Rainwater harvesting in Texas

Terra Daily: For the past few years, one of the most common questions facing the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) hasn't been over contentious water rights or proposed water projects; it's been from homeowners wanting to know what type of roofing material is most suitable for collecting rainwater for indoor domestic use. "Rainwater harvesting is becoming fairly widespread, at least in Central Texas. There's interest born out of necessity because people are simply running out of water in rural areas or they're interested in conserving water supplies and it's good for the environment," said Dr. Sanjeev Kalaswad, the TWDB's rainwater harvesting coordinator.

But when it came to responding to residents' questions about which roof collection surfaces are best suited for rainwater harvesting, TWDB didn't have a good, science-based answer to give, Kalaswad said. That's when the Cockrell School of Engineering came in to help.

With funding from TWDB, Cockrell School faculty and students conducted an in-depth study - recently published in the academic journal Water Research - examining the effects of conventional and alternative roofing materials on the quality of harvested rainwater.

The study, led by civil, architectural and environmental engineering Assistant Professor Mary Jo Kirisits, showed that, of the five roofing materials tested, metal (specifically Galvalume), concrete tile and cool roofs produce the highest harvested rainwater quality for indoor domestic use.

The study also showed that rainwater from asphalt fiberglass shingle roofs and increasingly popular "green" roofs contain high levels of dissolved organic carbon (DOC). Although other potential pollutants can be significantly lower on green roofs (turbidity and aluminum), the high DOCs are significant where these roofs would be used for potable rainwater collection.

Water with DOC is not necessarily dangerous on its own, but Kirisits said when it's mixed with chlorine - a common product used to disinfect water - the two substances react to form byproducts that potentially cause cancer and other negative human health effects. "Someone who already has a rainwater system is probably not going to change their roofing material based on this study, but this information is useful for anyone who's trying to make an informed decision about what material to use," Kirisits said….

Rain gutters in Languedoc, not Texas, shot by Debs, under the Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Satellites keeping busy with this week's severe weather

Red Orbit: Satellites have been busy this week covering severe weather across the U.S. Today, the GOES-13 satellite and NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image of the huge stretch of clouds associated with a huge and soggy cold front as it continues its slow march eastward. Earlier this week, NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite captured images of severe weather that generated tornadoes over Louisiana.

Today the eastern third of the U.S. is being buffered by a large storm that stretches from southeastern Minnesota east to Wisconsin and Michigan, then south through the Ohio Valley and all the way down to eastern Louisiana. That massive storm system was captured in an image by the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite called GOES-13.

GOES satellites are operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and NASA's GOES Project, located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. creates some of the GOES satellite images and animations.

Dennis Chesters, a GOES Project scientist at NASA Goddard, noted "The wide angle view provided by GOES reveals that the on-shore flow from the Gulf is part of a much larger oceanic circulation centered east of the Bahamas. That is driving a nearly unlimited supply of warm moisture over the eastern U.S. from as far south as Jamaica. With all that energy to work with, the wall of condensation and rainfall at the front pushed convective towers up to the stratosphere, which cast long shadows into the dawn behind the storm."…

A fulldisk of the earth on September 3, 2010 by GOES-13 satellite

Global warming versus climate change

Science Daily: Many Americans are skeptical about whether the world's weather is changing, but apparently the degree of skepticism varies systematically depending on what that change is called. According to a University of Michigan study published in the forthcoming issue of Public Opinion Quarterly, more people believe in "climate change" than in "global warming."

"Wording matters," said Jonathon Schuldt, the lead author of the article about the study and a doctoral candidate in the U-M Department of Psychology.

Schuldt co-authored the study with U-M psychologists Sara Konrath and Norbert Schwarz. For the research, they conducted a question wording experiment in the American Life Panel, an online survey conducted by RAND, with a national sample of 2,267 U.S. adults. Participants were asked to report their level of certainty about whether global climate change is a serious problem. In the following question, half the participants heard one version, half heard the other:

"You may have heard about the idea that the world's temperature may have been going up [changing] over the past 100 years, a phenomenon sometimes called 'global warming' ['climate change']. What is your personal opinion regarding whether or not this has been happening?

Overall, 74 percent of people thought the problem was real when it was referred to as climate change, while about 68 percent thought it was real when it was referred to as global warming….

William Hogarth's 1755 "An Election Entertainment"

Eco-farming could save the climate and double food production

Stephen Leahy in IPS: Eco-farming could double food production in entire regions within 10 years while mitigating climate change, according to a new U.N. report released Tuesday in Geneva. An urgent transformation to ‘eco-farming’ is the only way to end hunger and face the challenges of climate change and rural poverty, said Olivier De Schutter, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the right to food, following the presentation of his annual report focusing on agro-ecology and the right to food to the U.N. Human Rights Council.

"Agro-ecology mimics nature not industrial processes. It replaces the external inputs like fertiliser with knowledge of how a combination of plants, trees and animals can enhance productivity of the land," De Schutter told IPS, stressing that, "Yields went up 214 percent in 44 projects in 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa using agro-ecological farming techniques over a period of 3 to 10 years… far more than any GM [genetically modified] crop has ever done."

Other recent scientific assessments have shown that small farmers in 57 countries using agro-ecological techniques obtained average yield increases of 80 percent. Africans’ average increases were 116 percent. "Today’s scientific evidence demonstrates that agro- ecological methods outperform the use of chemical fertilisers in boosting food production in regions where the hungry live," De Schutter said.

Agro-ecology applies ecological science to the design of agricultural systems. It enhances soil productivity and protects crops against pests by relying on the natural elements. Eco-farming doesn’t require expensive inputs of fossil-fuel- based pesticides, fertilisers, machinery or hybrid seeds. It is ideally suited for poor smallholder farmers and herders who are the bulk of the one billion hungry people in the world. Efforts by governments and major donors such as the 400-million- dollar Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) to subsidise fertilizer and hybrid seeds will produce quick boosts in yields but are not sustainable in the long term, De Schutter said.…

Arcimboldo's "Portrait with Vegetables"

Uganda’s food security future looking bleak

Ephraim Kasozi in the Daily Monitor (Uganda): Uganda should brace for more devastating effects of drought in the months of May and June. Mr Moses Muwanga, the chief executive officer of the National Organic Agriculture Movement of Uganda says the condition is not yet severe for crop farmers because there are still food stocks available. “We (farmers) are supposed to be planting because ideally it is normally raining around this season to ensure harvest for early growing crops like beans.

