Kusu Quickly
some intriguing encounters on the wild shores of singapore blog
Life History of the Peacock Royal
on the Butterflies of Singapore blog
Striped Tit Babbler: A failed nesting
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog
“Plastic in the Open Ocean”
on the News from the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore blog
Alvin Lim, Straits Times 31 Aug 08;
A new sweetener has been offered to the unhappy cabbies who drive compressed natural gas (CNG) taxis supplied by the Smart Group.
From tomorrow, the group will give its CNG taxi drivers a fuel rebate of between five and 15 cents for every kilogramme of CNG sold at the refuelling station it owns, which is in Mandai.
This is on top of the 12 per cent discount these drivers now get at the station.
The extra rebate will kick in only if the price of CNG at the station rises above $1.50 before discount. The current price at the station before discount is $1.71.
The Sunday Times reported two weeks ago that Smart's CNG cab drivers, upset over poor earnings due to high CNG prices and other grouses, had wanted to return their Kia Carens cabs without any penalty.
The other gripes were long queues and few pumps in Mandai, and the alleged poor fuel economy of the Kias.
About 15 of its 50 Kia Carens CNG taxi drivers had met with Smart's managing director Johnny Harjantho.
That meeting two weeks ago ended with Smart offering monthly payouts of $100 to the Kia drivers, over the next six months.
Smart has also started constructing its second CNG station in Serangoon last week.
But even so, not all cabbies were reassured. Cabby Willy Neo, 60, who has been driving his CNG taxi for five months, had told The Sunday Times: 'The $100 translates to only about $3 a day. How is this going to help us?'
The latest move by Smart came after 17 of the Kia drivers met the management last week for a second time.
Cabby Lau Kok Chiew, 48, who was involved in arranging the talks, said: 'The company is listening to us. We are very happy and appreciative.'
Michael Casey, Associated Press Yahoo News 30 Aug 08;
Preecha Jiabyu used to take tourists on a rowboat to see the banks of the Mae Klong River aglow with thousands of fireflies.
These days, all he sees are the fluorescent lights of hotels, restaurants and highway overpasses. He says he'd have to row a good two miles to see trees lit up with the magical creatures of his younger days.
"The firefly populations have dropped 70 percent, in the past three years," said Preecha, 58, a former teacher who started providing dozens of row boats to compete with polluting motor boats. "It's sad. They were a symbol of our city."
The fate of the insects drew more than 100 entomologists and biologists to Thailand's northern city of Chiang Mai last week for an international symposium on the "Diversity and Conservation of Fireflies."
They then traveled Friday to Ban Lomtuan, an hour outside of Bangkok, to see the synchronous firefly Pteroptyx malaccae — known for its rapid, pulsating flashing that look like Christmas lights.
Yet another much-loved species imperiled by humankind? The evidence is entirely anecdotal, but there are anecdotes galore.
From backyards in Tennessee to riverbanks in Southeast Asia, researchers said they have seen fireflies — also called glowworms or lightning bugs — dwindling in number.
No single factor is blamed, but researchers in the United States and Europe mostly cite urban sprawl and industrial pollution that destroy insect habitat. The spread of artificial lights also could be a culprit, disrupting the intricate mating behavior that depends on a male winning over a female with its flashing backside.
"It is quite clear they are declining," said Stefan Ineichen, a researcher who studies fireflies in Switzerland and runs a Web site to gather information on firefly sightings.
"When you talk to old people about fireflies, it is always the same," he said. "They saw so many when they were young and now they are lucky now if they see one."
Fredric Vencl, a researcher at Stonybrook University in New York, discovered a new species two years ago only to learn its mountain habitat in Panama was threatened by logging.
Lynn Faust spent a decade researching fireflies on her 40-acre farm in Knoxville, Tenn., but gave up on one species because she stopped seeing them.
"I know of populations that have disappeared on my farm because of development and light pollution," said Faust. "It's these McMansions with their floodlights. One house has 32 lights. Why do you need so many lights?"
But Faust and other experts said they still need scientific data, which has been difficult to come by with so few monitoring programs in place.
There are some 2,000 species and researchers are constantly discovering new ones. Many have never been studied, leaving scientists in the dark about the potential threats and the meaning of their Morse code-like flashes that signal everything from love to danger.
