Water warming, a warning

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.queensu.ca/gazette/stories/water-warming-warning

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Water warming, a warning[/font]

Monday February 9, 2015
By Anne Craig, Communications Officer

[font size=3]A study of three remote lakes in Ecuador led by Queen’s University researchers has revealed the vulnerability of tropical high mountain lakes to global climate change – the first study of its kind to show this. The data explains how the lakes are changing due to the water warming as the result of climate change.

The results could have far-reaching consequences for Andean water resources as the lakes provide 60 per cent of the drinking water for Cuenca, the third largest city in Ecuador.

“Until recently we knew little about the effects of recent climate changes on tropical high-mountain lakes,” says Neal Michelutti (Biology), lead author and a senior research scientist at Queen’s University’s Paleoecological Environmental Assessment and Research Lab (PEARL). “We saw major changes in the algae consistent with the water warming that indicates changes in the physical structure of the water column.”

Dr. Michelutti and his research team visited three lakes in Cajas National Park. They retrieved water and core samples from the centre of each of the lakes for analysis. The lakes are accessible only by hiking trails and boats are prohibited. There is also no development within the park meaning the lakes are still in pristine condition.

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http://post.queensu.ca/~pearl/Andes/Andes.html

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Climate Change Forces New Ecological States in Tropical Andean Lakes[/font]

[font size=3]…

Because long-term monitoring data are generally unavailable in remote regions such as the Ecuadorian Andes, the team relied on using the history of past ecological changes that are preserved in lake sediment cores. The researchers focused on changes in fossil assemblages of microscopic algae (diatoms) to chronicle ecological changes over the last several centuries. All three study lakes show identical changes, namely a sudden rise in the number of planktonic (open water) diatoms from trace abundances to dominance beginning in the early 1960s.

“These are important threshold-type changes in lake ecology. Rising temperatures and declining wind speeds have forced these lakes towards new ecological and physical states that are unprecedented within the context of recent centuries” says Dr. Michelutti.

“The timing of these changes occurs in close synchrony to more conspicuous climate-related changes in the Andes, such as rapidly retreating glaciers” notes co-author John Smol, a professor in the Department of Biology and the Canada Research Chair in Environmental Change.

Diatoms are sentinels of environmental change – often the first species to respond to changing conditions. The shift in dominance to planktonic diatoms is significant because this often reflects a corresponding change in the physical properties of the water column, which can affect nutrient flow and thus all living creatures in the lakes.

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[newfie11]

1. Damn it!

This just sucks!

[niyad]

2. "heart of the world--the elder brothers warning" (the kogi elders)

have you seen this amazing documentary?

http://vimeo.com/103812927


The Heart Of The World-The Elder Brothers Warning (documentary The Kogi Elder)
from Hart van Groen 5 months ago Not Yet Rated

"The Heart of The World: Elder Brother's Warning” was filmed by Alan Ereira for the BBC in 1991

In a desperate attempt to prevent further ecological catastrophe and destruction, the Kogi Mamas broke their silence and allowed a small BBC film crew into their isolated mountaintop civilization to hear their message and warning to Younger Brother (those (un)conscious people who mashing up our environment). The subsequent messages and warnings were voiced in this documentary. After the documentary was filmed, the Kogi Mamas returned to their work in isolation and asked outsiders to not come to their land.

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The Kogi soon realized that their message and warning had not been heeded by Younger Brother, and instead, as they had predicted, many catastrophes occurred and the natural world continued to be devastated at an even more rapid pace.[7] In turn they contacted the same filmmaker twenty years later to give one final message. This became Aluna, a documentary made by the Kogi Mamas themselves in which they give a second warning and say that they have chosen to share their secret sciences with Younger Brother so that Younger Brother can help change the world for the better.