Lamu Port Project Impacts Kenyan Fishermen's Livelihoods - The Maritime Executive

Lamu Port Project Impacts Kenyan Fishermen's Livelihoods  The Maritime Executive

[By Janet Njunge] At a police station on Lamu Island in Kenya, 47-year-old Somo Mohamed Somo is n...

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Newly Discovered Corals In Mangrove Lagoons Can Withstand Extremes - Forbes

Newly Discovered Corals In Mangrove Lagoons Can Withstand Extremes  Forbes

Researchers have found corals near the Great Barrier Reef that can handle extreme heat, acidic waters, and low oxygen. What does this mean for the future of ...

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Cape working to resolve FDEP issues - Pine Island Eagle

Cape working to resolve FDEP issues  Pine Island Eagle

The city of Cape Coral is working to remedy a situation that resulted in a Florida Department of Environmental Protection citation for poor...

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The redfish bite continues to be good for Tampa Bay area anglers. - The Ledger

The redfish bite continues to be good for Tampa Bay area anglers.  The Ledger

WHAT'S BITING: REDFISHThe redfish bite continues to be good for Tampa Bay area anglers as well as locations elsewhere. Strike Zones: 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, ...

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Flood decreases salinity, soil fertility to go up in Krishna Estuary - The Hindu

Flood decreases salinity, soil fertility to go up in Krishna Estuary  The Hindu

A record quantity of inflow of floodwater into the Krishna Wildlife Sanctuary (KWS) has brought major changes in the ecologically fragile mangrove system near ...

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Uran civic body dumps waste in mangroves, allege green activists - Hindustan Times

Uran civic body dumps waste in mangroves, allege green activists  Hindustan Times

A five-hectare protected forest near Hanuman Koliwada in Uran has been converted into a dumping ground with large amounts of municipal waste, ...

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Mangroves, Climate Change And Hurricanes - NPR Illinois | 91.9 UIS

Mangroves, Climate Change And Hurricanes  NPR Illinois | 91.9 UIS

DAVID GREENE, HOST: Florida is preparing for the possibility of a major hurricane in coming days. And scientists are saying that mangroves might help lessen ...

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Extreme mangrove corals found on the Great Barrier Reef - Science Daily

Extreme mangrove corals found on the Great Barrier Reef  Science Daily

The first documented discovery of 'extreme corals' in mangrove lagoons around Australia's Great Barrier Reef is yielding important information about how corals ...

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Fishing Report: Amazing kingfish catch continues at Flagler Pier - Daytona Beach News-Journal

Fishing Report: Amazing kingfish catch continues at Flagler Pier  Daytona Beach News-Journal

Fishermen report 11 kings nabbed in one day last week and brings record yearly total to 112. Redfish, snook and flounder being taken from inlet and river ...

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Abu Dhabi's Anantara Eastern Mangroves has launched a Yas Family Adventure package - Time Out Dubai

Abu Dhabi's Anantara Eastern Mangroves has launched a Yas Family Adventure package  Time Out Dubai

The deal includes passes for two theme parks for a family of four | Hotels, Attractions, The Yas Family Adventure package at Eastern Mangroves Abu Dhabi Hotel ...

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No safeguards for mangroves in Kerala - Times of India

No safeguards for mangroves in Kerala  Times of India

KOCHI: Four years ago, the state government tried in vain to protect mangrove vegetation in the state under private ownership by notifying them under .

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Trump Administration Opens Door To Dropping Florida’s Key Deer From Endangered List - WBHM

Trump Administration Opens Door To Dropping Florida’s Key Deer From Endangered List  WBHM

U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials recommended that Key deer be "delisted due to recovery," but advocates say the Key deer population was hit hard by Hurricane Ir.

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Eureka prizes for Indigenous education programs and blue carbon research in Australia's 'science Oscars' - ABC News

Eureka prizes for Indigenous education programs and blue carbon research in Australia's 'science Oscars'  ABC News

Indigenous education, citizen frog surveys, research into wetland carbon storage and cancer-killing immune cells are among the winners at tonight's "Oscars" of ...

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New Elevation Measure Shows Climate Change Could Quickly Swamp the Mekong Delta - Scientific American

New Elevation Measure Shows Climate Change Could Quickly Swamp the Mekong Delta  Scientific American

Scientific American is the essential guide to the most awe-inspiring advances in science and technology, explaining how they change our understanding of the ...

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Bombay High Court orders razing of buildings on mangrove - DNA India

Bombay High Court orders razing of buildings on mangrove  DNA India

The Bombay HC on Tuesday ordered that all constructions which have come up on land which used to be originally mangroves in Mumbra-Diva area, be pulled ...

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Fighting rising sea levels: 5 approaches from around the world - TODAYonline

Fighting rising sea levels: 5 approaches from around the world  TODAYonline

SINGAPORE — Singapore is not alone in assessing measures to mitigate the threat of rising sea levels.

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Indonesia proposes joint commitment on mangrove restoration - World - Jakarta Post

Indonesia proposes joint commitment on mangrove restoration - World  Jakarta Post

Indonesia has invited five countries that have mangrove forests — Australia, Kenya, Mexico, Jamaica and Ghana — to make a joint commitment to restoring and ...

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Evidence for past high-level sea rise

An international team of scientists, studying evidence preserved in speleothems in a coastal cave, illustrate that more than three million years ago -- a time in which the Earth was two to three degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial era -- sea level was as much as 16 meters higher than the present day. Their findings represent significant implications for understanding and predicting the pace of current-day sea level rise amid a warming climate.

The scientists, including Professor Yemane Asmerom and Sr. Research Scientist Victor Polyak from The University of New Mexico, the University of South Florida, Universitat de les Illes Balears and Columbia University, published their findings in today's edition of the journal Nature. The analysis of deposits from Artà Cave on the island of Mallorca in the western Mediterranean Sea produced sea levels that serve as a target for future studies of ice sheet stability, ice sheet model calibrations and projections of future sea level rise, the scientists said.

Sea level rises as a result of melting ice sheets, such as those that cover Greenland and Antarctica. However, how much and how fast sea level will rise during warming is a question scientists have worked to answer. Reconstructing ice sheet and sea-level changes during past periods when climate was naturally warmer than today, provides an Earth's scale laboratory experiment to study this question according to USF Ph.D. student Oana Dumitru, the lead author, who did much of her dating work at UNM under the guidance of Asmerom and Polyak.

"Constraining models for sea level rise due to increased warming critically depends on actual measurements of past sea level," said Polyak. "This study provides very robust measurements of sea level heights during the Pliocene."

"We can use knowledge gained from past warm periods to tune ice sheet models that are then used to predict future ice sheet response to current global warming," said USF Department of Geosciences Professor Bogdan Onac.

The project focused on cave deposits known as phreatic overgrowths on speleothems. The deposits form in coastal caves at the interface between brackish water and cave air each time the ancient caves were flooded by rising sea levels. In Artà Cave, which is located within 100 meters of the coast, the water table is -- and was in the past -- coincident with sea level, says Professor Joan J. Fornós of Universitat de les Illes Balears.

The scientists discovered, analyzed, and interpreted six of the geologic formations found at elevations of 22.5 to 32 meters above present sea level. Careful sampling and laboratory analyses of 70 samples resulted in ages ranging from 4.4 to 3.3 million years old BP (Before Present), indicating that the cave deposits formed during the Pliocene epoch. The ages were determined using uranium-lead radiometric dating in UNM's Radiogenic Isotope Laboratory.

"This was a unique convergence between an ideally-suited natural setting worked out by the team of cave scientists and the technical developments we have achieved over the years in our lab at The University of New Mexico," said Asmerom. "Judicious investments in instrumentation and techniques result in these kinds of high-impact dividends."

"Sea level changes at Artà Cave can be caused by the melting and growing of ice sheets or by uplift or subsidence of the island itself," said Columbia University Assistant Professor Jacky Austermann, a member of the research team. She used numerical and statistical models to carefully analyze how much uplift or subsidence might have happened since the Pliocene and subtracted this from the elevation of the formations they investigated.

