#Loss of eastern hemlock affects peak flows after extreme storm eventsthe loss of eastern hemlock could affect water yield
and storm flow from forest watersheds in the southern Appalachians according to a new study by U s. Forest Service scientists at the Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory (Coweeta) located in Otto North carolina.
They also thought that peak flows after storms would increase especially in the dormant season.
and peak flow following storms. Since hemlock woolly adelgid was detected first in 2003 all the eastern hemlock trees in both watersheds died resulting in a loss of 26 percent of forest basal area (that area occupied by tree trunks
however that peak stream flow after the largest storm events increased by more than 20 percent.
It also has implications for the more extreme rain events predicted under climate change he added.
#Ecology could break deadlock between grouse shooting, hen harrier conservation on UK moorlandsas another grouse shooting season begins research out today in The british Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology shows ecology could help break the decades-long deadlock
between grouse shooters and conservationists seeking to protect hen harriers on UK moorlands. Led by Professor Steve Redpath of the University of Aberdeen the study involved grouse managers and conservationists as well as ecologists.
Using science as a way to seek solutions to the conflict the grouse managers and conservationists together agreed key questions they wanted the research to answer.
The ecologists then developed a model to explore a possible compromise solution. The model showed that at certain population densities harriers can coexist with profitable grouse shooting.
and testing the effectiveness of various solutions ecology can help resolve wildlife conflicts --which can have dramatic impacts on people's lives and livelihoods--worldwide.
Ecology has a vital role to play in understanding and tackling these conflicts by providing impartial evidence
The above story is provided based on materials by British Ecological Society (BES. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
#Climate change, predators, and trickle down effects on ecosystemspredators play important roles in maintaining diverse and stable ecosystems.
Climate change can push species to move in order to stay in their climatic comfort zones potentially altering where species live
and how they interact which could fundamentally transform current ecosystems. A symposium focusing on climate's effects on predators--causing cascading effects on whole ecosystems--will take place on Tuesday August 12th during the Ecological Society of America's 99th Annual Meeting held this year in Sacramento California.
There will be winners and losers as species adapt to a changing climate. Ecologists are just beginning to understand why different competitors may be favored by climate change
and how consumer-resource interactions are modified. Impacts on one species can affect many organisms in an ecosystem.
Because predator species are animals that survive by preying on other organisms they send ripples throughout the food web regulating the effects other animals have on that ecosystem.
This cause and effect process is called a trophic cascade or the progression of direct and indirect effects predators have across lower levels in a food chain.
Sea otter populations provide a historical example of this phenomenon. The fur trade spanning the late 1700s to early 1900s decimated their numbers across their range from Alaska to Baja california Mexico.
Populations went from an estimated several hundred-thousand to more than a million down to 1000 000. Today there are estimated to be just over 106000 worldwide with just under 3000 in California.
Now sea otters and other important predator species face the challenges of a changing climate. The near extinction of sea otters is one of the most dramatic examples of human-induced impacts to the structure
and functioning of temperate nearshore marine ecosystems said Rebecca G. Martone of the Center for Ocean Solutions at Stanford university.
Otters might also offer a defense against climate change because healthy kelp forests can grow rapidly and store large amounts of carbon.
Dr. Martone's analyses of the effects of sea otters on kelp forest ecosystems can help shape predictions of how climate change
and trophic cascades in concert with other drivers affect coastal ecosystems. The ecological impacts of a changing climate are evident from terrestrial polar regions to tropical marine environments.
Ecologists'research into the tropic cascading effects of predators will assist decision makers by providing important scientific findings to prepare for the impacts of climate change occurring now and into the future.
Speakers for the symposia include marine freshwater and terrestrial experimental ecologists who will present their research
and offer insights from different approaches used to studying consumer-resource interactions. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Ecological Society of America.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length h
#Climate change and drought in ancient timesthe influence of climate on agriculture is believed to be a key factor in the rise and fall of societies in the Ancient Near east.
