President Barack Obama spoke about the need to act on climate change, citing scientific evidence that the last 15 years have been the warmest on record and that rising carbon dioxide levels are disrupting the climate. He noted impacts such as more extreme weather events, rising sea levels contributing to destruction from storms like Hurricane Sandy, and worsening droughts and wildfires. Obama called the costs of these events enormous in terms of lives lost and economic impacts. The newsletter reported on other science and environmental stories, including progress in repairing spinal cord injuries, new maps highlighting global conservation priorities, research finding less mental decline in people reaching age 90 than a decade ago, a large iceberg breaking off an Antarctic glacier, and a study finding some
Our environment is constantly changing. There is no denying that. However, as our environment changes, so does the need to become increasingly aware of the problems that surround it. With a massive influx of natural disasters, warming and cooling periods, different types of weather patterns and much more, people need to be aware of what types of environmental problems our planet is facing.
Our environment is constantly changing. There is no denying that. However, as our environment changes, so does the need to become increasingly aware of the problems that surround it. With a massive influx of natural disasters, warming and cooling periods, different types of weather patterns and much more, people need to be aware of what types of environmental problems our planet is facing.
This was my centennial lecture at the 100th anniversary of the Ecological Society of America, given August 11th, in Baltimore, and focused on the role of Ecology and Natural History as a part of sustainability science in the Anthropocene. Please do contact me at tewksjj@gmail.com if you would like to use any unpublished data for commercial or non-commercial purposes, or if you want to find out more about the data and methods. Collaborators on this work not included in currently published papers include Alejandro Guizar at the Luc Hoffmann Institute and Tom Brooks at IUCN (for work on conservation reports), Ann Gabriel, Vice President, Academic & Research Relations at Elsevier (for the work using SCOPUS data).
Presentation to Sense of Place, Palo Alto, by Miriam Sachs Martín, as Chief Preserve Steward for Acterra. Keywords: ecology, habitat, riparian, oak woodland, species, invasive, biocultural diversity, Native Americans, stewardship.
Ecosystem services for biodiversity conservation and sustainable agricultureExternalEvents
The presentation by Dr. Abigael Otinga (University of Eldoret) outlines the concept of “ecosystem services” and particularly their relevance not only for biodiversity conservation but also for ensuring sustainable production of healthy and abundant crops. The presentation was given at a national training workshops for stakeholders involved in the revision of the Kenya NBSAP that was held at ICRAF in Nairobi, 25-26 May 2016. More information on the event are available at: www.fao.org/africa/news/detail-news/en/c/417489/ .
Ecosystem services are the benefits that people obtain from ecosystems. They are indispensable to the well-being of all living organisms, everywhere in the world. They include provisioning, regulating, and cultural services that directly affect people, and supporting services needed to maintain the other services (Anon., 2005). From the availability of adequate food and water, to disease regulation of vectors, pests, and pathogens, human well-being depends on these services and conditions from the natural environment. Ecosystem services depend on ecosystem conditions, and if these are impacted via pressures, consequently ecosystem services will be as well (Daily G, 1997). Human use of all ecosystem services is growing rapidly. Approximately 60% of the ecosystem services (including 70% of regulating and cultural services) are being degraded or used unsustainably. Certain changes place the sustained delivery of ecosystem services at risk. Human activity is impairing and destroying ecosystem services. Services by the ecosystem are facing some serious threats from urbanization, climate change and introduction of invasive species and pathogens which have come into existence through human activities (Anon., 1997). Ecosystem evaluation is a tool used in determining the impact of human activities on an environmental system, by assigning an economic value to an ecosystem or its ecosystem services. Ecosystem values are measures of how important ecosystem services are to people – what they are worth. Economists classify ecosystem values into several types. The two main categories are use values and non-use, or passive use values. Whereas use values are based on actual use of the environment, non-use values are values that are not associated with actual use, or even an option to use, an ecosystem or its services (Brookshire, et al.,1983). There are several methods of valuation of environmental assets, goods and amenities, services and functions like market price method, productivity method, hedonic pricing method, travel cost method and contingent valuation method.
Todd Witcher, Executive Director of Discover Life In America, spoke about the Smokies Biodiversity project at the 2009 East Tennessee Preservation Conference.
The environment provides humans with everything we need to survive. This presentation looks at the services ecosystems deliver humanity and the importance of conserving plant biomass and diversity in order to maintain those services
Environmental Science Merit Badge Boy Scouts by Joel Hebdon, Varsity Coach, P...Joel Hebdon, PG, MBA, PMP
Environmental Science Merit Badge Power Point. Please use freely but please "like" my presentation and send me an e-mail at joelhebdon@aol.com identifying yourself, the number of scouts viewing the presentations, and leaving feedback. A work in progress, please make comments and I'll try to update it to further improve it, make it more universally useful, and accessible to the most Scouts possible.
