A.M. Costa Rica: Fourth Costa Rica news page

A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth news page
A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth news page
San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2012, Vol. 12, No. 28

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Jo Stuart

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Walter Navarro, a security vice minister, and Luis Enrique Castillo, the foreign minster, leave a helicopter to take a tour of the Isla Calero that is frequently invaded by Nicaraguan troops.

Ministerio de Gobernación, Policía y Seguridad Pública photo

Foreign minister checks out the controversial northern border

By the A.M. Costa Rica staff

The foreign minster is the person who directs Costa Rica's cases at the International Court of Justice, so the current minister, Luis Enrique Castillo, took his first trip to the heart of the dispute in extreme northern Costa Rica.

He visited the Isla Calero and Portillos where Nicaraguan troops invaded more than a year ago. He also got an air view of a 100-kilometer road that is being constructed on the south bank of the Río San Juan.

Both figure in pending court cases.

Costa Rica says Nicaragua invaded its territory and did extensive environmental damage. Nicaragua is trying to build a useable and shorter mouth to the sea for the Río San Juan. The International Court or World Court is the arbiter of the northern border, according to international treaties.

Costa Rica officials recognized that there was little access to the northern area. So a road was begun along the south bank, which is the international border.

That is when Nicaragua brought it own International court case claiming environmental damage and debris falling into its river.

Nicaragua controls the Río San Juan, and for years, that country has forbidden armed Costa Rican policemen from traveling by boat. Without the road, that is the only means of travel. Officials said that they would be planting trees along the controversial road.

Castillo also visited Delta Costa Rica, Agua Dulce, Santa Marta and Barra del Colorado. He checked out border posts that are staffed with members of the Policía de Fronteras. There also are surveillance cameras. Castillo spent 12 hours making the tour, officials said.

Experiment shows effects of cold and heat on ocean coral

By the University of California-San Diego news staff

Around the world coral reefs are facing threats brought by 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 the University of California at 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 was 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 Ms. 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.

University of California-San Diego/Melissa Roth

Branching Acropora corals dominate shallow-water coral reefs such as those pictured here from the central Pacific.

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.”

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