Pesticides and other environmental contaminants are suspects and researchers have turned their attention to how pesticides might affect the honeybee navigation system memory and brain function.
The winter weather that has blasted the Midwest and the Northeastern United states hasn't won many fans.
I really do think it helps with some of the major insect problems that we have Robert Venette a biologist with the U s. Forest Service in Minnesota told NPR. 6 Invasive Pests Threatened by Cold weather The Earth's average temperature warmed 1. 53
degrees Fahrenheit (0. 85 degrees Celsius) from 1880 to 2012 according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
and animals that thrive in warmer climates have expanded their ranges. Many of the creatures with expanded ranges are invasive pests like the emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis) and the hemlock wooly adelgid (Adelges tsugae) both
But not all bugs succumb easily to icy weather and subfreezing temperatures. The emerald ash borer which burrows beneath the bark of ash trees to feed on the water
Only extended periods of very cold weather during the winter or subzero weather during the spring will have a real impact on the continued march of invasive species. Follow Marc Lallanilla on Twitter and Google+.
My neighbors and I we all knew that. But when they went we were shocked still and sad.
Nearly 40 years after the completion of the subdivision the relatively mature trees in our modest neighborhood are prized.
though and so most of us didn't realize that the primary thoroughfares of our neighborhood were shaded almost entirely by ash trees.
I drove back into the subdivision after work Our neighborhood had the look of a freshly shorn sheep with all its cuts
Every patch of flaking stucco every sagging gutter every DIY disaster all were exposed to the revealing sun. Suddenly my neighbors who generally don't live in the same bubble of conservation concern in which
but the feathery heads of the plants catch the wind with such grace it's hard not to be captivated.
or at least they did in Robert frost's snowy New england in Dust of Snow: The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree has given my heart A change of mood
And saved some Part of a day I had rued. I've rafted West virginia's Gauley River
It was cold the trail was icy and the sky overcast. But the hiking was beautiful.
But there was no doubt that the mood was set by the fresh snow lodged attractively in the boughs of the towering hemlock trees that line the gorge.
In the meantime expensive chemical treatments may keep enough hemlocks alive long enough to find a solution. 6 Invasive Pests Threatened by Cold weather Next time
1. 4 kg) though platypuses that live in colder climates are bigger than those living in warmer areas according to the Australian Platypus Conservatory.
or debris. Though they exist on only one side of one continent platypuses weather many climate extremes.
Disposable diapers last for hundreds of years in landfills and the average baby goes through 8000 diapers during its infancy according to the U s. Environmental protection agency. 6
One reason may be in organic farming s effects not on us but on the environment. In our study published in the Journal of Applied Ecology we re-analysed data collected on biodiversity one potential environmental benefit of organic farming.
We looked at data from 94 previous studies dating back to 1989 covering 184 farms with different crops in
So consumers who choose to buy organic food can be sure they are paying towards a method that generates an environmental benefit.
But in the tropics the situation may be different. A meta-analysis of published studies such as ours can only work with the literature available.
But the fact that organic crops may need more land is potentially a bigger problem in the tropics given that new farmland comes at the expense of clearing natural habitats.
Lindsay Turnbull receives funding from the Natural Environment Research Council. This article was published originally at The Conversation.
This is almost as large as the global warming in the past 150 years said Feng He lead study author and a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin Madison.
In contrast post-Industrial revolution societies are climate change rabbits with temperatures rising about 1. 53 degrees F (0. 85 degrees C) between 1880 and 2012 according to the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change. The study adds to an ongoing debate over the influence of preindustrial humans On earth's climate.
While 1850 is picked often as the kickoff for global warming human activities such as deforestation and agriculture could have shifted the climate earlier.
Ice cores suggest this is the case: carbon dioxide and methane levels over the past 8000 years don't follow their usual post-ice age trends.
The gases go up as human population booms instead of their usual decline. But some scientists say this is simply natural variability.
The idea that preindustrial humans significantly affected Earth's climate is still a hypothesis but it has huge climate implications He told Live Science.
The climate has some inertia and what has happened in the past 150 years may not be long enough to tell us what will happen in the future.
