Ecological adaptation likely to influence impacts of climate change

University of Wisconsin-Madison: Animals' capacity to adapt is a factor in how they are likely to respond to changing climate conditions. This conclusion of a new study published Mar. 2 in the Proceedings of the Royal Academy B is not especially surprising, says author Brandon Barton, but confirms the importance of accounting for local adaptation when determining the likely ecological effects of climate change.

The work shows that the ability of the top predator in a well-studied food web to adapt to local temperatures can preserve the ways the species in the web influence one another across a range of climate conditions. Barton, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, completed the work while a graduate student at Yale University.

Barton focused on a food web composed of a predatory spider, a grasshopper, and the plants the grasshopper eats. The spider's predatory behavior is temperature-sensitive: if things get too warm, it retreats to the shade and does not hunt, freeing the grasshoppers to eat more plants. Thus, in warm weather the spiders exert a larger — though indirect — effect on the plants.

…The new work overcomes a common limitation of many climate change experiments, in which an organism is suddenly exposed to a new set of conditions to see how it fares. Such an experimental design does not account for the ability of the species to adapt to changing conditions gradually over time.

Instead, Barton studied populations that already live in different climes. The spiders and grasshoppers he studies thrive along most of the eastern seaboard, so he compared populations in Vermont, Connecticut, and New Jersey, using the warmer temperatures farther south as a proxy for the changing conditions expected in Vermont over the next 100 years as projected by common global climate models.

…"Species do adapt to their local environment, and in this system that all worked out okay," he says. "But that does not mean that adaptation will completely eliminate the negative effects of climate change."…

A lovely shot of dew on a spider's web, by Luc Viatour, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Sustainable management of bamboo forests helps to combat climate change

Zhang Jin in CRI-English: The International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR), an intergovernmental organization based in Beijing, and China Green Carbon Foundation (CGCF) agreed on Wednesday to join hands on sustainable management of bamboo forests to combat climate change. As a first step, INBAR donated about 11,000 yuan to CGCF for an afforestation program to offset carbon emissions from staff flights. The money will be used to plant 300 bamboos in 0.5 hectares in East China's Zhejiang Province with an expected forestry carbon drop of 75 tons within 20 years.

Dr. Coosje Hoogendoorn, Director General of INBAR, said bamboo forests have their advantages in combating climate change compared to other forests. Since bamboo grows very fast, it fixes carbon fast. "Bamboo helps against mitigation by fixing carbon, to adaptation by protecting the forest against erosion and mudslides, and it helps with development so that even in those areas which are poor, people can improve their lives (with bamboo-related industries)," said Hoogendoorn.

According to a memorandum signed between INBAR and CGCF on Wednesday, the two parts will carry out joint efforts on research, demonstration and capacity building to combat climate change through sustainable development of bamboo forests.

The sustainable management of bamboo forests is important to their carbon storing function, said Hoogendoorn. "What we found is clear indications that when the forest is managed in a biodiversity-friendly way, it actually stores more carbon in the forest," she said. "By looking at ways of managing the bamboo forest in a sustainable way, you can increase the amount of carbon that is actually stored in the forest."…

An illustration of bamboo by Pearson Scott Foresman, who has released this image and many others into the public domain

Vietnam faces severe water shortage

UPI: Vietnam, hit by drought, faces a severe nationwide water shortage that threatens agriculture and tap water quality, the government said. The department of electricity and the agriculture ministry said three of the biggest reservoirs in the north, which supply water needed to irrigate crops, were nearly empty, even though less of their water was used than in previous years, the Vietnam News reported Wednesday.

The report said in the central region of the country, water levels were alarmingly low in major rivers. Stretches of the Tra Khuc and Ve rivers in Quang Ngai Province were completely dry, it said. In Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta region, the drought has led to intrusion of salt water which has damaged crops and added salinity to tap water, the report said….

From February 11, a parched rice field in Can Tho, shot by Dragfyre, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Climate change killing the lodgepole pines of North America

Terra Daily: Lodgepole pine, a hardy tree species that can thrive in cold temperatures and plays a key role in many western ecosystems, is already shrinking in range as a result of climate change - and may almost disappear from most of the Pacific Northwest by 2080, a new study concludes. Including Canada, where it is actually projected to increase in some places, lodgepole pine is expected to be able to survive in only 17 percent of its current range in the western parts of North America.

The research, just published in the journal Climatic Change, was done by scientists from the College of Forestry at Oregon State University and the Department of Forest Resource Management at the University of British Columbia. It was based on an analysis of 12,600 sites across a broad geographic range.

Lodgepole pine ecosystems occupy large areas following major fires where extreme cold temperatures, poor soils and heavy, branch-breaking snows make it difficult for other tree species to compete. This includes large parts of higher elevation sites in Oregon, Washington, the Rocky Mountains and western Canada. Yellowstone National Park is dominated by this tree species.

However, warming temperatures, less winter precipitation, earlier loss of snowpack and more summer drought already appear to be affecting the range of lodgepole pine, at the same time increasing the infestations of bark beetles that attack this tree species….

Ten years after the 1988 Yellowstone fires, Lodgepole pine forests are firmly reestablished, image taken by Jim Peaco, September 1989, from the Yellowstone Digital Slide Files archives which are all in the public domain

'Noxious' weed spreads across Africa towards Kenya's savannahs

Laurence Caramel in the Guardian (UK): No one knows how feverfew reached south-west Kenya. But the threat it poses led to a recent alert from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (ICUN) issued to the international scientific community: "The Serengeti – Masai Mara ecosystem in Africa, which hosts the largest wildlife migration known to man, is under attack from a noxious weed."

Masai Mara, which runs along the border with Tanzania, is home to Africa's largest herbivore population. At the start of the annual rainy season, millions of wildebeest, gazelles, zebras and giraffes leave the Tanzanian savannah for the plains of Kenya in search of fresh pastures. A few months later, towards December, they circle back completing a round trip of several hundred kilometres. But what would happen if the weed, originally from Central America, colonised this wildlife sanctuary?

