Individual and population dietary specialization decline in fin whales during a period of ecosystem shift.

This study sought to estimate the effect of an anthropogenic and climate-driven change in prey availability on the degree of individual and population specialization of a large marine predator, the fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus). We examined skin biopsies from 99 fin whales sampled in the St. Lawrence Estuary (Canada) over a nine year period (1998-2006) during which environmental change was documented. We analyzed stable isotope ratios in skin and fatty acid signatures in blubber samples of whales, as well as in seven potential prey species, and diet was quantitatively assessed using Bayesian isotopic models. An abrupt change in fin whale dietary niche coincided with a decrease in biomass of their predominant prey, Arctic krill (Thysanoessa spp.). This dietary niche widening toward generalist diets occurred in nearly 60% of sampled individuals. The fin whale population, typically composed of specialists of either krill or lipid-rich pelagic fishes, shifted toward one composed either of krill specialists or true generalists feeding on various zooplankton and fish prey. This change likely reduced intraspecific competition. In the context of the current "Atlantification" of northern water masses, our findings emphasize the importance of considering individual-specific foraging tactics and not only population or group average responses when assessing population resilience or when implementing conservation measures.

Building national emission inventories for the energy sector: Implications for life cycle assessment and nations environmental footprinting.

Environmentally-extended multi-region input-output (EE-MRIO) models allow calculating environmental impacts of goods and services in a supply-chain perspective. However, current EE-MRIO databases only have limited coverage of toxic pollutant emissions. This limited coverage is caused by the fact that public emission databases currently provide a rather modest pollutant coverage, are restricted to a limited number of countries, and lack differentiation in terms of sectors. This therefore calls for alternative data sources and inventorying techniques. Using the production of heat and electricity as a case study, we investigate the usability of available process-based inventories like the ecoinvent database from the field of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to build national emission inventories of pollutants. We thus develop the ecoinvent-based National Energy-related Emission (ENEE) inventory, comprising a total of 231 airborne emissions and 87 waterborne emissions of pollutants from heat and electricity power plants in 140 countries over the period 1995-2014. Using the improved data sets, we demonstrate that extending the coverage of pollutants beyond the few commonly-reported ones, like greenhouse gases, has a significant influence on the quantification of other important environmental impacts such as ionizing radiation and impacts of toxic substances to freshwater ecosystems. The ENEE inventory is an important first step towards building comprehensive inventories of pollutant emissions from power and heat generation, thus enabling more complete assessments of the energy sector. It also exemplifies the gains that can be made when introducing process-based data to complement public national and sectoral data for life cycle assessments and nations environmental footprinting.

Building national emission inventories of toxic pollutants in Europe.

The reduction of chemical pollution is a priority in many regional, national, and international policies, including in EU countries. To effectively do so, quantified overviews of pollutant emissions at national levels and with some granularity in their sources, are required. However, current monitoring efforts are often scattered and a quantitative and comprehensive inventory of toxic emissions in Europe is lacking. Toxic pollutants stem from a large variety of emission sources from industry, agriculture, households, etc. and the difficulty to cover all of them is manifest in public databases and official reports, where data gaps across countries and years exist for several substances. Here, we propose a methodology to tackle this problem and build comprehensive and harmonized national inventories of toxic pollutants. Using public databases, official reports, scientific literature and developing extrapolation techniques specific to each emission source, we derived harmonized annual inventories of toxic pollutants in all EU Member States over the years 2000-2014. They present an unprecedented coverage of 805, 572, and 468 substances emitted to air, water and soil, respectively. Although the resulting dataset shows a relatively good agreement with previous inventories of narrower scopes, uncertainties can be identified for specific emission sources and in the development of extrapolation techniques, thus calling for further research in these areas. Such efforts should also explore adaptation of the methodology to derive comprehensive inventories for countries outside EU, where data is scarcer. Nonetheless, the developed national inventories can provide a starting point for territorial chemical footprints of toxic pollutants and could be coupled with environmental impact assessment for gauging the damages to ecosystems and human health from toxic pollutants emitted in Europe. This can ultimately support policy-makers in their pollutants prioritisation and benchmarking across substances and countries towards improved toxic emission reduction policies.

Framework for estimating toxic releases from the application of manure on agricultural soil: National release inventories for heavy metals in 2000-2014.

Livestock manure is commonly applied on agricultural land for its fertilising properties. However, the presence of toxic substances in animal manure such as pathogens, antibiotics and heavy metals, can result in damages to ecosystems and human health. To date, although relevant for policy-making, e.g. regulation framing, their releases to agricultural land have been incompletely and inconsistently quantified at global and national scales. Here, we thus developed a generic framework for estimating such releases based on the quantities of manure applied and concentrations of toxic substances. Applying this framework, we built a global release inventory for arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, mercury, nickel, lead and zinc differentiated into 215 countries and 15years (period 2000-2014). Comparisons with more narrowly-focused inventories showed overall consistency in our inventory results, although a number of uncertainties and limitations were identified. In particular, the need for harmonising sampling and analytical methods for estimating heavy metal contents in manure and generating more country-differentiated data, especially for developing countries, should be prioritised by future research studies. Using life cycle impact assessment methods, it was additionally found that mercury, zinc and copper are the substances contributing the most to the toxic impacts on human health and freshwater ecosystems resulting from manure application to land. While countries such as China, India, Russia, Brazil and the United States of America contributed to half the heavy metal releases from manure application worldwide, the impact intensity per area of agricultural land was observed to be highest for island countries, the European Union and South-East Asia because of higher per-area applications of manure. These findings demonstrate the need to perform country-specific impact assessment to support policy-making regulating the concentrations of toxic substances such as heavy metals in utilised manure.