Land Issues
Melting Permafrost
Implications:
Environmental:
- When the permafrost starts to melt, the trees start to sag and fall, the frozen support it once had to support its giant roots and structure, has now softened and melted away.
- Negatively affects the atmosphere: it releases a lot of carbon dioxide, methane, and methane clathrate that was trapped beneath the frozen soil.
Social:
- Affects the well-being of humans and other species: has the potential to release tons of toxic mercury, as well as many unknown diseases. Can make many sick.
Political:
- Will affect how the part of the government that watches over the environment will run.
- Taxes will go up to make up for the cost it will take to end the melting of the permafrost.
Economic:
- In the next century, permafrost will cost the world 43 trillion dollars. Yeah 2200, permafrost will cost the world 369 trillion dollars.
Connections to other environmental issues:
Melting permafrost has been known to cause erosion, disappearance of lakes, landslides, and ground subsidence.
Solution:
-To stop the melting of permafrost: back the ecosystem of the ice age.
- Scientist would bring animals back such as: woolly mammoths, musk ox. and then they would have to bring herds of reindeer and moose, and herds of bison to these places with melting permafrost.
- Animals would always be walking on the ice and snow, packing it down. This would give less of a change for carbon dioxide and the toxic chemicals to leak through the surface of the topsoil. Stomping the snow down makes the snow compact, allowing for a much deeper freeze in the winter.
- A way to slow the speed of melting permafrost is to save electricity: Turn off the lights, television, PC, or any other electrical devices when not in use. This will lessen the warmth of th atmosphere, which would make it harder for the permafrost to melt.
- Another way to slow the process of melting permafrost would be use less gas for transportation. Find as many ways as possible to get to your destination, so that less carbon dioxide will go to the atmosphere and melt the permafrost.
- Also, a way to slow the process down of melting permafrost would be to plant more. Vegetation absorbs carbon dioxide and releases oxygen. If less carbon dioxide gets to the atmosphere, the less the permafrost will melt.
- https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2018/01/11/thawing-permafrost-matters/
- https://www.betterworldinternational.org/planet/8-easy-ways-stop-arctic-ice-melting/
Well Preserved Baby Mammoth
Methane Bubbles
Sagging Trees
Statistics:
- Researchers at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre : year 2200, 60% of the Northern Hemisphere's permafrost will be melted.
- Peat land guaranteed to be affected by permafrost.
- Peat dead organic matter, therefore it will be rich in carbon. -- Is found in the Northern Hemisphere beneath permafrost. If the world warms by 1 degree within the next year, 38-100 million tonnes of carbon will be released around every year due to the melted permafrost releasing the peat's carbon.
Where is this happening?
- North and South pole, such as (Northern) Canada, (Northern) Siberia, and many other countries in the Arctic.
What is it?
Permafrost: This is a thick layer or the earth’s soil, that remains permanently frozen.
Melting Permafrost:
- Many areas around the world with permafrost, are beginning to thaw.
- The frozen layer of earth is beginning to loosen
- Water, carbon dioxide, and possible deadly toxins such as mercury, and methane clathrate that has been trapped beneath the soil to leak through into the atmosphere
Land Slides
Implications:
Social:
- Will force people who lives near hilly or mountainous areas to leave their lifestyle behind, and find a new area to live in once they are affected by these landslides.
- It is not an issue such as tornado: One goes into the basement with their stacks of cans with food inside. When affected by a landslide, the safest thing to do is move as far away as possible from the affected area.
- If the landslide happened in a forest, people within a community who leave near the area affected cannot get any food from the forest.
Economic:
- The after effects of the landslides can be very expensive, as the repairment of what was previously built before the landslide will need fixing. These would be things such as buildings, or roads.
Environmental + connections with other land issues:
- Soil erosion: after effect of landslides.
- Erosion does the most damage to the environment after a landslide.
- Loss of topsoil, therefore nothing is able to grow in the area affected.
- Great loss of vegetation and trees, and animal habitats. Many people, as well as animals cannot live in areas affected by landslides for a while.
Solutions:
- Avoid deforestation, preserve natural vegetation.
- Ground expertise should be done before any construction activity, make sure that a landslide will not be capable of happening, and make sure that there has not been a landslide in that specific area before then.
- Covering the land with impermeable membranes in order to prevent water infiltration in the landslide;
- Directing surface water sources away from the landslides;
- Draining ground water streams away from the landslides;
- Minimizing irrigation on the surface of the soil.