One key interval of particular interest during the Pliocene is the mid Piacenzian Warm Period -- some 3.264 to 3.025 million years ago -- when temperatures were 2 to 3º Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels. "The interval also marks the last time the Earth's atmospheric CO2 was as high as today, providing important clues about what the future holds in the face of current anthropogenic warming," Onac says.

This study found that during this period, global mean sea level was as high as 16.2 meters (with an uncertainty range of 5.6 to 19.2 meters) above present. This means that even if atmospheric CO2 stabilizes around current levels, the global mean sea level would still likely rise at least that high, if not higher, the scientists concluded. In fact, it is likely to rise higher because of the increase in the volume of the oceans due to rising temperature.

"Considering the present-day melt patterns, this extent of sea level rise would most likely be caused by a collapse of both Greenland and the West Antarctic ice sheets," Dumitru said.

The authors also measured sea level at 23.5 meters higher than present about four million years ago during the Pliocene Climatic Optimum, when global mean temperatures were up to 4°C higher than pre-industrial levels. "This is a possible scenario, if active and aggressive reduction in green house gases into the atmosphere is not undertaken," Asmerom said.

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Oxygen depletion in ancient oceans caused major mass extinction

Late in the prehistoric Silurian Period, around 420 million years ago, a devastating mass extinction event wiped 23 percent of all marine animals from the face of the planet.

For years, scientists struggled to connect a mechanism to this mass extinction, one of the 10 most dramatic ever recorded in Earth's history. Now, researchers from Florida State University have confirmed that this event, referred to by scientists as the Lau/Kozlowskii extinction, was triggered by an all-too-familiar culprit: rapid and widespread depletion of oxygen in the global oceans.

Their study, published today in the journal Geology, resolves a longstanding paleoclimate mystery, and raises urgent concerns about the ruinous fate that could befall our modern oceans if well-established trends of deoxygenation persist and accelerate.

Unlike other famous mass extinctions that can be tidily linked to discrete, apocalyptic calamities like meteor impacts or volcanic eruptions, there was no known, spectacularly destructive event responsible for the Lau/Kozlowskii extinction.

"This makes it one of the few extinction events that is comparable to the large-scale declines in biodiversity currently happening today, and a valuable window into future climate scenarios," said study co-author Seth Young, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science.

Scientists have long been aware of the Lau/Kozlowskii extinction, as well as a related disruption in Earth's carbon cycle during which the burial of enormous amounts of organic matter caused significant climate and environmental changes. But the link and timing between these two associated events -- the extinction preceded the carbon cycle disruption by more than a hundred thousand years -- remained stubbornly opaque.

"It's never been clearly understood how this timing of events could be linked to a climate perturbation, or whether there was direct evidence linking widespread low-oxygen conditions to the extinction," said FSU doctoral student Chelsie Bowman, who led the study.

To crack this difficult case, the team employed a pioneering research strategy.

Using advanced geochemical methods including thallium isotope, manganese concentration, and sulfur isotope measurements from important sites in Latvia and Sweden, the FSU scientists were able to reconstruct a timeline of ocean deoxygenation with relation to the Lau/Kozlowskii extinction and subsequent changes to the global carbon cycle.

The team's new and surprising findings confirmed their original hypothesis that the extinction record might be driven by a decline of ocean oxygenation. Their multiproxy measurements established a clear connection between the steady creep of deoxygenated waters and the step-wise nature of the extinction event -- its start in communities of deep-water organisms and eventual spread to shallow-water organisms.

Their investigations also revealed that the extinction was likely driven in part by the proliferation of sulfidic ocean conditions.

"For the first time, this research provides a mechanism to drive the observed step-wise extinction event, which first coincided with ocean deoxygenation and was followed by more severe and toxic ocean conditions with sulfide in the water column," Bowman said.

With the oxygen-starved oceans of the Lau/Kozlowskii extinction serving as an unnerving precursor to the increasingly deoxygenated waters observed around the world today, study co-author Jeremy Owens, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science, said that there are still important lessons to be learned from ecological crises of the distant past.

"This work provides another line of evidence that initial deoxygenation in ancient oceans coincides with the start of extinction events," he said. "This is important as our observations of the modern ocean suggest there is significant widespread deoxygenation which may cause greater stresses on organisms that require oxygen, and may be the initial steps towards another marine mass extinction."

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Early start of 20th century Arctic sea ice decline

Arctic sea-ice has decreased rapidly during the last decades in concert with substantial global surface warming. Both have happened much faster than predicted by climate models, and observed Arctic warming is much stronger than the global average. Projections suggest that Arctic summer sea-ice may virtually disappear within the course of the next fifty or even thirty years.

Although Arctic-wide warming during the 20th century is well documented, little is known about the response of sea-ice to abrupt warming and it is unclear when the sea-ice decline started. Data coverage in this region is highly restricted, with observation-based satellite data only available since the 1970s, too short to accurately calibrate climate models.

Limited observational records therefore hamper the assessment of long-term changes in sea-ice, leading to large uncertainties in predictions of its future evolution under global warming. In the absence of instrumental data, natural archives of environmental changes, so-called proxies can be used to extend climate data further back in time.

In this study published in Geology, Steffen Hetzinger and colleagues present the first annually resolved 200-year record of past sea-ice variability from High Arctic Svalbard (79.9°N) using a newly developed in situ proxy from long-lived encrusting coralline algae. Annual growth and Mg/Ca ratios in this photosynthesizing benthic marine plant are strongly dependent on light availability on the shallow seafloor, recording the duration of seasonal sea-ice cover.

This proxy opens up a new possibility to study past sea-ice variability, and unlike previously available reconstructions from mainly land-based archives, it provides an annually resolved direct in situ proxy from the surface ocean.

Due to the limited availability of instrumental data, current research largely focuses on sea-ice decline since the late 20th century. The results of this study provide evidence for an earlier start of Arctic sea-ice decline at the beginning of the 20th century, not captured by shorter observational records and land-based reconstructions.

The algae also show that lowest sea-ice values within the past 200 years occurred from the 1980s to the early 2000s. These results may help reduce the large uncertainties that exist among ocean model simulations, providing a new approach for the detection and verification of long-term Arctic sea-ice changes.

Story Source:

Materials provided by Geological Society of America. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Uncovering ocean iron-level mystery

The middle of the Earth's oceans are filled with vast systems of rotating currents known as subtropical gyres. These regions occupy 40% of the Earth's surface and have long been considered remarkably stable biological deserts, with little variation in chemical makeup or the nutrients needed to sustain life.

However, there exists a strange anomaly in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre ecosystem that has puzzled scientists for years. In this region that occupies the Pacific Ocean between China and the United States, the chemistry changes periodically. There's a particularly notable fluctuation in the levels of phosphorus and iron, which affects the overall nutrient composition and ultimately impacts biological productivity.

In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a group of researchers uncovered the reason behind these variations in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre ecosystem. The group includes Matthew Church, a microbial ecologist with the University of Montana's Flathead Lake Biological Station, as well as Oregon State University's Ricardo Letelier and the University of Hawaii's David Karl, among others.

"Variations in ocean climate appear to regulate iron supply, altering the types of plankton growing in these waters, which ultimately controls ocean nutrient concentrations," Church said. "My laboratory has worked on questions related to the role of plankton in controlling ocean nutrient availability for many years, and this study places much of that work in context. As a result of sustained, long-term observations, our work confirms how tightly coupled plankton biology is to the supply of nutrients, specifically iron, delivered from the atmosphere."

Using three decades of observational data from Station ALOHA, a six-mile area in the Pacific Ocean north of Hawaii dedicated to oceanographic research, the team discovered that the periodic shift in iron levels result from iron input from Asian dust, accounting for the chemical variances and providing varying amounts of nutrients to sustain life.

The key to the variance is the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, an ocean-atmosphere relationship that varies between weak and strong phases of atmospheric pressure in the northeast Pacific Ocean.

In years when the low pressure weakens in the northeast Pacific, winds from Asia become stronger and move in a more southern direction. This brings more dust from the Asian continent, "fertilizing" the ocean surrounding Station ALOHA. When the pressure strengthens, the opposite occurs.

