Oxygen levels have dropped in hundreds of lakes in the United States and Europe over the last four decades, a new study found.
And the authors said declining oxygen could lead to increased fish kills, algal blooms and methane emissions.
Researchers examined the temperature and dissolved oxygen — the amount of oxygen in the water — in nearly 400 lakes and found that declines were widespread. Their study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, found dissolved oxygen fell 5.5 % in surface waters of these lakes and 18.6% in deep waters.
The authors said their findings suggest that warming temperatures and decreased water clarity from human activity are causing the oxygen decline.
“Oxygen is one of the best indicators of ecosystem health, and changes in this study reflect a pronounced human footprint,” said co-author Craig E. Williamson, a biology professor at Miami University in Ohio.
That footprint includes warming caused by climate change and decreased water clarity caused in part by runoff from sewage, fertilizer, cars and power plants.
Dissolved oxygen losses in Earth’s water systems have been reported before. A 2017 study of oxygen levels in the world’s oceans showed a 2% decline since 1960. But less was known about lakes, which lost two to nine times as much oxygen as oceans, the new study’s authors said.
Prior to this study, other researchers had reported on oxygen declines in individual lakes over a long period of time. But none have looked at as many lakes around the world, said Samuel B. Fey, a Reed College biology professor who studies lakes and was not involved in this study.
“I think one of the really interesting findings here is that the authors were able to show that there’s this pretty pronounced decline in dissolved oxygen concentrations in both the surface and (deep) parts of the lake,” Fey said.
The deep water drop in oxygen levels is critical for aquatic organisms that are more sensitive to temperature increases, such as cold water fish. During summer months, they depend on cooler temperatures found deeper in the water, but if deep waters are low on oxygen, these organisms can’t survive.
“Those are the conditions that sometimes lead to fish kills in water bodies,” said study co-author Kevin C. Rose, a professor of biology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. “It really means that a lot of habitats for cold water fish could become inhospitable.”
Other organisms, Rose said, are more tolerant of warmer temperatures found at the surface level and can get enough oxygen by remaining near the surface, where water meets air.
About a quarter of the lakes examined actually showed increasing oxygen in surface waters, which Rose says is a bad sign because it’s likely attributable to increased algal blooms — sudden growth of blue green algae.
In these lakes, he said, dissolved oxygen was “very low” in deep waters and was unlivable for many species.
And the sediment in such oxygen-starved lakes tends to give off methane, a potent greenhouse gas, research shows.
Lakes examined in the new study were in the U.S. or Europe, except for one in Japan and a few in New Zealand. The authors said there was insufficient data to include other parts of the world.
Rose said lakes outside the study area probably are experiencing drops in dissolved oxygen, too. The reason, he said, is that warmer temperatures from climate change reduce the ability of oxygen to dissolve in water — its solubility.
“We know that most or many places around the planet are warming,” he said. “And so, we would expect to see declining solubility.”
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Day: June 2, 2021
Cities around the world are installing new technology that connects to the personal devices of pedestrians, drivers, and riders on public transportation. Some cities are using these systems to make transportation easier for people with disabilities, such as those who are blind. For VOA, Jason Strother has the story from Busan, South Korea.
