Tsunami Sensor Detects Mysterious Background Signal in Panama

ScienceDaily (June 3, 2011) — An unusual signal detected by the seismic monitoring station at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute's research facility on Barro Colorado Island results from waves in Lake Gatun, the reservoir that forms the Panama Canal channel, scientists report. Understanding seismic background signals leads to improved earthquake and tsunami detection in the Caribbean region where 100 tsunamis have been reported in the past 500 years.

As part of a $37.5 million U.S. presidential initiative to improve earthquake monitoring following the devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004, a seismic sensor was installed on Barro Colorado Island in 2006. The sensor is one of more than 150 sensors that comprise the U.S. Geological Survey's Global Seismographic Network.

Barro Colorado Island is a hilltop that was isolated by the waters of the reservoir created when the Chagres River was dammed to form Lake Gatun, a critical part of the Panama Canal. The Barro Colorado seismic monitoring station is a collaboration between the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the University of Panama and STRI.

Ultra-sensitive devices at the station pick up a large range of ground motion from felt earthquakes to nanometer-scale seismic background noise. The instruments at the station include very sensitive broadband seismometers used to detect distant earthquakes and low-gain accelerometers that measure ground movement and withstand violent local earthquakes and explosions.

The sensors detect signals from many different sources that include cars, boats and machinery operating up to several kilometers away. They also pick up the background "hum of the Earth" caused by ocean waves breaking on continental shelves around the world.

Scientists noticed that sensors on Barro Colorado recorded an intriguing wave pattern at an intermediate frequency. They suspected that this pattern could be caused by standing waves in Lake Gatun. Standing waves, also known as "seiches," are common in enclosed bodies of water like lakes and harbors where waves moving in opposite directions interact. By installing a water-level detection meter along the shoreline, researchers confirmed that changes in the water level of the lake correspond to the unusual seismic signal.

This is not the first report of seiches in Lake Gatun. Earlier reports correlated the release of methane gasses in the sediments below the canal to seiches and bottom currents in the lake. The Panama Canal Authority provided data about the depth of the Canal channel and of Lake Gatun that the authors used to model wave patterns in the lake.

Boat traffic and wind speed correlate with the unusual wave pattern, which was more common during the day than it was at night, but more information is needed to confirm what is actually causing the waves.

This report, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, provides a new method to quantify the impact of water movements as recorded by land-based seismometers. A more exact understanding of the seismic signals resulting from water movements will improve estimates of other phenomena like tsunami impacts.

Source: Sciencedaily.com

Coping With Climate Change: Can We Predict Which Species Will Be Able to Move Far or Fast Enough to Adapt?

ScienceDaily (May 11, 2011) — As global temperatures rise, suitable sites for many plants and animals are shifting to cooler and higher ground. Can we predict which species will be able to move far or fast enough to keep up? A new study says the secrets to success in the face of a warming world are still elusive.

Rather than sticking around and sweating it out, some groups of plants and animals are responding to rising temperatures by migrating northward and upward to higher latitudes and elevations, studies show.

But when researchers working at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis took a closer look at recent range shifts, they noticed a peculiar pattern: some species are migrating much farther and faster than others.

"Some species are moving well ahead of the curve, while others seem to be stuck behind," said lead author Amy Angert, a biologist at Colorado State University.

Pinpointing what sets the fastest-shifting species apart from the stragglers could help scientists and policymakers predict which species are likely to be left behind in a warming world, the researchers said.

"The species that aren't able to expand their range are the ones we need to spend more resources protecting," said co-author Sarah Gilman of Claremont McKenna College in California.

The researchers wondered if general traits such as body size, diet and lifespan might help scientists predict which species are likely to keep pace as weather warms.

To find out, they looked at data gathered from more than 400 species of birds, plants, insects and mammals known to have shifted their ranges to different degrees in the last century in response to warming.

The data set included North American birds such as house finches and bald eagles, dragonflies and damselflies in Europe, grasses and other plants in the Swiss Alps, and small mammals such as shrews, mice and chipmunks in the Sierra Nevada of California.

The species quickest to expand their range should be those that reproduce the fastest, disperse the farthest, and are the least picky about food, shelter, or mates, models predict.

To find out if predictions hold true, the researchers compiled data on how far each species had shifted, and compared it to various intrinsic features of the species themselves, such as their mode of dispersal, breeding rate, and dietary preferences.

The result? Global warming's winners and losers may be hard to predict based on broad traits related to dispersal ability or reproduction, the researchers explained.

"For each group we found one or more traits that do explain some variation in recent range shifts, but none with clear influence across all groups," wrote Angert, who studies the effects of climate change on range shifts in monkeyflowers.

