CONTENTS PAGE

1.0 Articles………………………………………………………………………………….2 - 8

2.0 Reading Folio………………………………………………………………………...9 – 10

3.0 References……………………………………………………………………………….11

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ENVIRONMENT

We’ve lost almost 3 billion birds in

the U.S. and Canada since 1970
Scientists say it’s time to act to protect avian species
By Ula Chrobak
September 20, 2019

Blackbirds are one of the 12 bird families that are in steep declineBee
Calder/Unsplash
In 1962, Rachel Carlson warned about the dangers of the pesticide DDT in the
classic Silent Spring. The book helped launch an environmental movement and stop
the use of DDT, which had nearly decimated iconic raptors like the peregrine falcon
and the bald eagle.

While eagles and falcons have made a remarkable recovery and continue to grow in
numbers, a new study reveals a greater crisis, renewing Carlson's message about our
ability to destroy nature. In the United States and Canada, almost three billion birds
have been lost since 1970—or about 29 percent of birds that once lived in those
countries. "It's really quite frightening," says Rachel Buxton, conservation biologist at
Carleton University, who was not involved in the research. "We know that we're
facing a biodiversity crisis, but the most jarring thing is putting a number on it."

The biodiversity crisis is often defined by extinctions, the many species that are being
completely lost. And that's important: the extinction rate today is estimated to be
1,000 times greater than that before humans. But the new study, published Thursday
in the journal Science, shows that counting individuals of more common species can
paint a grim picture. "The overwhelming focus on species extinctions, however, has
underestimated the extent and consequences of biotic change," write the authors in the
paper. As Arvind Panjabi, co-author and avian conservation scientist at the Bird
Conservancy of the Rockies, says: "For the first time, we've combined estimates of
[bird] population size with trends of population change."

The ornithologists used breeding surveys for 529 species—comprising 76 percent of

known species in the U.S. (minus Hawaii, due to availability of numbers) and Canada
—to estimate the number of birds from 1970 to 2017. In addition to surveys, they also
used migration data from radar stations, which can capture flocks of birds in addition
to showing local weather. The researchers used a statistical analysis that helped
smooth over variations in the different datasets and create a comprehensive picture of
the state of the avian population. Nicole Michel, senior quantitative ecologist at the
National Audubon Society, says she was “really, really impressed” with the inclusion

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of the radar data. “We’ve been showing declines for a long time … The skeptics will
say it’s due to the data sources,” she says. “By including this completely independent
dataset, we have an independent evaluation … It’s a home run.”

Some types of birds are having a much harder time than others. Grassland birds had
the greatest loss, with their population going down by 53 percent since 1970—more
than 700 million fewer animals. "Grasslands really are the most threatened terrestrial
ecosystem in North America," says Panjabi. "We've lost more acres of grasslands in
the last few years than we did acres of rainforest in the Amazon."

Forest, tundra, desert, and coastal birds are all declining, too. And 90 percent of the
loss was concentrated in just 12 bird families, which includes some of the most
familiar, such as sparrows, blackbirds, warblers, and finches.

Finches are another family that have seen huge declines in the last decades Ken
Gibson/Flickr
Not only are birds ubiquitous and key to ecosystems—helping spread seeds, pollinate,
and control pests—they are also good indicators about the health of their habitats and
fellow wildlife. “Given that birds are one of the best monitored animal groups, birds
may also represent the tip of the iceberg, indicating similar or greater losses in other
taxonomic groups,” write the authors in the study.

But, in a bit of good news, wetland birds are actually recovering—their numbers are
up by 13 percent. “Our conservation success is showing up in these numbers,” says
Buxton. Since 1989, the North American Wetlands Conservation Act has provided
nearly $2 billion in funding toward wetlands conservation projects. “Our investment
in waterfowl conservation and wetlands conservation has really paid off,” agrees
Panjabi.

Undoubtedly, habitat loss is playing a big role in the decline of birds, says Panjabi.
Toxic chemicals may also be a driver. In fact, a study from last week found that
sparrows eating seeds coated with a neonicotinoid insecticide commonly used in
agriculture lost weight and then delayed their migration. Buxton adds that other
threats include windows, light pollution, and domestic cats: “Think about keeping
your cat inside.”

