Could Rudolph and friends help to slow down our warming climate?

Environmental Research Letters

Reindeer photo by Arild Vågen

Reindeer may be best known for pulling Santa’s sleigh, but a new study suggests they may have a part to play in slowing down climate change too. Story here.

Insecticide found in same B.C. hummingbirds that are in decline

CBCnews

A rufus hummingbird, one of the kinds in decline. Dean E. Biggins

'No one has ever measured pesticides in hummingbirds before. So we decided to try it,' says scientist. Story here.

RELATED: 

• "Will New Research Nudge Canada Toward a 'Neonic" Ban?"
• "Environmental groups back in court over pollinator-killing pesticides"

Most effective individual steps to tackle climate change aren't being discussed

ScienceDaily

Governments and schools are not communicating the most effective ways for individuals to reduce their carbon footprints, according to new research. Story here.

Insecticides damage bee socialization and learning skills, study reports

ScienceDaily

Wikimedia Commons

Researchers find that bees fed with thiacloprid (a neonic) significantly reduces their social interactions, suggesting that foraging bees that encounter high doses of insecticide in the field may be less likely to recruit others to nectar sources. Story here.

RELATED: 

• Will New Research From Europe Nudge Canada Toward a "Neonic" Ban?
• New research suggests “Neonics,” the world’s most widely-used family of insecticides, can decimate bee populations.

2.1 billion people lack safe drinking water at home, more than twice as many lack safe sanitation

World Health

Organization

Some 3 in 10 people worldwide, or 2.1 billion, lack access to safe, readily available water at home, and 6 in 10, or 4.5 billion, lack safely managed sanitation, according to a new report by WHO and UNICEF. Story here.

'When Rising Seas Hit Home': Hundreds of Towns Threatened by 2100

Common Dreams

Daunting new report shows coastal communities are at-risk and unprepared for flooding caused by climate change. Story here.

RELATED: "Angry Oceans - Pt. #1" and "Pt. #2."

The cycle of mercury pollution in the Arctic tundra

Nature
Human activity has been a major source of mercury pollution in 

the Arctic, and a new study has identified the form most often 

taken by the pollutant: gaseous elemental mercury (GEM). The 

present News & Views article discusses how the Arctic tundra 

acts as a major sink for mercury, as the local plants uptake GEM 

from the atmosphere; and what this means for the global mercury 

cycle as global temperatures warm. Isotopic data collected in the 

original study by Obrist et al. reveal that GEM accounts for 90% of 

the mercury in plants, and the uptake of GEM by plants is 

especially high in the summer. Since plant matter decomposes 

into the soil, the Arctic soil may soon become a substantial 

mercury sink.
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Editor's summary

Anthropogenic activities have led to large-scale mercury pollution in the Arctic, but it remains uncertain whether wet deposition of oxidized mercury via precipitation and sea-salt-induced chemical cycling of mercury are responsible for the high Arctic mercury load. This paper presents a mass-balance study of mercury deposition and stable isotope data from the Arctic tundra, and finds that the main source of mercury is in fact derived from gaseous elemental mercury, with only minor contributions from the other two suggested sources. Consistently high soil mercury concentrations derived from gaseous elemental mercury along an inland-to-coastal transect suggest that the Arctic tundra might be a globally important mercury sink and might explain why Arctic rivers annually transport large amounts of mercury to the Arctic Ocean.

Iceberg almost the Size of Lake Winnipegosis breaks off Antarctic ice shelf

theguardian

Satellite data confirms ‘calving’ of trillion-tonne, 5,800 sq km iceberg from the Larsen C ice shelf, dramatically altering the landscape. Story here.

The Larsen ice shelf as it was in 2004. NASA photo.

Parisitic birds use oil and gas infrastructures to prey on prairie songbirds - Study.

Royal Society Open Science 

We're only beginning to find out all the ways in which industrial activity disrupts the ecosystem, and a new bird study gives yet another example of the unexpected ways in which human activity affects the local fauna. Researchers at the University of Manitoba have found that the presence of oil and natural gas infrastructure—such as fences, power lines, and transmitters around oil wells—in Canada's Northern Great Plains helped boost the number of brown-headed cowbirds by four times. Cowbirds are a parasitic species who lay their eggs in other birds' nests, forcing others to raise their brood. The parasitic species uses oil and gas infrastructures as perches, and the availability of perches makes it easier for these birds to find their brood hosts. 

Savannah sparrow. Photo by D. Gordon E. Robertson

Cowbirds' abundance in the area could hurt another grassland bird species, the Savannah sparrow, which often falls victim to the parasitic birds. Researchers have observed a four-fold increase in brood parasitism of sparrows by cowbirds near the oil and gas infrastructure sites.

Melting ice may be making mountains collapse in Greenland

New

Scientist

Greenland. Túrelio

Earthquakes in Greenland are rare. At least, they’re supposed to be. But a few weeks ago, a 4.1 “quake” struck a tiny island off Greenland’s west coast, triggering a massive tsunami that smashed homes, leaving at least four people dead. But what residents – and seismic equipment – initially labelled a quake may be nothing of the sort. Story here.

A rare look at the potentially harmful effects of climate change on terrestrial species in Antarctica

Nature

Much research has been dedicated to studying the effects of climate change and global warming on the Antarctic ice sheet and sea levels; but the same can't be said about the ice-free parts of the region, which cover less than 1% of the continent. 

Australian researchers modelled the potential effect of climate change under two Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change climate-forcing scenarios. Their findings suggest that under the more radical of the two scenarios, the ice-free areas in the Antarctic can expand by as much as 25% by the end of the 21st century. 

Such a drastic increase in surface area can bring about a homogenization of the biome, the extinction of less-competitive species and the spread of invasive species. Though the 

expansion of habitat space can be viewed as a positive outcome, researchers say that sticking to the protocol that aims to reduce global temperature increases will help maintain the current biodiversity in the terrestrial Antarctic regions.
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Editor's summary

Permanently ice-free areas are home to almost all of Antarctica's biodiversity. Jasmine Lee and colleagues model the potential effect of climate change on the extent of ice-free areas in Antarctica over the coming century, under moderate and severe forcing scenarios. Ice-free areas are projected to expand by over 17,000 km² under the strongest forcing scenario. The greatest change can be expected in the Antarctic Peninsula, where a threefold increase in ice-free area is projected. The authors suggest that the expansion and eventual merging of ice-free areas could have harmful consequences for the biodiversity of the continent by facilitating the homogenization of biodiversity across regions.