January 30, 2019
From Office of Hon. Rob Stokes
Member for Pittwater Rob Stokes and Member for Wakehurst Brad Hazzard today announced $320,000 to support the restoration and sustainability of local wetlands.
The funds have been secured under the NSW Government’s Saving our Species program and will support Northern Beaches Council in improving key wetland reserves and protecting threatened ecological communities.
“This is a major boost for environmental management on the northern beaches,” Rob Stokes said today.
“Our wetlands are among the most underappreciated natural areas of our community – despite performing a crucial environmental role.
“There is so much life and activity in these areas and a sustained effort is needed to ensure their ongoing health and functionality,” Rob Stokes said.
“These are spectacular areas of our community which have both environmental and recreational values,” Brad Hazzard said.
“Improvements to our wetland reserves have direct benefits to water quality at our local lagoons and beaches.
“Northern Beaches Council has a strong focus on our natural environment and has a passionate and talented team of staff and volunteers who are committed to its long-term sustainability.
“I'm delighted the NSW government is partnering with Northern Beaches Council to ensure these key areas of our community are protected and improved,” Brad Hazzard said.
The NSW Government’s Saving Our Species program is investing $100 million over 5 years to secure the future of NSW threatened plants and animals.
Further details on the program is available at:
www.environment.nsw.gov.au/topics/animals-and-plants/threatened-species/saving-our-species-program
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Avalon Boomerang Bags 2019 Start Date +
WEEKLY WORKSHOPS CONTINUE IN 2019
TUESDAY 5TH February will be our first day back.
WORKSHOPS are held Tuesdays during the school term
at the Avalon Recreation Centre 11.30 - 3.30pm
Everyone is welcome; come for an hour or come for all 4, we'll even provide a cuppa and guaranteed laughs. Non-sewers also very useful.
Pop in with your excess fabric donations or spare enviro bag donations. We also sell our very handy Boomerang Bag coffee cups, stainless steel drink bottles and other enviro products and of course, our "Bought to Support" bags.
Our Christmas Celebration was truly that - a celebration of all that we have achieved together. We've made lots of bags, reduce much fabric from landfill, helped Avalon move towards using less plastics, made friendships and been a small cog in the wheel doing our bit for a better environment tomorrow.
Thanks to all those who helped organise - the food, the drinks, the 'real' glasses and "real" plates, the fabric serviettes, the fruit mince pies and the Christmas "star" decoration activity....a lovely day.
Recognition
Round of applause and congratulations to our local 2018 Eco Heroes - our very own Avalon Boomerang Bag volunteer Row Handley, and Manly Boomerang Bag coordinator Jude Furniss. Both of these incredible women are part of many environmental groups making a huge impact in the local community and for the conservation of the environment particularly our oceans and waters ways. Thank you both and our best wishes for your projects in 2019 and beyond.
Got time to sew over the holidays - need fabric ????
Reply to this email or call Robyn 0412 314 754
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Council Issues Warning To Beware Of Suspect Tree Operators
January 2019: NBC
Northern Beaches Council is warning the community to be wary of unscrupulous tree lopping operators who flout the law, making residents liable for thousands of dollars of fines for their illegal works.
Ray Brownlee said Council is aware of rogue tree tradesman currently door knocking in Avalon and offering to cheaply remove or trim large trees without Council permission. This follows a spate of similar incidents at around the same time last year.
“Our community is passionate about trees and at Council we are committed to protecting as much of our tree canopy as possible,” Mr Brownlee said.
“Most trees over 5m high are protected and residents need Council approval to prune more than ten percent of the tree or remove it. This ensures we maintain the green environment that is so valued by our community.
“Without consent to prune or remove the trees, residents can attract thousands of dollars in fines.
“If in doubt, residents should contact Council to ensure they, or those they contract, are working within the law.”
Mr Brownlee said that a good tree operator will be knowledgeable about what is permitted, be appropriately insured and qualified to undertake the work.
“If an operator can’t demonstrate they meet these requirements, residents should think twice about employing them to do the job in case they ended up being liable for their illegal activities.
“If the work is illegal, then that leaves the property owner at risk of being fined because the contractors have usually left with no traceable contact information,” Mr Brownlee said.
Property owners who are approached by contractors should contact Council first, to check that the work complies with Council’s tree controls or visit our website. Residents can also contact NSW Fair Trading on 13 32 20.