Dr. Simone Riehl of TÃ bingen University's Institute for Archaeological Science and the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment has headed an investigation into archaeological finds of grain
in order to find out what influence climate had on agriculture in early farming societies. Her findings are published in this week's PNAS--Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
They found that many settlements were affected by drought linked to major climate fluctuations. Geographic factors and technologies introduced by humans played a big role
The findings give archaeologists clues as to how early agricultural societies dealt with climate fluctuations and differing local environments.
and three raptor species commonly found in sagebrush ecosystems: Red-tailed hawks Swainson's Hawks and Ferruginous Hawks.
Raven populations have increased precipitously in the past four decades in sagebrush ecosystems largely as a result of fragmentation and development of anthropogenic structures.
and limited in nesting areas said study lead author Peter Coates an ecologist with the USGS Western Ecological Research center.
In addition they tend to be highly intelligent birds that adapt quickly to changing environments and have been shown to transmit learned behaviors from one generation to the next.
and USGS ecologist Kristy Howe whose masters thesis research with WCS formed the foundation of this study.
and eggs and hawks are predominantly predators of adults these landscape changes could shift ecosystem dynamics.
and young and correspondingly lower for adult sage-grouse and other prey species. This adds new insights for ecosystem managers who seek to understand the complex relationships between ravens hawks sage-grouse populations and habitat changes.
influence differential habitat use of nesting Buteos and ravens within sagebrush ecosystem: Implications for transmission line development will appear in the August 2014 print issue of the journal The Condor.
A second tool the Climate Patterns Viewer allows farmers to examine the impact global climate patterns such as El Niã o Southern Oscillation
Teams of agronomists sociologists climatologists and environmental and soil scientists are examining all aspects of the corn production system.
and the Environment stated that 70 percent of the world's coffee supply might disappear by 2080 because of conditions caused by climate change.
If you can't alter your entire environment by switching cities--make small changes. For instance if weight-loss
To measure individual differences in parasite tolerance the researchers used statistical methods that could be extended to studies of disease epidemiology in humans said senior author Andrea Graham an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology
If genetics do play a role she suspects multiple genes may interact with environmental factors to determine tolerance;
Lauren Quinn an invasive plant ecologist at U of I's Energy Biosciences Institute recognized that most of the news about invasive biofuel crops was negative
In approving new biofuel products Quinn said that the EPA doesn't formally consider invasiveness at all--just greenhouse gas emissions related to their production.
Last summer the EPA approved two known invaders Arundo donax (giant reed) and Pennisetum purpurem (napier grass) despite public criticism added U of I professor of agricultural law A. Bryan Endres who co-authored the research to define legislative language for potentially invasive bioenergy feedstocks.
The team of researchers used fundamental biological ecological and management principles to develop definitions for terminology commonly used to describe invasive species. Our definition of invasive is'a population exhibiting a net negative impact
or harm to the target ecosystem'for example Quinn said. We want to establish guidelines that will be simple for regulators and informed by the ecological literature and our own knowledge.
We also need to recognize that some native plants can become weedy or invasive. It's complicated
and suggested regulations could become part of a revised Renewable Fuels Standard administered by EPA which would require Congress to make the changes.
Some of the biofeedstocks currently being examined by the EPA for approval like pennycress have a high risk for invasion Quinn said.
However the EPA has approved Miscanthus as a feedstock without specifying a species or genotype Quinn said.
which includes 49 questions that must be asked about a particular species based on its biology ecology
This will be the first time that they are out in the environment so we don't know what their potential for invasiveness is.
The above story is provided based on materials by University of Illinois College of Agricultural Consumer and Environmental sciences (ACES.
and evidence-based methods for implementing particular programs. â#¢Characteristics of the NICU Work Environment Associated with Breastfeeding Support original research led by Sunny G. Hallowell Ph d. PPCNP-BC IBCLC of the University
and breastfeeding--Implementing a breastfeeding peer support group in a children's hospital--Considerations in meeting protein needs of the human milk-fed preterm infant--Environmental factors affecting breastfeeding duration within a NICUSUPPORTING the use of human milk is one
#History of fire and drought shapes the ecology of California, past and futurefire season has arrived in California with vengeance in this third year of extended drought for the state.
As force of destruction and renewal fire has a long and intimate history with the ecology of California.
Ecological scientists will discuss aspects of that history in detail at the upcoming 99th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America on August 10--15th 2014.
