In contrast large regions were deforested to very low carbon levels such as in the developed regions outside the protected watershed of the Panama canal.
and pollen content of mud collected from the bottoms of 14 deep lakes in the Yukon Flats.
#Geochemical fingerprints leave evidence that megafloods eroded steep gorgethe Yarlung-Tsangpo River in southern Asia drops rapidly through The himalaya Mountains on its way to the Bay of bengal losing about 7000 feet of elevation
which megafloods from glacial lakes perhaps half the volume of Lake erie drained suddenly and catastrophically through The himalayas when their ice dams failed at times during the last 2 million years.
Lang found that normal annual river flow carries about 40 percent of the grains from the Tsangpo Gorge downstream.
The Yarlung-Tsangpo is the highest major river in the world. It begins on the Tibetan Plateau at about 14500 feet or more than 2. 5 miles above sea level.
It travels more than 1700 miles crossing the plateau and plunging through The himalayas before reaching India's Assam Valley where it becomes the Brahmaputra river.
From there it continues its course to the Ganges river delta and the Bay of bengal. At the head of the Tsangpo Gorge the river makes a sharp bend around Namche Barwa a 25500-foot peak that is the eastern anchor of The himalayas.
Evidence indicates that giant lakes were impounded behind glacial dams farther inland from Namche Barwa at various times during the last 2. 5 million years ago.
Lang matched zircons in the megaflood deposits far downstream with zircons known to come only from Namche Barwa
and those signature zircons turned up in the flood deposits at a much greater proportion than they would in sediments from normal river flows.
Finding the zircons in deposits so far downstream is evidence for the prehistoric megafloods and their role in forming the gorge.
Lang noted that a huge landslide in early 2000 created a giant dam on the Yiggong River a tributary of the main river just upstream from the Gorge.
what happened with Lake Missoula in Western Montana 12000 to 15000 years ago. That lake was more than 10000 feet lower in elevation than lakes associated with the Tsangpo Gorge
though its water discharge was 10 times greater. Evidence suggests that Lake Missoula's ice dam failed numerous times unleashing a torrent equal to half the volume of Lake michigan across eastern Washington where it carved the Channeled Scablands before continuing down the Columbia river basin.
This is a geomorphic process that we know shapes the landscape and we can look to eastern Washington to see that Lang said.
and food productiona new study released today finds that so much water may be lost in the Volta River basin due to climate change that planned hydroelectric projects to boost energy
Some 24 million people in Ghana Burkina faso and four other neighboring countries depend on the Volta River and its tributaries as their principal source of water.
Mccartney served as lead author for the study The Water Resource Implications of Changing Climate in the Volta River basin along with colleagues from Ghana's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate
The Volta River basin encompasses 402000 square kilometers. Most of this area is in Ghana and Burkina faso with the remainder in Benin CÃ'te d'Ivoire Mali and Togo.
which created Lake Volta the world's largest human-made lake by surface area and fourth largest reservoir by volume.
For farmers Mccartney said the solutions could include improving groundwater supplies available to rural areas by recharging local aquifers with water taken from rivers or reservoirs.
and technologically disadvantaged farmers living in remote villages who depend on contaminated ground water or local rivers for their daily water needs.
when African cultivated rice (O. glaberrima) was bred from the African wild species O. barthii in the Niger river delta.
The new species was collected in a narrow river valley dominated by mountain sainfoin (Onobrychis cornuta) wild almond (Prunus amygdalus) scoparia) and downy brome (Bromus tectorum.
and unique species and contains the continent's highest mountain deepest lakes and large parts of two globally significant biodiversity hotspots the Eastern Afromontane and the Albertine Rift.
Sakinaw Lake in British columbia; the Etoliko Lagoon of western Greece; a sludge reactor in Mexico;
the Gulf of Maine; off the north coast of Oahu Hawaii the Tropical Gyre in the south Atlantic;
the East Pacific Rise; the Homestake Mine in South dakota; and the Great Boiling Spring in Nevada.