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Hundreds of Zimbabweans protested Wednesday about a shortage of COVID-19 vaccines as the country awaits more doses from China. The government wants to inoculate at least 60% of Zimbabwe’s more than 14 million people by the end of the year but has struggled to get the necessary supplies. Claudina Maneni brought her 60-year-old mother to get her second vaccine dose Wednesday at Wilkins Hospital, Zimbabwe’s main COVID-19 vaccination center. She was among people who arrived at 4 a.m. but waited in vain for hours. The crowd demanded to see authorities and began to protest but dispersed upon hearing police were on their way. Maneni says she wonders why Zimbabwe’s finance minister, Mthuli Ncube, has not imported more vaccines to avert shortages. “That’s the problem with freebies. Shortages must affect those who want their first jabs,” she said. “I hear some private points are selling it. I will pass through to check. It must be them — government officials — taking vaccines to those places. They are not ashamed at all. There will be chaos here. Why did they call us to come for vaccination?” On Wednesday, Dr. John Mangwiro, Zimbabwe’s junior health minister, refused to comment. Tuesday, he told state-controlled media that government would redistribute COVID-19 vaccines from areas with lower demand to those where uptake has been high to avert current shortages. He said Zimbabwe still had more than 400,000 doses from the 1.7 million COVID-19 vaccines it got from China, Russia and India since February. Zimbabwe’s Information Minister Monica Mutsvangwa was mum about the COVID-19 vaccine shortages on June 1, 2021 in Harare while updating journalists on the global pandemic. (Columbus Mavhunga/VOA)Updating media Tuesday about Zimbabwe’s COVID-19 situation, Information Minister Monica Mutsvangwa was mum about the shortages. “As of 31st May, 2021, a total of 675,678 people had received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and about 344,400 their second dose — this is across the country. Priority is being given to second doses,” she said.
After speaking, she did not field questions from reporters. Calvin Fambirai, executive director of Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights, says his organization is worried about the COVID-19 vaccine shortages with winter season approaching the region. “The vaccine shortages could have been avoided if there was proper planning on part of the government,” he said. “Although we understand the limited availability of vaccines on the market, we have some countries like South Africa, which entered into bilateral deals with manufacturers. We cannot afford to rely on donations, government must be proactive and secure the vaccines for all Zimbabweans.” Last week, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization’s director for Africa, appealed for at least 20 million vaccines of second doses for everyone who received their first shots on the continent to curtail a potential third wave of COVID-19. Zimbabwe has 38,998 confirmed coronavirus infections and just under 1,600 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University, which tracks the global outbreak.
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Australian scientists are leading an international consortium that is building one of the world’s most powerful ground-based telescopes. It promises to see further and clearer than the Hubble Space Telescope and unlock mysteries of the early Universe.The telescope is called MAVIS, or Multi-conjugate-adaptive-optics Assisted Visible Imager and Spectrograph. It’s a long name for a highly complex instrument that will be the first of its kind. It aims to remove blurring from conventional telescope images caused by turbulence in Earth’s atmosphere, which is why the stars appear to twinkle in the night sky. Scientists in Australia say the new technology will allow them to “peer back into the early Universe” and help them explore how the first stars formed 13 billion years ago, as well as monitoring changes in the weather on planets and moons in our solar system. Images produced by MAVIS will be three times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope that was launched into Earth’s low orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. Associate Professor Richard McDermid, a scientist based at Sydney’s Macquarie University, says the new telescope will change the way we explore space. “The clarity gives us two things,” he said. “It helps us see a sharper image, but it also helps us gain in sensitivity, so we can see fainter things and we can see them more clearly. That allows us to push into a new frontier of the furthest and faintest things we can see. So, for example the first stars in formation, inside the first galaxies because when we look far away in astronomy we are also looking far back in time because it takes time for the light to reach us. And so, yes, we are really building on the legacy of Hubble but we are going to go deeper and even sharper.” The ground-based telescope will be installed at a facility in Chile run by the European Southern Observatory, a research organization based in Germany. It will take seven years to build at a cost of $44 million. The MAVIS consortium is led by The Australian National University, and involves Macquarie University, Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics and France’s Laboratoire d’Astrophysique.
