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Shifting Baseline
A shifting baseline (also known as a sliding baseline) is a type of change to how a system is measured, usually against previous reference points (baselines), which themselves may represent significant changes from an even earlier state of the system. The concept arose in landscape architect Ian McHarg's 1969 manifesto ''Design With Nature'' in which the modern landscape is compared to that on which ancient people once lived. The concept was then considered by the fisheries scientist Daniel Pauly in his paper "Anecdotes and the shifting baseline syndrome of fisheries". Pauly developed the concept in reference to fisheries management where fisheries scientists sometimes fail to identify the correct " baseline" population size (e.g. how abundant a fish species population was ''before'' human exploitation) and thus work with a ''shifted baseline''. He describes the way that radically depleted fisheries were evaluated by experts who used the state of the fishery at the start of their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Daniel Pauly
Daniel Pauly is a French-born marine biologist, well known for his work in studying human impacts on global fisheries and in 2020 was the most cited fisheries scientist in the world. He is a professor and the project leader of the Sea Around Us Project at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries at the University of British Columbia. He also served as Director of the UBC Fisheries Centre from November 2003 to October 2008. Biography Pauly was born in Paris, France. He grew up, however, in La Chaux de Fonds, Switzerland in what was called a strange "Dickensian" childhood where he was forced to stay as a live-in servant to a new family. For the first 16 years of his life, Pauly lived an inward life as he was mixed race in an all-white town, finding solace in books/reading and model construction. At 16 he ran away and put himself through high school in Wuppertal, Germany after one year working with disabled people for a local church-run institution. His work led to a schol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ian McHarg
Ian L. McHarg (20 November 1920 – 5 March 2001) was a Scottish landscape architect and writer on regional planning using natural systems. McHarg was one of the most influential persons in the environmental movement who brought environmental concerns into broad public awareness and ecological planning methods into the mainstream of landscape architecture, city planning and public policy. He was the founder of the department of landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. His 1969 book ''Design with Nature'' pioneered the concept of ecological planning. It continues to be one of the most widely celebrated books on landscape architecture and land-use planning. In this book, he set forth the basic concepts that were to develop later in geographic information systems. Biography Formative years His father was a manager and later a salesman in the industrial city of Glasgow, Scotland. McHarg showed an early talent for drawing and was advised to consi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coral Reef
A coral reef is an underwater ecosystem characterized by reef-building corals. Reefs are formed of colonies of coral polyps held together by calcium carbonate. Most coral reefs are built from stony corals, whose polyps cluster in groups. Coral belongs to the class Anthozoa in the animal phylum Cnidaria, which includes sea anemones and jellyfish. Unlike sea anemones, corals secrete hard carbonate exoskeletons that support and protect the coral. Most reefs grow best in warm, shallow, clear, sunny and agitated water. Coral reefs first appeared 485 million years ago, at the dawn of the Early Ordovician, displacing the microbial and sponge reefs of the Cambrian. Sometimes called ''rainforests of the sea'', shallow coral reefs form some of Earth's most diverse ecosystems. They occupy less than 0.1% of the world's ocean area, about half the area of France, yet they provide a home for at least 25% of all marine species, including fish, mollusks, worms, crustaceans, echinoderms, sp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Measurement
Measurement is the quantification of attributes of an object or event, which can be used to compare with other objects or events. In other words, measurement is a process of determining how large or small a physical quantity is as compared to a basic reference quantity of the same kind. The scope and application of measurement are dependent on the context and discipline. In natural sciences and engineering, measurements do not apply to nominal properties of objects or events, which is consistent with the guidelines of the ''International vocabulary of metrology'' published by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures. However, in other fields such as statistics as well as the social and behavioural sciences, measurements can have multiple levels, which would include nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio scales. Measurement is a cornerstone of trade, science, technology and quantitative research in many disciplines. Historically, many measurement systems existed fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mongabay
Mongabay (mongabay.com) is a conservation news web portal that reports on environmental science, energy, and green design, and features extensive information on tropical rainforests, including pictures and deforestation statistics for countries of the world. It was founded in 1999 by economist Rhett Ayers Butler in order to increase "interest in and appreciation of wildlands and wildlife, while examining the impact of emerging local and global trends in technology, economics, and finance on conservation and development". In recent years, to complement its US-based team, Mongabay has opened bureaus in Indonesia, Latin America, and India, reporting daily in Indonesian, Spanish, and English respectively. Mongabay's reporting is available in nine languages. History In an interview with Conjour, Butler said his passion for rainforests drove him to start Mongabay: "I was intrigued by the complexity of these ecosystems and how every species seemed to play a part. As I became more passio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sea Around Us (organization)
The Sea Around Us is an international research initiative and a member of the Global Fisheries Cluster at the University of British Columbia. The Sea Around Us assesses the impact of fisheries on the marine ecosystems of the world and offers mitigating solutions to a range of stakeholders. To achieve this, the Sea Around Us presents fisheries and fisheries-related data at spatial scales that have ecological and policy relevance, such as by Exclusive Economic Zones, High Seas areas, or Large Marine Ecosystems. All spatialized data are visualized either graphically or mapped, and all data can be downloaded. Global fisheries catches from 1950 to the present are available, under explicit consideration of coral reefs, seamounts, estuaries and other critical habitats of fish and marine invertebrates. The data presented, which are all freely available, are meant to support studies of global fisheries trends and the development of sustainable, ecosystem-based fisheries policies. In the ea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flynn Effect
