watercolour; a slanted hill with layers of soil and roots throughout; 2 bare trees, one small and one large, stand on the left in front of a bright sky. Fractal lines pull the ground from the larger tree's roots towards the left small tree, curved lines connect both trees, bubbles rise on the right.
watercolour; dark grey background with swirls and holes scattered around purple splotchy sky, in the foreground there's a ring woman olive green bare tree, above towards the left there's a fractayburst of light curving towards the tree, partial silhouettes of the tree at different sizes can be seen.
watercolour; dark background with a spiral expaniinto a green solid streaked circle; lines interrupt the top, small bubbles sit at the bottom and top right, trees bend around the middle.
My name is Karine Gadré. I am a trained #astronomer with a particular interest in our #environment and the actions we humans can take to preserve and even restore #ecosystems.
On this news feed, I invite you to share short texts, photographs, naturalist illustrations, and video clips that reflect our #observations and #actions in favor of the environment.
watercolour; a large blue wave formed by spikes and leaf shapes, zigzag lines and parallel pattern swoops upward from the left, threatening to swallow up a small bare tree standing on the bottom right, fiery specks are scattered over the middle/top.
watercolour; abstract image of a spiral at vertical angle, inside vertical drops fall, it's pulling a spiral on the ground upwards in fractal distortions
Excerpt: "While regenerative agriculture is growing in business settings as a method of reducing agricultural impact, and as an emissions reduction method, indigenous farmers have been responding to environmental stimuli and promoting non-intensive farming methods for millennia. Indigenous groups and farmers are the best guardians of the world’s #ecosystems."
Humans profoundly reshaped mammal communities on a global scale.
"After farming began, just a handful of livestock species spread with humans and scrambled those natural boundaries, reshaping mammal communities worldwide...Large ungulates like horses and cows are important because they monopolize food resources wherever they are in high numbers...At the same time, many wild mammals went extinct, in each case following human arrival—not during a particular worldwide climate change episode."
"Post-extinction ecosystems have not been truly natural for the last 10,000 years or more, so national parks in the hardest-hit regions, such as Australia and the Americas, lack over half of the native large mammal species that would have been present if not for humans. Over the last 10,000 years or so, humans have overseen the wholesale replacement of native mammal communities with a very limited set of domesticated species."
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How humans reshaped the animal world: Research traces 50,000 years of change https://phys.org/news/2025-09-humans-reshaped-animal-world-years.html
All zonal biomes of the Southern Hemisphere are featured, and the major challenges we face in understanding their origins, structure, and functioning are discussed. The book contains a wealth of original data resulting from collation of bioclimatic data and vegetation mapping.
U-X-L Encyclopedia of Biomes by Marlene Weigel, 2010
Offers detailed comparative essays on major biomes and their component ecosystems. Includes entries on land biomes and water biomes and covers climate, elevation, soil, water bodies, vegetation, animal life, food web, plant and animal adaptations, endangered species, human effects on the biome and the effects of the environment on humans' culture and economy.
watercolour; an abstract image of a floating egg-shaped object from which a bright blue stream of water flows down into a whirl of liquid, several bare, pale trees are growing on its surface, drops of liquid drops from its lower edge, a wall of vertical raindrops sits at the top.
"Current data centers go through about 500,000 gallons of water a day, but the newer, bigger facilities currently in the works will require millions of gallons daily."
AI is an exponential surge in energy, water and materials. As we approach civilizational collapse, Big Tech has gone into hyperdrive.
watercolour; dark background with parallel lines curved into an almond shape, diagonally positioned in the centre, the middle is engulfed in flames, distortions iat the bottom, circular highlights randomly brighten parts of the inage
watercolour; dark background with a swirl comprised of blue (bottom half) and yellow (top half) droplet curves spinning around a circle, edges between the colours are distorted by waves which pull the colours into each other, partial parts of branches and roots can be seen at random locations throughout .
Wealthy countries can create prosperity while using less materials and energy if they abandon #EconomicGrowth as an objective.
By Jason Hickel, Giorgos Kallis, Tim Jackson, Daniel W. O’Neill, Juliet B. Schor, Julia K. Steinberger, Peter A. Victor & Diana Ürge-Vorsatz, 12 December 2022
Excerpt: "The global economy is structured around growth — the idea that firms, industries and nations must increase production every year, regardless of whether it is needed. This dynamic is driving climate change and ecological breakdown. High-income economies, and the corporations and wealthy classes that dominate them, are mainly responsible for this problem and consume energy and materials at unsustainable rates.
"Yet many industrialized countries are now struggling to grow their economies, given economic convulsions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, resource scarcities and stagnating productivity improvements. Governments face a difficult situation. Their attempts to stimulate growth clash with objectives to improve human well-being and reduce environmental damage.
"GDP is getting a makeover — what it means for economies, health and the planet
"Researchers in ecological economics call for a different approach — degrowth. Wealthy economies should abandon growth of gross domestic product (#GDP) as a goal, scale down destructive and unnecessary forms of #production to reduce energy and material use, and focus economic activity around securing human needs and well-being. This approach, which has gained traction in recent years, can enable rapid #decarbonization and stop ecological breakdown while improving social outcomes. It frees up energy and materials for low- and middle-income countries in which growth might still be needed for development. Degrowth is a purposeful strategy to stabilize economies and achieve social and ecological goals, unlike recession, which is chaotic and socially destabilizing and occurs when growth-dependent economies fail to grow.
"Reports this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (#IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on #Biodiversity and #Ecosystem Services (#IPBES) suggest that degrowth policies should be considered in the fight against #ClimateBreakdown and #biodiversity loss, respectively. Policies to support such a strategy include the following.
