Thursday, July 30, 2009
Colleges Become Greener Thanks to Savvy Students
Environmental Restoration May Not Be the Home Run It’s Advertised As
Cleaning up after ourselves is nothing new. And yet, if this be the case, why, then, do outsiders always have to ask companies and industries who affect the environment adversely, to clean up after themselves? Didn’t their mothers (and fathers) teach them that if they make a mess, it is their responsibility to return everything back to how they found it? Didn’t anyone tell them that the broken window won’t fix itself?
» See also: Greenpeace Praises Brazil
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Well, people have stepped in, and in the United States, restoration regulations are in use. This clean-up process is known by a few names: environmental restoration, ecological restoration or environmental remediation. And this process, this act of “cleaning up,” is “a process in which a damaged resource is renewed. Biologically. Structurally. Functionally” (John J. Berger, Restoring the Earth: How Americans are Working to Renew our Damaged Environment). It is, in essence, no trace living.
But while policymakers across of the globe are relying on environmental restoration projects to fuel emerging market-based environmental programs, it is not certain whether these programs deliver the environmental impacts that they market.
Markets identify the benefits humans derive from ecosystems, called ecosystem services, and associate them with economic values which can be bought, traded or sold. In short, they put a monetary value on the environment. This value is used in order to compensate for the damage done or environmental services used.
But now, two known ecologists, Dr. Margaret Palmer and Dr. Solange Filoso of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, are raising concerns about the real impacts of restoration. They are concerned that there is insufficient scientific understanding of the restoration process, namely, how to alter a landscape or coastal habitat to achieve the environmental benefits that are marketed.
“Both locally and nationally, policymakers are considering market-based environmental restoration programs where the science does not yet conclusively show that environment health will improve once the ‘restoration’ is completed,” said Dr. Palmer. “These programs may very well make economic sense, but the jury is still out whether or not the local environment will ultimately benefit.”
Currently ecosystem service market demand is driven by regulations requiring those who harm the environment to mitigate or provide offsets for their environmental impacts. However, many are hoping that the offsets will expand outside the regulatory context and into the voluntary, resulting in a net increase of ecosystem services rather than simply popping a fly out to left field and hoping that your man on third makes it home.
The two scientists urge that we recognize that restoration projects generally only restore a subset of the services that natural ecosystem provide. ”There is an inherent danger of marketing ecosystem services through ecological restoration without properly verifying if the restoration actions actually lead to the delivery of services,” said Dr. Filoso. “If this happens, these markets may unintentionally cause an increase in environmental degradation.” It’s like fixing Mr. Johnson’s broken window by gluing it together. The window is there, but it isn’t quite the same as it used to be.
I found out early on that it takes more than just glue to fix a broken window, which brings up the age old idea that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Conservation of the environment is better and more efficient than trying to recreate it, replace it or repair it; just like it is easier to keep the ball out of Mr. Johnson’s window to begin with.
Written by Ruedigar Matthes
Clean beach water? Not always, survey finds
Nationally, 7 percent of water samples in 2008 violated health standards — indicating the presence of human or animal waste, according to the report by the Natural Resources Defense Council. That's zero improvement over 2007 and 2006.
"Pollution from dirty stormwater runoff and sewage overflows continues to make its way to our beaches," Nancy Stoner, co-director of the council's water program, said in a statement marking the 19th annual "Testing the Waters" report.
"Americans should not suffer the consequences of contaminated beach water," she added. "From contracting the flu or pink eye, to jeopardizing millions of jobs and billions of dollars that rely on clean coasts, there are serious costs to inaction."
The report, compiled using data from the Environmental Protection Agency, looked at more than 6,000 beaches and found several states well above that national average of 7 percent:
Louisiana (29 percent of samples violated standards).
Ohio (19 percent).
Indiana (18 percent).
Illinois (15 percent).
Delaware, New Hampshire and Virginia had the lowest violation rates, all with 1 percent.
