1. Earth Alive!

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 1

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

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 1

2. Energy Through the System

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 2

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

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

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

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 2

3. Studying Desert Ecosystems

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 3

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

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

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 3

4. Changes in the Global System

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 4

5. Carbon in the Biosphere

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 5

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

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

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

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

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

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 5

6. Carrying Capacity

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 6

2008 November 10. Marine invasive species advance 50 km per decade, World Conference on Marine Biodiversity told. EurekAlert. Excerpt: A rapid, climate change-induced northern migration of invasive marine is one of many research results announced Tues. Nov. 11 during opening day presentations at the First World Conference on Marine Biodiversity, Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias, in Valencia.
Investigators report that invasive species of marine macroalgae spread at 50 km per decade, a distance far greater than that covered by invasive terrestrial plants. The difference may be due to the rapid dispersion of macroalgae propagules in the ocean, according to Nova Mieszkovska, from the Marine Biological Association of the U.K.
The international conference ... will gather over 500 scientists from 45 countries.
Says CSIC scientist Carlos Duarte, co-chair of the Conference: "Overwhelming evidence of an accelerating deterioration of the oceans has provided the ímpetus to call the marine biodiversity scientific community together in this first World Conference."
...Almost half of the 450 communications at the Conference will address the loss of marine biodiversity and its consequences, whereas the rest will cover the exploitation of marine living resources, as well as exciting discoveries of novel ecosystems in extreme ecosystems, particularly in the deep sea....

2008 October 13. Thinking Anew About a Migratory Barrier: Roads. By Jim Robbins, The New York Times. Excerpt: SALTESE, Mont. — ...The mountains in and around Glacier National Park teem with bears. A recently concluded five-year census found 765 grizzlies in northwestern Montana, more than three times the number of bears as when it was listed as a threatened species in 1975. To the south lies a swath of federally protected wilderness much larger than Yellowstone, where the habitat is good, and there are no known grizzlies. They were wiped out 50 years ago to protect sheep.
One of the main reasons they have not returned is Interstate 90.
To arrive from the north, a bear would have to climb over a nearly three-foot high concrete Jersey barrier, cross two lanes of road, braving 75- to 80-mile-an hour traffic, climb a higher Jersey barrier, cross two more lanes of traffic and climb yet another barrier.
“It’s the most critical wildlife corridor in the country,” said Dr. Servheen, grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, of the linkage between the two habitats.
...Some experts believe that habitat fragmentation, the slicing and dicing of large landscapes into small pieces with roads, homes and other development, is the biggest of all environmental problems....
Fragmentation cuts off wildlife from critical habitat, including food, security or others of their species for reproduction and genetic diversity. Eventually they disappear.
...Vegetation communities here are projected to migrate north, which means grizzlies will need to be able to follow. “Shrub fields where berries are is a good example,” Dr. Servheen said. “If dry weather wipes them out, the bears need to go elsewhere.”
The problem is they might not be able to follow. “We’ve boxed them in” with roads, he said....

2008 September 29. Harsh Review of Restoration in Everglades. By Damien Cave, The New York Times. Excerpt: MIAMI — The eight-year-old, multibillion-dollar effort to rescue the Everglades has failed to halt the wetlands’ decline because of bureaucratic delays, a lack of financing from Congress and overdevelopment, according to a new report.
The 287-page study by the National Research Council, a biennial review required by Congress, warned that South Florida’s stunning river of grass was quickly reaching a point of no return. Without “near term progress,” the report said, more species will die off “and the Everglades ecosystem may experience irreversible losses to its character and functioning.”
William L. Graf, chairman of the committee that wrote the report, put it more simply. “There is no other place like this,” Mr. Graf said. “It’s existed for 5,000 years this way, and we’re in danger of losing it for our kids and their kids.”
...“The bottom line,” said Mr. Graf, a professor of geology at the University of South Carolina, “is I don’t think we can wait and see what happens.”...

