African Ministers Adopt the Nairobi Declaration on Climate

UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

On 29 May, ministers from more than 30 African countries adopted the Nairobi Declaration on climate at a weeklong special session of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) in the headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi, Kenya.

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of UNEP which hosts the AMCEN secretariat, told the meeting: "Africa's environment ministers have today signaled their resolve to be part of the solution to the climate change challenge by forging a unified position, within their diversity of economies, in advance of the crucial UN climate convention meeting in Copenhagen in just 192 days' time."

The landmark document highlighted the major challenges and opportunities that African countries face in the upcoming negotiations in Copenhagen on a climate agreement that will succeed the Kyoto Protocol. The Declaration urges all parties - and particularly the international community - to base increased support for Africa on the priorities for the continent, which include adaptation, capacity-building, financing and technology development and transfer.

The Declaration could not have come sooner. "Africa is in peril. The continent faces disease, limited food security and more," warned Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in a press conference on the last day of the meeting.

Climate change is clearly impacting Africa in every way. According to the latest indicators, globally the climate is changing more rapidly than estimated. Today, nine out of every ten recorded disasters are climate related. Rising temperatures and more frequent and prolonged floods, droughts and storms are impacting millions of people's lives. And Africa is feeling the brunt of the changing weather patterns. Increasing numbers of natural disasters have left people grappling with drought, flooded houses and growing poverty.

Home to some of the major ecosystems in the world, climate change is also threatening some 20-30 per cent of species in Africa which now face the danger of extinction if global warming continues. According to a detailed study by Mozambique's national Disaster Management Institute, over the next 20 years and beyond the country will be overwhelmed by more natural disasters like cyclones, floods, droughts and disease outbreak as a result of climate change.

"Africa is one of the regions most vulnerable to climate change and has no means to respond to climate change," said Buyelwa Sonjica, President of AMCEN and Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs in South Africa, in her statement to the meeting.

"Climate change is the most serious threat to humanity," warned Erik Solheim, Minster of Environment of Norway, in his address to the AMCEN participants. "And Africa is facing this major threat and must rise to the occasion," he stressed.

Africa has to adapt to climate change but must also be compensated for having been the victim of the industrial pollution that it did not create. The continent has the lowest per capita emissions, and yet it is bearing the highest impact of climate change ? with projections showing that by 2020, in some African countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 per cent.

"Africa has today shouldered its domestic and global responsibilities. It is now time for other Continents and countries, especially the developed economies, to now seriously shoulder theirs," said Steiner.

Endemic poverty, limited access to capital, including markets, infrastructure and technology; ecosystem degradation; and multifaceted disasters and conflicts have all contributed to Africa's struggles. The continent represents less than 10 per cent of the carbon trading in the world even though its forests absorb a huge amount of the carbon emissions. These in turn have contributed to Africa's weak adaptive capacity, increasing the continent's vulnerability to climate change.

Adaptation therefore emerges as the most immediate priority. Since the Kyoto Protocol was drawn up in 1997, there has been some progress in acknowledging the need to support adaptation in developing countries. But most of the work remains to be done, particularly with the cost of adaptation in Africa estimated between USD1 billion and USD50 billion per year.

As existing financial mechanisms have proven inadequate, complex and fragmented, African countries have not yet been able to gain full access to these resources. The Declaration highlights the need for a coherent financial architecture for climate change and simplified access procedures.

In the run-up to the meeting in Copenhagen, it is clear that Africa needs a detailed strategy for combating climate change in a way that helps achieve sustainable development, particularly in terms of alleviating poverty, with an emphasis on the most vulnerable such as women and children who are bearing the brunt of the impact from climate change. "Africa's vote will be considered and that's why a strong African vision is crucial," said Mr de Boer.

"Africa must be united for Copenhagen," added Jean-Louis Borloo, French Minister of the Environment. "The world cannot refuse anything in Copenhagen but African countries must be ready," he stressed.

The AMCEN meeting took place six months before the critical climate meeting in Copenhagen where the global climate agreement will be negotiated. As Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, which oversees the talks in Copenhagen, de Boer in an interview in Nairobi warned of the challenges ahead: "The scientists have also told us that if we don't get emissions under control quickly and if we don't adapt to the impact of climate change quickly, then things are going to get worse and worse."

He highlighted three points that need to be met in Copenhagen:

-clear and ambitious reduction strategies for rich countries, who have to show leadership;

-major developing countries have to limit the growth of their emissions;

-significant financial support must be mobilized for developing countries to limit their emissions and adopt to the impact of climate change.

While debates marked the elaboration of the Nairobi Declaration, the AMCEN participants were clear on one issue: time is running and action is needed. Having adopted the Nairobi Declaration, African Ministers are now hoping there will be similar consensus in Copenhagen. "We the African countries endorse the efforts of the UN Secretary General to combat climate change and to encourage governments around the world to 'Seal the Deal' and support a fair, balanced and effective climate agreement in Copenhagen in December," said John Michuki, Minister of Environment in Kenya, in his address to the AMCEN gathering.

African environment ministers reach significant climate change accord

UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) today announced a landmark agreement reached by over 30 African ministers to mainstream climate change adaptation measures into national and regional development plans, policies and strategies.

The Nairobi Declaration adopted at the Special Session of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) aims to ensure adequate adaptation to climate change in the areas of water resources, agriculture, health, infrastructure, biodiversity and ecosystems, forest, urban management, tourism, food and energy security and management of coastal and marine resources.

The Declaration also calls on the international community to support the continent in implementing climate change programmes while at the same time achieving sustainable development, with an emphasis on the most vulnerable, such as women and children, who bear the brunt of the impact of global warming.

“Africa’s environment ministers have today signalled their resolve to be part of the solution to the climate change challenge by forging a unified position, within their diversity of economies, in advance of the crucial UN climate change convention meeting in Copenhagen in just 192 days time,” said UNEP executive director Achim Steiner.

The head of UNEP, which hosts the AMCEN secretariat, added that the “development prize for Africa is an acceleration of clean and renewable energy projects and payments for carbon-storing ecosystems from forests up to eventually perhaps dry land soils, grasslands and sustainable agriculture.”

Mr. Steiner stressed that Africa has “shouldered its domestic and global responsibilities. It is now time for other continents and countries, especially the developed economies, to now seriously shoulder theirs.”

According to UNEP, Africa has the lowest per capita greenhouse gas emissions rate, but bears the highest impact of climate change. It is predicted that some African countries will suffer reduced harvests of up to 50 per cent from rain-fed agriculture by 2020. During the same timeframe, between 75 million and 250 million people are expected to be exposed to increased water stress due to changes in the continent’s environment.

Since the Kyoto Protocol – a UN treaty designed to limit greenhouse gas emissions – was drawn up in 1997, there has been some progress in acknowledging the need to support adaptation in developing countries. However, little has been done, with the cost of adaptation in Africa estimated between USD1 billion to USD50 billion per year.

The AMCEN gathering brought around 300 African negotiators, high-level experts, civil society organizations and ministers together with a view to work towards a shared vision on climate change and develop a single African voice in Copenhagen and to advance the continent’s interests in negotiations for the climate change regime beyond 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires.

The Declaration highlights the need for a coherent financial mechanism to battle climate change, with equitable governance and simplified access procedures.

In this regard, African ministers are advocating for the improvement and modification of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) in order to ensure equitable geographical distribution of projects that contribute to sustainable development efforts on the continent.

They are also calling for the expansion of eligible categories to benefit from carbon credits and other international incentives to include sustainable land use, agriculture and forest management, in order to promote agricultural productivity in a way that improves resilience and adaptation to climate change.

They recommend that the Group of Eight (G-8) industrialized nations implement the recommendation to create a regional climate centre in Africa to improve climate risk management and to carry out the regional strategy for disaster-risk reduction.

As well as pressing for modification in the CDM and other international incentives – such as carbon credits – to include sustainable land use, agriculture and forest management, the ministers called on developed countries to set ambitious targets to reduce their emissions by 2020.

Economic Crisis Hits EU and US Clean Energy

Emerging Economy Investments Rise 27% to USD36 billion

However Renewables Draw More Investment than Fossil-Fueled Energy Technologies in '08

Geothermal Sees Fastest Growth - Wind Power Tops Overall Investment, Solar Posts Largest Gains

USD155 billion was invested in 2008 in clean energy companies and projects worldwide - not including large hydro, a new report says.

Of this USD13.5 billion of new private investment went into companies developing and scaling-up new technologies alongside USD117 billion of investment in renewable energy projects from geothermal and wind to solar and biofuels.

Extremely difficult financial market conditions prevailed during 2008 as a result of the global economic crisis.

Nevertheless investment in clean energy topped 2007's record investments by 5% in large part as a result of China, Brazil and other emerging economies.

Of the USD155 billion, USD105 billion was spent directly developing 40 GW of power generating capacity from wind, solar, small-hydro, biomass and geothermal sources.

A further USD35 billion was spent on developing 25 GW of large hydropower, according to the report.

This USD140 billion investment in 65 GW of low carbon electricity generation compares with the estimated USD250 billion spent globally in 2008 constructing 157GW of new power generating capacity from all sources.

