DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE OCEANS!!!

https://www.usgs.gov/news/warmer-ocean-waters-seen-spur-drought-africa

Release Date: DECEMBER 15, 2016

Monitoring drought vital to success of humanitarian relief

"Really?” and “Strange, but true” might be popular reactions to the idea that periodic El Niño events in the Pacific Ocean could have a long distance influence on drought conditions in Africa, almost half-a-world away. Unlikely as it may seem, these connections are widely accepted by climate scientists and weather experts across the globe. Strange, but true, indeed.

El Niño and its counterpart, La Niña, are the warm and cool phases of a recurring climate pattern across the tropical Pacific — the El Niño-Southern Oscillation – that shifts back and forth irregularly every two to seven years. By disrupting large-scale air movements in the tropics and thus affecting temperature, precipitation, and winds, these changes in the Pacific Ocean set off a cascade of global side effects with each oscillation.

Drought comes to Africa

In the northern hemisphere’s winter and fall of 2015, El Niño reached a record high temperature in December-January-February and triggered historic levels of famine far away in east Africa. A related drought across southern Africa affected 30 million people. In November of 2016 Zimbabwe still faced severe water shortages.

Observed Niño 3.4 sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies (vertical bars) and estimates of El Niño SST anomalies. Compared to an ensemble of climate change simulations (red line).  USGS image produced by Chris Funk. Public domain.

Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of California Santa Barbara, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tracked the severe droughts in eastern and southern Africa. This science team has recently published a paper in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (chapter 15) that assesses the extent that warmer ocean waters resulting from human-caused climate change likely intensified the impacts of the drought.

The authors of the study evaluated the impacts of the rainfall reductions and air temperature increases in Africa during this period by means of a contra-positive experiment, in which a “world without climate change” was simulated in complex hydrologic models. These experiments revealed that the warming of El Niño beyond its historical averages during 1946-1975 likely helped produce a very large reduction in streamflow: 35% for Ethiopia and 48% for Southern Africa. Both regions experienced severe water shortages, as illustrated by estimates of per capita water availability.

“In summary, what we seem to be seeing,” said Chris Funk, a USGS scientist and lead author of the study, “is that, as the oceans warm due to climate change, pockets of very warm sea surface temperatures develop that often act to increase the impact of natural climate variations such as El Niño and La Niña. These extreme sea surface temperatures can intensify droughts over food insecure areas, contributing to water stress and disrupting economic growth.”

The data and scientific reasoning for these findings are detailed in the publicly available professional paper.

Weakened livestock in Arsi Negele, south-central Ethiopia, Sept. 2, 2015.  Photo credit: Getachew Abate (FEWS NET) and Kelbessa Beyene (World Food Programme), public domain.

Monitoring drought to get ahead of famine

Ethiopia suffered drought conditions in 2015 that were comparable to the severe drought and ensuing famine of 1984, during which hundreds of thousands of people perished. Like the case in the 1980s, the 2015 Ethiopian drought was related to a strong El Niño. Unlike that terrible episode, widespread acute food insecurity was avoided in 2015-2016 due to effective climate services, early warning of potential food insecurity, and social safety nets, particularly through the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET).

USGS Water Hole Status map, early December 2016. Information source: earlywarning.usgs.gov

Created by USAID in 1985 to help decision-makers plan for humanitarian crises, FEWS NET provides evidence-based analysis of food insecurity in some 35 countries. Implementing team members include the government agencies of NASA, NOAA, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and USGS, along with the commercial entities, Chemonics International Inc. and Kimetrica.

Scientists at USGS, University of California Santa Barbara, NASA, and NOAA monitored the severe droughts associated with the extreme 2015-16 El Niño event in partnership with FEWS NET specialists in Africa and Washington, helping the U.S. Agency for International Development provide early and effective humanitarian assistance. The combined information derived from U.S. satellite remote sensing, climate forecasting, and land surface modeling capabilities provided the agro-climatic evidence needed by FEWS NET food security analysts to project livelihood impacts many months in advance. The resulting early warning of potential acute food insecurity was instrumental in mobilizing the resources needed to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe.

