WMU s22

WMU s22 updated their website address.

IMO Extraordinary Council Session held to discuss the impacts on shipping and seafarers of the situation in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov: https://bit.ly/3pZeBOZ

Information sharing is critical for maritime security. Best Practices for Information Sharing was the topic for a regional workshop at the Djibouti Regional Training Centre: https://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/Pages/WhatsNew-1694.aspx

Remember to register for the Regional Conference of The Nippon Foundation and WMU ‘Closing the Circle Programme', titled 'Identifying Regional Challenges and Opportunities to address the issue of Marine Debris, Sargassum and Marine Spatial Planning'.

The Conference is scheduled to take place from 4 to 7 April 2022 in Dominica, with virtual participation available on 5 - 6 April 2022 from 08:00 - 18:00 AST (14:00 - 00:00 CET). Learn more and register at: https://conferences.wmu.se/mdsmsp2022/

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration agency of the United States (NASA) will announce on March 30th the most recent discovery of the Hubble telescope.

The discovery promises to be leisure for every spectator

La NASA comunicará el próximo 30 de marzo a las 11am un nuevo descubrimiento del telescopio espacial Hubble, “para el libro de los récords” y “una nueva observación emocionante”.

Habrá que estar atentos.

https://www.space.com/hubble-space-telescope-observations-announcement-coming

-Jaume-

The Spread of Soy in South America

New satellite mapping of Earth shows a significant expansion of croplands during the past two decades. While most regions of the world saw modest increases in the area dedicated to cropland—which mirrored increases in population—one region that stood out was South America. With its cultivated land area nearly doubling between 2000 and 2019, the continent had the largest relative increase in cropland in the world.

“With only a modest population increase during that time period and a large expansion of cropland, it was also the only large region that saw a per capita increase in cropland area,” said Peter Potapov, co-director of the Global Land and Discovery (GLAD) Lab at the University of Maryland. This was mainly due to rapid expansion of farmland in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Uruguay.

As other GLAD projects have detailed, the area cultivated for soybeans in South America doubled in the past two decades. Most of the new soy crops are located in savanna and dry forest regions—the Cerrado in Brazil and the Gran Chaco in Argentina, Paraguay, and Bolivia.

However, some new croplands have eaten into rainforests. For instance, soybean fields in the Brazilian Amazon increased more than tenfold over the two decades. About 32 percent of the new fields were planted among primary tropical rainforests, often in areas that had first been cleared for cattle pastures.

“In South America, we’re not generally seeing an expansion of farmland due to subsistence farming,” said Xiaopeng Song, a GLAD researcher. “It is mostly large-scale growers who are raising soy for animal feed to meet the increasing demand for meat in China and Europe.”

Read more on NASA Earth Observatory: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/149621/the-spread-of-soy-in-south-america

WMU s22 updated their business hours.