Nerea Abrego-Antia and Isabel Salcedo-Larralde biologists in the Department of Plant Biology and Ecology of the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country have quantified recently this effect on fungi populations that live off dead
The pre-hypothesis could be that as the basic matter is lost the environment will be affected directly.
and the result has been published in the specialised journal Forest Ecology and Management. It is a journal of great quality pointed out Salcedo.
yet this one devotes attention to the ecological approach and has a more universal influence.
The works that analyse the ecological aspect have a greater impact and as far as we are concerned it is usually quite difficult to get them published.
But in this piece of work we paid great attention to the statistical and ecological aspect which has enabled us to get the paper published in such an important journal.
Writing in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry researchers demonstrate the contamination of Pacific Tree Fogs in remote mountain areas including national parks;
We found that even frogs living in the most remote mountain locations were contaminated by agricultural pesticides transported long distances in dust and by rain.
Very few studies have considered the environmental occurrence of pesticides particularly fungicides which can be transported beyond farmland concluded Smalling.
Collaboration is key to responding to problems as devastating as WNS said Michael T. Rains director of the Northern Research Station.
The world needs to unhook itself from its ever increasing reliance on synthetic nitrogen fertilisers produced from fossil fuels with its high economic costs its pollution of the environment and its high energy costs.
The University of Nottingham's Plant and Crop sciences Division is acclaimed internationally as a centre for fundamental and applied research underpinning its understanding of agriculture food production and quality and the natural environment.
Many marine fish species spend their larval stage near the ocean's surface#n environment completely different than the one they are in as adults.
Two different environments often require two different body shapes and appearances resulting in fish in their larval stage that bear little to no resemblance to their adult counterparts.
and laid down in the snow Goldner drove Nemo nearly four hours to Cornell's hospital where the pig was diagnosed with presumptive B-cell lymphoma a blood cancer.
and industry has major implications for agriculture and the environment. The discovery that regulation of the Shell gene will enable breeders to boost palm oil yields by nearly one-third is excellent news for the rainforest
and thus should lessen pressures to expand the land area devoted to oil palm notably onto endangered rainforest land--a major concern for the environment
whether an oil palm plantlet is a high-yielding palm Even with selective breeding 10 to 15 percent of plants are the low-yielding dura form due to uncontrollable wind and insect pollination particularly in plantations
of ecosystems that support some of the planet's most spectacular yet little-known large mammals.
Ecological effects of the growth in goat herds include increasing conflicts with pastoralists predation by dogs on wildlife retaliatory killing of snow leopards and displacement of wildlife away from critical food habitats.
WCS has begun already to help tackle the problem by engaging with the Responsible Ecosystems Sourcing Platform (RESP) a public-private partnership initiative aimed at addressing sustainability issues from the beginning to the end of select supply chains
-fiber highwater but lower-fat foods. She said too many athletes are pushed into fad diets or try to restrict calorie intake too much in a way that is unhealthy and unsustainable.
Researchers from the University of California San diego La jolla CA report on this potentially promising solution in a study published ahead of print in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
To test this the researchers examined more than 40 state-of-the-art climate simulations that included historical changes to greenhouse gases and aerosols over the twentieth century.
This delay in the modelled Indian ocean warming is likely due to the presence of atmospheric aerosols generated through transport emissions biomass burning and industrial smog together with natural emissions of sea salt
and then north along the Gulf stream said co-author Dr Wenju Cai. Together with a greenhouse gas-induced southward shift the Indian subtropical ocean gyres towards the Antarctic these processes delay the Indian ocean warming in the models Dr Cai said.
The research has been supported by the CSIRO Wealth from Oceans National Research Flagship The Australian Climate Change Science Program and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Climate System Science.
#Hunting pushing central African forests toward ecological collapsescientists from the Universities of Stirling Oxford Queensland
and the Wildlife Conservation Society warn that current hunting trends in Central African forests could result in complete ecological collapse.
and other seed-dispersing species threatens the ability of forest ecosystems to regenerate and that landscape-wide hunting management plans are needed to avoid an environmental catastrophe.