It means that renewables currently account for the majority of investment and over 40% of actual power generation capacity additions last year.

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, said, "Without doubt the economic crisis has taken its toll on investments in clean energy when set against the record-breaking growth of recent years. Investment in the United States fell by two per cent and in Europe growth was very much muted. However, there were also some bright points in 2008 especially in developing economies—China became the world's second largest wind market in terms of new capacity and the world's biggest photovoltaic manufacturer and a rise in geothermal energy may be getting underway in countries from Australia to Japan and Kenya".

Melting Greenland Ice Sheets May Threaten Northeast United States, Canada

This visualization, based on new computer modeling, shows that sea level rise may be an additional 10 centimeters (4 inches) higher by populated areas in northeastern North America than previously thought. Extreme northeastern North America and Greenland may experience even higher sea level rise. (Graphic courtesy Geophysical Research Letters, modified by UCAR.)Melting of the Greenland ice sheet this century may drive more water than previously thought toward the already threatened coastlines of New York, Boston, Halifax, and other cities in the northeastern United States and Canada, according to new research led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

The study, which is being published Friday in Geophysical Research Letters, finds that if Greenland's ice melts at moderate to high rates, ocean circulation by 2100 may shift and cause sea levels off the northeast coast of North America to rise by about 12 to 20 inches (about 30 to 50 centimeters) more than in other coastal areas. The research builds on recent reports that have found that sea level rise associated with global warming could adversely affect North America, and its findings suggest that the situation is more threatening than previously believed.

"If the Greenland melt continues to accelerate, we could see significant impacts this century on the northeast U.S. coast from the resulting sea level rise," says NCAR scientist Aixue Hu, the lead author. "Major northeastern cities are directly in the path of the greatest rise."

A study in Nature Geoscience in March warned that warmer water temperatures could shift ocean currents in a way that would raise sea levels off the Northeast by about 8 inches (20 cm) more than the average global sea level rise. But it did not include the additional impact of Greenland's ice, which at moderate to high melt rates would further accelerate changes in ocean circulation and drive an additional 4 to 12 inches (about 10 to 30 cm) of water toward heavily populated areas of northeastern North America on top of average global sea level rise. More remote areas in extreme northeastern Canada and Greenland could see even higher sea level rise.

Scientists have been cautious about estimating average sea level rise this century in part because of complex processes within ice sheets. The 2007 assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projected that sea levels worldwide could rise by an average of 7 to 23 inches (18 to 59 cm) this century, but many researchers believe the rise will be greater because of dynamic factors in ice sheets that appear to have accelerated the melting rate in recent years.

The new research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and by NCAR's sponsor, the National Science Foundation. It was conducted by scientists at NCAR, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Florida State University.

How much meltwater?

To assess the impact of Greenland ice melt on ocean circulation, Hu and his coauthors used the Community Climate System Model, an NCAR-based computer model that simulates global climate. They considered three scenarios: the melt rate continuing to increase by 7 percent per year, as has been the case in recent years, or the melt rate slowing down to an increase of either 1 or 3 percent per year.

If Greenland's melt rate slows down to a 3 percent annual increase, the study team's computer simulations indicate that the runoff from its ice sheet could alter ocean circulation in a way that would direct about a foot of water toward the northeast coast of North America by 2100. This would be on top of the average global sea level rise expected as a result of global warming. Although the study team did not try to estimate that mean global sea level rise, their simulations indicated that melt from Greenland alone under the 3 percent scenario could raise worldwide sea levels by an average of 21 inches (54 cm).

If the annual increase in the melt rate dropped to 1 percent, the runoff would not raise northeastern sea levels by more than the 8 inches (20 cm) found in the earlier study in Nature Geoscience. But if the melt rate continued at its present 7 percent increase per year through 2050 and then leveled off, the study suggests that the northeast coast could see as much as 20 inches (50 cm) of sea level rise above a global average that could be several feet. However, Hu cautioned that other modeling studies have indicated that the 7 percent scenario is unlikely.

In addition to sea level rise, Hu and his co-authors found that if the Greenland melt rate were to defy expectations and continue its 7 percent increase, this would drain enough fresh water into the North Atlantic to weaken the oceanic circulation that pumps warm water to the Arctic. Ironically, this weakening of the meridional overturning circulation would help the Arctic avoid some of the impacts of global warming and lead to at least the temporary recovery of Arctic sea ice by the end of the century.

Why the Northeast?

The northeast coast of North America is especially vulnerable to the effects of Greenland ice melt because of the way the meridional overturning circulation acts like a conveyer belt transporting water through the Atlantic Ocean. The circulation carries warm Atlantic water from the tropics to the north, where it cools and descends to create a dense layer of cold water. As a result, sea level is currently about 28 inches (71 cm) lower in the North Atlantic than the North Pacific, which lacks such a dense layer.

If the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet were to increase by 3 percent or 7 percent yearly, the additional fresh water could partially disrupt the northward conveyor belt. This would reduce the accumulation of deep, dense water. Instead, the deep water would be slightly warmer, expanding and elevating the surface across portions of the North Atlantic.

Unlike water in a bathtub, water in the oceans does not spread out evenly. Sea level can vary by several feet from one region to another, depending on such factors as ocean circulation and the extent to which water at lower depths is compressed.

"The oceans will not rise uniformly as the world warms," says NCAR scientist Gerald Meehl, a co-author of the paper. "Ocean dynamics will push water in certain directions, so some locations will experience sea level rise that is larger than the global average.

Greening Arctic not likely to offset permafrost carbon release

Credit: Emily Tissier/University of FloridaAs the frozen soil in the Arctic thaws, bacteria will break down organic matter, releasing long-stored carbon into the warming atmosphere.

At the same time, plants will proliferate, nurtured by balmier temperatures, more nutrients from decomposing soil and the increasing abundance of the greenhouse gas they depend on for growth.

These connected but contrasting changes have raised a question for scientists who study the causes and consequences of global climate change: Will the shrubs and incipient forests spreading across the Arctic compensate for the permafrost's rising release of carbon, blunting its impact on a warming planet? Or, with twice as much carbon locked up in the permafrost as now present in the atmosphere, will the lush growth become overwhelmed - like a kitchen sponge put down to stem a water main break?

Researchers led by a University of Florida ecologist may have an answer. In a paper set to appear May 28 in the journal Nature, the team reports experimental results suggesting tundra plant growth may keep up with rising carbon dioxide initially.

But if thawing continues in a warmer world, the permafrost will spew carbon for decades, and the plants will become overwhelmed -- unable to sop up the excess carbon despite even the most vigorous growth.

"At first, with the plants offsetting the carbon dioxide, it will appear that everything is fine, but actually this conceals the initial destabilization of permafrost carbon," said Ted Schuur, a UF associate professor of ecology and lead author of the paper. "But it doesn't last, because there is so much carbon in the permafrost that eventually the plants can't keep up."

Schuur noted most of the 13 million square kilometers, or roughly 5 million square miles, of permafrost in Alaska, Canada, Siberia and parts of Europe remain frozen. However, thawing already occurring around its southern edges is expected to expand this century.

Should that occur, this study suggests the permafrost could lose in the range of 1 gigaton of carbon, or 1 billion tons, per year – about the same order of magnitude as being added by current deforestation of the tropics, another large biospheric source, Schuur said.

While burning fossil fuels contributes considerably more carbon, about 8.5 gigatons annually, that process can at least in theory be controlled – whereas once the permafrost thaw begins, it sets up a self-reinforcing loop far from human activity and potentially difficult to stop.

That highlights the urgent need to address human-caused emissions now, Schuur said.

"It is not an option to be putting insulation on top of the tundra," he said. "If we address our own emissions, either by reducing deforestation or controlling emissions from fossil fuels, that's the key to minimizing the changes in the permafrost carbon pool."

Researchers from UF used hand-built, automated chambers to trap and measure carbon dioxide losses in Alaska year-round from 2004 through 2006. Thawing at the research sites near Denali National Park, in central Alaska, varies considerably, with some plots much more extensively thawed than others.

The researchers determined how long each spot had been thawing using long-term data from permafrost-monitoring instruments combined with historical aerial photographs. With a total of 18 of the automated chambers, they measured the release and uptake of carbon between the tundra and the atmosphere. This resulted in a measurement of net ecosystem carbon exchange – the total carbon each spot lost, or gained, due to thawing permafrost.

The results were clear.

Tundra sites that had thawed for the past 15 years gained net carbon, as increasingly verdant plant growth was greater than the permafrost's carbon losses. However, radiocarbon dating of carbon dioxide showed that old carbon from the permafrost was already being released in higher amounts due to thaw – signifying that all was not well with the permafrost carbon even in that time period. The site that began thawing decades before gained net carbon emission to the atmosphere, revealing that more thaw caused significantly more old carbon loss -- despite greening of the vegetation, including more shrubs.

Said Jason Vogel, a UF postdoctoral associate and author of the paper: "The plants are still growing faster in the extensively thawed area, but that's not enough to keep up with the greater microbial activity releasing old carbon from deeper in the soil."

