Endangered tigers face growing threats from an Asian road-building boom

Female tiger crossing track, Bandavgarh National Park, India.
David Tipling/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Tigers are one of the world’s most iconic wild species, but today they are endangered throughout Asia. They once roamed across much of this region, but widespread habitat loss, prey depletion and poaching have reduced their numbers to only about 4,000 individuals. They live in small pockets of habitat across South and Southeast Asia, as well as the Russian Far East – an area spanning 13 countries and 450,000 square miles (1,160,000 square kilometers).

Today Asia is experiencing a road-building boom. To maintain economic growth, development experts estimate that the region will need to invest about US$8.4 trillion in transportation infrastructure between 2016 and 2030.

Major investment projects, such as China’s Belt and Road Initiative – one of the largest infrastructure projects of all time – are fueling this growth. While roads can reduce poverty, especially in rural areas, many of Asia’s new roads also are likely to traverse regions that are home to diverse plants and animals.

To protect tigers from this surge of road building, conservation scientists like me need to know where the greatest risks are. That information, in turn, can improve road planning in the future.

In a newly published study, I worked with researchers at the University of Michigan, Boise State University and the University of British Columbia to examine how existing and planned Asian roads encroach on tiger habitats. We forecast that nearly 15,000 miles (24,000 kilometers) of new roads will be built in tiger habitats by 2050, and call for bold new planning strategies that prioritize biodiversity conservation and sustainable road development across large landscapes.

Economic growth in Asia means more roads will be built into tiger habitat. Planning at the outset can make these projects more tiger-friendly.

Letting humans in

Road construction worsens existing threats to tigers, such as poaching and development, by paving the way for human intrusion into the heart of the tiger’s range. For example, in the Russian Far East, roads have led to higher tiger mortality due to increased collisions with vehicles and more encounters with poachers.

To assess this threat across Asia, we focused on areas called Tiger Conservation Landscapes – 76 zones, scattered across the tiger’s range, which conservationists see as crucial for the species’ recovery. For each zone we calculated road density, distance to the nearest road and relative mean species abundance, which estimates the numbers of mammals in areas near roads compared to areas far from roads. Mean species abundance is our best proxy for estimating how roads affect numbers of mammals, like tigers and their prey, across broad scales.

We also used future projections of road building in each country to forecast the length of new roads that might be built in tiger habitats by 2050.

Overpasses and underpasses, like this one in Florida, help wild animals traverse highways safely.

More roads, fewer animals

We estimated that more than 83,300 miles (134,000 kilometers) of roads already exist within tiger habitats. This is likely an underestimate, since many logging or local roads are missing from the global data set that we used.

Road densities in tiger habitat are one-third greater outside of protected areas, such as national parks and tiger reserves, than inside of protected areas. Non-protected areas averaged 1,300 feet of road per square mile (154 meters per square kilometer), while protected areas averaged 980 feet per square mile (115 meters per square kilometer). For tiger populations to grow, they will need to use the forests outside protected areas. However, the high density of roads in those forests will jeopardize tiger recovery.

Protected areas and priority conservation sites – areas with large populations of tigers – are not immune either. For example, in India – home to over 70% of the world’s tigers – we estimate that a protected area of 500 square miles, or 1,300 square kilometers, contains about 200 miles (320 kilometers) of road.

Road networks are expansive. Over 40% of areas where tiger breeding has recently been detected – crucial to tiger population growth – is within just 3 miles (5 kilometers) of a nearby road. This is problematic because mammals often are less abundant this close to roads.

In fact, we estimate that current road networks within tiger habitats may be reducing local populations of tigers and their prey by about 20%. That’s a major decrease for a species on the brink of extinction. And the threats from roads are likely to become more severe.

Estimated road densities for 76 tiger conservation landscapes (colored zones), with darker red indicating more roads per unit area.
Neil Carter, CC BY-ND

Making infrastructure tiger-friendly

Our findings underscore the need for planning development in ways that interfere as minimally as possible with tiger habitat. Multilateral development banks and massive ventures like the Belt and Road Initiative can be important partners in this endeavor. For example, they could help establish an international network of protected areas and habitat corridors to safeguard tigers and many other wild species from road impacts.

