Big algae bloom in Lake erie, very dry 2015 forecastscientists delivered a mostly negative forecast for how climate change will affect Ohioans during the next year or so and well beyond.
and the associated runoff will likely lead to a larger-than-average bloom of harmful blue-green algae in Lake erie this summer.
Among the gloomy outlooks for Lake erie and the farm industry researchers and other experts offered more encouraging news about the recovery of Ohio forests and improved energy efficiency in electricity distribution and the operation of hospital systems statewide.
Attendees got a preliminary look at the Lake erie 2014 Harmful Algal Bloom (HAB) forecast which will be released officially by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric administration at Stone Laboratory on July 10.
Jeffrey Reutter director of Ohio Sea Grant revealed that he expects a larger-than-average bloom of harmful blue-green algae this year.
Longer storm seasons and more severe storms are contributing to an excessive amount of phosphorus in the lake--mostly from domestic and agricultural runoff--that feeds the HABS.
and sink to the bottom where their decomposition sucks the oxygen out of the bottom portion of the lake
and other nutrients draining into the lake. Even with a 75 percent reduction we could still experience a dead zone he added.
Lake erie often produces more fish for human consumption than all the other Great lakes combined he explained.
Similarly Ohio's forests--which are now recovering from heavy timber exploitation in the early 20th century--are expected to fare better than those in the arid west or along the coasts.
Among the technologies evaluated in situ are floor type in cattle housing use of additives in slurry storage manure turning flexible lagoons for collective slurry storage biowashers for gases at the outlet of air ducts of the sheds
Melting in the dry snow region does not contribute to sea level rise. Instead the meltwater percolates into the snowpack
The massive Greenland ice sheet experiences annual melting at low elevations near the coastline but surface melt is rare in the dry snow region in its center.
and in the waters surrounding the island of Moorea in French polynesia Florida Museum invertebrate zoology curator Gustav Paulay dredged from the deep sea a new hermit crab that exemplifies a rarely documented process in which hermit crabs move out of their shells
The guide has become the core of northern hardwood silviculture particularly in the Great lakes region.
whether Arbogast's selection system is applied widely in the Great lakes northern hardwood forests. They studied recent timber harvests on state forest lands forests under corporate ownership and privately owned forests.
and shelter are deprived of that habitat. â#oethis can have cascading effects through the food chainâ#said Bill Overholt an entomology professor at UFÂ##s Indian River Research and Education Center in Fort
A southern Brazil variety was brought to an area along the Gulf Coast probably near Punta Gorda;
#Ocean winds keep Antarctica cold, Australia drynew Australian National University-led research has explained why Antarctica is not warming as much as other continents
Researchers have found rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are strengthening the stormy Southern Ocean winds
along with data from tree rings and lakes in South america Dr Abram and her colleagues were able to extend the history of the westerly winds back over the last millennium.
The Southern Ocean winds are now stronger than at any other time in the past 1000 years Abram said.
#Hydrologists find Mississippi river networks buffering system for nitrates is overwhelmeda new method of measuring the interaction of surface water
and groundwater along the length of the Mississippi river network adds fresh evidence that the network's natural ability to chemically filter out nitrates is being overwhelmed.
The research by hydrogeologists at The University of Texas at Austin which appears in the May 11 edition of the journal Nature Geoscience shows for the first time that virtually every drop of water coursing through 311000 miles (500000 kilometers) of waterways
in the Mississippi river network goes through a natural filtering process as it flows to the Gulf of mexico.
The analysis found that 99.6 percent of the water in the network passes through filtering sediment along the banks of creeks streams and rivers.
but the unfortunate implication is that the river's natural filtration systems for nitrates appear to be operating at or very close to full capacity.
While further research is needed this would make it unlikely that natural systems can accommodate the high levels of nitrates that have made their way from farmland and other sources into the river network's waterways.
As a result of its filtration systems being overwhelmed the river system operates less as a buffer and more as a conveyor belt transporting nitrates to the Gulf of mexico.
The amount of nitrates flowing into the gulf from the Mississippi has created already the world's second biggest dead zone an oxygen-depleted area where fish
and other aquatic life can't survive. The research conducted by Bayani Cardenas associate professor of hydrogeology
and Brian Kiel a Ph d. candidate in geology at the university's Jackson School of Geosciences provides valuable information to those who manage water quality efforts including the tracking of nitrogen fertilizers used to grow crops in the Midwest in the Mississippi river
This is the first work putting together a physics-based estimate on the scale of one of these big rivers looking at the net effect of nitrate removal in big river systems.
