U-sustain week 8!

 

Hey, welcome to week eight. Today we are electing our new E-board! First though we have some climate news. 

    A new study showed models of how dissolved oxygen will change in coming years. The letters on each figure correspond to depths. A is the epipelagic zone 0-200m, B mesopelagic 200-1000m, and C bathypelagic zone 1000-3300m. Dissolved oxygen decreases most in the mesopelagic zone which is also the depth of most fisheries. By. 2080 there is a risk of 70% decrease in dissolved O2 in the mesopelagic zone. The second chart shows how dissolved O2 levels change in the ocean at these depths. Again in the mesopelagic zone there is the greatest negative change of dissolved O2 which is a concern for the fish populations in those zones. 

Study link: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021GL095370

Some great news: There are an estimated 9200 more tree species! This is really exciting as it shows species diversity is greater than we knew. %40 of these unidentified trees are in South America. This is encouraging that there are far more species yet to discover, but this makes them even more difficult to protect.     

One newly discovered species was named Uvariopsis dicaprio after Leonard DiCaprio a film a star and climate activist. Using social media petitions, DiCaprio successfully stoped deforestation in Cameroon by the government. The photo on the right is a tree in the same genus as Uvariopsis dicaprio. 

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220131153239.htm 

Thanks to Bethany and Hailey for the first two slides. Thanks for reading! 

U-sustain week 4

 

Welcome to our first in person full body meeting this term! We have lots to discuss including elections, Wold display cases, and earth day event planning. 

First the news:

• Florida manatees are being threatened with loss of habitat and sea grass to forage
• In 2021 there were 1100 deaths many from starvation
• there are now 7500 individuals in the wild
• most years there are only about ~500 deaths
• Foraging becomes even harder in winter when manatees need to eat more to stay warm
• Algae blooms are killing the local sea grass and at Indian River Lagoon (bottom left picture) there has been a 58% loss in sea grass since 2011
• sea grass also happens to be an endangered species too
• Recently there has been an effort to cultivate sea grass using divers and cages
• this can be really labor intensive, but has shown to be successful at reintroducing seagrass

• New research tool which can sample animal DNA from the air
• this can be used to track animal movements especially for species hard to access
• other tracking methods include capturing and placing a tag or setting up camera traps
• tests are being preformed in Zoos as the technology is still in development. 
• The animals pictured are dingos and the tube at the bottom of the photo is the air sampling device.

Thanks for reading!