Paving Roads Can Increase Weed Invasions

This article was found HERE While it is well-known that roads can spread invasive weeds, new research shows that some roads are worse than others. In Utah, areas along paved roads were far more likely to be invaded than those along 4-wheel-drive tracks. This suggests that limiting road improvements would help keep out invasive weeds.

"Each step of road improvement would appear to convert an increasing area of natural habitat to roadside habitat," say Jonathan Gelbard, who did this work while at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and is now at the University of California at Davis, and Jayne Belnap of the U.S. Geological Survey in Moab, Utah, in the April issue of Conservation Biology.

Cheatgrass, knapweeds and other non-native plants have invaded nearly 125 million acres of the American West. Roads are a big part of the problem: for instance, vehicles can transport non-native seeds into uninfested areas, and clearing land during road construction gives weed seeds a place to become established. Intuitively, it makes sense that improved roads would spread weeds more than primitive roads because the former have more traffic, more exposed soil and more maintenance such as mowing and herbicide treatments, all of which can favor invasive species.

To see if non-native weeds really are more likely to invade along improved roads, Gelbard and Belnap surveyed the plants along 42 roads with varying degrees of improvement (paved, improved surface such as gravel, graded and 4-wheel-drive track) in and around southern Utah's Canyonlands National Park. The researchers determined the cover and number of species of non-native and native plants in two areas: roadside verges (strips along the road), and "interior sites" near but not right next to roads (165 feet from the verge).

Gelbard and Belnap found that road improvement greatly increased the cover of non-native plants in roadside verges. Notably, cheatgrass cover was three times greater in verges along paved roads than along 4-wheel-drive tracks (27 vs. 9%).

In addition, verges along improved roads were also wider, ranging from about three feet on each side of 4-wheel-drive tracks to 23 feet on each side of paved roads. This means that improving roads can convert natural habitat to non-native weed-infested roadside habitat. "For example, our results suggest that improving 10 km [about 6 miles] of 4-wheel-drive tracks to paved roads converts an average of 12.4 ha [about 30 acres] of interior habitat to roadside [habitat]," say Gelbard and Belnap.

The researchers also found that improved roads had more non-native plant cover in interior sites. Again, cheatgrass cover was more than three times greater in interior sites adjacent to paved roads than in those adjacent to 4-wheel-drive tracks (26 vs. 8%). Overall, the cover of non-native plants was more than 50% greater in interior sites adjacent to paved roads than in those adjacent to 4-wheel-drive tracks.

In addition, road improvement changed the number of both exotic and of native species in the interior community study plots: the number of exotic species was more than 50% greater and the number of native species was 30% lower.

"Our findings suggest that major opportunities remain to prevent exotic [non-native] plant invasions in this semiarid landscape by minimizing the construction of new roads and the improvement of existing roads," say Gelbard and Belnap.
CONTACT:
Jonathan Gelbard (jlgelbard@ucdavis.edu)
Jayne Belnap (jayne_belnap@usgs.gov)

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International body will organise global response to protect ecosystems 'that underpin all life - including economic life

UN's 'IPCC for nature' to fight back against destruction of natural world

International body will organise global response to protect ecosystems that underpin all life - including economic life'

Juliette Jowit
guardian.co Friday 11 June 2010 17.11 BST

World governments voted last night to set up a major new international body to spearhead the battle against the destruction of the natural world.

With growing concern about the human impacts of destruction of habitats and species from around the world, from riots over food shortages and high prices, to worsening floods, and global climate change, more than 80 governments voted to take action in the final hours of a week-long conference in Busan, South Korea.

The Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), also dubbed "the IPCC for nature", will be modelled on the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, which has been credited with driving global warming and climate change from a fringe scientific issue to mainstream public and political concern.

Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, said: "The dream of many scientists in both developed and developing countries has been made reality. Indeed, IPBES represents a major breakthrough in terms of organising a global response to the loss of living organisms and forests, freshwaters, coral reefs and other ecosystems that generate multi-trillion dollar services that underpin all life - including economic life - on Earth."

Caroline Spelman, the UK environment secretary, said: "Alongside climate change, biodiversity loss is the greatest threat we face. Our very way of life is linked to the natural world; the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink; as well as providing the habitats for the Earth's millions of species of plants and animals. IPBES will provide governments and policy makers across the world with independent and trusted scientific advice so that we can take action to protect the world's natural environment."

