Scientific American - Environment

Python Predation: Big snakes poised to change U.S. ecosystems

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:00:00 EST

Brought to the U.S. as pets, Burmese pythons have made headlines with their uncontrolled spread in the Florida Everglades and willingness to challenge alligators for the position of top predator. A report released by the U.S. Geological Survey last fall delivered more bad news: two other constrictor species, also former pets, are thriving in the area, and six others could pose similar threats. Researchers fear that reproductive populations could spread and eat native animals into extinction.

The new interlopers--northern and southern African pythons, reticulated pythons, boa constrictors and four species of anacondas--have “ecological similarities,” explains Robert Reed, a USGS biologist and one of the authors of the report. “They are large invasive predators that native birds and mammals aren’t adapted to, and they are highly fecund, capable of producing up to 100 hatchlings in one nest.” They’re also big; some grow up to 20 feet and 200 pounds. They seize prey with their teeth and then wrap around the prey’s body, squeezing it to death.

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Welcome to Atlantis and the quest for nitrogen

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:01:00 EST

Editor's Note: Journalist and crew member Kathryn Eident and scientist Jeremy Jacquot are traveling on board the RV Atlantis on a month-long voyage to sample and study nitrogen fixation in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, among other research projects. This is the first blog post detailing this ongoing voyage of discovery for Scientific American.com.

20 00.0457S x 084'59.9745W [More]

City Dwellers Drive Deforestation in 21st Century

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:01:00 EST

Globally, roughly 13 million hectares of forest fall to the blade or fire each year. Such deforestation has long been driven by farmers eking out a slash-and-burn living or loggers using new roads to cut inroads into pristine forest. But now new data appears to show that, at least for the first five years of the 21st century, big block clearings that reflect industrial deforestation have come to dominate, rather than smaller-scale efforts that leave behind long, narrow swaths of cleared land. [More]

Life at the Bottom: The Prolific Afterlife of Whales (preview)

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 08:00:00 EST

On a routine expedition in 1987, oceanographers in the submersible Alvin were mapping the typically barren, nutrient-poor seafloor in the Santa Catalina Basin, off the shore of southern California. On the final dive of the trip, the scanning sonar detected a large object on the seafloor. Piercing through the abyssal darkness down at 1,240 meters, Alvin ’s headlights revealed a 20-meter-long whale skeleton partly buried in sediment. On reviewing the dive videotapes, expedition leader Craig Smith and his team saw that the skeleton was probably either a blue or a fin whale. The creature appeared to have been dead for years, but the bones and their surroundings teemed with life--wriggling worms, centimeter-size clams, little snails and limpets, and patches of white microbial mats. The skeleton was a thriving oasis in a vast, desertlike expanse.

Almost a year later Smith, an oceanographer at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, returned for a proper study of the skeleton site. His team described several species previously unknown to science, plus some that had been observed only in unusual environments, such as at deep-sea hydrothermal vents.

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Street Smarts: The BioBus Brings a Rolling Science Lab to Resource-Strapped Schools

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 10:00:00 EST

It's halfway through first period, and 10th-grade students at Frances Perkins Academy in Brooklyn are in science class--not in school, but on a specially outfitted bus parked outside. [More]

How Toads Conquered the World [Slide Show]

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:01:00 EST

Cane toads are seemingly innocuous enough. First imported to Australia to control a beetle pest of sugarcane fields, they are now frog-marching their way across the island continent , wreaking havoc on in situ flora and fauna. The key to their domination has been protection from would-be predators and an ability to breed fast. But how were cane toads gifted with those traits in the first place? [More]

American Pika Denied Endangered Species Status

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:30:00 EST

The Fish and Wildlife Service has rejected a bid to extend endangered species protection to a rabbit-like creature that environmentalists say could be pushed to extinction by rising temperatures.

The warming of the American pika's mountain habitat in California's Sierra Nevada and in parts of nine other Western states has shrunk the tiny mammal's population and could eliminate part of its range, but federal biologists say new studies suggest the pika will adjust to warmer homes or migrate to cooler areas upslope.

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Are Coyotes or Humans the Perpetrators of Suburban Animal Attacks?

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:00:00 EST

A coyote howls, its characteristically pointed muzzle aimed high toward the night sky. But the moon is not visible over this brightly lit Target store parking lot in Matamoras, Penn.--only a glowing globe atop a metal pole casting its electric illumination on the pavement. [More]

Utility to Build First Power Plant with Greenhouse Gas Emissions Limits in California

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:15:00 EST

Calpine Corp. is poised to build the first U.S. power plant with federal limits on greenhouse gas emissions in California after clearing a final regulatory hurdle today.

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District granted the Houston-based utility its final air quality permit today, allowing the company to proceed with the planned construction of a 600-megawatt natural gas-fired Russell City Energy Center. The 15-acre project site is in Hayward, just east of the San Francisco Bay.

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Defusing the Methane Greenhouse Time Bomb

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:00:00 EST

Methane trapped in Arctic ice (and elsewhere) could be rapidly released into the atmosphere as a result of global warming in a possible doomsday scenario for climate change, some scientists worry. After all, methane is 72 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over a 20-year timescale. But research announced at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union this December suggests that marine microbes could at least partially defeat the methane "time bomb" sitting at the bottom of the world's oceans.

