Changing Planet Revealed In Atlas

ring writes "The United Nations Environmental Programme (Unep) has released a new atlas 'One Planet Many People: Atlas of our Changing Environment', to mark World Environment Day (WED). It compares and contrasts spectacular satellite images of the past few decades with contemporary ones." From the BBC article: "Among the transformations highlighted in the atlas are the huge growth of greenhouses in southern Spain, the rapid rise of shrimp farming in Asia and Latin America and the emergence of a giant, shadow puppet-shaped peninsula at the mouth of the Yellow River that has built up through transportation of sediment in the waters."

Comments

Re:Not enough evidence

[Aphrika]

I think common sense is evidence enough. This is happening on a world scale, unless you can point out areas of the planet's surface that have been devoid of human interaction over the last 20-30 years. As far as seasons go, the effects that the study concentrates on tend to be long-term rather than seasonal, so seasonal evidence would be pointless.

Look at the basic facts; we are on a planet with finite resources. World population is growing, and human consumption of resources is growing.

Long term, the math doesn't work out. It's not a case of if we screw up this planet, it's a case of when, and more people equals acceleration towards that point, more space used, more fuels used, more products consumed.

The main problem is that as a planet, we all have to act to make it a sustainable environment. This means actually reducing what we use, not slowing down, or keeping it the same, but actually reducing the amount of resources we use. If one country *cough* decides to ignore this fact, it undermines the point of the exercise.

As far as your comment about hippies who want the developing countries to starve to death; well, they already do starve. But if world poverty was wiped out tomorrow the world over, the developed world would have to change its consumptive habits overnight for the world to sustain itself.

At the end of the day, everything on this planet is not okay, and all of our eggs are in one basket.

Re:Images?

[thesilicate]

Did you even look at your own link?

For those who haven't, it shows tons of virgin forest spread over the US in 1620 and 1850, then a dramatic reduction by 1920, and recently some regrowth, but still only perhaps a quarter of what was here pre-massive deforestation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

This is a great argument for the work of environmentalists.

The problem lies deeper

[Portal1]

Hi, may I react on this, as i think i know where i am talking of.

I am wanting to preserve some 50 square KM, yes KM of forrest down in the chaco Paraguay.
However everyone calls me a nut.

The problem is that it is almost impossible to control. to get there is a 2 to 3 day travel. up and down a week.
It is not people in paraguay cutting there but bolivians and yes your beloved argentinians stealing the trees. As they have good roads on the other side of the borders. (check the maps)
A big problem is that the border ad forest police is so coccupt and it is very easy to steal trees.

Then there are the farmers without earth. That always claim new land. Funny that they alwas claim a forest and never an empty farm land. Well if it is not cut while they are present there, it is very fast cut after they got their will and then they are gone again. A better name would be farmers without trees
Luckely the politics here are slowly shifting their position on these matters

I even thought of hiring several of these farmers to replant trees, but they rather don't it takes effort.

Then there is another maybe bigger problem
Soja delivers a 10 times higher profit then forest, meat (cows) a 5 times. Unless people will pay the real price for wooden it will be cut and not replanted

Well so if you are not going to invest from ideology, likely loosing your investment anyway through stealing, having a lot of headacke yes i have to agree with them, I would be a nut.

One way to balance the cost would be payment for greenhouse reduction, but polluting countries see saving trees not as a way of reducing greenhouse gasses. (I do monitor the COP Conference of Partys on these issues)

But if you have a 100.000$ laying around be my guest and save the world, yes 50 square KM of naitive forrest is likely cheaper then your house you are living in.

Do your calculus

geetings

ing. John van der Pol

If people want more info feel free to reply and i will answer

Re:Distorted Picture

[pfafrich]

One critique of these maps is that they are not comparing like with like. The forest clearing shown in http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/LandUse/Gallery/m ap1.htm is happening mainly in the old growth forest in the rockies. New planting in the east is often plantations of pine trees and other commercial forestry. While it is good that total forest cover in the US is increasing an old growth forest has a much greater biodiversity than a comercial plantation. Old growth forests will have many different species of trees at a variety of different ages, they will support many sorts of wild-life, bears, wolves, rare owls, and all manner of other plant and insect life. A conifourous plantation can be close to monoculture with rows and rows of a single species, often the dense planting and the blanket of needles supresses any low growth. Thankfully there is a trend towards better forest management today, but an old growth forrest is ireplacable.