In these dry fragile ecosystems where increase in water availability from rainfall is the limiting factor for malaria transmission irrigation infrastructure can drastically alter mosquito population abundance to levels above the threshold needed to maintain malaria transmission said lead
author and U-M graduate student Andres Baeza who works in the laboratory of Mercedes Pascual in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
and characterized by an enhanced environmental malaria risk despite intensive mosquito control efforts said Pascual the Rosemary Grant Collegiate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at U-M and a Howard
Pascual said the findings show that environmental methods for sustainable disease control are needed urgently. Several of these methods--including intermittent irrigation
and maintain them for long enough periods said Pascual a theoretical ecologist. Malaria is caused by the Plasmodium parasite
A better understanding of socioeconomic and ecological differences between recently irrigated and mature irrigation areas could provide the means to reduce the malaria burden
While our prehistoric relatives had no way to know the ash cloud was coming a recent study provides a new tool that may have predicted what path volcanic debris would take.
This paper provides a model for the pattern of the ash cloud if the wind is blowing past an eruption of a given size said Peter Baines a scientist at the University of Melbourne in Australia who did the study.
He published his work in the journal Physics of Fluids. Volcanic eruptions are an example of
what Baines calls an intrusion. Other examples include exhaust rising from a chimney sewage flowing into the ocean
and the oil spilling underwater in the 2010 Deepwater horizon disaster. In all these events a fluid rises into a density-stratified environment like the atmosphere or the ocean.
As the fluid rises it is pushed by winds or currents and this crossflow can cause the intruding fluid to disperse far from its origin.
Scientists have modeled previously intrusions into a completely calm environment but before Baines nobody had attempted ever to introduce the effect of crosswinds a necessary step toward making such models more realistic and useful.
Predicting Ash and Oil Flowsbaines thinks his work could be used to estimate how much ash is pouring out of a volcano
He found that under normal wind speeds the intruding fluid reached a maximum thickness at a certain distance upstream from the source and thinned in the downstream direction.
and other invasive weeds as a potential threat to landholder involvement in environmental offset programs such as the Carbon Farming Initiative.
It's really important we look at how these types of barriers might prevent landholders from getting involved in environmental offset programs
Hot dry and windy weather played a role in that wildfire said Don Smurthwaite spokesperson with the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) in Boise Idaho.
As of Aug 8 this year wildfires have burned more than 2. 5 million acres in the United states. Large wildfires are driven mainly by natural factors including the availability of fuel (vegetation) wind and ignition sources from lightning and humans.
what scientists know about fire's role in land cover change ecosystem processes and the global carbon cycle by allowing researchers to map characteristics of the global distribution of fires in remarkable detail.
Fighting fires is a very expensive proposition said Jim Vogelmann research ecologist from USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science Center in Sioux falls S d. Fire suppression costs last
Quayle believes the information from this project Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (mtbs. gov) will give scientists a better understanding of how climate change is affecting wildfire in the United states. 2013
Morton said the newest generation of climate models project drier conditions that likely will cause increased fire activity across the United states in coming decades.
and earlier snow melt and they are lasting longer into the fall. Snow cover shortens the fire season
because dry vegetation is not a factor in fire ignition or progression. Rain will lead to build up of grasses that dry out in the summer heat
So while it may be warmer it is the shift from snow to rain that increases fire risk said Jeff Eidenshink fire science team lead with the USGS EROS facility.
which will provide information on fire fuels active fires aerosols and climate: all pieces of the wildfire puzzle.
Participants in citizen science projects contribute real valuable data that allow us to tackle some major ecological questions related to invasive species urbanization
and habitat change our changing climate or other factors according to David Bonter Project Leader of Project Feederwatch and a co-author on the study.
Both for forests and urban trees the emerald ash borer has been devastating said Michael T. Rains Director of the U s. Forest Service's Northern Research Station and Director of the Forest Products Laboratory.
Using NASA rain and vegetation data researchers can track when and where arid lands begin to green
while overhead thundering cloudbursts of late October rains drive new plant growth filling pockmarks across this largest inland delta in the world.
In a matter of weeks the flooded landscape could yield ecosystems flush with forage for the muscled movers.
