We have been contacted by David Wiedenfeld with news of a wiki-style site with the objective of aggregating information about biodiversity conservation and climate change. It will mainly focus on wild biodiversity, but material on agricultural biodiversity will be welcome. You can find David’s wiki here. Sounds like a great idea, good luck with it!
Ginkgo the new kiwi?
Reindeer, caribou, genetics and global warming
Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus tarandus) were domesticated probably around 20,000 years ago in northern Europe and Asia. They are still kept by many herders in the Eurasian Arctic, who derive their livelihood from their animals. Reindeer from Siberia were imported into Alaska in the late 19th century in an attempt to provide income for indigenous people. In the 1930s an estimated 600,000 reindeer existed in Alaska, but that number is now down to about 20,000. It seems that most people didn’t quite see the point of managing reindeer when all they had to do was go out and hunt its wild cousin, the caribou (Rangifer tarandus granti). One of the unforeseen consequences of this endeavor has been the migration of reindeer into caribou herds and until recently it was unknown to what extent this influx has had an impact on the genetic diversity of caribou. A recent analysis of microsatellite DNA in caribou and reindeer in Alaska, however, shows that very little genetic introgression seems to have taken place into either species and the authors think the reason could be that hybrid offspring may have a lower chance of survival. It is interesting to note that their study also indicates that the Alaskan/Russian reindeer and the Alaskan and Canadian caribou are much more closely related to each other than either is to the Scandinavian reindeer.
Caribou, which can be found throughout Alaska and the Canadian territories, migrate often in large herds between their summer and winter pastures. The porcupine herd, for example, numbers in excess of 100,000 animals and covers a distance of over 2000 km on its yearly route from the Yukon to the calving grounds on the Alaskan Arctic coast (the very same area the US government is trying to open up for oil exploration). Many native people in Canada and Alaska still depend on these animals for their survival and they are becoming concerned that increasing human development and global warming may either affect the size of caribou herds or change their migration patterns.
From Michael Kubisch
School gardens
It seems pretty obvious that school food gardens should be quite useful teaching tools. Kids like nothing better than getting down and dirty. Well, anyway, now there’s proof. A paper in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, whose abstract you can read here, confirms “the efficacy of using garden-based nutrition education to increase adolescents’ consumption of fruits and vegetables.” What an opportunity for also teaching about agricultural biodiversity, highlighting its link to nutrition! Of course, in some parts of the world school gardens actually provide a significant proportion of the students’ diet…
Mexico atlas
If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time you’ll know I have a thing about agricultural atlases. Well, here’s another one. Mexico’s Instituto de Geografia has put its Atlas Nacional de Mexico online, and it includes maps of crop production such as these (dating back to 1989, though). However, these are just high definition scans rather than real digital maps, which makes them slow to load and difficult to use. But beautiful to look at.