Chuyên mục: Conserving natural wetlands

Vietnam loses sacred cranes after habitat change

~ Phạm Thu Hương ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

In 2020 and 2022, no sarus cranes were spotted in Cham Trim National Park. PHOTO: Nguyen Van Hung

mekongeye – By Tran Nguyen

19 September 2022 at 8:05 (Updated on 22 September 2022 at 17:13)

A vulnerable bird that usually migrated to the wetlands of the Mekong Delta has become a rare visitor to the area

DONG THAP, VIETNAM – Twenty years ago, Nguyen Van Liet took scientists to the wetlands near his hometown of Tram Chim on Vietnam’s Mekong Delta to find sarus cranes, a vulnerable bird species according to the IUCN Red List, native to Southeast Asia, South Asia and Australia.

“We had to go very early so the cranes wouldn’t know it,” Liet said of the expedition, which aimed to study the crane’s movements using a navigation device. “After sedating them, attaching tracking devices to their legs, the crew found shelter to wait for them to wake up and leave safely.”

Memories of those trips will forever be a source of pride for the 58-year-old. His efforts, no matter how humble, have contributed to helping Tram Chim become known worldwide as a place to preserve this rare crane species, which are world’s tallest flying birds.

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Wetlands help protect us from floods and purify our water

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này
news.trust.org
by Zita Sebesvari and Yvonne Walz | United Nations University, Institute for Environment and Human Security
Friday, 22 March 2019 07:53 GMT

Despite the many benefits of wetlands, their potential is still not fully utilisedEvery day climate-related disasters are happening all around the globe, and this trend will keep increasing. Just between 1998 and 2017, “climate-related and geophysical disasters killed 1.3 million people and left a further 4.4 billion injured, homeless, displaced or in need of emergency assistance”, according to U.N. figures.

On this year’s World Water Day, it is important to highlight the importance of protecting wetlands, so that they can maintain their natural structure and way of functioning. Wetlands such as floodplains, marshes, mangroves and peatlands help decrease flooding by increasing the infiltration of excess water into the soil. Along coastlines, they can also act as a natural buffer and reduce the energy of waves and currents, reducing exposure to storms and surges. Tiếp tục đọc “Wetlands help protect us from floods and purify our water” →

Bản đồ hoá hiện trạng nước mặt toàn cầu: Mapping long-term global surface water occurrence

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

ec.europa.eu_In an article published in Nature on 7 December 2016, JRC scientists describe how, in collaboration with Google, they have quantified changes in global surface waters and created interactive maps which highlight the changes in the Earth’s surface water over the past 32 years.

The data show that the impacts of climate on where and when surface water occurs can be measured, and that the presence of surface water can be substantially altered by human activities.The data show that the impacts of climate on where and when surface water occurs can be measured, and that the presence of surface water can be substantially altered by human activities.
©EU/Google 2016

Based on over three million satellite scenes (1 823 Terabytes of data) collected between 1984 and 2015, the Global Surface Water Explorer was produced using 10 000 computers running in parallel. The individual images were transformed into a set of global maps with a 30-metre resolution, which enable users to scroll back in time to measure the changes in the location and persistence of surface water globally, by region, or for a specific area. The maps are available for all users, free of charge. Tiếp tục đọc “Bản đồ hoá hiện trạng nước mặt toàn cầu: Mapping long-term global surface water occurrence” →