I'm preparing a talk on resources for French civil servants (now they will have to attend one presentation on #climate, one on #biodiversity, and one on resources as part of a mandatory continuing education) and I thought I would share the images I'll be using here, as I find some of them are quite nice.
So see below for some impressive visualizations on our #resource #consumption.
⬇️
1/N
[#]dataviz #environment #resources #infrastructure #fossilFuels #metals #landUse #ecology #cattle
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from tfardet@scicomm.xyz
I guess many may have seen these two, but I had to show them: it's been a few of years since we estimate the mass of human-made stuff since 1900 has exceeded the global biomass.
That's right: the weight of all the things we made is heavier than the dry mass of all living things on the planet (including viruses).
And at the speed we're increasing it, we'll exceed the wet mass (roughly 2.5 times this) in roughly two decades; less if we keep accelerating.
Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-3010-5
2/N
=> View attached media | View attached media | View attached media | View attached media
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from tfardet@scicomm.xyz
Of course, there are also fossil fuels!
I won't spend much time on that but it's always good to see how much one uses if they were made into big cubes.
The numbers are for US citizens, so it's probably less for most Europeans, and a lot less in other parts of the world.
For French people it's 4 times less gas (60% of the cube's size), twice less fuel (80% of the cube size), and more than 8 times less coal (so a cube half the size), but it'd still be impressive if you ask me 😉
3/N
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from tfardet@scicomm.xyz
But most of all, I'm interested in the other resources that people seldom think about: land, water, and biomass.
Land is a vital resource and we're using half of it for agriculture, with 80% to raise or feed cattle
This leaves little space for wild fauna (the bit that remains, anyways, since most mammal mass is now cattle).
https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture
And forest are not all wild areas: less than half are protected.
In France, most are fragmented, exploited and almost mono-species.
4/N
=> View attached media | View attached media | View attached media
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from tfardet@scicomm.xyz
Taking a break for now but I'll resume the thread some time next week to add visualization about water and biomass 🙂
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from tfardet@scicomm.xyz
I said I'd continue this thread ⬆️ with more data about biomass and water, but it turns out these issues are really region-specific and I don't see how to make it into a thread, so maybe I'll just write about it on my website and link it here one day.
Just to give you an idea of how much it varies, here are two neighbouring regions of France and their water use (ignoring the use to cool power plants).
Side note for France: flushes use about half as much water as industry or agriculture.
5/N
=> View attached media | View attached media
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from tfardet@scicomm.xyz
Anyway, the numbers for France can also show that what we extract most from the environment is water, as France extracts roughly 10 Gt a year to drink, irrigate or use in the industry.
With the water used to cool power plants and fill canals, we're moving around 30 Gt of water.
So just looking at France, that's already as much as all the matter we add each year to the world's technosphere!
Cf. https://scicomm.xyz/@tfardet/112342604037828708
6/N
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from tfardet@scicomm.xyz
I think I'll stop here for this thread.
Note that if you want to read more about resources like nutrients and biogeochemical flows, you can check these previous threads of mine:
On nutrient flows in general: https://scicomm.xyz/@tfardet/109370756100378256
On nitrogen flows in (French) sanitation systems: https://scicomm.xyz/@tfardet/111703771832787552
7/7 End
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from tfardet@scicomm.xyz
@tfardet The studies at https://circabc.europa.eu/ui/group/418195ae-4919-45fa-a959-3b695c9aab28/library/c2c3ef00-75a1-46d0-8bce-ad4116236e0a also highlight how water dominates the matter used in industry. As a normal citizen with no insight into industry, this is wild.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from darabos@mastodon.online
@darabos thanks for that link, I did not know about these EIA reports!
I'll also try make a short thread in a week or two about material consumption so we'll be able to discuss some more about this 😉
But yes, we use lots of water in lots of processes, which also means that we send quite a bit of undesirable material into water streams...
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from tfardet@scicomm.xyz
@tfardet
I'm extremely surprised by the large biomass of horses.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from dynamic@social.coop
@dynamic it was a surprise for me too, I imagine it's a bit like pets but with a much larger mass per animal? Plus maybe still used in some parts of the world?
