ReportWire

Tag: Oregon State University

  • OSU Researchers Play Pivotal Role In Global High Seas Treaty – KXL

    [ad_1]

    A Spilhaus projection that shows both the one-third of the ocean under countries’ national jurisdiction – known as Exclusive Economic Zones – and the two-thirds that make up the high seas. The map was created through a partnership among OSU’s Jane Lubchenco, Cory Langhoff of the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, and Dawn Wright of Esri, a company that develops geographic information systems software. Courtesy of OSU.

    Corvallis, Ore. – Researchers at Oregon State University played a key role in an historic global conservation effort. Known officially as the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdictions Agreement, the High Seas Treaty takes effect Saturday.

    OSU’s Kirsten Grorud-Colvert admits the High Seas are a vast area, “It’s two-thirds of the ocean, which means it’s like half of our planet.” She adds, “This is international waters, where, up to this point, there hasn’t been a mechanism for creating this conservation for biodiversity.” Grorud-Colvert was part of a team of more than three dozen scientists from 13 countries that developed a roadmap for planning and creating Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). “There are incredibly thriving ecosystems on things like seamounts, whales, tuna, all these species we know and love. Now we’ll have an opportunity for the global community to consider how best to conserve and protect them.” She says some of those ecosystems and species have yet to be discovered. The MPA Guide: A framework to achieve global goals for the ocean they created was published in September 2021.

    Work on that guide began when Jenna Sullivan-Stack was a grad student at OSU. She saw, “A very diverse, broad set of expertise that’s been contributing over years. And it’s all based on scientific studies that have taken place over decades.” Now, as an OSU Research Associate, she says it’s rewarding to see the work culminate with ratification of the treaty. “How we implement it is really the work that’s to come and it’s going to be hard work, a lot of compromise, a lot of listening. And our work is sort of calling for science to play a lead role in those conversations.”

    Grorud-Colvert and Sullivan-Stack wrote an editorial on the treaty, published Thursday in Science. For more on the treaty and the work to protect the High Seas, visit the High Seas Alliance website.

    Palau was the first nation to ratify the High Seas Treaty, in 2024. Morocco became the 60th on September 19, 2025, setting a 120-day clock for it to take effect on January 17, 2026. The guide developed in part at OSU will be used as the UN takes up that conversation starting in about a month.

    More about:

    [ad_2]

    Heather Roberts

    Source link

  • More California students than ever are heading out of state for college. Here’s why

    [ad_1]

    Javier Perez, a senior at Benjamin Franklin Senior High School in Highland Park, dreams of studying computer science at Dartmouth College.

    “For me, it’s really important to be surrounded by the right people,” said Perez, who earlier this year spent two days on the New Hampshire campus during a spring college tour and said he felt a “genuine connection” with the people he met. Plus, he likes cold weather.

    He’s hardly alone. A Public Policy Institute of California report released this month found that the share of college-bound California high school graduates enrolling in out-of-state colleges has nearly doubled in the last two decades, rising from 8.5% in 2002 to 14.6% in 2022.

    West Coast and Southwest colleges in particular seek out students in population-rich California in their recruitment efforts. Making the move more enticing is that many public universities participate in a program offering Californians discounted tuition at public colleges in the West.

    In 2022, nearly 40,000 California high school grads enrolled in out-of-state colleges, roughly a third of whom flocked to Arizona, Oregon or New York, the researchers found in their analysis of enrollment data from the National Center for Education Statistics. In 2002, the number was closer to 15,000.

    In Arizona, the most popular universities included Arizona State University, Grand Canyon University — known for its online programs — and the University of Arizona. Oregon State University drew the highest number of Californians in that state.

    California grads who moved to New York for college were drawn to smaller, competitive private liberal arts colleges, usually with heftier tuitions than California’s public universities. Because of limitations in national enrollment data, the study couldn’t account for scholarships, making it hard to determine whether the California students were choosing out-of-state options because of financial aid incentives.

    The researchers found that most students leaving California attend colleges less selective on average than the competitive University of California system. About half attend colleges more selective than the California State University system, which will soon automatically admit students who meet requirements at 16 of its campuses.

    Lynda McGee, a recently retired Los Angeles Unified School District college counselor who spent more than two decades at Downtown Magnets High School, said she sees the trend as a positive development. She said she often urged students to look beyond California, as she felt out-of-state campuses would expose them to a more diverse range of people and experiences.

    Arizona State, the University of Arizona and Oregon State have strong name recognition, actively recruit in California and feel less intimidating to students because they’re relatively close to home, she said. Oregon State’s athletics programs are a particular draw.

