, 19(3), 233–255. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pecon.2021.06.005

Power, M. J., Whitney, B. S., Mayle, F. E., Neves, D. M., de Boer, E. J., & Maclean, K. S. (2016). Fire, climate and vegetation linkages in the bolivian chiquitano seasonally dry tropical forest. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 371(1696). https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0165


Sincerely,
 
Jon
 
p.s. The picture above is a sunset at Cape May National Wildlife Refuge

July 2024 science summary

Hello,

I've just got two science articles this month, but also wanted a plug a book I found really interesting: The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle. There's not a lot of brand new content - he draws heavily on concepts of psychological safety and vulnerability (see Amy Edmondson), learning from failure, how to give effective feedback, ways to generate candor and tough love, making space for feedback, etc.

The reason this one stuck w/ me is that he has pretty compelling real world examples of organizations and leaders that embody some of the recommendations. One of his suggestions was also new to me and really resonates: "resist the temptation to reflexively add value." I've thought before about 1) whether or not my review or input can make something better and how much, and 2) whether I'd add enough value for it to be worth my time. But he notes that 3) every time you weigh in on something, you're missing a chance to express trust in the author and build their confidence that they don't NEED your input for it to be good enough. I'm still grappling with how to put this into practice, but the book is a fast read and I recommend it.

If you know someone who wants to sign up to receive these summaries, they can do so at http://bit.ly/sciencejon (no need to email me).


MAMMALS:
Greenspoon et. al 2023 is an attempt to estimate the biomass of all wild mammals on earth (combined), arriving at 60 Mt total: 20 Mt (million metric tons) on land (half from "even-hoofed" mammals, see FIg 2), and 40 Mt in oceans (23 Mt of which comes from baleen whales). But the kicker is that they estimate human biomass at 390 Mt, and livestock biomass at 630 Mt (420 Mt from cattle: which is more than all humans plus all wild land mammals). Fig 4 awkwardly tries to compare all mammal biomass on earth, showing how wild species have been squeezed. The wild mammal estimates mostly come from the IUCN red list which skews towards expert assessments of more threatened spp., and the numbers won't be "right" for several reasons (these estimates are hard, and the data are highly limiting). But it seems solid that humans and livestock substantially outweigh wild mammals.
There's a good critique of the paper (arguing that Greenspoon et al. underestimate biomass by a factor of 5.5) by Santini et al. here https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2308958121 and a reply from the Greenspoon authors pointing out why the methods used in the critique are also (differently) flawed: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2316314121


PANTANAL / CATTLE RANCHING:
Junk and da Cunha 2012 argue that when ranchers clear trees and shrubs from grazing lands, that should not be equated with deforestation. They note that from the perspective of ranchers, all trees and shrubs within pastures (whether native or not) are "invasive species." It's unusual to use that language to describe the regeneration of trees in what used to be forest (as of ~250 years ago before cattle were introduced) but makes sense from the perspective of someone trying to keep land suitable for cattle (and they note the land was managed for thousands of years to promote other wild game species, making parts of the Pantanal a cultural landscape). Table 1 lists their recommended methods to clear some of the more common woody species. They also discuss how starting in the 1980s, money from a gold rush was used to drive higher-density cattle ranching using African grass species.


REFERENCES:
Greenspoon, L., Krieger, E., Sender, R., Rosenberg, Y., Bar-On, Y. M., Moran, U., Antman, T., Meiri, S., Roll, U., Noor, E., & Milo, R. (2023). The global biomass of wild mammals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(10), 2017. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2204892120

REPLY AND COUNTER-REPLY TO GREENSPOON:

• Santini, L., Berzaghi, F., & Benítez-López, A. (2024). Total population reports are ill-suited for global biomass estimation of wild animals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(4), 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2308958121   
• Greenspoon, L., Rosenberg, Y., Meiri, S., Roll, U., Noor, E., & Milo, R. (2024). Reply to Santini et al.: Total population reports are necessary for global biomass estimation of wild mammals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 121(4), 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2316314121

    
Junk, W. J., & Nunes da Cunha, C. (2012). Pasture clearing from invasive woody plants in the Pantanal: a tool for sustainable management or environmental destruction? Wetlands Ecology and Management, 20(2), 111–122. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11273-011-9246-y



Sincerely,
 
Jon
 
p.s. This is a baby rabbit nibbling a weed in my garden. We had a nest of even tinier ones born more recently, but this guy was the cutest of them all.

