5. environment

Carbon capture (21)
Ecology (2890)

Synopsis: 5. environment:

It's a crowded beach, with bad weather, high tides and rough surf, which perhaps explains why one-quarter to two-thirds of pups each year were separated from their mothers at least once oe some permanently.

In this film, ecological economist Pavan Sukhdev, The Nature Conservancy's lead scientist Dr M Sanjayan and camerawoman Sophie Darlington talk about the salmon's unsung role in fertilising the forest.

Saving kelp forests and our climatethe kelp forests fringing the North Pacific coast are one of the richest marine ecosystems On earth.

marine ecologist Professor James A Estes, cameraman Doug Allan, ecological economist Pavan Sukhdev, and lead scientist with the Nature Conservancy,

Growing food, curbing floods, cleaning airhave you ever noticed a certain similarity in public parks and back gardens in the cities of the West?

As ecologist Peter Groffman has noted, it's increasingly difficult to tell one suburb apart from another,

even when they're located in vastly different climates such as Phoenix, Arizona, or Boston in the much chillier northeast of the US.

and the environmental context. Â They are tuned to their locality, and diverse within as well as across cities.

and corridors that connect both residents and wildlife to the surrounding native environment. Their functions are measured

But built environments will still be ever-present in dense megacities. Â We can greatly enhance the utility of green space through designs that provide a range of different uses in a confined space.

Currently, green space and street plantings are relatively similar throughout the Western world, regardless of differences in local climate, geography, and natural history.

of the Ecological Planning Center in the US, advocates an asset-based approach to urbanism.

ecological planners are beginning to frame the discussion of future cities in terms of what they do have-their natural and cultural assets.

In Utah's Salt lake city, instead of couching environmental planning as an issue of resource scarcity, the future park is described as mountain urbanism and the strong association of local residents with the natural environment of the mountain ranges near their home.

From this starting point the local climate, vegetation, patterns of rain and snowfall, and mountain topography are deemed all natural assets that create a new perspective

when it comes to creating urban green space. In Cairns, Australia, the local master plan embraces tropical urbanism that conveys a sense of place through landscaping features,

while also providing important functions such as shading and cooling in this tropical climate. The globally homogenised landscape aesthetic oe

New technologies for treating wastewater for example, look less like industrial treatment plants and more like ecosystems;

Windy city parkin Finland, Heiki Setã ¤lã ¤of the University of Helsinki has monitored the urban environment to measure pollutant concentrations near tree canopies and in waterways.

 Rather than relying on assumptions about the role of urban vegetation in improving the environment and health,

while providing more social and environmental uses. Alex Felson's"designed experiments  in collaboration with New york city are a good example of this.

Critically, there is a growing effort to understand the many and complex roles of urban green space in influencing human health and well-being beyond their effect on the physical environment alone.

and ecologists understand what kind of landscapes people want in different cities, so that future landscape designs can meet aesthetic and cultural as well as environmental needs.

 In other words, the hyperfunctional landscapes of the future will be beautiful as well as useful. As the environment changes and the urban landscape evolves,

so to must the design of the parks of the future. These urban landscapes will be as dynamic and diverse as their residents,

Basically, some people might not want to show off their potato battery to impress a neighbor. Still, it cannot be denied that the potato battery idea works,

Dwindling fish stocks from overfishing have prompted humanity to create farmed supplies, beginning with the most accessible environments on or near land.

It will be built to withstand Category Five typhoons, and will produce the natural gas equivalent of 100,000 barrels of oil per day.

While few groups could afford to build a floating city capable of weathering such storms

and rest at the surface in good weather. The long vertical trusses holding up Pauley's design use Fuller's principles for strong, lightweight"tensegrity  structures.

and store energy from wind and the Sun. As designs improve oe and get cheaper oe the idea of a home on the ocean will become more affordable.

and nourishes the ecosystems that we depend upon. Yet through waste and mismanagement, careless pollution, and ever-surging demand, humankind is careening toward a day

and neighbour against neighbour. Â It doesn't have to be this way. If we can focus on strategies that reduce demand

Such is the case in agriculture, particularly in arid climates. For example, Jordan's Water Authority is presently treating domestic wastewater for reuse in agriculture;

when discharged, can harm aquatic ecosystems. Advances in this technology have moved from an energy-hungry distillation process to a reverse osmosis process (essentially,

infrastructure and engineered ecosystems. Many types of industry and energy production oe including hydropower mineral extraction and mining or fuel production oe rely on vast quantities of water.

