There’s no such thing as truly ‘pristine’ nature anymore 8 February 2016
By Rachel Nuwer, Features correspondent Alaska may be remote, but it is still affected by air pollution that envelopes the globe (Credit: Getty Images)Getty Images Alaska may be remote, but it is still affected by air pollution that envelopes the globe (Credit: Getty Images) Humanity has changed the world so much that it’s hard to find anywhere that’s still untouched. Do we need a new way to define ‘pristine’? The great 19th Century naturalist John Muir often lamented humanity’s widespread desecration of nature. “In the noblest forests of the world, the ground, once divinely beautiful, is desolate and repulsive, like a face ravaged by disease,” he wrote. “The same fate, sooner or later, is awaiting them all, unless awakening public opinion comes forward to stop it.” Muir’s advocacy helped spur the US Congress into passing the National Park Bill in 1890. The patches of pristine places protected by that bill were meant to be set aside forever, providing generations to come access to nature. Given the scope of humanity seven billion-plus members reach, it hard to imagine anywhere is untouched Most scientists today would not claim that the majority of national parks around the world are pristine, however. Rangers and recreation-goers alike regularly crisscross those swaths of wilderness. Their ecological conditions are carefully managed and their animal populations are monitored and even adjusted. Indeed, a major reason national parks exist is “for the benefit and inspiration of all the people,” as one piece of US legislation put it – not to serve as virginal tracts safeguarded from humanity. Given the scope of humanity’s seven billion-plus members’ reach, it’s hard to imagine that any spots of wilderness remain completely free from our influence. Climate change, for one, is already having global impacts. “We’re undoubtedly influencing the entire planet,” says Justin Adams, global managing director for lands at the Nature Conservancy. “So on one level there’s nowhere left on Earth that’s not touched by man.” As this column explored in 2014, there are almost no unpolluted places left either. Air pollution blankets the planet, while debris plagues the deep sea to the Gobi Desert. It’s even difficult to find a spot that remains free from human noise for a mere 15 minutes. Our historic reach also seems quite profound; sophisticated tools like lidar – a remote sensing technology that uses lasers to examine the Earth’s surface – are revealing that even the seemingly remotest patches of tropical rainforest bear millennium-old human scars. “There is increasing recognition that few places on the planet are actually pristine,” says Richard Hobbs, an ecologist at the University of Western Australia. “Most places are now impacted by human activities, even if this is only indirectly.” If the definition of pristine is relaxed a bit, the outlook improves However, if the definition of pristine is relaxed a bit to exclude our indirect, far-reaching influences as well as ancient historical baggage, the outlook improves. “You have to be somewhat pragmatic with this because if not, you’d come up with nothing and say that everything has already been destroyed,” says Lars Laestadius, a senior associate at the World Resource Institute’s Forests Program. “That’s not constructive.” Few, if any, places remain untouched by humanity's footprint in some way Following this thinking, a researcher with a more liberal outlook might say that an old growth secondary forest – one that was once cut down but has since grown back – counts as pristine. “In Romania, for example, I’ve looked at old growth forests that local people say are pristine, and I’ve seen stumps,” Laestadius says. “But they don’t appear to have affected the dynamics of the forest at all, so I’m reluctant to eliminate a forest like that just because there’s been some logging.” “Ultimately, whether a place is pristine really depends on who you ask,” adds Erle Ellis, a professor of geography and environmental systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Most researchers are satisfied to settle on a definition of pristine that includes habitats free from obvious signs of human activity Given the ambiguity, most researchers are satisfied to settle on a definition of pristine that includes habitats free from obvious signs of human activity. Those places should also contain plant and animal species that experts would expect to be there in the absence of hunting, logging, habitat loss, invasive species and other human-driven threats. Alamy The Republic of Congo contains large tracts of 'hinterland forests', which are almost untouched The Republic of Congo contains large tracts of 'hinterland forests', which are almost untouched The most sure-fire way to evaluate if a given place meets those criteria is to visit it in person and conduct extensive ground surveys, but this takes a tremendous amount of time, effort and resources. So usually, especially for larger areas, an analysis conducted with remote sensing and GIS data has to do. Alexandra Tyukavina, a geographer at the