homage to the seed weblog . . .

Biodiversity: habitat and agriculture

2012-02-09T08:45:00.002+10:00

Today two stories I'm sharing were found at the Agrobiodiversity Grapevine. I could simply link the stories but I recognise people are unlikely to go off this site to read them... and both offer important information illuminating the spheres of wild habitat and agriculture.
When I commenced the Homage to the Seed project in 2010 I was on residency at the Botanic Garden in the city where I live... in Brisbane, Australia. The focus there was on indigenous plants from Qld in the Seed Lab set up in in partnership with KEW MSB (Millennium Seedbank).
I was very drawn to learn about indigenous plant species and painted Qld rainforest fruits species concentrating on seed capsules and the motifs that were drawn form the cross-sections of these seed capsules.

This was the visual focus for my art but given 2010 was the UN International Year of Biodiversity I keenly pursued the stories coming out on agrobiodiversity as well, feeling that 'homage to the seed' needed to consider all aspects of the realm of seeds.

SO here are stories that cover both aspects of the seed realm...

First, a story from London's

Ive shared below as it gives a good picture of the importance of plant hunting and naming species in order to see whats occurring around the planet.

Also these links:

Related information

External links

The scientists who identify, name and classify new species are called taxonomists and their work
is an essential foundation to understanding global biodiversity.

A few great plant hunters find most species

03 February 2012

Just 2% of plant collectors find the majority of new species, and these great plant hunters could be key to finding the rest of the world's undiscovered plants, according to a report this week in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Plant collector John Wood in Bolivia - one of the great plant hunters identified in new research who could be crucial to efforts to find the world's remaining unidentified plant species. © Darwin Initiative

Scientists led by Oxford University and including those at the Natural History Museum, studied over 100,000 type specimens - the important specimens that scientists use when naming a new species. They found that over 50% of the type specimens were discovered by 2% of the collectors.

These great plant hunters should be a focus of strategies to help find the estimated 15-20% of the world’s flowering plants yet to be discovered, the team says. They find a disproportionate number of new species, and at a time of rapid global biodiversity loss, could be an important way to find plants more quickly before they are lost forever.

Museum plant expert Mark Carine explains, ‘It’s clear from our study that a relatively small number of collectors have made a massive contribution to the discovery of plant species and that those ‘'big hitters'’ become more effective with experience – they tend to collect more species that are new to science towards the end of their careers.

‘Identifying, training, and supporting modern-day plant hunters, and targeting their efforts in the right areas of the world, is likely to be an effective element in completing the inventory of flowering plants.’

There are an estimated 380,000 known plants species. One in 5 plants are threatened with extinction and most threatened plant species are found in the tropics, the area of greatest plant diversity.

Combining large sets of data

Australian plant specimen collected by Robert Brown more than 200 years ago and looked after in the Museum collections. Brown is one of the great plant hunters from the 18th and 19th centuries.

For the study, 4 of the world's major specimen databases were combined to give a total of102,955 type specimens. The data was from the Natural History Museum, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Missouri Botanical Garden, and Royal Botanic Garden Melbourne.

The team were able to analyse such large amounts of data because the records had been digitised. Carine explains ‘With support from the Andrew W Mellon Foundation, the Museum has been databasing and imaging the type specimens and putting the data on the web to make them easily accessible.’

Leading the way digitally

This research method is leading the way in how scientific information is shared says Museum plant expert Steve Cafferty, who was also part of the research team. ‘This kind of collections-based research based on large multi-institutional datasets is in the vanguard of major new informatics initiatives, and has only recently become possible through the coordinated efforts to amalgamate such large datasets.’

Specimens at the Museum

More than 50,000 type specimens from the collections at the Museum were used in the study. Carine adds, ‘64 collectors (1.87%) constitute our big hitters as they were responsible for discovering half of the 50,398 type specimens we sampled from our herbarium.’ For example Robert Brown collected nearly 1700 type specimens during his collecting career from 1794-1827, and Arthur FG Kerr found 865 during 1908-1936.

Living great plant hunters

The era of the great plant hunters is often thought of as the 1700s and 1800s, with collectors such as Sir Joseph Banks. However, this pattern persists today says the team.

