A beautiful Carbon Sink. Photo:Giampaolo Macorig via flickr

A beautiful Carbon Sink. Photo:Giampaolo Macorig via flickr

Climate change, behind habitat loss, is the second biggest threat to biodiversity and may become the largest factor responsible for species extinctions in the coming years (Chivian et al. 2008). Forests store carbon and loss of this carbon sink can have a large effect on the climate (Bradshaw et al. 2009).

Unfortunately, less than 10% of the world’s forests are protected. It is estimated that 13 million hectares of the world’s forests are cleared annually (FAO).

The northern Boreal forests are large coniferous forests that contain roughly 30% of all the stored carbon on earth—an estimated 550 gigatonnes of carbon in soil and above ground pools (Bradshaw et al. 2009) Boreal forests are the largest contiguous forest left. However, this crucial carbon sink may become a carbon source if global warming increases decomposition rates and the growing season. The location of the Boreal forests at the northern latitudes makes one of the largest carbon sinks highly susceptible to climate change. Continued logging of this important forest will release carbon, speeding up global warming.

One study modeled carbon fluxes in the 21st century, looking at climate change, human interaction and deforestation rates of tropical forests. High deforestation (129 thousand km squared per year) could give more than 360 gigatonnes of carbon. This could lead to an addition 29 to 129 ppm (parts per million) concentration in the atmosphere (Cramer et al. 2004). That is a LOT, considering that in 2007, CO2 levels were estimated at 384 ppm. That level of deforestation is not ridiculous considering how the rates have been climbing.

SO DO SOMETHING! We need forest so they can act as a climate stabilizer (and for many many other reasons). The rate of deforestation needs to decrease in order to prevent it from having a significant contribution to climate change.

Sources:

• Bradshaw, Corey J.A, Ian G. Warkentin and Navjot S. Sodhi. Urgent preservation of boreal carbon stocks and biodiversity. 2009. Trends in Ecology and Evolution. 24.10: 541-546.

• Chivian, Eric and Aaron Bernstein. Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity. Center for Health and the Global Environment. Oxford University Press, 2008.

• Cramer, Wolfgang, Alberte Bondeau, Sibyll Schaphoff, Wolfgang Lucht, Benjamin Smith and Stephan Sitch. Tropical forests and the global carbon cycle: impacts of atmospheric carbon dioxide, climate change and rate of deforestation. 2004. Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences. 359.1443: 331-343.

• Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Forestry: Managing Forests for the future. 2009. Rome, FAO.

Hope you all had a wonderful thanksgiving dinner. By now, perhaps the pumpkin pie has been consumed and everyone is getting a little drowsy after the big meal.

But why?

Well, there are people who claim that consuming lots of turkey, as people are apt to do during thanksgiving, will make people more drowsy. This is due to an amino acid called Tryptophan. Tryptophan is awesome and our bodies need it, but it is a natural sedative.

However, this is probably just a fun idea… In most cases, if you eat a lot of food, you feel drowsy. Especially if you eat a lot of carbs with your meal.

There are a number of different reasons, but part of it is teh amount of blood being diverted to the intestines. This means the blood, and oxygen isn’t going elsewhere….

Earth Hour is a movement trying to convince people to turn off their lights for one hour a year.

Think about it. Flipping the light switch off for one hour is not really that hard. This hour is set every year.

The next Earth Hour is on Saturday, March 27th, 2010.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) organizes Earth Hour. They will also have an effect when world leaders meet at the Copenhagen Climate Summit to discuss climate change in December. The people of Copenhagen will be turning out the lights at 7pm, Dec. 16th.

Make a difference by joining the Earth Hour movement. “Cast your vote with your lightswitch.”

Earth Hour asks you to “Vote Earth.”

UPDATE:And they want you to Vote Earth so bad that they suggest I embed a video in my post…. so I did.