High above Earth-orbiting satellites capture images of the zebras'movements on this epic trek as well as the daily change in environmental conditions.
The surge of rain-coaxed grasses greening is their prompt to depart. But now researchers are able to take that data
and his team combined that information with in depth use of environmental satellite data using a series of images of vegetation growth and rainfall taken over days and weeks.
and how animal migrations respond to environmental change. Zebra mind: A band of scientists earn their stripesthe Zebra Migration Research Project began in 2008 after Hattie Bartlam-Brooks
She and her team in the field observed that the zebras began their migration at the onset of the rains so she joined forces with Beck to see how extensive the environment's influence is on the timing of the zebras'journey.
This allowed the researchers to see how environmental conditions changed over time and across the landscape.
The team also used NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission data to map daily rainfall which gave the researchers an idea of how much rain was falling in three-hour intervals.
The scientists converted the rainfall measurements to daily rates and cumulative weekly amounts and checked the accuracy by comparing them with ground-based rain gauges.
By examining daily rainfall and weekly vegetation data from satellite images and entering the data into migration models the researchers were amazed at how well they could predict
By comparing the results of the models it was possible to determine which environmental variables are the most effective in predicting zebra movement
and infer as to how the zebra make their decisions said Gil Bohrer assistant professor in the Department of Civil Environmental and Geodetic Engineering at The Ohio State university who collaborated on the project.
and strength of the rainfall cues were for migration success. He said that it may be possible for species that have had their migration patterns disrupted to relearn them from exploratory walks driven by environmental cues.
Guiding light among the starshaving access to NASA's free satellite images that shed light on the environmental conditions migratory animals face is something that Beck finds invaluable.
Understanding the mechanisms that drive migratory behavior is increasingly important Beck said in terms of climate change as migrating animals rely on multiple habitats.
Under climate change things are likely to accelerate Beck said. Many of the major migrations On earth especially on land have already been lost he explains
We need to know what the fate of those migrations is under climate change Beck said.
and their observers--may allow them to cope with changes in their environment an outcome that is not so black-and-white.
The environmental data sets from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission and the MODIS sensors will continue into the next decade with data provided by their follow-on missions:
Environmental samples from poultry cages water at two local poultry markets and swans from the residential area were tested also.
We need to develop long-term strategies to deal with these pests that are effective safe for public and environmental health
and chair of the Division of Organisms and Environment at UC Berkeley and an expert on biological invasions who is affiliated not with the new study.
The strength of the study lies in the use of multiple lines of evidence--population modeling molecular genetics ecological trapping border control/airport detections
Because of the state's geographic location and climate California is considered particularly vulnerable to introduction and establishment of tropical fruit-fly populations.
and forms found in trees hides a remarkably similar architecture based on fundamental shared principles UA ecologists have discovered.
Researchers in the University of Arizona's department of ecology and evolutionary biology have found that
or species. The researchers'results published in the August issue of the scientific journal Ecology Letters have important implications for models used by scientists to assess how trees influence ecosystems across the globe.
According to the authors their study is the first empirical test of a theory UA ecology professor Brian Enquist helped develop in 1998.
and water a tree exchanges with the environment in relation to its overall size independently of the species. This theory can be used to scale the size of plants to their function such as amount of photosynthesis water loss
and respiration especially in light of climate change said Lisa Patrick Bentley who led the research funded by the National Science Foundation as part of a postdoctoral fellowship in Enquist's lab
For example even though a piã on pine tree looks very different from a maple tree there are similar general ecological biological and physical principles that have resulted in a similar branching architecture across those species over the course of evolution.
and Allen Place at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental science's Institute for Marine and Environmental Technology are published in the August issue of the journal Lipids.
and Allen Place of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental science's Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology and Frederic Barrows of the U s. Department of agriculture's Agricultural research service is published in the August issue of Lipids.
The above story is provided based on materials by University of Maryland Center for Environmental science. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
The above story is provided based on materials by University of Illinois College of Agricultural Consumer and Environmental sciences (ACES.
#Ecology: As data flow, scientists advocate for quality controlas sensor networks revolutionize ecological data collection by making it possible to collect high frequency information from remote areas in real time scientists with the U s. Forest
Service are advocating for automated quality control and quality assurance standards that will make that data reliable.
