The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite detected 148,946 fires in this image on August 23, 2010. The fires are outlined in red. Most of the fires are concentrated in Bolivia, where the governments of two states had declared a state of emergency because of widespread fires three days earlier. Scores of […]
This paper explores how climate change has affected Vermont in recent decades using long-term datasets: specifically the impact on freeze dates, the length of the growing season, the frozen duration of its small lakes, and the onset of spring. The freeze period in Vermont has got shorter, and the growing season for frost-sensitive plants has […]
ScienceDaily (Sep. 4, 2010) — Global agricultural expansion cut a wide swath through tropical forests during the 1980s and 1990s. More than half a million square miles of new farmland — an area roughly the size of Alaska — was created in the developing world between 1980 and 2000, of which over 80 percent was […]
By Rhett A. Butler, www.mongabay.comAugust 31, 2010 Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is down significantly since last year, according to preliminary estimates released by Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and Imazon, a Brazil-based NGO that tracks forest loss and degradation across the Amazon. Analysis of NASA MODIS data by Imazon found some 1,488 […]
By David BielloSep 1, 2010 06:00 AM For decades, apocalyptic environmentalists (and others) have warned of humanity’s imminent doom, largely as a result of our unsustainable use of and impact upon the natural systems of the planet. After all, the most recent comprehensive assessment of so-called ecosystem services—benefits provided for free by the natural world, […]
NEW YORK (August 30, 2010) – With a simple click of the camera, scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society and Zoological Society of London have developed a new way to accurately monitor long-term trends in rare and vanishing species over large landscapes. Called the “Wildlife Picture Index,” (WPI) the methodology collects images from remote “camera […]
United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) 31 Aug 2010 ISLAMABAD — It only took a few minutes on board a helicopter scudding across the wasteland that is the Pakistan flood zone for WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran to understand the full extent of the crisis currently facing the country. Hectare after hectare of prime farmland […]
Many locations in the United States are already undergoing water stress. The Great Lakes states are establishing an interstate compact to protect against reductions in lake levels and potential water exports. Georgia, Alabama, and Florida are in a dispute over water for drinking, recreation, farming, environmental purposes, and hydropower in the Apalachicola–Chattahoochee–Flint River system. The […]
www.mongabay.com August 27, 2010 The number of fires burning in Brazil has more than doubled compared with the same period last year. Surprisingly, the news has sparked a Twitter sensation, with more than 120,000 users “tweeting” messages with the hashtag “#chegadequeimadas” about the fires in a 48 hour window. The phenomenon emerged after analysis of […]
By TIM SULLIVAN (AP)28 August 2010 SHIKARPUR, Pakistan — Thousands of farmers have crowded this once-quiet Pakistani town. They live on the hospital’s lawn, they camp on overpasses. Their fields are destroyed, covered by billions of gallons of brown soupy floodwater. But ask those farmers about their water troubles and they’ll tell you flooding is […]