As a result, even as the Arctic greens, its escalating old carbon loss "could make permafrost a large biospheric carbon source in a warmer world," according to the paper.

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Endangered right whales found where presumed extinct

Using a system of underwater hydrophones that can record sounds from hundreds of miles away, a team of scientists from Oregon State University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has documented the presence of endangered North Atlantic right whales in an area they were thought to be extinct.

The discovery is particularly important, researchers say, because it is in an area that may be opened to shipping if the melting of polar ice continues, as expected.

Results of the study were presented this week at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Portland, Ore.

The scientists are unsure of exactly how many whales were in the region, which is off the southern tip of Greenland and site of an important 19th-century whaling area called Cape Farewell Ground. But they recorded more than 2,000 right whale vocalizations in the region from July through December of 2007.

"The technology has enabled us to identify an important unstudied habitat for endangered right whales and raises the possibility that – contrary to general belief – a remnant of a central or eastern Atlantic stock of right whales still exists and might be viable," said David Mellinger, an assistant professor at OSU's Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport and chief scientist of the project.

"We don't know how many right whales there were in the area," Mellinger added. "They aren't individually distinctive in their vocalizations. But we did hear right whales at three widely space sites on the same day, so the absolute minimum is three. Even that number is significant because the entire population is estimated to be only 300 to 400 whales."

Only two right whales have been sighted in the last 50 years at Cape Farewell Ground, where they had been hunted to near extinction prior to the adoption of protective measures.

Funded by NOAA's Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, the project began in 2007 with the deployment of five hydrophones off the coast of Greenland. These instruments, built by Haru Matsumoto at OSU, were configured to continuously record ambient sounds below 1,000 Hz – a range that includes calls of the right whale – over a large region of the North Atlantic.

Right whales produce a variety of sounds, Mellinger said, and through careful analysis these sounds can be distinguished from other whales. The scientists used recordings of North Atlantic and North Pacific right whales to identify the species' distinct sounds, including vocalizations known as "up" calls. Beginning in July of 2007, the scientists recorded a total of 2,012 calls in the North Atlantic off Greenland.

The pattern of recorded calls suggests that the whales moved from the southwest portion of the region in a northeasterly direction in late July, and then returned in September – putting them directly where proposed future shipping lanes would be likely.

"Newly available shipping lanes through the Northwest Passage would greatly shorten the trip between Europe and East Asia, but would likely cross the migratory route of any right whales that occupy the region," said Phillip Clapham, a right whale expert with NOAA's National Marine Mammal Laboratory, who participated in the study. "It's vital that we know about right whales in this area in order to effectively avoid ship strikes on what could be a quite fragile population."

In addition to Mellinger and Clapham, scientists involved in the project include Sharon Nieukirk, Karolin Klinck, Holger Klinck and Bob Dziak of the Cooperative Institute for Marine Resources Studies – a joint venture between OSU and NOAA; and Bryndís Brandsdóttir, of the University of Iceland.

This is the third time that Mellinger's team has used hydrophones to locate endangered right whales. In the January 2004 issue of the journal Marine Mammal Science, Mellinger and his colleagues outlined how they used autonomous hydrophones to identify right whales in the Gulf of Alaska, where only one confirmed sighting had taken place in 26 years. And they identified the seasonal occurrence of right whales off Nova Scotia in a 2007 issue of the journal.

OSU scientists first began hearing whale sounds several years ago on a U.S. Navy hydrophone network. The hydrophone system – called the Sound Surveillance System, or SOSUS – was used by the Navy during the Cold War to monitor submarine activity in the northern Pacific Ocean. As the Cold War ebbed, these and other military assets were offered to civilian researchers performing environmental studies.

An Oregon State researcher, Christopher Fox, first received permission from the Navy to use the hydrophones at his laboratory at OSU's Hatfield Marine Science Center to listen for undersea earthquakes – a program now directed by Bob Dziak.

While listening for earthquakes, the OSU researchers begin picking up sounds of ships, marine landslides – and whales. Matsumoto, an engineer at the center, then developed autonomous hydrophones that can be deployed independently. Hydrophones since have become an important tool for marine ecologists, as well as geologists.

Plant biodiversity enhanced thanks to spillover from landscape corridors

One of the eight experimental landscapes — each with five open patches — the USDA Forest Service-Savannah River created in 2000 in the pine plantation forest near Aiken, S.C., to determine what role habitat connectivity might play in habitat conservation and restoration practices.Recently, images of melting sea ice and shrinking rainforests have highlighted the world's biodiversity crisis and made us aware of the need to find a balance between preserving natural ecosystems while still having enough land for human use.

"About 10 percent of the world's land surface is afforded formal protection. We need to manage that 10 percent as best as we possibly can to preserve biodiversity but also be mindful of human needs, such as food and fiber production," said Lars A. Brudvig, Ph.D., post-doctoral researcher in biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

"One way to do this is by managing the land in a way that promotes biodiversity beyond the habitat's borders."

One of the most popular ways to manage landscapes fragmented by humans is to connect the isolated patches of habitat with skinny strips of land called corridors.

Brudvig and Ellen I. Damschen, Ph.D., assistant professor of biology at Washington University, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Washington, North Carolina State University and University of Florida, have discovered that the biodiversity in a patch of habitat can extend outside the borders of a protected area; this effect is magnified when the habitats are connected by corridors.

Their findings provide a strategy for managing nature preserves to maximize biodiversity in the small spaces that are already formally protected.

Throughout the Southeast, most of the historically predominant ecosystem — longleaf pine Savanna — has been destroyed and converted into pine plantation forests to provide resources for human use. As a result, there is a great deal of interest in conserving the three percent of habitat that remains and in restoring additional habitat.

In order to determine what role habitat connectivity might play in habitat conservation and restoration practices, the USDA Forest Service-Savannah River created eight experimental landscapes in 2000, each with five open patches in the pine plantation forest near Aiken, S.C.

Within each landscape, two of the five patches were connected by a corridor and the remaining three were left isolated. Today, this is the location of the world's largest experimental test of corridors and one of the world's largest habitat fragmentation experiments.

"We are restoring these patches for longleaf pine savanna with prescribed fire and longleaf pine seedling transplants. We previously found that patches connected by corridors have acquired more species of plants, or higher biodiversity, than isolated patches," Brudvig explained.

In this study, published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of May 18, 2009, the researchers looked at the species of plants growing outside the protected longleaf pine savanna patches. The title of their paper is "Landscape Connectivity Promotes Plant Biodiversity Spillover Into Non-target Habitats."

In patches that were connected by corridors, more species of plants native to the pine savanna were found in the surrounding pine plantation forest, than around isolated patches.

"Because corridors promote higher levels of biodiversity in target patches, this bleeds over and elevates the biodiversity in the non-target habitat, increasing the area receiving a benefit from corridors by 160 percent," Brudvig said.

"Because of this spillover effect, the biodiversity benefit provided by corridors is more than double what we thought before," he said. "This is quite a large and pronounced effect."

Borrowing a concept

The concept of spillover originates from marine fisheries management. In seas with protected areas, the total fish catch is higher than in seas where fishing is not restricted. In the protected areas, fish populations grow until the excess density spills over into the surrounding waters, where fishing is allowed.

"We borrowed a concept that focused on single or small sets of species and put it into a biodiversity context to ask questions about all species that live in one ecosystem," Brudvig said.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation. The USDA Forest Service-Savannah River maintains the landscape with prescribed fires and other management activities.

These results apply directly to preserving biodiversity native to longleaf pine savanna.

"Throughout the Southeast, this provides a management strategy to promote a rare ecosystem and afford biodiversity benefits within a managed landscape," Brudvig said.

However, their findings have implications for habitats around the globe as well.

"We literally live in world of fragmented habitats, where the habitats that do remain are scattered around and intermixed with non-target habitats. It is entirely possible that this biodiversity spillover effect might be happening in a variety of ecosystems all over the world," Brudvig said.

"Through management activities, such as building corridors, we might be able to promote this spillover effect elsewhere."

Author: Melissae Stuart

Most polluted ecosystems recoverable

Most polluted or damaged ecosystems worldwide can recover within a lifetime if societies commit to their cleanup or restoration, according to an analysis of 240 independent studies by researchers at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. Their findings will appear in the June edition of the journal PLoS ONE.

The Yale researchers found that forest ecosystems recovered in 42 years on average, while ocean bottoms recovered in less than 10 years. When examined by disturbance type, ecosystems undergoing multiple, interacting disturbances recovered in 56 years, and those affected by either invasive species, mining, oil spills or trawling recovered in as little as five years. Most ecosystems took longer to recover from human-induced disturbances than from natural events, such as hurricanes.

"The damages to these ecosystems are pretty serious," said Oswald Schmitz, an ecology professor at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and co-author of the meta-analysis with Yale Ph.D. student Holly Jones. "But the message is that if societies choose to become sustainable, ecosystems will recover. It isn't hopeless."

