As restoration managers repair damaged corals, sound recordings can help jumpstart the process of restoring vibrant – and noisy – coral reef ecosystems. CC by 2.0
A healthy coral reef is a noisy place.
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<p>"You've got this constant crackling sound. … That's the sound of snapping shrimp," says Steve Simpson of the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. "Then on top of that, pops, grunts, growls, trumpeting sounds, whooping sounds … and these are generally made by fish that are communicating with each other."</p><p>But Simpson says after damaging coral bleaching events – which are growing more common as oceans warm – that soundscape changes.</p><p>He says that when his team visited part of the Great Barrier Reef after a major bleaching event, "really to our shock, we found that the reef had gone quiet."</p>
<p>It was a sign that many sea creatures had left the area. Now Simpson's team is using sound to draw some of that life back.</p><p>At 11 locations in the Great Barrier Reef, they played recordings of a healthy reef ecosystem. After six weeks, they compared the fish life in those places with that in other areas. They found that twice as many fish had returned to the audio-enriched sites.</p><p>So Simpson says that as restoration managers repair damaged corals, sound recordings can help jumpstart the process of restoring vibrant – and noisy – coral reef ecosystems.</p>
<p class=""><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/06/scientists-use-recorded-sounds-to-lure-fish-back-to-great-barrier-reef/" target="_blank">Yale Climate Connections.</a></em></p>From Your Site Articles
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Holger Casselmann / Wikimedia / CC BY-SA 3.0
The climate crisis has caused Japanese cherry blossoms to bloom in October and sped the arrival of spring in much of the U.S. But it turns out that humans aren't the only animals who can trick plants into flowering early.
<p><br/></p>
<p>Scientists have discovered that <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/bees" target="_self">bumblebees</a> can cause plants to flower as much as 30 days ahead of schedule by biting their leaves.</p><p>"I think it's fascinating how much we still don't know about organisms that we think we know really well," study coauthor and ETH Zurich professor Consuelo De Moraes <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52759804" target="_blank">told BBC News</a>. "It absolutely increases our sense of wonder at the cleverness of nature in all its many forms."</p>
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<p>The discovery, published in <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6493/881" target="_blank">Science Friday</a>, was made by accident. One of De Moraes' students, Foteini Pashalidou, observed buff-tailed bumblebees making small slits in the leaves of greenhouse plants, <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/05/bumblebees-bite-plants-flower-early/" target="_blank">National Geographic</a> explained. However, the bees didn't appear to eat the leaf bits or bring them back to their nests.</p><p>The researchers did notice that the bees from colonies with less food were the ones most damaging the leaves, <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/hungry-bumblebees-make-plants-flower-early-cutting-holes-their-leaves" target="_blank">Science reported</a>. This led the scientists to wonder if the bees were trying to get the plants to flower early out of hunger, so they set up an experiment to test this hypothesis, as Science described:</p><blockquote>The researchers set up a greenhouse experiment with black mustard (<em>Brassica nigra</em>), a crop they had been studying. Ten plants were put in mesh bags with bumble bees that hadn't eaten any pollen for 3 days; they proceeded to nibble five to 10 holes in each plant. On average, <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi/10.1126/science.aay0496" target="_blank">those plants flowered after 17 days</a>; undamaged plants that had not been exposed to bumble bees took an average of 33 days, the researchers report today in Science. In a similar experiment, tomato plants sped up their flowering by 30 days.</blockquote>
<p>Further experiments confirmed that the behavior was motivated by hunger. Pollen-deprived bees cut four times as many holes in lab leaves as fully fed bees. Outside the lab, bees cut holes in plants on a rooftop garden in early spring, but stopped doing so as frequently once more flowers began to bloom. The researchers also observed leaf-biting in two wild species: red-tailed and white-tailed bumble bees.</p><p>"That was super exciting," De Moraes told Science.</p><p>While this behavior is new to scientists, we may have encountered its evidence for years without realizing it. </p><p>"You see these semi-circular sort of incisions, often in the leaf," coauthor Dr Nark Mescher told BBC News. "One of the students was saying that they were eating a salad the other day, and they saw that kind of damage on the leaf that was probably from a bumblebee."</p>
<p>Beyond its novelty, the finding has important implications for bumblebees' ability to adapt to the climate crisis, National Geographic explained. As warmer spring temperatures cause <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/pollinators" target="_self">pollinators</a> to awaken before plants flower, this activity could ensure early-rising bees find food. It might also help farmers increase human food supply if they can copy the bees' technique.</p><p>But so far the researchers aren't sure how the bees' trick works. Attempts to duplicate it in the lab by damaging leaves in similar ways were only partially successful.</p><p>"We really tried to replicate it with the best of our ability," De Moraes told BBC News. "It's possible that the bees also have some cue that they are providing to the plants that is specific to the bee. And that could be secretions that we don't know about, but it's something that we plan to investigate."</p>
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NASA ScienceCasts: Keeping an Eye on Earth
For much of human history, it's been hard for scientists to learn about remote areas of the Earth that they cannot observe directly.
