Sharon Writes

August 6, 2010

The Sound and the fury: Why mapping the seabed of Lancaster Sound has the Arctic in an uproar

Filed under: Globe and Mail, Magazines and newspapers — Sharon @ 2:38 pm
The  Globe and Mail

August 6, 2010

SHARON OOSTHOEK

When William Baffin sailed past the entrance to a broad channel north of the island that now bears his name, little did the intrepid English navigator realize that it was the gateway to the very thing he was looking for: the fabled northwest passage to the riches of the Far East.

Four hundred years later, another European ship is headed for Lancaster Sound. It, too, is on a voyage of discovery, one designed to advance not only scientific knowledge but the cause of Canadian sovereignty.

The German research vessel Polarstern (Polar Star) has been enlisted by Natural Resources Canada (NRC) to conduct seismic testing of the Arctic seabed. Over the next two months, it will crisscross 5,500 kilometres, nearly 400 kilometres of it in the sound, collecting data and gaining a better understanding of what lies beneath the ocean floor.

At the same time, hundreds of kilometres to the west, Canadian scientists are working with counterparts from the United States on a similar mapping project. Two coast guard icebreakers, one from each nation, are exploring 21,000 square kilometres of the Beaufort Sea in a bid to settle once and for all where Alaska ends and the Northwest Territories begin.

And last week the flagship of Russia’s polar fleet, the Academician Feodorov, left port in Archangel to spend 100 days conducting geological and seismological studies between Siberia and the North Pole as part of Moscow’s drive to expand its territorial waters.

With just three years before the deadline set out by the United Nations Law of the Sea, the race to claim what lies below the ocean is clearly approaching the finish line.

Long a subject of heated debate, northern sovereignty has been especially touchy since the polar ice began to melt, making the Northwest Passage a potential conduit for international shipping. Which is why it was no laughing matter three years ago when the Academician Feodorov reached the North Pole and sent down a submersible carrying the deputy speaker of Russia’s parliament to plant a flag on the bottom.

Yet the fight for national supremacy isn’t why people who live in the path of the Polarstern went to court this week

(more…)

July 28, 2010

Signs of the Times

Filed under: Canadian Wildlife, Magazines and newspapers — Sharon @ 5:39 pm

Canadian Wildlife, July/August 2010

By Sharon Oosthoek

Assessing the impact of climate change on wildlife is tricky business. Any given year may be warmer or wetter than usual and still have nothing to do with climate change. That’s called weather.

Gambo, Newfoundland trapper Clarence Pritchett knows all about that. In his 35 years of trapping, he’s seen animals that have suffered through bad winters, and he’s seen the opposite.

This past winter was unusually temperate and animals such as otters and mink are now plump and healthy. “It’s not a pattern though,” says Pritchett. “We have good winters and bad winters. It changes drastically with the North Atlantic.”

But climate change is about patterns. Not seasonal or even yearly fluctuations, but long-term changes in temperature, precipitation, wind, and even ocean currents.

So a decade or more of unusually warm temperatures or lots of snow may signal climate change.

“In order to make that link, you have to have a long enough time series,” says Gary Stern, senior research scientist at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Winnipeg. “I would say 10-15 years of data on an annual basis … You have to monitor the biota (plants and animals) but you also have to the monitor the system that’s changing and try to link the two together, which is a difficult thing.”

Paul Wilson, a wildlife geneticists with Ontario’s Trent University, agrees that long-term patterns are key, and urges meticulous research to set baselines for comparison.

“I think we as scientists have to be careful we’re not jumping on the climate change bandwagon and trying to attribute everything we see to climate change,” says Wilson.

Other human-induced changes – fragmentation, pollution and introduced species – also make it hard to separate out what can and can’t be chalked up to climate change.

That’s why Jody Allair, a biologist with Bird Studies Canada, counsels caution.

‘Our scientists are finding it difficult to tease apart the variety of factors contributing to (bird) range shifts or to decipher an overall pattern,” says Allair.

Southern Yukon Tlingit elder Stanley James has also seen wildlife shifting ranges in the past few years, and like Allair, can’t say with certainty what is behind it.

“We’ve had polar bears coming down this way now, on the Dempster Highway. We have cougars coming in from the south. And then we’ve had muskox,” says James. All are unusual sightings near his home in Carcross.

“The animals know there is a change that is happening,” he says. “We used to have four feet of snow when I was on the trap line 60 years ago. Now you only have about 17 or 18 inches of snow.”

With these caveats in mind, we offer here a sampling of intriguing, and often troubling changes in the lives of Canada’s wild animals.

