#toxicalgae — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #toxicalgae, aggregated by home.social.
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From 2021: An Ancient Era of #GlobalWarming Could Hint at Our Scorching Future [Bonus -- We're adding #PFAS, #microplastics and #radiation to the mix! Oh boy...!]
Looking back at the strange and sweaty days of the #PETM.
by Riley Black, August 16, 2021
"THERE WAS A TIME when alligators slid through weed-choked swamps near the North Pole. Some 55 million years ago—just around 10 million years after the mass extinction that killed T. rex and most of its kin—the average global temperature sat more than 20°F higher than it does today. Subtropical forests spread to northern latitudes, and mammals thrived in lush new habitats.
"The toasty weather had nothing to do with the event that killed the dinos. The driver for the climatic shift came not from above, but from below—in Earth’s oceans. Paleontologists and geologists suspect that some amount of natural warming that took place during the Paleocene, or the period following the die-off, caused great deposits of crystallized methane to transform into gas. Seabeds belched the excess out into the water and the air, which was bad news for the planet: Methane is a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide. The globe rapidly warmed in response—jumping about 10°F in less than 20,000 years—and held steady for some 70,000 more before starting a long and slow recovery.
"Paleontologists call this hot spot the #PaleoceneEoceneThermalMaximum (PETM). It’s a time when subtropical forests spread over the continents and new animals got to stake their claims on the planet, all thanks to an atmosphere and oceans in turmoil. This part of the fossil record is a remnant of the past, but it may also be a preview of our future."
#HungryInsects #DeadZones #LossOfOceanOxygen #ToxicAlgae #RapidEvolution #StrangeNewRains #Extinction #NewLifeForms
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'Anything that can be built can be taken down': The largest dam removal in US history is complete – what happens next?
The #KlamathRiver is free of four huge dams for the first time in generations. But for the #Yurok tribe, the river's restoration is only just beginning – starting with 18 billion seeds.
by Lucy Sheriff, September 3, 2024
"This is decades and decades in the making," says Thompson. 'We were told it was never going to happen. That it was foolish to even ask for one removal. We were asking for four.'
"The #KlamathBasin covers more than 12,000 square miles (31,000 sq km) in southern Oregon and northern California, and was home to the JC Boyle, Copco 1, Copco 2 and Iron Gate dams, all owned by #PacifiCorp, an electric utilities company. The Klamath was once the third-largest salmon producing river on the US's West Coast before the construction of the dams blocked fish from accessing almost 400 miles (640km) of critical river habitat for almost 100 years.
"Fall #ChinookSalmon numbers plummeted by more than 90% and spring chinook by 98%. #SteelheadTrout, #CohoSalmon and #PacificLamprey numbers also saw drastic declines, and the Klamath tribes in the upper basin have been without their salmon fishery for a century, since the completion of #Copco 1 in 1922. The situation became so bad that Yurok tribe – who are known as the salmon people – began importing Alaskan salmon for their annual salmon festival, traditionally held to celebrate the first return of fall chinook salmon to the Klamath River.
"The dams also had a severe impact on #WaterTemperature and quality – growth of #ToxicAlgae behind two of the dams resulted in health warnings against water contact.
"'It was painful,' says Willard Carlson, a Yurok elder who is known as a #RiverWarrior and was part of the inter-generational campaign. 'All those years seeing our river damaged like that. I remember as a kid we'd have other people from nearby tribes making fun of our river. 'Oh, you're Yurok, your river is dirty.' For us, the #dams were a monument to the [#coloniser] people who conquered us."
[...]
"Restoring the land
But something that does need "a helping hand is the restoration of 2,200 acres (890ha) of land that is above ground for the first time in a century following the emptying of four reservoirs.
"'Removing the dams is one thing, restoring the land is quite another,' says Thompson, a civil engineer and part of the crew working on the restoration project – which is being managed by Resource Environmental Solutions, an ecological restoration company."
#KarukTribe #YurokTribe #KlamathRiverRenewal #RestoreNature #Decolonize #WaterIsLife #NativeAmericans