1. Earth Alive!

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 1

2007 January 30. In the Rockies, Pines Die and Bears Feel It. The New York Times, By CHARLES PETIT. Excerpt: Jesse Logan retired in July as head of the beetle research unit for the United States Forest Service at the Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Utah. He is an authority on the effects of temperature on insect life cycles. That expertise has landed him smack in the middle of a debate over protecting grizzly bears. Forests of whitebark pine turn red as they are attacked by the mountain pine beetle. ...Dr. Logan seems, in fact, to be on a collision course with the federal government, in the debate over whether to lift Endangered Species Act protections from the grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone National Park. The grizzly population in the greater Yellowstone area is estimated to be at least 600. ...Their resurgence in the past 50 years is why the federal government announced in 2005 the start of proceedings to take them off the endangered or threatened species list. Dr. Logan enters the fray on the question of what grizzly bears eat, how much of it will be available in the future, and where. All that, he says, hinges on the mountain pine beetle and the whitebark pine....New computer projections done by Dr. Logan and Jacques Régnière of the Canadian Forest Service based on recent climate and other data for the mountain West show most whitebark pine forests being wiped out as warming continues. But the Wind River Range is projected to stay cold until 2100 or so, which, if the model is right, means they could be a refuge for grizzlies forced out of areas where the trees die. ... Dr. Logan's projections shows devastating whitebark damage from the beetles in the government's core area for grizzly protection by the end of the century. He says that the government's recovery area "is completely out of touch with what is actually happening."... "It's all about global warming," Dr. Logan said. "I can't say if the beetle will stay out of the Winds for all the next century. I don't know how long it will take. But one thing I do know. If it keeps on warming, they'll get nailed there too. The trees can't move uphill, you know. They'll run out of mountain." What the bears will fatten for winter on then, nobody knows.

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 1

2. Energy Through the System

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 2

2009 November 5. Surprising New Connection Made Between Predators and Ecosystems. By Jennifer Donovan, US News & World Report. Excerpt: Moose eat plants; wolves kill moose. What difference does this classic predator-prey interaction make to biodiversity?
A large and unexpected one, say wildlife biologists from Michigan Technological University. Joseph Bump, Rolf Peterson and John Vucetich report in the November 2009 issue of the journal Ecology that the carcasses of moose killed by wolves at Isle Royale National Park enrich the soil in “hot spots” of forest fertility around the kills, causing rapid microbial and fungal growth that provide increased nutrients for plants in the area.
“This study demonstrates an unforeseen link between the hunting behavior of a top predator—the wolf—and biochemical hot spots on the landscape,” said Bump, an assistant professor in Michigan Tech’s School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science and first author of the research paper. “It’s important because it illuminates another contribution large predators make to the ecosystem they live in and illustrates what can be protected or lost when predators are preserved or exterminated.”...

2008 May 27. Scientists warn of acidic seawater in Puget Sound.
Associated Press. Excerpt: SEATTLE - Puget Sound faces an uncertain future due to the increasing acidity of seawater, a panel of marine scientists said Tuesday. The changes are coming more rapidly than expected, and could disrupt food chains and threaten Washington's shellfish industry. The acidic seawater is moving closer to shallow waters containing the bulk of marine life, according to an article this month in the journal Science. The increasingly corrosive water threatens the survival of many organisms, from microscopic plants and animals at the base of the food chain to shellfish, corals and the young of some marine species.
...The latest research indicates acidic water is appearing along the Pacific Coast decades earlier than expected.
... "As long as CO2 continues to increase in the atmosphere, the oceans will continue to absorb that," Sabine said. "What we're seeing is only going to get worse."
... "This acidity dissolves calcium carbonate, which is the thing that shells are made out of. If diatoms, corals, clams and oysters succumb to this it not only wipes out the shellfish industry but potentially the entire marine food chain," said Bishop, a fifth-generation shellfish harvester.

2005 September. Housecleaning Made Cleaner (Union of Concerned Scientists Greentips) Tips on choosing household cleansers that will help keep your home both clean and "green." Avoid harmful ingredients (Petroleum, Phosphates/EDTA, Phthalates, Antibacterial agents, Chlorine bleach). Choose "greener" alternatives (Citrus- and plant-based oils, Sodium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate, sodium citrate, and sodium silicate, Enzymes, Non-chlorine bleach).

2005 September 2. Study Indicates Organic Foods Are Best for Children. By Marla Cone, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer. Excerpt: U.S. government scientists from the Centers for Disease Control have released a new study revealing that switching to organic foods provides children with "dramatic and immediate" protection from toxic pesticides. The scientists tested the urine of elementary school children for 15 days. Children ate conventional foods for ten of the days and ate organic foods for five days. During those five days, researchers saw the toxins malathion and chlorpyrifos in the children's urine completely disappear. These chemicals are two of the most commonly found pesticides on non-organic foods. Pesticide levels increased five-fold in the children's urine as soon as conventional foods were reintroduced to their diet.] The health effects of exposure to minute amounts of pesticides found in food are largely unknown, especially for children. ...Pesticide manufacturers say that while low levels of residue are detectable on many products, there is no evidence that children are harmed by them. They say that pesticides, which are the most highly tested and regulated chemicals in the United States, are vital to providing an affordable and plentiful world food supply. ...Some research, however, suggests that the residue may harm the developing nervous system. ...The study concludes, "An organic diet provides a dramatic and immediate protective effect against exposure to organophosphorus pesticides that are commonly used in agricultural production." The study is "Organic Diets Significantly Lower Children's Dietary Exposure to Organophosphorus Pesticides" by Chensheng Lu, Kathryn Toepel, Rene Irish, Richard A. Fenske, Dana B. Barr, and Roberto Bravo. Full Text of Study.

