Co-author Dr. David Weise research forester from the U s. Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station at Riverside Calif. designed
and conducted this study with a team of scientists from the University of California Riverside College of Engineering to examine
In all nine rivers and streams including the Mississippi and Missouri rivers were included in the study.
The rivers studied drain most of Iowa and parts of Minnesota Montana Nebraska North dakota South dakota and Wisconsin.
These states have the highest use of neonicotinoid insecticides in the Nation and the chemicals were found in all nine rivers and streams.
Of the three most often found chemicals clothianidin was the most commonly detected showing up in 75 percent of the sites and at the highest concentration.
which is similar to the spring flushing of herbicides that has been documented in Midwestern U s. rivers
To obtain the DNA of the cottontails in this study researchers collected the fecal pellets of 157 New england cottontails in southern Maine and seacoast New hampshire during the winters of 2007-2008 and 2008-2009.
and likely documented nearly all currently occupied New england cottontail patches in Maine and seacoast New hampshire.
The team included NAU graduate students and undergraduate interns from the Watershed Research and Education Program as well as members of the Arizona Game and Fish Department U s. Forest Service Oak Creek Ambassadors
The team also has been refining efforts for breeding over the past year with captive narrow-headed gartersnakes from the Black River an area affected by the 2011 Wallow Fire
Nitrogen fertilizer creates water pollution in natural waterways. When the numbers were in including those for the environmental costs of different kinds of feed (pasture roughage such as hay
In the United states the Environmental protection agency found stormwater runoff to be one of the top 10 causes of compromised environments in rivers streams lakes ponds reservoirs bays and estuaries.
and Thames Basin Heath it can be affected by development such as housing and as part of the planning process developers must now provide data on presence
MLS showed cloud ice is often present over warm oceans. Along with satellite rainfall data MLS shows that dirty polluted clouds rain less than clean clouds.
and MLS connect ocean temperatures with clouds and ice and quantify effects of pollution on tropical rainfall
El Niã o is an irregularly occurring phenomenon associated with warm ocean currents near the Pacific coast of South america that changes the pattern of tropical rainfall.
the region of upward motion--a hallmark of low ozone concentrations over the ocean--moves along with it.
Early results from California already have pinpointed regions--such as the upper Sacramento Valley near Lake Shasta the coastal redwood belt and the San francisco bay Area's unique serpentine soil areas--as hotbeds of endemic
The increased use of groundwater for irrigation also results in a rise in sea levels: According to DÃ ll's calculations sea level rise due to groundwater depletion was 0. 31 millimetres per year during the period from 2000 to 2009.
This corresponds to roughly one tenth of the total sea level rise. The work was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through the priority program Mass transport and Mass distribution in the System Earth.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Goethe-Universitã¤t Frankfurt am Main.
and Eastern seaboard--for decades there is little research quantifying the damage the new wave of worms cause
Lyuba was found by reindeer herders in May 2007 on the banks of the Yuribei River on the Yamal Peninsula in northwest Siberia.
Khroma was found in October 2008 near the Khroma River in northernmost Yakutia in northeast Siberia.
The researchers suspect that Lyuba died in a lake because sediments found in her respiratory tract include fine-grained vivianite a deep blue iron
It's possible that Lyuba crashed through the ice while crossing a lake during the spring melt.
while submerged in a frigid lake the mammalian diving reflex may have kicked in during her final moments Fisher said.
A possible death scenario for Khroma places the calf and her mother on a riverbank in the spring.
Perhaps the riverbank collapsed and the two mammoths mother and daughter plunged into the river.
A fall would account for the fractured spinal column revealed by Khroma's CT scan as well as the mud she inhaled.
it will end up in a landfill ultimately finding its way to waterways and the nutrient circulation cycle.
The varieties Natchez Osage Fantasy Basham's Party Pink and Miami have proven highly resistant to bacterial leaf spot
Most of the fossil-bearing rocks at Driftwood Canyon formed on the bottom of an ancient lake
Ministry of Ecology Energy Sustainable Development and the Sea among other institutions. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Universidad de Barcelona.
and encircles three lagoons. Named after the American ship whose captain discovered it in 1802 Palmyra contains a 12-square-kilometer national wildlife refuge part of the larger Pacific Remote Islands Marine National monument established in 2009.
Manta rays are a highly mobile species that can travel across many different parts of the ocean.
Mccauley's team decided to focus on how mantas use Palmyra's lagoons. Lagoons are known to be ecologically important to a variety of mobile species including manta rays sharks turtles and dolphins.
