Constantine Alexander's blog

World nourishment at risk of being diminished: Wild cereals threatened by global warming

A 28-year comparative study of wild emmer wheat and wild barley populations has revealed that these progenitors of cultivated wheat and barley, which are the best hope for crop improvement, have undergone changes over this period of global warming

		Wheats and barleys are the staple food for humans and animal feed around the world, and their wild progenitors have undergone genetic changes over the last 28 years that imply a risk for crop improvement and food production, reveals a new study. "The earliness in flowering time and genetic changes that are taking place in these important progenitor wild cereals, most likely due to global warming, can negatively affect the wild progenitors. These changes could thereby indirectly deteriorate food production," says professor Eviatar Nevo of the Insitute of Evolution at the University of Haifa who directed the study. Credit: Courtesy of the University of Haifa

A 28-year comparative study of wild emmer wheat and wild barley populations has revealed that these progenitors of cultivated wheat and barley, which are the best hope for crop improvement, have undergone changes over this period of global warming. The changes present a real concern for their being a continued source of crop improvement.

Wheats and barleys are the staple food for humans and animal feed around the world, and their wild progenitors have undergone genetic changes over the last 28 years that imply a risk for crop improvement and food production, reveals a new study. "The earliness in flowering time and genetic changes that are taking place in these important progenitor wild cereals, most likely due to global warming, can negatively affect the wild progenitors. These changes could thereby indirectly deteriorate food production," says Prof. Eviatar Nevo of the Insitute of Evolution at the University of Haifa who directed the study.

Wheats are the universal cereals of Old World agriculture.The progenitors, wild emmer wheat and wild barley, which originated in the Near East, provide the genetic basis for ameliorating wheat and barley cultivars, which as earlier studies have shown, are themselves under constant genetic erosion and increasing susceptibility to environmental stresses.

The new study set out to examine whether the wild cereal progenitors are undergoing evolutionary changes due to climate change that would impact future food production. It was was headed by Prof. Nevo, along with Dr. Yong-Bi Fu from Canada, and Drs.Beiles, Pavlicek and Tavasi, and Miss Khalifa from the University of Haifa's Institute of Evolution, and recently published in the prestigious scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Ten wild emmer wheat and ten wild barley populations from different climates and habitats across Israel were sampled first in 1980 and then again at the same sites in 2008 and grown in a common greenhouse. The results indicated that over the relatively short period of 28 years, all 20 wild cereal populations examined, without exception, showed a dramatic change in flowering time. All populations sampled in 2008 flowered, on average, about 10 days earlier than those sampled in 1980. "These cereal progenitors are adapting their time of flowering to escape the heat," Prof. Nevo explains. The study also found that the genetic diversity of the 2008 sample is for the most part significantly reduced, but some new drought-adapted variants appeared that could be used for crop improvement. "The ongoing global warming in Israel is the only likely factor that could have caused earliness in flowering and genetic turnover across the range of wild cereals in Israel. This indicates that they are under environmental stress which may erode their future survival," says Prof. Nevo. "Multiple effects of the global warming phenomenon have been observed in many species of plants and animals," he adds. "But this study is pioneering in showing its infuence on flowering and genetic changes in wild cereals. These changes threaten the best genetic resource for crop improvement and thereby may damage food production."

A number of species did show positive adaptive changes resulting from global warming, such as earliness in flowering or migration into cooler regions. "But overall," says Prof. Nevo, "the genetic resources of these critical wild cereals are undergoing rapid erosion - and cannot be dismissed as a concern for future generations. Wild emmer wheat is the world's most important genetic resource for wheat improvement, and it is up to us to preserve it. We are utilizing our gene bank at the Institute of Evolution for transforming genes of interest to the crop. However, a much more extensive effort needs to be made to keep the natural populations thriving, by preventing urbanization and global warming from eliminating them".

Contact: Rachel Feldman
rfeldman@univ.haifa.ac.il
972-482-88722
University of Haifa

For disaster debris arriving from Japan, radiation least of the concerns

Kathryn Higley, a radiation health physicist at Oregon State University, studies uptake of uranium contaminants in plants, information that may help address cleanup issues near the Fukushima nuclear plants in Japan. (Photo courtesy of Oregon State University)

The first anniversary is approaching of the March, 2011, earthquake and tsunami that devastated Fukushima, Japan, and later this year debris from that event should begin to wash up on U.S. shores – and one question many have asked is whether that will pose a radiation risk.

