-------------------------------------
" ... it is likely that the future will be hotter than we think."
-------------------------------------------------------------

Torn, M. S., and J. Harte (2006), Missing feedbacks,asymmetric
uncertainties, and the underestimation of future warming.
Geophysical Research Letters, 33, L10703, doi:10.1029/2005GL025540.

Received 19 December 2005; revised 17 March 2006; accepted 24 March
2006; published 26 May 2006.

Abstract:
Historical evidence shows that atmospheric greenhouse gas (GhG)
concentrations increase during periods of warming, implying a
positive feedback to future climate change. We quantified this
feedback for CO2 and CH4 by combining the mathematics of feedback
with empirical ice core information and general circulation model
(GCM) climate sensitivity, finding that the warming of 1.5-4.5 C
associated with anthropogenic doubling of CO2 is amplified to 1.6-6.0
C warming, with the uncertainty range deriving from GCM simulations
and paleo temperature records. Thus, anthropogenic emissions result
in higher final GhG concentrations, and therefore more warming, than would be predicted
in the absence of this feedback. Moreover, a symmetrical uncertainty
in any component of feedback, whether positive or negative, produces
an asymmetrical distribution of expected temperatures skewed toward
higher temperature. For both reasons, the omission of key positive
feedbacks and asymmetrical uncertainty from feedbacks, it is likely
that the future will be hotter than we think.

=======================

"One study estimated that more than half (59 percent) of 1598 species
exhibited measurable changes in their phenologies and/or
distributions over the past 20 to 140 years .... high proportion of
species responding to recent, relatively mild climate change (global
average warming of 0.6 C)."

Parmesan, Camille. ' Ecological and Evolutionary Responses to Recent
Climate Change.' Annual Review of Evolution, Ecology, and
Systematics. 2006. 37: 637-69
=================================================

PLANKTOS: The Solution to Climate Change?

By Maya Face
A for-profit company named Planktos Inc. claims to “erase carbon footprints” by offsetting carbon emissions. Their promotional materials say, “Global Warming: Solved!” –offering a quick fix to the largest challenge of our times. While they are primarily concerned with “restoring” plankton in the oceans, they have a subsidiary that plants trees in the European Union. The carbon dioxide taken up by the plankton is sold as carbon credits to consumers, businesses and governments. Ocean fertilization is a quickly emerging threat to the oceans and better ways of dealing with climate change; the estimated future value of the market for ocean fertilization is $100 billion. Planktos is likely to make huge profits from the Kyoto Protocol, the market for carbon offsets, the huge carbon footprints of Western consumers, and industrial greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, the world’s oceans and climate are paying the price, with widespread scientific uncertainty as to how they will be affected by iron fertilization. Continue Reading »

Focus on Trade, the publication of Walden Bello’s group Focus on the Global South, is entirely focused on climate politics for this issue…Some excellent writings in here, and illustration that the anti-globalization / Global Justice movement in getting increasingly tapped into the climate movement, and bringing it some much needed multi-issue, anti-technofix perspectives. Continue Reading »

URGENT ACTION ALERT!! DEADLINE APPROACHING! YUCCA MOUNTAIN, SACRED TO THE SHOSHONE & MAJOR FAULT ZONE, IN IMMINENT DANGER! DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY MOVES PLANS FORWARD TO TURN YUCCA MOUNTAIN INTO NUCLEAR WASTE REPOSITORY. PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD DEADLINE JANUARY 10, 2008.Public hearings have not been well attended, statements mostly in favor of the plan to put all of the nuclear waste in the country in this one sacred place. Activists were told that if we do not go on record with a statement, we will have no legal recourse later on. Local papers & media spin have recently stated that opposition to the nuke dump had dropped of since the passing of Corbin Harney. The nuclear reps are confident to the point of acting like it’s a done deal. WE KNOW THAT’S NOT TRUE! LETS PROVE THEM WRONG! TAKE ACTION & MAKE YOUR COMMENT NOW!! Continue Reading »

Continue Reading »

I’ve been meaning to write a post about New Orleans for weeks now. This month - in the midst of the bad news from Bali and congress - a new climate-provoked crisis, one in the works since just after Hurricane Katrina has hit New Orleans hard. It’s been called “Hurricane H.U.D.” [HUD is the government office of Housing and Urban Development].

What’s at stake is the bulldozing of 5000 homes, or what politicians and reporters euphemistically call “units”, of public housing. These units, some moderately damaged, some unimpacted by Katrina, have been neglected for decades, but nonetheless were homes for some of New Orleans neediest and most disenfranchised people before the storm. Since the storm, rent prices are up by 50% and the homeless population is far larger than pre-storm levels. After nearly 2 and half years of all types of neglect and abuse toward survivors of a global warming related disaster, this has become a hugely symbolic battle against the ethnic cleansing of New Orleans.

And it has been the last straw for many of New Orleans’s most oppressed people.

