Rashid's Blog: A Place for Inquisitive Souls

Australian study shows how branching corals suddenly declined and failed to recover during Queensland settlement and development era

By Summit Voice

FRISCO — Marine scientists have long been tracking the impacts of human activities to coral reefs, finding overfishing, logging and agricultural runoff all have negative effects. In a new Australian study, researchers linked a widespread coral collapse in the Great Barrier Reef with a  wave of settlement and development in Queensland.

Cores taken through the coral reef at Pelorus Island confirm a healthy community of branching Acropora corals flourished for centuries before European settlement of the area, despite frequent floods and cyclone events. Then, between 1920 and 1955, the branching Acropora failed to recover.

“And if three whole people, why not — four? And if four whole people, why not–more, and more, and more….” – Snoopy and the Peanuts

There has been much recent discussion on the role of crowdfunding in scientific research (for example, see here and here).  Crowdfunding is the public funding of projects or ideas of organizations or individuals, typically via the internet.  Described as “sort of a combination of venture capitalism and social networking” by the bloggers at Jabberwocky Ecology, several organizations have emerged to support this funding model for the scientific community (e.g., Petridish, #SciFund Challenge).  What role will crowdfunding play in science research funding?  How important will this funding source be in the future?  Will it shape the way some science is done?  Will it lead to greater interaction between scientists and non-scientists?  The verdict is still out on these and other questions, but…

Recently I had the privilege to attend a “high-level” meeting between ICAR (Indian Council of Agricultural Research and ILRI (International Livestock Research Institute) bureaucrats and scientists. While interaction between such major institutions is important and necessary, I became a bit concerned about the underlying tenor of many of the presentations. For instance there were remarks about farmers/livestock keepers having no concept of animal nutrition and not being able to “calculate rations”.  And there is this general attitude of believing that the farmer/livestock keeper is backward, illiterate and in need of guidance by scientists. Well, nothing wrong with science, but how many of the interventions developed by scientists are actually taken off the shelf and being put into use? And, considering that India is not only the largest dairy producer in the world, but also all set to become the global leader in beef exports , must the…

There’s an interesting article in The Conversation today which suggests that climate change may have been responsible for the collapse of the Mayan civilisation in central America. The authors refer to a study in Science authored by Douglas J. Kennett et. al., in which they studied rainfall patterns from stalagmites inside Yok Balum Cave in Belize and compared them with historical clues carved into local monuments. While anomalously high rainfall had allowed the population to expand considerably, the following warming and drying trends which extended for several hundreds of years led to droughts which shattered and eventually destroyed the civilisation.

There is also evidence that contemporaneous civilisations fell prey to the same problem. The Khmer, who covered much of South-East Asia and built the famous Angkor Wat temple,  suffered first from the deluge, which badly damaged their extensive network of canals and reservoirs, then from the succeeding centuries of drought…