Year 2030, Water Crisis?

Several studies show that the next big worldwide crisis would be about the only REAL indispensable element to life.  Water.

Lagoon

These are excerpts from a report developed by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.

How fresh water resources are distributed by region in the planet

The concept of water resources is multidimensional. It is not limited only to its physical measure (hydrological and hydrogeological), the ‘flows and stocks’, but encompasses other more qualitative, environmental and socio-economic dimensions. However, this report focuses on the physical and quantitative assessment of the resource, renewable water resources.

Waterfall

The focus is on freshwater resources. The data collected do not distinguish between different water qualities. Brackish, saline and non-conventional water sources are not accounted for.

Renewable and non-renewable water resources

In computing water resources on a country basis, a distinction is to be made between renewable and non-renewable water resources.

• Renewable water resources are computed on the basis of the water cycle. In this report, they represent the long-term average annual flow of rivers (surface water) and groundwater.
• Non-renewable water resources are groundwater bodies (deep aquifers) that have a negligible rate of recharge on the human time-scale and thus can be considered non-renewable.

Amazon River

Natural and actual renewable water resources

Natural renewable water resources are the total amount of a country’s water resources (internal and external resources), both surface water and groundwater, which is generated through the hydrological cycle. The amount is computed on a yearly basis.

This report also considers actual renewable water resources. These are defined as the sum of internal renewable resources (IRWR) and external renewable resources (ERWR), taking into consideration the quantity of flow reserved to upstream and downstream countries through formal or informal agreements or treaties and possible reduction of external flow due to upstream water abstraction. Unlike natural renewable water resources, actual renewable water resources vary with time and consumption patterns and, therefore, must be associated to a specific year.

The Distribution of Water

Total Actual Renewable Water Resources  TARWR

At a country level, there is an extreme variability in TRWR: from a minimum of 10 m³/inhabitant in Kuwait to more than 100 000 m³/inhabitant in Canada, Iceland, Gabon and Suriname. For 19 countries or territories, the TRWR per inhabitant are less than 500 m³; and the number of countries or territories with less than 1 000 m³/inhabitant is 29.

Dam

Internal renewable water resources IRWR

Nine countries are the world giants in terms of internal water resources, accounting for 60 percent of the world’s natural freshwater . At the other extreme, the water poor countries are usually the smallest (notably islands) and arid ones

Water Rich Countries

Canada                                                 92,662 km/3 year

Peru                                                        62,973 km/3 year

Colombia                                               50,160 km/3 year

Brazil                                                     31,975  km/3 year

Russian Federation                            29,642  km/3 year

Indonesia                                             13,381 km/3 year

United States (Continental)                7,158 km/3 year

China Mainland                                    2,245 km/3 year

India                                                         1,249 km/3 year

The ten poorest countries in terms of water resources per inhabitant are Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Libyan Arab Jamahirya, Maldives, Malta, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. In the large countries, water resources are also distributed unevenly in relation to the population.

Thirty-three countries depend on other countries for over 50 percent of their renewable water resources: Argentina, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Benin, Bolivia, Botswana, Cambodia, Chad, Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Gambia, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Latvia, Mauritania, Mozambique, Namibia, Netherlands, Niger, Pakistan, Paraguay, Portugal, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Senegal, Somalia, Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Viet Nam and Yugoslavia.

EROSION CONTROL
Planet Earth
PANGAEA, The Supercontinent Theory, True or False?

The Pangaea theory is one that states that all present continents were once together and collectively known as a ‘supercontinent’ called a Pangaea. The word ‘Pangaea’ means ‘all lands’ in Greek, accurately defining the way the continents were 200 millions years ago before it split up. These split-up pieces drifted slowly apart and became the way they are today. Even until now, the shape of the Earth surface is still changing, and it will be forever, as long as the mantle underneath the Earth’s crust gets heated and convection currents in the magma keeps dragging the plates.

The Future Shape of the Planet?

The Pangaea theory was treated with much skepticism when it was first raised. But since then, there have been much evidence to support this theory, but, the skepticism is still strong.

 Erosion Control & Climate Control

Erosion Control

Climate control

Apparently Erosion Control and Climate Control are two different things, but they are tightly  entrenched . Predicting what the long term holds for climate is a tough business; nothing is ever certain. Erosion control is predictable and applicable

But our best guess is that human-induced world warming is going to dry out plenty of the arid lands in Africa’s Sahel space, areas across the Mediterranean Sea, the fringes of China’s Gobi desert, areas  of South America and southwestern North America., and without appropriate measures of erosion control the effects could be worse.