From these samples the team laser-sorted 9000 cells from which they were able to reassemble
They occupy every conceivable environmental niche from the extreme depths of the oceans to the driest of deserts.
the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences University of British columbia the University of Nevada Las vegas the University of Western Greece Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
#Snakes devour more mosquito-eating birds as climate change heats forestsmany birds feed on mosquitoes that spread the West Nile virus a disease that killed 286 people in the United states in 2012 according to the Centers
and Lyla Hunt master's student in biology Riverside Calif. The Grassland Community Collaborative Oversight Committee of the National Wind Coordinating Collaborative oversaw the research project.
and fastest flowing glacier in the Antarctic and is now floating in the Amundsen Sea in the form of a very large iceberg.
However the Pine Island glacier which flows from the Hudson mountains to the Amundsen Sea was the fastest flowing glacier in the Western Antarctic with a flow speed of around 4 kilometres per year.
however and is more attributable to the fact that the wind directions in the Amundsen Sea have altered.
The wind now brings warm sea water beneath the shelf ice. Over time this process means that the shelf ice melts from below primarily at the so-called grounding line the critical transition to the land ice says the scientist.
which is deeper than sea level. Its bed tends towards the land. The danger therefore exists that these large ice masses will become unstable
If the entire West Antarctic ice shield were to flow into the Ocean this would lead to a global rise in sea level of around 3. 3 metres.
Shelf ice The shelf ice which is 200 to 1200 metres thick is created by glaciers sliding into the sea.
It is therefore an extension of the Antarctic land ice which thins at the edges and floats on the sea.
A special feature of the Western Antarctic is that large areas of land are below sea level.
and on beaches on the basis that passive smoke is a risk for nonsmokers cigarette butts pollute the environment
In the paper Banning Smoking In Parks and on Beaches: Science Policy and the Politics of Denormalization published in the July issue of the journal Health Affairs researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public health analyzed the evidence for these claims
A national database maintained by the American Nonsmokers'Rights Foundation shows that from January 1993 to June 2011 U s. smoking bans were put in effect in 843 parks and on 150 beaches.
and 46 beaches no longer allowed smoking followed by Minnesota and New jersey although bans in many states covered only sections of the beach.
A city or county-level governing body enacted a majority of the laws (90%.%Forty-one percent or 352 of the municipalities with park bans had tot lot bans--prohibitions on smoking in children's play areas.
and the No. 1 item found during cleanup of beaches and waterways worldwide. Story Source:
The researchers used next generation sequencing technology RNA sequencing to reveal in exquisite detail the blueprint for making milk in the human mammary gland according to Laurie Nommsen-Rivers Phd RD IBCLC a scientist
Nommsen-Rivers'previous research had shown that for mothers with markers of sub-optimal glucose metabolism such as being overweight being advanced at an maternal age
and carbohydrates for nourishing the newborn baby says Dr. Nommsen-Rivers. Considering that 20 percent of women between 20 and 44 are prediabetic it's conceivable that up to 20 percent of new mothers in the United states are at risk for low milk supply due to insulin dysregulation.
Dr. Nommsen-Rivers and her colleagues were able to use a noninvasive method to capture mammary gland RNA--a chain of molecules that are blueprints for making specified proteins--in samples of human breast milk.
While a drug is not an ideal way to solve the problem of sub-optimal glucose metabolism impairing breastfeeding according to Dr. Nommsen-Rivers it is excellent for establishing proof-of-concept through the use of a placebo controlled randomized clinical trial.
Dr. Nommsen-Rivers began her quest to understand why so many U s. mothers today struggle with low milk supply
The researchers used next generation sequencing technology RNA sequencing to reveal in exquisite detail the blueprint for making milk in the human mammary gland according to Laurie Nommsen-Rivers Phd RD IBCLC a scientist
Nommsen-Rivers'previous research had shown that for mothers with markers of sub-optimal glucose metabolism such as being overweight being advanced at an maternal age
and carbohydrates for nourishing the newborn baby says Dr. Nommsen-Rivers. Considering that 20 percent of women between 20 and 44 are prediabetic it's conceivable that up to 20 percent of new mothers in the United states are at risk for low milk supply due to insulin dysregulation.
Dr. Nommsen-Rivers and her colleagues were able to use a noninvasive method to capture mammary gland RNA--a chain of molecules that are blueprints for making specified proteins--in samples of human breast milk.
While a drug is not an ideal way to solve the problem of sub-optimal glucose metabolism impairing breastfeeding according to Dr. Nommsen-Rivers it is excellent for establishing proof-of-concept through the use of a placebo controlled randomized clinical trial.
