# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Image

Credit Iris Gottlieb for The New York Times

A quarter-century ago, Pinatubo, a volcano in the Philippines, blew its top in a big way: It spewed a cubic mile of rock and ash and 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide gas into the atmosphere. The gas spread around the world and combined with water vapor to make aerosols, tiny droplets that reflected some sunlight away from the Earth. As a result, average global temperatures dropped by about one degree Fahrenheit for several years.

Powerful volcanic eruptions like Pinatubo's in 1991 are one of the biggest natural influences on climate. So NASA researchers and other scientists are planning a rapid-response program to study the next big one.

But the climate impact of a Pinatubo-size eruption is also a natural analog of an idea that has existed on the fringes of science for years: geoengineering, or intervening in the atmosphere to deliberately cool the planet.

Mount Pinatubo in 1991 Credit Courtesy of Yale University Press

One geoengineering approach would use high-flying jets to spray similar chemicals in the stratosphere. So by studying the next big volcanic eruption, scientists would also gain insights into how such a scheme, known as solar radiation management, or S.R.M., might work.

"This is important if we're ever going to do geoengineering," said Alan Robock, a Rutgers University researcher who models the effects of eruptions and who has been involved in discussions about the rapid-response project. "But even if there were no such thing as geoengineering, it's still important to understand how volcanoes affect climate."

The rapid-response effort would involve high-altitude balloon flights and other methods to gather data about an eruption as soon as possible after it begins and for several years afterward.

Iris Gottlieb for The New York Times

The idea has gained some urgency in recent weeks, since Mount Agung, a volcano in Bali, began erupting at the end of November. Agung's last major eruption occurred in 1963, and should it fully blow with similar fury it could pump enough sulfur dioxide gas high enough into the atmosphere to have a measurable cooling effect. A huge eruption could also temporarily damage the ozone layer, which scientists would also study.

The relative power of an eruption is ranked on an "explosivity index," a scale from 0 to 8 depending largely on the volume of ejected ash and gas and how high it goes - 100,000 feet or more in some cases. Agung's 1963 eruption was rated 5 on the scale, as was Pinatubo's in 1991. But the index does not necessarily correlate to impact on climate: The eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington in 1980 was of similar explosiveness but had little cooling effect because most of the ash and gas was expelled laterally rather than upward.

Mount Agung spewing smoke and ash in Bali in November. Credit Firdia Lisnawati/Associated Press

NASA researchers are mapping out a plan to monitor a Pinatubo-like event - "the scale of eruption that would lead to both ozone depletion and a lot of surface cooling," said Paul A. Newman, a senior scientist at the agency who is helping to develop the plan.

Of particular interest would be to measure the amount of sulfur dioxide in the first few weeks, before the gas combines with water vapor to make the reflective aerosols.

It would also be important to monitor the aerosols over time, to see how big they get and how they eventually break down. Bigger aerosols would fall out of the atmosphere sooner, lessening the cooling impact.

Some environmental satellites can monitor volcanic eruptions, but balloon flights would be an important component of any rapid-response program. Balloons are relatively low cost and can be launched from various locations. It would be important to fly them near the same latitude as the erupting volcano, because the gas plume tends to spread east-west first.

Over the longer term, a robust monitoring program would need aircraft from NASA and other agencies, said Jack Kaye, associate director for research at NASA's earth science division. That would most likely involve diverting aircraft time from other research projects, he said. "It may mean some people's plans will have to change," he said.

Most planes do not fly high enough to reach the part of the atmosphere where the aerosols form, although they can be outfitted with sensors to take measurements from below. "It would be a huge redirection of resources," Dr. Newman said. "You're only going to do this if you have something really big to look at."

NASA officials play down the benefits to the study of geoengineering of a volcano-research program. Geoengineering has long had an outlaw image among much of the scientific community, viewed as risky last-resort measures to solve climate problems that would be better dealt with by cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Even discussing geoengineering concepts has long been considered taboo among many scientists.

"From my viewpoint, the big issues are really about the impacts of volcanoes, not on S.R.M. per se," Dr. Newman said.

Credit Iris Gottlieb for The New York Times

But in the past few years, some scientists and policymakers have begun to argue for limited direct research into geoengineering concepts to better understand their potential as well asrisks, and be better prepared should global warming reach a point where some kind of emergency action were deemed necessary.

A few scientists have proposed small-scale outdoor experiments to study aspects of solar radiation management, and last month the American Geophysical Union, one of the nation's largest scientific societies, endorsed the idea of some research into what it called "climate intervention."

Scientists cannot predict precisely when a volcano will blow. Even though Mount Agung is being closely monitored since coming back to life, scientists cannot say for certain when or if it will fully erupt.

And even if Agung were to erupt soon, there is no guarantee it would be explosive enough to send significant amounts of gas and ash high enough into the atmosphere to be worth monitoring. Some volcanologists suggest, in fact, that because Agung had a powerful eruption only half a century ago, any eruption now might not be big enough.

Similarly, the current eruption of Mayon in the Philippines is not expected to have any climate impact.

But Dr. Robock said that eventually some large volcano would blow on the order of the '91 Pinatubo eruption. "It'll probably be one you've never heard of," he said.

Henry Fountain covers climate change, with a focus on the innovations that will be needed to overcome it. He is the author of "The Great Quake," a book about the 1964 Alaskan earthquake. @henryfountain * Facebook

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page D3 of the New York edition with the headline: A Volcanic Idea for Cooling the Earth. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Next Big Volcano Could Briefly Cool Earth. NASA Wants to Be Ready.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
By studying the natural effects of a large volcanic eruption, scientists could learn about how we might deliberately cool the planet in the future.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Prepare for the great nurdle invasion, as a wave of 1 billion plastic pellets bears down on WA

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Updated October 26, 2018 18:50:41 The word "nurdle" rarely enters everyday conversation, but these tiny lentil-sized pellets of plastic are at the centre of an impending environmental headache. More than 2.25 billion of the miniature plastic spheres were spilt into the ocean from a ship off the South African city of Durban last year, and they have been creeping their way to Australian shores ever since.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The conditions under which early lifeforms originated and exploded into the many animal groups we see today is a mystery that has confounded scientists for decades. New research suggests shallow marine environments were a critical testbed for these early animals, providing the perfect space for them to evolve the physical characteristics required for them to move beyond their nearshore cradle.

Microbes were the only form of life on Earth for thousands of millions of years. But then something remarkable happened: complex, multicellular organisms, including animals, appeared. Seemingly overnight, these new lifeforms diversified into all sorts of kooky creatures, expanding to fill virtually every nook and cranny on the planet. The habitat within which this crucial transformation took place, however, is poorly understood, owing to a dearth of fossil evidence.

New research published today in Science posits the theory that shallow, nearshore environments were critical to this biological revolution, and that all vertebrate groups alive today emerged from these sorts of marine environments between 480 million to 360 million years ago.

A fascinating implication of this research, aside from providing new details about the origin of complex vertebrates, is that it could tell us something about how life emerges - or cannot emerge - on other habitable planets. Without shallow waters, this new research suggests, early life might remain stuck in a primitive mode.

Prior to the new study, biologists suspected that early vertebrates may have emerged and evolved in shallow waters, but some suggested they evolved in freshwater, the open ocean, or even amongst coral reefs. With evidence lacking, however, scientists couldn't be sure which of these interpretations was correct.

Part of the problem, according to Lauren Sallan, the lead author of the new study and a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, has to do with the sheer lack of fossils. The fossil record of vertebrates is rather pathetic for tens of millions of years following their debut during the Cambrian Explosion, she said, but scientists have been able to uncover bits and pieces of bone, and the odd whole-body fossil, from the Ordovician period starting at about 480 million years ago.

