The Great London:
Legacy

Gaps in our information about biodiversity means we are at risk of focussing our conservation efforts in the wrong places.

New research from Newcastle University, UK, University College London (UCL) and the University of Queensland, Australia, highlights the uncertainty around our global biodiversity data because of the way we record species sightings.

The study explains how a lack of information about a species in a particular location doesn't necessarily mean it's not there and that recording when we don't see something is as important as recording when we do.

Changing the way we record data

Publishing their findings in the journal Biology Letters, the team say we need to change the way we record sightings -- or a lack of them -- so we can better prioritise our conservation efforts in light of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Dr Phil McGowan, one of the study's authors and a Senior Lecturer in Biodiversity and Conservation at Newcastle University, said: "Where there is no recent biodiversity data from an area then we might assume a species is no longer found there, but there could be a number of other possible reasons for this lack of data. It could be that its habitat is inaccessible -- either geographically or due to human activity such as ongoing conflict -- or perhaps it's simply a case that no-one has been looking for it. Unless we know where people have looked for a particular species and not found it then we can't be confident that it's not there."

Galliformes and man

To test the research, the team used the rigorously compiled database of European and Asian Galliformes -- a group of birds which includes the pheasant, grouse and quail.

"Our long-standing love of the Galliformes goes back hundreds of years which means we have records that are likely to be much better than for other groups of animals or plants," explains Dr McGowan.

"Not only have these birds been hunted for food, but their spectacular colours made them valuable as trophies and to stock the private aviaries of the wealthy. In the late 1800s and the turn of the last century, the Galliformes were prized specimens in museum and private collections and today they are still a favourite with bird watchers."

Data absent from 40% of the study area

Analysing 153,150 records dating from 1727 to 2008 and covering an area from the UK to Siberia and down to Indonesia, the team found that after 1980, there was no available data at 40% of the locations where Galliformes had previously been present.

The study suggests two possible scenarios.

Dr Elizabeth Boakes, the study's lead author and a teaching fellow at University College London, said: "We have no evidence of populations existing past 1980 in 40% of our locations. However, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. One scenario is that populations have been lost from these areas, probably due to hunting or habitat loss. The other scenario is that the species are still locally present but that nobody has been to look for them. Our study shows that which scenario you choose to believe makes a huge difference to measures used in conservation priority-setting such as species richness and geographic range. It's important that we make the right call and that means a big shake up in the way we currently monitor biodiversity. We need to record what we don't see as well as what we do see and we need to be recording across much wider areas."

Meeting international targets

Involving 192 countries and the EU, the Convention on Biological Diversity is dedicated to promoting sustainable development.

The goals include the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity which says we must at least halve and, where feasible, bring close to zero the rate of loss of natural habitats, including forests, and halt extinction of those species we know to be under threat.

"In order to start meeting these goals we must first understand exactly which organisms are close to extinction and need prioritising in order to meet this target," explains Dr McGowan, who is Co-chair of IUCN Species Survival Commission's Policy Subcommittee and a member of its Strategic Conservation Planning Subcommittee.

"The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is a good starting point but as our research shows, it's only as accurate as the data that's been collected. Going forward, we need to make sure we are recording when we've not seen something just as much as when we do and that's where keen and informed members of the public -- such as bird watching groups -- could really help us."

Source: Newcastle University [March 08, 2016]

Using a technique that can tell if a species has passed by from just a sample of water, scientists are developing new ways to assess ecosystems.

All animals shed fragments of DNA as they go about their lives – in faeces, mucous, sperm and eggs, shed skin, hair and, eventually, their carcasses.

These traces of genetic material can persist in the environment for some time – a matter of weeks in water and up to a few centuries in soil. With new, more sensitive DNA amplification and sequencing techniques, scientists can collect and analyse these fragments in water and soil samples and identify individual species that have passed by.

One area where environmental DNA, or eDNA, is finding practical use is in environmental assessments, for example to check whether any protected species are present before construction works are carried out. Already, Defra in the UK have approved the use of eDNA sampling to assess the presence of protected great crested newts in ponds.

Now, in a new partnership between Imperial College London and environmental ecology consultancy Thomson Ecology, scientists are hoping to expand the use of eDNA. They want to create protocols to assess whether different areas are home to key protected species, including crayfish, water voles, otters and reptiles.

As well as looking at key protected species for conservation, the team want to use eDNA for biosecurity, by identifying invasive species. For example, as well as native crayfish, some UK waters have been occupied by invasive American Signal Crayfish, which outcompete the native species and damage the local environment. Early detection of invasive crayfish could mean they are dealt with sooner, and cause less damage.

Ultimately, the researchers hope to be able to use eDNA to profile entire ecosystems, analysing water samples to get a snapshot of all the organisms present in the local environment that have shed some DNA.

Victoria Priestley, who is taking on this task for her PhD thesis in the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial, said: "I think eDNA surveys represent a sea change in how we approach survey and monitoring of species.

"There is a lot of effort going into eDNA research globally and once it becomes more established, we should be able to assess what species are present in an area much more quickly. Ultimately we should be able to use it to create a clearer and more detailed picture of global biodiversity."

Efficient Environmental Assessments

Currently, species are assessed based on intensive field surveys, requiring taxonomic expertise and often involving tagging animals and repeat visits to a site. However, Professor Vincent Savolainen, from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial, is developing new protocols for various species.

This is paving the way for much simpler and more cost-effective surveying for environmental assessments. Professor Savolainen said: "This research will contribute to developing new indices to meet goals of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the body that assesses the state of biodiversity and of the ecosystem services it provides to society, in response to requests from decision makers."

Although sequencing techniques have improved dramatically in the last few decades, challenges remain in analysing eDNA. The fragments degrade over time, a process enhanced by temperature, microbes, enzymes and salinity.

The rate that eDNA is 'shed' from species to species and individual to individual also requires more research, as does the role of predators in moving eDNA between sites, and especially how eDNA is distributed in aquatic environments.

However, Priestley is positive that eDNA surveys have a bright future: "There is still some way to go before whole-ecosystem eDNA monitoring is standard practice, but I believe that at least in the near future, eDNA will increasingly be one of the options in the survey toolkit, working alongside traditional methods to obtain the best ecological survey data in the most efficient way."

Positive Partnership

Professor Tom Welton, Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, said partnerships like this one help translate research into real-world applications: "This exciting collaboration demonstrates that research across the whole breadth of natural sciences at Imperial, even on newts, has practical applications to real world problems.

"Our partnership with Thomson Ecology will allow our research to have a positive impact on environmental protection and conservation."

Author: Hayley Dunning | Source: Imperial College London [November 25, 2016]

Killer whales in European waters face extinction due to outlawed but long-lived pollutants that also threaten several species of dolphins, according a study published in the journal >Scientific Reports.

Toxic chemicals known by the acronym PCBs are poisoning these marine mammals, and in some cases severely impeding their ability to reproduce, researchers reported.

Becoming more concentrated as they move up the food chain, PCBs settle into the fatty tissue of top ocean predators.

The deadly compounds—used in manufacturing and construction and banned across the European Union in 1987—can also be passed on to orca and dolphin calves suckling their mothers' milk.

"Few coastal orca populations remain in western European waters," said lead author Paul Jepson of the Zoological Society of London, noting that those in the Mediterranean and North Sea have already disappeared.

"The ones that do persist are very small and suffering low or zero rates of reproduction."

A community of 36 orcas, or killer whales, off the coast of Portugal—observed by scientists for decades—has not produced any offspring in more than ten years, the study reported.

An even smaller grouping near Scotland "will go extinct," Jepson told journalists by phone.

The death of a female known as Lulu, whose carcass was discovered on the Scottish island of Tiree last week, reduced this pod from nine to eight.

As well as direct observation, biopsies of individuals in the wild have also shown that these orca populations are not reproducing.

When female killer whales give birth, they transfer about 90 percent of the PCBs accumulated in their bodies—sometimes over decades—to their calves, purging themselves but poisoning their offspring.

Recent biopsies, however, revealed that all the females have the same level of PCB toxins in their system as males, evidence that they had not produced calves in the preceding years.

The toxic effect of PCBs on marine mammals was known, but this is the first overview—based on tissue samples from more than 1,000 stranded and biopsied whales, dolphins and orcas—of the extent of the damage.

Climbing the food chain

PCBs were widely used in manufacturing electrical equipment, paints and flame retardants. Designed to withstand weathering, they were also added to sealants used in buildings.

Europe produced some 300,000 tonnes of the compound from 1954 to 1984, and 90 percent of it has yet to be destroyed or safely stored away.

PCBs—which do not dissolve in water—reach the ocean via several routes.

"It is leaching from landfills into rivers and estuaries, and eventually into the marine environment," Jepson explained.

Sediment dredging to a depth of ten metres (30 feet) along shipping lanes in industrial ports brings the deadly chemicals to the surface.

From there, they gradually climb the food chain, becoming more toxic along the way: from bottom-feeding mollusks to crabs to small fish to the bigger fish eaten by orcas, dolphins and porpoises.

