Category: Newsletter

Glowing Puffin Beaks Surprise Scientists

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 20

We know that light in the visible spectrum is necessary for humans to be able to see. Since our eyes are able to observe only a relatively limited number of wavelengths on the entire light spectrum, we must rely on artificial lighting to guide us when the sun is down or we are in enclosed areas with no additional lighting. However, many other animals in our world use light in different ways. Some we know about and some have yet to be discovered. The Atlantic Puffin is just one example of an organism that utilizes light in a very interesting way.

Jamie Dunning, a research student at the University of Nottingham, was more than surprised to turn on a black light over a deceased Atlantic puffin and discover that its beak glowed. Now, the Atlantic puffin is considered to be one of 180 animals considered “biofluorescent,” meaning they reflect blue light and reemit another color—the most common being green, red, or orange.
This is different from bioluminescent animals who are able to create their own light which they emit through chemical reactions in their bodies. In other words, biofluorescent animals use light and bioluminescent animals create light.

Most of the animals that are able to be used or create light live in the world’s largest habitat: the ocean. Animals like fish and squid that live so far below the ocean’s surface where light cannot reach, use light in a variety of ways. Most of the time, light is used as a way of defending oneself from a predator. Deep sea squids use light to startle and distract predators before they quickly dart away back into the darkness. Other creatures, such as dinoflagellates, light up to summon a predator of the predator attempting to eat them. Additionally, some species of shrimp and dinoflagellates, who live near the surface of the water, may light up to blend in with the silhouettes created in the water by the sun at dusk. This makes these creatures invisible to predators, as their light matches the light on the water.

But why would a puffin’s beak light up? Tony Diamond, an ornithologist at the University of New Brunswick, had observed the same glowing orange light from a deceased puffin as Dunning, so they have put their data together. Right now, the team is aiming to discover whether living puffins also have glowing beaks, but they had to develop “puffin sunglasses,” first, so as not to harm the puffin’s eyes under the blacklight. The team hopes to be able to observe whether the beaks glow on live birds and hopefully discover why the beaks glow. Is it for the purpose of preventing predation or is it something else? This question has no answer yet, but researchers are hoping to find this out soon.

Sources:

Arnold, Carrie. “Puffin Beaks Glow in Surprising Discovery.” National Geographic National Geographic. 27 April 2018. Web. 4 May 2018.

Judson, Olivia. “Luminous Life.” National Geographic. National Geographic. March 2015. Web. 4 May 2018.

Preserving our Wetlands on Earth Day

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 19

With the arrival of spring comes one of the most underrated holidays: Earth Day. Although potentially talked about in schools as the day arrives, Earth Day is hardly the type of holiday that gathers media attention or is used for mattress sales like Christmas or Mother’s Day. However, Earth Day is a very important holiday, and it is also a relatively new holiday.

In 1962, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, a book that became so much more than an expose on pesticides. This book aroused public attention for environmental welfare and public health, not just in the United States, but in 24 different countries. Enter Gaylord Nelson, a senator from Wisconsin with a particular interest in the 1969 Santa Barbara, California oil spill. Seeing the passion that college students across America had for issues such as the Vietnam War, Nelson believed that he could put this passion to use in helping our environment. Nelson organized a committee, and on April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day was celebrated by over 20 million Americans. Various environmental groups from around the country with interests in pollution, wildlife, and many other issues realized their common goal: to protect the planet. By the end of 1970, the EPA was formed and the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Endangered Species Act were passed as a result of this new concern for the environment.

Almost 50 years later, Earth Day is still very relevant. Groups around the country put in extra effort on Earth Day to clean up our environment. Instead of having great parties, clean-ups are organized at rivers, lakes, parks, and forests around America. One such clean-up taking place this year is at the Potomac and the Anacostia River. Located in the Washington DC area, both these rivers suffer from concerning amounts of pollution. Loaded with trash and chemicals from the great metropolitan area, the Anacostia an F for its level of health from the Anacostia Watershed Society. The Potomac received a D+ in 2007, but today, due to efforts of clean-up crews, it has a B rating. Crews kayak up and down these rivers, cleaning out the trash, and truly making a difference.

