Program for the Human Environment

Recent essays based on the “Peak Stuff” paper by Chris Goodall highlight our work on Dematerialization:

In Le Monde in France in French by Audrey Garric, “Have we attained a peak of objects?”  Also available in English.

In Italy in Italian by Pamela Pelatelli “Are we consuming less?”

Also, an essay, ”Going for the Burn,” by Matt Ridley (45 December 2011) draws on our work on Decarbonization.    Also available in Spanish.

Goodall’s excellent paper elicits memories of

IK Wernick, JH Ausubel, National materials flows and the environment (Annual Review of Energy and the Environment 20: 463-492, 1995)

IK Wernick, R Herman, S Govind, JH Ausubel, Materialization and dematerialization: Measures and trends (Pp 135-156 in Technological Trajectories and the Human Environment, JH Ausubel and HD Langford (eds) 1997) and

JH Ausubel, PE Waggoner, Dematerialization: variety, caution, and persistence (Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 105(35): 12774-12779, 2008 10.1073/pnas.0806099105 D)

Thanks to Susan Basen and Web Geek Science, the 1997 report IK Wernick, JH Ausubel, Industrial ecology: some directions for research (with the Vishnu Group, The Rockefeller University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) is available in a Haitian Creole translation.

Kate Stoeckle’s 2008 high school DNA barcoding project, dubbed “Sushi-gate“, is featured in the latest edition of McGraw-Hill textbook, Biology. Here is the excerpt from the book.

The 4th International Barcode of Life Conference held in Adelaide, Australia, in December 2011 has now posted the presentations, including Mark Stoeckle on the All Birds Barcoding Initiative.  Also posted is the 5-minute video of Jesse Ausubel’s Toast to the progress of the barcode movement at the Reception at the South Australian Museum.

A 4 January 2012 press release describes the continuing rapid expansion of the Encyclopedia of Life.  It is hard to believe that the EOL went public only in February 2008.    Over 900,000 species now have pages.

The Census of Marine Life community continues to make wonderful discoveries of diversity and its patterns.   Alex Rogers, Paul Tyler, and Co. report on “The Discovery of New Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vent Communities in the Southern Ocean and Implications for Biogeography.”   Their findings include a new Yeti crab!

On 16 October 2011 the Scientific Steering Committee of the Census of Marine Life formally received Japan’s International Cosmos Prize in an elegant ceremony in Osaka. Jesse Ausubel joined Ian Poiner, Myriam Sibuet, Victor Gallardo, Patricia Miloslavich, and Yoshihisa Shirayama in accepting the prize. Following is the brief statement of acceptance.

On Receiving the International Cosmos Prize

The Scientific Steering Committee of the Census of Marine Life

We are thrilled that the International Cosmos Prize, rooted in greenery, honors the blue world.  Humanity every day has opportunities to see the beauty of nature on land, exemplified by flowers and gardens and their changes through the seasons. Until recently, humanity could see little of life in the vast, dark, and deep oceans. We transferred a few forms of marine life into aquariums, but we did not even have a list of the forms of life in the ocean or a reliable estimate of how many forms of life remain to be discovered.

In the late 1990s, marine biologists became convinced that new technologies and international cooperation could make possible the first Census of Marine Life. The goal was to bridge polar and tropical seas, shallow and deep waters, and small and large organisms in an exploration and documentation of marine life. The members of the international Scientific Steering Committee of the Census of Marine Life had the privilege of encouraging and assisting more than 2700 researchers from over 80 nations to participate. We humbly accept the International Cosmos Prize on behalf of the entire community of researchers who succeeded in realizing the dream of a Census. The discovery of one another’s talents, and the consequent rapport and respect, form a major legacy of the Census matching the global scale of the ocean’s questions.

We also thank all the organizations that enabled the Census, including marine laboratories and universities, natural history museums and aquariums, navies, governmental and intergovernmental organizations that support and coordinate ocean and biodiversity science, and private corporations and foundations who gave technical and financial support. We specially note the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation of New York, which provided funds to assess the feasibility of the Census and then to coordinate the Census through its decade.

We are proud that the Census advanced both the microscopic and the macroscopic. The Census described in detail more than 1200 new species. It also discovered immense global patterns of diversity, distribution, and abundance based on tens of millions of observations united in a modern database freely accessible to everyone. We are proud that the beauty and mystery of marine life attracted artists and historians as well as natural scientists and that the Census became a united celebration of many forms of the power of human observation. Together, we learned that the oceans are richer, more connected, and more altered than anyone had known.

May the extraordinary honor of the International Cosmos Prize prove that the oceans can symbolize the harmonious coexistence between nature and humanity. What the Census discovered, what the Census showed that has already been lost, and what the Census showed remains to be discovered give urgency to achieving such harmony, our best gift to future generations.  The ocean can be Earth’s largest garden – and wilderness.

A splendid book emerging from the Census of Marine Life has just been published, The Biology of Squat Lobsters, GCB Poore, ST Ahyong, and J Taylor (eds.), CRC, Boca Raton, 2011, available from Amazon and other booksellers. Jesse Ausubel had the privilege to pen the Foreword:

The Biology of Squat Lobsters is not obviously the title of an important and beautiful book, which this is. The book matters because, as editors Gary Poore, Shane Ahyong, and Joanne Taylor explain, squat lobsters dominate, numerically and visibly, crustacean life on seamounts, continental margins, many shelf environments, coral reefs, and hydrothermal vents. The book matters even more because it exemplifies 21st century global biology. The seventeen authors from nine countries address variety, ancestry, and global distribution, spanning animals from waters of frosty Norway to toasty Philippines. They address development, physiology, and ecology, including how squat lobsters thrive in the exotic seafloor environments independent of energy from the sun. They address the big humans who make a living from squat lobster fisheries and the tiny parasites for whom the lobsters are hosts. They address squat lobsters making war and making love. Using the many tools of biology, traditional and new, the authors describe and explain what is known and unknown about 1000 forms of life. The skill and generosity of more than forty photographers and artists make the animals and book a joy to behold.

As one of the founders of the cooperative international research program The Census of Marine Life, I can say with certainty and pleasure that The Biology of Squat Lobsters is one of the highest realizations of the program. To understand life, we must observe and collect, analyze, and integrate as the authors and their colleagues have done. To protect life, we must feel awe at the treasure around and sustaining us. Anyone reading this masterwork will come to know that squat lobsters are not only Galatheoids and Chyrostolids, they are rubies and sapphires, set here in a scientific crown worthy of their perfection.

The Environmental News Alert Service of the European Commission published a piece “Forest Density is Increasing” describing our work.

Discover magazine celebrates our work with Finnish colleagues on the changing density of forests as one of the top 100 science stories of 2011. “Forests stage a comeback” is #36!”