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Archive for December 29th, 2011
Predicting Ecosystem Changes
Posted by U.S. News and World Report: Marlene Cimons on December 29th, 2011
U.S. News and World Report: Coastal margins sit at the interface between the sea and the land, with fresh water on one end, the ocean on the other. Home to about half the world’s population, the resources they provide are vital for recreation, transportation and other services.
Moreover, they are exquisitely sensitive to such influences as development, climate change and population growth, among other things.
For this reason, “we are trying to understand coastal margins well enough to be able to predict changes in the...
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Mongolia: Helping wild horses and livestock survive extreme weather in Gobi desert
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 29th, 2011
ScienceDaily: Winters in the Gobi desert are usually long and very cold but the winter of 2009/2010 was particularly severe, a condition Mongolians refer to as "dzud." Millions of livestock died in Mongolia and the re-introduced wild Przewalski's horse population crashed dramatically. Petra Kaczensky and Chris Walzer from the Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology (FIWI) of the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna have used spatially explicit loss statistics, ranger survey data and GPS telemetry to provide...
The Puzzle of Rising Methane
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 29th, 2011
New York Times: In an article the other day about thawing permafrost, I mentioned that no signal had emerged in the atmosphere to suggest a sharp rise in methane emissions from the Arctic. But that does not mean all is stable with methane in the air - quite the contrary, in fact.
It’s true that methane was stable for roughly a decade ending in 2006. That apparent stabilization occurred after a long rise in the methane content of the atmosphere related to human activities, so it came as a relief to scientists....
Q&A: Tuna Fisheries Must Make Short-Term Sacrifices
Posted by Inter Press Service: Julio Godoy Interviews Marine Biologist MARandamp;#205;A JOSandamp;#201; Juan JO on December 29th, 2011
Inter Press Service: For the last ten years, environmentalists and marine biologists have repeatedly warned that the world’s tuna populations, and particularly bluefin tuna, are being overfished to the verge of extinction.
Added to this are criticisms of the systems for controlling tuna fishing, including the annual quotas authorised for each country and the means of monitoring them, handled by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT).
These complaints led ICCAT to admit in November...
Climate Change Endangers Millions In South Asia
Posted by Eurasia Review: Zafar Iqbal on December 29th, 2011
Eurasia Review: Millions of people in South Asia are vulnerable to climate change because of depleting glaciers, increasing coastal erosion, frequent floods and other natural disasters associated with global warming, warn environmentalists and development agencies. “We are extremely vulnerable to climate change threats.” Says Dr. Durga Poudel, Head of Department of Renewable Resources, University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He has extensively studied climatic patterns of South Asia. “Our coping mechanism/resources...
Canada: Oh, Canada’s become a home for record fracking
Posted by ProPublica: Nicholas Kusnetz on December 29th, 2011
ProPublica: Early last year, deep in the forests of northern British Columbia, workers for Apache Corp. performed what the company proclaimed was the biggest hydraulic fracturing operation ever.
The project used 259 million gallons of water and 50,000 tons of sand to frack 16 gas wells side by side. It was "nearly four times larger than any project of its nature in North America," Apache boasted.
The record didn't stand for long. By the end of the year, Apache and its partner, Encana, topped it by half...
Tanzania: Timber Logging in Rufiji Continue
Posted by Tanzania Daily News: Finnigan Wa Simbeye on December 29th, 2011
Tanzania Daily News: Remnants of torched farm huts suspended from the ground by burnt out logs mostly mangroves, are testimony that something went terribly wrong in Rufiji Delta. Ash is scattered all over the place and this was the site of brutal torching of farmers' temporary huts mainly used during the planting season.
Muscular youths brandishing machetes, petrol jerry cans hired as casual labourers by the Mangrove Management Project under Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism invaded the delta to enforce an...