Marine environment at risk
A comprehensive map of our planet’s marine environment shows that human activity has heavily affected 41 percent of the world’s ocean-covered area, with no area left completely untouched.An atlas, based on four years of research, represents the first attempt to synthesize many studies into one global database. This was unveiled by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and was drawn up by combining impact data for 17 different activities, ranging from fishing and commercial shipping to pollution and climate change.
The biggest human impact was seen in the North Sea, the South and East China Seas, the Caribbean and North America’s East Coast. The least-affected areas were largely near the poles with coral reefs, continental shelves and the deep ocean were the hardest-hit ecosystems.”For the first time, we have produced a global map of all of these different activities, laid on top of each other, so that we can get the big picture of all the impacts humans are having,” Ben Halpern, the study’s lead author, told journalists
The scientists said policymakers could use their atlas to coordinate preservation efforts — for example, by rerouting shipping lanes to reduce the impact on areas already hard-hit by overfishing. “Our approach may be used to identify regions where better management of human activities could achieve a higher return on investment,” the researchers wrote.
Halpern said the study should serve as “a wake-up call … rather than a reason to give up.”
“Humans will always use the oceans for recreation, extraction of resources, and for commercial activity such as shipping,” he said. “Our goal, and really our necessity, is to do this in a sustainable way so that our oceans remain in a healthy state and continue to provide us the resources we need and want.”
http://www.nsf.gov/index.jsp reported by /www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23155918/
Tags: marine environment