Top 10 Surprising Results of Global Warming He and his co-authors estimated past global temperatures with climate models that calculated the effects of land-cover changes such as deforestation and irrigation.
Their findings were published Jan 24 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The study compared climate models of a human-free Earth to a planet crawling with hunter-gatherers and farmers.
The researchers used estimates of past land-use from a 2011 study led by Jed Kaplan of The swiss Federal Institute of technology who built a detailed model of land-use over time based on historical and archaeological data.
In terms of long-term climate change the last several thousand years are unique because of this human factor in it He said.
The new research paints a different picture of the Arctic thousands of years ago said study co-author Joseph Craine an ecosystem ecologist at Kansas State university.
The ancient ecosystem was detailed today (Feb 5) in the journal Nature. Pretty landscape In the past scientists imagined that the now-vast Arctic tundra was once a brown grassland steppe that teemed with wooly mammoths rhinos and bison.
and reproduce in the otherwise sparse Arctic environment Craine told Live Science. Vanishing wildflowers Between 10000 and 15000 years ago forbs declined in the Arctic study co-author Mary E. Edwards a physical geographer at the University of Southampton in England wrote in an email.
Though it's not exactly clear why we do know from much other evidence that the climate changed at this time Edwards said.
and warmer wetter weather was prevailing. That climate allowed trees and shrubs to flourish and these would have outgrown forbs by shading them for example Edwards said.
It's also possible that the vanishing of these high-protein plants hastened the extinction of ice age beasts such as the woolly mammoth.
If a big jolt in climate disrupted one part of the chain for instance by depleting the forbs that may have led the whole system to collapse Edwards speculated.
This could bode well for alpine bumblebees in the future Dillon said as climate change may force animals up to higher elevations than they once inhabited due to warming conditions at lower elevations.
It is given important a lot of recent literature suggesting that many insects are moving up mountains in response to changing climates Dillon said.
The document details the health and environmental benefits derived from a diet supplemented by insects a diet also known as "
Not only does this eliminate the environmental hazards associated with<a href=http://www. livescience. com/13839-pesticide-babies-intelligence-iq-scores. html>pesticide sprays</a>it also gives the local people an extra source of nutrition
because they thrive in a temperate climate.</</p><p>The nutritional value of mealworms is hard to beat:
But late in 2013 severe rains in central Mexico knocked the blossoms off many lime trees greatly limiting this spring's crop.
and while they live in many different environments they have many things in common. While many people think rabbits are about the size of a cat some rabbit species such as the jackrabbit can grow to be as big as a small child.
Domestic rabbits need a regulated environment to protect against heat exhaustion or hypothermia. Wild rabbits don't have this problem
Warrens can be as deep as 9. 84 feet (3 meters) underground according to the Young People's Trust for the Environment.
It also allows them to stay cool in hot climates. Extra body heat is released through blood vessels in the ear.
and further study will help them understand the forest ecology and biodiversity in this region immediately before the dinosaurs fell.
We won't be able to fully understand the extinction dynamics until we understand what normal ecological processes were going on in the background study researcher Hans Larsson of Mcgill University said in a statement.
#California Tule Fog Becoming Increasingly Rare (Photo) At first glance this image might seem to show Central California covered in snow.
It's thick dense fog known as tule fog. Tule fog season in California is traditionally between November
and March when rains bring moisture to the state's Central Valley. The term tule comes from the plant of the same name (Schoenoplectus acutus)
A new study published May 16 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters found that the number of winter fog events declined by 46 percent over the past 32 winters.
Fish Rain & Fire Whirlwinds: The World's Weirdest Weather Vanishing fog The conditions varied year by year depending on the level of moisture study leader Dennis Baldocchi a biometeorologist at the University of California Berkeley said in a statement.
Generally when conditions are too dry or too wet we get less fog Baldocchi said.
If we're in a drought there isn't enough moisture to condense in the air. During wet years we need the rain to stop
so that the fog can form. This image of tule fog was taken Jan 17 2011 by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA's Terra satellite according to NASA's Earth Observatory
which released the image on June 5. Fog and fruit The decline of tule fog has pros
and cons. Dense fog frequently causes traffic accidents in the Central Valley some on a very large scale.
