Global warming threatens Lakshadweep’s coral reefs

For most of us, thinking about Lakshadweep islands conjures images of pristine beaches, clear blue seas and fascinating coral reefs that are home to a diversity of plant and animal life.

This might not be far from reality but recent research questions how long will these serene islands remain the same.

A nearly two-decade-long study by the Oceans and Coasts Program of the Nature Conservation Foundation’s (NCF) has found that the absolute coral cover in these islands has reduced from 51.6% in 1998 to 11% in 2017, a staggering 40% decline.

They have found that the alarming rate of coral mortality and their shifting species compositions, combined with their slow rate of recovery, could severely limit their ability to resist future disturbances due to climate change.

“The enormous drop in coral cover is a result of repeated and increasingly severe climate change-related disturbance,” says Shreya Yadav, who along with Teresa Alcoverro and Rohan Arthur published their findings in the journal Coral Reefs earlier this month.

“By monitoring the same reefs since 1998 through a series of El Niño disturbance events, we found that the way a single reef responds to and recovers from a stressor can change drastically through time,” Yadav says.

“Reefs are infamously complex and dynamic systems, but our study shows that in the Lakshadweep, a changing community of corals in a warming environment has led to a four-fold drop in recovery rates since 1998,” she adds.

An unending fight for water

Every year since 1952, towards August, there has been international focus on this little region on the banks of the Pampa River, on the Alappuzha-Kottayam water transport route.

Still, a repeated complaint voiced by the residents of the Nehru Trophy Ward, hosts to the Nehru Trophy Boat Race, has not attracted any serious attention, which is why women from about 500 families there had to take to the streets on Wednesday, armed with water pots and shouting slogans, demanding pure drinking water.

The Nehru Trophy ward and parts of the adjoining Kainakary panchayat, including areas like Thayyilkayal, Naduthuruthu Kannittakayal and the land encircling the Azhikal padasekharam, all of which fall under the

Alappuzha municipality, have been short of not just drinking water, but water for daily requirements as well, for the last 20 years. A majority of voters in this region boycotted panchayat elections 10 years back, but in vain. Repeated memoranda, petitions and requests too have brought about little change.

Don’t compare air pollution to smoking’

Anti-tobacco activists have expressed concern that comparing the ill-effects of air pollution to that of smoking will result in trivializing the catastrophic effects of smoking.

They say that such comparisons also promote the theory that it is all right to smoke as the air that we breathe is equally harmful.

“It is absurd to compare the health consequences of air pollution with that of smoking. Needless to say, both are equally important public health issues and the comparisons are being made to probably simplify it for lay people,” said anti-tobacco activist and cancer surgeon Dr. Pankaj Chaturvedi.

“Such comparisons are based on a formula proposed by a Berkeley Earth study that draws an equivalence between the hazards of air pollution and smoking. In the words of one of the co-author of the study ‘when you bring scientific terms to something so well known as a cigarette number, it helps to raise awareness and bring discussion. It hits people in the way they can understand.’ However, the author’s metaphor is being misinterpreted and it is belittling something as serious as tobacco control,” said Dr. Chaturvedi.

“The common ingredients of air pollution are mainly carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, volatile organic compounds and suspended particulate matter. Cigarette smoke, in addition to all the above, is made of nearly 7,000 toxic chemicals and at least 69 of them are highly carcinogenic,” he said, adding that the dose or concentration of the suspended particulate matter in the air per day and per lifetime is nearly 200 times lesser than that from cigarettes.

Himachal: Highway dumping raises environmental concerns

The absence of earmarked, designated dumping site for the four-lane highway being constructed between Nagchala and Manali, has raised serious environmental concerns.

Furthermore, it has raised a question on the functioning of the National Highway Authority of India.

To get approval for any construction project, it is mandatory to have proper site disposal of the muck and debris, however, the NHA has not created any dumping site.

The construction of the stretch of four-lane is around 110 kms will also have the construction of tunnels.