The Yale analysis focuses on seven ecosystem types, including marine, forest, terrestrial, freshwater and brackish, and addresses recovery from major anthropogenic disturbances: agriculture, deforestation, eutrophication, invasive species, logging, mining, oil spills, overfishing, power plants and trawling and from the interactions of those disturbances. Major natural disturbances, including hurricanes and cyclones, are also accounted for in the analysis.

The researchers analyzed data derived from peer-reviewed studies conducted over the past century that examined the recovery of large ecosystems following the cessation of a disturbance. The studies measured 94 variables that were grouped into three categories: ecosystem function, animal community and plant community.

The researchers quantified the recovery of each of the variables in terms of the time it took for them to return to their pre-disturbance state as determined by the expert judgment of each study's author. The Yale analysis found that 83 studies demonstrated recovery for all variables; 90 reported a mixture of recovered and non-recovered variables; and 67 reported no recovery for any variable. Schmitz said 15 percent of all the ecosystems in the analysis are beyond recovery. Also, 54 percent of the studies that reported no recovery likely did not run long enough to draw definitive conclusions.

In addition, the analysis suggests that an ecosystem's recovery may be independent of its degraded condition. Aquatic systems, the researchers noted, may recover more quickly because species and organisms that inhabit them turn over more rapidly than, for example, forests whose habitats take longer to regenerate after logging or clear-cutting.

The researchers point out that a potential "pitfall" of the analysis is that the ecosystems may have already been in a disturbed state when they were originally examined. Many ecosystems across the globe that have experienced extinctions and other fundamental changes as a result of human activities, combined with the ongoing effects of climate change and pollution, are far removed from their historical, natural pristine state. Thus ecologists measured recovery on the basis of an ecosystem's more recent condition. The study points out the need for the development of objective criteria to decide when a system has fully recovered.

The researchers said the analysis rebuts speculation that it will take centuries or millennia for degraded ecosystems to recover and justifies an increased effort to restore degraded areas for the benefit of future generations. "Restoration could become a more important tool in the management portfolio of conservation organizations that are entrusted to protect habitats on landscapes," said Schmitz.

Jones added: "We recognize that humankind has and will continue to actively domesticate nature to meet its own needs. The message of our paper is that recovery is possible and can be rapid for many ecosystems, giving much hope for a transition to sustainable management of global ecosystems."

The report, "Rapid Recovery of Damaged Ecosystems," is available online at http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0005653.

Scientists develop a new HIV microbicide

New research in the FASEB Journal describes a one-two punch in the battle against HIV

In what could be a major pharmaceutical breakthrough, research published online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org) describes how scientists from St George's, University of London have devised a one-two punch to stop HIV. First the report describes a new protein that can kill the virus when used as a microbicide. Then the report shows how it might be possible to manufacture this protein in quantities large enough to make it affordable for people in developing countries.

"We desperately need to control the spread of HIV, particularly in developing countries," said Julian Ma of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at St. George's and the senior researcher involved in the work. "A vaccine is still some way off, but microbicides could provide a more immediate solution, provided we can overcome major hurdles of high efficacy, low cost, and wide availability—all of which we address in this study."
In the research paper, Ma and colleagues describe how they combined two protein microbicides (b12 monoclonal antibody and cyanovirin-N) into a single "fusion" molecule and showed that this molecule is more active against HIV than either of its individual components. They designed synthetic DNA for producing this molecule and introduced this DNA into plant cells. After regenerating transgenic plants that produce the fusion molecule, they prepared the microbicide from a plant extract made by grinding the leaves.

"This study is nothing short of a breakthrough—not only does it yield a new drug to fight the spread of HIV, but it also shows us how we can produce it on the scale necessary to get it into the hands of those who need it most," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "Unlike their unregulated counterparts in the dietary supplement industry, these scientists are using the engines of nature to manufacture pharmaceuticals that must undergo extensive safety and efficacy testing long before the first gel or cream is administered."

GARRA SMARTI – new species of Arabian freshwater fish discovered in Oman

Emma Smart, a UAE-based PHD student and member of the Emirates Wildlife Society – WWF (EWS-WWF) team has discovered a new species of Arabian freshwater fish - Garra Smarti - residing in Southern Oman. To date there were only sixteen recorded species of primary freshwater fish throughout the entire Arabian Peninsula highlighting the magnitude of the discovery and underpinning the unique and high ecological value of Arabian wadi ecosystems.

“This is an extremely exciting discovery and I am thrilled that my project and research has lead to uncovering this unique species,” said Emma Smart, Conservation Officer, EWS-WWF. “The find proves how little we know about the region and how much potential wildlife remains to be discovered”.

“In order to conserve the natural ecosystem in the region it is vital that we continue to learn more about them and the species that reside in them. I plan to continue my research across the region which may lead to further discoveries in the future.”

Commenting on the discovery, Razan Khalifa Al Mubarak, Director of EWS-WWF stated: “The discovery highlights the need for further research in the region where extreme environmental conditions increase the risk of losing species prior to discovery.”

Smart is currently involved in EWS-WWF’s Wadi Wuraya project where she is studying the ecology of another species of related freshwater fish, Garra barremiae, endemic to the UAE Mountains. “So little has been studied regarding freshwater ecosystems of the UAE and Arabian Peninsula as a whole and I hope to learn a great deal about the ecology of these fascinating habitats and their wildlife,” concluded Smart.

Smart has had an active interest in freshwater fish conservation for over 10 years working voluntarily at Chester Zoo Aquarium in the UK where she became involved in the captive breeding of endangered species.

Having studied for a degree in Marine Biology at the University of Liverpool where she graduated with honours and won the Ellis award for Freshwater Biology, Smart’s subsequent post-graduate research at the University of St. Andrews involved conservation and environmental survey work on endangered freshwater fish species and their habitats in the arid regions of central Mexico.

Smart has spent two years working in Dubai where she was employed as Scientific Advisor and Production Manager on Arabia's first wildlife documentary series 'The Cycle of Life'. This involved planning filming and research expeditions and spending over 10 months travelling across Oman, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates. Throughout this time Smart carried out baseline surveys of wadi habitats and their freshwater fish populations and it was this initial research and a passion for Arabia that gave rise to establishing the 'Wadi Fish' project and subsequent discovery of Garra Smarti.

Scientists announce top 10 new species, issue SOS

Image by Erik Holsinger/ Name: Microbacterium hatanonis

State of Observed Species reports 18,516 species new to science in 2007

The International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University and an international committee of taxonomists – scientists responsible for species exploration and classification – today announce the top 10 new species described in 2008.

On the list are a pea-sized seahorse, caffeine-free coffee and bacteria that live in hairspray. The top 10 new species also include the very tiny (a snake just a slither longer than 4 inches or 104 millimeters), the very long (an insect from Malaysia with an overall length of 22.3 inches or 56.7 centimeters) the very old (a fossilized specimen of the oldest known live-bearing vertebrate) and the very twisted (a snail whose shell twists around four axes). Rounding out this year's list are a palm that flowers itself to death, a ghost slug from Wales and a deep blue damselfish.

The taxonomists also are issuing an SOS – State of Observed Species – report card on human knowledge of Earth's species. In it, they report that 18,516 species new to science were discovered and described in 2007. The SOS report was compiled by ASU's International Institute for Species Exploration in partnership with the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, International Plant Names Index, Zoological Record published by Thomson Reuters, and the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology.

Photos and other information on the top 10 and the SOS report are online at species.asu.edu.

Among this year's top 10 picks is a tiny seahorse – Hippocampus satomiae – with a standard length of 0.54 inches (13.8 millimeters) and an approximate height of 0.45 inches (11.5 millimeters). This pygmy species was found near Derawan Island off Kalimantan, Indonesia. The name – satomiae – is "in honour of Miss Satomi Onishi, the dive guide who collected the type specimens."

From the plant kingdom is a gigantic new species and genus of palm – Tahina spectablilis – with fewer than 100 individuals found only in a small area of northwestern Madagascar. This plant flowers itself to death, producing a huge, spectacular terminal inflorescence with countless flowers. After fruiting, the palm dies and collapses. Soon after the original publication of the species description, seeds were disseminated throughout the palm grower community, to raise money for its conservation by the local villagers. It has since become a highly prized ornamental.

Also on the top 10 list is caffeine-free coffee from Cameroon. Coffea charrieriana is the first record of a caffeine-free species from Central Africa. The plant is named for Professor André Charrier, "who managed coffee breeding research and collecting missions at IRD (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement) during the last 30 years of the 20th century."

And, in the category of "spray on new species" is an extremophile bacteria that was discovered in hairspray by Japanese scientists. The species – Microbacterium hatanonis – was named in honor of Kazunori Hatano, "for his contribution to the understanding of the genus Microbacterium."

Phobaeticus chani made the list as the world's longest insect with a body length of 14 inches (36.6 centimeters) and overall length of 22.3 inches (56.7 centimeters). The insect, which resembles a stick, was found in Borneo, Malaysia.

The Barbados Threadsnake – Leptotyphlops carlae – measuring 4.1 inches (104 millimeters) is believed to be the world's smallest snake. It was discovered in St. Joseph Parish, Barbados.

