The Biomass Reallocation Program

World on Fire ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 172-188
Author(s):  
Mark Rowlands
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Domestic Fowl ◽  
Animal Feed ◽  
Marked Change ◽  
Agricultural Expansion ◽  
Species Extinction ◽  
Number Of Species ◽  
The World ◽  
Pastoral Farming

Underlying human-caused extinctions, past and present, is a vast biomass reallocation program. Before our Neolithic forebears began changing the world, biomass was distributed quite evenly among species of animals and plants. The tenure of humans has seen a marked change in this, as biomass became progressively concentrated into a small number of species—us and animals we eat. Today, 96% of all mammalian biomass consists in humans and the mammals that humans farm. An additional 70% of all avian biomass consists in domestic fowl. This biomass reallocation is the most significant driver of species extinction. The number-one driver of species extinction today is change in land use. The most significant driver of change in land use is agricultural expansion. By far the most prominent form of agricultural expansion is pastoral farming and the growing of animal feed crops. Eating animals is, therefore, the most important driver of species extinction.

No taxonomists? No progress

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 223-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.L. Yen ◽  
J. Van Itterbeeck
Keyword(s):  
Animal Feed ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Practical Reasons ◽  
Insect Diversity ◽  
Model Species ◽  
Nutritional Values ◽  
Edible Insect ◽  
Number Of Species ◽  
The World ◽  
Food And Feed

Western societies currently show considerable interest in using insects as human food and/or as animal feed to reduce loss of habitats, use less energy to produce the food or feed in much smaller spaces, and to provide foods and feeds of high nutritional values. There appears to be emphasis on a small number of species for practical reasons: the domestic cricket, mealworms, and the black soldier fly seem to be the main species. There are most probably practical reasons for this emphasis including: the efficiency in building on established knowledge, the extensive use of model species in academic research, and, related to the two former reasons, the need for highly successful projects showing that insects indeed can be the food of the future. While practical reasons are often legitimate, the adoption of a small number of insect species as food and feed is contradictory to the concept that edible insect diversity will help feed the world. An emphasis on further building up knowledge of a small number of species will receive criticism that is very similar to the criticism on the use of a small number of vertebrate or plant species as food.

Global agricultural expansion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan R. B. Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Population Growth ◽  
Human Population ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Natural Habitat ◽  
Agricultural Land Use ◽  
Agricultural Expansion ◽  
Global Trends ◽  
The World ◽  
National Trends

This chapter asks whether evidence supports the widely held belief that land used for agriculture around the world has continued to rapidly expand via conversion of natural habitat in response to the demands created by recent human population growth. Contrary to conventional wisdom, global agricultural land use peaked in 1998 and has since declined. While habitat continues to be cleared for agriculture, on a global net basis, more agricultural land has been converted to other uses than vice versa. This analysis also found that national trends in agricultural expansion are driven by factors other than population growth. Although this does not mean agriculture is “sustainable,” these findings challenge the dominant narrative around global agricultural expansion and highlight other important issues that must be addressed. Looking at data at national and subnational scales is essential to understand the implications of global trends in agriculture, where improvements and interventions are most needed.

scholarly journals The role of edible insects to mitigate challenges for sustainability

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-36
Author(s):  
Raquel P. F. Guiné ◽  
Paula Correia ◽  
Catarina Coelho ◽  
Cristina A. Costa
Keyword(s):  
Nutritional Value ◽  
Animal Feed ◽  
World Population ◽  
Edible Insects ◽  
Strong Component ◽  
Human Food ◽  
The World ◽  
Food And Feed ◽  
Recent Trends

Abstract This review is focused on the utilization of insects as a new opportunity in food and feed products, including their commercialization both in traditional and new markets. It has been suggested that insects are considerably more sustainable when compared with other sources of animal protein, thus alleviating the pressure over the environment and the planet facing the necessity to feed the world population, constantly increasing. Many chefs have adhered to the trend of using insects in their culinary preparations, bringing insects to the plan of top gastronomy, highlighting their organoleptic qualities allied to a recognized high nutritional value. However, in some markets, insects or insect-based products are not readily accepted because of neophobia and disgust. Moreover, the insect markets, farming, and commercialization are experiencing a huge growth, in which the domain of animal feed is undoubtedly a very strong component. The future of insects as human food and animal feed seems promising in view of the recent trends and challenges.

scholarly journals Ecosystem Services Changes on Farmland in Response to Urbanization in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area of China

