News Forum Archives: January 2003
Ski resort turning human waste into pure snow
Beyond 2000
Ski resorts arent just playgrounds for the rich and idle. Relying as they do on the natural environment, its not uncommon for true ski aficionados to also do a nice line in conservation awareness.
Such is the case at the Australian ski resort of Mount Buller near Melbourne in the countrys south. Operators at the resort have recently completed trials that convert human waste into pristine, pure white, ski-able snow.
The resort has an amazing 7500 beds, which all adds up to a lot of visitors making a lot of human waste. Converting this into snow seemed a logical step.
Waste from resort is converted into usable water in two ways, both at a recycling plant for initial treatment, and then separately through a three-step purifying process of UV light filtration, ozonation and ultra-filtration. The final ultra-filtration step removes all suspended solids from the liquid including all biological matter, alive or dead. The resulting water is even free of viruses, bacteria and spores from cryptosporidium or giardia. The treated wastewater is then used in conjunction with meltwater and creekwater from surrounding areas to create snow.
David Westphalen from the Mt Buller Resort management board believes the snow that is made from the treated waste to be even cleaner than that made from nearby creek water. Itll be talking the resorts regulars into skiing on the remains of their own waste that will be the real challenge.
In this area, David thinks the resort will have to put in some hard yards in the marketing department. I think, though, that the Australian people are mature enough to realise that the scheme makes sense, he adds. Australians are naturally concerned about the environment, and once they are aware that the snow made from this process is safe, I dont think they will be against the idea. He also points out that many golf courses and playing fields are already irrigated from recycled waste water, without incident.
At the moment, extra snow that the resort creates to extend the ski season is pumped from surrounding creeks. While this water is perfectly good, it often contains suspended matter from wildlife in the area. The treated wastewater would have all solids removed..
Just icing on the slopes
The resort management team is already very environmentally conscious. These recent trials are only one of many ways the resort is looking to use their environment efficiently, and make as little impact on it as possible. Already there are recycling programmes in place, and all waste generated from visitors is suitably treated before entering creeks or other waterways.
The results of the tests are ready to be approved. Once the government gives the green light and sufficient funds are raised, David believes the scheme will be ready to implement, and should be up and running in three to four years.
Copyright 2002 Beyond Online Limited. All rights reserved.
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Smaller Households Lead to Vanishing Biodiversity
By Cat Lazaroff
Environment News Service
WASHINGTON, DC, January 13, 2003 (ENS) – A worldwide trend toward smaller households is fueling a global housing boom and threatening biodiversity around the world, a new study finds. The report is among the first to link trends such as a rising divorce rate and a movement away from multigenerational households to changes in resource consumption and sprawling development.
Even where the human population is declining, the number of households continues to grow, concludes the study by scientists from Michigan State (MSU) and Stanford Universities. The results, the authors say, point to needed changes in policies intended to protect valuable wildlife habitat and ecosystem services.
“Having fewer people in more households means using more resources and putting more stress on the environment,” said Jianguo “Jack” Liu, an associate professor of fisheries and wildlife at MSU. “Freedom and privacy come at a huge environmental cost.”
According to the study, housing units throughout the world are being built at a rate that outpaces population growth, resulting in a loss of habitat, natural resources and biodiversity.
“We had hoped to find that, where human population growth was slowing, biodiversity might be given some breathing room,” said Stanford University ecologist Gretchen Daily, a co-author of the study. “But instead, we’ve found that urban and suburban sprawl are accelerating faster than population growth is decelerating.”
“To our knowledge, this is the first study to look at the environmental impact of households on a global scale,” Daily added.
Liu, Daily, and Stanford population expert Paul Ehrlich and postdoctoral associate Gary Luck, examined household dynamics and population changes in 141 countries worldwide, then scrutinized six areas with biodiversity hotspots: areas with high densities of animal and plant species.
The studies paint pictures of how changes in human lifestyles affect different habitats – from endangered pandas in the mountains of southwestern China to the subdivisions that press against the Florida Everglades.
The researchers found that across the world, in both developed and developing countries, households are getting smaller, and there are many more of them. Multigenerational living arrangements are giving way to couples or individuals moving out on their own.
Rising divorce rates mean families that used to live in one dwelling now occupy two, and aging populations mean more parents living in households separate from their grown children.
