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Methane emissions from aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems play a crucial role in global warming, which is particularly affecting high-latitude ecosystems. As major contributors to methane emissions in natural environments, the microbial communities involved in methane production and oxidation deserve a special attention. Microbial diversity and activity are expected to be strongly affected by the already observed (and further predicted) temperature increase in high-latitude ecosystems, eventually resulting in disrupted feedback methane emissions. The METHANOBASE project has been designed to investigate the intricate relations between microbial diversity and methane emissions in Arctic, Subarctic and Subantarctic ecosystems, under natural (baseline) conditions and in response to simulated temperature increments. We report here a small subunit ribosomal RNA (16S rRNA) analysis of lake, peatland and mineral soil ecosystems.

Many species are too slow to track their poleward moving climate niche under global warming. Pesticide exposure may contribute to this by reducing population growth and impairing flight ability. Moreover, edge populations at the moving range front may be more vulnerable to pesticides because of the rapid evolution of traits to enhance their rate of spread that shunt energy away from detoxification and repair. We exposed replicated edge and core populations of the poleward moving damselfly Coenagrion scitulum to the pesticide esfenvalerate at low and high densities. Exposure to esfenvalerate had strong negative effects on survival, growth rate and development time in the larval stage and negatively affected flight-related adult traits (mass at emergence, flight muscle mass and fat content) across metamorphosis. Pesticide effects did not differ between edge and core populations, except that at the high concentration the pesticide-induced mortality was 17% stronger in edge populations. Pesticide exposure may therefore slow down the range expansion by lowering population growth rates, especially because edge populations suffered a higher mortality, and by negatively affecting dispersal ability by impairing flight-related traits. These results emphasize the need for direct conservation efforts toward leading-edge populations for facilitating future range shifts under global warming. MAIN DATAEVA-2015-167-OA DATA.xlsSUPPLEMENTARY DATA FOR APPENDICES (BIOTIC AND ABIOTIC PARAMETERS)EVA-2015-167-OA DATA FOR APPENDICES (BIOTIC AND ABIOTIC PARAMETERS).xls

Analyses of ancient food webs reveal important paleoecological processes and responses to a range of perturbations throughout Earth’s history, such as climate change. These responses can inform our forecasts of future biotic responses to similar perturbations. However, previous analyses of ancient food webs rarely accounted for key differences between modern and ancient community data, particularly selective loss of soft-bodied taxa during fossilization. To consider how fossilization impacts inferences of ancient community structure we (1) analyzed node-level attributes to identify correlations between ecological roles and fossilization potential and (2) applied selective information loss procedures to food web data for extant systems. We found that selective loss of soft-bodied organisms has predictable effects on the trophic structure of “artificially fossilized” food webs, because these organisms occupy unique, consistent food web positions. Fossilized food webs misleadingly appear less stable (i.e., more prone to trophic cascades), with less predation and an overrepresentation of generalist consumers. We also found that ecological differences between soft- and hard-bodied taxa—indicated by distinct positions in modern food webs—are recorded in an Early Eocene web, but not in Cambrian webs. This suggests that ecological differences between the groups have existed for ≥ 48 million years. Our results indicate that accounting for soft-bodied taxa is vital for accurate depictions of ancient food webs. However, the consistency of information loss trends across the analyzed food webs means it is possible to predict how the selective loss of soft-bodied taxa affects food web metrics, which can permit better modeling of ancient communities. Repository Contents: Supplementary Information: Containing Supplementary Text, Figures, Tables, and Data descriptions. Supplementary Data 1: Food web data (adjacency matrices and metadata; see publication; see Related Works). Supplementary Data 2: Additional references consulted for preservation group assignments. Supplementary Data 3: Data and R scripts to recreate analyses from this study. S3_AllWebTaxonomy_updated_200903.csv: Taxonomy data for all food web nodes. S3_AnalysisOfTaxonomicRanks.csv: Lowest taxonomic rank for each node. S3_MainFigures_CaimanComparison.R: Compare the three food webs contained in (Roopnarine and Hertog 2013). S3_MainFigures_ComparisonFunctions.R: Functions for calculating metrics and generating trophic species webs. S3_MainFigures_FossilizationFunctions.R: Functions for artificially fossilizing networks. S3_MainFigures_Setup_200826.R: Setup to import food webs. S3_MainFigures_Code.R: Code to apply functions. S3_pbdb_data_200504.csv: Data from the Paleobiology Database, excluding Lagerstätten (see publication). S3_PresGrAssignments_updated_200902.csv: Preservation group assignments for all nodes. Fossil faunal lists were downloaded from the PBDB on 17th January 2020. Any data processing steps are shown in R Scripts and described in publication. Paleobiology Database is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 International License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. We analyzed food webs for four modern marine systems, one modern freshwater system, two ancient marine systems, and one ancient lake system from previous publications. All webs have similar, broad higher-rank taxonomic compositions and contain at least 85 nodes (the size of the smallest ancient network considered). For comparisons with ancient diversity, we downloaded fossil occurrences from the Paleobiology Database (PBDB) on 17th January 2020. 

