Carole Fakhry M d. M p h. of the Johns hopkins university School of medicine Baltimore and colleagues investigated associations between objective biomarkers reflective of all current tobacco exposures (environmental smoking and use of smokeâ less tobacco
and Probiotics led by Dr. Gregor Reid studied how microbes could protect against environmental health damage in poor parts of the world.
#Due to landscape fragmentation, Brazils rainforests are releasing more carbon dioxide than previously thoughtbecause of the deforestation of tropical rainforests in Brazil significantly more carbon has been lost than was assumed previously.
As scientists of the Hemholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) write in the scientific journal Nature Communications the effect of the degradation has been underestimated in fragmented forest areas
To estimate the additional carbon emissions at the forest edges the UFZ scientists developed a new approach that integrates the results from remote sensing ecology and forest modelling.
For their study they initially modelled the percentage loss of carbon in forest border after the deforestation of the surrounding area.
The climate conditions change significantly: The sun's rays are stronger the temperatures rise and there are areas where the wind is provided with a more effective target.
This means that stress increases for trees in peripheral areas. Especially the larger specimens die off.
A quarter of this is caused by deforestation around the globe. Because the calculations of the UFZ model indicate that ten percent of the forest areas in the tropics worldwide lie at the edges of forests these degradation effects result in an increase of up to 0. 2 billion tonnes of carbon getting
into the atmosphere per year. This share has so far not been included in the carbon balance calculations.
This aspect has been included not directly in the calculations of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
However this effect should urgently be taken into account the ecologist demands. The UFZ scientists'results are also interesting for practical aspects in climate protection policy.
On the one hand it makes sense to require a minimum size of at least around 10000 hectares for forest island areas
For the first time this examination shows a methodical way in which ecological effects in small areas can be used for large-scale environmental assessments.
The above story is provided based on materials by Helmholtz Centre For Environmental Research-UFZ. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
#Effects of growing rice in low water, high salt conditionstwo papers in the Pertanika Journal of Tropical Agricultural Science investigates the effects of low water input and high salt levels on rice growth.
One paper finds that low water input does not affect rice growth as much as the levels of nutrients in soil can
and with water for agriculture becoming increasingly scarce the question of the effect of low water levels on rice growth is becoming more critical.
Low water input rice production could be implemented and fresh water saved for other sectors. In a second paper in the same issue Muhammad Ibrahim and colleagues from Pakistanâ##s University college of Agriculture and Government College University as well as the South Koreaâ##s National Academy of Agricultural
Research published today in Nature Climate Change reveals how carbon efficiency has improved in nearly all Chinese provinces.
The research was funded partly by the Economic and Social Research Council's (ESRC) Centre for Climate Change Economics
Prof Guan professor of climate change economics said: Capital investment creates a market demand for the large-scale production expansion of cement steel
China's national government sets both climate and economic targets and uses these criteria in evaluating performances and promotion of local government leaders.
Additionally Prof Guan has published recently research in Environmental science & Technology which shows China's growing economy has caused also serious stresses on the country's freshwater both in terms of consumption and pollution.
and textiles--was the largest contributor to the water pollution while household consumption and agricultural use also stressed the country's limited clean water supply.
Urban household consumption export of goods and services and infrastructure investment are the main factors contributing to accumulated water pollution since 2000.
and to lower environmental impact since this fertilizing system represents an alternative to the mineral fertilizers used so far.
Thus its application in agriculture horticulture forestry plants ornamental plants or any other plant with commercial interest would represent a significant environmental and economic saving.
and other tiny creatures to the structure of grasslands and the valuable ecosystem services they provide.
During a 3-year study researchers found that removing these small animals from the soil of a replicated Scottish sheep meadow altered the plant species that grew in the ecosystem reduced overall productivity
The results reflect the long-term ecological impacts of land use changes such as the conversion of forests to agricultural land researchers say.
and carbon to cycle in ecosystems but there was little evidence that human-induced loss of these animals has effects at the level of the whole ecosystem on services such as agricultural yield said Mark Bradford an Associate professor at the Yale
& Environmental Studies (F&es) and lead author of the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
At a climate-controlled laboratory the researchers assembled 16 bathtub-sized replicas of a Scottish upland grassland.
