The Jaguar - A Casualty Of The Olympics

To round off this Olympic week the creature we’ll be learning about today is the national animal of Brazil, the jaguar.

Jaguars are the third largest feline in the world behind tigers and lions; this also means that they are the largest cat in the Americas. Unlike many of the other large cat species jaguars currently have fairly sizable populations in different areas of South America and so a survey in 2008 made the IUCN red list classify them as near threatened. This is due to the ever increasing pressure being applied on the species through deforestation because of illegal logging and other activities. Despite the sound of this information though it is important for efforts to be made to protect and conserve the jaguar, because as of 2002 54% of its historic range had been destroyed and so there is a strong likelihood of a tipping point coming soon which will see a drastic decrease in total populations driven by lack of habitat. This time point is drawing ever closer as populations have been slowly decreasing since 2002.

Contrary to popular belief jaguars unlike other cats actually enjoy water in fact a large amount of their diet is made up of fish, turtles, capybaras and even caimans. However due to their original large range which used to stretch from Argentina to Arizona the jaguar will take an extremely wide variety of prey. It is common for jaguars to hunt on the ground but not unheard of some animals taking up positions in trees which allows them to pounce onto their unsuspecting prey from above. Once they have succeeded in catching a prey item jaguars sometimes bury their prey so as to save it for later.

Like the majority of big cats (excluding lions) jaguars are solitary animals usually only coming together to breed. In Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Mexico it is estimated that there are around 1.7-4 adults per 100km² with males possessing territories which overlap several small female territories.  

Along with the habitat destruction which is creating heavily fragmented populations which jaguars have to cope with there is also pressure being applied through poaching. Up until the mid-1970s the jaguars coat was in high demand, thankfully demand has declined to some extent. However there is still a trade of jaguar parts for traditional medicine which has created a black market for jaguar goods. Some jaguars are also being shot due to cattle farmers claiming they cause a risk to their herds and so they are seen as a pest by some.

As this is an Olympic themed post it’s sadly important to bring to the attention to everyone what happened during the Olympic torch relay. In the city of Manaus a jaguar escaped its handler in the ceremony that was taking place. Despite then being shot with four tranquilizing dart the jaguar proceeded to attack a soldier and was shot dead with a pistol. This is sadly another example of when humans and wildlife simply don’t mix and we shouldn’t be creating situations like this as it is believe the animal escaped and attacked due to the stress it was being put under from being surrounded by hundreds of people.

Hopefully although the jaguar is currently still in a stable (ish) situation they will with the correct conservation effort remain at decent total population number for many many more years to come.

Thanks for reading!

Check out this video of a jaguar hunting from classicgrag 

Weekly Article - Zika Virus What Is It?

So to continue the Olympic theme for this week I will be bring you some information about the Zika virus. So this has been a subject which has been hotly debated in the run up to the Olympics with many different news headline and lots of Olympians refusing to compete in the event due to the risk.

Hopefully if you read a couple of these links hopefully you’ll be able to get a very basic understanding of what the Zika virus actually is. I say basic but it’s important to remember however that very little is known or understood about this virus.

The virus does have some history however as it didn’t first appear in April 2015 (when it started appearing in the media). The virus was actually first recognised in 1947 in the Zika forest of Uganda, it wasn’t till 1952 however that it’s first found in humans.  It then was another 55 years till there was a recognised significant outbreak of the disease in the Island of Yap (2007).

WHO website has a some interesting information on the virus and is the place I suggest that you you start using this link.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/zika/en/

In 2016 a article was published in The New England Journal of Medicine which proved that it was indeed the virus which was the source of birth defects in babies.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsr1604338?query=featured_home&

There has been good news on the Zika front recently however, this article talks about the production of a test which uses saliva to establish whether a patient is infected with the virus.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275410834_Detection_of_Zika_virus_in_saliva

Finally this post from science alert was published a little over 10 days ago and gives a slight insight into the stages at which vaccines are which will bring Zika outbreaks under control (hopefully)

http://www.sciencealert.com/three-new-zika-vaccines-offer-complete-protection-from-virus-in-primates

Thanks for reading!

Check out this video from The North Face

Fact File 002 - A Greener Olympics?

So it’s time for another fact file and in case you haven’t realised the Olympics has been taking placing in Rio for the past week or so. Therefore this week’s fact file will be focusing on Brazil and how it is currently attempting to create the ‘greenest Olympics’ ever! Sadly however although they have made improvement in a lot of areas they have fallen short of many of the targets set by officials.

• Rio pollution levels have not been portrayed well in most media outlets across the world but if you haven’t heard the water in which a lot of the rowers, sailors and open water swimming have been competing in is extremely polluted. This is despite the fact that Rio officials claimed that 80% of the raw sewage  being released into Guanabara Bay would be treated in time for the games to start. However they haven’t even achieved close to this figure with only 48% being treated.

