Amazon Corridors Far Too Narrow, Warn Scientists

February 24, 2008 — Protected forest strips buffering rivers and streams of the Amazon rainforest should be significantly wider than the current legal requirement, according to new research. Brazilian forestry ... > full story

• Antarctic Marine Life Under Threat From Warming Seas, New Predators
• February 24, 2008 — Predatory crabs and fish are poised to return to warming Antarctic waters for the first time in millions of years, threatening the shallow marine ecosystems surrounding Antarctica. Antarctic marine ... > full story
• 
  
• Climate Change Has Major Impact On Oceans
• February 24, 2008 — Climate change is rapidly transforming the world's oceans by increasing the temperature and acidity of seawater, and altering atmospheric and oceanic circulation, reported a panel of scientists. ... > full story
• 
  
• What Farmers Think About GM Crops
• February 24, 2008 — Farmers are upbeat about genetically modified crops, according to new research. Both farmers who have been involved in GM crop trials and those who have not, regard GM as a simple extension of ... > full story
• 
  
• Surprise On Journey To Center Of The Earth: Light Tectonic Plates Lead The Way
• February 23, 2008 — The first direct evidence of how and when tectonic plates move into the deepest reaches of the Earth is published in Nature. Scientists hope their description of how plates collide with one sliding ... > full story
• 
  
• Carbon Dioxide Has Been Naturally Stored For A Million Years In Colorado And Rocky Mountains
  February 23, 2008 — Earth scientists have found that carbon dioxide has been naturally stored for more than a million years in several gas fields in the Colorado Plateau and Rocky Mountains of the United States. ... > full story
• 
  
• Small Sea Creatures May Be The 'Canaries In The Coal Mine' Of Climate Change
• February 23, 2008 — As oceans warm and become more acidic, ocean creatures are undergoing severe stress and entire food webs are at risk, according to molecular ecologists. Biologists have just returned from a research ... > full story
• 
  
• Shark Superhighways And Hotspots May Offer Insight Into Saving Sharks
• February 23, 2008 — The world's sharks are disappearing. These fearsome yet charismatic fish continue to fall victim to overfishing and many are now at risk of extinction as a result. New research shows that open-ocean ... > full story
• 
  
• Resilience Science Is Promising Approach To Marine Conservation
• February 23, 2008 — The fast-growing field of resilience science can produce more effective ocean protection policies than previous models. Resilience science is the study of how ecosystems resist and respond to ... > full story
• 
  
• Earthworms Found To Contain Chemicals From Households And Animal Manure

  February 23, 2008 — Earthworms studied in agricultural fields have been found to contain organic chemicals from household products and manure, indicating that such substances are entering the food chain. Manure and ... > full story

Reducing Fisheries' By-Catch Through Mathematical Analysis

February 20, 2008 — Images of dolphins and turtles ensnared in tuna nets are a heart-wrenching reminder of the impact of fisheries on ocean bio-diversity. Known in fisheries science as 'by-catch,' this killing of ... > full story

• What Does The Future Hold For Biofuels?
  February 20, 2008 — High oil prices, energy security considerations and fears about global warming have helped revive interest in renewable energy sources like biofuels. But there are a few catches. For example, the ... > full story
• 
  
• Offsetting Global Warming By Trapping Carbon Dioxide On The Bottom Of The Ocean
  February 19, 2008 — Imagine a gigantic, inflatable, sausage-like bag capable of storing 160 million tons of carbon dioxide -- the equivalent of 2.2 days of current global emissions. Now try to picture that container, ... > full story
• 
  
• Giant Frog Jumps Continents, May Have Eaten Baby Dinosaurs
  February 19, 2008 — A giant frog fossil from Madagascar dubbed Beelzebufo or "the frog from Hell" has been identified. It would have been the size of a slightly squashed beach-ball, with short legs and a big mouth. If ... > full story
• 
  
• Global Trade In Tiger Shrimp Threatens Environment
  February 19, 2008 — The cultivation of shrimp and fish in tropical coastal areas is often described as an environmentally friendly way to alleviate poverty, but in fact this cultivation has negative consequences for ... > full story
• 
  
• Solar Cell Directly Splits Water To Produce Recoverable Hydrogen
  February 19, 2008 — Plants, trees and algae do it. Even some bacteria and moss do it, but scientists have had a difficult time developing methods to turn sunlight into useful fuel. Now, researchers have a ... > full story
• 
  
