nsf.gov - National Science Foundation : NSF, USDA, DOE Award Grants to Improve Predictions of Climate Change on Regional, Decadal Scales

Research will lead to better understanding of climate change effects on shorter, more local scales,-

Simulation of surface temperature changes due to aerosols from Northern Hemisphere fires. Credit: Yongjia Song and Yuhang Wang, Georgia Institute of Technology

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EaSM researchers will assess how climate change affects prairie pothole wetlands. Credit: Ducks Unlimited

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Water: more precious than gold. Will there be enough in longer times of drought? Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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EaSM grantees will study wildfires and regional climate variability. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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Scorched Earth: drought in the Sonoran Desert cracks open the land. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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Hot time in the city: How will climate change affect urban and surrounding areas? Credit: NSF Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research Site

Download the high-resolution JPG version of the image. (100 KB) What will Earth's climate be like in a decade--or sooner? And what will it be like where you live, and around the globe? To help find answers, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and other federal agencies have awarded new grants to study the consequences of climate variability and change. The awards were made through the interagency Decadal and Regional Climate Prediction Using Earth System Models (EaSM) Program. At NSF, EaSM is part of the Science, Engineering and Education (SEES) portfolio of investments. "NSF is strongly supportive of the EaSM goal of improved understanding of the climate system," says Roger Wakimoto, NSF assistant director for Geosciences. "Better climate predictions will arm decision-makers with the quantitative information they need to help chart the appropriate future course for society," says Wakimoto. Other agencies awarding grants in the interagency EaSM Program are the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). NSF has invested $22.7 million in the awards; USDA, $5.2 million; and DOE, $3.3 million. Among the subjects addressed by the EaSM awards are: Quantifying and conveying the risk of prolonged drought in coming decades, Exploring the connection between wildfires and regional climate variability, Linking near-term future changes in weather and hydroclimate in Western North America to adaptations for ecosystem and water resource management, Advancing climate and regional model validation for societal applications, and Connecting human and Earth system models to assess regional effects and adaptations in urban systems and their hinterlands. According to scientists, the EaSM program addresses one of the most pressing problems of the millennium: climate change and how it is likely to affect the world--and how people can plan for its consequences. That challenge calls for the development of next-generation Earth system models that include coupled and interactive representations of ecosystems, agricultural working lands and forests, urban environments, biogeochemistry, atmospheric chemistry, ocean and atmospheric currents, the water cycle, land and sea ice and human activities. EaSM projects will expand the limits of scientists' understanding of Earth's climate system, leading to better ways of predicting climate change. The consequences of climate variability and change are becoming more immediate and profound than anticipated, research has found. Prolonged droughts on several continents, increasing stresses on natural and managed ecosystems, losses of agricultural and forest productivity, degraded ocean and permafrost habitats, global sea-level rise, the rapid retreat of ice sheets and glaciers, and changes in ocean currents have shown that climate variability and change will likely have significant effects on decade and shorter time scales. Those effects on humans and other animals, plants, and planet-wide systems such as the oceans, may be far-reaching. Among the goals of the EaSM program is achieving reliable global and regional predictions of decadal climate variability and change through an understanding of the coupled physical, chemical, biological