Due to heavy rains in England and Wales, 2019 Cricket World Cup is the wettest tournament of all time resulting in abandonments of several matches. Unlike many other sports, cricket is very weather-sensitive. Climate change could very well destroy it.

Cricket is the world’s second-most popular sport. When India plays Pakistan in the men’s Cricket World Cup, more than a billion people tune in to watch a match on TV. Climate change is coming for all of them.

India Premier League matches have been moved because of drought, heatwaves in Australia led to the hospitalization of players, two hurricanes in the Caribbean destroyed cricket grounds recently. Further extreme weather events could put the cricket industry and its billion fans on the brink of collapse.

And cricket is not alone. Obviously climate change will impact all winter sports but heat waves also threatens tennis and soccer while higher temperatures and heavy rains have led to golf course closures.

The record heat wave sent daytime temperatures above 37 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit) during the FIFA Women’s World Cup in France. Temperatures soared even higher during the Africa Cup of Nations in Egypt. The heat sparked a dispute between the Moroccan coach and referees over a lack of water breaks. One player was hospitalized after collapsing due to severe dehydration. Climate change is obviously changing soccer, affecting where and when games are played and how athletes perform. For example, there is an increased risk of heat-related injuries because teams have limited substitutes.

Sports events are not only suffering from climate change but also contribute to it. FIFA estimated that the 2018 Men’s World Cup in Russia would emit about 2.1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents — same amount as emissions from about 456,500 cars a year.

The impacts of climate change are driving sports towards greater sustainability, according to one report. For instance, good sustainability practices of the Manchester United club include harvesting and recycling rainwater to irrigate and maintain the pitch and extensive recycling and reuse program.

Photo credit: Samarth Shirke / Unsplash.com.

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Fishing has been the economic and cultural pillar for many coastal towns along the Northeast coast for generations. But a warmer climate threatens the abundance and distribution of key species like haddock and Atlantic cod. And that will spell trouble for these fishing towns, according to new research.

The study looked at 33 marine species. Overall, seven species will generally suffer from climate change while only two, longfin inshore squid and butterfish, will have improved habitat throughout the region, the scientists found. Atlantic cod is poised to be the biggest victim. Even in the coldest areas, temperatures would exceed the thermal optimum for cod by 2050.

All of this will result in declining fishing opportunities for a majority of local communities unless they adapt. Communities of small trawlers in Maine are most exposed because of their historical dependence on species expected to lose habitat suitability in the future — for instance, Atlantic cod and witch flounder.

The adaptation will require totally new approaches to fishing. Possible solutions are catching new species or fishing in new locations. Shifting species portfolios could be an effective way to adapt to a changing ocean environment. And this is already happening in some places, including squid fisheries in the Gulf of Maine that developed during the hot summer of 2012. But there’s a catch: while diversification can buffer fishers against climate change, market forces can also incentivize specialization.

I’ve asked quantitative ecologist Lauren A. Rogers, who co-authored the study, and Monique Coombs, director of marine programs at the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, to share their views on this problem. Here are their answers:

Lauren A. Rogers, quantitative ecologist:

Climate change is already presenting challenges for fishing communities and bringing new opportunities in some places. There are well-documented cases of fishers needing to travel farther from port to fill their nets. We’ve also seen examples of new fisheries developing as species move into a region.

In our study, we found that exposure to climate risk varies across fishing communities based on past fishing practices. Most communities will need to adapt, either by shifting their fishing grounds or targeting new species or else face declining opportunities in the next generation. However, there are often barriers to adaptation, such as restrictions on where fish can be landed or the high cost of fishing permits and new fishing gear. Our study can help identify where adaptation strategies will be most needed and where to focus on removing barriers to adaptation when possible.

Monique Coombs, Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association:

— Fishermen are on the frontlines of climate change. Clam harvesters see the shells of the intertidal species softening because of ocean acidification. Changing weather patterns inhibits fisher’s safety because they are no longer able to depend on weather forecasts. Fishermen find the weather patterns changing more regularly and faster. This inhibits their safety because they are no longer able to depend on weather forecasts. Sea-level rise is impacting many coastal communities, of course.

