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Researchers Find Roads Shatter the Earth's Surface Into 600,000 Fragments (phys.org)
An international team of conservation scientists have released a new global map of roadless areas that shows that the Earth's surface is shattered by roads into more than 600,000 fragments. While roads allow humans to travel to nearly every region in the world, they severely reduce the ability of ecosystems to function effectively. Phys.Org reports: Recent research carried out by an international team of conservation scientists and published in the journal Science used a dataset of 36 million kilometers of roads across the landscapes of the earth. They are dividing them into more than 600,000 pieces that are not directly affected by roads. Of these remaining roadless areas only 7 percent are larger than 100 km2. The largest tracts are to be found in the tundra and the boreal forests of North America and Eurasia, as well as some tropical areas of Africa, South America and Southeast Asia. Only 9 percent of these areas undisturbed by roads are protected. Roads introduce many problems to nature. For instance, they interrupt gene flow in animal populations, facilitate the spread of pests and diseases, and increase soil erosion and the contamination of rivers and wetlands. Then there is the free movement of people made possible by road development in previously remote areas, which has opened these areas up to severe problems such as illegal logging, poaching and deforestation. Most importantly, roads trigger the construction of further roads and the subsequent conversion of natural landscapes, a phenomenon the study labels "contagious development."
Where we're going we don't need roads.
they're alive, i tell ya.
We need more squirrel bridges!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3462228/Mayor-insists-120-000-bridge-built-SQUIRRELS-cross-busy-road-Holland-not-waste-money-despite-five-animals-using-four-years.html
"It didn't! Its dreams were SHATTERED!"
(queue the Rolling Stones)
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
People denying the existence of roads may be roads themselves.
600,000 may sound like a big number. But consider that the Earth's land surface is 197,000,000 mi^2 (sorry for the imperial units, figure it out). So, roads "shatter" the Earth into average sections of 328 mi^2. Big woopee-doo.
("Shatter?" Unless the claimant can find lots of roads which have created fault lines in the Earth's crust, that's a troll at best, and more likely a deliberate falsification to support an agenda.)
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
When an eco-warrior manifesto worthy of the Unabomber makes into a publication like "Science," the real conclusion that should be drawn is that the scientific publishing establishment has been overtaken by propagandists with a political agenda.
To 'fix' critical ecosystems, could we 'bury' sections of roads (either by tunneling, or building 'hills' over the top of existing roads? (the latter being easier in places which cut through hills already)
Should future roads be built underground/at the treetop level?
Data for data's sake is fine, but recommendations need to come out of this.
Time to blame the Romans, those unenvironmental asshats and their... their.... roads!
But seriously, don't blame the roads, blame the species that built them.
We have close to 7.5 billion people on the planet. Without roads people would be living in poverty. Unless you have a reasonable alternative you cannot complain. Should we just have huge no go areas 200 km by 200 km? Should we just not farm the earth and allow humankind to starve? And there is already not enough homes for the current population. It's easy to be an environmentalist when you are wealthy and have a beautiful and large home. Articles like this don't consider the human dimension. Why is Slashdot so biased?
... the human species is responsible for devastation across all ecosystems on the planet. Over 7 billion of these creatures are multiplying like a cancer. They consume vast quantities of resources, they destroy ecosystems. There is plastic waste in the ocean, overfishing which is decimating the fish population, pollution of ecosystems, and radiocative waste from nuclear bombs and powerplant accidents. And new humans begat even more of these damaging beasts.
that environmentalists don't care about what's good for people.
Too bad nothing goes under or over, that would shatter this stupid story title.
roads are triggering.. roads cause ptsd.. roads need trigger warnings.
Building roads generates an endless need to build even more roads. Roads eliminate trees and animal life as do roof tops. It all points to the same issue. We must limit births in all nations. Almost all of our serious issues are simply due to excessive reproduction. And again, forced birth control is not a topic that any politician dare mention. Further, the way our economic systems work if population does not grow poverty increases.
Seriously it sounds an awful lot like his manifesto.
Crap, crap, MEGA CRAP.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
So are you saying that the roads who built roads aren't human?
