Crossing Boundaries

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.

Chris Jordan's online photography gallery.

A training manual to use a free open-source GIS to do spatial analysis with plant biodiversity and distribution

"Bird species in rainforest fragments in Brazil that were isolated by deforestation disappeared then reappeared over a quarter-century, according to research results published today in the journal PLoS (Public Library of Science) ONE. Scientists thought many of the birds had gone extinct."

"EcoTipping Points are small actions that tip the balance from decline to restoration by tapping the inborn power of nature and human societies to heal themselves." Case studies range from community gardens in NYC to reversing tropical deforestation in Thailand.

This report provides a new approach to examining the links between ecosystem services (the benefits derived from nature) and the poor. Through a series of maps and analyses, the authors focus on the environmental resources most Kenyans rely on such as soil, water, forest, rangeland, livestock, and wildlife. The atlas overlays georeferenced statistical information on population and household expenditures with spatial data on ecosystems and their services (water availability, wood supply, wildlife populations, and the like) to yield a picture of how land, people, and prosperity are related in Kenya.

Short clips from Simpson episodes which demonstrate particular science concepts/topics **Jesus Fish and Natural Selection is a neat one**

Resources for using Edublog more effectively

Fast and easy access to dynamic worldwide, multi-spectral, multi-temporal Landsat data for your projects. This is a great resource for observing and analyzing land use changes.

# 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

hehe..students might not get the humor of Monty Python, but I do!

science lesson and unit planning

Can 'water footprinting' help cut the 500 liters of H2O needed to produce a carton of OJ? Carbon trading promotes good behavior by creating a standardized currency representing a verifiable environmental benefit. Payments for watershed services do the same for cutbacks in water pollution, albeit on a smaller scale. Now, the Nature Conservancy and the Coca-Cola Company are experimenting with a new method of "water footprinting" that could do the same for total water use - a key component in the development of a market-based scheme that would promote responsible water usage.

An interactive website for learning about cloud forest ecosystems. Includes videos and lesson plans.

Created by Missouri Botanical Garden, describes biomes of the world.

Compare two images in Google Earth side-by-side using both historical and current imagery.

"As the numbers of species declines due to habitat loss, pollution and climate change, the risk of catching infectious diseases may rise for humans, animals and plants. "

"The OpenHeatMap site lets you create heat maps and choropleths from uploaded spreadsheet data (CSV format), or Google Docs Spreadsheet data (which makes it continuously updatable). It supports location coding by latitude/longitude coordinates, or by a large number of name/code attributes (e.g. address, FIPS code, zip code, state, province, country). And as a bonus, you can also have time as a variable, letting you create animated heatmaps or choropleths."

"A collection of rubrics for assessing portfolios, cooperative learning, research process/ report, PowerPoint, podcast, oral presentation, web page, blog, wiki, and other web 2.0 projects."