and artificial selection gene regulation and gene-environment interaction as well as biotechnological approaches to customize the crop to different uses in the production of sugar
which is at the center of a debate about how to minimize flood damage and maximize water availability in the tropics.
During nearly 450 tropical storms a team of visiting scientists from the University of Wyoming measured the amount of runoff from pastureland abandoned pastureland
and forested land as part of a large-scale land-use experiment in the Panama canal watershed initiated by STRI.
The result for storm peaks is said spectacular Robert Stallard hydrologist at STRI and the United states Geological Survey who developed the statistics for data analysis.
Storm-water runoff from grazed land is much higher than from forested land. The results are clearest after big storms.
On the other hand forests released more water than grasslands and mixed-use landscapes during the late dry season pointing to the importance of forests in regulating water flow throughout the year in seasonal climates.
Evidence to support the sponge effect was lacking for tropical forests leading some to question its validity.
In 2010 a major December storm system examined in this study halted shipping in the canal for 17 hours.
The study is particularly relevant to land use decisions throughout the tropics where more than 50 percent of forests are now secondary forests that have grown back after logging or on abandoned pastureland.
The 700-hectare Panama watershed experiment also known as Agua Salud will run for 20 to 30 years making it the largest ongoing study of land use in the tropics.
Our project aims to clearly quantify environmental services such as water flow carbon storage and biodiversity conservation that decision makers will consider as they evaluate projects from forest restoration to watershed management said Jefferson Hall Smithsonian staff scientist and project director.
High-fiber salad bar may help lagomorphs survive climate changein some mountain ranges Earth's warming climate is driving rabbit relatives known as pikas to higher elevations
But University of Utah biologists discovered that roly-poly pikas living in rockslides near sea level in Oregon can survive hot weather by eating more moss than any other mammal.
Our work shows pikas can eat unusual foods like moss to persist in strange environments says biology professor Denise Dearing senior author of the new study published online today in the February 2014 issue
It suggests that they may be more resistant to climate change than we thought. The study's first author biology doctoral student Jo Varner says:
By consuming mosses that grow on the rockslides where they live the pikas are released from foraging outside the safety
Varner says the findings suggest Northwest residents may want to preserve moss that often covers rockslides which are known as talus slopes.
and traipsing all over rockslides and trampling moss cover has become a popular pastime in the gorge she adds.
Pikas are native to cold alpine climates--often above 8200 feet elevation--in North america Asia and Eastern europe.
Environmentalists disagreed calling them mascots for climate change. In the Cascade range they live as high as the snow line some 7000 feet on slumbering volcanoes such as 11230-foot Mount Hood east of Portland Ore.
Yet their population extends thousands of feet all the way down the north slope of Mount Hood to the often wet foggy Columbia river Gorge
A 2009 study documented these pikas lived in a warmer wetter climate than usual. But until now no one had looked at exactly how they survive.
The scientists surveyed the abundance of lichens mosses ferns grasses sedges rushes forbs shrubs and trees along the two rockslides.
Less snow cover low in the Columbia Gorge--only about 20 days per winter--means the pikas there collect smaller haypiles (about 10 pounds per animal per year by dry weight) for winter than do pikas at high elevations
what's best for land ecosystems is also best for coastal corals. The study appears in the online edition of Marine Policy.
but also how much they benefit coral reef ecosystems said lead author Dr. Carissa Klein. Thinking about the connections between the land and sea is done rarely
Most managers realize how downstream ecosystems such as coral reefs can be affected negatively by land-based activities that cause increases in runoff and associated sediments nutrients and chemicals.
and additional forest areas were added to the final register of priority places for management endorsed by the Fiji government National Environment Council in October 2013.
and link land to sea conservation helps to ensure the long term security of their globally important coral reef ecosystems while supporting the livelihoods and resilience of coastal communities.
what may be a warmer and drier future climate. The research was supported by the Tree Biosafety and Genomics Research Cooperative at OSU.
Agencies are likely to require extensive studies of gene flow and their effects on forest ecosystems
which together with further ecological research might provide a socially acceptable path for commercial deployment.
