 Your new post is loading...
Ocean acidification is damaging some marine species while others thrive, say scientists. n international team studied the effect of ocean acidification on plankton in the North Sea over the past forty years, to see what impact future changes may have. The study, published in PLoS One found that different species react in different ways to changes in their environment. As carbon dioxide emissions dissolve in seawater they lower the pH of the oceans making them more acidic and more corrosive to shells. Foraminifera and coccoliths, which are small shelled plankton and algae, appear to be surviving remarkably well in the more acidic conditions. But numbers of pteropods and bivalves – such as mussels, clams and oysters – are falling. 'Ecologically, some species are soaring, whilst others are crashing out of the system,' says Professor Jason Hall-Spencer, of Plymouth University, who co-authored the paper. The scientists are unsure whether this drop in certain species is because of changing pH levels, or whether it is due to a combination of stress factors like warming, overfishing and eutrophication -which results from a build up of excess nutrients in water.
oday Member States agreed on a new piece of legislation restricting the use of dangerous pesticides called neonicotinoids (neonics). The ban will start to come into effect later this year, and will restrict the use of the three most common neonics, imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam on crops which are ‘attractive to bees’ and on cereals planted in the summer which cause dust clouds of toxic chemicals. This is a small step in the right direction for wildlife organisations. Buglife have been campaigning for a ban since 2009, after producing a report showing that neonicotinoids had harmful effects on wildlife and damaging the delicate relationship between pollinators and plants. Pollinator decline is a serious concern, with roughly two thirds of insects seeing worrying reduction in numbers, and more than 250 UK pollinators being threatened with extinction.
"The patches are an international problem," said researcher Erik van Sebille in a video abstract for Environmental Research Letters (ERL). "It is not that plastic from one country ends up in one particular patch. Quite the contrary, all of the plastic ends up in all of the patches, and the patches are interconnected in a way that we didn't know before." Van Sebille and colleagues' model of plastic dispersion is the first to include seasonal variations in ocean currents and to vary the amount of plastic entering the ocean according to the number of people living near each coast. There are currently five garbage patches, formed at a gyre – a system of rotating ocean currents – in each of the world's subtropical ocean basins. A garbage patch is also likely to form in the Barents Sea in the Arctic within the next 50 years or so, the team's model revealed.
By Laura Bretherton on January 24, 2013 in Antarctic, Ocean Acidification If you’ve been keeping up with the blog, you’ll by now be well acquainted with marine plankton. These little guys are the topic of my PhD, though more specifically, I look at the phytoplankton – the photosynthetic microalgae – and how they might be affected by ocean acidification. That means I’ve been particularly focussed on the bioassay experiments we’ve been conducting at sea, and today marked the end of our second one. With that comes an early start and many water samples to process… My role on this cruise is to look at the physiology of phytoplankton populations, and how that changes over the course of the bioassays. I use an instrument called a fast-rate repetition fluorometer (or FRRF for short), which monitors photosynthesis by detecting fluorescence given off by the chlorophyll inside the microalgae. Because we understand how changes in this chlorophyll fluorescence are linked to photosynthesis, the fluorometer can tell us things like how efficiently the phytoplankton are photosynthesising, or if they’re changing the structures within their cells that catch sunlight.
Sainsbury's is to solely use Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) -certified canned skipjack tuna in its own label from next year. Already the UK's largest retailer of MSC-certified sustainable fish in the UK – selling more than 130 products carrying the logo – the supermarket says the move is a significant step forward in protecting the world's tuna stocks. Skipjack is seen as a more sustainable species of tuna, when caught by pole and line, compared to yellowfin and bluefin species. The skipjack tuna sourced from the Maldives will be introduced into stores from April next year and will sit alongside canned Albacore tuna which is already MSC-certified. Sainsbury's currently tops the Greenpeace league for responsible sourcing of tinned tuna. Sainsbury's currently carries 18 different lines of own brand skipjack tuna, 12 of which are 100% sourced from the Maldives. Three further lines are jointly sourced from the Maldives and Indonesia. Toby Middleton, MSC's UK country manager, said: "Tuna is in the cupboards of nearly every kitchen in the country. Getting MSC certified skipjack to the UK has been a long journey and it is great that Sainsbury's is maintaining its MSC market-leading position with this announcement."