Learn more

Funk, C. and L. Harrison, S. Shukla, A. Hoell, D. Korecha, T. Magadzire, G. Husak, G. Gideon. “Assessing the Contributions of Local and East Pacific Warming to the 2015 Droughts in Ethiopia and Southern Africa” in “Explaining Extremes of 2015 from a Climate Perspective,” Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 97 (12), S14–S18, doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-16-0149.

USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science Center (EROS)
University of California Santa Barbara Climate Hazards Group
NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, Physical Sciences Division
USGS FEWS NET

FIGHTING FOR THE AMAZON DESPITE ELECTION'S RESULTS

http://amazonwatch.org/news/2016/1107-no-matter-the-outcome-of-tomorrows-election-well-continue-to-fight-for-the-amazon?utm_source=Amazon+Watch+Newsletter+and+Updates&utm_campaign=16991f4cbc-2016-11-07-video-new&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e6f929728b-16991f4cbc-341634521&mc_cid=16991f4cbc&mc_eid=929388f719

DO NOT BLAME NATURE FOR DISASTERS: ALLOW MANGROVE FORESTS TO RECOVER

Allowing mangrove forests to recover naturally result in more resilient habitats that benefit both wildlife and people, say conservationists

Reproduced from BBC NEWS - Environment

In Indonesia, a Wetlands International project uses permeable dams to restore sediment needed for the trees to grow.

The charity says early results suggest "ecological restoration" is more effective than planting programmes.

More than half of the world's most at-risk habitats have been felled or lost over the past century, UN data shows.

Mangroves are a group of about 80 different salt-tolerant species of trees that are able to live along the intertidal zones of coastlines in tropical and sub-tropical regions.

The characteristic root systems of these trees allow them to withstand the ebb and flow of daily tides. The roots also act as buffers, slowing the flow of the tidal waters, allowing sediment to settle and build up as nutrient-rich mud.

The unique habitats provide valuable shelter and breeding sites for fish, as well as stabilising coastlines, reducing erosion from storm surges and tsunamis.

Life-saver

A report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) shortly after the 2004 Asia tsunami, which killed more than 200,000 people in nations lining the Indian Ocean, highlighted how in-tact mangrove forests provided protection to coastal communities.

It reported that two people were killed in a Sri Lankan village with dense mangrove and scrub forest, but up to 6,000 people lost their lives in a settlement that was no longer protected by similar vegetation.

Following the 2004 tsunami, the importance of robust and resilient mangrove forests became widely recognised, explained Femke Tonneijck, Wetlands International's programme manager for coastal wetlands.

"This resulted in many mangrove restoration efforts around the world, many of which were implemented through planting programmes by NGOs, governments and business," she said.

"Now we are seeing that many of those planting efforts are failing, and there are a number of reasons for this. 

"One of the most important reasons is that there is a wrong species-to-site match because mangroves have a natural [gradient] from land to sea, in which there is a mix of species that are best adapted to the level of salinity, wave exposure and submergence. 

"This is why we now focus more on ecological mangrove restoration," Ms Tonneijck told BBC News.

She said researchers had been carrying out a series of studies on this approach to conservation and it had been shown to deliver "much better results".

"This is because if you have a mix of natural species, ages and root types, as well as different types of fruit, fodder and timber, the diversity makes the system more resilient, as well as a forest that offers multiple benefits to a diverse group of stakeholders, as there are different species of fish taking shelter in the different root systems," she added.

However, planting programmes still remained popular because many schemes, often government-funded, measured success on the number of trees planted rather than the longer term survival rate.

"Also, there is no measurement of ecosystem services returning, such as coastal protection, and this may give people a false sense of protection," Ms Tonneijck warned.

In 2011, Wetlands International was invited to undertake a ecological mangrove restoration project in Central Java by the Indonesian government's marine and fisheries department.

Two villages in the area had been lost and the sea was encroaching inland up to three kilometres, destroying arable land.

Ms Tonneijck explained how the team restored the conditions needed for the mangrove to return to landscape.

"Working with Deltares, the Dutch knowledge institute, we were inspired by Dutch and German marshes where land was regained by putting permeable dams in place," she recalled.

"These permeable structures let waves pass through with sediment and behind the structures the sediment can settle. Once it had settled then the mangroves were able to come back into the area.

"We started first with a small pilot, and as the sediment trapping worked really well, we decided to set up a larger project that was supported by Dutch funds and the Indonesian government as well."

