Climate Change Threatens New England Forests and Cultures
In New England, spring is arriving earlier, snowpack is melting faster, and rivers are flowing at peak levels sooner than ecologists have seen before. Climate change has extended the growing season of New England forests 10 more days per year than foresters observed before 1970.
That may sound like good news for the region's foresters, but New Englanders are quickly realizing that a more humid climate may threaten seasonal activities and their overall culture as native species are forced to migrate north for their survival, reports Worldwatch Fellow John Mulrow from the New England Society of American Foresters' winter meeting.
Click here for the full article on Worldwatch's Dateline: Copenhagen blog.
OCA Challenges Whole Foods Market to 'Walk the Talk'
At a shareholders' meeting in Vancouver, one of the leading sellers of organic goods was accused of misleading consumers with its labelling of products and disregarding the working conditions of the people who grow the food they sell. Ronnie Cummins of the Organic Consumers Association says this is because Whole Foods founder John Mackey believes that climate change is a hoax and hates unions with a passion.
Reeve's Bid to Halt Spreading of Biosolids Rejected
Tweed - Council will not adopt any measures to control the spreading of sludge on local farmland, even though Reeve Jo-Anne Albert pushed for a moratorium.
How the Global Food Market Starves the Poor [Video]
To understand the complexities of the international food market -- and how traders in Chicago can cause Africans to starve -- you could get a Ph.D. in economics, or read a 400-page report from the World Bank. Or you watch this superb nine minute video, directed by Denis van Waerebeke.
Seeing the Forest Through the Trees
There's an old cliché about someone who can't see the forest for the trees. It is used to describe people who are so focused on some detail that they fail to see the big picture. Nowhere is this failure to see the forest for the trees more evident than in the rush to utilize dead trees for biomass fuels and/or the presumed need to "thin" forests to reduce so-called "dangers" and/or "damage" from wildfire and beetle outbreaks.
Britain's First Factory Farm?
The plan for Britain's first "factory farm" for cows has stirred up the debate on the future of farming in Europe.
Can a Video Game Teach Sustainability?
CU and OCA Urge Action on Deceptive 'Organic' Labeling
Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, and the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), today filed a petition with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requesting action on the widespread and blatantly deceptive labeling practices of several "organic" personal care brands that do not comply with the National Organic Program (NOP).
Walmart Fires Cancer Patient for Legally Using Medical Marijuana
Joseph Casias, 29, has sinus cancer and an inoperable brain tumor. Despite his condition, he has dutifully gone to work every day for the last five years at a Walmart in Battle Creek, Michigan, where in 2008 he was named Associate of the Year.
Cities Sue Over Weed Killer in the Water
As Change.org has previously reported, atrazine is as ubiquitous as it is dangerous. The most widely used weed killer in the country, it spreads swiftly to municipal water—where it has been found to lower sperm counts for men and increase the risk of breast cancer and fertility problems in women. When tested on frogs, it was even powerful enough to turn males into functional females.
The 'Femivore': New Breed of Feminist, or Frontier Throwback?
Have locavores and feminists -- factions that a few years ago, some bloggers believed to be fundamentally at odds -- become allies?
Vandana Shiva Says Relying on GM Crops to Battle Climate Change 'Suicidal'
Widespread adoption of GM varieties by small farmers would be "suicidal in terms of climate change," said Vandana Shiva, an Indian social activist, environmentalist and proponent of small-scale farming.
Protesters Say Panic, Products Aren't Organic
Cell phone and pocket cameras whirred and clicked as a group of about a dozen protesters got the Natural Products Expo off to a raucous start Friday at the Anaheim Convention Center.
Bees are Busier Than Ever as Disease Besieges Colonies
More than three years after beekeepers starting seeing the sudden disappearance of hive populations, scientists have yet to find the cause -- let alone the fix -- for a condition called colony collapse disorder (CCD). Meanwhile, the commercial beekeeping industry is struggling to provide pollination services to the nations' farmers. One-third of food crops rely on insect pollination.
School Lunches: Where’s the Broccoli?
First Lady Michelle Obama's noble fight against childhood obesity cannot be won unless members of Congress act boldly this spring and vote to give school lunches the healthy makeover that our kids deserve and desperately need.
Saving U.S. Water and Sewer Systems Would Be Costly
Today, a significant water line bursts on average every two minutes somewhere in the country, according to a New York Times analysis of Environmental Protection Agency data. State and federal studies indicate that thousands of water and sewer systems may be too old to function properly.
Nearly Half of Americans Believe Climate Change Threat is Exaggerated
Public belief in climate science has seen a precipitous slide in the US, according to new polling that suggests fewer Americans are concerned about the threat posed by global warming.
