Can Controversial Ocean Iron Fertilization Save Salmon?
What's been described as a "rogue" geoengineering experiment is really an effort, however flawed, to restore salmon abundance
ADDING IRON: By adding iron to the Pacific Ocean, as pictured here, the Haida Salmon Restoration Corp. hoped to restore lost salmon abundance--and generate carbon credits too. Image: Courtesy of HSRC
In a bid to restore lost fish abundance, the Haida Salmon Restoration Corp. (HSRC) undertook to mimic the effects of a volcanic eruption by fertilizing the ocean with iron. The idea was to provide the missing nutrient for a plankton bloom that would then trickle up the food web and restore salmon?with the ancillary effects of gathering data on the ocean food web and, potentially, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
"What if this is a means by which ocean pastures can be stewarded and brought back to health?" asks Russ George, chief scientist of the expedition as well as a controversial businessman with a history of attempting to start CO2-removal schemes ranging from reforestation to ocean fertilization. "This is a tiny village of people trying to take care of their backyard."
Old Masset village on the Haida Gwaii Islands off the British Columbia coast did this by contracting George and others to initiate the largest such intentional ocean fertilization effort to date. It authorized the release of roughly 110 metric tons of iron dust, 91 metric tons of the iron sulfate fertilizer commonly used as a lawn treatment and employed in other scientific experiments, and nearly 20 metric tons of the iron oxide found in soils around the world. "It's micronutrient enrichment," Jason McNamee, operations officer and corporate director for the HSRC, told a press conference on October 19. "We took a bag of iron, and we slapped it over one square kilometer [of ocean]."
To do that, this past July the HSRC team motored more than 300 kilometers west from the Haida Gwaii Islands to an ocean eddy in the fishing vessel Ocean Pearl. The area had previously been scouted by collecting water samples since January and lies outside Canadian territorial waters. The team also used more than 20 autonomous oceangoing robots, including two bright yellow gliders and 20 Argo drifter robots on loan from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to survey the scene?work that is ongoing. Over the course of several days the researchers then released the 110 metric tons into the fishing boat's wake in an attempt to raise the levels of iron in the water from one or two parts per trillion up to five to 10, although both concentrations are estimates.
Satellite images as well as maps of chlorophyll abundance appear to show that the iron did indeed fuel a plankton bloom in August. But questions remain: Was it the right kind of bloom to bury carbon? Will it have any effect on the salmon?
Ocean restoration
The HSRC's basic idea is born out of marine biology as well as observations of the aftermath of volcanic eruptions in the region. For example, a lack of iron limits the growth of microscopic plants in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica and elsewhere, a fact that prompted marine biologist John Martin to famously muse: "Give me half a tanker of iron, and I'll give you the next ice age."
In the summer of 2008 Mount Kasatochi in Alaska's Aleutian Islands blew, sending volcanic minerals, including iron dust, far to sea and prompting plankton blooms across the Gulf of Alaska. At the same time, years and years of decline in returning salmon populations led researchers to expect few of the fry from 2008 to return in later years, only to find a record salmon run in Canada's Fraser River in 2010.
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=658d00fad051340594bb186a65d57226
air jordan 11 concord unemployment extension the thin man republic wireless space ball drops on namibia matt barkley melanie amaro x factor
tumiochena পোস্ট করেছে @ ১২:৫১ AM
0টি মন্তব্য
Before people depended on the Internet and various forms of mobile messaging, communication was rather simple. If you wanted to communicate with someone immediately, you either called or sent a fax, and in many cases, you might have done both in one sitting.
It is so much easier for a company to promote someone internally. The person already knows the company, the culture, the processes, etc. However, that doesn?t always mean an internal candidate is the best choice. As you meet with people to learn more about their business, be sure to share how you, someone coming from the outside, offers fresh, valuable perspectives on solving their problems. Even if there isn?t a job available, you should be having conversations with people inside companies you would like to work for. Inevitably, they will be hiring someone one day soon and you want them to think of you as their next great hire!
Once a job posting goes public, everyone and their brother is applying. All the employer can see is your resume, if they even see that. If your resume doesn?t contain the right key words or skill sets required by the company?s screener, chances as slim that anyone will ever see your resume. And what makes you think you are a stronger, more likeable candidate than the hundreds of external candidates AND the handful of internal candidates? What tips the scales in your favor when the competition is so steep? Can you see how much more difficult it is to stand out?
It has been my experience when hiring, that by the time the job posting goes public, I have already been asking everyone I know, inside and outside the company, who would be a good fit for the upcoming open job. Sometimes this has been going on for months before the job gets announced. Imagine all the people who come to mind and who get referred. If all you do is wait for posted jobs, chances are, your name wouldn?t be in the running. Once the job does get announced, perhaps it has been custom tailored to match the very unique and specific skill sets and background of the predetermined candidate. You will never meet the requirements of the? job if this is the case. You can?t. It has been written so that only one person is truly qualified.
How frustrating is it when you don?t see any good jobs available? And then there is the frenetic rush on the rare days when you see more than one job available and you have to research the company, tweek your resume and customize your cover letter to get it to the company ASAP. When you only look at posted jobs, you have peaks and valleys of activity. Your job search activity is driven on their timeline, not one you have influence over. I would prefer you have more control over your activities and use of your time, wouldn?t you?
Writer and creative freelancer, Tom Tumbusch, of WordStreamCopy, put together this quick list of ideas about how to get digital gigs.?
Those eighteen words got a founder and I kicked off of the trading floor of the NYSE earlier this evening. Because, as we shuffed out of the Girls Who Code event held there earlier tonight, we looked at the jumble of computers and stock tickers on the first floor of 18 Bond Street and exclaimed in awe, “So this is where it all goes down, huh?” And of course, because we’re tech people and troublemakers we’re like, “So how does it work?” specifically joking, in light of all the recent tech stock collapses, “Which one of these do I have to spill water on (okay, we may have said wine) to make people irrationally buy Facebook?” The founder and I (who made me promise not to write about him/her because he/she said his/her?parents PR people would kill him/her and I don’t want to be an accomplice to murder) took solace in this laughter, and the idea that the rise in price of $FB shares would most likely bolster the entire tech industry. And all was bright and shiny until an NYSE security guard pulled the founder aside from our revelry. “Excuse me sir/mam, did you just ask which computer you’d have to spill water (okay, it was most likely wine) on to make people buy Facebook stock?” Oh God. “We were joking,” I replied, which, like how you can’t say bomb?in any context on a plane, apparently isn’t acceptable in the NYSE. Because we got kicked out. “Get OUT” the guard said, and we scurried out, because he really did mean it. One man’s facetiousness is another man’s terrorist threat. And yes, I have the utmost respect for this guard. Because this exactly was his job. So we got OUT, like ran out, before the man could take further action, and I hope we’re not banned for life because I have to be at an another event at the NYSE on Thursday. Also, Girls Who Code is awesome, and you should all download 16-year-old “Girl Who Codes” Nikita Rau’s app Wander. And not joke about destroying important things, ever. Pro tip.
