In science news this week:
Reclaiming the lost population: Recent release part of plan to repopulate winter Chinook salmon in upper Battle Creek after the loss of nearly the entire in-river juvenile population during the drought of 2014 and 2015: “Winter-run Chinook salmon are unique in that they spawn during the summer months, from mid-April to mid-August, when California is at its hottest. This proved to be catastrophic in 2014 and 2015 when the drought killed nearly the entire in-river juvenile salmon population. This event prompted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to reinitiate the captive broodstock program at Livingston Stone National Fish Hatchery, part of the Coleman National Fish Hatchery Complex. ... ” Read more from the US Fish & Wildlife Service here: Reclaiming the lost population
Conserving Wetlands Makes Cents: “Placing a dollar value on nature is no easy task. The cultural benefits of natural ecosystems – such as their aesthetic or spiritual importance – tend to defy the label of a monetary value. However, nature also provides very real, very economically valuable natural benefits, known as ecosystem services, to human populations around the globe. These include supplying food, water, or other materials, as well as regulating services like preventing floods, purifying water, and preventing erosion. In a world where planning and management decisions are often based on the best use of limited funding, understanding the value of services that nature provides to us free of charge is an important factor to consider. For that reason, numerous studies have attempted to establish economic measures of such ecosystem services around the world. … ” Read more from FishBio here: Conserving Wetlands Makes Cents
On the flyway highway: Chris Nicolai’s passion for waterfowl leads to goose migration coincidence: “Chris Nicolai’s serendipitous experience with a snow goose is sort of like the classic film Fly Away Home, but in real life. The 1996 movie dramatized the actual experiences of Bill Lishman who, in 1986, started training Canada geese to follow his ultralight aircraft. He later succeeded in leading their migration in 1993 through his program “Operation Migration.” Nicolai, a waterfowl biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Reno, Nevada, has been a waterfowl fanatic since he was old enough to ride a bike. By the time he was in his early teens, he had seen every single waterfowl species native to North America. Now he is conserving migratory birds full-time, and after banding a mottled duck in Louisiana in June 2018, Nicolai can officially say he has trapped and banded every native waterfowl species on the continent. … ” Read more from the US FWS here: On the flyway highway: Chris Nicolai’s passion for waterfowl leads to goose migration coincidence
Survive the sound: ““Survive the Sound” is an online game developed in collaboration with Long Live the Kings and other partners, using real fish data collected by NOAA scientists who study the migration patterns and survival of threatened steelhead in Puget Sound. The real fish tracking data is transformed to a friendly competition where gamers can pick a fish and compete for survival as the fish migrate through obstacles including pollution, predators, and physical structures such as bridges. After the 5-day migration (May 6-10), the individual, classroom, or team with the most surviving fish wins bragging rights. … ” Read more from the Northwest Fisheries Science Center here: Survive the sound
Carbon dioxide from Silicon Valley affects the chemistry of Monterey Bay: “MBARI researchers recently measured high concentrations of carbon dioxide in air blowing out to sea from cities and agricultural areas, including Silicon Valley. In a new paper in PLOS ONE, they calculate that this previously undocumented process could increase the amount of carbon dioxide dissolving into coastal ocean waters by about 20 percent. Extending their calculations to coastal areas around the world, the researchers estimate that this process could add 25 million additional tons of carbon dioxide to the ocean each year, which would account for roughly one percent of the ocean’s total annual carbon dioxide uptake. This effect is not currently included in calculations of how much carbon dioxide is entering the ocean because of the burning of fossil fuels. ... ” Read more from Science Daily here: Carbon dioxide from Silicon Valley affects the chemistry of Monterey Bay
Climate “Tipping Points” Could Add Trillions to the Costs of Warming: ““Tipping elements” in the rapidly warming Arctic may add trillions of dollars to the long-term costs of climate change, a new study suggests. As temperatures rise, thawing permafrost may release large amounts of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, causing even more warming. At the same time, the disappearance of snow and ice cover—bright, reflective surfaces that help to beam sunlight away from the planet—will cause the Earth to absorb even more heat. The result is to worsen the progression of climate change even further. … ” Read more from Scientific American here: Climate “Tipping Points” Could Add Trillions to the Costs of Warming
Microplastics take flight—how mosquitoes move microscopic pollutants from water to land: “At first glance the edge of a pond might look like a boundary where the water ends and the land begins. But ecologists know that water and land are connected by a web of invisible bridges that continually pass energy and materials back and forth. Animals that start life in the pond—such as insects or salamanders—move to the land as adults where they feed terrestrial predators. Leaves drop into the pond, as do insects that fall from the air, and make their way into the aquatic food web. This give-and-take supports life in both realms. But what happens when pollutants enter the pictures – could they catch a ride and move between the worlds of water and air? ... ” Read more from EnviroBites here: Microplastics take flight—how mosquitoes move microscopic pollutants from water to land
Teaching old codes new tricks: Increasing peak performance for weather modeling using GPUs: “Can a single weather model be run globally at a resolution high enough to start resolving individual thunderstorms — whether in the American Midwest, African rainforests, or anywhere else? The answer depends on the horsepower of your supercomputer. Running extremely complicated models over the entire Earth at such high resolution is a herculean task for any machine, which has made a predictive global, storm-scale model impractical. But now, the National Center for Atmospheric Research has partnered with The Weather Company, an IBM subsidiary, to experiment with a new technology that could make global, storm-scale forecasting a practical reality: graphical processing units, or GPUs. ... ” Read more from NCAR News here: Teaching old codes new tricks: Increasing peak performance for weather modeling using GPUs
Maven’s XKCD Comic Pick of the Week …
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About Science News and Reports: This weekly feature, posted every Thursday, is a collection of the latest scientific research and reports with a focus on relevant issues to the Delta and to California water, although other issues such as climate change are sometimes included. Do you have an item to be included here? Submissions of relevant research and other materials is welcome. Email Maven