I'm always hearing about cars hitting deers. In my neck of the woods it's cars hitting squirrels. Every couple years there is a big media splash about how we're spending millions so wildlife can take underground tunnels and not turn into roadkill on a 70 mph road. Keep in mind, this is where squirrels are the issue.
/,, preferring soylent Why should I have to \br\ when I want a paragraph break?
So who is surprised wildlife habitat has been divided into x times 1000 little bitty chunks, each too small to support the wildlife?
Too many people, not enough land.
I'm getting to hate
The Path has layers of rock(s). Just like the bible saying to build on the rock(Stable?).
I think this article is talking about Fracking for oil. Fracking causes the ground to become unstable thus cracking all the rocks. Did U promote Fracking?
Example:
Around where my house is built has solid foundation with lots of rocks.
If their was oil Fracking, then an Earth Quake will occur after the Fracking Operations.
WAIT! An earth quake took place around areas of Fracking! What I want to know is, what happened after the Fracking Operations and the Earth Quake? Where all the houses, street, etc rebuilt? Where they relocated?
This just in: Researchers report that 600,000 is a very big number that you should be super impressed by. That is all.
Researchers Find Roads Shatter the Earth's Surface Into 600,000 Fragments
Loaded word presenting a non-neutral POV. Reword and try your submission again.
Better known as 318230.
It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.
In happier times, London would never have bothered with such feeble prey. The great Traction City had once spent its days hunting far bigger towns than this, ranging north as far as the edge of the Ice Wastes and south to the shores of the Mediterranean. But lately prey of any kind had started to grow scarce, and some of the larger cities had begun to look hungrily at London. For ten years now it had been hiding from them, skulking in a damp, mountainous western district that the Guild of Historians said had once been the island of Britain. For ten years it had eaten nothing but tiny farming towns and static settlements in those wet hills. Now, at last, the Lord Mayor had decided that the time was right to take his city back over the land bridge into the Great Hunting Ground.
It was barely halfway across when the lookouts on the high watchtowers spied the mining town, gnawing at the salt flats twenty miles ahead. To the people of London it seemed like a sign from the gods, and even the Lord Mayor (who didn't believe in gods or signs) thought it was a good beginning to the journey east, and issued the order to give chase.
The mining town saw the danger and turned tail, but already the huge caterpillar tracks under London were starting to roll faster and faster. Soon the city was lumbering in hot pursuit, a moving mountain of metal that rose in seven tiers like the layers of a wedding cake, the lower levels wreathed in engine smoke, the villas of the rich gleaming white on the higher decks, and above it all the cross on top of St. Paul's Cathedral glinting gold, two thousand feet above the ruined earth.
Tom was cleaning the exhibits in the London Museum's Natural History section when it started. He felt the telltale tremor in the metal floor, and looked up to find the model whales and dolphins that hung from the gallery roof swinging on their cables with soft creaking sounds.
He wasn't alarmed. He had lived in London for all of his fifteen years, and he was used to its movements. He knew that the city was changing course and putting on speed. A prickle of excitement ran through him, the ancient thrill of the hunt that all Londoners shared. There must be prey in sight! Dropping his brushes and dusters, he pressed his hand to the wall, sensing the vibrations that came rippling up from the huge engine rooms down in the Gut. Yes, there it was—the deep throb of the auxiliary motors cutting in, boom, boom, boom, like a big drum beating inside his bones.
The door at the far end of the gallery slammed open and Chudleigh Pomeroy came storming in, his toupee askew and his round face red with indignation. "What in the name of Quirke . . . ?" he blustered, gawking at the gyrating whales, and the stuffed birds jigging and twitching in their cases as if they were shaking off their long captivity and getting ready to take wing again. "Apprentice Natsworthy! What's going on here?"
Flying cars.
Remember, you heard it here first.
Have gnu, will travel.
Also called building of communities, development of an area or economic activity. In Africa, where the roads are particularly scarce, this attitude towards planned development should be branded as "ecological imperialism." People die due to the poor connections and lack of roads. It doesn't mean there shouldn't be any animal crossings and bridges, however.
