and Mexico according to a University of Michigan ecologist who studies the disease. The current outbreak of coffee rust is seen the worst in Central america
U-M ecologist John Vandermeer has operated research plots at an organic coffee plantation in southern Chiapas Mexico for about 15 years.
Vandermeer and colleague Ivette Perfecto of the U-M School of Natural resources and Environment study the complex web of interactions between resident organisms there including various insects fungi birds and bats.
They all say that it's the worst explosion of this disease they've ever seen said Vandermeer a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and at SNRE.
The move to sun coffee results in a gradual breakdown of the complex ecological web found on shade plantations.
What we feel has been happening is that gradually the integrity of this once-complicated ecosystem has been slowly breaking down
And this year it seems to have hit a tipping point where the various things that are antagonistic to the roya in a complex ecosystem have declined to the point where the disease can escape from them
It was discovered first in the vicinity of Lake victoria in East Africa in 1861 and was identified later
Coffee rust spores are spread by the wind and the rain from lesions on the underside of leaves.
Although the yield of aromatic rice is lower the farmers will not need to spend much money on applying chemicals that could pollute the environment and harm their own health.#
#Lack of energy an enemy to antibiotic-resistant microbesrice University researchers cured a strain of bacteria of its ability to resist an antibiotic in an experiment that has implications for a longstanding public health crisis. Rice environmental engineer Pedro Alvarez
The researchers'results reported this month in the American Chemical Society journal Environmental science and Technology are the latest in a long effort to understand the environmental aspects of antibiotic resistance which threatens decades of progress in fighting disease.
The propagation of antibiotic resistance has been perceived as a medical or microbiology-related problem Alvarez said.
But what many people miss is that it is also an environmental pollution problem. A lot of the antibiotic-resistant bacteria originate in animal agriculture where there is overuse misuse
Alvarez contended that confined animal feeding operations (CAFOS) are potential sources of environmental contamination by antibiotics
and E coli which carries resistant genes directly from animals through their feces into the environment.
whether in a person an animal or in the environment the weak microbes will die
So there is incentive to eliminate the resistance plasmid from bacteria in the environment as close to the source as possible.
If we can put an anaerobic barrier at the point where a lagoon drains into the environment we will essentially exert selective pressure for the loss of antibiotic-resistant genes
but it's enough to have bacteria notice a deficiency in their ability to obtain energy from the environment and feel the stress to dump resistant genes.
His study of the Haihe River in China funded by the Chinese government and published last year found tetracycline resistance genes are common in the environment there as well.
We tested water and river sediment and couldn't find a sample that didn't have said them he Our philosophy in environmental engineering is that an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of remediation Alvarez said.
Don't let them amplify in the environment. Stop them before they're released. And one easy way is to put up an anaerobic barrier.
Co-authors of the paper are Rice alumni Michal Rysz now an environmental engineer at GSI Environmental Inc. Houston;
William Mansfield a scientist at the EPA in Dallas; and John Fortner an assistant professor at Washington University St louis. Alvarez is the George R. Brown Professor and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rice.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Rice university. The original article was written by Mike Williams. Note:
#Tree die off triggered by hotter temperaturesa team of scientists led by researchers at Carnegie's Department of Global Ecology has determined that the recent widespread die off of Colorado trembling aspen trees is a direct result of decreased precipitation
which inhibits the ability to predict how climate change can affect different ecosystems. The recent study was led by brothers Leander and William Anderegg.*
For instance summer rain has different isotopic ratios than winter snow. So we can use these markers to figure out where
They then looked at climate data finding that these high temperatures were part of a long-term increasing trend likely linked with climate change a unique feature of this drought that separates it from earlier less damaging droughts.
Forests store about 45 percent of the carbon found on land remarked William. Widespread tree death can radically transform ecosystems affecting biodiversity posing fire risks
Rapid shifts in ecosystems particularly through vegetation die offs could be among the most striking impacts of increased drought
and climate change around the globe. In a previous study the brothers with colleagues looked at two competing theories for how forest trees die during a drought.
This study pinpoints the trigger of this loss--summer temperature was the most important climate variable for explaining aspen death by drying out surface soil
Since there is a very strong upward trend in Colorado summer temperatures they could link tree death to climate change said Chris Field director of the Carnegie department.
This study is a milestone in linking plant-level physiology measurements with large-scale climate to predict vulnerability to climate change in these forests.
