Earth ChangesS


Butterfly

Nature loss 'dwarfs bank crisis'

Richard.Black
BBC NEws
Fri, 10 Oct 2008 04:44 UTC
Image

Rainforest in Kakum National Park, Ghana
Losses are great, and continuous, says the report
Barcelona - The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis, according to an EU-commissioned study.

It puts the annual cost of forest loss at between $2 trillion and $5 trillion.

The figure comes from adding the value of the various services that forests perform, such as providing clean water and absorbing carbon dioxide.
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Bizarro Earth

Canada: Mysterious green algae blankets Hamilton Harbour

Cathie Coward
Hamilton Spectator
Thu, 09 Oct 2008 22:25 UTC
Algae bird
A bird is shown covered by the mysterious green algae that has blanketed parts of Hamilton Harbour.
A green slime has hit Hamilton Harbour, coating wildlife and causing a stink.

The inlets near Macassa Bay Yacht Club and Bayfront Park have been blanketed with pungent-smelling algae, though neither the city's public health department nor local boaters know if it's dangerous.
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Butterfly

Beavers: Dam Good For Songbirds


Science Daily
Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:59 UTC
The songbird has a friend in the beaver. According to a study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the busy beaver's signature dams provide critical habitat for a variety of migratory songbirds, particularly in the semi-arid interior of the Western U.S.
Beaver dam
© iStockphoto/Yenwen LuBeaver dam in Lundy Canyon, Eastern Sierra, California, U.S. The busy beaver's signature dams provide critical habitat for a variety of migratory songbirds, particularly in the semi-arid interior of the West.

The study, which appears in the October 2008 issue of the journal Western North American Naturalist, says that through dam building, beavers create ponds and stimulate growth of diverse streamside vegetation critical for birds, including many migratory songbirds in decline. The study found that the more dams beavers build, the more abundant and diverse local songbirds become.

"We found that increasing density of beaver dams was associated with a diverse and abundant bird community and the wetland and streamside habitat these species depend on," said Hilary Cooke, the study's lead author who is now finishing her dissertation at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. "This habitat is critical to birds in semi-arid regions yet has been severely degraded or lost through much of the West. Our results suggest that management of beavers may be an important tool for restoring habitat and reversing bird declines."
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Bizarro Earth

Mutant fish is hunting humans


The Courier Mail
Thu, 09 Oct 2008 12:32 UTC
Big Mutant Fish
© The SunCaught... Jeremy Wade and locals hold a goonch
Scientists have claimed a fearsome mutant fish has begun actively hunting people - after gorging itself on human corpses which have been dumped in rivers.

They reckon that a huge type of catfish, called a goonch, may have developed a taste for flesh in an Indian river where bodies are dumped after funerals, reports The Sun newspaper.
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Cloud Lightning

Norbert becomes Category 4 hurricane in Pacific

Julie Watson
Associated Press
Thu, 09 Oct 2008 09:55 UTC
Ciudad Obregon, Mexico - Hurricane Norbert strengthened Wednesday into an extremely powerful Category 4 storm off Mexico's Pacific coast and was on track to hit the southern Baja California peninsula over the weekend.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Norbert will likely turn toward the northeast over the next two days en route to the Baja peninsula and Mexican mainland. Officials across the region were setting up shelters and preparing for possible evacuations from low-lying regions.
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Fish

Future Looks Bleak For One Of World's Smallest Seal Species


Science Daily
Wed, 08 Oct 2008 21:43 UTC
One of the smallest seals - the Caspian - has joined a growing list of mammal species in danger of extinction.
Caspian seal
© Simon Goodman, University of Leeds/Caspian International Seal SurveyCaspian seal (Pusa caspica).

Scientists from the University of Leeds together with international partners have documented the disastrous decline of the seal - a species found only in the land-locked waters of the Caspian Sea - in a series of surveys which reveal a 90 per cent drop in numbers in the last 100 years.

The research findings have prompted the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to move the Caspian seal from the Vulnerable category to Endangered on its official IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, announced today in Barcelona [06 October 2008].

Dr Simon Goodman of Leeds' Faculty of Biological Sciences says: "Each female has just one pup a year, so with numbers at such a low levels, every fertile female that dies is a nail in the coffin of the species. We're hoping that the seal's change in Red List status will help raise awareness about their plight, and the many important conservation issues facing the whole Caspian ecosystem."

Commercial hunting, habitat degradation, disease, pollution and drowning in fishing nets have caused the population of the seal collapse from more than 1 million at the start of the 20th century to around 100,000 today.
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Info

Arctic Soil May Contain Nearly Twice Greenhouse-Gas Producing Material Than Previously Estimated


Science Daily
Wed, 08 Oct 2008 21:25 UTC
Frozen arctic soil contains nearly twice the greenhouse-gas-producing organic material as was previously estimated, according to recently published research by University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists.
Chien-Lu Ping
© UAF School of Natural Resources & Agricultural SciencesChien-Lu Ping conducting soil tests.

School of Natural Resources & Agricultural Sciences professor Chien-Lu Ping published his latest findings in Nature Geoscience. Wielding jackhammers, Ping and a team of scientists dug down more than one meter into the permafrost to take soil samples from more than 100 sites throughout Alaska. Previous research had sampled to about 40 centimeters deep.

After analyzing the samples, the research team discovered a previously undocumented layer of organic matter on top of and in the upper part of permafrost, ranging from 60 to 120 centimeters deep. This deep layer of organic matter first accumulates on the tundra surface and is buried during the churning freeze and thaw cycles that characterize the turbulent arctic landscape.
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Fish

Deepest-living Fishes Caught On Camera For First Time


Science Daily
Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:11 UTC
Scientists filming in one of the world's deepest ocean trenches have found groups of highly sociable snailfish swarming over their bait, nearly five miles (7700 metres) beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean. This is the first time cameras have been sent to this depth.
snailfish
© Natural Environment Research Council and University of AberdeenSnailfish

'We got some absolutely amazing footage from 7700 metres. More fish than we or anyone in the world would ever have thought possible at these depths,' says project leader Dr Alan Jamieson of the University of Aberdeen's Oceanlab, on board the Japanese research ship the Hakuho-Maru.

'It's incredible. These videos vastly exceed all our expectations from this research. We thought the deepest fishes would be motionless, solitary, fragile individuals eking out an existence in a food-sparse environment,' says Professor Monty Priede, director of Oceanlab.
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Bizarro Earth

Arctic quake sends waves through Nevada


Associated Press
Wed, 08 Oct 2008 03:16 UTC
North Fork - Scientists say what appeared to be an earthquake in northeastern Nevada was actually a seismograph picking up waves from an earlier quake in the Arctic Ocean.

A preliminary report from the U.S. Geological Survey said a magnitude-4.2 temblor centered about 18 miles west of North Fork shook Elko County at 3:07 a.m. Tuesday.

USGS geophysicist Jessica Sigala says a seismologist reviewed the record and determined that phases from a magnitude-5.8 quake in the Arctic Ocean seven minutes earlier had been wrongly interpreted by a seismograph as a local quake.
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House

Indonesians warned to stay away from erupting volcano


Agence France-Presse
Wed, 08 Oct 2008 00:10 UTC
Jakarta - People living in the shadow of Mount Soputan volcano on Indonesia's Sulawesi island were warned to stay away Tuesday after it started erupting with smoke and flame, officials said.

"There's no order to evacuate but people are asked to stay outside a radius of four kilometres (2.5 miles) from the volcano's summit because it could spew lava and heat clouds down its slopes," volcanologist Sandi said.
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