Taxonomy and nine new combinationsthe sweet-gum family Altingiaceae is a small group of wind-pollinated trees that produce hard woody fruits that contain numerous seeds.
so that it behaves differently with its environment Moon said. Zavattieri plans to extend his research to study the properties of alpha-chitin a material from the shells of organisms including lobsters crabs mollusks and insects.
chickens and pigs drives climate change hoofprintthe resources required to raise livestock and the impacts of farm animals on environments vary dramatically depending on the animal the type of food it provides the kind of feed it consumes
and where it lives according to a new study that offers the most detailed portrait to date of livestock ecosystems in different parts of the world.
The study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) is the newest comprehensive assessment assembled of
so that the debate over the role of livestock in our diets and our environments and the search for solutions to the challenges they present can be informed by the vastly different ways people around the world raise animals said Herrero.
The initial work was funded by ILRI and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change Agriculture and Food security (CCAFS.
and environmental risks notably greenhouse gases produced by the energy and transport services needed for industrial livestock production
so we can get a fuller picture of how livestock in all these different regions interact with their ecosystems and
#Climate change puts 40%more people at risk of absolute water scarcity, study sayswater scarcity impacts people's lives in many countries already today.
Yet in addition to this on the supply side water resources will be affected by projected changes in rainfall and evaporation.
Climate change due to unabated greenhouse-gas emissions within our century is likely to put 40 percent more people at risk of absolute water scarcity than would be without climate change a new study shows by using an unprecedented number of impact models.
effort to bring research on climate change impacts to a new level. The steepest increase of global water scarcity might happen between 2 and 3 degrees global warming above preindustrial levels
unless emissions get cut soon says lead-author Jacob Schewe of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
but our study is the first to quantify the relative share that climate change has compared in that to
Population growth and climate change combined would increase this to about ten in a hundred at roughly 3 degrees global warming.
As climate change is not uniform across the world the regional differences of its impacts on water availability are huge.
This study is based on a comprehensive set of eleven global hydrological models forced by five global climate models--a simulation ensemble of unprecedented size
Hence the findings synthesize the current knowledge about climate change impacts on water availability. The cooperative ISI-MIP process systematically compares the results of the various computer simulations to see where they agree
Unique multi-model assessment allows for risk-management perspectivethe multi-model assessment is unique in that it gives us a good measure of uncertainties in future impacts of climate change
if human-made climate change continues we are putting at risk the very basis of life for millions of people even according to the more optimistic scenarios and models.
The above story is provided based on materials by Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK. Note:
#Assessing the impact of climate change on a global scalethirty research teams in 12 different countries have compared systematically state-of-the-art computer simulations of climate change impact to assess how climate change might influence global drought water scarcity
#¢Adverse climate change impacts can combine to create global'hotspots'of climate change impacts. Dr Simon Gosling from the School of Geography at The University of Nottingham co-authored four papers in this unique global collaboration.
For the project--'Intersectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI-MIP)'-Dr Gosling contributed simulations of global river flows to help understand how climate change might impact on global droughts water scarcity and river flooding.
I jointly-led with the Met Office that estimated the potential impacts of unabated climate change for 23 countries.
Those reports helped major economies commit to take action on climate change that is demanded by the science at the 17th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP17) in Durban.
Another paper co-authored by Dr Gosling shows that without reductions in global greenhouse-gas emissions 40 per cent more people are likely to be at risk of absolute water scarcity than would be the case without climate change.
More water under climate change is not necessarily always a good thing. While it can indeed help alleviate water scarcity assuming you have the infrastructure to store it
The ISI-MIP team describe how adverse climate change impacts like flood hazard drought water scarcity agriculture ecosystems
and malaria can combine to create global'hotspots'of climate change impacts4. The study is the first to identify hotspots across these sectors
while being based on a comprehensive set of computer simulations both for climate change and for the impacts it is causing.
The findings of the ISI-MIP are amongst the scientific publications that feed into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working group II report on climate change impacts to be presented in March 2014.