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 2

3. Studying Desert Ecosystems

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 3

2009 November 5. Climate Change, Nitrogen Loss Threaten Plant Life in Arid Desert Soils. NSF Release 09-218. Excerpt: ...As Earth's climate warms, arid soils lose more nitrogen, which could lead to deserts with even less plant life than they sustain today.
Available nitrogen is second only to water as the biggest constraint to biological activity in arid ecosystems, but ecologists have struggled to understand the balance of the input and output of nitrogen in deserts. For the first time, however, researchers have discovered a mechanism that balances the nitrogen budget in deserts: Higher temperatures cause nitrogen to escape as gas from desert soils.
...In the past, researchers focused on biological mechanisms in which soil microbes near the surface produce nitrogen gas that dissipates into the air, but ecologists Jed Sparks and Carmody ("Carrie") McCalley, both at Cornell University and co-authors of the paper, found that non-biological processes are playing a bigger role in nitrogen losses from soil to air.
"This is a way that nitrogen is lost from an ecosystem that people have never accounted for before," said Sparks.  "It allows us to finally understand the dynamics of nitrogen in arid systems."
...Further temperature increases and shifting precipitation patterns due to climate change may lead to more nitrogen losses in arid ecosystems, making their soils even more infertile and unable to support most plant life, according to McCalley. Although some climate models predict more summer rainfall for desert areas, the water, when combined with heat, would greatly increase nitrogen losses, she said.
"We're on a trajectory where plant life in arid ecosystems could cease to do well," said McCalley....

2007 June 28. Likely Spread of Deserts to Fertile Land Requires Quick Response, U.N. Report Says. The New York Times. By Elisabeth Rosenthal. Excerpt: Enough fertile land could turn into desert within the next generation to create an ''environmental crisis of global proportions,'' large-scale migrations and political instability in parts of Africa and Central Asia unless current trends are quickly stemmed, a new United Nations report concludes. ''The costs of desertification are large,'' ...

2007 January 3. Defining Desertification. By Holli Riebeek. NASA Earth Observatory. [This article gives some insight into the origins and significance of the development of NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) which the GSS Interpreting Digital Images software helps students to understand. ---Alan Gould]
Botswana, 1984. Cattle roam over grasslands at the edge of the Kalahari Desert. ...A full 77 percent of the country's 576,000 square kilometers is already used for grazing, but even this isn't enough to support the cattle. The grasslands are prone to drought, and the government is forced to import food for them. British biogeographer Stephen Prince is among the scientists that the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has asked to assess the health of the rangelands. How is drought impacting the land? Is overgrazing occurring? ...Conditions could vary widely; healthy vegetation could be growing meters away from barren land. "You couldn't measure vegetation change over the entire country with 50 data points." ...Prince stopped by the house of a colleague, John Townshend. ... from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center...remote-sensing ecologist Compton Tucker had developed a new scale, or index, of global vegetation based on satellite data. ...the index could show how much photosynthesis was happening in every 8-by-8-kilometer patch of ground. Displayed as a map, the index revealed the productivity of the grazing land over a broad area over successive 15-day periods. ..."It blew me away that we could see a complete continent at frequent time intervals," Prince says. "It was a career-changing moment." ...the vegetation index would be able to answer even larger questions about Africa's vegetation. ...Prince had seen the effect of devastating drought in Africa's Sahel, a...semi-arid, sparse savanna immediately south of the Sahara Desert. A list of Sahelian countries is a yearbook of famine: Sudan, Chad, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, Ethiopia, Burkina Fasso, and Senegal. A string of dry years leading up to the early 1980s shriveled vegetation throughout the Sahel, causing some people to fear that the Sahara Desert was steadily marching southward, .... Ground studies had produced dramatic pictures of formerly productive lands reduced to apparent desert. Many people extrapolated from these local examples of desertification to propose that the whole Sahel was becoming a desert, but no one had surveyed the entire Sahel. It was far too large a task. ..."When I saw the vegetation index data, I realized that it was exactly the scale we wanted for studying desertification," says Prince. "There is no other way of seeing big enough areas at high enough frequency." ....

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 3

4. Changes in the Global System

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 4

2009 November 2. Deep-sea ecosystems affected by climate change. MBARI News Release. Excerpt: The vast muddy expanses of the abyssal plains occupy about 60 percent of the Earth's surface and are important in global carbon cycling. Based on long-term studies of two such areas, a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) shows that animal communities on the abyssal seafloor are affected in a variety of ways by climate change.
Historically, many people, including marine scientists, have considered the abyssal plains, more than 2,000 meters below the sea surface, to be relatively isolated and stable ecosystems. However, according to Ken Smith, a marine ecologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI)..., changes in the Earth's climate can cause unexpectedly large changes in deep-sea ecosystems....
...In this cold, dark environment, very little food is available. What food there is takes the form of bits of organic debris drifting down from the sunlit surface waters, thousands of meters above. During its long descent, this organic matter may be eaten, excreted, and decomposed, drastically reducing its nutritive value. It is estimated that less than five percent of the organic matter produced at the surface reaches the abyssal plains.
...The authors point out that global climate change could affect the food supply to the deep sea in many ways. Some relevant ocean processes that may be affected by climate change include wind-driven upwelling, the depth of mixing of the surface waters, and the delivery of nutrients to surface waters via dust storms. Climate-driven changes in these processes are likely to lead to altered year-to-year variation in the amount of organic material reaching the seafloor.
...Based on their observations, the authors conclude that long-term climate change is likely to influence both deep-sea communities and the chemistry of their environment. According to Smith, "Essentially, deep-sea communities are coupled to surface production. Global change could alter the functioning of these ecosystems and the way carbon is cycled in the ocean."...

2008 May. The Carbon Hoofprint. Lauren Wilcox, The WorldArk. Excerpt: A recent report from the United Nations contained a stunning statistic: One industry is responsible for nearly 20% of the greenhouse gases released int the atmosphere worldwide. It isn't long-haul trucking, or air travel, or stell-smelting vactories, or any of the other exhaust-belching suspects ususally associated wtih environmental woes.
It is the livestock industry.
In "Livestock's Long Shadow," released in 2006, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations freported that raising and processing cattle, hogs, poultry and other animals produces 18% of the greenhouse gases; just 13% comes from trucks, cars and other transportation. ...The livestock industry's transgressions include the deforestation of grazing land, the pollution of air and grondwater from animal waste, the excessive use of water to raise grain for feed and its threat on biodiversity....