The ghost slug – Selenochlamys ysbryda – was a surprising find in the well-collected and densely populated area of Cardiff, Glamorgan, Wales.

A snail – Opisthostoma vermiculum – found in Malaysia, represents a unique morphological evolution, with a shell that twists around four axes. It is endemic to a unique limestone hill habitat in Malaysia.

The other two species on the top 10 list are fish – one found in deep-reef habitat off the coast of Ngemelis Island, Palau, and the other a fossilized specimen of the oldest known live-bearing vertebrate.

Chromis abyssus – a beautiful species of damselfish made it to the top 10 representing the first taxonomic act of 2008 and the first act registered in the newly launched taxonomic database Zoobank. As a result, in the first month following its original description, it was the most downloaded article in Zootaxa's history and was among the top 10 downloaded articles for 11 months in 2008. The discovery also highlights how little is known about deep-reef biodiversity.

Also on the top 10 list is a fossilized specimen – Materpiscis attenboroughi – the oldent known vertebrate to be viviparous (live bearing). The specimen, an extremely rare find from Western Australia, shows a mother fish giving birth approximately 380 million years ago. The holotype specimen has been nicknamed "Josie" by the discoverer, John Long, in honor of his mother.

"The international committee of taxon experts who made the selection of the top 10 from the thousands of species described in calendar year 2008 is helping draw attention to biodiversity, the field of taxonomy, and the importance of natural history museums and botanical gardens in a fun-filled way," says Quentin Wheeler, an entomologist and director of the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University.

"Charting the species of the world and their unique attributes are essential parts of understanding the history of life," says Wheeler. "It is in our own self-interest as we face the challenges of living on a rapidly changing planet."

According to Wheeler, a new generation of tools are coming online that will vastly accelerate the rate at which we are able to discover and describe species.

"Most people do not realize just how incomplete our knowledge of Earth's species is or the steady rate at which taxonomists are exploring that diversity. We are surrounded by such an exuberance of species diversity that we too often take it for granted," says Wheeler, who also is ASU vice president, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and a professor in the School of Life Sciences.

The annual top 10 new species announcement and issuance of the SOS report commemorate the anniversary of the birth of Carolus Linnaeus, who initiated the modern system of plant and animal names and classifications. The 300th anniversary of his birth on May 23 was celebrated worldwide in 2007. Last year marked the 250th anniversary of the beginning of animal naming.

There are an estimated 1.8 million species that have been described since Linnaeus initiated the modern systems for naming plants and animals in the 18th century. Scientists estimate there are between 2 million and 100 million species on Earth, though most set the number closer to 10 million.

The SOS report card summarizes the number of major pspecies.asu.edulant and animal species newly described for the most recent year of complete data. The majority of the 18,516 species described (named) in 2007 were invertebrate animals (75.6 percent), vascular plants (11.1 percent) and vertebrates (6.7 percent). This year's SOS report also includes data for prokaryotes (bacteria and Archaea) in addition to protists.

The State of Observed Species report and list of top 10 new species issued annually by ASU's International Institute for Species Exploration is part of its public awareness campaign to shine attention on biodiversity and the field of taxonomy. Last year's list and report are online at species.asu.edu.

An international committee of experts, chaired by Janine N. Caira of the University of Connecticut, selected the top 10 new species for this year's list. Nominations were invited through the species.asu.edu Web site and also generated by institute staff and committee members.

The Caira committee had complete freedom in making its choices and developing its own criteria, from unique attributes or surprising facts about the species to peculiar names, Wheeler notes.

How cities mine fish stocks

How cities mine fish stocks
The state of coral reef fish stocks often depends how close they are to markets.
Striking new research carried out in the Solomon Islands has drawn a direct line between the depletion of local fish stocks and their proximity to national or even local markets. Recognising the role which markets play in depleting fish stocks in the developing world offers scientists and managers a new weapon for evaluating and managing the fish stocks.

“Reef fishery stocks are under increasing threat from factors such as global warming, runoff and logging, and overfishing. With over 500 million people worldwide dependent on reef resources, it is crucial to understand what is causing declining stocks,” says Tom Brewer of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS) at James Cook University.

Most studies about the human impacts on coral reefs focus on the negative role of human population size, but local subsistence pressures, national urban markets and international demand for certain species combine to deplete fish stocks in ways that are not well understood. This novel study went a step further, accounting for the affect of local, provincial, and national markets on fish stocks.

“We found that markets can be as important as environmental conditions and local fishing pressure in determining the condition of fish stocks - and for some kinds of fish they are even more important. The closer you get to a major town or city, the more overfished are the most sought-after reef species such as gropers, parrotfish, snappers and emperors.”

“The bigger the market, the larger the area fisheries resources are drawn from - big markets cast a wider net. The network of markets allows cities to project their footprint even to remote areas with larger markets obtaining fish through their links to smaller markets,” Mr Brewer says.

“Because of this, proximity to even very small local markets can have surprisingly strong impact to the local area, particularly when they are connected to larger markets.”

The research by Mr Brewer and colleagues Josh Cinner, Alison Green and John Pandolfi finds that more attention needs to be paid to markets and their ability to mine fish to ensure the continued availability of fish for food and income and the ecological integrity of reefs.

In places such as the Solomon Islands, where more than 80 per cent of households in a population of more than half a million are involved in fishing to some extent, overfishing can have critical economic and social impacts.

“The best scenario is when reefs can provide communities with food and income without endangering the capacity of the reefs to be productive in the long term. Our research shows how this can be compromised by inadequately regulated markets,” Mr Brewer explains.

With relatively recent improvements of fishing equipment, refrigeration and increasing market access, reef resources in the Solomons have become depleted. This is a picture being repeated worldwide, the team warns.

“While our study focused on one particular group of islands and their internal economy, there’s not much doubt that similar circumstances play out on the global stage, too. When global markets for reef fish are inadequately regulated, as is sometimes the case in the aquarium and live reef food fish trades, local fish stocks in remote areas can become overexploited despite low local populations and local demand,” say s Dr Alison Green of The Nature Conservancy.

The team’s paper “Thresholds and multiple scale interaction of environment, resource use, and market proximity on reef fishery resources in the Solomon Islands” by Tom D Brewer, Joshua E Cinner (CoECRS and JCU), Alison Green (The Nature Conservancy) and John M Pandolfi (The University of Queensland) appears in the latest issue of the journal Biological Conservation.

WWF delivers on 100 million hectares of wetlands pledge

Photo: Omar Rocha

Declaration of the high Andes home to two of the three species of Andean flamingos marks WWF’s delivery of a “crazy, unrealistic pledge” to deliver 100 million hectares of new protected wetlands in a decade.

Fittingly, the 3000 to nearly 7000 metre high Lagunas Altoandinas y Punenas de Catamarca in north west Argentina is the highest area to be declared a wetland of international importance under the International Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar Convention).

With 1.2 million hectares of high altitude “puna” scattered with a variety of shallow, deep and brackish to hypersaline lakes, the Catamarca Lagunas complex is also the largest of the Andean wetlands of international importance, home to a variety of migratory birds, as well as a unique frog threatened Andean cats and chinchillas.

The Catamarca Lagunas complex is a highly vulnerable and fragile area, threatened by overgrazing, unregulated tourism, mining prospecting and flamingo egg collection.

For WWF International’s Wetlands Conservation Manager Denis Landenbergue, this latest Ramsar declaration is a fitting climax to a decade of seeking to preserve fragile areas crucial to functioning of landscapes and the animals and people of five continents.

The WWF and Ramsar Convention global vision – for 250 million hectares of new protected wetlands by 2010 – is still some way off, with parties to the convention deciding last year on 2015 as a target date for its achievement.

Ramsar Convention Secretary General Anada Tiega paid tribute to WWF’s achievement in playing a major role in securing an area equating to nearly three Germanys or about one and half times the size of Texas and its “instrumental support to the worldwide conservation of wetlands in general and the Ramsar objectives in particular”.

“I would also like to highlight the major leveraging effect these designations have generated for globally improving the management of wetlands,”said Tiega.

Around three quarters of the total area designated globally under the Ramsar Convention in the past decade has been directly supported by WWF’s International Fresh Water Programme.

“Promoting the designation of wetlands is an efficient way of attracting the attention, and the crucially important resources of the international donors community to support their improved management,” said Landenbergue.

“In the past 10 years, every single dollar invested by WWF has generated, on average, matching external funding up to 25-30 times larger in wetlands management and restoration.”

Spider monkeys control their diets in a similar way to humans

This is a curious "teenage" (sub-adult) male spider monkey. Credit: Annika FeltonBehavioural ecologists working in Bolivia have found that wild spider monkeys control their diets in a similar way to humans, contrary to what has been thought up to now. Rather than trying to maximize their daily energy intake, the monkeys tightly regulate their daily protein intake, so that it stays at the same level regardless of seasonal variation in the availability of different foods.

Tight regulation of daily protein intake is known to play a role in the development of obesity in humans, and the findings from this research suggest that the evolutionary origins of these eating patterns in humans may be far older than suspected. Until now it was thought humans' eating patterns originated in the Palaeolithic era (between 2.4 million and 10,000 years ago).