(more…)

July 4, 2010

Wasp Detectives

Filed under: Magazines and newspapers, YES Magazine: The Science Magazine for Adventurous Minds — Sharon @ 2:14 pm

YES Mag: The Science Magazine for Adventurous Minds, July/August, 2010

Wasp Detectives

by Sharon Oosthoek

A tiny black-winged wasp is about to become a detective in the case of the emerald ash borer, a beetle that has killed millions of ash trees in Canada and the United States.    The shiny green beetles hitched a ride from Asia about 10 years ago, hidden in wood packing materials for products shipped to North American stores. It’s the beetle baby that kills trees — larvae feed under the bark and destroy the system that transports food and water to a tree.

Luckily, researchers at Ontario’s University of Guelph found that a native wasp, Cerceris fumipennis, can detect beetle-infested areas. The wasp leaves its nest in search of prey and in as little as half an hour knows if beetles are present. That’s good news because the faster we find the emerald ash borers, the faster we can stop them. Fewer trees will have to be cut down or injected with expensive pesticides to stop the beetles’ spread.

“It’s like the wasp is Sherlock Holmes and we’re his assistant Watson,” says bug expert Philip Careless, who was a master’s student at the University of Guelph when he helped figure out the wasps make good investigators. “You have a partner — which happens to be a wasp — that is awesome at finding where these pests are that are moving into our neighborhoods to eat our trees.”

Careless, who is now a bug expert with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, says the wasp is good at finding the beetle because it’s one of its favorite meals. Mother wasps bring the beetles back to the nest to feed their larvae. Careless knows this because he visited places known to have emerald ash borers, and then he looked for wasp nests on the nearby ground.

After the mother wasps left their nests to hunt, he put clear plastic cups over the nest entrances. When a mother returned and found her nest blocked, Careless grabbed her groceries. He found — you guessed it — emerald ash borers.

Unfortunately, the wasps kill too few emerald ash borers to stop them from spreading. That’s where humans come in. Forest managers in the U.S. are now training volunteers, including scouts and guides, to watch nests and tell them when the wasps bring back emerald ash borers. In Canada, Careless and his team will spend this summer finding out where the nests are and next year volunteers can take over.

Want to volunteer, but you’re afraid of a wasp sting? No worries. “These wasps have a stinger, but they don’t use it in defense. They use it to paralyze prey,” Careless says.  “We grab them all the time when we steal their groceries and they never sting us.” Beetles, beware.

June 6, 2010

Short-sighted discovery

Filed under: Magazines and newspapers, ON Nature — Sharon @ 1:01 pm

ON Nature, Summer 2010

by Sharon Oosthoek

Go outside and play. It’s a rare child who hasn’t heard those words, and now there’s another reason to heed them – better eyesight. Australian and Singaporean researchers have found the more time kids spend outdoors, the less likely they are to be nearsighted.

 From 2003 to 2005, researchers with Australia’s University of Sydney gave more than 2,000 12-year-olds eye exams, and then asked them and their parents how much time they spent outside.

 The average was 2.39 hours a day, but the children who exceeded that were less likely to be myopic compared to those who didn’t, regardless of confounding factors such as their parents’ myopia. Researchers at the National University of Singapore, who conducted a similar study of more than 1,200 teens in 2006, came to the same conclusion.

 So what’s going on? Do kids who spend more time outside spend less time straining their eyes reading or playing video games? No, say researchers. In fact, “close work” had little effect on eyesight.

 Light may be the answer.  According to the Australian researchers, “Light intensities are typically higher outdoors than indoors, and pupils will be more constricted outdoors. This would result in a greater depth of field and less image blur.”

 The findings come at a time when myopia among children appears to be on the rise: in the West, one in three kids is nearsighted and in some highly urbanized East Asian regions, it exceeds 80 per cent.

May 20, 2010

Scientists create first synthetic cell

Filed under: CBC.CA, Magazines and newspapers, Online media — Sharon @ 3:54 pm

CBC.CA

May 20, 2010

May 3, 2010

Eagles’ homecoming may harm fragile ecosystem

Filed under: CBC.CA, Magazines and newspapers, Online media — Sharon @ 5:42 pm

CBC.CA

May 3, 2010

Restoring a species to its native habitat is usually considered a good thing, but an unusual study reconstructing historic bald eagle diets is raising flags over their reintroduction off the California coast.

Attempts to bring back the United States’ iconic bird to the Channel Islands could put at risk populations of recovering seabirds and the threatened island fox, according to research published in Monday’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A bald eagle nesting on California's Channel Islands in 2008. (Peter Sharpe/Institute for Wildlife Studies)

March 29, 2010

Secrets of overseeding

Filed under: Magazines and newspapers, Online media — Sharon @ 4:29 pm

greenliving, March 2010

Tough winter? Here’s how to bring your lawn back to life, naturally.

