A collection of new scientific papers authored by 56 experts from around the world reiterates rising concerns about bug declines and urges people and governments to take urgent action to address a biodiversity crisis dubbed the "insect apocalypse."
Environmental News For The Week Ending 16January 2019
This is a collection of interesting news articles about the environment and related topics published last week. This is usually a Tuesday evening regular post at
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Note: Because of the high volume of news regarding the coronavirus outbreak, that news has been published separately:
Summary:
New US Covid infections for the week ending January 16th were 8.5% below those of the week ending January 9th, so it appears that the incidence of new cases mat have peaked and is turning down, at least for the time being. One caveat to that, though, is that we don t know how many of the prior week s cases were from reports that had been delayed over the holidays. For a check on that, we can compare new cases from the week ending January 16th to those from the week ending December 19th, two weeks which sh
A collection of new scientific papers authored by 56 experts from around the world reiterates rising concerns about bug declines and urges people and governments to take urgent action to address a biodiversity crisis dubbed the “insect apocalypse.” By Jessica Corbett Common Dreams “The Global Decline of Insects in the Anthropocene Special Feature,” which includes an introduction […]
12 New Studies Show How Close Insects Are to Extinction
Photo: Gabriel Bouys (Getty Images)
I do not like bugs. Creepy, many-legged things make my skin crawl. But as unpleasant as they are, insects are absolutely crucial for our world’s ecosystems to function, and sadly, new research shows that the creatures populations are on the verge of collapse.
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That’s the theme of the latest issue of the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences, called the Global Decline of Insects in the Anthropocene Special Feature, which includes 12 papers conducted by 56 authors detailing insects’ rapid decline.
One reason for this decline is habitat degradation. As one of the studies shows, land use changes for agriculture are a major cause. “The industrialization of agriculture during the second half of the 20th century involved farming on greatly expanded scales, monoculturing, the application of increasing amounts of pesticides and fertilizers, and the elimination of i