Interestingly this type of climate-change hot summer drought actually occurred again in 2012 which could indicate more tree die offs are in the pipeline for the near future.
You take into account the soil microbes and environment for these tests. A long-term cropping system trial provided the perfect opportunity to test the extent to which carbon
Specifically the researchers have found that the Asian needle ant is successfully displacing Argentine ants in an urban environment indicating that the Asian needle ant--with its venomous sting--may be the next invasive species to see a population boom.
and changing ecosystems to suit its needs. No other ant species had been seen successfully pushing back--until now.
In 2008 while watching a supercolony of Argentine ants in an urban environment former NC State Ph d. student Dr. Eleanor Spicer Rice noticed that Asian needle ants (Pachycondyla chinensis) were living
During cold weather both ant species become fairly dormant and cease reproducing limiting their activity and driving their populations down.
and urban environments at the same time Spicer Rice says. And because it is active at cooler temperatures it could move into a very broad range of territory.
Asian needle ants also appear to be driving out native ant populations in forests--including native species that play important roles in ecosystem processes such as dispersing seeds.
The smokeless devices can be used in nonsmoking environments and are regulated not in most states. They do not carry FDA health warning labels.
The research may help scientists better understand how mammals survived past climate change and how they may be impacted by future environmental conditions.
UF researchers led the team that analyzed the anatomy of living and fossil primates including lemurs monkeys and humans as well as their closest living relatives flying lemurs and tree shrews.
Visual reconstruction of the placental ancestor--a small insect-eating animal--was made possible with the help of a powerful cloud-based and publicly accessible database called Morphobank.
Episodic purging of carbonate capacitor drives long-term climate cyclea new Rice university-led study finds the real estate mantra location location location may also explain one of Earth's enduring
climate mysteries. The study suggests that Earth's repeated flip-flopping between greenhouse and icehouse states over the past 500 million years may have been driven by the episodic flare-up of volcanoes at key locations where enormous amounts of carbon dioxide are poised for release into the atmosphere.
Earth's climate continually cycles between greenhouse and icehouse states which each last on timescales of 10 million to 100 million years.
whether the flare-up in volcanic activity that helped create the Sierra nevada mountains may also have affected Earth's climate.
In our environment your job is to find the truth to the best of your ability
Medical environmental and other factors can exacerbate those differences she said. For a long time cardiovascular research was tilted toward men
In recent years several prominent summits on ecological concerns have identified biodiversity in agricultural ecosystems as a major sustainability issue with implications for food security conservation health and well-being and adaptation
to such global concerns as climate change. Sustainable development is crucial in Bolivia and other places in hotspots worldwide Zimmerer said
Sustainable development means protecting the future of these environments through the social-ecological systems in
That's how University of Guelph integrative biologists might recast a line from an iconic folk tune for their new research paper warning about the perils of ecosystem breakdown.
Instead they should encourage more kinds of plants in fields and woods as a buffer against sudden ecosystem disturbance.
Their research confirms that having lots of species in an area helps ecosystems avoid irreversible collapse after human disturbances such as climate change or pest invasion.
Macdougall said the study supports resource management strategies that increase biodiversity on land and in aquatic ecosystems.
--but it's an ecosystem that is more vulnerable to collapse he said adding that this study helps explain why species diversity matters.
and ecosystem stability said many ecosystems are at a tipping point including grasslands that may easily become either woodlands or deserts.
They're a really productive ecosystem that produces year in and year out and seems stable
or produce varies hugely with year-to-year variations in the climate. In a paper published online Feb 6 2013 by the journal Nature a team of climate scientists from the University of Exeter the Met Office-Hadley Centre
and the NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology has shown that these variations reveal how vulnerable the rainforest is to climate change.
Lead author Professor Peter Cox of the University of Exeter explained: We have been struggling for more than a decade to answer the question'will the Amazon forest die back under climate change?'
'Our study indicates that the risk is low if climate change is associated with increased plant growth under elevated carbon dioxide.
But if this effect declines or climate warming occurs due to something other than a carbon dioxide increase we expect to see a significant release of carbon from tropical ecosystems.
The study reveals a new way to find out how sensitive biological systems are to changes in climate.
