Today is Earth Day.

A celebration is in order because an educational gathering that was initiated here in the USA 40 years ago has now grown into a world-wide event. But it should also be recognized that even more needs to be accomplished now towards protecting and restoring the environment. A TED Talk reminds us why we have an Earth Day to begin with:



Willie Smits on Restoring a Rainforest in Borneo (credit: TED Conferences)





Here are 10 ideas on ways that anyone can participate in a project that assists in helping to further any one of a myriad of Earth Day objectives:

1. become educated on the environment in your area and get kids involved in investigative programs like Roots & Shoots;

2. plant a tree with kids or read to them...

Spring arrived earlier this year, perhaps by nearly a month from anecdotal accounts. A NASA satellite has captured an image of the Piedmont area, between the Appalachians and the Atlantic coast, using its Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that is providing more precise measurements. In an early April image, the Appalachian Mountains remain brown as the trees cover higher elevations and have not begun producing leaves yet.



Spring Greening along East Coast

(credit: NASA)

The timing...

If you’re someone who is perplexed to understand weather events and their relationship to climate change, then a clever video by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research UCAR is worth watching. Comparing increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere to a baseball player on steroids, the effects become obvious:







Baseball and the Climate on Steroids (credit: NCAR & UCAR)





WHB

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Beyond the fancy resorts of Waikiki or Kona, the beauty of the Hawaii can be sadly diminished and unknown to the Island’s tourists. The early Polynesians released rummaging pigs that soon went feral exposing mountainous vegetation to erosion; later, 19th Century white settlers logged off vast native koa tree forests converting the landscape to cattle ranches; and now more recently arrived mosquitoes spread avian malaria that has decimated native Hawaiian bird populations found nowhere else on Earth.

If there ever were landscapes where environmental repair was appropriate, Hawaii represents a great example and a place to apply ecological principals and new restoration technologies.

An innovative initiative known as the Ka'ena Restoration Project is making an excellent start on Oahu. Early results show how quickly an ecosystem can recover when proper planning is applied and pressure from invasive species is removed. Using a new technology called Xcluder, a barrier was erected across...

When I was a grad student conducting ecological field research in the 1970’s, I spent much time in the mountains. My research consisted of an early examination into the environmental factors influencing restoration of vegetation destroyed by fires in the Colorado Rockies. The project required the collection of copious scientific measurements from multiple study sites across diverse plant species, soil chemistry, light intensity, air temperatures, and fire timelines. All this data was necessary to develop a comprehensive predictive model of the limiting factors to high elevation forest and tundra recovery.

‘Back in the Day’ I collected this data using a hand-held device, a punch-card system developed by IBM, called a “Port-a-punch”. IBM had never thought of an ecological application for their prototype device so I was on the “cutting edge”. Unlike taking handwritten field notes, the little, portable, gadget was really quite handy. It worked by using a stylus to manually eliminate chads in the cards, each...

 

Invasive species are annoying.

Whether they are cane toads hopping across Australia, kudzu vines smothering southern pine forests, or lionfish eating Caribbean coral reefs, these new visitors from other environments are rapidly growing in their frequency, impacts, and eradication costs. Such unwelcome guests can be especially troublesome if they happen to be an apex or top predator like pythons that have invaded the Florida in massive numbers.

OnPoint Radio from WBUR focused attention on the invasive snake from southeast Asia that is on the move after having eaten virtually all the small mammals in the Everglades National Park in Florida. Even an entire deer was found inside one 17 foot monster sized python. The apex predators were introduced into Florida’s ecosystem after becoming too large to maintain in a home aquarium. The snakes were originally purchased...

In the vein of full disclosure, it must be admitted that I am super-biased about the subject matter of a yet-to-be released movie, Chasing Ice, the film’s subject James Balog, a friend of 40 years, and the Sundance Film Festival where I was an original long-time volunteer. It is hard not to celebrate this fantastic documentary film, the dedicated explorer-photographer, and a festival that has come to represent all that is important in independent filmmaking.

