Social Media:

Teaching

Items of the month:
Note that since April 2014, I am publishing these items in my blog at http://runninginfog.wordpress.com/.

Activities I contribute to:

Selected Recent Presentations and Publication

Picture of the month ...

May 2011: Benefits of Climate Change? The picture was taken on May 1, 2011 from a basaltic hill close to Rossbach/Wied in Germany. Compared to a similar picture taken on a First of May in 1960, 1970, or 1980, there are two major changes (besides a few more houses that have been added to the villages): (1) The yellow flowers of oil-seed rape, now abundant in Germany, were not to be seen at that time - arable farm land was still used to produce food for humans and their livestock. The demand to feed cars with fuel has had a significant impact on land use and on food available to humans. (2) All pictures taken 30 and more years ago would have shown much less green. Most trees would just have started to get their leaves. Oaks would still be bare, with their leaves opening typically at the end of May. In 2011, all trees, including oaks, are in their full leaves, exhibiting the rich green that in my memory is connected with early June. We can consider this increased growing period as a benefit of climate change. But there are disadvantages: new types of insects attacking the trees, for example. People in other parts of the world suffering from the impacts of droughts, extreme flooding, and food shortage, for example. It may take many years before we will be able to evaluate the net benefits and costs of our global experiment. But the signs that we are successfully producing significant changes are abundant.


Hans-Peter Plag, all rights reserved.

If you have a story, thought, or picture worth to be considered as story, thought or picture of the month, please feel free to inform me about it by sending an e-mail to hpplag@unr.edu.