June 2024 science summary

Greetings,

While I have heard that most of you want me to keep focusing on research articles (and I do have four this month, three on fire and one on pollinators), I also wanted to highlight two great books I've read.

First is "Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution" by Cat Bohannon. The intro has a really incisive indictment of how much biology research has centered on men, and how harmful that's been to both science and women in particular. It then delves into how and why various female traits evolved. I found it both fascinating and useful, and was shocked at how recent and limited efforts to better represent women in clinical trials have been. Here's a NYtimes review:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/06/books/review/eve-cat-bohannon.html?unlocked_article_code=1.tU0.Ukhj.AMvoB5CNzRbt&smid=url-share

The other is About Us (https://goodreads.com/book/show/43726545-about-us), which is a collection of articles about many different forms of disability, each written by a person with lived experience (with one exception for people who are mostly unable to communicate, written by an ally). It seems like it would be a slog or a downer, but the articles are short, well-written, and really diverse in style which makes it a pretty quick and fun read (plus super educational). Some are funny, some made me cry (including some funny / sad mixes), but all were worth reading. If you are a New York Times subscriber all the component articles are free, but I liked having it in book form. If you're in DC and want to borrow a copy let me know!

If you know someone who wants to sign up to receive these summaries, they can do so at http://bit.ly/sciencejon (no need to email me).

POLLINATORS:
Li et al. 2024 is a methods paper about using land cover data to predict floral resource availability for pollinators. I'm an author despite minimal input; the lead author based this on work by the last author, who I provided some guidance to when he was a postdoc. There are a few potentially interesting things in here. 1) Most pollinators don't make much honey, so their populations are limited by the time of year w/ the least food available (pollen and nectar). The methods here help you figure out those bottlenecks if you want to target habitat restoration to boost pollinator populations. 2) Plants vary a lot in how much nectar pollen they make. Not every crop makes flowers that feed pollinators (likely obvious, but some crops and cover crops are harvested or terminated before flowering, and wind-pollinated plants don't have nectar). Trees produce a ton of nectar and pollen. 3) The paper looked at two different ways to map land cover, and surprisingly the simpler approach worked as well (similar error levels)! It's a good reminder to always question whether you need more complexity and accuracy.

I added some tips for improving pollinator habitat in your own garden here.


FIRE:
Parks et al. 2023 looks at severity and frequency of fire in dry conifer forests in the Western US (see Fig 1), comparing the last 40 years to pre-colonial times. They found that forests that kill most or all trees ("stand-replacing fires") are from 3 to 14 times more common now (varying by ecoregion). By looking at areas with varying logging pressures and fire suppression, they show that logging is not reducing stand-replacing fires, but places w/ more prescribed fire and the least fire suppression have much less of these severe fires. For example, in the Gila Wilderness (where many fires are not suppressed) the % of fires that were stand-replacing was 3 times lower than the ecoregion it's in. Prescribed fires consistently led to the lowest stand-replacement, at similar rates to pre-colonial times. Fig 4 and 5 have some great aerial images of forests before and after fire and changes over decades.

Peeler et al. 2023 is an analysis of the best places in 11 US Western states for coniferous forest management (removing small trees and brush, and/or prescribed fire) to reduce the risk of wildfire leading to carbon loss (and/or to protect human communities). Skip to Fig 5 for the key results (the highest ranked places they found) and Fig 3 for more detail. Note that they excluded forests which historically burned rarely b/c ecologically these kinds of forests are supposed to be dense and thinning would alter that ecology (but they still see a role for prescribed fire and tree planting there). They also flag the need for cross-boundary collaboration (including w/ local & Indigenous knowledge and values).

