The newest version of Google Earth includes more accurate imagery in several key areas of ocean using data collected by research cruises over the past three years.

"The original version of Google Ocean was a newly developed prototype map that had high resolution but also contained thousands of blunders related to the original archived ship data," said David Sandwell, a Scripps geophysicist.

"UCSD undergraduate students spent the past three years identifying and correcting the blunders as well as adding all the multibeam echosounder data archived at the National Geophysical Data Center in Boulder, Colorado."

"The Google map now matches the map used in the research community, which makes the Google Earth program much more useful as a tool for planning cruises to uncharted areas," Sandwell added.

For example, the updated, more precise data corrects a grid-like artifact on the seafloor that was misinterpreted in the popular press as evidence of the lost city of Atlantis off the coast of North Africa.

Through several rounds of upgrades, Google Earth now has 15 percent of the seafloor image derived from shipboard soundings at 1-kilometer resolution. Previous versions only derived about 10 percent of their data from ship soundings and the rest from depths predicted by Sandwell and NOAA researcher Walter Smith using satellite gravity measurements. The two developed the prediction technique in 1994.

The satellite and sounding data are combined with land topography from the NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) to create a global topography and bathymetry grid called SRTM30_PLUS.

This new version includes all of the multibeam bathymetry data collected by U.S. research vessels over the past three decades including 287 Scripps expeditions from research vessels Washington, Melville and Revelle. UCSD undergraduate student Alexis Shakas processed all the U.S. multibeam data and then worked with Google researchers on the global integration.

The next major upgrade to the grid will occur later this year using a new gravity model having twice the accuracy of previous models. The new gravity information is being collected by a European Space Agency satellite called CryoSat that was launched in February 2010.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:54 AEST San Diego CA (SPX) Feb 09, 2012 - Around the world coral reefs are facing threats brought by climate change and dramatic shifts in sea temperatures. While ocean warming has been the primary focus for scientists and ocean policy managers, cold events can also cause large-scale coral bleaching events.

A new study by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego compared damage to corals exposed to heat as well as cold stress. The results reveal that cool temperatures can inflict more damage in the short term, but heat is more destructive in the long run.

The study is published in Scientific Reports, a publication of the Nature Publishing Group.

Climate change is widely known to produce warming conditions in the oceans, but extreme cold-water events have become more frequent and intense as well. In 2010, for example, coral reefs around the world faced one of the coldest winters and one of the hottest summers on record.

During a unique experiment conducted by former Scripps Oceanography student Melissa Roth and current Scripps scientist Dimitri Deheyn, corals subjected to cold temperatures suffered greater growth impairment and other measurable damage in just days compared with heat treated corals.

Yet the researchers found that corals were eventually able to adjust to the chilly conditions, stabilize their health and continue to grow. However, over the long term corals subjected to heat suffered more greatly than those in cold, with evidence of severe bleaching and growth stoppage, a trajectory that leads to death.

"These results show distinct responses between cold and heat-treated corals on different time scales," said Roth, now based at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

"On a short time scale, the cold event was actually more harmful to the corals than an equivalent warming event, but over time, these corals were able to acclimate to the cold. Therefore, these corals showed more resilience to seawater cooling than seawater warming."

The coral's ability to adjust to cool temperatures surprised the researchers, who say the study's results highlight the complexities of monitoring coral health in response to varying environmental factors.

During the investigations-conducted inside Scripps' Experimental Aquarium-the researchers tracked the overall coral health and the stress of their symbiotic algae, sometimes called "zooxanthellae."

The symbiosis is an essential component for reef-building corals because the symbionts provide corals with most of their energy. Accordingly, the researchers found that the cold both disrupted the photosynthetic system of the symbionts and greatly reduced coral growth.

"Global warming is associated with increases but also decreases of temperatures," said Deheyn, a project scientist in Scripps' Marine Biology Research Division.

"Not much has been known about the comparative effects of temperature decrease on corals. These results are important because they show that corals react differently to temperature differences, which is critical for future management of coral reefs in the realm of climate change."