Wetland International's Building with Nature programme is now looking at restoring the "mangrove greenbelt" throughout the district.

"In the area where it is eroding, we are applying these permeable dams and we have already placed two kilometres of them," Ms Tonneijck revealed.

"As well as the mangroves slowly coming back in, we are also seeing that people are becoming very enthusiastic and they really want to do something - people immediately want to start planting as soon as there is sedimentation. 

"So we have started a dialogue explaining why we are preferring to wait for nature to come back.

SUPERBUGS ANTIBIOTICS RESISTANT WILL BE EXTERMINATED IF...KEEP OFF FACTORY FARMED MEAT!!!

Photo below was taken in a "first world country"!!!

Reproduced from

http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/2988153/to_stop_antibiotic_resistant_superbugs_keep_off_factory_farmed_meat.html

All 193 UN states will sign a declaration today to fight the spread of drug-resistant 'superbugs', writes Alastair Kenneil. The problem is often blamed on overprescription of antibiotics by doctors. But that's to ignore the massive use of antibiotics on animals in factory farms, both to prevent infection and to assist weight gain - turning farms into superbug breeding centres.

For decades factory farmers have been pumping antibiotics into livestock to compensate for inhumane and disease-inducing conditions. Now, bacteria are fighting back.

A new ground-breaking study of factory farmed UK supermarket pork and chicken has found that 71% of the samples were contaminated with antibiotic-resistant E. coli bacteria that cause life-threatening kidney infections and blood poisoning. The figure for just pork was alarmingly 63%.

Pigs in factory farms are so overcrowded, stressed and unhealthy they have to be routinely given antibiotics even when no disease has been diagnosed in any of the animals. What's more, drugs classed as ‘critically important' for people may be used.

In the EU, from where 54% of the pork consumed in the UK is imported, factory pig farms can keep pregnant mother pigs confined in steel cages for 20 weeks a year. In UK low welfare farms, including Red Tractor, this is allowed for 11 weeks a year when she is feeding her piglets.

The high levels of stress from having to endure weeks of this torture makes her vulnerable to injuries and disease.

To achieve maximum weight gain piglets in factory farms can be taken away from their mothers when they are only 21 days old, too early for their immune systems to develop properly. This means they have to be routinely given antibiotics as an integral part of the production cycle.

Intensive farms 'breeding' antibiotic-resistant bacteria

Just as doctors strive to reduce antibiotic use in the surgery, so farm use is increasing. Around a quarter of all antibiotics prescribed in the UK are given to pigs in factory farms. This routine misuse of antibiotics means that bacteria become resistant, bringing us closer to the end of antibiotics as a cure for an increasing number of human diseases.

The study, commissioned by the Alliance to Save our Antibiotics and conducted by Dr Mark Holmes from Cambridge University, is the first study to examine UK-origin retail meat for resistance to a wide range of key antibiotics for treating dangerous E. coliurinary-tract and blood-poisoning infections in people.

The study tested 189 samples of low welfare, UK-origin pork and chicken meat from the seven largest supermarkets from across the UK (ASDA, Aldi, Coop, Morrisons, Sainsbury's, Tesco and Waitrose).

Across factory farmed pig and chicken meat from all these supermarkets, the study found E.coli bacteria resistant to three highly important antibiotics for treating E.coli infections in people.

The research found soaring levels of resistance in chicken meat, with a staggering 24% of chicken samples testing positive for ESBL E. coli, a type of E. coli which is resistant to a family of antibiotics classed as ‘critically important' for people (the cephalosporins). These antibiotics are widely used for treating life-threatening E. coli blood poisoning in humans.

On 19% of pig and chicken meat, E. coli bacteria showed high levels of resistance to the antibiotic Gentamicin, which is of vital importance in treating serious urinary tract infections in people. Resistance to another essential antibiotic, Trimethoprim (which is the most widely used drug for treating lower urinary-tract infections in people) was found on 51% of pork & chicken samples.

The findings provide further evidence that the overuse of antibiotics on British farms is undermining the treatment of dangerous E. coli infections in humans.