Climate change is worsening the number, frequency and duration of natural hazards across the globe, making disaster risk reduction and resilience building among the most pressing challenges ahead. According to UN-Habitat, informal settlements are where the impacts of climate change are the most acute in urban areas and strengthening resilience in these neighbourhoods represents a very complex yet urgent challenge. Today, urban areas are home to 56 per cent of the world’s population and this figure is projected to increase to 60 per cent by 2030 and 68 per cent by 2050, with 90 per cent of the growth by 2050 expected to occur in less developed economies. In these countries, population growth and displacement (including climate-driven migrations) will lead to rapid and unplanned urbanisation forcing a growing number of people into informal settlements. Currently, one billion people live in informal settlements, mostly in Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America and this figure is expected to grow to 3 billion in 2050. Horizon 2020 MSCA-RISE, Grant Agreement #873119

Modèle Atmosphérique Régional (MAR) is a regional climate model that is fully coupled to a one-dimensional surface-atmosphere energy and mass transfer scheme, SISVAT (Soil Ice Snow Vegetation Atmosphere Transfer) (Fettweis et al., 2005, 2020; Lefebre et al., 2005). SISVAT employs a multilayered snowpack model, CROCUS, that simulates meltwater production, percolation, and refreeze (Brun et al., 1989), while also accounting for changes in albedo due to snow metamorphism (Brun et al., 1992). MAR has been extensively verified over the Greenland Ice Sheet and is therefore particularly well suited for analyses of Greenland ice sheet surface mass balance (Fettweis et al., 2011; Fettweis et al., 2020; Lefebre et al. 2005; Mattingly et al. 2020). Brun, E., Martin, E., Simon, V., Gendre, C., and Coléou, C. (1989). An energy and mass model of snow cover suitable for operational avalanche forecasting. Journal of Glaciology, 35, 333. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022143000009254 Brun, E., David, P., Sudul, M., and Brunot, G. (1992). A numerical model to simulate snow-cover stratigraphy for operational avalanche forecasting. Journal of Glaciology, 38(128), 13–22. https://doi.org/10.3189/S0022143000009552 Fettweis, X., Gallée, H., Lefebre, F., and van Ypersele, J.-P. (2005). Greenland surface mass balance simulated by a regional climate model and comparison with satellite-derived data in 1990–1991. Climate Dynamics, 24(6), 623–640. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-005-0010-y Fettweis, X., Tedesco, M., van den Broeke, M., and Ettema, J. (2011). Melting trends over the Greenland ice sheet (1958–2009) from spaceborne microwave data and regional climate models. The Cryosphere, 5(2), 359–375. https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-5-359-2011 Fettweis, X., Hofer, S., Krebs-Kanzow, U., Amory, C., Aoki, T., Berends, C. J., et al. (2020). GrSMBMIP: intercomparison of the modelled 1980–2012 surface mass balance over the Greenland Ice Sheet. The Cryosphere, 14(11), 3935–3958. https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-3935-2020 Lefebre, F., Fettweis, X., Gallée, H., Van Ypersele, J.-P., Marbaix, P., Greuell, W., and Calanca, P. (2005). Evaluation of a high-resolution regional climate simulation over Greenland. Climate Dynamics, 25(1), 99–116. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-005-0005-8 Mattingly, K. S., Mote, T. L., Fettweis, X., van As, D., Van Tricht, K., Lhermitte, S., et al. (2020). Strong summer atmospheric rivers trigger Greenland ice sheet melt through spatially varying surface energy balance and cloud regimes. Journal of Climate, 33(16), 6809–6832. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-19-0835.1