2008 December 22. Bigger Sea Creatures, Like Squid, May Feel Effects of Higher CO2. By Henry Fountain. Excerpt: Increased emissions of carbon dioxide affect more than the atmosphere. Much of the CO2 is absorbed by the oceans, causing them to become more acidic.Recent research has looked at the impact of the acidification on corals and other small calcifying organisms. But increasing CO2, coupled with gradual warming of the oceans, may have other effects, and may affect bigger creatures, because there will be less oxygen at the surface and deep oxygen-poor zones will expand vertically...The researchers found that under conditions of elevated CO2 similar to those forecast for surface waters for the end of the century, the squids’ metabolic and activity rates slowed significantly. So it is a good bet that these squid will become more lethargic, less adept at hunting prey and less able to avoid predators like seals, sharks, swordfish and marlin, and sperm whales...

2008 October 28. Stanford researchers: Global warming is killing frogs and salamanders in Yellowstone Park. EurekAlert. Excerpt: Frogs and salamanders, those amphibious bellwethers of environmental danger, are being killed in Yellowstone National Park. The predator, Stanford researchers say, is global warming.
Biology graduate student Sarah McMenamin spent three summers in a remote area of the park searching for frogs and salamanders in ponds that had been surveyed 15 years ago. Almost everywhere she looked, she found a catastrophic decrease in the population.
The amphibians need the ponds for their young to hatch, but high temperatures and drought are drying up the water. The frogs and salamanders lay eggs that have a gelatinous outer layer—basically "jelly eggs," McMenamin says—that leaves them completely unsuitable for gestation on land. If the ponds dry up, so do the eggs. "If there isn't any water, then the animals simply don't breed," she said.
..."Everybody can identify with the loss of glaciers, but in Yellowstone the decrease in lakes and ponds and wetlands has been astounding," John Varley, the former chief scientist for Yellowstone, told New West. "What were considered permanent bodies of water, meaning reference was given to them in the 1850s, '60s and '70s, and bestowed with a name as a lake, are now gone. Some wetlands that were considered permanent ponds are no longer there. Some lakes have become ephemeral."...

2008 July 15. Study: Future snowmelt in West twice as early as expected; threatens ecosystems and water reserves. By Elizabeth K. Gardner, Perdue University News. Excerpt: WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - According to a new study, global warming could lead to larger changes in snowmelt in the western United States than was previously thought, possibly increasing wildfire risk and creating new water management challenges for agriculture, ecosystems and urban populations.
Researchers, including a Purdue University professor of earth and atmospheric sciences, discovered that a critical surface temperature feedback is twice as strong as what had been projected by earlier studies.
...Sara A. Rauscher, visiting scientist at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, and lead author on the paper, said the melting snow contributes to a feedback loop that accelerates warming.
"Because snow is more reflective than the ground or vegetation beneath it, it keeps the surface temperatures lower by reflecting energy from the sun," Rauscher said. "When snow melts or does not accumulate in the first place, more solar energy is absorbed by the ground, warming the surface. A feedback loop is created because the warmer ground then makes it more difficult for snow to accumulate and perpetuates the effect."...

2008 Spring. 3 Terrain Magazine articles. Berkeley Ecology Center. Inside Out: Behind the Scenes at the Bird Wash. by Nicole Edmison. Excerpt: The spill will affect wildlife for years-and the impact extends far beyond the bay. ...I blearily opened the newspaper in a Corvallis, Oregon coffeeshop and stared at a photo of an oil-drenched western grebe. The caption said that oil had spilled into San Francisco Bay after the Cosco Busan had knocked into a pillar of the Bay Bridge. This disaster in the making warranted no more than a photo, but as a wildlife biologist with a special affinity for birds, I felt as if my liver had been ripped out. When I returned to Berkeley, I realized the true scope of what had happened. ... After the "oil on beach" signs have disappeared and volunteers have gone back to their daily lives, oil is still traveling in our open ocean, up and down our coast, lurking in the substrates of our bays, and polluting the environment for all of its inhabitants. Bringing the Outside In. by Lisa Owens Viani. Interview with Eddie Bartley... a San Francisco-based naturalist ...When the Cosco Busan spill hit, Bartley surveyed for oiled birds and worked with San Francisco Animal Care and Control to rescue injured birds. Dismayed by bureaucratic confusion and inaction, Bartley is working on a Web site and an action map that should help alleviate agency dysfunction if-or more likely, when-there is another spill. Outside In: Renegades to the Rescue. by Lisa Owens Viani. Birders got busy as officials fluttered...

2008 Mar 18. In a Warmer Yellowstone Park, a Shifting Environmental Balance By Jim Robbins, NY Times. Excerpt: The grassy sweep of the Lamar Valley in the northeastern corner of the Yellowstone National Park is famous for its wildlife.  But while walking across the Lamar last fall, Robert L. Crabtree  pointed out a cascade of ecological changes under way…  The number of grizzly bears and gophers in the valley has increased, Dr. Crabtree said, an increase supported by the spread of an invasive plant from the Mediterranean that a warming climate benefits.  The plant, Canada thistle, provides food for grizzlies in more than one way but may also be squeezing out native plants that cannot compete…  Areas along the Lamar River that were once marshy have dried out because of a drought that began around 2000. As the ground becomes drier, the thistle invades.  Enter the pocket gopher, a half-pound dynamo that tunnels into the ground near the surface. The gophers love the abundant, starchy roots of the plant and burrow beneath it to harvest the tubers. What they do not eat they stockpile under plants or rocks.  The expansion of pocket gophers and thistle is not gradual, Dr. Crabtree said, but a rapid positive-feedback loop…  For their part, grizzly bears have discovered the gophers’ caches and raid them. As a result, the Lamar Valley is pockmarked with holes where grizzlies have clawed up bundles of roots. Bears also devour gophers and their pups.  As climate change alters ecosystems, Dr. Crabtree said, “the winners are going to be the adaptive foragers, like grizzlies that eat everything from ants to moose, and the losers are going to be specialized species that can’t adapt.”  As budgets for controlling invasive species shrink, he suggested a triage. “If you are going to give up on a species,” he said, “it’s best to give up on one that has ecological value.”

2007 February 23. After 200 Years, a Beaver Is Back in New York City. Wildlife Conservation Society. By ANAHAD O'CONNOR. Excerpt: A crudely fashioned lodge perched along the snow-covered banks of the Bronx River - no more than a mound of twigs and mud strewn together in the shadow of the sits steps away from an empty parking lot and a busy intersection. Scientists say that the discovery of this cone-shaped dwelling signifies something remarkable: For the first time in two centuries, the North American beaver, forced out of town by agricultural development and overeager fur traders, has returned to New York City. The discovery of a beaver setting up camp in the Bronx is a testament to both the animal's versatility and to an increasingly healthy Bronx River. A few years ago the river was a dumping ground for abandoned cars and rubber tires, but it has been brought back to life recently through a big cleanup effort. The biologists who discovered the beaver say they have nicknamed it José, after United States Representative José E. Serrano of the Bronx, who has directed $15 million in federal funds toward the river's rebirth….. A beaver sighting was reported last month in East Hampton on Long Island. Environmental officials said that if it was a beaver, it may have come across the Long Island Sound from Connecticut or from Gardiners Island, a tract of private land between Long Island's forks…..The North American beaver vanished from New York City in the early 1800s as a result of trapping, fur trading, and deforestation. Beavers helped speed Manhattan's development by attracting fur traders who were eager to feed huge demands for their pelts in Europe. To this day, beavers remain tightly linked to New York's identity……

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 4

5. Carbon in the Biosphere

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 5

2009 August 5. Forests Fall To Beetle Outbreak. By Ed Stoddard, Reuters. Excerpt: MEDICINE BOW NATIONAL FOREST, Wyoming - From the vantage point of an 80-foot (25 meter) tower rising above the trees, the Wyoming vista seems idyllic: snow-capped peaks in the distance give way to shimmering green spruce.
But this is a forest under siege. Among the green foliage of the healthy spruce are the orange-red needles of the sick and the dead, victims of a beetle infestation closely related to one that has already laid waste to millions of acres (hectares) of pine forest in North America.
...The plague has cost billions of dollars in lost timber and land values and may thwart efforts to combat climate change, as forests are major storing houses of carbon, the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming.
The beetle outbreak, which has taken a lesser, but mounting, toll on spruce trees, could make it that much tougher to meet the ambitious target to reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 17 percent of 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050.
...In the terminology of trees and carbon, a healthy forest is a net "sink," with trees storing carbon as they grow. When they die and rot they "emit" carbon back into the atmosphere, and so a dead or dying forest becomes a "net source" of greenhouse gas, meaning it emits more carbon dioxide than it stores.
Colorado-based U.S. Forest Service scientist Mike Ryan said the net carbon storage in this patch of woods is about half of what it was three or four years ago. In another three or four years, he believes it will become a net source....
...In Colorado, aerial surveys show that from 1996 to 2008 Colorado lost almost 2.5 million acres (1 million hectares) of pine forest to the beetle outbreak, Wyoming 677,000 acres and South Dakota 354,000 acres.
Over the same period of time, the spruce beetle, which has also ravaged forests as far north as Alaska, took out 374,000 acres of spruce trees in Colorado and 340,000 in Wyoming.
That cumulative total of over 6 million acres (2.5 million hectares) is an area larger than Israel or South Africa's Kruger National Park.
...A forest can recover, but that can take decades.
"Most forests will recover the carbon they lose but if the next 50 to 100 years is important we may not have that much time. It's setting back carbon storage efforts," said Ryan....

2008 June 13. Have Desert Researchers Discovered a Hidden Loop in the Carbon Cycle? By Richard Stone, Science Magazine. Excerpt: URUMQI, CHINA--When Li Yan began measuring carbon dioxide (CO2) in western China's Gubantonggut Desert in 2005, he thought his equipment had malfunctioned. Li, a plant ecophysiologist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography in Urumqi, discovered that his plot was soaking up CO2 at night. His team ruled out the sparse vegetation as the CO2 sink. Li came to a surprising conclusion: The alkaline soil of Gubantonggut is socking away large quantities of CO2 in an inorganic form.
A CO2-gulping desert in a remote corner of China may not be an isolated phenomenon. Halfway around the world, researchers have found that Nevada's Mojave Desert, square meter for square meter, absorbs about the same amount of CO2 as some temperate forests. The two sets of findings suggest that deserts are unsung players in the global carbon cycle. "Deserts are a larger sink for carbon dioxide than had previously been assumed," says Lynn Fenstermaker, a remote sensing ecologist at the Desert Research Institute (DRI) in Las Vegas, Nevada, and a co-author of a paper on the Mojave findings published online last April in Global Change Biology.
The effect could be huge: About 35% of Earth's land surface, or 5.2 billion hectares, is desert and semiarid ecosystems. If the Mojave readings represent an average CO2 uptake, then deserts and semiarid regions may be absorbing up to 5.2 billion tons of carbon a year--roughly half the amount emitted globally by burning fossil fuels, says John "Jay" Arnone, an ecologist in DRI's Reno lab and a co-author of the Mojave paper. But others point out that CO2 fluxes are notoriously difficult to measure and that it is necessary to take readings in other arid and semiarid regions to determine whether the Mojave and Gubantonggut findings are representative or anomalous...