The result is often urban sprawl and less efficient housing for the same number of people. For example, a refrigerator uses about the same amount of energy whether it belongs to a family of four or a family of two.
Each household takes up space, requires resources to construct, and fuel to heat and cool it. Increased energy consumption also increases the emission of greenhouse gases, which is believed to contribute to global warming.
“In larger households, the efficiency of resource consumption will be a lot higher because more people share things,” Liu said. “Usually, many people will share living space and other resources. This is true in all countries.”
While households may be shrinking in number of residents, most are growing in terms of square footage. Fewer people tend to live in more space.
For example, in Indian River County, Florida, the average area of a one story, single family house increased 33 percent in the last three decades, from an average of about 1,800 square feet in houses built before 1970 to an average of about 2,400 square feet built between 1970 and 2000.
“Had the average household size stayed at the 1970 level, Indian River County would have had 11,000 fewer households in 2000,” the researchers observed.
The household project grew from Liu’s years of research on how humans interact with fragile wildlife habitat in China’s Sichuan Province, where villagers compete for resources with the endangered giant panda. In Wolong, Liu learned, a reduced average household size was tied to an increase in household numbers and a rise in the amount of fuel wood consumed by the local populace for cooking and heating, which has contributed to deforestation and loss and fragmentation of habitat for giant pandas.
“The numbers of households increased much faster than the size of the population at Wolong,” Liu said. “What was discovered from the panda reserve helped me to conclude that considering population size and growth alone is not enough, and made me want to find out whether other areas in the world have similar phenomena.”
“The issue of the number of households and their impact on the environment basically has been ignored. It was even difficult to unearth the data,” Liu added. “Everyone looks at population size and growth rate, but the number of households and household size are crucial factors affecting the environment.”
The team of researchers found that in 76 countries containing biodiversity hotspots, between 1985 and 2000 the number of households grew by 3.1 percent a year, whereas the population increased only 1.8 percent. Meanwhile, the number of people living in a single dwelling dropped from 4.7 to 4.0.
The scientists estimated that had average household size remained the same in hotspot countries during the 15 year period, there would have been 155 million fewer households overall, meaning less pressure on biodiversity. Hotspot countries studied included Australia, India, Kenya, Brazil, China, Italy and the United States.
“Ignoring population growth, reduction in household size alone is projected to add 233 million households to hotspot countries between 2000 and 2015,” said Daily.
In the 65 non-hotspot countries, similar trends were found, although the magnitudes of change were less. In 1985, the average household size was 4.7 in hotspot countries and 3.7 in non-hotspot countries. By 2015, the average household size in hotspot countries is expected to be 3.4 persons, and in non-hotspot countries, it is expected to be 3.6 persons.
Liu contends that the increase in household numbers even in non-hotspot countries directly influences important biodiversity on a national and local scale. Indirectly, he says, global environment is affected in such patterns as more energy consumption and release of more greenhouse gases.
Even in regions where population size decreased, such as in New Zealand, the number of households increased because of a reduction in household size.
The “double toll” a reduction in average household size takes on the environment, the scientists said, includes more land use and more materials consumed for construction, and a lower efficiency of resource use per person. In hotspot countries, where this trend is most prevalent, the authors believe there may be severe limits on efforts to conserve species, thus “degrading the ecosystem services that biodiversity delivers to humanity.”
In the past, the business community took most of the heat for many environmental problems, Liu explained.
“While there is still a need to reduce pollution and ecological destruction caused by factories and companies, this study provides a wake up call, and suggests that efforts at the individual and household levels are also needed to reduce impacts on the environment,” Liu said.
Changes in government policies such as tax incentives for sharing housing and resources could be helpful to influence personal and household decisions and actions, he added.
“In China and many other countries around the world, incentives created to help the environment are based on households,” Liu said. “These incentives have good intentions, but they also encourage households to break into smaller households.”
The threat to global biodiversity is likely to escalate, the authors concluded, because current household trends, such as higher divorce rates and increased affluence, are expected to continue.
“Most countries containing hotspots have relatively low population growth rates, and the primary demographic pressure on their biodiversity will come from urban sprawl and other impacts associated with increased household numbers,” they wrote.
