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Keystone Species Extinction Overview

Keystone Species Extinction Overview

Paul Alois and Victoria Cheng, July 2007

 

Brief About:

This paper discusses the plight of four keystone species which are absolutely essential for human survival: plankton, edible fish, bees, and topsoil.

Honey Bees in US facing extinction

Experts are at a loss to explain the fall in honey bee populations in America, with fears of that a new disease, the effects of pollution or the increased use of pesticides could be to blame for "colony collapse disorder". From 1971 to 2006 approximately one half of the US honey bee colonies have vanished.

Alex Renton: How the world's oceans are running out of fish | Environment | The Observer

Ninety years of industrial-scale overfishing has brought us to the brink of an ecological catastrophe and deprived millions of their livelihoods.
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Penguin Decline Points to Climate Change, Pollution, Study Says Bloomberg.com: Science

Penguin colonies are collapsing because global warming, pollution and over-fishing are damaging their ocean habitat in the southern hemisphere, a researcher at the University of Washington said.
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African forest under threat from sugar cane plantation

Conservationists in Uganda are fighting a last-ditch battle to stop the destruction of a forest reserve by a sugar corporation friendly with the government.

Crop Yields Expand, but Nutrition Is Left Behind | Worldwatch Institute

Farmers today can grow two to three times as much grain, fruit, and vegetables on a plot of land as they could 50 years ago, but the nutritional quality of many crops has declined, according to a new report from The Organic Center, a group based in Boulder, Colorado.

Bees Dying: Is It a Crisis or a Phase?

Over the last year, large die-offs of commercial honeybee colonies, from unknown causes, have raised concern that an agricultural crisis is at hand. Now, however, some expertsare questioning how unusual the die-offs are, saying commercial beekeeping has long had a pattern of die-offs, and there is not enough information to know if anything new or calamitous is happening.

Flowers' Fragrance Diminished by Air Pollution

Air pollution from power plants and automobiles is destroying the fragrance of flowers and thereby inhibiting the ability of pollinating insects to follow scent trails to their source

Floodwaters to widen 'dead zone' in Gulf of Mexico - Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON - Floodwaters loaded with farm runoff are heading down the Mississippi River, and scientists fear the deluge will dramatically increase this summer's dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, covering an area the size of Maryland.
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