The humans and vehicles running across the surface are there?
Does this mean that roads are sentient? Apparently they reproduce...
Celebrities will advocate this for everyone who isn't them.
XTC
Roads Girdle The Globe
Am I asleep or am I fast
Your every race
You first, you last
Roads girdle the globe
We safe in your concrete robe
Hail mother motor, hail piston rotor, hail wheel
Roads girdle the globe
Am I tied in or do I turn
Your holy incense
You tyre burn
Roads girdle the globe
We safe in your concrete robe
Hail mother motor, hail piston rotor, hail wheel
Roads girdle the globe
Steel Radial
Steel Radial
Steel Radial
Am I get there
When is A, B
Your iron, oil and steel
[Incomprehensible]
Roads girdle the globe
We safe in your concrete robe
Roads girdle the globe
We safe in your concrete robe
Roads girdle the globe
We safe in your concrete robe
Roads girdle the globe
We safe in your concrete robe
Hail mother motor, hail piston rotor, hail wheel
Hail mother motor, hail piston rotor, hail wheel
Hail mother motor, hail piston rotor, hail wheel
Songwriters
A. PARTRIDGE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1JZCCeVzn0
Click-whores gets fucked in the ass, after they die.
The rest of us go to heaven.
According to this, um, 1950s Popular Science magazine we will have flying cars any day now. Problem solved, no need for those pesky roads all over the place.
...omphaloskepsis often...
They need to stop putting deer crossings in places with high traffic.
The roads they are talking about are not in metropolitan centers. If plants before "man" can transverse from Europe and Asia to the the Americas then I doubt a simple two lane "road" is going to stop nature.
The vast majority of the 'roads' in the study are the little two-laners that twine everywhere, but have no effect on ecosystems other than to limit the spread of wildfires. An ecosystem is disturbed when a major, fenced-off highway carries a lot of traffic, and as the article admits the primary impact is the human population the road brings, rather than the road itself.. Around here the perennial debate is, do we fence off the rural Interstate as the construction standard specifies or do we let elk and coyotes roam freely across it, accepting that a few will be killed?
If anyone should examine a topo map of North America and give a reasonable estimate as to which major land contours, lake systems and other land features were either caused (or prevented) by the specific actions of BEAVERS, the rodents would be singled out in an IPCC report as a major cause of 'climate change', exposed by CNN, trash-talked on The View, sold bogus 'log pullers', and hunted down near extinction. We could begin by interesting Europeans in beaver pelt clothing...
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
> but have no effect on ecosystems other than to limit the spread of wildfires
This claim is not well founded, I'm afraid. Even the most casual look at Google shows thousands of well written articles on the difficulty, and many well researched scientific papers on obvious and subtle effects. Slower moving animals like snakes and turtles are devastated by roads, and can lose genetic diversity because they can't safely cross roads to cross breed with even nearby habitats. And animals that need to migrate due to winter or due to local food depletion often have profound difficulty finding safe and effective ways past piles of fenced in highway.
The study was done by researchers from the Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development. What would you expect their conclusion to be?
The kiddies are bored, they have no life, they have no purpose, and so they rub it to a nub and then what? They get angry and tagged at the world. But with their inadequate damaged brains this is the best that they can do. Until they get done beating of one more time, at which time the tears of three children flow again and another diatribe of spewing vomit is ejaculated once more.
I bet you'll vote next time Tree Huggers!!
- The Donald
https://www.goodreads.com/book...
"Hugh Pine, a porcupine genius, works with his human friends to save his less intelligent fellow porcupines from the deadly dangers of the road."
Anyone who saw the video version of this on CBS Storybreak might remember the refrain: "Looks like it's gonna be a hot day today":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
More seriously, ecological and evolutionary theory (including island biography) shows how the size of a habitat and how habitats are connected affects the distribution and genetics of organisms in habitats, so habitat fragmentation has consequences.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Which was kind of dumb in that it didn't cause any problems at kind earth
So if the roads are "shattering" the Earth, is it going to fly off into space, into 600,000 fragments?
If not, I believe the word would be "divide."