December 11, 2006, 9:42 PM CT
Agricultural Production In Great Lakes
Great Lakes area: Africa's most impoverished region
Credit: IFD
The Netherlands Government is launching a project to promote peace and environmental stability by improving soil health, intensifying farm production, and increasing trade in one of the world's poorest areas: the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa.
The highest population density in Africa is in the Great Lakes Region: Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, western Tanzania, and the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
"The Great Lakes region already has far more people than its fragile soils can support," says Dr. Amit Roy, CEO of IFDC, An International Center for Soil Fertility and Agricultural Development. IFDC will implement the 5-year project.
"The region faces perpetual crises of poverty, social instability, war, and environmental degradation. The situation is rapidly worsening as deforestation intensifies and its soils are starved of nutrients".
Tiny Rwanda is typical. More than 340 persons are packed into each square kilometer, and population is growing by almost 3% annually. Almost all of Rwanda's population are subsistence farmers. Using existing technology, food production can be increased only by clearing and farming the ecologically important wetlands or, worse, the last relicts of parks and reserves, including habitats of mountain gorillas and other endangered wildlife and plants.........
Posted by: Erica Permalink Source
December 11, 2006, 9:35 PM CT
Plant One Tree And Save The Earth
Can planting a tree stop the sea level from rising, the ice caps from melting and hurricanes from intensifying?
A new study says that it depends on where the trees are planted. It cautions that new forests in mid- to high-latitude locations could actually create a net warming. It also confirms the notion that planting more trees in tropical rainforests could help slow global warming worldwide.
In the first study to investigate the combined climate and carbon-cycle effects of large-scale deforestation in a fully interactive three-dimensional climate-carbon model, researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Carnegie Institution and Universite Montpellier II observed that global forests actually produce a net warming of the planet.
The study provides a holistic view of the deforestation issue. "This is the first comprehensive assessment of the deforestation problem" said Govindasamy Bala, lead author of the research that will be presented on Dec. 15 at the American Geophysical Society annual meeting in San Francisco.
The models calculated the carbon/climate interactions and took into account the physical climate effect and the partitioning of the carbon dioxide release from deforestation among land, atmosphere and ocean.
Forests affect climate in three different ways: they absorb the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and help to keep the planet cool; they evaporate water to the atmosphere and increase cloudiness, which also helps keep the planet cool; and they are dark and absorb a lot of sunlight, warming the Earth. Climate change mitigation strategies that promote planting trees have taken only the first effect into account.........
Posted by: Erica Permalink Source
December 5, 2006, 8:36 PM CT
Measuring Carbon Without Destroying Trees
USDA Forest Service (FS) scientists have provided the first proof of concept for a method that allows researchers to study below-ground carbon allocation in trees without destroying them. In the latest issue of the journal Plant, Cell and Environment, Kurt Johnsen and fellow scientists at the FS Southern Research Station unit in Research Triangle Park, NC, describe a reversible, non-destructive chilling method that stops the movement of carbon into root systems.
The photosynthetic process of plants has been estimated to account for almost half of the carbon circulating in the Earth's systems. Reliable data has been developed on carbon cycling in the above-ground processes of trees, but how much carbon is actually moved and stored below the ground has not yet been determined. Most methods to study below-ground processes involve destroying the roots as well as the mycorrhizal communities that live symbiotically with root systems.
"Below-ground carbon allocation is one of the least understood processes in tree physiology," says Johnsen. "Being able to accurately measure it is essential for modeling forest and ecosystem productivity and carbon sequestration, but most methods disturb the root-mycorrhizal continuum that plays an essential role in nutrient transport".........
Posted by: Erica Permalink Source
December 5, 2006, 5:00 AM CT
Rise In California Temperatures
Increasing temperatures in California during the next 45 years could negatively affect the amount of almonds, walnuts, oranges, avocados and table grapes that Americans put on their tables.
As per new research in the journal Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, production losses in some of California's most popular crops could be as high as 40 percent by mid-century.
