Silent Valley gets research centre

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Union Minister for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh will lay the foundation stone for the Indira Gandhi National Biodiversity Research Centre at Silent Valley in Palakkad district in December.

Forest Minister Benoy Viswom told The Hindu that the Union Minister had promised funding for the centre. An amount of Rs.5 crore would be sanctioned immediately and another Rs.5 crore at a later date. Mr. Ramesh had also promised to sanction Rs.1.24 crore for developing elephant corridors in the State. Assistance might also be forthcoming for the domestic elephants rehabilitation programme, he said.

The Ministry of Environment and Forests had initially rejected the project proposal for the national centre on biodiversity. It was cleared after Mr.Viswom took up the matter with the Union Minister who had earlier promised support for the project. Mr. Ramesh had also announced this at a meeting held in connection with the silver jubilee of the Silent Valley National Park.

The proposal is expected to gain importance against the background of the International Union for Conservation of Nature considering the Western Ghats for inscription as a world heritage site. The stone laying ceremony is likely to be held on December 28. Before that, the Union Minister will also lay the foundation stone for the Forest Academy at Arippa in Thiruvananthapuram. The function is slated to be held on November 20. The existing training centre at Arippa is proposed to be developed as an academy of international standards under the project. Central assistance is expected for this project also.

Source: The Hindu, 3 -11-2010

A lifeline for ecosystems?

NAGOYA (Japan): A historic global treaty to protect the world's forests, coral reefs and other threatened ecosystems within 10 years was sealed at a UN summit.

Rich and poor nations agreed to take "effective and urgent" action to curb the destruction of nature in an effort to halt the loss of the world's biodiversity on which human survival depends.
Delegates from 193 countries on Saturday committed to key goals by 2020 such as curbing pollution, protecting forests and coral reefs, setting aside areas of land and water for conservation, and managing fisheries sustainably.

"This is a day to celebrate," UN Environment Programme chief Achim Steiner said straight after the accord was struck early on Saturday morning following nearly two weeks of tense talks in the central Japanese city of Nagoya.

Delegates and green groups also said the accord offered hope that the United Nations could help to solve the planet's many environmental problems, particularly after the failure of climate change talks in Copenhagen last year.

One of the most significant elements of the historic accord was a commitment to protect 17% of land and 10% of oceans so that biodiversity there could thrive. Currently only 13% of land and 1% of oceans are protected.

Nevertheless, Greenpeace expressed disappointment at the new targets, which delegates said were lowered on the insistence of China and some other developing countries.

Greenpeace had been pushing for 20% of oceans to be conserved, as a step towards an eventual target of 40% preservation.

There were other limitations to the Nagoya pact — including that the United States was not a signatory as it is one of the few countries not to have ratified the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

But while some green groups said the 20-point plan was not as ambitious as hoped, most still welcomed it as a historic step towards united global action in tackling biodiversity problems.

"Governments have sent a strong message that protecting the health of the planet has a place in international politics and countries are ready to join forces to save life on earth," WWF International director general Jim Leape said. AFP

Source: Times Of India, 31-10-2010

SourAsteroid strike in oceans can destroy ozone layer: Study

WASHINGTON: An asteroid splashdown in one of the Earth's oceans could trigger a destructive chemical cycle that would wipe out half the ozone layer, a new study has claimed.

In the worst scenario, the impact of a one-km-wide asteroid would re-create the ozone hole, which appeared over Antarctica during the 1990s. It could cause massive loss of protection against the sun's ultraviolet (UV) radiation and force humans stay indoors during the daytime, according to the researchers.

"An asteroid impact in the ocean is always dismissed as being a danger for coastal sites, but not much else has been discussed about it," said Elisabetta Pierazzo, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz.

To evaluate the asteroid hazard from climatic effects, Pierazzo combined her expertise in crater-impact modelling with simulations developed by US and German atmospheric scientists that show the interactive chemistry of the atmosphere.

They tested scenarios with a 0.6-mile asteroid and a 0.3-mile (500 meters) asteroid at a specific location and specific time of year.

The models showed how ozone destruction would result from an asteroid strike launching seawater vapour hundreds of miles up into the highest parts of the atmosphere.

Chemical elements such as chloride and bromide that separated from the water vapour could then wreak havoc by destroying the ozone layer that protects life on Earth from the worst of mutation-causing UV rays.

