Articles tagged with: landscapes
The Biosphere we created: 1700 to 2000
“So how did the biosphere become anthropogenic anyway?” asked an astute audience member at my 2007 AGU presentation (powerpoint). I had just given a presentation on my work with Navin Ramankutty demonstrating that human populations …
On observing human nature
Ecologists are studying the least human parts of the most human ecosystems and the most human parts of the wildest ecosystems while favoring the Temperate zone over the Tropics (Nature News Article by Zoë Corbyn: …
China’s villages are changing the world
If you still think of rural China as remote, traditional, and unchanged for millennia, think again. China’s ancient village landscapes are among the most dynamic and densely populated on Earth, with a global extent more …
Tools for the Carbon Economy
By Jonathan Dandois
Will the census of the future ask homeowners how many trees they have on their property?
With humanity now faced with a changing climate under even the most stringent efforts to reduce carbon emissions, …
The Nature within now matters most
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). …
Be your own eye in the sky
Now you can be your own remote sensing platform on the cheap – in 3D! Microsoft’s Photosynth application (installs in your browser) allows anyone to combine pictures taken from any angle from the ground or …
Our landscapes are reflected in the clouds
When we change our landscapes, we change the clouds above and thereby climate – this from new evidence just published by Jingfeng Wang (Wang et al., 2009) and a team of researchers in Rafael Bras’s …
The human jungle
Are pristine rainforests the only ones that matter? We know that forests do change as they age, developing some unique characteristics when mature, and that some species cannot live outside of large swaths of ancient …
A glimpse of the future from the past
by Jonathan Dandois
It is incorrect to think that something is not possible when considering how remote sensing tools and technology can be used to improve our understanding of local, regional and global landscapes. Publications and …
Remember the matrix! (no habitat is an island)
Conservation of biodiversity requires the conservation of habitat, and for a long time, this has meant preserving the largest possible “pristine” habitats and excluding humans. Now that humans have fragmented most of earth’s landscapes …
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