Earth | Ecology Global Network

Stanford Scientists Document Fragile Land-Sea Ecological Chain

Guest — Thu, 24 May 2012 17:02:47 +0000

By Rob Jordan

The researchers found a link between replacing native trees with non-native palms and the health of the manta ray population off Palmyra Atoll in the Pacific. Photo: Gareth Williams / Courtesy of Stanford University

Intricate, often invisible chains of life are threatened with extinction around the world. A new study quantifies one of the longest such chains ever documented.

Douglas McCauley and Paul DeSalles did not set out to discover one of the longest ecological interaction chains ever documented. But that’s exactly what they and a team of researchers – all current or former Stanford students and faculty – did in a new study published in Scientific Reports.

Their findings shed light on how human disturbance of the natural world may lead to widespread, yet largely invisible, disruptions of ecological interaction chains. This, in turn, highlights the need to build non-traditional alliances – among marine biologists and foresters, for example – to address whole ecosystems across political boundaries.

Swimming With the Rays

This past fall, McCauley, a graduate student, and DeSalles, an undergraduate, were in remote Palmyra Atoll in the Pacific tracking manta rays’ movements for a predator-prey interaction study. Swimming with the rays and charting their movements with acoustic tags, McCauley and DeSalles noticed the graceful creatures kept returning to certain islands’ coastlines. Meanwhile, graduate student Hillary Young was studying palm tree proliferation’s effects on bird communities and native habitats.

Aerial shot of Palmyra Atoll, one of the most remote and least-disturbed places on Earth.

Palmyra is a unique spot on Earth where scientists can compare largely intact ecosystems within shouting distance of recently disturbed habitats. A riot of life – huge grey reef sharks, rays, snapper and barracuda – plies the clear waters while seabirds flock from thousands of miles away to roost in the verdant forests of this tropical idyll.

Over meals and sunset chats at the small research station, McCauley, DeSalles, Young and other scientists discussed their work and traded theories about their observations. “As the frequencies of these different conversations mixed together, the picture of what was actually happening out there took form in front of us,” McCauley said.

The Ecological Chain

Through analysis of nitrogen isotopes, animal tracking and field surveys, the researchers showed that replacing native trees with non-native palms led to about five times fewer roosting seabirds (they seemed to dislike palms’ simple and easily wind-swayed canopies), which led to fewer bird droppings to fertilize the soil below, fewer nutrients washing into surrounding waters, smaller and fewer plankton in the water and fewer hungry manta rays cruising the coastline.

“This is an incredible cascade,” said researcher Rodolfo Dirzo, a professor of environmental science and senior fellow with the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. “As an ecologist, I am worried about the extinction of ecological processes. This dramatically illustrates the significance of such extinctions.”

Equally important is what the study suggests about these cascades going largely unseen. “Such connections do not leave any trace behind,” said researcher Fiorenza Micheli, an associate professor of biology affiliated with the Stanford Woods Institute. “Their loss largely goes unnoticed, limiting our understanding of and ability to protect natural ecosystems.” McCauley put it another way: “What we are doing in some ecosystems is akin to popping the hood on a car and disconnecting a few wires and rerouting a few hoses. All the parts are still there – the engine looks largely the same – but it’s anyone’s guess as to how or if the car will run.”

By way of comparison, researcher Robert Dunbar, a professor of earth sciences and Stanford Woods Institute senior fellow, recalled the historical chain effects of increasing demands on water from Central California’s rivers. When salmon runs in these rivers slowed from millions of fish each year to a trickle, natural and agricultural land systems lost an important source of marine-derived fertilizer. These lost subsidies from the sea are now replaced by millions of dollars’ worth of artificial fertilizer applications. “Humans can really snip one of these chains in half,” Dunbar said.

Rob Jordan is the communications writer for the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

Successful Launch of SpaceX’s Dragon Cargo Capsule Ushers In a New Era in Comercial Spaceflight

Bob Petz — Tue, 22 May 2012 14:45:03 +0000

The first commercial supply mission to the International Space Station lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 3:34 EDT this morning in what appeared to be a picture-perfect launch through a one-second launch window.

This mission is a demonstration flight by the private company Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, as part of NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program to develop private-sector launch capabilities after the retirement of NASA’s space shuttle fleet.