- Plant more. The roots of the plants will be able to hold the soil in place, making sure that it will not be loose, therefore there will be less of a chance for a landslide to happen.
- http://www.wlf2.org/how-to-reduce-the-effects-of-a-landslide/
- https://homequicks.com/how-to-prevent-landslides
Statistics:
- 30,000+ people worldwide were killed by landslides between 2004 and 2010.
- In the U.S. between 25 and 50 people are killed by landslides every year.
- Lands exposed to landslides: 3.7 million km squared
- Population exposed: 300 million, or 5% of the world’s population
- Land area identified as a high-risk zone: 820,000 km squared
- Population living in high risk areas: 66 million
- Fatalities: The Americas and China has the highest fatality rate due to landslides
What is it?
- Process of the sliding down of a mass of earth or rock from a mountain or a cliff.
- Can be caused by human activity such as construction: building roads and buildings without proper grading of slopes, poorly planned alteration of drainage patterns, and of disturbing old landslides.
- More prone to happen in the future due to global warming. There will be an increase of rainfall, will loosen the earth’s soil. Loosening soil on mountainous areas: will begin to disintegrate and fall, leading into a landslide.
Most Common?:
- Common with hilly or mountainous landscapes. Places such as British Columbia, and Alberta.
- They are also common where climate and precipitation, bedrock and soil conditions and slopes are susceptible to failure. These would areas that would commonly be around the equator: Asia, Africa, South America.
Landslide
Land Degradation
Implications:
Environmental:
- Loss of nutrients and moisture in the soil. Creates a patchy desert-like land: nothing can grow on it. Desert-like land can spread, and connect with other lands creating an even bigger surface of this desert like land on earth.
- Huge losses of many species that depend on the earth’s soil and nutrients.
- Every year, earth loses 500,000 hectares of fertile soil to Land Degradation.
Social:
- Partially responsible for population migration. People abandoned their lands when their soil has turned into dry dirt.
- Poor people are forced by poverty to draw out as much as they can from the soil they live on to be able to feed, house and warm their families. Over cultivation and deforestation forces them to change their lifestyles: moving to different lands to continue to attempt making a living.
- Many reasons of humans migrating to different lands from land degradation would be: floods, droughts, pollution clogging to waterways.
- Affects around 3.2 billion people around the world.
Economic:
- If the earth’s land was better cared for, it could’ve contributed greatly to the economy, as it would serve as land for human habitation, agriculture, and grazing.
- Lands that are so extremely dry, have no use for human habitation, agriculture, because it cannot grow anything.
- Costs the economy more money to replenish the degraded land.
Solutions:
https://www.greenfacts.org/en/desertification/l-2/6-prevention-desertification.htm
https://www.positive.news/2018/environment/31537/soil-degradation-five-possible-solutions/
https://www.conserve-energy-future.com/causes-effects-solutions-soil-degradation.php
Integrating land and water management to protect soils from erosion, salinization, and other forms of degradation.
- Responsible industrial and chemical waste management.
- People can avoid littering as much as possible, and learn how to dispose of waste properly, so that certain chemical can go in the proper waste. This will help to make sure that they do not end up on the earth's land, causing problems for plants to grow, and create a healthy environment.
Chemical Waste Management
Land reclamation: restore the organic matter back to the original soil to replenish the land back to its natural state as much as possible. It will not go back exactly to how it was, however it will be in a much better state.
Land Reclamation
- Humans need to have better respect for the earth’s land, and not to overuse its recourses, only use it when necessary.
- Avoid deforestation and manipulation of the earth’s soil.
Affected areas:
- Affects areas with a higher population and/or many people who live in poverty, who’s livelihoods rely on well managed agriculture.
- Overuse of the land for agriculture causes the soil to turn into a desert like dirt, bare of nutrients, therefore useless because nothing can be planted to grow on it.
- Affects areas near the equator. Due to the immense heat and hot wind near the equator, soil requires a lot more water and nutrients, or else it will become dry and useless.
- Affects areas with lots of buildings and machinery. Where there's buildings and machinery the soil will be unable to flourish and grow plants to support other species.
Map of Highly Degraded Land (red= extremely degraded)
What it is:
- Earth’s quality of soil deteriorates, caused by excessive or inappropriate exploitation by human beings. It is a decline in soil fertility.
- Pieces of dryland that lack nutrients for plants to grow on, and species to live on. The land is completely useless.
Degraded Land
