Pacific locked in 'La Nada' limbo

 NASA: Sea-surface height data from NASA's Jason-2 satellite show that the equatorial Pacific Ocean is still locked in what some call a neutral, or 'La Nada' state. This condition follows two years of strong, cool-water La Niña events.

A new image, based on the average of 10 days of data centered on Jan. 26, 2013, shows near-normal conditions (depicted in green) across the equatorial Pacific. The image is available at: http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/images/latestdata/jason/2013/20130126P.jpg.

This latest image highlights the processes that occur on time scales of more than a year, but usually less than 10 years, such as El Niño and La Niña. These processes are known as the interannual ocean signal. To show that signal, scientists refined data for this image by removing trends over the past 20 years, seasonal variations and time-averaged signals of large-scale ocean circulation.

The height of the water relates, in part, to its temperature, and thus is an indicator of the amount of heat stored in the ocean below. As the ocean warms, its level rises; as it cools, its level falls. Yellow and red areas indicate where the waters are relatively warmer and have expanded above normal sea level, while green (which dominates in this image) indicates near-normal sea level, and blue and purple areas show where the waters are relatively colder and sea level is lower than normal. Above-normal height variations along the equatorial Pacific indicate El Niño conditions, while below-normal height variations indicate La Niña conditions. The temperature of the upper ocean can have a significant influence on weather patterns and climate. For a more detailed explanation of what this type of image means, visit: http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/science/elninopdo/latestdata/.

"This past spring, after two years of La Niña, the expected El Niño was a no-show," says Bill Patzert, climatologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "La Niña faded and 'La Nada' conditions locked in. This absence of El Niño and La Niña, termed 'neutral' by some, has left long-range climate forecasters adrift," Patzert added. "Seasonal, long-range forecasting works best when signals like El Niño and La Niña are strong."

Patzert calls the present condition 'La Nada,' because the word 'neutral' misleadingly implies to some that weather will be 'normal.'....

The latest image of sea surface heights in the Pacific Ocean from NASA's Jason-1 satellite shows that the equatorial Pacific Ocean is now in its 10th month of being locked in what some call a neutral, or "La Nada" state. "La Nadas" make long-range climate forecasting more difficult due to their greater unpredictability. Yellows and reds indicate areas where waters are relatively warmer and have expanded above normal sea level, while blues and purple areas show where waters are relatively colder and sea level is lower than normal. Green indicates near-normal sea level conditions. Image credit: NASA-JPL/Caltech/Ocean Surface Topography Team

Modern food supply technology 'key to affordable food'

Joel D. Adriano in SciDev.net: The modernisation of farm-to-market supply chains is important for increasing farmers' income, alleviating poverty, cutting food waste and improving the affordability of food staples, according to the authors of a book. The Quiet Revolution in Staple Food Value Chains: Enter the Dragon, the Elephant, and the Tiger is a joint project by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) that was launched last month.

The book examines the movement of rice and potatoes from the farm to the consumer — known as the 'value chain' — in three Asian countries: Bangladesh, China and India. Rice and potato are food staples in Asia.

Thomas Reardon, a professor in the Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics at Michigan State University, United States, and one of the book's authors, says that the study also has lessons for South-East Asian and Pacific island states.

He says that all three countries have found ways to modernise the value chains of these staple crops. He adds that the changes had been introduced at the grassroots and brought about mainly by mobile phones, the use of improved crop varieties and technological changes related to rice milling and potato storage.

Reardon says the rapid rise of modern cold storage facilities for potatoes, which enable them to be supplied out of season, had led to more stable prices and higher incomes for farmers.... 

Marsh plants actively engineer their landscape

EurekAlert via Duke University: Marsh plants, far from being passive wallflowers, are "secret gardeners" that actively engineer their landscape to increase their species' odds of survival, says a team of scientists from Duke University and the University of Padova in Italy.

Scientists have long believed that the distribution of plants within a marsh is a passive adaption in which species grow at different elevations because that's where conditions like soil aeration and salinity best meet their needs. But this team found intertidal marsh plants in Italy's famed Venetian lagoon were able to subtly tune, or adjust, their elevations by producing different amounts of organic soil, and trapping and accumulating different amounts of inorganic sediments as part of a complex interplay with the environment.

"Our study identifies the visible signature of a two-way feedback occurring between the vegetation and the landscape," said Marco Marani, professor of ecohydrology at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment and Pratt School of Engineering. "Each species builds up the elevation of its substrate to within a favorable range for its survival, much the way corals in the animal kingdom do." The finding may help scientists better predict marsh ecosystems' resilience to climatic changes such as sea level rise. "Obviously, this is not a conscious choice on the part of the plants," Marani said. "It's a natural mechanism -- how marshes work. We just didn't understand it in such detail until now."

...The team used numerical modeling to visualize the dynamic interactions of marsh ecosystems over time, and tested the models against detailed topographical surveys of elevations and distributions of plant species in the Venetian lagoon.

"We've been studying this same marsh for 15 years and, as in similar studies around the world, we were using GPS technology with an accuracy of plus or minus one centimeter in elevation," Marani explained. For the new study, they used a more precise surveying instrument, an electronic theodolite, which measure elevations accurately to within less than one millimeter. "It allowed us to observe differences so subtle that they went unnoticed before," he said....

A digital map of one portion of the Venetian marsh shows the distribution of several species of marsh plants. Courtesy of Marco Marani, Duke University

A war without end - with earth’s carbon cycle held in the balance

Oregon State University: The greatest battle in Earth’s history has been going on for hundreds of millions of years - it isn’t over yet - and until now no one knew it existed, scientists reported today in the journal Nature.

In one corner is SAR11, a bacterium that’s the most abundant organism in the oceans, survives where most other cells would die and plays a major role in the planet’s carbon cycle. It had been theorized that SAR11 was so small and widespread that it must be invulnerable to attack.

In the other corner, and so strange-looking that scientists previously didn’t even recognize what they were, are “Pelagiphages,” viruses now known to infect SAR11 and routinely kill millions of these cells every second. And how this fight turns out is of more than casual interest, because SAR11 has a huge effect on the amount of carbon dioxide that enters the atmosphere, and the overall biology of the oceans.

“There’s a war going on in our oceans, a huge war, and we never even saw it,” said Stephen Giovannoni, a professor of microbiology at Oregon State University. “This is an important piece of the puzzle in how carbon is stored or released in the sea.”

Researchers from OSU, the University of Arizona and other institutions today outlined the discovery of this ongoing conflict, and its implications for the biology and function of ocean processes. The findings disprove the theory that SAR11 cells are immune to viral predation, researchers said.