The research, published in the journal Behavioral Ecology, also provides valuable information about which trees are important for the monkeys' diet, which is relevant to conservation; in addition, it may help to improve the care of captive primates, which can be prone to obesity and related health problems due to their diet.

Dr Annika Felton, a Departmental Visitor at the Fenner School of Environment and Society, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, spent a year in the Bolivian rainforest (in Departmento Santa Cruz) familiarising the Peruvian spider monkeys (Ateles chamek) to her presence and then observing their feeding habits.

She followed 15 individual monkeys (7 adult males, 8 adult females), conducting continuous observations of the same animal from dawn to dusk, and following each of the monkeys for at least one whole day a month. During observations she recorded everything they did and ate and for how long. Where possible, she counted every fruit and leaf they ate, and collected samples of what they had eaten from the actual trees the monkeys had chosen. The samples were then dried and sent to the laboratory in Australia where they were analysed for their nutritional content. It is unusual for a study of feeding habits in wild primates to be conducted in this detailed way. It enabled Dr Felton and her colleagues to calculate how much an individual monkey had consumed and the nutrients involved; usually, other field studies are only able to calculate averages for a group of animals.

Dr Felton said: "We found that the pattern of nutrient intake by wild spider monkeys, which are primarily fruit eaters, was almost identical to humans, which are omnivores. What spider monkeys and humans have in common is that they tightly regulate their daily protein intake, i.e. they appear to aim for a target amount of protein each day, regardless of whether they only ate ripe fruit or mixed in other vegetable matter as well. Finding this result in spider monkeys was unexpected because, previously, ripe fruit specialists were thought to be 'energy maximisers'. In other words, they would aim to maximise their daily energy intake. Our findings show this is not the case.

"The consequence of tight protein regulation is the same for monkeys and humans: if the diet is poor in protein but rich in carbohydrates and fats (energy dense food) individuals will end up ingesting a great deal of energy in order to obtain their protein target, which can lead to weight gain. This 'protein leverage effect' is thought to play a significant role in the human obesity problem found in modern western societies. Our results suggest that an adjustment of the nutritional balance of diets as a means to manage human obesity might similarly be an option for mitigating obesity in captive primates.

"Our findings are also interesting from an evolutionary point of view. Similarity in the regulatory pattern of protein intake between distantly related species, such as humans and spider monkeys, possessing very different dietary habits, may indicate that the evolutionary origins of such regulatory patterns are quite old, potentially far older than the Palaeolithic era. If we are not dealing with convergent evolution here – in other words that spider monkeys and humans have evolved this trait independently – then this trait may have been shared by our common ancestor. Spider monkeys are New World primates that split from the Old World primates about 40 million years ago.

"Finally, our research shows that nutritionally-balanced food sources that are used extensively by a wild population may need special attention in terms of conservation planning, perhaps by regulating logging and selecting certain tree species for re-planting. The majority of the monkeys' nourishment was sourced from a species of fig tree, Ficus boliviana, that is currently being harvested for timber in Bolivia."

Dr Felton and her colleagues found that the monkeys ate a wide variety of fruit and vegetables – 105 different plants belonging to 63 species during the 12 months of observation. Figs were particularly popular. The monkeys rarely ate insects, which are rich in protein.

The spider monkeys did not specifically select either the most energy-rich or the most protein-rich foods that were available, and the daily amount of food they ate varied quite widely, averaging about 1 kg a day, but sometimes as much as 2.4 kg a day. However, they maintained their daily protein intake around 0.2 MJ (11 grams), whereas their intake of carbohydrates and fats varied between 0.7-6.2 MJ. The availability of sweet, ripe fruit was significantly related to the variation in their daily energy intake – the more there was, the more they ate.

"To maintain a stable intake of protein, spider monkeys consumed large amounts of carbohydrates and fats when protein content in the food was low, for instance when their diet consisted entirely of ripe fruit, and consumed far fewer carbohydrates and fats when feeding on items rich in protein," said Dr Felton.

She concluded: "What is perhaps most fascinating about our paper is not the answers we provide, but the questions that our findings raise. For example, why do these frugivores have the same pattern of nutritional intake as human omnivores? Is this due to convergent evolution or is it a remaining trait from a common ancestor?

"I am also pleased that our findings can be applied to the management of captive primates (where obesity is a problem), and possibly the management of spider monkey forest habitat.

"Also, importantly, we have shown that the combination of intensive data collection and the application of an innovative analytical framework can dramatically change our perceptions of the nutritional ecology of a species."

Climate change odds much worse than thought

Ronald Prinn, director of MIT's Center for Global Change Science, and his group have revised their model that shows how much hotter the Earth's climate will get in this century without substantial policy change. Photo: Donna CoveneyNew analysis shows warming could be double previous estimates.

The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the Earth's climate will get in this century shows that without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago - and could be even worse than that.

The study uses the MIT Integrated Global Systems Model, a detailed computer simulation of global economic activity and climate processes that has been developed and refined by the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change since the early 1990s. The new research involved 400 runs of the model with each run using slight variations in input parameters, selected so that each run has about an equal probability of being correct based on present observations and knowledge. Other research groups have estimated the probabilities of various outcomes, based on variations in the physical response of the climate system itself. But the MIT model is the only one that interactively includes detailed treatment of possible changes in human activities as well - such as the degree of economic growth, with its associated energy use, in different countries.

Study co-author Ronald Prinn, the co-director of the Joint Program and director of MIT's Center for Global Change Science, says that, regarding global warming, it is important "to base our opinions and policies on the peer-reviewed science," he says. And in the peer-reviewed literature, the MIT model, unlike any other, looks in great detail at the effects of economic activity coupled with the effects of atmospheric, oceanic and biological systems. "In that sense, our work is unique," he says.

The new projections, published this month in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate, indicate a median probability of surface warming of 5.2 degrees Celsius by 2100, with a 90% probability range of 3.5 to 7.4 degrees. This can be compared to a median projected increase in the 2003 study of just 2.4 degrees. The difference is caused by several factors rather than any single big change. Among these are improved economic modeling and newer economic data showing less chance of low emissions than had been projected in the earlier scenarios. Other changes include accounting for the past masking of underlying warming by the cooling induced by 20th century volcanoes, and for emissions of soot, which can add to the warming effect. In addition, measurements of deep ocean temperature rises, which enable estimates of how fast heat and carbon dioxide are removed from the atmosphere and transferred to the ocean depths, imply lower transfer rates than previously estimated.

Prinn says these and a variety of other changes based on new measurements and new analyses changed the odds on what could be expected in this century in the "no policy" scenarios - that is, where there are no policies in place that specifically induce reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Overall, the changes "unfortunately largely summed up all in the same direction," he says. "Overall, they stacked up so they caused more projected global warming."

While the outcomes in the "no policy" projections now look much worse than before, there is less change from previous work in the projected outcomes if strong policies are put in place now to drastically curb greenhouse gas emissions. Without action, "there is significantly more risk than we previously estimated," Prinn says. "This increases the urgency for significant policy action."

To illustrate the range of probabilities revealed by the 400 simulations, Prinn and the team produced a "roulette wheel" that reflects the latest relative odds of various levels of temperature rise. The wheel provides a very graphic representation of just how serious the potential climate impacts are.

"There's no way the world can or should take these risks," Prinn says. And the odds indicated by this modeling may actually understate the problem, because the model does not fully incorporate other positive feedbacks that can occur, for example, if increased temperatures caused a large-scale melting of permafrost in arctic regions and subsequent release of large quantities of methane, a very potent greenhouse gas. Including that feedback "is just going to make it worse," Prinn says.

The lead author of the paper describing the new projections is Andrei Sokolov, research scientist in the Joint Program. Other authors, besides Sokolov and Prinn, include Peter H. Stone, Chris E. Forest, Sergey Paltsev, Adam Schlosser, Stephanie Dutkiewicz, John Reilly, Marcus Sarofim, Chien Wang and Henry D. Jacoby, all of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, as well as Mort Webster of MIT's Engineering Systems Division and D. Kicklighter, B. Felzer and J. Melillo of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole.

Prinn stresses that the computer models are built to match the known conditions, processes and past history of the relevant human and natural systems, and the researchers are therefore dependent on the accuracy of this current knowledge. Beyond this, "we do the research, and let the results fall where they may," he says. Since there are so many uncertainties, especially with regard to what human beings will choose to do and how large the climate response will be, "we don't pretend we can do it accurately. Instead, we do these 400 runs and look at the spread of the odds."

Because vehicles last for years, and buildings and powerplants last for decades, it is essential to start making major changes through adoption of significant national and international policies as soon as possible, Prinn says. "The least-cost option to lower the risk is to start now and steadily transform the global energy system over the coming decades to low or zero greenhouse gas-emitting technologies."

This work was supported in part by grants from the Office of Science of the U.S. Dept. of Energy, and by the industrial and foundation sponsors of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

Energy research is the key

Photo: Donna Coveney

Nobel Laureate and U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu speaks at MIT

Steven Chu, the newly appointed secretary of the Department of Energy, said in a talk at MIT that a major increase in basic research is necessary in the United States in order to provide the new energy technologies needed to avert catastrophic climate change.

