Dr. Lowman’s latest Nature’s Secrets column in newsobserver.com:

It sounds like a horror movie – billions of miniature, bear-like creatures crawling through the lawns and shrubbery in Raleigh, Charlotte and Durham. Neither drought nor flood nor extreme temperature will kill them. During a heat wave, they curl into a ball and wait for better conditions to “come back to life.” They dominate their miniature kingdom of soil, leaf surfaces and water droplets. These invincible, microscopic beasts are… tardigrades.

Tardigrade means “slow walker.” They’re also called water bears, bears of the moss or moss piglets. They thrive in water, coral islands, moist tropical forests, and even the extremes from deserts to Antarctic slopes. Dispersed on all seven continents, tardigrades may be the most common organism of N.C.

Fortunately, they are quite harmless. But it’s good to know and appreciate who lives in your neighborhood.

Full Story

Dr. Lowman’s latest Nature’s Secrets column in newsobserver.com:

Christmas lists abound with “stuff” that is usually manufactured, bought, discarded, and ultimately piles up in landfills. With the current economic downturn, what about a gift list centered on special places in nature that inspire and nurture our souls?

Many special natural places are close to home and essentially free; others require a veritable expedition outfitted to reach remote destinations. But near or far, the natural world engages our five senses and restores our spirits in ways that are difficult to equal in dollars and cents. Here is a survey of some North Carolina residents and their favorite natural places – some local, some global. On behalf of Nature’s Secrets, please enjoy your favorite spots in nature with loved ones this holiday season.

Full Story

Dr. Lowman’s latest Nature’s Secrets column in newsobserver.com:

Cutting-edge technology helps save rhinos in India

The North Carolina Museum of Natural History’s new Nature Research Center, opening spring 2012 in Raleigh, will employ cutting-edge technologies to convey scientific discoveries to students, policy-makers and citizens.

Using remote cameras in distant field sites such as forest canopies, the NRC will share discoveries around the planet with audiences and classrooms throughout North Carolina and beyond. These technologies educate people via new programs about how science works. They are already providing solutions to conservation challenges.

In remote northeastern India, intel sleuths have been deployed to eradicate rhino poaching. Kaziranga National Park is in Assam province, not far from Bangladesh; it is home to more than two-thirds of the world’s one-horned rhinos. During the past decade alone, 66 rhinos were killed by poachers. At that rate, the world’s remaining 2,850 one-horned rhinos (of which India is home to 2,390) will disappear by 2050.

Read the full article

Dr. Lowman’s latest Nature’s Secrets column in newsobserver.com:

Yttrium, promethium, europium and luterium may sound like mythological characters, but they’re rare-earth elements that comprise the backbone of new technologies for the 21st century.

Their discovery in recent years has advanced the electronics industry. Yttrium, when alloyed with other elements, forms part of aircraft engines; promethium is an essential component of long-lived nuclear batteries; europium powers images in flat-screen televisions; and luterium detects radiation in PET scanners used for medical research. Many new technologies owe their success to rare-earth elements.

Read the full article

Dr. Lowman’s latest Nature’s Secrets column in newsobserver.com:

The U.S. military is moving aggressively to reduce its energy “bootprint.”

The Department of Defense is our country’s largest single consumer of energy, using more than 300,000 barrels of oil per day. With an armored Humvee averaging only 4 miles per gallon, and with a gallon of fuel costing $400 to reach our troops in Afghanistan, the military budget is crippled by energy inefficiencies. But new initiatives for military installations include solar power units, purifying stagnant water, solar tents and LED lights. At Fort Drum, N.Y., one of the world’s largest solar installations currently heats the base. A fleet of new clean-energy naval vessels, dubbed “Prius of the oceans,” will save millions of taxpayer dollars. The military’s goal is to achieve 25 percent renewable energy by 2025.

Read the full article

Dr. Lowman’s latest Nature’s Secrets column in newsobserver.com:

The time was 4:24 a.m. I sat upright in bed, awakened by an inspirational choir that just burst into sound. Vacationing in the woods of northern Vermont, I took a June sojourn back to my childhood forests of New England. Sleeping until noon is an obvious privilege of vacation, but late sleepers in the short Northern summer miss one of the best musical events of the year.

The red-breasted robin was the first songster on nature’s program. Opening up the dawn chorus with a melodious, cheerful message, it announced to the forest denizens that sunrise was imminent. Soon, that dawn harbinger was joined by other robins, a trio in full song. As if not to be outdone, the white-throated sparrows trilled, “Oh sweet Canada, Canada.” Almost 150 years after Thoreau described New England songbirds, their melodies have remained remarkably true over time.

Read the full article

Dr. Lowman’s latest Nature’s Secrets column in newsobserver.com:

Did you know that over 70 species of ants live in Raleigh?