“In general, every living cell is vulnerable to viral infection,” said Giovannoni, who first discovered SAR11 in 1990. “What has been so puzzling about SAR11 was its sheer abundance; there was simply so much of it that some scientists believed it must not get attacked by viruses.” What the new research shows, Giovannoni said, is that SAR11 is competitive, good at scavenging organic carbon, and effective at changing to avoid infection. Because of that, it thrives and persists in abundance even though it’s constantly being killed by the new viruses that have been discovered....

A SAR-11 bacterium infected with the pelagiphage virus. Photo courtesy of the University of Oregon

European satellite confirms that the Arctic Ocean is on thin ice

Hannah Hickey in the University of Washington News: The September 2012 record low in Arctic sea-ice extent was big news, but a missing piece of the puzzle was lurking below the ocean’s surface. What volume of ice floats on Arctic waters? And how does that compare to previous summers? These are difficult but important questions, because how much ice actually remains suggests how vulnerable the ice pack will be to more warming.

New satellite observations confirm a University of Washington analysis that for the past three years has produced widely quoted estimates of Arctic sea-ice volume. Findings based on observations from a European Space Agency satellite, published online in Geophysical Research Letters, show that the Arctic has lost more than a third of summer sea-ice volume since a decade ago, when a U.S. satellite collected similar data. Combining the UW model and the new satellite observations suggests the summer minimum in Arctic sea ice is one-fifth of what it was in 1980, when the model begins.

“Other people had argued that 75 to 80 percent ice volume loss was too aggressive,” said co-author Axel Schweiger, a polar scientist in the UW Applied Physics Laboratory. “What this new paper shows is that our ice loss estimates may have been too conservative, and that the recent decline is possibly more rapid.”

The system developed at the UW provides a 34-year monthly picture of what’s happening to the total volume of Arctic sea ice. The Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System, or PIOMAS, combines weather records, sea-surface temperature and satellite pictures of ice coverage to compute ice volume. It then verifies the results with actual thickness measurements from individual moorings or submarines that cruise below the ice.

“Because the ice is so variable, you don’t get a full picture of it from any of those observations,” Schweiger said. “So this model is the only way to reconstruct a time series that spans multiple decades.”...

Monthly sea ice volume anomalies from 1979 to the present calculated using the University of Washington system. Graph from the University of Washington website

Low-arsenic rice could have major health benefits

Seed Daily via SPX: Millions of people worldwide are regularly exposed to arsenic through drinking water and eating rice grown in soil and water containing high amounts of arsenic. Long-term exposure can lead to the development of different types of cancer as well as serious cardiovascular, neurological, and other health problems.

Scientists have now identified aromatic rice from Bangladesh that has far lower arsenic concentrations than found in non-aromatic rice. The other important benefit is that it contains higher amounts of selenium and zinc. The discovery is reported in Biomedical Spectroscopy and Imaging.

Rice is the staple food of over three billion people. Because the rice plant is highly efficient at absorbing arsenic from soil and water, it is reported to be the highest arsenic-containing cereal. For Bangladeshis, rice is their staple food and they consume on average half a kilogram of rice daily.

A team of scientists led by Dr. Parvez Haris from De Montfort University, Leicester, UK is carrying out research to remove arsenic from water and to identify ways of reducing human exposure to arsenic through diet.

Haris and his team have already demonstrated that exposure to the more toxic inorganic arsenic species is greater in people who eat more rice. In this latest work, published in Biomedical Spectroscopy and Imaging, the De Montfort University team - along with Dr Michael Watts from the British Geological Survey, Keyworth, Nottingham, UK - has identified varieties that are low in arsenic but high in essential trace elements such as selenium and zinc.

Earlier studies showed high concentrations of arsenic in Bangladeshi rice, but the rice samples were mainly from regions where the irrigation water contains higher levels of arsenic....

Child in a deepwater rice field in Bangladesh, shot by the International Rice Research Institute, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Disaster risk is transforming African cities

Denis McClean in the news archive of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction:  Risks that have historically played out in rural areas like drought, floods and wildfires "are being transferred and transformed and expressed differently across Africa's fast growing cities and towns," said Dr. Ailsa Holloway in her keynote address to the 4th Africa Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction today.

Dr. Holloway who oversees Disaster Risk studies at South Africa's Stellenbosch University, said Africa's urban population is expected to be 60% of the total population by 2050 and some countries will reach this by 2030.  "Urban risk management in Africa is simply not up to speed. It is unrealistic to expect our national disaster management authorities to have capacity to address nationwide concerns simultaneously with those faced by large cities and towns," she said.

The urbanization of risk manifests itself in the case of drought in water scarcity when reservoirs run dry due to diminished rainfall and poor water demand management due to the pressures of urban growth, she said.  "Urban fire is devastating and a poorly understood and weakly managed risk across the continent, while new forms of rising flood occur in our growing cities due to unplanned settlement and weak urban infrastructure. Food insecurity in cities generates multiple challenges."

Dr. Holloway spoke about the "large youth dividend" in Africa which was largely untapped due to dismally low enrollment in high schools, for example in southern Africa where it is 30% or lower in some countries and the majority of youth are unemployed.

"An inescapable reality of an increasingly urban continent --especially one with so much poverty and structural inequality -- is the likelihood of social violence and conflict. While one might argue that this is not the core focus of disaster risk reduction, shortcomings in service delivery, rising food prices, unemployment and political intolerance can trigger social unrest.  Community based disaster risk reduction in tense urban contexts can play an important role in addressing other forms of tension that have potential to bring harm and loss."...

A crowd on the street in Lagos, Nigeria, shot by Zouzou Wizman, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Warming seas frustrate Zanzibar's seaweed farmers

Danstan Kaunda in AlertNet: Rising sea temperatures and more extreme weather  are damaging Zanzibar’s formerly thriving seaweed farms, maritime experts say, reducing harvests and putting farmers out of work.

Commercially valuable seaweed was brought to Zanzibar from the Philippines in the 1980s, and early producers found it grew well in the shallow waters off this Indian Ocean island. Some types of seaweed, used in the food and pharmaceutical industries as a stabilizer or emulsifying agent, are in great demand abroad, and the government promoted it as a useful export crop and source of employment.

...Demand was strongest for high quality red seaweeds such as the Cottonii and Spinosum varieties, but seaweed farmers say those varieties are now proving very vulnerable to changes in growing conditions, which can make the weed lose its colour and, most important, its texture.

