Category Archives: Environment

British butterfly desperate for warm weather this summer

By Guest PostJune 11, 2013Environment, Naturebritish butterfly, climate, computer modeling, fluctuation, habitats, jenny hodgson, jonathan bennie, microclimates, silver spotted skipper, summer, sussex wildlife trust, temperature, university of exeter, university of liverpool, university of york, variable climate, warm weather, warmer conditions, zoe davies

Butterflies are extremely sensitive to changes in temperature and new research has revealed that when summer weather turns bad the silver-spotted skipper battles for survival.

The butterfly, which previously faced extinction from habitat loss, is recovering following conservation efforts but the recent cool wet summers in England have almost stalled its progress.

A 27 year study by researchers at the University of Exeter in collaboration with the University of York, the University of Liverpool, Sussex Wildlife Trust, the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and the charity Butterfly Conservation has been published in the journal Ecology Letters. The study estimated changes in temperature across a range of silver-spotted skipper habitats and found that localised fluctuations in temperature lead to extreme fluctuations in the butterfly population size and in the probability of the butterflies colonising new sites. (more…)

Biotech Crops vs. Pests: Successes, Failures from the First Billion Acres

By Guest PostJune 11, 2013Environmentbacillus thuringiensis, bacterium, Beijing, biotech crops, bruce tabashnik, bt, bt crop acreage, bt toxins, cirad, epa, evolutionary theory, france, global assessment, insecticidal proteins, kongming wu, million hectares, organic farmers, pest resistance, pests, pink bollworm caterpillar, rapid evolution, resistance in pests, sprays, thierry brevault, university of arizona, world, yves carriere

A new global assessment helps scientists explain why genetically modified crops have suppressed some pests for longer than a decade, while others adapted in a few years.

Since 1996, farmers worldwide have planted more than 1 billion acres (400 million hectares) of genetically modified corn and cotton that produce insecticidal proteins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt for short.

Bt proteins, used for decades in sprays by organic farmers, kill some devastating pests but are considered environmentally friendly and harmless to people. However, some scientists feared that widespread use of these proteins in genetically modified crops would spur rapid evolution of resistance in pests. (more…)

UCLA life scientists present new insights on climate change and species interactions

By Guest PostJune 11, 2013Environmentanthony dell, biotraits database, climate change, cold blooded animals, consumer, coral reefs, ecology, ecosystems, feeding event, feeding relationship, flowering in plants, fluctuation, Germany, global increase, global warming, immobile prey, interactions, juvenile possum, knowledge, life scientists, massive dataset, mean temperature, metabolic rate, mobile prey, moving prey, natural ecosystems, policymakers, predator, prey, python, rainforests, rate, resource, rising temperatures, samraat pawar, species, species interactions, timing, ucla, university of chicago, university of gottingen, van savage, variability in temperature

UCLA life scientists provide important new details on how climate change will affect interactions between species in research published online May 21 in the Journal of Animal Ecology. This knowledge, they say, is critical to making accurate predictions and informing policymakers of how species are likely to be impacted by rising temperatures.

“There is a growing recognition among biologists that climate change is affecting how species interact with one another, and that this is going to have very important consequences for the stability and functioning of ecosystems,” said the senior author of the research, Van Savage, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and of biomathematics at UCLA. “However, there is still a very limited understanding of exactly what these changes will be. Our paper makes progress on this very important question.” (more…)

Scientists Explore Roots of Future Tropical Rainfall

By Guest PostJune 10, 2013Environmentarabian sea, atmosphere, bay of bengal, climate prediction, earth, eastern africa, eastern indian ocean, evidence, future tropical rainfall, geological clues, hadley centre, indian, indo-pacific, indonesia, jessica tierney, last glacial maximum, last ice age, northern australia, numerical models, pacific regions, pedro dinezio, proxies, proxy evidence, rainfall patterns, roots, salinity, saltier waters, southeast asia, sunda shelf, surface waters, tropical climate change, university of hawaii, warm pool, western pacific, wetter

Analysis of the Last Glacial Maximum sheds light on climate models’ ability to simulate tropical climate change

How will rainfall patterns across the tropical Indian and Pacific regions change in a future warming world? Climate models generally suggest that the tropics as a whole will get wetter, but the models don’t always agree on where rainfall patterns will shift in particular regions within the tropics.

