Saving Earth

A study which published in “science” this week shows that intact rainforests and coral reefs both act towards cloud seeding to produce rain. This study shows that an rainforest acts as its own ‘bioreactor’, whereby clouds and precipitation are produced by the abundance of plant materials in the ecosystem.

This study by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy, and the World Bank.

The study identified “remoteness” based on, as Michael Robinson points out in Time to Eat the Dogs, “information on terrain and access to road, rail and river networks. It also consider[ed] how factors like altitude, steepness of terrain and hold-ups like border crossings slow travel.” It didn’t necessarily take into account access to cell phone networks (now available on the summit of Everest) or other technological advances that may limit aspects of remoteness.”

Pinning down exact numbers is nearly impossible, but most experts agree that we are losing upwards of 80,000 acres of tropical rainforest daily, and significantly degrading another 80,000 acres every day on top of that. Along with this loss and degradation, we are losing some 135 plant, animal and insect species every day—or some 50,000 species a year—as the forests fall.

According to researchers, tropical rainforests are incredibly rich ecosystems that play a key role in the basic functioning of the planet. They help maintain the climate by regulating atmospheric gases and stabilizing rainfall, and provide many other important ecological functions.

Geologists have confirmed that the African continent is being torn in two, forming a new ocean. An international collaboration has shown that a 35 mile long rift in the Afar region of the Ethiopian desert, which opened in 2005, is likely to be the beginning of a new sea.
The recent study, published in the journal [...]

The Amazon Rainforest area occupies over 7.5 million square kilometers, about 40 percent of South America’s territory.
A region of superlatives, the Amazon, the world’s largest intact rainforest,spans nine South American countries – Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, Venezuela, and French Guyana (part of France). Thetotal forest area of 6.7 million km2 is nearly [...]

Antarctica has no trees or bushes at all, vegetation is limited to about 350 species of mostly lichens, mosses, and algae. There are lush beds of such vegetation in some parts of the Antarctic Peninsula. Lichens have been discovered growing on isolated mountains within 475 km (295 mls) of the South Pole. [...]

{mov}seawifs_biosphere{/mov}
This animation show where and when photosynthesis happens around the world as the seasons come and go. The land in the Northern Hemisphere gets greener each spring and summer, an indication of high rates of photosynthesis, and yellow during autumn as most plants become dormant and the amount of photosynthesis decreases. In tropical rainforest areas, [...]

The Pacific ocean is the largest ocean, it is more than twice as big as the Atlantic ocean.
Almost 1/3 of the earth land surface is covered with desert. The Sahara desert is just slightly smaller than the entire land area of the United States.
The lowest point on the earth surface is the Mariana trench, it [...]

The surface of the Earth rotates at just over 1000 miles per hour.
The Earth is traveling through space at 66700 miles per hour.
The Taiga or Boreal forest circles the entire northern land mass of the world. It contains almost 1/3 of the worlds trees. The trees are mostly coniferous trees but there are some broad [...]