Epic driftwood: Monster tree washes ashore
Flooding, high tides and blasting winds worked together to land a massive drift log taller than a single-story house.
I BET IT WAS THE WEREWOLVES.
(Source: bookspaperscissors)
Blue Pond, Hokkaido
Photograph by Kent Shiraishi, My Shot
The “blue pond” of the famous tourist resort in Biei, Hokkaido, Japan is a place where many tourists gather in spring, summer, and autumn. However, since this pond freezes in winter, nobody is there during that period. This photograph was taken during the first snow of the season as it fell over the blue pond.
(Source: bookspaperscissors)
National Geographic Magazine: Deep Down Under | With ropes but no GPS, daring Aussies plunge into the hidden canyons of the Blue Mountains. →
By Mark Jenkins
Photograph by Carsten Peter
The Swiss have mountains, so they climb. Canadians have lakes, so they canoe. The Australians have canyons, so they go canyoneering, a hybrid form of madness halfway between mountaineering and caving in which you go down instead of up, often through…
(Source: National Geographic)
Incredibly Colourful Magnified Grains of Sand
Viewed at an astounding magnification of over 250 times, tiny grains of sand are surprisingly colorful and extremely unique. Each piece is either a fragment of crystals, spiral fragments of shells or crumbs of volcanic rock.
To see these incredible images, Dr. Gary Greenberg goes through a painstakingly lengthy process. First he takes many photos from different points of focus. Then, he combines them using software to produce one spectacular image.
“It is incredible to think when you are walking on the beach you are standing on these tiny treasures,” says Greenberg.”via http://sandgrains.com/ and ISI
Oh, my - this is AMAZING! Very beautiful.
Weeds acquire genes from GMO crops →
Way back in 2001, New Scientist reported that genetically modified (GM) oilseed rape, known as canola in North America, was being grown so widely in Canada that many plants had “escaped” from fields and become weeds. Most had been made resistant to broad-spectrum weedkillers such as Monsanto’s glyphosate, but the analysis we reported showed that some had acquired additional resistance by cross-breeding with modified crops that were resistant to other herbicides.
Despite this, no panic buttons were pressed, and farmers learned to manage the problem by rotating crops. That means different herbicides are used on a single plot of land, which helps wipe out weed-resistant survivors.
Now, 10 years on, similar “stacked” hybrid canola weeds are being found in the US. Meredith Schafer of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville reported at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Austin, Texas, this week, that she had found “escaped” canola plants in North Dakota that were resistant both to glyphosate, sold by Monsanto as Roundup, and to glufosinate, sold by Bayer Cropscience as LibertyLink.
As in Canada a decade ago, the discovery is a good demonstration that genes do get about in the wild. Neither company would have engineered resistance against a rival weedkiller into their own plants, so the only explanation is that the extra gene was acquired “naturally”.
An Ocean Miracle in the Gulf of California
For generations we have been taking fish out of the ocean at a rate faster than they can reproduce. The problem is that there are fewer and fewer fish to meet an ever-increasing demand. The solution is simply to take less so that we can continue eating fish for a longer time.
Opponents of conservation, however, argue that regulating fishing will destroy jobs and hurt the economy–but they are wrong, and there are real-world examples that prove this. A scientific study published today by the Public Library of Science shows that protecting an area brings the fish back, and creates jobs and increases economic revenue for the local communities. I have seen it with my own eyes and, believe me, it is like a miracle, only that it is not–it’s just common business sense.
Cabo Pulmo National Park in Baja California, Mexico, was protected in 1995 to safeguard the largest coral community in the Gulf of California. When I dove there for the first time in 1999, I thought the corals were very nice, but there were not so many fishes, and I didn’t think the place was extraordinary. Together with Octavio Aburto and other Mexican colleagues we dove at many sites in the gulf, in a region spanning over 1,000 km. Cabo Pulmo was just like most other places I’d seen in the Gulf of California.
But the Cabo Pulmo villagers wanted more. They decided that the waters in front of their settlement were going to be a no-take marine reserve – fishing was banned with the hopes of bringing the fish back. They had a vision, and they succeeded in a way that exceeded all expectations, including mine.
In 2009 we went back to Cabo Pulmo to monitor the fish populations. We jumped in the water, expecting fishes to be more abundant after 10 years of protection. But we could not believe what we saw–thousands upon thousands of large fishes such as snappers, groupers, trevally, and manta rays. They were so abundant that we could not see each other if we were fifteen meters apart. We saw more sharks in one dive at Cabo Pulmo than in 10 years of diving throughout the Gulf of California!
Our research indicated that the fish biomass increased by 460% at Cabo Pulmo–to a level similar to remote pristine coral reefs that have never been fished. In contrast, all other sites in the Gulf of California that we revisited in 2009 were as degraded as ten years earlier. This shows that it is possible to bring back the former richness of the ocean that man has obliterated, but that without our dedication, the degradation will continue.
Most importantly for the people of Cabo Pulmo, since their reef is now the only healthy reef left in the Gulf of California, it has attracted divers, which bring economic revenue. And fishermen around the marine reserve are catching more fish than before thanks to the spillover of fish from the no-take marine reserve. It seems like a win-win to me!
The question is: how can we have more of these?
Environmental sustainability is possible.
This is what I like to see!
National Geographic releases Trail Maps, ambitious new backcountry navigation app for iPhone and iPad, featuring high-resolution USGS topographic maps for the lower 48 states and GPS functionality
Wow! Kind of makes me wish I had an iPhone…
Mexican gray wolf escapes from MN Zoo, shot and killed by animal escape team. →
The zoo also explained why it had to be done.
Water texture by CubaGallery.
by CubaGallery.