“We are currently unable to plant since it is a dry season but the shortage of food will be felt around May-June after the stocks are exploited,” says Mr Muwanga.
He added that the country will experience shortage mainly of annual crops like bananas, coffee and pineapples.

“For this situation, the effects will be different in various areas. For crops like pineapples and coffee, they are flowering but because of the dry season, the flowers will wither and as a result they will not bear fruit causing a shortage during the would be harvest season,” says Mr Muwanga who was not certain how much impact the drought would cause.

He was, however, quick to add that the shortage of food would result in shortage of money especially for the populations that depend entirely on agriculture….

Climate change debate must include women's voices

Deutsche Welle: In 2007, cyclone Sidr battered the western coast of Bangladesh, killing more than 3,000 people – the majority of them women. It was no coincidence, according to Sharmind Neelormi, who's researched climate change vulnerability and impacts in her country.

Not only were women in remote areas, often shut out from public life, the last to hear of the storm warning. Neelormi says many also shunned existing cyclone shelters many of which typically had just one flooded toilet on the ground floor. While the sight of men relieving themselves in the open is not unusual in Bangladesh, cultural mores make it impossible for women to do the same. "It was a basic engineering fault which could have saved the lives of thousands of women," Neelormi said.

The 41-year-old has since lobbied the government to redesign cyclone shelters. But the example underlines what some campaigners call the lack of a "female factor" in the climate change debate. Climate negotiations and adaptation strategies, they say, have responded poorly to the needs of women despite being most at risk.

A 2009 study by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) found that women in developing nations bear the disproportionate burden of climate change since they do most of the agricultural work and are therefore affected by weather patterns impacting on food, energy and water. Describing "a cycle of deprivation," the report said that women in developing nations had less access to income-earning opportunities. They also managed households and cared for families, which limited their mobility and increased "their vulnerability to sudden weather-related natural disasters," it said….

An aerial view of a devastated village in Bangladesh after Cyclone Sidr in 2007, photo by US Navy

NASA finds polar ice adding more to rising seas

NASA/JPL News: The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at an accelerating pace, according to a new NASA-funded satellite study. The findings of the study -- the longest to date of changes in polar ice sheet mass -- suggest these ice sheets are overtaking ice loss from Earth's mountain glaciers and ice caps to become the dominant contributor to global sea level rise, much sooner than model forecasts have predicted.

The nearly 20-year study reveals that in 2006, a year in which comparable results for mass loss in mountain glaciers and ice caps are available from a separate study conducted using other methods, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets lost a combined mass of 475 gigatonnes a year on average. That's enough to raise global sea level by an average of 1.3 millimeters (.05 inches) a year. (A gigatonne is one billion metric tons, or more than 2.2 trillion pounds.)

The pace at which the polar ice sheets are losing mass was found to be accelerating rapidly. Each year over the course of the study, the two ice sheets lost a combined average of 36.3 gigatonnes more than they did the year before. In comparison, the 2006 study of mountain glaciers and ice caps estimated their loss at 402 gigatonnes a year on average, with a year-over-year acceleration rate three times smaller than that of the ice sheets.

"That ice sheets will dominate future sea level rise is not surprising -- they hold a lot more ice mass than mountain glaciers," said lead author Eric Rignot, jointly of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and the University of California, Irvine. "What is surprising is this increased contribution by the ice sheets is already happening. If present trends continue, sea level is likely to be significantly higher than levels projected by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007. Our study helps reduce uncertainties in near-term projections of sea level rise."…

Store Glacier, West Greenland. A new NASA funded study finds that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at an accelerating pace, three times faster than that of mountain glaciers and ice caps. Image credit: Eric Rignot, NASA JPL

Switzerland commits to long-term Pakistan aid

Billi Bierling in Swissinfo.ch: Switzerland has repeated a commitment to continue long-term support for the vulnerable and needy in northwestern Pakistan, following last summer’s devastating floods. The director of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Martin Dahinden, has just concluded a four-day visit to the region during which he looked at development projects in the Swat Valley and Nowshera in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province (KPK).

“One of the most significant things I saw during my visit was the resilience and the hope of the people, even though they experienced so much hardship,” Dahinden told swissinfo.ch, referring to the floods that inundated Pakistan at the end of July last year.

The raging waters destroyed 1.7 million houses, washed away 2.2 million hectares of crops and affected more than 18 million people across the country. In the very first few days of the disaster, Switzerland took immediate action and provided emergency relief, delivering drinking water, food and hygiene kits for thousands of affected people.

In the Swat Valley alone, where most of the SDC’s developing projects are based, more than 14,000 homes were partially or completely damaged and 95 per cent of the bridges were washed away, cutting off dozens of villages from the rest of the country. “We were quick with our emergency response, but we will now focus on livelihood and disaster risk reduction programmes as this is important for the long-term recovery of the country,” explained Dahinden, whose visit was the first such high-level visit in five years…

Climate adaptation is bringing sceptics in the US and UK onboard - but is it fast enough?

Lynn Morris in the Ecologist: Some of the more conservative areas of the US like Florida are now adapting to climate change yet they are still unwilling to accept the necessity of reducing greenhouse gas emissions In Punta Gorda, a city on the West coast of Florida, the streets are interlaced with canals and retirees move there to enjoy the warm climate and good fishing. It is a low-lying area vulnerable to sea level rise and consequently, Punta Gorda became the first city in Florida to adopt a climate change adaptation plan.

In the words of Environmental scientist Whitney Grey of the South West Florida Regional Planning Council, ‘It's a particularly conservative population, we don’t talk about why climate change is happening.’

…Reaching scientific consensus on the causes and likely consequences of climate change was challenging. But communicating this is proving equally difficult. ?In the UK, the government says it requires an ‘urgent and radical response’ but Governments shy away from binding agreements at international conferences and individuals continue to commute by car and take long distance flights for pleasure. The problem lies in how to communicate the ‘massive threat’ in a way that inspires action rather than apathy.

In the United States the problem is particularly acute and climate change is a highly politicised issue. Although of all the developed countries the US is likely to feel the effects of climate change worst. Perhaps, it is not just the language that needs to change. The message might be coming from the wrong medium. What if rather than hearing about climate change from a political entity you may not support, it came from someone trusted like a vicar? In the US, the Interfaith Power and Light project uses faith communities to disseminate climate change messages. The organisation has reached almost 10,000 congregations in 38 states across the US and is continually expanding its reach…

The coast at Punta Gorda, Florida, shot by Willy Horsch, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Climate change, biofuels threaten food security, says FAO

Svetlana Kovalyova and Deepa Babington in Reuters: Climate change bringing floods and drought, growing biofuel demand and national policies to protect domestic markets could drive up global food prices and threaten long-term food security, the United Nations said. High and volatile food prices are a growing global concern, partly fuelling the protests that toppled the rulers of Tunisia and Egypt this year. The aftershocks have been seen across North Africa and the Middle East from Algeria to Yemen.

