Genetic Modification of crops has always been a thorny issue. Shock headlines and contrived ‘public debates’ have left scientists and communicators alike quaking at the prospect of navigating the muddy waters, with an at best ill informed, and at worst downright hostile, public in tow. One could be forgiven for considering this a disaster for public dialogue with science. That is of course, if consensus and consumer acceptance are the aim…..

Going back to the root of the matter, the 2011 British Science Association’s Science Communication Conference planted the science firmly in context of its application and the policy making system. A panel, chaired by Fiona Fox from the Science Media Centre, and consisting of Jack Stilgoe from the Royal Society, Professor David Baulcombe from Cambridge University, and Andrew Wadge from the Food Standards Agency, debated with an audience of science communicators. They identified real issues, tangled and deeply buried, which extend to moral values and personal taste.

The moral imperative to feed the planet’s population sustainably is the key to a much needed policy discussion which considers all options and which recognises multiple views, messy and chaotic as this may be. This means that the challenge is to cultivate confidence in the scientific process and enable scientists to have a view on how their research is employed.

According to Jack Stilgoe, the GM crop debate has defined a shift in the science and society relationship. The majority of issues sprouted from the very first dialogue experiment in 1994, with understanding deepened by Social Science. As he noted, “GM is not one issue”.

Moving away from mainstream media presentation of polarised debate about isolated technologies, towards looking at issues in order to advise government on what to do next. He asked: “How did we get to a stage where nobody listened and the conversation broke down?”

He floated the need to debate new possibilities presented by science, upstream of regulation. “GM embodies the idea of seed as a product”. This poses a threat of disruption in developing countries where farmers save and regrow seed.

There is a tendency for scientists to retreat into the novelty trap, to determine need for revised labelling and regulation. But he asked “Do we have the right sort of system to govern these technologies if we buy the fact they are new?”

In these situations, regulation and academic independence become complex and highly politicised. When it comes to safety, there is concern over assessment systems and the degree people are put at risk. There are also issues of patenting and control over the markets and food chain by monopolistic companies, begging the question “Is government genuinely interested in opening up debate, or in ‘selling’ to an oppositional public?”

Feeding the Planet
Professor David Baulcombe discussed dealing with the challenge of providing global sustainable food in light of climate change, population growth, shortage of land and other resources. Biological Science offers two approaches: firstly, science-based enhanced crop management, and secondly, the genetic improvement of crops, which was his focus for this discussion. He noted that “Plants evolved to produce babies that survive harsh natural environments, not big fat juicy fruits… What we are trying to do is redirect the legacy of millions of years of evolution towards sustainable food production.”

Drought, heat, stress, and mineral uptake are complex traits governed by several genes. They are key challenges for sustainable intensification of food production to provide sufficient food for the planet. He explained that conventional breeding shuffles characteristics and introduces complexities, whereas with GM original characteristics can be retained while changing a few traits at once. Using closely related species for GM gives a similar end result to conventional breeding, noting that “Both GM and conventional breeding are long term solutions. They need to be assessed side by side in terms of risk.” GM can also be used for grand challenges like enhancing the efficiency of photosynthesis, remodelling crops to regenerate yearly, stabilise and fertilise soil, and turning different plant varieties into useful crops.

Crossed Wires
Andrew Wadge from the Food Standards Agency explained how the FSA had been established after a series of scares culminating in the BSE crisis. He went on to describe GM as part of a series of technological developments impacting on the food we eat, with the public asking questions like “is it safe for me and the environment?, What’s in it for me? Who benefits and what’s in it for them? Is it natural or human made?”

The debate gets skewed around whether GM is more harmful to health than its counterparts because it is based on scientific assessments which exclude moral and ethical considerations.However, our judgements as individuals are based on values, especially where we don’t necessarily understand the wealth of complex science. He suggested that “Our minds run through a process of weighing risks and benefits, balancing how to respond and deciding who to trust. “

Cracking Up

Jack Stilgoe explained that the Food Standards Agency was asked to deliver a further dialogue exercise in 2010 as a trusted agency. Their responsibility is regulatory with no mandate for agriculture, developing world markets or industrial policy in biotech.

A political timescale meant that the process was too rushed to frame a productive dialogue. The resignation of two steering group members and the pretence it was about science alone led to its abandonment.

Citing a lack of clarity from ministers and the coalition government wanting to save money, Andrew Wadge explained: “The public is interested in the issue as a whole but government departments are organised in silos with food standards separate from environment.” David Baulcombe added: that the “advantages of products like purple tomatoes and golden rice are difficult to prove. Scientists may not have made the case about the environmental benefits strongly enough.” While there is a moral imperative to feed the world sustainably, it is irresponsible to get angry, and likewise not address the issue and force a technology on a reluctant public. For fellow scientists he suggests it is important to recognise that they may not seem trustworthy if they present themselves merely as “a humble seeker of the truth” for society to make of as they will. He also felt that intellectual property is a significant issue. Scientists should take a view over the context where their science is deployed. “I want technology for my lab to support small business and diversity in agriculture with commitment to open source”.

Cracking on

On the way forward, Jack Stilgoe said: “There is a need to appreciate the political nature of the topic, and be honest about debating values not science.” He argued that a purely scientific debate presents the risk of a diversity of opinions being put into a monolithic view of science. “A huge amount of effort is needed upfront to design a representative conversation based on shared understanding”.

This will also require consideration of who to include. Stilgoe suggested that publically funded scientists have found themselves bound up in issues driven by large companies with which they have little in common. On the other hand an employee of Astra Zeneca indicated similar conflicts in the industrial scientific community. Andrew Wadge pointed out that Scientific Advisory Committee members don’t get paid yet have to publish all their interests: “Openness about conflicts is important but everyone needs to be there.”

The panel were agreed that despite frustrations, consultation is worth pursuing. David Baulcombe said:
“I know others with a different view have also been frustrated but I think the end result is move towards a better agriculture”.

Andrew Wadge cited need for framing the debate and instilling confidence in the scientific process where they may be different views. Jack Stilgoe suggested: “You can take general principles from topics like Nanotechnology, Synthetic Biology and Climate Change and apply them to develop principles for governing technology in uncertain and highly politicised environments.” He recommended training scientists to participate, removing barriers and supporting not forcing them to get involved. “Science speaking with many voices is a more productive conversation.”

How should we in determine what nature of genetic manipulations are acceptable interventions?

From my perspective the potential to mitigate the effects of climate change, reduce agricultural pollution and preserve biodiversity would be deciding factors. Interventions which tackle the social systems of distribution and consumption are not to be ignored.

West Oxford Community Renewables is applying for a grant from “energyshare” to kick start a Micro-Hydro scheme on Osney Island, Oxford. We want to install a reverse Archimedes screw in the River Thames. We are hoping to win some of the £500,000 prize on offer to kick start our fund for an Archimedes screw in the Thames at Osney Lock. The projects which get the most on-line support by the end of June will get through to the next round.

If you would like to register your support then please follow this link:
http://www.energyshare.com/west-oxford-community-renewables

About our community
West Oxford is built around a river, but it’s a complicated relationship. We enjoy the power, beauty and history of the Thames every day. But we live on the front line when the waters rise. In the summer of 2007 we felt powerless as we watched the homes of friends and neighbours succumb to the flood waters.
Yet this community has always worked with the river, harnessed its great power. So now, here in the oldest industrial quarter of the city, we want to work with the river once again using the newest technology.

Our dream
To set up a microhydro system in the heart of Oxford that will use the power of the river to generate improvements for our community. Situated by Osney Lock, just across the river from the site of the city’s first electric power station, the benefits of the scheme will be two fold
1. Providing a source of green energy, a 48 kW installation could generate 159,169kWh a year, saving 68 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year.
2. Creating an income stream which can be invested in local community projects to help further reduce our community’s carbon footprint.