This is the 5th lesson of the course - Foundation of Environmental Management taught at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Rajarata University of Sri Lanka
This was my centennial lecture at the 100th anniversary of the Ecological Society of America, given August 11th, in Baltimore, and focused on the role of Ecology and Natural History as a part of sustainability science in the Anthropocene. Please do contact me at tewksjj@gmail.com if you would like to use any unpublished data for commercial or non-commercial purposes, or if you want to find out more about the data and methods. Collaborators on this work not included in currently published papers include Alejandro Guizar at the Luc Hoffmann Institute and Tom Brooks at IUCN (for work on conservation reports), Ann Gabriel, Vice President, Academic & Research Relations at Elsevier (for the work using SCOPUS data).
Presentation to Sense of Place, Palo Alto, by Miriam Sachs Martín, as Chief Preserve Steward for Acterra. Keywords: ecology, habitat, riparian, oak woodland, species, invasive, biocultural diversity, Native Americans, stewardship.
Ecosystem services for biodiversity conservation and sustainable agricultureExternalEvents
The presentation by Dr. Abigael Otinga (University of Eldoret) outlines the concept of “ecosystem services” and particularly their relevance not only for biodiversity conservation but also for ensuring sustainable production of healthy and abundant crops. The presentation was given at a national training workshops for stakeholders involved in the revision of the Kenya NBSAP that was held at ICRAF in Nairobi, 25-26 May 2016. More information on the event are available at: www.fao.org/africa/news/detail-news/en/c/417489/ .
Ecosystem services are the benefits that people obtain from ecosystems. They are indispensable to the well-being of all living organisms, everywhere in the world. They include provisioning, regulating, and cultural services that directly affect people, and supporting services needed to maintain the other services (Anon., 2005). From the availability of adequate food and water, to disease regulation of vectors, pests, and pathogens, human well-being depends on these services and conditions from the natural environment. Ecosystem services depend on ecosystem conditions, and if these are impacted via pressures, consequently ecosystem services will be as well (Daily G, 1997). Human use of all ecosystem services is growing rapidly. Approximately 60% of the ecosystem services (including 70% of regulating and cultural services) are being degraded or used unsustainably. Certain changes place the sustained delivery of ecosystem services at risk. Human activity is impairing and destroying ecosystem services. Services by the ecosystem are facing some serious threats from urbanization, climate change and introduction of invasive species and pathogens which have come into existence through human activities (Anon., 1997). Ecosystem evaluation is a tool used in determining the impact of human activities on an environmental system, by assigning an economic value to an ecosystem or its ecosystem services. Ecosystem values are measures of how important ecosystem services are to people – what they are worth. Economists classify ecosystem values into several types. The two main categories are use values and non-use, or passive use values. Whereas use values are based on actual use of the environment, non-use values are values that are not associated with actual use, or even an option to use, an ecosystem or its services (Brookshire, et al.,1983). There are several methods of valuation of environmental assets, goods and amenities, services and functions like market price method, productivity method, hedonic pricing method, travel cost method and contingent valuation method.
Todd Witcher, Executive Director of Discover Life In America, spoke about the Smokies Biodiversity project at the 2009 East Tennessee Preservation Conference.
The environment provides humans with everything we need to survive. This presentation looks at the services ecosystems deliver humanity and the importance of conserving plant biomass and diversity in order to maintain those services
Environmental Science Merit Badge Boy Scouts by Joel Hebdon, Varsity Coach, P...Joel Hebdon, PG, MBA, PMP
Environmental Science Merit Badge Power Point. Please use freely but please "like" my presentation and send me an e-mail at joelhebdon@aol.com identifying yourself, the number of scouts viewing the presentations, and leaving feedback. A work in progress, please make comments and I'll try to update it to further improve it, make it more universally useful, and accessible to the most Scouts possible.
This is the 5th lesson of the course - Foundation of Environmental Management taught at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Rajarata University of Sri Lanka
Please enjoy the latest issue of our weekly Newsletter. Disfruten la última edición de nuestro Boletin semanal. Desfrute da mais recente edição da nossa Newsletter semanal.
Global Warming DelusionsBy DANIEL B. BOTKINGlobal warming does.docxwhittemorelucilla
Global Warming Delusions
By DANIEL B. BOTKIN
Global warming doesn't matter except to the extent that it will affect life -- ours and that of all living things on Earth. And contrary to the latest news, the evidence that global warming will have serious effects on life is thin. Most evidence suggests the contrary.
Kilimanjaro's shrinking ice cap is not directly related to global warming.