Visit:
Plastic In Britain's Seals, Dolphins And Whales
January 31, 2019
Microplastics have been found in the guts of every marine mammal examined in a new study of animals washed up on Britain's shores.
Researchers from the University of Exeter and Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) examined 50 animals from 10 species of dolphins, seals and whales -- and found microplastics (less than 5mm) in them all.
Most of the particles (84%) were synthetic fibres -- which can come from sources including clothes, fishing nets and toothbrushes -- while the rest were fragments, whose possible sources include food packaging and plastic bottles.
"It's shocking -- but not surprising -- that every animal had ingested microplastics," said lead author Sarah Nelms, of the University of Exeter and PML.
"The number of particles in each animal was relatively low (average of 5.5 particles per animal), suggesting they eventually pass through the digestive system, or are regurgitated.
"We don't yet know what effects the microplastics, or the chemicals on and in them, might have on marine mammals.
"More research is needed to better understand the potential impacts on animal health."
Though the animals in the study died of a variety of causes, those that died due to infectious diseases had a slightly higher number of particles than those that died of injuries or other causes.
"We can't draw any firm conclusions on the potential biological significance of this observation," said Professor Brendan Godley, of the Centre for Ecology and Conservation on the University of Exeter's Penryn Campus in Cornwall.
"We are at the very early stages of understanding this ubiquitous pollutant.
"We now have a benchmark that future studies can be compared with.
"Marine mammals are ideal sentinels of our impacts on the marine environment, as they are generally long lived and many feed high up in the food chain. Our findings are not good news."
Dr Penelope Lindeque, Head of the Marine Plastics research group at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, said: "It is disconcerting that we have found microplastic in the gut of every single animal we have investigated in this study.
"Indeed, from our work over the years we have found microplastic in nearly all the species of marine animals we have looked at; from tiny zooplankton at the base of the marine food web to fish larvae, turtles and now dolphins, seals and whales.
"We don't yet know the effects of these particles on marine mammals. Their small size means they may easily be expelled, but while microplastics are unlikely to be the main threat to these species, we are still concerned by the impact of the bacteria, viruses and contaminants carried on the plastic.
"This study provides more evidence that we all need to help reduce the amount of plastic waste released to our seas and maintain clean, healthy and productive oceans for future generations."
In total, 26 species of marine mammal are known to inhabit or pass through British waters.
The species in this study were: Atlantic white-sided dolphin, bottlenose dolphin, common dolphin, grey seal, harbour porpoise, harbour seal, pygmy sperm whale, Risso's dolphin, striped dolphin and white-beaked dolphin.
The study, supported by Greenpeace Research Laboratories, used samples provided by the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme (SMASS), Cornwall Wildlife Trust's Marine Stranding's Network and ZSL's (Zoological Society of London) Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme (CSIP).
S. E. Nelms, J. Barnett, A. Brownlow, N. J. Davison, R. Deaville, T. S. Galloway, P. K. Lindeque, D. Santillo, B. J. Godley. Microplastics in marine mammals stranded around the British coast: ubiquitous but transitory? Scientific Reports, 2019; 9 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-37428-3
Common dolphin washed up on a beach. Credit: Frazer Hodgkins & CSIP
Earth's Largest Extinction Event Likely Took Plants First
January 31st, 2019
Little life could endure the Earth-spanning cataclysm known as the Great Dying, but plants may have suffered its wrath long before many animal counterparts, says new research led by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
About 252 million years ago, with the planet's continental crust mashed into the supercontinent called Pangaea, volcanoes in modern-day Siberia began erupting. Spewing carbon and methane into the atmosphere for roughly 2 million years, the eruption helped extinguish about 96 percent of oceanic life and 70 percent of land-based vertebrates -- the largest extinction event in Earth's history.
Yet the new study suggests that a byproduct of the eruption -- nickel -- may have driven some Australian plant life to extinction nearly 400,000 years before most marine species perished.
"That's big news," said lead author Christopher Fielding, professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences. "People have hinted at that, but nobody's previously pinned it down. Now we have a timeline."
The researchers reached the conclusion by studying fossilized pollen, the chemical composition and age of rock, and the layering of sediment on the southeastern cliffsides of Australia. There they discovered surprisingly high concentrations of nickel in the Sydney Basin's mud-rock -- surprising because there are no local sources of the element.
