Climate & Environment

Apr

2010

Bats, Birds and Lizards Can Fight Climate Change

WIRED Science blog, April 9th, 2010.

BIRDS, BATS AND lizards may play an important role in Earth’s climate by protecting plants from insects that forage on foliage. A new study suggests that preserving these animals could be a low-tech way to fight climate change.

“The presence, abundance and diversity of birds, bats and lizards, the top predators in the insect world, has impacts on the growth of plants,” said ecologist Daniel Gruner of the University of Maryland, co-author of the paper published April 5 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “If you don’t have plants, you don’t have organisms that are recapturing carbon.” Read More >

Feb

2010

$4 million grant funds projects monitoring marine protection areas

Santa Cruz Sentinel, February 25th, 2010.

The Ocean Protection Council recently awarded $4 million, almost half of it going to a UC Santa Cruz- based consortium, to monitor north Central Coast marine protected areas.

The projects, which will continue for up to three years, will study the organisms inside and outside the protected areas to establish an integrated picture of marine ecosystems and human activities. The region being studied ranges from Alder Creek in Mendocino County to Pigeon Point in San Mateo County.

“I’m very excited about what the baseline project will deliver. It will be right on target with determining how these areas are performing,” said Cheri Recchia of the Ocean Protection Council. Read More >

Jan

2010

Santa Cruz expecting a mild, drizzly week before storms predicted for next weekend

Santa Cruz Sentinel, January 30, 2010.

Friday’s rain will linger through this morning, but give way to a relatively dry and only partly cloudy weekend.

But don’t put your rain gear away just yet.

Cloudiness is predicted to increase on Monday leading to light showers returning periodically throughout the week, said meteorologist Steve Anderson of the National Weather Service in Monterey. Read More >

Jan

2010

UCSC grad walks the Pacific Crest Trail

Santa Cruz Sentinel, January 24th, 2010.

SANTA CRUZ — Sage Clegg-Haman’s shoes are made for walking and that’s just what they did — seven pairs of them, to be exact.

“I had one pair of shoes that lasted around 900 miles. Those were incredible. I miss them,” she said.

On July 1, Clegg-Haman started her 2,650-mile journey traveling the Pacific Crest Trail on foot.

“I’ve always really liked being outside. I’m more comfortable there than I am indoors or in cities. It was a little pipe dream of mine since I was 14,” said Clegg-Haman, a UC Santa Cruz graduate. Read more >

Jan

2010

Compost tubs at Second Harvest Food Bank keep 7,000 pounds of waste from landfills, so far

Santa cruz Sentinel, January 22, 2010.

WATSONVILLE — The Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Cruz County not only helps the hungry, but is taking strides to help the environment, too.

Funding from Watsonville and Santa Cruz County has helped install tubs to convert the Food Bank”s kitchen scraps and spoiled produce into compost.

“It”s a nice partnership, because the food waste they were unable to use would end up in our landfill,” said Nancy Lockwood, environmental projects manager for the city of Watsonville. Read More >

Dec

2009

The Climate Costs of Contrails

Americal Geographic Union GeoSpace Blog, December 17th, 2009.

Trucks belching emissions are obnoxious, but I don’t feel the same disgust when I see fluffy white contrails in the sky. Maybe I should.

Contrails are the artificial clouds formed by condensation of water and emissions from plane engines. New insights into their effects on climate were discussed during session A42A: Climate and Chemistry Impacts of Aviation and Aerospace Emissions I. Contrails form in ice supersaturation regions in the sky, where the relative humidity is over 100 percent. Their presence changes the sky’s radiative forcing, the energy balance between incoming and outgoing radiation, measured in Watts per square meter. Positive forcing warms the system, while a negative numbers tends to cool it. Read More >