Tuvalu among other Pacific nations also battered by cyclone

Terra Daily via AFP: Nearly half the population of Tuvalu have been severely affected by the devastation wrought by Cyclone Pam, Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga said Sunday, with other Pacific island nations also taking a hit.

While the focus has been on devastation in neighbouring Vanuatu, Tuvalu -- a grouping of nine coral atolls with a population of less than 11,000 -- is also struggling to cope, he told Radio New Zealand International.

"Forty five percent of the population of Tuvalu, most of whom are on the outer islands, have been affected, badly, severely affected," he said of the island chain some 1,550 kilometres (960 miles) northeast of Vanuatu.

"We are worried about the aftermath in terms of hygiene and supplies of essential materials like food, medicine and water."

Few details of the impact were given. But Sopoaga said most people living on the outer islands of the ex-British colony formerly known as the Ellice Islands had been affected, with houses and crops washed away....

Devastation after Cyclone Pam, March 14, 2015. Shot by Graham Crumb Graham Crumb, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license

Vanuatu devastated by one of the strongest tropical cyclones in Pacific; at least eight dead

Yahoo News via 7 News: At least eight people have died in Vanuatu, a senior aid official says, in one of the strongest tropical cyclones to have hit the South Pacific. It comes amid unconfirmed reports that more than 40 people may have perished elsewhere in the country as a result of Cyclone Pam.

The official death toll in Port Vila stands at six, with another 20 confirmed injured, according to Vanuatu's National Disaster Management Office. One person has also died in Papua New Guinea's West New Britain province after a tree fell onto a house during strong winds driven by the storm.

Vanuatu coordinator of climate change not-for-profit organisation 350, Isso Nihmei, said he and others tried to rescue three people in Port Vila who later died in hospital.

"We heard some of the people who were living close. They were shouting and calling us. So once we went down there, we saw this guy who was already dead," he said.

"There [were] other people on the other side, so we went down to rescue them but they were really weak....

NOAA image from March 14, 2015, of Cyclone Pam over Vanuatu

Experts sound warning over flu dangers in China, India

Terra Daily: Scientists sounded warnings Wednesday over H7N9 bird flu in China and the H1N1 strain of swine flu in India that have jointly claimed more than 1,700 lives. H7N9 virus presents a high risk of becoming pandemic if China fails to close loopholes in its live poultry trade, researchers reported in the journal Nature.

A different team, writing in the US journal Cell Host and Microbe, said a strain of H1N1 "swine" flu in India may have acquired mutations enabling it to spread more readily. Looking at H7N9, epidemiologists led by Yi Guan at the University of Hong Kong sought to understand why this dangerous strain emerged in China in 2013, faded away and then rebounded in 2014.

The reason lies in the live poultry sector, they found, with China's eastern province of Zhejiang a springboard for spreading the virus south- and eastward. In the 2014 outbreak, H7N9 mixed with other flu viruses, helping to create new strains, the team said.

Their evidence came from throat and faecal swabs taken from chickens at live markets in Zhejiang, Guangdong, Jiangxi, Jiangsu and Shandong provinces from October 2013 to July 2014. No H7N9 was found among ducks. Further proof came from analysis of flu virus samples taken from patients at hospitals in the southern city of Shenzhen, in Guangdong province across from Hong Kong...

An electron micrograph of H7N9 from the Centers for Disease Control

Rapid coastal population growth may leave many exposed to sea-level rise

Science Daily: The number of people potentially exposed to future sea level rise and associated storm surge flooding may be highest in low-elevation coastal zones in Asia and Africa, according to new projections published March 11, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Barbara Neumann from Kiel University, Germany, and colleagues.

Many coastal areas are densely populated and exposed to a range of coastal hazards, including sea level rise. As coastal population density and urbanization continue to increase, researchers are investigating how coastal populations may be affected by potential environmental impacts at global and regional scales in the future. Based on four different sea-level and socioeconomic scenarios, the authors of this study assessed future population changes by the years 2030 and 2060 in the low-elevation coastal zone and estimated trends in exposure to 100-year coastal floods.

From the scenario-based projections, the researchers estimated that the number of people living in the low-elevation coastal zone, as well as the number of people exposed to flooding from 100-year storm surge events, was highest in Asia
. China, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Viet Nam had the largest numbers of coastal population per country and accounted for more than half of the total number of people living in low-elevation coastal zones, both now and in the future scenarios. However, Africa was estimated to experience the highest future rates of population growth and urbanization in the coastal zone, particularly in Egypt and sub-Saharan countries in West and East Africa. While the authors' research method does not explicitly consider possible population displacement or out-migration due to factors such as sea level rise, the results highlight countries and regions with a high degree of potential exposure to coastal flooding, and also help to identify regions where policies and adaptive planning for building resilient coastal communities are essential....

NASA image of Haiphong

Bangladesh announces nationwide use of SERVIR satellite-based flood forecasting and warning system

A press release from NASA: Bangladesh officials have announced plans to expand a satellite-based flood forecasting and warning system developed by SERVIR to aid an area where floodwaters inundate from 1/3 to 2/3 of the country annually, killing hundreds of people and affecting millions. The system, which relies on river level data provided by the Jason-2 satellite, last year provided the longest lead time for flood warnings ever produced in Bangladesh.

SERVIR is a joint development initiative of NASA and USAID, working in partnership with leading regional organizations around the globe to help developing countries use information provided by Earth Observing satellites and geospatial technologies for managing climate risks and land use. SERVIR and the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development based in Kathmandu, Nepal, developed the Jason-2 based flood forecasting and warning solution.