The study appears in the latest version of Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society B. The authors include:
K. A. Abernethy of the African Forest Ecology Group of Stirling University; L. Coad of the University of Queensland and the University of Oxford;
and Fiona Maisels of the Wildlife Conservation Society and the African Forest Ecology Group. Humans have lived in the forests of Central africa for thousands of years until recently practicing subsistence hunting for the needs of their communities said Kate Abernethy lead author of the study.
and species that play important ecological functions are being driven to local extinction. The researchers conducted a review of more than 160 papers
The authors found troubling trends that threaten the very fabric of rainforest ecosystems. In particular mammals such as forest elephants gorillas forest antelopes and others play a major role in seed dispersal for most tree species;
and planning must be included in any climate change strategy or land use plan in Central africa. They add that efficiently managed multiple-use landscapes--combining protected areas alongside logging concessions--can maintain the seed-dispersing species
and apex predators such as leopards in order to maintain intact ecosystems in Central africa. Otherwise the loss of wildlife will result in a disastrous spiral of forest degradation that will reduce the storage of carbon and the resilience of rainforests to climate change.
Current climate models suggest that Central African rainforests may be more ecologically resilient to the short-term impacts of climate change than those of West
and East Africa or the Amazon said co-author Dr. Lauren Coad. However severe ecological changes below the forest canopy driven by hunting are already occurring.
The removal of seed-dispersing megafauna such as elephants and apes could reduce the ability of forests to sequester carbon.
Much of the data analyzed for this study was collected with the support of the US Fish & Wildlife Service and USAID's Central africa Regional Program for the Environment.
and a failure to properly manage grassland ecosystems according to a report from the European Environment Agency (EEA).
which is supported scientifically by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ). UFZ scientists have contributed also to the analysis of population trends.
which together form around two thirds of the world's species. This means that butterflies are useful indicators of biodiversity and the general health of ecosystems.
and other insects--the pollination they carry out is essential for both natural ecosystems and agriculture.
The above story is provided based on materials by Helmholtz Centre For Environmental Research-UFZ. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length h
and efforts to mitigate climate change through carbon sequestration. It will also inform our understanding of how carbon storage can be used to assess other fundamental ecosystem characteristics such as hydrology habitat quality and biodiversity.
The approach provides much-needed technical support for carbon-based economic activities such as the United nations Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) program in developing countries.
Panama has complex landscapes with variable topography and diverse ecosystems (ranging from grasslands and mangroves to shrublands and dense forests).
As a result Panama is an ideal laboratory to develop and test a method for quantifying aboveground carbon.
It directly probes the ecosystem's physical structure which Carnegie scientists have repeatedly proven to be linked tightly to tropical carbon stocks.
The researchers then were able to scale up the plot and Lidar data with freely available satellite data on topography rainfall and vegetation to model carbon stocks at the national level.
The Lidar and satellite combination were able to account for variations in the carbon pattern from differences in elevation slope climate
and these new maps put the country at the forefront of high-resolution ecosystem management. said co-author
when pollinator species declineremove even one bumblebee species from an ecosystem and the impact is swift and clear:
We found that these wildflowers produce one-third fewer seeds in the absence of just one bumblebee species says Emory University ecologist Berry Brosi who led the study.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the study co-authored by ecologist Heather Briggs of the University of California-Santa cruz. About 90 percent of plants need animals mostly insects to transfer pollen between them
Some studies have indicated that plants can tolerate losing most pollinator species in an ecosystem as long as other pollinators remain to take up the slack.
While previous research has shown how competition drives specialization within a species the bumblebee study is one of the first to link this mechanism back to the broader functioning of an ecosystem.
Our work shows why biodiversity may be key to conservation of an entire ecosystem Brosi says.
Whether the shift to deciduous forests will overcome the fire-inducing effects of a warming climate remains to be seen the researchers said.
and we are focusing on periods of climate fluctuation during the Holocene. We're trying to figure out what happened in the past to help us to project what may happen in the future.