and human processes that drive the climate system. Awardees are working to quantify the effects of climate variability and change on ecological, agricultural and other human systems, and to identify and quantify "feedback loops" through which humans affect the environment. "As climate becomes more variable, precipitation extremes become more frequent and temperatures rise, agricultural producers, foresters and natural resource managers will need to plan and adapt in order to meet the needs of Earth's population," says Sonny Ramaswamy, director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "Understanding the climate system and being able to predict climate trends on decadal and regional scales will be important to helping the agriculture industry remain profitable. These grants will help us move science forward so we can make the best decisions for adaptive management and planning for the future." Adds Sharlene Weatherwax, DOE associate director for Biological and Environmental Research, "To advance a robust predictive understanding of Earth's climate, and to inform the development of sustainable solutions to our energy and environmental challenges, a deeper understanding of natural climate variability and change is needed. "The projects DOE supports through EaSM are expected to efficiently enhance the ability to design and deploy the most effective energy solutions for the nation." Scientists are maximizing observational and model data for impact and vulnerability/resilience assessments, and translating model results and their uncertainties into the scientific basis for well-informed human adaptation to and management decisions for climate change. These decisions need to happen, say climate researchers, in the coming years--not decades or centuries. 2013 NSF-USDA-DOE EaSM Awards Collaborative Research EaSM2: Mechanisms, Predictability, Prediction, and Regional and Societal Impacts of Decadal Climate Variability: Gokhan Danabasoglu, UCAR Collaborative Research: EaSM2--Quantifying and Conveying the Risk of Prolonged Drought in Coming Decades: Jonathan Overpeck, University of Arizona Collaborative Research: EaSM2--Linking Near Term Future Changes in Weather and Hydroclimate in Western North America to Adaptation for Ecosystem and Water Management:    Richard Seager, Columbia University Collaborative Research: EaSM2--Advanced Climate and Regional Model Validation for Societal Applications:  Lawrence Buja, UCAR Collaborative Research: EaSM 2: Stochastic Simulation and Decadal Prediction of Large-Scale Climate: Dmitri Kondrashov, University of California, Los Angeles Collaborative Research: EaSM2--Wildfires and Regional Climate Variability - Mechanisms, Modeling, and Prediction:   Yuhang Wang, Georgia Tech (jointly funded with DOE) Collaborative Research: EaSM2--Linking Human and Earth System Models to Assess Regional Impacts and Adaption in Urban Systems and Their Hinterlands:  Brian O'Neill, UCAR Collaborative Research: EaSM 2 Advancing extreme value analysis of high impact climate and weather events: Daniel Cooley, Colorado State University (jointly funded with DOE) Attribution of changes in precipitation intensity over the central US (USDA-funded):  Ray Arritt, Iowa State Forest Die-off, Climate Change, and Human Intervention in Western North America (USDA-funded): Phil Mote, Oregon State University -NSF- Media Contacts Cheryl Dybas, NSF (703) 292-7734 cdybas@nsf.gov Related WebsitesNSF Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability (SEES) Investment: http://www.nsf.gov/sees NSF/EaSM Discovery Article: The Snows of Mount Washington: http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=123363&org=NSF NSF Publication: Discoveries in Sustainability: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2012/disco12001/disco12001.pdf The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. In fiscal year (FY) 2012, its budget was $7.0 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and other institutions. Each year, NSF receives about 50,000 competitive requests for funding, and makes about 11,500 new funding awards. NSF also awards about $593 million in professional and service contracts yearly. Get News Updates by Email Useful NSF Web Sites: NSF Home Page:  http://www.nsf.gov NSF News: http://www.nsf.gov/news/ For the News Media: http://www.nsf.gov/news/newsroom.jsp Science and Engineering Statistics: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/ Awards Searches:  http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/