While I’ve been following the housing struggle as its gone from grave to worse for two years, I reached a breaking point of despair these last 2 days when it got personal. At least 2 people I know in New Orleans, including one close friend, were TASERed by police while loudly, but peacefully, demanding entry into their city council meeting where the approval of the demolitions of these homes. Despite (police initiated) physical strife both inside and outside the chambers, the council approved the demolitions. Dozens more people, public housing residents and supporters alike, were pepper sprayed and beaten by police. 4 people, including my friend, were hospitalized. Continue Reading »

Evolutionary biology and practical conservation: bridging a widening gap

GEORGINA M. MACE, ANDY PURVIS (2008)
Molecular Ecology, Volume 17 Issue 1 Page 9-19, January 2008
doi:10.1111/j.1365-294X.2007.03455.x

Full article online at :
<http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1365-294X.2007.03455.x>

Correspondence: Georgina M. Mace, Fax: 01344
873173; E-mail: g.mace@imperial.ac.uk

Keywords: biodiversity goals, conservation planning, evolution, policy

“Habitat conversion continues in most parts of the world, especially in areas of high species richness, and novel threats, especially climate change, will pose new challenges.”

“Not all populations or species are equally likely to become extinct. Vulnerability to local extinction is commonly associated with low abundance, high habitat specificity, large body size and slow reproductive rates. In cases where both body size and life history have been studied, life history has been shown to be more important in carnivores (Cardillo et al. 2004; Purvis et al. 2000b) and, interestingly, in the extinction of large mammals in the late Quaternary (Johnson 2002). …. Top predators also appear to be especially threatened in mammals (Purvis et al. 2000a; Cardillo et al. 2004). ”

” Similarly, among the mammalian carnivores high threat rates are found in species that inhabit areas of high human population density (Cardillo et al. 2004). …. For example, large body size is often associated with present-day vulnerability, but is only patchily linked with extinction rates in the prehuman past (Purvis et al. 2003)”

“While the major drivers of biodiversity loss (overexploitation, habitat loss, introduced species, climate change and pollution) remain there is little likelihood that the trends will be slowed or reversed in the near future, and every likelihood that further losses will result, unless major changes in policy and practice are implemented (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005a).”

“Developing species recovery plans

“This is the most obvious point at which evolutionary processes could and should be prioritized (Ashley et al. 2003). Opportunities for continued evolution and adaptive change can be encouraged by relatively simple mechanisms. For example, ensuring adequate genetic diversity by maintaining connectedness of related populations, starting with high levels of genetic diversity, avoiding inbreeding, and preserving the species across the range of habitats in which it is found, as well as at significant boundaries such as ecotones. These simple mechanisms will increase the adaptive nature of the landscape, and the potential for evolutionary change in response to it.

“One obstacle is the potential for over-emphasizing the differences between population subunits and attempting to conserve as separate units any population subunit for which evidence of reproductive isolation or genetic distinctiveness can be found. With the increasing precision and rigour of molecular genetic tools it is rare, given sufficient time and effort, for some genetic distinctiveness not to be found, albeit a result of recent genetic drift or random founder effects and having little consequence for adaptive distinctiveness. While the incorporation of molecular methods into the assessment of conservation units (such as ESUs; Moritz 1995) provided welcome rigour and clarity, uncritical application of these methods can be detrimental to the broader goal of preserving adaptive diversity.”

Full article online at :
<http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1365-294X.2007.03455.x>

This article is cited by:

* THOMAS B. SMITH and LOUIS BERNATCHEZ.
(2008) Evolutionary change in human-altered environments. Molecular Ecology 17:1, 1-8

Blackwell Publishing Blackwell Synergy® is a Blackwell Publishing, Inc. registered trademark Partner of CrossRef, COUNTER, AGORA, HINARI and OARE

Technology Partner - Atypon Systems, Inc.
=========================================

MSNBC.com
3,000 walruses die in stampedes
Shortage of sea ice on Russian side of Arctic led to crowded conditions
The Associated Press
updated 10:11 a.m. MT, Fri., Dec. 14, 2007

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Several thousand Pacific walruses above the Arctic Circle were killed in stampedes earlier this year after the disappearance of sea ice caused them to crowd onto the shoreline in extraordinary numbers, deaths some scientists see as another alarming consequence of global warming.

The deaths took place during the late summer and fall on the Russian side of the Bering Strait, which separates Alaska from Russia.

“It was a pretty sobering year - tough on walruses,” said Joel Garlach-Miller, a walrus expert for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Continue Reading »

News release
University of Florida
Monday, December 17, 2007.
http://news.ufl.edu/2007/12/17/golbal-warming/

Ancient global warming changed earth from ‘icehouse to greenhouse’

GAINESVILLE, Fla. - Earth literally turned over a new leaf 15 million years ago when an earlier version of global warming changed large parts of the planet from lush forests to open grasslands, a new study by scientists at the University of Florida and other institutions shows.

In a portent of today’s global warming, fossilized leaves tell the story of a carbon dioxide induced warm-up at the end of the Miocene age that melted much of the polar icecaps and led to the spread of animals that thrive in the wide open spaces, such as horses, camels and other grazers, said David Dilcher, a UF paleobotanist and one of the study’s authors.

“Our findings clearly demonstrate that past climate changes were tied to carbon dioxide fluctuations in the atmosphere, which influenced the major vegetation patterns occurring on earth and in turn affected the evolution of major animal groups,” Dilcher said.

The work by Dilcher, Wolfram Kurschner, a paleobotanist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and Zlatko Kvacek, a paleobotanist at Charles University in the Czech Republic, appears in a paper published this week in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“The relevance for today is that the Antarctic ice sheets are reversing again,” said Dilcher, who works at the Florida Museum of Natural History. “As carbon dioxide and other gasses increase in the atmosphere, we’re emerging from a cooler or icehouse-type period into a greenhouse-type period with ice-free poles. The Earth is gradually going to undergo major changes just as we saw major changes in the upper Miocene Epoch.”

