Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by the University of Kent in the UK.

Reference:
Gary D. Paoli, Philip L. Wells, Erik Meijaard, Mathew J. Struebig, Andrew J.
Marshall, Krystof Obidzinski, Aseng Tan, Andjar Rafiastanto, Betsy Yaap, J.W.
Ferry Slik, Alexandra Morel, Balu Perumal, Niels Wielaard, Simon Husson, Laura
D’Arcy. Biodiversity Conservation in the REDD. Carbon Balance and Management,
2010; 5 (1): 7 DOI: 10.1186/1750-0680-5-7

Despite significant growth in food production over the past 50 years, it has been estimated the world needs to produce 70-100% more food to meet expected demand without significant increases in prices. To help formulate a future policy on this issue, a multi-disciplinary team of 55 agricultural and food experts from the world’s major agricultural organisations, professional scientific societies and academic institutions was appointed to identify the top 100 questions for global agriculture and food. They were drawn from 23 countries and work in universities, UN agencies, CG research institutes, NGOs, private companies, foundations and regional research secretariats.

Should we just maximise productivity?

The researchers say that a solution to this complex issue is not simply about maximising productivity. With additional challenges from climate change, water stresses, energy insecurity and dietary shifts, global agricultural and food systems will have to change substantially to meet the challenge of feeding the world. A new paper published in the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability identifies the top 100 questions for the future of global agriculture.

An initial list of 618 key questions was, over the course of a year, whittled down by the team to the top 100 questions which the team aimed to answer.

If addressed and answered, it is anticipated these questions will have a significant impact on global agricultural practices worldwide. They offer policy and funding organisations an agenda for change. The questions are wide-ranging, are designed to be answerable and capable of realistic research design, and cover 13 themes identified as priority to global agriculture. Lead author of the team was Professor Jules Pretty, of the University of Essex in the UK. He said that: “The challenges facing world agriculture are unprecedented and are likely to magnify with pressures on resources and increasing consumption. What is unique here is that experts from many countries, institutions and disciplines have agreed on the top 100 questions that need answering if agriculture is to succeed this century. These questions now form the potential for driving research systems, private sector investments, NGO priorities, and UN projects and programmes.”

Professor Sir John Beddington, Government Chief Scientific Advisor and Head of the UK Government’s Foresight programme, said, “This paper and its lead author Jules Pretty have provided an important contribution to the Foresight project on Global Food and Farming Futures. This study poses the central question, how can a future global population of nine billion people be fed sustainably, healthily and equitably.
The project will publish its findings in January 2011 and EcoNewsOnline will relay this information to readers
The article is written using material provided by University of Essex (UK).

Reference:
The top 100 questions of importance to the future of global agriculture. International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability, 2010; 8 (4): 219 DOI: 10.3763/ijas.2010.0534

The study, funded by a European Young Investigator’s Award, the Hewlett Foundation, and the US National Science Foundation was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), and was conducted by researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

The study conclusions were that by the middle of the century it is estimated that the global population could rise by more than three billion people, with most of that increase occurring in urban areas. The study showed that a slowing of that population growth could contribute to significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions. By 2050, the researchers found that if population followed one of the slower growth paths foreseen as plausible by demographers at the United Nations, it could provide 16 to 29 percent of the emission reductions thought necessary to keep global temperatures from causing serious impacts. The effect of slower population growth on greenhouse gas emissions would be even larger by the end of the century. The team believe that if global population growth slows down, it is not going to solve the climate problem, but it can make a contribution, especially in the long term. They further show that slower population growth will have different influences, depending on where it occurs. For example, a slowing of population growth in developing countries today will have a large impact on future global population size. However, slower population growth in developed countries will matter to emissions too because of higher per capita energy use.

Scientists have long known that changes in population will have some effect on greenhouse gas emissions, but there has been debate on how large that effect might be.

