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    Mongabay, a leading resource for news and perspectives on environmental and conservation issues related to the tropics, has launched Tropical Conservation Science - a new, open access academic e-journal. It will cover a wide variety of scientific and social studies on tropical ecosystems, their biodiversity and the threats posed to them. Tropical Conservation Science - March 8, 2008.

    At the 148th Meeting of the OPEC Conference, the oil exporting cartel decided to leave its production level unchanged, sending crude prices spiralling to new records (above $104). OPEC "observed that the market is well-supplied, with current commercial oil stocks standing above their five-year average. The Conference further noted, with concern, that the current price environment does not reflect market fundamentals, as crude oil prices are being strongly influenced by the weakness in the US dollar, rising inflation and significant flow of funds into the commodities market." OPEC - March 5, 2008.

    Kyushu University (Japan) is establishing what it says will be the world’s first graduate program in hydrogen energy technologies. The new master’s program for hydrogen engineering is to be offered at the university’s new Ito campus in Fukuoka Prefecture. Lectures will cover such topics as hydrogen energy and developing the fuel cells needed to convert hydrogen into heat or electricity. Of all the renewable pathways to produce hydrogen, bio-hydrogen based on the gasification of biomass is by far both the most efficient, cost-effective and cleanest. Fuel Cell Works - March 3, 2008.


    An entrepreneur in Ivory Coast has developed a project to establish a network of Miscanthus giganteus farms aimed at producing biomass for use in power generation. In a first phase, the goal is to grow the crop on 200 hectares, after which expansion will start. The project is in an advanced stage, but the entrepreneur still seeks partners and investors. The plantation is to be located in an agro-ecological zone qualified as highly suitable for the grass species. Contact us - March 3, 2008.

    A 7.1MW biomass power plant to be built on the Haiwaiian island of Kaua‘i has received approval from the local Planning Commission. The plant, owned and operated by Green Energy Hawaii, will use albizia trees, a hardy species that grows in poor soil on rainfall alone. The renewable power plant will meet 10 percent of the island's energy needs. Kauai World - February 27, 2008.


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Friday, October 10, 2008

Smithsonian's perspective on impact of global warming on biodiversity


Will climate change exceed life's ability to respond? "Biodiversity in a Warmer World", published in Science illustrates that cross-disciplinary research fostered by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama clearly informs this urgent debate.

As an extremely diverse region of rainforest and coral reefs, the tropics may have the most to lose as a result of global warming. Some disagree, arguing that tropical organisms will be favored as their ranges expand into temperate areas. Few empirical studies provide specific answers to help us choose conservation and mitigation measures.

Science asked Jens Svenning, University of Aarhus, Denmark and Richard Condit of the Smithsonian's Global Earth Observatory Network to review two papers about species range change.

In a range analysis for plants and insects on a mountain slope in Costa Rica, Colwell et al. show that a 3.2˚ C increase in temperature threatens 53 percent of the area's species with lowland extinction and 51 percent with range shift gaps, meaning that they have nowhere else to go.

The other study they reviewed, by Moritz et al., follows historical range expansions and contractions for small mammals in Yosemite National Park in California, USA and shows that ranges may contract dangerously as they are pushed further and further up mountain slopes:
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To provide the proper perspective for this work Svenning, who held a postdoctoral fellowship with the Smithsonian's GEO network in 2000-2002 and Condit cite empirical work by colleagues at the Smithsonian and others.

In a 2001 Science article by STRI staff scientist Carlos Jaramillo et al., plant pollen diversity in rock cores from northern South America revealed that warming events in the tropics over 60 million years were not particularly detrimental, with the caveat that warming in fragmented landscapes or crossing a temperature threshold could cause severe extinctions in the future.

Extant species that evolved in warmer climates should retain the ability to tolerate warmer climates in the future, as argued in a 2001 issue of Science by Eldredge Bermingham, director of STRI and Christopher Dick, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

It is not clear which factors (temperature, moisture, competition with other species, habitat limitation) are the primary causes of tropical extinctions. Drought tolerance, however, definitely limits tropical plant distributions. This was reported in the May 2007 issue of Nature by Bettina Engelbrecht, research associate and lecturer at San Francisco State University, and colleagues.

Condit and Svenning also cite their own studies from the tropics and temperate areas where other drivers of extinction are at work. They call for more discoveries of the sort that often result when researchers are brought together in places like STRI's facilities in Panama, where camaraderie fuels critical ecological research within an intellectual context that encourages a deep time and wide world perspective.

The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, headquartered in Panama City, Panama, is a unit of the Smithsonian Institution. The Institute furthers the understanding of tropical nature and its importance to human welfare, trains students to conduct research in the tropics and promotes conservation by increasing public awareness of the beauty and importance of tropical ecosystems.

Picture: How will a warmer world affect seasonal behavior such as the flowering of these Cuipo trees in Panama? Credit: Marcos Guerra, STRI

References:
Jens-Christian Svenning and Richard Condit, "Biodiversity in a Warmer World", Science 10 October 2008: Vol. 322. no. 5899, pp. 206 - 207, DOI: 10.1126/science.1164542




2 Comments:

Blogger rufus said...

Is THIS what you're so het up about?

Come on guys, get a grip. There's a whole world of serious, grown-up stuff to talk about. Don't destroy you credibility with fairy-tales.

3:23 PM  
Blogger al fin said...

Over the past several hundred million years, atmospheric CO2 levels have varied wildly. During that time, plants and animals evolved and adapted to the changing levels of CO2.

Some plants are optimised to higher levels than at present, some to lower, depending upon their evolutionary history. Some plants that evolved for higher levels than at present are essentially CO2 starved.

You should understand that the competition for advantages within environmental niches is ongoing, and will never stop while life exists.

Rather than reducing this discussion to the one-dimensional framework of "catastrophic anthropogenic global warming", intelligent people would expand the framework to look more deeply and broadly.

5:48 PM  

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