Dr. Nommsen-Rivers began her quest to understand why so many U s. mothers today struggle with low milk supply
But if we are to stop the rising sea levels ocean acidification and the loss of production from agriculture CO2 emissions will have to fall even more sharply.
rising sea levels ocean acidification#which threatens coral reefs#and production on agricultural land. Realistic development pathsthe main culprit in relation to these environmental changes is the emission of the greenhouse gas CO2
and limitation of ocean acidification says Marco Steinacher the leading author of the study. And the researchers ask the crucial question of what would be required in order for all of the climate targets to be met.
The objective of limiting ocean acidification proved particularly challenging and is achievable only through a massive reduction in the emissions of CO2.
This information is needed to formulate many additional climate targets#for example to prevent the acidification of the oceans in the Tropics.
Iodine deficiency can cause scurvy which has historically been a big problem the world over particularly in populations at a distance from the coast who did not eat much fish
Animal waste is collected in lagoons where the gas is captured. The gas is transported through an internal combustion area that produces energy for heat and electricity.
They focused on the Yahara River watershed which covers much of central portion of Dane County
and parts of Columbia and Rock Counties in southern Wisconsin and includes the chain of Madison lakes.
Preliminary analysis of these win-win areas suggests that factors like flat topography a deep water table less field runoff soil with high water-holding capacity more adjoining wetlands
The results also show that nearly all of the land in the watershed provides a high level of at least one of the measured services
and making up just three percent of the watershed (largely parks and protected areas) provide high levels of at least six of the measured services.
The project aims to use a combination of contemporary and historical data to understand how the watershed may change over the next 50 to 60 years.
We ultimately want to be able to look at future scenarios for this watershed Turner says. If climate changes or land use changes what's going to happen to the values that we care about?
because oceans and trees absorb carbon dioxide--including carbon-14--from the atmosphere. So the method won't work for tusks
and Management was done in a portion of the Metolius River watershed in the eastern Cascade range of Oregon
#Aerial mosquito spraying study finds no immediate public health risksin what researchers say is the first public health study of the aerial mosquito spraying method to prevent West Nile virus a UC Davis study analyzed emergency
which will likely magnify the incidence West Nile virus and the risks of human transmission.
Unfortunately West Nile virus is endemic in California and the United states and the controversy of mosquito management will likely arise every summer said Estella Geraghty associate professor of clinical internal medicine at UC Davis
West Nile virus has become an increasingly serious problem throughout the United states and may become more of a threat as the climate warms.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention West Nile virus is the leading cause of viral encephalitis in the United states. The virus is transmitted to humans and animals through the bite of an infected mosquito.
In California around the time of the study#2004 and 2005#hundreds of people were sickened by West Nile virus
and the killing of larval and adult mosquitoes#are used all in California to control the spread of mosquito-borne diseases such as West Nile virus
The article is titled Correlation between aerial insecticide spraying to interrupt West Nile virus transmission and emergency department visits in Sacramento County California.
Study reveals potent carbon-storage potential of human-made wetlandsafter being drained by the millions of acres to make way for agriculture wetlands are staging a small comeback these days on farms.
or construct wetlands alongside their fields to trap nitrogen and phosphorus runoff and research shows these systems can also retain pesticides antibiotics and other agricultural pollutants.
Important as these storage functions of wetlands are however another critical one is being overlooked says Bill Mitsch director of the Everglades Wetland Research Park at Florida Gulf Coast University and an emeritus professor at Ohio State university:
Wetlands also excel at pulling carbon dioxide out of the air and holding it long-term in soil.
Writing in the July-August issue of the Journal of Environmental Quality Mitsch and co-author Blanca Bernal report that two 15-year-old constructed marshes in Ohio accumulated soil carbon at an average annual rate of 2150 pounds per acre--or just over one ton of carbon per acre
The rate was 70%faster than a natural control wetland in the area and 26%faster than the two were adding soil carbon five years ago.
And by year 15 each wetland had a soil carbon pool of more than 30000 pounds per acre an amount equaling
and human-made wetlands as they look for places to store or sequester carbon long-term. For more than a decade for example scientists have been studying the potential of no-tillage planting of pastures and other farm practices to store carbon in agricultural lands
Yet when created wetlands are discussed in agricultural circles it's almost always in the context of water quality.
If you happen to build a wetland to remove nitrogen for example then once you have it it's probably accumulating carbon too.
