Southern Fried Science

Biodiversity Wednesday: Great Smoky Salamanders

February 2, 2011February 1, 2011 Bluegrass Blue Crab 2 Comments

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The Great Smoky Mountains are one of those places of wonder right in our own backyard. Not only have the coal and timber communities cultivated the banjo, bluegrass, and moonshine, but they are one of the most unique habitats in the world due to their forest canopy chemistry. As one of the oldest mountains chains on earth, their caps are often rounded and covered in trees, providing sheltered habitat at a variety of altitudes for critters great and small. In fact, it’s the small ones that actually deserve the most notoriety – the mountain chain boasts the highest diversity of amphibians in the world and herpetologists travel long distances to find the many salamanders hiding under the Smokies’ logs and leaf litter. This kind of refuge is increasingly important in the struggle to keep amphibians alive.

State of the Field: Policy is not just for policymakers anymore

February 1, 2011 Bluegrass Blue Crab 1 Comment

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Schwarzenegger_at_Town_Hall — Even the Governator believes in public participation, thanks cdcr.ca.gov

Continuing this series’ recent theme of ways to make policy work, let’s consider a broader view of what policy is and therefore who gets to create policy. It’s not just the elected officials with legislation in their job description. For one, those people are accountable to the people who elected them. Second, formal written policy is not the only kind that is effective – informal rules, community traditions, and other forms of policy are often best. Plus, these types of policy offer the general public a change to be involved in creation and implementation.

There is a large literature on the value of participation in policymaking, especially in fisheries (Silver and Campbell 2005). Here I will focus on three particularly important aspects of participation to management at the scale of an estuary, where I work: a) additional knowledge creation, b) community buy-in, and c) tighter feedback loops. These are important for relatively large-scale systems with several communities and many variables that could affect management.

Ethical Debate: Clean Energy and the State of the Union

February 1, 2011January 30, 2011 David Shiffman 7 Comments

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I’ve been critical of President Obama’s policies concerning science, technology and education in the past. I think he uses a lot of great-sounding rhetoric, but I have yet to see very much in the way of actual results. Despite lofty promises about climate change, we remain without a cap-and-trade system or any sort of meaningful response plan. To make things worse, the administration recently fired their primary adviser for climate change policy. Is all hope lost? Perhaps not.

Shark Science Monday: Aurelie Godin discusses shark management in Canada

January 31, 2011January 30, 2011 David Shiffman 2 Comments

Conservation

In this week’s edition of Shark Science Monday, Aurelie Godin discusses Canada’s shark management policies. If you have a question for Aurelie, please leave it as a comment below and I’ll make sure that she gets it.

Great Diagrams of Science: It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… a really bad drawing of a bird.

January 28, 2011January 28, 2011 David Shiffman 2 Comments

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The latest edition of my Great Diagrams of Science series comes from a field near and dear to my heart- using stable isotope analysis to map a food web. Japanese scientists Wada, Mizutani, and Minagawa got the opportunity to study the feeding ecology of penguins in Antarctica, and were some of the first researchers to use stable isotopes for food web analysis. To travel so far and use what was at the time (1991) state-of-the-art technology, they must have received an impressively large grant. Their results played a part in revolutionizing how scientists study food web interactions, so the grant money was well spent in that regard.

However, it seems that none of it was spent on graphic design:

One more week to take the Reader Survey!

January 28, 2011 Andrew Thaler

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Thank you to everyone who has responded to our survey. There’s still a chance to win some free books or great big piles of swag! To sweeten the deal, we’re going to add one more prize to the list. One lucky winner, randomly drawn from or pile of surveys, will win an autographed copy of … Read More “One more week to take the Reader Survey!” »

Weekly Dose of TED – Ed Burtynsky photographs the landscape of oil

January 28, 2011January 17, 2011 Bluegrass Blue Crab

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Ed Burtynsky, perhaps most famous for his movie Manufactured Landscapes, takes a moment to show what he sees as “symbols of how we use the land”. Do you agree that oil is the dominant landscape feature nowadays? Is the use of photography and other art media helpful in gaining new perspective for exactly how humans … Read More “Weekly Dose of TED – Ed Burtynsky photographs the landscape of oil” »

Send testimony to help protect Guam’s sharks!

January 26, 2011January 26, 2011 David Shiffman 14 Comments

Conservation, Science

The sharks of Guam need your help! Bill number 44-31, which would make selling or possessing shark fins illegal in Guam, was just introduced by members of the Senate. The Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing on the bill next Tuesday night Guam time, which is Monday night our time.

This bill is expected to face strong opposition from the fishing industry, which has a powerful voice. However, you can help! You send a letter in support of this policy to Shark Defenders, and they will make sure that it gets into the right hands. Many of the letters will be read out loud as testimony, and receiving a large number of letters in support of the law will be a big help!

Please send these letters to Info AT SharkDefenders DOT com by Monday afternoon U.S. East Coast time (sooner would be better).

Biodiversity Wednesday: The Sea of Cortes

January 26, 2011January 25, 2011 Andrew Thaler 2 Comments

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The Sea of Cortes (commonly referred to as the Gulf of California) lies between the Baja Peninsula and mainland Mexico. Glorified in Steinbeck’s narrative The Log from the Sea of Cortes, detailing his adventures with Ed Ricketts during a six-week collecting trip, the region is rich in both history and biodiversity. The sea is formed by the separation of the Pacific and North American tectonic plates. The East Pacific Rise runs through the Sea of Cortes and continues north to become the San Andreas Fault. The Colorado River empties into the sea at the Colorado River Delta.

Shark Science Monday: Christopher Neff discusses shark management policy in the US, Australia, and South Africa

January 25, 2011January 25, 2011 David Shiffman

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In this week’s edition of Shark Science Monday, Christopher Neff discusses how shark attacks play a role in shark management policy in three countries- the United States, Australia, and South Africa. If you have a question for Christopher, please leave it in the comments and I’ll make sure it gets to him.