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"Planets Environmental engineering."
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Project Terra : crash course
Eleven-year-old Elara from the planet \"Nowhere\" begins school at the Academy of Terraforming Arts, where she befriends Clare, a mute intergalactic sponge, and learns how to farm in space without blowing up planets.
Book
Pioneering Mars
Life on Mars may not exist today, but scientists have figured out ways to create life on the red planet by \"terraforming\" it, or making it more like Earth. By warming up the planet, some researchers believe that the frozen environment will melt, and life will evolve in various forms. Humans would also be able to survive on Mars with the right apparatus.
Magazine Article
Glorious universe
An illustrated cosmological journey takes us from the Big Bang, and the evolution of stars and galaxies, through the evolution of Earth and life on Earth, to the present.
Magazine Article
Bites back
\"Elara just wants to learn how to build new worlds with her best friends Knot, Beezle, Sabik, and her alien-sponge roommate, Clare. But when an evil time-hopping force threatens to take down the galactic order, Elara's 'normal' school year might turn into something weird\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
ReCiPe2016: a harmonised life cycle impact assessment method at midpoint and endpoint level
Purpose
Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) translates emissions and resource extractions into a limited number of environmental impact scores by means of so-called characterisation factors. There are two mainstream ways to derive characterisation factors, i.e. at midpoint level and at endpoint level. To further progress LCIA method development, we updated the ReCiPe2008 method to its version of 2016. This paper provides an overview of the key elements of the ReCiPe2016 method.
Methods
We implemented human health, ecosystem quality and resource scarcity as three areas of protection. Endpoint characterisation factors, directly related to the areas of protection, were derived from midpoint characterisation factors with a constant mid-to-endpoint factor per impact category. We included 17 midpoint impact categories.
Results and discussion
The update of ReCiPe provides characterisation factors that are representative for the global scale instead of the European scale, while maintaining the possibility for a number of impact categories to implement characterisation factors at a country and continental scale. We also expanded the number of environmental interventions and added impacts of water use on human health, impacts of water use and climate change on freshwater ecosystems and impacts of water use and tropospheric ozone formation on terrestrial ecosystems as novel damage pathways. Although significant effort has been put into the update of ReCiPe, there is still major improvement potential in the way impact pathways are modelled. Further improvements relate to a regionalisation of more impact categories, moving from local to global species extinction and adding more impact pathways.
Conclusions
Life cycle impact assessment is a fast evolving field of research. ReCiPe2016 provides a state-of-the-art method to convert life cycle inventories to a limited number of life cycle impact scores on midpoint and endpoint level.
Journal Article
How we'll live on Mars
It sounds like science fiction, but Stephen Petranek considers it fact: Within twenty years, humans will live on Mars. We'll need to. In this book that mixes business, science, and human reporting, Petranek makes the case that living on Mars is an essential back-up plan for humanity and explains in detail just how it will happen. The race is on. Private companies, driven by entrepreneurs, such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Paul Allen, and Sir Richard Branson; Dutch reality show and space mission Mars One; NASA; and the Chinese government are among the many groups competing to plant the first stake on Mars and open the door for human habitation. Why go to Mars? Life on Mars has potential life-saving possibilities for everyone on earth. Depleting water supplies, overwhelming climate change, and a host of other disasters -- from terrorist attacks to meteor strikes -- all loom large. We must become a space-faring species to survive. We have the technology not only to get humans to Mars, but to convert Mars into another habitable planet. It will likely take 300 years to \"terraform\" Mars, as the jargon goes, but we can turn it into a veritable second Garden of Eden. And we can live there, in specially designed habitations, within the next twenty years. In this chronicle, Petranek introduces the circus of characters all engaged in an effort to be the first to settle the Red Planet. How We'll Live on Mars brings firsthand reporting, interviews with key participants, and extensive research to bear on the question of how we can expect to see life on Mars within the next twenty years.
Book
Scientists’ warning to humanity on the freshwater biodiversity crisis
Freshwater ecosystems provide irreplaceable services for both nature and society. The quality and quantity of freshwater affect biogeochemical processes and ecological dynamics that determine biodiversity, ecosystem productivity, and human health and welfare at local, regional and global scales. Freshwater ecosystems and their associated riparian habitats are amongst the most biologically diverse on Earth, and have inestimable economic, health, cultural, scientific and educational values. Yet human impacts to lakes, rivers, streams, wetlands and groundwater are dramatically reducing biodiversity and robbing critical natural resources and services from current and future generations. Freshwater biodiversity is declining rapidly on every continent and in every major river basin on Earth, and this degradation is occurring more rapidly than in terrestrial ecosystems. Currently, about one third of all global freshwater discharges pass through human agricultural, industrial or urban infrastructure. About one fifth of the Earth’s arable land is now already equipped for irrigation, including all the most productive lands, and this proportion is projected to surpass one third by midcentury to feed the rapidly expanding populations of humans and commensal species, especially poultry and ruminant livestock. Less than one fifth of the world’s preindustrial freshwater wetlands remain, and this proportion is projected to decline to under one tenth by midcentury, with imminent threats from water transfer megaprojects in Brazil and India, and coastal wetland drainage megaprojects in China. The Living Planet Index for freshwater vertebrate populations has declined to just one third that of 1970, and is projected to sink below one fifth by midcentury. A linear model of global economic expansion yields the chilling prediction that human utilization of critical freshwater resources will approach one half of the Earth’s total capacity by midcentury. Although the magnitude and growth of the human freshwater footprint are greater than is generally understood by policy makers, the news media, or the general public, slowing and reversing dramatic losses of freshwater species and ecosystems is still possible. We recommend a set of urgent policy actions that promote clean water, conserve watershed services, and restore freshwater ecosystems and their vital services. Effective management of freshwater resources and ecosystems must be ranked amongst humanity’s highest priorities.
Journal Article
Anomaly. Vol. 1
Earth 2717, the third golden age of man, building a better tomorrow today. The planet we call home slowly dies beneath us. Most humans now live in teeming surface \"Terrarium Cities,\" off-world colonies or orbiting space stations. All of earth's resources have been depleted. All corporations, nations, and technologies have merged into the Conglomerate, whose Enforcer Battalions now conquer whole planets to feed its shareholders' insatiable appetites.
Book
The Anthropocene: From Global Change to Planetary Stewardship
Over the past century, the total material wealth of humanity has been enhanced. However, in the twentyfirst century, we face scarcity in critical resources, the degradation of ecosystem services, and the erosion of the planet's capability to absorb our wastes. Equity issues remain stubbornly difficult to solve. This situation is novel in its speed, its global scale and its threat to the resilience of the Earth System. The advent of the Anthropence, the time interval in which human activities now rival global geophysical processes, suggests that we need to fundamentally alter our relationship with the planet we inhabit. Many approaches could be adopted, ranging from geoengineering solutions that purposefully manipulate parts of the Earth System to becoming active stewards of our own life support system. The Anthropocene is a reminder that the Holocene, during which complex human societies have developed, has been a stable, accommodating environment and is the only state of the Earth System that we know for sure can support contemporary society. The need to achieve effective planetary stewardship is urgent. As we go further into the Anthropocene, we risk driving the Earth System onto a trajectory toward more hostile states from which we cannot easily return.
Journal Article