More about Earth Hour

In this day and age, the world is so much smaller than it used to be. As a journalism major, I am always trying to think of ways to make a story relevant and important to the bulk of society. This same principle of relevance and importance is true for various causes. In order to get people who don’t care to try to start making a difference, you have to find a way to make it important.

The main way environmental activists have tried to get apathetic parties interested in a certain cause is through economic means. If they make a particular conservation effort also economically viable, they stand a better chance of making the effort a reality. I propose a more unorthodox method; use people’s annoyance to further a cause.

Aside from being kind of a pretty rainbow, this oil spot cannot be good. Poor ecosystem....

Water pollution is a huge environmental concern. The degradation of our water systems has had huge affects on aquatic life. Polluted water entering storm drains have caused losses in fish populations and in the stability of aquatic ecosystems. As a reminder to the public, many public storm drains have pictures of fish next to them, reminding people that many drains lead straight to water systems. The EPA states that “90 percent of surface pollutants are carried by the first 1-1/2 inch of rainfall.”

Pictures of fish next to storm drains will not solve the problems of polluted run-off. The majority of the pollution comes from cars and from the chemicals found in asphalt. The people in the cars can’t see the pictures and the asphalt doesn’t care.

One solution is using permeable concrete. I have worked for the Tualatin Hills Park and Recreation District for the past two summers and I have seen the park district use permeable pavement for certain parking lots. For at least this type of pavement, it looked like regular pavement and was as smooth as regular pavement, so even people on bikes didn’t notice the change.

However, the environment will notice the change. Groundwater can be better replenished, polluting run-off is diminished, and trees and landscaping are much happier receiving the water. The environment benefits.

Petitioning contractors and developers to consider using permeable alternatives to asphalt and traditional concrete could go a long way. Although proponents of permeable concrete and paving surfaces have already tried to explain the economic benefits, I think that many times a different approach should be taken to get the public involved.

Some people use safety as a reason for the change. It is true that permeable concrete would be safer. Dangerous pools of water will be eliminated and the tendency of cars to hydroplane in foul weather will be diminished, making driving on wet days much safer.

However, there is a simpler and possibly more effective alternative. People sometimes ignore safety benefits if it is an inconvenience. An obvious example of this would be banning drivers from using cell phones. It would greatly improve safety, but is also an inconvenience.

Rather, use their annoyance. I live in Eugene. It is rainy here and I walk to class every day. I have seen puddles that morphed into small lakes, making pathways impassable. I have dodged waves of waters kicked up by passing cars.

A permeable surface eliminates these everyday annoyances that people in wet climates endure.

This is definitely just a small thing to advocate considering the huge issues in diminishing biodiversity and environmental degredation and perhaps I’m being a bit flippant about the whole concrete topic. However, big things come from small things. Trying to get people to face gigantic changes or admit that there are huge problems is a large task.

Getting one town to mandate that all new road construction must use permeable solutions is a huge step. After a town, a city, or a state. A small change can lead to big changes and large solutions. Everything must start small.

Middle school is not the best time for students to learn about biology.

Middle school students are right at the pre-adolescent stage. Too old to be cute and forgivable, too young to be sensible or reliable.

Its a mad mad world in middle school. Even when I was a middle school student I felt sorry for my teachers. Who chooses to be a middle school teacher? How is that rewarding at all?

My 7th grade science teacher was beloved by all. He found out how to deal with the terror of middle school students. 1) tell them stories. 2) let them watch movies.

He told us what would happen if you ate the brain of the frog you were dissecting.

He told us that DNA stood for deoxyribonucleic acid…. without explaining what DNA really was.
(For those interested, DNA is a nucleic acid consisting of a phosphate group, a 5-carbon sugar, and a nitrogenous base. It is “deoxy,” because unlike RNA, which has ribose as its sugar, DNA’s 5-carbon sugar is missing an oxygen- it is deoxyribose.)

When we learned about genetics… very briefly…. and talked about the issues of cloning, it was time for a “science” movie. It wasn’t boring, and it wasn’t even Bill Nye.