Parthenium hysterophorus, commonly known as Santa Maria feverfew or whitetop weed, is one of the world's 10 most dangerous weeds. It can grow two metres tall. Until now it has only been seen on tracks crossing the wildlife reserve and on the shores of the river Mara, which flows through the Serengeti.

"It is very hard to say how long it will take for the invasion to spread to the whole park, because that depends on many factors, in particular climatic conditions," says Arne Witt, Invasive Species Co-ordinator at the Centre for Agricultural Bioscience International (Cabi). "But the example of neighbouring Uganda shows that it may be very quick. The plant was first spotted three years ago and it is now seen all over the country. Bearing in mind that it can grow from seed to maturity in four to six weeks and can produce 10,000 to 25,000 seeds, contamination can happen very quickly," Witt adds....

Parthenium, also called gajar ghas, is a genus of flowering plants in the aster family, Asteraceae. It is also called bitterweed, carrot-grass, false ragweed, feverfew, parthenium-weed, ragweed parthenium, Santa Maria feverfew, whitetop, coentro-do-mato, losna-branca, cicutilla. It is biggest problem in cultivation in India. Photographed at Howrah, India by Biswarup Ganguly,
under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

‘Floods expected every 20 years, says UN

The News (UK): Catastrophic floods, similar to those recently witnessed in Pakistan and Australia that are normally anticipated once a century, can now be expected every 20 years instead, warn scientists. On the other hand, recent studies show, water demand in many countries will exceed supply by an estimated 40 per cent within a single generation, with one-third of humanity having half the water required for life’s basics.

Climate change, which is one of the least attractive topics for policy makers, has emerged as a major challenge to livelihood of millions of people. There is dire need to involve reputed scientists to help countries brace for drought, flood and unsafe water problems looming on a 15 to 20 year horizon.

The anticipated crises create a fast-growing need for technologies and services to discover, manage, filter, disinfect and/or desalinate water, improve infrastructure and distribution, mitigate flood damage and reduce water consumption by within a single generation, households and industry- the biggest water user by far at 71 per cent worldwide.

“Climate change will affect all societies and ecosystems most profoundly through the medium of water but there is no other way to generalize the crises ahead. At unpredictable times, too much water will arrive in some places and too little in others,” says Zafar Adeel, Chair of UN Water, which coordinates water-related efforts of 28 United Nations organisations and agencies. He is also Director of the United Nations University’s Canadian-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health.

“Water is a local issue demanding responses tailored to specific locations. Sadly, most communities, especially in developing countries, are ill-prepared to adjust to looming new realities. Canadian expertise in water management is greatly needed.”…

The January flooding in Toowoomba, shot by Kingbob86, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Climate migration as a security issue

Lorraine Elliott in Eurasia Review: The proposition that climate change will or could generate international security concerns has become prominent in public discourse over the last few years. Governments, international organisations and NGOs have increasingly directed their attention to climate change as a likely source of conflict. Climate change is most likely to be presented as a threat multiplier, overstretching societies’ adaptive capacities and creating or exacerbating political instability and violence. This is an updated version of predictions from the late 1980s and early 1990s that environmental degradation could contribute to various kinds of instability including civil disruption and perhaps even outright violence.

The United Nations has estimated that there could be ‘millions’ of environmental migrants by 2020. Various think tanks, government agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have produced reports that argue that migration can be a major risk factor in the chain of effects that link climate change and violent conflict. The expectation is that climate migration will result in tensions between those displaced within their own country and the communities into which they move, as well as between so-called climate ‘refugees’ (who cross an international border) and the states that receive them.

Various triggers for conflict have been identified — competition for scarce resources or economic support (or jobs); increased demands on social infrastructure; and cultural differences based on ethnicity or nationality. All of this is thought more likely in countries or regions that already suffer from other forms of social instability and that possess limited social and economic capacity to adapt.

Climate change-related migration is most likely to be a slow process. The language in the climate security and climate migration literature, on the other hand, conjures up the image of climate change-induced migration that is likely to be out of control and therefore highly threatening. The implication is that countries in the developed ‘North’ will somehow be threatened directly by the alleged ‘influx’ of climate refugees (the term itself is nevertheless contentious) or indirectly by instabilities that might arises in regions of strategic interest…

Palestinian refugees in 1948 fleeing the Nakba, shot by Fred Csasznik. Wikimedia Commons

Diversifying crops may protect yields against a more variable climate

EurekAlert: A survey of how farmers could protect themselves by growing a greater diversity of crops, published in the March issue of BioScience, has highlighted economical steps that farmers could take to minimize the threat to crops from global climate change, including a greater frequency of extreme climate events.

Adaptation to ongoing climate change is considered a policy priority for agriculture. The survey, by Brenda B. Lin of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, documents multiple instances of farmers protecting economically important crops, such as rice and other cereals, alfalfa, and coffee, from outbreaks of pests and disease, often associated with climate change, or simply from changed physical conditions. The farmers succeeded by switching from growing a single variety of crop to growing a broader range of species or varieties, either at the same time or in rotation, or by introducing structural variety into uniform fields.

Such techniques work, in general, because they make it harder for pathogens and pests to spread, and they may modulate climate extremes the crops experience. Not all attempts at agricultural diversification lead to such benefits, Lin points out. Yet increasingly, farmers have access to crop modeling techniques that can evaluate when a given adaptation technique might provide an economic benefit. Because accurate modeling requires extensive knowledge of on-the-ground data, such as soil profiles for water and nutrients, Lin argues for the development of extension and research staff who can assist farmers in gaining the information they need to use modeling techniques for adaptation….

Shot of a field of rape by Mike Harris, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Top bodies in the Philippines join forces to combat disasters and climate change

Prevention Web: The Climate Change Commission, the Philippines’ top body for climate change, and the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC), the country’s top body for disaster risk reduction and management, today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (M.O.U.) to jointly improve community resilience in the Philippines in the face of the looming problems presented by climate change.

The agreement comes on the heels of unusual heavy rains in the Philippines in early 2011, which caused landslides, flash floods, and storm surges that have already affected two million people and damaged approximately 5,400 houses. More extreme weather events in the future are likely to increase the number and scale of disasters.