As an apparent result of warming conditions and storms, Zanzibar’s seaweed production has fallen sharply in recent years, from 14,040 tonnes five years ago to just under 10,800 tonnes last year, according to the Department of Marine Resources of Zanzibar.

The Zanzibar Exporters Association said its members collected and exported about 11,000 tonnes of dry seaweed in 2011, most of it going to the United States, France, Denmark, Spain, China and Chile....

Aquaculture of red algae in Zanzibar, shot by Leyo, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Switzerland license

Paying farmers to protect forest watersheds in Vietnam & China: The long-term prognosis

Maya Thatcher in Forest News, a blog by the Center for International Forestry Research: As China and Vietnam move toward decentralised, market-based economies, they will need to improve the cost-effectiveness of ambitious programmes offering cash rewards to farmers who help protect forests, watersheds and other vulnerable ecosystems, a new study by the Center for International Forestry Research suggests.

Local communities, whose participation at the moment is generally mandatory, will also need to have a greater say in how they manage the land. “The key is to find a way to make these Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes sustainable in the long run,” said Vijay Kolinjivadi, lead author of the report looking at the governments’ driving role in the projects and what impact that has. “As currently designed, these schemes may eventually require external funding, from international donors or non-governmental organisations,” he said. “Local stakeholders need to understand the long-term benefits of ecological stewardship.”

Policymakers across the globe worry about how the food, water and shelter needs of seven billion people may be irreparably damaging our planet. The clearing of tropical forests, intensified farming production and industrial-scaled ranching have resulted in soil erosion, deterioration of water resources and a general loss of biodiversity. China and Vietnam, which have both experienced unprecedented economic growth in recent decades, are offering incentives to those who adopt land use practices that benefit society as a whole.

But these programmes, aimed at protecting forests and promoting watershed conservation, have cost tens of billions of dollars. And because they are carried out on state-controlled land, farmers have little choice but to take part and have little or no sense of ownership.

Kolinjivadi hopes district chiefs, farmer councils, and other local institutions will eventually play a larger, more significant role. “We have a unique opportunity here,” said Kolinjivadi, who sees the role of the government eventually shifting from primary driver to facilitator, promoting direct, fair negotiations between contracting parties....

A forest wetlands in Tịnh Biên and An Gaing, Vietnam, shot by Thuydaonguyen, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Migration myths hold back successful climate adaptation

Dominic Kniveton and Max Martin in SciDev.net: What do farmers in the tropics do when their land remains parched for years, or the delta islands on which they live are flooded more frequently because of a changing climate? If you think, like many still do, that they either stay put in increasing hardship or abandon their homes and emigrate to developed countries, it is time to think again.

People do migrate when faced with rapid and uncertain changes in their environment, but this is largely within their own country and sometimes within their home region. Such movements usually follow, build on or tweak established pathways of migration.

And most of the time, they eventually lead back home — people tend to move back and forth, looking for more productive livelihoods. The popular media sometimes set out vivid future scenarios of people abandoning their homes and fleeing en masse to faraway places. But there is no hard evidence to support such forecasts.

Internal migration is a trend we observed through ongoing research in Bangladesh carried out alongside the University of Dhaka's Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit.

In its first phase, the study, funded by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network, examined 14 villages in three districts: one largely affected by drought, one by flooding and one by cyclones. Through interviews and focus group discussions, we probed what goes on inside people's minds when they encounter these stresses and shocks.

...From our preliminary work, we get a sense that, faced with change, people are increasingly seeking diverse livelihood strategies — different ways to make a living. This includes migrating to locations within the country that are well-established as well as new to them. And while some do migrate internationally, long hauls are rare....

Flooding after a 1991 cyclone in Bangladesh, US Air Force photograph

Nitrogen from pollution, natural sources causes growth of toxic algae

Seed Daily: Nitrogen in ocean waters fuels the growth of two tiny but toxic phytoplankton species that are harmful to marine life and human health, warns a new study published in the Journal of Phycology. Researchers from San Francisco State University found that nitrogen entering the ocean -- whether through natural processes or pollution -- boosts the growth and toxicity of a group of phytoplankton that can cause the human illness Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning.

Commonly found in marine waters off the North American West Coast, these diatoms (phytoplankton cells) of the Pseudo-nitzschia genus produce a potent toxin called domoic acid. When these phytoplankton grow rapidly into massive blooms, high concentrations of domoic acid put human health at risk if it accumulates in shellfish. It can also cause death and illness among marine mammals and seabirds that eat small fish that feed on plankton.

"Regardless of its source, nitrogen has a powerful impact on the growth of phytoplankton that are the foundation of the marine food web, irrespective of whether they are toxic or not," said William Cochlan, senior research scientist at SF State's Romberg Tiburon Center for Environmental Studies. "Scientists and regulators need to be aware of the implications of both natural and pollutant sources of nitrogen entering the sea."

Nitrogen can occur naturally in marine waters due to coastal upwelling, which draws cool, nutrient-rich water containing nitrate (the most stable form of nitrogen) from deeper depths into sunlit surface waters. Pollution, including agricultural runoff containing fertilizer and effluent from sewage plants, is also responsible for adding nitrogen, including ammonium and urea, to ocean waters, but in most regions these types of nitrogen occur at relatively low concentrations....

Pseudo-nitzschia multiseries strain "CCMP 2708" : diatoms viewed under a light microscope, shot by Guillmot44, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

GAO adds climate change, weather satellite delays to high-risk list

Sean Reilly in the Federal Times: The federal government is facing significant financial risks posed by climate change and expected gaps in weather satellite data, according to the Government Accountability Office.

The government owns large amounts of property, runs flood and crop insurance programs with millions of policyholders, and regularly pours vast sums of money into emergency aid. But while scientists predict that climate change will lead to more frequent and more destructive natural disasters, the government “is not well positioned to address this fiscal exposure, partly because of the complex, cross-cutting nature of the issue,” GAO said in its latest biennial list of federal programs that are at high risk of waste, fraud, abuse and financial loss.

GAO’s so-called high-risk list, released Thursday, is issued at the start of each new Congress and now features 30 problem areas, most of which have been on the list for many years.

The White House has created a governmentwide task force on climate change adaptation, but “it has no mechanisms for making or enforcing important decisions and priorities,’’ the GAO said.

Weather satellite data gaps are expected because of delays and cost overruns in launching the next generation of polar satellites. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting a gap of up to two years after existing spacecraft wear out later this decade...

