By Rhishja Larson •
July 27, 2009
At a reserve in southwestern China, a small group of wild pandas may be pushed closer to extinction in the wild. Researchers now report that last year’s earthquake destroyed almost a quarter of their fragile habitat.
In a recent article published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, researchers say that landslides and mudflows occurring from the May 12 earthquake have severely fragmented one of the last habitats of wild pandas. The resulting isolation from other populations puts them at risk of inbreeding, which could lead to extinction.
Lead author of the study, Weihua Xu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, says that the Sichuan region comprises more than half of the habitat for the world’s remaining wild pandas.
Xu estimates that more than 60 percent of the panda population - which could be as low as 35 individuals - was affected by the earthquake.
By Michael Ricciardi •
January 29, 2009
Harnessing the Earth’s Heat for Food and Power
As the rumbling temblors beneath Yellowstone National Park continue (over 900 hundred such weak quakes in 2008), media attention shifts to two topics: the possibility of a super-volcanic eruption (not likely, according to most geologists), and secondly, the harnessing of geothermal energy.
This latter consideration is all the more fashionable these days as America struggles to embrace an alternative and sustainable energy future.
Geothermal energy offers the promise of a virtually unlimited source of power. Although less energetic in terms of total constant power output compared to the sun, harnessing the geothermal venting from a single, sufficiently high-grade, hot-spring could conceivably provide power for a population of tens of thousands, and it’s not weather dependent. But there are also plenty of “lower grade” springs that can be put to other uses, such as growing hothouse produce (and the spring water is also used for watering the plants) and naturally warming water for fish farming (the Talipia species, a popular dinner fish, is one species farmed this way). Not all animals that are farmed this way are used for food, some, like the farmed alligators in Mosca, CO (see photo), are raised for their skins primarily (though some do eat the meat).
By Amanda Peterka •
January 7, 2009
In the past week or so, some 400 earthquakes have added to the already precarious land at Yellowstone National Park. Although the area is the largest supervolcano in North America, the rumbling is a bit more than normal.
By Adam Williams •
November 2, 2008
Using designs that mimic the shape of birds’ flight, as rendered above, these foldable bamboo shelters can be used in a wide range of ways to provide eco-friendly shelter in response to catastrophe that displaces large numbers of people.
Ming Tang, the designer, arrived at the idea for the Folding Bamboo Houses after the devastating earthquake that struck China in May, killing tens of thousands of people.
Sources: OneInchPunch.net and Click to Continue Reading
Switching 
