tourism

The Great Salt Lake Is Disappearing | Earth Wise

August 31, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Utah’s Great Salt Lake is the largest saltwater lake in the western hemisphere. According to data from the US Geological Survey, the surface water elevation of the Great Salt Lake has fallen to the lowest level since records began in the mid-1800s. The average elevation is now 4,190 feet above sea level. With this drop in water level, the surface area of the lake is little more than half of its historical size. The lower water level has exposed about 700 square miles of previously submerged lakebed.

The lake now contains about a quarter of the volume of water that it did at its high point in 1987. The precipitous drop in water is a result of water usage from the lake coupled with climate change-fueled drought. Increased water demand is due to the rapidly growing population of metropolitan Salt Lake City. Utah’s population is projected to increase by almost 50% by 2060.

The Great Salt Lake goes though seasonal cycles of water loss and replenishment. Rain and snow generally refill its level. However, because of the ongoing megadrought in the West, water evaporation and depletion continue to exceed the amount of water entering the lake. The water levels are expected to further decrease until fall or early winter, when incoming water is expected to equal or exceed evaporation.

The decline of the Great Salt Lake is a serious threat to the economy, ecology, and people of northern Utah. The lake generates snowpack, is a refuge for hundreds of migratory birds and other wildlife and generates millions of dollars in the economy through mineral extraction and tourism.

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Utah’s Great Salt Lake is disappearing

Photo, posted October 6, 2020, courtesy of Julie Girard via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Trouble For The Outer Banks | Earth Wise

August 9, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The Outer Banks are a series of barrier islands off the coast of North Carolina that separate the Atlantic Ocean from the mainland. They are a very popular tourist destination featuring open-sea beaches, state parks, shipwreck diving sites, and historic locations such as Roanoke Island, the site of England’s first settlement in the New World. There is also Kitty Hawk, the site of the Wright Brothers’ first flights.

The ribbon of islands is nearly 200 miles long. Some of them are low and narrow and are only a few feet above sea level. Many are especially vulnerable to Nor’easters in the winter and hurricanes in the summer. The collision of warm Gulf Stream waters and the colder Labrador current helps to create dangerous shoals and some of the largest waves on the East Coast.

Over the years, developers have added billions of dollars’ worth of real estate to the Outer Banks. Rising sea levels and increasingly frequent storms threaten the barrier islands of the Outer Banks. Beach-front cottages have tumbled into the ocean for as long as people have built them in the Outer Banks but now they are falling at a greater rate and more and more are in danger.

The Department of Transportation has spent nearly $100 million dollars to keep NC12, the highway connecting the string of islands, open to traffic. Three new bridges built to traverse inlets opened by storms and bypassing rapidly eroding shorelines raised the cost by another half a billion dollars.

There are many other measures such as pumping sand into eroded areas going on in the Outer Banks, but ultimately, all of the measures may not be enough to deal with rising sea levels and more powerful storms.

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Shifting Sands: Carolina’s Outer Banks Face a Precarious Future

Photo, posted August 31, 2011, courtesy of NCDOT Communications via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Space Tourism And The Climate | Earth Wise

July 29, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Space tourism is human space travel for recreational purposes. A few well-known billionaires have taken rocket rides in recent years and at least a dozen companies are at the vanguard of what they are expecting to be a burgeoning industry. If space tourism truly takes off – pun intended – it could be a serious threat to the climate and the environment.

Black carbon – essentially soot – is emitted when fossil fuels, including rocket fuels, are burned. Black carbon absorbs light from the sun and releases thermal energy, making it a powerful climate warming agent. At lower altitudes, black carbon quickly falls from the sky, remaining in the atmosphere for only a matter of days or weeks.

Rockets are another story entirely. They dump black carbon into the stratosphere as they blast into space, and up there black carbon is 500 times worse for the climate and sticks around for several years.

A detailed study by researchers at University College London looked at the climate impact of present-day space launches compared with the potential massive expansion of launches from a large space tourism industry.

The overall result is that current space launches are not a significant source of emissions, but space launches would become incredibly significant if projections of tourist space flights proved to be true. Currently, there are roughly 100 space launches a year world-wide. If that number becomes thousands, the impact on the climate would be substantial.

The same researchers looked at the ozone impact of rocket launches and reached a similar conclusion. The current impact of spaceflights is not very significant, but a massive increase in launches could have a major impact on atmospheric ozone concentrations.

Space tourism may be exciting, but it also could be very dangerous for the planet.