Further north, a healthier population of several thousand orcas living in waters near Iceland and northern Norway provide additional evidence that PCBs are, in fact, causing the decline of their cousins to the south.

Whereas the southern killer whales eat large fish and mammals, such as seals, the Arctic orcas subsist almost exclusively on herring.

Because herring eat plankton, they are outside the food chain along which PCBs climb, explaining why the northern orcas have ten times less PCB in their fatty tissue.

Disposing of land-based PCBs—made to resist heat, chemical attack and degradation—is difficult, Jepson said.

"They were designed to last a very long time, so it is incredibly hard to destroy them."

Author: Marlowe Hood | Source: AFP [Janaury 14, 2016]

Few Americans may be aware of it, but in 1952 a killer fog that contained pollutants covered London for five days, causing breathing problems and killing thousands of residents. The exact cause and nature of the fog has remained mostly unknown for decades, but an international team of scientists that includes several Texas A&M University-affiliated researchers believes that the mystery has been solved and that the same air chemistry also happens in China and other locales.

Texas A&M researcher Renyi Zhang, University Distinguished Professor and the Harold J. Haynes Chair of Atmospheric Sciences and Professor of Chemistry, along with graduate students Yun Lin, Wilmarie Marrero-Ortiz, Jeremiah Secrest, Yixin Li, Jiaxi Hu and Bowen Pan and researchers from China, Florida, California Israel and the UK have had their work published in the current issue of >Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In December of 1952, the fog enveloped all of London and residents at first gave it little notice because it appeared to be no different from the familiar natural fogs that have swept over Great Britain for thousands of years.

But over the next few days, conditions deteriorated, and the sky literally became dark. Visibility was reduced to only three feet in many parts of the city, all transportation was shut down and tens of thousands of people had trouble breathing. By the time the fog had lifted on Dec. 9, at least 4,000 people had died and more than 150,000 had been hospitalized. Thousands of animals in the area were also killed.

Recent British studies now say that the death count was likely far higher -- more than 12,000 people of all ages died from the killer fog. It has long been known that many of those deaths were likely caused by emissions from coal burning, but the exact chemical processes that led to the deadly mix of fog and pollution have not been fully understood over the past 60 years.

The 1952 killer fog led to the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1956 by the British Parliament and is still considered the worst air pollution event in the European history.

Through laboratory experiments and atmospheric measurements in China, the team has come up with the answers.

"People have known that sulfate was a big contributor to the fog, and sulfuric acid particles were formed from sulfur dioxide released by coal burning for residential use and power plants, and other means," Zhang says.

"But how sulfur dioxide was turned into sulfuric acid was unclear. Our results showed that this process was facilitated by nitrogen dioxide, another co-product of coal burning, and occurred initially on natural fog. Another key aspect in the conversion of sulfur dioxide to sulfate is that it produces acidic particles, which subsequently inhibits this process. Natural fog contained larger particles of several tens of micrometers in size, and the acid formed was sufficiently diluted. Evaporation of those fog particles then left smaller acidic haze particles that covered the city."

The study shows that similar chemistry occurs frequently in China, which has battled air pollution for decades. Of the 20 most polluted cities in the world, China is home to 16 of them, and Beijing often exceeds by many times the acceptable air standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"The difference in China is that the haze starts from much smaller nanoparticles, and the sulfate formation process is only possible with ammonia to neutralize the particles," Zhang adds.

"In China, sulfur dioxide is mainly emitted by power plants, nitrogen dioxide is from power plants and automobiles, and ammonia comes from fertilizer use and automobiles. Again, the right chemical processes have to interplay for the deadly haze to occur in China. Interestingly, while the London fog was highly acidic, contemporary Chinese haze is basically neutral."

Zhang says China has been working diligently over the past decade to lessen its air pollution problems, but persistent poor air quality often requires people to wear breathing masks during much of the day. China's explosive industrial and manufacturing growth and urbanization over the past 25 years have contributed to the problem. "A better understanding of the air chemistry holds the key for development of effective regulatory actions in China," he adds.

"The government has pledged to do all it can to reduce emissions going forward, but it will take time," he notes. "We think we have helped solve the 1952 London fog mystery and also have given China some ideas of how to improve its air quality. Reduction in emissions for nitrogen oxides and ammonia is likely effective in disrupting this sulfate formation process."

Source: Texas A&M University [November 15, 2016]

The appearance of infectious diseases in new places and new hosts, such as West Nile virus and Ebola, is a predictable result of climate change, says a noted zoologist affiliated with the Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

In an article published online today in conjunction with a special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Daniel Brooks warns that humans can expect more such illnesses to emerge in the future, as climate change shifts habitats and brings wildlife, crops, livestock, and humans into contact with pathogens to which they are susceptible but to which they have never been exposed before.

"It's not that there's going to be one 'Andromeda Strain' that will wipe everybody out on the planet," Brooks said, referring to the 1971 science fiction film about a deadly pathogen. "There are going to be a lot of localized outbreaks putting pressure on medical and veterinary health systems. It will be the death of a thousand cuts."

Brooks and his co-author, Eric Hoberg, a zoologist with the U.S. National Parasite Collection of the USDA's Agricultural Research Service, have personally observed how climate change has affected very different ecosystems. During his career, Brooks has focused primarily on parasites in the tropics, while Hoberg has worked primarily in Arctic regions.

Each has observed the arrival of species that hadn't previously lived in that area and the departure of others, Brooks said.

"Over the last 30 years, the places we've been working have been heavily impacted by climate change," Brooks said in an interview last week. "Even though I was in the tropics and he was in the Arctic, we could see something was happening." Changes in habitat mean animals are exposed to new parasites and pathogens.

For example, Brooks said, after humans hunted capuchin and spider monkeys out of existence in some regions of Costa Rica, their parasites immediately switched to howler monkeys, where they persist today. Some lungworms in recent years have moved northward and shifted hosts from caribou to muskoxen in the Canadian Arctic.

But for more than 100 years, scientists have assumed parasites don't quickly jump from one species to another because of the way parasites and hosts co-evolve.

Brooks calls it the "parasite paradox." Over time, hosts and pathogens become more tightly adapted to one another. According to previous theories, this should make emerging diseases rare, because they have to wait for the right random mutation to occur.

However, such jumps happen more quickly than anticipated. Even pathogens that are highly adapted to one host are able to shift to new ones under the right circumstances.

Brooks and Hoberg call for a "fundamental conceptual shift" recognizing that pathogens retain ancestral genetic capabilities allowing them to acquire new hosts quickly.

"Even though a parasite might have a very specialized relationship with one particular host in one particular place, there are other hosts that may be as susceptible," Brooks said.

In fact, the new hosts are more susceptible to infection and get sicker from it, Brooks said, because they haven't yet developed resistance.

Though resistance can evolve fairly rapidly, this only changes the emergent pathogen from an acute to a chronic disease problem, Brooks adds.

"West Nile Virus is a good example - no longer an acute problem for humans or wildlife in North America, it nonetheless is hhere to stay," he said.

The answer, Brooks said, is for greater collaboration between the public and veterinary health communities and the "museum" community - the biologists who study and classify life forms and how they evolve.

In addition to treating human cases of an emerging disease and developing a vaccine for it, he said, scientists need to learn which non-human species carry the pathogen.

Knowing the geographic distribution and the behavior of the non-human reservoirs of the pathogen could lead to public health strategies based on reducing risk of infection by minimizing human contact with infected animals, much likethose that reduced the incidence of malaria and yellow fever by reducing human contact with mosquitos.

Museum scientists versed in understanding the evolutionary relationships among species could use this knowledge to anticipate the risk of the pathogen becoming established outside of its native range.

Brooks, who earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, was a zoology professor at the University of Toronto for 30 years until he retired early in 2011 to devote more time to his study of emerging infectious disease. In addition to being a senior research fellow with UNL's Manter Laboratory, he is a visiting senior fellow at the Universidade Federal do Parana, Brazil, funded by the Ciencias sem Fronteiras (Sciences without Borders) of the Brazilian government, and a visiting scholar with Debrecen University in Hungary.

Brooks' and Hoberg's article, "Evolution in action: climate change, biodiversity dynamics and emerging infectious disease," is part of a Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B issue on "Climate change and vector-borne diseases of humans," edited by Paul Parham, a specialist in infectious disease epidemiology at Imperial College in London.

"We have to admit we're not winning the war against emerging diseases," Brooks said. "We're not anticipating them. We're not paying attention to their basic biology, where they might come from and the potential for new pathogens to be introduced."

Source: University of Nebraska-Lincoln [February 16, 2015]

Beneath the Aurora Borealis an oil tanker glides through the night past the Coast Guard ice breaker Amundsen and vanishes into the maze of shoals and straits of the Northwest Passage, navigating waters that for millennia were frozen over this time of year.

Warming has forced a retreat of the polar ice cap, opening up a sea route through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans for several months of the year.

Commander Alain Lacerte is at the helm as the vessel navigates the Queen Maud Gulf, poring over charts that date from the 1950s and making course corrections with the help of GPS.