"Forecasters have the dream to extend lead time for flood warnings," said Amirul Hossain, executive engineer for the Bangladesh Water Development Board. "By using Jason-2 near real-time data, we made a real step forward in the flood forecasting system in Bangladesh."

About 80 million people depend on the BWDB Flood Forecasting and Warning Center flood warnings. This organization has progressively built and expanded its flood forecasting system. However, without data from Jason-2, warnings were issued just three to five days in advance of flooding. During the 2014 monsoon season, the FFWC used the new Jason-2 solution experimentally and was able to forecast flooding eight days in advance at nine locations of the Ganges and Brahmaputra River Basins in the north, northwest, and central part of the country.

..."We hope this is the beginning of a new journey, a new era for further development of the flood early warning system using space data or space technology,” said Hossain. “In the coming year, with support provided by the NASA SERVIR team, we would like to expand the system to many other locations where possible, to enable more people to benefit from this system by receiving more extended lead time for flood forecasts."...

Upper row: The Ganges Brahmaputra Meghna (GBM) river basins and the Ganges-Brahmaputra (GB) delta. Bottom row: The many river deltas (shown as a triangle in each region) located in large remote river basins that lack information for modeling rivers and water management. Image Credit: NASA SERVIR

The green lungs of our planet are changing

A press release from Goethe University (Frankfurt, Germany): Are leaves and buds developing earlier in the spring? And do leaves stay on the trees longer in autumn? Do steppe ecosystems remaining green longer and are the savannas becoming drier and drier?  In fact, over recent decades, the growing seasons have changed everywhere around the world. This was determined by a doctoral candidate at the Goethe University as part of an international collaboration based on satellite data. The results are expected to have consequences for agriculture, interactions between species, the functioning of ecosystems, and the exchange of carbon dioxide and energy between the land surface and the atmosphere.

"There is almost no part of the Earth that is not affected by these changes", explains Robert Buitenwerf, doctoral candidate at the Institute for Ph
ysical Geography at the Goethe University. He has evaluated satellite data from 1981 to 2012 with regard to 21 parameters on vegetation activity, in order to determine the point in time, the duration, and the intensity of growth from the northernmost conifer forests to tropical rain forests. His conclusion: On 54 percent of the land surface, at least one parameter of vegetation activity has moved away from the mean value by more than two standard deviations.

As reported by researchers from Frankfurt, Freiburg and New Zealand in the current edition of the professional journal "Nature Climate Change", leaves are now sprouting earlier in most of the climate zones of the far north. Although they are also dropped somewhat earlier in autumn, the overall vegetation period has grown longer. On the other hand, in our latitudes, trees and shrubs are losing their leaves later than they have up to now.

To date, not much research has been conducted on the regions of the southern hemisphere.  In those areas, the researchers found that in several savannas of South America, southern Africa and Australia, the vegetation activity has decreased during dry seasons. "Although these savannas have similar vegetation and comparable climates, the changes in vegetation activity differ. That may be attributable to the differences in the functioning of the respective ecosystems", says Buitenwerf.

In this respect, the seasonal distribution of leaf growth constitutes a sensitive indicator: it indicates how various ecosystems react to changes in the environment. "Although vegetation changes in the northern hemisphere have conclusively been attributed to climate change by other studies, attributing all the changes found in our study would require a more complex analysis," Buitenwerf emphasizes. In the northern hemisphere it has already been shown that species whose life cycles depend on the vegetation period are endangered by these severe changes.  Consequences for species in the southern hemisphere are as yet unclear....

Redwoods in Muir Woods, shot by Meburian, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Disaster warnings ignored in Sri Lanka

IRIN: Lives and livelihoods are being lost unnecessarily in Sri Lanka because local communities are ignoring disaster warnings, according to officials. More than 70 people died in the last two months of 2014 as a result of floods and landslides while the earlier part of the year was marked by a prolonged drought, severely impacting the rice harvest.

“In both instances, the losses could have been avoided if warnings were heeded but unfortunately they weren’t,” Sarath Lal Kumara, assistant director at Sri Lanka’s Disaster Management Centre (DMC), told IRIN.

The government, through the department of agriculture, asked farmers in early 2014 to reduce the amount of land cultivated for rice and to plant more drought resistant crops because of indications that the monsoon rains might fail. Very few responded to the call.

By the time the 10-month long drought began to ease, Sri Lanka’s rice harvest was estimated to be more than 20 percent short of a government target of four million metric tons. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization at the end of 2014 all rice varieties had recorded price increases of between 25 to 50 percent over the previous year.

“What we have here is not a problem of lack of water, but a water management problem,” said Ivan de Silva who served as secretary to the Ministry of Irrigation and Water Management until January this year....

The exposed floor of a reservoir in Sri Lanka, shot by Hasindu2008, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Pastoralism in Africa provides crucial services to humanity, can support green economy transition

AllAfrica.com via UNEP: Pastoralism-extensive livestock production in the rangelands-provides enormous benefits to humanity and should be supported as a key element of the global transition to a green economy, according to a new report released today by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Released at the 3rd Scientific Conference of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in Cancun, Pastoralism and the Green Economy - a Natural Nexus?, highlights pastoralism's role in safeguarding natural capital across a quarter of the world's land area.