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:54 AEST Durham NH (SPX) Feb 09, 2012 - An ocean mapping expedition has shed new light on deepest place on Earth, the 2,500-kilometer long Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean near Guam. Using a multibeam echo sounder, state-of-the-art equipment for mapping the ocean floor, scientists from the University of New Hampshire Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping/Joint Hydrographic Center found four "bridges" spanning the trench and measured its deepest point with greater precision than ever before.

Research professor James Gardner and affiliate professor Andrew Armstrong, both of UNH's Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping/UNH-NOAA Joint Hydrographic Center (CCOM/JHC), presented their findings at the recent American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, the world's largest annual meeting of Earth and planetary scientists.

Mapping the entire Mariana Trench - approximately 400,000 square kilometers - from August through October 2010, the researchers discovered four bridges spanning the trench and rising as high as 2,500 meters above its floor. While satellite images had suggested the trench might be spanned by one such ridge, Gardner says the mapping mission confirmed the existence of four such features. "That got me excited," he says.

The ridges are being formed as the 180-million-year-old Pacific and far younger Philippine tectonic plates collide. Because the ocean's crust cools as it ages, "the Pacific crust is much, much older, so it's diving underneath the Philippine plate," Gardner says. As seamounts on the Pacific plate are pulled beneath the Philippine plate, they are compacted against the wall of the trench, forming these ridges.

"It's incredibly complex geology. These seamounts haven't been completely subducted, they're getting jammed up against the plate," Gardner says. He surmises that the bridges are related to earthquake subduction zones, such as the one that caused the March 2011 earthquake in Japan.

The expedition also yielded the most precise measurement yet of Challenger Deep, the trench's (and the Earth's) deepest point, finding it to be 10,994 meters deep, plus or minus 40 meters. Calculated from thousands of depth soundings as well as detailed analysis of how the how the water column can alter the echo sounding signals, the new measurement is similar to other claims of the Challenger Deep's depth, some of which are deeper.

"When you're dealing with something that's 11 kilometers deep, you have to deal with inherent uncertainties in the system," says Gardner, noting that Challenger Deep is deeper than Mount Everest is high.

Multibeam echo sounders measure depth by sending sound energy to the ocean floor then analyzing the returning signal. Mounted beneath a ship, the instruments produce a fan-shaped swath of coverage of the seafloor.

The resolution of the resulting images, at one pixel to every 100 meters, is far more precise than other earlier measurement systems. Hydrographers and ocean mappers such as Armstrong and Gardner describe the process of mapping an area as like "mowing the lawn," making overlapping tracks over the area in question.

This mission to the Mariana Trench, the third and fourth cruises to that area by UNH scientists, was undertaken to gather data that can be used to support an extended continental shelf (ECS) under Article 76 of the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). All data are publicly available on the CCOM website: www.ccom.unh.edu.

The U.S. has an inherent interest in knowing, and declaring to others, the exact extent of its sovereign rights in the ocean as set forth in the Convention on the Law of the Sea. For the ECS, this includes sovereign rights over natural resources on and under the seabed including energy resources such as: oil and natural gas and gas hydrates; "sedentary" creatures such as clams, crabs, and corals; and mineral resources such as manganese nodules, ferromanganese crusts, and polymetallic sulfides.

The U.S. Extended Continental Shelf Task Force is responsible for delineating the U.S. ECS and is chaired by the Department of State with co-vice chairs from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Department of the Interior. Ten additional agencies participate in the task force, including the U.S. Geological Survey, Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard, Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, Environmental Protection Agency, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the Arctic Research Commission, and the Executive Office of the President.

The University of New Hampshire, founded in 1866, is a world-class public research university with the feel of a New England liberal arts college. A land, sea, and space-grant university, UNH is the state's flagship public institution, enrolling 12,200 undergraduate and 2,300 graduate students.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:54 AEST Paris (AFP) Feb 8, 2012 - The French environmental services group Suez said Wednesday that it would preserve a solid balance sheet after releasing 2011 results that were hit by problems at an Australian desalination plant.