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A massive and long-awaited new translation of Mein Kampf — peppered with scholarly commentary to explain Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s disjointed, hate-filled manifesto — has been released in France. The project has been controversial, but supporters say it could serve as a warning against rising acts of hate and antisemitism today.The book is a recast translation of Mein Kampf, or My Struggle, Hitler’s 1925 manifesto detailing how he became antisemitic, his ideology and his plans for Germany. The recast is 1,000 pages and costs more than $120. Adolf Hitler’s name and face do not appear on its plain white cover. The new edition by French publisher Fayard — titled Putting Evil in Context: A Critical Edition of Mein Kampf — does not aim to be a bestseller. French bookstores cannot stock copies, which are available by order only. All proceeds will go to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation. Historian Christian Ingrao, part of the academic team involved in the Fayard edition, told French radio the book aims to desacralize Hitler’s work that has attracted a kind of fetishism. It aims to offer an unvarnished take on the Nazi leader’s writing, which Ingrao and others say is repetitive, rambling and riddled with mistakes. Translator Olivier Mannoni called Hitler’s manifesto an “incoherent soup.” The translation is accompanied by lengthy historians’ notes and annotations that make up most of the book. Germany and Poland have published similar scholarly translations in recent years. In France, the first edition of Mein Kampf came out in 1934, and attempted to improve on Hitler’s writing. By that time he was chancellor of Germany, where his book had become a bestseller. Hitler’s rule saw Europe plunged into World War II — and the Holocaust that killed roughly six million Jews, including more than 70,000 from France. Today, antisemitism is again on the rise across Europe, watchdog groups say. So is the far right. While printed copies of Mein Kampf have stagnated worldwide, digital editions have surged in recent years, although publishers point to a mix of reasons. Last year, Amazon banned most editions of the book from its site. Ninety-six-year-old Holocaust survivor Ginette Kolinka speaks to French school groups about her memories. She told French radio she never read Mein Kampf — mostly, she says, because she had other books to read. But she says young people need to read everything — good and bad — to form opinions for themselves, and eventually understand tolerance. The Fayard translation project has been controversial. A few years ago, far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon called it “morally unacceptable.” Since then, it has been endorsed by several prominent Jewish figures, including Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld. France’s Grand Rabbi, Haim Korsia, told VOA that Klarsfeld’s support for the translation shaped his own views. His argument: You can’t reproach the world for not having read Hitler’s writings nearly a century ago — which forecast the horror the Nazi leader was preparing — and then tell people today not to read this new translation, which could help prevent hatred, prejudice and antisemitism from reappearing.
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Authorities in Australia’s southern state of Victoria have extended a one-week lockdown for its capital, Melbourne, to contain the spread of a new COVID-19 outbreak. The lockdown was initially imposed across the entire state last week after health officials detected a highly infectious variant of the coronavirus that was rapidly spreading across Victoria state. The latest outbreak has been linked to an overseas traveler who became infected with a variant first detected in India during his mandatory hotel quarantine phase. FILE – A mostly-empty city street is seen on the first day of a seven-day lockdown as the state of Victoria looks to curb the spread of a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Melbourne, Australia, May 28, 2021.Health officials announced six new locally acquired COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, bringing the total number of confirmed infections to 60. “If we let this thing run its course, it will explode,” Victoria state Acting Premier James Merlino told reporters in Melbourne. “We’ve got to run this to ground because if we don’t, people will die.” Although Melbourne’s 5 million residents will remain under strict restrictions until June 10, the lockdown measures have been lifted for residents in regional Victoria, with limits on public and private gatherings and restaurant capacity. The new lockdown is the fourth one imposed on Melbourne and Victoria state since the start of the pandemic. The most severe period occurred in mid-2020, which lasted more than three months as Victoria was under the grip of a second wave of COVID-19 infections that killed more than 800 people. Moderna seeking full FDA authorization
