The second instalment of the BBC’s excellent programme on nuts in Brazil, which I blogged about earlier, is online here. There’s also a short article here.
Latin cooking
This piece on the polyphenolic content of yearba mate (llex paraguariensis), a tea-like drink traditionally consumed in South America by pouring boiling water onto leaves held in a seasoned gourd, led me to this interesting-sounding book on Hispanic foods in general. Polyphenols are antioxidants and the food industry wants to add them to juices and teas.
Identifying trees from the air
We received the following request from Carlos E. Gonzalez of the Department of Geography, King’s College London in response to an earlier posting on botanical keys. I hope readers will be able to help him out.
As part of my PhD I have been developing an online taxonomic key for tree identification (higher taxa) on the basis on aerial photography. The taxonomic key uses some aerial photography over the Tiputini Biodiversity Station, and the user answers a series of questions on each crown in order to come to an identification. I am now testing this key in order to understand better (a) its success rate in the identification of trees using a large number of different observers and (b) the patterns of correct and erroneous identifications and implications for the key and for how different observers visualise and separate crown features in imagery. I would be very grateful if you would take a short time to identify 20 trees for me. You can find instructions and access to the key and imagery here. Your computer needs to have a copy of Google Earth version 4, available here. I cannot identify which users have given particular answers but will be able to provide some general feedback to the group of users as a whole. PLEASE ALSO FORWARD TO OTHERS WHO MIGHT CONTRIBUTE. Many thanks! Carlos
Build coastal resilience
Deriving food from the coastline is more like hunting than fishing, and a new report from GRID Arendal stresses the need to protect coastal regions and ensure that they maintain the resilience to feed people. The report is available directly from Eldis, which says that “According to the report, the recommendation by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), that 10% of all marine and coastal ecological regions be conserved in MPAs by 2012, will not be met until 2069. MPAs further need to be of a significant size, effectively managed and designed and implemented in such a way to facilitate the conservation of marine biodiversity and the associated ecosystem services, including close regulation of the adjacent land-based activities to reduce pollution.”
GRID Arendal is part of UNEP’s GRID network, specialising in GIS and its uses.
Crops in the news
I’m not sure what to make of newspaper articles describing how to grow and process staple crops. On the one hand, it is nice to see the mainstream media take on agricultural subjects. On the other, it is sometimes difficult to see who exactly is meant to benefit from articles such as this on cassava from the St Kitts & Nevis and this on sweet potato from Zambia. Any thoughts?