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Fairfax joins media hysteria over post-Hazelwood “blackouts”
More than half Australian snake bite deaths since 2000 occurred at victim’s home
Almost three-quarters of the 35 victims were male, and 20% were bitten while trying to pick up or kill snake
More than half of the deaths caused by snake bites in Australia since 2000 have occurred in or around the victim’s home, a nationwide review has found.
The coronial-based retrospective study of fatalities from January 2000 to December 2016 found that, of the 35 deaths recorded by the National Coronial Information Service, 16 were a direct result of the bite.
How an obscure seed is helping to save the elephant
Maine lawmaker seeks discrimination protection for climate change deniers
State representative introduced a bill that would limit the state attorney general’s ability to investigate or prosecute people based on their political speech
Maine laws protect people from discrimination based on factors such as race, disabilities and sexual orientation, and a Republican lawmaker wants to add a person’s beliefs about climate change to that list.
State representative Larry Lockman has introduced a bill that would limit the state attorney general’s ability to investigate or prosecute people based on their political speech, including their views on climate change. It would also prohibit the state from making decisions on buying goods or services or awarding grants or contracts based on a person’s “climate change policy preferences”.
Continue reading...Back-to-back mass bleaching confirmed for GBR
Victoria will continue to have reliable power: Andrews
Paleo artist
Still enough power to get Victoria through: Tony Wood
After Hazelwood, what next for the Latrobe Valley?
Snowy hydro scheme will be left high and dry unless we look after the mountains
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s plan for a A$2 billion upgrade and expansion of the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme, announced last week, will be an impressive engineering achievement. Snowy Hydro 2.0 will increase the scheme’s capacity by 50%.
Meeting this extra capacity will depend entirely on the natural water supply available in the Snowy Mountains. But the current environmental conditions of these mountains, and the Australian Alps where they are located, are compromising both water delivery and water quality.
The only way to maintain water flow is to control the threats that are actively degrading the high country catchments. These include introduced animals, wetland loss, and climate change.
Restoration and managementThe remarkable Snowy Hydro Scheme was developed over 25 years from the 1940s. During this period the NSW Soil Conservation Service and later NSW National Parks effectively managed soil and restored areas damaged by grazing.
Conservation efforts focused on looking after topsoil, stabilising wetlands, and restoring vegetation after decades of grazing. This ensured good amounts of high-quality water for both hydro power and irrigation downstream.
More recent efforts have focused on the impacts of building the original Snowy scheme. This includes restoring areas cleared for roads and construction sites, and areas where rock and soil from blasting and cutting were dumped.
Before and after revegetation works in the 1970s, following the removal of cattle. Current ecological change is likely to be far more significant and could require new types of intervention.
Image courtesy of Roger Good
Threats to mountain catchments
The Australian Alps are the nation’s water towers. They provide water for growing food and hydroelectricity, but face several threats.
Across the Alps, despite well-informed and committed control programs, feral horses, pigs and deer are destroying wetlands, degrading streamside vegetation, and causing moisture-holding peat soils and stream channels to erode. This leads to more evaporation, more rapid runoff and erosion, less water flow, and lower water quality.
There is currently no effective response to this damage. We estimate that more than 35% of the high mountains’ wetlands have been affected, and the problem is getting worse.
The Alps are also recognised as extremely vulnerable to climate change. Climate models suggest that alpine areas that currently receive at least 60 days of snow cover will shrink by 18-60% by 2020.
Temperatures in the alps are already increasing by 0.4℃ per decade, an increase of 1.79℃ since records began. Climate change projections for the Australian Alps indicate the hottest summer days will be around 5°C warmer in 2100, minimum temperatures will rise by 3-6℃, and precipitation (rain and snow) will decrease by up to 20%, with less falling as snow. These changes are already putting pressure on iconic mountain ecosystems including the peatlands, snowgum woodlands and alpine ash forests.
The Australian Alps are also likely to experience more extreme events such as heatwaves, storms, fires and severe frosts. All of these affect high mountain ecosystems, making the environment more vulnerable to disturbances such as more fires, weeds and disease outbreaks.
For example, the root-rot fungus, Phytophora cambivora, recently appeared in the alps. The fungus killed large areas of shrubs following unusually warm springtime soil temperatures.
New weeds are an additional concern for the alps as these may compromise the existing plant communities and their ability to deliver services such as water. Alpine peat soils, which build up over thousands of years, can also burn in drought.
Reliable water depends on functioning ecosystemsA stable water supply from the Alps is crucial for energy and food production. This relies on intact vegetation.
Back in the 1950s, it became clear to the researchers at the Soil Conservation Service that hard-hooved animals, in this case domestic cattle, were severely damaging the alpine catchments.
The success of the original Snowy scheme depended on removing cattle from alpine areas, controlling soil erosion that resulted from prior grazing and hydro works, and carrying out extensive revegetation works across the whole of the nearby mountain ranges.
However, land managers to this day are still controlling a legacy of disturbance and weed invasions from both the Snowy scheme itself and years of previous grazing. Snowy 2.0 must consider these lessons from the past, and work to improve mountain catchments.
Alpine plants and animals often live close to their environmental tolerances, meaning they are not necessarily able to cope with change. For some species, climate change is likely to exceed these thresholds. Vegetation communities will change as current populations decline and colonisers from different species move in to occupy the gaps, including invasive species.
