Climate change will bring extreme conditions to much of Earth’s surface without immediate action. (Image is in the public domain: CC0 1.0 Universal)

Human activities may promote speciation

We applaud the vital work to save species at risk. However, it is a truism (if not a law) of biology, that all species will eventually go extinct. With that sobering thought, can we ask what level of effort should be expended to save those plants and animals that are inevitably doomed? With his new book, Inheritors of the Earth, Chris Thomas, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University of York inspired me to consider an alternative view. He argues that many plants and animals benefit from human activities. For example, many species have expanded their geographic ranges. According to evolutionary biology theory, increasing fragmentation and niche availability drive species diversification. Indeed, Thomas argues that human activities are “increasing the rate at which new species are formed, perhaps to the highest level in Earth’s history.”

Embrace neobiodiversity

Thus, rather than the depressing notion that conservation is fighting a losing battle, we can view some kinds of human activity as actually promoting biodiversity in the long run. This positive view will provoke controversy. However, if we embrace the idea of a new paradigm for maximizing biodiversity, which we can call “neobiodiversity,” conservationists can start to turn toward the most serious threat facing life on Earth: climate change.

Climate change is the biggest threat

Indeed, earlier this month, the IPCC released yet another climate change report again sounding loud warning bells. Just this week, the Washington Post reported on a study published in PNAS showing “massive loss” of insect abundance in pristine rainforest. The researchers identified climate change as the culprit in driving the precipitous decline. Without action, we’re undoubtedly facing environmental catastrophe. Many scientists warn that we may soon reach a variety of tipping points. Beyond these, runaway global warming and its effects are unstoppable. Extreme conditions will prevail across large swathes of Earth. At this point, it won’t matter what species we have saved. They will disappear anyway, and humans along with them. Earth may be uninhabitable but for a few extremophiles.

Conservationists must shift focus to deal with climate change

Given this urgency, we should heed Professor Thomas’s message to “re-examine humanity’s relationship with nature.” We must be done with business as usual. Treating “Earth as a faded masterpiece that we need to restore” is no longer a luxury we can afford. Instead, global conservation must focus on taking all and any steps necessary to combat global warming. At the same time, such measures may include reforestation, which may benefit legacy species, but species-focused conservation may be a priority that no longer takes center stage in a long-term strategy to save life on Earth.

REFERENCES

1. 2018 IPCC Report: Global Warming of 1.5 °C http://www.ipcc.ch/report/sr15/
2. Lister, BC & A. Garcia (2018) Climate-driven declines in arthropod abundance restructure a rainforest food web. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1722477115

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A picture is worth a thousand words, they say. That may be true! Today we’re swamped with information. Images can say a lot with a little. That said, we’re in the digital revolution. So now we’re flooded with zillions of photos and memes. We like and tag images on social media. News websites have photos of current events. We share our own lives with selfies, food or pet pictures.

In today’s firehose of images are powerful stories about nature. Facts and figures are vital. But to connect with the widest audience we must nature’s story. Visual media are the most effective way to do that. Images transcend language. They evoke emotions in ways that words and data cannot. Human devastation, and our natural world’s fragility and beauty are best shown through biodiversity images like the ones you see here. Together they show human impacts on biodiversity, wildlife, the environment, and natural resources. Threats include global warming, deforestation, pollution and wildlife exploitation.

Help to tell the story of biodiversity

To help you share these stories, we’ve put together ten amazing images and graphics. We encourage you to share these images as widely as possible (including appropriate credit). It’s vital now more than ever to tell the story of biodiversity. It’s the only way we’re truly going to make a difference.

In all cases, we have strived to provide appropriate credit to the creators and copyright holders. Please contact us if you recognize an image and additional or alternative attribution is required.

The post The 10 Most Powerful Biodiversity Images appeared first on Biodiversity Professionals.

Advice on how to spot fake news from the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. You can apply these principles to spot dubious claims from those who use unethical fund-raising methods. (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)

A hair-raising fund-raising story

This story begins with a post I read on LinkedIn. The article in question is trying to raise money for a conservation organization. Among several dubious claims, one stuck out. According to the author, for “approximately $12M a single donor could have protected, in perpetuity… trillions of microbial species.”