Rivers like the Potomac and the Anacostia are crucial to the environment as part of wetlands. Although not often picked as tourist destinations, wetlands are homes for thousands of organisms and are important for water quality. Just some functions of wetlands include feeding downstream waters, recharging groundwater supplies, and removing pollution from the habitats of plants and animals. In addition, many endangered species make their homes in wetlands. Economically, wetlands are beneficial, as well, due to being popular destinations for fishing and other recreational activities.

Unfortunately, wetlands have seen increasing exploitation in recent decades. Because they have valuable resources, they are often harmed in order to obtain these resources. Also, they are often deemed “unproductive” and drained for the use of developers. Not only is this dangerous for the many endangered species that live in these wetlands, but this is also harmful to us as humans who need water to be alive. Without wetlands, our ability to obtain clean water is seriously threatened.

Earth Day may lie on April 22, but what it represents should be celebrated throughout the year. Wetlands, as well as many other ecosystems across America, need to be protected for the health of our environment. We need to protect these ecosystems for the sake of ourselves and for the sake of the organisms that do not have a voice.

Sources:

Elasar, Dara. “This Earth Day, Head to the River.” Washington Post. Washington Post. April 16, 2018. Web. April 19, 2018.

“The History of Earth Day.” Earth Day Network. Earth Day Network. Web. April 19, 2018.

“Why are Wetlands So Important to Preserve?” Scientific American. Scientific American. Web. April 20, 2018.

 

Arbor Day and its Roots

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 18

Over the past few weeks, the landscape seems to have finally begun to make the transition from a cold, bleak winter to a bright and colorful spring. The world is starting to become green again and for this, we must certainly thank one group of organisms especially, the trees. Earth Day is on April 22nd, but just as important is Arbor Day which lies on April 27th this year. Slightly less well known or celebrated than Earth Day, Arbor Day is dedicated to the propagation and preservation of one of our most important resources, trees.

Arbor Day’s origins begin in 1854 when a man from Detroit moved to the Nebraska Territory. His name was J. Sterling Morton, and he was very passionate about trees. As editor of a prominent Nebraskan newspaper, Morton constantly wrote articles concerned with environmental and agricultural issues. He was especially concerned with the need for trees. He and his fellow pioneers certainly missed the aesthetic beauty of the trees they remembered from the east, but they also needed them for fuel, building materials, and windbreaks to help prevent soil erosion. He strongly advocated the planting of trees throughout the Nebraska Territory.

On January 4, 1872, Morton proposed that April 10, 1872, be “Arbor Day” to honor the importance of the trees he cared about so much. The new holiday was so popular that it is estimated that over one million trees were planted in the Nebraska Territory on that day. Arbor Day became a yearly celebration, but the date has moved around several times since. Soon, other states and territories began to adopt the holiday until it became a nationwide event. Today, Arbor Day is nationally celebrated on the last Friday in April and celebrated locally whichever weekend is the best for tree planting. Similar events now take place around the world.

Sterling Morton recognized the vast importance of trees which is still relevant 146 years later. Trees are an integral part of any ecosystem. Their leaves filter pollutants, improve air quality and help manage the effects of erosion, thereby improving water quality.  Without trees, we would be much hotter and spend a lot more money on our energy bills. It has been shown that shade can reduce air conditioning costs by up to 3o% in certain situations. Shade trees significantly decrease the temperature of asphalt by up to 36 degrees Fahrenheit and the temperature of car interiors by up to 47 degrees Fahrenheit. “All up, the shade provided by trees can reduce our physiologically equivalent temperature (that is, how warm we feel our surroundings to be) by between seven and 15°C, depending on our latitude. (The Conversation -2018) Additionally, without trees, many animals including birds, insects, and small mammals would be homeless. Psychologically, some studies have even shown that areas with more trees have less crime and that children with ADHD benefit from living in areas with more trees. The benefits trees bring to our environment are many. A world without trees would be very different from the world we now know.

