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Rewetting drained peatlands is recognized as a leading and effective natural solution to curb greenhouse gas emissions. However, rewetting creates novel ecosystems whose emission behaviors are not adequately captured by currently used emission factors. These emission factors are applied immediately after rewetting, thus do not reflect the temporal dynamics of greenhouse gas emissions during the period wherein there is a transition to a rewetted steady-state. Here, we provide long-term data showing a mismatch between actual emissions and default emission factors and revealing the temporal patterns of annual carbon dioxide and methane fluxes in a rewetted peatland site in northeastern Germany. We show that site-level annual emissions of carbon dioxide and methane approach the IPCC default emission factors and those suggested for the German national inventory report only between 13 to 16 years after rewetting. Over the entire study period, we observed a source-to-sink transition of annual carbon dioxide fluxes with a decreasing trend of −0.36 t CO2-C ha−1 yr−1 and a decrease in annual methane emissions of −23.6 kg CH4 ha−1 yr−1. Our results indicate that emission factors should represent the temporally dynamic nature of peatlands post-rewetting and consider the effect of site characteristics to better estimate associated annual emissions. This project is supported by the WET HORIZONS project.

Aquaculture has grown exponentially during the last decades, even overcoming traditional fishing in volume since2012 (Iñarra et al, 2018). The rise of the production of fish involves the rise of fish by-products, that in case ofbeing disposed could suppose an environmental risk. Fish viscera are part of the by-products used to producefishmeal and are the 10-18 % of the whole fish weight.Fish silage or acid autolysis is commonly used in areas with high fisheries rates and consists of liquefactionand stabilization of minced fish at room temperature, normally adding formic acid until reaching a pH between3.5 and 4.5 to prevent microbial growth. Hydrolysis of proteins occurs thanks to the endogenous acid proteasesthat are located at the fish viscera, which enable to get low molecular weight peptides and amino acids (Toppe etal, 2018). The resulting protein hydrolysates could be used as fertilisers. However, silage can take several days toachieve a high hydrolysis degree. In this work, autolysis has been carried out simulating the conditions ofenzymatic hydrolysis but only working with the endogenous enzymes from fish viscera with the aim ofaccelerating a typical silage to get free amino acids while saving costs derived from the use of commercialenzymes

This is the December 2023 edition of the OCEAN:ICE Newsletter. The original newsletter is posted on the OCEAN:ICE LinkedIn. For those who do not have access to LinkedIn, we upload the newsletter to Zenodo and the website.

This newsletter is part of the OCEAN:ICE Dissemination activities, OCEAN:ICE News. Newsletters are released every month on the OCEAN:ICE LinkedIn page and uploaded to the project's website and Zenodo. 

There are several research infrastructures or other data services running in Europe that cover a multitude of marine-related sciences, providing specific datasets coming from observations collected with different methods. These infrastructures constitute a diverse world, each looking at a piece of the big picture, sometimes hindering collaboration and data sharing. Blue-Cloud aims to overcome fragmentation and build a bridge between thematic science clusters - such as marine, climate, food and agriculture sciences - and EOSC, creating a data federation and providing a common access to a so-called thematic EOSC for marine data. By connecting leading marine data management infrastructures with horizontal e-infrastructures, the project aims to maximise the exploitation of data resources available from different sources. The Blue-Cloud framework consists of two major technical components: (1) a Blue-Cloud Data Discovery and Access service, already presented in a previous EOSC in practice story, to serve federated discovery and access to blue data infrastructures, and (2) a Blue-Cloud Virtual Research Environment (VRE) to provide computing platforms and analytical services facilitating the collaboration between researchers, which is detailed hereafter. The Blue-Cloud VRE is powered by the D4Science Infrastructure. [M. Assante et al. (2019) Enacting open science by D4Science. Future Gener. Comput. Syst. 101: 555-563 10.1016/j.future.2019.05.063 ] The full list of EOSC in practice stories is available here

Acclimation of corals to light is known to rely on multiple strategies working at different timescales. Among them, photosynthetic alternative electron flows (AEFs) could act as photoprotective mechanisms under fluctuating light intensities. In this work, we first compared the use of AEFs in shallow and mesophotic colonies of the coral Stylophora pistillata by carrying out joint measurements of oxygen exchange and photosystems quantum yields. We observed similar capacities to re-route photosynthetically derived electrons toward oxygen (Mehler reaction) and to perform cyclic electron flow around photosystem I under high light intensity in both colony types. But in contrast to mesophotic colonies that hosted Cladocopium, the photosynthetic apparatus of Symbiodinium microadriaticum hosted by their shallow counterparts was notably able to drive a higher number of electrons, displayed a higher thermal dissipation of absorbed light energy. Then, a short-term light stress was applied to evaluate the plasticity of the photosynthetic apparatus. Both shallow and mesophotic colonies showed fast acclimation to the low light regime. In contrast, under the high light regime, mesophotic colonies showed a limited capacity to dissipate light energy and were strongly photoinhibited, though their PSI activity was partly preserved and likely involved cyclic electron flow. This study shows how important the photosynthetic alternative electron flows are in acclimation processes to light and how the plasticity of the photosynthetic processes in Symbiodiniaceae may shape the vertical distribution of the coral holobionts.

Momarsat 2022 cruise report: summary of dives and operations, and position of moorings and observation infrastructures and sampling locations

Marine mammals include toothed and baleen whales, as well as seals, sea lions, sea cows, sea otters and polar bears. They are adapted to an aquatic life in oceanic, coastal and riverine habitats. They range in size from sea otters to blue whales. The extreme diversity of marine mammals is related to their adaptations to different habitats and their use of different feeding strategies. The different kinds of marine mammals are not closely related but evolved from different terrestrial ancestors. Because they have been exposed to similar environmental constraints in their aquatic way of life, many evolutionary convergences can be found in different lineages. They have torpedo-shaped bodies, thick fur or fat layers to preserve heat, as well as impressive diving abilities. Here, we discuss these adaptations in their physiology and anatomy. Through hands-on exercises, students can test how their own muscle strength and heartbeat are affected by cold water.