The Miocene Epoch is characterized by weather extremes, from the Earth plunging into its present “icehouse” state with glaciers at the north and south poles to periods of tropical temperatures.

While use of fossil fuels has been blamed for today’s global warming, the likely source of this ancient episode was carbon dioxide belched from widespread volcanic eruptions in the Columbia River Flood Basalt region of the United States and in Central Europe, Dilcher said.

The researchers were able to track the fluctuating levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by taking fossilized leaves and measuring the number of stoma or small pores, through which carbon dioxide is taken in and oxygen released during photosynthesis. The more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the fewer stomata there are on the undersides of leaves.

Using three different species of leaves from the Charles University collection, with most of the specimens collected from the brown-coal basins in the Czech Republic, the researchers found a correlation between the number of stoma in the leaves and carbon dioxide levels in the air with climate patterns over time. The carbon dioxide fluctuations coincided with temperature changes recorded in the ocean record - as measured by isotope concentrations in the shells of marine organisms - which, in turn, corresponded with drastic changes in plant and animal life, Dilcher said.

“It was at the very end of the Miocene Age that modern vegetation emerges in the world, and we find that atmospheric carbon dioxide was the forcing factor,” he said.

Fluctuating levels of carbon dioxide combined with reduced available moisture, in the rain shadow of the rising Rocky Mountains, pressured the forest vegetation and photosynthesis of some plants to be altered. As a result, the closed forests of palm and bamboo trees that had dominated interior North America gave way first to savannas and open woodlands and later to grasslands, which also sprouted up across the ocean around the eastern Mediterranean, Dilcher said. These changes occurred gradually, over a few thousand to millions of years, he said.

The Great Plains began to form, leading to a diverse mix of large hoofed herbivores such as extinct species of horses, camels, rhinoceroses and elephants that fed on the lush grasses, he said.

“Preliminary data suggest that this pattern of elevated ungulate diversity is a global phenomenon, and therefore a global driving force such as climate change is the most likely explanation,” he said.

While carbon dioxide levels fluctuated between 370 and 600 parts per million during the Miocene Epoch, today’s levels are at about 375 parts per million, Dilcher said.

“We are in a period of accelerated climate change that is quite unlike anything that we have seen in the fossil record,” he said. “When carbon dioxide levels go up to 400 and then on to 500 parts per million, we will be at the same point that we were in the Miocene age when the poles were ice-free.”

© University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611; (352) 392-3261.
=========================================

Telegraph (UK)       December 17, 2006

Italy’s woodlands dying due to climate change
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/12/17/eaitaly117.xml>
By Michael Day in Milan

Italy’s woodlands are already dying as climate change starts to bite in southern Europe, experts warn.

A report represented to the Italian government said that eight out of 10 trees across Italy’s varied ecosystems were already suffering from the effects of rising temperatures and diminishing rainfall.

Professor Carlo Blasi of the Inter-university Centre for Bio-diversity at Rome’s La Sapienza University said the research showed that a third of the country’s woodland was seriously threatened, and that 60 per cent was likely to suffer permanent damage.

The warning echoes fears that the Mediterranean, and Italy in particular, is proving highly vulnerable to climate change.

Climatologist Dr Filippo Giorgi of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told a major environment conference in Rome in September that the Mediterranean was warming up faster than the rest of the world.

“It’s a climate change hot spot, one of the areas where we actually see the change happening”.

Dr Giorgi said that in the next decades temperature rises in Europe during the summer months could be 40-50 per cent higher than elsewhere.

Of the six major droughts to occur in Italy in the last 60 years, four have occurred since 1990. The average temperature has increased by 0.4ºC in the north in 20 years and by 0.7ºC in the south. Earlier report have suggest that 10m hectares were “at risk of desertification”.

Prof Blasi noted that many of Italy’s tree species were ill-equipped to survive hotter, drier conditions.

“Despite its large Mediterranean coastline, Italy has a relatively low proportion - just 40 per cent - of the shrubby Mediterranean trees that are best adapted to resist the heat waves that are on their way,” he told La Repubblica newspaper.

“The other 60 per cent are particularly likely to suffer from increasingly hot and arid conditions.”

Most surprising, said Prof Blasi, was how widespread the threat was across Italy.

The regions of Tuscany, Umbria, Abruzzo, Puglia and also the islands of Sicily and Sardinia were being hard hit by rising temperatures, with several species of oak and beech tree in particular under threat.

Lack of rainfall was proving the biggest threat to woodland in the Alpine north of the country.

In Sicily and Sardinia, cork trees, the evergreen Holm-oak and even some compact Mediterranean tree species were threatened by the increasingly arid conditions.

In response to the report Environment minister Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio said: “Fewer woodlands mean, among other things, reduced capacity to absorb carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere.”

He said that to “break this vicious ciricle” his government had set aside £110m to tackle degradation of forests and woodlands.

Like other Southern European countries, Italy has also lost considerable areas of woodland to forest fires, which although fanned by hot winds, are often started deliberately.

Pecoraro Scanio lamented the failure of Italy’s fractious parliament to agree to fund a new body to investigate the cause of such blazes and “defend itself from the criminals that set fire to the forests”.

He predicted more woodland and forest would perish from such fires in the summers to come.

It is not not only Italy’s forests that are causing enviromentalists concern, however.