Periods of price volatility are not new to agriculture, but recent price shocks triggered by extreme weather and increasing use of grains to produce energy have caused great concern, the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organisation said. "There are fears that price volatility may be increasing," the FAO said in its State of Food and Agriculture report.

The growing influence of commodities markets and "counter-productive 'beggar-thy-neighbour' policy responses (to high prices)...may exacerbate international market volatility and jeopardise global food security," it said. The Rome-based FAO has already warned food-producing countries against introducing export curbs to protect local markets as world food prices push further above the levels that triggered deadly riots in 2007/2008.…

Somali drought adds to region’s despair

Olivia Ward in the Toronto Star: From outer space a large swath of East Africa looks like a dusty diamond. From the ground the dust is real, and it’s combined with arid scrub, sand and dried up rivulets. “The first thing that struck me was how stark the landscape was,” says Anne-Marie Connor, Africa program manager for World Vision Canada. “There’s no greenery, livestock is dying, and people have to go farther to search for water.”

Drought has bitten deeply into one of the African continent’s most troubled regions. On Wednesday the UN’s expert on human rights in Somalia, Shamsul Bari, said that he feared a “natural and human disaster” as thousands of people are driven from parched pastoral land toward dangerous conflict areas, or into makeshift camps in Puntland.

He said that the international response to the crisis was “slow,” and urged countries to help meet needs for clean drinking water, food and health care. “Puntland is hosting about 125,000 displaced people from outside the region,” said Connor, in a phone interview from the autonomous Somali province. “Some have fled fighting in the south, others are here because of the drought.”

World Vision, funded by the Canadian International Development Agency, is helping to provide sanitation for swelling numbers of arrivals, who lack the most basic amenities of latrines and running water. It is one of a number of aid groups working in the region….

Somalia seen from space

Kent disaster scenario tested

Martin Jefferies in Kent Online (UK): A huge emergency exercise is underway today to find out how Kent would cope with catastrophic flooding from tidal surges, overflowing rivers or collapsing reservoirs. Police, firefighters and experts from the Environment Agency will all be put to the test as part of Exercise Watermark.

They will have to make critical decisions as devastating floods are simulated across the county. The scenarios will help ensure the 70,000 homes and businesses in Kent at risk of flooding can be evacuated in time in the event of a real-life emergency. They will also test measures put in place to protect the county since some parts of the UK were hit by severe flooding in 2007.

James Humphrys, regional director at the Environment Agency, said: "One in six properties in England and Wales is at risk of flooding and it's only by working and practising together that we'll be ready to protect people's lives, homes and livelihoods when flooding hits….”

Sea defenses in Folkestone, Kent, shot by Peter Trimming, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Biodiversity panel learns from IPCC experience

Stephen Leahy in IPS via Tierramérica: After five years of preparation the international community is expected to launch the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services this year. For some of its proponents, even the decisions of the World Trade Organisation should be subject to its analysis. IPBES would be analogous to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), but focused on biological diversity.

The idea behind this effort is that decisions by all levels of government are largely responsible for the decline in species and ecosystems that support life on the Earth. To put an end to species decline, governments need an independent, authoritative scientific body that can assess the impacts of proposed policies and decisions that biodiversity experts have long recommended.

"People generally have yet to appreciate the importance of biodiversity and ecosystem services, and how much is at stake in biodiversity loss," Charles Perrings, professor of environmental economics at Arizona State University in the U.S. southwest, told Tierramérica.

"Biodiversity" is the term used to describe the wide variety of living things that comprise the planet's biological infrastructure and provide us with health, wealth, food, water, fuel and other vital services. Several reports, including last year's Global Biodiversity 3, show that policy decisions and failures to enforce regulations have put the biological infrastructure in jeopardy.

Many people fail to understand how much humans rely on the many natural services provided by nature and how fast this is changing, said Perrings. "Decisions taken today that change the biosphere will have profound implications for humanity's welfare. They must be well informed by science," he said.

In his view, "proposals put forward by the World Trade Organisation would potentially be assessed for consequences on habitat or if they would lead to dispersal of species around the globe, worsening the problem of invasive species." …

An image of the jungle in Mexico's Sierra Madre by Perojevic, who has released it into the public domain

Danger to Louisiana coastal roads

Kathrine Schmidt in the Daily Comet (LaFourche Parish, Louisiana): Global warming could pose a threat to Port Fourchon and the roads that serve it, according to transportation advocates and port officials. The La. 1 Coalition, a group that has long pushed for major improvements to the road that connects Fourchon to the rest of the state, has asked scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to work up a rough calculation of how sea-level rise would affect the highway, which is increasingly surrounded by encroaching water from the Gulf of Mexico.

Their conclusion: With a conservative estimate of sea-level rise and erosion, in the next 20 years La. 1 will be flooding up to 30 times a year just from high tides, cutting off access to the trucks that supply the offshore industry and for residents of Grand Isle, Louisiana's only inhabited barrier island.

“It won't just affect Port Fourchon,” said Chett Chiasson, executive director of the port. “It's affecting every coastal community throughout the world. If in fact sea-level rise is a reality, which it looks like it is, we're certainly going to have to combat that.”

With several attempts frustrated to get $300 million in federal money to complete the next stretch of the new La. 1 between Leeville and Golden Meadow, lobbyists for the transportation improvements aim to try a different tack. Their hope is the environmentally minded Obama administration may be more responsive to an application in the context of a global environmental issue, said Henri Boulet, a lobbyist for the coalition….

Soldiers of the Louisiana National Guard's 527th and 769th Engineer Battalions put together a wall of sand-filled Hesco Concertainer units in Port Fouchon, La., to help keep oil-tainted water from reaching Bay Champagne, May 21 2010. Shot by Senior Airman Jeffrey Barone

California's coastal cities prepare for rising sea levels

Tony Barboza in the Los Angeles Times: Cities along California's coastline that for years have dismissed reports of climate change or lagged in preparing for rising sea levels are now making plans to fortify their beaches, harbors and waterfronts. Communities up and down the coast have begun drafting plans to build up wetlands as buffers against rising tides, to construct levees and seawalls to keep the waters at bay or to retreat from the shoreline by moving structures inland.

