AMAZON UNDER PRESSURE : ILLEGAL MINING AND DESTRUCTIONS IN ‘NATIONAL PROTECTED AREAS’ AND ‘INDIGENOUS TERRITORIES’

Reproduced from

 The advance of deforestation, illegal mining, fires and infrastructure projects indicate that the Amazon is much more threatened than eight years ago. This is what the new Atlas Amazon Under Pressure from the Amazon Geo-referenced Socio-environmental Information Network (Raisg) indicates, launched on December 8. The publication took an X-ray of the main threats to the world’s largest tropical forest, and noted the progress of its deterioration. The good news is that indigenous territories and protected natural areas remain a shield against devastation.

The intention of the Atlas is to generate information that facilitates its management through integrative public policies that take into account the environmental and climatic connectivity of the entire territory, connectivity that transcends the borders of the countries that contain it. This is the first time since 2012 that the Raisg has decided to bring together all its technical groups to work on a complete portrait of the situation in the Amazon. The Atlas is now updated after the work of 10 technical groups that have generated 23 maps representing the entire region, apart from dozens of graphics and informative tables that facilitate the understanding of the socio-environmental complexity of the region, its conflicts, pressures, threats, as well as its importance for South America and the planet.

The main symptom: deforestation

Although 2003 remains the worst year for Amazon forests since 2000, with a total loss of 49,240 km2, deforestation has accelerated since 2012 after reaching a minimum in 2010 (17.674 km2). The area that is lost each year has tripled between 2015 and 2018. In 2018 alone, 31,269 km2 were deforested throughout the Amazon, the highest annual deforestation since the peak in 2003. 

Considering this latest record, we are losing forests in the Amazon at a rate equivalent to 3,500 soccer fields every year. Between 2000 and 2018, the advance of deforestation in the Amazon region accumulated the loss of 513,016 km2 of native forest, a territory equivalent to the area of ​​Spain, 8% of the total area of ​​6.3 million km2 of forest that existed in 2000.

The regional reality may differ from the national one(2) in each Amazonian country. The trend described for the entire Amazon is strongly determined by the situation in Brazil, which contains 61.8% of the Amazon territory. In addition to Brazil, Bolivia and Colombia are the countries that most closely imitated these trends in recent years, with total deforestation of 425,051, 31,878 and 20,515 km2 respectively. The rest of the countries do not show clear upward or downward trends.

Shields against deforestation

The Amazon has national and local figures for the sustainable management of its ecosystems. These figures vary from country to country in terms of their legal functioning and degree of recognition by the States. The Raisg classifies them for their analysis in Natural Protected Areas (NPAs – aimed mainly at the preservation of ecosystems) and in Indigenous Territories (ITs – with the intention of preserving native Amazonian cultures). The effectiveness of these management figures as barriers to the advance of deforestation can be evaluated based on the findings of the Raisg. 

At the regional level, most of the deforestation (87.5%) detected between 2000 and 2018 took place outside of the aforementioned management figures. This trend continues in all countries. These findings are evidence in favor of territorial management figures for conservation purposes and indigenous forest management as effective mechanisms for the conservation of the Amazon.

However, there are differences in this effectiveness between countries, highlighting the need for cross-border policies for the management of the Amazon. Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia and Venezuela should pay particular attention to their Amazonian NPAs and ITs, as they show an apparent weakening since 2015, as deforestation, illegal mining and fires become more common within their boundaries.

Illegal mining boom

Mining has been a constant pressure to the Amazon for several decades and is one of the causes of deforestation, pollution and social conflicts that generates most concern. Amazon Under Pressure also presents an updated report until 2020 of mining in the Amazon that shows an increasing trend, especially of illegal mining. 4,472 points of this illicit activity have been identified. Most of them (83%) affect several hectares of land or directly Amazon rivers. More than half of these points are located in Brazil (53.8%), but notably, 32% of them are in Venezuela, a country that barely contains 5.6% of the Amazon. Venezuela is also the country with the highest proportion of ITs and NPAs affected by illegal mining. In the entire Amazon, there are 664 ITs and 129 NPAs with presence of illicit mining activities.