Nothing, however, has been found in fossilised ecosystems such as coral reefs. Then in the Silurian period, starting around 443 million years ago, a large number of jawed and jawless animals suddenly appeared all at once, noted Sallan. The big question that scientists have been asking is why - and under which conditions - this dramatic transformation took place.

Sallan said new developments in quantitative methods are finally allowing scientists to test theories about the ancestral habitats of vertebrates, as opposed to just making educated guesses.

"We put together a database of over 2700 early vertebrate occurrences from 480 million years ago to 360 million years ago, when fishes experienced a mass extinction, and determined what environments these fossils originally came from," Sallan told Gizmodo.

"We used the evolutionary tree of early fishes and mathematical models to reconstruct the ancestral habitats for different kinds of vertebrates. This showed that all major groups, from jawless fishes to jawed fishes, evolved in a very restricted band of coastal waters, well shoreward of the lagoon. We then compared the vertebrate record to that for invertebrates like shells and corals, which showed that early fishes thrived and diversified in much shallower waters than expected."

The shallow-water lagoons lining the mid-Palaeozoic coastline, this research suggests, served as a springboard for all major groups of early vertebrates over a period of 100 million years. As these creatures evolved and diversified, their bodies adapted in ways that eventually allowed them to spread into new environments; tough, durable animals stayed nearshore or moved into freshwater habitats like lakes and rivers, while more delicate, flexible creatures ventured to deep water to avoid the increasingly hostile competition, the researchers speculate.

"Our study suggests that there was a repeated 'invasion of the oceans' by vertebrates who started out in shallow waters and shifted to reefs and offshore settings," said Sallan. "This required specific changes such as flexible bodies, just as the invasion of land required the previous evolution of specific traits like lungs and limbs. However, we don't see any further major diversification caused by these shifts offshore. We also find that many early vertebrate groups invaded freshwaters first."

This study only covers the initial phases of vertebrate evolution. Looking ahead to future research, Sallan said her team would like to know if this primordial water cradle persisted through time, or if other environments, such as corals, somehow contributed to the emergence of new fish groups.

The diversification of early vertebrates was contingent on the presence of shallow waters, this research suggests. A relevant question to ask is whether similar constraints exist elsewhere, namely on habitable exoplanets. A surprising finding from astronomy is that most habitable Earth-like planets may be waterworlds.

Such planets would be devoid of shallow areas, with deep waters enveloping the entire globe. It's possible that microbial life could emerge on waterworlds, and even evolve into primitive fish-like creatures, but without nearshore environments, these organisms might not be able to graduate to the next level of evolutionary complexity.

It's yet another potential sign that the conditions required to support the emergence of intelligent life in the cosmos are exceedingly rare.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Shallow Waters Allowed Early Fish-Like Creatures To Experiment With Evolution

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The conditions under which early lifeforms originated and exploded into the many animal groups we see today is a mystery that has confounded scientists for decades. New research suggests shallow marine environments were a critical testbed for these early animals, providing the perfect space for them to evolve the...

# data[].attributes.body
The origin of birds is a hot topic.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The winged is one of the most famous dinosaurs known to science, yet arguments persist about its place in the evolutionary family tree. The reported discovery of an entirely new species of Archaeopteryx with distinctly bird-like characteristics suggests its relationship to modern birds is more meaningful than we realised. Critics, on the other hand, say it's premature to designate the fossil specimen as belonging to a new species.

It's called Archaeopteryx albersdoerferi - a Jurassic dinosaur that's less reptile-like and more bird-like than any other known Archaeopteryx species, according to new research published today in Historical Biology. If confirmed, it would only be only the third species of Archaeopteryx identified among the 12 known fossilised skeletons (or 10, depending on who you ask).

This particular fossil was discovered in 2009 (it's referred to as number eight), but a new scanning technique was used for the analysis, so it's classic case of an old fossil being view through new eyes. That the authors of the new study would declare the specimen a distinct species shouldn't come as a surprise.

Virtually every new fossil of Archaeopteryx has, at first, been declared a new species before eventually being slotted back into one of the two known species, either Archaeopteryx lithographica or Archaeopteryx siemensii, after further scrutiny. The same could happen to Archaeopteryx albersdoerferi, but only time will tell.

Archaeopteryx is one of the most intriguing dinosaurs in the palaeontological record. Discovered back in the 1860s, this Jurassic-era dinosaur was celebrated as being a conspicuous demonstration of evolution in action. Not quite lizard and not quite bird, it seemed to show, almost literally, lizards evolving into birds. Archaeopteryx was thus branded a "transitionary" species - a so-called missing link between extinct dinosaurs and modern birds.

Over the years, however, palaeontologists have struggled to place Archaeopteryx in the family tree that leads to modern birds. The discovery of other dinosaur-era bird-like creatures, with sizes and characteristics more in keeping with the appearance of modern birds, led some scientists to conclude that Archaeopteryx was an evolutionary dead end, and that modern birds have a different common ancestor.

Archaeopteryx was dubbed a "convergently bird-like non-avialan theropod," which means a non-avian feathered dinosaur that acquired bird-like characteristics through the processes of convergent evolution.

That's what makes this new analysis so potentially important. The lead author of the new study, Martin Kundrát from Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Slovakia, said the specimen is more like modern birds than any other Archaeopteryx specimen uncovered to date. The new paper is thus nudging Archaeopteryx a step or two closer to the family tree that leads to modern birds.

This Archaeopteryx fossil was pulled from the Mörnsheim Formation of Germany, and it's the youngest of all the known Archaeopteryx specimens by about 500,000 years, according to the study. All Archaeopteryx fossils date back to the Late Jurassic some 150 million years ago, a time when the first bird-like dinosaurs were emerging.

It bears a close resemblance to an older species known as A. lithographica, the researchers claim, but the age of the new fossil, in conjunction with its unique physical characteristics, single it out as a distinct species of Archaeopteryx.

To study the specimen, Kundrát's team used a scanning technique called synchrotron microtomography, which allows scientists to visualise specimens in three dimensions and to observe interior features without having to cut them open.

"By digitally dissecting the fossil we found that this specimen differed from all of the others," John Nudds, a co-author of the study and a palaeontologist at Manchester University, said in a statement. "It possessed skeletal adaptations which would have resulted in much more efficient flight. In a nutshell we have discovered what A. lithographica evolved into - a more advanced bird, better adapted to flying - and we have described this as a new species of Archaeopteryx."

The researchers documented several distinct skeletal characteristics, such as the fusion of its cranial bones, unique wing elements and pectoral girdle (chest), and a hardier arrangement of hand bones. Importantly, none of these features are found in the older Archaeopteryx specimens, which tend to be more reptile-like in their features, noted the researchers.

"This is the first time that numerous bones and teeth of Archaeopteryx were viewed from all aspects including exposure of their inner structure," said Kundrát, "The use of synchrotron microtomography was the only way to study the specimen as it is heavily compressed with many fragmented bones partly or completely hidden in limestone."

Troublingly, the researchers claim their new study offers "the first synchrotron microtomographic examination of the [Archaeopteryx] genus," which is categorically untrue. Earlier this year, a research team from from the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France, and Palacký University in the Czech Republic used a synchotron to study the flight potential of Archaeopteryx. That Kundrát and Nudds failed to account for this closely related research, published in Nature Communications, is a glaring omission.

Dennis Voeten, the lead author of the Nature Communications paper, said the new study provides "a welcome contribution to our understanding of the variability that Archaeopteryx exhibits within the genus," but he's not convinced the fossil represents a new species.

"Nearly all specimens have been included in their own species at some point, and later revisions remained incapable of separating these animals in a limited number of well-defined 'natural' species," Voeten told Gizmodo.

The rate of growth and physical variability of Archaeopteryx "remains challenging to reconstruct," he said, and several key characteristics, such as the sizes of bones and subtle physical traits, could be the result of individual variation, or even deformations of the bone after the animal died, rather than the signs of a separate species.