In an article published recently in the journal Bioscience research ecologists John Campbell and Lindsey Rustad of the U s. Forest Service's Northern Research Station and colleagues make a case for incorporating automated quality control and quality assurance procedures in sensor networks.
In the not distant future sensor networks will be the standard technique used to collect data on all kinds of ecosystems said Michael T. Rains Director of the Northern Research Station
Jeffrey R. Taylor National Ecological Observatory Network Inc.;Ethan W. Dereszynski Oregon State university; James B. Shanley U s. Geological Survey;
Automated QA/QC for Streaming Environmental Sensor Data is available at: http://www. nrs. fs. fed. us/pubs/43678story Source:
The team's findings to be presented today in a talk at the annual conference of the Ecological Society of America highlight the potential benefits of conserving all species--even those some people dislike.
Because not every human bitten by an infected tick develops Lyme disease the team did not estimate how many people are spared the disease because of the ecosystem service that timber rattlesnakes provide.
#Ozone-protection treaty had climate benefits, too, study saysthe global treaty that headed off destruction of earth's protective ozone layer has prevented also major disruption of global rainfall patterns according to a new study in the Journal of Climate.
The 1987 Montreal Protocol phased out the use of chloroflourocarbons or CFCS a class of chemicals that destroy ozone in the stratosphere allowing more ultraviolet radiation to reach earth's surface.
had taken these effects hold they would have combined to shift rainfall patterns in ways beyond those that may already be happening due to rising carbon dioxide in the air.
and the impact of ozone depletion on surface climate and the hydrological cycle was recognized not at all.
We dodged a bullet we did not know had been fired said study coauthor Richard Seager a climate scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
and wet regions in the tropics and mid-to-high latitudes would have grown even wetter.
and in the troposphere below to shift displacing jet streams and storm tracks. The researchers'model shows that
if ozone destruction had continued unabated and increasing CFCS further heated the planet the jet stream in the mid-latitudes would have shifted toward the poles expanding the subtropical dry zones and shifting the mid-latitude rain belts poleward.
and precipitation causing the wet climates of the deep tropics and mid to high latitudes to get wetter
and the subtropical dry climates to get drier. The study builds on earlier work by coauthor Lorenzo Polvani a climate scientist with joint appointments at Lamont-Doherty and Columbia's Fu Foundation School of engineering and Applied science.
Polvani and others have found that two human influences on climate--ozone loss and industrial greenhouse gases--have pushed together the jet stream in the southern hemisphere south over recent decades.
As the ozone hole over Antarctica closes in the coming decades the jet stream will stop its poleward migration Polvani found in a 2011 study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
The projected stopping of the poleward jet migration is a result of the ozone hole closing canceling the effect of increasing greenhouse gases.
We wanted to take a look at the more drastic scenario--what would have happened if there had been no Montreal Protocol?
The Montreal Protocol is considered one of the most successful environmental treaties of all time. Once scientists linked CFCS to rapid ozone loss over Antarctica world leaders responded quickly.
and in decreasing global warming but that it also has had an important effect on rainfall patterns
While HFCS are ozone-safe they too are powerful greenhouse gases that have become a concern as world leaders grapple with climate change.
but its expiration at the end of 2012 has led some countries to seek climate protections from the Montreal Protocol.
This research supports the principle that it's generally best not to put things into the environment that weren't there before said Scott Barrett an economist at the Earth Institute who was involved not in the study.
Goldman researches human-environment relations with the Tanzanian and Kenyan Maasai one of the most recognizable ethnic groups in Africa known for their distinctive colorful dress
Their review article appears in an Aug 2 special edition of the journal Science titled Natural Systems in Changing Climates.
and other gases known to create a greenhouse effect that traps heat in the atmosphere. For several days in May 2013 CO2 levels exceeded 400 parts per million for the first time in human history
The'rainforests-of-the-sea'reefs were replaced by the'gravel parking lots'of the greenhouse world said Norris The greenhouse world was marked also by differences in the ocean food web with large parts of the tropical and subtropical ocean ecosystems supported by minute
picoplankton instead of the larger diatoms typically found in highly productive ecosystems today. Indeed large marine animals--sharks tunas whales seals even seabirds--mostly became abundant
which serves as a guide to predicting what may happen under current climate trends. That event lasted about 200000 years and warmed Earth by 5-9°C (9-16°F) with massive migrations of animals and plants and shifts in climate zones.
