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Cracked and deteriorated asphalt are common problems on our roads, leading to safety concerns and requiring significant resources for rehabilitation and reconstruction. This study investigates bio-fog seals, a promising eco-friendly solution utilizing bio-based rejuvenators. These treatments penetrate aged asphalt, restoring its flexibility and resistance to cracking. We assessed the effectiveness of two bio-fog seal formulations—one containing sub-epoxidized soybean oil (SESO) and the other combining SESO with a biopolymer (BioMag). Applied to real pavement sections, the research evaluated how these bio-seals impacted key performance factors, such as stiffness, permeability, and drying time, and safety factors, including skid resistance and pavement marking visibility. The results indicate the bio-seals did not compromise skid resistance and the reflectivity of the markings, eliminating the need for repainting stripes. Additionally, they successfully reduced pavement stiffness, making the asphalt more flexible and crack-resistant. Remarkably, with rapid setting times, under 30 min, these treatments minimize traffic disruption and do not require a blotter material. Overall, this research demonstrates the potential of bio-fog seals as a sustainable solution for extending pavement lifespan and lowering long-term maintenance costs. 

This talk will describe the work of the CPN Pre-Impact Baselines Working Group to leverage the wealth of paleoecological and historical ecological data to facilitate estimation of pre-impact species distribution baselines. Species conservation has long focused on preventing human-driven extinctions, and over the past 50 years conservation success has been measured using changes in species’ extinction risk. However, recently calls have been made for a parallel focus on species recovery, and on developing metrics with which to assess its achievement. This call to action within the conservation community is fuelled in part by the recognition that baselines of species abundance and distribution have shifted dramatically across human generations with globally detectable human impacts on ecosystems beginning at least several thousand years ago. While assessment of extinction risk generally only considers species’ change over the past few decades, assessment of recovery requires considering change over centuries to millennia. This requires identifying the baseline status at the time when humans first became a major factor influencing the abundance and distribution of a species. Two new frameworks for considering conservation status relative to a species’ pre-impact baseline have been recently released: EPOCH (Evaluation of POpulation CHange), and the IUCN Green Status of Species. These frameworks have been lauded as moving conservation in a much-needed direction, but there is also concern about whether these methods will be applicable to any but a few well-known, charismatic species. Using a combination of modelling approaches, we are working to estimate species pre-impact distributions in a way that is accessible to conservation practitioners, helping to unshift the baseline and bring species recovery into the mainstream.