(Chinese Urban Pollution)
Post Comments like this:
1. Your Name
2. A Title
3. A short personal commentary what you learned from it or what made you curious about it given the week's class content. However, it doesn't have to be about the week's content, only something related to human-environmental interactions.
4. Then put a long line ('-------------------)'.
5. Then cut/paste the article or topic you found.
6. Then a small line '---'.
7. Then, finally, paste the URL (link) of the post.
Post for this week on this thread. I'll set up a new main post each week, and then we will do the same.
4 comments:
This is a test comment of what to do.
1. Mark Whitaker
2. My Comment's Title
3. There is something about the following article that interests me, fascinates me, and/or makes me wonder what the article leaves out, etc. I can write as much as I want on this blog about my view on the article and the issues that it discusses. I can write about personal experiences that the article reminded me about. I can write about a different view of the same issues that the article mentions. I can convince people of something, express my intelligence, and express my emotion in this comment.
-----------------------------
[repost article here]
---
[URL / web location of the article]
Moctar Aboubacar
Deforestation in Haiti
This article I found is not very directly related to the readings of the week, I suppose, in that it does not specifically look at how regulations and informal networks influence allocation and consumption of a specific natural resource. It's also a pretty old article. What it does show, however, is what prof. Whitaker briefly mentioned in class on Friday; how resource mismanagement can directly influence standards of living and the course of 'development' of a country.
The article itself is 4 years old, but a fleeting look at today's news shows us that the content is just as relevant. During this summer's hurricane season Haiti once again experienced flooding and dangerous mudslides, the latter due mostly to deforestation. Deforestation in Haiti has purely economic causes, as many poor unemployed people cut down trees and sell charcoal to make a living. This has reverberating effects not only on the Haitians, who are exposed to risks such as mudslides brought on by the lack of trees and vegetation to secure topsoil, but also on the rest of the ecosystem, affecting even rainfall (which in turn affects agricultural output, a small vicious circle in itself).
-----------------------------
Deforestation exacerbates Haiti floods
GONAIVES, Haiti (AP) — The torrents of water that raged down onto this city, killing hundreds of people, are testimony to a man-made ecological disaster. Poverty has transformed Haiti's once-verdant hills into a moonscape of bedrock ravaged by ravines.
A resident of the village of Cayes Didier, about 30 miles southeast of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, walks by a deforested area .
Ariana Cubillos, AP file
More than 98% of its forests are gone, leaving no topsoil to hold rains. Even the mango and avocado trees have started to vanish, destroying a vital food source in favor of another necessity for the impoverished — charcoal for cooking.
"The situation will continue, and other catastrophes are foreseeable," Jean-Andre Victor, one of Haiti's top ecologists, said in the capital, Port-au-Prince.
"When you remove vegetation, the topsoil washes away. The earth isn't capable of absorbing rainfall," said Rick Perera of the international humanitarian group CARE, which supports alternative energy programs in Haiti to lessen dependence on charcoal.
Less tree cover also means less regular rain, since trees "breathe" water vapor into the air. The result is a dropping water table, making for even poorer farmers, the backbone of Haiti's economy.
A 90-minute flight from Miami, Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world. Most of its 8 million people don't have jobs, and political instability discourages foreign investors.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged donors on Wednesday to help Haiti recover from the "devastating natural disaster." But it's very much a man-made one.
Most Haitians are descendants of African slaves brought over in the late 1600s by French colonizers who destroyed tens of thousands of acres of virgin forest to plant the cane that made Haiti the world's largest sugar producer. More wood was cut to fuel the sugar mills. Entire forests were shipped to Europe to make furniture of mahogany and dyes from campeachy.
After rebellious slaves defeated Napoleon's army and Haiti became the world's first black republic in 1804, great plantations were divided among the slaves.
Under an inherited French law, land is shared among a man's heirs. One of the fastest growing populations in the world — Haitian women average five births each — has reduced the average holding to little more than a half acre. That's not enough to support a family of seven even in a good rainy season.
Pressed for income, farmers chopped trees to make and sell charcoal.
From the air, you can see the border with the Dominican Republic, which shares Hispaniola island with Haiti. Lush forests stop suddenly and give way to barrenness. Vast stretches of the Dominican Republic remain in the hands of a wealthy few.
The difference in vegetation also is reflected in the death tolls. The Dominican Republic lost just 19 people to Jeanne, including 12 people who drowned in swollen rivers.
In 1950, about 25% of Haiti's 10,700 square miles was covered with forest, said Victor, the agronomist. In 1987, it was 10%. By 1994, 4%. Now, foreign and Haitian scientists find only about 1.4% of the Maryland-sized nation is forested, he said.
Here in Gonaives, where rebels launched the rebellion that forced out President Jean-Bertrand Aristide last February, Jeanne deluged the region with rains for some 30 hours. Water-logged valleys behind the mountains funneled torrents of water that bloated the four rivers surrounding the gritty city of 250,000 people.
