Tagged: ecosystems

New Zealand’s fossil record suggests more species lived in warmer waters. But the current rate of warming may break this pattern - Hot off the press

Guest Author • Sep 01, 2021 •

• climate change,
• ecosystems,
• fossils,
• New Zealand stories

Tom Womack, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington Marine organisms found in New Zealand’s past and present coastal waters. Tom Womack, CC BY-ND New Zealand may be relatively small, but its fossil record reveals a globally important ecological relationship between the number of species, their role in the ecosystem and ocean temperatures. We used New Zealand’s exemplary fossil … Read More

Go native: why we need ‘wildlife allotments’ to bring species back to the ‘burbs - Guest Work

Guest Author • Jan 11, 2017 •

• cities,
• community gardens,
• ecosystems,
• gardening,
• native wildlife,
• Planning,
• urban planning,
• vegetables

By Lizzy Lowe, University of Auckland and Margaret Stanley, University of Auckland As urban populations around the globe skyrocket and the demand for housing grows, space is increasingly at a premium in cities. Unfortunately, despite some notable efforts to include green space in cities, native wildlife is not often a priority for urban planners, despite research … Read More

Reducing food waste could put birds and animals at risk - Guest Work

Guest Author • Nov 10, 2016 •

• conservation,
• ecology,
• ecosystems,
• Environment,
• food chain,
• food waste,
• food web

By Ninah Kopel, The Conversation Well-intended efforts to reduce food waste could threaten some birds and animal species, a new paper has warned. Writing in the journal Animal Conservation, researchers have called for scientists to consider how food efficiency measures may affect animal populations that rely on landfill and other food waste to survive. The warning comes … Read More

Ancient rat dung a window into the past - News

John Kerr • Nov 03, 2016 •

• carbon dating,
• coprolites,
• DNA,
• dung,
• ecology,
• ecosystems,
• kiore,
• paleoecology,
• rats

The bits of plant and animal matter found in fossilised rat poo can tell us a rich and detailed story of New Zealand’s past. Rat droppings are something most people actively avoid, but not Associate Professor Janet Wilmshurst. She has just been awarded a $830,000 grant from the Marsden Fund to take a closer look at preserved … Read More

The best way to protect us from climate change? Save our ecosystems - Guest Work

Guest Author • Feb 13, 2016 •

• climate change,
• ecosystems,
• protection

Tara Martin, CSIRO and James Watson, The University of Queensland When we think about adapting humanity to the challenges of climate change, it’s tempting to reach for technological solutions. We talk about seeding our oceans and clouds with compounds designed to trigger rain or increasing carbon uptake. We talk about building grand structures to … Read More

TDB today: The Big Crunch - Hot Topic

Gareth Renowden • May 29, 2013 •

• Biodiversity,
• Climate business,
• climate change,
• Climate politics,
• Climate Science,
• ecosystems,
• population,
• The Daily Blog

My column at The Daily Blog this week looks at last week’s call from the Millennium Alliance for Humanity & the Biosphere (a cross-disciplinary group of hundreds of top scientists) for urgent action to address climate change, extinctions, loss of ecosystem diversity, pollution, and human population growth and resource consumption. To call it a big [...] … Read More

Not a pretty picture: recent science summarised - Hot Topic

Bryan Walker • Oct 17, 2011 •

• Climate politics,
• Climate Science,
• ecosystems,
• geoengineering,
• ice,
• mitigation,
• Sea level,
• WRI

A valuable review, Climate Science 2009-2010, has just been published by the World Resources Institute. It’s a summary of major peer-reviewed research in climate change science and technology during those two years. Aimed at policymakers, the NGO community, and the media, it offers succinct summaries of the findings of a wide array of scientific papers, [...] … Read More

Jolting Contrasts - Hot Topic

Bryan Walker • Sep 12, 2011 •

• Climate cranks,
• Climate politics,
• Climate Science,
• denial,
• ecosystems,
• Sea level

I read this morning yet another dismal report on the extraordinary lengths to which Republican politicians hopeful of nomination as presidential candidate in America are going in their denial of climate change. Then I watched an excellent PBS television interview with a couple of intelligent and knowledgeable American scientists which regular Hot Topic commenter Bill [...] … Read More

No Penguin Café when the ice melts - Hot Topic

Bryan Walker • Jun 30, 2011 •

• Antarctica,
• arctic,
• Climate Science,
• ecosystems,
• penguins,
• phytoplankton,
• sea ice

At Yale Environment 360 Fen Montaigne provides a fascinating, if disturbing, report on the findings of scientists working on the effects of sea ice retreat on the polar marine food chain. Montaigne is the author of the book Fraser’s Penguins which I reviewed earlier this year and of an earlier article at Yale Environment about [...] … Read More

Climate compendium: important insights - Hot Topic

Bryan Walker • Sep 28, 2009 •

• bryan walker,
• Climate Science,
• ecosystems,
• ocean acidification,
• Sea level,
• UN

“The Climate Change Science Compendium is a wake-up call. The time for hesitation is over”. So wrote Ban Ki-moon in his foreword to this UN Environment Programme publication released last week. The publication is a review of how climate science has evolved since the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), and is based on some 400 major scientific contributions [...] … Read More