We used high-resolution animal tracking tools to describe in as much detail as we could the ecology of the mantas
Using a novel combination of research tools the scientists examined how the manta rays use lagoons
and go from Palmyra's lagoons. Very heavily used by mobile animals as breeding grounds and as places to feed lagoons are highly sensitive to human disturbance.
Although there is no evidence that Palmyra ever supported permanent indigenous settlements its habitats were affected dramatically during WORLD WAR II
Lagoons are imperiled often very places so that was certainly part of our interest Mccauley said. Palmyra's lagoons and the mantas that use them are protected.
However lagoons elsewhere have been compromised. Fishing boat traffic and habitat degradation all may negatively affect mantas in less remote lagoons.
The big question Mccauley and his team wanted to answer is why manta rays congregate in this particular habitat.
It turns out it was at least partially because of the food. The researchers used stable isotope analysis a chemical assay of a tissue biopsy that provides an integrative view of what the animal ate in previous months.
They matched the chemical signature of the mantas to that of zooplankton collected in the lagoons verifying that this habitat serves as an important feeding ground.
Using mathematical modeling we determined that many of the manta rays we encountered took around 80 percent of their energy from lagoon plankton Mccauley said.
This discovery that lagoons can contribute such an important amount of food and energy to manta rays highlights the need to motivate management interventions in lagoons.
Other tools in the researchers'arsenal were high-resolution tracking which provided information about how the manta rays used the lagoon habitat over long and short periods of time;
an acoustic camera which logged patterns of the animals entrances and departures from the lagoons;
and photo identification/laser photogrammetry--making measurements from photographs--which provided insight into whether the manta rays were staying in this habitat for longer time periods by tracking their comings and goings.
Additional detailed information about how manta rays use ocean areas outside of lagoons will also be needed to better manage this at-risk species. Story Source:
and improving other management strategies such as protection from overfishing and excessive coastal pollution could help the reefs recover
While it does pose a serious threat by making oceans more acidic and causing coral bleaching the report shows that the loss of parrotfish
which they feed to smother the reefs. Reefs protected from overfishing as well as other threats such as excessive coastal pollution tourism
and coastal development are more resilient to pressures from climate change according to the authors. Even if we could somehow make climate change disappear tomorrow these reefs would continue their decline says Jeremy Jackson lead author of the report and IUCN's senior advisor on coral reefs.
We must immediately address the grazing problem for the reefs to stand any chance of surviving future climate shifts.
The report also shows that some of the healthiest Caribbean coral reefs are those that harbour vigorous populations of grazing parrotfish.
These include the U s. Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary in the northern Gulf of mexico Bermuda and Bonaire all of
if we are going to increase the resilience of Caribbean reefs. Reefs where parrotfish are protected not have suffered tragic declines including Jamaica the entire Florida Reef Tract from Miami to Key West and the U s. Virgin islands.
The Caribbean is home to 9%of the world's coral reefs which are one of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet.
Caribbean reefs spanning a total of 38 countries are vital to the region's economy.
The decline in corals started long before climate change began to affect reefs says Terry Hughes author of the 1994 study that predicted the current problems due to parrotfish removal.
These'resilient reefs'have strong local protections that are enforced strictly and double or triple the average coral cover of the 14%seen throughout the Caribbean.
He conducted the new study with researchers from the University of California (UC) San diego UCLA UC Riverside UC Berkeley the University of South australia the Forest Research Institute Malaysia and PE Research.
'Belinda's Dream''Climbing Pinkie''Mrs. Dudley Cross''Reve d'Or'and'Sea Foam'were the most salt-tolerant cultivars.'
They recommended'Belinda's Dream''Climbing Pinkie''Mrs. Dudley Cross''Reve d'Or'and'Sea Foam'as good selections for planting in landscapes with high soil salinity.'
's Lake Ponchatrain does today says a new study involving the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Chicago.
The team also compared its information to prior studies of sediment cores extracted from an oceanic region in the central Arctic ocean called the Lomonosov Ridge--a steep hump of continental crust that rises more than 1000 feet from the ocean floor--to estimate
Because sharks are aquatic the oxygen from the ocean is constantly being exchanged with oxygen in their body water and that's
The team analyzed 30 fossil sand tiger shark teeth exhumed from Banks Island and 19 modern sand tiger shark teeth from specimens caught in Delaware bay bordered by Delaware and New jersey.
