In some ways, the picture of amphibian survival I’ve painted over the past few weeks is pretty grim: we know that species are disappearing around the world, in some cases faster than we can identify them; we know that disease is playing a role, as well as pollution and a changing climate; and we know […]
Author Archive
Giving frogs a leg up
Silence (and raspy-ness) will fall
I have to say that frog researchers are doing, and have done, some pretty amazing things to learn more about the big issues facing amphibians and how we can improve their chances. (It would never have occurred to me that you could track frogs.) And their results are helping us better understand not only the […]
A disappearing act
I’ve spent the last few days trying to get a sense of how frogs are faring around the world, and what I found was generally depressing- according the to the first Global Amphibian Assessment which was completed in 2004, at least 43% of amphibian species are in decline worldwide (Ben-Ari 2005). This trend seems to […]
Croaks in the night
Where I am in Louisiana, spring is already in full swing- the tulip trees are blooming, song birds are loudly proclaiming their territories, and spotted salamander egg masses can be found in standing bodies of water. When some friends went looking for amphibians a week ago, they found lots of croaking frogs. Over the last […]
Cooling the greenhouse
In my last post I looked at larger, systems-wide options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but those actions may not be possible where you live, or it may require some time to move down those roads. I’m not sure how much time we have to prevent certain climate change effects, and I personally feel better […]
Reining in greenhouse gas emissions, Part I
As I started looking through literature on ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it became clear that studies had approached the issue largely from two different angles: a) how specific industries are contributing to global warming in a broad sense, and b) how smaller-scale decisions, like those made by consumers, are involved. It made sense […]
The air we breathe
I think it should be pretty clear that researching the state of the atmosphere is a tall order- and some journal articles go REALLY in-depth when it comes to chemical reactions and composition and simulations (after a while, I found my eyes glazing over anytime I encountered more than 2 pages of graphs)- but I […]
A resolution to learn more
As 2013 begins, I’ve been mulling over events from last year and decisions to be made in the next 12 months, some of which involve things like energy sources and new places to live and even automobiles. And I’ve been hearing a lot about alternative energy and fracking and average temperatures, among other topics. I […]
Building a better dingo house
Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen that dingoes play a variety of roles in the environment, and the extent and importance of those roles is hotly debated by researchers. Dingoes may help native wildlife by keeping exotic predator numbers down, but they may also prey upon threatened species in Australia. Dingoes are apex predators […]
Keeping up with the pack
Dingoes seem to be pretty controversial animals, and I think I even found about as close as you’ll get to a fight in the scientific community over the ecological roles of the dingo (what was fascinating about the exchange was not just what was said, but how it was said- scientists can be mean). A […]