Seagrass Ecosystems at a “Global Crisis”

[Barrett808]

Seagrass Ecosystems at a “Global Crisis” -- Bioscience article calls for “global conservation effort” to preserve critical coastal habitat

Cambridge, Md. (December 1, 2006) – An international team of scientists is calling for a targeted global conservation effort to preserve seagrasses and their ecological services for the world’s coastal ecosystems, according to an article published in the December issue of Bioscience, the journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS).

The article “A Global Crisis for Seagrass Ecosystems” cites the critical role seagrasses play in coastal systems and how coastal development, population growth and the resulting increase of nutrient and sediment pollution have contributed to large-scale losses worldwide.

“Seagrasses are the coal mine canaries of coastal ecosystems,” said co-author Dr. William Dennison of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. “The fate of seagrasses can provide resource managers advance signs of deteriorating ecological conditions caused by poor water quality and pollution.”

Among its findings, the study analyzed an apparent disconnect between the scientific community’s concerns over seagrass habitat and its coverage in the popular media. While recent studies rank seagrass as one of the most valuable habitat in coastal systems, media coverage of other habitats – including salt marshes, mangroves and coral reefs – receive 3 to 100-fold more media attention than seagrass systems.

“Translating scientific understanding of the value of seagrass ecosystems into public awareness, and thus effective seagrass management and restoration, has not been as effective as for other coastal ecosystems, such as salt marshes, mangroves, or coral reefs,” said co-author Dr. Robert Orth of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. “Elevating public awareness about this impending crisis is critical to averting it.”

“This report is a call to the world’s coastal managers that we need to do more to protect seagrass habitat,” said co-author Dr. Tim Carruthers of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. “Seagrasses are just one of the many keys to maintaining healthy coastal ecosystems and their biodiversity.”

(more)

http://www.umces.edu/grassecosystems.htm

[zonkers]

1. Kick.

[The Stranger]

2. If there is a Hell, it must be watching the planet die a slow death.

If only the religious cults could figure out what humans knew long ago.

[Ediacara]

3. Not to rain on this parade...

But ancient humans were hardly effective stewards of environmentalism....

[The Stranger]

4. Maybe you can explain what you mean.

Based on current events, I can't see any way to support your statement. Especially given that ancient and "pagan" beliefs stemmed from a celebration of the planet, its seasons, and its life, rather than focus on some other world of pleasure for which the present real one may be sacrficed.

[NickB79]

5. Well, you don't see any mammoths around, do you?

There are many paleontologists who feel the mass extinctions of mega-fauna over the past 50,000 yrs was due to humans overhunting populations around the planet. North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, all saw their megafauna populations go extinct around the same time human numbers began to boom. Climate change undoubtedly helped to reduce their numbers, but many areas didn't change enough to lead to full-scale extinction without human assistance.

For example, mammoths went extinct roughly 10,000 yrs ago. Some have proposed that the changing climate destroyed the coldweather grasslands they grazed on, giving way to tundra and coniferous forest. However, "mini-mammoths" survived on an island in the Arctic until 2000 BC: http://www.radiocarbon.org/Journal/v37n1/vartanyan.html. Not until humans arrived did the mammoths go extinct.

[The Stranger]

8. No mammoths, but plenty of buffalo (at least until the Europeans arrived).

Wouldn't the loss of megafauna, some of which were carnivorous predators, be more the result of competition with early man, than man eating them? This would also explain why human numbers increased at the same time.

Add to this early man's apparent adapability to changing climates, and the mammoths' inability, and again it doesn't appear that early man hunted the mammoths to extinction (if there were even enough early men and enough early technology to accomplish something like that).

Yet we know from written history that Native Americans hunted buffalo. Yet they did not hunt these animals to extinction. On the contrary, they had developed a belief system which prevented it.

[NickB79]

11. The current species of bison were runts 20,000 yrs ago

There was a much larger species of bison that existed until the end of the Ice Age that was hunted far more extensively. It is likely that humans preferentially hunted the larger species of bison, as well as the mammoth, ground sloth, etc, leaving the smaller species until they were all that was left. By then, they were forced to adopt a belief system to prevent overhunting, as they had no other species left to hunt.

