Eye-on-Earth

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[eye-on-earth]

Earth Cannot Breath!

Extreme temperatures can be harmful on photosynthesis raising the rate beyond the upper limits of plants. Above CO2 in Earth's atmosphere if half of global-warming emissions are not absorbed. - (NASA computer simulation).

The large majority of plants are C3 plants, which tend to thrive in areas where sunlight, temperatures, carbon dioxide concentrations are are moderate, and groundwater is plentiful. 

Carbon_cycle

Effect_of_climate_change_on_plant_biodiversity

C3_carbon_fixation

https://archive.is/EtPgs

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Polar ice is melting

The effects of global warming in the Arctic include rising temperatures, loss of sea ice, and melting of the Greenland ice sheet. Potential methane release from the region, especially through the thawing of permafrost and methane clathrates, is also a concern. Because of the amplified response of the Arctic to global warming, it is often seen as a leading indicator of global warming.

Global_warming_in_the_Arctic

Arctic_sea_ice_decline

Greenland_ice_sheet

Climate_risk

Arctic_sea_ice_decline

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Drought & Famine

Activities resulting in global climate change are expected to trigger droughts with a substantial impact on agriculture throughout the world, and especially in developing nations.  Even a short, intense drought can cause significant damage and harm to the local economy. substantial impact on the ecosystem and agriculture of the affected region

Overall, global warming will result in increased world rainfall. Along with drought in some areas, flooding and erosion will increase in others, paradoxically. 

Many African countries are not self-sufficient in food production, relying on income from cash crops to import food. Agriculture in Africa is susceptible to climatic fluctuations, especially droughts which can reduce the amount of food produced locally. Other agricultural problems include soil infertility, land degradation and erosion, swarms of desert locusts, which can destroy whole crops, and livestock diseases. Desertification is increasingly problematic: the Sahara reportedly spreads up to 48 kilometres (30 mi) per year. The most serious famines have been caused by a combination of drought, misguided economic policies, and conflict.

In Africa, if current trends of population growth and soil degradation continue, the continent might be able to feed just 25% of its population by 2025.

Famine

Drought

Climate_change

Human_overpopulation

Environmental_migrant

Refugee

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Hippos & Whales

The hippopotamus are the whale's closest terrestrial living relatives.

The hippopotamuses are the sister clade to the Cetacea, which contains whales, dolphins and porpoises. Whales, dolphins and porpoises belong to the order Cetartiodactyla with even-toed ungulates and their closest living relatives are the hippopotamuses, having diverged about 40 million years ago. 

Whippomorpha is the clade containing the Cetacea (whales, dolphins, etc.) and their closest living relatives, the hippopotamuses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whippomorpha

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippopotamus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacea

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin

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World Overpopulation

Human_overpopulation

World_population

Projections_of_population_growth

Total_fertility_rate

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Everything is linked.

Old Wise Australian Aborigine tells to his young walkabout son

Indigenous_peoples_of_Australia

History_of_Indigenous_Australians

Walkabout

Australian_Aboriginal_culture

Dream_time

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Only when the last tree has been cut down; Only when the last river has been poisoned; Only when the last fish has been caught;  Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.

Cree

Cree_language

Plains_Cree

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Deforestation of Asian-Pacific

Rising demand for palm oil and timber has led to the clearing of tropical forest land in Indonesian national parks. At the rate of deforestation, an estimated 98 percent of Indonesian forest would be destroyed by 2022 due to legal and illegal logging, forest fires and the development of palm oil plantations.

Palm oil cultivation has been criticized for:

Greenhouse gas emissions. Deforestation in tropical areas accounts for an estimated 10 percent of manmade CO2 emissions, and is a driver toward dangerous climate change.

Habitat destruction, leading to the demise of critically endangered species (e.g. the Sumatran elephant, Sumatran tiger, the Sumatran rhinoceros, and the Sumatran Orangutan.)

Reduced biodiversity, including damage to biodiversity hotspots.

Cultivating crops on land that belongs to indigenous people in the Sarawak and Kalimantan states on the island of Borneo and the Malaysian state of Sabah.

