Ecologists gain insight into the likely consequences of global warming

Science Daily: A new insight into the impact that warmer temperatures could have across the world has been uncovered by scientists at Queen Mary, University of London. The research, published in the journal Global Change Biology on January 20, found that the impact of global warming could be similar across ecosystems, regardless of local environmental conditions and species.

The team, based at Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, went to Iceland to study a set of geothermally-heated streams. The streams provided scientists with a unique environment to conduct their research; they were able to isolate the effects of temperature from other confounding variables found in nature.

Lead author, Queen Mary's Dr Daniel Perkins, explains: "The streams in Iceland are all very similar, in terms of their physical and chemical environment, but maintain very different temperatures to each other all year round. "This enabled us to explore how temperature, both past and present, affects the rate at which respiration responds to temperature in ecosystems."

Dr Perkins said that when the team exposed the organisms found in streams to a range of temperatures "the rate at which carbon was respired increased with temperature as expected, but surprisingly, rate of increase was consistent across streams which differed in average temperature by as much as 20°C."...

A stream wends its way to the coast in Iceland, shot by Bromr, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Plant biodiversity can aid climate change survival

Zee News (India): The ability of a plant and its pollinator to survive rapid climate change depends upon the density and distribution of other species in the community, a new study has suggested.

Ecologists have known for many years that climate change alters the timing of when plants flower and when insects emerge. If climate change causes species that rely on one another, known as “mutualists”, to be active at different times, then these species may be threatened with extinction. The question that remained was whether the process of evolution could mitigate the potential damage that climate change can inflict upon the timing of life cycle events.

To find an answer to this, researchers from the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis used computer simulations to examine the effect of climate change on populations of flowering plants and their insect pollinators for the study. They found that in some cases evolution can rescue plant-pollinator mutualisms that would otherwise become extinct as a result of climate change.

They also found weather a mutualism survives can depend upon the density and distribution of other species in the community. “In such cases, habitat fragmentation or loss of native pollinators might compound the threat of climate change to mutualisms,” Tucker Gilman, lead author of the paper, said...

A nice instance of mutualism, even if it involves animals rather than plants: an impala at Mikumi National Park. Red-billed Oxpeckers are feeding on parasites found on the Impala, a practice that benefits both animals. Shot by Muhammad Mahdi Karim (www.micro2macro.net) Facebook, Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 only as published by the Free Software Foundation

Earthworms: 'The secret weapon against climate change'

The Press Trust of India has the story today, but once again Darwin blazed the path. Not in his work on evolution, but in The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms, With Observations on Their Habits, published in 1881, which outsold On the Origin of Species during Darwin's lifetime: Believe it or not, the humble earthworm has become the latest secret weapon in the war against climate change. A major four-year-old study has revealed that instead of just wriggling around and providing food for birds, earthworms -- have been burrowing their way through the ground for 300 million years -- can help prevent flooding and droughts.

Floods and droughts are caused by cycles of dry weather and monsoon-type rains often said to be caused by global warming. And this is where the humble earthworm can help the planet, say researchers at the Game and Wildlife Conservation Society in the UK.

The average worm weighs less than half an ounce but it is able to eat through a third of its own weight in soil a day. When worms tunnel the soil absorbs more water, meaning that in their millions, worms can turn the ground into one vast sponge soaking up water in floods but retaining it during dry spells.

Now, farmers can play a vital part in combating the devastation caused by floods and droughts by encouraging earthworms, according to the researchers....

Earthworm photo by Michael Linnenbach, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Managing ecosystems in a changing climate

EurekAlert via the Ecological Society of America: Global warming may impair the ability of ecosystems to perform vital services—such as providing food, clean water and carbon sequestration—says the nation's largest organization of ecological scientists. In a statement released today, the Ecological Society of America (ESA) outlines strategies that focus on restoring and maintaining natural ecosystem functions to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

"Decision-makers cannot overlook the critical services ecosystems provide," says ESA President Mary Power. "If we are going to reduce the possibility of irreversible damage to the environment under climate change, we need to take swift but measured action to protect and manage our ecosystems."

