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2016 Woodland Trust tree of the year shortlist - in pictures
The original Bramley apple tree and the inspiration for the mulberry bush nursery rhyme are among the 29 trees in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that have been shortlisted by the Woodland Trust for its annual tree of the year competition.
Experts whittled down nearly 200 public nominations based on the tree’s story, how they would use the £1,000 care grant and visual appeal of the tree. Members of the public can vote for their favourite tree by country before 10 October with the winners going forward to the European tree of the year competition in early 2017.
Continue reading...An American tragedy: why are millions of trees dying across the country?
A quiet crisis playing out in US forests as huge numbers of trees succumb to drought, disease, insects and wildfire – much of it driven by climate change
JB Friday hacked at a rain-sodden tree with a small axe, splitting open a part of the trunk. The wood was riven with dark stripes, signs of a mysterious disease that has ravaged the US’s only rainforests – and just one of the plagues that are devastating American forests across the west.
Friday, a forest ecologist at the University of Hawaii, started getting calls from concerned landowners in Puna, which is on the eastern tip of Hawaii’s big island, in 2010. Their seemingly ubiquitous ohi’a trees were dying at an astonishing rate. The leaves would turn yellow, then brown, over just a few weeks – a startling change for an evergreen tree.
Continue reading...British conservationist takes to the skies for 4,500-mile migration with swans
Sacha Dench will follow Bewick’s swans on their annual journey from the Russian Arctic in a motorised paraglider in a bid to shed light on their decline
A British conservationist took to the skies in a motorised paraglider on Monday morning for the start of a daring 4,500-mile expedition across the Russian Arctic that will attempt to shed light on the decline of the UK’s smallest, shyest species of swan.
For the next 10 weeks, Sacha Dench, 41, will act as a “human swan” and follow the route of thousands of Bewick’s swans on their annual migration. From the tundra of Siberia she will head west and south through 11 countries including Finland, Poland and Germany to the swans’ wintering grounds in Britain and other parts of western Europe.
Continue reading...New study undercuts favorite climate myth ‘more CO2 is good for plants’ | Dana Nuccitelli
A 16-year study found that we’re at a point where more CO2 won’t keep increasing plant production, but higher temperatures will decrease it
A new study by scientists at Stanford University, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, tested whether hotter temperatures and higher carbon dioxide levels that we’ll see post-2050 will benefit the kinds of plants that live in California grasslands. They found that carbon dioxide at higher levels than today (400 ppm) did not significantly change plant growth, while higher temperatures had a negative effect.
Continue reading...Expedition to study effect of microplastics on Atlantic's smallest creatures
Scientists will sail from the UK to the Falkland Islands to study scale of microplastic pollution on tiny zooplankton at the bottom of the food chain
Scientists will set off from the east coast of England this week to journey thousands of miles across the Atlantic to discover how bad the problem of the oceans’ tiniest creatures eating microplastics has become.
Zooplankton are essential for the marine food web right up to the fish we eat, and are known to be more likely to die and be worse at reproduction after eating the minuscule pieces of plastic.
Owners of Chinese ship that ran aground on Great Barrier Reef agree to pay $39.3m
Government was seeking at least $120m, while Shenzhen Energy Transport Co Ltd argued reef was self-healing
The federal government has reached a $39.3m out-of-court settlement with the owners of a Chinese coal carrier that ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef in 2010.
Shenzhen Energy Transport Co Ltd and its insurer had, for six years, refused to accept responsibility for restitution after the 225m long, fully laden Shen Neng 1 ran aground 100km east of Rockhampton at Douglas Shoal.
Continue reading...Let mangroves recover to protect coasts
A tarn for all – on foot, by bicycle and by mobility scooter
Tarn Hows, Lake District One of the most popular destinations in the north-west, the tarn is made more accessible by free four-wheeled Tramper buggies available from the National Trust
Bunches of crimson berries hang heavy from the rowan trees, like knuckledusters punching colour along Tarn Hows’s famously photogenic shores. I remark on this to a couple piloting battery-powered mobility scooters past the bench where I’m seated. Why haven’t birds snaffled them? “Not quite ripe enough maybe,” ventures the woman. “But flocks of fieldfares will soon arrive from Scandinavia and scoff them up.” On cue several fieldfare look-a-likes – mistle thrushes with black-speckled mustard-coloured breasts – swoop by, though they ignore the berries.
The scooter drivers disappear along the crushed stone path that guides walkers and cyclists for more than a mile and a half round the tarn. Created from three smaller tarns and landscaped in the 19th century by the industrialist James Garth Marshall, it was later sold to Beatrix Potter, who bequeathed the site with its expanding plantations of spruce, larch and pine in 1930 to the National Trust.