Moving this process from a tower into a chain of cooling landscapes adds green spaces to the environment

assess and understand the performance and resilience of these ecosystems. The Milliontreesnyc Initiative, for instance, is designed a experiment Â,

Such hypothesis-driven research will promote the type of urbanisation that adds to the health, safety and welfare of residents and their environment.

and influence decisions on environmental issues. This process oe and the shared responsibility it generates oe enables these projects to serve as a testbed that reveals better ways to confront the complex problems of climate change and its impact on stressed communities.

In the UK, the London Wetland Centre functions as such a working landscape; its habitats are built into clay-lined pools

The built center for the Women for Women International's Women's Opportunity Centre in Koyonza, Rwanda, includes a rain water capture

In 1949, the environmental scientist Aldo Leopold  wrote:""We abuse land because we see it as a commodity belonging to us.

and Margaret Atwood's Oryx & Crake (along with its sort of sequels The Year of the Flood and the about to be published Maddaddam)

A recent report published UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation concludes that as the climate changes

and the dog oe both are found across much of the world and in wet and cold environments.

So the C4 pathway is ideal for the hotter drought conditions that are increasingly prevalent owing to climate change.

I'd ducked into a covered alley to escape a sudden springtime downpour and the icy ankle-deep stream it sent coursing through the narrow streets,

The driving force behind these initiatives the Transition Towns movement oe encourages communities to build local resilience to outside economic and environmental forces.

A couple of damp tourists pick at the goods, waiting for the rain to stop. It doesn't look like

Government builds free cloud-based backup for ungrateful nation Totient Medium 8 july 2013"The cloud backup program, called Prism, safely stores all American's phone

consumption environments oe was the first piece of what I've come to think of as the Ëoeamerican cloud':

'the vast industrial back end of our lives that we access via a theatre of manufactured experiences.

If distant tea and coffee plantations were the first modern clouds, A&p stores and mail-order catalogues were the first browsers and apps.

Will we continue on a path of global climate change, land-use change, resource depletion, biodiversity loss and population expansion?

The Black death also had an environmental impact oe loss of agricultural activity allowed forests to regrow,

but this could be to the benefit of the environment. Poverty in HIV-hit southern Africa means it has the lowest per capita greenhouse gas emissions on the planet.

Instead of clear skies and open air, our atmosphere could be filled with lacy meshwork that filters air

and renews the environment. Technical crafts made possible by new research in thermodynamics are now presenting remarkable new opportunities for architectural designers to work with air gas and fluids as building materials.

Exploring new chemical reactions within dynamic gaseous and fluid environments, British and Danish artificial life researchers such as Rachel Armstrong and Martin Hanczyc are designing protocells oe a mix of chemicals

The glasswork houses a carbon capture system that works in much the same way that limestone is deposited by living marine environments.

and interact with their surroundings. A new city capable of handling unstable conditions oe where it could shed heat,

Mankind's awareness of our food supplies has been heightened by massive crop failures due to millennial level floods, protracted droughts,

or is it causing irreparable damage to the environment that will eventually turn today's serious problem of today into a food crisis of epic proportions in the near future?

Drier weather patterns caused the failure of this single crop their civilisation depended upon oe a mono-crop dependent upon a constant source of water to survive.

Indoor farms (controlled environment agriculture or CEA) will undoubtedly replace most outdoor urban agricultural initiatives as the advantages of farming within protected environments become more widely accepted.

ecosystems that were fragmented in favour of farmland could be allowed to regain most of their ecological functions,

and it's that cities could offer the biggest hope for the survival of other species and ecosystems in the Anthropocene.

Growing upso if the environmental preservation opportunity that cities offer is to be realised, then the citizens of the Anthropocene will need to live far more efficiently than most city dwellers currently do.

attracting birds and wildlife to sky-gardens, tens of floors up. In Singapore, for example, the Marina Bay Sands hotel features a skypark on the 56th floor, with trees,

growing food in the urban environment on regular multistorey plots is likely to increase as hobby farmers,

There is already a new field of urban ecology for scientists who study the city and biophysical interactions within it, in a similar way to traditional ecosystem research.

