e360 Video Report

Colorado River: Running Near Empty

Photographer Pete McBride traveled along the Colorado River from its source high in the Rockies to its historic mouth at the Sea of Cortez. In a Yale Environment 360 video, he documents how increasing water demands have transformed the river that is the lifeblood for an arid Southwest.
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Interview: Putting a Price
On the Real Value of Nature

How do you put a price on the value of nature? That’s the question Indian banker Pavan Sukhdev and his colleagues are seeking to answer in their international project on The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), which published its latest report last month. The challenge, as Sukhdev sees it, is how to address the “economic invisibility of nature.” In an interview with Yale Environment 360, he cited crucial benefits from nature that are often overlooked, including the capacity of wetlands for filtering water, the role of forests in preventing erosion and flooding, and the importance of bees in pollinating crops. “When did the bees last send you an invoice for pollination?” he asks.
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09 Jan 2012: Mountain Plants Disappearing
As The Climate Warms, New Study Says

A new study says that a warming climate is having a more profound effect on the world’s mountain vegetation than previously believed and that some alpine meadows could vanish altogetherwithin a few decades. After comparing vegetation samples from 60 mountain summits in 13 European nations — collected in 2001 and then again in 2008 — a team of scientists found that cold-loving plants are being pushed out by plants that thrive in warmer temperatures. While earlier studies have made this conclusion at regional levels, researchers say this is the first time the phenomenon has been shown on a continental scale. And they say it is happening more quickly than expected. “Many cold-loving species are literally running out of mountain,” said Michael Gottfried, a researcher with the Austria-based Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments, which coordinated the study, which was published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

09 Jan 2012: U.S. Imposes Catch Limits
On All Managed Fisheries For First Time

For the first time ever, the U.S. this year will impose catch limits for all 528 federally managed species, a new policy one official said will become an “international guidepost” for sustainable fisheries practices. After years of political wrangling, a coalition of lawmakers, environmental groups, fishing groups, and scientists were able to insert language into a reauthorized version of the Magnuson-Stevens Act — which governs all U.S. fishing — that will include annual limits on all fish stocks by the time the 2012 fishing year begins for all species. Some species, including mahi-mahi and wahoo, will have catch limits for the first time. “This simple but enormously powerful provision has eluded lawmakers for years and is probably the most important conservation statute ever enacted into America’s fisheries law,” Joshua Reichert, managing director of the Pew Environment Group, told The Washington Post. Because the new limits were achieved in cooperation with regional fisheries councils, advocates predict a greater probability of success.

Interview: Development Expert
Relies On Resilience of Villagers

Geographer Edward Carr has spent much of his time working in sub-Saharan Africa, where climate change and other environmental threats present a growing challenge to the local people. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, he describes how his experience in Ghana taught him that villagers were “repositories of information about how to improve the human condition cheaply and with minimal environmental impact.” Carr contends that any outside aid, including funds for adapting to a warming world, must build on this inherent resilience. “One of the most important and fascinating things that comes out of my experience,” says Carr, “is that people are enormously capable with access to very limited resources, while managing serious economic and environmental instability.”
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06 Jan 2012: Renewables Yield Greater Share
Of U.S. Power Than Nuclear, Report Says

Renewable sources of energy provided a greater share of U.S. domestic energy production than nuclear during the first nine months of 2011, according to a new report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). In its latest monthly energy review, the EIA reports that renewable energy — including solar, wind, hydropower, geothermal, and biomass/biofuels — provided 11.95 percent of energy production during the first three-quarters of 2011, compared with 10.62 percent from nuclear. During the same period in 2010, about 10.85 percent of domestic energy production came from renewables; in 2009, it was 10.33 percent. Among renewable sources, hydropower produced the largest contribution of total domestic energy, with 4.35 percent, followed by biomass (3.15 percent) and biofuels (2.57 percent). In the electricity sector, renewable sources provided 12.73 percent of net electrical generation in the U.S., according to the report.

06 Jan 2012: Seal Populations Plummet as
North Atlantic Sea Ice Thins, Study Says

A new study says that thinning sea ice in the north Atlantic has caused a catastrophic decline in harp seal populations, a trend animal advocacy groups say should spur an end to commercial hunts of the animal in Canada. According to the study, conducted by scientists at Duke University and the International Fund for Animal Welfare, sea ice cover in all harp seal breeding regions has declined by as much as 6 percent per decade since 1979. Since female seal pups depend on stable winter ice to give birth and nurse their young, these changing conditions have produced a higher mortality, said David Johnston of the Duke University Marine Laboratory and lead author of the study, which was published in the journal PLoS ONE. “Entire year classes may be disappearing from the population in low ice years” Johnston said. “Essentially all of the pups die.” According to Canada’s Fisheries and Oceans department, as many as 80 percent of seal pups born in 2011 may have died because of a lack of sea ice.

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