The simple answer is, no.

Nuclear radiation health experts from Oregon State University who have researched this issue following the meltdown of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant say the minor amounts of deposition on the debris field scattered in the ocean will have long since dissipated, decayed or been washed away by months of pounding in ocean waves.

However, that's not to say that all of the debris that reaches Pacific Coast shores in the United States and Canada will be harmless.

"The tsunami impacted several industrial areas and no doubt swept out to sea many things like bottled chemicals or other compounds that could be toxic," said Kathryn Higley, professor and head of the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics at OSU.

"If you see something on the beach that looks like it may have come from this accident, you shouldn't assume that it's safe," Higley said. "People should treat these debris with common sense; there could be some things mixed in there that are dangerous. But it will have nothing to do with radioactive contamination."

Higley and other OSU experts have been active in studying the Fukushima accident since it occurred, and are now doing research to help scientists in Japan better understand such issues as uptake of radioactive contamination by plants growing near the site of the accident. They also studied marine and fishery impacts near Japan soon after the incident.

"In the city and fields near Fukushima, there are still areas with substantial contamination, and it may be a few years before all of this is dealt with," Higley said. "But researchers from all over the world are contributing information on innovative ways to help this area recover, including some lessons learned from the much more serious Chernobyl accident in 1986 in the Ukraine."

Some of the technology to deal with this is complex. Other approaches, she said, can be fairly low-tech – removal of leaf litter, washing, plowing the ground, collecting and concentrating water runoff.

The repercussions of the event in the ocean, however, and implications for distant shores are much more subdued. Most of the discharge that was of concern was radionuclides of iodine and cesium, which were deposited on widely dispersed, floating marine debris days after the tsunami. Most of the iodine by now will have disappeared due to radioactive decay, and the cesium washed off and diluted in the ocean.

"There are a lot of misconceptions about radioactivity," Higley said. "Many people believe that if it can be measured, it's harmful. But we live in a world of radiation coming to us from the sun, or naturally present in the earth, or even from our own bodies.

"There are higher natural levels of radiation found all around the Rocky Mountains, for instance," she said. "And we can still measure radioactive contaminants in nature from old atmospheric nuclear weapons tests more than 50 years ago."

Like most of those other forms of radiation, Higley said, any measurable radioactivity found on debris from Fukushima should be at very low levels and of no health concern – much less, for instance, than a person might receive in a single X-ray.

Debris from Japan should start to arrive in the U.S. and Canada late this year or in 2013 following normal ocean currents, say other OSU experts who are studying this issue. When they do, some aspects of them might be dangerous – a half-filled, floating, sealed bottle of a toxic chemical, for instance. So people should exercise caution.

But they don't need to worry about radiation.

Contact: Kathryn Higley
Kathryn.higley@oregonstate.edu
541-737-0675
Oregon State University

 

Iconic marine mammals are 'swimming in sick seas' of terrestrial pathogens: UBC researchers

Steller sea lion with tumor. Credit: M Haulena. Taken under authority of U.S. Marine Mammal Permit No. 14326-02 issued to the National Marine Mammal Lab, Seattle, WA.

Parasites and pathogens infecting humans, pets and farm animals are increasingly being detected in marine mammals such as sea otters, porpoises, harbour seals and killer whales along the Pacific coast of the U.S. and Canada, and better surveillance is required to monitor public health implications, according to a panel of scientific experts from Canada and the United States.

UBC scientists Stephen Raverty, Michael Grigg and Andrew Trites and Melissa Miller from the California Department of Fish and Game, presented their research today at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Vancouver, Canada.

They called for stronger collaboration among public health, coastal water policy and marine mammal health research sectors to reduce land-sea transfer of pathogens and toxins. These terrestrial sourced pollutants are killing coastal marine mammals and likely pose risks to human health.

Between 1998 and 2010, nearly 5,000 marine mammal carcasses were recovered and necropsied along the British Columbia and Pacific Northwest region of the U.S., including whales, dolphins and porpoises, sea lions and otters.

