New study provides insight into Southern Ocean food web – ‘Likely to be regional extinctions of some species’

2 Feb 2012 (BAS) – One of the most comprehensive studies of animals in the Southern Ocean reveals a region that is under threat from the effects of environmental change. Reporting in January 2012 in a special volume of the journal Deep Sea Research II, an international team of researchers led by British Antarctic Survey […]

Protecting the seas is good business: UN

25 January 2012 (Agence France-Presse) – The worldwide fishing industry could benefit from a $50 billion boost annually if stocks were allowed time to recover, the UN said Wednesday. Already 32 percent of the world’s fish stocks have been depleted by years of overfishing and poor coastal management, according to a UN Environment Programme report […]

Native forest birds in Hawaii in unprecedented trouble

Contact: University of Hawaiʻi at MānoaLeonard Freed, (808) 956-8655      Rebecca Cann, (808) 956-552119 January 2012 Native birds at Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge are in unprecedented trouble, according to a paper recently published in the journal PLoS ONE. The paper, titled “Changes in timing, duration, and symmetry of molt of Hawaiian forest birds,” was authored […]

Video: NASA says Canada ‘hot spot’ of ecological change

[cf. NASA: Climate change to bring big ecosystem changes – Current warming is 100 times faster than end of last ice age. Apologies in advance for the advertisement.] By Mychaylo Prystupa, CBC News 12 January 2012 A new NASA study predicts massive ecological changes for Canada’s Prairies and boreal regions by the year 2100. Those […]

Frankincense trees in steep decline

December 21 (AFP) – Ecologists have warned production of frankincense, one of the three gifts the Wise Men gave to the baby Jesus in a key part of the Nativity story celebrated at Christmas, is in dramatic decline. A research team from the Netherlands and Ethiopia says a new study has shown numbers of the […]

‘Deadly synergy between beetles, blister rust, and climate change’ may doom rugged pine

By Craig Welch, The Seattle Times14 November 2011 SAWTOOTH RIDGE, Wash. — The bug lady scoots through stick-straight lodgepole and ponderosa, and marches uphill toward the gnarled trunk of a troubled species: the whitebark pine. The ghostly conifers found on chilly, wind-swept peaks like this may well be among the earliest victims of a warming […]

Lethal virus detected in wild Pacific salmon ‘a cataclysmic threat’

By CORNELIA DEAN and RACHEL NUWER, The New York Times17 October 2011 A lethal and highly contagious marine virus has been detected for the first time in wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest, researchers in British Columbia said Monday, stirring concern that it could spread, as it has in Chile, Scotland and elsewhere. Farms hit […]

Image of the Day: Satellite View of Toxic Algae Bloom in Lake Erie

Caption by Holli Riebeek14 October 2011 The green scum shown in this image is the worst algae bloom Lake Erie has experienced in decades. Such blooms were common in the lake’s shallow western basin in the 1950s and 60s. Phosphorus from farms, sewage, and industry fertilized the waters so that huge algae blooms developed year […]

New England cottontail rabbit on verge of extinction in Rhode Island

Media Contact: Todd McLeish, 401-874-789214 September 2011 KINGSTON, R.I. – Rhode Island’s native rabbit, the New England cottontail, is on the verge of being extirpated from the state after a survey of appropriate habitat and historical breeding sites by more than 100 University of Rhode Island students and staff from the R.I. Department of Environmental […]

With deaths of forests, a loss of key climate protectors

By JUSTIN GILLIS 1 October 2011 WISE RIVER, Mont. — The trees spanning many of the mountainsides of western Montana glow an earthy red, like a broadleaf forest at the beginning of autumn. But these trees are not supposed to turn red. They are evergreens, falling victim to beetles that used to be controlled in […]

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial