New fossils discovered in East Greenland record an empty alien world from immediately after the extinction, which marked what is formally known as the Permian-Triassic boundary. Our discovery is significant because it shows for the first time that sea floor life at higher latitudes suffered the same global extinction process, and subsequent ecosystem recovery, says Dr Benjamin Kear from the Museum of Evolution at Uppsala University and leader of the project funded by the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat.
Palaeontologists from Uppsala University spent more than two months collecting fossils in East Greenland. East Greenland is the only landmass where rocks of these ages occur together in the same place, says Dr Henning Blom of the Evolutionary Biology Centre at Uppsala University, and co-investigator on the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat project.
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Some Los Angeles earthquakes possibly triggered by oil production in early 20th century 1/3/1611/2/2016 If you take our four-the 1920, 1929, 1930 and 1933 earthquakes-out of the calculations as induced or potentially induced, it does call into question what the rate of natural earthquakes in the L.A. Basin really is, Hough suggests. Los Angeles oil boom began in 1892 when oil was discovered near present-day Dodger Stadium, and L.A. Basin oil fields accounted for nearly 20 percent of the worlds total production of crude oil by 1923. Houghs earlier studies of historic induced earthquakes in Oklahoma gave her the idea to look for oil permits and other industry records online, and she eventually found a site containing state reports that summarized the operations of California oil fields in the early 20th century. By comparing the earthquake lists with the industry data, the researchers found several links between earthquakes and significant oil production activities that took place nearby and close to the same time as the quakes. The recent increase in human-caused earthquakes in the central United States and Canada make it important to understand the full context of how, where and why earthquakes are induced, Hough notes. The oceans hold a vast reservoir - 700 billion tons - of carbon, dissolved in seawater as organic matter, often surviving for thousands of years after being produced by ocean life.
Think of dissolved organic carbon, or DOC, in the ocean as tree leaves and other dead organic matter falling to the forest ground - a portion of this natural carbon sustains life while the remainder remains hidden in the soils, being sequestered for many years. As is true in the forests, this vital, residual carbon reservoir is necessary to sustain life in the ocean, and to sequester vast amounts of carbon in its great depths. The researchers discovered that the production of dissolved organic carbon at the oceans surface could be accurately predicted by measuring the amount of nutrients arriving into the euphotic, or sunlit, zone. In future scenarios, how climate change will affect the nutrient arrival to the surface ocean will determine the inventory of dissolved organic carbon in the ocean. Left to its own defenses, a farm field growing a variety of plants tends to attract fewer insect pests than a field growing just one type of crop. Insects have a perfect nutrient level that they really like, said lead author William Wetzel, a doctoral student in Population Biology at UC Davis at the time of the study and currently an assistant professor at Michigan State University.
The problem with monocultures, Wetzel said, is that if an insect likes the crop, that insect has a large food supply to draw from all in one place. Conversely, a field containing a variety of plants does not offer a large block of food for the insect, so it will not get the nutrients it needs to survive and thrive. Wetzel said this sort of genotype mixing for plants is already being done on some rice and wheat fields to reduce the spread of disease among the crops. A new global assessment of forests - perhaps the largest terrestrial repositories of biodiversity - suggests that, on average, a 10% loss in biodiversity leads to a 2 to 3% loss in the productivity, including biomass, that forests can offer. While productivity trends consistently decrease with increased biodiversity loss across nearly all regions of the world, the areas that would experience the greatest productivity decline in absolute terms include the Amazon, West Africas Gulf of Guinea, Southeastern Africa, Southern China, Myanmar, Nepal, and the Malay Archipelago.