"The thing with the asteroid is that it ejects the water vapour way up there -- we're talking hundreds of kilometres," Pierazzo told LiveScience. "It really goes to the highest extent of the atmosphere."

The results, detailed in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, showed a 0.3-mile asteroid that hit in the Pacific Ocean in January would lead to a local impact on the ozone layer -- though "local" still meant an ozone hole that spread across the entire Northern Hemisphere.

By contrast, the 0.6-mile asteroid strike led to a worldwide drop in UV protection -- at which point the "hole" ceases to be a hole, the researchers said.

According to Pierazzo, location of the asteroid strike matters because of atmospheric circulation patterns. Time of year in each hemisphere also matters, because the strength of the ozone layer changes by season based on the amount of sunlight reaching the atmosphere, she explained.

A strike by the 0.3-mile asteroid saw a jump in UV radiation as measured by the ultraviolet index (UVI) to values above 20 in the northern subtropics for several months. A UVI of 10 or more can burn people with fair skin with just a few minutes of sun exposure.

Long-term effects of such high UV radiation would include skin-reddening, changes in plant growth and genetic mutations for humans and other organisms.

Such scenarios represent the likelier outcomes of an asteroid impact on Earth. An asteroid has about twice the chance of striking water rather than hitting land as 70 per cent of the planet's surface is covered by water.

Asteroid hunters have found about 903 of an estimated 1,050 near-Earth objects (NEOs) with diameters of 1 kilometre or greater as of Oct 1. That still leaves well over 100 objects in the 1-2 kilometre size undiscovered.

"As you go down in asteroid size, there's a lot more objects out there that have not been identified that could be a threat," said Pierazzo.

Source: Times Of India, 27-10-2010

New eruption could be looming in Iceland, experts warn

REYKJAVIK: An Icelandic volcano has shown signs it could be about to burst into life, just months after an eruption from another volcano caused Europe's biggest air shutdown since World War II, experts said Monday.

"The water levels have tripled in (the river) Gigja since last night," water measurement specialist Gunnar Sigurdsson of the Icelandic Meteorological Institute told AFP.

The water flooding into the Gigja, on the Vatnajoekull glacier in eastern Iceland, comes from an icy lake in the crater of the Grimsvoetn volcano.

Due to increased thermal temperatures, the lake and surrounding glacier area has melted, filling the crater to a point where it has spilled over and caused a so-called river-run, which in turn could easily set off an eruption.

"When a river-run occurs, the pressure, in this case, in Grimsvotn, decreases, and with less pressure, there is a chance of an eruption from the volcano," Thorunn Skaftadottir, a geophysicist also with the Icelandic Meteorological Institute told AFP.

"This is not guaranteed," she pointed out, since an eruption "can only happen if the volcano has collected enough magma."

In 2004, a similar flood from the Grimsvoetn lake was closely followed by an eruption from what is considered Iceland's most active volcano.

Sigurdsson said an eruption was unlikely to occur "until the water levels in Gigja have reached a maximum.

"I don't know when we can expect the levels to reach their highest point, but I suspect it will be in a few days," he said.

Over the past 48 hours, the Meteorological Institute has also registered strong seismic activity in the area, and three moderate earth quakes ranging from 2.7 to 4.0 on the Richter scale.

Icelandic authorities were however unable Monday to say whether an eruption at Grimsvotn would hit air traffic as hard as in April when the Eyjafjoell volcano erupted, dispersing a massive cloud of ash which affected more than 100,000 flights and eight million passengers.

"It is near impossible to say if Grimsvotn erupts whether it will have an affect on air traffic at all," said Keflavik Airport spokeswoman Hjordis Gudmundsdottir, pointing out it would depend if the volcano spewed lava or ash.

"If it is an ash eruption, then it would affect air traffic, but only if it is a strong eruption with ash clouds reaching significant heights," she said, adding "it will also depend on wind, so at this point it is hard to guess."

Skaftadottir meanwhile said that any eruption from Grimsvotn would be an ash eruption.

"However, the scale of the eruption will be much smaller than the Eyjafjoell eruption and I do not think it would have the same effect on air travel as Eyjafjoell did," she said.

Source: TIMES Of India, 2-11-2010