As a junior faculty member at Brown along the shores of Rhode island he noticed that seaweeds
and salt marshes and sea grass beds being decimated. We need to figure this stuff out quickly.
Using an atmosphere-ocean coupled climate model that simulates realistically both past and present-day climate conditions the scientists found that for every degree rise in global temperature the global rainfall rate
Our climate model simulations show that this difference results from different sea surface temperature patterns.
When warming is increased due to greenhouse gases the gradient of sea surface temperature (SST) across the tropical Pacific weakens
while the eastern Pacific remains cool from the usual ocean upwelling. While during past global warming from solar heating the steeper tropical east-west SST pattern has won out we suggest that with future warming from greenhouse gases the weaker gradient
#Stable fisher population found in the Southern Sierra Nevadaafter experiencing years of population decline on the West Coast a recent study examining fisher populations found that--at least in the southern Sierra nevada--the animal's numbers appear to be stable.
The forest-dwelling fisher (Martes pennanti) once lived throughout most of the mountains in northern California and the Sierra nevada and in the Rocky mountains Cascades and Coast ranges.
and through clever engineering we've taken its capabilities a step further says lead author Mathias Kolle a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of engineering and Applied sciences (SEAS).
Professor of Materials Science at Harvard SEAS and Kolle's adviser. Aizenberg is also Director of the Kavli Institute for Bionano Science and Technology at Harvard and a Core Faculty member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard.
which carbon is exchanged among the atmosphere the ocean the biosphere and Earth's crust. Fewer trees mean not only a weakening of the forest's ability to absorb carbon
Runoff to the Colorado river increases by 28 percent and the Four Corners region experiences a 56 percent boost in runoff.
If we stop irrigating in the Valley we'll see a decrease in stream flow in the Colorado river basin said climate hydrologist Jay Famiglietti senior author on the paper which will be published online Jan 29 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
and drawing in more water vapor from the Gulf of mexico as well as the Central Valley. When the additional waves of moisture bump into developing monsoons Famiglietti said it's like throwing fuel on a fire.
The cascade of ecological cause and effect is described by Tyler Coverdale and colleagues at Brown University in a paper published online this month in ESA's journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.
which burrows in the mud along the inner shorelines of the marshes and dines almost exclusively on the tall and fast-growing low marsh cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora) that lines the marsh edges.
Without it soft banks erode out from under the other plants and the water line retreats farther and farther back into the marsh.
The unchecked multitudes of purple marsh crabs have taken a visible toll on the developed areas of the Cape.
Ocean warming also appears to have stabilised somewhat despite the fact that CO2 emissions and other anthropogenic factors thought to contribute to global warming are still on the rise.
They also entered measurements of temperatures taken in the air on ground and in the oceans. The researchers used a single climate model that repeated calculations millions of times in order to form a basis for statistical analysis.
and ocean for the period ending in 2000 they found that climate sensitivity to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration will most likely be 3. 7°C
because the oceans delay the effect by several decades. Natural changes also a major factorthe figure of 1. 9°C as a prediction of global warming from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration is an average.
Whipworms for example which are confined now largely to Madagascar's northeast and western coasts may become widely distributed on the country's southeastern coast as well.
And as sea levels rise with climate change understanding how plants particularly crops react to salt might allow us to develop plant varieties that can grow in the saltier soils that will likely occur in coastal zones.
what did the warming do to global sea levels? --as we face global warming in the future the answer to these questions is becoming very important.
when the oceans were four to eight meters higher than today the ice sheet in northwest Greenland was only a few hundred meters lower than the current level
and running out to sea in warm climate periods like the Eemianas we thought explains Dorthe Dahl-Jensen
if Greenland's ice did not disappear during the Eemian then Antarctica must be responsible for a significant portion of the 4-8 meter rise in sea levels that we know occurred during the Eemian.
or river flow but lack investments in agricultural technologies that would enhance productivity. For this reason he said foreign corporations see in them strong potential for high-profit investments
At one site sampled over time the Tuichi River camera trapping has revealed that lowland tapir populations have been recovering following the creation of Madidi National park in 1995.
The team then looked for the same effect with willows growing in natural conditions on Orkney Island off the northernmost coast of Scotland where winds are regularly so strong that the trees are bent constantly over at severe angles.
