Will help countries to detect fire hotspots in real time



FAO today has launched a new online portal on fire information and real time monitoring to help countries to control fire effectively and protect property and natural resources. The new Global Fire Information Management System (GFIMS) detects fire hotspots from satellites operated by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Developed in collaboration with the University of Maryland, GFIMS has an online mapping interface for displaying fire hotspots in "near real" time meaning that there is a lag of approximately 2.5 hours between satellite overpass and the data being available. The new system also allows users to receive email alerts on specific areas of interest, enabling subscribers to react quickly.

"The GFIMS has been launched at a time when the incidence of megafires tends to increase," said Pieter van Lierop, FAO Forestry Officer, who is responsible for the agency's activities in fire management.
"The control of these fires has become an issue of high importance, not only because of the increasing number of casualties and the huge amounts of area burned but also because of the relations with issues of global interest, like climate change."In Russia alone this year due to the unprecedented heat wave with temperatures soaring to up to 40ºC and winds of up to 20 metres per second the total area burned has reached more than 14 million hectares, according to the data provided by the Sukachev Institute for Forests, based in Krasnoyarsk. Forest fires in Russia have already killed more than 50 people this summer.

Globally, vegetation fires affect an estimated 350 million ha of land each year- about half or more of this area is burnt in Africa. In the Mediterranean, between 700 000 and one million hectares are damaged by vegetation fires every year.

Easy to use
Until recently, natural resource managers have faced considerable challenges in obtaining timely satellite-derived information on vegetation fires.

"The information was very fragmented because it was gathered from various sources making it unsuitable for precise analysis and identifying trends," - said John Latham, FAO Senior Environment Officer in the Natural Resources Management and Environment Department. - "GFIMS is an integrated fire information system which delivers the essential data to its users while the fires are still burning."

GFIMS allows users to download fire information in minimal file sizes and in easy-to-use formats, including text files, ESRI shapefiles, Web Map Services, Google Earth/KML files, and a plug-in for NASA World Wind.
"GFIMS has also provoked strong research interest," added Latham. "Linking the system to land cover shows us what is burning. GFIMS now provides analysis on trends of prevalence of fire by year and month, and will include information on the size of burnt area by land cover type in the future. It will result in improving analytical data and timely response."
The system could be used by forest managers and fire fighters, as well as agencies involved in agricultural and natural resources monitoring. The subscription is free of charge. The system only requires a functioning email address. Initially GFIMS has been launched in three languages - English, French and Spanish. The monitoring system is hosted at the FAO's Natural Resources Management and Environment Department.


http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/44613/icode/

One of the European Space Agency experiments involves the collection of air samples to measure the quality of air in a confined space such as the Mars500 modules. Romain Charles demonstrates the collection procedure and describes the scope of this experiment.

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars500/SEMJ2Y4OJCG_0.html

The second, updated and revised, edition of Toby Mendel’s Freedom of Information: A Comparative Legal Survey has been translated into Arabic and is now available both in print and online versions.

The publication analyses the notion of the right to information, surveys international standards and trends, outlines the key features of a right to information regime and presents a comparative legal analysis covering 14 different countries.

“There has been a veritable revolution in recent years in terms of the right to information, commonly understood as the right to access information held by public bodies. Whereas in 1990 only 13 countries had adopted national right to information laws, upwards of 70 such laws have now been adopted globally, and they are under active consideration in another 20-30 countries,” states the author. His overview of best practice standards and review of laws and policies has become a point of reference for governments, civil society actors, development practitioners, academics and media involved in efforts to further the right to information around the world.

The publication is also available in its original English version, as well as in Chinese, French, Nepalese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish for free download in PDF format: click here.

http://whc.unesco.org

FAO publishes new version of handbook on wildland fire management



Fighting wildfires requires the participation of local communities, since most fires stem from human activities, says a new version of FAO's "Wildland Fire Management Handbook for Trainers," co-published today by the UN agency and the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
"When local communities benefit from protecting their natural resources they are more likely to be mobilized to prevent fires," said Pieter van Lierop, FAO Forestry Officer. Where people have a direct interest in protecting their natural resources, the number and size of unplanned wildfires started by people are likely to drop significantly.

The handbook highlights that the risk, frequency, intensity and impacts of wildfires can be reduced through more integrated approaches to fire management, including fire detection and suppression but also monitoring, early warning, prevention and preparedness. 

