ecosystem
Hippo Waste And Fish
Agricultural and sewage pollution can cause low-oxygen conditions and fish kills in rivers. A new study published in Nature Communications reports that hippo waste can have a similar effect in Africa’s Mara River, which passes through the world renowned Maasai Mara National Reserve of Kenya and is home to more than 4,000 hippos.
Urban Streams Are Breeding Superbugs
City streams are subjected to a constant onslaught of synthetic chemicals found in pharmaceuticals and personal care products. Wastewater treatment facilities are not designed to filter out these compounds. Instead, they flow into surface waters where they impact aquatic organisms like microbes – which perform key ecosystem services like removing excess nutrients and breaking down leaf litter.
Conflicts In Conservation
In recent years there has been a great deal of discussion about animal intelligence and the idea of animal consciousness. In the past, the notion that animals have feelings had been relegated to fringe status, but these days, a wealth of scientific findings has made it much more mainstream to entertain such ideas.
Alien Waters Invade The Arctic
The Arctic is heating up faster than any other region of the planet. As a result, once-distinct boundaries between the frigid polar ocean and the warmer, neighboring Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are blurring, opening the way for the southern waters to enter the polar regions. The volume of Pacific Ocean water flowing into the Arctic Ocean through the Bering Strait has increased by 70% over the past decade. The Arctic Ocean’s cold layering system that blocks Atlantic inflows is breaking down.
Hunting Grizzly Bears
One year ago, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced that the grizzly bear population in the Yellowstone area would be delisted from the Endangered Species Act, and more recently, announced that those federal protections would not be restored.
Whom Should We Save?
The list of endangered species continues to get longer around the world and society is increasingly faced with the nearly impossible decision of which ones to take off life support.
Fewer Snowbird Sharks
Blacktip sharks are snowbirds, to use a cross-species metaphor. At least, they usually are. The males of the species swim south to southern Florida during the coldest months of the year and head back north to North Carolina in the spring to mate with females.
Elephant Losses Imperil Forests
Poaching and habitat loss have reduced Central African elephant populations by 63% since 2001. These losses not only pose dire consequences for the elephants themselves but also for the forests in which they live.
Spring Is Springing Earlier
A comprehensive study has confirmed what has been widely believed in the scientific community and in popular reports for years: spring is arriving earlier and the further north you go, the more pronounced is the effect.
Saving The Siberian Tiger
The northeastern part of China, wedged between North Korea to the south and Russia to the northeast, is home to two highly endangered big cats: the Siberian tiger and the Amur leopard. Siberian tigers, which can weigh over 600 pounds and grow to more than 10 feet in length, now number only about 500 in the wild, mostly in Russia. Amur leopards, weighing more than 100 pounds and growing to more than four feet in length, number only about 80 in the wild. While both species are right on the edge of extinction, both are slowly rebounding.
Fracking And Streams
Hydraulic fracturing – better known as fracking – is a method of extracting oil and gas from shale deposits in which millions of gallons of freshwater and chemicals are injected into deep underground deposits. There has been a great deal of concern related to the effects that this process has on water quality and also on the stability of the ground in the vicinity of where it takes place.
A Philippine Coral Reef Survives
One of the greatest coral reef ecosystems in the world, the Tubbataha Reef in the Philippines, continues to prosper. Undersea coral walls that plunge more than 300 feet deep are home to some 600 species of fish and 360 kinds of coral, about half of all known species. According to experts, the ocean wilderness of Tubbataha Reef is about the closest thing to a true natural state for any reef in the world.
The Effects Of One Degree
In discussions of global warming, we often hear about the effects of a 2-degree rise in temperature or a 1-degree rise in temperature. For most of us, such changes seem pretty insignificant. Of course, in our daily lives, a one-degree temperature change is not particularly noticeable. But in the context of climate change, we are talking about a change in average temperature over time, not the temperature on a particular day or at a particular time.
Pine Barrens Threatened
Pine barrens occur throughout the northeastern U.S. from New Jersey to Maine. They are plant communities that occur on dry, acidic, infertile soils dominated by grasses, forbs, low shrubs, and small to medium-sized pines. The Pine Bush Preserve in Albany, New York is one of the larger inland pine barrens in the country.
Restoring Sediment To Save Wetlands
The world’s rivers carry billions of cubic yards of sediment – sand, silt and other material – and transport it to wetlands and coastal areas. Until fairly recently, this was viewed as a negative thing. But that has changed.
Can The Great Barrier Reef Be Saved?
There have been many stories in the media about the ongoing environmental crisis at Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Over the past two years, the reef has lost almost half of its coral because of bleaching events. Faced with this situation, the Australian government created the Reef 2050 Plan, a strategy to protect and maintain the reef through the year 2050.
Satellites And Conservation Science
Satellites orbiting the earth are becoming an increasingly powerful tool for counting and monitoring wildlife populations and to answer a host of other questions about the natural world.
Melting Ice Adds Life To The Sea
The changing climate has many effects upon the world’s ecosystems, some of which are surprising. One of these relates to the effect of the increasing melting of ice in the Arctic. The ice melt is leading to more life in the Arctic sea.
Terrestrial Plants and Lake Ecosystems
Most of the planet’s freshwater stores are found in the northern hemisphere, a region that is changing rapidly in response to human activity and shifting climate trends. A recent study analyzed 147 northern lakes and found that many rely on nutrients from tree leaves, pine needles, and other land-grown plants to feed aquatic life.