n the spring of 2000, veterinarian Craig Stephen walked up to the biology department at Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo for what he thought would be a routine autopsy of a dead porpoise. "In my experience of doing stranded marine mammals, the vast majority of them, you don't get anything," says Stephen, who runs the university's Center for Coastal Health, "They've died, they've sunk, they've started to rot, they float back up, they get on the beach and then somebody finds them."
Biologists now recognize that this dogma is only partly true, particularly in the face of Earth's warming climate. For example, over 50% of Kazakhstan's croplands have been sucked dry, while the Sahara expands into Nigeria and Ghana at a rate of 3,500 km2 per year. This global process of desertification is increasing the number of dust storms that ferry microbes across continents and oceans. ...