Under the M.O.U., the two organizations will jointly support the formulation and implementation of disaster risk reduction and climate change action strategies by local government units and improve the provision of climate risk information to local authorities. They will also work to encourage local governments to coordinate the review and monitoring of their disaster risk reduction and climate change action plans.

…Voltaire T. Gazmin, Secretary of National Defence and Chairperson of the NDRRMC, and Commissioner Lucille Sering, Vice-Chair of the Climate Change Commission, signed the M.O.U. at an event titled “One Against Risks.” “Local governments are asking for a structured and well-coordinated approach to action plans stipulated by law. The NDRRMC and Climate Change Commission have therefore agreed to. With the M.O.U. in place, the organizational capacities and mechanisms of NDRRMC can be leveraged and existing resources can be better directed to link and implement action plans for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation,” explained Mr. Gazmin.

“The mission of the Climate Change Commission can never be achieved without integrating disaster risks. Expectation can never be managed properly without addressing both impacts of climate change and risks of disasters. At the most basic level, the CCC and the NDRRMC need to cooperate with each other if communities are truly going to adapt and be resilient,” said Ms. Sering….

Super Typhoon Cimaron struck the northernmost large island in the Philippines, Luzon, on October 29, 2006. From NASA

Water managers in western US brace for more dry times

Susan Montoya Bryan Tri-State Online (Arizona, Nevada, California): …The restoration work along Sandia Pueblo’s section of the Rio Grande is just the latest effort by tribal, state and federal water managers as they grapple with persistent drought across the West, the uncertainties of climate change, endangered species concerns and growing demand for a limited resource.

With the exception of New Mexico’s two major river basins — the Rio Grande and the Pecos — [Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Michael] Connor said the West so far this year is in “pretty good shape.” However, it’s not even March and he expects the rest of the year and beyond to be more challenging if the region fails to get more rain.

“We’re just looking at every conceivable option to manage the systems more efficiently and supplement water supplies where we can and save storage where we can. My priority right now is to build in enough efficiency and good water management operations,” he said, while acknowledging the possibility of water shortages.

In New Mexico, winter storms have brought little more than record freezing temperatures. January marked the lowest precipitation totals for the state as a whole since record-keeping began more than a century ago. State Engineer John D’Antonio described it as a dire situation.

Farther west, more than a decade of drought has hammered the Colorado River Basin, which delivers water to millions of people spread throughout seven states. Resources in the basin have dropped by about half from nearly full levels in 2000, and federal officials have said states like Arizona, California and Nevada could be subject to shortages as early as 2012 if drought conditions persist. Southern California industry and farms in the San Joaquin Valley have already felt the effects of limited supplies caused by drought and regulatory restrictions.

Despite the grim predictions, Connor said he’s hopeful because water managers over the last decade have started to focus less on the crisis of limited supplies and more on finding solutions for providing drinking water and habitat for endangered species as well as meeting interstate and international water delivery compacts….

An Arizona view of Lake Powell, shot by Wolfgang Staudt, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

China's drought-hit areas shrink after rain, snow

Xinhua: The size of drought-stricken areas in China is significantly smaller after rain and snow since Friday, the country's drought relief authority said Monday. As of Sunday, the total acreage of drought-hit farmlands in eight wheat-producing provinces was 37.82 million mu (2.52 million hectares), down 73.69 mu from 20 days ago when the drought was at its worst, said the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters (SFDH) in a statement on its website.

The statement said most of these areas had seen rain or snow since Feb. 25. The eight provinces include Shanxi, Shaanxi, Jiangsu, Gansu, Anhui, while the other three provinces of Shandong, Hebei and Henan are the worst affected with total drought-hit crop areas exceeding 24 millon mu.

The statement said that since the start of this month, local governments had focused efforts on irrigating 117.5 million mu of crops, more than 40 percent of the total in the eight provinces. Since the autumn, local governments in these regions had mobilized more than 14 million people to help irrigate 190 million mu of farmland….

Winter view of the Great Wall of China from space, via NASA

Water demand will 'outstrip supply by 40% within 20 years'

Daily Mail (UK): Water demand in many countries will exceed supply by 40 per cent within 20 years due to the combined threat of climate change and population growth, scientists have warned. A new way of thinking about water is needed as looming shortages threaten communities, agriculture and industry, experts said.

In the next two decades, a third of humanity will have only half the water required to meet basic needs, said researchers. Agriculture, which soaks up 71 per cent of water supplies, is also likely to suffer, affecting food production.

Filling the global water gap by supply measures alone would cost an estimated £124billion per year, a meeting in Canada was told. But this could be cut to between £31billion and £37billion by an approach which both raised supply and lowered demand, according to leading water economist Dr Margaret Catley-Carlson.

Around 300 scientists, policy makers, and economists attended the international meeting in Ottawa hosted by the Canadian Water Network (CWN) in the run-up to U.S. World Water Day on March 22. Dr Catley-Carlson, a director of the CWN, which co-ordinates water research and policy in Canada, and vice-chair of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Water Security, said: 'We need to brace for what could easily be humanity's greatest short-term challenges.'

The vast amount of 'virtual water' used in farming and industry was highlighted by Nicholas Parker, chairman of international environmental technology consultants Cleantech Group. …'What people don't often realise is how much water there is in everything we make and buy, from T-shirts to wine,' Mr Parker added….

The main spillway for the Rivière des Prairies dam in the north end of Montreal, shot by Blanchardb at en.wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Adapting to global warming the key to Vietnam's sustainable development

VietNam Net Bridge: Urban development must develop in a manner that takes climate change into account, including more green building, experts said at an international conference held in HCM City yesterday, Feb 27. Speaking at the conference, Olavo Rasquinho, secretary of the Typhoon Committee, an intergovernmental body based in Macau, said ineffective land-use planning, waste management and infrastructure construction would make cities more vulnerable to climate change.

If governments do not take climate-change adaptation seriously, flooding in particular would increase in frequency and intensity, causing damage to property, livelihoods, human health and economies. Rasquinho pointed to the example of downtown Beijing, where more rain is falling compared to suburban areas because of the number of tall buildings affecting the formation of clouds.