"It is like a mystery insect," said Anchana Thancharoen, who was part of a team that discovered a new species Luciola aquatilis two years ago in Thailand.
The problem is, a nocturnal insect as small as a human fingertip can't be tagged and tracked like bears or even butterflies, and counting is difficult when some females spend most of their time on the ground or don't flash.
And the firefly's adult life span of just one to three weeks makes counting even harder.
European researchers have tried taking a wooden frame and measuring the numbers that appear over a given time. Scientists at the Forest Research Institute Malaysia have been photographing fireflies populations monthly along the Selangor River.
But with little money and manpower to study the problem, experts are turning to volunteers for help. Web sites like the Citizen Science Firefly Survey in Boston, which started this year, encourages enthusiasts to report changes in their neighborhood firefly populations.
"Researchers hope this would allow us to track firefly populations over many years to determine if they are remaining stable or disappearing," said Christopher Cratsley, a firefly expert at Fitchburg State College in Massachusetts who served as a consultant on the site run by the Boston Museum of Science.
Scientists acknowledge the urgency to assess fireflies may not match that of polar bears or Siberian tigers. But they insist fireflies are a "canary in a coal mine" in terms of understanding the health of an ecosystem.
Preecha, the teacher turned boatman, couldn't agree more. He has seen the pristine river of his childhood become polluted and fish populations disappear. Now, he fears the fireflies could be gone within a year.
"I feel like our way of life is being destroyed," Preecha said.
Taranjit Kaur, Virginia Tech LiveScience.com Yahoo News 30 Aug 08;
This Behind the Scenes article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation.
As the sun rises, my commute to work begins. There is no traffic at all to speak of except for a few baboons frolicking about and a couple warthogs at their favorite grazing spot for breakfast.
I am at 6 degrees south of the equator and 30 degrees east of the prime meridian, where there is an enchanted forest, called Mahale Mountains. It is situated along the shores of a vast lake, Lake Tanganyika in East Africa. Mahale Mountains National Park is a foot-walking Park. It stretches across 623 square miles in a remote location in western Tanzania, East Africa. Mahale is very remote. The nearest town is between 10 - 12 hours by steamship.
I come here to study the wild chimpanzees. They are habituated to human presence.
Lucky to find them
Each morning I wake up and wonder where the chimpanzees are today - high up in the mountain range or lower and closer to my base camp. Trekking through the forest, I listen for their vocalizations. On a good day, I hear some vocalizing and can work towards finding them. A great day is one where I actually find them and can spend some time with them as they roam around in perfect liberty.
I am humbled; their appearance and behavior command my respect. After all, chimpanzees are the closest living relative of humans. Less than about 2 percent of their DNA sequence differ ours. This close genetic relationship makes chimpanzees susceptible to many of the same diseases that we are susceptible to.
I study chimpanzee health. I want to determine how and why they are getting sick and dying.
Eco-friendly research
I have developed a software program for this research. It enables me to collect data rapidly using a handheld computer. I can download the data automatically directly into a database that I built. I need a reliable power source in the field though to run the system.
Mahale is very remote and there is no source of power available. A gasoline-powered generator or solar power is the only options available.
I decided to go all solar since I believe it is the most environmentally friendly approach. I needed a physical structure to work out of. I wanted my research station to be eco-friendly and leave the smallest possible footprint in the forest. So I worked with architects and engineers to design and develop my eco-friendly lab.
Human disease
For my research, I observe the chimpanzees. Also, I collect specimens for analysis. Research on chimpanzees here is "hands-off." I can only collect feces and urine, and saliva can sometimes be collected from leftover pieces of fruits that the chimpanzees were eating.
Using samples collected from sick chimpanzees, I can do forensics of sorts. Following this approach, I was able to detect a virus in the feces. After doing further molecular analysis on this virus, I was able to tell that this virus was closely related to a human virus called the metapneumovirus. Metapneumovirus in humans causes acute respiratory disease. It can sometimes lead to death, most often in young children. Looking at my data, it was very clear that most of the chimpanzees that were getting sick and dying were the younger ones, as is the case with humans.
Now, the question arises, how the virus came to infect and cause disease in chimpanzees at Mahale. At this moment in time, it is very hard to answer this question. Currently, I am doing further research. Hopefully, I will be able to determine the origin of this human-related chimpanzee metapneumovirus which has been causing disease and death in chimpanzees at Mahale. The work goes on...