The key was to learn how to read the year-to-year variations in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Carbon dioxide increases each year as a result of burning fossil fuels and deforestation. But the amount it goes up from one year to the next depends on
whether the tropical climate was warmer and dryer than usual or wetter and cooler. So the trace of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere holds a record of how the lungs of the planet respond
when the climate warms or cools. The team studied how these year-to-year variations in carbon dioxide concentration relate to long-term changes in the amount of carbon stored in tropical rainforests.
They found that climate models that predicted tropical forest dieback under climate change also had a very large year-to-year variation in carbon dioxide concentration while models in
which the rainforest was more robust to climate change had more realistic year-to-year variation in carbon dioxide concentration.
By combining this relationship with the year-to-year variation in carbon dioxide as seen in the real world the team were able to determine that about 50 billion tonnes of carbon would be released for each Degree celsius of warming in the tropics.
however certain that tropical forests will suffer under climate change if carbon dioxide doesn't fertilise tree growth as strongly as climate models suggest.
Co-author Chris Jones of the Met Office said: The long-term health of tropical forests will depend on their ability to withstand multiple pressures from changing climate and deforestation.
Our research has shed light on the former but the latter remains a significant pressure on this ecosystem.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Exeter. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Astonishing ten new species of semiaquatic freshwater earthworms revealedthe semiaquatic earthworms in the genus Glyphidrilus are somewhat unfamiliar species that live between the terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems of rivers streams canals
In Thailand the species demonstrate astonishing biodiversity due to the monsoon climate contributing to drastic river system changes and a large variety of microhabitats.
and so are likely to be sensitive to modern agrochemical contamination of the environment. They may play an important role in organic rice farming.
More efficient use of nitrogen in the soil would be especially beneficial in areas where nitrogen is lost through heavy precipitation or erosion.
At the same time their high reactivity has raised concerns about their fate transport and toxicity in the environment.
Arturo A. Keller of the University of California in Santa barbara and Co-Director of the UC Center for the Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology who was involved not in this research comments:
In a paper recently published in the journal Environmental Research researchers demonstrate that people with higher concentrations of DDE-the main metabolite in the pesticide DDT-are four times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than other people.
In a study that delves into the mechanisms behind this common function North carolina State university researchers show that insect grooming--specifically antennal cleaning--removes both environmental pollutants
Leaving antennae dirty essentially blinds insects to their environment. Schal adds that there could be pest-control implications to the findings.
Brennan who works at the ARS Crop Improvement and Protection Research Unit in Salinas has published some his findings in Agronomy Journal and Applied Soil Ecology.
Albatross are remarkable fliers who travel thousands of miles on wind currents without ever flapping their wings.
They do this by angling their 6-foot wings to adjust for wind currents and varying air speeds above the water.
#Low rainfall and extreme temperatures double risk of baby elephant deathsextremes of temperature and rainfall are affecting the survival of elephants working in timber camps in Myanmar
and can double the risk of death in calves aged up to five new research from the University of Sheffield has found.
With climate change models predicting higher temperatures and months without rainfall; this could decrease the populations of already endangered Asian elephants.
The researchers matched monthly climate records with data on birth and deaths to track how climate variation affects the chances of elephant survival.
It is hoped this research--which was published in the journal Ecology--will make a difference by highlighting the importance of protecting vulnerable calves in captivity from the effects of climate changeexperts at the University of Sheffield accessed unique recordings of the life
Our results show that the optimal conditions for elephant survival correspond to high rainfall and a moderate temperature of 23 C but that further from those optimal conditions elephant survival was lower.
whose risk of death before the age of five approximately doubles in the hottest weather in comparison to the optimal moderate temperature for elephant survival.
These results could have important implications for Asian elephant populations both in western zoos where they may experience unfamiliar climate added Hannah
and in range countries where climate may be changing faster than elephants can adapt to it.
The project is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and was carried out at the University of Sheffield and Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Germany.
#Understanding Earths climate prior to the industrial eraclimate signals locked in the layers of glacial ice preserved in the annual growth rings of trees
and corals allow researchers to quantify climate variation prior to instrumental measurements. An international research team has investigated now hundreds of these proxy records from across the globe
and compared them with both simulations of the Earth s climate and instrumental measurements of temperature and precipitation.
Climate extremes not always recognized in proxy archivesthe scientists learned that these proxy archives provide an incomplete record of climate variation.
while the ring is developing but also from the climate of the past years and other factors like tree age.