Until everyone understands that we’re all responsible for the changes in our environment, I’m not sure fishing communities will get any better. So cynical, right? But it’s true. That being said, fishermen are adapting by becoming more involved and outspoken about the changes they see to make others aware and defend their industry. They are diversifying and attempting to alleviate pressure on one fishery by fishing multiple fisheries over the year.

And everyone can help fishermen in their quest. Just switch to a diet with a variety of seafood because picking a single species damages both the fishing business and seafood stocks.

Photo credit: Monique Coombs.

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If you like clams, you’re not alone. For the past 164,000 years, people have used shellfish as a food source. We know this thanks to shell middens found on shorelines around the world. By studying these mounds, scientists can say a lot about the history of early humans — from their dietary preferences to migration paths.

But this window into humankind’s past is shutting down because of — you guessed it — climate change. Rising sea levels, thawing permafrost, and vegetation increases are destroying archeological sites everywhere.

The latest findings come from scientists studying over 3,000 prehistoric shell midden sites on the Farasan Islands in the Red Sea some 30 miles offshore from Saudi Arabia. For 7,500 years, these sites have experienced a naturally fluctuating shoreline, giving the research team a perfect opportunity to assess the effects of such changes. Usually well-preserved at archaeological sites, shells are now being washed away by rising sea levels.

And sea-level rise could be having an even greater impact on the archaeological record in the Arctic. Last year, scientists studied national cultural heritage databases and determined at least 180,000 archeological sites in the Arctic. These sites are being lost to climate change faster than sites elsewhere, according to the paper published in the Antiquity journal.

Among endangered sites are Paleolithic excavations in the lower reaches of the Yana River in eastern Russia that show the life of ancient humans who settled the Arctic about 30,000 years ago. Ivory was found there with carved patterns that gave a glimpse of early Siberians’ symbolic and ritual activities. Today, the Yana site is facing the threat of destruction — part of it was already washed away due to erosion.

Even increased vegetation caused by a warmer climate threatens heritage sites. As boreal forests expand into the Arctic tundra, roots exploit the soil for water and nutrients — it could cause physical damage to organic archaeological material and disturb the archaeological stratigraphy, which is crucial to site interpretations.

And there are problems in the continental U.S., too. Scientists announced in a 2017 study that almost 20,000 recorded archaeological sites along the coastline from Maryland to Louisiana are in danger of being destroyed by a sea-level rise of only 3 feet.

One of the endangered sites is Fort Sumter, where the first shots of the Civil War were fired. The low-elevation island it’s located on would be lost by 3 feet of sea-level rise. Even the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials in Washington, D.C., are at risk because the Potomac River would experience higher tides and more frequent flooding due to climate change.

Examples from Walakpa in Alaska of newly exposed archaeological layers that are quickly degrading due to multiple processes: permafrost thaw, frost/thaw processes, microbial degradation and wave action during storms.

In a weird twist, the same thing that threatens world heritage also can help uncover it. Since the 1990s, the discoveries include Viking artifacts in Norway, ancient weapons in Canada, and human remains in South America. For years scientists didn’t consider sub-Arctic areas as places worth digging, but ice and permafrost created a perfect environment for preserving organic materials of ancient nomadic civilizations. Until, of course, climate change struck.

I’ve asked the scientists how climate change threatens archeological sites and how to protect world heritage. These are their answers:

Matthew Meredith-Williams, archaeologist at the La Trobe University, Australia:

— Our research both demonstrates and quantifies how sea-level change in the past has nearly erased an episode of coastal exploitation from the archaeological record. Without taking a combined approach — at the broad-scale identifying groups of sites and an in-depth analysis of a sample of these groups — we would not have been able to disentangle that these groups are actually what remains of several superimposed episodes of activity, where the earliest episode of coastal exploitation had nearly been erased by past sea-level rise. Using the most recent episode as an analogy for the earliest episode, we have quantified the serious impact of past sea-level rise.