Notably despite the disruption to Earth's ecosystems the extinction of species was remarkably light other than a mass extinction in the rapidly warming deep ocean.
In many respects the PETM warmed the world more than we project for future climate change so it should come as some comfort that extinctions were limited mostly to the deep sea said Norris. Unfortunately the PETM also shows that ecological disruption can last tens of thousands of years.
Indeed Norris added that continuing the fossil fuel economy even for decades magnifies the period of climate instability.
An abrupt halt to fossil fuel use at current levels would limit the period of future climate instability to less than 1000 years before climate largely returns to preindustrial norms.
But if fossil fuel use stays on its current trajectory until the end of this century then the climate effects begin to resemble those of the PETM with major ecological changes lasting for 20000 years
or more and a recognizable human fingerprint On earth's climate lasting for 100000 years. Co-authors of the review are Sandra Kirtland-Turner of Scripps Oceanography Pincelli Hull of Yale university and Andy Ridgwell of the University of Bristol in the United kingdom. Story Source:
The above story is provided based on materials by University of California San diego. The original article was written by Robert Monroe.
The study which appears today in the Journal of Ecology is the first of its kind to use
which fruits are harvested said Orou Gaoue the study's lead author and assistant professor of ecology evolution and conservation biology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
which variation in climate and human behavior can change the traits or productivity of harvested wild plants Gaoue added.
#Climate change occurring ten times faster than at any time in past 65 million yearsthe planet is undergoing one of the largest changes in climate
Stanford climate scientists warn that the likely rate of change over the next century will be at least 10 times quicker than any climate shift in the past 65 million years.
If the trend continues at its current rapid pace it will place significant stress on terrestrial ecosystems around the world
Although some of the changes the planet will experience in the next few decades are baked already into the system how different the climate looks at the end of the 21st century will depend largely on how humans respond.
The findings come from a review of climate research by Noah Diffenbaugh an associate professor of environmental Earth system science and Chris Field a professor of biology and of environmental Earth system science and the director
of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution. The work is part of a special report on climate change in the current issue of Science.
Diffenbaugh and Field both senior fellows at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment conducted the targeted
but broad review of scientific literature on aspects of climate change that can affect ecosystems
and investigated how recent observations and projections for the next century compare to past events in Earth's history.
As the climate continued to warm those plants and animals moved northward to cooler climes.
We know from past changes that ecosystems have responded to a few degrees of global temperature change over thousands of years said Diffenbaugh.
Some of the strongest evidence for how the global climate system responds to high levels of carbon dioxide comes from paleoclimate studies.
There are two key differences for ecosystems in the coming decades compared with the geologic past Diffenbaugh said.
One is the rapid pace of modern climate change. The other is that today there are multiple human stressors that were not present 55 million years ago such as urbanization and air and water pollution.
Record-setting heatdiffenbaugh and Field also reviewed results from two-dozen climate models to describe possible climate outcomes from present day to the end of the century.
In general extreme weather events such as heat waves and heavy rainfall are expected to become more severe and more frequent.
For example the researchers note that with continued emissions of greenhouse gases at the high end of the scenarios annual temperatures over North america Europe
But this would present a novel climate for most land areas. Given the impacts those kinds of seasons currently have on terrestrial forests agriculture
The scientists also projected the velocity of climate change defined as the distance per year that species of plants
The human elementsome climate changes will be unavoidable because humans have emitted already greenhouse gases into the atmosphere
Diffenbaugh said that the range of climate projections offered in the report can inform decision-makers about the risks that different levels of climate change pose for ecosystems.
There's no question that a climate in which every summer is hotter than the hottest of the last 20 years poses real risks for ecosystems across the globe Diffenbaugh said.
However there are opportunities to decrease those risks while also ensuring access to the benefits of energy consumption.
and how climate change may alter infestations. While the influence of temperature on individual-level life-history traits is understood well the impact on population-level dynamics such as population cycles
The researchers who also include William A. Nelson associate professor of biology Queens University Canada currently on sabbatical at Penn State and Takehiko Yamanaka senior researcher National Institute for Agro-Environmental sciences Tsukuba
and biofuels to producing exclusively food for human consumption according to new research from the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota.
