The Frontiers Report spotlights emerging environmental issues before they escalate into global or regional crises.
Major Environmental Issues highlighted in the Report
- Reactivation of Microbes in a Warming Cryosphere: Climate warming could reactivate and remobilize dormant microbes into new environments, potentially altering microbial communities, introducing pathogens, or causing biodiversity loss as some might fail to survive thawing.
- Microbes that thrive under extremely challenging habitats like frozen environments are generally referred to as psychrophiles.
- River Barriers: All barriers (dams, weir or low-head dam, barrage, culverts, sluices etc.) affect the river ecosystem.
- Impact of River Barriers: Modify water flow and temperature, habitat quality and quantity, downstream sediment transport, displace indigenous community and fish movement.
- Report recognizes Barrier Removals as an accepted strategy to restore river health.
- Barrier removals reduce river fragmentation (which will affect 89% of global river volume) and restore connectivity in river ecosystems.
- Demographic Challenge: Climate change is exacerbating environmental risks such as heatwaves, air pollution, and floods, which disproportionately threaten increasing population of older adults.
- Remobilization of legacy pollutants by flood events: Persistent contaminants (Heavy metal, organic compounds etc.) in water and sediment can enter and accumulate in plants and animals (bioaccumulation), and subsequently contaminate food chains with increased concentrations (biomagnification).