National laws can also do more to promote tiger-friendly infrastructure planning. This includes keeping road development away from priority tiger populations and other “no go” zones, such as tiger reserves or habitat corridors.

Zoning can be used around infrastructure to prevent settlement growth and forest loss. Environmental impact assessments for road projects can do a better job of assessing how new roads might exacerbate hunting and poaching pressure on tigers and their prey.

Funding agencies need to screen proposed road developments using these tiger-friendly criteria before planners finalize decisions on road design, siting and construction. Otherwise, it might be too late to influence road planning.

There are also opportunities to reduce the negative effects of existing roads on tigers. They include closing roads to vehicular traffic at night, decommissioning existing roads in areas with important tiger populations, adding road signs announcing the presence of tigers and constructing wildlife crossings to allow tigers and other wildlife to move freely through the landscape.

Roads will become more pervasive features in Asian ecosystems as these nations develop. In my view, now is the time to tackle this mounting challenge to Asian biodiversity, including tigers, through research, national and international collaborations and strong political leadership.

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Neil Carter, Assistant Professor of Wildlife Conservation, University of Michigan

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Be still, my beating wings: hunters kill migrating birds on their 10,000km journey to Australia

A bar-tailed godwit.
Lucas DeCicco, US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Eduardo Gallo-Cajiao, The University of Queensland

It is low tide at the end of the wet season in Broome, Western Australia. Shorebirds feeding voraciously on worms and clams suddenly get restless.

Chattering loudly they take flight, circling up over Roebuck Bay then heading off for their northern breeding grounds more than 10,000 km away. I marvel at the epic journey ahead, and wonder how these birds will fare.

In my former role as an assistant warden at the Broome Bird Observatory, I had the privilege of watching shorebirds, such as the bar-tailed godwit, set off on their annual migration.

I’m now a conservation researcher at the University of Queensland, focusing on birds. Populations of migratory shorebirds are in sharp decline, and some are threatened with extinction.

We know the destruction of coastal habitats for infrastructure development has taken a big toll on these amazing birds. But a study I conducted with a large international team, which has just been published, suggests hunting is also a likely key threat.

Bar-tailed Godwits and great knots on migration in the Yellow Sea, China.
photo credit: Yong Ding Li

What are migratory shorebirds?

Worldwide, there are 139 migratory shorebird species. About 75 species breed at high latitudes across Asia, Europe, and North America then migrate south in a yearly cycle.

Some 61 migratory shorebird species occur in the Asia-Pacific, within the so-called East Asian-Australasian Flyway. This corridor includes 22 countries – from breeding grounds as far north as Alaska and Siberia to non-breeding grounds as far south as Tasmania and New Zealand. In between are counties in Asia’s east and southeast, such as South Korea and Vietnam.

Map of the East Asian-Australasian Flyway (bounded by blue line) showing schematic migratory movements of shorebirds.
figure credit: Jen Dixon

The bar-tailed godwits I used to observe at Roebuck Bay breed in Russia’s Arctic circle. They’re among about 36 migratory shorebird species to visit Australia each year, amounting to more than two million birds.

They primarily arrive towards the end of the year in all states and territories – visiting coastal areas such as Moreton Bay in Queensland, Eighty Mile Beach in Western Australia, and Corner Inlet in Victoria.

Numbers of migratory shorebirds have been falling for many species in the flyway. The trends have been detected since the 1970s using citizen science data sets.

Five of the 61 migratory shorebird species in this flyway are globally threatened. Two travel to Australia: the great knot and far eastern curlew.

Threats to these birds are many. They include the loss of their critical habitats along their migration path, off-leash dogs disturbing them on Australian beaches, and climate change likely contracting their breeding grounds.

And what about hunting?

During their migration, shorebirds stop to rest and feed along a network of wetlands and mudflats. They appear predictably and in large numbers at certain sites, making them relatively easy targets for hunters.

Estimating the extent to which birds are hunted over large areas was like completing a giant jigsaw puzzle. We spent many months scouring the literature, obtaining data and reports from colleagues then carefully assembling the pieces.

We discovered that since the 1970s, three-quarters of all migratory shorebird species in the flyway have been hunted at some point. This includes almost all those visiting Australia and four of the five globally threatened species.