The Mississippi river network includes the Ohio river watershed on the east and the Missouri river watershed in the west as well as the Mississippi watershed in the middle.
Using detailed ground-level data from the United states Geological Survey (USGS) and Environmental protection agency Cardenas and Kiel analyzed the waterways for sinuosity (how much they bend and curve);
the texture of the materials along the waterways; the time spent in the sediment (known as the hyporheic zone;
and the rate at which the water flows through the sediment. The sediment operates as a chemical filter in that microbes in the sand gravel
One compound nitrate is a major component of inorganic fertilizers that has helped make the area encompassed by the Mississippi river network the biggest producer of corn soybeans wheat cattle
While the biggest source of nitrates in the Mississippi river network are industrial fertilizers nitrates also come from animal manure urban areas wastewater treatment
The residence times when water entered the hyporheic zones ranged from less than an hour in the river system's headwaters to more than a month in larger meandering channels.
Cardenas said the research provides a large-scale holistic view of the river network's natural buffering mechanism
The new model he added can be a first step to enable a wider analysis of the river system.
When a river system gets totally overwhelmed You lose the chemical functions the chemical buffering said Cardenas.
Research and Education Center in Lake Alfred. Citrus greening first enters the tree via a tiny insect the Asian citrus psyllid
Those treatments are being studied by UF researchers in Lake Alfred and at the Southwest Florida Research and Education Center in Immokalee.
which are divided by the Yangtze river--the largest river in China flowing west to east across the vast country.
He soon found that the Yangtze was an important cultural divider in China. I found out that the Yangtze river helped divide dialects in China and
I soon learned that the Yangtze also roughly divides rice farming and wheat farming he said.
He dug into anthropologists'accounts of pre-modern rice and wheat villages and realized that they might account for the different mindsets carried forward from an agrarian past into modernity.
Talhelm said that one of the most striking findings was that counties on the north-south border--just across the Yangtze river from each other--exhibited the same north/south psychological characteristics as areas much more distantly separated north and south.
and the underlying molecular mechanismsthe National institutes of health the Keck Center Nanobiology Training program of the Gulf Coast Consortia and the Baylor College of Medicine Medical scientist Training program supported the research.
and coastal flooding due to sea level rise and storm surge. NCA Highlights: Northeast; NCA Highlights: Overview) â#¢Southeast and Caribbean-Virginia W. Virginia Kentucky Tennessee Georgia Alabama Arkansas S. Carolina N. Carolina Mississippi Florida Louisiana and the Caribbean islands:
and some of the fastest-growing metropolitan areasâ#The Gulf and Atlantic coasts are major producers of seafood
The Midwest's agricultural lands forests Great lakes industrial activities and cities are all vulnerable to climate variability and climate change.
Rapidly receding summer sea ice shrinking glaciers and thawing permafrost cause damage to infrastructure and major changes to ecosystems.
The U s. Pacific Islands region includes more than 2000 islands spanning millions of square miles of ocean.
Rising air and ocean temperatures shifting rainfall patterns changing frequencies and intensities of storms and drought decreasing streamflows rising sea levels and changing ocean chemistry will threaten the sustainability
Overview) â#¢Coasts: More than 50%of Americans--164 million people--live in coastal counties with 1. 2 million added each year...
Coastal lifelines such as water supply infrastructure and evacuation routes are increasingly vulnerable to higher sea levels and storm surges inland flooding and other climate-related changes.
Coasts; NCA Highlights: Overview) Climate-Change Impacts on Key Sectors of Society and the U s. Economy â#¢Health:
The impacts from sea level rise and storm surge extreme weather events higher temperatures and heat waves precipitation changes Arctic warming and other climatic conditions are affecting the reliability and capacity of the U s. transportation system in many ways.
Sea level rise coupled with storm surge will continue to increase the risk of major coastal impacts on transportation infrastructure including both temporary and permanent flooding of airports ports
In the longer term sea level rise extreme storm surge events and high tides will affect coastal facilities and infrastructure on
These changes limit the capacity of ecosystems such as forests barrier beaches and wetlands to continue to play important roles in reducing the impacts of extreme events on infrastructure human communities
and other valued resourcesâ#Whole-system management is often more effective than focusing on one species at a time
Ecosystems) â#¢Oceans: Ocean waters are becoming warmer and more acidic broadly affecting ocean circulation chemistry ecosystems and marine life.
