Monitoring global deforestation by satellite

Started by Taronyu Leleioae, November 18, 2013, 08:34:49 AM

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Taronyu Leleioae

Interesting service that Google Earth is helping support.  
There are questions as to how scientists are actually accurately interpreting the color shifts in the satellite pictures, but a good tool nonetheless to get an overall survey.

http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/google-earth-launches-high-resolution-global-deforestation-map.html

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2013/nov/15/global-deforestation-10-hot-spots-on-google-earth-in-pictures

Tìtstewan


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`Eylan Ayfalulukanä

This is what human encroachment does, and it is a bigger threat than just about anything else we do as a species. How to control it is an even bigger issue. There is a strong natural tendency for people to want to mate and have families.

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archaic

Short of mass sterilization programs or extermination camps, education, family planning and contraceptives are probably the most effective ways available to us.
And they come as a package, you cannot simply opt out of one or two for reasons of theological dogma or whatever.
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Raiden

The best solutions to combating ecosystem loss are probably building up instead of out, incentives to have fewer children, and education + more freedom for women worldwide to use contraceptives or to abort embryos/fetuses if they cannot support them.

Building up instead of out is the best way to solve the ecosystem destruction problem, because it's harder to convince people to stop having babies than it is to simply make human infrastructure take up less space. The only problem with this solution is that agriculture still needs to occur, and agriculture can be just as harmful as urban sprawl to local ecosystems. There would need to be a way to restrict the spread of agricultural fields around the cities as well.

As for inverse birth incentives, there should be tax cuts for people who do not have children, and the tax cuts for people with children should be eliminated slowly (slowly, so that low-income families with many children don't starve). This system makes sense, because the more people there are in a city, the more they will stress the city's resources. Eventually, there should be slightly more taxes for people who have more than one child and tax breaks for people who have no children.

People who do not have children are, in a way, sacrificing something in order to make the planet more "liveable" for all species, so they should be recognized for that.
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`Eylan Ayfalulukanä

Ma Raiden, I like your tax incentive idea, but the rest is like textbook pages out of UN Agenda 21. I have no desire whatsoever to live in a tiny apartment in a highrise, 5 feet from my noisy neighbors, and have just about every activity I do controlled by the government (and for that matter, be highly dependent on the government). Although I enjoy some aspects of city life, I really don't want to be immersed in it.

Also, the only time I would be able to see wildlife would be on government-approved organized tours, as citizens would not be allowed in wild areas.

Somewhere in all of this, there has to be a balance.

Yawey ngahu!
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archaic

#6
Balance yes, somewhere. But until we can find that balance we should perhaps try and restrain some of the most damaging aspects of 'progress' because if we don't, then we risk ending up with nothing left to save.
While highrise blocks have undeniable issues, they have plus points too, small ground foot print for a one.
We can continue to thrive as a species, but we are arriving at the point where we need to move away from base greed to a more responsible mind set, either by education or legislation (or a mix of the two). If we fail to do so, we risk initiating a mass extinction event, eliminating a great many species from this planet, that quite possibly includes our own.

Whether we as a species are capable of stepping up to the plate in that way, remains to be seen.
But there is of course, as with any scientific prognosis, a caveat. What we know to be true, we know only until research shows something different to be true.
Pasha, an Avatar story, my most recent fanfic, Avatar related, now complete.

The Dragon Affair my last fanfic, non Avatar related.