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<p>Jack Kaye is associate director for research in NASA's Earth Science Division.</p><p>"It's very hard to know what's going on out in the middle of the ocean or on polar ice sheets or in tropical forests or boreal forests," he says.</p><p>But modern technology has changed that. NASA now operates a fleet of satellites that orbit the Earth. They make it possible to see the whole planet and observe how it's changing as the climate warms.</p><p>Satellites can help measure ocean temperatures, sea levels, and forest cover on a global scale and monitor changes over time.</p>
<p>"We can see the way that we are changing the surface of our planet," Kaye says. "We can look at things like the changing of the mass of the ice sheets in Greenland and tell people, 'We're really seeing this, we know what's going on.'"</p><p>Kaye says along with rigorous data, satellites provide images that help people realize what's at stake as the climate warms.</p><p>"You can see the Earth sort of suspended in the darkness of space, and the imagery I think gives us a clear sense of this is our planet, this is where we live, and we have to manage it," he says.</p>
<p class=""><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/05/how-nasa-satellites-help-scientists-understand-climate-change/" target="_blank">Yale Climate Connections</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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A cave at the Mediterranean Sea in Sicily. ClaraNila / iStock / Getty Images Plus
Not even underground ecosystems are safe from human pollution.
<p>New research <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0232742" target="_blank">published in PLoS ONE May 6</a> examined how <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/water" target="_self">water</a> runoff from the surface impacted the communities of microbes in the Monte Conca cave system in Sicily. The answer? Quite a lot. Potentially human-introduced bacteria made up less than 4 percent of the microbial community during the dry season, but shot up to almost 90 percent during the wet season, after heavy rains.</p><p>"Anthropogenic microbial contaminants originating from outside of the cave environment can replace endemic cave communities," the researchers concluded.</p>
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<p>The Monte Conca cave system is one of many caves formed by a process called sulfuric acid speleogenesis, by which <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/groundwater" target="_self">groundwater</a> containing sulfur dissolves limestone. Communities of microbes within the caves contribute to this process, the researchers explained.</p><p>But the study, carried out by a team of microbiologists and geoscientists at the University of South Florida (USF), indicates that bacteria from urban and agricultural areas can enter these unique communities via runoff from surface water, the <a href="https://www.usf.edu/news/2020/researchers-find-human-driven-pollution-alters-environment-even-underground.aspx" target="_blank">university press release explained</a>. This happens despite the fact that the Monte Conca system sits below a nature preserve.</p>
<p>To assess the impact of surface-level bacteria on the cave's microbial communities, the researchers compared their composition between the dry and wet seasons.</p><p>During the dry season, more than 90 percent of the microbes were sulfur oxidizers. These are bacteria uniquely adapted to use both oxygen from the cave and sulfur from its spring pool. But during the wet season, when large amounts of rainwater enter the cave, the composition radically changed. <em>Escherichia</em> and <em>Lysinibacillus</em> bacteria jumped from 3.7 percent of the microbial community to 89.5 percent. These are fecal and soil bacteria researchers identified as influenced by human activity, including the fecal bacteria <em>Escherichia coli, or E. coli.</em></p>
<p>Researchers also found evidence of a transition period between the wet and dry seasons in a sample taken when rains were 50 percent of typical wet season levels. During this period, the human-introduced bacteria made up 67.3 percent of the microbes, while sulfur-oxidizing bacteria and nitrogen-fixing bacteria were also present.</p><p>More research is needed to understand the impact of these changes on the cave ecosystem itself and on groundwater, lead author Dr. Madison Davis of USF's Department of Cell Biology, Microbiology and Molecular Biology said in the press release.</p><p>However, the pollution of caves and the groundwater that springs from them is already a known problem across the U.S., as <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pollution-caves-water-wildlife-trout/" target="_blank">Scientific American reported</a> in 2009:</p><blockquote>Examples abound, including raw sewage flowing into Shalers Brook inside Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, an animal feedlot in eastern Missouri washing waste down sinkholes into Crevice Cave and dirt runoff from logging activity choking Whispering Canyon Cave at Tongass National Forest in Alaska.</blockquote>"People need to be aware that there's a subterranean ecosystem and that what happens on the surface impacts these unique ecosystems in a very real way," American University in Washington, DC cave expert and biologist David Culver told Scientific American at the time.
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According to researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Louisiana experiences one of the highest rates of sea level rise on the planet, as evidenced by this home on stilts on August 24, 2019 in Grand Isle, Louisiana. Drew Angerer / Getty Images
By Alistair Walsh
Global sea levels will probably rise by even more than currently predicted, scientists warned on Friday.