"Urban flooding is not an isolated issue and it should be integrated with urban system or planning," he said, suggesting that cities should engage in international cooperation to increase the managerial capacity of urban planners.

Melissa Susan Merryweather, coordinator of Viet Nam Green Building Council, told the conference attendees that architectural models should be chosen according to the kind of climate zone. "Western architectural prototypes are suitable for northern climates, but are less appropriate in a hot tropical climate," she said. She urged builders and investors to follow Viet Nam's new LOTUS system, somewhat similar to the LEED standard in the US, which awards points to green construction…

Quake pushes reinsurance prices up after Australia flood

Noah Buhayar in Bloomberg News writes about an issue that puts pressure on adaptation to climate impacts: New Zealand’s deadliest earthquake in eight decades, which toppled buildings and trapped workers in Christchurch, the country’s second-largest city, may lead to higher prices for reinsurance in the Asia-Pacific region. Rates may climb as companies including Munich Re and Swiss Reinsurance Co. take losses, compounding costs from last month’s flooding in Queensland, Australia, Credit Suisse Group AG wrote in a note to clients on Feb. 22. Reinsurance rates in other regions probably won’t be affected, Credit Suisse said.

“Losses are building in the reinsurance industry in the first quarter,” Credit Suisse wrote in the note. “With continued high levels of excess capital in the global reinsurance industry, the losses suffered to date are unlikely to be sufficient to cause a turn in global pricing, although we would expect pricing in the Asia-Pacific region to increase.”

…Reinsurers sell coverage to providers of primary insurance such as Allianz SE and American International Group Inc. to help protect against the cost of major claims. Reinsurance prices on policies renewed Jan. 1 worldwide declined 7.5 percent, according to the Guy Carpenter Global Property Catastrophe Rate on Line Index. Rates fell 6 percent a year earlier….

St Andrews College, Papanui Road. Liquefaction, causing water and silt to squirt up from underground. Shot by Tim, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Healthy snowpack bodes well for Arizona

Tony Davis in the Arizona Star: The northern Rockies have been slammed with enough snow this year that it might be possible to delay shortages of Colorado River water for Arizona water users for two to five years, officials say. After years of drought and below-normal snowpack in the Colorado's Upper Basin, primarily in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming, this year's snowpack there is now about 120 percent of normal, said a U.S. government forecasting agency.

The Colorado River Basin Forecasting Center predicts that April-July runoff into Lake Powell, which straddles the Arizona-Utah border, will be about 113 percent of normal. That's about 9 million acre-feet of water. An acre-foot is about 325,850 gallons.

Last year's April-June runoff was only 73 percent of average, or 5.79 million acre-feet, said Brenda Alcorn, a forecaster for the center in Salt Lake City. For the decade of 2000-2009, the Colorado's average annual flow into Lee's Ferry, just below Lake Powell, was the lowest for any decade since authorities started keeping records on the river more than a century ago.

Last year's low snowpack and runoff sent Lake Mead at the Arizona-Nevada border to its lowest level since 1937, about 1,082 feet above sea level. That prompted predictions that the Central Arizona Project might start seeing shortages affecting farmers, mines and other users of excess CAP water as early as 2012. Excess CAP is water that a local government, tribe or other user has a contract for but isn't buying or using.

But now, if the snowpack stays strong into the spring and the river runoff continues to flow as predicted, a shortage could be delayed for two to three years past 2012, said Dan Bunk, a Bureau of Reclamation hydrologist in Boulder City, Nevada…

Cascade Geyser, Upper Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. National Park Service

Climate change just one worry in struggling Haiti

Robert Shaw in AlertNet: A month before a massive earthquake derailed pretty much everything in Haiti, the government set up a climate change division within its environment ministry, building on a “National Adaptation Plan of Action” (NAPA) the government announced in 2006. But in the aftermath of the devastation, climate change has been all but forgotten in Haiti as the country struggles to deal with pressing rebuilding priorities.

“We have seen very little concrete action in terms of climate change,” admits Jean Pierre Moise, Haiti’s climate chief. Still, promises by rich nations to provide $100 billion a year in funding by 2020 to help vulnerable countries deal with climate change may present opportunities for Haiti to address its problems and vulnerabilities, particularly if it can overcome longstanding political paralysis, experts say.

“Over the last number of years it is true that there has been a void of leadership in Haiti, and with no budget, no authority and no capacity, very little can be achieved,” said Ross Gartley, a disaster risk specialist at the World Bank. But Haiti now has a “unique opportunity to position itself to get big financing further down the line … and to build solid capacity,” he said.

Many Haitians live in urban areas that are vulnerable to landslides and floods, a point not lost on the Ministry of the Environment. About a year before the devastating January 2010 earthquake, which claimed more than 50,000 lives, the ministry appointed 26 Haitian artists, actors, comedians and journalists as environment and disaster risk reduction ambassadors.

Haitian mayors are also beginning to understand the need to act on climate concerns, international experts say. "We have already begun work with the mayor of Port-au-Prince, Muscadin Jean-Yves Jason, to bring together local leaders from around the country and the world in raising political commitment to disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation,” said Ricardo Mena, head of the Americas office of the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction…

An aerial view of the UN headquarters in Haiti shows the devastation caused by an earthquake measuring 7 plus on the Richter scale rocked Port au Prince Haiti just before 5 pm, January 12, 2010. Shot by UN Photo/Logan Abassi UNDP Global, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Flood warning over UK government spending cuts

Kent News (UK): Research which proves global warming contributed to the Kentish floods of 2000 should serve as a warning about the consequences of government spending cuts. That is the view of Kent Green Party spokesman Steve Dawe, who claims the Coalition is failing to adequately prepare for climate change by slashing the amount it spends on flood protection schemes.

His comments are in response to a ground-breaking study by Oxford University scholar Myles Allen, who found that global warming made the autumn 2000 floods – which hit Maidstone and Tonbridge in particular when the River Medway burst its banks – between two and three times more likely to happen. Mr Dawe said the research confirms predictions made 20 years ago that climate change would make naturally occurring events more frequent and damaging in the future.