Big fires today are not outside the range of historical variation in size said Jon Keeley an ecologist based in Three Rivers Cal. with the U s. Geological Survey's Western Ecological Research center and a Fellow of the Ecological Society.
and adapting to extreme weather and climate events. He will synthesize his research on the history of wildfire across the entire state contrasting historical versus contemporary and forested versus non-forested patterns of wildfire incidence.
when we talk about wildfire in California we are talking about two very different fire regimes in two different ecosystems:
The chaparral shrublands of southern California and similar sagebrush ecosystems in the Great Basin are adapted not to the kind of frequent fire typical of the mountain conifer forests in California.
Fires in the lower elevation ecosystems are always crown fires which kill most of the vegetation.
In the millennia before humans arrived these ecosystems burned at intervals of 100 to 130 years.
These lower elevation ecosystems experienced unprecedented fire frequency in the last century with fire returning to the same area every 10 to 20 years altering the ecology of the landscape.
In Southern California lower elevation ecosystems have burned more frequently than ever before. I think it's partly climate
but also people starting fires during bad conditions Keeley said. Bad conditions include extended droughts and dry fall days when the Santa ana winds blow through the canyons.
In high elevation conifer forests spring temperatures and drought are correlated strongly with fire and Keeley thinks climate change
and management choices are likely playing a role in current trends. But in the hotter drier valleys and foothills cloaked in grass oak and chaparral human behavior dominates.
Climate change is certainly important on some landscapes. But at lower elevation we should not be thinking just about climate change said Keeley.
We should be thinking about all global change. Land use change and population growth create more opportunities for fires to start.
To Keeley this means that prescribed fires in lower elevation ecosystems now have entirely different consequences for the regional ecology than they did
The above story is provided based on materials by Ecological Society of America. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length h
#Fipronil, imidacloprid reduce honeybee mitochondrial activitynew research published in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry addresses the effects of two broad-spectrum systemic insecticides fipornil and imidacloprid on honeybees.
Daniel Nicodemo professor of ecology and beekeeping at the Universidade Estadual Paulista in Dracena Brazil and lead author of the study states These insecticides affect the nervous system of pest
The above story is provided based on materials by Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
or expose soybean to the weather during transport all of which results in a 10 percent loss Goldsmith said.
bad weather; bad road conditions; and a lack of employee training. What's interesting is that the results from the survey were mixed so Goldsmith said.
Truck conditions and bad weather were the top factors to blame for loss but truck conditions were mentioned by only 62 percent.
and beautiful all the time but farming is really tough in the tropics. There are pest pressures 24/7 soils are poor there's an extreme rainy season distance to markets is great and road conditions are very rough.
The above story is provided based on materials by University of Illinois College of Agricultural Consumer and Environmental sciences.
and other animals said Adam Morris a Phd student in the School of Environmental sciences and lead author of the study published recently in Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry.
The lack of any significant biomagnification through the food chain indicates that there is very little risk of harm from exposure to these CUPS in this region.
Morris focused on studying the Bathurst region of the Canadian Arctic working with Guelph toxicology professor emeritus Keith Solomon adjunct professor Derek Muir and collaborators from Environment Canada's Aquatic
Morris said these CUPS represent only a small percentage of contaminants in Arctic regions or in the environment globally.
However their unique set of properties does help us more clearly see how different contaminants behave in the environment
This makes good sense in an ecological sense Robinson said because threats often come in bunches. The fact that the researchers observed these effects in two species that diverged 300 million years ago makes the findings even more compelling Robinson said.
#Interaction of climate change, fire and forests in U s a special section of the September issue of Forest Ecology
and Management available online now assesses the interactions among fire climate change and forests for five major regions of the United states. The editors of the section--Drs.
Chelcy Miniat from the U s. Forest Service Monique Rocca from Colorado State university and Robert Mitchell (now deceased) from the Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research center--started the project by organizing teams of scientists from the Forest Service
and universities to provide scientific input into the third National Climate Assessment (NCA) which is prepared at least every four years to assess the effects of climate change on sectors resources
and regions of the United states. The idea for the section came from conversations I had with Bob Mitchell when
and to use fire as a tool would be affected by climate change and that this interaction needed more attention in the next round of assessments.