Shortly after launch atop a Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX’s Dragon cargo capsule entered Earth orbit and successfully deployed its power-producing solar array. Between now and Friday, the capsule will undergo checkout procedures to test its various systems. On Thursday it will fly to within 1.5 miles of the ISS, in preparation for a rendezvous on Friday.

If all goes according to plan, the Expedition 31 crew on board the station will use the orbiting complex’s robotic arm to capture Dragon and dock it on the bottom side of the Harmony node.

The Dragon features an unpressurized trunk and a recoverable capsule, protected during launch by a nose cone. Within the capsule is a pressurized section for cargo and, eventually, crew. On this flight, Dragon is packed with food and provisions for the residents aboard the ISS, student experiments, and other cargo destined for the outpost.

Dragon is expected to return to Earth loaded with more than a thousand pounds of science experiments, station hardware and crew items.

The 157-foot-tall Falcon 9 rocket is a two-stage, liquid-fuel design, whose first stage is powered by 9 Merlin engines. A high-pressure reading in one of those engines was responsible for the aborted launch on Saturday a half-second before liftoff. Over the weekend, a faulty check valve was discovered and replaced.

Parallel to NASA’s COTS program is the Commercial Crew Program, intended to spur development of new spacecraft and launch vehicles from the commercial sector able to safely, reliably and cost-effectively transport astronauts to low Earth orbit and the space station.

Aurora

Guest — Sat, 19 May 2012 02:28:36 +0000

AURORA is a natural light display in the sky, particularly in the polar regions, caused by the collision of charged particles directed by the Earth’s magnetic field.

This film, produced by Flat Light Films for Visit Finland, the official travel site of Finland, is an amazing selection of northern lights filmed during the winter 2011 in several locations in the Finnish Lapland.

It was filmed with DSLR cameras with timelapse technique using remote pan/tilt heads.

NASA Explores – Video

Guest — Tue, 01 May 2012 05:16:06 +0000

From its earliest days of sounding rockets and balloon-borne instruments, to Apollo and Hubble and missions to Mars, NASA explores. This mission of exploration has also always focused on our own corner of the universe, Earth – The Home Frontier. It still holds a world of knowledge we’ve yet to understand that is critical to our future on this big, blue beautiful world. It is still the only planet we’ve ever been to.

Earth Day 2012 Reading List

Susan Colby — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 05:00:51 +0000

Earth Days

In the days leading up to Earth Day 2012, the Ecology Global Network focuses on the positive, and takes this opportunity to honor the beauty and grandeur of this planet we call home.

Started in 1970 by Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, the Earth Day movement was set into motion during the turmoil and demonstrations against the Vietnam War. On that historic day, according to earthday.org, more than 20 million Americans took to the streets around the country, demanding government action to clean up the environment. This led to the establishment of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts.

Today, as huge progress is being made toward Earth-care consciousness, an ongoing world-wide effort is required, with full participation from all 7+ billion of us.

EGN has gathered together some wonderful stories, videos and images for you to enjoy this Earth Day. They serve to remind us all of how magnificent Planet Earth is and how amazing her people are.

Mobilize the Earth™ on Earth Day 2012

Earth Day Network’s goal of A Billion Acts of Green® pledged before the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, the so called Rio+20 Earth Summit this June is closing in on the finish line with more than 890,000,000 environmental actions already pledged. Individuals, governments, faith-based and civic organization and businesses around the world have registered.

Flashback to Earth Day 1970

These flashback videos of the first Earth Day, with Walter Cronkite on CBS News, provide context for what is happening in the world today. In this broadcast 42 years ago, Cronkite admonished, “Act now or die,” a refrain that continues to this day.

South African Conservancies: Grassroots Conservation

For many, Earth Day is every day. These are the people who make things happen, the movers and shakers in their communities, as it seems these days, that if anything is to be done to protect and conserve our environment, it is being done on a local level. What the earth is experiencing is a real international grassroots effort that often slips below the radar.

Earth Day Videos for Kids

Children are never too young to learn how important it is to protect the Earth. They, and you will enjoy this selection of Earth Day songs to sing along with, while learning from the important environmental messages.

