Ecoclimax

The Arctic usually gains about 161 cubic km of ice per day in November, but this year’s growth has been about 10% lower, at 139 cubic km per day, with a total ice volume estimated to have accumulated to 10 500 cubic km by the end of the month. But CryoSat shows that the ice was thicker at the end of summer than in most other years, at 116 cm on average. This means there was substantially more ice this year than in 2011. Thicker ice can occur if melting is lower, or if snowfall or ice compaction is higher. Via esa.int

Below the resulting 926 photos were then each used as a frame of video to create this glimpse of the highest tides in the world in the Bay of Fundy.

Google Earth Engine has made it possible for the first time in history to rapidly and accurately process vast amounts of satellite imagery, identifying where and when tree cover change has occurred at high resolution. Global Forest Watch would not exist without it. For those who care about the future of the planet Google Earth Engine is a great blessing! - Dr. Andrew Steer, President and CEO of the World Resources Institute . Source: earthengine.google.com Google Earth Engine combines a multi-petabyte catalog of satellite imagery and geospatial datasets with planetary-scale analysis capabilities and makes it available for scientists, researchers, and developers to detect changes, map trends, and quantify differences on the Earth's surface. Timelapse is a global, zoomable video that lets you see how the Earth has changed over the past 32 years. It is made from 33 cloud-free annual mosaics, one for each year from 1984 to 2016. Via earthengine.google.c...

How can you imagine 4.5 billion years? And how does that compare the amount of time  that humans have been around? A geologist gave the idea to use a football field as a metaphor. And at this end zone is the moment our planet formed Earth's entire history stretches the full 100 yards in between. Every inch is 1.3 million years. Let's start at the beginning and take a walk through earth's entire history.

Each tree is its own adventure. It's an amazing and humbling experience to have the opportunity to climb to the top of these trees that have lived in the same place for such a long time. UC Berkeley forest ecologist Wendy Baxter describes the synthesis of athleticism and science involved in her studies of the impacts of climate change on California's giant sequoias, the world's largest trees. Baxter and her colleagues conduct their research at the tops of these forest monarchs, some of which stretch nearly 300 feet above the forest floor.

Much of the world was cold and dry during the Last Ice Age . The average global temperature around 21,000 years ago was about 6 °C (11 °F) colder than today.  The massive ice sheets locked away water, decreasing the sea level, revealing continental shelves, joining land masses together, and creating vast coastal plains. Bering Land Bridge connected vast expanses of Siberia and Alaska. During the last glacial maximum, 21,000 years ago, the sea level was about 125 meters or 410 feet lower than it is nowadays. Glaciers cover about 8% of Earth's surface, 25% of our planet's land area, and 33% of Alaska.  For comparison, today, glaciers cover approximately: 3% of Earth's surface, 11% of Earth's land area, and 5% of Alaska.    

Via economist.com

CITES PIKE is an index that measures the annual proportion of illegally killed elephants to the total number of carcasses found at each site. The index ranges from 0.0 (no poaching) to f .0 (all carcasses encountered are due to poaching). The PIKE index is calculated for specific MIKE (Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants) sites.

Reptiles are tetrapod animals in the class Reptilia, comprising today's turtles, crocodilians, snakes, amphisbaenians, lizards, tuatara, and their extinct relatives. The study of these traditional reptile orders, historically combined with that of modern amphibians, is called herpetology. Some reptiles are more closely related to birds than they are to other reptiles, the traditional groups of "reptiles" listed above do not together constitute a monophyletic grouping . For this reason, many modern scientists prefer to consider the birds part of Reptilia as well, thereby making Reptilia a monophyletic class. The earliest known proto-reptiles originated around 312 million years ago during the Carboniferous period, having evolved from advanced reptiliomorph tetrapods that became increasingly adapted to life on dry land. Some early examples include the lizard-like Hylonomus and Casineria. Reptiles are tetrapod vertebrates, creatures that either have four limbs or, li...

The reason why we chose the Wander Wagon: One was because we were looking for a mechanically sound van that we knew was going to be able to hopefully take us across the country. And one that was affordable, which we found. And then we also just love the unique features of this van. The skylight windows let in a lot of natural light. There is a shower and a toilet. And it also has an oven which is super cool. Related post: -  Loft on Wheels

The map shows operation renewable electricity sites over 0.01 MW. The area of circles represents installed capacity (maximum power output).

