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Showing posts from December, 2017

Environmentally friendly Denmark

WHAT ARE THEY DOING AND HOW IS IT HELPING? THEY PREFER TO CYCLE On average, Danes living in Copenhagen cycle almost 2 miles a day. Danes are far more likely to own a bike than they are a car, in fact, 40% of Danes own a car and 90% a bike. THEY DON'T WASTE FOOD Danes are very good at avoiding wasting food. Supermarkets offer 80% reductions at the end of the day to try to minimise waste. An app called 'TooGoodToGo' also allows restaurants to give away unwanted food at closing time. THEY ARE AWARE Danes are mindful of knowing where their food has come from. It is not uncommon for children to be taken to witness slaughters and dissections of animals at zoos so they understand where the food on their plate began its life. THEY EAT ORGANIC Danes eat more organic food than any other country in the world. This is because organic food is not drastically more expensive than other options, making it a good choice for everyone. THEY USE CLEAN ENERGY By 2050, Denma

World map of natural hazards

A natural hazard is a natural phenomenon caused by events that might negatively influence humans and other living organisms or the environment. Natural hazards can be classified into five broad categories: geophysical (earthquakes, mudslides, landslides, and volcanic activity), hydrological (avalanches and floods), climatological (extreme temperatures and drought), meteorological (storms, tornados,) and biological (disease epidemics and pandemics, and pest or animal plagues). The map below shows the frequency and intensity of hailstorms, tornados, wildfires, the observed trend in mean temperature and precipitation in different parts of our planet.

US Wildfire Causes (1980 - 2016)

jillhubley.com

Forest cover map of the Unites States

It has been estimated that before European settlement, forests in the U.S. covered nearly 1 billion acres (4,000,000 km2). The arrival of Europeans, however, caused a decline in native populations, and since the natives were largely agricultural, this caused reforestation of agricultural lands. Since the mid-1600s, about 300 million acres (1,200,000 km2) of forest have been cleared, primarily for agriculture during the 19th century. Today about one-third of the nation is forested. While total forest area has been relatively stable for the last 100 years (currently about 747 million acres (3,020,000 km2)), there have been significant regional shifts in the area and composition of the nation's forests. Reversion of marginal farmland in the east, large-scale planting in the South, and fire suppression have contributed to increases in a forest area. Urbanization, conversion to agriculture, reservoir construction, and natural disasters have been major factors contributing to the los

What happens when you pull the plug on the Marianas Trench

Reddit user: Vinnytsia The Mariana Trench or Marianas Trench is the deepest part of the world's oceans. It is located in the western Pacific Ocean, an average of 200 kilometres to the east of the Mariana Islands, in the Western Pacific East of Philippines. It is a crescent-shaped scar in the Earth's crust, and measures about 2,550 km long and 69 km wide on average. It reaches a maximum-known depth of 10,994 metres  at a small slot-shaped valley in its floor known as the Challenger Deep, at its southern end, although some unrepeated measurements place the deepest portion at 11,034 metres. For comparison: if Mount Everest were dropped into the trench at this point, its peak would still be over 1.6 kilometres  underwater. In 2009, Marianas Trench was established as a United States National Monument. At the bottom of the trench the water column above exerts a pressure of 1,086 bars, more than 1,000 times the standard atmospheric pressure at sea level. At this pressure, the de

Urban forests

New York City NYC's urban forest provides numerous environmental and social benefits, and street trees compose roughly one-quarter of that canopy. This map shows the distribution and biodiversity of the city's street trees based on the last tree census. London This map has been created using tree data made available by London's local authorities and Transport of London. The map shows the locations and species information for over 7000,000 trees. The majority of the data is for street trees but also includes some park trees. It's estimated that there are over eight million trees in London. Edinburgh Melbourne The City of Melbourne maintains more than 70,000 trees. This website enables you to explore this dataset and some of the challenges facing Melbourne’s Urban Forest. San Francisco 124,915 trees, 39,690 empty planting sites, 10 sidewalk gardens Los Angeles 784,575 trees, 72,787 empty planting sites, 54 watershed solutions The City

U.S. military toxic waste sites

The military spends more than a one billion dollars a year to clean up sites its operations have contaminated with toxic waste and explosives. These sites exist in every state in the United States. Some are located near schools, residential neighborhoods, rivers, and lakes. The number of military installations by state: California - 131 Florida - 66 Alaska - 65 Texas - 62 Hawaii - 43 New York - 32 Arizona -  29 Virginia - 25 New Mexico - 25 Kanzas - 24 Maryland - 22 Maine - 20 Massachusetts - 20 South Carolina - 18 Georgia - 17 Michigan - 16 New Jersey - 16 North Carolina - 15 Washington - 14 Puerto Rico - 14 Colorado - 13 Alabama - 13 Guam -  12 Ohio - 12 Oregon - 11 Mississipi - 11 Rode Island -  10 Wyoming - 10 Nebraska - 10 Illinoise - 9 Pennsylvania - 9 Tennessee - 8 Idaho - 8 Missouri - 7 Louisiana - 7 Northern Mariana Islands - 7 Montana - 6 Utah - 6 Oklahoma - 5 Nevada - 5 Indiana - 5 South Dakota - 5 Wisconsin - 4 West Virgi

Large carnivores of Europe

Wolverine, lynx, bear and wolf habitat. Most of all predators live in Scandinavia, in Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

Tropics below the Arctic Circle

The Komarov Botanical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences is a leading botanical institution in Russia, It is located on Aptekarsky Island in St. Petersburg (Russia), and is named after the Russian botanist Vladimir Komarov (1869-1945). The institute was established in 1931 as the merger of the Botanical Garden and the Botanical Museum of the Academy of Sciences. The institute hosts Saint Petersburg Botanical Garden as well as herbarium collections that house over seven million specimens of plants and fungi. The latter is the largest collection in Russia, and among the three largest in the world.