We watched Star Wars: Attack of the Clones.

When we learned about Darwin, and his theory of evolution, it was time for another movie.

We watched Evolution.

If you don’t know that movie, its a comedy where rapidly-evolving alien organisms end up on earth. If you want to know how scientific it is, it has blue monkeys. Enough said.

He must have been a science fiction fan.

Maybe I don\'t compare with Jules Verne\'s masterpiece, but it was rather large.

However, since this was a feat of biojournalism, here are a few excerpts from the essay:

Dividing up the Fish: A Way to Sustainability and Success

“O Oysters,” said the Carpenter,
“You’ve had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?’
But answer came there none–
And this was scarcely odd, because
They’d eaten every one.
-Walrus and the Carpenter, Lewis Carroll

Unless we are prepared to face a world where all the fish stocks suffer the same fate as the oysters in this whimsical child’s poem, innovative fishery management programs must be implemented. On the West Coast, such a plan has already been set in motion. These plans tend to be controversial and the debate still rages on: should the Pacific Fishery Management Council implement plans to use Individual Fishing Quotas (IFQs) to manage sustainable fisheries within its jurisdiction?

The ocean is considered a public resource, and in most places so are the fish. Limited Access Privilege Programs (LAPPs) are a way of dividing up the resource and granting a share of that resource to a fisher, a company, or a community. This share, called a quota share, is essentially a piece of property. These rights-based programs, also called catch share programs, may eliminate the “tragedy of the commons,” the notion that people will overexploit a public resource because the incentive to do so is always higher than the cost of protecting the resource. As it relates to fisheries, this means the benefit of overfishing is higher than the incentive to use sustainable practices and preserve the fish stocks for the future. IFQs (also called ITQs, or Individual Transferable Quotas) are a type of catch share program that grants quota to individuals in the system, such as fishers.

These types of management programs are one of the options that might solve the fisheries crisis. As the fish stocks are depleted, the industry dependent upon them is being thrown into economic despair. Almost 60 percent of fisheries in the world have already declined or are on the brink of collapse due to overfishing (Jacques and Smith 27). Fish stocks are not just important from an ecologic viewpoint; the economic problems that occur because of this collapse are also on a massive scale worldwide. In the US, the fishing industry contributed 28 billion dollars to the gross national product in 2002. In the groundfish fishery (comprised of species like whiting, flounder and lingcod) managed by the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC), seven species of groundfish are currently at extremely low levels due to overfishing.

In 1883, Thomas Huxley, a respected member of the scientific community, issued a statement stating that he believed the resources of the sea were “inexhaustible”. He believed that the productivity of an acre of fishing ground in the North Sea was so high that no man could make a significant impact on it. He was sadly mistaken. That same acre in the North Sea now has about a tenth of the productivity it had in Huxley’s day.

Much research was conducted on IFQs and still more is yet to come. Despite this, IFQ systems are rare in fisheries, which are mostly dominated by competitive-TAC based management. Many of management systems fail, causing fishers to lose faith with the councils that try to enforce them. Sometimes the failure is do to the high rate of accidental catch, or bycatch, of other species. The incentive for rushed and sloppy fishing practices that occur under many competitive TAC-based systems causes this problem. In an IFQ system, the incentives change. Fishers have a long-term share in an industry and like a share in the stock market, would like the value of it to increase. This fosters more sustainable fishing practices, and fishers take time to avoid bycatch, therefore preventing the “tragedy of the commons.” Any good management system changes the incentives so the most likely behavior that occurs is one that will benefit the system the most.