A new study, published online May 19 in the journal Nature Geoscience, looks to the past to learn about the future of tropical climate change, and our ability to simulate it with numerical models. (more…)

Hidden Wildfires Taking Big Toll on Amazon Rainforest

By Guest PostJune 9, 2013Environmentamazon fire season, deforestation, hidden wildfires, understory fires

Using an innovative satellite technique, NASA scientists have determined that a previously unmapped type of wildfire in the Amazon rainforest is responsible for destroying several times more forest than has been lost through deforestation in recent years. (more…)

Northern hemisphere losing last dry snow region, says CU study

By Guest PostJune 8, 2013Environment60 year record, air temperature, Arctic sea ice, boulder, dan mcgrath, dry snow region, greenland ice sheet, ice per year, mass balance, melt water, northern hemisphere, surface, university of colorado, warming at summit

Last July, something unprecedented in the 34-year satellite record happened: 98 percent of the Greenland Ice Sheet’s surface melted, compared to roughly 50 percent during an average summer. Snow that usually stays frozen and dry turned wet with melt water. Research led by the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences now shows last summer’s extreme melt could soon be the new normal.

“Greenland is warming rapidly, and such ice-sheet-wide, surface-melt events will occur more frequently over the next couple of decades,” said Dan McGrath, a University of Colorado Boulder doctoral student who works at CIRES. McGrath is lead author of a paper published online May 20 in Geophysical Research Letters and which reports a significant warming trend on the Greenland Ice Sheet. (more…)

New Robotic Instruments to Provide Real-Time Data on Gulf of Maine Red Tide

By Guest PostJune 2, 2013Environmentalexandrium bloom season, alexandrium fundyense, amnesic shellfish poisoning, asp, chris scholin, coast of portsmouth, coastal waters, current status, dennis mcgillicuddy, diatom, don anderson, environmental sample processors, epa, espchris, espdon, esps, fda, greg doucette, gulf of maine, habs, harmful algal blooms, kohl kanwit, MIT, molecular biology labs, neracoos, new england, new robotic instruments, nh, noaa, paralytic shellfish poisoning, pseudo nitzschia, psp, real time data, red tide, sea grant program, single celled algae, toxins, WHO

Deployment could lead transformation of toxic HAB monitoring

A new robotic sensor deployed by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Gulf of Maine coastal waters may transform the way red tides or harmful algal blooms (HABs) are monitored and managed in New England. The instrument was launched at the end of last month, and a second such system will be deployed later this spring.

The results will add critical data to weekly real-time forecasts of New England red tide this year distributed to more than 150 coastal resource and fisheries managers in six states as well as federal agencies such as NOAA, the FDA and the EPA. Researchers also plan to add data from the sensor to regular updates provided on the “Current Status” page of the Northeast PSP website. (more…)

New Advance in Biofuel Production

By Guest PostJune 2, 2013Environmentacid catalyst, advanced biofuels, alternative to gasoline, atmosphere, bioenergy, biofuel production, blake simmons, burning, carbon dioxide, cellulosic biomass, crystals, diesel, enzymes, fermentable sugars, fossil fuels, hanbin liu noppadon, hydrolyzing biomass polysaccharides, imidazolium chloride, ionic liquid, jbei, jet fuels, liquid fuels, manali sawant, new advance, ning sun, recycle, vitalie stavila

Joint BioEnergy Institute Researchers Develop Enzyme-free Ionic Liquid Pre-treatment

Advanced biofuels – liquid fuels synthesized from the sugars in cellulosic biomass – offer a clean, green and renewable alternative to gasoline, diesel and jet fuels. Bringing the costs of producing these advanced biofuels down to competitive levels with petrofuels, however, is a major challenge. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), a bioenergy research center led by Berkeley Lab, have taken another step towards meeting this challenge with the development of a new technique for pre-treating cellulosic biomass with ionic liquids – salts that are liquids rather than crystals at room temperature. This new technique requires none of the expensive enzymes used in previous ionic liquid pretreatments, and makes it easier to recover fuel sugars and recycle the ionic liquid. (more…)