Investors were not impressed, and drove the company's share price down in trading on the Paris stock exchange.

A Suez statement that underscored "an atonic economic environment" quoted chief executive Jean-Louis Chaussade as saying that his priorities this year and next were "to protect profitability and maintain a solid balance sheet with a sustained cash flow generation."

Suez reported a 6.9-percent increase in 2011 sales to 14.8 billion euros ($19.7 billion), but a 42.8 percent plunge in net profit to 323 million euros.

That was the result of additional construction costs at a desalination plant in Melbourne that cut 237 million euros from the group's bottom line.

The construction was now 89 percent complete, Suez said.

Core operating profit gained 7.4 percent to 2.5 billion euros meanwhile, and was forecast to reach or exceed 2.7 billion by the end of 2013, it added.

"Our two activities had very solid performances, above initial guidance, with dynamic sales activity in water in Europe, (and) the confirmation that waste industry is moving towards more recovery, and sustained growth internationally," Chaussade said.

Investors were disappointed by the results however, and Suez shares lost 0.74 percent to 10.02 euros in midday Paris trading.

The CAC 40 index of leading French stocks was 0.39 percent higher overall.

Suez noted meanwhile that group debt was stable at 7.6 billion euros.

Following the sale of the its UK unit Bristol Water late last year, Suez is finalising the divestment of the Berlin-based water and waste company Eurawasser to fellow German group Remondis for 95 million euros.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:54 AEST Shanghai (AFP) Feb 8, 2012 - A cargo ship spilled acid into China's longest river last week, contaminating tap supplies and sparking a run on bottled water in eastern China, the government and state media said.

It is the nation's second water pollution scare in a month, after factories in the southern region of Guangxi contaminated water supplies for millions with toxic cadmium and other waste in January.

The ship, reportedly South Korean, was docked in Zhenjiang city on the Yangtze river last Thursday when it leaked phenol -- an acid used in detergents -- into the water because of a faulty valve, local authorities reported.

Residents started complaining their tap water had a strange smell on Friday, and soon rumours that a capsized ship was polluting the river sparked a run on bottled water in at least two cities in Jiangsu province, the Shanghai Daily said.

One photo carried by the official China Daily newspaper showed a supermarket shelf stripped nearly bare as a customer loaded water bottles into a shopping cart.

The water quality had now returned to normal, the government of Zhenjiang, in Jiangsu, said in a statement late Tuesday.

A resident in the city of three million told AFP the run on water appeared to have eased on Wednesday.

"There was panic buying of bottled water for a couple of days. But it stopped after we received a government notice clarifying that the tap water is safe now," the resident, who declined to be named, told AFP.

Zhenjiang officials would not comment when contacted by AFP on Wednesday. The South Korean Consulate in Shanghai, meanwhile, said it was not aware of the incident.

Phenol -- also called carbolic acid -- can irritate the eyes and skin, damage the liver and kidneys, and impair the nervous system if absorbed, according to the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The incident comes hot on the heels of the more serious environmental scandal in Guangxi, where a 300-kilometre (190-mile) section of the Longjiang River was polluted by toxic cadmium and other waste.

Authorities have detained at least eight company executives and punished nine government officials over the case.

Many waterways in China have become heavily contaminated with toxic waste from factories and farms -- pollution blamed on more than three decades of rapid economic growth and lax enforcement of environmental protection laws.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:54 AEST Beijing (AFP) Feb 5, 2012 - A massive project to divert water from China's south to its drought-prone north -- which has seen hundreds of thousands of people relocated -- will become partly operational next year, state media reported.

The South-North Water Diversion Project is one of the country's largest infrastructure projects since the building of the Three Gorges Dam, which involved the relocation of more than one million people.

Sun Yifu, deputy water resources chief in the eastern province of Shandong -- who is also involved in the programme -- said his province's part of the project would be completed at the end of the year, the Xinhua news agency said.