Five-star guide to U.S. beaches
Below's a quick look at how the 200 U.S. beaches rated by the Natural Resources Defense Council fared, with five stars being the highest ranking. Beaches are followed by their state abbreviation.
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1 star
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2 star
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3 star
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4 star
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5 star
CT: Ocean Beach ParkFL: Bayview ParkFL: Monument BeachFL: Newman Brackin Wayside ParkFL: Venice Public BeachFL: Venice Fishing PierNJ: Avalon Beaches at 30th NJ: Belmar BeachNJ: Spring Lake (Essex)NJ: Point Pleasant Beach (Central)NY: Jones Beach State Park at Zach's BaySC: Myrtle BeachSC: Surfside Beach
Source: Natural Resources Defense Council
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Orange County beaches rate highestThe report also provides a five-star rating guide for 200 popular U.S. beaches, based on indicators of beach water quality, monitoring frequency and public notification of contamination.
Fourteen beaches rated five stars, and nine of those were in Orange County, Calif. The others were in Alabama, Maryland and Minnesota and New Hampshire
hirteen beaches rated just one star. Five were in Florida, four were in New Jersey, two in South Carolina and one each in Connecticut and New York.
Illnesses from polluted beach water include stomach flu, skin rashes, pinkeye, ear, nose and throat problems, dysentery, hepatitis, respiratory ailments, neurological disorders and other serious health problems, the defense council said. "For senior citizens, small children and people with weak immune systems, the results can be fatal," it added.
The report did find a 10 percent drop in days that beaches were closed or advisories issued, but attributed the decline to dry conditions and decreased funding for monitoring — not to any improvement in water quality.
"When the rains return," Stoner said, "so will pollution, forcing beaches to issue more closings and advisory days
utterflies tracked as environmental barometer
It's butterfly counting time at a central Georgia wildlife refuge. That means a sweaty but fun outing for these two men, one a retired entomologist, the other the abbot of a Roman Catholic monastery. But it has a serious side: Some researchers worry butterfly populations may be in decline, possibly signaling a worsening environment.
The flying insects are often viewed as canaries in a coal mine because they are sensitive to changes in their habitats.
"When you see the absence of butterflies, you know something is wrong," says Jerry Payne, the entomologist on the recent counting expedition to Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge, about 70 miles south of Atlanta. Payne has tracked butterfly habitats for years.
"Unfortunately, we have met the enemy — and he is us," Payne says. "Man is the biggest reason for declining butterfly populations. We're taking away their land."
Butterflies play a key environmental role as a pollinator, fertilizing wild and cultivated plants by carrying pollen from one flower to another. In human eyes, butterflies are also a powerful symbol because of their transformation from caterpillar to graceful flight. That makes them a good standard-bearer for raising public awareness about habitat decline and species preservation, says Jaret Daniels of the Butterfly Conservation Initiative.
"They are that very visible, charismatic organism that can really rally the troops behind the importance of insects overall," Daniels says.
Butterfly training in the worksRoughly two dozen of America's hundreds of butterfly species are listed as endangered or threatened. The initiative is setting up workshops this year to train zoos, museums and others in butterfly conservation.
Some enthusiasts aren't sounding the alarm yet. Jeffrey Glassberg, president of the North American Butterfly Association, cautions that only a handful of species are in danger.
"You have to look at the big picture here," says Glassberg, a retired molecular geneticist who wrote the authoritative field guide, "Butterflies of North America." "There is still plenty of habitat."
But other researchers say there are clear signs that butterfly populations are under increasing threat, due either to climate change or human sprawl. A 2006 report by the National Academy of Sciences found evidence that some butterfly species key to pollination are on the decline.
"If you look at the numbers overall, they are declining slowly," says Daniels, an assistant entomology professor at the University of Florida. "There's no overriding trend of alarm, but within individual pockets there is."
To get a better idea of what's happening, various state and federal agencies with environmental missions team up annually with butterfly groups to plan hundreds of counts — including a handful of new sites that sprout up each year.
The counts aren't exactly scientific, as they largely depend on the talents and know-how of the volunteers. And it depends on how many enthusiasts show up to scout a park. But they help give researchers an idea of the diversity and relative numbers of butterflies in a given area.
'Butterflyers' in paradiseThey also help bring together enthusiasts like Payne and Francis Michael Stiteler, the abbot, who have been counting butterflies for years.
Stiteler started out following dragonflies, but turned to butterflies soon after arriving at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Georgia in the 1970s.
He says he was "like a kid in a candy shop" roaming the monastery's 2,000 acres with binoculars and a camera to log the area's butterfly tenants. It's become a handy way to relieve the stress that comes with running the 40-monk Trappist monastery which, like other nonprofits, is facing financial woes amid the recession.
Payne has long been a bug buff — obsessed with insects since he was a hard-luck teen who couldn't get many dates. Compared to dating, he says now, "Insects were much cheaper to work with."
The two "butterflyers" were among about a dozen who descended on the Georgia refuge on a sweltering morning in late June, bringing the two most important elements of the hunt: Sharp eyes and keen peripheral vision.
"I get rid of all the other stuff," says Payne, "and I just see the butterfly."
The refuge's gravel roads were empty as they roamed in Payne's van, but sometimes it felt like they were in an invisible traffic jam: Payne repeatedly slammed on the brakes to catch some real or imagined flicker of movement outside the dusty windows.
The two men eventually made their way to a grassy field, where they were overjoyed to find the Holy Grail of butterflying: A buttonbush, a magnet for the insects. The duo headed straight for it, plunging into chest-high grass with no regard for ticks or snakes.
"Zarucco Duskywing! Horace's Duskywing! Byssus Skipper!" yells Stiteler, excited to cross three more species off the list.
There are many keys to a good butterfly count. Fortunately for these two, being quiet isn't one of them.
Sustainable seas? Overfishing easing in places
Two years after a study warned that overfishing could cause a collapse in the world's seafood stocks by 2048, an update says the tide is turning, at least in some areas.
"This paper shows that our oceans are not a lost cause," said Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, lead author of both reports. "I'm somewhat more hopeful ... than what we were seeing two years ago."
It's personal as well as scientific.
"I have actually given thought to whether I will be hosting a seafood party then," Worm said, meaning 2048.
Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington challenged Worm's original report, leading the two — plus 19 other researchers — to launch the study that led to the new findings. They're being published in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
The news isn't all good.
Of 10 areas of the world that were studied, significant overfishing continues in three, but steps have been taken to curb excesses in five others, Hilborn and Worm report. The other two were not a problem in either study.
Hilborn noted that 63 percent of fish stocks remain below desired levels. It takes time to rebuild after steps are taken to reduce the catch.
Michael Fogarty of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration noted a dramatic recovery of haddock on Georges Bank, off New England, as well as improvements in redfish, scallop and other fish. But still others, such as cod and flounder, remain vulnerable, he said at a briefing.
"We feel confident that the tide of overexploitation can be reversed on a global basis," Fogarty said, citing such steps as exclusion areas, changes in fishing gear, assignments of rights to harvest and incentives for fishers to take a long-term view.
Alaska, New Zealand success storiesTwo areas, Alaska and New Zealand, have led the world in terms of management success by not waiting until drastic measures are needed to conserve, the report said. These areas were not a problem in either study.
Regions where excess exploitation has halted are Iceland, southern Australia, the Northeast U.S., the Newfoundland-Labrador area and the California Current, which flows south along the U.S. West Coast.
Still being overfished, the report said, are the North and Baltic seas and the Bay of Biscay region.
A newly developing problem is the movement of major fishing efforts to the developing world, with foreign fleets operating off east and west Africa under access agreements with local governments. These fleets compete with local fishers and almost all the fish they catch is taken to industrialized countries.
"The prognosis for Africa is not nearly as good as it is for wealthier areas," commented Tim McClanahan of the Wildlife Conservation Society in Mombasa, Kenya.