Common estimates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Native weather Change (IPCC) predicts that deserts will increase 10 % worldwide by the 12 months 2100. But it absolutely might be loads worse if some kind of erosion control is not applied .

The computer models the IPCC used for his or her latest estimate neglected a key facet of local climate: When trees dry out and die en masse, they leave behind a brighter landscape that displays extra daylight once more out into space.

Erosion Control

This causes land to stay cooler, a loss of life sentence for arid areas that depend on heat to attract in nourishing monsoonal winds and rain from the ocean. Water and wind are the main causes for erosion degradation; erosion control is the way to prevent the loss of soil.

 Erosion Control

In keeping with Ning Zeng and Jinho Yoon of the College of Maryland, Faculty Park, the rising brightness may triple the quantity of desert growth expected by the tip of the twenty first century. Such a change would imperil millions of people that depend upon already scarce water sources for ingesting, rising crops and raising livestock.

The implications are big,” Zeng said. “Over the following couple of years, we might see very fast degradation of marginal zones close to deserts.”

Erosion Control

Whatever the dire prediction, the destiny of those lands is not set in stone. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a key nutrient for plants, and it is doable that as people pump ever extra of it into the ambiance, the shrubbery will thrive. Timber and grasses might even develop into more sturdy against drought as CO2 concentrations increase; erosion control activities could be developed.

It’s a main, unsolved question whether this so-referred to as “CO2 fertilization effect” is strong sufficient to rescue threatened areas from plunging into desert, or whether or not the anticipated drying will seemingly be too severe for plants to survive.What is true is that applying  erosion control in the adjacent areas of the deserts could help in delaying the advance of the desertification

Either method, there’s one different layer that Zeng and Yoon couldn’t add to their fashions: the direct impression of human presence in these regions. Intensive farming, livestock overgrazing and water consumption may combine with pure changes to the touch off ecological crises similar to the notorious Mud Bowl that struck the central United States within the 1930′s.

Climate change may help some crops thrive — not simply because temperatures will probably be hotter, however because of temperatures shall be further variable, and, maybe, because the erosion control would be in the agriculture world more often.

As deeply frozen winters give solution to more cycles of freezing and thawing, some crops will turn into more productive, agreeing with one of much crucial first research to think about the link, although not all vegetation will receive advantages and those who do could endure in several ways. A good erosion control plan would help keeping  plants and tress free of freezing.

Erosion control

These findings illustrate that local climate change will current many surprising results in ecosystems,” mentioned lead researcher Juergen Kreyling, of the College of Bayreuth in Germany. “Freeze-thaw cycles are just one phenomenon that is not yet understood but is shortly altering”

 Erosion Control  is part of the  Answer

In response to projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, many places with historically chilly winters will begin to flirt extra steadily with the freezing stage because the native weather heats up.

The equivalent areas that can probably be drying because of world warming additionally occur to have numerous land use change,” Benjamin Prepare dinner of Columbia College said. “Doubtlessly these sorts of Mud Bowl conditions would possibly occur again.”

Normally, a thick snow topmost insulates the soil in temperate and excessive-latitude areas, preserving floor temperatures pretty constant. However warmer days will result in a lot less snow on the underside, meaning the soil is extra susceptible to freeze and thaw many situations over the course of the season.

Earlier analysis has proven that thawing and refreezing impacts nutrient ranges within the soil along with microbial activity. Kreyling and colleagues wished to know what the shift in winter weather would do to plant life.

Inside the winter of 2005-2006, the researchers planted several species of frequent grasses and herbs in 30 plots on the outskirts of Bayreuth, the place common January temperatures usually hover round unfavorable  one Celsius degree (30 degrees F). Every plot contained one hundred explicit individual crops and a buried heating wire that may artificially thaw the soil.

In today’s challenging environment erosion control is a must.

EROSION CONTROL: HOW BAGS  CAUSE EROSION AND POLLUTION

Paper Vs. Plastic. What to do? How this could help to improve the erosion control?

The global battle against plastic has taken a draconian turn with officials in Delhi, India, announcing that the penalty for carrying a polythene shopping bag would be five years in prison.