Importantly the researchers found out that proxy data underestimate climate fluctuations of for example air temperature over the land surface where large year-to-year variability is common.
These findings indicate that the proxy data often result in a#oeblurry picture#of climate variation.
The researchers were able to conclude from their work that short-term extreme climate events such as individual years with hot summers are captured not well by the proxy reconstructions.
and speleothem records are needed to develop a more accurate history and understanding of the climate system.
Our results point to uncertainties in the global climate system that were recognized previously not says David Frank co-author of this study.
because we know more about the Earth s climate now than say 20-years ago.
and uncover these unknowns while developing climate reconstructions. There is still a lot of basic research needed to reduce uncertainties about how the Earth s climate system operated prior to the industrial era
and how it may operate in the future. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Swiss Federal Institute for Forest Snow and Landscape Research WSL.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference f
#New study sheds light on link between dairy intake and bone health: Not all dairy products are equala study by researchers at the Institute for Aging Research (IFAR) at Hebrew Seniorlife an affiliate of Harvard Medical school (HMS) has found that dairy intake--specifically milk
but a different father said Diggle a faculty member in CU-Boulder's ecology and evolutionary biology department.
Co-authors on the study included Chi-Chih Wu a CU-Boulder doctoral student in the ecology
This particular ecosystem between the earth and the sea plays a major role in protecting the particularly unstable muddy coastline (2) against erosion.
The retreating mangrove wall will result in large-scale coastal erosion threatening populations and their economic activities as demonstrated in a study conducted by researchers from IRD
However these dikes do not provide the same level of protection as mangroves against the swell which is the main cause of erosion.
so as not to encounter the same problems as its neighbour in the medium term.
#Scientists use Amazon Cloud to view molecular machinery in remarkable detailin this week's Nature Methods Salk researchers share a how-to secret for biologists:
code for Amazon Cloud that significantly reduces the time necessary to process data-intensive microscopic images.
In their Nature Methods paper the researchers offer other scientists the tools they need to use an easier alternative-the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon Elastic EC2) a service that provides access to supercomputing via the Internet
and process PALM images using Amazon Cloud. As a demonstration Cang Lippincott-Schwartz and postdoctoral researcher Ying Hu reconstructed the images of podosomes
Their new paper provides a how-to tutorial for using the code to process PALM images through Amazon Cloud helping the other labs achieve similar increases in speed.
#Amazon freshwater ecosystems are vulnerable to degradationa study published in Conservation Letters this week found that freshwater ecosystems in the Amazon are highly vulnerable to environmental degradation.
River lake and wetland ecosystems--encompassing approximately one-fifth of the Amazon basin area--are being degraded increasingly by deforestation pollution construction of dams
These included the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) the University of California at Santa barbara (UCSB) Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC.
Damage to Amazon freshwater ecosystems greatly impacts Amazonians who historically have been so dependent on freshwater ecosystem goods
Little attention has been paid to freshwater ecosystems which through the hydrological cycle are interconnected to other ecosystems at local and distant locations being highly sensitive to a broad array of human impacts.
Despite some terrestrial protections that are high by global standards this paper shows key gaps in protection for the Amazon's freshwater systems
The Madeira river basin for example is threatened by oil exploration deforestation and dams in its headwaters even though protected areas cover 26%of the catchment area.
The principal threat to most Amazon freshwater ecosystems is large-scale alteration of the basin's natural hydrology.
These infrastructure projects together with deforestation-induced changes to regional rainfall could fundamentally change the hydrology of Amazon freshwater systems she added.
Adequate protection of Amazon freshwater ecosystems requires broadening the forest-centric focus of prevailing environmental management
and conservation strategies to encompass aquatic ecosystems. By building upon existing protected areas it is possible to develop a river catchment-based conservation framework that protects both aquatic
and terrestrial ecosystems effectively protecting the Amazon river-forest system. The Amazon watershed spans six countries with Brazil Bolivia and Peru accounting for most of the area.
There are environmental issues everywhere but the case with Amazon freshwater ecosystems is different because no one talks about it.
Their problem has been concealed said Castello. Emphasizing the need for a shift he added Significant strides in Amazon conservation have been on deforestation
because deforestation has been studied and monitored year after year. We now need to do the same for these aquatic ecosystems.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Woods Hole Research center. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference e
#Planting trees may not reverse climate change, but it will help locallyafforestation planting trees in an area where there have previously been no trees can reduce the effect of climate change by cooling temperate regions finds a study in Biomed Central's open access journal Carbon Balance and Management.