The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, will produce regular assessments of the state of biodiversity at international, regional and "sub regional" levels, mirroring the IPCC's five-yearly global assessments of global warming and its impacts. It will also develop research and conservation in developing countries, stimulate research in areas not covered, and advise policy-makers, said Professor Bob Watson, vice chair of IPBES and chief scientist at the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs.

It will focus on "poverty alleviation, human well-being and sustainable development", he said. A recommendation to set it up will now be voted on by the UN at its meeting in September.

"It's just possible that in Busko, Korea, a significant step forward has been made towards a renewed global approach to tackle the loss of biodiversity and its consequences for the natural world and the people," said Robert Bloomfield, coordinator of the International Year of Biodiversity in the UK. "Crucially it would bring more closely together the analysis of the scientific evidence of biodiversity loss and its impact alongside the development of policy responses - this has been lacking. Then, as with the IPPC, such an overarching body would also help put biodiversity in the media spotlight - where it needs to be.

"It will be up to all the parties, including science, international governance and the media, to make sure that such a development is open to scrutiny and effective in delivering the action needed to mainstream the response required to tackle the underlying causes of a problem which has disastrous consequences if not urgently addressed.


News
New UN science body to monitor biosphere
     'IPCC for biodiversity' approved after long negotiation

Emma Marris

All creatures great and small: A newly approved global science organization to oversee life on earth will have its work cut out for it.Cesar Paes Barreto

Representatives from close to 90 countries gathering in Busan, Korea, this week, have approved the formation of a new organization to monitor the ecological state of the planet and its natural resources. Dubbed the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the new entity will likely meet for the first time in 2011 and operate much like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

In essence, that means the IPBES will specialize in "peer review of peer review", says Nick Nuttall, a spokesman for the United Nations Environment Programme, which has so far hosted the IPBES birth process. Its organizers hope that its reports and statements will be accepted as authoritative and unbiased summaries of the state of the science. Like the IPCC, it will not recommend particular courses of action. "We will not and must not be policy prescriptive", emphasized Robert Watson, chief scientific advisor to the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and a vice-chair of the Busan meeting. "That is critical, or it will kill the process."

According to the document approved June 11, IPBES will conduct periodic assessments of the diversity of life on earth and its 'ecosystem services'-those outputs of ecosystems, such as clean fresh water, fish, game, timber and a stable climate, that benefit humankind. These assessments will answer questions about how much biodiversity is declining and what the implications of extinctions and ecosystem change are for humanity. Assessments will take place on global, regional and sub-regional scales.

IPBES will also take a hand in training environmental scientists in the developing world, both with a to-be-determined budget of its own and by alerting funders about gaps in global expertise. The organization will also identify research that needs to be done and useful tools-such as models-for policymakers looking to apply a scientific approach to such decisions as land management.

In Busan, negotiations stretched late into the night as delegates debated the scope of the proposed IPBES, including the specifics of how it will be funded. "There was concern among the developed countries that this not become a huge bureaucracy," says Nuttall. "Governments wanted to be reassured that it would be lean and mean and streamlined."

Another bone of contention was to what extent IPBES would tackle emerging issues or areas of contested science. In the end, it was agreed that the body will draw attention to "new topics" in biodiversity and ecosystem science. "If there had been something like this before, then new results on issues such as ocean acidification, dead zones in the ocean and the biodiversity impacts of biofuels would have been rushed to the inboxes of policymakers, instead of coming to their attention by osmosis," says Nuttall.

Among the governments who assented to the IPBES's creation were the European Union, the United States, and Brazil. The plan will come before the general assembly of the United Nations, slated to meet in September, for official approval. Those involved with the process say that that the UN creation of the new body is a virtual certainty.

Structural integrity

Anne Larigauderie, executive director of the Paris-based biodiversity science clearing house Diversitas, was jubilant at the outcome but said that the final agreement included a few disappointments. She hoped that IPBES would be set up to take requests for information or reports not only from governments and biodiversity-related conventions, such as the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, but also from environmental organizations, academic societies and economic interests such as agricultural and trade organizations. Instead, all requests to IPBES will go through its voting members-all of them government representatives.

Larigauderie suggests that this organizational structure represents an effort by governments to control potentially embarrassing information. "We were struck with the fear in governments," she says. "To them, scientific information represents a potential threat."

