Peer Readings

Alliance., The Resilience. "Conservation Ecology: Biodiversity, urban areas, and agriculture: locating priority ecoregions for conservation." Ecology and Society. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol8/iss2/art1/inline.html (accessed February 25, 2010).
This peer review was about the effect urban sprawl has biodiversity. There was a map showing the different ecoregions. There were a lot of maps showing the different effects that urban sprawl can have. Human influence is increasing and for that reason, biodiversity is decreasing.

http://www.foodwebs.org/Sala2000Science.pdf
The above PDF shows the different scenarios that could happen with biodiversity by the year 2100. I thought this article was very useful because it gives scenarios for the future and that's what our senior project is about.

Nathan Lewis Reflection

At first I didn't understand Dr. Lewis' presentation. There was a lot of talk about power units and different complex things that I have yet to understand. Dr. Nathan Lewis also spoke about our use of coal and our dependency on other fossil fuels. I learned that coal was very abundant and very inexpensive so if we want a change to be made, it's going to be hard. Another thing that I found interesting was that even though China and India's populations are going up exponentially, the reason why their CO2 emissions are going up is because they're taking up our kind of energy lifestyle.
Dr. Lewis said a lot of things that actually made me wonder how lucky people feel. There are so many signs directly showing that we have an impact on the environment. We can see that Coral's are bleaching, that glaciers are retreating, sea levels are rising, wildfires are increasing, and so many other signs.
There are three carbon free powers that we could explore, nuclear, carbon sequestration - CO2 burial and renewables. He said that we need cheap solar fuel, and with the information that he gave, I agree. It seems as if it would be a big initial investment but it would pay for itself in the long run.

Three More Annotated Sources

Abdulla, Ameer. "Ecosystem Marketplace - ." Ecosystem Marketplace - . http://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/pages/dynamic/article.page.php?page_id=7443&section=news_articles&eod=1 (accessed February 10, 2010).

This article is mostly about improving marine biodiversity. It gives information on how to keep marine biodiversity high. "Designing an offset entails understanding which of the habitats at the development location have been impacted, and whether that impact is partial, significant or total, then quantifying this per unit area (square meter or square kilometre, for example) while weighting its “biodiversity significance” with a score." This article also talks a lot about biodiversity offsets, “measurable conservation outcomes that are the result of activities designed to compensate for significant and unavoidable impacts on biodiversity”.

Ford, Matt. "Costing the Earth: Investing in protecting the planet - CNN.com." CNN.com - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News. http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/11/01/value.nature.conservation/index.html?iref=allsearch (accessed February 10, 2010).

"These ecosystems are on the point of collapse," said Sukhdev at the conference in South Africa. "Unless we can get the right deal at the [UN Climate Talks in December] in Copenhagen, things look very bleak.

This article mostly talks about how the downfall of biodiversity is making us all lose a lot of money. It is putting business in with the environment. I believe that this article did a really good job at explaining how we need to do something now about biodiversity because if we don't do something now, it will cost us more in the long run. "Apart from a moral obligation to look after our environment, Sukdev believes that even in simple cost benefit terms conservation is good sense and investing $45 billion could secure "nature-based services" worth $4.5 trillion to $5.2 trillion annually." We need to do more than throw money at the problem of biodiversity, ""If you start throwing more money into that context it's like throwing petrol on a fire."

"UN opens Biodiversity Year with plea to save world's ecosystems." Welcome to the United Nations: It's Your World. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=33393&Cr=envirionment&Cr1= (accessed February 10, 2010).

"In a bid to curb the unprecedented loss of the world's species due to human activity – at a rate some experts put at 1,000 times the natural progression." This article is mostly about what the UN plans to do about biodiversity and raising awareness. This article lacks a lot of facts but has a lot of good quotes about what biodiversity does. It helps put things into perspective.“Biodiversity, the variety of life on Earth, is essential to sustaining the living networks and systems that provide us all with health, wealth, food, fuel and the vital services our lives depend on. Human activity is causing the diversity of life on Earth to be lost at a greatly accelerated rate. These losses are irreversible, impoverish us all and damage the life support systems we rely on every day. But we can prevent them.”