Climate vulnerability in SE Asia mapped

The International Development Research Centre’s Economy and Environment Program for South-East Asia (EEPSEA) has just published a study on the effects of climate change on SE Asia. The authors first mapped climate hazard, including all kinds of different things, from drought to cyclones to sea level rise. They then compared that with maps of population density and adaptive capacity. That allowed them to identify a number of vulnerability hotspots. And here they are, the most vulnerable areas in each country:

seasia-country-hotspots

All good places in which to start looking for agrobiodiversity to collect for ex situ conservation before it disappears, and in which to test agrobiodiversity for its possible contribution to adaptation.

More on mapping agrobiodiversity threats

Hot on the heels of a map showing how warfare has spared hardly any biodiversity hotspot in the past 50 years comes one on another possible threat to agricultural biodiversity. UNESCO has just announced the publication of its Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger. There’s a great interactive website all ready for people to start playing with. Below is a screen shot (there doesn’t seem to be a way to export maps, alas) showing critically endangered languages with fewer than 50 speakers in South and Central America. Worldwide there are 318 such languages.

map1

I’d say a disappearing language was a pretty good proxy for risk of crop genetic erosion. So much to mash up, so little time.

Mapping agrobiodiversity, then and now

france ag map

I found this great 19th agricultural map of France at Mapping the Marvelous, a feed I’ve only recently subscribed to which is proving a real find. It was linked there to a post about city orchards at a blog called Food Mapping, a “visual exploration and mapping out of the issues surrounding local food, including the associated debates regarding economics, environmentalism, geography, sustainability and taste.” That’s also gone into the feed reader.