#landuse — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #landuse, aggregated by home.social.
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welp… i’ve often contended that the real-life Jabba The Hut is George Lucas himself. this Trump-like fuckery with his museum may actually prove me right 🍿🍿🍿
» Lucas Museum Hit With $1.9M Lawsuit Over Unpaid Bills Days Before Opening https://hoodline.com/2026/09/lucas-museum-hit-with-1-9m-lawsuit-over-unpaid-bills-days-before-opening/
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welp… i’ve often contended that the real-life Jabba The Hut is George Lucas himself. this Trump-like fuckery with his museum may actually prove me right 🍿🍿🍿
» Lucas Museum Hit With $1.9M Lawsuit Over Unpaid Bills Days Before Opening https://hoodline.com/2026/09/lucas-museum-hit-with-1-9m-lawsuit-over-unpaid-bills-days-before-opening/
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welp… i’ve often contended that the real-life Jabba The Hut is George Lucas himself. this Trump-like fuckery with his museum may actually prove me right 🍿🍿🍿
» Lucas Museum Hit With $1.9M Lawsuit Over Unpaid Bills Days Before Opening https://hoodline.com/2026/09/lucas-museum-hit-with-1-9m-lawsuit-over-unpaid-bills-days-before-opening/
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welp… i’ve often contended that the real-life Jabba The Hut is George Lucas himself. this Trump-like fuckery with his museum may actually prove me right 🍿🍿🍿
» Lucas Museum Hit With $1.9M Lawsuit Over Unpaid Bills Days Before Opening https://hoodline.com/2026/09/lucas-museum-hit-with-1-9m-lawsuit-over-unpaid-bills-days-before-opening/
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welp… i’ve often contended that the real-life Jabba The Hut is George Lucas himself. this Trump-like fuckery with his museum may actually prove me right 🍿🍿🍿
» Lucas Museum Hit With $1.9M Lawsuit Over Unpaid Bills Days Before Opening https://hoodline.com/2026/09/lucas-museum-hit-with-1-9m-lawsuit-over-unpaid-bills-days-before-opening/
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"Continued use and access to the peat swamp forest is therefore essential for people's well-being. Formalizing the customary tenure of communities that use the peatlands could contribute to their long-term protection."
Dummett et al. (2026). "How people use the peat swamp forests of the central Congo Basin" https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2024.0489
#wetlands #peatland #peatlands #swamps #bogs #carbon #conservation #landUse #LULUCF #land #landscape #Congo #DRC #forests #fishing
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"Continued use and access to the peat swamp forest is therefore essential for people's well-being. Formalizing the customary tenure of communities that use the peatlands could contribute to their long-term protection."
Dummett et al. (2026). "How people use the peat swamp forests of the central Congo Basin" https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2024.0489
#wetlands #peatland #peatlands #swamps #bogs #carbon #conservation #landUse #LULUCF #land #landscape #Congo #DRC #forests #fishing
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"Continued use and access to the peat swamp forest is therefore essential for people's well-being. Formalizing the customary tenure of communities that use the peatlands could contribute to their long-term protection."
Dummett et al. (2026). "How people use the peat swamp forests of the central Congo Basin" https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2024.0489
#wetlands #peatland #peatlands #swamps #bogs #carbon #conservation #landUse #LULUCF #land #landscape #Congo #DRC #forests #fishing
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"Continued use and access to the peat swamp forest is therefore essential for people's well-being. Formalizing the customary tenure of communities that use the peatlands could contribute to their long-term protection."
Dummett et al. (2026). "How people use the peat swamp forests of the central Congo Basin" https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2024.0489
#wetlands #peatland #peatlands #swamps #bogs #carbon #conservation #landUse #LULUCF #land #landscape #Congo #DRC #forests #fishing
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"Continued use and access to the peat swamp forest is therefore essential for people's well-being. Formalizing the customary tenure of communities that use the peatlands could contribute to their long-term protection."
Dummett et al. (2026). "How people use the peat swamp forests of the central Congo Basin" https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2024.0489
#wetlands #peatland #peatlands #swamps #bogs #carbon #conservation #landUse #LULUCF #land #landscape #Congo #DRC #forests #fishing
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… animal production itself uses much more nitrogen from fertiliser than it provides to the rest of #agriculture via manure—even in grass-based systems. Fertilizer, #landuse & the scale of animal production are all linked.
Case study: doi.org/10.5281/zeno...
Background: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... -
… animal production itself uses much more nitrogen from fertiliser than it provides to the rest of #agriculture via manure—even in grass-based systems. Fertilizer, #landuse & the scale of animal production are all linked.
Case study: doi.org/10.5281/zeno...
Background: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... -
"Data centers represent 27% of development sites in the U.S. this year. It’s the second-highest category after apartment buildings..."
Land prices are up 79% from last year.
And "home builders cannot bid in that market, because a builder’s land budget is capped by what home buyers can afford. A data center operator faces no such constraint. The result is ... no homes at all."