ESA recommends four approaches to limiting adverse effects of climate change through ecosystem management:

• Prioritize low-alteration strategies. …
• Critically evaluate management-intensive strategies. ….
• Acknowledge the ecological implications of geoengineering. …
• Address long-term risks. …

In addition to mitigating climate change, steps should be taken to prepare ecosystems to withstand climate change impacts. Human activity has impaired the natural resilience of many ecosystems. ESA outlines four adaptation strategies to safeguard ecosystem services in the face of climate change:

• Take additional steps to protect water quality and quantity. …
• Enable natural species migration across human dominated landscapes.
• Improve capacity to predict extreme events. ….
• Manage collaboratively at the ecosystem level. ….

Wetlands alongside the Morava river (Gestütwiese), near Hohenau an der March, Lower Austria, shot by Stanislav Doronenko (nazdar!), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Glacial watersheds may contribute to oceanic food web

Terra Daily: A study recently completed in the gulf coast of Alaska by federal and university researchers has found that as glacial ice disappears, the production and export of high- quality food from glacial watersheds to marine ecosystems may disappear too. This trend could have serious consequences for marine food webs. The study, "Glaciers as a source of ancient and labile organic matter to the marine environment," was recently published in the December 24, 2009, issue of the journal Nature.

The research, which was conducted on 11 coastal watersheds in the Gulf of Alaska, has documented an interesting paradox with important implications for coastal ecosystems. "Glacial watersheds comprise 30 percent of the Tongass National Forest and supply about 35 to 40 percent of the stream discharge," says Rick Edwards, a coauthor on the study.

"These watersheds export dissolved organic matter that is remarkably biologically active in contrast to that found in other rivers. Generally, scientists expect that organic matter decreases in its quality as a food source as it ages, becoming less and less active over time."

But the dissolved organic material discharged from the glacial watersheds in this study was almost 4,000 years old; yet surprisingly, more than 66 percent of it was rapidly metabolized by marine microbes into living biomass to support marine food webs, adds Edwards.

…Rivers fringing the gulf coast of Alaska discharge as much water as the Mississippi River into a marine system that harbors the most productive salmon fishery in the world. As these rivers flow through the temperate rain forests on the coastal margin, they are influenced by vegetation, soils and wetlands, which control the amount and timing of carbon and nutrients delivered to the productive coastal ecosystems receiving that drainage….

Dry bay at Alaska's Pacific coast, where it meets the Alsek River, shot by Sam Beebe, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License

Australian marine ecosystems get benchmarked

Science Blog: The first-ever Australian benchmark of climate change impacts on marine ecosystems and options for adaptation is being released in Brisbane today. The Marine Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Report Card for Australia, and an accompanying website, will provide a biennial guide for scientists, government and the community on observed and projected impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems.

"The objective of compiling this information is to consider options available to environmental and resource managers in their response to changes in ecosystem balance," says project leader, CSIRO Climate Adaptation Flagship scientist Dr Elvira Poloczanska.

"On both sides of the continent there is clear evidence of ocean warming and this is already bringing sub-tropical species south into temperate waters, and in the case of the giant kelp forests in Tasmania, appears to be having a severe impact in just a few years. This research is relevant for anyone with a recreational interest or financial investment in our coasts and oceans," Dr Poloczanska says.

The Report Card highlights observations over the past decade, projects forward to 2030 and 2100 with assessments of likely status and confidence ratings, and offers adaptation responses that can also inform policy makers.

Key concerns include; waters around Australia becoming warmer and more acidic, increases in strengths of major warm-water currents such as the East Australian Current, changes in the productivity of marine ecosystems and shifts in the distribution and abundance of species. The Report Card identifies where change is already occurring, likely trends and confidence levels in those trends depending on the state of knowledge….

From NASA: The striking orange-red colored southern Australian coast contrasts against the deep sapphire-blue waters of the Southern Ocean in this true-color Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) image acquired by the Terra satellite on August 19, 2002. In the northern portion of the image, a handful of fires (marked in red) were detected burning in the Great Victoria Desert by the MODIS instrument. South of the desert is the lighter-orange Nullarbor Plain, which stretches for over 1000 kilometers (about 600 miles) from end to end. Finally, just off the coast in the Southern Ocean is the Great Australian Bight, home to Australian Sea Lions, Southern Right Whales, and various fish species.

Deep-sea ecosystems affected by climate change

Science Daily: The vast muddy expanses of the abyssal plains occupy about 60 percent of the Earth's surface and are important in global carbon cycling. Based on long-term studies of two such areas, a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) shows that animal communities on the abyssal seafloor are affected in a variety of ways by climate change.