The National Science Foundation (NSF).-

 

Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

ayabaca@gmail.com

ayabaca@hotmail.com

ayabaca@yahoo.com

Science: Biologists Replicate Key Evolutionary Step in Life on Earth

Hi My Friends: AL VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., More than 500 million years ago, single-celled organisms on Earth's surface began forming multi-cellular clusters that ultimately became plants and animals.

Green cells are undergoing cell death, a cellular division-of-labor--fostering new life.

Credit: Will Ratcliff and Mike Travisano

Multi-cellular 'snowflake' yeast images with a blue cell-wall stain and red dead-cell stain.

Credit: Will Ratcliff and Mike Travisano
First steps in the transition to multi-cellularity: 'snowflake' yeast with dead cells stained red.

Credit: Will Ratcliff and Mike Travisano

A multi-cellular yeast consisting of hundreds of cells.

Credit: Will Ratcliff and Mike Travisano Multi-cellular yeast individuals containing central dead cells, which promote reproduction.

Credit: Will Ratcliff and Mike Travisano Aberrant shapes of multi-cellular yeast's dead cells: break points for reproduction.

Credit: Will Ratcliff and Mike Travisano

More than 500 million years ago, single-celled organisms on Earth's surface began forming multi-cellular clusters that ultimately became plants and animals.
Just how that happened is a question that has eluded evolutionary biologists.
Now scientists have replicated that key step in the laboratory using common Brewer's yeast, a single-celled organism.
The yeast "evolved" into multi-cellular clusters that work together cooperatively, reproduce and adapt to their environment--in essence, they became precursors to life on Earth as it is today.
The results are published in this week's issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
"The finding that the division-of-labor evolves so quickly and repeatedly in these 'snowflake' clusters is a big surprise," says George Gilchrist, acting deputy division director of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research.
"The first step toward multi-cellular complexity seems to be less of an evolutionary hurdle than theory would suggest," says Gilchrist. "This will stimulate a lot of important research questions."
It all started two years ago with a casual comment over coffee that bridging the famous multi-cellularity gap would be "just about the coolest thing we could do," recalled Will Ratcliff and Michael Travisano, scientists at the University of Minnesota (UMN) and authors of the PNAS paper.
Other authors of the paper are Ford Denison and Mark Borrello of UMN.
Then came the big surprise: it wasn't that difficult.
Using yeast cells, culture media and a centrifuge, it only took the biologists one experiment conducted over about 60 days.
"I don't think anyone had ever tried it before," says Ratcliff. "There aren't many scientists doing experimental evolution, and they're trying to answer questions about evolution, not recreate it."
The results have earned praise from evolutionary biologists around the world.
"To understand why the world is full of plants and animals, including humans, we need to know how one-celled organisms made the switch to living as a group, as multi-celled organisms," says Sam Scheiner, program director in NSF's Division of Environmental Biology.
"This study is the first to experimentally observe that transition," says Scheiner, "providing a look at an event that took place hundreds of millions of years ago."
In essence, here's how the experiments worked:
The scientists chose Brewer's yeast, or Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a species of yeast used since ancient times to make bread and beer because it is abundant in nature and grows easily.
They added it to nutrient-rich culture media and allowed the cells to grow for a day in test tubes.
Then they used a centrifuge to stratify the contents by weight.
As the mixture settled, cell clusters landed on the bottom of the tubes faster because they are heavier. The biologists removed the clusters, transferred them to fresh media, and agitated them again.
Sixty cycles later, the clusters--now hundreds of cells--looked like spherical snowflakes.
Analysis showed that the clusters were not just groups of random cells that adhered to each other, but related cells that remained attached following cell division.
That was significant because it meant that they were genetically similar, which promotes cooperation. When the clusters reached a critical size, some cells died off in a process known as apoptosis to allow offspring to separate.
The offspring reproduced only after they attained the size of their parents.
"A cluster alone isn't multi-cellular," Ratcliff says. "But when cells in a cluster cooperate, make sacrifices for the common good, and adapt to change, that's an evolutionary transition to multi-cellularity."
In order for multi-cellular organisms to form, most cells need to sacrifice their ability to reproduce, an altruistic action that favors the whole but not the individual, Ratcliff says.
For example, all cells in the human body are essentially a support system that allows sperm and eggs to pass DNA along to the next generation.
Thus multi-cellularity is by its nature very cooperative.
"Some of the best competitors in nature are those that engage in cooperation, and our experiment bears that out," says Travisano.
Evolutionary biologists have estimated that multi-cellularity evolved independently in about 25 groups.
Travisano and Ratcliff wonder why it didn't evolve more often since it's not that difficult to recreate in a lab.
Considering that trillions of one-celled organisms lived on Earth for millions of years, it seems like it should have, Ratcliff says.
That may be a question the biologists will answer in the future using the fossil record for thousands of generations of multi-cellular clusters, which are stored in a freezer in Travisano's lab.
Since the frozen samples contain multiple cell lines that independently became multi-cellular, the researchers can compare them to learn whether similar or different mechanisms and genes were responsible in each case, Travisano says.
The next steps will be to look at the role of multi-cellularity in cancer, aging and other critical areas of biology.
"Multi-cellular yeast is a valuable resource for investigating a wide variety of medically and biologically important topics," Travisano says.
"Cancer was recently described as a fossil from the origin of multi-cellularity, which can be directly investigated with the yeast system.
"Similarly the origins of aging, development and the evolution of complex morphologies are open to direct experimental investigation that would otherwise be difficult or impossible."
-NSF-
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
ayabaca@gmail.com
ayabaca@hotmail.com
ayabaca@yahoo.com