Tracking bands can harm penguins

Penguins live at the bottom of the world, where scientists expect the most drastic global warming changes. As such, the waddling birds have become beacons of environmental change, so much so that they've been strapped with identification bands so climate scientists can monitor their whereabouts (and health status).

But the harm caused by this method of flipper tagging may outweigh the benefits, a new study suggests. Over a 10-year period, banded penguins produced 39 percent fewer chicks and had a survival rate that was 16 percent lower than birds without bands.

Yvon Le Maho, an ecologist at the University of Strasbourg and the French National Center for Scientific Research, and his collaborators reported the findings today (Jan. 12) in the journal Nature.

Tracking penguins
Le Maho and his team tracked 100 king penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus) on an island in the southern Indian Ocean near Antarctica by implanting electronic tags under their skin. Half of these birds also had metal bands put on their flippers.

The researchers found that banding increased mortality in less-fit birds during the first 4.5 years. The banded penguins also had less time and energy to reproduce and care for their young, because they spent more time foraging and arrived more than two weeks late to breeding areas.

"There was no sign the birds adapted to the handicap caused by the bands, even after 10 years," Le Maho said.

Extra baggage
Rory Wilson, an ecologist at Swansea University who was not involved in the research, said the extra baggage likely increased the drag penguins experienced and impaired their athletic performance. Any hindrance makes a huge difference to the animals, because they swim so efficiently, Wilson said.

Wearing the equipment forces penguins to expend 24 percent more energy while swimming, an amount similar to humans running with a heavy backpack, Wilson said, referring to research he has done on captive Adelie penguins. What's more, the gear could injure the flippers and attract the attention of predators, he added.

"Although at any one moment for any one day, the impediment is perhaps not that great, if you put on a band for the animal's life, then it's carrying that cost every hour of every day, and that could come to be quite a serious cost," Wilson told LiveScience.

The effect the banding had on breeding success varied each year, depending on climate patterns, the research team found. Banded birds suffered more than nonbanded birds during normal years, but the two groups fared similarly when environmental conditions were extremely favorable or very poor. Le Maho said that it’s necessary to monitor animals for a long period to fully appreciate the impact of banding.

Future of banding penguins
Because the approach diminishes survival and reproduction, Le Maho warned that climate change studies relying on banded birds are biased and produce questionable results.

Meanwhile, thousands of penguins still carry bands, and because they’re cheap, durable and convenient, scientists may continue to use them in the future.

"The big question for scientists using flipper bands is how much and under what conditions is banding penguins justified," Wilson said. "I would say that if anyone puts bands on, there has to be a bloody good reason for it."

Wilson said that the repercussions of banding would "absolutely" carry over to other penguin species, and possibly even seals and sea turtles. Scientists have also investigated the impact of climate patterns on Emperor penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri), Adelie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) and Galapagos penguins (Spheniscus mendiculus), among others.
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4 Big Green Trends at the 2011 CES

The 2011 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was impressive – and massive. At the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) alone, 3.2 million square feet of floor space were available to highlight the plethora of innovative products and ideas at the show.

"Convergence" products were huge at CES. For example, Panasonic's Viera Connect will allow users to watch TV, surf the Web, control devices, play games and more...all in one product. Photo: Amanda Wills, Earth911

Convergence, “smart” technology and revised use-case scenarios rocked the scene. Cell phones now control refrigerators, TVs surf the Web and stream online content, and glasses-free 3-D TV is already in the works.

Sustainability itself moved from a trend at past CES experiences to a practical expectation at this year’s show. Here’s a look at the top four themes that we caught onto in Earth911′s travels this past week.

1. Energy efficiency

The name of the game in greening up your tech starts with reducing its overall power consumption. “Smart” technologies in home appliances especially took this trend to a new level, with home appliances like refrigerators, washing machines and ovens that monitor the grid and can tell users when the least expensive time to run a cycle or cook a meal will occur.

These appliances will also learn when you most often use them (such as how many times a day and when you open the freezer) and adjust the temperature accordingly to keep foods fresh, even at slightly warmer temperatures, to reduce power consumption. You can even receive a text message from your oven to start and stop cooking cycles when you’re out in the backyard or even on the road.

Companies also met energy efficiency standards head-on, and the U.S. EPA is already revising its Energy Star program to take the requirements up another notch.

The bottom line is that consumers can expect their gadgets to strive to maximize efficiency and minimize power drain in new, intuitive ways.

2. Monitoring home energy usage

Jumping off of the efficiency trend, being able to monitor and control your home energy usage from any location is a huge theme in consumer electronics (CE).

“Smart” plugs offer a fast way to modify existing homes in order to monitor power usage, without needing a full-scale home energy monitoring (HEM) system.

