Scientist studies the way ecosystems connect
Dust storm approaching Stratford, Texas, 1935. Dust bowl surveying in Texas. Credit: NOAA
In ecology, small things can accumulate to have big effects.
Debra Peters: So here the classic example is the Dust Bowl, where individual farmers were all doing basically the same thing. They were plowing their land, and plowing increasingly marginal crop land. Now it became dry in the ‘30s, and because everyone was doing the same thing, it accumulated to have a very large effect.
That’s Debra Peters with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She’s studying the way ecosystems connect. She said we’re all connected through a common atmosphere and oceans. But its not always obvious how something that happens in one part of the world may affect another. To monitor ecological changes across the United States, scientists have created the Ecotrends project. They’ll collate data from an initial 50 locations around the U.S. into one website. It’ll include long-term climate data — plus information about soil, air and water chemistry, plants and animals, and human population.
Debra Peters: You can actually then see if the weather patterns at one site are correlated to the weather patterns at another site.
Access to this information could enable scientists to more accurately predict ecological changes across the U.S. – and even help prevent another Dust Bowl.
Dear Debra Peters,
Speaking of human impacts, did anyone at the ECOTRENDS PROJECT notice that the human population worldwide is exploding, that July 11th was World Population Day and that too many of our leading politicians and mass media moguls did not take advantage of World Population Day by so much as mentioning this “mother” of all human-driven global challenges?
Yesterday was World Population Day. Can you or anyone else name one world leader or mass media organization to direct our attention to this momentous event or for that matter to the soon to become colossal challenge posed to humanity by the unbridled growth of the human species on Earth?
After all, if Earth cannot be expected to sustain the skyrocketing growth of the global human population, perhaps there is a case to be made for political leaders and mass media “talking heads” to advocate family planning, health education and contraception programs universally, freely and immediately available for voluntary use.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
What do you want to do. Kill off a couple of billion people. They tried to stop population growth in China and it doesnt seem to be helping. Eventually well run out of food and then the population will decrease only to increase again. It is a continuous cycle that we cant control.
Dear all,
Reading your comments I feel to post mine. The increase of the population is for the benefit of the country or the whole world. our prophet ibrahim, “prayed to allah, that O allah, fill this world with the humans as like the stars in the sky”. The population increases will not have much effect. allah is the sustainer of all the human beings. he brought us into this world he will not leave you alone with food and clothing. inshallah he will provide you with all until you die.