Browsing by Author "Jiao, Nianzhi"
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Item A roadmap for Ocean Negative Carbon Emission eco-engineering in sea-farming fields(The Innovation Geoscience, 2023-09-14) Jiao, Nianzhi; Zhu, Chenba; Liu, Jihua; Luo, Tingwei; Bai, Mindong; Yu, Zhiming; Chen, Quanrui; Rinkevich, Buki; Weinbauer, Markus; Thomas, Helmuth; Fernández-Méndez, Mar; López-Abbate, Celeste; Signori, Camila Negrão; Nagappa, Ramaiah; Koblížek, Michal; Kaartokallio, Hermanni; Hyun, Jung-Ho; Jiao, Fanglue; Chen, Feng; Cai, Wei-JunCarbon neutralization has become a significant, inevitable, and urgent strategy for both adaptation and mitigation of global warming caused by anthropogenic CO2 emissions, and its environmental consequences such as ocean acidification. However, the reduction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions often conflicts with economic development. In contrast, environmentally-friendly negative carbon emissions can be a way of killing two birds with one stone, capturing carbon dioxide and ensuring economic development, and therefore become imperative to achieve carbon-neutral goals.Item Correcting a major error in assessing organic carbon pollution in natural waters(Science Advances, 2021-04-14) Jiao, Nianzhi; Liu, Jihua; Edwards, Bethanie; Lv, Zongqing; Cai, Ruanhong; Liu,Yongqin; Xiao, Xilin; Wang, Jianning; Jiao, Fanglue; Wang, Rui; Huang, Xingyu; Guo, Bixi; Sun, Jia; Zhang, Rui; Zhang, Yao; Tang, Kai; Zheng, Qiang; Azam, Farooq; Batt, John; Cai, Wei-Jun; He, Chen; Herndl, Gerhard J.; Hill, Paul; Hutchins, David; LaRoche, Julie; Lewis, Marlon; MacIntyre, Hugh; Polimene, Luca; Robinson, Carol; Shi, Quan; Suttle, Curtis A.; Thomas, Helmuth; Wallace, Douglas; Legendre, LouisMicrobial degradation of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in aquatic environments can cause oxygen depletion, water acidification, and CO2 emissions. These problems are caused by labile DOC (LDOC) and not refractory DOC (RDOC) that resists degradation and is thus a carbon sink. For nearly a century, chemical oxygen demand (COD) has been widely used for assessment of organic pollution in aquatic systems. Here, we show through a multicountry survey and experimental studies that COD is not an appropriate proxy of microbial degradability of organic matter because it oxidizes both LDOC and RDOC, and the latter contributes up to 90% of DOC in high-latitude forested areas. Hence, COD measurements do not provide appropriate scientific information on organic pollution in natural waters and can mislead environmental policies. We propose the replacement of the COD method with an optode-based biological oxygen demand method to accurately and efficiently assess organic pollution in natural aquatic environments.Item Wastewater alkalinity addition as a novel approach for ocean negative carbon emissions(The Innovation, 2022-06-23) Cai, Wei-Jun; Jiao, NianzhiAnthropogenic CO2 emissions have greatly increased atmospheric CO2 contributing to global warming and leading to ocean acidification (Figure 1). As reflected in the recent IPCC report, the scientific community's consensus is that emissions reductions alone are not sufficient or timely enough to avoid a global warming catastrophe. Thus, negative-carbon-emission technologies are needed to avoid atmospheric CO2 overshoot scenarios and limit global warming to less than 2°C by the end of this century per the Paris Agreement. Due to the urgency and scale of the issue, multiple negative-emission technologies should be evaluated and adopted with broad community involvement to address our society's pressing climate crisis. The goal is to remove at least 10 Gt-CO2/year from the atmosphere by the mid to-late century,2 which is more than the current annual anthropogenic CO2 uptake by the global ocean (Figure 1). Among various ocean negative-carbon-emission approaches or ocean-based carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies, ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) is an approach that will decrease sea surface pCO2 via the addition of alkaline materials and promote CO2 uptake from the atmosphere. Additionally, as the oceanic dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) reservoir is nearly 50 times the atmospheric CO2 content, the sequestered CO2 can remain in the ocean DIC pool as bicarbonate (HCO3−) for centuries. OAE is viewed with high confidence under the efficacy criterion and medium on environmental risk in the recent report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.1