Mining sets off earthquake in west Germany
Mining in west Germany has caused dozens of small tremors in the past year.
“A police spokesman in the Saarlouis region on the French border said the earthquake measured 4.0 on the Richter scale, the strongest on record in the area, and had knocked over chimneys and caused electricity outages. Roughly 1,000 demonstrators gathered near the epicenter in Saarwellingen, police said, to demand an end to mining work which has sparked dozens of small tremors this year alone.” Reuters
MSNBC.com, Alan Boyle reports: “The first-ever comprehensive map of our planet’s marine environment shows that human activity has heavily affected 41 percent of the world’s ocean-covered area, with just a tiny percentage left relatively untouched.”
The map will be in the Feb. 15 issue of Science and was shown in Boston at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on February 14. It represents impact data for 17 different activities from fishing and commercial shipping to pollution and climate change. The work was conducted at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at UC Santa Barbara and involved 19 scientists from a broad range of universities, NGOs, and government agencies.
The Stats
- Ecosystems affected the most: coral reefs, continental shelves and the deep ocean.
- Biggest human impact was seen in the North Sea, the South and East China Seas, the Caribbean and North America’s East Coast.
Ben Halpern, the study’s lead author: “This project allows us to finally start to see the big picture of how humans are affecting the oceans. Our results show that when these and other individual impacts are summed up, the big picture looks much worse than I imagine most people expected. It was certainly a surprise to me.”
“There is definitely room for hope,” added Halpern. “With targeted efforts to protect the chunks of the ocean that remain relatively pristine, we have a good chance of preserving these areas in good condition.”
David Garrison, biological oceanography program director at NSF: “This research is a critically needed synthesis of the impact of human activity on ocean ecosystems. The effort is likely to be a model for assessing these impacts at local and regional scales.”
links
http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/GlobalMarine
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23155918/
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-02/uoc–srf021108.php
