Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

US: Los Angeles Quake Swarm: A Precursor to the Big One?


KTLA
Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:49 UTC
There has been a swarm of earthquakes in one area of Southern California that scientists in Pasadena are watching closely, with more than 20 temblors hitting this morning.

The biggest of the 24 quakes recorded this morning was a magnitude-4.8 which struck at 4:55 a.m. near the Salton Sea in Imperial County, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The quake was centered three miles south of the small town of Bombay Beach and 90 miles east of San Diego.

It was followed by a swarm of smaller quakes, which were recorded between 4:58 a.m. and 6:14 a.m. around Bombay Beach. Most of those temblors registered lower than a 3.0-magnitude, officials said.

There were no immediate reports of any injury or damages. Scores of small quakes have shaken the area in recent days.
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Better Earth

Coral colony as old as the pyramids

Nora Schultz
New Scientist
Tue, 24 Mar 2009 16:50 UTC
Image
© NOAA's Hawaii Undersea Research LaboratoryColonies of gold coral Gerardia (pictured) can persist for more than 2700 years, while a black coral, Leiopathes, has been dated to 4265 years.

Giant deep-sea corals don't get around much, but what they lack in mobility they make up for in longevity. A new study has discovered that some coral colonies can "live" for more than 4000 years, showing that the animals grow far more slowly than was thought.

It is this extremely slow growth that is the secret of the corals' long life, says Brendan Roark, at Texas A&M University.

The finding may have grave implications for the conservation of the corals' ecosystems. "Because corals are so big, they form the habitat for many other species in the coral bed and if you take them away, it will take thousands of years for similarly sized organisms to grow back," says Roark.

The gold coral Gerardia and the black coral Leiopathes both grow several metres tall, at depths of up to 500 metres in oceans around Hawaii. Whilst other studies had estimated their age at between a few hundred years and at most 3000 years, Roark argues that what had been considered "annual" growth rings actually take much longer to form.
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Better Earth

Rescue efforts on large beached whales 'futile'

Michael Marshall
New Scientist
Tue, 24 Mar 2009 16:48 UTC
Large whales that strand themselves should be killed, as any attempts to save them are probably futile and likely to cause more suffering, according to animal welfare specialists.

The results of a series of autopsies of beached whales carried out by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) have led veterinarians to conclude that sperm whales and beaked whales have little chance of survival if they become stranded.

"Euthanasia can be a very emotive issue," says Adam Grogan of the UK's Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), "but it is often in a stranded whale's best interests." It is normally carried out by lethal injection.

The statement, made by the Marine Animal Rescue Coalition, a group of organisations including the International Fund for Animal Welfare and the RSPCA, comes as rescuers were trying to save 90 long-finned pilot whales and bottlenose dolphins that had beached themselves on the west coast of Australia. At time of writing, only 10 of the animals were still alive.
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Bizarro Earth

Magnitude-4.7 quake shakes near Salton Sea, California


Associated Press
Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:40 UTC
Bombay Beach, California - A moderate earthquake struck Tuesday on the edge of the Salton Sea in Southern California's Imperial County, but there were no immediate reports of any injuries or damages.

The magnitude-4.7 quake struck at 4:55 a.m. at a depth of about 3.5 miles, said seismologist Amy Vaughn of the U.S. Geological Survey. It was centered three miles south of the small town of Bombay Beach, or 90 miles east of San Diego.
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Bug

Bees and ants are true team players


BBC News
Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:44 UTC
Image
© Frantnieks
Bees and ants are true team players unlike other creatures who seek safety in numbers for selfish reasons, according to researchers.

Scientists from Edinburgh and Oxford Universities used mathematical models to study "swarm behaviour". They found that bison or fish want to get to the centre of large groups to keep themselves safe from predators.

Ants and bees worked together as a single unit, and were prepared to die for the greater good of the colony.
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Igloo

Bad weather conditions in Balkans forced planes to land at Northern Greek airport


FOCUS Information Agency
Sun, 22 Mar 2009 18:55 UTC
The bad weather conditions in the Balkans forced airplanes to land at Thessaloniki airport Macedonia, Greek Eleftheros Typos daily writes on its Internet site.

A British Airways plane from London to Pristina and an Austrian Airlines plane from Vienna to Skopje were forced to land in Thessaloniki on Friday as they failed to reach their destinations due to the bad weather. Most of the Austrian Airlines passengers continued their traveling by road. 11 passengers from the Pristina flight continued towards their destination, while the rest returned to London.
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Phoenix

Alaska volcano Mount Redoubt erupts 4 times

Mark Thiessen
Associated Press
Mon, 23 Mar 2009 14:33 UTC
Anchorage - Alaska's Mount Redoubt volcano erupted four times overnight, sending an ash plume more than 9 miles into the air in the volcano's first emission in nearly 20 years.

Residents in the state's largest city was spared from falling ash, though fine gray dust was falling Monday morning on small communities north of Anchorage.
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Bizarro Earth

Alert level raised for Alaska volcano


Associated Press
Sun, 22 Mar 2009 23:38 UTC
Mount Redoubt
© AP Photo/AVO,USGSIn a January 27, 2009 file photo provided by the Alaska Volcano Observatory/U.S.G.S. steam and gas rise from a large fumerole on the north flank of Mount Redoubt, a 10,197-foot volcano in the Chigmit Mountains, in Alaska. Geologists at the Alaska Volcano Observatory Sunday increased the official alert level on the volcano to orange, the stage just before eruption.

Increased earthquake activity has prompted scientists to raise the alert level for Alaska's Mount Redoubt volcano.

Geologists at the Alaska Volcano Observatory said Sunday that seismic activity had increased over the past two days. On Sunday morning, 40 to 50 earthquakes were being recorded every hour.

Scientists said conditions may evolve rapidly and culminated in an eruption within days to weeks at the volcano roughly 100 miles southwest of Anchorage.

A steam plume rising about 1,000 feet above the mountain peak was observed Saturday.
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Nuke

Climate change: Less CO2, less jobs. It's that simple.

Scoop77
Calgary herald
Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:08 UTC
If you want to know what an economy that pumps out less carbon dioxide is like, look at Ontario, Quebec and Alberta. Factories closed, growing numbers of jobless, people driving less because they have nowhere to go, government deficits.

As it happens, it's the U.S. debt crisis that's done it to us. When the air comes out of the tires of your biggest trading partner, look out.

However, it's also what a well-meaning climate-change lobby felt was pain worth risking for the sake of the planet, when it recommended a regimen of emission caps and/or carbon taxes to reduce C02 emissions in Canada.

How do you like it so far?

Not so much, at this desk.

This is not the whole story as it doesn't include coal and natural gas, but there are some provocative specifics in a recent Statistics Canada document. (Link)
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Info

Africa's first bird extinction likely within four years

Nora Schultz
New Scientist
Sun, 22 Mar 2009 21:57 UTC
The modest plumage of the Sidamo lark may not catch the eye, but the bird could achieve the worst sort of fame - as the first contemporary African bird to go extinct, a new study warns.

The lark is adapted to Ethiopia's "rangeland" - the savannah of native grasses that traditionally covered large parts of east Africa, but is now rapidly disappearing. If the rangeland goes, so will the lark, says Claire Spottiswoode from the University of Cambridge.

"Rangeland degradation is often overlooked by conservationists, but it is not just the birds that suffer from the change in land use. The native people, the Borana pastoralists, also rely on intact rangeland to support their nomadic lifestyle," she says.
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