    Under the right conditions, and after taking into account financial aid or merit-based scholarships, private colleges can sometimes end up costing less than a California public university, said Erica Rosales, executive director of College Match, a mentoring program for low-income students in Los Angeles.

    “For a low-income, first-generation student, a private institution that meets full need without loans is often the most affordable and most supportive option available,” Rosales said in an email.

    Rosales, who has spent nearly two decades helping students navigate the college admissions process, noted that Cal Grant income ceilings leave out some middle-class families unable to afford to send their children to a UC or CSU campus. Financial aid at CSU campuses typically covers tuition, not room and board, according to Rosales.

    The promise of full financial-need coverage is why Perez, who grew up in Guatemala and immigrated to the U.S. three years ago, is aiming to attend a private liberal arts college. He learned about his options through College Match. The program funded a two-week East Coast college tour this year and provided him with a laptop for his applications.

    Javier Perez, 18, takes public transit to a library. His three-hour round-trip commute to and from school involves a bike ride, two trains and a bus.

    (Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

    Perez said leaving California would enable him to experience life in a small college town surrounded by nature. He’d like to spend his days focusing on his studies instead of commuting to school. His current commute from his Koreatown home to his Highland Park campus takes three hours round-trip, and involves a bike ride, two trains and a bus.

    Perez, an ambitious programmer who leads his school’s competitive robotics team, intends to apply to 22 colleges, including Stanford University, Caltech and a handful of UCs and CSUs.

    But his hopes are set on moving to the East Coast, as reflected by many of the schools on his list: Middlebury College, Boston College, Bowdoin College, Columbia University, Brown University and his dream school, Dartmouth College.

    “I just want to explore as much as I can in my college life,” Perez said.

    [ad_2]

    Iris Kwok

    Source link

  • OSU Football Player Arrested On Abuse Charges – KXL

    [ad_1]

    Oregon State football player arrested on 18 charges. MGN image.

    BENTON COUNTY, OR – An Oregon State University football player has been arrested and faces multiple domestic violence charges.

    According to several media accounts, Sophomore defensive back Exodus Ayers was booked into the Benton County Jail on 18 separate charges, including a felony charge of coercion and strangulation.

    Court documents reportedly show the charges all pertain to a woman identified only as Ayers ex-girlfriend, who is also an OSU student. The alleged abuse is said to have happened in early September of this year.

    Beside contacting law enforcement, the woman also says she let OSU football coaches know what had happened.

    The university issued the following statement: “The university is aware of the pending charges involving Exodus Ayers, is gathering information and is addressing this with the seriousness and care that it warrants.”

    Beavers interim head coach Robb Akey has declined to talk about the charge, though he admits he is aware of the situation.

    More about:

    [ad_2]

    Tim Lantz

    Source link

  • University researchers model storm surge study on Hurricane Ian

    [ad_1]

    Hurricane Ian dramatically changed our coastlines, damaged homes and caused serious flooding when it struck Florida in 2022.Oregon State University researchers looked at Hurricane Ian’s impact on coastal communities and saw an opportunity to investigate storm surges and how to protect people’s homes. “So those houses are 1:3, which means everything is dramatically three times smaller than the real house… but also the response of the house, how it’s broken and how is damages is also scaled properly to represent what happens in nature,” Pedro Lomonaco, director of the Hinsdale Wave Research Lab, said.It’s all about seeing how houses in coastal communities hold up to storm surge.”We build those in our directional wave basin. Our directional wave basin is imagined like an Olympic-size swimming pool where we can generate wave,” Lomonaco said. The researchers replicated waves as close as possible to what you find in nature with increasing storm surges. One house was built to meet the 100-year-flood standard which is the current FEMA guideline. Another was built to a 500-year-standard and sits higher above the water.The researchers increased the wave strength every 15 minutes until the houses collapsed.“The houses that are lower are going to be affected by waves sooner, and they are going to be damaged sooner. And the higher elevation houses are going to be more resilient and more resistant to those storm surge and wave,” Lomonaco said. Lomonaco says they’re still processing all the data; however, the information can be helpful in the future.The researchers are still processing all of the data from the experiment, but Lomonaco believes this research will be helpful in the future.He added that awareness is one of the main takeaways from the experiment, “We have to accept that we have placed the houses in the wrong place is the first point. and we allowed the construction of houses in places that were too risky and now we’re paying the price of that.”He acknowledged that this may not be the popular answer, but people may need to move their houses to places which are safer.Lomonaco anticipates the experiment’s results could be incorporated into building codes and where houses are built.