Chet Brokaw, Associated Press Yahoo News 30 Aug 08;
On the grasslands a few miles from the pinnacles and spires of Badlands National Park, federal wildlife officials have been waging a war since spring to save one of the nation's largest colonies of endangered black-footed ferrets.
The deadly disease sylvatic plague was discovered in May in a huge prairie dog town in the Conata Basin. The black-tailed prairie dog is the main prey of ferrets, and the disease quickly killed up to a third of the area's 290 ferrets along with prairie dogs.
The disease stopped spreading with the arrival of summer's hot, dry weather, but it poses a serious threat to efforts to establish stable populations of one of the nation's rarest mammals, said Scott Larson of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Pierre.
The plague, which is carried by fleas, is the biggest danger to ferrets' survival in the Conata Basin and other sites that still have ferrets, said Larson, who is coordinating ferret conservation efforts among five federal agencies.
"It has the capacity to take out more ferret habitat than anything we've run up against, and do it in such a short order," Larson said. "For ferrets, it's the most challenging issue we face."
The ferrets were once considered extinct. But one colony was discovered in Wyoming in 1981, and a captive breeding program succeeded in increasing their numbers. Since then, ferrets have been reintroduced at 17 sites in South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Utah, Kansas and Mexico, said Nancy Warren, endangered species program leader in the Rocky Mountain Region of the U.S. Forest Service.
Reintroduction efforts failed in some locations, and plague has hit most of the ferret colonies to some degree, Larson said.
Establishing many reintroduction sites helps protect the overall ferret population from being wiped out by plague, Larson said. "I guess it's the old risk management of having your eggs spread out among many baskets."
Representatives of federal agencies and some conservation groups have taken a double-barreled approach to try to stop the spread of plague and save prairie dogs and ferrets in the 20-mile-long Conata Basin, a portion of the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands that lies just south of the Badlands in southwestern South Dakota.
This summer, a crew of four has buzzed across the prairie on all-terrain vehicles, pausing frequently to spray white insecticide dust into prairie dog burrows to kill fleas.
After dark, another crew moved into the area during part of the summer to shine spotlights across the grasslands, trap ferrets and vaccinate them against the plague.
Officials want to dust about 11,000 acres with insecticide by this fall, and have covered about two-thirds of that area so far. More than 60 ferrets have been vaccinated, with 15 of them already getting the desired two doses.
Of the 25,000 acres of prairie dog habitat managed for ferrets in the basin, the plague had spread to about 9,700 acres before its growth halted in August. Officials expect the plague might start spreading again this fall or next spring. The disease has not been found inside Badlands National Park itself.
Warren said the insecticide appears to be effective, but it's too early to tell if it will save the ferrets.
"We're learning as we go. We really don't know the answer to that yet," Warren said. "We're hopeful with the dusting, which is something new we're doing now, we'll be able to at least contain the extent of this plague."
The basin also has been the focus of controversy as the Forest Service tries to balance the protection of prairie dogs and ferrets with the needs of ranchers who graze cattle on leased sections of the national grasslands.
Prairie dogs once were routinely poisoned as pests. However, the rodents expanded rapidly in the region, moving from federal land to private ranches, during an extended drought and a halt to poisoning on federal land while government officials considered whether they should be protected under the Endangered Species Act. The Fish and Wildlife Service decided in 2004 not to protect prairie dogs, but the agency is now reconsidering the issue.
Jonathan Proctor, Great Plains representative for Defenders of Wildlife, a conservation group, said the Conata Basin is the last remaining large complex of black-tailed prairie dogs on the Great Plains since the plague destroyed two in Montana and Wyoming. Prairie dogs must be protected because they are important not only to ferrets, but also to hawks, burrowing owls and many other species, he said.
"Even with the loss of almost 10,000 acres of prairie dogs, Conata Basin still remains the largest and most important prairie dog complex on federal lands in the Great Plains. It's worth all these efforts to save it," Proctor said.
But Shirley Kudma, who ranches in the basin with her husband, Donald, said the prevalence of plague confirms the predictions of ranchers overrun by prairie dogs in the past decade. They argued more should have been done to limit the spread of prairie dogs because the hungry rodents strip the ground of grass and leave little for cattle.
