Author: Sarah.chappel

Billionaire Ted Turner is set to receive 88 Yellowstone National Park bison from Montana that were supposed to be put on public or private lands.

The animals, now housed at a joint federal-state quarantine compound in southern Montana’s Paradise Valley, are part of a state program geared toward placing disease-free animals on public or tribal lands.

Turner struck a deal with the state that will allow him to keep 75 percent of the bison offspring — an estimated 188 bison — in exchange for boarding the animals for five years. Montana would get an estimated 150 bison back in 2015.

Turner already owns about 50,000 bison, but this group of bison is valued for its pure gene pool.

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D) had asked Turner to submit an offer for the bison last fall after an earlier plan to move them onto a Wyoming reservation fell through. The state has also turned down at least two American Indian reservations that wanted some or all of the bison.

“There were a lot of people that wanted [the bison] on public lands. We’re not ready,” said Montana wildlife chief David Risley. “The Turner option, all it does is buy us time to come up with a long-term solution” (AP/Billings Gazette, Feb. 2). – DFM

Share This

Science Daily: The Atlantic blue crab, Callinectes sapidus, long prized as a savory meal at a summer party or seafood restaurant, is a multi-million dollar source of income for those who harvest, process and market the crustacean along the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts.

Unfortunately, the blue crab population has been declining in recent years under the assault of viruses, bacteria and man-made contaminants. The signs of the attack often are subtle, so researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the College of Charleston (CofC) are at work trying to identify the clues that will finger specific, yet elusive, culprits.

Pathogens and pollutants impair the blue crab’s metabolic processes, the chemical reactions that produce energy for cells. These stresses should cause tell-tale changes in the levels of metabolites, small chemical compounds created during metabolism. Working at the Hollings Marine Laboratory (HML) in Charleston, S.C., the NIST/CofC research team is using a technology similar to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to identify and quantify the metabolites that increase in quantity under common environmental stresses to blue crabs — metabolites that could be used as biomarkers to identify the specific sources.

Read more >>

Share This

Science Daily: Speed is not a word typically associated with trees; they can take centuries to grow. However, a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found evidence that forests in the Eastern United States are growing faster than they have in the past 225 years. The study offers a rare look at how an ecosystem is responding to climate change.

For more than 20 years forest ecologist Geoffrey Parker has tracked the growth of 55 stands of mixed hardwood forest plots in Maryland. The plots range in size, and some are as large as 2 acres. Parker’s research is based at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, 26 miles east of the nation’s capital.

Parker’s tree censuses have revealed that the forest is packing on weight at a much faster rate than expected. He and Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute postdoctoral fellow Sean McMahon discovered that, on average, the forest is growing an additional 2 tons per acre annually. That is the equivalent of a tree with a diameter of 2 feet sprouting up over a year.

Read more>>

Share This

Greenwire: The United States, China and the European Union have all signed on to the Copenhagen Accord, writing to the United Nations before yesterday’s deadline to formally reaffirm their intention to combat global warming.

The United Nations plans to publish today a list of commitments by participating countries, which also include Australia, Indonesia, Canada, Japan and India. While the total number of participating countries has not yet been announced, it is expected to include at least 51 countries producing a substantial majority of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

While scientists say their promised reductions in emissions by 2020 are insufficient for the fulfillment of the accord’s goal to prevent global warming from exceeding 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown hailed the accord as a “crucial first step.”

“For the first time, the world will see, collected together, strong mitigation commitments by countries representing more than 80% of global emissions,” Brown wrote in a letter to government officials in London.

Developing countries that had called for binding emissions reduction targets said the accord should be considered just the start of efforts to combat climate change.

“The Copenhagen Accord is a step forward, but all nations must commit to the strongest possible actions, and adopt a legal treaty, if we are to ensure our survival,” said John Silk, foreign minister of the Marshall Islands, in a statement last week (Alex Morales, Bloomberg, Feb. 1). – GN

Share This

Greenwire: Nearly three decades after Congress first directed the Army Corps of Engineers to investigate the possibility of dredging the Delaware River, a federal judge last week cleared the way for the deepening to begin.