Exposing humans to potentially fatal infections

This is of huge concern, as the number of serious E. coli infections is at a record high and increasing every year. E.coli is by far the most common cause of urinary tract and dangerous blood poisoning in humans, and can also cause meningitis. These kinds of infections can be fatal if they do not respond to antibiotics.

But the last 25 years has seen a steady increase in resistance to some of the most important remaining antibiotics which can treat these infections. No new antibiotics for treating E. coli infections have been discovered for over 35 years.

Increasing resistance is leading to record levels of E. coli blood poisoning. Figures we have assembled show that in 2015 there were over 45,000 E. coli blood poisoning infections in the UK.

The number of blood-poisoning infections has increased every year since 2000 (when it stood at about 12,000 or so), and is increasing by about 2,000 each year now. E. coli is by far the most common cause of blood poisoning nowadays, causing more blood poisoning than the next four bacterial causes of blood poisoning combined.

Meanwhile, many important antibiotics - including a number of those examined in the study - are used in far greater quantities in livestock farming than in human medicine, often given to whole groups of (mostly healthy) animals.

This systematic overuse of antibiotics in factory farms is fuelling the emergence of resistant bacteria. These superbugs can then pass to humans through the environment, or via meat that we buy in the supermarket.

The antibiotic resistance crisis is predicted to kill one person every 3 seconds by 2050. Over a third of these deaths will be caused by drug-resistant E. coli. This catastrophe is now unfolding before us.

The silience of the supermarkets

Supermarkets have remained too silent on this issue. While our vital drugs fail, they continue to permit unacceptable antibiotic use in their supply chains.

Supermarkets must now take share the responsibility for tackling this crisis by banning the routine preventative mass medication of groups of animals, dramatically curbing farm-use of the ‘critically important' antibiotics in their supply chains, and setting specifications around good animal husbandry.

Animals should - and can - be kept healthy through good husbandry and welfare, not through routine medication. It's time to stop sacrificing our animals - and our antibiotics - for cheap meat.

As farmers strive to compete with cheap imported pork, many farmers break EU and the UK regulations by depriving the growing pigs of straw (or other bedding material) to reduce labour costs. Crammed into small pens without the ability to express their natural instincts to root in straw for food and play with, pigs are stressed and fight thus increasing their vulnerability to disease.

Without straw the pig waste can more easily drop through the concrete floor slats into tanks underneath. The effluent is spread onto fields, sickening local residents with a toxic stench of ammonia and a cocktail of other gases and disease-causing bio aerosols.

This effluent inevitably leaks into watercourses, killing fish and other wildlife in rivers and the sea. In contrast, pig waste on outdoor farms, whose certification system demands limited pig numbers, nourishes the soil and forms part of the crop cycle that grows the pig feed.

Competing with imports is driving UK farmers in to a downward spiral where farms have to consolidate and reduce labour or go bankrupt. In the past 15 years the UK pig herd has dropped by half, while 70% of the imports have been raised in conditions that are illegal in the UK.

Join the growing movement for high-welfare farming!

The good news is that conscientious consumers are buying pork from high welfare farms. Today 25% of UK pork has been raised either outdoors, or indoors with plenty of straw and space to move around, where the pigs are happy and healthy and rarely, if ever, need antibiotics.

The solution? Of course we must back today's UN initiative to tackle the problem of microbial resistance on a global level. But we can also act closer to home and join the growing movement against factory farming by only buying meat from high welfare farms.

How? In supermarkets, only buy pork with the labels RSPCA Assured, Outdoor Bred, Free Range or best of all, Organic. Ask for high welfare pork in butchers, farmers' markets or online.

It doesn't cost much more - four sausages from a factory pig farm cost the same as three sausages from a real farm where pigs are healthy and free to move around. Reducing our meat intake also helps avoid obesity, diabetes, heart disease and certain types of cancer.

We can all give up half a sausage and help bring an end to pig factories, for our health and humanity's sake.

 PS

Alastair Kenneil is a campaigner with Pig Pledge, a project of Farms not Factories. As a former hill farmer raising sheep in Argyll, he became aware that animals thrive out of doors in a natural environment, and committed to the virtues of sustainable farming. He later became a film-maker, working on TV documentaries about remote communities around the world and their distinctive cultures for the BBC, Channel 4 and Discovery.

Take the Pig Pledge now!