#USA #AI #DataCenters #LandUse #housing #farming
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https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/06/ai-data-centers-are-transforming-rural-land-markets-fueling-backlash.html -
Carbon credits as currently structured are ineffective for funding peatland restoration - but if effective, they could be actively harmful.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/25148486261437571
#wetlands #GHG #conservation #carbonCredits #rewetting #rewilding #carbon #peatland #peatlands #landuse #land #landscape #carbonOffsets #UK #Britain
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🃏 Behold, a 'riveting' collection of business cards from Los Alamos that apparently needed its own public #exhibit. Because, obviously, nothing screams land use like a #Rolodex from the nuclear age! 🔍📇
https://clui.org/collections/los-alamos-business-cards/selection-cards #LosAlamosBusinessCards #NuclearAge #UniqueCollection #LandUse #HackerNews #ngated -
The Radiative Effects Of Water Vapour From Terrestrial Evapotranspiration
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https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/adde72 <-- shared paper/letter
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https://zenodo.org/records/15413219 | https://zenodo.org/records/15416936 <-- shared open data, for “Model information and output for "The radiative effects…” ”
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https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-025-04191-w <-- shared paper
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H/T @jan Umsonst | Earth System Nerd
“Water vapour accounts for roughly 50% of the modern greenhouse effect. Over continental regions, evapotranspiration (ET) is often limited by water availability. In this study, [the authors] spatially quantify how much of the total atmospheric water vapour evaporated most recently from land and calculate the relative contribution of that water vapour to the atmospheric radiative budget. Using a combination of tracer-enabled Earth system model simulations and radiative transfer calculations, [they were] able to explicitly quantify the 3D distribution of terrestrial vs. oceanic water vapour, and the spatial contribution of each to the surface and top of atmosphere radiative budgets. [They found] that over many continental regions, more than half of the total column-integrated water vapour originates from land ET, and that this vapour contributes up to 30 W/m² of longwave radiation into the surface in the annual mean (about 10% of the total). Understanding how terrestrial ET impacts the base-state of water vapour distribution and the water vapour greenhouse effect is critical to understanding how and where changes in terrestrial ET, driven by climate change, land use, etc, will modify the radiative properties of the atmosphere and thus the climate system…”
#water #hydrology #greehouseeffect #highperformancecomputing #HPC #evapotranspiration #Radiative #WaterVapour #spatial #spatialanalysis #spatiotemporal #atmosphere #model #modeling #earthsystemmodelling #terrestrial #oceanic #vapour #climatechange #landuse #changes #climatesystem -
“According to the U.N., an estimated 40 percent of the world’s lands are degraded, largely from neglect, drought and over-grazing, meaning they’re less able to hold water and sequester carbon.
Restoring these lands could yield enormous benefits for food production, drought mitigation and carbon storage.”
#Environment #soil #LandUse #Climate #Water #Biodiversity #UN #Desertification
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What Energy Really Costs in Land: Looking Beyond the Fence Line
Why land area only matters when you count all the land that energy really uses
Arguments about land use in energy often begin with a photograph and end with a conclusion. A gas-fired power station occupies a compact industrial site. A nuclear station sits within a relatively small, well-defined boundary. A solar farm spreads across fields, while wind turbines may be visible across an entire landscape. From the fence line, the answer appears obvious: conventional generation is compact, while renewables are land hungry.
The observation is real, but the conclusion is often misleading because it counts only the land that can be seen. Modern energy systems are not simply power stations; they are supply chains. Every source of electricity requires some combination of mining, processing, transport infrastructure, maintenance, waste handling and eventual decommissioning. Looking only at the generating facility ignores much of the land required to support it.
This creates a problem in public debate. People often talk about “land used by energy” as though it were a single, obvious measure. In reality they are usually discussing one of three very different things. The first is the land physically occupied by the generating facility. The second is the land occupied throughout the entire lifecycle of producing a unit of electricity. The third is the ecological opportunity cost of that occupation: what other functions that land can still perform while the energy system is present.
All three questions are legitimate. None can safely be substituted for another.
The fence-line view
If the discussion is restricted to the generating site itself, then gas and nuclear perform exceptionally well.
A modern combined-cycle gas turbine plant can produce very large quantities of electricity from a remarkably compact site. Nuclear stations achieve something similar through the extraordinary energy density of uranium and their high utilisation rates. Ground-mounted solar, by contrast, requires substantially more surface area.
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero estimated that, at the end of September 2024, ground-mounted solar installations occupied around 21,200 hectares across the United Kingdom, representing approximately 0.1% of the nation’s total land area. Typical projects occupy around 2.25 hectares per megawatt of installed capacity, although individual sites vary significantly.
These figures often appear in criticisms of solar farms, but it is important to be clear about what they mean. They describe the area contained within the solar development boundary. They do not describe the total land required to provide solar electricity, nor do they describe land that has necessarily been removed from all other uses.
This distinction becomes obvious when nuclear is added to the comparison.
One of the most comprehensive studies of electricity land use examined around 1,400 observations across 73 countries and 45 US states. It found nuclear to be the most land-efficient source of electricity generation in its dataset, with a median land-use intensity of approximately 7.1 hectares per terawatt-hour generated annually. That made nuclear dramatically more land efficient than ground-mounted solar and significantly more land efficient than coal.
If the question is simply “which technology generates the most electricity per hectare of generating site?”, nuclear wins and gas performs extremely well. On that narrow metric, critics of solar farms are broadly correct.
