Word: ecologist
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...chunk of the Amazon was deforested in the second half of 2007 and even more was degraded by fire. Some scientists believe fires are now altering the local microclimate and could eventually reduce the Amazon to a savanna or even a desert. "It's approaching a tipping point," says ecologist Daniel Nepstad of the Woods Hole Research Center...
...science world assumed biofuels would be grown in parking lots. The deforestation of Indonesia has shown that's not the case. It turns out that the carbon lost when wilderness is razed overwhelms the gains from cleaner-burning fuels. A study by University of Minnesota ecologist David Tilman concluded that it will take more than 400 years of biodiesel use to "pay back" the carbon emitted by directly clearing peat lands to grow palm oil; clearing grasslands to grow corn for ethanol has a payback period of 93 years. The result is that biofuels increase demand for crops, which boosts...
...without which life as we know it might not be possible. (Think how expensive it would be if we had to pay to remove hundreds of thousands of tons of nitrogen from our waterways every year.) "These streams are the first line of defense," says Patrick Mulholland, an aquatic ecologist at Oak Ridge and the lead author of the study...
...demand keeps rising in wealthy countries for nutritious, and delicious, white-fish meat from species that have become increasingly hard to find closer to shore. "All fisheries are turning gradually into deep-sea fisheries because they have fished themselves out of the shallow waters," says Robert Steneck, a marine ecologist at the University of Maine. "The solution is not going into the deep sea, but better managing the shallow waters, where fish live fast and die young but where the ecosystems have greater potential for resilience...
...clearing out accumulated vegetation. This is a little like letting newspapers pile up in your kitchen: If a fire occurs, the place is primed to blow. "These larger and more severe wildfires are an unintended consequence of a suppression policy that doesn't work," says Richard Minnich, a wildfire ecologist at the University of California at Riverside. "If anything, suppression actually endangers society...