2008 Sep 8. Friendly Invaders. By CARL ZIMMER, NY Times. Excerpt: New Zealand is home to 2,065 native plants found nowhere else on Earth....
When Europeans began arriving in New Zealand, they brought with them alien plants - crops, garden plants and stowaway weeds. Today, 22,000 non-native plants grow in New Zealand. Most of them can survive only with the loving care of gardeners and farmers. But 2,069 have become naturalized: they have spread out across the islands on their own. There are more naturalized invasive plant species in New Zealand than native species.
It sounds like the makings of an ecological disaster: an epidemic of invasive species that wipes out the delicate native species in its path. But in a paper published in August in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dov Sax, an ecologist at Brown University, and Steven D. Gaines, a marine biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, point out that the invasion has not led to a mass extinction of native plants. The number of documented extinctions of native New Zealand plant species is a grand total of three.
..."I hate the 'exotics are evil' bit, because it's so unscientific," Dr. Sax said.
Dr. Sax and his colleagues are at odds with many other experts on invasive species. Their critics argue that the speed with which species are being moved around the planet, combined with other kinds of stress on the environment, is having a major impact.
There is little doubt that some invasive species have driven native species extinct. But Dr. Sax argues that they are far more likely to be predators than competitors.
...Biological invasions also set off bursts of natural selection.
House sparrows, for example, have moved to North America from Europe and have spread across the whole continent. "Natural selection will start to change them," Dr. Sax said. "If you give that process enough time, they will become new species."
"The natives themselves are also likely to adapt," Dr. Sax added.
Some of the fastest rates of evolution ever documented have taken place in native species adapting to exotics. Some populations of soapberry bugs in Florida, for example, have shifted from feeding on a native plant, the balloon vine, to the goldenrain tree, introduced from Asia by landscapers in the 1950s. In five decades, the smaller goldenrain seeds have driven the evolution of smaller mouthparts in the bugs, along with a host of other changes.
In Australia, the introduction of cane toads in the 1930s has also spurred evolution in native animals....

2008 June 17 .Tiny, Clingy and Destructive, Mussel Makes Its Way West. By John Collins Rudolf, The New York Times. Excerpt: LAKE MEAD, Nev. — Kneeling at the edge of the dock, Wen Baldwin began hauling on a length of nylon rope that disappeared into the depths of Lake Mead. One after another, an odd assemblage of objects — a water bottle, a chunk of concrete, a pair of flip-flops, a steel anchor — emerged from the emerald-green waters.
A living blanket of tiny, striped mussels covered each one.
"The conditions here are ideal for these things, absolutely ideal," said Mr. Baldwin, 70, a retired design engineer and a National Park Service volunteer.
The mussel-coated debris is unmistakable evidence of an event occurring silently and largely out of sight — the colonization of the Colorado River by the quagga mussel, a fingernail-size Eurasian bivalve with an astonishing sex drive and a nasty reputation for causing economic and ecological havoc.
Like the closely related zebra mussel, the quagga can cling tenaciously to hard surfaces, like the equipment of the many hydroelectric and water-supply plants along the lower Colorado. "They're going to be all over the pipes, all over the intakes," said Gary L. Fahnenstiel, senior ecologist with the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "It's going to be devastating."
Dr. Fahnenstiel ought to know. The quagga has carpeted much of the Great Lakes, largely displacing the better-known zebra. Its invasion of the Colorado, presumably after crossing the Rockies on recreational boats hitched to trailers, foretells major disruptions not just for utilities, but also for the entire ecology of the lower river. By stripping nutrients and microorganisms from the water, the mussel could do grave damage to a wide variety of species, including small invertebrates, fish and birds. "This is one bad hombre," Dr. Fahnenstiel said. "It's almost your worst-case scenario for affecting the entire food chain...

2008 Spring. Are Bay Seals Facing a New Chemical Health Threat? by Lisa Owens Viani, Terrain Magazine. Excerpt: etween globs of oil, six-pack rings, used condoms, and discarded sippy cups, harbor seals have plenty of hazards to dodge in San Francisco Bay. But some potential threats to their health may be more insidious. An "emerging contaminant" found circulating in blood samples from harbor seals is perfluorooctane sulfanate (PFOS), a persistent compound used in Scotchgard, fire extinguisher foam, and other stain-resistant and water-repellent coatings.