Vidal-Riveros et al. 2023 looks at wildfire history and impacts across the Gran Chaco region (see Fig 1 - it's mostly in Argentina and Paraguay with some in Bolivia and a tiny bit in Brazil, and includes two ecoregions). It's a good review, but they note that the literature has some big gaps. It is mostly focused in Argentina (69% of papers they assessed) with only 10% in Bolivia and 3% in Paraguay. 68% of the papers were on remote sensing of fire frequency, most of which lacked field calibration and validation (which is really important). Unsurprisingly cattle ranching is the main source of wildfire, and in many cases is frequent enough to make it hard for vegetation to recover. For example, in Bolivia 4 yr burning cycles don't allow for forest and soil regeneration, while leaving land fallow for 14-20 years after fire (in Argentina) promotes plant diversity and weed control. The paper has some good info on how different plant species and communities respond to fire. It notes there's limited info on how fire affects invasive non-native plants, but one study in Argentina found prescribed fire killed native and non-native species at similar levels (and some highly flammable non-native spp promote flame spreading). Fig 3 has a nice model of how fire and grazing interact to shape whether grass or trees or shrubs dominate in a given place.


REFERENCES:
Li, K., Fisher, J., Power, A., & Iverson, A. (2024). A map of pollinator floral resource habitats in the agricultural landscape of Central New York. One Ecosystem, 9. https://doi.org/10.3897/oneeco.9.e118634

Parks, S. A., Holsinger, L. M., Blankenship, K., Dillon, G. K., Goeking, S. A., & Swaty, R. (2023). Contemporary wildfires are more severe compared to the historical reference period in western US dry conifer forests. Forest Ecology and Management, 544(June), 121232. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2023.121232

Peeler, J. L., McCauley, L., Metlen, K. L., Woolley, T., Davis, K. T., Robles, M. D., Haugo, R. D., Riley, K. L., Higuera, P. E., Fargione, J. E., Addington, R. N., Bassett, S., Blankenship, K., Case, M. J., Chapman, T. B., Smith, E., Swaty, R., & Welch, N. (2023). Identifying opportunity hot spots for reducing the risk of wildfire-caused carbon loss in western US conifer forests. Environmental Research Letters, 18(9), 094040. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/acf05a

Vidal-Riveros, C., Souza-Alonso, P., Bravo, S., Laino, R., & Ngo Bieng, M. A. (2023). A review of wildfires effects across the Gran Chaco region. Forest Ecology and Management, 549(September), 121432. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2023.121432

Sincerely,
 
Jon
 
p.s. This is a photo of a long-horned bee (Melissodes spp.) which I only ever saw in my garden the one year I grew a couple sunflowers. They look even cooler close up: photo 1, photo 2, photo 3

Pollinators - new paper and tips for your garden

I wanted to announce a new paper I've been kindly included as an author on (despite minimal contributions) - Li et al. 2024. It's a methods paper about using land cover data to predict floral resource availability for pollinators. There are a few potentially interesting things in here. 1) Most pollinators don't make much honey, so their populations are limited by the time of year w/ the least food available (pollen and nectar). The methods here help you figure out those bottlenecks if you want to target habitat restoration to boost pollinator populations. 2) Plants vary a lot in how much nectar pollen they make. Not every crop makes flowers that feed pollinators (likely obvious, but some crops and cover crops are harvested or terminated before flowering, and wind-pollinated plants don't have nectar). Trees produce a ton of nectar and pollen. 3) The paper looked at two different ways to map land cover, and surprisingly the simpler approach worked as well (similar error levels)! It's a good reminder to always question whether you need more complexity and accuracy. https://oneecosystem.pensoft.net/article/118634/

I was asked "How can we use these insights in NYC if at all for urban pollinator husbandry?" which made me realize I should have been more clear about tips for people who want their gardens to better support pollinators.

The actual results are specific to upstate New York and wouldn't apply elsewhere. To make this work one of the authors had to visit many places to see what plants were blooming in what kinds of habitat at different times, then use remote sensing to make a land cover map, then do the math to see when floral resources are scarce.BUT here's how I have been using the very rough concept it in my own garden!

1. Take notes and photos throughout the year as you walk around your neighborhood. When do you first see bees (and/or other pollinators like flies and beetles), and what flowers are they visiting? If you're not seeing bees in your garden - try planting those early bloomers in your own yard.

2. What weeks do you notice the most and least flowers? This isn't a perfect proxy since some flowers have big petals but don't provide much food (like marigolds, geraniums, lilies, and tulips). But it's a start. Write down the weeks where you see the fewest flowers in the neighborhood. That tells you where your garden can have the most added value.