• Along with the raw sewage the bay is filled with rubbish and dead animals. This has resulted in greater than 1 billion viruses per litre of water within the bay. To put this into some context that’s more than 1.7 million times the level thought of as being hazardous in Europe and many other parts of the world.

• Another major issue is the destruction of certain environments to create Olympic venues. Brazil already has a massive problem with both legal and illegal logging but one venue which has been affecting other a different habitat is the Olympic golf course. It has been constructed on the edge of a delicate sandbank habitat which is home to over 238 registered species. Beach butterflies, White-sand-lizards and rare species of orchid and cactus are just a few  of the many endangered species this construction is applying pressure too.

• The carbon footprint for the spectators alone is estimated to exceed 1.380 ktonnes CO2eq, with the Game wide emissions expected to measure in at around 3600 ktonnes CO2eq.

• Finally to put a brighter light on the whole situation the 5,130 medals which will be awarded throughout the course of the Olympics were made from gold mined so called sustainable conditions with the gold medals being completely free of mercury and the silver medals are comprised of 30% recycled material. 

Thanks for reading!

Check out this video from devinsupertramp

Proxy Measurements - A Window To The Past

This post is again focusing on the methods used to map the variation in Earth’s climate over its history and this time we’ll be focusing on the use of proxy measurements.

Proxy measurements take many forms and can provide information on climate for a few hundred years up to many millions of years. However like the measurements currently being used which were discussed in the last post each method has its own flaws.

So the first methods which most of you will have heard of is the use of tree rings or dendrochronology, this method has many benefits for instance trees can be found nearly on every continent an

d so a good spread of data can be gathered. However there are drawbacks the width of tree rings are not solely affected by temperature factors such as rain, soil temperature and age will also have an influence and so need to be considered. Through research we have been able to learn that conifer tree ring width changes exponentially with age so this can be compensated for. Other tree species ring width are not so easy to read however such as Oaks, this is a drawback as species such as Oaks tend to have a longer life span and so can provide more data when sampled.

A second method used to monitor climate change is through the use of Ice cores. These provide general information on climate across the global due to the isotope composition within the layers. There are several different Oxygen isotopes (O¹⁶ and O¹⁸) and it is the composition of these isotopes within the ice cores which suggest historic temperature. This is possible due to the fact that each isotope has a slightly different boiling temperature and so the ratios which they are found within the ice cores give a suggestion to the previous temperature at the equator which is where the majority of water evaporates from to create the snow at the poles. There are again problems with ice cores however for instance they can only be found in certain locations. Along with this they can be affected by water flowing through the ice layers disrupting the isotope composition, these ratios can also be affected where the ice touches the bedrock. Dating the layers can cause issues as they require a significant event such as a volcano to lay down ash so as to act as a time point within the ice layers otherwise samples cannot be used as they are not accurate enough. Finally ice cores can capture gas bubble within them and these give information about the atmospheric composition in the past and so suggest at historic temperatures.

A further method which many of you won’t have heard of is the use of soil sediments magnetism to provide temperature data. This has been put to use in China with sediment known as loess. Temperature and rainfall effect how magnetic the sediment is and so historic temperature can be extrapolated from these levels as warmer wetter years create a higher level of magnetism. The drawback with this method however is the fact that sites where this is possible are extremely limited.  

There are many other methods which have been used to provide accurate measurements on historic temperatures. Further methods include pollen and fossil records, Ocean sediments, stalactites and stalagmites CaCO₃ composition to name just a few. Each of which has their own drawbacks and benefits and so as a collective they provide an almost complete image of earth climate variation.

Thanks for reading!

Check out this video from YAHMIRA Productions

Weekly Article - Carbon Dioxide Could Be Part Of The Solution To All Our Problems!

So currently across the world there are many different groups of people who are attempting to find a solution to the planets need for fuel. Bio-fuels and other non-carbon based fuels such as solar and wind turbines are currently leading the field but these neglect the problem of the excess CO2 and they all have limitations such as the need for sunlight or wind.

Another method which bypasses these problems is to use CO2 are the raw materials and create fuel. We have been capable of creating fuel from CO2 for well over 20 years now (see link 1) but the ability to do so is not the problem. The issue arises with practicality of the process, previously the energetic costs of the fuels creation, to be a viable option it needs to provide as close to the amount of energy you put in as possible and the source energy needs to be abundant.

This latest article claims that they have created a new method which uses a synthetic leaf to create fuel from CO2 and sunlight and more importantly they claim that the process is cost effective unlike previous methods.

Check out these links

1 - http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/turning-carbon-dioxide-back-into-fuel/

2 - http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0801/Scientists-flip-energy-equation-with-solar-leaf-that-converts-CO2-into-fuel

Thanks for reading!