Abstract Rising ocean temperatures will alter the productivity and composition of marine phytoplankton communities, thereby affecting global biogeochemical cycles. Predicting the effects of future ocean warming on biogeochemical cycles depends critically on understanding how existing global temperature variation affects phytoplankton. Here, we show that variation in phytoplankton temperature optima over 150 degrees of latitude is well explained by a gradient in mean ocean temperature. An eco-evolutionary model predicts a similar relationship, suggesting that this pattern is the result of evolutionary adaptation. Using mechanistic species distribution models, we find that rising temperatures this century will cause poleward shifts in species' thermal niches and a sharp decline in tropical phytoplankton diversity in the absence of an evolutionary response. (need subscription)
Controversial US businessman's geoengineering scheme off west coast of Canada contravenes two UN conventions... A controversial American businessman dumped around 100 tonnes of iron sulphate into the Pacific Ocean as part of a geoengineering scheme off the west coast of Canada in July, a Guardian investigation can reveal. Lawyers, environmentalists and civil society groups are calling it a "blatant violation" of two international moratoria and the news is likely to spark outrage at a United Nations environmental summit taking place in India this week. Satellite images appear to confirm the claim by Californian Russ George that the iron has spawned an artificial plankton bloom as large as 10,000 square kilometres. The intention is for the plankton to absorb carbon dioxide and then sink to the ocean bed – a geoengineering technique known as ocean fertilisation that he hopes will net lucrative carbon credits. George is the former chief executive of Planktos Inc, whose previous failed efforts to conduct large-scale commercial dumps near the Galapagos and Canary Islands led to his vessels being barred from ports by the Spanish and Ecuadorean governments. The US Environmental Protection Agency warned him that flying a US flag for his Galapagos project would violate US laws, and his activities are credited in part to the passing of international moratoria at the United Nations limiting ocean fertilisation experiments Scientists are debating whether iron fertilisation can lock carbon into the deep ocean over the long term, and have raised concerns that it can irreparably harm ocean ecosystems, produce toxic tides and lifeless waters, and worsen ocean acidification and global warming.
Dr. Commoner was a leader among a generation of scientist-activists who recognized the toxic consequences of America’s post-World War II technology boom, and one of the first to stir the national debate over the public’s right to comprehend the risks and make decisions about them. Raised in Brooklyn during the Depression and trained as a biologist at Columbia and Harvard, he came armed with a combination of scientific expertise and leftist zeal. His work on the global effects of radioactive fallout, which included documenting concentrations of strontium 90 in the baby teeth of thousands of children, contributed materially to the adoption of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963. From there it was a natural progression to a range of environmental and social issues that kept him happily in the limelight as a speaker and an author through the 1960s and ’70s, and led to a wobbly run for president in 1980. In 1970, the year of the first Earth Day, Time magazine put Dr. Commoner on its cover and called him the Paul Revere of Ecology. He was by no means the only one sounding alarms; the movement was well under way by then, building on the impact of Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring” in 1962 and the work of many others. But he was arguably the most peripatetic in his efforts to draw public attention to environmental dangers.