"Nature took care of it, didn't it?" Shirley Kudma said. "There's the plague and the prairie dogs, and that's nature taking care of the expansion."
Ranchers don't want to wipe out prairie dogs, she said.
"I think we want to get along. We want to be able to survive just the same as the prairie dogs want to survive. We don't want to annihilate them. We don't. Just get them under control so they're not sick. Give the ferrets something healthy to eat."
About 5 to 15 people are infected by plague in the United States each year, but it can be cured with antibiotics if treatment is prompt.
Kirsty Scott, The Guardian 30 Aug 08;
In the long grass near the edge of a small loch, Toby the springer spaniel is hard at work. Harness on, head down, he zigzags through the undergrowth until something stops him in his tracks. He puts his nose to the ground, tail flicking frantically. Before him, hidden in the vegetation, is a remnant of a bumblebees' nest.
Toby is the latest weapon in an effort to try to understand what is happening to Britain's bumblebees. He is the world's first bee-sniffing dog, trained by the army, and based at Stirling University, where researchers have a £112,000 grant to study the bees' decline.
Like honeybees, the British bumblebee is under threat. There used to be 25 different species of bumblebee in the UK. Three are extinct and up to seven more are close to extinction. Habitat loss is the biggest threat. Intensive farming means fewer areas where the bees can flourish, such as hay meadows and clover leys.
"If we are going to conserve them, we need to know more about them, where they live, what causes the nests to die," says Professor Dave Goulson of the university's school of biological and environmental sciences. "The last few years have been really bad for bumblebees. We think it's probably the weather, but we don't know. We need to know how many nests there are. We need to find the nests to know how long they live and what destroys them."
The trouble with bumblebees is that their nests are smaller than a honeybee hive and are often hidden underground. As few as 50 bees can live in one nest. One of the bees' main predators is the badger, and it occurred to the Stirling team that if badgers could sniff out bee nests, then so could a dog. They approached the army and provided the funds to train Toby, who had been rescued from an animal pound in the Midlands and now lives on a farm with his handler, PhD student Steph O' Connor.
It is absolutely crucial work, says Goulson. "Bumblebees are very important to the environment as pollinators of crops and flowers, but sadly they are struggling to survive in the modern world of habitat loss, pesticides and intensive agriculture," he said. "Further decline in bumblebees could result in a downward cycle of poorer harvests and sweeping changes to the countryside, as wild flowers set less seed and disappear, which, in turn, could have catastrophic effects for other wildlife."
The university team works alongside the Stirling-based Bumblebee Conservation Trust, which, with the help of the RSPB, recently set up the world's first bumblebee sanctuary in Fife, a large wildflower meadow, which is attracting a wide variety of bees.
Sabine Vollmer, Raleigh News & Observer Yahoo News 26 Aug 08;
RALEIGH, N.C. — Bayer CropScience is facing scrutiny because of the effect one of its best-selling pesticides has had on honeybees
A German prosecutor is investigating Werner Wenning , Bayer's chairman, and Friedrich Berschauer , the head of Bayer CropScience , after critics alleged that they knowingly polluted the environment.
The investigation was triggered by an Aug. 13 complaint filed by German beekeepers and consumer protection advocates, a Coalition against Bayer Dangers spokesman, Philipp Mimkes, said Monday.
The complaint is part of efforts by groups on both sides of the Atlantic to determine how much Bayer CropScience knows about the part that clothianidin may have played in the death of millions of honeybees.
Bayer CropScience , which has its U.S. headquarters in Research Triangle Park , said field studies have shown that bees' exposure to the pesticide is minimal or nonexistent if the chemical is used properly.
Clothianidin and related pesticides generated about $1 billion of Bayer CropScience's $8.6 billion in global sales last year. The coalition is demanding that the company withdraw all of the pesticides.
"We're suspecting that Bayer submitted flawed studies to play down the risks of pesticide residues in treated plants," said Harro Schultze , the coalition's attorney.
"Bayer's ... management has to be called to account, since the risks ... have now been known for more than 10 years."
Under German law, a criminal investigation could lead to a search of Bayer offices, Mimkes said.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the Natural Resources Defense Council is pressing for research information on clothianidin.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved the pesticide in 2003 under the condition that Bayer submit additional data. A lawsuit, which the environmental group filed Aug. 19 in federal court in Washington , accuses the EPA of hiding the honeybee data.