The story so far…..
A site has been identified and assessed as suitable. A full feasibility study has been completed to show that the project is both technically and financially viable. Flood risk analysis and ecology and arboricultural surveys have been carried out, to enable us to understand and manage any potential negative impact the project may have.
We are now working on leasing the land, securing planning permission and abstraction licence for the project.
We’re also working to secure the funding to carry out the project, through a community share scheme and loans.

About us
What started in 2007 as a group of enthusiastic neighbours around a kitchen table, is now a flourishing Industrial and Provident Society with a track record in setting up community owned renewable projects, with five installations complete and another three in the pipeline. The microhydro scheme will be our first hydrogeneration project.
We wouldn’t exist without the extraordinary community support we have received – not only from people living in the area, who have invested time and money in making our plans a reality, but also as a virtual community of friends, likeminded individuals and organisations who have supported us along the way.
We know that with your help, we can continue to flourish and play our part in making West Oxford the supportive and vibrant community we feel privileged to be a part of.
Together, we have the power to make it possible.

“Deforestation contributes about one fifth (20%) of global carbon dioxide emissions ….

We need to reduce deforestation, introduce new forests, manage them sustainably and adapt to meet the challenge of climate change which is now inevitable.” UK Forestry Commission

2011 has been declared the international year of the forest, placing recognition and responsibility on the boughs of the world’s forests, in terms of their potential to help secure the future of the planet. Forests provide habitats for an enormous variety of creatures, a source of sustainable energy and building materials. Most of all, they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, converting it into life giving oxygen during the day, the reason they are sometimes called ‘the world’s lungs’. While currently under the spotlight, their role in sustaining the planet stretches back thousands of years. Today, the woods can no longer be left to nature and must be nurtured by humans. There are international management standards to attain with the European Union leading the way.

Community care for trees has a long tradition across the world. As well as featuring in the Lion King, the Baobab tree has been worshiped for centuries across Africa, Sudan, indigenous Australia and the Caribbean. It forms a central pillar of communities. The whole tree is used for food and materials, including sap for medicinal purposes. In 2008 its fruit was approved for distribution in EU.

Trees are completely intertwined with my family history, originating from my Grandfathers walking stick factory, taking my parents across the sea to New Zealand on a boat. My first ladybird book told the story of the Oak, one of the few truly indigenous British trees, beautifully illustrating the balance of animals, birds and insects it sustained. Marvelling at David Attenborough gazing up into the Amazon canopy through the TV screen was a regular winter time activity.

As an adult, I camped at the foot of two ancient Oak Trees believed to be over one thousand years old. Their names Gog and Magog, feature in folklore and legends from many cultures, the Bible, and Qur’an. In London’s Guildhall, two carved wooden statues represent them as giants according to the ancient British version. The oaks bearing their names stand at the entrance to the mythical Isle of Avalon where they were worshipped by pagans. At sunrise one morning, I woke and saw a white rabbit scamper along the grassy precession towards them. The two were knotted together, gnarled and twisted one bald, its split branches stretching slowly toward the sky, the other, withered and sprouting sheltering beneath it. A few hours later I got a call on my mobile about my Granddad, Arthur…..

When I was at University trees became political. Swampy and the Newbury bypass protestors were notorious alternative media icons. Even the most conservative members of the British public were forced to admire their spirit, finding it hard to disagree that trees were nicer than roads, especially on their doorstep. Today, once again trees grace the headlines, only this time Swampy and co can stay at home and protest by internet if they choose. It is difficult to say how much internet outrage led the government to abandon its recent plan to sell off the national forests.

Buying a newspaper is a very effective way to stay informed politically and help preserve forests, flying in the face of the idea that saving paper equals saving trees. Of course everyone should use recycled paper, then all forests could stay exactly as they are. Not quite, recycling, needs energy to transport and pulp the paper, and chemicals to bleach and colour it. Paper on average can be recycled 6 to 7 times. As long as there is demand for forest products then land must be managed to produce trees, surely more environmentally friendly than PC manufacturing and disposal plants?

Trees are big business. They provide renewable, non toxic raw materials for building, packaging and publishing. Forests can generate and store real quantifiable energy. Unlike coal and oil, wood is a renewable fuel. Across Europe the area of land covered by forest is increasing. In the UK, forests cover 12% of the land area compared to 5% at the start of the twentieth century, which it should be remembered represents an all time low.

Perhaps best known in the form of graphite, forming the black shiny soft slidey lead in our wooden pencils, it is carbon that is key to the forests role in energy storage, production and climate regulation. When fuel burns and creatures breathe, carbon combines with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide (CO2). Too much of this in the atmosphere is the primary climate culprit.

During the daytime, trees and plants convert carbon dioxide into oxygen through photosynthesis. In the dark, the process is reversed. Carbon is stored in trunks, leaves and roots, returning to the soil through death and decay, for life to start again. Mature forests reach a steady state where carbon storage and production are balanced. Growing forests act as ‘sinks’, absorbing more than they produce. Alarms should ring when a forest is felled, destroying a store, allowing carbon to escape.

The critical factor is to manage the forests, selecting types of tree to plant and balancing the rate of cutting and replanting to sustain the level of tree growth. Clearing some trees is often good for modern forests, making room for others to spread out and a variety plant species to flourish.

Visible, in book and furniture shops world wide, the Forest Stewardship Council FSC, logo on timber products is more than an attractive design. It provides assurance that that the source of wood or paper is certified, having achieved management standards meeting vigorous legal and environmental criteria.

Only products from certified forests can carry this logo through supply chain to the consumer. It guarantees there must have been a permit to log the timber. Different countries are free to interpret the guidelines for themselves. Independent international auditors inspect the forests and issue certification where requirements are achieved. The UK (especially Wales), with Germany and Holland and a push from the NGOs have led the world in helping the EU position these standards at the forefront of the move to stop illegal logging.
If, importers and consumers insist on certification, demand for illegally logged timber can be reduced, completely removing the second largest incentive for clearing irreplaceable rainforests after agriculture. The international year of forestry encourages combination of forestry and agriculture, emphasising both preservation and reforestation, with the single goal of increasing forest cover.

While developing countries in the tropics don’t have the resources to manage and police forests there is little to stop illegal loggers. If compensation could be paid to for loss of illegal logging profits and sustainable agriculture prioritised, then deforestation could be rapidly reduced, as if by magic.

Far from the mythical Avalon, on a real island, also a favourite for Druids and Witches, it is hard to believe that an idyllic pine scented forest on the edge of a sandy beach, at one time provoked a hotbed of controversy. Newborough on Anglesey is one of the few places that native red squirrels have been successfully reintroduced and are capable of surviving the competitive greys. Corridors are being created to enable them to navigate around the island. However, this idyllic pine needle scented scene is artificial. The trees were planted by humans, the species are not indigenous and their positioning could damage the natural sandunes, contravening an EU directive on habitat preservation. While there was talk of replacing them with willow to preserve the dunes, plans were scrapped in favour of the squirrels following talks between Forestry Commission Wales branch, community groups and stake holders. They all worked together to agree a forest partnership action plan.

This scheme provides a snapshot of the complex global reality of moves to increase land mass covered by trees. This kind of dilemma is likely to become more frequent as the need to position trees to prevent floods, cool cities and offset choking carbon emission rises. Adaptable resilient varieties capable of fast growth, surviving adverse whether events and habiting environments they might not usually will be needed.
Clearly reducing emissions is the ideal solution for tackling climate change. Unfortunately it may well be too late to rely on alone. Compromises will have to be made, especially regarding mixing indigenous species and introducing new ones.

The priority is to act fast and bring CO2 and temperature levels, not trees, down. Internationally recognised standards can help forests be part of the solution not the cause.