British scientists plan to monitor the effect of storms on nitrate and
phosphate contamination in rivers, research they say is crucial because climate change means that the intensity and frequency of storms are likely to increase. Results of the study by the scientists from the Universities of Southampton, Portsmouth and East Anglia and the National Oceanography Centre will be used to create a statistical model of the distribution of excess phosphates and nitrates. The model will show how far phosphates and nitrates transfer from rivers, through estuaries and into the coastal seas and the role that storms play in the process. The team anticipates that this will give policymakers more informed decisions on how to reduce nitrate and phosphate pollution in estuaries. "Approximately 40% of the world's population live within 100 kilometres of the coast and estuaries making them some of the most vulnerable sites for impact from man's activities," said Dr Gary Fones, marine biogeochemist from the University of Portsmouth. "Pollutants such as runoff from fertilised fields and discharge from sewage treatment plants are gathered by rivers from large areas of the interior and accumulate in estuaries and this is aggravated by storm activity," he added. Acknowledging agriculture’s potential impact on water quality, the European Commission has proposed a set of measures to update its Nitrates Directive and fertilisers regulation. Its proposed reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) would give farmers cash incentives to rotate crops to reduce fertiliser use.
Nerve-agent pesticides should not be banned in Britain despite four separate scientific studies strongly linking them to sharp declines in bees around the world, Government scientists have advised. An internal review of recent research on neonicotinoids – pesticides that act on insects' central nervous systems and are increasingly blamed for problems with bee colonies – has concluded that no change is needed in British regulation. The British position contrasts sharply with that of France, which in June banned one of the pesticides, thiamethoxam. French scientists said it was impairing the abilities of honeybees to find their way back to their nests. The Green MP Caroline Lucas described the British attitude as one of "astonishing complacency". The French research was published in March in the journal Science at the same time as another study by British researchers from the University of Stirling, implicating neonicotinoids in the decline of bumblebees. In January, the US government's chief bee researcher published a study showing that imidacloprid makes honeybees more susceptible to disease, even at doses so low as to be barely detectable. And in April, a team from Harvard claimed that imidacloprid was the culprit in colony collapse disorder.
A diver swims with a huge ocean sunfish, or Mola mola, off the coast of San Diego. They are the largest of the bony fish and often get mistaken for sharks due to their dorsal fins. They feed on jellyfish and plankton and are curious of humans, as seen in the photo. One threat to molas is drift nets, which they often get caught in, and garbage such as plastic bags that they mistake for jellyfish, their favorite food. Climate change is also a threat as it is to all sea life. According to the Center for Ocean Solutions, some ocean areas have acidified to levels known to cause harm to ocean life. Also decreasing pH levels from CO2 acidosis are responsible for shifting the ecological balance of plankton and other bottom dwelling species. “Many Pacific Ocean areas may become uninhabitable due to sea level rise, coastal inundation, shifting rainfall, collapse of fresh water supplies, or changes in the migration patterns of food species,” says the Center for Ocean Solutions. Credit: Daniel Botelho/Barcroft Media
Hey coffee lovers, you know that recurring dream where you're swimming in a sea of caffeine? Your subconscious might be onto something. Hey coffee lovers, you know that recurring dream where you're swimming in a sea of caffeine? Your subconscious might be onto something. Unfortunately, the reality is a bit less dreamy if its implications mean heightened levels of pollution. A Portland State University study published last month in Marine Pollution Bulletin examined Oregon coastal waters and found elevated amounts of caffeine at some of the sites. The study, "Occurrence and concentration of caffeine in Oregon coastal waters," found that onsite waste disposal systems might be sending contaminants into the region's waters, polluting the ocean. Although past studies have found caffeine in other bodies of water, this is the first to examine pollution off Oregon's coast. According to a Washington State University press release, 14 locations were analyzed, and the researchers found that while waste water treatment plants were not a major contributor, "high rainfall and combined sewer overflows flush the contaminants out to sea" and "septic tanks, such as those used at the state parks, may be less effective at containing pollution."