Case in point: This year's United Nations report on climate change and other documents say that 20%-30% of plant and animal species will be threatened with extinction in this century due to global warming -- a truly terrifying thought. Yet, during the past 2.5 million years, a period that scientists now know experienced climatic changes as rapid and as warm as modern climatological models suggest will happen to us, almost none of the millions of species on Earth went extinct. The exceptions were about 20 species of large mammals (the famous megafauna of the last ice age -- saber-tooth tigers, hairy mammoths and the like), which went extinct about 10,000 to 5,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age, and many dominant trees and shrubs of northwestern Europe. But elsewhere, including North America, few plant species went extinct, and few mammals.
We're also warned that tropical diseases are going to spread, and that we can expect malaria and encephalitis epidemics. But scientific papers by Prof. Sarah Randolph of Oxford University show that temperature changes do not correlate well with changes in the distribution or frequency of these diseases; warming has not broadened their distribution and is highly unlikely to do so in the future, global warming or not.
The key point here is that living things respond to many factors in addition to temperature and rainfall. In most cases, however, climate-modeling-based forecasts look primarily at temperature alone, or temperature and precipitation only. You might ask, "Isn't this enough to forecast changes in the distribution of species?" Ask a mockingbird. The New York Times recently published an answer to a query about why mockingbirds were becoming common in Manhattan. The expert answer was: food -- an exotic plant species that mockingbirds like to eat had spread to New York City. It was this, not temperature or rainfall, the expert said, that caused the change in mockingbird geography.
You might think I must be one of those know-nothing naysayers who believes global warming is a liberal plot. On the contrary, I am a biologist and ecologist who has worked on global warming, and been concerned about its effects, since 1968. I've developed the computer model of forest growth that has been used widely to forecast possible effects of global warming on life -- I've used the model for that purpose myself, and to forecast likely effects on specific endangered species.
I'm not a naysayer. I'm a scientist who believes in the scientific method and in what facts tell us. I have worked for 40 years to try to improve our enviro ...
Observations by interested individuals help us better understand local impacts of climate change. Science researchers work with volunteers through citizen science projects to track changes in annual plant blooming, frog calling, bird ranges, and other natural phenomena. This version opens with an example from the Southwestern United States. A similar version is available highlighting the North East US .
Is homo sapiens a key species in an ecological system?Ernst Satvanyi
About the role of the species Homo Sapiens in environment. The postulate of human ecology can help us to better understand the connections between Homo Sapiens as a key species and its natural environment in order to ensure the sustainability of ecological systems.
The fast evolving global climate change movement - the official science, economics, politics and consciousness - is explained and analyzed. This is a skeptics view of the subject, not a denier's nor an alarmist's. The current role and powers of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is discussed in detail.
The Bionic City by Melissa Sterry. Published September 2011.Melissa Sterry
Introduction: 'In the course of her research, Melissa Sterry came to realise that "what humankind considers a force for destruction, nature considers a force for creation". Melissa is now developing The Bionic City: a model that transfers knowledge from complex natural ecosystems to a blueprint for a future city resilient to extreme meteorological and geological events.'
Published in the Sept/Oct 2011 issue of Sustain.
101416, 416 PMHumans Have Caused Global Warming for Longer .docxpaynetawnya
10/14/16, 4:16 PMHumans Have Caused Global Warming for Longer Than We Thought | TIME
Page 1 of 3http://time.com/4461719/global-warming-climate-change-humans/?iid=sr-link1
S C I E N C E C L I M AT E C H A N G E
Humans Have Caused Global
Warming for Longer Than We
Thought
Justin Worland @justinworland Aug. 24, 2016
Global warming isn't just a 20th and 21st
century phenomenon
People have been contributing to global
warming since the mid-nineteenth
century, decades before scientists
previously estimated, according to new
research published in the journal Nature.
The study questions the perception of
climate change as primarily a 20th
century phenomenon and provides new
evidence of how quickly the Earth’s
atmosphere responds to increased
levels of greenhouse gas emissions.
Even relatively low levels of
greenhouse gas emissions in the first
decades of the Industrial Revolution
contributed to a temperature
increase, according to the research.
“It was one of those moments where
science really surprised us,” says
study author Nerilie Abram of the
Australian National University. “But
the results were clear. The climate
warming we are witnessing today
started about 180 years ago.”
Dirk Meister—Getty Images
Arial view of German industrial area.