More acidic waters inhibit the formation of shells skeletons and coral reefs. Warmer waters harm coral reefs and alter the distribution abundance
and productivity of many marine species. The rising temperature and changing chemistry of ocean water combine with other stresses such as overfishing and coastal and marine pollution to alter marine-based food production
and harm fishing communitiesâ#In response to observed and projected climate impacts some existing ocean policies practices
and communities to adapt to changing ocean conditions. NCA Highlights: Oceans) Climate Trends in America â#¢Temperature:
U s. average temperature has increased by 1. 3â°F to 1. 9â°F since record keeping began in 1895;
Rising temperatures are reducing ice volume and surface extent on land lakes and sea. This loss of ice is expected to continue.
Climate Trends) â#¢Sea level: Global sea level has risen by about 8 inches since reliable record keeping began in 1880.
It is projected to rise another 1 to 4 feet by 2100. NCA Highlights: Climate Trends) â#¢Ocean Acidification:
The oceans are currently absorbing about a quarter of the carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere annually
and are becoming more acidic as a result leading to concerns about intensifying impacts on marine ecosystems.
parts of Sudan and Ethiopia the countries surrounding Lake victoria in Central africa and the very southeast of the continent including most notably parts of South africa Mozambique Zimbabwe says lead-author Christoph MÃ ller.
They are projected to see more severe dry seasons and reduced growth of plants and near Lake victoria floodings.
In a separate study presented on April 27 at the Experimental Biology annual meeting in San diego Laurie Nommsen-Rivers Phd a researcher at the Cincinnati Children's Perinatal Institute showed that postpartum metabolic health
Dr. Nommsen-Rivers is senior author of both of these new studies. The single most important factor in building a strong milk supply is frequent and thorough breastfeeding beginning at birth she says.
Dr. Nommsen-Rivers and Dr. Riddle are planning to conduct a clinical trial of metformin a drug used to control blood sugar in type 2 diabetes.
But is it possible to optimize production across a much bigger area--say the whole East Coast of the United states?
What's driving the research are mounting concerns about food security across the Eastern Seaboard Region (ESR.
When the team used GAMCAF to predict how many potatoes the Eastern Seaboard could produce if all of its farmland was devoted to this single commodity they found the production capacity could be increased by as much as 40%over baseline values.
and dead trees in the Weber River basin the researchers built a tree-ring chronology that extends back 585 years into Utah's natural history.
Though bountiful in the ocean salt is often a rare and valuable resource on land especially for vegetarians.
It is not uncommon to see butterflies sipping mineral-laden water from mud puddles. When minerals are rare in the soil animals sometimes gather salt and other rare minerals and proteins from sweat tears urine and even blood.
He remembered a 2012 report of a solitary bee sipping the tears of a yellow-spotted river turtle in Ecuador's Yasunã National park
and Tribulations story about the Ecuadorian bee and the river turtle by Olivier Dangles and JÃ rã'me Casas in ESA's Frontiers.
#Wetlands likely to blame for atmospheric methane increases: Studya surprising recent rise in atmospheric methane likely stems from wetland emissions suggesting that much more of the potent greenhouse gas will be pumped into the atmosphere as northern wetlands continue to thaw
and tropical ones to warm according to a new international study led by a University of Guelph researcher.
The study supports calls for improved monitoring of wetlands and human changes to those ecosystems--a timely topic as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change prepares to examine land use impacts on greenhouse gas emissions says Prof.
and fossil fuel use as well as natural sources such as microbes in saturated wetland soils. The amount of atmospheric methane has remained relatively stable for about a decade
Scientists believe this increase stems partly from more methane being released from thawing northern wetlands. Scientists have assumed that wetland methane release is largest in the tropics said Turetsky.
But our analyses show that northern fens such as those created when permafrost thaws can have emissions comparable to warm sites in the tropics despite their cold temperatures.
The study calls for better methods of detecting different types of wetlands and methane release rates between flooded and drained areas.
Fens are the most common type of wetland in Canada but we lack basic scientific approaches for mapping fens using remote sensing products she said.
Not only are fens one of the strongest sources of wetland greenhouse gases but we also know that Canadian forests
The team showed that small temperature changes can release much more methane from wetland soils to the atmosphere.
If wetland soils dry out from evaporation or human drainage emissions will fall--but not without other problems.
