or are violated flagrantly usually without any consequences the environmental group WWF noted. Illegal logging has also become a way of life and source of income for many communities they added.
About 10 percent of the entire island now consists of single-crop monocultures such as these plantations according to the study that documented the deforestation published in PLOS ONE.
because deforestation isn't well-documented by local governments and some statistics kept by the Indonesia for example are highly suspect underestimating forest loss the authors wrote.
Scientists are working on varieties that survive disease drought and flood. So what exactly do consumers have to fear?
and individuality in this era of disrupted climate--an invisible force that is demonstrably wiping out some of our long-held agricultural certainties e
The gradient helps them deal with stresses such as weather and wearing. The China-U s. team published their steel gradient findings in two papers in the journals Materials Research Letters and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
and other environmental challenges traits he and others are eager to see introduced to North american breeds:
Schmidt s team s work is part of a five-year $4. 7 million climate change grant from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
if the climate does continue to change. Click here to read the full article l
Some environmental groups said that Obama didn't go far enough and should have done specifically some about neonicotinoid pesticides
in spite of positive scientific reviews finding Aquabounty fish safe to eat and safe for the environment.
Earlier he'd been photographing a brightly-colored fungus beetle for project called Meet Your Neighbors that's dedicated to reconnecting people with the wildlife on their own doorsteps
The Hoover dam just around the corner from the construction site releases water downstream to a series of smaller reservoirs and canals that deliver water to communities throughout the Southwest including my Los angeles neighborhood.
Climate will exacerbate the problem. Rainfall in the Colorado Basin could decrease 15 percent in the next 50 years.
We now know that these water rights were based on a grave misjudgment. The Colorado river is grossly overallocated says Peter Gleick a water expert with the Pacific Institute in Oakland California. ve given away more water than nature provides.
Climate change will only exacerbate the problem. Models predict that rainfall in the Colorado Basin could decrease by 15 percent in the next 50 years.
Even 10 percent is brutal says marine physicist Tim Barnett of Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
If climate change continues to dry out the region Barnett found in a 2009 study Colorado river water deliveries could fall short 60 to 90 percent of the time by midcentury.
Scientists can t say how much climate change is influencing the current drought and in a way it doesn t matter.
They do know climate change is happening and that it will make droughts worse. Many places are slow to prepare for such a future.
and farmers grow crops (such as rice) more appropriate to a wetland environment. Many residents water bills will remain disconnected from their actual usage eliminating any financial incentive to conserve until a new state law goes into effect in 2025.
Robert Kern is one of the water cops (officially investigators) employed to patrol neighborhoods looking for cheats.
This time of year residents are allowed only to water one day a week he says steering his pickup into a neighborhood of older single-family homes.
Kern often follows tips from neighbors. People are self-conscious about water use he says and they know the regulations.
The neighborhoods are policing themselves. When this development was built every home had a front and back lawn Kern says.
and the climate changes water will become more valuable and we ll have to spend more money to manage it properly.
and eradication effort quickly to avoid devastation of a sensitive island ecosystem and a culture so tied to the palm tree e
It is the most sweeping CO2 reduction in the power sector ever mandated by the Environmental protection agency
Gina Mccarthy head of the Environmental protection agency formally announced the plan this morning before an upbeat Washington D c. audience of federal staffers and officials.
EPA used emissions data from 2005--a benchmark the U s. has used as well at recent international climate talks--to estimate the overall reduction of 30 percent by 2030.
Under the Kyoto climate agreement which the U s. never ratified greenhouse gas emissions cuts were benchmarked at 1990 levels.
In the rule EPA identifies four building blocks for carbon-reduction strategies that are already being used by many states
Rising temperatures bring more smog more asthma and longer allergy seasons. If your kid doesn t use an inhaler consider yourself a lucky parent said Mccarthy
the same tired play from the same special-interest playbook they ve used for decades such as the creation of smog-reducing regulations in the 1960s or curbs on pollutants causing acid rain in the 1990s.
Mccarthy's sharp tone was of a piece with the Obama administration's recent pugnacity in affirming the scientific evidence that carbon pollution created by human activities has destabilized the climate
In 2007 the Supreme court upheld the EPA's authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate CO2 emissions from power plants--a leading cause of human-propelled global warming s long as the agency could affirm that the greenhouse gas
EPA made just such an endangerment finding in 2009 and has used this power since then to tighten up auto fuel economy standards as well as carbon regulations on new power plants and industrial facilities.
