Intensification of the use of natural resources is a world-wide trend driven by the increasing demand for water, food, fibre, minerals and energy. These demands are the result of a rising world ...population, increasing wealth and greater global focus on economic growth. Land use intensification, together with climate change, is also driving intensification of the global hydrological cycle. Both processes will have major socio-economic and ecological implications for global water availability. In this paper we focus on the implications of land use intensification for the conservation and management of freshwater ecosystems using Australia as an example. We consider this in the light of intensification of the hydrologic cycle due to climate change, and associated hydrological scenarios that include the occurrence of more intense hydrological events (extreme storms, larger floods and longer droughts). We highlight the importance of managing water quality, the value of providing environmental flows within a watershed framework and the critical role that innovative science and adaptive management must play in developing proactive and robust responses to intensification. We also suggest research priorities to support improved systemic governance, including adaptation planning and management to maximise freshwater biodiversity outcomes while supporting the socio-economic objectives driving land use intensification. Further research priorities include: i) determining the relative contributions of surface water and groundwater in supporting freshwater ecosystems; ii) identifying and protecting freshwater biodiversity hotspots and refugia; iii) improving our capacity to model hydro-ecological relationships and predict ecological outcomes from land use intensification and climate change; iv) developing an understanding of long term ecosystem behaviour; and v) exploring systemic approaches to enhancing governance systems, including planning and management systems affecting freshwater outcomes. A major policy challenge will be the integration of land and water management, which increasingly are being considered within different policy frameworks.
•This paper considers the impacts of land use and hydrological intensification on inland waters•Global issues are considered through the lens of Australian examples•Likely scenarios include wet regions becoming wetter, dry regions drier and storms more intense•The legacies of past land use change will need to be addressed•Proactive governance based on innovative science and adaptive management will be critical
Summary
Government‐funded flow response monitoring and modelling programmes (flow science) provided by the New South Wales Office of Water (NOW) have supported water resource management since 1997. ...Flow science has a core technical component defined by hypothesis‐driven long‐term monitoring and analysis, but it also represents many activities that support committees involved in environmental flow management. This is done through collaborations and contracting and has fostered considerable research and analysis into flow ecology, including modelling for the recent Murray–Darling Basin Plan. We describe the performance of environmental flows against legislated wetland objectives to improve wetland function and diversity using flow science. On‐ground monitoring at wetland sites has largely ceased but the flow science done so far indicates that the environmental flow rules written into Water Sharing Plans improve wetland diversity and function. Determination of the long‐term flow needs of NSW wetlands, including how well current Water Sharing Plans aid the delivery of environmental flows, requires finding the means to build on current flow science knowledge from across Australia.
Summary
Government‐funded flow response monitoring and modelling programmes (flow science) provided by the New South Wales Office of Water (
NOW
) have supported water resource management since 1997. ...Flow science has a core technical component defined by hypothesis‐driven long‐term monitoring and analysis, but it also represents many activities that support committees involved in environmental flow management. This is done through collaborations and contracting and has fostered considerable research and analysis into flow ecology, including modelling for the recent Murray–Darling Basin Plan. We describe the performance of environmental flows against legislated wetland objectives to improve wetland function and diversity using flow science. On‐ground monitoring at wetland sites has largely ceased but the flow science done so far indicates that the environmental flow rules written into Water Sharing Plans improve wetland diversity and function. Determination of the long‐term flow needs of
NSW
wetlands, including how well current Water Sharing Plans aid the delivery of environmental flows, requires finding the means to build on current flow science knowledge from across Australia.
Abstract
We give an overview and describe the rationale, methods, and first results from NIRCam images of the JWST “Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science” (PEARLS) project. ...PEARLS uses up to eight NIRCam filters to survey several prime extragalactic survey areas: two fields at the North Ecliptic Pole (NEP); seven gravitationally lensing clusters; two high redshift protoclusters; and the iconic backlit VV 191 galaxy system to map its dust attenuation. PEARLS also includes NIRISS spectra for one of the NEP fields and NIRSpec spectra of two high-redshift quasars. The main goal of PEARLS is to study the epoch of galaxy assembly, active galactic nucleus (AGN) growth, and First Light. Five fields—the JWST NEP Time-Domain Field (TDF), IRAC Dark Field, and three lensing clusters—will be observed in up to four epochs over a year. The cadence and sensitivity of the imaging data are ideally suited to find faint variable objects such as weak AGN, high-redshift supernovae, and cluster caustic transits. Both NEP fields have sightlines through our Galaxy, providing significant numbers of very faint brown dwarfs whose proper motions can be studied. Observations from the first spoke in the NEP TDF are public. This paper presents our first PEARLS observations, their NIRCam data reduction and analysis, our first object catalogs, the 0.9–4.5
μ
m galaxy counts and Integrated Galaxy Light. We assess the JWST sky brightness in 13 NIRCam filters, yielding our first constraints to diffuse light at 0.9–4.5
μ
m. PEARLS is designed to be of lasting benefit to the community.
Theoretical concepts from polymer physics are often used to describe intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs). However, amino acid interactions within and between regions of the protein can lead to ...deviations from typical polymer scaling behavior and even to short-lived secondary structures. To investigate the key interactions in the dynamic IDP α-synuclein (αS) at the amino acid level, we conducted single-molecule fluorescence resonance energy transfer (smFRET) experiments and coarse-grained molecular dynamics (CG-MD) simulations. We find excellent agreement between experiments and simulations. Our results show that a physiological salt solution is a good solvent for αS and that the protein is highly dynamic throughout its entire chain, with local intra- and inter-regional interactions leading to deviations from global scaling. Specifically, we observe expansion in the C-terminal region, compaction in the NAC region, and a slightly smaller distance between the C- and N-termini than expected. Our simulations indicate that the compaction in the NAC region results from hydrophobic aliphatic contacts, mostly between valine and alanine residues, and cation−π interactions between lysine and tyrosine. In addition, hydrogen bonds also seem to contribute to the compaction of the NAC region. The expansion of the C-terminal region is due to intraregional electrostatic repulsion and increased chain stiffness from several prolines. Overall, our study demonstrates the effectiveness of combining smFRET experiments with CG-MD simulations to investigate the key interactions in highly dynamic IDPs at the amino acid level.
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