Feral horses make it even more difficult for native species to respond to a changing climate, by exacerbating environmental degradation and impacts on water.
Part of the solution is restoring and re-vegetating degraded high country landscapes. For example, restoring snowgum communities, which were severely affected by burning and grazing, may lead to increases in the amount of water trapped as drifting fog.
But climate change will demand new research and management partnerships to find species that will survive well into the future and to develop adaptation pathways to respond to uncertain conditions.
This will be a new and different world. We are currently ill-prepared to maintain high-quality water yield in the future, to predict the impacts of climate change, or to effectively protect our alps for future generations.
But we are confident these questions can be answered with adequate investment in the environmental infrastructure needed to underpin the engineering. We estimate that between A$5 million and A$7 million per year is needed to research and develop new management structures. You could see this investment as royalties returned to the system that provides the water and power.
Turnbull’s plan may deliver more power, but only if the environment is carefully managed. Otherwise Snowy Hydro 2.0 may be left high and dry.
Adrienne Nicotra receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the NCCARF. She is a member of the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) Science Advisory Council and the Ecological Society of Australia.
David Freudenberger receives funding from Whitehaven Coal to conduct mine site rehabilitation research. He is a board member of the Society for Ecological Restoration Australasia, a member of the Australian Ecological Society and a member of the ACT Natural Resource Management Advisory Council
Geoff Cary currently receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Bushfire and Naturals Hazard CRC, and has recently received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australian Greenhouse Office/Department of Climate Change Greenhouse Action in Regional Australia funding schemes, NSW Department of Environment and Conservation, and the Bushfire CRC. He is affiliated with the International Association of Wildland Fire.
Geoffrey Hope has received funding from the Office of Environment and Heritage, NSW Government and the ACT Government for research on mountain wetland ecology. He is affiliated with the Australian Institute of Alpine Studies and is a member of the Kosciuscko National Park Wild Horse Management Plan Review Independent Technical Reference Group. . .
Sam Banks receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Susanna Venn receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Graeme Worboys does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.
Major shake-up suggests dinosaurs may have 'UK origin'
Arctic ice falls to record winter low after polar 'heatwaves'
Extent of ice over North pole has fallen to a new wintertime low, for the third year in a row, as climate change drives freakish weather
The extent of Arctic ice has fallen to a new wintertime low, as climate change drives freakishly high temperatures in the polar regions.
The ice cap grows during the winter months and usually reaches its maximum in early March. But the 2017 maximum was 14.4m sq km, lower than any year in the 38-year satellite record, according to researchers at the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) and Nasa.
Continue reading...UK schoolboy corrects Nasa data error
Thames Water hit with record £20m fine for huge sewage leaks
Massive fine reflects change in sentencing as previously low penalties failed to deter water firms from polluting England’s rivers and beaches
Thames Water has been hit with a record fine of £20.3m after huge leaks of untreated sewage into the Thames and its tributaries and on to land, including the popular Thames path. The prolonged leaks led to serious impacts on residents, farmers, and wildlife, killing birds and fish.
The fine imposed on Wednesday was for numerous offences in 2013 and 2014 at sewage treatment works at Aylesbury, Didcot, Henley and Little Marlow, and a large sewage pumping station at Littlemore.
Continue reading...Honduras, where defending nature is a deadly business
In the first in a series, Yale Environment 360 reports from Honduras where Berta Cáceres fought to protect native lands and paid for it with her life – one of hundreds of victims in this disturbing global trend
They came for her late one evening last March, as Berta Cáceres prepared for bed. A heavy boot broke the back door of the safe house she had just moved into. Her colleague and family friend, Gustavo Castro, heard her shout, “Who’s there?” Then came a series of shots. He survived. But the most famous and fearless social and environmental activist in Honduras died instantly. She was 44 years old. It was a cold-blooded political assassination.
Berta Cáceres knew she was likely to be killed. Everybody knew. She had told her daughter Laura to prepare for life without her. The citation for her prestigious Goldman Environmental prize, awarded in the US less than a year before, noted the continued death threats, before adding: “Her murder would not surprise her colleagues, who keep a eulogy – but hope to never have to use it.”
Continue reading...Eco homes – in pictures
From air- and ground-source heat pumps to desalinating seawater, these properties flaunt their environmentally friendly credentials
Continue reading...Global warming is increasing rainfall rates | John Abraham
A new study looks at the complex relationship between global warming and increased precipitation
The world is warming because humans are emitting heat-trapping greenhouse gases. We know this for certain; the science on this question is settled. Humans emit greenhouse gases, those gases should warm the planet, and we know the planet is warming. All of those statements are settled science.
Okay so what? Well, we would like to know what the implications are. Should we do something about it or not? How should we respond? How fast will changes occur? What are the costs of action compared to inaction? These are all areas of active research.
Continue reading...Princess Anne: GM crops 'have real benefits'
Plans for coal-fired power plants drop by almost half in 2016
'I take portraits of gods': the photography of Nobuyuki Kobayashi – in pictures
With his gorgeous and patiently realised black and white images, Kobayashi searches for a spiritual dimension in the calm beauty of nature
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