A survey of urban insects, recently conducted by the Museum of Natural Sciences and the biology department at N.C. State University, represents the first effort that engaged citizens to count the wealth of unknown critters who share our cities. The results of this citizen science effort will likely double or triple when the treetop habitats are included. One of the least explored regions of the planet, forest canopies are home to millions of species (predominantly insects), and North Carolina’s treetops are relatively unexplored to date.

Read the full article

Below is an article written by Dr. Lowman in newsobserver.com:

A biological inventory project, called the Encyclopedia of Life (EoL), was recently launched to catalog information about Earth’s 1.8million scientific species classified during the past several centuries. Currently, information on some species is only available piecemeal in different museums, collections, websites or roughly scribbled in the field notebooks of individual biologists. This first-ever global inventory will compile all facts about every species and make it available via computer. Thousands of taxonomists (scientists who classify and name organisms) are contributing information to create the first large-scale assessment of life on our planet (www.eol.org).

Read the full article

Below is an article written by Dr. Lowman in newsobserver.com:

“In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.” John Muir

Like a baby’s soft skin, the new foliage of spring is delicate and breathtaking as it unfolds to signify a rebirth of the natural world.

A leaf lover for many decades, I can vouch for the existence of thousands of green hues in the botanical world, each unique.

The sun-drenched lime greens of live oak catkins indicate subtle signs of a Florida spring. The cinnamon greens of unfurling magnolia leaves announce spring in Georgia. The dazzling array of dogwood, hornbeam, beech and oak greenery – interspersed with the electric pinks and reds of budding maples and redbud – signify spring in North Carolina.

Read the full article

There is one important difference between ecology and many other fascinating sciences and games: unsolved problems of chess, astronomy, or mathematics will not change if we ignore them. Our activity or lack of activity can alter the state of ecology. [Lawrence Slobodkin, 2003 in A Citizen’s Guide to Ecology]

From November 29 to December 10, delegates from approximately 194 countries are meeting in Cancun, Mexico, attempting to produce a climate agreement. It is ironic that this location was underwater during Earth’s last warming period just over 100,000 years ago. And even more amazing is the fact that the entire Cancun coastline at that time was swamped by an 8 foot sea-level rise which occurred in only a few decades of relatively rapid warming. Will history repeat itself? Or will our governments agree on an international plan to reduce carbon emissions as a means of addressing global warming?

Last year, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), was held in Copenhagen, with a mission to cut greenhouse gases by 50 percent by the year 2050. That conference failed to achieve any consensus on a legally binding treaty. This year’s meeting, (chronologically referred to as COP 16), is expected to attract about half the attendees, in part due to the disappointment of not achieving any outcomes at COP 15 in Copenhagen. Many are wondering if the methodology of bringing together 194 countries is sound; can such a large and diverse group achieve consensus? This year, the sights have been lowered, and most countries hope to focus on pieces of the bigger framework, including REDD (reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation), “climate finance” which involves money administered to poor countries to combat early signs of climate change, and how to structure the economics of funding forest conservation as important carbon storage systems. Most delegates feel that Cancun could serve to restore confidence in the UNFCCC process, and hopefully an overall action plan will be more likely in South Africa in 2011, or at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 2012.

According to almost all scientific models, the time is running out to reverse our planet’s warming trends. Some of the most serious changes recorded in the past few decades of climate change monitoring include increased acidification of our oceans, significant melting of Arctic and Greenland ice, and accelerating sea level rise along coastlines. These phenomena are not easily reversed. Although the earth has been warm before in its geological past, millions of human beings were not living in valuable real estate along coastlines or concentrated in large urban areas that tend to act as heat islands.

The international panel of scientists who evaluate climate change, otherwise known as the IPCC, is also scrambling to revise and refine their communication about their results. One serious issue for this panel is how to translate the term “uncertainty” to policy-makers, to the public, and also to the scientific community. Similar to warfare, when governments need to predict the likelihood of military invasions, the IPCC uses a vocabulary of terms that estimate probability. But these terms are not necessarily translated with any mathematical certainty by the media. For example, their term “very likely” means a greater than 90% chance of happening; but to the average layperson, “very likely” sounds pretty vague. And when “very likely” is written up by a sensational tabloid article, its meaning may change altogether. The inclusion of more precise language is on the drawing board, as the IPCC reviews its own process, and attempts to improve its science communication skills. Otherwise, the continued uncertainty of the jargon may continue to cloud the certainty of our changing climate. And our great grand-children will someday wonder why we never understood the significance of the science.

Meg Lowman, longtime Florida scientist/educator, is now establishing the nationally acclaimed Nature Research Center at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, with its mission “to engage the public.” Her column appears monthly in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune (RSS).