THE ROADS THE RESEARCHERS & THE MAP (Pt 4/4)

Ohhh hello hellooo dear English speaking-thinking-reading-hearing listener, welcome back to me, @sciencemug, the blog-podcast-twitter&Instagram accounts-gofundme unsuccessful campaign holder-entity behind the unsuccessful e-shop that tells you science stories while longing for a sip of truce from all the chaos around and for just a smile from that particular girl, yeah, that one, you know what I mean. Aaaaand that does all of this in Eng?ish, a language that is to proper English what anti-Vaxxer are to something that even remotely makes sense and what a dodo was to a win at the evolution’s lottery. Aaaaand the reaches your ears thanks to the voice of a veeeeeeery dumb human that has been (the voice) kidnapped via a wireless-woo-doo trick.

Oooook, let’s start with a quick recap of the previous episodes.

There’s an international bunch of researchers headed by professor Nuria Selva Fernandez, presently working at the Institute of Nature Conservation Polish Academy of Sciences. The researchers publish a paper on Science where they tell us they created a map of the world’s roadless areas, that is the “terrestrial areas not dissected by roads […]” “that are at least 1 km away from all roads and, therefore, less influenced by road effects”(P).
The scientists’ map shows that roadless areas with a 1-km buffer to the nearest road cover about 80% of Earth’s land (105 million square kilometers circa).
Moreover the good researchers create a unit-less index (called EVIRA, as in Ecological Value Index of Roadless Areas) that scores the ecological value of the above mentioned roadless areas. The index goes form 0 (0 being the slums of District 9) to 80 (80 being a very good spot of nature among human stuff).
About one third of the roadless areas have a low EVIRA score, but both low and high ecological valuable roadless areas are only by a tiny fraction inside protected lands.
This means, the researchers say, that “[g]lobal protection of ecologically valuable roadless areas is inadequate” (P) and that there “is an urgent need for a global strategy for the effective conservation, restoration, and monitoring of roadless areas and the ecosystems that they encompass” (P).
And this is proven by two of the most important global initiative that exist at present to preserve biodiversity and promote a sustainable development: the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 (1), and the United Nation’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2). Both this global initiatives fail to take into consideration the impact of roads on ecosystems and the need to safeguard roadless areas, in fact the reaching of many of their proposed goals somehow conflicts with the possibility to actually preserve the roadless areas.

If you want a quick example of how important is to protect raodless areas think of this: in the Amazon, unprotected areas near roads and rivers have four times more deforestation than protected areas (3).

So these are the results professor Selva Fernandez and her colleagues get from their massive research work.
 

Podcast on iTunes
Podcast on Podcast Machine 

Part 1 here

Part 2 here
Part 3 here

But why do they even care to do such a work, meaning why do they pick roads and roadless areas as the topic of their research?
 
Weeell dear listener, the answer is: because roads effects on the environment are huge, and the value of roadless areas are huge as well.
 
Let’s start with a deep look of roads effects, ok? Oh and by the way, dear listener, make no mistake, any type of road causes some effect on the ecosystem, so not only the long, wide paved ones like highways, but also the short, narrow almost invisible unpaved ones, such as a path or less. (P).
 
Ok, then, there are seven general direct and indirect effects roads have on ecosystems: “mortality from road construction, mortality from collision with vehicles,

THE ROADS THE RESEARCHERS & THE MAP (Pt 3/4)

Ohhh halloooo dear English speaking-thinking-reading-hearing listener, welcome back to me, @sciencemug, the blog-podcast-twitter&instagram account-gofundme useless campaign holder-entity behind the zero items selling e-shop that tells you science stories, try to build nanobots with oranges peels and a second hand smile bought in a cheap pawn shop somewhere north of Philadelphia, aaand that does this in En?ish, a language that is to real English what a middle age cucumber that wears a good quality blond wig while riding a mechanic seahorse in some poorly illuminated joint full of vinegar addicted and wasabi freaks is to something someone whose brain is NOT under the influence of a heavy cosmic vodka rays bombardment can normally see.
Aaand that speaks to you thanks to the voice kidnapped from a dumb human via a wireless-voodoo trick.

So quick recap of the last episodes/posts:
an international bunch of researchers headed by professor Nuria Selva Fernandez (who works at the Institute of Nature Conservation Polish Academy of Sciences) publishes a paper on Science and in the paper the scientists tell us they created a map of the world’s roadless areas, namely, according to the definition of the same professor Selva Fernandez team, “terrestrial areas not dissected by roads […]” “that are at least 1 km away from all roads and, therefore, less influenced by road effects”(P).
 
The map shows that roadless areas with a 1-km buffer to the nearest road cover about 80% of Earth’s land (105 million square kilometers circa).
 
