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DISPATCHES DISPATCHES DISPATCHES UNEP report tackles Congo water issues Jen Fela Approximately 51 million people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) – 74% of the country’s population – lack access to safe drinking water, even though the country holds more than half of Africa’s fresh water reserves, according to a new study by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP; http://postconflict.unep.ch/publica tions/UNEP_DRC_water.pdf). These findings and recommended solutions were presented at an event in Kinshasa, DRC, marking World Water Day, on March 22, 2011. The UNEP report attributes the water crisis to years of mismanagement, conflict, environmental degradation, rapid urbanization, and underinvestment in water infrastructure, calling the networks in DRC “insufficient, aging, and overloaded”. Compounding the problem is the uncontrolled clearing of critical forested watersheds surrounding urban areas for the construction of homes and gardens, the production of crops, and for firewood. Congolese women can spend hours every day fetching water. UNEP’s DRC Program Manager, Hassan Partow, says, “Improving the water situation is not only necessary to alleviate the high incidence of waterborne diseases in the DRC, but is equally critical to improving the daily living conditions of DRC’s population – particularly women and children – who have to toil several hours every day to fetch water, which is often contaminated. Investing in the water sector is equally important for kick-starting development in a number of key economic sectors, including agriculture, transportation, and energy.” The UNEP report recommends promoting micro-investment strategies, such as communal tap areas and rainwater harvesting, stating that “the development of local solutions Hassan Partow/UNEP/GVA/UNO can help make significant headway in areas where the government is reluctant, or does not have the capacity, to invest.” Partow continues, “What is needed in the DRC is a broad vision and practical strategies drawing on a mixture of both macro- and microsolutions, from large-scale infrastructure investments to autonomous community-based water supply systems, which have shown impressive potential in the DRC”. The UNEP report estimates that US$169 million is needed over the next 5 years to implement its recommendations, which include “support to water sector governance reform, technical and institutional capacitybuilding, and establishing the scientific information base to strengthen water resources management.” That estimate excludes major infrastructure projects. According to Partow, US$500 million has already been committed by donors to the country’s water sector, although gaining access to the funding can be a complicated undertaking at the local level. “And this is precisely where UNEP is recommending that the funding should be targeted”, Partow concludes. n 201 Got weeds There’s an app for that! Robin Meadows The war on weeds in California just got easier, thanks to a new smartphone application – or “app” – that takes much of the drudgery out of reporting and tracking invasive species. The app, which will be available this spring, also maps native plant distributions and could reveal climate-induced vegetation shifts. Called Observer, the app takes advantage of smartphone cameras and GPS capabilities, geo-tagging plant photos and notes for future uploading to an online database via cellular signals. Observer also facilitates plant identification by displaying lists with thumbnail pictures, ranging from all 12 000 taxa statewide, to just the 2000 invasives, to just those invasives within a quarter mile of the user’s location. Spearheaded by habitat restoration expert Daniel Gluesenkamp (Audubon Canyon Ranch; Stinson Beach, CA), the app has freed his staff from the nuisance of having to carry cumbersome equipment and software into the field. “We used to have to gear up for mapping, but now the tool is already in our pockets”, he says. Observer is based on What’s Invasive!, a simpler app developed by the US National Park Service (NPS) and the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS). “We took a ‘Top Ten’ approach that lets managers focus citizen-science efforts on their worst invaders, those that are also easily recognized without much training”, explains CENS app developer Eric Graham. What’s Invasive! can improve volunteer-collected data, according to NPS vegetation ecologist Robert Steers (San Francisco, CA). “GPS makes the spatial location more accurate, and it’s easy to verify the species by looking at the picture”, he points out. “Early detection is critical to controlling invasives, and this app helps us have more eyes on the ground.” Gluesenkamp predicts that the more complex Observer program will increase volunteer contributions to weed control. “We’re trying to curate the information”, he explains. “Registration is required and users report their level of botanical expertise, so professionals can choose to include data only from experts or from everyone.” Mapping apps may soon be even more powerful. “My contacts at Google think we’re 5 to 10 years away from identifying species just from their photos”, says Gluesenkamp. n © The Ecological Society of America www.frontiersinecology.org