3. Are there certain plants absolutely mobbed with pollinators certain weeks (bees, flies, moths, etc.)? That's a good clue they may be offering food when it's scarce, and/or it's high quality, and you could plant more of them. If you want diverse pollinators, include some plants with small composite flowers (I find those are the most popular overall, especially for sweat bees and bomber flies, something like anise hyssop / Agastache or goldenrod) and some with bigger flowers larger bees like (Penstemon is a favorite of my bees, although the bees also love basil flowers).

4. Based on your notes, add perennial plants that flower when there are the fewest available flowers in the neighborhood. For me that was early spring, late fall, and mid to late summer. Consider also adding some plants that flower intermittently year round like rosemary - it's consistently a star performer in late winter / early spring for me, but also gets some love in the summer. For folks in the DC area my top performers are probably penstemon, anise hyssop, goldenrod, swamp milkweed, and obedient plant (for late fall / early winter)

5. Take notes and/or photos of what you see in your garden. It's fun to see how specific flowers will attract species that won't come otherwise. Use Google Lens or iNaturalist to identify at least the rough kinds of bees. Look for the metallic green or orange Agopostemon bees, get close photos of sweat bees, and whatever other ones surprise you. Here are my pics of pollinators in my garden.

6. Experiment! One year I planted sunflower and it was the only time I saw a long-horned bee in my garden (check out the pics: it's a pretty cool bee). I used to have some lambs ear which I got rid of b/c it wasn't native, but then I stopped seeing carder bees (which collected its fuzz).

7. Leave the dead flower stems through the winter; when new shoots and leaves form on the plant, break off the stems at different heights and toss them elsewhere in your garden (not compost). Many bees and other pollinators lay their eggs in the stems and you don't want to get rid of them before they hatch. See this guide from Xerces for more.

8. Have fun. It's really cool to see how much impact you can have on your garden and neighborhood.

9. Don't forget about habitat for other wildlife! My favorites: 

a) add a birdbath if you're able to commit to dumping and replacing the water daily (you can use rain barrel water like I do). Scrub it with a brush weekly. Get one w/ rough iron sides or leave in a stick so bugs can drink but escape if they fall in.

b) make sure you have some bushes for birds to hang out in. Mine love the swamp dogwood and viburnum more than the inkberries I planted specifically for birds.

c) if you're in the Mid-Atlantic, plant cut-leaf coneflowers. You get 7-8' tall plants that attract so many goldfinches that eat the seeds!

d) let some of your herbs flower. In addition to bees loving basil, cardinals love coriander seeds from cilantro!

e) pokeweed is a native aggressive perennial that provides so much free bird food, especially to catbirds but also robins and mockingbirds and sometimes other species. Cut it back or dig it up when it spreads too much.

e) if you have room, make a brush pile from any pokeweed stems and woody stems and bush trimmings. Several species appreciate them.

f) I used to think "certified wildlife friendly" signs were silly and bragging, but then I heard some neighbors walk by complaining about how unruly my garden was (they didn't see me on the porch). I ordered a sign, and a week or so after I put it up, I heard the same neighbors walk by, see the sign, and say "oh that's cool! it's a wildlife-friendly garden!" So it's worth looking into and the process has a few more tips.

May 2024 science summary

Ahoy,

This month I have a mixed bag of four unrelated articles: the efficacy of conservation globally, the state of wetlands in the US, the state of the world's migratory species, and one on how biodiversity relates to productivity in forests.

If you know someone who wants to sign up to receive these summaries, they can do so at http://bit.ly/sciencejon (no need to email me).

CONSERVATION IMPACT:
Langhammer et al. 2024 is the big splashy new Science paper looking at the impact of conservation. It's a meta-analysis of trials comparing interventions to counterfactuals (similar areas w/o action). They found conservation helps 2/3 of the time (45% of trials led to absolute improvement in biodiversity, 21% reduced biodiversity loss), but is harmful 1/3 of the time (in 21% of trials biodiversity declined more due to conservation, in 12% it improved less due to conservation), and only 2% of trials showed no difference). That's not a great track record - I'd hoped net harm would be rare (1/3 is very high!), and just over half the time we're losing biodiversity despite trying to stop it. Fig 2 helpfully shows how impact varies by type of intervention: protected areas show the smallest positive effect on average, and invasive species removal shows the largest positive effect. I'd ignore "sustainable use of species" b/c it's a weirdly broad category that somehow only included 4 papers on wildlife hunting and 1 on fishing, although a few fishing papers are included under protected areas (details in the supplement - this makes me think their sample is not representative of conservation broadly). While the authors conclude conservation is working and we should do more of it, I bet if this was a paper on medical efficacy we'd consider interventions that are 2/3 helpful and 1/3 harmful an urgent cry to improve efficacy BEFORE we try to scale work that is so often ineffective or harmful. Would you send your kids to a school where 1/3 of students learned less than kids not in school at all?