Hugh Possingham, a mathematical ecologist at the University of Queensland, Australia, specializes in decision-making tools for use by governments and conservation organizations. He says IPBES will have to make predictions to be useful. "Until we can make forward projections of meaningful biodiversity metrics under different policy scenarios, biodiversity is not even at the policy table," he says.

Watson says that IPBES will indeed make predictions, as its charge is to conduct "comprehensive" assessments.

Larigauderie say that IPBES has the potential to turn the "fragmented" field of biodiversity research into a more coordinated "common enterprise" that will lead to better predictive models of future biodiversity changes.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed, without profit, for research and educational purposes only.

Preserve Natural Wonder of Niagara Falls - "It isn't Just The View Being Spoiled"

Image via Wikipedia

By Cathy Marie Buchanan. Article HERE.  Sign the online petition HERE. Website HERE.
Sign Niagara Heritage Partnership petition t HERE.

Buzz up!

With rampant development and a new hydroelectric tunnel to siphon water away from the river, Niagara Falls is threatened in ways that are eerily familiar. Way back, the falls were cordoned off, reserved by hucksters for the paying few, and gristmills overwhelmed the natural beauty of the place. But then in the 1880s, a groundswell of preservation sentiment led to the establishment of public parks on both the American and Canadian sides of the river. Here’s to hoping the old adage about history repeating itself is true, because today we are again failing miserably at preserving the natural wonder of the world entrusted to our care.

An unsightly wall of hotels extends downriver from the Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side of the river, and that wall is slated to infiltrate the seven acres of green space that today frame the Horseshoe Falls in nature when viewed from the American side of the river. In 2006, a Canadian hotelier bought Loretto Academy, the stately, 148-year-old convent school that stands atop the bluff at the Horseshoe Falls, and now the city of Niagara Falls, Ontario, has amended its official plan, permitting the hotelier to replace the treed grounds of the academy with three high-rises, one a monstrous 57 stories in height.

And it isn’t just the view that’s being spoiled. According to the Niagara Parks Commission, the government agency that owns and maintains the tract of Canadian parkland running the length of the river, the misty days have more than doubled since the high-rises went up, and engineering consultants Rowan Williams Davies & Irwin, who modeled the area, say the high-rises are altering the airflow near the falls, drawing vapor toward the land and creating more days with rain-like conditions. Awnings and umbrellas have gone up and raincoats are now donned at plenty of spots where it was once possible to remain dry while taking in the staggering beauty of the falls.

The shadows of the new high-rises will cast parts of Queen Victoria Park beside the falls in gloom as the sun moves from the southern sky to the west and will span the river as the sun sets, bringing darkness to Goat Island’s Terrapin Point, the favored American vantage point for viewing the falls, 90 minutes early at certain times of the year. Worse yet, for a six-week period each spring and each fall, the shadows will interfere with the spectacle of the setting sun’s light on the Horseshoe Falls. Needless to say, when the sunshine is blocked, Niagara’s trademark rainbow will not appear.

Adding insult to injury, the magnificence of the falls themselves are set to take a plunge. In 2006 the world’s largest rock-boring machine began cutting yet another diversion tunnel under the city of Niagara Falls, Ontario. When that tunnel — it’s six stories in height — is completed in 2013, Ontario’s capacity to divert water away from the river and falls for the production of hydroelectricity will increase by 30 percent.

The water available for diversion is legislated by the 1950 Niagara Diversion Treaty, which set the minimum flow over the falls at about 50 percent of the natural flow during the daylight hours of tourist season and 25 percent at all other times, and in the words of Ontario Power Generation, “Excess water above and beyond what is required for tourism is now ‘spilling’ over the falls some of the time.” Offensive as the statement is, it is true that during the “non-tourist flow” times, Canada is currently unable to siphon off all it is allowed. Worrisome, though, is that with the new tunnel, total diversion capacity, including both the Canadian and the American power installations, will reach a whopping 186,000 cubic feet per second, enough to divert 93 percent of the river’s average natural flow. Our history of relentlessly chiseling away at the volume of water flowing over the brink through a succession of progressively more lenient diversion treaties underscores the vulnerability.

