5 ms·

A 1876 Map of the World’s Ecozones That Still Holds Up

34 points by orcul 7y ago

SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
I would have thought climate change would have greatly impacted this map. Why hasn't it?
- mcphage 7y ago
  It’s pretty coarse—a small number of regions and subregions, and looks mostly defined in terms of geography, which climate change won’t really affect :-)
- shadowprofile77 7y ago
  Not to deny climate change caused by humans (it's unarguably happening) but some of the headlines really ratchet up the doom and gloom to the point where people think we really are rushing to total climatic shift at a breakneck pace, and well, no we're not, at least not yet and likely not in the foreseeble future. The models themselves don't even forecast such extremes and since the beginning of the 20th century to now, most climate indicators have only very modestly shifted. Sea level for example: since 1900 it has risen by no more than an estimated...... 8 inches, unevenly, and the IPCC forecast for the next century is only modestly higher than that. This is something to monitor carefully and try to mitigate but it shows just how removed the hard facts are from what some of the media loves to headline for the sake of clicks and social media shares. Some things have even improved. Both the USA and western Europe have more forest cover today than they did over a century ago and certain other countries have managed to pull off their own good reverses too.
  - deanCommie 7y ago
    This is actively harmful misinformation. "Breakneck speed" doesn't mean turkeys are going extinct before next Thanksgiving, Paris will be uninhabitable before the next Olympics, and the ice caps are going to melt and recreate Waterworld in our lifetimes. What it does mean is that the lives of your children and more likely GRAND-children (assuming you're somewhere in the adult range) will be significantly different from yours, and not in a better way. It means 1/ significant animal species will be effectively extinct in the wild, including ones you take for granted (e.g. polar bears), 2/ western countries will be spending more and more funds and tax dollars on disaster relief, emergency preparedness, air conditioning (ironically exacerbating the problem), 3/ cuisines like sushi and hobbies like skiing/snowboarding will be effectively out of reach from the middle class, 4/ continued destabilization rather than increasing peace in parts of the world with fresh water shortages, 5/ millions to hundreds of millions of climate refugees dealing with aforementioned destabilization and other disasters such as the kind of flooding that barely makes a blip in the west but takes out half of Bangladesh. And all of this could happen on a 100 year timeline if we do nothing. This isn't extinction, but if you don't think this is "doom and gloom" then brother you have no empathy.
    - shadowprofile77 7y ago
      I repeat: what I said above is based on the actual IPCC models (among others) and the evidence they're derived from. All of these are worrying but also surprisingly modest compared to your typical headline about climate change, which is almost by default designed for fearful clicks and social shares. Polar bear populations are of concern and there are credible (but hypothetical) predictions from the U.S Geological Survey that their populations could decrease heavily by 2050. However, at the present time, all known evidence shows that A. they have steadily been increasing over the last few decades and B. are currently quite stable despite warming in the northern Ice Cap. The same goes for the possibility of social upheaval due to temperature increases: it's predicted and sometimes by credible sources, but so far it hasn't been shown to have concretely occurred and no firm prediction can accurately say when or if it will start to happen. Your claim about the consequences of a century from now is even more speculative than this. In reality we have no idea what our world will be like then. This doesn't mean ignoring climate change but like I said, evidence and perspective are crucial. I want my children's world to be a place they can be healthy and relatively safe in, but having empathy for the future doesn't mean ignoring actual evidence, scientific reports or reasoned consideration. on polar bears: https://arcticwwf.org/species/polar-bear/population/ https://arcticwwf.org/species/polar-bear/population/
PaulDavisThe1st 7y ago
I prefer this one, from 1975 Coevolution Quarterly, by Miklos Udvardy and Theodore Oberlander: https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~231745~5509023:World----Biogeographical-Provinces https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~2...
- sct202 7y ago
  It's interesting that a lot of the largest industrial regions (Europe, East Asia, Eastern USA) are in the same temperate woodland land type.
seltzered_ 7y ago
Still a dilettante at bioregional thinking, but FWIW another eco region map I’ve been staring at lately has been WWF’s: https://www.worldwildlife.org/publications/terrestrial-ecoregions-of-the-world https://www.worldwildlife.org/publications/terrestrial-ecore... . It’s intended for ESRI but can also be imported into Google Earth.
- AlbertoGP 7y ago
  Some time ago I converted it to GeoJSON to use with the Nigerian Oil Spill Monitor: https://oilspillmonitor.ng https://oilspillmonitor.ng https://sentido-labs.com/en/portfolio/#Nigerian-Oil-Spill-Monitor https://sentido-labs.com/en/portfolio/#Nigerian-Oil-Spill-Mo... To activate it, go to the layer control at the right side (“Oil company”, “Third party”, ...), unfold the extra layers with the down-arrow button, then click on “Ecoregions”. The information on each region appears when clicking somewhere on the map.