U.S. District Judge Sue Robinson denied an injunction Wednesday to stop the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from deepening a 13-mile stretch of river by an additional 5 feet this year without first obtaining a Delaware state permit and said opponents of deepening the river should give up.

“For those who oppose the project in the first instance, the time for that fight has long passed,” Robinson said, adding, “The decision to allow deepening in Reach C, therefore, is not a ‘bridge to nowhere.’ It is a first step in a regulatory process that has worked in the past, and should work here, to accomplish Congress’ goals without causing environmental harm as defined by statute.”

On Friday, Robinson amended her 31-page opinion to make clear that she intends for the entire project to proceed, not just a portion of it.

“Just to be clear, the deepening project is one that should be completed, consistent with Congressional intent,” the judge wrote. “The court does not equate administrative obstacles with proof of insurmountable environmental risks.”

The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection said it was “extremely disappointed” in the ruling. “We believe there are significant environmental, economic, and state’s rights concerns that the decision does not adequately take into account,” said acting DEP Commissioner Bob Martin. Delaware and several environmental groups also oppose the court’s decision and are planning their next legal moves.

Those groups could appeal the ruling to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, amend their complaint to raise new issues or wait for a full airing before the federal court in Wilmington (Linda Loyd,Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 31). – DFM

Share This

Science Daily: New Mexico is known for Aztec ruins and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.  Paleontologists Thomas Williamson of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Thomas Carr of Carthage College is now bringing a new superstar to the state.

Bistahieversor sealeyi (pronounced: bistah-he-ee-versor see-lee-eye) is a new species of tyrannosaur discovered in the Bisti/De-na-zin Wilderness of New Mexico. Tyrannosaurs include the famous meat-eating dinosaurs like T. rex, with their characteristic body and skull shape and their mouthful of ferocious teeth that make them easy for paleontologists and kids to recognize.

The skull and skeleton of Bistahieversor were collected in the first paleontological excavation from a federal wilderness area, and the specimen was airlifted from the badlands by a helicopter operated by the Air Wing of the New Mexico Army National Guard. “Bistahieversor sealeyi is the first valid new genus and species of tyrannosaur to be named from western North America in over 30 years,” says Williamson.

Tyrannosaurs are best known from 65-75 million year old sediments from the Rocky Mountain region of North America. Bistahieversor provides important insights into the evolutionary history of the group.

Read more >>

Share This

Science Daily: The innermost secrets of fire’s role in the rebirth and renewal of forests and grasslands are being revealed in research that has identified plant growth promoters and inhibitors in smoke. In the latest discovery about smoke’s secret life, an international team of scientists are reporting discovery of a plant growth inhibitor in smoke.

The study appears in ACS’s Journal of Natural Products.

“Smoke plays an intriguing role in promoting the germination of seeds of many species following a fire,” Johannes Van Staden and colleagues point out in the report. They previously discovered a chemical compound in smoke from burning plants that promotes seed germination. Such seeds, which remain in the undercover on forest and meadow floors after fires have been extinguished, are responsible for the surprisingly rapid regrowth of fire-devastated landscapes.

In their new research, the scientists report discovery of an inhibitor compound that may block the action of the stimulator, preventing germination of seeds. They suspect that the compounds may be part of a carefully crafted natural regulatory system for repopulating fire-ravaged landscapes. Interaction of these and other compounds may ensure that seeds remain dormant until environmental conditions are best for germination. The inhibitor thus may delay germination of seeds until moisture and temperature are right, and then take a back seat to the germination promoter in smoke.

Share This

Science Daily: A 10 percent drop in water vapor ten miles above Earth’s surface has had a big impact on global warming, say researchers in a study published online January 28 in the journal Science. The findings might help explain why global surface temperatures have not risen as fast in the last ten years as they did in the 1980s and 1990s.

