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The First Firn Core From the Cordillera Darwin Icefield: Implications for Future Ice Core Research
Get PDFThe Southern Hemisphere westerly winds (SHWWs) (45–65°S) are important regulators of the Southern Hemisphere climate. The scarcity of observational records at the core of the wind belt hinders our understanding of the environmental impact and long-term variability of the westerly winds. The Cordillera Darwin Icefield (CDI) (54–55°S) is favorably located to capture environmental changes at the current core of the SHWW belt. Here, we present chemical and microparticle records from the first firn core from the CDI. We evaluate regional climate reanalysis data using in situ automatic weather station observations and apply a downscaling approach to study regional-to-local environmental conditions at the firn core site. We use these records to assess the preservation of local-to-regional environmental information in the firn. Our CDI firn core records present minor post-depositional disruptions, preserving the original seasonality of locally sourced impurities. Local surface air temperature and melt estimations suggest the icefield has been progressively exposed to surface melt conditions, but not enough to produce significant melt at the firn core site. Air mass trajectories demonstrate air parcels are directly transported from local marine and terrestrial environments, establishing a route for the transport and deposition of chemical compounds and aerosols to the firn core site. These results highlight the potential of high elevation sites (>2,000 m a.s.l) in the CDI to hold valuable paleoenvironmental records directly from the core of the SHWW belt, records which are currently threatened by increasing surface air temperatures
Publishing Environmental Data APIs for use in AI workflows: recommendations and demonstrators of a standard approach within the NERC Environmental Data Service
Get PDFThe advent of artificial intelligence as a scientific tool is driving a new demand for multidisciplinary
data analyses that crosscuts scientific domain boundaries. Developing
interoperable solutions to data delivery enables new avenues for scientific investigation.
This report summarises work on development of interoperability tools, for environmental
research.
The NERC Environmental Data Service (EDS) consists of five domain specific data
centres supplying data to environmental scientists. The data is findable through data
catalogues and web search engines, thanks to decades of collaborative effort
implementing standardised discovery metadata. However, the access methods, formats
and content of the delivered data are varied, and users need to spend time navigating
and understanding these. Data access through Application Programming Interfaces (API)
are preferred over bulk data downloads, because they allow programmatic querying and
repeatable workflows, and are recommended for access to data that is large, complex
or being continuously updated.
This project’s detailed aim was a greater level of standardisation of data access APIs
across the EDS, with a particular focus on their use in AI and machine learning (ML)
applications. This will reduce the effort needed by EDS as data publishers and by
environmental researchers as data consumers, saving development time and easing
data integration processes. This supports systematic AI analysis of multiple
environmental datatypes to underpin development of predictive environmental
modelling and digital twins.
Through co-design and Agile development processes, we identified and recommended
mlcommons Croissant specification as a common standard to help ML consumers
interface between data APIs - and bulk download - of any design. Croissant extends
existing metadata standards, is understood by web search engines and AI agents to
support findability and is integrated into ML python libraries and popular ML platforms to
support usability.
We created a number of Croissant descriptors from each of the data centres, a new data
API, and extensions of metadata APIs to serve croissant metadata. We created
demonstrator ML workflow notebooks using the Croissant descriptors and data APIs and
ran these on different data science platforms to demonstrate portability.
Croissant [26] is a relatively new standard and not built primarily for data access by API
or for multi-dimensional spatiotemporal data. We identified areas where croissant and
the implementing libraries could work better for these use cases, such as use of the emerging geo-croissant extension, integration with OpenAPI [38] specifications, and
support for authenticated data access.
At the API implementation level our recommendations were more flexible, and in line
with existing EDS practices to use API standards appropriate to the data type (e.g. OGC
[37], STAC [43]), and to describe APIs using OpenAPI specification
Critical minerals potential of Zambia : guide to the geology, occurrences, exploration and mineral production
Get PDFThis first edition of the ‘Critical minerals potential of
Zambia’ guide outlines the current and potential
critical mineral resources of Zambia (as defined by
the Zambian National Critical Minerals Strategy). It
provides insight into the location of operating mines
and known occurrences, geological information,
exploration activity and production for each critical
mineral in Zambia from 2019 to 2023 (Table 1).
This guide is part of a collaboration between the
Geological Survey Department of Zambia (GSD) and
the British Geological Survey (BGS), with funding
provided by the United Kingdom (UK) Government’s
Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(FCDO). It was supported by the BGS International
Geoscience Research and Development (IGRD)
programme.