Fires

Although a fire does not imply deforestation, the increase in the annual incidence of burns and fires increases the pressure in this regard. The Atlas reveals the region’s vulnerability to this phenomenon, which has affected 13% of the Amazon surface since 2001, reaching 1.1 million km2. This area is comparable in extension to Bolivia, a country that coincidentally is the hardest hit by the phenomenon, with up to 27% of its Amazonian territory affected. On average, every year since 2001, 169,000 km2 of Amazon have been burned, 26,000 of them within NPAs and 35,000 within IT. 

Long-term work

These Raisg analyzes are part of an uninterrupted work assessing the pressures and threats to the Amazon, and constitute one of the most precise data series published to date on the loss of vegetation cover of the most extense and biodiverse tropical terrestrial ecosystems of the planet. 

The studies are carried out with a standardized methodology by professionals within the Amazonian countries, capable of adapting the procedures taking into consideration local realities. Systematic evaluations, which incorporate local expertise, are key to understanding the status of the ecosystem heritage of the Amazon region, as well as for the formulation of evidence-based public policies for its conservation. The conservation of the Amazon implies the preservation of the environmental benefits it provides to the entire continent and favors the well-being and sustainable development of its 47 million inhabitants. 

The data can be publicly consulted and in greater detail at:

• Atlas: https://www.amazoniasocioambiental.org/en/publication/amazonia-under-pressure-2020/
• Illegal Mining Map: https://mineria.amazoniasocioambiental.org/
• Map Data for Download: https://www.amazoniasocioambiental.org/en/maps/#download

About RAISG

The Amazon Geo-referenced Socio-environmental Information Network is a consortium of civil society organizations from Amazonian countries, oriented towards the socio-environmental sustainability of the Amazon, with the support of international cooperation. The Raisg generates and disseminates knowledge, statistical data and geospatial socio-environmental information of the Amazon, following common protocols for all the countries of the region. This work makes it possible to visualize the Amazon as a whole, the threats and pressures that loom over it and the search for opportunities for the conservation of the region.

UNBELIEVABLE (?!): MICROPLASTICS PARTICLES IN THE PLACENTAS OF UNBORN HUMAN BABIES

Reproduced from The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/22/microplastics-revealed-in-placentas-unborn-babies?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

A WARNING TO HUMAN BEINGS

 

Reproduced from:

Humans waging 'suicidal war' on nature - UN chief Antonio Guterres 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55147647

"Our planet is broken," the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, will warn on Wednesday.

Humanity is waging what he will describe as a "suicidal" war on the natural world.

"Nature always strikes back, and is doing so with gathering force and fury," he will tell a BBC special event on the environment.

Mr Guterres wants to put tackling climate change at the heart of the UN's global mission.

In a speech entitled State of the Planet, he will announce that its "central objective" next year will be to build a global coalition around the need to reduce emissions to net zero.

Net zero refers to cutting greenhouse gas emissions as far as possible and balancing any further releases by removing an equivalent amount from the atmosphere.

Mr Guterres will say that every country, city, financial institution and company "should adopt plans for a transition to net zero emissions by 2050". In his view, they will also need to take decisive action now to put themselves on the path towards achieving this vision.

The objective, says the UN secretary general, will be to cut global emissions by 45% by 2030 compared with 2010 levels.

PEOPLE PESSIMISTIC ABOUT GENERATING CHILDREN! GLOBAL WARMING WOULD BE THE VILLAIN!!!

POPULATION CONTROL

One of the four basic principles of sustainability (the other three are: Productivity, Biogeocycling, Biodiversity).

Some people, concentrated in the so-called "developed countries", are beginning to admit that they no longer want to bear children, fearing an apocalyptic climate! For global warming. Opinion poll result with 600 people.

The world's population was estimated to reach 7.8 billion in July 2020. The United Nations estimates that the human population will reach up to 11.2 billion in 2100.

With the current criteria of distribution of resources that provide all human beings, good quality of life, environmental... I believe that admitting an apocalypse, perhaps in unpredictable form, is not exacerbated pessimism!

Reproduced from

 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/27/climate-apocalypse-fears-stopping-people-having-children-study?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

A DREAM NOT SO EASY TO BECOME TRUE!

Reproduced from 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/25/boris-johnsons-jet-zero-carbon-flight-goal-dismissed-as-a-gimmick-experts-technology-avaiation-emissions?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Adicionar legenda

NEW TIMES IN NEW CLIMATE REQUIRE MANY NEW ATTITUDES FOR PLANNERS

 Planners 'must prepare' for weather extremes - Met Office https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54637086

Everywhere in the world!!! 

