Tag Archives: environment

Science No Chaser

What Lake Beds Know (Interview with Janice Brahney of USU)

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[Photo by Jake Eberhardt via Flickr & CC 2.0 License] 

Lakes make excellent witnesses, says Utah State University assistant professor Janice Brahney.  The sediment at the bottom of lakes can hold clues about life in the lake thousands of years ago, preserving everything from fossils to traces of rainfall.

“I wanted to be a detective growing up, solving puzzles and looking at trace evidence to piece together what happened,” she said. “Lakes are just really excellent recorders.”

Brahney focuses on glacial lakes, which form when giant ice sheets melt. Specifically, she’s been studying the glacial lakes high in the mountains of British Columbia.  Her research could help predict how our planet will handle melting glaciers.

Most of the lakes are so remote they don’t even have names.  For example, one basin has  five lakes that are collectively called Coven Lakes, but the individual Coven lakes are anonymous. 

Continue reading “What Lake Beds Know (Interview with Janice Brahney of USU)” »

By Request, Science No Chaser

The Slow Poisoning of the UK’s Bees (and What to Do About It)

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[Photo by David Short via Flickr & Creative Commons 2.0]

“By Request” is a series of posts where I track down studies that answer questions asked by you, my blog’s readers. 

High School Friend Elna asked: “Impending extinction of bees- what can prevent?”

That’s a tough question to answer, because some bee populations are at much higher risk than others. Domesticated honey bee numbers are actually growing, largely due to the large scale industrialized pollination companies, which  bring giant swarms to farmers whose crops rely on bees.

Bees are an enormously diverse group that includes over 20,000 species, spread over 6 continents. (As far as we know, there are no bees in Antarctica.)  Like other animals, bees can be vulnerable to habitat loss, changing temperatures, and pollution.  However, bees do have one persistent problem that stands out: they keep getting caught in the line of fire when humans spray insecticides.

Well, bees are insects, after all.

However, bees are not equally vulnerable to all pesticides.

For example, when Ben Woodcock and his colleagues at the UK’s Natural Environmental Research Council’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology published a study which analyzed 18 years’ worth of data on 62 species of British bees, they found that some bee species’ populations are holding steady in the face of insecticides, while others aren’t.

Continue reading “The Slow Poisoning of the UK’s Bees (and What to Do About It)” »

Science No Chaser

Caltech grows miniature “river deltas” in a lab

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About half a billion people live on fan-shaped floodplains that form where rivers meet the sea.

Those plains, called river deltas, share the same fan-like shape the world over. Even after controlling for factors like the size of the river, the slope of the land its channel traverses, and the makeup of the local soil, river deltas have a remarkably consistent shape.

Seriously. Here’s The Nile: [satelite image via NASA Godard Space Flight Center’s Flickr]

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Here’s the Yukon River in Alaska [satelite image via NASA Godard Space Flight Center’s Flickr] 

Image acquired September 22, 2002 Countless lakes, sloughs, and ponds are scattered throughout this scene of the Yukon Delta in southwest Alaska. One of the largest river deltas in the world, and protected as part of the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge, the river's sinuous waterways seem like blood vessels branching out to enclose an organ. Credit: NASA/USGS/Landsat NASA image use policy. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission. Follow us on Twitter Like us on Facebook Find us on Instagram
Image acquired September 22, 2002
Countless lakes, sloughs, and ponds are scattered throughout this scene of the Yukon Delta in southwest Alaska. One of the largest river deltas in the world, and protected as part of the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge, the river’s sinuous waterways seem like blood vessels branching out to enclose an organ.
Credit: NASA/USGS/Landsat
NASA image use policy.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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Brown Bag Lunch Recaps

Oceans in the Anthropocene: Forever changed but still awesome [Recap of talk ft. Jeremy Jackson]

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The Talk:

Uncharted Waters: Novel Ecosystems in the Marine Environment (part of the Ecological Systems in the Anthropocene series)

In Plain English:
Humans have messed up the ocean, so Harvard asks marine biologists, “What are you excited about?!”

The Speaker(s):
Mary O’Connor of University of British Columbia, Jeremy Jackson of Scripps Institute for Oceanography, Trevor Branch of University of Washington. & John Pandolfi of the University of Queensland Australia

The Sponsor:

Harvard Center for the Environment (HUCE)

What it covered:

“Biologist work on systems dominated by the footprint of man,” Elizabeth Wolkovich, Harvard biology prof and the series organizer, declared in her opening remarks. Most biologists (and a fair number of geologists) will tell you that we are living in a new epoch, a period of time where the Earth’s biogeochemistry becomes so different from the last few million years that geologists have to declare it its own thing.

This particular new epoch is an outlier, because we started it. It’s called the Anthropocene. Wolkovich pointed out that if you look back at Victorian-era papers and essays on natural history (because obviously you’re Stephen J. Gould), you’ll see scientists talking about Nature, with a capital “N”, pristine and untouched by human boot-clomping.

Scientists don’t do that anymore.

Continue reading “Oceans in the Anthropocene: Forever changed but still awesome [Recap of talk ft. Jeremy Jackson]” »

Brown Bag Lunch Recaps

Gaia Theory, “Irresponsible Heroes”, & Why We’re Like Cyanobacteria- Recap of talk by Dr. Andrew Knoll & Dr. David Grinspoon

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The Talk:

“Planetary Changes from Deep Time to the 4th Kind”

In Plain English:

Life doesn’t just adapt to geochemical features; it transforms them simply by…living.

The Speaker:

Andrew Knoll of Harvard and David Grinspoon of the Planetary Science Institute

The Sponsor:

Planet and Life Series, sponsored by MIT Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences dept. (EAPS)

What it covered:

Climate shapes life. This is a fact. But when you get right down to it, life is not a fragile, softly-treading phenomenon; every living cell is an interlocking network of chemical reactions. Nutrients and resources are taken in; other chemicals get spewed out.

It would be rather amazing if all those living organisms didn’t have some effect on the non-living environment. But what kinds of impacts? And how can we, as humans with advanced technology, understand and predict the effects our actions will have on the environment?

These are the questions being addressed by The Planets and Life Series at MIT, and the kick-off event, held back in September (unfortunately, I do not get paid to write this blog) was a doozy. Continue reading “Gaia Theory, “Irresponsible Heroes”, & Why We’re Like Cyanobacteria- Recap of talk by Dr. Andrew Knoll & Dr. David Grinspoon” »

Brown Bag Lunch Recaps

Kimberly Wasserman of LVEJO on “Killing a Midwest Generation”

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The Talk:

Killing a Midwest Generation

In Plain English:

How a Chicago non-profit from a low-income neighborhood got an asthma-inducing coal plant shut down

The Speaker:

Kimberly Wasserman of Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO)

The Sponsor:

Fossil Free MIT

What it covered:

When Kimberly Wasserman of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) took the podium at MIT’s Sloan School of Business and Management, she didn’t fawn; she was direct: “We never stop our community members from asking questions during our presentations,” she said. “And this isn’t that different.”

Bold move from someone who was just introduced to an MIT audience as “a community college graduate” and “an example of how you don’t need a degree to make a difference.” Wasserman is a community organizer with LVEJO, a community-based organization out of Little Village, a predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood on the southwest side of Chicago. Continue reading “Kimberly Wasserman of LVEJO on “Killing a Midwest Generation”” »