The paleo-salinity estimate for the modern sand tiger sharks is consistent with the continental shelf salinity present from Delaware south to Florida and from the coastline to roughly six miles offshore known hunting grounds for modern sand tiger sharks
Eberle said the Eocene Arctic ocean was isolated largely from the global oceans. Increased freshwater runoff from the land due to an intensified hydrologic cycle and a humid Arctic would have turned it more brackish pretty quickly she said.
and designing oil palm plantations so that dense road networks do not intersect directly with waterways. These kinds of improved practices are being pioneered by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm oil
#Comparison study of planting methods shows drilling favorable for organic farmingin the fertile growing regions of the central coast of California scientists are looking for ways to increase organic production of strawberry
In vegetable and strawberry systems in the central coast region of California grain drills are used commonly by medium-to large-scale farms
and Rocky mountain spotted fever and mosquitoes can spread West Nile Virus. Insect repellents are used to avoid exposure to pests that can bite attach
As a consequence heat-related deaths could reach about 200000 the cost of river flood damages could exceed â0 billion and 8000 km2 of forest could burn in southern Europe.
agriculture river floods coasts tourism energy droughts forest fires transport infrastructure and human health. The report also includes a pilot study on habitat suitability of forest tree species. Connie Hedegaard European Commissioner for Climate Action said:
Expected biophysical impacts (such as agriculture yields river floods transport infrastructure losses) have been integrated into an economic model
Premature mortality accounts for more than half of the overall welfare losses (â20 billion) followed by impacts on coasts (â2 billion) and agriculture (â8 billion.
For example the welfare loss due to sea level rise in the Central europe North region or to the agricultural losses in southern Europe would have a spill over effect on the whole Europe due to economic interlinkages.
The study simulated this for the impacts of river floods and results show that they could multiply tenfold.
And because of the country's climate and geography irrigation is now widespread burdening rivers and groundwater supplies.
They found that domestic corn trade leads to significant losses of irrigation water resources (such as rivers reservoirs and groundwater.
From the 1930's to the present generations of citizens and government leaders have worked to protect this special area through designations of wilderness wild and scenic rivers and protection of critical wildlife habitat.
Vital places with particular concentration of present and future habitat include the Whitefish Range adjacent to Glacier national park and the Swan Range east of Flathead Lake.
town by the Euphrates river in Syria may be the first evidence that agricultural irrigation systems in the middle East contributed to disease burden according to new Correspondence published in The Lancet Infectious diseases.
This research shows it may have been spread by the introduction of crop irrigation in ancient Mesopotamia the region along the Tigris-Euphrates river system that covers parts of modern-day Iraq Iran Kuwait Syria
dynasty-toppling floodsfor thousands of years Mother Nature has taken the blame for tremendous human suffering caused by massive flooding along the Yellow River long known in China as the River of Sorrow and Scourge of the Sons of Han.
Now new research from Washington University in St louis links the river's increasingly deadly floods to a widespread pattern of human-caused environmental degradation
and related flood-mitigation efforts that began changing the river's natural flow nearly 3000 years ago.
and nowhere more keenly witnessed than in attempts to harness the Yellow River said T. R. Kidder Phd lead author of the study and an archaeologist at Washington University.
A catastrophic floodit also suggests that the Chinese government's long-running efforts to tame the Yellow River with levees dikes
By 2000 years ago people were controlling the Yellow River or at least thought they were controlling it and that's the problem.
and Archaeology relies on a sophisticated analysis of sedimentary soils deposited along the Yellow River over thousands of years.
It includes data from the team's ongoing excavations at the sites of two ancient communities in the lower Yellow River flood plain of China's Henan province.
and bank/levee systems along the lower reaches of the Yellow River about 2900-2700 years ago.
By the beginning of the first millennium A d. the levee system had been extended much farther up river lining the banks for several hundred miles he estimated.
building levees causes sediments to accumulate in the river bed raising the river higher and making it more vulnerable to flooding
The Yellow River has been engineered an river--entirely unnatural--for quite a long time. Help for understanding climate change's effectskidder an authority on river basin geoarchaeology has gathered data from the Yellow River excavation sites over the last five summers.
He also conducts similar geoarchaeology research along the Mississippi river at a Native american site called Poverty Point in Louisiana.
He argues that geoarchaeology--a relatively new science that combines aspects of geology and archaeology--offers the potential to make dramatic contributions to our understanding of how climate change
The Yellow River he argues had existed for eons as a relatively calm and stable waterway until large numbers of Chinese farmers began disturbing the fragile environment of the upper river's Loess Plateau.