After the May floods, interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, said, "The root of the problem is that we have to go and reforest the hills and until we do that, every two, three, four years after some heavy rain, the same thing could happen again."
Over the past 20 years, the U.S. Agency for International Development has planted 60 million trees in Haiti, but the poor chop down 10 million to 20 million trees each year, said David Adams, USAID director in Haiti.
Perera, the CARE official, said small-scale replanting projects and pilot programs using alternative cooking fuels such as solar energy and propane are trying to change habits. Still, 71% of the energy used in Haiti comes from charcoal, Victor said.
Though the deforestation is obvious, many steeped in superstition believe the disasters are caused by a higher power, a belief that officials say makes it hard to fix the problems.
"It was God who made this flood," said Eliphet Joseph, a 43-year-old salesman.
Other people blame decades of official corruption and mismanagement.
"The whole country's environment is messed up, that's why we had these (floods)," said Cherly Etienne, 28, who lost her cousin and aunt.
-----
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/hurricane/2004-09-23-haiti-deforest_x.htm
1.Bjoern Schmidt
2.Development of the Maine Lobster Industry
3. After reading about the Maine Lobster Industry I wanted to know about there future development. It was good to hear that there quite several examples of sustainable ressource areas in the world. As there is no real new issue here, I searched 2 articles which both introduce this development.
----------------------------
Thursday, August 21, 2008
ELLSWORTH — A plan to have the Maine lobster industry certified as a sustainable fishery by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) took a step forward earlier this month when a working group on Maine lobster sustainability established by Governor John Baldacci’s accepted a “pre-assessment report” concluding that the industry could probably meet MSC certification standards.
The Governor appointed the working group in February to explore whether the state’s industry could gain MSC certification. Established in 1997 by the World Wide Fund for Nature and the food industry giant Unilever, the London-based nonprofit organization has assumed a pre-eminent role in designating which commercial fisheries are sustainable.
MSC certification has become an important marketing tool for “green” retailers such as Whole Foods and many segments of the fishing industry. Currently, MSC has certified some 30 fisheries worldwide as meeting its sustainability standards and more than 600 companies are certified by MSC as meeting its standards of seafood traceability. On its Web site, the organization claims that the value of seafood products carrying the MSC sustainability seal is nearly $1 billion.
North America has only a handful of MSC-certified fisheries. The Canadian northern prawn (shrimp) trawl net fishery recently earned certification, and the Oregon pink shrimp fishery was certified last October. Several Alaskan fisheries, including salmon, cod and halibut, have earned certification since 2000.
Before submitting Maine’s lobster industry to MSC scrutiny, the working group commissioned an independent “pre-assessment report” from Moody Marine Ltd., an environmental consulting group from Halifax, Nova Scotia. The pre-assessment process is designed to give members of a fishery a clear look at how well their industry measures up to MSC standards and how difficult it might be to earn certification.
According to the report, the Maine lobster industry stands a good chance of meeting the MSC’s requirements. The report outlined several potential issues that might be raised during the certification process but concluded that none of them appear to be insurmountable.
Unsurprisingly, the biggest problem is the risk that lobster fishing gear is believed to pose to large whales in the Gulf of Maine. Other issues relate to the possible damage lobster traps may do to the ocean floor and the lack of a plan to limit the fishery if lobster stocks should begin to fall.
The working group has scheduled a series of public meetings with the members of the lobster industry and the public to explain the certification process and discuss the report. The first meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 22, at the Ellsworth Public Library. Other meetings are scheduled for Rockland on Sept. 23 and Portland on Sept 24.
-----------------------------
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Invest In A Lobster Trap Off The Coast Of Maine
Posted by: Charles Sipe @ 2:33 PM1 Comments | Links to this post Catch a Piece of Maine is a new company with a brilliant idea that allows anyone to make an investment in the lobster industry. For $2,995, you can lease a specific lobster trap off the coast of Maine for one year. A fisherman will harvest the lobsters that are caught in your trap during the 32-week season and FedEx them to you, relatives, customers or anyone you choose. Each package includes fresh mussels and clams, a home-baked dessert, bibs and cooking instructions. You are guaranteed a minimum of 40 lobsters of 1.5 pounds each, which comes to approximately $75 per lobster; this would drop to $60 a lobster if the trap catches 50, which the founders believe is a realistic goal. The idea is similar to a farming co-op where an individual can make a deposit to the farm owner in return for a share of the harvest.
What makes this investment unique is the interactive experience. You can select your own fisherman by viewing their personal profile online and even check the statistics of your trap. It's actually similar to playing fantasy football. The company provides video updates of the fishermen and you can learn how your personal fisherman is faring and hear their thoughts and observations on lobstering. You can even take a trip to Maine and experience a day in the life of your chosen Maine fisherman.
