Tag Archives: carbon

Airborne Technology Helps Manage Elephants

By Guest PostAugust 26, 2012Environment, Nature3 d mapping, africa, airborne technology, atmosphere, cao, carbon, carnegie, climate, danie pienaar, ecology letters, ecosystem, elephant, elephant conservation, elephant trap, Environment, greg asner, habitat, herbivore, kruger national park, lidar, management practice, savanna, sequester, shaun levick, South Africa, terrain condition, toppling tree, treefall, vegetation

Washington, D.C. – For years, scientists have debated how big a role elephants play in toppling trees in South African savannas. Tree loss is a natural process, but it is increasing in some regions, with cascading effects on the habitat for many other species. Using high resolution 3-D mapping, Carnegie scientists have for the first time quantitatively determined tree losses across savannas of Kruger National Park. They found that elephants are the primary agents—their browsing habits knock trees over at a rate averaging 6 times higher than in areas inaccessible to them. The research also found that elephants prefer toppling trees in the 16-to-30 foot (5-8 m) range, with annual losses of up to 20% in these height classes. The findings, published in Ecology Letters, bolster our understanding of elephant conservation needs and their impacts, and the results could help to improve savanna management practices.

“Previous field studies gave us important clues that elephants are a key driver of tree losses, but our airborne 3-D mapping approach was the only way to fully understand the impacts of elephants across a wide range of environmental conditions found in savannas,” commented lead author Greg Asner of Carnegie’s Department of Global Ecology. “Our maps show that elephants clearly toppled medium-sized trees, creating an “elephant trap” for the vegetation. These elephant-driven tree losses have a ripple effect across the ecosystem, including how much carbon is sequestered from the atmosphere.” (more…)

Water in a Changing World

By Guest PostJune 25, 2012Entertainment, Sciencealgal blooms, biogeochemistry, cancer causing byproduct, carbon, changing world, chesapeake bay, climate change, delphis levia, disinfection, experimental watershed, fair hill, forest canopy, groundwater level, high frequency data, natural ecosystem, nitrogen, nitrogen cycling, nsf, season, shreeram inamdar, soils, stream runoff, university of delaware, water, water quality, watershed hydrology, watersheds

Experimental watershed provides new insights, rich educational experience

Six years and about 4,000 water samples later, an outdoor experimental watershed laboratory established by University of Delaware faculty members Shreeram Inamdar and Delphis Levia at Fair Hill, Md., is now producing valuable data and novel insights into how water and chemicals move through the forest canopy, soils and watersheds, and how future climate change may impact or alter such responses.

Inamdar, associate professor in the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, has investigated the role of soils, streams, and watersheds in leaching water and nutrients, while Levia, professor in the Department of Geography, has studied the interactions of atmosphere and the forest canopy in leaching water and nutrients. Together, they have provided a complete picture of watershed hydrology and biogeochemistry. (more…)

New Study by WHOI Scientists Provides Baseline Measurements of Carbon in Arctic Ocean

By Guest PostMay 21, 2012Environmentalaska, arctic ocean, biogeosciences, canada basin, canadian coast guard, carbon, carbon 13, carbon atoms, carbon cycle, carbon dioxide, CO2, david griffith, fiona mclaughlin, global climate, icebreaker, li xu, marine ecosystem, organic carbon, pacific, pathway, robie macdonald, sea ice melt, Siberia, temperatures, whoi

Scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have conducted a new study to measure levels of carbon at various depths in the Arctic Ocean. The study, recently published in the journal Biogeosciences, provides data that will help researchers better understand the Arctic Ocean’s carbon cycle—the pathway through which carbon enters and is used by the marine ecosystem. It will also offer an important point of reference for determining how those levels of carbon change over time, and how the ecosystem responds to rising global temperatures.

“Carbon is the currency of life. Where carbon is coming from, which organisms are using it, how they’re giving off carbon themselves—these things say a lot about how an ocean ecosystem works,” says David Griffith, the lead author on the study. “If warming temperatures perturb the Arctic Ocean, the way that carbon cycles through that system may change.” (more…)

Microbe That Can Handle Ionic Liquids

By Guest PostMay 17, 2012Environment, Scienceanthropogenic chemicals, biofuel production, biofuels, blake simmons, carbon, cellulosic biomass, enterobacter lignolyticus, fossil fuels, hannah wooa, industry, ionic liquids, jane khudyakov, jbei, kristen deangelis, michael thelen, microbe, microorganisms, model, patrik dhaeseleer, properties, scf1 strain, semicrystalline, sharon borglin, soil bacterium, sugar fermenting microbes, switchgrass, Technology, toxic effect, tropical rainforest microbe

New Find From Joint BioEnergy Institute Could Help Reduce Biofuel Production Costs

In the search for technology by which economically competitive biofuels can be produced from cellulosic biomass, the combination of sugar-fermenting microbes and ionic liquid solvents looks to be a winner save for one major problem: the ionic liquids used to make cellulosic biomass more digestible for microbes can also be toxic to them. A solution to this conundrum, however, may be in the offing.

Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), a multi-institutional partnership led by Berkeley Lab, have identified a tropical rainforest microbe that can endure relatively high concentrations of an ionic liquid used to dissolve cellulosic biomass. The researchers have also determined how the microbe is able to do this, a discovery that holds broad implications beyond the production of advanced biofuels. (more…)

Thawing Permafrost 50 Million Years Ago Led To Warm Global Events, Says New Study

By Guest PostApril 7, 2012EnvironmentAntarctica, arctic permafrost, carbon, climate, climatic threshold, CO2, earth, eccentric orbits, ecosystem, Environment, floor sediment, fossil fuel, frozen-soil, greenhouse gas levels, italy, kevin schaefer, methane gas, ocean, orbit, organic matter, paleocene eocene, permafrost, permafrost thaw, petm, rob deconto, soil, source, thermal maximum, university of urbino

A new study led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst and involving the University of Colorado Boulder proposes a simple new mechanism to explain the source of carbon that fed a series of extreme warming events on Earth about 50 million years ago called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, as well as a sequence of similar, smaller warming events afterward.

“The standard hypothesis has been that the source of carbon was in the ocean in the form of frozen methane gas in ocean-floor sediments,” said lead study author Rob DeConto of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “We are instead ascribing the carbon source to the continents in polar latitudes where permafrost can store massive amounts of carbon that can be released as CO2 when the permafrost thaws.” (more…)

Evolution of Earliest Horses Driven by Climate Change

By Guest PostFebruary 24, 2012Environment, Nature, Scienceaaron wood, atmosphere, bighorn basin, body size, cabin fork area, carbon, carbon dioxide, cause and effect, climate model, clydesdale, concentration, doug boyer, dwarfing phenomenon, earliest horse, evolution, florida museum of natural history, fossil, geochemical analysis, global temperature, h richard lane, horse teeth, industrial revolution, jonathan bloch, mammal, national science foundation, natural selection, North America, nsf, ocean, ornithologist, oxygen levels, paleocene-eocene thermal maximum, petm, prediction, ross secord, sifrhippus sandae, stephen chester, temperature, university of florida, university of nebraska lincoln, worland, yale

*The hotter it gets, the smaller the animal?*

When Sifrhippus sandae, the earliest known horse, first appeared in the forests of North America more than 50 million years ago, it would not have been mistaken for a Clydesdale.

It weighed in at around 12 pounds–and it was destined to get much smaller over the ensuing millennia.

Sifrhippus lived during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a 175,000-year interval of time some 56 million years ago in which average global temperatures rose by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit. (more…)

NASA Map Sees Earth’s Trees in a New Light

By Guest PostFebruary 19, 2012Environment, Scienceaustralia, caltech, carbon, carbon cycle, climate change, cloud, data, earth, effects of topography, eucalyptus, flowering plants, forest, forest canopy, forest habitat, global map of forest height, height, high resolution map, icesat, laser pulse measurements, lidar, light detection and ranging, marc simard, modis, monitor, NASA, new zealand, satellites, south latitude, southern tropical forests, Space, spatial modeling, spatial resolution, trmm sensors, vegetation, worldclim database

PASADENA, Calif. – A NASA-led science team has created an accurate, high-resolution map of the height of Earth’s forests. The map will help scientists better understand the role forests play in climate change and how their heights influence wildlife habitats within them, while also helping them quantify the carbon stored in Earth’s vegetation.

Scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; the University of Maryland, College Park; and Woods Hole Research Center, Falmouth, Mass., created the map using 2.5 million carefully screened, globally distributed laser pulse measurements from space. The light detection and ranging (lidar) data were collected in 2005 by the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System instrument on NASA’s Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat). (more…)

NASA: Climate Change May Bring Big Ecosystem Changes

By Guest PostDecember 15, 2011Environmentbiodiversity, biome changes, biosphere, boreal forests, caltech, carbon, climate, climate change, climate model projections, computer modeling, desert, duane waliser, earth, eastern equatorial africa, ecological consequences, ecological sensitivity, ecosystem, element cycles, energy, environmental changes, forest, global climate simulations, grassland, great lakes, great plains, greenhouse gases, himalayas, hotspots, ice, jon bergengren, last glacial maximum, Madagascar, major ecological community type, mediterranean region, melting glaciers, migrate, model projections, modern climate changes, multiple generations, NASA, North America, northern hemisphere, plant communities, rising sea levels, southern south america, tibetan plateau, tundra, water

PASADENA, Calif. – By 2100, global climate change will modify plant communities covering almost half of Earth’s land surface and will drive the conversion of nearly 40 percent of land-based ecosystems from one major ecological community type – such as forest, grassland or tundra – toward another, according to a new NASA and university computer modeling study.

Researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., investigated how Earth’s plant life is likely to react over the next three centuries as Earth’s climate changes in response to rising levels of human-produced greenhouse gases. Study results are published in the journal Climatic Change. (more…)