New EPA Regulations Would Force Power plants To Find 30%More Loopholes By 2030 http://t. co/W001fh9v3x pic. twitter. com/Qoqod8mzd
Standard procedure for performance capture is to confine actors to indoor green-screen environments and rely solely on head-mounted cameras to film their actions.
what he describes as the reality of camper trips (It rains. The kids get to fighting.
and no conception of the misery the discomfort and the danger that were man's constant neighbors.
By the time you've settled the quarrel with the neighbors your kids are making a sound like whooping cough.
No marriage no family can survive three rainy days cooped up in a camper. Your teenage daughter is in deep mourning for the steady she had to leave behind
She is a good little scout who loves to feel the rain on her face who adores the wind in her hair in a convertible.
Engineers working on in vitro meat hope their creations will be less harmful on the environment. But will they ever get there One new paper published yesterday in the journal Trends in Biotechnology aimed to find out.
While many scientists have calculated the environmental footprint of beef no one has done that for stem cell burgers.
Reader Jay pointed out there is at least one analysis of the environmental footprint of cultured meat.
Their surveys have also found that most samples from the general environment don't produce the toxin that causes food poisoning.
#How Global Warming Will Affect Your Beerthere are many things that will change as Earth's climate warms.
Climate change is expected to bring more frequent and more severe droughts to growing regions all over the world.
and growing new varieties of well-beloved crops is one of the many ways agriculture will have to adapt to climate change in the future u
Researchers had suspected that goats are intelligent based on their ability to colonize new and harsh environments to find
It will be the first time in decades that people have released water into the delta for environmental reasons instead of say
Ecologists hope those seeds will take root in the newly-wetted sand and drive out invasive salt cedars that have taken over.
Scientists themselves will proliferate in the area after the planned mini-flood. Hydrologists and ecologists will monitor where the water goes
and how trees and birds react. Scienceinsider Nature News
#Has The Reintroduction Of Wolves Really Saved Yellowstone? The story goes something like this: Once upon a time we exterminated the wolves from the Rocky mountain West including the part that would become Yellowstone national park.
But then interest in environmental conservation took hold. Scientists discovered that without wolves present in Yellowstone to hunt
and plants in harmful ways and the ecosystem became unbalanced. Or as science puts it we caused a harmful top-down trophic cascade by removing an apex predator the wolf from the food web.
So with conservation ethics and ecological science in pretty good alignment we reintroduced the wolves to Yellowstone where today they scare away the hungry elk herds from the tasty young willows.
in the opinion pages of The New york times. This story that wolves fixed a broken Yellowstone by killing and frightening elk is one of ecology s most famous he wrote.
(which The New york times actively curates for signal over noise) with some readers protesting that the wolves have been crucial to Yellowstone's ecological revival.
As a Phd ecologist myself it's hard to see how 60%fewer elk could affect vegetation as much as before.
Journalist Emma Marris who recently wrote about wolf/ecosystem science for the journal Nature finds that Middleton's stance aligns with a growing body of evidence.
Some of the recent studies suggest that trophic cascades in land-based ecosystems are more center out than top-down composed of many many radial lines of cause
or breaks a healthy ecosystem. Every population of wolves has a different interesting story going on with them says Marris.'
And in some it's a question of how they're interacting with the rest of the ecosystem.
That was caused by the absence of wolves but also presumably by human management decisions climate and other factors.
Without beaver dams creating willow-friendly environments Marris says the willows can't recover. In reporting her article Marris learned that beyond the pages of scientific journals the gaps between researchers who do
Generally it's accepted that there is a lot more involved in balancing an ecosystem. But some still believe carnivores are somewhat special in their top-down effects on the ecosystem she says.
Wolves generate a lot of emotion as well as attention because they've become a bell-weather for the fate of wilderness.
What's most at risk as we debate the role of wolves in the ecosystem seems to be our hope for a really straightforward story that explains
#8 Steps To Sustainable Meat And Milkglobally deforestation driven by clearing land for cattle alone accounts for close to one-fifth of global greenhouse gas pollution.
or thousands of cows in CAFOS (concentrated animal feedlot operations) often leads to water pollution and air pollution the latter largely methane a powerful heat-trapping gas that contributes to destabilizing the climate.