"Infectious diseases accounted for up to 40 per cent of mortalities of these marine animals," says Stephen Raverty, a veterinary pathologist with the Animal Health Centre in the British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, and an adjunct professor in UBC's Marine Mammal Research Unit.

"In many cases, the diseases found in these marine mammals have similar or genetically identical agents as those infecting pets and livestock. We don't yet know how these diseases are affecting the health of marine mammals" says Raverty.

For example, researchers recently identified the first case of Neospora caninum in sea otters. The parasite is known to cause infectious abortions in dairy cattle and muscular and bone diseases in dogs. Cryptococcus gatti, a fungus typically associated with dead and decomposing eucalyptus trees in tropical regions, has been found in some harbour and Dall's porpoises.

"The marine mammals that died of severe brain disease were infected with two common parasites, Toxoplasma and Sarcocystis, which are shed in the feces of feline and opossum hosts," says Michael Grigg, a researcher with the U.S. National Institutes of Health's Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases and adjunct professor in UBC's Marine Mammal Research Unit. "Expansion of host range for the opossum and climate change may be important factors contributing to the increased incidence of infection from these land-based pathogens "

"We can expect increased health risks for humans, pets and marine mammals sharing the same polluted marine habitat – including along the shorelines right here in downtown Vancouver," says Andrew Trites, director of UBC's Marine Mammal Research Unit. "In a way, marine mammals are the canary in the coal mine – we must consider ourselves warned and take appropriate action."

The team recommends better management of urban pest populations, maintaining wetland marshes, reducing run-off from urban areas near the coast, and monitoring water quality to prevent pathogens and toxins from entering the marine food chain. Collaboration amongst coastal regions and countries is also crucial.

"Marine mammals recognize no borders, and neither do pathogens and parasites," says Raverty.

Contact: Brian Lin
brian.lin@ubc.ca
604-818-5685
University of British Columbia

Landscape fire smoke contributes to hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide, new research suggests

Andros Island Household Trash Management

Worldwide, smoke from landscape fires contributed to an average of 339,000 deaths per year between 1997 and 2006, according to new research published in Environmental Health Perspectives and released today during the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia were the hardest hit by fire-smoke deaths, with an estimated annual average of 157,000 and 110,000 deaths, respectively, attributable to landscape fire smoke exposure, said researcher Fay Johnston, who represented a global team at the 2012 AAAS Annual Meeting in Vancouver, Canada.

"It's time to look at deforestation impacts on fires, which in turn affect human health," said Johnston, a research fellow at the Menzies Research Institute, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia.

Johnston and her co-authors specifically assessed the health impacts of particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers, an important byproduct of landscape fire smoke. First, they looked at satellite data to gather information on areas burned each year during the study period; particulate matter exposures were estimated using a chemical transport model, satellite-based observations, and other data. They applied an accepted World Health Organization framework for determining annual mortality in different regions, and they used results from previous research on the health effects of smoke-related particulate matter to estimate deaths attributable to fire smoke. They further calculated annual mortality during a La Niña period, and an El Niño period. Worldwide, deaths from fire smoke during those periods were estimated at 262,000 and 532,000, respectively, compared with an estimated 10-year global average of 339,000 deaths.

"Fire emissions are an important contributor to global mortality," the EHP article concludes. "Adverse health outcomes associated with landscape fire smoke could be substantially reduced by curtailing burning of tropical rainforests, which rarely burn naturally. The large estimated influence of El Niño suggests a relationship between climate and the burden of mortality attributable to landscape fire smoke."

Johnston is participating in a special AAAS Annual Meeting seminar at 8:30 am Pacific Standard Time on Sunday, February 19. The session is titled "Climate Change in Northern Latitudes—Forest Fires in Canada: Impacts of Climate Change and Fire Smoke."

She also agreed to take part in a related news briefing at 2:00 pm PST on Saturday, February 18. She was joined by fellow panelists Michael Brauer of the University of British Columbia; Mike Flannigan of the University of Alberta; Gordon McBean of the University of Western Ontario; and Douglas Woolford of Wilfrid Laurier University.

The panelists noted that fire scorches 350 to 400 million hectares of land every year—an area larger than the size of India—emitting greenhouse gases as well as fine particulate matter that can be harmful to people and animals. As global warming continues, vegetation becomes dryer, lightning strikes more frequently, and fire seasons change.