But when we ran it out through 500 days we did actually find huge changes in the ecosystem processes including productivity of the plants Bradford says.
These findings emphasize how interconnected the belowground and aboveground components of ecosystems are and that different ecosystem processes respond in different ways to the management of grasslands said Stephen Wood'11 M. E. Sc. a doctoral student at Columbia University
and and co-author of the study. In this case the loss of soil animal diversity eventually changed the dominant plant species in the meadow ecosystems
and then in turn the productivity of these grasslands and how they responded to agricultural management Bradford said.
The above story is provided based on materials by Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. The original article was written by Kevin Dennehy.
Identifying substances in our environment that can make people vulnerable to cancer will help in prevention efforts said Linda Birnbaum Ph d. director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the National
People are exposed mainly to cumene through the environment and in workplaces that use or produce cumene.
The above story is provided based on materials by National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS. Note:
#Predicting impact of climate change on species that cant get out of the waywhen scientists talk about the consequences of climate change it can mean more than how we human beings will be impacted by higher temperatures rising seas and serious storms.
Researchers at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental science and University of Vermont have developed a new tool to overcome a major challenge of predicting how organisms may respond to climate change.
When climate changes organisms have three choices: migrate adapt or go extinct said lead author Matt Fitzpatrick of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental science's Appalachian Laboratory.
We're bringing the ability to quantify that adaptation piece that had largely been missing up to this point.
Organisms are adapted to live in certain environments and not others. However climate change is forcing them to live in climates to
which they may not be well adapted. Animals can move around but things like plants and trees are rooted in the ground
and must withstand climate change or die. Scientists have combined genetic analyses with new modeling approaches for the first time to help identify how well balsam popular trees are adapted to handle climate change.
The scientists sampled the genetic code of 400 trees from 31 locations across northern North america
Up until now scientists have sought to quantify the risk of climate change to different species by mapping where those species occur today based on climate
For instance models for North american tree species often predict them to occur further north as climate warms.
It turns out that all members of a species won't react the same way to climate change.
Some poplar trees are adapted already genetically to handle climate changes expected over the next few decades while others are not--just like some people a more likely to survive a disease than others.
Increasingly local adaptation to climate is being studied at the molecular level by identifying which genes control climate adaptation
and how these vary between individuals. This type of modeling of variation in genetic makeup represents an important advance in understanding how climate change may impact biodiversity.
We've developed the techniques to associate genetic variation to climate and to map where individuals may
and may not be preadapted to climates expected in the future said Fitzpatrick. It's important to know where these places are.
This gives us a way to link climate responses more closely to the biology than we were able to do previously.
The study Ecological genomics meets community-level modeling of biodiversity: mapping the genomic landscape of current and future environmental adaptation was published by Matthew Fitzpatrick of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental science and Steven Keller of the University of Vermont.
It appeared in the October 1 issue of Ecology Letters. Story Source: 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. Journal Reference e
#Pet foods: Not all brands follow meat regulationsresearchers in Chapman University's Food Science Program have published just a study on pet food mislabeling.
The study focused on commercial pet foods marketed for dogs and cats to identify meat species present as well as any instances of mislabeling.
Of the 52 products tested 31 were labeled correctly 20 were mislabeled potentially and one contained a nonspecific meat ingredient that could not be verified.
and it was shocking how few had ever been described said Noah Fierer an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at CU-Boulder and corresponding author of the study.
The study was led by Kelly Ramirez a postdoctoral researcher at Colorado State university now at The netherlands Institute of Ecology in The netherlands.
and Ecosystem Functioning Lab at CSU headed by biology Professor Diana Wall director of the School of Global Environmental Sustainability and a corresponding author on the study.
and if you want to find a wide range of different belowground organisms you don't have to travel around the world said Fierer who is also a fellow at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental sciences.
and animals that are able to live in a particular biome like the desert are determined largely by the climate.
But microbes appear to be concerned more about the environment in the soil such as the acidity
and the carbon availability than how hot or dry the climate is. This allows diverse microbial communities to thrive wherever the soil conditions are equally diverse.