Well, I’m not a soil scientist. However, I’ve studied biodiversity since the mid-1980s. So I know that we understand microbial biodiversity too poorly to make such a claim. The writer is not a soil scientist, either. But that lack of expertise did not stop him from making this dramatic claim. I commented on his post that there is simply no agreement among biologists about the number of microbial species. In support, I found a Nature article that says, “estimates for the total number of microbial species vary wildly, from as low as 120,000 to tens of millions and higher.” Millions, maybe. But trillions? Who can say? Indeed, biologists can’t even agree on how well Mayr’s definition of species applies to microbes, and prokaryotes in particular. (See e.g., Konstantinidis, et al. 2006). The writer simply has no justification for stating that a donation could save “trillions of microbial species.”

Nevertheless, the writer insisted that he was correct in his use of that unverifiable number. I beg to differ. Any time someone uses an exaggeration, hyperbole or invented data to bolster a cause, particularly when trying to raise money, their motives are suspect. In the old days, such a person would be called a snake oil salesman, a charlatan, a conman or any number of other derogatory names. I avoided such epithets. Instead I tried to present my case rationally, from a scientific standpoint. To no avail.

Bogus claims

The writer made several other claims that I could challenge. For example, the claim that $12M could protect 11 million acres of “life-essential ecosystems.” I have helped to manage a small conservation non-profit called SavingSpecies for the past seven years. We focus on buying cheap, degraded land in high biodiversity areas of the world. The cheapest land we have been able to purchase was in Ecuador at just over $400 per acre. That land was infertile and eroded former cattle pasture. When we bought it, the land was not good even for that any more. So quite how the writer proposed to protect “in perpetuity” land comprising “life-essential ecosystems” for $1.09 per acre is a complete mystery to me.

The corrosive effects of fake news

Dubious claims such as these benefit no-one. Indeed, it’s a sad commentary on our times that we’re swamped with “fake news.” Look no further than Washington DC. You can see the corrosive effects of false and misleading information. For those of us who are in the fund-raising business, it’s more vital than ever to keep our facts and figures straight. Yes, there’s lots of competition for the donor dollar. But that does not justify using hyperbole. Bending facts, fudging figures, massaging data–these are the tools of hustlers and swindlers, not respectable fund-raising enterprises. Here’s why you should stick to the facts.

1. Exaggeration or dubious claims do your enterprise more harm than good.
2. Such claims damage your own credibility, and that of organizations for whom you’re working.
3. The claims of other hard-working fund-raisers and conservationists can also come under suspicion, particularly among non-experts.
4. You provide opponents of conservation with ammunition to use against conservation in general.
5. When donors give to causes based on exaggerated claims, and their expectations aren’t met, they will likely give their future gifts to unrelated causes.

Read up, stand up, and speak up

So, my fellow conservationists and fund-raisers, I implore you (1) to carefully read through claims to ensure that they are based on fact and are verifiable, (2) not to share or like any content that has questionable data, and (3) to call out the perpetrators when you encounter them. Otherwise, we risk being tarred by the same “fake news” brush that plagues other realms of the media. And that jeopardizes the entire donor-funded conservation enterprise.

REFERENCE
Konstantinidis, K, Ramette A and Tiedje JM (2006) The bacterial species definition in the genomic era. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 361(1475): 1929–1940. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2006.1920

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This Fall Webinar Series welcomes Dr. Robert Carver. He will give a guest presentation. His topic is on using JMP effectively to prepare data for analysis. Join this guest webinar. You will be entered in a drawing to receive a free copy of Dr. Carver’s new book, Preparing Data for Analysis in JMP.