Urbanization and aging

The researchers sought to quantify how demographic changes influence emissions over time, and in which regions of the world. They also went beyond changes in population size to examine the links between aging, urbanization, and emissions. The team found that growth in urban populations could lead to as much as a 25 percent rise in projected carbon dioxide emissions in some developing countries. The increased economic growth associated with city dwellers was directly correlated with increased emissions, largely due to the higher productivity and consumption preferences of an urban labour force. In contrast, aging can reduce emission levels by up to 20 percent in some industrialized countries. This is because older populations are associated with lower labour force participation, and the resulting lower productivity leads to lower economic growth.

They say that demography will matter to greenhouse gas emissions over the next 40 years and that urbanization will be particularly important in many developing countries, especially China and India, and aging will be important in industrialized countries.”

The researchers worked with projections showing that population aging will occur in all regions of the world, a result of people living longer and declines in fertility.
Future scenarios of human behaviour

The authors developed a set of economic growth, energy use, and emissions scenarios, using a new computer model (the Population-Environment-Technology model, or PET). To capture the effects of future demographic change they distinguished between household types, looking at age, size, and urban vs. rural location.

In addition, they drew on data from national surveys covering 34 countries and representative of 61 percent of the global population to estimate key economic characteristics of household types over time, including labour supply and demand for consumer goods.
Households can affect emissions either directly, through their consumption patterns, or indirectly, through their effects on economic growth..

The authors also suggest that developers of future emissions scenarios give greater consideration to the implications of urbanization and aging, particularly in the U.S., European Union, China, and India. The researchers caution that their findings do not imply that policies affecting aging or urbanization should be implemented as a response to climate change, but rather that better understanding of these trends would help anticipate future changes.

The article is written from materials provided by International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).

Reference:
Brian C. O’Neill, Michael Dalton, Regina Fuchs, Leiwen Jiang, Shonali
Pachauri, and Katarina Zigova. Global demographic trends and future carbon
emissions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, October 11, 2010

Researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research have discovered that conscious choice of food can substantially mitigate climate change and that by reducing the consumption of meat and dairy products and improving agricultural practices we could decrease global greenhouse gas emissions substantially. By 2055 the emissions of methane and nitrous oxide from agriculture could be cut by more than eighty percent which is a significant decrease. The results of the modelling study have recently been published in the journal Global Environmental Change and the scientists say that meat and milk really matter.

Reduced consumption of these commodities could decrease the future emissions of nitrous oxide and methane from agriculture to levels below those of 1995. In the past, agricultural emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly methane and nitrous oxide, have increased steadily. In 2005 they accounted for 14 percent of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Besides the conscious choice of food on the consumers’ side there are technical mitigation options on the producers’ side to reduce emissions significantly.
The researchers used a global land use model to assess the impact of future changes in food consumption and diet shifts, but also of technological mitigation options on agricultural greenhouse gas emissions up to 2055. The global model combines information on population, income, food demand, and production costs with spatially explicit environmental data on potential crop yields.
The calculations show that global agricultural non-carbon dioxide (non-CO2) emissions increase significantly until 2055 if food energy consumption and diet preferences remain constant at the level of 1995. Taking into account changing dietary preferences towards higher value foods, like meat and milk, associated with higher income, emissions will rise even more. In contrast, reducing the demand for livestock products by 25 percent each decade from 2015 to 2055, leads to lower non-CO2 emissions even compared to 1995.
There are also technological mitigation options to decrease emissions significantly but these technological mitigation options are not as effective as changes in food consumption.
The highest reduction potential could be achieved by a combination of both approaches, the researchers report. Compared to a scenario that takes population growth and an increase in the demand for livestock products into account, emissions of methane and nitrous oxide could be cut by 84 percent in 2055.
However, livestock products are very valuable for nutrition as they contributed globally an average of one third of protein to dietary intakes in 2003. For many poor and undernourished people in the developing world who frequently suffer from protein deficiencies livestock products are important parts of food consumption. In contrast, less meat-oriented diets in the developed regions would have positive health effects, the authors note. Agricultural, non-carbon dioxide non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions consist mainly of methane and nitrous oxide. Nitrous oxide is about 300 and methane about 20 times more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Agricultural emissions originate from the use of synthetic fertilizers on croplands and from flooded rice fields. Because animal products require large amounts of fodder crops, livestock production is connected to higher emissions from fertilizer application. Additional livestock emissions occur due to manure excretion, management and application and methane producing microbes in ruminants’ digestive systems.