In Brazil, come to PANTANAL and Amazonas, and see wildfire destroying ecosystems and killing animals! Or come to the city of São Paulo, the biggest in South America, and see many places drowning in heavy rains!

Go to Australia or to California, in U.S.

MURDER ASIAN HORNET: NEST ERADICATED IN U.S. WITH A VACUUM HOSE

 https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-us-canada-54681723

HOW CAN WE PREVENT SUCH TRAGEDY FROM HAPPENING?

 Reproduced from THE GUARDIAN

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/09/climate-crisis-could-displace-12bn-people-by-2050-report-warns?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

ETHNIC MINORITIES AND COVID-19

Reproduced from

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/19/covid-19-impact-on-ethnic-minorities-linked-to-housing-and-air-pollution?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

[…]

The study concluded: “Patients of black, Asian and minority ethnicity (BAME) are more likely to be admitted from regions of highest air pollution, housing quality and household overcrowding deprivation. This is likely to contribute an explanation towards the higher ITU admissions reported among Covid-19 BAME patients.”

WELL DESERVED (?)

As reported in BBC News

Bayer to pay $10.9bn to settle weedkiller cancer claims https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53174513

...

"It has been a long journey, but we are very pleased that we've achieved justice for the tens of thousands of people who, through no fault of their own, are suffering from Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma after using a product Monsanto assured them was safe," Robin Greenwald, Practice Group Chair, Environmental Pollution and Consumer Protection at Weitz & Luxenberg, said in a statement.
Up to $5bn of the agreed payout will be released this year, with a further $5bn paid in 2021. Bayer said an agreement had not yet been reached for about 25% of the outstanding claims.

A NEUROTOXIN FROM CYANOBACTERIUM AND ZIKA: MORE SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES?

For four years starting in 2012, dry weather crackled across northeastern Brazil. Temperatures rose, vegetation died, and fresh water started to evaporate more quickly from the region’s reservoirs. Though the conditions were devastating for local human populations, they were ripe for bacterial blooms to flourish in the water. Among the bacterial species known to establish themselves in reservoirs and wells during such droughts is the cyanobacterium Raphidiopsis raciborskii.

More often than not, the strain of R. raciborskii that colonizes reservoirs and wells in the region is one that secretes saxitoxin, a chemical that lets the bacterium thrive in the salty, mineral-rich water associated with dry spells. Although saxitoxin aids the bacterium’s survival, it is—as its name indicates—toxic to humans, who often ingest it when eating contaminated freshwater shellfish. In large amounts, the neurotoxin can be deadly, causing respiratory failure; in lesser amounts, it leads to numbness and partial paralysis.

Because of this toxicity, Brazilian water quality guidelines state that levels of saxitoxin must be lower than three micrograms per liter, which would keep people safe if they consume the contaminated water only infrequently. During droughts, however, that water is likely to be more contaminated than normal, putting people at risk of higher exposure to saxitoxin.

Northeast Brazil was the epicenter for cases of microcephaly. But the inci­dence of Zika was higher in other regions of Brazil.

 —Stevens Rehen, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro

To explore the effects on the brain of regularly drinking contaminated water, Katie O’Neill of the University of Adelaide and colleagues set up a lab experiment with cultured nerve cells in 2016. Continuous, low-level exposure to saxitoxin impaired the cells’ growth, the team found, making it hard for them to form the spiny protrusions that are essential for cell-to-cell communication. The neuro-toxin also disrupted expression of proteins involved in mitochondrial function and in programmed cell death, the team found. It was a hint that, even in low doses, saxitoxin may pose a risk of neurological damage.As the dry spell lingered into the 2010s, northeast Brazil was hit with a second health crisis: an outbreak of illness spread by mosquitoes infected with the Zika virus. Zika swept across South America and other regions of the world in 2015. As it did so, doctors treating patients sickened by the disease began to note that pregnant mothers who gave birth after being infected sometimes had babies with microcephaly, a condition in which the baby’s head, and often also its brain, are much smaller than normal. 