2008 May 6. Mangrove loss 'left Burma exposed' By Mark Kinver, Science and nature reporter, BBC News. Excerpt: Destruction of mangrove forests in Burma left coastal areas exposed to the devastating force of the weekend's cyclone, a top politician suggests. ASEAN secretary-general Surin Pitsuwan said coastal developments had resulted in mangroves, which act as a natural defence against storms, being lost.
At least 22,000 people have died in the disaster, say state officials. A study of the 2004 Asian tsunami found that areas near healthy mangroves suffered less damage and fewer deaths. Mr Surin, speaking at a high-level meeting of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Singapore, said the combination of more people living in coastal areas and the loss of mangroves had exacerbated the tragedy.

2008 Feb 29. Invasion of the Alien Creatures. by Molly Webster, OnEarth (NRDC). Unwelcome guests Tainted ballast water brought zebra mussels to the Great Lakes. Excerpt: Ecologists estimate that every six months a new invasive species begins carving out a spot for itself in the Great Lakes ecosystem. Many arrive as stowaways on shipping vessels that travel up the St. Lawrence Seaway, hiding out in ballast water until it's discharged for cargo--leaving the aquatic invaders free to move about the continent. In 2006, one of the most lethal infectious diseases affecting fish populations, viral hemorrhagic septicemia, killed tens of thousands of fish in Lake Erie. Scientists believe it might have arrived in ballast water. Such losses are ruinous in a region that takes in $5.7 billion a year through the sport and commercial fishing industries. In the absence of federal rules to curtail tainted ballast discharges, in 2007 Michigan began requiring that ships treat their ballast water before releasing it in state waters. The shipping industry challenged the law in court; NRDC joined Michigan's case, arguing that states have the right to enact their own standards. The case was dismissed in August, but NRDC is prepared to defend against the shippers' appeals.

2008 February 28. Requiem for a River. By Tim Folger, OnEarth. Excerpt: Snake Valley, Nevada [Elevation 5,300 feet]
...The demand for water here, exacerbated by the growth of Las Vegas, has never been greater. Las Vegas, built in the middle of the Mojave Desert, gets 60,000 new residents-and four inches of rain -- each year. To secure the water it needs to maintain that growth, the city plans to build a $2 billion pipeline to pump groundwater from the valleys of northern Nevada. Baker and his fellow ranchers believe the pipeline will be a disaster, not just for them but for the Great Basin ecosystem, which is one reason we've driven to Needle Point Spring. If a single farmer can suck a spring dry, what will happen when a city of nearly two million starts pumping groundwater here?
The remote Snake Valley is but one of the many fronts in a battle for water rights that will play out in the decades ahead across the entire Southwest... With the onset of global warming, an already bad situation is likely to get much worse. Some climate scientists suspect that the current drought is not an aberration but the start of a transition to permanently drier conditions in the fastest-growing -- and most arid -- region in North America...
Late last year, the seven states that share the Colorado River's water -- Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming -- agreed to new federal guidelines for managing the river that should prevent the drought from morphing into a full-blown catastrophe. But that agreement won't end the region's water wars...
...The crisis facing the Southwest isn't so much due to any lack of water-even in the driest years the Colorado River can satisfy the needs of millions. The real crisis is a demographic one. Is urban development a goal to be pursued at any cost? Or as Cecil Garland, the rancher in tiny Callao, Utah, put it, do we want lawns or lettuce? Craps or crops?