Arbor Day is just as important today as it was on April 10, 1872. Local environments and ecosystems everywhere can still benefit from new trees being planted. The Arbor Day Foundation is a nonprofit conservation and education organization founded in 1972 in Nebraska, by John Rosenow and it is the largest nonprofit membership organization dedicated to tree planting. The Foundation’s stated corporate mission is “to inspire people to plant, nurture, and celebrate trees.” The Foundation programs are supported by members, donors, and corporate sponsors that share the same vision of a healthier and greener world. The Arbor Day Foundation has many different resources available to help you celebrate this important holiday at arborday.org. Simple as it may sound, every tree counts.

 

Sources:

“The History of Arbor Day.” Arbor Day Foundation. www.arborday.org/celebrate/history.cfm. Accessed 16 April 2018.

“How Trees Make a Difference.” National Wildlife Federation. www.nwf.org/Trees-for-Wildlife/About/Trees-Make-a-Difference. Accessed 16 April 2018.

“Can trees really cool our cities down?” The Conversation. http://theconversation.com/can-trees-really-cool-our-cities-down-44099 Accessed 19 April 2018

Swine Production and the Environment

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 17

Pigs, hogs, or swine, no matter what you call them, for many states they are a major industry. North Carolina is one of the top swine-producing states in the country and this is clear if you have ever traveled to the Tar Heel state. Not only are barbecue restaurants plentiful, but in some places, most notably eastern North Carolina, pigs outnumber the number of humans living in the area. In Duplin County, pigs outnumber humans by a ratio of 39:1. In 2012, hog farming and pork-product, processing industries employed nearly 13,000 people in North Carolina and were (and still are) a major source of revenue with pork sales totaling $2.9 billion. However, while this is something for swine producers to be proud of, some residents of eastern North Carolina are less than pleased.

With nearly 8.9 million pigs living in North Carolina, how to handle their waste becomes an enormous issue. While this may seem like a rather uncomplicated issue, it is quite the opposite. Anyone involved in food animal production is well aware of the fact that nuisance complaints are not a minor consideration. Swine farms, as well as any other types of animal farms, are loud and foul-smelling. Smells due to the feces produced by the animals can result in highly volatile altercations with neighbors. Some neighbors of swine farms have experienced the problem of having feces sprayed into their yards. Besides the powerful stench that can deprive neighbors of their right to use and enjoy their own property, feces can find its way into waterways and contaminate the water. Another problem is the lagoons which hold the excess feces from the farms. Meant to contain the potentially harmful chemicals from swine excrement, these can also pose a major problem in the case of extreme flooding. Hurricane Floyd is one example of this where the environment took a hit from overflowing lagoons.

But there is more to the story. Swine producers are not “evil” and not trying to hurt the environment. Swine producers are residents of the state where they produce, and some have come up with some very inventive solutions to the waste problem.  Tom Butler, a swine producer in Lillington, North Carolina, has slats on the floor of his barns where the feces fall through. It then travels to a manure digester where bacteria break down the feces. The methane gas produced in this process travels to a generator building where it is burned to create electricity. The left-over waste resides in lagoons that are covered with green plastic. Not only does the operation smell much better, but enough electricity is also produced to power 90 refrigerators.

A drawback to this solution is the price. It is a lot cheaper to just not install this type of waste management. There are other farms around the country that have similar digestors to manage their waste, but the price of such a digestor discourages many more farmers from adopting them. So, while there are solutions, it has yet to be seen if the solution can be reconciled as a cost of doing business and become more widespread. Until then, the local environment is still at risk.

Sources:

Peach, Sara. “What to Do About Pig Poop? North Carolina Fights a Rising Tide.” National Geographic. National Geographic. October 30, 2014. Web. April 6, 2018.

Food and Water Watch. (2010, August). Factory Farmed Hogs in North Carolina. January 17, 2014.

After Seven-year Moratorium, Indonesia’s Rainforests Continue to Disappear

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 16

In 2011, the Indonesian government, responding to the rampant deforestation of the archipelago’s tropical rainforests and peatlands, imposed a moratorium on the logging of any new concessions in undisturbed forest areas.