Some records relate to historical hunting that has since been banned. For example the Latham’s snipe, a shorebird that breeds in Japan, was legally hunted in Australia until the 1980s. All migratory shorebirds are now legally protected from hunting in Australia.

We found evidence that hunting of migratory shorebirds has occurred in 14 countries, including New Zealand and Japan, with most recent records concentrated in southeast Asia, such as Indonesia, and the northern breeding grounds, such as the US.

For a further eight, such as Mongolia and South Korea, we could not determine whether hunting has ever occurred.

Our research suggests hunting has likely exceeded sustainable limits in some instances. Hunting has also been pervasive – spanning vast areas over many years and involving many species.

Shorebirds being sold as food in southeast Asia, 2019.
Toby Trung and Nguyen Hoai Bao/BirdLife

Looking ahead

The motivations of hunters vary across the flyway, according to needs, norms, and cultural traditions. For instance, Native Americans in Alaska hunt shorebirds as a food source after winter, and low-income people in Southeast Asia hunt and sell them.

National governments, supported by NGOs and researchers, must find the right balance between conservation and other needs, such as food security.

Efforts to address hunting are already underway. This includes mechanisms such as the United Nations Convention on Migratory Species and the East Asian-Australasian Flyway Partnership. Other efforts involve helping hunters find alternative livelihoods.

Our understanding of hunting as a potential threat is hindered by a lack of coordinated monitoring across the Asia-Pacific.

Additional surveys by BirdLife International, as well as university researchers, is underway in southeast Asia, China, and Russia. Improving hunting assessments, and coordination between them, is essential. Without it, we are acting in the dark.

The author would like to acknowledge the contributions of Professor Richard A. Fuller (University of Queensland), Professor Tiffany H. Morrison (James Cook University), Dr Bradley Woodworth (University of Queensland), Dr Taej Mundkur (Wetlands International), Dr Ding Li Yong (BirdLife International-Asia), and Professor James E.M. Watson (University of Queensland).

Eduardo Gallo-Cajiao, PhD Candidate, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

It might sound ‘batshit insane’ but Australia could soon export sunshine to Asia via a 3,800km cable

John Mathews, Macquarie University; Elizabeth Thurbon, UNSW; Hao Tan, University of Newcastle, and Sung-Young Kim, Macquarie University

Australia is the world’s third largest fossil fuels exporter – a fact that generates intense debate as climate change intensifies. While the economy is heavily reliant on coal and gas export revenues, these fuels create substantial greenhouse gas emissions when burned overseas.

Australia doesn’t currently export renewable energy. But an ambitious new solar project is poised to change that.

The proposed Sun Cable project envisions a ten gigawatt capacity solar farm (with about 22 gigawatt-hours of battery storage) laid out across 15,000 hectares near Tennant Creek, in the Northern Territory. Power generated will supply Darwin and be exported to Singapore via a 3,800km cable slung across the seafloor.

Sun Cable, and similar projects in the pipeline, would tap into the country’s vast renewable energy resources. They promise to provide an alternative to the export business of coal, iron ore and gas.

As experts of east-Asian energy developments, we welcome Sun Cable. It could pioneer a renewable energy export industry for Australia, creating new manufacturing industries and construction jobs. Importantly, it could set our economy on a post-fossil fuel trajectory.

Long-term cost benefits

Sun Cable was announced last year by a group of Australian developers. The project’s proponents say it would provide one-fifth of Singapore’s power supply by 2030, and replace a large share of fossil fuel-generated electricity used in Darwin.

Submarine cables are laid using deep-sea vessels specifically designed for the job.
Alan Jamieson/Flickr, CC BY

To export renewable energy overseas, a high-voltage (HV) direct current (DC) cable would link the Northern Territory to Singapore. Around the world, some HVDC cables already carry power across long distances. One ultra-high-voltage direct current cable connects central China to eastern seaboard cities such as Shanghai. Shorter HVDC grid interconnectors operate in Europe.

The fact that long distance HVDC cable transmission has already proven feasible is a point working in Sun Cable’s favour.

The cost of generating solar power is also falling dramatically. And the low marginal cost (cost of producing one unit) of generating and transporting renewable power offers further advantage.