Source: Germanwatch

Cows stranded on quake island. Via newshub.co.nz

"Estimated tree species richness under (A) current climatic conditions (1971–2000) and (B) future climatic conditions (2071–2100). Future climatic conditions were based on the A2 emissions scenario of the Canadian CGM3.1 model" ( After McKenney et al. 2011. ) McKenney et al. 2011. Related posts: - The Trees That Will Start to Vanish Because of Climate Change - Biodiversity of the Contiguous U.S.  - U.S. map after global warming

- The species that have gone extinct - The species that will go extinct IN our lifetime - the species that we will never know because we destroyed their habitats before we could ever know them Designed by Maya Lin as her last memorial, What is Missing? creates, through science-based artworks, an awareness about the present sixth mass extinction of species, connects this loss of species to habitat degradation and loss, and emphasizes that by preventing deforestation, we can both reduce carbon , emissions and protect species and habitats. What Is Missing? is a wake up call and a call to action. It shows us how we can help protect and restore nature, reimagine our relationship to the natural world, showcasing how we could five in ways that balance our needs with the needs of the planet. Via whatismissing.net

This map shows the distance to the center of the Earth of the Earth's terrain both above and below sea-level. The Earth is an oblate spheroid. Like a sphere, but its radius is larger at the equator than at the poles - by around 21 km. Although this bulge is small compared to the size of the Earth, this difference is much larger than the scale of natural features. Everest is 8.8km from sea level, Challenger deep is 11km below sea level. This means that high mountains closer to the equator are further from the centre of the Earth than Everest. Gravity also varies across the Earth's suface,although this influence is smaller,+/- 0.1 km. Both of these are factored into the calculations. The triangles show the maxima (in Ecuador and Peru, also Kilimanjaro in Tanzania) and minima (in the Artie ocean near the Gakkel Ridge) Via stevefaeembra

Global credit rating agency Moody’s

The World Resources Institute, a think-tank, ranked 167 countries, and found that 33 face extremely high water stress by 2040. Via economist.com

If you were to shave off all of the land from the top of every continent and island in the world and fill up the oceans deepest point with that land than the entire Earth would be covered in an ocean two miles deep.

"Baubotanik" is a German term for a quite new field of architecture and research which is based on a traditional approach to construct with branches trunks and the roots of trees The plane tree cube is three-storey building constructed of more than 1000 young trees. In the future, these trees will fuse to one organism. The chances of "Baubotanik" for sure are the possibility to really use the ecological and aesthetic potential of trees with the buildings.

Slime mold is fascinating, because though it’s only a single cell organism with no brain, it somehow stretches its tentacle-like fingers in a coherent pattern in search for food. This time lapse footage speeds up the process of that goopy crawl (in reality it only moves a few centimeters a day), but you get to see how the simple yellow slime eventually envelopes everything around it. A slime mold is used to design an efficient United States and Canadian transport network.

November 5th is the latest sunrise of the year (due to DST) south of 49.5° latitude. Via Brian

A fight breaks out when a husband comes home and finds his wife with another penguin.

A timeline of media-inflamed fears. Via informationisbeautiful.net

The New York City Street Tree Map is the world’s most accurate and detailed map of a city’s street trees. Through this map, you can explore our city’s urban forest, mark trees as favorites and share them with your friends, and record and share all of your caretaking and tree stewardship activities.

Our population remained low - probably less than 1 million people. With the advent of farming, growth picked up. By AD 1, world population reached approximetely 170 million people. It took 200,000 years for our population to reach 1 billion. And only 200 years to reach 7 billion. If current trends continue, global population will peak at 11 billion around 2100. Grouwth is slowing because average fertillity rates are falling in nearly every country.

CSIRO-Mk3.0   (The Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research) Model CSIRO Mk3 developed at CSIRO Atmospheric Research. The CSIRO Mk3 climate system model contains a comprehensive representation of the four major components of the climate system (land surface, atmosphere, oceans and sea-ice), and in its current form is as comprehensive as any of the global coupled models available worldwide. The forerunners to this model (the Mk1 and Mk2 models) have been used in a large number of climate related experiments, and for multi-seasonal predictions. The major aim in the development of the Mk3 climate model has been to provide a coupled atmosphere-ocean system that gives a significantly improved representation of the current climate relative to the prior model generations. It was also highly desirable that this be achieved without the need for any artificial corrections (the so called “flux adjustments”) to the flux quantities connecting the atmospheric and oceanic systems. T...