Legislative changes may be the most far-reaching way to save birds. The Trump
Administration has proposed a rollback of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which
would remove "incidental" harm from being a prosecutable offense, so only
intentional acts to hurt birds would be punishable. That means development that
destroys habitat would then be immune to consequences for harming migratory birds
(which make up the majority of avian species). Michel says Audubon is using the
study to sound an alarm to their members, rallying them to support reinstating the
MBTA and other conservation measures.

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But, given how actions like banning DDT or protecting wetlands have helped birds in
the past, it’s clear that these species can make a comeback—they just need a little
help. “When you give birds half a chance, they can recover,” says Michel. “And this is
important because birds and humans share the same fate; By protecting birds and their
habitat, you also protect people and other wildlife that depend on the same places.
What’s good for birds is good for people.”


ENVIRONMENT

How some fish are adapted to thrive

after catastrophic hurricanes
Studies in Puerto Rico show that native-fish populations thrived after
Maria, while exotic ones sank.
By Thomas J. Kwak and Alonso Ramirez/The Conversation
September 18, 2019

Extreme flooding during Hurricane Maria in 2017 was hazardous for the Puerto
Rican people. But a new study finds that it helped native fish populations rebound
after years of drought.AP Photo/Alvin Baez
Hurricanes like Dorian and Maria may be disastrous for humans and their property,
but some fish have actually evolved to thrive in severe weather.

Our team of scientists studied how extreme weather events affect river fish in Puerto
Rico. The island is ideal for examining the environmental and human impacts on
freshwater fish because Puerto Rico has only nine native species and, unlike smaller
Caribbean islands, many inland rivers—46, to be exact.

Numerous exotic fish, introduced by humans over the past century, compete for
limited food and habitat with Puerto Rican species like the waterfall-climbing sirajo
goby, the streamlined mountain mullet, and the bigmouth sleeper, a top river predator.

The native Caribbean mountain mullet (top) has evolved to survive floods. The
sedentary red devil cichlid, a fish native to Nicaragua but now present in Puerto
Rico’s lakes and rivers, is better suited to drought.Tom Kwak
Because these same native fish are found throughout the Caribbean, their conservation
is an important environmental priority for the region. Native fishes are perfectly
adapted to their environment and provide services to humans, such as food and

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nutrient transport. Their presence indicates a healthy ecosystem and clean drinking
water.

After Hurricane Maria hit the island in 2017, we discovered that nonnative species—
and only the nonnative species—had been decimated by the storm.

Thousands of exotic fish, which are physically adapted to survive drought—not

extremely high river flows and flooding—were flushed far downriver during
Hurricane Maria, even into the ocean. Many died from blunt force trauma or exposure
to salt water.

The Espíritu Santo River after 2017’s Hurricane Maria (top) and 18 months
after.P. Gutierrez-Fonseca.
Native river fish, in contrast, were unaffected by the hurricane. Their body shape and
behavior are designed to survive high, fast waters. Puerto Rican fish are actually hit
hardest by drought, because they struggle to migrate for reproduction and to find food
when waters are low.

Big hurricanes, in short, reset the balance in Puerto Rico’s rivers, favoring native fish
over imported species. The same would hold true in rivers across the Caribbean.

So which fish will win the battle for resources in Caribbean waters? The answer may
change with the weather.

Climate predictions indicate that the Caribbean will experience both more catastrophic
hurricanes and increased drought in the future.

With help from staff and graduate assistants Gus Engman, Bonnie Myers, and Ámbar
Torres, we are now conducting experiments to better understand the dynamics
between native and exotic fishes in Puerto Rico. We plan to model the future balance
between these species—and, hopefully, help keep the Caribbean’s native fish
swimming.

Thomas J. Kwak is a professor at the North Carolina State University.

Alonso Ramirez is a professor at the North Carolina State University.

This article was originally featured on The Conversation.