<p><br/></p>
<p class=""><em>Reposted with permission from </em><em><a href="https://www.dw.com/en/sea-levels-could-rise-13-meters-by-2100-scientists-warn/a-53367946?maca=en-VAM_volltext_ecowatch-28485-html-copypaste" target="_blank">Deutsche Welle</a>.</em><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/r/entryeditor/2645952057#/" target="_self"></a></p>
<p>Even if nations are able to achieve their Paris-Agreement commitment to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the oceans will still rise by about 0.5 meters (1.6 feet) by the end of the century and as much as 2 meters by 2300, a new study found.</p><p>If nations fail to act, and current emissions lead to warming of 4.5 degrees, then sea levels are predicted to rise between 0.6 and 1.3 meters by 2100 and between 1.7 and 5.6 meters by 2300.</p><p>The predictions are based on a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-020-0121-5" target="_blank">survey of 106 of the world's leading sea level researchers</a>, carried out by scientists from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and co-authored by researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and published in the Nature Partner Journal Climate and Atmospheric Science.</p>
Mitigation Is 'In Our Hands'
<p>"What we do now within a few decades will determine sea-level rise for many centuries, the new analysis shows more clearly than ever before," PIK's Stefan Rahmstorf said. "But this is also good news: when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, we have it in our own hands how much we increase the risks for millions of people on the world's coasts, from Hamburg to Shanghai and from Mumbai to New York.</p><p>The predictions are higher than those currently published by the <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/what-is-the-ipcc-and-what-does-it-do/a-50552119" target="_blank">Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)</a>, which has already increased its predictions.</p><p>In September 2019, the UN climate science panel found that <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/ipcc-15-c-degree-report-points-to-high-stakes-of-climate-inaction/a-45791882" target="_blank">unmitigated climate change would lead to a sea level rise</a> of between 0.61 meters and 1.1 meters by 2100. At the time it said the forecast could be conservative due to the speed at which Antarctic ice could melt.</p><p>Friday's report said the increased forecast came from better data and improved understanding of climate processes.</p>Data for Decision Makers
<p>"The complexity of the sea-level rise projections and the sheer volume of relevant scientific publications makes it difficult for policy makers to gain an overview of the state of research," NTU's Benjamin Horton said in a statement.</p><p>"For such an overview, it is therefore useful to ask leading experts what kind of sea-level rise they expect — this gives a broader picture of future scenarios and provides policymakers with the information they need to decide on the necessary measures."</p>From Your Site Articles
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On March 2, 2019, the Schiavonea beach in Calabria, Italy is littered with microplastics lifted from the seabed following a storm in the Ionian sea. Alfonso Di Vincenzo / KONTROLAB / LightRocket / Getty Images
Scientists have discovered the highest concentration of microplastics ever recorded on the seafloor—1.9 million pieces in one square meter (approximately 11 square feet) of the Mediterranean.
<p>But the finding, <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/04/29/science.aba5899" target="_blank">published in Science Thursday</a>, suggests a much broader problem as deep-sea currents carry <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/plastics" target="_self">plastics</a> to microplastic "hotspots" that may also be deep-sea ecosystems rich in <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/biodiversity" target="_self">biodiversity</a>. For study coauthor professor Elda Miramontes of the University of Bremen, Germany, the results were a call to action.</p><p>"We're all making an effort to improve our safety and we are all staying at home and changing our lives - changing our work life, or even stopping work," she told <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52489126" target="_blank">BBC News</a>, referring to the global response to the new coronavirus. "We're doing all this so that people are not affected by this sickness. We have to think in the same way when we protect our <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/oceans" target="_self">oceans</a>."</p>
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<p>Of the more than ten million tons of plastic that enter the world's oceans every year, less than one percent of it stays on the surface. Researchers at the University of Bremen, IFREMER in France, the universities of Manchester and Durham and the National Oceanography Centre in the UK set out to discover what happens to the remaining 99 percent, a <a href="https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/scientists-find-highest-ever-level-of-microplastics-on-seafloor/" target="_blank">University of Manchester press release explained</a>.<br></p><p>They determined that it doesn't settle on the bottom evenly, but is instead pushed together with other sediments by deep-sea currents.</p><p>"Almost everybody has heard of the infamous ocean 'garbage patches' of floating plastic, but we were shocked at the high concentrations of microplastics we found in the deep seafloor," lead study author Dr. Ian Kane of the University of Manchester said in the press release. "We discovered that microplastics are not uniformly distributed across the study area; instead they are distributed by powerful seafloor currents which concentrate them in certain areas."</p>
<p>Because these currents also distribute oxygen and nutrients, the microplastics may be concentrating in important deep-sea ecosystems.</p><p>Since this is the first study to uncover the connection between these currents and microplastic concentration, it can drive research into other seafloor hotspots and their impact on <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/marine-life" target="_self">marine life</a>. Other studies have shown that toxic chemicals from plastics can block the digestive systems of insects and marine animals, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/30/toxic-microplastic-hotspots-are-accumulating-on-the-ocean-floor-in-record-levels.html" target="_blank">CNBC pointed out</a>. They can also harm their development and reproductive systems. Microplastics have been found in 114 freshwater and ocean species to date.</p><p>The research took place in the Tyrrhenian basin between Italy, Corsica and Sardinia, but there is nothing unique to that area that could not occur in other ocean regions with strong deep-ocean currents, BBC News explained.</p>
<p>The microplastic fibers on the seafloor mostly come from textiles and clothing, the University of Manchester said. They end up there because wastewater treatment plants do not filter them effectively.</p><p>Roland Geyer, a professor of industrial ecology at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California at Santa Barbara, was not involved with the current research, but is part of the broader effort to understand how plastics enter the oceans.</p><p>"We still have a very poor understanding of how much total plastic has accumulated in the oceans. There seems to be one emerging scientific consensus, which is that most of that plastic is <em>not</em> floating on the ocean surface," he told BBC News. "Many scientists now think that most of the plastic is likely to be on the ocean floor, but the water column and the beaches are also likely to contain major quantities. We really should all be completely focused on stopping plastic from entering the oceans in the first place."</p>
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Antarctica and Greenland Raised Sea Levels More Than Half an Inch in Just 16 Years, New NASA Data Shows
01 May
Climate
Greenland's fast-melting Kangerdlugssup glacier. NASA / Jim Yungel
Greenland and Antarctica have raised global sea levels by more than half an inch in the last 16 years, according to data from the most advanced laser that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has ever launched into space to observe the earth.