Chasing Ice chronicles the efforts of Balog and his small, elite, crew of scientists, engineers, and artists to bring the existential reality of climate change to a wider audience beyond dry government reports and climate statistics. It succeeds well at this task as The Hollywood Reporter so aptly reviewed.

Using spectacular photography for which he is well known from work...

by Conrad Anker

Humans have a tendency to anthropomorphize animals.

Penguins, with their tuxedo like plumage and waddle, are a fine example of how we extend characteristics and behavior of humans to animals. The physical similarity makes the connection to animals is logical--- they are born, they die, and they share a brief time span on this planet. Obviously penguins, cute and adorable as they are, would not be granted personhood in the Bill of Rights. Less obvious are corporations and unions. Do groups of people speaking as corporations and unions have the same rights as individuals?

On the 21st of January 2012 the Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission observers its second anniversary. In 2010, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to allow corporations and unions to support political candidates. The ruling gave corporations First Amendment rights, under free speech, to favor or oppose candidates as they choose. The central theme is that corporations are people. However, the question should...

 

 

The Endangered Species Act became law on December 28, 1973. That makes the law 38 years old today and appropriate for some recognition of accomplishments over the years. The ESA was a pioneering piece of American environmental legislation.

The Endangered Species Act was signed into law by President Richard Nixon. It was designed to protect critically imperiled plant and animal species from extinction as stated in its charter as a "consequence of economic growth and development untempered by adequate concern and conservation.”

Since the Act went into effect, combined efforts by public agencies such as the Fish & Wildlife Service, private conservation foundations like the Center for Plant Conservation, numerous biological researchers, and concerned individuals have helped in the identification, designation,...

 

It isn’t often that a hurricane heads towards Alaska but one is on its way. The storm barreling towards the Baring Straits is predicted to carry hurricane-force winds and waves as it hits along the Alaskan coast. The National Weather Service has stated: "This will be an extremely dangerous and life-threatening storm of epic magnitudes rarely experienced," in Alaska.

A NOAA satellite image captured the scale of the weather system.

 



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The Appalachian folksingers, the Carter Family, wrote a beautiful sea shanty-- The Storms Are On The Ocean --about a sailor leaving his homeland and a girl far behind: I'm going away to leave you, love I'm going away for awhile, But I'll return to you again someday If I go ten thousand miles

In the 18th and 19th Centuries seafaring voyages like the one in the Carter tune were a treacherous matter and storms were always on the horizon. Times and sea going vessels have changed but the threat of storms has not. They are getting even more intense and dangerous with each passing year due to a changing climate.

A recent paper shows just how dangerous storms are becoming. In this case. the atmospheric pollution, instead of CO2, comes from smoke and soot. Environmental researchers at the University of Virginia compared cyclone patterns in the Arabian Sea between 1979-2010, a thirty year period. Their report, Arabian Sea Tropical...

New imagery from aerial surveys of Antarctica shows the development of an enormous crack in the Pine Island Glacier. Measurements indicate that the glacier basin makes the highest contribution of ice into the ocean than any other glacier in the world. This is of particular interest since the ice sheet is so large, unstable, and a large source of uncertainty in predicting rising sea levels due to global climate change. 

You can watch the impressive NASA video here:

 





Major crack observed in Antarctic ice shelf (credit: NASA)





 

Riled Up

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As one commentator has noted:  “We need to stop throwing stuff away since there is no more away there to throw it” as he reflected on the expanse of plastic debris in the ocean known as the Pacific Garbage Patch.

This massive gyre of pulverized rubbish is the result of garbage being cast overboard by large ships and subsequently pulverized by wave action. The consequences for marine wildlife including birds, turtles, and dolphins who ingest the materials is tragic and preventable. It is also an example of a wasteful, throw-away, society and an inefficient use of plastics, all products of petroleum.

The International Pacific Research Center at the University of Hawaii has graphically illustrated just how massive the garbage patch has become. The dump now includes debris from the Japanese tsunami at Fukushima moving around the Pacific Ocean. The IPRC’s animations show the predicted path of trash movements and their eventual deposit on Hawaiian and West Coast beaches.

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