Save the Polar Bears

This week's blog post is going to be about how climate change and melting arctic sea ice affects one of the most beloved species we have on this planet: the polar bears.

http://www.firstpeople.us/pictures/polar-bears/cute-polar-bear-cub-sitting-on-snow.html

The polar bears are struggling to feed themselves because of the melting ice. Seals are one of the species' main sources of food. Polar bears hunt for food, seals in particular, when they are on the sea ice. However, there is less ice for them to stand on, therefore, they are having to spend more time on land. This is forcing them to starve or fast. Our greenhouse gas emissions are getting out of control and harming these wonderful creatures. Our emissions are warming up the earth and getting trapped in the atmosphere to the point where they melt

http://www.cuteheaven.com/polar-bear-and-iceberg/

the ice that polar bears rely on. Humans are the cause. Sea ice loss for polar bears, according to one website, will mean: "reduced access to food, drop in body condition, lower cub survival rates, and increasing in drowning". All of these effects of anthropogenic sources could lead to the extinction of one of our favorite arctic animals unless we are more careful and frugal about our daily life choices. The sea ice cover has been decreasing for a while now, but we can see an extremely evident decrease in sea ice cover over the past few decades in particular. In the map I made with QGIS below (obtaining data from the National Snow & Ice Data Center), there is data represented for the years 1990, 2000, and 2010. All data is from the month of September because that is when it is at its minimum due to the end of the warm summer months. Over the course of just 20 years, there is significant decrease in arctic ice cover. It is scary to see this map because who knows what it will be like down the road? Will the rate ever slow down? What if it doesn't? Our beloved polar bears could be on their way to extinction. In the QGIS map, the sea ice cover for 1990 is in green, while the cover for 2000 is in blue and the cover for 2010 is in red.

An additional graph from the Huffington Post shows a trend for average monthly sea ice extent in September from 1979-2013. The long-term trend is that it is dropping more steeply, and it shows no signs of slowing down unless we take action. Can we save the polar bears before it's too late?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-chameides/arctic-sea-ice-update-the_b_5187264.html

Mali: A Victim of the Land Grabbing Phenomenon

Land grabbing occurs when a country seeks land outside of their borders in order to produce agricultural crops. Land grabs destroy the local culture and get rid of many local jobs. Local farmers are forced to move to make room for larger manipulative governments to come in and land grab. In Africa, farmers and their families are displaced when many African villages are already in distress, therefore, we should take an interest in their situation and be aware of the events happening in our world today. Africa is the leading country in land grabs and accounts for 70% of the world's total land grabs. It has only gotten more frequent and worse in recent years too. Such is the case between Libya and Mali. An article in the New York Times points out that Libyans ship rice, beef, and other agricultural products back to their country after using the arable land in Mali and displacing many of the farmers there. When farmers in Mali were brought the news of the land grabbing they were told, "their humble fields, tilled from one generation to the next, were now controlled by Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, and the farmers would all have to leave." The Libyan government says that they will compensate the people of Mali whose livelihoods are at risk, but there is no guarantee of a follow through. The compensation depends on trust, something that is risky between nations. In addition, Mali is taking a big risk in an attempt to improve their political relations with other countries, particularly Libya, since the land grabbing is not favoring them economically. The country's agricultural well-being is at the mercy of another country.

I found a website that allows you to interactively see the amount of arable land in hectares by African country. As of 2011, Mali had 6.9 million available hectors, 100,000 of which is under the control of the Libyan government. The image below (obtained from the New York Times article) shows the country of Mali and the countries in which agricultural transactions are popular.

This image below from QGIS shows the available agricultural hectares by country (for which there is data). As you can see from the dark blue, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Mozambique, as also seen in the image above, are some of most popular places for land grabbing to occur. Not far behind them is Mali. Mali gives a fairly large amount of agricultural hectares to Libya, considering the amount of total arable land they have.

Carbon Emissions Per Capita

The world’s population is growing at an exponential rate. As the population increases, there are serious consequences to Earth’s resources. Human interests, unfortunately always take precedent over ecological and environmental interests, which is detrimental to the sustainability of the planet. As the population grows, the tragedy of the commons gets worse because it adds to the amount of people who can deplete Earth’s resources. Worst of all, the carbon emissions of developed nations harm countries who do not emit as much. It is sad that the countries who experience the most negative effects of carbon emissions are the ones who emit the least. The underdeveloped countries, namely some in Africa, do not have the technology or the means to pollute the Earth’s atmosphere with greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide. However, countries such as China and the U.S. contribute heavily to carbon dioxide, while less well-off nations don’t have as many resources as we do, so they cannot adapt as well to climate change. The population is growing and so countries with less money and more population cannot install renewable resources and the means to adapt to the warming Earth and the changing climate. In my QGIS map, you can see the world population in numbers. China and India, then the United States and Brazil hold the largest populations but those are some of the countries least affected by carbon emissions. In Africa, it is a different story…

GHG Emissions Per Capita

Coral Bleaching Visualizations: Australia

For my winter quarter research topic I chose to study the effects of ocean acidification on coral bleaching off the coast of Australia near the Great Barrier Reef and how the effects changed the Australian biodiversity and tourism industry. Princess Charlotte Bay is off of Queensland, Australia, which is in the northeast part of the country. The Bay is near the Great Barrier Reef and the area experiences many of the problems that arise from climate change. Rising carbon emissions and temperatures lead to ocean acidification which leads to coral bleaching in the Princess Charlotte Bay. Coral bleaching and the effects of anthropogenic causes of climate change just keep getting worse over time. The second graph below shows the difference between coral bleaching in 1998 and 2002, and it is evident that just four years makes a difference. I like this visualization because it shows side by side the comparisons of the two years and it is easy to read how much coral is bleached and in what area. Overall, the colors are easy to identify and the images are visually pleasing. In the first visualization, there are two side-by-side pie charts. In Australia, there were two major coral bleaching events due to extreme temperatures in 1998 and 2002. Although this graph is simple to read, it is unclear whether the 60% of bleached coral in 2002 is 60% of the coral that was unbleached in 1998 or if the total amount of bleached coral off the coast of Australia just increased by 10% from 1998 to 2002. I personally like the graph by the peer-reviewed journal more because it displays more information and it gives more specifics about the region that is being referred to by the visualization.

Major coral bleaching events

Princess Charlotte Bay: Coral Bleaching (page 77 of the article)

Week 1: Introduction

Hi, my name is Kira Latham and this will be where I blog this quarter. I'm from Texas and I am planning on double majoring in political science and psychology at UCLA. As a political science major, so far in the cluster I have found Professor Kahn's lectures on public policy to be interesting. I have enjoyed learning about how different nations have come together to try to slow down the process of climate change due to anthropogenic causes. For example, learning about the Kyoto Protocol and the Montreal Protocol interested me because of the global involvement and collaboration to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases and CFCs, respectively. As a psychology major, I also found the lectures on nudges, incentives, and behavioral economics to be interesting because of the natural human response.

(Molly Samuel/KQED)

Redwood Forest, CA

I have found two blogs (about environmental issues) in particular that interest me, and I will be monitoring them for the rest of the quarter.
The first blog I will follow is called "Dot Earth", and is under the New York Times. They are really good about posting regularly and they post about a broad variety of environmental issues happening in our world today. One article in particular that is interesting that they recently posted is about timber thieves in California's Redwood Forest.
The second blog I will follow is called ecogeek and posts about a variety of topics, but focuses a lot on transportation efficiency. One recent interesting post talks about the future potential of having planes fly in a V formation like birds do in order to increase efficiency.