<p>While the figures themselves are consistent with other studies, as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/30/climate/antarctica-ice-climate-change.html?campaign_id=51&emc=edit_MBE_p_20200501&instance_id=18124&nl=morning-briefing&regi_id=88631294&section=whatElse&segment_id=26351&te=1&user_id=d8eb7cee9d3c5ab39515239b6ec54d19" target="_blank">The New York Times pointed out</a>, the satellite laser allows researchers a much more precise picture of how polar ice is changing over time, which helps determine the role of the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" target="_self">climate crisis</a> and plan for future <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/sea-level-rise" target="_self">sea level rise</a>.</p><p>"We've all been waiting for this new dataset," Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory research professor Robin Bell <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/04/30/848398472/antarctica-and-greenland-are-losing-thousands-of-gigatons-of-ice-thats-a-lot?utm_term=nprnews&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=npr&fbclid=IwAR2t-fTSchEfWMFJe_R91Jy86koAqTfmGlewTvq9eG6z0lzpdM1w8GjogGY" target="_blank">told NPR</a>.</p>
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<p>The study, <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/04/29/science.aaz5845" target="_blank">published in Science Thursday</a>, combines data from two NASA satellites: the original Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat), which took measurements from 2003 to 2009, and ICESat-2, launched in 2018. The two satellites allowed researchers to measure changes in ice mass from 2003 to 2019, and to calculate that Greenland and Antarctica contributed 0.55 inches to sea level rise during that time. That's around a third of the global total, which was also driven by the expansion of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/oceans" target="_self">oceans</a> as they warm, NPR explained.</p><p>"If you watch a <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/glaciers" target="_self">glacier</a> or ice sheet for a month, or a year, you're not going to learn much about what the climate is doing to it," University of Washington glaciologist and lead study author Ben Smith said in a <a href="https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2981/nasa-space-laser-missions-map-16-years-of-ice-sheet-loss/?fbclid=IwAR0vi9r5VM03t_d9hDoceJSHkeEsxDtzOIApDy3x4TniEx4UowY02_j-bSM" target="_blank">NASA press release</a>. "We now have a 16-year span between ICESat and ICESat-2 and can be much more confident that the changes we're seeing in the ice have to do with the long-term changes in the climate."</p>
<p>The data also revealed that Greenland's ice sheet lost an average of 200 gigatons of ice per year and Antarctica's lost an average of 118. That's more than 5,000 gigatons total, NPR reported. To put that in perspective, one gigaton is enough to fill 400,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.</p><p>But the satellite data also helped show how the ice was being lost. In Antarctica, the East actually gained mass, probably because of increased precipitation, The New York Times reported. But this was offset by losses in West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula. In West Antarctica, 30 percent of that loss was due to floating ice, which either calves icebergs or melts from below due to warm ocean water. While this ice cannot contribute directly to sea level rise because it is already floating, its loss destabilizes the so-called "grounded ice" that can.</p><p>"It's like an apple tart and the ice shelves are like the wall of pastry around the edges of the tart," Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California-San Diego glaciologist and study coauthor Helen Fricker explained to NPR. "And if those walls are too thin or they're not baked well enough, then the filling will ooze out."</p><p>In Greenland, two thirds of the ice loss was due to surface melting, something that rarely occurs in Antarctica, The New York Times said. Greenland also lost a lot of mass from its coastal glaciers, according to NASA. Its Kangerdulgssuaq and Jakobshavn glaciers have shrunken by 14 to 20 feet per year.</p>
<p>NASA explained why its satellites were able to provide such a detailed portrait:</p><blockquote>ICESat-2's instrument is a laser altimeter, which sends 10,000 pulses of light a second down to Earth's surface, and times how long it takes to return to the satellite – to within a billionth of a second. The instrument's pulse rate allows for a dense map of measurement over the ice sheet; its high precision allows scientists to determine how much an ice sheet changes over a year to within an inch.<br><br>The researchers took tracks of earlier ICESat measurements and overlaid the tracks of ICESat-2 measurements from 2019, and took data from the tens of millions of sites where the two data sets intersected. That gave them the elevation change, but to get to how much ice has been lost, the researchers developed a new model to convert volume change to mass change. The model calculated densities across the ice sheets to allow the total mass loss to be calculated.</blockquote><p>This level of detail is essential for helping coastal residents and governments plan for sea level rise, which is expected to reach two to six feet by 2100, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/30/climate-change-antarctica-greenland-ice-melt-raised-sea-levels-by-half-inch-in-last-16-years.html" target="_blank">according to CNBC</a>.</p><p>"Our goal is to be able to tell every coastal community what they can plan on [in] the coming decades," Bell told NPR. "To be able to do that, we both need to measure how the ice is changing but also understand better why it's changing."</p>
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Antarctica before and after its hottest day on record Feb. 6. NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey and GEOS-5 data from the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA GSFC.