The problem of rising sea levels is a global problem, which is only forecast to get worse. Whilst there are many very negative connotations with sea-level rise for a global society in general, the issue has severe impacts on cultural heritage worldwide.

The sites on the Farasan are clearly at risk; however, the impacts of global sea-level rise have implications globally. There are several well-documented examples of exposed coastal sites being damaged or lost to sea-level rise. However, the universal risk to coastal archaeology from sea level rise is clear. If we fail to address this issue, virtually all coastal sites will be impacted — both those we know about and many more that have not yet be found and likely never will be before they are destroyed.

Sara Gonzalez, anthropologist at the University of Washington:

— When we think of climate change, it’s often abstracted as this external phenomenon. Yet, changes in average temperature, annual and seasonal rainfall, and weather patterns have very specific impacts on the degree to which archaeological sites, or ancestral places, are preserved in the ground. For sites along the Pacific Coast, rising sea water and the intensity of storms create the threat of inundation and rapid coastal erosion, which threatens to destroy many significant coastal sites from Baja up to the Alaskan seashore.

In Scotland, for example, civic scientists have partnered with archaeologists to document and record rising sea levels near local archaeological sites. With this data, research teams are working to identify which sites are imminent danger of being lost to the sea.

Sites located in regions with permafrost are unique in that the stable, freezing temperatures create the perfect condition for preservation. But as the permafrost and underlying ice melt, the cultural belongings — and associated knowledge — begin to rapidly decompose while the melt creates the potential for large areas of sites to collapse.

In Washington, Oregon, and California, sites are not only being impacted by coastal erosion, and rising sea levels, the increase in large, catastrophic fires is also creating significant dangers for tribal and other heritage. While belongings and features may be buried below ground, a large fire event destroys evidence contained in the dirt itself: traces of past plants, records of past soil temperature, and other information is also destroyed, thus eliminating key lines of evidence we can use to understand better what a place and its environment looked like from the deep past to recent memory.

The single biggest thing we can do to protect archaeological sites and tribal heritage is to build partnerships with tribal nations. In working together, there is potential to think creatively about how both indigenous and archaeological approaches may be used to care for and protect ancestral places threatened by climate change.

While we may use techniques such as full-scale excavation of ancestral places as a strategy to preserve cultural belongings that are eroding out of coastal sites or threatened by inundation or the thawing of permafrost, this comes at a steep cost: physical destruction of an ancestral place and the removal of belongings from their intended resting places. In some cases, a tribal nation may not prefer to use this approach as the active disturbance of ancestral places. Alternative strategies such as capping a site with materials designed to delay erosion may be preferred.

In another context, a community may decide that allowing the natural course of action (erosion or decomposition) is appropriate. It allows for belongings left in place to become part of the earth again. Yet in others, communities may choose instead to pursue a combination of archaeological methods, including excavation or other less-impactful techniques such as Ground Penetrating Radar or LiDAR (survey techniques designed to provide snapshots of surface and below-surface remains) to recover and preserve information about a place. In these cases, the potential to remember tribal history through archaeology may respond to specific needs within the community.

Indeed, in my own work with the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Community of Oregon, I’ve worked with tribal heritage monitors to study ancestral places on their reservation. While the tribe had reservations about the disturbance of ancestral places, we have developed a low-impact approach that maximizes the information we can gain from a place while minimizing harm to both that place and the larger community. This work points to the value of working together to determine how best to care for places from both an indigenous and archaeological standpoint.

Jørgen Hollesen, senior researcher at the National Museum of Denmark:

— The problem is very serious. As presented in our article, the Arctic contains at least 180,000 archaeological sites. Very few of these sites have been visited in recent times, and therefore we know little about their current state of preservation. For example, recent test trenching and coring at 90 sites in South Greenland where excellent preservation conditions for organic materials had been reported around World War 2 show that the state of preservation is now very poor. Only five of the sites produced well-preserved organic finds, whereas the rest had little or no preservation of organic materials. Currently, we are working in the Nuuk region. Our results show that we could lose up to 70 percent of the organic content within this century.