#Floridas climate boosts soil-carbon storage, cuts greenhouse emissionswarm temperatures and a wet landscape increase soil's ability to store carbon
Soil-stored carbon can slow the build up of carbon-based gases in the atmosphere a phenomenon believed to be a cause of global climate change.
but also helps to improve our climate and agricultural production is hidden a treasure said Grunwald a member of the Institute of food and agricultural sciences faculty.
Soils serve as a natural container to hold carbon that would otherwise be emitted into the atmosphere as greenhouse gases that accelerate global climate change.
In addition to environmental stewardship landowners can make money by storing carbon. Participants in the state's Florida Stewardship Program are sitting on an estimated $300 million worth of carbon.
Researchers studied land use land cover and climate change to see how those factors affect the soil's ability to store carbon.
Together land use land cover and climate change account for 46 percent of soil carbon sequestration the study showed.
while climate change account for 19 percent. Researchers used temperature and rain to determine the effect of climate change.
They found higher average annual temperatures correlated with higher soil carbon sequestration specifically in crops mesic upland forest pineland
Results of the study appear in the September issue of the journal Science of the Total Environment.
#Biodiversity does not always improve resistance of forest ecosystems to droughtscientists from INRA in collaboration with WSL (Switzerland)
and European colleagues studied the resistance of forests to drought according to the diversity of tree species. Due to climate change parts of the world will face droughts that will affect forest health.
what was accepted commonly by scientists species diversity does not systematically improve tree resistance to drought in forest ecosystems.
The extreme events induced by climate change will have drastic consequences on forest functions and services and may bring about important drought-induced die off events.
It is known however that biodiversity can promote forest ecosystem performance and resistance to insect pests and diseases but whether or not diverse forests are adapted also better to deal with drought stress remains unknown.
Therefore managing forest ecosystems for high tree species diversity alone does not necessarily ensure forest adaptability to possible future severe drought events.
and thus maintain ecosystem functions under drought stress. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by INRA-France.
Just as in humans the plant microbiome is shaped by the types of bacteria that successfully colonize the plant's ecosystem.
Instead weather and topography play a greater role in the ecological severity of fires than these bark-boring beetles.
While the findings may exonerate the insect scapegoats they should also help ecosystem managers better respond to changes in the face of climate-driven disturbances like drought and warmer temperatures.
However as the climate has warmed outbreaks and big fires have both become more common. The phenomenon of more beetles has meant more dead trees
and wildfire together change the ecological response of the forest to fire? Fortunately for the team among the burned areas studied were pine stands that had not been attacked by beetles.
The study team examined ecosystem indicators of fire severity such as how many trees were killed by fire
Overall however Turner says the effects of beetle outbreaks on fire severity took a back seat to stronger drivers--primarily weather and topography.
Fire severity increased under more extreme weather regardless of pre-fire outbreaks and forest stands higher in the landscape burned more severely than those at lower elevation as fires moved uphill building momentum.
It's not surprising the ecosystem has these mechanisms to be resilient. What we as people see as catastrophes are not always catastrophes to the ecosystem.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Wisconsin-Madison. The original article was written by Kelly April Tyrrell.
#Causes of California drought linked to climate changethe extreme atmospheric conditions associated with California's crippling drought are far more likely to occur under today's global warming conditions than in the climate that existed before humans emitted large amounts of greenhouse gases.
The atmospheric conditions associated with the unprecedented drought currently afflicting California are linked very likely to human-caused climate change Stanford scientists write in a new research paper.
In a new study a team led by Stanford climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh used a novel combination of computer simulations
and statistical techniques to show that a persistent region of high atmospheric pressure hovering over the Pacific ocean that diverted storms away from California was much more likely to form in the presence of modern greenhouse gas concentrations.
The research published on Sept. 29 as a supplement to this month's issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society is one of the most comprehensive studies to investigate the link between climate change and California's ongoing drought.