The researchers attribute the 2005 Amazonian drought to the long-term warming of tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures.
and Rita along U s. southern coasts in 2005 also likely caused the severe drought in southwest Amazonia Saatchi said.
Intense rainstorms and floods will become more common and existing risks to the Great lakes will be exacerbated.
Impacts are already being felt in the forests in agriculture in the Great lakes and in our urban centers said Scavia director of the Graham Sustainability Institute and special counsel to the U-M president on sustainability issues.
Climate change will likely worsen a host of existing problems in the Great lakes including changes in the range and distribution of important commercial and recreational fish species increases in invasive species declining beach health and more frequent harmful
However declines in ice cover on the Great lakes may lengthen the commercial shipping season. In agriculture longer growing seasons and rising carbon dioxide levels are likely to increase the yields of some Midwest crops over the next few decades according to the report though those gains will be increasingly offset by the more frequent occurrence of heat waves droughts and floods.
But more importantly we suspect that the strong effects of icing on the overwintering vertebrate community have the potential to indirectly influence other species and cascade throughout the food web.
Focusing on 10 Midwest states Great lakes Bioenergy researchers from MSU and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory used 20 years of data from MSU's Kellogg Biological Station
The research was funded primarily by the Department of energy's Great lakes Bioenergy Research center the National Science Foundation and MSU Agbioresearch.
Leopard range has extended historically through most of Sub-saharan africa along parts of the North African coast through central south and Southeast asia and north to the Amur river valley in Russia.
#New Antarctic geological timeline aids future sea-level predictionsradiocarbon dates of tiny fossilised marine animals found in Antarctica's seabed sediments offer new clues about the recent rapid
and changes in ocean circulation. Reporting this month in the journal Geology a team of researchers from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI)
and glacier retreat in the Amundsen Sea region of West Antarctica. The team concludes that the rapid changes observed by satellites over the last 20 years at Pine Island
and ice builds up on the vast Antarctic Ice Sheet the ice flows from the centre of the continent through glaciers towards the sea where it often forms floating ice shelves and eventually breaks off as icebergs.
The science team used gravity corers up to ten metres long to extract mud from the sea floor of the continental shelf in the Amundsen Sea.
which was carved into the sea bed by the glaciers during past ice sheet advances. These locations gave us the best chance to collect the tiny skeletons
but they are normally extremely rare on the Antarctic continental shelf. Co-author Dr James Smith also from BAS adds First we determined the distance between the core locations
Then by dating the type of sediment material deposited at a core site in the open ocean (after the grounding line had moved further landward) we were able to calculate the average rate of glacier retreat over time.
This new research will be used to improve the accuracy of computer models that are essential to predict future ice loss in the Amundsen Sea sector of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and its likely contribution to global sea-level rise.
Over the last two decades the melting of West Antarctic glaciers has contributed significantly to sea-level rise (recent studies have suggested that continued melting would raise global sea level by up to 0. 3 mm a year.
#Pine beetle outbreak buffers watersheds from nitrate pollutiona research team involving several scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder has found an unexpected silver lining in the devastating pine beetle outbreaks ravaging the West:
and other vegetation that survive pine beetle invasions along waterways increase their uptake of nitrate a common disturbance-related pollutant.
We found that the beetles do not disturb watersheds in the same way as logging
In waterways adjacent to healthy pine forests concentrations of nitrate is generally far lower than in rivers on the plains in the West like the South platte said Lewis. Nitrate pollution is caused by agricultural runoff from populated areas and by permitted
In Colorado many watersheds have lost 80 to 90 percent of their tree canopy as a result of the beetle epidemic said Lewis also a faculty member in CU-Boulder's ecology and evolutionary biology department.
This study shows that at least in some areas it is possible to remove a large part of the tree biomass from a watershed with a very minimal effect on the stream ecosystem he said.
If water resource monitoring detects no insecticide pollution in waterways and as a result no exceeding of the threshold levels this is
Furthermore constructed wetlands should be furnished with plants which according to previous studies of the Institute of Environmental sciences in Landau are capable of reducing pesticide exposure up to 70 per cent.
RAPID deterioration in mangrove health is occurring in the Sundarbans resulting in as much as 200m of coast disappearing in a single year.