Another study co-author Kim Wickland United states Geological Survey said This study provides important data for better accounting of how methane emissions change after wetland drainage and flooding.
or managed wetlands says Wickland who has helped the IPCC improve methods for calculating greenhouse gas emissions from managed wetlands.
which is released from natural sources such as wetlands as well as from human activities including waste management the oil and gas industries rice production and livestock farming.
and in Cape cod to look at sea level rise and die off under the assumption that these are the mechanisms that are causing it Crotty said.
Water warming has altered also the distribution of large species of fish found in the open sea.
Rising sea levels coastal flooding and tidal waves cause danger to life and risk of injury and hinder livelihoods in low-lying coastal areas and in small island nations.
and Alberta with the potential to spread all the way to the Atlantic coast. Millions of acres of forest have been lost with severe economic and ecological impacts from a beetle outbreak ten times larger than previous outbreaks.
and Platte rivers says hydrologist Reed Maxwell of the Colorado School Of mines. Maxwell and colleagues have published results of their study of beetle effects on stream flows in this week's issue of the journal Nature Climate Change.
The new results show that the fraction of late-summer groundwater flows from affected watersheds is about 30 percent higher after beetles have infested an area compared with watersheds with less severe beetle attacks.
Dead trees create changes in water qualityusing'fingerprints'of different water sources defined by the sources'water chemistry we found that a higher fraction of late-summer streamflow in affected watersheds comes from groundwater rather than surface
In bark beetle-infested watersheds. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by National Science Foundation.
This strategy sees reserves as islands in an inhospitable sea of human-modified habitats and doesn't adequately account for biodiversity patterns in many human-dominated landscapes according to the Stanford study.
The study focused on bat populations within a mosaic of forest fragments and farmland in Costa rica and on islands in a large lake in Panama.
Not only do more species persist across the'sea of farmland'than expected by island biogeographic theory novel yet native species actually thrive there said co-author Elizabeth Hadly the Paul S. and Billie Achilles Professor in Environmental Biology at Stanford and senior
and wetlands and pest control provided by birds and bats. The study's findings point to the need for new approaches that integrate conservation
and sediment-rich carbon deposition on a soil located on a lower landscape position or in a waterway.
The land unit could be a plot plot area parcel tract field farm landscape position landscape wetland forest
The scientists found Nosema at three sites along the coast and one interior site. At all of the sites they found only a small number of pesticides at low concentrations.
but severe climatic events can trigger cascades of ecosystem change that last for centuries. Some of the most compelling evidence of how ecosystems respond to drought
As the drought continues mirroring conditions that are projected to be more common in the future scientists say the need for allocating water reliably to wetlands
and flooded agricultural lands will only grow stronger for wetland-dependent birds. Curlews can't survive in the Central Valley without irrigated agriculture given the loss of most of their historic shallow-water habitats in summer
The Central Valley's protected wetlands (federal wildlife refuges state wildlife areas and private lands)
In early fall--the driest time of year in the Valley--it is especially important that these birds can find flooded fields and wetlands for their survival.
He is now a researcher with the Department of Rangeland and Watershed Management at the University of Mohaghegh Ardabili Iran.
and dissolving stone monuments on the East Coast. Air pollution rose beginning with the Industrial revolution and started to improve when the U s. Clean Air Act of 1970 required coal power plants and other polluters to scrub sulfur out of their smokestacks.
Ice cores from Greenland and North american lake sediments showed the nitrogen-15 ratio gradually decreasing
#Iconic boreal bird species declining in the Adirondacksa new study from the Wildlife Conservation Society finds that several iconic Adirondack birds are in trouble with declines driven by the size of their wetland habitats
how connected these wetlands are to one another and how near they are to human infrastructure.
and WCS Adirondack Program Science Director Michale Glennon explores occupancy patterns over time for eight bird species in lowland boreal forest wetlands in the Adirondacks.
A total of 1105 count surveys conducted between 2007 and 2011 in wetlands ranging in size from 0. 04--6. 0 square kilometers resulted in 1305 detections of target species with yellow-bellied flycatcher
and connectedness of their wetland habitats were important as was nearby human infrastructure with birds much more likely to disappear from smaller isolated wetlands that are near development.
The number of boreal wetlands occupied by five species--rusty blackbird gray jay yellow-bellied flycatcher olive-sided flycatcher
In addition to songbirds and woodpeckers boreal wetlands provide critical habitat for other park icons like moose loon and marten.
