What Does 100,000-Year-Old Seagrass Look LIke?

This archaic seagrass' or underwater meadows are called Posidonja oceanica and live in the Mediterranean. What is their secret to a long-life? According to Professor Carlos Duarte, the director of the Oceans Institute, Withthrop, " Clonal organisms have an extraordinary capacity to transmit only highly competent genomes through generation, with potentially no end" although now climate change is threatening their being. Duarte adds " Indeed, the ancient meadows [...] are declining at a rate several hundred-fold faster than the rate over which they spread when forming, a situation that this slow growing, long lived species is capable of recovering from." This will have consequences to all of earth as these meadows are essential to coastal ecosystems. Replanting these meadows has proved unsuccessful thus so far,so they face a struggle we will share with them in the decades to come. 

For those who want to know more about seagrass here is a variety of helpful links:

http://teamseagrass.blogspot.com

http://www.seagrasswatch.org/Singapore.html

http://thesilvercane.blogspot.com

http://myfwc.com/research/habitat/seagrasses/information/learn/

http://pigcos.soest.hawaii.edu/piccp/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=61&Itemid=66

The Latest Deterioration of the Amazon Rainforest

The government officials in Brazil are planning to build a hydroelectric dam in the Amazon. It would be the third largest of its kind and wreck havoc on the Amazon, which already suffers from such treachery as deforestation. The Amazon has the most diverse ecosystem in the world-it needs to be protected at all costs, but quite the opposite has happened in the past and continues to happen. Climate changes along with deforestation at unprecedented levels are causing record droughts that threaten its very existence.

An indigenous people by the name of Kayapo who reside in regions where the dam will influence, are the mostly likely to directly suffer as the river is central to their lifestyles. During the 1990s when the Brazilian government last attempted to build a dam here, the World Bank balked at dispensing the loan due to protests on behalf of the Kayapo people by such names as Sting (played in the popular British pop band The Police). This time around less noise is touted about such preservation, and it looks likely that the dam will proceed to be built. I suppose we should all be use to this human treachery and lack of empathy as our history books are saturated in such behavior. Those who want to know more about the plight of the Amazon can check out http://www.rainforestfund.org/ founded by Sting and his wife.