“We need to act fast. Forests are disappearing at an alarming rate. International measures to STOP deforestation as part of international negotiations on climate change are needed. Timber certification is one way to STOP illegal logging”.
Roger Cooper, MBE Services to Forestry

More Information:
http://www.fsc.org/
www.forestry.gov.uk/publications

I am not a geneticist or plant scientist, with no knowledge of Mandarin or Taiwanese, so a visit to the World Vegetable Centre (AVRDC) home for the World’s largest public vegetable gene bank, in Taiwan, tested my skills of interpretation and translation to the limit.

Working especially with farmer’s co-operatives across Asia, India and Africa, AVRDC supplies crop seeds, adapted to survive whatever misfortunes an increasingly fickle climate and trails of over breeding and overcrowding throw at them.

Headquarters for the World Vegetable Centre, an international Non Governmental Organisation is located in the region of the old Taiwan capital, Tainan County. The centre attracts scientists across the world, while retaining strong ties to the local community of Shan Hua, a town with a long established agricultural tradition.
Providing the roots for the Centre’s activities, Dr Andreus Ebert from Germany and Taiwanese Mr Whan share responsibility for curating Gene Bank’s the vast collection. I had the chance to glimpse inside the heart of this real life archive and out in the fields, speak to researchers using the records to conserve rare indigenous vegetables and create hardy new varieties of familiar favourites like tomatoes.

Approaching the bank my steps fall into the sifting rhythm, transmitted from a circle of people in conical straw hats, crouching among the trees, shifting and shaking pans of seeds. Like most things in Taiwan it was important to move beyond first impressions. I was soon to learn that this was more than a musical accompaniment, and in fact an ingrediant of the scientific process of sorting and selecting seeds for preservation in the gene bank vaults.

Changing into slippers so that I don’t carry spores, viruses or other plant pests in on my shoes, I accompany Dr Ebert on a guided tour of the bank.

1. Processing – Within the walls, genetic inheritance information from over 56,000 global varieties, collected over 30 years, is identified, coded and stored. Records in this unusual library are in the form of germplasm, the genetic information that allows plants to reproduce. While most is seeds, there is also an alium store for onions, shallots and garlic and tubors like potatoes as their structure and high moisture content needs different treatment.

   Shuffling into the first space, we see seeds being processed, extracted and cleaned, mostly by hand. Seeds are selected, bad seeds, very small seeds damaged seeds or those not confirming to the standards are removed. For long term preservation, temperature and humidity must come down. In this short term storage and processing area the temperature is cooled from the average 25-30 °C outside to 15°C.

2. Storage – The door of the cavernous chamber for medium term storage, clunked shut behind us. Here, temperature is reduced to 5°C like the inside of a domestic fridge, giant fans reducing the humidity to 45%. Different species require slightly different treatment to balance the temperature and humidity levels with the viability limits of the variety. Some seed surfaces will crack at lower temperatures, affecting their ability to grow outside. Coco seeds are not suitable for long term storage as they quickly loose viability, and coffee can only be stored for a few months.

   I was lucky enough to catch a rare glimpse inside the second chamber. The long term store can’t be opened very often as this will increase the already enormous amount of energy needed to regulate its environment. The humm of fans and giant fridges became a roar as the door sealed. Temperature is below 0 °C, with humidity of -10 to 18%. Under these conditions seeds are expected to last between 50 and 70 years.
   They must not however, be forgotten, samples are grown outside at regular intervals. I am told that farmers would soon complain if the proportion of viable seeds is low and they regularly fail to germinate. First seeds must be mobilised by imbibing to take up water. Plants can then be grown outside, and their seeds harvested to maintain the variety. Wherever possible, it is best to use the originals, as each time seeds are grown outside they start to adapt to the conditions in Taiwan, losing their native characteristics.

   Care is taken to preserve indigenous crops, defined as those that are not immediately of major commercial importance world wide, in line with national programmes across the World. Examples include, egg plants, okra, loofah and bitter gourds, rich in antioxidants under investigation for treating diabetes. Older varieties may be more hardy with better resistance to disease than cultivated hybrids with desirable commercial characteristics and a narrow genetic basis.

   Dr Ebert tells me, small farmers need to use a risk management strategy of growing mixed crops together so they are less vulnerable to specialist insect attack. Failure to do this was responsible for totally wiping out coffee in Shri Lnaka which had to be replaced by tea. It was necessary to return to the origin of the crop in Etheopia to find older varieties with natural genetic resistance. The gene bank exists to help manage such eventualities.

3. Conserving Indigenous Vegetables – Out in the sunshine, heavily pregnant Mandy Li-Ju Lin took me on a tour of the indigenous vegetable garden. Here, lesser known species with promising characteristics, either for commercial development or crossing with current popular varieties are grown. Tiny wild tomatoes gleam like holy berries, inedible for humans yet more hardy and resilient than their cultivated cousins. Creamy white African egg plant nestles among lush green and purple African cassava (sweet potato leaves) and, and I spot pink tarot popular in hotpots and markets across Taiwan. I am intrigued by the thorny coriander, popular in Thailand, exotic, pungent and aromatic for humans but far less attractive to insects than the commonly available round leafed type.

   Mandy told me many of these vegetables are considered to have strong unpleasant tastes and smells making them less popular candidates for commercial development. She reminded me they have uses beyond food like washing skin and clothes and water purification. As well as climate resilience plants can also be selected for nutritional properties such as high antioxidant or beta carotene content (vitamins). This is often indicated by deep colour, greens, purples and yellows, and can help human immunity. Plants shelter in net cages to protect them from virus carrying Taiwanese whitefly and avoid cross pollination, maintaining the purity of the lines.

   Transferring the information to records library helps prevent less immediately commercially attractive crops disappearing from existence, as farmers feel pressure to replace local varieties with high yield hybrids. Plants are measured, observed and photographed, recording days to flower and fruit, and fruit size and weight. I set out to discover how to identify which ones have the real X factor.

4. New Stress Resilient Varieties – In the greenhouse scientist Rachael Symonds (UK), described how she combines indigenous genes with commercial varieties to improve survival in extreme conditions.
   ‘I have been working at an international research centre with an international community for the global public good’
   “Why we are doing the research is to help plants survive under stress, for example tomatoes with thicker skin may be more resilient. This is vital now as the climate is changing and the world is getting drier and hotter. Plants, especially vegetables won’t be able to live where they do at the moment. We need to produce high value nutritious crops for areas most affected like Sub Saharan Africa.”

   She told me, commercial varieties can be crossed with wild types that you can’t eat to help their tolerance to stress. For example some types of inedible wild tomato growing naturally near the sea may be more resistant to drought and dehydration from salty soil by having a different type of cell membrane barrier structure. These can then be bred with some of the more commercial varieties to produce food crops better able to survive.

   “We’ve got a gene bank with thousands of varieties so we select types of interest, often going back to the wild type to cross them with cultivated varieties. Seeds that don’t get selected for one experiment are returned to the bank for use at another time and place.”

   Controlled experiments are used to test this out, comparing samples of tomatoes with known characteristics with the new varieties in controlled dry and wet conditions, artificially created in pots. Water and salt level are carefully measured and the resulting crop yields dried and weighed to establish whether or not there is a significant advantage, and if so its extent.

   “ I can take many types of measurements to describe the plants and their interaction with the environment. A breeding programme for a new variety can take three years to produce vegetables to eat.”

5. Packing and Labelling – Back inside the bank, Dr Ebert explained how packing and labelling is an essential step towards distribution of identified seeds. First, in the processing area, they are weighed and stored 20 – 30 in paper packages. A barcode system is used to identify the seeds and labels are placed on them by hand. Each time the packets are labelled there is a danger that two numbers could be exchanged and the barcode system is used to reduce errors.