In fact, a surprising amount of wildlife now depends on the human-made environment, from the clouds of huge Sydney fruit bats to London's wily foxes,

and those opportunists that migrate to the urban environment, are interacting to produce unique ecosystems that exist nowhere else.

Seagulls, for example, now often live in cities hundreds of kilometres from the coast. As their traditional food oe fish oe becomes scarcer,

which Rachel Carson, author of the seminal environmental book Silent Spring, noted is not quite fatal.

roots) adapted to different kinds of environments and using a range of resources. For example, needle-leaved Canadian evergreens make the most of scant sunlight

Bioprocessing units may be designed to house different kinds of ecologies to suit particular habitats. For example, in estuary environments so-called oystertecture, in which shellfish are farmed on sculptural metal structures,

could be used to filter impurities, improve water quality and increase biodiversity. Â These developments in living technology suggest that we will evolve solutions using the transformational properties of natural systems.

Perhaps the future of our urban environments will not be about designing buildings, as we know them,

but in the production of synthetic ecosystems, which improve the quality of our lives. For more in our Building Tomorrow series, click here.

Which would be great news oe if not for climate change. How not to die Jonathan Rauch The Atlantic 24 april 2013 Humbling, enlightening essay on end-of-life care."

"Over the years, people had looked for environmental factors that caused inflammatory bowel disease and hadn't found anything, Â Weinstock says."

The rise in allergies and inflammatory diseases may not necessarily be caused by a general lack of microbes in hygienic environments,

information on weather and market prices; and the markets to sell their products. Radical overhaulbut things are beginning to turn around.

It's an ecosystem that needs to be built. Â Hedging harveststhat ecosystem, at least in Kenya, is slowly starting to develop.

Several innovations like Farm Shop are improving the lives and income of Africa's struggling smallholder farmers,

If the rains fail, they are left with nothing to invest in the next season. Using weather stations across the country

Kilimo Salama has developed a unique"weather-based index insurance, Â which farmers can buy into at the beginning of the season,

Weather stations are equipped with small sim-cards that wirelessly transmit data every five minutes to a cloud-based server.

and used to map out rain patterns. Kilimo Salama then works with agronomists to calculate the index oe

and find where the rain was too much, too little, or at the wrong time. Farmer payouts are calculated automatically based on their crops, location,

Richard has installed seven Lion Light systems for his neighbours, and people all over Kenya have begun copying his approach.

and two environmental research departments at the University of Minnesota to shape a 130mph"carbon neutral  steam locomotive.

But over the last 40 years, this great verdant tract has been threatened increasingly by deforestation. Clearing of the forest began in the 1960s

Although deforestation rates have declined now oe hitting an all time low in 2011-the forest is still gradually disappearing,

In this film, ecological economist Dr Trista Patterson, lead scientist with The Nature Conservancy Dr M Sanjayan,

sustainability advisor and author Tony Juniper and environmental economist Pavan Sukhdev reveal the richness of life supported by the Amazon

and the hidden contribution this great forest makes in helping regulate the planets climate. If you would like to comment on this video

Shark scientist David Shiffman pointed out recently that biting may be a necessary consequence of mating in a three-dimensional oe and slippery oe environment.

That's important when you realize that aviation currently accounts for around 2%of all greenhouse gas emissions according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,

"In terms of climate impact it's somewhat higher than that, Â says Steven Barrett, assistant professor of astronautics and aeronautics at the Massachusetts institute of technology (MIT),

and the director of the Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment.""Estimates vary from 5 to 10%,because of the altitude at which aircraft fly.

 For example, the contrails from a jet oe those white streaks you sometimes see trailing a plane oe are known to cause high-altitude cirrus clouds,

"Probably 75%of the research and development dollars we invest in the commercial airplane side goes towards improving our environmental footprint.

and the data collected enables us to better understand the impact of biofuel on the environment,

leading the chief scientist of environmental group Greenpeace to label the first flight by Virgin as high-altitude greenwash.