"Nevertheless, this new paper provides a powerful second example of the value of synchrotron tomography in reliably visualising the internal structures of priceless and fragile fossils," he said. "Future evaluations of the beautiful fossils of Archaeopteryx will undoubtedly reveal which morphological characters are associated with its true specific diversity, and which result from other factors in play."

As a final aside, the top image used in this post - an artist's reconstruction of A. albersdoerferi - takes some serious liberties. Though Archaeopteryx exhibits physical characteristics consistent with flying, it has not yet been proven that it was a free flyer. As I wrote earlier this year, "scientists don't know if this animal used its wings for passive gliding or powered, active flight.

Another possibility is that Archaeopteryx was a ground-dwelling animal that didn't fly at all, using its wings for something else, like snatching prey, leaping, or sexual displays."

All this said, the recent work done by Voeten and Kundrát both point in the direction of Archaeopteryx being a flying creature, but its exact mode of flying remains a mystery.

[ Historical Biology]

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Intriguing German Fossil Could Be An Entirely New Species Of Archaeopteryx

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The winged Archaeopteryx is one of the most famous dinosaurs known to science, yet arguments persist about its place in the evolutionary family tree. The reported discovery of an entirely new species of Archaeopteryx with distinctly bird-like characteristics suggests its relationship to modern birds is more meaningful...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
While the Atlantic Hurricanes Florence and Michael have rightfully gotten most of our attention this season, climate conditions in the Pacific are churning out one storm after another. We've seen a whopping 21 named storms in that region so far this year, but even that sheer number does no justice to the intensity of this hurricane season. This Pacific hurricane season could likely end up being the most intense one that meteorologists have ever recorded.

The Pacific hurricane season covers all storms that form between the western coast of North America and 180°W, which is also known as the International Date Line. The eastern Pacific basin stretches from the western coast of North America to 140°W longitude. The central Pacific basin, which covers Hawaii, stretches from 140°W to 180°W. Meteorologists and climatologists often combine the two basins since most of the storms that cross through the central Pacific originated in the eastern Pacific.

Storms that form west of the international date line are still tropical cyclones, but instead of being called hurricanes, they're known as typhoons. Typhoons are tracked separately from hurricanes in the central and eastern Pacific because of geopolitical reasons and the fact that storms in the western Pacific are influenced by different factors than storms in the rest of the ocean.

The eastern and central Pacific basins have seen an incredible 20 named storms so far this year. The season began with Hurricane Aletta's formation on June 5 and continued through Tropical Storm Tara in the middle of October. Another tropical depression had a high chance of developing into the next named storm, Willa, by the publication of this post.

12 of those named storms became hurricanes, and nine of those storms strengthened into a category four or five at one point during their lifespan. Nine storms with winds reaching category four or five status on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale is a record for the most storms we've ever seen achieve that strength during one Pacific hurricane season.

The sheer energy released by these storms places this year in record territory. Meteorologists measure the strength of a hurricane season through Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE). ACE measures the energy produced by a storm by calculating the maximum sustained winds of the storm over its lifespan. The average ACE value for the eastern and central Pacific basins combined is about 121. The ACE generated by this year's storms through October 16 is 294-more than double what you'd see in an average year and putting it just shy of the most intense year on record. The ACE generated by the next tropical cyclone, should it develop, will give this season the dubious distinction of most intense on record.

For context, the entire Pacific-from Asia to North America-is traditionally more active than the Atlantic basin. The eastern Pacific alone typically sees about 15 named storms in an average year compared to just 12 over in the Atlantic. The Pacific is usually busier than the Atlantic because sea surface temperatures are warmer and there are fewer factors present-such as dry air or wind shear-to inhibit the development of storms. The developing El Niño in the eastern Pacific this year is also likely boosting the development of storms and helping them reach their full potential.

Unlike the Atlantic, the list of storm names in the eastern Pacific includes the letters X, Y, and Z to account for the heightened activity. It would be a heavy lift for this hurricane season to exhaust the English alphabet and continue into the Greek alphabet-which has only happened once, during the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season-but it's not a completely implausible scenario at this point.

Despite the number and strength of storms so far this year, relatively few have threatened land at full strength in the central or eastern Pacific. Hawaii faced the greatest tropical threats this year, feeling the effects of Hurricane Lane in August and Tropical Storm Olivia in September. Lane produced the second-highest rainfall total ever recorded during a tropical cyclone anywhere in the United States, dropping 52 inches of rain on the Big Island as it passed just south of the island chain. Hurricane Walaka, the only storm to actually form in the central Pacific this year, made a close brush with Johnston Atoll in October before heading out to open waters.

Thankfully, prevailing winds across the region usually sweep these storms westward, sending them out to sea where they perish in cooler waters, but there are notable exceptions. Storms hit or brush Mexico fairly regularly and can cause significant wind damage to coastal communities and produce life-threatening flash flooding and mudslides across inland mountainous areas. Six storms this year either made landfall in or closely brushed Mexico. Luckily, all of those storms were tropical storms or weaker, and they were predominately rainmakers. The remnant moisture from Hurricanes Bud, Rosa, and Sergio produced flooding rains when they moved into the southwestern United States.

The Pacific hurricane season continues through the end of November.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
This could be the fiercest Pacific hurricane season ever

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
While the Atlantic Hurricanes Florence and Michael have rightfully gotten most of our attention this season, climate conditions in the Pacific are churning out one storm after another. We've seen a whopping 21 named storms in that region so far this year, but even that sheer number does no justice to the intensity of this hurricane season.

# data[].attributes.headline
 Print  Email  Facebook  Twitter  MoreClimate change, rising sea levels putting Australia's koalas at risk

# data[].attributes.subject
 Print  Email  Facebook  Twitter  MoreClimate change, rising sea levels putting Australia's koalas at risk

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Updated June 04, 2017 11:53:39

Australia's koala populations and their coastal gum tree habitats could be devastated by rising sea levels, which would trigger toxic die-back disease, a scientific conference has been told.

Koala's feed only on the leaves of gum trees, and spend most of their lives protected in their tall branches. The iconic marsupial is listed nationally as a vulnerable species, and its numbers are falling.

Dr Rebecca Montague-Drake, an ecologist with the Port Macquarie Council in New South Wales, has published modelling that shows 14 per cent of the area's koala habitats will experience saltwater inundation over the next 50 years, climbing to 22 per cent next century.

She said rising salinity from bigger tides and floods would increase toxins in gum trees and "reduce the koala's food availability".

"Koalas walk a really tight tightrope between the leaf that they eat, the high levels of toxins that eucalypts leaves contain, and the amount of toxin they can extract from those leaves," she said.

"When we start playing with the salinity balance in the soil, that fine balance in the leaf, between the toxins and the nutrient, values get way out of kilter."

Data suggests fewer than 40,000 koalas survive in the wild.

Dr Montague-Drake expects further destruction of coastal gum trees along a 1,000-kilometre strip between Jervis Bay and Moreton Bay, which could eliminate a third of the region's koala habitats.

She also said her modelling reflected a best-case, not worst-case, sea-rise scenario.

"We are only using a conservative estimate, because we know the trees characterised in these areas, the swamp mahoganies the forest red gum, are a little bit more resilient to salinity than some other species of eucalypts," she said.

Rising seas not the only problem

The sea level warnings add to a growing list of existing habitat threats for koalas, like forestry and unlawful land clearing.

Newly released Forestry Corporation maps obtained by ABC News show intensive logging is expected inside prime habitat areas around Coffs Harbour.

Sorry, this video has expired

Ecologist Steve Philips, a member of a NSW Koala advisory panel, said the state's native forests have been "harvested to within an inch of their ecological life".

After years of field surveys, he warned this weekend's National Koala Conference that populations could disappear.

"The picture builds up over a few decades of research," he said.