"Prior to this study, evaluations of the status of world fish stocks and communities were based on catch records for lack of a better alternative. Results were controversial because catch trends may not give an accurate picture of the trends in fish abundance," Ana Parma of Centro Nacional Patagonico in Argentina, said in a statement.
"This is the first exhaustive attempt to assemble the best-available data on the status of marine fisheries and trends in exploitation rates," she said. The new analysis includes catch data, stock assessments, scientific trawl surveys, small-scale fishery data and computer modeling results.
The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the University of California, Santa Barbara.
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Oyster breakthrough in Chesapeake BayA separate study, also in Science, reports that researchers have successfully restored populations of native oysters to the Chesapeake Bay.
The local oyster population had collapsed after years of overfishing. Researchers launched the restoration effort in 2004, constructing artificial reefs in protected areas of the Great Wicomico River in Virginia.
The oysters are thriving in these areas, demonstrating how similar recovery efforts might work elsewhere, according to the researchers from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science of the College of William and Mary.
That research was funded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Blue Crab Advanced Research Consortium and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
White Roofs Catch on as Energy Cost Cutters
He or his wife would race to the thermostat and turn on the air-conditioning as their four small children, just picked up from day care, awaited relief.
All that changed last month. “Now we come home on days when it’s over 100 degrees outside, and the house is at 80 degrees,” Mr. Waldrep said.
Their solution was a new roof: a shiny plasticized white covering that experts say is not only an energy saver but also a way to help cool the planet.
Relying on the centuries-old principle that white objects absorb less heat than dark ones, homeowners like the Waldreps are in the vanguard of a movement embracing “cool roofs” as one of the most affordable weapons against climate change.
Studies show that white roofs reduce air-conditioning costs by 20 percent or more in hot, sunny weather. Lower energy consumption also means fewer of the carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming.
What is more, a white roof can cost as little as 15 percent more than its dark counterpart, depending on the materials used, while slashing electricity bills.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate in physics, has proselytized for cool roofs at home and abroad. “Make it white,” he advised a television audience on Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” last week.
The scientist Mr. Chu calls his hero, Art Rosenfeld, a member of the California Energy Commission who has been campaigning for cool roofs since the 1980s, argues that turning all of the world’s roofs “light” over the next 20 years could save the equivalent of 24 billion metric tons in carbon dioxide emissions.
“That is what the whole world emitted last year,” Mr. Rosenfeld said. “So, in a sense, it’s like turning off the world for a year.”
This month the Waldreps’ three-bedroom house is consuming 10 percent less electricity than it did a year ago. (The savings would be greater if the family ran its central air during the workday.)
From Dubai to New Delhi to Osaka, Japan, reflective roofs have been embraced by local officials seeking to rein in energy costs. In the United States, they have been standard equipment for a decade at new Wal-Mart stores. More than 75 percent of the chain’s 4,268 outlets in the United States have them.
California, Florida and Georgia have adopted building codes that encourage white-roof installations for commercial buildings.
Drawing on federal stimulus dollars earmarked for energy-efficiency projects, state energy offices and local utilities often offer financing for cool roofs. The roofs can qualify for tax credits if the roofing materials pass muster with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program.
Still, the ardor of the cool-roof advocates has prompted a bit of a backlash.
Some roofing specialists and architects argue that supporters fail to account for climate differences or the complexities of roof construction. In cooler climates, they say, reflective roofs can mean higher heating bills.
Scientists acknowledge that the extra heating costs may outweigh the air-conditioning savings in cities like Detroit or Minneapolis.
But for most types of construction, they say, light roofs yield significant net benefits as far north as New York or Chicago. Although those cities have cold winters, they are heat islands in the summer, with hundreds of thousands of square feet of roof surface absorbing energy.
The physics behind cool roofs is simple. Solar energy delivers both light and heat, and the heat from sunlight is readily absorbed by dark colors. (An asphalt roof in New York can rise to 180 degrees on a hot summer day.) Lighter colors, however, reflect back a sizable fraction of the radiation, helping to keep a building — and, more broadly, the city and Earth — cooler. They also re-emit some of the heat they absorb.