Chu gave the Compton Lecture, the Institute's most prestigious lectureship, to a packed audience in Huntington Hall (10-250) and a packed overflow room (26-100) where people watched on closed-circuit television.

In introducing Chu, MIT President Susan Hockfield described the problem of addressing global climate change as "the challenge of a lifetime," requiring a national effort "like the Apollo program, but raised by a few orders of magnitude." And in addressing that challenge, she said, Secretary Chu is now "the director of mission control."

Chu, who won the Nobel Prize for his work on cooling and trapping atoms with laser beams, is the first Nobel laureate ever to hold a U.S. cabinet position, and the first working scientist ever appointed as head of the Energy Department. Already, his department has been charged with implementing "the largest and most significant investment in science and technology since Apollo," Hockfield said.

Chu began his talk by describing various measures of the pace of recent climate change, emphasizing that the changes being seen now - including the rate of decline in Arctic sea ice, and the rate of rise of global sea level - are already either at, or even beyond, the most extreme projections made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations.

"We're skirting the outer limits of the range" of predicted changes, he said. "Things that were said a decade ago are coming true, but a little bit faster" than had been expected.

The projections now say there is a "significant probability" of an increase of 6 degrees Celsius or more by the end of this century, he said. The difference between today's average temperatures and those during the last ice age, when much of North America and Europe were buried under more than a mile of ice, was about 6 degrees Celsius, he said. "Six degrees means a profound difference in climate."

And it could get even worse: Carbon has been getting stored in the frozen tundra for millions of years, he said, and if temperatures rise to a certain point, that carbon will begin to be released to the atmosphere as the ground thaws. That process could quickly reach a point where the carbon emissions from the thawing permafrost could exceed all the emissions from human activity, he said. "Then it takes on a life of its own, it's out of our control. That's a tipping point you don't want to go near."

With that dire outlook, he said, "Is there a reason for hope? I think there is."

To explain that hope in the face of such bleak projections, he cited the example of Paul Ehrlich's 1968 book "The Population Bomb," which predicted that hundreds of millions of people would starve in the 1980s and 1990s because human population was growing too fast for food production to keep up. But technical advances - fourfold or better improvements in crop yields resulting from the "green revolution" - prevented the predicted food shortages from occurring.

Similarly, new technologies should be able to forestall the worst projections of climate change, he said, as long as they are developed soon enough.

To curb the emissions of greenhouse gases, he said, "energy efficiency and conservation are number one." He cited the example of how refrigerators have changed in the last few decades as a result of efficiency standards that were imposed, over the strenuous objections of the appliance industry. Even though people have been buying ever-larger refrigerators, their efficiency has improved by a factor of four, so their overall energy use has been cut in half - and so, contrary to the makers' claims, has their cost.

"They're cheaper, they use less energy and they got bigger," Chu said. As a result, the energy savings just from this one type of appliance already exceeds the total energy production from all renewable energy sources combined, he said.

"Can we do better? Yes, we can do much better," he said. For example, creating a set of energy standards for new buildings, comparable to the refrigerator energy standards that were imposed in the 1970s and 1980s, has the potential to cut the nation's greenhouse emissions by about a third. "This is truly low-hanging fruit," he said.

In other areas, such as more cost-efficient solar cells, he said, "what we're looking for is transformative technology." He said what is needed is a massive research effort, comparable in approach to the innovative research produced in the past by private research facilities like AT&T's famed Bell Laboratories, which spawned some of the 20th century's most important advances such as the transistor and helped usher in the modern computer age.

Similar large-scale focused research is now needed for the development of technologies that will have a direct, beneficial impact on the environment. "I am," he said by way of example, "very optimistic we'll get very good batteries in five years or so." Major efforts are also needed, he said, in biologically based energy, such as using microbes to produce fuel for transportation. "We need to use nature as inspiration, but go beyond nature."

By solving such technical challenges, he suggested, today's scientists and engineers could "win a Nobel prize, and save the world at the same time." Showing an image of the Earth taken by Apollo astronauts, he said, "It's our home. Let's take care of it."

The first step, he said, will be the massive work of evaluating the many proposals submitted for grants under the new funding for research that is part of the government's economic stimulus package. He suggested that students could take a leave of absence to work for the Energy Department in evaluating these proposals. "We need the best help we can get," he said.

World's top reef scientists flock to JCU

James Cook University will host the next International Coral Reef Symposium, the world conference on all matters relating to coral reefs.
Almost 3000 scientists attended the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS) in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, last year. The 12th conference will be held in 2012.

The director of the ARC Centre of Excellence, Professor Terry Hughes from James Cook University, has said that the conference would bring leading coral reef scientists and reef managers from all over the world to Australia.

“The International Coral Reef Symposium is the world's largest and premier forum for the dissemination and discussion of coral reef science, management and conservation,” he said.

“We expect the symposium in Australia to attract close to 3000 scientists, students, natural resource managers, policy makers, conservationists and others interested in sustaining these precious natural resources.”

The sponsoring organisation, the International Society for Reef Studies (ISRS), has announced in Florida that the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, headquartered at James Cook University, had been chosen to host the next conference.
ISRS president, Professor Rich Aronson said, “We are delighted that JCU will host the Symposium. The University’s intellectual standing and organisational
capabilities, combined with the opportunity for delegates to explore Australia’s coral reef resources, are unmatched."

“ISRS will be working closely with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies to put on a top-notch conference in 2012,” he said.

JCU vice chancellor Professor Sandra Harding said it would be a wonderful opportunity for Australia to play host to so many eminent scientists. “It is also a recognition of JCU’s standing internationally in the field of coral reef studies,” she said.

“Together with AIMS and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, we have some of the world’s leading reef scientists already working in this part of Queensland,” Professor Harding said. “The ICRS will be a most welcome addition.
Professor Hughes, who was awarded the prestigious Darwin Medal at the Fort Lauderdale meeting, said the symposium’s goal was a better understanding of coral reef ecosystems for improved management of the goods and services they provide to societies worldwide.

The principal objective of the Society is "to promote the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge and understanding of coral reefs, both living and fossil”.

Previous ICRS have been held in Fort Lauderdale (2008), Okinawa (2004), Bali (2000), Panama (1996), Guam (1992), Australia (1988), Tahiti (1985), the Philippines (1980), Miami (1977), Australia (1974), and the 1st ICRS in India (1969).

Coral climate crunch could displace millions

Photo:Cat Holloway / WWF-CANON

If the world does not take effective action on climate change, coral reefs will disappear from the Coral Triangle by the end of the century, the ability of the region’s coastal environments to feed people will decline by 80 per cent, and the livelihoods of around 100 million people will have been lost or severely impacted.

But effective global action on climate change and regional attention to problems of over-fishing and pollution would prevent catastrophe, according to a WWF-commissioned environmental, economic and social study of possible scenarios outlined to the World Oceans Conference here today.

The Coral Triangle and Climate Change: Ecosystems, People and Societies at Risk considers over 300 published scientific studies and includes the work of over 20 experts in fields such as biology, economics and fisheries science to present two different possible futures this century for the world’s richest marine environment -- the coasts, reefs and seas of the six countries of Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Timor Leste.

The Coral Triangle, just one per cent of the earth’s surface, includes 30 per cent of the world’s coral reefs, 76 per cent of its reef building coral species and more than 35 per cent of its coral reef fish species as well as vital spawning grounds for other economically important fish such as tuna. It sustains the lives of more than 100 million people.

“In one world scenario, we continue along our current climate trajectory and do little to protect coastal environments from the onslaught of local threats,” says Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of the University of Queensland, who led the study.

“In this world, people see the biological treasures of the Coral Triangle destroyed over the course of the century by rapid increases in ocean temperature, acidity and sea level, while the resilience of coastal environments also deteriorates under faltering coastal management. Poverty increases, food security plummets, economies suffer and coastal people migrate increasingly to urban areas.”

“Tens of millions of people are forced to move from rural and coastal settings due to loss of homes, food resources and income, putting pressure on regional cities and surrounding developed nations such as Australian and New Zealand.”

However the report also shows there is an opportunity to avoid a worst-case scenario in the region and instead build a resilient and robust Coral Triangle in which economic growth, food security and natural environments are maintained if significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are backed up by international investment in strengthening the region’s natural environments.

“This leads to climate change in the Coral Triangle which is challenging but manageable and which responds well to regional action to reduce local environmental stresses from overfishing, pollution, and declining coastal water quality and health,” Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said.

Even under the best case scenario however, communities will face loss of coral, sea level rises, increased storm activity, severe droughts and reduced food availability from coastal fisheries. A key difference, however, is that communities remain reasonably intact and more resilient in the face of these hardships.

“Effective management of coastal resources through a range of options including locally-managed regional networks of marine protected areas, protection of mangrove and seagrass beds and effective management of fisheries results in a slower decline in these resources,” the summary report said.

“The relationship between people and the sea in the Coral Triangle has come under extreme threat from rapid climate change and escalating local and regional environmental pressures,” said WWF International Director General James Leape.

