13 Better Use of Water Management Tools

Is this paper an original attempt to explicate the western states water law and to tell how to improve the legal tools we have at our disposal? No. There is nothing original about what I have written. I am merely trying to be a loyal carpenter to western water users and administrators and the antiwestern water law dogmatists alike, hammering away at the nails of our system of water allocation and administration at spaced intervals of time, hoping that something beneficial and constructive will evolve. Some of the nails (the principles of our water laws) may have been square when the West was being settled, but as with all important tools in constant use, most states went from square to round nails. Now we are finding a great need for the staple and special nail fitted to the local gun and the eastern power hammer. For all this rhetoric, I wish to make a few simple but fundamenta

Skeletal Light-Scattering Accelerates Bleaching Response in Reef-Building Corals

Background At the forefront of ecosystems adversely affected by climate change, coral reefs are sensitive to anomalously high temperatures which disassociate (bleaching) photosynthetic symbionts (Symbiodinium) from coral hosts and cause increasingly frequent and severe mass mortality events. Susceptibility to bleaching and mortality is variable among corals, and is determined by unknown proportions of environmental history and the synergy of Symbiodinium- and coral-specific properties. Symbiodinium live within host tissues overlaying the coral skeleton, which increases light availability through multiple light-scattering, forming one of the most efficient biological collectors of solar radiation. Light-transport in the upper ~200 μm layer of corals skeletons (measured as ‘microscopic’ reduced-scattering coefficient, μ′S,m), has been identified as a determinant of excess light increase during bleaching and is therefore a potential determinant of the differential rate and severity of bleaching response among coral species. Results Here we experimentally demonstrate (in ten coral species) that, under thermal stress alone or combined thermal and light stress, low-μ′S,m corals bleach at higher rate and severity than high-μ′S,m corals and the Symbiodinium associated with low-μ′S,m corals experience twice the decrease in photochemical efficiency. We further modelled the light absorbed by Symbiodinium due to skeletal-scattering and show that the estimated skeleton-dependent light absorbed by Symbiodinium (per unit of photosynthetic pigment) and the temporal rate of increase in absorbed light during bleaching are several fold higher in low-μ′S,m corals. Conclusions While symbionts associated with low-μ′S,m corals receive less total light from the skeleton, they experience a higher rate of light increase once bleaching is initiated and absorbing bodies are lost; further precipitating the bleaching response. Because microscopic skeletal light-scattering is a robust predictor of light-dependent bleaching among the corals assessed here, this work establishes μ′S,m as one of the key determinants of differential bleaching response

Erratum to: 36th International Symposium on Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1186/s13054-016-1208-6.]

Colorado water quality control and administration laws and regulations

Compiled and edited by George E. Radosevich and Peggy Allen.Includes bibliographical references (F-1)