   In the long term store, seeds are packed into vapour proof aluminium packets. Unlike the organic paper material this doesn’t have the same interaction with moisture in the environment. Before putting in these final bags seed samples are tested for moisture content, comparing it with the baseline. Given even the slightest hint of moisture seeds could germinate, rendering them useless for storage and future planting and breeding. The aluminium packets are kept in sealed drums for future.

6. Passport Data – ‘Integrated passport data’ for seed lines is represented on a freely accessible database. This information includes, a unique number to identify the lines, and like your own birthday, their date and place of collection. Nutritional information is also stored and used to inform the breeding process, together with research information from other parts of the Centre, to produce a well documented profile. The computerised records are freely available for anyone interested enough to browse them.
7. Safety Back Up – When disaster strikes such as the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami in Shri Lanka is, this preserved collection enabled the farmers to go back to the seeds and start production again. Just like backing up your hard drive, a safety back up is made in a secure sister site in Korea. This is reassuring given that Taiwan is prone to earthquakes, and like anywhere is not without is vulnerabilities to climate catastrophe as demonstrated by the landslides shortly after my visit in 2009. Unlike a computer the genetic information is stored in the seeds themselves. Even in long term storage viability beyond fifty to seventy years is precarious, requiring a considerable energy.
8. Distribution – There is a small charge for distribution of seeds from the gene bank, staggered according to means, lower for national programmes and higher for seed companies. Co-ordinating distribution flow is tricky, as the Rio conference on Biodiversity in 1992 gave countries of origin ownership of seeds and plant materials. They can choose whether or not to make it available to the bank, grant or refuse permission for countries beyond their own borders to use them, placing restrictions on the bank. Dr Ebert suggests the current legislation is complex to implement because plant species don’t stick to international geographical and political boundary limits making it hard for any one country to prove which plants are native.

   “Co-operation and collaboration are needed to continue with the exchange to produce new varieties and feed a still growing world population with always less and less land which is more difficult with this legislation.”

   Balancing the need for movement with ecosystem preservation is a critical challenge. As sea levels rise in response to climate change, so does demand for heat, drought, flood and salt tolerance species, accelerating global redistribution of genes. At the same time, recognition of the importance of wild and domestic varieties is higher than ever, as farmers need to incorporate characteristics from wild types, more hardy to poor soil and extreme temperatures into the higher yielding varieties. Seeds are treated for pests before leaving the bank and quarantine encouraged in the receiving country.

9. Consumer Choice – World Wide, Who’s to say what happens to the gene lines on leaving the bank, as on reaching their destination seeds will enter agricultural production as the farmers see fit exposing them to cross breeding at the discretion of local humans, animals, birds and insect behaviour. Despite best efforts, it is not possible for the gene bank to certify that seeds are virus and pest free. Post entry quarantine and growing out isolated samples in the destination country is required to check for disease that might be present but not show up in Taiwan. Success now, is dependent on local knowledge and expertise, and outcomes cannot be completely controlled.

   The gene bank is vital in countering the threat of a narrowing gene base as farmers select for specific traits, leaving commercially valuable crops with large juicy fruit crops that are both attractive to insects and vulnerable to devastation by viruses. The coffee crisis in Shri Lanka, demonstrated this threat is real. Today, thanks to consumer’s preference for flavour, taste and colour, older stronger varieties are becoming more popular, despite having lower yields. This trend for quality has allowed niche markets for unusual varieties to develop, powerful encouragement for preserving the world’s diverse genetic heritage.

For more information visit:
http://www.avrdc.org/index.php?id=13

Spanish scientists have analysed the temperature and salt levels of the Western Mediterranean Sea between 1943 and 2000 to study the evolution of each variable. Their research shows that, since at least the 1940s, the deep water has become progressively hotter and saltier, and that, since the 1990s, this process has speeded up.

Each year the temperature of the deep layer of the Western Mediterranean increases by 0.002 C, and its salt levels increase by 0.001 units of salinity. These changes, although minimal from year to year, have been continuously and constantly occurring at a faster pace since the 1990s.

The results are consistent, ‘but to confirm this accelerating trend, we need to monitor it over the years to come,’ Manuel Vargas-Yanez, main author of the study and researcher at the Oceanic Centre of Malaga of the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO), assures SINC.

In their study, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, the researchers analysed the temperature and salt levels of the three layers of the Mediterranean Sea: the upper layer (from the surface to 150-200 metres deep with water that enters from the Atlantic), the middle layer (from 200 to 600 metres deep with water from the eastern Mediterranean that enters the western basin via the Strait of Sicily), and the deep layer (from 600 metres to the sea bed with water from the western Mediterranean).

‘These layers, especially the deep one, take up a huge volume, and raising its temperature each year by one thousandth of a degree requires an enormous amount of heat,’ the researcher points out.

The team has also observed an increase in the salt level and the temperature of the middle layer of the sea. This has not been clearly observed in the upper layer, ‘but it can be deduced from the heating of the deep water and from studies done by other teams and our current research projects,’ Vargas-Yanez states.

The research team compiled the data about temperature and salt levels by means of the MEDATLAS (Mediterranean Hydrographic Atlas) database, and using the IEO monitoring programmes. All the data were collected from the Alboran Sea, the Catalan-Balearic Sea, the Gulf of Lion, the Ligurian Sea, the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Algerian Basin, between 1943 and 2000.

‘We need to support the networks that already exist and build new ones to monitor the sea. Only then will we be able to detect, in a reliable and effective way, the changes taking place in the sea,’ Vargas-Yanez concludes.

Science Oxford is delighted to welcome Prof Gideon Henderson from Oxford University. He will explain how we can use what we know about the Earth’s climate over the last million years to help us predict temperatures, rainfall, and sea-level in the future.

This is a great lecture, check it out:

Lake Tanganyika, the second oldest and the second-deepest lake in the world, could be in for some rough waters.

Geologists led by Brown University have determined the east African rift lake has experienced unprecedented warming during the last century, and its surface waters are the warmest on record. That finding is important, the scientists write in the journal Nature Geoscience, because the warm surface waters likely will affect fish stocks upon which millions of people in the region depend.

The team took core samples from the lakebed that laid out a 1,500-year history of the lake’s surface temperature. The data showed the lake’s surface temperature, 26 degrees Celsius (78.8°F), last measured in 2003, is the warmest the lake has been for a millennium and a half. The team also documented that Lake Tanganyika experienced its biggest temperature change in the 20th century, which has affected its unique ecosystem that relies upon the natural conveyance of nutrients from the depths to jumpstart the food chain upon which the fish survive.

“Our data show a consistent relationship between lake surface temperature and productivity (such as fish stocks),” said Jessica Tierney, a Brown graduate student who this spring earned her Ph.D. and is the paper’s lead author. “As the lake gets warmer, we expect productivity to decline, and we expect that it will affect the [fishing] industry.”

The research grew out of two coring expeditions sponsored by the Nyanza Project in 2001 and 2004. Cores were taken by Andrew Cohen, professor of geological sciences at the University of Arizona and director of the Nyanza project, and James Russell, professor of geological sciences at Brown, who is also Tierney’s adviser.

Lake Tanganyika is bordered by Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, and Zambia — four of the poorest countries in the world, according to the United Nations Human Development Index. An estimated 10 million people live near the lake, and they depend upon it for drinking water and for food. Fishing is a crucial component for the region’s diet and livelihood: Up to 200,000 tons of sardines and four other fish species are harvested annually from Lake Tanganyika, a haul that makes up a significant portion of local residents’ diets, according to a 2001 report by the Lake Tanganyika Biodiversity Project.