• Warming Waters May Make Antarctica Hospitable To Sharks: Potentially Disastrous Consequences
  February 19, 2008 — It has been 40 million years since the waters around Antarctica have been warm enough to sustain populations of sharks and most fish, but they may return this century due to the effects of global ... > full story
• 
  
• New Paradigm On Ecosystem Ecology Proposed
  February 19, 2008 — Predators have considerably more influence than plants over how an ecosystem functions, according to a Yale study in Science. Ecosystem ecologists have long held that plants and their interaction ... > full story
• 
  
• National Biomass And Carbon Dataset Now Available For US
  February 19, 2008 — Scientists at the Woods Hole Research Center working to produce the "National Biomass and Carbon Dataset" for the US are releasing data from nine project mapping zones. Within each mapping zone data ... > full story
• 
  
• Living Corals Thousands Of Years Old Hold Clues To Past Climate Changes
  February 19, 2008 — New research shows that the second most diverse group of hard corals first evolved in the deep sea, and not in shallow waters. This finding contradicts a long-established theory suggesting that ... > full story

Antarctic Ice Shelf Collapse Blamed On More Than Climate Change

ScienceDaily (Feb. 11, 2008) — When the Larsen B Ice Shelf in Antarctica collapsed in 2002, the event appeared to be a sudden response to climate change, and this long, fringing ice shelf in the north west part of the Weddell Sea was assumed to be the latest in a long line of victims of Antarctic summer heat waves linked to Global Warming.

However in a paper published in the Journal of Glaciology, Prof. Neil Glasser of Aberystwyth University, working as a Fulbright Scholar in the US, and Dr Ted Scambos of University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Centre now say that the shelf was already teetering on collapse before the final summer.

“Ice shelf collapse is not as simple as we first thought,” said Professor Glasser, lead author of the paper. “Because large amounts of meltwater appeared on the ice shelf just before it collapsed, we had always assumed that air temperature increases were to blame. But our new study shows that ice-shelf break up is not controlled simply by climate. A number of other atmospheric, oceanic and glaciological factors are involved. For example, the location and spacing of fractures on the ice shelf such as crevasses and rifts are very important too because they determine how strong or weak the ice shelf is”.

The study is important because ice shelf collapse contributes to global sea level rise, albeit indirectly. “Ice shelves themselves do not contribute directly to sea level rise because they are floating on the ocean and they already displace the same volume of water. But when the ice shelves collapse the glaciers that feed them speed up and get thinner, so they supply more ice to the oceans,” Prof. Glasser explained.

Professor Glasser acknowledges that global warming had a major part to play in the collapse, but emphasises that it is only one in a number of contributory factors, and despite the dramatic nature of the break-up in 2002, both observations by glaciologists and numerical modeling by other scientists at NASA and CPOM (Centre of Polar Observation and Modeling) had pointed to an ice shelf in distress for decades previously. “It's likely that melting from higher ocean temperatures, or even a gradual decline in the ice mass of the Peninsula over the centuries, was pushing the Larsen to the brink”, said co-author Ted Scambos of University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Centre.

The focus of further study is now moving to the Larsen C shelf, a much thicker and apparently more stable area, and while there are at present no signs that this shelf is likely to collapse, Professor Glasser’s paper will play an important role in informing future study. The keen interest expressed in the paper has also been a boost to Professor Glasser’s hopes of raising funds to travel to Antarctica this year to conduct some of his research in the field.

Adapted from materials provided by Aberystwyth University.

• Eat Up All Of Your Brussels Sprouts -- Unless You're An Aphid
• February 11, 2008 — Aphids that eat Brussels sprouts are smaller than normal and live in undersized populations, which has a negative knock-on effect up the food chain according to new research in Science. The study ... > full story
• 
  
• Core Samples From Subsea Fault System Off Japan Will Help Explain How Earthquakes Are Generated

  February 11, 2008 — Scientists aboard IODP scientific drilling vessel Chikyu collected 5,000 samples from the seismogenic zone known as the Nankai Trough. The samples will provide scientists with new sources of data and ... > full story
• 
  
• Rubik's Cube In Center Of Earth? Computer Simulations Support New Model Of Earth's Core
  February 11, 2008 — Swedish researchers have presented evidence in Science to support their new theory about the structure of the earth's core. The findings may be of significance for our understanding of the cooling ... > full story
• 
  
• Biofuel Crops That Require Destroying Native Ecosystems Worsens Global Warming
  February 11, 2008 — Turning native ecosystems into "farms" for biofuel crops causes major carbon emissions that worsen the global warming that biofuels are meant to mitigate, according to a new study. The carbon lost by ... > full story
• 
  
