CABI Blogs: hand picked... and carefully sorted

Mystery disease in Ethiopia solved: linked to weed toxin

Imagine this…

A mysterious disease terrorising your community, not infectious but spreading nonetheless, and killing your relatives and neighbours. All you want to do is pack your bags and flee. Worse, when your plight comes to the attention of the health authorities, they are stumped and its not going to be easy or quick to solve.

A recent example of this kind of illness is “nodding disease” (South Sudan, Uganda, and Tanzania), which affects children 5-15 years old: they suffer epileptic seizures which causes their heads to nod, and they end up severely disabled and finally die. The USA’s Centre for Disease Control (CDC) is working to identify the cause: so far, the best guess is that it’s linked to the parasite that causes river blindness combined with an autoimmune reaction, and exposure to chemicals could predispose.

Other examples of non-communicable disease outbreaks

On Global Health, I found there are outbreaks going back to 1911 (epidemic dropsy) but more recent ones were in India,  Bangladesh, Nigeria, Brazil, China, Afghanistan and even the USA.

 What are the likely causes for these outbreaks? The body of research, as found on databases like Global Health, tells us that they could be contamination of food and water supply, exposure to chemicals or heavy metals in the environment, or even use of traditional medicine.

 Mystery liver disease in Ethiopia with a ‘happy’ ending

Can public health authorities in low-income countries solve & stop such outbreaks?   Yes. In 2005, in Ethiopia, a 4 year long outbreak of liver disease in Tseda Emba, a small village of the Tahtay Koraro district of Tigray, finally reached the attention of the Tigray Health Bureau (THB). Now, in 2012, the multidisciplinary and one-health approach they initiated has “solved” the mysterious illness, significantly reducing new cases. 

 The research work was the subject of an entire session at the recent World Congress Public Health (WCPH-2012) in Ethiopia, and is now published as 5 papers in the supplement to April 2012’s edition of Ethiopian Medical Journal (EMJ). [Abstracts to these papers will be available on Global Health]. It demonstrates the relevance of the one-health approach to public health in low-income countries and is a fascinating detective story….

“Precipitationsheds” – a new concept for water science!

It is well known that precipitation derives in part from evaporation from oceans and in part from recycled moisture from terrestrial surfaces. In fact, a new model from the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF) demonstrates that up to 50% of rainfall in many areas is actually the recycling of water on land. Although external forcing and climatic parameters, such as solar radiation, aerosols and greenhouse gases affect sea surface temperature and, thus, determine oceans evaporation; terrestrial evaporation on the other hand is strongly influenced by vegetation and only in part by climate.

Towards an ecology of belief: The limits of science for preserving public parks

 The following guest article was written by Will La Page, author of the new book "Rethinking Park Protection: Treading the Uncommon Ground of Environmental Beliefs", which has just been published by CABI. It describes the inspiration for the book and for the thinking behind it.

A small group of park scientists friends were sitting around the dining table at our home in Fort Collins, Colorado, in the mid-1990's digesting dinner along with a comment my wife, Susan Cockrell a long-time wildlife activist, had made about the growing public outcry over the state's wildlife management policies. One of the scientists, obviously experiencing some discomfort with the meal or the topic or perhaps both, in an outburst of emotion revealed his frustration with the public's resources being managed by the subjective passions of poorly-informed citizens and their biased beliefs. No amount of cajoling this purely objective scientist could get him to reconsider; not the fact that the public owns the resources, and has a right to be involved in policy-making; not the fact that other biased belief systems have wildlife managers firmly in their grasp; nor even the fact that science is, itself, a human belief system, approaching if not exceeding that of the most dogmatic religion.

Mobilize the Earth - Earth Day 22 April 2012

Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP

Since the first Earth Day in 1970, the Earth Day Network (EDN) has worked with over 22,000 partners in 192 countries to broaden, diversify and mobilize the environmental movement. More than 1 billion people now participate in Earth Day activities each year, making it the largest civic observance in the world. Earth Day 2012 is on Sunday 22^nd April 2012 and the 42^nd anniversary of Earth Day is on the theme ‘Mobilize the Earth’. Read on to see how you can help the campaign!

Forests on the move

Studies on ‘natural’ and ‘forced’ migration of forests threatened by climate change.

A multi-European project trying to anticipate the effects of climate change on forests is taking shape. In parts of Europe, established forest trees are showing signs of vulnerability – such as drought stress - as their ‘climate niche’ changes. An ambitious long-term project hopes to work out which species will provide the best natural environments and commercial forestry prospects for the future.

Thousands of trees are being planted at 37 locations on the west Atlantic, covering a length of 1600 miles from the Azores to Scotland. Forest Research (part of the Forestry Commission), the UK partner in the ‘Reinforce’ project, is planting 30 species at various sites in England, Scotland and Wales. The species include familiar trees like English oak, Scots pine, silver birch and sweet chestnut as well as less usual species such as Atlas cedar and Macedonian, maritime and Monterey pines from the Mediterranean, Eastern Europe and California.