Woolford's research reveals, for example, that the fire season now begins earlier and ends later in Alberta than it did in 1960. Climate change affects the frequency of extreme weather, too, causing unusually warm events to happen more often.

Also during the AAAS news briefing, Mike Flannigan released new predictions of future global fire severity, based on three specific climate-change scenarios. He further discussed concerns about the increasing number of peat fires, which release significant amounts of greenhouse gases as well as high levels of mercury.

Brauer discussed approaches for estimating population exposure to forest fire smoke and the evaluation of a smoke forecasting tool for public health preparedness. He summarized studies of health impacts of fire smoke exposure in Canada and evaluated the effectiveness of room air cleaners in reducing exposure to fire smoke.

Johnston's co-authors on the EHP paper, "Estimated Global Mortality Attributable to Smoke from Landscape Fires," were Sarah B. Henderson, Yang Chen, James T. Randerson, Miriam Marlier, Ruth S. DeFries, Patrick Kinney, David M.I.S. Bowman, and Michael Brauer. Environmental Health Perspectives is published by the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, one of the National Institutes of Health. Funding for the research was provided by the Australian Research Council, the University of Tasmania, and NASA.

Contact: Ginger Pinholster
gpinhols@aaas.org
202-326-6440
American Association for the Advancement of Science

Andros Island Household Trash Management

 

How Fires Impact Human Health & Air Quality

Deepwater Horizon disaster could have billion dollar impact

Deepwater Horizon. Credit: US Coast Guard

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010 will have a large economic impact on the U.S. Gulf fisheries. A new study published in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences (CJFAS) says that over 7 years this oil spill could have a $US8.7 billion impact on the economy of the Gulf of Mexico. This includes losses in revenue, profit, and wages, and close to 22 000 jobs could be lost. "Unlike the visually obvious and immediate effects on birds and mammals, the effects of oil on fisheries can be more difficult to detect, though they are no less devastating," says lead author U. Rashid Sumaila. "Oil and hydrocarbons are taken up by plankton and other surface-dwelling species that link to aquatic food chains." This in turn affects the fishing industry.

The Deepwater Horizon, a British Petroleum oil rig, exploded in the Gulf of Mexico on 20 April 2010. By August 2010 it was estimated that it had leaked an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil (780 million L), making it the largest accidental marine oil spill in US waters. In comparison, the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 amounted to less than 0.5 million barrels. This study estimates the economic impact this spill will have on commercial and recreational fisheries and mariculture in the Gulf of Mexico.

Reference: Sumaila, U.R., Cisneros-Montemayor, A.M., Dyck, A., Huang, L., Cheung, W., Jacquet, J., Kleisner, K., Lam, V., McCrea-Strub, A., Swartz, W., Watson, R., Zeller, D., and Pauly, D. 2012. Impact of the Deepwater Horizon well blowout on the economics of US Gulf fisheries. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 69. doi: 10.1139/F2011-171 

Contact: U. Rashid Sumaila
r.sumaila@fisheries.ub.ca
Canadian Science Publishing (NRC Research Press)

Dolphin deaths mystery in Peru

Hundred of dead dolphins have washed up on the coastline 500 miles north of Lima in Peru. Officials are not sure of the cause of death, but believe they may have been killed. The Peruvian Sea Institute has taken samples to study in a laboratory and it also found dead anchovies in the sea, which may have poisoned the dolphins. (Source: The Guardian)

 

Fighting crimes against biodiversity

How to catch a killer weed

Invasive species which have the potential to destroy biodiversity and influence global change could be tracked and controlled in the same way as wanted criminals, according to new research from Queen Mary, University of London.

Geographic profiling (GP) was originally developed as a statistical tool in criminology, where it uses the locations of linked crimes (for example murder, rape or arson) to identify the predicted location of the offender's residence. The technique is widely used by police forces and investigative agencies around the world.

Now, a team led by Dr Steven Le Comber from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences has shown that this technique can also be used to identify the source of populations of invasive animals and plants such as Giant hogweed and Japanese knotweed.