The scientists who identify, name and classify new species are called taxonomists and their work is an essential foundation to understanding global biodiversity.

For example during 38 years from 1938, Peter Davis from Edinburgh collected 348 type specimens mostly from Turkey. And John Wood, currently at Oxford University’s Department of Plant Sciences, has collected 30,000 specimens from South America and Asia, many of which are new species.

Challenges

The numbers of living, and potential future, great plant hunters is relatively small. Carine explains, ‘The reality is, there probably aren’t many because it is not a career path that is easy to follow not least because of funding’.

Currently, funding is usually aimed at shorter-term projects and so is unlikely to help build up the expertise that takes a longer time to develop, the team says. And funding is often aimed at newer collectors who, while they tend to collect more specimens in terms of numbers, they are less selective and find fewer new species.

So, although it is a small number of great plant hunters that have the biggest impact in discovering new plant species, this will only continue if the right support and strategies are put in place.

A new blog I found today,

Landscapes blog for People, Food and Nature

which offers timely reading:

The Landscapes for People, Food and Nature is not only striving to develop a knowledge base through the Global Review process outlined on Monday, but it also aims to turn that knowledge into action and scale-up activities and policies already in place. One strategy for accomplishing this objective is to target pertinent meetings and events. There are very many such meetings on the horizons, and we have sought to identify those that will provide a forum for scaling up integrated landscapes for people, food and nature, with stakeholder groups relevant to advancing integrated agricultural landscape approaches. Here are some major ones to keep on the radar:

Continue reading →

This is the story I wanted to share.

Time for a new paradigm

Posted on February 2, 2012

By Dr. Emile Frison, Director General
Bioversity International, Rome, Italy

In recent years, evidence has been accumulating about the need for change in agriculture. The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development report, the 2010 report to the UN by the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, and FAO’s Save and Grow report, among others, have all highlighted that different approaches are required to achieve food security in a sustainable manner.

The G20, a group comprised of the 20 biggest economies in the world, has joined the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and others, in making urgent calls for more investment in agriculture, including agricultural research. But the type of agriculture in which we invest is a critical decision. Agriculture gives us more than food and products; it also provides other benefits such as ecosystem services. Simply investing more in ‘business as usual’ will not be sufficient. Addressing the needs of the billion chronically hungry in a sustainable way will require a rethink of the agricultural model.

What is needed in this redesign? There needs to be a shift in objectives, from maximizing the productivity of a few major staple crops to simultaneously addressing how to improve livelihoods and nutrition of rural communities, and increase the resilience, stability and sustainability of the production system. It will also require taking into account the full range of ecosystem services provided by agricultural landscapes and making better use of a broader range of agricultural biodiversity. Such an approach will also help reconcile the objectives of agricultural production and nature conservation in more diverse agricultural landscapes instead of opposing and segregating these goals in intensive agriculture areas on the one hand and protected areas on the other hand.

The Landscapes for People, Food and Nature Initiative seeks to address these issues and develop ways to realize this shift to a new agricultural paradigm. As one of the co-organizing agencies, Bioversity International has already started a review of its evidence base in preparation for the Initiative’s Global Review. We know from working for many years and in many parts of the world, that successful innovative approaches by smallholder farmers, policymakers, food companies, and conservation and grassroots organizations are already happening in the field.

Participants in this effort will be from government planning agencies, leading research centers and think tanks, donors, the private sector, farmer and community-based organizations from around the world. Through this international collaborative effort we can share knowledge as the first step to affect real change in agricultural approaches.

The future of chocolate

2012-02-07T08:37:00.000+10:00

Like most things we can only too easily take chocolate for granted...

image from Scientific American

This article might be worth a read if you like chocolate as I do.

The Future of Chocolate

Researchers are racing to fortify the embattled cacao tree and to meet increasing demand for cocoa made from its seeds

By Harold Schmitz and Howard-Yana Shapiro | Monday, February 13, 2012

Here is the guts of the story....