Moreover the good researchers create a unit less index to score the ecological value of the above mentioned roadless areas. The index is called EVIRA, as in Ecological Value Index of Roadless Areas, and it's a unit less index that goes form 0 (0 being the slums of Gotham City) to 80 (80 being Eden before that fuss about the iPad, I mean the apple).

Sooo, that’s what it has been told in the last episodes/posts.

And now, let’s see how the story continues.
 

Podcast on iTunes
Podcast on Podcast Machine

Part 1 here

Part 2 here
 Part 4 here 

Our eco science dudes decide to find what is the amount of roadless areas that is located inside the protected areas of the world.
 
To do that professor Selva Fernandez’ team, aka the SF bunch, has to collect information about the protected areas existing all around the world. So the science gang once again dig wildly into data-sets, two to be precise.

The first data-set is that of

THE ROADS THE RESEARCHERS & THE MAP (Pt 2/4)

Ohhh halloooo dear English speaking-thinking-reading-hearing listener, welcome back to me, @sciencemug, the blog-podcast-twitter&instagram account-gofundme useless campaign holder-entity behind the quite unsuccessful e-shop that tells you science stories, tames particularly aggressive snails and is developing a method to unwrap the fifth dimension and finally set all those poor inter-dimensional lobsters free (why, don’t you hear ‘em screaming at night? No? Strange...). Aaand that does all of this in Eng?ish a language that is to real English what selfies are to something useful to civilization.
Aaand that reaches your ears thanks to the voice kidnapped via a voodoo-wireless trick to a dumb human being, oh jesus he’s so very dumb, poor thing…

Today, dear listener, you're going to be told the second part of the story of roads, roadless areas, and their ecological value!

Podcast on iTunes
Podcast on Podcast Machine

Part 1 here
Part 3 here
  Part 4 here  

So quick recap of the last episode/post:
an international bunch of science dudes headed by professor Nuria Selva Fernandez (who works at the Institute of Nature Conservation Polish Academy of Sciences) publishes a paper on the journal Science and in the paper the researchers tell us they created a map of the world’s roadless areas, namely, according to the definition given by the same science bunch, “terrestrial areas not dissected by roads […]” “that are at least 1 km away from all roads and, therefore, less influenced by road effects” (Ibisch et al, 2016 (P)).

The map shows that roadless areas with a 1-km buffer to the nearest road cover about 80% of Earth’s land (105 million square kilometers circa). These roadless areas, though, are hyper-dissected into 600,000 patches more than half of which is less than 1 square kilometer big (for more numbers and details check the previous episode/post).

Once done this, professor Selva Fernandez and companions - aka the SF bunch - use their beloved map to check where the roadless areas precisely are, and they find out that

THE ROADS THE RESEARCHERS & THE MAP (Pt 1/4)

Ohhh hallo hallooo dear English speaking-thinking-reading-hearing listener, welcome back to me, @sciencemug, the blog-podcast-twitter&instagram account-gofundme unsuccessful campaign holder-entity behind the unsuccessful e-shop that tells you science stories while scratching the by now almost unbearable itch on the back of the turtle just a millisecond before the turtle in question decide to use the whole southern hemisphere of your planet for the above just mentioned task. Aaaand that does all of this in Eng?ish, a language that is to proper English what the movie Morgan is to originality and the post-truth era is to a good news for you humans. Aaaand that is verbally communicating with you thanks to the voice kidnapped from a veeery dumb human via a voodoo-wireless trick.

Today, dear listener, youre going to be told a story about roads, more roads, even more roads, aaand a bit of wilderness.

Podcast on iTunes

Podcast on Podcast Machine 

Part 2 here
Part 3 here
Part 4 here 

So theres this paper, published on the peer-reviewed research journal Science about one year ago or so (mid December 2016), where a team of ten scientists from Germany, USA, Greece, Brazil, UK and Poland creates a map of the roadless areas existing in the world. According to their map, the scientists tell us that even if about 80% of Earth's lands are still roadless, this roadless chunk of Earth is though hyper-fragmented in roughly 600,000 pieces more than a half of which is smaller than one square kilometer (Ibisch et al, 2016 (P)) (and to have a reference, 1 square kilometer is 20 times smaller than the JFK airport of New York). Above all the paper tells us that

OF OCEAN, PLASTIC & BUGS: AN INTERVIEW

 OF OCEAN, PLASTIC & BUGS: AN INTERVIEW

 (in Eng?ish)