2007 August 23. Rule to Expand Mountaintop Coal Mining. By JOHN M. BRODER, NY Times. Excerpt: The Bush administration is set to issue a regulation on Friday that would enshrine the coal mining practice of mountaintop removal. The technique involves blasting off the tops of mountains and dumping the rubble into valleys and streams. It has been used in Appalachian coal country for 20 years under a cloud of legal and regulatory confusion. The new rule would allow the practice to continue and expand, providing only that mine operators minimize the debris and cause the least environmental harm, although those terms are not clearly defined and to some extent merely restate existing law. ...A spokesman for the National Mining Association, Luke Popovich, said that unless mine owners were allowed to dump mine waste in streams and valleys it would be impossible to operate in mountainous regions like West Virginia that hold some of the richest low-sulfur coal seams.
All mining generates huge volumes of waste, known as excess spoil or overburden, and it has to go somewhere. For years, it has been trucked away and dumped in remote hollows of Appalachia.
Environmental activists say the rule change will lead to accelerated pillage of vast tracts and the obliteration of hundreds of miles of streams in central Appalachia.
"This is a parting gift to the coal industry from this administration," said Joe Lovett, executive director of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment in Lewisburg, W.Va. "What is at stake is the future of Appalachia. This is an attempt to make legal what has long been illegal."
Mr. Lovett said his group and allied environmental and community organizations would consider suing to block the new rule.
...Roughly half the coal in West Virginia is from mountaintop mining, which is generally cheaper, safer and more efficient than extraction from underground mines like the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah, which may have claimed the lives of nine miners and rescuers, and the Sago Mine in West Virginia, where 12 miners were killed last year.
...the stream buffer zone rule. First adopted in 1983, it forbids virtually all mining within 100 feet of a river or stream....

See also... http://www.ilovemountains.org/ for Google map of mountaintops that have been removed.

2006 December 6. NASA RESEARCH REVEALS CLIMATE WARMING REDUCES OCEAN FOOD SUPPLY. NASA Earth Observatory News. - In a NASA study, scientists have concluded that when Earth's climate warms, there is a reduction in the ocean's primary food supply.

2006 August 1. BEATING THE HEAT IN THE WORLD'S BIG CITIES - (NASA) Green roofs can mitigate urban heat islands and heat waves.

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 5

6. Carrying Capacity

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 6

2009 Fall. Hardrock Headache. By Alice Tallmadge, Forest Magazine. Excerpt: ...There’s no doubt that hardrock mining helped build the West. It lured the curious and the inventive, the brave and the greedy, the visionary and the hopeful across the plains and into the mountains of the arid West. The 1872 Mining Law made land and mining cheap and laid out a welcome mat for mining into the twenty-first century. Mining generated communities, agriculture, railroads and commerce and built an industry that provided a livelihood for thousands.
Now we know the earth exacts a huge price for the taking of its minerals. Thousands of acres of public lands across the West are affected by acid mine drainage from abandoned mines, an insidious mining residue that can appear years after a mine has been shuttered and can last for decades. In addition, tunnel openings, vertical shafts and mineral-laced pools pose safety hazards for humans and wildlife.
Today, thousands of abandoned hardrock mining sites are located in the western United States—19,000 inventoried sites on Bureau of Land Management land and about 40,000 on national forest land. Thousands more sites have not yet been inventoried. Because mining companies aren’t required to post bonds for cleanup, taxpayers are footing the bill for billions of dollars in reclamation costs that will, in some cases, be required for decades....
See also:
* The Mine Next Door by Scott Streater
* Mining for Reform by Joshua Zaffos
* Cleanup at the Blue Ledge by Alice Tallmadge
* Reclaim and Reuse by Scott Streater

2009 August 12. NASA RELEASE: 09-185. Satellites Unlock Secret to Northern India's Vanishing Water. Excerpt: WASHINGTON -- Using NASA satellite data, scientists have found that groundwater levels in northern India have been declining by as much as one foot per year over the past decade. Researchers concluded the loss is almost entirely due to human activity.
More than 26 cubic miles of groundwater disappeared from aquifers in areas of Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and the nation's capitol territory of Delhi, between 2002 and 2008. This is enough water to fill Lake Mead, the largest manmade reservoir in the United States, three times.
A team of hydrologists led by Matt Rodell of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., found that northern India's underground water supply is being pumped and consumed by human activities, such as irrigating cropland, and is draining aquifers faster than natural processes can replenish them....
The finding is based on data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), a pair of satellites that sense changes in Earth's gravity field and associated mass distribution, including water masses stored above or below Earth's surface. As the twin satellites orbit 300 miles above Earth's surface, their positions change relative to each other in response to variations in the pull of gravity.
Changes in underground water masses affect gravity enough to provide a signal that can be measured by the GRACE spacecraft. After accounting for other mass variations, such changes in gravity are translated into an equivalent change in water.
..."We don't know the absolute volume of water in the northern Indian aquifers, but GRACE provides strong evidence that current rates of water extraction are not sustainable," said Rodell. "The region has become dependent on irrigation to maximize agricultural productivity. If measures are not taken to ensure sustainable groundwater usage, the consequences for the 114 million residents of the region may include a collapse of agricultural output and severe shortages of potable water."...

2009 August 8. Avian Silence: Without Birds to Disperse Seeds, Guam's Forest Is Changing. By Brendan Borrell, Scientific American. Excerpt: The forest on Guam is silent.
Sometime after World War II the brown tree snake arrived as a stowaway on this U.S. Pacific island territory 6,100 kilometers west of Hawaii. It has since extirpated 10 of the island's 12 native forest bird species. The remaining forest birds have been relegated to small populations on military bases, where the snakes are kept in check. In the first study of its kind, a rugby-playing researcher named Haldre Rogers is documenting how the forest itself is changing.
...Of the approximately 40 species of trees on Guam, about 60 to 70 percent once depended on birds to eat their fruits and disperse their seeds. The birds may have just nicked and dropped seeds somewhere along a flight path, or they could have swallowed the seeds, digested their tough coats, and pooped them out with a splatter of high-nitrogen urea.
Rogers went to neighboring islands that still have birds along with many of the same trees, collected seeds from the tree Premna obtusifolia, and brought them back to grow in a greenhouse on Guam. She found that seeds handled by birds are twice as likely to germinate as seeds that simply land on the forest floor. They also germinate about 10 days more quickly, giving them a better shot at evading seed-destroying rodents or fungi.
In another experiment, Rogers has found that seeds on Guam now always land directly in the shade of the mother tree and always have an intact seed coat. But seeds from neighboring islands that still have birds can sometimes end up 10 to 20 meters away from the mother tree, where they are more likely to find a sunny niche with fewer enemies. About 80 percent of these have had their seed coat removed, meaning they can germinate more quickly....
..."The brown tree snake is held up as textbook example of how a destructive invasive species can eradicate birds," she says. "This shows that the effects of introduced predators reverberate through the ecosystem."