    Hurricane Ian dramatically changed our coastlines, damaged homes and caused serious flooding when it struck Florida in 2022.

    Oregon State University researchers looked at Hurricane Ian’s impact on coastal communities and saw an opportunity to investigate storm surges and how to protect people’s homes.

    “So those houses are 1:3, which means everything is dramatically three times smaller than the real house… but also the response of the house, how it’s broken and how is damages is also scaled properly to represent what happens in nature,” Pedro Lomonaco, director of the Hinsdale Wave Research Lab, said.

    It’s all about seeing how houses in coastal communities hold up to storm surge.

    “We build those in our directional wave basin. Our directional wave basin is imagined like an Olympic-size swimming pool where we can generate wave,” Lomonaco said.

    The researchers replicated waves as close as possible to what you find in nature with increasing storm surges.

    One house was built to meet the 100-year-flood standard which is the current FEMA guideline. Another was built to a 500-year-standard and sits higher above the water.

    The researchers increased the wave strength every 15 minutes until the houses collapsed.

    “The houses that are lower are going to be affected by waves sooner, and they are going to be damaged sooner. And the higher elevation houses are going to be more resilient and more resistant to those storm surge and wave,” Lomonaco said.

    Lomonaco says they’re still processing all the data; however, the information can be helpful in the future.

    The researchers are still processing all of the data from the experiment, but Lomonaco believes this research will be helpful in the future.

    He added that awareness is one of the main takeaways from the experiment, “We have to accept that we have placed the houses in the wrong place is the first point. and we allowed the construction of houses in places that were too risky and now we’re paying the price of that.”

    He acknowledged that this may not be the popular answer, but people may need to move their houses to places which are safer.

    Lomonaco anticipates the experiment’s results could be incorporated into building codes and where houses are built.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Study estimates that gray whales near Oregon Coast ingest millions of tiny particles daily through their diet and feces.

    Study estimates that gray whales near Oregon Coast ingest millions of tiny particles daily through their diet and feces.

    [ad_1]

    Newswise — CORVALLIS, Ore. – Oregon State University researchers estimate that gray whales feeding off the Oregon Coast consume up to 21 million microparticles per day, a finding informed in part by poop from the whales.

    Microparticle pollution includes microplastics and other human-sourced materials, including fibers from clothing. The finding, just published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, is important because these particles are increasing exponentially and predicted to continue doing so in the coming decades, according to researchers Leigh Torres and Susanne Brander.

    Microparticle pollution is a threat to the health of gray whales, in addition to obstacles related to increased boat traffic and loss of prey.

    “These are quite scary numbers,” said Leigh Torres, an associate professor at Oregon State and an author of the paper. “I think they should raise concern for people who care about the marine environment or about their own environment and exposure to microplastics.

    “Little by little we are all getting exposed to more and more microplastics. That’s inescapable at this point across all ecosystems, including right off our coast here in Oregon.”

    Susanne Brander, an associate professor and ecotoxicologist at Oregon State and co-author of the study, said the findings reinforce the need to curb the release of microparticles because of the adverse impacts they have on organisms and ecosystems.

    “This issue is gaining momentum globally and some states, such as California, have taken important steps,” Brander said. “But more action needs to be taken, including here in Oregon, because this problem is not going away anytime soon.”

    The study focused on a subgroup of about 230 gray whales known as the Pacific Coast Feeding Group. They spend winters in Baja California, Mexico and migrate north to forage in coastal habitats from northern California to southern British Columbia from June through November.

    Since 2015, Torres, who leads the Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Laboratory in the OSU Marine Mammal Institute, and her team, including doctoral student Lisa Hildebrand, have used drones and other tools to study the health and behavior of this subgroup of gray whales off the Oregon Coast. As part of this work, they collect poop samples from the gray whales.

    For the new study, the researchers collected zooplankton, which are an important food supply for gray whales, and commercial and recreational fish.

     

    “We had determined the caloric content of several zooplankton species, so next we wanted to know what their microparticle loads might be to get a more complete picture of the quality of these prey items,” Hildebrand said.

    Brander, Hildebrand and members of Brander’s Ecotoxicology and Environmental Stress Lab analyzed the microparticle loads in 26 zooplankton samples collected from whale feeding areas and found microparticles in all of them. A total of 418 suspected microparticles were identified, with fibers accounting for more than 50% of them.