Officials in India’s capital have decided that the only way to stem the rising tide of rubbish is to outlaw the plastic shopping bag. According to an  official note , the “use, storage and sale” of plastic bags of any kind or thickness will be banned.

The new guideline means that customers, shopkeepers, hoteliers and hospital staff face a 100,000 rupee ($1,194US) fine and possible jail time for using non-biodegradable bags.

Delhi has been steadily filling up with plastic bags in recent years as the economy has boomed and Western-style shopping malls have sprung up in the city.

There are no reliable figures on bag use, but environmentalists say more than 10 million are used in the capital every day.

Paper or Cloth? Italy Says ‘Ciao’ to Plastic Bags in 2011

Italians use some 20 billion plastic bags yearly—or 300 per person. But that ends tomorrow: the country is banning the non-biodegradable bags in shops, the BBC reports. It’s “a key step forward in the fight against pollution and it makes us all more responsible in terms of recycling,” says the country’s environmental chief.

“Italy in total is responsible for 25% of all plastic bags that are used and produced in Europe,” says a rep for the World Wildlife Fund. The plastic-killing plan has been introduced in stages since 2006, and the first deadline was postponed amid industry uproar.

PAPER ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS

Erosion Control in USA

In the United States the paper industry is the largest user, per ton of product, of industrial process water and the third largest industrial consumer of energy.  During the year 2008 in the United States, paper and paperboard accounted for the largest portion (34 percent) of the municipal waste stream, and 25 percent of discards after recovery of materials for recycling and composting.

Once in a landfill, paper has the potential to decompose and produce methane, a greenhouse gas with 21 times the heat-trapping power of carbon dioxide.  Transportation throughout the system also has significant environmental impacts. In an effort to improve the paper industry, we need to make moves to sustainable forest management with Forestry Stewardship Certification and removal of harmful bleaching technologies.

Information courtesy papercutz.planetark.org

There are several processes and steps to go through in order to make paper.  Grocery bags are most often made by way of Kraft pulping.  Kraft pulping uses less than 50% of the tree; the rest ends up as sludge which is burned, spread on land or land filled.

The chemicals can be recycled and re-used in the mill. Though this kind of pulping creates stronger bags, it also causes a great amount of air pollution.
There are dire consequences to creating bags this way: Water pollution is one of these consequences.  Pulp mills are voracious water users. Their consumption of fresh water can seriously harm habitat near mills, reduce water levels necessary for fish, and alter water temperature, a critical environmental factor for fish.

Another consequence is air pollution. Mills should be, but usually are not, monitored for a range of air emissions, such as particulate matter, carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, hydrogen sulphide, volatile organic compounds, chlorine, chloroform, and chlorine dioxide.

Pros:

• Paper bags can decompose more easily than plastic.
• Paper bags are recycled more often than plastic.

Cons:

• American’s consume more than 10 billion paper bags each year – 14 million trees are cut down yearly for the manufacturing of paper.

PLASTIC  ENVIROMENTAL EFFECTS

• Plastic bags cause over 100,000 sea turtle and other marine animal deaths every year when animals mistaken them for food.

• The manufacture of plastic bags add tons of carbon emissions into the air annually
• Between 500 billion and 1 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide each year
• Approximately 60 – 100 million barrels of oil are required to make the world’s plastic bags each year
• Most plastic bags take over 400 years to biodegrade. Some figures indicate that plastic bags could take over 1000 years to break down.
• China uses around 3 billion plastic bags each day!

Pros:

• They are convenient
• They are durable and can be used more than once
• They take up less space in a landfill than paper bags (Washington Post)
• It takes 91% less energy to recycle a pound of plastic than it takes to recycle a pound of paper. (Recycling rates of either type of disposable bag are extremely low, with rates of 10-15% for paper and 1-3% for plastic.)

Cons:

• 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used every year, worldwide
• About 1 million plastic bags are used every minute.
• A single plastic bag can take 20 to 1,000 years to degrade
• The U.S. goes through 100 billion single-use plastic bags. This costs retailers about $4 billion a year
• Plastic bags remain toxic even after they break down
• Every square mile of ocean has about 46,000 pieces of plastic floating in it.

Many cities in different countries, like San Francisco in USA, have banned the commercial use of plastic bags. This should lead to a improvement in the use of the  natural resources of the planet and  with more trees   and clean water to   a best  Erosion Control.