Petition:  Jeremy Hunt MP, Secretary of State for Health: Please save our antibiotics! (38 Degrees)

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PLANT DIVERSITY...DRY FORESTS...CONSERVATION

Dry Woods State Park, Minas Gerais, Brazil

Reproduced from http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6306/1383

Plant diversity patterns in neotropical dry forests and their conservation implications

Abstract

Seasonally dry tropical forests are distributed across Latin America and the Caribbean and are highly threatened, with less than 10% of their original extent remaining in many countries. Using 835 inventories covering 4660 species of woody plants, we show marked floristic turnover among inventories and regions, which may be higher than in other neotropical biomes, such as savanna. Such high floristic turnover indicates that numerous conservation areas across many countries will be needed to protect the full diversity of tropical dry forests. Our results provide a scientific framework within which national decision-makers can contextualize the floristic significance of their dry forest at a regional and continental scale.

A LETTER TO THE FUTURE PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

[N.B. I personnally hope the President will not be him!!!]

http://imazon.org.br/imprensa/help-brazil-preserve-the-amazon/?lang=en

As reported in imazon.org.br

Help Brazil Preserve the Amazon

 

In the new issue of Americas Quarterly, we asked people, “What would you tell the next U.S. president about Latin America?” To see other authors’ responses, click here.

 

 

Dear Mister / Madam President,

Last June, Presidents Barack Obama and Dilma Rousseff, meeting in Washington, jointly declared that addressing climate change requires “continued, robust financial support.” They committed the U.S. and Brazil to an ambitious program aimed at helping developing countries mitigate the effects of climate change.

It was a landmark step. You should strengthen and expand this initiative — with special attention to the threats facing the Brazilian Amazon, where significant reductions in deforestation would produce enormous reductions in emissions. The work that still needs to be done is formidable.

Between 2004 and 2015, Brazil made great progress by reducing the deforestation rate of its Amazon region by more than 75 percent. But even with this large reduction, in the past three years, the region lost an average of 5,578 square kilometers (2,153 square miles) of forest annually, an area roughly the size of Delaware.

Zero deforestation should be the goal. But achieving it requires combining public policy initiatives with the positive influence of the market. For example, the U.S. and Brazil should deepen cooperation to enforce the Lacey Act against illegal logging. This would entail working together to improve the traceability of timber harvested in the Amazon and exported to the U.S. One way to do so is by exchanging data on logging permits. Additionally, the U.S. could help Brazilian and U.S. firms to fulfill their goals to curb deforestation by helping Brazil to implement full traceability of cattle in the Amazon region.

Brazil could benefit from the U.S. experience in managing national parklands to balance conservation and economic development. Although over 272 million acres of the Amazon have been allocated as conservation units (in the form of parks, national forests, etc.), the generation of jobs and income from these areas is currently only a fraction of its potential. Tourism and other activities in the U.S. national park system generated $32 billion and supported nearly 300,000 jobs in 2015. A Washington-sponsored initiative to develop collaboration between U.S. federal parks authorities and their Brazilian counterparts, including state and federal conservation authorities, would be a major step forward.

Investing in forest-based development would generate environmental and economic gains for both countries. We urge you to work with Brazil to develop the pledged Binational Program on Forest and Land Sector Investment and convene a public-private Forum on Innovative Forest Investment to increase investments in sustainable forest management and forest restoration in the region.

In their June 2015 declaration, the U.S. and Brazil also pledged to explore joint projects on clean energy. Studies show that several large hydropower plants proposed for the Amazon by the Brazilian government are very likely to increase deforestation as well as conflicts with indigenous peoples. U.S. collaboration would enable Brazil to develop other clean energy sources such as solar, biomass and wind, without increasing emissions — and avoid social conflicts associated with hydropower plants.

Further destruction of the Amazon would accelerate climate change, extinguish thousands of unique animal and plant species, and bring suffering to its indigenous peoples. Conserving it is in the U.S. interest as well as Brazil’s.

-

Veríssimo is a senior researcher and cofounder of the Amazon Institute of People and Environment (Imazon), a think-and-do-tank based in the Brazilian Amazon. He holds a master’s degree in ecology from Pennsylvania State University (USA) and a graduate degree in agriculture engineering from the Federal Rural University of the Brazilian Amazon.