In the United States, Moderna said Tuesday it is seeking full authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its COVID-19 vaccine for adults 18 years old and older. The Moderna two-shot vaccine is one of three coronavirus vaccines the FDA authorized for emergency use in the United States, playing a major role in the steadily declining number of new infections in the country. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say more than 150 million doses of the Moderna vaccine have been distributed since the emergency use authorization was granted last December. FILE – A nurse draws a Moderna coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine, in Los AngelesModerna announced last week that it will apply for emergency use authorization this month to administer the vaccine to young people after discovering it was safe and effective for children between 12 and 17 years old. If approved, it will join the two-shot vaccine developed by Pfizer and Bio N Tech that was authorized for use in 12 to 15 years old last month. Brazil to host soccer tournamentBrazil confirmed Tuesday that it will host the troubled Copa America soccer tournament despite warnings of an upcoming new wave of new infections. President Jair Bolsonaro said the tournament, which will take place from June 13 to July 10, will be held in the capital Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro, Cuiaba and Goiania. The tournament’s organizers, the South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL), announced Monday it was moving the upcoming event to Brazil due to a surge of new COVID-19 infections in Argentina, which was co-hosting the tournament with Colombia, which is unable to stage the tournament because of massive anti-government street protests. Scientists in Brazil are concerned about hosting a tournament in a nation with a more transmissible COVID-19 variant, with many predicting another wave of the disease to hit the country in a matter of weeks. The opposition Workers Party has filed an injunction with the Brazilian Supreme Court to block the tournament. FILE – Demonstrators shouts slogans during a protest against the government’s response in combating COVID-19, demanding the impeachment of President Jair Bolsonaro, in Rio de Janeiro, May 29, 2021.President Bolsonaro has come under heavy criticism for his apparently dismissive attitude toward the pandemic, and is the subject of a congressional investigation over his government’s management of the crisis. Brazil trails only the United States and India in the total number of coronavirus cases with more than 16.6 million, and is second only to the U.S. in deaths at more than 465,199, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
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US President Joe Biden’s administration announced Tuesday it was halting petroleum development activity in the Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, reversing a move by former president Donald Trump to allow drilling. The Interior Department said it was notifying firms of the freeze, pending a comprehensive environmental review that will determine whether leases in the area known as ANWR should be “reaffirmed, voided or subject to additional mitigation measures,” the agency said in a statement. The announcement deals a blow to the long-contested quest of oil companies to drill in the sensitive territory. The push for development picked up momentum after Trump announced the leasing plan last November shortly after losing reelection to Biden. At a lease sale in January over some 1.6 million acres, US officials auctioned off 11 oil tracts. Major oil companies sat out the bidding, and nine of the leases went to the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, a state agency, while two went to small companies. Biden had promised to protect ANWR during the presidential campaign. White House climate advisor Gina McCarthy noted Biden’s promise and said the move reflected his belief that “national treasures are cultural and economic cornerstones of our country,” according to a White House statement. Biden “is grateful for the prompt action by the Department of the Interior to suspend all leasing pending a review of decisions made in the last administration’s final days that could have changed the character of this special place forever,” McCarthy added. Environmentalists have long argued that safeguarding ANWR is critical to protect polar bears and other vulnerable wildlife and for indigenous populations that hunt caribou in the region. But the oil industry has long sought to drill in the area, which is thought to potentially hold billions of barrels in oil. Key Alaska lawmakers such as Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, have strongly backed development. The Alaska Wilderness League, which had joined other environmental groups in litigation against the Trump administration’s development efforts, applauded the Biden administration’s action. “Suspending these leases is a step in the right direction,” said Kristen Miller, acting executive director for the Alaska Wilderness League. Continued threat”There is still more to be done. Until the leases are canceled, they will remain a threat to one of the wildest places left in America,” Miller said. “Now we look to the administration and Congress to prioritize legislatively repealing the oil leasing mandate and restore protections to the Arctic Refuge coastal plain.” But the American Petroleum Institute said the oil industry knows how to develop responsibly and that the decision will cost Alaska jobs and tax revenue. “Policies aimed at slowing or stopping oil and natural gas production on federal lands and waters will ultimately prove harmful to our national security, environmental progress and economic strength,” API official Kevin O’Scannlain said. “At a time of economic recovery, this action only serves to withhold the good-paying jobs and economic revenue that safe and responsible oil and gas development would provide to local Alaskan communities.” The Biden administration’s move on ANWR comes only days after it sanctioned another Trump administration plan on oil development in Alaska, involving a ConocoPhillips project in Alaska’s North Slope in the former Naval Petroleum Reserve.
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