    Torres and Hildebrand then combined that data with known estimates of energetic requirements for lactating and pregnant female gray whales to quantify how many zooplankton and microparticles they consume in a day. That yielded estimates that lactating and pregnant whales consume between 6.5 million and 21 million microparticles per day.

    “It’s a wake-up call that whales are getting that much microplastic from what they eat,” Torres said. “It’s likely that humans are also getting a lot of microplastics from our own fish diet.”

    Torres notes that the microparticle consumption estimates are likely conservative because they only account for what the whales consume from zooplankton.

    Gray whales likely ingest more microparticles directly from the water and seafloor sediment because they are filter feeders that engulf large amounts of water while consuming prey and also use suction feeding to obtain prey from the seafloor.

    Analysis of the poop samples provided a window to what kind of microparticles these gray whales were digesting. The researchers analyzed five poop samples and found microparticles in all of them. Similar to zooplankton, the majority of the microparticles were fiber.

    The researchers also found that the microparticles in the poop were significantly larger than those found in the zooplankton, leading them to believe the larger particles came from the water or sediment, not the prey (too small to consume these larger particles).

    The findings raise concerns for Torres, whose past research has shown that this subgroup of gray whales is skinnier than other groups of gray whales.

    “These whales are already stressed out with boats driving around all the time and the risk of getting hit by one of those boats,” she said. “They might also have less prey around because of changes in the environment, like less kelp. And now the quality of the prey might be poor because of these high microplastic loads.”

    Brander and Torres are continuing their investigations by studying the effects of microfibers on zooplankton that are an important food source for whales and fish in Oregon waters.

    “That all can lead to being poorly nourished and having poor health,” Torres said, “That can lead to stunted growth, smaller body size, lower ability to have calves and animals not using this habitat anymore. All of those are areas of significant concern.”

    Other authors of the paper are Julia Parker, Elissa Bloom, Robyn Norman, Jennifer Van Brocklin and Katherine Lasdin. They are all from Oregon State and in the colleges of Agricultural Sciences, Engineering and Science. Brander is also affiliated with Oregon State’s Coastal Oregon Marine Experiment Station at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport.

    [ad_2]

    Oregon State University

    Source link

  • As Colleges Focus on Quality in Online Learning, Advocates Ask: What About In-Person Courses?

    As Colleges Focus on Quality in Online Learning, Advocates Ask: What About In-Person Courses?

    [ad_1]

    As colleges’ online catalogs grow, so too has the push to develop standards of quality for those courses. But are in-person classes getting the same attention?

    If you ask many online-education advocates, the answer is “no.” And the solution, many say, is for colleges to adopt standards and policies that set consistent expectations for quality across all courses, whether they’re remote or in a classroom.

    While decades of research and the pandemic-spurred expansion of online learning have helped demystify it, and build confidence in its efficacy, these advocates say the misconception lingers that remote education is inherently lower in quality than instruction in the classroom. And that stigma, they say, puts a magnifying glass to online ed, while largely leaving in-person classes to business as usual.

    “To think through all of our college experiences, we have all been in large lecture classes” with minimal to no contact with a professor, said Julie Uranis, senior vice president for online and strategic initiatives at the University Professional and Continuing Education Association. In other words, an in-person class doesn’t necessarily guarantee more student engagement and instructor support. “But for some reason, that bar is higher for online.“

    Some college administrators can attest to this. When accreditors ask institutions to prove that all of their courses are equally rigorous, colleges’ interpretation of that instruction has often been to “show that online courses are up to the standard of” in-person courses, “not the other way around,” wrote Beth Ingram, executive vice president and provost of Northern Illinois University, in an email.

    The discrepancy seems to be borne out in the data, too. A reported 38 percent of in-person courses have no quality-assurance standards to meet, according to a survey of more than 300 chief online officers by Quality Matters, an organization that helps ensure quality in online education. That compares with 17 percent of online synchronous courses and 5 percent of online asynchronous courses.

    To be sure, online and in-person aren’t wholly interchangeable — there are nuances to account for. Distance education, for example, is governed by federal regulations that require courses to include “regular and substantive” interactions; that necessitates course design that intentionally creates opportunities for students to engage with one another and their professor. Online incorporates more technology, too, which means additional checks for security measures, proper integration — are the links and embeds all working? — and accessibility features.

    Caveats aside, though, online-education advocates like Bethany Simunich, vice president for innovation and research at Quality Matters, say higher ed needs to stop “othering” and setting different bars for different modes of learning. Especially as the lines between them blur together. (A lot of in-person courses, for example, are now “web enhanced,” with faculty members using the campus learning-management system. And many colleges now offer hybrid courses with both in-person and online components.)

