From the category archives:
Brazil launched the Biomes Project today at the COP16 meeting in Cancun. The goal of the project is to reconcile agricultural production with environmental preservation across the six Brazilian biomes (the Amazonian and Atlantic Rainforests, savanna, wetlands, grasslands and pampas). The nine-year project has a budget of R$ 40 million (approximately $23.5 million). The focus [...]
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The Atlas of Living Australia is a newly launched website that aims to catalog Australia’s biodiversity, providing a site for researchers and others to access, combine and visualize data on the country’s animals, fungi, microorganisms and plants. The project is a six-year scientific collaboration between the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the Australian museum [...]
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New country maps are being developed in Asia, Africa and Latin America to show where investments in carbon can contribute to conservation goals and improved livelihoods. These maps are being compiled by a partnership led by the UN Environment Programme’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) to overlay the carbon held in the vegetation and soils [...]
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The United Nations Environment Program met last week in Busan, Republic of Korea, and one outcome of the meeting was the approval of a new panel that will have oversight on the global ecology, much in the same way the climate panel has raised awareness of global warming. The IPBES will act as the ultimate [...]
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The U.S. Geological Survey has released the Gap Analysis Program (GAP) national land cover dataset of the entire continental United States as both a data download and online viewer. The mission of the program is to “keep common species common” by identifying quality habitat to support wildlife. The effort effectively creates a baseline for biodiversity [...]
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The efforts to map and protect routes for animal survival is gaining ground, with wildlife corridors receiving greater support at the state and federal level. Colorado and New Mexico became the first two states to forge an alliance for interstate wildlife corridors. The governors of both states met in Denver yesterday to urge a national [...]
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Eight scientists and geographers at the Nature Conservancy have spent the past three years charting the health of different ecosystems across the globe to create the Atlas of Global Conservation. The detailed ecosystem-level mapping project will be unveiled in book form on Earth Day 2010 in cooperation with the University of California Press. An interactive [...]
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The Brooklyn Botanic Garden has recently completed a 20-year study and mapping effort of plant biodiversity in the metropolitan New York region. The New York Metropolitan Flora Project maps flora for all counties within a 50-mile radius of New York City. Understanding the urban landscape is critical in our rapidly urbanizing world. Findings of BBG’s [...]
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The UK Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn, is calling for world leaders to include the impact on biodiversity in their decision making, warning that the world may be undergoing the sixth greatest extinction ever. He’s contemplating a report on the economic consequences of biodiversity loss, and a pricing of biodiversity in a similar fashion as we’ve [...]
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2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity, and while coordinated conservation efforts are taking place at an unprecedented level worldwide, there are still dramatic declines in species diversity taking place. Climate change threatens to accelerate this process, but it also holds some promise for more coordinated global conservation efforts. “The time is ripe for a [...]
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