for long-term problems associated with issues such as ocean acidification and rising sea levels. The word'compensation'raises concerns in industrialized nations, who don't want to sign a blank cheque,
The gulf between developed and developing nations over greenhouse gases and who should take responsibility for what remains alarmingly wide.
The Alliance of Small Island States, for instance, often pushes for aggressive action to reduce greenhouse gases because of its pressing concern over rising sea levels,
Canada's Chalk River, Ontario, reactor whose closure precipitated the isotope crisis will not reopen until 2010.
says the USGS. Coal-fired power plants are the main source of mercury reaching US waterways.
because melting glaciers in The alps have altered the watershed that marks the border. AP) Number crunch<br></br>16.99 °C<br></br>The average surface temperature of the world's oceans in June and July 2009 the warmest measured
since records began in 1880. NOAA) Â
The resistant rice of the future: Nature Newsjapanese research teams have pinpointed the genes in hardy varieties of rice that help the plants to outgrow rising paddy-field waters
Julia Bailey-Serres, a molecular geneticist at the University of California, Riverside, says that the Submergence
The Amazon river basin covers some 7 million square kilometres and nearly half of Brazil. By some estimates 15%of the basin has been cleared in recent decades.
and 5. 4 °C and sea levels will ascend by between 26 cm and 59 cm compared to 1990 levels.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed on 22 october to designate around 500,000 square kilometres of critical habitat 96%of which is sea ice for the polar bear.
The bear was listed as a threatened species in 2008 owing to projections of sea-ice declines caused by global warming.
and Ocean Salinity satellite. go. nature. com/shq161 2 â oe6 November Nairobi, Kenya, hosts the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria's fifth Pan-African Malaria Conference. www. mimalaria. org/pamc 2 â oe6 November The United nations Framework
After a bitter and lengthy controversy over water management, four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River in Oregon and California will be removed to restore salmon runs.
whether by water in running streams and deep lakes, or by soil adsorption that takes the compounds out of solution.
'the proportion of a stream or river not attributable to direct run off from precipitation or melting snow.
But in basins that contain small rivers afforestation can reduce base flow by up to 50,
in collaboration with the US Forest Service, afforested one of a pair of watersheds. The researchers observed an 18-22%drop in base flow in the afforested watershed compared with the watershed that had been left as grassland.
As the trees get larger, the effect will be somewhat greater, says Skaggs. The differences between Jobb ¡
It could reduce flood flows, particularly from small watershed areas. According to his team's observations, the afforested parts of watersheds also prevent the erosion
and sediment-leaching that were seen in their grassland counterparts. Jobb ¡gy says that at least for his study areas, the ideal balance between afforestation and water needs is for one-quarter of the river basin to be planted with between 400 and 500 trees per hectare.
It is possible to prevent drastic effects on water availability, he says. Choosing tree species wisely might help, Binkley and Jobb ¡
Also, planting only some portions of the watershed might achieve the balance of providing wood products for the people without the impact on the basin's water balance
what the Nazca were doing to their river valleys. Preserved tree trunks are scattered across the now-deserted lower Ica valley, about 200 km south of Lima, indicating a significant landscape change.
which once created woodland oases that lined the rivers in the otherwise desert landscape. But as Chepstow-Lusty moved forward in time through the pollen record, he found a gradual decrease in huarango pollen and a concomitant increase in pollen from agricultural sources
The sea of tents around the university has disappeared now. The new university year was able to open just two weeks later than usual on 19 october.
and NASA's US$280 million Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) crashed into the sea, dashing the hopes of scientists who wanted to use the satellite to measure sources
to that seen when sea ice melts and exposes darker surface water, thus accelerating the melting effect there.
At the conference, Anderson presented a erosionsm. mov>dramatic video of frozen coastlines in northern Alaska eroding rapidly into the Beaufort sea.
because the sea ice that holds fast to the coast for much of the year is breaking up earlier,
and also that the water lapping the shore is warmer than it was. Asked what her team's findings might mean for the international climate negotiations going on in Copenhagen,
Pershing, of the University of Maine in Orono and the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland, Maine, calculates that
he said on 25 february at the American Geophysical Union's 2010 Ocean Sciences meeting in Portland,
they usually sink to the bottom of the ocean, carrying their carbon with them. Back in 1900,
But even if ocean food supplies are limited, there could still be a substantial increase in total biomass owing to the difference in size between whales
The iron in whale faeces is an important micronutrient that is often in short supply in waters such as the Southern Ocean,
Pershing adds that the same analysis applies to other large ocean animals whose populations have been reduced drastically, such as bluefin tuna and some species of shark.
