HONOLULU, Hawaii — If current climate change trends continue, rising sea levels may inundate low-lying islands across the globe, placing island biodiversity at risk. A new U.S. Geological Survey scientific publication describes the first combined simulations of the effects of sea-level rise and wave action in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, offering the most detailed and multifaceted assessment available of how island biodiversity may be affected by climate change.
Light pollution is often associated with negative effects on wildlife. Now, ecologists have found that by mimicking a perpetual full moon, the gas flares and electrical lighting along Scotland’s Forth estuary are helping shorebirds stock up on more food during the winter to fuel their spring migration.
The research is the first to use night-time light data from US military satellites to study animal behaviour.
Coasts and estuaries are among the most rapidly developing areas on Earth. Night-time satellite images of the planet show that except Antarctica, continents are ringed with halos of brightly-lit human development. But coasts are also key wildlife sites. Every year, millions of waterbirds arrive from the Arctic to overwinter on UK coasts, yet scientists remain largely in the dark about how these birds respond to the bright lights of coastal cities and industry. (more…)
A new app which encourages people to say “good morning Mr Magpie” via their mobile phone will help scientists evaluate the benefits which birds bring to the quality of human life.
Whether you view them with sorrow or joy, using your smart device to help build up a national database of sightings of the distinctive black-and-white birds will feed into wider research by the University of Exeter to assess how much value people place on having birds in their gardens.
Dr Richard Inger, at the Environment and Sustainability Institute on the University’s Cornwall Campus, said: “We chose to study magpies because they’re one of the most common garden birds in the UK and are easily recognisable. Many people already acknowledge them for luck, and we’re asking them to go one small step further and log sightings on their mobile phones. Magpies are not everyone’s favourite birds, but by getting involved you can help us to gather crucial data which will help us establish how much time the birds spend in different habitats. (more…)
Goal is to Understand the Ecological Role of Seals in North Atlantic Waters
People come from miles away to see the seals off the shores of Cape Cod and surrounding regions, but the animals are creating some challenges for local fishermen. Recent increases in local seal abundance have led to concerns about fisheries interactions. The urgency of documenting, understanding, and mitigating these interactions has become more apparent.(more…)
EAST LANSING, Mich. — A team of Michigan State University researchers will soon be heading into the rainforests of Nicaragua to help an endangered species known as a Baird’s tapir co-exist with local farmers whose crops are being threatened by the animals.(more…)
Patterns Also Shed Light on How Environmental Disturbances Affect Aquatic Organisms
The ability of deep-sea corals to harbor a broad array of marine life, including commercially important fish species, make these habitat-forming organisms of immediate interest to conservationists, managers, and scientists. Understanding and protecting corals requires knowledge of the historical processes that have shaped their biodiversity and biogeography.(more…)
China’s endangered wild pandas may need new dinner reservations–and quickly, based on models that indicate climate change may kill off swaths of bamboo that pandas need to survive
In this week’s Nature Climate Change, an international journal, scientists from Michigan State University (MSU) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences provide comprehensive forecasts of how changing climate may affect the most common species of bamboo that carpet the forest floors of prime panda habitat in northwestern China. Even the most optimistic scenarios show that bamboo die-offs would effectively cause prime panda habitat to become inhospitable by the end of the 21st century.
The scientists studied possible scenarios of climate change in the Qinling Mountains in Shaanxi Province. At the northern boundary of China’s panda distributional range, the Qinling Mountains are home to about 275 wild pandas, which account for about 17 percent of the remaining wild population. The Qinling pandas, which have been isolated because of thousands of years of human habitation around the mountain range, vary genetically from other giant pandas. The geographic isolation of these pandas makes them particularly valuable forconservation, but vulnerable to climate change. (more…)
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Sparse summer sea ice in the Arctic over the past five years has caused behavioral changes in Pacific walruses according to research published by U.S. Geological Survey and Russian scientists. The effects on the walrus population are unknown.
“The loss of sea ice is the ‘why’ for the change in walrus behavior; the tracking data tells us the ‘where’ in terms of their new forage patterns,” said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. “What awaits to be seen is ‘how much will it matter?'” (more…)
