PINE ISLAND Glacier

Changes in Pine Island Glacier over the last 2 weeks

Over the last 2 weeks, Pine Island Glacier, a major ice mass in Antartic, has been revelling an increasing crack which has been followed by NASA scientists.

A large iceberg, with approximately 35Km by 20km, roughly the size of Singapore, is forming and detaching from the main Pine Glacier heading to the Amundsen Sea, freely drifting away from the coast into the Antartic Ocean.

NASA published images, comparing the glacier last October 28th and November 13th, where changes on the ice crack are visible with an increasing open-water between the glacier and the detaching ice mass.

Named B-31, the iceberg will be followed by a team scientists from Sheffield and Southampton universities which will track the 700 square-kilometer chunk of ice and try to predict its path using satellite data.

The shelf of Pine Island Glacier has been moving forward at roughly 4 kilometers per year, so the calving of this iceberg is not necessarily a surprise, noted Tom Wagner, NASA’s cryosphere program manager.
Such events happen about every five or six years, though Iceberg B-31 is about 50 percent larger than previous ones in this area. Scientists have been studying Pine Island Glacier closely because there is evidence that warmer seawater below the shelf will cause the ice grounding line to retreat and the glacier to thin and speed up.

More here

October 28th, 2013

November 13th 2013

NASA Earth Observatory images by Holli Riebeek, using Landsat 8 data from the USGS Earth Explorer. Caption by Michael Carlowicz.

WHAT a WONDERFUL WORLD - Sir DAVID ATTENBOROUG

TIGER' s DAY - July 29th

© naturepl.com /Edwin Giesbers / WWF

Created on the Saint Petersburg Tiger Summit, the International Tiger Day, decided to be held every July 29th, has the goal to promotes awareness to protect tiger's natural habitats as well as other related conservation issues.

With wild tiger numbers as low as 3,200, direct, targeted poaching of tigers is the most immediate danger for the species today. However, a serious contributing factor to the plight of the tiger is the widespread decline of its forest larder – the deer, wild pigs and wild cattle.

One tiger needs to eat the equivalent of a medium size deer every week to survive and without adequate food, the tiger population declines very fast. Too many forests of Asia are classed as ‘empty forests” – the trees are there but the animals are gone. Anti-poaching efforts therefore must be targeted at protecting both the tiger and its prey. 

Credits here WWF

New BACTERIA discovered that breaks PHTHALATES one of PLASTIC components

After a visit to a plastic-filled waste transfer station last year, students Miranda Wang and Jeanny Yao learned that much of the plastic in trash may not degrade for 5,000 years. 

Synthesized into plastics are phthalates, compounds that make shower curtain liners, food wraps and other products bendable but may also adversely impact human reproductive development and health. 

As plastics slowly break down, these phthalates would leach into the surrounding environment. So, the two young scientists tackled the problem and ultimately discovered strains of bacteria that have the potential to naturally degrade phthalates. 

Their work earned a regional first place in British Columbia for the 2012 Sanofi BioGENEius Challenge Canada, as well as a special award for the most commercial potential at the contest’s finals estimated on an amount of 10M USD.

DINOSAURS EXTINCTION - HYBRID THEORY

Illustration of Asteroid Impact

Several theories have been debated for many years trying to find a scientific explanation for the dinosaurs extinction.

Although none of them is acquired having scientists defending the volcanic theory, while others refer to an asteroid impact as the main reason, the truth  is that lately there has been an hybrid theory that has gained some sustainability.

According to scientists the metheorit impact was just the culminate of a long volcanic activity which was already promoting drastic climate variations, including long cold snaps,  that may have already been culling the dinosaurs before the asteroid struck.

more here

2013 - A Race Against Time

Amazon Forest or what's Left of It

As a wish for 2013, I'd like to see a setback on the pulverization of our rain forests, a reduction of the number of endangered species, wider protected wildlife zones, conservation plans and real changes on governments policies focused on controlling illegal traffic and poaching.

Concerns about Amazon, and the inumerous routs that are splitting the forest apart turning it into a vast mosaic where species struggle to survive on trapped ecosystems, surrounded by man and their vast palm tree farms, their cuttle and hundreds of devastating fires in order to settle more men, more palm trees and more cuttle. Will it ever stop?

A BALANCED World

The GREEN WAR for ETHANOL - THE GUARANI's KAIOWÁ lands

While the World is concerned with the economic crises, the euro's sustainability there is a region and their native inhabitants in the globe that are struggling to survive.

In the south region of Mato Grosso do Sul, in the border of Brazil and Paraguay, the most populous indigenous nation of the country silently struggle for its territory, trying to contain the advance of its powerful enemies.

