Bee Alert: Is a Controversial Herbicide Harming Honeybees?

YaleEnvironment360

Recent court cases have focused on the possible effects of glyphosate, found in Monsanto’s Roundup, on humans. But researchers are now investigating whether this commonly used herbicide could also be having adverse effects on the health and behaviour of honeybees.

Story here.

RELATED: 

Scientists cast doubt on claims by the chemical giant, Bayer, that its newest pesticide is safe for bees. - by Larry Powell

It's Time for a Green New Deal - Build it With Us!

DETAILS HERE.

World is ‘on notice’ as major UN report shows one million species face extinction

UN News Service

A hard-hitting report into the impact of humans on nature shows that nearly one million species risk becoming extinct within decades, while current efforts to conserve the earth’s resources will likely fail without radical action, UN biodiversity experts say.

The Chatham penguin, once endemic to the Chatham Islands,
off New Zealand. Its bones indicate it likely became extinct
shortly after Polynesians arrived about 450 years ago.
Image by Sean Murtha.
RELATED:

"The Sixth Extinction - an Unnatural History." (A book review.)

Also, please watch this "Life Below Water," video, below.

Climate Change Has Made Droughts More Frequent Since 1900

The Smithsonian

Photo by Tomas Castelazo

Tree ring data from various parts of the world show that greenhouse gas increases have impacted soil moisture for over 100 years. Story here.

Farm Country: Don’t Get Fooled Again

By Cherie Mortice - Common Dreams.

Smithfield Food's pig-breeding facility, Virginia. Sows in cruel
gestation crates. Photo by US Humane Society.

Big ag companies killed family farms and polluted our water, while politicians blamed our immigrant neighbours. Let’s not turn on each other again. Story here

Make EU trade with Brazil sustainable

Science

The Amazon, near Manaus. 
Photo by Neil Palmer (CIAT).

Brazil, home to one of the planet's last great forests, is currently in trade negotiations with its second largest trading partner, the European Union (EU). We urge the EU to seize this critical opportunity to ensure that Brazil protects human rights and the environment. More here.

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Related: Attacks on Brazil's ecological paradises.

New research finds that “marine reserves” – tracts of ocean where fishing is banned – are protecting fish, the coral reefs where they live and vast undersea "gardens," a lot more than once thought.

Large-scale commercial fishing has, for years, been depleting fish-stocks in many places around the world - especially in coral reefs in the tropics. In response, several countries have designated certain areas of the sea as "marine reserves," where neither fishing nor other development is allowed. Now, a team of scientists from US and Australian universities has produced compelling new evidence. It shows these reserves have not only been helping stocks rebound, but are also protecting massive coral "food webs" - beds of sea-grasses and algae - important reservoirs for carbon storage. 

by Larry Powell

In this satellite photo, "halos" appear as pale blue circular bands 
surrounding tiny dark spots.The spots are likely small patch reefs 
or other shelter for small fish and invertebrates that protect them 
from predators. Each halo is probably about 10 meters wide. 
The more there are, the healthier marine life there is likely to be.

Using hi-rez images from both satellites and underwater cameras, the researchers studied hundreds of small, tropical reefs in the huge Great Barrier Reef complex off Australia. 

Those images detected about two-&-a-half times more halos within the reserves than elsewhere. The more halos, the healthier the reef is considered to be as a home for both fish and invertebrates. 

These pale blue, circular bands surrounding the small dark spots, are where herbivorous, or plant-eating fish and some marine mammals, venture out to graze on surrounding vegetation such as algae or seagrass. Then, they dart back in, using the reefs as protection from the predators. 

The scientists refer to the halos as "seascape-scale footprints" of healthy, increased activity in aquatic life.

Elizabeth M.P. Madin, Ph.D.

Assistant Research Professor
Hawaii Institute of Marin Biology

University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA.

The spokesperson for the study, Dr. Elizabeth Madin (above), tells PinP, "What the halos are telling us is that marine reserves - especially older ones - where predator and herbivore populations have had sufficient time to recover from previous fishing - are protecting key species and their resulting interactions.

"Specifically," she adds, "we’re more likely to see halos in especially older reserves (40 years old or so), which suggests that predators and prey are in sufficient numbers there to interact and cause these halo patterns." 

Since halos can also be found in some ares unprotected from fishing, the team calls for more research to further confirm the connection.

Among groups funding the research were the World Wildlife Fund and the US National Science Foundation.

The findings were published recently in the proceedings of The Royal Society in the UK and in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.  

But the benefits of marine reserves, don't stop here.

"Importantly," Dr. Madin goes on, "we know from another of our studies, that halos affect carbon storage. So, not only are marine reserves re-shaping coral reef landscapes on very large scales in ways we didn’t know about before, but they’re also affecting a key ecosystem service - carbon storage."

She's referring to a truly fascinating undersea scenario in which predator fish actually play a beneficial - albeit indirect - role in carbon sequestration. A healthy habitat means more predators. Their prey, often herbivorous fish or marine mammals, cling to the relative safety of their home reefs and don't venture too far afield to find plants to eat. 

Dugongs, a type of marine mammal, are
known to be capable of decimating sea-grass beds
as they graze. Photo taken in an oceanarium in Jakarta.

This spares massive sea-scapes of algae and sea-grasses nearby, which would otherwise be stripped by the plant-eaters. Instead, the vegetation grows taller and denser, greatly increasing its capacity to store carbon, thus providing a significant buffer against climate change.

Not only are the number of marine reserves growing, worldwide, they're getting bigger, too (some more than 100 thousand km2). Nineteen of these "mega-reserves" have been established since 2009. And happily for the sea-life living there, the research finds, the bigger the reserves, the more protection they offer!

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RELATED: 

• UK Government Adds New Marine Protected Areas Nearly 8x the Size of Greater London
• Study demonstrates seagrass' strong potential for curbing erosion