Articles in the special section review the interactions between climate and fire in five different regions of the U s--the Pacific Northwest Southwest Rocky mountains Mid-atlantic and Southeast.
discussion of projected changes in climate and how they will likely impact fire and forests;
and a synthesis of what is known about the effects of fire on forest ecosystem services such as water quantity and quality air quality and biodiversity.
The growing interest in fire and climate has been fueled by numerous predictions that wildfires--especially in the West--will get larger more intense
and increasingly hard to contain with climate change said Rocca. Understanding the complex relationships among climate fire and vegetation is critical to the ability of policymakers
and resource managers to respond to climate change. Our goal in these articles is not only to provide the best available science
but also to inform the conversation on how forest management choices can impact the valuable services we derive from our forests.
Historically many blueberry traits have been selected with producers in mind including climate adaptation yield harvest potential
and disease resistance said Thomas Colquhoun an environmental horticulture assistant professor and study co-author. Developing a new blueberry variety can take more than 10 years so before investing that time scientists
which can be found in humans animals and our surroundings. Staphylococcus aureus is part of the normal nasal and skin flora of approximately 50%of the population.
and seeds becoming long and leggy as they reach for the sky. That process begins with the phytochrome
#Climate change is fueling forest disturbances, study showsclimate change is already altering the environment. Long-lived ecosystems such as forests are particularly vulnerable to the comparatively rapid changes in the climate system.
A new international study published this week in Nature Climate Change shows that damage from wind bark beetles
and wildfires has increased drastically in Europe's forests in recent years. Disturbances like windthrow and forest fires are part of the natural dynamics of forest ecosystems
and are not therefore a catastrophe for the ecosystem as such. However these disturbances have intensified considerably in recent decades
which increasingly challenges the sustainable management of forest ecosystems says Rupert Seidl BOKU Vienna the principal researcher involved in the study.
The authors show that damage caused by forest disturbance has increased continuously over the last 40 years in Europe reaching 56 million cubic meters of timber per year in the period 2002--2010.
Scenario analyses for the coming decades also suggest a continuation of this trend: the study estimates that forest disturbances will increase damage by another million cubic meters of timber every year over the next 20 years.
The scientists identified climate change as the main driver behind this increase: under assumed stable climatic conditions no substantial further increases in forest disturbances beyond the current levels were found in their simulations.
Wind damage would be seen to rise most notably in Central and Western europe. Increasing disturbances amplify climate changethere is strong feedback from forest disturbances on the climate system.
Currently Europe's forests are mitigating climate change by taking up large quantities of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.
The carbon loss from increasing tree mortality and disturbance could however reduce this uptake and reverse the positive effects of forest management aimed at reducing climate change.
The climate-induced increase in forest disturbance could thus further amplify the progression of climate change.
In this respect adapted management strategies such as increased biodiversity and optimized thinning interventions in Europe's forests can buffer these carbon losses and support the climate change mitigation function of forests.
Europe's forest management will need thus to adapt to changing disturbances in order to keep sustaining the diverse set of ecosystem services provided to society in the future the study concludes.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by European Forest Institute. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference e
#Kangaroos win when aborigines hunt with fire: Co-evolution benefits Australias martu people and wildlifeaustralia's Aboriginal Martu people hunt kangaroos and set small grass fires to catch lizards as they have for at least 2000 years.
when human subsistence practices might be detrimental to the environment and when they might be beneficial says Brian Codding an assistant professor of anthropology.
When subsistence practices have long histories they are more likely to sustain ecosystem stability he says.
But when there are sudden changes to the way people make a living on the land expect the result to be detrimental to the environment.
In some parts of Australia where Aboriginal people no longer are burning the bush ecologists are recording rapid declines in threatened species
and hunting regimes in remote communities and incorporate this traditional ecological practice into future management protocols.
Martu-set fires average about 10 acres--a small fraction of the size of fires ignited by lightning Codding says noting that patchy vegetation created by intentional fires reduce the likelihood of devastating large blazes.
The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment.
or indirectly over time in ways that alter each other's evolution--an ecological mechanism that he says explains how moderate levels of burning by the Martu actually bolsters kangaroo populations.
