Bob - For One & All. TED. Sustainability. Sustainability. Fight for our future or allow big money to leave just the crumbs. Our Future Beacons. Global glacier retreat. The recession of mountain glaciers, has been used to provide qualitative support to the rise in global temperatures since the late 19th century [3]. Many glaciers are being lost to melting further raising concerns about future local water resources in these glacierized areas.
Glaciers are the perfect summer water supply in alpine regions providing the highest runoff during warm dry periods when other water sources are at a minimum. The smaller the glacier area to melt, the less the runoff, the greater the change in alpine streamflow and the higher the stress on man and aquatic users of this resource. The result of glacier loss will be reduced summer runoff providing fewer resources for hydropower in Europe, hydropower and irrigation in the Himalaya, Andes and Western North America. The Lewis Glacier, North Cascades pictured at right after melting away in 1990, reducing its August streamflow by 40%. Glaciers respond to climate in an attempt to achieve equilibrium. Himalayas. Himalaya's receding glaciers suffer neglect / The Christian Science Monitor. By Janaki Kremmer, Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor / January 3, 2007 Billions of people in China and the Indian subcontinent rely on South Asia's Himalayan glaciers – the world's largest store of fresh water outside the polar ice caps.
The massive ice floes feed seven of the world's greatest Asian rivers in one of the world's most densely populated regions. Skip to next paragraph Subscribe Today to the Monitor Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS ofThe Christian Science MonitorWeekly Digital Edition Yet as global climate change slowly melts glaciers from Africa to the Andes, scientists say the glaciers in the Himalayas are retreating at a rate of about 33 to 49 feet each year – faster than in any other part of the world. In the Himalayas, the Gangotri Glacier, one of India's largest, is entitled to an even more dubious distinction.
But according to government officials and environmental groups like Greenpeace, very little has been done in the way of a rigorous scientific study. Scientists investigate Ecuador's receding glaciers. Studies suggest Ecuador's glaciers are rapidly shrinking Ever since the German explorer Alexander Von Humboldt visited Ecuador in 1802, foreign visitors have been drawn to its majestic volcanoes with delightful-sounding names like Cotopaxi, Chimborazo and Cayambe. Scientists studying them are reluctant to predict how many more decades visitors have left to see the glaciers which crown the volcanoes. There are too many uncertainties involved, the experts fear, and they are worried that many are losing their glacial cover at an alarming rate.
A study to be published this year by Ecuadorean glaciologist Bolivar Caceres suggests that the country's glaciers lost more than 40% of their surface area between 1956 and 2006. For example, the Cotopaxi mountain with its famous volcanic cone has lost 40% of its glacial cap since 1976. 'Abnormally high temperatures' And one of the glaciers on the nearby mountain called Antisana has also retreated by nearly the same amount in the last 50 years. Crucial role. Natural Threats to Rainforests.
By Rhett Butler | Last updated July 27, 2012 Throughout their existence, tropical rainforests have been affected by natural forces like fire, drought, and storms. These events occur on a random basis and can damage large stretches of rainforest. However, the damage caused by these natural occurrences is generally different from that caused by human activities; namely in that the forest loss is not complete and parts of the ecosystem continue to function. From the surviving remnants of the ecosystem, the forest can usually rapidly regenerate. Natural forest fires [news] occur in rainforests, despite their humid nature.
A forest, stressed by drought or some other factor, is most susceptible to fire, usually sparked by lightening or small human fires that escape neighboring agricultural zones and burn out of control. Volcanic eruptions and subsequent lava flows sometimes burn large tracts of forest, while the gases released from the activity can kill wildlife. Review questions: Amazon Rainforest Destruction. There are many reasons the Amazon rainforest is being destroyed, but if you take a closer look all of them share the same principle, profit. For someone that is exploiting the forest and destroying it in the process there is nothing that will change their minds unless they find a more profitable business. Although this is a sad statement it is true and well known. But the local population usually can’t fully understand the environmental issues and how they can affect other people’s lives.
They lack information and education, and although this can be solved with special environmental education programs, this doesn’t solve the problem if you don’t provide a means for the people to survive. The businesses that are destroying the forest are also well known. Another business that affects the forest is the wood sector. What needs to be done is to create development possibilities that have high sustainability for the region. Additionally there is a lot of illegal trade of biological species. Brazil | Amazon | Activist. Please support our site by enabling javascript to view ads. An anti-logging activist has been killed in Brazil's Amazon region, bringing the number of such deaths to five in the past month. The body of Obede Loyla Souza, 31, was found last weekend in the forest surrounding his home in the northern state of Para, BBC reports.