Invasive species are now viewed as the second most important driver of world biodiversity loss behind habitat destruction and have been identified as a significant component of global change. The cost of invasive species can run from millions to billions of pounds. For these reasons, prevention and control of invasive species has been identified as a priority for conservation organisations and government wildlife and agriculture ministries globally.

Writing in the journal Ecography, the team describe how they used computer simulations to compare GP to existing ways of monitoring invasive species. The team also analysed historical data from the Biological Records Centre (BRC) for 53 invasive species in Great Britain, ranging from marine invertebrates (such as the Japanese oyster) to woody trees (for example, Norway spruce), and from a wide variety of habitats (including coastal habitats, woodland and man-made habitats) to attempt to identify the source of each species. In both the computer simulations and the real datasets, GP dramatically outperformed other techniques, particularly as the number of sources (or potential sources) increased. Dr Steven Le Comber who led the study, explains:

"We found that existing methods performed reasonably well finding a single source, but did much less well when there were multiple sources – as is typically the case as invasive species spread The results show that geographic profiling could potentially be used to control the spread of invasive species by identifying sources in the early stages of invasions, when control efforts are most likely to be effective."

Contact: Sian Halkyard
s.halkyard@qmul.ac.uk
44-207-882-7454
Queen Mary, University of London

 

Predicting system crashes in nature and society

The world can deliver sudden and nasty shocks. Economies can crash, fisheries can collapse, and climates can pass tipping points. Providing early warning of such changes currently requires the collection of enormous and often prohibitive amounts of data. A new method developed by Steven Lade from the Max-Planck-Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Germany and Thilo Gross from the University of Bristol in the UK could change this. In a paper published in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology on February 2, the researchers present a mathematical methodology that uses easily obtainable information to greater effect and can therefore reduce the amount of additional data that needs to be collected.

The proposed method adds a new twist to an old idea. Predicting the behavior of simple systems is easy. However, systems at risk of severe transitions, such as fisheries and economies, are complex and intricate. To warn of critical transitions, scientists mostly use approaches that require close and continuous monitoring of the system under consideration. The present situation thus presents a fundamental dilemma: predicting transitions without a credible mathematical model requires large amounts of data, but building such a model entails gathering even larger amounts of information.

Len Fisher, author of Crashes, Crises, and Calamities explains the advantages to the new approach: "How can we improve our chances of seeing crashes coming? The number-crunching methods used by economists and others require massive amounts of data, and all too frequently collapse under their own weight. In their new study, Thilo Gross and Steve Lade show how we can use traditional intuition and understanding in a surprising and mathematically rigorous new way to reduce the amount of data that we need, while actually enhancing our chances of 'seeing it coming'."

The key insight on which the new approach builds is that some bits of information are easier to obtain than others. For instance, in fisheries it is easier to find out which fish are eaten by a specific species of predator than to precisely quantify the relationship. The researchers have found a way to utilize this easily obtainable information without requiring information that is difficult to obtain.

In simulations of fisheries, Lade and Gross have demonstrated that their method can use available knowledge to reduce the need for stock monitoring data that is costly to collect. "Our approach combines the best of both worlds: we make use of specific knowledge that is available, while not requiring full knowledge of the system." says Dr Lade. "Our main contribution is how partial information is utilized," adds Dr Gross; "we don't try to build any single fully-fledged model. Instead, we use a mathematical trick to study all models in parallel that are not excluded by what we know."

Their model of fisheries is effective for predicting a simulated collapse, and the authors now plan to test the method with observational data, refine the approach and the ways in which expert knowledge is used, and develop the framework so that it can be applied to other systems.

This research was supported by the Max Planck Society.

CITATION: Lade SJ, Gross T (2012) Early Warning Signals for Critical Transitions: A Generalized Modeling Approach. PLoS Comput Biol 8(2): journal.pcbi.1002360

• Download Early Warning Signals for Critical Transitions A Generalized Modeling Approach

• CONTACT: Dr. Steven J. Lade, Department of Biological Physics, Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden, Germany

Contact: Dr. Steven J. Lade
slade@pks.mpg.de
49-035-187-12113
Public Library of Science

Heat and cold damage corals in their own ways, Scripps study shows

First-of-its kind study of extreme temperature shock reveals complexities of climate-induced threats

Melissa Roth, Scripps student, conducted temperature experiments on coral. Credit: Dimitri Deheyn

Around the world coral reefs are facing threats brought by climate change and dramatic shifts in sea temperatures. While ocean warming has been the primary focus for scientists and ocean policy managers, cold events can also cause large-scale coral bleaching events. A new study by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego compared damage to corals exposed to heat as well as cold stress. The results reveal that cool temperatures can inflict more damage in the short term, but heat is more destructive in the long run.

