Category Archives: Environment

New Website Invites Public to Help Identify Seafloor Life and Habitats

By Guest PostSeptember 15, 2012Environment, Scienceamber york, annotation tool, arfon smith, astronomy, citizen science alliance, csa, distribution, financial resource, galaxy zoo, georges bank, habcam, habitat, hole, hugh popenoe, identify, image, institution, jonathan howland, lophius americanus, mapping, monkfish, norman vine, object, oceanographic, old weather, placopecten magellanicus, planet hunters, predator, scallops, scott gallager, seafloor, seafloor explorer, starfish, underwater vehicle, web interface, web programmer, whoi, woods, zooniverse

The public is invited to help identify objects they see in images of the seafloor through a new interactive website called “Seafloor Explorer.” The result of a unique collaboration between oceanographers studying seafloor habitats, Web programmers and social scientists, Seafloor Explorer (www.seafloorexplorer.org) launches September 13.

The team has more than 40 million images, but are launching the site with a preliminary set of 100,000 – all of them taken by HabCam, a habitat mapping underwater vehicle. HabCam was developed and built by the HabCam group, which comprises marine biologists and engineers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) as well as fishermen and other scientists. The Seafloor Explorer interactive website was funded by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and built in collaboration with the HabCam Group by the Citizen Science Alliance (CSA), the developers behind interactive sites found on Zooniverse.org. (more…)

Surviving Without Ice

By Guest PostSeptember 15, 2012Environment, Natureamphipods, apherusa glacialis, arctic crustaceans, arctic ocean, disney movie, Environment, finding nemo, fram strait, geir johnsen, gulf stream, jorgen berge, life cycle, mark moline, melt, nemo hypothesis, north pole, ocean current, sea ice, shrimp

Arctic crustaceans use currents, deep-water migration to survive sea ice melts

With sea ice in the Arctic melting to record lows in summer months, marine animals living there face dramatic changes to their environment. Yet some crustaceans, previously thought to spend their entire lives on the underside of sea ice, were recently discovered to migrate deep underwater and follow ocean currents back to colder areas when ice disappears.

“Our findings provide a basic new understanding of the adaptations and biology of the ice-associated organisms within the Arctic Ocean,” said Mark Moline, director of the University of Delaware’s School of Marine Science and Policy in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment. “They also may ultimately change the perception of ice fauna as imminently threatened by the predicted disappearance of perennial sea ice.” (more…)

Researchers Devise More Accurate Method for Predicting Hurricane Activity

By Guest PostSeptember 14, 2012Environmentalok choudhary, cross validation, factor, forecasting, fredrick semazzi, historical data, humidity, hurricane season, method, model, motif based, nagiza samatova, network, north atlantic, north Carolina, seasonal hurricane, state university, statistical method, temperature, united states, william hendrix, zhengzhang chen

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new method for forecasting seasonal hurricane activity that is 15 percent more accurate than previous techniques.

“This approach should give policymakers more reliable information than current state-of-the-art methods,” says Dr. Nagiza Samatova, an associate professor of computer science at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the work. “This will hopefully give them more confidence in planning for the hurricane season.” (more…)

Salt Seeds Clouds in the Amazon Rainforest

By Guest PostSeptember 13, 2012Environmentabsorption, aerosol particle, airborne particle, als beamline, Amazon, amazon jungle, amazonian, asci, ballistospores, berkeley lab, biomass, brazil, chemistry, christopher pohlker, david kilcoyne, deep, emission, fine particle, fog, forest canopy, fungi fire, gas phase, Germany, graphitic, institute, isoprene, leaves, liquid droplet, manaus, mary gilles, max planck, meinrat andreae, microscopy, moisture, morning, mpic, natural forest, nexafs, organic carbon, organism, osmosis, photon, potassium level, potassium salt, rainforest, sacs, seed, soluble particle, stxm, sugar alcohol, terpenes, tree resin, trees, ulrich pöschl, water vapor, xray

It’s morning, deep in the Amazon jungle. In the still air innumerable leaves glisten with moisture, and fog drifts through the trees. As the sun rises, clouds appear and float across the forest canopy … but where do they come from? Water vapor needs soluble particles to condense on. Airborne particles are the seeds of liquid droplets in fog, mist, and clouds.