The problem is that this metric only captures the final stage of the energy system.
Looking beyond the power station
Once the boundaries are expanded beyond the generating facility, the picture becomes much more nuanced.
Gas generation depends upon a continuing industrial landscape that extends well beyond the power station itself. Every unit of electricity requires gas to be extracted, processed, compressed, transported and ultimately burned. This requires wells, gathering systems, access roads, processing plants, compressor stations and pipelines, many of which extend across large geographic areas.
The generating station may remain small, but the supporting infrastructure does not.
Research into natural gas infrastructure has demonstrated why this wider perspective matters. One study found that roads and pipelines accounted for more than a third of the directly affected habitat footprint associated with gas extraction activities. The authors concluded that these linear features should be considered alongside extraction facilities when assessing environmental impact because they contribute significantly to habitat fragmentation.
This does not mean gas suddenly becomes the worst-performing technology. It does mean that comparing the complete fenced area of a solar farm with only the turbine hall of a gas station is not comparing like with like.
Nuclear tells a different story. Like gas, nuclear has upstream requirements that are invisible from the generating site. Uranium must be mined, processed, enriched and manufactured into fuel. Nuclear facilities must eventually be decommissioned, and wastes must be managed for the long term. Yet even when these stages are included, nuclear remains one of the most land-efficient energy technologies available.
Solar presents the opposite pattern. Manufacturing panels requires materials, mining and factory infrastructure, but once the system is built there is no ongoing fuel extraction. No wells have to be drilled. No pipelines have to be maintained. No raw fuel has to be supplied throughout the next thirty or forty years of operation. Most of the lifecycle impact occurs before operation begins.
Not all hectares are equal
Even lifecycle land occupation does not tell the whole story.
A hectare occupied by a solar farm is not necessarily equivalent to a hectare occupied by a mine, a gas field, a road corridor or an industrial estate. The crucial question becomes not simply how much land is occupied, but what remains possible on that land while the energy system is present.
This is where ecological opportunity cost becomes important.
A wind farm may extend across a large geographic area, yet much of the intervening land remains available for agriculture. A solar farm may support sheep grazing, species-rich grassland, improved hedgerows and pollinator habitat. A gas pipeline corridor may occupy a comparatively small total area while simultaneously fragmenting habitats across a much wider landscape. A surface mine may transform ecosystems entirely.
The difference between land occupied and land lost is therefore critical.
So what is the right comparison?
The mistake in many energy debates is to use one metric for one technology and a different metric for another. Solar farms are usually assessed by counting every hectare within their development boundary. Gas power stations are often assessed only by counting the power station itself. Wind farms are frequently criticised using their entire spacing area, while coal stations are discussed without reference to the mines that feed them.
None of these comparisons are fair.
The correct approach is to apply the same system boundary to every technology. Either count only the generating facility for all technologies or count the full lifecycle for all technologies. Either focus on site occupation or focus on ecological outcomes. Mixing the approaches inevitably produces misleading results.
The useful question is not “How much land can I see?” but “How much land does the entire energy system occupy, for how long, and what can that land still do?”
Once those questions are separated, land use becomes a meaningful environmental metric rather than a convenient photograph.
Sources
- Lovering et al. (2022) Land-use intensity of electricity production and tomorrow’s energy landscape, PLOS ONE.
- Ritchie (2022) How does the land use of different electricity sources compare?, Our World in Data.
- Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (2024) Land Utilised by Solar PV.
- Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (2025) Ground-mounted Solar Energy Plants: Predicted Land Use.
- House of Commons Library (2025) Planning for Solar Farms.
- UNECE (2021) Life Cycle Assessment of Electricity Generation Options.
- Gibon (2022) Corrigendum to UNECE Integrated Life-cycle Assessment of Electricity Sources: Land Use.
- Jones et al. (2014) Quantifying Habitat Impacts of Natural Gas Infrastructure to Facilitate Biodiversity Offsetting.
- The Wildlife Trusts (2025) Impacts of Ground Mounted Solar Farms on Biodiversity.
- Cagle et al. (2023) Standardized Metrics to Quantify Solar Energy-Land Relationships.
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… And current #funding also supports low-yielding but land-intensive #organic farming—without it, some farms will switch to higher-yielding conventional #farming methods.
#Agriculture #EU #CAP #Landownership #LandUse #Yields -
”When our rewilding program started, many big corporations offered us huge amounts of money if we certified carbon credits. We consulted with communities. But our answer was that we don’t sell nature.”
#climateFinance #wetlands #rewetting #prevention #deterrence #rewilding #Finland #Karelia #peatland #restoration #landUse #peatlands #nature #carbon #carbonSinks #CDR #wildfires #offsets #carbonOffsets #communities
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Pierce Road in the Harvard Forest is named for the Pierce Farm. 200 years ago, about a mile into the woods, once stood a farmhouse. All that remains now are the stones of the cellar hole, and, if you know where to look, the old well. The cellar is partially obscured by vegetation, but it's there as a reminder of the past land use #history of the area, when much of the surrounding forest was cleared for pasture.
