Julia Whitty

Environmental Correspondent

Julia is an award-winning author of fiction and nonfiction (Deep Blue Home, The Fragile Edge, A Tortoise for the Queen of Tonga), and a former documentary filmmaker. She also blogs at Deep Blue Home.

Full Bio | Get my RSS | Follow @juliawhitty

Julia is a writer and former documentary filmmaker and the author of The Fragile Edge: Diving & Other Adventures in the South Pacific, winner of a PEN USA Literary Award, the John Burroughs Medal, the Kiriyama Prize, the Northern California Books Awards, and finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Deep Blue Home: An Intimate Ecology of Our Wild Ocean. Her short story collection A Tortoise for the Queen of Tonga won an O. Henry and was a finalist for the PEN Hemingway Award. She also blogs at Deep Blue Home.

The Endangered Species Act Really Works

—By Julia Whitty

| Fri May. 18, 2012 10:36 AM PDT

Gray wolves were hunted to near extinction in the western US. By 1973 none remained in the wild. Listed as endangered in 1967, they recolonized the Rocky Mountains from Canada. Protected, they grew to 1,679 wolves by 2009, delisted in 2011: Martin Mecnarowski via Wikimedia Commons

Just in time for Endangered Species Day the Center for Biological Diversity analyzed 110 species protected under the US Endangered Species Act (ESA) and found that 90 percent are on track to meet recovery goals set by federal scientists, with some far exceeding expectations. From the report:

On average, species recovered in 25 years, while their recovery plan predicted 23 years — a 91 percent timeliness accomplishment.

Critics of the Endangered Species Act contend it is a failure because only 1 percent of the species under its protection have recovered and been delisted... To objectively test whether the Endangered Species Act is recovering species at a sufficient rate, we compared the actual recovery rate of 110 species with the projected recovery rate in their federal recovery plans. The species range over all 50 states, include all major taxonomic groups, and have a diversity of listing lengths.We found that the Endangered Species Act has a remarkably successful recovery rate: 90 percent of species are recovering at the rate specified by their federal recovery plan.

We confirmed the conclusion of scientists and auditors who assert that the great majority of species have not been listed long enough to warrant an expectation of recovery: 80 percent of species have not yet reached their expected recovery year. On average, these species have been listed for just 32 years, while their recovery plans required 46 years of listing.

Meet a few of the success stories:

Bighorn sheep: Philipp Haupt via Wikimedia CommonsThe Peninsular bighorn sheep declined to near extinction because of housing developments, agriculture, collisions with cars, predation by mountain lions and diseases contracted from domestic sheep. Sheep populations plummeted from 971 in 1971, to 276 in 1996, but since being listed as endangered in 1998, the number of bighorns has increased to 981 as of 2010.

Green sea turtle: Brocken Inaglory via Wikimedia CommonsGreen sea turtles in the Pacific are threatened by habitat loss, egg collection, hunting, beach development, bycatch mortality in commercial fisheries, and sea level rise due to global warming. In Hawaii, more than 90 percent of nesting occurs at French Frigate Shoals. Since being listed as endangered in 1978, the number females nesting there increased from 105 to 808 in 2011.

Piping plover: Mdf via Wikimedia Commons

Atlantic piping plover populations declined due to 19th-century hunting and the millinery trade. After these threats were eliminated, its numbers increased, but began declining after 1950 due to beach development and predation by native and introduced predators. It was listed on the ESA in 1985, and gained habitat protection, control of recreationists on beaches, and predators, which allowed its population in the US to increase from 550 pairs in 1986 to 1,550 in 2011. The US population reached its overall recovery goal in three of the past five years, but some of its subpopulations haven't reached recovery yet. Its associated Canadian population has grown little.

From the report:

The corollary to claiming the Endangered Species Act is 1 percent successful because only 1 percent of species has been delisted is that the other 99 percent are failures. In fact, many still endangered species have increased dramatically since being placed on the list. Among them are the California least tern (2,819 percent increase in nesting pairs), San Miguel island fox (3,830 percent increase in wild foxes), black-footed ferret (8,280 percent increase in the fall population), Atlantic green sea turtle (2,206 percent increase in nesting females on Florida beaches) and El Segundo blue butterfly (22,312 percent increase in butterflies).

"Saving species from the brink of extinction—and bringing them back to a point where they're going to survive into the future—can't happen overnight," says lead author Kieran Suckling. "Calling the Act at failure at this point is like throwing away a 10-day prescription of antibiotics on the third day and saying they don't work. It just makes no sense."

You can read the entire report and meet some of the other species being aided by the ESA here.