The young activist and landless peasant had argued with illegal loggers in the area. Police told Al Jazeera he was killed by a gunshot wound to the head, and they are investigating his murder. Four other activists have been killed in Para and Rondonia state in the past month, it states. A witness to two of the murders has also been killed, Al Jazeera reports. The deaths are believed to be connected to the activists' fight to end logging in the region. Souza lived with his wife and three children on unused farmland that they occupied in 2008. Souza got into a fight with an illegal logger, another activist said. Activist nun shot dead in Amazon rainforest | World news.
Cabinet ministers and police officers arrived in the eastern Amazon region of Brazil yesterday to investigate the fatal shooting of a missionary nun compared to the 1988 murder of the rainforest activist Chico Mendes. Dorothy Stang, 74, a sister in the Order of Notre Dame de Namur and defender of the rainforest and local people persecuted by illegal loggers and landowners, was shot three times on Saturday near Anapu, a rural town about 1,300 miles north of Sao Paulo. She had defied frequent threats to her life, and recently met the minister for human rights, Nilmario Miranda, to report that four peasants had received death threats from loggers and ranchers.
Human rights groups compared her death to the murder of Mendes, a rubber tapper who attracted international attention to the plight of the Amazon rainforest. Paulo Adario, head of Green peace's Amazon programme, said: "Dorothy died fighting for the Amazon, just like Chico died. And other people will die if the government doesn't act. " Chico Mendes « Children of the Amazon. In Brazil this past month, there has been a dramatic escalation of the threats against Chief Almir and other leaders who stand with him in opposing new changes to The Forest Code.
Legislation currently being considered by the Brazilian government would reduce the protections in place against further destruction of the forest. These changes would greatly increase the amount of land that can be legally logged and may also provide retroactive amnesty for illegal logging. Earlier in July, Chief Almir traveled to the city of Brasilia with 11 other Surui leaders to meet with the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI), the branch of the Ministry of Justice responsible for Indigenous affairs.
So far, the local FUNAI office in Cacoal has not responded to their requests for help and protection. There is a long history of danger to environmental activists in the Amazon region, far from the centers of Brazilian government. These killings may not linked or the work of the same forces. Rash of murders threatens to silence environmental and social activism in Brazil. "The groups which grew out of land grabbing and clandestine exploitation of natural resources have much more power than the state does.
That’s why there is this shocking kind of violence," asserts Keck, a policy expert with Johns Hopkins University. Rural Brazil has suffered two periods of intense violence and assassination recently according to Professor Carlos Gonçalves of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. In an interview with Ecodebate, Gonçalves says the first period lasted from 1985 to 1990 culminating in the assassination of Chico Mendes, but the second period, which began in 2003, is still ongoing and, considering recent murders, shows no sign of abating. Despite the epidemics of violence in rural Brazil, few killers are ever brought to trial.
According to a 2001 report by the Social Network for Justice and Human Rights, systemic violence against rural leaders and environmental activists in the Amazon routinely ends in impunity for murderers. Related articles. Amazon rainforest activist shot dead | Environment. Six months after predicting his own murder, a leading rainforest defender has reportedly been gunned down in the Brazilian Amazon. José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife, Maria do Espírito Santo, are said to have been killed in an ambush near their home in Nova Ipixuna, in Pará state, about 37 miles from Marabá. According to a local newspaper, Diário do Pará, the couple had not had police protection despite getting frequent death threats because of their battle against illegal loggers and ranchers. On Tuesday there were conflicting reports from about whether the killing happened on Monday night or Tuesday morning. A police spokesperson said there were reports of a "double homicide" at the settlement called Maçaranduba 2.
In a speech at a TEDx event in Manaus, in November, Da Silva spoke of his fears that loggers would try to silence him. Land barons seen behind Amazon activist killings. Nearly a month after the murder in Brazil's Amazon of an activist couple believed to have been threatened by land and logging barons, the investigation has gone nowhere. The killing of the activists, who had denounced illegal logging, was the latest in a string of deadly attacks on environmentalists, murders allegedly linked to powerful corporate interests in the vast South American jungle.
Jose Claudio Ribeiro da Silva, 52, and his wife Maria do Espirito Santo da Silva, 51, were shot dead in an ambush in late May close to their home in Nova Ipixuna, a small town of 15,000 people in the state of Para. Since their deaths, another three activists have been killed in the state, which is the epicenter of deadly land disputes. A fourth was killed in the state of Rondonia, also in the vast Amazon jungle. Junior, a 30-year-old agronomist who worked for two years with Silva and declined to give his last name for fear of retribution, said the murdered ecologist had received death threats. Amazon Rainforest News: Amazon anti-logging activist shot dead. 15 Jun 2011Source: Aljazeera.net Heavy logging activity in the region has led to the deforestation of one of the world's most dense rainforests [EPA] A landless peasant activist has been found dead in Brazil's Amazon state of Para, the fifth murder in a month believed to be linked to the conflict over land and logging in the country’s rainforest region.