The transition to a low-carbon future will lead to
a significant increase in the demand for critical
minerals (Hund et al., 2023). For example, renewable
energy sources, energy storage batteries and the
electrification of the transport sector are key aspects
of a low-carbon future and require mining of minerals
(Mudd, 2022). The importance of these minerals is
globally recognised. Many countries publish lists
of those minerals that are ‘critical’ to their energy
transition goals and economic stability. These are the
result of assessments of their national importance as
well as supply and demand risk (Mudd et al., 2024).
In the context of Zambia, critical minerals are the
naturally occurring minerals that are essential to
modern technologies, the economy and international
development (Ministry of Mines and Minerals
Development, 2024). The recently published
‘National Critical Minerals strategy 2024 to 2028’
highlights eleven metals and minerals as critical to
Zambia over the next five years (Ministry of Mines and
Minerals Development, 2024). These eleven metals
and minerals form the focus of the ‘Critical mineral
potential guide of Zambia’:
• cobalt
• columbite-tantalite (‘coltan’)
• copper
• graphite
• lithium
• manganese
• nickel
• rare earth elements
• sugilite (a complex silicate mineral)
• tin
• uraniu
The Impact of Adaptive High-Latitude Coordinates
Get PDFThe high-latitude ionosphere can be divided into three regions dominated by different types of coupling and characterized by distinctive behaviors. These are the polar cap, the auroral region, and the sub-auroral region. Their locations are highly variable, changing in extent in response to driving conditions in the solar wind and within the magnetosphere. We discuss how defining high-latitude coordinates relative to the boundaries between these physically significant regions (adaptive co-ordinates) has major implications for statistical studies, modeling applications, and research combining magnetospheric and ionospheric data. We explore the impact of using adaptive co-ordinates for statistical analyses of ionospheric vorticity, showing how using adaptive co-ordinate systems provides a clearer picture of the latitudinal variation of vorticity, and how peaks and troughs in vorticity relate to the boundary locations
Perspectives on conservation grazing: the need for monitoring and communication
Get PDF•1. Conservation grazing is widely used to manage open ecosystems, but inconsistent definitions and inadequate reporting of grazing patterns hinder effective communication among researchers, practitioners and policymakers, limiting the understanding and success of conservation grazing regimes.
•2. We demonstrate detailed measurement of the grazing pattern (comprising timing, intensity, duration and frequency) in management units within a single nature recovery site — Ainsdale Sand Dunes National Nature Reserve, in the United Kingdom. We highlight the potential value of using existing records of livestock movements to create a detailed picture of how the pattern of grazing varies between management units and over time.
•3. The pattern of grazing at Ainsdale Sand Dunes National Nature Reserve (Ainsdale NNR) has changed over time due to responsive management approaches. These management approaches also result in differences between grazing enclosures.
•4. We recommend that standard definitions are agreed upon to unify terminology for conservation grazing patterns and regimes. This will improve clarity, reporting and monitoring. We encourage sites to record daily livestock movements to track grazing patterns and plant communities, to monitor their impacts. We propose a common framework for describing grazing patterns to enable the effective use of data and allow comparisons across other sites.
•5. Practical implication. Bridging the gap between academics and land managers is essential, as limited staff, resources, time and in‐house expertise often prevent managers from moving beyond data collection to effective data use in decision‐making. Strengthening this connection will enhance the monitoring, analysis and communication of the analysis of grazing patterns, and support improved nature recovery outcomes
COSMOS-UK. Soil moisture: July 2025
Get PDFThe COSMOS-UK soil moisture status report provides an insight into the current soil moisture conditions across the UK as monitored by the COSMOS-UK network. The network comprises approximately 50 sites at which a cosmic ray neutron sensor is deployed to monitor soil moisture within a footprint of about 12 hectares. The report is comprised of: maps of end of month soil moisture both as volumetric water content and as a soil moisture index; a short description of current status; and selected time series graphs showing data from the last three years
The Representation of Surface Temperature Trends in C3S Seasonal Forecast Systems
Get PDFWe assess near‐surface temperature and sea surface temperature trends in 8 seasonal forecast systems in the Copernicus Climate Change Service archive, over the common hindcast period (1993–2016). All but one of the systems show a faster warming of the global‐mean, relative to observations in both boreal summer and winter seasons. On average, systems warm at 0.21 K/decade and 0.22 K/decade for winter and summer, respectively, compared to 0.17 K/decade and 0.19 K/decade for ERA5. In summer, forecast systems tend to show an excessive warming of the tropical Pacific, tropical Atlantic and southern mid‐latitudes, which contributes to the difference in global warming rates compared to observations. In contrast, greater warming in the northern mid‐latitudes contributes most to trend differences for winter. The faster warming of models over this period has important implications for seasonal forecasts of future global and regional temperature and suggests further work is required to understand this bias
