The Humorous and the Sad

[PeteC]

Big Animal Extinction Impoverishes Soil

Megafauna extinctions prove a key factor in reduced soil fertility. David Biello reports

By about 10,000 years ago, nearly 100 species of large animals had been recently driven to extinction around the globe. This march of megafauna mortality coincides suspiciously with the arrival of another large animal in their vicinity: humans.

The die off in South America included giant ground sloths and armadillo-like animals the size of cars known as glyptodonts. And the deaths seem responsible for the dearth of nutrients in Amazon rainforest soils today. So says a study in the journal Nature Geoscience. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)

Plainly put, these big animals disperse a lot of phosphorous in their feces. Once the big animals are gone, there's no way for the phosphorous to get from one part of the rainforest to another. As a result, the Amazon rainforest even today is struggling to recover from that loss of fertility.

Other parts of the world face the same poop paucity predicament, according to the researchers’ model. But the impact outside the Amazon was less severe, for reasons still unknown. What is clear is that the impact of extinction reverberates down through the millennia, a clear signal that we’ve been living in the Anthropocene for a while.
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3,000 Years of Abusing Earth on a Global Scale

A new perspective emanating from archaeology and ecology suggests that humanity has spent thousands of years making widespread and profound changes to the "natural" world

Wherever you go on this blue, green and white globe of ours, odds are some person has been there before you—and left a mark. That's because the hunting, farming or burning practices of our most distant ancestors have shaped most land areas on the planet, argues an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists and ecologists in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. If we are indeed living in the Anthropocene—a new geologic epoch brought on by the outsized environmental effects of the human species—then this new interval isn't just a few hundred years old, it is older than the industrial revolution.

The researchers set out to investigate just how long human being have been profoundly changing the environment on land. "This is a super important question for the identity of humanity," argues ecologist Erle Ellis of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, a co-author. "Are we the people who transformed the planet for hundreds of generations, or the people who just recently started destroying things?"

To answer that outstanding question the researchers started with a vast spread of archaeological and ecological data from around the world, particularly micro charcoal records from sediment cores. The charcoal delivers a long-term record of human burning, whether intentional or accidental, that coincides with the arrival of modern humans in a particular area. That arrival also often coincides with the extinction of large predators and large animals, generally.

But how exactly do humans impact a new environment? Scientists have used computer models that aim to estimate how quickly and how profoundly Homo sapiens change the landscape. One option estimates land use simply based on the number of humans around, assuming a minimum acreage required to support a person. The other model has humans relatively quickly sprawl through an entire area, but then contract to intensify land use in support of a larger but denser population. This might be dubbed the laziness principle—humans invest the least amount of work, technology or any other resource as possible to survive and even thrive, these researchers argue. "People are doing the easiest thing, knocking out top predators early on," Ellis explains. "There's a pretty big impact per person to make a living, [because people are] burning big swathes of forest just to make it easier to get some game."

According to this model, and the charcoal record where it is available, a relatively small number of humans began to transform most of the planet's land surface at least 3,000 years ago. "If people can get away with less work, they're going to do less work," says archaeologist Dorian Fuller of University College London, who also contributed to the research.

Take for example rice cultivation in Asia, developed some 6,000 years ago in the Yangtze River Valley but not adopted for another thousand years or so in areas of southern China and Southeast Asia. "You have relatively happy hunter-gatherer-fishers who don't want to put in the effort" to farm rice until population density requires it, Fuller explains.

As the human population swells—as seen in the record of fertilizer use in Europe and Asia—the resources then become more intensively used. This is not confined to agriculture; archaeologists find a similar intensification in the hunting patterns of Paleolithic Europeans after the decline of big game. These proto-Europeans began to hunt a wider range of smaller animals more intensively as well as developing the food preparation technology to extract more food from a larger array of sources. This idea further suggests that humanity has escaped time and time again from the Malthusian trap of population colliding with limited resources by transforming the relationship between human population and the environment through technology, whether through the invention of cooking or modern mechanized agriculture. Humanity simply applies technology to derive more from a given resource, whether it be copper or farmland.