Abstract Earth

Lest we forget, our Planet Earth is a magnificent place. In these technological times, we are privileged to have access to works of natural art that NASA has made available to us all. In celebration of Earth Day, Ecology Global Network has assembled an astonishing selection of images taken from satellites and from the International Space Station.

Polynesian Voyagers Summon Ancestral Wisdom to Heal the Oceans

“We are one family, regardless of race, religion, wealth or social status. The sooner individuals acknowledge this and start working together, the sooner people can start saving the Earth,” said Duncan Morrison, Pacific Voyagers spokesperson and captain of the vessel Haunui.

World’s Largest Transboundary Conservation Area Becomes Reality

Five nations that form the central heart of the African continent, recently signed the final documents to create an enormous conservation zone. Altogether, the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA) or KAZA Peace Park, will include 36 game reserves, numerous national parks, forest reserves, conservancies, game and wildlife management areas and communal lands.

Perpetual Ocean

Watch surface currents circulate in this 3D model of the Earth’s oceans, courtesy of NASA. Driven by wind and other forces, currents on the ocean surface cover our planet. Some span thousands of miles across vast ocean basins in well-defined flows. Others are confined to particular regions and form slow-moving, circular pools. Seen from space, the circulating waters offer a study in both chaos and order.

Marine Conservation in Tanzania

Tanzania has several unique marine conservation areas: Internationally-funded Sea Sense, privately and self-financing Chumbe Island Coral Park and eco-lodge (CHICOP), and the locally set up Youth Vision of Kigamboni (YVK) are active in this area. All three list preservation and education as their key objectives and the best means to protect the marine life.

Big City Conservation: New York City’s Hidden Biodiversity

New York is one of the greenest metropolises in the U.S. It boasts the highest levels of public transportation use, and its citizens consume less than half the energy of the national per capita average. Compared to San Francisco, where plastic bags are illegal, New York out-ranks the ecologically conscious California city, contributing almost 30 percent less per capita in annual greenhouse gas emissions.

The Good News: Why Climate Change Doesn’t Matter

There is increasing awareness that we don’t need to believe in climate change to do the right thing when it comes to energy. Of course, climate change is a real threat to us and our environment. But there are many highly valid reasons to become more energy efficient, conserve energy through behavior change, and transition to renewables – entirely independent of climate change concerns.

Videos

Getting to Know the Goldilocks Planet – NASA Videos

Guest — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 04:25:35 +0000

NASA‘s Kepler spacecraft is discovering a veritable avalanche of alien worlds. As the numbers mount, it seems to be just a matter of time before Kepler finds what astronomers are really looking for: an Earth-like planet orbiting its star in the ‘Goldilocks zone’.

NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered the first Earth-size planets orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system. The planets, Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, are too close to their star to be in the so-called habitable zone where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface, but they are the smallest exoplanets ever confirmed around a star like our sun.
Read more: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

Video credit: NASA/Ames
Animation credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Coral Reefs at Risk Around the World – Videos

Susan Colby — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 07:24:04 +0000

World Resources Institute’s Reefs at Risk project and Google Earth bring to life the six tropical reef areas of the world, highlighting the risks of over-fishing, coastal development and manmade pollution.

The Reefs at Risk project raises awareness of threats to coral reefs and provides information and tools to manage coastal habitats more effectively.

Take a swim on the coral reefs with the fish and see for yourself.

Introduction

Caribbean

Middle East

Indian Ocean

South East Asia

Australia

Pacific

Conclusion

Knock-on Effects of Coral Reef Fishing

Guest — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 10:02:02 +0000

Overfishing Threatens Reefs

Photo courtesy Christopher Bartlett

A study of the tropical coral reef system along the coastline of Kenya has found dramatic effects of overfishing that could threaten the long-term health of the reefs. Led by scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, the study was published in the journal Coral Reefs (online publication January 28, 2012).

The researchers found that the loss of predatory fish leads to a cascade of effects throughout the reef ecosystem, starting with an explosion in sea urchin populations. Excessive grazing by sea urchins damages the reef structure and reduces the extent of a poorly studied but crucially important component of the reefs; crustose coralline algae. Coralline algae deposit calcium carbonate in their cell walls and form a hard crust on the substrates where they grow, helping to build and stabilize reefs. They also play a crucial role in the life cycle of corals.