"the five million to six million farmers in the tropics who cultivate the cacao trees from which cocoa is produced rely on the sales of the seeds to feed themselves and their families. Workers extract the seeds (often called beans) from football-shaped pods and then ferment and dry them to form cocoa liquor, butter and powder. The livelihoods of another 40 million to 50 million depend on the long production road the cacao seeds travel from farm to candy on store shelves. In Ivory Coast, which produces 40 percent of the world’s cocoa, such farming accounts for a full 15 percent of GDP and employs 5 percent of households.

“Many of these farmers use their cacao trees like ATM machines. They pick some pods and sell them to quickly raise cash for school fees or medical expenses. The trees play an absolutely critical role in rural life,” observes Peter Läderach of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, who led recent research into the effects of climate change on cacao farming in Ivory Coast and Ghana. Those countries, along with Nigeria and Cameroon, produce 70 percent of the world’s cocoa supply.

But the delicate “chocolate tree,” Theobroma cacao, is in peril."

Read more here:

image found here

Great blog post from Annmaree Kostyk well worth reading here titled
"Adopt a chocolate tree!"

image also found at blog above

text from post: "The chocolate tree not only needs certain animals and insects to do their job with seeding and pollination, but also requires cover trees like that of the rubber tree to protect it from the harsh sun. You see, the chocolate tree not only prefers to live within 20 degrees north or south of the equator in a place lovingly called “the cocoa belt”, but it also doesn’t care to roast in the blinding sun all day. Sounds like me. They like the secluded shaded areas provided by their friends of the forest."

So next time you take a bite of something with chocolate in it bear this in mind... its

potentially an endangered species and certainly not to be taken for granted.

bizzare and incredible

2012-01-30T17:37:00.000+10:00

Despite my not being able to embed this 5 min video here I urge you to be inspired by visiting this BBC site to watch a wonderfully unique short presentation on seeds by Kew MBS's Wolfgang Stuppy. I included it my December Newsletter but am posting it here so you can be sure to see it.

From this posting by CLAIRE O'NEILL some background.

Over in England there's a man named Wolfgang Stuppy who speaks more than five languages, has a Ph.D. in botany and calls himself a "seed morphologist." His focus? "Seed structure of angiosperms, its relevance for seed banking operations and phylogenetic significance, especially with respect to Malpighiales," says his bio. Click on highlighted text above to read the whole post.

These books were by published by Papadakis in the UK and all except the title Pollen were books collaborated on extensively by Wolfgang Stuppy. The images in the video above come from these books.

I am also going to share with you winning films forWWF that I watched today. READ about the competition and winners here. Below is the shortlist of films you can watch as well as the winning films (2 mins.... take a peek!)

SHORT LIST

Judges' Selection Shortlist:

Making a difference around the world...

2012-01-27T16:12:00.001+10:00

I wrote extensively about my recent Residency at the Kew Millennium Seed bank in October, 2011 here in the Mid-December E-newsletter . NB: translation to other languages is available!

You will find these stories here at the KEW Website . I thought I would take a look at their latest postings and these were some of the articles I found there, full of excellent links that take you to all the various projects and explain in the most accessible terms what each involves.

Making a difference around the world

Explore Kew's interactive map and find out how our science and conservation work is making a huge difference in the UK and around the world.

Find out about the new discoveries Kew's science teams have made across plant science and mycology, how the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership is driving vital global conservation workand how our innovative research into the use of plants is helping communities worldwide.

All life depends on plants - and not just those we value most. The health of the planet - and our future - depends on the immense wealth of different species of plants and fungi that grow in the Earth's many and varied habitats.

Interactive map - Explore Kew's work around the world

Why you need Kew

More than one in five of the world's plants are threatened with extinction. We all rely on plants for food, clean air and water, but they are more threatened than birds, and as threatened as mammals. We need to understand more about how plants adapt to environmental change, and how to use them in ways that are sustainable. Much of Kew’s work is focused on these challenges.

Australia's connection with the KEW Millennium Seedbank:

Kew's Millennium Seed Bank partnership - Australia

Twenty-three per cent of Australian floral species are listed as under threat of extinction

Seed collecting in Tasmania, Australia (Image: Andrew McRobb)

Plant life in Australia is under threat

Australia is one of only eighteen 'mega diverse’ countries as identified by the United Nations and therefore by definition contains a significant number of the earth’s species.

