Natural resource depletion - July 25
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Unsettling Infographic Details the Impending Disappearance of World's Natural Resources
BBC via Planetizen
The BBC has provided an infographic timeline indicating when scientists and researchers predict valuable resources and ecosystems will disappear, urging planners and officials to address the dangers of current population and consumption levels.
The data used to create the infographic can be found here (PDF).
Link to Infographic
(25 July 2012)
Maps spark concern over corporate water grab
Astrid Zweynert, Reuters
...The Aqueduct Alliance, which allows users to create maps by combining hydrological data with geographically specific details, gives companies and investors unprecedented detail of water availability in some of the world's largest river basins.
The promoters say the data should help companies use water more responsibly while helping them to manage their exposure to risk.
But critics fear the data could be used to cash in on an increasingly scarce natural resource - two thirds of people are expected to face water shortages by 2025.
The maps, which are powered by previously proprietary Coca-Cola data collected over years of research in locations wherever the world's biggest soft drinks firm had manufacturing sites, are now publicly available for free on the Internet...
Link to interactive maps
(24 July 2012)
Dramatic Time-Lapse Videos Show Changes to Earth’s Surface Using 40 Years of Landsat Images
Jaymi Heimbuch, Treehugger
How can we see what's happened to the earth's surface over the last 40 years? Well, the Landsat satellite has been taking image after image -- in fact, a complete image of Earth's surface every 16 days -- for the last four decades. That means we have all the data we might need, if we could figure out the best way to look at it all. Thankfully, there is a high-tech tool that can handle such a pile of information. Google's Earth Engine is taking all the data captured by Landsat over the last 40 years and making sense of it all, so that we can really see how the planet's surface has changed over the years...
Link to more videos
(25 July 2012)