He added that "the entire project" would become operational in the first half of 2013, and start supplying water to arid parts of the north, the report said late Saturday.

China's South-North Water Diversion project consists of three routes -- the eastern, middle and western routes -- and Sun was referring to the eastern portion of the project, or a 1,890-kilometre (1,170-mile) canal.

Construction on the 1,430-kilometre central route began in 2003 and will only be operational in 2014. The western section, meanwhile, has yet to see the light of day.

Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong is credited with coming up with the idea for the massive diversion programme, which will feature a tunnel dug beneath the Yellow River -- the second-largest in China.

But the project -- which will cost an estimated 500 billion yuan ($79 billion) -- was only approved in 2002.

Critics say it could be a huge waste of resources that risks creating new water shortages and sparking environmental disasters. They also point to the human cost of mass relocations to make way for the canals.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:54 AEST Aberdeen, Scotland (UPI) Feb 2, 2012 - Large shrimp-like crustaceans, some as long as 13 inches, have been found 4 miles deep in the ocean off the coast of New Zealand, researchers say.

Researchers from the University of Aberdeen in Britain say the creature, dubbed a supergiant, is a type of amphipod, which are normally around an inch long.

These creatures, discovered at the bottom of the Kermadec Trench, were more than 10 times bigger, researchers said.

"It's a bit like finding a foot-long cockroach," Alan Jamieson of Aberdeen's Oceanlab said. "I stopped and thought: 'What on Earth was that?' This amphipod was far bigger than I ever thought possible."

Amphipods have been found living in large numbers at the bottom of ocean trenches, deep, narrow valleys in the sea floor that can be as deep as almost 7 miles.

The name "supergiant" was first coined after large specimens were caught in the 1980s off the coast of Hawaii. Those specimens are dwarfed by the new ones.

"For such a large and conspicuous animal to go unnoticed for so long is just testament to how little we know about life in New Zealand's most deep and unique habitat," Ashley Rowden of New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research said. "It just goes to show that the more you look, the more you find."

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:54 AEST Washington DC (SPX) Feb 03, 2012 - In recent years, media reports of jellyfish blooms and some scientific publications have fueled the idea that jellyfish and other gelatinous floating creatures are becoming more common and may dominate the seas in coming decades. The growing impacts of humans on the oceans, including overfishing and climate change, have been suggested as possible causes of this apparently alarming trend.

A careful evaluation of the evidence by Robert H. Condon of Dauphin Island Sea Lab and his 16 coauthors, however, finds the idea that jellyfish, comb jellies, salps and similar organisms are surging globally to be lacking support. Rather, Condon and his colleagues suggest, the perception of an increase is the result of more scientific attention being paid to phenomena such as jellyfish blooms and media fascination with the topic.

Also important is the lack of good information on their occurrence in the past, which encourages misleading comparisons. Condon and his coauthors describe their findings in the February issue of BioScience.

Such fossil and documentary evidence as is available indicates that occasional spectacular blooms of jellyfish are a normal part of such organisms' natural history, and may be linked to natural climate cycles. But blooms drew less attention in decades and centuries gone by.

Condon and his coauthors do not urge complacency, and acknowledge a lack of consensus among researchers. They point out that changes in populations of jellyfish and similar sea organisms do have important consequences for local marine ecology and could be affected by human activity.

For that reason, they are assembling a comprehensive new database that will enable trends in the numbers of such creatures to be assessed and the links to human activity studied. But for now, Condon and his coauthors believe the case for jellyfish-dominated seas in coming decades is not proven.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:54 AEST Hong Kong (AFP) Feb 2, 2012 - On Midway atoll in the North Pacific, dozens of young albatross lie dead on the sand, their stomachs filled with cigarette lighters, toy soldiers and other small plastic objects their parents have mistaken for food.

That sad and surreal sight, says Hong Kong-based Australian film director Craig Leeson, is one of the many symptoms of a plague afflicting the world's oceans, food chains and human communities: the onslaught of discarded plastic.

"Every piece of plastic ever made since the fifties exists in some shape or form on the planet," Leeson told AFP. "We throw plastic into a bin, it's taken away from us and we never see it again -- but it still comes back at us."

Over the past year, Leeson has been following the menace of plastic from Sardinia to Canada to the Indian Ocean for a film that aims to combine the art of nature documentary with a campaigning quest.

Provisionally called "Away", the film -- backed by David Attenborough and the UK-based Plastic Oceans Foundation -- brings together new research on the spread of plastic with missions by "explorers" such as Ben Fogle to show the diverse effects of plastic trash.

Its message is that while you may throw out your plastic goods, they are never really thrown "away".

Crews under Leeson's direction have so far swum with blue whales, taken a deep-sea submarine to the depths of the Mediterranean and found swirling clumps of plastic trash in the Indian Ocean.

They have used a harpoon-like instrument to take biopsies from whales and dissected a dead Corsican turtle in a Siena laboratory -- "dead turtles are the smelliest things you can imagine", he says. Sea lions are yet to come.

The foundation cites research showing that at least 250 species have ingested or become entangled in plastic in the seas. They put forward plastic ingestion as one of the main causes of "skinny whale syndrome", in which whales are discovered mysteriously starved.

The 250 million tonnes of plastic we discard each year make their way for thousands of miles around the oceans, and Leeson's team -- many of whom have backgrounds in the BBC's Natural History Unit -- are determined to document this in spectacular fashion.

But beyond this, their goal is to show that the environmental damage is systemic, going far beyond a series of water-borne trash heaps.

In fact, Leeson said, the mass of plastic the size of Texas often said to exist in the North Pacific is a myth. Instead, particles of plastic lurk there invisibly, in seemingly clear water.

"If you trawl for it with these special nets that they've developed, you come back with this glutinous mass -- it's microplastics that are in the water along with the plankton," he said.

"The problem is that it's being mistaken for food and being eaten by plankton eaters, who are then eaten by bigger fish, and so it goes on, and it ends up on our dinner tables."

Studies have linked this with health conditions in humans including cancer, diabetes and immune disruption.

And it is not just the plastic itself that enters the food chain, but other man-made substances from sources such as industrial waste that attach themselves to plastics in the water.

The team will be shooting until mid-2012 and will also visit communities living beside rivers that are heavily polluted with plastic to see its more direct effects on human life.

This is not the first high-profile campaign on the subject: Greenpeace, currently researching plastic in the Arctic Ocean, has warned that urgent action is needed to address the sources of plastic waste, and campaign group WWF calls the problem "staggering".

But Leeson hopes the images in his film will jolt viewers out of their complacency about rubbish that apparently disappears into the waste collection system.

"When you see a toy soldier or a lighter that's manufactured in China that ends up in the stomach of an albatross at Midway Point in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, that just shows you how much effect you're having on the environment," he said.

Leeson will not divulge all the findings from new research carried out for the film, but it is clear the message will be an alarming one.

Does he think his team can compete in the busy market for alarming messages, currently dominated by the threat of climate change?

"Clearly climate change is one of the most pressing issues, if not the most pressing issue that we face, because it affects everything we do," Leeson says.

But plastic and emissions are directly linked: plastic is estimated to account for around eight percent of the world's fossil fuel use, half of it in energy consumed during its manufacturing.

The film will question the "disposable lifestyle" behind discarded plastic, but not advocate banning the substance altogether.

It will also look at solutions to the waste mountain, including plastic recycling and biogenesis, in which plastic is reduced back to its core elements while producing energy.

An initial aim, says Leeson, is to persuade consumers and manufacturers to reconsider their use of disposable plastics such as mineral water bottles.

He says responsibility for waste cuts across different environmental issues, including climate.

"Plastic is part of that, but also if we are raising awareness about issues such as plastic then were raising awareness about what does actually affect the planet we live on, and I think thats a good thing," he said.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:54 AEST Racine WI (SPX) Feb 01, 2012 - Innovative financing and pricing flexibility are key to preparing the nation's aging freshwater systems to handle growing demand and environmental challenges, according to a Charting New Waters report released by The Johnson Foundation at Wingspread, American Rivers andCeres.