"There should be the right balance between activities involving suppressing fires and investing in costly forest-fire equipment on one hand, and establishing effective prevention and awareness-raising among local communities on the other," van Lierop said.

Scale and causes of wildfires

Globally, more than 350 million hectares (ha) are estimated to be affected by vegetation fires eah year — about half or more of this area is burnt in Africa.
An estimated 150 to 250 million ha of tropical forests are affected by wildfire annually.
Between 700 thousand and 1 million ha in the Mediterranean area suffer from vegetation fires every year.
Ninety to 95 percent of all such fires have a human cause.

The expansion of agriculture and other forms of land conversion in developing countries, negligence, the increased use of wildlands for recreation, such as picnics and barbecues, and tourism in both developed and developing countries are among the reasons for the increasing incidence and impacts of wildland fires. Many fires are intentionally set to clear land for agriculture, and often burn much larger areas than was originally intended.

However, simply prohibiting burning is not a practical solution. "People will light fires anyway, even if it is legally banned, in order to clear land or to dispose of rubbish," van Lierop said. "So it is more beneficial to train local communities in fire management and to develop alternative less harmful solutions with them. Burning land at the end of winter, for example, will lower the risk of bigger devastating fires."

Fire: a necessary evil
Fire can be very destructive and at the same time be a very useful land management tool if carefully timed and used. Fire and ecosystems have been linked in many ways for millennia, and that must be recognized for any wildland fire management to be effective, according to FAO. It is important that planned burning in ecosystems takes place to maintain biodiversity, ensure regeneration, and forage production.

For instance, it is known that in Southern Africa, controlled burning of savanna provides edible forage for animals compared to unburnt areas and reduces the fire risk by reducing the accumulation of dry and inedible older grasses. In grassland ecosystems, fire is the primary mode of decomposition, crucial for returning nitrites to the soil and allowing the grasslands to sustain their high productivity.

Successful fire management requires training of local communities to improve their knowledge of fire impacts on food security and rural livelihoods. Also, land-use authorities and managers around the world need to be educated in ecological fire management. Creating special forest fire control units in each country is another important step to monitor and prevent disastrous forest fires.

In Thailand, massive education and training programmes involving foresters and the general public have resulted in a reduction of indiscriminate burning by 30 percent, the publication mentions. "Developing countries should look into such positive practices and put more efforts into community based fire management education and prevention of fires," added van Lierop.


http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/41230/icode/

FAO publishes key findings of global forest resources assessment


World deforestation, mainly the conversion of tropical forests to agricultural land, has decreased over the past ten years but continues at an alarmingly high rate in many countries, FAO announced today.
Globally, around 13 million hectares of forests were converted to other uses or lost through natural causes each year between 2000 and 2010 as compared to around 16 million hectares per year during the 1990s, according to key findings of FAO's most comprehensive forest review to date The Global Forest Resources Assessment 2010. The study covers 233 countries and areas.
Brazil and Indonesia, which had the highest loss of forests in the 1990s, have significantly reduced their deforestation rates. In addition, ambitious tree planting programmes in countries such as China, India, the United States and Viet Nam - combined with natural expansion of forests in some regions - have added more than seven million hectares of new forests annually. As a result the net loss of forest area was reduced to 5.2 million hectares per year between 2000 and 2010, down from 8.3 million hectares annually in the 1990s.

The world's total forest area is just over four billion hectares or 31 percent of the total land area. The net annual loss of forests (when the sum of all gains in forest area is smaller than all losses) in 2000-2010 is equivalent to an area about the size of Costa Rica. 


Biggest losses in South America, Africa
South America and Africa had the highest net annual loss of forests in 2000-2010, with four and 3.4 million hectares respectively. Oceania also registered a net loss, due partly to severe drought in Australia since 2000. 

Asia, on the other hand, registered a net gain of some 2.2 million hectares annually in the last decade, mainly because of large-scale afforestation programmes in China, India and Viet Nam, which have expanded their forest area by a total of close to four million hectares annually in the last five years. However, conversion of forested lands to other uses continued at high rates in many countries. 

In North and Central America, the forest area remained fairly stable, while in Europe it continued to expand, although at a slower rate than previously.

"For the first time, we are able to show that the rate of deforestation has decreased globally as a result of concerted efforts taken both at local and international level," said Eduardo Rojas, Assistant Director-General of FAO's Forestry Department.