The IPCC Working group I report on physical climate science was published in September 2013. Dr Gosling's 23-volume report Climate:
observations projections and impacts commissioned by the Department of energy and Climate Change (DECC) which he jointly led with the UK Met Office addressed an urgent international need for scientific evidence on the impact of climate change to be presented in a consistent format
for different countries particularly those that lack an adequate research infrastructure to facilitate valid international comparisons.
Since COP17 the research has prompted governments to reconsider their options for adapting to climate change.
#Lost freshwater may double climate change effects on agriculturea warmer world is expected to have severe consequences for global agriculture
Now a new analysis combining climate agricultural and hydrological models finds that shortages of freshwater used for irrigation could double the detrimental effects of climate change on agriculture.
Given the present trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions agricultural models estimate that climate change will directly reduce food production from maize soybeans wheat and rice by as much as 43 percent by the end of the 21st century.
But hydrological models looking at the effect of warming climate on freshwater supplies project further agricultural losses due to the reversion of 20 to 60 million hectares of currently irrigated fields back to rain-fed crops.
and an effect that's basically on the same order of magnitude as the direct effect of climate change said Joshua Elliott a research scientist with the Computation Institute's Center for Robust Decision making on Climate
So the effect of limited irrigation availability in some regions could end up doubling the effect of climate change.
Agricultural models and hydrological models both incorporate the influence of climate but are designed by different scientific communities for different purposes.
and other climate factors may alter the yield for various crops hydrological models seek to estimate water-related characteristics such as stream flow water availability and storm runoff.
But when Elliott and colleagues fed each type of model with the same climate model forecasts the models produced dramatically different predictions about the future demand for freshwater irrigationthe researchers discovered discrepancies in how hydrological models incorporate processes such as the carbon cycle
The comparison also produced new insight about the potential agricultural consequences of climate change. Due to climate change alone the models predicted a loss of between 400 and 2600 petacalories of food supply 8 to 43 percent of present day levels.
But due to the decline in freshwater availability--and the associated conversion of irrigated cropland to rain-fed--the models predict an additional loss of 600 to 2900 petacalories the researchers discovered.
or add irrigation to rain-fed crop areas could dampen some of the consequences of climate change upon irrigation
We found that maximal usage of available surplus freshwater could end up ameliorating between 12 and 57 percent of the negative direct effects of climate change on food production Elliott said.
which conducted a fast-track exercise to generate new knowledge about climate change impacts on agriculture for the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Understanding the climate change implications of freshwater availability is key to the future food security goals of society said Cynthia Rosenzweig co-primary investigator of Agmip.
The rigorous Agmip multi-model approach is enabling advances in research on how climate change will affect agriculture worldwide
#European springtime temperature benefits Alpine ibex vitalitya study published December 16th 2013 in the journal Ecology Letters provides new evidence for the dependency of local trophic interactions
on large-scale climate dynamics and reveals positive effects of recent climate change for the Monarch of The alps.
Dendrochronology methods appliedan interdisciplinary group of scientists including biologists climatologists and ecologists from Switzerland Norway and the US debuts in applying existing methods of tree-ring research (dendrochronology*)to analyze annual horn growth rates of the Alpine ibex (Capra ibex**)
**For this purpose climatic drivers of horn growth were disentangled from the effects of animal age and the individual year of harvesting.
(i e. air masses originating in the North Atlantic) synchronizes annual horn growth rates of male ibex living in different regions and altitudes.
The resulting record offers exceptional insight into the relationship between large-scale climate conditions local trophic interactions and the animals'overall performance states Ulf BÃ ntgen head of this study.
and climate variability and emphasize the importance of other factors. Further analyses are necessary to fully understand the complete potential of the ibex dataset in Grison.
The above story is provided based on materials by Swiss Federal Institute for Forest Snow and Landscape Research WSL.
Turning chicken feathers and plant fiber into eco-leather, bio-based circuit boardsthe Environmental protection agency has honored the University of Delaware's Richard Wool with its Presidential Green chemistry Challenge Award for his extensive
Wool was recognized We during a presentation at EPA headquarters in Washington D c. on Dec 11. Now in its 18th year the EPA awards program recognizes the design of safer and more sustainable chemicals processes and products.
