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Archive for March 28th, 2011
Billion-plus people to lack water in 2050: study
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 28th, 2011
Independent: More than one billion urban residents will face serious water shortages by 2050 as climate change worsens effects of urbanization, with Indian cities among the worst hit, a study said Monday.
The shortage threatens sanitation in some of the world's fastest-growing cities but also poses risks for wildlife if cities pump in water from outside, said the article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The study found that under current urbanization trends, by mid-century some 993...
Posted in 
Amazon still neglected by researchers
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 28th, 2011
Mongabay: Terra Incognito? Venezuela's Amazon rainforest (a portion of which is viewed here by Google Earth) has been almost wholly ignored by researchers.
Andean forests even less represented in research than the Amazon.
Although the Amazon is the world's largest tropical forest, it is not the most well known. Given the difficulty of access along with the fear of disease, dangerous species, indigenous groups, among other perceived perils, this great treasure chest of biology and ecology was practically...
Dark side of spring? Pollution in our melting snow
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 28th, 2011
ScienceDaily: With birds chirping and temperatures warming , spring is finally in the air. But for University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC) environmental chemist Torsten Meyer, springtime has a dark side.
"During the winter months, contaminants accumulate in the snow," says Meyer, an expert on snow-bound organic contaminants and a post-doctoral fellow at UTSC. "When the snow melts, these chemicals are released into the environment at high concentrations."
In a specially designed, temperature-controlled laboratory...
What’s behind the 85% decline of mammals in West Africa’s parks?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 28th, 2011
Mongabay: What's behind the 85% decline of mammals in West Africa's parks?
A recent, well-covered study found that African mammals populations are in steep decline in the continent's protected areas. Large mammal populations over forty years have dropped by 59% on average in Africa [read an interview on the study here] and by 85% in west and central Africa, according to the study headed by Ian Craigie, which links the decline to continuing habitat degradation as well as hunting and human-wildlife conflict....
Leaf harvesting impacts Amazon palm
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 28th, 2011
Mongabay: Overexploitation of wildlife doesn't just threaten animals such as bluefin tuna, pangolins, and parrots, but plants as well. Leaves from the carana or puy palm (Lepidocaryum tenue) are used for thatching buildings in the northwestern Amazon, however a recent study in mongabay.com's open access journal Tropical Conservation Science finds that the overharvesting could imperil a palm's ability to survive.
Studying the palms in the Colombian Amazon, researchers harvested leaves to see how well the...
Billion-plus people to lack water in 2050: study
Posted by Agence France-Presse: Shaun Tandon on March 28th, 2011
Agence France-Presse: More than one billion urban residents will face serious water shortages by 2050 as climate change worsens effects of urbanization, with Indian cities among the worst hit, a study said Monday.
The shortage threatens sanitation in some of the world's fastest-growing cities but also poses risks for wildlife if cities pump in water from outside, said the article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The study found that under current urbanization trends, by mid-century some 993...
Fukushima engineers hampered by lack of power in fight to cool reactors
Posted by Guardian: Ian Sample on March 28th, 2011
Guardian: The central problem behind almost every hurdle faced by the workers at the Fukushima nuclear power plant has been – and remains – a lack of power supply. Since electricity was knocked out by the tsunami it has been impossible to run the pumps that cool the reactor cores and circulate water around storage pools used to keep spent fuel rods cold.
Last week engineers succeeded in connecting power to some of the reactors, but three remain in a dangerous and precarious state. The fuel rods inside reactors...
Bill Clinton takes on Brazil’s megadams, James Cameron backs tribal groups
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 28th, 2011
Mongabay: Former US President, Bill Clinton, spoke out against Brazil's megadams at the 2nd World Sustainability Forum, which was also attended by former California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and film director, James Cameron, who has been an outspoken critic of the most famous of the controversial dams, the Belo Monte on the Xingu River.
As reported by Forbes, in a speech delivered on the last day of the forum last week, Bill Clinton said, "You need electricity and you need to preserve the forest....
Google Earth reveals stark contrast between Sarawak’s damaged forests and those in neighboring Borneo states
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 28th, 2011
Mongabay: Google Earth reveals stark contrast between Sarawak's damaged forests and those in neighboring Borneo states
Logging roads and damaged forest in Sarawak compared with the healthy forest of Brunei. Photo courtesy of Google Earth.
Images from Google Earth show a sharp contract between forest cover in Sarawak, a state in Malaysian Borneo, and the neighboring countries of Brunei and Indonesia at a time when Sarawak's Chief Minister Pehin Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud is claiming that 70 percent of Sarawak's...
Of Nuclear Power, Risk and Meteorites
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 28th, 2011
New York Times: As my colleagues Matt Wald, John Broder and I write in Science Times, weighing the risks associated with nuclear power against other forms of electricity is, at least for regulators and actuaries, a highly academic exercise.
But for others -- particularly those living in the shadow of nuclear reactors -- it is an intensely personal affair.
Rochelle Becker, a grandmother and local activist, lives in Grover Beach, about 14 miles down the California coast from the Diablo Canyon nuclear power station,...