Green Options

The butterfly research team’s findings were dramatic: half of the monitored sites showed declines in “species richness” (the total biodiversity or numbers of species of a certain type). The monitored sites range in elevation from sea-level to nearly one and half miles above sea-level–with lower elevation sites showing the greatest reduction in richness.

As Arctic temperatures rise, precipitation rates, and snow/ice cover volumes, begin to change as well. In some cases, this has lead to an increase in vegetation, which can have the beneficial effect of reducing atmospheric CO2, but which can also cause a disruption in the trace gas exchange between earth and atmosphere. Also, many of these climate change impacts produce imbalances within ecosystems (the web of interactions between species, and between species and their environments) and these can and do [...]

There has been significant success in decreasing the levels of chemical contaminants in our nation’s water ways in recent years, thanks to the Clean Air and Water Acts passed by Congress. However, low levels of many contaminants (such as metals, pesticides, and synthetic molecules like PCBs) persist in many rivers and streams, home to salmon and related trout species.