In Belgium, the future response of the climate to increasing greenhouse gas concentration is not clear, especially with regard to the perturbations of the precipitation regime, snow cover, and global radiation. On the one hand, existing studies show results which differ strongly either according to the future scenario, or from one model to another. On the other hand, there is even an absence of studies focussing on Belgium regarding future changes in snow cover and global radiation. Given their potential impacts on the society (water management, energy supply, biodiversity, tourism), future changes in precipitation, snow cover, and global radiation require further research. As the orography, the exposition to the dominant winds, and the proximity of the North Sea determine a large spatial variability in the Belgian climate, the latter requires a fine representation of these features to be properly simulated. Compared to global climate models (GCM), regional climate models (RCM) are recognized for their ability to represent climatic phenomena with higher spatial resolutions. In the framework of this doctoral thesis, the RCM MAR (for "Modèle Atmosphérique Régional" in French), which is developed at the Laboratory of Climatology and Topoclimatology of the University of Liège, was applied for the first time to Belgium. The aim was first to assess the performances of MAR over Belgium and then to study the current and future evolution of hydroclimatic conditions favouring floods, and also the current and future evolution of global radiation. For this purpose, historical simulations were performed over 1959-2014. Future projections (2006-2100) were then performed under the most pessimist IPCC future scenario (RCP8.5). The horizontal resolution used for both historical and future simulations is 5 km. By comparing the MAR outputs to ground-based measurements from 20 weather stations over 2008-2014, the results show that MAR successfully simulates the spatial and temporal variability of the Belgian climate. In fact, the biases found in the MAR results are non-significant and the correlation coefficients are satisfying with regard to temperature, precipitation, snow height, global radiation and cloudiness. The MAR results are particularly satisfying during the winter months and in High Belgium where the climate is the coldest. Regarding hydroclimatic conditions favouring floods, we focused on the Ourthe catchment. In this river, about 70 % of floods occur during the winter months and result from either the rapid melting of the snow pack covering the Ardennes eventually combined with rainfall or abundant rainfall alone. The current evolution of hydroclimatic conditions favouring floods was first assessed for the period 1959-2010. Conditions favouring floods in the Ourthe River present a negative trend over 1959–2010 as a result of a decrease in snow accumulation and a shortening of the snow season. Regarding the impact of the evolution of extreme precipitation events on hydroclimatic conditions favouring floods, the signal is less clear because the trends depend on the data used to force the MAR model. By the end of the 21st century, under the most pessimist scenario, the results show an acceleration of the snow cover depletion resulting in a decrease in conditions favouring floods. Further, the impact of the evolution of extreme precipitation events on hydroclimatic conditions favouring floods, no significant change was found although these trends are subject to uncertainties due to the deficiencies of the convective scheme of MAR. Regarding global radiation, its current evolution was first assessed for the period 1959-2010. In addition, we consider two distinct periods in our analysis: 1959-1979 (dimming) and 1980-2010 (brightening). For both the dimming and the brightening periods, our results show that the annual global radiation trends are mainly driven by global radiation changes in spring and summer. The increase in global radiation observed in Belgium since the 1980s and especially since the 2000s could mainly be explained by a decrease in low and medium cloud cover. This would strengthen the effect of the decrease in aerosol load on global radiation that has been observed in Europe since the 1980s. The origin of these changes in cloudiness is not clear and could result from changes in both aerosol-cloud interactions and atmospheric-circulation, such as more frequent tropical air advections and more frequent anticyclonic conditions over Western Europe due to the poleward shift of extratropical storm tracks. These changes in the atmospheric circulation may result from global warming and may persist in the future. In fact, by the end of the 21st century, under the most pessimist scenario, the models simulate an increase in the blocking regime frequency in summer over Europe. For Belgium, this implies more frequent anticyclonic conditions favouring cloudless conditions. The future projections performed with MAR exhibit significant decreasing total cloud cover, and particularly decreasing low and medium cloud cover. However, this declining cloud cover leads to contrasting changes in global radiation depending on the data used to force MAR. This thesis was funded by the Fonds pour la formation à la Recherche dans l'Industrie et dans l'Agriculture (Communauté française de Belgique) - FRIA (BE)