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10/14/16, 4:16 PMHumans Have Caused Global Warming for Longer Than We Thought | TIME
Page 2 of 3http://time.com/4461719/global-warming-climate-change-humans/?iid=sr-link1
RECOMMENDED FOR YOU
Read More: July Was the Single
Warmest Month Ever Recorded
Previous research has relied largely
on land temperature records from
the Northern Hemisphere to
evaluate warming trends. But that’s
not where early man-made global
warming struck first, according to
the new study. Researchers looked at
historic data derived from natural
sources like coral, tree rings and ice
to determine that the first
“sustained” and “significant”
temperature rise actually occurred in
tropical oceans and the Arctic during
the 1830s. That’s several decades
before most modern temperature
data sets began.
Researchers attribute the difference
in temperature rise between different
geographic locations across the globe
to a variety of climate factors
including ocean circulation. That, at
least in part, explains why
temperatures in the Arctic have been
rising much faster than anywhere
else on the globe—about 16°C (29°F)
this winter—while temperature rise
in Antartica has been relatively slow.
The work should encourage others
studying global warming to
incorporate earlier data into their
models and research to gain a better
understanding of how the world
warms, the scientists behind the
study say.
Read More: These Photos Show How Hard Climate Change Has Hit Greenland
Of course, th ...
Clearwater 2Cover LetterProfessor Snape,I changed a few th.docxclarebernice
Clearwater 2
Cover Letter
Professor Snape,
I changed a few things around but kept a lot the same. As per your suggestion, I tried to clarify my thesis statement more and put more details in about what we can do to change around the habitats. I put more in about the cost of moving species to different habitats but there isn’t a whole lot of information yet about benefits, besides the moved species not dying out, because it’s only been done a few times.
I added a little bit more about polar bears because one of my peers said that he’d like more information about that and why it’s the face of the struggle. I had made an assumption that my target audience of people who have a basic knowledge of global warming and endangered species would know about the polar bear but I clarified it a bit more. My audience was the curious academic audience of my peers.
Sincerely,
Penelope Clearwater
Penelope Clearwater
Professor Snape
ENG 111-23N
17 November 2014
How Climatic Changes are Affecting Endangered Species
When you think of climate change endangering animals, the first thing that comes to mind is polar bears as they have become the face of this struggle. There are, however, plenty of other species that are affected just as much. “The major problem with climate change is not so much that climate is changing, but that it is changing faster than species can move or adapt” (Rout). I plan to look at which species are impacted that are closest to home, what we can do to help and how much this would cost. Setting up a separate habitat for species that might not have a habitat for much longer would be a good idea but should be worked out more since it comes at a cost and might not work out ecologically either.
Around the world there are endangered species are on the critical list such as the previously mentioned polar bears, tigers in India, the Sumatran orangutan and Mexico’s Santa Catalina Island rattlesnake and a few have become officially extinct like the Yangtze River dolphin. Global warming melting the polar ice caps endangers any animal relying on ice such as the polar bear which many people think of when they think of global warming endangering a species. It’s easy to be upset about these but hard to relate to however there are quite a few species in Indiana that are endangered. Georgia Parham of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Midwest Region tells us of a bat in Indiana that is having problems. Myotis sodalis, otherwise known as the Indiana bat, is in trouble because “they were struck four years ago by a deadly disease known as white-nose syndrome” (Parham). Climate change can stress these already stressed animals to the point where they die out. “Surface temperature is directly related to cave temperature, so climate change will inevitably affect the suitability of hibernacula” (Parham). Indiana bats require a certain temperature when hibernating so if it gets too hot or cold then there will be a rapid decline in their numbers. Since they have su ...
Observations by interested individuals help us better understand local impacts of climate change. Science researchers work with volunteers through citizen science projects to track changes in annual plant blooming, frog calling, bird ranges, and other natural phenomena. This version opens with an example from the North East United States. A similar version is available highlighting the US Southwest.
Climate Scientist James Hansen's 1981 Predictions Came True. What abouot 2016Paul H. Carr
1. 1981 Climate Impact of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide. (Science)
2. 2016 Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise, and Superstorms… (Atmos. Phys. Chem)
3. Ocean acidification is threatening the bottom of our food chain.
4. Is green solar, wind, and nuclear technology advancing fast enough ?
Required Resources
https://www.cdc.gov/phlp/news/current.html
https://www.congress.gov/
https://www.congress.gov/legislative-process
Geobiology is the study of the interactions that occur between the biosphere and the geosphere. It must include elements of the atmosphere, the hydrosphere and the lithosphere. When I looked up geobiology a lot of the articles came up about climate change.