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Space Tourism Poses a Significant ‘Risk to the Climate’

Impact of Rocket Launch and Space Debris Air Pollutant Emissions on Stratospheric Ozone and Global Climate

Photo, posted May 30, 2020, courtesy of Daniel Oberhaus (2020) via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Climate Resilient Microalgae | Earth Wise

July 21, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The plight of the world’s coral reefs has been a growing environmental crisis for many years. Coral reefs provide sustenance and income to half a billion people, are major tourist attractions, protect coastlines, and are important centers of biodiversity. And because of the warming climate as well as other effects of human activity, more than half of the world’s coral reefs are under stress.

The primary threat is coral bleaching, which is the disruption of the symbiotic relationship between coral polyps (which are tiny animals) and the heavily pigmented microalgae that live within the coral structures and provide most of the energy for the polyps. When corals are stressed, often because water temperatures are too high, they expel the microalgae within them. The structures then become transparent, leaving only the white skeletal corals. Bleached corals aren’t dead, but they are at great risk of starvation and disease until and unless new symbiont algae are acquired.

A new study by scientists at Uppsala University in Sweden investigated how different species of coral symbiont algae react to temperature stress. They discovered differences among symbiont cells that enable the prediction of how temperature stress tolerant the cells are. Such predictive ability could provide the means to identify and select more temperature-tolerant coral symbionts that could conceivably be introduced into coral host larvae in order to make corals more robust against climate change.

The research has a ways to go, but the new tools may help coral reef monitoring and increase the speed at which reef restoring efforts can create stocks of climate-resistant symbionts.

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Climate resilient microalgae could help restore coral reefs

Photo, posted September 28, 2009, courtesy of Matt Kieffer via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Tourism And Invasive Species | Earth Wise

March 7, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Tourism has experienced exponential growth during the past 70 years. In 1950, there were 25 million international tourist arrivals. By 1990, it had ballooned to 435 million. Between 1990 and 2018, the numbers more than tripled reaching more than 1.4 billion. And by 2030, the number of international tourist arrivals is expected to reach 1.8 billion.

Tourism is vital to the success of many economies around the world. Tourism can boost revenue, provide jobs, develop infrastructure, protect wildlife, and help preserve heritage sites and cultures. But there can also be many downsides to tourism, one of which is that it can contribute to the introduction and spread of invasive species. Non-native organisms can cause all sorts of social, environmental, and economic damage.

Tourists help spread invasive organisms far and wide. These organisms hitch rides in their luggage and on their shoes and clothing. A 2011 study in New Zealand found that for every gram of soil on the shoes of in-bound international passengers, there were 2.5 plant seeds, 41 roundworms, 0.004 insects and mites, and many microorganisms.

A new study by researchers from the University of Melbourne in Australia and AgResearch New Zealand examined to what degree tourism plays a role in the spread of invasive species. According to the study, which was recently published in the journal NeoBiota, the research team found that the number of nights spent in hotels significantly correlated to the incursion of invasive species during that period.

Creating effective mechanisms to prevent the introduction of invasive species in the first place is the best way to prevent this problem.

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Unwelcome guests: International tourism and travel can be a pathway for introducing invasive species

Number of tourist arrivals

Photo, posted March 27, 2005, courtesy of John via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Invasive Species On Ships In Antarctica | Earth Wise

February 23, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The Southern Ocean around Antarctica is the most isolated marine environment on Earth. Antarctica’s native species have been isolated for the last 15-30 million years. As a result, wildlife there has not evolved the ability to tolerate the presence of many groups of species.

New research by the University of Cambridge and the British Antarctic Survey has traced the global movements of all the ships entering Antarctic water and has found that Antarctica is connected to all regions of the globe via ship activity to an extent much greater than previously thought. Fishing, tourism, research, and supply ships are exposing Antarctica to invasive, non-native species that threaten the existing ecosystems.

In all, the research identified over 1,500 ports with links to Antarctica. From all these places, non-native species including mussels, barnacles, crabs, and algae attach themselves to ships’ hulls. The process is known as biofouling.

The greatest concern is the movement of species from pole to pole. These species are already cold-adapted. They may come on tourist or research vessels that spend the northern hemisphere summer in the Arctic before traveling south for the Antarctic summer season.

Mussels have no competitors in Antarctica should they be accidentally introduced. Shallow water crabs would introduce a new form of predation that Antarctic animals have never encountered before.

Current biosecurity measures to protect Antarctica, such as cleaning ships’ hulls, focus on a small group of so-called gateway ports. The new findings indicate that these measures need to be expanded to protect Antarctic waters from non-native species.