"We are going into forested areas that we know used to have koalas in them, and are often coming back without any data, without any koala sightings."

Dr Oisin Sweeney, a scientist from the National Parks Association, said populations could become extinct if large-scale logging goes ahead.

"We know that koalas don't like logging, they don't like disturbance, they prefer larger trees because they perceive these as larger food sources," he said.

"So it doesn't take a genius to work out that having all their food sources in an area subject to logging is a major threat to koalas."

Dr Sweeney is urging the Government to protect more habitat and said he supported a proposed Great Koala National Park (GKNP) in the State Forest.

"That's the jewel in the crown, the Great Koala National Park in the Coffs Harbour hinterland that would capture some of the really, really good koala habitat," he said.

National Park is a 'political gimmick'

NSW Environment Minister Gabrielle Upton disagrees, describing the national park idea as a political gimmick.

"It is not about a national park in one area of the state, it is about helping our koala population across NSW," she said.

She points to her government's $100 million investment in Threatened Species programs, including a $10 million fund to acquire koala habitat from private owners.

"The NSW Government is developing a whole-of-state strategy," Ms Upton said.

"There's a lot we don't know. A balance has to be struck between jobs and preserving our environment, and our iconic koala species.

"That is the work we are doing now, to make sure we get that balance right."

Others at the conference hope for more urgent action.

Veteran koala carer Cheyne Flanagan, from Port Macquarie Koala Hospital, is this week nursing 20 sick koalas, with ailments ranging from stress-related chlamydia, to injuries from a train strike.

She told the ABC of her desperation to protect local habitat, saying if authorities do not act faster, the Port Macquarie community will.

"We're considering having a population moved into a secret location, to have them as a source population to keep them alive," she said.

Topics: human-interest, animals, animal-welfare, environment, conservation, national-parks, government-and-politics, nsw, port-macquarie-2444, coffs-harbour-2450

First posted June 04, 2017 09:29:09

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How climate change is putting koalas at risk

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Updated June 04, 2017 11:53:39 Australia's koala populations and their coastal gum tree habitats could be devastated by rising sea levels, which would trigger toxic die-back disease, a scientific conference has been told. Koala's feed only on the leaves of gum trees, and spend most of their lives protected in their tall branches.

# data[].attributes.body
What the climate change scientist leaders are saying and doing now to help us understand past temperatures.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Smithsonian Voices National Museum of Natural History

Leading Scientists Convene to Chart 500M Years of Global Climate Change

The National Museum of Natural History's "Earth Temperature History Symposium" convened leading paleoclimate scientists to draw a comprehensive temperature curve of Earth's past climates. (Lucia RM Martino, Smithsonian)

What is a "normal" global temperature increase for the Earth? How fast can it happen and how long does it take for the planet to recover? How do ecosystems change in response?

These are all questions that require urgent answers as the scientific community seeks to establish baselines against which we can compare modern changes in global temperature, and tries to predict how our planet will respond to the climate change we are seeing today. As paleobiologists at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), my colleagues and I are uniquely placed to answer these questions. The climate history of the Earth is recorded by rocks and fossils; we work to "read" this record, and to understand what it can tell us to expect in the future.

The past 500 million years of the Earth's history-since the time that many groups of plants and animals that we recognise today first evolved-provides a kind of "natural experiment" that demonstrates how the planet responded to large global temperature changes. Charting this history is a huge, collaborative task. In aid of this, NMNH recently convened eighteen scientists who are world authorities on climate in the geological past, for a two day meeting: the "Earth's Temperature History Symposium." This was the first time that a group of researchers with such diverse climate-related expertise had been brought together.

The idea for this event was originally conceived back in 2016. NMNH paleobiologists Scott Wing and Brian Huber were presented with the daunting task of drawing a graph of the rise and fall of average global temperature over the past 500 million years, to be displayed in the National Fossil Hall when it reopens in summer 2019. Drawing this temperature curve required bringing together many lines of evidence, from ice cores, to fossil leaves and measurements of the chemical elements in ocean sediments.

While attempting this task, Wing and Huber found that there were very good estimates of global climate for many periods in the history of the Earth. However, some periods of time lacked data, leaving gaps in our scientific knowledge. The Symposium was designed to help address these gaps by providing an opportunity for paleoclimate scientists to synthesize all the work that has already been done, and identify how to solve the remaining problems.

With so many experts in the same place at the same time, the Symposium also presented a valuable opportunity for paleoclimate communication. I was part of a team of scientists and educators coordinating "Paleoclimate Day", an outreach event aimed at helping outstanding educators and DC area science communicators better understand and tell the interconnected story of life, climate and other Earth systems. The attendees listened to lightning talks from researchers on cutting-edge climate science and interacted directly with scientists to get to grips with paleoclimate theory. They also saw first-hand the fossil specimens housed at the NMNH that show how climate has changed over millions of years and that help scientists better understand and address 21st-century challenges such as biodiversity loss and climate change. Their enthusiastic response to this outreach effort highlighted how vital the following two days of scientific collaboration were.

A precise estimate of how the temperature of the Earth has changed over the last 500 million years is not something that can be mapped out in two days, but during the Symposium, we made significant progress towards that long-term goal. Experts in different types of evidence discussed how their data could be linked together, while climate modellers had the mathematical tools available to process primary data to fill in some of the gaps in the temperature record. Concrete plans were made to continue the conversation and address the remaining questions. In the end, the most important goal of the event was fulfilled-the group came to a consensus on how the temperature curve for the exhibit should be drawn, so keep an eye out for it when the National Fossil Hall reopens!

More From This Author "

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
smithsonian's national museum of natural history

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Leading Scientists Convene to Chart 500M Years of Global Climate Change

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Smithsonian Voices National Museum of Natural History What is a "normal" global temperature increase for the Earth? How fast can it happen and how long does it take for the planet to recover? How do ecosystems change in response?

# data[].attributes.headline
The interior of the Earth- some new data.

# data[].attributes.subject
The interior of the Earth- some new data.

# data[].attributes.body
New insights into what the interior of the planet is really like.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Researchers report that they've observed seismic waves traversing the Earth's inner core, allowing them to figure out what it's like: Solid, but softer than previously thought.

Scientists predicted that the Earth has a solid inner core and liquid outer core 80 years ago, based on measurements inconsistent with just one single core. The solid core should accompany a special kind of seismic wave, called J waves, but it's been difficult to actually detect the waves - until now.

"Detection of J waves confirms that Earth's inner core is solid, although elastically less stiff than previous estimate," the authors, from the Australian National University, wrote in their paper published in Science.

We've long inferred based on observations that the Earth has layers: A crust; a thick, hot mantle; a liquid outer core; and a solid inner core.

These inferences are based on seismic measurements. Seismic waves are just vibrations that travel through the Earth, which could be caused by volcanoes and earthquakes or even human-caused explosions. Geophysicists measure these waves in order to deduce what Earth's insides must look like.

But it's long been difficult to measure the waves produced in the solid inner core, given that they would have a very small amplitude - they'd be really weak.

Rather than spotting the waves directly, Hrvoje Tkalčić and Thanh-Son Pham looked at global seismogram data and correlated the results, meaning they looked at the differences in the readings. Among all of the different ways that the waves could travel, outer core and inner core, they were able to pick out specific signals representing the J waves travelling through the inner core.

This study was able to use those J waves to determine that the inner core is solid, but that waves travelled slower through it than current reference models suggest. This means the core may also be softer than previously thought.

The researchers explain that there's further work to be done, such as taking more data from more seismograms and placing seismic measuring equipment in new places.