The book that changed the world is a cliché often used but rarely true, yet 50 years ago this week a book appeared which profoundly altered the way we view the Earth and our place on it: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. This impassioned and angry account of how America's wildlife was being devastated by a new generation of chemical pesticides began the modern environment movement: it awoke the general consciousness that we, as humans, are part of the natural world, not separate from it, yet we can destroy it by our actions. A middle-aged marine biologist, Carson was not the first to perceive this, to see how intimately we are bound up with the fate of our planet; but her beautifully-written book, and the violent controversy it generated, brought this perception for the first time to millions, in the US, in Britain and around the world. Down the centuries many people had expressed their love for nature, but Silent Spring and the furore it created gave birth to something more: the widespread, specific awareness that the planet was threatened and needed defending; and the past half-century of environmentalism, the age of Green, the age of Save The Whale and Stop Global Warming, has followed as a natural consequence.
|
International research has suggested that many coral species won't survive beyond the end of this century, but marine biologists at Victoria University are offering an alternative scenario. Dr James Bell, who specialises in sponge ecology, is the lead author of an article published in Global Change Biology which suggests that sponges may become the dominant organisms inhabiting coral reefs when the effect of climate change and ocean acidification sets in. "Coral reefs face an uncertain future as a result of global climate change and other stressors which have a negative impact on reefs," says Dr Bell. "It has been predicted that many reefs will end up being dominated by algae rather than corals, which will have negative effects on biodiversity and ultimately on the ability of humans to derive protein from reefs." .................... Paleontological evidence from over 200 million years ago suggests past ocean acidification events were followed by a mass extinction of coral species and subsequent proliferation of sponges.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-05-coral-reefs-sponge-future.html#jCp
A combination of multiple, mostly man-made pressures are largely responsible for the continued global decline in honeybees, bumblebees, and other insect pollinators, say scientists. It seems individual stresses like intensive farming, climate change, the spread of alien species and diseases are almost entirely to blame for pollinator losses. But the researchers say complex interactions between these separate issues may be making matters worse. The situation is so grave that our ability to supply adequate nutrients and dietary diversity to the world's growing population is seriously threatened. This is because honeybees, bumblebees and other pollinating insects are vital for many fruit, vegetable, seed, nut, and oil crops around the world. Since 1961, the number of these crops grown worldwide has grown so much that demand for pollination has increased threefold. One estimate suggests the annual worth of pollination to the global economy is about US$215 billion. Not just that, but globally, pollinating insects improve the yields of around three-quarters of crops, while up to 94 per cent of wild flowering plants depend on pollinators for reproduction.
This morning all this came to reality with a vengeance. As we woke up to the same misty weather and big seas but now with filled with schools of pilot whales. These are small whales but still impressive as they swam in packs of a dozen or more jostling with each other whilst breaking in and out of the big waves. To add to the party in amongst the pilot whales were packs of fur seals. These were swimming surprisingly fast and porpoising in and out of the water like dolphins, or penguins. Actually there we a few penguins and dolphins as well but a lot more fur seals. These are the same fur seals as we saw on South Georgia looking after their cubs and attempting to scare us off the beach. We were told there that it been a bad year for the fur seals with them having difficulty finding enough food for their pups, but they appeared to be doing better here.
A GM salmon which grows twice as fast as ordinary fish could become the first genetically-modified animal in the world to be declared officially safe to eat, after America's powerful food-safety watchdog ruled it posed no major health or environmental risks. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it could not find any valid scientific reasons to ban the production of GM Atlantic salmon engineered with extra genes from two other fish species – a decision that could soon lead to its commercial production. The verdict clears one of the last remaining hurdles for GM salmon to be lawfully sold and eaten in the US and will put pressure on salmon producers in Britain and Europe to follow suit.