This article is adapted from a report provided by Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).
Reference:
Alexander Popp, Hermann Lotze-Campen, Benjamin Bodirsky. Food consumption, diet shifts and associated non-CO2 greenhouse gases from agricultural production. Global Environmental Change, 2010; 20 (3): 451 DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2010.02.001
APA
MLA Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) (2010, June 29). Conscious choice of food can substantially mitigate climate change, research finds.

According to experts at the international aerospace trade show in Berlin, earlier this year, air travel of the future is expected to be quieter, cleaner and more environmentally
friendly. To achieve this goal, new structural concepts and aerodynamic profiles have to be engineered, along with better drive concepts as well as adapted logistical designs, and then put to use. In the European Union project ‘Clean Sky’, researchers are determined to make their contribution to solving this task.

Flying can become considerably more environmentally friendly—the aviation experts from the “Advisory Council for Aeronautics Research in Europe” ACARE are certain of this. In the guidelines that they compiled for the European aviation industry, the experts are calling for a 50 percent reduction in carbon dioxide and noise emissions by 2020; nitrogen oxide output should be reduced by 80 percent.
The goals are ambitious, researchers say but are achievable. Since 2008, the head of the Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability LBF in Darmstadt, Germany, has been a member of the Governing Board, the decision-making body of the EU’s “Clean Sky” project, one of the most expansive and complex research projects in Europe, with a subsidy volume of 1.6 billion euro. The goal of the 86 participating industry and research partners from 16 nations is not only to develop unique technologies for specific applications, but also to evaluate and advance the entire aeronautics system.
In its first stages a task force set the plot for the technology fields for the airplane encompassing engines, wings and fuselage structures as well as systems and landing gear, etc. Each of these components can be put into an improved ecological balance of the system as a whole. An optimized airflow profile on the wings cuts noise and saves energy; improved engine technology minimizes kerosene consumption; materials with long lifespans save on raw materials; the application of recyclable materials prevents the accumulation of waste.

The breadth of detail is immense: Materials have to be tested, material flows simulated, calculation methods refined, experiments conducted and analyzed. For the first time, the researchers also intend to take into account the lifecycle of materials within airline construction so that the aircraft components can be disposed of at the end of their economic lives in an environmentally sound manner. Therefore, researchers are investigating the best way of joining the most important lightweight construction materials in use today, and how new paint systems can reduce frictional resistance.
Safety is of course a very important feature. So testing should indicate if a newly developed material diminishes the air quality in the passenger cabin. In the Flight Test Facility, researchers can simulate the pressure, temperature and moisture conditions during a flight.

This photo was taken by Robert J. Boser http://www.airlinesafety.com/editorials/AboutTheEditor.htm.
Article adapted from a report provided by Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.