Geologists think of the last 50 million years as the recent past, both because they represents only about one percent of the age of the earth. As well as because plate tectonics, the geologic process that controls conditions within the solid part of the earth, has operated without major change during that time period. This is the time period that is most relevant to gaining insights about earth’s climate. Which can be applied to the present-day global warming. Geological record of ancient climate is good. Ancient temperatures can be determined very precisely, because the composition of the shells of corals and other marine organisms varies measurably with it. The plants and animals that lived during a given time and are now preserved as fossils indicate whether the climate was wet or dry. Overall climatic trend has been cooling, from an unusually warm period. This is called the Eocene Optimum. Before like 55-45 million years ago, there was a cool period, colloquially called the Ice Age. It ended just 20,000 years ago. The overall range in temperature was huge it was about 35°F. During the Eocene Optimum it was warm that Antarctica was ice-free. The ice caps did not start to form there until about 35 million years ago. Palm trees grew at high latitudes. As well cold-blooded animals, such as crocodiles, lived in the Arctic. The earth’s climate is highly variable. During the Eocene Optimum and the Ice Age, though in both cases life was more abundant in some parts of the world than in others. The fossil record indicates that forests were common during the Eocence Optimum. But in some areas were vegetated steppes and deserts. While the great glaciers of the Ice Age were lifeless, extremely large mammals inhabited lower latitudes. Some species adapted and others went extinct. Climate during the Ice Age was unstable. Many swings of more than 10°F. The Milankovitch cycles, which is a cycle due to the gravitational influence of the moon and planets. The timing of these swings closely follows regular fluctuations in the tilt of the earth’s axis and the shape of its orbit around the sun. The magnitude can be reliably calculated.
Another article stated that the a changing climate has been the norm throughout the 4.6 billion year history of the Earth. Recent geological past, climate swings have given us repeated glaciations separated by warmer intervals. Climate is intimately connected to the evolution of life, to the erosion and formation of rocks, and even to the generation of mountains. The connections is the transfer of carbon from one place is a process known as.
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role of women and girls in various terror groupssadiakorobi2
Women have three distinct types of involvement: direct involvement in terrorist acts; enabling of others to commit such acts; and facilitating the disengagement of others from violent or extremist groups.
In a May 9, 2024 paper, Juri Opitz from the University of Zurich, along with Shira Wein and Nathan Schneider form Georgetown University, discussed the importance of linguistic expertise in natural language processing (NLP) in an era dominated by large language models (LLMs).
The authors explained that while machine translation (MT) previously relied heavily on linguists, the landscape has shifted. “Linguistics is no longer front and center in the way we build NLP systems,” they said. With the emergence of LLMs, which can generate fluent text without the need for specialized modules to handle grammar or semantic coherence, the need for linguistic expertise in NLP is being questioned.
हम आग्रह करते हैं कि जो भी सत्ता में आए, वह संविधान का पालन करे, उसकी रक्षा करे और उसे बनाए रखे।" प्रस्ताव में कुल तीन प्रमुख हस्तक्षेप और उनके तंत्र भी प्रस्तुत किए गए। पहला हस्तक्षेप स्वतंत्र मीडिया को प्रोत्साहित करके, वास्तविकता पर आधारित काउंटर नैरेटिव का निर्माण करके और सत्तारूढ़ सरकार द्वारा नियोजित मनोवैज्ञानिक हेरफेर की रणनीति का मुकाबला करके लोगों द्वारा निर्धारित कथा को बनाए रखना और उस पर कार्यकरना था।
‘वोटर्स विल मस्ट प्रीवेल’ (मतदाताओं को जीतना होगा) अभियान द्वारा जारी हेल्पलाइन नंबर, 4 जून को सुबह 7 बजे से दोपहर 12 बजे तक मतगणना प्रक्रिया में कहीं भी किसी भी तरह के उल्लंघन की रिपोर्ट करने के लिए खुला रहेगा।
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1. SOUTH AMERICA ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY,
AND HEALTH NEWSLETTER
230t h
issue, July 15, 2013
We Need to Act: President Barack Obama on Climate Change
“On Christmas Eve, 1968, the astronauts of Apollo 8 did a live broadcast from lunar
orbit. So Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, William Anders -- the first humans to orbit the
moon -- described what they saw, and they read Scripture from the Book of Genesis to
the rest of us back here. And later that night, they took a photo that would change the
way we see and think about our world.
It was an image of Earth -- beautiful; breathtaking; a glowing marble of blue oceans,
and green forests, and brown mountains brushed with white clouds, rising over the
surface of the moon.
And while the sight of our planet from space might seem routine today, imagine what it
looked like to those of us seeing our home, our planet, for the first time. Imagine what
it looked like to children like me. Even the astronauts were amazed. “It makes you
realize,” Lovell would say, “just what you have back there on Earth.”
And around the same time we began exploring space, scientists were studying changes taking place in the
Earth’s atmosphere. Now, scientists had known since the 1800s that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide trap
heat, and that burning fossil fuels release those gases into the air. That wasn’t news. But in the late 1950s, the
National Weather Service began measuring the levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, with the worry that
rising levels might someday disrupt the fragile balance that makes our planet so hospitable. And what they’ve
found, year after year, is that the levels of carbon pollution in our atmosphere have increased dramatically.