Observations from satellites and balloons show that stratospheric water vapor has had its ups and downs lately, increasing in the 1980s and 1990s, and then dropping after 2000. The authors show that these changes occurred precisely in a narrow altitude region of the stratosphere where they would have the biggest effects on climate.

Water vapor is a highly variable gas and has long been recognized as an important player in the cocktail of greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane, halocarbons, nitrous oxide, and others — that affect climate.

“Current climate models do a remarkable job on water vapor near the surface. But this is different — it’s a thin wedge of the upper atmosphere that packs a wallop from one decade to the next in a way we didn’t expect,” says Susan Solomon, NOAA senior scientist and first author of the study.

Read more >>

Share This

Greenwire: A federal judge has rejected Delaware’s challenge to a plan by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to deepen the Delaware River’s main shipping channel.

The Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control had challenged the agency’s plan, citing the potential for environmental damage. U.S. District Judge Sue Robinson sided with the Army Corps in an opinion issued yesterday, saying state officials failed to demonstrate irreparable harm that would override the federal agency’s authority over waterway maintenance.

“The court is mindful of the increased potential for environmental harm that accompanies the failure to adequately investigate a project of this size and stature,” Robinson wrote. “However, the deepening project, while different in scope, is not vastly different from Delaware River maintenance dredging that the Corps has engaged in for decades.”

The Army Corps intends to dredge the river to deepen its main shipping channel from 40 feet to 45 feet to accommodate larger vessels. The $300 million project, which would extend from Philadelphia ports to the mouth of the Delaware Bay, could begin as soon as next week, an agency official said Tuesday.

Environmental groups such as the National Wildlife Federation had supported Delaware, saying a ruling in favor of the Army Corps could provide greater precedent for the agency to override the concerns of states in federal waterway projects (Jeff Montgomery, Wilmington [Del.] News Journal, Jan. 28). – GN

Share This

Greenwire: Mountain climbers will have to climb a bit higher in the coming decades to reach the summit of the Patagonia mountains in South America, researchers reported in a new study.

In recent years the mountains, located in the southernmost region of South America, have sprung up as the weight of glaciers melted away, they said.

GPS-based measurements indicate that between 2003 and 2006, the Patagonia mountains grew at a rate of 1.5 inches per year, found a team of researchers led by Reinhard Dietrich of Institut für Planetare Geodäsie, Technische Universität Dresden, Germany. Their findings are reported in the latest issue of the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

“Before I saw this article, I would have said the highest rate [of mountain growth] was at Glacier Bay, Alaska,” said Bruce Molnia, a veteran glacier researcher and geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. In 2005, similar measurements at Glacier Bay found the mountains there rising at a rate of 1.3 inches per year.

According to their estimates, 30 years from now, the most famous peaks of Patagonia — like Mount Fitzroy — will be about 3.3 feet higher (Larry O’Hanlon, MSNBC/Discovery News, Jan. 27). – DFM

Share This

Climatewire: Philippe Starck, the French designer of furniture and interiors, yesterday unveiled designs for two micro wind-power turbines.

The “Revolutionair” turbines will be made in Siena, Italy, by Pramac, which manufactures power generation equipment. They can be placed in gardens or on roofs and have a power output of 400 watts for a quadrangular model or 1 kilowatt for a helicoidal option. The prices start at €2,500 and €3,500, respectively.

“We have to help people to produce energy, to be part of the fight,” Starck said at the turbines’ unveiling in Milan.

Starck is famous for creating modern-style furniture and high-tech lamps and for designing former French President François Mitterrand’s private residence (Reuters, Jan. 27). – EL

Share This

Climatewire: The East Coast soon may have a “hydrogen highway,” a series of solar refueling stations covering roads from Portland, Maine, to southern Florida.

Connecticut-based SunHydro plans to construct 11 stations with technology that uses solar-generated electricity to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, which then can be used as fuel for hydrogen cars. The process results in less emissions — and is cheaper — than other hydrogen technologies, like shipping it or reforming it from natural gas.