"Reduce less-necessary production. This means scaling down destructive sectors such as #FossilFuels, mass-produced meat and dairy, #FastFashion, #advertising, #cars and aviation, including #PrivateJets. At the same time, there is a need to end the #PlannedObsolescence of products, lengthen their lifespans and reduce the purchasing power of the #rich.
"Introduce a green jobs guarantee. This would train and mobilize labour around urgent social and ecological objectives, such as installing renewables, insulating buildings, regenerating #ecosystems and improving social care. A programme of this type would end unemployment and ensure a just transition out of jobs for workers in declining industries or 'sunset sectors', such as those contingent on fossil fuels. It could be paired with a #UniversalIncome policy.
"Reduce working time. This could be achieved by lowering the retirement age, encouraging part-time working or adopting a four-day working week [and hybrid or remote work]. These measures would lower #CarbonEmissions and free people to engage in care and other welfare-improving activities. They would also stabilize employment as less-necessary production declines.
"Enable #sustainable development. This requires cancelling unfair and unpayable debts of low- and middle-income countries, curbing unequal exchange in international trade and creating conditions for productive capacity to be reoriented towards achieving social objectives.
"Some countries, regions and cities have already introduced elements of these policies. Many European nations guarantee free health care and education; Vienna and Singapore are renowned for high-quality public housing; and nearly 100 cities worldwide offer free public transport. Job guarantee schemes have been used by many nations in the past, and experiments with basic incomes and shorter working hours are under way in Finland, Sweden and New Zealand.
"But implementing a more comprehensive strategy of degrowth — in a safe and just way — faces five key research challenges, as we outline here."
So, my neighbor and I share a property line which contains a wooded area full of blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, sweet pea and other plants (as well as trees). We've been talking about taking walks together to see what's out there, figure out what's invasive, and growing more for the local wildlife (and maybe ourselves -- we've had some great blackberry harvests in the past). We both garden for pollinators in our yards, so it would be great to collaborate (and maybe include some of the other neighbors). I just bought a couple of books that might prove very useful with this endeavor!
A book titled: Farming the Woods - An integrated permaculture approach to growing food and medicinals in temperate forests. By Ken Mudge and Steve Gabriel, Foreword by John F. Munsell.
With information on forest farming, and farming in changing climate conditions. Maple sugaring, ginseng, fruit and nut trees.
The book cover is dark green with light green type. There are images of woods, plants, berries, roots and mushrooms.
"Across southern #Romania, much of which relies on the #Danube for fresh #DrinkingWater, hundreds of villages are rationing water supplies and curtailing the irrigation of #farmland that Europe relies upon for #corn, #grain, #sunflowers, and #vegetables. The cruise ships that normally ferry tourists along the iconic waterway are docked. In the first six months of 2022, Romania's #hydropower utility #Hidroelectrica generated a third less electricity than it normally does. And Romanian #wheat farmers say that drought has cost them a fifth of their harvest. Romania is one of Europe's largest wheat producers, and all the more important for the international market in light of Russia's blockage of much of Ukraine's wheat exports.
"'At towns up and down the Danube, #drought and #ClimateChange take on an existential meaning,' explains Nick Thorpe, author of The Danube: A Journey Upriver from the #BlackSea to the #BlackForest. 'In contrast to city dwellers, they're having this disaster unfold before their eyes.'"
[...]
"Scientists say that the economic cost of the rivers' decimation is only part of the problem. The less water in the water system as a whole, explains Gabriel Singer, an ecologist at University of Innsbruck, Austria, the less dilution for #salts and the slower a river flows. This leads to higher #saline content and #HigherWaterTemperatures, which can be lethal for many species of #Riverine life, such as Danube #salmon, b#arbel, and European #grayling, among many others.
"Higher temperatures also feed #AlgaeBlooms, Singer explains, which can be #toxic for river systems. This is what has happened in several German rivers, including the Moselle and Neckar, as well as perhaps the Oder River, where in mid-August more than 100 metric tons (220,000lbs) of dead fish – among them #perch, #catfish, #pike, and #asp – washed up on its shores within a week. (Experts are currently investigating the cause of the die-off.)"
"Rivers worldwide are drying up at the fastest rate in 30 years, posing a critical threat to ecosystems, agriculture, and human populations. In 2023, unprecedented heatwaves, prolonged droughts, and erratic rainfall patterns resulted in the most severe year of water depletion in three decades, according to World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reports. This alarming phenomenon is a direct consequence of climate change, worsened by unsustainable human activities, raising the spectre of widespread water scarcity.
A Crisis Accelerating: Rivers Drying at Record Rates
"The world’s rivers, crucial lifelines for billions of people, have shown alarming signs of depletion, with some drying up completely. The WMO’s recent State of the Global Climate report revealed that rivers in Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia experienced their lowest levels since the early 1990s. Rivers like the #Yangtze, #AmazonRiver, and #Danube can no longer support the #ecosystems and communities that depend on them for agriculture, drinking water, and transport.
"The impact of climate change, marked by rising global temperatures, has played a significant role in this crisis. The warming of the Earth’s surface increases the evaporation rate from rivers, lakes, and reservoirs, intensifying water loss. Regions already prone to droughts, such as the Middle East, parts of Africa, and southern Europe, face even more severe shortages due to intensified drought cycles. In 2023 alone, the Danube, Europe’s second-longest river, saw record-low water levels, which crippled shipping routes and threatened agricultural output in countries like #Hungary and #Romania.
"This drying trend is not limited to one region. The #ColoradoRiver continues to shrink in the United States, causing severe #WaterShortages for millions in states like #Arizona and #Nevada. Similar trends have been observed in the #IndusRiver in #SouthAsia, which supports millions of people in #Pakistan and #India. These drying rivers are a wake-up call for the global community to address water conservation and management issues before irreversible damage occurs."