Scientists at Italy’s Agency for New technology, Energy and the Environment (ENEA), say that failing cold currents and rising water temperatures are exacerbating periodic flooding - and this is causing massive erosion along Italy’s Adriatic coast.

As a result they have drawn up a plan in which hundreds of miles of new sand dunes would be created to save it the country’s most endangered coastline and its wildlife from rising sea levels.

Dr Edi Valpreda, who led the project, told Telegraph Earth that it was currently being considered by the environment ministry.
=========================================

Science News Online
Week of Dec. 15, 2007; Vol. 172, No. 24

Prairie Revival ; Researchers Put Restoration to the Test
Leslie Allen

It took less than a century after John Deere unveiled his steel-bladed plow in 1837 for the North American prairie to all but disappear. For 20 million years, a nearly 1,000-mile-wide swath of unbroken grassland belted the continent’s midsection from northern Canada to Mexico. Now, only about 5 percent is left, mainly as mixed and shortgrass prairie in the Plains states. To the east, less than 1 percent of the original lush tallgrass remains, most of it as remnants in pioneer cemeteries and old railroad rights-of-way.

Plowed up, paved over, and little lamented, the vanishing prairie found few early champions. Among them were naturalists Aldo Leopold and John Curtis, who began using Civilian Conservation Corps enlistees in the 1930s to help restore more than 110 acres at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum. One of the earliest attempts at habitat restoration, the site today has hundreds of species of native plants, birds, and small mammals.

Now, prairie restoration is attracting widespread interest among environmental scientists, conservation groups, and even the U.S. government. The first federal grassland preserve, Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, opened 3 years ago on the grounds of the former Joliet Army Ammunition Plant near Chicago. Thousands of ordinary midwesterners are also rediscovering their long-spurned heritage, working to preserve or restore patches of prairie in fallow cornfields, quarter-acre backyard plots, and an expanding network of preserves. How-to Web sites instruct landowners in restoration techniques, and seed companies specializing in prairie species are thriving. Prairies now rank among the most popular ecosystems targeted for restoration anywhere, especially the tallgrass of the Midwest’s eastern third.

But researchers are left wondering how well the prairie renaissance is really succeeding and whether it’s actually possible to re-create a prairie. Until recently, little long-term monitoring had quantified the success rates of common restoration techniques, and few studies had compared even the most careful restorations with scarce remnant prairie habitat.

Broad-scale comparisons are complicated by the fact that restorations serve a range of different purposes. Beyond bringing back native plants, some restorations focus on conserving fresh water or creating habitat for birds. About 40 percent of North American bird species are native to prairie.

Because restoring prairies is both labor- and cost-intensive, some restorations are seeded with only a fraction of the plants that a remnant prairie holds. Seed mixes usually contain relatively few species and some of those species are difficult to grow from seed.

Measuring success

Real prairies are highly diverse. “In a remnant prairie, you can find 150 to 180 species of plants,” says Deborah Marr, a plant ecologist at Indiana University in Bloomington. In western Indiana, Marr and her colleagues have been comparing restored prairie with slices of the original in nature preserves and along railway rights-of-way. Across the board, the remnants have more native-plant species. Over a 4-year study period, plant diversity increased in the restored prairies, but the proportion of grasses and flowering broad-leaved plants diverged from that found in remnant prairies.

A study during the 1990s of sites around the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., where restoration efforts began in 1975, also found that species richness declined over time in restored sites, but not in remnants. The Fermi restorations had never achieved the biodiversity of remnants to begin with. High diversity, a Holy Grail to prairie ecologists, so far eludes their restorations, but no one is sure why.

“A remnant is very complex,” notes Marr. Blazing wildflowers and rippling bluestems only hint at the complexity below ground. “It takes a long time for soils to build up,” she adds. Unlike cropland, prairie soils are rich in fungi, which appear to be an essential component of high diversity. In August, at a conference in San Jose, Calif., Indiana University researcher Peggy Schultz reported on field trials that suggest that adding soil from prairie remnants, or at least inoculating restorations with the kind of fungi found in remnants, can allow hard-to-establish plants to take hold.

Seed selections

Obtaining the variety of seed needed to start a restoration can be an arduous, months-long task involving painstaking hand picking by squads of volunteers. As a result, many restorations rely on mail-order seeds that typically include grass cultivars or wildflowers from various sources. The grass cultivars were originally bred by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to hold topsoil in place. They are now planted on millions of acres as part of the USDA’s Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to plant erosion-taming native grasses on land removed from agriculture.

In the late 1990s, though, plant biologist Sara Baer, then a graduate student at Kansas State University in Manhattan, began noticing something unexpected while doing research at the 3,487-hectare Konza Prairie Biological Station in northeastern Kansas, part of the largest remnant tallgrass prairie in North America. The grass cultivars in her sites were germinating readily and growing fast and tall. In some situations, that would be desirable, but here, the robust grasses were crowding out slower-growing native flowering plants and disrupting the balance of species. Productivity was easy to restore in the prairie; diversity much less so.

At around the same time, plant ecologist David Gibson and his students at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC) began finding major genetic differences between cultivars and wild seeds. Their photosynthesis rates also differed. Furthermore, genetic differences existed between local and nonlocal wild seed.

Since then, some prairie enthusiasts, passionate about making restorations as faithful to the original undisturbed prairie as possible, have begun avoiding mail-order seed mixes, instead hand gathering wild seed only within 200 miles of their site. Gibson cautions that little research supports any particular approach.