Social_and_environmental_impact_of_palm_oil

Palm_oil_production_in_Indonesia

Deforestation_in_Indonesia

Environmental_issues_in_Thailand

Deforestation_in_Borneo

Deforestation_in_Thailand

Deforestation_in_Papua_New_Guinea

Deforestation_in_Malaysia

Endangered_species

Deforestation

Palm_oil

Palm_oil_production_in_Indonesia

Palm_oil_production_in_Malaysia

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Amazon Calling

The Amazon River, Amazonas in South America is the largest river by discharge of water in the world, and either the second or first in length.  The Amazon rainforest represents over half of the planet's rainforests, with more than one-third of all known species in the world, would be reduced by 40% in two decades.

Amazonian societies were deeply involved in the emergence of South America's highland agrarian systems, and possibly contributed directly to the social and religious fabric constitutive of the Andean civilizational orders.

The Amazon rainforest represents over half of the planet's remaining rainforests, and comprises the largest and most biodiverse tract of tropical rainforest in the world. 60% of the forest is contained within Brazil, followed by Peru with 13%, Colombia with 10%, and with minor amounts in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana.

More than one-third of all known species in the world live in the Amazon rainforest, a giant tropical forest and river basin with an area that stretches more than 5,400,000 square kilometres (2,100,000 sq mi). It is the richest tropical forest in the world in terms of biodiversity. There are over 3,000 species of fish currently recognized in the Amazon basin, with more being discovered every year. In addition to the thousands of species of fish, the river supports crabs, algae, and turtles.

Amazon_River

Amazon_rainforest

Scientists have discovered the longest underground "river" (actually a saline water aquifer) in the world, in Brazil. Water in the aquifer flows a distance of 6,000 kilometres (3,700 mi) at a depth of nearly 4,000 metres (13,000 ft). It flows from the Andean foothills to the Atlantic coast in a nearly west-to-east direction like the Amazon River. The discovery was made public in August 2011 meeting of the Brazilian Geophysical Society in Rio de Janeiro. The "river", named Hamza after the discoverer, an Indian-born scientist Valiya Hamza who is working with the National Observatory at Rio, makes it the first and geologically unusual instance of a twin-river system flowing at different levels of the earth's crust in Brazil.

Hamza_River

Amazon_basin

Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest accelerated significantly between 1991 and 2004, reaching an annual forest loss rate of 27,423 km² in 2004. Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest threatens many species sensitive to environmental changes. Using the 2005 deforestation rates, it was estimated that the Amazon rainforest would be reduced by 40% in two decades.

Deforestation_of_the_Amazon_rainforest

Desertification

Deforestation

Chief Raoni, born ca. 1930, is an important chief of the Kayapo people, a Brazilian Indigenous group from the plain lands of the Mato Grosso and Pará in Brazil, south of the Amazon Basin and along Rio Xingu and its tributaries. He is a famous international character, a living symbol of the fight for the preservation of the Amazon rainforest and of the indigenous culture. +

At the time of European contact, some of the indigenous peoples were traditionally mostly semi-nomadic tribes who subsisted on hunting, fishing, gathering, and migrant agriculture. Many of the estimated 2,000 nations and tribes which existed in the 16th century suffered genocide as a consequence of the European settlement, and many were assimilated into the Brazilian population.

The indigenous population was largely killed off by European diseases, declining from a pre-Columbian high of millions to some 300,000 (1997), grouped into some 200 tribes. However, the number could be much higher if the urban indigenous populations are counted in all the Brazilian cities today.

On January 18, 2007, FUNAI reported that it had confirmed the presence of 67 different uncontacted tribes in Brazil, up from 40 in 2005.

Kayapo

Indigenous_peoples_in_Brazil

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Not only flora & fauna but also humans, uncontacted tribes disappear loosing rainforests! 

Uncontacted_peoples

Povos_isolados

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Environmental impact of pesticides

Over 98% of insecticides reach other than target species, because they are sprayed or spread across entire agricultural fields. Runoff can carry pesticides into aquatic environments while wind can carry them to other fields, grazing areas, human settlements and undeveloped areas, potentially affecting other species. Other problems emerge from poor production, transport and storage practices.

The arrival of humans in an area, to live or to conduct agriculture, necessarily has environmental impacts. These range from simple crowding out of wild plants in favor of more desirable cultivars to larger scale impacts such as reducing biodiversity by reducing food availability of native species, which can propagate across food chains. The use of agricultural chemicals such as fertilizer and pesticides magnify those impacts. These effects are magnified by the use of older chemistries and poor management practices.

