Earth ChangesS


Fish

Type Of Plankton -- Food Source For Many Fish -- Has Ability To Survive Climate Change


Science Daily
Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:36 UTC
Queen's researchers have found that the main source of food for many fish - including cod - in the North Atlantic appears to adapt in order to survive climate change.

Billions of Calanus finmarchicus, a plankton species, which are just a few millimetres in size, live in the waters of the North Atlantic where the research was carried out.

It showed they responded to global warming after the last Ice Age, around 18,000 years ago, by moving north and maintaining large population sizes and also suggests that these animals might be able to track the current change in habitat.

The effect of global climate change on the planet's ecosystems is one of the key issues scientists are currently focussing on and the research has been published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a publication of the national academy of science of the UK and the Commonwealth, today.
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Frog

US: Central Florida Neighborhoods Invaded By Frogs


WESH.com
Fri, 12 Sep 2008 07:20 UTC
Frog
Standing water everywhere and hot weather create the perfect situation to incubate eggs. Central Florida is being invaded, not by mosquitoes, but by frogs. The tiny frogs are too daunting -- until you multiple them by about 1 million.

"Last night there was 11 big ones on my house, jumping and hitting me in the head and stuff like that," Cindy Trumpolt said.

"I told them we should get on our knees and pray, because I think it is a plague. I do," one resident said.

Many residents are worried the frogs will get into their home or car.
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Evil Rays

Strong earthquake jolts Central Asia

Olga Dzyubenko
Reuters
Sun, 05 Oct 2008 15:24 UTC
BISHKEK - A strong earthquake struck Central Asia on Sunday but there were no immediate reports of damage or casualties, officials and witnesses said.

The quake jolted an area between Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, Central Asia's most densely populated corner prone to ethnic tension and instability.

The earthquake was felt throughout the region, mainly in Kyrgyzstan, but there were conflicting reports about the magnitude and epicenter.
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Calculator

Math helps bees read the waggle dance


New Scientist
Sun, 05 Oct 2008 15:24 UTC
When honeybees dance to point their hivemates towards nectar-rich flowers, they waggle in a slightly different direction each time. It is sometimes claimed that this variability benefits the hive by helping bees locate new resources, but an experiment by David Tanner and Kirk Visscher from the University of California, Riverside, seems to have overturned this theory.

By observing bees trained to visit artificial sugar-traps, Tanner and Visscher discovered that rather than picking a flight path based on the angle of any one waggle, the bees flew off in a direction that more closely matched the mean angle of several waggles.

"Bees apparently keep a mental log of the directions indicated in the dance," says Tanner. "I find it remarkable that, with a relatively simple brain, they can do something so mathematically complex."
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Snowman

Arctic Sea Ice Annual Freeze-up Underway


Science Daily
Sun, 05 Oct 2008 04:31 UTC
After reaching the second-lowest extent ever recorded last month, sea ice in the Arctic has begun to refreeze in the face of autumn temperatures, closing both the Northern Sea Route and the direct route through the Northwest Passage.
Parry Channel in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago
© ESAParry Channel in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, as seen by Envisat's ASAR on 25 August 2008, when the direct Northwest Passage was open (right image), and on 22 September 2008 when sea ice is closing the direct Northwest Passage.

This year marked the first time since satellite measurements began in the 1970s that the Northern Sea Route, also known as the Northeast Passage, and the Northwest Passage were both open at the same time for a few weeks.

"NIC analysis of ESA's Envisat and other satellite datasets indicated that the Northern Sea Route opened when a path through the Vilkitski Strait finally cleared by 5 September," NIC Chief Scientist Dr Pablo Clemente-Colón said via email from aboard the US Coast Guard icebreaker Healy in the Arctic, where he is conducting joint mapping operations with the Canadian Coast Guard.

"This is the first time in our charting records that both historic passages opened up in the same year," Clemente-Colón said. "Both of the routes appeared as closed by 22 September."
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Target

Russia hit by 4.0-magnitude earthquake


United Press International
Sat, 04 Oct 2008 19:28 UTC
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Russia -- A mild earthquake measuring 4.0 on the Richter scale hit the Russian island of Sakhalin Saturday, the Russian Emergencies Ministry says.

The ministry's Sakhalin regional department said the earthquake on the North Pacific island controlled by Russia occurred nearly 20 miles north of the city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, ITAR-TASS reported.
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Target

Earthquake rocks the Andaman Islands, India Region

Amrit Rashmisrisethi
Thaindian.com
Sat, 04 Oct 2008 19:24 UTC
There was an earthquake at the Andaman Islands, India Region with the magnitude of 5.5 on the Richter scale.

The earthquake occurred on Friday, October 03, 2008 at 21:20:26 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time ) and Saturday, October 04, 2008 at 03:20:26 AM at epicenter of the local time as reported by the U.S. Geological Survey.
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Bizarro Earth

In warm Brazil, a perplexing inrush of penguins

Joshua Partlow
Washington Post
Fri, 03 Oct 2008 19:15 UTC
penguins
© Washington Post
Not everyone in Rio de Janeiro has taken to the penguins quite the way Cecilia Breves has, but even for her, there is a learning curve.
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Bizarro Earth

US: Debris of daily life washes onto Texas beaches

Christopher Sherman
Associated Press
Thu, 02 Oct 2008 22:50 UTC
Padre Island National Seashore, TX - The world's longest undeveloped barrier island now looks as if people have been living - and dumping - on it for decades.
Padre Island National Seashore debris
© AP Photo/Eric GayPieces of debris collected by cleanup crews that are cleaning up the Padre Island National Seashore, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2008, on South Padre Island, Texas. Debris from Hurricane Ike litters more than 60 miles of the national seashore.

Tons of debris swept up by Hurricane Ike last month were carried by Gulf of Mexico currents hundreds of miles from the upper Texas coast to this ordinarily pristine landscape just north of the Mexican border.

Sections of roofs, refrigerators, loveseats, beds, TVs, hot tubs and holiday decorations litter the more than 60 miles of gently arcing sand in the national park.

Some of the junk is good for a laugh, like the lifejacket-clad snowman someone placed next to a plastic pumpkin, a small but real palm tree and an acoustic guitar. But it's no joke to wildlife workers who are worried the trash will harm birds and other animals, including an endangered turtle that nests here in the spring.
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Bizarro Earth

Marine 'dead zones' leave crabs gasping

Catherine Brahic
New Scientist
Thu, 02 Oct 2008 22:37 UTC
It's not easy being a fish these days, but it could be even harder being a crab. Research into marine "dead zones" around the world suggests that crustaceans are the first to gasp for air when oxygen levels get low.

The findings, based on a review of 872 published studies of 206 ocean-floor dwelling species, also suggest that a much greater area than we thought is dangerously low on oxygen.

In marine dead zones - also known as hypoxic zones - the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water becomes too low for organisms to survive.

They are usually caused by synthetic fertilisers, which are carried from fields, down rivers, and out to sea, where algal blooms gorge on the extra nutrients. When these phytoplankton die, they fall to the bottom where they are eaten by bacteria that consume all the local oxygen in the process.

Marine biologists generally hold that any area that has less than 2 milligrams of dissolved oxygen per litre of seawater is hypoxic - "dead". The threshold was set by a study in 1983 in the Gulf of Mexico, when marine biologists found that fish and shrimp had deserted bottom waters that had 2 mg/l of oxygen or less.
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