Big Green Palm Leaves wallpaper
Studies confirm presence, severity of pollution in US national parks
The research should provide a better understanding of the risks, including which pesticides are most likely to accumulate and may require improved regulation.
Among the other findings of the studies:
* Every national park and preserve studied had a somewhat different pollution signature, reflecting localized and regional inputs.
* Most of the pesticide and PAH pollution came from local and regional sources, although some traveled in short-term, episodic pulses from Asia and other very distant locations.
* The comparatively cold temperatures in these alpine or arctic ecosystems tend to concentrate both PAH levels and pesticides.
* The study concluded that “potential risks exist for indigenous people and subsistence food consumers that rely on fish and meat from cold ecosystems.”
* Local pollution sources can be very important. One lake in Olympic National Park had PAH deposition 10 times higher than another not far away, possibly because it was closer to Seattle and nearby ship traffic in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
* Large-scale biomass burning near Glacier National Park seemed much less important in PAH deposition than some nearby aluminum smelting and oil and natural gas drilling operations.
* The majority of pesticide contamination in U.S. national parks is due to regional pesticide use.
* The magnitude of pesticide deposition varies from year to year, but the geographic sources of it generally do not.
While the vast majority of our toxic pollution problems are home-grown its a wake-up call for international action on pollutants and climate change that the pollution from Asia has reached us. We may have political borders but not environmental ones.
Fishy Gene Hints at How Limbs Evolved From Fins
The genes’ removal from zebra-fish embryos resulted in the loss of actinotrichia — a basic fin component — and made their proto-fins resemble appendages seen in ancient fossils of the first four-legged creatures.
…During early embryonic development, fins and limbs look strikingly alike. In fish, however, some cells form a pattern of fine fibers. These are the actinotrichia, which form the scaffold on which fin rays are assembled.
Photo at link.
This link tells how residents of the Gulf Coast can participate in a ghost crab count. The Ghost Crabs Of The Gulf
While it’s true that Ghost Crabs, Ocypode quadrata, aren’t birds, they are vitally important to the ecosystems in which shorebirds live, and are an important food source for many species. Anyone who has ever strolled an Atlantic beach is familiar with them, or at least the holes in which they live. Beaches from Rhode Island south, through the Gulf of Mexico and all the way to South America are dotted with the circular openings of their cylindrical burrows. They are gorgeous little creatures, and a major component of the diets of many beach going birds, including Wilson’s Plover, American Oystercatcher, and just about anything that might happen upon them.
While the photos of oil drenched animals in the Gulf are heartbreaking, the deaths of the small animals from the Ghost crab down to zooplankton will have a devastating effect on Gulf ecology for years if not decades.
Conservative media defend BP against “shakedowns,” “show trials,” and environmentalists at least 62 times. It is amazing how some have turned BP into the victim and those affected by the spill and those trying to hold BP accountable into the bad guys.
BP repair work releases more oil into gulf
“How can you deal with watching the oil kill every damn thing you ever lived for in your whole life?” said Ty Fleming, a land-bound charter captain who spoke Wednesday afternoon at the Undertow bar in Orange Beach, Ala.
…Far out to sea at the site of the oil leak, the containment cap was lifted Wednesday morning after a robotic submarine bumped into it and closed an oil vent, raising fears that slushy hydrates might form under the cap, U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Thad Allen said in a media briefing.
“Out of an abundance of caution … they moved the containment cap with the riser pipe and moved away so they can assess the condition,” Allen said.
On Wednesday evening, BP was attempting to reinstall the cap. A smaller containment system with a capacity of 10,000 barrels a day was still working. A federal panel estimates the leak is gushing 35,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil a day into the gulf.
Allen said that if hydrates hadn’t formed, workers would attempt to reinstall the cap, but that if hydrates were found, clearing the equipment and reinstalling the cap would take “a considerable amount longer.”
tangledwing 