With a 5-year grant from the National Science Foundation, Gibson and Baer (now also at SIUC) hope to tease out some guiding principles for restorations. At three sites in Kansas and Illinois, the scientists are planting wild seeds and cultivars of prairie grasses and wildflowers in multiple plots and in various proportions. “No one has ever put the same plant species, but from different seed sources, in a common environment before,” says Baer.

Cultivated seed will make up from 4 percent to 97 percent of each
plot’s mix. The idea, says Baer, is to see whether tinkering with
proportions can help establish and maintain a truly diverse prairie.

Burning questions

“Production of prairie seeds is a big business, and there are all these species that people can choose to put in,” Baer says. “Restorations are unique, in that by our decisions, we humans are an integral filter.”

Historically, bison grazing and fire were the two natural filters that shaped and maintained the prairie. Until they were nearly extirpated in the 19th century, along with the prairie itself, bison by the tens of millions ranged across North American grasslands, often in herds so big that observers compared them to roaring avalanches. Fires, set by lightning strikes and later by Native Americans, would attract bison and other herbivores, because the burned patches sprouted fresh green grasses that the animals prefer to graze on. At the same time, bison avoided the tender broad-leaved plants, or forbs. This kind of preferential grazing established a system of checks and balances, which kept grasses under control and allowed many plant species to flourish.

Researchers at Kansas’ Konza Prairie and elsewhere have begun to see how bison encourage habitat diversity by grazing very heavily on burned patches and avoiding other areas altogether. Heavily disturbed habitats, for example, attract some native birds. Other native birds prefer completely undisturbed habitats; and still others, such as prairie chickens, require a mix of habitats. The same holds true for insects and small mammals.

Over time, fire drove the bison’s behavior, which in turn shaped the prairie’s biodiversity. But fire by itself is not enough to restore diversity to the prairie, says ecologist Scott Collins of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Various studies by Collins and his colleagues have shown that frequent burning by itself can reduce biodiversity. Collins’ work at Konza shows that species diversity rises in areas that are grazed and infrequently burned, and falls in frequently burned, ungrazed areas. “Diversity is much higher at all levels in the grazed areas,” he says.

“If I had a prairie to restore,” says Collins, “my recommendation would be that some kind of grazing, or at least mowing, to eliminate the big, thick grass canopy and create more light, take place.” Studies by other researchers indicate that bison and other native herbivores like to eat many nonnative, exotic plants, which helps suppress the invasions that plague grasslands.

Deron Burkepile of Yale University, who studies native herbivores in North American and South African grasslands, says, “I think that grazing is essential for restoration. More and more people are starting to adapt that mind-set.”

Those findings are borne out by the sight of newly installed bison herds silhouetted against the sky at a growing number of prairie preserves. Still, little is known, even now, about eons-old grazing patterns and fire frequencies. If annual burning causes plant diversity to fall, then how often should controlled burns occur? Studies indicate that burning every 4 years probably isn’t frequent enough to keep out trees and woody shrubs.

Adapting to the future

Ironically, figuring out historical fire frequency at Konza may not be relevant today, says Collins. Human-driven environmental change imposes new conditions on prairies that could make restoration more challenging than ever. Already, encroachment by nonnative shrubs, bushes, and other woody plants is afflicting grasslands around the world, with or without controlled burning.

And the past itself is a moving target, points out Alan Knapp, a plant ecologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins who is also doing studies at Konza Prairie. “We have a romantic, snapshot view of the prairie when Europeans settled it,” he says. “But ecological systems are always dynamic, always changing.”

Prairies evolved under blazing summers, harsh winters, and extreme fluctuations of temperature and rainfall from year to year and within growing seasons. To adapt, prairie plants developed underground-storage structures and extensive root systems. Scientists have recently discovered that prairie species grow more variably from year to year, depending on rainfall variations, than do plants in any other North American biome. That variability makes remnant prairies, such as Konza, good natural laboratories for studying the likely effects of future climate change.

Most climate models predict extreme and variable rainfall patterns and future temperature increases. To study those hypothetical effects, scientists at Konza Prairie are manipulating rainfall and temperature under canopied shelters where native prairie grasses, such as big bluestem and Indian grass, grow. Altering the timing of rainfall from current norms can lead to significant declines in the plants’ productivity. “It’s surprising how rapid the changes have been,” says researcher Melinda Smith of Yale University.

In a new, related study at Konza Prairie, Smith is profiling the genetic activity of two grasses under simulated climate-change conditions. Some regulatory genes may become less active when the grasses are stressed by alterations in precipitation. Smith and colleagues hope to identify specific genetic changes linked to the plants’ responses to environmental changes. That should, in turn, reveal implications for large-scale ecosystem processes.

One early surprise is the large amount of genetic diversity that already exists within populations of native dominant species. “You can find 14 genotypes of big bluestem in 1 square meter,” says Smith. “Diversity within dominant species is often ignored.”

Tapping that genetic diversity may in time offer the best shot for keeping grasslands vibrant under future conditions that will be vastly different from those of today.

If you have a comment on this article that you would like considered for publication in Science News, send it to editors@sciencenews.org. Please include your name and location.

References:

Dolan, R.W., D.L. Marr, and A. Schnabel. In press. Capturing genetic variation during ecological restorations: An example from Kankakee Sands in Indiana. Restoration Ecology. Abstract available at
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1526-100X.2007.00318.x.