This is a view of Coalcliff in New South Wales, Australia, where researchers discovered evidence that Earth's largest extinction may have extinguished plant life nearly 400,000 years before marine animal species disappeared. Credit: Christopher Fielding
Tracy Frank, professor and chair of Earth and atmospheric sciences, said the finding points to the eruption of lava through nickel deposits in Siberia. That volcanism could have converted the nickel into an aerosol that drifted thousands of miles southward before descending on, and poisoning, much of the plant life there. Similar spikes in nickel have been recorded in other parts of the world, she said.
"So it was a combination of circumstances," Fielding said. "And that's a recurring theme through all five of the major mass extinctions in Earth's history."
If true, the phenomenon may have triggered a series of others: herbivores dying from the lack of plants, carnivores dying from a lack of herbivores, and toxic sediment eventually flushing into seas already reeling from rising carbon dioxide, acidification and temperatures.
'It Lets Us See What's Possible'
One of three married couples on the research team, Fielding and Frank also found evidence for another surprise. Much of the previous research into the Great Dying -- often conducted at sites now near the equator -- has unearthed abrupt coloration changes in sediment deposited during that span.
Shifts from grey to red sediment generally indicate that the volcanism's ejection of ash and greenhouse gases altered the world's climate in major ways, the researchers said. Yet that grey-red gradient is much more gradual at the Sydney Basin, Fielding said, suggesting that its distance from the eruption initially helped buffer it against the intense rises in temperature and aridity found elsewhere.
Though the time scale and magnitude of the Great Dying exceeded the planet's current ecological crises, Frank said the emerging similarities -- especially the spikes in greenhouse gases and continuous disappearance of species -- make it a lesson worth studying.
"Looking back at these events in Earth's history is useful because it lets us see what's possible," she said. "How has the Earth's system been perturbed in the past? What happened where? How fast were the changes? It gives us a foundation to work from -- a context for what's happening now."
The researchers detailed their findings in the journal Nature Communications. Fielding and Frank authored the study with Allen Tevyaw, graduate student in geosciences at Nebraska; Stephen McLoughlin, Vivi Vajda and Chris Mays from the Swedish Museum of Natural History; Arne Winguth and Cornelia Winguth from the University of Texas at Arlington; Robert Nicoll of Geoscience Australia; Malcolm Bocking of Bocking Associates; and James Crowley of Boise State University.
The National Science Foundation and the Swedish Research Council funded the team's work.
Christopher R. Fielding, Tracy D. Frank, Stephen McLoughlin, Vivi Vajda, Chris Mays, Allen P. Tevyaw, Arne Winguth, Cornelia Winguth, Robert S. Nicoll, Malcolm Bocking, James L. Crowley. Age and pattern of the southern high-latitude continental end-Permian extinction constrained by multiproxy analysis. Nature Communications, 2019; 10 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-07934-z
Australia Post To Operate Nation’s Largest Electric Vehicle Fleet
February 1st, 2019: Australia Post
A new order for an additional 1,000 three-wheeled electric delivery vehicles (eDVs), by Australia Post, is set to make it the nation’s largest electric vehicle fleet operator.
Australia Post Group Chief Operating Officer, Bob Black, said the 1,000 eDVs boost its existing fleet of electric postie vehicles – including electric pushbikes – and creates a range of benefits for posties, customers and the environment.
“We are proud to soon be operating Australia’s largest fleet of electric vehicles, and hope this will set the standard across Australia,” Mr Black said.
“With parcel volumes growing – on average, close to 10 per cent each year for the last three years – and letter volumes declining, we’re always looking for ways to ensure our posties continue to play an important and sustainable role in the community.
“These vehicles offer additional carrying capacity, so our posties can deliver more parcels than ever before directly to the customer’s door – and can perform additional functions, such as collecting mail from street posting boxes.”
Along with delivery benefits, Mr Black said the electric vehicles also offer added safety and environmental protections.
“The eDVs are safer than the traditional motorcycle. They are easier to see on the road, more stable, have increased rider protection and lower on-road speeds, all of which reduce a postie’s exposure to incidents and serious accidents.
“We started trialling eDVs in 2017 and we’ve since deployed them in all states. We have worked closely with our posties to make improvements along the way.