"Where it's white (on the chart), it means the area hasn't been surveyed," he explains -- leaning over a map that is mostly white. "Most of the far north hasn't been surveyed, so our maps are unreliable."

The crew constantly take radar and multi-beam sonar measurements and check their position.

"We don't want any shoals named after us," says the old sea dog from behind his spectacles.

Almost the size of the European Union, the Canadian Arctic seabed remains largely uncharted. The waters are also shallow and navigating unknown parts can be deadly -- even when the north is ice-free.

Today, taking this route cuts 7,000 kilometers (4,350 miles) off a trip from London to Tokyo, saving time and fuel.

'Never imagined this'

Since the 15th century there have been a dozen expeditions seeking a faster shipping route from Europe to Asia through the north.

The Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen was the first to cross the Northwest Passage, on board the Gjoa, in an expedition that took three years, finishing in 1906.

Afterward interest in the waterway waned. An average of one ship per year attempted to make the crossing over the past century.

But thawing of the polar ice promises Arctic nations new opportunities to open ocean trade routes and offshore oil fields.

In the summer months the Amundsen is used by Canadian government scientists -- among them Roger Provost, a Canadian Ice Service meteorologist -- as well as a network of scientists led by the ArcticNet organization.

Provost looked with amazement from the wheelhouse at the lack of any ice cover around the coast guard ship.

"Anyone who still denies climate change is real has their head in the ground, they're blind," he said.

In 37 years of Arctic exploration, he said he "never imagined ever seeing this," pointing to satellite images showing a clear path through the Queen Maud Gulf and the M'Clintock Channel, where the Amundsen is headed.

Almost 112 years ago to the day, the explorer Amundsen got stuck in the pack ice here. And in 1979, Provost recalls, another Canadian Coast Guard ice-breaker had to cut short its inaugural journey, unable to push beyond this point through thick ice.

Over the past five years the number of cargo and cruise ships, tankers and others crossing the Passage climbed to 117.

In 2010, Canada imposed shipping regulations on seafarers going through the Passage, but the United States and the European Union do not recognize Canada's ownership of the waterway, considering it international waters.

'Completely disappear'

The ice cover has steadily retreated over the past decade, with this year set to be the hottest on record, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The previous year saw average global temperatures rise one degree Celsius -- but by three degrees in the Arctic.

What most worries Provost is the loss of "multi-year ice," formed over centuries. "In a few years it will completely disappear," he forecast.

"It's a tragedy for all humanity what is happening."

Glaciologist Lauren Candlish said: "We're now in the transition phase, from having multi-year ice through the entire summer, to a seasonally ice free Arctic."

Poring over data on her computer in a nook of the ship the University of Manitoba researcher says: "It's a different Arctic now. Less predictable, with more fluctuations."

The last such melting occurred "before the last ice age," from AD 100,000 to AD 10,000, she noted.

Most aboard the ship doubt we are headed for an Arctic shipping boom predicted by many, as the weather remains unpredictable and harsh. But there is sure to be an increase, which raises concerns for the environment.

"When it was covered in ice, this ecosystem was not threatened," says Provost. The Arctic is a unique and diverse ecosystem that is home to whales, seals, polar bears, walruses and several bird species.

"A massive oil spill like the one in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 must never happen in the Arctic," he said. "The consequences would be much more serious."

Author: Clement Sabourin | Source: AFP [October 20, 2015]

The human-dominated geological epoch known as the Anthropocene probably began around the year 1610, with an unusual drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide and the irreversible exchange of species between the New and Old Worlds, according to new research published today in Nature.

Previous epochs began and ended due to factors including meteorite strikes, sustained volcanic eruptions and the shifting of the continents. Human actions are now changing the planet, but are we really a geological force of nature driving Earth into a new epoch that will last millions of years?

Scientists at UCL have concluded that humans have become a geological power and suggest that human actions have produced a new geological epoch.

Defining an epoch requires two main criteria to be met. Long-lasting changes to the Earth must be documented. Scientists must also pinpoint and date a global environmental change that has been captured in natural material, such as rocks, ancient ice or sediment from the ocean floor. Such a marker -- like the chemical signature left by the meteorite strike that wiped out the dinosaurs -- is called a golden spike.

The study authors systematically compared the major environmental impacts of human activity over the past 50,000 years against these two formal requirements. Just two dates met the criteria: 1610, when the collision of the New and Old Worlds a century earlier was first felt globally; and 1964, associated with the fallout from nuclear weapons tests. The researchers conclude that 1610 is the stronger candidate.

The scientists say the 1492 arrival of Europeans in the Americas, and subsequent global trade, moved species to new continents and oceans, resulting in a global re-ordering of life on Earth. This rapid, repeated, cross-ocean exchange of species is without precedent in Earth's history.

They argue that the joining of the two hemispheres is an unambiguous event after which the impacts of human activity became global and set Earth on a new trajectory. The first fossil pollen of maize, a Latin American species, appears in marine sediment in Europe in 1600, becoming common over subsequent centuries. This irreversible exchange of species satisfies the first criteria for dating an epoch -- long-term changes to Earth.

The Anthropocene probably began when species jumped continents, starting when the Old World met the New. We humans are now a geological power in our own right -- as Earth-changing as a meteorite strike

The researchers also found a golden spike that can be dated to the same time: a pronounced dip in atmospheric carbon dioxide centred on 1610 and captured in Antarctic ice-core records. The drop occurred as a direct result of the arrival of Europeans in the Americas. Colonisation of the New World led to the deaths of about 50 million indigenous people, most within a few decades of the 16th century due to smallpox. The abrupt near-cessation of farming across the continent and the subsequent re-growth of Latin American forests and other vegetation removed enough carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to produce a drop in CO2. Thus, the second requirement of a golden spike marker is met.

The researchers have named the 1610 dip in carbon dioxide the 'Orbis Spike'. They chose the Latin word for 'world' because this golden spike was caused by once-disconnected peoples becoming globally linked.

Lead author, Dr Simon Lewis (UCL Geography and University of Leeds), said: "In a hundred thousand years scientists will look at the environmental record and know something remarkable happened in the second half of the second millennium. They will be in no doubt that these global changes to Earth were caused by their own species. Today we can say when those changes began and why. The Anthropocene probably began when species jumped continents, starting when the Old World met the New. We humans are now a geological power in our own right -- as Earth-changing as a meteorite strike."

He added: "Historically, the collision of the Old and New Worlds marks the beginning of the modern world. Many historians regard agricultural imports into Europe from the vast new lands of the Americas, alongside the availability of coal, as the two essential precursors of the Industrial Revolution, which in turn unleashed further waves of global environmental changes. Geologically, this boundary also marks Earth's last globally synchronous cool moment before the onset of the long-term global warmth of the Anthropocene."

The authors also considered the merits of dating the Anthropocene to 1964, which saw a peak in radioactive fallout following nuclear weapons testing. This marker is seen in many geological deposits, and by the 1960s human impact on the Earth was large. However, the researchers note that while nuclear war could dramatically alter Earth, so far it has not. While the fallout from nuclear bomb tests is a very good marker, the testing of nuclear weapons has not been -- in geological terms -- an Earth-changing event.

The beginning of the Industrial Revolution, in the late 18th century, has most commonly been suggested as the start of the Anthropocene. This linked a clear turning point in human history, and the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil fuel use is a long-term global environmental change of critical importance. However, the researchers did not find a golden spike at that time because most effects were local, while the global exponential rise in carbon dioxide was too smooth an increase to form a precisely dated marker.

The authors' new paper ends by highlighting some implications of formally defining the Anthropocene.

Co-author, geologist Professor Mark Maslin (UCL Geography) said: "A more wide-spread recognition that human actions are driving far-reaching changes to the life-supporting infrastructure of Earth will have implications for our philosophical, social, economic and political views of our environment. But we should not despair, because the power that humans wield is unlike any other force of nature, it is reflexive and therefore can be used, withdrawn or modified. The first stage of solving our damaging relationship with our environment is recognising it."

An official decision on whether to formally recognise the Anthropocene, including when it began, will be initiated by a recommendation of the Anthropocene Working Group of the Subcommission of Quaternary Stratigraphy, due in 2016.

Source: University College London [March 11, 2015]

The leopard (Panthera pardus), one of the world's most iconic big cats, has lost as much as 75 percent of its historic range, according to a paper >published in the scientific journal PeerJ. Conducted by partners including the National Geographic Society's Big Cats Initiative, international conservation charities the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and Panthera and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Cat Specialist Group, this study represents the first known attempt to produce a comprehensive analysis of leopards' status across their entire range and all nine subspecies.

The research found that leopards historically occupied a vast range of approximately 35 million square kilometers (13.5 million square miles) throughout Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Today, however, they are restricted to approximately 8.5 million square kilometers (3.3 million square miles).

To obtain their findings, the scientists spent three years reviewing more than 1,300 sources on the leopard's historic and current range. The results appear to confirm conservationists' suspicions that, while the entire species is not yet as threatened as some other big cats, leopards are facing a multitude of growing threats in the wild, and three subspecies have already been almost completely eradicated.