The study is published in the Feb. 2 issue of Scientific Reports, a publication of the Nature Publishing Group.

Climate change is widely known to produce warming conditions in the oceans, but extreme cold-water events have become more frequent and intense as well. In 2010, for example, coral reefs around the world faced one of the coldest winters and one of the hottest summers on record.

During a unique experiment conducted by former Scripps Oceanography student Melissa Roth and current Scripps scientist Dimitri Deheyn, corals subjected to cold temperatures suffered greater growth impairment and other measurable damage in just days compared with heat treated corals. Yet the researchers found that corals were eventually able to adjust to the chilly conditions, stabilize their health and continue to grow. However, over the long term corals subjected to heat suffered more greatly than those in cold, with evidence of severe bleaching and growth stoppage, a trajectory that leads to death.

"These results show distinct responses between cold and heat-treated corals on different time scales," said Roth, now based at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "On a short time scale, the cold event was actually more harmful to the corals than an equivalent warming event, but over time, these corals were able to acclimate to the cold. Therefore, these corals showed more resilience to seawater cooling than seawater warming."

The coral's ability to adjust to cool temperatures surprised the researchers, who say the study's results highlight the complexities of monitoring coral health in response to varying environmental factors.

During the investigations—conducted inside Scripps' Experimental Aquarium—the researchers tracked the overall coral health and the stress of their symbiotic algae, sometimes called "zooxanthellae." The symbiosis is an essential component for reef-building corals because the symbionts provide corals with most of their energy. Accordingly, the researchers found that the cold both disrupted the photosynthetic system of the symbionts and greatly reduced coral growth.

"Global warming is associated with increases but also decreases of temperatures," said Deheyn, a project scientist in Scripps' Marine Biology Research Division. "Not much has been known about the comparative effects of temperature decrease on corals. These results are important because they show that corals react differently to temperature differences, which is critical for future management of coral reefs in the realm of climate change."

The study was coauthored by Scripps researcher Ralf Goericke of the Integrative Oceanography Division.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research's Biomimetics, Biomaterials and Biointerfacial Sciences program. Birch Aquarium at Scripps provided logistical and technical support for the experiments.

Contact: Mario Aguilera
scrippsnews@ucsd.edu
858-534-3624
University of California - San Diego

 

Λίμνη Ρειτών - Reiton Lake (in Greek)

Λίμνη Κουμουνδούρου: Ο ρημαγμένος υγρότοπος, μέχρι πριν από λίγο καιρό, δεν υπήρχε πουθενά. Αποτελούσε έναν τόπο φάντασμα, ένα σημείο no man's land, όπου απλώς έκλεινες τη μύτη σου και προσπερνούσες. Εδώ και πολλά χρόνια αποτελεί τη χαβούζα αποβλήτων των γειτονικών βιομηχανιών και το σουρωτήρι της υπερχωματερής των Αθηνών! Κι όμως αυτός ο τραγικός υγρότοπος, η λίμνη της Περσεφόνης, η λίμνη του πετρελαίου, αντιστέκεται και προσπαθεί να επιβιώσει μέσα σε μια ανελέητη επίθεση σοκάροντας μας με τη δύναμη και την αντοχή του. Η συλλογική προσπάθεια και η επιμονή 'δίνει' τα πρώτα θετικά αποτελέσματα για τη λίμνη ενσωματώνοντας την στους υγρότοπους της Αττικής! Από 'κει και πέρα πρέπει να διανυθεί ένας πολύ δύσκολος δρόμος μέχρι την απορρύπανση και ανάδειξή της. φιλοξενεί τον μεγαλύτερο πληθυσμό υδρόβιων πτηνών της Αττικής το χειμώνα! Επίσης μαζί με τον υγρότοπο του Σχινιά φιλοξενεί τις παγκοσμίως απειλούμενες βαλτόπαπιες.