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Videos include: - What is the Global Food System? - Land Use Change and Agriculture - Food Security - Water and Agriculture - Climate Change, Agriculture, and NASA

The Russian-English Agricultural Atlas is the world's most comprehensive source of information on the geographic distribution of plant-based agriculture in Russia and neighboring countries. The Atlas contains 1500 maps that illustrate the distribution of 100 crops, 560 wild crop relatives, 640 diseases, pests and weeds, and 200 environmental parameters. Additionally, the Atlas provides detailed biological descriptions, illustrations, metadata and reference lists. Currently, individual maps can be downloaded and viewed using freely available AgroAtlas GIS Utility software, which can also be downloaded at this site.

"The interactive crop map displays the native origins and primary regions of diversity for selected major agricultural crops."

"A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) examines how the Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO) program has succeeded in stabilizing wildlife while improving agriculture in the Luangwa Valley."

"How is climate change affecting your region? What are the impacts on key sectors like health, water, and agriculture? Find out from USGCRP's Third National Climate Assessment."

When officials gather for an international summit on biodiversity next month, they might look to remind the world why species matter to humans: for producing oxygen, finding new drugs, making agricultural crops more productive, and something far less tangible - a sense of wonder.

"CUGIR is an active online repository in the National Spatial Data Clearinghouse program. CUGIR provides geospatial data and metadata for New York State, with special emphasis on those natural features relevant to agriculture, ecology, natural resources, and human-environment interactions."

The Land Use Calculator is a tool for rapid scenario analysis of land-use implications, useful for decision-makers to address real-world challenges and for classroom teaching of conservation biology, sustainable development, environmental economics and global change biology. It is a decision-support tool targeted at land-use decision-makers in the tropic, allowing users to evaluate the implications and tradeoffs of pursuing alternative development scenarios by simultaneously accounting for the societal priorities of agricultural production, economic development, carbon conservation and biodiversity protection. Users specify a few environmental and socioeconomic parameters describing a landscape scenario, and the tool determines the implications of that scenario in terms of biodiversity, carbon stocks, greenhouse-gas emissions, financial returns of the land and employment opportunities.

"BioCarbon Tracker uses satellite data and advanced methods to map the ecosystems where biocarbon is stored, identify vegetation at risk from land use change and monitor where high biocarbon stock land such as forest is converted to agriculture."

"Using data for 25,780 species categorized on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List, we present an assessment of the status of the world's vertebrates. One-fifth of species are classified as Threatened, and we show that this figure is increasing: On average, 52 species of mammals, birds, and amphibians move one category closer to extinction each year. However, this overall pattern conceals the impact of conservation successes, and we show that the rate of deterioration would have been at least one-fifth again as much in the absence of these. Nonetheless, current conservation efforts remain insufficient to offset the main drivers of biodiversity loss in these groups: agricultural expansion, logging, overexploitation, and invasive alien species. "

"here are 40 maps, charts, and graphs that show where our food comes from and how we eat it, with some drinking thrown in for good measure."

"[Noreen] Thomas [a farmer] enjoys this view from hundreds of miles above Earth's surface -- not just for the beauty, but the utility. She is among a growing group of Midwest farmers who rely on satellite imagery from Landsat to maximize their harvest and minimize damage to their fields. It's become another crucial tool like their tractors and sprinklers."

A wealth of digital-GIS friendly, information, especially international, on environment and sustainable development.

# Many Planets, One Earth # Atmosphere # Oceans # Ecosystems # Human Population Dynamics # Risk, Exposure, and Health # Agriculture # Water Resources # Biodiversity Decline # Energy Challenges # Atmospheric Pollution # Earth's Changing Climate # Looking Forward: Our Global Experiment

Açaí berry business boom in the Amazon linked to conservation efforts.