The Flynn effect is the substantial and long-sustained increase in both fluid and crystallized intelligence test scores that were measured in many parts of the world over the 20th century. When intelligence quotient (IQ) tests are initially standardized using a sample of test-takers, by convention the average of the test results is set to 100 and their standard deviation is set to 15 or 16 IQ points. When IQ tests are revised, they are again standardized using a new sample of test-takers, usually born more recently than the first; the average result is set to 100. When the new test subjects take the older tests, in almost every case their average scores are significantly above 100. Test score increases have been continuous and approximately linear from the earliest years of testing to the present. For example, a study published in the year 2009 found that British children's average scores on the Raven's Progressive Matrices test rose by 14 IQ points from 1942 to 2008. Similar gain ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seed (magazine)
''Seed'' (subtitled ''Science Is Culture''; originally ''Beneath the Surface'') is a defunct online science magazine published by Seed Media Group. The magazine looked at big ideas in science, important issues at the intersection of science and society, and the people driving global science culture. ''Seed'' was founded in Montreal by Adam Bly and the magazine was then headquartered in New York with bureaus around the world. May/June 2009 (Issue No. 22) was the last print issue. Content continued to be published on the website until its demise in 2012. ''Seed'' was a finalist for two National Magazine Awards in 2007 in the categories of Design and General Excellence (100,000 to 250,000), was the recipient of the ''Utne'' Independent Press Award, and was included in the 2006 Best American Science and Nature Writing anthology published by Houghton Mifflin and edited by Brian Greene. The magazine published original writing from scientists and science journalists. Scientists who c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Public Service Announcements
A public service announcement (PSA) is a message in the public interest disseminated by the media without charge to raise public awareness and change behavior. In the UK, they are generally called a public information film (PIF); in Hong Kong, they are known as an announcement in the public interest (API). History The earliest public service announcements (in the form of moving pictures) were made before and during the Second World War years in both the UK and the US. In the UK, amateur actor Richard Massingham set up Public Relationship Films Ltd in 1938 as a specialist agency for producing short educational films for the public. In the films, he typically played a bumbling character who was slightly more stupid than average and often explained the message of the film by demonstrating the risks if it was ignored. The films covered topics such as how to cross the road, how to prevent the spread of diseases, how to swim, and how to drive without causing the road to be unsafe for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Surfrider Foundation
The Surfrider Foundation USA is a U.S. 501(c)(3) grassroots non-profit environmental organization that works to protect and preserve the world's oceans, waves and beaches. It focuses on water quality, beach access, beach and surf spot preservation, and sustaining marine and coastal ecosystems. Headquartered in San Clemente, California, the Surfrider Foundation maintains a small staff, which work to support the organization's network of regional grassroots chapters. The current CEO is Chad Nelsen. History The Surfrider Foundation was started in Malibu, California in 1984 by a handful of surfers to protest threats to their local surf break at Malibu Point. The organization continued on for several years as a loose advocacy group until 1991, when the first chapters were founded. Programs and campaigns In November 2018 the Surfrider Foundation launched a campaign declaring "We are the United States and Oceans of America". The campaign sought to inform people that America is made ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Ocean Conservancy
Ocean Conservancy (founded as The Delta Corporation) is a nonprofit environmental advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., United States. The organization formulates ocean policy at the federal and state government levels based on peer reviewed science. About The Ocean Conservancy promotes healthy and diverse ocean ecosystems and opposes practices that threaten oceanic and human life. Through several program areas, Ocean Conservancy advocates for protecting special marine habitats, restoring sustainable fisheries, reducing the human impact on ocean ecosystems and managing U.S. ocean resources. Ocean Conservancy is a tax-exempt non-profit organization. It meets the Better Business Bureau's 20 Standards for Charity Accountability. History Ocean Conservancy was founded in 1972 to promote healthy and safe ocean ecosystems and to help prevent things that threaten oceanic and human life. The conservancy's main concern was to restore sustainable American fisheries and protect wildl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nature Conservation
Nature conservation is the moral philosophy and conservation movement focused on protecting species from extinction, maintaining and restoring habitats, enhancing ecosystem services, and protecting biological diversity. A range of values underlie conservation, which can be guided by biocentrism, anthropocentrism, ecocentrism, and sentientism, environmental ideologies that inform ecocultural practices and identities. There has recently been a movement towards evidence-based conservation which calls for greater use of scientific evidence to improve the effectiveness of conservation efforts. As of 2018 15% of land and 7.3% of the oceans were protected. Many environmentalists set a target of protecting 30% of land and marine territory by 2030. In 2021, 16.64% of land and 7.9% of the oceans were protected. The 2022 IPCC report on climate impacts and adaptation, underlines the need to conserve 30% to 50% of the Earth's land, freshwater and ocean areas – echoing the 30% goal of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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