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A status on land use change worldwide:
"The area used for growing crops grew significantly from 2001 to 2024. Temporary crops (such as wheat, rice and maize) increased by 104 million ha, or 11 percent, reaching 1 081 million ha. Permanent crops (such as cocoa, oil palm and coffee) grew by 59 million ha, reaching 194 million ha in 2024, an increase of over 43 percent."
The leaders in cropland expansion were in Africa (+78 million ha) and South America (+35 million ha).
The leaders in cropland contraction were in Northern America (−26 million ha).https://openknowledge.fao.org/items/fbfbe167-5026-4aa1-b985-2468507d5dc1
#FAO #foodSovereignty #agriculture #crops #land #landUse #LULUCF #trade #internationalTrade #cashCrops #exports
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Impact Of Urbanization Driven Land Use And Land Cover Change On Ecological Environmental Quality In Rupandehi Nepal Assessed Using The Remote Sensing Ecological Index
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https://doi.org/10.1007/s44288-026-00650-y <-- shared paper
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https://kathmandupost.com/money/2026/02/18/rupandehi-s-continued-urban-sprawl-comes-at-a-cost-for-agriculture-in-the-periphery <-- shared media article
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H/T@ Gaurav Parajulim
“[The authors] studied how the ecological quality of Nepal's Rupandehi District has changed over three decades (1993–2023), using satellite imagery and the Remote Sensing Ecological Index (RSEI) to track the health of the landscape year by year and to understand how urbanization-driven land use change has reshaped it.
What [they] found tells a nuanced story: as Butwal and Bhairahawa grew and built-up land expanded, ecological quality shifted in ways that a single number can't capture, some areas recovered, others declined, and the patterns rarely moved in a straight line…”
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“Rapid urbanization and population growth are major drivers of land use and land cover (LULC) change and can substantially alter ecological environmental quality (EEQ). This study assessed the spatiotemporal dynamics of LULC and their effect on EEQ in Rupandehi District, Nepal, over a 30-year period (1993–2023). Four ecological indicators representing greenness, wetness, dryness, and heat were derived from Landsat imagery in Google Earth Engine (GEE), and LULC was classified using a Support Vector Machine (SVM). The Remote Sensing Ecological Index (RSEI) was then constructed from these indicators using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) in ArcGIS Pro, and its spatial structure was examined using global and local spatial autocorrelation. The mean RSEI followed a non-linear trajectory, rising from 0.59 in 1993 to 0.635 in 2004, declining to 0.55 in 2013, and recovering to 0.67 in 2023, indicating an overall improvement in EEQ with a temporary mid-period decline. Over the same period, built-up areas expanded substantially and agricultural land declined, whereas forest cover fluctuated but showed a slight net increase by 2023, and barren land decreased markedly. Higher EEQ was concentrated in the forested northern hills, while lower values occurred in the urban centers of Butwal and Bhairahawa, closely matching the spatial pattern of LULC change. The results indicate that ecological quality reflects the combined influence of all land cover classes rather than any single class. This study provides a transferable and reproducible workflow for long-term ecological assessment based on openly available Landsat data, with the analysis code shared in a public repository, offering practical guidance for sustainable land management and environmentally responsible urban development...”
#GIS #spatial #mapping #RemoteSensing #GIS #RSEI #EnvironmentalMonitoring #Nepal #Research #GoogleEarthEngine #ArcGIS #EcologicalQuality #spatialautocorrelation #ecology #environment #earthobservation #RemoteSensingEcologicalIndex #landscape #urbanisation #urban #development #landuse #change #spatialanalysis #spatiotemporal -
Adherence to an adapted Planetary Health Diet (more fruits & #legumes; less #dairy, red #meat, animal fats & added #sugar) in China was linked to reduced GHG #emissions, water use & #landuse, as well as lower risk of all-cause mortality: doi.org/10.1007/s003... #environment #health #footprint
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Food consumption is responsible for over 80% of #carbon storage & biodiversity loss from #landuse in global agricultural supply chains—of which animal products drive 60% of carbon & 70% of #biodiversity losses, largely due to high land requirements of #meat. Shifts towards… doi.org/10.1038/s430... +
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Pocatello breaks ground on its first community garden Friday | Local https://www.allforgardening.com/1927786/pocatello-breaks-ground-on-its-first-community-garden-friday-local/ #agriculture #CommunityGardening #FoodActivism #GardenDesign #gardening #GardeningIdaho #idaho #LandUse #NewUrbanism #parks #PlantAgriculture #UrbanAgriculture
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Thousand Oaks Development Activity Report for July 2026
https://toaks.gov/corecode/storage/uber_resource/uploaded_pdfs/2026-07%20DAR_1785941996.pdf
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From Ireland Land Use Review latest report: “sustainable land use requires very significant change”.
Explanations by Caroline O'Doherty:
"Agriculture is the main polluter of waterways, half of which fail to meet minimum environmental standards.
"It is responsible for 38 per cent of national emissions – the largest of any sector.