The census found that agriculture was more damaging to China's waterways than manufacturing. In 2007, agriculture was responsible for 43.7%of the total 30.3 million tonnes of chemical oxygen demand (COD) a measure of organic pollutants in water.
Consequently, the country's numerous lakes, rivers and coastal waters have suffered from repeated outbreaks of algal blooms owing to the excess of nutrients polluting the water.
including the pollution of rivers and lakes. But Chinese farmers are often unaware of the consequences of over-fertilization.
and oceans to futuristic'solar-radiation management'techniques for example, creating haze in the stratosphere to act as a cheap layer of sunscreen.
Another cadre of researchers is pushing a more benign technology that involves seeding clouds with sea salt to increase their brightness.
The technique could be focused on regional problems such as disappearing Arctic sea ice say advocates, who suggest that a research programme could be presented to the intergovernmental Arctic Council for approval.
John Niles, the director of the Tropical forest Group, a non-governmental organization based in San diego, California, that focuses on forest policy, warns that funnelling support into existing protected areas through REDD may be tricky because of the ongoing debates about what constitutes a carbon saving.
says Niles. The legal additionality issue has been a problem in the past, he says. Why would wealthy governments pay for
But Niles adds that because REDD-plus does not yet have a governing body or mechanism, there is an opportunity change the rules.
Let's just move to the real stuff,'says Natasha Raikhel at the University of California, Riverside.
But the two are linked closely specially close to the shore, where most people lived. So, when the water temperatures are up,
the team also correlated rainfall patterns with nearly 150 years of sea-surface-temperature recordings throughout the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
Colorado, reveals how distant ocean conditions might affect Asian weather again, useful for refining climate models.
by hot air rising inland over the continents, pulling in moisture from the sea. Future changes in that process will be driven not just by traditional patterns of sea-surface-temperature fluctuations
but by changes in sunlight-reducing haze from air pollution from industrialized areas of China, for example,
and differences in the degree to which global warming affects sea and land. The drivers today are different,
Increased planting of herbicide-tolerant crops may also have reduced the use of many herbicides that linger in soil and waterways
Research A microbial world Estimates for the number of microbial species in the world's oceans have jumped massively.
But the latest analyses indicate that the oceans are home to at least 20 million types,
The plans would prevent drilling along the west coast and halt a particularly controversial project in Alaska's Bristol Bay,
but open up vast tracts along the eastern seaboard. Last week, the administration also finalized its greenhouse-gas standards for vehicles
The protected biodiversity hot spot covers more than half a million square kilometres of ocean, and will include a'no-take'reserve where all commercial fishing is banned.
which was blocking the development of five wind farms on England's east coast. The ministry has opposed previously these projects
Linking offshore wind farms together with an undersea cable down the US east coast could produce a reliable supply of grid electricity,
but that the specimens came from a strip of trees along a waterway through a savannah1.
The oil spewing into the Gulf of mexico was stemmed partially this week, after BP managed to force a siphon tube into the leaking wellhead pipe.
Number crunch 14.5 °C April's combined land and sea surface temperature: the hottest April on record, at 0. 76 °C above the average for the twentieth century.
) Canadell says that cutting down forests sometimes results in the drying out of wetlands and peat bogs and the release of their huge carbon stores
while a ship monitors the air off the coast and two electric vehicles zip about collecting samples upwind and downwind of selected sites.
what the researchers call a powerful trophic cascade, resulting in fewer potato-munching beetles and larger potato plants.