Awards are conferred annually in five categories: Academic Small Business Greener Synthetic Pathways Greener Reaction Conditions and Designing Greener Chemicals.
and foams--even circuit boards hurricane resistant energy efficient roofs and leather substitutes. Finding low toxicity replacements for commodity plastics such as polystyrene and PVC adhesives foams
if we are to benefit the environment and human health said Wool. Wool became passionate about sustainability in the early 1990s
I became critically aware of the issues surrounding waste management recycling climate change and the protection of our natural resources he said.
He developed hurricane resistant roofing with colleagues in UD's civil and environmental engineering department in response to issues in global warming.
and the environment said Wool. This award lends credibility to what we are doing and my hope is that it will cause some to give us a second look.
In issuing this statement the academy takes the same position as the American Medical Association the American Veterinary Medical Association the International Association for Food Protection the National Environmental Health Association the U s
or the organisms are somewhere in their environment and the milk can be contaminated with them Maldonado said.
Researchers from the Finnish Environment Institute and the Finnish Forest Research Institute (Metla) participated in this research
By critical nitrogen loads we refer to nitrogen deposition known to have harmful effects on the functions of more sensitive organisms in the ecosystem.
since northern forest ecosystems are highly sensitive to the effects of excess nitrogen. Such areas in Finland include nutrient-poor
and growth of nitrogen-favouring species. The effects of nitrogen deposition on Finland's forest vegetation can only be investigated with the assistance of a permanent environmental monitoring network.
The above story is provided based on materials by Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Those problems would likely occur in buildings with cracked foundations that happen to be in the vicinity of fuel spills.
Vapors that rise from contaminated groundwater can be sucked inside according to Rice environmental engineer Pedro Alvarez.
The Rice study detailed this week in the American Chemical Society journal Environmental science and Technology emerges as the Environmental protection agency (EPA) prepares technical guidance for higher ratios of ethanol in fuels.
The safe distances (between buildings and groundwater) that the EPA are setting up are going to work well 95 percent of the time said Alvarez a member of the agency's Science Advisory board.
The atmospheric pressure was assumed to be slightly less inside than outside. The simulations determined that when there is no generation of methane from a plume benzene would not be a problem--even for sources less than a meter below a foundation.
The paper's co-authors include Hong Luo an environmental hydrologist at the Chevron Energy Technology Co.;
and William Rixey an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Houston.
and Kansas where farmers can't pump enough water to meet the demands of their crops said Bruno Basso co-author and MSU ecosystem scientist.
and reduce environmental impact. When you have a cut in your hand and need disinfectant you don't dive into a pool of medicine you apply it only where you need it and in the quantity that is strictly necessary;
Policies solidly grounded in science are critical to ensure long-term sustainability and environmental integrity for future generations.
#Environmental history key to future of Englands wildlifeprotecting and enhancing our wildlife for future generations will need radical new policies informed by history as much as science according to an academic at the University of East Anglia.
In his new book An Environmental History of Wildlife in England 1650--1950 Prof Williamson examines how the number
when the environment was transformed by unprecedented levels of population growth large scale urbanisation economic globalisation and successive revolutions in agriculture and industry.
These great environmental changes had a profound impact on the country's flora and fauna but a less uniformly negative one than is assumed often.
and explains how the environments in which such creatures made their homes developed and adapted often in surprising ways to new conditions.
The environment of England faces more challenges and more complex challenges than perhaps ever before said Prof Williamson.
Our insatiable demand for energy threatens to cover the rural landscape with wind turbines and solar farms.
Above all globalization and perhaps climate change bring not only more foreign plants and invertebrates to these shores but also--more worrying by far--new pests and diseases especially of trees such as the recent ash chalara.
The book published this month by Bloomsbury draws on a wide variety of social historical and ecological sources.
Most people today probably think of the countryside as in some sense'natural'certainly in comparison with the environment of towns said Prof Williamson.
and in other contexts rather than watching wildlife adapt--as it has done always in the past--to changes wrought to the environment primarily for our own practical and economic benefit.
and filled the same ecological role that kangaroos or deer play today. But no one had suspected that they
Secondary forests in the tropics are normally cut within a few decades and very often in less than 10 years said Michiel van Breugel postdoctoral fellow at STRI
Perhaps the most extensive of its kind in the tropics van Breugel's study suggests that forests subjected to regular human disturbance may undergo profound long-lasting tree biodiversity loss.