"It is the number one pressure on wildlife and natural habitats, 90 per cent of which are in poor condition."By subscription: https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/2026/08/09/how-irelands-land-is-used-and-why-it-has-to-change/
Archived: https://archive.ph/Al4qw#selection-2163.0-2177.107#landUse #viability #property #sustainability #water #publicHealth #biomethane #tillage #forestry #Ireland #emissions #agriculture #footprint #GHG #methane #globalHeating #agribusiness #meat #cattle #climateChange #dairy
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New publication: Digital twins as a tool for #ecosystem research. #digitaltwins #biodiversity #landuse #climatechange
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2026.04.016 -
#SanfordME City Council extends #DatacenterMoratorium 180 days amid resident concerns
by WGME Staff
Tue, August 4, 2026SANFORD (WGME) -- "Sanford city councilors have voted to extend the city's moratorium on new #datacenters for another 180 days.
"The previous moratorium was approved in May and was set to expire.
"The extension comes as a developer proposes building a 1,000-acre data center along the #MousamRiver.
"City leaders and residents have raised concerns about potential impacts on #WaterQuality, #LandUse, #ElectricityDemand and other #Environmental issues.
" 'We have the chance to protect the #community, #wildlife and the legacy of the Mousam River, not diminish its value by allowing harmful projects of this scale to be built along the river,' said Eve Dumont-Wilson, who opposes the project."
#MainePol #MaineResists #SandfordResists #ResistDataCenters #Datacentres #DatacentreMoratorium
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#Google, through its related company #Verrus, tips its hand despite Gov. Tina Kotek's order canceling the sale of one previously secret parcel and Salem's proposed data-center moratorium.
On July 31, Verrus filed a land-use application involving three nearby properties.
Map I created:
https://salemdata.net/CityOfSalem/verrus/img/AssessorMap_Verrus_v1.svg -
Busy Beavers - The Turbidity Signature Of Ecosystem Engineers At Work
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https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.70661 <-- shared paper
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H/T @alan Puttock
“Beavers are the quintessential ecosystem engineers. In slow-flowing streams, they create complex wetlands with ponds by building dams and canals that can positively impact biodiversity, hydrology and water quality. These activities can interchangeably capture or release sediment along the watercourse. To date this has not been quantified at the resolution of rainfall events or beaver activity. This study used 15-min frequency, sustained monitoring upstream and downstream of a newly establishing beaver wetland to measure episodic changes in water turbidity at an event resolution. Monitoring showed no significant differences between upstream and downstream turbidity over 160 days when the first pair of beavers, known not to be building dams or canals, were resident. Shortly after introduction of another beaver pair, however, dam building, burrows and canal excavations were quickly observed, resulting in the creation of a complex beaver wetland between 2021 and 2024. Monitoring over 375 days during this period showed significant differences. Downstream turbidity was significantly higher overall than upstream: 13.1 Nephelometric Turbidity Units (NTU) compared to 4.2 NTU. Stochastic spikes in downstream turbidity during the study period not recorded upstream were associated with dam building and burrowing. Overall, there was no significant difference in turbidity loads, which was at least partially explained by a reduction in discharge downstream, particularly in higher flows, during the dam building period. This demonstrates a complex system with the trapping of influent sediment, the storing of water and the periodic release of beaver wetland sediment leading to net balance in loads. These results help provide context for other studies which have used temporally discrete sampling campaigns rather than continuous high-frequency monitoring. They provide a unique insight into the downstream impacts of a rapidly developing beaver wetland over its first three and a half years in a landscape that hasn't had beavers for over 400 years…"
#hydromorphic #water #hydrology #dam #beaverdam #waterquality #biodiversity #ecology #benefits #NatureBasedSolutions #Wetlands #Ecology #Biodiversity #EnvironmentalScience #Wildlife #Ecosystem #bioviversity #conservation #restoration #landscaperecovery #floodmanagement #FloodMitigation #flooding #energy #floodrisk #sustainability #wetlands #hydrography #dams #impoundment #deadwood #waterresources #landscapeengineer #benefits #vegetation #ecology #ecosystem #riversystemsstabilisation #naturalwaterregulation #resilience #valleysreborn #fisheries #invertebrates #extremeweather #floodflows #sediment #baseflow #drought #landmanagement #naturalsystems #landuse #monitoring #spatialanalysis #spatiotemporal -
Mapping Multifunctionality In Remote Patagonian Forest Landscapes Reveals High-Value Ecosystems Beyond Protected Areas
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https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03515-x <-- shared paper
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H/T @Peter Potapov | Researcher at the World Resources Institute (WRI)
“This paper is] a strong example of multifunctionality analysis applied to conservation planning. The study mapped six ecosystem functions, including carbon storage, nutrient availability, water regulation, erosion control, habitat quality, and ecological connectivity. [The author] combined satellite data, field soil sampling, and spatial modeling for this comprehensive analysis.
Two findings stand out.
1. Old-growth forests had the highest multifunctionality index of any land cover type.
2. 78.5% of the top multifunctionality hotspots fall outside the region's protected areas, even though PAs already cover more than 54% of the territory.