This period called the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA) occurred about 1000 to 500 years ago.
So there was a limit to fire frequency during the Medieval Climate Anomaly. The same kind of change in tree species is occurring today Kelly said.
The release of this carbon from fires adds to the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere potentially leading to additional climate warming he said.
The climate today appears to be warmer than in the past 10000 years in that region and we know that the climate is continuing to warm up.
As warming continues Hu said it's plausible that even deciduous forests will become highly flammable.
The National Science Foundation and a National parks Ecological Research Fellowship supported this research. Story Source:
#Climate forecasts shown to warn of crop failuresclimate data can help predict some crop failures several months before harvest according to a new study from an international team including a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Md.
For those two key crops a computer model could predict crop failures three months in advance for about 20 percent of global cropland according to the study published July 21 in Nature Climate Change.
The research team led by Toshichika Iizumi with the National Institute for Agro-Environmental sciences in Tsukuba Japan created
The impact of climate extremes--the kind of events that have a large impact on global production--is more predictable than smaller variations in climate
But if economics set the bar for crop yield other factors--including climate--can still cause variations that lead to good years and devastating years.
While climate's role in crop yields and failures may seem intuitive it's difficult to demonstrate in part because of the overwhelming influence of social and economic factors Brown said.
But integrating climate and economic predictions can lead to a better understanding of crop yields and failures--especially in a changing climate.
For example if satellite data and climate models forecast a good season for rice before seeds are planted even farmers
or communities could get loans to invest in technologies to take advantage of the good weather while insurers could keep insurance premiums low.
and climate prediction models she said. If you knew you were going to have a good year you could plan you could give out loans you could do other things to boost food production to be prepared for bad years.
if a three-day long flood occurred there would be some pretty significant impacts downstream said Karl Lang a University of Washington doctoral candidate in Earth and space sciences.
Lang noted that a huge landslide in early 2000 created a giant dam on the Yiggong River a tributary of the main river just upstream from the Gorge.
The dam failed catastrophically in June 2000 triggering a flood that caused numerous fatalities and much property damage downstream.
what those ancient floods did. There is circumstantial evidence that yes they did do a lot of damage. The process in the Tsangpo Gorge is similar to
#Loss of African woodland may impact on climate, study showsdeforestation in parts of Africa could be reversed with changes to land use a study suggests.
A more strategic approach to managing trees across the continent could have a positive impact on the changing climate researchers say.
A pioneering study of African savannas by the University of Edinburgh has revealed deforestation in south-central Africa driven by rising populations in the aftermath of war and increasing demand for trees for agriculture and fuel.
This loss of forests threatens the ecosystem and the livelihood of populations. Scientists suggest that the situation could be alleviated by using sustainable fuel instead of charcoal
Loss of trees could impact on climate change as forests store carbon in their stems
and improve predictions of global climate change. The study identified a north-south divide --while most forests and woodlands in the south are losing tree cover many north of the equator are gaining trees.
The study supported by the Natural Environment Research Council was published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. Dr Ed Mitchard of the University of Edinburgh's School of Geosciences who led the study said:
and Environmental sciences said: Although concerns about arsenic in rice have been raised for some time now to our knowledge this is the first time a link between consumption of arsenic-bearing rice
Of these three improving the efficiency of the IT devices is overwhelmingly the most important said Jonathan Koomey a co-author of the study Characteristics of Low-Carbon Data centers published online June 25 in Nature Climate Change.
and pressure from environmental organizations. ebay even discloses its data center efficiency publicly at dse. ebay. com. These companies were hearing a lot of noise from Greenpeace and others.
State-of-the-art data centers have reduced the ratio to about 1 to 0. 1 kwh said study co-author Arman Shehabi of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Environmental Energy Technologies Division.
They locate server farms in cool climates like the U s. Northwest Sweden and Iceland. They purchase processors that are less sensitive to heat.