Barreto is a senior researcher at Imazon. He holds a master’s degree in forest science from Yale University and a bachelor’s degree in forestry from the Federal Rural University in Pará state, Brazil.

Any opinions expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect those of Americas Quarterly or its publishers.

SUSTAINABILITY: EARTH OVERSHOOT DAY 2016

By Balakrishna Pisupati (UNEP Division of Environmental Law and Conventions) and Mathis Wackernagel (Global Footprint Network) | 08 August 2016

Today, millions of people around the world will watch as Olympic swimmers and divers compete in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. We believe this global event begs the question: What if countries were as competitive about fulfilling the pledges for a sustainable world they made last year in New York and Paris, as they have been in training athletes for the Olympic Games?

Today (August 8) is Earth Overshoot Day 2016. Humanity has used all the renewable natural resources that the planet can replenish for the whole year, according to international research institute, Global Footprint Network.

Its data shows that humanity demands 64% more from nature than planet Earth can renew. We make up for that gap by depleting our planet’s natural capital through overfishing, overharvesting forests and emitting more carbon into our atmosphere than can be absorbed.

The disastrous consequences include climate change, topsoil erosion and biodiversity loss. The longer we continue viewing natural resources as unlimited, the faster we are jeopardizing the very capacity of our planet to provide us with the renewable resources that we need to feed, clothe and shelter ourselves.

We can measure the scope of our ecological overshoot by comparing the Ecological Footprint (demand for resources) to biocapacity (nature’s ability to supply these resources). Human demands compete for biologically productive space. Therefore, we can add up these required spaces to support demand and compare them with the spaces actually available.

Already 85 percent of the global population live in countries whose natural ecosystems do not suffice to support their Ecological Footprint. And 71 percent live in countries whose ecological deficit is compounded by low-income, adding to the challenge of affording, through trade, those resources that their own ecosystems can’t provide.

One of the most significant demands of humanity on nature stems from our carbon emissions as a result of fossil fuel burning. The carbon Footprint now makes up 60% of humanity’s Ecological Footprint. Absorbing carbon emissions competes with other demands on nature, such as producing crops, supporting grazing animals for food, wool and leather, and providing timber.

Thankfully, this year is no business as usual. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in New York last September, and the Paris Climate Agreement, signed last December, have given us the best reason for hope to date. If we are to adhere to the Paris climate goals adopted by nearly 200 countries, carbon emissions will need to gradually fall to zero by 2050. This calls for a new way of living on our planet. That path is already made possible with current technology. Economic analysis shows it is also financially advantageous with overall benefits exceeding costs, since it will stimulate emerging sectors like renewable energy, while reducing risks and costs associated with stranded assets.

The only resource we still need more of is political will. Currently, for instance, only 19 countries (mostly islands and low-lying countries) have ratified the Paris Climate Agreement, accounting for 0.18% of total greenhouse gas emissions.

Fortunately, some countries are taking action. For instance, Costa Rica generated 97 percent of its electricity from renewable sources during the first three months of 2016. Portugal, Germany and Britain also demonstrated groundbreaking levels of renewable energy capability this year, when 100% of their electricity demand was met by renewables for several minutes or, in the case of Portugal, for several days. In China, meanwhile, the government has outlined a plan to reduce its citizens’ meat consumption by 50%, which it calculates will lower the carbon dioxide equivalent emissions from China’s livestock industry by 1 billion tonnes by 2030.

Furthermore, let’s bear in mind that the future we want is not the responsibility of governments alone. Balancing how much renewable natural resources we use and how much is generated is paramount for mankind to thrive on our beautiful planet. Each of us has the opportunity to participate. Through the choices we make every day as consumers and as citizens, we are already actively contributing to the world that we will be leaving for future generations.

What if the expected 3+ billion Rio Olympics viewers were as committed to taking action towards a low-carbon economy as they are excited about watching athletes compete? That shift is our most important task at hand. Building a sustainable world will take nothing less than transforming our individual and collective mindsets and setting our imaginations free.

Balakrishna Pisaputi, Coordinator, Biodiversity MEAs and SDGs, UNEP Division of Environmental Law and Conventions

Mathis Wackernagel, co-founder and CEO, Global Footprint Network

"ZERO DEFORESTATION" IN THE AMAZON: IS IT A DREAM!?!?!?

