Ecoclimax

Mars receives 57% less sunlight than Earth. Sunset on Mars Sunset on Earth

For the first time, a NASA satellite has quantified in three dimensions how much dust makes the trans-Atlantic journey from the Sahara Desert to the Amazon rainforest. Among this dust is phosphorus, an essential nutrient that acts like a fertilizer, which the Amazon depends on in order to flourish. The new dust transport estimates were derived from data collected by a lidar instrument on NASA's Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation, or CALIPSO, satellite from 2007 though 2013. An average of 27.7 million tons of dust per year – enough to fill 104,980 semi trucks – fall to the surface over the Amazon basin. The phosphorus portion, an estimated 22,000 tons per year, is about the same amount as that lost from rain and flooding. The finding is part of a bigger research effort to understand the role of dust and aerosols in the environment and on local and global climate.

Flight Stream Airflow Globe

Esri and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) are pleased to announce the development of the highest spatial resolution ecological land units (ELUs) map of the world ever produced. The Global ELUs map portrays a systematic division and classification of ecological and physiographic information about land surface features. The work was commissioned by the intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations (GEO), and published in print by the Association of American Geographers (AAG). “This map provides, for the first time, a web-based, GIS-ready, global ecophysiographic data product for land managers, scientists, conservationists, planners, and the public to use for global and regional scale landscape analysis and accounting,” said Roger Sayre from the USGS. “The Global ELU map advances an objective, repeatable, ‘big data’ approach to the synthesis and classification of important earth surface data layers into distinct and ecologically meaningful land units.” The ecological la...

Beneath the towering redwoods lives one of the most peculiar creatures in California: the banana slug. They're coated with a liquid crystal ooze that solves many problems slugs face in the forest - and maybe some of our own.

The series imagines a pattern of extreme weather changes, forcing the earth’s natural and urban landscapes into ruin and disrepair. beloved landmarks, towns and touristic sites are afflicted by heat waves, ice storms and droughts, leaving each in a state of decay and degeneration. Kazantsev envisages venice’s world-celebrated canals without water, leaving a sad scene of abandoned gondolas at the bottom of an empty waterway; unusually warm conditions sees an alpine town without any sign of snow, the unfortunate scene unfolding from a lone tram car descending down the moistureless mountainside; beachgoers appear to find the sight of a mammoth glacier sitting just off the sandy shores an ordinary circumstance. ‘Cataclysm happens’ - made for burjui design bureau and their client, gefest insurance company – sheds an unnerving light on the potential for natural disaster, and uncovers the alarming scenarios if such havoc were to ensue. Huge iceberg sailed to the beach. Barcelona’s...

 February 11, 2015 marks five years in space for NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which provides incredibly detailed images of the whole sun 24 hours a day. Capturing an image more than once per second, SDO has provided an unprecedentedly clear picture of how massive explosions on the sun grow and erupt ever since its launch on Feb. 11, 2010. The imagery is also captivating, allowing one to watch the constant ballet of solar material through the sun's atmosphere, the corona.  

The scientific phenomenon of "playing dead," technically called "tonic immobility," is used by animals in high stress situations. Here we see shark trainer Cristina Zenato induce this behavior and explain her theories behind how it may be used in a wider variety of situations.  

Google's New Robo-Dog That Won't Fall Over - Even If You Kick It Super Hard.

A number of people who've seen NASA's annual lunar phase and libration videos have asked what the other side of the Moon looks like, the side that can't be seen from the Earth. This video answers that question. The imagery was created using Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter data.  