Expelled from their lands, because of the continuous process of colonization, more than 40,000 Guarani Kaiowá live nowadays in less than 1% of their original territory. Over their lands there are now thousands of hectares of sugarcane, planted by multinational enterprises that, in agreement with the government, show ethanol to the world as an environment friendly and “clean” fuel.

Without their lands and the forests, without any of their ancestral ways of cooping with nature, the Guarani Kaiowá have been coexisting for years with all malnutritions and epidemic disease that have decimated their children. With no alternative of subsistence, adults and kids are exploited in the cane fields in exhausting working days making us remembering the old slavery, still so present in our minds. 

On August 8, 2012 completes a year of occupation of part of a territory Pyelito Kue/Mbarakay. The members of these indian communities were violently attacked by gunmen of the farms. Many were killed. Later on they were threatened. Surronded. All their wooden bridges pulled down. More than 10 times.

Despite this isolation, the reocupante indigenous community of 158 (58 women 50 children, 50 men) is still resisting and surviving in a small area retaken now.

But life is being unbearable and they have posted, last week, a collective suicidal intention if they are not allowed to remain in their ancestral territories.

Guarani's Warriors

We will follow the up coming days on this region of the planet and see if the Brazilian government  will attend their demands. With the vast lands at Mato Grosso, it's astonishing that a small piece could not be  allocated to 150 survivors. Men are undoubtably greedy.

Hurricanes - SANDY in NEW YORK by Radcliff Roye

The Madonna sits in silent vigil ©Radcliff Roye

While some look for shelters during the storm, others try to capture the path of debris and destruction that SANDY - THE HURRICANE leaves behind.

RADCLIFF ROYE, a photographer from New York, is one of those that cares about capturing for posterity the day that SANDY passed through New York - from here

Breezy Point Beach, Brooklyn - © Radcliff Roye

Mexico - Life UNDER SEA

Jason de Cairos Taylor sculptures

Life is exploding on the reefs of Cancun, Mexico. By the hand of Jason de Cairos Taylor, an undersea museum is being shaped with the help of the Cancun community where many of its citizens have served as models for Taylor's sculptures. 

 Named, 'Man on Fire' (based on a local fisherman), the 'Collector of Lost Dreams' and 'Gardener of Hope', the first parts of this submarine museum was submerged in 2009. Later, the main group - which consists of 400 figures weighing over 120 tonnes - was submerged during the following years, off the coast of Mexico. When this occurs, the artist loses the 'aesthetic control' over his work, which will be in further on in charge of nature. 

"Ring of Children"

The idea is connected with prevention measures given the environmental decline of coral reefs, originated by natural disasters as well as for drastic climate changes which caused the disappearance of some significant coral reef areas. 

The sculptures made of a chemical composition of cement promote the colonization of marine life, which in time will cover the carvings in different colors. 

Taylor's sculptures have been listed, by National Geographic, as one of the top 25 Wonders of the World.

"Silent Evolution"

The Ultimate Fisher

Haven't you ever missed flying?

Haven't you ever wished to fly above the mountains completely free?

Watching this beautiful osprey catching fish, carrying them on its long talons, some of them dramatically heavy, reminds me how skills can be refined in nature regarding the survival sequence.

I was just thinking that I was missing my blogs. The right place to let your spirit fly like a dramatically lonely eagle. 

Like if it was TIME to return to our little village by the sea.

Seychelles - Moyenne Island - Brendon Grimshaw's Private Paradise

 Brendon Grimshaw's Island - Seychelles

"Did you ever bathe in the hot blue water with your feet on a coral-reef strand, with starfish tickling the soles of your feet, with the bleached sand running beneath them, with the water melting into the sky in waves of sunshine, and your body melting into the water? Then your body has no burden, it wavers and washes in the moving of the sea, and your weightless feet, your water-washed thighs, your shadowed legs, your drifting hands, dissolve from you, and are born into the warmness and coolness and sweetness of the sea."
Agnes Keith in "Land Below the Wind"

When I read here that Brendon Grimshaw had, on his thirties, the opportunity to buy his private paradise I immediately went back on my memories to this beautiful passage, from the Agnes Keith's book "Land Below the Wind". Few books gave a sense of calm and tranquility like this one and maybe I thought that Brendon Grimshaw managed in his life to achieve what many of us dream.

50 years ago Brendon accepted the challenge of buying an atoll at the Seychelles sea. It was just a desert amount of bush and rocks in the middle of nowhere. 50 years later, 16.000 trees planted, tracks manually build, wood houses erected on the top of the reef, thousands of birds and turtles well adapted to the island, Brendon has finally that magic story to tell to the world. How a single man managed to transform desert into life, the quietness of the sea in the singing of birds, rocks into a dense forest, a desert island into a National Park.

