Word: ecosystems
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...ECOSYSTEM...
Environmental problems in the past were experienced mainly on a local level, associated usually with effluents, both domestic and industrial, responsible for some combination of dirty air and polluted water (both surface and sub-surface) with complex consequences for both human and ecosystem health. It was relatively easy to associate cause with effect. Burning coal adds large concentrations of sooty materials to the atmosphere, in addition to gaseous compounds of nitrogen and sulfur oxides and a variety of toxic elements including, for example, mercury. The effluents from coal burning have a demonstrably negative effect on human health. It took...
...impact of Chinese artists on the Australian art scene is already being felt from within. Sydney gallery director Gene Sherman describes this world as "a very delicate ecosystem, both in terms of the practitioners, and also in terms of people like us." While artists like Guan Wei, Ah Xian, and Liu Xiao Xian, all of whom moved to Australia following the Tiananmen Square killings 16 years ago, are hardly household names, they are for the dealers, curators and gallery directors who make the art world go round. Their works are being quietly amassed by the collections that count, and they...
...like nature's waste lots, ripe for occupation and improvement. Even the word desert implies "unoccupied." But despite the shortage of water and wide temperature fluctuations, deserts are the host of a wide variety of species, each of which has adapted in its way to life in a desert ecosystem. Couch's spadefoot toads can live underground for much of their lives, awaiting some moisture before they come up and breed. Saguaro cacti are able to suck up a ton of water from one rain shower and then do without more rain for a year. Sidewinder rattlesnakes move across dunes...
...bottle. Diamond uses archaeological data to meticulously piece together its decline. Despite its current denuded state, it turns out that Easter Island was at one time home to the largest species of palm tree in the world. It seems the Easter Islanders overtaxed their tiny home's unusually fragile ecosystem. Once they chopped down all the palms, they couldn't make canoes to go fishing in, and soil erosion devastated any attempts at agriculture. "The further consequences," Diamond observes dispassionately, "start with starvation, a population crash, and a descent into cannibalism." You can imagine where they end. Diamond interprets...