Continue reading...Could jet fuel grow on trees? ANU finds promise in Australian gum-leaf
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The silencing of the seas: how our oceans are going quiet
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Despite appearances, the oceans are far from silent places. If you dunk your head underwater you’ll hear a cacophony of sounds from wildlife great and small, crashing waves, and even rain. And it’s louder still for creatures attuned to these sounds.
However, humans are changing these ocean soundscapes. Our recent research showed that changes caused by people, from ocean acidification to pollution, are silencing the seas' natural noises. (We’re also filling the oceans with human noise).
This is bad news for the species that depend on these noises to find their way.
Ocean soundscapesAll over the world you can hear a lively crackling sound made by thousands of snapping shrimp that live along coastlines.
These common shrimp, often referred to as pistol shrimp, have a large claw that they can close with such force that a cavitation bubble is formed. As this bubble implodes on itself a loud snap is created – like a pistol shot – which can be heard over long distances.
In fact, snapping shrimp are the loudest marine invertebrates, and second only to the noisest marine animals, which are sperm whales! Snapping shrimp are found all over the world, including in coral reefs, kelp forests, seagrass beds and mangroves.
Other types of animals create ocean noise too. Urchins and parrotfish make clearly audible chomping sounds as they scrape algae off rocks. Many fish are frequent and loud talkers and make an array of sounds such as chirps, burps, whistles, knocks and so on. They use these to mark out their territory, during fights and to locate mates.
These biological sounds, together with those from rain, crashing waves and seismic activities, form the so-called underwater soundscape.
Learn more about marine soundscapes watching this video.Sounds that are emitted from temperate and tropical reefs are loud and quite constant. As such these sounds form a reliable source of information for animals, particularly for navigation.
Most animals in the sea let go of their fertilised eggs without providing any parental care. As these eggs hatch, small babies (larvae) are dispersed by ocean currents. Growing up away from coastal areas provides a safer place with fewer predators.
However, after growing for a few weeks or months in the open ocean, it is time for these young animals to return to the coast to find a home. How do they find their way in the vast and uniform open ocean? Sounds and odours from coastal habitats are key cues that allow marine animals to find their new homes and replenish adult populations.
Going quietHumans are increasingly dominating the physical and chemical environment. We are altering the carbon cycle through the burning of fossil fuels and the nitrogen cycle by extracting vast amounts of nitrogen for food production and releasing it as waste. Large amounts of this carbon and nitrogen liberation end up in the ocean.
About one-third of the carbon dioxide that humans emit into the atmosphere dissolves in the ocean, leading to increased seawater acidity (or ocean acidification). This is an obvious problem for animals that produce a calcium carbonate shell or skeleton (such as corals, some plankton, and snails). Remarkably, ocean acidification also alters the behaviour of many animals by messing up their brain functioning.
Earlier studies (see also here) have shown that ocean acidification can change the response of fish larvae to settlement habitat sounds by deterring them rather than attracting them.
Learn more about the effects of ocean acidification on fish behaviour watching this animation video.Two of our recent studies (see also here) showed that ocean acidification not only affects sound reception, but also the sounds that ocean ecosystems produce. If we don’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions, rocky reefs could be much quieter in 2100 than now. And snapping shrimps are the reason.
Coastal discharge of nutrients from sewage plants and catchment runoff also degrades kelp forests and seagrass beds. These coasts are more silent than their healthy counterparts.
In many parts of the world, kelp forests, seagrass beds and coral reefs have been replaced by carpets of turf-forming or mat-forming algae. These weedy types of algae have much lower diversity of species and provide less shelter and feeding opportunities for shrimps and other noisy animals.
Degraded habitat means fewer animals, which means less noise. For larvae that use sound as a navigational cue, this means that fewer larvae will be able to successfully locate their home. And fewer returning larvae means less replenishment of fish stocks.
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Climate change and ocean acidification act at global scales and are difficult to stop in the short term. In contrast, nutrient pollution is a local stressor, which makes it more manageable.
Various options exist for local communities to reduce nutrient pollution of coastal areas. These include improved sewage treatment, restoration of coastal vegetation (such as mangroves) and swamps that extract sediment and nutrients from stormwater runoff, and decreasing the use of rivers as outlets for polluted waters.
Reducing the impacts of nutrient pollution on coastal ecosystems makes these systems more robust and provides them with increased resilience to cope with the impacts of ocean warming and acidification.
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Ivan Nagelkerken receives funding from The Australian Research Council.
Sean Connell receives funding from The Australian Research Council.
Tullio Rossi owns the YouTube channel where the linked videos are hosted.