© Bing Guan for The New York Times
Scientists are desperately racing to save one of the world’s rarest tree species from disappearing — by collecting seeds from the only surviving specimen, which is literally clinging to the side of a cliff on Robinson Crusoe Island, an extremely remote island off the coast of Chile.
A photo shared by the Royal Botanic Gardens in the UK shows conservationists reaching out with a giant net in an attempt to recover seeds from the last known wild specimen of the Dendroseris neriifolia tree, native to Chile’s Juan Fernández Islands.
The action highlights how scientists are going to great lengths to ensure the survival of highly endangered species of plants, a prescient topic as global warming caused by human activity continues to put them at great risk. Scientists have previously found that twice as many plants have gone extinct in the last 250 years as all birds, mammals, and amphibians combined, a devastating and often less-talked-about loss of biodiversity.
The tree species has been heavily affected by habitat loss, encroaching invasive species, and failed attempts to ensure its survival, according to a statement by the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, near London, UK.
Twenty-nine seeds were recovered, 25 of which were identified to be potentially viable according to an X-ray analysis by scientists at the Botanic Gardens. Seven seedlings are already establishing, so the last-ditch effort may have a chance of paying off.
It’s not the first time scientists have attempted to ensure the survival of the Dendroseris neriifolia tree. By 1980, only seven surviving wild specimens remained following dramatic population declines. Park rangers attempted to recover the species in the 1990s, and reintroduction efforts in the early 2000s ultimately proved unfruitful.
At this point, there’s not a lot of room for error. Beyond the tree falling off the cliff, just single specimen is currently growing at the VerdeNativo botanic gardens in Chile.
“It is a race against time,” said VerdeNativo botanic gardens scientist Diego Penneckamp in a statement. “This international collaboration to support the last remaining individual could prevent the extinction of a species that represents a unique lineage with its own natural history.”
More on biodiversity: Wildlife Populations Have Shrunk a Shocking Amount in Just 50 Years, Report Finds
The post Scientists Rush to Save One of the World’s Rarest Trees as It Literally Falls Off a Cliff appeared first on Futurism.
Summer hasn’t even started in the Northern Hemisphere, and thermometers around the globe are already fit to burst.
In India, at least 16 people have died during a pre-monsoon season heatwave as temperatures reach a scorching 116 degrees Fahrenheit, with conditions expected to worsen over the coming days.
Meanwhile, the European continent is currently experiencing one of the worst heat waves on record, the Associated Press reports, with gauges in the United Kingdom recording all-time highs of 94.6 degrees Fahrenheit and 95.1 over a 24-hour period. Seven have already died in France during the hottest day in May in the country’s recorded history, while health officials in Italy have moved to restrict outdoor activity.
While these temperatures might not sound extreme by American standards — the US is a world leader in air conditioning usage, with some 90 percent of households covered — the heat is pushing people and infrastructure to their limits elsewhere in the world.
As a recent report on the UK’s global warming outlook noted, the country is “built for a climate that no longer exists,” with only 5 percent of households boasting AC units.
“While we do occasionally have warm spells in May, what we’re seeing now is unprecedented,” Stephen Dixon, a spokesperson for the UK Met told CNN. “What was around a 1-in-100 year event is now around a 1-in-33 year event.”
Making matters worse is the looming threat of El Niño, a cyclical climate pattern which raises temperatures around the world. That event typically comes once every two to seven years, but the one expected to kick off this summer is massive — forecasted to be nearly as bad as the nearly-apocalyptic heat spell of 1877, which killed millions of people.
Keep in mind, these record heat waves are hitting well ahead of both summertime and El Niño. As researchers have found, ambient global temperatures are already enough to kill elderly and even young people given the right amount of exposure time. In other words, this summer is about to give a whole new meaning to the phrase “jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.”
More on extreme heat: Earth Screams in Agony as Microplastics Found to Increase Global Warming
The post This Summer Is Going to Kill a Lot of People appeared first on Futurism.