Children are more susceptible and sensitive to pesticides. Exposure effects can range from mild skin irritation to birth defects, tumors, genetic changes, blood and nerve disorders, endocrine disruption, coma or death. Developmental effects have been associated with pesticides. Recent increases in childhood cancers in throughout North America, such as leukemia, may be a result of somatic cell mutations. Insecticides targeted to disrupt insects can have harmful effects on mammalian nervous systems. Both chronic and acute alterations have been observed in exposees. 

Environmental_impact_of_pesticides

Fertilizer#Environmental_effects

Pesticide_residue

Persistent_organic_pollutant

Silent_Spring

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Marine ecosystems

the largest of Earth's aquatic ecosystems, include oceans, salt marshes, intertidal zones, estuaries, lagoons, mangroves, coral reefs, the deep sea, and the sea floor. Marine waters cover two-thirds of the surface of the Earth. Marine ecosystems are very important for the overall health of both marine and terrestrial environments. 

Communities of organisms that are dependent on each other and on their environment live in aquatic ecosystems. 

“Everything is linked.” — Old Wise Aborigine tells to his young son

Marine_ecosystem

Aquatic_ecosystem

Phytoplanktons

Algae

Cyanobacteria

Planktons

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Pollination

A European honey bee collects nectar, while pollen collects on its body.

Most flowering plants are pollinated by animals, and especially by insects, mostly beetles, flies, wasps, bees, ants, thrips, butterflies, and moths. Insects carry out pollination when visiting flowers to obtain nectar or pollen, to prey on other species, or when pseudo-copulating with insect-mimicking flowers such as orchids.

Pollination

Pollinator

Anthecology

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Environmental impact of fishing

Some fishing techniques cause habitat destruction. Blast fishing and cyanide fishing, which are illegal in many places, harm surrounding habitat. Bottom trawling, the practice of pulling a fishing net along the sea bottom behind trawlers, removes around 5 to 25% of an area's seabed life on a single run.

The environmental impact of fishing includes issues such as the availability of fish, overfishing, fisheries, and fisheries management; as well as the impact of fishing on other elements of the environment, such as by-catch. There is a growing gap between the supply of fish and demand, due in part to world population growth.

A 2005 report of the UN Millennium Project, commissioned by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, recommended the elimination of bottom trawling on the high seas by 2006 to protect seamounts and other ecologically sensitive habitats. This was not done.

In mid-October 2006, US President Bush joined other world leaders calling for a moratorium on deep-sea trawling, a practice shown to often have harmful effects on sea habitat and, hence, on fish populations. No further action was taken.

Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_northwest_cod_fishery

Overexploitation

Destructive_fishing_practices

Overfishing

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Wagenya

Congo built a traditional sustainable fishing system of wooden tripods across the river anchored on the holes naturally carved in the rock by the water current. with large baskets, which are lowered in the rapids to “sieve” the waters for fish. It is a very selective fishing method, as these baskets are quite big and only large fish are entrapped.

Wagenya

Sustainable_fishing

Fishing_basket

Destructive_fishing_practices

Overfishing

Overexploitation

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Beaver Dams

Beavers build dams to make ponds as protection against predators, and to provide easy access to food during winter. These structures modify the natural environment in such a way that the overall ecosystem builds upon the change, making beavers a keystone species. 

Beavers work at night and are prolific builders, carrying mud and stones with their fore-paws and timber between their teeth. Beavers can rebuild primary dams overnight, though they may not defend secondary dams as vigorously.

Beaver_dam

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Sustainability

Endurance of systems and processes: In ecology, it is how biological systems remain diverse and productive indefinitely. Scientific data indicates that humans are living beyond the carrying capacity of planet Earth and that this cannot continue indefinitely. 

Healthy ecosystems and environments are necessary to the survival of humans and other organisms. Long-lived and healthy wetlands and forests are examples of sustainable biological systems.

The organizing principle for sustainability is sustainable development, which includes the four interconnected domains: ecology, economics, politics and culture. 

Human_population_control

Carrying_capacity

Environmental_issue