“These pressures are increasing at such an alarming rate that urgent regional and international action must now be taken to avoid an ecological and human catastrophe.

“World leaders must support Coral Triangle countries in their efforts to protect their most vulnerable communities from rising sea levels and loss of food and livelihoods by helping them to strengthen management of their marine resources and by forging a strong agreement on greenhouse gas reductions at the UN Climate Conference at Copenhagen in December this year.”

Water’s leading role in tackling the food and energy crisis

Humankind’s rising demand for food, energy and water could lead to either conflict or cooperation. Two months ago, representatives from the water, agriculture and energy sectors convened at the 5th World Water Forum (Istanbul, Turkey) concluded that no country is immune from potential conflicts. This week nations gather in New York to agree upon further actions to tackle the challenges posed by the escalating demands on agriculture production and water resources during the United Nations – Commission on Sustainable Development 17th session.

Growing populations, changing lifestyles and consumption patters and migration are driving the demand for land and water ever higher. “We see that demand rises exponentially with the level of development,” says Loic Fauchon, President of the World Water Council. “The world will have 3 billion more mouths to feed by 2050. With the rising demand we see that the time of ‘Easy Water’ is over,” he continues.

Agricultural global food production has so far kept pace with population growth. Yet 900 million people remain undernourished, rural migrants are leaving farms for cities, and from 2000 to 2030 the demand for food crops in developing countries will increase 67 per cent, straining the already over-tapped water resources.

“Population growth coupled with changing lifestyles and consumption patterns means that in the next 40 years there will be a sharp increase in the demand for energy, food and water services,” says Olcay Unver, Coordinator for the UN World Water Assessment Programme. “The question is how to manage these linkages and maintain our natural resource base while also dealing with the effects of climate change. The leaders in government, private sector and civil society should understand how their actions impact our water and that they have to incorporate water in their decision-making processes”

Rising demands for energy will stress watersheds even further. Energy production uses important amounts of water for hydroelectricity production, for cooling thermal and nuclear power plants, and for biofuel production. Take California, where water demand rises by millions of liters every year. With a shrinking snowpack, tensions rise between upstream farmers who want water stored for summer irrigation and hydropower operators struggling to meet immediate demand for energy. Similar food vs. energy flashpoints emerge in hotspots ranging from Kirgisstan to Spain, Guatemala to India, and from Tansania to Australia.

Increasingly we are reaching the limits of what can be done with conventional water management approaches focused on optimising water use within one sector. “Without tackling key questions around the water, food and energy nexus, across sectors, there is a significant risk that some of the best technology transfers, most targeted lending programs, or both small and large scale infrastructure schemes may falter,” says Ger Bergkamp, Director General of the World Water Council. It is therefore essential that the nations gathered in New York this week agree to take into account hugely important role of water for improving agriculture production, combating desertification and manage droughts pro-actively.

Sustainable development in Africa, a focus of discussion at the CSD, is faced with almost all of these challenges which are aggravated by a combined lack of infrastructure, implementation capacity and investments.

To increase water-, food- and energy security, efficiency and sustainability, nations need to reduce their water footprint of energy and food production by focusing on water efficient technologies. We also need to reduce post-harvest losses and wastage of water throughout the supply chain by reducing food waste. Reducing the wastage of food and fibres can generate the double benefit of reducing water demand and diminishing the risk of highly volatile prices as the global food reserves could increase.

Scientists urge world leaders to respond cooperatively to Pacific Ocean threats

More than 400 leading scientists from nearly two dozen countries have signed a consensus statement on the major threats facing the Pacific Ocean. The threats identified as the most serious and pervasive include overfishing, pollution, habitat destruction and climate change.
“This is first time the scientific community has come together in a single voice to express urgency over the environmental crisis facing the Pacific Ocean,” said Meg Caldwell, executive director of the Center for Ocean Solutions.

“The scientific community urges governments to respond now, cooperatively, to these threats before their impacts accelerate beyond our ability to respond.”

The consensus statement, entitled “Ecosystems and People of the Pacific Ocean: Threats and Opportunities for Action,” emerged from a scientific workshop in Honoluluhosted by the Center for Ocean Solutions in collaboration with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Ocean Conservancy. The workshop was part of a broader effort by the three organisations to challenge countries throughout the Pacific region to improve the health of marine ecosystems by 2020.

In the consensus statement, the scientists warn that if left unchecked, the cumulative impacts of overfishing, pollution and habitat destruction, exacerbated by climate change, could have devastating consequences for coastal economies, food supplies, public health and political stability. These threats affect all members of the Pacific Ocean community, said Stephen Palumbi, director of Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station and one of the principal organisers of the consensus statement.

“Remarkable similarity exists between the major problems experienced in poor and rich countries alike, in populous nations and on small islands,” said Palumbi, a professor of biology and a senior fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment.

In addition to listing the serious environmental challenges facing the Pacific Ocean, the consensus statement also highlighted a set of potential solutions now being applied and tested at various scales throughout the region.

Examples include the establishment of marine-protected areas and the creation of economic incentives for activities that promote rather than degrade ecosystem health.

“These efforts have shown remarkable success at local scales in maintaining biological and human economic diversity, particularly when applied with adequate levels of regulation and enforcement in place,” said Caldwell, a senior lecturer at Stanford Law School and at the Woods Institute. “These solutions are indicators of hope within an ocean of distress.”

The consensus statement was largely based on a synthesis of more than 3,400 scientific papers on the threats and impacts to the Pacific prepared by the Center for Ocean Solutions. The Pacific Ocean Synthesis provides “a roadmap by which governments might chart a new course of policy for the Pacific region,” said Biliana Cicin-Sain, a professor of marine policy at the University of Delaware and coordinator of the Global Forum on Oceans, Coasts and Islands, a multi-stakeholder network committed to advancing ocean issues within international agreements.

“The impacts of misuse of our ocean resources on our economy, our environment and our community can no longer be ignored,” said Gov. Sinyo Harry Sarundajang of the Indonesian province of North Sulawesi, whose capital Manado is hosting the World Ocean Conference. The governor will convene the event with Caldwell on Wednesday.

“We must work together at theregional and transboundary levels to find solutions for improved management of our common ocean.”

Avoiding catastrophe for world's coral heartland

A region harbouring more than half the world’s coral reefs is at risk of “a major environmental and human catastrophe,” a report released by the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) at the World Ocean Conference in Manado, Indonesia, has warned.

The report, The Coral Triangle and Climate Change: Ecosystems, People and Societies at Risk,” was compiled from the research of 20 of the world’s leading coral reef scientists and proposes nine measures for action which it describes as urgent.

Its release coincides with the decision of the six Coral Triangle nations, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and the Solomon Islands, to move ahead with the world’s largest transboundary network of marine protected areas.

Professor Terry Hughes from James Cook University, director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS), says: "The Coral Triangle Initiative recognises that the status quo is not an option for the future. All countries are seeking to radically improve how coral reefs are managed, so that these critical natural resources can sustain future human development”.

The Coral Triangle covers one per cent of the earth's surface, yet contains the richest marine ecosystems on the planet. It is home to 53 per cent of the world's coral reefs, including over 80 per cent of all reef-building coral species and at least 3000 species of fish. It is the world epicentre for the biodiversity of not only corals and fish, but many other marine organisms.

At the same time it supports more than 100 million people working as fishers, foragers, in tourism and other marine-based industries. Its reefs and mangroves help cleanse water and protect coastal regions from storm damage.

“Coastal ecosystems throughout the Coral Triangle are being severely threatened by the activities of humans,” the WWF study says. “These include local threats such as destructive fishing, deteriorating water quality, over-exploitation of key marine species, and the direct devastation of coastal ecosystems through unsustainable coastal development.

Contributing author to the Report, Professor Garry Russ of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies says: "There is clear evidence that no-take areas, supported by local communities, are powerful tools for re-building depleted fish stocks. In the Philippines for example, community-based no-take areas support a lucrative tourism industry, and provide an alternative source of employment for fishers."

"Healthy ecosystems support vibrant fisheries, while fish in turn support the functioning of the entire ecosystem. Remove too many fish, especially those that control blooms of seaweed, and the entire ecosystem is more vulnerable to threats such as climate change,” says Professor Hughes today in Manado.

The nine urgent measures proposed by the WWF report include:

*Taking urgent steps to reverse the decline in health of coastal ecosystems

*Reviewing the adequacy of local and national conservation measures in the light of climate change

*Taking greater steps to engage coastal communities and stakeholders in protecting their reefs

*Building the capacity of reef managers to implement necessary changes in reef and fisheries management.

Another contributor to the WWF report, CoECRS researcher Dr Josh Cinner, adds: "Fisheries managers need a diverse toolbox to meet the new challenges of climate change. Managing how fishers fish, the gear they use, can make a huge difference to the health of the coral ecosystem.”

“For example, we found that spearguns remove far more ecologically important fish, such as herbivores that keep coral reefs clean of seaweed, than do nets. Regulating the type of gear used can make a big ecological difference, while still enabling local fishing communities to sustainably harvest their local resources."