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 501
Author(s):  
Xuege Wang ◽  
Fengqin Yan ◽  
Yinwei Zeng ◽  
Ming Chen ◽  
Bin He ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Ecosystem Service ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Great Loss ◽  
The Past ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
Farmland Loss ◽  
The World

Extensive urbanization around the world has caused a great loss of farmland, which significantly impacts the ecosystem services provided by farmland. This study investigated the farmland loss due to urbanization in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) of China from 1980 to 2018 based on multiperiod datasets from the Land Use and Land Cover of China databases. Then, we calculated ecosystem service values (ESVs) of farmland using valuation methods to estimate the ecosystem service variations caused by urbanization in the study area. The results showed that 3711.3 km2 of farmland disappeared because of urbanization, and paddy fields suffered much higher losses than dry farmland. Most of the farmland was converted to urban residential land from 1980 to 2018. In the past 38 years, the ESV of farmland decreased by 5036.7 million yuan due to urbanization, with the highest loss of 2177.5 million yuan from 2000–2010. The hydrological regulation, food production and gas regulation of farmland decreased the most due to urbanization. The top five cities that had the largest total ESV loss of farmland caused by urbanization were Guangzhou, Dongguan, Foshan, Shenzhen and Huizhou. This study revealed that urbanization has increasingly become the dominant reason for farmland loss in the GBA. Our study suggests that governments should increase the construction of ecological cities and attractive countryside to protect farmland and improve the regional ESV.

scholarly journals Characteristics of the butterflies on various forms of land uses

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 15-22
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Szyszko-Podgórska
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Forest Site ◽  
Fallow Land ◽  
Land Uses ◽  
Human Influence ◽  
Numerous Species ◽  
Number Of Species ◽  
Human Economic Activity ◽  
Trees And Shrubs

Abstract The purpose of the work was to identify the occurrence of butterflies depending on landform uses and human influence on the population domination structure. The research was conducted in the ‘Krzywda’ field-and-forest Site occupying 172 ha. The area consists of the land leaving in fallow, meadows and wasteland including about 68 ha of swamps that are strongly eutrophic due to human economic activity. The area is subjected to artificial succession inhibition processes in the form of mowing and cutting of trees and shrubs. 32 species of butterflies were recorded during the research, that is, 20% of all species within this group occurring in Poland. The research has approved the great spatial and quantitative diversification of the occurring area of butterflies depending on the form of the land uses. The greatest number of species and their greatest populations were found in the land laying in fallow without the removal of the biomass. The least number of species and their specimens were collected in the unmown laying fallow land. Lycaena virgaureae was the most numerous species collected. The correct domination structure characterized by a small number of numerous species and a large number of species consisting of a low number of specimens. Processes observed in the studied Site subjected to various types of land use influence the occurrence diversity of this group of insects.

scholarly journals Extinction risk of narrowly distributed species of seed plants in Brazil due to habitat loss and climate change

PeerJ ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. e7333 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Maria Cardoso da Silva ◽  
Alessandro Rapini ◽  
Luis Cláudio F. Barbosa ◽  
Roger R. Torres
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Habitat Loss ◽  
Extinction Risk ◽  
Conservation Strategies ◽  
Seed Plants ◽  
Conservation Action ◽  
Species Extinction ◽  
Tropical Regions ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation

In a world where changes in land cover and climate happen faster than ever due to the expansion of human activities, narrowly distributed species are predicted to be the first to go extinct. Studies projecting species extinction in tropical regions consider either habitat loss or climate change as drivers of biodiversity loss but rarely evaluate them together. Here, the contribution of these two factors to the extinction risk of narrowly distributed species (with ranges smaller than 10,000 km2) of seed plants endemic to a fifth-order watershed in Brazil (microendemics) is assessed. We estimated the Regional Climate Change Index (RCCI) of these watersheds (areas with microendemics) and projected three scenarios of land use up to the year 2100 based on the average annual rates of habitat loss in these watersheds from 2000 to 2014. These scenarios correspond to immediate conservation action (scenario 1), long-term conservation action (scenario 2), and no conservation action (scenario 3). In each scenario, areas with microendemics were classified into four classes: (1) areas with low risk, (2) areas threatened by habitat loss, (3) areas threatened by climate change, and (4) areas threatened by climate change and habitat loss. We found 2,354 microendemic species of seed plants in 776 areas that altogether cover 17.5% of Brazil. Almost 70% (1,597) of these species are projected to be under high extinction risk by the end of the century due to habitat loss, climate change, or both, assuming that these areas will not lose habitat in the future due to land use. However, if habitat loss in these areas continues at the prevailing annual rates, the number of threatened species is projected to increase to more than 85% (2,054). The importance of climate change and habitat loss as drivers of species extinction varies across phytogeographic domains, and this variation requires the adoption of retrospective and prospective conservation strategies that are context specific. We suggest that tropical countries, such as Brazil, should integrate biodiversity conservation and climate change policies (both mitigation and adaptation) to achieve win-win social and environmental gains while halting species extinction.

