Tag: Study

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Analysis has found that 1/3 of land set aside for restoration is worse than before in Australia

Large parts of Australia look like the above photo, beautiful in a rugged way, but quite useless for the survival of many of Australia species. Australia has a wide range of habitats, which means that there are many areas which need to be protected.

The problem is, according to this study, declaring an area protected appears to be having little change on what is happened.

1/3 of all land that is set aside for restoration and conservation, has got worse rather than better. Given the fact that so many species are just hanging on to existence, this could be very bad news.

In one area that was studied, the majority of the area was cleared paddock – a serious problem for the koala and grey-headed flying fox which called the area home.

In particular, the idea of this scheme is so called biodiversity offsetting – if you are to clear wildlife habitat, you protect a similar sized area elsewhere.

Continue reading “Analysis has found that 1/3 of land set aside for restoration is worse than before in Australia”
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Currently, in the Amazon rainforest, 5 times more carbon is released from degradation than from deforestation – and still what remains continues to burn

A study, using detailed 3d surveys, found that road building, and other degradation is causing 5 times as much carbon to be released into the air, than deforestation of the Amazon.

From road building, to selective logging, fires and natural disasters, all these activities are combining to having a greater impact on carbon stocks in the Brazillian Amazon than deforestation. This huge discrepancy is not taken into account by the numbers.

This is also a problem to the world, as this carbon is being radically underestimated, which means that large quantities of our remaining carbon budget are being used up. This new survey used lidar, which gives a more accurate idea of what is left in terms of forest cover.

Read more: Currently, in the Amazon rainforest, 5 times more carbon is released from degradation than from deforestation – and still what remains continues to burn

With the addition of lidar sensors on the ISS, it is possible to scan the worlds forests more often – and given the ISS regular passing over 90% of the earths surface (in each 24 period – as while it orbits on a set path, the earth turns below it) this can be a good tool to keep an eye on the forests of the earth.

Another confirmation (as if it was needed) has been supplied by this study, showing that Indigenous territories and conservation units are both more efficient ways to protect the forest. These cover only 47.5% of the land, but contain just 9.1% of the forest clearing 2.6% of the logging and 9.6% of the fires.

Talking of fires

Fires continue to burn in the Amazon, with over 13,400 having been recorded in 2024. President Lula has called for general mobilization and Brazil has pledged to end deforestation by 2030. This is higher than during Bolsonaro’s time in office, though current cause is a drought, not human mismanagement.

Climate change is causing an increasing change in weather patterns, and reduced rainfall is changing the forests behaviour ( it should be noted, that the forest produces a not -insignificant portion of its rainfallm

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The Ross ice shelf, in Antarctica, has been found to move

The Ross ice shelf is vast, covering 182,000 square miles, it is only slightly smaller than France, and yet a study has shown, that the whole ice shelf can move 40 cm in just 10 minutes. These were generally caused by slips in the Whillans Ice Sheet, which is one of just a few ice flows into and through the area.

The whole shelf was found to move 6-8cm once or twice a day, triggered by these flows moving. This could be the cause of both icequakes, and fractures running through the ice (fractures are important, as they make it more likely that a section of the ice will break off the edge of Antarctica and head into the ocean. While this ice can, on occasion survive a long time – A23a broke of Antarctica in 1986 and has been floating free for much of the time since (except for a decade or so when it grounded); it was estimated to be 400m thick and weigh in at nearly 1 trillion tonnes.

This is a problem for a simple reason. Unlike the north pole, there is land under the ice in Antarctica. This means that while in the north pole, the ice sheet is already in the sea, so its melting cannot increase sea level, Antarctic ice all does increase sea levels.

The Ross ice shelf is known to have collapsed 120,000 years ago during the last interglacial period, and contains enough ice to raise sea levels by 11.5m (this would also cause another 2m of sea level rise because of the glaciers which would no longer be held back).

A Dutch startup, is trialling mitigating this in the Arctic, by pumping sea water onto the ice. This then freezes, thickening the ice. It is possible that this might work in the short term, however, what is clear, is that the only long-term solution, is to stop burning fossil fuels, so as to halt the heating of the earths climate.

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Great white sharks separated into 3 district populations 200,000 years ago – and have Orca stopped hunting the South African population?

These 3 groups do not intermix, and only very seldom, interbreed. These populations are found in the Southern Pacific, Northern Pacific and the North Atlantic and Mediterranean.

This naturally means that the great white sharp is far more at risk of extinction, than if all the great white sharks in the worlds oceans could interbreed.

These areas appear to be bounded by great ocean currents, which are rarely crossed. This is a problem, as if an individual population is lost, it makes it far more likely that distinct genetic information could be lost with it – take the Mediterranean great while shark population, which has seen a dramatic population decline from historic numbers, estimated at between 52% and 96% (areas like the Maramara sea, are known to have lost 96% of their population) depending on which study you read.