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Greenhouse gases trap heat within the atmosphere. One such gas that exists beneath the ocean floor is methane. Ice-like substances on the seafloor that contain methane, known as methane hydrates, can break apart or melt, releasing methane gas into the ocean, risking further global warming. Melting permafrost, active tectonics, daily tidal patterns, and changing sea levels can similarly trigger methane’s escape from sediments. However, scientists don’t understand how these triggers will respond to future climate change.
A team of researchers hypothesized that future global warming could actually accelerate methane’s escape into the ocean. To investigate this hypothesis, they focused on an ancient global warming event approximately 56 million years ago, called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum or PETM. Arctic Ocean temperatures at times exceeded 20°C (68°F) during this event. These elevated temperatures serve as an analog for today’s rapidly warming conditions.
Once methane enters seawater, its fate is largely determined by 2 sets of biological processes. Today, 90% of methane released into the ocean from the seafloor is consumed by tiny organisms called microbes via a process known as anaerobic methane oxidation. During this process, microbes consume methane alongside sulfate, producing a solid iron-sulfur mineral, pyrite. Anaerobic methane oxidation prevents methane from escaping into the atmosphere by trapping it in minerals. In this case, the ocean becomes a reservoir, or sink, for methane.
Despite this, too much methane could overwhelm the sulfate-dependent cycle. If that occurs, a different set of microbes consumes methane alongside oxygen in a process known as aerobic methane oxidation. Aerobic methane oxidation produces carbon dioxide, a potent heat-trapping greenhouse gas that escapes from the ocean. Aerobic oxidation accounts for 10% of methane consumption in oceans today, though this could have been different in the past.
To determine how much anaerobic versus aerobic methane oxidation occurred during the PETM, the team extracted data from sediments retrieved from the Arctic Ocean floor. As sediment piles up on the seafloor, it compacts. Scientists can drill deep into the seafloor to extract a cylindrical sample, or core, of this compacted sediment.
The age of sediments in a core increases with depth. Therefore, younger sediments exist at the top of the core, and older sediments exist at the bottom. For this project, the team used a previously extracted core from the Arctic Ocean that contained sediments dating back 100 million years. They found 56-million-year-old sediments from the PETM at a depth of 386 meters, or 1,266 feet, in this core.
The researchers explained that microbes leave behind unique carbon-based molecules called organic biomarkers when they decompose. These organic biomarkers accumulate in seafloor sediments. The 2 different types of methane-consuming microbes leave behind 2 different biomarkers, one for anaerobic methane oxidation and one for aerobic methane oxidation. This team measured the amount of each biomarker in the sediment core to determine which microbes were dominant during the PETM.
The biomarker left behind from microbes performing aerobic methane oxidation is called hop(17)21-ene. The researchers noticed that the amount of hop(17)21-ene increased by a factor of 4 during the PETM. At the same time, the biomarker left behind from microbes performing anaerobic methane oxidation, called glycerol dialkyl tetraether, decreased to half. They interpreted these trends to reflect the rise of aerobic methane cycling and the shutdown of anaerobic methane cycling, respectively. They attributed this transition to the release of enough methane to overwhelm the sulfate-dependent methane cycle under warming conditions.
To estimate the amount of carbon dioxide produced by aerobic methane oxidation during the PETM, the researchers located another biomarker in the sediment core, called phytane. Phytane is produced by organisms that consume carbon dioxide during photosynthesis, and its structure preserves clues to the amount of carbon dioxide available at the time. The researchers found that during and well after the PETM, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Arctic Ocean was 4 times greater than modern levels. They concluded that the Arctic Ocean became a prolonged source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, even after the PETM.
The team suggested that the uptick in aerobic methane oxidation during the PETM serves as an analog for the modern Arctic Ocean, which continues to warm rapidly in the face of modern climate change. Their results highlight how the transformation of methane into carbon dioxide poses a threat. More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere warms the air, which heats the oceans, causing more methane to escape from the seafloor and eventually be converted into additional carbon dioxide. When triggered, this feedback would continue to amplify and could become difficult to recover from.
The post Does the Arctic Ocean regulate or amplify global warming? appeared first on Sciworthy.
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