WEEK 1: Noaa and Nasa Team up to Investigate Strongest El Niño on Record

WEEK 1: Noaa and Nasa team up to investigate strongest El Niño on record

Two agencies’ survey via land, sea and air will hopefully help improve weather forecasts and models that predict the longer-term impact of climate change

California’s Folsom Lake was nearly depleted by drought in 2015 and is now nearing capacity. Photograph: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images

America’s two leading climate science agencies are conducting an unprecedented survey via land, sea and air to investigate the current El Niño event and better understand its impact on weather systems that have brought both parched and soaking conditions to North America.

Theproject, which will conclude in March, will deploy resources from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) and Nasa to analyze one of the strongest El Niños on record. El Niño is a periodic phenomenon in which parts of the eastern Pacific warm, causing a ripple effect for weather around the world.

Noaa’s Gulfstream IV research plane and its ship Ronald H Brown will collect data from the vast stretch of the Pacific ocean where El Niño climate events are spawned. Nasa will deploy its Global Hawk unmanned aircraft, which is able to fly at 65,000ft for 30 hours at a time.

It is hoped that instruments dropped from aircraft, supported by weather balloons, will help improve weather forecasts and models that predict the longer-term impact of climate change. The scientists will coordinate with researchers based in Honolulu and the Pacific island of Kiribati, around 1,340 miles south ofHawaii.

“This has never been done with a major El Niño,” said Randall Dole, a senior scientist at Noaa’s Earth Sciences Research Lab.

“A field campaign ordinarily takes years to plan and execute. But we recognized what an important opportunity we had and everyone worked hard to pull this mission together.”

Noaa said it was conducting the rapid assessment due to heightened interest over El Niño’s impact upon California, which is in the midst of a historic four-year drought. El Niño brought a slew of rain to California in December and January,prompting warnings to residentsnot to let their guard down in an unprecedented water conservation push.

California’s Folsom Lake, which was nearly depleted by the drought, is nearing capacity; Lake Tahoe has been replenished by around 28bn gallons of water since December.

The precipitation has proved aboon for ski resort operators, with the water content of Sierra Nevada’s snowpack standing at 130% of normal for this time of year. Californians have also marveled at strange sightings of tropical fish, with several warm-water sea snakeswashing upon the state’s beaches in recent months.

Felicia Marcus, chair of California’s state water resources control board, said: “We are hopeful that we are turning the corner on this drought.”

However, 64% of the state remains inextreme drought conditions, with 11 of its 12 largest water reservoirsbelow historical capacity averages.

WhileCaliforniahas received some welcome rain, other parts of the US have experienced exceptionally dry and mild conditions. According to Noaa, only 5.7% of the Great Lakes’ surface was covered by ice as of 3 February, a huge drop on 2015, when 50% of the lakes’ surface was frozen.

The impact of El Niño has perhaps been most pernicious in Africa, with Zimbabwe declaring a state of emergency this week over a drought that has ravaged much of the south of the continent. An estimated 26% of Zimbabwe’s population, around 2.4 million, are now considered food insecure due to dying cattle and failed crops.

QUESTIONS: ANSWER IN COMPLETE SENTENCES OR WRITE THE QUESTION AND THEN ANSWER, NO COPYING!

1. Which two agencies are teaming up? What area of science is each best known for?
2. What is El Nino?
3. Why is this mission so special?
4. What impact is El Nino having on California’s water supply?
5. What impact is El Nino having on wildlife?
6. Despite the water it brings to California, what hardships are the state still facing?
7. Where else has there been major impacts?
8. In at least 3 sentences,from your own experiences, how has El Nino affected our climate here this past winter. Do you think this was a good study for the two agencies to team up for?

WEEK 2: What is the Sensible Seafood program?

Mission: To promote seafood choices that make sense for a healthy marine environment.

The Sensible Seafood program helps consumers make sustainable seafood choices in stores and restaurants. Working in partnership with Monterey Bay Aquarium and an Advisory Panel of regional seafood experts, our Sensible Seafood program provides you with a handy reference pocket guide​ that rates the most popular seafood items as green, yellow or red. Green items are best choices for seafood that is abundant, well-managed, and fished or farmed in environmentally friendly ways. Yellow items are good alternatives to consider when best choices are not available, though there may be some concerns with how they are caught or farmed. You should avoid red items, at least for now, because they are over-fished or are caught or farmed in ways that harm other marine life or the environment. Click here for more information on Monterey Bay's program.

Because populations and harvesting methods change, our Sensible Seafood pocket guide and supporting information will be reviewed on a regular basis. The Sensible Seafood Advisory Panel meets annually to discuss new information on sustainable seafood sources, fisheries management, and species biology and revise the program’s recommendations, accordingly. Our program promotes seafood species that are grown in, or harvested from, Virginia and the mid-Atlantic region. Click here​ for a listing of participating restaurants and partners.