Among them is Newport Beach, a politically conservative city where a council member once professed to not believe in global warming. Now, the wealthy beach city is considered to be on the forefront of preparing for climate change.

Though some in Newport Beach remain skeptical that global warming caused by humans is elevating sea levels, city planners are looking at raising seawalls by a foot or more to hold back the ocean. New homes along the city's harbor are being built on foundations several feet higher than their predecessors as a precaution against flooding. "I feel a real sense of urgency to begin planning for this right now," Mayor Michael Henn said. "To me it's irrelevant what the causes of global warming are. What we are dealing with is the reality that sea levels are rising."

Sea levels have risen about 8 inches in the last century, and scientists expect them to rise several feet by the end of this century as climate change warms the ocean.

The focus on adaptation is a marked shift for cities such as Newport Beach that just a few years ago had made few preparations for the effects of climate change or were focusing on reducing their carbon footprints. Even as the California Legislature passed a landmark law in 2006 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, few coastal cities had any plans to confront rising waters on their own shores.

"The state of preparedness was close to zero in terms of looking forward to climate change and what it's going to bring," said Susanne Moser, a social science researcher at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University, who has surveyed coastal cities and counties about planning for rising sea levels. "Since then there's been an explosion of interest on the local level."…

The town of Newport Beach, and the Pacific. Shot by Renjishino, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Bleaching and resilience: can reefs survive?

Yahoo News via AFP: Red anthia fish and rainbow-coloured wrasse dart among the glittering reefs of Indonesia's Wakatobi archipelago, as eagle rays and barracudas cruise past in the blue depths. It's hard to believe Wakatobi is anything but a thriving marine paradise, packing a bewildering abundance of life that supports 100,000 people and contributes millions of dollars to Indonesia's economy. But scientists are worried.

Last year, coral bleaching caused by higher sea temperatures wreaked havoc across the Coral Triangle, a region of rich tropical reefs spanning much of Southeast Asia and almost all of Indonesia. Up to 70 percent of the coral in Wakatobi, off the southeastern tip of Sulawesi island, was totally or partially bleached. In Aceh province, off the northern tip of Sumatra, as much as 90 percent was killed, scientists said.

Experts from environmental groups The Nature Conservancy and WWF, as well as the Indonesian government, returned to Wakatobi last month to see if the marine park's reefs had bounced back. Over two weeks of diving at sites with names like Table Coral City and Blue Hole, the team looked for signs of long-term damage or resilience, in the hope of learning more about how reef systems respond to climate-related stresses.

"In Aceh about 90 percent of the coral bleached, and that included some of the really big varieties that are hundreds of years old and had survived the (2004) tsunami but died because of the bleaching," said Joanne Wilson, deputy director for science in TNC's Indonesia Marine Programme.

"Very fortunately in Wakatobi ... it seems that only about five to 10 percent of the corals actually died. We're very lucky here." Bleaching occurs when corals respond to stress, such as stronger than normal direct sunlight or elevated sea temperatures, by expelling the algae that live inside them and give them their brilliant colours…

Coral in the Wakatobi archipelago, Indonesia, shot by Craig D, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Models use satellite data to calculate deforestation's impact on Kilimanjaro

University of Alabama in Huntsville Campus News: The impacts that local deforestation might have on the snowcap and glaciers atop Mount Kilimanjaro are being calculated at The University of Alabama in Huntsville using regional climate models and data from NASA satellites. The first piece of that research, which looked only at the month of July, found that deforestation is changing weather patterns around the mountain but not (at least in July) at the peak, according to Dr. Udaysankar Nair, a research scientist in UAHuntsville's Earth System Science Center.

Early results from this work, which is funded through NASA's Earth Science Directorate, were published Feb. 15 in the "Journal of Geophysical Research."

A tiny fraction of that ice cap still exists. Surveys in the 1880s estimated that glaciers covered about 20 square kilometers on the mountain. From 1912 to now, the glacier area on Kilimanjaro has decreased from 12 square kilometers to less than two. Nair and doctoral student Jonathan Fairman, a NASA Earth system science fellow, are studying the effects of deforestation on weather patterns in a 2,000-square-mile area around the mountain.

…"Kilimanjaro is an isolated mountain, so under normal circumstances most of the local air flow goes around the mountain," Nair said. "When you cut down forests you reduce surface roughness, which increases wind speed at higher elevations on the windward slopes. That faster wind over steep upper slopes causes more intense cloud formation and precipitation up the side of the mountain."

Nair and Fairman are extending their model runs to include the fall and spring rainy seasons, when the dominant weather rolls in from the Indian Ocean. "We need to look at the complete annual cycle before we understand the impacts that deforestation is having on the mountain peak," Fairman said.

Early results suggest that deforestation around Kilimanjaro might be having a noticeable impact on how quickly glaciers and ice are melting on the mountain, although it isn't clear from preliminary data modeling whether that impact is positive or negative….

The current glaciers of Kilimanjaro, made famous by an Ernest Hemingway short story in 1936 and a movie released in 1952, are almost 12,000 years old. About 16,000 years ago, during the most recent ice age, Kilimanjaro's glaciers covered up to 150 square kilometers and reached from the summit (19,298 feet above sea level) to the surrounding plain more than 9,000 feet below. Image from the website of the University of Alabama in Huntsville

Private property rights and Australian farms -- they got issues

Farm Weekly (Australia): Property rights, land tenure and climate change were just some of the big issues tackled at the Pastoralists and Graziers Association's (PGA) annual convention in Perth last week. It was the PGA's 104th annual conference and there was a strong turnout of more than 200 farmers, pastoralists and industry representatives, including a large political contingent.

…In his opening address, PGA president Rob Gillam spoke of the challenges faced by farmers and pastoralists, particularly by external groups questioning their businesses. "Never before in the history of agriculture have we seen so many additional stakeholders trying to impinge on our rights to operate our businesses," Mr Gillam said. "We are now being challenged by these external groups to justify every aspect of our production methods.

"From how to transport our livestock and our support for the live trade, to the types of crops we can grow and how we can deliver it to market, or whether we are able to clear our land without facing prosecution and public condemnation."

Property rights is an ever-increasing issue in agriculture and on that topic, Mr Gillam said clearing ban regulations in WA had changed the definition and security of rural land ownership. He said private property rights of rural landowners would continue to be diminished until there was a comprehensive review of the Environmental Protection Act and the establishment of an independent appeals process.

"This removal of key rights of ownership of private property has been exacerbated by requirements set down under Kyoto and other climate change related protocols, which have been established to satisfy the demands of environmental activists," he said….

Farm settlement at Gracemere, west of Rockhampton. Dairy featured in this country postcard of the farming area of Gracemere. Notes on the back of the postcard read:'The butter produced in Queensland during 1906 weighed 22,746, 593 lbs.The postcoard was part of the Franco-British Exhibition in 1908.'

World Bank to help Kiribati adapt

The Solomon Times Online: The World Bank Board today approved the first Country Assistance Strategy for Kiribati. The strategy, which was developed in consultation with government, donors and civil society, puts climate change at the centre of the three-year plan.

With 33 atoll islands, spread across an area the size of India, Kiribati is one of the most remote and geographically dispersed countries in the world. Its' inhabited atolls lie only a few meters above sea level, making the country highly vulnerable to impacts from climate change and natural disasters. Already the effects of rising sea-levels and associated soil salination are starting to threaten limited fresh water supplies.

Reflecting Kiribati's vulnerability to climate change and natural disasters, the core of the World Bank Group's Country Assistance Strategy will be to support the Kiribati government on climate change adaptation measures. This will include supporting the government to manage groundwater reserves, managing coastal areas, improving rainwater collection, and developing new sources of water.

"Despite its small population - the challenges loom large for Kiribati" said Ferid Belhaj, World Bank Country Director, the Pacific. "The country and its people are at the coal-face of climate change and other natural disasters. This is a very real existential threat. This Country Assistance Strategy shows the World Bank's commitment to work with the government in the critical area of climate change adaptation."…

Kiribati's coat of arms

Rising CO2 is causing plants to release less water to the atmosphere

Indiana University Newsroom: As carbon dioxide levels have risen during the last 150 years, the density of pores that allow plants to breathe has dwindled by 34 percent, restricting the amount of water vapor the plants release to the atmosphere, report scientists from Indiana University Bloomington and Utrecht University in the Netherlands in an upcoming issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences…

In a separate paper, also to be published by PNAS, many of the same scientists describe a model they devised that predicts doubling today's carbon dioxide levels will dramatically reduce the amount of water released by plants. The scientists gathered their data from a diversity of plant species in Florida, including living individuals as well as samples extracted from herbarium collections and peat formations 100 to 150 years old.

"The increase in carbon dioxide by about 100 parts per million has had a profound effect on the number of stomata and, to a lesser extent, the size of the stomata," said Research Scientist in Biology and Professor Emeritus in Geology David Dilcher, the two papers' sole American coauthor. "Our analysis of that structural change shows there's been a huge reduction in the release of water to the atmosphere."

Most plants use a pore-like structure called stomata (singular: stoma) on the undersides of leaves to absorb carbon dioxide from the air. The carbon dioxide is used to build sugars, which can be used by the plant as energy or for incorporation into the plants' fibrous cell walls. Stomata also allow plants to "transpire" water, or release water to the atmosphere. Transpiration helps drive the absorption of water at the roots, and also cools the plants in the same way sweating cools mammals. If there are fewer stomata, or the stomata are closed more of the day, gas exchange will be limited -- transpiration included.

"The carbon cycle is important, but so is the water cycle," Dilcher said. "If transpiration decreases, there may be more moisture in the ground at first, but if there's less rainfall that may mean there's less moisture in ground eventually. This is part of the hyrdrogeologic cycle. Land plants are a crucially important part of it."…

This photo by Emmy Lammertsma on the IU website shows changes in stomata, structures that allow plants to exchange gases with the air. Contemporary plants in Florida have fewer stomata than their ancestors did a few decades ago.

National disaster risk reduction forum proposed

Vietnam News: Viet Nam needs to establish a comprehensive forum on disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation as part of the struggle to minimise the consequences of natural disasters, environmental experts said at a meeting yesterday. Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai said the forum would help governmental and non-governmental agencies and organisations exchange information, experiences and boost co-operation to reduce the vulnerability of disaster-hit areas and improve recovery abilities after natural disasters.

Hai urged representatives to discuss and complete the roadmap to establish the forum and submit the proposals to the Government in the future. As planned, the forum would begin work from October. As many as 35 nations worldwide have established forums to mobilise the whole population to reduce natural disasters caused by climate change.

At the meeting, representatives from five cities, including Ha Noi, HCM City, Da Nang, Hai Phong and Can Tho signed a commitment to join the United Nation campaign on strengthening investment in disaster risk mitigation, efficient and early alarm system construction and ecological protection.

…However, like other Asian countries, Viet Nam had low capacity to overcome the consequences of natural disasters. Asian countries were four times more vulnerable than Africa and 25 times more than Europe and America, according to the World Health Organisation's recent report. The joining of the campaign would make these cities safer and more resilient. Currently, about 80 Philippine cities and provinces have joined the campaign, she said...

A 2008 flood in Hanoi, shot by Bình Giang, who has released the image into the public domain

Flood-tolerant rice plants can also survive drought

University of California-Riverside: Rice, which is sensitive to drought due to its high water requirement, is particularly vulnerable to how global climate change is altering the frequency and magnitude of floods and droughts. If rice plants’ combined tolerance to flooding and drought could be improved, however, rice productivity could be protected and even substantially increased.

Now plant scientists at the University of California, Riverside have made a discovery that can greatly benefit rice growers and consumers everywhere. The researchers have demonstrated in the lab and greenhouse that rice that is flood tolerant is also better able to recover from a drought. “Flood tolerance does not reduce drought tolerance in these rice plants, and appears to even benefit them when they encounter drought,” said Julia Bailey-Serres, a professor of genetics in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences, who led the research project.

Bailey-Serres and her team – Takeshi Fukao, a senior researcher, and Elaine Yeung, an undergraduate student – focused on Sub1A, a gene responsible for flood or “submergence” tolerance in rice and found only in some low-yielding rice varieties in India and Sri Lanka. Sub1A works by making the plant dormant during submergence, allowing it to conserve energy until the floodwaters recede. Rice with the Sub1A gene can survive more than two weeks of complete submergence.

Plant breeders have already benefited farmers worldwide – especially in South Asia – by having transferred Sub1A into high-yielding rice varieties without compromising these varieties’ desirable traits—such as high yield, good grain quality, and pest and disease resistance.

Bailey-Serres’s lab found that in addition to providing robust submergence tolerance, Sub1A aids survival of drought. The researchers report that at the molecular level Sub1A serves as a convergence point between submergence and drought response pathways, allowing rice plants to survive and re-grow after both extremes of precipitation.