…[A]ccording to Ken Smith, a marine ecologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) and lead author of the recent PNAS article, changes in the Earth's climate can cause unexpectedly large changes in deep-sea ecosystems. Based on 18 years of studies, Smith and his coauthors show that such ecosystem changes occur over short time scales of weeks to months, as well as over longer periods of years to decades.

The recent paper covers two time-series studies -- one at "Station M," about 220 kilometers off the Central California coast, and a second on the Porcupine Abyssal Plain, several hundred kilometers southwest of Ireland. The flat, muddy seafloor at these sites lies between 4,000 and 5,000 meters beneath the ocean surface.

In this cold, dark environment, very little food is available. What food there is takes the form of bits of organic debris drifting down from the sunlit surface waters, thousands of meters above. During its long descent, this organic matter may be eaten, excreted, and decomposed, drastically reducing its nutritive value. It is estimated that less than five percent of the organic matter produced at the surface reaches the abyssal plains.

Research by Smith and his coauthors has shown that the amount of food reaching the deep sea varies dramatically over time. For example, at the Porcupine Abyssal Plain, the amount of organic material sinking from above can vary by almost an order of magnitude from one year to another.

…The authors point out that global climate change could affect the food supply to the deep sea in many ways. Some relevant ocean processes that may be affected by climate change include wind-driven upwelling, the depth of mixing of the surface waters, and the delivery of nutrients to surface waters via dust storms. Climate-driven changes in these processes are likely to lead to altered year-to-year variation in the amount of organic material reaching the seafloor…..

Giant grenadier fish (Albatrossia pectoralis) from NOAA's Alaska Fisheries Science Center

Argentina makes environmental insurance a must

Reuters: Argentine officials said on Thursday theirs is the first government worldwide to require that companies engaged in potentially hazardous activities buy insurance to cover environmental damage. Government officials said preliminary figures show that about 35,000 companies would have to comply with the new rules.

"Argentina is taking a leadership role in the region on this issue," Sergio Chodos, an undersecretary at the Environment Secretariat, told Reuters. "There's a lot of environmental insurance sold in Europe, but it's not obligatory because it doesn't have to be. In Argentina, lawmakers understood that this had to be made obligatory," he said.

Argentina's Congress passed a law to this effect in 2002 and it was finally implemented last month. The insurance policies will range in price from 120,000 pesos ($36,090) a year to 50 million pesos ($15 million), depending on a given company's activities, output and the potential risk involved….

Aconcagua in Argentina, shot by Roland Baumschlager, who has generously released it into the public domain via Wikimedia Commons. Thank you, Roland

Does nature have rights? Ecuador may say yes

The Guardian (UK): The South American republic of Ecuador will next week consider what many countries in the world would say is unthinkable. People will be asked to vote on Sunday on a new constitution that would give Ecuador's tropical forests, islands, rivers and air similar legal rights to those normally granted to humans. If they vote yes - and polls show that 56% are for and only 23% are against - then an already approved bill of rights for nature will be introduced, and new laws will change the legal status of nature from being simply property to being a right-bearing entity.

The proposed bill states: "Natural communities and ecosystems possess the unalienable right to exist, flourish and evolve within Ecuador. Those rights shall be self-executing, and it shall be the duty and right of all Ecuadorian governments, communities, and individuals to enforce those rights."

Thomas Linzey, a US lawyer who has helped to develop the new legal framework for nature, says: "The dominant form of environmental protection in industrialised countries is based on the regulatory system. Governments permit and legalise the discharge of certain amounts of toxics into the environment. As a form of environmental protection, it's not working. In the same way, compensation is measured in terms of that injury to a person or people. Under the new system, it will be measured according to damage to the ecosystem. The new system is, in essence, an attempt to codify sustainable development. The new laws would grant people the right to sue on behalf of an ecosystem, even if not actually injured themselves."

Until now, all legal frameworks have been anthropocentric, or people-based. To file an environmental lawsuit requires a person to provide evidence of personal injury. This can be extremely difficult. To provide a conclusive link, say, between a cancer and polluted drinking water is, legally speaking, virtually impossible….

Get off my lawn -- the law is on my side. So says this American saltwater crocodile. This photograph was taken at La Manzanilla, Jalisco State in Mexico, on the Pacific Coast, by Tomás Castelazo. Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License