That science, accumulated and reviewed over decades, tells us that our planet is changing in ways that will
have profound impacts on all of humankind.
The 12 warmest years in recorded history have all come in the last 15 years. Last year, temperatures in some
areas of the ocean reached record highs, and ice in the Arctic shrank to its smallest size on record -- faster than
most models had predicted it would. These are facts.
Now, we know that no single weather event is caused solely by climate change. Droughts and fires and floods,
they go back to ancient times. But we also know that in a world that’s warmer than it used to be, all weather
events are affected by a warming planet. The fact that sea level in New York, in New York Harbor, are now a
foot higher than a century ago -- that didn’t cause Hurricane Sandy, but it certainly contributed to the
destruction that left large parts of our mightiest city dark and underwater.
The potential impacts go beyond rising sea levels. Here at home, 2012 was the warmest year in our history.
Midwest farms were parched by the worst drought since the Dust Bowl, and then drenched by the wettest
spring on record. Western wildfires scorched an area larger than the state of Maryland. Just last week, a heat
wave in Alaska shot temperatures into the 90s.
And we know that the costs of these events can be measured in lost lives and lost livelihoods, lost homes, lost
businesses, hundreds of billions of dollars in emergency services and disaster relief. [...]”
Read full transcript: http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/texttrans/2013/06/20130625277552.html#axzz2YqrZqFpM
The information contained herein was gathered from news sources from across the region, and the views expressed below do not
necessarily reflect those of the Regional Environmental HUB Office or of our constituent posts.
Addressees interested in sharing any ESTH-related events of USG interest are welcome to do so.
For questions or comments, please contact us at quevedoa@state.gov.
* Free translation prepared by REO staff.
We Need to Act:
President Barack Obama
on Climate Change
Health: Nerve Cells Re-
Grown in Rats After
Spinal Injury.
Conservation: New
Maps Highlight Global
Conservation Priorities.
Health: Mental Decline at
Age 90 is Less Than a
Decade Ago
Antarctica: Giant Iceberg
Breaks Off Antarctic
Glacier.
Climate Change: Some
Trees Use Less Water
Amid Rising Carbon
Dioxide.
Science: Massive Stellar
Womb Caught Birthing
Monstrous Star in Milky
Way.
August 19-23, 2013
10th
Latin American
Congress of Private
Nature Reserves, Chile
http://asiconservachile.cl/en/x-
congreso-latino-agosto-
2013.html
Next events:
In this issue:
President Barack Obama.
2. U.S. scientists say they have made progress in repairing spinal cord injuries in paralyzed rats.
Rats regained some bladder control after surgery to transplant nerve cells into the spinal cord, com-
bined with injections of a cocktail of chemicals. The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience,
could raise hopes for one day treating paralyzed patients.
But UK experts say it will take several years of research before human clinical trials can be consid-
ered.
Scientists have tried for decades to use transplants of nerve cells to restore function in paralyzed
animals by bridging the gap in the broken spinal cord.
However, coaxing the cells to grow and form new connections has proved elusive. One problem is
the growth of scar tissue as the body's responds to injury, which seems to block cell regeneration.
U.S. scientists carried out complex surgery to transplant nerves from the rodents' ribs into the gap in the middle of their spinal cord. They also
used a special "glue" that boosts cell growth together with a chemical that breaks down scar tissue in an attempt to encourage the nerve cells to
regenerate and connect up. The researchers found for the first time that injured nerve cells could re-grow for "remarkably long distances" (about
2cm). They said that while the rats did not regain the ability to walk, they did recover some bladder function.
Lead author Dr Jerry Silver of Case Western Reserve Medical School, Cleveland, Ohio, said: "Although animals did not regain the ability to walk,
they did recover a remarkable measure of urinary control." Co-author Dr Yu-Shang Lee of the Cleveland Clinic, Ohio, added: "This is the first time
that significant bladder function has been restored via nerve regeneration after a devastating cord injury."
The findings may help future efforts to restore other functions lost after spinal cord injury. They also raise hope that similar strategies could one
day be used to restore bladder function in people with severe spinal cord injuries.
Dr Silver said further animal experiments will be needed to see if the technique could work in humans.
Read more at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-23051516
What region of the world has the most imperiled mammals? Where are the most bird species
found? And where are new amphibians being discovered? Indonesia and Malaysia is the answer to
the first question; the Amazon, the second; and the Andes, the third. A new study in the Proceed-
ings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has used global data on 21,000 mammals, birds,
and amphibians to create magnificent maps that highlight missing priorities for conservation.