Australia's native biodiversity is of global significance. The total number of Australian species comprises 15% of the world's total with a high proportion of these being endemic to the continent.

However, threatened by massive land clearance since European settlement , significant problems from invasive species and with serious implications from a changing climate, 23% of Australian floral species are listed as under threat of extinction.

Save a plant species outright or adopt a seed for just £25

Environment and climate

The Australian outback conjours up images of a complete dryland continent, but Australia is truly a land of contrast.

The extreme dryland of the "Red Centre" is a world away form the wet tropical forests of Northern Queensland and the alpine zones of the Snowy Mountains. This ancient landscape, having escaped the recent glacial ages displays a mosaic of vegetation and habitats all very different form each other and has given rise to high levels of endemism across the continent .

This is especially so in the South Western part of Western Australia, well known as a plant biodiversity hotspot of global significance.

Saving seeds for the future in Australia

Australia is making a major contribution to Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank partnership. Each of the six States and the Northern Territory all have separate partnerships with Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank. In total, we work with 14 institutions and government departments across the country.

Scientists from Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank partnership are sharing their expertise with partners in the six States and the Northern Territory on seed collection processes, conservation and research.

The overall priority is to bank plant species considered rare or threatened in order to dramatically enhance the conservation of the Australian flora.

Discover more about our work in Australia...

Interactive map - Explore Kew's MSBP around the world

Our team in Australia

Tim Pearce, International Coordinator, MSBP
Michiel Van Slageren, International Coordinator, MSBP

Our partners in Australia

Our partners in Australia have mobilised a national network called Australian Seed Conservation and Research (AuSCaR) which ensures harmonisation of activities across the project partners. The AuSCaR network ensures that the teams in each region aren’t duplicating collections if, for example, plant species are found in more than one State. It also ensures a programme of collaboration between research groups from each State.

AuSCaR has now received support from Federal agencies and we hope very soon that the network evolves into a major contributor to plant conservation on the continent.

Read about what the Partnerships are doing in other countries below:

Saving seeds

NB: All text is from the Kew Website.

The Millennium Seed Bank - more seed projects

The projects below are related to seed germination and seed banking, and are managed by Millennium Seed Bank staff.

Community Tree Seeds project

This project is aimed at enhancing the role and capacity of institutes in sub-Saharan Africa to assist with the conservation and sustainable use of native tree seeds of community value.

Community Tree Seeds project

Cryopreservation Network

The aim of this project is to create a network that brings together European scientists with an expertise and / or interest in plant cryopreservation for the development of efficient cryopreservation procedures.

Cryopreservation Network

'Difficult' Seeds project

Kew and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) are working with seed banks in Africa to conserve plants used for food and agriculture, but which are difficult to conserve and/or use.

'Difficult' Seeds project

European Native Seed Conservation Network (ENSCONET)

This project aims to optimise seed conservation practices and avoid the extinction of native species from Europe.The network aims to make best use of time and resources by reducing the duplication of effort.

European Native Seed Conservation Network

Extinct Plants project

This project takes seeds from old Herbarium sheets and attempts to resurrect species which are now extinct in the wild

Extinct Plants project

Orchid Seed Stores project

Orchids are being over-collected and many are threatened with extinction. This project aims to establish orchid seed banking around the globe using conventional seed banking techniques.

Orchid Seed Stores project

Palm Seed Network

A network bringing together scientists from around the world working on palm seed biology research.

Palm Seed Network

Useful Plants project

This project aims to increase the capacity of local communities to store and propagate plant species that are most useful to their wellbeing.

Useful Plants project

What to target?

Prioritising plant species for conservation

The Millennium Seed Bank Partnership is the world’s most ambitious plant conservation initiative. By 2020, it aims to have seeds from 25% of Earth’s seed-bearing flora saved for posterity. Doing so acts as an insurance policy.

Analysing seeds at Kew's Millennium Seed Bank at Wakehurst, West Sussex.