"Not only have countries improved their forest policies and legislation, they have also allocated forests for use by local communities and indigenous peoples and for the conservation of biological diversity and other environmental functions. This is a very welcoming message in 2010 - the International Year of Biodiversity.
"However, the rate of deforestation is still very high in many countries and the area of primary forest - forests undisturbed by human activity - continues to decrease, so countries must further strengthen their efforts to better conserve and manage them", he added.


Forests and climate change


Forests play an important part in climate change mitigation. Forests store a vast amount of carbon. When a forest is cut down and converted to another use, carbon is released back into the atmosphere.
"A lower deforestation rate and the establishment of new forests have helped bring down the high level of carbon emissions from forests caused by deforestation and forest degradation", said Mette Løyche Wilkie, the Coordinator of the Assessment.
"But we need to look forward because the large tree planting programmes in China, India and Viet Nam, accounting for most of the recent gains in forest area, are scheduled to end by 2020," she added. "That means we have a short window of opportunity to put in place effective and permanent measures to significantly reduce the current rates of deforestation and forest degradation. Without such interventions we risk a sudden return to the high rates of net forest loss and of carbon emissions from forests, which we had in the 1990s," she said.


FAO's Global Forest Resources Assessments are published every five years. More than 900 specialists from 178 countries were involved in the Global Forest Resources Assessment 2010. The full report of this Assessment will be released in October 2010.


Key findings


Other key findings in the report included:
•Brazil lost an average of 2.6 million hectares of forest annually in the last ten years as compared with 2.9 million hectares per year in the 1990s while Indonesia's figures were respectively 0.5 and 1.9 million hectares per year.
•Primary forests account for 36 percent of total forest area but have decreased by more than 40 million ha since 2000. This is largely due to reclassification of primary forest to "other naturally regenerated forests" because of selective logging or other human interventions.
•The area of forest in national parks, wilderness areas and other legally protected areas has increased by more than 94 million hectares since 1990 and it now equals 13 percent of the total forest area.
•Forests are among the world's chief carbon sinks. They store some 289 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon in trees and vegetation. The carbon stored in forest biomass, deadwood, litter and soil together is more than all the carbon in the atmosphere. Globally, carbon stocks in forest biomass decreased by an estimated 0.5 Gt a year in 2000-2010, mainly due to a reduction in total forest area.
•Fires, pests and diseases are causing increased damage to forests in some countries. On average, one percent of all forests was reported to be significantly affected each year by forest fires. Outbreaks of forest insects damage some 35 million hectares of forest annually. Extreme weather events such as storms, blizzards and earthquakes also took a heavy toll in the past decade.
•Seventy-six countries have issued or updated their forest policies since 2000 and 69 countries - primarily in Europe and Africa - have enacted or amended their forest laws since 2005.
•Data collection for the Global Forest Resources Assessment is becoming more comprehensive and precise. New data and additional information on afforestation and on natural expansion of forests for the past 20 years has made it possible to estimate rates of deforestation and loss from natural causes more accurately. The new global estimate for 1990 to 2000 (close to 16 million ha per year) is higher than previously estimated (13 million ha), because it now also includes deforestation within countries that have had an overall net gain in forest area.
•A remote-sensing survey of forests, led by FAO, sampling some 13 500 sites over a period of 15 years, will provide even more accurate data on global and regional rates of deforestation by the end of 2011.



http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/40893/icode/

L’Istituto Italiano di Paleontologia Umana nell’ambito del Progetto MIUR per la diffusione della cultura scientifica “Valorizzazione e virtuale dei siti preistorici del bacino di Anagni” ha organizzato due PaleoConferenze presso il Convitto Principe di Piemonte ad Anagni (Frosinone).

La prima conferenza si terrà alle ore 10 di venerdì 22 Novembre. Interverrà il Prof. Italo Biddittu che illustrerà la storia delle più importanti scoperte archeologiche e paleontologiche degli ultimi anni del Lazio meridionale, in particolare quella dell’”Uomo di Ceprano”.

La seconda conferenza si svolgerà alle ore 10 di venerdì 29 Novembre e giovani paleontologi e archeologi della “Sapienza – Università di Roma” presenteranno le loro ricerche.