Yet recent satellite imagery monitoring Indonesia’s deforestation rate shows that the country has lost over 10,000 square miles of forested lands since the moratorium went into effect, an area slightly larger than the state of Maryland. This is in addition to the nearly 96,000 square miles of rainforest lost between 1990 and 2011, an area roughly the size of the United Kingdom.

The trend has awarded Indonesia, whose rainforest is the third largest globally and home to 17 percent of the planet’s species, the notorious distinction of being the world’s No. 1 deforester, eclipsing Brazil in 2014. Largely to blame are the land-hungry palm oil and paper pulp plantations that Indonesia has come to rely in recent decades in order to grow its economy.

“In fact, there was a marked increase of deforestation after 2010,” says Erik Meijaard, a conservation scientist and founder of Borneo Futures. “You get a very rapid expansion of the oil palm industry into forest areas, so if a moratorium was called in 2011, it didn’t seem to have an impact on the oil palm sector at least,” said Meijaard.

The plantations clear the land by burning the rainforests and peat bogs, not only destroying habitat for critically endangered species like the orangutan and the Sumatran rhino but also releasing vast volumes of smoke and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. In 2015, due to dry conditions exacerbated by an El Niño event, the largest wildfire in Indonesian history, attributed to industrial burns, released 1,750 million metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, almost twice the annual emissions of Germany.

Even though emissions from forest and land disturbance only account for a quarter of total global emissions, Indonesia leads the world in forest-related emissions, releasing 240 to 447 million tons of CO2 annually from these activities.

Despite these trends, Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry states that the deforestation rate has been decreasing since 2015. “There has been a decline in deforestation in production forests, from 63% [of total deforestation] in 2014 to 44% in 2017,” said Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar.

Critically, this is because the Indonesian government views production forests, man-made industrial forests planted for timber harvesting, as reforestation. This is at odds with many research institutes and conservation think tanks, such as the World Resource Institute, that sees production forests as a form of deforestation because they are a human replacement of the natural forest cover.

The disagreement over definitions could impede Indonesia’s access to international funding for its reforestation efforts, such as the $1 billion Norway has pledged as a part of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) program, and the $100 billion the signers of the Paris Accords pledged to donate to the Green Climate Fund to assist developing counties in fighting climate change.

Yet at the moment, Indonesia has only received 12% of Norway’s promised contribution, and only $10 billion has thus far been given to the Green Climate Fund. This is compared to the nearly $30 billion Indonesia earns annually from paper pulp, palm oil, and coal industries, the very enterprises that are most destructive to the forests.

“The amount of money that’s on the table for conserving forests is not nearly enough to compete with the amount of money that is changing hands every day for clearing forests for palm oil and paper pulp,” says Jonah Busch, an environmental economist and fellow at the Center for Global Development.

Despite the problems with the moratorium and the muddled definition of “deforestation”, Busch thinks that, at least in the short term, something is better than nothing. “The very important steps in the right direction that Indonesia has taken are unfairly characterized as failures because the whole big ship has not turned around yet. If there hadn’t been a moratorium, deforestation might have been higher.”

Sources

  1. Coca, Nithin. “Despite Government Pledges, Ravaging of Indonesia’s Forests Continues”. Yale Environment 360. Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, 22 March 2018. Web. 30 March 2018.
  2. Harball, Elizabeth. “Deforestation in Indonesia is Double the Government’s Rate.” E&E News Sustainability. Scientific American, 30 June 2014. Web. 30 March 2018.
  3. Jong, Hans Nicholas. “Is a plantation a forest? Indonesia says yes, as it touts a drop in deforestation.” Mongabay. Mongabay, 31 January 2018. Web. 1 April 2018.

The Importance of Vultures

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 15

Vultures, many things may come to mind upon hearing this word. You may think of someone particularly unpleasant, someone who takes but never gives. Perhaps an image of a particularly ugly looking bird sitting on the side of the road, towering over roadkill comes to mind. Whatever the image, when you hear the term “vultures,” you might want to hold it in higher regard than you used to.