The research was conducted on the Smithsonian's 700-hectare Panama canal Watershed Experiment a long-term research site designed to quantify ecosystem services provided by different land uses.
To the authors'knowledge this was the first metacommunity study of its kind ever conducted in the tropics.
The research underscores the importance of protecting old forests to maintain the tree diversity for which the tropics are famous.
and analyses of their teeth indicated they relied heavily on eating grasses in the grassy woodland environment.
Testosterone levels are highly reactive to environmental factors including pathogens parasites and food scarcity. If you get sick at all you see a decrease in testosterone said Trumble.
if population growth climate change and political instability will affect the open market. Several partners in the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU) are behind the study.
if climate change has large effects on food production and other parts of the food chain in the future says John R Porter.
Human intervention in coastal areas and climate change also make life difficult for mangrove seedlings.
High tide. Due to the currents and waves that accompany high tide sedimentation and erosion can prevent seedlings from becoming established on the bare tidal flat.
During sedimentation material carried by the water sinks to the l bed and accumulates there essentially burying the seedlings.
Erosion is another factor whereby soil particles are removed from the bed by water currents. Many limiting factors However the seedlings also work against themselves.
Due to their own buoyancy it takes some time before they become firmly anchored in the soil
and waves that accompany high tide. And after the seedlings are anchored in the soil their growth process can still fail
Experiments in wave tanks To study all these aspects in detail Balke set up an experiment in Singapore to simulate the various rates of sedimentation and erosion at high tide.
In combination with wind data and tidal time series Balke developed models for the establishment of young mangrove forests by predicting windows of opportunity:
Moreover with this information we can create scenarios to predict the consequences of climate change on mangroves.'
For example in Indonesia mangrove rehabilitation projects are being developed using brushwood groynes to counteract erosion and enable mangrove seedlings to develop.
or surface renewal of agricultural systems that are threatened by water scarcity and climate change. These systems provide growers with real-time data needed to make irrigation decisions said Dr. Andrew Mcelrone a US Department of agriculture
Among the numerous variables involved in the calculation process the system measures wind temperature and speed soil temperature fluctuation and a process called evapotranspiration or water evaporation through soil and the surfaces of plants.
but it is an effective environmental management and recovery tool against agribusiness deforestation a new study from Indiana University and Brazil's Oswaldo Cruz Foundation has found.
Many indigenous peoples in Brazil have practiced hunting with fire and today Brazil's Xavante Indians often use fire to hunt game for ceremonial occasions such as weddings and rites of initiation.
While the practice has also often been blamed for causing deforestation and increasing carbon dioxide emissions the new study dispels this popular myth.
Based on analysis of 37 years of satellite imagery and long-term fieldwork the researchers determined that hunting with fire by the Xavante Indians actually maintained ecological integrity
Neotropical Savanna Recovery Amid Agribusiness Deforestation in Central Brazil the deforested area under indigenous management inside the Pimentel Barbosa Indigenous Reserve decreased from 1. 9 percent in 2000 to 0. 6
In contrast deforestation in surrounding lands remaining under agribusiness management increased from 1. 5 percent to 26 percent during the same period.
By controlling fires according to the weather winds moisture and natural fire barriers they successfully conserved the increasingly threatened cerrado vegetation.
In fact since 2005 indigenous reserves have been responsible for more than 70 percent of the reduction in deforestation in Brazil particularly in the Amazon
the formation of islands of environmental conservation surrounded by large-scale agribusiness he said. Brondizio is a professor in the IU Bloomington College of Arts
and Research on Global Environmental Change and the Ostrom Workshop in Political theory and Policy Analysis both research centers supported by the Office of the Vice Provost for Research at IU Bloomington.
According to Brondizio Xavante practices offer invaluable lessons regarding ecosystems and conservation. The Xavante show us how to maintain
and recover the environment and call attention to the need to consider new governance systems that respect the rights of indigenous populations
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011