Publisher : BioScience Magazine
Place of publication :
Publication year : 2009
Thematic : Climate Change and Biodiversity
Language : English
Note
As the newest member of the group of former NOAA Administrators, and as someone who is very proud of the achievements of NOAA's dedicated, world-class scientists and support personnel, I remain, and anticipate always remaining, very much interested in the future of NOAA's mission and its people. So what does that future hold? In the atmosphere, human-produced contaminants threaten the health and welfare of all air-breathing species. In the ocean, marine debris generated by one country washes up on the shores of another. The absorption of increased atmospheric carbon has made the ocean more acidic (or less basic, to be accurate), thus jeopardizing the existence of organisms that depend on calcification and are essential to the entire food chain. Biodiversity is declining at an alarming rate, and overfishing worldwide has brought about a rapid decrease in populations of large fishes. Trends in the ocean and atmosphere are clearly affecting the sustainability of the human race. Population trends are alarming. With almost seven billion people, the earth is strained as never before to support the human species. People are moving to the coasts and large cities, thus magnifying the need to study, understand, and apply large-scale ecosystem approaches to the management of human activities. Climate change and global warming are clearly affecting the ocean and atmosphere; or, better said, observed changes in the ocean and atmosphere indicate that the earth is warming and the climate is changing.
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Encoded by : Mae Belen Llanza
