Stalagmites Confirm 9,000-Year Lower Brazil Rainfall

Geoscientist Francisco Cruz of the University of Sao Paolo,
Brazil, on the floor of a cave where the team collected
stalagmites for radiometric dating and chemical analysis.
The red clay floor is residue left after thousands of years of
water seeping through and dissolving bedrock limestone.
Credit: Steven Burns

Climate researchers expected to see wet/dry periods in Brazil’s Nordeste region similar to the rest of South America in the past 9,000 years. But the area experienced the opposite, drought when rain was expected. Using stalagmite data, researchers identify unexpected air circulation as the cause.

Until recently, researchers studying climate history in Brazil’s dry Nordeste region expected it to have wet and dry periods similar to the rest of South America. But over the past 9,000 years, the region has shown just the opposite, drought when rain was expected, and vice versa. Geoscientists from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Sao Paolo, Brazil, with others, report this week that they’ve identified the cause as a surprising air circulation pattern.

As Stephen Burns, a UMass Amherst geoscientist explains, “In general, the Northern Hemisphere tropics have been getting drier and the Southern Hemisphere tropics have been getting wetter as maximum summer solar heating shifts southward. But Northeast Brazil has been acting like a Northern Hemisphere site and it’s been getting steadily drier from about 9,000 years ago to today.” Millions of people there must cope with severely disruptive, recurring droughts, Burns and colleagues point out. A more accurate model of past conditions could help predict what to expect in the future.

In their paper published recently in Nature Geoscience, Burns and co-investigators Francisco Cruz of the University of Sao Paolo and Mathias Vuille of the State University of New York, Albany, say they have discovered an unexpected east-west atmospheric circulation pattern that fits their new data and explains the Nordeste anomaly.

18-Year-old rescued from cave

Several members of the Scottsboro-Jackson County Rescue
Squad and other rescue personnel rescued an 18-year-old
man from Stephens Gap Cave after he fell into the vertical
cave while exploring it with a group of friends.

An 18-year-old man was rescued from Stephens Gap Cave near here Sunday afternoon by members of the Scottsboro-Jackson County Rescue Squad.

Jordan Garren of the Limrock community near here was exploring the vertical cave with some friends when he fell, said squad spokesman Eddie Tigue. He said squad members removed Garren by means of a rope and a basket.
Tigue said Garren received a possible broken leg and a cut to the forehead. Squad members transported the victim about a mile over extremely rugged terrain to an ambulance, which then carried him a short distance to an awaiting Air Evac helicopter.
Garren was flown to Huntsville Hospital where his condition was not immediately known. But his injuries were not believed to be life-threatening, Tigue said.
The squad was assisted by the Jackson County Sheriff's Department, the Limrock-Aspel Volunteer Fire Department and paramedics from Highlands Medical Center ambulance service

Source: Al.com

White-Nose Kills Hundreds Of Bats Near Abandoned Mines In Pennsylvania

Game Commission Biologist Greg Turner checks
dead bats outside an abandoned coal near Carbondale.
Credit: Kevin Wenner

Several hundred little brown bats are dead from White-Nose Syndrome (WNS) in Lackawanna County, and the Pennsylvania Game Commission is looking to residents for help uncovering other sites where this deadly disorder may have surfaced.

Game Commission biologists had been uncovering signs of what appeared to be an impending WNS outbreak in Pennsylvania since last spring. Over the past two years, the disorder has killed more than 90 percent of some wintering bat colonies where it first surfaced in New York and spread through New England. Its confirmation in Pennsylvania and New Jersey came in the past two weeks, but Pennsylvania had a surprisingly unique distinction among the states where WNS has been documented; Pennsylvania bats were not leaving their wintering quarters – caves and mines – and weren’t dying. Unfortunately, that no longer can be said.

Last week, bats were found dead outside of an abandoned mine near Carbondale by a citizen who later reported the findings to the agency. Game Commission Wildlife Conservation Officer Chris Skipper visited the site immediately and confirmed the findings. Bats were dead on the ground; flying from the mine; dropping from the sky. Then on Groundhog Day, agency biologist Greg Turner found bats flying from another Lackawanna County mine near Throop. They shouldn’t have been emerging for another six weeks.

Biodiversity Hotspot Enabled Neanderthals To Survive Longer In South East Of Spain

Present day landscapes of Gibraltar (above) and
reconstructed landscapes of Gibraltar from 30,000 years ago (below).
Credit: Museum of Gibraltar

Over 14,000 years ago during the last Pleistocene Ice Age, when a large part of the European continent was covered in ice and snow, Neanderthals in the region of Gibraltar in the south of the Iberian peninsula were able to survive because of the refugium of plant and animal biodiversity. Today, plant fossil remains discovered in Gorham's Cave confirm this unique diversity and wealth of resources available in this area of the planet.

The international team jointly led by Spanish researchers has reconstructed the landscape near Gorham's Cave in Gibraltar, by means of paleobotanical data (plant fossil records) located in the geological deposits investigated between 1997 and 2004. The study, which is published in the Quaternary Science Reviews, also re-examines previous findings relating to the glacial refugia for trees during the ice age in the Iberian Peninsula.

"The reconstructed landscape shows a wide diversity of plant formations in the extreme south of the Iberian peninsula from 32,000 to 10,000 years ago," José S. Carrión explains. He is the principal author and researcher from the University of Murcia. The most significant finding amongst the steppe landscape, pine trees, holm oaks, oak trees, deciduous trees, and others, is the presence of "plant elements indicative of a warm environment," states Carrión.