….She explained that after a flood, a period follows when the leaves that have been submerged lose water and become dehydrated. Moreover, because a period of dehydration is part of the natural progression of a flood, Sub1A also happens to have benefits after desubmergence and is therefore important for drought tolerance as well. “Our finding suggests that the plant recovers well from drought by growing new shoots,” Bailey-Serres said. “This is something that is also seen with flooding.”…

The images show rice plants treated with drought, followed by recovery. Each image shows two kinds of rice plants. The plants to the left of the red tape lack the Sub1A gene; the plants to the right of the red tape have Sub1A. The image marked "Day 0" shows the plants when the experiment began. The image marked "Day 8" shows the plants on the eighth day of drought. The image marked "Recovery" shows that only the plants with the Sub1A gene are recovering from drought stress after the pot was regularly watered for 14 days after Day 8. Photo credit: Bailey-Serres lab, UC Riverside.

Mapping human vulnerability to climate change

McGill University: Researchers already study how various species of plants and animals migrate in response to climate change. Now, Jason Samson, a PhD candidate in McGill University’s Department of Natural Resource Sciences, has taken the innovative step of using the same analytic tools to measure the impact of climate change on human populations. Samson and fellow researchers combined climate change data with censuses covering close to 97 per-cent of the world’s population in order to forecast potential changes in local populations for 2050.

Samson’s team found that if populations continue to increase at the expected rates, those who are likely to be the most vulnerable to climate change are the people living in low-latitude, hot regions of the world, places like central South America, the Arabian Peninsula and much of Africa. In these areas, a relatively small increase in temperature will have serious consequences on a region’s ability to sustain a growing population.”It makes sense that the low latitude tropical regions should be more vulnerable because the people there already experience extremely hot conditions which make agriculture challenging. An increase in temperature over the next few decades will only make their lives more difficult in a variety of ways,” says Samson.

This contrasts with Samson’s predictions about the impact of climate change on human populations in the high-latitude more temperate zones of the world, where the temperature change is expected to be greater. Because the spread of human populations along with their activities are already more constrained by the cooler conditions in these regions, the researchers expect that climate change will have less of an impact on people living in these areas.

The study also points to clear inequities in the causes and consequences of climate change: the countries that have contributed the least to climate change, based on their average per-capita carbon dioxide emissions, are nevertheless predicted to be the most vulnerable to its impacts. “Take Somalia for instance,” suggests Samson.”Because it’s so hot there, it’s already very difficult to grow things, and it will only become more difficult if the temperature rises. It’s also clear that Somalia is not a big contributor of greenhouse gas to the atmosphere. Now thanks to this map, we have concrete quantitative evidence of the disparity between the causes and the consequences of climate change at a national level.”…

Local vulnerability to climate change, according to ecological and demographic models -- regions in red are expected to be hit hardest. The poles show white because of low human population. (Map from McGill University)

Climate change 'will bring drought, not rain, to East Africa'

Dann Okoth in SciDev.net: East African environmental specialists have questioned new research that concludes that that climate change will bring increased drought, rather than more rain, to the region. The new research, published in Climate Dynamics, predicts that the droughts common in eastern Africa over the past 20 years are likely to continue if global temperatures rise further.

But the prediction contradicts the scenario of increased rainfall projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The researchers, from the University of California, Santa Barbara, studied temperature, wind speed and precipitation data over the last 20–30 years to determine what was driving climate variations in the tropical Indian and Pacific Ocean regions.

They found that the Indian Ocean has warmed particularly fast, increasing rainfall over the ocean and the westward movement of dry air over Eastern Africa — hence decreasing rainfall. The severe food shortages experienced by millions of people in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia will be exacerbated by increased drought in the future, said the researchers.

…But the conclusions were dismissed by some East African climate researchers. Richard Odingo of the University of Nairobi and former vice chair of the IPCC said the research was "half-baked" and served only US relief interests in the region. He said it was erroneous to say the IPCC was wrong as the organisation used data going back 300 years from many different sources, as well as taking into account links between weather systems high in the Earth's atmosphere.

…But Park Williams, co-author of the paper and a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said global models [such as those produced by the IPCC] have a notoriously difficult time accurately simulating rainfall patterns over tropical land masses. "Global models are tending to forecast a global trend toward a more El Niño-like climate which would, for example, generally mean more rainfall for Ethiopia and Kenya during the March to June period…

The desert east of Sudan, shot by Sharif Baasher, Wikimedia Commons via World 66, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 1.0 Generic license

Some Antarctic ice is forming from bottom

Columbia Unversity’s Earth Institute: Scientists working in the remotest part of Antarctica have discovered that liquid water locked deep under the continent’s coat of ice regularly thaws and refreezes to the bottom, creating as much as half the thickness of the ice in places, and actively modifying its structure. The finding, which turns common perceptions of glacial formation upside down, could reshape scientists’ understanding of how the ice sheet expands and moves, and how it might react to warming climate, they say. The study appears in this week’s early online edition of the leading journal Science; it is part of a six-nation study of the invisible Gamburtsev Mountains, which lie buried under as much as two miles of ice.

…“We usually think of ice sheets like cakes--one layer at a time added from the top. This is like someone injected a layer of frosting at the bottom--a really thick layer,” said Robin Bell, a geophysicist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and a project co-leader. “Water has always been known to be important to ice sheet dynamics, but mostly as a lubricant. As ice sheets change, we want to predict how they will change. Our results show that models must include water beneath.” The Antarctic ice sheet holds enough fresh water to raise ocean levels 200 feet; if even a small part of it were to melt into the ocean, it could put major coastal cities under water.

The scientists found that refrozen ice makes up 24% of the ice sheet base around Dome A, a 13,800-foot-high plateau that forms the high point of the East Antarctic ice sheet, at 3.8 million square miles roughly the size of the continental United States. In places, slightly more than half the ice thickness appears to have originated from the bottom, not the top. Here, rates of refreezing are greater than surface accumulation rates.

….Because the ice is in motion, understanding how it forms and deforms at the base is critical to understanding how the sheets will move, particularly in response to climate changes, researchers say. “It’s an extremely important observation for us because this is potentially lifting the very oldest ice off the bed,” said Jeff Severinghaus, a geologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego who was not involved in the study. He said it could either mean older ice is better preserved – or, it could “make it harder to interpret the record, if it’s shuffled like a deck of cards.”

