Archive for the 'Ecology' Category
Water: A Precious, and Wasted, Resource
By Andrea Thompson, LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 02 November 2007 12:08 pm ET
NEW YORK — On an illuminated wall in the American Museum of Natural History, three clear plastic tubes about 5-feet long and a couple inches in diameter automatically fill with water. In the first tube, a small amount shoots up, barely visible at the tube’s bottom, representing the meager 3 gallons of water that the average Ethiopian subsists on daily. The middle tube fills about one quarter full, showing the more bountiful 30 gallons of water the average Briton uses in a day.
No commentsEating Less Meat May Slow Climate Change
By MARIA CHENG, AP Medical Writer
(AP) – Eating less meat could help slow global warming by reducing the number of livestock and thereby decreasing the amount of methane flatulence from the animals, scientists said on Thursday.
In a special energy and health series of the medical journal The Lancet, experts said people should eat fewer steaks and hamburgers. Reducing global red meat consumption by 10 percent, they said, would cut the gases emitted by cows, sheep and goats that contribute to global warming.
“We are at a significant tipping point,” said Geri Brewster, a nutritionist at Northern Westchester Hospital in New York, who was not connected to the study. Read more
No commentsStudy: Cities Make Storms More Fierce
By Andrea Thompson, LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 10 August 2007 11:30 am ET
Cities make summer thunderstorms more intense than they would be in the countryside, a new study suggests.
Scientists have noted before that urban environments seem to alter the behavior of storms, but had not made observations of specific storms.
Researchers at Princeton University consulted models and observations of an extreme thunderstorm that hit Baltimore in July 2004 and found that about 30 percent more rainfall occurred in the city than would have if there were no buildings where the city now sits.
During the storm, Baltimore experienced as many lightning strikes in the space of two hours as the city normally sees in a whole year, with much of the lightning striking the western edges of the city.
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Florida raises ill-fated artificial reefs
By Jim Loney Sun Jul 8, 8:35 PM ET
MIAMI (Reuters) - When people began dumping used tires in the ocean 40 years ago to create artificial reefs, they gave little thought to the potential environmental cost, or to how difficult it would be to pick them up.
“It was one of those ideas that seemed good at the time,” said Jack Sobel, a senior scientist at The Ocean Conservancy, a Washington-based environmental group. “Now I think it’s pretty clear it was a bad idea.”
No comments2 billion Chinese mice overrun lake area
Mon Jul 9, 9:46 AM ET BEIJING - People living in communities surrounding a large shallow lake have been overrun by field mice after floodwaters drove the rodents out of islands on the lake, state media reported Monday.
The mouse invasion began on June 23 when the Yangtze River flooded, raising the water level in central China’s Dongting Lake and submerging mouse holes on lake islands, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
No commentsDrought renews pressure to fix Glades
By BRIAN SKOLOFF, Associated Press Writer Sun Jul 8, 7:59 AM ET
ON THE KISSIMMEE RIVER, Fla. - One hard rainfall won’t even come close to solving the unprecedented drought withering much of Florida.
Lake Okeechobee, the heart of the Everglades and a backup drinking water source for millions of South Florida residents, has been hitting a record low almost weekly. Its main artery, the Kissimmee River starting near Orlando, hasn’t flowed south in more than 240 days, depriving the lake of 50 percent of its water.
No commentsThe world’s largest snake hunt
- 07 July 2007
- NewScientist.com news service
Seven million: that’s the estimated annual toll in the world’s largest snake harvest, currently taking place on Tonlé Sap in Cambodia - the largest freshwater lake in south-east Asia.
“I don’t know of any other reptile that is exploited to this extent,” says Sharon Brooks, a graduate student at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, who described her studies of the hunt this week at the Society for Conservation Biology’s meeting in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.
No commentsAncient Greenland Was Actually Green
By Ker Than, LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 05 July 2007 02:01 pm ET
The oldest ever recovered DNA samples have been collected from under more than a mile of Greenland ice, and their analysis suggests the island was much warmer during the last Ice Age than previously thought.
The DNA is proof that sometime between 450,000 and 800,000 years ago, much of Greenland was especially green and covered in a boreal forest that was home to alder, spruce and pine trees, as well as insects such as butterflies and beetles.
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International Workshop: Impacts of Climate Change on AquaticEcosystems and Society
Freshwaters are crucial to the establishment of any human community and to the conservation of all land-based life as water is the major component of all living organisms. Though freshwaters, wetlands or lakes cover only 1% of the Earth’s surface, they hold more than 40% of the world’s species. Latest studies have shown that global average air temperature near the Earth’s surface rose nearly 1 oC during the past century. Read more
No commentsPlan to Dump Iron in Ocean Criticized
By Andrea Thompson, LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 27 June 2007 01:23 pm ET
A controversial plan to dump iron dust into the open ocean near the Galapagos Islands to induce the growth of phytoplankton met with opposition from an environmental group today.
The plan, from a company called Planktos, Inc., seeks to grow the tiny creatures in an attempt to suck up excess atmospheric carbon dioxide.
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