2009 August 1. An Underwater Fight Is Waged for the Health of San Francisco Bay. By Malia Wollan, The NY Times. Excerpt: SAN FRANCISCO — Chela Zabin will not soon forget when she first glimpsed the golden brown tentacle of the latest alien to settle in the fertile waters of San Francisco Bay.
...The tentacle in question was that of an Asian kelp, Undaria pinnatifida, a flavorful and healthful ingredient in miso soup and an aggressive, costly intruder in waters from New Zealand to Monterey Bay.
The kelp, known as wakame (pronounced wa-KA-me), is on a list of “100 of the World’s Worst Invasive Alien Species,” compiled by the Invasive Species Specialist Group. Since her discovery in May, Dr. Zabin and colleagues have pulled up nearly 140 pounds of kelp attached to pilings and boats in the San Francisco Marina alone.
Every year the damage wrought by aquatic invaders in the United States and the cost of controlling them is estimated at $9 billion, according to a 2003 study by a Cornell University professor, David Pimentel, whose research is considered the most comprehensive. The bill for controlling two closely-related invasive mussels — the zebra and the quagga — in the Great Lakes alone is $30 million annually, says the United States Federal Aquatic Nuisance Species Task Force.
Many scientists say that San Francisco Bay has more than 250 nonnative species, like European green crab, Asian zooplankton and other creatures and plants that outcompete native species for food, space and sunlight....

2009 July 6. Some See Beetle Attacks on Western Forests as a Natural Event. By JIM ROBBINS, The NY Times. Excerpt: MISSOULA, Mont. — When Ken Salazar — then a senator from Colorado, now secretary of the interior — called the attack on millions of acres of pine forests by the bark beetle the Katrina of the West, he was expressing the common view of the explosive growth of the beetles as an unmitigated disaster.
But not everybody sees it that way. Some environmentalists and scientists support the beetles. While they acknowledge the severity of the problems the beetles are causing, they argue that the insects, which kill only mature trees larger than five inches in diameter, are a natural phenomenon, like forest fires, and play a vital ecological role.
“It’s not the end of the forests, and they are not destroyed,” said Diana L. Six, a professor of forest entomology and pathology at the University of Montana here, who has studied the beetle for 16 years, as she walked in a beetle-infected forest near here recently .
“Lodge pole pine evolved to go out with a stand-replacing event, such as fire or beetles, then regenerate really quickly,” she said. “When they hit 80 or 90 years of age all of a sudden the beetles become a player — the trees are big enough for the beetles to attack. They reset the clock on the stand.”
...Nothing can or should be done to halt the spread of the beetle, experts say. After they kill the mature trees, the soil becomes more fertile as nitrogen levels increase, sometimes tripling. The growth rate of surviving trees increases when the infestation ends. After dead trees fall over or burn, grass grows and provides elk habitat, and slightly more diverse forests rise up.
...Both Dr. DeNitto and Dr. Six allow that the current outbreak is not entirely natural. Human intervention in the form of fire suppression and large-scale clear cuts mean that many forests are simultaneously vulnerable.
...The major human-caused element of the current outbreak, though, is a warmer climate, which has opened new territory to the beetles. And this has caused some experts to view the beetle infestations as unnaturally severe....

2009 June 15. An Unsightly Algae Extends Its Grip to a Crucial New York Stream. By Anthony DePalma, The NY Times. Excerpt: SHANDAKEN, N.Y. — The Esopus Creek, a legendary Catskill Mountain fly fishing stream that is an integral part of New York City’s vast upstate drinking water system, is one of the latest bodies of water to be infected with Didymosphenia geminata, a fast-spreading single-cell algae that is better known to fishermen and biologists around the world as rock snot.
...Didymo has a natural tendency to grow upstream in fast-moving rivers and creeks, but it can spread by clinging to fishing equipment, especially the felt-bottom waders that fly fishermen use to keep from slipping on river bottoms.
Didymo is considered native to parts of North America, where it was found in higher elevations with cold, nutrient-poor waters. But in the last 20 years, the single-celled diatom seems to have morphed into a more aggressive invasive species, spreading from British Columbia across the continent to New York.
Unlike other algae, which float on the surface, Didymo clings to rocks on the bottom of rivers, streams and lakes. At times it grows furiously in blooms that can cover a river bottom from bank to bank, smothering the stone flies, worms and other organisms that trout and other sport fish live on....

2009 February 16. The Unintended Consequences of Changing Nature’s Balance. By Elizabeth Svoboda, The NY Times. Excerpt: With its craggy green cliffs and mist-laden skies, Macquarie Island — halfway between Australia and Antarctica — looks like a nature lover’s Mecca. But the island has recently become a sobering illustration of what can happen when efforts to eliminate an invasive species end up causing unforeseen collateral damage.
In 1985, Australian scientists kicked off an ambitious plan: to kill off non-native cats that had been prowling the island’s slopes since the early 19th century. The program began out of apparent necessity — the cats were preying on native burrowing birds. Twenty-four years later, a team of scientists from the Australian Antarctic Division and the University of Tasmania reports that the cat removal unexpectedly wreaked havoc on the island ecosystem.
With the cats gone, the island’s rabbits (also non-native) began to breed out of control, ravaging native plants and sending ripple effects throughout the ecosystem....
“Our findings show that it’s important for scientists to study the whole ecosystem before doing eradication programs,” said Arko Lucieer, a University of Tasmania remote-sensing expert... “There haven’t been a lot of programs that take the entire system into account. You need to go into scenario mode: ‘If we kill this animal, what other consequences are there going to be?’ ”...

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 6

7. Neighborhood and Global Stewardship

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 7

2009 Nov. Rubbish in the Pacific. NY Times slide show. In a remote patch of the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles from any national boundary, the detritus of human life is collecting in a swirling current so large that it defies precise measurement....