Boat stranded on the Rockaway subway line after Hurricane Sandy, shot from Metropolitan Transportation Authority of the State of New York, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Flood-proofing Mozambique

IRIN: Mozambique has dealt with years of recurrent floods and set up an effective early warning system, yet the intensity of this year’s rains came as a surprise.  At least a 100 people have been killed and 150,000 displaced in the country’s southern Gaza Province, with the Chókwè District among the worst affected by flooding of the Limpopo River.

The numbers of people killed and displaced have dropped since 2000, when floods in Mozambique killed 700 people and displaced a quarter of a million others, but they are higher than the tolls from 2008’s floods.

Aid workers and officials in Mozambique are now discussing problems in the early warning system, and they are looking to long-term solutions, including reviving a long-standing debate on dams, to save people from future floodwaters.  Although 2008 saw floodwaters along the Zambezi River Valley reach levels higher than in past flood years, increased planning, early warning and the rapid response capacity of the National Institute for Disaster Management (INGC) ensured a better-coordinated response and lower casualties, according to the UN in Mozambique. 

But these measures proved less effective against this year’s torrential rains.  Américo Ubisse, the general secretary of the Mozambican Red Cross, has already started thinking about lessons learned. “The early warning system worked well this time. People already understand the meaning of blue, orange and red alert [colours signifying levels of risk]. But still the problem is that we were taken by surprise by the magnitude of the rains. The forecast talked about between 75 and 150mm of rain [over two days in the south]. But in the end [we received] 400mm. Suddenly, the water was already in the city and many people were affected at the same time.”

Sergio Buque at the National Meteorological Institute in Maputo says it is difficult to forecast rain quantities over 75mm using the equipment they have....

Preserving biodiversity can be compatible with intensive agriculture

Penn State Live: Preserving genetically diverse local crops in areas where small-scale farms are rapidly modernizing is possible, according to a Penn State geographer, who is part of an international research project investigating the biodiversity of maize, or corn, in hotspots of Bolivia, Peru and Mexico.

Hotspots are areas where cultivation of peaches and other non-traditional crops has exploded over the past decade, noted Karl Zimmerer, professor and head of the Department of Geography, and where small-scale farms are often female-run and have been previously regarded as marginal to mainstream agriculture.

"Peach-growing in central Bolivia is a vitally important income-generating strategy, even while farmers also desire and succeed in producing their Andean maize, both for eating and seed, as well as some sale," said Zimmerer, whose findings were recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researcher analyzed small-scale farm, or smallholder, landscapes and their farming and livelihood practices, including labor migration and irrigation issues, from 2000 to 2010 over three areas within Bolivia's Valle Alto region. Farmers had low-to-moderate incomes by national standards.

Zimmerer and his colleagues surveyed land use among 174 smallholder households to assess production inputs and outputs of maize and peach crops. Among the factors they examined were farm-level management, varietal choices and water and soil management. Zimmerer designed this data collection and analysis to use with high-resolution satellite imagery and Geographic Information Systems. These techniques enabled him to create geographic models, maps and estimates of the areas devoted to intensified peach- and maize-growing.

Zimmerer also interviewed diverse groups of land users and officials to determine similarities and differences of perspectives on biodiversity in changing farming and food systems. In addition to determining the compatibility of traditional plants, or landrace, diversity and intensified agriculture, Zimmerer also addressed important links between migrant communities and smallholder farms.

"Many of these farmers rely on money sent back home from relatives abroad, primarily in the United States and Spain," he said. "This money is key to the farmers' ability to run successful smallholder farms and grow high agrobiodiversity maize."...

Terraced farms in Bolivia's Cordillera Central, shot by Christopher Walker, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Aceh governor wants to allow more logging in Indonesia's protected forests

Hayat Indriyatno in the Jakarta Globe (Indonesia): Spatial zoning proposals for Aceh indicate that the province’s governor is seeking to open up more than 52,000 hectares of protected forest there to logging, a conservation group warns. In a report published on Tuesday, the group Greenomics Indonesia found that the spatial plans proposed by Governor Zaini Abdullah would change the status of vast tracts of protected forest to production forest.

“The report reveals that there are five large blocks of [protected] forest — each more than 2,000 hectares in area — that have been identified for the sole purpose of felling so as to meet timber needs of more than 21,000 hectares, equivalent to 30 percent of the total area of Singapore,” the report said.

“In addition the report reveals that there are two blocks of [protected] forest that are also relatively large which have been proposed for conversion into production forest. The principal function of production forest is to produce timber, which is of course done through logging… These two blocks extend to more than 31,000 hectares.”

Satellite image analysis shows that all the affected blocks, spanning the districts of Gayo Lues, Southwest Aceh, Aceh Jaya and Nagan Raya, currently enjoy good forest cover, which Greenomics noted was the obvious reason that they were being targeted for logging.

However, the group also noted that the spatial zoning proposals were subject to approval by the central government, and called on authorities in Jakarta to reject the plans. “The motivation needs to be quickly nipped in the bud by the Forestry Ministry. Otherwise it could lead to the legalization of destructive practices in the protection forests of Aceh,” the report said....

An 1890 photo of a forest in Aceh, Wikimedia Commons, from the Tropenmuseum Collection

Cutting food waste crucial to ensuring food security

Isaiah Esipisu in AlertNet: Sticking to what’s written on your shopping list, checking food expiry dates, cooking just enough but no more and a few other simple practices can help curb global food waste, which amounts to 1.3 billion tonnes of food every year, experts say. This is vital at a time when climate change and population growth are reducing the availability of food for millions of vulnerable people around the world, they add.

“With the World Bank warning of the possibility of a four-degrees-centigrade temperature rise by the end of the decade and an expected world population of nine billion by 2050, global food production and supply is going to be highly affected,” Dennis Garrity, United Nations drylands ambassador and senior fellow at the World Agroforestry Centre told AlertNet in Nairobi. “The time to act is now.”

There are 870 million hungry people in the world today, experts estimate, but droughts, floods, storms and climate-related plant diseases, among many other factors, continually reduce access to food. Now experts say that cutting the amount of food that goes to waste, both in the developed and developing world, is key to addressing this.

One of Africa’s food waste hotspots is the Dandora rubbish dump on the outskirts of Nairobi. The 30-acre piece of land receives 2,000 tonnes of solid waste every day, an uncertain share of it food waste. The presence of pigs, marabou storks, dogs and other animals – as well as human scavengers - indicates there is plenty to eat, however....

