Today I Learned These Fish Make Great Earrings

TIL: Lionfish Jewelry Can Help Save the Ocean

You don’t often hear about conservationists actively trying to kill off a species, but when it comes to the invasive lionfish, the more we can cull, the better. I knew they were being harvested for food, but this video taught me their fins and spines can also be used for jewelry.

I was amazed at this eye-popping fact: One lionfish and her offspring can produce 8.1 QUINTILLION eggs in three months (0:25). That’s unbelievable. Using animal products makes me feel guilty sometimes, so I was surprised to learn it isn’t always bad.

—Jared Gair, associate producer

Milking Salmon Sperm to Save the Species? | wild_life

Saving salmon is the kind of conservation mission that sounds straightforward, but it’s anything but. Scientists first have to catch adult salmon, a feat in itself. Then they have to go through the unforgettably strange task of harvesting their sperm and eggs (2:20) for the good of the species.

Wildlife cameraman Bertie Gregory chronicles the efforts of scientists working to restore the salmon population on Vancouver Island. Some 95 percent of the salmon at the hatchery will survive to be released into the wild.

—Will Halicks, producer

What’s in Air Freshener? | Ingredients

Rotten food, burnt remnants of a failed baking experiment, and a full trash can are all examples of pungent odors that can ruin a pleasant atmosphere. In these smelly situations, we often turn to commercial air fresheners. But this episode of Ingredients poses a challenge: Is it possible to make an all-natural air freshener from scratch?

I don’t want to spoil it, but host and trained chemist George Zaidan explains why making a homemade air freshener is a nearly impossible task—even for him!

—Milaena Hamilton, associate producer

Bird-Watching While Black: A Wildlife Ecologist Shares His Tips

In this short, J. Drew Lanham, professor of wildlife ecology at Clemson University, lays out his “rules” for black bird-watchers, using satire to point out the lack of diversity in birding, his hobby and chosen profession. Humor is a powerful tool for critiquing society, and this film does an excellent job of asking, How can we get more people to care about the environment and embrace their passion to protect it? Including more voices in the conversation is a good way to start.

—Rachel Link, producer

Stunning Close-ups: Meet These Frogs Before They Go Extinct

When it comes to conservation, we tend not to pay as much attention to the little creatures. But amphibians around the globe are being decimated by invasive chytrid fungus. This video zooms in—literally—on the adorable tree frogs of Cusuco National Park in Honduras. (See the amazing time-lapse at 2:15 showing a tadpole metamorphosing into a frog, a stage during which the frogs most often succumb to the pathogen.) A new conservation center offers hope for the species that make this park their home.

—Jed Winer, associate producer

Behind the Scenes of Killing Reagan| Costume Design

What I love most about Killing Reagan is the way it captures the era so vividly, you canalmost smell the perfume and cigarette smoke. I recommend this video for its mashup of 1981-era Nancy Reagan looks alone. But if you’re like me, the interview with costume designer Kimberly Adams (whose CV includes There Will Be Blood and Stranger Things) will give you a new appreciation for the amount of historical research and artifact huntingthat goes into every button, every ruffle, and every lapel in a production like this.

—Alison Walsh, digital media director

Tune in tonight for an encore presentation of Killing Reagan on the National Geographic Channel. (Check local listings outside the U.S.)

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Researchers find higher than expected carbon emissions from inland waterways

01/03/2017 Nativegrl77

Solar-powered device takes measurements over Mississippi’s Ross Barnett Reservoir.

Credit: Washington State University

Work has implications for global carbon budget

Washington State University researchers have found that greenhouse-gas emissions from lakes and inland waterways may be as much as 45 percent greater than previously thought.

Their study, published in Environmental Research Letters, has implications for the global carbon budget and suggests that terrestrial ecosystems may not be as good a carbon reservoir as scientists thought.

Similar to the way people use a budget to manage finances, researchers are working to understand where carbon is being spent and saved on a global scale to better manage resources. The scientists know that humans are emitting about 33 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year into the atmosphere globally and that the emissions are changing the climate. About half of the emissions stay in the atmosphere, but researchers are unable to quantify with certainty how much carbon is taken up by land and oceans.

“People can’t figure out how to close the budget with great confidence,” said Heping Liu, associate professor in the WSU Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “That’s the big mystery.”

A significant part of the carbon dioxide initially sequestered by terrestrial ecosystems moves into inland waters and is then released to the atmosphere. Scientists previously have made only occasional measurements of emissions from waterways — most often during calm, daytime conditions — and have used these measurements to make broad estimates for waterways’ contribution to regional or global emissions. They missed nighttime emissions and periods between field samplings.

In the study, the WSU team took a yearlong series of continuous measurements of carbon dioxide emissions, gathering data from atmospheric instruments on a platform over the water in Mississippi’s Ross Barnett Reservoir. The researchers used a sophisticated system that measures atmospheric eddies, called an eddy covariance system. It was powered by solar panels and batteries.

The WSU team found that nighttime carbon emissions were as much as 70 percent higher than during the day and that storms also created emissions spikes.

“That’s pretty huge,” said Liu. “Based on this study, the emissions from inland waterways are much larger than previously thought.”

The researchers surmise that during the day, when air temperatures are warm, water layers in the reservoir are stratified and carbon dioxide from microbes in the lake bottom cannot escape. Colder nighttime temperatures allow for mixing of the water and for higher emission rates. Wind from storms also creates mixing and an opportunity for carbon dioxide to escape.

Liu and his colleagues believe that the Mississippi reservoir is not unusual and that the higher emission rates apply to waterways around the world. Other researchers have seen similar higher nighttime emissions, but had not connected the measurements to a higher overall emissions rate in the global carbon budget.