Lead author Andrew Jacobson, of ZSL's Institute of Zoology, University College London and the National Geographic Society's Big Cats Initiative, stated: "The leopard is a famously elusive animal, which is likely why it has taken so long to recognize its global decline. This study represents the first of its kind to assess the status of the leopard across the globe and all nine subspecies. Our results challenge the conventional assumption in many areas that leopards remain relatively abundant and not seriously threatened."

In addition, the research found that while African leopards face considerable threats, particularly in North and West Africa, leopards have also almost completely disappeared from several regions across Asia, including much of the Arabian Peninsula and vast areas of former range in China and Southeast Asia. The amount of habitat in each of these regions is plummeting, having declined by nearly 98 percent.

"Leopards' secretive nature, coupled with the occasional, brazen appearance of individual animals within megacities like Mumbai and Johannesburg, perpetuates the misconception that these big cats continue to thrive in the wild—when actually our study underlies the fact that they are increasingly threatened," said Luke Dollar, co-author and program director of the National Geographic Society's Big Cats Initiative.

Philipp Henschel, co-author and Lion Program survey coordinator for Panthera, stated: "A severe blind spot has existed in the conservation of the leopard. In just the last 12 months, Panthera has discovered the status of the leopard in Southeast Asia is as perilous as the highly endangered tiger." Henschel continued: "The international conservation community must double down in support of initiatives — protecting the species. Our next steps in this very moment will determine the leopard's fate."

Co-author Peter Gerngross, with the Vienna, Austria-based mapping firm BIOGEOMAPS, added: "We began by creating the most detailed reconstruction of the leopard's historic range to date. This allowed us to compare detailed knowledge on its current distribution with where the leopard used to be and thereby calculate the most accurate estimates of range loss. This research represents a major advancement for leopard science and conservation."

Leopards are capable of surviving in human-dominated landscapes provided they have sufficient cover, access to wild prey and tolerance from local people. In many areas, however, habitat is converted to farmland and native herbivores are replaced with livestock for growing human populations. This habitat loss, prey decline, conflict with livestock owners, illegal trade in leopard skins and parts and legal trophy hunting are all factors contributing to leopard decline.

Complicating conservation efforts for the leopard, Jacobson noted: "Our work underscores the pressing need to focus more research on the less studied subspecies, three of which have been the subject of fewer than five published papers during the last 15 years. Of these subspecies, one—the Javan leopard (P. p. melas)—is currently classified as critically endangered by the IUCN, while another—the Sri Lankan leopard (P. p. kotiya)—is classified as endangered, highlighting the urgent need to understand what can be done to arrest these worrying declines."

Despite this troubling picture, some areas of the world inspire hope. Even with historic declines in the Caucasus Mountains and the Russian Far East/Northeast China, leopard populations in these areas appear to have stabilized and may even be rebounding with significant conservation investment through the establishment of protected areas and increased anti-poaching measures.

"Leopards have a broad diet and are remarkably adaptable," said Joseph Lemeris Jr., a National Geographic Society's Big Cats Initiative researcher and paper co-author. "Sometimes the elimination of active persecution by government or local communities is enough to jumpstart leopard recovery. However, with many populations ranging across international boundaries, political cooperation is critical."

Source: PeerJ [May 03, 2016]

The erosion rates of cliffs along the Sussex coast have rapidly sped up in the last 200 years, a new study has found.

The research shows that the erosion rates along Beachy Head and Seaford Head in Sussex had remained relatively stable, at around two to six centimetres each year, for thousands of years. However, around 200 to 600 years ago the rates rapidly accelerated, increasing to between 22 and 32 centimetres each year.

The authors suggest that rising sea levels and increasingly severe storms have rapidly eroded the Beachy Head and Seaford Head shorelines. The loss of beach means that the cliffs are exposed to the eroding wave action forces, which is causing them to collapse into the sea. The researchers suggest this erosion process is probably happening along other coastlines in the UK and elsewhere around the world, with implications for how coasts will respond to climate change and what we can do to manage the impact on important coastal infrastructure.

Dr Dylan Rood, co-author from the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London, said: "The coast is clearly eroding, and Britain has retreated fast. Our study on British coasts leaves no question that coastal cliff retreat accelerated in the recent past. A nearly ten-fold increase in retreat rates over a very short timescale, in geological terms, is remarkable. The UK cannot leave the issue of cliff erosion unresolved in the face of a warming world and rising sea levels. Cliff erosion is irreversible; once the cliffs retreat, they are gone for good."

The scientists used a process called cosmogenic dating to learn how the chalk cliffs at Beachy Head and Seaford Head have eroded. Cosmogenic dating allows scientists to analyse the build-up of a rare isotope of beryllium (beryllium-10). This isotope is created when cosmic radiation reacts with oxygen atoms in the exposed flint rock, so by measuring its accumulation, it acts as a kind of 'rock clock' to show the rate of rock erosion.

Since the rate of accumulation has previously been relatively constant, measuring rock samples from across the shore platforms allowed researchers to build a record of how coastal erosion has proceeded over the last 7000 years or so.

Dr Rood added: "Cosmogenic isotopes including beryllium-10 are advancing the science of retreating coastlines in Great Britain and worldwide. These new tools provide a rare insight into how dramatically environmental change and human impact affected sensitive coastal landscapes. We still need to better understand how other rocky coastlines have responded in the past, and cosmogenic isotopes are the key to unlocking this mystery."

The researchers now hope to use their observations to create a more accurate predictive model of how climate change will affect coastal erosion in the future, which could help authorities make more informed decisions about coastal management.

The research was published in the >Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Author: Caroline Brogan | Source: Imperial College London [November 16, 2016]

To fence or not to fence? That is the question facing conservationists concerned with barriers that keep wildlife in and people out.

According to a new study by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and other groups, appearing in April 20 edition of the Journal of Applied Ecology, new policies must be developed before fences are erected -- particularly in dryland ecosystems where mobility is essential for both humans and wildlife.

Some nations are considering fences as a means to protect remnant wildlife populations. For example, Uganda intends to fence all of its national parks to stem human-wildlife conflicts, while Rwanda recently erected a 120 km fence around Akagera National Park.

But the study's authors caution that evidence is limited showing that fences are effective management tools, particularly in drylands.

"Large-scale fencing can disrupt migration pathways and reduce access to key areas within drylands, such as seasonal foraging areas," said lead author Sarah Durant of ZSL. "This can lead to severe reductions in migratory wildlife populations and may prompt wider impacts on non-migratory species."

The study says that policies are needed to evaluate whether fences should be erected and should be evaluated based on wildlife movement and distribution, climate change predictions, costs and benefits to local people, and other factors.

Said co-author James Deutsch of WCS: "Fencing can initially appear to be an easy conservation solution. Yet, unless fencing strategies have local community support and financing for maintenance, there is a danger that they may generate more problems than they solve."

The authors suggest that The United Nations Conventions on Migratory Species (CMS) and to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) are appropriate international agreements for leading to the development of policies and guidelines on fencing drylands.

In response, the Scientific Council of CMS has proposed to form a Working Group on fencing problems and policies in dryland ecosystems.

Said co-author Roseline Beudels-Jamar from the CMS Scientific Council: "CMS is concerned about the impact of human-wildlife conflict on both wildlife and on vulnerable livelihoods of marginalised people, and would like to better understand the impacts of fencing, or alternative methods, if used to mitigate such conflicts."

Source: Wildlife Conservation Society [May 06, 2015]

Global populations of vertebrates -- mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish -- have declined by 58 percent between 1970 and 2012, states a new report from World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Animals living in the world's lakes, rivers, and freshwater systems have experienced the most dramatic population declines, at 81 percent. Because of human activity, the report states that without immediate intervention global wildlife populations could drop two-thirds by 2020.

"This research delivers a wake-up call that for decades we've treated our planet as if it's disposable," said Carter Roberts, WWF president and CEO. "We created this problem. The good news is that we can fix it. It requires updating our approach to food, energy, transportation, and how we live our lives. We share the same planet. We rely on it for our survival. So we are all responsible for its protection."

The top threat to wildlife is habitat loss and degradation, driven primarily by increasing demand for food and energy. According to the report, global food production is the leading cause for destruction of habitats and overexploitation of wildlife. Agriculture currently occupies approximately one-third of Earth's total land area and accounts for 70 percent of all freshwater use.

Wild animals are not the only ones at risk; the report states that increased pressure threatens the natural resources that all life -- including humanity -- depend on.

The report demonstrates the need to rethink how we produce, consume, measure success and value the natural environment, and calls for an urgent system change by individuals, businesses and governments. The report also illustrates the positive momentum that is building by highlighting recent global agreements on climate change and sustainable development. In particular, the report recognizes the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as an essential guide to decision-making that can ensure that the environment is valued alongside economic and social interests.

"A strong natural environment is the key to defeating poverty, improving health and developing a just and prosperous future," said Marco Lambertini, WWF director general. "We have proven that we know what it takes to build a resilient planet for future generations, we just need to act on that knowledge."