Professor Gretchen Daily of Stanford University says the research suggests that human population decline alone may not be enough to reverse trends of vanishing biodiversity. (Photo courtesy Stanford University)
“We all depend on open space and wild places, not just for peace of mind but for vital services such as crop pollination, water purification and climate stabilization that are key to health and economic prosperity,” Daily observed. “The alarming thing about this study is the finding that, if family groups continue to become smaller and smaller, we might continue losing biodiversity – even if we get the aggregate human population size stabilized.”
The research, funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, appears in the January 12 online edition of the British science journal “Nature.”
For more information on Liu’s panda habitat research in China, visit: http://www.panda.ur.msu.edu
Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2003. All Rights Reserved.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
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Court Orders Review of Mexican Truck Traffic
SAN FRANCISCO, California, January 17, 2003 (ENS) – A federal appeals court has ordered the Bush administration to review the environmental impacts of opening U.S. borders to Mexican truck traffic.
Finding that the Bush Administration “acted arbitrarily and capriciously,” the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the administration violated federal environmental laws by taking steps to give Mexico based trucks full access to U.S. highways without reviewing the impact they would have on air quality. The court ordered the administration to complete a full Environmental Impact Statement and Clean Air Act conformity determination.
The court ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed in May 2002 by a coalition of environmental, consumer and labor groups including Public Citizen, the Environmental Law Foundation and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
“Today’s ruling is a victory for the environment and public health. The court has acted decisively to prevent an influx of trucks into the U.S. until we know how they could affect the air we breathe,” said Jonathan Weissglass, a attorney for the petitioners and a partner at Altshuler, Berzon, Nussbaum, Rubin & Demain.
The court decision stated that while the judges agreed with the importance of the United States’ compliance with its treaty obligations with Mexico, “such compliance cannot come at the cost of violating United States law.” The court concluded that the Department of Transportation acted “without regard to well established United States environmental laws.”
The judges noted that a number of studies have demonstrated that diesel exhaust and its components constitute “a major threat to the health of children, contribute to respiratory illnesses such as asthma and bronchitis, and are likely carcinogenic.”
The lawsuit claimed that trucks from Mexico would increase U.S. air pollution because at least 30,000 Mexico based diesel trucks could enter the U.S. in the next year alone, including many older, pre-1994 trucks that are among the worst polluters. A study has suggested that by the year 2010, trucks from Mexico will emit twice as much particulate matter and nitrogen oxides as U.S. trucks.
There is no system in place to systematically inspect the emissions of trucks coming over the border from Mexico. In addition, trucks from Mexico may not be covered by a 1998 settlement between the government and trucking manufacturers that requires U.S. trucks to remove “defeat devices” which enabled them to test clean at inspection sites but run dirty on the open road.
“Trade and environmental protection need not be enemies – but here the Bush Adminsitration simply ran roughshod over U.S. law,” said Al Meyerhoff, a partner with Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach LLP and an attorney for the petitioners. “In doing so, they unnecessarily jeopardized American public health.”
To read the full court opinion, click here.
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Earth Policy News - 12 Trends to Track
The following 12 indicators represent significant measures of our progress, or the lack thereof, in building an eco-economy—one that respects the principles of ecology.
All 12 indicators and accompanying data can be found on the Earth Policy Institute’s website at http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/index.htm
Population
Although a social indicator, population is also a basic environmental indicator. During most of the past 4 million years, our existence as a species was precarious, our numbers small. Now we are so numerous and leave such a large ecological footprint that we threaten the existence of the millions of other species with whom we share the planet. When assessing the adequacy of basic resources such as land and water over time, population size is the universal denominator, always shrinking per capita availability as it expands.
http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator1.htm
Economic Growth
Given the way the world now does business, the size of the economy is the best single measure of the mounting pressure on the earth’s environment. It combines the effects of both population growth and rising individual consumption to give us a sense of how much the pressure is increasing.
http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator2.htm
World Fish Catch
Measures the productivity and health of the oceanic ecosystem that covers 70 percent of the earth?s surface. The extent to which world demand for seafood is outrunning the sustainable yield of fisheries can be seen in shrinking fishery stocks, declining catches, and collapsing fisheries.