2008 January. The Invaders: Weapons of Choice. By Laura Paskus, Forest Magazine, Winter 2008
Excerpt: For almost four decades, Doug Parker worked for the U.S.
Forest Service, initially with pesticides, then with herbicides. But
just days shy of his thirty-ninth anniversary with the agency, he was
fired, charged with misconduct and not following orders-in particular, not certifying enough employees in the use of pesticides and improperly formatting a progress report. But Parker, who was the pesticide coordinator for the Southwestern Region until his dismissal two years ago, believes that he was fired because he sounded the alarm about the agency's strategy for dealing with invasive species, and because he refused to authorize spraying a campground with insecticide in 2003. Parker has filed a lawsuit against the agency. His claims that the agency is ill-prepared to deal with the growing problem of invasive plant and insect incursions-and with citizens' groups who oppose the use of herbicides and pesticides on public land-illustrate the complex issue that forest managers are facing as invasives gain a foothold on national forests....A quick look around the Southwestern Region reveals a dramatic trend within forest ecosystems: Russian knapweed chokes northern New Mexico roadsides, while Dalmatian toadflax infiltrates the banks of the Rio Grande. On the Lincoln National Forest, musk thistle is spreading across the ground, while inchworms defoliate conifer trees.
Meanwhile, in Arizona, bark beetles have destroyed hundreds of
thousands of acres of pine forests as well as plants such as honey
and velvet mesquite, and buffelgrass and fountaingrass are outpacing
the Sonoran Desert's native plants, including the iconic saguaro
cactus....

2008 January. The Invaders: Fodder for Fire. By Alice Tallmadge, Forest Magazine, Winter 2008. An aggressive invasive from Russia has emerged as a significant factor in the wildfires that rolled through much of the West this past summer, and several western states have decided it's time to get serious about eradicating the ubiquitous cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum). The governors of Idaho, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming are developing a strategy for rehabilitating thousands of acres of scorched rangeland by reseeding with native and nonnative grasses before cheatgrass can take hold.

2007 December 17. Oceans' Growing Acidity Alarms Scientists. By Les Blumenthal, McClatchy Newspapers. Excerpt: WASHINGTON - Seven hundred miles west of Seattle in the Pacific at Ocean Station Papa, a first-of-its-kind buoy is anchored to monitor a looming environmental catastrophe. Forget about sea levels rising as glaciers and polar ice melt, and increasing water temperatures affecting global weather patterns. As the oceans absorb more and more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, they're gradually becoming more acidic. And some scientists fear that the change may be irreversible. At risk are sea creatures up and down the food chain, from the tiniest phytoplankton and zooplankton to whales, from squid to salmon to crabs, coral, oysters and clams....

2007 December 16. National Park Plans to Cull Its Herd of Elk. By KIRK JOHNSON, NY Times. Excerpt: DENVER - The elk population that roams and sometimes rampages through the delicate landscape of Rocky Mountain National Park is out of control and will be reduced through a program that will use sharpshooters to cull the herd, park officials said last week.
The plan, which is expected to receive final approval by the National Park Service next month, would involve killing up to 200 of the animals each year beginning in 2009.
The herd, believed to be descended from a tiny transplant community brought down from Wyoming during World War I, has become a major tourist attraction - and a severe problem for park managers. The animals, which can weigh up to 700 pounds for a full-grown bull, feed
on fragile aspen and willow stands. In some places the stands have been devastated by the herd's growing numbers. Rocky Mountain National Park, which straddles the Continental Divide and holds the headwaters of the Colorado River, is one of the most heavily used national parks, about 90 minutes northwest of Denver.
And the majestic, slow-moving elk, numbering upwards of 3,000 in some past years, have become one of the park's signature photo opportunities, even as their environmental impact has grown. Park officials say a sustainable population is about 1,600 to 2,100 animals.
...A park biologist who led a management study of the elk, Therese Johnson, said ... that for several reasons, the park's elk population had recently fallen a bit. About 700 were killed by hunters outside the park last year, one of the highest numbers in years. And more of the animals appear to be spending time in forest areas outside park
boundaries.
She said that if the trend continued, there might be years when no animals needed to be killed. She also emphasized that the culling program would be scientifically based. The shooting would be done in winter, ...with a goal of mimicking as much as possible how natural predators like wolves would reduce a herd, by taking out the old, the weak and the ill....

