Scientists Reveal First-Ever Global Map of Total Human Effects on Oceans

More than 40 percent of the world’s oceans are heavily affected by human activities, and few if any areas remain untouched, according to the first global-scale study of human influence on marine ecosystems. By overlaying maps of 17 different activities such as fishing, climate change, and pollution, the researchers have produced a composite map of the toll that humans have exacted on the seas.

The work, published in the Feb. 15 issue of Science and presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in Boston, Mass., was conducted at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at UC Santa Barbara. It involved 19 scientists from a broad range of universities, NGOs, and government agencies.

The study synthesized global data on human impacts to marine ecosystems such as coral reefs, seagrass beds, continental shelves, and the deep ocean. Past studies have focused largely on single activities or single ecosystems in isolation, and rarely at the global scale. In this study the scientists were able to look at the summed influence of human activities across the entire ocean.

“This project allows us to finally start to see the big picture of how humans are affecting the oceans,” said lead author Ben Halpern, assistant research scientist at NCEAS. “Our results show that when these and other individual impacts are summed up, the big picture looks much worse than I imagine most people expected. It was certainly a surprise to me.”

The study reports that the most heavily affected waters in the world include large areas of the North Sea, the South and East China Seas, the Caribbean Sea, the East Coast of North America, the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Bering Sea, and several regions in the western Pacific. The least affected areas are largely near the poles.

Importantly, human influence on the ocean varies dramatically across various ecosystems. The most heavily affected areas include coral reefs, seagrass beds, mangroves, rocky reefs and shelves, and seamounts. The least impacted ecosystems are soft-bottom areas and open-ocean surface waters

— Public Affairs

100 California High Schools Account for High Number of Dropouts, Study Says

The California Dropout Research Project, based at UC Santa Barbara and directed by education professor Russell W. Rumberger, has issued a new report analyzing data on high school dropout rates. The study indicates that a relatively small group of California schools account for a significant number of high school dropouts. Based on data from the California Basic Educational Data System (CBEDS), the study conducted by the California Dropout Research Project (CDRP) shows that just 100 high schools — out of 2,462 high schools in California — account for more than 40 percent of the state’s dropouts.

“While the dropout crisis is systemic, this latest research tells us that we don’t need to fix every school to begin addressing the dropout crisis,” Rumberger said. “We need to focus our energy and resources on finding solutions to improve the schools and school districts with the highest number of dropouts.”

Highlights from the report (www.lmri. ucsb.edu/dropouts/) include:
• There are 25 California high schools — 1 percent of high schools — that account for 21 percent of the state’s dropouts
• The average individual school dropout rate in California is 3.5 percent. More than half of California high schools have dropout percentages less than or equal to the state average. • There are 73 high schools that have dropout rates greater than 50 percent.
• A total of 662 schools (27 percent) report zero dropouts.

U.S. Experiment Retakes the Lead in Race To Find Dark Matter

Scientists of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search experiment have announced that they have regained the lead in the worldwide
race to find the particles that make up dark matter. The CDMS experiment, conducted a half-mile underground in a mine in
Soudan, Minn., again sets the world’s best constraints on the properties of dark matter candidates. Teams searching for dark matter
have quadrupled in the past few years and now number 20. UC Santa Barbara is among 16 institutions involved in the CDMS
experiment. UCSB emeritus professor David Caldwell, a physicist, was one of the originators of the experiment.

Small Sea Creatures May Be the ‘Canaries in the Coal Mine’ of Climate Change

As oceans warm and become more acidic, ocean creatures are undergoing severe stress and entire food webs are at risk.

Gretchen Hofmann, associate professor of biology at UC Santa Barbara, has just returned from a research mission to Antarctica where she collected pteropods, tiny marine snails the size of a lentil, that she refers to as the “potato chip” of the oceans because they are eaten widely by so many species. The National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs funded the expedition.

Pteropods are eaten by fish that are in turn consumed by other animals, such as penguins. As these small creatures are stressed by an increasingly acidic ocean, due to the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, they are less able to cope with a warmer ocean.

“They are harbingers of change. It’s possible by 2050 they may not be able to make a shell anymore,” Hofmann said. “If we lose these organisms, the impact on the food chain will be catastrophic.”

Collaborative Ways to Manage Fisheries Emerging in Southern California

An innovative collaboration has developed between local trap fishermen and scientists at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at UC Santa Barbara. The partnership, called CALobster, tries to involve fishermen in fisheries research and management, ensuring the sustainability of lobster populations, and maintaining working harbors.

Currently the California spiny lobster is being scrutinized as Californians evaluate the first five years of marine reserves in the Channel Islands area.

A series of short-term studies have been conducted, including an assessment of a recent and controversial management decision to establish no-take fishing reserves at the Channel Islands.