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Saving Florida’s Corals | Earth Wise

September 6, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

When corals are exposed to extended periods of excess heat, they are subject to bleaching, which occurs when they expel the algae that live within their structure. Bleaching can lead to coral death.

This summer, temperatures in the Florida Keys crossed the bleaching threshold in mid-June and remained above it for extended periods of time. This cumulative heat exposure leads to widespread bleaching and significant die-offs. The last major mass bleaching event in the Florida Keys occurred in 2014 and 2015.

The Coral Restoration Foundation has been receiving reports ranging from partial bleaching to mass coral mortality throughout the keys. Several coral restoration sites in the lower Keys have been totally lost already.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its state agency, university, and non-profit partners have initiated actions to try to save Florida’s corals.

They have halted all restoration-related planting and are evacuating some of their nursery-grown stock to climate-controlled labs. They are considering interventions such as shading coral nurseries or even high-value reef sites. They are also considering feeding nursery and wild corals until the waters cool off enough for algae to return.

Modeling indicates that there is a 70-100% chance that the extreme heat in the North Atlantic will persist through September-October. NOAA and its partners will continue to do what they can to save Florida’s Coral Reef for the marine and human communities that depend on them.

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NOAA and partners race to rescue remaining Florida corals from historic ocean heat wave

Photo, posted April 19, 2012, courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Fewer Farms In The World | Earth Wise

June 30, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A new study by the University of Colorado Boulder looked at the trends in the number and size of farms around the world starting from the 1960s and projecting through the end of the 21st century.

The analysis shows that the number of farms globally will shrink in half while the size of the average existing farms doubles.

The study used data from the UN Food and Agricultural Organization on agricultural area, GDP per capita, and rural population size of more than 180 countries. The analysis found that the number of farms around the world would drop from 616 million in 2020 to 272 million in 2100. A key reason for the trend is that as a country’s economy grows, more people migrate to urban areas, leaving fewer people in rural areas to tend the land.

This decline has been ongoing in the US and Europe for decades. For example, in the US, there were 200,000 fewer farms in 2022 than in 2007.

This trend has troubling consequences. Larger farms typically have less biodiversity and more monocultures. The greater biodiversity and crop diversity of smaller farms makes them more resilient to pest outbreaks and climate shocks.

Currently, 600 million farms provide for 8 billion people. By the end of the century, it is likely that half the number of farmers will be feeding even more people. That is a weighty responsibility for agricultural workers. Support systems and education for farmers becomes ever more important.

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The number of farms in the world is declining, here’s why it matters to you

Photo, posted January 18, 2011, courtesy of 2010 CIAT / Neil Palmer via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Livestock Expansion And Global Pandemics | Earth Wise

August 18, 2020 By EarthWise 1 Comment

The domestication of cows, pigs, chickens, and other animals as livestock for their meat, milk, and eggs was historically revolutionary. It boosted food security by giving people a readily-available means of feeding themselves as opposed to more traditional methods such as hunting and fishing.

But animal agriculture has plenty of drawbacks. The industrialization of animal agriculture has led to horrendous conditions. Animals are kept in huge quantities and packed together with little regard for their health and welfare. This approach to agriculture is simply designed to maximize production while minimizing costs.

With its chemical inputs and toxic outputs, intensive animal agriculture is also a major threat to the environment. In fact, it’s a major driver of habitat degradation and biodiversity loss all around the globe.

But it’s not just animals and the planet that pay a price. Humans have inherited several lethal pathogens from livestock over the years, including the influenza virus that likely jumped to humans from poultry.

According to a study recently published in Biological Conservation, there is a connection between the global increase in the emergence of infectious diseases and epidemics, the accelerated loss of biodiversity, and the expansion of livestock. In the study, the research team from the Institute of Evolution Sciences of Montpellier cross referenced databases on human and animal health, livestock expansion, and biodiversity loss between 1960-2019. The team found that the number of epidemics identified in humans increased in correlation with both biodiversity loss and livestock expansion.

In the era of COVID-19, it’s important to understand how global livestock expansion directly threatens both human health and the health of the planet.

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Livestock expansion is a factor in global pandemics

Photo, posted July 22, 2018, courtesy of Artem Beliakin via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The March Of The Penguins Toward Extinction

November 28, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

According to a new study from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the warming climate may render emperor penguins extinct by the end of this century. The study, which was part of an international collaboration between scientists, finds that emperor penguins will likely experience an 86% decline by 2100 if the global climate continues to warm at the current rate. At that point, it would be very unlikely for them to recover, according to the study’s lead author.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and recently published in the journal Global Change Biology.

The fate of emperor penguins is largely tied to the fate of sea ice. The penguins use sea ice as a place for breeding, feeding, and molting. They look for very specific conditions of sea ice – it must be locked in to the Antarctic shoreline but also close enough to open seawater to give them access to food. The study predicts that this sea ice will gradually disappear, depriving the birds of their habitat, food sources, and ability to raise their young.

The researchers combined two existing computer models to study three different climate change scenarios. If the average global temperature increases by only 1.5 degrees Celsius, the study found that only 5% of sea ice would be lost by 2100, resulting in a 19% drop in penguin colonies. If the planet warms by 2 degrees Celsius, the sea ice loss nearly triples and more than a third of penguin colonies disappear. The ‘business as usual’ scenario where the planet continues to warm at the current rate will ensure a near complete loss of emperor penguin colonies by 2100.

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