The supply of nutrients is a fundamental regulator of ocean productivity, and phosphorus and iron are key components for life. Typically, the ocean's upper water column is fertilized by nutrient-rich water mixing up from the deep. This is a difficult process in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre ecosystem because the waters are very stratified and little mixing actually takes place.

When strong Asian winds bring in significant amounts of iron, organisms are allowed to grow and use phosphorus in the upper layers of the ocean. When Asian winds weaken and iron input is reduced, organisms are forced to return to a deep-water-mixing nutrient delivery system. This creates the periodic ebb and flow of iron and phosphorus levels in the North Pacific Gyre.

Church said the findings from this study emphasize the critical need to include both atmospheric and ocean circulation variability when forecasting how climate change might impact ocean ecosystems.

"It reaffirms the need to think about how tightly connected plankton biology is to changes in climate and ultimately also to changes in land use, which can directly impact dust supply to the sea," he said.

As Earth's temperature continues to warm, researchers expect to see long-term changes in wind patterns across the North Pacific. The evolution of land use and pollution driven by human activity in Asia also will affect the sources and magnitude of iron and other nutrients carried by wind across the ocean.

Further research is needed to better understand how these changes ultimately will impact ecosystems in this ocean region, as well as others around the world.

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Bacteria feeding on Arctic algae blooms can seed clouds

New research finds Arctic Ocean currents and storms are moving bacteria from ocean algae blooms into the atmosphere where the particles help clouds form. These particles, which are biological in origin, can affect weather patterns throughout the world, according to the new study in the AGU journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Particles suspended in air called aerosols can sometimes accelerate ice crystal formation in clouds, impacting weather climate and weather patterns. Such ice-nucleating particles include dust, smoke, pollen, fungi and bacteria. Previous research had shown marine bacteria were seeding clouds in the Arctic, but how they got from the ocean to the clouds was a mystery.

In the new study, the researchers took samples of water and air in the Bering Strait, and tested the samples for the presence of biological ice nucleating particles. Bacteria normally found near the sea floor was present in the air above the ocean surface, suggesting ocean currents and turmoil help make the bacteria airborne.

Oceanic currents and weather systems brought bacteria feeding off algae blooms to the sea spray above the ocean's surface, helping to seed clouds in the atmosphere, according to the new research.

"These special types of aerosols can actually 'seed' clouds, kind of similar to how a seed would grow a plant. Some of these seeds are really efficient at forming cloud ice crystals," said Jessie Creamean, an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado, and lead author on the new study.

Understanding how clouds are seeded can help scientists understand Arctic weather patterns.

Pure water droplets in clouds don't freeze until roughly minus 40 degrees Celsius (minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit). They are supercooled below their freezing point but still liquid. Aerosols raise the base freezing temperature in supercooled clouds to minus five degrees Celsius (23 degrees Fahrenheit), by providing a surface for water to crystalize on, and creating clouds mixed with supercooled droplets and ice crystals. Mixed clouds are the most common type of clouds on the planet and the best for producing rain or snow.

"Cloud seeds," like the bacteria found in algae blooms, can create more clouds with varying amounts of ice and water. An increase in clouds can affect how much heat is trapped in the atmosphere, which can influence climate. The clouds' compositions can affect the Arctic's water cycle, changing the amount of rain and snow that is produced. Increasing the number of clouds and changing the composition of Arctic clouds also affects northern weather systems, potentially affecting weather trends worldwide, the authors of the new study said.

Without ice nucleating particles, precipitation from clouds is less likely to happen, Heike Wex, an atmospheric scientist at the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research in Leipzig, Germany, unaffiliated with the new study explained.

From the ocean to the atmosphere

To learn how biological "cloud seeds" travel from ocean depths to the atmosphere, Creamean and her colleagues took samples from 8 meters (26 feet) below the water's surface and air samples roughly 20 meters (66 feet) above the water's surface in the Bering Strait during an algae bloom.

Algae blooms are big increases in photosynthetic plant-like microorganisms that many ocean animals eat, including some kinds of bacteria. The researchers found bacteria known to seed clouds at the bottom of a phytoplankton bloom in the Bering Strait, but not in the surrounding air. The scientists found the same bacteria roughly 250 kilometers (155.3 miles) northwest of the bloom, suggesting a strong current transported the bacteria to a new spot. The bacteria were also in the air above the water. A storm brought the bacteria from the ocean depths to the surface, transporting the bacterial "cloud seeds" into the air in water droplets.

"What existed at the bottom of the ocean was making its way up to the surface waters," Creamean said.

Since the scientists only were able to take samples from 20 meters (66 feet) up, they don't yet know how the ice nucleating particles ascend to cloud elevation, which on average starts at 1.9 kilometers (1.2 miles) above the surface.

The polar regions are experiencing rapid warming from climate change. The Arctic's accelerated warming could cause more algae blooms as well as more bacteria of the type found to seed clouds, in turn further affecting its weather systems, according to the authors.

"This is a piece of the puzzle as to how these clouds form in the Arctic and potentially impact weather patterns all over the world," Creamean said.

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Sea Shepherd’s Recommendations Taken Seriously at CITES CoP 18

Look for reds to begin bunching up as we approach fall - Suncoast News

Look for reds to begin bunching up as we approach fall  Suncoast News

As we move a little closer to fall our redfish are going to become a little more sociable and begin to pack together in bigger schools, offering up some of.

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Mama Tamba Youth Empowerment Association Plants 5,000 Mangroves at Baobolong wetland Area | - Voice Gambia Newspaper

Mama Tamba Youth Empowerment Association Plants 5,000 Mangroves at Baobolong wetland Area |  Voice Gambia Newspaper

By: Haruna Kuyateh. The National Coordinator of Mama Tamba Youth Empowerment Association of Illiasa of Upper Baddibou has underscored the significance ...

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WOW To Do List: Essentials of digital photography, more - Marco News

WOW To Do List: Essentials of digital photography, more  Marco News

From 9:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m., Sept. 9, $55. If you want to get the best pictures possible.

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Ladies Sunset Kayaking to Explore Purple Island - ILoveQatar.net

Ladies Sunset Kayaking to Explore Purple Island  ILoveQatar.net

Enjoy a day away from the hustle and bustle of the city, promote the benefits of an active healthy lifestyle.

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Freshwater invades Tampa Bay, putting fish on the move - The Anna Maria Islander

Freshwater invades Tampa Bay, putting fish on the move  The Anna Maria Islander

With the vast amounts of rainfall we are receiving, fishing around Anna Maria Island has become slightly challenging. Large quantities of freshwater flushing out ...

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Maharashtra to set up seabass hatchery - BusinessLine

Maharashtra to set up seabass hatchery  BusinessLine

The Maharashtra government has signed an agreement with the Chennai-based Central Institute of Brackishwater Aquaculture (CIBA) to boost farmed fish ...

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After residents complain, state halts Cape Coral's canal dredging and mangrove destruction - The News-Press

After residents complain, state halts Cape Coral's canal dredging and mangrove destruction  The News-Press

Residents question why the city of Cape Coral's canal clearing coincides with plans to develop some of the city's last waterfront wilderness.

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After plowing his boat into the mangroves, this Florida man went to jail - Miami Herald

After plowing his boat into the mangroves, this Florida man went to jail  Miami Herald

An Islamorada man spent Saturday in jail after plowing his boat into the mangroves of Islamorada in the Florida Keys. Police with the Florida Fish and Wildlife ...

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HC nod to build tunnel passing through Vasai mangroves, with riders - Hindustan Times

HC nod to build tunnel passing through Vasai mangroves, with riders  Hindustan Times

The Bombay high court (HC) recently allowed the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) to carry out tunnelling work below patches of ...

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The City of Cape Coral and land owner issued warning for removal of mangroves and other issues along Cape canal. - The News-Press

The City of Cape Coral and land owner issued warning for removal of mangroves and other issues along Cape canal.  The News-Press

Land was cleared along the Coral Point Canal in Cape Coral recently. The City of Cape Coral and the land owner, Ripple Lake LCC were issued a warning ...

