September 24, 2018

Good Morning,

Tired of mosquitoes munching on you? Well, they might be moving on to microplastics. That's a relief!

Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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*-- Space station sensor plots Los Angeles hot spots --*

NASA's ECOSTRESS instrument is helping scientists plot Los Angeles's hotspots.

Researchers mapped the sprawling metropolis' surface temperatures using data collected by NASA's ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station.

The ECOSTRESS instrument measures surface temperature, not air temperature. The data can reveal the heat signature of a city's built environment. In a city like Los Angeles, where asphalt and concrete stretch in all directions, a few hot days in a row can send the heat signature soaring.

When an abundance of heat-absorbing materials heat up urban air faster than the rural and suburban surroundings, the phenomenon is called the heat island effect. Previous studies suggest L.A. has one of the strongest heat island effects in the country.

The newest maps, shared online this week by NASA, showcase Los Angeles' heat signature during the heat wave that struck the city early this summer. Scientists used ECOSTRESS data collected between July 22 and Aug. 14 to build the maps. The maps can help scientists understand L.A.'s heat island effect and how it might be mitigated.

On the maps, the yellows, oranges and reds are used to convey higher temperatures, while greens and blues communicate cooler temperatures.

The maps can help scientists study how different surfaces heat up and cool down. Researchers can observe urban materials in neighborhoods, mostly roofs, cool down more quickly than large highways and roads, which have a greater heat index.

"The Los Angeles area is known for its Mediterranean climate and abundant sunshine but also for its extreme 'micro-climate' temperature swings -- from cooler coastal areas to much warmer inland regions like the San Gabriel Valley," NASA wrote in a news update. "ECOSTRESS can detect the distribution and pattern variations of that surface heat over areas the size of a football field."

*-- Mosquitoes can introduce microplastics into new food chains --*

Mosquitoes can ingest microplastics and carry them into new food chains and ecosystems, according to a new study.

"By studying mosquitoes, we have found a previously unknown way for plastic to pollute the environment and contaminate the food chain," Amanda Callaghan and Rana Al-jaibachi, both researchers at the University of Reading, wrote in a blog post for The Conversation.

Microplastics can form as larger plastic pollution is broken down or enter the environment in the form of tiny plastic beads, found in toothpastes, face wash and other cosmetic products. Smaller organisms can mistake microplastics as food. When the smaller organisms are consumer by larger organisms, microplastics can make their way up the food chain.

Scientists have mostly focused on the movement of microplastic pollution through marine ecosystems, including the deep ocean, but the latest research -- published Wednesday in the journal Biology Letters -- suggests microplastics can be introduced to land ecosystems by mosquitoes and other aquatic insects.

"It occurred to us that aquatic insects might carry plastics out of the water if they were able to keep the plastics in their body through their development," Callaghan and Al-jaibachi wrote.

In the lab, researchers fed fluorescent plastic beads to mosquito larvae and tracked the pollution through the different stages. The experiment confirmed microplastics can survive the mosquito's development process, from the larval stages through to adulthood. Scientists observed plastic beads in the mosquitoes' guts and liver.

"The transfer of [microplastics] to the adults represents a potential aerial pathway to contamination of new environments," researchers wrote in their newly published paper. "Thus, any organism that feeds on terrestrial life phases of freshwater insects could be impacted by [microplastics] found in aquatic ecosystems."

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