The report findsthat sustainable pastoralism on rangeland ecosystems-such as desert grasslands, woodlands and steppes-maintains soil fertility and soil carbon and contributes to water regulation and biodiversity conservation. It also provides other goods such as high-value food products.

Pastoralism is practiced by up to half a billion people across the globe. Despite its clear benefits, decades of underinvestment have eroded the lifestyle in many developing countries. Reversing this decline and realizing pastoralism's full green economy potential will require leadership and the establishment of a global development framework for sustainable pastoralism, the report says.

"As our world becomes increasingly mechanized and industrialized in the pursuit of progress, it is easy to forget that there is much to be learned from traditional ways of life such as pastoralism," said UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner. "Yet half a billion pastoralists across the world are struggling to maintain a way of life that is far more consistent with green economy goals than many of our modern methods of rearing livestock."...

Livestock in Kenya, shot by USAID

Stronger storms feared as dry spell forecast in Philippines

Zee News: The disaster-haunted Philippines is likely to be hit by stronger typhoons this year as warming ocean surfaces contribute to a dry spell, the state weather service warned Wednesday.

The Asian archipelago, whipped by about 20 typhoons and storms each year, is now in the grips of the "El Nino" phenomenon that can make storms "stronger" and more "erratic", weather service chief Vicente Malano said.

"El Nino may cause the behaviour of tropical cyclones to become erratic, affecting (their) tracks and intensity," he said in an advisory, adding that the same number of storms are expected.

"The tropical cyclone tracks are expected to shift northward and (their) intensity could become stronger," Malano said.

Super Typhoon Haiyan, the strongest ever to hit land, left more than 7,350 people dead or missing in central regions of the Philippines in November 2013 as it dumped tsunami-like waves on coastlines, wiping out entire towns....

2013's Typhoon Haiyan viewed from a Navy research satellite

Researchers connect climate change to food safety

Wageningen UR: Climate change can affect our food safety in a number of ways. In a European study, researchers at Wageningen University and Ghent University (Belgium) state that there is often a relationship between long-term changes in temperature and rainfall and vegetable and fruit contamination. For example, flooding may result in increased concentrations of harmful bacteria that can be quickly broken down again by UV light. Similarly, in one region fungi that produce toxins may increase due to global warming, while they decrease in other regions. The researchers have published their findings in a special issue of the scientific journal Food Research International that they edited.

In the future, in a changing climate, will we be able to continue eating safe vegetables and fruit or will this come under pressure? This is the question asked by the Ghent and Wageningen researchers. They have brought together the latest information and scientific findings on the impact of climate change on food safety in the special issue. The special issue was initiated by researchers and includes several papers from the  Veg-i-Trade project financed by the European Union.

These are the first studies into the relationship between climate change and food safety. The researchers find that there is every reason to expand this research. They believe that more scenario analyses, which have been used for years in climate study in general, should also be included in food safety research. One of the first scenario analyses was included in the Veg-i-Trade study.

Field studies and statistical analyses within the Veg-i-Trade project show that there is in fact often a relationship between vegetable and fruit contamination and climate variables such as temperature and rainfall. A preliminary study into toxic
substances from fungi shows, for example, that an increased risk of contamination of tomatoes may be expected at the end of the 21st century in Poland. In Spain, however, it will be too hot then for this kind of fungi, so the risk of contamination will be lower. Another study shows that in a flooded lettuce field the likelihood of flooding is increased by climate change, resulting in higher concentrations of harmful bacteria. UV light will then cause these concentrations to decrease again rapidly.

One of the conclusions from a study into possible forms of adaptation to climate change is that adaptation to future climate change will have to be very different for different countries, sectors and companies. According to this research the focus here will have to be on increasing the adaptive capacity....

A lettuce field, shot by Daniel Ventura, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

In Florida, officials ban term ‘climate change’

Tristram Korten at the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting reports on an asinine policy: The state of Florida is the region most susceptible to the effects of global warming in this country, according to scientists. Sea-level rise alone threatens 30 percent of the state’s beaches over the next 85 years. But you would not know that by talking to officials at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the state agency on the front lines of studying and planning for these changes.

DEP officials have been ordered not to use the term “climate change” or “global warming” in any official communications, emails, or reports, according to former DEP employees, consultants, volunteers and records obtained by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting. The policy goes beyond semantics and has affected reports, educational efforts and public policy in a department that has about 3,200 employees and $1.4 billion budget.

“We were told not to use the terms ‘climate change,’ ‘global warming’ or ‘sustainability,’ ” said Christopher Byrd, an attorney with the DEP’s Office of General Counsel in Tallahassee from 2008 to 2013. “That message was communicated to me and my colleagues by our superiors in the Office of General Counsel.”

Kristina Trotta, another former DEP employee who worked in Miami, said her supervisor told her not to use the terms “climate change” and “global warming” in a 2014 staff meeting. “We were told that we were not allowed to discuss anything that was not a true fact,” she said.

This unwritten policy went into effect after Gov. Rick Scott took office in 2011 and appointed Herschel Vinyard Jr. as the DEP’s director, according to former DEP employees. Gov. Scott, who won a second term in November, has repeatedly said he is not convinced that climate change is caused by human activity, despite scientific evidence to the contrary. Vinyard has since resigned. Neither he nor his successor, Scott Steverson, would comment for this report....

Marc Averette took this 2005 of flooding after Hurricane Wilma in 2005

More Filipinos pushed into poverty by Haiyan, high rice prices

Terra Daily via AFP: Super typhoon Haiyan and surging rice prices pushed the number of Filipinos living in poverty to 25.8 percent in the first half of last year despite strong economic growth, official data released Friday showed.