http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator3.htm
Forest Cover
One of the best single indicators of changes in land use. Shrinking forest cover shows we are cutting more trees than we are planting. The shrinkage of forested area means not only that the forest?s capacity to supply products is diminished, but also that its capacity to provide services, such as flood control, soil protection, and the purification of water, is also reduced.
http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator4.htm
Carbon Emissions
As the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide changes, so does the earth’s temperature. Thus carbon emissions tell us a lot about ourselves and our current habits and provide clues about the kind of world we will be leaving for future generations. Will we be leaving them a stable climate, or will it be a world of searing heat waves, more destructive storms, melting glaciers, and rising sea level ? a world besieged by millions of rising-sea refugees?
http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator5.htm
Grain Production
The best indicator of the adequacy of the food supply. On average, half of all the calories we consume come directly from grain and a large part of the remainder come from the indirect consumption of grain in the form of meat, milk, eggs, and farmed fish. Grain production is a useful indicator of growing food demand in that increased output reflects population growth and also rising affluence, with its associated rise in consumption of grain-fed livestock products.
http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator6.htm
Water Scarcity
May be the most underrated resource issue the world is facing today. Because water was relatively abundant throughout most of our existence, we came to take it for granted. Now we see that water tables are falling in scores of countries. The data show that these individual countries and indeed the entire world soon will be facing ?water shocks? as aquifers are depleted and the water supply is abruptly reduced.
http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator7.htm
Global Temperature
Just as taking our own body temperature is one of the best measures of our health and well-being, so temperature is also a measure of how well we are taking care of the earth, the only planet known to support life. For the first time in human history, our actions are linked to changes in the global temperature. Who would have thought a generation ago that the thermometer might become the device with which we assessed the human prospect?
http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator8.htm
Ice Melting
One of the most sensitive and one of the most visible effects of rising temperature. There are many other indicators of rising temperatures, such as forests beginning to migrate, tropical diseases moving into higher latitudes, or tree lines moving upward on mountains, but none are quite so visible and perhaps disturbing as the melting of glaciers and ice sheets. Since so much of the world?s water is stored in ice on land, its melting raises sea level, directly influencing the human prospect.
http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator9.htm
Wind Electric Generating Capacity
Advances in wind turbine design have set the stage for wind power to become
the foundation of the new energy economy. Because it is abundant, cheap,
inexhaustible, and clean, wind energy is now growing by leaps and bounds.
Examining the rate at which wind generating capacity is expanding compared
with fossil fuels gives us a sense of how fast the eco-economy is unfolding.
http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator10.htm
Bicycle Production
Annual sales are more than double those of automobiles. Their sales also measure our ability to reduce traffic congestion, lower air pollution, increase mobility, and provide exercise?a counter to the obesity that is now engulfing urban populations everywhere.
http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator11.htm
Solar Cell Production
On the falling cost curve, solar cells are several years behind wind. Solar cell sales in 2001 of nearly 400 megawatts of generating capacity represent by far the largest annual sales to date, but still this is the equivalent of the output of only a single power plant. The promise lies in the future, where ? as it continues to fall ? the cost will cross a critical threshold where production will begin to jump. At least one major manufacturer is planning a doubling of production this year.
http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/indicator12.htm
All 12 indicators have been published in THE EARTH POLICY READER, the
Earth Policy Institute’s new book. Order your copy today!
http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/index.htm
Or call us at 202.496.9290×13
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Polar bear ‘extinct within 100 years’
By Helen Briggs
BBC News Online science reporter
The polar bear could be driven to extinction by global warming within 100 years, warns an ecology expert.
The animal, which relies on sea ice to catch seals, is already starting to suffer the effects of climate changes in areas such as Hudson Bay in Canada.
Scientists say Arctic sea ice is melting at a rate of up to 9% per decade. Arctic summers could be ice-free by mid-century.
Dr Andrew Derocher of the University of Alberta, Edmonton, has used the data to assess the impact on the Arctic’s top predator.
Top carnivore
He believes the polar bear could disappear in the wild by the end of the century unless the pace of global warming slows.
He told BBC News Online: “Polar bears are a species whose whole life history is dependent on having sea ice.
“As the sea ice changes in distribution and pattern we can expect this to have fundamental changes on the ecology of polar bears.
“As the sea ice disappears, so will the polar bears.”