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FEATURE | September 10, 2019

Satellite Data Record Shows Climate

Change's Impact on Fires

Fires are a natural part of the ecosystem in North American forests. However, their size and intensity is shaped by climate.
Credit: NASA

By Ellen Gray,
NASA's Earth Science News Team

Hot and dry. These are the watchwords for large fires. While every fire needs a spark to
ignite and fuel to burn, the hot and dry conditions in the atmosphere determine the likelihood
of a fire starting, its intensity and the speed at which it spreads. Over the past several decades,
as the world has increasingly warmed, so has its potential to burn.

Since 1880, the world has warmed by 1.9 degrees Fahrenheit (1.09 degrees Celsius), with the
five warmest years on record occurring in the last five years. Since the 1980s, the wildfire
season has lengthened across a quarter of the world's vegetated surface, and in some places
like California, fire has become nearly a year-round risk. The year 2018 was California's
worst wildfire season on record, on the heels of a devasting 2017 fire season. In 2019,
wildfires have already burned 2.5 million acres in Alaska in an extreme fire season driven by
high temperatures, which have also led to massive fires in Siberia.
Whether started naturally or by people, fires worldwide and the resulting smoke emissions
and burned areas have been observed by NASA satellites from space for two decades.
Combined with data collected and analyzed by scientists and forest managers on the ground,
researchers at NASA, other U.S. agencies and universities are beginning to draw into focus
the interplay between fires, climate and humans.

"Our ability to track fires in a concerted way over the last 20 years with satellite data has
captured large-scale trends, such as increased fire activity, consistent with a warming climate
in places like the western U.S., Canada and other parts of Northern Hemisphere forests where

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fuels are abundant," said Doug Morton, chief of the Biospheric Sciences Laboratory at
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "Where warming and drying
climate has increased the risk of fires, we’ve seen an increase in burning."

A Hotter, Drier World

High temperatures and low humidity are two essential factors behind the rise in fire risk and
activity, affecting fire behavior from its ignition to its spread. Even before a fire starts, they
set the stage, said Jim Randerson, an Earth system scientist at the University of California,
Irvine who studies fires both in the field and with satellite data.

He and his colleagues studied the abundance of lightning strikes in the 2015 Alaskan fire
season that burned a record 5.1 million acres. Lightning strikes are the main natural cause of
fires. The researchers found an unusually high number of lightning strikes occurred,
generated by the warmer temperatures that cause the atmosphere to create more convective
systems — thunderstorms — which ultimately contributed to more burned area that year.

Hotter and drier conditions also set the stage for human-ignited fires. "In the Western U.S.,
people are accidentally igniting fires all the time," Randerson said. "But when we have a
period of extreme weather, high temperatures, low humidity, then it’s more likely that typical
outdoor activity might lead to an accidental fire that quickly gets out of control and becomes
a large wildfire."

For example, in 2018 sparks flying from hammering a concrete stake into the ground in 100-
degree Fahrenheit heat and sparks from a car's tire rim scraping against the asphalt after a flat
tire were the causes of California's devastatingly destructive Ranch and Carr Fires,
respectively. These sparks quickly ignited the vegetation that was dried out and made
extremely flammable by the same extreme heat and low humidity, which research also shows
can contribute to a fire's rapid and uncontrollable spread, Randerson said. The same
conditions make it more likely for agricultural fires to get out of control.

A warming world also has another consequence that may be contributing to fire conditions
persisting over multiple days where they otherwise might not have in the past: higher
nighttime temperatures.

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"Warmer nighttime temperature allow fires to burn through the night and burn more
intensely, and that allows fires to spread over multiple days where previously, cooler
nighttime temperatures might have weakened or extinguished the fire after only one day,"
Morton said.

For the climate, fires can directly and indirectly increase carbon emissions to the atmosphere.
While they burn, fires release carbon stored in trees or in the soil. In some places like
California or Alaska, additional carbon may be released as the dead trees decompose, a
process that may take decades because dead trees will stand like ghosts in the forest, decaying
slowly, Morton said. In addition to releasing carbon as they decompose, the dead trees no
longer act as a carbon sink by pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. In some areas
like Indonesia, Randerson and his colleagues have found that the radiocarbon age of carbon
emissions from peat fires is about 800 years, which is then added to the greenhouse gases in
that atmosphere that drive global warming. In Arctic and boreal forest ecosystems, fires burn
organic carbon stored in the soils and hasten the melting of permafrost, which release
methane, another greenhouse gas, when thawed.
Another area of active research is the mixed effect of particulates, or aerosols, in the
atmosphere in regional climates due to fires, Randerson said. Aerosols can be dark like soot,
often called black carbon, absorbing heat from sunlight while in the air, and when landing
and darkening snow on the ground, accelerating its melt, which affects both local
temperatures — raising them since snow reflects sunlight away — and the water cycle. But
other aerosol particles can be light colored, reflecting sunlight and potentially having a
cooling effect while they remain in the atmosphere. Whether dark or light, according to
Randerson, aerosols from fires may also have an effect on clouds that make it harder for
water droplets to form in the tropics, and thus reduce rainfall — and increase drying.