Register and mark your calendar! Fall webcasts include:

Sept 20th at 11am ET: Teaching Introductory Statistics
Sept 26th at 10am ET: JMP Basics for Professors and Students
Oct 5th at 2pm ET: Data Summary and Analysis
Oct 11th at 12PM ET: Teaching Engineering Statistics
Oct 24th at 11am ET: Teaching ANOVA and Regression
Oct 26th at 12pm ET: JMP Integration with SAS, R, Matlab…
Oct 31st at 11am ET: Preparing Data for Analysis with JMP (Guest Speaker)
Nov 2nd 10am ET: JMP Basics for Professors and Students
Nov 7th at 12pm ET: Teaching Basic Predictive Modeling
Nov 9th at 12pm ET: Teaching Advanced Predictive Modeling
Nov 13th at 11am ET: Data Summary and Analysis
Nov 14th at 10am ET: Teaching Design of Experiments
Nov 20th at 12pm ET: Scientific Workflow in JMP: Creating Reproducible Analyses
Nov 28th at 10am ET: Visualization and Graphics
Dec 6th at 12pm ET: Multivariate Analysis and Advanced Visualization
Dev 12th at 12pm ET: Teaching Statistics in the Health and Life Sciences
Register now

Who should participate?

Any student, graduate student, or professor looking to enhance their analytics capabilities–no matter which country you’re based in.

What can I expect from a JMP data analysis webcast?

You’ll learn how to get the most out of JMP. You’ll also see how various features can make data analysis easier, faster and more fruitful overall.
For additional webinar details, click here.

Can”t make it to a webcast? Please visit the JMP/SAS Academic Webinar Library for recorded versions of webinars:

Stay tuned for more events and don”t hesitate to reach out with any questions.
Academic@JMP.com
877.594.6567
jmp.com/why

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(Image courtesy of BBC.)

Do you know what the word “biodiversity” means?

In 2010, the UN Year of Biodiversity, the BBC conducted a survey. The survey showed that most people don’t know the meaning of “biodiversity.” Most people thought it was a type of laundry powder. Consider that in perspective. Biodiversity loss is the biggest problem facing us today, alongside global warming. Yet most people don’t even know what the word means. How many could actually give a definition? Given that lack of understanding, we can take hope. We surveyed the world’s languages. We found that most have their own word for “biodiversity.”

How to translate the word “biodiversity”

We used Google Translate to convert the word “biodiversity” into 103 languages. It’s impressive and heartening to realize that interest in biodiversity is truly global. We did find a few gaps! There were a few languages for which we couldn’t find an equivalent word. Do you know of the word for biodiversity in any of those languages? If so, please let us know in the comments, and we’ll add it to the list. Also, if you know of any language not in the list, please let us know. Either contact us, or write your comment below.

How to listen to the translated word for “biodiversity”

For non-native speakers of some of these languages, their word for biodiversity seems like a real tongue twister. If you want to hear how it’s pronounced, type “biodiversity” into the first window in Google Translate. Click the speaker icon below the translated word. You will hear the translated spoken word. (Not all languages have this feature.)

Original translation data

Click for the spreadsheet. Biodiversity translated into world languages

Please share this article to help raise global awareness of biodiversity.