Le due PaleoConferenze sono rivolte agli studenti della scuola primaria e secondaria. La partecipazione è gratuita previa prenotazione.

http://www.isipu.org/

22 e 23 FEBBRAIO 2013, Città Prato

Lo stage è rivolto ad archeologi, studenti di Scienze Umanistiche e Naturali, insegnanti, operatori museali, guide archeologiche, naturalistiche, ambientali o turistiche, operatori culturali e  semplici appassionati. Tale corso tratta la tecnologia dell'Uomo nella Preistoria.

All'interno di esso verranno affrontati diversi procedimenti tecnologici dei nostri antenati.

Programma di massima

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano, Russian commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg returned to Earth today, landing in the Kazakhstan steppe.

Their return flight, landing at 02:49 GMT (03:49 CET), was in the same Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft that flew them to the International Space Station on 29 May.

Luca and Karen will now travel to Houston, Texas, where they will undergo medical checks before meeting media on 13 November at 13:30 GMT (14:30 CET).

Luca spent five months on the International Space Station for his Volare mission under a bilateral agreement with the Italian space agency and NASA. He conducted more than 30 scientific experiments, performed two extravehicular activities (EVAs) and operational tasks as well as maintaining the orbital outpost.

Luca’s science roster included installing and running experiments on emulsions that will help industry to create foods and pharmaceuticals with longer shelf‑lives.

The Italian astronaut used ESA’s space furnace to heat metal to 1400°C for studying microstructures during alloy casting. This research can only be conducted in microgravity and is paving the way for ultra-light and stable space‑age metals.

Another experiment had Luca collect data of his own skin to help develop a model of how our tissues age. Luca also recorded his sleep to help understand how the human body regulates sleep patterns.

These experiments and more are benefitting people on Earth and preparing humans for further exploration of our Solar System. Previous experiments have drastically improved the industrial process for creating complex titanium alloys, resulting in cheaper and faster manufacturing of high-quality materials.

In addition to his scientific workload, Luca carried out operational tasks such as monitoring the docking of ESA’s fourth Automated Transfer Vehicle,Albert Einstein. Luca oversaw the unloading of more than 1400 items from the cargo spaceship.

Karen and Luca worked as a team to grapple and berth the second commercial spacecraft to visit the International Space Station, Cygnus.

His eventful mission included two spacewalks to install external experiments and prepare the Station for a new Russian module that will be launched next year.

Luca’s second spacewalk was cut short after a malfunction in the spacesuit caused water to accumulate inside his helmet, forcing him and NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy to return to the airlock as quickly as possible. Luca, a test pilot from the Italian air force, remained calm and returned to the airlock safely despite intermittent communications and without being able to see out of his helmet.

This was the first mission for Luca and the first for ESA’s new astronauts from the class of 2009. The next to fly to the Station will be Alexander Gerst, set for launch on 28 May 2014 from Kazakhstan.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. It is an intergovernmental organisation, created in 1975, with the mission to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space delivers benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.

ESA has 20 Member States: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, of whom 18 are Member States of the EU.

ESA has Cooperation Agreements with eight other Member States of the EU. Canada takes part in some ESA programmes under a Cooperation Agreement.

ESA is also working with the EU on implementing the Galileo and Copernicus programmes.

By coordinating the financial and intellectual resources of its members, ESA can undertake programmes and activities far beyond the scope of any single European country.

ESA develops the launchers, spacecraft and ground facilities needed to keep Europe at the forefront of global space activities.

Today, it launches satellites for Earth observation, navigation, telecommunications and astronomy, sends probes to the far reaches of the Solar System and cooperates in the human exploration of space.

http://www.esa.int/For_Media/Press_Releases/ESA_astronaut_Luca_Parmitano_lands_safely_back_on_Earth

Partners agree approach for developing vaccines capable of reducing malaria cases by 75% and to enable malaria elimination.

Dr Jean-Marie Okwo Bele, Director of WHO’s Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals

The world should aim to have vaccines which reduce malaria cases by 75%, and are capable of eliminating malaria, licensed by 2030, according to the updated 2013 "Malaria Vaccine Technology Roadmap", launched today. This new target comes in addition to the original 2006 Roadmap’s goal of having a licensed vaccine against Plasmodium falciparum malaria, the most deadly form of the disease, for children under 5 years of age in sub-Saharan Africa by 2015.

