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Archive for January, 2012
Species lag in climate change shift
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 9th, 2012
Agence France-Presse: Fast-track warming in Europe is making butterflies and birds fall behind in the move to cooler habitats and prompting a worrying turnover in alpine plant species, studies published on Sunday say.
The papers, both published by the journal, Nature Climate Change, are the biggest endeavour yet to pinpoint impacts on European biodiversity from accelerating global temperatures.
A team led by Vincent Devictor of France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) found that from 1990 to 2008,...
Study finds a better way to gauge the climate costs of land use changes
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 8th, 2012
Physorg: "We know that forests store a lot of carbon and clearing a forest releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and contributes to climate change," said University of Illinois postdoctoral researcher Kristina Anderson-Teixeira, who pioneered the new approach with plant biology and Energy Biosciences Institute professor Evan DeLucia. "But ecosystems provide other climate regulation services as well."
The climate effects of a particular ecosystem also depend on its physical attributes, she said. One...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Study finds a better way to gauge the climate costs of land use changesClimate change is altering mountain vegetation at large scale, European research says
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 8th, 2012
Physorg: With the publication of "Continent-wide response of mountain vegetation to climate change," scheduled for Advance Online Publication (AOP) in Nature Climate Change on 8 January, researchers from 13 countries report clear and statistically significant evidence of a continent-wide warming effect on mountain plant communities.
The findings are "clearly significant," says Ottar Michelsen, a researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and one of the article's co-authors. "You can...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Climate change is altering mountain vegetation at large scale, European research saysClimate change is altering mountain vegetation at large scale
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 8th, 2012
EurekAlert: Climate change is having a more profound effect on alpine vegetation than at first anticipated, according to a study carried out by an international group of researchers and published in Nature Climate Change. The first ever pan-European study of changing mountain vegetation has found that some alpine meadows could disappear within the next few decades.
Led by researchers from the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Vienna, biologists from 13 different countries in Europe analysed...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Climate change is altering mountain vegetation at large scaleStudy finds a better way to gauge the climate costs of land use changes
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 8th, 2012
PhysOrg: Tropical rainforests have an even greater climate cooling impact when biophysical attributes, such as evapotranspiration, are included in calculations. Other eco-regions, such as boreal forests, have less climate cooling potential when biophysical attributes are also considered. Credit: Kristina Anderson-TeixeiraThose making land use decisions to reduce the harmful effects of climate change have focused almost exclusively on greenhouse gases – analyzing, for example, how much carbon dioxide is released...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Study finds a better way to gauge the climate costs of land use changes2011 was the driest year on record in Texas
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 8th, 2012
Reuters: It's official: 2011 was the driest year on record in Texas, according to the National Weather Service. It was also the second-hottest ever.
That won't surprise Texans who lived through a year in which wildfires roared through the Lone Star State, cattle went thirsty and many Fourth of July fireworks shows were canceled.
The weather service said the average rainfall in Texas in 2011 was 14.89 inches. The previous record of 14.99 inches of average rainfall was set in 1917.
The average temperature...
EPA reports says Mass. has reduced pollutants
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 7th, 2012
Associated Press: A new report from federal environmental officials shows Massachusetts has reduced the amount of pollutants it releases into the environment.
The Environmental Protection Agency's 2010 Toxic Release Inventory shows that at 441 Massachusetts facilities, the overall release of pollutants was 4.3 million pounds, a decrease of 1.12 million pounds from 2009.
The inventory includes toxic chemical disposals and releases into the air, land and water.
Curt Spalding, regional administrator for EPA's...
Extinctions from Climate Change Underestimated
Posted by LiveScience: Wynne Parry on January 7th, 2012
LiveScience: As climate change progresses, the planet may lose more plant and animal species than predicted, a new modeling study suggests.
This is because current predictions overlook two important factors: the differences in how quickly species relocate and competition among species, according to the researchers, led by Mark Urban, an ecologist at the University of Connecticut.
Already evidence suggests that species have begun to migrate out of ranges made inhospitable by climate change and into newly...
South Florida prepares for higher sea levels
Posted by Sun-Sentinel: David Fleshler on January 7th, 2012
Sun-Sentinel: A battle plan for an anticipated assault by seawater has been drafted by four South Florida counties, attempting to protect one of the nation's most vulnerable regions from the impact of climate change.
The proposal by Broward, Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and Monroe counties calls for 108 actions to deal with rising sea levels and other consequences of global warming.
Among the steps: Redesigning low-lying roads to keep them above water, restricting development in vulnerable areas and relocating...
Animals, plants could be on collision course created by climate change
Posted by Fars News Agency: None Given on January 7th, 2012
Fars News Agency: Predictions of the loss of animal and plant diversity around the world are common under models of future climate change. But a new study shows that because these climate models don't account for species competition and movement, they could grossly underestimate future extinctions.
"We have really sophisticated meteorological models for predicting climate change," says ecologist Mark Urban, the study's lead author. "But in real life, animals move around, they compete, they parasitize each other,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Animals, plants could be on collision course created by climate change