Afforestation would lead to cooler and wetter summers by the end of this century. Without check climate change is projected to lead to summer droughts and winter floods across Europe.
Using REMO the regional climate model of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology researchers tested
what would happen to climate change in 100 years if land currently covered in non-forest vegetation was converted into deciduous forest.
This equates to more than a doubling of forest in Poland Czech republic Denmark Northern Ukraine Northern Germany and France.
But in already heavily forested countries such as Sweden the increase is smaller at less than 10%.
The model indicates that in the northern part of Central europe and Ukraine afforestation results in 0. 3-0. 5c decrease in temperature and 10-15%more summer rain by 2071-2090.
The effect of planting trees depends on the environment of each region. Dr Borbã¡la Gá
While we realize that the amount of afforestation included in our model is unrealistic in practice even a more modest program of planting trees could theoretically reduce the effect of climate change in Northern europe.
#Ozone depletion trumps greenhouse gas increase in jet-stream shiftdepletion of Antarctic ozone is a more important factor than increasing greenhouse gases in shifting the Southern hemisphere jet stream in a southward direction according to researchers
Previous research suggests that this southward shift in the jet stream has contributed to changes in ocean circulation patterns and precipitation patterns in the Southern hemisphere both
and greenhouse gas increase are thought to have contributed to the southward shift of the Southern hemisphere jet stream with the former having a greater impact.
The jet stream is expected to shift back toward the north as ozone is replenished yet the greenhouse-gas effect could negate this.
and greenhouse gas on several different observed wind patterns. When most people look at ozone and greenhouse gases they focus on one wind pattern
but my previous research suggests that by looking at several different but similar patterns you can learn more about what is said really happening Feldstein.
In their study the researchers analyzed four wind patterns. The first wind pattern corresponded to an equatorwarda shift of the midlatitude westerlies toward the equator.
T; the second pattern also described an equatorward shift but included a strong tropical component.
In addition to their novel inclusion of more than one wind pattern in their analysis the scientists investigated the four wind patterns at very short time scales.
Climate models are usually run for many years; they don't look at the day-to-day weather said Feldstein.
But we learned that the four wind patterns fluctuate over about 10 days so they change on a time scale that is similar to daily weather.
This realization means that by taking into account fluctuations associated with the daily weather it will be easier to test theories about the mechanism by
which ozone and greenhouse gases influence the jet stream. The researchers used an algorithm to examine the relationship between daily weather patterns and the four wind patterns.
They found that the first wind pattern--which corresponded to an equatorward shift of the midlatitude westerlies--was associated with greenhouse gases.
They also found that the third pattern--which corresponded to a poleward shift of the westerlies--was associated with ozone.
The other two wind patterns were unrelated to either of the forcings. The researchers found that a long-term decline in the frequency of the first pattern
and a long-term increase in the frequency of the third pattern can explain the changes in the Southern hemisphere jet stream.
Ozone had the bigger impact on the change in the position of the jet stream said Lee.
The opposite is likely true for the Northern hemisphere; we think that ozone has limited a influence on the Northern hemisphere.
Understanding which of these forcings is most important in certain locations may help policy makers as they begin to plan for the future.
In addition to finding that ozone is more important than greenhouse gases in influencing the jet-stream shift the scientists also found evidence for a mechanism by
which greenhouse gases influence the jet-stream shift. They learned that greenhouse gases may not directly influence the jet-stream shift
but rather may indirectly influence the shift by changing tropical convection or the vertical transfer of heat in large-scale cloud systems which in turn influences the jet shift.
The researchers currently are further examining this and other possible mechanisms for how greenhouse gases and ozone influence the jet stream as well as Antarctic sea ice.
The results will appear in the Feb 1 issue of the journal Science. Not only are the results of this paper important for better understanding climate change
but this paper is also important because it uses a new approach to try to better understand climate change;
it uses observational data on a short time scale to try to look at cause and effect which is something that is rarely done in climate research said Feldstein.
Also our results are consistent with climate models so this paper provides support that climate models are performing well at simulating the atmospheric response to ozone and greenhouse gases.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Penn State. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
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