The conventional wisdom for decades has been that methane emanating from the seafloor could be consumed by a special class of bacteria called methanotrophs. It has long been known, for instance, that these organisms at the bottom of the Black Sea consume methane produced in its deep oxygen-free waters.

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Recommended: Gems and Gemstones

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 09:00:00 EST

Gems and Gemstones by Lance Grande and Allison Augustyn. University of Chicago Press, 2009 [More]

Readers Respond on "Squeezing More Oil from the Ground"

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:00:00 EST

End or No End? In “ Squeezing More Oil from the Ground ,” Leonardo Maugeri, director of strategies and development of an international oil company, expresses the conventional view of his profession, assuming a world of near-infinite oil resources to be produced under market forces. Maugeri is particularly dismissive of our Scientific American article “The End of Cheap Oil” [March 1998]. It is difficult to find fault with at least its title, considering that the average price of oil over the preceding 10 years was $28 a barrel but rose to $45 over the ensuing decade to reach a peak of almost $150 in 2008.

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Wolverine No Match for Climate Change

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:00:08 EST

Forget polar bears or penguins. The charismatic megafauna suffering most from climate change may well be the wolverine--a vicious predator known for its uncanny strength and tenacity. Making it the perfect inspiration for the X-Me n superhero.

The actual wolverine's super powers extend mostly to a tolerance for Arctic chill and supersized feet to permit quicker movement on snow. Those big feet might be hurting the largest member of the weasel family as snowpack declines across much of North America.

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Will U.S. Government Crackdown on "Greenwashing"?

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:20:00 EST

The Federal Trade Commission is expected to crack down on " greenwashing " when it updates its environmental marketing guidelines for the first time since 1998.

The agency's Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims , or Green Guides, define terms such as "recyclable" and "biodegradable" and explain how businesses should back up environmental assertions. Though FTC cannot force businesses to adopt greener practices, Section 5 of the FTC Act authorizes the agency to intervene when businesses are misrepresenting their practices to clients -- in other words, turning greenwashing into fraud.

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Fixing the Broken Government Policy Process

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:00:00 EST

The breakdown of the Washington policy process has four manifestations. First is a chronic inability to focus beyond the next election. “Shovel-ready” projects squeeze out attention to vital longer-term strategies that may require a decade or more. Second, most key decisions are made in congressional backrooms through negotiations with lobbyists, who simultaneously fund the congressional campaigns. Third, technical expertise is largely ignored or bypassed, while expert communities such as climate scientists are falsely and recklessly derided by the Wall Street Journal as a conspiratorial interest group chasing federal grants. Fourth, there is little way for the public to track and comment on complex policy proposals working their way through Congress or federal agencies.

These failings take a special toll on the challenges of sustainable development because there is no quick fix, for example, for the challenge of large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Instead of getting long-term strategies for adopting low-carbon energy sources, upgrading the power grid, encouraging electric transportation and so on, we are getting cash for clunkers, subsidies for corn-based ethanol, and other ineffective and highly costly nonsolutions delivered by large-scale lobbying.

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Stay otter there: California sea otters cross over to the forbidden zone

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:30:00 EST

Few things in my life have brought me as much joy as watching sea otters play in the waters near Monterey, Calif. So when I heard this week that the frisky yet endangered critters may be slightly expanding their habitat, I figured everyone would think that was good news. [More]

Better Broadband: New Regulatory Rules Could Change the Way Americans Get Online

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 08:00:00 EST

At the turn of the millennium, the U.S. had some of the best broadband access in the world. It reached more homes, and at a lower price, than most every other industrial country. Ten years later the U.S. is a solid C-minus student, ranking slightly below average on nearly every metric.

Just how the U.S. lost its edge and how it plans to get it back are the issues before the Federal Communications Commission as it prepares to launch the most significant overhaul of network policy since the birth of the Web. As part of last year’s stimulus package, Congress provided $7.2 billion to expand broadband access to every American. It also required the FCC to outline a plan for how to make that happen. The outcome of the FCC’s deliberations, due February 17, could determine not just control over the broadband infrastructure but also the nature of the Internet itself.*

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The Bigger Kahuna: Are More Frequent and Higher Extreme Ocean Waves a By-Product of Global Warming?

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:30:00 EST

Armand Thibault looked out over the Pacific's rumbling winter waves from his balcony in Neskowin, Ore. "The predicted high tide today is a 10.1 [feet]," he relayed via YouTube on Friday, January 29. "I'm very glad we don't have a storm surge behind this one. Tomorrow is supposed to be a 10.2, so it should be interesting." [More]

Obama Budget Increases Funding for Energy Research and Nuclear Power

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:00:00 EST

Nuclear energy and energy research are among the big winners in the proposed $28.4 billion Energy Department fiscal 2011 budget the White House unveiled today.

The almost 5 percent increase in funding from fiscal 2010 covers a $36 billion boost in loan guarantee authority for nuclear power facilities for a total of $54 billion, $300 million for an innovative energy research program, and a $226 million increase in funding for the Office of Science for research and development of "breakthrough" technologies for a total of $5.1 billion.

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Over the Top: Data Show "Green" Roofs Could Cool Urban Heat Islands and Boost Water Conservation

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 12:45:00 EST

NEW YORK--Through the rain-pocked window of his Prius heading east on the Queensboro Bridge, Stuart Gaffin sees a black, watery sea of missed opportunities. [More]