Europe reassesses its dominion over all the fish of the sea

Europe’s fisheries lurched towards reform today as the European Commission unveiled its long-awaited proposals to shake up the industry. But the announcement failed to satisfy already vocal critics.

Maria Damanaki, the commissioner for maritime affairs, warnedthat if fisheries were not reformed to put them on a sustainable basis “we will loose one fish stock after the other”.

At heart the new proposals are attempting to heed the warnings of scientists, who for years have been saying that Europe is hideously over-exploiting many species. When drafts of the proposals began circulating earlier this year though many commentators warned they did not go far enough. (See Nature’s news story ‘Too few fish in the sea’ and the World View piece ‘Fishery reform slips through the net’ for details of the reforms and the critiques.)

Damanaki wants fishermen to stop throwing away non-target species they haul up (so-called by-catch). Quotas will also be set to manage each stock at ‘maximum sustainable yield’ by 2015 and aquaculture will be encouraged.

Critics have repeated concerns voiced over early drafts though, especially around the fact that there will be no actual obligation on European Union member states to heed scientific advice on catch limits.

Monica Verbeek, executive director of the Seas At Risk group, said “More ambitious management targets for stocks will only halt overfishing if ministers are obliged to set fishing quotas based on the best available scientific advice. We can no longer afford to put fish stocks at risk with the annual horse trading of quotas.”

Image: photo by Chris Brown via flickr under creative common

Committee champions underground science

A proposed underground laboratory would be an important step in addressing three science questions of “paramount importance”, says a report released today by the National Academies.

The report evaluated the physics experiments that could be performed at the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL), a cavernous space physicists want dug out nearly 1,500 metres below ground in the abandoned Homestake mine near Lead, South Dakota (pictured).

The report, led by Andrew Lankford of the University of California at Irvine, found that three physics experiments would be particularly worthwhile in this quiet space, sheltered from the noisy cosmic ray particles that rain down on the Earth’s surface:

1) Dark matter. A giant detector on the order of a ton or more, filled with water or liquid argon, could detect and characterize dark matter, the elusive stuff that makes up 80% of the matter in the Universe.

2) Neutrino oscillation. This experiment would begin with a beam of neutrinos shot from Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, 1,300 kilometres away in Batavia, Illinois. A detector at DUSEL would look for ways in which the neutrinos morphed from one flavour to another en route, and, in doing so, the experiment would shed light on the way that the Universe favours matter over antimatter.

3) Neutrino-less double-beta decay. This experiment would look for a rare particle decay that could measure the mass of the neutrino in absolute terms, rather than in the relative terms governed by flavour oscillation.

The report noted that an underground lab would also be useful for two less crucial, but still worthwhile physics experiments: setting stricter limits on the decay of the proton, and detecting neutrinos from a supernova, should one go off in the galaxy during the lifetime of the experiment. Moreover, the report notes, a lab like DUSEL would provide a home for valuable experiments in subsurface engineering, the geosciences, and the biosciences.

But the report’s glowing reviews of the science may all be moot. That’s because, in December, the National Science Foundation pulled out of the project, after its governing board balked at the price. That left the Energy Department wondering if it could afford to finance the facility on its own.

Last month, advisers to the Energy Department reviewed a report that looked at the cost of doing just that. The cheapest way of doing all three physics experiments at Homestake would still cost between $1.6 billion and $2.1 billion, according to that report, led by Jay Marx of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Academics and insurers team up to tackle tsunami risk

As murky torrents swirled around Sendai airport in Japan following the earthquake and tsunami in March, geographer Mark Maslin and his team were horrified to see their predictions coming true.

Maslin’s team at University College London Environment Institute (UCLEI) had been working on the first global assessment of tsunami risk to airports in January 2010. Sendai was one of 10 international airports studied but their research couldn’t pre-empt this most recent disaster. It is hoped that the project, commissioned by insurance broker JLT Re, will help the aviation industry accurately assess the financial risk posed by tsunamis as well as aiding the reassessment of defences.