Four-lane Joint Action Committee (JAC) president Brigadier Khushal Thakur (Retd) said that the absence of proper designated landfill to dump the debris has come to light in the recent meeting held in Mandi with the Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur to resolve the issues of the four-lane affected families.

Kushal Thakur has been raising the issues of the affected families owing to the project since the last few tears.

He blamed the NHA of flouting the norms not only in the concerns of those being affected by the project but also for haphazardly dumping the debris along the Beas River along the highway.

To dispose the debris there is no official designated dumping site created by NHA which has raised doubts on the clearance of the four-laning project, he said.

Fisherfolk's protests bear fruit as CRZ denies clearance for the port on Ennore Creek

The Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has rejected the Kamarajar Port's proposal to locate port facilities on the eastern banks of the Kosasthalaiyar's backwaters in Ennore Creek following a long struggle by local fishermen.

The fisherfolk, however, said their battle to declare all of Ennore Creek off limits for industrial projects will intensify.

The port had planned to develop facilities like office, commercial buildings and parking terminals on the eastern part of the ecologically fragile intertidal salt pans. Environmental and CRZ Clearance accorded to Kamarajar Port for its Phase III expansion dated 30th October 2018 ordered to relocate these facilities. The Environment Ministry ruled, "The water bodies and wetlands are more important than the development activity."However, the union ministry has allowed Kamarajar Port to construct facilities like coal yards on the western part of the Ennore wetlands.

Harvesting renewable energy from the sun and outer space at the same time

Scientists at Stanford University have demonstrated for the first time that heat from the sun and coldness from outer space can be collected simultaneously with a single device. Their research, published November 8 in the journal Joule, suggests that devices for harvesting solar and space energy will not compete for land space and can actually help each other function more efficiently.

Renewable energy is increasingly popular as an economical and efficient alternative to fossil fuels, with solar energy topping charts as the worldwide favorite. But there is another powerful energy source overhead that can perform just the opposite function -- outer space.

Bionic mushrooms' fuse nanotech, bacteria and fungi

In their latest feat of engineering, researchers at Stevens Institute of Technology have taken an ordinary white button mushroom from a grocery store and made it bionic, supercharging it with 3D-printed clusters of cyanobacteria that generate electricity and swirls of graphene nanoribbons that can collect the current.

The work, reported in the Nov. 11 issue of Nano Letters, may sound like something straight out of Alice in Wonderland, but the hybrids are part of a broader effort to better improve our understanding of cells biological machinery and how to use those intricate molecular gears and levers to fabricate new technologies and useful systems for defense, healthcare and the environment.

Graphene takes a step towards renewable fuel

Researchers at Linköping University, Sweden, are working to develop a method to convert water and carbon dioxide to the renewable energy of the future, using the energy from the sun and graphene applied to the surface of cubic silicon carbide. They have now taken an important step towards this goal, and developed a method that makes it possible to produce graphene with several layers in a tightly controlled process.

The research group has also shown that graphene acts as a superconductor in certain conditions. Their results have been published in the scientific journals Carbon and Nano Letters.

Carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. These are the three elements you would get if you took apart molecules of carbon dioxide and water. The same elements are the building blocks of chemical substances that we use for fuel, such as ethanol and methane. The conversion of carbon dioxide and water to renewable fuel, if possible, would provide an alternative to fossil fuels, and contribute to reducing our emission of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Jianwu Sun, senior lecturer at Linköping University, is trying to find a way to do just that.

Amazon forests failing to keep up with climate change

New research has assessed the impact of global warming on thousands of tree species across the Amazon to discover the winners and losers from 30 years of climate change. The analysis found the effects of climate change are altering the rainforest's composition of tree species but not quickly enough to keep up with the changing environment.

A team of more than 100 scientists has assessed the impact of global warming on thousands of tree species across the Amazon to discover the winners and losers from 30 years of climate change. Their analysis found the effects of climate change are altering the rainforest's composition of tree species but not quickly enough to keep up with the changing environment.