Advertise on MotherJones.com

Rapid Retreat of Columbia Glacier

—By Julia Whitty

| Thu May. 17, 2012 2:05 PM PDT

Columbia Glacier, Alaska, in 1986 (top) and 2011 (bottom): NASA

Alaska's Columbia Glacier is one of the fastest evolving ice rivers on Earth. It flows from its headwaters 10,000 feet up in the Chugach Mountains towards Prince William Sound. In 1980 it began a rapid retreat that continues today. From NASA Earth Observatory:

These two false-color images, both captured by the Thematic Mapper (TM) instrument on Landsat 5, show the glacier and the surrounding landscape in 1986 and 2011. Snow and ice appears bright cyan, vegetation is green, clouds are white or light orange, and the open ocean is dark blue. Exposed bedrock is brown, while rocky debris on the glacier’s surface is gray. The 2011 image has more snow because it was captured in May, while the 1986 image was captured in July... As the glacier has retreated, it has also thinned substantially, as shown by the expansion of brown bedrock areas. Rings of freshly exposed rock, known as trimlines, are prominent in the later image. Since the 1980s, the glacier has lost about half of its total thickness and volume.

The retreat has also changed the flow dynamics of the glacier. The medial moraine—a line of debris deposited when separate channels of ice merge (seen as a line down the center of the 1986 glacier)—divided the Main Branch from West Branch in 1986. Now the retreating terminus has effectively split the Columbia into two glaciers, with calving occurring on both fronts.

Last 12 Months Hottest in Recorded US History

—By Julia Whitty

| Thu May. 17, 2012 11:53 AM PDT

Record average national temperatures from May 2011 to April 2012: NOAA/NCDC

The last 12 months were the hottest 12 months in US history since record-keeping began in 1895. This according to NOAA's National Climatic Data Center's latest State of the Climate report.

This historic heat broke the prior record set from November 1999 to October 2000 by 0.1°F.

Ten warmest 12-month periods in contiguous US since 1895: NOAA/NCDC.

But what's really interesting is if you put this new record in context of the current trend. As you can see in the chart above, all 10 of the hottest 12-year periods have occurred since 1999.

In the US, the 12 months between May 2011 and April 2012 ranked as:

the 2nd warmest summer on record
the 4th warmest winter on record
the warmest March on record
during this time 22 states saw record warmth
during this time 19 states saw top 10 hottest

Contiguous US temperature January-April 1895-2012: NOAA/NCDC

The average temperature in the contiguous US from January to April 2012 was of 45.4°F—that's 5.4°F above the 20th-century average for that period. It shattered the prior record set in 2006 by a huge margin of 1.6°F.

The chart above shows the hot first quarter of 2012 charted against the long-term average since 1895. Specifically:

The warming trend of 1.9°F per century is shown by the red line
The long-term average can be seen in the gray line
Actual temperatures from January to April 2012 are shown in the blue points/line
The green line is a 9-point binomial filter, which shows decadal-scale variations.

United States Drought Monitor as of 1 May 2012.: climate.gov

The gnarly partner to all this heat is drought. The US Drought Monitor (USDM) map above shows the state of drought in the lower 48 as of 1 May 2012. That's a lot of dry territory.

Drought is assessed on the D-scale (D0 to D4)—similar to the scale used for hurricanes and tornadoes—and designed to reflect the unusualness of a drought episode. D1 conditions (pale yellow) are expected to occur only ~10 to 20 percent of the time. Much-rarer D4 conditions are expected no more than every 50 years (darkest orange).

Heat anomalies central and eastern equatorial Pacific in past 12 months: NWS/Climate Prediction Center

One mastermind behind these temperature and drought anomalies in the US is the state of sea surface temperatures in the top ~1,000 feet (300 meters) of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. These reflect our current position in the El Niño/La Niña/Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

The strong La Niña that held sway for most of the last couple of years dissipated in April. The Climate Prediction Center forecasts a return to ENSO neutral conditions this summer—with a strong caveat that at least half the climate models predict a swing to El Niño.

But the ENSO pattern has been changing in recent years too (I wrote more about that here). So we really don't know what's in store, other than the likelihood—based on the trends—of more extremes and, with them, more costly weather and agricultural disasters.

Human Languages Decline as Species Disappear

—By Julia Whitty

| Mon May. 14, 2012 11:23 AM PDT

Quechua woman and child, Peru: quinet via Wikimedia Commons

Biologists estimate annual loss of species at 1,000 times (or greater) of historic rates. Linguists predict that 50–90% of the world's languages will disappear by the end of this century.

A new paper in PNAS finds that 70 percent of the world's languages are found within Earth's most biologically diverse regions.

Earlier studies suggested there was probably a lot of overlap between areas of high biological diversity and areas of high linguistic diversity. But data were limited.

In the new study, the authors used recently compiled global data showing the geographic locations of more than 6,900 languages compiled for geographic information system (GIS) applications by Global Mapping International. They used the locations of biodiversity hotspots and high biodiversity wilderness areas compiled by Conservation International.