Several automakers are developing hydrogen fuel cell vehicles despite the surge of electric cars, but a lack of a refueling network has prevented companies from selling their vehicles widely.

“We’ve just decided that somebody needed to start this process,” said SunHydro President Michael Grey. “You have a lot of the big companies talk about it, but nobody’s stepped up to the plate and made it happen.”

The first stations, which will service 10 to 15 cars per day, will be located in Portland, Maine; Braintree, Mass.; Wallingford, Conn.; South Hackensack, N.J.; Claymont, Del.; Richmond, Va.; Charlotte, N.C.; Atlanta and Savannah, Ga.; and Orlando and Miami, Fla.

Each will cost about $3 million to install and will rely on private donors (Keith Barry, Wired, Jan. 27). – EL

Share This

Greenwire: The U.S. Interior Department plans to wait until at least 2012 to issue any oil and gas drilling leases off the Virginia coast, meaning delays are in store for a five-year offshore plan implemented under the George W. Bush administration.

Lars Herbst, a regional director for the agency’s Minerals Management Service, announced the delay last week at an industry-only offshore drilling workshop in Texas, people in attendance told Reuters. Eileen Angelico, a spokeswoman for the Minerals Management Service, confirmed Herbst’s remarks and said more time will be needed to examine what environmental impact offshore drilling would have.

The Bush administration’s offshore plan called for the lease in November 2011 of 3 million acres about 50 miles from the Virginia shoreline.

“[Officials are] still analyzing whether they’re going to be able to hold the lease sale then or not,” Angelico said.

Newly elected Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) wrote a letter in December to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar urging him not to obstruct offshore drilling projects.

The oil and gas industry has also lobbed criticism. “This just demonstrates what remains a pattern with the Salazar Interior Department. Delay, delay, delay,” said Cathy Landry, a spokeswoman for the American Petroleum Institute. “Instead of moving forward, and conducting environmental reviews so the sale could occur in 2011, Salazar stalled” (Tom Doggett, Reuters, Jan. 26). – GN

Share This

Climatewire: The prairies and woodlands of North Texas soon will become part of a project to increase scientists’ understanding of climate change, biodiversity, species and pollution.

The Caddo-LBJ National Grasslands will join the National Ecological Observatory Network, a series of 20 eco-climatic domains that will be used to study the forces that affect ecosystems. The project is sponsored by the National Science Foundation and has received $27 million in federal funding.

“It’s about understanding how those forces are then changing the way ecosystems function,” said Michael Keller, the nonprofit’s chief scientist. “And we are interested in how ecosystems function because we live off the products of ecosystems, whether it be wood from forests or food from farms or fresh water.”

Other domains include Yellowstone, western Massachusetts, northern Wisconsin and the Appalachians. At each site, researchers will use various technologies, as well as samples of plants, animals, insects, soil and water collected by hand, to measure ecology.

NSF needs final approval from its board and director before the plan heads to Congress for support. The network’s staff, currently at 65, will jump to 250 when the project reaches capacity in 2016 (Steve Campbell, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Jan. 26). – EL

Share This

Greenwire: Chicago is the only large metropolitan area in the United States to consistently violate the new standards U.S. EPA proposed yesterday for smog-forming nitrogen oxides.

The standard, which would not come into effect until 2021, would limit the air pollutant to 100 parts per billion, measured every hour. Nitrogen oxides emitted from car and truck tailpipes and power plants are a key ingredient in smog.

Chicago averaged nitrogen oxide rates of 116 parts per billion between 2006 and 2008, according to EPA. (The next highest urban area was San Diego, at 87 parts per billion.) However, Chicago’s poor rating could be due to the location of the city’s monitor, sitting atop a heavily trafficked interchange between the Eisenhower and Kennedy expressways.

“It’s very congested there, with a steady stream of cars and trucks,” said Laurel Kroack, chief of the Illinois EPA’s air bureau. “It’s very difficult for us to do anything about that.”