WETLANDS:
The latest report on the status of wetlands in the US (excluding AK and HI) is a bummer but has some useful info. Key summaries are in Fig 9 and Table 2, but in short on net 221,000 acres of wetlands were converted, mostly to ag and tree plantations followed by housing developments. But that net change hides that fact that we actually lost 670,000 acres of vegetated wetlands, with non-vegetated wetlands like ponds, sandbars, and mudflats increasing (but NOT providing nearly as much ecological value). The report calls for more coordination to achieve no net loss of wetlands, to update and improve the National Wetlands Inventory, develop and implement better wetland conservation and management (duh), and commit to long-term monitoring and adaptive management.


MIGRATORY SPECIES:
The new State of the World's Migratory Species report (UNEP-WCMC 2024) has an update on how the 1,189 migratory species in CMS are doing. Almost half (44%) are in decline (with 22% at risk of extinction, including 97% of listed fish spp), 1/3 are stable, and the rest are split between improving and unknown. The report also notes that 399 spp not even listed in CMS (including ~200 fish spp, ~150 bird spp, and ) are at risk (from critically endangered to near threatened). See Fig 2.10b for an overview of which migratory species CMS leaves out (including horseshoe crabs!) and 2.10c for the subset at risk. Unsurprisingly the main threats are habitat loss (along w/ degradation and fragmentation) and overexploitation (hunting and fishing). Recommendations on page ix-xi are familiar and unsurprising (albeit important). There's a blog about this paper with key highlights at: https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/landmark-un-report-worlds-migratory-species-animals-are-decline-and


BIODIVERSITY:
At first I thought Liu et al. 2024 was saying that productivity (the rate at which biomass is created) is a great predictor of forest species richness / biodiversity. That's not right though! Look at Fig 2 - they're actually saying that to predict productivity there is a significant but weak positive correlation to tree species richness, which is about the same as the correlation w/ more compelx metrics (functional attribute diversity and phylogenetic diversity). But forest stands under 30 show lower productivity with higher richness, and wildlife richness is left out entirely. So this is less of a strong & clear relationship, and more of a "if you're going to compare the two you may as well use the simpler metric" result.

REFERENCES:

Lang, M. W., Ingebritsen, J. C., & Griffin, R. K. (2024). Status and Trends of Wetlands in the Conterminous United States 2009 to 2019. U.S. Department of the Interior; Fish and Wildlife Service, Washington, D.C. 43 pp. https://www.fws.gov/project/2019-wetlands-status-and-trends-report

Langhammer, P. F., Bull, J. W., Bicknell, J. E., Oakley, J. L., Brown, M. H., Bruford, M. W., Butchart, S. H. M., Carr, J. A., Church, D., Cooney, R., Cutajar, S., Foden, W., Foster, M. N., Gascon, C., Geldmann, J., Genovesi, P., Hoffmann, M., Howard-McCombe, J., Lewis, T., … Brooks, T. M. (2024). The positive impact of conservation action. Science, 384(6694), 453–458. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adj6598

Liu, Y., Hogan, J. A., Lichstein, J. W., Guralnick, R. P., Soltis, D. E., Soltis, P. S., & Scheiner, S. M. (2024). Biodiversity and productivity in eastern US forests. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(14), 2017. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2314231121

UNEP-WCMC, 2024. State of the World’s Migratory Species. UNEP-WCMC, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
https://www.cms.int/en/publication/state-worlds-migratory-species-report

Sincerely,
 
Jon

 
p.s. This photo is on the Blackwater River Trail in the Canaan Valley Resort State Park, where we were treated to some April snow on vacation!