It took until the early 1970s before he was able to move to Moyenne Island full time. Brendon has become one of the few people to ever live on the island. He puts the number of his predecessors at three.
The first challenge, then, was to cut a path through the undergrowth so he could see exactly what the island had to offer and what needed to be done.
From the impenetrable bush with few signs of fauna, - where to get from one side to the other of the island it was required swimming around or boating - he created a micro climate, planting mahogany and palm trees, which attracted thousands of birds and forested a thriving community of giant tortoises, none of which were around when he bought the island.

The island was in the past a stop where pirates docked, so he wasn't surprised when he found two pirate's graves which the carefully looks after settling his own future grave right beside them.

Brenton has had offers of 50 million pounds to sell the island but be doesn't have a greedy nature. He prefered to apply for the Seychelles Goverment and transform Moyenne Island into a National Park. He succeed to do so and now, with more than 80 years old, he is living his relaxing days on the quietness of a Private Paradise.

Moyenne Island & the mahogany trees from Wandering Eye on Vimeo.
Here you can see the all story

Earth Day - 22d April 2012

Forty-two years ago this photography was released to celebrate the first Earth Day. Forty-two years ago the organization's purpose was to lay the first stones to create a global awareness for the urgent need of preserving our environment and biodiversity. Since then, in spite of the numerous attempts to find reasonable solutions, the inertia and the economic and political interests have always overlap the welfare of world citizens and the hope of a cleaner and healthier Earth.

With the slogan "Earth Can't Wait", this year the 42nd Anniversary of Earth's Day has created another awareness: frustration and the governments' failure to take any steps towards protecting and preserving the environment. The Earth Day 2012 campaign was designed to turn each one of us on a vivid voice claiming for the right of a sustainable future and direct them towards quantifiable outcomes.

Today I read about an urgent measure which scientist say it would help on Earth's balance. The project, absolutely magnanimous proposes to plant about a billion trees in a very short time.

With the name of "A Billion Acts of Green" this day was the world's largest environmental service campaign. With over 800 million environmental actions registered on the Earth Day Network website the global support behind the movement has been tremendous. But the work is really, only now, starting. here

3.000 Dolphins Dead on the Coast of Peru

On an unprecedented catastrophe more than 3.000 dolphins were found dead on the desert beaches of Peru. 

The news strangely didn't receive the disclosure that would be expected. Few media reports carried out on site in order to seek an explanation for the largest mass killing of these friendly mammals.

Peruvian biologist Carlos Yaipen of the Scientific Organization for Conservation of Aquatic Animals said activity from petroleum companies in the waters is to blame in this instance. A controversial technique for detecting oil beneath the seabed, using sonar or acoustic sensing, is leading the massive die off of marine life. 

 

"The oil companies use different frequencies of acoustic waves and the effects produced by these bubbles are not plainly visible, but they generate effects later in the animals. That can cause death by acoustic impact, not only in dolphins, but also in marine seals and whales."     more here

World Largest Protected Area in Africa

 CRV© Chobe Park - Botswana

On the year of 2007 I made one the most beautiful trips of my life. I spent one month in Africa, with my family. We got into the deep continent where animals still live free in the wild, waterfalls are strong as arms of deep rivers. Colors, all around us, are bright like strong brushstrokes on a vivid painting that flirts with our senses everywhere we turn to.

I'll never forget this experience and several times I've questioned about borders and migration tracks that involve thousands of animals that each year seek for water and food and places to give birth to the next generations. Nations like Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe make part of a conjunction which includes some of the most prolific parks with a concentration of wildlife unique in the whole continent.

Today I became thrilled with the news that all of these countries agreed to creat the largest conservation area in the world, reported PRI's "Living on Earth." 

A chunk of land the size of California will include a variety of habitats and allow wildlife to migrate to greener pastures in the dry season and keep their feet dry during the wet season.

Africa's iconic wildlife, elephants, lions, crocodiles, leopards, rhinos, hippos and buffalo, are expected to bring in tourist dollars. Without the incentive of tourist revenues encouraging conservation, the animals were just a danger and a pest to locals, who had to fear elephants raiding their crops and lions stalking them at night, without the legal right to hunt problem animals.  more here

CRV© Chobe Park - Botswana

Scanning Earth's Energy Balance in Blue and Green

Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System

The doors are open on NASA's Suomi NPP satellite and the newest version of the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) instrument is scanning Earth for the first time, helping to assure continued availability of measurements of the energy leaving the Earth-atmosphere system.

The CERES results help scientists to determine the Earth's energy balance, providing a long-term record of this crucial environmental parameter that will be consistent with those of its predecessors.

Looks like there's a tranquility and a smooth balance between both colors.

Credit: NASA

Are We Getting Back to a Little Ice Age?