The researchers infected mosquitoes in the lab with West Nile Ross River or chikungunya viruses. About 10 days later, they captured more than 90 mosquitoes,
placed each one in a separate vial and allowed them to feed on the honey-soaked cards for 2 days.
where they were tested for Ross River and Barmah Forest viruses. VIRAL RNA was found on the cards and in the mosquitoes that fed on the cards.
says Phil Lounibos, a medical entomologist at the University of Florida in Vero Beach. It would be more valuable for the quick and dirty detection of viruses,
BP's latest efforts to staunch the flow of oil from its wellhead in the Gulf of mexico have failed,
The waterfowl, found mainly in Lake Alaotra in eastern Madagascar, is thought to have been killed off by poaching and the introduction to its habitat of carnivorous fish.
and Charles river Laboratories in Wilmington, Massachusetts, shifting more of their operations to emerging markets. Funding Mental health call:
flowing from the ruptured Gulf of mexico well up to four times the official estimate from a month ago.
based in Ludwigshafen am Rhein has been approved for cultivation in the EU, and 16 other crops are still awaiting final approval.
and sea level rise of different greenhouse-gas emissions scenarios. It also concludes that once the global average temperature warms beyond a certain point,
Oil gushed into the Gulf of mexico at a staggering rate from the damaged riser that had attached the platform to the well.
Some of the oil was trapped well below the Gulf's surface, with undetermined effects. It seemed as though the spill might drag on forever.
Last week, during Tunnell's most recent trip, the first stop was a rocky limestone shoreline near the town of Champot  n on the Yucat ¡
n's western coast. Thirty years ago, he recalls, the tide pools here were thick with oil.
Development and road building have changed the shoreline significantly since then. Nevertheless, Tunnell and two colleagues quickly found a 40-centimetre-wide patch of tar above the tideline.
Tunnell points out that the Gulf may have been healthier and more resilient then, so it's difficult to say
whether species in the northern Gulf will rebound as quickly from the current spill. But the curtailment of commercial fishing owing to fears over contaminated seafood may hasten the recovery of exploited species. In some parts of Campeche,
Ixtoc I's main lesson for those responding to the current spill is that sandy beaches
and rocky shores can recover relatively quickly, but that more productive ecosystems such as mangrove swamps or salt marshes the closest analogue to mangroves in the northern Gulf retain oil indefinitely.
They may take decades to regain their health. Jernelã v says that other features of Ixtoc I may foreshadow what the coming months
That oil made its way around the Gulf, and at one point some beaches in Texas took an unexpected oil hit after it mixed with surface waters close to shore.
You didn't see anything and then all of a sudden you had oil on the beaches, Jernelã v says.
In broader terms, Tunnell, Jernelã v and other researchers familiar with Ixtoc I agree that its most important lesson is to continue studying the Deepwater horizon spill
Nature Newsthe colour of her historic, red wood villa on the Bosporus waterfront in Istanbul may be fading,
overlooking the Ceyhan River flowing toward the Mediterranean. In 1957, her wish was granted, and an outdoor museum with some shelters designed by her husband was completed in 1960.
when the government wanted to dam the Ceyhan River, which would have flooded many archaeological sites.
water is being diverted from the swollen Indus river into irrigation canals. But engineers are warning that these canals are becoming swamped,
These have flowed from the high ground in the north of the country along the Indus river tributaries,
and the barrage gates that control the flow of the river. The Pakistan Irrigation and Power Department has declared many embankments along a 160-mile stretch of the Indus in the Sindh province to be in danger of breaking.
two of the largest barrages in the Sindh province, where more than 25,000 cubic metres per second of water was flowing down the river.
The Asian Development Bank, which is leading the first assessment of the flooding, says that 80,000 livestock have perished already
With a limited labour force but ample subsidized chemical fertilizer available in most of rural China, dumping this phosphate-rich animal manure into waterways has become an easier and cheaper option than using it to fertilize cropland.
A pollution census conducted by China's government earlier this year earlier this year see'China takes stock of environment')found that livestock is the largest contributor to run off pollution from the land into waterways,
%Excess phosphorus in many of China's lakes, coastal waters and rivers has caused repeated occurrences of harmful algal blooms known as eutrophication.
an ecologist at the Beijing-based Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, examined phosphate run off into Lake Tai,
It found that the area of land from which water drains into the lake exports more than 6 kilograms of phosphate per hectare-most
a study of ocean sediments suggests. The findings, published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1,
Dahl's team looked at the concentration of molybdenum and the ratios of its isotopes atoms of the same element with different numbers of neutrons and different masses in oceanic rocks for clues to the concentration of oxygen in the seas
Molybdenum in sea water behaves in different ways, depending on the concentration of oxygen. In oxygenated water, the lighter of the two main molybdenum isotopes 95mo and 98mo is absorbed into the seabed
leaving the heavier isotope in solution. Sea water gets lighter and heavier as a measure of the balance between oxic
and anoxic conditions, says Tim Lyons, a geochemist at the University of California, Riverside. Patterns of heavy and light molybdenum in sea water, reflecting oxygenation levels, are captured in deposited rocks called shales.