Their findings:

The languages in biodiverse hotspots are frequently unique to their particular regions
Many of these endemic languages also face extinction

Biodiversity hotspots map: L. J. Gorenflo, et al. PNAS. DOI:10.1073/pnas.1117511109

Geographic distribution of indigenous and nonmigrant languages in 2009. (Click map for larger version): L. J. Gorenflo, et al. PNAS. DOI:10.1073/pnas.1117511109

The researchers examined 35 biodiversity hotspots—locations with an exceptionally high number of endemic species, which have lost 70 percent or more of their habitat (top map, above). These hotspots comprise only 2.3 percent of the Earth's surface, yet contain more than half the world's vascular plants and 43 percent of its terrestrial vertebrate species. They also contain people speaking 3,202 languages—nearly half of all languages spoken on Earth (bottom map, above).

"In the past, it was hard to get biologists to look at people," says Gorenflo. "That's really changed dramatically in the past few years. One thing that a lot of biologists and ecologists are now seeing is that people are part of these ecosystems."

The team also examined linguistic diversity in five high biodiversity wilderness areas—places whose remaining habitat covers ~6.1 percent of Earth's surface and contains about 17 percent of the vascular plants and 6 percent of the terrestrial vertebrate species. These biodiversity wilderness areas are also home to people speaking another 1,622 languages.

"In many cases it appears that conditions that wipe out species wipe out languages," says lead author Larry Gorenflo at Penn State Department of Landscape Architecture, and affiliated with Penn's Institutes of Energy and Environment. "I think it argues for concerted conservation efforts that are integrated and try to maintain biodiversity and cultural diversity."

From the paper:

Given the capacity of humans to dominate, and in many cases eradicate, other species on our planet, the importance of the relationship between people and the natural environments they inhabit cannot be overstated for biodiversity conservation. Unfortunately, the opportunity to enlist speakers of particular languages in biodiversity conservation is rapidly disappearing as languages are lost at an alarming rate. Although linguists have attempted to identify languages in danger of disappearance, no system of language ranking in terms of risk can claim the broad attention and authority enjoyed by the IUCN Red List, the main means of evaluating the conditions of species.

Kutia Kondh woman, Odisha, India: PICQ via Wikimedia Commons

As for why the coexistence between areas with high concentrations of endangered species and endangered languages, the researchers aren't sure. But possibly because indigenous cultures, supported by their languages, create conditions optimum to maintaining species and keeping ecosystems intact and working.

The open-access paper:

L. J. Gorenflo, Suzanne Romaine, Russell A. Mittermeier, and Kristen Walker-Painemilla. Co-occurrence of linguistic and biological diversity in biodiversity hotspots and high biodiversity wilderness areas. PNAS. DOI:10.1073/pnas.1117511109

Arctic Ocean is a Potent Methane Source Too

—By Julia Whitty

| Wed May. 9, 2012 1:19 PM PDT

Arctic sea ice: NOAA

We've known for a while that a melting Arctic is likely to be a big methane producer, and that methane is a potent greenhouse gas. Until recently we thought the primary sources of Arctic methane were from:

Melting tundra
Melting marine sediments (like gas hydrates)

Now a new paper in Nature Geoscience reports the Arctic Ocean is itself a source of atmospheric methane. Here's how this scientific riddle got cracked. From NASA's Earth Observatory:

During five research flights in 2009–10, [researchers] measured increased methane levels while flying at low altitudes north of the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas... The methane level detected during the flights was about one-half percent higher than normal background levels. But where was the methane coming from? The team detected no carbon monoxide in the atmosphere, which would have been a signature of methane coming from the human combustion of fuels. And based on the time of year, the location, and the nature of the emissions, it was unlikely that the methane was coming from high-latitude wetlands or geologic reservoirs.

Thawing on East Siberian Arctic Shelf: Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation

The researchers eventually pinpointed the source: the Arctic Ocean. But not just any part of the Arctic Ocean. From the paper:

"While the methane levels we detected weren't particularly large," says lead author Eric Kort, "the potential source region, the Arctic Ocean, is vast. So our finding could represent a noticeable new global source of methane."

We further show that high methane concentrations are restricted to areas over open leads and regions with fractional sea-ice cover. Based on the observed gradients in methane concentration, we estimate that sea–air fluxes amount to around 2 mg d−1 m−2, comparable to emissions seen on the Siberian shelf. We suggest that the surface waters of the Arctic Ocean represent a potentially important source of methane, which could prove sensitive to changes in sea-ice cover.

To put that into perspective, the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is leaking an amount of methane comparable to all the methane from the rest of the world's oceans put together. In the schematic above, you can how its permafrost is highly porous, allowing methane stored under to burst through cracks into the atmosphere.

According to the new research, now we're talking about a rapidly de-icing Arctic, with methane bursting through its ice cracks, capable of contributing hella big methane to the atmosphere. Talk about a tipping point.

No one's yet sure how the methane is produced, but lead author Eric Kort suspects biological productivity in Arctic surface waters may be the culprit. "It's possible that as large areas of sea ice melt and expose more ocean water," he says, "methane production may increase, leading to larger methane emissions."

The video condenses the rapid changes underway in the Arctic into two minutes (though prior to the new evidence on methane production from the Arctic Ocean).

The paper: