Nature won at least twice in last week’s primary election in California as Butte County passed a Fracking Ban by 71 percent, and the San Francisco Bay area approved 500 million dollars funding for wetlands. More good news is the research on carbon dioxide fixation. A study on the effects of artificial lighting to moths found bad news for plants needing moth pollinators, but also had a surprise.
San Francisco Bay protection
A ballot measure to fund wetland restoration around the San Francisco Bay, Measure A, passed in Tuesday’s election. This also is climate change planning as wetlands along the bay margins help mitigate flooding. The measure authorizes a parcel tax to raise $25 million a year until 2037 to fund bay enhancement and wetland restoration projects. It’s California’s first-ever regional ballot measure and included eight counties. The importance of coastal environment resilience to climate change was powerfully motivating for the 837,162 people who voted in favor (371,542 voted against it).
Supporters of the measure said a dedicated revenue source is needed to restore marshes along the northern and southern edges of the bay, which would serve as buffers from sea-level rise in the coming decades. The marshes would also protect inland areas from flooding during high tides and severe storms.
The Daily Bucket is a regular feature of the Backyard Science group. It is a place to note any observations you have made of the world around you. Animals, weather, meteorites, climate, soil, plants, waters are all worthy additions to the Bucket. Please let us know what is going on around you in a comment. Include, as close as is comfortable for you, your location. Each note is a record that we can refer to in the future as we try to understand the patterns that are quietly unwinding around us. |
Moths Don’t Do It In The Dark
Clever title for bad news from the University of Washington: Distracted while pollinating: The hidden danger of artificial light. Guess what it’s about. Moths are slackers when attracted to lights at night while they should be out visiting the flowers and spreading pollen around. Streetlights keep them higher than the plants normally visited.
Moth abundance at ground level was halved at lit sites, species richness was >25% lower, and flight activity at the level of the light was 70% greater,” the researchers write. In other words, at lit sites more moths are flying up high, around streetlight level. At dark sites more moths are flying low, near the plants.
To learn how much pollen the moths were picking up, researchers examined diverse moth specimens and found a low percent of the usual pollinator moth species had pollen. But to their surprise they also discovered several moths carrying pollen from flower species not know to be moth-pollinated.
All this contributes to mounting evidence that moths make a more significant contribution to pollination than previously assumed.
CarbFix
Scientists in Iceland have discovered how to capture CO2 released by a power plant and turn it into stone much faster than lab tests indicated possible. The trick is to stored it in basalt rock. Now to find enough basalt along with fresh water (they don’t know if salt water AKA ocean works) to help keep greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. They really did name the process CarbFix.
"Spotlight on Green News & Views" is posted Saturday at 5pm Pacific Time and Wednesday at 3:30 Pacific Time on the Daily Kos front page. Be sure to recommend and comment. |