If we do not protect the sites, we will lose irreplaceable human and environmental records of the past. Until now, Arctic archaeology has provided researchers with unique opportunities to learn about past environments and cultures, many of which connect directly to modern indigenous cultures. Furthermore, Arctic archaeological sites often provide concrete connections to cultural heritage provide an ideal medium to engage younger generations with local heritage and culture. It would be a great shame if future generations will not have this opportunity to learn from the past as we have.

Photo credits: Garry Momber (1), Anne M. Jensen (2).

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The Modon-Kul river in Buryatia Republic in Russia turned bright orange. The maximum concentration of manganese is exceeded by 61 times. Authorities blame the former mine of a local tungsten-molybdenum plant.

According to officials, the source of rusty water is the western adit of the former Holtoson mine of the Dzhida tungsten-molybdenum plant closed in 1990. Experts say that the maximum permissible cadmium concentration in the river is exceeded by 2.9 times, and there is 61.2 times more manganese than normal.

Earlier Russian scientists have compiled perennial studies aimed at assessing the ecological status of the Selenga river basin. Dzhida tungsten-molybdenum plant was named among the objects that pose a particular danger to the river basin.

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Scientists have discovered genes that helped indigenous peoples of Siberia to adapt to life in a cold climate with a restricted diet. Mutations were found in genes affecting lipid metabolism, which involves splitting, digesting, absorbing, transporting, and accumulating fat in the body.

According to the Science in Siberia magazine, the discovery was made by examining DNA samples of Nganasans and Yakut. Afterward researchers confirmed the results on the material of representatives of 17 other ethnic groups in Siberia.

“The study explains the fact that indigenous ethnic groups have a deficient level of low-density lipoprotein, that is, bad cholesterol,” says Lyudmila Osipova, a leading researcher at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. “All of this despite eating mainly fatty meat food: the usual menu — deer blood, raw meat, fish, raw kidneys, brains.”

The found genes are also involved in the work of brown adipose tissue, which at the molecular level may be responsible for the low level of bad lipids in the blood. Brown fat is activated when it is cold and begins to release energy to warm an organism intensively. It requires fatty acids and glucose, which serve as a kind of “fuel.”

People with active brown adipose tissue have lower total and bad cholesterol levels but higher levels of good cholesterol (high-density lipoprotein). If the cold lasts long enough, brown fat may require fuel all the time, that is, continuously burning many lipids.

Moreover, Siberian natives have accelerated metabolism and elevated levels of thyroxine, a thyroid hormone. Researchers believe that this may also be associated with the genes found through the functioning mechanisms of brown fat: thyroxin activates brown adipose tissue, and an increased release of energy in it requires enhanced nutrition, which can lead to rapid metabolism.

This adaptation mechanism becomes a risk factor when indigenous people switch to a lifestyle with a different type of food, including many carbohydrates. As a result, a shift in metabolism occurs, and overweight appears, resulting in diabetes mellitus of the second type and hypertension. Scientists hope that further research will help find a solution to this problem.

Photo credit: Kirill Kanin / Tayga.info.

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Adult females of tiny snails of the genus Boreocingula could grow underdeveloped male reproductive organs. It can be a reaction to the pollution of the Arctic seas.

Some species of mollusks are hermaphroditic: they have both male and female genitals, but sometimes mollusks can change their sex throughout life. As an extremely rare anomaly, however, a mollusc can develop sexual characteristics of another sex.

According to a recent research, it happened with sexually mature females of the Boreocingula martyni mollusk: a small rudimentary penis was found in all snails. Specialists collected samples of this species in Rogers Bay on Wrangel Island and Pevek Bay in Chukotka. These territories are polluted by organotin compounds, harmful substances that were previously used in paints to protect ship hulls against fouling. In 2008, an international convention came into force prohibiting anti-fouling systems with organotin compounds. Studies have shown a correlation between the number of mollusk pseudohermaphrodites and their habitat’s concentration of organotin compounds.