Unlike high-technology solutions to reducing energy use, like light-emitting diodes in lamp fixtures, white roofs have a long and humble history. Houses in hot climates have been whitewashed for centuries.
Before the advent of central air-conditioning in the mid-20th-century, white- and cream-colored houses with reflective tin roofs were the norm in South Florida, for example. Then central air-conditioning arrived, along with dark roofs whose basic ingredients were often asphalt, tar and bitumen, or asphalt-based shingles. These materials absorb as much as 90 percent of the sun’s heat energy — often useful in New England, but less so in Texas. By contrast, a white roof can absorb as little as 10 percent or 15 percent.
“Relative newcomers to the West and South brought a lot of habits and products from the Northeast,” said Joe Reilly, the president of American Rooftile Coatings, a supplier. “What you see happening now is common sense.”
Around the country, roof makers are racing to develop products in the hope of profiting as the movement spreads from the flat roofs of the country’s malls to the sloped roofs of its suburbs.
Years of detailed work by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory have provided the roof makers with a rainbow of colors — the equivalent of a table of the elements — showing the amount of light that each hue reflects and the amount of heat it re-emits.
White is not always a buyer’s first choice of color. So suppliers like American Rooftile Coatings have used federal color charts to create “cool” but traditional colors, like cream, sienna and gray, that yield savings, though less than dazzling white roofs do.
In an experiment, the National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn., had two kinds of terra-cotta-colored cement tiles from American Rooftile installed on four new homes at the Fort Irwin Army base in California. One kind was covered with a special paint and reflected 45 percent of the sun’s rays — nearly twice as much as the other kind. The two homes with roofs of highly reflective paint used 35 percent less electricity last summer than the two with less reflective paint.
Still, William Miller of the Oak Ridge laboratory, who organized the experiment, says he distrusts the margin of difference; he wants to figure out whether some of it resulted from different family habits.
Hashem Akbari, Dr. Rosenfeld’s colleague at the Lawrence Berkeley laboratory, says he is unsure how long it will take cool roofs to truly catch on. But he points out that most roofs, whether tile or asphalt-shingle, have a life span of 20 to 25 years.
If the roughly 5 percent of all roofs that are replaced each year were given cool colors, he said, the country’s transformation would be complete in two decades.
Jellyfish Stir Up Oceans, May Influence Climate
It also plays a role in global climate change because carbon dioxide in the air can dissolve in the surface water and then get pulled into the depths and stored there. "It's important for us to understand the dynamics of the ocean in order to really understand what's going to happen to climate over land," says John Dabiri, a bioengineer at Caltech University in Pasadena and co-author of the paper.
Ocean Mixers
Tides and winds are known to be major players in ocean mixing, but some researchers believe that animals might also contribute. Dabiri and his graduate student Kakani Katija decided to find out by filming dozens of jellyfish as they swam in the wild. Studying the movies shows that the simple animals drag water behind them as they swim. It's a little bit like a bicyclist in the Tour de France, says Dabiri: "When Lance Armstrong is riding down the road, he's actually taking quite a bit of the surrounding air along with him, and the animals are doing something similar in the water."
To avoid predators, jellyfish and related animals often hide far below the ocean's surface during the day and swim to the surface at night to feed, according to William Dewar, an oceanographer at Florida State University in Tallahassee who was not involved with the study.
Changing The Carbon Balance
If the work is correct, then it could mean that they're ferrying cold water to the surface and warm water into the depths of the sea with each feeding cycle. In the process, they may be taking dissolved carbon dioxide with them far beneath the sea, changing the overall carbon balance in the atmosphere.
But, Dewar adds, there's a still a long way to go before scientists can say for sure that animals like jellyfish are helping to regulate the climate. Larger-scale studies need to be carried out to understand where marine animals are living and how they move. "What I think we can say at the moment is that it's a plausible idea," he says. new study in this week's issue of the journal Nature.