Based on these results, the authors estimate the value of biodiversity in maintaining commercial productivity to be 166 to 490 billion (USD), which would be considerably greater than the total cost of effective global conservation. Global Climate Deal: Nearly 200 Nations Agree to Limit Powerful Greenhouse Gases - 10/6/1610/16/2016 The agreement announced that, after all-night negotiations, caps and reduces the use of HFCs in a gradual process beginning in 2019 with action by developed countries including the United States, the world's second worst polluter. More than 100 developing countries, including China, the world's top carbon emitter, will start taking action in 2024. Environmental groups had hoped that the deal could reduce global warming by a half-degree Celsius by the end of this century. This agreement gets about 90 percent of the way there, said Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development. 200 countries signed this agreement. This is an agreement to get rid of the HFCs in air conditioning systems and refrigerators. This will eliminate the HFCs in the air and benefit us in America. The greenhouse emissions paths also needs to change because it is endangering our polo bears. The polo bears are becoming skinner and dying off. A wildfire burned through bone dry brush and threatened hundreds of structures in California's Santa Cruz Mountains. Some evacuations were lifted as firefighters, aided by cooler weather, held back the progress of the wildfire. Temperatures have been in the high 90s and near 100 degrees, and were considered "hazardous," by the National Weather Service. But by later in the week cooler weather conditions were expected to last past the weekend. Nearly 1,100 firefighters were working furiously to protect the 300 homes and communication towers that stood in the fire's path.
Wildfires are becoming more and more common around California. These fires are affecting our air quality. We are not breathing in any clean air and it is not good for our health. Especially when a fire like this lasts up to about a week. Hurricane Matthew is the most powerful Atlantic tropical storm in almost a decade, it was gearing up to deliver a potentially devastating blow to the Caribbean as wary U.S. authorities began preparing for a possible landfall on the Atlantic Coast late in the week.Matthew is "just an absolute powerhouse," said Ari Sarsalari, a meteorologist for The Weather Channel. And besides Haiti, it will be "a really nasty storm in Jamaica and eastern Cuba," he said. This hurricane can even be seen from an international space station.
By Wednesday, Hurricane Matthew could be in the Bahamas and possibly in the Turks and Caicos Islands. The U.S. Embassy in Nassau late Monday urged U.S. citizens in the Bahamas to take steps to shelter in place if they haven't already made arrangements to leave the country. "Overall, the National Hurricane Center said Monday, 15 to 25 inches of rain with isolated totals up to 40 inches could fall on southern Haiti and southwestern areas of the Dominican Republic. It projected 8 to 12 inches in the Bahamas, northwestern Haiti and eastern Cuba" states Johnson and Gutierrez. After that, the storm could be heading for Florida, where "direct hurricane impacts are possible" later this week, said Michael Brennan, a forecaster for the National Hurricane Center. This storm is very devastating to people. It is taking away their homes and peoples towns for that matter. They are being forced to leave some where, where they never though they would have to leave. Substantial flooding in eastern and central parts of the state from recent rain events, and many areas are already saturated. "We are taking this storm seriously, and I encourage residents and visitors do the same" said Pat McCrory. U.S. Adds Seven Types of Bees to Endangered Species List for First Time: By Reuters - Absent 9/15/1610/3/2016 Seven types of bees once found in abundance in Hawaii but now facing extinction on Friday became the first bees to be added to the federal list of endangered and threatened species, according to U.S. wildlife managers. The people of Hawaii have noticed a huge drop in the bee count on there islands. Once the island was swarming with bees and now they are disappearing. Reuters states that "Placing yellow-faced bees under federal safeguards comes just over a week since the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed adding the imperiled rusty patched bumble bee, a prized but vanishing pollinator once found in the upper Midwest and Northeastern United States, to the endangered and threatened species list"
This is important to us because pollinators like bees are crucial for the production of fruits, nuts and vegetables and they represent billions of dollars in value each year to the nation's agricultural economy. Bees are part of our agriculture and how the whole process works. c"Speaking in Honolulu, the president called for the world to unite and move forward in order to save the planet" NBC Nightly News. Obama shares the importance of the climate change happening in the united states. Especially along the coast lines and in Alaska. He talks about how the sea is swallowing villages in Alaska and eating away at shore lines and the glaciers are melting so fast. Obama also shares that the tundra is burning. Obama Is speaking about uniting as one and making a change for the one plant that we got.
I agree with Obama with the fact that we need to be making a change to this country. So many president things are according I don't think we are reacting the way we should be. Changes need to be made and actions need to be taken in order to save our world that we live on. |
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February 2017
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