A landfill in Guatemala, shot by Surizar, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Thirsty Mideast is exhausting its water supply

Tia Ghose in Live Science: The Middle East has depleted its water reserves at a frightening pace over the last several years, according to a new study. From 2002 to 2009, the region lost enough water from groundwater, soil, snowmelt and reservoirs to fill the entire Dead Sea — about 117 million acre-feet (144 cubic kilometers). The majority of that water loss comes from aggressive pumping of groundwater.

...The team was using satellite data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) project, which measures the change in mass on the Earth below it. The project's primary goal was to track changes in ice sheets.

"GRACE is like a giant scale in the sky, it responds to gravity changes, the satellites are perturbed and they move around in their orbits due to changes in mass," said study co-author James Famiglietti, a hydrologist at the University of California, Irvine. The twin satellites take advantage of the fact that gravity's tug on a spot is proportional to its mass. And water is by far the heaviest thing that changes on Earth, so gravity changes can reveal how much water has been lost. [6 Weird Facts About Gravity]

Famiglietti and his colleagues found that the Tigris Euphrates Basin, which spans parts of Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq, lost an average of 16 million acre-feet (20 cubic kilometers) a year during the period of the study. By analyzing other data that tracked other water levels, such as the amount of snowmelt and reservoir levels in the region, the team concluded that most of the depletion came from pumping groundwater.

A drought during that time period may have depleted reservoirs and snowmelt, causing people to more aggressively pump groundwater, Famiglietti told LiveScience. The findings are even more worrisome, because climate change is projected to reduce rainfall in the region, causing even more water troubles, he said....

The Syrian Desert, shot by yeowatzup, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Climate change influence on typhoons uncertain

IRIN: When Typhoon Bopha, one of the strongest storms to hit the western Pacific in recent memory, slammed into the Philippine island of Mindanao last year, there was much speculation in the media about the growing influence of climate change.  But science is still uncertain about whether atmosphere-warming greenhouse gas emissions have caused a detectable change in cyclonic activity.

This was reported by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP)/World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Typhoon Committee in a new assessment considering the western North Pacific Ocean basin.

The tropical cyclone activity in this region is the most intense of any basin in the world. Cyclonic activity provides about 11 percent of the total rainfall in that part of the basin, and the storms - which are known as typhoons in this part of the world - have caused substantial damage and death.

The Typhoon Committee that initiated the assessment is currently composed of 14 members: Cambodia; China; Democratic People’s Republic of Korea; Hong Kong, China; Japan; Lao People’s Democratic Republic; Macao, China; Malaysia; the Philippines; Republic of Korea; Singapore; Thailand; Socialist Republic of Vietnam; and the United States of America.

Their findings are in line with the 2012 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) special report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX). Scientists familiar with the SREX review said that researchers were uncertain how tropical cyclones might have changed since pre-industrial times because of lack of data, the questionable quality of older data, and a limited understanding of the links between global climate change and tropical cyclone activity....

Typhoon Nuri in 2008, from NASA

Sunlight stimulates release of climate-warming gas from melting Arctic permafrost

University of Michigan News Service: Ancient carbon trapped in Arctic permafrost is extremely sensitive to sunlight and, if exposed to the surface when long-frozen soils melt and collapse, can release climate-warming carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere much faster than previously thought.

University of Michigan ecologist and aquatic biogeochemist George Kling and his colleagues studied places in Arctic Alaska where permafrost is melting and is causing the overlying land surface to collapse, forming erosional holes and landslides and exposing long-buried soils to sunlight.

They found that sunlight increases bacterial conversion of exposed soil carbon into carbon dioxide gas by at least 40 percent compared to carbon that remains in the dark. The team, led by Rose Cory of the University of North Carolina, reported its findings in an article to be published online Feb. 11 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Until now, we didn't really know how reactive this ancient permafrost carbon would be — whether it would be converted into heat-trapping gases quickly or not," said Kling, a professor in the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. EEB graduate student Jason Dobkowski is a co-author of the paper.

"What we can say now is that regardless of how fast the thawing of the Arctic permafrost occurs, the conversion of this soil carbon to carbon dioxide and its release into the atmosphere will be faster than we previously thought," Kling said. "That means permafrost carbon is potentially a huge factor that will help determine how fast the Earth warms."

Tremendous stores of organic carbon have been frozen in Arctic permafrost soils for thousands of years. If thawed and released as carbon dioxide gas, this vast carbon repository has the potential to double the amount of the heat-trapping greenhouse gas in the atmosphere on a timescale similar to humanity's inputs of carbon dioxide due to the burning of fossil fuels.

That creates the potential for a positive feedback: As the Earth warms due to the human-caused release of heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, frozen Arctic soils also warm, thaw and release more carbon dioxide. The added carbon dioxide accelerates Earth's warming, which further accelerates the thawing of Arctic soils and the release of even more carbon dioxide....

University of Michigan ecologist George Kling at a landslide thermokarst on a glacial headwall near Toolik Lake, Alaska. As permafrost ice melts, the soil collapses and either creates an erosional hole in the tundra or a landslide such as this one. These features are called thermokarst failures. Photo from the University of Michigan website, courtesy of George Kling.

Philippine development sparks 'sunset' protest

Terra Daily via AFP: Hundreds of Filipinos converged on the Philippine capital's main bayfront Tuesday for a unique "sunset watch" protest aimed at stopping what they said would be a disastrous reclamation project. Armed with binoculars and cameras, the protesters called on the Manila city government to repeal an ordinance granting permission for a developer to reclaim 288 hectares (711 acres) of the bay.

"This reclamation will not only block the view of the famed sunset on Manila Bay but will also lead to worsening environmental degradation, like more floods," said Chiqui Mabanta, one of the organisers of the event.

The protest involved a broad coalition of Manila residents, artists, civic leaders and environmentalists called SOS Manila Bay, which last month filed a petition with city hall to stop the reclamation. The protesters linked hands to form a human chain at sunset, while artists painted the famed views.

The group said the developer, Manila Goldcoast Development, had presented plans for an international cruise ship terminal to boost tourism to the area. The complex would also house entertainment businesses, as well as a high-rise residential development....

Sunset at the Manila Bay Yacht Club, shot by Waiting for serendipity, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Security risks of extreme weather and climate change

EurekAlert via Harvard University: Increasingly frequent extreme weather events such as droughts, floods, severe storms, and heat waves have focused the attention of climate scientists on the connections between greenhouse warming and extreme weather. Because of the potential threat to U.S. national security, a new study was conducted to explore the forces driving extreme weather events and their impacts over the next decade, specifically with regard to their implications for national security planning. The report finds that the early ramifications of climate extremes resulting from climate change are already upon us and will continue to be felt over the next decade, directly impacting U.S. national security interests. "Lessons from the past are no longer of great value as a guide to the future," said co-lead author Michael McElroy, Gilbert Butler Professor of Environmental Studies at Harvard University. "Unexpected changes in regional weather are likely to define the new climate normal, and we are not prepared."