This makes local conservation far more essential, and we need to be careful to not loose any individual populations. There has been a great deal of worry for the great white shark population around South Africa, as they pretty much vanished in 2017, but appear to have returned in 2024. The disappearance of the great white was attributed to 2 orca which had become expert in hunting and killing these sharks – it should be remembered, that while great whites are often at the top of the food chain, they are hunted for food by orca. Whether these orca have gone back to eating something else, hence the great white shark return, is a question that does not appear to have been answered as yet.

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Older trees are more capable of increasing growth and carbon dioxide use than young ones

Whether tropical or not, old growth forests absorb far more carbon than new trees, and can increase this

Old growth trees, have the capacity to greatly increase their growing rate, when there is a lot of carbon dioxide in the air. This has been found, in a study by the University of Birmingham. This is important, as in many places around the world, an area of destroyed natural forest, is considered to be replaceable by a similar area of planted trees, but what is clear, is that in order to merely keep up with the absorption of the original trees, several multiples more of trees need planting. What is worse, is that this is not worrying about the huge amount of carbon that is stored in the trees that are cut down, or within its roots system and the surrounding soil.

To put this in perspective, at the current time, it is estimated that a football pitch of primary forest is lost every 6 seconds.

This experiment was done, by piping extra carbon dioxide into a forest area and monitoring its growth. Unfortunately, this does reinforce the conservationist point of view, that simply planting a similar area of woodland for each bit lost, is not good enough.

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Badger vaccinating is found to be far more effective than culls

The UK has been culling badgers since 2013, and since then over 230,000, yet a recent study has shown that vaccination is far more successful than culling.

This trial in Cornwall, found that the rate of bTB in the study area fell to zero.

Why is this important? One of the big shames of the British government is the fact that experts have been telling them since the beginning of the cull, that it will not work. This is for a very simple reason. Badgers are required to mingle to breed, and when you cull badgers, while you can largely eliminate them in the centre of your trial area, in the area further out, you merely reduce the numbers.

As a result, young males and females that are looking for a mate are required to roam further in order to find one. As a result, any local concentrations of bTB get spread around, causing the rate of the illness to increase. The study area covered 12 farms, and they vaccinated 265 badgers.

The next step is to fund a study over a far larger area.

It should be noted, that farmers funded the study, and it has been shown that not only are vaccines more effective at eliminating bTB, but also significantly cheaper. Furthermore, they found that more badgers were vaccinated per km than were culled on nearby land – suggesting a far higher reach within the badger population.

Might we finally be at a place, where with bTB outbreaks, we can vaccinate rather than cull the badgers, so as to reduce the spread in cattle (though as I have written before, much of the spread comes from moving cattle around, rather than from the badgers anyway.

In south Africa, the bTB reservoir is found within the wild lion population. Understandably, few people would want these lions to be culled, but the ability to fire vaccine darts at them, might well be feasible in eliminating bTB here as well, where around 54% of lions have been shown to carry the illness. Whether or how fast the vaccine idea will reach South Africa is something that we will have to look out for.

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A rare whale species observed on Antarctic expedition

The Arnoux’s beaked whale Berardius arnuxii. Credit: André Meijboom

The beaked whale species are a family of rarely seen whales. Despite there being 22 species of beaked whale (which we know about) they are rarely seen, and some have only been described in recent years.

Why are they seen so rarely? because they have a record breaking ability to hold their breath being able to hold it for over an hour (reasonably regularly) and have been recorded in dives lasting over 100 minutes. After sightings of this species, the researchers did a search and analysis of sightings between 1980 and 2000. Just 108 sightings were made, accounting for 1125 individuals.

Continue reading “A rare whale species observed on Antarctic expedition”
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The telegraph has put out an article suggesting that homegrown food has 5 times greater carbon footprint than conventional: is that right? Should we all end our allotments?

Looking at the busy mass of growing green, it is hard to see how this is the most inefficient way to grow food…

The study that the article is based on comes from the university of Michigan, and is frankly badly, badly made. It is the quintessential study, where this is the answer, now how do we get there, sort of study.

So, what did they do? Well, they put gardens into 3 different categories

  • Backyard gardens – single occupancy
  • communal gardens (like the above)
  • Urban farms

Your backyard garden has about as small a carbon footprint as it is possible to have, it is possible that fruit or veg from here actually has zero carbon footprint. Community gardens can be a bit different – you have a small area, so you might use more compost or fertilizer, and it is possibly further from where you live, so you might drive to it. However, this kind of place also has a low carbon footprint.

It is essentially just the Urban farms which are a problem here: growlights and watering and temperature controls all add up to large quantities of energy.

This video shows this is an easy way to understand.

Do not be put off! If you have an allotment or a vegetable patch in your garden, this is almost completely carbon free food, it does bring down your carbon footprint.

It is unfortunately the kind of study you can find in a newspaper like the Telegraph; I do not think it would be a surprise for any readers to hear, that this is not the place readers go to find out about the new scientific studies of this kind.

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