Description of the subject. Extracellular enzymes from filamentous fungi are increasingly used in eco-friendly biotransformation processes. Their relevant technological role and their stability towards extreme process conditions make of them the first sustainable solution for the elaboration of bio-based products from biomass conversion. Objectives. This paper describes the isolation of filamentous fungi from decaying plant material in the region of Meknes (northern central Morocco) and the assessment of their ability to breakdown lignocellulose. The objective is to select performant fungi with enzymatic machinery adapted to local environment and with potential for the breakdown of the regional specific lignocellulosic by-products into potentially high-value molecules. Method. Cereals, decaying wood, olive-pomace and -pulp and their composts were used to isolate lignocellulolytic fungi. One hundred twenty-seven pure strains were isolated and screened at 25 °C on selective media with cellulose or lignin as the sole carbon source. Performant strains were validated for the production of ligno-cellulolytic enzymes and identified using molecular technique. Results. Twenty-eight fungi had mycelial diameter on cellulose ≥ 6 cm and cellulolytic index ≥ 0.9. Twenty-two strains had the same profile on lignin medium. The production of endoglucanase, lignin peroxidase and manganese peroxidase enzymes was confirmed in performant strains using qualitative assay and molecular identification revealed that the best performing fungi were Mucor circinelloides, Mucor racemosus, Penicillium brasilianum, Penicillium crustosum, Paecilomyces sp., Fusarium oxysporum, Fusarium solani, Aspergillus fischeri, Curvularia spicifera, Humicola grisea, Trichoderma atroviride and Cosmospora viridescens. Measurement of ligno-cellulolytic activities revealed that Penicillium and Fusarium strains mainly from wood decay and compost had the best profiles among performing strains. Conclusions. Isolated fungi are high decomposers of biomass and represent a prominent solution to develop green bioprocesses in the region.

Conversion of waste biomass to resource, through the environmentally sound multipurpose process of anaerobic digestion, allows the sustainable organic waste management, bioenergy and biofertilizer production, and therefore facilitates the transition to circular economy and mitigation of environmental pollution. The goal of this study was to assess and compare the agricultural performance parameters of biogas residues (BRs) and chemical fertilizers (CFs) while monitoring the residual nitrate accumulation under repeated application on a grassland in the Walloon Region of Belgium over the period 2013-2018. The results showed that BRs produced the same yield as CFs and could lead to similar N uptake after five years of application. Nitrogen fertilizer replacement value (NFRV) of BRs tended to increase over time, while in the last year of the experiment raw digestate demonstrated a NFRV of 99.9% in substitution for ammonium nitrate. The high nitrogen rate tested inhibited N uptake and yield for both BRs and CFs. Finally, BRs did not cause significant nitrate accumulation in the soil compared to CFs while repeated application of CFs indicated a cumulative effect. These results strongly advocate for the agricultural and environmental benefits of BRs and underline their suitability as substitutes for CFs in similar grassland systems. Proceedings of the 27th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 27-30 May 2019, Lisbon, Portugal, pp. 1694-1700