Forest cover (green curve) versus palm oil production (white curve) in Indonesia. In 2007 Indonesia overtook Malaysia as the world’s largest producer of palm oil. Together the two countries account for more than 85 percent of global production. A study published in May showed that 55-59 percent of oil palm expansion in Malaysia and at […]
This graph from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which collects and collates data on the Antarctic ozone “hole”, makes clear that although the exact size of the hole varies from year to year, it’s stubbornly resistant to going away. This is despite the fact that within months, the Montreal Protocol’s list of banned chemicals will […]
Groundwater-quality data from a sampling of 1,329 wells in 19 states were analyzed. Chloride concentrations were greater than the secondary maximum contaminant level established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of 250 milligrams per liter in 2.5 percent of samples from 797 shallow monitoring wells and in 1.7 percent of samples from 532 drinking-water supply […]
Complex responses to Arctic climate change that may have broader community and ecosystem consequences. A developing trophic mismatch between the timing of caribou calving (blue), which has not changed, and the timing of plant growth (red), which is advancing with warming in Greenland [updated from E. Post, M. C. Forchhammer, Philos. Trans. R. Soc. B […]
Economic mass is concentrated in North America, Western Europe, and Northeast Asia. And only East Asia has significantly increased its share of global GDP in recent decades. This global concentration matters greatly for the development prospects of today’s lagging world regions, and increasing their access to these large world markets must be a priority for […]
Kenya risk is only Medium? The global map of hydro-meteorological natural disasters profiles 208 countries. It displays a subset of the data used in Maplecroft’s global map of natural disasters. The rationale behind mapping subsets of natural disaster data is that each type of natural disaster presents different challenges in terms of preparedness and response […]
These are results for the 12 reef systems around the world (Caribbean, Red Sea, Indo-west Pacific). The colors show ecological condition (amount of degradation) for 7 “guilds” of coral reef organisms: large herbivores (> 1 meter long) like sea cows and green turtles, large carnivores like sharks and goliath groupers, small herbivores like parrotfish, small […]
Direct and rapid responses to recent Arctic climate change have included earlier flowering of plants in Greenland [replicate slopes for each genus are based on annual estimates from 1996 to 2008 in Zackenberg; adapted from T. T. Høye, E. Post, H. Meltofte, N. M. Schmidt, M. C. Forchhammer, Curr. Biol. 17, R449 (2007)]. Eric Post, […]
From Tamino: Several things are abundantly clear: The “sudden recent warming” is right there. For every grid. Just open your eyes. For every grid the last decade is the warmest. Over the last 3 decades, 108 out of 113 individual stations indicate warming, 48 of 113 are significant at 95% confidence, none show significant cooling. […]
Figure 3.6. Graph of the acreage of piñon pine (Pinus edulis) and ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) dieback from 1997–2004 in the Four Corners States of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah. Based upon annual aerial forest insect and disease activity inventories by the U.S. Forest Service. Thresholds of Climate Change in Ecosystems [pdf], U.S. […]