Urban Metabolism
It was reported that the concept of ‘urban metabolism’ has existed for decades and views large cities as living entities that consume energy, food, water, and other raw materials, and release wastes. These releases include carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas; air pollutants, sewage and other water pollutants; and even excess heat that collects in vast expanses of concrete pavement and stone buildings. Humans directly produce a significant share of this waste, but emissions from industrial, power generation and transportation systems emit the largest quantities of greenhouse gases and other air pollutants. Other urban metabolisers include sewage systems, landfills, domestic pets and pests like rats, which in some cities outnumber people.
During the last five years, this body of knowledge has drawn into sharper focus the hazards of poor air quality in mega cities, not just on the large local populations but also on population centres, agricultural activities and natural ecosystems located downwind from these sprawling areas. Researchers now acknowledge that carbon dioxide and other pollutants in mega cities make them immense drivers of climate change. They impact climate on both a regional and global level because these long-lived greenhouse gases are dispersed around the world.” More than half the world’s population today lives in cities, and the world’s largest urban areas are growing rapidly. The number of mega cities — metropolitan areas with populations exceeding 10 million — has grown from just three in 1975 to about 20 today.

The Culprits
The most highly polluted mega cities are in developing countries. They include Dhaka, Bangladesh; Cairo, Egypt; and Karachi, Pakistan. Some mega cities in less developed regions have recently mounted air quality management campaigns that have resulted in lower levels of pollution; they include Mexico City, Mexico; Beijing, China; Sao Paulo, Brazil; and Buenos Aires, Argentina. Even the cleanest mega cities like Tokyo/Osaka in Japan and New York City and Los Angeles in the United States — all in the developed world — still have serious problems.
The hot weather and frequent atmospheric inversions in southern California, for instance, foster Los Angeles’ legendary smog problem. Mexico City’s high altitude/low latitude location produces high levels of solar ultraviolet radiation that drive photochemical smog production, and the even higher surrounding mountains trap the resulting pollutants in and over the city on most days.
That causes a very serious situation for residents of Mexico City. There are very unhealthy levels of ozone and fine particle pollutants that produce large numbers of premature deaths each year. Studies show that for each increase of 10 micrograms per cubic metre of these particles, you get roughly a 10 percent increase in premature deaths, producing a decrease in average life expectancy of about 0.8 years. Hospital visits, including bronchitis and asthma cases, also rise.

Controlling urban growth key to improving global air quality
Scientists believe that controlling urban growth in the developing world is key to improving the world’s air quality. Urban pollutant levels in poor countries will remain high, with increased emissions expected as the city populations and economic activities increase. Until mega cities are rich enough to devote significant funds to reduce their emissions, two factors will invariably increase the stresses on their environment — increasing vehicular traffic and industrial growth.

California and Mexico reversing the trend
An example of attempts at reversing this trend can be seen in Southern California, which has taken successful action to modify its urban metabolism, pioneering efforts to reduce motor vehicle emissions. Mexico City — unlike most mega cities in less-developed countries — has also taken successful steps to partially address poor air quality. In the past two decades, the Mexican Government has introduced policies to improve air quality, including requiring pollution control devices like catalytic converters on newer vehicles, reducing sulphur levels in petrol and diesel fuel and relocating some large industrial emitters outside the Valley of Mexico. However, in other parts of the world for example the Mega cities in Asia and Africa urgently need to modify their urban metabolism in similar ways with a few fundamental changes such as getting rid of lead in their gasoline. In the developed world, we can institute emissions controls on diesel vehicles, which create hazardous fine particles, and we can also reduce pollution by using more rail-based mass transport or setting up specialized bus routes.”
The urban metabolism model can reveal how developed-world mega cities, such as Tokyo, New York and Los Angeles, have improved their air quality despite a rise in population. The study also assesses how developing-world mega cities are seriously grappling with the problem.

Adapted from materials provided by American Chemical Society.
American Chemical Society (2009, August 18). How Cities Mimic Life:
Mega cities Breathe, Consume Energy, Excrete Wastes And Pollute.