Widespread erosion in the river's upper regions caused it to carry incredibly heavy loads of sediment downstream where deposits gradually raised the river bed above levees and surrounding fields.
Implications for modern river managementslowly over thousands of years human intervention began to have a dramatic impact on the river's character.
Periodic breaches of the levee system led to devastating floods with some shifting the river's main channel hundreds of miles from its initial course.
While the research offers new insight into Chinese history it also has interesting implications for modern river management policies around the globe such as those causing similar flooding problems along the Missouri
and Mississippi rivers in the United states. To think that we can avoid similar catastrophe today due to better technology is a dangerous notion he said.
Unlike ancient China where human mistakes devastated a single river valley we now have the technology to make mistakes that can cause devastation on a truly global scale.
Over the past 25 years we have reduced soil erosion by over 40%mainly by conservation practices such as conservation tillage terracing cover crops and grass waterways.
or it might end up in a river or stream or in the ocean or it might end up in a reservoir.
If the soil ends up in reservoir it limits the space for water and has to be removed by a very expensive process called dredging.
Places at risk include urban areas in China where the disease has occurred not yet along with large swaths of the Bengal regions of Bangladesh and India the Mekong and Red river deltas in Vietnam and isolated parts of Indonesia and the Philippines.
The existence of wetland-related agriculture near the markets such as farms that raise ducks in flooded rice fields appeared to be a contributing factor linked to the initial emergence of the virus
El Niã o which is the warming of the sea temperatures off the coast of Peru is expected to affect crops during September October and November.
Forest debris that drains into lakes is important to freshwater food chainsresearch shows forest debris that drains into lakes is an important contributor to freshwater food chains--bolstering fish diets to the extent that increased forest
Debris from forests that washes into freshwater lakes supplements the diets of microscopic zooplankton and the fish that feed off them--creating larger and stronger fish new research shows.
In fact the study was conducted at a Canadian lake chosen because it had suffered ecological disaster during the mid-20th century:
Despite moves to reduce environmental impact many areas of vegetation surrounding the lake are still in recovery.
This enabled scientists to study Yellow perch fish from different parts of a lake that has varying degrees of surrounding forest coverage.
Essentially the more forest around the edge of the lake the fatter the fish in that part of the lake were.
Scientists say that the young fish in lake areas with scant forest cover were much smaller
While plankton raised on algal carbon is more nutritious organic carbon from trees washed into lakes is a hugely important food source for freshwater fish bolstering their diet to ensure good size
The work was conducted at Daisy Lake on the outskirts of the industrial city of Sudbury in Ontario Canada.
The scientists studied eight different'watersheds'surrounding the lake: a given area across which all the moisture drains into a single stream.
When these fast-moving streams--full of detritus from forest foliage--hit the slow-moving lake the debris falls out of suspension
but the new research builds on previous work that showed they also feed on bacteria from forest matter drained into lakes.
Areas of Daisy Lake closest to the nickel smelt-works remain bare--dirt and rock instead of the once lush forest.
The young fish in these parts of the lake were considerably smaller due to less available food.
Now imagine that you manage acres of old-growth forest--or another natural resource like some fish in the ocean.
The value of a fish in waterconsider the example of reef fish in the Gulf of mexico.
During their research Abbott and Fenichel found that the value of preserving live reef fish was more than $3 a pound in 2004 a price that jumped to almost $9 in 2007 after policymakers implemented management reforms that incentivized conservation.
The Gulf's reef fish contributed more than $256 million to U s. national wealth in 2004--and three times that after management reforms.
hard clamsfour of the most common mosquito pesticides used along the east and Gulf coasts show little risk to juvenile hard clams and oysters according to a NOAA study.
and microbiology program lead with NOAA's Centers for Coastal Ocean Science. Hopefully these data will benefit both shellfish mariculture operations
Shellfish growers however are concerned that pesticide spraying near the coastlines may contaminate both their hatcheries and source waters.
These ecologically and economically important species inhabit tidal marsh habitats along the U s. Atlantic and Gulf of mexico coastlines.
and West Nile virus. One approach to controlling mosquitoes is to apply pesticides by spraying from planes or trucks over a large area.
Comparing restored undisturbed grasslandswinkler compared tracts of restored grasslands to undisturbed ones at three sites in eastern South dakota--Sioux Prairie in Minnehaha County Oak Lake Field Station
while the undisturbed area at Sioux Prairie is managed by the Nature Conservancy Oak Lake by SDSU and Spirit Mound by the S d. Game fish and Parks Department.