Growing low-oxygen zones in oceans worry scientists
In some spots off Washington state and Oregon, the almost complete absence of oxygen has left piles of Dungeness crab carcasses littering the ocean floor, killed off 25-year-old sea stars, crippled colonies of sea anemones and produced mats of potentially noxious bacteria that thrive in such conditions.
Areas of hypoxia, or low oxygen, have long existed in the deep ocean. These areas – in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans – appear to be spreading, however, covering more square miles, creeping toward the surface and in some places, such as the Pacific Northwest, encroaching on the continental shelf within sight of the coastline.
“The depletion of oxygen levels in all three oceans is striking,” said Gregory Johnson, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle.
In some spots, such as off the Southern California coast, oxygen levels have dropped roughly 20 percent over the past 25 years. Elsewhere, scientists say, oxygen levels might have declined by one-third over 50 years.
“The real surprise is how this has become the new norm,” said Jack Barth, an oceanography professor at Oregon State University. “We are seeing it year after year.”
Barth and others say the changes are consistent with current climate-change models. Previous studies have found that the oceans are becoming more acidic as they absorb more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
“If the Earth continues to warm, the expectation is we will have lower and lower oxygen levels,” said Francis Chan, a marine researcher at Oregon State.
As ocean temperatures rise, the warmer water on the surface acts as a cap, which interferes with the natural circulation that normally allows deeper waters that are already oxygen-depleted to reach the surface. It’s on the surface where ocean waters are recharged with oxygen from the air.
Commonly, ocean “dead zones” have been linked to agricultural runoff and other pollution coming down major rivers such as the Mississippi or the Columbia. One of the largest of the 400 or so ocean dead zones is in the Gulf of Mexico, near the mouth of the Mississippi.
However, scientists now say that some of these areas, including those off the Northwest, apparently are linked to broader changes in ocean oxygen levels.
The Pacific waters off Washington and Oregon face a double whammy as a result of ocean circulation.
Scientists have long known of a natural low-oxygen zone perched in the deeper water off the Northwest’s continental shelf.
During the summer, northerly winds aided by the Earth’s rotation drive surface water away from the shore. This action sucks oxygen-poor water to the surface in a process called upwelling.
Though the water that’s pulled up from the depths is poor in oxygen, it’s rich in nutrients, which fertilize phytoplankton. These microscopic organisms form the bottom of one of the richest ocean food chains in the world. As they die, however, they sink and start to decay. The decaying process uses oxygen, which depletes the oxygen levels even more.
Southerly winds reverse the process in what’s known as down-welling.
Changes in the wind and ocean circulation since 2002 have disrupted what had been a delicate balance between upwelling and down-welling. Scientists now are discovering expanding low-oxygen zones near shore.
“It is consistent with models of global warming, but the time frame is too short to know whether it is a trend or a weather phenomenon,” Johnson said.
Others were slightly more definitive, quicker to link the lower oxygen levels to global warming rather than to such weather phenomena as El Nino or the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a shift in the weather that occurs every 20 to 30 years in the northern oceans.
“It’s a large disturbance in the ecosystem that could have huge biological changes,” said Steve Bograd, an oceanographer at NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Southern California.
Bograd has been studying oxygen levels in the California Current, which runs along the West Coast from the Canadian border to Baja California and, some scientists think, eventually could be affected by climate change.
So far, the worst hypoxic zone off the Northwest coast was found in 2006. It covered nearly 1,200 square miles off Newport, Ore., and according to Barth it was so close to shore you could hit it with a baseball. The zone covered 80 percent of the water column and lasted for an abnormally long four months.
Because of upwelling, some of the most fertile ocean areas in the world are found off Washington and Oregon. Similar upwelling occurs in only three other places, off the coast of Peru and Chile, in an area stretching from northern Africa to Portugal and along the Atlantic coast of South Africa and Namibia.
Scientists are unsure how low oxygen levels will affect the ocean ecosystem. Bottom-dwelling species could be at the greatest risk because they move slowly and might not be able to escape the lower oxygen levels. Most fish can swim out of danger. Some species, however, such as chinook salmon, may have to start swimming at shallower depths than they’re used to. Whether the low oxygen zones will change salmon migration routes is unclear.
Some species, such as jellyfish, will like the lower-oxygen water. Jumbo squid, usually found off Mexico and Central America, can survive as oxygen levels decrease and now are found as far north as Alaska.
“It’s like an experiment,” Chan said. “We are pulling some things out of the food web and we will have to see what happens. But if you pull enough things out, it could have a real impact.”
Article by Les Blumenthal, McClatchy Newspapers
Related posts:
- Global Warming: background
- Growing potatoes is easy …and so rewarding
- The End of the Line: a future without fish?
Obama Has Tragically Lost The Youth, Antagonized Unions
A trio of the Senate's leading progressives expressed concern on Wednesday that President Obama has squandered the transformational political coalition that propelled him into office, concluding that he will pay a price for it.
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