It’s a Wednesday, a big one, like a XXXL size one or so, but not a fatty Jabba the Hutt-big one, with all those soggy minutes and hours overflowing from its borders toward a much fitter Thursday [not Tuesday of course, since time, especially the soggy one, can’t overflow into the past, you know, otherwise the arrow of Miss Entropy (a dominatrix/nutritionist with a passion for basic physics, sloths, tattooed double chins and, of course, archery) gets all grumpy (Miss Entropy, not the arrow, which never gets grumpy because it’s very much into meditation, masters the art of self-control, aaand has a strong relationship with Mr. Valium) and you don’t want to mess with Miss Entropy and her arrow, especially when she’s all grumpy -well, maybe you can handle that if you’re a cat used to weird boxes full of guns (or of cyanide tablets and baskets of acids, or of hatching alien eggs, or of four very robust dudes who bet who would have eaten more lentils at lunch and the “it’s digestion time baby!” is going to begin…-]. No, put it simply, it’s a The Rock-big, a Ivan Drago-big, a Thor-big, a Steve Buscemi under steroids-big (… Ok, maybe not this unsettling) Wednesday.
And PiPs is floating like a feather of light on a blue sea. Under a blue sky. With its legs astride of a blue, slender, beautiful board (ok, not the same of the following pic, but, you know, whatever...).
Waiting for The wave.

 

[The pictures of the ocean (a) the surfboard (b) and of the plastic material (c) are adapted from Public Domain images by @sciencemug (source: Wikimedia Commons)]

But not far from PiPs there’s a wild bunch of blue (and of other colors too) pieces of plastic trash that, on the cry of “Nobody puts Baby in a corner!” (oddly enough, plastic rubbish near the shores collectively refer to themselves as “Baby” - nobody really knows why- while the plastic mush in deep water goes by the name of “Vida”) is ready to steal the perfect coming wave from PiPs, while, on the beach, some rubber masks, a couple of parachutes, a tanned heap of creased bucks and a pair of limping mustaches just passing by, seem to enjoy the show.
PiPs knows it’ll be a rough ride, above all ‘cause the plastic stuff can count on a legion of bacteria living on them, and those tiny little bugs can surely surf (and also make a really funny impression of Steve Buscemi under steroids, but that’s another story...)
So PiPs is all tense, focused and already starting to row with its skinny arms to jump on the back of that wave when a woman bravely approaching the surly school of plastic+bugs distracts it and make it lose the moment… (*)

Pips by SM

PiPs- Hey Miss, watch out, they’re nasty stuff! Who’re you anyway, and what are you doing here?

Ass. Prof. AMB

Ana Maria Barral- I am Ana Maria Barral, Assistant professor at National University in the balmy region of Southern California and I study the microbes that live on ocean plastic and, along with other life forms that live on it, make the so-called plastisphere. What I do here is hanging squares of different types of plastic that floats in the ocean. I am curious to know what kind of microbes attach to them when they are freshly out floating in the beach. We know quite a bit what kind of microbes live on them once they have disintegrated into tiny particles and are out in the ocean gyre. But we know little if the plastic floating close to the coast can carry any risks.

P- Cool, so you study the (coastal) plastiphere [which, by the way, I first thought to be the commercial name –the common one being “the in-real-need-of-a-hell-of-a-ton-of-wide-spectrum-antibiotics-before-they-eventually-stop-working round thingy”- of a super fancy biotech XXI century version of the old disco ball, with, instead of all those banal little mirrors so âgé, a whole load of multi-bioluminescent bugs flashing in sync with the music (hey, I should patent it, maybe I’ll get rich by that and finally realize my dream to retire in a very exclusive url of the dominion “.whateverudreamcomestrueinheredudeevenifuarebutareallystupidpostwithoveractivearmpits”…)].
 

The plastiphere according to PiPs (by @sciencemug)

 [The picture of the disco ball is a Public Domain image adapted by @sciencemug (source: Wikimedia Commons)]

Anyway, Prof. Barral, why do you study precisely bacteria and their near shore floating plastic shacks? I mean, why don’t you study, I dunno, how come there’re sea stars but not sea black-holes; or why betters don’t ever wager on seahorses; or who, among bacteria, mosquitoes, cockroaches, rats and drivers who don’t use blinkers, is gonna inherit the world when you humans are gone; or whether, given all the plastic floating on the seas of the world, all the people undergoing plastic surgery risk, afterwards, to go to bed and then to suddenly awaken in the middle of the You-Name-It Ocean with only a pair of leaking water wings around their arms and with a splintered mirror floating aside them on which it is written, with some cheap lipstick, “welcome home”?
And, above all, professor, how come you ended up studying precisely bacteria and their near shore floating plastic shacks? Did you lose/win a bet (on a rigged seahorse race, maybe?)

AMB- I came from the school that bacteria were bad and caused diseases, so when the whole idea of microbes living in us and on us, and being so important to shape our health came out I was amazed. A great book that just came out on this is Ed Yong’s “I contain multitudes“, I really recommend it. So I am curious about microbes in general and how they impact our lives. On the other hand I love the ocean, I live close to the ocean and I feel very strongly about plstic pollution. So when this project was presented to me I jumped on the opportunity.
As for the how