Little Changes Today is a conservation themed blog with weekly informative posts aimed at suggesting how you can personally improve the planet. Posts include weekly articles, species information and other interesting information to allow you to become more informed about the natural world.
Following on from my post on Monday about greenhouse gases
there has been some potential good news on the methane front.
A group of researches in the Denmark are developing a new
type of genetically modified grass which will be easier for the cows to digest.
This will therefore reduce the amount of burps cows are producing and so their
overall methane output will be reduced. This product has been given £1.6
million by Denmark’s environment and food ministry in the hope that it will
create a partial solution to our methane problems.
There have been many attempt in the pass to attempt to
develop a method to reduce the amount of methane that cows produce. There are
people currently working on a method to change the digestive system of cattle
to reduce the methane creating bacteria in their stomach along with many other
methods. Let me know what you find.
Greenhouse gases is a term which is thrown around a lot in
today media and in most cases people just assume that when this is said people
are talking about CO2 but this isn’t the case. Hopefully you’ll know a bit more
about greenhouse gases by the end of this post.
So the exact definition of a greenhouse gas is – a gas that
contributes to the greenhouse effect by absorbing infrared radiation. So
basically for a gas to be a greenhouse gas it just needs to capture heat and
prevent it from leaving earth’s atmosphere. There are countless different
greenhouse gases from the well-known ones such as carbon dioxide (CO2)
and Methane (CH4) to water vapour (H20) and even ozone (O3)
so it’s important to remember without ozone, water and several of the other greenhouse gases we wouldn’t be able to
inhabit the earth.
Methane has a global warming effect far greater than that of
carbon dioxide! The exact figure varies across different sources of information
but an article published in Scientific America in 2015 put the number at 86x
greater than carbon dioxide. Methane has a greater effect due to its differences
from carbon dioxide means that it is capable of absorbing different frequencies
of infrared radiation and so it collects energy which would have ordinarily
passed through the layers of carbon dioxide. This is because a methane molecule
contains 4 C-H bonds while carbon dioxide has 2 C=O bonds and it is these bonds
which absorb different frequencies of infrared radiation. So as the number of
methane molecules increases the amount of this energy being absorbed will
increase until it reaches a saturation level so that is why methane has a
higher effect as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide as an individual molecule
as there are fewer of them as they have a larger amount of infrared radiation to absorb, but overall carbon dioxide as a sum total possess a
greater effect currently on the global climate.
Carrying on with the theme of methane the sources of it may surprise
you of the main sources of this gas. The main contributor which many people
might know of is from domestic live stock or more primarily cattle. Apart from that
however there is a large amount of methane produced in rice production which
creates 31 million tonnes annually. As well as other human derived methods of
methane creation such as biofuels and waste decomposition there are already
huge stores of it held in certain areas of the world. These are known as
clathrates and are found either in areas of high pressure (ocean floors) or in permafrost’s
the problem with these stores however is they are slowly releasing the methane
they are storing. This is a never ending circle as well, as when the gas is
released the climate increases and the process speeds up. This at some point
soon is going to reach a certain stage a line is going to be cross and a
methane belch will occur which will be irrevocable. Can you think of any other sources of methane
gas?
Many of you reading this might have a fear of these creatures
and if you haven’t heard of this specific family I’m going to be talking about
today you maybe inline for a few extra nightmares.
Today I’m going to be talking about spiders or more
specifically Jumping Spiders or spiders which are part of the family Salticidae.
These are an amazing group of arachnids which contains more than 5800 different
described species, which makes up around 13% of all spider species. They are
found almost globally in tropical forests, mountain ranges and intertidal
zones, with the only exceptions being Greenland and the Antarctic.
One of the things which sets jumping spiders apart from
other spider species is the positioning of their eyes, jumping spiders like
every spider has 8 pairs of eyes but unlike other spiders the majority of these
eyes are mounted facing forward on their heads. This sounds rather simple and
common however what it allows is extremely important. With forward facing eyes
jumping spiders are able to get a decent idea of distance due to their eyes
providing depth perception between themselves and other objects. This is
important for jumping spiders as unlike other groups of spiders they are not a
sit and wait predators, they actually go out and hunt for their prey. They are
active the most during daylight hours due to their reliance on their eyes for
hunting.
As it is apparent in
their name jumping spiders actually pounce on their prey. They achieve this by
use of a weird internal hydraulic system, as instead of having muscles in their
legs they use pressure to extend their legs. This novel method of jumping has
allowed some of these spiders to be able to jump or pounce up to 50 times their
own body length. This is extremely impressive as they can range from sizes of
1-22mm.
As mentioned jumping spiders don’t actually use webs to
capture their prey and so this leaves them with an issue. Once they have
successfully managed to capture a prey item they only have limited time to
subdue them before they escape. The jumping spiders solution to this issue is
that they have developed fast-acting venom which will almost instantly
incapacitate their prey. You don’t have to personally worry about this however
as due to the fact that these prey items are so small that only people who have
an allergic reaction to the bites which will have any issues, most of us will
just experience some mild discomfort for a short while.
Hopefully this post has helped you if not overcome your fear of spiders at least allowed you to understand what amazing creatures they are.