Polar bears are uniquely adapted to survival in the Arctic. They are the world’s largest land predator, feeding mainly on seals.
They use the sea ice as a floating platform to catch prey and they travel across it on their way to their dens.
British polar expert Dr Peter Wadhams of the University of Cambridge says the bear faces a gloomy future unless it is able to change its habits.
“It could be that a polar bear could adapt to a new habitat and adopt habits like the brown bear in Alaska which hunts salmon in streams and other small animals on land,” he said.
Fragile ecology
Scientists believe that Ursus maritimus, the “sea bear”, evolved about 200,000 years ago from brown bear ancestors.
Whether it can ‘change its spots’ and behave more like a brown bear is another matter.
Lynn Rosentrater, climate scientist in the WWF International Arctic Programme, thinks it unlikely.
There have been cases of polar bears scavenging in bins for food in summer, she said, but the animals need seal fat to get through the winter.
“In the absence of sea ice the whole basis of polar bear ecology ceases to exist,” she explained.
Polar bears are currently found in Arctic regions of Alaska, Canada, Russia, Greenland and Norway.
Populations in southern limits such as Hudson Bay are at most risk of dying out.
Bears stand most chance of surviving, in isolated groups, in the western Arctic or the Canadian archipelago.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
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The Forgotten Forest Product: Water
By Mike Dombeck
Guest Editorial, New York Times
STEVENS POINT, Wis. My daughter, Mary, is a Peace Corps volunteer in a village in Mali. Each day she gets a small amount of drinking water, which she must purify, plus two buckets of water for bathing. We are far more fortunate here in the United States, a relatively water-rich nation. Yet even here, water restrictions have become the norm in some parts of the country in the East, where supplies once seemed inexhaustible, and in the arid West, where a number of states, along with Mexico, routinely fight over the trickle from what is now the parched Colorado River.
Given such realities, I am puzzled that water rarely enters the debate as the Bush administration and interest groups argue about roadless areas, logging and forest fire management. For water is perhaps the most important forest product.
Forests generate most of the water in the country, providing two-thirds of all the precipitation runoff the water that comes from the sky in the 48 contiguous states. Some 14 percent of all runoff comes from the roughly 190 million acres of our national forests, which take up only 8 percent of the land. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, more than 60 million people in 3,400 communities in 33 states rely on national forests for their drinking water. Millions more depend on state and private forests to facilitate the refilling of aquifers from which they draw their water.
A century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt recognized the vital connection between forests and water. When Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, the first United States Forest Service chief, set up the national forest system, they talked about managing for the greatest good for the greatest number for the long run. This was in response to the cut-and-run era of timber harvests that left the United States with 80 million acres of denuded forests known as clear-cuts, mostly in the East and upper Midwest. Roosevelt, Pinchot and other federal policymakers were most concerned about preserving the long-term timber supply and the watershed function of the forests.
Yet in modern times, this connection has been lost. When I was in the Clinton administration, I participated in more than 100 Congressional and public hearings and fielded thousands of questions about forest policy. Then, as now, water rarely surfaced as a forest management issue. Yet water from our national forests has an economic value of more than $3.7 billion a year, according to a Forest Service report issued in 2000.
How do forests produce and preserve water? The complex array of trees, shrubs, ground covers and roots slows runoff from rain and snow, and water is purified as it percolates through the soil and into aquifers. By slowing runoff, forests also reduce floods and erosion, minimizing the sediment entering streams and rivers.
Mature forests do this work best. They have the best soil, and their mixed canopy a mosaic of open and closed spots among the treetops allows for snowfall accumulation and eventual runoff. Old trees also use less water for growth than young trees do. And as intact forests better regulate water chemistry and temperatures, they enhance habitats for aquatic species. (In many streams this means better recreational opportunities, such as trout fishing.)
New York City has some of the best water in the world because it maintains healthy forests in its Catskill, Delaware and Croton watershed system. The E.P.A. recently warned that New York would have to spend more than $6 billion on a purification plant if it failed to protect those watersheds.
It comes as no surprise that the Bush administration is proposing new forest-management policies. New administrations always bring new policies. What’s unfortunate, however, is that some of these policies effectively abandon Theodore Roosevelt’s long-term goals. Roosevelt valued open-space preservation and resource conservation. That’s why I support the recent ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which upheld the ban on building roads in roughly 60 million acres of national forest. Maintaining these areas is both prudent and conservative, especially given the explosive rate of urban expansion and the rapid decline of open space.