When the New York State Reservation at Niagara Falls opened in 1885, it was with a declaration that Niagara Falls was “not property, but a shrine — a temple erected by the hand of the Almighty for all the children of men.” Yet we find ourselves on a path of turning Niagara Falls into a trifling, measly thing, framed not by nature but by looming, glass and concrete edifices erected for the financial gain of a few.

Cathy Marie Buchanan is the author of the novel “The Day the Falls Stood Still,” which opens at Loretto in 1915 and chronicles the early days of hydroelectric development on the Niagara River. She is a founding member of the conservation organization www.FriendsOfNiagaraFalls.org.

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The Benefits and Impacts of Removing Urban Roads

http://www.wildonesniagara.org/advocacy.html
Case Study Summary: Benefits and Impacts of Road Removal
City Parks Closing Roads for Parks
Parking In Parks
Economic Impacts of Protecting Rivers, Trails, and Greenways
Conservation: An Investment That Pays
Case Studies in Urban Freeway Removal

A Waterfront Project Opens Up The Debate About the Soul Of A City

QUOTE OF THE DAY  from the Project for Public Spaces: "A waterfront project opens up the debate about the soul of a city for all to see." (http://www.pps.org/info/getinvolved/making_places/waterfronts_overview)

Making the transition from working waterfront to public gathering place is full of challenges, be it providing public access or identifying the activities best suited to a particular community and place. Today, more and more cities and towns are boldly taking on these challenges.

Seizing the Opportunity of Urban Waterfronts
A waterfront project for a town resembles a blank canvas for an artist. Anything is possible, including a masterpiece. Because it is so central to the life of that community, representing so many competing claims about its history and where it is now headed, there's an opportunity for a breakthrough in how people in that place think of themselves. Such a project raises questions about what a city is and what it needs most. It opens up the debate about the soul of a city for all to see. Will the city stay on the familiar course of standard-issue condos, office towers and road construction, or will it boldly assert community values--and maintain the essential publicness of the waterfront--by creating a gathering spot that attracts and inspires us?

Rock Climbing in the Niagara Gorge Harms Cliff Ecosystems

Here's another reason to protect the Niagara Gorge. Click the blue text to read the article on the Science Daily webpage.

ScienceDaily (Apr. 3, 2002) — While it stands to reason that rock climbers might harm habitats such as the ancient, stunted forests that grow on cliffs around the world, there has been little unambiguous evidence that this is so. Now the first study to isolate rock climbing from other factors confirms that the sport damages cliff ecosystems. "Our work clearly shows that rock outcrop ecosystems suffer dramatically when exposed to recreational rock climbing," says Douglas Larson of the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. This work is presented in the April issue of Conservation Biology by Larson and Michele McMillan, who is also of the University of Guelph.

---

See Also:

Plants & Animals

• Endangered Plants
• Nature
• Ecology Research

Trends & Issues

Reference

• Coastal erosion
• Ivy
• Lichen
• Slash and burn

The popularity of rock climbing has soared in North America over the last 20 years, disturbing areas that had been untouched for ages. However, previous studies on the ecological effects of rock climbing have been contradictory.

McMillan and Larson studied the ecological effects of rock climbing on vegetation (vascular plants, bryophytes and lichens) on the heavily-climbed limestone cliffs of the Niagara Escarpment, which is near Toronto in southern Ontario. These cliffs have the most ancient forest east of the Rocky Mountains, with eastern white cedars that are more than 1,000 years old. The researchers compared the vegetation on three parts -- the top edge (plateau), the middle (cliff face) and the base (talus) -- of climbed and unclimbed cliffs.

The researchers found that rock climbing greatly decreases the diversity of vegetation on cliffs. Notably, climbed faces had only 4% as many vascular plant species as those that were unclimbed. Moreover, the diversity of bryophytes and lichens in climbed areas were roughly 30 and 40% of that in climbed areas, respectively.

Rock climbing also decreases the cover of vegetation on cliffs. For vascular plants, the cover on climbed plateau and talus was roughly 60% of that on unclimbed areas. For bryophytes, the cover on climbed plateau and talus was about a fifth of that on unclimbed areas. While climbing did not affect the extent of lichen cover, it did change the types of species that grow on cliffs. Delicate lichen species were replaced by tough ones: in unclimbed areas the most common lichens are so fragile that they crumble to the touch, while in climbed areas the most common lichens are so sturdy that they can even withstand rubbing.
McMillan and Larson also found that in climbed areas, the proportion of non-native plants was three times higher (81 vs. 27%). Rock climbing reduces plant density, thus increasing the number of sites where non-native plants can grow. Furthermore, rock climbers can introduce seeds and living pieces of non-native plants via their shoes, clothing and equipment.