"Identifying the most important areas for biodiversity is essential for directing conservation re-
sources. We must know where individual species live, which ones are vulnerable, and where human
actions threaten them," explains lead author Clinton Jenkins at North Carolina State University. "We
have better data than in the past—and better analytical methods. Now we have married them for
conservation purposes."
The result is a series of stunning maps at scales of 10 kilometers by 10 kilometers: 100 times finer than anything ever produced before. The scien-
tists hope that the new maps can point conservationists and policy-makers to new areas for protection—before they are lost. The finer scale is
especially important because, according to the paper, it is "comparable with regional decisions on where to place protected areas." The scientists
created a series of maps highlighting different themes, including total diversity within each taxonomic group (mammals, birds, amphibians),
threatened species, species dependent on small-ranges (i.e. particularly vulnerable to extinction), and newly discovered species.
The maps found that when combining all the vertebrate species, the most biodiverse areas were the Amazon, southeastern Brazil, and Central
Africa. While these regions cover only about 7.2 percent of land area, they contain around half of the world's species. Looking at diversity of each
taxonomic group, the research found that "for birds and mammals, these areas are nearly identical: the moist forests of the Amazon, Brazilian
Atlantic Forest, Congo, Eastern Arc in Africa, and the Southeast Asian mainland and islands house the greatest numbers of bird and mammal spe-
cies. The pattern for amphibians is similar, but amphibians have exceptional diversity in the Neotropics."
Birds and mammals living in small-ranges were located primarily in the Andes, Madagascar, and Southeast Asian islands. Since most amphibians
are small-ranged species already, few hotspots were located. However, 93 percent of the world's small-ranged mammals, birds, and amphibians
are found in just 8.3 percent of the land area. Some if these areas—such as Papua New Guinea, the eastern coast of Australia, the west Coast of
North America, and smatterings of China—are not included in current ecological hotspots designation crafted by Norman Meyers in 1988. The
paper concludes that the best way to protect the world's biodiversity is to focus on these highly-diverse small-ranged species hotspots.
Read more at: http://news.mongabay.com/2013/0625-hance-maps-biodiversity.html#8FrJMfXxphvpr6rg.99
HEALTH: Nerve Cells 'Re-Grown' in Rats After Spinal Injury By Helen Briggs
CONSERVATION: New Maps Highlight Global Conservation Priorities By Jeremy Hance
Photo’s author: unknown. Under Wikimedia Commons License.
Selected priority ecoregions based on small-ranged
vertebrates. Maps courtesy of Jenkins et al.
3. A study of two large groups of the very elderly suggests that the mental performance of people who
reach their 90s may be improving.
Getting very old does not necessarily come with the absolute decline in mental and physical functioning
that is commonly expected, new research shows.
A large-scale study of two groups of nonagenarians — people in their 90s — in Denmark finds that those
born in 1915 not only lived longer than people born a decade earlier, but they also scored significantly
better on measures of cognitive ability and activities of daily living.
Even after adjusting for increases in education in a decade, people born in 1915 "still performed better in
the cognitive measures, which suggests that changes in other factors such as nutrition, burden of infec-
tious disease, work environment, intellectual stimulation and general living conditions also play an impor-
tant part in the improvement of cognitive functioning," says the study, published online today by the science journal The Lancet.
The findings challenge speculation that improving longevity "is the result of the survival of very frail and disabled elderly people," says lead re-
searcher Kaare Christensen,professor of epidemiology at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense and director of the Danish Aging Re-
search Center.
"That's not to say that everyone in the later cohort was healthy, smart and functioning well, but compared to those who were born 10 years ear-
lier, not only were more living to a higher age, but they were functioning better," Christensen says.
Using the Danish Civil Register System, Christensen and colleagues identified all nonagenarians living in Denmark at the time that they were con-
ducting their surveys. A total of 2,262 men and women born in 1905 were assessed in 1998 when they were ages 92 to 93. A smaller number,
1,584 men and women born in 1915, were assessed in 2010 when they were ages 94 to 95.
No one was excluded from the studies based on health, residence or cognitive status. When mental or physical handicap prevented a participant
from responding (about 20%), someone else answered on his or her behalf. Along with an interview, the assessment consisted of physical tests
(including grip strength, chair stand and gait speed) and cognitive measurements of attention, verbal memory and word fluency. Results showed
that the chance of surviving to age 93 years was 28% higher among those born in 1915; their chance of reaching 95 was 32% higher.