While their features vary by manufacturer, essentially, smart plugs are outlet units that plug into regular household outlets to prevent vampire power drain, monitor energy consumption and generally reduce the overall costs to run various electronics.

Many versions offer wi-fi or radio wave technology that communicate consumption rates to energy profiles accessible from any location. This capability, as well as updates available by text or email, make unusual usage patterns easier to spot and money easier to save in the process.
For more info- http://earth911.com/news/2011/01/12/4-big-green-trends-at-the-2011-ces/

Earth On Fire

Not far from Hazard, Kentucky, in the shadow of Lost Mountain, a woman named Ruth Mullins saw smoke rising off the slope. “I knew it wasn’t no woods on fire, because of the smell”—the rotten-egg stench of sulfur—she said. Her suspicions were soon confirmed: Lost Mountain’s coal mine, abandoned for 40 years, was burning.

Kentucky names coal fires for the people who first report them, so the fire, which has continued to smolder and occasionally flame since it was identified in 2007, is known officially as the Ruth Mullins fire. “We’ve never met the woman and we don’t know where she lives, but her name now appears in scientific publications that are read all over the world,” says Jennifer O’Keefe, a geologist at Kentucky’s Morehead State University. “She’s got her little bit of immortality.”

O’Keefe is part of a team that has been visiting the Ruth Mullins fire over the past three years, studying its behavior and quantifying the gases that plume from nine known openings in the ground. Last January she and a colleague, University of Kentucky geologist James Hower, brought some students to the coal fire for new measurements. They parked off Highway 80, a road that cuts a swath along the side of Lost Mountain, and unloaded gear in a stingingly cold wind as speeding trucks whipped ice along the asphalt. Trudging up the snow-covered mountain, the scientists shivered along the flat shelf of land circling its midsection, the remains of contour mining in the 1950s. While smoke from the burning mine had been hard to spot from the road, here it billowed from small vents where portals to the mine had collapsed.

Coal fires are as ancient and as widely distributed as coal itself. People have reported fires in coal beds close to the earth’s surface for thousands of years—in fact, Australia’s Burning Mountain, once thought to be a volcano, sits atop a coal seam that has been on fire for some six millennia. But ever since the Industrial Revolution, the number of coal fires has grown dramatically. There are now thousands of such fires around the world, in every country—from France to South Africa to Borneo to China—where mining exposes coal deposits...
For more info- http://discovermagazine.com/2010/jul-aug/28-earth-on-fre

What Are the Latest Environmental Issues?

We read about them almost every day. Hear it all over the news. Even watch video documentaries about them. All of this information would not matter at all if we fail to understand and be fully aware of the environmental issues threatening our planet. Here are just some of the few environmental issues.

Many environmentalists and scientists will agree that one of the greatest problems that man has to face is Climate change or Global warming (Greenhouse effect). Satellite images captured and environmental research had proven the melting of polar ice caps causing a significant increase in sea levels. Weather patterns have extremely changed. Droughts, heat waves, wildfires are more widespread. Typhoons and hurricanes occur more frequent and with more intensity. Human health is continuing to be threatened as well, by the increase in epidemics and climate-sensitive infectious diseases.

Human populations throughout a large region in many parts of the world have experienced a large-scale epidemic of infectious disease, or to what are called as a Pandemic. To mention a few, notable pandemics were: Cholera, Tuberculosis, Malaria, SARS, Typhus, Influenza, Avian Flu, and Swine Flu. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the virus starts from infected animals, in some cases will then infect nearby humans. The virus is then spread directly from human to human. It is then considered as a pandemic if this new virus is spread over the world.

Another environmental issue that should not be brushed aside is the Endangered Species. Planetary changes are occurring at a rapid rate. Ecosystems and natural habitats are altered or diminished to accommodate human overpopulation. Dangerous chemical waste products from industrial areas and agricultural chemicals find their way into nearby bodies of water causing contamination. Illegal hunting and trading is also threatening to deplete a number of our endangered species. It all falls down to the fact that these animals and plants do not have enough time to react and adapt to these circumstances therefore are on the verge of being extinct.

Overpopulation is also one of the complex problems in need of immediate attention. Critics say that we are coming to close to the sustainable capacity of the Earth. Overpopulation arises from increased number of births, low mortality rates and even increase in immigration. With overpopulation comes poverty. People are also lead to war and violence from the lack of sustainable resources. It is expected that by the year 2050, the Earth's population will surpass the 9 billion mark, which is a very significant increase from the current number 6.5 billion.

I believe that proper education is the only key to unlock awareness. We can either choose to be the instrument for change or be a hindrance to it. It is never too late for CHANGE because every single effort counts. Put all the small efforts together eventually will turn into a movement of a global-scale. It may take time before we turn things around, but who knows one day we might wake up to see our planet in a better shape.
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