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Preserving the environment makes heroes out of Filipinos – Senator Pangilinan - Manila Bulletin

Preserving the environment makes heroes out of Filipinos – Senator Pangilinan  Manila Bulletin

Opposition Senator Francis N. Pangilinan on Monday said Filipinos could become heroes for the future and their children by preserving the country's ...

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Notting Hill Carnival: Mangrove's Matthew Phillip on the steel bands that shaped carnival - ITV News

Notting Hill Carnival: Mangrove's Matthew Phillip on the steel bands that shaped carnival  ITV News

The famous sound of the steelpan doesn't just provide the soundtrack to the Notting Hill Carnival - it also played a big part shaping the event as we know it today ...

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Bali Governor demands a stop to Benoa Bay reclamation project, after monitoring team found 17 hectares of mangrove forest destroyed - Coconuts

Bali Governor demands a stop to Benoa Bay reclamation project, after monitoring team found 17 hectares of mangrove forest destroyed  Coconuts

Bali Governor Wayan Koster said his office has issued a formal letter, urging state-owned port operator PT Pelabuhan Indonesia (Pelindo) III to stop the ...

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Bridge over Gorai creek gets coastal zone green signal - Mumbai Mirror

Bridge over Gorai creek gets coastal zone green signal  Mumbai Mirror

MMRDA will now have to approach High Court to get clearance as mangroves will be destroyed for the Rs 575-crore project.

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Mangrove replanting initiative launched - Fiji Times

Mangrove replanting initiative launched  Fiji Times

FIJI Airports partnered with Mamanuca Environment Society to launch its mangrove replanting program in Viseisei, Lautoka, over the weekend. About 50 staff ...

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Sta. Cruz community replace mangroves destroyed by monsoon waves - BusinessWorld Online

Sta. Cruz community replace mangroves destroyed by monsoon waves  BusinessWorld Online

BIG WAVES caused by the southwest monsoon, which has been prevailing for weeks, destroyed the seawall, breakwaters, houses and mangroves in Sta. Cruz ...

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Elevated road to link Malad, Lokhandwala - The Hindu

Elevated road to link Malad, Lokhandwala  The Hindu

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to go ahead with its ambitious plan of constructing an elevated road from Lokhandwala Complex ...

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Indonesia proposes joint commitment on mangrove restoration - Mon, August 26 2019 - Jakarta Post

Indonesia proposes joint commitment on mangrove restoration - Mon, August 26 2019  Jakarta Post

Indonesia has invited five countries that have mangrove forests — Australia, Kenya, Mexico, Jamaica and Ghana — to make a joint commitment to restoring and ...

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Red Bull X Mangrove Truck At Notting Hill Carnival - Zimbio

Red Bull X Mangrove Truck At Notting Hill Carnival  Zimbio

Bree Runway (L) and Siobhan Bell attend the Red Bull Music x Mangrove truck at Notting Hill Carnival 2019 on August 26, 2019 in London, England.

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News Fiji Airports launches mangrove replanting Initiative - FBC News

News Fiji Airports launches mangrove replanting Initiative  FBC News

Colleagues from all departments of Fiji Airports participated in this new initiative. Fiji Airports CEO Faiz Khan says they want to create awareness on the ...

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Fiji's Latest News and Sports website - Fijivillage

Fiji's Latest News and Sports website  Fijivillage

More than 2,000 mangrove plants were planted this morning by the staff of Fiji Airports Limited at Viseisei Village. This is part of their Mangrove Replanting ...

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WWF, JS Bank launch drive to plant mangrove saplings - The Nation

WWF, JS Bank launch drive to plant mangrove saplings  The Nation

KARACHI (PR) To mitigate the impact of climate change and increase tree cover, WWF-Pakistan and JS Bank launched a drive to plant 100000 mangrove ...

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Bad Blooms: Researchers review environmental conditions leading to harmful algae blooms

When there is a combination of population increase, wastewater discharge, agricultural fertilization, and climate change, the cocktail is detrimental to humans and animals. This harmful cocktail produces harmful algal blooms, and many of these are toxic to humans and wildlife.

Wayne Wurtsbaugh, Professor Emeritus in the Watershed Sciences Department at Utah State University, along with Hans Paerl and Walter Dodds published a global review of conditions that lead to these harmful algal blooms in rivers, lakes, and coastal oceans. Wurtsbaugh says that the review will be an excellent resource for students studying pollution and for managers wanting to review recent advances in this field of study. Their review highlights how agricultural, urban, and industrial activities have greatly increased nitrogen and phosphorus pollution in freshwater and marine systems. This pollution has degraded water quality and biological resources costing societies billions of dollars in losses to fisheries, the safety of drinking water, increases to greenhouse gas emissions and related social values. Their findings have been published in, "Nutrients, eutrophication and harmful algal blooms along the freshwater to marine continuum."

Their scientific review highlights that although individual bodies of water may be more effected by increases in either phosphorus or nitrogen, the unidirectional flow through streams, lakes, and into marine ecosystems creates a continuum where both nutrients become important in controlling the algal blooms. The authors report how increasing nutrients has caused harmful blooms in waters as diverse as Utah Lake (Utah), mid-west agricultural streams, and the Gulf of Mexico where a 5,800 mi2 (15,000 km2) dead zone has developed. The authors conclude that although the specifics of algal production varies in both space and time, reducing the human causes of both phosphorus and nitrogen may be necessary to decrease the harmful algal blooms along the freshwater to marine continuum. These algae blooms make waters dysfunctional as ecological, economic, and esthetic resources.

The technology currently exists to control excessive nutrient additions, but more effective environmental regulations to control agricultural nutrient pollution, and investment in more advanced wastewater treatment plants will be needed to reduce these inputs and improve water quality. The enhancement of the quality of freshwater and coastal systems will become essential as climate change and human population growth place increased demands for high quality water resources.

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Materials provided by S.J. & Jessie E. Quinney College of Natural Resources, Utah State University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Crack in Pacific seafloor caused volcanic chain to go dormant

From his geology lab at the University of Houston, Jonny Wu has discovered that a chain of volcanoes stretching between Northeast Asia and Russia began a period of silence 50 million years ago, which lasted for 10 million years. In the journal Geology, Wu, assistant professor of structural geology, tectonics and mantle structure, is reporting that one of the most significant plate tectonic shifts in the Pacific Ocean forced the volcanoes into dormancy.

At the end of the Cretaceous Period, shortly after dinosaurs disappeared, the Pacific Plate, the largest tectonic plate on Earth, mysteriously changed direction. One possible result was the formation of a prominent bend in the Hawaiian Islands chain, and another, just discovered by Wu, was the volcanic dormancy along a 900-mile stretch between Japan and the remote Sikhote-Alin mountain range in Russia in what is known as the Pacific Ring of Fire, where many volcanoes form.

"Around the time of the volcano dormancy, a crack in the Pacific Ocean Plate subducted, or went below, the volcanic margin. The thin, jagged crack in the seafloor was formed by plates moving in opposing directions and when they subduct, they tend to affect volcanic chains," reports Wu.

When the volcanoes revived 10 million years later, the radiogenic isotopes within the magma were noticeably different.

"The productivity of magma within the once-violent chain of volcanoes was only one-third its previous level," said Wu, who has linked this phenomenon to the subduction of the Pacific-Izanagi mid-ocean ridge, an underwater mountain.

Scientists have long understood that volcanic activity above subduction zones, where one tectonic plate converges towards and dives beneath another, is driven by water brought deep within the Earth by the diving subducting plate. When the water reaches depths of around 65 miles, it causes the solid mantle to partially melt and produces magma that may rise and feed volcanoes.

"However, in the case of the East Asian volcanoes, subduction of the immense seafloor crack interrupted its water-laden conveyor belt into the deep Earth. As a result, the volcanoes turned off," said Wu.

Wu and UH doctoral student Jeremy Tsung-Jui Wu, who is not related to Jonny Wu, discovered the dormancy -- and the reason for it -- after examining a magmatic catalog of 900 igneous rock radio-isotopic values from the Cretaceous to Miocene eras. They also found evidence that the crack in the Pacific Plate was about 50% shorter than originally believed.

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Materials provided by University of Houston. Original written by Laurie Fickman. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Big increase in ocean carbon dioxide absorption along West Antarctic Peninsula

Climate change is altering the ability of the Southern Ocean off the West Antarctic Peninsula to absorb carbon dioxide, according to a Rutgers-led study, and that could magnify climate change in the long run.

The study, led by scientists at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, is published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The West Antarctic Peninsula is experiencing some of the most rapid climate change on Earth, featuring dramatic increases in temperatures, retreats in glaciers and declines in sea ice. The Southern Ocean absorbs nearly half of the carbon dioxide -- the key greenhouse gas linked to climate change -- that is absorbed by all the world's oceans.

"Understanding how climate change will affect carbon dioxide absorption by the Southern Ocean, especially in coastal Antarctic regions like the West Antarctic Peninsula, is critical to improving predictions of the global impacts of climate change," said lead author Michael Brown, an oceanography doctoral student in the Center for Ocean Observing Leadership in the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences.

The study tapped an unprecedented 25 years of oceanographic measurements in the Southern Ocean and highlights the need for more monitoring in the region.

The research revealed that carbon dioxide absorption by surface waters off the West Antarctic Peninsula is linked to the stability of the upper ocean, along with the amount and type of algae present. A stable upper ocean provides algae with ideal growing conditions. During photosynthesis, algae remove carbon dioxide from the surface ocean, which in turn draws carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

From 1993 to 2017, changes in sea ice dynamics off the West Antarctic Peninsula stabilized the upper ocean, resulting in greater algal concentrations and a shift in the mix of algal species. That's led to a nearly five-fold increase in carbon dioxide absorption during the summertime. The research also found a strong north-south difference in the trend of carbon dioxide absorption. The southern portion of the peninsula, which to date has been less impacted by climate change, experienced the most dramatic increase in carbon dioxide absorption, demonstrating the poleward progression of climate change in the region.

The results also demonstrate the often counterintuitive impacts of climate change. The scientists hypothesize that upper ocean stability off the West Antarctic Peninsula may ultimately decrease in the coming decades as sea ice continues to decline. Once sea ice reaches a critically low level, there won't be enough of it to prevent wind-driven mixing of the upper ocean, or to supply a sufficient amount of stabilizing meltwater. And that could result in reduced carbon dioxide absorption in the Southern Ocean over the long run.

A decrease in the ocean's ability to absorb carbon dioxide could lead to more warming worldwide by allowing more of the heat-trapping gas to remain in the atmosphere.

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Materials provided by Rutgers University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Variety of wonders to explore at Great Barrier Reef, Queensland - Toronto Sun

Variety of wonders to explore at Great Barrier Reef, Queensland  Toronto Sun

CAIRNS, Australia — We're standing ankle-deep in mud in a group of mangroves at one end of Cooya Beach, having stepped delicately through the roots at low ...

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Mapping seagrass in the Philippines - Rappler

Mapping seagrass in the Philippines  Rappler

The status of seagrass in the Philippines remains widely unknown, although their importance both for food security and mitigating the impacts of climate change ...

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Indonesia calls for mangrove protection during international panel - ANTARA

Indonesia calls for mangrove protection during international panel  ANTARA

At the 5th International Panel on Sustainable Ocean Economy held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, recently, Indonesia stressed the importance of protecting the ...

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Mumbai: FIR against 3 developers for destroying mangroves, encroaching on govt land - The Indian Express

Mumbai: FIR against 3 developers for destroying mangroves, encroaching on govt land  The Indian Express

The Mira Bhayander Municipal Corporation had lodged the FIR against developers Pintu Singh, Jaywant Kini and Jitendra Kini and demolished constructions ...

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The right to community forest in Tanintharyi Region - Frontier Myanmar

The right to community forest in Tanintharyi Region  Frontier Myanmar

A community forestry scheme introduced by the military junta has allowed some communities to preserve traditional livelihoods.

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JS Bank & WWF-P initiate mangroves plantation drive - Business Recorder

JS Bank & WWF-P initiate mangroves plantation drive  Business Recorder

To mitigate the impact of climate change and increase tree cover, WWF-Pakistan and JS Bank launched a drive to plant 100000 mangrove saplings along the ...

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Mangrove park outside of planned Bulacan airport - INQUIRER.net

Mangrove park outside of planned Bulacan airport  INQUIRER.net

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO—A mangrove park that was rehabilitated by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in a town in Bulacan ...

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WWF-Pakistan initiates 100,000 Mangroves Plantation Drive - Daily Times

WWF-Pakistan initiates 100,000 Mangroves Plantation Drive  Daily Times

... * Speaking on the occasion, WWF-Pakistan Sindh & Balochistan Regional Head Dr Babar Khan said that Pakistan is recognised as having the seventh largest ...

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Artists in residence: Goodland couple comingle artistic sensibilities - Marco News

Artists in residence: Goodland couple comingle artistic sensibilities  Marco News

Two of the most notable, designer Sherri Morrison and photographer Jim Freeman, are married to each other.

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Good Catch: Lots of redfish action in Tampa Bay - FOX 13 News, Tampa Bay

Good Catch: Lots of redfish action in Tampa Bay  FOX 13 News, Tampa Bay

MADEIRA BEACH, Fla. (FOX 13) - Every Friday morning, Captain Dylan Hubbard of Hubbard's Marina joins Good Day to fill viewers in on his fishing forecast as ...

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Ivory Coast under pressure to save mangroves and marine life - Reuters India

Ivory Coast under pressure to save mangroves and marine life  Reuters India

For generations, women in Ivory Coast have smoked the day's catch both as a delicacy and as a means of preserving fish, but authorities in the country, backed ...

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Navi Mumbai: PMO responds to plea of greens - Times of India

Navi Mumbai: PMO responds to plea of greens  Times of India

Navi Mumbai: City-based greens are upbeat after receiving a formal response from the prime minister's office (PMO) on Wednesday to their pleas on clea.

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Mangrove logging in Lamu banned during census - The Star, Kenya

Mangrove logging in Lamu banned during census  The Star, Kenya

County commissioner says anyone found logging on census day will be arrested and charged.

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How clean water data is helping to protect Brazil's precious ecosystems | Microsoft On The Issues - Microsoft

How clean water data is helping to protect Brazil's precious ecosystems | Microsoft On The Issues  Microsoft

*Fresh* water is an essential resource. Brazil has more than any other country but millions of its people still don't have access to clean and safe water sources.

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The Amazon is on fire: 5 things you need to know - Conservation International

The Amazon is on fire: 5 things you need to know  Conservation International

Smoke from fires in the Amazon darkened the skies of Sao Paulo, Brazil, this week, as the world's largest tropical forest found itself in the midst of an ecological ...

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Snake at Bronx Zoo exhibit escapes, still missing - Bronx Times

Snake at Bronx Zoo exhibit escapes, still missing  Bronx Times

This isn't a case of a 'snake in the grass', but more of a 'snake out of the glass.' It has been over two weeks since a venomous snake left its Bronx Zoo exhibit.

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Concerns surge after Dos Bocas environmental... - BNamericas English

Concerns surge after Dos Bocas environmental...  BNamericas English

The Mexican environmental regulator's approval of the refinery has generated new criticism.

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Keys Sanctuary To Unveil 'Restoration Blueprint' - WLRN

Keys Sanctuary To Unveil 'Restoration Blueprint'  WLRN

It's been more than 20 years since the last comprehensive plan to manage the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Now the sanctuary is releasing a.

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What's killing sea otters? Parasite strain from cats

Many wild southern sea otters in California are infected with the parasite Toxoplasma gondii, yet the infection is fatal for only a fraction of sea otters, which has long puzzled the scientific community. A study from the University of California, Davis, identifies the parasite's specific strains that are killing southern sea otters, tracing them back to a bobcat and feral domestic cats from nearby watersheds.

The study, published this week in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, marks the first time a genetic link has been clearly established between the Toxoplasma strains in felid hosts and parasites causing fatal disease in marine wildlife.

The study builds on years of work by a consortium of researchers led by the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine's Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW). The scientists were called upon in the late 1990s to help decipher the mystery when Toxoplasma caused deaths in sea otters along the California coast.

