Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Crops, animals, wild relatives ...
by Luigi Guarino on November 20, 2008
That’s the cheesy title of what should be a fascinating National Geographic documentary on a subject that we’ve covered here a number of times: the idea that the Amazon was once thickly settled. If anyone sees it, do let us know what it’s like.
Show on map Tim Robinson updates us on livestock data at FAO:
…We had, of course, been working on the collection of the underlying livestock statistics, and the spatial modelling to produce the maps, for many years prior to them being published on the FAO website … but that is all quickly forgotten when they are re-distributed by a third party.
For your information, we have been beavering away since then, collecting more recent and detailed sub-national livestock statistics and disaggregating these using a slightly modified modelling approach, and 1 km multi-temporal, Fourier-processed MODIS imagery from the University of Oxford…
Global datasets coming soon, apparently. We’ll keep you posted.
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Let’s hope the documentary at least tips a nod and a wink to the estimable Colonel P.H. Fawcett (the inspiration for Professor Challenger of Conan Doyle’s Lost World), whose entertaining journals (“Exploration Fawcett”) in his ultimately fruitless quest to find remnants of Amazon civilizations a hundred years ago make a ripping yarn: Heart of Darkness meets Monty Python. A rousing, superb read.
Indeed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Fawcett. There’s an Avenida Fawcett in Lima. Or there used to be. It may no longer be considered politically correct to invoke the crusty old colonel.
I think the Avenida Faucett, leading to the airport, was called after Elmer J. Faucett, a Peruvian airline pioneer.
What are the odds?
Oh yeah, Percy Fawcett was mentioned quite a bit, and there was even a reenactment of his journey in and long quotes from his letters. I liked Lost Cities the best of any of the new documentaries I saw, although I must admit that Peter Coyote’s sonorous voice was a little much. Not very many excavation photos, but a lot of video shot in the Xingu park, and considerable emphasis on the archaeology.