Basically, you own a piece of the business, but unlike stock in Microsoft, you get an immediate return. If you buy stock in General Electric, you won’t be able to spend a day with an engineer. Catch a Piece of Maine takes fractional ownership of a business and adds an experiential element to it, making it much more personal and fun. It is a great business model that could be applied to other businesses to achieve a similar effect. Wouldn’t it be interesting if you could own a table at a restaurant? Your investment would provide the business owner with guaranteed cash flow and in return you would receive all the revenues of people who sit at that table.
-------------
http://ellsworthmaine.com/site/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=16348&Itemid=85
-------------
http://www.nuwireinvestor.com/blogs/thebrinktank/2008/09/invest-in-lobster-trap-off-coast-of.html
1. Haerang Park
2. Seas Will Rise Much Faster Than Thought, Study Says
3. We've watched a video on gyre full of plastic that is never biodegradable detroying both marine and land food chains. Personally I never heard of this and it came to me as a shock. From then on, I am really concerned about the oceans. In the second class, Prof. Whitaker explained about dead zone that has very low oxygen concentrations and cannot support aquatic life. Another issue concerning the oceans is melting ice in the Antartic caused by global warming. Recently, a study by Carlson's team was published in Nature Geoscience and concluded that the sea level will rise faster than the IPCC prediction. We do not know which one is right but it is for sure that the sea level will rise over the next century threatening cities built at sea level. The meling process is done as heat from greenhouse gases is concentrated on Greenland ice sheet.
------------------
Seas Will Rise Much Faster Than Thought, Study Says
Anne Minard
for National Geographic News
September 3, 2008
Melting Greenland ice could cause oceans to rise by more than a foot (30 centimeters) over the next hundred years.
The resulting sea level rise, spurred by global warming, may also happen three times faster than previously predicted.
When all other sources of melting ice are also factored in—such as the Antarctic ice sheet and smaller glaciers—the sea level has been predicted to increase by several more feet by 2100, according to previous studies.
(See a global warming interactive.)
The new estimates are based on disappearance rates of the ancient Laurentide ice sheet that long ago covered North America and melted between 9,000 and 6,000 years ago.
"We have never seen an ice sheet retreat significantly or even disappear before, yet this may happen for the Greenland ice sheet in the coming centuries to millennia," lead study author Anders Carlson, of the University of Wisconsin, said in a press release.
Carlson said his team's research on the Laurentide ice sheet "gives us a window into how fast these large blocks of ice can melt and raise sea level."
The study appears this week in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Massive Disappearance
At its peak, the Laurentide ice sheet was more than 5,000,000 square miles (13,000,000 square kilometers) across, with a thickness of up to 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) in some places, according to previous estimates.
To determine the demise of the massive sheet, Carlson and his team estimated the ages of boulders left in its wake based on how long they had been exposed to cosmic rays.
The geologists also obtained radiocarbon dates of trees and other organic materials that couldn't have existed until after the ice was gone.
Finally they measured oxygen atoms in plankton fossils in Labrador Bay, which is adjacent to the site of the historic ice sheet.
The atoms—oxygen isotopes—indicate the contribution of fresh water from the melting glacier, Carlson said, and therefore independently confirm the land-fossil measurements.
The authors said there were two major Laurentide melting pulses—9,000 years ago and 7,500 years ago—that added a total of almost 40 feet (12 meters) of depth to the world's oceans.
They say the entire Laurentide ice sheet was gone by about 6,500 years ago.
Upping the Ante
Covering about 650,000 square miles (1.7 million square kilometers), the Greenland ice sheet is Earth's second largest, after the Antarctic ice sheet. It's about the size that the Laurentide ice sheet was 8,000 years ago, after its first major melting pulse.
The Laurentide ice sheet was exposed to direct solar heat because Earth's tilt had it angling closer to the sun, Carlson said. The concentration of heat caused by greenhouse gases is having a similar effect on today's Greenland ice sheet.
The new findings also suggest the Greenland ice sheet will melt faster than the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted last year.
The IPCC estimate was based on melt rates measured between 1992 and 2003 in Greenland and Antarctica and on a current rate of sea level rise of about .12 inches (3 millimeters) a year.
The IPCC scientists predicted the Greenland ice sheet would cause the the seas to rise up to four inches (ten centimeters) within a hundred years.
"It's basically showing the IPCC was right when they were predicting sea level rise," Carlson said of the new results. "But we're showing that they probably were conservative."
Cities Under Water?
Mark Siddall, a geologist at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, was not a co-author on the new study but wrote an editorial that accompanies it. He also helped write the IPCC's 2007 report.
"At the very least," he said, "this work suggests that the sea level rise in the next century will be at the upper end of the IPCC estimate and maybe some tens of centimeters more."
Any rise at all could threaten U.S. cities that are built, at least in part, at sea level. These cities include New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New Orleans (read more in National Geographic magazine), and San Francisco, among others.
------
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/09/080903-greenland-ice.html
Post a Comment