Once those two areas are maximized sourcing electricity from renewables like wind and solar power plus green handling of retired equipment can get a typical data center's emissions down 98 percent.
Policymakers and environmental organizations however tend to focus on the third option--renewable energy which the study finds to be misplaced a priority.
#Climate change could deprive Volta Basin of water needed to boost energy and food productiona new study released today finds that so much water may be lost in the Volta River basin due to climate change that planned hydroelectric projects to boost energy
and food production may only tread water in keeping up with actual demand. Some 24 million people in Ghana Burkina faso and four other neighboring countries depend on the Volta River and its tributaries as their principal source of water.
and diminished rain could mean that by the year 2100 all of the current and planned hydroelectric projects in the basin would not even generate as much power as existing facilities do now.
IWMI and other centers involved with the CGIAR's Research Program on Climate Change Agriculture and Food security (CCAFS) are drawing attention to the Volta study as leaders from across Africa gather in Ghana for Africa Agriculture
Beyond that there is an urgent need to shift more food production away from rain-fed systems that are subject to the vagaries of climate to irrigated agriculture.
Mccartney served as lead author for the study The Water Resource Implications of Changing Climate in the Volta River basin along with colleagues from Ghana's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate
Climate models show temperatures in the Volta Basin rising by up to 3. 6 degrees Celsius over the next century--which the scientists warn could significantly increase water lost to evaporation.
They also indicate average annual rainfall could drop by about 20 percent. Mccartney and his colleagues calculated that water flows in the Volta region could fall by 24 percent through 2050
and we need to understand how climate change might alter water availability in vulnerable regions like the Volta Basin said Robert Zougmor who leads CCAFS research in West Africa.
As rains become less and less reliable in a changing climate researchers and policy-makers have been exploring a shift to groundwater or other types of irrigation.
Meanwhile hydroelectric power plants are seen as crucial to sustaining industrial development and expanding economic opportunities. The Volta Basin is already home to the massive Akosombo Dam
and many others planned for the basin could fall far short of their potential due to climate change.
and agriculture to stand up to the climate challenge. For example the study suggests considering a broader mix of renewable energy sources including wind and solar.
Water storage options should not be confined to projects that employ large dams the researchers said.
The above story is provided based on materials by CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change Agriculture and Food security.
Mennecke said the studies show the influence of environmental cues and images on consumer behavior.
and in a hydrogen-rich environment produced the first rings. Under those conditions Tour Rice theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and their teams found that the entire edge of a fast-growing sheet of graphene becomes a nucleation site
The big news here he said is that we can change relative pressures of the growth environment of hydrogen
#Widely used pesticide toxic to honeybeesforthcoming research in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry analyzes the physiological effects of three separate pesticides on honey bees (Apis mellifera.
Sensitivity to these insecticides and foraging range (as far as 1. 5 to 3 km) make A. mellifera an optimal candidate for monitoring the environmental impacts of pesticides.
The above story is provided based on materials by Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Many hazardous pollutants enter the water supply through many channels including waste disposal industry effluent release or rain water drainage.
and using less chemicals in the process so as to reduce negative impact on the environment. Tomato peel:
The study-the first of its kind in the UK-is published today in the Journal of Applied Ecology.
The above story is provided based on materials by British Ecological Society (BES. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
and team has the unique ability to convert satellite images of seemingly dense tropical forest cover into highly detailed maps of deforestation and forest degradation.
There is a crisis in tropical forest ecosystems worldwide and our work documents the extent of the crisis on Malaysian Borneo.
Rainforests that previously contained lots of big old trees which store carbon and support a diverse ecosystem are being replaced with oil palm or timber plantations or hollowed out by logging.
Very few forest ecosystems remain intact in Sabah or Sarawak. But Brunei has excluded largely industrial logging from its borders
The problem with previous monitoring reports is that they have been based on satellite mapping methods that have missed most of the forest degradation in Malaysian Borneo and elsewhere throughout the tropics.
The situation in these tropical forests is now so severe that any further sacrifice of intact ecosystems to the logging industry should be off the table.