2009 Nov 9. Afloat in the Ocean, Expanding Islands of Trash. By Lindsey Hoshaw, NY Times. Excerpt: ...Light bulbs, bottle caps, toothbrushes, Popsicle sticks and tiny pieces of plastic, each the size of a grain of rice, inhabit the Pacific garbage patch, an area of widely dispersed trash that doubles in size every decade and is now believed to be roughly twice the size of Texas. But one research organization estimates that the garbage now actually pervades the Pacific, though most of it is caught in what oceanographers call a gyre like this one — an area of heavy currents and slack winds that keep the trash swirling in a giant whirlpool.
Scientists say the garbage patch is just one of five that may be caught in giant gyres scattered around the world’s oceans. Abandoned fishing gear like buoys, fishing line and nets account for some of the waste, but other items come from land after washing into storm drains and out to sea.
Plastic is the most common refuse in the patch because it is lightweight, durable and an omnipresent, disposable product in both advanced and developing societies. It can float along for hundreds of miles before being caught in a gyre and then, over time, breaking down.
But once it does split into pieces, the fragments look like confetti in the water. Millions, billions, trillions and more of these particles are floating in the world's trash-filled gyres....

2009 October 19. Nudging Recycling From Less Waste to None. By Leslie Kaufman, The NY Times. Excerpt: At Yellowstone National Park, the clear soda cups and white utensils are not your typical cafe-counter garbage. Made of plant-based plastics, they dissolve magically when heated for more than a few minutes.... Across the nation, an antigarbage strategy known as "zero waste" is moving from the fringes to the mainstream, taking hold in school cafeterias, national parks, restaurants, stadiums and corporations.
The movement is simple in concept if not always in execution: Produce less waste. Shun polystyrene foam containers or any other packaging that is not biodegradable. Recycle or compost whatever you can....

2009 July. Male Frogs Losing Their Macho. By Kathleen M. Wong, ScienceMatters@Berkeley. The herbicide atrazine, used on millions of acres of corn and other crops each year, turns male frogs into hermaphrodites and can affect human health as well. This alarming discovery by Berkeley professor Tyrone Hayes is leading to a major analysis of America's waterways....

2009 June 29. A Green Way to Dump Low-Tech Electronics. By Leslie Kaufman, The NY Times. Excerpt: ...Since 2004, 18 states and New York City have approved laws that make manufacturers responsible for recycling electronics, and similar statutes were introduced in 13 other states this year. The laws are intended to prevent a torrent of toxic and outdated electronic equipment — television sets, computers, monitors, printers, fax machines — from ending up in landfills where they can leach chemicals into groundwater and potentially pose a danger to public health.
The Environmental Protection Agency estimates 99.1 million televisions sit unused in closets and basements across the country. Consumer response to recycling has been enormous in states where the laws have taken effect. Collection points in Washington State, for example, have been swamped by people....
Since January, Washington State residents and small businesses have been allowed to drop off their televisions, computers and computer monitors free of charge to one of 200 collection points around the state. They have responded by dumping more than 15 million pounds of electronic waste, according to state collection data. If disposal continues at this rate, it will amount to more than five pounds for every man, woman and child per year.
“If you make it easy, they will recycle their stuff,” said Barbara Kyle, national coordinator of the Electronics TakeBack Coalition, a nonprofit group based in San Francisco. If products are recycled rather than dumped, parts of the machines are refurbished for new use where possible; if not, they are disassembled, their glass and precious metals are recycled, and the plastics, which have no reuse market, are often shipped overseas to developing countries for disposal....

2009 June 19. Destroying Levees in a State Usually Clamoring for Them. By Cornelia Dean, The NY Times. Excerpt: In the 1960s, a group of businessmen bought 16,000 acres of swampy bottomland along the Ouachita River in northern Louisiana and built miles of levee around it. They bulldozed its oak and cypress trees and, when the land dried out, turned it into a soybean farm.
Now two brothers who grew up nearby are undoing all that work. In what experts are calling the biggest levee-busting operation ever in North America, the brothers plan to return the muddy river to its ancient floodplain, coaxing back plants and animals that flourished there when President Thomas Jefferson first had the land surveyed in 1804.
“I really did not know if I would ever see it,” said Kelby Ouchley, who retired last year as manager of the Upper Ouachita National Wildlife Refuge, which owns the land. He pursues the project as a volunteer consultant in coordination with his brother Keith, who heads Louisiana operations for the Nature Conservancy, which helped organize and finance the levee-busting effort.
...Louisiana’s levees have exacted a huge environmental cost. Inland, cypress forests and wetlands crucial for migrating waterfowl have vanished; in southern Louisiana, coastal marshes deprived of regular infusions of sediment-rich river water have yielded by the mile to an encroaching Gulf of Mexico. Some scientists have suggested opening levees south of New Orleans so the Mississippi River can flow normally into the swamps.
...The workers replanted cypress and tupelo in low areas, then oaks and green ash, and then sweetgum and pecans — “life-sustaining, system-supporting diversity,” as Kelby Ouchley called it in an essay.
Eventually, he predicted, the restored landscape would be home to black bear cubs, largemouth bass, fireflies, crawfish and “gobbling wild turkeys and cottonmouths with attitudes.”...

2008 July 23. No plastic bags in LA stores beginning July 2010. LOS ANGELES (AP) - Excerpt: Los Angeles shoppers soon won't hear the question, "Paper or plastic?" at the checkout line. The City Council voted Tuesday to ban plastic shopping bags from stores, beginning July 1, 2010. Shoppers can either bring their own bags or pay 25 cents for a paper bag. The council's unanimous vote also puts pressure on the state, which is considering an Assembly bill that would ban plastic bags in 2012 and charge at least 15 cents per paper bag. "We've gotten to a point where we need to act as a city, where we can have real results," said Councilman Ed Reyes, who proposed the bag ban.... Last year, San Francisco passed the nation's first bag ban, which took effect in November.

2008 May 7. A City Committed to Recycling Is Ready for More By FELICITY BARRINGER The mayor of San Francisco wants to make the recycling of cans, bottles, paper, yard waste and food scraps mandatory instead of voluntary, on the pain of having garbage pickups suspended.