>Living Planet Report 2016: Risk and resilience in a new era is the eleventh edition of WWF's biennial flagship publication. The report tracks over 14,000 vertebrate populations of over 3,700 species from 1970 to 2012 and includes research from the Global Footprint Network and the Zoological Society of London.

Source: World Wildlife Fund [October 27, 2016]

The world's largest canyon may lie under the Antarctic ice sheet, according to analysis of satellite data by a team of scientists, led by Durham University.

Although the discovery needs to be confirmed by direct measurements, the previously unknown canyon system is thought to be over 1,000km long and in places as much as 1km deep, comparable in depth to the Grand Canyon in USA, but many times longer.

The canyon system is made up of a chain of winding and linear features buried under several kilometres of ice in one of the last unexplored regions of the Earth's land surface: Princess Elizabeth Land (PEL) in East Antarctica. Very few measurements of the ice thickness have been carried out in this particular area of the Antarctic, which has led to scientists dubbing it one of Antarctica's two 'Poles of Ignorance'.

The researchers believe that the landscape beneath the ice sheet has probably been carved out by water and is either so ancient that it was there before the ice sheet grew or it was created by water flowing and eroding beneath the ice.

Although not visible to the naked eye, the subglacial landscape can be identified in the surface of the ice sheet.

Faint traces of the canyons were observed using satellite imagery and small sections of the canyons were then found using radio-echo sounding data, whereby radio waves are sent through the ice to map the shape of the rock beneath it. These are very large features which appear to reach from the interior of Princess Elizabeth Land to the coast around the Vestfold Hills and the West Ice Shelf.

The canyons may be connected to a previously undiscovered subglacial lake as the ice surface above the lake shares characteristics with those of large subglacial lakes previously identified. The data suggests the area of the lake could cover up to 1250km², more than 80 times as big as Lake Windermere in the English Lake District.

An airborne survey taking targeted radio-echo sounding measurements over the whole buried landscape is now underway with the aim of unambiguously confirming the existence and size of the canyon and lake system, with results due later in 2016.

Lead researcher, Dr Stewart Jamieson, from the Department of Geography at Durham University in the UK, said: "Our analysis provides the first evidence that a huge canyon and a possible lake are present beneath the ice in Princess Elizabeth Land. It's astonishing to think that such large features could have avoided detection for so long.

"This is a region of the Earth that is bigger than the UK and yet we still know little about what lies beneath the ice. In fact, the bed of Antarctica is less well known than the surface of Mars. If we can gain better knowledge of the buried landscape we will be better equipped to understand how the ice sheet responds to changes in climate."

Co-Author Dr Neil Ross from Newcastle University in the UK, said: "Antarctic scientists have long recognised that because the way ice flows, the landscape beneath the ice sheet was subtly reflected in the topography of the ice sheet surface. Despite this, these vast deep canyons and potential large lake had been overlooked entirely.

"Our identification of this landscape has only been possible through the recent acquisition, compilation and open availability of satellite data by many different organisations (e.g. NASA, ESA and the US National Snow and Ice Data Center), to whom we are very grateful, and because of some serendipitous reconnaissance radio-echo sounding data acquired over the canyons by the ICECAP project during past Antarctic field seasons."

Co-Author Professor Martin Siegert, from the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, UK, said: "Discovering a gigantic new chasm that dwarfs the Grand Canyon is a tantalising prospect. Geoscientists on Antarctica are carrying out experiments to confirm what we think we are seeing from the initial data, and we hope to announce our findings at a meeting of the ICECAP2 collaboration, at Imperial, later in 2016.

"Our international collaboration of US, UK, Indian, Australian and Chinese scientists are pushing back the frontiers of discovery on Antarctica like nowhere else on earth. But the stability of this understudied continent is threatened by global warming, so all the countries of the world now must rapidly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and limit the damaging effects of climate change."

>The research is >published in >Geology>.

Source: Durham University [January 13, 2016]

Current rates of climate change could trigger instability in a major Antarctic glacier, ultimately leading to more than 2m of sea-level rise.

This is the conclusion of a new study looking at the future of Totten Glacier, a significant glacier in Antarctica. Totten Glacier drains one of the world's largest areas of ice, on the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS).

By studying the history of Totten's advances and retreats, researchers have discovered that if climate change continues unabated, the glacier could cross a critical threshold within the next century, entering an irreversible period of very rapid retreat.

This would cause it to withdraw up to 300 kilometres inland in the following centuries and release vast quantities of water, contributing up to 2.9 metres to global sea-level rise.

The EAIS is currently thought to be relatively stable in the face of global warming compared with the much smaller ice sheet in West Antarctica, but Totten Glacier is bucking the trend by losing substantial amounts of ice. The new research reveals that Totten Glacier may be even more vulnerable than previously thought.

The study, by scientists from Imperial College London and institutions in Australia, the US, and New Zealand is >published in Nature. Last year, the team discovered that there is currently warm water circulating underneath a floating portion of the glacier that is causing more melting than might have been expected.

Their new research looks at the underlying geology of the glacier and reveals that if it retreats another 100-150 km, its front will be sitting on an unstable bed and this could trigger a period of rapid retreat for the glacier. This would cause it to withdraw nearly 300 km inland from its current front at the coast.

Retreating the full 300 km inland may take several hundred years, according to co-author Professor Martin Siegert, Co-Director of the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London. However, once the glacier crosses the threshold into the unstable region, the melting will be unstoppable -- at least until it has retreated to the point where the geology becomes more stable again.

"The evidence coming together is painting a picture of East Antarctica being much more vulnerable to a warming environment than we thought," he said. "This is something we should worry about. Totten Glacier is losing ice now, and the warm ocean water that is causing this loss has the potential to also push the glacier back to an unstable place."

"Totten Glacier is only one outlet for the ice of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, but it could have a huge impact. The East Antarctic Ice Sheet is by far the largest mass of ice on Earth, so any small changes have a big influence globally."

To uncover the history of Totten Glacier's movements, the team looked at the sedimentary rocks below the glacier using airborne geophysical surveys. From the geological record, influenced by the erosion by ice above, they were able to understand the history of the glacier stretching back millions of years.

They found that the glacier has retreated more quickly over certain 'unstable' regions in the past. Based on this evidence, the scientists believe that when the glacier hits these regions again we will see the same pattern of rapid retreat.

Author: Hayley Dunning. | Source: Imperial College London [May 18, 2016]

The world's fastest land animal, the cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus), is sprinting towards the edge of extinction and could soon be lost forever unless urgent, landscape-wide conservation action is taken, according to a study published today in the journal >Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Led by Zoological Society of London (ZSL), Panthera and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the study reveals that just 7,100 cheetahs remain globally, representing the best available estimate for the species to date. Furthermore, the cheetah has been driven out of 91% of its historic range. Asiatic cheetah populations have been hit hardest, with fewer than 50 individuals remaining in one isolated pocket of Iran.

Due to the species' dramatic decline, the study's authors are calling for the cheetah to be up-listed from 'Vulnerable' to 'Endangered' on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Typically, greater international conservation support, prioritization and attention are granted to wildlife classified as 'Endangered', in efforts to stave off impending extinction.

Dr. Sarah Durant, ZSL/WCS lead author and Project Leader for the Rangewide Conservation Program for Cheetah and African Wild Dog, said: "This study represents the most comprehensive analysis of cheetah status to date. Given the secretive nature of this elusive cat, it has been difficult to gather hard information on the species, leading to its plight being overlooked. Our findings show that the large space requirements for cheetah, coupled with the complex range of threats faced by the species in the wild, mean that it is likely to be much more vulnerable to extinction than was previously thought."

Durant continued, "We have worked with range state governments and the cheetah conservation community to put in place comprehensive frameworks for action to save the species, but funds and resources are needed to implement them. The recent decisions made at the CITES CoP17 meeting in Johannesburg represent a significant breakthrough particularly in terms of stemming the illegal flow of live cats trafficked out of the Horn of Africa region. However, concerted action is needed to reverse ongoing declines in the face of accelerating land use changes across the continent."

While renowned for its speed and spots, the degree of persecution cheetahs face both inside and outside of protected areas is largely unrecognized. Even within guarded parks and reserves, cheetahs rarely escape the pervasive threats of human-wildlife conflict, prey loss due to overhunting by people, habitat loss and the illegal trafficking of cheetah parts and trade as exotic pets.

To make matters worse, as one of the world's most wide-ranging carnivores, 77% of the cheetah's habitat falls outside of protected areas. Unrestricted by boundaries, the species' wide-ranging movements weaken law enforcement protection and greatly amplify its vulnerability to human pressures. Indeed, largely due to pressures on wildlife and their habitat outside of protected areas, Zimbabwe's cheetah population has plummeted from 1,200 to a maximum of 170 animals in just 16 years -- representing an astonishing loss of 85% of the country's cheetahs.

Scientists are now calling for an urgent paradigm shift in cheetah conservation, towards landscape-level efforts that transcend national borders and are coordinated by existing regional conservation strategies for the species. A holistic conservation approach, which incentivises protection of cheetahs by local communities and trans-national governments, alongside sustainable human-wildlife coexistence is paramount to the survival of the species.

