Amazon River exhales virtually all carbon taken up by rain forest

By Hannah Hickey – Until recently people believed much of the rain forest’s carbon floated down the Amazon River and ended up deep in the ocean.

The finding has implications for global carbon models, and for the ecology of the Amazon and the world’s other rivers.

“People thought this was one of the components that just got dumped into the ocean,” said first author Nick Ward, a University of Washington doctoral student in oceanography. “We’ve found that terrestrial carbon is respired and basically turned into carbon dioxide as it travels down the river.” more> http://tinyurl.com/p66frtk

Europe’s fight to save its bees

By Richard Schiffman – Last Monday (Apr 29), the European Union banned the most commonly used pesticide group in the world, the neonicotinoids – neonics for short. The ban is set for two years and may be extended.

The EU members took this radical step because their bees are dying – and neonics have been implicated as one contributing cause. The agro-chemical industry warned that the ban will cause huge losses to agriculture, and encouraged farmers to use even more-dangerous insect poisons, which were in vogue before the neonics were introduced in the 1990s.

Europe is invoking the precautionary principle better safe than sorry. Will the United States – which has an even higher economic stake in the health of its pollinators – follow Europe’s lead? more> http://tinyurl.com/c3ka32d

Rolling tree planting robot

Dassault Systèmes – Our great winner Geoffrey Cooper. His IF WE Dream was “IF WE design a rolling tree planting robot, we can send them out to replant forests and restore a desertified land. Let’s make it happen!!“. Geoffrey is a industrial designer coming from Canada and lived in Los Angeles at the time of the challenge. more> http://tinyurl.com/dxoc4km

Norway’s Capital Doesn’t Have Enough Trash to Help Power the City

By Kharunya Paramaguru – In an age where there is an increasing demand to find alternatives to landfill sites, and a pressing need to reduce garbage production globally, Oslo, the capital of Norway, is experiencing an unusual problem with its trash: there’s not enough of it.

In order to sustain that waste-energy production, the Norwegians plan on importing garbage–potentially from as far afield as the U.S. given how relatively inexpensive sea transportation is. Last year Sweden also ran out of garbage to burn and plans to import nearly 800,000 annually to keep up with its energy production. more> http://tinyurl.com/ctcxgdd

Views from the Solar System (108)

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An Astronaut’s View of the Colorado Plateau
NASA – The Colorado Plateau spans northern Arizona, southern Utah, northwestern New Mexico, and southwestern Colorado. This physiographic province is well known for its striking landscapes and broad vistas—an impression that is enhanced by the view from the orbital perspective of the International Space Station. This astronaut photograph highlights part of the Utah-Arizona border region of the Plateau, and includes several prominent landforms.

The Colorado River, dammed to form Lake Powell in 1963, crosses from east to west (which is left to right here because the astronaut was looking south; north is towards the bottom of the image). The confluence of the Colorado and San Juan Rivers is also visible. Sunglint—sunlight reflected off a water surface back towards the observer—provides a silvery, mirror-like sheen to some areas of the water surfaces.

The geologic uplift of the Colorado Plateau led to rapid downcutting of rivers into the flat sedimentary bedrock, leaving spectacular erosional landforms. One such feature, The Rincon, preserves evidence of a former meander bend of the Colorado River.