And while there are still questions about the nature of Earth's inner core, it's an important result, Jessica Irving, assistant professor in geosciences at Princeton, wrote in a Science commentary. "The observation of J phases will provide an extra tool to assess the properties of Earth's 'soft heart'."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newly Detected Vibrations Show Earth's Inner Core Is Solid

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Researchers report that they've observed seismic waves traversing the Earth's inner core, allowing them to figure out what it's like: Solid, but softer than previously thought. Scientists predicted that the Earth has a solid inner core and liquid outer core 80 years ago, based on measurements inconsistent with just one single core.

# data[].attributes.headline
Megafauna extinction in Australia- not cut and dried.

# data[].attributes.subject
Megafauna extinction in Australia- not cut and dried.

# data[].attributes.body
The debate- humans or climate change has been raging for years. Might it just come down to looking at the evidence of interactions between living and abiotic actors in ecosystems.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
New research suggests it was climate change - not human activity - that caused Thylacoleo carnifex, an Australian marsupial lion, to go extinct.

For millions of years, Thylacoleo carnifex ruled the forests of Australia, but this predatory species disappeared around 35,000 to 45,000 years ago. Humans first appeared in Australia around 60,000 years ago, leading scientists to wonder if humans were somehow responsible - not an outrageous suggestion, given our dubious track record on such matters.

New research led by palaeontologist Larisa DeSantis from Vanderbilt University, with help from her colleagues at the University of New South Wales and University of Queensland, suggests these marsupial lions lost their habitat on account of climate change (the natural kind - not the human-induced version we're witnessing today), leading to its eventual extinction.

Humans, according to this research, had nothing to do with it. For once.

Thylacoleo is the largest carnivorous Australian mammal known, reigning as one of Australia's most fearsome predators for two million years. These creatures were slightly bigger than modern leopards, but smaller than today's African lions. Their jaws packed a tremendous punch, producing some of the strongest bite forces ever documented in a mammal.

DeSantis and her colleagues were able to show that Thylacoleo was an exclusive forest dweller, and not accustomed to open habitats, a conclusion reached by applying two different methods.

"Stable isotopes told us that Thylacoleo ate prey that resides in forests," DeSantis explained to Gizmodo, while a 3D dental analysis of wear-and-tear on this creature's teeth pointed to the same conclusion.

"We determined," she said, "that Thylacoleo was highly specialised on prey from forested environments and this would've made it more vulnerable to extinction with the long-term pattern of aridification that begin around 350,000 years ago."

These findings were presented by DeSantis and her colleagues at a recent meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, and a formal science paper is forthcoming.
"This research helps demonstrate that even the fiercest predators can succumb to climate change."
In addition to the chemical and dental analyses, a review of this animal's physical characteristics suggests it was an ambush hunter, capable of launching itself at unsuspecting prey at close distances. Thylacoleo, the researchers say, was not built to chase speedy prey across vast, open landscapes.

As DeSantis pointed out, Australia began drying out some 350,000 years ago, a process that turned lush forests into open savanna. Thylacoleo, being highly adapted to forests, simply could not adjust to the loss of its habitat, becoming less effective at hunting over time.

"This research," she said, "helps demonstrate that even the fiercest predators can succumb to climate change."

Study co-author Gilbert Price from the University of Queensland echoed these sentiments in a press release: "When you're big and bitey, you can eat pretty much anything you want. But our findings show that even the top predators are no match for extreme climate change."

"Marsupial lions were far more specialised than African lions. They even had a proportionately larger brain than African lions as well as large, uniquely formidable, large can-opener-like thumb claws," Michael Archer, a palaeontologist from the University of New South Wales, said in a statement.

"What's increasingly clear now is that it evidently survived the arrival of humans 60,000 years ago, but apparently not the profound impacts of a rapidly drying climate that undermined the survival of a range of megafaunal mammals in Australia."

In terms of the study's shortcomings, the authors admit that they only sampled specimens from New South Wales and Queensland. "Thus," DeSantis told Gizmodo, "while we don't have data from Western Australia, all 35 of our samples from eastern Australia suggest that Thylacoleo was a specialist on forest-dwelling prey."

Interestingly, this now-extinct marsupial lion was a contemporary of the thylacine, more famously known as the Tasmanian tiger. This animal, which went extinct during the 20th century, was better able at adapting to Australia's new and open habitats, which likely explains why it survived Australia's aridification period while Thylacoleo could not.

Thylacoleo carnifex had some impressive physical characteristics, but its highly specialised adaptations ultimately proved to be its undoing.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
New Clues May Explain Why This Fearsome Marsupial Lion Disappeared From Australia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
New research suggests it was climate change - not human activity - that caused Thylacoleo carnifex, an Australian marsupial lion, to go extinct. For millions of years, Thylacoleo carnifex ruled the forests of Australia, but this predatory species disappeared around 35,000 to 45,000 years ago.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Updated October 16, 2018 06:20:17

You might think the tsunami risk to Australia is fairly remote, but you may be surprised to learn they have hit our shores before, and it could happen again.

Whirlpools, flooding and ocean currents strong enough to sink boats are just some of the possible impacts if a tsunami were to hit Australia's largest city, Sydney, according to research.

The chance of a major tsunami affecting New South Wales is very low, but University of Newcastle researchers say the tsunami risk to Australia is under-researched and needs to be taken seriously.

Working with the Bureau of Meteorology, they have mapped out several different scenarios of what could happen, including a very unlikely one-in-5,000-year event, to other, more likely, "it could happen in your lifetime" events.

"It's absolutely something we need to plan for, even if this is something we consider to be an infrequent event," lead author Kaya Wilson said.

"The costs of being unprepared are so great.

"It's important to remember that a tsunami hitting Sydney Harbour is unlikely to be that kind of Hollywood style wall of water coming towards you.

"It would be experienced as a sequence of waves that may last for hours or even days.

"The worst-case scenario that we modelled was a one-in-5000-year event.

"We're lucky in Australia, that it would be caused quite far away, and the Australian Tsunami Warning Centre would issue a warning that hopefully we'd receive at least two hours before the tsunami were to hit.

"It would affect the whole east coast, but within Sydney Harbour we would expect extremely large waves.

"The largest we recorded for this worst-case event was 10 metres from peak to trough - we'd expect land to be inundated across Manly Corso, and we'd expect the waves to come from both the ocean and harbour side, eventually isolating North Head."

In that worst-case scenario, water would move incredibly fast at up to eight knots, and bays along the south side of the harbour such as Double Bay, Rose Bay and Rushcutters Bay would be inundated.

A one-in-20-year event, more likely in our lifetime, might go generally unnoticed.

"In terms of events that are more serious, we're talking a one-in-110-year - on average - event upwards," Mr Wilson said.

"So, with those more serious events, we could expect the sort of currents that would really disrupt the harbour.

"It would be dangerous for anyone in the water or to people on ships and ferries - you wouldn't want to be in the water.

"We know ships will probably be torn from their moorings, we know that currents will be very unpredictable, and the safest thing would be to be out of the water and to stay away from the shore."

While 110 years or more may seem a remote chance, Mr Wilson says it's not that far-fetched.

"For a tsunami of that size, that could occur once on average every 200 years," he said.

"That statistic can be translated into a 30 per cent chance of occurring over an average lifetime."

Warning systems are good

It's not like tsunamis haven't struck Australia before.

The Bureau of Meteorology has a complete list of all the tsunamis that have affected Australia over the years.

Many probably went largely unnoticed.

The worst one, off the mainland on Norfolk Island in 1805, damaged homes and swept one away.

But in 1960, after a quake in Chile, a tsunami hit the east coast and sank boats in Sydney and Newcastle.

"We had quite a lot of damage around the Spit Bridge, lots of yachts were torn from their moorings, we had a timber punt down by Anzac Bridge - I think it was capsized," Mr Wilson said.

"There was damage in Newcastle and lots of damage widely reported.

"That is a sort of tsunami that we would expect to happen within our lifetimes again. We could expect a similar size in the harbour once every 50 to 100 years."

