Coral and Global Warming: Diversity in Some Coral Populations May Affect Their Survival

Posted on May 9, 2010 by Rashid Faridi

An international team of marine biologists has found that existing diversity in some coral populations may significantly influence their response to extreme temperature disturbances — such as those predicted from climate warming. The team demonstrated that natural selection acting on the species of algae living within corals may determine which partnerships will survive when confronted with extreme temperatures changes.Corals form symbiotic relationships with photosynthetic algae in order to survive. The algae provide the corals with nutrients and energy, while the corals provide the algae with nutrients and a place to live. According to the scientists, this delicate symbiosis is sensitive to changes in the environment, and especially to changes in temperature.

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Posted in BIODIVERSITY, climate change, News, oceans | Leave a comment

Climate Change and Mountain Building affects Mammal Diversity Patterns

Posted on May 9, 2010 by Rashid Faridi

If you travel from the tropics to the poles,  you’ll notice that the diversity of mammals declines with distance from the equator. Move from lowland to mountains, and you’ll see diversity increase as the landscape becomes more varied. Ecologists have proposed various explanations for these well-known “biodiversity gradients,” invoking ecological, evolutionary and historical processes.

New findings by University of Michigan researchers John A. Finarelli and Catherine Badgley suggest that the elevational patterns of diversity we see today have appeared, disappeared and reappeared over Earth’s history and that these patterns arise from interactions between climate change and mountain building.
The results, published online in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, also have implications for conservation efforts in the face of modern-day global warming, said Finarelli, a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Geological Sciences.
In their study, focused on the Miocene Epoch, which began around 23 million years ago and ended about 5 million years ago, Finarelli and Badgley evaluated diversity for more than 400 rodent species from adjacent regions that differed in geologic history and topography. The geologically “active region,” which extends from the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific coast, has experienced several episodes of mountain-building and volcanic activity, and as a result has a topographically complex landscape. In contrast, the relatively flat Great Plains, has been more stable geologically.
The prevailing notion has been that diversity is greater in mountainous regions than in lowlands simply because the topography is more complex. As mountains rise up, new habitats are created, and areas that once were continuous become fragmented. Such changes offer opportunities for new species to arise, increasing diversity.
But climate also enters in, the new study shows. During the Miocene, long-term, global cooling was interrupted by warm intervals. In the active region, diversity increased during a warm interval from 17 to 14 million years ago that coincided with intensified mountain building and volcanic activity, the analysis revealed. During subsequent cooling, diversity declined in the mountains and increased on the plains.

Source(s) :

Sciencedaily

Posted in BIODIVERSITY, Mountains | Leave a comment

Amazing Image of Icelandic Volcano Ash

Posted on May 8, 2010 by Rashid Faridi

The ash-cloud image, taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite shows a thick plume of ash blowing east and then south from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano. Clouds bracket the edges of the scene, but the dark blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean show in the middle, and above them, a rippling, brownish-yellow river of ash.

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Posted in News, Uncategorized, Volcanoes | Leave a comment

Intelligent robot porter system using LiDAR

Posted on May 8, 2010 by Rashid Faridi

Researchers from Information and Communication Technology (ICT) are creating autonomous robots that use LiDAR in a new way. Rather than having a robot simply follow a one-step process of LiDAR measurement, the new process has two steps.The first step is a comprehensive mapping of the surrounding area that occurs before the robot in normal operation. In the second step, the robot uses its LIDAR to detect what’s around it. However, with its already stored knowledge of the surroundings, the robot only needs to distinguish what is new. The project is called IRPS (Intelligent Robot Porter System), and is being pursued by a group of institutions and companies, four from Europe and one each from Canada and Israel. The project is being funded by the European Union.The researchers, who call the technology 3D LIMS (3D LiDAR Imaging and Measurement System), foresee a broad range of applications for it, from navigating autonomous vehicles around airports to monitoring industrial equipment and enhancing security surveillance.”This two-step LIDAR process, involving first calibration and then real-time navigation, is the key innovation. It allows the system to accurately and rapidly detect changes in the environment,” says Maurice Heitz, the manager of the IRPS project and a researcher at French technology firm CS Communication & Systèmes.The technology not only detects objects with greater accuracy, but unlike camera-based robotic vision systems it is not affected by shadows, rain or fog, and provides angular and distance information for each pixel, making it suitable for use in virtually any environment.

Sources:

GIS Development.net

Optoiq

 

 

 

 

Posted in GIS, Remote Sensing 101 | Leave a comment