Backyard
Nature's Direct Feed from |
Backyard
Nature's Direct Feed from |
Last updated on September 2nd, 2010
| Special edition journal provides new perspectives and guidance for managing white pine blister rust: Click here |
| 'My job was to locate the previously marked study trees... and record data on the activity of treated blister rust cankers,' wrote Charles 'Terry ' Shaw. 'The work took [me] in rickety four-wheel drive vehicles to remote locations scattered across the white pine forests of northern Idaho.' Shaw, now editor of a recently published special issue of Forest Pathology, described how 44 years ago, he and other young forestry students collected data about a destructive forest disease for senior scientists... |
| NIST ultraviolet source helps NASA spacecraft measure the origins of space weather: Click here |
| With a brilliant, finely tuned spark of ultraviolet (UV) light, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) helped NASA scientists successfully position a crucial UV sensor inside a space-borne instrument to observe a 'hidden' layer of the Sun where violent space weather can originate... |
| Seafood stewardship questionable: UBC-Scripps experts: Click here |
| The world's most established fisheries certifier is failing on its promises as rapidly as it gains prominence, according the world's leading fisheries experts from the University of British Columbia (UBC), Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California at San Diego and elsewhere... |
| NASA infrared data sees convection building in Fiona's clouds: Click here |
| Infrared satellite imagery from NASA's Aqua satellite showed some strong convection building in Tropical Storm Fiona, and her maximum sustained winds increased from 40 mph yesterday to 60 mph this morning... |
| NASA and NOAA's newest GOES satellite ready for action: Click here |
| NASA and NOAA's latest Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-15, has successfully completed five months of on-orbit testing and has been accepted into service. The satellite has demonstrated operational readiness of its subsystems, spacecraft instruments and communications services. GOES-15 is the third and final spacecraft in the GOES N-P Series of geostationary environmental weather satellites... |
| Infrared NASA image shows strong convection in new Atlantic Depression 9: Click here |
| The Atlantic Ocean is in overdrive this week, and NASA satellite imagery captured the birth of the ninth tropical depression in the central Atlantic Ocean today, trailing to the east of Tropical Storm Fiona... |
| Hurricane warnings posted on US East Coast, NASA sees Earl's heavy rainfall: Click here |
| NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, or TRMM satellite looked at the rate rain was falling in Hurricane Earl yesterday, and it was intense... |
| Mimicking fish and tailoring radar to warn of bridge peril: Click here |
| Floods cut down more bridges than fire, wind, earthquakes, deterioration, overloads and collisions combined, costing lives and hundreds of millions of dollars in damage... |
| NASA's Terra Satellite captures 3 tropical cyclones in the northwestern Pacific Ocean: Click here |
| NASA's Terra satellite flew over the Northwestern Pacific Ocean at 10:30 p.m. EDT Aug. 30 and captured Tropical Storm Lionrock, Tropical Storm Namtheun, and Typhoon Kompasu in one incredible image. Two of these tropical cyclones are expected to merge, while the other is headed for a landfall in China... |
| University of Colorado students, staff help NASA decommission satellite: Click here |
| University of Colorado at Boulder undergraduates, who have been helping to control five NASA satellites from campus, participated in the unusual decommissioning of a functioning satellite with a failed science payload in recent days, bringing the craft into Earth re-entry to burn up yesterday... |
| Goodbye to cold nights: Click here |
| Given the impact of climatic extremes on agriculture and health in Spain, researchers at the University of Salamanca (USAL) have analysed the two factors most representative of these thermal extremes between 1950 and 2006 - warm days and cold nights. The results for mainland Spain show an increase in the number of warm days greater than that for the rest of the planet and a reduction in the number of cold nights... |
| A decade of studying the Earth's magnetic shield, in 3-D: Click here |
| Today (September 1), space scientists around the world are celebrating ten years of ground-breaking discoveries by 'Cluster,' a mission that is illuminating the mysteries of the magnetosphere, the northern lights and the solar wind... |
| Researchers analyse 'the environmentalist's paradox': Click here |
| Global degradation of ecosystems is widely believed to threaten human welfare, yet accepted measures of well-being show that it is on average improving globally, both in poor countries and rich ones. A team of authors writing in the September issue of BioScience dissects explanations for this 'environmentalist's paradox.' Noting that understanding the paradox is 'critical to guiding future management of ecosystem services,' Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne and her colleagues confirm that improvements in aggregate well-being are real, despite convincing evidence of ecosystem decline. Three likely reasons they identify - past increases in food production, technological innovations that decouple people from ecosystems, and time lags before well-being is affected - provide few grounds for complacency, however... |
| Photo album tells story of wildlife decline: Click here |
| With a simple click of the camera, scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society and Zoological Society of London have developed a new way to accurately monitor long-term trends in rare and vanishing species over large landscapes... |
| Dramatic climate change is unpredictable: Click here |
| The fear that global temperature can change very quickly and cause dramatic climate changes that may have a disastrous impact on many countries and populations is great around the world. But what causes climate change and is it possible to predict future climate change? New research from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen shows that it may be due to an accumulation of different chaotic influences and as a result would be difficult to predict. The results have just been published in Geophysical Research Letters... |
| New study shows that oilsands mining and processing are polluting the Athabasca River: Click here |
| Inorganic elements known to be toxic at low concentrations are being discharged to air and water by oilsands mining and processing according to University of Alberta (U of A) research findings being published this month in one of the world's top scientific journals... |
| Climate change implicated in decline of horseshoe crabs: Click here |
| A distinct decline in horseshoe crab numbers has occurred that parallels climate change associated with the end of the last Ice Age, according to a study that used genomics to assess historical trends in population sizes... |
| Marine animals suggest evidence for a trans-Antarctic seaway: Click here |
| A tiny marine filter-feeder, that anchors itself to the sea bed, offers new clues to scientists studying the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet - a region that is thought to be vulnerable to collapse... |
| China, Russia provinces agree to first transboundary protected area to conserve Amur tigers: Click here |
| Jilin province of China and neighbouring Primorsky province in Russia agreed today to collaborate formally in working towards the first transboundary Amur tiger protected area amidst celebrations for the second annual Amur Tiger Cultural Festival in the northeastern Chinese city of Hunchun... |
| Rescue and relief the current priority for WWF-Pakistan: Click here |
| Rescue and relief is the current priority for WWF-Pakistan in the numerous communities it works with in the flood ravaged Indus basin... |
