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Showing posts from December, 2018

Blog #11

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Title: Five things we have learned from the IPCC report Author: Matt McGrath Date: October 8, 2018 Source: BBC News URL: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-45784892 This article is a summary of a 33 page report of the impacts of climate change in years to come. The report talks about the difference between allowing temperatures to rise 2 degrees C as opposed to 1.5. In order to achieve this, we have to cut emissions by nearly half and get our electricity from renewable sources. The report also says that we will have to take the carbon out of the air and store it underground. In addition, billions of trees will need to be planted. While these are big changes that need to implemented globally, individually, everyone has to do their part. This includes eating at a lower trophic level and traveling in a way that uses less energy.

Blog #10

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Title: China's one-child policy to end Author: Steven Jiang Date: October 30, 2015 Source: CNN URL: https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/29/asia/china-one-child-policy/ China is upholding its regulations on its population, but less so now. The previous policy that families can only have one child is now gone. To replace it, there is a new policy that allows only two children for every couple. This policy is estimated to affect 100 million couples. China had said that with the one child policy, families could have a second baby if the one of the parents was an only child. However, this did not lead to the influx in population that was expected. Because of the one child policy, there is a huge population of people over 60 years old, which is expected to hurt health care and social services. The impact of China's one child policy is going to be prevalent for a long time, even if the law has been changed

Blog #9

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Title: Keystone Species Author: Stephen C. Wagner Date: 2010 Source: The Nature Education URL: https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/keystone-species-15786127 The term keystone species first originated from an experiment Robert Paine did. He took out a species called Pisaster ochraceus from an ecosystem and also kept a control group. He found that without this species, there was a significant decrease in species diversity. A keystone species was then defined as a species that has a large role in the population and prevalence levels of other species within the same ecosystem or community. Keystone modifiers are species that dramatically alter the environment and in turn determine other species' way of life. Another example of a keystone species is the Gray Wolf. When this species' population decreased, the elk populations drastically increased, leading to overgrazing. With this overgrazing, there was declines in plant species, which caused the loss of habitat f