DISPATCHES DISPATCHES DISPATCHES 202 IPM cuts losses in stored grains Noreen Parks An international group of researchers has developed a new, eco-friendly method for greatly reducing damage to stored grains by insects and molds. The pesticide-free method could increase global food security while delivering healthier staples to potentially billions of consumers. Post-harvest food losses vary by crop, country, and climatic region, but global estimates range from 10–40% annually, says project collaborator Shlomo Navarro, formerly with the Israeli Agricultural Research Organization (Bet-Dagan, Israel). In developed countries, stored commodities are typically cooled by aeration and treated with fumigants. However, fumigation by methyl bromide, once used widely, is now banned due to its contribution to stratospheric ozone depletion. Moreover, insects have become increasingly resistant to phosphine, another commonly used pesticide. “In the developing world, farmers keep up to 80% of their crops for home consumption, and poor storage methods under warm, humid conditions often lead to major food losses”, says Navarro. In 2006, Maria Otilia Carvalho, a researcher with the Tropical Reearch Institute of Portugal (Lisbon), invited scientists working on alternatives for preserving stored rice to cooperate in devising an integrated pest management (IPM) system that could wean agricultural producers off pesticides. “We combined and improved on known technologies for protecting stored grains – none of which, individually, could duplicate the protective benefits of pesticides”, Carvalho explains. To assess the need for treatments, the team used probes for temperature monitoring and innovative electronic traps to detect insects at a rice mill in Portugal. Ventilation and refrigeration (during winter and summer, respectively) of ricestorage silos reduced insect infestations dramatically. The third tool, applied as needed, was to manipulate the interior atmosphere of the silos by flooding them with CO 2 – recycled from an industrial source – to deprive pests and fungi of oxygen. Using this strategy trimmed the mill’s losses by approximately 94%, says Carvalho. The results of the study are soon to be published in the International Organisation for Biological Control Bulletin. While the costs for the IPM system will likely remain prohibitive for developing regions with limited infrastructure, Navarro has pioneered the development of gas-tight, plastic bags – now in the early stages of distribution – for grain storage, wherein respiration by pests generates CO 2 , thus curbing their own populations. “Hermetically sealed bags can allow subsistence farmers to prevent major crop losses and give them the option to hold out for better prices”, he says. n Migrating birds may spread deadly virus Janet Pelley The Asian bird flu grabbed headlines in 2005, when it suddenly spread from China and infected poultry in Africa, Europe, and central Asia. This rapid proliferation sparked a debate over whether wild birds might be circulating H5N1, the virus that causes bird flu. Now, a new study provides the first evidence of a mechanism for transmission of the H5N1 virus between domestic farm birds and wild birds. The researchers focused on China’s Qinghai Lake National Nature Reserve, a remote wildlife reserve where 6000 birds – mostly bar-headed geese (Anser indicus) – died as a result of an H5N1 outbreak in 2005. “Because Qinghai Lake is far from poultry farms, which are the main reservoir for the disease, we wondered how H5N1 got there”, explains Diann Prosser, a wildlife ecologist with the US Geological Survey (Beltsville, MD). Diann Prosser releases a bar-headed goose fitted with a GPS tracking device. Prosser and her team equipped 29 bar-headed geese at the Qinghai Lake breeding range with GPS transmitters that recorded the birds’ location every 2 hours. The scientists mapped the migration routes and overwintering ranges of the geese and compared them to both the locations of poultry farms and the timing of H5N1 outbreaks at domestic bird farms in China and Tibet. They also mined a genetics database to determine the degree of relatedness between viruses isolated from poultry and other wild D Zhang birds in the flyway of the tagged geese. The analysis revealed that the barheaded geese overwinter in fields outside Lhasa, Tibet, near farms that have previously experienced virus outbreaks. The study also showed that 14 out of 16 H5N1 outbreaks in domestic chickens and wild birds were located within the bar-headed goose flyway (PLoS ONE 2011; doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0017622). Although none of the tagged birds contracted H5N1, barheaded geese were the primary species infected during other outbreaks. “This paper provides evidence that suggests there is potential for wild birds to move the virus from poultry outbreaks in Lhasa to the breeding grounds at Qinghai Lake”, says Justin Brown, a research scientist at the University of Georgia (Athens). This research will help target new areas for future studies and monitoring, he adds. The World Health Organization reports that at least 300 people worldwide have died from bird flu since 2003. n www.frontiersinecology.org © The Ecological Society of America
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