…"Scientific results from the Antarctic Gamburtsev Province Project data set are already transforming our understanding of ice sheet behavior,” said Dr. Alexandra Isern, program director for Antarctic earth sciences in the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs. “This understanding is critical for the development of climate models that can accurately describe how our planet will react to increased global temperatures."…

From the Earth Institute's website: Radar image (B) shows the Gamburtsev Mountains (bottom of image) overlain by the ice sheet, which has been deformed by a bulge of refrozen ice (center). (Courtesy Bell et al., 2011)

Philippines urged to include disaster risk reduction in local government plans

Andrew Doga-ong in the Philippine Information Agency: There is a need to integrate disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation plans in the programs of local governments. Thus stressed Rodolfo Labarinto of the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) – CAR in a recent briefing and orientation on Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Climate Change Adaptation (CCA).

This was participated in by some local officials, heads, and representatives of the various local and national government offices here. Labarinto said the Philippines, the Cordillera region in particular, is exposed to various hazards. He said the country, being located along the “Ring of Fire,” makes it vulnerable to earthquake and volcanic hazards.

He added that the Cordillera provinces being near the Western Pacific Basin, a generator of climactic conditions, has a minimum 31 to a maximum of 60 tropical cyclone passages in a given year in which five usually cause major damages. Data show that climactic-related risks are attributed to the almost 50 percent of deaths and about 80 percent of economic losses.Trend shows climactic-related risks are increasing while disaster is deepening.

Labarinto said natural hazards and climactic risks are natural events that we cannot stop from happening but we can mitigate their impact. He said local government units should formulate and implement disaster risk reduction and climate change action strategies….

Climate satellite falls into the ocean

CBS News: The protective nose cone of an Orbital Sciences Corp. Taurus XL rocket carrying NASA's Glory environmental research satellite apparently failed to separate after launch Friday, preventing the spacecraft from achieving orbit in a $424 million failure. "All indications are that the satellite and rocket is in the southern Pacific Ocean somewhere," launch director Omar Baez said in a morning press conference.

It was the second nose cone failure in a row for a Taurus XL rocket following the 2009 loss of another environmental satellite, reports CBS News space analyst William Harwood. The Glory mission got underway at 5:09:43 a.m. EST (GMT-5) with a sky-lighting launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. The rocket's first three solid-fuel stages ignited as planned, but the nose cone fairing did not separate as required two minutes and 58 seconds after liftoff.

"We are at T+plus 300 seconds," Richard Haenke, the ascent commentator, reported. "The vehicle speed error is indicating underperformance, which is expected due to a fairing not separating. We have a report the system did pressurize. However, we still have no indication of the fairing separating." A few moments later, NASA launch director Omar Baez declared a failure…

The Glory satellite, now sleeeping with the fishes

Forest carbon offers up hard lessons

A new publication highlighted in Carbon Positive: Two decades of attempts to restore and preserve forests to help combat climate change have seen the slow rise of a “forest carbon” sector that is vast in opportunity, but not for the faint-hearted. That’s according to a report, “Investing in forest carbon: Lessons from the first 20 years” by research organisations the Katoomba Group, Ecosystem Marketplace and Forest Trends.

The report draws on the findings and feedback gleaned in this group’s annual State of the Forest Carbon Markets surveys in recent years. It identifies the lessons for project developers learned the hard way in a difficult, emerging industry over 20 years. Many of the opportunities in forest carbon lie in developing countries, with all the governance, institutional and infrastructure challenges they pose.

Top of the list is that although the rules are often unclear, it is vital for project developers to know them as best they can. What are the national rules applying to carbon projects in the country of operation, and are there clear lines of authority? Who owns the carbon stored and the financial credit asset over it —the landowner, the government, or another entity?

…The importance of credible methodologies to underpin projects is also vital, made all the more difficult in the past because their availability has been badly lacking. “The key is that clarity, stability, and enforceability of legal issues are fundamental components of investor and project developer confidence in potential forest carbon projects and host countries,” the report says.

Lesson two is get used to complexity and time-consuming processes; dealing with all the parties involved, communities, landowners, local and national authorities, is a minefield. Significant expertise is needed to resolve the numerous technical issues arise in the assessment, design, monitoring, and verification of forest carbon
projects.

Lesson three is be conservative in all estimates of carbon, benefits, time, and cost. Project development is time- and cost-intensive and many projects have had higher costs, required more time, and generated less carbon than originally anticipated.

…The report authors say the sense they get from participants is that forest carbon won’t see significant expansion in the next three years unless the sector is becomes part of a regulatory system, as opposed to the voluntary market which has driven it over the past three years...

Invasive species widespread, but not more than at home range

Terra Daily: Invasive plant species have long had a reputation as being bad for a new ecosystem when they are introduced. Stan Harpole, assistant professor of ecology, evolution and organismal biology at Iowa State University, is founding organizer of a team of more than 70 researchers working at 65 sites worldwide that tested that assumption. They wanted to know if it is true that problematic invasive species often spread widely in their new habitats because they don't encounter predators or diseases that help keep them in check in their home ranges.

"There is this assumption that when plants invade a new area that they become much more abundant in the new area than they were in the native areas," said Harpole. "It turns out that, on average, they aren't any more abundant away from home than they are at home."

Harpole says there is a "rule of 10s" that can apply to invasive species. "Of, say, 100 plants that arrive in a new area, only about 10 percent of those will survive without being in a greenhouse or some other controlled area," said Harpole. "Of those 10 that can survive, only about 10 percent of those really cause problems.

"When you think about all the species we've brought over from other areas, relatively few have become serious pest species. The problem is we've brought over so many that quite a few have become major problems and they get a lot of attention."…

A kudzu-covered field in Port Gibson, Mississippi, shot by Galen Parks Smith (Gsmith), under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licenseWikimedia Commons

Vietnam, Laos split over Mekong dam

Marwaan Macan-Markar in IPS: The first in a new series of 11 dams planned across the Mekong, South-east Asia’s largest river, could break a special bond between two communist-ruled countries. Critics in Vietnam see red over a 1,260-megawatt hydropower project planned by their smaller, poorer, land-locked neighbour, Laos. They call it an environmental disaster.

Laos, however, wants to be the powerhouse of the region – to sell power to its neighbours and earn enough to help the poor, that is a third of its population of 5.8 million. The dam in an idyllic hill setting in the north Laos province of Xayaburi (or Sayaboury), will be built by a Thai developer. Thailand is expected to buy 95 percent of its power to fuel its booming economy.

Environmentalists say the Xayaburi dam and 10 more such constructions planned on the Mekong’s mainstream, nine in Laos, make a Faustian bargain. The dam will "reduce fresh water and silt downstream in Vietnam and devastate fishing among others," stated ‘Tuoi Tre’, the country’s largest circulating paper, published by the Communist Youth Organisation from Ho Chi Minh City (former Saigon) in the south.