Lake Tanganyika, one of the richest freshwater ecosystems in the world, is divided into two general levels. Most of the animal species live in the upper 100 meters, including the valuable sardines. Below that, the lake holds less and less oxygen, and at certain depths, it is anoxic, meaning it has no oxygen at all. What this all means is the lake is highly stratified and depends on wind to churn the waters and send nutrients from the depths toward the surface as food for algae, which supports the entire food web of the lake. But as Lake Tanganyika warms, the mixing of waters is lessened, the scientists find, meaning less nutrients are funneled from the depths toward the surface. Worse, more warming at the surface magnifies the difference in density between the two levels; even more wind is needed to churn the waters enough to ferry the nutrients toward the fish-dwelling upper layer.

The researchers’ data show that during the last 1,500 years, intervals of prolonged warming and cooling are linked with low and high algal productivity, respectively, indicating a clear link between past temperature changes and biological productivity in the lake.

“The people throughout southcentral Africa depend on the fish from Lake Tanganyika as a crucial source of protein,” noted Cohen, an author on the paper. “This resource is likely threatened by the lake’s unprecedented warming since the late 19th century and the associated loss of lake productivity.”

Climate change models show a general warming in the region, which, if accurate, would cause even greater warming of the Lake Tanganyika’s surface waters and more stratification in the lake as a whole. “So, as you move forward, you can imagine that density gradient increasing,” said Russell, an author on the paper.

Some researchers have posited that the declining fish stocks in Lake Tanganyika can be attributed mainly to overfishing, and Tierney and Russell say that may be a reason. But they note that the warming in the lake, and the lessened mixing of critical nutrients is exacerbating the stocks’ decline, if not causing it in the first place. “It’s almost impossible for it not to,” Russell said.

Other authors on the paper are Brown graduates Marc Mayes and Natacha Meyer; Christopher Johnson at the University of California, Los Angeles; and Peter Swarzenski, with the United States Geological Survey. The National Science Foundation and the Nyanza Project funded the research.

The future of clean green solar power may well hinge on scientists being able to unravel the mysteries of photosynthesis, the process by which green plants convert sunlight into electrochemical energy. To this end, researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC), Berkeley have recorded the first observation and characterization of a critical physical phenomenon behind photosynthesis known as quantum entanglement.

Previous experiments led by Graham Fleming, a physical chemist holding joint appointments with Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley, pointed to quantum mechanical effects as the key to the ability of green plants, through photosynthesis, to almost instantaneously transfer solar energy from molecules in light harvesting complexes to molecules in electrochemical reaction centers. Now a new collaborative team that includes Fleming have identified entanglement as a natural feature of these quantum effects. When two quantum-sized particles, for example a pair of electrons, are “entangled,” any change to one will be instantly reflected in the other, no matter how far apart they might be. Though physically separated, the two particles act as a single entity.

“This is the first study to show that entanglement, perhaps the most distinctive property of quantum mechanical systems, is present across an entire light harvesting complex,” says Mohan Sarovar, a post-doctoral researcher under UC Berkeley chemistry professor Birgitta Whaley at the Berkeley Center for Quantum Information and Computation. “While there have been prior investigations of entanglement in toy systems that were motivated by biology, this is the first instance in which entanglement has been examined and quantified in a real biological system.”

The results of this study hold implications not only for the development of artificial photosynthesis systems as a renewable non-polluting source of electrical energy, but also for the future development of quantum-based technologies in areas such as computing – a quantum computer could perform certain operations thousands of times faster than any conventional computer.

“The lessons we’re learning about the quantum aspects of light harvesting in natural systems can be applied to the design of artificial photosynthetic systems that are even better,” Sarovar says. “The organic structures in light harvesting complexes and their synthetic mimics could also serve as useful components of quantum computers or other quantum-enhanced devices, such as wires for the transfer of information.”

The schematic on the left shows the absorption of light by a light harvesting complex and the transport of the resulting excitation energy to the reaction center through the FMO protein. On the right is a monomer of the FMO protein, showing its orientation relative to the antenna and the reaction center. The numbers label FMO’s seven pigment molecules. (Image from Mohan Sarovar)

What may prove to be this study’s most significant revelation is that contrary to the popular scientific notion that entanglement is a fragile and exotic property, difficult to engineer and maintain, the Berkeley researchers have demonstrated that entanglement can exist and persist in the chaotic chemical complexity of a biological system.

“We present strong evidence for quantum entanglement in noisy non-equilibrium systems at high temperatures by determining the timescales and temperatures for which entanglement is observable in a protein structure that is central to photosynthesis in certain bacteria,” Sarovar says.

Sarovar is a co-author with Fleming and Whaley of a paper describing this research that appears on-line in the journal Nature Physics titled “Quantum entanglement in photosynthetic light-harvesting complexes.” Also co-authoring this paper was Akihito Ishizaki in Fleming’s research group.

Green plants and certain bacteria are able to transfer the energy harvested from sunlight through a network of light harvesting pigment-protein complexes and into reaction centers with nearly 100-percent efficiency. Speed is the key – the transfer of the solar energy takes place so fast that little energy is wasted as heat. In 2007, Fleming and his research group reported the first direct evidence that this essentially instantaneous energy transfer was made possible by a remarkably long-lived, wavelike electronic quantum coherence.

Using electronic spectroscopy measurements made on a femtosecond (millionths of a billionth of a second) time-scale, Fleming and his group discovered the existence of “quantum beating” signals, coherent electronic oscillations in both donor and acceptor molecules. These oscillations are generated by the excitation energy from captured solar photons, like the waves formed when stones are tossed into a pond. The wavelike quality of the oscillations enables them to simultaneously sample all the potential energy transfer pathways in the photosynthetic system and choose the most efficient. Subsequent studies by Fleming and his group identified a closely packed pigment-protein complex in the light harvesting portion of the photosynthetic system as the source of coherent oscillations.

“Our results suggested that correlated protein environments surrounding pigment molecules (such as chlorophyll) preserve quantum coherence in photosynthetic complexes, allowing the excitation energy to move coherently in space, which in turn enables highly efficient energy harvesting and trapping in photosynthesis,” Fleming says.

In this new study, a reliable model of light harvesting dynamics developed by Ishizaki and Fleming was combined with the quantum information research of Whaley and Sarovar to show that quantum entanglement emerges as the quantum coherence in photosynthesis systems evolves. The focus of their study was the Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) photosynthetic light-harvesting protein, a molecular complex found in green sulfur bacteria that is considered a model system for studying photosynthetic energy transfer because it consists of only seven pigment molecules whose chemistry has been well characterized.

“We found numerical evidence for the existence of entanglement in the FMO complex that persisted over picosecond timescales, essentially until the excitation energy was trapped by the reaction center,” Sarovar says.

“This is remarkable in a biological or disordered system at physiological temperatures, and illustrates that non-equilibrium multipartite entanglement can exist for relatively long times, even in highly decoherent environments.”

The research team also found that entanglement persisted across distances of about 30 angstroms (one angstrom is the diameter of a hydrogen atom), but this length-scale was viewed as a product of the relatively small size of the FMO complex, rather than a limitation of the effect itself.

“We expect that long-lived, non-equilibrium entanglement will also be present in larger light harvesting antenna complexes, such as LH1 and LH2, and that in such larger light harvesting complexes it may also be possible to create and support multiple excitations in order to access a richer variety of entangled states,” says Sarovar.

The research team was surprised to see that significant entanglement persisted between molecules in the light harvesting complex that were not strongly coupled (connected) through their electronic and vibrational states. They were also surprised to see how little impact temperature had on the degree of entanglement.

“In the field of quantum information, temperature is usually considered very deleterious to quantum properties such as entanglement,” Sarovar says. “But in systems such as light harvesting complexes, we see that entanglement can be relatively immune to the effects of increased temperature.”

This research was supported in part by U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, and in part by a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. It conducts unclassified scientific research and is managed by the University of California. Visit our website at http://www.lbl.gov.