We essentially have uncovered an astoundingly abundant supply of food for a hungry world hidden in plain sight in the farmlands we already cultivate says graduate research assistant Emily Cassidy lead author of the paper published in Environmental Research Letters.
In addition to her role as Global Landscapes Initiative graduate research assistant with the Institute on the Environment Cassidy is a graduate student in the Natural resources Science
and even rarer in its native Sumatra where the deforestation of equatorial rainforests has wreaked havoc on its habitat said UCSB biology greenhouse manager Danica Taber.
and pollination systems said Scott Hodges professor in the Department of Ecology Evolution and Marine Biology.
#Could planting trees in the desert mitigate climate change? As the world starts feeling the effects of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide
and consequent global temperature rise researchers are looking for a Plan B to mitigate climate change.
Carbon farming addresses the root source of climate change: the emission of carbon dioxide by human activities says first-author Klaus Becker of the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart.
Carbon farming's price tag ranges from 42 to 63 euros per tonne of CO2. making it competitive with other CO2. reduction techniques such as carbon capture and storage.
and environmentally safe approach for climate change mitigation. Vegetation has played a key role in the global carbon cycle for millions of years in contrast to many technical and very expensive geoengineering techniques explains Becker.
and little knowledge of the benefits large-scale plantations could have in the regional climate which can include increase of cloud coverage and rainfall.
The newearth System Dynamics paper presents results of simulations looking into these aspects but there is still a lack of experimental data on the effects of greening arid regions.
because their computer modeling was done in a single-column clear-sky model or a one-dimensional measure averaged around a planetary sphere that does not account for the atmospheric effect of clouds.
The findings apply to planet Earth As well as the sun increases in brightness over time Earth too will move into the runaway greenhouse stage--but not for a billion and a half years or so.
They are one of the big elements of ecosystems like birds and trees. They are major movers of stuff.
We have assumed always that stress at this age is the main environmental insult that contributes to developing these conditions in at-risk individuals
which environmental events influence genetic information. Likewise the team is exploring markers of inflammation in the brain
. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences and director of the University's Pymatuning Laboratory of Ecology.
Both embryos and hatchlings from all four environs were exposed first to a low nonlethal concentration of the insecticide.
It's one of the first reports to identify the interactions between these large important predators based on complex ecological processes.
It was published today by scientists from Oregon State university and Washington state University in the Journal of Animal Ecology.
when they are trying to gain weight as rapidly as possible before winter hibernation said William Ripple a professor in the OSU Department of Forest Ecosystems
The recovery of those trees and other food sources since the re-introduction of wolves in the 1990s has had a profound impact on the Yellowstone ecosystem researchers say
As we learn more about the cascading effects they have on ecosystems the issue may be more than having just enough individual wolves
and shrub recovery and restore ecosystem health. As wolves help reduce elk numbers in Yellowstone
Increases in berry production in Yellowstone may also provide a buffer against other ecosystem shifts the researchers noted--whitebark pine nut production a favored bear food may be facing pressure from climate change.
Its use also requires expert knowledge and detailed monitoring of the moth's biological cycle ecology and behaviour
Phytosanitary products are toxic for the environment and potentially for the user as well. Using biological pesticides that rapidly degrade in the environment would reduce the risks of pollution.
Another advantage of baculoviruses is that they are innocuous to man vertebrae and plants. Moreover each viral strain attacks a very limited number of insect species. This host specificity means that the Guatemalan potato moth can be targeted
while preserving the ecosystem in particular useful insects like pollinators. Lastly unlike the molecules in chemical plant-protection products viruses are able to mutate which limits the development of resistance in their host.
since 2006 been doing genetic agronomic and ecological studies: molecular analyses to describe the genetic structure of the pests a study of the impact of temperatures on their ecology by means of drones with thermal cameras#The aim is to get a better understanding of the insects'population dynamics
and define good practices to limit their proliferation. In this respect the researchers have developed methods like role-playing games to raise awareness among farmers.
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011