Climate change mitigation. Environmental role models. Coastal climate impacts. Conserving biodiversity. Species adaptation to climate change. Climate change developments. Globalization of the Cashmere Market and the Decline of Large Mammals in Central Asia - BERGER - 2013 - Conservation Biology. Does habitat replacement let developers off the hook? - environment - 24 June 2013. Read full article Continue reading page |1|2 Eco-offsetting – creating habitats to replace ones lost to development – can save wildlife, but may instead help business trump nature AT THE far eastern end of the Thames estuary, amid a scruffy sprawl of London satellite towns, is a spot known as Lodge Hill.
It is a military junkyard, littered with abandoned munitions stores, sentry boxes and an anti-aircraft gun emplacement from the first world war. With the soldiers gone, there is a plan to blanket the hill with 5000 badly needed new homes. This kind of ecological offsetting is becoming popular, with more and more governments seeing it as a way of pleasing both developers and conservationists. Where there are markets, banks follow, and ecological offsetting is no exception. Australia does it too, and the European Union is about to publish recommendations for habitat banking as part of its strategy to halt species loss.
Many conservationists are keen. Wildlife habitats are not like that. Untitled. Snow leopards and wild yaks becoming 'fashion victims' | Environment. Snow leopards, wild yaks and other iconic wildlife on the world's highest mountains and great steppes are becoming "fashion victims" of the surging global trade in cashmere, new research has revealed. Scientists found wildlife being driven to the margins of survival by the "striking but unintended consequences" of huge increases in the numbers of the goats producing the luxurious lightweight wool. The herds eat up the grass that previously supported antelopes, wild asses and their predators. Further problems were retaliatory killings of leopards and wolves by herders after livestock attacks, the killing of wild animals by herders' dogs and the transfer of disease from livestock to wild animals.
"In the absence of commitment across global and local scales, this iconic wildlife will cease to persist as they have for millennia, concluded an international team of researchers in the journal Conservation Biology. The slippery slope to slime – Features – ABC Environment. Australia's Great Barrier Reef is unparalleled in its beauty. But now a new scientific experiment is revealing the future for the reef if climate change continues, and it doesn't look good. ON A LARGE WOODEN deck on a coral cay island in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef, research assistant Aaron Chai removes the lid from one of 12 circular white water tanks. "This is the 'do nothing' tank," he says, peering inside at a careful arrangement of dead, slimy, algae-covered and bleached-white corals.
In July last year, this small reef ecosystem looked very different - corals of vivid purples and blues beside the bright greens of turtle weeds. Since then the levels of carbon dioxide and temperature in the bowl-shaped tank have been changed to the kind of conditions expected by the end of this century if the world 'does nothing' about climate change and its fossil fuel use. The World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef is already under stress from natural and man-made hazards. Tanks of tests. Science Committee. Mark Stafford Smith - Chair Dr Mark Stafford Smith is the Science Director of CSIRO’s Climate Adaptation Flagship in Canberra, Australia, where he oversees a highly interdisciplinary programme of research on many aspects of adapting to climate change. He has more than 30 years experience in drylands systems ecology, management and policy, including senior roles such as Program Leader of CSIRO’s Centre for Arid Zone Research in Alice Springs, and then CEO of the Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre.
During this time he was a task leader under the Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems core project of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP). He was also a key contributor to the AridNET international network of drylands researchers that devised the Dryland Development Paradigm. In the past decade his research focus has turned more to adaptation to climate change. Belinda Reyers - Vice-chair Melissa Leach - Vice-chair Bina Agarwal Xuemei Bai Eduardo Brondizio Eduardo S. Carrion fly-derived DNA as a tool for comprehensive and cost-effective assessment of mammalian biodiversity - Calvignac-Spencer - 2013 - Molecular Ecology.
Risk Assessment for GM in aquatic environments. Soot is heating up the planet, experts warn. U. LEEDS (UK) — Soot’s role in global warming may be underestimated, but a major effort in reduction could potentially gain us a few decades of relief. The direct warming effect of black carbon, the term used by scientists to describe soot, could be about twice the previous estimates, according to a study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres. Black carbon is believed to have a warming effect of about 1.1 Watts per square meter (W/m2), approximately two thirds the warming effect of carbon dioxide—the largest man-made contributor to global warming—and greater than that of methane. The figures indicate there may be a greater potential to curb warming by reducing soot emissions than previously thought. Professor Piers Forster from the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds, who co-led the study, says: “There are exciting opportunities to cool climate by cutting soot emissions, but it is not straightforward.