In 2007 for example dense fog on California's Highway 99 near Fresno caused an 108-car pileup that killed two people.
Fewer days of fog means less risk of deadly accidents. But tule fog is also crucial to the Central Valley's fruit and nut crop
which represent about 95 percent of U s. production of foods such as cherries almonds peaches and apricots according to UC Berkeley.
As fogs decline so have winter chills Baldocchi and his colleagues reported. The number of winter days with temperatures between 32 degrees and 45 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees to 7 degrees Celsius) in the Central Valley have dropped by several hundred in the past 60 years.
For fruit trees the fog and temperatures are related Baldocchi said. A shroud of fog shields the trees from sunlight keeping their buds cooler.
As a result farmers may need to cultivate more heat-hardy trees or move orchards to cooler spots.
California's current drought is unlikely to help matters as it is starving the state of the moisture needed to form tule fog.
California's final full snowpack survey of the winter on May 1 found that the moisture stored in the state's snow is at 18 percent of normal.
If you have an amazing weather or general science photo you'd like to share for a possible story
and massive volcanic eruptions doesn't sound like ideal habitat. But Earth's grinding plates the source of its deadly tectonics are actually one of the key ingredients that make it only planet with life in the solar system (found so far.
As a result they can't survive in environments with lower than 80 percent humidity for more than eight hours Mather said.
As a result nymphs congregate in leaf piles in shady humid environments so sticking to sunny areas can reduce tick exposure he said. 4. Change the landscape Most ticks around homes stay within a few yards of the interface between the yard
when the mercury rises. 7. Lighten up The clothes people wear should also be said light Kathryn Berger a disease ecologist at the University of Calgary in Canada.
These bats would never attack a person there's no reason for them to do so said Micaela Jemison a bat ecologist
They are an important part of our environment. See more photos of bats People also fear bats
Goblin sharks live in the deep ocean more than 200 meters 660 feet down where they would never encounter a human said Chip Cotton a fisheries ecologist at Florida State university.
and'fangy'and both factors cause some people to fear them said Chris Buddle an arachnologist who studies arthropod ecology at Mcgill University.
and they'll eat almost anything they play an important role in the ecosystem they clean up after everything else.
However in any environment niches are limited. That is why the diversity in a tropical forest cannot be explained by the exploitation of niches alone.
The competition for niches is shaped by species interactions with the environment which includes both abiotic elements (climate water soil
and such) and biotic elements (in other words other species). Tropical forests have stable abiotic environments so Coley and Kursar concluded it must be the biotic interactions that explain the extraordinary diversity in these forests.
They argue in an article just published in Science that an arms race between plants and plant-eaters is what drives evolutionary changes.
and has been applied to many other ecological scenarios. However so far biologists have found it hard to determine
To understand these defences on an ecosystem scale requires the use of metabolomics which is the study of chemical fingerprints left behind by an organism.
In a 2011 study published in the journal Functional Ecology Angela Moles the head of the Big Ecology Lab at the University of New south wales looked at all the data on interactions between plants
The record cold snap sweeping much of the United states blasted states hit hard by the emerald ash borer an invasive beetle that was detected first in 2002.
However temperatures under the tree bark could be two to seven degrees warmer than the air University of Minnesota ecologist Lee Frelich told Minnesota Public Radio.
Climate, Animals & Plants The Permian period was the final period of the Paleozoic era. Lasting from 299 million to 251 million years ago it followed the Carboniferous period
Because Pangaea was so immense the interior portions of the continent had a much cooler drier climate than had existed in the Carboniferous.
Fossils of the shallower coastal waters around the Pangaea continental shelf indicate that reefs were large and diverse ecosystems with numerous sponge
Arthropods continued to diversify during the Permian period to fill the niches opened up by the more variable climate.