List of words for biodiversity in 103 languages

Afrikaans – biodiversiteit
Albanian – biodiversiteti
Amharic – ብዝሃ ሕይወት
Arabic – التنوع البيولوجي
Armenian – Կենսաբազմազանություն
Azerbaijani – bioloji müxtəliflik
Bangla/Bengali – জীব বৈচিত্র্য
Basque – biodibertsitatea
Belarusian – біяразнастайнасці
Bosnian – biodiverzitet
Bulgarian – биологичното разнообразие
Burmese – ဇီဝမျိုးစုံမျိုးကွဲများ
Catalan – biodiversitat
Cebuano – biodiversidad
Chinese (Mandarin) – 生物多样性
Corsican – a biodiversità
Croatian – bioraznolikosti
Czech – biodiverzity
Danish – biodiversitet
Dutch – biodiversiteit
English – biodiversity
Esperanto – biodiverseco
Estonian – bioloogiline mitmekesisus
Filipino – biodiversity
Finnish – biodiversiteetti
French – biodiversité
Galacian – biodiversidade
Georgian – ბიომრავალფეროვნება
German – biodiversität
Greek – βιοποικιλότητα
Gujarati – જૈવવિવિધતા
Haitian Creole – divèsite biyolojik
Hausa – bambancin halittu
Hawaiian – nā meaola like’oleHebrew – המגוון הביולוגי
Hindi – जैव विविधता
Hmong – biodiversity
Hungarian – a biológiai sokféleség
Icelandic – líffræðileg fjölbreytileik
Igbo – Ụdị ndụ dị iche iche
Indonesian – keanekaragaman hayati
Irish – bithéagsúlacht
Italian – biodiversità
Japanese – 生物多様性
Javanese – keanekaragaman hayati
Kannada – ಜೀವವೈವಿಧ್ಯ
Kazakh – Биоәртүрлілік
Khmer – ជីវចំរុះ
Korean – 생물 다양성
Kurdish – biyanîparêz
Kyrgyz – биологиялык ар түрдүүлүк
Lao – ຊີວະນາໆພັນ
Latin – biodiversitatis
Latvian – bioloģiskā daudzveidība
Lithuanian – biologinė įvairovė
Luxembourgish – biodiversitéit
Macedonian – Биодиверзитет
Malagasy – harena voajanahary
Malay – biodiversitiMalayalam – ജൈവവൈവിദ്ധ്യം
Maltese – bijodiversità
Maori – te koiora
Marathi – जैवविविधता
Mongolian – Биологийн төрөл зүйл
Nepali – जैव विविधता
Norwegian – biologisk mangfold
Nyanja – zachilengedwe
Pashto – ژوندی تنوع
Persian – تنوع زیستی
Polish – różnorodności biologicznej
Portuguese – biodiversidade
Punjabi – ਜੀਵ ਵਿਭਿੰਨਤਾ
Romanian – biodiversitatea
Russian – биоразнообразия
Samoan – meaola eseese
Scottish Gaelic – bith-iomadachd
Serbian – Биодиверзитет
Shona – biodiversity
Sindhi – حياتي تنوع
Sinhala – ජෛව විවිධත්වය
Slovak – biodiverzita
Slovenian – biotske raznovrstnosti
Somali – kala duwanaanta bay’ada
Southern Sotho – mefuta-futa ea lihloliloeng
Spanish – biodiversidad
Sundanese – biodiversiti
Swahili – biodiversity
Swedish – biologiska mångfalden
Tajik – Гуногунии биологӣ
Tamil – பல்லுயிர்
Telugu – జీవవైవిధ్యం
Thai – ความหลากหลายทางชีวภาพ
Turkish – biyoçeşitlilik
Ukrainian – Біорізноманіття
Urdu – جیو ویو
Uzbek – bioxilma-xillik
Vietnamese – Đa dạng sinh học
Welsh – bioamrywiaeth
Western Frisian – biodiversity
Xhosa – eziphilayo
Yiddish – ביאָדיווערסיטי
Yoruba – oniruuru ipinsiyeleyele
Zulu – eziphilayo

Do these languages have a word for biodiversity?

Cambodian
Fiji
Quechua
Tatar
Tibetan
Tonga

The post The word for “biodiversity” in 103 different world languages appeared first on Biodiversity Professionals.

A stark future awaits if we fail to act on climate change. (Credit: Wikimedia, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license)

Why is a video infographic helpful?

It can be hard to visualize global temperature changes. For example, a simple line graph shows a single number changing over time. It doesn’t show the complex data comprising changes in the range of temperatures across the planet over time.

Who can use this video infographic of global warming?

Scientists, educators, teachers and students can benefit from a better way to communicate global temperature change. This video infographic accomplishes that. It shows temperature anomalies arranged by country from 1900 to 2016. The visualization based on GISTEMP data, maintained by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The video is available for download free-of-charge on Flickr (see below for download link).

How can I use this video infographic?

The video infographic is ideal to illustrate the increasing urgency of climate change. You can clearly see that over time, temperature anomaly frequency is increasing. No special data interpretation skills are needed. Since it is available as a download, it can be used offline. Therefore, presenters could include this in a digital slide presentation, for example. An educator could show the video to students and use it as a way to engage students in a discussion about global warming. It’s also a good opportunity to talk to students about the importance of data visualization. Edward Tufte’s book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, is an excellent primer on this topic.

A picture is worth a thousand words, it is said. Well, good data visualization can convey complex ideas more readily than words. With that in mind, I encourage you to make use of this resource and share widely with colleagues and fellow Biodiversity Professionals.