If a plant species becomes extinct in the wild, the opportunity remains to reintroduce stock back to the plant’s native habitat by propagating the stored seeds. But how do Kew’s scientists choose which plants to prioritise?

Targeting vulnerable areas and habitats

The Millennium Seed Bank Partnership is focusing its global seed-collecting activities towards plant species growing in areas that are vulnerable to threats such as habitat loss and climate change.

These include the world's drylands (home to a billion of the world’s poorest people), islands, coastal areas and mountains.

Identifying plant species at risk

Scientists at Kew's Millennium Seed Bank concentrate their efforts towards saving species that are endangered, economically important or endemic - often refered to as the 3 E's.

"Endemic" species are limited to a discrete geographical area, often within one country and are therefore more vulnerable to threats. For example in Madagascar, where there is approximately 80% endemism among plant species, extinctions are especially likely given the few localities in which many species occur, the relatively small areas of protected land and the slash-and-burn agricultural practices prevalent in rural areas.

At present, Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank partnership works with 123 organisations in 54 countries around the world. Decisions about which plant species to prioritise are usually taken by the partner countries themselves. However, if the country concerned has insufficient data to do this itself, Kew's science teams will help.

The team consults specimens from Kew and other herbaria, and literature resources to prioritise species for conservation. Information collated is then analysed using technologies such as GIS (geographical information systems). Staff map locations of herbarium specimens, estimate distribution patterns and pinpoint likely flowering and fruiting periods (when seeds can be gathered). They also use this data to get a preliminary idea of how threatened each plant species is. Species found to be at high risk of extinction are assessed more fully using the Red List criteria of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The Species Targeting Programme has worked with partners to target species for conservation inBotswana, Burkina Faso, Chile, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mexico,Republic of South Africa, and Tanzania.

Information on each nation’s most threatened species is presented in a collection guide. These are made available to Millennium Seed Bank partners so they can efficiently plan itineraries for seed-collecting expeditions. Guides recently completed include Trees of Botswana, Threatened Taxa of Albany (South Africa) and the Malawi Red Data List.

Scientific Research & Data

Yale Environment 360: Value of Conserving Habitats Could be Worth $500B to World’s Poor

2012-01-25T12:59:00.000+10:00

As we in the so-called first world countries go about our daily lives worrying about any number of things ranging from topics like the GMO/Organics debate, credit card debt, rise of gambling, increase in health related problems due to diet and the fact our lives are often less physically demanding than once upon a time and so on ... people in countries where access to wild habitats may be the only available resource for many are part of a conversation about survival... in whatever way is possible.

Image via here.

This article below therefore strikes me as precisely the conversation we in the 'first world countries' need to be considering. Where once it was possible to divorce oneself from how others were doing elsewhere around the globe, remaining insular, perhaps licking our lips in satisfaction at the spoils we could accumulate over a life time if we had the capacity, increasingly people are waking up to the horrendous cost of that ignorance.

The population debate is always in the background now but so increasingly is this one found via Biodiversity Library:

Yale Environment 360: Value of Conserving Habitats Could be Worth $500B to World’s Poor

Click on link to read or see Article here at e360 digest

20 JAN 2012: VALUE OF CONSERVING HABITATS
COULD BE WORTH $500B TO WORLD’S POOR

A new study says that compensating the world’s poorest communities for helping conserve the planet’s most vital habitats would help solve two major challenges: biodiversity loss and poverty. In fact, if global

Interview: Putting a Price
On the Value of Nature

In an interview with Yale e360, Indian bankerPavan Sukhdevdiscusses the ways natural ecosystems benefit people and why policymakers and businesses must rethink how they assess environmental costs and benefits.
READ THE e360 REPORT

leaders were to put an economic value on the preservation of the world’s biodiversity hotspots — including such benefits as providing food and water and absorbing carbon emissions — it could be worth more than $500 billion annually for 330 million of the world’s poorest people. Since the people who live near these resources typically don’t have the means to protect them, the urgency for such economic mechanisms becomes increasingly critical, according to the study, published in the journal BioScience. “Developed and developing economies cannot continue to ask the world’s poor to shoulder the burden of protecting these globally important ecosystem services for the world’s benefit,” said Will Turner, vice president of Conservation International and lead author of the study. An example of such a scheme is the UN-based REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) initiative, which provides incentives to developing nations to prevent large-scale deforestation.