INGREDIENTS: CAFFEINE, CHLOROGENIC ACIDS (5-CAFFEOYLQUINIC ACID. 3.4- DICAFFEOYLQUINIC ACID, 3-CAFFEO-4-FERULOYLQUINIC ACID. 5-P-COUMAROYL- QUINIC ACID), CAFESTOL, KAHWEOL, AMINO ACIDS, SOLUBLE DIETARY FIBRE {GALACTOMANNANS AND TYPE II ARABINOGALACTANS), GALACTOSE, ARABINOSE, FURANS. PYRIDINES, PYRAZINES, PYRROLS. ALDEHYDES, MELANOIDINS, FATTY ACIDS (LINOLEIC ACID, OLEIC ACID, LINOLENIC ACID, COFFEADIOL, ARABIOL I), ASH, STEROLS {4-DESMETHYLSTEROLS, 4-METHYLSTEROLS, 4,4-DIMETHYL-STEROLS, ALPHA-, BETA AND GAMMA-TOCOPHEROLS), FLAVOURS (2,3-BUTANE-DIONE, 2,3-PENTANEDIONE, 1 0CTEN-30NE, 2-HYDROXY-3-METHYL-2CYCLOPENTENE-1-ONE PROPANAL, 2-METHYL PROPANAL, 3-METHYL-PROPANAL, 2-METHYLBUTANAL, 4-METHYLBUTANAL, HEXANAL (E)-2-NONENAL METHIONAL, METHANETHIOL, 4-METH YL-2-BUTENO-1 -THIOL, 2 METHYL-4-FURANTHIOL, 5-DIMETHYL-TRISULFIDE. 2-FURFURYLTHIOL, 2-FURAN METHANTHIOL, 2-(METHYL-THlOL)-PROPANAL, 2(METHYLTHIO-METHYL)FURAN, 3,5-DI HYDRO-4(2H)-THIOPHENONE, 2ACETYL-2-TYAZOLINE, 4METHYLBUTAN...

Every day, New York City’s 5.5 million commuters seed the city subways with bacteria from the food they eat, the pets or plants they keep, and their shoes, sneezes and unwashed hands. For the first time, researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College sampled DNA in New York City’s 466 open subway stations. They found genetic material from 15,152 different species, most of them harmless or unidentified. Almost half the DNA belonged to bacteria. No two subway stations were exactly the same, and the research continues. So far, the scientists have identified 67 bacteria species associated with disease and infections. Here are details on a few of the bacteria found.

Illusion of Lights introduces you to the concept of movement and time that visually explores our night skies. Beginning with the dazzling chaos of urban light pollution, the film takes you on a magnificent trip across pristine wilderness areas and shares with you the wonders of our night skies. With hundreds of thousands of gorgeous images produced especially for this project, Illusion of Lights gives you scene after scene of unique and detailed views from locations few will ever encounter. Fly over high altitude peaks, soar with the wind, and follow the Milky Way as it dances through the afterhours. From beyond the stars to beneath our feet, each time-lapsed sequence gives the viewer a visual narrative that attempts to communicate what the artist experiences each night in the field; natures expressions of human curiosity and ambition. Brad Goldpaint spent 3 years of creative exploration crafting visual metaphors which reflect aspects of existence that are often hidden from everyd...

U.S. Daily Temperature Anomalies 1964-2013 U.S. Daily Temperature Anomalies 1964-2013 charts 50 years of temperature anomalies in the United States. The timeline and map plots temperature anomalies from 2,716 weather stations in the US, which have data going back 50 years. Each station's daily temperature recordings have been compared to its corresponding monthly distribution. If the temperature at the station fell in the bottom or top 2% on a given day it is labelled an anomaly. The map animates through the 50 years of temperature anomalies at all 2,716 weather stations. Warm anomalies are show on the map in red and cold anomalies are displayed with blue dots. Beneath the map a graph plots the yearly proportion of warm anomalies to cold anomalies. The graph shows a clear trend towards ever increasing warm anomalies in the United States. Via googlemapsmania

Atoms are very weird. Wrapping your head around exactly how weird, is close to impossible – how can you describe something that is SO removed from humans experience? But then again, they kind of make up everything, so let us try anyways.  

In our terrestrial view of things, the speed of light seems incredibly fast. But as soon as you view it against the vast distances of the universe, it's unfortunately very slow. This animation illustrates, in realtime, the journey of a photon of light emitted from the sun and traveling across a portion of the solar system.