Panthera's Cheetah Program Director, Dr. Kim Young-Overton, shared, "We've just hit the reset button in our understanding of how close cheetahs are to extinction. The take-away from this pinnacle study is that securing protected areas alone is not enough. We must think bigger, conserving across the mosaic of protected and unprotected landscapes that these far-ranging cats inhabit, if we are to avert the otherwise certain loss of the cheetah forever."

The methodology used for this study will also be relevant to other species, such as African wild dogs, which also require large areas of land to prosper and are therefore similarly vulnerable to increasing threats outside designated protected areas.

Source: Panthera [December 26, 2016]

Arctic sea ice has reached its lowest winter point since satellite observations began in the late 1970s, raising concerns about faster ice melt and rising seas due to global warming, US officials said Thursday.

The maximum extent of sea ice observed was 5.6 million square miles (14.5 million square kilometers) on February 25, earlier than scientists had expected, said the report by the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

"It is also the lowest in the satellite record," the NSIDC said.

Below-average ice conditions were observed everywhere except in the Labrador Sea and Davis Strait.

The sea ice was about 425,000 square miles below the average from 1981 to 2010, a loss equal to more than twice the size of Sweden.

It was also 50,200 square miles below the previous lowest maximum that occurred in 2011.

Environmentalists said the report offered more evidence of worsening global warming, and urged action to curb the burning of fossil fuels that send greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

"This is further evidence that global warming and its impacts have not stopped despite the inaccurate and misleading claims of climate change 'skeptics,'" said Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

"The gradual disappearance of ice is having profound consequences for people, animals and plants in the polar regions, as well as around the world, through sea level rise."

The World Wildlife Fund said the loss of sea ice means trouble for a vast web of life that depends on it, from polar bears to marine creatures.

"Today's chilling news from the Arctic should be a wakeup call for all of us," said Samantha Smith, leader of the WWF Global Climate and Energy Initiative.

"Climate change won't stop at the Arctic Circle. Unless we make dramatic cuts in polluting gases, we will end up with a climate that is unrecognizable, unpredictable and damaging for natural systems and people."

The NSIDC said much of the ice loss could be attributed to an unusually warm February in parts of Russia and Alaska, and that it was still possible that a late-season surge of ice growth could occur.

A detailed analysis of the winter sea ice from 2014 to 2015 is due to be released in early April.

Source: AFP [March 19, 2015]

Scientists have discovered that stunted growth can be a genetic response to ocean acidification, enabling some sea creatures to survive high carbon dioxide levels, both in the future and during past mass extinctions.

Using natural CO2 seeps as test sites, the international team of marine scientists and palaeontologists have studied the way in which sea snails cope in more acidic conditions ‒ simulating the change in seawater chemistry that will occur in future as more atmospheric CO2 is absorbed by the ocean.

The researchers say their findings, published in Nature Climate Change, provide an explanation as to why marine species that survived previous mass extinction events were much smaller – a phenomenon known as the ‘Lilliput effect’.

The research was funded by the EU MedSeA project and the UK Ocean Acidification Research Programme, and involved researchers from 10 institutions including Plymouth University, the University of Southampton, the Natural History Museum, London, and colleagues in Italy, Monaco, Norway and New Caledonia.

Its results provide a stark warning about the impact that continuing ocean acidification could have on marine ecosystems unless we drastically slow the rate of carbon dioxide emissions.

Dr Vittorio Garilli, at Paleosofia-APEMA, Palermo, said: “Two species of snails growing at shallow water CO2 seeps were smaller than those found in normal pH conditions, and adapted their metabolic rates to cope with the acidified seawater. These physiological changes allowed the animals to maintain calcification and to partially repair shell dissolution.”

Professor Jason Hall-Spencer, of the School of Marine Science and Engineering at Plymouth University, said: “Organisms that have been exposed to elevated CO2 levels over multiple generations provide valuable insights both into changes we can expect in marine ecosystems as CO2 emissions continue to rise unchecked, and into past mass extinctions."

“Not only do they demonstrate a similar magnitude and direction of body size change as fossil organisms, but they also reveal the physiological advantages of dwarfing,” added Professor Marco Milazzo at Palermo University.

Measurements showed that the shells from high CO2 seawater were about a third smaller than those in “normal” environments. Some of the snails were taken to the Marine Environmental Studies Laboratory at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Monaco, where their calcification rates were measured in aquaria.

Study co-leader Dr Riccardo Rodolfo-Metalpa, from the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, said: “They developed a surprising ability to calcify and cope with shell dissolution at pH values which were thought too low for calcification to occur.”

The results – published in the paper Physiological advantages of dwarfing in surviving extinctions in high CO2 oceans – confirmed the theory that the snails had adapted to the conditions over many generations.

Professor Richard Twitchett, of the Department of Earth Sciences at the Natural History Museum, said: “The fossil record shows us that mass extinctions and dwarfing of marine shelled species are repeatedly associated with episodes of past global warming. It is likely that similar changes will increasingly affect modern marine ecosystems, especially as the current rate of ocean acidification and warming is so rapid."

Professor Hall-Spencer added: “It is critical that we understand the mechanisms by which certain species survive chronic exposure to elevated CO2 since emissions of this gas are already having adverse effects on marine foodwebs and putting food security at risk.”

Author: Andrew Merrington | Source: University of Plymouth [April 21, 2015]

The first annual State of the World's Plants report, which involved more than 80 scientists and took a year to produce, is a baseline assessment of current knowledge on the diversity of plants on earth, the global threats these plants currently face, as well as the policies in place and their effectiveness in dealing with threats.

"This is the first ever global assessment on the state of the world's plants. We already have a 'State of the World's ...birds, sea-turtles, forests, cities, mothers, fathers, children even antibiotics' but not plants. I find this remarkable given the importance of plants to all of our lives- from food, medicines, clothing, building materials and biofuels, to climate regulation. This report therefore provides the first step in filling this critical knowledge gap." said Professor Kathy Willis, Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew at the report launch on Monday.

"But to have effect, the findings must serve to galvanise the international scientific, conservation, business and governmental communities to work together to fill the knowledge gaps we've highlighted and expand international collaboration, partnerships and frameworks for plant conservation and use," she added.

The status of plants outlined in the report is based on the most up to date knowledge from around the world as of 2016 and is divided into three sections; describing the world's plants, global threats to plants and policies and international trade.

Naming and Counting

The first section focuses on the diversity of plants on earth, noting that there are now an estimated 391,000 vascular plants known to science of which 369,000 are flowering plants -- with around 2,000 new vascular plant species described annually. Some of the most exciting were found during fieldwork while many others were detected only after they have already been preserved and filed as herbarium specimens and a few have been discovered in the glasshouses at Kew.

One of the largest carnivorous plants known (1.5m in height), a new insect-eating plant of the sundew genus called Drosera magnifica was even first discovered on Facebook. Eighteen new species of the genus Ipomoea in the morning glory family, were described from Bolivia last year, among them a close relative of the sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas, offering exciting options for the future of this crop.

"But there are still large parts of the world where very little is known about plants. Identification of these important plant areas is now critical." said Steve Bachman, strategic output leader for the State of the World´s Plants report, RBG Kew. "Similarly, we still only know a fraction of the genetic diversity of plants and whole-genome sequences are currently available for just 139 species of vascular plants. Activity in this area needs to speed up," he added.

Useful plants

In terms of the uses of plants, the report collates data from multiple data sources to reveal that at least 31,000 plant species have a documented use for medicines, food, materials and so on. The majority (17,810 plants) of those now documented have a medicinal use.

Aside from the plants that are currently in use, the report looks at where collection efforts should focus to include plants that will be useful in the future. One set of plant species of critical importance to global food security are the wild relatives of crops, a pool of genetic variation that can help to drive the improvement of our crops into the future. A recent inventory has revealed that there are currently 3,546 prioritised global plant taxa identified as 'crop wild relatives' and Kew's Millennium Seed Bank (MSB) includes 688 crop wild relatives among its over 78,000 accessions, but there are still substantial gaps.

Research in this sector has found that the traits that have been bred into crops over years of domestication are not necessarily the same ones that will provide the greatest climate resilience. Given that many of the wild populations of these species are under considerable threat due to land-use and climate change there is an urgent need to conserve those species not adequately represented in current collections. More seed banking will help preserve a wider range of alternatives to the crops on which the world over relies today (report pages 20-23).

Climate change

The report also explores current knowledge around the impact of climate change on plants and finds that while there is a good understanding for some regions of the world, there are still large areas for which little or no research exists. In those areas where good data is available, clear impacts are visible, including changes in flowering times, turnover in plant communities and movement of species with changing climates.

Research referenced in the report shows that all but one of the world's biomes have experienced more than 10% change in land-cover type in the past decade due to the combined impacts of land-use and climate change.

This research, led by teams at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Colombia is also the first of its kind to allocate timeframes for the changes in policy and practice needed to maintain food production and security in Africa. It identifies that up to 30% of areas growing maize and bananas, and up to 60% of those growing beans, are likely to become unviable by the end of the century. But it also highlights some crops like cassava and yams that are showing much greater resilience and could worth focusing on in years to come (report pages 36-39).