2008 Apr 22. Mercury Migrating Out of Rivers to the Shore. By HENRY FOUNTAIN, NY Times. Excerpt: Mercury contamination can be a big problem in rivers, as it moves up the food chain accumulating in top predators. ...In the South River in Virginia, ... the mercury has moved from the river to the shore, according to a study by Daniel A. Cristol and colleagues at the College of William and Mary. They report in Science.... The South, a Shenandoah tributary, was heavily contaminated with mercury sulfate from a DuPont factory from 1930 to 1950. Fish and aquatic birds on the river have long been known to be contaminated. But most of the 13 terrestrial birds tested had levels similar to or higher than the aquatic birds.
Researchers say the main culprit is spiders, which in some cases make up 30 percent of birds' diets and have high levels of mercury. The spiders obtain mercury from their prey, either aquatic insects that are contaminated or terrestrial insects that develop in areas contaminated by flooding.

2008 Mar 4. Polluted Worms Help Starling's Song, but Not Mating Fitness. By HENRY FOUNTAIN, NY Times. Excerpt: To the long list of the unintended effects of environmental contaminants, add one - eating polluted worms affects the songs of male starlings. What's more, the females seem to like it.Researchers from Cardiff University in Wales report in the open-access online journal PLoS One that male starlings that consume estrogen and similar compounds, chemicals normally found in sewage, showed brain and behavioral changes related to singing.
Shai Markman, now at the University of Haifa in Israel; Katherine L. Buchanan, now of Deakin University in Australia; and colleagues studied wild starlings foraging at sewage treatment works in southwestern Britain. The birds eat small worms found in huge quantities along filter beds.
The worms accumulate natural estrogen excreted in human waste and estrogenlike compounds from plastics manufacturing. The chemicals are known to disrupt endocrine function, with anatomical and behavioral effects. ...A male's song is one trait that helps to attract mates. The researchers found that females chose the males with more complex songs even though the contaminants had made them less fit. "Females are choosing to mate with males who are in poorer physical condition," Dr. Buchanan said, with potential effects on the number and survivability of offspring. So the simple act of eating tainted worms may be having an overall effect on starling populations, she added.

2008 February. Poultry workers 32 times more likely to carry resistant bacteria. Union of Concerned Scientists newlstter. Poultry workers are 32 times more likely than the average person to harbor E. coli bacteria that are resistant to the antibiotic gentamicin, according to a study by Johns Hopkins University researchers. The scientists compared stool samples from poultry workers with those from local community residents. The workers were also significantly more likely to harbor bacteria that were resistant to multiple drugs. The study concluded that occupational exposure to chickens may be "an important route of entry" for these dangerous bacteria into the community. Read the study, and send a letter to your members of Congress on legislation to address antibiotic resistance.

2008 February 2. Motivated by a Tax, Irish Spurn Plastic Bags. By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL, NY Times. Excerpt: DUBLIN - ...In 2002, Ireland passed a tax on plastic bags; customers who want them must now pay 33 cents per bag at the register. There was an advertising awareness campaign. And then something happened that was bigger than the sum of these parts. Within weeks, plastic bag use dropped 94 percent. Within a year, nearly everyone had bought reusable cloth bags, keeping them in offices and in the backs of cars. Plastic bags were not outlawed, but carrying them became socially unacceptable - on a par with wearing a fur coat or not cleaning up after one's dog. "When my roommate brings one in the flat it annoys the hell out of me," said Edel Egan, a photographer, carrying groceries last week in a red backpack. Drowning in a sea of plastic bags, countries from China to Australia, cities from San Francisco to New York have in the past year adopted a flurry of laws and regulations to address the problem, so far with mixed success. The New York City Council, for example, in the face of stiff resistance from business interests, passed a measure requiring only that stores that hand out plastic bags take them back for recycling. But in the parking lot of a Superquinn Market, Ireland's largest grocery chain, it is clear that the country is well into the post-plastic-bag era. "I used to get half a dozen with every shop. Now I'd never ever buy one," said Cathal McKeown, 40, a civil servant carrying two large black cloth bags bearing the bright green Superquinn motto. "If I forgot these, I'd just take the cart of groceries and put them loose in the boot of the car, rather than buy a bag."....

Biosphere 2 http://www.bio2.edu/

Environment & Ecosystems on the Net from SciLinks¨

Environment & Ecosystems in NSTA Journal Articles--high school

Environment & Ecosystems in NSTA Journal Articles--intermediate

Books on the Environment & Ecosystems from NSTA Press and NSTA Recommends.

Bats

• Bat Conservation International
• Bat Facts--Encyclopedia Smithsonian
• The Coalition of North American Bat Working Groups

• American Bird Conservancy http://www.abcbirds.org/ -- Cats indoors program; bird-killing pesticides

Earth Shots--Satellite Images of Environmental Change

Fair Trade Cocoa and Coffee

• Organic Consumers Association -- http://www.organicconsumers.org/
• Saskatchewan Organic Directorate -- http://www.saskorganic.com/
• Wheat: Dakota Resource Council -- http://www.drcinfo.com/current.htm

• Jellyfish bloom
  • Dockwatch
  • Claudia Mills, research scientist
• Pew Oceans Commission-- http://www.pewoceans.org/ -- an independent group of American leaders conducting a national dialogue on the policies needed to restore and protect living marine resources in U.S. waters.

• Backyard Wildlife Habitat program
• Wild Ones; Landscaping with Native PLants -- http://www.for-wild.org/
• Xeriscape Council of New Mexico -- http://www.xeriscapenm.com/

Alibrandi, Marsha, GIS in the Classroom and CD-Rom. Heinemann Educational Books, Inc. Portsmouth, NH. 2003. ISBN 032500479X. Grade level: 9-12. Reviewed here (10/15/2003) by Eloise Farmer [GSS teacher leader and] Biology Teacher retiring in June after 37.5 years. The book would be useful with Life and Climate, since many suggested activities have students monitoring the effects of human activities on a variety of things on local bodies of water, or ecosystems in general. It also could be used with Ecosystem Change, or Changing Climate for the same reason. Students could use GIS to map changes in coastlines due to erosion, the effects of storms on an area, etc. It really emphasizes systems, so it could be used with any of the GSS books. This link tells how it has been used in a high school.

Organic Food - Restaurants, Farmers Markets, Coops

• http://www.localharvest.org/
• http://www.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets/

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 7

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