Connections between soil microbes, land use and European climate: Insights for management practices.

Soil microbial biomass and activity strongly depend on land use, vegetation cover, climate, and soil physicochemical properties. In most cases, this dependence was assessed by one-to-one correlations while by employing network analysis, information about network robustness and the balance between stochasticity and determinism controlling connectivity, was revealed. In this study, we further elaborated on the hypothesis of Smith et al. (2021) that cropland soils depended more on climate variables and therefore are more vulnerable to climate change. We used the same dataset with that of Smith et al. (2021) that contains seasonal microbial, climate and soil variables collected from 881 soil points representing the main land uses in Europe: forests, grassland, cropland. We examined complete (both direct and indirect relationships) and incomplete networks (only direct relationships) and recorded higher robustness in the former. Partial Least Square results showed that on average more than 45% of microbial attributes' variability was predicted by climate and habitat drivers denoting medium to strong effect of habitat filtering. Network architecture slightly affected by season or land use type; it followed the core/periphery structure with positive and negative interactions and no hub nodes. Microbial attributes (biomass, activity and their ratio) mostly belong to core block together with Soil Organic Carbon (SOC), while climate and soil variables to periphery block with the exception of cropland networks, denoting the higher dependence between microbial and climate variables in these latter. All complete networks appeared robust except for cropland and forest in summer, a finding that disagrees with our initial hypothesis about cropland. Networks' connectivity was controlled stronger by stochasticity in forest than in croplands. The lack of human interventions in forest soils increase habitat homogeneity enhancing the influence of stochastic agents such as microbial unlimited dispersal and/or stochastic extinction. The increased stochasticity implies the necessity for proactive management actions.

The overlooked threat of land take from wind energy infrastructures: Quantification, drivers and policy gaps.

Wind harnessing is a fast-developing and cost-effective Renewable Energy Source, but the land impacts of wind power stations are often overlooked or underestimated. We digitized land take, i.e., the generation of artificial land, derived from 90 wind power stations in Greece constructed between 2002 and 2020 (1.2 GW). We found substantial land take impacts of 7729 m2/MW (3.5 m2/MWh) of new artificial land, 148 m/MW of new roads and 174 m/MW of widened roads on average. Models showed that the number and size of wind turbines, the absence of other existing infrastructures and the elevational difference across new access roads increased artificial land generation. The elevational difference across new and widened access roads also increased their length. New wind power stations in Greece are planned to be installed at higher elevations and in terrains facing higher risks for soil erosion and soil biodiversity. The general tendency in the European Union is to sit fewer wind power stations in mountainous and forested land. Still, this pattern is inversed in several countries, particularly in Southern Europe. After screening 29 policy and legal documents, we found that land take is indirectly inferred in the global policy but more directly in the European policy through five non-legally binding documents and three Directives. However, the current European energy policies seem to conflict with nature conservation policies, risking land take acceleration. The study provides insights for reducing land take when planning and constructing wind power stations. We underline the need for better quantification of land take and its integration in the complex process of sustainable spatial planning of investments.

Wildfires in Europe: Burned soils require attention.

Annually, millions of hectares of land are affected by wildfires worldwide, disrupting ecosystems functioning by affecting on-site vegetation, soil, and above- and belowground biodiversity, but also triggering erosive off-site impacts such as water-bodies contamination or mudflows. Here, we present a soil erosion assessment following the 2017's wildfires at the European scale, including an analysis of vegetation recovery and soil erosion mitigation potential. Results indicate a sharp increase in soil losses with 19.4 million Mg additional erosion in the first post-fire year when compared to unburned conditions. Over five years, 44 million Mg additional soil losses were estimated, and 46% of the burned area presented no signs of full recovery. Post-fire mitigation could attenuate these impacts by 63-77%, reducing soil erosion to background levels by the 4th post-fire year. Our insights may help identifying target policies to reduce land degradation, as identified in the European Union Soil, Forest, and Biodiversity strategies.

Integrating New Staff into Endovascular Stroke-Treatment Workflows in the COVID-19 Pandemic.

A health care crisis such as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic requires allocation of hospital staff and resources on short notice. Thus, new and sometimes less experienced team members might join the team to fill in the gaps. This scenario can be particularly challenging in endovascular stroke treatment, which is a highly specialized task that requires seamless cooperation of numerous health care workers across various specialties and professions. This document is intended for stroke teams who face the challenge of integrating new team members into endovascular stroke-treatment workflows during the COVID-19 pandemic or any other global health care emergency. It discusses the key strategies for smooth integration of new stroke-team members in a crisis situation: 1) transfer of key knowledge (simple take-home messages), 2) open communication and a nonjudgmental atmosphere, 3) strategic task assignment, and 4) graded learning and responsibility. While these 4 key principles should generally be followed in endovascular stroke treatment, they become even more important during health care emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic, when health care professionals have to take on new and additional roles and responsibilities in challenging working environments for which they were not specifically trained.

