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Archive for October, 2015
Spruce Beetles Don’t Increase Severity Of Colorado Forest Fires, Researchers Say
Posted by Nature World News: Samantha Mathewson on October 29th, 2015
Nature World News: Spruce beetles have often been blamed for increasing the severity of raging wildfires throughout Colorado. While the bugs invade Engelmann spruce and subalpine fir forests and scar the trees they feed on, this destruction is not linked to the occurrence of forest fires plaguing the state, a new study revealed.
Within the past decade, spruce beetles have chewed through roughly half a million acres of forests in Colorado. In 2014 alone the beetles reportedly infested more than 87,000 new acres of...
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Comments Off on Spruce Beetles Don’t Increase Severity Of Colorado Forest Fires, Researchers SayAlaskan trout choose early retirement over risky ocean-going career
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 29th, 2015
ScienceDaily: Even fish look forward to retirement.
After making an exhausting migration from river to ocean and back to river -- often multiple years in a row -- one species of Alaskan trout decides to call it quits and retire from migrating once they are big enough to survive off their fat reserves.
This is the first time such a "retirement" pattern has been seen in fish that make this river-to-ocean migration, according to University of Washington-led research published in July in the journal Ecology....
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Alaskan trout choose early retirement over risky ocean-going careerWater-treatment plants are not supposed to harm the functioning of river ecosystems
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 29th, 2015
ScienceDaily: Despite the fact that the main function of water treatment plants is to clean the polluted waste water produced by human activity, "the effluent from them turns into a source of many pollutants in rivers," explained Ibon Aristi, researcher in the UPV/EHU's department of Plant Biology and Ecology. He has studied the impact of one of these effluents in the river Segre by observing the fluvial community, in other words, by analysing its response to the pollutants in the effluent.
The compounds in...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Water-treatment plants are not supposed to harm the functioning of river ecosystemsClimate Change is Decimating Cod in Gulf of Maine
Posted by Climate Central: Brian Kahn on October 29th, 2015
Climate Central: Climate change is expected to vastly reshape our food resources from the seed we sow to the fish we catch in the sea. In the case of cod in the Gulf of Maine, those impacts could be happening here and now, according to new findings.
The research, published on Thursday in Science, shows that waters in the region have recently warmed at an unprecedented rate. Fisheries management has not been able to keep up with the warming, resulting in cod stocks that are at just 3 to 4 percent of sustainable...
Chile: Lush carpets of flowers thrive in world’s driest desert
Posted by Mother Nature: None Given on October 29th, 2015
Mother Nature: Receiving barely a half-inch of rainfall per year, Chile's Atacama Desert is one of the driest places on Earth, but that all changes when El Niño rolls around every few years.
Heavy rains caused by this weather phenomenon activate the germination of dormant seeds and bulbs buried deep within the ground, resulting in a sea of brilliant pink-hued blooms beginning around September.
The gorgeous natural event is known as desierto florido, which means "flowering desert" in Spanish.
As a fairly...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Chile: Lush carpets of flowers thrive in world’s driest desertWater too warm for cod in U.S. Gulf of Maine; stock near collapse
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 29th, 2015
Reuters: A rapid warming of the Gulf of Maine off the eastern United States has made the water too hot for cod, pushing stocks toward collapse despite deep reductions in the number of fish caught, a U.S. study showed on Thursday.
The Gulf of Maine had warmed faster than 99 percent of the rest of the world's oceans in the past decade, influenced by shifts in the Atlantic Gulf Stream, changes in the Pacific Ocean and a wider trend of climate change, it said.
Scientists said the findings showed a need...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Water too warm for cod in U.S. Gulf of Maine; stock near collapseSoutheast Asian Nations Plan Major Hydroelectric Projects in Mekong Region
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 29th, 2015
Yale Environment 360: Although China's hydroelectric development — particularly the world's largest power plant at Three Gorges Dam — has garnered significant attention, other Southeast Asian nations have relatively large hydropower expansion plans of their own, the U.S. Energy Information Administration says. Those smaller nations plan to construct 61 gigawatts of new capacity through 2020, primarily along the Mekong River and its tributaries. If all planned projects are completed, these countries will more than double...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Southeast Asian Nations Plan Major Hydroelectric Projects in Mekong RegionThe Sushi Project: Farming Fish And Rice in California’s Fields
Posted by Yale Environment 360: Jacques Leslie on October 29th, 2015
Yale Environment 360: The idea of rearing salmon in fallowed rice fields started in a duck blind. Huey Johnson, California’s Secretary of Resources in the 1970s and at age 82 widely considered the “grand old man” of California environmentalists, is an avid hunter, who has spent hundreds of hours in Central Valley duck blinds. It is perhaps a testament to the contemplation induced by extended Resource Renewal Institute Aerial view of a “Fish in the Fields” site, where small forage fish are being raised in flooded, fallow...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on The Sushi Project: Farming Fish And Rice in California’s FieldsRussian media take climate cue from skeptical Putin
Posted by Reuters: Andrey Kuzmin on October 29th, 2015
Reuters: Wildfires crackled across Siberia this summer, turning skies ochre and sending up enough smoke from burning pines to blot out satellite views of the 400-mile-long Lake Baikal.
To many climate scientists, the worsening fires are a consequence of Siberia getting hotter, the carbon unleashed from its burning forests and tundra only adding to man-made fossil fuel emissions. Siberia's wildfire season has lengthened in recent years and the 2015 blazes were among the biggest yet, caking the lake, the...
Global Warming Could Be Limited to 3 Degrees C Under Current Climate Pledges
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 28th, 2015
Yale Environment 360: National climate pledges submitted so far by 155 countries — responsible for around 90 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions — could limit the planet's long-term temperature increase to around 3 degrees Celsius, according to an assessment by the European Commission Joint Research Center (JRC). The climate pledges, submitted to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change ahead of December's climate negotiations in Paris, are officially known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions,...
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