Changes in extremes include more record high temperatures; fewer but stronger tropical cyclones; wider areas of drought and increases in precipitation; increased climate variability; Arctic warming and attendant impacts; and continued sea level rise as greenhouse warming continues and even accelerates. These changes will affect water and food availability, energy decisions, the design of critical infrastructure, use of the global commons such as the oceans and the Arctic region, and critical ecosystem resources. They will affect both underdeveloped and industrialized countries with large costs in terms of economic and human security. The study identifies specific regional climate impacts—droughts and desertification in Mexico, Southwest Asia, and the Eastern Mediterranean, and increased flooding in South Asia—that are of particular strategic importance to the United States.

The report concludes that the risks related to extreme weather require that the U.S. sustain and augment its scientific and technical capacity to observe key indicators, monitor unfolding events, and forewarn of impending security threats as nations adapt to a changing climate. The study recommends a national strategy for strategic observations and monitoring— including greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions, ocean temperatures, and satellite observations of the Arctic—and improved forecast models. "Our critical observational infrastructure is at risk from declining funding," added co-lead author D. James Baker, Director of the Global Carbon Measurement Program at the William J. Clinton Foundation and former Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "Without that knowledge, the needs of civil society and national security for mitigation and adaptation will go unmet."...

Boatswain's Mate 3rd Class Dustin Kang, from Dardanelle, Ark., directs all the flight deck evolutions for an SH-60B Seahawk assigned to the “War Lords” of Light Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron Five One (HSL-51) during flight quarters aboard the guided missile frigate. US Navy photograph

Fog-catching fabric could improve water collection in deserts

Joel Winston in SciDev.net:  A novel and affordable fabric may improve the efficiency of water collection from fog, helping to provide freshwater in desert areas. Researchers from the Eindhoven University of Technology (EUT), in the Netherlands, and Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China, turned a  cotton fabric into a water-collecting material by coating it with a polymer called PNIPAAm.

The fabric switches between absorbing moisture directly from the air when it is foggy and cold, and releasing it as water at warmer temperatures, according to a paper to be published on 21 February in Advanced Materials.

Every kilogramme of the sponge-like fabric can absorb around 3.4 litres of water from the air.  When the ambient temperature rises, the material's microstructure changes and the water is released. These processes are repeatable, raising hopes the fabric could act as an autonomous water-collecting device.

The team hopes the material could be used to harvest water in dry coastal areas, such as the Namib Desert, in Namibia, where rainfall is scarce but ocean air currents frequently bring vapour-carrying fogs.

The temperature range within which the fabric collects, and then releases, water is similar to the typical daytime highs and night-time lows seen in deserts....

A dune in the Namib Desert, shot by Teo Gómez, who has released it into the public domain

US environment agency releases first climate adaptation plan

Carey L. Biron in AlertNet via IPS: For the first time, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has publicly released a draft plan on how the department's programmes will adapt to global warming, in a move that could lay additional groundwork for important new emissions rulemaking the agency may announce in coming months.

 Obama is being urged to set new carbon standards on U.S. power plants, cutting their greenhouse gas emissions by at least a quarter by 2020. Credit: public domain

The EPA is tasked with oversight of the health of both human communities and natural systems, mandated with creating and implementing standards relating to air and water quality, among others. As such, the agency has emerged at the frontlines of Washington's attempts to push through stricter climate-related regulations while circumventing the U.S. Congress, which remains fractious and politicised over the reality of human responsibility for global warming.

"We're happy the government is finally waking up to the cold, hard reality of climate change and seeing its impacts," Elizabeth Perera, a Washington climate policy expert with the Sierra Club, an environment advocacy group, told IPS. "The more real and specific that you can talk about these impacts, the more we think there will be a fire lit under the government to do something on the action side. On climate change, you have to remember, we're talking about major costs across all parts of the government and economy."

The draft plan comes in response to a government-wide requirement, mandated through executive order in 2009 by President Barack Obama, in which this year all U.S. government agencies are required to file climate change-related adaptation plans with a newly created office within the White House, the Council on Environmental Quality.

Each of these plans will now be open to public comment for two months, although the plan by the EPA is expected to garner some of the most significant public scrutiny. According to a five-year plan, adaptation planning is to be integrated across the EPA's operations by 2015....

Getting a better look at Sandy's wake of destruction

Newswise via Drexel University: Images of the destruction caused by Hurricane Sandy have captured the immense power of what many experts have termed a “superstorm.” These snapshots and videos might not tell the whole story, however. A group of Drexel University engineers are now trying to give rescue and recovery workers a better picture of the storm’s damages that can’t be seen by the naked eye.

Using a combination of images from satellites and remote controlled aircrafts and cameras equipped with infrared and ultraviolet technology, the researchers are hoping to paint a detailed picture of Sandy’s path of destruction that could help emergency workers respond to the next natural disaster.

“During Hurricane Sandy, 7.5 million power outages were reported and thousands of people were still without power weeks after the hurricane,” said Dr. Anu Pradhan an assistant professor in Drexel’s College of Engineering and the lead researcher on the National Science Foundation-funded research team. “This is due to the massive destruction, it’s difficult to see the full scope of it by walking through the sites, we need a broader picture that shows the various layers of damage both seen and unseen.”

Infrared (IR) and ultraviolet (UV) imaging technology, combined with acoustic emission (AE) testing can reveal damages to power lines, trees, telephone poles and buildings that appeared to be unscathed.

“Infrared and ultraviolet cameras can capture radiation that is not visible to the naked eye,” said Dr. Ivan Bartoli, an assistant professor in the College of Engineering and a co-researcher for the project. “Different anomalies in power lines can be observed using IR/UV imaging, in the future, using a combination of high resolution satellite images and close-range aerial photography with IR/UV filters, we could determine which power lines are working and which are damaged.”

Acoustic emission testing uses sound waves to test the elasticity of trees and telephone poles and can determine whether or not they’ve been damaged internally to the point where they could be a falling hazard.