Our results indicate a rapidly retreating coastline that cannot be accounted for by the regular dynamics of the Sundarbans.
and leads to coastal ocean problems. The hypoxic zone that forms each summer in the Gulf of mexico is a result of nitrate leaching from the tile-drained Corn belt of the midwestern United states--a likely location for biofuel production he said.
In the study funded by the Energy Biosciences Institute miscanthus switchgrass and mixed prairie species were compared against a typical corn-corn-soybean rotation.
and does liquify at least in small amounts as deep as 250 kilometers in the mantle beneath the ocean floor.
The Rice team focused on mantle beneath the ocean because that's where the crust is created
and spread out to form the ocean crust. The starting point for melting has long been thought to be at 70 kilometers beneath the seafloor.
Seismologists have observed anomalies in their velocity data as deep as 200 kilometers beneath the ocean floor Dasgupta said.
It is found in the animal kingdom in insects inside sea shells and in feathers and is seen also in some plants.
The native Carolina Willow is also starting to strangle portions of the St johns river. Biologists at the University of Central Florida recently completed a study that shows this slender tree once used by Native americans for medicinal purposes may be thriving because of water-management projects initiated in the 1950s.
While the trees previously were kept in check by natural annual flooding they can now be found thriving in wetlands swamps and marshes.
and Dianne Hall scientists from the St johns river Water Management District to run experiments that found ways to control the willow
which is taking over marshes in the upper St johns river basin UCF students helped plant hundreds of willow seedlings
and saplings onto small islands built for the project by the St johns river Water Management District's staff.
but plants above the waterline grew and flowered one year later. The biologists confirmed the importance of water fluctuation using experimental ponds on UCF's main campus. Willow seedlings
and saplings planted on the pond banks grew poorly when the biologists raised the water level
At the same time control plants just above the waterline grew over 3 feet tall. Combined the two experiments show that the key to controlling willow is allowing water levels to fluctuate in early spring.
and continue enjoying recreational activities in the river Fauth said. The study may also aid other countries fighting the Carolina willow including Australia
former UCF biology student Luz M. Castro Morales and Ken Snyder of the St johns river Water Management District.
--and current vegetation conditions in the eastern United states. Early tree surveys chronicle the westward progression of European land acquisition with some dating back to the 1600s along the East Coast.
Funded by a grant from California Sea Grant Long set out to discover exactly how these scale insects affect the growth of cordgrass.
Also as climate change raises the sea level the marsh might see its natural salinity level increase.
It serves a buffer for river flow into the ocean. It's really the engineer of its ecosystem.
In addition the chemical later turned out to improve the body's heat-shock response--a cascade of events used to protect cells from the stress caused by high temperatures including those experienced
#Designing rivers: Environmental flows for ecosystem services in rivers natural and novellast spring the Colorado river reached its delta for the first time in 16 years flowing into Pacific ocean at the Gulf of california after wetting 70 miles of long-dry channels through the Sonoran Desert.
The planned 8-week burst of water from Mexico's Morelos Dam on the Arizona-Mexico border was the culmination of years of diplomatic negotiations between the United states and Mexico and campaigning from scientists and conservation organizations.
and ease strains on fisheries in the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of california). Environmental flows for natural hybrid and novel riverine ecosystems in a changing worldthere are two primary ways to achieve environmental flows of water necessary to sustain river ecosystems write Mike Acreman
of the UK's Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and colleagues in a review published this month in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment:
or reverse alterations to the natural flow of the river. For rivers like the Colorado already much altered and bearing heavy demands from many different user groups a designer approach is more practical than attempting to return the river closer to its natural pre-development state say the authors.
Designers work to create a functional ecosystem or support ecosystem services under current conditions rather than recreate a historical ecosystem.
and other life inhabiting the river its banks and its marshes. Managers must plan to turn on the taps
Rebirth of the Elwha Riverfor rivers with fewer economic and social demands restoration guided by historical records of the natural dynamics of the river can be an effective restoration strategy say Acreman and colleagues.
and get the maximum value from ecosystem services river systems need to fluctuate in natural rhythms of volume velocity
and timing (to put it very simplistically At the end of the twentieth century Washington state decided that the water of the Elwha River would be most valuable flowing freely through Olympic national park to the Pacific at the Strait of Juan de Fuca supporting salmon trout clams and tourism.