    The focus instead, Simunich said, should be on a big-picture question: Is this a high-quality learning experience for students?

    Numerous institutions are working to keep that question front and center. Oregon State University crafted a universal quality framework. North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University adopted a common syllabus template. Montgomery College, in Maryland, requires learning-management-system training for all new faculty members teaching credit-bearing courses. Harford Community College, also in Maryland, has revamped its faculty-observation forms.

    “Online and face-to-face are very different things. But it doesn’t mean systems have to be separate,” said Jeff Ball, director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Harford. “We’re learning that we need to talk about them together in very conscious ways.”

    Setting a Standard

    It’s not uncommon for faculty members to teach an array of courses: some online, some in-person, some a hybrid blend. Oregon State University is no exception.

    That’s why it made sense to develop an “umbrella” quality-teaching framework that outlines standards the institution expects from any of its courses, said Karen Watté, director of course-development and training at Oregon State’s Ecampus. It would, in her words, “elevate teaching across the board.”

    That framework, completed in 2021, includes expectations like:

    • Providing materials in formats that are accessible by all learners, including curricular materials designed with recommended fonts and colors.
    • Fostering community outside of the classroom.
    • Measuring, documenting, and using achievement data to inform instruction.

    Around that same time, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University adopted another tool: A universal template for course syllabi to create a cohesive student experience across classes, said Tonya Amankwatia, assistant vice provost for distance education and extended learning.

    This newer template has introduced standards that weren’t previously required in faculty syllabi. For example, it includes a communications policy stating that faculty “must notify students of the approximate time and method they can expect to receive an answer to all communications,” with the expected window being 48 hours, apart from holidays. The syllabus template also links to a “common policies” document that directs students to resources such as minimum technology requirements.

    What was particularly exciting, Amankwatia said, was that the template wasn’t the result of a top-down mandate. Faculty members teaching both online and in-person courses had, in fact, led the charge. “It was one big visible move that no senior administrator had to say” or ask for, she said.

    Prioritizing Professional Development

    The success of any course, experts say, also comes down to investing in professional development.

    For Montgomery College, in Rockville, Md., that has meant doubling down on its “Digital Fundamentals for Teaching and Learning” training, which teaches faculty members how to take advantage of the campus’s learning-management system. (All credit-bearing classes at Montgomery are required to have a course page in the LMS).

    The training, which takes about 20 hours to complete, starts with foundational skills — how to post files and upload a syllabus — and builds from there: How to create and manage discussion boards. How to embed videos, and caption them to support accessibility. How to set up an online gradebook for students to track their performance.

    The college first rolled out this training in the early days of the pandemic to ease the pivot to fully remote learning. About 70 percent of full- and part-time faculty members teaching credit-bearing courses completed it in 2020. It was so useful that the college has since required each new faculty member who teaches for credit to take the training, whether they’re teaching online, in-person, or both, said Michael Mills, vice president of the Office of E-Learning, Innovation, and Teaching Excellence.

    Montgomery also offers a voluntary quality-assurance microcredential — a series of three badges a faculty member can earn outside of work hours that, among other things, indicates knowledge of “inclusive quality course design and delivery.”

    Mills acknowledged that the college doesn’t offer a pay incentive to complete that microcredential. “The incentive is a better course design,” he said. “For some faculty, that’s important to them.” He noted that it may help part-time faculty secure additional teaching opportunities at other institutions.

    Revisiting Observations

    Setting standards is one thing. Evaluating courses based on those standards is another; policies can be tricky to put in place and enforce broadly. (It’s an area where online education still struggles, too.)

    That also goes for faculty evaluations. That process is often codified in collective-bargaining agreements, and grants faculty members a high degree of autonomy in teaching.

    At Harford Community College, in Bel Air, Md., “observing” a faculty member’s course is one part of the larger annual evaluation process. And a goal for that piece, at least, is consistency where it makes sense.

    The college’s refreshed faculty-observation forms for both online and in-person teaching — the online one is still in draft mode — are similarly formatted. Both have done away with numeric values and rating scales. Both set parameters around what the observer is seeing, and when they’re seeing it (for in-person, it’s a single class. For online, it’s access to an agreed-upon portion of the course for an agreed-upon time frame). Both check to see if the instructor has fostered “an engaging learning environment.”

    But there are differences. In the online-course observation form, for example, the reviewer is asked to check to see that links and “technical aspects of the course are in working order,” and whether navigation is “user friendly.” In the in-person observation, the reviewer is asked about the pace: Was the instructor teaching at a speed that allowed students to process the content?