2007 November 12. Border Fence Work Raises Environmental Concerns. By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD, NY Times. LOS ANGELES. Excerpt: The Department of Homeland Security is ahead of schedule in building some 700 miles of fencing along the Mexican border, but some environmental groups, elected officials and local Indian tribes say too little attention is being paid to the environmental consequences of the barriers. ...Opponents say the 12-to-15-foot-tall steel fence and its construction will disrupt the habitat of jaguars, pygmy owls and other sensitive fauna in the wildlife refuge, and encourage illegal immigrants to use more remote, ecologically delicate terrain.
Three times, including twice this year, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has exempted fence construction along the border from environmental reviews normally required for such projects, saying the waivers avoid legal delays that threaten speedy completion.
..."This is another example of the federal government riding roughshod over America's treasured lands and legal process in its rush to complete a highly ineffective and controversial border wall," said Matt Clark, the Southwest representative for Defenders of Wildlife, an advocacy group.
Federal officials have defended the land swap and the environmental waivers, saying speedy construction of the fence will help lead to control of the border and reduce trash and other environmental damage generated by illegal immigrant traffic....

2007 October 16. Oriental Beetle Discovered in Indiana. Associated Press Excerpt: WEST LAFAYETTE - An invasive beetle that's native to Japan has been discovered in Indiana for the first time as the plant-munching insect edges further into the Midwest. Purdue University entomologist Doug Richmond said a graduate student recently found an unusual beetle in Tippecanoe County and identified it at a Purdue lab as an Oriental beetle. ...The beetles, which are similar in size to Japanese beetle, arrived in the United States in the 1920s and have caused devastating infestations across much of the Northeast. To date, the insect has been found as far south as South Carolina. ...In the larval stage, the beetles feed on roots of turf grasses, perennial plants, weeds, nursery stock and potted plants. After the adult beetles emerge, they feed on flowers from May to August, favoring the petals of daisies, phlox and petunias....

Fall 2007. A Fence Runs Through It. Forest Magazine. Excerpt: The cost of the proposed 700-mile fence along segments of the border between the United States and Mexico will likely be higher than the $1.2 billion Congress approved when it passed the Secure Fence Act in 2006.
Much, much higher, say members of environmental groups who advocate for the hundreds of acres of national wildlife refuges, forests and monuments that straddle the border. ...What concerns them are the impacts a two walled fence will have on desert ecosystems, water flow and wildlife species--from jaguars and desert pronghorn to the flat-tailed horned lizard.
...According to [Jenny] Neely [with the Defenders of Wildlife in Tucson], the Marine Corp, which is responsible for managing the range on the ground, planned to install vehicle barriers along the border it shares with Mexico.
This three-foot high, "permeable" fencing allows people and wildlife to pass through, but prevents the passage of cars and trucks. Similar barriers ahve been constructed in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument east of the range...and the Tohono O'odham Nation also had approval to construct vehicle barriers.
"The world came downthat the bombin range was going to get a [double] fence...in contradiction to what every manager out there wanted."

2007 June 18. Caverns to Remove Exotic Fish From Pond. Associated Press. Excerpt: State Game and Fish officials will help staff members at Carlsbad Caverns National Park remove exotic fish and amphibians from the pond at Rattlesnake Springs. The effort, which starts Sunday, is aimed at restoring native species, including the roundnose minnow and greenthroat darter. Non-native species that will be removed include the green sunfish, the largemouth bass and the bullfrog. ... Park officials will pump water from the pond for one week. When half to two-thirds of the water has been removed, biologists will separate live fish in holding tanks - one for native fish, the other for non-natives. Native fish will be returned to the pond and non-natives will be released into another water system managed by the Game and Fish Department. ...