“Some coralline algae produce a chemical that induces coral settlement, in which the larval stage in the water settles on the ocean floor to grow into an adult. This settlement must happen for reefs to recover after disturbance,” said lead author Jennifer O’Leary, a research associate with the Institute of Marine Sciences at UC Santa Cruz.

The ability of coralline algae to induce the settlement of coral larvae has been well studied in the laboratory, but few studies have been done to investigate this relationship in the field. O’Leary set out to study the role of coralline algae in reef ecosystems as a UCSC graduate student working with Donald Potts, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

The Research Team

In Kenya, O’Leary teamed up with Tim McClanahan, a UCSC alumnus who now heads the Wildlife Conservation Society’s marine programs in Kenya. The researchers compared the types of coralline algae and the number of juvenile corals on Kenyan reefs under three different management conditions: closed, gear-restricted, and open access. On fished reefs (both those open to all fishing and those with gear restrictions), sea urchin populations were much higher than on closed reefs, resulting in lower abundance of crustose coralline algae and lower coral densities.

“Outside the protected areas, we’re seeing the ecosystem collapse,” O’Leary said. “When you look at the effects of fishing, you can’t just think about the species that are being removed. You have to look at how the effects are carried down through the ecosystem.”

Most of the young corals found in the surveys were growing on crustose coralline algae. Juveniles of four common coral families were more abundant on coralline algae than on any other settlement substrate. The results suggest that fishing can indirectly reduce coral recruitment or the success of juvenile corals by reducing the abundance of settlement-inducing coralline algae.

“The loss of crustose coralline algae has huge implications for the regeneration of coral reefs,” O’Leary said. “In our surveys, we found no difference between gear-restricted areas and fully fished areas, so gear restrictions are not working to keep urchin populations down. We need to consider ecosystem-wide effects as we develop new management strategies.”

Potts said he hopes the new study will raise awareness of the role that coralline algae play in the health of coral reefs, especially in developing countries. “Most managers and conservationists, and even many scientists, are unaware of the existence, abundance, and importance of coralline algae, so management regimes intended to enhance the health of reefs may actually be detrimental,” he said.

The co-authors of the paper include O’Leary, Potts, McClanahan, and Juan Carlos Braga of the University of Granada, Spain. Funding for this research was provided by UC Santa Cruz, Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation, ARCS Foundation, Project Aware, and Wildlife Conservation Society.

Source: University of California, Santa Cruz/ Tim Stephens
Photos courtesy Christopher Bartlett

Look Up at the Night Sky For a Change – video

Guest — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 10:37:32 +0000

TED Fellow Lucianne Walkowicz asks: How often do you see the true beauty of the night sky? At TEDxPhoenix, she shows how light pollution is ruining the extraordinary — and often ignored — experience of seeing directly into space.

Walkowicz explains the importance of preserving our dark night sky from the perils of light pollution and other lesser-known factors. In Lucianne’s eyes, “Our night sky is a natural resource, it’s like a park you can visit without ever having to travel there. But like any natural resource, if we don’t protect it, if we don’t preserve it and treasure it, it will slip away from us and be gone.”

With numerous citizen science projects online, such as planethunters.org, she encourages would-be astronomers to get involved and contribute to the results of the projects.

Walkowicz works on NASA’s Kepler mission, studying starspots and “the tempestuous tantrums of stellar flares.”

150 Mile Wardrobe – Video

Guest — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 09:57:13 +0000

In our throw away culture, it is refreshing to see a person, in this case, Northern California resident Rebecca Burgess, explore sustainability in a venue that is so often overlooked.

Clothing.

In this video, she describes how she clothed herself from garments made by a community of dedicated designers and artisans within a 150 mile radius of her home. Inspired by the 100-mile diet, Rebecca developed the Fibershed Project, or the 150 mile wardrobe project, alluding to the fact that like a watershed, all her raw materials – and artisans – are within a 150-mile area.

She doesn’t advocate going back to the hand loom, but simply highlights the availability of materials that more often than not, go to waste.

On her blog she states, “Now we have the ability through an information age that’s come. My goal is to use the best of modern technology and the best of self-sufficiency that we could learn from our ancestors. Combine self sufficiency with modern technology and that combo, like a solar-powered cotton mill on a farm. That mill is very advanced, yet at the same time, it’s very new and old. I love this new old thing.”