Species found in a single cubic foot around a coral reef in French Polynesia. Photo by David Liittschwager via National Geographic.
Photographer David Liittschwager set out for five different habitats on locations around the world to place a cubic foot. For a period resembling a twenty-four hour cycle he photographed all species that passed through this cube. Resulting photos, making of videos and an article by biodiversity expert E.O. Wilson appeared in the National Geographic Magazine of February 2010.
South Africa fynbos sample
As humans, we tend to pay more attention to the animals of considerable size, ones that we find cute or scary. But if we look close enough, there is such a great number of species living in any random cubic foot. This project is a visual display of this richness in just five of the worlds many cubic feet. Although the diversity on this scale is already surprising, there’s still many bacteria, viri and fungi less photogenic.
Projects like this keep showing the impossibility for humans to map (or even grasp) the scale of our planet’s biodiversity. If we don’t understand most species or the interrelations between them, how can we possibly determine their value? Ever?
Comments
One Comment so far. Leave a comment below.Two-hour drive north of Manaus (Amazon, Brazil) lies the ‘Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Research Base’ where over a thousand scientists come to research projects in the forest to see if the forest were worth something all by itself, without being chopped down or dug up. This is such important information. It is here that scientists can put forward evidence supporting a case that the forest is important to conserve for financial reasons, not just sentimental ones.
Alessandro Araujo, a scientist specializing in micrometrology, researches the carbon dioxide levels emitted throughout the forest. Trees here, like all plants, use photosynthesis to trap energy from sunlight, and in doing so they remove carbon from the atmosphere and incorporate it into their biomass. Forests are one of the main carbon sinks on the planet.
Araujo highlights 3 main reasons for the importance of the forest the be left intact. First, it is an important carbon sink or storage which, if disturbed or turned to crops or pasture, would increase the release of greenhouse gases and therefore global warming. Second, it generates local rain and weather patterns, which if lost could mean colossal droughts over the very fields and crops that it’s being destroyed to make way for. And also it is a cog in global weather systems to a degree that no one seems to quite understand.
It is believed by many that, financially, these potential disasters would be much more costly in damage repair and maintenance than any profits made by turning the forest into crops, pasture , timber or the like.
Maybe the problem lies in the fact that the worth of the forest intact is somewhat intangible. Its worth is wholesome and there for us all to reap the rewards together, but at the same time this makes it much harder for individuals to take their cut and get rich quick.
Source / More info at: Parry, B. (2008) Amazon: an extraordinary journey down the greatest river on earth. London: Penguin Group.