FOREST

Vanishing cover

BETWEEN 2000 and 2012, the world lost more forest area than it gained -a net loss of 3.76 million sq km of interior forest area .what's worse,core forest areas--- remote interior areas critical for disturbance sensitive wildlife and ecological processes are vanishing even faster. There is also a widespread shift of the remaining global forest to a more fragmented condition . Down To Earth 1-15 March ,2016

Taxonomists in india have discovered 523 new species.

In 2015,India added 523 new living  species to this ever-expanding inventory . According to the documentations released by the country’s two premier institutes engaged in the exploration of flora and fauna –the Zoological Survey of India (ZIS) and the Botanical Survey of India (BSI) –and nonprofit  World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) scientists and taxonomists have identified 246 animal species and 277 plants species .

Seed plants (118) have accounted for more  than 40% of new plant spices discovered. And as every year,insect (119) have outnumbered other groups of animals.

New plants species

Seed plants  118      Fungi 52     Microbes 36      Lichens 33 

Algae 24       Bryophytes 8         Pteridophytes  7

New animal species

Insect   118       Fish  27     Amphibians 24      Archnidans 19

Cnidaria  16     Crustaceans  14   Collembola  10   Mollusca  7

Nematode 7  Reptiles 3  Birds 2  Trematoda 1  Polycheata 1

  

Down To Earth  16-31 January 2016
              

    

Heat beds

Human -made heat put into oceanshas doubled since 1997

Since 1997, Earth's oceans have absorbed human-made heat energy equivalent 
to Hiroshima-style bomb being exploded every second for 75 straight years .for long, scientists have know that more than 90% of the heat energy from human-made global warming goes into the world's oceans .The researchers used oceans observing data that goes back to the British research ship Challenger in the 1870s,and with the help of high -tech modern underwater  monitors and computer models,they tracked how much human -made heat has been buried in the oceans in the past 150 years.The world's oceans absorbed approximately 150 zettajoules of energy between 1865 and 1997,and then absorbed about another 150 zettajoules in the next 18 years .

Down To Earth -16-29 February 2016