Sources of soot Immediate effects. India bans captive dolphin shows, says dolphins should be seen as ‘non-human persons’ Dolphins have long been one of our favorite ocean-going animal counterparts , blurring the line that separates human intelligence and emotion from the wildness of nature. Sadly, though, this attraction has resulted in dolphins around the world being exploited for our entertainment, subjected to a life in captivity. But now, in a bold move to protect the well-being of dolphins, India has moved to ban dolphin shows -- a push that helps elevate their status from creatures of mere curiosity to one that borders more closely to that of personhood.
Late last week, India's Minstry of the Environment and Forests released a statement banning "any person / persons, organizations, government agencies, private or public enterprises that involves import, capture of cetacean species to establish for commercial entertainment, private or public exhibition and interaction purposes whatsoever.” Ezra S F / CC BY 2.0 © Google Maps. Scientists pioneer method to predict environmental collapse. Scientists at the University of Southampton are pioneering a technique to predict when an ecosystem is likely to collapse, which may also have potential for foretelling crises in agriculture, fisheries or even social systems.
The researchers have applied a mathematical model to a real world situation, the environmental collapse of a lake in China, to help prove a theory which suggests an ecosystem 'flickers', or fluctuates dramatically between healthy and unhealthy states, shortly before its eventual collapse. Head of Geography at Southampton, Professor John Dearing explains: "We wanted to prove that this 'flickering' occurs just ahead of a dramatic change in a system - be it a social, ecological or climatic one - and that this method could potentially be used to predict future critical changes in other impacted systems in the world around us.
" The researchers hope the method they have trialled in China could be applied to other regions and landscapes. Call for DNA biologists to join fight against deadly new threats to wildlife | Environment | The Observer. Conservation workers will this week seek help from an unlikely set of allies. They will ask researchers working on synthetic biology – the science of creating advanced manipulated organisms – to help them save the world's endangered creatures and habitats. Threats that conservationists believe could be countered by a new generation of manipulated organisms include the fungus epidemics that are currently devastating frog populations around the world and which are also attacking bat colonies in the United States. In addition, ocean dead zones – where marine life has been killed by algal blooms – could also be tackled by synthetic biology, they believe.
"We think this is the time to ask science if it can help," said conservation biologist Kent Redford, who has organised this week's meeting in Cambridge, Synthetic Biology and Conservation, on behalf of the Wildlife Conservation Society. Synthetic biology is the technology of designing and building biological devices from scratch. Should domestic cats be eradicated? | Gareth Morgan and Tom Cox. New study to examine ecological tipping points in hopes of preventing them. Predation by otters keeps urchin populations in check, allowing kelp - a favorite food of urchins - to flourish. But what if otters were harvested to near extinction for their fur? The resulting overabundance of urchins would decimate the kelp forest, leaving little food or shelter for fish and invertebrates.
And so it may go, as declines in these species are likely to affect others. Such is the potential trickle-down effect on the food chain of even subtle shifts in a single species - tipping points that can induce wholesale, sometimes irreversible change to entire ecosystems. Examples of these ecological thresholds and unintended consequences are many - the otter-urchin scenario occurred in Alaska and California - but solutions are few. "This is an ambitious project that addresses really critical issues in natural resource management and protecting and managing our oceans effectively," said Halpern, director of UCSB's Center for Marine Assessment and Planning. Flooding preparedness needs to include infection prevention and control strategies. Flooding can cause clinical and economic damage to a healthcare facility, but reopening a facility after extensive flooding requires infection prevention and control preparedness plans to ensure a safe environment for patients and healthcare workers.
In a study published in the February issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, clinical investigators report key findings and recommendations related to the closure and re-opening of hospitals impacted by black-water floods. The guidance builds on lessons learned from Thailand and the United States. The findings come as many flood-damaged healthcare facilities in New York and New Jersey look to reopen in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Reopening of hospitals after excessive flooding requires a balance between meeting the medical needs of the surrounding communities and restoration of a safe hospital environment. As planet heats up, fertile soil isn’t guaranteed. PURDUE (US) — A new study casts doubt on the assumption that warmer climates will speed the return of nitrogen to soils, making them more fertile for plants. Increased temperatures from climate change have been expected to speed decomposition of plant materials and the return of nitrogen to soils.