He added: "Under the previous government the Environment Agency wanted £1 billion a year for flood defence projects in view of the various floods going back to 2000 in particular. "The Government agreed to raise the funding to £800 million a year, but now the Coalition is cutting this (by eight per cent to £540m a year). The justification for these cuts should now be challenged because if they don’t reverse the policy and recognise the needs of the Environment Agency then we will all end up paying for the consequences of further floods."

Between September and November, 2000, more than 500mm of rain fell in the UK – the wettest autumn since records began in 1766. More than 10,000 homes were flooded and £3.5bn of insurance claims were filed. The new research, which was compiled through www.climateprediction.net, represents the first time scientists have quantified the role of human-induced climate change in increasing the risk of a serious flood…

Flooding at River Rother from Blackwall Bridge Sussex to the left and Kent to the right. Shot by Oast House Archive, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Transgenic fungus 'could be powerful weapon against malaria'

Daniela Hirschfeld in SciDev.net: Infecting mosquitoes with a transgenic fungus could drastically cut their ability to transmit malaria, according to research published today in Science (25 February). Existing efforts to develop fungal malaria control focus on slowly killing mosquitoes before they have the chance to pass on Plasmodium, the malaria parasite. But they rely on mosquitoes being inoculated with parasitic fungus soon after Plasmodium infection, which limits their use.

In this latest research, scientists have changed tactics and instead focused on reducing the infectiousness of the mosquitoes, so that fungus could be applied later in a mosquito's lifecycle but still cut malaria transmission.

The researchers genetically modified (GM) the fungus Metarhizium anisopliae, which infects mosquitoes on contact, to express molecules which impede the entrance of sporozoites — the cells that malaria parasites produce to infect new hosts — to the salivary gland of the mosquitoes, reducing the number that can be passed to humans through a bite.

The GM fungi reduced the number of sporozoites in mosquito salivary glands by up to 98 per cent compared to those infected with the non-GM fungi. Within just two days of infection 80 per cent of mosquitoes could not transmit malaria anymore compared to only 14 per cent of fungi-free mosquitoes and 32 per cent of those infected with non-GM fungi….

Ring-stage plasmodium in a smear of human blood, shot by Bobjgalindo, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Climate satellite grounded for at least a week

Janene Scully in the Santa Maria Times (California): With crews still troubleshooting an elusive problem that led them to scrub Wednesday’s liftoff attempt, the Taurus XL rocket launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base has been delayed for at least a week. Liftoff of the rocket carrying NASA’s climate-studying Glory satellite reportedly has slipped to early or mid-March. Crews have suspended launch preparations until they solve a problem with ground support equipment, officials said Thursday morning.

Just before 2 a.m. Wednesday, with less than 10 minutes before the rocket was scheduled to lift off, ground controllers spotted a glitch before transitioning the Taurus to internal power. A launch window of just 47 seconds — essentially just one shot a day — left no time for the launch team to troubleshoot the problem and proceed with blastoff.

“We had an indication that a ‘hold-fire’ command was sent when indeed it had not,” said Omar Baez, NASA launch director. The commands originated from the Vehicle Interface Control Console in the mobile launch support van stationed a few miles from the launch pad. The problem has not yet been isolated, and troubleshooting continues, officials said Thursday.

The cold winter storm headed to the Central Coast also has crews taking precautions to ensure that Taurus and the Glory satellite remain healthy…

NASA's Glory satellite, in a rendering from 2008

Avoiding Asian water waters

Mohammad Jamil the Pakistan Observer: The US Senate report released the other day warned that the Indus Water Treaty may fail to avert water wars between India and Pakistan, acknowledging that dams India is building in occupied Kashmir will limit supply of water to Pakistan at crucial moments. … Currently, the most controversial dam project is the proposed 330-megawatt dam on the Kishenganga River, a tributary of the Indus. The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee should have come out with the solution to the problem instead of giving an impression that Indus Water Treaty has become redundant. In fact, it is the responsibility of the international community to urge India to honour its commitment under the treaty. And this is the only way to avoid war.

With the climate change and as a consequence shrinking water availability across the Middle East, Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, violent conflict between states is increasingly likely. This matter was on the agenda of annul World Water Week forum in Stockholm held in 2006, but it could not answer the question raised in the meeting whether we are heading for an era of “hydrological warfare” in which rivers, lakes and aquifers become national security assets to be fought over, or controlled through proxy armies and client states? Or can water act as a force for peace and cooperation? It has been estimated by the experts that by 2025, more than two billion people are expected to live in countries that find it difficult or impossible to mobilize the water resources needed to meet the needs of agriculture, industry and households. Population growth, urbanization and the rapid development of manufacturing industries are relentlessly increasing demand for finite water resources. Symptoms of the resulting water stress are increasingly visible. In northern China, rivers now run dry in their lower reaches for much of the year. In parts of Pakistan and India, groundwater levels are falling so rapidly that from 10 percent to 20 percent of agricultural production is under threat.

In the past, there have been wars between the countries over religions, usurpation of territories and control of resources including oil, but in view of acute shortages of water in Africa, Middle East, Asia and elsewhere, the future wars could be fought over water.

In addition to Kashmir dispute, the Indus River Basin has been an area of conflict between India and Pakistan for about four decades. Spanning 1,800 miles, the river and its tributaries together make up one of the largest irrigation canals in the world. Dams and canals built in order to provide hydropower and irrigation have dried up stretches of the Indus River. The division of the river basin water has created friction among the countries of South Asia, and among their states and provinces. Accusations of overdrawing of share of water made by each province have resulted in the lack of water supplies to coastal regions of Pakistan. India and Bangladesh have also dispute over Ganges River water and India is resorting to water theft there as well. Nepal and Bangladesh are also victims of India’s water thievery. India had dispute with Bangladesh over Farrakha Barrage, with Nepal over Mahakali River and with Pakistan over 1960 Indus Water Treaty….

Baglihar Dam on river Chenab in Doda district, Jammu and Kashmir, shot by Vinayak.razdan at en.wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

California's water situation is bleak

Robert F. Service in Science Insider: If California hopes to prevent further extinctions of native species of endangered fish, the state should abandon efforts to take desperate measures to save individual species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and instead look to bolster entire aquatic ecosystems. That's among a long list of recommendations in a new book that was released last night from the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC). It was written by a team of scientists, engineers, economists, and legal experts from three University of California (UC) campuses and Stanford University.

