Loss of seagrasses ‘accelerating’
“The losses have been quite substantial,” says Kendrick. “Every year we’re losing about 110 square kilometres of seagrasses globally.”
He and colleagues found that since 1980, 29% of seagrass has disappeared and the overall rate of loss has accelerated from 0.9% a year, before 1940, to 7% a year, since 1990.
In the largest study of its kind, Kendrick and colleagues analysed 215 studies of seagrass beds in shallow coastal waters from around the world.
They found seagrass is being lost from east and west North America, the Caribbean, Mediterranean, Europe, parts of East Asia, Southeast Asia, as well as tropical and temperate Australasia.
Seagrasses are not just great props in beach photos they play an essential role in both beach and ocean ecology. Marine biologist Professor Gary Kendrick has found that seagrasses are the equal of the earth’s rain forest in fixing tropical forests. Seagrasses form a substantial part of the oceans food web. With about three quarters feeding bacteria which are at the bottom of the web and thus work their way up to ultimately feed larger creatures. The other quarter of seagrass supports wildlife like geese and sea turtles directly. Seagrass also serves as an anchor plant for sandy coastal areas which help form natural flood barriers.
Between CBS, certain bloggers and the perennially strange Senator Jame Inhofe(R) there are been quite a bit of noise about what great conspiracy to “suppress” a report ( really some unsolicited comments) from an economist named Alan Carlin. If there is any conspiracy here it is the attempt by Carlin and his supporters to portray his plagiarized pseudo-science as science. Most readers are probably aware that scientific papers that are say published in Scientific American or the U.K. journal Nature, undergo a review by other scientists in what is called a peer review. When a team of scientists read Carlin’s report that found that the science was less then serious and the citations were spurious. Deciding not to publish rubbish is a long way from suppressing information. This blogger delves a little deeper, Ever wonder why Americans don’t get science?
1. This was a “report” that same way Jame Inhofe’s bogus “minority report” was a report. (See “the most intellectually dishonest person” link.) Two non-climate scientists working for the NCEE (a branch of the EPA) decided to put together some unsolicited comments about climate change for the EPA report.
2. Their “report” relied heavily on the work of a leading figure of an industry front group. And by “relied heavily” I mean that they basically transcribed a previous pseudo-scientific piece from that group’s website.
Some further fact checking here, Bubkes
But it gets worse, what solid peer reviewed science do they cite for support? A heavily-criticised blog posting showing that there are bi-decadal periods in climate data and that this proves it was the sun wot done it. The work of an award-winning astrologer (one Theodor Landscheidt, who also thought that the rise of Hitler and Stalin were due to cosmic cycles), a classic Courtillot paper we’ve discussed before, the aforementioned FoS web page, another web page run by Doug Hoyt, a paper by Garth Paltridge reporting on artifacts in the NCEP reanalysis of water vapour that are in contradiction to every other reanalysis, direct observations and satellite data, a complete reprint of another un-peer reviewed paper by William Gray, a nonsense paper by Miskolczi etc. etc. I’m not quite sure how this is supposed to compete with the four rounds of international scientific and governmental review of the IPCC or the rounds of review of the CCSP reports….
A novel analysis of microscopic scratches on fossilized teeth reveals how plant-eating duck-billed dinosaurs used a now-extinct type of jaw to chew their food. The study also suggests duckbills were more likely to graze on low-lying greenery than to chomp on tree leaves like giraffes (or like the dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park”).
….”Rather than a flexible lower-jaw joint, they had a hinge between the upper jaws and the rest of the skully,”
Posted just because people always seem to like news that solves a mystery and because I like duck billed dinosaurs.
tangledwing 