Federal mandates for cleaner car and truck engines should help reduce the nitrogen oxide pollution, which many environmental groups groused as being too lenient. A stricter level — say 50 parts per billion — would have required tougher local pollution controls, they say.

“We are disappointed that given a range of options EPA proposed last year … the agency chose the least protective health standard,” said Brian Urbaszewski, director of environmental health at the Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago (Michael Hawthorne, Chicago Tribune, Jan. 25). – PV

Share This

Greenwire: The Ugandan government is close to finalizing a long-term irrigation plan in response to severe droughts affecting the nation’s food production.

Officials last year asked the ministries of agriculture and water and environment to develop a 25-year master plan on the feasibility, approach and cost of irrigation schemes. The ministries this month will submit the plan to the Cabinet, which in turn will send it to Parliament for approval.

The plan will show which areas can be used for irrigation in each of Uganda’s 81 districts, according to Richard Cong, commissioner for water for production at the Ministry of Water and Environment. Areas will be categorized based on proximity to permanent water bodies.

Uganda has suffered eight major droughts in the past 40 years, and reliance on rain-fed agriculture has been exacerbated by weather patterns.

A major hurdle for irrigation development is cost, which is outside the means of citizens. The government will take on the cost of moving water from major bodies to irrigable land and then will cover 40 percent of the remaining burden. Farmers will cover the other 60 percent, which will depend on the technology most suitable to individual farms. The most practical system, according to Cong, is the $500 Ecologics pump.

Communities will need guidance and reorganization for the master plan to work, and some officials are concerned the plan won’t actually come to fruition.

“Our country is very good at developing good policies that are never implemented,” said Stephen Ochola, Soroti district chairman. “My strong recommendation is that when that policy is passed it should be implemented. Does it make sense for my district, for instance, to continue relying on nature when it is surrounded by water?” (Richard M. Kavuma, London Guardian, Jan. 25). – EL

Share This

Greenwire: As part of a push to save energy rather than pay to build new plants, Idaho Power Co. has been paying its customers to cut power use at peak times for six years, a strategy that energy experts say could be replicated by other power companies across the country.

In response to the tenfold spike in peak-time energy prices in the past decade, Idaho Power began paying farmers in 2004 to turn off their pumps for up to 15 hours a week during times when air conditioners and other gadgets are on. The venture paid off, resulting in drop-offs of as much as 5.6 percent of peak power demand and reducing the utility’s need to build new plants.

The company has also adopted other strategies to promote energy efficiency such as paying users 15 cents for each square foot of insulation they put in their attics and letting customers sign up for a “demand response” program for air conditioners that allows the utilities to cycle their air conditioner power on and off at crucial times for a price rake off.

“It’s clearly iconic in terms of a utility that’s turned the corner,” said Tom Eckman, the manager of conservation resources with the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, a planning group created by Congress. “They have gone from pretty much ground zero to a fairly aggressive program level.”

Idaho Power is not the only utility eyeing ways to cut back on energy use, but it spends a much higher percentage of its revenue on saving energy than most other utilities, said Ralph Cavanagh, a senior lawyer at the Natural Resources Defense Council. About half of all utilities now run programs that pay customers to cut their energy use during peak periods, said Steve Nadel, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. And companies like Boston-based Enernoc Inc. have sprung up to help utilities by outfitting stores and other businesses with devices to turn off lights or reduce power in other ways during a power squeeze.

But to make up for selling less electricity, Idaho Power — and other companies like it — are raising rates. For example, Idaho Power has asked regulators to make permanent a pilot program it began in 2007 that allowed it to charge an energy efficiency rider of 4.75 percent on electric bills, one of the highest percentage charges in the country to help pay for this type of program.

Critics also maintain Idaho Power has lagged behind other utilities when it comes to renewable energy use because it has not invested in wind power initiatives like most of its neighboring states’ utilities (Kate Galbraith, New York Times, Jan. 24). – DFM

Share This