"This is decades in the making," said corresponding author Karen Shapiro, an associate professor with the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and its One Health Institute. "We now have a significant link between specific types of the parasite and the outcome for fatal toxoplasmosis in sea otters. We are actually able to link deaths in sea otters with wild and feral cats on land."

FROM LAND TO SEA

Wild and domestic cats are the only known hosts of Toxoplasma, in which the parasite forms egglike stages, called oocysts, in their feces. Shapiro led the initial effort to show how oocysts accumulate in kelp forests and are taken up by snails, which are eaten by sea otters.

For this study, the authors characterized Toxoplasma strains for more than 100 stranded southern sea otters examined by the CDFW between 1998 and 2015. CDFW Veterinary Pathologist Melissa Miller assessed the otters for Toxoplasma as a primary or contributing cause of death. The scientists compared pathology data with the parasite strains found in sea otters and nearby wild and domestic cats to identify connections between the disease-causing pathogen and its hosts.

The study's results highlight how infectious agents like Toxoplasma can spread from cat feces on land to the sea, leading to detrimental impacts on marine wildlife.

CLOSELY WATCHED

Southern sea otters are among the most intensely studied marine mammals in California because they are a threatened species and an iconic animal for the state. They live within just a few hundred meters of the coastline, allowing for close observation that enables a wealth of scientific data.

Previous research showed that up to 70 percent of stranded southern sea otters were infected with Toxoplasma, yet the infection becomes fatal for only a fraction of them. Decades of detailed investigations by CDFW and UC Davis have confirmed that infection by land-based protozoan parasites such as Toxoplasma and the related parasite Sarcocystis neurona are common causes of illness and death for southern sea otters.

Shapiro notes that Toxoplasma can also affect other wildlife species, but there is more robust data for the otters.

"Toxoplasma is one heavily studied pathogen that we care about, but there are many other viruses and bacteria that are on land and being flushed to the ocean that we probably aren't aware of yet," Shapiro said.

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

People can help reduce the spread of Toxoplasma by keeping their cats inside and disposing of cat feces in a bag in the trash, not outdoors or in the toilet because wastewater treatment is not effective in killing oocysts.

Outdoor cats that feed on wild rodents and birds are likely to become infected with Toxoplasma because the parasite is commonly present in the tissues of these prey animals.

Oocysts shed in cat feces on land get washed into waterways with rainfall, and prior research identified freshwater outflow as a key source of Toxoplasma exposure for southern sea otters.

Wetlands, forests and grasslands naturally serve to shield watersheds and oceans from pollutants, including oocysts. Preserving and restoring wetlands and natural areas, managing stormwater runoff, and replacing pavement with permeable surfaces can reduce contamination and minimize pathogens entering the water.

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Materials provided by University of California - Davis. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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'100-year' floods will happen every 1 to 30 years, according to new flood maps

A 100-year flood is supposed to be just that: a flood that occurs once every 100 years, or a flood that has a one-percent chance of happening every year.

But Princeton researchers have developed new maps that predict coastal flooding for every county on the Eastern and Gulf Coasts and find 100-year floods could become annual occurrences in New England; and happen every one to 30 years along the southeast Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico shorelines.

"The historical 100-year floods may change to one-year floods in Northern coastal towns in the U.S.," said Ning Lin, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Princeton University.

In a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers combined storm surge, sea level rise, and the predicted increased occurrence and strength in tropical storms and hurricanes to create a map of flood hazard possibility along the U.S. East Coast and Gulf of Mexico. Coastlines at northern latitudes, like those in New England, will face higher flood levels primarily because of sea level rise. Those in more southern latitudes, especially along the Gulf of Mexico, will face higher flood levels because of both sea level rise and increasing storms into the late 21st century.

"For the Gulf of Mexico, we found the effect of storm change is compatible with or more significant than the effect of sea level rise for 40% of counties. So, if we neglect the effects of storm climatology change, we would significantly underestimate the impact of climate change for these regions," said Lin.

The study's predictions are different than what else is currently available, said Reza Marsooli, assistant professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology, who worked on this study while a research scholar at Princeton, because they combine multiple variables that are typically addressed separately. For example the new maps use the latest climate science to look at how tropical storms will change in the future instead of what they are right now, or even looking backwards at previous storms, as federal disaster officials do to build their flood maps. These data, in turn, are integrated with sea level analysis.

The researchers hope that creating more accurate maps -- especially those that are customized according to local conditions down to the county level -- will help coastal municipalities prepare to face the effects of climate change head on.

"Policy makers can compare the spatial risk change, identify hotspots, and prioritize the resource allocation for risk reduction," said Lin. "Coastal counties can use the county-specific estimates in their decision making: Is their risk going to significantly change? Should they apply more specific, higher-resolution data to quantify the risk? Should they apply coastal flood defenses or other planning strategies or policy for reducing the future risk?"

This research was funded by National Science Foundation and the Princeton Environmental Institute at Princeton University.

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Materials provided by Princeton University, Engineering School. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Detecting hydrothermal vents in volcanic lakes

Geothermal manifestations at Earth's surface can be mapped and characterized by a variety of well-established exploration methods. However, mapping hydrothermal vents in aquatic environments is more challenging as conventional methods can no longer be applied. In fact, chemical composition of lake water may indicate inflow of fluids from a volcanic system, but it does not provide spatial information on the location of hydrothermal vents, their abundance and current state of activity.

Changes in the behaviour of hydrothermal vents may be indicative of changes in the volcanic system underneath, thus being a useful precursor for the next generation of early warning systems. Increased volcanic activity beneath volcanic lakes could also trigger increased gas input, in particular CO₂, which could again result in catastrophic gas outbursts as reported from Lake Nyos or Lake Monoun in Cameroon. New exploration approaches will help improving site-specific risk assessment and monitoring concepts by taking a closer look at hydrothermal vents.

The study describes an integrated approach of (1) bathymetry, (2) thermal mapping of the lake floor, and (3) gas emission measurements at the water surface, which was tested successfully at Lake Ngozi in Tanzania. Multiple hydrothermal feed zones could be identified by hole-like structures and increased lake floor temperatures, in combination with increased CO₂ emissions from the lake surface. The developed approach has the advantage that (1) it does not require a complex technical setup, (2) data can be obtained in-situ, and (3) it is transferable to other volcanic lakes for mapping hydrothermal feed sources.

Further research activities at volcanic lakes and in shallow marine environments with hydrothermal activity (e.g., Iceland, Italy) are currently in preparation with partners from the Scientific Diving Centre (SDC) at the Technical University Bergakademie Freiberg, Germany, and the Marine & Freshwater Research Institute in Reykjavík, Iceland. This will also include research related to future offshore geothermal exploration.

Data related to this study have been collected complementary to a geothermal exploration project, which was coordinated by the author, who has previously been with BGR in Hanover, Germany.

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Climate change will alter waves along half the world's coast

New research finds that a warming planet will also alter ocean waves along more than 50% of the world's coastlines. This research, published in Nature Climate Change, has significant implications for coastal flooding and erosion.

As part of the Coordinated Ocean Wave Climate Project, ten research organisations, including the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), combined to look at a range of different global wave models in a variety of future climate scenarios, to determine how waves might change in the future.

While they identified some differences between different models, they found if the 2 degrees Paris agreement target is kept, changes in wave patterns are likely to stay inside natural climate variability.

However, in a business-as-usual climate, where warming continues in line with current trends, the models agreed the planet is likely to see significant changes in wave conditions along 50% of the world's coasts, although these changes varied by region.

For example, if the climate warms by more than 2 degrees beyond pre-industrial levels, southern Australia is likely to see longer, more southerly waves that could alter the stability of the coastline. For the UK coast the mean wave height is projected to decrease by about 10% by the end of the century under the most extreme global warming scenario.

Some areas will see the height of waves remain the same, but their wavelength or frequency will change. This can result in changes in the force exerted on the coast and any infrastructure there, and in some cases lead to increased wave-driven flooding.

Similarly, climate change induced alterations to the direction of waves can change how much sand they move along the coast. Infrastructure built on the coast, or offshore, is sensitive to these different characteristics of waves.