“Northeast Brazil was the epicenter for cases of microcephaly,” says Stevens Rehen, a neuroscientist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. “But the incidence of Zika was higher in other regions of Brazil.” That discrepancy led Rehen and his colleagues to wonder if some environmental factor was compounding the effects of viral infection in pregnant women in the northeast region, leading to more-severe brain damage in their babies. When his team saw that northeast Brazil suffered its worst drought on record at the same time as the Zika outbreak, the researchers decided to test whether saxitoxin and Zika together spurred serious changes to brain tissue.

The team started tests in human brain organoids, growing clumps of nerve cells from the reprogrammed skin cells of donors. After cultivating the cells for 50 days, Rehen and his colleagues infected the brain organoids with Zika virus and then treated them daily with low doses of saxitoxin. After 13 days of treatment, the team looked at the organoids under the microscope and found that the clumps of brain cells exposed to both Zika and saxitoxin had 2.5 times more dead cells than organoids that were only infected with Zika. Organoids exposed to both saxitoxin and Zika also had levels of the virus that were three times higher than what was found in Zika-only cultures, suggesting that the toxin promoted viral replication. Organoids treated only with saxitoxin had a level of cell death similar to what was observed in untreated organoids. 

Wanting to check the results in animals, Rehen and his colleagues set up an experiment in which female mice were given either clean or saxitoxin-contaminated drinking water for a few days before and a few days after mating. After the mice became pregnant, the researchers infected them with Zika. Baby mice born to Zika-only mothers had fairly normal brains, the team found, but those born to Zika-infected mice drinking saxitoxin-laden water had unusually small brains, with around a 30 percent reduction in the thickness of their cortex, a layer of the brain known to be essential for cognition. Those mice also had twice the number of dead nerve cells in their brains as the pups whose moms were only infected with Zika or were not subjected to either treatment, the researchers reported earlier this year.

“This paper demonstrates that a long-standing problem with cyanobacteria toxins in the water resources of the region has played a role in making the impact of the Zika outbreak in the region much worse,” says Alexandre Anesio, a biogeochemist at Aarhus University in Denmark who was not involved in the work.

Rehen notes that the research not only shows a connection between saxitoxin and Zika, but also exposes a potential reason for the observed economic disparity in severity of illness. Initially, “we were surprised by the fact that many babies with microcephaly were born at Brazilian cities with very low gross domestic product,” he writes in an email to The Scientist. In light of his team’s findings, it seems that “unfortunately, these malformations were probably exacerbated by avoidable environmental cofactors associated with poverty and lack of basic needs.”

The importance of improving  access to clean water is clearly shown in this new work, notes Fabiano Thompson, a micro-biologist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro who was not involved in the study. “Even in countries like Brazil, which has 10 percent of the fresh water of the planet, water is a pricey resource,” he says. “Governments need to be very careful with this.”

VIRUS INFECTION FROM WILD ANIMALS! WILL IT STOP?

Reproduced from BBC News

Coronavirus: The race to find the source in wildlife https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51496830

ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES OF THE AMAZON RAINFOREST

https://k6f2r3a6.stackpathcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Dossi%C3%AA-Imazon-ENG.pdf

From the micro to the macro level, the Amazon rainforest is grand. It houses the greatest biodiversity on Earth. Its plants contain substances used to fight diseases, such as Uncaria tomentosa, which is used against inflammatory processes. They are also used in the cosmetic industry, like the copaíba balm, a scent fixative. Apart from that, the Amazon offers countless other services to the environment. It acts upon rain formation, which directly supports agriculture and hydroelectric power generation.

[Access the link above]

IN U.S.: AIR POLLUTION AND COVID-19

As the United States struggles to contain the coronavirus epidemic, scientists are finding that air pollution is making things even worse. In a study submitted for publication, researchers at Harvard University found that even a small increase in long-term exposure to PM2.5, or particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or less, can lead to a large increase in the death rate from COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus.

Air Quality in a Time of Crisis

With over 460,000 cases in the United States, coronavirus-related deaths are approaching 20,000 and could reach about 60,400 by early August, according to the latest projection from the Seattle-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Although the mechanisms of COVID-19 are still being investigated, the World Health Organization reported that one in seven patients develops difficulty breathing and other severe complications.

PM2.5, meanwhile, has been associated with health problems such as premature death, heart attacks, asthma, and airway irritations. However, in March, the Environmental Protection Agency said it was relaxing air pollution enforcement rules and allowing power plants, factories, and other facilities to skip pollution tests.

