A new study in Biology Letters has found that at least one insect has found a use for the increasing abundance of plastic in the ocean — as a place to lay eggs. The increase in abundance of this insect, and the potential effects on plankton, crabs, and other community members, is uncertain. OCEAN‘s Giora Proskurowski is quoted. Read more here.
 Ian Joughin/Science/AAAS--Massive sections of ice (center front) have broken away from the Jakobshavn glacier into the sea. There's enough water stored in Greenland's glaciers to raise the sea level by 20 feet. Changes in the speed that ice travels in more than 200 outlet glaciers indicates that Greenland’s contribution to rising sea level in the 21st century might be significantly less than the upper limits some scientists thought possible, a new study shows. Read more about it here, or listen to NPR’s “All Things Considered” story here! A new study out in Nature finds that human-emitted aerosols may be largely to blame for the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation–and therefore that this apparently cyclical climate phenomenon may be neither multidecadal nor an oscillation. Read a perspective on this article here. Conservation heavy-hitters Peter Kareiva, Michelle Marvier, and Robert Lalasz recently discussed how conservation is losing the war to protect nature despite winning the battle to create parks and game preserves. In a new debate, a host of passionate 21st Century conservationists, including SAFS’ Ray Hilborn, face off with the authors over the resilience of nature, corporate partners, and the state of conservation today. Read more here. Scientists map how ag fertilizers can flow through groundwater to waterways – South Puget Sound NewsUSGS studies that took place in Maryland, Nebraska, Indiana, California and Washington are shedding light on the way that agricultural fertilizers make their way through aquifers to nearby waterways. According to USGS scientists, nutrient transport from agricultural fields, including nitrogen and phosphorus compounds, is one of the most serious environmental problems throughout the world because it can cause adverse effects on aquatic ecosystems and/or drinking water supplies. Read more here. A new report has stated that malaria deaths worldwide are as much as 2 times higher than the World Health Organization reports. However, not everyone concurs. The UW’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation is quoted, read more here.  Gordon Holtgrieve, first author of the newly released Science paper. Nitrogen pollution from human activities can be found in lake bed sediments from over 100 years ago, and in areas thousands of miles away from any city, farm or factory, CoEnv scientists have found. SAFS’ Gordon Holtgrieve, Daniel Schindler and Lauren Rogers, and others, published these results in the December 16 issue of Science. Their findings are based on the chemical composition of lake bed sediments from 36 different lakes, and mark both the time and the planetary scale at which nitrogen pollution has effected ecosystems. Read the UW News story here. |
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