Mr Wilson and his team also work closely with the New South Wales State Emergency Service, which oversees tsunami responses and coordinates evacuations.

"Our research is ultimately about providing more data for our national institutions to make better decisions and keep people safe," he said.

New South Wales SES planning coordinator Nicholas Kuster said they were implementing data from the new study into their own tsunami plans.

"To get this kind of information, it's gold for us emergency services," Mr Kuster said.

"It helps us refine our evacuation areas in time and helps us prioritise vulnerable areas in the event of a real-life, land-threat tsunami - but also marine-threat tsunamis as well.

"[The research] is expensive, time-consuming, and tsunami planning hasn't really been a large priority for Australia before the 2004 tsunami."

The researchers say a tsunami originating from one of the nearest source zones, the Puysegur Trench, south of New Zealand, could reach Sydney in about two hours.

But Australia has good systems in place, so a warning would go out well before then.

Mr Kuster said it was crucial to always heed the warnings.

"We have a saying up here, 'Up, up and away': Up 10 metres, up the estuary 10 kilometres, and away from the coast one kilometre."

The work is published in the journal Scientific Reports, with the researchers next planning to model potential tsunami impacts in their home city, Newcastle.

Topics: disasters-and-accidents, earthquake, emergency-planning, newcastle-2300

First posted October 16, 2018 06:08:00

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What would happen if a tsunami hit Sydney?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Think the tsunami risk to Australia is pretty remote? You may be surprised to learn they have hit our shores before, and it could happen again. Whirlpools, flooding and ocean currents strong enough to sink boats are just some of the possible impacts if a tsunami was to hit Sydney, research suggests.

# data[].attributes.body
A description of the current mass extinction. Indications are it could be in the top 5 of all time. Caused by humans!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Peter Kotecki, provided by

Aarhus University

The Earth is undergoing a mass extinction, which is caused by human activity that destroys habitats and kills off species.

In a new study, Danish researchers concluded that so many mammal species will go extinct in the next 50 years that the planet's evolutionary diversity won't recover for at least 3 million years.

The scientists said their findings could be used to help determine which endangered species are the biggest priorities for conservation efforts.

Humans will cause so many mammal species to go extinct in the next 50 years that the planet's evolutionary diversity won't recover for 3 to 5 million years, a team of researchers has found.

The Earth may be entering its sixth mass extinction: an era in which the planet's environments change so much that most animal and plant species die out. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature predicts that 99.9% of critically endangered species and 67% of endangered species will be lost within the next 100 years.

The five other times a mass extinction has occurred over the past 450 million years, natural disasters were to blame. But now, human activity is killing mammal species.

In a study published Monday in the journal PNAS, scientists from Aarhus University in Denmark calculated how fast extinctions are happening, and how long it would take for evolution to bring Earth back to the level of biodiversity it currently has.

The scientists concluded that in a best-case scenario, nature will need 3-5 million years to get back to the level of biodiversity we have on Earth today. Returning to the state Earth's animal kingdom was in before modern humans evolved would take 5-7 million years.

Evolution can't keep up

Evolution is the planet's defense mechanism against the loss of biodiversity. As habitats and climates change, species that can't survive die, and new species slowly emerge. But it takes a long time for new species to fill the gaps - and that process is far slower than the rate at which humans are causing mammals to go extinct.

For their calculations, the Aarhus University researchers used a database containing existing mammal species and mammals that already went extinct as humans spread across the planet. They combined that data with information about extinctions expected to come in the next 50 years, and used advanced simulations of evolution to predict how long recovery would take.

Their estimates are based on an optimistic assumption that people will eventually stop ruining habitats and causing species to die out, and the extinction rate will go back down. But even in that best-case scenario, the timeline depends on how quickly mammals start recovering. If the extinction rate doesn't start falling for another 20-100 years, more species will likely disappear, causing greater diversity loss, the study said.

Robert Bruce Horsfall via Wikimedia Commons

The researchers noted that in their model, certain species were given more importance than others. Matt Davis, a paleontologist at Aarhus University who led the study, cited the shrew as an example. There are hundreds of species of shrew, so if one or two go extinct, that would not kill off all shrews on Earth.

But there were only four species of sabre-toothed tigers on the planet. So when they all went extinct, many years of evolutionary history disappeared with them.

"Large mammals, or megafauna, such as giant sloths and sabre-toothed tigers, which became extinct about 10,000 years ago, were highly evolutionarily distinct," Davis said in a press release. "Since they had few close relatives, their extinctions meant that entire branches of Earth's evolutionary tree were chopped off."

The research could help conservationists

Today, other large animals like the black rhino are facing extinction. Asian elephants' chance of making it to the 22nd century is less than 33%, the study found. These elephants are one of only two remaining species from a group of mammals that once included mastodons and mammoths.

"We now live in a world that is becoming increasingly impoverished of large wild mammalian species," Jens-Christian Svenning, an Aarhus University professor who researches megafauna, said in the press release. "The few remaining giants, such as rhinos and elephants, are in danger of being wiped out very rapidly."

He noted that the planet no longer boasts giant beavers, giant deer, or giant armadillos.

Though the researchers' findings are dire, the scientists said their work could be used to figure out which endangered species are evolutionarily unique, which might help conservationists decide where to focus their efforts to prevent the most devastating extinctions.
Join the conversation about this story "
NOW WATCH: Researchers want to try a cutting-edge technique to save rhinos from extinction
See Also: SEE ALSO: 13 rare animals that are teetering on the brink of extinction SEE ALSO: Study reveals how 500 years of human exploitation has created a dangerous 'extinction vortex' in one of the world's most important forests

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
So many animals will go extinct in the next 50 years that it will take Earth at least 3 million years to recover, a study has found

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Aarhus University The Earth is undergoing a mass extinction, which is caused by human activity that destroys habitats and kills off species. In a new study, Danish researchers concluded that so many mammal species will go extinct in the next 50 years that the planet's evolutionary diversity won't recover for at least 3 million years.

# data[].attributes.body
Week 10

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When preparing for a natural disaster, every second counts. Any tip off to an impending disaster gives residents a second longer to prepare and brace themselves for what's coming. Some natural disasters, like earthquakes and tsunamis, actually have warning systems built in: localized changes in geomagnetic fields. Now, scientists at Tokyo Metropolitan University are developing a deep neural net to understand changes to magnetic fields as they happen.

An earthquake's magnetic field is created by phenomena called the piezo-magnetic effect, or piezomagnetism. Earthquakes relieve stresses built up between tectonic plates, and as they do so, the symmetry of elements within the structure of the Earth can become out of sync. When they become asymmetrical, the geomagnetic field around the area shifts.

With tsunamis, their rapid movement across the ocean causes changes in atmospheric pressure. When the atmospheric pressure starts to alter ionosphere, the geomagnetic field alters along with it.

These are two very different processes, but they have the same result. Either can be detected by observation, and they register faster than virtually anything else on the planet-electromagnetic waves move at the speed of light. It's possible to have a near-instant understanding of any shift to the Earth's geomagnetic field anywhere across the globe.

However, the Earth is a living planet. That means all sorts of tiny shifts and alterations through the day, leaving scientists with the classic problem of trying to find signal through wide spreads of noise.

Taking measurements around Japan, Professor Yuta Katori and Associate Professor Kan Okubo created estimates of what the normal geomagnetic field looks like in the area. To give an idea of how much geomagnetic flux there is in the world: Just in their Japanese observation sites, just in 2015, Katori and Okubo were able to accumulate 500,000 data points.

They then began feeding these data points into a neural net. With their data points, they can now estimate what a normal magnetic field looks like within the area, thus offering a better understanding of what an abnormal reading due to an earthquake or tsunami would look like.

The hope is to pair up the neural network with high sensitivity detectors, allowing for a lightening-fast emergency warning. Given how the recent tsunami in Indonesia was compounded by faulty emergency warning systems, the sooner the neural net is up and running the better.