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A USGS map showing the location of a 6.5 magnitude quake that shook Idaho Tuesday evening. USGS
Idaho residents were rattled Tuesday evening by the biggest earthquake to shake the state in almost 40 years.
<p>The 6.5 magnitude quake struck just before 6 p.m. local time 73 miles northeast of Meridian, <a href="https://apnews.com/ee4018c9240bd4768dbea25c40712198" target="_blank">The Associated Press reported</a>. It caused no known damage or injuries, but plenty of surprise. </p>
<p>"At first I thought it was thunder, weird thunder, but then the house was moving and I realized this is an earthquake — a really big earthquake," Boise resident Melissa Hawkins, 44, <a href="https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/31/earthquake-idaho-the-whole-house-rattling/5100853002/" target="_blank">told USA Today</a>.</p><p>All told, more than two million people might have felt the earthquake, according to U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) figures reported by The Associated Press. Reports of shaking came from as far as Spokane, Washington; Bozeman, Montana; and Salt Lake City, Utah, according to USA Today.</p>
<iframe width="100%" height="150" scrolling="no" class="rm-shortcode twitter-embed-1245151137918889984" id="twitter-embed-1245151137918889984" lazy-loadable="true" src="/res/community/twitter_embed/?iframe_id=twitter-embed-1245151137918889984&created_ts=1585702139.0&screen_name=jessphoenix2018&text=Here%27s+an+interesting+visualization+of+%22Did+You+Feel+It%3F%22+reports+for+the+%23IdahoEarthquake.+Head+over+to+the+%40USGS%E2%80%A6+https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FdELFgCELYt&id=1245151137918889984&name=Jess+Phoenix+%F0%9F%8C%8B" frameborder="0" data-rm-shortcode-id="0e18395a82f4d973bcc848b284b09f44"></iframe><p>Evaro, Montana resident Shannon Patton at first blamed her health.</p><p>"I actually thought I was having a dizzy spell to begin with due to my migraine," Patton told USA Today in an email. "Our light fixtures were shaking and one of our signs on our pantry door almost fell off."</p>
<iframe width="100%" height="150" scrolling="no" class="rm-shortcode twitter-embed-1245138509263859712" id="twitter-embed-1245138509263859712" lazy-loadable="true" src="/res/community/twitter_embed/?iframe_id=twitter-embed-1245138509263859712&created_ts=1585699128.0&screen_name=AmbroseElaine&text=Earthquake+near+Boise%2C+Idaho.+Watching+now+for+the+four+horsemen...+https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FqavCnyBGLl&id=1245138509263859712&name=Elaine+Ambrose" frameborder="0" data-rm-shortcode-id="84f59635d11f02fd671f511c633c6819"></iframe><p>Despite tweets warning of the apocalypse, Caltech seismologist Dr. Lucy Jones told The Associated Press that the Idaho region has an earthquake around this size every 30 to 40 years.</p><p>The last was actually much worse: the 6.9 Borah Peak earthquake of 1983. That quake struck near the town of Challis and killed two school children when they were buried under rubble, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/31/us/idaho-boise-earthquake-trnd/index.html" target="_blank">CNN reported</a>. It also cost the state $12.5 million in property damage.</p><p>The 1983 quake was along a "normal fault," which causes vertical movement, Jones told The Associated Press. Tuesday's quake, on the other hand, was on an unmapped "strike-slip fault," which causes horizontal movement. Jones said it was not uncommon for faults in remote areas to go unmapped, since they are less likely to cause damage.</p>
<p>"This is one that wasn't obvious enough to be mapped before now," Jones told The Associated Press.</p><p>But she further explained on Twitter why Idaho sees earthquakes.</p><p>"Idaho is part of the Basin and Range tectonic province. Everything west of the Wasatch Mtns. is getting slowly stretched out as a bit of North America tries to cling to the Pacific plate," she wrote.</p>
<iframe width="100%" height="150" scrolling="no" class="rm-shortcode twitter-embed-1245148206121381889" id="twitter-embed-1245148206121381889" lazy-loadable="true" src="/res/community/twitter_embed/?iframe_id=twitter-embed-1245148206121381889&created_ts=1585701440.0&screen_name=DrLucyJones&text=Idaho+is+part+of+the+Basin+and+Range+tectonic+province.+Everything+west+of+the+Wasatch+Mtns.+is+getting+slowly+stre%E2%80%A6+https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FmmHtOWAeJU&id=1245148206121381889&name=Dr.+Lucy+Jones" frameborder="0" data-rm-shortcode-id="c0b53a7963c00f719946684fd594c2f1"></iframe><p>Jones said to expect aftershocks, and the USGS reported a 4.8 magnitude one about an hour after, according to USA Today. More, smaller tremors were felt throughout the evening.</p>
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If you are worried about herring worm, just cut your piece of sushi in half before eating it. Nandaro / CC BY-SA 3.0
The population of a marine parasite that sometimes worms its way into sushi has increased by 283 times in the last nearly 40 years, a University of Washington (UW)-led study has found.