This work was an international collaboration between the School of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Tasmania in Hobart Australia;
and the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science California. The CLASLITE capacity building project is made possible by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
Most of the rice grown in the U s. is japonica rice Olsen says which is genetically pretty different from indica rice the rice grown in a lot of the tropics.
and the other strain resembles a rice grown in the tropics. Because the weedy forms are closely related to rice varieties that were grown never in the U s. they probably arrived as contaminants in grain stocks from Asia instead of evolving directly from the tropical japonica crops grown here.
The study while not primarily focused on plant disease population growth climate change or the diversion of corn to non-food uses such as ethanol suggests that significant stresses in these areas could jeopardize food security.
if major exporters experience disruptions due to non-food diversions plant diseases and climate impacts according to the article.
The article suggests that the largest maize producers may be wise to consider potential solutions to combat impacts of climate change on maize production for the purpose of maintaining supplies.
Their idea is to test the concept of a truly sustainable forest where conservation biodiversity safeguarding environmental balance
and usually small total population sizes micro-endemic species are particularly vulnerable to changes in their environment.
Worthy of protectionnot least because of the high number of endemic species the region is one of the most important centres of biodiversity in the tropics of the New world.
Even though the forests of the Guiana Shield have had among the lowest deforestation rates of the world with very little change over the past decades rapid economic and social changes are posing increasing pressures on these relatively wellconservedforest ecosystems.
and in their brains finds research in Biomed Central's open access journal BMC Ecology.
which could lead to a significant depopulation of the colony. However very few studies have analyzed the impact of parasites on bee phenotypes e g. brain and behavior.
The project was funded by a grant from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC. Story Source:
#Trade-offs between food security and climate change mitigation exploredimproving crop yields using sustainable methods could cut greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 12%per calorie produced according to a new study published in the journal Environmental
Agriculture and land use change contributed about 1/3 of total human greenhouse gas emissions in the past decade through crop cultivation animal production and deforestation.
This essential ecosystem provides an important balance between health and disease in the body. Fructooligosaccharides also increase calcium absorption in the body an important consideration for pre-and postmenopausal women ages 45 and older who are losing critical bone mass that increases their risk for osteoporosis and bone fractures.
and how the industry and parents can give children access to healthy food environments that shape those food choices.
But environment peer groups family and exposure to a variety of menu items play a key role in children's food choices.
but there could be ecological disruption in fields because of the effects on reproduction. Lundgren and Duan suggest that researchers investigating the potential of interference RNA pesticides create types that are designed to be unlikely to affect non-target species. They also suggest a research program to evaluate how the chemicals move in real-life situations.
#Keys to reducing the impact of agriculture on climate changeland is not being used to its best advantage according to a new study by Ikerbasque Professor Unai Pascual from the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3) and University of Cambridge and a team of environmental
Research published in the journal Science (5th july 2013) shows that allowing land use to be determined purely by agricultural markets results in considerable financial and environmental costs to the public.
Alongside tangible financial costs in the form of agricultural subsidies the research team calculated the economic value of current and future agricultural land uses due to climate change including the value of food production
and associated environmental impacts including greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change and reduced recreation for people.
The study demonstrates the importance of bringing ecosystem services into decision-making and to make full use of the potential gains from working with the natural environment
and the underpinning biophysical processes. The study acknowledges that this does not come without practical challenges.
Recasting the CAP as a Payment for Ecosystem Services mechanism would reward farmers for delivering a bundle of key of ecosystem services including climate change mitigation by the reduction of emission of greenhouse gases water regulation recreation and biodiversity conservation.
Policy should instead confront the reality of over-relying on agricultural markets as this generates unnecessary costs to society in terms of negative environmental impacts many
With the evidence at hand it is imperative that there is a U-turn in land use policies that allow to maximize the economic benefits of landscapes by reducing greenhouse gas emissions reducing water pollution enhanced recreation and urban greenspace and improvements
It is time to reward farmers for securing the vital ecosystem services that are valued highly by society.
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