Source: Tokyo Metropolitan University

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Earth's Magnetic Fields Could Give Lightspeed Warning of Incoming Earthquakes and Tsunamis

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When preparing for a natural disaster, every second counts. Any tip off to an impending disaster gives residents a second longer to prepare and brace themselves for what's coming. Some natural disasters, like earthquakes and tsunamis, actually have warning systems built in: localized changes in geomagnetic fields.

# data[].attributes.body
USGS has a really great earthquake tracker, I had a play around with it in conjunction with google earth and it is excellent. Set it to colour by depth and give it a nice long time frame (like a year) and it will show you some really clear subduction zones and faults.

Considering using it to make a depth study on earthquakes or maybe on defining continental plates

# data[].attributes.body
App: Ancient Earth - Breakup of Pangea
Bookmark a place at a particular time. The plate tectonics can be displayed at a particular time and at the same time as a geographical timeline. The Screenshots are very handy to insert into ppt. You can also connect the phone to the screen. (Screen settings may need to be changed)

Depth Studies imbedded into Assessment Tasks may keep student engaged in their research.Start lesson with prior knowledge and a few key points related to the depth study in a lesson and allow students to build upon scientific concepts and ideas in their own research. The Prac books also include Depth Studies and these books are kept at your desk. The diversity in the number of depth studies provides an opportunity for student focus throughout the course. Whilst there is a set number of Assessment Tasks for Yr 11, the number of depth studies in unlimited. Depth Studies can be provided with a scaffold to assist student expand upon their scientific inquiries.   Weekly topic tests can be included at the end of each week for a summative Assessment Task and go toward a final mark at the end of the topic/term.

IBM Plant Earth Series reflect the discoveries of the Earth from a human perspective.

The beauty about search the Earthquake database catalog on the USGS websitehttps://earthquake.usgs.gov is the volume of first hand data available for students. Apart of the software integrates well with Google Earth and enhances imagery with colour. However USGS website is great as a stand alone too. There maybe technology glitches if google earth if not downloaded originally.

# data[].attributes.body
Zealandia, the continent next door we don't see too much of.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
SCIENTISTS have announced they believe an eighth continent exists.

Zealandia has all the characteristics needed to be considered a continent, a study found. So what do we know about the landmass?

What is Zealandia?

Zealandia is a landmass almost completely submerged by the Pacific Ocean, reports The Sun.

Its only point above sea level is New Zealand's two main islands and New Caledonia - the proposed continent's highest 'mountain range'.

A further five million square kilometres - or 95 per cent of the landmass - are underwater.

Its western ridge is believed to lie several hundred miles off Australia's east coast - although some scientists have suggested land bridges could once have connected the two masses.

Scientists studying Zealandia say it has several of the key characteristics of a continent, including a distinctive geology, and an elevation above the surrounding sea bed.

It is believed to have been a part of the Gondwana supercontinent but broke away about 100 million years ago.

Scientists have been gathering data to prove the case for Zealandia for more than 20 years.

Lead author of the study Nick Mortimer said: "What we hope is that Zealandia will appear on world maps, in schools, everywhere.

"I think the revelation of a new continent is pretty exciting."

A mission has also set sail to recover sediments and rocks lying deep beneath the sea bed in a bid to discover more about the drowned world.

The recovered cores will be studied on-board drill ship Joides Resolution, allowing scientists to address issues such as oceanographic history, extreme climates, sub-sea floor life, plate tectonics and earthquake-generating zones.
WHAT ARE THE OTHER CONTINENTS?
The Earth is generally considered by scientists to have seven continents:

* Africa - 29,448,000 sq km

* Asia - 43,823,000 sq km

* Europe - 10,179,000 sq km

* North America - 24,501,000 sq km

* South America - 17,845,000 sq km

* Oceania - 9,008,500 sq km

* Antarctica - 13,727,000 sq km

Some scientists consider the Europe and Asia landmass to be one single continent called Eurasia.

Africa, Asia and Europe are connected continuously via Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and can be referred to as Afro-Eurasia.

Together it constitutes more than half the world's landmass - 32,811,166 sq miles.

North and South American are also considered as one continent by some studies.

This story first appeared on The Sun.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Scientists discover 'eighth continent' under New Zealand

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
SCIENTISTS have announced they believe an eighth continent exists. Zealandia has all the characteristics needed to be considered a continent, a study found. So what do we know about the landmass? What is Zealandia? Zealandia is a landmass almost completely submerged by the Pacific Ocean, reports The Sun .

# data[].attributes.body
Nature of scientific inquiry in EES. Super interdisciplinary. physics, chem, bio.

# data[].attributes.headline
Week 4 activity---What is the nature of scientific inquiry in EES?

# data[].attributes.subject
Week 4 activity---What is the nature of scientific inquiry in EES?

# data[].attributes.body
It's more interdisciplinary because you need knowledge from other science subjects to understand the processes happening in the environment. It's rely on the secondary data and resource more because it's harder to model the processes happening in the nature .  According to the workshop, physics concept of density can be applied to understand the topics/modules of rocks.

# data[].attributes.headline
Week 4 - What is the nature of scientific inquiry in EES?

# data[].attributes.subject
Week 4 - What is the nature of scientific inquiry in EES?

# data[].attributes.body
A lot of it seems to be based on researching and secondary investigations.

# data[].attributes.body
From Ric

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Deep below the glistening surface of a frozen Arctic lake, something is bubbling-something that could cause global warming to accelerate beyond all previous projections. Dr. Katey Walter Anthony steps onto the ice, to tell us why. "The bubbles are metha...

# data[].attributes.body
From Ric

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Some Arctic lakes are starting to look like witches' cauldrons.

The above video shows an increasingly common site in northern latitudes. As global warming heats these areas up, the frozen ground is melting. And when permafrost turns from solid ground to looser mud, it releases gases that have been trapped inside.

Much of the gas is methane, which is produced by microbes that feed on prehistoric biological matter laid down before the last Ice Age. The methane bubbles up to the surface, sometimes gently and at other times violently. ( Read a magazine feature on this topic.)

As the land softens, it can also slide and sink, sometimes causing damage on the surface to vegetation (see: drunken trees), or breaking buildings, pipelines, or roads. It can also cause depressions that fill with rainwater, which are called thermokarst lakes.

Scientists with the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) and NASA's Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) are measuring the release of methane from the melting Arctic, as the above video shows. The scientists measure bubbles from lakes, and even occasionally set the gas on fire to get a better sense of its composition (methane is flammable; see more photos of this).

The team combines these ground-based observations with satellite data to get a better sense of the effect this additional methane may be having on our atmosphere.

It's an important issue, because methane acts as a greenhouse gas, trapping more heat closer to the Earth. In fact, one molecule of methane is 25 times more powerful at trapping heat than a molecule of carbon dioxide (we hear so much more about carbon dioxide because there is a lot more of it in the atmosphere, but scientists think methane has an important role to play in climate).

"All that carbon was locked up safely in the permafrost freezer for tens of thousands of years," National Geographic Explorer and UAF professor Katey Walter Anthony previously said. "Now the freezer door is opening, releasing the carbon into Arctic lake bottoms."

The world's permafrost holds an estimated 950 billion tons of carbon. As it thaws, 50 billion tons of methane could enter the atmosphere from Siberian lakes alone.

"That's ten times more methane than the atmosphere holds right now," Walter Anthony said. "Since methane traps heat so efficiently, temperatures will rise higher, faster."

More warming means even more melting of the permafrost, resulting in the release of more methane, setting up a vicious cycle.

But Anthony has also been working on ways to try to harness the methane bubbling out of the ground for energy, particularly for off-the-grid communities who could most benefit from it. Success has been demonstrated in small-scale projects.