A 95-million-year-old am­ber de­pos­it is adding new­found fun­gus, in­sects, spi­ders, nem­a­tode worms, and bac­te­ria to the por­trait of an an­cient ec­o­sys­tem al­so shared by di­no­saurs, sci­en­tists say.

Am­ber is hard­ened, fos­sil­ized tree sap whose glassy, jewel-like and yel­low­ish form of­ten con­tains small crea­tures trapped from the time of its or­i­gin and pre­served nearly per­fect­ly.

The new­found de­pos­it, dat­ed to the Cre­ta­ceous era that was the last ma­jor pe­ri­od of the di­no­saurs, is re­ported to be the first ma­jor dis­cov­ery of its kind from Af­ri­ca.

The find­ing may al­so pro­vide in­sights in­to the rise and di­ver­sifica­t­ion of flow­er­ing plants dur­ing the Cre­ta­ceous, re­search­ers say. A re­port by 20 sci­en­tists on the dis­cov­ery, in the cur­rent is­sue of the re­search jour­nal Pro­ceed­ings of the Na­tional Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, re­con­structs an an­cient trop­i­cal for­est un­cov­ered in pre­s­ent-day Ethi­o­pia.

“Un­til now, we had discov­ered vir­tu­ally no Cre­ta­ceous am­ber sites from the south­ern hemi­sphere’s Gond­wanan su­per­con­ti­nent, a land mass that in­clud­ed mod­ern Af­ri­ca, said re­search group mem­ber Paul Nascim­bene of the Amer­i­can Mu­se­um of Nat­u­ral His­to­ry in New York. “Sig­nif­i­cant Cre­ta­ceous am­ber de­pos­its had been found pri­marily in North Amer­i­ca and Eura­sia.”

“The first an­giosperms, or flow­er­ing plants, ap­peared and di­ver­si­fied in the Cre­ta­ceous,” added Al­ex­an­der Schmidt of the Uni­vers­ity of Göt­tin­gen in Ger­ma­ny, an­oth­er of the in­ves­ti­ga­tors. “Their rise to dom­i­nance dras­tic­ally changed ter­res­tri­al ec­o­sys­tems, and the Ethi­o­pi­an am­ber de­pos­it sheds light on this time of change.”

While some of the au­thors worked on the ge­o­log­i­cal set­ting and the fos­sils en­tombed with­in the am­ber, Nascim­bene, with Ken­neth An­der­son of South­ern Il­li­nois Uni­vers­ity, stud­ied the am­ber it­self. They found that the res­in that seeped from these Cre­ta­ceous Gond­wanan trees is si­m­i­lar chem­ic­ally to more re­cent am­bers from flow­er­ing plants in Mi­o­cene de­pos­its found in Mex­i­co and the Do­min­i­can Re­pub­lic. The am­ber’s chem­ical de­signa­t­ion is Class Ic, and it is the only Ic fos­sil res­in discov­ered thus far from the Cre­ta­ceous. All oth­er doc­u­mented Cre­ta­ceous am­bers are from non-flow­er­ing plants, or gym­nosperms.

“The tree that pro­duced the sap is still un­known, but the am­ber’s chem­is­try is sur­pris­ingly very much like that of a group of more re­cent New World an­giosperms [flow­er­ing plants] called Hy­menaea,” says Nascim­bene. “This am­ber could be from an early an­gi­o­sperm or a previously-unknown co­ni­fer that is quite dis­tinct from the oth­er known Cre­ta­ceous am­ber-producing gym­nosperms.”

Oth­er team mem­bers discov­ered 30 in­sects and spi­ders trapped in the am­ber from thir­teen fam­i­lies of or­gan­isms. These fos­sils rep­re­sent some of the ear­li­est Af­ri­can fos­sil records for a va­ri­e­ty of types, in­clud­ing wasps, bark­lice, moths, bee­tles, a prim­i­tive ant, a rare in­sect called a zorapte­ran, and a sheet-web weav­ing spi­der. Par­a­sit­ic fun­gi that lived on the trees were al­so found, as well as fil­a­ments of bac­te­ria and the re­mains of flow­er­ing plants and ferns.

Will 2010 be the warmest year on record? How do the recent U.S. “Snowmageddon” winter storms and record low temperatures in Europe fit into the bigger picture of long-term global warming?

NASA has launched a new web page to help people better understand the causes and effects of Earth’s changing climate.

The new “A Warming World” page hosts a series of new articles, videos, data visualizations, space-based imagery and interactive visuals that provide unique NASA perspectives on this topic of global importance.

The page includes feature articles that explore the recent Arctic winter weather that has gripped the United States, Europe and Asia, and how El Nino and other longer-term ocean-atmosphere phenomena may affect global temperatures this year and in the future. A new video, “Piecing Together the Temperature Puzzle,” illustrates how NASA satellites monitor climate change and help scientists better understand how our complex planet works.

The new web page is available on NASA’s Global Climate Change Web site
at:
http://climate.nasa.gov/warmingworld

For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov

Governments from across Asia’s tiger range countries (TRCs) sent a powerful message that new efforts to save wild tigers from extinction would begin immediately and called for total protection of critical tiger habitats as the 1st Asia Ministerial Conference on Tiger Conservation concluded today at the resort of Hua Hin, Thailand.

The Royal Government of Thailand hosted the meeting. Thailand’s Minister of Environment and Natural Resources Suwit Khunkitti pointed to commitments in the Hua Hin Declaration, and urged other TRCs to follow through with consolidated technical recommendations that resulted from an earlier meeting in Kathmandu on tiger conservation: “We shall reach up to the highest levels of our governments for support at the Year of the Tiger Heads of State Summit in Russia. Let us join together boldly to save the wild tiger.”

Thailand made a number of new commitments at the conference:

• Expansion of its SMART wildlife area patrolling program in its Western Forest Complex (WEFCOM) at Huai Kha Khaeng-Thung Yai
• Assistance to its neighbor countries to repatriate tigers when the population of tigers in WEFCOM and Kaeng Krachan/Kuiburi becomes large enough to act as a donor source
• Announcement that it would make funding for the ASEAN Wildlife Enforcement Network a permanent item in its budget

Seven ministers, along with senior delegations from 13 tiger range countries, gathered with top wildlife conservation experts and representatives from international organizations and donor institutions such as the World Bank, Global Tiger Initiative, WWF, Save the Tiger Fund, Wildlife Conservation Society, USAID, FREELAND, and TRAFFIC, to energize the wildlife conservation agenda, update national action plans, and announce specific proposals to reverse the continuing decline of tiger populations.

President of the World Bank Group Robert B. Zoellick, who launched the Global Tiger Initiative (GTI) in June 2008 together with the Smithsonian Institution, Global Environment Facility, and other partners, delivered a video message to the ministers and delegations, promising support for the range countries’ efforts and to spearhead sustainable development in Asia: “The World Bank stands ready to support regional projects in the tiger range countries and to mobilize the donor community and develop innovative financial instruments to support tiger conservation funds.”

Populations of wild tigers have declined to only 3,200 worldwide, according to latest estimates, from 100,000 a century ago. The GTI is one of the drivers of the World Bank’s commitment to new strategies that balance economic development with nature conservation, biodiversity and environmental protection.

Another significant development in Thailand came from Prime Minister Vladmir Putin and the Government of the Russian Federation, who officially announced plans to host the Heads of State Summit in September.

The Hua Hin Declaration reflected agreement among the TRCs to redouble efforts on the ground to halt the decline of tigers and assist in recovery of habitats. An international donor conference is also planned later this year to support the countries to bring increased resources for integrated game-changing policy to save the species from extinction.

