Biosphere Earth — 16: Global Priorities
Hopefully, you’ve read blogs 15 and 13 which share the science on why land-based tropical ecosystems are priority 1 for Biosphere Earth’s rescue and continuation.
Add to that list, Earth’s other vital organ ecosystems. In sum, the vital organ ecosystems: tropical lands, all coastal ecosystems, a few lakes, and high-lattitude oceans. These places are the most critical to global climate, food, and continuation. You can see this in the amazing animation from NASA shown here. This is 20 years of biological productivity, compressed into a 10-second loop.
On land, the scale goes from brown (low vegetation) to dark green (lots of vegetation). In the oceans, phytoplankton blooms go from purple (super low) to red (super high). The more vegetation and phytoplankton, the greater the productivity. This is our life support system. Duration of color over the 10 second cycle is the most important feature.
As explained in blog 9 — Look at the center of the map, specifically South America, Central Africa, and Equatorial Asia.
Notice the center of the map is green year-round. These are tropical forests and grasslands. Up in the USA, tho, ice descends in the winter; green returns in the Spring. These seasonal changes show variations in biospheric productivity.
Today i just want to highlight the single most productive component of this grand life-support system —Tropical Forests. Yes, global oceans cover 71% of Earth, but much of their real estate is empty like a desert. Tropical Forests cover about 5% of the planet, 14X less area, yet contain twice as much biodiversity as global oceans and are more immediately influential on our food system.
Tropical Forests contain, inch for inch, more productive species relationships that impact our lives today than any other “biome”. Here is a short list of Tropical Forests’ contributions to the global biosphere and climate:
My paper, this video, and the 5 maps below show Tropical Forests’ level of importance to our climate and life-support systems. The emphasis in this series is on rescuing, restoring, and stewarding all vital organ ecosystems. Tropical Forests are the biggest contributors, but they are inter-dependent on the wellbeing of the lands and waters surrounding them.
Five maps:
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More amazing NASA animations here: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/global-maps
Go to biointegrity.net/solutions to make a tax deductible donation that helps protect Tropical Forests.
Thanks for reading. More tomorrow!
Citations
- Links in the article. Check out my paper, The Systemic Climate Solution for more on the power of the Tropical Forests, and this draft of my upcoming paper, Earth’s Biosphere = all GDPs + all Lives, for more science on our life-support system.
This blog is part 16 of a series on Biosphere Earth.
Read the previous blog: Benefitting Everything.
To review other posts in this series, visit the TOC.