34 points by orcul 7y ago

SlowRobotAhead 7y ago

I would have thought climate change would have greatly impacted this map. Why hasn't it?

mcphage 7y ago
It’s pretty coarse—a small number of regions and subregions, and looks mostly defined in terms of geography, which climate change won’t really affect :-)
shadowprofile77 7y ago
Not to deny climate change caused by humans (it's unarguably happening) but some of the headlines really ratchet up the doom and gloom to the point where people think we really are rushing to total climatic shift at a breakneck pace, and well, no we're not, at least not yet and likely not in the foreseeble future. The models themselves don't even forecast such extremes and since the beginning of the 20th century to now, most climate indicators have only very modestly shifted. Sea level for example: since 1900 it has risen by no more than an estimated...... 8 inches, unevenly, and the IPCC forecast for the next century is only modestly higher than that. This is something to monitor carefully and try to mitigate but it shows just how removed the hard facts are from what some of the media loves to headline for the sake of clicks and social media shares. Some things have even improved. Both the USA and western Europe have more forest cover today than they did over a century ago and certain other countries have managed to pull off their own good reverses too.
- deanCommie 7y ago
  This is actively harmful misinformation. "Breakneck speed" doesn't mean turkeys are going extinct before next Thanksgiving, Paris will be uninhabitable before the next Olympics, and the ice caps are going to melt and recreate Waterworld in our lifetimes. What it does mean is that the lives of your children and more likely GRAND-children (assuming you're somewhere in the adult range) will be significantly different from yours, and not in a better way. It means 1/ significant animal species will be effectively extinct in the wild, including ones you take for granted (e.g. polar bears), 2/ western countries will be spending more and more funds and tax dollars on disaster relief, emergency preparedness, air conditioning (ironically exacerbating the problem), 3/ cuisines like sushi and hobbies like skiing/snowboarding will be effectively out of reach from the middle class, 4/ continued destabilization rather than increasing peace in parts of the world with fresh water shortages, 5/ millions to hundreds of millions of climate refugees dealing with aforementioned destabilization and other disasters such as the kind of flooding that barely makes a blip in the west but takes out half of Bangladesh. And all of this could happen on a 100 year timeline if we do nothing. This isn't extinction, but if you don't think this is "doom and gloom" then brother you have no empathy.
  - shadowprofile77 7y ago
    I repeat: what I said above is based on the actual IPCC models (among others) and the evidence they're derived from. All of these are worrying but also surprisingly modest compared to your typical headline about climate change, which is almost by default designed for fearful clicks and social shares. Polar bear populations are of concern and there are credible (but hypothetical) predictions from the U.S Geological Survey that their populations could decrease heavily by 2050. However, at the present time, all known evidence shows that A. they have steadily been increasing over the last few decades and B. are currently quite stable despite warming in the northern Ice Cap. The same goes for the possibility of social upheaval due to temperature increases: it's predicted and sometimes by credible sources, but so far it hasn't been shown to have concretely occurred and no firm prediction can accurately say when or if it will start to happen. Your claim about the consequences of a century from now is even more speculative than this. In reality we have no idea what our world will be like then. This doesn't mean ignoring climate change but like I said, evidence and perspective are crucial. I want my children's world to be a place they can be healthy and relatively safe in, but having empathy for the future doesn't mean ignoring actual evidence, scientific reports or reasoned consideration. on polar bears: https://arcticwwf.org/species/polar-bear/population/ https://arcticwwf.org/species/polar-bear/population/

PaulDavisThe1st 7y ago

I prefer this one, from 1975 Coevolution Quarterly, by Miklos Udvardy and Theodore Oberlander: https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~231745~5509023:World----Biogeographical-Provinces https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~2...

sct202 7y ago
It's interesting that a lot of the largest industrial regions (Europe, East Asia, Eastern USA) are in the same temperate woodland land type.

seltzered_ 7y ago

Still a dilettante at bioregional thinking, but FWIW another eco region map I’ve been staring at lately has been WWF’s: https://www.worldwildlife.org/publications/terrestrial-ecoregions-of-the-world https://www.worldwildlife.org/publications/terrestrial-ecore... . It’s intended for ESRI but can also be imported into Google Earth.

AlbertoGP 7y ago
Some time ago I converted it to GeoJSON to use with the Nigerian Oil Spill Monitor: https://oilspillmonitor.ng https://oilspillmonitor.ng https://sentido-labs.com/en/portfolio/#Nigerian-Oil-Spill-Monitor https://sentido-labs.com/en/portfolio/#Nigerian-Oil-Spill-Mo... To activate it, go to the layer control at the right side (“Oil company”, “Third party”, ...), unfold the extra layers with the down-arrow button, then click on “Ecoregions”. The information on each region appears when clicking somewhere on the map.