The 1.2 percent rise was compared to the 24.6 percent of people in the Philippines who were considered poor a year earlier, the Philippine Statistics Authority said in a statement. The increase followed Haiyan which struck in November 2013, killing more than 7,350 people and ravaging an area as big as Portugal in the nation of around 100 million people.

The government agency deemed a family of five who lived off 8,778 pesos ($199.3) a month -- roughly $1.33 per person a day -- to be poor.

Nevertheless the Philippines, one of Asia's fastest-growing economies, saw the average income of Filipinos rise by 6.4 percent in the first six months of 2014, Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan said in the statement. "The very high prices of food wiped out the gains in per capita income," he added. The areas ravaged by Haiyan saw the most substantial jumps in poverty levels, he said....

Nutrient pollution damages streams in ways previously unknown, ecologists find

Beth Gavriles in UGA Today: An important food resource has been disappearing from streams without anyone noticing until now. In a new study published March 6 in the journal Science, a team of researchers led by University of Georgia ecologists reports that nutrient pollution causes a significant loss of forest-derived carbon from stream ecosystems, reducing the ability of streams to support aquatic life.

The findings show that the in-stream residence time of carbon from leaves, twigs and other forest matter, which provide much of the energy that fuels stream food webs, is cut in half when moderate amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus are added to a stream. "This study shows how excess nutrients reduce stream health in a way that was previously unknown," said the study's lead author Amy D. Rosemond, an associate professor in the UGA Odum School of Ecology.

Stream food webs are based on carbon from two main sources. One is algae, which produce carbon through photosynthesis. Nutrient pollution has long been known to increase carbon production by algae, often causing nuisance and harmful algal blooms. The second source is leaves and bits of wood from streamside forests. This forest-derived carbon typically persists year-round, making it a staple food resource for stream organisms.

"Most people think of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution in streams as contributing to algae blooms," said Diane Pataki, program director in the National Science Foundation's Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research. "But streams contain a lot of leaf litter, and this study shows that nutrient pollution can also stimulate carbon losses from streams by accelerating the breakdown of that litter. That helps us better understand how fertilizer runoff affects carbon transport and emissions from streams and rivers."...

Looking east toward Haystack Butte and Haystack Creek along the Going-to-the-Sun Road. The cut of the Going-to-the-Sun Road, a National Civil Engineering Landmark, is visible in the vegetation of the mountainside. Photo: David Restivo, NPS, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Disaster-prone Madagascar battles flooding and drought

IRIN: Authorities in Madagascar are struggling to respond to increasingly severe flooding in the central highlands region of the country that includes the capital, Antananarivo, in addition to a prolonged drought in the south.

The latest round of flooding, which started when three rivers that cross Antananarivo – the Sisaony, Ikopa and Imamba – burst their banks during a storm on 24 February, has left 19 people dead and an estimated 36,000 displaced, according to the National Office for the Management of Risks and Catastrophes (BNGRC in French). A further 40,000 people were displaced in 13 other districts.

On Wednesday, BNGRC issued a new alert warning that a low-pressure system just off the island’s west coast was expected to bring more torrential rainfall to the central highlands region. Several neighbourhoods in Antananarivo remain braced for further flooding and landslides over the coming days.

The current flooding adds to the many challenges already facing the city in the wake of Tropical Storm Chedza, which caused 68 deaths and almost 80,000 displacements across Madagascar - over 16,000 in Antananarivo alone - during the weekend of 17 January. In the aftermath, several of the city’s public spaces, such as sports stadia, have been providing temporary shelter for the displaced.

NASA image of a 2010 flood near the Betsiboka River in Madagascar

China plans rural land reform experiment

Terra Daily via AFP: China will carry out a groundbreaking trial programme that may allow farmers to sell land, a senior official said Wednesday, a step towards liberalising rural real estate transactions currently monopolised by the government.

The ability to sell land is expected to accelerate China's urbanisation, a key driver of its decades-long economic boom, by enabling farmers to realise value from their assets, facilitating their move to the cities.

Under current Chinese law, all land in the country is ultimately owned by the state or by rural collectives, while farmers can retain usage rights in the countryside. Only the government has the power to appropriate land, often with little or no compensation, and can then sell it to property developers at a huge profit, leading to widespread social resentment and frequently triggering unrest.

A total of 33 county-level areas including Beijing's Daxing district -- the site of the capital's new airport -- will suspend some regulations that ban the free trading of some non-farming land, according to Fu Ying, a spokeswoman for the National People's Congress (NPC), China's legislature.

The programme will allow "rural land for business purposes" -- usually real estate used for industry or commerce -- to be traded on the market, meaning farmers are no long restricted to selling it to the government, according to a report posted earlier on the NPC's website.

"This reform is to support the development of agriculture modernisation and urbanisation, and it intends to better protect farmers' rights and interests during the process of reforms," Fu told reporters at a news conference....

Farming in Yunnan Province, shot by JialiangGao www.peace-on-earth.org, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Gasoline beats mining for lead pollution

A press release from the Paul Scherrer Institute: Until it was banned, leaded gasoline dominated the manmade lead emissions in South America

Leaded gasoline was a larger emission source of the toxic heavy metal lead than mining in South America – even though the extraction of metals from the region’s mines historically released huge quantities of lead into the environment. Researchers from the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI and the University of Bern have discovered evidence of the dominance of leaded gasoline based on measurements in an ice core from a Bolivian glacier. The scientists found that lead from road traffic in the neighbouring countries polluted the air twice as heavily as regional mining from the 1960s onwards. The study is to be published in the journal Science Advances on 6 March 2015.