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Invasive species ‘hitchhiking’ on ships threaten Antarctica’s unique ecosystems

Photo, posted April 12, 2016, courtesy of NOAA’s National Ocean Service via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Climate Change And The Winter Olympics | Earth Wise

February 8, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

According to a new study led by researchers from the University of Waterloo in Canada, climate change will limit where the Winter Olympics can be held as winter changes across the Northern Hemisphere.

The international research team found that by the end of the century only one of the 21 cities that have previously hosted the Winter Olympics would be able to reliably provide fair and safe conditions for winter sports if global greenhouse gas emissions are not dramatically reduced.

However, if the emissions targets set forth in the Paris Climate Agreement can be reached, the number of climate-reliable host cities for the Winter Olympics would jump to eight.

In the study, which was recently published in the journal Current Issues in Tourism, the researchers reviewed historical climate data from the 1920s to today, as well as future climate change scenarios for the 2050s and 2080s. The researchers also surveyed international athletes and coaches, and found that 89% of them felt that changing weather patterns are already affecting competition conditions.

The average February daytime temperature of host cities has been steadily increasing. At the winter games held between the 1920s and 1950s, the average temperature was 32.7°F. It rose to 37.6°F at games between the 1960s and 1990s, and has spiked to 43.3°F in the games held in the twenty-first century. The planet is projected to warm another 3.6°F to 7.9°F this century depending on our ability to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.

Reducing global greenhouse gas emissions is critical to ensure that there remain places across the globe to host the Winter Olympics.

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Climate change threatens future Winter Olympics

Photo, posted February 21, 2010, courtesy of Michael via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The World’s Largest Harmful Algal Bloom | Earth Wise

July 1, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Brown sargassum seaweed floats in surface water in a bloom that stretches all the way from West Africa to the Gulf of Mexico. Sargassum provides habitat for turtles, crabs, fish, and birds.

The stuff carpets beaches along the tropical Atlantic, the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and the east coast of Florida disrupting tourism. Florida’s Miami-Dade County alone spends $45 million a year cleaning up sargassum. Annual Caribbean clean-up is in excess of $120 million.

A study by Florida Atlantic University has discovered dramatic changes in the chemistry and composition of sargassum which has transformed the so-called Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt into a toxic dead zone.

The findings of the study suggest that increased nitrogen availability from both natural and human-generated sources, including sewage, is supporting blooms of sargassum and turning a critical marine nursery habitat into harmful algal blooms with catastrophic impacts on coastal ecosystems, economies, and human health.

The study found that today’s sargassum tissues compared with those of the 1980s have 35% more nitrogen content and 42% less phosphorus. Much of the nitrogen increase is a result of agricultural and industrial runoff from the Congo, Amazon, and Mississippi Rivers.

The fact that the bloom itself has expanded so tremendously was already suspected to be the result of significant changes in the ocean’s chemistry. Given the negative effect that the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt is having on the coastal communities, additional research is essential to guide mitigation and adaptation efforts.

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Sargassum now world’s largest harmful algal bloom due to nitrogen

Photo, posted June 5, 2016, courtesy of J Brew via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Keeping Charleston Dry | Earth Wise

June 11, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Charleston, South Carolina is visited by millions of tourists each year. The town is a glimpse into the past, showcasing antebellum mansions, row houses, historic African American churches and scenic harbor views from a Civil War-era promenade.

Charleston is also visited more and more by water from rising seas and increasingly powerful storms. The city is essentially drowning in slow motion and may soon face an existential threat to its survival.

Charleston has a harbor and three rivers and water from all these sources leaks in at every bend and curve, fills streets, disrupts businesses, and rushes into homes during storms. Million-dollar antebellum mansions, built on spongy marsh and old tidal creeks, flood repeatedly.

City officials have endorsed a plan by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to wall off the historic downtown with an 8-mile-long seawall that would cost nearly $2 billion. The proposed barricade is just one of many proposed projects to build seawalls, surge gates, levees, and other barriers to defend U.S. coastal cities in an era of rising seas and climate-fueled floods and storms. A proposed flood wall in Miami would cost federal taxpayers $8 billion.

Researchers generally agree that sea levels are likely to rise by at least 3 feet by the end of the century. Some experts believe the rise will be much greater. So, a key question is whether these barriers will actually keep out the water. Critics of many of the proposed solutions contend that they are doomed to fail.

Flooding has caused nearly $1 trillion worth of damage along the East and Gulf coasts over the past 40 years. And things are almost certain to get worse in Charleston and other coastal cities.

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Fortress Charleston: Will Walling Off the City Hold Back the Waters?