New national-forest planning regulations should now specify that the remaining old-growth public forests should not be harvested, since these wild lands provide the cleanest water in the country. Rather than wasting energy on the rancorous, tired debates about road building in the wilderness and old-growth forest management, the focus should be on how to let our forests do their job of producing high-quality water. Given our water supply problems, this should be the highest priority of forest management.
Mike Dombeck, a professor of global environmental management at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, was chief of the United States Forest Service from 1997 to 2001.
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Global Warming Kicks Off A Migration
Associated Press
Rising global temperatures that have lured plants into early bloom and birds to nest earlier in the spring are altering the ranges and behavior of hundreds of plant and animal species worldwide, two studies conclude.
From North America’s marmots to Britain’s birds, the findings could spell bad news for species already stressed by habitat loss if predictions of global warming over the next century pan out, the authors said in the studies, which appear in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature.
Other scientists said the studies, which are based largely on research done previously in Europe and North America, could foretell the extinction of many species in the coming decades as rising temperatures force them to retreat from their historic ranges or face new competitors.
Alastair H. Fitter, a professor of biology at the University of York who has documented the trend toward earlier-blooming flowers in Britain, said the studies’ conclusions that the ranges of hundreds of species are shifting northward in response to warming temperatures are disconcerting.
He said the two papers show that plants and animals are already being affected by global warming, although Earth’s average temperature climbed only about 1 degree Fahrenheit in the past century.
“These papers are the conclusive evidence that the natural world is already responding in a big way to climate change, even though that change has only just got going and there is a lot more to come,” Fitter said.
A United Nations panel has predicted that average global temperatures could rise as much as 10.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century as heat-trapping gases from human industry accumulate in the atmosphere.
Fitter said if that occurs it may drive some plant and animals species to extinction as their ranges shrink or they are forced to compete with other species moving into their territory.
Working independently, two research teams reviewed hundreds of published papers that tracked changes in the range and behavior of plant and animal species believed caused by human-driven global warming.
Both teams concluded that they had found the “fingerprint” of global warming on hundreds of species, from insects to birds and mammals, even after taking into account other possible causes such as habitat loss.
Other scientists said the two studies, in pulling together hundreds of published scientific papers for two comprehensive analyses, add another piece of evidence along with retreating glaciers, warming oceans and shrinking snow cover that global warming is impacting the Earth.
Mike Novacek, provost of science of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said much of the data in the two papers was based on studies of wildlife found in North America and the United Kingdom.
New research of plants and animals representing a wider range of Earth’s life would conclusively pin down the evidence, said Novacek, who was not involved in the research.
Camille Parmesan, a biologist at the University of Texas at Austin, worked with a colleague to review studies that tracked about 1,700 species, often over several decades. While about half of the species showed no changes in behavior or range shifts, the changes seen in the other half clearly pointed to global warming as the culprit, she said.
“The climate scientists have really shown that global warming is happening. What we’ve found is that it’s not only happening but it’s having a big impact,” she said.
In an analysis of 172 species of plants, birds, butterflies and amphibians, Parmesan found that spring events such as egg-laying or flower-blooming advanced 2.3 days on average each decade.
Her analysis of studies of 99 species of birds, butterflies and alpine herbs in North America and Europe found these species’ ranges have shifted northward an average of about 3.8 miles per decade.
Most striking, she said, was the case of the sooty copper, a butterfly common near Barcelona until recent decades. These days, however, residents of the Spanish city must travel about 60 miles north to find this butterfly.
Meanwhile, the sooty copper’s northern range, which once ended in Austria, has shifted into Estonia during the past five years, Parmesan said. The insect had previously never been seen in that Baltic nation.
A second study by Stanford University researchers reviewed scientific studies that involved more than 1,400 plant and animal species.
Terry L. Root, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Institute for International Studies, and five colleagues determined that about 80 percent of those species have undergone range or behavioral changes likely caused by global warming.
They found, for example, that the earlier arrival of spring weather had shifted events such as egg-laying, the end of hibernation and flower blooming ahead about 5 days per decade for temperate-zone species.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
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