They're hard to breed and easy to kill,” says plant pathologist Fred Hebard as he attacks a 2-metre-tall chestnut tree in southwest Virginia. Hebard bores a hole in the bark and squeezes a mash of orange fungus into the wood. The tree is a hybrid of the Chinese and American chestnut species, and Hebard hopes that it has enough resistance genes to keep the fungus — called chestnut blight — at bay. If so, the hybrid could help to resurrect a long-gone icon.Until a century ago, the American chestnut (Castanea dentata) was the cornerstone tree species of eastern North America. With long, straight trunks and bushy crowns, it carpeted the forest floor each autumn with prickly brown nuts. But the arrival of chestnut blight (Cryphonectria parasitica) from Asia wiped out almost all the stately trees, leaving only a few, isolated stands. Since then, a faithful fan club of scientists and citizens has sought to tame the blight. As chief scientist of the American Chestnut Foundation (ACF), a group of chestnut enthusiasts and scientists, Hebard has bred thousands of hybrids at the organization's research farm in Meadowview, Virginia. He crosses descendants of the original American chestnut with the much smaller Chinese variety (Castanea mollissima), which has some natural immunity to the Asian fungus. And after decades of work, he is within reach of his goal, a tall American tree with enough Chinese traits to keep it healthy. (subs)
Worms, Termites, Microbes Offer Food Security - Worms and termites are not likely to win hearts and minds, but they, along with lichens and microbes, are vital to food security, say biodiversity specialists who attended this month’s United Nations... conference on the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in this south Indian city. orms, termites, lichens and soil microbes may well be the heroes of food production as without these species land-based biodiversity would collapse and food production cease,” Julia Marton-Lefevre, director-general of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, told IPS.“In this day’s fierce competition for political attention and funds, (preventing) land degradation is a tough sell,” said Marton-Lefevre. “It may be one of the most serious threats to global food production and biodiversity over the next few decades, affecting an estimated 1.5 billion (poor) people. “Soil biodiversity may not be the most glamorous of our biodiversity, but it is nevertheless highly important,” she added. Safeguarding the underlying ecological foundations that support food production, including biodiversity, will be central to feeding seven billion inhabitants, climbing to over nine billion by 2050, says the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) study ‘Avoiding Future Famines: Strengthening the Ecological Basis of Food Security through Sustainable Food System’ released in Hyderabad. “Soil is not an empty container, as is thought by modern agriculturists; land is a living organism and has to be valued as such,” emphasised internationally known Indian environmentalist and activist Vandana Shiva. Borrowing from Charles Darwin, Shiva said, earthworms create dams without concrete, increase air volume within soil by 30 percent and improve water retention capacity by 40 percent, increasing the life of soil. “Unfortunately, we are valuing inefficient systems like chemical intensive monoculture, forgetting that value and benefit lie in securing the soil that provides everything for humanity; discarding natural farming that simultaneously provides grains, firewood and also fodder for cattle,” Shiva told IPS. Shiva hit out at Indian policy saying it gave “billions of dollars as subsidy for chemical fertilisers, completely ignoring the fact that the solution to hunger and poverty lay in biodiversity promotion – that is being destroyed by chemical farming.”
In exchange for sharing southern Europe's debt burden, Germany is demanding liberal economic reforms in those countries. Yet Germany is not following its own advice. Its services markets are heavily regulated. Diplomas are required by law for people to work as wooden boat builders, painters and decorators, or ski instructors. Pharmacists are only allowed to own four shops. Lawyers' fees for most civil and criminal cases are set by a centrally-determined scale, not the market. Germany's strategy for Europe's economic future hardly includes services. The German government believes that the pre-requisite for growth is more flexible labor, with competitive wages, producing manufactured goods for sale abroad: hence its call for southern Europe to deflate and shift towards exports. But even in Germany, the manufacturing sector only accounts for 20% of GDP. And since European countries mostly trade with each other, they cannot all move into external surplus at once. That's why productivity growth in services—which make up the majority of European output—must be at the heart of any long-term growth plan. This has been anaemic in the European Union, where productivity gains averaged only 1.2% per year between 1995 and 2009. In that same period, the U.S. managed 3% average annual productivity growth.