What is a vulture? Most people recognize this bird from while driving, seeing them on roadsides feasting on the carcasses of dead animals, but there is much more to a vulture. “Vulture” is actually a pretty general term, referring to a great many species of birds of prey that eat decomposing animals. Turkey vultures, black vultures, and California condors are just a few species of vultures that may be seen throughout the United States. Additionally, vultures have somewhat of a bad reputation. Not only do they eat dead, rotting animals, but they also have some pretty strange personal habits you may not be aware of. One of these habits is to vomit when feeling threatened and another is to urinate on themselves in order to clean themselves. Due to this bad reputation, vultures tend to be coined “vermin” or “pests.” Just type the word “vulture” into Google, and numerous sites will pop up concerned with how to get rid of vultures. Now, vultures may nest in inconvenient areas and cause damage, but the small amount of harm they may cause is more than offset by the greater good they bring to local environments.Vultures recycle many important nutrients into the environment. An ecosystem without vultures would be like a city without waste removal services. (Picture this in your mind.) Vultures do their work for the ecosystem very efficiently. They consume the meat of dead animals very quickly, which reduces the risk of large colonies of insects gathering around dead bodies. Give them a niche and they’ll take a mile! In doing so, vultures limit the risk of disease in ecosystems by keeping insect populations in check. Not only is this beneficial to us as humans, but also to the agricultural industry, since vultures also help prevent livestock from getting sick.

Although, this is not how everyone sees vultures. In Kenya, vultures are threatened due to livestock farmers poisoning the dead carcasses of the animals that predators have killed. When vultures feast on these carcasses, they also consume the poison, and this has led to the elimination of the Cinereous vulture in Africa, as well as the endangerment of more than seven other species of native African vultures. As noted above, the lack of carrion elimination has caused problems for ecosystems all over Africa. Darcy Ogada, assistant director of Africa programs at the Peregrine Fund, says African vultures “are the most threatened avian functional group in the world.” Species such as Egyptian vultures are nearly extinct.

When most people think of some of the important, endangered animals struggling to survive, they don’t often think of vultures. But vultures play a crucial role in our world and, in many places, are in danger of being eliminated. It is more important than ever to recognize not only how fascinating these birds are, from their strange behaviors to their monogamous mating patterns, but also how important they are to our world. Atticus Finch argued that it was a sin to kill a mockingbird, but perhaps it is an even greater sin to kill a vulture.

Sources:

Royte, Elizabeth. “Vultures are Revolting. Here’s Why We Need to Save Them.” National Geographic. National Geographic. January 2016. Web. March 27, 2018.

 

 

Border Wall Threatens Desert Wildlife

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18, Issue 14

Despite its reputation as a barren wasteland, the desert regions of the American southwest are some of the most biologically rich areas in all of North America. Within 100 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, there are 25 million acres of protected public lands, including six national parks, six wildlife refuges and a number of wilderness areas.

Of this area, the Coronado National Forest, part of the ecologically rich Sky Island mountain range that extends from Sonora, Mexico, into southern Arizona and New Mexico, contains more threatened and endangered species than any other national forest in the country. Many of these threatened species are charismatic megafaunas, such as the Mexican gray wolf, ocelot, jaguarundi, and a lone jaguar that has reentered the region from Mexico after the species was driven to extinction in the U.S. during the 20th century.

Yet these species and many others are increasingly threatened by the expanding wall the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is building on the border to deter unauthorized migration from Mexico. A 2011 study by Penn State biologist Jesse Lasky found that, of 369 animal species documented within 30 miles of the border, 50 were considered endangered.

The 654 miles of wall that already exist along the 2,000-mile long border has prevented at least 45 of those species from migrating, potentially reducing their gene pool and cutting them off from water sources and hunting grounds. “A lot of species do best in Northern Mexico, but with changes in precipitation patterns, they would need to disperse across the border,” says Lasky. “This is something we should be thinking about a lot more – how fast organisms are responding to climate change.”

Additionally, new roads created by the Border Patrol into more remote areas of Arizona’s southern desert have also disrupted desert habitat and destroyed many miles of cryptobiotic soil, clumps of fungus and algae that retain moisture and assist in plant growth that take many years to form.