Multidimensional biodiversity framework reveals divergent responses of benthic organisms to multiple stressors in a highly urbanized river basin
No full textFreshwater biodiversity faces an unprecedented decline from multiple stressors, yet conventional assessment approaches often inadequately capture complex ecological responses, especially in heavily urbanized river systems. Here we implemented a multidimensional biodiversity framework in China’s most urbanized basin─the Pearl River Basin─to investigate how macroinvertebrate and diatom communities respond to spatial factors and multiple stressors across climatic, hydrological, water quality, and land-use gradients. Based on two-year surveys at 50 sites (2020–2021), we found that (1) Basin-scale α-diversity increased longitudinally, whereas β-diversity decreased, with macroinvertebrates showing pronounced diversity attenuation in urbanized middle and downstream; (2) Spatial factors explained 61.0–83.1% of explained variance in macroinvertebrate α-diversity, indicating dispersal limitation as the primary assembly mechanism. In contrast, environmental drivers accounted for 66.2–77.5% of explained variance in diatom communities, reflecting stronger environmental filtering. Additionally, stochastic processes played an important role in shaping the assembly of both groups. (3) Multidiversity indices demonstrated significantly enhanced sensitivity to influence factors (84.9% for α-diversity and 12.9% for β-diversity), outperforming single-taxon metrics in detecting community-level responses to multiple pressures. Our findings highlight the importance of integrating taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity across levels when assessing ecosystem responses to complex environmental stressors, with direct implications for more effective biodiversity monitoring and conservation in human-disturbed river basins
Mixed provenance of organic carbon in Northeast Atlantic temperate intertidal seagrass sediments
Get PDFBlue carbon accreditation for climate mitigation services provided by coastal ecosystems, such as seagrass beds, typically account only for autochthonous organic carbon, potentially underestimating the total carbon sequestration capacity of seagrass ecosystems. Here, a multi-proxy approach is used to determine the provenance of organic carbon in two intertidal temperate seagrass ecosystems in the Northeast Atlantic. The organic carbon to nitrogen ratio (Corg/N) and carbon isotope composition (δ13C) of seagrass tissues and sediments from an open coastal sandy site (Ryde, UK) and a muddy tidal inlet site (Farlington Marshes, UK) were measured. Sedimentary Corg/N was higher at the muddy site than the sandy site, suggesting a greater contribution of marine algal organic matter in the latter. Isotopic mixing model analysis showed that seagrass biomass contributes between 12 and 25% to accumulated sedimentary Corg. These findings demonstrate that temperate Northeast Atlantic seagrass sediments are dominated by allochthonous Corg (75–88%) and that current blue carbon accreditation frameworks undervalue these ecosystems. Supporting the estimation and uptake of high integrity field-derived allochthonous deduction evidence would assist uptake of these frameworks to support implementation of nature-based solutions
First island-wide, single-day soil collection study on Crete reveals environmental drivers of microbial diversity
Get PDFUnderstanding how environmental and ecological factors shape variability in soil-associated microbial communities is a complex problem, particularly on islands, which contain a wide range of diverse and unique geology, fauna, and flora. The island of Crete features sharp altitudinal gradients, diverse landscapes, and distinct ecological zones shaped by its complex geological history making it an ideal natural laboratory for studying how environmental variation influences soil microbial communities. In this study, we characterized the soil microbial communities across Crete’s ecozones and identify environmental factors associated with their diversity and composition. We performed a single-day, island-wide soil microbiota investigation, the first of its kind, to address this challenge by eliminating sources of variability including seasonality, weather conditions, anthropogenic or land use changes over time, and ecological succession of microbial communities. This island collection event (Island Sampling Day, ISD) was conducted in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Genomic Standards Consortium, on the island of Crete, and utilized standard data and metadata collection protocols. We generated amplicon sequences (V3-V4 regions of the 16 S ribosomal RNA gene) and a metadata-enriched dataset from 435 soil samples across 72 sites and four distinct ecozones for future whole-island microbiome studies. Here we report on the study design and sample collection process along with our initial examination of the ecological drivers of soil microbial community variability (e.g., elevation, soil types, soil pH, soil moisture, vegetation type, land use) across the Crete ecozones (defined by elevation and distinct habitats)
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