The A$20 billion-plus proposal’s biggest financial hurdle was covering initial capital costs. In November last year, billionaire Australian investors Mike Cannon-Brookes and Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest provided initial funding to the tune of up to A$50 million. Cannon-Brookes said while Sun Cable seemed like a “completely batshit insane project”, it appeared achievable from an engineering perspective.

Sun Cable is expected to be completed in 2027.

Bringing in business

The proposal would also bring business to local high-technology companies. Sun Cable has contracted with Sydney firm 5B, to use its “solar array” prefabrication technology to accelerate the building of its solar farm. The firm will pre-assemble solar panels and deliver them to the site in containers, ready for quick assembly.

The Northern Territory government has also shown support, granting Sun Cable “major project” status. This helps clear potential investment and approval barriers.

Across Australia, similar renewable energy export plans are emerging. The Murchison Renewable Hydrogen Project in Western Australia will use energy produced by solar and wind farms to create renewable hydrogen, transported to east Asia as liquid hydrogen.

Similarly, the planned Asian Renewable Energy Hub could have renewable hydrogen generated in Western Australia’s Pilbara region at 15 gigawatts. This would also be exported, and supplied to local industries.

These projects align with the Western Australian government’s ambitious Renewable Hydrogen Strategy. It’s pushing to make clean hydrogen a driver for the state’s export future.

Reliable solutions

Generating and transmitting power from renewable resources avoids the energy security risks plaguing fossil fuel projects. Renewable projects use manufactured devices such as solar cells, wind turbines and batteries. These all generate energy security (a nation’s access to a sufficient, affordable and consistent energy supply).

Australia controls its own manufacturing activities, and while the sun may not shine brightly every day, its incidence is predictable over time. In contrast, oil, coal and gas supply is limited and heavily subject to geopolitical tensions. Just months ago in the Middle East, attacks on two major Saudi Arabian oil facilities impacted 5% of global oil supply.

Renewing international links

Apart from exporting electricity produced on its own solar farm, Sun Cable could profit from letting other projects export electricity to Asia through shared-cost use of its infrastructure.

This would encourage future renewable energy exports, especially to the energy-hungry ASEAN nations (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) – Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

This would strengthen Australia’s economic relationships with its ASEAN neighbours – an importantc geo-economic goal. In particular, it could help reduce Australia’s growing export dependence on China.

However, as with any large scale project, Sun Cable does face challenges.

Other than raising the remaining capital, it must meet interconnection standards and safety requirements to implement the required infrastructure. These will need to be managed as the project evolves.

Also, since the power cable is likely to run along the seabed under Indonesian waters, its installation will call for strategic international negotiations. There has also been speculation from mining interests the connection could present national security risks, as it may be able to send and receive “performance and customer data”. But these concerns cannot be validated currently, as we lack the relevant details.

Fortunately, none of these challenges are insurmountable. And within the decade, Sun Cable could make the export of Australian renewable energy a reality.

John Mathews, Professor of Strategic Management, Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Macquarie University; Elizabeth Thurbon, Scientia Fellow and Associate Professor in International Relations / International Political Economy, UNSW; Hao Tan, Associate professor, University of Newcastle, and Sung-Young Kim, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Modern History, Politics & International Relations, Macquarie University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Asia – The World’s Tip?

In the remote Cambodian jungles, we made sure rare Siamese crocodiles would have enough food

The Siamese Crocodile once lived in Southeast Asian freshwater rivers, but now fewer than 1000 individuals exist.
Shutterstock

Paul McInerney, La Trobe University

For nine hours, my colleague Michael Shackleton and I held onto our scooters for dear life while being slapped in the face by spiked jungle plants in the mountains of Cambodia. We only disembarked either to help push a scooter up a slippery jungle path or to stop it from sliding down one.

With our gear loaded up on nine scooters – 200 metres of fishing nets, two inflatable kayaks, food for five days, hammocks, preservation gear for collection of DNA, and other assorted scientific instruments – we at last arrived at one of the few remaining sites known to harbour the critically endangered Siamese crocodiles.

The Siamese crocodile once lived in Southeast Asian freshwater rivers from Indonesia to Myanmar. But now, fewer than 1000 breeding individuals remain.

In fact, during the 1990s the species was thought to be completely extinct in the wild. Then, in 2000, scientists from Fauna and Flora International found a tiny population in the remote Cardamom Mountains region of Cambodia.