Hendrick Avercamp - Winter Landscape - 1605

In the late 13th century, massive volcanic explosions in the tropics destroyed mountain villages in northern Europe—not by burying them in lava and mudflows, mind you, but by triggering a cold spell that engulfed the towns in ice.

By that time, Europe was plagued by waves of cold that turned out the major rivers in Europe in thick layers of ice. Painters like Hendrick Avercamp (who I've mentioned on my blog Manifesto Surrealista regarding an exhibition about the "Little Ice Age", which I've visited in Amsterdam) was one of the artists that came to outdoors depicting the white scenarios given by those frozen years.

Scientists have always debated about the causes that have lead to this ice age. Many were the theories advanced but, according to a group of geologists, led by Gifford Miller of the University of Colorado, Boulder, has identified an abrupt start for the cool spell, sometime between 1275 and 1300 A.D and causes, related with the volcanic activity has been considered a sustainable explanation for the cause.

Explosive volcanism cooled the climate and set off a self-perpetuating feedback cycle involving sea ice in the North Atlantic Ocean that sustained the cool spell into the 19th century, they reported this week in the "Journal Geophysical Research Letters". Miller said in a press release:

“This is the first time anyone has clearly identified the specific onset of the cold times marking the start of the Little Ice Age. We also have provided an understandable climate feedback system that explains how this cold period could be sustained for a long period of time.”

In the first part of the study, Miller and his colleagues collected roughly 150 dead plants from the receding ice margins of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. Radiocarbon dating back in the lab reveled a large cluster of “kill dates” between 1275 and 1300 A.D., indicating the plants had been frozen and engulfed by ice during a relatively sudden event. 

Miller and his team admitted that only sudden volcanic eruptions may be the explanation for major climate changes. Particles spread in the air make a thick layer around Earth atmosphere that blocks some of the sun's incoming energy. The timing jibed with a period of intense volcanic activity already known from the rock record.

Looking at this analysis it's interesting to point out if we aren't facing, once again, the prelude of another Little Ice Age with the major Earth volcanoes splitting lava and emerging earth on thick sun blocks.  more here

Borneo - Endangered Species Give Room to Palm Tree Plantations

Palm trees are replacing the RAIN FOREST on a tragic killing of nearly extinction species - CRV@

 When I visited Malasia, 3 years ago, I was shocked and absolutely devasted to become aware of the huge, enormous amount of rain forest extensions that are, on a daily basis, being clearead.

Without any concern regarding the maintenance and survival of endangered species, animals, even those almost near extinction, are simple being killed or pulled away in order to give enough room for the profit plantations of palm trees. On my blog Manifesto-Surrealista I've  posted some pictures, which I took on my visit to Borneo, showing clearly this rapid lack of concern with preservation and biodiversity. It was heart breaking to become aware of the immense wildlife that should be on that specific place and it  was replaced by a forest of uninhabited palm trees.

The Gang and the terrified ORANG UTANG

For my deepest regreats, I see that, 3 years have passed and things haven't changed a bit. If the irresponsible devastation of the rain forest continues to grow on these dramatic levels, I've read that environmentalists predict that, in 2050, there won't be any more FOREST or endangered species to concern about.

So, when I came across this news, all that sad and overwhelming feeling came again. The pictures are so incredibly sad.  They reported some bounty hunters with bush knives that had entrapped a pregnat ORANG UTAN and her little baby within a circle and moved in for the kill. By the pictures we can see that the terrified mother the only thing she could do was to wrap a giant protective arm around her daughter.

The terrified pregnant ORANG UTANG and her baby surrounded by a gang of palm trees workers

The pair seemed to be facing a certain death as the gang of hunters surrounded them keen to cash in on the palm oil plantations' bid to be ride of the animals. Thanks to an happy coincidence, a team from the British-based international animal rescue group "Four Paws" arrived in time to stop the slaughter and saved their lives.

Happy endings - Back into the deep RAIN FOREST, back to the luxurious wild life

Pregnant mother and daughter were captured and moved to a remote and safe area of the rainforest and released back into the wild - but not before the mother was equipped with a radio device so she and her young can be tracked to ensure they remain safe. Dr Signe Preuschoft, a "Four Paws" primate expert said:

'We discovered a gang of young men surrounding them and both victims were clearly petrified. Our arrival could not have been more timely, A few minutes later and the orang-utans could have been dead".

The gang meanwhile were jubilant in anticipation of their rewards for catching and killing the animals. These massacres will certainly continue but on this fortune situation 3 lives of a highly endangered species were saved giving that the British Team was able to trade them for the "huge" amount of 70 Pounds.
When I watch the palm trees plantation picture that I took in Borneo I'm unable to forget that all that devasteted extensions of land are now completely stained with the blood of the rare, extremely rare and beautiful wildlife animals. from here

Beauty

Beautiful Nature, the way it is

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For a Better World - Water's Year in Review

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