As to the time-scale of the project, growth data and responses to climatic variables like temperature and soil water will be collected and analysed regularly, but it could be 50 years before any meaningful data can be gathered for mature trees. With climate change now evident, there’s no time for delay…

Watch a video of the research on the BBC website.

The trial coincides with the findings of a 4-year survey of 15 coniferous species in 34 different ecoregions in western Canada and the USA^(1,2). Remote sensing of large areas showed that a huge natural migration of trees has already started across much of the west due to global warming, insect attack, diseases and fire, and many tree species are projected to decline or die out in regions where they have been present for centuries, while others move in and replace them. Forests are reshaping in a visible display of ‘survival of the fittest’.

Existing species are losing their competitive edge and opportunistic species are taking over. More than half of the evergreen species were found to be experiencing a significant decrease in their competitiveness in 6 ecoregions. The study projected that in some cases, once-common species such as lodgepole pine will be replaced by other trees, with perhaps a range expansion of ponderosa pine or Douglas-fir. Other areas may shift completely out of forest into grass savannah or sagebrush desert. In central California, more than half of the species now present would not be expected to persist in the climate conditions of the future (approx. 2-4°C warmer by 2080, drier summers, and wetter spring and autumn seasons).

Some of these changes are already happening quite fast and over huge areas – at a rate fast enough to detect at the landscape level – remarkable for forests.

References

1. Waring, R. H.; Coops, N. C.; Running, S. W. Predicting satellite-derived patterns of large-scale disturbances in forests of the Pacific Northwest Region in response to recent climatic variation. Remote Sensing of Environment (2011) Vol. 115 No. 12 pp. 3554-3566.

2. Coops, N. C.; Waring, R. H. Estimating the vulnerability of fifteen tree species under changing climate in Northwest North America. Ecological Modelling (2011) Vol. 222 No. 13 pp. 2119-2129 [10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2011.03.033]

See also:
Oregon State University news

Planet under Pressure

A major international conference ‘Planet under Pressure (PUP)’ is being held in London, United Kingdom, this week, 26–29 March 2012. The meeting is being attended by scientists, industry leaders and decision makers. It will show whether science can, not only diagnose our environmental crisis, but also provide effective solutions, says David Dickson, SciDev’s editor, the official organisation providing coverage of the event. CABI is also marking its presence at Planet under Pressure. Will PUP produce real solutions for Earth's acute environmental problems?

World Water Day - 22 March 2012

Water is essential for life and an important resource to virtually all economic activities, including food production, energy and industrial outputs. Clean water is an indispensable natural resource for a healthy life for humans and for freshwater ecosystems and, therefore, demands careful management. Water has been in the forefront this month with the 6th World Water Forum, which took place in Marseille, France, last week, on the theme ‘Time for Solutions.’ Since today is World Water Day, 'Handpicked and Carefully Sorted' is focusing on water, with some important facts and figures and highlighting reports published this month, from the European Environment Agency (EEA) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

This week is climate week – 12-18 March 2012

The Met Office 2012 global temperature forecast predicts that this year will be around 0.48 °C warmer than the long-term (1961-1990) global average of 14 °C, with a predicted range of between 0.34 °C and 0.62 °C. The middle of this range would put 2012 within the top ten warmest years in a series which goes back to 1850. It seems hard to believe, but there are still people who do not believe in global warming and the imminent climate change; and there are also those who believe but do not know how to get involved in the effort to reduce greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions to slow down global warming. Climate Week is a supercharged national campaign to inspire a new wave of action on climate change. The first Climate Week, in March 2011, resulted in 3000 events, which were attended by half a million people, making it probably Britain’s biggest ever environmental occasion.

Pre-historic forest discovered buried under coal mine in China - Pompeii of the Permian period!

A reconstruction of the 300-million-year-old forest near Wuda, China. Image courtesy of Penn News

The swamp forest was preserved by volcanic ash around 300 million years ago, near Wuda, Mongolia, and was discovered by scientists from China and the USA, who called it the “Pompeii of the Permian period” because like Pompeii the forest was perfectly preserved by the volcanic ash, making it possible to see where each tree was.

Theft! A new threat to glaciers

Argentina passed a law back in September 2010 aiming at preserving their glaciers on the grounds that they are important as: "strategic hydrological resource for human consumption; for agricultural use; to recharge hydrographic basins; to protect biodiversity; a scientific information source; and a touristic attraction.” The law imposed a requirement for a prior evaluation of any planned allowed activities. This is quite an important law, when considering the latest threat to glaciers – theft! A news article from the UN News Centre reported recently that criminal gangs might have become a more immediate threat to glaciers than climate change.