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 ESSAY

These days people had not been aware by the destruction that human had made
towards the environment. They were too focused in the development of the cities until they
were blinded into achieving money rather than saving the planet which is currently dying.
Environment is the natural world which surrounds the earth and makes a particular
geographical area which human beings, animals, plants and other living and non-living
things exist. A clean environment is very necessary to live in a peaceful and healthy life.

In the first article, written by Ula Chroba at September 20, 2019 who wrote about the
biodiversity crisis which had been going on for hundreds of years. The article had said once
that the extinction rate today is estimated to be 1,000 times greater than that before humans.
The next article which was written by Thomas J. Kwak and Alonso Ramirez on September
18, 201. In the article, it was said that after Hurricane Maria hit an island at Carribean in
2017, they have discovered that non-native species had been decimated by the storm. This
happens because the fishes could not stand the high river flows and flooding resulting the
fishes to be flushed far downriver, even into the ocean. Many died blunt force trauma or
exposure to salt water. An article by Ellen Gray, a NASA’s Earth Science News Team at
September 10, 2019 in the other hand had touched the issue regarding climate changes
which been a factor to the fires that had been going on these past few weeks. NASA’s
satellite had observed the fire resulting smoke emissions and burned areas whether it is
naturally or by people. Researches at NASA and forests managers and other U.S. agencies
are beginning to draw into focus the interplay between fires, climate and humans. The fires
that were erupted throughout most of the country resulted a hotter and drier conditions for
humans including other living things such as animals and plants.

The articles which are about environment had open my eyes on the destruction of
man doings to the earth. Our planet had been dying and it is mostly caused by the human
itself. However, it is not fair to only point fingers to the and keep blaming humans because
sometimes it was because of nature itself too. The articles had shown that human beings are
not the only factors for the destruction of the planet. Hurricanes, climate change and storms
are not what we, humans do on purpose to destroy our planet but it is the nature. The
climate change which had made the risen of temperature of the world will make the most the
of the forests worldwide to be so dry it ended up them to be burnt in the scorching hot. This
is resulted to a more hot and drier condition which had been stated mostly at the articles.
Other than that, birds that always migrate to another place will tend to get sick easily as they
are not used in the new surrounding around them. This can be the core factor of the
extinction of the birds which is not done by humans. Next, in my opinion, the fish would have

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live longer if it were to be breed in a secure places after the hurricane occur. This is to
ensure the population of most exotic and native fishes are well kept and is not facing
extinction.

In conclusion, environment is in the era of sickness. As a human being who lives in

face of earth should be helping the world to keep it from getting bad day by day and year
after year. Generations now need to take further actions to save our environment for the
sake of the future generation. This is because a better environment can make people feel
more joyful and can be more beneficial for their lifestyles. Therefore, we all must take an
oath together to protect our natural environment to keep it safe as usual forever.

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 Reference

Satellite Data Record Shows Climate Change's Impact on Fires – Climate Change: Vital
Signs of the Planet. (2019, September 11). Retrieved from
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2912/satellite-data-record-shows-climate-changes-impact-on-
fires/

Kwak, T. J., & Alonso. (2019, September 18). How some fish are adapted to thrive after
catastrophic hurricanes. Retrieved from https://www.popsci.com/caribbean-fish-love-
hurricanes/

Chrobak, U. (2019, September 20). We've lost almost 3 billion birds in the U.S. and Canada
since 1970. Retrieved from https://www.popsci.com/lost-3-billion-birds/

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