Quito, Ecuador-- The most biologically diverse habitat in the western hemisphere, the Yasuní rainforest in Ecuador, is under threat. The diversity of species in the Yasuní Park is unmatched by any other park in the world. One hectare contains more species of trees than all of North America, but hidden beneath this Garden of Eden lies temptation: oil worth billions.

Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa is bargaining the fate of the Yasuní Park against the willingness of the industrialized world to pay 3.6 billion dollars in return for a promise not to extract oil from the ecological preserve. The conservation proposal is praised internationally as a creative way to protect the Amazon rainforest and the indigenous people living there, but the fate of the Yasuní Initiative is in doubt. There is uncertainty whether the funding can be raised as governments grapple with the international economic crisis, and skeptics question whether the bargain could work.

The Yasuní Park contains more species of trees in one hectare than in all of North America. Ecuador lost 4 million hectares of forest in the last 20 years--30 % of its total forest area. Courtesy UASB (Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar)

"They are going to drill. They are going to drill," an authority on the Yasuní project told me in confidence. "Perhaps ten years from now, perhaps 5 years from now. The next president will need that money."

Oil is Ecuador's top export, providing one third of its revenue, but despite the black gold pooled beneath its steamy jungles, Ecuador is a poor country. With little industry, Ecuador's 58.9 billion GDP is among the smallest in Latin America. (By comparison, the GDP of the USA is 14,600 billion.) Exporting raw materials, primarily petroleum, bananas, and shrimp, has enriched foreign corporations, but the wealth has not trickled down to the people. 50 % of Ecuadorian citizens live below the poverty level. One third of the children in Ecuador are malnourished and 60 % in the indigenous populations according to Health Minister, Carina Vance. Between 1999 and 2000 one million Ecuadorians fled their homeland to escape the misery and financial collapse that left the country's currency worthless. The US dollar is now the accepted currency.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 16, 2012) -- Early snowmelt caused by climate change in the Colorado Rocky Mountains snowballs into two chains of events: a decrease in the number of flowers, which, in turn, decreases available nectar. The result is decline in a population of the Mormon Fritillary butterfly, Speyeria mormonia.

Using long-term data on date of snowmelt, butterfly population sizes and flower numbers at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, Carol Boggs, a biologist at Stanford University, and colleagues uncovered multiple effects of early snowmelt on the growth rate of an insect population.

"Predicting effects of climate change on organisms' population sizes will be difficult in some cases due to lack of knowledge of the species' biology," said Boggs, lead author of a paper reporting the results online in this week's journal Ecology Letters.

Taking into account the butterfly's life cycle and the factors determining egg production was important to the research.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 16, 2012) -- The northeastern U.S. should prepare for a surge in Lyme disease this spring. And we can blame fluctuations in acorns and mouse populations, not the mild winter. So reports Dr. Richard S. Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, NY.

What do acorns have to do with illness? Acorn crops vary from year-to-year, with boom-and-bust cycles influencing the winter survival and breeding success of white-footed mice. These small mammals pack a one-two punch: they are preferred hosts for black-legged ticks and they are very effective at transmitting Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease.

"We had a boom in acorns, followed by a boom in mice. And now, on the heels of one of the smallest acorn crops we've ever seen, the mouse population is crashing," Ostfeld explains. Adding, "This spring, there will be a lot of Borrelia burgdorferi-infected black-legged ticks in our forests looking for a blood meal. And instead of finding a white-footed mouse, they are going to find other mammals -- like us."

For more than two decades, Ostfeld, Cary Institute forest ecologist Dr. Charles D. Canham, and their research team have been investigating connections among acorn abundance, white-footed mice, black-legged ticks, and Lyme disease. In 2010, acorn crops were the heaviest recorded at their Millbrook-based research site. And in 2011, mouse populations followed suit, peaking in the summer months. The scarcity of acorns in the fall of 2011 set up a perfect storm for human Lyme disease risk.

Advances in delivering and storing electricity are crucial to the future of electric cars and otherwise reducing reliance on energy produced from burning fossil fuels. Yet a powerful means of running electronics that can charge and discharge quickly while also storing large amounts of energy has long eluded scientists.

This predicament could be changing, thanks to new research. A team from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Egypt's Cairo University describe in the March 16 issue of Science a new laser-based technique for making flexible, durable and highly conductive electrochemical capacitors--also known as ultracapacitors or supercapacitors--out of graphene. Electrochemical capacitors handle frequent charge/discharge cycles well but have been unable to store lots of energy. (Lithium-ion and other conventional batteries can store large amounts of energy but have short life cycles and are filled with hazardous chemicals known to catch fire under certain conditions.)

Electrochemical capacitors made using graphene--a one-atom-thick sliver of graphite--began showing potential to boost storage capacity a few years ago. Individual graphene sheets create a larger surface area than when they are stacked together as a piece of graphite. This larger surface area increases energy storage capacity. Yet the strong electrostatic attraction between graphene sheets makes graphene a difficult material to work with because it tends to cause them to stack back together into their original graphite form.