"Our assessment of the current water situation [in California] is bleak," says Ellen Hanak, a PPIC economist, who co-authored the study. "California has essentially run out of cheap, new water sources," Hanak says. Water quality is deteriorating. Pollution from agricultural runoff and other "non-point" sources is increasing. And efforts to manage water and species recovery are fragmented, with hundreds of local and regional agencies responsible for water supply, water treatment, flood control, and land-use decisions. The upshot is that, despite decades of actions to save aquatic species under the ESA, the trend has been relentlessly downward. Seven of the state’s 129 native fish species are already extinct. Since 1989, the number of native fish species listed as threatened or endangered has more than doubled to 31. And over that same period, the number of species that were “reasonably secure” has dropped from 44% in 1989 to 38% in 1995 and 22% in 2010.

Even worse crises are looming. Most threatening is the vulnerability of the hub of the state’s fresh water system, the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta, which drains water from the northern Sierra mountains. Massive pumps in the southern end of the delta suck nearly 10 billion cubic meters of water per year from the delta and send it to farmers in the Central Valley and urban residents in Southern California. Over the past century, farmers have built a network of more than 1700 kilometers of levees to protect farmland in the delta from floodwaters. Those levees, most of which are simple earthen berms, are weak and vulnerable to earthquakes, seasonal floods, and rising waters expected as a result of climate change. The failure of even a fraction of the levees would draw massive amounts of saltwater in from San Francisco Bay, forcing the state to shut off the pumps, cutting off water supplies for many months, and costing the state’s economy billions of dollars, the report says. Risks from droughts, floods, climate change, and declining habitat for fish are also rising over time.

“Today’s system of water management, developed in previous times for past conditions, is leading the state down a path of environmental and economic deterioration. We’re waiting for the next drought, flood, or lawsuit to bring catastrophe,” Hanak says…

This photo was published opposite page 209 of "California Highways: A Descriptive Record of Road Development by the State and Such Counties as Have Paved Highways", 1920, written by Ben Blow. It is captioned as follows: The new highway. Picture made in 1919.

Land management change urgently needed in Australia

Colin Bettles in Stock & Land (Australia): An urgent imperative exists to change how the Australian landscape is managed, for food security and climate change reasons, especially farmland, according to former Governor General, Major General Michael Jeffery. But in that transition, farmers must be viewed not only as food growers but as the primary custodians of the Australian landscape and “rewarded accordingly”.

Major Jeffery outlined his thoughts on agriculture’s critical importance to climate change adaptation, during the opening address of a high level land use forum organised by Independent MP Rob Oakeshott, in Canberra last week. Major Jeffery said the challenges confronting Australia in dealing with a changing climate, land degradation, food and water security and the needs of increasing global populations were “unprecedented”.

In casting that warning, he said governments needed to take the issue far more seriously by handing the responsibility for managing the various interlocking tasks attached to a positive and sustainable outcome, to the Deputy Prime Minister and Deputy Premiers or their equivalents.

“Water is fundamental to life but it can only do its job properly through the aegis of healthy soils,” he said. “If we save our soil we save our planet. The common thread is carbon and its key role in building soil health and thus naturally regulating the water cycle through the photosynthetic and evapotranspiration action of trees, plants and a regenerated soil structure. But to do this, effective and coordinated change is essential now….”

George Elvery on a tractor in Toowoomba, around 1927

Drought rattles farmers in eastern China

Terra Daily: …China is the largest global producer and consumer of wheat. A bad harvest would not only devastate local farmers -- if China were to buy a large amount of wheat overseas due to a crop failure, world commodity prices would surge.

The government has allocated 13 billion yuan ($2 billion) to combat the drought, and the central bank announced this week it would provide 10 billion yuan in loans to farmers. But the aid injection cannot make the rains come...The central government is implementing a number of emergency measures such as diverting water to the worst-affected areas and building wells.

….According to Ma Wenfeng, an analyst who specialises in cereal markets at Orient Agribusiness Consultant in Beijing, China's winter wheat harvest should only diminish by around two percent if the situation does not deteriorate. But "anticipation of bad (wheat) harvests linked to droughts in China, India, East Africa, as well as a bad rice harvest in Southeast Asia" has put an upward pressure on prices on international markets, Ma adds.

Experts are calling on China to implement more long-term measures to fight drought, so that the dire situation in Shandong and other affected provinces does not recur.

How severe can climate change become?

National Science Foundation: How severe can climate change become in a warming world? Worse than anything we've seen in written history, according to results of a study appearing this week in the journal Science.

An international team of scientists led by Curt Stager of Paul Smith's College, New York, has compiled four dozen paleoclimate records from sediment cores in Lake Tanganyika and other locations in Africa. The records show that one of the most widespread and intense droughts of the last 50,000 years or more struck Africa and Southern Asia 17,000 to 16,000 years ago.

Between 18,000 and 15,000 years ago, large amounts of ice and meltwater entered the North Atlantic Ocean, causing regional cooling but also major drought in the tropics, says Paul Filmer, program director in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the research along with NSF's Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences and its Division of Ocean Sciences.

"The height of this time period coincided with one of the most extreme megadroughts of the last 50,000 years in the Afro-Asian monsoon region with potentially serious consequences for the Paleolithic humans that lived there at the time," says Filmer.

The "H1 megadrought," as it's known, was one of the most severe climate trials ever faced by anatomically modern humans. Africa's Lake Victoria, now the world's largest tropical lake, dried out, as did Lake Tana in Ethiopia, and Lake Van in Turkey. The Nile, Congo and other major rivers shriveled, and Asian summer monsoons weakened or failed from China to the Mediterranean, meaning the monsoon season carried little or no rainwater.