Livestock account for 14.5%of human-induced greenhouse-gas emissions exceeding that from transportation notes the report.
To add to the environmental insults meat animals are fed about 1 billion metric tons a year of the same cereal grains that humans consume increasing the pressure on supplies of food and fresh water.
Publlished this week in the journal Nature the strategies favor diverse approaches tailored to local conditions rather than a universal approach that ignores local cultures geographies economies and environmental realities.
It's about developing the correct system for the correct environment says Lee in the podcast.
#The Garbage Manin December 2001 American environmental activist Jim Puckett traveled to the town of Guiyu in southeast China to look for old computers.
There were piles of burning wires clouds of noxious fumes and fields of gooey sludge. Puckett met people blackened head-to-toe with printer toner.
and neighborhood concentrating on a particular kind of recycling. Some burned electrical wires in open pits to recover the copper.
In the soil the level of chromium was 1338 times higher than the EPA s environmental risk standard.
He was soon winning grants and loans from the State of California the Environmental protection agency and the Departments of Energy and Commerce.
He coined the use of the term environmental arbitrage to describe this shifting of waste from rich nations to poor ones
All of this has upped both his profile and the topic of environmental arbitrage. In 2007 Biddle was named an Earthkeeper Hero a tribute previously given to Jane Goodall Jacques Cousteau and Rachel Carson.
In 2010 The Economist honored him with one of its awards for energy and the environment (along with Steve jobs and Harald zur Housen a Nobel-winning cancer researcher).
Last April the EPA interpreted an obscure rule to explicitly allow for the first time the recycling of plastic from auto-shredder residue in the U s. something Biddle has been doing in England since 2011.
He points to other signs that suggest a groundswell of popular support for dealing with environmental arbitrage.
He s attending a dinner hosted by the Climate Change Forum ith guest ministers of trade
and environment from several countries nd he s having lunch with Britain s head of green economy in the department for economic growth.
Woodon a cloudy day in early October the architect Andrew Waugh circles the base of a nondescript apartment tower in Shoreditch a neighborhood in East London.
Recently though the neighborhood has come roaring back. Nightclubs and tech start-ups arrived first on the promise of cheap rent
Its gray and white facade blends almost seamlessly into the overcast London skies. It s what s inside that makes Stadthaus stand out.
When the Australian arm of Lend lease a global project management and construction company began to design Fortã Â a 10-story apartment building in the docklands neighborhood of Melbourne its engineers were not considering mass timber.
But the biggest driving force behind the turn toward wood is a growing awareness among architects and developers about their field s contribution to climate change.
In other words wolves are vital for the proper function of the ecosystem as we know it (something that has been shown over and over again
My neighbour and an excellent naturalist J. Lubbock is an enthusiastic convert. I see that you are doing great work in the Archipelago;
which may come from the space station's environment. These are the same types of tests we routinely conduct on the food grown On earth Bugbee says.
The EPA met on Tuesday (Jan 28) to discuss safety issues regarding the technique and will report on the proceedings within 90 days.
and horizontally and hover in place against gusting wind. It weighs 19 grams ighter than some AA batteries ut it carries a camera communications systems and an energy source.
The Instanteye is far better at recovering from wind gusts and minor collisions than other drones are
and insects are suited perfectly for environments where you have dynamic obstructions he trees are moving the branches are moving.
or the environment and help pollinate crops. Research scientists could use them to gather data in the field.
when really they just hadn't looked past the languages in their own neighborhoods. Check out some of the words Jahai speakers have for smells.
With this study scientists at the University of Queensland have found that the so-called waggle dance bees perform translates that polarized light map of the sky into the movement that guides others.
and signal the direction of their flight by using information that is based purely on the polarized-light pattern of the sky the study reads.
of satellite data from the University of Maryland and the Smithsonian Environmental Research center in Edgewater Md.
The mangroves'march up the coast as far north as St augustine Fla. is a striking example of one way climate change's impacts show up in nature.
Rising temperatures lead to new patterns of extreme weather which in turn cause major changes in plant communities say the study's authors.
or are transformed by climate change. The mangrove forests are edging out salt marshes said University of Maryland Entomology Professor Daniel S. Gruner a study co-author.