In fact wetlands in agricultural landscapes may sequester carbon very quickly because high-nutrient conditions promote the growth of cattail reeds
and other wetland big boys that produce a lot of plant biomass and carbon Mitsch says. Once carbon ends up in wetland soil it can also remain there for hundreds to thousands of years because of waterlogged conditions that inhibit microbial decomposition.
And carbon is a big deal--any carbon sinks that we find we should be protecting Mitsch says.
We've lost half of our wetlands in the United states so let's not only protect the wetlands we have remaining
but also build some more. At the same time he acknowledges that wetlands emit the powerful greenhouse gas (GHG) methane leading some to argue that wetlands shouldn't be created as a means to sequester carbon
and mitigate climate change. But in a new analysis that modeled carbon fluxes over 100 years from the two constructed Ohio marshes
and 19 other wetlands worldwide Mitsch Bernal and others demonstrated that most wetlands are net carbon sinks even
And among the best sinks were the wetlands in Ohio possibly due to flow-through conditions that promoted rapid carbon storage
It's easy to undervalue wetlands if we become too focused on just one of their aspects--such as
Instead people should remember everything wetlands do. We know they're great for critters and for habitat that's always been true.
Funding for the study came from the U s. Environmental protection agency the National Science Foundation Ohio State university and Florida Gulf Coast University.
The new species was collected in a wide river valley near mountain mixed forests dominated by various conifer trees bushes and rhododendron.
These and many other questions are answered in the doctoral thesis of Kees Camphuysen from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research NIOZ.
She then flew to the north Sea in order to follow a fishing boat far out at sea. The next day her young had grown properly again. http://www. youtube. com/watch?
Other areas that could see pronounced animal movements are northeastern North america including around the Great lakes and north into Canada;
We also took into consideration major natural barriers such as the Great lakes in North america and the Amazon river in South america.
and Australia are responsible for reducing the regional diversity of invertebrates in streams and rivers by up to 42 percent researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
and is converted to energy for the ants says Frank Aylward a bacteriology graduate student and researcher with the Great lakes Bioenergy Research center.
Illinois has a lot of land that is subpar for corn and soybeans such as the southern part of state and northern parts of the state along rivers.
From a base in Fairbanks Alaska the C-23 flies up to eight hours a day to sites on Alaska's North Slope interior and Yukon river Valley over tundra permafrost boreal
forests peatlands and wetlands. The C-23 won't win any beauty contests--its pilots refer to it as a UPS truck with a bad nose job.
and sediment loss from no-till conventional tillage and reduced-input rotation watersheds in a study published online today in Soil science Society of America Journal.
and nutrient runoff in watersheds managed in three different ways--no-till conventional tillage (chisel-till) and reduced-input rotations.
In the current study researchers provided most of the nutrients to crops in the reduced-input watersheds by planting red clover and spreading manure instead of fertilizers.
As was expected the researchers found that soil loss was lowest in no-till watersheds. Reduced-input fields
To address the concern of dissolved P loss from no-till fields the researchers compared runoff from conventional tillage and no-till watersheds.
Also average total P loss from no-till watersheds was actually smaller than that from conventional tillage watersheds.
#Roman seawater concrete holds the secret to cutting carbon emissionsthe chemical secrets of a concrete Roman breakwater that has spent the last 2000 years submerged in the Mediterranean sea have been uncovered by an international team of researchers led by Paulo Monteiro of the U s
First Vitruvius an engineer for the Emperor Augustus and later Pliny the Elder recorded that the best maritime concrete was made with ash from volcanic regions of the Gulf of Naples (Pliny died in the eruption of Mt vesuvius that buried Pompeii
By 3000 BCE the Nile Delta was being planted with vines by Canaanite viniculturalists. As the earliest merchant seafarers the Canaanites were also able to take the wine culture out across the Mediterranean sea.
Greeks and the Phoenicians--the Levantine successors to the Canaanites--vied for influence by establishing colonies on islands and along the coasts of North africa Italy France and Spain.
The researchers found states in the Corn belt (Iowa Illinois Indiana Ohio and Missouri) and the Great lakes (Minnesota and Wisconsin) where corn growth is fed primarily by rainfall would be subject to more intense but less frequent precipitation especially during the summer.