… The lack of a complete explanation opens the question of whether an extreme megadrought could strike again as the world warms and de-ices further. "There's much less ice left to collapse into the North Atlantic now," Stager says, "so I'd be surprised if it could all happen again--at least on such a huge scale."…

Lake Victoria seen from space, via NASA

Innovative micro-insurance program expands to protect Kenyan farmers from drought

EurekAlert: With Kenyan farmers increasingly fearing massive weather-related losses, UAP Insurance, Syngenta Foundation and mobile operator Safaricom announced today a major expansion of Kilimo Salama, an innovative and affordable crop insurance program that will now cover the expected value of farm harvests, more crops and many more farmers against drought and flooding, while also protecting against livestock losses.

The new program, called Kilimo Salama Plus, builds on the original Kilimo Salama—Kiswahili for "safe farming"—which was launched last year. It uses a low-cost mobile phone payment and data system that is linked to solar-powered weather stations to issue an insurance policy and rapidly compensate farmers for investments in seeds, fertilizer, and other inputs that are lost to either insufficient or excessive rains.

Kilimo Salama Plus retains this innovative approach while expanding from the initial focus to go beyond just inputs to give farmers the opportunity to insure the value of their harvest. In addition, due to high demand, farmers can now insure a wider array of crops including maize, wheat, beans, and sorghum.

…UAP Insurance Managing Director James Wambugu said that Kilimo Salama Plus had expanded the range of crops under cover due to rising popularity of its affordable and easily-dispensable nature. "It also follows our drive to simplify insurance and in the process expand access to more crop and livestock farmers," he explained.

…Expounding on the successes of the initial program, Marco Ferroni, Executive Director of the Syngenta Foundation, said, "We have seen 12,000 farmers in Kenya take advantage of the original Kilimo Salama and we should be able to reach 50,000 farmers with Kilimo Salama Plus this year and provide far more insurance options."

"We have quickly seen this initiative grow from a small pilot program in 2009 to become the largest agricultural insurance program in Africa and the first to use mobile phone technology to speed access and payouts to rural farmers," he added….

Global red imported fire ant invasions traced to southern US

University of Florida News: Red imported fire ant invasions around the globe in recent years can now be traced to the southern U.S., where the nuisance insect gained a foothold in the 1930s, new University of Florida research has found. Native to South America, the ant had been contained there and in the southeastern U.S. before turning up in faraway places in the last 20 years — including California, China, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand.

The study in Friday’s edition of Science was co-authored by Marina Ascunce, a postdoctoral associate with the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus and Chin-Cheng Yang of National Taiwan University. The team’s findings could prove helpful in finding new ways to control the invasive species, Solenopsis invicta, Ascunce said. Americans spend more than $6 billion a year to control the ants and offset damage they cause, including medical expenses and $750 million in agricultural losses.

“Fire ants are very annoying pests, and they cause people to suffer,” Ascunce said. “People who are allergic can die (from ant stings).” Red imported fire ants are highly aggressive. They have a painful sting, often discovered by humans only after stepping on a mound.

The research team used several types of molecular genetic markers to trace the origins of ants in nine locations where recent invasions occurred. They traced all but one of the invasions to the southern U.S. The exception was an instance where the ants moved from the southeastern U.S. to California, then to Taiwan.

Ascunce said the scientists were surprised by the findings. “I thought that at least one of the populations in the newly invaded areas would have come from South America, but all of the genetic data suggest the most likely source in virtually every case was the southern U.S.,” she said. The study results show the problematic side of a robust global trade and travel network….

Photo of fire ants taken by Scott Bauer, from the US Department of Agriculture

Expert rejects shift of Australia's cyclone zone

Bill Hoffman in the Sunshine Coast Daily (Australia): The planned shift of the east coast cyclone zone south to cover the Sunshine Coast and Caboolture was a politically motivated exercise that had generated considerable cynicism from the engineering community. That is the opinion of Dr George Walker who wrote the post-Cyclone Tracy engineering report that reset Australian building codes.

He said current standards, where new Coast buildings were required to be able to withstand a category three cyclone, were reasonable The Australian Building Codes Board is considering a draft report that recommends the Cyclone Region C boundary, which starts near Cairns and ends south of Bundaberg, be changed to take in the Coast and Caboolture.

Builders fear that would add up to $15,000 to the cost of a new home although this estimate has been questioned by some engineering experts who say the actual component costs would be significantly less. Dr Walker, of Mapleton, who has studied tropical cyclones and their effects on building for the past 40 years, said the zone change appeared to be a purely political exercise by a government wanting to be seen to be doing something about global warming.

No climate-change sceptic – he is a peer science reviewer for the International Panel on Climate Change – Dr Walker remains highly sceptical of the cost-benefit of the zone shift which he says stops conveniently short of the state’s capital where it would have the greatest impact on disaster mitigation. He said too much emphasis was being applied to upper range impacts of climate change….

Torn shade sails in Townsville after Cyclone Yasi, shot by Rob and Stephanie Levy, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Models guiding climate policy are "dangerously optimistic"

Nadya Anscombe in Environmental Research Web: Integrated assessment models (IAMs) used by researchers today – where climate change data is integrated with economic data – are dangerously flawed because they are based on naïve assumptions, according to Kevin Anderson from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change at the University of Manchester, UK.

Anderson told environmentalresearchweb: "The vast majority of IAMs assume low emission growth rates; early emission peaks; annual reduction rates limited to between 2 and 4%; untested geoengineering; and a high penetration of nuclear power alongside untested 'carbon capture and storage' technologies. Because IAMs typically use similar and inappropriate sets of assumptions, they repeatedly come up with the same narrow and fundamentally flawed answers."

Anderson argues that actual emissions growth rates are much higher than those used by most IAMs, and that even ambitious emission peaks are much nearer 2020–2030 than the naïve estimates of 2010–2016 used by most models. His calculations have shown that, if we want to aim for a high chance of not exceeding a 2°C increase in global temperature by the end of the century, our energy emissions need to be cut by nearer 10% annually rather than the 2–4% that economists say is possible with a growing economy.

"The output from today's models is politically palatable," said Anderson. "The reality is far more depressing, but many scientists are too afraid to stand up and speak out for fear of being ridiculed. Our job is not to be liked but to give a raw and dispassionate assessment of the scale of the challenge faced by the global community." In a recent paper in Philosophical Transactions, Anderson and his colleague Alice Bows of the Sustainable Consumption Institute at the University of Manchester warn that "there is now little to no chance of maintaining the rise in global mean surface temperature at below 2°C, despite repeated high-level statements to the contrary".