Bradley Brooks, Associated Press Yahoo News 30 Aug 08;
Amazon deforestation jumped 69 percent in the past 12 months — the first such increase in three years — as rising demand for soy and cattle pushes farmers and ranchers to raze trees, officials said Saturday.
Some 8,147 square kilometers (3,088 square miles) of forest were destroyed between August 2007 and August 2008 — a 69 percent increase over the 4,820 square kilometers (1,861 square miles) felled in the previous 12 months, according to the National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, which monitors destruction of the Amazon.
"We're not content," Environment Minister Carlos Minc said. "Deforestation has to fall more and the conditions for sustainable development have to improve."
Brazil's government has increased cash payments to fight illegal Amazon logging this year, and it eliminated government bank loans to farmers who illegally clear forest to plant crops.
The country lost 2.7 percent of its Amazon rain forest in 2007, or 11,000 square kilometers (4,250 square miles). Environmental officials fear even more land will be razed this year — but they have not forecast how much.
Minc says monthly deforestation rates have slowed since May, but environmental groups say seasonal shifts in tree cutting make the annual number a more accurate gauge.
Most deforestation happens in March and April, the start of Brazil's dry season, and routinely tapers off in May, June and July: Last month, 323 square kilometers (125 square miles) of trees were felled, 61 percent less than the area razed in June.
Environmentalists also argue that INPE's deforestation report wasn't designed to give accurate monthly figures, but to alert and direct the government to deforestation hot spots in time to save the land.
The Amazon region covers about 4.1 million square kilometers (1.6 million square miles) of Brazil, nearly 60 percent of the country. About 20 percent of that land has already been deforested.
Richard Alleyne The Telegraph 31 Aug 08;
The waters of the Sea of Galilee where Jesus is said to have once sailed are at their lowest level on record due to drought and demand from Israel, it has been claimed.
The freshwater lake which supplies Israel with much of its drinking water and irrigation has been hit by a combination of four years of drought and relentless demand from homeowners and farmers in the region.
The waters are now at their lowest on record and are set to fall even lower.
Critics say the Israeli government seems oblivious to the damage being caused to the largest lake in the country.
Despite the water falling below the lowest red line, which denotes serious hazard, the pumping has continued until it is due to reach an even lower black line, seen previously as a point of no return.
Gidon Bromberg, the Israel director of Friends of the Earth Middle East, said: "There is a very real danger that this could lead to over-salination.
"The lower red line indicates the level at which the sustainability of the lake is threatened. We are certainly very alarmed by the authorities' willingness to go to the black line. This development could well be irreversible."
The main factor driving the unending thirst is Israel's projection of itself is a country of pioneering farmers who made the desert bloom while the previous Palestinian owners of the land were prepared to live in a barren environment without seeking progress.
Attempts by the Israeli government to bring in strict restrictions on water usage would be politically suicidal with an election on the horizon. No party would be willing to put forward such proposals against the powerful farming lobby.
Israeli farmers consume 40 per cent of the country's fresh water using some of it, environmental campaigners point out, to grow fruit such as bananas and types of berries alien to the desert, for export to the West.
The Galilee region had been verdant through the ages with a ribbon of flourishing towns and villages beside the lake. The historian Flavius Josephus, writing in the first century, was so taken with the area that he wrote: "One may call this place the ambition of nature." He reported 230 fishing boats working each day.
Ari Binyamin, a fisherman, said the water levels have also affected fish stocks.
"We used to say even a few years ago that one place where you couldn't go wrong fishing was Kinneret [Hebrew name for the Sea of Galilee] but now it is getting very, very hard because the stocks are so low.
"Many fishermen fear for their livelihood and so do I. But it seems no one really cares about us."
Melting ice opens up North-west and North-east passages simultaneously. Scientists warn Arctic icecap is entering a 'death spiral'
Geoffrey Lean, The Independent 31 Aug 08;
Open water now stretches all the way round the Arctic, making it possible for the first time in human history to circumnavigate the North Pole, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. New satellite images, taken only two days ago, show that melting ice last week opened up both the fabled North-west and North-east passages, in the most important geographical landmark to date to signal the unexpectedly rapid progress of global warming.
