| 1. |
- Lappalainen, H. K., et al.
(författare)
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Overview: Recent advances in the understanding of the northern Eurasian environments and of the urban air quality in China - a Pan-Eurasian Experiment (PEEX) programme perspective
- 2022
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Ingår i: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. - : Copernicus GmbH. - 1680-7316 .- 1680-7324. ; 22:7, s. 4413-4469
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Pan-Eurasian Experiment (PEEX) Science Plan, released in 2015, addressed a need for a holistic system understanding and outlined the most urgent research needs for the rapidly changing Arctic-boreal region. Air quality in China, together with the long-range transport of atmospheric pollutants, was also indicated as one of the most crucial topics of the research agenda. These two geographical regions, the northern Eurasian Arctic-boreal region and China, especially the megacities in China, were identified as a "PEEX region". It is also important to recognize that the PEEX geographical region is an area where science-based policy actions would have significant impacts on the global climate. This paper summarizes results obtained during the last 5 years in the northern Eurasian region, together with recent observations of the air quality in the urban environments in China, in the context of the PEEX programme. The main regions of interest are the Russian Arctic, northern Eurasian boreal forests (Siberia) and peatlands, and the megacities in China. We frame our analysis against research themes introduced in the PEEX Science Plan in 2015. We summarize recent progress towards an enhanced holistic understanding of the land-atmosphere-ocean systems feedbacks. We conclude that although the scientific knowledge in these regions has increased, the new results are in many cases insufficient, and there are still gaps in our understanding of large-scale climate-Earth surface interactions and feedbacks. This arises from limitations in research infrastructures, especially the lack of coordinated, continuous and comprehensive in situ observations of the study region as well as integrative data analyses, hindering a comprehensive system analysis. The fast-changing environment and ecosystem changes driven by climate change, socio-economic activities like the China Silk Road Initiative, and the global trends like urbanization further complicate such analyses. We recognize new topics with an increasing importance in the near future, especially "the enhancing biological sequestration capacity of greenhouse gases into forests and soils to mitigate climate change" and the "socio-economic development to tackle air quality issues".
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| 2. |
- Steinthorsdottir, V, et al.
(författare)
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Genetic predisposition to hypertension is associated with preeclampsia in European and Central Asian women
- 2020
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Ingår i: Nature communications. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2041-1723. ; 11:1, s. 5976-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Preeclampsia is a serious complication of pregnancy, affecting both maternal and fetal health. In genome-wide association meta-analysis of European and Central Asian mothers, we identify sequence variants that associate with preeclampsia in the maternal genome at ZNF831/20q13 and FTO/16q12. These are previously established variants for blood pressure (BP) and the FTO variant has also been associated with body mass index (BMI). Further analysis of BP variants establishes that variants at MECOM/3q26, FGF5/4q21 and SH2B3/12q24 also associate with preeclampsia through the maternal genome. We further show that a polygenic risk score for hypertension associates with preeclampsia. However, comparison with gestational hypertension indicates that additional factors modify the risk of preeclampsia.
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| 3. |
- Kulmala, M., et al.
(författare)
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Introduction : The Pan-Eurasian Experiment (PEEX) - multidisciplinary, multiscale and multicomponent research and capacity-building initiative
- 2015
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Ingår i: Atmospheric Chemistry And Physics. - : Copernicus GmbH. - 1680-7316 .- 1680-7324. ; 15:22, s. 13085-13096
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Pan-Eurasian Experiment (PEEX) is a multidisciplinary, multiscale and multicomponent research, research infrastructure and capacity-building program. PEEX has originated from a bottom-up approach by the science communities and is aiming at resolving the major uncertainties in Earth system science and global sustainability issues concerning the Arctic and boreal pan-Eurasian regions, as well as China. The vision of PEEX is to solve interlinked, global grand challenges influencing human well-being and societies in northern Eurasia and China. Such challenges include climate change; air quality; biodiversity loss; urbanization; chemicalization; food and freshwater availability; energy production; and use of natural resources by mining, industry, energy production and transport sectors. Our approach is integrative and supra-disciplinary, recognizing the important role of the Arctic and boreal ecosystems in the Earth system. The PEEX vision includes establishing and maintaining long-term, coherent and coordinated research activities as well as continuous, comprehensive research and educational infrastructure and related capacity-building across the PEEX domain. In this paper we present the PEEX structure and summarize its motivation, objectives and future outlook.
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| 4. |
- Lappalainen, Hanna K., et al.
(författare)
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Pan-Eurasian Experiment (PEEX) : towards a holistic understanding of the feedbacks and interactions in the land-atmosphere-ocean-society continuum in the northern Eurasian region
- 2016
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Ingår i: Atmospheric Chemistry And Physics. - : Copernicus GmbH. - 1680-7316 .- 1680-7324. ; 16:22, s. 14421-14461
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The northern Eurasian regions and Arctic Ocean will very likely undergo substantial changes during the next decades. The Arctic-boreal natural environments play a crucial role in the global climate via albedo change, carbon sources and sinks as well as atmospheric aerosol production from biogenic volatile organic compounds. Furthermore, it is expected that global trade activities, demographic movement, and use of natural resources will be increasing in the Arctic regions. There is a need for a novel research approach, which not only identifies and tackles the relevant multi-disciplinary research questions, but also is able to make a holistic system analysis of the expected feedbacks. In this paper, we introduce the research agenda of the Pan-Eurasian Experiment (PEEX), a multi-scale, multi-disciplinary and international program started in 2012 (https://www.atm.helsinki.fi/peex/). PEEX sets a research approach by which large-scale research topics are investigated from a system perspective and which aims to fill the key gaps in our understanding of the feedbacks and interactions between the land-atmosphereaquatic-society continuum in the northern Eurasian region. We introduce here the state of the art for the key topics in the PEEX research agenda and present the future prospects of the research, which we see relevant in this context.
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| 5. |
- Pietroń, Jan, et al.
(författare)
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Sedimentation patterns in the Selenga River delta under changing hydroclimatic conditions
- 2018
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Ingår i: Hydrological Processes. - : Wiley. - 0885-6087 .- 1099-1085. ; 32:2, s. 278-292
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Selenga River delta (Russia) is a large (>600km(2)) fluvially dominated fresh water system that transfers water and sediment from an undammed drainage basin into Lake Baikal, a United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization World Heritage Site. Through sedimentation processes, the delta and its wetlands provide important environmental services, such as storage of sediment-bound pollutants (e.g., metals), thereby reducing their input to Lake Baikal. However, in the Selenga River delta and many other deltas of the world, there is a lack of knowledge regarding impacts of potential shifts in the flow regime (e.g., due to climate change and other anthropogenic impacts) on sedimentation processes, including sediment exchanges between deltaic channels and adjacent wetlands. This study uses field measurements of water velocities and sediment characteristics in the Selenga River delta, investigating conditions of moderate discharge, which have become more frequent over the past decades (at the expense of peak flows, Q>1,350m(3)s(-1)). The aims are to determine if the river system under moderate flow conditions is capable of supporting sediment export from the main distributary channels of the delta to the adjacent wetlands. The results show that most of the deposited sediment outside of the deltaic channels is characterized by a large proportion of silt and clay material (i.e., <63m). For example, floodplain lakes function as sinks of very fine sediment (e.g., 97% of sediment by weight<63m). Additionally, bed material sediment is found to be transported outside of the channel margins during conditions of moderate and high water discharge conditions (Q1,000m(3)s(-1)). Submerged banks and marshlands located in the backwater zone of the delta accumulate sediment during such discharges, supporting wetland development. Thus, these regions likely sequester various metals bound to Selenga River sediment.
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