Habitat and eroded coastline are recovering at an astonishing pace only one year after the demolition of two dams freed the river as Noreen Parks reports for her news story Rebirth of the Elwha River in ESA Frontier
Rivers of the Anthropocene? Outside protected wilderness the Elwha's story may be more of an anomaly than a blueprint for future river restoration projects.
As nonnative species land development and climate change remodel river ecosystems it is no longer easy to define what is natural for river systems.
But heavily used regulated and altered rivers have ecological value. The future of freshwater biodiversity is linked inextricably to land
and water infrastructure management writes N Leroy Poff of Colorado State university in his guest editorial for ESA Frontiers in
whether rivers have changed so much that we need to rethink some of our conceptions about restoration.
#Mangroves protecting corals from climate changecertain types of corals invertebrates of the sea that have been On earth for millions of years appear to have found a way to survive some of their most destructive threats by attaching to and growing under mangrove roots.
Scientists with the U s. Geological Survey and Eckerd College recently published research on a newly discovered refuge for reef-building corals in mangrove habitats of the U s. Virgin islands.
More than 30 species of reef corals were found growing in Hurricane Hole a mangrove habitat within the Virgin islands Coral reef National monument in St john. Corals are animals that grow in colonies forming reefs over time as old corals die
However some of their most widespread threats involve warming ocean temperatures solar radiation and increased ocean acidification.
Red mangroves subtropical or tropical trees that colonize coastlines and brackish water habitats have networks of prop roots that extend down toward the seafloor
No coral reefs have been identified to date that protect from rising ocean temperatures acidification and increased solar radiation like these mangrove habitats in St john. Story Source:
#Food, fuel and more will be produced in sea farms of futuremeet the farm of the future where common seaweed is being upgraded from an environmental problem to a valuable natural resource and raw material.
The excessive fertilisation (eutrophication) of our seas results in an over-production of algae commonly known as seaweed.
Bathing beaches become unusable on account of algae blooms and entire ecosystems can be threatened. But in our research we turn the argument on its head
We collect excess algae along the coasts and cultivate new algae out at sea Grã ndahl says.
Already seaweed is getting scooped up from the Baltic sea along Sweden's southern coast in order to be converted to biogas.
The coast is rich with the seaweed. The city of Trelleborg estimates that its beaches host an excess of algae that is equivalent to the energy from 2. 8 million litres of diesel fuel.
Almost three quarters of the earth's surface is covered by sea and the seas possess as great a production capacity as the land.
At the present time humankind utilises 40 per cent of the production from land-based ecosystems
whereas only 1 per cent of the seas'ecosystems are utilised currently. Unfortunately this percentage at present consists largely of ruthless exploitation;
where the fishing industry trawls up every living thing and hoovers the sea bottoms. We really need new solutions such as harvesting the excess algae for fuel
and cultivating new pure algae for special products and foodstuffs Grã ndahl says. Grã ndahl points out that algae contain vitamins amino acids
since they form secondary reefs in free bodies of water. This sort of reef attracts fish and other animal species
. What's more we're also acting to help the environment. Partly when we make use of the excess algae
and partly when we cultivate algae that actually absorb nitrogen and phosphorus from the sea.
The coasts of Sweden according to Grã ndahl are perfect for the cultivation of large algae (macroalgae)--there are plentiful archipelagos and well-sheltered areas.
since the bays along the coast are filled with barrels explains Grã ndahl.''Not in the bay where I bathe!'
and are able to grow in the sea. When the algae after about six months have grown on the ropes they are harvested
and come into the pictureâ#In 15 years time we will have many large algae cultivations along our coasts;
Mwanza is located on the shores of Lake victoria which is known to be polluted with pesticides and toxic metals including mercury.
Prof Guan and a team of researchers found that 75 per cent of China's lakes
and rivers and 50 per cent of its groundwater supplies are contaminated. Manufacturing--including food processing paper production
In 2006 after witnessing multiple episodes where harmless spiders were mistaken for toxic ones Richard Vetter an arachnologist at the University of California Riverside asked other arachnologists
#Predicting impact of climate change on species that cant get out of the waywhen scientists talk about the consequences of climate change it can mean more than how we human beings will be impacted by higher temperatures rising seas and serious storms.
