Europas Vogelwelt findet zunehmend bessere Lebensbedingungen vor. Sie profitiert von jenen Schutzprogrammen, die seit 1979 von mittlerweile fünfzehn europäischen Ländern unterzeichnet und umgesetzt wurden. Britische Forscher verglichen Statistiken aus den Jahren 1990 bis 2000 und konnten nachweisen, dass sich die Bestände seltener geschützter Vögel gegenüber nicht geschützten deutlich verbessert haben. Außerhalb Europas konnten die bedrohten Arten nicht vergleichbar zulegen.
International Conservation Policy Delivers Benefits for Birds in Europe
Kategorie: Umwelt & Klima
Space-Borne Sensors Help Africa Tackle Water Shortage Problems
Zambian water authorities are integrating information based on satellite imagery to alleviate water shortages. With inadequate information causing many water-related problems, an ESA project called TIGER has generated a variety of environmental maps to provide local policy makers with the necessary tools for effective water resource management. Data from ESA’s multispectral MERIS sensor aboard Envisat was used to create maps depicting existing water resources, suitable dam locations and land cover.
African water authorities receive space-tool training
Lake Superior wird nicht nur kleiner, sondern auch wärmer
Lake Superior, der zweitgrößte See der Erde, wird nicht nur kleiner, sondern auch wärmer. Forscher beunruhigt, dass die Wassermenge seit 1999 ständig unter den Durchschnittswerten der letzten 40 Jahre geblieben ist und in diesem Jahr sogar einen Tiefstwert erreichte. Hinzu kommt, dass sich das Oberflächenwasser des besonders kalten Sees auf bis zu 24 Grad Celsius erwärmt hat. Die ökologischen Folgen dieser ganzen Entwicklung sind noch ungewiss. Der Lake Superior im Grenzgebiet zwischen den USA und Kanada ist der wichtigste Trinkwasser-Speicher der Region.
Shrinking Lake Superior Also Heating Up
Greenland was warmer than previously believed
A team of international researchers has collected the oldest ever recovered DNA samples and used them to show that Greenland was much warmer at some point during the last Ice Age than most people have believed. The ancient DNA was discovered at the bottom of a two kilometer thick ice sheet and came from the trees, plants and insects of a boreal forest estimated to be between 450.000 and 900.000 years old. Previously, the youngest evidence of a boreal forest in Greenland was from 2,4 million years ago.
Ancient DNA reveals Greenland’s warm past
Ancient Biomolecules from Deep Ice Cores Reveal a Forested Southern Greenland
Envisat still going strong after five successful years
Launched from Kourou in French Guiana on the night of February 28, 2002, ESA’s Envisat spacecraft marks its fifth year in space. Having orbited Earth more than 26.000 times, the world’s largest and most complex environmental satellite ever launched has travelled a distance of more than 1.000.000.000 kilometres – nearly the equivalent of travelling to Jupiter and back. Generating some 280 Gigabytes of data products daily, Envisat has gathered 500 Terabytes to date.
To mark five years of Envisat, four picture galleries have been created to provide an overview of the mission:
From icehouse to hothouse
Three hundred million years ago, Earth’s climate shifted dramatically from icehouse to hothouse, with major environmental consequences. That shift was the result of both rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and the melting of vast ice sheets, new research by University of Michigan paleoclimatologist Christopher Poulsen shows. The changes occurred during the period of Earth’s history when the continents were consolidated into a single supercontinent, Pangaea. Toward the end of the Paleozoic Era, tropical regions of Pangaea became much warmer and drier, winds in the region shifted direction, and tropical flora drastically changed. At the same time, atmospheric carbon dioxide increased and the enormous ice sheets that blanketed Gondwana began disappearing.
From icehouse to hothouse: melting ice and rising CO2 caused climate shift
Carbon dioxide may have saved Earth from freezing over
The greenhouse gas that has become a bane of modern society, may have saved Earth from freezing over early in the planet’s history, according to the first detailed laboratory analysis of the world’s oldest sedimentary rocks. Scientists have theorized for years that high concentrations of greenhouse gases could have helped Earth avoid global freezing in its youth by allowing the atmosphere to retain more heat than it lost. Now a team from the University of Chicago and the University of Colorado at Boulder that analyzed ancient rocks from the eastern shore of Hudson Bay in northern Quebec, Canada, have discovered the first direct field evidence supporting this theory. The study shows carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere could have sustained surface temperatures above freezing before 3,75 billion years ago.
Identification of chemical sedimentary protoliths using iron isotopes in the > 3750 Ma Nuvvuagittuq supracrustal belt, Canada
Researchers Identify Driver for Near-Earth Space Weather
New findings indicate that the aurora and other near-Earth space weather are driven by the rate at which the Earth’s and sun’s magnetic fields connect, or merge, and not by the solar wind’s electric field as was previously assumed. The merging occurs at a spot between the Earth and sun, roughly 40.000 miles above the planet’s surface, and appears fundamental to the circulation of particles and magnetic fields throughout near-Earth space.
http://www.jhuapl.edu/newscenter/pressreleases/2006/061208b.asp
Amazon Indians Using Google Earth to Protect Tropical Forests
A non-profit organization called the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) has been providing Amazon Indian natives (who know the tropical forests better than anyone) with GPS hand-held units and Google Earth so they can help keep track of illegal mining and tree cutting on their lands. Since Google has updated many of the areas with higher resolution, it has even been possible now to identify illegal mine sites in the satellite photos. The Indians are using the GPS units to mark locations of roads, airports, and mining operations deep in the tropical forests. They then put the locations into Google Earth and are sharing the data with government officials to track down illegal operations. Apparently, members of the Google Earth team have been helping them out.
What a perfect example of combining technology with traditional hunting and land knowledge to help reduce environmental destruction!
https://news.mongabay.com/2006/11/amazon-indians-use-google-earth-gps-to-protect-forest-home/
Icelandic Volcano Caused Historic Famine In Egypt
An environmental drama played out on the world stage in the late 18th century when a volcano killed 9.000 Icelanders and brought a famine to Egypt that reduced the population of the Nile valley by a sixth. A study by three scientists from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and a collaborator from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, demonstrates a connection between these two widely separated events. The investigators used a computer model developed by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies to trace atmospheric changes that followed the 1783 eruption of Laki in southern Iceland back to their point of origin. The study is the first to conclusively establish the linkage between high-latitude eruptions and the water supply in North Africa. In June 1783, the Laki volcano began a series of eruptions, regarded as the largest at high-latitude in the last 1.000 years. The eruptions produced three cubic miles of lava and more than 100 million tons of sulfur dioxide and toxic gases, killing vegetation, livestock and people. These eruptions were followed by a drought in a swath across northern Africa, producing a very low flow in the Nile. In the northern hemisphere, the summer of 1783 was the coldest in at least 500 years in some locations, according to tree ring data. Sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere kept the warmth of the sun from the Earth’s surface.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061121232204.htm