In the study, scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory reviewed the impact of climate change on six major perennial crops in California: wine grapes, almonds, table grapes, oranges, walnuts and avocados. Each of these crops is typically planted only once every 25-40 years. However, so that climate can change considerably in the lifetime of individual vines or trees.
Using more than 20 climate models, the authors assessed the response of these crops to projected changes in temperature (an increase of 2 degrees to 4 degrees Celsius) and precipitation.
"Climate change should be an important factor in selecting perennial varieties and deciding whether and where they should be planted in California," said David Lobell, the lead author of the paper who collaborated with researchers at the Carnegie Institution, Stanford University and UC Merced. "This study indicates that warmer temperatures will tend to reduce yields of these crops in their current locations".........
Posted by: Erica Permalink Source
December 1, 2006, 4:22 AM CT
Potential For Biodiversity Management
While global protected areas, including nature reserves, parks, and areas protected by treaties, protect some aspects of biodiversity, shortcomings remain: the areas only cover certain habitats and local people often resent their formal management. Natural sacred sites exist in a number of countries around the world, with communities often sharing and managing sites that are not under formal protection. Such sites cover a wide variety of habitats and are often located in biodiversity hotspots. Shonil Bhagwat (Natural History Museum, London and University of Oxford) and Claudia Rutte (University of Bern, Switzerland) propose that such habitats should be included in biodiversity management.
Eventhough 23 percent of Earth's tropical forests are formally protected, only 8 percent of cropland and natural vegetation mosaic habitats receive the same protection. Natural sacred sites, protected by local traditions, are often situated within agricultural landscapes, providing corridors for wildlife. These sites come in a number of forms, including burial grounds and sites of ancestral deity worship, and often include organisms not protected in more formal settings. For example, sacred groves in the Koduga district of Karnataka state, India, have relict populations of certain threatened tree species that are not found in formal protected areas.........
Posted by: Erica Permalink Source
November 29, 2006, 5:05 AM CT
Placement Of Rainforest Trees
The apple might not fall far from the tree, but new research shows that how it falls might be what is most important in determining tree distribution across a forest. This study of the seed dispersal methods of rainforest trees demonstrates that these methods play a primary role in the organization of plant species in tropical forests.
Joshua B. Plotkin, a junior fellow in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, and co-author Tristram Seidler will publish their results in the recent issue of the journal Public Library of Science Biology.
"Overall, there is a highly significant relationship between mode of seed dispersal and the clustering and arrangement of mature trees in the rainforest," says Plotkin. "This strong correlation demonstrates the long-term impact that these dispersal methods have on the organization of the large-scale forest".
In order to address the paradox of how so a number of rainforest species can coexist while competing for the same resources, Plotkin and Seidler studied a 50-hectare (500 meters by 1,000 meters) plot of lowland tropical forest at Pasoh Forest Reserve in peninsular Malaysia. They analyzed the dispersal mechanisms and spatial distributions of 561 tree species found in the plot. What they found was that species clustering was strongly corcorrelation to the species' mode of seed dispersal.........
Posted by: Erica Permalink Source
November 28, 2006, 4:53 AM CT
Biocontrol of wavyleaf thistle being studied in Texas
Wavy leaf thistle was difficult to find along Panhandle highways five years ago. But now the noxious weed can be found moving into pastures, said a Texas Agricultural Experiment Station researcher.
Dr. Jerry Michels, Experiment Station entomologist at Bushland, along with Nagendra Earle, a West Texas A&M University graduate student, began looking at controlling the intruding noxious weed with natural controls about two years ago.
Michels' entomology team travels the highways to Colorado frequently each year to monitor biocontrol work with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. At first, they noticed wavyleaf thistle growing in small clumps along roadsides, Michels said, but in the past few years it seemed to be spreading.
Deciding they wanted to look at possible control measures, he submitted a proposal for a grant to the Joe Skeen Institute for Rangeland Restoration. His team received funding for two years.