Utstein recommendation for emergency stroke care.

BACKGROUND: Recent advances in treatment for stroke give new possibilities for optimizing outcomes. To deliver these prehospital care needs to become more efficient. AIM: To develop a framework to support improved delivery of prehospital care. The recommendations are aimed at clinicians involved in prehospital and emergency health systems who will often not be stroke specialists but need clear guidance as to how to develop and deliver safe and effective care for acute stroke patients. METHODS: Building on the successful implementation program from the Global Resuscitation Alliance and the Resuscitation Academy, the Utstein methodology was used to define a generic chain of survival for Emergency Stroke Care by assembling international expertise in Stroke and Emergency Medical Services (EMS). Ten programs were identified for Acute Stroke Care to improve survival and outcomes, with recommendations for implementation of best practice. CONCLUSIONS: Efficient prehospital systems for acute stroke will be improved through public awareness, optimized prehospital triage and timely diagnostics, and quick and equitable access to acute treatments. Documentation, use of metrics and transparency will help to build a culture of excellence and accountability.

A step towards a holistic assessment of soil degradation in Europe: Coupling on-site erosion with sediment transfer and carbon fluxes.

Soil degradation due to erosion is connected to two serious environmental impacts: (i) on-site soil loss and (ii) off-site effects of sediment transfer through the landscape. The potential impact of soil erosion processes on biogeochemical cycles has received increasing attention in the last two decades. Properly designed modelling assumptions on effective soil loss are a key pre-requisite to improve our understanding of the magnitude of nutrients that are mobilized through soil erosion and the resultant effects. The aim of this study is to quantify the potential spatial displacement and transport of soil sediments due to water erosion at European scale. We computed long-term averages of annual soil loss and deposition rates by means of the extensively tested spatially distributed WaTEM/SEDEM model. Our findings indicate that soil loss from Europe in the riverine systems is about 15% of the estimated gross on-site erosion. The estimated sediment yield totals 0.164 ± 0.013Pgyr-1 (which corresponds to 4.62 ± 0.37Mgha-1yr-1 in the erosion area). The greatest amount of gross on-site erosion as well as soil loss to rivers occurs in the agricultural land (93.5%). By contrast, forestland and other semi-natural vegetation areas experience an overall surplus of sediments which is driven by a re-deposition of sediments eroded from agricultural land. Combining the predicted soil loss rates with the European soil organic carbon (SOC) stock, we estimate a SOC displacement by water erosion of 14.5Tg yr-1. The SOC potentially transferred to the riverine system equals to 2.2Tgyr-1 (~15%). Integrated sediment delivery-biogeochemical models need to answer the question on how carbon mineralization during detachment and transport might be balanced or even off-set by carbon sequestration due to dynamic replacement and sediment burial.

Breastmilk from obese mothers has pro-inflammatory properties and decreased neuroprotective factors.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the impact of maternal obesity on breastmilk composition. STUDY DESIGN: Breastmilk and food records from 21 lean and 21 obese women who delivered full-term infants were analyzed at 2 months post-partum. Infant growth and adiposity were measured at birth and 2 months of age. RESULT: Breastmilk from obese mothers had higher omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acid ratio and lower concentrations of docosahexaenoic acid, eicosapentaenoic acid, docasapentaenoic acid and lutein compared with lean mothers (P<0.05), which were strongly associated with maternal body mass index. Breastmilk saturated fatty acid and monounsaturated fatty acid concentrations were positively associated with maternal dietary inflammation, as measured by dietary inflammatory index. There were no differences in infant growth measurements. CONCLUSION: Breastmilk from obese mothers has a pro-inflammatory fatty acid profile and decreased concentrations of fatty acids and carotenoids that have been shown to have a critical role in early visual and neurodevelopment. Studies are needed to determine the link between these early-life influences and subsequent cardiometabolic and neurodevelopmental outcomes.

Basin characteristics and nutrient losses: the EUROHARP catchment network perspective.

The EC-funded EUROHARP project studies the harmonisation of modelling tools to quantify nutrient losses from diffuse sources. This paper describes a set of study areas used in the project from geographical conditions, to land use and land management, geological and hydro-geological perspectives. The status of data availability throughout Europe in relation to the modelling requirements is presented. The relationships between the catchment characteristics and the nutrient export are investigated, using simple data available for all the catchments. In addition, this study also analyses the hydrological representativity of the time series utilised in the EUROHARP project.