One possibility is that the traits that really matter for a species' ability to move to more suitable sites -- such as temperature tolerance -- are difficult to measure or find a proxy for, the authors argue.

Another possibility is that external factors, such as habitat fragmentation and availability, may be just as important as the species themselves. Plants and animals on mountain peaks or near the poles may simply have nowhere cooler to go, the researchers explained.

The findings were published in Ecology Letters.

Other authors on the paper include Lisa Crozier of the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, Leslie Rissler of the University of Alabama, Josh Tewksbury of the University of Washington, and Amanda Chunco of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Source: Sciencedaily.com

Natural Gas from Shale Contributes to Global Warming, Researchers Find

ScienceDaily (Apr. 12, 2011) — Natural gas extracted from shale formations has a greater greenhouse gas footprint -- in the form of methane emissions -- than conventional gas, oil and coal over a 20 year period. This calls into question the logic of its use as a climate-friendly alternative to fossil fuels, according to Robert Howarth and colleagues, from Cornell University in New York.

Shale gas has become an increasingly important source of natural gas in the United States over the past decade. Shale gas is extracted by a high-volume hydraulic fracturing (fracking) process. Large volumes of water are forced under pressure into the shale to fracture and re-fracture the rock to boost gas flow. A significant amount of water returns to the surface as flow-back within the first few days to weeks after injection and is accompanied by large quantities of methane.

Howarth and team evaluated the greenhouse gas footprint of natural gas, obtained by high-volume hydraulic fracturing of shale formations, focusing on methane emissions. They analyzed the most recently published data -- in particular, the technical background document on greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas industry (EPA 2010), as well as a report on natural gas losses on federal lands from the General Accountability Office (GAO 2010).

They calculated that, overall, during the life cycle of an average shale-gas well, between four to eight percent of the total production of the well is emitted to the atmosphere as methane, via routine venting and equipment leaks, as well as with flow-back return fluids during drill out following the fracturing of the shale formations. Routine production and downstream methane emissions are also large, but comparable to those of conventional gas.

Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, but methane also has a 10-fold shorter residence time in the atmosphere. As a result, its effect on global warming falls more rapidly. Methane dominates the greenhouse gas footprint for shale gas on a 20 year horizon, contributing up to three times more than does direct carbon dioxide emission. At this time scale, the footprint for shale gas is at least 20 percent greater than that for coal, and perhaps twice as great.

Robert Howarth concludes: "The large greenhouse gas footprint of shale gas undercuts the logic of its use as a bridging fuel over coming decades, if the goal is to reduce global warming. The full footprint should be used in planning for alternative energy futures that adequately consider global climate change."

Source: ScienceDaily.com

Global Rivers Emit Three Times IPCC Estimates of Greenhouse Gas Nitrous Oxide

ScienceDaily (Dec. 27, 2010) — What goes in must come out, a truism that now may be applied to global river networks. Human-caused nitrogen loading to river networks is a potentially important source of nitrous oxide emission to the atmosphere. Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change and stratospheric ozone destruction.

It happens via a microbial process called denitrification, which converts nitrogen to nitrous oxide and an inert gas called dinitrogen.

When summed across the globe, scientists report this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), river and stream networks are the source of at least 10 percent of human-caused nitrous oxide emissions to the atmosphere.

That's three times the amount estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Rates of nitrous oxide production via denitrification in small streams increase with nitrate concentrations.
"Human activities, including fossil fuel combustion and intensive agriculture, have increased the availability of nitrogen in the environment," says Jake Beaulieu of the University of Notre Dame and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Cincinnati, Ohio, and lead author of the PNAS paper.

"Much of this nitrogen is transported into river and stream networks," he says, "where it may be converted to nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas, via the activity of microbes."

Beaulieu and co-authors measured nitrous oxide production rates from denitrification in 72 streams draining multiple land-use types across the United States. Their work was part of a broader cross-site study of nitrogen processing in streams.

"This multi-site experiment clearly establishes streams and rivers as important sources of nitrous oxide," says Henry Gholz, program director in NSF's Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research.
"This is especially the case for those draining nitrogen-enriched urbanized and agricultural watersheds, highlighting the importance of managing nitrogen before it reaches open water," Gholz says. "This new global emission estimate is startling."

Atmospheric nitrous oxide concentration has increased by some 20 percent over the past century, and continues to rise at a rate of about 0.2 to 0.3 percent per year.

Beaulieu and colleagues, say the global warming potential of nitrous oxide is 300-fold greater than carbon dioxide.

Nitrous oxide accounts for some six percent of human-induced climate change, scientists estimate.

Source:  sciencedaily.com

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