University of Canterbury

Amid the threat of dramatic sea level rise, coastal communities face unprecedented dangers, but a new study reveals that as flooding intensifies, disadvantaged populations will be the ones to experience some of the most severe burdens of climate change. Amid the threat of dramatic sea level rise, coastal communities face unprecedented dangers, but a new study reveals that as flooding intensifies, disadvantaged populations will be the ones to experience some of the most severe burdens of climate change. While accelerating sea level rise will result in widespread intermittent flooding and long-term inundation in many coastal communities, the paper, recently published in Nature Communications, showed that when these levels increase above 4 feet, minority populations will be disproportionately at risk of isolation. Rising sea levels could lead to isolation by disrupting transportation networks and roads, meaning that those affected lose access to essential locations such as critical emergency services and schools. The study further exposed that renters and older adults face a greater risk of isolation, highlighting the growing connection between historical drivers of existing social inequality and the groups that incur the most risk of climate change. According to Kelsea Best, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of civil, environmental and geodetic engineering at The Ohio State University, the first step in better characterizing these threats is changing how researchers assess community risk, as most studies measure this by exclusively determining impacts via direct flooding. But concentrating on this sole measurement neglects more complex aftereffects of sea level rise, such as isolation, and reinforces inequality in coastal areas, Best said. "We need to re-conceptualize how we measure who is burdened by sea level rise because there are so many ways that people might be burdened before their home is flooded," she said. Current reports estimate that around 20 million coastal residents in the U.S. will be affected by rising sea levels by 2030, but the paper notes that this number doesn't include the whole impact global warming will have on certain communities and demographics. Notably, because people need access to essential places like grocery stores, public schools, hospitals and fire stations, Best and her colleagues argue that an inability to reach these places impacts individuals just as negatively as if they were living in inundated homes themselves, and should be documented as such. Most importantly, their results expose one of the main reasons for these vast differences in risk: A group's risk of isolation is intimately entwined with specific road networks and where vital services are located in relation to where affected individuals reside. They identified these disparities in risk by overlaying OpenStreetMap (OSM) road network data with National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) mean higher high water (MHHW) scenarios. These projections were then combined with recent census data to estimate the percentage of a population that would be left out or missed in estimates of who would be impacted by sea level rise if researchers only counted those who suffered direct inundation. "If we take a one-size-fits-all approach, or a seemingly 'neutral' approach to understanding who gets access to safe, affordable housing and community in a world with climate change, then we're really just exacerbating these inequities and it's not good enough," said Best. "We have to deliberately seek to provide access to adaptation resources to groups of people who have historically been left out and therefore have fewer resources to respond in the first place." The researchers showed that Hispanic populations are often overrepresented in the total citizenry for being at risk of isolation beginning at 4 feet of sea level rise, and Black populations are overrepresented after 6 feet. Alternatively, white populations are underrepresented after 5 feet of sea level rise. But to determine when these disparities will begin to develop, Best's team compared two long-term sea level rise scenarios: an intermediate scenario in which global sea level rise increased by a meter by 2100, and a high scenario in which that number increased to 2 meters by the same year. Alarmingly, the study found strong evidence that these isolation effects would set in by 2120 in the intermediate scenario and as early as 2090 in the high scenario. "This timeline matters from a planning and adaptation perspective," said Best. "Part of why we included the temporal piece is to say this issue would not be as much of a problem if we had urgent, aggressive mitigation. "The effects of climate change are going to be further reaching and more cascading than might be directly obvious, and those effects are not going to be felt equitably," said Best. "So we need to be thinking about those populations most at risk from the beginning and develop policies to support them." The work was supported by the Clark Distinguished Chair Endowment (given to study co-author Deb. A. Neimeier of the University of Maryland) and the National Science Foundation. Other co-authors were Qian He from Rowan University, Allison C. Reilly from the University of Maryland, and Mitchell Anderson and Tom Logan from the University of Canterbury.