NOC scientist Professor Judith Wolf, also a co-author of the study, said "It is important to understand changes in the wave climate under climate change scenarios because waves are what cause damage to coastal defences and infrastructure, and erosion of natural coasts, beaches and ecosystems. They also contribute to increasing flood levels through wave setup, run-up and overtopping."

The overarching pattern emerging from this study is that robust changes in projected mean wave heights are seen in some areas, with increases in the Southern Ocean and the tropical eastern Pacific, but decreases in the North Atlantic Ocean and portions of the northern Pacific Ocean. These changes are consistent with a relatively uniform decrease in projected surface wind speeds over the northern hemisphere extra-tropical storm belt, partly driven by the polar amplification of climate change.

Previous research has looked at the way waves have shaped our coasts through the past, which is used as a guide to understanding past sea levels. However, this research has often assumed that while sea levels might change, wave conditions have stayed the same. This same assumption is used when considering how climate change will influence future coastlines. Although, importantly, climate change can alter waves both through changing wind patterns, and through changes to the water depth at the coast through sea-level rise.

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Materials provided by National Oceanography Centre, UK. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Switching on the Atlantic Ocean heat pump

34 million years ago the warm 'greenhouse climate' of the dinosaur age ended and the colder 'icehouse climate' of today commenced. Antarctica glaciated first and geological data imply that the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, the global ocean conveyor belt of heat and nutrients that today helps keep Europe warm, also started at this time. Why exactly, has remained a mystery.

"We have found a new trigger to explain the start-up of the Atlantic current system during the greenhouse-icehouse climate transition: During the warm climate, buoyant fresh water flooded out of the Arctic and prevented the ocean-sinking that helps power the conveyor. We found that the Arctic-Atlantic gateway closed due to tectonic forces, causing a dramatic increase in North Atlantic salinity. This caused warming of the North Atlantic and Europe, and kickstarted the modern circulation that keeps Europe warm today," says David Hutchinson, researcher at the Department of Geological Sciences, Stockholm University, and lead author of the article published in Nature Communications.

The team of scientists, from the Bolin Centre for Climate Research, used a combination of geophysical data and climate modelling to show that the freshwater transport through the Arctic-Atlantic gateway plays a critical role in controlling the overturning circulation.

"Not only did deep water start forming in the Atlantic Ocean, it also stopped forming in the North Pacific at the same time, which matches geological evidence. We were surprised to find that our computer simulations can explain both of these changes due to salty ocean currents connecting the Pacific to the Atlantic. Our study is the first to show that these two events are linked, which is very exciting," says Hutchinson.

The climate at this time was very warm, with atmospheric CO₂ levels two to three times the present day levels, and this contributed to extremely fresh Arctic waters. The study begs the question of whether in a future warm world, in which the Arctic may again be very fresh, the sinking in the Atlantic may cease again, which may dramatically alter the climate of Europe. Without the Atlantic conveyor belt, Europe can experience both colder winters and hotter and drier summers, making a more extreme and inhospitable climate.

"Our study helps to bridge the gap between climate modelling and geological observations of the deep past. We hope this will inspire further research from both communities on the deep circulation of the ocean," says Hutchinson.

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On the Water: It was a stormy week out on the water - pineisland-eagle.com, news, sports, Florida info - Pine Island Eagle

On the Water: It was a stormy week out on the water - pineisland-eagle.com, news, sports, Florida info  Pine Island Eagle

Rain, rain and more rain. That pretty much summed up the past wee.

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Number crunching: Making sense of REDD+ and results-based payments - Forests News, Center for International Forestry Research

Number crunching: Making sense of REDD+ and results-based payments  Forests News, Center for International Forestry Research

Building climate-effective enterprises to realize forest-related emissions reductions.

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Sarasota Bay Project developers to host public input meeting - WWSB

Sarasota Bay Project developers to host public input meeting  WWSB

The developers of The Sarasota Bay Project, which aims to redevelop over 50 acres of city-owned land along the Sarasota Bayfront, is asking for public input ...

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Travel shorts: New resorts, staycation deals - ABS-CBN News

Travel shorts: New resorts, staycation deals  ABS-CBN News

Here are some of the travel-related promos and offerings you can check out for your next trip or staycation.

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Study: Higher seas could kill off mangroves in bay - KeysNews.com

Study: Higher seas could kill off mangroves in bay  KeysNews.com

FLORIDA KEYS — Federal scientists reached back 5,000 years to assess current sea-level rise threats to mangroves and coastlines of Florida Bay, says a new ...

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Palau: Experience the wonders of this tropical paradise - Stripes Korea

Palau: Experience the wonders of this tropical paradise  Stripes Korea

Palau's 500 tropical islands offer endless attractions across both land and sea. Visitors will find a wide variety of experiences, from the wildly adventurous to the ...

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'Instagrammable' Kemayoran Urban Park to open in November - The Jakarta Post - Jakarta Post

'Instagrammable' Kemayoran Urban Park to open in November - The Jakarta Post  Jakarta Post

The Kemayoran Complex Management Center (PPK) is currently renovating the Kemayoran Urban Forest to add amenities at the Central Jakarta park.

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With Ecosia, You Can Help Plant Trees by Just Surfing the Internet - Sierra Magazine

With Ecosia, You Can Help Plant Trees by Just Surfing the Internet  Sierra Magazine

Internet users around the world are planting trees—nearly 65 million of them to date—just by browsing the internet. That's because instead of relying on Google ...

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“Taste Your Caribbean” Campaign Working to Protect the Spiny Lobster - Slow food

“Taste Your Caribbean” Campaign Working to Protect the Spiny Lobster  Slow food

Along the coast of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, the cradle of the Mayan civilization, lie the biosphere reserves Banco Chinchorro and Sian Ka'an,

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If you don't mind getting wet, you'll be rewarded with fish - The Anna Maria Islander

If you don't mind getting wet, you'll be rewarded with fish  The Anna Maria Islander

Another week of wet weather prevented some anglers from getting on the water, but those who were determined were rewarded with some good inshore action.

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Protecting Paradise Residents upset over continued digging at Cape Coral canal and ecological preserve WFTX Digital - Fox 4

Protecting Paradise Residents upset over continued digging at Cape Coral canal and ecological preserve WFTX Digital  Fox 4

Residents who live along the Coral Pointe Canal on the northern edge of the Four Mile Cove Ecological Preserve are upset after they discovered someone has ...

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Sri Lanka to re-take state lands for mangroves regeneration - Xinhua | English.news.cn - Xinhua

Sri Lanka to re-take state lands for mangroves regeneration - Xinhua | English.news.cn  Xinhua

COLOMBO, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lanka plans to re-take unused coastal areas released for aquaculture and salterns as part of a mega project to re-generate ...

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Discovery, WWF tie up to preserve Sundarbans - BusinessLine

Discovery, WWF tie up to preserve Sundarbans  BusinessLine

To help save the world's only mangrove tiger habitat, Discovery India and WWF India have partnered with the Forest Directorate, the government of West Bengal ...

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Village swallowed by rising sea level an eerie tourist draw - AsiaOne

Village swallowed by rising sea level an eerie tourist draw  AsiaOne

Motorboats chug slowly down a canal running between mangrove forests in the village of Bedono, an eco-tourism area on the north coast of the island of Java, ...

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Keys Sanctuary To Unveil 'Restoration Blueprint' - WJCT NEWS

Keys Sanctuary To Unveil 'Restoration Blueprint'  WJCT NEWS

It's been more than 20 years since the last comprehensive plan to manage the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.Now the sanctuary is releasing a.

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The man helping to save Senegal's mangroves - BBC News

The man helping to save Senegal's mangroves  BBC News

Haidar el Ali has led a project to plant 152 million mangrove buds in Senegal's Casamance Delta.

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Sri Lanka to re-take to state aquaculture areas for mangrove regeneration - EconomyNext

Sri Lanka to re-take to state aquaculture areas for mangrove regeneration  EconomyNext

Sri Lanka plans to re-take unused coastal areas released for aquaculture and salterns as part of a project to re-generate 10000 hectares of mangroves.

