Forests & trees

September 11, 2012September 11, 2012

IUCN and Microsoft map threats to biodiversity

“We’re building an application that allows people to map those threats spatially,” Joppa explains. “We’re trying to provide a repository of evidence for threats to species.”

Lucas Joppa is talking about a collaboration between Microsoft and IUCN to map threats to biodiversity. Worth keeping an eye on. But I wonder if they’ll consider agrobiodiversity too. If so, we have some ideas here at the blog. Anyway, presumably the thing will link up with GeoCAT in some clever way.

LATER: And also link to this? Or at least suck in the data?

September 7, 2012April 24, 2014

Nibbles: IUCN conference tweep, ICARDA move, Adaptation stories, Branding and market chains, Tree farming

Stefano Padulosi of Bioversity tweets from the IUCN conference in Korea. And here’s another way of following proceedings: The Twitter Hub.
ICARDA forced to relocate.
Results of survey of farmer adaptation strategies in East Africa. (And CIFOR has more examples.) So why do they need Climate Analogues then? I mean, given what we know about it and all… Oh come on, it’s not as bad as all that, look they’re even using it in Costa Rica. Nobody likes a whiny user. Ok, ok, fair enough.
Branding not much use to farmers.
Kenyan banker agrees with my mother-in-law on the usefulness of trees.

September 6, 2012September 6, 2012

Nibbles: Fertilizer tree, Indo-European, Human diversity, European pollinators, DNA data quality, Biodiversity maps, Organizzzzzz, Plantain

Faidherbia albida gets another push. To quote from the recent Crops for the Future dissection of neglected/underutilized species: if it’s so good, how come it’s not used more?
The Indo-European roots of names for pulse crops. Not nearly as boring as it sounds. Oh, and since we’re on the subject…
Human biodiversity files: athleticism, foodism.
Huge EU project monitors pollinators. What could possibly go wrong?
Cleaning up DNA Sequence Database Hell.
Nice biodiversity hotspot maps. No plants. Definitely no agrobiodiversity.
A philosopher’s take on that organic agriculture meta-analysis.
Not Musa, but still edible.

September 3, 2012September 3, 2012

What I read on my summer holidays

Yeah, summer is over and I’m back at work. Maybe you noticed I haven’t contributed much here in the past month or so. Or maybe you didn’t. Jeremy kept up a steady stream of agrobiodiversity nuggets pretty much all through August. But my lack of activity on the blog doesn’t mean I haven’t tried to keep up, as you would know if you followed us on Facebook, Twitter or Scoop.it. Anyway, for those that don’t, and would like to catch up on my summer reading, here is, in nibble form, what caught my eye during the past month or so:

“The potato is a religious commodity in America.” Explaining the governance crisis in the US using the humble spud.
Wait a minute though: “The sizzle seems to be gone from America’s long-term relationship with the potato.” Which apparently means it needs an extreme makeover, colour-wise. For which you’ll need a genebank.
A tree’s leaves can be genetically different from its roots. Does that mean we have to re-think all molecular phylogenies?
And speaking of a tree’s leaves, these ones are a thousand years old and give you a buzz.
A toff with a passion for pigs. P.G. Wodehouse had something to say about this, didn’t he?
Turns out WFP has a podcast. And ICIMOD has an RSS feed.
A mathematician factchecks Michael Pollan.
Pear with me please, while I tell you about another USDA fruit collection.
15 Africa-changing innovations include orange-fleshed sweet potatoes. As if they weren’t there before. Anyway, they were THE story for a couple of weeks in August.
12 food security innovations include increasing crop diversity. With orange-fleshed sweet potatoes?
How to put that banana genome to some use.
Getting the most out of your enumerators.
IUCN’s Conservation Campus. Any ag? And on a similar topic, training materials in anthropology.
Automating conservation assessment of plants. You’ll need provenance data from herbaria such as this one at CIP, of course. Oh, and speaking of CIP, they need a phylogeneticist.
A market opportunity for the mother-in-law?
Measuring the health of the oceans. Hey, but it’s not all bad for fish.
Ten species which rely on ex situ conservation. And why that number will go up. How to pay for it all, though?
Book on the recent history of agricultural research reviewed. I wonder if they looked at the private sector. Because it seems there may be a case to answer.
Another big grant for taxonomic databases. Ah but this is all going to be community-driven.
Looks like this Australian genebank could have done with a decent database, community-driven or not.

August 22, 2012August 22, 2012

Nibbles: Deforestation, Mayan collapse, Agroforestry, One Acre Fund, School gardens

Cutting down forests worsened ancient Mayan droughts.
And (among other things) did for the Maya.
And despite the Mayan end of the world being near, the French are revitalising agroforestry.
The Financial Times wrote about One Acre Fund’s work to reduce agrobiodiversity in Kenya, then put it behind a paywall (for me). So One Acre Fund sprung it.
School gardens continue to flourish in some places.