The potential threat of the 3.5 billion dollar dam in the Mekong delta, Vietnam’s "biggest rice producing and fish farming area", has been highlighted by The Saigon Times too. Vietnam’s government officials have raised their voice against the 32-metre- tall, 820-metre-wide dam. "If built, Laos’ Xayaburi dam will greatly affect Vietnam’s agriculture production and aquaculture," deputy minister of natural resources and environment Nguyen Thai Lai reportedly said in a meeting of the country’s Mekong River experts.

Such criticism goes against the spirit of a 1977 treaty of friendship and cooperation that binds them in a ‘special relationship’. The treaty followed the communist triumph against the U.S. in the Vietnam War….

The Mekong River between Laos and Thailand, shot by Prince Roy, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Flooded Bolivia faces long-term water woes

AlertNet: Widespread flooding in Bolivia, which prompted the government to declare a national emergency last week, shows the vulnerability of one of South America's poorest countries to changing weather patterns linked to climate change. Landlocked Bolivia, which runs from the rugged Andes to the Amazon jungle, faces a variety of climate change-related pressures, from disappearing glaciers to worsening droughts and more intense and unpredictable rainfall. Combined with rising urban demand for water, the problems suggest a long-term water crisis ahead for the country, analysts say.

The latest disaster has killed at least 50 people and left thousands homeless in Bolivia after weeks of heavy rain triggered flooding and mudslides, with 400 houses destroyed in the capital La Paz alone in a mudslide. In Cochabamba, southeast of La Paz, schools and stadiums were sheltering hundreds of families whose homes were destroyed. In lowland Santa Cruz department, Bolivia's major grain growing region, floods damaged soy, corn and wheat crops. Rivers burst their banks and major roads were unusable.

"We've declared a state of emergency on different levels in different areas of the country," Defence Minister Ruben Saavedra said last week. The government has allocated $20 million to help survivors.

Defence Minister Saavedra put the crisis in the Cochabamba, Beni, Santa Cruz, La Paz, Chuquisaca and Tarija departments (administrative regions) down to the La Niña weather phenomenon, linked to abnormally cool ocean temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific….

Shrinking tundra, advancing forests: how the Arctic will look by century's end

EurekAlert: Imagine the vast, empty tundra in Alaska and Canada giving way to trees, shrubs and plants typical of more southerly climates. Imagine similar changes in large parts of Eastern Europe, northern Asia and Scandinavia, as needle-leaf and broadleaf forests push northward into areas once unable to support them. Imagine part of Greenland's ice cover, once thought permanent, receding and leaving new tundra in its wake.

Those changes are part of a reorganization of Arctic climates anticipated to occur by the end of the 21st century, as projected by a team of University of Nebraska-Lincoln and South Korean climatologists. In an article to be published in a forthcoming issue of the scientific journal Climate Dynamics, the research team analyzed 16 global climate models from 1950 to 2099 and combined it with more than 100 years of observational data to evaluate what climate change might mean to the Arctic's sensitive ecosystems by the dawn of the 22nd century.

The study is one of the first to apply a specific climate classification system to a comprehensive examination of climate changes throughout the Arctic by using both observations and a collection of projected future climate changes, said Song Feng, research assistant professor in UNL's School of Natural Resources and the study's lead author.

Based on the climate projections, the new study shows that the areas of the Arctic now dominated by polar and sub-polar climate types will decline and will be replaced by more temperate climates – changes that could affect a quarter to nearly half of the Arctic, depending on future greenhouse gas emission scenarios, by the year 2099.

Changes to Arctic vegetation will naturally follow shifts in the region's climates: Tundra coverage would shrink by 33 to 44 percent by the end of the century, while temperate climate types that support coniferous forests and needle-leaf trees would push northward into the breach, the study shows.

"The expansion of forest may amplify global warming, because the newly forested areas can reduce the surface reflectivity, thereby further warming the Arctic," Feng said. "The shrinkage of tundra and expansion of forest may also impact the habitat for wildlife and local residents."…

Area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain, looking south toward the Brooks Range mountains. US Fish and Wildlife Service photo

Boulder City Council approves drought-response powers

Erica Meltzer in the Boulder Daily Camera: In severe drought situations, Boulder will have a financial stick to apply to residents who don't curb their water use, according to a drought-response ordinance approved in a second reading by the Boulder City Council on Tuesday night.

The ordinance gives the city manager the ability to reduce water budgets in cases of drought. By going into higher tiers, at which they pay more for water, residents would have a financial incentive to reduce their water use. And those who go over their water budget eventually would face fines, but a first offense would result in a warning.

City Council members said the city's water utility should look into ways to notify residents when they start to use more water, before they go into violation, but they voted unanimously to approve the new drought-response powers.

…But Councilman Ken Wilson, who previously served on the city's Water Resources Advisory Board, said the city has plenty of water for normal use, and it doesn't make sense to buy more water rights for the extreme case of a multi-year drought.

Water budgets are set by the city based on the type of property and its expected water needs each month. Most single-family homes have a budget of 7,000 gallons a month, plus an allotment for outdoor water use. Commercial customers may have water budgets set based on average monthly use, three-month averages or custom evaluations.

Water budgets are connected to a tiered pricing structure, which the city began using in 2007 as a way to encourage water conservation. The rates include five tiers -- ranging from $2.18 per 1,000 gallons to $14.50 per 1,000 gallons -- depending on how much users exceed their monthly water budget....

Rainbow over Boulder, shot by Madhubala Naicker

Pakistan plans to impose 15 percent flood surcharge on tax

Sahar Ahmed in Reuters: Pakistan will impose a flood surcharge of 15 percent on income tax in order to tackle the country's widening budget deficit, a government source involved in talks with the IMF said on Wednesday. "Yes, we plan to impose the flood surcharge," the source told Reuters, declining to give details of when the surcharge might be levied.

Pakistan, whose tax-to-GDP ratio is around 10 percent, one of the world's lowest, is trying to show the IMF and other donors that it is working on ways to boost revenue. The country is dependent on foreign aid, and riven with political instability and violence. On Wednesday, gunmen shot dead the only Christian in Pakistan's government, the second top official killed this year for questioning a law that mandates the death penalty for insulting Islam.

The struggling government, still contending with damage from disastrous floods last year, is desperate to raise money. According to news reports, as well as the flood surcharge, it plans to increase a special excise duty by 150 percent soon after a National Assembly recess….