Batteries - How can we store energy

Energy is extremely hard to store, currently there are not may options for power storage, you can either store potential energy is the form of a dam or electrical energy in batteries. However these are not very feasible methods as dams require certain geography and years of planning and building, while current batteries are unable to store anywhere near the amount of energy needed for commercial use.

A Canadian group have been working on a solution to this problem and it's well worth having a read about it if you have a spare few minutes. This is something you could be seeing put into practice in the very near future.

Check out the link

http://www.sciencealert.com/underwater-balloons-could-give-us-a-new-way-of-storing-renewable-energy

Invasive Species - When Aliens Attack

Invasive species are devastating to the environment

Some people refer to a thing known as the ‘Rule of 10s’ this states that if 100 organisms are introduced to a new area 10 of them will be capable of surviving without input and of those 10 only  1 is going to cause a truly significant problem. So when you look at the numbers like that you have to ask yourself how likely invasive species are going to cause a problem. Well the problem is with better connection between everywhere in the world, thousands of invasive species have been able to move into new areas where they are all having very significant effects.

Now it’s hard to talk about invasive species in a general sense as every situation is different and is being dealt with differently.

An example of an invasive species in the UK is the grey squirrel, now this is something everyone who lives in the UK should already know about. In the 1870s they were introduced from the eastern side of North America which is their native range and since then they have expanded across the UK. In 2014 it was estimated that they possessed a population size of 2,520,000 within the UK. There are serious competitors to the native red squirrel this is due to their ability to store more fat than the red squirrels meaning that they are more likely to survive tough winters and be in a better condition afterward. Also their ability to produce more offspring whilst also living at higher densities, results in uncontrollable competition which the red squirrel is simply unable to match. It’s not just the competition they provide which has led to the decreased red squirrel numbers however, a virus known as squirrel pox has increased red squirrel decline by an estimate 17-20 times. This disease has been able to spread throughout the UK thanks to the extensive range of the grey squirrels which acts as a vector for the disease continuously introducing it to the few remaining isolated red squirrel populations.

A further example of an invasive species which has covered an entire country and has been mentioned before on this blog, is the mosquito fish Gambusia holbrooki, which was introduced into Australia in the 1920s, in the hope that it would control mosquito larvae. It is now present in every state except the Northern Territories and vastly affects the food web dynamics preying on aquatic invertebrates and breeding till it is the most dominant species in the pond. It also has an adverse effect on amphibians due to the fact that it attacks tadpoles and fin nips them which reduces the area of their tail and so prevents them from escaping from predators. There is not much to be done about this invasion as if a pond is drained gambusia always returns due to its resilience to droughts.

New Zealand as a country has been hit extremely hard by invasive species, owing to the fact that it has been separated from other land masses for so long means that in evolutionary terms many of the niches are occupied by organisms which are not adapted to predators and competition. This is issues being faced by many other isolated Islands such as Hawaii which distance for large land masses has made their ecology completely unique and so unable to cope with invasive species.

Within the US there are around +150 known invasive species which includes plants, reptiles, insects, molluscs, mammals, birds as well as pathogens (which are not usually thought of as an invasive species). One of the most well-known cases of invasive species within the US is the Burmese Pythons which can now be found in the Florida Everglades. A population which is believed to have become established due to the escape or release of captive pet, over 2000 were removed from 2002-2015 but it is believed that this effort made no kind of significant impact on population numbers despite extensive efforts.

Finally it is not simply invasive animals which cause problems and disrupt the stability of ecosystems, the introduction of invasive plants can cause equally as many problems to both native plants and animals. A quick example of this would be Japanese Knotweed which was introduced into Britain by the Victorians as an ornamental garden plant and has again spread from gardens into rural Britain, resulting in an estimated cost of £1.5billion to bring it under control.

As you can see invasive species are a serious issue and one which costs nearly every country billions of pounds a year through either loss of economic income or attempts in controlling and eradicating the invading species. In most cases however the damage has been done with many native species having become extinct due to the introduction of a new organism.

However there is always more work to be done on this front as with each new invasive species new threats are created and new diseases introduced resulting in different native species being put under pressure.

You can do something though, something as simple as thinking about what you are planting in your garden and whether its spread will be detrimental to your local environment will help. As well as this there are groups which are easily found in the internet local to you which need the help of volunteers to remove invasive species, so if you have some spare time that would be a good option to look into.

Thanks for reading

Side note – I only just brushed the surface of the effect that each of the invasive species mentioned in this post has and if you are interested there are countless studies being conducted, some of which have been running for many years to show the full extent of the introduction of an invasive species.

Check out these videos

The Ethiopian Wolf - An animal on the edge

The Ethiopian wolf is a amazing animal but unfortunately it is now down to  an overall populations of fewer than five hundred individuals. As the name would suggest it is endemic to Ethiopia, specifically the few remaining mountain ranges which possess suitable Alfroapline grasslands above 3200m in altitude.

The largest of the six remaining populations is found

in the Bale Mountains and it is made up of 210 individuals with 113 of them being mature individuals capable of breeding. The age which wolves are capable of breeding is 2 years old and once they reach this age they have the potential to breed once a year till 10-12 years of age. Each brood is contains on average between 3 to 6 pups with the chances of each pup making it through their first year being 45% for females and 55% for males. However not every individual has the opportunity to breed, only 57% of females get to
breed, this is due to the pack system which the Ethiopian wolf employs much like most canine species only the Alpha female of each group breeding each year.