We travelled to this remote wilderness in 2017 to determine habitat suitability for the reintroduction of captive-bred juvenile Siamese crocodiles. We wanted to understand the food web there to see whether it contains enough fish to sustain the young crocs.

Our journey would not have been possible without the help of Community Crocodile Wardens – local community members who patrol the jungle sanctuaries for threats and record crocodile presence. Wardens also conduct crocodile surveys further afield to discover new populations or to identify new areas of potential suitable crocodile habitat for juvenile releases.

Our recent study found to ensure the species survives, reintroduction locations must be protected from fishing pressure – both from a food supply perspective, but also from risk of entanglement in nets.

A species in decline

When we arrived at our site, northwest of the village of Thmor Bang, our day was capped by what we came to know as the standard evening downpour, despite assurances that we had, in fact, timed our trip for the dry season.

Kayaks were inflated, nets set, and sampling was underway. This proved laborious – to ensure crocodiles didn’t drown, we couldn’t leave nets unattended in the water overnight, but instead checked them every hour until morning.

Siamese crocodiles are generally not aggressive to humans, but they come into conflict with people when caught in fishing nets.

This often leads to the crocodile drowning and the fishing net being ruined. It’s a disaster on both counts, because fish is the only source of protein for many local communities in Cambodia.

Like many other apex predators around the world, the Siamese crocodile is also in decline because of habitat destruction and poaching for their skins.

Their potential large size and generally placid nature means they are highly prized by crocodile farmers who use the skins for handbags and footwear. Crocodile farmers also often hybridise the Siamese crocodiles with other non-native crocodile species.

This means programs for Siamese crocodile reintroduction and breeding must carefully genetically screen all young crocodiles bred in captivity to make sure they’re not actually hybrids, so the “genetically pure” wild populations can remain.

Finding fish bones in croc poo

Despite a pretty good understanding of captive Siamese crocodile behaviour and biology, very little is known about Siamese crocodiles in the wild, such as what they eat or how much food they need to raise an egg to adulthood.

Our only reliable indication of diet comes from scats (crocodile poo or “shit of croc” as we came to call it) collected along the river banks inhabited by remnant populations.

Carefully collected poo samples containing scales and bones tell us fish and snakes make up a significant proportion of the Siamese crocodile diet.

But the shrouded, mystical, extremely remote and virtually inaccessible jungle in the Cardamom Mountains has ensured we know next to nothing about fish communities within habitats set for the release of captive crocodile. And this information is particularly important for prioritising release locations for captive bred juveniles.

We spent four days sampling fish communities and then repeated the process at two other equally remote locations within the Cardamoms, requiring two days travel between each.

We saw groups of gibbons moving through the forest and macaques climbing down from trees to drink at the river. But at last we spotted a wild Siamese crocodile after dark, swimming in our morning bathing pool, on our second-last day.

Ultimately, we distinguished 13 species of fish from the Cardamom Mountains, confirming the presence of two previously unconfirmed species groups for the region.

What’s more, we found fish density was highest in areas with more Siamese crocodiles, and lowest in areas with more human fishing pressure.

Understanding the food web of crocodile reintroduction sites is important, because conservation managers need to understand the ecological carrying capacity of the system – the number of individual crocodiles that can be supported in a given habitat. Learning this is especially important when historical information does not exist.

Preservation of fish stocks within Siamese crocodile habitats is critical for survival of the species. But a key challenge for natural resource managers of the Cardamom Mountains is balancing crocodile density with local fishing necessity, and to do this, we need more information on Siamese crocodile biology.

Paul McInerney, Research Fellow, La Trobe University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Asia – Japan, China and Nepal

Stowaway mozzies enter Australia from Asian holiday spots – and they’re resistant to insecticides

File 20190320 93051 1rj4pog.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1 — We might not be able to use common insecticides to kill mosquitoes that arrive from other countries.
from www.shutterstock.com

Tom Schmidt, University of Melbourne; Andrew Weeks, University of Melbourne, and Ary Hoffmann, University of Melbourne

Planning a trip to the tropics? You might end up bringing home more than just a tan and a towel.

Our latest research looked at mosquitoes that travel as secret stowaways on flights returning to Australia and New Zealand from popular holiday destinations.