In fact they see humans as part of a larger ecosystem that has spiritual components--the dreamtime place of creation where ancestors roamed.
So perhaps it's not surprising to them it has positive results for the ecosystem.
Adding them to affected cells in other words cells treated with the environmental poison Paraquat or with a down-regulated DJ-1 decreased the toxic effect of the herbicide restored the activity of the mitochondria
while building carbon storage and improving production efficiency on their lands said Stephen Ogle associate professor in CSU's Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability and senior scientist at the Natural resource Ecology Laboratory (NREL).
That involves calculating the energetic preferences of every acid in the chain as well as the influence of the surrounding environment as folding progresses.
#Wildfires and other burns play bigger role in climate changestanford professor's calculations indicate that wildfires
and other types of fires involving plant matter play a much bigger role in climate change
and wildfires--figures into both climate change and public health. But until the release of a new study by Stanford university Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Mark Z. Jacobson the degree of that contribution had never been quantified comprehensively.
Jacobson's research detailed in a paper published July 30 in the Journal of Geophysical Research:
His findings indicate that burning biomass is playing a much bigger role in climate change
Jacobson the director of Stanford's Atmosphere/Energy Program and a senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and the Precourt Institute for Energy said almost 8. 5 billion tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide
First they enter the minuscule water droplets that form clouds. At night that's not an issue.
But during the day sunlight scatters around within clouds bathing them in luminescence. When sunlight penetrates a water droplet containing black
Heating the cloud reduces the relative humidity in the cloud Jacobson said. This causes the cloud to dissipate.
And because clouds reflect sunlight cloud dissipation causes more sunlight to transfer to the ground
and seas ultimately resulting in warmer ground and air temperatures. Finally Jacobson said carbon particles released from burning biomass settle on snow
and ice contributing to further warming. Ice and snow are white and reflect sunlight very effectively Jacobson said.
But because carbon is dark it absorbs sunlight causing snow and ice to melt at accelerated rates.
That exposes dark soil and dark seas. And again because those surfaces are dark they absorb even more thermal energy from the sunlight establishing an ongoing amplification process.
and enhance cloudiness causing more light to reflect. The cooling effect of these light-colored particles amounts to slightly more than 1 C Jacobson said so you end up with a total net warming gain of 0. 9 C or so.
The bottom line is that biomass burning is neither clean nor climate-neutral he said. If you're serious about addressing global warming you have to deal with biomass burning as well.
They recently published the study Ecological consequences of shifting the timing of burning tallgrass prairie in the peer-reviewed scientific journal PLOS ONE.
And our neighbors downwind of the Flint Hills also win. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Kansas State university.
Selective logging in the tropics is not a new phenomenon and it will continue to be a common use of the forest says Zuzana Burivalova of ETH Zurich Switzerland.
Biological sciences the study builds the evolutionary framework for future ecological and genetics research of insects Kawahara said.
Caitlin Jacobs a University of Florida master's student in wildlife ecology and conservation conducted the study in
The new carbon map also reveals Perã's extremely high ecological diversity and it provides the critical input to studies of deforestation and forest degradation for conservation land use and enforcement purposes.
The technique includes the determination of uncertainty of carbon stores throughout the country which is essential for decision makers.
The mapping project is a joint effort among the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO) led by Carnegie's Greg Asner the Ministry of Environment of Perã and Wake Forest University.
With its huge range of environments from cold Andean deserts to hot Amazonian rainforests Perã is an ideal country for advancing high-tech carbon inventories.
The international community wants to use a combination of carbon sequestration and emissions reductions to combat climate change.
Some 15%of global carbon emissions result from deforestation and forest degradation which releases carbon dioxide to the atmosphere as trees are destroyed.
By combining the CAO laser information with satellite maps of forest cover deforestation and other environmental variables generated by the Peruvian Environment Ministry's Directorate of Land Management a cost-effective means to monitor the country into the future has been established.
The new map reveals that the total aboveground carbon stock of the country is currently 6. 9 billion metric tons.
Regions of deforestation such as Puerto Maldonado where gold mining has ravaged the area had low to no carbon storage.
It should ignite the imaginations of ecologists and earth scientists and provide a road map for decision makers.
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