Southern Fried Science

Light bulbs on the Colbert Report

March 10, 2011March 11, 2011 David Shiffman 2 Comments

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Last year, we wrote about the bizarre “save the light bulb” movement. The issue hasn’t gone away. Far Right politicians continue to actively resist energy efficiency. This Wednesday’s episode of the Colbert Report covered the light bulb “controversy”.

Building Policies for Stewardship

March 10, 2011February 22, 2011 Bluegrass Blue Crab

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Utopia — A dream? tomschlueter.blogspot.com

We as humans and especially here at SFS like to picture an ideal government and hope that as we learn more about science and political theory, government can take steps in that direction. By any measure, governance within the United States is far from meeting the theoretical ideal. Implementation and enforcement are often pointed at as more important factors than policy design in terms of effectiveness in meeting policy goals. But if we ever had the chance to change the design, here’s four principles that will help make sure we move in the right direction.

Addressing Scale: Appropriate information gathering

If scale is unified at the ecosystem level – bounded by hydrological and geophysical boundaries – then information about the system must also represent the ecosystem scale. Fisheries management, for example, requires information on all the potential factors that could affect stock size – habitat, water quality, fishing pressure, competition with other native and nonnative species, productivity of the food web, etc. Furthermore, the total fishery stock in an area would have to be considered together – total biomass of market species, for example. These types of measurements will delineate threats to conservation to a particular species versus threats to the health of the whole system.

Help protect sharks in the Bahamas

March 9, 2011March 8, 2011 David Shiffman

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Last week, I summarized shark conservation laws and policies from around the world. In the wake of recent successes, several shark conservation NGOs are hoping to get similar laws passed in the Bahamas. Guy Harvey is heavily involved in this project, and explained why protecting sharks in the Bahamas is so important:

“These magnificent animals have been admired for years by divers visiting The Bahamas and revered by people around the world as one of the great wonders of the ocean.”

Read More “Help protect sharks in the Bahamas” »

Biodiversity Wednesday: The Skeleton Coast

March 9, 2011November 7, 2011 Andrew Thaler

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Skeleton-Coast — Image from http://www.safari-namibia.co.uk/

A 900-mile coastline runs perpendicular to the border of Angola and Namibia. The cold water carried up from the antarctic by the Benguela Current meets the warm, dry air of the Namib Desert and the resulting depression forms a cold, dense fog that extends out into the sea. The currents and wind combine to produce a force pushing inexorably towards shore. These conditions led mariners to christen this seemingly desolate and inhospitable stretch of sand the Skeleton Coast.

State of the Field: Playing with Policy

March 8, 2011February 22, 2011 Bluegrass Blue Crab

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owls — Successful owl populations in CA are credited to adaptive management, from ceplacer.ucdavis.edu

Following our discussion of scale, management boundaries must match ecological processes which are now recognized to be dynamic and complex. This means that management must manage not for a known equilibrium, but a dialectic system full of uncertainty (Berkes 2008). Instead of attempting to predict from the instigation of a policy what the effects may be, governance should be structured to constantly evaluate the system and incorporate feedbacks. This process, known as adaptive management (also check out statements on the subject from the Resilience Alliance and US Department of Interior), provides for the co-evolution of the system and its governance to ensure that they remain an effective match.

Under adaptive management, episodes of disturbance are learning opportunities, not a signal of policy failure. Berkes (2008) describes this phenomenon: “’conservation’ is not a state of being. It is a response to a people’s perceptions about the state of their environment and its resources, and a willingness to modify their behaviors to adjust to new realities”. He goes on to say that disturbances are not only opportunities for learning, but that they are necessary for that learning to occur. Gunderson and Carpenter (2006) add that disturbance is necessary for transformational learning – the type of learning that allows for the emergence of novelty. Therefore, disturbances should be allowed to occur in order to foster community and governmental innovation.

Science and the Arab Awakening

March 4, 2011March 5, 2011 David Shiffman

Science

In the last few months, the Middle East and North Africa have seen some of the most dramatic political changes since the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who had ruled with an iron fist for more than 20 years, was overthrown. Shortly after, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who had also been a brutal dictator for decades, stepped down in the wake of massive public protests. As of this writing, similar protests are taking place in Yemen, Oman, Morocco, Iran, Djibouti, Jordan and Libya (where government retaliation to the protests has been particularly brutal). If you’re a CNN junkie like I am, you’ve read all about how these revolutions will affect human rights, international relations, oil prices, and the influence of terrorism in the region. There has been relatively little mainstream media focus on how science will be affected, however.

Weekly dose of TED: Reviving New York’s rivers with oysters!

March 4, 2011 Andrew Thaler 3 Comments

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Kate Orff, is not a biologist, she’s an architect. I love the idea of using natural systems to design human systems. The idea that construction should work with the landscape is not new, all you have to do is visit Falling Water to see that, but it’s an idea that hasn’t taken off like it … Read More “Weekly dose of TED: Reviving New York’s rivers with oysters!” »

SFS Gear Review: Keen Hybrid Life

March 3, 2011March 3, 2011 Bluegrass Blue Crab 2 Comments

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Everyone’s seen the Keen sandals – the ones that characterize the feet of kayakers all over and arguably create their own style. Keen, however, also offers shoes more in line with their motto of “hybrid life” – that is, they are supposed to be good for a life on-the-go for someone who only wants to carry one pair of shoes.

I received such a pair as a birthday gift from my mother – the source of most shoes in my life. She bought them because they were “cute” and because they came in green, a color that pervades my wardrobe. So they’ve passed the mom test on style. How’d they do on function?

Biodiversity Wednesday: Three Gorges

March 2, 2011March 3, 2011 David Shiffman 3 Comments

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The Three Gorges region of Central China has one of the most striking landscapes on Earth. Steep cliffs covered in lush greenery rise right from the shores of the Yangtze (Yellow) river. Despite the harshness of the terrain, millions of people and numerous species of unique plants and animals call this region home.

Gorge1 — One of the three Gorges. Photo Credit: David Shiffman, 2007

The Yangtze is the third largest river in the world (after the Nile and the Amazon). The river and it’s shores are home to iconic Chinese species such as the Dawn Redwood tree, the tiger, the pangolin, the Chinese sturgeon and the Chinese river dolphin. All told, 570 species of vertebrates and almost 2,100 species of plants live in this region according to UNESCO. The area also has thousands of archaeological sites, including rare evidence of the Ba and Damaio peoples. This entire ecosystem is in big trouble because of one of the largest engineering projects of all time- the Three Gorges Dam.

State of the Field: Shark Conservation Policies

March 1, 2011March 1, 2011 David Shiffman 6 Comments

Conservation, Science

Shark populations around the world are crashing. Researchers have reported that many populations have decreased by 90% or more since the 1970’s. The leading causes for these precipitous declines are bycatch, which kills tens of millions of sharks each year, and the shark fin fishery, which kills as many as 73 million sharks each year. In this edition of State of the Field, I will explain what different countries are doing about this problem.

In many parts of the world, it is still legal to cut the fins off of a still-living shark and dump the rest of the animal overboard where it will bleed to death or drown. Other nations have a variety of management policies.