<p>The study, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gcb.15048" target="_blank">published in Global Change Biology Thursday</a>, reviewed the literature and found a significant rise in the abundance of the parasite <em>Anisakis</em>, or "herring worm." This isn't especially concerning for humans, who experience the worm as a nasty bout of food poisoning that then resolves, but it could have serious consequences for marine mammals, who play host to the parasites for years.</p><p>"One of the important implications of this study is that now we know there is this massive, rising health risk to marine mammals," study coauthor and UW School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences assistant professor Chelsea Wood said in the UW press release. "It's not often considered that parasites might be the reason that some marine mammal populations are failing to bounce back. I hope this study encourages people to look at intestinal parasites as a potential cap on the population growth of endangered and threatened marine mammals."</p>
<iframe width="100%" height="150" scrolling="no" class="rm-shortcode twitter-embed-1240735574232891400" id="twitter-embed-1240735574232891400" lazy-loadable="true" src="/res/community/twitter_embed/?iframe_id=twitter-embed-1240735574232891400&created_ts=1584649387.0&screen_name=UW_SAFS&text=The+next+time+you+eat+sashimi%2C+nigiri+or+other+forms+of+raw+fish%2C+consider+doing+a+quick+check+for+worms.+%F0%9F%8D%A3%F0%9F%98%B3%0A%0Ahttps%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FjuL5dW2NDu&id=1240735574232891400&name=UW+SAFS" frameborder="0" data-rm-shortcode-id="24416e58f4dc5112fd635f2dc87516cb"></iframe>
<p>The researchers looked at a total of 123 papers published between 1967 and 2017 to assess how the abundance of two marine parasites had changed over time: <em>Anisakis </em>and another parasite known as <em>Pseudoterranova</em>, or "cod worm." <em>Anisakis </em>abundance rose 283-fold from 1978 to 2015, while <em>Pseudoterranova </em>abundance did not change. This means that Anisakis has risen from less than one for every 100 hosts caught to more than one in every host caught, <a href="https://www.sciencealert.com/parasitic-worms-in-raw-seafood-have-increased-280-fold-but-it-s-not-sushi-we-should-be-worried-about" target="_blank">ScienceAlert explained</a>.</p><p>Ironically, while <em>Anisakis </em>might threaten the health of marine mammals, its rise may have been triggered by their success.</p><p>"My gut is that this is about the improvements we've made in marine mammal <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/conservation" target="_self">conservation</a>," Wood told ScienceAlert. "The time frame of our study directly overlaps with when a bunch of really important marine mammal legislation went into effect like the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972 and the international whaling commission moratorium on commercial whaling which came in the 1980s."</p>
<p>The one wrinkle in this theory is which mammals usually play host to the worm. <em>Anisakis</em> hatches in the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/oceans" target="_self">ocean</a> and first infects small animals like shrimp, the UW explained. They then make their way up the food web as the shrimp are eaten by fish, who are eaten by bigger fish, until they end up in the intestines of Cetaceans like <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/whales" target="_self">whales</a> or <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/dolphins" target="_self">dolphins</a>. Here they can live and reproduce for years, reentering the ocean in the animals' feces to start the cycle again.</p><p>While <em>Anisakis</em> abundance has risen, <em>Pseudoterranova</em>, which typically infects fish, sea lions and seals, has not. However, seals and sea lions have done much better than whales, Wood told ScienceAlert, which means one would expect <em>Pseudoterranova </em>abundance to have increased instead. However, she speculated it was possible the parasite was actually increasing because it had fewer hosts to pass through.</p><p>Other factors that could have caused the rise include the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-change" target="_self">climate crisis</a> and increased runoff from fertilizers, according to the press release.</p><p>So what happens if humans happen to ingest one of the worms? Nausea and vomiting that is unpleasant, but temporary.</p><p>"When they enter the intestine of a human, it's a great disappointment to the worm. They're not going to be able to complete their life cycle there," Wood told <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2237951-fish-used-for-sushi-now-carry-283-times-more-parasites-than-in-1980s/" target="_blank">New Scientist</a>.</p><p>Wood said that sushi lovers shouldn't worry, as chefs were expert de-wormers.</p><p>"I still eat sushi all the time," she told New Scientist.</p><p>However, if you are concerned, just cut your nigiri in half and look for worms yourself, she advised in the press release.</p>
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We Should Be Listening to Our Scientists and Experts Right Now—Not Driving Them Away.
