Earth ChangesS


Fish

Leatherback Turtles' Newly Discovered Migration Route May Be Roadmap To Salvation


Science Daily
Sun, 20 Jul 2008 11:41 UTC
With a name like "Leatherback Turtle" you might think the sea turtles could stand up to just about anything the ocean can throw at them, and for more than a hundred million years, they have. But tough, long-lived critters though they are, the population of leatherbacks in the eastern Pacific Ocean has plummeted by over 90 percent in the last 20 years.

Leatherback Turtle
©NOAA
Leatherback Turtle

Like many species that migrate across a vast ocean, pinpointing all the possible causes of their decline is difficult and figuring out where conservationists might be able to intervene on their behalf is hugely challenging. But a major effort to tag and track leatherbacks that nest on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica has yielded unprecedented insight into their behavior.
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Cloud Lightning

Lightning swarm detected in Atlanta

Christian Boone
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Wed, 09 Jul 2008 02:46 UTC
About 600 lightning strikes strafed communities north and east of Atlanta on Wednesday afternoon, touching off house fires across the region and striking a woman in Gwinnett County.
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Cloud Lightning

Utah: Sevier County woman survives lightning strike

Buddy Blankenfeld
ABC News
Fri, 11 Jul 2008 02:37 UTC
Richfield - A Sevier County woman beat the odds after getting struck by lightning and surviving. Experts say those odds are 1 in 700,000.
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Cloud Lightning

Russia: Gadgets blamed as lightning strikes dozens

Alina Selyukh
CNN
Fri, 18 Jul 2008 01:22 UTC
MOSCOW -- Lightning has killed and injured more than a dozen people in Russia in the past two weeks, officials say, blaming widespread use of electronic gadgets such as cell phones for an increase in deadly strikes.
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Bizarro Earth

Barren Island volcano continues to remain active


New Kerala
Sat, 19 Jul 2008 21:28 UTC
The Barren Island volcano, near Andaman Islands, which rejuvenated its activity three years ago continues to be active and the series of eight earthquakes in the Andaman Sea in the last two days indicates the possibility of undersea volcanic activity.

'During the last 15 days, the volcano activity in the island has increased. Fire glow over the central cone can be seen at the night from a distance of 10 km,' according to Indian Coast Guard sources.

Barren Island volcano was reactivated following killer Sumatra earthquake of December 26, 2004 which created tsunami, killing lakhs (a unit in the Indian numbering system equal to one hundred thousand) of people in various Asian countries, including India and Indonesia.

'Barren Island volcano located at 135 km northeast of Port Blair is the northern most point of Indonesian volcanic chain and is very active,' Dr D Chandrasekharam, Volcanologist of IIT Mumbai said, confirming it.

It appears that this volcanic activity must have triggered a series of eight earthquakes since evening of June 27 in southwest of Port Blair, magnitude varying from 4.8 to 6.6 on Richter scale occurring in the same junction which was earlier considered aseismic (not an earthquake zone), Chandra Sekharam, Head, Centre of Studies in Resources Engineering, said.
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Bizarro Earth

US: Okmok volcano continues to act up


Anchorage Daily News
Sat, 19 Jul 2008 17:02 UTC
Umnak Island -- The U.S. Geological Survey says Okmok Volcano in Alaska is producing more explosions and ash plumes.

The ash is coming through a newly created vent and poses hazards to area air travel.

Scientists are tracking the eruption with seismic and global positioning system instruments on the ground and weather and radar satellites in space. Ash obscures the view inside the volcano's 6-mile-diameter crater.

Eruption of Okmok
©Kelly Reeves Alaska Airlines
Eruption of Okmok, image taken on Sunday, July 13, 2008.

The volcano in the eastern Aleutian Islands erupted unexpectedly July 12, sending up a plume that reached 50,000 feet and disrupted flights.

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Info

Judge restores protection for Rockies wolves


Associated Press
Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:39 UTC
BILLINGS, Mont. - A federal judge has restored endangered species protections for gray wolves in the Northern Rockies, derailing plans by three states to hold public wolf hunts this fall.

U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula granted a preliminary injunction late Friday restoring the protections for the wolves in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. Molloy will eventually decide whether the injunction should be permanent.

The region has an estimated 2,000 gray wolves. They were removed from the endangered species list in March, following a decade-long restoration effort.

Image
©AP Photo/U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, File
A gray wolf.

Environmentalists sued to overturn the decision, arguing wolf numbers would plummet if hunting were allowed. They sought the injunction in the hopes of stopping the hunts and allowing the wolf population to continue expanding.
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Cloud Lightning

Dust Storms In Sahara Desert Sustain Life In Atlantic Ocean


Science Daily
Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:13 UTC
Research at the University of Liverpool has found how Saharan dust storms help sustain life over extensive regions of the North Atlantic Ocean.

Image
©iStockphoto/Christian Peeters
A sand storm in the Sahara desert.

Working aboard research vessels in the Atlantic, scientists mapped the distribution of nutrients including phosphorous and nitrogen and investigated how organisms such as phytoplankton are sustained in areas with low nutrient levels.

They found that plants are able to grow in these regions because they are able to take advantage of iron minerals in Saharan dust storms. This allows them to use organic or 'recycled' material from dead or decaying plants when nutrients such as phosphorous - an essential component of DNA - in the ocean are low.
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Cloud Lightning

US: Tropical Storm Cristobal forms off Southeast coast

Bruce Smith
Associated Press
Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:07 UTC
CHARLESTON, S.C. - Tropical Storm Cristobal formed off the Southeast coast Saturday, the first storm to threaten the U.S. this hurricane season, forecasters said.

Image
©AP Photo/Weather Underground
This NOAA satellite image taken Saturday, July 19, 2008 at 2:15 PM EDT shows clouds off the Southeast Coast associated with Tropical Storm Cristobal. The storm is expected to move northeastward along the eastern seaboard with a possible landfall along the Outer Banks of North Carolina late Sunday. It is not expected to reach hurricane strength.

The storm's stregthened from a tropical depression, and promised to bring much-needed rains to the eastern Carolinas before it was predicted to slip out to sea.

At 2 p.m. EDT, the center of the storm was about 100 miles east of Charleston and about 225 miles southeast of Cape Hatteras, N.C.

The National Hurricane Center said Cristobal (pronounced crist-TOE'-ball) was moving northeast at about 7 mph.
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Life Preserver

Australia: Pet dog saves old woman from rogue kangaroo


The Telegraph
Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:25 UTC
A family pet saved an elderly Australian woman from a rogue kangaroo that attacked her on a farm in New South Wales.

Rosemary Neal, 65, was walking through a mob of kangaroos to look after some horses in a paddock at the farm near Mudgee, 160 miles northwest of Sydney.

Her son Darren said the area was overrun with the large marsupials, which rarely attack people, and she had felt entirely safe in their company.

But then, a large male kangaroo inches taller than the 5'6 foot Mrs Neal, suddenly lunged at her.

"The kangaroo has just jumped up and launched straight at her," he told local newspapers. "He hit her once and she just dropped and rolled. My dog heard her screaming and bolted down and chased him off.

kangaroo
©Unknown
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