“Our posties love the eDVs because they demonstrate our commitment to providing safer and more sustainable employment into the future, given consumers are sending fewer letters and relying more and more on their postie to deliver their parcels.
“They will also help us achieve our commitment of reducing our carbon emissions by 25 per cent by 2020.”
Deployment of the additional 1,000 vehicles is expected to start from June across all states.
Along with the additional 1,000 eDVs Australia Post will also roll out an additional 4,000 electric pushbikes, bringing its total to 5,980 over the next three years.
Missing-Link In Planet Evolution Found
January 29, 2019
For the first time ever, astronomers have detected a 1.3 km radius body at the edge of the Solar System. Kilometre sized bodies like the one discovered have been predicted to exist for more than 70 years. These objects acted as an important step in the planet formation process between small initial amalgamations of dust and ice and the planets we see today.
The Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt is a collection of small celestial bodies located beyond Neptune's orbit. The most famous Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt Object is Pluto. Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt Objects are believed to be remnants left over from the formation of the Solar System. While small bodies like asteroids in the inner Solar System have been altered by solar radiation, collisions, and the gravity of the planets over time; objects in the cold, dark, lonely Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt preserve the pristine conditions of the early Solar System. Thus astronomers study them to learn about the beginning of the planet formation process.
Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt Objects with radii from 1 kilometer to several kilometers have been predicted to exist, but they are too distant, small, and dim for even world-leading telescopes, like the Subaru Telescope, to observe directly. So a research team led by Ko Arimatsu at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan used a technique known as occultation: monitoring a large number of stars and watching for the shadow of an object passing in front of one of the stars. The OASES (Organized Autotelescopes for Serendipitous Event Survey) team placed two small (28 cm) telescopes on the roof of the Miyako open-air school on Miyako Island, Miyakojima-shi, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan, and monitored approximately 2000 stars for a total of 60 hours.
Analysing the data, the team found an event consistent with a star appearing to dim as it is occulted by a 1.3 km radius Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt Object. This detection indicates that kilometre sized Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt Objects are more numerous than previously thought. This supports models where planetesimals first grow slowly into kilometre sized objects before runaway growth causes them to merge into planets.
Arimatsu explains, "This is a real victory for little projects. Our team had less than 0.3% of the budget of large international projects. We didn't even have enough money to build a second dome to protect our second telescope! Yet we still managed to make a discovery that is impossible for the big projects. Now that we know our system works, we will investigate the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt in more detail. We also have our sights set on the still undiscovered Oort Cloud out beyond that."
This research was made possible by the support of the Miyako open-air school and the local community in Miyakojima-shi.
K. Arimatsu, K. Tsumura, F. Usui, Y. Shinnaka, K. Ichikawa, T. Ootsubo, T. Kotani, T. Wada, K. Nagase, J. Watanabe. A kilometre-sized Kuiper belt object discovered by stellar occultation using amateur telescopes. Nature Astronomy, 2019; DOI: 10.1038/s41550-018-0685-8
This is an artist's impression of the newly discovered object. Credit: Ko Arimatsu
Earth's Continental Nurseries Discovered Beneath Mountains
January 29, 2019: Rice University
In his free time last summer, Rice University geoscientist Ming Tang made a habit of comparing the niobium content in various rocks in a global minerals database. What he found was worth skipping a few nights out with friends.
In a paper published this month by Nature Communications, Tang, Rice petrologist Cin-Ty Lee and colleagues offered an answer to one of Earth science's fundamental questions: Where do continents form?
"If our conclusions are correct, every piece of land that we are now sitting on got its start someplace like the Andes or Tibet, with very mountainous surfaces," said Tang, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral research associate in Rice's Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences (EEPS). "Today, most places are flat because that is the stable stage of the continental crust. But what we found was that when the crust formed, it had to start out with mountain-building processes."
The connection between niobium, one of Earth's rarest elements, and continent formation is a story that plays out over billions of years at scales as small as molecules and as large as mountain ranges. The leading players are niobium and tantalum, rare metals so alike that geologists often think of them as twins.
"They have very similar chemical properties and behave almost identically in most geological processes," Tang said. "If you measure tantalum and niobium, you find that their ratio is nearly constant in Earth's mantle. That means that when you find more niobium in a rock, you will find more tantalum, and when you find less niobium, you will find less tantalum."