What is sustainable seafood and why does it matter?

Sustainable seafood comes from sources, either fished or farmed, that can continue to produce into the future without negatively affecting their populations or natural ecosystems. As consumers, we can be good stewards of the environment by making the right choices when we purchase our seafood. Sustainable seafood is Sensible Seafood, and that makes sense for a healthy marine environment.

How do we determine if seafood is sustainable?

• How is the species population doing? – This seems like an obvious question, but in order to know if the seafood we are consuming is a good choice, we need to know about the life history of the species and if its population is abundant or disappearing. Some species easily reproduce in large numbers and grow to maturity very fast. Others, such as sharks, reproduce and mature more slowly. Understanding these factors is critical for good fisheries management. Abundant species from well managed fisheries make good seafood choices.
• Where does the seafood come from? – Is the seafood from local sources, from other parts of the U.S, or imported? This is important because, like many other commodities, seafood can now be transported all over the globe. Seafood from local sources has the potential to be fresher and reduces the financial and environmental costs of long distance transport. Additionally, U.S. fisheries may be better managed than some foreign fisheries. These factors are important when considering where a seafood item might originate.
• Is the seafood wild-caught, or is it farmed? – As seafood has become more popular, many species are now raised on farms, a process called aquaculture. In some cases, the wild stock of a species may be depleted, but there is a good supply from aquaculture, like catfish. In other cases, the farmed stock has been associated with problems and the wild-caught stock is the better choice, like some shrimp. Of course, most of our seafood choices still come mostly from wild-caught stocks.
• How is the seafood harvested? – Are the fishing or aquaculture practices environmentally sound? To answer this question, we must understand fisheries and aquaculture techniques and how they are applied for harvesting different seafood species. Some fisheries techniques, like bottom trawling or dredging, have the potential to damage ocean bottom communities like corals. Others may have unintended catches of unwanted animals, called bycatch. Bycatch can include unwanted fishes and even sea turtles or marine mammals. Finally, poorly managed aquaculture operations can damage coastal ecosystems. Well managed fisheries and aquaculture, utilizing sound techniques to minimize bycatch and ecosystem impacts, provide the best seafood choices.

Sense-“Ability” How do we make sensible choices?

Use the Sensible Seafood pocket guide – carry and consult the guide when making choices in the store, or when dining out. Click here​ to download the current Sensible Seafood pocket guide.

Buy local sustainable seafood – not only does buying local usually ensure the freshest seafood, it also helps support an important segment of the local economy. Virginia’s seafood industry is the third-largest in the country, producing vast amounts of blue crabs, scallops, clams, croaker, spot, striped bass, and oysters that are shipped all over the world. Puchase sustainable seafood in your area, where you know and understand the harvesting or growing process, to think globally and act locally.​

Choose Sensible Seafood restaurant partners – a great way to make sensible choices is to visit one of our restaurant partners. These partners have agreed to serve seafood that is approved from our Sensible Seafood pocket guide. Partner restaurants will also provide information on sustainable seafood to their staff and patrons. The Sensible Seafood program has been endorsed by the Virginia Beach Restaurant Association.

QUESTIONS: ANSWER IN COMPLETE SENTENCES OR WRITE THE QUESTION AND THEN ANSWER, NO COPYING!

1. What is the Sensible Seafood program?
2. Who has the Virginia Aquarium worked with to create the Sensible Seafood booklet?
3. What is sustainable seafood and why does it matter?
4. How do they determine if seafood is sustainable or not?
5. How do they want you to make sustainable choices.
6. Look at the list, are there any surprises?
7. Is there something you eat often that is on the avoid list?
8. Would this be easy for you to do?
9. In 2 sentences, do you think this is a good thing to have? Would you change your habits to only eat from the good list?

WEEK 3: Aquatic predators affect carbon-storing plant life

Species at top of freshwater food web can indirectly limit buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere

By Janet Raloff

In ecosystems around the world, big guys eat littler guys, who in turn eat plants and other organisms at the base of the food web. A study now finds that removing top predators in freshwater environments allows their prey to flourish — and overgraze on plants and algae. The result of the missing plant matter: a 93 percent reduction in uptake and storage of carbon dioxide.

Several research teams have explored the importance of predators in protecting organisms that store carbon, notes ecologist James Estes of the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the new research. The new study is particularly strong, he says, because it demonstrates predators’ influence across a broad range of ecosystems. It therefore suggests “that the phenomenon may be fairly general.”

When pesticide runoff, overfishing or other human activities impact ecosystems, the first species to disappear are usually the bigger, top predators, notes freshwater ecologist John Richardson of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and coauthor of the study, published online February 17 in Nature Geoscience. The new work shows that predator losses have effects beyond the loss of biodiversity: “We can see climate effects as well,” he says. “We start seeing a higher flux of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.”

