Earth ChangesS


Wolf

Dog-walking 'can harm wildlife'

Dogs are the four legged foes of natural wildlife and not their friends, according to the first study to quantify the effects on local birds of taking them for a walk.

Experiments show that dog-walking causes more than 40 per cent reduction in bird abundance and more than 35 per cent reduction in bird diversity in woodlands, even if the pets are kept on a lead.

"These results support the ban on access for dog-walking to sensitive natural areas," said Dr Peter Banks, who did the study at the University of New South Wales with Jessica Bryant. "I can't see why it wouldn't be relevant to the UK and other places," he told The Daily Telegraph.

Dog-walking is among the world's most popular outdoor activities, with clear benefits to both human and canine health.

Bizarro Earth

Earthquake Shakes Off Of San Diego Coast

A magnitude-4.0 earthquake rattled off the San Diego coast Tuesday, but no injuries or structural damage was reported on the mainland, authorities said.

©News10.com

The quake, centered 11 miles west of San Diego at a depth of 6.8 miles, hit at 7:48 a.m., according to the U.S. Geological Survey.


Cloud Lightning

Twin Storms Pack Dangerous Winds in Central America

Felix walloped Central America's remote Miskito coastline and Henriette slammed into resorts on the tip of Baja California as a record-setting hurricane season got even wilder Tuesday with twin storms making landfall on the same day.

Atlantic and Pacific hurricanes making landfall on the same day is unprecedented, according to National Hurricane Center records dating back to 1949.

Red Flag

Livestock Breed Extinction Concerns U.N.

INTERLAKEN, Switzerland - The rate at which livestock breeds are disappearing is "alarming," a senior official at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said Tuesday, warning that precious genes could be lost forever.

Bizarro Earth

Sicily's Mount Etna erupts



©Reuters

Mount Etna, Europe's tallest and most active volcano spewed out lava late on Tuesday in its latest spectacular eruption.

Sparks lit the night sky and a small stream of lava was flowing down the volcano into an uninhabited valley but there was no danger to villages lower down on the slopes, officials said.

Cloud Lightning

Hurricane Felix hits Central America, 2 reported dead

Hurricane Felix ripped into Central America on Tuesday, trashing a port on Nicaragua's Caribbean coast and threatening dangerous mudslides in Honduras and Guatemala.

Two people were reported dead in Puerto Cabezas in northern Nicaragua, where howling winds tore the roofs off homes and shelters and badly damaged a church.

"My house felt like it was moving with the wind," said resident Julio Mena. Street lights and phone cables lay on the ground.

Uprooted trees flew through the air as thousands sheltered in two schools in the port, home to some 30,000 mostly Miskito Indians.

Cloud Lightning

Tens of thousands displaced by Ethiopia floods

Widespread flooding across Ethiopia is affecting more than 100,000 people, with the number of those driven from their homes topping 36,000 and rising, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

Authorities fear further flooding is imminent and the outbreak of waterborne disease likely.

Arrow Up

Korea: Global Warming Blamed for Record Tropical Nights



©Chosun
Children splash in a fountain in front of the Kim Dae-jung Convention Center in Gwangju at the end of July when the rainy season was over and the heat wave beginning.

The nation saw more sleepless "tropical nights" this summer than ever, when nighttime temperatures stayed above 25 degrees Celsius. There were twice as many of them this summer as in the average year. In August alone, the frequency of tropical nights was four times higher than ever before. Meteorologists cite global warming and the "heat island" effect as the main culprits.

Info

Fewer copperheads at mountaintop meet

The mysterious nighttime meetings of snakes on an Ozark hilltop have taken a puzzling new turn.

For the past two summers, dozens of Southern copperhead snakes have appeared beneath a cedar tree at Chuck Miller's rugged mountaintop home in Marion County. Like clockwork, the snakes arrived suddenly around 8 p. m., stayed for an hour or so, and then disappeared.

But things are different this summer. Instead of making their first appearance in mid-July, as they did in 2005 and 2006, the snakes began showing up in August. And their numbers are down significantly.

Cloud Lightning

After devastating fires, heavy rains in Greece now raise fears of flooding

A massive cleanup, reconstruction and anti-flood effort was being launched Monday for fire-stricken parts of southern Greece as one fire front continued to burn while others abated, officials said.

After months of successive heat waves, heavy rainstorms flooded parts of northern Greece on Sunday. Rain and cooler weather were expected to move south early this week, helping firefighters extinguish any remaining blazes and prevent the possibility of smoldering fires rekindling. However, officials also fear that heavy rains could hamper relief efforts and lead to flooding.