CREDIT AND DOWNLOAD LINK
Antti Lipponen: Temperature anomalies arranged by country 1900 – 2016.
DOWNLOAD (13.1 MB MP4 file)

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(Image credit: BAM Construction and CIRIA)

With construction and development essential for continued economic growth, it is crucial that the current upward trend does not come at the expense of the natural environment. Further awareness of the relationship between natural systems and a strong economy has led to organisations developing plans and strategies that integrate both economic and environmental targets.

An essential part of an organisation meeting environmental targets is to ensure that biodiversity becomes an integrated part of construction planning and projects. At present there is still some uncertainty surrounding incorporating biodiversity into projects with many viewing it as a topic only suited to technical experts.

This is where the BIG Biodiversity Challenge plays a unique role, allowing organisations to reach environmental targets whilst raising awareness and training members of staff. The challenge has a simple message of ‘do one thing’ for biodiversity which demonstrates that enhancements can be simple, affordable and achievable. These biodiversity enhancements can range from installing bat boxes and bug hotels through to detailed action plans and management strategies.

Now in its third year the challenge has continued to grow with new award categories launched to reflect the dynamic nature of the industry and focusing on the core areas of infrastructure, urban development and mineral extraction.

The 2016 award categories include:

• Client Award
• Community Engagement Award
• Large Scale Permanent Award
• Medium Scale Permanent Award
• Small Scale Permanent Award
• Maintenance & Management Award
• Pollinator Award
• Temporary Award

The BIG Biodiversity Challenge is free to enter and the deadline is August 8, with the 2016 awards ceremony taking place on September 15 in a central London venue. There are also fantastic sponsorship opportunities for organisations wanting to be involved in this year’s Awards ceremony. For further information on how to enter, and to be inspired by last year’s entries, please click to visit www.bigchallenge.info

Michael Small, Project Manager, CIRIA

The post The BIG Biodiversity Challenge 2016 appeared first on Biodiversity Professionals.

Indigenous communities can play a pivotal role in the success of a conservation program. (Image courtesy of junglephotos.com)

However, many officially protected areas suffer from neglect, poor management, and corruption. This new research emphasizes the pivotal role local communities could play in addressing these shortcomings. From their analysis of villages in a region in Papua New Guinea, the researchers conclude: “…local monitoring contributes to effective protection and deters unregulated exploitation,” and that, “Clearly, local people are effective in protecting large areas in a relatively natural state.”

Giving local people a stake in the protection and restoration of their surrounding area could make all the difference, even to established conservation programs. The bottom-up approach can provide the community with much-needed jobs through ecotourism, sustainable harvesting and conservation area protection. In turn, local jobs help to prevent migration to urban areas, and lessen the pressure to engage in slash-and-burn agriculture or to sell out to the highest bidder, which may be a mining or lumber company, or big agriculture.

We certainly need new and thoughtful approaches, since the past half century of business as usual has got us nowhere.

References
Sheil, D., M. Boissière, and G. Beaudoin. 2015. Unseen sentinels: local monitoring and control in conservation’s blind spots. Ecology and Society 20(2): 39.
http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-07625-200239
See also Mongabay: Local stewardship: conservation’s ‘vast blind spot’

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There is a risk that traditional conservation strategies oriented toward biodiversity may not be effective at protecting the economic benefits of an ecosystem, and vice-versa. ~ Bill Adams

Putting a price on the services which a particular ecosystem provides may encourage the adoption of greener policies, but it may come at the price of biodiversity conservation. Writing today (30 October) in the journal Science, Professor Bill Adams of the University’s Department of Geography argues that assigning a quantitative value to nature does not automatically lead to the conservation of biodiversity, and may in fact contribute to species loss and conflict.

While assigning a monetary value to the benefits of an ecosystem can be an essential tool in the environmental planning process, unequal access to those benefits, particularly where there are differences in wealth and power, can lead to poor trade-offs being made, both for the ecosystem itself and those who rely on it.

“Putting a price on what nature provides is not in itself a conservation measure,” said Adams. “There is a risk that traditional conservation strategies oriented toward biodiversity may not be effective at protecting the economic benefits of an ecosystem, and vice-versa.”

For example, when stream channels in the US state of Maryland were re-engineered to provide a means of natural flood control, it ended up causing the loss of trees which had been growing next to the water and were unable to adapt to their new, drier environment.