The loss of carnivores is clearly due to competition with man, but how is the loss of herbivorous species the result of competition? There was no competition with ranchers, as they didn't exist, nor with farmers. What competition existed between herbivorous megafauna and man other than from their spears and the fire they used to convert forest to savanna?

Today feral horses roam in the hundreds of thousands in the US. Wild camel populations surived for a time in the American Southwest, until hunted to extintion again this past century. If climate change were responsible for killing off the megafauna, why are these species capable of thriving once introduced into what should be an inhospitable climate?

[Ediacara]

6. How many horses are native to the Americas? See any lions here?

Cheetahs? Camels? Elephants? Rhinos? Do you see glyptodonts in South America? How about giant Kangaroos in Australia? How about any trees on Easter Island?

I realize that some in the environmental movement look to "ancient" wisdom of native peoples around the world for guidance, but this wisdom is at best newly acquired, and at worst, completely invented. The history of the human species has been one of environmental devastation almost immediately upon the first arrival of humans.

ON EDIT: made the last sentence make more sense.

[The Stranger]

9. The lack of camels or elephants in the Americas is hardly evidence they were hunted to extinction

in the Americas. This thread isn't (or wasn't) about the "some in the environmental movement," but more about religions that convince millions that the planet is disposable since they will live in paradise after its destruction or their death.

[NickB79]

13. But the fact that they can thrive here now

Weakens the argument that they went extinct due to climate change. Introduced camels and horses have and do survive quite well in North America, despite having a climate almost the same as it was 10,000 yrs ago when they became extinct here.

[Ediacara]

15. Actually, it's quite well established that ancient humans did drive camels, elephants, &c ...

....to extinction in the Americas, but like you said, that's not really the point. I was responding directly to your extremely rose-colored statement:

"If only the religious cults could figure out what humans knew long ago,"

Which is, as I and others have pointed out, almost entirely false. Humans long ago didn't "know" anything special about environmentalism, and in many cases were just as destructive as humans are today.

I agree with you that environmental protection should be one of the major focuses of humanity right now, but the crisis needs to be addressed by scientific realism, and not some fakey homage to "ancient wisdom."

[Barrett808]

7. It's true that many aboriginal societies were not the careful stewards we may wish to believe...

...but some were and are. For example, Amazon tribes are excellent stewards of the rain forest they inhabit. Check out the excellent work of the Amazon Conservation Team (http://www.amazonteam.org). The Tikopeans also managed to reverse the Polynesian colonization model of consuming each island's resources and moving on; they instead pioneered techniques which today we call "permaculture".

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[NickB79]

12. Since when did "not effective stewards"

Translate into "Ancient man devastated the planet so we can to"?

Did ancient humans drive many species to extinction? Yes. As has been pointed out, the majority of paleontologists that study Ice Age fauna feel that man had at least a contributing role in wiping out hundreds of species of large mammals, birds and reptiles as the Ice Age drew to a close. Whether through direct overhunting, or hunting populations already stressed by climate change, humans ultimately caused large-scale extinctions in the past. And in the thousands of years that followed that, many island species were lost as ancient seafarers introduced pigs and rats to islands, or deforested them.

Did ancient humans drastically modify the ecosystems around them, sometimes in detrimental ways? Yes, look to the Australian Outback for one such exampe (hint: it wasn't always a semi-arid grassland), or the Sahara/Sahal region, the Golden Crescent in the Middle East, the once-great forests of Northern Africa, or the Mediterranian region in general for others (again, not always semi-arid grassland and desert).

Does this mean anyone in this thread equated ancient man's follies to what we are currently doing to the planet? No. What we are doing today is far worse than what was done in the past. However, pointing out that ancient cultures weren't perfect isn't a preposterous idea, and does not mean it excuses us from the current environmental destruction we are causing. We should recognize that they too had their faults, and try to learn from what they did wrong, as well as what many of them did right, so that we can better understand how to survive sustainably today.

[Barrett808]

14. Nicely said. n/t

[The2ndWheel]

16. Blah, blah, blah, yap, yap, yap

Does it get in the way of progress?

We don't get to have our cake, eat it, then sell it, and make a giant profit.

[nam78_two]

17. K&R/nt