Check out this video from Unit

Fact File 001 - Waste Are We Heading Towards A Wall-E World

So Its time to start a new section of this blog and I hope you all enjoy it.

Each week I'll be posting a couple of interesting facts on a variety of different topics related to conservation and ecology. Hopefully it will be something just to give you a break on a Monday.

This week the facts will focus on the global waste crisis!

• On average a person in the UK throws away their own body weigh in rubbish every seven weeks, whilst in the USA on average 4.4 pounds of rubbish is thrown away per person per day. When this number is converted it means Americans throw there body weight of rubbish away every 6 weeks.

• The United States, Russia, Japan, Germany and The United Kingdom make up the top five most wasteful nations as of 2006. However it is estimated that by 2030 China will be producing more than double that of the USA at 533 million tons.

• Sweden is currently setting an extremely good example which should be emulated by other nations. This is because although Sweden produces the same amount of waste when compared to other European countries, less than 1% of this waste makes it to landfills. This is due to the 32 waster to energy plants which have been consuming 50% of the countries waste annually. in fact these plants are now so effective that Sweden have been importing an extra 80,000 tons annually.

•  Finally of the 41 million metric tonnes of electronic waste binned every year (2014) the majority of it is illegally exported to African countries such as Ghana where there are vast graveyards of broken equipment. This waste is then stripped of valuable parts before being burnt which pours pollutants into the atmosphere.

To finish this post off I think you might enjoy a look around this website, it shows a couple of scary counters, check it out!

http://www.theworldcounts.com/counters/shocking_environmental_facts_and_statistics/world_waste_facts

Thanks for reading!

Check out this video from Redbull

Measuring Earths Climate - Modern Day Methods

So as I’m sure a lot of you have seen there are estimates on how the Earth’s climate has changed for many thousands of years. All of them are suggesting that we are currently experiencing an upward trend which isn’t great news but that is not what this post is going to be focusing on. Humans have only really been measuring temperatures for the last few hundred years, so the question is where did these reading come from?

Well there are so many different methods of measurin

g climate that I’m going to do split it into a couple of different posts.

To start with we are going to look into the current methods of measuring temperature in really time. Now in most cases this means that an item known as a Stevenson shelter is used. It is possible that you’ve even seen one of these, possibly out the window while waiting at an airport. A Stevenson shelter is a standardised white box which lifts a thermometer away from the heat being radiated from the ground whilst being well shaded and receiving a good amount of air flow across a standard thermometer.  There are problems with Stevenson shelters however, for instance until recently very few of these boxes were found in the southern hemisphere, this has leads to historic data being unevenly distributed across the global. Another issue is the physical location of each shelter, as to get reliable long term data ideally shelters should remain in the same spot. Unfortunately increased urbanisation creating both heat island and the need for space has meant that a lot of shelters are being moved which can also disrupt data.

It’s not only air temperature which records are kept on, sea surface temperatures have also been monitored for several hundred years, but the methods of doing so have been changing. At first a wooden bucket was lowered of the side of a ship and the temperature was gained from this small sample. This wooden bucket was then replaced with a canvas bucket in the late 19^th century which caused a spike in temperatures due to the insulating properties of canvas and wood. This practise was again changed during World War 2 as the water sample was taken from the engine inlet valve instead of the side of the ship so again a second jump in temperature readings was seen. The lack of consistencies within the measuring protocol has meant they require a standardisation so as a consistent record can be created. There are also further problems with measuring sea surface temperature which are similar to Stevenson shelters in the fact that in the beginning ships were usually confined closer to shore the majority of the time, so overall coverage of readings are at points an issue. In recent years a modern method for monitoring sea surface temperature has been developed which uses satellite imaging to provide nearly complete coverage sea across the world. Yet again these measurements need to be standardised to continue temperature records. These satellites can also be used to measure sea level rises.

The final modern method of measuring deep water temperatures are Agro floats. These are autonomous robots which are capable of descending two thousand meters under the oceans and taking multiple different temperatures reading over the course of ten days before it resurfaces and uploads the data to a series of satellites. These floats are important as changes in deep sea temperatures could seriously disrupt their productivity and so have a knock on effect on shallower waters and terrestrial environments. However like ever kind of measurements there are limitations, for instances there have been problems with the floats becoming trapped under ice when taking reading close to the poles and so the spread of data is disrupted again.

So these are just a few modern methods which are utilised to measure

the changes in the Earth’s climate to allow us to see how human activities and natural variations are effecting global temperatures. However as I said earlier this is just the tip of the iceberg, we currently have accurate global temperature records for many thousands of year so how was these achieved?

The answer is through the use of proxy measurements.

Stay tuned for the second of these two  posts which will look into exactly how proxy measurements are used in historical records.

Thanks for reading!

Check out this link which shows a remarkable amount of progress in the UK when it comes to shopping bags.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36917174

Check out this video from Redbull