...“In addition to the lives lost and destruction caused by Hurricane Sandy, the residual effects are still very much with us,” said co-researcher Dr. Antonios Kontsos, an assistant professor in the College of Engineering. “Our goal is to make sure that responders have even more information at their disposal the next time something like this happens so that perhaps some of this loss can be prevented.”...

In New Jersey, along Hurricane Sandy's path of destruction, Drexel engineers are using infrared and ultraviolet imaging technology and acoustic emission testing combined with low-altitude aircraft photography to generate detailed maps for recovery workers to triage their efforts.  Image from Drexel University

Climate change promises tough future for US farmers

Alex Kirby in Responding to Climate Change:  Climate change may force American farmers to alter where they grow crops and to spend millions of dollars more tackling weeds, pests and diseases, a report says. It urges them to consider this as a risk they may have to manage.

The report, by the US Agriculture Department, says American farmers have managed to adapt to environmental changes for nearly 150 years. But the accelerating pace and intensity of global warming in the next few decades might soon overwhelm it.

“We’re going to end up in a situation where we have a multitude of things happening that are going to negatively impact crop production,” said Jerry Hatfield, a plant physiologist with USDA’s Agricultural Research Service and lead author of the study. “In fact, we saw this in 2012 with the drought.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says 2012 was the hottest year in the US since record-keeping began in 1895, overtaking the previous record by 1°F (-17.2°C). The country suffered its worst drought in over 50 years.

The report’s authors say US cropland agriculture will resist climate change fairly well during the next 25 years. Farmers will be able to minimize the impact of warming by changing their timetables and using crop varieties more resilient to drought, disease and heat. More use of irrigation and moving production to regions with a more clement temperature will also help.

But by mid-century adaptation becomes more difficult and expensive as crops and livestock need to become ever more adaptable, something which will leave their productivity increasingly unpredictable. Temperature increases and more extreme swings in precipitation could cause yields of major crops to fall....

A wheat field on the Palouse, in Idaho, US Department of Agriculture

Investors who trample land rights risk bottom line

Seed Daily via AFP: Companies that invest in land and resources in emerging economies risk financial and public relations disasters if local inhabitants feel they are getting ripped off, consultants warned in a report last week. The report was released by a group known as the Munden Project and founder Lou Munden said: "When we looked at companies involved in international land acquisitions, we found that they experience an astonishing amount of financial damage."

This ranged from "massively increased operating costs, as much as 29 times above a normal baseline scenario, to outright abandonment of functional operations when they ignore pre-existing or customary local land rights."

The report was entitled "The Financial Risks of Insecure Land Tenure: An Investment View," and Munden emphasised that the financial risks were many and varied from delays in construction timetables to the expropriation of assets "following the loss of insurance coverage."

He commented that "even more troubling, the escalation of risk can be extremely rapid", and that conventional techniques for managing risk were inadequate for coping with insecure local land tenure.

Projects go wrong when local people feel they have not been adequately compensated and are being deprived of their land, jobs, water and forests.

This can lead to disruption of many kinds, from roadblocks to frequent acts of sabotage and other forms of violence....

A walk for land rights in Chambai, India, in 2009, shot by Ekta Parishad, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Two more cases of human bird flu in China

South China Morning Post: China reported two human cases of bird flu in the southwestern city of Guiyang on Sunday, with both patients in a critical condition, the official Xinhua news agency said.

A 21-year-old woman and 31-year-old man tested positive for the H5N1 bird flu virus on Sunday after developing symptoms on February 2 and February 3 respectively, Xinhua said.

“They are in a critical condition and medical workers are carrying out emergency treatment,” the Ministry of Health said in a statement, cited by Xinhua.

It is the second city to be hit by the virus, after 19-year-old Beijing-based migrant worker Huang Yanqing died in January of the disease.

People who had close contact with the two patients are under medical observation but none have been found ill so far, the agency said. It reported that the pair did not have contact with birds before they developed symptoms....

Colorized transmission electron micrograph of Avian influenza A H5N1 viruses (seen in gold) grown in MDCK cells (seen in green). Avian influenza A viruses do not usually infect humans; however, several instances of human infections and outbreaks have been reported since 1997. From the Centers for Disease Control

Climate change could impact wave height

Dyna Rochmyaningsih in SciDev.net: Average wave size will increase in many parts of the southern hemisphere over the twenty-first century, but decrease in the north, according to an international study on the impact of climate change on oceanic activity.

The study, published in Nature Climate Change last month (13 January), predicts a wave height increase of between 20 and 30 centimetres in an area covering at least seven per cent of the surface of the world's oceans. This is due to the poleward intensification of the westerly winds in the southern hemisphere, resulting from climate change.

But the scientists also predict a drop in wave height across a quarter of the area of the world's oceans, particularly in the northern hemisphere, with potentially far-reaching impacts.

"The decreased wave height in the northern oceans is good news for the fishing industry there because the sea will be calmer," says Nobuhito Mori, associate professor at Kyoto University, Japan, and the study's co-author.

But the opposite may happen for fisheries in the South, as bigger waves may make conditions more difficult, Mori says. He warns that the seaweed industry may also be affected, as higher waves are disruptive for seaweed and prevent the plants from settling.... 

"Ocean waves," Hokusai

Smartphones, tablets help researchers improve storm forecasts

Hannah Hickey in University of Washington News: The next advance in weather forecasting may not come from a new satellite or supercomputer, but from a device in your pocket. University of Washington atmospheric scientists are using pressure sensors included in the newest smartphones to develop better weather forecasting techniques.

“With this approach we could potentially have tens or hundreds of thousands of additional surface pressure observations, which could significantly improve short-term weather forecasts,” said Cliff Mass, a UW professor of atmospheric sciences.

Owners of certain new Android smartphones and tablet computers can now download the PressureNet app, which measures atmospheric pressure and provides the data to UW researchers. When some smartphone manufacturers recently added pressure sensors, to estimate the phone’s elevation and help pinpoint its location, Mass saw an opportunity to enhance weather prediction. In the autumn he approached Cumulonimbus, a Canadian app company that developed a barometer application for smartphones that collects all the data and shares it back with users.

The PressureNet app this week collected about 4,000 observations per hour, with users clustered in the northeastern United States and around some major cities. “We need more density,” Mass said. “Right now it’s a matter of getting more people to contribute.”

Android devices equipped with pressure sensors include Samsung’s Galaxy S3, Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy Note and Nexus 4 smartphones, and the Nexus 10 and Motorola Xoom tablet computers.

Atmospheric pressure is the weight of the air above, and includes information about what is happening as air masses collide. Precise tracking of pressure readings and pressure changes could help weather forecasters to pinpoint exactly where and when a major storm will strike.