To help protect cliff ecosystems, McMillan and Larson recommend banning new climbing routes in protected areas along the Niagara Escarpment, and explaining why to rock climbing associations and schools. "Recreationists are far more likely to abide by management plans when they are aware of the ecological rationale behind the restrictions," say the researchers.  

Nature's Kidneys

Image via Wikipedia

From our friends at Rochester Environment, the opening article on their RENenvironment newsletter.

“Nature’s Kidneys”

Though we tend not to consider our wetlands until they get in the way of a development project, they play a unique ecological role.  They are like our kidneys, a filtration organ cleansing our environment.  The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), using more rigorous language, defines wetlands as "those areas that are inundated or saturated by surface or groundwater at a frequency and duration sufficient to support, and that under normal circumstances do support, a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil conditions. Wetlands generally include swamps, marshes, bogs and similar areas." Wetlands | US EPA

Given such a critical role, you’d think we’d be more careful with our wetlands.  Au contraire:  “In the 1600s, over 220 million acres of wetlands are thought to have existed in the lower 48 states. Since then, extensive losses have occurred, and over half our original wetlands have been drained and converted to other uses. Between the 1950s and 1970s an estimated 58,500 acres of wetlands were lost” (EPA 1995).

Nowadays, perhaps feeling a little guilty (or simply better at tweaking our laws), wetland mitigation or offsets help us get around the legality of destroying those inconvenient soggy lands by allowing us to build another wetland someplace else.  That kind of structural relocating makes sense if you’re renovating an old house and want the bathroom on the third floor instead of the first.  Trouble is recreating a wetland that took thousands of years to weave itself into the infinite biological matrix called Nature cannot be so easily replicated by a backhoe and a garden hose. Many experts think that constructed wetlands don’t really capture at all the breathtaking complexity that is a wetland. 

When I think that we have destroyed over 50% of our wetlands here in America during the last five-hundred years, I’m reminded of the total decimation of the Easter Island forests that Jared Diamond describes in “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail.” Generations of Easter Islanders used the once plentiful trees to roll great stone icons across the island.  They didn’t ‘see’ that they were destroying their environment because it happened so slowly.  A single generation of islanders would think the relative loss of trees sustainable—if they thought about such things at all.  But you have to wonder: Halfway through this forest destruction (for Easter Island civilization collapsed when the trees were gone), was there a moment when someone foresaw the calamity to come? 

Just in the same way, we have destroyed much of what was biologically in place when we had a healthy environment.  Now, it’s questionable. We are often such hasty folks that we simply marvel at our particular longevity (some of us make it to one hundred) and forget our life spans are but fleeting moments to Nature.  . 

February second was World Wetlands Day.  “It marks the date of the signing of the Convention on Wetlands on 2 February 1971, in the Iranian city of Ramsar on the shores of the Caspian Sea.”  It went by unnoticed in our local media.  But Nature, because it is simply a mindless biological algorithm, never forgets.

FrankRegan@RochesterEnvironment.com

Garden Rant: Sustainable Sites Folks say "Landscapes Give Back!"

Garden Rant: Sustainable Sites Folks say "Landscapes Give Back!"

"The most compelling argument for sustainable landscapes, and the slogan splashed across SSI literature, is that Landscapes Give Back. They give back in cleaner water and air, cooler cities, mitigation of climate change (all that sequestering of carbon), resource conservation and regeneration, greater energy efficiency, habitat conservation and biodiversity, lower costs and improved performance from stormwater management, and better living conditions. Whew"

Thought For Today: Every Urban River Deserves A Book

Image by krisdecurtis via Flickr

The Orion Society periodically gives away books to its members. For the price of shipping, I received Urban Wilderness: Exploring a Metropolitan Watershed by Eddee Daniel. Like every book lover, I flipped it open, skimming. Sometimes, in unexpected moments, words take on prophetic impact.

The Romantic notion of landscape as sublime and enduring has given way to one that is malleable, even fragile. Today, the land can be bent to suit human needs, or broken through self-interest or short-sighted planning. We can also choose to include wildness in our landscapes and in our lives. We will be richer for it. (pg.33)