But Jeff Dukes, an associate professor of forestry and natural resources at Purdue University, found that the microbes responsible for returning nitrogen to soils react differently to a range of climate scenarios. “More nitrogen being available is not something we can count on in all ecosystems,” says Dukes, whose findings were published in the journal Global Change Biology. While warming has been expected to accelerate nitrogen cycling, the study’s results suggest it may actually have little to no effect on the process in some ecosystems. Dukes runs the Boston-Area Climate Experiment, which measures ecosystem responses to climate change.
Source: Purdue University. Biodiversity loss as bad as CC. CC bad for blue-greens. More than 3,000 natural gas leaks in Boston. BOSTON U. / DUKE (US) — Scientists have found 3,356 natural gas leaks—six of which with concentrations high enough to cause an explosion—under Boston’s streets. The city’s aging natural-gas pipeline system is to blame, according to a new study by researchers at Boston and Duke Universities.
Their findings appear this week in the journal Environmental Pollution. The new study comes in the wake of devastating fires fueled by natural gas during Hurricane Sandy. Potential damage to gas pipeline pressure regulators, caused by flooding in Hurricane Sandy, has raised ongoing safety concerns in New York and New Jersey. “While our study was not intended to assess explosion risks, we came across six locations in Boston where gas concentrations exceeded the threshold above which explosions can occur,” says Nathan Phillips, associate professor in Boston University’s Department of Earth and Environment and co-author of the study.
Source: Boston University. ‘Sea of exotics’ isolates native plants. U. TORONTO (CAN) — Given time, invading plants will most likely eliminate native species growing in the wild, new research shows. Previous statements that find invasive plants are not problematic are often based on incomplete information, with insufficient time having passed to observe the full effect of invasions on native biodiversity, according to a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “The impacts of exotic plant invasions often take much longer to become evident than previously thought,” says Benjamin Gilbert of the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto and lead author of the study. “This delay can create an ‘extinction debt’ in native plant species, meaning that these species are slowly going extinct but the actual extinction event occurs hundreds of years after the initial invasion.”
“Invasion has created isolated ‘islands of native plants’ in a sea of exotics,” says Gilbert. Source: University of Toronto. How the marine snail will help build better batteries, solar cells, and drill bits. It is often said that the success of humans as a species is due to their extensive use of tools. The wearable tools of the handyman are no doubt impressive to many of the lesser beasts. Yet these tools do not grow, self-sharpen, or morph to fit the job at hand. The rasping organ of a humble marine snail can do all of these things and more.
The rasp’s teeth self-assemble the hardest known biomaterial — fiber-reinforced crystalline magnetite. As most schoolchildren are eager to tell, sharks are so flexible because they have no bone — their fibrous cartilage is never permeated through with calcium to mineralize it. Iron oxide, or rust, is not something that we tend to think of as a crystal. David Kisailis, from the University of Califronia at Riverside, has figured out how the marine snail builds its rasp and is now looking to apply the technique to build better batteries, solar cells, and drill bits. The recipe for snail magnetite would challenge any modern day synthetic chemist. Microbes in the sky. Some clouds are also important for bacterial transport to new environments. The violent air currents inside storm clouds can speed up the mixing of different atmospheric layers and can lift bacteria above boundary layers, helping them to travel distances of up to several thousand kilometres.
Dr Tina Šantl Temkiv We may think of clouds as simply water vapour in the sky, but scientists from Aarhus University in Denmark have revealed the rich diversity of microbial life and chemical compounds that exist in these temporary habitats above our heads. The research, which appeared in the open access journal PLOS ONE , used hailstones recovered after a storm in May 2009 as its focus. As well as several species of bacteria usually associated with plants, the hailstones were found to carry nearly 3000 different compounds typically located in soil. What did you hope to achieve with this study? Were you surprised to find so many different compounds and different types of bacteria in the hailstones? Hailstones: A Window into the Microbial and Chemical Inventory of a Storm Cloud.
Talking beluga whale named Noc is revealed | Environment. Wallasea Island nature reserve project construction begins. Science under pressure as pesticide makers face MPs over bee threat | Environment. Caledonian pinewoods threatened by spread of tree disease. 20-fold increase in tree pests and pathogens.