Klopf, R.P., and S.G. Baer. 2007. COS 36-2: Patterns of root production among native and cultivar populations of dominant warm-season grasses in a first-year tallgrass prairie restoration. ESA/SER Joint Meeting. San Jose, Calif. Aug. 5-10. Abstract available at
http://eco.confex.com/eco/2007/techprogram/P6156.HTM.

Further Readings:

Cunningham, A. 2006. Going native: diverse grassland plants edge out crops as biofuel. Science News 170(Dec. 9):372. Available at
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20061209/fob4.asp.

Gustafson, D.J., D.J. Gibson, and D.L. Nickrent. 2005. Using local seeds in prairie restoration. Native Plants (Spring):25. Available at
http://nativeplants.for.uidaho.edu/Content/
Articles/6-1NPJ25-28.pdf.

Knapp, A.K. . . . S. Collins, et al. 1999. The keystone role of bison in the North American tallgrass prairie. Bioscience 49(January):39-50.

Konza Prairie Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program and other research at the Konza Prairie Biological Station, can be found at
http://www.konza.ksu.edu.

Sluis, W.J. 2002. Patterns of species richness and composition in recreated grassland. Restoration Ecology 10(December):677-684.
Abstract available at
http://dx.doi.org/10.1046/j.1526-100X.2002.01048.x.

The Tallgrass Prairie:
http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/~kenr/tallgrass.html.

Sources:

Sara Baer
Department of Plant Biology
Mail Code 6509
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, IL 62901-6509

Deron Burkepile
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Yale University
165 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT 06520

Scott L. Collins
Department of Biology
Casteter Hall
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131

David Gibson
Department of Plant Biology
Mail Code 6509
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, IL 62901-6509

Alan K. Knapp
Department of Biology
Colorado State University
Ft. Collins, CO 80523

Deborah Marr
1700 Mishawaka Avenue
Indiana University, South Bend
South Bend, IN 46634

Peggy A. Schultz
Department of Biology
Indiana University
Jordan Hall
1001 East Third Street
Bloomington, IN 47405-7000

William J. Sluis
Department of Biology
Tri-State University
1 University Avenue
Angola, IN 46703

Melinda D. Smith
Yale University
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
P.O. Box 208106
New Haven, CT 06520-8106

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20071215/bob8.asp

From Science News, Vol. 172, No. 24, Dec. 15, 2007, p. 376.
Copyright (c) 2007 Science Service. All rights reserved.
=========================================

———————————————————————————
” …  the voracious power of today’s global economy, which has created a situation in which the world is not just getting hot, it’s getting raped.”
—————————————————————————————-

NEW YORK TIMES
It’s Too Late for Later
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: December 16, 2007

Bali, Indonesia - The negotiators at the United Nations climate conference here in Bali came from almost 200 countries and spoke almost as many languages, but driving them all to find a better way to address climate change was one widely shared, if unspoken, sentiment: that “later” is over for our generation.

“Later” was a luxury for previous generations and civilizations. It meant that you could paint the same landscape, see the same animals, eat the same fruit, climb the same trees, fish the same rivers, enjoy the same weather or rescue the same endangered species that you did when you were a kid - but just do it later, whenever you got around to it.

If there is one change in global consciousness that seems to have settled in over just the past couple of years, it is the notion that later is over. Later is no longer when you get to do all those same things - just on your time schedule. Later is now when they’re gone - when you won’t get to do any of them ever again, unless there is some radical collective action to mitigate climate change, and maybe even if there is.

Continue Reading »

Kenneth J. Feeley, S. Joseph Wright, M. N. Nur Supardi, Abd Rahman Kassim and Stuart J. Davies. Decelerating growth in tropical forest trees. Ecology Letters (2007) 10: 461-469

Abstract
The impacts of global change on tropical forests remain poorly understood. We examined changes in tree growth rates over the past two decades for all species occurring in large (50-ha) forest dynamics plots in Panama and Malaysia. Stem growth rates declined significantly at both forests regardless of initial size or organizational level (species, community or stand). Decreasing growth rates were widespread, occurring in 24-71% of species at Barro Colorado Island, Panama (BCI) and in 58-95% of species at Pasoh, Malaysia (depending on the sizes of stems included). Changes in growth were not consistently associated with initial growth rate, adult stature, or wood density. Changes in growth were significantly associated with regional climate changes: at both sites growth was negatively correlated with annual mean daily minimum temperatures, and at BCI  growth was positively correlated with annual precipitation and number of rainfree days (a measure of relative insolation). While the underlying cause(s) of decelerating growth is still unresolved, these patterns strongly contradict the hypothesized pantropical increase  in tree growth rates caused by carbon fertilization. Decelerating tree growth will have important economic and environmental implications.
=========================================

Science News

Top 11 Warmest Years On Record Have All Been In Last 13 Years

ScienceDaily (Dec. 13, 2007) - The decade of 1998-2007 is the warmest on record, according to data sources obtained by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The global mean surface temperature for 2007 is currently estimated at 0.41°C/0.74°F above the 1961-1990 annual average of 14.00°C/57.20°F.

The University of East Anglia and the Met Office’s Hadley Centre have released preliminary global temperature figures for 2007, which show the top 11 warmest years all occurring in the last 13 years. The provisional global figure for 2007 using data from January to November, currently places the year as the seventh warmest on records dating back to 1850.

Other remarkable global climatic events recorded so far in 2007 include record-low Arctic sea ice extent, which led to first recorded opening of the Canadian Northwest Passage; the relatively small Antarctic Ozone Hole; development of La Niña in the central and eastern Equatorial Pacific; and devastating floods, drought and storms in many places around the world.

