GEO BON – First-Ever Global Biodiversity Observation Network Launched
By Maeve Hickok, posted on November 17th, 2008 in Articles, Biodiversity, GEOSS/ICEO News
The Earth’s biosphere is such a complex system that a comprehensive monitoring network for simultaneously tracking individual species and populations, and monitoring trends in forests and other ecosystems has never been built. Now, the GEO and some 80 leading scientific institutes, intergovernmental organizations and national ministries have joined forces to start building a global Biodiversity Observation Network for monitoring and assessing the world’s species and ecosystems in order to prevent their further destruction.
The GEO (Group on Earth Observations) Biodiversity Observation Network or GEO BON will integrate biological information from a wide range of sources together with data and forecasts on climate change, pollution and other threats to biodiversity. GEO BON was announced recently in Barcelona at the international Convention on Biological Diversity.
The collection and analysis of data on all aspects of the natural environment has been dramatically improved in recent years by technological advances. Increasingly sophisticated monitoring systems consisting of satellite, air, land and ocean-based instruments, as well as models and other decision-support tools, are being interlinked through the Group on Earth Observations to form a Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS).
Serving as the biodiversity arm of this expanding “system of systems”, GEO BON will lead to a more complete understanding of the status and trends in the world’s living resources. The national, regional and global organizations that are contributing to GEO BON will harmonize their data and information systems, identify and address gaps and overlaps in existing coverage, and ensure the continuity and sustainability of biodiversity information.
The GEO BON community is currently elaborating a detailed implementation plan. An advance document entitled “Implementation Overview: Early products and vision for building the network” will be presented to GEO’s annual plenary meeting (GEO-V), to be held 19-20 November in Bucharest.
The Group on Earth Observations was established in 2005 after the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), the Group of Eight leading industrialized countries (G8) and three ministerial Earth Observation Summits all called for improving existing observation systems. Its membership now includes 74 governments and the European Commission; 52 “participating organizations” also contribute to its work.
GEO is coordinating the construction of a Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) that will link together diverse monitoring networks, instruments, data bases and models and other decision-support tools. GEOSS addresses nine priorities of critical importance to the future of the human race. It will help countries to protect themselves against natural and human-induced disasters, understand the environmental sources of health hazards, manage energy resources, respond to climate change and its impacts, safeguard freshwater resources, improve weather forecasts, manage ecosystems, promote sustainable agriculture, and conserve biodiversity.
GEO also serves as an advocate for investments in biodiversity and other Earth observation systems. Greater investment is essential to ensure the adoption of new and emerging technologies for monitoring species populations, modelling changes in biodiversity and filling in the many gaps in biodiversity observations.
NASA Daily Image
Remnant of a Supernova
Vital clues about the devastating ends to the lives of massive stars can be found by studying the aftermath of their explosions. In its more than twelve years of science operations, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has studied many of these supernova remnants sprinkled across the galaxy. The latest example of this important investigation is Chandra's new image of the supernova remnant known as G350.1-0.3. This stellar debris field is located some 14,700 light years from the Earth toward the center of the Milky Way. Evidence from Chandra and from ESA's XMM-Newton telescope suggest that a compact object within G350.1+0.3 may be the dense core of the star that exploded. The position of this likely neutron star, seen by the arrow pointing to "neutron star" in the inset image, is well away from the center of the X-ray emission. If the supernova explosion occurred near the center of the X-ray emission then the neutron star must have received a powerful kick in the supernova explosion. Data suggest this supernova remnant, as it appears in the image, is 600 and 1,200 years old. If the estimated location of the explosion is correct, this means the neutron star has been moving at a speed of at least 3 million miles per hour since the explosion. Another intriguing aspect of G350.1-0.3 is its unusual shape. Many supernova remnants are nearly circular, but G350.1-0.3 is strikingly asymmetrical as seen in the Chandra data in this image (gold). Infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope (light blue) also trace the morphology found by Chandra. Astronomers think that this bizarre shape is due to stellar debris field expanding into a nearby cloud of cold molecular gas. The age of 600-1,200 years puts the explosion that created G350.1-0.3 in the same time frame as other famous supernovas that formed the Crab and SN 1006 supernova remnants. However, it is unlikely that anyone on Earth would have seen the explosion because of the obscuring gas and dust that lies along our line of sight to the remnant. These results appeared in the April 10, 2011 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. Image Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/I. Lovchinsky et al; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech