Sustainable Ecosystems and Community News - ENN

Plants and CO2 Uptake

Andy Soos, ENN — Wed, 23 May 2012 13:29:00 EST

Plants absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Exactly how fast this might occur is not clear. The capacity of terrestrial ecosystems to absorb carbon dioxide emissions from human activity may be greater than previously thought, according to a new study published in Nature Climate Change, which looks at how plants react to environmental change. The authors say these results improve our ability to look into the planet's future and predict the magnitude of climate change before it happens.

Leaf 'stamp' could detect crop diseases

Joanna Carpenter — Wed, 23 May 2012 09:10:00 EST

Crop diseases could be detected earlier and more easily if a new method that stamps a leaf with a color-changing biosensor is successful. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded US$100,000 to Hideaki Tsutsui of the University of California, Riverside, earlier this month (9 May) to develop the early warning system for crop diseases.

Study links fungi to early vascular plants

Tom Marshall, Planet Earth On Line — Wed, 23 May 2012 06:48:00 EST

Cooperating with fungi didn't just help the earliest plants spread across a barren, rocky landscape; it also played a decisive role in the rise of more complex plants with roots and leaves that make up most of today's flora. That's the conclusion of a recent study, which used experiments on closely-related plants that are still around today to investigate how major environmental changes around 400 million years ago gave more complex new 'vascular' arrivals the edge over older, simpler 'non-vascular' plants like liverworts. A sudden plunge in atmospheric CO2 made these simpler plants' cooperative fungal networks far less capable of supplying them with enough nutrients to grow, compared to a corresponding improvement for their vascular rivals. Adding to the problem, the upstarts were starting to outcompete them for light.

The Fall of the Reef Shark

Andy Soos, ENN — Tue, 22 May 2012 15:20:00 EST

Sharks have a reputation of being apex predators of the sea. But even they have their weak points. Many shark populations have plummeted in the past three decades as a result of excessive harvesting – for their fins, as an incidental catch of fisheries targeting other species, and in recreational fisheries. This is particularly true for oceanic species. However, until now, a lack of data prevented scientists from properly quantifying the status of Pacific reef sharks at a large geographic scale. Curious gray reef sharks at Kure Atoll in the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, Hawaii were studied as part of a study published April 25 in the journal Conservation Biology. An international team of marine scientists provided the first estimates of reef shark losses in the Pacific Ocean using underwater surveys conducted over the past decade across 46 US Pacific islands and atolls, as part of NOAA's extensive Pacific Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program. The team compared reef shark numbers at reefs.

Charting a new environmental course in China

Mark Szotek — Tue, 22 May 2012 09:41:00 EST

Founded in 1951, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) works in more than 30 countries and has projects in all 50 of the United States. The Conservancy has over one million members, and has protected more than 119 million acres of wild-lands and 5,000 miles of rivers worldwide. TNC has taken an active interest in China, the world's most populated nation, and in many important ways, a critical center of global development. The following is an interview with multiple directors of The Nature Conservancy's China Program. Mongabay: Please tell our readers about the background and history of The Nature Conservancy's (TNC) work in China. Zhang Shuang, Director of TNC China Program: Though TNC is a big international organization, we started small in China, in the critically important Northwest corner of the province of Yunnan. We were invited by the Yunnan provincial government to help them complete a regional conservation plan. That was in 1998. We still operate a number of projects in Yunnan but now have also expanded site work into Sichuan, Inner Mongolia, and the Yangtze River Basin. While the opportunities and need for addressing environmental challenges in China are enormous, we still try to focus our work on select areas, where we can really have an impact. This includes addressing climate change (through restoring forests and creating adaptation strategies), introducing new models of protected areas while strengthening existing conservation landscapes, and minimizing the impact of hydropower and other development in the Yangtze River Basin, China's heartland.

Why the best world-changing ideas begin in your neighbourhood

John-Paul Flintoff — Tue, 22 May 2012 09:31:00 EST

Your ideas for changing the world may be desperately important. But if you can't find a way to engage the interests of the people around you they may never take off, argues John-Paul Flintoff. The environmental movement has often been guilty of making people despondent, either by talking about 'problems' in a way that makes listeners feel powerless, or by presenting solutions as miserable duties. It needn't be that way. Instead, we could try to make doing the right thing appealing, rather than merely necessary - and one way to do that is to offer people a chance to say hello to their neighbours.

High Concentrations of Toxic Mercury in the Arctic from Circumpolar Rivers

David A Gabel, ENN — Tue, 22 May 2012 09:19:00 EST

Environmental scientists have known that high levels of the toxic element, mercury, have been accumulating in the Arctic Ocean for some time. It was believed to be mostly caused by atmospheric sources stemming from the combustion of coal. However, a new study from the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Harvard School of Public Health has found that the great majority of Arctic mercury arrives via circumpolar rivers. Some of the largest rivers in the world flow north into the Arctic in Eurasia and North America.