Continue Reading »

Carnegie Institution
Public release date: 14-Dec-2007

Coral reefs unlikely to survive in acid oceans

Stanford, CA - Carbon emissions from human activities are not just heating up the globe, they are changing the ocean’s chemistry. This could soon be fatal to coral reefs, which are havens for marine biodiversity and underpin the economies of many coastal communities. Scientists from the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology have calculated that if current carbon dioxide emission trends continue, by mid-century 98% of present-day reef habitats will be bathed in water too acidic for reef growth. Among the first victims will be Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest organic structure.

Chemical oceanographers Ken Caldeira and Long Cao are presenting their results in a multi-author paper in the December 14 issue of Science* and at the annual meeting of American Geophysical Union in San Francisco on the same date. The work is based on computer simulations of ocean chemistry under levels of atmospheric CO2 ranging from 280 parts per million (pre-industrial levels) to 5000 ppm. Present levels are 380 ppm and rapidly rising due to accelerating emissions from human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels.

Continue Reading »

—————————- Original Message —————————-
Subject: FW: [FOL] : Action Alert!!  Lubicon Cree
From:    “wsdp” <wsdp@igc.org>
Date:    Fri, December 14, 2007 10:30 am
To:      wsdp@igc.org
————————————————————————–

FYI.

—–Original Message—–
From: fol-bounces@masses.tao.ca [mailto:fol-bounces@masses.tao.ca] On Behalf

ACTION ALERT!

Phone or email TransCanada and tell them no pipeline without Lubicon agreement!

This is an easy five minute action that can make a big difference-not only to the Lubicon Cree but for the rest of the planet as well.

STEPS FOR THE ACTION:

By Phone:

1. Starting today, phone TransCanada Pipelines  — toll free
1.800.661.3805 (or in Calgary at 403-920-2000)

2. Let them know:
1. you are a concerned citizen
2. tell the company you strongly oppose any pipeline through Lubicon territory without Lubicon agreement,
3. that the company must obtain that agreement before approaching the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board.

A sample script is below but always remember that a similar message in your own words has a much stronger impact.

Hi, my name is _____ and I am calling to express my strong opposition to TransCanada Pipelines announced plans to seek Alberta Energy and Utilities Board (or AEUB) approval to build the North Central Corridor pipeline. This pipelines runs through the middle of unceded Lubicon territory and your company does not have Lubicon agreement to use their land in this way. I demand that you seek this agreement before going any further. Thank you.

By Email:

Compose your own message or simply copy and paste the above message (but write your name on the blank and change ‘calling’ to ‘writing’ of course) into your own email browser and send to the CEO of TransCanada, Harold Kvisle, c/o his “Associate” Janna Laberge at:

janna_laberge@transcanada.com

If you like you can also cc a copy to Stelmach at:

fortsaskatchewan.vegreville@assembly.ca

and the Alberta EUB at:

bill.tilleman@eub.ca

Thanks!!

Friends of the Lubicon Alberta

Jacob O. Sewall and Lisa Cirbus Sloan. “Disappearing Arctic sea ice reduces available water in the American west.”  GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH
LETTERS, VOL. 31, 2004

In the climate science community, long-distance connections like the one described by Sewall and Sloan,  above,  are called “teleconnections” and there’s plenty of need for more wake-up calls about them. So remember the Sewall and Sloan article when reading the University of Washington news release below.
Lance

University of Washington       Public release date: 12-Dec-2007

Contact: Sandra Hines
shines@u.washington.edu
206-543-1580

Without its insulating ice cap,  Arctic surface waters warm to as much as 5 C above average

Record-breaking amounts of ice-free water have deprived the Arctic of more of its natural “sunscreen” than ever in recent summers. The effect is so pronounced that sea surface temperatures rose to 5 C above average in one place this year, a high never before observed, says the oceanographer who has compiled the first-ever look at average sea surface temperatures for the region.

Such superwarming of surface waters can affect how thick ice grows back in the winter, as well as its ability to withstand melting the next summer, according to Michael Steele, an oceanographer with the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory. Indeed, since September, the end of summer in the Arctic, winter freeze-up in some areas is two months later than usual.

The extra ocean warming also might be contributing to some changes on land, such as previously unseen plant growth in the coastal Arctic tundra, if heat coming off the ocean during freeze-up is making its way over land, says Steele, who is speaking Wednesday at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

He is lead author of “Arctic Ocean surface warming trends over the past 100 years,” accepted for publication in AGU’s Geophysical Research Letters. Co-authors are physicist Wendy Ermold and research scientist Jinlun Zhang, both of the UW Applied Physics Laboratory. The work is funded by the National Science Foundation.

“Warming is particularly pronounced since 1995, and especially since 2000,” the authors write. The spot where waters were 5 C above average was in the region just north of the Chakchi Sea. The historical average temperature there is -1 C - remember that the salt in ocean water keeps it liquid at temperatures that would cause fresh water to freeze. This year water in that area warmed to 4 C, for a 5-degree change from the average.

That general area, the part of the ocean north of Alaska and Eastern Siberia that includes the Bering Strait and Chukchi Sea, experienced the greatest summer warming. Temperatures for that region were generally 3.5 C warmer than historical averages and 1.5 C warmer than the historical maximum.

