Words Can't Describe It: Humans' Impact on the World's Oceans
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 02.15.08
Image courtesy of B.S. Halpern
The verdict is in, folks, and, to no one's surprise, it ain't pretty: over 40% of the world's oceans are heavily impacted by anthropogenic activities with few - if any - left unaffected. The map, the product of four years' worth of meticulous research and number-crunching, was created by Benjamin Halpern and his colleagues at UCSB's National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.
On the center's website, Halpern explains the process he and his colleagues followed to make the composite map:
"1. We gathered or created maps (with global coverage) of all types of human activities that directly or indirectly have an impact on the ecological communities in the ocean's ecosystems. In total, we used maps for 17 different activities in categories like fishing, climate change, and pollution. We also gathered maps for 14 distinct marine ecosystems and modeled the distribution of 6 others.
2. To estimate the ecological consequences of these activities, we created an approach to quantify the vulnerability of different marine ecosystems (e.g., mangroves, coral reefs, or seamounts) to each of these activities, published in Conservation Biology, October 2007. For example, fertilizer runoff has been shown to have a large effect on coral reefs but a much smaller one on kelp forests.
3. We then created the cumulative impact map by overlaying the 17 threat maps onto the ecosystems, and using the vulnerability scores to translate the threats into a metric of ecological impact.
4. Finally, using global estimates of the condition of marine ecosystems from previous studies, we were able to ground-truth their impact scores."
As Science's Eli Kintisch notes, the impact scores, which range from 0 to 20, mean little to the scientists in terms of concrete damage; without more hard data, Halpern acknowledges it is difficult to move beyond the use of vague terms such as "degraded" to describe the ecosystems' state. Larry Crowder, a marine ecologist at Duke University, deemed the effort a "bold attempt" though he said it is still far from comprehensive.
Halpern and his colleagues hope other scientists will use the map as the basis for updating and studying new data sets to form a clearer overall picture. Despite some of its more noticeable gaps, it's clear that the map paints a bleak picture of the oceans' health. As Dennis Heinemann, a senior scientist at the Ocean Conservancy and a co-author on the study, explained to blogfish's Mark Powell:
"On a global scale, the study determined that coral reefs and sea-grass habitats, places important to maintaining the diversity and productivity of ocean life, are suffering from some of the most significant cumulative threats from humans. We fear that few areas of the ocean are left without compromised resilience in the face of the ongoing and increasing threats of overfishing, pollution and ocean climate change."
Take a look at NCEAS' website to learn more about the study's methodology and implications (and to see a great informative video).
Via ::blogfish: Map of global human impact on oceans (blog)
See also: ::Loss of Deep-Sea Species Could Precipitate Oceans' Future Collapse, ::The 10 Solutions to Save the Oceans, ::Live from Pop!Tech: For Ocean Health, "Climate Change More Important than Fishing Practices"
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
- Countries Falling Behind As World's Oceans Are Still "Vastly Under-Protected": Study
- Tropical Dead Zones Set to Expand by 50 Percent Under Climate Change
- On Climate Change, Africa Votes As One Country And One Continent
- GHG Photos: Climate Change Photography Shapes Debate
Something is happening that many too many people appear not to be seeing, I suppose.
Scientific evidence is springing up everywhere that indicates the massive and pernicious impact of the human species on the limited resources of Earth, its frangible ecosystems and life as we know it.
Guided by mountains of carefully and skillfully developed research regarding climate change, top rank scientists like Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Hans J. Schellnhuber and Dr. Christopher Rapley issued a Climate Code Red emergency declaration this month to leaders of governments and to the family of humanity proclaiming the necessity for open discussion and action by politicians and economic powerbrokers.
From my humble perspective, many leaders of the global political economy are turning a blind eye to human over-consumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities that can be seen recklessly dissipating the natural resources and dangerously degrading the environs of our planetary home. The Earth is being ravaged; but it appears many leaders are willfully refusing to acknowledge what is happening.
Because the emerging global challenges that could soon be presented to humanity appear to so many fine scientists as human-induced, leaders have responsibilities to assume and duties to perform, ready or not, like them or not.
Perhaps leadership in our time has too often chosen to ignore whatsoever is somehow real in order to believe whatever is politically convenient, economically expedient, socially agreeable, religiously tolerated and culturally prescribed. When something real directly conflicts with what leaders wish to believe, that reality is denied. It appears that too many leaders are content to hold tightly to widely shared and consensually validated specious thinking when it serves their personal interests.
Is humanity once again finding life as we know it dominated by a modern Tower of Babel called economic globalization? That is, has human thinking, judging and willing become so egregiously impaired by our idolatry of the artificially designed, manmade, global political economy that we cannot speak intelligibly about anything else except economic growth and profits without sounding like blithering idiots?
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/