Reproduced from IMAZON

Access to

http://imazon.org.br/PDFimazon/Ingles/other_publications/Zero%20Deforestation%20and%20the%20future%20of%20Brazil_new.pdf

NASA WARNS: AMAZON MAY HAVE INTENSE WILDFIRE THIS YEAR

As reported in The Guardian, Environment

Conditions created by the strong El Niño event that warmed up Pacific waters in 2015 and early 2016 altered rainfall patterns around the world. In the Amazon basin, that meant reduced rainfall during the wet season, plunging some parts of the region into severe drought.

According to NASA, the Amazon is the driest it’s been at the start of the dry season since 2002 — and that probably means the rainforest is in for a particularly nasty wildfire season, according to Doug Morton, an Earth scientist with the U.S. agency and a co-creator of the Amazon fire forecast, which uses climate observations and active fire detections by NASA satellites to predict fire season severity.

“Severe drought conditions at the start of the dry season have set the stage for extreme fire risk in 2016 across the southern Amazon,” Morton said in a statement. The Brazilian states of Amazonas, Mato Grosso, and Pará are reportedly at the highest risk.

Per NASA’s Amazon fire forecast, the wildfire risk for July to October now exceeds the risk in 2005 and 2010 — the last time the region experienced severe drought and wildfires raged across large swaths of the rainforest. So far, the Amazon has seen more fires through June 2016 than in previous years, which NASA scientists said was another indicator of a potentially rough wildfire season.

NASA’s forecast model, developed by scientists at the University of California, Irvine (UC-Irvine) in 2011, focuses on the link between sea surface temperatures and fire activity. Warmer sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean, which occur during an El Niño event, as well as in the Atlantic Ocean are known to shift rainfall away from the Amazon, thereby increasing the fire risk in dry months.

Sea surface temperatures in tropical Pacific waters from October 2015 to April 2016 were at record highs relative to the 2001-2015 average, according to UC-Irvine scientists. At the same time, sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic from January to April 2016 were also above average.

The Amazon fire forecast team also tracks changes in terrestrial water storage (TWS) during the dry season. NASA’s GRACE satellites registered below-average TWS across most of Amazonia in March 2016, which means there was less soil moisture recharge from wet season precipitation than in previous years.

“When trees have less moisture to draw upon at the beginning of the dry season, they become more vulnerable to fire and evaporate less water into the atmosphere,” UC-Irvine scientist Jim Randerson, who built the forecast model together with fellow UC-Irvine scientist Yang Chen, said in a statement. “This puts millions of trees under stress and lowers humidity across the region, allowing fires to grow bigger than they normally would.”

Scientists at NASA and UC-Irvine have been working with South American officials and scientists to make them aware of these data and their implications.

Liana Anderson of Brazil’s National Center for Monitoring and Early Warning of Natural Disasters said in a statement that “fire forecasts three to six months before peak fire activity are important to identify areas with higher fire probability for integrated planning.”

SURVIVAL INTERNATIONAL: HOW TO PREVENT ANNHILATION OF TRIBAL PEOPLES

Watch the video by accessing this link:

http://www.survivalinternational.org/survival_film?utm_source=ENGLISH%3A+email+updates&utm_campaign=5b8edf2321-ENGLISH_160717_Mark_R_film7_14_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_241e47c256-5b8edf2321-87441577

TURTLE TRAGEDY IN AUSTRALIA'S GREAT BARRIER REEF: HERPES DUE TO POLLUTION

From NEW SCIENTIST

It’s a turtle tragedy. Tumours are crippling an increasing number of green sea turtles on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, with pollution being investigated as the prime culprit.

The animals have a turtle-specific herpesvirus that causes fibropapillomatosis – a condition in which disfiguring tumours grow on the eyes, flippers, tail, shell or internal organs.

“The tumours are benign but can grow up to 30 centimetres in size and block the turtles’ vision, says Karina Jones of James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. “This means they can’t find food or see predators or boats.”

Turtles with tumours are also more vulnerable to other infections, she says. “Severely affected turtles are quite skinny and have other pathogens affecting them – that’s why they die.”

