<p>Recent research led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst evaluates how well machine learning can identify different insect species by their sound, from malaria-carrying mosquitoes and grain-hungry weevils to crop-pollinating bees and sap-sucking cicadas. Listening in on the insect world gives us a way to monitor how populations of insects are shifting, and so can tell us about the overall health of the environment. The study, published in the <a href="https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2664.14630">Journal of Applied Ecology</a>, suggests that machine and deep learning are becoming the gold standards for automated bioacoustics modeling, and that ecologists and machine-learning experts can fruitfully work together to develop the technology’s full potential.</p>
<p>A team of researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst that specializes in accounting for the carbon dioxide release by streams, rivers and lakes recently demonstrated that the chemical process known as “carbonate buffering” can account for the majority of emissions in highly alkaline waters. Furthermore, carbonate buffering distorts the most commonly used method of tracking the origins of CO<sub>2</sub> in streams. The research, published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GB007860" target=" blank">Global Biogeochemical Cycles</a>, proposes a better method for tracking the origin of riverine CO<sub>2</sub> emissions.</p>
<p>A collaborative team of scientists led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently found that there is no physiological evidence supporting a leading theory— which involves the surface area of fish gills —as to why many fish species are “shrinking” as waters grow warmer due to climate change. Known as the Gill Oxygen Limitation (GOL) theory, it has been proposed as the universal mechanism explaining fish size and has been used in some predictions of future global fisheries yields. However, the researchers, representing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Geological Survey, the University of California Davis as well as UMass Amherst, conducted a series of long-term experiments on brook trout and found that, though increased temperatures do lead to significantly decreased body size, gill surface area did not explain the change. The results of the study were recently published in the <a href="http://doi