We found mosquito stowaways mostly enter Australia from Southeast Asia, and enter New Zealand from the Pacific Islands. Worse still, most of these stowaways are resistant to a wide range of insecticides, and could spread disease and be difficult to control in their new homes.

Secret stowaways

Undetected insects and other small creatures are transported by accident when people travel, and can cause enormous damage when they invade new locations.

Of all stowaway species, few have been as destructive as mosquitoes. Over the past 500 years, mosquitoes such as the yellow fever mosquito (Aedes aegypti) and Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) have spread throughout the world’s tropical and subtropical regions.

Dengue spread by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes now affects tens to hundreds of millions of people every year.

Mosquitoes first travelled onboard wooden sailing ships, and now move atop container ships and within aircraft.

Adults in your luggage

You probably won’t see Aedes mosquitoes buzzing about the cabin on your next inbound flight from the tropics. They are usually transported with cargo, either as adults or occasionally as eggs (that can hatch once in contact with water).

It only takes a few Aedes stowaways to start a new invasion. In Australia, they’ve been caught at international airports and seaports, and in recent years there has been a large increase in detections.

*Aedes aegypti* mosquito detections per year at Australian international terminals – passenger airline terminals in white; seaports or freight terminals in black.
Tom Schmidt, Author provided

In our new paper, we set out to determine where stowaway Aedes aegypti collected in Australia and New Zealand were coming from. This hasn’t previously been possible.

Usually, mosquitoes are only collected after they have “disembarked” from their boat or plane. Government authorities monitor these stowaways by setting traps around airports or seaports that can capture adult mosquitoes. Using this method alone, they’re not able to tell which plane they came on.

But our approach added another layer: we looked at the DNA of collected mosquitoes. We knew from our previous work that the DNA from any two mosquitoes from the same location (such as Vietnam, for example) would be more similar than the DNA from two mosquitoes from different locations (such as Vietnam and Brazil).

So we built a DNA reference databank of Aedes aegypti collected from around the world, and compared the DNA of the Aedes aegypti stowaways to this reference databank. We could then work out whether a stowaway mosquito came from a particular location.

We identified the country of origin of most of the Aedes aegypti stowaways. The majority of these mosquitoes detected in Australia are likely to have come from flights originating in Bali.

Here’s where the *Aedes aegypti* mozzies come into Australia and New Zealand from.
Tom Schmidt, Author provided

Now we can work with these countries to build smarter systems for stopping the movement of stowaways.

As the project continues, we will keep adding new collections of Aedes aegypti to our reference databank. This will make it easier to identify the origin of future stowaways.

New mosquitoes are a problem

As Aedes aegypti has existed in Australia since the 19th century, the value of this research may seem hard to grasp. Why worry about invasions by a species that’s already here? There are two key reasons.

Currently, Aedes aegypti is only found in northern Australia. It is not found in any of Australia’s capital cities where the majority of Australians live. If Aedes aegypti established a population in a capital city, such as Brisbane, there would be more chance of the dengue virus being spread in Australia.

The other key reason is because of insecticide resistance. In places where people use lots of insecticide to control Aedes aegypti, the mosquitoes develop resistance to these chemicals. This resistance generally comes from one or more DNA mutations, which are passed from parents to their offspring.

Importantly, none of these mutations are currently found in Australian Aedes aegpyti. The danger is that mosquitoes from overseas could introduce these resistance mutations into Australian Aedes aegpyti populations. This would make it harder to control them with insecticides if there is a dengue outbreak in the future.

In our study, we found that every Aedes aegpyti stowaway that had come from overseas had at least one insecticide resistance mutation. Most mosquitoes had multiple mutations, which should make them resistant to multiple types of insecticides. Ironically, these include the same types of insecticides used on planes to stop the movement of stowaways.

Other species to watch

We can now start tracking other stowaway species using the same methods. The Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) hasn’t been found on mainland Australia, but has invaded the Torres Strait Islands and may reach the Cape York Peninsula soon.

Worse still, it is even better than Aedes aegypti at stowing away, as Aedes albopictus eggs can handle a wider range of temperatures.

A future invasion of Aedes albopictus could take place through an airport or seaport in any major Australian city. Although it is not as effective as Aedes aegypti at spreading dengue, this mosquito is aggressive and has a painful bite. This has given it the nickname “the barbecue stopper”.

