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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(4)
Plague/Virus:()
Climate Chaos:(12)
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This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
ecosystem interrelationships  ~ climate impacts  ~ short-term thinking  ~ contamination  ~ oil issues  ~ economic myopia  ~ governmental idiocy  ~ deniers  ~ carbon emissions  ~ corporate malfeasance  ~ invasive species  



ApocaDocuments (9) matching "ecosystem interrelationships" from this week
[see full week] ~ [see all stories tagged "ecosystem interrelationships"]
Sun, Jul 11, 2010
from Associated Press:
Scientists roll out mats to kill Lake Tahoe clams
Scuba-diving scientists are unrolling long rubber mats across the bottom of Lake Tahoe coves in an attempt to quell a clam invasion that could cloud the world-reknown cobalt waters. The half-acre mats are designed to smother dime-sized nonnative Asian clams that can reach populations of 5,000 per square yard. Geoffrey Schladow, director of the Tahoe Environmental Research Center run by the University of California, Davis, said the clams promote so much algae growth that they can turn some coves from blue to green. "They suck in the water and they filter out the algae. Their excretions are highly concentrated packages of nutrients," he said. ...


Unwelcome mats make clams sad.

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Sun, Jul 11, 2010
from Associated Press:
BP claims progress on new cap as oil spews freely
Oil was spewing freely into the Gulf of Mexico as BP crews claimed progress Sunday in the first stages of replacing a leaky cap with a new containment system they hope will finally catch all the crude from the busted well. There's no guarantee for such a delicate operation nearly a mile below the water's surface, officials said, and the permanent fix of plugging the well from the bottom remains slated for mid-August. "It's not just going to be, you put the cap on, it's done. It's not like putting a cap on a tube of toothpaste," Coast Guard spokesman Capt. James McPherson said. ...


Hell, I can't even get my kids to do that at home.

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Fri, Jul 9, 2010
from New Scientist:
Prawns on Prozac, whatever next? Crabs on cocaine?
Second-hand Prozac in waste water could be sending shrimps' swimming patterns haywire, making them easy targets for predators. Alex Ford and Yasmin Guler at the University of Portsmouth in the UK collected local shrimp, Echinogammarus marinus, and observed their behaviour in the lab. The shrimp were exposed to different levels of the antidepressant fluoextine - or Prozac - to test whether the presence of the drug would affect the way the shrimp respond to light. In humans, Prozac acts as a mood enhancer by prolonging the effect of serotonin at nerve terminals. The shrimp, on the other hand, responded to increased serotonin levels by swimming towards the light (Aquatic Toxicology DOI:10.1016/j/aquatox.2010.05.019). The pair found that shrimps exposed to the same Prozac levels present in waste water that flows to rivers and estuaries are five times more likely to swim toward the light instead of away from it. ...


Whatever you do... don't... go... to... the light!

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Thu, Jul 8, 2010
from London Guardian:
China launches armada to head off algae plume
Chinese authorities have dispatched a flotilla of more than 60 ships to head off a massive tide of algae that is approaching the coast of Qingdao. The outbreak is thought to be caused by high ocean temperatures and excess nitrogen runoff from agriculture and fish farms. Scientists involved in the operation say the seaweed known as enteromorpha needs to be cleaned up before it decomposes on beaches and releases noxious gases. According to the domestic media, the green tide covers an area of 400 sq km. Newspapers ran pictures of coastguard officials raking up the gunk as soon as it reached the shore. As well as the 66 vessels sent to intercept the approaching algae, a net has been stretched offshore as an extra defence. Ten forklift trucks, seven lorries and 168 people were clearing up the many tonnes of seaweed that still got through. ...


Sounds blooming gross to me!

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Thu, Jul 8, 2010
from Word Resources Institute, via Mongabay:
Goodbye to the Gulf: oil disaster hits region's 'primary production'
According to a new analysis by the World Resources Institute (WRI), the many ecosystem services provided by the Gulf of Mexico will be severely impacted by BP's giant oil spill. 'Ecosystem services' are the name given by scientists and experts to free benefits provided by intact ecosystems, for example pollination or clean water. In the Gulf of Mexico, such environmental benefits maintain marine food production, storm buffers, tourism, and carbon sequestration, but one of the most important of marine ecosystem services is known as 'primary production'. The backbone of the marine food chain, primary production refers to the process whereby some marine organisms turn carbon dioxide into organic compounds--in this case corals, sea grass, algae, and the most important of all phytoplankton.... Although considered 'free' by most economists, ecosystem services are worth far more than most people realize. According to Earth Economics one acre of Mississippi Delta produces approximately $13,000 in ecosystem services annually. But oil pollution will greatly diminish such long depended on and cryptic returns.... The WRI argues that from now on ecosystem services must be taken into account when officials grant offshore drilling licenses. They are currently ignored by public officials handling oil drilling. ...


Jeez, Mom, you want me to help pay for groceries? I'm only 51!

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Thu, Jul 8, 2010
from New Scientist:
Sea otters worth $700 million in carbon credits
Want to slow global warming? Save a sea otter. So says Chris Wilmers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, whose team has calculated that the animals remove at least 0.18 kilograms of carbon from the atmosphere for every square metre of occupied coastal waters. That means that if sea otters were restored to healthy populations along the coasts of North America they could collectively lock up a mammoth 1010 kg of carbon - currently worth more than $700 million on the European carbon-trading market.... The figures are part of a growing realisation that predators play a crucial ecological role, promoting the growth of vegetation by controlling herbivore populations. Just as wolves benefit trees and shrubs by killing deer, sea otters allow the luxuriant growth of kelp by consuming sea urchins. In former kelp forests that have lost their otters, Wilmers says, "all you are left with is piles of urchins and very little else". ...


Are you crazy? We're not even paying them minimum wage!

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Wed, Jul 7, 2010
from Science Daily:
Thousands of Undiscovered Plant Species Worldwide Face Extinction, Study Reveals
Dr Joppa explained: "By using a model that incorporates taxonomic effort over time, we calculated that the current number of species should grow by ten to 20 percent, meaning that there are between ten and 20 percent more undiscovered flowering plant species than previously thought -- a finding that has enormous conservation implications, as any as-yet-unknown species are likely to be overwhelmingly rare and threatened." Dr Roberts said: "If we take the number of species that are currently known to be threatened, and add to that those that are yet to be discovered, we can estimate that between 27 percent and 33 percent of all flowering plants will be threatened with extinction." Dr Joppa added: "That percentage reflects the global impact of factors such as habitat loss. It may increase if you factor in other threats such as climate change." ...


I think you're mixing "known unknowns" with "unknown unknowns."

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Tue, Jul 6, 2010
from New Scientist:
IPCC report is 'reliable but flawed': Netherlands
A tendency to highlight worst-case scenarios undermined parts of the last assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, according to a new study by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL). The inquiry was ordered by embarrassed Dutch ministers after it emerged that a mistake in the 2007 IPCC report originated with its own scientists. The report stated that 55 per cent of the Netherlands is below sea level, when in fact the true figure is half that. Overall, the Dutch investigators said, the IPCC report's conclusions were "well-founded". But it found several judgements that were "misleading" and appeared to have no firm research basis. For instance, the IPCC concluded that by 2050, "freshwater availability in central, south, east and south-east Asia, particularly in large river basins, is projected to decrease". This matters because some 3 billion people live in this part of the world and most rely on river flows to irrigate their crops. However, the Dutch investigators found confusion over data. Some studies cited measured absolute river flows, while others assessed per-capita flows. This made it "hard to establish the line of reasoning" and meant the conclusion could not be relied on, they said. In another case, the IPCC stated that "on balance health risks are very likely to increase" as a result of climate change. The PBL researchers said the report lacked a "quantitative underpinning for the statement". ...


Imagine! Scientists can be imperfect in predicting world-scale complexity!

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Mon, Jul 5, 2010
from Wired:
Study claims hydroelectric dams hurt climate more than oil
Hydroelectric power is normally listed in the same breath as solar, wind and wave as a world-saving renewable energy source. But a study from Brazil's National Institute for Research in the Amazon claims that it could be considerably more damaging to the atmosphere than generating the same amount of energy from oil. The study, which is due to be published in Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, asserts that Hydroelectric's "green" image is false and that traditional dam-based hydroelectric power generation systems could be releasing significant amounts of methane into the environment, thanks to the rotting vegetation submerged when the reservoir floods. ...


Dam!

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