Study leader Trisha Atwood, then also at the University of British Columbia, and colleagues simulated three freshwater ecosystems outdoors to study the effects lower in the food web of predator loss at the top. They diverted water from streams near Vancouver into six channels they had constructed. Those channels accumulated critters and debris for about six weeks. To simulate ponds, Atwood’s team added water and sediment from ponds in Vancouver to 10 tanks, each about 2 meters across, and let them acquire organisms over 18 months. And to study the water-holding reservoirs among leaves of some plants, the ecologists went to Costa Rica and let the center well of 20 bromeliads — flowering plants found mainly in tropical regions — collect a little water and wildlife over a two-week period.

In half of the simulated ecosystems in each location, the researchers added top predators. For streams, that predator was the three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteusaculeatus), a 10-centimeter-long fish that feeds on zooplankton in stream water. Stonefly larvae served as the predator in the simulated ponds. And the researchers introduced damselfly larvae to feed on zooplankton in the bromeliads.

At the end of these accommodation periods, the researchers made daylong measurements of carbon dioxide in water. Then they compared the values for environments with and without their top predators.

Adding the top predators decreased the amount of carbon dioxide in the water by an average of 93 percent, Atwood and her colleagues report. When predators are absent, the researchers think the unchecked zooplankton aggressively feed on plants and algae in each ecosystem. Those photosynthetic organisms, had they not gotten eaten, would have used and stored carbon, removing it from the water. That in turn would have pulled more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

This predator effect on carbon dioxide has been reported in a few land-based environments, says David Butman of Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. But, he adds, “there have been few studies to explicitly suggest stream and pond systems may perform similarly.” As such, he argues, the new study is important in unraveling the complexity of natural environments. However, he cautions, scientists must recognize that the results come from artificial manipulations of ecosystems “until similar systems are identified in the wild.”

Correction: This story was updated on February 20, 2013, to clarify that predators decreased carbon dioxide levels in the water by 93 percent on average.

QUESTIONS: ANSWER IN COMPLETE SENTENCES OR WRITE THE QUESTION AND THEN ANSWER, NO COPYING!

1. What is the normal food web described in the beginning of the article?
2. If the plant matter is overeaten, what happens?
3. What are some causes of top predators disappearing?
4. In at least 4 sentences, describe the “pond” the research team assembled and what results they found.

1. Is there a direct link between top predators and gas levels in the ponds?

WEEK 4: Giant squid population is one big happy species

Elusive deep ocean dwellers have low genetic diversity despite living around the globe

By Tina HesmanSaey

Elusive deep ocean dwellers have low genetic diversity despite living around the globe

By Tina Hesman Saey

Web edition: March 19, 2013

Credit:Giant squid are so mysterious — and so huge — that they inspired the legend of the kraken, a Scandinavian sea monster. Now, a genetic analysis adds to the creatures’ mystique.

DNA evidence suggests that all giant squid are part of one global interbreeding species instead of the three that scientists previously thought existed, an international group of scientists reports March 20 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The finding indicates the giant squid must migrate long distances to keep the breeding population well mixed.

The massive invertebrates also have some of the lowest genetic diversity of any species, the researchers report. That finding and the squid’s global interbreeding are nearly impossible for scientists to explain, says study coauthor M. Thomas Gilbert, a geneticist at the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. “We were very surprised by the results,” Gilbert says.

Most of what is known about giant squid comes from studying carcasses washed up on beaches, hauled in by fishermen or found in the bellies of sperm whales, the giant squid’s natural predator. Only last year did an expedition film a giant squid in its natural habitat. Researchers can describe the physical characteristics of the animals, which can grow to be about 18 meters long with parrotlike beaks, sucker-studded tentacles and eyes bigger than a person’s head. But not much is known about how the creatures live.

Gilbert and his team got a glimpse by examining mitochondrial DNA from 43 giant squid. Mitochondria are the energy factories inside cells. Scientists can trace a species’ life history through the DNA carried in mitochondria.

Researchers had thought there were three species of giant squid: one in the North Atlantic, a second in the southern oceans and a third smaller species in Japanese waters, says Clyde Roper, a marine biologist emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. But the new analysis puts squid worldwide into what was thought to be the Atlantic Ocean-dwelling species, Architeuthis dux.

The genetic homogeneity suggests that somehow squid must travel long distances. A previous chemical analysis of the giant squid’s sharp beaks indicated that adults don’t migrate far. That means the juveniles and larvae must leave local waters and migrate around the world. Gilbert and his colleagues think “the young float around on the surface before they dive deep and become kingpins.” Surface currents could disperse the youngsters far and wide.