The Slow Science of Phenology

Posted on Monday, 21 April 2008 by mackthek

More incontrovertible signs of spring arrived this week: spring peepers and chorus frogs began their eons-old ritual of calling, mating and reproducing, road construction crews are similarly multiplying, and Peterborough County is choking under its first smog alert of the year.
I’m most interested in the frogs.  For a number of years, I’ve been informally recording in my journal [...]

Filed under: Britain, Canada, Environment, Murmurs, Raves and Rants, Peterborough County, Rural, Science, United States | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

The Dawning of the Age of Asparagus

Posted on Wednesday, 2 April 2008 by mackthek

Meanwhile, back in Peterborough County, winter has settled in for an extended engagement until mid-June, approximately, because we’re all enjoying it so much. The snow, which ought to be gone, or nearly so, stretches across the fields, an infinity of tiresome whiteness. No one can remember so much snow on the ground this late in [...]

Filed under: Horticulture, Personal Mutterings, Peterborough County | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

  • 385 ppm: Chronicles of a Sick Planet

    7. "While southern Spain has always been dry and plagued by cyclical droughts, the average surface temperature in Spain has risen 2.7 degrees compared with about 1.4 degrees globally since 1880, records show. Rainfall here is predicted to fall 20 percent from this year to 2020, and 40 percent by 2070, according to United Nations projections. The changes on the Almarcha family farm in Albanilla over the past three decades are a testament to that hotter, drier climate here. Until two decades ago, the farm grew wheat and barley, watered only by rain. As rainfall dropped, Carlo Almarcha, 51, switched to growing almonds. About 10 years ago, he quit almonds and changed to organic peaches and pears, 'since they need less water,' he explained. Recently he took up olives and figs, 'which resist drought and are less sensitive to weather.' Mr. Almarcha participates in a government water trading system, started last year, in which farmers pay three times the normal price — 33 cents instead of 12 per cubic meter — to get extra water. The black market rate is even higher. Still, his outlook is bleak. 'You used to know that this week in spring there will be rain,' he said, standing in his work boots on parched soil of an olive grove that was once a wheat field. 'Now you never know when or if it will come. Also, there’s no winter any more and plants need cold to rest. So there’s less growth. Sometimes none. Even plants all seem confused.' "
    6. "A tanker from Marseilles with 36 million litres of drinking water unloaded its first cargo this week, one of a mini-fleet contracted to bring water from the Rhone every few days for at least the next three months. So humbled was Barcelona when prolonged drought forced it to ship in domestic water from Tarragona, 50 miles south along the Catalan coast, 12 days ago, that city hall almost delayed shipment and considered an upbeat publicity campaign to lift morale and international prestige. The whole country is suffering from its worst drought in 40 years and the shipments from Tarragona prompted an outcry from regions who insist they need it more. For now the clashes are being soothed by intervention from Madrid, and plans to ship water from desalination plants in parched Almeria in Andalusia are shelved until October. But there is little indication of a strategy to deal not just with an immediate emergency but an ongoing crisis. Buying water on an epic scale from France has given the controversy an international aspect as French environmentalists question whether such a scarce natural resource should be sold as a commodity to another country."

    Is Spain's Drought a Glimpse of Our Future?


    5. "Tourists heading to the tropics were warned yesterday that their suntan lotion can kill off one of the main attractions of their holiday - the colourful corals that thrive in warmer waters. Residues from sunscreens that wash off in the sea were shown by researchers to cause coral bleaching, a condition that leads to the death of the organism and the collapse of delicate ocean eco-systems. Chemical compounds that make up the ultra-violet (UV) filters in sunscreens, which are essential to protect the skin against burning, were shown to be harmful to coral reefs, even in small quantities.The researchers called for regulations to limit human contact with reefs where the coral was already suffering from other environmental threats such as rising sea temperatures."


    4. "Wasps used to be an uncommon sight in Fairbanks until two years ago. Then huge numbers of them swarmed on the city, ten times more than normal. The number of stings grew so bad that outdoor school events were cancelled, 178 patients were treated in hospital for stings and two people died. A study now reveals that wasp stings across northern Alaska have increased sevenfold over the past few years.

    3. "Daniel Boone's road is now the Hal Rogers Parkway, named after one of the Kentucky coal industry's closest friends in Washington, a Republican Congressman of 34 years. It passes through a mountain range older than the Himalayas and is blanketed in broadleaf forests rivalled only by the Amazon basin in its biodiversity. But the canopy of trees which lines the parkway as it rises from the bluegrass horse country to the mountains is a trompe l'oeil. The lush forest gives way to scraggly trees along the ridge-line, and behind those trees is evidence of unspeakable ecological violence. In a process known as mountaintop removal an upland moonscape is being created, which is incapable of regenerating trees. As far as the eye can see, the land is grey and pockmarked with huge black lakes, filled with toxic coal slurry."


    2. "Climate change has become firmly established as an accelerant to many of the factors which have put one in eight of the world's birds at risk of extinction, today’s publication of the 2008 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species of birds has found. Long-term drought and sudden extreme weather are putting additional stress on the pockets of habitat that many threatened species depend on. This coupled with extensive and expanding habitat destruction has lead to an increase in the rate of extinction on continents and away from islands, where most historical extinction has occurred. The 2008 Red List makes grim reading with 1,226 species of bird now threatened, and eight species newly uplisted to Critically Endangered, the highest threat category. Of the 26 species that changed category owing to changes in their population size, rate of decline or range size, 24 were uplisted to a higher level of threat. These include widespread continental species like Eurasian Curlew Numenius arquata and Dartford Warbler Sylvia undata, both previously of Least Concern, and now regarded as Near Threatened in a global context."


    1. "The Living Planet Index (LPI) follows trends in nearly 4,000 populations of 1,477 vertebrate species and is said to reflect the impact humans have on the planet. It is based on a wide range of population datasets, such as commercial data on fish stocks and projects such as the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring scheme. New figures show that between 1970 and 2005, the global LPI has fallen by 27%. This suggests that the world will fail to meet the target of reducing the rate of biodiversity loss set by the 2002 Convention on Biological Diversity."

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