Photo, posted October 7, 2015, courtesy of Jeff Turner via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Boutique Hotels For Birds | Earth Wise

April 28, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The changing Arctic climate has had a drastic effect on its seabirds. In fact, seabirds worldwide are in crisis, with global populations plummeting nearly 70% over the past 70 years as a result of climate change, over-fishing, habitat loss, and other human impacts on their environment.

Above the Arctic circle in Norway, seabird behavior has changed dramatically. Black-legged kittiwakes – which are the most seafaring member of the gull family – used to nest in cliffs over the ocean and seldom ventured inland. But in recent years, that has changed. Because of a warming ocean, increased storminess and other changes that are decimating chick populations in their normal habitat, the birds have been setting up housekeeping in places like shopping centers and office buildings in Tromsø and other towns along Norway’s north coast.

Tromsø, Hammerfest and other towns at the very north end of Norway have become very popular with tourists seeking the Northern Lights and wanting to see glaciers before they disappear. The booming tourism has been put on hold for the moment as it has elsewhere, but when it returns, the regions growing hotels and shopping areas are facing a problem.

The birds taking up residence on these buildings are unpleasant neighbors. They are especially noisy during the breeding season and people are having to put up nets or spikes on buildings to discourage the kittiwakes from settling there.

Local ecologists are now building boutique hotels just for kittiwakes. Using abandoned buildings on piers, they are adding ledges for nesting, materials for nest-building, and electronic speakers that croon kittiwake songs. The hope is that the birds will stay in their own hotels and leave the other ones for the human tourists.

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Norwegians are building boutique hotels for threatened Arctic birds

Photo, posted April 14, 2018, courtesy of Charlie Jackson via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Volunteer Tourism | Earth Wise

February 13, 2020 By EarthWise 1 Comment

Spending vacation time in a disaster zone seems like a crazy idea, but so-called volunteer tourism can actually be a big help to communities trying to recover from natural disasters. It can also be a unique and rewarding experience for the volunteers.

Such volunteer tourism should not be confused with “disaster tourism”, the unfortunate practice of rushing to the scene of a calamity to gawk. That is certainly no help to anyone.

When disaster strikes a destination usually frequented by tourists, people naturally tend to stay away, leaving communities to deal with the loss of tourism income on top of the costs of repair and recovery.

A study by UTS, a technology university in Sydney, Australia, looked at the effects of volunteer tourism in the wake of the April 2015 earthquake in Nepal. They found that when it is done in an ethical matter than takes into account local conditions and the affected community, volunteer tourism can aid recovery and resilience.

In the months following the earthquake, most relief organizations asked international volunteers not to come unless they had specific expertise, such as medical skills, building skills, or emergency response experience. Eventually, Nepal relaxed conditions to include volunteers to help rebuild homes and schools, to intern in hospitals, and to support NGOs and to re-establish sustainable agriculture.

According to the Nepal Association of Tour and Travel Agents, almost one third of the tours booked to Nepal in the two years after the earthquake comprised groups who combined tourism with volunteering or philanthropy.

Volunteer tourism isn’t for everyone and for every situation, but for places that rely on tourism for their economy, building volunteer tourism into the recovery process can be a good strategy.

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Volunteer tourism can aid disaster recovery

Photo, posted July 2, 2015, courtesy of the World Humanitarian Summit via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Removing Dams Restores Ecosystems

November 1, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

In many parts of the country, dams that sometimes date back as much as 100 years are being removed and are giving way to the revival of migratory fish and their river ecosystems. Since 1912, more than 1,600 dams have been removed in the U.S., but the pace of dam removal has greatly picked up in recent years. 2017 and 2018 were the highest years ever with 91 and 99 dams removed, respectively.

When dams are removed, the response from migratory fish can be almost immediate. A large dam removal project on the Penobscot River in Maine in 2012 opened up 1,000 miles of habitat with a quick return of shad and alewives, followed by salmon.

In 2022, four large dams across the Klamath River will be removed. The dams, which are located at the California and Oregon border, were facing an expensive re-licensing process and, because of their age, could no longer be run at a profit.

Re-licensing the dams along the Klamath was going to cost as much as $400 million. On the other hand, uncapping the Klamath River has tremendous commercial and tourism potential. Two states, tribal nations, and other stakeholders have all seen the virtues of restoring the landscape to its original form.

Opposition to dam removal is typically driven by aesthetics or recreational preferences. But dam economics are getting increasingly worse. Now that electricity can be produced far more cheaply with wind and solar power, many American dams have become artifacts of an older manufacturing era. Meanwhile, rural towns near decommissioned dams are likely to now have more robust fishing industries.

In rivers big and small, migratory fish and river ecosystems surge back to life as old energy structures are taken down.

