What is the significance of Dec. 21, 2012, the so-called ÛÏend of the worldÛ and the Maya calendar? This essay takes a look at whether the Maya civilization collapsed in response to climate change and discusses the implications of this for our present society.
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory research scientist Richard Gross has computed how Earth’s rotation should have changed and shortened the Earth day by about 1.26 microseconds as a result of the Feb. 27 quake.
As the international remote sensing community readies the 2009 IGARSS in Cape Town, South Africa this July, Earthzine recalls last summer’s conference in Boston, Massachusetts with this Featured Person interview with Dr. Barrett N. “Barry” Rock, professor of forestry, botany and remote sensing in the Complex Systems Research Center and the Department of Natural Resources at the University of New Hampshire. Barry Rock exemplifies IEEE’s mission to put science and technology to work for the benefit of humanity and Earth. He has “grown” a network of hundreds of students and teachers in Forest Watch, the outreach program he founded in 1991 in order to scientifically track the effects of U.S. efforts to diminish the damage of air pollution on human health and vegetation. In Boston, he demonstrated the Forest Watch model of university/K-12 partnership and IEEE scientific/community outreach at the 2008 IEEE International Geosciences and Remote Sensing Symposium.
In Global Footprint Mapping and Micro-Simulation:A Tool for Risk Management, Lezlie Morini̬re and her co-authors make the case for including human migration as an ongoing consequence of climate change, and a risk that needs official acknowledgement as well as management.
Julia Cechvala explains that laughing at our current environmental crisis – with a little help from various eco-cartoonists – is not only a healthy exercise, but can actually drive the point home easier than words alone.
