<http://atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world.com/index_0.html>
ATLAS /for the/ END /of the/ WORLD
<http://atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world.com/index_0.html>
<http://atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world.com/index_0.html>
Coming almost 450 years after the world's first Atlas, this Atlas for
the End of the World audits the status of land use and urbanization in
the most critically endangered bioregions on Earth. It does so, firstly,
by measuring the quantity of protected area across the world's 36
biodiversity hotspots in comparison to United Nation's 2020 targets; and
secondly, by identifying where future urban growth in these territories
is on a collision course with endangered species.
By bringing urbanization and conservation together in the same study,
the essays, maps, data, and artwork in this Atlas lay essential
groundwork for the future planning and design of hotspot cities and
regions as interdependent ecological and economic systems.
-
Ashwani
Vasishth vasis...@ramapo.edu (201) 684-6616
http://phobos.ramapo.edu/~vasishth
--------------------------------------------------------
Associate Professor of Sustainability Planning
Director, Center for Sustainability
http://ramapo.edu/sustainability
Ramapo College of New Jersey
505 Ramapo Valley Road, SSHS, Mahwah, NJ 07430
--------------------------------------------------------
-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: An Atlas for the End of the World
Date: Fri, 04 Aug 2017 12:28:33 -0400
From: David Duthie <davidjdut...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: bioplan <biop...@groups.undp.org>
To: bioplan <biop...@groups.undp.org>
Dear BIOPLANNERS,
It is not often that I visit a website and come away with "elegant and
informative" in my mind.
But the Atlas for the End of the World -
http://atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world.com/index_0.html
<http://atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world.com/index_0.html> did just that!
In just a few pages, the authors Richard Weller, the Martin and Margy
Meyerson Chair of Urbanism and Professor and Chair of the Department of
Landscape Architecture at The University of Pennsylvania (UPenn). in
collaboration with Claire Hoch and Chieh Huang, both recent graduates
from the Department of Landscape Architecture at UPenn, now practicing
landscape architecture in Australia and the United States, have compiled
a new analysis of the status of the Norman Myers/Conservation
International hotspots in the context of their contribution and progress
towards the Convention on Biological Diversity's Aichi Target 11, and
the likely impact of a progressively urbanisign world population of 10
billion (American-style) people. [/Apologies for the long sentence/!]
Here is the author's precis of their own work.......
/Coming almost 450 years after the world's first Atlas, this Atlas for
the End of the World audits the status of land use and urbanization in
the most critically endangered bioregions on Earth. It does so, firstly,
by measuring the quantity of protected area across the world's 36
biodiversity hotspots in comparison to United Nation's 2020 targets; and
secondly, by identifying where future urban growth in these territories
is on a collision course with endangered species. By bringing
urbanization and conservation together in the same study, the essays,
maps, data, and artwork in this Atlas lay essential groundwork for the
future planning and design of hotspot cities and regions as
interdependent ecological and economic systems./
.......and below my signature a Science News cover story
As many of you return from your annual vacations, a visit to this site
will be a good reminder of the work still to do to help the other half.
Best wishes
David Duthie
***********************
Inspired by the first atlas — Abraham Ortelius’s 1570 /Theatrum Orbis
Terrarum (The Theater of the World)
<http://atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world.com/precis.html>/ — researchers
at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design made an /Atlas for
the End of the World <http://atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world.com/>. /Its
bleak name announces its ecological cartography on climate change and
biodiversity crises. Using infographics and maps, the /Atlas/ visualizes
the world’s urbanization and need for conservation in cities expanding
in biodiverse “hotspots.”
<http://atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world.com/precis.html>
Created by Penn professor Richard Weller in collaboration with recent
landscape architecture graduates Claire Hoch and Chieh Huang, the /Atlas
for the End of the World/ was launched alongside this year’s Earth
Day. The researchers recently shared the self-funded
<http://atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world.com/acknowledgements.html>
three-year research project on/Scientific American, /
<https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/an-atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world/>writing
that “our new Atlas is not about the end of the world per se; it is
about the end of Ortelius’s world, the end of the world as a God-given
and unlimited resource for human exploitation and its concomitant myths
of progress.”
Hotspots in the /Atlas for the End of the World/
The subtitle of the /Atlas/ is the “Atlas for the Beginning of the
Anthropocene.” Weller used the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
and the United Nations Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020 as a
framework, <http://atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world.com/essay.html>in
particular the CBD target of protecting 17% of the Earth’s land by
2020. In a 2016 post for the Penn Institute for Urban Research
<http://penniur.upenn.edu/publications/atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world>,
Weller wrote that the mapping “can show any community or nation or NGO
exactly how much land they need to protect and — at least in terms of
ecoregionalism — where they need to protect it if they wish to meet
their obligations under the Convention.”
“Health of Waters” map
<http://atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world.com/world_maps/world_maps_health_of_waters.html>
in the /Atlas for the End of the World/, showing freshwater quality,
garbage gyres, dams, and marine dead zones
The /Atlas/ features world maps
<http://atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world.com/world_maps_main.html>on
topics like the species distribution of threatened mammals
<http://atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world.com/world_maps/world_maps_threatened_mammals.html>,
deforestation
<http://atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world.com/world_maps/world_maps_deforestation.html>,
population pressure
<http://atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world.com/world_maps/world_maps_population_pressure.html>,
sea level rise
<http://atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world.com/world_maps/world_maps_sea_level_rise.html>,
conservation spending
<http://atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world.com/world_maps/world_maps_conservation_spending.html>,
conflict and corruption
<http://atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world.com/world_maps/world_maps_conflict_and_corruption.html>, and
environmental displacement
<http://atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world.com/world_maps/world_maps_environmental_displacement.html>.
A “meat map
<http://atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world.com/world_maps/world_maps_meat_map.html>”
of livestock pasturelands highlights how this farming involves
deforestation and expels major anthropogenic methane, while a “health of
waters
<http://atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world.com/world_maps/world_maps_health_of_waters.html>”
map examines freshwater quality, the accumulation of garbage gyres in
the ocean (patches of floating trash), and marine dead zones. A map of
megastructures
<http://atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world.com/world_maps/world_maps_megastructures.html> plots
large-scale engineering works that interrupt the environment, such as
canals, bridges, submarine cables, and walls. Notably, a planned area
for Trump’s US-Mexico border wallis right through a wildlife refuge
<http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-texas-border-wall-20170717-story.html>,
where endangered ocelots still roam, and would strand its visitor’s
center from the protected land.
One of the /Atlas/ maps visualizes countries with and without
biodiversity planning,
<http://atlas-for-the-end-of-the-world.com/world_maps/world_maps_biodiversity_planning.html>and
the United States a gaping void. Once, atlases presented the “New World”
as a landscape of unknowns and sprawling nature, which through
colonialism, development, and unchecked industry has been irreversibly
changed. Yet there remain realms of biodiversity, even near our urban
areas and places of potential development. If lost in the coming years,
they cannot be recovered.
***********************
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