The unpublished results of surveys by Jones’s team this year show that herpesvirus is most prevalent within a narrow stretch of Cockle Bay at Magnetic Island, a popular tourist destination in the middle of the reef. Roughly half the turtles in this hotspot have fibropapillomatosis, compared with less than 10 per cent of turtles sampled across the rest of Cockle Bay.

The cause remains unclear, but environmental contaminants are at the top of the suspect list. “We see these tumours in turtles in very localised hotspots around the world where there is heavy human activity,” says Jones.

Turtles in healthy marine environments can still carry the virus, but it often lies dormant with no symptoms, she says. “We think there must be some external trigger that causes the tumour development,” she says.

Fibropapillomatosis has also become increasingly common in turtles in Florida and Hawaii, particularly near onshore farming areas, which may be the source of pollution. Over the last 20 years, Doug Mader of the Turtle Hospital in Marathon, Florida, says he has gone from treating six to eight turtles per month to the same number per week.

Mader agrees that human pollution is probably to blame. “It is thought that pollution may weaken their immune systems, thus rendering them more susceptible to disease,” he says.

The next step is to try to pin down the contaminants that are responsible, if any, says Jones. Her team is looking for clues in historical water quality data, and is also planning to test water samples for a range of chemicals, including heavy metals and fertiliser and pesticide components.

“The field is very challenging because there are so many questions to ask,” she says. “But it’s always good to ask the big questions.”

A SOLITARY SPIX'S MACAW IN THE WILD. SHOULD IT HAD BEEN FREED BY A POACHER???

Reproduced from BBC News (on line)

A solitary Spix's Macaw was caught on video flying through trees in the state of Bahia. 

Pedro Develey, head of the Brazilian Society for the Conservation of Birds, said he believed it had been freed by a poacher trying to avoid arrest. 

A search of the area had just been concluded. 

A colony of Spix's Macaw - the breed made famous in the animated "Rio" films - is being bred in Qatar and Brazil plans to reintroduce some of them into the wild. 

The latest sighting was made by residents in Curaca, Bahia.

Mr Develey said the news was "amazing".

"You should have seen the joy of the people when I got there, saying the macaw was back," he said.

However, since the initial sighting, the whereabouts of the bird is unknown, the newspaper Estadao de Sao Paulo reported.

MICROPLASTICS IN THE OCEANS WILL THREATEN FISH STOCK (?)

From  The Guardian

http://gu.com/p/4k62f?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Fish are being killed, and prevented from reaching maturity, by the litter of plastic particles finding their way into the world’s oceans, new research has proved.

Some young fish have been found to prefer tiny particles of plastic to their natural food sources, effectively starving them before they can reproduce.

The growing problem of microplastics – tiny particles of polymer-type materials from modern industry – has been thought for several years to be a peril for fish, but the study published on Thursday is the first to prove the damage in trials.

Microplastics are near-indestructible in natural environments. They enter the oceans through litter, when waste such as plastic bags, packaging and other convenience materials are discarded. Vast amounts of these end up in the sea, through inadequate waste disposal systems and sewage outfall.

Another growing source is microbeads, tiny particles of hard plastics that are used in cosmetics, for instance as an abrasive in modern skin cleaners. These easily enter waterways as they are washed off as they are used, flushed down drains and forgotten, but can last for decades in our oceans.

The impact of these materials has been hard to measure, despite being a growing source of concern. Small particles of plastics have been found in seabirds, fish and whales, which swallow the materials but cannot digest them, leading to a build-up in their digestive tracts.

[...]

Samples of perch, still in their larval state, were shown not only to take in the plastics, but to prefer them to their real food. Larval perch with access to microplastic particles ate only the plastics, ignoring their natural food source of plankton.

[...]

THE ECOLOGY OF HUMAN-ANACONDA CONFLICT

The ecology of human-anaconda conflict: a study using internet videos 

http://tropicalconservationscience.mongabay.com/content/v9/tcs_v9i1_43-77_Miranda.pdf

Photos from http://www.oeco.org.br/colunas/colunistas-convidados/o-que-as-sucuris-matam-e-porque-pessoas-matam-sucuris/

Anaconda found by fishermen in northeastern Brazil littoral

Anaconda killed by humans after it had eaten a calf