When airports such as Sendai go down during a natural disaster it can severely damage international aid imports and, in the long term, can have crippling effects on the economy, not only in terms of insurable damage to aircraft on the tarmac, but also to international trade. Sendai was completely out of action for one month and Japan’s Transport Ministry announced only last Friday that they plan to resume international flights on 25 July.

The UCLEI project was a collaborative effort between the (re)insurance industry and the scientific community to identify tsunami risk, which was previously labelled a “known-unknown” by insurers. This new knowledge is to be used within the aviation industry for the benefit of JLT Re clients, but the methodology will have wider applications.

The researchers say their methods can be applied to other forms of coastal infrastructure such as nuclear power plants and ports. Matt Owen, a PhD student at UCLEI who conducted the research, explained that the project began with mapping based on a catalogue of tsunamis from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. The project looked at geographical factors specific to each of the 10 international airports studied: Hong Kong; Incheon, in Korea; Changi, in Singapore; PuDong, in China; Kasnsai, Chubu, Haneda, and Sendai in Japan; Honolulu in Hawaii, and JFK in New York. The recently submerged Sendai is classed as ‘high risk’ according to the study but the project identified Chubu, Haneda and Honolulu as even more vulnerable (See this chart).

The UCLEI method assesses the factors affecting the likelihood and resultant impact of tsunamis. Likelihood was discerned from the interval between tsunami events in that area: airports at very high risk had a recurrence interval of less than 25 years. The typical magnitude of these tsunamis was catagorised based on their maximum on-shore height. Other considered factors included the position of the airport in relation to the coast, the location of parked aircraft, runways and terminal buildings, local topography, and the degree of inundation required to cause damage. “Current engineering models underestimate peak wave height and thus damage caused by tsnamis,” says Maslin, as was the case with the most recent disaster in Japan.

This collaboration between academia and the insurance industry provides a scientific framework on which to base the assessment of other potential ‘metrocatastophes,’ and should be used to ensure that other high risk airports are not victims of underestimation.

stop global warming !!

Is Global Warming real?

Earth's climate is changing. The result so far:

Global temperatures have risen 5° C
Glaciers have melted and retreated dramatically
Ecosystems around the world are being altered

This is not new news. These changes started 18,000 years ago, as the earth emerged from the Pleistocene Ice Age-- a time when ice-covered mammoths and mastodons roamed the earth.
Geologists know great ice sheets once covered large portions of the continents. These glaciers have alternately retreated and advanced as the earth has warmed and cooled, in cycles spanning hundreds, thousands, and millions of years.
Historical data from ocean sediments and ice cores indicate warm interglacial periods of 15,000 - 20,000 years separate each major ice age. We currently are in an interglacial period, and are due ( some say overdue ) for the next 100,000- year Ice Age.

pollution

Pollution is the addition to the ecosystem of someting which has a detrimental effect on it. One of the most important causes of pollution is the high rate of energy usage by modern, growing populations.
Different kinds of pollution are found. In this section we will discuss:

1. Air Pollution.
2. Water Pollution.
3. Land Pollution.

Global Warming

http:/

Is Global Warming real?

Earth's climate is changing. The result so far:

Global temperatures have risen 5° C

Glaciers have melted and retreated dramatically

Ecosystems around the world are being altered

This is not new news. These changes started 18,000 years ago, as the earth emerged from the Pleistocene Ice Age-- a time when ice-covered mammoths and mastodons roamed the earth.

Geologists know great ice sheets once covered large portions of the continents. These glaciers have alternately retreated and advanced as the earth has warmed and cooled, in cycles spanning hundreds, thousands, and millions of years.

Historical data from ocean sediments and ice cores indicate warm interglacial periods of 15,000 - 20,000 years separate each major ice age. We currently are in an interglacial period, and are due ( some say overdue ) for the next 100,000- year Ice Age.

for more information download this presentation http://www.alaskaconservationsolutions.org/acs/images/stories/docs/AkCS_current.ppt