Forest Planet
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Spock: Science *and* adventure
To mark the sad passing of Leonard Nimoy today, I publish a short essay I wrote 20 years ago as a PhD student: When I was seven years old, a popular playtime game was play-acting Star Trek and it will come as no surprise to many of my current friends that I always played … Continue reading
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The trend towards applying economic value to forest ecosystems is contentious. While the valuing of the processes of nature (“ecosystem services”) or valuing of their stock value (“natural capital”) is potentially advantageous in helping to tackle challenges of nature’s conservation and protection, it is not unambiguously beneficial. I therefore wanted to find a way to … Continue reading
Having discovered Powtoon, I’ve now made another one. This time, with my elder son’s voice over, we’ve made a little introduction to the concept of natural capital and ecosystem services. You might argue that the “payment” bit is a bit presumptuous, but I wanted to at least raise the question of who has responsibility … Continue reading
Here is an extract from my recent eBook, Thirteen Short Chapters on Remote Sensing. It is the first part of “Chapter 4: Two things that can give remote sensing a bad name”. I thought it contentious enough to post as a blog entry to generate a bit of discussion. It also links back to previous … Continue reading
OK, strictly speaking it’s not origami, since there are no folds, but here is a visualisation of the global carbon cycle using a paper cut-outs motif. Forests and the carbon cycle are strongly linked since they do most of the photosynthesis that takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. They also respire, and their … Continue reading
I hate petrol [1]. As a fossil fuel its combustion contributes CO2 to the atmosphere, and so contributes to climate change. The particulates it emits on combustion contribute to inner-city pollution. Its extraction around the world is a dirty process, despite some half-hearted efforts to convince us otherwise. And the global appetite for oil-based fuels … Continue reading
A great new video from Malawi and some good coverage in the Daily Times newspaper: “Artists invent peculiar way of saving trees“. The PATANI (Plant a tree and name it) project was under the REDD Horizon banner, but was entirely the result of the hard work and initiative of Myck Fisha and Clifford Mkanthama following the … Continue reading