Scientists have long known about the effects of air pollution on public health. A severe smog event in London in 1952, for example, is believed to have caused about 12,000 deaths. Four years later, the United Kingdom’s Clean Air Act came into force and prohibited burning polluting fuels in designated areas, setting the stage for similar legislation overseas.

Researchers determined that an increase of only 1 microgram per cubic meter of PM2.5 is associated with a 15% increase in the COVID-19 death rate.

The researchers from Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health noticed that many conditions known to contribute to more severe COVID-19 outcomes are also known to be caused by long-term PM2.5 exposure. Seeking possible connections, they used an environmental health data platform they had already compiled that featured nationwide PM2.5 and socioeconomic and demographic information. They then added the incoming COVID-19 outcome data to the mix.

They analyzed data from 3,080 counties in the United States; adjusted for variables including population size, number of people tested, weather, obesity, and smoking; averaged PM2.5 exposure over 2000–2016; and looked at COVID-19 deaths as the outcome. The data account for 90% of confirmed COVID-19 deaths in the United States as of 4 April 2020. In the study, which has been submitted to the New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers determined that an increase of only 1 microgram (μg) per cubic meter (m3) of PM2.5 is associated with a 15% increase in the COVID-19 death rate.

“We found that people living in counties in the United States that have experienced higher levels of air pollution over the past 15–20 years have a substantially higher COVID-19 mortality rate,” said study coauthor Rachel C. Nethery, an assistant professor of biostatistics at Harvard. “Based on our findings, we would expect a county with PM2.5 levels of 15 μg/m3 (highly polluted) to have approximately 4.5 times higher COVID-19 death rate than a county with PM2.5 levels of 5 μg/m3 (low pollution), assuming the counties are similar aside from the difference in pollution levels.”

Relaxing Rules the “Wrong Choice”

The results of the study, which is the first nationwide report of its kind in the United States, are not surprising given epidemiological findings on air pollution for diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), but the effect of PM2.5 on mortality could be dramatic, said University of Southern California environmental epidemiologist and biostatistician Zhanghua Chen, who was not involved with the study.

“The current EPA’s action on the relaxation of environmental rules in terms of pollutant emissions from power plants, factories, and other facilities is an obviously wrong choice and could result in more COVID incidences and deaths.”

“Even though the findings were based upon the ongoing development of the pandemic and we cannot exclude the possibility that there are potential confounders that are not adjusted for, the findings of this paper lay out straightforward information that we should make all efforts to improve air quality so that we can reduce the total number of deaths from disasters like COVID-19,” said Chen. “The current EPA’s action on the relaxation of environmental rules in terms of pollutant emissions from power plants, factories, and other facilities is an obviously wrong choice and could result in more COVID incidences and deaths.”

Nethery said many people have been asking how they can limit the harmful impacts of air pollution during the epidemic. Her team plans to examine the effects of short-term air pollution exposure in COVID-19 as well as the disease’s relationships with race and poverty.

—Tim Hornyak (@robotopia), Science Writer

DEADLY OLIVE TREE DISEASE ACROSS EUROPE COULD COST BILLION

As reported on :

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52234561

They've modelled the future worst impacts of the Xylella fastidiosa pathogen which has killed swathes of trees in Italy.
Spread by insects, the bacterium now poses a potential threat to olive plantations in Spain and Greece.
The disease could increase the costs of olive oil for consumers.
■   Olive tree killer still threatens EU
■   Revealed: The secret life of the spittlebug
■   Olive killer disease reaches Spain
Xylella is considered to be one of the most dangerous pathogens for plants anywhere in the world. At present there is no cure for the infection.
It can infect cherry, almond and plum trees as well as olives.
It has become closely associated with olives after a strain was discovered in trees in Puglia in Italy in 2013.
The organism is transmitted by sap-sucking insects such as spittlebugs.
The infection limits the tree's ability to move water and nutrients and over time it withers and dies.
In Italy, the consequences of the spread of the disease have been devastating, with an estimated 60% decline in crop yields since the first discovery in 2013.
"The damage to the olives also causes a depreciation of the value of the land, and to the touristic attractiveness of this region," said Dr Maria Saponari, from the CNR Institute for Sustainable Plant Protection in Italy.
"It's had a severe impact on the local economy and jobs connected with agriculture."
As well as in Italy, the Xylella bacterium has now been found in Spain, France and Portugal.
Tackling it at present involves removing infected trees and trying to clamp down on the movement of plant material and the insects that spread the disease.
But if these measures fail, what will be the financial impact of the infection?
In this new study, researchers modelled different scenarios including what would happen if all growing ceased due to tree death.
They also compared this worst case with a scenario where replanting with resistant varieties occurred.
The team made projections for Italy, Spain and Greece, which between them account for 95% of European olive oil production.