One of his main criticisms is that in some cases biofuels can lead to deforestation and a large increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

which ones make environmental sense. Â Other big challenges for biofuels include whether land used for growing the necessary crops is taking land away from growing food,

and others died from the weather. Â Welcome to the first TED event at Sana'a, capital of Yemen, the poorest country in the middle East and a nation at the heart of the covert US war on Al Qaeda.

But, for those who think that TED only offers the positive, Dr Kaled Alamarie, an environmental protection scientist from the New york city Department of Environmental Protection

as is Quammen's description of the elderly monster standing regally in the snow. Dark matter:

to curb waste and environmental damage. As mines become depleted, it could soon force the market to change its recent ways.

And what's more, the ants constantly update their calculations to correct for the sun's march across the sky.

That creates the conditions for a kind of patent perfect storm, O'connor says. Ëoefingers crossed'To get an idea of the size of the problem facing the likes of Apple and Samsung

But, for the moment, the software patent perfect storm shows no sign of abating. The only likely winners are the patent attorneys.

throwing up persistent clouds of debris that darkened the sky for years. The resulting change in climate led to a mass extinction that included the dinosaurs.

Barnosky calculates that humans are now creating a mass extinction on the same scale oe the planet's sixth one oe through a combination of habitat encroachment

climate change, pollution, and the spread of disease and introduced species. As many as 30%of all species may be lost over the next four decades, conservationists estimate.

Instead of battling to return ecosystems to a pre-human state, as previous efforts have tried to do,

and recognise that humans are an integral part of many ecosystems now. In many cases they argue,

we should accept ecosystems that incorporate nonnative species, value them and try to conserve them as"novel ecosystems  that are worth protecting.

Tipping point From Hawaii to the Galapagos, conservationists are beginning to accept and implement this new approach-embracing introduced species,

efforts are already being made to restore native ecosystems, or in some cases plant nonnative trees and grasses,

or introduce animals to restore the functions that the pre-human ecosystem once provided oe such as reducing soil erosion,

or exist only in human-made environments like zoos or private breeding colonies far from their natural habitat,

Instead, in our human world, we must decide what type of ecosystems we would collectively like,

and their interaction with humans, land and climate. They live high up in small alpine pockets;

their record is one of astonishing endurance in inhospitable climates. In times of drought they virtually shut down,

and those many thousands of servers that, in aggregate, add up to the mother of all clouds.

Sucking CO2 from the skies with artificial treesit may be a colourless, odourless and completely natural gas,

The carbon dioxide we are releasing is changing the climate, the wind and precipitation patterns, acidifying the oceans,

warming the habitats for plants and animals, melting glaciers and ice sheets, increasing the frequency of wildfires and raising sea levels.

And we are doing this at such a rapid pace that animals and plants may not have time to evolve to the new conditions.

Removing this pollution from power plants oe called carbon capture and storage oe is a useful way of preventing additional carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere as we continue to burn fossil fuels.

and can dry naturally in the wind, soaking up more carbon dioxide. Lackner calculates that his tree can remove one tonne of carbon dioxide a day.

but this could be provided by renewable sources, such as wind energy, Lackner suggests. We have the technology to suck carbon dioxide out of the air oe

and that social price is likely to fall as climate change brings its own mounting costs.

The more samples they have in the database the more scientists can hope to use the technique to barcode everything from a whole environment to a cup of seawater.

and not all the nitrogen in the food we eat is used even by our bodies oe the excess enters the environment through human waste.

Producing fertilisers also pollutes the atmosphere with climate-altering greenhouse gases. The Haber reaction requires burning fossil fuels

which would further impact our forests and other ecological spaces. Priceless subsidieswe're already seeing the effect of this Africa,

and the world in general, would be to see agricultural yield per hectare increased with minimal environmental impact

and in a way that can be sustained as the climate becomes less conducive. So when I hear the passionate views about

climate and soil type oe whether that be GM rice or conventionally bred cassava-rather than vast grain monocultures.

software can begin to build up a picture of the machine's surroundings. Â Using it in combination with GPS and other location technologies,

and an environment that was modified more pervasively, then previously thought, Â said Fisher. Instead of a wilderness, here were two continents with vast populations, grand urban centres and widespread agriculture.

as with all developments in computing, Fisher expects to see that cost continue to fall and its use to sky rocket."