15 March
Science
Jahi Chikwendiu / The Washington Post / Getty Images
By Jeff Turrentine
Back in 2017, a few weeks before Donald Trump became the most powerful individual in the world, a New Yorker cartoon by Will McPhail did what the best New Yorker cartoons do: It made you laugh, and then — once you stopped laughing — it made you think. Trump had just won the presidency in part by redefining populism as the belief that experience and expertise should count for far less than ideology and intensity. Without mentioning him by name, and without even making reference to politics for that matter, McPhail managed to capture the frustration and anxiety that millions were feeling.
<iframe width="100%" height="150" scrolling="no" class="rm-shortcode twitter-embed-815899174474567680" id="twitter-embed-815899174474567680" lazy-loadable="true" src="/res/community/twitter_embed/?iframe_id=twitter-embed-815899174474567680&created_ts=1483360496.0&screen_name=WillMcPhail&text=One+from+this+week%27s+%40NewYorker.+Hello+politics%2C+my+names+Will.+https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2F5LfNYnOgMA&id=815899174474567680&name=Will+McPhail" frameborder="0" data-rm-shortcode-id="466YVQ1584287540"></iframe><p>More than that, though, the cartoon — like the 2016 election itself — seemed to augur the widening of a troubling cultural fissure. (Note how most of the cartoon mutineer's fellow passengers are raising their hands in support of him.) On one side of this divide are those Americans who continue to put their faith in experts. On the other are those who've had quite enough of the people who know what they're doing, thank you very much, and think it's high time to give someone else a chance.</p><p>For the past three years, this antagonism toward expertise has been put into practice across the federal government, with the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-science-specialreport/special-report-inside-a-trump-era-purge-of-military-scientists-at-a-legendary-think-tank-idUSKCN1UP15P" target="_blank">purging of military experts</a> from a Pentagon advisory panel, the firing of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-science-specialreport/special-report-inside-a-trump-era-purge-of-military-scientists-at-a-legendary-think-tank-idUSKCN1UP15P" target="_blank">cybersecurity experts</a> from the Department of Homeland Security, and the ousting of members of the National Security Council's <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/05/10/top-white-house-official-in-charge-of-pandemic-response-exits-abruptly/" target="_blank">pandemic response team</a> — a decision that now seems momentous as the country scrambles to address the growing number of COVID-19 infections.</p><p>Scientific expertise has been especially devalued. As the Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/science-ranks-grow-thin-in-trump-administration/2020/01/23/5d22b522-3172-11ea-a053-dc6d944ba776_story.html" target="_blank">reported</a> in January, "hundreds of scientists across the federal government … have been forced out, sidelined, or muted since President Trump took office," in a mass exodus "fueled broadly by administration policies that have diminished the role of science." Currently, 20 percent of high-level scientific appointee positions are vacant, with some of the biggest losses being felt among soil scientists, hydrologists, and experts in chemistry and geology. Nearly 700 scientists have left the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the past three years, the Post notes; so far, the administration has only replaced half of them.</p><p>One way that the administration has carried out this unprecedented purge of talent is through the relocation of personnel within agencies. Last week, <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/486237-blm-exodus-agency-loses-half-of-dc-staff-slated-for-relocation" target="_blank">the</a><a href="https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/486237-blm-exodus-agency-loses-half-of-dc-staff-slated-for-relocation" target="_blank"> Hill</a> reported that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has now lost more than half of its Washington, DC–based employees, who were slated to move to western states as part of a larger relocation effort that also includes shifting the agency's headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado. According to internal numbers obtained by the Hill, 87 BLM staffers opted to quit rather than make the move, leaving only 80 employees who say they will relocate.</p><p>As I <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/bureau-land-management-dc-employees-go-west-or-get-lost" target="_blank">wrote last summer</a>, when the relocation plan was first announced, many people — including several former BLM directors — believed that these resignations are all part of a strategy to weaken the agency to the point where it eventually just dissolves. A defunct BLM would potentially cede its responsibilities and assets to individual states that would welcome the opportunity to control the hundreds of millions of acres currently under the agency's purview. One of these former directors, Steve Ellis, told the Hill last week that the loss of so many top-level BLM employees, in whom so much institutional memory and specialized knowledge reside, represents "a huge brain drain … there is a lot of really solid expertise walking out the door."</p><p>When experts become enemies, science itself becomes suspect. Last week, the Trump administration also <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/vijay-limaye/epa-doubles-down-its-attempt-censor-science" target="_blank">doubled down</a> on <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/epa-says-it-wants-scientific-transparency-what-it-really-wants-control-over-research" target="_blank">a proposed rule</a> that would make it far easier for the EPA to disregard findings from public health studies in its policy making. Despite widespread condemnation from scientists and public health experts — many of whom voiced their concerns during a public-comment period that drew more than 600,000 responses, the overwhelming majority of which were negative — the EPA has decided not only to keep the rule but to <em>expand</em> it, making it even more attractive to industry polluters and more dangerous to everyday Americans. If EPA administrator <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/who-andrew-wheeler-and-why-you-should-be-afraid-him" target="_blank">Andrew Wheeler</a> has his way, the agency would be able to ignore solid, peer-reviewed scientific studies simply because they don't make all their underlying data publicly available — information such as private health records of participants. The EPA's selection criteria would be advantageously murky and, perhaps most disturbingly, it could apply the rule retroactively, allowing it to reject huge amounts of research that underpin current environmental protections, such as air pollution limits.</p><p>We've never needed science — or scientists — more than we do right now. From climate change to coronavirus, people all over the world are looking to experts for answers to questions that aren't academic but urgent. At a time like this, leadership is defined by the ability to acknowledge expertise, accept facts and science, and plan accordingly. To reject the insight and input of experts at this moment, or any moment, isn't populist. It's perverse. Ideology can draw huge crowds, harden divisions, and drive people to extremes. But it can't fly a plane.</p><p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/we-should-be-listening-our-scientists-and-experts-right-now-not-driving-them-away" target="_blank">onEarth</a>.</em><em></em></p>
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President Donald Trump gives a press conference on the coronavirus. Alex Wong / Getty Images
In a move that undercut and possibly delayed the U.S. response to the new coronavirus, the White House designated crucial meetings about the outbreak as classified, four Trump administration officials told Reuters Wednesday. The classified nature of the meetings meant that some government experts could not attend.
<p>"We had some very critical people who did not have security clearances who could not go," one official told Reuters. "These should not be classified meetings. It was unnecessary."</p><p>The meetings were held from mid January about topics ranging from quarantines to the extent of the disease's spread in a secure room at the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS). The fact that they were classified meant that a HHS lawyer with expertise about quarantine could not attend a meeting because he did not have the right security clearance. His input was therefore postponed. The secrecy surrounding the meetings also meant that HHS staffers were not up-to-date on coronavirus developments.</p><p>According to former officials, this is not usual practice for the U.S. government.</p><p>"[I]t's not normal to classify discussions about a response to a <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/public-health" target="_self">public health</a> crisis," a former official who worked under President George W. Bush told Reuters.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-coronavirus-cover-up-us-cases-fake-news-2020-election-white-house-a9395901.html" target="_blank">The Independent</a> suggested that President <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/donald-trump" target="_self">Donald Trump</a> might have sought secrecy to stabilize the market. His own businesses could be hurt by decreases in travel and social gatherings, and a <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/coronavirus-global-recession-2645437654.html" target="_self">falling stock market</a> may hurt his chances of reelection.</p><p>The news of the secret meetings came the same day that the <a href="https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---11-march-2020" target="_blank">World Health Organization declared</a> COVID-19 to be a pandemic, an <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/coronavirus-pandemic-epidemic-outbreak-2645448420.html" target="_self">epidemic that has spread to multiple countries or regions</a>. As of that announcement, the new disease had sickened more than 118,000 people in 114 countries and killed 4,291.</p><p>This isn't the first time the Trump administration has faced scrutiny for its response to COVID-19, which has so far sickened 938 people in 38 U.S. states and the District of Columbia and killed 29, according to the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-in-us.html" target="_blank">most recent figures</a> from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC has come under fire for <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/coronavirus-infections-cdc--2645381740.html" target="_self">botched and limited testing</a>, while the White House has ordered public health experts <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/coronavirus-public-health-experts-2645341522.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1" target="_self">not to speak without prior approval</a>.</p><p>Trump himself has also issued misleading statements. Last week, he <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/coronavirus-infections-trump-2645393552.html" target="_self">said</a> that some people with the new coronavirus could recover while going to work, contradicting CDC guidelines that anyone exhibiting symptoms stay home.</p>
<p>For some, the president's response to the coronavirus reflects his and his administration's broader hostility to science.</p><p>"[T]his is President Trump's approach to nearly every public health and environmental threat: find some way to exclude the experts, stop them from speaking publicly, and make decisions in a vacuum," Center for Science and Democracy Deputy Director Michael Halpern <a href="https://blog.ucsusa.org/michael-halpern/white-house-removes-public-health-experts-from-coronavirus-discussions?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fb&fbclid=IwAR1LcbEZvVpj_jZOVyNJ4KDLC9JgR1EWH514g5wB4P13Zic-qJsQYdvwZ-o" target="_blank">wrote in a blog post</a>. "The deliberate sidelining of public health experts and science leads to bad policy, and ultimately, to more sickness and death."</p><p>Officials told Reuters that the order to classify the meetings came from the National Security Council (NSC), which advises the president.</p><p>"This came directly from the White House," one official said.</p>
<p>Both the NSC and HHS defended their work on the coronavirus to Reuters, saying that all meetings of the coronavirus task force had not been classified.</p><p>"From day one of the response to the coronavirus, NSC has insisted on the principle of radical transparency," NSC spokesman John Ullyot told Reuters.</p><p>However, neither agency spokesperson directly responded to questions about the classified meetings.</p>
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