    “It’s like a Venn diagram,” said Elizabeth Mosser Knight, associate dean for academic operations at Harford. “There’s the overlap, but then there’s the nuance, because they’re unique in some ways.”

    It’s these types of conversations that get online advocates like Simunich excited about the potential for progress.

    “As these conversations are all starting to merge and come to a head, institutions are going to have to make a choice,” she said, “about whether they’re going to publicly address and talk about quality.”

    [ad_2]

    Taylor Swaak

    Source link

  • Blue whale foraging and reproduction are related to environmental conditions, study shows

    Blue whale foraging and reproduction are related to environmental conditions, study shows

    [ad_1]

    Newswise — NEWPORT, Ore. – A new study of New Zealand blue whales’ vocalizations indicates the whales are present year-round in the South Taranaki Bight and their behavior is influenced by environmental conditions in the region.

    The findings are a significant advancement in researchers’ understanding of the habitat use and behavior of this population of blue whales, which Oregon State University researchers first identified as genetically distinct from other blue whale populations less than a decade ago.  

    “We went from not knowing 10 years ago whether this was a distinct population to now understanding these whales’ ecology and their response to changing environmental conditions,” said the study’s lead author, Dawn Barlow, a postdoctoral scholar in OSU’s Marine Mammal Institute. “These findings can inform conservation management of this blue whale population and their habitat.”

    The patterns and intensity of the whales’ calls and songs over two years showed strong seasonality in their foraging and breeding behavior, and the vocalizations changed based on environmental conditions such as a documented marine heatwave, Barlow said.

    “During the marine heatwave, feeding-related calls were reduced, reflecting poor foraging conditions during that period,” Barlow said. “But we also saw changes in vocalizations in the next breeding period, an indication that they put less effort into reproduction following a period of poor feeding conditions.”

    The study was just published in the journal Ecology and Evolution. Barlow conducted the research as a doctoral student in the Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Laboratory at Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, led by associate professor Leigh Torres, a co-author of the new paper.

    Blue whales are the largest of all whales and are found in all oceans except the Arctic. Their populations were depleted due to commercial whaling in the early 1900s, and today they are listed as endangered under the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species.

    The New Zealand whales’ habitat overlaps with a wide range of commercial activities, including oil and gas exploration and extraction, vessel traffic, fisheries, wind energy development and possible seabed mining.

    Torres first hypothesized in 2013 that the South Taranaki Bight, between New Zealand’s North and South Islands, was an undocumented blue whale feeding ground. Following comprehensive data collection efforts, and using multiple lines of evidence, Torres, Barlow and colleagues were able to document in 2018 that the population in this region was genetically distinct from other blue whale populations.

    Previous research was primarily based on observations researchers made during visits to the region in the summer months. But the researchers wanted to know more about the whales’ behavior during other parts of the year. They placed five hydrophones – a type of underwater microphone – that recorded continuously between January 2016 and February 2018, with only brief gaps to retrieve data every six months.

    “Unlike many other baleen whales, this population stays in this region year-round,” Barlow said. “That means we can monitor what they are doing from one location. Listening is an effective way to do that.”

    The hydrophone recordings showed that the whales’ “D” calls were strongly correlated with oceanographic conditions related to upwelling in the spring and summer. Upwelling is a process where deeper, cooler water is pushed toward the surface; the nutrient-rich water supports aggregations of krill that the blue whales feed on. The whales’ D calls were more intense during periods of strong upwelling.

    The recordings also showed that the whales’ song vocalizations, which are produced by males and associated with breeding behavior, followed a highly seasonal pattern, with peak intensity in the fall. That timing aligns with past whaling records’ estimates of conception, Barlow said.

    The hydrophone evidence of the breeding behavior and the whales’ presence in the region year-round can influence the animals’ national threat classification status, which impacts management practices, the researchers said.

    Blue whales in New Zealand had been classified as migrant, but as a result of the research by Torres, Barlow and colleagues, the classification of has changed from migrant to data deficient. If the whales are reclassified as a resident population, that could impact management practices, but evidence of breeding in New Zealand is needed for that change to occur, the researchers said.

    “Although no one has actually documented blue whales mating – it is hard to observe that directly – the increase in song during the expected time of mating is a strong indication of breeding in New Zealand waters,” Torres said. “Our study adds more evidence that these are resident New Zealand blue whales.”

