Leaf Litter
Raking in Notes From All Over

March, 2010

Eagle Eye

The United States Department of Fish and Wildlife (USDFW) has recently come under fire by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), which takes issue with the USDFW’s request to remove Arizona’s desert nesting bald eagle from the federal endangered species list. There are only about 50 breeding pairs of the eagle, says the CBD, which is joined in protest by the Maricopa Audubon Society. The USDFW first attempted to remove protection in 2006, and is now saying that the bald eagle, currently studied by NestWatch, a nest-monitoring database of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, “…does not indicate that persistence in the ecosystem of the Sonoran Desert Area is important to the species as a whole.”

Going Green with Algae

While algae are a problem in some ecosystems, Chile is making the most of the substance by creating a research and development team that will investigate its use as a biofuel. Three companies, assisted by $31.6 million in funds, will experiment with algae from the three thousand-kilometer Chilean coastline, where high solar radiation causes extensive photosynthesis. Experts believe that cultivation of the seaweed macroalgae (Macrosystis pyrifera) will produce up to 50 million gallons of ethanol a year, and hope that algae will become a renewable biofuel in Chile within four years.

Cows Express Relief

While everyone was blaming Elsie the Cow for methane gas, scientists were measuring an abundance of it exuding from permafrost in Arctic wetlands and lakes. Turns out the permafrost—frozen soil—isn’t so permanent. From 2003-2008, during six research cruises to the Siberian Arctic shelf, scientists found large quantities of methane bubbling out of melting permafrost. This indicates that permafrost is a major cause of greenhouse gas emissions, which have been linked to the highly-debated topic of global warming.

How About a Little Fish with Your Mercury?

Got a friend that won’t eat fish because she’s scared of mercury poisoning? Think she’s a little wacky? The U.S. Geological Survey has just released data that concluded that every fish its scientists tested from 1998-2005 was contaminated with mercury. The fish were sampled from 291 freshwater streams across the United States and over 66 percent were contaminated beyond the “concern for fish-eating mammals” levels set by the Environmental Protection Agency. Think about that next time you go out for sushi.

You Thought Your Kid’s Room was Dirty

A floating island of garbage between California and Hawaii, approximately the size of Texas and consisting of small pieces of plastic, sludge and other debris, was discovered in 1997 by Captain Charles Moore. Dubbed “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” it’s not visible via satellite photography because most of it is just under the water’s surface. Recently, researchers from Sea Education Associates, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the University of Hawaii found a high concentration of plastic debris floating in the Atlantic Ocean north of the Caribbean. The researchers believe that surface currents carry the debris to the Atlantic patch, and are still investigating its size in comparison to its Pacific Ocean cousin.

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