Beyond mosquitoes, our DNA-based approach can also be applied to other pests. This should be particularly important for protecting Australia’s A$45 billion dollar agricultural export market as international movement of people and goods continues to increase.

Tom Schmidt, Research fellow, University of Melbourne; Andrew Weeks, Senior Research Fellow, University of Melbourne, and Ary Hoffmann, Professor, School of BioSciences and Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Why predicting the weather and climate is even harder for Australia’s rainy northern neighbours

File 20181116 194500 1wx1jwa.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1 — Clouds roll across Samosir in northern Sumatra.
Shutterstock.com

Andrew King, University of Melbourne and Claire Vincent, University of Melbourne

Australians love to complain about weather forecasts, but compared with some other parts of the world ours are impressively accurate. Our large, mostly flat continent surrounded by oceans makes modelling Australia’s weather and climate relatively straightforward.

The same cannot be said about our neighbours to the north.

For Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia and Papua New Guinea – which we collectively refer to as the “Maritime Continent” – things are a lot more complicated. With their mountainous terrain and islands of different shapes and sizes, it’s much harder to model the weather and climate of this region.

The models we use to make the most of our climate projections have to simulate the climate for many decades to provide us with useful information. To run such long simulations we have to compromise on resolution; even state-of-the-art global climate models divide the world into grid boxes more than 100km across. The Maritime Continent doesn’t come out too well at these resolutions.

If you squint you can see it! The world’s surface looks a bit like a 1980s video game to a global climate model. The Maritime Continent region (in the black box) is especially messy.
Author provided

It’s unfortunate the Maritime Continent’s weather and climate are so tricky to simulate on long time scales. Due to its location right on the Equator and between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, this region has a defining influence on the global climate, being a major source of heat and water vapour to the atmosphere. If we don’t simulate the climate over the Maritime Continent well, we can get errors appearing on the global scale.

Besides that, the Maritime Continent is also home to hundreds of millions of people, and includes major cities such as Jakarta and Singapore. We need our weather and climate models to simulate the processes behind the severe storms, heatwaves, and droughts that these cities and the broader region experience. Accurate weather forecasts, seasonal outlooks and climate projections require models to simulate the atmosphere over the Maritime Continent well.

In our new study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, we show that many state-of-the-art global climate models struggle to simulate the climate of the Maritime Continent. But fortunately, a higher-resolution model captures more of the major processes in this area.

The benefits of high resolution

Like in Australia, much of the Maritime Continent region is wetter during La Niña seasons and drier in El Niño, although for some western coasts and Sumatra it’s the other way round. Many global climate models fail to reflect accurately this rainfall response to El Niño and La Niña.

We found that for climate models to do a good job in capturing the year-to-year variability in rainfall over the Maritime Continent, they need to do a few things well. Specifically, they need to represent accurately the amount of moisture held in the atmosphere, as well as the pattern of winds in the region. This gives the right pattern of rainfall response to El Niño and La Niña.

Our higher-resolution regional climate model does a much better job at simulating the Maritime Continent’s rainfall patterns than many of the global models we looked at. As the region has such a complex landscape, global models simply cannot capture enough detail on all the different processes between the land and the ocean, and the coasts and the mountains. But higher-resolution regional models can.

We can capture the processes behind rainfall in the Maritime Continent more realistically when we use a high-resolution model. In particular we can better represent the thunderstorms and heavy rain that tends to occur in the afternoons and evenings in the tropics.

As the Maritime Continent is so important for the global climate but so difficult to model, there is a concerted effort to improve our models and to get more atmospheric observations across the region.

International projects such as the Years of the Maritime Continent are taking place, with millions of dollars and dozens of researchers working on improving our understanding of the region’s weather and climate.

Ultimately, we hope that through better, higher-resolution model simulations, we can capture the processes behind the Maritime Continent’s weather and climate much more accurately. This should lead to better climate projections and seasonal forecasts not only for the region, but for the world as a whole.