Re-establishing plantings of trees, grasses and other vegetation is essential for restoring degraded ecosystems, but a new survey of almost 2,600 restoration projects from nearly every type of ecosystem on Earth finds that most projects fail to recognize and control one of the new plants' chief threats: hungry critters that eat plants. Re-establishing plantings of trees, grasses and other vegetation is essential for restoring degraded ecosystems, but a new survey of almost 2,600 restoration projects from nearly every type of ecosystem on Earth finds that most projects fail to recognize and control one of the new plants' chief threats: hungry critters that eat plants. "While most of the projects took steps to exclude competing plant species, only 10% took steps to control or temporarily exclude herbivores, despite the fact that in the early stages these plants are like lollipops -- irresistible little treats for grazers," said Brian Silliman, Rachel Carson Distinguished Professor of Marine Conservation Biology at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment. By not protecting plants in their early states, conservationists are missing out on great opportunity to significantly speed restoration, improve its outcomes, and lower its costs, he said. "Our analysis of the surveyed projects shows that introducing predators to keep herbivore populations in check or installing barriers to keep them at bay until plantings become more established and less vulnerable, can increase plant re-growth by 89% on average," said Silliman, who helped conceptualize the study and was one of its coauthors. Those gains are equal to or greater than the gains realized by excluding competing plant species, the new survey shows. "This begs the question: Why aren't we doing it more?" he asks. The new survey was conducted with input from an international team of researchers affiliated with 20 universities and institutions. They published their peer-reviewed findings Nov. 3 in Science. Qiang He, professor of coastal ecology at Fudan University and a former postdoctoral research associate of Silliman's at Duke, co-led the study with Changlin Xu, a member of He's Coastal Ecology Lab at Fudan. The survey's findings have far-reaching implications for efforts to restore vegetation at a time of climate change, He said. "Herbivores' effects were particularly pronounced in regions with higher temperatures and lower precipitation," He noted. All of which leads to one inescapable conclusion, Silliman said. "If we want more plants, we have to let more predators in or restore their populations," Silliman said. "Indeed, the decline of large predators, like wolves, lions, and sharks, that normally keep herbivore populations in check, is likely an important indirect cause of high grazing pressures." "Conventional restoration is slowing our losses, but it's not expanding vegetation in many places, and climate change could make that even more difficult," he said. Using predators to keep herbivores in check at restored sites is a relatively untapped approach that could help us boost plant diversity and restore ecosystems that are vital to human and environmental health, in less time and at lower costs," Silliman said. "It's like learning a new gardening trick that doubles your yield." Once a planting is established, the herbivores are essential too, he added. "Plants just need a small break from being eaten to get restarted making ecosystems. Once they establish, herbivores are key to maintaining plant ecosystem diversity and function." Researchers from the University of Canterbury (N.Z.); Aarhus University; Northeastern University; Pusan National University; the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center; the University of Maryland; the Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras; and Sonoma State University coauthored the study with the Duke and Fudan scientists. Coauthors also came from Northern Illinois University; East China Normal University; Peking University; Nanjing University; the University of Florida; the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research; the University of Groningen; the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Lanzhou University; and Yunnan University. Primary funding was provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (#32271601) and the National Key Basic Research Program (#2022YFC2601100 and 2022YFC3105402).

Researchers from the University of Canterbury have developed a tool that makes respiratory data more accessible for clinicians and patients. A team of PhD students of UC Engineering developed the software called Breath-to-Breath Observed Biometrics (BOB) that provides real-time breath-to-breath data. It can also interpret this data and generate a report for GPs, supporting data-driven care. Additionally, BOB can also be used with a CPAP device to optimise how it is used. WHY IT MATTERS The researchers came up with the software after finding how inaccessible respiratory data is for care teams, and even for patients. Ella Guy, one of the researchers, noted how current respiratory disease testing can "take a long time and be costly." "A diagnosis can take multiple visits to specialised clinics which do not have the capacity to be accessed by everyone." There has been a significant rise in various respiratory illnesses over the past years, exacerbated by the global pandemic. And yet, the capacity to treat these diseases has not kept up, said Jaimey Clifton, also one of the researchers. "Because appointments and follow-up can be scarce due to cost and time, it is also possible patients have struggled for some time and needed a change in care," she mentioned. Their invention enables more automated diagnosis and frequent condition monitoring, which in turn helps relieve pressure on the health system overall. BOB can also be used by clinicians to make changes in care when it is no longer optimal. Besides its application in chronic care, it can also be potentially used in ICUs to check when mechanically ventilated patients can be extubated or when they can be moved out of the unit. THE LARGER TREND In rural South Australia recently, SA Health launched a 24/7 remote health monitoring service to help reduce hospital admissions while still providing quality urgent care. Referred patients are provided with a monitoring kit that allows them to measure their own vital signs at home. It also comes with a digital tablet where patients can upload their health data, which is then reviewed by a specialist nurse remotely. Signs of patient deterioration are now being closely tracked in real-time in EDs across Western Australia following the rollout of wearable devices for continuous vital signs monitoring as part of the Health in a Virtual Environment service. Outside ANZ, Changi General Hospital in Singapore is now predicting the likelihood of patient deterioration using a new AI-powered RPM system. Developed with Respiree, the system features a wearable sensor that has been validated in two studies involving warded patients with respiratory diseases and COVID-19.