Mass is particularly interested in the center of the country, which is prone to severe storms but includes fewer weather observation stations. “Thunderstorms are one of the areas of weakest skill for forecasting,” Mass said. “I think thunderstorms in the middle part of the country could potentially be the biggest positive for this approach. They are relatively small-scale, they develop over a few hours, they can be severe and can affect people significantly.”...

Photo by Harald Hoyer, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

“Building back worse” after Philippines typhoon

IRIN: More than two months after Typhoon Bopha hit the eastern coast of Mindanao Province in the southern Philippines some 198,000 families are still trying to repair their homes, even in the midst of daily monsoon rains.

“There is a sense that natural disasters hit, and that’s it,” said Tom Bamforth, the coordinator of aid groups working on housing after Typhoon Bopha, known locally as Pablo, struck on 4 December, displacing close to one million residents. “But the problem is,” Bamforth continued, “it has been two months of constant rains. This is still an ongoing disaster.”

Entire small towns, known locally as `barangays’, were submerged following flooding on 19 January which affected almost 40,000 people in Davao city (the country’s second largest) as well as the provinces of Davao del Norte and Compostela Valley, which were both affected earlier by the Category 5 typhoon (winds that reach 250km/hour).

“We have never had something like this in our lifetimes,” said Sustenio Sulag, the elected leader of Panansalan in Compostela Valley, 150km north of Davao city. All 215 family homes were partially or completely destroyed by the typhoon in December.

Typhoon Bopha/Pablo was the sixteenth to hit the archipelago in 2012, but the deadliest worldwide that year, claiming, thus far, close to 1,100 lives.

...The government’s Mines and Geosciences Bureau is conducting geohazard risk assessments in affected provinces, colour coding sites to indicate high, medium or low risk to flooding and landslides. The government is interpreting high-risk areas as “no-build” zones, said DSWD’s housing focal point for typhoon-affected areas, Elena Labrador. “The government will not tolerate people living in no-build zones,” she told IRIN....

Homes destroyed by Typhoon Bopha in Cateel, Davao, shot by Sonny Day, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Conservatives can be persuaded to care more about the environment, study finds

Yasmin Anwar in the UC Berkeley News Center: When it comes to climate change, deforestation and toxic waste, the assumption has been that conservative views on these topics are intractable. But new research from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that such viewpoints can be changed after all, when the messages about the need to be better stewards of the land are couched in terms of fending off threats to the “purity” and “sanctity” of Earth and our bodies.

A UC Berkeley study has found that while people who identified themselves as conservatives tend to be less concerned about the environment than their liberal counterparts, their motivation increased significantly when they read articles that stressed the need to “protect the purity of the environment” and were shown such repellant images as a person drinking dirty water, a forest filled with garbage, and a city under a cloud of smog.

Published today (Dec. 10)  in the online issue of the journal Psychological Science, the findings indicate that reframing pro-environmental rhetoric according to values that resonate strongly with conservatives can reduce partisan polarization on ecological matters.

“These findings offer the prospect of pro-environmental persuasion across party lines,” said Robb Willer, a UC Berkeley social psychologist and coauthor of the study. “Reaching out to conservatives in a respectful and persuasive way is critical, because large numbers of Americans will need to support significant environment reforms if we are going to deal effectively with climate change, in particular.”

Researchers conducted a content analysis of more than 200 op-eds published in such newspapers as The New York Times, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal, and found the pro-environmental arguments were most often pitched in terms of moral obligations to care about the natural environment and protect it from harm, a theme that resonates more powerfully with liberals, they added, than with conservatives....

Dirty water spilling from a jug, shot by Ildar Sagdejev (Specious), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Exeter developing climate change adaptation plan

Aaron Sanborn in Seacoastonline.com: By the end of 2014, the town [of Exeter, New Hampshire] is expected to have the most rigorous climate change adaptation plan on the Seacoast. Through a $683,472 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the University of New Hampshire and Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve are working with the town to develop a plan based on Exeter's perspectives using hydraulic and hydrologic modeling and climate change scenarios.

Paul Kirshen, a research professor with UNH's Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space, said Exeter was a good fit for the grant because the grant focuses on the protection of large watersheds and Exeter sits along the Great Bay watershed.

In addition, Exeter is already focusing on some of the areas this study will highlight, such as stormwater runoff, non-point source pollution and flood projections. The study will also look at how climate change may impact the Squamscott River and its ecosystem.

"Exeter is already concerned about many of these issues and climate change will make them worse," Kirshen said. "As part of climate change we're expecting more intense rain storms. Any problem Exeter already has with water is going to be worse with climate change."

Kirshen said there are some models that indicate the area could see a sea-level rise of 1 to 2 feet by 2050, which would put additional stress on the tidal marshes of the Squamscott River. He said it's important for the town to understand what the potential impacts of this might be so it can factor it into its future planning of developments, land use decision-making, drainage networks and future infrastructure needs, such as the new wastewater treatment plant....

The Exeter Town Hall, shot by Beancounter603, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Deadly striga weed spreading across Eastern Africa

Maina Waruru in SciDev.net: Rising soil temperatures are increasing the spread of a deadly, parasitic weed that significantly reduces crop yields in Sub-Saharan Africa, Striga, according to scientists. The noxious weed, also known as witch-weed, usually thrives in the warm and humid tropics but is now spreading to cooler and wetter highlands as a result of warmer soils driven by global warming and low soil fertility, which provides the right conditions for Striga to thrive.

This spread has threatened the livelihoods of around 100 million people, with more than four million hectares of maize crops infected. In general, Striga reduces maize and cowpea yields by up to 80 per cent in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Some farmers are now abandoning maize cultivation for cassava as the parasitic plant colonises areas at attitudes more than 1,500 metres above sea level, said Mel Oluoch, head of the Integrated Striga Management in Africa programme at the International Institute of Research in Tropical Agriculture (IITA), during a farmers' field day in Western Kenya last month (17 January) organised by ISMA.

"Striga currently remains the biggest threat to maize production, particularly in the East Africa region where corn is the staple for millions of inhabitants," said Oluoch, adding that the weed devastates plants by attaching itself at the root base, starving the host for nutrients.

"More worrying is that the weed is spreading fast to areas not traditionally known to be infected, owing to climate change-related impacts and the resulting rise in soil temperatures coupled with low soil fertility across most of Africa," Oluoch told SciDev.Net and added that they have been observing the weed for more than two years...

Corn in Kenya, from USAID's Africa bureau