By examining the shale strata, scientists can chart periods of low and high oxygenation in the history of the seabed and, by inference, in the oceans themselves.
Levels of oxygenation in the oceans are assumed to reflect levels in the atmosphere. Dahl's study uncovered two periods when heavy molybdenum isotopes show up in the shale records
suggesting that oxygen levels increased in the Ediacaran period, about 560-550 million years ago,
and again, more dramatically, during the Devonian, around 400 million years ago. This is the first evidence supporting the theory that oxygen levels increased substantially during the Devonian.
when oceans are ventilated the oxygen in the atmosphere is going up, but that isn't necessarily the case,
adding that lowering the supply of nutrients in the ocean also increases oxygenation, as animal life respires less.
and others who are dependent on the river and presented scientists with what was seen as a rare opportunity to investigate the world's largest rainforest in extreme distress.
Water levels in the primary tributary Rio Negro or Black River are at historic lows. Although deforestation in Brazil has decreased,
If all the water in a river is used by agriculture and industry, leaving nothing for the aquatic environment,
and the river will die. How can we change the way we use and manage water?
which costs farmers in Africa's Great lakes region an estimated half a billion dollars every year. Bananas infected with BXW ripen unevenly and prematurely,
and tsetse flies on the island of Zanzibar, off the coast of Africa. The technique works best on pests that are not particularly populous.
Mayans converted wetlands to farmland: Nature Newsthe ancient Maya civilization is recognized widely for its awe-inspiring pyramids, sophisticated mathematics and advanced written language.
researchers have found that the Maya coped with tough environmental conditions by developing ingenious methods to grow crops in wetland areas.
and on a par with these other areas of intellectual development, says Timothy Beach, a physical geographer at Georgetown University in WASHINGTON DC,
The Maya's home was a tough environment replete with recurring droughts and rising sea levels,
or wetlands. So one of historians'biggest questions about the Maya civilization is managed how they to feed their huge populations.
In the 1970s, researchers began characterizing the remains of elaborate irrigation canals found in wetland areas.
or whether the use of wetlands for farming was an important part of the Maya agricultural system.
At the GSA meeting, Beach presented the results of two decades'work aimed at answering these questions1, 2. During that time
he and his wife, Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach, a physical geographer specializing in water quality from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia,
Working in low-lying wetlands, which are difficult to access and navigate, the team dug trenches some 3 metres deep and 10-20 metres long to study soil and water chemistry.
Their research suggests that the Maya built canals between wetlands to divert water and create new farmland,
says Beach. As the Maya mucked out the ditches, they would have tossed the soil onto the adjacent land,
and remote sensing techniques suggest that this wetland system was probably around 100 kilometres across.
the idea that the Maya farmed wetland areas extensively has been controversial among archaeologists. But the new work is very suggestive that the Maya were modifying these swamps intensively to make a living,
Stephen Houston, an expert on Maya civilization at Brown University in Providence, Rhode island, who recently began collaborating with Beach
Beach's arduous excavations have filled a crucial gap, he adds. They've confirmed that many of these swamplands in that area were being used for that kind of intensive agriculture and large-scale manipulations of the landscape.
One of the reasons some scholars dismissed the idea that wetlands were fundamentally important to the Maya is that they are often far from famous sites such as Tikal and Chichen Itza.
But there must have been dense populations living in rural areas near wetlands, far from the glitzy urban centres, says Beach.
It's a very thoughtful, clever way of utilizing the environment, says Scarborough. When a Westerner goes into a wetland today,
they see nothing but trouble. It's difficult to tame, capture and modify. But in the past they were considered real breadbaskets in many parts of the world.
In areas where she had some expertise clouds and sea ice, for example she felt that the report's authors were not appropriately careful.
or How much will sea level rise? Instead the experts give ranges and confidence intervals and the like. More important, other scientists part ways with Curry over how significant those uncertainties are to the final calculation.
and how much that extra water should raise sea level. Warming, though, could also affect the rate at
which glaciers flow from the ice sheets down to the sea to dump icebergs, which raises sea level independently.