 

Erosion Control Worldwide

African Dust Storms May Cool Atlantic, Lessen Hurricanes

Source: Science Daily

— Every year, storms over West Africa disturb millions of tons of dust and strong winds carry those particles into the skies over the Atlantic. According to a recent study led by University of Wisconsin-Madison atmospheric scientists, this dust from Africa directly affects ocean temperature, a key ingredient in Atlantic hurricane development.

“At least one third of the recent increase in Atlantic Ocean temperatures is due to a decrease in dust storms,” says lead author Amato Evan, a researcher at UW-Madison’s Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS).

In a paper published online in “Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems,” the team of scientists describes how dust in the atmosphere cools the ocean by decreasing the amount of energy that reaches the water. The study also demonstrated that the large amount of dust blowing off of Africa in the 1980s and ’90s likely cooled the Atlantic enough to prevent conditions that could have resulted in more devastating hurricane seasons similar to 2004 and 2005.

As dust from Africa accumulates in the skies over the Atlantic, the atmosphere above the ocean begins to resemble the conditions over Africa. Millions of tons of dust create a drier environment and also reduce the amount of sunlight that reaches the ocean. Using a 25-year data record created by co-author Andrew Heidinger, a researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Evan assessed how much the dust cooled the temperature of the ocean.

“It’s not just one dust storm,” Evan says. “It’s the cumulative effect of several months of dust storms.”

The 2007 Atlantic hurricane season, for example, was much quieter than predicted and the Atlantic was cooler than in previous years. Evan suggests that the relative lack of hurricane activity and cool ocean temperatures could be partially due to a particularly dusty spring and early summer. 2007 was the dustiest year since 1999.

By putting satellite observations and other atmospheric information into a computer simulation, Evan assessed how much energy reached the ocean with the dust in the atmosphere and then again after removing the dust. Evan found that dust cools the Atlantic by an average of one degree Celsius, about two degrees Fahrenheit, each year. In years with a lot of dust activity, such as the 1980s, the dust had a larger cooling effect.

In a study published in fall 2006 in “Geophysical Research Letters,” Evan demonstrated that the intensity of hurricane seasons in the Atlantic increased when the amount of dust blowing off of Africa decreased and vice versa. The study published today is an effort to explain why this relationship exists and what the past few decades would have looked like without the effects of dust. Evan says these results confirm a direct connection between the intensity of dust storms in Africa and that of hurricanes in the Atlantic.

Because of the direct relationship, the amount of dust in the atmosphere could contribute to hurricane season forecasts. “Dust prediction is another tool to diagnose hurricane activity,” Evan says. Evan has done some preliminary work to develop an effective way to use satellite observations to predict dust activity up to nine months in advance.

Dust storms in Africa have a significant impact on the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean, which, in turn, plays a large role in hurricane activity. Although climate change has taken the spotlight in media conversations about hurricanes, many factors influence these complicated storms. Of the effects of global warming, Evan says: “It’s real, but that’s not all there is.”

EROSION RESTORATION IN USA

Source: Cornell University: Chronicle On Line

Erosion restoration should be a maximum priority because soil erosion and degradation are so severe worldwide, that it threatens our agricultural base.

Erosion Restoration. Causes for Concern

As the outcome of soil degradation and erosion occur so slowly, they seldom give rise to rapid action. In truth, it is hardly seen during one generation of say, 30 years. Soil appears to be here forever. It is nearly unimaginable to think that this inconspicuous rate of loss, is many periods that of natural formation.

Had synthetic fertilizers not been obtainable, soil degradation would have been observed a lot earlier, but these miracle cures appear to give you the option to compensate for declining fertility. Only by trying at the bigger picture, does the severity of soil loss develop into clear.

Around the world, soil is being swept and washed away 10 to 40 times faster than it is being replenished, destroying cropland the size of Indiana every year.

Yet the need for food and other agricultural products continues to soar.

Erosion Restoration , a worldwide priority

“Soil erosion is second only to population growth as the biggest environmental problem the world faces,” said David Pimentel, professor of ecology at Cornell. “Yet, the problem, which is growing ever more critical, is being ignored because who gets excited about dirt?”

Plenty of people should be, stressed Pimentel, whose study on the food and environmental threat of soil erosion is published in a recent issue of the Journal of the Environment, Development and Sustainability (Vol. 8, 2006).