This is what we would expect to see happening with climate change one ecosystem replacing another said Gruner who co-leads an interdisciplinary research project on mangrove ecosystems along with Ilka C. Feller of the Smithsonian.
One valuable ecosystem replaces another--at what cost? Some people may say this is a good thing because of the tremendous threats that mangroves face said the study's lead author Kyle Cavanaugh a Smithsonian postdoctoral research fellow.
which have important ecosystem functions and food webs of their own. Mangrove forests grow in calm shallow coastal waters throughout the tropics.
Salt marshes fill that niche in temperate zones. Both provide crucial habitat for wildlife including endangered species and commercially valuable fish and shellfish.
Some animals use both types of habitat. Others like marsh-nesting seaside sparrows or the honey bees that produce mangrove honey rely on one or the other.
Both provide valuable ecosystem services buffering floods storing atmospheric carbon and building soils. Both are in decline nationally and globally.
Study used satellite photos the gold standard in climate change Cavanaugh an expert in remote sensing turned to photographs of Florida's Atlantic coast taken by NASA's Landsat 5
It very quickly became a gold standard to examine the effects of climate change because it lets you look back in time Cavanaugh said.
Average winter temperature rainfall and urban or agricultural land use did not explain the mangroves'expansion.
whether the change will affect coastal ecosystems'ability to store carbon; and whether juvenile fish and commercially valuable shellfish will remain abundant in the changing plant communities.
This flood of antibiotics released into the environment--sprayed on fruit trees and fed to the likes of livestock poultry and salmon among other uses--has led bacteria to evolve Hollis writes.
Mounting evidence cited in the journal shows resistant pathogens are emerging in the wake of this veritable flood of antibiotics--resulting in an increase in bacteria that is immune to available treatments.
Bacteria is spread in the environment; it might wind up on a doorknob. You walk away with the bacteria on you
The findings published online in the journal Functional Ecology may help land managers make decisions about which trees to cull and
while he and Jeffry Mitton a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology were walking through a stand of high-elevation limber pines.
#Clues to how plants evolved to cope with coldresearchers have found new clues to how plants evolved to withstand wintry weather.
The results suggest that many plants acquired characteristics that helped them thrive in colder climates--such as dying back to the roots in winter--long before they first encountered freezing.
Fossil evidence and reconstructions of past climatic conditions suggest that early flowering plants lived in warm tropical environments explained co-author Jeremy Beaulieu at the National Institute for Mathematical & Biological Synthesis (NIMBIOS) at the University
and stem data onto their evolutionary tree for flowering plants they found that many plants were equipped well for icy climates even before cold conditions hit.
Similarly species with narrow water transport cells acquired a finer circulatory system well before they confronted cold climates.
This suggests that some other environmental pressure--possibly drought--caused these plants to evolve this way
As a next step the researchers plan to use their evolutionary tree to find out how plants evolved to withstand other environmental stresses in addition to freezing such as drought and heat.
and the associated marginal costs labor requirements risks and environmental impacts may outweigh the benefits. Story Source:
Academy scientist Brian Fisher an entomologist who specializes in the study of ants calls them the glue that holds ecosystems together.
Ants are one of the most important members of ecosystems says Fisher. They turn over more soil than earthworms.
and diverged to succeed in lowland and highland elevations from tropical islands to dry environments.
#Efforts to curb climate change require greater emphasis on livestockwhile climate change negotiators struggle to agree on ways to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions they have paid inadequate attention to other greenhouse gases associated with livestock according to an analysis
A reduction in non-CO2 greenhouse gases will be required to abate climate change the researchers said.
The researchers analysis#oeruminants Climate Change and Climate Policy#is being published today as an opinion commentary in Nature Climate Change a professional journal.
and the United states reached their conclusions on the basis of a synthesis of scientific knowledge on greenhouse gases climate change and food and environmental issues.
and Agricultural organization the United nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and recent peer-reviewed publications.#
#oebecause the Earth s climate may be near a tipping point to major climate change multiple approaches are needed for mitigation#said Ripple.#
The authors also observed that on a global basis ruminant livestock production is having a growing impact on the environment:
#oereducing demand for ruminant products could help to achieve substantial greenhouse gas reductions in the near-term#said co-author Helmut Haberl of the Institute of Social Ecology in Austria#oebut implementation of demand changes represent a considerable
#Among agricultural approaches to climate change reducing demand for meat from ruminants offers greater greenhouse gas reduction potential than do other steps such as increasing livestock feeding efficiency or crop yields per acre.