Our research finds that extreme atmospheric high pressure in this region--which is linked strongly to unusually low precipitation in California--is much more likely to occur today than prior to the human emission of greenhouse gases that began during the Industrial revolution in the 1800s said Diffenbaugh an associate professor of environmental Earth
system science at Stanford and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
or Triple R--that prevented winter storms from reaching California during the 2013 and 2014 rainy seasons.
Blocking ridges are regions of high atmospheric pressure that disrupt typical wind patterns in the atmosphere. Winds respond to the spatial distribution of atmospheric pressure said Daniel Swain a graduate student in Diffenbaugh's lab
and lead author of the study. We have seen this amazingly persistent region of high pressure over the northeastern Pacific for many months now which has altered substantially atmospheric flow and kept California largely dry.
Like a large boulder that has tumbled into a narrow stream the Triple R diverted the flow of high-speed air currents known as the jet stream far to the north causing Pacific storms to bypass not only California but also Oregon and Washington.
whether human climate change has influenced the conditions responsible for California's drought. Given the important role of the Triple R Diffenbaugh's team set out to measure the probability of such extreme ridging events.
whether climate change played a role in the probability of the 2013 event the team collaborated with Bala Rajaratnam an assistant professor of statistics and of environmental Earth system science and an affiliated faculty member of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
Rajaratnam and his graduate students Michael Tsiang and Matz Haugen applied advanced statistical techniques to a large suite of climate model simulations.
Using the Triple R as a benchmark the group compared geopotential heights--an atmospheric property related to pressure--between two sets of climate model experiments.
One set mirrored the present climate in which the atmosphere is growing increasingly warm due to human emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
The interdisciplinary research team found that the extreme geopotential heights associated with the Triple R in 2013 were at least three times as likely to occur in the present climate as in the preindustrial climate.
We've demonstrated with high statistical confidence that the large-scale atmospheric conditions similar to those associated with the Triple R are far more likely to occur now than in the climate before we emitted large amounts of greenhouse gases Rajaratnam said.
In using these advanced statistical techniques to combine climate observations with model simulations we've been able to better understand the ongoing drought in California Diffenbaugh added.
thus lowering production costs and reducing the potential for runoff that can impact the environment according to Subramanian.
and CTFS-Forestgeo and ecosystem ecologist based at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. Many of the changes occurring in forests worldwide are attributable to human impacts on climate atmospheric chemistry land use
and animal populations that are so pervasive as to warrant classification of a new geologic period in Earth's history--the Anthropocene the Age of Humans.
Landscapes around protected sites experience deforestation. The plot network now includes forests from Brazil to northern Canada from Gabon to England and from Papua new guinea to China.
and flows within the ecosystem take soil samples and measure climate variables like rainfall and temperature.
The thorough study of these plots provides insights into not only how forests are changing but also why.
Climate change scenarios predict that most of these sites will face warmer and often drier conditions in the future--some experiencing novel climates with no modern analogs.
Forests are changing more rapidly than expected by chance alone and shifts in species composition have been associated with environmental change.
Biomass increased at many tropical sites across the network. It is incredibly rewarding to work with a team of forest scientists from 78 research institutions around the world including four Smithsonian units Anderson-Teixeira said.
what this means for the climate biodiversity conservation and human well-being said Stuart Davies network director.
biology at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment. The goats are likely to provide an effective sustainable and much more affordable way of mowing down the invasive grass
and converting grasslands into forest ecosystems. This change in environment can affect stream hydrology and biogeochemistry said Dodds who has studied streams
and watersheds on the Konza prairie for more than 20 years. This is an important issue regionally
and shrubs additional actions are need to maintain quickly disappearing grassland ecosystems. It's clear from this research that
or differences in climate change may allow woody plant species to competitively take over grasslands. The biologists plan to continue studying water quality
Konza is an 8600-acre tallgrass prairie ecological research site jointly owned by the university and The Nature Conservancy.
But sugars may also be part of a deadly game of tag between plant and insect according to scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology.
and Jonathan Gershenzon from the Department of Biochemistry at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena Germany have discovered recently a previously unknown detoxification strategy in these pest insects.