“Erosion is a slow and insidious process,” stressed Pimentel. “Yet, controlling soil erosion is really quite simple: The soil can be protected with cover crops when the land is not being used to grow crops.”

Other ways to reduce erosion include reducing the need for people in developing countries to clear forests for agriculture, overgraze their cattle and remove crop residues for cooking fuel.

The vast majority — 99.7 percent — of human food comes from cropland, which is shrinking by more than 10 million hectares (almost 37,000 square miles) a year due to soil erosion, Pimentel reports, while more people than ever — more than 3.7 billion people — are malnourished.

“Erosion is one of those problems that nickels and dimes you to death: One rainstorm can wash away 1 mm (.04 inches) of dirt. It doesn’t sound like much, but when you consider a hectare (2.5 acres), it would take 13 tons of topsoil — or 20 years if left to natural processes — to replace that loss,” Pimentel said. “And that kind of loss occurs year after year by wind and rain around the world.”

The study, which pulls together statistics on soil erosion from more than 125 sources, reports:

• The United States is losing soil 10 times faster — and China and India are losing soil 30 to 40 times faster — than the natural replenishment rate.
• The economic impact of soil erosion in the United States costs the nation about $37.6 billion each year in productivity losses. Damage from soil erosion worldwide is estimated to be $400 billion per year.
• As a result of erosion over the past 40 years, 30 percent of the world’s arable land has become unproductive.
• About 60 percent of soil that is washed away ends up in rivers, streams and lakes, making waterways more prone to flooding and to contamination from soil’s fertilizers and pesticides.
• Soil erosion also reduces the ability of soil to store water and support plant growth, thereby reducing its ability to support biodiversity.
• Erosion promotes critical losses of water, nutrients, soil organic matter and soil biota, harming forests, rangeland and natural ecosystems.
• Erosion increases the amount of dust carried by wind, which not only acts as an abrasive and air pollutant but also carries about 20 human infectious disease organisms, including anthrax and tuberculosis.
• Taking in consideration the above, erosion restoration is vital.

Erosion Restoration Worldwide

Facts About The Coming Water Crisis

Source: Business Insider.com

1- America must spend $255 billion in the next five years to prevent deterioration of water infrastructure. We plan to spend half that amount.

2-Parts of America use up to 80% of their available freshwater resources. (That means a slight drought or increase in usage will cause a WATER SHORTAGE.).

3- Californians look forward to a fourth straight year of serious drought.

 4- Transporting water is impractical, even within the U.S. Just look at the cost of bottled water.

5-Globally, 1.2 billion people live in areas with inadequate water supply.

6-1.6 billion live in areas where there is water, but they can’t afford to drink it.

7-Water use is increasing much faster than population.

8-Global water demands will increase by 40% in the next ten years.

9-By 2025, two-thirds of the world will live under conditions of water scarcity.

10-Two-thirds of the cities in China suffer from water shortages. Clean water is even more rare.

11-India WILL run out of water in the near future.

12- “A shortage of water resources could spell increased conflicts in the future. Population growth will make the problem worse. So will climate change. As the global economy grows, so will its thirst. Many more conflicts lie just over the horizon.” — Ban Ki-Moon

13- MENA maintains water supplies through expensive and non-renewable sources.

14- Desalination is only practical for small countries with extreme wealth. Saudi Arabia accounts for 25% of the world’s use.

15- Green tech may provide a way past peak oil. There is no escape from peak water.

Earthshaking Facts About The Three Gorges Dam And China’s Next Even Bigger Water Project

Source : Business Insider
Not sure how China’s Three Gorges Dam affects you? Consider this: It will literally slow the rotation of the planet.
In ten years China has built the biggest ever hydroelectric dam and started an even more elaborate and expensive scheme to divert freshwater across 1,000 miles. On these two controversial projects — worth together over $100 billion — China’s future depends.

1-The Three Gorges Dam cost $37 billion to build

2- 13 cities, 140 towns, and more than 1,600 villages have been submerged under the world’s largest reservoir. An official count of 1.3 million people were relocated.

3-The world’s largest hydroelectric dam, it generates 11 times as much power as the Hoover Dam

4-Three Gorges Was Mao Ze-dong’s idea: he even wrote a poem about it, entitled “Swimming”

5-Since partial completion in 2006, there have been reports of cracks, landslides, ecological deterioration, and accumulation of algae (water becoming murkish)

6-Although the dam was supposed to control flooding on the Yangtze, 2010 is on track to be one of the worst flood years ever

7-Power generation is one thing, water crisis is another: Northern China has half of the population and only 15% of the freshwater.