“Safe, effective, affordable vaccines could play a critical role in defeating malaria,” said Dr Robert D. Newman, Director of WHO’s Global Malaria Programme. ”Despite all the recent progress countries have made, and despite important innovations in diagnostics, drugs and vector control, the global burden of malaria remains unacceptably high.”
Current situation

The most recent figures by the WHO indicate that malaria causes an estimated 660 000 deaths each year from 219 million cases of illness. Scale-up of WHO recommended malaria control measures has been associated with a 26% reduction in the global malaria death rate over the last decade. Effective malaria vaccines could be an important complement to existing measures, if they can be successfully developed.

Final results from Phase III trials of the most advanced vaccine candidate, RTS,S/AS01, will be available by 2015. Depending on the final trial results, and depending on the outcome of the regulatory review by the European Medicines Agency, a WHO recommendation for use and subsequent prequalification of this first vaccine could occur in late 2015.
The Malaria Vaccine Technology Roadmap

The new roadmap, launched today at the annual conference of the American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene in Washington DC and also announced in a letter published in "The Lancet", aims to identify where additional funding and activities will be particularly key in developing second generation malaria vaccines both for protection against malaria disease and for malaria elimination. These include next-generation vaccines that target both Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax species of malaria.

“The new vaccines should show at least 75% efficacy against clinical malaria, be suitable for use in in all malaria-endemic areas, and be licensed by 2030,” says Dr Jean-Marie Okwo Bele, Director of WHO’s Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals. “The roadmap also sets a target for malaria vaccines that reduce transmission of the parasite.”

The 2013 "Malaria Vaccine Technology Roadmap" cites several reasons for the update, among them changing malaria epidemiology associated with the successful scale-up of malaria control measures in the last decade; a renewed focus on malaria elimination and eradication in addition to the ongoing need to sustain malaria control activities; and new technological innovations since 2006 including promising early work on so-called transmission-blocking malaria vaccines.

WHO lists 27 malaria vaccine candidates currently in clinical trials, with most in early stages of testing; RTS,S/AS01 is the only one currently in late-stage development.

The Roadmap’s vision centres on developing safe and effective vaccines against Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax that prevent disease and death and prevent transmission to enable malaria eradication, and is built around two strategic goals:

Development of malaria vaccines with protective efficacy of at least 75% against clinical malaria suitable for administration to appropriate at-risk groups in malaria-endemic areas.
Development of malaria vaccines that reduce transmission of the parasite and thereby substantially reduce the incidence of human malaria infection. This will enable elimination in multiple settings. Vaccines to reduce transmission should be suitable for administration in mass campaigns.

The "Malaria Vaccine Technology Roadmap" is the result of a consultative process led by WHO, which brought together the global community of malaria vaccine researchers and product developers, and is supported by an informally-organized group of malaria vaccine funders. The Malaria Vaccine Funders Group comprises the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the European & Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership, the European Vaccine Initiative, the European Commission, the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, the US Agency for International Development, the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Wellcome Trust, and WHO.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/notes/2013/malaria-vaccines-20131114/en/index.html

Misunderstandings of Human Evolution

224 pages | 8 line drawings | 6 x 9 | © 2013

The idea of a missing link between humanity and our animal ancestors predates evolution and popular science and actually has religious roots in the deist concept of the Great Chain of Being. Yet, the metaphor has lodged itself in the contemporary imagination, and new fossil discoveries are often hailed in headlines as revealing the elusive transitional step, the moment when we stopped being “animal” and started being “human.” In The Accidental Species, Henry Gee, longtime paleontology editor at Nature, takes aim at this misleading notion, arguing that it reflects a profound misunderstanding of how evolution works and, when applied to the evolution of our own species, supports mistaken ideas about our own place in the universe.

Gee presents a robust and stark challenge to our tendency to see ourselves as the acme of creation. Far from being a quirk of religious fundamentalism, human exceptionalism, Gee argues, is an error that also infects scientific thought. Touring the many features of human beings that have recurrently been used to distinguish us from the rest of the animal world, Gee shows that our evolutionary outcome is one possibility among many, one that owes more to chance than to an organized progression to supremacy. He starts with bipedality, which he shows could have arisen entirely by accident, as a by-product of sexual selection, moves on to technology, large brain size, intelligence, language, and, finally, sentience. He reveals each of these attributes to be alive and well throughout the animal world—they are not, indeed, unique to our species.

The Accidental Species combines Gee’s firsthand experience on the editorial side of many incredible paleontological findings with healthy skepticism and humor to create a book that aims to overturn popular thinking on human evolution—the key is not what’s missing, but how we’re linked.

http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo12789718.html