University of Maryland, and her colleagues recently undertook such studies. First, they used all available Landsat high-resolution satellite imagery from 2000 to 2014 to build a map of global forest loss and gain. From there, they narrowed their dataset down to tropical forests in South America, Africa and Southeast Asia that had not been disturbed for at least the past 12 years and that had no recent regrowth that would indicate disturbances over the past 20 to 30 years. (Fire-prone boreal forests and tundra must wait for a future study that distinguishes man-made from natural fires.) The old growth primary and secondary tropical forests that they were left with are no younger than 40 to 50 years old; are a minimum of 38 square miles; and are at least half a mile from the nearest disturbed or recently regrown area. Getty Images Parts of Alaska count as pristine, at least according to the more liberal definition used by some researchers Parts of Alaska count as pristine, at least according to the more liberal definition used by some researchers The results indicated that the northeastern parts of South America, including Suriname, Guyana and French Guyana, hold the most untouched tropical forests in the world. “Almost 100% of forested areas there are still pristine, and rates of loss are pretty low,” Tyukavina says. Additionally, Peru, Venezuela, Colombia and Republic of Congo also all contain large shares of hinterland forests, as the researchers call them. Although all of these places may have some minimal disturbances – a tree cut here or there, an indigenous group using the understory for hunting – to Tyukavina they are an accurate representation of what pristine means today. Additionally, Laestadius and his colleagues have conducted their own analysis using satellite data and have identified places in Canada, Alaska, Siberia, Borneo, Central Africa and the Amazon that count as pristine in their books. They rank a habitat as pristine (they use the word “intact”) if it shows no aerial indication of disturbance and has a minimum area of 123,500 acres. Some pristine places are threatened with imminent annihilation Some pristine places are threatened with imminent annihilation, however. According to Tyukavina’s analysis, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Angola, Papua New Guinea and Paraguay are currently losing pristine forests at strikingly high rates. Indonesia, Malaysia, Central African Republic and Cameroon aren’t far behind, either. Other countries have already completely exhausted their remaining pristine landscapes; the last of Rwanda’s old growth forests fell in 2013, while less than 500 acres of pristine forest remains in Bangladesh, Benin, Burkina Faso, Haiti, El Salvador and more. A few other places not included in the analyses may hold on to their pristineness simply because of their remoteness or inhospitality for human existence, Hobbs says. This likely extends to areas covered in ice – the tundra, the poles and the high mountains. Adams adds that parts of Australia’s Outback may also qualify, and expansive deserts are good candidates as well. As for the oceans, they are affected by the same atmospheric pollution and climate change that blankets the land, plus there’s the ever-present problem of garbage and microplastic. “The ocean is unified,” says Maria Damanaki, global managing director of oceans for the Nature Conservancy. “You cannot escape from what is happening on the planet as a whole.” Untouched sea? No, there is nowhere like that on the planet ; Maria Damanaki Excluding pervasive global impacts, however, some of the world’s largest no-take zones – places where fishing is banned – are likely the most pristine marine spots left, especially the ones that occur furthest from the mainland. Included on that list are areas in the Pitcairn Islands Marine Reserve, Easter Island marine park, Palau National Marine Sanctuary and the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary. Boats are allowed in those places and people inhabit nearby islands, however. “Untouched sea? No, there is nowhere like that on the planet,” Damanaki says. No one can reliably forecast how much of the world’s remaining pristine habitats – by whatever definition – will continue to exist in the future. But Hobbs points out that to value pristine wilderness over all other nature would be a mistake. Non-pristine places like parks “are generally more accessible than so-called pristine areas, and hence are the ones that humans will interact with – and likely value – most,” he says. “They also make up the most of our planet now, and they still contain a huge and wonderful array of life.” KR It is 2016 news; 2024 Denmark says there is no place on land; but some part of sea may be pristine. K Rajaram IRS 12 4 24 ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Markendeya Yeddanapudi <[email protected]> Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2024 at 20:44 Subject: Rejuvenation-Vs-Disparagement To: ggroup <[email protected]>, thatha patty < [email protected]>, <[email protected]>, Satyanarayana Kunamneni <[email protected]>, <[email protected]>, viswanatham vangapally <[email protected]>, Rajaram Krishnamurthy <[email protected]>, Murthy, Jayathi Y <[email protected]>, Nehru Prasad <[email protected]>, Aparna Attili <[email protected]>, Anisha Yeddanapudi <[email protected]>, Kunamneni Satyanarayana < [email protected]>, Ramanathan Manavasi <[email protected]>, Padma Priya <[email protected]>, Usha <[email protected]>, Ramu S < [email protected]>, Ramamurti PV <[email protected]>, tnc rangarajan <[email protected]>, dr anandam <[email protected]>, Krishnamacharyulu Nanduri <[email protected]>, Manda chiranjeevi das < [email protected]>, APS Mani <[email protected]>, Abhishek Pothunuri < [email protected]>, Abhinay soanker <[email protected]>, A. Akkineni <[email protected]>, Neeraja Nadikuda < [email protected]>, <[email protected]>, kantamaneni baburajendra prasad <[email protected]>, < [email protected]> -- *Mar*Rejuvenation-Vs-Disparagement Today, you cannot find nature which is completely healthy and free. We have polluted and poisoned our Heaven. Still if you are lucky and if you enter a forest thick with flora and fauna and if you do not allow fear and caution to cloud your perception, you get greatly rejuvenated and reinforced. You get caught under the wonderful spell and can relive temporarily the rapture that once was Troposphere, Biosphere, Hydrosphere and Lithosphere. Every organism sends smells of rapture and the forest sings wonderful music. Musing becomes music and rapture. You may dance, if you are not a patient of chronic inhibitions imposed on you by your social mores. You may even feel the Theosphere that once pervaded the surface of our earth as rapture. The Theosphere simply does not allow any discouragement and disparagement. Unfortunately the disease economics has taken us all, and we are busy destroying nature and eliminating rapture itself. We have become chronic critics and we simply cannot accept rapture without the cartesianed mechanization of perception. The waves of rapture cannot be divided and analyzed and rapture becomes the whole which refuses mathematical reduction. In free and lush nature, the laughter of the six months baby lasted the full life of even hundred years. There was the wonderful ‘Rapture Multiplier’, which spread like the wave of an electron. A single electron becomes an infinite wave that spreads everywhere when needed. May be the electromagnetic waves of the Universe spread like rapture waves in the free and healthy nature of Earth, which must have been total Heaven or the Abode of God. The photons always photon-synthesize as abstract waves of diversity. As it is we are now living on earth as life forms, because of the particular Thermodynamic situation we need. If the temperature becomes, say 1000c, we cannot live as the life forms we are now. I do not know, actually we do not know but can only speculate, whether we mutate into monsters that destroy and completely revel in the Darwinian hell we may create. When we create desperation as normalcy, we may kill each other and eat each other. It happened during famines in human history. As it is, in the colleges and Universities we kill each other with marks and grades. The Professors and Libraries have ousted nature from teaching as enlightenment. There is more evaluation and market pricing of the work in the Universities, than appreciation as a particular flow of perception and understanding. Money and market decides the quality of perception as presentation. There is simply no element of rapture, which once sprouted as revelations and discoveries continuously from nature directly. Every University today is a beggar for grants from Merchants, who call themselves business tycoons. Or the government bureaucrats evaluate and decide and grant. Free nature and the spell of revelations from nature simply are not there. Most Universities have mainly the MBA course and simply do not have the Faculty of Philosophy. They are just big Kirana Shops that sell Degrees and Diplomas. Today even in some Social media forums where the members do not meet each other, I find insult fests. The verbal assaults lost all restraint. Let us contemplate on the effect of the words we use. Encouraging, appreciating and reinforcing words automatically increase self confidence and self esteem. The Forum will brim with positivism. But in the insult fests in some forums indulged in by a few members creates very bad feelings and the words radiate negative waves. My appeal to such members is to go to any place where there is some flora and fauna, close the eyes, made the mind blank and just feel the messages from the life forms. They can get cured of negativism and stop sending messages with appalling words, in the insult fests. I really dread that these insult fests portend the total hell into which the economic destruction of nature is taking us into. Filthy words just spread filth only and they are now creating waves of filth in some forums. No member really needs support with filthy words hurled against the opponent. Filth is filth. YM -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/thatha_patty/CAL5XZorRv5sAB%3D0s3bUjPko-r9epTKaxKdd_%3DROkOfDsv82tMg%40mail.gmail.com.