8-The South-To-North Water Project will cost $62 billion to complete.

9-The project will use dams, pumping stations, tunnels, and canals to draw 45 billion cubic meters of water upstream 1,000 miles each year.

10-China will relocate 350,000 people within two years to make way for the water diversion project. Further destruction and relocation is inevitable.

11-The South-To-North Project was also Mao’s idea. A 50-year construction plan was launched in 2002 and is already facing devastating delays.

12-The project’s western route draws water across five major fault lines, including the epicenter of the 2008 earthquake that killed over 70,000.

14-Already 70% of China’s freshwater is polluted. The project could worsen pollution. Some cities have already rejected plans to obtain water via the diversion project as too polluted.

15-Indians are worried by reports the project will significantly decrease the flow of the shared Brahmaputra (Yarlung Tsangpo) river and increase its salinity.

17-Meanwhile in Western China: The massive Gobi Desert is expanding 1,400 square miles per year due to drought and over farming.

Yangtze River Soil Erosion

The 6,300 km lengthy Yangtze River,  the longest river in China and the third longest on Earth, is currently  struggling its worst ever soil erosion issues, experts told   Xinhua, Chinese news agency.
Several  consultants engaged on soil erosion management tasks  along the Yangtze River said throughout a latest on-website interview  that this trouble has become a ” Huge headache” for the social and  financial growth of the river basin area.
“As much as 41.1 percent of the river basin space, or 740,000 sq km of land, suffers from soil erosion issues,” mentioned Shi Liren, a leading expert.
“Every year the whole river basin area loses 2.24 billion tons  of soil, damaging a million mu (67,000 hectare) of cultivable  land,” he added.

For the Chinese language, the Yangtze River shouldn’t be only one of the main rivers in history, but it surely has additionally long been a clean river whose  each banks are coated by inexperienced plants.
Nonetheless, with the booming population and short-sighted economic exploitation, issues have changed up to now 20 years and now, for many specialists, the Yangtze River has turn out to be one other “Yellow  River” in China.

The truth is, in talking with consultants, the Yangtze River shouldn’t be the  solely river that’s facing large soil erosion problems.
“Soil erosion has develop into the key environmental drawback in  China,” mentioned Qu Geping, one of China’s top legislators and known  as a pioneer environmentalist.
But for Qu and his followers, the good news is that the  authorities and increasingly more people have taken efficient steps to regulate the soil erosion problem.
“In some areas, the federal government’s efforts have gained good  results, with more barren hills being re-planted with bushes and  soil erosion having been basically put below control,” Qu said.
“The tomorrow of the Yangtze River and the 400 million individuals  dwelling along it will reside on what we are doing at the moment,” Qu said.

Soil Erosion Threatens Land of 100m Chinese.

Almost 100 million people in south-west China will lose the land they live  in the next  35 years if soil erosion continues at its current rate, a nationwide survey has found.

Crops and water supplies are suffering serious damage as earth is washed and blown away throughout a 3rd of the nation, in line with the largest-scale study for 60 years.

Harvests within the north-east, referred to as China’s breadbasket, will fall forty percent within half a century on present rates, even as the 1.3 billion population continues to grow.

Whereas specialists cited farming and forestry as the primary causes, contributing to over a 3rd of the realm affected, the research crew mentioned erosion was damaging industrial areas and cities as well as remote rural land. About 4.5bn tonnes of soil are scoured away annually, at an estimated price of 200bn yuan (£20bn) on this decade alone.
The poor might be worst hit, warns the report from China’s bio-environment security research team, which labored on the survey for 3 years. Virtually three-quarters of them already stay in erosion-hit areas.

The country’s 80,000 reservoirs are additionally affected, with sand and mud reducing their storage capacity each year. Like soil deposits alongside rivers, that will increase the danger of flooding.

“If we don’t apply effective measures, erosion will trigger main damage to social and financial improvement,” Chen Lei, the director of the Ministry of Water Assets, instructed the official People’s Daily newspaper.

The state news agency  Xinhua stated more than 3.5m square kilometers were affected in total, with 1.6m square kilometers scoured by water and 2m sq. kilometers by wind.