Together, these results make a clear case for expanding conservation of the remaining Intact Forest Landscapes and primary forests in Patagonia and elsewhere…”
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“Remote forest landscapes provide critical references for understanding ecosystem functions (EFs) under low anthropogenic pressure, yet their capacity to sustain multiple EFs simultaneously remains poorly understood. [They] assessed landscape multifunctionality in western Patagonia by integrating satellite indicators, field data, and spatial modeling. Six EFs (carbon storage, nutrient availability, water regulation, erosion control, habitat quality, and ecological connectivity) were mapped, and their spatial relationships and hotspot distribution within and outside protected areas (PAs) were analyzed. Old-growth and secondary forests showed the highest functional performance. Strong synergies (ρ ≥ 0.6) between carbon storage and nutrient availability covered >50% of the landscape, whereas strong trade-offs (ρ ≤ –0.6) were spatially limited ( < 6%). Notably, 78% of multifunctionality hotspots occurred outside PAs, indicating that high-functional-value areas extend beyond formal conservation boundaries. These findings reveal spatial mismatches between multifunctionality and protection status and provide a replicable framework for integrating multifunctionality into conservation planning under global change…”
#Patagonia #chile #aysen #coyhaique #landcover #mapping #spatial #spatialpatterns #spatiotemporal #spatialanalysis #forest #vegetation #oldgrowth #secondgrowth #shrubland #grassland #steppe #ecosystem #habitat #nutrients #water #hydrology #erosion #multifunctionality #multifunctionalityanalysis #protectedareas #landuse #conservationplanning #conservation #ecology #carbonstorage #nutrientavailability #waterregulation #erosioncontrol #habitatquality #ecologicalconnectivity #remotesensing #satellite #earthobservation #modeling -
The Growing Threat of Flooding on Transportation Infrastructure Across Texas Through 2100
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https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EF008207 <--shared paper
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H/T @Rakibul Ahasan
“[The researchers] modeled flood susceptibility across Texas at 30 m resolution and projected how it shifts through 2100. The headline is not just that flood risk grows, but that it moves, into places current planning and regulatory maps are not watching. The July 2025 Kerrville flooding sat squarely inside the kind of inland hazard expansion this model projects.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
● 95% of new flood exposure by 2100 is inland, away from the coast, shifting the resilience problem into interior river basins that planning has historically deprioritized.
● Where [they] benchmarked against FEMA's National Flood Hazard Layer, the model flags substantial hidden risk in rapidly urbanizing peri-urban areas, most notably in Greater Houston.
● Climate change alone expands the flood-susceptible footprint by 10–12% by 2100, before any new road or land-use development, so this is a conservative floor, not a ceiling.
● Half the state's roads and rail and 80% of its bridges already sit in flood-susceptible zones today.
● [They] accounted for both factor-importance and spatial-scale uncertainty, using a Monte Carlo weight-perturbation ensemble and multiscale analysis across nested neighborhoods.
The practical takeaway: this is a statewide screening layer, not a replacement for site-level hydraulic studies. It shows planners and policymakers where the gap between today's protection and tomorrow's risk is widest, and where unmapped peri-urban growth is walking into exposure that regulatory maps still call safe…”
#water #hydrology #hydrography #extremeweather #flood #flooding #Texas #TX #USA #transportation #infrastructure #humanimpacts #risk #hazard #cost #economics #floodsusceptibility #GIS #spatial #mapping #raster #elevation #modeling #model #spatialanalysis #planning #regulation #warning #Kerrville #hazardmapping #floodexposure #inland #coast #urban #urbanisation #development #growth #Houston #lowlying #climatechange #landuse #development #geostatstics #MonteCarlo #regionalscreening #naturalhazard #infrastructureresilience #floodmapping #hydrogeomorphology #geomorphometry #aginginfrastructure -
On The Use Of Rainfall Time Series For Regional Landslide Prediction By Means Of Functional Regression
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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enggeo.2026.108860 <-- shared paper
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#rainfallinduced #landslide #Functionalregression #Japan #Earlywarningsystem #Spacetimeprediction #spatialanalysis #spatiotemporal #massmovement #engineeringgeology #geomorphology #hydrogeomorphology #geomorphometry #remotesensing #geostatistics #model #modeling #mechanics #rainfall #threshold #precipitation #water #hydrology #risk #hazard #hazardassessment #terrain #landscape #landform #landuse #geology #soil #lithology #functionalGeneralizedAdditiveModel #FGAM #prediction #casestudy #AI #LLM -
The #EnvironmentalCost of #ArtificialIntelligence: #Carbon, #Water, and #LandFootprints
#AI’s rapid growth drives huge energy, water, and land use, raising environmental and equity challenges across its global infrastructure.
Date Published 3 Jun 2026
UNU-INWEH Report: Aczel, M., Chamanara, S., Matin, M., Farsi, A., Marwala, T., Madani, K. (2026).
"This report, Environmental Cost of Artificial Intelligence: Carbon, Water and Land Footprints, by the #UnitedNationsUniversity Institute for Water, Environment and Health ( #UNU - #INWEH ) on its 30th anniversary, examines one of the most underexplored consequences of AI’s rapid expansion: the environmental footprints of the energy required to power it. As artificial intelligence becomes embedded in economies, public services, research, communication, and everyday life, it depends on a growing physical infrastructure of #datacenters, advanced #chips, #CoolingSystems, #ElectricityGrids, #WaterResources, land, and #CriticalMineral supply chains. The report shows that AI is not only a digital technology, but also a material system with measurable #EnvironmentalCosts.