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Take Down That Dam: River Ecosystems Bounce Back As Removals Soar

Photo, posted June 11, 2016, courtesy of the Bureau of Land Management via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Refugee Corals

August 30, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

As climate change warms the ocean, subtropical environments are becoming more favorable for corals than the equatorial waters where they traditionally thrived. As a result, drifting coral larvae are settling and growing in new regions.

According to new research in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series, the number of young corals on tropical reefs has declined by 85% over the past 40 years. At the same time, the numbers on subtropical reefs has doubled.

Only certain types of coral can reach these new subtropical locations. That depends on how far the microscopic larvae can swim and drift on currents before they exhaust their limited fat stores. Thus, the reef ecosystems that develop have new blends of species that have previously never coexisted. It is not clear how long it will take for the new systems to reach equilibrium.

Coral reefs are complicated systems that depend on the interplay between species to enable their healthy functioning. Apart from the corals themselves, there are the coraline algae that symbiotically coexist with them. How all of this will play out in these evolving ecosystems is unknown.

In the meantime, the research has found that these refugee corals are settling at latitudes up to 35 degrees both north and south of the equator. It is no longer so clear what constitute native species in the reefs. It remains to be seen whether new reefs in subtropical oceans can support the incredible biodiversity seen in tropical reefs. But ultimately, these changing ecosystems could potentially bring new resources and opportunities, such as fishing and tourism, to places where they never existed before.

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Coral Reefs Shifting Away from Equatorial Waters

Photo, posted March 22, 2011, courtesy of Simone Lovati via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A Giant Solar Farm In Dubai

June 26, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Like many places in the Middle East, Dubai made its fortune from oil. But the Emirate’s oil resources are limited, and its economy has evolved in other directions. Today, oil provides less than 5% of Dubai’s revenues; its economy relies on revenues from trade, tourism, aviation, real estate, and financial services.

Dubai is also away from fossil fuels to meet its energy needs. A monumental construction project is underway deep within Dubai’s desert interior which will be the largest solar energy facility in the world.

The Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park – named after Dubai’s ruler – has been under development for 7 years. Total investment in the project will be nearly $14 billion when it is completed in 2030. It will have a total capacity of 5,000 megawatts, enough to power 1.3 million homes. Only some large hydroelectric power plants, the largest nuclear power plants, and a couple of Asian coal plants have more generating capacity.

Phases one and two of the project are already complete and feature more than 2 million solar panels. Phase three – well along the way in construction – will add another 3 million solar panels and should be completed next year.

Phase four will not involve solar panels but instead will make use of the world’s tallest concentrated solar power tower. It will use mirrors to focus sunlight at the top of the tower to heat up molten salt that will power steam turbines to generate electricity and will be able to operate long after the sun goes down.

Currently, the Tengger Desert Solar Park in China is the largest photovoltaic park in the world, but a colossal farm in India will take its place in a few years. Big solar is getting bigger all the time.

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$13.6B record-breaking solar park rises from Dubai desert

Photo, posted December 15, 2018, courtesy of Anoop S. via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Saving Beaches With Seagrass

February 22, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Almost a quarter of the Gross Domestic Product of places around the Caribbean Sea is earned from tourism. Preserving the beaches in the region is an economic imperative. With increasing coastal development, the natural flow of water and sand is disrupted, natural ecosystems are damaged, and many tropical beaches simply disappear into the sea.

With such high stakes, expensive coastal engineering efforts such as repeated replenishing of sand and the construction of concrete protective walls are common strategies. Rising sea levels and increasingly powerful storms only increase the threat to tropical beaches.

Researchers from The Netherlands and Mexico recently published a study in the journal BioScience on the effectiveness of seagrass in holding onto sand and sediment along shorelines.

Seagrasses are so-named because most species have long green, grass-like leaves. They are often confused with seaweeds but are actually more closely related to flowering plants seen on land. Seagrasses have roots, stems and leaves, and produce flowers and seeds. Seagrasses can form dense underwater meadows and are one of the most productive ecosystems in the world. Seagrasses provide shelter and food to an incredibly diverse community of animals, from tiny invertebrates to large fish, crabs, turtles, marine mammals and birds.

The researchers performed measurements of the ability of seagrass along Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula coastline to keep sand in place and prevent erosion. They found that the amount of erosion was strongly linked to the amount of vegetation. Quite often, seagrass beds have been regarded as a nuisance, rather than a valuable asset for preserving valuable coastlines. The study opens opportunities for developing new tropical beach protection schemes in which ecology is integrated into engineering solutions.

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