And a previously published survey showed that citizens are willing to make such payments for environmental services such as cleaner lakes.
The regime that used fewer chemicals resulted in more than 50 percent reductions in the amount of nitrogen that escaped into groundwater and rivers with crop yields close to those of standard management.
Nitrogen pollution is a major problem in inland waterways and coastal regions where it contributes to the formation of dead zones.
so that land managers could participate in stewardship programs to benefit lakes; a smaller number were willing to pay for a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
and The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in Bedfordshire UK via the Across the River Project together with experienced rangers from the Forestry Development Authority in Liberia local research assistants from Liberia and Sierra leone
which we sometimes had to cross rivers climb mountains and pass through steep valleys. But the effort paid off.
by the time it reaches seafloora fraction of the carbon that finds its way into Earth's oceans--the black soot
and hitches a ride to the ocean floor on passing particles. The study by scientists from Rice university the University of California Irvine and the University of South carolina offers the first detailed analysis of how black carbon gets into deep ocean sediments as well as an accounting of the types
and amounts of black carbon found in those sediments. Our previous work showed that the black carbon in ocean sediments is said ancient lead investigator Ellen Druffel the Fred Kavli Professor of Earth System Science at UC Irvine.
It's anywhere from 2000 to 5500 years older than the organic carbon in the same sediments.
or it stays trapped somewhere else--like the soil--for thousands of years before it enters the ocean.
This new study offers the most complete picture yet of how black carbon finds its way into deep ocean sediments.
Our aim was to show how the black carbon cycle likely works in the ocean Druffel said.
This helps us narrow down the role of the ocean as a sink for both soot and charcoal.
Black carbon's journey to the bottom of the ocean begins when the material enters the water.
Airborne soot gets into the ocean via rainfall and runoff from streams. Though charcoal residue can stay trapped in soils for thousands of years runoff
and erosion eventually carry some of it to the ocean as well. The researchers used radiocarbon dating and other techniques to examine the black carbon that was buried in seafloor sediments in the Northeast Pacific that dated to about 20000 years ago.
Another is a sticky'marine snow'that falls slowly downward to the bottom and gets buried in sediments.
I'm surprised that given how much black carbon is produced most of it remains in the ocean for thousands of years Coppola said.
It's very interesting that only a relatively small amount with a certain type of chemistry is removed to the ocean floor.
Research by Alison Macintosh a Phd candidate in Cambridge university's Department of Archaeology and Anthropology shows that after the emergence of agriculture in Central europe from around 5300 BC the bones of those living in the fertile soils of the Danube river valley
#A balanced carbon footprint for the Amazon Riverconsidered until now a source of greenhouse gas emissions capturing the CO2 fixed by the tropical forest through the soils of the watershed to release it into the atmosphere the Amazon river actually has balanced a carbon footprint.
In fact a new study shows that the CO2 outgassed by the river is drawn only from the river system itself by the semiaquatic vegetation on the flood plains.
Therefore the Amazon recycles the CO2 from its own river system and not that fixed by the tropical forest releasing as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as it absorbs.
Until now researchers thought that rivers were supplied with carbon by trees and other land plants through the soils of the watershed.
This carbon was transformed then into CO2 and released by outgassing into the atmosphere. Watercourses and in particular the giant Amazon were considered
thus as net sources of emissions releasing more CO2 than they absorbed. Now researchers have shown just that the CO2 outgassed by the waters of the Amazon is drawn in reality only from the river system itself.
This CO2 comes from the decomposition of the organic matter produced by semiaquatic vegetation in the Amazon wetlands.
Conversely to what we thought the river thus acts as a CO2 pump. The link between aquatic vegetation and CO2EMISSIONTEN French and Brazilian teams within the framework of the ANR-CARBAMA project
and the HYBAM environmental research observatory conducted many field-studies in the Amazon region and analysed satellite images.
and in space as the proportion of vegetation diminishes from upstream of the study area where flooded forests dominate to downstream where the majority of the lakes are found.
In fact the researchers showed a very high export ratio toward the aquatic environment of the gross primary production of the Amazon wetlands:
half of this carbon in the form of dissolved CO2 and biodegradable organic matter is transferred directly to the river.
Therefore the carbon footprint of the river system in the central Amazon region is close to equilibrium:
It sheds light on the need to consider the specific properties of wetlands in global carbon footprints.
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