Michael Baltzer, Leader of WWF’s Tiger Initiative, said: “We are delighted to see a ray of hope for the tiger as represented by the tiger range countries’ commitment to work together to double wild tiger numbers by 2022. We look forward to seeing their pledges turn into firm actions in Vladivostok.”

All 13 tiger range countries were represented in Hua Hin. They include Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

New research suggests that animals living at high latitudes grow better than their counterparts closer to the equator because higher-latitude vegetation is more nutritious. The study, published in the February issue of The American Naturalist, presents a novel explanation for Bergmann’s Rule, the observation that animals tend to be bigger at higher latitudes.

Ever since Christian Bergmann made his observation about latitude and size in 1847, scientists have been trying to explain it. The traditional explanation is that body temperature is the driving force. Because larger animals have less surface area compared to overall body mass, they don’t lose heat as readily as smaller animals. That would give big animals an advantage at high latitudes where temperatures are generally colder.

But biologist Chuan-Kai Ho from Texas A&M University wondered if there might be another explanation. Might plants at higher latitudes be more nutritious, enabling the animals that eat those plants to grow bigger?

To answer that question, Ho along with colleagues Steven Pennings from the University of Houston and Thomas Carefoot from the University of British Columbia, devised a series of lab experiments. They raised several groups of juvenile planthoppers on a diet of cordgrass, which was collected from high to low latitudes. Ho and his team then measured the body sizes of the planthopppers when they reached maturity. They found that the planthoppers that fed the high-latitude grass grew larger than those fed low latitude grass.

The researchers performed similar experiments using two other plant-eating species—grasshoppers and sea snails. “All three species grew better when fed plants from high versus low latitudes,” Ho said. “These results showed part of the explanation for Bergmann’s rule could be that plants from high latitudes are better food than plants from low latitudes.” Although this explanation applies only to herbivores, Ho explained that predators might also grow larger as a consequence of eating larger herbivores.

“We don’t think that this is the only explanation for Bergmann’s rule,” Ho added. “But we do think that studies of Bergmann’s rule should consider ecological interactions in addition to mechanisms based on physiological responses to temperature.”

It’s not known why the higher-latitude plants might be more nutritious. But research in Pennings’s lab at the University of Houston offers a clue. Pennings has shown that plants at low latitudes suffer more damage from herbivores than those at higher latitudes. Ho and Pennings suggest that perhaps lower nutrition and increased chemical defenses are a response to higher pressure from herbivores.

An Oxford University study says the best way to reduce emissions in the short term is a ‘drastic downscaling of both size and weight’ of conventional petrol and diesel cars.

The research by Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment suggests that we should not rely on manufacturers producing hydrogen or battery-powered vehicles in the next decade.

The report ‘Future of Mobility Roadmap’ assesses the potential for low carbon transport on land, by air and sea. It finds that electric and hydrogen vehicles are likely to remain niche products for many years because of limited battery life and the high cost of platinum, which is needed for the catalysts in hydrogen fuelled cars.

The study editor Sir David King and lead author Dr Oliver Inderwildi urge the government to impose higher taxes on drivers of large, inefficient vehicles and reinvest the money in better public transport and measures to get more people cycling and walking.

Dr Inderwildi says: ‘There is ample opportunity for emissions reductions by further improvements of currently available technology combined with a change in user habits.’

Rather than rely on the manufacturers to provide the ‘silver bullet’ solution to cut transport emissions, the report recommends behavioural change, urging consumers to influence manufacturers through their buying power. Manufacturers are more likely to produce smaller vehicles if customers opt not to buy larger, heavier vehicles with higher carbon emissions.

Better technology could significantly cut emissions from aircraft and shipping but incentives and regulation will be needed to encourage users to switch to low-carbon forms of transport, says the report.

It highlights algae-based biofuels as a means of significantly cutting transport emissions in the future and points out the limitations of biofuels as an alternative because of land shortages and food security concerns. First generation biofuels, derived from food stocks, ‘have proved the viability of such fuels, but remain a local solution, as in Brazil,’ it says.

Dr Inderwildi sees electric and diesel rail systems as the way forward in bringing down transport emissions but says there are disadvantages in the resulting infrastructure costs and lack of flexibility in route planning. Even so, reducing the carbon footprint of cars and replacing domestic flights with high speed rail could still produce ‘drastic emissions savings’.

The study warns that action must be taken immediately to have any impact on climate change because of the long lifetime of transport fleets and subsequent delays in technological impact.

‘Many technological options are already available and, in combination with infrastructure investments, [will] support the economy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide other long-term benefits,’ says the report.

Monkey species will become ‘increasingly at risk of extinction’ because of global warming, according to new research, published this week. It reveals that populations of monkeys and apes in Africa that depend largely on a diet of leaves may be wiped out by a rise in annual temperatures of two degrees Celsius. The study by researchers from Bournemouth, Roehampton and Oxford Universities suggests that the species most at risk are the already endangered gorillas and colobine monkeys.

The paper, published online by Animal Behaviour, pinpoints which species are most threatened by climate change in a series of new global maps. They show current and predicted distribution patterns of primates, comparing the populations according to their diet and the amount of enforced rest they are predicted to need.

They warn that Old World monkey populations in Africa will be hardest hit even by a very modest two degrees Celsius increase in global mean temperature, especially those whose diets are mainly leaf-based such as the beautiful colobine monkeys. In contrast, New World monkeys in South America will be virtually unaffected by a rise of two degrees in mean temperatures. However, even the South American species will begin to suffer if temperatures rise as much as four degrees Celsius (the currently predicted most extreme value) because suitable habitats will then become increasingly fragmented and small fragmented populations are more liable to chance risks of extinction.

These predictions are based on analyses of the ecological constraints that determine how much time animals are forced to rest. The researchers found that animals that have forced rest have less time to forage for food or engage in other biologically essential activities, such as forming friendships. Although most primates have adaptations that help them cope with the heat, they head for shelter and rest when the sun gets too hot. The researchers show that resting time is influenced by three main factors: the percentage of leaves in the animals’ diet, temperature variation and mean annual temperature. When these three effects come together, susceptible species will be unable to cope and populations will go extinct.

The researchers used climate models coupled with an analysis of quantitative data on the behaviour, diet and group size of different primate species across the world. African monkeys and apes that have a high percentage of leaves in their diet are geographically more restricted even now, being confined to a relatively narrow region around the equator. However, fruit-eating species like the baboons and guenon monkeys of Africa typically have a much wider latitudinal range and can cope with a wider range of climatic conditions. This ecological separation between fruit- and leaf-eating species is much less obvious in the Americas, and so these species will be much less badly affected by climate warming. The contrast between the continents may be due to the fact that African fruit-eating species may have developed a particular ecological adaptation to more challenging habitats than those encountered by species in South America.

Lead author Dr Amanda Korstjens, from Bournemouth University, said: ‘The possibility that enforced resting time might have so strong an effect on where on the map a major mammal group is likely to survive has not previously been appreciated. This study suggests that the amount of time available for monkeys and apes to gather food and socialise may be a key factor when looking at possible effects of climate change on animal distribution patterns in the past and in the future.’

Professor Robin Dunbar, from the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford, said: ‘We often worry about deforestation and hunting as the two main factors threatening the extinction of primate populations, but these results suggest that even if we find ways to solve these problems, it may not save some species of monkeys and apes from extinction. Instead, we perhaps should worry about ensuring that we provide these species with habitats that are more in tune with their capacities to cope with climate change.’

Dr Julia Lehmann, from Roehampton University, said: ‘ At overall temperature increases of two and four degrees Celsius, the distribution of habitat suitable for species that eat a lot of leaves will be greatly reduced. The distribution of suitable habitat would become progressively restricted and increasingly fragmented. The scale of the effect is sufficiently large that the implications for the survival of the dietetically more specialised primates are worrying.’