At the end of the Permian the largest Synapsids became extinct leaving many ecological niches open. The second group of land animals the Sauropsid group weathered the Permian Extinction more successfully
which may have led to the collapse of marine ecosystems. Other scientists point to indications of a massive asteroid impacting the southernmost tip of the C# in
In the tropics in June the sun is low casting long shadows when the MODIS or Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer sensors that fly aboard NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites snap images
Climate in general (including drought but also extreme temperatures) is contributing. And deforestation of the butterflies'wintering habitat continues to be a concern.
However given that the widespread adoption of Round up Ready crops has eliminated largely the monarch's most essential habitat by removing milkweeds from the landscape it's time to reconsider
The Environmental Working group maintains a list of the produce items that it considers to be the most heavily sprayed with pesticides and other chemicals.
One of the reasons for the decline may have been the bad weather: 2013 had the coldest and wettest weather since 2009 according to Gallup.
Whether adults in any state exercise depends on other factors as well including the availability of places to exercise the average age of people in the state
and states can adopt to create an environment where the healthy choice is the easy choice environments where fruits
and several plans call for a reduced-pressure environment in the Mars habitats as well. In the near term before colonists can construct greenhouses they will have to use artificial light from LEDS for example to power their plants'photosynthesis. NASA has conducted plant-growth research in microgravity aboard the International Space station (ISS) and in the Long Duration Exposure
Still the effects that these factors will have on plant growth specifically in a Mars environment are still largely in the theoretical stages of research.
A manned construction in low-Earth orbit could simulate a low-gravity environment. Placing a laboratory near the International Space station (ISS) would be one logical way of doing this;
The lab section would have to replicate the atmospheric pressure suggested for future Mars habitats by Dr. Robert Zubrin President of The Mars Society.
Due to the reduced air pressure the crew's section might need to have elevated oxygen levels while the plant section would require elevated carbon dioxide levels to foster plant growth.
Special precautions would be necessary to minimize the danger of fire in the high-oxygen environment.
and shape of the earth and of the universe the movements of the sky and of the stars and what the gods intend##he wrote.
the ancient islanders never described themselves as Celts a name reserved for some continental neighbours.#
And to make a living my father had to practice the science of farming where rainfall is deficient.
Suddenly instead of floating on the crystalline waters of that stock-water storage tank I found myself standing waist-deep in my father's tailwater pit a bulldozed hole in the ground where he caught runoff from his flood-irrigated fields.
Although our entire history in that place depended on farming within the climate's limits my father like his neighbors had grasped on to new technology allowing him to irrigate out of the vast but virtually nonrenewable Ogallala Aquifer.
Aridity had given the grass that stretched beyond our farmhouse this transfixing blue-green cast that had complemented perfectly our pale blue overarching skies.
Howard Frumkin dean and professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle said the new study provides the strongest evidence to date that climate change could threaten the nutritional value of foods
#oeone of the cardinal features of climate change is higher carbon dioxide levels#said Frumkin who was involved not in the study.
This is exactly the kind of science we need to do to understand how to anticipate impacts of climate change on nutrition
which maintains a certain level of carbon dioxide by tracking wind-direction and carbon dioxide concentration. Myers group included crop scientists around the world who were conducting FACE experiments on 41 different genetic strains or cultivars#of grains and legumes over three continents.
David Wolfe a plant and soil ecologist at Cornell University in Ithaca New york said that
what liberating all that carbon into the Earth s atmosphere would do to the climate.
or dangerous climate change instead we can fret over peak phosphorous. Unlike moving from our current dependence on fossil fuels there is no alternative to phosphorus
or will we cook the climate? OK that s a false dichotomy. We could instead look at the current situation in which one billion people go hungry
#The Grocery store and Dinner plate Get Hit By Climate Change (Op-Ed) Frances Beinecke is the president of NRDC an environmental advocacy organization with 1. 4 million supporters nationwide served on the National Commission
on the BP Deepwater horizon Oil spill and Offshore Drilling and holds a leadership role in several environmental organizations.
But California farmers aren't the only ones struggling in the face of extreme weather.
According to the National Climate Assessment released on Tuesday many crops are expected to decline as a result of the drought heavy rains and pest outbreaks made worse by climate change.