    Once the researchers were able to make the link between the whales’ behavior and their calls, they could then look at the calls and behavior relative to environmental patterns. Specifically, they noted how the whales’ foraging and breeding behavior changed during and after a 2016 marine heatwave.

    During the marine heatwave, there were fewer aggregations of krill for the whales to feed on, which the researchers documented in a previous study. The reduction in foraging behavior correlated to less intense D calls during that period, and in the next breeding season, the breeding songs were also less intense.

    The findings raise additional questions about how changing ocean conditions and human activity in the region are impacting the New Zealand blue whale population and reinforce the need for continued monitoring, the researchers said.

    “We have come so far in 10 years in our knowledge of these blue whales – from not knowing this population existed to now understanding their year-round use of this region for feeding, mating and nursing,” Torres said. “New Zealanders should be excited and proud that their country is home to its own unique population of blue whales. We hope our work helps Kiwis manage and protect these whales.”

    Additional coauthors are Holger Klinck, director of the Cornell University K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics, who also is affiliated with OSU’s Marine Mammal Institute; Dimitri Ponirakis of Cornell; and Trevor Branch of the University of Washington. The Marine Mammal Institute is part of Oregon State’s College of Agricultural Sciences.

    [ad_2]

    Oregon State University

    Source link

  • Feedback loops make climate action even more urgent, scientists say

    Feedback loops make climate action even more urgent, scientists say

    [ad_1]

    Newswise — CORVALLIS, Ore. – An international collaboration led by Oregon State University scientists has identified 27 global warming accelerators known as amplifying feedback loops, including some that the researchers say may not be fully accounted for in climate models.

    They note that the findings, published today in the journal One Earth, add urgency to the need to respond to the climate crisis and provide a roadmap for policymakers aiming to avert the most severe consequences of a warming planet.

    In climate science, amplifying feedback loops are situations where a climate-caused alteration can trigger a process that causes even more warming, which in turn intensifies the alteration. An example would be warming in the Arctic, leading to melting sea ice, which results in further warming because sea water absorbs rather than reflects solar radiation.

    OSU College of Forestry postdoctoral scholar Christopher Wolf and distinguished professor William Ripple led the study, which in all looked at 41 climate change feedbacks.

    “Many of the feedback loops we examined significantly increase warming because of their connection to greenhouse gas emissions,” Wolf said. “To the best of our knowledge, this is the most extensive list available of climate feedback loops, and not all of them are fully considered in climate models. What’s urgently needed is more research and modeling and an accelerated cutback of emissions.”

    The paper makes two calls to action for “immediate and massive” emissions reductions:

    • Minimize short-term warming given that “climate disasters” in the form of wildfires, coastal flooding, permafrost thaw, intense storms and other extreme weather are already occurring.
    • Mitigate the possible major threats looming from climate tipping points that are drawing ever-closer due to the prevalence of the many amplifying feedback loops. A tipping point is a threshold after which a change in a component of the climate system becomes self-perpetuating.

    “Transformative, socially just changes in global energy and transportation, short-lived air pollution, food production, nature preservation and the international economy, together with population policies based on education and equality, are needed to meet these challenges in both the short and long term,” Ripple said. “It’s too late to fully prevent the pain of climate change, but if we take meaningful steps soon while prioritizing human basic needs and social justice, it could still be possible to limit the harm.”

    Ripple, Wolf and co-authors from the University of Exeter, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the Woodwell Climate Research Center and Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Associates considered both biological and physical feedbacks. Biological feedbacks include forest dieback, soil carbon loss and wildfire; physical feedbacks involve changes such as reduced snow cover, increased Antarctic rainfall and shrinking arctic sea ice.

    Even comparatively modest warming is expected to heighten the likelihood that the Earth will cross various tipping points, the researchers say, causing big changes in the planet’s climate system and potentially strengthening the amplifying feedbacks.

    “Climate models may be underestimating the acceleration in global temperature change because they aren’t fully considering this large and related set of amplifying feedback loops,” Wolf said. “The accuracy of climate models is crucial as they help guide mitigation efforts by telling policymakers about the expected effects of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. While recent climate models do a much better job of incorporating diverse feedback loops, more progress is needed.”

    Emissions have risen substantially over the last century, the researchers note, despite several decades of warnings that they should be significantly curbed. The scientists say interactions among feedback loops could cause a permanent shift away from the Earth’s current climate state to one that threatens the survival of many humans and other life forms.