In spring 2005, Earle began mapping the infestations across the Panhandle. The highest concentrations were found in the northern Panhandle down to U.S. Interstate 40, he said. Wavyleaf thistle has been found along I-40 from New Mexico to Colorado, but not much to the south.
"Our idea was that it was coming in through vehicle traffic, because it is common in Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming," Michels said. "Also, thistles love disturbed areas, so any road work could have increased the infestation."........
Posted by: Erica Permalink Source
November 28, 2006, 4:44 AM CT
Perennial wheat research
Annual wheat, which is traditionally grown in the Great Plains, is planted in the fall and dies after harvest in mid-summer. But Dr. Charlie Rush, Experiment Station plant pathologist, is testing some perennial lines of wheat bred in Washington state.
These perennial lines regrow after harvest and may survive for up to five years, Rush said. And eastern Washington is climatically similar to the Texas Panhandle, except it has harsher winters.
"This wheat, if it works here, will start growing back as soon it rains or is irrigated after harvest," he said. "Right now, we don't know if it will work in our area or not. But there definitely could be some applications for it if it does".
The perennial wheat could be used as a ground cover for highly erodible lands, wildlife habitat and an alternative crop for Conservation Reserve Program lands, Rush said. However, primarily he is interested in evaluating use of perennial wheats in dual purpose grain-grazing cropping systems that are prevalent in the southwestern Great Plains.
Over the years, different breeders have crossed bread wheat with wild wheat grass in order to acquire a variety of desirable traits, such as drought tolerance and resistance to diseases and insects, Rush said. In making these crosses, some of the resulting lines inherited the perennial trait.........
Posted by: Erica Permalink Source
November 26, 2006, 7:56 AM CT
Dramatic Shift In Marine Ecosystems Occurred 250m Years Ago
The earth experienced its biggest mass extinction about 250 million years ago, an event that wiped out an estimated 95% of marine species and 70% of land species. New research shows that this mass extinction did more than eliminate species: it fundamentally changed the basic ecology of the world's oceans.
Ecologically simple marine communities were largely displaced by complex communities. Furthermore, this apparently abrupt shift set a new pattern that has continued ever since. It reflects the current dominance of higher-metabolism, mobile organisms (such as snails, clams and crabs) that actually go out and find their own food and the decreased diversity of older groups of low-metabolism, stationary organisms (such as lamp shells and sea lilies) that filter nutrients from the water.
So says embargoed research would be published in Science on November 24, 2006. An accompanying article suggests that this striking change escaped detection until now because prior research relied on single numbers--such as the number of species alive at one particular time or the distribution of species in a local community--to track the diversity of marine life. In the new research, however, researchers examined the relative abundance of marine life forms in communities over the past 540 million years.........
Posted by: Kelly Permalink Source
November 26, 2006, 7:52 AM CT
Wheat Gene To Boost Foods' Nutrient Content
Scientists at the University of California, Davis; the U.S. Department of Agriculture; and the University of Haifa in Israel have cloned a gene from wild wheat that increases the protein, zinc and iron content in the grain, potentially offering a solution to nutritional deficiencies affecting hundreds of millions of children around the world.
Results from the study will be published in the Nov. 24 issue of the journal Science.
"Wheat is one of the world's major crops, providing approximately one-fifth of all calories consumed by humans, therefore, even small increases in wheat's nutritional value may help decrease deficiencies in protein and key micronutrients," said Professor Jorge Dubcovsky, a wheat breeder and leader of this research group. He noted that the World Health Organization estimates that more than 2 billion people are deficient in zinc and iron, and more than 160 million children under the age of five lack an adequate protein supply.
The cloned gene, designated GPC-B1 for its effect on Grain Protein Content, accelerates grain maturity and increases grain protein and micronutrient content by 10 to 15 percent in the wheat varieties studied so far. To prove that all these effects were produced by this gene, the scientists created genetically modified wheat lines with reduced levels of the GPC gene by a technique called RNA interference. These lines were developed by research geneticist Ann Blechl of USDA's Agricultural Research Service in Albany, Calif.........
Posted by: Erica Permalink Source