Thanks for reading!
Just a side note- a while ago Australia had to ban a children's program which encouraged them not to be scared of spiders which would harm them.
The marine world is still relatively unknown to us due to
many different factors such as it’s size, depth and general conditions (eg
pressure) exploration has never been an easy task, because of this there is generally a near
constant stream of new discoveries to do with the oceans and that is what part of this
weekly article will be about.
The first article which has recently come out is the
culmination of a 20 year study in Hawaii and has found that the algae meadows
found among the mesophotic coral zone which can range from 30-150m in depth
have the highest species diversity known within any marine environment. The
study also found that half the fish species below the depth of 70m are endemic
to areas surrounding Hawaii and with further research they found in the
north-western waters 100% of the fish species were solely found in Hawaii at
those depths. The results of this new study are extremely important in terms of
conservation as now the extent of species diversity is known within these
waters, hopefully they’ll be a greater effort in an attempt to keep them as
natural as possible.
Sadly from the good news to terrible, recently the
global CO2 level has passed 400ppm (parts per million) for a whole month. Now
this is a big step up as I’m sure if you look at a lot of school text books you’ll
see this figure quoted as 380ppm so this new figure is a large increase which
is nothing but bad news in my eyes and will have many unknown implications.
The seasons are defiantly starting to change from summer to
autumn here in the Northern hemisphere now, well in the UK at least as it was 0oC
this morning when I got up. This means that the harvest of many edible plants
and berries are coming to an end whilst others are coming into their season.
There is always food to be found in the wild if you know where to look for it, so today's fact file we’ll be focusing on this.
Apples are available almost everywhere around the world with
hundreds of different varieties grown for the consumer market. Some of the main
species being: Pink Lady, Braeburn, and Gala, what you might not know about them however is each of the trees which grow a specific species is genetically identical to all
the others. This is because they are all clones of the original tree. As when a tasty tree was found it
would be cloned through grafting clippings onto other trees so as to produce
more fruit. These cuttings would fuse with the host tree and make use of their
root system to provide nutrients necessary for survival. You may also be
interested to know that a lot of the trees which line road systems are apple
trees and this is due to cores being thrown out of car windows.
Mushrooms are another source of food which can be found
throughout the world, but one which is steeped in caution in some cases for
good reason. However in the UK there are several thousand species of fungi,
with only a very limited few having disastrous results if consumed. The edible
species produce their fruiting bodies different stages of the year so if you
are willing to do the research there can always be some available to you.
Although it is now seen as a bit of a hobby in most of
western culture hunting gathering societies were the only way of being
successful before the domestication of crops and animals. In a lot of these societies there is a visible
split of labour with men focusing on large game whilst women gather more plants.
The women in these groups overall provide a larger net income of food in these groups
while men provided smaller amount of critical protein so each sex is as
valuable as each other. It has also been passed down through aboriginal tales
that older members of the group used to be the first to try a new food source so
as to assess whether it is edible or not. So in these societies every member
had a important role to play.
Just a disclaimer make sure you are 100% certain that what
you have picked is what you believe it to be before you consume it.
Thanks for reading!
Check out these links for foraging information and remember there are lots of groups and course out there which provide information on foraging.
I regularly post information on this blog about the effects
of climate change and new data which is attempting to map out the extent of climate change. There has also been posts about how climate change is effecting
the conservation of some species, but in this post I want to talk about it all in a
wider context whilst focusing on one subject.
Nature reserves and National parks, are areas which
sadly are a must in today’s world if there is any hope of certain niche species
continued existence and it is these I want to write about today.
A lot of issues surround the creation of these areas: economic, social and
environmental to name just a few but in this post climate change will be the
primary issues we’ll be addressing. The problem with climate change and the positioning
of reserves isn’t not a simple answer as it will be constantly evolving as the
climate changes.
So the main issue is where exactly do you place the reserve?
This may sound like a rather simple question as you put it in a site so it
encompasses as much of the targets species range as possible right? This would
be the answer if it wasn’t for climate change!
The problem lays in the fact that as the average global
temperature the natural range of the species which needs conservation is
constantly shifting primarily towards the poles. So a decision needs to be made
do you protect an area which encases the animals current range? It’s projected
future range? Or a bit of both? Throw in other problems like habitat
destruction creating fragmentation and conflict over other reasons and that is
why many reserves take years of planning and arguments to actually locate.
The problem is extended even further when you are attempting
to protect a species which either migrates or possesses a large range. Then a decision
needs to be made of which section do you protect, which area does the animal
come into conflict with humans the most? This was seen in several species of
birds for instance like the Spoon-billed Sandpiper which winters in the warmer
climate of Myanmar where it is hunted and so the numbers returning to Europe in
the spring where significantly reduced. So for a species such as this work is
needed in Asia if the population decline is going to be stop.
Overall there are more questions than real information in
this blog post but I wanted to write about it so as to bring just some of the issues
the creation of reserves have to overcome to people attention.
Thanks for reading!
Check out this link about the Spoon-billed Sandpiper
Following on from my post on Monday about greenhouse gases
there has been some potential good news on the methane front. 