Andrew King, ARC DECRA fellow, University of Melbourne and Claire Vincent, Lecturer in Atmospheric Science, University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Trans-Siberian Railway

I’ve always wondered: why many people in Asian countries wear masks, and whether they work

File 20180130 170432 1pgvpmm.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1 — Face masks are a common sight in Asia. Why?
David Chang/AAP

C Raina MacIntyre, UNSW and Abrar Ahmad Chughtai, UNSW

This is an article from I’ve Always Wondered, a series where readers send in questions they’d like an expert to answer. Send your question to alwayswondered@theconversation.edu.au

In Japan, many people wear face masks – is that to prevent the wearer getting the infection, or is the wearer already infected and protecting those around? Is the mask useful in protecting against viruses or bacteria? – Petrina, Greenwich

Thanks for your question, Petrina. You’re right, in countries like Japan and China, facemask use in the community is widespread – much more so than in Western cultures. People wear them to protect the respiratory tract from pollution and infection, and to prevent the spread of any pathogens they might be carrying.

Whether this works depends on the type of mask.

There are three supposed ways a mask can provide protection: by providing a physical barrier (which prevents splashes and sprays), by filtering the particles (blocking particles of a certain size from entering the respiratory tract), and by fitting around the face to prevent leakage of air around the sides.

Some mask makers have also gone the extra step of using antimicrobials and claim to kill bugs on the surface of the mask, but these haven’t been tested to see if they provide any benefit.

Healthcare workers have been using cloth masks (made of cotton or other materials and with ties to secure them at the back) while caring for patients since the late 19th century to protect from various respiratory infections such as diphtheria, scarlet fever, measles, pandemic influenza, pneumonic plague and tuberculosis.

Cloth masks have been around since the late 19th century.
Author provided

During the mid 20th century, disposable surgical facemasks (similar in look to the cloth masks but made of paper) were developed. Surgical masks were developed to prevent the surgeon from contaminating the wound during surgery, but studies have not proven they help.

Surgical masks have no evidence of effectiveness.
from http://www.shutterstock.com

These were followed by respirators, which vary in shape and material but are designed to fit around the face and filter particles. Respirators are designed specifically to protect the respiratory tract from inhaled germs. There are many types, which may be reusable or disposable.

People must undergo fit-testing to ensure respirators are correctly fitted, with a good seal around the face. Unlike masks, respirators are subject to certification and regulation, and are proven to protect against respiratory infection.

Respirators are proven to protect against infection.
from http://www.shutterstock.com

Surgical masks are unregulated for filtration and do not fit around the face, and the evidence for their use is less convincing. In a community study, families with a sick child who wore such a mask were less likely to get sick if they also wore a mask, but many family members didn’t wear their masks all the time.

In a university setting, students were protected from sick classmates if they wore the mask within 36 hours of their classmate getting sick.

In many low income countries, the cost of even paper surgical masks is prohibitive, so cloth masks are used, washed and re-used. But these don’t protect against infection, and may even increase the risk of infection.

Prevention of infection vs source control

Masks can be used to protect healthy people (such as nurses and doctors) from exposure to infection, but are also used by sick people (such as a TB patient) to prevent spread of infections to others (called “source control”). There is less research on this use than on the use of masks by well people. The efficacy of source control is unknown.

Do masks work?

It’s long been thought surgical masks protect from transmission of pathogens, which spread through the air on large, short-range droplets, while respirators protect against much smaller, airborne particles, which may remain suspended in the air for several hours and transmit infection over long distances. So most guidelines recommend a mask for droplet transmitting infections (such as influenza) and a respirator for airborne infections (such as TB and measles).

But we’ve shown respirators protect better than masks even against droplet-spread infections. And the longstanding belief that infections neatly fit into either droplet or airborne transmission is not correct. Respiratory transmission of infections is more complex than this.

To say whether masks work, we have to specify whether we’re talking about a respirator, a surgical mask or a cloth mask.

The respirators are the Rolls Royce option and do protect, and this is a tool for frontline health workers facing epidemics of known and unknown infections. Surgical masks probably also protect but to a lesser extent. But there’s no evidence cloth masks will protect against invading or escaping bugs.

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C Raina MacIntyre, Professor of Infectious Diseases Epidemiology, Head of the School of Public Health and Community Medicine, UNSW and Abrar Ahmad Chughtai, Epidemiologist, UNSW

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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What are migratory shorebirds?

And what about hunting?

Looking ahead

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The benefits of high resolution

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Prevention of infection vs source control

Do masks work?

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