Tag "Royal Society"
Poor diet may have caused nosedive in major Atlantic seabird nesting colony
The findings provide fresh evidence of the fragility of marine ecosystems and lend weight to the scientific case for creating the Ascension Island Ocean Sanctuary (AIOS), set to be one of the largest fully protected reserves in the Atlantic Ocean.
The most numerous seabird of tropical waters, sooty terns breed on Ascension Island where the colony is the largest in the entire Atlantic Ocean.
A team based in the University’s School of Biosciences believes the birds’ plight is closely linked to changes in populations of predatory fish such as tuna.
However, while many seabird species subsequently began to thrive, the tern population did not recover as expected and the Birmingham team, together with researchers from the University of Exeter, the Ascension Island Government Conservation Department (AIGCD) and the Army Ornithological Society (AOS), set out to find out why. “We believe that a number of factors might influence the size of the breeding population of sooty terns on the island but we wanted to understand such factors in greater detail, resulting in causal explanations of the tern population decline over the past 60 years,” says Dr Jim Reynolds, lead author on the paper.
The team started to look at the birds’ diet after noticing that some of the food naturally regurgitated by the terns contained lots of prey low in nutrients, such as squid, marine snails and even locusts.
Feathers from more than 180 specimens, dating from 1890 to the present day, were collected and analysed by collaborators at the University of Coimbra in Portugal.
The results clearly showed that a change in the terns’ diets from eating mainly fish to eating lower quality food was coincidental with their population decline.
As oceans warm, the movements of top predators and the fish on which they forage are changing, possibly making it more difficult for the terns to follow them in search of food.”
Marine protected areas such as that planned for Ascension Island may well help to alleviate pressure on species like sooty terns.
L. A. Times Ca. climate alarmist wildfire story hides key studies showing global & Ca. wildfires in decline
Guest essay by Larry Hamlin The L. A.
As usual with climate fear articles like this one in the L. A.
The latest scientific study completed by the Royal Society concludes that global wildfires are in decline.
Additionally a study by the USGS of wildfires in the western U.S. provides scientific evidence documenting the decline of wildfires over the last 40 years in California using both USFS and Cal Fire historical fire data sources.
Times Ca.
wildfire propaganda claim wrong about the pattern of wildfire occurrences in California it is also wrong about its flawed claim that these fires are the result of “heat like the state has never seen”.
The complete summer month maximum temperature data for June through September from NOAA’s California temperature data base shows that the state has experienced the present “heat” levels many times before.
Additionally a 2015 study by the University of California at Berkeley concluded that the present extremely high level of vegetation now fueling California wildfires has occurred because of fire fighting forest management policies over the last century which have allowed an unsustainable amount of vegetation to accumulate.
The Berkeley study notes: “National parks and other protected areas clearly provide an important function in removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it,” said Battles.
Times continues its climate alarmism propaganda campaign while ignoring and hiding from its readers significant scientific data and studies which completely undermine its alarmists claims.