To learn how aerosol particles form in the Amazon, Mary Gilles of the Chemical Sciences Division at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and David Kilcoyne of the Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS) worked with Christopher Pöhlker of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (MPIC) as part of an international team of scientists led by MPIC’s Meinrat Andreae and Ulrich Pöschl. They analyzed samples of naturally formed aerosols collected above the forest floor, deep in the rainforest. (more…)

Wind Power’s Potential

By Guest PostSeptember 12, 2012Environment3d, atmospheric circulation, carbon dioxide, clean energy, climate impact, coastal ocean, cristina archer, delaware, Economy, energy demand, energy output, energy potential, Environment, environmental impact, fundamental barrier, future energy, gator gcmom, german, global, global scale, mark jacobson, physical model, saturation, stanford university, surface temperature, university, water vapor, wind, wind turbine

UD-Stanford team calculates maximum global energy potential from wind

Wind turbines could power half the world’s future energy demands with minimal environmental impact, according to new research published by University of Delaware and Stanford University scientists in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers arrived at the determination by calculating the maximum theoretical potential of wind power worldwide, taking into account the effects that numerous wind turbines would have on surface temperatures, water vapor, atmospheric circulations and other climatic considerations.

“Wind power is very safe from the climate point of view,” said Cristina Archer, associate professor of geography and physical ocean science and engineering at UD. (more…)

Increase in Metal Concentrations in Rocky Mountain Watershed Tied to Warming Temperatures

By Guest PostSeptember 10, 2012Environmentacid rock drainage, acidity, air temperature, andrew manning, andrew todd, ard, bedrock, biologist, caitlin crouch, calcium concentration, chemical reaction, colorado, colorado boulder, continental divide, diane mcknight, ecological concern, geological survey, hypothesis, keystone, metal concentration, mineral weathering, mineralized, pennsylvania mine, permafrost, peru creek, philip verplanck, pyrite, pyrite weathering, rate, remediation effort, rocky mountain, snake river, stream, stream ecosystem, sulfide mineral, sulfuric acid, tributary, united states, university, US, usgs, water table, watershed, zinc

Warmer air temperatures since the 1980s may explain significant increases in zinc and other metal concentrations of ecological concern in a Rocky Mountain watershed, reports a new study led by the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Colorado Boulder.

Rising concentrations of zinc and other metals in the upper Snake River just west of the Continental Divide near Keystone, Colo., may be the result of falling water tables, melting permafrost and accelerating mineral weathering rates, all driven by warmer air temperatures in the watershed. Researchers observed a fourfold increase in dissolved zinc over the last 30 years during the month of September. (more…)

NASA/WHOI Voyage Set to Explore Link Between Sea Saltiness and Climate

By Guest PostSeptember 9, 2012Environment, Science3d picture, aquarius instrument, autonomous glider, azores, bahamas, climate change, climate model, data, david fratantoni, drought, effect, equator, eric lindstrom, evaporation, expedition, flood, fluctuate, global temperature, knorr, NASA, north africa, north atlantic, ocean, pattern, phenomena, planet, rainfall, rainy belt, raymond schmitt, research vessel, sac d, salinity processes, salinity variability, salt content, satellite technology, scale, spurs, upper layer, us midwest, voyage, water cycle, western coast, woods hole

A NASA-sponsored expedition is set to sail to the North Atlantic’s saltiest spot to get a detailed, 3-D picture of how salt content fluctuates in the ocean’s upper layers and how these variations are related to shifts in rainfall patterns around the planet.

The research voyage is part of a multi-year mission, dubbed the Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study (SPURS), which will deploy multiple instruments in different regions of the ocean. The new data also will help calibrate the salinity measurements NASA’s Aquarius instrument has been collecting from space since August 2011. (more…)

Droughts are Pushing Trees to the Limit

By Guest PostSeptember 8, 2012Environmentatmospheric sponge, droughts, plant growth, plant response, plant stress, tree death, vapor pressure deficit, variable precipitation

Droughts in the Southwest made more severe by warming temperatures are putting plants in stressful growing conditions, a new study has found, identifying an increasingly water-thirsty atmosphere as a key force that sucks moisture from plants, leading to potentially higher stress – especially in mid and low elevations.

As temperatures rise and droughts become more severe in the Southwest, trees are increasingly up against extremely stressful growing conditions, especially in low to middle elevations, University of Arizona researchers report in a study soon to be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences. (more…)