    “In the worst case, if amplifying feedbacks are strong enough, the result is likely tragic climate change that’s moved beyond anything humans can control,” Ripple said. “We need a rapid transition toward integrated Earth system science because the climate can only be fully understood by considering the functioning and state of all Earth systems together. This will require large-scale collaboration, and the result would provide better information for policymakers.”

    In addition to the 27 amplifying climate feedbacks the scientists studied were seven that are characterized as dampening – they act to stabilize the climate system. An example is carbon dioxide fertilization, where rising concentrations of atmospheric CO2 lead to increasing carbon uptake by vegetation.

    The effects of the remaining seven feedbacks, including increased atmospheric dust and reduced ocean stability, are not yet known.

    The paper in One Earth has a corresponding website that features more about climate feedback loops, including infographics and interactive animations.

    [ad_2]

    Oregon State University

    Source link

  • Alaskan island wolves caused a deer population to plummet

    Alaskan island wolves caused a deer population to plummet

    [ad_1]

    Newswise —

    Historically, wolves and sea otters likely lived in the study area, Pleasant Island, which is located in an island landscape adjacent to Glacier Bay about 40 miles west of Juneau. The island is about 20 square miles, uninhabited and accessible only by boat or float plane.

    During the 1800s and much of the 1900s, populations of sea otters in this region were wiped out from fur trade hunting. Unlike wolves in the continental USA, Southeast Alaskan wolves were not hunted to local extinction. Only in recent decades, particularly with the reintroduction and legal protection of sea otters, have the populations of both species recovered and once again overlapped, providing new opportunities for predator-prey interactions between the two species.

    Wolves on an Alaskan switched to primarily eating sea otters in just a few years, a finding scientists believe is the first case of sea otters becoming the primary food source for a land-based predator. Using methods such as tracking the wolves with GPS collars and analyzing their scat, the researchers found that in 2015 deer were the primary food of the wolves. By 2017, wolves transitioned to primarily consuming sea otters while the frequency of deer declined.

    Sea otters are this famous predator in the near-shore ecosystem and wolves are one of the most famous apex predators in terrestrial systems. So, it’s pretty surprising that sea otters have become the most important resource feeding wolves. You have top predators feeding on a top predator.

    The researchers studied the wolf pack on Pleasant Island and the adjacent mainland from 2015 to 2021. Gretchen Roffler, a wildlife research biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and others from the department collected 689 wolf scats, many along the island’s shoreline.

    Once the scat is collected, members of Levi’s lab in Oregon used molecular tools, such as DNA metabarcoding and genotyping of the scat, to identify individual wolves and determine their diets.

    Roffler also captured and placed GPS collars on four wolves on the island and nine on the mainland. The researchers were curious whether wolves were traveling between the mainland and island, considering other scientists have found they are capable of swimming up to eight miles between land masses. Both the GPS collar data and genotypes of the scats confirmed they were not, indicating that the island wolf pack is stable and that the island is not a hunting ground for mainland wolves.

    Locations from the GPS-collared wolves also provide evidence that the wolves are killing sea otters when they are in shallow water or are resting on rocks near shore exposed at low tide. Roffler and her crew have investigated wolf GPS clusters on Pleasant Island for three, 30-day field seasons since 2021 and found evidence of 28 sea otters killed by wolves.

    “The thing that really surprised me is that sea otters became the main prey of wolves on this island,” Roffler said. “Occasionally eating a sea otter that has washed up on the beach because it died, that is not unusual. But the fact that wolves are eating so many of them indicates it has become a widespread behavior pattern throughout this pack and something that they learned how to do very quickly.

    “And from the work we are doing investigating kill sites, we are learning that wolves are actively killing the sea otters. So, they aren’t just scavenging sea otters that are dead or dying, they are stalking them and hunting them and killing them and dragging them up onto the land above the high tide line to consume them.”

    Shortly after wolves colonized Pleasant Island in 2013, the deer population on the island plummeted. With the wolves having consumed most of the deer, their main food source, Levi said he would have expected the wolves to leave the island or die off. Instead, the wolves remained and the pack grew to a density not previously seen with wolf populations, Levi said. The main reason, he believes, is the availability of sea otters as a food source.

    The findings outlined by the same researchers showed that wolves were eating sea otters. This was documented throughout the Alexander Archipelago, a group of Southeastern Alaskan islands which includes Pleasant Island.

    The research has now expanded to study wolves and sea otters in Katmai National Park & Preserve, which is in southwest Alaska, about 700 miles from Pleasant Island. Early research indicates that wolves are also eating sea otters there. In fact, at that location three wolves were killing a sea otter near the shore.

    [ad_2]

    Oregon State University

    Source link