Food Sovereignty in New Orleans

2012-01-24T10:13:00.003+10:00

Found at the Biodiversity Library's Grapevine comes this article from Grist on Food Sovereignty.
I put it on my Facebook page and then thought I would share it here as well...

Food sovereignty has been a massive issue where multinational corporations like Monsanto, Dupont and co, amongst their many highly contentious moves, have been dismantling age old farming traditions in countries like India in a way that has been well documented.

They've met their fiercest and most able opponent in India in the form of Vandana Shiva who's worked tirelessly on preserving food sovereignty not just in her country, but globally, linked with Slow Food International and many other vital organisations to do so. Her work on the Manifesto for the Future of Seeds from the last decade made it a global concern to know about Food sovereignty, seed copyright and loss of biodiversity.

IN the west our arguments against these companies focus very largely on the GMO's/Organic debate and our food chains... failing to even mention the broader issues at stake. The more I pursued what was going on globally with seeds the more I wondered why we rarely mention food sovereignity and discuss seed copyright issues in relation to the transnational companies. I also wondered why we drown out important input from within the the Science community where independent work is carried out, not to serve corporate interests but to investigate a whole range os concerns around seeds and plants.

Biodiversity loss is what I find personally most concerning as it covers many, many issues that I believe we could be more aware of and use our influence to fight. I would ask anyone focusing solely on the gmo vs organic story to see that as one aspect of a much bigger thing that is at stake.

Here below is the story I wanted to share:

Editor’s note: This is the second in a weekly installment of images from Douglas Gayeton and Laura Howard-Gayeton’s Lexicon of Sustainability. We’ll be running one image every Friday this winter, so stay tuned. If you have your own sustainability terms, you can add them yourself to the Lexicon of Sustainability.

Xuyen Pham’s Garden
East New Orleans, LA

After Xuyen Pham lost her New Orleans home to Hurricane Katrina, she turned the property into a farm to feed her community. She fled Vietnam with her husband and children at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. After months in Southeast Asian refugee camps they were moved to Fort Chaffee in Arkansas. The family was eventually sponsored by a hotel owner in Oklahoma, but the cold proved too much so they moved yet again, settling in the “Mary Queen of Vietnam” community in East New Orleans.

This farm is surrounded by houses (we are right in the middle of a suburban housing tract in East New Orleans).

Xuyen stands amidst taro plants in her home garden. The plant stems are a base ingredient in traditional soups and congees found on most Vietnamese dinner tables. By growing taro and other vegetables, she keeps Vietnamese traditions alive in her community.

Xuyen’s definition of “food sovereignty”:
The ability of community members to control food access (both effluent and influent) independent of outside food sources (such as supermarkets). Members of the community grow traditional fruits and vegetables and fisherfolk go shrimping, fishing, and crabbing to sell at local stores, the local Saturday farmers market, and most importantly, to feed their families and community members.

Xuyen is also a participant in a local New Orleans East aquaponics project. The project is being implemented by MQVN Community Development Corporation and was established originally by fisherfolk displaced by the BP oil drilling disaster as a way to create jobs and to ensure adequate food access in New Orleans East (a USDA-identified food desert). In the near future, she and her husband, with the help of MQVN Community Development Corporation, will construct greenhouses and an aquaponics growing system on their farm plot.

The Lexicon of Sustainability Project is based on a simple premise: people can’t be expected to live more sustainable lives if they don’t even know the most basic terms and principles that define sustainability. For the past three years Douglas Gayeton and Laura Howard-Gayeton have crisscrossed the USA to learn this new language of sustainability from over one hundred of its foremost practitioners in food and farming — from Alice Waters, to Wes Jackson, Joel Salatin, Vandana Shiva, and Will Allen.

These insights have been translated into large format “information art” photo collages and a series of short films. Study guides, a book, a traveling show, installations, and lastly a website where people can dig deeper into these terms (and even add to our ever-evolving lexicon) are also under development.