That trend continues into the present day, the researchers argue. The most modern industrial agriculture focuses primarily on the best land it can get. The human population has shifted away from subsistence and low productivity agriculture, collecting in cities as fossil-fueled machines help fewer farmers work the land. "The next revolution is when the majority of people get into cities and are fed by a minority," Fuller explains. This process is already complete in industrialized countries where less than 1 percent of the population feeds the rest, but "we're not finished with that yet," in developing countries such as China and India, Fuller says. Peak farmland may be imminent.

If the human impact is longstanding and widespread, then the landscape is as much in recovery from past impacts as it is enduring new changes. Think of the cutting back of the Amazon rainforest—itself potentially a recovery from earlier, more intensive human use before the arrival of Europeans—versus the regrowth of the forests of the eastern U.S. In fact, the woodland ecosystems of Europe and South America commonly thought of as natural may be the legacy of prior human use. "Most of the forest have had people in them, interacting with them and transplanting species around for thousands of years," Fuller notes. "We have very little in the way of natural forests, which doesn't mean that we shouldn't be trying to reforest environments and have forests." After all, the modern phase of the Anthropocene may be the first time humans can choose intentionally what an appropriate level of impact might be.

Fully answering this question of how long the human impact on land has been widespread requires a broader global synthesis of the archaeological and paleoecological data on human population and land use. Most of that data is available—and has been examined—in a local rather than global context, such as the impacts of humans on the Yucatan Peninsula or Australia. Nevertheless, what data exists suggests that this is a "used planet," in the words of the authors. "We've been husbanding these biomes and creating our own types of ecologies—the cultivated lands, the rangelands—we've been doing this for a very long time," Ellis argues. "We've been living in that Anthropocene biosphere since prehistory."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/

[ridgeydidge.au]

My dear prcssct,
can you please make clear what your point is...?
reproducing a tract from a respected journal doesn't necessarily reflect positively on its plagiarising poster, unless you have a point to make that is somehow relevant to a forum dedicated to life in Hua Hin.
perhaps I missed something, but it is a rather puzzling, albeit intriguing post of a well argued and interesting idea...is that the point?
It's a sincere question!

[PeteC]

It's no different than posting an interesting news story, with a reference link to where it came from clearly visible at the bottom. It's a forum section for items of interest about Science and Nature and unless we have scientists as members on here, most of what we'll have is from other sources.

In regards to your "life in Hua Hin" comment, I suggest you read more threads. Thankfully the general forum content is more diversified than that.

Now, try to contribute something worthwhile and interesting.....OK. Pete

[ridgeydidge.au]

ok , I will contribute something worthwhile, albeit uninteresting. You are in serious breach of copyright publishing an entire article like this, even with a reference at the end. You would be better protected personally and as a business to either link to to the publisher or quote judiciously from the text with your own paraphrase, or you risk the very litigious wrath of a large publishing network using lawyers who take no prisoners.
It is meant to be good advice, not smart ass commentary.

[PeteC]

I'm sure the forum management will take what you say into consideration if they feel posting policy needs to be reviewed. Pete

[Khundon1975]

My dear prcssct,
can you please make clear what your point is...?
reproducing a tract from a respected journal doesn't necessarily reflect positively on its plagiarising poster, unless you have a point to make that is somehow relevant to a forum dedicated to life in Hua Hin.
perhaps I missed something, but it is a rather puzzling, albeit intriguing post of a well argued and interesting idea...is that the point?
It's a sincere question!

My dear ridgeydidge.au a sincere suggestion, I suggest you look up the meaning of plagiarism.

[ridgeydidge.au]

the Oxford dictionary defines plagiarism as “The action or practice of taking someone else's work, idea, etc., and passing it off as one's own; literary theft.”