Professor Mu Xingming of the Institute of Soil and Water Conservation advised the Guardian that overpopulation was largely to blame. He said his evaluation of north-east China over the last century showed the consequences of accelerating population density.

New roads and railways had been additionally contributing to the issue and people had been less conscious of the need for environmental safety than in different international locations, he added.
Mu cited the Yellow River as one of many areas worst hit. “Traditionally, it got its title due to its color – because the water incorporates more mud and sand than different rivers. But now it is yellower because of human actions,” he said.

Beijing has been involved in regards to the desertification of China’s northern grasslands for many years, and scaled back logging after deforestation contributed to flooding along the Yangtze within the late 1990s. Mu said extra work was wanted to restore forests and grasslands and suggested people must depart some areas completely in the event that they were to recover.

AMAZON RAINFOREST DEFORESTATION

Article published by UniqueSouthAmericaTravelExperience.com

Lack of Erosion Control:

One of the reasons for the vanishing rainforest

Commercial logging is the single most important factor for Amazon rainforest deforestation, followed by cattle grazing and other reasons we will review shortly…

Amazon rainforest is disappearing at an alarming rate, and the same applies for all the remaining rainforests in the world.
Once the covered 14% of earth’s surface, now only 6%. Experts estimate they could disappear within 40 years.

Amazon rainforest alone is vanishing at a rate of 200,000 square miles a year – out of 2,5 million square miles, embracing nine South America countries or 2/3s of the continent.

Amazon Rainforest Deforestation Facts

Main reasons for the vanishing rainforest include…

• Commercial logging:
  Logging tropical hardwoods for exportation (teak, mahogany, etc.) as well as other timber for furniture, ply wood, etc. , followed by other wood-related industries such as chipboard and cardboard. In addition, the paper industry requires a massive amount of pulpwood trees. In order to satisfy the world’s demand, more and more of the rainforest is burned to the ground and replanted with pulpwood trees.
• Cattle grazing:
  
  Ranchers need more pastures for their livestock. It is estimated that to raise one steer consumes two acres of the rainforest.
  Amazon Rainforest  covers 1,2 billion acres – 200,000 of them are burned every day at a rate of al least one per second.
  Grazing land degrades fast due to the lack of gradients and overgrazing, which means new rainforest land needs to be obtained to satisfy their needs.
• Farming:
  It is estimated that less than 10% rainforest land is suitable for conventional agriculture. Soon gets exhausted after 3 or 4 crops due to its poor-gradients condition and the lack of sustainable cultivation practices.
  As a consequence, farmers move deeper into the rainforest in search of new, fresh land. Soybean is the largest crop.
• Road building:
  Since the 1970s, more than 9,000 miles of road have been built through the rainforest, endangering the environment as well as the lives of native Amazon tribes.
• Hydroelectric dams:
  Dams have an impact on the local wildlife, affecting migratory fish and the  Amazon Oink River Dolphin for instance, and threaten the environment.

• Mining operations:
  The Gold Rush in  Brazil started in the 1980s, when gold was discovered in Sierra Pelada. Some 250,000 miners lived and worked in terrible conditions. There is a remarkable photo reportage done on the subject by Brazilian photographer  Sebastiao Salgado
  To pursue mining operations, tons of mercury are released to the environment, causing irreparable damage to rivers, vegetation and animals.

Rainforest Deforestation Consequences

Among the major consequences of  Amazon Rainforest deforestation we find…

• soil erosion
• water and air pollution
• the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere
• loss of biodiversity by extinction of plants and animals
• increased threat from global warming
• decimation of Amazon tribes
• malaria epidemics
• widespread flooding

Let’s Help to Preserve the Rainforest

We need each and every one of us to take a stand and do out bit. Simple and easy steps to help preserve the rainforest…

• buy only sustainable and environmentally friendly products
• buy local
• keep our homes and cars as carbon neutral as possible
• not to waste energy
• help to create a market and demand for sustainable rainforest products
• Exercise our rights as citizens. A simple No!…would suffice at times

• As Harvard’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biologist Edward O. Wilson wrote more than a decade ago…”The worst thing that can happen during the 1980s is not energy depletion, economic collapses, limited nuclear war, or conquest by a totalitarian government.
• As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired within a few generations.
  The one process ongoing in the 1980s that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats.
• This is the folly that our descendants are least likely to forgive us for.”