NASA took the wraps off a new website on Monday dedicated to tracking global changes in the sea level. It’s packed full of free online resources that will..
Sourced through Scoop.it from: techcrunch.com
See on Scoop.it – GarryRogers Biosphere News
Sub-Saharan Africa has the most World Heritage sites at risk, but even developed countries like the United States and Canada are harming some of their sites with development. From: thinkprogress.org
GR: Similar reports are coming in from around the world. Toxic pesticides are an important contributor to the decline in many other areas.
“Climate change and nitrogen pollution may be behind the “dramatic drop” in the number of butterfly species in Germany over the past 200 years, according to new research.
“Of the 117 butterfly species recorded in 1840 in the survey site, a protected habitat in the south-German state of Bavaria, just 71 are still found today, said the authors of the study recently published in journal “Conservation Biology.”
“Species requiring a specific type of habitat or food source, such as the “elegant white and ochre-spotted” hermit butterfly, are threatened with extinction in Germany. The hermit, for instance, lives in dry grasslands and will be hit even harder by changes in land use and global warming in the future, say the authors.” From: www.dw.com
We are living in the Anthropocene age, in which human influence on the planet is so profound – and terrifying – it will leave its legacy for millennia. Politicians and scientists have had their say, but how are writers and artists responding to this crisis?
From: www.theguardian.com
From: campaign.r20.constantcontact.com
“There are species going extinct today that have never been described,” Plotnick said. “Others are going extinct that are known only because someone wrote it down.” All such species would thus be unknown in the far future, he said, if the written historical record is lost — as it might well be.
The fossil record, Plotnick points out, is much more durable than any human record.
“As humanity has evolved, our methods of recording information have become ever more ephemeral,” he said. “Clay tablets last longer than books. And who today can read an 8-inch floppy?” he shrugged. “If we put everything on electronic media, will those records exist in a million years? The fossils will.”
Other authors on the study, published earlier this month in Ecology Letters, are Felisa A. Smith of the University of New Mexico and S. Kathleen Lyons of the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
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From: news.uic.edu
Avoiding societal collapse means building bridges between science and the rest of the world. From: ensia.com
Good expansion on the issue.
Homogenic climate change is already too rapid for Earth’s ecosystems. And now our experts are warning us that truly abrupt changes may be coming. How can we not act when unconscionable devastation of habitats and wildlife is already occurring?