Tracing Paper had a fun mosaic of food-themed maps yesterday. We’ve blogged about a couple of them before, and lots more actually, as it’s a bit of an obsession around these parts, but it’s fun to see them all together like that. And while we’re on the subject of geography, I got 8 out of 9 on the beer geography quiz that was also concidentally on Mental Floss this week. Can you beat that?
“Global human sensor net” to be cast for biodiversity
Another attempt to harness the “wisdom of crowds” is in the offing. The eBiosphere informatics challenge is asking people around the world to send in observations of “species of interest.” That basically means mainly invasives and threatened species, for now. You can contribute photographs to Flickr or use Twitter or send an email. You don’t have to be a taxonomist: you’re asked to do your best on the identification, and they’ll bring experts in for confirmation. All the observations coming in will be integrated it with other scientific knowledge (e.g. taxonomy, maps, conservation status) on the species.
Now, if you’re a regular reader you’ll know this kind of approach is one we’ve occasionally contemplated here for crop wild relatives, landraces and other agrobiodiversity, in particular to monitor threats and erosion. So I’ll be watching closely.
Nibbles: CGRFA, Livestock atlas, ITPGRFA, Bighorn, Japan, Wild Europe, Svalbard
- The Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture re-launches its website. And also the Global Livestock Production and Health Atlas (GLiPHA). Must be an FAO thing.
- “We are grateful to the governments who have made voluntary contributions to make this possible,” said Dr Shakeel Bhatti, Secretary of the Treaty’s Governing Body.
- Bighorn sheep at risk from climate change, computer says.
- The changing face of Japanese agriculture.
- “We are blurring natural boundaries: forests are no longer forests, meadows are no longer meadows. We have lost sight of eternity and infinity and are destroying nature for future generations.”
- Pope name-checks Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
Eden makes a comeback of sorts
It was over two years ago that we blogged about attempts to bring back Iraq’s southern marshes, and the agriculture they supported. Now, via Wired, there’s evidence from NASA of at least partial success.
A United Nations Environment Program assessment of the Iraq marsh restoration in 2006 concluded that roughly 58 percent of the marsh area present in the mid-1970s had been restored in the sense that standing water was seasonally present and vegetation was reasonably dense.
Here’s what this (partial) reclaiming of the marshes looks like from space:
But serious concerns remain: the water used for reflooding may not be sustainable as the population recovers and expands its agricultural efforts, and the region may have already suffered an irreversible loss of species diversity.
Would be nice to know to what extent traditional agriculture is also coming back. Maybe this could be discerned from the aerial images? What has happened to local landraces in the meantime?
Will climate change make protected areas useless?
Not for birds in Africa, apparently — and surprisingly, at least to me. ((It’s been a week for surprises. A meta-analysis also just out suggested that “recovery is possible and can be rapid for many ecosystems, giving much hope for humankind to transition to sustainable management of global ecosystems.” But that’s another story.)) A recent paper looked at likely turnover of species in Important Bird Areas (IBAs) in Africa under a range of climate change scenarios. The results showed that although there would be significant shifts in the species composition of individual IBAs, overall about 90% of 815 endangered species “are projected to retain suitable habitat by 2085 in at least one IBA where they occur currently.” And some IBAs will become newly suitable for some species. Only a few endangered species will lose all suitable habitat from the IBA network.
Nevertheless, the authors acknowledge the importance of the shifts in species distribution and suggest a number of recommendations. In particular, the results highlight the need for regionally focused management approaches. For example, increasing the number and size of protected areas, providing ‘stepping stones’ between habitats and protected areas and restoring critical types of habitat, as well as ensuring that the current IBA network is adequately protected into the future.
Sensible recommendations, which would apply all the more strongly to any similar network for crops wild relatives, say, which don’t by and large have the mobility of birds. ((Ok, maybe the ones which are bird-dispersed do! And the ones which don’t move around so well could be helped out, of course, although the most recent paper on such “assisted migration” is definitely in the “no” camp.)) We need to carry out a similar resilience study for CWRs in protected areas, I would suggest. But also, do we know how good the IBAs are at capturing CWR diversity? I suspect when people look at CWR distributions in protected areas, it is mainly national parks and the like that they consider, rather than such specialized things as IBAs, but I could be wrong. ((And Nigel and Shelagh will quickly tell me if I am, no doubt.)) Here’s the distribution of IBAs in Africa. I seem to be having a thing about maps of Africa lately.