This, they say, is because of a lack of contextual thinking. For example, Anderson and Bows found that several models assumed that fossil-fuel carbon-dioxide emissions from developing nations would exceed those from industrialised nations as late as 2013–2025, despite the actual date being around 2006…

Pococurante's library, from the 1759 edition of Voltaire's Candide

Conditions for tornadoes ramping up across the southern US

Doyle Rice in USA Today: An outbreak of severe storms and tornadoes is likely across the South today, and torrential rain is forecast for other areas as the nasty weather heads east. The most dangerous storms will strike late afternoon into the evening as they move across Arkansas and spread into northern Mississippi and western Tennessee, according to the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) in Norman, Okla.

"Tornadoes, a few possibly strong, and particularly damaging winds will be possible," the SPC says. The big cities most at risk are Dallas, Little Rock, Memphis and Nashville, the Weather Channel reports.

The forecast calls for as much as 5 inches of rain to drench the lower Mississippi Valley and Ohio Valley regions. Flood watches are posted from Arkansas to Pennsylvania. This year, 11 tornadoes have struck across the USA, the SPC reports. Severe weather, which can include tornadoes or storms producing large hail or damaging winds, is running 60% below average this year, Weather Channel severe weather expert Greg Forbes says.

"The cold weather has suppressed the severe weather activity," he says. "We're now getting into the time of the year for the severe weather threat to ramp up." More severe storms that are potentially more powerful could form early next week, Weather Channel meteorologist Tom Moore says…

A powerful 2007 tornado in Manitoba, shot by Justin1569, Wikimedia Commons (where it has garnered plenty of recognition, since it's a great image), under the Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Kenyan farmers adapt to climate change but investments needed

Africa Science News: Kenya’s smallholder farmers are taking steps to adapt to climate change but key investments could help reduce the threat to food security and economic development posed by increasingly variable and severe weather, new research led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) says.

According to a survey carried out in 2009 and 2010 by IFPRI, KARI, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), and the University of Georgia with funding from the World Bank, almost half of all farm households listed irrigation as the most desired adaptive measure, followed by planting trees (39%). They identified the lack of money, credit, and access to water as major obstacles to improved adaptation.

Researchers surveyed 710 farm households in seven sites spanning temperate, humid, arid, and semi-arid agroecological zones. More than eight in ten farm households say they have been struck by drought at least once in the past five years. Drought is the key climate-related shock. Researchers expect the frequency to increase even more, possibly causing irreversible decreases in livestock numbers in some regions.

"Climate change has and will increasingly affect agricultural livelihoods and food security in Kenya, making adaptation essential," said Barrack Okoba, national research coordinator for soil and water management at KARI. "This research can support the development of better programs and policies to assist farmers in adapting to global warming."…

A 28-member farming group in Machakos, Kenya farms a 4-acre plot where they grow oranges, avocado, vegetables, maize. Shot by McKay Savage, Women from the Mbini Self-Help Group showing off the fields,Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Better mapping of human settlements supports disaster management

Terra Daily: When a major disaster strikes in remote parts of the world, knowing if the area is populated, and how densely, is crucial for the effective organisation of humanitarian operations. The Global Human Settlements Layer (GHSL), developed by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC), will soon provide this detailed information for the first time on a global scale. The breakthrough is new advanced algorithms, developed by the JRC, that allow automatic analysis of medium resolution data provided by European satellites. The first test results confirm that the combined use of ICT technologies permit fast and precise mapping of built-up areas, anywhere in the world.

In addition, the algorithms allow massive datasets to be processed more efficiently and rapidly, making it possible to monitor the changes in human settlements regularly and equally importantly, to collect the same information from heterogeneous satellite data. This can help to reduce risks in areas that experience recurrent disasters and to focus post-disaster humanitarian interventions on the most likely populated places in disaster affected countries and regions.

The European Commission's Joint Research Centre, in collaboration with the European Space Agency's (ESA) Earth Observation Ground Segment Department (EOP-G) has produced the first prototype of a new Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) using European radar satellite (ENVISAT) capacity and advanced automatic pattern recognition algorithms.

One of the major problems in disaster-struck areas in less developed countries is the lack of relevant and up to date pre-disaster information that can help to quickly locate and assess the type and extent of damage, especially in populated places. The GHSL will help to focus damage analysis very quickly over populated places, leading to improvements in emergency rescue and humanitarian relief operations.

The GHSL will help to improve the quantification of the building stock which is valuable information both for risk assessment activities and for emergency rescue operations. As the building stock is an indicator of human presence, this critical piece of information on population (often lacking in remote areas) can help the first responder communities to focus their efforts in a particular area…

An 18th century map of an African village. From Antoine-François Prevost d'Exiles: Histoire generale des voyages ou nouvelle collection de toutes les relations de voyages par met et par terre..., Paris: Didot 1749–1758.

Low-cost filter to provide safe water in emergency

Sify News: McGill researchers have come up with a new and inexpensive way of filtering water using silver nanoparticles. Disasters such as floods, tsunamis, and earthquakes often result in the spread of diseases like gastroenteritis, giardiasis and even cholera because of an immediate shortage of clean drinking water.

Now, researchers at McGill University have taken a key step towards making a cheap, portable, paper-based filter coated with silver nanoparticles to be used in these emergency settings.

…Gray's team, which included graduate student Theresa Dankovich, coated thick (0.5mm) hand-sized sheets of an absorbent porous paper with silver nanoparticles and then poured live bacteria through it. The results were definitive. Even when the paper contains a small quantity of silver (5.9 mg of silver per dry gram of paper), the filter is able to kill nearly all the bacteria and produce water that meets the standards set by the American Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)….

Detail of sterling silver "Melrose" pattern bowl by Gorham Manufacturing Company. GFDL permission granted by: Stan Skwarek - Cobblestone Antiques - Arlington Heights, IL 60004 - via email Aug 11, 2006. Image originally taken by him for eBay auction. under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license