The body of the victim, Obede Loyla Souza, was found over the weekend in the dense forest surrounding his home in the landless settlement of Esperanca, near the town of Pacaja. Police said on Tuesday that the activist was killed by a gunshot to his head outside his home and that an investigation was under way. Witnesses who did not want to give their name told Hilario Lopes Costa, a co-ordinator for the watchdog Catholic Land Pastoral [CLP] in Para, said they saw four men in a pickup truck asking for Souza.
They and Souza's wife are now afraid for their lives as well, Costa said. It was returned on Tuesday for burial. Threats and Solutions. Background - May 13, 2009 Fifteen percent of the Amazon rainforest has already been destroyed. Between 2000 and 2007, the Brazilian Amazon was deforested at an average rate of over 19,000 km² per year, an area larger than Greece. A significant part of what remains is under direct threat - as are the forest plants, animals and people who depend upon the forest. Greenpeace campaigner Paulo Adario contemplating the destruction in the Pará State, Amazon, Brazil. Threats: Logging, soy and cattle One of the greatest dangers to the Amazon rainforest is illegal logging which is fuelled primarily by demand for cheap timber.
By building logging roads into pristine rainforest, the logging industry opens the door to further devastation of the forest ecosystem through clearing for cattle ranches and soya plantations, over-hunting, fuel wood gathering, and mining. Between 60 and 80 percent of all logging in the Brazilian Amazon is estimated to be illegal. Solutions Soya moratorium Forests for climate. Medicinal Plants of the Amazon Rainforest. As of July 1, 2013 ThinkQuest has been discontinued.
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We encourage everyone to continue to “Think, Create and Collaborate,” unleashing the power of technology to teach, share, and inspire. Best wishes, The Oracle Education Foundation. Rain Forest Threats, Rain Forest Species. More than half of Earth’s rain forests have already been lost forever to the insatiable human demand for wood and arable land. Rain forests that once grew over 14 percent of the land on Earth now cover only about 6 percent. And if current deforestation rates continue, these critical habitats could disappear from the planet completely within the next hundred years.
The reasons for plundering rain forests are mainly economic. Wealthy nations drive demand for tropical timber, and cash-strapped governments often grant logging concessions at a fraction of the land’s true value. “Homesteader” policies also encourage citizens to clear-cut forests for farms. Sustainable logging and harvesting rather than clear-cutting are among the strategies key to halting rain forest loss. Threats Solutions. Future threats to the Amazon rainforest.
Amazon Facing New Threat: Agent Orange | The EnvironmentaList. Amazon facing new threat: Agent Orange | Environment. Criminal Assault on the Planet! Monsanto's Agent Orange Being Used to Clear Amazon Forest. How cattle ranching is destroying the Amazon rainforest 60 Dams will end the Amazon as we know it.
Dammed. Fury as Amazon rainforest dam approved by Brazil - Times Online. Belo Monte Dam Threatens Brazilian Amazon (PHOTOS) Amazon - Threats. Amazon Rainforest News: Brazil's rainforest faces new threats. Amazon Rainforest News: Gold rush is growing threat to Suriname rainforest. Amazon Rainforest and Wildlife Under Threat - LiveVideo. 25 Million Hectares of Rainforest Threatened in DRC | Greenpeace Africa. Congo River Basin is Under Threat of Wars, Deforestation and Climate Change!
Africa | Congo basin forests under threat. DEVELOPMENT-CONGO Deforestation Threatens South With Famine. How Does Deforestation Affect Orangutans? Guardian Environment Network | Environment. WWF partnering with companies that destroy rainforests, threaten endangered species. Japan 'to continue' Antarctic whaling. Whaling in Japan is on the verge of collapse | Junichi Sato | Environment. U.S. Leads Bid to Phase Out Whale Hunting. Bycatch Fish and Animals Caught and Wasted | Global Chefs.
Longline fisheries continue to drive albatross decline : The Birds Nest. Fisheries Depletion - Going, Going... gone? Trashed: Across the Pacific Ocean, Plastics, Plastics, Everywhere CHARLES MOORE / Natural History v.112, n.9, Nov03. Coral Grief: Warming Climate Threatens Reef Destruction. Coral Reefs. coral reef destruction Fish Bombing - Coral Reefs - Indonesia Destructive Trawling: Reefs to Rubble Reef. Bottom trawling Exposed—EU Bottom Trawling in the North Atlantic 底引き網漁 Seafloor carnage: the truth about bottom trawling
Deep Trawl Underwater Camera Sustainability. Trees-deforestation. Bob's Bleat.