ScienceDaily (Sep. 25, 2012) — A new synthesis on drivers of deforestation and forest degradation was published during the Bangkok climate change negotiations in September by researchers from Canada and from Wageningen University, Netherlands. The report stresses the importance of knowing what drives deforestation and forest degradation, in order to be able to design and monitor effective REDD+ policies to halt it. Agriculture is estimated to be the direct driver for around 80% of deforestation worldwide. In Latin America, commercial agriculture is the main direct driver, responsible for 2/3 of all cut forests, while in Africa and tropical Asia commercial agriculture and subsistence agriculture both account for one third of deforestation. Mining, infrastructure and urban expansion are important but less prominent drivers worldwide. It is concluded that economic growth based on the export of primary commodities and an increasing demand for timber and agricultural products in a globalizing economy are critical indirect drivers
Venturing into inhospitable wildernesses to collect data, today's scientific warriors are between a rock and a hard place. Actually they are usually in Antarctica. There's a research gold rush to the South Pole as record numbers of scientists (5,000 each year, from 27 different countries) head out to various stations. The prize? Essential research and their own data charting the effects of climate change at the front line. Lest we forget why this is important: if the ice melted in Antarctica, global sea levels would rise by 50m. As a way of funding their expeditions, many programmes now "carry" a number of amateur scientists. This is not an easy jolly; participants must be fit. They occupy an uneasy space between scientist and tourist. The latter are habitually blamed for putting pressure on ecosystems everywhere. But while there will be those who want to gawp at penguins, most are very well-intentioned. A recent report by Professor Steven Chown on the dangers to Antarctica found that tourists are unfairly taking all the flak for damage. Embarrassingly his research shows that when it comes to the distribution of invasive plant seeds (a serious form of pollution), scientists are more to blame than tourists. Peter Convey, a terrestrial ecologist for the British Antarctic Survey, pulled up his first weed in Antarctica in January this year and was suitably horrified.
We regularly hear calls to improve “ocean health.” Health is a powerful metaphor, but scientists have had no way to measure it and therefore no means to evaluate how the world's oceans are doing. More than 60 researchers from a cross section of disciplines and institutions, including the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, have created the Ocean Health Index to do just that. It rates the health of ocean waters bordering 171 coastal countries and territories. Each nation's overall score is the average of scores for 10 widely held public goals for healthy oceans, including sustainable food provision, recreation, fishing opportunities and biodiversity. The index, which was published in August in Nature, is not a measure of how pristine the ocean is. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) Instead it measures how sustainably the ocean is providing the things people care about. The goals are universal measures of ecosystem health—all 10 must be met for a country's ocean to be rated as healthy—but the relative importance of each goal can vary from place to place.
Government approves world's first commercial deep-sea mining project despite vehement objections over threat to marine life... A "new frontier" in mining is set to be opened up by the underwater extraction of resources from the seabed off the coast of Papua New Guinea, despite vehement objections from environmentalists and local activists. Canadian firm Nautilus Minerals has been granted a 20-year licence by the PNG government to commence the Solwara 1 project, the world's first commercial deep sea mining operation. Nautilus will mine an area 1.6km beneath the Bismarck Sea, 50km off the coast of the PNG island of New Britain. The ore extracted contains high-grade copper and gold. The project is being carefully watched by other mining companies keen to exploit opportunities beneath the waves. The Deep Sea Mining (DSM) campaign, a coalition of groups opposing the PNG drilling, estimates that 1 million sq km of sea floor in the Asia-Pacific region is under exploration licence. Nautilus alone has around 524,000 sq km under licence, or pending licence, in PNG, Tonga, New Zealand and Fiji. "PNG is the guinea pig for deep-sea mining," says Helen Rosenbaum, the campaign's co-ordinator. "The mining companies are waiting in the wings ready to pile in. It's a new frontier, which is a worrying development. "The big question the locals are asking is 'What are the risks?' There is no certain answer to that, which should trigger a precautionary principle. "But Nautilus has found a place so far away from people that they can get away with any impacts. They've picked an underfunded government without the regulation of developed countries that will have no way of monitoring this properly."
A tale of two polar bear cubs – photo poster
|
