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Breaking Traditional Barriers to Model Climate Change and Land Use Impacts on Freshwater Mussels
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Thomas Kwak, Leader of the U.S. Geological Survey North Carolina Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit and Professor of Biology, North Carolina State University, will give a presentation on global declines in the abundance and diversity of freshwater mussels that have been attributed to a wide array of human activities that cause pollution, water-quality degradation, and habitat destruction.
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Events
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Brownness of organics in aerosols from biomass burning linked to their black carbon content
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Atmospheric particulate matter plays an important role in the Earth’s radiative balance. Over the past two decades, it has been established that a portion of particulate matter, black carbon, absorbs significant amounts of light and exerts a warming effect rivalling that of anthropogenic carbon dioxide1,2. Most climate models treat black carbon as the sole light-absorbing carbonaceous particulate. However, some organic aerosols, dubbed brown carbon and mainly associated with biomass burning emissions3–6 , also absorbs light7 . Unlike black carbon, whose light absorption properties are well understood8, brown carbon comprises a wide range of poorly characterized compounds that exhibit highly variable absorptivities, with reported values spanning two orders of magnitude3–6,9,10. Here we present smog chamber experiments to characterize the effective absorptivity of organic aerosol from biomass burning under a range of conditions. We show that brown carbon in emissions from biomass burning is associated mostly with organic compounds of extremely low volatility11. In addition, we find that the effective absorptivity of organic aerosol in biomass burning emissions can be parameterized as a function of the ratio of black carbon to organic aerosol, indicating that aerosol absorptivity depends largely on burn conditions, not fuel type. We conclude that brown carbon from biomass burning can be an important factor in aerosol radiative forcing.
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Building Climate Solutions: 14th National Conference and Global Forum on Science, Policy and the Environment
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Join over 1,200 key individuals from many fields of sciences and engineering, government and policy, business and civil society to advance solutions to climate change.
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Events
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Building community resilience by strengthening America’s natural resources and supporting green infrastructure
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President Obama has made it clear that we have a moral obligation to our children and future generations to leave behind a planet that is not polluted and damaged. That is why, as part of his effort to combat climate change, the President launched a Climate Action Plan last year to cut carbon pollution, prepare communities for the impacts of climate change, and lead international efforts to address this global challenge.
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Building partnerships and establishing consensus on regional priorities across the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes Landscape Cooperative - Final Report
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As part of our project to identify the most climate vulnerable species in
the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes Landscape Conservation Cooperative
we have completed phase one of our project. This report summarizes our findings to date.We completed ten workshops across the
region and have compiled a regional list of priority wildlife species for
consideration in a climate vulnerability assessment.
Included in the report are the top 30 species shared as priorities across
the region, as well as the individual lists from each workshop.
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General Resources Holdings
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Buried by bad decisions
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From the text: Alas, research shows that when human beings make decisions, they tend to focus on what they are getting and forget about what we are forgoing.
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Butler, Patricia
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Coordinator, Climate Change Response Framework
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C4 Photosynthesis: Differentiating Causation and Coincidence
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Determination of the historical causes of organismal adaptations is difficult, but a recent study has suggested that at least one of the transitions to C4 photosynthesis was directly facilitated by changes in atmospheric CO2 levels. But what about the other 50+ origins of C4?
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Call for a climate culture shift
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A new book describes the rapid reshaping of human priorities needed to save the planet from global warming. Some of that change is already under way at the community level, explains Robert Costanza.
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Call Off the Quest
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Over the past 30 years, the climate research community has made valiant efforts to answer the “climate sensitivity” question: What is the long-term equilibrium warming response to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide? Earlier this year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (1) concluded that this sensitivity is likely to be in the range of 2° to 4.5°C, with a 1-in-3 chance that it is outside that range. The
lower bound of 2°C is slightly higher than the 1.6°C proposed in the 1970s (2).
26 OCTOBER 2007 VOL 318 SCIENCE
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