Nevertheless they wrote policies to achieve both types of reductions#oehave the best chance of providing rapid and lasting climate benefits.#
and environmental conservation involving water quality wildlife habitat and biodiversity#he explained. Agricultural researchers are also studying methane reduction through improved animal genetics
International climate negotiations such as the UNFCCC have not given#oeadequate attention#to greenhouse gas reductions from ruminants they added.
For a long time many scientists have focused specifically on one place to understand environmental impact but that no longer is said enough Liu the director of MSU's Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability and the Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability.
Economic development and environmental conservation in one place are increasingly having substantial influence elsewhere and spill over into places we don't consider.
Deforestation that eases in China tends to reappear in the countries that sell them lumber
Telecoupling is socioeconomic and environmental interactions over distances. It goes beyond the idea of connection as telecoupling factors in actions and reactions over distances.
Spreading the message of environmental protection can be a forest's friend while spreading knowledge of technology can make powerful efficient machinery available that harvests forests more efficiently.
On the other hand female birds needed to blend into their surroundings in order to nest safely and protect their young--so they became drab and dull to protect themselves
--whether they have an environmental basis and/or whether they have a signalling function between birds of different sexes or within the same sex.
and environmental conditions said Gluckman. Thanh-Lan Gluckman is a Phd candidate in the Evolutionary genetics group at the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge.
This variability means that the success of bacterial fertilizers might depend on developing tailor-made versions for different crop cultivars and environments.
While two of the most abundant bacteria did not have noticeable effects on plant growth Burkholderia australis was doing quite well in competition with other soil bacteria in the environment
#Big data project reveals where carbon-stocking projects in Africa provide greatest benefitsit is recognized increasingly that climate change has the potential to threaten people
and nature and that it is imperative to tackle the drivers of climate change namely greenhouse gases.
One way to slow climate change is to increase the number of trees On earth as they through photosynthesis take up the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide converting it to carbon products
and to big sizes but where past disturbances such as deforestation fires and degradation have resulted in much of the vegetation being destroyed because the difference between
Combining it with data on environmental factors that affect plant growth such as climate and soil they could model the maximum amount of carbon that could be stored in vegetation across tropical Africa.
For example a densely populated agricultural area with high levels of rainfall and temperatures might bring high carbon returns;
and support ecosystem services that is services that the environment provides which benefit humans. The areas also had to have low land value
but has an excellent climate for tree growth and thus has a high potential for carbon stocking through forests.
Their findings are published online in the journal Forest Ecology and Management. We found we have a native predator that is able to detect
and the impact on the ecosystem Flower said. In this study the researchers wanted to see
and woodpecker activity in the area said Christopher Whelan an avian ecologist with the Illinois Natural history Survey UIC adjunct assistant professor of biology
Very little is known about emerald ash borer habits in its native environment its natural predators
or recreational needs and uses and cost-effective natural resource management to maintain the health of the ecosystem said John J. Mack chief conservation and education officer.
and changing the Island for thousands of years the Conservancy is always seeking new approaches to ensuring the long-term use and ecological health of Catalina Island.
while the environment and people who have lost land to tobacco estates are the major losers in Malawi's expanding tobacco industry.
This is according to Alois Mandondo of the Centre for Agrarian and Environmental Studies in Zimbabwe. Mandondo as leader of a study published in Springer's journal Human ecology believes that concerted and coordinated efforts are needed to solve the related dilemmas faced by this African country.
To assess the social economic and environmental impacts and trade-offs of investing in Malawi's tobacco industry Mandondo and his team focused on two prime tobacco growing districts in the Miombo woodlands.
The high rate of tobacco-induced deforestation is also a major environmental concern. Deforestation is caused by continued plantation expansion
and the subsequent unsustainable wood-sourcing practices in an effort to provide low-cost fuel to dry
This in turn ratchets up the potential for rapid deforestation there as well. The major lesson appears to be that there is no single solution to any of the problems:
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