The above story is provided based on materials by Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
while they acclimated to their new surroundings near other free-ranging whooping cranes. The pens are located in the vicinity of pairs of adult whooping cranes without chicks of their own.
Such pairs have a tendency to adopt other chicks and when adopted will lead them south during migration
or biochar to soil to both boost crop yields and counter global climate change a new study by researchers at Rice university
and reduced greenhouse gas emissions said lead author Rebecca Barnes an assistant professor of environmental science at Colorado College who began the research while serving as a postdoctoral research associate at Rice.
which formed in the wake of Hurricane Ike in 2008 when the city of Houston called for ideas about how to get rid of an estimated 5. 6 million cubic yards of fallen trees broken branches
and dead greenery left behind by the storm. The Rice Biochar Group won the $10000 grand prize in the city's Recycle Ike contest
In addition a warming Colorado climate--2 degrees Fahrenheit since 1977--has become a wild card regarding future Front Range fires according to the team.
Dr Hogendoorn says the use of bees has many environmental and economic benefits compared to spraying fungicide.
or run off into the environment less use of heavy equipment water labour and fuel. Dr Hogendoorn says adoption of the technique will have the additional benefit of building up the honey bee industry
#Being sheepish about climate adaptationfor thousands of years man has domesticated animals selecting the best traits possible for survival.
Now livestock such as sheep offer an intriguing animal to examine adaptation to climate change with a genetic legacy of centuries of selected breeding and a wealth of livestock genome-wide data available.
In a first-of-its kind study that combined molecular and environmental data professor Meng-Hua Li et al. performed a search for genes under environmental selection from domesticated sheep breeds.
or SNPS) that were collected on a sample of 32 different sheep breeds adapted to a number of regional and extreme contrasting climates.
along with environmental data to identify 230 SNPS that may have been selected due to climate change. These were used to identify 17 genes that are involved in energy metabolism endocrine and autoimmune regulation.
One particular gene candidate TBC1D12 had a pattern of global distribution indicating that variants were deleterious in hot equatorial climates
but became advantageous in colder climates. They found that of a variety of climatic variables such as sunlight
Their results could have significance for potential applications in functional genomics breeding and adaptation of livestock to climate change.
For example in the face of globally changing climates that may favor more woody vegetation at the expense of grasses the finding are useful for identifying particular breeds
and breeding) that are suited more robustly to future climates i e. have increased feed efficiency on novel vegetation communities.
and are the largest human contributors to climate change. Duren is principal investigator for the LA component of the Megacities Carbon Project.
and to the skies to collect mobile measurements of the local atmosphere to better define individual emissions sources and environmental conditions.
LA is a giant laboratory for climate studies and measurement tests said Duren. The LA megacity sprawls across five counties 150 municipalities many freeways landfills oil wells gas pipelines America's largest seaport mountains and even dairies all within an area
New york and Sao paulo Brazil through the policies of individual mayors regional councils and organizations like the Climate 40 group a partnership among the world's largest cities.
Other instruments track winds and vertical motion of the atmosphere--both of which are key to interpreting the greenhouse gas measurements.
While weather satellites tell us about winds storms and atmospheric moisture future satellites will also use'chemical cameras'to map the distributions of greenhouse gases
whether urban climate policies are working as intended and if not why and how they should be changed Duren said.
A new paper in the journal Nature Climate Change concludes that climate warming does not accelerate soil organic carbon decomposition or affect soil carbon storage despite increases in ecosystem productivity.
The research led by U s. Forest Service Research Ecologist Dr. Christian Giardina with the agency's Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry Pacific Southwest Research Station with co-authors Drs.
However the temperature gradient used in this study provides an ideal study system for measuring ecosystem responses to warming over long periods of time.
This allowed them to isolate the effects of changing temperature on ecosystem carbon storage and flux.
The scientists propose that where ecosystem carbon is unprotected such as at the surface in plant debris its decomposition
And while climate warming will continue with the addition of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere due to human activities (fossil fuel combustion land-use clearing) previous assumptions about a positive soil carbon cycling feedback to future warming
which means that the capacity of tropical ecosystems to retain carbon will depend on the balance of changes within each ecosystem.
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