"Having proof that root crops like cassava and yams are among the climate-smart crops of the future for sub Saharan Africa is vital for informing policy and planning today," added Professor Willis.

Further research into building a climate resilient coffee economy in Ethiopia published in this report highlights how coffee production is likely to be drastically affected by climate change, but claims that this could be offset if there were interventions now to develop new areas for coffee plantations, which may even lead to gains in coffee production.

Important plant areas

1,771 important plant areas have been identified globally but very few currently have conservation protection. In the UK alone, 165 such sites have been recognised, including parts of the Atlantic woodlands and the Celtic rainforests which are considered to be globally important. These sites include the Lizard in Cornwall, the Brecklands in East Anglia and parts of the west coast of Scotland. Important plant areas have also been identified in several of the UK Overseas Territories including the Falkland Islands and plans are underway to extend this programme to the Caribbean UK Overseas Territories.

Invasive species

A large movement of invasive alien plant species is also occurring. Nearly 5000 plant species are now documented as invasive in global surveys. These plants are causing large declines in native plants, damaging natural ecosystems, transforming land-cover and often causing huge economic losses. In the UK, this includes the highly invasive Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica), introduced as an ornamental plant to Britain in the mid-19th century and costing Great Britain more than £165 million annually to control (report pages 48-51).

The report calls for closer collaboration between institutions and organisations working with invasive species to enable the establishment of a single global list that documents taxonomy, threat, distribution, control and other relevant information. Stricter enforcement of legislation and increased implementation of quarantine procedures would minimise the risk of further.

Plant diseases

There are many emerging threats also occurring with plant diseases, and research effort into these diseases is skewed towards countries with a wealthier research infrastructure.

Threats and extinction

Best estimates lead us to believe that 21% of the world's plants are currently threatened with extinction and ongoing monitoring will allow us to determine whether the trend is of plants slipping closer towards extinction or becoming less threatened.

Plants and policies

Although trade in plants supports livelihoods worldwide, illegal or unsustainable trade is causing additional pressure on wild biodiversity and strict enforcement of international legislation is crucial. Adoption and implementation of policies such as CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) have had demonstrable benefits and there is cause for optimism that the Nagoya Protocol will enhance the effectiveness with which countries conserve and utilise their biodiversity.

One of the main plant groups that are still widely traded are orchids, a fact confirmed by data from the UK borderforce. Of all plants plants seized at Heathrow airport in 2015 over 42% were wild orchids.

"This is the most significant horizon-scanning document to be released by Kew in recent decades and I hope as many people as possible will access the findings," said Richard Deverell, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

"Plants represent one of the most important constituents of biodiversity, the foundation of most of the world's ecosystems and hold the potential to tackle many of the world's present and future challenges. We are uniquely placed to unlock their importance and are proud to have both the catalogue of over 250 years of collections and active scientific field work globally that allows us to interpret the data so it will have multiple uses for generations to come," he added.

Read the report >here.

Source: Royal Botanic Gardens Kew [May 11, 2016]

With scientists forecasting sea levels to rise by anywhere from several inches to several feet by 2100, historic structures and coastal heritage sites around the world are under threat. Some sites and artifacts could become submerged.

Scientists, historic preservationists, architects and public officials are meeting this week in Newport, Rhode Island—one of the threatened areas—to discuss the problem, how to adapt to rising seas and preserve historic structures.

"Any coastal town that has significant historic properties is going to be facing the challenge of protecting those properties from increased water and storm activity," said Margot Nishimura, of the Newport Restoration Foundation, the nonprofit group hosting the conference.

Federal authorities have encouraged people to elevate structures in low-lying areas, but that poses challenges in dense neighborhoods of centuries-old homes built around central brick chimneys, Nishimura said, especially ones where preservationists are trying to keep the character intact.

Many of the most threatened sites in North America lie along the East Coast between Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and southern Maine, where the rate of sea level rise is among the fastest in the world, said Adam Markham, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a speaker at the conference.

"We're actually not going to be able to save everything," he said.

A look at some of the historic areas and cultural sites that are under threat from rising sea levels:

Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island

Situated in New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island are some of New York's most important tourist attractions.

In 2012, Superstorm Sandy submerged most of the low-elevation Liberty and Ellis islands. After the storm, the Statue of Liberty, a gift from the people of France in 1886, was closed for eight months. Ellis Island, the entry point for about 12 million immigrants to the United States from 1892 to 1954, remained closed for nearly a year.

A report by the National Park Service looked at how several parks would be threatened by 1 meter, or around 3 feet, of sea level rise. It found $1.51 billion worth of assets at the Statue of Liberty National Monument were highly exposed to sea level rise.

Much of historic Boston is along the water and is at risk due to sea level rise, including Faneuil Hall, the market building known as the "Cradle of Liberty," and parts of the Freedom Trail, a walking trail that links historic sites around the city.

Boston has seen a growing number of flooding events in recent years, up from two annually in the 1970s to an average of 11 annually between 2009 and 2013, according to a 2014 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists. If sea levels rise by 5 inches, the group reported, the number of floods is projected to grow to 31 annually. If seas rise by 11 inches, the number of flooding events is projected to rise to 72 per year.

Newport

The Point neighborhood in the Rhode Island resort town has one of the highest concentrations of Colonial houses in the United States, and it sits 4 feet above mean sea level. Tidal flooding is already occurring in the neighborhood, and that is expected to increase as sea levels rise, Nishimura said. The smell of sea water already permeates the basement of some homes.

Annapolis

Maryland's capital, on Chesapeake Bay, boasts the nation's largest concentration of 18th-century brick buildings. The city briefly served as the nation's capital in the post-Revolutionary War period, and the Treaty of Paris, which formally ended the war, was ratified there. The city is also home to the U.S. Naval Academy.

The city already sees tidal flooding dozens of times a year, and scientists have predicted number could rise to hundreds annually in the next 30 years.

Jamestown

Established in 1607, it is the first permanent English colony in North America. It sits along the tidal James River in Virginia, and most of the settlement is less than 3 feet above sea level. A large part of the settlement has already eroded because of wave action, Markham said. Storms have also damaged the site, including Hurricane Isabel in 2003, which flooded nearly 1 million artifacts. A rising water table at the site also poses a threat to archaeological remains, Markham said.

He called the loss of archaeological artifacts "an urgent problem" along the U.S. coastline.

Hawaii

Reports by the National Park Service and others have found that rising sea level rises threaten archaeological sites at various historic places in Hawaii. Those include ancient fish ponds at Pu'ukohola Heiau National Historic Site and a "Great Wall" at a sacred site in Pu'uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park. It is considered the best-preserved such wall in Hawaii.

International Sites

Dozens of UNESCO World Heritage Sites are under threat from sea level rise, according to a 2014 report by climate scientists Ben Marzeion, of the University of Innsbruck in Austria, and Anders Levermann, of the Potsdam Institute in Germany.

Among those are: the Tower of London; Robben Island in South Africa, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years; Venice, Italy, and its lagoon; Mont-Saint-Michel, home to an abbey built atop a rocky islet in France; the Kasbah of Algiers, Algeria; the historic district of Old Quebec, Canada; Old Havana in Cuba; and archaeological areas of Pompeii, Italy, and Carthage in Tunisia.

The authors wrote that their findings indicate that "fundamental decisions with regard to mankind's cultural heritage are required."

Author: Michelle R. Smith | Source: The Associated Press [April 11, 2016]

Researchers surveying for endangered primates in national parks and forest reserves of Ivory Coast found, to their surprise, that most of these protected areas had been turned into illegal cocoa farms, a new study reports.

The researchers surveyed 23 protected areas in the West African nation between 2010 and 2013 and found that about three-quarters of the land in them had been transformed into cocoa production.

The Ivory Coast is the largest producer of cocoa beans, providing more than one-third of the world's supply. Cocoa is the main ingredient in chocolate.

"The world's demand for chocolate has been very hard on the endangered primates of Ivory Coast," said W. Scott McGraw, co-author of the study and professor of anthropology at The Ohio State University.

McGraw said the original goal of this research was "just to do a census of the monkeys in these protected areas."

"But when we started walking through these areas we were just stunned by the scale of illegal cocoa production. It is now the major cause of deforestation in these parks," he said.

"There are parks in Ivory Coast with no forests and no primates, but a sea of cocoa plants."

For the study, McGraw and his co-authors, all of whom work for Ivory Coast research institutions, spent a total of 208 days walking transects through nationally protected areas, most in the central and southern regions of the country. In each area, they noted the amount of forest that had been cut down or degraded and how much of this was replaced by cocoa or other types of farms. They also recorded the presence of 16 primate species, including monkeys and chimpanzees.

The results, McGraw said, were "depressing."

Of the 23 protected areas, 16 of them had more than 65 percent of their forests degraded by farms, logging or other human disturbance. While a variety of agricultural products were grown illegally in the parks, cocoa constituted 93 percent of the total crops grown.