scholarly journals Extinction and the U.S. Endangered Species Act

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noah Greenwald ◽  
Kieran F Suckling ◽  
Brett Hartl ◽  
Loyal Mehrhoff
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Endangered Species ◽  
Endangered Species Act ◽  
The United States ◽  
Species Extinction ◽  
Number Of Species ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Species Extinctions

The United States Endangered Species Act is one of the strongest laws of any nation for preventing species extinction, but quantifying the Act’s effectiveness has proven difficult. To provide one measure of effectiveness, we identified listed species that have gone extinct and used previously developed methods to update an estimate of the number of species extinctions prevented by the Act. To date, only four species have been confirmed extinct with another 22 possibly extinct following protection. Another 71 listed species are extinct or possibly extinct, but were last seen before protections were enacted, meaning the Act’s protections never had the opportunity to save these species. In contrast, a total of 39 species have been fully recovered, including 23 in the last 10 years. We estimate the Endangered Species Act has prevented the extinction of roughly 291 species since passage in 1973, and has to date saved more than 99 percent of species under its protection.

scholarly journals COLLEMBOLA DIVERSITY IN THE SOIL OF THE THREE TYPES OF LAND USED ON BUNGO DISTRICT JAMBI PROVINCE, INDONESIA

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 362-367
Author(s):  
Febriyansyah
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Sampling Method ◽  
Secondary Forest ◽  
Rubber Plantation ◽  
Purposive Sampling ◽  
Number Of Species

The research regarding Collembola on Bungo District was conducted from February to July 2014. The purpose of this study was to know Collembola Diversity in the soil of the three types of land used (secondary forest, rubber plantation and palm plantation). This study used a purposive sampling method with soil drill having 4 cm diameter. The highest diversity on three types of land use is on rubber plantation and the lowest is on secondary forest. Family Entomobryidae (Ascocyrtus sp.) has the highest number of species as well as the highest percentage of all species.

scholarly journals Using OpenStreetMap to Create Land Use and Land Cover Maps

2019 ◽  
pp. 1100-1123
Author(s):  
Cidália Costa Fonte ◽  
Joaquim António Patriarca ◽  
Marco Minghini ◽  
Vyron Antoniou ◽  
Linda See ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Level Of Detail ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Corine Land Cover ◽  
Online System ◽  
Urban Regions ◽  
The World ◽  
Future Work ◽  
Land Cover Maps

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a bottom up community-driven initiative to create a global map of the world. Yet the application of OSM to land use and land cover (LULC) mapping is still largely unexploited due to problems with inconsistencies in the data and harmonization of LULC nomenclatures with OSM. This chapter outlines an automated methodology for creating LULC maps using the nomenclature of two European LULC products: the Urban Atlas (UA) and CORINE Land Cover (CLC). The method is applied to two regions in London and Paris. The results show that LULC maps with a level of detail similar to UA can be obtained for the urban regions, but that OSM has limitations for conversion into the more detailed non-urban classes of the CLC nomenclature. Future work will concentrate on developing additional rules to improve the accuracy of the transformation and building an online system for processing the data.

scholarly journals Estimating historical land use patterns in Amazonia for hydrological studies

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 189-197
Author(s):  
Christiane Cavalcante Leite ◽  
Marcos Heil Costa ◽  
Ranieri Carlos Ferreira de Amorim
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Water Resources ◽  
Land Use Change ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Land Use Patterns ◽  
Use Patterns ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Historical Land Use ◽  
Past Land Use

The evaluation of the impacts of land-use change on the water resources has been, many times, limited by the knowledge of past land use conditions. Most publications on this field present only a vague description of the past land use, which is usually insufficient for more comprehensive studies. This study presents the first reconstruction of the historical land use patterns in Amazonia, that includes both croplands and pasturelands, for the period 1940-1995. During this period, Amazonia experienced the fastest rates of land use change in the world, growing 4-fold from 193,269 km2 in 1940 to 724,899 km2 in 1995. This reconstruction is based on a merging of satellite imagery and census data, and provides a 5'x5' yearly dataset of land use in three different categories (cropland, natural pastureland and planted pastureland) for Amazonia. This dataset will be an important step towards understanding the impacts of changes in land use on the water resources in Amazonia.

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