Record of anthropogenic lead emissions over the past 2,000 years in the Bolivian Altiplano. Shown are lead enrichment factors (EFs) compared to the regional background, reconstructed based on an ice core from the Illimani glacier. Before the use of leaded gasoline (period AD 0–1960), lead emissions from mining activities were dominant, especially during periods of the pre-Colombian cultures Tiwanaku/Wari and the Incas, the colonial era and with the increasing industrialisation in the 20th century (brown, blue). Emissions from leaded gasoline were primarily responsible for the significant increase after 1960 (green). Picture: Paul Scherrer Institute.

....The researchers’ analyses also revealed that the anthropogenic, i.e. man-made, lead emissions prior to 1960 primarily entered the atmosphere via mining activities. The pollution was particularly severe during periods of the pre-Colombian cultures Tiwanaku/Wari and the Incas, the colonial era and with the increasing industrialisation of the 20th century.

...The study once again highlights the importance of the ban on leaded gasoline for the environment and human health. If inhaled, lead can enter the bloodstream and ultimately the brain, where it poisons nerve cells. Leaded gasoline has already proven to be a key source of lead emissions in previous studies. “We now show that this is also the case in a region in which mining with its heavy lead emissions has been practiced intensively for millennia,” says Margit Schwikowski, co-author and head of the study and the Analytical Chemistry Group in the Laboratory for Radiochemistry and Environmental Chemistry at PSI.

A model of tetraethyl lead, created by Jynto, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication

Western Cape fire in South Africa under control, two hotspots left

AllAfrica.com via SAPA: The Muizenberg fire that broke out over the weekend leading to hundreds of people being evacuated was under control on Thursday, Cape Town Disaster Risk Management said. "The fire is under control; we are currently dealing with hotspots in Clovelly and Constantia north," spokeswoman Charlotte Powell said. "The crews remained through the night and this morning [Thursday] helicopters will go out and inspect the area but currently the fire is under control."

By Wednesday, a total of 500 people had been evacuated since the fire began. The fire started on Sunday and was contained, but flared up again just after 2am on Monday in Muizenberg above Boyes Drive. It was fanned by strong winds. It spread to Ou Kaapse Weg, Chapman's Peak, Hout Bay, and Tokai.

One city fire-fighter sustained burn wounds and 52 frail-care residents from a Noordhoek retirement village were treated for smoke inhalation.

More than 2000 people were helping to quell the fire on Wednesday, the environmental affairs department said at the time. This figure included 150 members of the department's Working on Fire (WoF) programme, spokesman Zolile Nqayi said in a statement.

Fifty more people from Volunteer Wildfires Services and 250 WoF fire-fighters had been dispatched from other provinces to join the effort. A total of 26 aircraft had been in the air since Sunday, Nqayi said....

A 2009 fire on Cape Town's Table Mountain, shot by Warren Rohner Warren Rohner, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license 

Malaria resurfaces in Rio as drought displaces mosquitoes

Adriana Brasileiro in Thomson Reuters Foundation: Malaria has resurfaced in Rio de Janeiro as a historic drought in Brazil's southeastern region is driving mosquitoes in the Atlantic Forest to seek water in areas frequented by people, such as waterfalls.

"The mosquitoes in this area habitually lay their eggs in water collected in bromeliads (plants), deep in the forest," said infectologist Alberto Chebabo. "So the drought probably forced them to look for water in more humid places, such as rivers and waterfalls, where people often go at this time of year," Chebabo, of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, said in a recent interview. "This may have increased contamination."

Rio de Janeiro and most regions in southeastern Brazil have been considered malaria-free zones for the past 40 years, with just a few cases reported each year. Malaria is only endemic in the northern region, particularly in the Amazon basin.

In the past three weeks, 14 cases have been reported in Rio de Janeiro state, compared with eight in all of 2014, according to the Health Ministry. The people who were infected had travelled to dense Atlantic Forest areas in the interior of Rio state. The cases are not considered severe, as the mosquitoes in the area transmit the Plasmodium vivax parasites, which are less virulent than the Plasmodium falciparum, the deadliest species.

Southeast Brazil, home to the country's wealthiest cities, is grappling with the worst drought in at least 80 years as unusually low rainfall since 2013 has resulted in rivers and reservoirs drying up....

The Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon in Rio, shot by chensiyuan, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license 

En route to climate change adaptation

Ayesha Qaisrani in Pakistan Today: With no adherence to geographical boundaries, climate change continues to hover over our heads like a dense, dark cloud of uncertainty. Even with all the sophisticated projections of climate change, only one thing about it remains certain: that it is happening and we better act now.

Realising the gravity of the situation, Climate Action Network South Asia (CANSA) in collaboration with Janathakshan and Asia Pacific Adaptation Network (APAN), organised a sub-regional workshop for the South Asian nations in Colombo, Sri Lanka, to discuss the latest adaptation initiatives taken up and exchange best practices and information. The workshop took place on the 23rd and 24th of February 2015 and was attended by representatives of Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Bhutan and Nepal including representation from the respective governments, the parliaments and the civil society.

