Word: california
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...MISS CALIFORNIA, defender of "opposite marriage," is "opposite hired" by pageant officials after racy pics, X-rated videos surface...
There are many units by which to measure the impact of climate change: degrees of increasing temperature, feet of rising sea level, dollars needed to adapt to a warming world. But a group of scientists in California have put forth an intriguing new unit of measurement: kilometers per year...
Indeed, because global temperature is rising now, ecosystems are already on the move. "Once you explain it to people, it makes intuitive sense," says co-author David Ackerly, a University of California, Berkeley, biologist. "We know what it's like to drive north to escape the heat. It's concrete, rather than the abstractness of rising average temperatures." (See the top 10 green ideas...
...other co-authors, including scientists at Climate Central in Palo Alto and the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, emphasize that their velocity maps are oversimplifications - at least so far. For one thing, they do not account for the unique characteristics of various species within a given ecosystem. Some species may have more tolerance for climate changes than others, and may not need to move as quickly; some species may be intolerant of change but unable to move. Other species may be sensitive to changes in rainfall, while still others responsive only to temperature - and changes in these weather...
Nevertheless, while the climate-velocity concept is still crude, it's promising enough that Ackerly is collaborating with an organization called the Bay Area Open Space Council on habitat conservation strategies in central California. The new research informs one of the key challenges conservationists face: having only limited funds to buy up land, and, thus, having to spend wisely. "What we bring," says Ackerly, "is the ability to think about how topography might affect those decisions...