  Antarctic Expedition Provides New Insights Into The Role Of The Southern Ocean For Global Climate

  February 11, 2008 — In the Southern Ocean, large quantities of surface-drifting plankton algae are able to significantly reduce the carbon dioxide content of surface waters. Scientists will discuss pressing questions of ... > full story
• 
  
• Intersex Fish Linked To Population And Agriculture In Potomac River Watershed
  February 11, 2008 — For several years, scientists have been working to determine why so many male smallmouth bass in the Potomac River basin have immature female egg cells in their testes - a form of intersex. They are ... > full story
• 
  
• History Of Quaternary Volcanism And Lava Dams In Western Grand Canyon
  February 11, 2008 — John Wesley Powell wrote in 1895: "...what a conflict of water and fire there must have been [in western Grand Canyon]! Just imagine a river of molten rock running down over a river of melted snow." ... > full story
• 
  
• Cheap, Environmentally Friendly Extraction Method For Titanium Dioxide Developed
  February 11, 2008 — From medicine to make-up, plastics to paper -- hardly a day goes by when we don't use titanium dioxide. Now researchers have developed a simpler, cheaper and greener method of extracting higher ... > full story
• 
  
• Organic Solar Cells: Electricity From A Thin Film

  February 10, 2008 — Teams of researchers all over the world are working on the development of organic solar cells. Organic solar cells have good prospects for the future: They can be laid onto thin films, which makes ... > full story
• 
  
• Dust Storms In Sahara Desert Trigger Huge Plankton Blooms In Eastern Atlantic
  February 10, 2008 — Scientists are at sea studying the Saharan dust that blows off the coast of Africa - triggering huge plankton blooms in the eastern Atlantic. Saharan dust is rich in nitrogen, iron and phosphorus and ... > full story

Magma And Volcanoes: Physicists Explain Dance Marathon Of Wispy Feature In Roiling Fluids

ScienceDaily (Feb. 6, 2008) — Theoretical physicists at the University of Chicago are suggesting how thin spouts of magma in the Earth's mantle can persist long enough to form hotspot volcanism of the type that might have created the Hawaiian Islands.

Their calculations also apply to tendrils only a few inches long that form in convecting fluids under laboratory conditions. University of Chicago graduate student Laura Schmidt and Wendy Zhang, an Assistant Professor in Physics, will detail their findings in the Feb. 1 issue of the journal Physical Review Letters.

The work was inspired by laboratory experiments conducted by Anne Davaille in France that mimic, in a simplified way, convecting bubbles of magma as they might look deep beneath the Earth's surface. "This is one robust feature of thermal convection," Zhang said.

"It's a useful thing to know because it's the kind of thing that happens in all sorts of different industries, in all sorts of different contexts." These include oil extraction, the chemical industry and in certain biotechnological applications.

Earth scientists also have theorized that mantle plumes form on a regional scale in the Earth's interior, sometimes breaking the surface to form small landmasses, including Hawaii and Iceland. Nevertheless, debate swirls around how, or even if, mantle plumes can account for such surface features.

Geophysicists often liken a pot of boiling water as a smaller, more rapid version of the convection that takes place in the mantle, the layer of Earth that lies between the surface crust and its core. But unlike a pot of water, the Earth's interior consists of layers with different properties.

In laboratory experiments, Anne Davaille, a geophysicist at the University of Paris 7, studies convection in a small tank by heating two layers of colored liquids of differing densities. She observed the formation and persistence of thin tendrils between the layers, which correspond to subsurface plumes measuring scores of miles across.

"It seems so thin and tenuous, how could it possibly manage to hold itself in place over time as everything else is going on around it?" Zhang asked. "Somehow, they manage to hold themselves together."

The tendrils persist for hours, even as experimental conditions change. "These tendrils have fluid flowing through them, and it starts to mix the two layers," Schmidt said. "When the two layers mix, then the viscosity of the layers changes as well."

Following a series of visits to Davaille's lab, Schmidt and Zhang sought to mathematically explain the phenomenon.

"When you look at the shape of these very thin tendrils, there's something very striking that Anne noticed right away," Zhang said. The tendrils seem to emerge from flow lines that resemble the flared-out end of a trumpet. This trumpet shape marked the location of a stagnation point. Both Davaille's experiments and Schmidt's calculations agree: The thinnest tendrils that persist have a stagnation point.

Schmidt had seen a similar stagnation point in experiments she conducted in the laboratory of Sidney Nagel, the Stein-Freiler Distinguished Service Professor in Physics at the University of Chicago. Those experiments involved unmixable fluids, such as water and oil, instead of the fresh water and salt water mixing in Davaille's laboratory.

Nevertheless, the experimental similarities provided Schmidt and Zhang insights that helped solve the problem. In previous studies, other theoreticians suggested how large flows might rise through the tendrils from the base of the hot spots, Schmidt said. She and Zhang approached the problem differently.

"We include the effect of the stagnation point," Schmidt explained. "Our tendrils are really a thin skin or thin layer of the surface between the fluids that is drawn up. It's not a bulk flow going up through the tendril."

Adapted from materials provided by University of Chicago, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Palestinian, Jordanian, And Israeli Researchers Build A New Partnership To Monitor Regional Earthquakes

February 6, 2008 — One of the world's most vulnerable areas for earthquakes lies in a region important for Palestinians, Jordanians, and Israelis, around the ancient city of Jericho. A serious earthquake could add to ... > full story

• Communing With Nature Less And Less
  February 5, 2008 — From backyard gardening to mountain climbing, outdoor activities are on the wane as people around the world spend more leisure time online or in front of the tube, according to findings. "The ... > full story
• 
  
• Floods And Droughts: Water Planners Call For Fundamental Shift To Deal With Changing Climate
  February 5, 2008 — The past is no longer a reliable base on which to plan the future of water management. So says a new perspectives piece written by a prominent group of hydrologists and climatologists that calls for ... > full story
• 
  
• Energy-efficient Microchip Could Result In Cell Phones Staying Charged 10 Times As Long, Self-charging Electronics
  February 5, 2008 — A new chip design for portable electronics can be up to 10 times more energy-efficient than present technology. The design could lead to cell phones, implantable medical devices and sensors that last ... > full story
• 
  
• Lost City Pumps Life-essential Chemicals At Rates Unseen At Typical Deep Ocean Hydrothermal Vents
  February 5, 2008 — Hydrocarbons -- molecules critical to life -- are being generated by the simple interaction of seawater with the rocks under the Lost City hydrothermal vent field in the mid-Atlantic Ocean. Being ... > full story
• 
  
• Sediment Prediction Tools Off The Mark
  February 5, 2008 — A recent study led by a Smithsonian ecologist suggests it is time for a change in at least one area of watershed management. She has been examining the tools scientists and managers use to predict ... > full story
• 
  
• Why Do Earthquakes Stop?
  February 5, 2008 — Why do some earthquakes terminate along a fault, while others jump or step-over a gap to another fault? The underlying structure of a fault determines whether an earthquake rupture will jump from one ... > full story
• 
  
• Wind May Be The Driving Force Behind Fish Booms And Busts
  February 5, 2008 — Scientists have now shed light on the puzzle by proposing a plausible mechanism behind the mystery of fish booms and busts: wind. They propose that atmospheric wind forces can determine the ... > full story
• 
  
• Core Samples From Subsea Fault System Off Japan Will Help Explain How Earthquakes Are Generated
  February 5, 2008 — Scientists aboard IODP scientific drilling vessel Chikyu collected 5,000 samples from the seismogenic zone known as the Nankai Trough. The samples will provide scientists with new sources of data and ... > full story
• 
  
• Satellite Data To Deliver 'State-of-the-art' Air Quality Information In Europe
  February 5, 2008 — The European Environment Agency has finalized an agreement with an ESA-led consortium to provide unparalleled information on air pollution, which contributes to the premature deaths of hundreds of ... > full story

Human-caused Climate Change At Root Of Diminishing Water Flow In Western US, Scientists Find

ScienceDaily (Feb. 1, 2008) — The Rocky Mountains have warmed by 2 degrees Fahrenheit. The snowpack in the Sierras has dwindled by 20 percent and the temperatures there have heated up by 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit.

All could lead to dire consequences for the water supply in the Western United States, including California. Scientists have noted that water flow in the West has decreased for the last 20 to 30 years, but had never explained why it was happening.

Until now. Scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison in collaboration with Scripps Institution of Oceanography, have pinpointed the cause of that diminishing water flow on a regional scale: humans.

“We looked at whether there is a human-caused climate change where we live, and in aspects of our climate that we really care about,” said Benjamin Santer of LLNL and co-author of the paper. “No matter what we did, we couldn’t shake this robust conclusion that human-caused warming is affecting water resources here in the Western United States.”

By looking at air temperatures, river flow and snowpack over the last 50 years, the team determined that the human-induced increase in greenhouse gases has seriously affected the water supply in the West. And the future brings more of the same.

“It’s pretty much the same throughout all of the Western United States,” said Tim Barnett of Scripps and a co-author of the paper.* “The results are being driven by temperature change. And that temperature change is caused by us.”

The team scaled down global climate models to the regional scale and compared the results to observations over the last 50 years. The results were solid, giving the team confidence that they could use the same models to predict the effects of the global scale increase in greenhouse gases on the Western United States in the future.

The projected consequences are bleak.

By 2040, most of the snowpack in the Sierras and Colorado Rockies would melt by April 1 of each year because of rising air temperatures. The earlier snow melt would lead to a shift in river flows.

The shift could lead to flooding in California’s Central Valley. Currently, state reservoirs are filled during the rainy season. As the water is drawn down, the reservoirs are replenished with snow melt from the Sierras.

If that snow melts earlier, as predicted in the climate models, the reservoirs could overflow.

“We are headed for a water crisis in the Western United States that has already started,” Barnett said. “A couple of decades ahead, we might not have that snowpack, making us more susceptible to flooding.”

Santer said the increase in predicted river flow should be a wake- up call to officials that the water supply infrastructure needs to be updated now, as opposed to waiting until the situation is urgent.

As for the warming, with the existing greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, the Earth will continue to warm for the next 80-100 years.

“For someone who has seven grandchildren, that scares the hell out of me,” Barnett said. “I’ve seen the future and I don’t like it.”

*The research appears in the Jan. 31 online edition of Science Express. The findings also were presented at last year’s annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

Adapted from materials provided by DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Bad News For Coastal Ocean: Less Fish Out, Means More Nitrogen In

February 2, 2008 — Commercial fisheries play an unexpected role in the decline of water quality in coastal waters. The study, the first to examine the world's 58 coatal regions, shows how failing to maintain ecosystems ... > full story

• Markets Of Biodiversity And Equity In Trade: An Illusion?
• February 2, 2008 — There are difficulties in establishing public policies that protect the biodiversity found in nature. Over recent years, strong media coverage of "pillaging" of local resources, food plants or ... > full story
• 
  
• Keeping The Dust Down When Separating The Chaff From The Nuts
  February 1, 2008 — Agricultural scientists are developing an add-on device to control dust emissions from nut harvesters. Researchers are testing a prototype device that uses centrifugal force to trap soil and bits of ... > full story
• 
  
• A Difficult Youth Is A Good Thing For A Fish
• February 1, 2008 — A tough early life turns out to be a good thing for a fish, according to scientists. They discovered that fish larvae that survive a long, rough, offshore journey eventually arrive at a near shore ... > full story
• 
  
• New Program Will Improve Pollution Monitoring From Many Sources
  February 1, 2008 — Environmental scientists are developing a pervasive environmental sensor networks to collect data on parameters such as air and water quality from many sources, and use this data to provide accurate, ... > full story
• 
  
• Impoverished Areas Of Africa And Asia Face Severe Crop Losses From Climate Change In 20 Years
  February 1, 2008 — Many of the world's poorest regions could face severe crop losses in the next two decades because of climate change, according to a new study in Science. The researchers focused on 12 regions where a ... > full story
• 
  
• Air Pollution May Be Causing More Rainy Summer Days In The Southeast US
• February 1, 2008 — Rainfall data from a NASA satellite show that summertime storms in the southeastern United States shed more rainfall midweek than on weekends. Scientists say air pollution from humans is likely ... > full story
• 
  
• International Effort Takes Critical Steps To Accelerate Growth Of Global Biofuels Market
  February 1, 2008 — Led by the world's three major producers of biofuels, an international effort seeks to harmonize standards for bioethanol and biodiesel, two key renewable energy sources and important commodities in ... > full story
• 
  
• Ancient Climate Secrets Raised From Ocean Depths
  February 1, 2008 — Photos and samples taken of coral in the deepest recesses of the Southern Ocean investigated to date off Australia, are expected to yield valuable historical data on climate ... > full story
• 
  
• Increased Hurricane Activity Linked To Sea Surface Warming
  January 31, 2008 — The link between changes in the temperature of the sea's surface and increases in North Atlantic hurricane activity has been quantified for the first time. The research shows that a 0.5 C increase in ... > full story