Such widespread warming in those areas and elsewhere in the Arctic is probably the result of having increasing amounts of open water in the summer that readily absorb the sun’s rays, Steele says. Hard, white ice, on the other hand, can work as a kind of sunscreen for the waters below, reflecting rather than absorbing sunlight. The warming also may be partly caused by increasing amounts of warmer water coming from the Pacific Ocean, something scientists have noted in recent years.

The Arctic was primed for more open water since the early 1990s as the sea-ice cover has thinned, due to a warming atmosphere and more frequent strong winds sweeping ice out of the Arctic Ocean via Fram Strait into the Atlantic Ocean where the ice melts. The wind effect was particularly strong in the summer of 2007.

Now the situation could be self-perpetuating, Steele says. For example, he calculates that having more heat in surface waters in recent years means 23 to 30 inches less ice will grow in the winter than formed in 1965. Since sea ice typically grows about 80 inches in a winter, that is a significant fraction of ice that’s going missing, he says.

Then too, higher sea surface temperatures can delay the start of freeze-up because the extra heat must be discharged from the upper ocean before ice can form. “The effect on net winter growth would probably be negligible for a delay of several weeks, but could be substantial for delays of several months,” the authors write.

=================================================

Jacob O. Sewall and Lisa Cirbus Sloan. “Disappearing Arctic sea ice reduces available water in the American west.”  GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH
LETTERS, VOL. 31, 2004

In the climate science community, long-distance connections like the one described by Sewall and Sloan,  above,  are called “teleconnections” and there’s plenty of need for more wake-up calls about them. So remember the Sewall and Sloan article when reading the University of Washington news release below.
Lance

University of Washington       Public release date: 12-Dec-2007

Contact: Sandra Hines
shines@u.washington.edu
206-543-1580

Without its insulating ice cap,  Arctic surface waters warm to as much as 5 C above average

Record-breaking amounts of ice-free water have deprived the Arctic of more of its natural “sunscreen” than ever in recent summers. The effect is so pronounced that sea surface temperatures rose to 5 C above average in one place this year, a high never before observed, says the oceanographer who has compiled the first-ever look at average sea surface temperatures for the region.

Such superwarming of surface waters can affect how thick ice grows back in the winter, as well as its ability to withstand melting the next summer, according to Michael Steele, an oceanographer with the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory. Indeed, since September, the end of summer in the Arctic, winter freeze-up in some areas is two months later than usual.

The extra ocean warming also might be contributing to some changes on land, such as previously unseen plant growth in the coastal Arctic tundra, if heat coming off the ocean during freeze-up is making its way over land, says Steele, who is speaking Wednesday at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

He is lead author of “Arctic Ocean surface warming trends over the past 100 years,” accepted for publication in AGU’s Geophysical Research Letters. Co-authors are physicist Wendy Ermold and research scientist Jinlun Zhang, both of the UW Applied Physics Laboratory. The work is funded by the National Science Foundation.

“Warming is particularly pronounced since 1995, and especially since 2000,” the authors write. The spot where waters were 5 C above average was in the region just north of the Chakchi Sea. The historical average temperature there is -1 C - remember that the salt in ocean water keeps it liquid at temperatures that would cause fresh water to freeze. This year water in that area warmed to 4 C, for a 5-degree change from the average.

That general area, the part of the ocean north of Alaska and Eastern Siberia that includes the Bering Strait and Chukchi Sea, experienced the greatest summer warming. Temperatures for that region were generally 3.5 C warmer than historical averages and 1.5 C warmer than the historical maximum.

Such widespread warming in those areas and elsewhere in the Arctic is probably the result of having increasing amounts of open water in the summer that readily absorb the sun’s rays, Steele says. Hard, white ice, on the other hand, can work as a kind of sunscreen for the waters below, reflecting rather than absorbing sunlight. The warming also may be partly caused by increasing amounts of warmer water coming from the Pacific Ocean, something scientists have noted in recent years.

The Arctic was primed for more open water since the early 1990s as the sea-ice cover has thinned, due to a warming atmosphere and more frequent strong winds sweeping ice out of the Arctic Ocean via Fram Strait into the Atlantic Ocean where the ice melts. The wind effect was particularly strong in the summer of 2007.

Now the situation could be self-perpetuating, Steele says. For example, he calculates that having more heat in surface waters in recent years means 23 to 30 inches less ice will grow in the winter than formed in 1965. Since sea ice typically grows about 80 inches in a winter, that is a significant fraction of ice that’s going missing, he says.

Then too, higher sea surface temperatures can delay the start of freeze-up because the extra heat must be discharged from the upper ocean before ice can form. “The effect on net winter growth would probably be negligible for a delay of several weeks, but could be substantial for delays of several months,” the authors write.

=================================================

Continue Reading »

Continue Reading »

Alter-Eco is published by a group of non-governmental organizations, indigenous people’s organizations and social movements at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change COP-13. The groups came together to make a unified call in support of real solutions to climate change and against the false market-based solutions to climate change that are being implemented under the Kyoto Protocol.

Alter-Eco is an instrument to project the collective voices of groups reflecting the views and concerns of grassroots constituencies and impacted communities all over the world.

Contributing organizations include: Global Justice Ecology Project, Global Forest Coalition, Carbon Trade Watch/ Transnational Institute, CORE (Center for Organizational Research and Education), PIPEC, The Corner House, SEEN (Sustainably Energy and Economy Network), BiofuelWatch, World Rainforest Movement.

Check it out at www.altereconews.org