The mantle is Earth's thickest layer, spanning about 1,800 miles between the planet's core and its thin outer crust. Earth scientists believe that little, if anything, moves between the mantle and core, but the mantle and everything above it -- seafloor, oceans, continents and atmosphere -- are connected, and many of the atoms on Earth's surface today, including the atoms in humans and other living things, have cycled through the mantle one or more times in Earth's 4.6 billion years.
The rocks in continents are an exception. Geologists have found some that are up to 4 billion years old, which means they were formed near the surface and stayed on the surface, without being recycled into the mantle. That's due in part to the nature of continental crust, which is far less dense than the basaltic rocks beneath Earth's oceans. Lee, professor and EEPS department chair, said it's no coincidence that Earth is the only rocky planet known to have both continents and life.
"Every day we live on continents, and we take most of our resources from continents," Lee said. "We have oxygen in the air to breath and just the right temperature to support complex life. These things are so common that we take them for granted, but Earth didn't start off with these conditions. They developed later in Earth's history. And the emergence of continents is one of the things that shaped our planet and made it more livable."
Scientists still lack details about how continents got their start and how they grew to cover 30 percent of Earth's surface, but one big clue relates to niobium and tantalum, the geochemical twins.
"On average, the rocks in continental crust have about 20 percent less niobium than they should compared to the rock we see everywhere else," Tang said. "We believe this missing niobium is tied to the mystery of continents. By solving or finding the missing the niobium, we can get important information about how continents form."
Geologists have known about the imbalance for decades. And it certainly suggests that the geochemical processes that produce continental crust also remove niobium. But where was the missing niobium?
That nagging question prompted Tang to spend his free time perusing records in the Max Planck Institute's GEOROC database, a comprehensive global collection of published analyses of volcanic rocks.
Based on those searches and months of follow-up tests, Tang, Lee and colleagues offer the first physical evidence that "arclogites" (pronounced ARC-loh-jyts) are responsible for the missing niobium. Arclogites are cumulates, the leftover dross that accumulates near the base of continental arcs. On rare occasions, chunks of these cumulates erupt onto the surface from volcanos.
The Rice group first sent arclogite samples that Lee had collected in Arizona to their collaborator, Kang Chen, a research fellow based at the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan. Chen spent a month getting precise readings of the relative amounts of niobium and tantalum in the samples. The rocks were created when the High Sierras were an active continental arc, like the Andes today.
Chen's tests confirmed high niobium-tantalum ratios, but to better understand the mechanism by which this signature was developed, Tang and Lee used high precision laser ablation and "inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry" in Lee's laboratory at Rice to reveal the mineral rutile was responsible.
"Rutile is the mineral that hosts the niobium," he said. "It's a naturally occurring form of titanium oxide, and it is what actually 'sees' the difference between niobium and tantalum and captures one more than the other."
But that happens only under specific conditions. For example, Tang said that at temperatures above 1,000 degrees Celsius, rutile traps normal ratios of tantalum and niobium. It only begins to prefer niobium when temperatures drop below 1,000 degrees Celsius. Tang said the only known place with that set of conditions is deep beneath continental arcs, like the Andes today or the High Sierras about 80 million years ago.
"The reason you need high pressure is that titanium oxide is relatively rare," he said. "You need very high pressure to force it to crystalize and fall out of the magma."
In an earlier arclogite study published in Science Advances last May, Tang and Lee discovered a subtle chemical signature that can explain why continental crust is iron-depleted. Lee said that finding and the discovery about rutile and niobium illustrate the central importance of continental arcs in Earth history.
"Continental arcs are like a magic system that links everything together, from climate and oxygen concentrations in the atmosphere to ore deposits," Lee said. "They're a sink for carbon dioxide after they die. They can drive greenhouse or icehouse, and they are the building blocks of continents."
Ming Tang, Cin-Ty A. Lee, Kang Chen, Monica Erdman, Gelu Costin, Hehe Jiang. Nb/Ta systematics in arc magma differentiation and the role of arclogites in continent formation. Nature Communications, 2019; 10 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-08198-3
The central Andes Mountains and surrounding landscape, as seen in this true-color image from NASA’s Terra spacecraft, formed over the past 170 million years as the Nazca Plate lying under the Pacific Ocean has forced its way under the South American Plate.
Credit: NASA