A liter of ethanol also translates into 1600 liters of ET water that might not directly replenish the local watershed.
They recommended dry lot and solid storage systems as preferred management strategies rather than anaerobic lagoons and deep bedding.
and even the survival of humankind warns the founding Chair of a new global organization created to narrow the gulf between leading international biodiversity scientists and national policy-makers.
IPBES will reduce the gulf between the wealth of scientific knowledge on declining natural world conditions
When a breed population falls to about 1000 animals it is considered rare and endangered. Causes of genetic erosion in domestic animals are the lack of appreciation of the value of indigenous breeds
Each time a ship passes through more than 55 million gallons of water are used from Gatun Lake
One proposed measure is the reforestation of the watershed. To help planners and policy makers understand the effects of reforestation ASU scientists Silvio Simonit
Published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) their study--Bundling ecosystem services in the Panama canal Watershed--examines precipitation topography vegetation
In parts of the watershed not currently under forest they found that reforestation of areas with high precipitation rates flat terrain
However they note that these conditions exist in less than 5 percent of watershed not currently under forest.
Water supply is however only one amongst many ecosystem services affected by reforestation of the watershed said Perrings a professor in the School of Life sciences in ASU's College of Liberal arts and Sciences.
if all existing grasslands were allowed to regenerate as natural forest there would be a reduction in dry-season flows across the watershed of 8. 4 percent compared to 11.1 percent
However the Panama canal Authority is not the only beneficiary of the watershed and water is not the only ecosystem service supplied.
Rivers of wildebeests zebra and Thompson's gazelles--more than 2 million all told--cross the landscape in one of the largest animal migrations on the planet.
and Travel to address this the Tanzania government now plans to build a gravel road across 50 km of the northern part of the park to link the country's coast to Lake victoria
A spectacular large harp-or lyre-shaped carnivorous sponge discovered in deep water (averaging 3399 meters) from the northeast Pacific ocean off the coast of California.
and is considered to be endangered an species. It is the latest evidence of the unique and numerous species found in this specialized humid forest that grows on sandy substrate within kilometers of the shoreline.
Current archaeological thinking is that it was the advent of rice cultivation along the Lower Yangtze river that marked the beginning of agriculture in southern China.
if this pattern is repeated along the coast. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Leicester.
It lives in aquatic habitats like freshwater wetlands and has developed corresponding highly specialized hunting methods.
Located on the shores of Lake victoria KJS contains three large well-preserved stratified layers of animal remains.
and are located in the Coweeta watersheds. Because of its dense evergreen foliage and dominance in riparian and cove habitats eastern hemlock plays an important role in the area's water cycle regulating stream flow year round.
For example environmentalists would like to see improvements at the watershed scale. If only isolated farmers need to be certified
#Zeal to ensure clean leafy greens takes bite out of riverside habitat in Californiameticulous attention to food safety is a good thing.
These buyers insist that swathes of bare ground wider than a football field is long separate the leafy greens from rivers wetlands and other wildlife habitat.
They measured changes in wetlands and riverside habitat in the Salinas Valley between 2005 and 2009 finding 13.3 percent converted to bare ground crops or otherwise diminished.
Widespread introduction of fencing blocked wildlife corridors. Low barriers even kept out the frogs. Unlike the LGMA standards individual corporate requirements for farm produce are generally not transparent to the public.
and environmental advocates to make farm edges slim sanctuaries for wildlife as well as buffers between agricultural fields and waterways.
Fallow strips along streams and rivers provide corridors for migrating animals and birds. This is an area that is already 95 percent altered--the habitat that remains is said critical Gennet.
The Salinas River and its tributaries are an important rest stop on the Pacific Flyway a major migration route for neotropical songbirds and home to raptors and shorebirds.
The waterways are also corridors for deer and other big animals moving between the high country of the Diablo Range and coastal Big sur mountains that flank the valley.
Wetlands and buffers of trees grasses and shrubs help to keep runoff from fields out of the waterways slowing erosion of soil and blooms of algae downstream.
An overabundance of fertilizer has created problems for domestic drinking water as well as the ecosystems of the Salinas River watershed and its outlet Monterey Bay.
California has a big problem with concentrated nutrients in waterways and there is a lot of pressure on growers to reduce those inputs
--so to the extent that riverside wildlife habitat could be a benefit all around a coordinated approach to agricultural management
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