This is just one reason an IFQ system is environmentally beneficial. An IFQ system allows the TAC to be lowered without destroying the economic viability of the system. If a fisher catches more than his quota allows, the fisher will have to purchase or lease quota to cover his accidental catch. This is far superior to the wasteful dumping of fish that currently occurs in the Pacific groundfish industry. The rationalization of the fleet also reduces the number of boats that impact the ocean; thereby reducing the environmental harm the industry creates. A study done on the benefits of ITQs found that the percent of fisheries that were collapsed under a competitive TAC-based system was twice that of those under ITQs, a statistic that the authors say, “probably underestimates ITQ benefits, because most ITQ fisheries are young.” The longer ITQs are in place, the bigger the benefits are.

In the end, the implementation of IFQs in the Pacific groundfish fishery can be a model for the rest of the world. A successful IFQ program satisfies both the economic and ecological needs of the world. And yes, there will be those who argue against it, but this will happen with any revolutionary program. Unfortunately, a revolutionary program is what is needed to stop the fishing industry from permanently collapsing. As Charles Clover, author of The End of the Line says, “There is one solution that is controversial with fishermen…but it is simple and totally effective. That is preventing fish from being exposed to any kind of fishing gear at all.” Besides that option, this is the solution that will benefit the fish and the fishers the most.

If the above paragraphs don’t make as much sense, I apologize. Its hard to pick certain paragraphs out of a 20 page essay to post.

About Citations: I have a lot of sources, but they are not always cited in the usual manner. If anyone would like to see where I got any of my information, simply contact me and I will be happy to furnish you with 3 pages of annotated sources and 5 pages of work cited.

About Info Hell: Info Hell (as it is called by the professors, the GTFs, the students, the administrators and everyone, except the parents) is a rite of passage involving 10 weeks of hard labor on a single project. It is infamous for ridding the school of excess Pre-journalism majors. Type “Info Hell” into google to find the lamenting and blog posts of journalism students… as well as the FAQ page for the School of Journalism and Communication.

From a fellow blogger, and UO student’s perspective: Late Update-Hella Info

I have been working all term on a 100 page assignment on a certain topic. I have researched it thoroughly.

When it is completed, I will probably upload the entire project… although I doubt anyone will want to read it.

However, I am researching the benefits of implementing Individual Fisher Quotas to manage fisheries.

A commercial fishing vessel in Norway (Hakon Iversen via Flickr)

They are a type of catch share that allocates a certain portion of the particular fishery industry’s Total Allowable Catch to fishermen. It’s a market-based strategy. Quota can be bought and sold and acts sort of like shares on the stock market.

They are being hailed as the savior of the fisheries because they can protect the environment and provide a profitable industry as well instead of constantly making compromises that help neither the fish nor the fishermen.

Here are the environmental benefits:

-IFQs streamline the industry, making it more efficient. This mean less vessels to

-IFQs allow the Total Allowable Catch set in the industry to be lowered without affecting profits

-A fisherman with quota has a guaranteed long-term share in the industry. Something that he’ll want to protect. This means more environmentally-friendly fishing practices.

-IFQs often lengthen the season (after an IFQ system, Alaskan Halibut went from a 3 day season to a season lasting months), which means fishers can be careful about reducing bycatch. It also means fishers don’t catch as much as they can, often overfishing and also flooding the market.

-In some fisheries, if fishers caught more than allowed by the TAC on accident, they would have to dump the fish. This fish was then wasted and no money was gained. Under an IFQ system, quota must be bought to cover this extra fish. It isn’t wasted and because fishers have to pay for quota if they catch more than their quota, they have incentive to be careful.

Unfortunately, although catch share systems have been shown to protect fish stocks and allow them to rebound, there are a variety of social problems associated with IFQs, mainly the allocation of the quota. In Iceland, quotas have been in place for 30 years, but quota has become so concentrated, certain vessels hold a monopoly. The UN ruled that the system was discriminatory. A post on the Iceland Weather Report Blog explains the Iceland situation.

Currently, debates on allocation rights are going on right now as the Pacific Fishery Management Council is attempting to put the groundfish fishery on the West Coast under an IFQ system.

As for me, I will continue to research and read the hundreds of sources I have found on IFQs as I prepare this project for my class, a class lovingly called Info Hell by all parties, including the professors.