[…]

PLASTICS POLLUTION: THE SOLUTION...AT LAST?!

As reported in THE GUARDIAN - Environment 

Billions of tonnes of plastic waste have polluted the planet, from the Arctic to the deepest ocean trench, and pose a particular risk to sea life. Campaigners say reducing the use of plastic is key, but the company said the strong, lightweight material was very useful and that true recycling was part of the solution.

The new enzyme was revealed in research published on Wednesday in the journal Nature. The work began with the screening of 100,000 micro-organisms for promising candidates, including the leaf compost bug, which was first discovered in 2012.

“It had been completely forgotten, but it turned out to be the best,” said Prof Alain Marty at the Université de Toulouse, France, the chief science officer at Carbios.

The scientists analysed the enzyme and introduced mutations to improve its ability to break down the PET plastic from which drinks bottles are made. They also made it stable at 72C, close to the perfect temperature for fast degradation.

The team used the optimised enzyme to break down a tonne of waste plastic bottles, which were 90% degraded within 10 hours. The scientists then used the material to create new food-grade plastic bottles.

'Plastic recycling is a myth': what really happens to your rubbish?

Carbios has a deal with the biotechnology company Novozymes to produce the new enzyme at scale using fungi. It said the cost of the enzyme was just 4% of the cost of virgin plastic made from oil.

[But...important warning!]:

Waste bottles also have to be ground up and heated before the enzyme is added, so the recycled PET will be more expensive than virgin plastic. But Martin Stephan, the deputy chief executive at Carbios, said existing lower-quality recycled plastic sells at a premium due to a shortage of supply.

[…]

SOUTHEAST ASIAN UNDER WATERSHED IN THEIR HISTORY OF EATING WILD ANIMALS

As reported on BBC News- Environment


Coronavirus: Putting the spotlight on the global wildlife trade https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52125309

Coronavirus: Putting the spotlight on the global wildlife trade https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-Conservation experts say the coronavirus pandemic, which likely originated at a market selling wild animals in China, is a watershed moment for curbing the global wildlife trade, which can drive extinction and spread disease.

THE SIZE OF AMAZONIAN FOREST FRAGMENT MAY BE CRITICAL

Reproduced from

FRAGMENT FOREST FACES BLEAK FUTURE
(www.newscientist.co.uk — by Fred Pearce, 8 November 2003)

A study of forest fragments in the Brazilian Amazon show the importance of
preserving large natural areas. But it is also a major blow to conservationists trying to mend
the damage to habitats that are increasingly broken into small pieces by human invasions.
Ecologists knew that large chunks of forest can conserve many more species than
smaller chunks. But the new study quantifies the relationship and adds a new dimension:
time. It reveals how fast species disappear in forest fragments of a given size.
Researchers from the US and Brazil’s National Institute for Amazonian Research in
Manaus spent 13 years catching birds in patches of undisturbed Amazon rainforest. The
fragments, which varied in size from 1 hectare to 100 hectares, were cut off from each other
by cattle pasture. During the study, the number of bird species declined in all the fragments.
But the ‘half-life’ for biodiversity, the number of years it took for half the species to
disappear, was dramatically shorter in small forest patches than in larger patches (see
Graph).

The size of forest fragments is more critical for some species than others. It was
concluded in the article (Proceedings of the National Academy of Science) that certain
species seemed much more likely to disappear than others although some species do
relatively well in patchy landscapes. Even in a fast-growing rainforest, it takes 20 years for
the semblance of a new forest to emerge and a hundred years for full regrowth. So the paper
concludes that to be successful, rainforest conservation generally requires fragments larger
than about 10 square kilometres. The findings suggest there is little point in trying to link
small patches because most of the species in them will have disappeared before the new
forest in the gaps has had a chance to grow.

