Should we conserve nature even if it is not wild?  Humans have transformed 40% of earth’s ice-free land into crop fields, pastures and settlements, and have embedded another 37% within used and populated landscapes (anthromes).  While 23% is still free of people and their... [More]

Today, the Tata Nano (Wikipedia entry), the first “people’s car” of the 21st century, rolled out of a dealership in Mumbai, hitting the streets at 56 miles per gallon (and 1300 lbs; its a 4 passenger vehicle!).  Compare this with the pinnacle of US auto ingenuity, the Hummer... [More]

Not only do humans burn away forests to enhance their food supply, they also do it when they battle each other!  Or so says a study published by Zhen Li and his colleagues this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Li et al. 2009).  By linking a careful inve... [More]

The real world is 3-dimensional.  And so is real ecology!  To improve our ability to observe and measure the ecology of landscapes in 3D, we are exploring a variety of new tools that almost anyone can use.  To see some examples, I've just updated our 3D landscapes pag... [More]