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from tfardet@scicomm.xyz
@tfardet
I guess so. I feel like when I see non-U.S. imagery of people using draft animals it's usually oxen, but I guess those would be folded in with "cattle", so these charts don't let us do that comparison.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from dynamic@social.coop
@tfardet
One bit of nuance that I feel is important to add to the land charts is that there are a lot of anthropogenic landscapes that are also habitat for wildlife. This includes pasture, grazing land, and a lot of the forests that are managed for wood, but also certain built-up environments.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from dynamic@social.coop
@dynamic that's somewhat true for very small animals, provided they can resist the products spread on the land (very few pastures are not fertilized or treated in some way), but much less for larger animals.
Overall, they could be, but at the moment they're not, hence the extreme decline we see in wild biomass.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from tfardet@scicomm.xyz
@tfardet
Re: "that's somewhat true for very small animals"
Of course. But small doesn't mean unimportant.
(will respond to the other part of your statement separately)
https://news.mongabay.com/2024/04/sumatra-wildlife-umbrella-species-tiger-rhino-clouded-leopard-conservation-leuser-biodiversity/
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from dynamic@social.coop
@tfardet
Re: "very few pastures are not fertilized or treated in some way"
I'm interested in this statement, and I have a couple of questions.
First, what is the geographic scope here?
Second, how much of the reason that "very few pastures are not treated" is rooted in definitional differences between pasture and grazing land? I want to check on this, because (I believe?) grazing land is the far larger footprint globally.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from dynamic@social.coop
@dynamic I know mostly about France and Europe, situation may vary wildly elsewhere...
As for the definition, I'm used to the French definitions where I believe grazing lands has animals on it while pasture would be mowed to feed animals that are not on it.
However, as far as I know, there is no well defined boundary between the two and it may also varies wildly across countries.
I'm not sure there is a major difference between the two in terms of impact (I'm not even sure it's worth separating)
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from tfardet@scicomm.xyz
@tfardet
Oh, interesting. I'm pretty sure that isn't the distinction drawn in the U.S., although I'm honestly a bit hazy on how we distinguish between pasture and grazing land, beyond the fact that grazing land is largely public lands out west.
I'm pretty sure that over here, pasture and grazing land are both grazed by animals directly, as opposed to hay, which is cut.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from dynamic@social.coop
@dynamic what would be the difference (if any) between the two, then?
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from tfardet@scicomm.xyz
@tfardet
As I say, I'm hazy on the distinction. I'll do a bit of poking around and see if I can find a clear distinction.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from dynamic@social.coop
@tfardet
In any case, there's a very important distinction between land that is mowed and land that is grazed by livestock directly, from an ecosystem ecology perspective. That is, if you mow the hay and transport it somewhere else, all of those nutrients are permanently removed from the soil, whereas if animals graze the land directly, a large portion of the nutrients are returned as feces and urine.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from dynamic@social.coop
@tfardet
The only nutrients that are necessarily lost from land that is grazed are the nutrients removed in the form of meat, milk, eggs, (etc.). The reality is of course a bit messier than that. Continuous haying depletes the soils much more rapidly, and amendments are much more important if the productivity of the land isn't going to be quickly exhausted.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from dynamic@social.coop
@dynamic that is true, but at least in France you still get rather high fertilization rates even on permanent grazing land, possibly because the animals do not stay there year-round and and to compensate nitrogen loss from cow urine denitrification.
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from tfardet@scicomm.xyz
@tfardet
[nod] And honestly, the fact that grazing land is (I'm pretty sure) less managed over here doesn't necessarily mean that it is managed sustainably.
(I'm using "sustainable" here in the traditional sense of meaning an activity that is capable of being sustained indefinitely, not in the more modern sense of sustainable development goals.)
=> More informations about this toot | More toots from dynamic@social.coop This content has been proxied by September (ba2dc).Proxy Information
text/gemini