Sharon Oosthoek

Just like people, lawns can get tired and worn out. Heavy shade, high traffic areas, compacted soil and recurring pest infestations such as grubs can thin even the lushest turf.

One way to bring your lawn back to life is by over seeding. Because grass seeds need warmth and moisture to germinate, the best time to do this is mid to late spring or late August. Avoid the high temperatures and relative dryness of full summer. To do this you can hire a lawn care company to prepare your lawn and apply the seed, or you can do it yourself.

Reap what you sow

If you’re a do-it-yourselfer, the first step is to buy the highest quality disease-resistant seed from a garden centre with a good reputation, giving you the best chance for success. Make sure it’s not last year’s seed, which will have a lower germination rate.

Pay attention to seed bag labels, which will tell you if you’re buying the right grass blend for the area you intend to reseed. Some seed mixtures do better in shade, others in full sun. Still others are especially adapted to dry or moist conditions.

The most common mixtures include Kentucky bluegrass and perennial ryegrass. Garden experts recommend staying away from mixtures that include a lot of quick-germinating annual ryegrass seed because one good harsh winter will kill the grass.

Laying the groundwork

Before you start sowing, be sure to properly prepare your lawn. The first step is to remove the old turf with a trowel or shovel, marking out the area you need to replace. Next, break up the soil underneath and enrich with organic material (such as rich compost or well-rotted manure) and level it with a rake.

Now you’re ready to sprinkle your carefully-chosen grass seed across the area according to the package directions. Be sure to apply a topdressing layer of soil overtop of the new seeds to maximize moisture retention. Soil cover will also keep seeds from being blown away and protect them from hungry birds.

Over the next few weeks you’ll want to make sure the newly seeded patches stay moist. If Mother Nature takes care of this chore for you, all the better. If not, get out the sprinkler or garden hose to keep your lawn evenly moist, but not soggy.

Once the grass germinates, let it grow to about 10 centimetres before cutting it.

March 13, 2010

Closing the phosphorus loop

Filed under: Globe and Mail, Magazines and newspapers — Sharon @ 8:47 am

The Globe and Mail,  Saturday March 13, 2010

by Sharon Oosthoek

Like a fickle god, phosphorus gives life and takes it away. If too much leaches into lakes and streams, algal blooms suck oxygen from the water and choke off life.

But if too little exists, we are all in trouble: Phosphorus is a dwindling, and non-renewable, component of agricultural fertilizers, essential to growing food for Earth’s burgeoning population, says the International Institute for Sustainable Development, a Winnipeg-based environmental think tank, which recently released a report on phosphorus spills in Manitoba’s waterways.

(The problem in Lake Winnipeg is so severe that the green-blue algae can be seen from space.)

In a race against time – some experts cite 30 years, some 100, until the resource runs out – scientists are scrambling to recapture phosphorus. “So, we convert a problem into a product,” says Fred Koch, a researcher at the University of British Columbia.

Mr. Koch is a research associate of Don Mavinic, a UBC civil engineer who has designed a system that removes phosphorus from liquid sewage at wastewater-treatment plants and turns it into slow-release fertilizer pellets.

Their system capitalizes on the fact that humans expel about three million tonnes of valuable phosphorus a year, which, along with fertilizer runoff, often ends up in local waterways. “We prevent the pollution and we ship fertilizer into a marketplace that will literally be starving for phosphorus,” Mr. Koch says.

“Clean phosphorus reserves are rapidly being depleted and there are no new reserves being found by the mining sector,” Mr. Mavinic says.

While there is scientific debate over when we will see a shortage, researchers at the University of Technology in Australia and Linköping University in Sweden say we may have mined all the easily accessible, high-quality phosphate rock in as few as 30 years. By then, the United Nations estimates, there will be two billion more of us, clamouring to be fed. The implications are daunting. While there are alternatives to other finite resources such as oil in the form of renewable energy, there are no current substitutes for phosphorus.

Mr. Koch’s and Mr. Mavinic’s system of two-storey metal cone reactors was designed to deal with struvite, a byproduct of biological wastewater treatment that clogs pipes and valves and must be regularly removed at great cost. Struvite is a concrete-like substance made up of phosphate, magnesium and ammonium.

The invention takes struvite from the wastewater in its soluble state, before it can harden on pipe walls. The soluble struvite is then forced into giant metal cones, where it mixes until it hardens and forms phosphorus-based fertilizer pellets.

Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies, the Vancouver-based company created to commercialize the invention, built cone reactors at an Edmonton wastewater-treatment plant in 2007 – the first large-scale demonstration of the technology. Last summer, the first commercial system came online in Portland, Ore.

Oregon farmers are buying the pellets, and say they are happy to find high-quality fertilizer at a time when supplies are becoming uncertain and prices volatile.

Ostara estimates there are 200 plants across North America, and several hundred in Europe and the rest of the world, that are candidates for the technology. Two new struvite reactors are coming online early this year – one in Chesapeake Bay, Va., the other in York, Pa.

While there are a limited number of struvite-recovery operations in other countries – Japan leads the way – most have so far yielded pellets of uneven quality, Mr. Koch says.

Meanwhile, Ostara says its technology has passed performance tests in industrial wastewater-treatments plants, including corn-ethanol production plants. And Mr. Mavinic is now working with colleagues at UBC’s Dairy Education and Research Centre on retrieving phosphorus from cow manure, which is an even richer source of this essential element.

“Globally, we have no choice but to implement phosphorus removal and recovery from wastewater-treatment plants. Otherwise, we cannot grow enough food to feed all those people, or raise cows and hogs,” Mr. Mavinic says.

March 4, 2010

Invasion of the earthworms

Filed under: Magazines and newspapers, ON Nature — Sharon @ 2:14 pm

ON Nature, Spring 2010

by Sharon Oosthoek

Invasive earthworms alter nutrients on which northern hardwood trees and plants depend.

Invasive earthworms alter nutrients on which northern hardwood trees and plants depend.

It sounds like a bad Hollywood film, but truth can be stranger than fiction.

While gardeners love to see earthworms in their soil and eco-conscious apartment dwellers rely on them to compost food waste, what most people don’t know is that the vast majority of worms in Ontario are in fact invasive.  Furthermore, scientists recently discovered that the earthworms’ ability to decompose organic matter makes them a growing threat to our hardwood forests, including Canada’s iconic maple trees.

The vast majority of the approximately two dozen species of worms we see today arrived with European settlers more than two centuries ago in ships’ ballast and agricultural products.  (Before that, only two species of worms were in Ontario.)

But the very trait that makes them the darling of gardeners everywhere also makes them a menace in Ontario’s hardwood forests. European worms are much better than native species at munching through leaf litter.  In doing so, they alter the structure of phosphorous and nitrogen – nutrients on which northern hardwood trees and plants depend – such that they are no longer bound up with organic matter and they leach away with the rain.

A 2008 study of northern Minnesota hardwood forests found significantly smaller growth rings in maple trees from forests with European earthworms compared to worm-free forests. “Our research would apply to the hardwoods of southern Quebec and Ontario’s maple forests,” said University of Minnesota forest ecologist Lee Frelich, who worked on the study.

While European worms have been here for more than two centuries,  according to Frelich it takes roughly 1,000 years for a hardwood forest to adapt to such drastic change.  And as the climate warms, these worms are thriving farther and farther north.

While worms move five to 10 metres a year on their own, their wide dispersal is believed to be mostly due to fishermen transferring bait from one lake to another. In 2008, Trent University graduate student Stacy Gan found European earthworms on Akimiski Island in James Bay; their eggs probably arrived  in soil on the runners of float planes carrying goose hunters. Before that, worms had not been found farther north than Moosonee.

January 13, 2010

Why Haiti’s quake was so devastating

Filed under: CBC.CA, Magazines and newspapers, Online media — Sharon @ 12:26 pm

CBC.CA

January 13, 2010

by Sharon Oosthoek

The green line south of Port-au-Prince shows the fault line where the 7.0-magnitude quake was centred. The epicentre was 10 kilometres beneath the surface. (U.S. Geological Survey)

The green line south of Port-au-Prince shows the fault line where the 7.0-magnitude quake was centred. The epicentre was 10 kilometres beneath the surface. (U.S. Geological Survey)

Tuesday’s earthquake in Haiti was especially destructive because its epicentre was close to a major city and its hypocentre, or focal point, was close to the Earth’s surface, says a Canadian seismologist familiar with the area.

Natural Resources Canada seismologist John Cassidy says the 7.0 quake — centred just 15 kilometres southwest of the capital of Port-au-Prince — happened roughly 10 kilometres below ground.

“If the earthquake had happened further below, it would have lost its energy as it moved up,” he says.

When Seattle was hit with an earthquake measuring 6.8 in 2001, the damage was much less severe because it happened 60 kilometres below ground.

Full article

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