That means higher prices at the store but also greater challenges for the farmers producing our food.
Scientists have been telling us what climate change looks like said Matt Russell a fifth-generation farmer in Lacona Iowa.
In Iowa hazardous weather between 2010 and 2012 caused losses totaling $4. 34 billion mainly in crop damage.
As Russell explained We are already experiencing the effects of climate change. It's going to be very difficult for us to continue to feed a growing population
if the agriculture systems we have in place now are no longer viable with the climate that's changed.
Extreme weather may require expensive new machines to handle rain-drenched fields or a shift in crops and planting cycles NRDC is calling on the U s. Department of agriculture to support farmers who are trying to become more resilient in the face of extreme weather.
But our nation must also tackle this crisis at its root: We must reduce the pollution that causes climate change.
Power plants are the largest source of U s. carbon pollution. The United states limits mercury arsenic and soot from power plants yet astonishingly there are no national limits on how much carbon these plants can dump into our atmosphere.
National Climate Assessment: Agriculture chapter This June the U s. Environmental protection agency (EPA) will propose the first-ever national limits on carbon pollution from existing power plants.
NRDC analysis shows that strong carbon limits would yield up to $60 billion in health and environmental benefits by 2020.
NRDC also found that energy efficiency provides the cheapest way for utilities to meet carbon limits
If America acts now to reduce carbon pollution we can help protect our communities from unchecked climate change
Through our site you can tell the EPA you support strong limits on dangerous carbon pollution.
The weather was warm. The sun shone on the meat. Corned beef is cooked in the can
People have been affecting the global climate system through land use for not just the past 200 to 300 years
Since the 1980s however deforestation has revealed massive earthworks in the form of ditches up to 16 feet (5 meters) deep and often just as wide.
These sediment cores hold ancient pollen grains and charcoal from long-ago fires and can hint at the climate
and ecosystem that existed when the sediment was laid down as far back as 6000 years ago.
The very oldest sediments didn't come from a rainforest ecosystem at all. In fact the Bolivian Amazon before about 2000 to 3000 years ago looked more like the savannas of Africa than today's jungle environment.
The question had been whether the early Amazon was deforested highly or barely touched Carson said. The surprising thing we found was that it was told neither he Live Science.
when people first arrived on the landscape the climate was drier. The pollen in this time period came mostly from grasses and a few drought-resistant species of trees.
The Amazon also drives climate as well as responds to it thanks to its ability to take up carbon from the atmosphere.
Stop talking I said beating the first blade out of the way as they came upon us like a thunderstorm and start singing.
#'Better'Burgers Worse for Health, No Better for Climate (Op-Ed) Elliott Negin is the director of news and commentary at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS.
Beef is the worst meat for the climate Before you begin searching high and low for a grass-fed burger
but both are bad for the climate. Agriculture accounts for about 6 percent of total U s. global-warming emissions and beef production alone accounts for 2. 2 percent of the total according to a 2011 Union of Concerned
The more beef Americans eat the worse global warming gets said Doug Boucher director of UCS's Tropical forest and Climate Initiative.
and the climate if they replaced beef with poultry or pork or ate less meat altogether.
Solutions for Deforestation-Free Meat found that beef production uses about 60 percent of the world's agricultural land
According to Boucher's 2012 study U s. beef consumption helps drive tropical deforestation which is now responsible for about 10 percent of the world's carbon emissions.
As demand for beef goes up worldwide so does deforestation. If U s. consumers ate less beef Boucher explained U s. producers would have more to export to other countries.
All of those are much better for the environment whether you're talking about climate emissions land use water use or nitrogen pollution.
Lowering demand he added also could help cut production here at home where beef cattle account for more than a third of all U s. agricultural heat-trapping emissions.
It might be better for the environment if we all became vegetarians but a lot of improvement could come from eating pork or chicken instead of beef.
Big Sky Shrinking Glaciers Fading Wildlife. This article was adapted from'Better'Burgers Worse for Your Health No Better for the Climate
which first appeared on the Huffington Post. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates and become part of the discussion on Facebook Twitter and Google+.
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