In autumn of 2017, President Trump requested $1.6 billion for the construction of 74 miles of additional wall that would bisect the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge in Texas as well as reinforce an existing wall on the San Diego-Tijuana border in California. Environmentalists worry that apart from bisecting habitat and preventing animal migration, the wall could also exacerbate the risk of flooding to both ecosystems and human settlements.

In Nogales and the adjacent Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona, debris has been known to pile up behind the border fence, damming water behind it until it bursts through in a flash flood event that drowns out habitat and occasionally kills people. “Flood water always has debris in it,” says Dan Millis of the Sierra Club Borderlands project. “That’s how you get these damming events that blew out chunks of the wall. Damming also causes erosion – it creates the situation we saw in Arizona where debris backs up the water and then the sediment building upstream created a waterfall that causes more erosion. This is liable to happen in Texas.”

Due to a law passed in 2005 called the Real ID Act, the DHS has the right to waive most environmental regulations in the name of national security, depriving environmental advocacy groups of the power to litigate against the federal government. Yet as the Trump administration makes plans to build 700 to 900 additional miles of concrete wall along the border to the tune of at least $12 billion, environmentalists, scientists, and regional stakeholders are coming up with alternative solutions that promote border security while also enhancing the health of borderland ecosystems.

One such proposal is to create a large international nature reserve on the Rio Grande that is co-owned and operated by the U.S. and Mexican governments. The Rio Grande’s volume is currently on the decline due to climate change as well as diversions by both countries for municipal, agricultural and industrial uses. It also suffers from excessive pollution from raw sewage and fertilizer runoff, possibly contributing to the loss of half a dozen of its native fish species. By restoring the riparian areas on both sides through the planting of trees, reducing water diversions and cleaning up pollution, the river’s water volume and velocity will likely increase, deterring people from crossing while also providing more robust habitat for wildlife.

Yet another option is to rely more heavily on advanced surveillance technology to monitor the border and reduce the environmental damages associated with a physical wall and terrestrial Border Patrol vehicles. The Department of Homeland Security already employs predator drone aircraft, high-elevation blimps, and helicopters equipped with video cameras and infrared sensors used in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to monitor border activity. “Technology is definitely first,” said David Aguilar, principal of the Washington D.C.-based Global Security and innovative Strategies consulting firm. “These are things that can be used on any part of the border. There are places where you just can’t put a wall.”

Despite insistence from some that security concerns trump environmental ones, this is a false choice. While no solution is 100% effective, it is possible to secure our border without sacrificing the species and ecosystems that make the borderlands beautiful and worth protecting.

Sources:

  1. Barclay, Eliza and Sarah Frostenson. “The ecological disaster that is Trump’s border wall: a visual guide.” Vox. Vox, 29 October 2017. Web. 9 February 2018.
  2. Goldfarb, Ben. “Where wildlife is up against the wall.” High Country News. High Country News, 10 February 2017. Web. 9 February 2018.
  3. Lasky, Jesse R. et. al. “Conservation biogeography of the US-Mexico border: a transcontinental risk assessment of barriers to animal dispersal.” Wiley Online Library. Diversity and Distribution: A Journal of Conservation Biogeography, 3 May 2011. Web. 9 February 2018.
  4. Montemayor, Gabriel Diaz. “There’s a better alternative to building a border wall: restoring the Rio Grande.” Quartz. Quartz Media LLC, 28 August 2017. Web. 19 February 2018.
  5. Nixon, Ron. “On the Mexican Border, a Case for Technology Over Concrete.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 20 June 2017. Web. 19 February 2018.
  6. Ray Ring. “Border out of control.” High Country News. High Country News, 16 June 2014. Web. 9 February 2018.

Penguins: Windows to the Past

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 13

Penguins have captured the hearts of many of us, long before March of the Penguins debuted in movie theaters. They are one of the most unique birds on our planet, from their habit of mating for life to their ability to “fly” not in the air, but through the water. For many years, scientists have used penguin populations to study the effects of a changing climate on the home of the penguins, the Antarctic. Recently though, large amounts of valuable new data have been collected and not just from penguin population numbers.  The data demonstrates not only the effects of a changing climate but many other environmental changes, created by humans, that need to be prevented in order to preserve the Antarctic.