The Financing Sustainable Water Infrastructure report, is the product of a meeting convened by The Johnson Foundation, in collaboration with American Rivers and Ceres, which brought together a group of experts to discuss ways to drive funding toward the infrastructure needed for the 21st century.

Largely built on systems developed during the 19th and early 20th centuries, U.S. water infrastructure faces profound problems of aging components, outdated technology and inflexible governance systems ill-equipped to handle current consumption, environmental and economic problems.

Presently, about 6 billion gallons of expensive, treated water is being lost in the U.S. each day due to leaky and aging pipes - some 14 percent of the nation's daily water use. This pervasive water waste is underscored by the fact the American Society of Civil Engineers gives the nation's water systems a D-, the lowest grade of any infrastructure including roads and bridges.

The report concludes that rebuilding and operating our watersystems as they are presently built would be enormously inefficient. One major problem is the very nature of the systems themselves - where drinking water, stormwater and wastewater are built, financed and operated as entirely distinct units rather than as more efficient, interconnected systems.

Another major problem is myopic, inflexible water-pricing systems that fail to distinguish between various water uses and generally undervalue water.

In order to achieve more sustainable, resilient and cost-effective freshwater systems, the report recommends bold new approaches for financing and operating public water systems, including:

+ Local water solutions that can improve efficiencies, including green infrastructure, closed-loop systems and water recycling;

+ Flexible water pricing and revenue structures that distinguish between drinking water and various other types of water, such as lawn water and toilet water;

+ System-wide, full-cost accounting of water services and financing mechanisms; and

+ Less reliance on state and federal funding and more reliance on private, market-based financing mechanisms that can support local, customer-supported solutions.

"While the deteriorating state of the nation's water infrastructure is not a secret, we have lacked workable strategies and policies to finance the changes needed," said Lynn Broaddus, Director, Environment Programs at The Johnson Foundation.

"This report addresses the critical linkage between financing and sustainability that was initially raised by the Charting New Waters consensus report in 2010. It's not enough to pay for new water infrastructure: we need the financing to actually drive a new, sustainable water infrastructure that will take care of generations to come."

Jeffrey Odefey, Director of Stormwater Programs at American Rivers, said, "Clean water and resilient ecosystems are absolutely vital to our health, our communities, and economy. This timely report lays out clear directions to ensure that our communities grow into the future with safe, reliable water supplies and healthy rivers and streams."

Sharlene Leurig, Senior Manager of Water and Insurance Programs atCeres, said, "This report makes clear that our nation's water infrastructure system is broken and dramatic changes are needed. Rethinking how we finance and operate our vast water systems is not a choice, it's a must. We have the engineering and land use tools we need to ensure our water systems can stand up to 21st century challenges. The key will be partnerships and cooperation between business, government and public interest groups to finance these new tools."

The Johnson Foundation is releasing this report as part of its work with Charting New Waters, an effort it formally launched in 2010 dedicated to catalyzing new solutions to U.S. freshwater challenges. Charting New Waters is composed of a diverse group of leaders from business, agriculture, academia and environmental organizations that have publicly committed to improving U.S. freshwater resources by advancing the principles and recommendations of the group.

The initial phase of work led to the release of Charting New Waters: A Call to Action to Address U.S. Freshwater Challenges, a consensus report issued on Sept. 15, 2010. Download the report here.

As part of its ongoing Charting New Waters effort, The Johnson Foundation is also hosting a series of Regional Freshwater Forums that convene experts to examine freshwater challenges, successes, innovations and potential solutions that can bridge geographies and inform national policy. The first Forum took place in Denver, Colo., in October 2011.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:54 AEST Subscribe to our daily selection of space, military, environment and energy newsletters responseText http://visitor.constantcontact.com/manage/optin/ea?v=0016gbbKsaiGSpQFojVO8ZoHw%3D%3D