COVID-19: QUESTIONS STILL TO BE ANSWERED

As reported on BBC News

Coronavirus: What we still don't know about Covid-19:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52006988

HOW IMPORTANT THEY HAVE BEEN NOWADAYS

Bertrand Russell

https://youtu.be/IJcqP9fGBSk

Bill Gates

https://youtu.be/6Af6b_wyiwI

NEW CORONAVIRUS: NEW ‘CONSPIRACY THEORY’??

Brief note.
See more complete report on The Scientist.

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/theory-that-coronavirus-escaped-from-a-lab-lacks-evidence-67229

Civet (above)

 

“The lab-escape theory had been circulating on social media and various blogs for weeks, but gained considerable visibility in a New York Post article in late February. In it, Steven Mosher, a social scientist and the president of the Population Research Institute in Front Royal, Virginia, summarizes why he believes SARS-CoV-2 may have been accidentally spread by China’s National Biosafety Laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where researchers have studied bat coronaviruses”.

“SARS-CoV, for example, was transmitted from bats to civets to humans, while camels were an intermediate host in MERS, according to Quanta. “The civet version of SARS-CoV was 99.8 percent similar to the one found in humans—much more closely related than the bat and human varieties of SARS-CoV-2—so researchers believe the new coronavirus also infected another type of animal on its way from bats to humans. But they have not found a candidate so far, according to Nature”.

“No signs of engineering in SARS-CoV-2 genome.
RNA viruses, which include coronaviruses, “accumulate mutations at a rate one million times faster than human DNA [does]. . . . It gives them the ability to survive against an immune response,” Paraskevis says. While the new coronavirus does have some genetic differences to other known viruses due to mutations, “there’s no evidence that this is the result of a human experiment,” he says, adding that if the virus were engineered, scientists would expect to see additional genetic material in its genome. For example, an early bioRxiv preprint on SARS-CoV-2 found HIV-like genetic sequences, but online commenters pointed out that “the findings were at most a coincidence” and that research has since been retracted, reports STAT”.
[NB.:”Dimitrios Paraskevis, an epidemiologist at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in Greece”. Este epidemiologista enfatiza sobre os rigorosos procedimentos em laboratórios que manipulam micro-organismos. Acredito eu, que é do maior interesse que tais regras sejam seguidas com muito rigor, evitando possíveis desastres para os próprios manipuladores; o “tiro pela culatra”!]

“This ability to move in between different animal hosts is a characteristic feature of coronaviruses, according to Paul McCray, a pulmonologist at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine whose lab studies coronaviruses. “It’s exactly what we’ve learned in studies of SARS in 2002 and 2003, and MERS in 2012. . . . So the concept that this is happening again should come as no surprise,” he says. “For people that work with these viruses, this is completely unsurprising. We don’t need to come up with farfetched theories when the genome sequences and the characteristics of these viruses support what we’re seeing.”
[OBS.: “farfetched”=improvável].

NO MORE INSECTS? ‘CRAZY NEW WORLD’!!!

Reproduced from:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320719317793?via%3Dihub#bb0135

Abstract

The fate of humans and insects intertwine, especially through the medium of plants. Global environmental change, including land transformation and contamination, is causing concerning insect diversity loss, articulated in the companion review Scientists' warning to humanity on insect extinctions. Yet, despite a sound philosophical foundation, recognized ethical values, and scientific evidence, globally we are performing poorly at instigating effective insect conservation. As insects are a major component of the tapestry of life, insect conservation would do well to integrate better with overall biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation. This also involves popularizing insects, especially through use of iconic species, through more media coverage, and more inclusive education. Insect conservationists need to liaise better with decision makers, stakeholders, and land managers, especially at the conceptually familiar scale of the landscape. Enough evidence is now available, and synthesized here, which illustrates that multiple strategies work at local levels towards saving insects. We now need to expand these locally-crafted strategies globally. Tangible actions include ensuring maintenance of biotic complexity, especially through improving temporal and spatial heterogeneity, functional connectivity, and metapopulation dynamics, while maintaining unique habitats, across landscape mosaics, as well as instigating better communication. Key is to have more expansive sustainable agriculture and forestry, improved regulation and prevention of environmental risks, and greater recognition of protected areas alongside agro-ecology in novel landscapes. Future-proofing insect diversity is now critical, with the benefits far reaching, including continued provision of valuable ecosystem services and the conservation of a rich and impressive component of Earth's biodiversity.