At the American Geophysical Union’s 2018 Ocean Sciences Meeting held on February 12, 2018, researchers discussed the growing importance of penguins in the fight to preserve the Antarctic. As the “heart of the Antarctic food web,” researchers have found that penguins’ feathers and eggshells tell the story of the changing Antarctic environment. Penguin tissue cells capture important details concerning the food they take in. These particular tissues contain different amounts of certain chemicals that are specifically found in the fish and other sea life the penguins consume. For instance, krill may be high in the nitrogen-14 isotope and a fish may be high in nitrogen-15. If a penguin consumes a lot of krill, its eggshells and feathers will contain more nitrogen-14 than nitrogen-15.

Over-fishing has been a persistent problem in the Southern Ocean for many years. By observing the food penguins ingest, scientists can discover just how much over-fishing has affected the Antarctic environment, especially in regards to the declining krill population.

Kelton McMahon, an oceanic ecogeochemist at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston,  is using this information to track the changes in the environment. McMahon and his team compare penguins from the wild to captive penguins at the Omaha Henry Doorly Zoo in Nebraska to observe how much wild penguins’ diets have changed. They use different amino acids, as well as the different types of nitrogen isotopes, to study dietary changes. From this information, it has been determined that penguins’ diets consisted primarily of fish approximately 80 years ago, then krill, and now fish once again with the declining krill population. This information is extremely valuable in determining food web changes that may have resulted from over-fishing or climate change. Once scientists have determined what these changes are, they can take the best action needed in order to fix potentially negative effects.

Recently, scientists have found yet another characteristic that makes penguins even more fascinating. From eggshells preserved by vast sheets of ice and collected by researchers, scientists believe that they can determine what the Antarctic food web looked like as long as 10,000 years ago. Just as geologists use radioactive decay of certain isotopes to date the earth, scientists can now use the fossil remains of penguins to see into the past, and give us a new image of a time long ago, another chapter in the history of the home we call Earth.

 

Sources:

Gramling, Carolyn. “Look to Penguins to Track Antarctic Changes.” Science News. Science News. February 14, 2018. Web. March 20, 2018.

The Mysterious Case of Shelly Island

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 12

As spring draws nearer, the weather is supposed to gradually become warmer and warmer, until walking outside without a jacket is no longer outrageous. However, if you happen to live in North Carolina, the weather cannot seem to decide whether it wants to welcome spring or desperately hold on to winter. Today, snow falls, but tomorrow could bring temperatures in the high 70s or 80s. However, this is not the only phenomenon that North Carolina cannot seem to make up its mind about. Enter Shelly Island.

Shelly Island appeared overnight in July 2017. It is located in the famous Outer Banks off the coast of Cape Point, which is part of Cape Hatteras National Seashore. Scientists are not completely sure how the island originally formed, but they think it has something to do with the weather conditions of July 2017. Last summer, the winds, and currents appeared to be just right to bring sands from the northern barrier islands to the southern tip of Cape Point to form Shelly Island. This island became a new attraction for tourists interested in snorkeling and kayaking, and it grew to be about 27 acres in area. However, do not start planning your trip to Shelly Island for the summer of 2018. New photos from NASA show that Shelly Island disappeared just as quickly as it came. Moreover, the island is now beneath the waves once again.

How did this happen? The blame can be thrust upon the many hurricanes of the fall of 2017: Hurricanes Irma, Jose, and Maria. The erosion created by these storms first split the island in two and have now completely erased what was once Shelly Island. By October 2017, Shelly Island was “ninety percent gone,” according to Virginia businessman Ken Barlow who was one of many seeking ownership of the new island. Only a small crescent, about 100 acres in area, was left after the fall, and by February 2018 the island was no more.

Could Shelly Island return? Possibly. Again, scientists are not positive how Shelly Island came to be in the first place. However, people such as Barlow suspect the formation of the island had to do with nearby dredging operations, which are resuming. So hold on to your kayaks and your snorkeling equipment: Shelly Island could come back. This would be good news for local businesspeople interested in buying parts of the island and for the local economy that could benefit from growing interest from tourists. Shelly Island may be a mystery, but it is a mystery that comes with positive outcomes.