Predicting the latter effect is tougher. In fact, Curry says, we don't know how to quantify it, so we don't even include it in our models.
The spill severely contaminated two tributaries of the Danube, killing all wildlife in the small River Marcal.
which lowered river levels and stranded equipment, a team of Brazilian and German scientists have installed a small meteorology tower
Just as importantly, says John Niles, director of the Tropical forest Group in San diego California, the agreement calls on an existing technical body to look into the programme rules
says Niles. This is the biggest decision we could have asked for. Delegates also agreed to establish a Green Climate Fund to be managed by representatives of the developed and developing world to help channel aid;
citing diminished sea ice in their native habitats. The final decision will be made after a period of 60 days to allow public comment;
Oil-spill budget Scientists have welcomed a long-awaited peer-reviewed US government report on the short-term fate of the oil from the Deepwater horizon spill in the Gulf of mexico this summer.
Susan Lieberman, director of international policy for the Pew Environment Group in WASHINGTON DC, says the agreement showed that management of high seas fisheries was flawed and inadequate.
and Wildlife Service has set aside roughly 484,000 square kilometres in Alaska and the surrounding seas as a'critical habitat'for the polar bear (Ursus maritimus),
Almost all of the protected area is sea ice off Alaska's northern and western coasts.
Dividing Europe into five regions, they tallied for each region how this climate regime would affect today's economy in five areas agriculture, human health, coastal flooding, river flooding and tourism.
thousands of people might be spared river floods as a result of reduced spring snow melt; and 25%more tourists might flock to its shores.
Throughout Europe, the expected decrease in deaths thanks to warmer winters could outweigh the increase from summer heatwaves,
to relocating fish to cooler lakes farther north. Because of the large uncertainties in the estimated impact of climate change, some researchers prefer to avoid putting dollar figures on climate-change costs at all.
and rivers needs to be so that the water is polluted not by eroded soil and fertilizers.
Spill science scarce The presidential commission investigating last year's huge oil spill in the Gulf of mexico has called for more science in federal decisions on oil production and spill response.
Business BP in Russian deal BP is joining up with Russia's state oil company Rosneft to drill in the Arctic waters of the Kara Sea.
000-square-kilometre area that it compares in potential to the north Sea. Rosneft will get 5%of BP's ordinary shares, worth around US$8 billion.
Nature Newsan international effort to protect coastal wetlands by assigning them carbon credits kicked off last week in Paris. The aim is to do for some wetland plants mangroves, seagrasses and salt marshes
Wetland plants and forests act as carbon sinks, locking away substantial amounts of carbon absorbed from the atmosphere.
The ocean absorbs some 25%of the world's carbon-dioxide emissions, and in its watery depths are acres of seagrass meadows that use about 15%of the dissolved carbon to grow.
Yet the world's coastal wetlands have been in continuous decline over the past century and now cover just 2%of the seabed1.
so that coastal land could be used for agriculture, aquaculture and beach resorts. When coastal wetlands are drained,
the soil is oxidized and carbon dioxide is released into the air, contributing to climate change. The'blue carbon'concept aims to protect some of the most endangered wetlands by assigning credits to their stored carbon2.
The credits can then be traded on a carbon market explains Emily Pidgeon, director of the marine climate change programme at Conservation International,
For starters, no one knows how much carbon is stored by wetlands around the world-largely because no one knows exactly how many seagrass beds
That means there is no good estimate of how much wetlands destruction contributes to global emissions. Stephen Crooks, climate change programme manager at the environmental consultancy ESA PWA in San francisco, California, estimates that emissions from drained mangroves and salt marshes total half a billion tonnes
protecting wetlands may not make a huge difference to anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions. Oceanographer Christoph Heinze at the University of Bergen, Norway, points out that the carbon sequestration abilities of wetland plants are
quite literally, a drop in the ocean compared with Earth's other carbon sinks. But Crooks points out that marine carbon circulation models have tended to consider wetlands'current carbon sequestration abilities,
yet ignore the impact of releasing thousands of years of stored carbon when the lands are dried out.
Pidgeon acknowledges that a financial system such as blue carbon credits is at least a decade down the line.
in parallel with further efforts to quantify the scale of Earth's wetlands and how much carbon they hold.
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011