Skip to main content

Home/ Groups/ IB Geography
Rss Feed
Sort By: Most Recent | Popular Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Benjamin McKeown

NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program: Values - 0 views

coralreef.noaa.gov/...values

coral coasts

shared by Benjamin McKeown on 21 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • Coral ecosystems are a source of food for millions; protect coastlines from storms and erosion; provide habitat, spawning and nursery grounds for economically important fish species; provide jobs and income to local economies from fishing, recreation, and tourism; are a source of new medicines, and are hotspots of marine biodiversity. They also are of great cultural importance in many regions around the world, particularly Polynesia.
  • They are also found along the coasts of over 100 other countries.
  • one recent estimate gave the total net benefit of the world's coral reef ecosystems to be $29.8 billion/year.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • he economic importance of Hawai`i's coral reefs, when combining recreational, amenity, fishery, and biodiversity values, were estimated to have direct economic benefits of $360 million/year
  • Yet coral reefs are in decline due to an increasing array of threats—primarily from global climate change, unsustainable fishing impacts, and land-based pollution.
Benjamin McKeown

Frozen conflict | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...ims-north-pole-frozen-conflict

arctic coasts

shared by Benjamin McKeown on 21 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • IN 2007 a Russian-led polar expedition, descending through the icy waters of the Arctic Ocean in a Mir submarine, planted a titanium Russian tricolour on the sea bed 4km (2.5 miles) beneath the North Pole. “The Arctic has always been Russian,
  • Denmark has staked a claim to the North Pole, too. On December 15th it said that, under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), some 900,000 square kilometres of the Arctic Ocean north of Greenland belongs to it (Greenland is a self-governing part of Denmark).
  • Canada, which plans to assert sovereignty over part of the polar continental shelf (
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • he prize for these countries is the mineral wealth of the Arctic, which global warming may make more accessible.
  • an eighth of the world’s untapped oil
  • perhaps a quarter of its gas.
  • Drilling for oil and gas there is extremely expensive, and falling oil prices have made the economics of Arctic energy even less favourable. This gives would-be prospectors an interest in co-operating, not in adding to the risks and costs.
  • The melting of the summer sea ice has also opened up trade routes between Asia and Europe via the top of the world; 71 cargo ships plied the north-east passage last summer, up from 46 in 2012
  • Russia
  • carried out extensive combat exercises in the Arctic for the first time since the end of the cold war
  • re-equipping old Soviet bases there and in July tested the first of its new-generation rockets,
  • Sweden spent part of the summer searching for a Russian submarine that it suspected of slipping into its territorial waters.
  • countries may control an area of seabed if they can show it is an extension of their continental shelf.
« First ‹ Previous 581 - 600 of 1382 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page