...It was encouraging to get insights about the adaptation initiatives being taken up by the nations of South Asia. Even more encouraging was the general recognition of the need of cooperation and collaboration among the nations for an effective response to climate change. Emphasising on the need of regional cooperation, Mr Malik Muhammad Uzair Khan, Member Parliament, Pakistan, commented, “Pakistan like India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh is reeling under the worst impacts of climate change. Clearly, climate change knows no borders and now more than ever it is critical that our leaders come together to share best practices for climate change adaptation and set the region on the path of sustainable development.”

Underlining that capacity building is the keystone to effective adaptation to climate change. The representatives advocated a balanced investment in physical infrastructure and skills of the population. They stressed upon focusing on education and awareness, health, agriculture sector, water management and disaster preparedness to increase the resilience of people and reduce their vulnerability. Besides individual and community level, focus should also be directed at institutional capacity building as, quite often, it is the institutions that are inefficient in setting their priorities for strategic response to climate change....

NASA image of 2010 flooding in Pakistan

Munching bugs thwart eager trees, reducing the carbon sink

University of Wisconsin-Madison News: In a high carbon dioxide world, the trees would come out ahead. Except for the munching bugs. A new study published today [Monday, March 2, 2015] in Nature Plants shows that hungry, plant-eating insects may limit the ability of forests to take up elevated levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, reducing their capacity to slow human-driven climate change.

The finding is significant because climate change models typically fail to consider changes in the activities of insects in the ecosystem, says Richard Lindroth, a professor of ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the leader of the study. The research suggests it’s time to add insects to the models.

Carbon dioxide typically makes plants grow faster and makes them more efficient in how they use nutrients. But the amount of damage caused by leaf-munching bugs in the study nearly doubled under high carbon dioxide conditions, leading to an estimated 70g of carbon-sequestering biomass lost per meter squared per year.

“This is the first time, at this scale, that insects have been shown to compromise the ability of forests to take up carbon dioxide,” Lindroth says.

In addition, as feeding increased, more nutrients moved from the canopy to the forest floor in the form of insect fecal material and chewed-on leaf scraps, mixing into the soil and likely altering the nutrient profile of the forest....

Photo of a tent caterpillar by Mary A. Jamieson/UW-Madison Department of Entomology

Aggressive plant fungus threatens wheat production

Seed Daily via SPX: The spread of exotic and aggressive strains of a plant fungus is presenting a serious threat to wheat production in the UK, according to research published in Genome Biology. The research uses a new surveillance technique that could be applied internationally to respond to the spread of a wide variety of plant diseases.

Wheat is a critical staple and provides 20% of the calories and over 25% of the protein consumed by humans. 'Yellow rust' caused by the fungus Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici (PST) is one of the plant's major diseases and is widespread across the major wheat-producing areas of the world.

Infections lead to significant reductions in both grain quality and yield, with some rare events leading to the loss of an entire crop. New fungus strains have recently emerged that adapt to warmer temperatures, are more aggressive and have overcome many of the major defensive genes in wheat.

Lead author Diane Saunders of the John Innes Centre and The Genome Analysis Centre (TGAC), UK, said: "Increased virulence, globalization, and climate change, are all increasing the scale and frequency of emerging plant diseases, and threatening global food security....

Trial plots of winter wheat that are being evaluated for their response to fungicide applications for controlling wheat diseases such as brown rust, yellow rust, eyespot and septoria. Shot by , Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Flooding, wildfires shake Argentina

Terra Daily via AFP: The heaviest rain in decades pounded much of central and western Argentina on Tuesday, prompting evacuations, even as wildfires roared across much of the parched far south.

Rain has been heaviest in the provinces of Cordoba, San Luis, Santiago del Estero and Santa Fe's capital city of the same name, forecasters said. In the central-western region, "this is the worst weather disaster we have seen in the past 50 years," said Cordoba governor Jose Manuel de la Sota.

His province alone has seen at least seven people killed and 1,000 evacuated in the past two weeks. In San Luis province "there are families who have lost everything," said Facundo Dominguez, mayor of Concaran.

Liberia's long road to recovery from ebola

IRIN: Liberia has lifted nationwide curfews and reopened its land borders with key trading partners Sierra Leone and Guinea, but a full recovery from the economic impact of the Ebola outbreak will take time, experts say.

“The reopening of the border is going to have an impact immediately, both in terms of livelihoods and the availability of food, as well as informal trade,” said Errol Graham, the World Bank’s country economist for Liberia, who spoke to IRIN from Virginia. “But there is going to be a lot of asymmetry between the [speed of] recovery and the crisis. The crisis was an immediate thing because of fear and aversion. The recovery is going to take a little longer.”

Within hours of the reopening of the border, people and merchandise began to flow from one side to the other. Local markets, once again stocked with fresh produce, meat and home goods, buzzed with activity, for the first time in more than six months.

In the interior of Liberia, Graham said, “We are also seeing, with the abatement of the crisis, people starting to go back to work and we expect to see more of that over time. And as foreigners who were involved in concessions in the natural resource sector come back, we expect to see more improvements in the employment situation.”...

The city of Kakata in Liberia, shot by Thadk, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Did climate change help spark the Syrian war?

Science Codex: A new study says a record drought that ravaged Syria in 2006-2010 was likely stoked by ongoing manmade climate change, and that the drought may have helped propel the 2011 Syrian uprising. Researchers say the drought, the worst ever recorded in the region, destroyed agriculture in the breadbasket region of northern Syria, driving dispossessed farmers to cities, where poverty, government mismanagement and other factors created unrest that exploded in spring 2011. The conflict has since evolved into a complex multinational war that has killed at least 200,000 people and displaced millions. The study appears today in the leading journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"We're not saying the drought caused the war," said Richard Seager, a climate scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory who coauthored the study. "We're saying that added to all the other stressors, it helped kick things over the threshold into open conflict. And a drought of that severity was made much more likely by the ongoing human-driven drying of that region."

