Thursday, June 25, 2008, six intrepid Earth Institute supporters – Joy Tartar of the Lenfest Foundation and her husband George Hall, Nancy Best, Diane Troderman and Harold Grinspoon, and Bonnie Potter – joined Earth Institute Funding Initiatives staff and 200 project staff for the third annual Millennium Villages retreat in Bamako, Mali. The group participated…
What can satellite imagery tell us about the impact of humanity’s transformation of the landscape on climate and ecosystems? A lot, according to Ruth DeFries, ecosystems expert, Denning Professor of Sustainable Development, and professor of ecology, evolution, and environmental biology at Columbia University and the Earth Institute’s Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC). DeFries…
Among various uses of corn, the three major uses—food, animal feed, and biofuel production—compete in demand. Here we analyzed the percentage of corn for animal feed compared to total domestic consumption of corn (including feed, food, seed, and industrial uses) in US, China, and India.
We found top three importers and exporters of wheat in 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2008.
Using wheat production and population data for China, US, and India since 1960, we analyzed per capita wheat production. Because per capita wheat consumption is fairly stable over time (though it can change a little bit by changing lifestyle, diet, economic status, etc), from per capita wheat production, it can be shown whether a country…
China shows the biggest improvement in yield over last 50 years; it improved almost by six times, while United States only doubled and India tripled. Although China and India showed very similar yield level in 1960s, China started to take off around early 1970. United States shows a relatively little change in yield and China…
In July 2009 more than 20 people from eight countries set out for the Millennium Village cluster of Koraro, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, to see firsthand the progress and challenges experienced by one of the most remote Millennium Villages. Individuals represented the Earth Institute, Millennium Promise, Millennium Villages project (MVP) sites in…
Bärbel Hönisch, an expert on ocean acidification at Columbia, will speak after a screening of the film “A Sea Change” this Thursday.
That rumbling you feel is not necessarily a passing subway. New York City and the surrounding region gets a surprising number of small earthquakes, and a 2008 study from the region’s network of seismographs, run by Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, suggests that the risk of a damaging one is not negligible. This week, the federal government announced a major upgrade…