The two groups performed equally on tests measuring physical performance, but those born in 1915 outperformed those born in 1905 in activi-
ties of daily living such as walking inside and outside, getting out of bed and maneuvering up and down stairs. They also achieved better average
test scores than those born in 1905, and a substantially higher proportion achieved maximum scores on cognition tests, even though they were
older at the time of testing — leading to the suggestion that more people are living to older ages with better overall functioning.
Read full article at: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/07/10/age-mental-decline/2505371/
A massive iceberg, larger than the city of Chicago, broke off of Antarctica's
Pine Island Glacier on Monday (July 8), and is now floating freely in the
Amundsen Sea, according to a team of German scientists.
The newborn iceberg measures about 278 square miles (720 square kilome-
ters), and was seen by TerraSAR-X, an earth-observing satellite operated by
the German Space Agency (DLR). Scientists with NASA's Operation IceBridge-
first discovered a giant crack in the Pine Island Glacier in October 2011, as
they were flying over and surveying the sprawling ice sheet.
At that time, the fissure spanned about 15 miles (24 km) in length and 164
feet (50 meters) in width, according to researchers at the Alfred Wegener
Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany. In May
2012, satellite images revealed a second rift had formed near the northern
side of the first crack.
"As a result of these cracks, one giant iceberg broke away from the glacier
tongue," Angelika Humbert, a glaciologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute,
said in a statement. [Photo Gallery: Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier Cracks]
Read full article at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22996054
HEALTH: Mental Decline at Age 90 is Less Than a Decade Ago By Michelle Healy
Photo by Amos Oliver Doyle. Under Wikimedia Commons
License.
The newly formed iceberg with a size of 720 square kilometers is visible. CREDIT: DLR
ANTARCTICA: Giant Iceberg Breaks Off Antarctic Glacier By Denise Chow
4. The fate of the world’s forests on a warming planet has long been one of the great unanswered
questions about climate change. Now, new research is complicating the picture further, suggesting
that big shifts are already under way in how forests work.
A paper published Wednesday suggests that trees in at least some parts of the world are having to
pull less water out of the ground to achieve a given amount of growth. Some scientists say they be-
lieve that this may be a direct response to the rising level of carbon dioxide in the air from human
emissions, though that has not yet been proved. If the research holds up, it suggests some potential
benefits for forests. They might be able to make do with less water, for instance, becoming more
resilient in the face of drought and higher temperatures as climate change proceeds.
But the new finding also has potential downsides, scientists said. The immense volume of water that trees pull out of the ground
winds up in the atmosphere, helping supply moisture to farming areas downwind of forests. So if trees use less water, that could
ultimately mean less rain for thirsty crops in at least some regions of the world.
Several scientists predicted that the new research would set off a flurry of efforts to clarify whether trees are really using less, and
what the implications might be, not only for forests but for the human and ecological systems that depend on existing patterns of
moisture flow.
Read full article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/11/science/earth/some-trees-use-less-water-amid-rising-carbon-dioxide-paper-says.html?_r=1&
Probing a distant cloud 11,000 light-years away, astronomers have
discovered what may be the largest stellar womb yet found in our
galaxy. With a mass of 500 suns, this massive body is feeding an
embryonic star that may become a rare behemoth in the Milky
Way.
This star birth, to be described in the journal Astronomy and Astro-
physics, sheds light on how such giants are formed. Such massive
stars are extremely rare; roughly one in 10,000 stars in the Milky
Way gathers this much bulk. (A star is considered massive if it’s at
least about 10 times the mass of the sun.)
Astronomers aren’t sure how massive stars form. One idea suggests
that many small star cores coalesce out of a dark gas cloud; another
theory argues that the entire cloud core begins to collapse inward
to form one or two really big star cores.
To try and answer this question, a team of European scientists decided to look at the Spitzer Dark Cloud, a mysterious body filled
with dense filaments of gas and dust that was discovered using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and the European Space Agency’s
Herschel Space Observatory.
The scientists used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile, a radio telescope that can pick up long wavelengths
of light that can punch through the dark cloud. They discovered just two embryonic stellar cores – one of them so big that they
predict it will form at least one star that’s 100 solar masses when it fully develops.
The observation supports theory No. 2 – that such massive stars are formed by a dramatic collapse of a cloud core. It’s a fast proc-
ess as the material races inward – so the scientists were lucky to catch this process in the act, they said.
Read full article at: http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-massive-star-embryo-born-galaxy-20130710,0,3202849.story
CLIMATE CHANGE: Some Trees Use Less Water Amid Rising Carbon Dioxide, Paper Says
By Justin Gillis
Photo by Nevit Dilmen. Under Wikimedia Commons
License.a
SCIENCE: Massive Stellar Womb Caught Birthing Monstrous Star in Milky Way
By Amina Khan
Milky Way.. Photo by Forest Wander. Under Wikimedia Commons License.