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Gorai to get ₹25-crore mangrove garden - The Hindu

Gorai to get ₹25-crore mangrove garden  The Hindu

Project aims to restore ecosystem, spread awareness of coastal biodiversity.

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Monitoring CO2 leakage sites on the ocean floor

Injecting carbon dioxide (CO₂) deep below the seabed could be an important strategy for mitigating climate change, according to some experts. However, scientists need a reliable way to monitor such sites for leakage of the greenhouse gas. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology have studied natural sources of CO₂ release off the coast of Italy, using what they learned to develop models that could be applied to future storage sites.

The multinational energy company Equinor operates a CO₂ capture and storage facility that injects about 1 megaton per year of the greenhouse gas into an offshore sandstone aquifer deep below Norwegian waters. Undersea storage of the gas presents less risk for humans in case of accidental leakage compared with storage on land because the vast ocean acts as a buffer for the released CO₂. However, the leaked gas can dissolve in ocean water, decreasing the pH and potentially harming the local marine ecosystem. Currently, scientists lack an established method to identify and quantify multiple CO₂ leaks spread across a region of the ocean floor. Therefore, Jonas Gros and colleagues investigated pH changes near natural CO₂ seeps in the vicinity of Panarea, a small island off the coast of northern Sicily.

The researchers used scuba divers and ship-based instrument deployments to collect gas and water samples from undersea CO₂ plumes. The team used these data to validate a computer model that they developed to predict pH changes to water resulting from leakage of the gas. This simulation indicated that over 79% of the CO₂ dissolved within 4 meters of the seafloor. The team found that the model could predict a pattern of pH variation in waters surrounding the leakage site that was similar to actual data collected by sensors towed underwater. The new model could be used to guide sampling strategies during routine monitoring of storage sites and to estimate impacts of CO₂ releases to the local marine environment.

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Materials provided by American Chemical Society. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Jonas Gros, Mark Schmidt, Andrew W. Dale, Peter Linke, Lisa Vielstädte, Nikolaus Bigalke, Matthias Haeckel, Klaus Wallmann, Stefan Sommer. Simulating and Quantifying Multiple Natural Subsea CO2 Seeps at Panarea Island (Aeolian Islands, Italy) as a Proxy for Potential Leakage from Subseabed Carbon Storage Sites. Environmental Science & Technology, 2019; DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.9b02131

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Cite This Page:

American Chemical Society. "Monitoring CO2 leakage sites on the ocean floor." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 21 August 2019. <https://ift.tt/2ZlHJzH>.

American Chemical Society. (2019, August 21). Monitoring CO2 leakage sites on the ocean floor. ScienceDaily. Retrieved August 21, 2019 from https://ift.tt/2ZlHJzH

American Chemical Society. "Monitoring CO2 leakage sites on the ocean floor." ScienceDaily. https://ift.tt/2ZlHJzH (accessed August 21, 2019).

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Origin of massive methane reservoir identified

New research from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) published Aug. 19, 2019, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science provides evidence of the formation and abundance of abiotic methane -- methane formed by chemical reactions that don't involve organic matter -- on Earth and shows how the gases could have a similar origin on other planets and moons, even those no longer home to liquid water. Researchers had long noticed methane released from deep-sea vents. But while the gas is plentiful in the atmosphere where it's produced by living things, the source of methane at the seafloor was a mystery.

"Identifying an abiotic source of deep-sea methane has been a problem that we've been wrestling with for many years," says Jeffrey Seewald a senior scientist at WHOI who studies geochemistry in hydrothermal systems and is one of the study's authors.

Of 160 rock samples analyzed from across the world's oceans, almost all contained pockets of methane. These oceanic deposits make up a reservoir exceeding the amount of methane in Earth's atmosphere before industrialization, estimates Frieder Klein, a marine geologist at WHOI and lead author of the study.

"We were totally surprised to find this massive pool of abiotic methane in the oceanic crust and mantle," Klein says.

The scientists analyzed rocks using Raman spectroscopy, a laser-based microscope that allows them to identify fluids and minerals in a thin slice of rock. Nearly every sample contained an assemblage of minerals and gases that form when seawater, moving through the deep oceanic crust, is trapped in magma-hot olivine. As the mineral cools, the water trapped inside undergoes a chemical reaction, a process called serpentinization that forms hydrogen and methane. The authors demonstrate that in otherwise inhospitable environments, just two ingredients? -- water and olivine? -- can form methane.

"Here's a source of chemical energy that's being created by geology," says Seewald.

On Earth, deep-sea methane might have played a critical role for the evolution of primitive organisms living at hydrothermal vents on the seafloor, Seewald explains. And elsewhere in the solar system, on places like Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's Enceladus, methane produced through the same process could provide an energy source for basic life forms.

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Materials provided by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Profound patterns in globally important algae

A globally important ocean algae is mysteriously scarce in one of the most productive regions of the Atlantic Ocean, according to a new paper in Deep Sea Research I. A massive dataset has revealed patterns in the regions where Atlantic coccolithophores live, illuminating the inner workings of the ocean carbon cycle and raising new questions.

"Understanding these large-scale patterns helps us understand ocean productivity in the entire Atlantic basin," said William Balch, a senior research scientist at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences and lead author of the paper. "Collecting this dataset has been a superhuman effort for my team that has taken hundreds of days at sea and years of analysis."

The researchers found that coccolithophores both struggle and thrive in unexpected places throughout the Atlantic Ocean. They are most abundant in subpolar and temperate waters and surprisingly scarce around the equator, where an abundance of nutrients and sunlight create one of the most biologically productive regions of the global ocean.

The team also discovered that some coccolithophore species thrive deep below the surface near the farthest reaches of sunlight -- within or just above an important water layer called "Sub-Antarctic mode water." This distinct feature flows north from the Southern Ocean and provides nutrients to much of the global ocean, including the northern hemisphere. Balch suspects that booming coccolithophore populations in the Southern Ocean are depleting the water layer's nutrient supply and altering its chemistry -- potentially making it inhospitable for coccolithophores by the time it reaches the equator.

"Sub-Antarctic mode water exerts a staggering level of control on much of the global ocean," Balch said. "If coccolithophores are changing its essential properties, then they could be influencing which species grow in food webs as far away as the equator or even in the northern hemisphere."

Balch and his team built this vast dataset from measurements collected during 10 45-day research cruises through the Atlantic Meridional Transect program, which crosses the Atlantic Ocean between the United Kingdom and the tip of South America. Their findings also have important applications to observations that rely on NASA ocean color satellites. These powerful oceanographic tools allow scientists to detect coccolithophore populations by measuring the light they reflect back into space, but they require on-the-water measurements to ground-truth the satellite data. NASA was the primary funder of this work.

Coccolithophores build protective crystalline plates from chalk minerals by extracting dissolved inorganic carbon from seawater. The way a species' plates are shaped impacts how those plates scatter light in the surface ocean, especially after they become detached and begin to sink towards the seafloor. The researchers discovered that not all coccolithophores drop their plates, and that the plates found throughout the water column come from just a few species.

This finding vastly simplifies the calculations needed to measure the carbon that coccolithophores contain from satellite reflectance data. Coccolithophores play a major role in the global carbon cycle, and understanding where they live and how they scatter light is essential to quantifying how this important element moves between the surface ocean and seafloor. Ultimately, that carbon is either broken down by deep-sea bacteria or buried in sediment, effectively sequestering it from the atmosphere for thousands of years.

Balch's team, along with an international team of investigators, will continue this research in January, when they embark on a National Science Foundation-funded cruise to answer one of the most important questions raised by this study -- how coccolithophores in the Southern Ocean alter Sub-Antarctic mode water before it flows north. Their research will elucidate how these changes may affect productivity further north, and why coccolithophores are so scarce at the equator.

"The grand question remains -- what is missing from this equatorial water that makes it not conducive to coccolithophore growth in such a fertile region of the world ocean?" Balch said. "The difference in the amount of coccolithophores at temperate latitudes and the equator is profound, and it has enormous ramifications for the ocean's food webs and the productivity of the entire planet."

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Materials provided by Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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