A growing body of research suggests that extreme weather, including high temperatures and droughts, increases the chances of violence, from individual attacks to full-scale wars. Some researchers project that manmade global warming will heighten future conflicts, or argue that it may already be doing so. And recent journalistic accounts and other reports have linked warfare in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere in part to environmental issues, especially lack of water. The new study, combining climate, social and economic data, is perhaps the first to look closely and quantitatively at these questions in relation to a current war....

A Bedouin tent in the Syrian desert, shot by yeowatzup yeowatz, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attirbution 2.0 Generic license 

Malaysia moves against coastal erosion crisis

Sohail Rahman in Al-Jazeera.com: ...Malaysia and Denmark ... have been working on environmental projects for over a decade. Both recognise the importance of their coastline and Denmark has years of experience in dealing with water levels and rising seas.

...So fast forward to Penang, coastal erosion and fresh water fishermen. They have a huge problem of coastal degradation. Is global warming the reason for the way typhoons have hit Asia Pacific these past few years, or the terrible floods that hit Malaysia in December 2014?

It could be a factor if the bigger global environmental jigsaw puzzle is worked out Here, though, the government, local and national is working with local nongovernmental organisations, acknowledging there is a need to support the livelihoods of over 200 fisherman on the island that locals call Pulau Pinang.

Together they identify vulnerable areas, work out which of the 150 species of hmangrove will be best suited to binding the land, grow quickly and feed the natural wildlife that depends on the plants. Keeping salt water away and encouraging freshwater wildlife that can sustain communities, such as fish, prawns and lobster to return.

...It is working yet we hear very little about it. Some NGOs such as The Consumer Association of Penang say the government need to do more and quickly. It is an easy statement to make but no government official likes to be told what to do. Yet Malaysia will be doing that soon enough. Telling its neighbours or the international community at the UN what they think and what needs to be done....

Storm-weary New York City needs to adapt faster to climate change

Jim Hall in the Guardian (UK): ...In 2007 [New York City] embarked on a programme to address changing climate, population growth and ageing infrastructure, as well as improve residents’ quality of life. It covers investment in green infrastructure, including energy, transport and housing, up to 2030.

New York City has also been working to tackle the realities of flooding and offer solutions that keep the city moving in spite of its storms. After flooding in 2007 a weakness was identified with the subway network in Queens and other low-lying areas. Storm water had repeatedly gushed through street-level ventilation grates into the subway network below, flooding numerous stations throughout the borough and paralysing portions of the city’s transport network. Responding, the MTA raised the subway grates up off the ground and double-purposing them as street benches and other outdoor furniture. Not only does this enhance resilience to flooding, but enables residents to go about their lives even during heavy storms.

In response to Sandy and its devastation to the north east of the US, the federal government awarded $335m last year to the City of New York to build the first stage of what is being called “The Big U” project. Essentially a large storm protection berm around lower Manhattan, it will extend for 10 miles, and aims to protect an incredibly dense, vibrant and low-lying urban area. The proposed system will not only shield the city against floods and storm water, but also aims to provide social and environmental benefits to the community..

New York City’s approach to climate change adaptation was one of the first in the US that not only considered how one policy area affects another, but also how agencies can work together effectively.

However, despite its plans, our research at the Institution of Civil Engineers suggests that the city itself has built comparatively few resilience projects. It is important to get decisions right, so time spent on analysis and design is time well spent. But impending sea level rise, hurricanes and storms warrant action sooner rather than to later....

The Queens Midtown Tunnel flooded during Hurricane Sandy. Shot by the MTA, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Flooding in Madagascar capital kills at least 14

Terra Daily via AFP: At least 14 people died in flooding Friday in the Madagascan capital Antananarivo after a night of torrential rain caused dams to burst, rescue services said.

About 24,000 people were driven from their homes in the floods and several neighbourhoods in the Indian Ocean island nation were being evacuated, the country's emergency management bureau said.

"Due to the emergency, we call on all schools, churches, town halls, covered gymnasiums and those of goodwill to facilitate the sheltering of victims," a statement from the bureau said. Prime Minister Jean Ravelonarivo visited the affected areas early Friday.

Three rivers flow in the area of the capital. A number of dams gave way under the weight of the floodwaters, sweeping away around 50 houses, the statement said. Electricity was also cut to parts of the capital....

In northwestern Madagascar, the Betsiboka River flows toward the coast, its braided streams emptying into the Bombetoka Bay. In late March 2010, however, not long after Tropical Cyclone Hubert passed through the region, part of the river pushed over its banks, flooding nearby agricultural fields. The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite captured this natural-color image on March 23, 2010. Immediately south of the Betsiboka River, which is visible in the large image, this area is roughly 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the coast. The wide beige-and-green swath filling most of the image is flooded, and uneven rectangles demarcate individual fields. Only areas of relatively high ground appear to have escaped standing water.

Isolated wetlands have significant impact on water quality

A press release from Indiana University: Geographically isolated wetlands play an outsized role in providing clean water and other environmental benefits even though they may lack the regulatory protections of other wetlands, according to an article by Indiana University researchers and colleagues.