"The report moves beyond a carbon-only lens by quantifying the carbon, water, and land footprints associated with the electricity used to train, deploy, and operate AI systems at scale. Its central finding is that AI’s environmental costs depend not only on how much electricity is used, but also on where that electricity is generated and which energy sources power it. Every kilowatt-hour used by AI carries carbon, water, and land implications, and these footprints do not always move in the same direction: low-carbon electricity is not automatically low-water or low-land. The report also shows that AI’s footprint is shaped by both major infrastructure trends, including the rapid growth of data centers, and everyday use patterns, including model choice, output length, modality, and the growing use of text, image, and video generation.
"Importantly, the report frames AI’s environmental footprint as a governance and justice challenge, not only a technical problem. The benefits of AI often flow across borders and sectors, while the environmental burdens of data center siting, electricity demand, water withdrawals, #LandUse, MineralExtraction, and #EWaste can be concentrated in specific communities and regions. To address these risks, the report calls for a responsible AI ecosystem grounded in transparency, efficiency by design, equity and #EnvironmentalJustice, lifecycle responsibility, global cooperation, and sustainable use. By making AI’s carbon, water, and land footprints visible and comparable, the report provides a practical basis for integrating AI into energy, climate, water, and land-use planning, ensuring that innovation advances without shifting environmental costs onto vulnerable communities."
Download PDF:
https://unu.edu/inweh/collection/environmental-cost-of-AIs-Enrgy-Use-Carbon-water-and-land-footprints#AIBoom #Electricity #Hyperscale #BigTech #BigData #CarbonFootprint #EnvironmentalRacism #EnvironmentalDegradation #NoisePollution #LightPollution #WaterIsLife #AIAgents #BotTraffic #GreenSpaces #Farmland #Prairies #Woodland #TechGiants #ProtectNature #NoDatacenters #EnergyConsumption #USPol #WorldPol #Datacentres
#DatacenterMoratoriums -
Legacy of #Indigenous #stewardship of #camas dates back more than 3,500 years, #OSU study finds
May 20, 2024
Excerpt: CORVALLIS, Ore. — "An #Oregon State University study found evidence that Indigenous groups in the #PacificNorthwest were intentionally harvesting edible #CamasBulbs at optimal stages of the plant’s maturation as far back as 3,500 years ago.
"The findings contribute to the growing body of research around #TraditionalEcologicalKnowledge and practices, demonstrating the care and specificity with which Indigenous groups have been stewarding and cultivating natural resources for millennia.
"Camas is an #ecological and cultural keystone, meaning it is a species that many other organisms depend on and that features prominently within many cultural practices.
" 'If you think about #salmon as being a charismatic species that people are very familiar with, camas is kind of the plant equivalent,' said Molly Carney, an assistant professor of anthropology in OSU’s College of Liberal Arts and lead author on the study. 'It is one of those species that really holds up greater #ecosystems, a fundamental species which everything is related to.'
"An eye-catching blue flower that grows widely throughout the Pacific Northwest, camas is referred to in Indigenous calendars across the region, with the plant’s growth stages used as a sort of seasonal benchmark. It is often included in traditional #FirstFood ceremonies, in which tribal communities mark the coming of spring with the first #SalmonRun or the first #EdibleRoots after a long winter, Carney said.
"Camas bulbs must be baked for two to three days to render them edible. Once soft, the bulbs taste a bit like sweet potato, Carney said. Traditional baking was done in underground ovens using heated rocks."
#SolarPunkSunday #LandUse
#IndigenousFoods #CulturalPreservation
#NativeAmericanHistory #IndigenousStewardship #IndigenousHistory #TraditionalFoods
#TraditionalFoodSources #KeystoneSpecies #PNW #TEK -
#NoNaturalDisasters [UN]
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https://www.undrr.org/our-impact/campaigns/no-natural-disasters | https://www.nonaturaldisasters.com/ <-- shared technical articles
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#Resilience #ClimateAction #Governance #risk #hazard #riskassessment #naturalhazard #disaster #humanimpacts #engineeringgeology #NoNaturalDisasters #natural #nature #earthquake #storm #flood #flooding #tsunami #volcano #desertification #wildfire #fires #publicsafety #planning #policy #preparedness #ISO31000 #monitoring #buildingcodes #engineering #landuse #earlywarning #humanmaderisk #exposure #vulnerability #socioeconomic #ecosystems #habitat #livelihoods #farming #infrastructure #buildings #structures #industrial #cost #recovery #economics #homes #extremeweather #hurricane #tornado #resilience #sustainability #poverty #assessment #UNDRR #UN #riskreduction
@United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction -
Erin Brockovich Asks Americans For Help As She Launches Data Center Map
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https://www.newsweek.com/erin-brockovich-asks-americans-for-help-as-she-launches-data-center-map-11989813 <-- shared media article
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https://brockovichdatacenter.com/ <-- shared Brockovich AI Data Center Reporting web site
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https://youtu.be/fp5ozQraKf4?si=7qu3g77iVVD3GGFJ <-- shared media video, @cbs Sunday Morning, “Nationwide boom in AI data centers stirs resistance”