It means you CANNOT Cut and paste from electronic journals, websites or other sources to create a piece of work. the above mentioned article, despite its reference at the end is literary theft at best. there are better technical terms in legalise, but you certainly wouldn't want to read them in a document addressed to you.

[MrPlum]

Doesn't 'Fair Use' allow it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

[ridgeydidge.au]

Doesn't 'Fair Use' allow it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

the article you cite confirms my viewpoint, rather than refutes it (notwithstanding the fact that wikipedia is a really dodgy source which is considered unreliable in academic citation)
that being said, my intentions are honourable in that I am attempting to prevent exposure to potential legal action, not argue for the sake of it (in the spirit of altruism).

[J.J.B.]

the Oxford dictionary defines plagiarism as “The action or practice of taking someone else's work, idea, etc., and passing it off as one's own; literary theft.”

It means you CANNOT Cut and paste from electronic journals, websites or other sources to create a piece of work. the above mentioned article, despite its reference at the end is literary theft at best. there are better technical terms in legalise, but you certainly wouldn't want to read them in a document addressed to you.

prcscct didn't try to "pass it off as [his] own", quite the contrary and it's certainly not plagiarism either as there is no claim to be the originator. As for your assertion that somebody "CANNOT Cut and paste..." you are clearly wrong there since prcscct has apparently managed to do just that. Nor has prcscct "create[d] a piece of work", only promoted it. prcscct has shared it with others for the benefit of the publication, without which many would never have been aware of its existence.

That is what 'social media' is all about. It's not 'owned' media, 'print' media, 'broadcast' media, 'earned' media etcetera, it's about taking something interesting, informative or useful (the technical term is 'content') and sharing it with a broader and previously unaware audience. I would say that is more accurately the 'spirit of altruism'. If Scientific American didn't want their work to be shared then they are pretty foolish setting up a website and even more one that includes almost a dozen 'share' options through various social media channels. Even behind a paywall, they can request that patrons don't share work but it's not much more than a request since the Internet is - so far - an uncontrolled free for all.

In fact, for what prcscct has done, Scientific American would nominally charge a Rights Fee of $500 and only if the country where the website was based adhered to the US laws on copyright and they could collect on the money. Against that, they see that some of their work is being shared with tens of thousands of potential new subscribers or advocates of their service and I'm fairly certain which one they'd rather choose. But perhaps you know better, who's to say.

[StevePIraq]

I really want to make a difference in life or at least make an effort however when some people just pastes documents from another post it has no appeal as the poster is just doing copy and past with no commitment.
If you want to state something relevant don't just copy and post.

Make a statement dude.
Same applies to moderators

[Ginjaninja]

Remind me to never invite you pair of fun bags to a party......
I exceeded the speed limit by 5KMs/hr last week, should I go hand myself into the the coppers?

Keep it up Pete, you're doing a grand job

GN.

[Khundon1975]

"the Oxford dictionary defines plagiarism as “The action or practice of taking someone else's work, idea, etc., and passing it off as one's own; literary theft.”

"It means you CANNOT Cut and paste from electronic journals, websites or other sources to create a piece of work. the above mentioned article, despite its reference at the end is literary theft at best. there are better technical terms in legalise, but you certainly wouldn't want to read them in a document addressed to you".

Strange ridgeydidge.au I see nothing in the OED definition that says what you assert in your own definition of what plagiarism means.

The first part of the article clearly states (for those with eyes to see)David Biello reports
and the second article has a clear link to the article publication.

prcscct did no more than billions of internet users do every day, I would love to see all those ambulance chasing lawyers try to go after them.

[ridgeydidge.au]

khundon, that you cannot or will not understand the implications of stealing a publication and rebroadcasting it makes it pointless me wasting a reasoned response on you. Your use of that particular smilie is enlightening and says more about you than any of your words.
but I bear no malice

[MrPlum]

I think this question is worth a separate topic with moderator input. Perhaps an advisory, on the forum rules?

'Caution: Cutting and Pasting Could Get You Sued'
http://blog.kw.com/2010/07/09/caution-c ... -you-sued/