#New england lakes recovering rapidly from acid rainfor more than 40 years policy makers have been working to reduce acid rain a serious environmental problem that can devastate lakes streams
and Agriculture indicates that lakes in New england and the Adirondack mountains are recovering rapidly from the effects of acid rain.
and sulfate concentration in lakes declined at a greater rate from 2002 to 2010 than during the 1980s or 1990s.
and nitrate concentration declined in lakes. This is really good news for New england. Lakes are accelerating in their recovery from the past effects of acid rain.
Our data clearly demonstrate that cleaning up air pollution continues to have desired the effect of improving water quality for our region's lakes said NHAES researcher William Mcdowell professor of environmental science and director of the NH Water Resources Research center.
In addition to Mcdowell the research team included Kristin Strock assistant professor at Dickinson College; Sarah Nelson assistant research professor with the Senator George J. Mitchell Center and cooperating assistant research professor in Watershed Biogeochemistry in the UMAINE School of Forest Resources;
Jasmine Saros associate director of the Climate Change Institute at UMAINE and professor in UMAINE's School of Biology & Ecology;
and allows forests to store more carbon dioxideevery spring as the weather warms trees in forests up and down the east coast explode in a bright green display of life as leaves fill their branches
--which stretches along the eastern seaboard from Maine to Georgia and as far inland as Wisconsin--as well as a more granular measurement of individual sites.
and praying for a new discovery for treatmentâ#said Ellis Hunt Jr. of Lake Wales whose family has been in the citrus business since 1922.
only if resource efficient cascades and stringent energy efficiency measures were implemented. The report is available online at:
and in the ocean storing carbon dioxide in a liquefied form in underground geological formations and wells increasing Earth's cloud cover and solar reflection.
The researchers evaluated the idea of adding iron to oceans in order to stimulate the growth of algae
because less than a quarter of the algae could be expected to eventually sink to the bottom of the ocean which would be the only way that carbon would be sequestered for a long period of time.
The study predicted that the rest would be expected to be consumed by other sea life that respire carbon dioxide
Native grasslands forests and wetlands may be converted into croplands tree plantations residential areas and commercial developments. Those conversions can in turn diminish the health of natural ecosystems
Because forests clean rivers climate regulation and other ecosystem services are freely available to everyone landowners often receive nothing for actions they take on their own land that contribute to the pool of ecosystem services.
Norman Ellstrand a plant geneticist at the University of California Riverside is interested in many aspects regarding gene flow especially in applied plant biology
damage forests crops and lakes; and harm fish and wildlife. This according to a first-of-its-kind study released today by scientists at Syracuse University
The maps show that the greatest benefits occur in the eastern U s. particularly in states in and around the Ohio river Valley as well as the Rocky mountain region.
California U s a. This tiny shrimp the smallest in the genus was identified from among specimens originally collected from a cave on that island of romance sunny Santa catalina off the coast of Southern California.
This species was discovered in underwater caves 30 miles off the southeast coast of Spain. Interestingly they are the same caves where carnivorous sponges were discovered first.
In the natural world the mechanism may influence the motion of icebergs floating on the sea
Ecology, super-sizedthe University of Wisconsin-Madison home of pioneering ecologists who studied lakes forests wetlands
But where UW-Madison's Edward Birge and Chancey Juday considered the founders of freshwater science once studied lakes one by one UW-Madison scientists are now leading several large-scale ecological investigations.
The university through its Trout Lake Station in Boulder Junction Wisconsin has played a pivotal role in the Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network (GLEON) an international network that has placed observation buoys at more than 100 lakes.
The 24/7 nature of data collection is essential says Tim Kratz director of Trout Lake and a GLEON founder.
One difficulty in studying lakes is that many organisms are very short-lived and the environment can change quickly.
Their records are being assembled to compare lakes of various sizes located in different geographic or social settings and climates Kratz says.
For example the project has discovered the release of greenhouse gases is controlled differently in large lakes versus small ones.
On land Paleon (the Paleo-Ecological Observatory Network) is looking backward to see forward assembling long-term records from lake sediments and other natural archives to build large-scale reconstructions of forest and climate
and charcoal trapped in lake sediments historic land surveys and tree rings. All reveal the change of conditions through time
and pollen that sank to the bottom of lakes which tracks the changing abundances of plants and trees around the lake.
We're pollen whisperers says Simon Goring a postdoctoral fellow in geography who notes that pollen records can extend back tens of thousands of years
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