Florida Coral Nurseries Snag $350K In 'Stimulus' Funding To Aid In Reef Recovery

MIAMI, Florida -- University of Miami (UM) Professor Diego Lirman and fellow Caribbean coral reef nursery scientists will be celebrating as well. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) today announced that The Nature Conservancy and its partners' staghorn and elkhorn coral recovery project, including Lirman's nursery in Biscayne National Park, will receive $350,000 from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to further develop large-scale, in-water coral nurseries and restore reefs along Florida's southern coast and in the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI).

The Nature Conservancy will serve as coordinator of the overall project, working with the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, as well as other academic, government and private entities to help repopulate local reef areas. The centerpiece of the proposed activities is the significant expansion of the four existing staghorn nurseries found between Broward County and the Lower Florida Keys, and the establishment of additional nurseries in the Dry Tortugas and the USVI. In all, the project will grow roughly 12,000 corals in Florida to enhance coral populations at 34 degraded reefs in the region.

Lirman, in UM's Marine Biology and Fisheries division, established a staghorn coral nursery within Biscayne National Park in 2007. This nursery presently holds approximately 500 fragments, and nursery fragments have already been used to restore four reefs where staghorn corals were depleted. The proposed plan includes expansion of fragment stocks (up to 4,000 fragments at this site) and the restoration of eight additional reefs over the next three years.

Florida boasts one of the planet's most significant coral reef ecosystems. Once abundant and productive marine habitat builders in Florida and the Caribbean, staghorn coral and elkhorn coral suffered severe population declines due to coral bleaching, diseases, hurricane damage, and other threats. Both corals were designated as threatened species under the authority of the Endangered Species Act in 2006. With the ability to produce numerous branches that can each grow four or more inches a year, these corals are well suited for nursery propagation and restoration efforts.

Source: http://www.underwatertimes.com/news.php?article_id=11059768320

Sea Ice At Lowest Level In 800 Years Near Greenland

There has never been so little sea ice in the area between Svalbard and Greenland in the last 800 years. (Credit: NASA/GSFC)

ScienceDaily — New research, which reconstructs the extent of ice in the sea between Greenland and Svalbard from the 13th century to the present indicates that there has never been so little sea ice as there is now. The research results from the Niels Bohr Institute, among others, are published in the scientific journal, Climate Dynamics.

There are of course neither satellite images nor instrumental records of the climate all the way back to the 13th century, but nature has its own 'archive' of the climate in both ice cores and the annual growth rings of trees and we humans have made records of a great many things over the years - such as observations in the log books of ships and in harbour records. Piece all of the information together and you get a picture of how much sea ice there has been throughout time.

Modern research and historic records

"We have combined information about the climate found in ice cores from an ice cap on Svalbard and from the annual growth rings of trees in Finland and this gave us a curve of the past climate" explains Aslak Grinsted, geophysicist with the Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.

In order to determine how much sea ice there has been, the researchers needed to turn to data from the logbooks of ships, which whalers and fisherman kept of their expeditions to the boundary of the sea ice. The ship logbooks are very precise and go all the way back to the 16th century. They relate at which geographical position the ice was found. Another source of information about the ice are records from harbours in Iceland, where the severity of the winters have been recorded since the end of the 18th century.

By combining the curve of the climate with the actual historical records of the distribution of the ice, researchers have been able to reconstruct the extent of the sea ice all the way back to the 13th century. Even though the 13th century was a warm period, the calculations show that there has never been so little sea ice as in the 20th century.

In the middle of the 17th century there was also a sharp decline in sea ice, but it lastet only a very brief period. The greatest cover of sea ice was in a period around 1700-1800, which is also called the 'Little Ice Age'.

"There was a sharp change in the ice cover at the start of the 20th century," explains Aslak Grinsted. He explains, that the ice shrank by 300.000 km2 in the space of ten years from 1910-1920. So you can see that there have been sudden changes throughout time, but here during the last few years we have had some record years with very little ice extent.

"We see that the sea ice is shrinking to a level which has not been seen in more than 800 years", concludes Aslak Grinsted.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090701102900.htm

Journal reference:

1. Macias Fauria et al. Unprecedented low twentieth century winter sea ice extent in the Western Nordic Seas since A.D. 1200. Climate Dynamics, 2009; DOI: 10.1007/s00382-009-0610-z

Adapted from materials provided by University of Copenhagen.

How the Oceans Once Ended Global Warming

Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News - During a period of natural global warming 55 million years ago, ocean plant life kicked into high gear. All that productivity captured excessive carbon from the atmosphere and dropped it to the ocean floor, where it was buried -- or "sequestered." Scientists studying the remains of those plants are starting to understand how they helped cool the Earth.

Last time Earth suffered a carbon-induced fever, it was the oceans that helped saved the day, say marine scientists in California.

Massive ocean-bottom accumulations of the mineral barite show that the last severe global warming episode 55 million years ago was accompanied by several thousands of years of ocean plant life kicking into high gear. All that productivity captured excessive carbon from the atmosphere and dropped it to the ocean floor, where it was buried -- or "sequestered."

"Basically what we're trying to say is the increasing barite accumulation rate is really generally recording greater productivity and not just changes in ocean chemistry," said Adina Paytan, an oceanographer at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

She is the author of a report on barite in the deep sea which appears in the December issue of the journal Geology, published by the Geological Society of America.

Barite, also known as barium sulfate, is a good indicator of productivity, Paytan said, because all living things contain a lot of the element barium in their tissues. When organisms in the life-rich upper waters die, they sink to the sea floor, taking that barium with them. At great depths that barium reaches its saturation point in the water and combines with sulfur to create the mineral barite.

In other words, barite is a secondary product of boom times in the sunny surface waters of a warmer world.

The new research contrasts with previous work on the signs of changing ocean productivity 55 million years ago -- what's called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) -- by looking for direct products of living organisms, Paytan told Discovery News.

If the barite speaks the truth about what turned down the thermostat during the PETM, it also could be a clue to how Earth will eventually respond to current global warming.

"I think the main contribution here is that the PETM is our best example of a natural carbon cycle experiment," said PETM expert James Zachos, who also works at U.C. Santa Cruz, but was not involved in Paytan's research.

"This study is suggesting that the peaks in barite observed in the deep sea...are accurately reflecting changes in the accelerated, though temporary, sequestration of carbon by one process -- higher algal production," Zachos told Discovery News.

That doesn't mean Earth is likely to repair the damage done by current global warming in any timely way, however, he cautions.

"Unfortunately, this process is slow and thus lags the buildup of carbon in the atmosphere," said Zachos.

In fact, said Paytan, the barite accumulation went on for about 170,000 years. That suggests it takes a lot longer to cool off a hot Earth than to heat up a cool planet.

Source: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/12/26/global-warming-ocean.html