Follow Brian Clark Howard on Twitter and Google+.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Watch Bubbling Alaska Lakes Catch on Fire

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Some Arctic lakes are starting to look like witches' cauldrons. The above video shows an increasingly common site in northern latitudes. As global warming heats these areas up, the frozen ground is melting. And when permafrost turns from solid ground to looser mud, it releases gases that have been trapped inside.

# data[].attributes.body
How about this article?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
AUSTIN, Texas - When oil mixes with or enters into water, conventional methods of cleaning the water and removing the oil can be challenging, expensive and environmentally risky. But researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin believe they may have developed a better method.

In a study published this spring in the Journal of Nanoparticle Research, the researchers used magnetic nanoparticles to separate oil from water through a simple process that relies on electrostatic force and a magnet. The engineers believe their new technique could improve water treatment for oil and gas production, more efficiently clean up oil spills and potentially remove lead from drinking water.

Today, nanoparticles, which are tiny particles that can be coated with different chemicals such as polymers, are used in a wide variety of areas and industries including medicine, energy and electronics. The versatility of nanoparticles inspired the UT Austin team to explore how the particles could be applied to oil production to lessen its environmental footprint and increase efficiency in both onshore and offshore drilling. They believe their technique could also be used to treat the millions of gallons of fresh water used in hydraulic fracturing and to help clean drinking water.

Modern oil production methods separate 95 percent of the oil from produced water but leave behind small oil droplets that are difficult to extract, which makes water treatment and disposal more challenging and environmentally risky.

"This new technique is really aimed at removing that little bit of oil in that water that needs to be removed before you can consider it treated," said Saebom Ko, a research associate in the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering and lead author on the study. "The advantage of employing magnetic nanoparticles is that the small oil droplets that attach to the nanoparticles are much more quickly separated from water than traditional physical separation processes because magnetic force can be orders of magnitude larger than gravitation."

Ko worked with a team including petroleum and geosystems engineering professor Hugh Daigle, biomedical engineering professor Thomas Milner and researcher Chun Huh to design surface coatings for magnetic nanoparticles that could be used for the removal of oil. They employed a technique, called high gradient magnetic separation, that has been used in mining to remove metals and in the food industry to remove toxic particles.

The team's main advancement is designing surface coatings for nanoparticles that are able to adhere to oil droplets using electrostatic force. The team coated the magnetic nanoparticles with polymers whose surface charge is positive. The positively charged magnetic nanoparticles then latch on to the negatively charged oil droplets through electrostatic attractive force, similar to how a dust-trapping cloth picks up dust. The process - which takes seconds in laboratory tests- could also happen in reverse. If the target substances have positive surface charges, the magnetic nanoparticles could be coated with negatively charged polymers to attract the target.

"It's a simple idea," Daigle said. "We are leveraging the magnetic properties of these nanoparticles to get them to stick to the oil droplets and essentially magnetize the oil droplets so they can be pulled out with a magnet."

The ease of the technique and the flexibility of magnetic nanoparticles have motivated the researchers to consider different applications.

"The applications can extend far beyond the oil field because, with an appropriate surface coating design, you can take your magnetic core and coat it with whatever chemical you choose on the outside to stick to the target and pull it out with a magnet," Daigle said.

The researchers have envisioned designing a method for using these nanoparticles to clean up oil spills in the ocean. They are also exploring how magnetic nanoparticles can be used to remove lead and other contaminants from drinking water, with plans to test their ideas this summer.

For oil and gas production, the team plans to develop a treatment system that would have the capacity to rapidly handle a high volume of oil and water, which would be crucial for onshore and offshore oil drilling sites.

"We are currently developing a chemical-free regeneration process to reuse nanoparticles. Other regeneration methods use chemicals to extract the oil, resulting in production of other hazardous waste," Ko said. "We believe that by recycling and reusing nanoparticles, it could not only reduce operational costs, but it could be an environmentally friendly process that reduces hazardous waste."
This research received funding from Maersk Oil and the Nanoparticles for Subsurface Engineering Industrial Affiliates Program at UT Austin.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Nanoparticles and Magnets Offer New, Efficient Method of Removing Oil from Water

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
AUSTIN, Texas - When oil mixes with or enters into water, conventional methods of cleaning the water and removing the oil can be challenging, expensive and environmentally risky. But researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin believe they may have developed a better method.

# data[].attributes.body
Science Magazine - EES

Share recent science articles with your peers in the workshop  [Year 11 topic related articles]

Choose valid and reliable science articles

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Antarctica's ice sheet hides a massive system of volcanoes, one that is comparable to volcanic regions in East Africa and western North America, according to a new study, which found 91 previously undiscovered volcanoes, some over 12,600 feet tall.

Volcanoes aren't completely unknown in Antarctica: some poke up through the existing ice sheet, while other studies have examined exposed outcrops. However, ice blankets the surface of the continent, making it impossible to directly study the underlying geology. A team of researchers from the University of Edinburgh's School of GeoSciences examined a digital elevation model called Bedmap 2 DEM. That survey created a surface elevation model using radar imaging, which the team examined, looking for volcanic structures.

The team created a series of criteria for identifying probable volcano cones: a mound that has a certain length vs. width ratio and which has an elevations of more than 328 feet (100 meters), which were then examined from multiple angles to discern its shape. From that data, the team put together a five-point criteria to gauge how confident they were that each structure was a volcano.

The study resulted in the discovery of 178 cone-shaped structures in a region that researchers named the West Antarctic Rift System. Of those structures, researchers found that 138 are likely volcanoes, based on their confidence criteria. The identified volcanoes range from 328 feet (100 meters) to just over 12600 feet (3850 meters) in height, with cones that range from about two miles to just under 40 miles in dimeter. Of those volcanoes, 91 had not been previously been identified, and the study's authors explain that the density of the volcanoes in the WARS is approximately one volcano per 4800 square miles. This puts the region in the company of other massive volcanic regions around the world, such as the East African Rift, which has around one volcano per 4500 square miles.

The results could have major implications for our understanding of the region and the massive ice sheet that covers it. The study's authors explain that they aren't able to determine if any of the newly-discovered volcanoes are active, but note that their survey should be able to help fuel future studies to help determine that. They also don't believe that volcanic activity has played a role in the present retreat of the ice sheet.

However, they do believe that the presence of volcanoes in the area will play a role in how quickly the sheet retreats in the future. They cite studies of glaciers in Iceland, which were helped along by the heat by underlying volcanic activity. There's other implications as well: the team says that there's evidence that the removal of a kilometers-thick ice sheet can lead to an increase in volcanism, something that's also been seen in Iceland.

On the other hand, the presence of the volcano cones themselves could also help slow glacial movement: ice flows downward as long as it's easy for it to do so, but rough underlying terrain can help impede this movement. The team explains that they found a number of cones in the area that "could represent some of the most influential pinning points for past and future ice retreat."

Ultimately, the surface of Antarctica hidden by its massive ice sheet is home to one of the largest volcanic regions on Earth, the existence of which could have a profound impact on the future of the region, which is already quickly changing.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Antarctica is home to considerably more volcanoes than previously thought

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Antarctica's ice sheet hides a massive system of volcanoes, one that is comparable to volcanic regions in East Africa and western North America, according to a new study, which found 91 previously undiscovered volcanoes, some over 12,600 feet tall. Volcanoes aren't completely unknown in Antarctica: some poke up through the existing ice sheet, while other studies have examined exposed outcrops.

# data[].attributes.body
The structuring of the syllabus can help us in planning lessons/ modules. It is important to remember that there are 7 WS� outcomes compared with just 1 knowledge & understanding outcome for each of the 8 Modules

# data[].attributes.body
Depth studies are a thing and atm are not very well understood. Read and understand the rules clearly to avoid litigious students

# data[].attributes.body
Week 3

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
HUGE STREAM OF LAVA IN HAWAII (JUNE 29, 2018)