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#GIS #spatial #mapping #USA #nation #AI #datacenters #waterresources #utilities #energyconsumption #water #hydrology #hydrography #watermanagement #community #humanimpacts #costs #economics #ewaste #noise #risk #hazard #electricity #localcommunities #taxbreaks #cooling #energy #highenergyusage #infrastructure #landuse #environment #ecology #public #skepticism #environmentalimpact #scalability #growth #Virginia #Utah #Texas #Ohio #Arizona #Georgia
#ErinBrockovichFoundation #ErinBrockovich -
Detecting Land Use And Land Cover Changes And Quantifying Soil Erosion And Sediment Export Using GIS And Remote Sensing In The GERD Catchment, Ethiopia
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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iswcr.2026.100657 <-- shared paper
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https://infonile.org/en/2023/05/battling-for-survival-along-the-warming-source-of-the-blue-nile/ <-- shared technical media article
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https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-65241-7_4 <-- shared technical book chapter
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https://doi.org/10.3390/rs8121020 <-- shared 2016 paper
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#landuse #landcover #RUSLE #model #soil #erosion #sedimentation #GERD #catchment #NorthAfrica #Ethiopia #AbbayBasin #sustainability #landmanagement #agriculture #farmland #foodsecurity #water #hydrogology #reservior #watermanagement #watersecurity #waterresources #catchment #GrandEthiopianRenaissanceDam #BlueNile #hydrography #impoundment #GIS #spatial #mapping #remotesensing #earthobservation #thematic #spatialanalysis #spatiotemporal #landsat #elevation #DEM #CHIRPS #rainfall #precipitation #LULC #AI #forest #grazing #grassland #field #crops #cropland #waterbodies #urban #biophysical #risk #hazard #mitigation #soilquality -
Remote Sensing And Process Attribution Uncertainties In The Dharali Event [Himalayas, India]
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https://doi.org/10.1038/s44304-026-00211-w <-- shared paper review
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https://doi.org/10.1038/s44304-026-00191-x <-- shared paper that was reviewed
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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nhres.2025.11.001 <-- related shared paper
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#Dharali #disaster #BhagirathiBasin #India #NorthernIndia #Himalayas #GIS #spatial #mapping #remotesensing #satellite #imagery #earthobservation #trigger #risk #hazard #damage #infrastructure #mountain #geomorphology #glacier #glacial #debrisflow #publicsafety #landuse #paraglacial #rainfall #precipitation #extremeweather #massmovement #landslide #spatialanalysis #spatiotemporal #Bhagirathi #River #water #hydrology #icepatchcollapse -
What Shapes Earthquake Risk In Bangladesh? Geospatial Insights From Physical And Social Factors Using A Spatial Meta-Regression Approach
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https://doi.org/10.1007/s41748-026-01089-4 <-- shared paper
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#EarthquakeRisk #GIS #Bangladesh #DisasterManagement #SEAsia #GIS #spatial #mapping #risk #hazard #earthquake #naturalhazard #urban #rural #infrastructure #publicsafety #model #modeling #spatialanalysis #spatiotemporal #geomorphology #geology #tectonics #social #cultural #demographics #fault #faulting #factoranalysis #seismichazard #model #modeling #socioeconomics #geophysics #remotesensing #geostatistics #landuse #framework #magnitude #engineering #buildingcode #mitigation #zoning #development #growth #vulnerability -
Drivers Of Forest Disturbance In Southeast Asia [incl. spatial analysis]
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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2026.105220 <-- shared paper 🔗
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https://github.com/shijuanchen/SEA_forest_dis <-- shared GitHub ‘data repository 🔗
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#GIS #spatial #mapping #spatialanalysis #spatiotemporal #forest #vegetation #Forestdisturbance #Forestdegradation #Deforestation #remotesensing #SoutheastAsia #Asia #tropicalforests #timeseriesanalysis #geostatistics #disturbance #clearing #planting #agriculture #earthobservation #imagery #CCDC #changedetection #landcover #landuse #change #plantation #cultivation #slashandburn #planning #mitigation #catalogue #conservation #management #landmanagement #machinelearning #imageanalysis #AI -
Vertical Land Motion And Human Exposure Across India's Coastal Regions
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https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GL120539 <-- shared paper 🔗
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https://www.indiaspend.com/climate-change/indias-coastal-cities-face-heavy-flooding-risk-due-to-sea-level-rise-970906 <-- shared media article 🔗
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#SeaLevelRise #Subsidence #India #InSAR #radar #Postdoc #GIS #spatial #mapping #inSAR #LandSubsidence #remotesensing #coast #coastal #coastline #India #earthobservation #subsidence #rise #urban #city #SLR #ClimateChange #spatialanalysis #spatiotemporal #marine #ocean #water #hydrology #risk #hazard #humanimpacts #flood #flooding #model #modeling #floodrisk #infrastructure #damage #costs #economics #verticallandmotion #VLM #ESA #Sentinel #Ahmedabad #Chennai #Amaravathi #Kochi #Kakinada #Kolkata #deltas #estuary #demographics #population #coastalsubsidence #landuse #planning #mitigation #farmland #agriculture #foodsecurity #groundwater #pumping #extraction