‘This allows us to suggest a hypothesis that the B. martyni micro mollusks can be used for bioindication of marine pollution,’ said Ivan Nekhaev, a biologist from St Petersburg University. ‘The fact is that at present, it is cheaper to gather a few dozen snails and open them than to analyze water samples. Such work can be carried out, for example, at specially equipped stations near the coast. It will also become necessary to have a stereomicroscope and a specially trained person. Moreover, the distribution density of micro mollusks is much higher than that of larger organisms. So, they are easier to be found.’

Photo credit: St. Petersburg State University.

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Bacterial nano cellulose has many advantages over its plant analog, regular cellulose. Its fibers are longer, wider, and stronger. Such pulp has practically no impurities that would impair its strength and absorbing properties.

Russian scientists developed a new method of obtaining a nutrient medium for the synthesis of bacterial nanocellulose. As a source of raw materials, they used oat husks and miscanthus biomass. Researchers used chemical accelerating enzymes to turn raw materials into sugar solutions to produce nano cellulose.

Bacterial nanocellulose could be instrumental in creating artificial skin: it plays an active role in stimulating regenerative processes, helping to heal wounds. Due to the large surface area and porous structure, nano cellulose can absorb a significant amount of various substances. Medical researchers can use this property to create efficient bandages. The high strength of bacterial nano cellulose makes it possible to use it as a material for 3D printing of certain types of human tissue, for example, cartilage.

Photo credit: Galina Mironova.

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Russian engineers proposed using drones to fight field mice. UAVs can remotely find vole colonies and deliver targeted anti-rodent chemicals.

Researchers carried out aerial photography of a field in the Voronezh region of Russia to determine rodent populated areas. Based on the obtained data, engineers have developed optimal drone routes. After receiving the flight task, the drone delivered six liters of chemicals to the affected areas. In 20 minutes, one UAV can process 60 colonies of pests.

Using this pest control method, farmers will be able to destroy rodent colonies without harming crops with wheeled or tracked vehicles. This will increase the effectiveness of anti-pests measures and provide greater environmental safety.

Photo credit: Unsplash.

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Russian scientists proposed replacing traditional methods of cultivating crops with two resource-saving methods: minimal and zero tillage. Such methods help obtain a high yield with maximum profitability and reduce the negative impact on the environment.

The research team from the Krasnoyarsk Scientific Center and the Kemerovo State University has found that crops grown on untreated soil in a forest-steppe zone of southern Siberia are not inferior in yield to cultivated plowing. The introduction of minimum tillage and direct sowing reduces costs by almost 50 percent.

Resource-saving technologies reduce soil erosion due to plant residues on the surface, reduce the energy intensity of agricultural production, increase labor productivity and economic efficiency of growing crops.

Photo credit: Krasnoyarsk Scientific Center.

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In 2018, Russian scientists studied parasitic fungi, killer organisms that turn insects into zombies. One of them, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, sprouts inside the bodies of ants, turning the victim into an obedient puppet. The infected insect wanders in search of a favorable place for the growth of its new owner. Having reached the ideal shelter, the parasitic mushroom paralyzes an insect and slowly kills it. Next, the fruiting body of the fungus springs from the victim’s head, releasing deadly spores into the air.

Scientists at Moscow State University investigated entomopathogenic fungi in the Cedar Pad reserve in the southwest of Primorsky Krai on the Russian Far East. The reserve has the largest variety of mushrooms of this group in Russia. During the expeditions, mycologists collected hundreds of fungi samples growing on insects. As a result, they identified 15 species that parasitize on ants, bees, beetles, and butterflies.

In the future, scientists expect to find out how organisms without a brain have developed the ability to control animals with a brain. Such fungi can be used to control the number of pests, blood-sucking, and other harmful insects, affecting them as biopesticides.

Photo credit: Moscow State University.

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