Improve your plant life balance!

2012-01-21T12:30:00.000+10:00

An interesting Logo!

When I see people cutting down trees everywhere I wonder what they are thinking. Yes... trees do play havoc at times with plumbing and there are times when the danger factor is high and it must be addressed. But so often getting rid of trees is for the sake of a view or perhaps simply to assert "I own this patch of land and I'll do what I want thank you very much!"

Plant - life balance is a curious play on work - life balance which loses vitality over time as a concept when it becomes used to death. Today this seems worth a ponder... how is my plant life balance?

Found at Tumblr:

earthhour:

Matthew Carroll from Hortiman is Earth Hour’s garden adviser. In his first blog post, he talks about ways people can set up a garden using a very small space - dwarf fruiting trees, espaliers, greenwalls and vertical gardens, hanging baskets, indoor crops and multi-purpose plants.
In today’s world, it’s easy to think it’s too difficult for young people to have the time and space to cultivate a garden, especially if they live in an apartment. But Hortiman will be answering questions on Earth Hour’s Facebook page today from 4 PM EST (US) to dispel this myth.
If you have any questions or would like further information visit Hortiman on their website or check them out on Facebook. To find out more about the many benefits of plant life in your life visit Plant/Life Balance

Also this:

Click here to read larger version!

The biodiversity crisis: Worse than climate change

2012-01-20T20:44:00.000+10:00

The biodiversity crisis: Worse than climate change

Found at Twitter through Eureka Alert

WEBSITE HERE

Bioversity International uses agricultural biodiversity to improve people's lives.
We carry out global research to seek solutions for three key challenges: Sustainable Agriculture, Nutrition, Conservation.

The Agrobiodiversity Grapevine

A blog maintained by the library staff at Bioversity International, the world’s largest international research organisation dedicated solely to the conservation and use of agricultural biodiversity. Entries in this blog are for discussion and information purposes only. They express the views of their author(s) and not necessarily that of Bioversity International. Links to other web sites are provided for the user’s convenience and do not constitute endorsement of material at those sites, or any associated organisation, product or service.

Contact: Carsten Rahbek
crahbek@bio.ku.dk
01-145-409-63967
University of Copenhagen

The biodiversity crisis: Worse than climate change

Biodiversity is declining rapidly throughout the world. The challenges of conserving the world's species are perhaps even larger than mitigating the negative effects of global climate change. Dealing with the biodiversity crisis requires political will and needs to be based on a solid scientific knowledge if we are to ensure a safe future for the planet. This is the main conclusion from scientists from University of Copenhagen, after 100 researchers and policy experts from EU countries were gathered this week at the University of Copenhagen to discuss how to organise the future UN Intergovernmental Panel for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, IPBES - an equivalent to the UN panel on climate change (IPCC).

Biodiversity is declining rapidly throughout the worldSpecies extinction and the degradation of ecosystems are proceeding rapidly and the pace is accelerating. The world is losing species at a rate that is 100 to 1000 times faster than the natural extinction rate.

Mass extinctions of species have occurred five times previously in the history of the world – last time was 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs and many other species disappeared. Previous periods of mass extinction and ecosystem change were driven by global changes in climate and in atmospheric chemistry, impacts by asteroids and volcanism. Now we are in the 6th mass extinction event, which is a result of a competition for resources between one species on the planet – humans – and all others. The process towards extinction is mainly caused by habitat degradation, whose effect on biodiversity is worsened by the ongoing human-induced climate change.

"The biodiversity crisis – i.e. the rapid loss of species and the rapid degradation of ecosystems – is probably a greater threat than global climate change to the stability and prosperous future of mankind on Earth. There is a need for scientists, politicians and government authorities to closely collaborate if we are to solve this crisis. This makes the need to establish IPBES very urgent, which may happen at a UN meeting in Panama City in April," says professor Carsten Rahbek, Director for the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, University of Copenhagen.

Professor Rahbek was one of the main forces behind this week's conference on biodiversity and the organisation of the new Biodiversity panel IPBES (Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services).