The ways in which we depend on our natural environment are increasingly expressed as ‘ecosystem services’, or the range of benefits we get from nature for free. These benefits include the provision of food and clean water, erosion control and carbon storage. Quantifying the value of nature in this way is meant to allow policymakers to consider the potential economic and social impacts of altering a particular habitat.

This approach does sometimes lead to win-win scenarios, where the value of ecosystem services is dependent upon a high level of biodiversity. One example is in the coffee plantations of Costa Rica, where the retention of forest habitat in areas around the plantations doubled the amount of pest control of coffee berry borer beetle provided by birds, which benefitted the coffee farmers while protecting biodiversity.

However, consideration of ecosystem services when making decisions does not automatically lead to retention of biodiversity. “In many cases, trade-offs are made,” said Adams.

Several factors cause tension between biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services. One problem is that the biological and physical processes that guarantee the supply of specific ecosystem services may be different from those that support valued species. An ecosystem that is managed to deliver particular services may not support particular elements of biodiversity.

A second problem is that there are often no markets for some vital services, such as soil formation and nutrient cycling, and while payment schemes can be created to create market-like structures, the value assigned to ecosystem services depends on market prices, which are subject to change.

A third problem arises from the institutional and political processes linking economic benefits from ecosystems and human wellbeing. “Unequal access to benefits, for example where there are differences in wealth and power among stakeholders, can lead to trade-offs being made, with negative impacts for the ecosystem itself and those who rely on it,” Adams comments “It’s not enough to identify the net benefits of ecosystem services; it also matters who gets them.”

For example, in Nepal, research has shown that forests managed by the local community, rather than by the state, yielded benefits of clean water, tourism and harvested wild goods. However, these forests restricted poorer people’s access to forest-derived products, creating hardship, illegal use and impacts on other areas.

“In a world run according to economic arguments, the survival of biotic diversity will depend on its price,” said Adams. “Sometimes economics will favour conservation and sometimes it won’t. But conservationists need to plan for both outcomes.”

The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to the original page. For image rights, please see the credits associated with each individual image.

Original article: Does it help conservation to put a price on nature?

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Up to now, conservationists (and their donors) have assumed that conserving the maximum biodiversity also stores the most carbon. It’s supposedly a win-win. But two new studies turn this assumption its head.

In a July 2015 paper in Nature, the authors report that only a few “hyperdominant” species are responsible for most of the carbon stored in biomass, based on research in the Amazon rainforest. (Mongabay’s article on the Amazon carbon sequestration study provides a good synopsis of the paper.)

This work is consistent with another study on REDD and biodiversity published in Conservation Biology. This research highlights how meeting REDD+ targets will not substantially support biodiversity conservation. (The study is summarized in a blog article on the CIFOR website.)

The conclusion? Preserving the most species by leaving rainforest intact, or attempting to restore original biodiversity to degraded areas, is not the most efficient way to store carbon. That carbon would otherwise enter the atmosphere and contribute to global warming.

The findings present conservation organizations with a conundrum, especially those that emphasize carbon storage as a benefit of biodiversity conservation. Do they carry on business as usual, hoping that their donors and the public won’t care about the science? That would be disingenuous, if not dishonest. A better approach would be to switch focus and emphasize the importance of biodiversity conservation in its own right.

I’ve never been a big fan of tying biodiversity conservation to carbon storage because conflating the two amounts to a compromise that neither benefits conservation in the long run, nor significantly reduces carbon emissions. Indeed, paying a conservation organization to “offset” our personal carbon emissions simply assuages our guilt. Directly minimizing our personal carbon footprint by driving less and reducing power consumption is much more effective and empowering.

The point here is that carbon is essentially an economic and political problem, not a conservation problem. There are many ways to reduce emissions before we ever need conservation to be part of the solution. So should conservation organizations completely disentangle themselves from the carbon offset business? It may well be time to do so.

References
Sophie Fauset, S. et al. (2015) Hyperdominance in Amazonian forest carbon cycling. Nature Communications 6: 6857 doi:10.1038/ncomms7857
Murray, J. P. et al. (2015) Spatial patterns of carbon, biodiversity, deforestation threat, and REDD+ projects in Indonesia. Conservation Biology DOI: 10.1111/cobi.12500

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