For more information, please contact the University of Oxford Press Office on 01865 280534 or email press.office@admin.ox.ac.uk

A new study examines how ice sheets, such as the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, could become unstable as the world warms.

The team from Oxford University and Cambridge University developed a model to explore how changes in the ‘grounding line’ – where an ice sheet floats free from its base of rock or sediment – could lead to the disintegration of ice sheets and result in a significant rise in global sea level.

A report of their research is published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A.

‘The volume of ice locked up in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is equivalent to a sea level rise of around 3.3 metres,’ said Dr Richard Katz of Oxford University’s Department of Earth Sciences, an author of the report. ‘Our model shows how instability in the grounding line, caused by gradual climatic changes, has the potential to reach a ‘tipping point’ where disintegration of the ice sheet could occur.’

At the moment the model – that uniquely takes into account the three dimensional shape of ice sheets – is still fairly simple, but the researchers hope to eventually include more detail on how ice sheets interact with their base slopes and show the behaviour of individual ice streams.

When the team applied their theoretical and mathematical model to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet they found that, contrary to earlier assessments, a scenario which would see instability grow as the grounding line recedes was likely. In the case of the Pine Island Glacier it may already be occurring.

‘Global climate models often assume that, as the world warms, ice sheets will melt at a steady rate, leading to gradual rises in sea level – but ice sheets are much more complex structures than this,’ said Dr Katz. ‘We need to do a lot more work to build better models of how ice sheets behave in the real world. Only then can we start to predict how this behaviour might change in the future as the climate changes.’

A report of the research, ‘Stability of ice sheet grounding lines’, is published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A. The research was conducted by Dr Richard Katz of Oxford University’s Department of Earth Sciences and Professor M Grae Worster of Cambridge University’s Institute of Theoretical Geophysics.

David Godber, from the Design Council talking about their work to put design into UK businesses.

Innovation Forum
The Oxfordshire Economic Partnership’s vision is to guide strategic change to develop Oxfordshire’s capacity for innovation, business and personal development, research and education, and the effective management of local environmental assets. These Innovation seminars are aimed at a mixed audience of business leaders and members of the public across Oxfordshire and will provide a valuable opportunity for companies and individuals to network and share best practice.

Warmed, overfished and polluted, the small Mediterranean Sea is giving scientists a look at what the future may hold for the rest of Earth’s oceans — and it’s not pretty.

Beneath its surface, a transformation is taking place. Food webs are shrinking, with rich ecosystems that supported valuable commercial fisheries giving way to barrens dominated by jellyfish and tiny invertebrates. Mass die-offs and disease are now common.

“The predicted effects of climate change are being met in the Mediterranean. The results are more obvious and dramatic, but the drivers are the same all over the world,” said Pierre Chevaldonné, a University of the Mediterranean biologist.

Chevaldonné is a co-author of a review of more than 100 studies on the Mediterranean’s changing ecological dynamics. Published last Monday in Trends in Ecology and Evolution, it describes the convergence of climate change and human impacts in waters that had been stable since the time of Aristotle.

During the latter half of the 20th century, the Mediterranean’s deep northern regions, a traditional source of cold waters that flowed south into warmer basin currents, warmed by one-fifth of a degree Fahrenheit. Shallow northwest waters — an intermediate zone more productive than any other region of the Mediterranean — warmed by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Some of the warming was expected, but it appears to have accelerated in the last 20 years, as the unusually hot 1990s coincided with natural cycles.

With that overheated decade came anomalies in surface temperature and rainfall. These appear to have disrupted deep-water hydrology, changing its composition and currents. That disruption has now rippled to the western shallows. Compounding the problem, runaway population growth has packed 132 million people around the sea’s rim, with habitat destruction, pollution and fishing pressure increasing apace.

The effects of these interacting stresses make the Mediterranean a model system for the rest of Earth’s oceans, which are also overfished and, in many regions, warming at comparable or greater rates. Scientists say warming will continue for decades even if greenhouse gas emissions soon fall to a fraction of current levels. And though it will take longer for disruption to become visible in those larger waters, the lessons are the same.

“It’s difficult to know exactly what’s going to happen elsewhere, but the principles can be extrapolated,” said Marta Call, a Dalhousie University marine biologist who has modeled the interactions of Mediterranean species. In a paper published last year in Ecosystems, she and her colleagues described Mediterranean food webs as “in an advanced state of degradation.”

Degradation in the Mediterranean has taken place on multiple levels. Many large fish species, including top-level predators like sharks and tuna, have been fished to functional extinction. A few still swim, but they no longer have the same ecological role. Coll’s models and other research on predator interactions suggest that they helped stabilize food webs, and their absence now leaves other species prone to wild fluctuations.

Mass die-offs of dozens of invertebrate species are now common in the northeast. They’re stressed by rising temperatures and vulnerable to disease, and the most common invasive species are not new predators, but microbes. Most strikingly, soft corals that once carpeted the northwest seafloor, forming a literal underwater forest, have in many areas been wiped out altogether. Replacing them is what Chevaldonné calls “lawns” of algae and short-lived invertebrates.

The prevailing dynamic is what scientists call “brittleness,” or a decline in “robustness.” Historically complex food webs cannot find balance. In their place have emerged simpler food webs dominated by species that Coll and her colleagues characterize as “unpalatables” and “detritus” — algae, invertebrates and jellyfish. There are still some fish, but they’re relatively few in number, and small. Much of the Mediterranean catch is now processed and sold as animal feed.

“In terms of biomass and production, the Mediterranean is basically impoverished,” said Coll.

These conditions probably represent a transitional period for the Mediterranean, though it’s likely a one-way transition. Neither Chevaldonné nor Coll claims to know exactly what the sea’s next stable ecological configuration will look like, but this may be a preview, just as the Mediterranean may be a preview of the profound shifts likely elsewhere.

“In the future, we may get only jellyfish. Then we’ll find a way of consuming jellyfish,” Coll said. “The problem is, do we want that?”

Article Credit: Wired Science

The tragic recognition of the extinction of Yangtze River Dolphin in 2007 made headline news around the world.
Dr Samuel Turvey tells the story of the plight of these unique and beautiful creatures from his perspective as a conservation biologist deeply involved in the struggle to save them.

This film is in association with Oxford University Press.

Further Information
Dr Samuel Turvey is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London. His main interest is the history and prehistory of human-caused extinctions, and is involved with ZSL’s new Edge of Existence programme, which aims to support conservation projects for evolutionary distinct and globally endangered species. He is author of ‘Witness to Extinction: How We Failed to Save the Yangtze River Dolphin’.

http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199549474.do?keyword=Turvey&sortby=bestMatches

www.zsl.org/science/ioz-staff-students/turvey,1107,AR.html

www.edgeofexistence.org/

Biodiversity is our life

2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity and we’d like everyone to do one simple thing to preserve life on earth. With your help, it is easier than it sounds.

1) Make your New Year resolution for 2010 to do something to support biodiversity.

2) Choose a simple, fun pledge from the list on the International Year of Biodiversity UK website www.biodiversityislife.net/?q=do-one-thing
Or, you may know something you want to do already?

3) On 1 January 2010 – or as soon as you can in 2010 – let people know what you’re doing: Tweet, email, Facebook or blog your pledge to inspire others to do something similar. Please include the link to www.biodiversityislife.net/?q=do-one-thing in your communication.

On Twitter you could begin your tweet by saying:
“I’m supporting biodiversity by [type your pledge in here and end with the following hashtag] #iyb”

OR

“Biodiversity is our life so I’m going to [type your pledge in here and end with the following hashtag] #iyb”

Together we can make a difference.

Further Information:
www.biodiversityislife.net/?q=do-one-thing
www.biodiversityislife.net
www.nhm.ac.uk