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Ematy1
The Most Horrible Earthquake In The World
~1.8 mins read
Humans have been recording earthquakes for nearly 4,000 years. From the ones we know about, the deadliest by far happened in China in 1556 A.D. On January 23 of that year, a powerful quake rocked the province of Shaanxi as well as the neighboring province of Shanxi, killing an estimated 830,000 people.
Historical records often refer to this as the Jiajing Great Earthquake because it occurred during Emperor Jiajing’s reign during the Ming dynasty. The approximate death toll comes from local annals that also tracked 26 other earthquakes in the region. In those records, the description of the Jiajing earthquake is starkly different from the others: they describe leveled mountains, floods, fires that burned for days, and a drastically altered landscape. The annals estimated that some counties had lost about 60 percent of their population.
Even though we can’t be certain of how accurate the estimate of fatalities was, Jiajing is still considered the deadliest earthquake today because its death toll is just so much higher than any other disaster. The closest in terms of casualties that we know of was the 2004 earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean that killed an estimated 230,000 people across Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India.
After the development of the Richter scale in the 1930s, scientists theorized the Shaanxi earthquake was probably between a 8.0 to 8.3 in magnitude—not the strongest one ever recorded, but certainly significant. The most powerful quake was the 9.5 magnitude, Valdivia Earthquake that struck in Chile in 1960, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). That quake created a tsunami, which together killed an estimated 5,700 people. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami registered a 9.3 magnitude.
So if Jiajing wasn’t the strongest quake, why was it the most deadly? Likely, the high death toll resulted from a combination of densely populated communities and poorly-constructed stone buildings. According to the local records, the people of the Shaanxi and Shanxi provinces responded to the natural disaster by trying to rebuild in a way that would lessen the impact of future earthquakes. Since the quake had lethally toppled so many stone buildings, communities rebuilt with softer material like bamboo and wood, which were more resistant to earthquakes and would cause less damage if they fell on you.
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Ematy1
WILDLIFE CONSERVATION, OUR DUTY AS HUMAN
~3.1 mins read
Wildlife conservation refers to the practice of protecting wild species and their habitats in order to maintain healthy wildlife species or populations and to restore, protect or enhance natural Ecosystems. Major threats to wildlife include habitat destruction/degradation/fragmentation, overexploitation, poaching, pollution and climate change. The IUCN estimates that 27,000 species of the ones assessed are at risk for extinction. Expanding to all existing species, a 2019 UN report on biodiversity put this estimate even higher at a million species. It's also being acknowledged that an increasing number of ecosystems on Earth containing endangered species are disappearing. To address these issues, there have been both national and international governmental efforts to preserve Earth's wildlife. Prominent conservation agreements include the 1973 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). There are also numerous nongovernmental organizations (NGO's) dedicated to conservation such as the Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, and Conservation International.
Habitat destruction decreases the number of places wildlife can live in. Habitat fragmentation breaks up a continuous tract of habitat, often dividing large wildlife populations into several smaller ones. Human-caused habitat loss and fragmentation are primary drivers of species declines and extinctions. Key examples of human-induced habitat loss include deforestation, agricultural expansion, and urbanization. Habitat destruction and fragmentation can increase the vulnerability of wildlife populations by reducing the space and resources available to them and by increasing the likelihood of conflict with humans. Moreover, destruction and fragmentation create smaller habitats. Smaller habitats support smaller populations, and smaller populations are more likely to go extinct.
Overexploitation is the harvesting of animals and plants at a rate that's faster than the species's ability to recover. While often associated with Overfishing, overexploitation can apply to many groups including mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and plants. The danger of overexploitation is that if too many individuals of a species are taken, then the species may not recover. For example, overfishing of top marine predatory fish like tuna and salmon over the past century has led to a decline in fish sizes as well as fish numbers.
Habitat conservation is the practice of protecting a habitat in order to protect the species within it. This is sometimes preferable to focusing on a single species especially if the species in question has very specific habitat requirements or lives in a habitat with many other endangered species. The latter is often true of species living in biodiversity hotspots, which are areas of the world with an exceptionally high concentration of endemic species (species found nowhere else in the world). Many of these hotspots are in the tropics, mainly tropical forests like the Amazon. Habitat conservation is usually carried out by setting aside protected areas like national parks or nature reserves. Even when an area isn't made into a park or reserve, it can still be monitored and maintained.
Conservation genetics studies genetic phenomena that impact the conservation of a species. Most conservation efforts focus on ensuring population growth but genetic diversity also greatly affect species survival. High genetic diversity increases survival because it means greater capacity to adapt to future environmental changes. Meanwhile, effects associated with low genetic diversity, such as inbreeding depression and loss of diversity from genetic drift, often decrease species survival by reducing the species' capacity to adapt or by increasing the frequency of genetic problems. Though not always the case, certain species are under threat because they have very low genetic diversity. As such, the best conservation action would be to restore their genetic diversity.
In the US, the Endangered Species Act of 1973 was passed to protect US species deemed in danger of extinction. The concern at the time was that the country was losing species that were scientifically, culturally, and educationally important. In the same year, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora (CITES) was passed as part of an international agreement to prevent the global trade of endangered wildlife. In 1980, the World Conservation Strategy was developed by the IUCN with help from the UN Environmental Programme, World Wildlife Fund, UN Food and Agricultural Organization, and UNESCO. Its purpose was to promote the conservation of living resources important to humans. In 1992, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was agreed on at the UN Conference on Environment and Development (often called the Rio Earth Summit) as an international accord to protect the Earth's biological resources and diversity.
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