A Wolfs diet consists nearly completely of rodents (96%) which are found thr

oughout the mountain ranges they inhabit, specifically this takes the form of giant mole rats and Blick’s grass rats. However they have also been known to feed on other small mammals such as Starck’s hares and Rock Hyrax and it is these prey items which makes up the remainder of the wolves diet (4%).

The Ethiopian wolf populations have been experiencing significant population declines for a number of reasons, such as disease, hunting, habitat lost and cross species breeding. The main two disease which are effecting wolf populations are the rabies virus and CDV (canine distemper virus). There were serious outbreak of CDV in 2005/6 and 2010 and these cases produced a fatality rate of 43% and 68%. These numbers are extremely significant especially now the population in now less than 500 individuals, for instance if there is another outbreak of CDV within the next few years this could take the population dangerously close to an unviable population. Rabies outbreaks also increase mortality rates significantly with an outbreak in 1991-92 killing 77% of remaining individuals in the Bale Mountains and with the increase of feral dogs in the area there is increasing risks of further outbreaks.

Another pressure which is attributes to the decline of the Ethiopian wolf is the loss of habitat, there is now only around 4200km² of suitable habitat left for this wolf and this is spread out between the six remaining populations with only 2779 km² of the available area being used by the remaining population. Habitat declines are mainly due to the increase of farming in the area, the high altitude grasslands provide fertile pastureland for local’s livestock. As the human population continues to increase there is a higher demand for free land for food production and at the current rate of use the Ethiopian wolf is destined for extinction.

It’s not only an expanding human population in the area which is causing the decline of Wolves, feral dogs are also causing population declines as well as hybridisation of genetics when the two species come into contact.  Although only a few cases of this happening have so far been observed this dilution of the gene pool will affect the ability of the wolfs population to increase.

 There is a conservation effort in progress to attempt to prevent the extinction of the Ethiopian Wolf, for instance the Bale Mountain population has been continually monitored for the past 30 years sadly despite these efforts the population is still declining.

Hopefully in the very near future this will change giving the Ethiopian Wolf a chance to escape extinct.

Thanks for reading

Check out these videos 

Logging - An avalanche of effects

Logging is an environmental issue that has very far reaching effects; many people will know that millions acres of trees are cut down every single year across the world from the rain forests of Amazon to the tundra of Russia.

I’m not planning on actually focusing on the removal of tree while this is the major issue as they play extremely significant effect on the ecosystem for things such as carbon storage, food and shelter. However once removed a process starts, an entire cascade effect or avalanche which is started by the removal of trees.

The first impact on the habitat when trees are removed starts instantly, the topsoil becomes unstable, this means that the thin nutrient rich layers of topsoil is at risk. The topsoil is lost within a couple of years owing to the fact that it is no longer secured by roots and also because water will move through it faster speeding up the process of leaching. Leaching occurs when water from rain moves through the exposed and unsecured topsoil, as it moves it carries away nutrients and organic matter either in solution or suspension. This matter is washed into water systems where it can cause a boom in productivity of aquatic life or given excessive quantities cause a crash due to excessive siltation. However this is only a one off situation as after a year or so all the nutrients are removed and so the ecology of the water system is affected.

It does not just end there however as after the initial boom there is a lack of interaction between riparian areas (area within influence of the river) and the aquatic life. A study was conducted between these exchanges of both biotic and abiotic factors; it was found that when these interactions were prevented invertebrates such as riparian based spider population crashed massively as significantly fewer aquatic invertebrates emerge to start their new life stage due to lack of nutrient sources from within the river reducing population size. Also feeding systems within the rivers were affected and some more generalised species populations increased while others more specific niche based organisms crashed due to the new habitat created.

Deforestation also affects human populations as the removal of trees effect the water cycle. Forests act as a sort of biological dam, the rain fall is caught up in the forest either held within the plants before being transpired, or as suspended ground water. This means that rainfall is steadily released into the water ways thus controlling flow rates. Removal of the trees however prevents this process and so rain proceeds into rivers faster without being stalled, resulting in extreme and quick fluctuation it river level. These changes in river levels can increases the risks of flash flooding in villages, towns and cities which are commonly found on large water ways lower in the catchment area. The faster movement of this water through the water cycle also results in the areas which have been deforested being drier overall with a lack of ground water.

Finally the effects of deforestation are detrimental to human advances; already there are around 7,000 medical compounds which are derived from plants. It is also important to remember  that I’m not talking about herbal medicine or Chinese medicines, because these are a con, if they are helpful the active molecule would have already been isolated and concentrated into modern medicine. It is still unknown to the exact extent of medical cures the forests of the world contain but with an estimated 28,000 species expected to become extinct in the next 25 years due to deforestation  it is likely that many of them will be lost forever.

So what can you do?

Simply try to avoid all types of tropical woods for furniture and other applications especially Sapelee, Wenge, Ebony, Brazilian Mahogany and Burmese teak, will help as it is demand for these exotic products which are truly driving the process of deforestation. Also try to make sure that the wood in the products which you do purchases is sourced from a sustainable managed sources. The FSC for instance certify groups who support responsible forestry, so look for their logo.

Thanks for reading

Check out  this article - Just goes to show what we can still learn for nature to benefit humanity 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-34466220

Check out these videos