Conclusions of great interest to the agricultural and animal husbandry sector were drawn from the studies. Neiker-Tecnalia was able to show that, on extensive mountain pastures, lime sand and wood ash are a viable alternative to quicklime as a liming material. In moderate doses, both products slightly correct the acidity of soils and, at the same time, produce a balanced increase in their short-term biological activity, as well as an increase in the productivity and the nutritive value of the pasture. Also, no significant changes were observed in the floral composition of the pastures one year after the application of these liming materials. When attention was turned to intensive crop rotation in more lowland pastures, it was observed that the use of cattle slurry as organic fertiliser, the use of the non-tillage (direct sowing) technique and the incorporation of legumes as winter crops enable the reduction of production costs, compared to mineral fertiliser, conventional tillage and a single grass crop and as a consequence, the economic yield of the farms is enhanced. Moreover, the application of fresh cattle slurry, especially in combination with non tillage, favours the activity and the functional diversity of edaphic microbial communities, as well as the abundance of earthworms.
Nevertheless, non tillage may give rise to the problem of compacting in fine-textured soils, from the second year of intensive rotation. Neiker-Tecnalia also carried out trials with microcosm-scale fodder species and which showed that the application of the glyphosate herbicide in doses normally employed in agriculture may affect the non-targeted edaphic organisms and, in particular, the functional diversity of rhizospheric microbial communities.
From this research, it was concluded that the biomass, the mineralizable nitrogen, the activity and functional diversity of the edaphic microbial communities, as well as the abundance of earthworms, have a fast and high sensitivity response to the changes that agricultural practices produce in the soil. This is why they are such effective tools when evaluating alternative agricultural practices when in transition to an agriculture that better respects the environment and that combines crop productivity with the protection of soil health and quality in the long-term.

Adapted from materials provided by Basque Research.

MLA Basque Research (2009, July 24). Alternative Agricultural Practices Combine
Productivity And Soil Health.

Editor’s Opinion
My opinion is that nutritional value for humans is only a very small part of the organic benefits for human kind and if as the report suggests, organically produce food is not nutritionally better, then it is not a major upset for organic producers. Organic farming methods are better for biodiversity, soil health, wild life including insects and better for you because there is no danger of contaminants entering the food chain in the form of insecticides and herbicides. In other words, if you eat an organic apple, then you are eating only an apple. if you eat a non organic apple with the same nutritional value, you don’t know exactly what you are eating. Unfortunately, reports such as this – which are extremely accurate as far as they go, are taken up by the press in headlines which suggest to the lay reader that we might as well not bother producing organic food. All the other major benefits for plane/human health remain unmentioned. Our next post (Alternative Agricultural Practices Combine Productivity And Soil Health) looks at just one aspect of this. Ed.

More on the report:
Organic food consumers appear willing to pay higher prices for organic foods based on their perceived health and nutrition benefits, and the global organic food market was estimated in 2007 to be worth £29 billion (£2 billion in the UK alone). Some previous reviews have concluded that organically produced food has a superior nutrient composition to conventional food, but there has to-date been no systematic review of the available published literature. Researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine have now completed the most extensive systematic review of the available published literature on nutrient content of organic food ever conducted. The review focussed on nutritional content and did not include a review of the content of contaminants or chemical residues in foods from different agricultural production regimens.
Over 50,000 papers were searched, and a total of 162 relevant articles were identified that were published over a fifty-year period up to 29 February 2008 and compared the nutrient content of organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs. To ensure methodological rigour the quality of each article was assessed. To be graded as satisfactory quality, the studies had to provide information on the organic certification scheme from which the foodstuffs were derived, the cultivar of crop or breed of livestock analysed, the nutrient or other nutritionally relevant substance assessed, the laboratory analytical methods used, and the methods used for statistical analysis. 55 of the identified papers were of satisfactory quality, and analysis was conducted comparing the content in organically and conventionally produced foods of the 13 most commonly reported nutrient categories.
The researchers found organically and conventionally produced foods to be comparable in their nutrient content. For 10 out of the 13 nutrient categories analysed, there were no significant differences between production methods in nutrient content. Differences that were detected were most likely to be due to differences in fertilizer use (nitrogen, phosphorus), and ripeness at harvest (acidity), and it is unlikely that consuming these nutrients at the levels reported in organic foods would provide any health benefit. Alan Dangour, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine’s Nutrition and Public Health Intervention Research Unit, and one of the report’s authors, comments: ‘A small number of differences in nutrient content were found to exist between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs, but these are unlikely to be of any public health relevance. Our review indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority. Research in this area would benefit from greater scientific rigour and a better understanding of the various factors that determine the nutrient content of foodstuffs’.