Overall, 20 of the areas had illegal cocoa plantations and approximately 74 percent of the total land in these areas was transformed into cocoa production.

Unauthorized villages have sprung up within these parks, with one housing nearly 30,000 people.

"I've been doing survey work in these parks for 20 years, and it wasn't nearly this bad when I started. This is a relatively recent development," McGraw said.

The impact on primates has been dramatic.

• Overall, 13 of the protected areas (57 percent) had lost their entire primate populations, while another five had lost half of their species.

• One species of monkey -- Miss Waldron's red colobus -- was not seen during this survey and has not officially been sighted since 1978. It is probably extinct.

• Two other monkeys -- the Roloway monkey and the White-naped mangabey -- were seen in only two reserves and are critically endangered, at least partially due to the habitat destruction caused by illegal cocoa farms.

"The Roloway monkey may be the next to go extinct," McGraw said. "It is not able to live in the degraded habitats that are left in many of these protected areas."

A variety of factors have led to these forest reserves being destroyed, he said. One has been the growing worldwide demand for chocolate. Ivory Coast produced a record 1.7 million metric tons of cocoa in the year that ended in September, according to the International Cocoa Organization in London.

Many of the older, legal cocoa plantations in the country have been blighted by disease or otherwise haven't produced at the same levels as previously, which has led some growers to establish new farms in the reserves. Moreover, migrants from outside the country have moved into Ivory Coast and turned to farming to survive.

At the same time, Ivory Coast has been in political turmoil in recent years and the government hasn't been focused on monitoring these forest reserves.

"There is little, if any, real active protection given to these parks and reserves," McGraw said. "People have moved in and settled with essentially no resistance, cut down the forest, and planted cocoa. It is incredibly blatant."

McGraw said that while the results are disappointing, there is still time to halt the disappearance of more primates and other wildlife. First, the land within protected areas needs to be actually protected.

Outside these lands, growers should move toward shade-cocoa farming, which keeps some of the large existing trees, with cocoa plants interspersed among them. This would at least preserve some suitable habitat for monkeys that live in the country, he said.

In addition, there should be efforts to connect the many fragmented forest reserves in the country. "We need to view the protected areas not as individual islands, but as a matrix," he said.

One promising development is the establishment of community-based bio-monitoring programs that involve foot patrols conducted by local villagers. McGraw said his co-authors on this paper established a patrol in the Dassioko Forest Reserve and it has succeeded in reducing illegal activity in the area. Encounter rates with primates has risen in the area as a result.

The study appears in the March 2015 issue of the journal Tropical Conservation Science.

Author: Jeff Grabmeier | Source: Ohio State University [March 30, 2015]

The ice sheet covering Greenland is four times bigger than California -- and holds enough water to raise global sea-level more than twenty feet if most of it were to melt. Today, sea levels are rising and the melting of Greenland is a major contributor. Understanding how fast this melting might proceed is a pressing question for policymakers and coastal communities.

To make predictions about the future of the ice sheet, scientists have tried to understand its past, hoping to glean what the ice was doing millions of years ago when the Earth was three or more degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it is now. But our understanding of the ice sheet's complex behavior before about 125,000 years ago has been fragmentary at best.

Now, two first-of-their-kind studies provide new insight into the deep history of the Greenland Ice Sheet, looking back millions of years farther than previous techniques allowed. However, the two studies present some strongly contrasting evidence about how Greenland's ice sheet may have responded to past climate change -- bringing new urgency to the need to understand if and how the giant ice sheet might dramatically accelerate its melt-off in the near future.

The two new studies were published in the journal Nature, including one led by University of Vermont geologist Paul Bierman.

Ice On the East

In >the first study Bierman and four colleagues -- from UVM, Boston College, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, and Imperial College London -- examined deep cores of ocean-bottom mud containing bits of bedrock that eroded off of the east side of Greenland. Their results show that East Greenland has been actively scoured by glacial ice for much of the last 7.5 million years -- and indicate that the ice sheet on this eastern flank of the island has not completely melted for long, if at all, in the past several million years. This result is consistent with existing computer models.

Their field-based data also suggest that during major climate cool-downs in the past several million years, the ice sheet expanded into previously ice-free areas, "showing that the ice sheet in East Greenland responds to and tracks global climate change," Bierman says. "The melting we are seeing today may be out of the bounds of how the Greenland ice sheet has behaved for many millions of years."

Since the data the team collected only came from samples off the east side of Greenland, their results don't provide a definitive picture of the whole Greenland ice sheet. But their research, with support from the National Science Foundation, provides strong evidence that "an ice sheet has been in East Greenland pretty much continuously for seven million years," says Jeremy Shakun, a geologist at Boston College who co-led the new study. "It's been bouncing around and dynamic -- but it's been there nearly all the time."

Contrasting Results

The >other study in Nature -- led by Joerg Schaefer of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Columbia University, and colleagues -- looked at a small sample of bedrock from one location beneath the middle of the existing ice sheet and came to what appears to be a different conclusion: Greenland was nearly ice-free for at least 280,000 years during the middle Pleistocene -- about 1.1 million years ago. This possibility is in contrast to existing computer models.

"These results appear to be contradictory -- but they may not be," UVM's Bierman says. He notes that both studies have "some blurriness," he says, in what they are able to resolve about short-term changes and the size of the ancient ice sheet. "Their study is a bit like one needle in a haystack," he says, "and ours is like having the whole haystack, but not being sure how big it is."

That's because Schaefer and colleagues' data comes from a single point in the middle of Greenland, pointing to a range of possible scenarios of what happened in the past, including several that challenge the image of Greenland being continuously covered by an extensive ice sheet during the Pleistocene. In contrast, Bierman and colleagues' data provides a record of continuous ice sheet activity over eastern Greenland but can't distinguish whether this was because there was a remnant in East Greenland or whether the ice sheet remained over the whole island, fluctuating in size as the climate warmed and cooled over millions of years.

"It's quite possible that both of these records are right for different places," Bierman says. "Both of these studies apply a similar innovative technique and let us look much farther into the past than we have been able to before."

New Method

Both teams of scientists used, "a powerful new tool for Earth scientists," says Dylan Rood, a scientist at Imperial College London and a co-author on the Bierman-led study: isotopes within grains of quartz, produced when bedrock is bombarded by cosmic rays from space. The isotopes come into being when rock is at or near Earth's surface -- but not when it's buried under an overlying ice sheet. By looking at the ratio of two of these cosmic-ray-made elements -- aluminum-26 and beryllium-10 caught in crystals of quartz, and measured in an accelerator mass spectrometer -- the scientists were able to calculate how long the rocks in their samples had been exposed to the sky versus covered by ice.

>Paul Bierman, a geologist at the University of Vermont and his colleagues --f rom UVM, Boston College, 
>Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, and Imperial College London--wanted to develop a better understanding 
>of the ancient history of the huge ice sheet that covers Greenland, like this portion of the ice sheet shown from 
>a helicopter on a Bierman-led expedition there. The team studied deep cores of ocean-bottom mud containing 
>bits of bedrock that eroded off of the east side of Greenland. Their results show that East Greenland has been 
>actively scoured by glacial ice for much of the last 7.5 million years--and indicate that the ice sheet on the 
>eastern flank of the island has not completely melted for long, if at all, in the past several million years. Their 
>field-based data also suggest that during major climate cool-downs in the past several million years, the ice sheet 
>expanded into previously ice-free areas, "showing that the ice sheet in East Greenland responds to and tracks
> global climate change," Bierman says. "The melting we are seeing today may be out of the bounds of how 
>the Greenland ice sheet has behaved for many millions of years." [Credit: Joshua Brown/UVM]
This isotope technique has been used for several decades for measuring land-based erosion, but this is its first application to ocean core samples, said Lee Corbett, a postdoctoral researcher at UVM and co-author with Bierman. "This has never been attempted with marine sediments," she says. Their results overcome a basic problem of trying to discern the deep history of ice from bedrock: every time an ice sheet retreats and then grows back, it scours away the bedrock and the isotope record of its own past. "It's hard to discern an ice sheet's cycles on land because it destroys the evidence," she says, "but it dumps that evidence in the oceans, archived in layers on the bottom."

Now Corbett, Shakun, and others are applying this isotope technique to additional cores taken from around the coast of Greenland to get a more complete and in-focus picture of the whole ice sheet's long history. And they have already applied the new isotope technique far beyond Greenland -- particularly in exploring the much larger, more mysterious ice sheets covering Antarctica.

"These two apparently conflicting -- but not necessarily conflicting -- studies in Nature really force the issue that we don't know enough about how ice sheets work over deep time," Bierman says. "We must recognize the importance of advancing polar science to understand how our world works. And, right now, because we're pumping huge plumes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we really need to know how our world works."

The dynamics of Antarctica's giant ice sheet is full of questions and the disastrous potential. "But there's enough sea-level rise tied-up in Greenland alone to put a lot of cities and long stretches of coastline underwater," says Paul Bierman, "including Donald Trump's property in Florida."

Source: University of Vermont [December 07, 2016]