Last night Professor Mark Serreze, a sea ice specialist at the official US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), hailed the publication of the images – on an obscure website by scientists at the University of Bremen, Germany – as "a historic event", and said that it provided further evidence that the Arctic icecap may now have entered a "death spiral". Some scientists predict that it could vanish altogether in summer within five years, a process that would, in itself, greatly accelerate.
But Sarah Palin, John McCain's new running mate, holds that the scientific consensus that global warming is melting Arctic ice is unreliable.
The opening of the passages – eagerly awaited by shipping companies who hope to cut thousands of miles off their routes by sailing round the north of Canada and Russia – is only the greatest of a host of ominous signs this month of a gathering crisis in the Arctic. Early last week the NSDIC warned that, over the next few weeks, the total extent of sea ice in the Arctic may shrink to below the record low reached last year – itself a massive 200,000 square miles less than the previous worst year, 2005.
Four weeks ago, tourists had to be evacuated from Baffin Island's Auyuittuq National Park because of flooding from thawing glaciers. Auyuittuq means "land that never melts".
Two weeks later, in an unprecedented sighting, nine stranded polar bears were seen off Alaska trying to swim 400 miles north to the retreating icecap edge. Ten days ago massive cracking was reported in the Petermann glacier in the far north of Greenland, an area apparently previously unaffected by global warming.
But it is the simultaneous opening – for the first time in at least 125,000 years – of the North-west passage around Canada and the North-east passage around Russia that promises to deliver much the greatest shock. Until recently both had been blocked by ice since the beginning of the last Ice Age.
In 2005, the North-east passage opened, while the western one remained closed, and last year their positions were reversed. But the images, gathered by Nasa using microwave sensors that penetrate clouds, show that the North-west passage opened last weekend and that the last blockage on the north- eastern one – a tongue of ice stretching down to Russia across Siberia's Laptev Sea – dissolved a few days later.
"The passages are open," said Professor Serreze, though he cautioned that official bodies would be reluctant to confirm this for fear of lawsuits if ships encountered ice after being encouraged to enter them. "It's a historic event. We are going to see this more and more as the years go by."
Shipping companies are already getting ready to exploit the new routes. The Bremen-based Beluga Group says it will send the first ship through the North-east passage – cutting 4,000 nautical miles off the voyage from Germany to Japan – next year. And Canada's Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, last week announced that all foreign ships entering the North-west passage should report to his government – a move bound to be resisted by the US, which regards it as an international waterway.
But scientists say that such disputes will soon become irrelevant if the ice continues to melt at present rates, making it possible to sail right across the North Pole. They have long regarded the disappearance of the icecap as inevitable as global warming takes hold, though until recently it was not expected until around 2070.
Many scientists now predict that the Arctic ocean will be ice-free in summer by 2030 – and a landmark study this year by Professor Wieslaw Maslowski at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, concluded that there will be no ice between mid-July and mid-September as early as 2013.
The tipping point, experts believe, was the record loss of ice last year, reaching a level not expected to occur until 2050. Sceptics then dismissed the unprecedented melting as a freak event, and it was indeed made worse by wind currents and other natural weather patterns.
Conditions were better this year – it has been cooler, particularly last winter – and for a while it looked as if the ice loss would not be so bad. But this month the melting accelerated. Last week it shrank to below the 2005 level and the European Space Agency said: "A new record low could be reached in a matter of weeks."
Four weeks ago, a seven-year study at the University of Alberta reported that – besides shrinking in area – the thickness of the ice had dropped by half in just six years. It suggested that the region had "transitioned into a different climatic state where completely ice-free summers would soon become normal".
The process feeds on itself. As white ice is replaced by sea, the dark surface absorbs more heat, warming the ocean and melting more ice.
Yahoo News 30 Aug 08;
Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is leaking from the permafrost under the Siberian seabed, a researcher on an international expedition in the region told Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter on Saturday.
"The permafrost now has small holes. We have found elevated levels of methane above the water surface and even more in the water just below. It is obvious that the source is the seabed," Oerjan Gustafsson, the Swedish leader of the International Siberian Shelf Study, told the newspaper.
The tests were carried out in the Laptev and east Siberian seas and used much more precise measuring equipment than previous studies, he said.
Methane is more than 20 times more efficient than carbon dioxide in trapping solar heat.
Scientists fear that global warming may cause Siberia's permafrost to thaw and thereby release vast amounts of methane into the atmosphere. The effects of global warming are already most visible in the Arctic region.
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