Science Now “Is Acid Rain a Thing of the Past?” It is wonderful that this policy is yielding results, but a bit scary how slowly recovery takes. Obviously climate change is a very different problem, but seeing how this “success story” has come with such time lags really makes me scared of how long we Read More
A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, PollutionScience “Mining the Biodiversity of Plants: A Revolution in the Making” What’s fascinating to me about this is what happens when we have screened every plant we can find… will we then stop caring about the medicinal value of biodiversity?
A Minor Post, Biodiversity Loss, GeneticsScience “Fences Make Good Nest Sites“
A Minor Post, Biodiversity Loss, Conservation Biology, Invasive SpeciesProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences “Degradation and resilience in Louisiana salt marshes after the BP–Deepwater Horizon oil spill” Kudos to PNAS for making this important paper open access. There is some depressing data here, as oil-slicked marshes with complete die-off of grasses were quickly eroded. But for those that were not eroded, the Read More
A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Biodiversity Loss, Bogs & Wetlands, Conservation Biology, Habitat DestructionProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences “Lead poisoning and the deceptive recovery of the critically endangered California condor” Nature News “California condors face lead menace“
A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Conservation Biology, ExtinctionDiscover “The Transplanted Forest: A Bold Experiment in Preemptive Climate Adaptation” Given the chances that we will fail to prevent climate change, it seems like the Canadians have the right idea here. Ironic that industries that rely on stable climate are less apt to deny its reality.
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Climate Change, Extinction, Habitat Destruction, Public Policy, Resilience, Risk & Uncertainty, Taiga (Boreal Forest), Temperate ForestProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences “Biodiversity impacts ecosystem productivity as much as resources, disturbance, or herbivory“
A Minor Post, Biodiversity Loss, Ecosystem Ecology, Ecosystem Services, Habitat DestructionEcology Letters “Intensive agriculture erodes β-diversity at large scales“
A Minor Post, Biodiversity LossPLoS ONE “Management Implications of the Biodiversity and Socio-Economic Impacts of Shrimp Trawler By-Catch in Bahía de Kino, Sonora, México” Anyone who cares about marine conservation and believes that they can ethically eat seafood is somewhat delusional. Further evidence that there is no such thing as industrial-scale “safe catch”.
A Minor Post, Biodiversity Loss, Marine Ecosystems, Resource Consumption, Sustainable HarvestingScience “Legislating Sea Level Rise” Well, I guess if North Carolina says that nature only changes in a linear manner, it must be true! Thank goodness for brave legislators who are not going to let nature get non-linear on us! We evolutionary biologists have seen this play out before, but this must come as a Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Climate Change, Political Science, Public Policy, Sustainability