Given those benefits, the authors argue, decision-makers should assume that isolated wetlands are critical for protecting aquatic systems, and the burden of proof should be on those who argue on a case-by-case basis that individual wetlands need not be protected.

“Geographically isolated wetlands provide important benefits such as sediment and carbon retention, nutrient transformation and water-quality improvement, all of which are critical for maintaining water quality,” said lead author John M. Marton, assistant scientis
t at the IU Bloomington School of Public and Environmental Affairs. “We demonstrate that continued loss of these wetlands would likely cause serious harm to North American waters.”

The article, “Geographically Isolated Wetlands Are Important Biogeochemical Reactors on the Landscape,” will appear in BioScience, the journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, and is available online. Co-authors include Christopher B. Craft, the Janet Duey Professor in Rural Land Development with SPEA at IU Bloomington, along with researchers from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the University of Western Ontario, the University of Waterloo, the University of Florida and the University of South Florida.

Geographically isolated wetlands are formed by natural forces that create depressions in the landscape, resulting in conditions suitable for wetland plants and soils. They include the prairie potholes of the upper Midwest, the playas of the Southwest, vernal pools in New England and California, and the Carolina Bays.

Citing research literature, the authors say geographically isolated wetlands are highly effective “biogeochemical reactors” that improve water quality. They often retain water longer than protected waters, such as streams and wetlands that are directly connected to navigable water. And they have a higher ratio of perimeter to area, allowing more opportunities for reactions to take place....

A vernal pool in the Totts Gap Preserve in Pennsylvania, shot by Nicholas A. Tonelli Nicholas A. Tonelli, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license 

Pollution is driving force behind growth of nuisance algal scums

A press release from the University of Nottingham: Potentially toxic microbes which pose a threat to our drinking water have undergone a dramatic population explosion over the last 200 years as a result of pollution, research involving experts from The University of Nottingham has found.

The study, published in the journal Ecology Letters, looked at more than 10
0 lakes in lowland and alpine areas of North America and Europe and found that populations of cyanobacteria — also known as blue-green algae — have significantly increased since the 1800s.

The research, conducted in collaboration with academics at McGill University in Canada and other collaborators, is the first study to show that a rise in the algae’s available nutrient sources nitrogen and phosphorus — commonly resulting from industrial fertilisers and sewage discharge — is the biggest potential culprit responsible for the increase in such a large number of lakes, across such a large geographical area. The study also found that climate change can exacerbate this problem, with water management challenges likely to increase in a future warmer world.ry

Most municipal water treatment plants do not regularly look for cyanobacterial toxins in the water supply. However, municipalities with a known history of blooms typical monitor their surface water supplies for cyanobacteria. When detected, the cells can be removed by adding chemicals that bind them together, so they can be separated out. Although this removes the cells, the cells may already have broken down releasing toxins into the water.

In addition, environmental costs associated with this alga were estimated to exceed $100 million per year in both the UK and Australia....

Cyanobacteria in a flask, from CSIRO, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Natural disasters cost Asia-Pacific 60 billion dollars, 6,000 lives in 2014

Josh Butler in IPS: Natural disasters in Asian and Pacific nations cost almost 60 billion dollars and killed 6,000 people in 2014. There were 119 ‘disaster events’ recorded in the Asia-Pacific last year, including cyclones, storms, floods, landslides and earthquakes.

The most damaging single event was a river basin flood in India in September that killed 1,281 people and caused 16 billion dollars in damages, according to a report from the U.N.’s Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). ‘Disasters in Asia and the Pacific: 2014 Year in Review’ said the 6,050 people killed in Asia-Pacific natural disasters was well down on the 18,744 recorded in the region in 2013.

Almost 80 million people were affected by Asia-Pacific natural disasters last year, and a total of 59.6 billion dollars in economic loss was wreaked on the region.

Tropical Cyclone Hudhud caused 11 billion dollars in damage in India in October; the Ludian earthquake in China killed 617 and left six billion dollars in damage behind in August; landslides in Nepal killed 229; while 75 deaths and 5.2 billion dollars in damage resulted from Japanese tropical cyclones Lingling and Kajiki.

Floods, however, were the most damaging natural events, causing 3,559 deaths and 26.8 billion dollars in damage. ESCAP warns that the Asia-Pacific was “found largely unprepared in its response to cross-border floods and landslides,” and urged countries to implement better response strategies in future....

Aerial view northeast of Cheepurupalli in the aftermath of Cyclone Hudhud. Shot by the Indian Navy, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 India license.

IPCC sea-level rise scenarios fall short for high-risk coastal cities

ANI News: According to a new research, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sea-level rise scenarios may not provide complete information for high-risk coastal decision-making and management.

The research warned that the IPCC scenarios are often inappropriate or incomplete for the management of high-risk coastal areas as they exclude the potential for extreme sea-level rises. This missing information was also crucial for a number of policy processes, such as discussions by G7 countries to establish climate insurance policies and allocations of adaptation funding by the Green Climate Funds.

The IPCC sea-level rise scenarios are developed for the purpose of understanding the physics of the earth system through process-based models, which are models based on the laws of physics. As a consequence, these scenarios cover only the central range of possible sea-level rise.

Knowing the central range was, however, generally not sufficient for coastal risk management. This was because inhabitants of densely populated coastal zones generally prefer to avoid major damage under all circumstances, so coastal planners are particularly interested in possible high-end sea-level rise scenarios beyond the IPCC range....

Shot of Miami Beach, by Miamiboyz, public domain