Sources:

Ghose, Tia. “Mysterious Sandbar Island that Formed Last Summer is Gone Once Again.” Live Science. Live Science. March 8, 2018. Web. March 12, 2018.

Price, Mark. “The strange new NC island mystifies the world yet again.” Charlotte Observer. Charlotte Observer. October 1, 2017. Web. March 12, 2018.

King Penguins Face Habitat Loss in Warming Southern Ocean

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18, Issue 11

The king penguins of the Antarctic sea may be the next charismatic species faced with the daunting challenge of moving to escape the impacts of climate change. A study recently published in the journal Nature Climate Change suggests that, unless warming greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are reduced, up to 70% of the king penguin population will have to move or face starvation by the end of the century.

Due to warming ocean temperatures, the Antarctic polar front, a nutrient-rich band of water in the Southern Ocean from whence king penguins derive 80% of their diet, is migrating closer to Antarctica and farther away from the southern archipelagos where the penguins roost. While the penguins can swim up to 400 miles round trip from the southern islands to the polar front, if the band moves much farther south, it will be out of reach for most of the penguin colonies.

Additionally, the lack of sea ice, which allows penguins to rest while hunting in the open ocean, may further threaten the species capacity to feed itself as warming continues. “They will need to either move somewhere else or they will just disappear,” said Dr. Emiliano Trucchi, an evolutionary biologist at Italy’s University of Ferrara and one of the study’s senior authors. “The largest colonies are on islands that will be too far from the source of food.”

The largest colonies of king penguins, home to a full half of the species population, are located on Prince Edwards and the Crozet Islands, south of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. According to the researchers’ “business as usual” climate change model, the populations on these islands would likely lose their habitat entirely by the end of the century. Another 21% that live on the Kerguelen Islands in the Indian Ocean and the Falkland Islands off the South American coast will likely find themselves far enough away from their food source that they may be incentivized to relocate to islands farther south.

Yet, relocation may not be as simple as moving farther south to islands closer to the new Antarctic polar front. Unlike the larger emperor penguins, king penguins require ice-free islands with sandy beaches, leaving the species with few additional islands closer to Antarctica to move to as many are rocky, covered in ice, or have other species of penguins already living there. “We are talking about one million individuals that need to find a new place to live,” says Trucchi, noting that “the endpoint of this massive relocation is hard to predict.”

Despite the grim finding, the researchers suggested that some islands, such as Bouvet Island in the Southern Ocean, may be able to be colonized by king penguins as temperatures warm if humans take steps to protect them. “If there are some islands that are likely to be relatively safe, like those in the south, then we know about that now, and we can potentially protect those from other threats like fishing and tourism – to give animals the best chance of survival,” says Dr. Jane Younger, evolutionary ecologist at Loyola University Chicago.

The researchers ultimately argue that mitigating climate change is the best chance we have at saving king penguin habitat; using a model in which greenhouse gases were reduced enough to prevent global temperature from rising more than 2-degrees Celsius, they found that the majority of the population would not need to migrate.

“These are kind of poster children for what’s going to happen with climate change,” said Dr. Ceriden Fraser, a marine molecular ecologist at the Australian National University in Canberra. “People wouldn’t care as much if it were a slug or a slime mold, but the same sorts of impacts will happen to many different species. In a way, it’s good for us to see these impacts happening to animals we love, because it might spur a little bit of action.”

Sources:

  1. Harvey, Chelsea. “Antarctica’s Iconic King Penguins May Have to Move South: But suitable islands for breeding may be harder to find.” Scientific American. E&E News, 27 February 2018. Web. 4 March 2018.
  2. Kennedy, Merrit. “Scientists Predict King Penguins Face Major Threats Due to Climate Change.” North Carolina Public Radio. National Public Radio, Inc., 26 February 2018. Web. 5 March 2018.
  3. Winetraub, Karen. “King Penguins Are Endangered by Warmer Seas.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 26 February 2018. Web. 5 March 2018.