“A.D.H.D Drugs Linked to Higher Test Scores”

I have no problem with the article or with the scientists who conducted the study the article discusses. It simply states that children with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) who are being treated with medication are shown to have higher test scores than those who are not.

As a journalism major, my teachers have stressed the need for word choice and critical thinking. A title like that is very disturbing to me, someone who suffers from ADHD. It makes it sounds like people with ADHD who are medicated somehow have a better chance in school. In my mind it is like its implying that ADHD drugs are to students as steroids are to athletes.

This simply isn’t true. I can speak from personal experience. People who have ADHD are all very different, but for me personally, if I don’t take my medication, I am a post-toastie.

I fidget, I waste time. I glance around, I forget things. I will set a timer, tell myself that in 15 minutes I will start on the massive piles of homework that accumulate when a person double majors. I will tell myself every 15 minutes for over 6 hours that I will do my homework. When it doesn’t happen, I experience irritation, anger, shame, self-doubt and self-recrimination. Not to mention that I still have to do the homework.

If I take my meds, it gets better. Sort of. Of course, with ADHD, half the time I forget my to take my meds.

The fact that the headline is ambiguous already is bad journalism. I should know, because I suck at writing headlines, which means I’ve had plenty of instruction on bad headlines in professor’s efforts to improve them. I would rather people get the right idea from the headline. Perhaps this is an overreaction on my part, but I expect more from the New York Times website. It serves as a model for aspiring journalists everywhere in terms of writing. If someone just read the headline, it could have a detrimental affect on that person’s opinion on ADHD.

I mean, I know all about ADHD. If I got the wrong impression from the headline, how many other people could? Biojournalism must be precise.

As I’ve said, the article is very good. It simply explains that studies show medication works to reduce the symptoms of ADHD. Actually, it just shows a causal releationship. Like good scientists, the authors of the study point out that other factors could be a reason for the relationship. Good for them. For me, personally… I already knew that medication helps.

One person studies neurology and was arguing about how the blood brain barrier would prevent the toxin from reaching the brain.

The other studies chemistry and was arguing some chemicals can pass through the blood brain barrier because cells would need some chemicals in order to survive.

They are both right.

The blood-brain barrier does restrict many substances from reaching the brain and microscopic materials, such as bacteria. In general, most things cannot pass through it and must be changed in order to pass through the barrier.

However, it cannot restrict everything, or else drugs that affect the brain or diseases such as sleeping sickness (to choose a dramatic, Hollywood-type illness) would not occur. Sleeping Sickness, also called trypanosomiasis, is caused by a parasite, a protozoan that affects the brain tissue.

If all toxins could not reach the brain, neurotoxins would not affect us and you wouldn’t rush outside when you’ve been scrubbing with cleaning chemicals too long, or feel woozy.

However, without the blood-brain barrier, a tight network of blood cells, we would be a lot worse off.

The idea that a slug could enter your body and secrete a toxin ( that specifically targets an area to allow the bad guys to control you) might be is a little more Hollywood. I’m sure there are other arguments that could made that would destroy its credibility.

But hey! It’s the 23rd Century! There are a lot of things about biology that we don’t know yet.

Modeling a communications outfit in front of the Star Trek Poster, opening night (photo via Kris)

In the case that it is possible, I’ll be counting on Kirk and Spock to save us all.

For more on the realism of biology used in Star Trek, try these two books, one  co-authored by a molecular geneticist and a psychiatrist and one by a Harvard biologist.

- Life Signs: The Biology of Star Trek, by Susan and Robert Jenkins       For a little more of a fun, Trekkie-based read.

- To Seek Out New Life: The Biology of Star Trek, by Athena Andreadis For a serious biology discussion based in the world of Star Trek

For more about biology in science fiction, check out the Biology in Science Fiction blog.

Star Trek opened May 8th, 2009. It is playing in IMAX for a limited amount of time.