People in the News

Lead Scientist Travels to Japan; Explores Parallels to Delta

Delta Lead Scientist Cliff Dahm traveled to Japan recently to give a keynote address entitled, "Perspectives on Restoring the California Delta" to the Ecology and Civil Engineering Society of Japan. Dahm was invited by the Society to be this year's international keynote speaker at its annual meeting in Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido, Japan, where the theme of this year's conference was 'From the Forest to the Sea.' "We look from the Sierra to the Bay; they look from the volcanic mountains to the Sea of Okhotsk," said Dahm.

http://www.deltacouncil.ca.gov/delta_science_program/publications/sci_news_1210_japan.html

VIMS and Longwood Commit to Restoration Partnership

The Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) and Longwood University's Hull Springs Farm have announced a strategic partnership designed to restore, enhance, and preserve 213 acres of wetlands, stream buffers, and streams on a portion of Hull Springs Farm.

http://www.vims.edu/newsandevents/topstories/longwood_vims_hsf.php

Investing in Nature, for People's Sake

Ecosystem services is still jostling to find its place in the crowded landscape of conceptual frameworks that seek to define sustainable development. Many, particularly international policymakers, conflate ecosystem services with payments or markets for ecosystem services. While payments and markets have their place, the real power of ecosystem services lies in its ability to provide an overarching framework for both ecosystems and economic development. In systematically making these links, an ecosystem services framing can inform decisions that are more likely to be sustainable for people and nature.

http://www.wri.org/stories/2010/12/investing-nature-peoples-sake

Glimpsing Sustainable Economics

In our existing economic thinking, productivity is assumed to be the basis of value and the Earth's ecosystems are considered externalities. In reality, productivity can only be realized if the ecosystems from which the products are extracted are functional. Valuing productivity but not valuing function creates perverse incentives to degrade the environment, by providing immediate financial reward for extracting from nature but not calculating the real costs. To continue to grow the economy we need to endlessly produce and consume more than the planet can bear and this will ultimately destroy our ecosystems.

http://www.africasciencenews.org/asns/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2620&Itemid=2

Rewarding Eco-friendly Farmers Can Help Combat Climate Change

The researchers conclude that setting up a trading market, where farmers earn financial incentives for investing in eco-friendly techniques, would result in a double environmental benefit - reducing fertilizer run-off destined for the Chesapeake Bay, while at the same time capturing carbon dioxide headed for the atmosphere.

http://stockmarketsreview.com/pressrelease/2010/12/05/rewarding-eco-friendly-farmers-can-help-combat-climate-change/

Aussie University Completes World's First Climate Change Reef Experiment Facility

In a world first, a new 'state of the art' climate change experimental facility has been completed at the University of Queensland's Heron Island Research Station. The Climate Change Mesocosm (CCM) project led by Associate Professor Sophie Dove and Dr. David Kline from the Global Change Institute's Coral Reef Ecosystems Laboratory is one of the largest and most accurately controlled ocean acidification and warming experimental systems in the world and simulates ocean temperatures and acidification levels predicted to occur on coral reefs in the next 50 to 100 years.

http://www.underwatertimes.com/news.php?article_id=13057924610

Florida Everglades Cleanup: A River of Morass

The Everglades, greens like to say, is a test: If we pass, we may get to keep the planet. And the Everglades project is a model for ecosystem restorations around the country (the Chesapeake Bay, the Great Lakes, Louisiana's coastal wetlands) and around the world (the Pantanal, the Okavango Delta, the Garden of Eden marshes that Saddam Hussein destroyed in Iraq). It's a test of our science, our engineering and our political will; indeed, it's a test of man's ability to manage water and live in harmony with nature.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2036580,00.html

Minnesota: The Last Piece of the Belwin Restoration Puzzle is in Place

The last piece of the Belwin restoration puzzle has been placed. For the past several years, Belwin has been hard at work restoring 150 acres north of Lake Edith to its former natural environment -oak savanna. Oak savannas, which once graced the hillsides of thousands of acres in Minnesota and Wisconsin, are now one of the most endangered ecosystems in the world, Hobbs said.

http://www.woodburybulletin.com/event/article/id/36825/group/homepage/

Maryland: Bay Conservation Corps Aims to Protect Environment, Create Jobs

The fight to clean up the Chesapeake Bay just got a new army. Sixteen fresh-faced young men and women clad in white polo shirts took the stage in Annapolis last month as the inaugural class of the Chesapeake Conservation Corps. The program, which is funded by the state of Maryland, the Chesapeake Bay Trust and the U.S. Department of Labor, provides a year of funding for each class member to help in a restoration project in the state. The project's backers hope the young people, many of whom are college graduates, will decide to embark on careers in restoration and environmental work.

http://www.bayjournal.com/article.cfm?article=3982

Louisiana: At Least Two Barrier Islands to Be Rebuilt with $100 Million in BP Money

Louisiana coastal restoration officials plan to use $100 million given to the state by BP to rebuild at least two barrier islands west of the mouth of the Mississippi River, in conjunction with money available from several federal coastal restoration programs.

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/12/at_least_two_barrier_islands_t.html