*Notes: While organic food accounts for 1–2% of total food sales worldwide, the organic food market is growing rapidly, far ahead of the rest of the food industry, in both developed and developing nations.
• World organic food sales jumped from US $23 billion in 2002] to $40 billion in 2006
• The world organic market has been growing by 20% a year since the early 1990s, with future growth estimates ranging from 10%-50% annually depending on the country.
In the European Union 3.9% of the total utilized agricultural area is used for organic production. The countries with the highest proportion of organic land are Austria (11%) and Italy (8.4), followed by Czech Republic and Greece (both 7.2%). The lowest figures are shown for Malta (0.1%), Poland (0.6%) and Ireland (0.8%)
United States: Organic food is the fastest growing sector of the American.
Organic food sales have grown by 17 to 20 percent a year for the past few years while sales of conventional food have grown at only about 2 to 3 percent a year.
* Notes from Wikepedia

Recently, scientists have warned that Restoration-based Environmental Markets may not improve ecosystem health. While policymakers across of the globe are relying on environmental restoration projects to fuel emerging market-based environmental programmes, an article in the July 31 2009 edition of Science by two noted ecologists warns that these programs still lack the scientific certainty needed to ensure that restoration projects deliver the environmental improvements being marketed.
Markets identify the benefits humans derive from ecosystems, called ecosystem services, and associate them with economic values which can be bought, sold or traded. The scientists, Dr. Margaret Palmer and Dr. Solange Filoso of the University of Maryland Centre for Environmental Science Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, raise concerns that there is insufficient scientific understanding of the restoration process, namely, how to alter a landscape or coastal habitat to achieve the environmental benefits that are marketed. “Both locally and nationally, policymakers are considering market-based environmental restoration programs where the science does not yet conclusively show that environment health will improve once the ‘restoration’ is completed,” said Dr. Palmer. “These programs may very well make economic sense, but the jury is still out whether or not the local environment will ultimately benefit.” At present, the demand in ecosystem service markets is driven by regulations that require those who harm the environment to mitigate or provide offsets for their environmental impacts. But in the regions throughout the world, including the Chesapeake Bay, many people hope that voluntary markets will expand outside of a regulatory context and result in a net gain of ecosystem services rather than just offsets for lost ecosystem services.
Examples include markets for flood protection created by restoring floodplains or wetlands and markets for improving water quality by restoring streams or rivers.
In their paper, the scientists outline what should be done before markets expand further and state that there must be a recognition that restoration projects generally only restore a subset of the services that natural ecosystem provide, complete a limited number of projects in which direct measurements are made of the response of biophysical processes to restoration actions, and identify easily measured ecosystem features that have been shown to reflect the biophysical processes that support the desired ecosystem service.
“There is an inherent danger of marketing ecosystem services through ecological restoration without properly verifying if the restoration actions actually lead to the delivery of services,” said Dr. Filoso. “If this happens, these markets may unintentionally cause an increase in environmental degradation.”

Reference:
Restoration of Ecosystem Services for Environmental Markets. Science, July
31st 2009. Adapted from materials provided by University of Maryland Centre for
Environmental Science.

Environmental Markets Association EMA
For more information on Environmental Markets please visit the web site of the Environmental Markets Association: http://www.environmentalmarkets.org/index.ww

Although corals are found in temperate and tropical waters, shallow-water reefs are formed only in a zone extending at most from 30°N to 30°S of the equator. (This zone is very important to whales because many types of plankton live there). Tropical corals do not grow at depths of over 50 m (165 ft). Temperature has less of an effect on the distribution of tropical coral, but it is generally accepted that they do not exist in waters below 18 °C.[
“Corals are certainly threatened by environmental change, but this research has really sparked the notion that corals may be tougher than we thought,” say researchers at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment in the USA.
Corals in danger?

Coral locations

Coral reefs form the basis for thriving, healthy ecosystems throughout the tropics. They provide homes and nourishment for thousands of species, including massive schools of fish, which in turn feed millions of people across the globe. Corals rely on partnerships with tiny, single-celled algae called zooxanthellae. The corals provide the algae a home, and, in turn, the algae provide nourishment, forming a symbiotic relationship. But when rising temperatures stress the algae, they stop producing food, and the corals spit them out. Without their algae symbionts, the reefs die and turn stark white, an event referred to as coral bleaching.
During particularly warm years, bleaching has accounted for the deaths of large numbers of corals. In the Caribbean in 2005, a heat surge caused more than 50 percent of corals to bleach, and many still have not recovered. In recent years however, scientists discovered that some corals resist bleaching by hosting types of algae that can handle the heat, while others swap out the heat-stressed algae for tougher, heat-resistant strains.
In 2006, researchers at Stanford, travelled to Ofu Island in American Samoa. Ofu, a tropical coral reef marine reserve, has remained healthy despite gradually warming waters with numerous corals hosting the most common heat-sensitive and heat-resistant algae symbionts. Ofu also has pools of varying temperatures that allowed the research team to test under what conditions the symbionts formed associations with corals.
In cooler lagoons, Oliver found only a handful of corals that host heat-resistant algae exclusively. But in hotter pools, he observed a direct increase in the proportion of heat-resistant symbionts, suggesting that some corals had swapped out the heat-sensitive algae for more robust types. These results, combined with regional data from other sites in the tropical Pacific, were published in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series in March 2009.
Global pattern
To see if this pattern exists on a global scale, the researchers gathered worldwide oceanographic data on a variety of environmental variables, including ocean acidity, the frequency of weather events and sea-surface temperature. They then compiled dozens of coral reef studies from across the tropics and compared them to environmental data. The results revealed the same pattern: In regions where annual maximum ocean temperatures were above 84 to 88 degrees Fahrenheit (29 to 31 degrees Celsius), corals were avoiding bleaching by hosting higher proportions of the heat-resistant symbionts. Most corals bleach when temperatures rise 1.8 F (1 C) above the long-term normal highs. But heat-tolerant symbionts might allow a reef to handle temperatures up to 2.6 F (1.5 C) beyond the bleaching threshold. The scientists believe that this might be enough to help get them through the end of the century, Oliver said, depending on the severity of global warming.
A 2007 report by the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change concluded that the average surface temperature of the Earth is likely to increase 3.6 to 8.1 F (2 to 4.5 C) by 2100. In this scenario, the symbiont switch alone may not be enough to help corals survive through the end of the century. But with the help of other adaptive mechanisms, including natural selection for heat-tolerant corals, there is still hope, scientists believe.
It comes down to a calculation of the rates of environmental change versus the rates of adaptation. Heat-resistant corals also turn out to be more tolerant of increases in ocean acidity, which occurs when the ocean absorbs excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere—another potential threat to coral reefs. This finding suggests that corals worldwide are adapting to increases in acidity as well as heat, and that across the tropics, corals with the ability to switch symbionts will do so to survive.
Future protection
Researchers from the Institute say that it’s hard to imagine that these corals, which have existed for a quarter of a billion years, only have 50 years left. Part of their job might be to figure out where the tougher ones live and protect those places.

Journal reference:
Oliver TA, Palumbi SR. Distributions of stress-resistant coral symbionts match environmental patterns at local but not regional scales. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 2009; 37893 DOI: 10.3354/meps07871

This article was adapted from materials provided by Stanford University.

The Yale researchers found that forest ecosystems recovered in 42 years on average, while ocean bottoms recovered in less than 10 years. When examined by disturbance type, ecosystems undergoing multiple, interacting disturbances recovered in 56 years, and those affected by either invasive species, mining, oil spills or trawling recovered in as little as five years. Most ecosystems took longer to recover from human-induced disturbances than from natural events, such as hurricanes.
“The damages to these ecosystems are pretty serious,” said Oswald Schmitz, an ecology professor at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and co-author of the meta-analysis with Yale Ph.D. student Holly Jones. “But the message is that if societies choose to become sustainable, ecosystems will recover. It isn’t hopeless.”

The Yale analysis focuses on seven ecosystem types, including marine, forest, terrestrial, freshwater and brackish, and addresses recovery from major anthropogenic disturbances: agriculture, deforestation, eutrophication, invasive species, logging, mining, oil spills, over fishing, power plants and trawling and from the interactions of those disturbances. Major natural disturbances, including hurricanes and cyclones, are also accounted for in the analysis. The researchers analyzed data derived from peer-reviewed studies conducted over the past century that examined the recovery of large ecosystems following the cessation of a disturbance. The studies measured 94 variables that were grouped into three categories: ecosystem function, animal community and plant community. The researchers quantified the recovery of each of the variables in terms of the time it took for them to return to their pre-disturbance state as determined by the expert judgment of each study’s author. The Yale analysis found that 83 studies demonstrated recovery for all variables; 90 reported a mixture of recovered and non-recovered variables; and 67 reported no recovery for any variable. Schmitz said 15 percent of all the ecosystems in the analysis are beyond recovery. Also, 54 percent of the studies that reported no recovery likely did not run long enough to draw definitive conclusions. In addition, the analysis suggests that an ecosystem’s recovery may be independent of its degraded condition. Aquatic systems, the researchers noted, may recover more quickly because species and organisms that inhabit them turn over more rapidly than, for example, forests whose habitats take longer to regenerate after logging or clear-cutting.

They point out that a potential “pitfall” of the analysis is that the ecosystems may have already been in a disturbed state when they were originally examined. Many ecosystems across the globe that have experienced extinctions and other fundamental changes as a result of human activities, combined with the ongoing effects of climate change and pollution, are far removed from their historical, natural pristine state. Thus ecologists measured recovery on the basis of an ecosystem’s more recent condition. The study points out the need for the development of objective criteria to decide when a system has fully recovered.

The researchers said the analysis rebuts speculation that it will take centuries or millennia for degraded ecosystems to recover and justifies an increased effort to restore degraded areas for the benefit of future generations. “Restoration could become a more important tool in the management portfolio of conservation organizations that are entrusted to protect habitats on landscapes,” said Schmitz.

Jones added: “We recognize that humankind has and will continue to actively domesticate nature to meet its own needs. The message of our paper is that recovery is possible and can be rapid for many ecosystems, giving much hope for a transition to sustainable management of global ecosystems.”

Ground breaking Experiment
Scientists have known for some time that artificially created algal blooms could be used to absorb greenhouse gases, but the technique has been banned for fear of causing unforeseen side effects in fragile ecosystems. However, based on the UK team’s evidence that the process has been occurring naturally for millions of years, and on a wide scale, the UN has given the green light for a ground-breaking experiment later this month and the team will try and create a massive algal bloom by releasing several tons of iron sulphate into the sea off the coast of the South Georgia. (A UK possession).
If the experiment is successful, the technique could be used over large areas of the Southern Ocean. Scientists calculate that if the whole 20 million square miles was treated, it could remove up to three and a half Gigatons of C02, equivalent to one eighth of all global annual emissions from fossil fuels.
Could this prevent the global warming catastrophe? We’ll see, but hopes are high that indeed the threatened icebergs have given us the information needed to save ourselves from ourselves.