Low-lying tropical atoll islands appear remarkably vulnerable to climate change. But when shrouded with native forests and with abundant seabird populations, these islands may keep up with rising sea levels, a new study finds. Seabirds act as biological pumps, moving nutrients from feeding areas in the open ocean to roosting and nesting areas on land and, eventually, back into the ocean. The recent Science Advances study traces how energy from nutrient-dense seabird guano trickles through terrestrial and marine ecosystems on atoll islands. The findings show that these nutrients, along with native vegetation, boost processes that build and maintain the island’s reef and underlying structure, even in the face of rising seas. Rewilding atoll islands — many of which no longer support seabirds and have seen native forests replaced by coconut palms — builds climate resilience, as well as benefiting biodiversity, Nicholas Graham, distinguished professor at Lancaster University, England, and the study’s first author, told Mongabay in a video call. “It’s really telling us something about the islands themselves,” Graham said. “Seabirds and native vegetation actually support the resilience of the islands themselves to sea level rise, which I think is fascinating and really quite positive.” Atoll islands of Tetiaroa Atoll, French Polynesia. Seabirds and native vegetation make low-lying atoll islands more resilient to sea level rise due to climate change, according to a recent study. Image by Yadvinder Malhi. Graham and colleagues first began looking into the connection between seabirds, islands and reefs nearly a decade ago. At the time,…This article was originally published on Mongabay

When an ice shelf blocks a polar fjord, it sparks the creation of an ecosystem like no other: the epishelf lake. Meltwater pools up behind the ice shelf, floating above the denser seawater, with both freshwater and marine species found in distinct layers within the same water column. But Canada’s last known epishelf lake, at Milne Fjord on Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, is gone. The lake drained out to sea after the Milne Ice Shelf calved in 2020, and it won’t return, according to a recent study published in Scientific Reports. Ellesmere Island lies within the Last Ice Area, a region of the Arctic that scientists have long thought would retain its sea ice longer than elsewhere as the planet warms. The changes at Milne Fjord are a signal of accelerating climate change, with implications for the entire planet. “What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic,” study co-author Derek Mueller, a professor at Carleton University in Ontario, told Mongabay in a video call. Meltwater lakes form in the depressions of Milne Ice Shelf every summer. Image by Jérémie Bonneau. In the past, ice shelves dammed Ellesmere’s many fjords, with an estimated 10 to 17 epishelf lakes perched along its north coast as recently as the 20th century. But over the past several decades, dramatic warming, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, has transformed this region. One by one, giant ice shelves have split and calved, allowing the epishelf lakes to drain away. When the massive 65-meter-deep…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Frog release days always start early, at about 4 a.m., so that staff can get up to the site before the day gets too hot, said Erin Lundy, manager of conservation initiatives at the Aquarium of the Pacific in the U.S. The first challenge is catching the frogs. A newly morphed southern mountain yellow-legged frog (Rana muscosa) is about an inch long, fast, and very good at squeezing into cracks, Lundy said. It can take a couple of hours for staff to scoop them all up from the tanks. Lundy prefers grabbing them with gloved hands, though others use nets. The aquarium has been rearing southern mountain yellow-legged frogs since 2021, as part of a multi-agency, 20-plus-year conservation effort for the species, a Southern California amphibian listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List. Head-starting the frogs by ushering them through metamorphosis in captivity boosts their odds of survive, Lundy said. This year’s cohort arrived at the aquarium late last summer as 2-month-old tadpoles from the Los Angeles Zoo, where they were bred. Through winter and into spring, aquarium staff watched as their limbs erupted and tails slowly reabsorbed. By August, most were ready for life in the wild. (Metamorphosis for this species takes from one to five years in the wild, and is highly variable in captivity. Those that did not fully metamorphosize by the release date will be held back and released as larger adults next summer). Developing southern mountain yellow-legged frog (Rana muscosa) embryos inside eggs at…This article was originally published on Mongabay