That change has caused carbon-rich wetlands to increase 140 percent while carbon-poor agricultural land decreased about 20 percent according to the study.
Among land-use types researchers also found sugarcane in the soils of the Everglades Agricultural area near Lake Okeechobee and wetlands stored the most soil carbon
and Hawaii to the coast of the Arctic ocean north of Alaska said Swain who coined the term ridiculously resilient ridge last fall to highlight the unusually persistent nature of the offshore blocking ridge.
and snow that would normally fall on the West Coast was rerouted instead to Alaska and as far north as the Arctic circle.
#Goats better than chemicals for curbing invasive marsh grassherbivores not herbicides may be the most effective way to combat the spread of one of the most invasive plants now threatening East Coast salt marshes a new Duke university-led
Phragmites australis or the common reed is a rapid colonizer that has overrun many coastal wetlands from New england to the Southeast.
A nonnative perennial it can form dense stands of grass up to 10 feet high that block valuable shoreline views of the water kill off native grasses
and helping restore lost ocean views he said. In fenced in test plots at the USDA Beltsville Agricultural Research center in Maryland Silliman
These chicks will join a flock of about 95 cranes that inhabit wetlands on the refuge and elsewhere in central Wisconsin during the spring and summer.
in order to establish a migratory flock of whooping cranes in the eastern United states. The Eastern Migratory Flock flies south to wetlands in the Southeast United states for the winter.
The USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research center also raises chicks for release into a newly established nonmigratory flock in the wetlands of Southwest Louisiana.
They will earn the migration route by following the ultralight from White river Marsh in Wisconsin to the Gulf Coast of Florida.
The LA network encompasses the portions of the South Coast Air Basin that produce the most intense greenhouse gas emissions in California.
#Tree rings used to determine history of geological features, arroyosa new GSA Bulletin study uses tree rings to document arroyo evolution along the lower Rio Puerco and Chaco
By determining burial dates in tree rings from salt cedar and willow investigators were able to precisely date arroyo sedimentary beds 30 cm thick or greater.
and repeat surveys to reconstruct the history of these arroyos. Arroyos are oversized deep channels that have vertical
or steeply cut walls made up of silt clay or sand. Because of this makeup arroyo systems are inherently unstable shifting at the century to millennial scale between broad floodplains and incised high-walled channels in
which floods have a high stream power that causes more rapid erosion. Study authors Jonathan Friedman of the U s. Geological Survey and colleagues note that
Along both rivers erosion occurred until the 1930s in association with extremely high flows. Subsequent infilling was caused by vegetation growth channel narrowing increased sinuosity and vertical accumulation of sediments.
However the 55-km study area along the Rio Puerco demonstrated upstream progression of arroyo widening
and filling but not of arroyo incision channel narrowing or floodplain vegetation development. Friedman and colleagues conclude that the occurrence of upstream progression within large basins like the Rio Puerco makes precise synchrony across basins impossible.
Arroyo wall retreat is limited now mostly to locations where meanders impinge on the arroyo wall forming hairpin bends for
and long-term bedrock erosion it would take the arroyo 310 years to completely fill in. Story Source:
and the fishing industry new research links short-term reductions in growth and reproduction of marine animals off the California coast to increasing variability in the strength of coastal upwelling currents--currents that supply nutrients
Along the west coast of North america winds lift deep nutrient-rich water into sunlit surface layers fueling vast phytoplankton blooms that ultimately support fish seabirds and marine mammals.
The researchers demonstrated that growth patterns in blue oak trees near the coast are highly sensitive to the same climate factors associated with upwelling.
Few direct observations of the climate factors associated with upwelling along the west coast of North america go back more than 70 years.
Members of the team surveyed more than 1000 kilometres of coastline in Turkey and Greece where two species of rabbitfish have become dominant
Increased feeding by plant-eating tropical fish in temperate waters as a result of ocean warming is an issue of global importance that has the potential to transform marine ecosystems as has also been seen in Japan.
and another species that removes the youngest algal recruits preventing them from making a forest says Dr Vergã s. This research highlights the need to work out how the interactions between different species will change in a warming ocean.
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