The conference was arranged and hosted in cooperation with the Danish Ministry of Environment and took place at the University of Copenhagen, where more than 100 scientists and decision makers, primarily from EU countries were gathered. The conference has been organised just as Denmark is taking over the EU Presidency, which provides an opportunity to influence the process of organising the UN Biodiversity Panel.

The new panel is the biodiversity equivalent to the UN panel on climate change, which has resulted in enhanced policy awareness and changes around the world, and initiated a change of behaviour for billions of people in many companies. Unfortunately, the same is not true when it comes to reducing the threats to ecosystems and the loss of animal and plant species.

"There is a need to produce future scenarios that are easily understood and at the same time bring together the best scientists in this field. It is technically possible to develop such scenarios, if they are requested by decision-makers and politicians involved in the IPBES process. The myth that university scientists cannot or will not contribute to concrete solutions of large-scale society problems in close collaboration with practitioners, decision makers and politicians has been shown to be untrue through our close engagement in the organisation and participation in these workshops. The collaboration between the Danish Ministry of Environment, the EU presidency and University of Copenhagen over organising this conference is a successful example of how universities can contribute in dealing with some of the largest challenges that face the world at large," states Carsten Rahbek.

###

The Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate at University of Copenhagen led by Carsten Rahbek and producing world class research within biodiversity is arranging this conference in cooperation with the ministry of environment and EPBRS, European Platform for Biodiversity Research Strategy supported by EEA.

IF YoU ARE INTERESTED also read Biodiversity International on Genebanks.

Coffee, according to Treehugger in 2009, is the second most traded commodity after Oil.

That other most sought after commodity... Cacao... (chocolate) shown being farmed here.

(image: Rainforest Alliance)

Diverse ecosystems are crucial climate change buffer

2012-01-19T21:55:00.000+10:00

This article is well worth reading....

Diverse ecosystems are crucial climate change buffer

Image shown with the article ... click on link above to read in full.

Peruvian Dryland

Caption: This is a dryland ecosystem in Peru that was sampled by researchers as part of the study.

Credit: David Eldridge | Fernando T. Maestre

THis and the following article on the next post were both found here at

The Agrobiodiversity Grapevine

“Providing readers with information resources about PGR, agrobiodiversity, conservation and livelihoods. ”

Curated by Bioversity Library

homage to the seed weblog . . .

Biodiversity: habitat and agriculture

Related information

External links

A few great plant hunters find most species

03 February 2012

Combining large sets of data

Leading the way digitally

Specimens at the Museum

Living great plant hunters

Challenges

The future of chocolate

Like most things we can only too easily take chocolate for granted...

This article might be worth a read if you like chocolate as I do.

The Future of Chocolate

bizzare and incredible

SHORT LIST

Making a difference around the world...

Why you need Kew

Kew's Millennium Seed Bank partnership - Australia

Plant life in Australia is under threat

Save a plant species outright or adopt a seed for just £25

Environment and climate

Saving seeds for the future in Australia

Discover more about our work in Australia...

Interactive map - Explore Kew's MSBP around the world

Our team in Australia

Our partners in Australia

Saving seeds

The Millennium Seed Bank - more seed projects

Community Tree Seeds project

Cryopreservation Network

'Difficult' Seeds project

European Native Seed Conservation Network (ENSCONET)

Extinct Plants project

Orchid Seed Stores project

Palm Seed Network

Useful Plants project

Targeting vulnerable areas and habitats

Identifying plant species at risk

Scientific Research & Data

Yale Environment 360: Value of Conserving Habitats Could be Worth $500B to World’s Poor

20 JAN 2012: VALUE OF CONSERVING HABITATSCOULD BE WORTH $500B TO WORLD’S POOR

Food Sovereignty in New Orleans

Improve your plant life balance!

The biodiversity crisis: Worse than climate change

The biodiversity crisis: Worse than climate change

Diverse ecosystems are crucial climate change buffer

Peruvian Dryland

The Agrobiodiversity Grapevine

20 JAN 2012: VALUE OF CONSERVING HABITATS
COULD BE WORTH $500B TO WORLD’S POOR