2007 June 12. Battling a Nasty Green Invader From the Deep. By LISA W. FODERARO Excerpt: SCHROON, N.Y. - Nosing into a shallow bay on Schroon Lake, Steve LaMere peered over the side of his pontoon boat. He was on an unusual reconnaissance mission, looking for signs of an aggressive aquatic invader. The plant he was after, Eurasian watermilfoil, is not new. First found in the United States in the 1940s in a pond in Washington, D.C., it has since spread to almost every corner of the country, endangering swimmers, boaters and other aquatic plants. Since the 1970s, its growth - along with that of many other invasive plants and animals - has exploded.
Like other invasive species, Eurasian watermilfoil is spread from continent to continent by ballast water from ships, and locally by recreational boaters and fishermen who unwittingly introduce plant fragments to clean lakes from infested ones. Eurasian watermilfoil is now in more than 45 Adirondack lakes, including giants like Lake George and Saranac Lake. It threatens their biodiversity by muscling out native plants and can grow so thick that it becomes entangled in boat propellers and the limbs of swimmers.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent each year to remove watermilfoil. In July and August, teams of scuba divers descend to hand-harvest plants, which can grow up to 15 feet tall. Where the watermilfoil is too dense for that approach (scientists have found as many as 300 stems per square meter), divers fasten huge sheets of plastic, called benthic barriers, to the lake bottom to blot out the sun.
Another method, known as biocontrol, uses nature - in the form of insects and fish - to fight nature. At Augur Lake, where Mr. LaMere was hired to combat its Eurasian watermilfoil infestation, hundreds of sterile grass carp were released several years ago to eat the plants. For now, the watermilfoil, which had cloaked 10 percent of the lake, is still there, but is less of a nuisance.
In 2005, an Invasive Species Task Force appointed by former Gov. George E. Pataki issued a 146-page report, with a dozen recommendations and a call for the state to budget from $5 million to $10 million annually to address the issue. To illustrate how quickly invasive species spread, the report said that since the task force convened in 2004, at least six new ones have arrived in the state. They include the European crane fly and Brazilian elodea, a popular aquarium plant discovered last year. Michael P. White, the commission's executive director, said the additional state money would mean more divers this summer. "The state funding will allow us to expand our operations more on a scale that's appropriate to the challenge." While some lakes in New York are choked with Eurasian watermilfoil, the early efforts on Lake George paid off. Of 1,800 acres of lake bottom where watermilfoil could conceivably take root (generally the shallower fringes), only about 10 to 12 acres have dense growth.

2007 April. Lush Yards with Less Water. Union of Concerned Scientists - Green Tips. Excerpt: About one-third of all residential water use goes toward lawns and gardens, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Unfortunately, much of this water is wasted through runoff, evaporation, overwatering, or inefficient landscape design. Reducing water use in your yard does not mean resorting to rock gardens-by adopting some simple landscaping techniques known as "xeriscaping" (from the Greek xeros, meaning dry) you can create a beautiful lawn or garden that uses up to 60 percent less water, requires less fertilizer and pesticides, and saves you time and money. ... In most cases, native, non-invasive plants are best because they are naturally adapted to regional temperature and rainfall patterns. Grouping plants that have similar water needs can also help minimize the need for supplemental watering....If there are areas of your lawn that go unused, consider replacing the grass with less water-intensive plants such as trees, shrubs, flowers, or low-growing ground covers. ...Mulching around plants with coarse compost, wood chips, shredded leaves, or straw further reduces the need for supplemental watering by keeping the soil cool and moist. ....

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 6

7. Neighborhood and Global Stewardship

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 7

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

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

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

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

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

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

2007 December 22. As Cars Hit More Animals on Roads, Toll Rises. By JIM ROBBINS, NY Times. Excerpt: BOZEMAN, Mont. - On a dark highway near Anchorage, Specialist Steven Cavanaugh of the Army, who had survived 300 missions in Iraq, was critically injured in December when his vehicle hit a moose. Specialist Cavanaugh died Dec. 6. ...In the early morning darkness in Lincoln, Mont., in October, a pickup slammed into a 830-pound grizzly bear. The driver survived, but the bear was among seven grizzlies - a record for one year - killed by vehicles this year statewide.
Wildlife-related crashes are a growing problem on rural roads around
the country. The accidents increased 50 percent from 1990 to 2004,
based on the most recent federal data, according to the Western
Transportation Institute at Montana State University here.
The basic problem is that rural roads are being traveled by more and
more people, many of them living in far-flung subdivisions. Each
year, about 200 people are killed in as many as two million
wildlife-related crashes at a cost of more than $8 billion, the
institute estimated