Nicholas Ward results 63
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Shifts in subsurface oxygen transport and consumption patterns in a restored coastal flood plain over five yearsNARA Subscribed
Groundwater dissolved oxygen (DO) variability in coastal systems remains poorly understood despite its importance for biogeochemical cycling and ecosystem modeling. This study investigates temporal variability in groundwater DO and its hydro‐climatic drivers across timescales (hourly to seasonal) in a coastal floodplain at Beaver Creek, Washington, USA, a site transitioning from a freshwater forest to brackish tidal wetland fo...
The Asia region harbors exceptional chondrichthyan (shark, ray, and chimaera) diversity but faces intense fishing pressure. The Important Shark and Ray Areas (ISRA) process provides a collaborative, evidence-based framework to identify critical habitats and inform spatial management. We assessed ISRAs across the Bay of Bengal, Southeast Asia, and the Northwest Pacific to characterize their extent, ecological significance, and...
Modulation of primary motor cortex after experimentally induced and use-dependent plasticity in young and older adultsNARA Subscribed
The ability to induce plasticity in human primary motor cortex (M1) may be diminished with advancing age. Intracortical inhibition is critical for M1 plasticity and regular participation in physical activity can promote M1 plasticity. This study assessed modulation of M1 excitability and inhibition after paired associative stimulation (PAS) and motor skill acquisition in young and older adults, which also considered the cardio...
Mixed‐Species Fish Shoals: Any Port in a Storm?NARA Subscribed
Mixed‐species fish shoals are common, and form for a variety of reasons. We suggest that short term mixed‐species shoals, that persist for minutes or hours, might form because lone individuals (or small groups) of one species might benefit from joining larger groups of heterospecifics to reduce predation risk. We carried out a literature survey, which revealed that mixed‐species groups seldom contain equal numbers of species;...
Aim The urgency for remote, reliable and scalable biodiversity monitoring amidst mounting human pressures on ecosystems has sparked worldwide interest in Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM), which can track life underwater and on land. However, we lack a unified methodology to report this sampling effort and a comprehensive overview of PAM coverage to gauge its potential as a global research and monitoring tool. To address this...
Stormwise: Innovative Forest Management to Promote Storm Resistance in Roadside ForestsNARA Subscribed
A growing proportion of forested landscapes are interspersed with human infrastructure, such as utility lines and roads, increasing the potential for tree-failure consequences due to storms and other causes. Utilities and other institutions have strong incentives to reduce such interactions and allocate substantial resources to risk reduction, but trees and forests in densely populated landscapes also provide significant ameni...
Purpose The land-lake interface is a unique zone where terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems meet, forming part of the Earth’s most geochemically and biologically active zones. The unique characteristics of this interface are yet to be properly understood due to the inherently high spatiotemporal variability of subsurface properties, which are difficult to capture with the traditional soil sampling methods. Geophysical methods of...
The frequency and persistence of tidal inundation varies along the coastal terrestrial-aquatic interface, from frequently inundated wetlands to rarely inundated upland forests. This inundation gradient controls soil and sediment biogeochemistry and influence the exchange of soils and sediments from terrestrial to aquatic domains. Although a rich literature exist on studies of the influence of tidal waters on the biogeochemistr...
Seasonal drivers of dissolved oxygen across a tidal creek–marsh interface revealed by machine learningNARA Subscribed
Dissolved oxygen (DO) is a key biogeochemical control in coastal systems, and its concentration and drivers vary markedly through time and space. This makes it difficult to accurately represent coastal DO and associated biogeochemical processes in models, limiting our ability to predict how these systems will respond to global change. We obtained high‐frequency (5‐min) in situ measurements of DO collected at three locations ac...
Processes and mechanisms of coastal woody‐plant mortalityNARA Subscribed
Observations of woody plant mortality in coastal ecosystems are globally widespread, but the overarching processes and underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. This knowledge deficiency, combined with rapidly changing water levels, storm surges, atmospheric CO 2 , and vapor pressure deficit, creates large predictive uncertainty regarding how coastal ecosystems will respond to global change. Here, we synthesize the literatu...
Genomic erosion in a demographically recovered bird species during conservation rescueNARA Subscribed
The pink pigeon ( Nesoenas mayeri ) is an endemic species of Mauritius that has made a remarkable recovery after a severe population bottleneck in the 1970s to early 1990s. Prior to this bottleneck, an ex situ population was established from which captive‐bred individuals were released into free‐living subpopulations to increase population size and genetic variation. This conservation rescue led to rapid population recovery to...
Common, low-frequency, rare, and ultra-rare coding variants contribute to COVID-19 severityNARA Subscribed
The combined impact of common and rare exonic variants in COVID-19 host genetics is currently insufficiently understood. Here, common and rare variants from whole-exome sequencing data of about 4000 SARS-CoV-2-positive individuals were used to define an interpretable machine-learning model for predicting COVID-19 severity. First, variants were converted into separate sets of Boolean features, depending on the absence or the pr...
Maintaining healthy, productive ecosystems in the face of pervasive and accelerating human impacts including climate change requires globally coordinated and sustained observations of marine biodiversity. Global coordination is predicated on an understanding of the scope and capacity of existing monitoring programs, and the extent to which they use standardized, interoperable practices for data management. Global coordination...