Sykes is no stranger to media storms. As well as his work retrieving ancient DNA samples and mapping human migration through DNA analysis,

Darren Curnoe of the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental sciences at the University of New south wales in Australia, the chances of finding a completely new species of hominid are remote.

It works by funnelling wind around a metal box  lined with fabric and kept  water-soaked.

And the fuels used by each of us for energy have produced combined emissions that are already altering the planet's climate.

infrastructure is worst and environmental degradation is already problematic. And the current demographic shift in which developed nations have an older average population,

In the next four decades we're going to have to produce more food than we have during the last 10,000 years in soils that are degraded, marginal lands and under the difficult conditions of climate change.

or crops already hit by climate change, or being too poor to afford food whose price has been raised artificially by commodities trading.

The Great Acceleration can be seen in the rise in everything from carbon dioxide release, to water use, to number of cars, to ozone depletion, to deforestation, to GDP, to consumption.

pea-souper smogs shrouded cities like London killing thousands; acid rain poisoned rivers, lakes and soils, eroded buildings and monuments;

and carbon emissions caused a change in the global climate and acidified the oceans. In addition, our voracious appetite for manufactured products has led to massive deforestation

and created a mining boom for minerals, oil and coal that is destroying ecosystems and producing a deluge of toxin

and plastics waste that will take centuries to degrade. Lesser-developed nations will strive to follow the Great Acceleration trajectory set by industrialised nations.

Peasants scraping for subsistence in the dirt of India do not toil under romanticised notions about their labours.

and live as the average American now does at the expense of the environment. Climate change, ecosystem services degradation and limitations on natural resources threaten the lives of millions.

So what's the answer? Many poor countries have argued that they must be allowed to develop their economies, with however much pollution that entails,

Except that rich cities still suffer from smog, much of our biodiversity has been lost irrevocably, and we're still pumping out greenhouse gases.

Others point out that there is more than enough environmental space on this planet for everyone to live sustainably,

and whether such a purchase is needed even oe would be to levy an environmental services fee.

so that the price of a product more accurately reflects its environmental cost. The charge would encourage more sustainable production

and also help pay for remedial efforts from carbon capture and storage to waste water cleanup to recycling.

returning the water to the soil for the plants by way of rain. Nothing is lost.

and ecosystems around the world are suffering from the decline in supply. Our problem is that 97%of our planet's water is salty ocean.

Of the 2. 5%that is fresh, most of it is trapped in glaciers in Antarctica, Greenland and mountains.

An even tinier proportion hangs in the atmosphere as clouds and rain. Since ancient times people have found many ways to store water oe from trapping roof run off to underground monsoon storage.

to modulate damaging floods, and to provide electricity by passing falling water through turbines. Environmental losstwo-thirds of the world's major rivers have now been disrupted with more than 50,000 dams in an attempt to store water

and provide power. In the US, there are more than 85,000 dams, stoppering large and small rivers,

Downstream of a dam, the seasonal floods that revitalize wetlands and fertilise paddy fields cease. The flow may be reduced

with soils lost during seasonal rains not being replaced. Perhaps the most problematic result of this loss of sediment replenishment can be seen in deltas

and for all of them, the tension has been between the national economic advantage offered by the dam oe often by selling the power to international neighbours,

rather than directly improving electricity access to locals oe versus the local environmental and social damage caused by its construction.

Yet for all the environmental damage to its downstream river system, you'd be pushed hard to find an Egyptian that advocates its removal.

and now heads the Water division at the International Institute for Environment and Development, suggests the answer might be to issue dam builders with limited-length licences.

and the dams would no longer pass the more stringent environmental planning regulations, he says. Acceptable impactremoving the permanency of dams would make them more palatable to environmentalists

Even in the US, where companies are obliged legally to put aside funds for environmental cleanups,

Limited lifespans are sensible for another reason too oe climate change is altering rainfall patterns around the world, leaving many dams economically worthless.

The scientists can analyse the different engineering options and their power and environmental outcomes but it is down to society to decide what constitutes an acceptable impact.

Putting in gated spillways makes for a more regular flow that is less damaging to ecosystems, for example,

decide that some environments are simply too precious to dam, then we must offer compensation to those countries for their loss of potential power generation,

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