Banner
Global Environmental Change
Global Environmental Change addresses large-scale chemical, biological, geological, and physical perturbations of the Earth’s surface, ocean, land surface, and hydrologic cycle with special attention to time scales of decades to centuries, to human-caused perturbations and their impacts on society.
Source: Global environmental change. (n.d.). AGU (American Geophysical Union). https://connect.agu.org/gec/home
- Global environmental change and health: impacts, inequalities, and the health sector
Human actions are changing many of the world’s natural environmental systems, including the climate system. These systems are intrinsic to life processes and fundamental to human health, and their disruption and depletion make it more difficult to tackle health inequalities. - Anthropogenic Biomes
Anthropogenic biomes, also known as "anthromes" or "human biomes", describe the terrestrial biosphere in its contemporary, human-altered form using global ecosystem units defined by patterns of sustained direct human interaction - Monitoring Land cover changeLoss of biodiversity and pressures on ecosystem services are among the most
pressing global challenges. Global biodiversity loss is so intense that it has recently been described as ‘biological
annihilation’.
Tuvalu: The Threat of Rising Seas
The inhabitants of this tiny nation state are some of the first in the world to feel the full impact of climate change. As rising sea levels threaten their whole country, what action can they take?
- How Australia became one of the worst deforesters in the worldAustralia is the only nation in the developed world to make the World Wildlife Fund's (WWF) global list of deforestation hotspots.
The biennial Living Planet Report, published this week, puts Australia alongside New Guinea, Indonesia, Congo and Brazil for deforestation. - Australia's Land UseThis web interactive explores the different ways Australia's land is used and managed.
It forms part of the Land Use Futures program, which is working to develop integrated pathways and roadmaps for sustainable food and land use in Australia. - Indigenous land management in Australia
Indigenous land and sea management, also referred to as ‘caring for country’, includes a wide range of environmental, natural resource and cultural heritage management activities undertaken by individuals, groups and organisations across Australia for customary, community, conservation and commercial reasons. - BiodiversityConservation of Australia's biodiversity | Biodiversity is the variety of all life forms on earth - the different plants, animals and micro-organisms and the ecosystems of which they are a part.
- Global land use changes are four times greater than previously estimatedQuantifying the dynamics of land use change is critical in tackling global societal challenges such as food security, climate change, and biodiversity loss. Here we analyse the dynamics of global land use change at an unprecedented spatial resolution by combining multiple open data streams (remote sensing, reconstructions and statistics) to create the HIstoric Land Dynamics Assessment + (HILDA +).
- Impact of land cover change on the climate of southwest Western AustraliaA sudden reduction in rainfall occurred in the southwest of Western Australia in the mid-20th century. This reduced inflows to the Perth water supply by about 120 GL (42%) and led to an acceleration of projects to develop new water sources at a cost of about $300 million.
- Influences on the water cycleThe water cycle operates at different scales in different places. It is strongly influenced by location, temperature and topography. Australia is the driest inhabited continent on earth – and large parts of it are unsuitable for agriculture.
- Land capability assessmentLand capability assessment is used to identify the potential for agricultural and non-agricultural land uses. It considers specific requirements of the land use and also identifies potential degradation risks.
- Climate Time Machine
This series of visualisations shows how some of Earth's key climate indicators are changing over time.
Climate Zones
What makes one region of Earth so dry, and another so wet? And what impact does this have on landscapes, wildlife and weather?
The Water Cycle
All water on planet Earth is constantly cycled from the atmosphere, into reservoirs, and through plants and animals. The Earth's water has completed this cycle around 8 million times.
- Climate change and soil and water resources in Western AustraliaClimate change will affect soil and water resources directly and indirectly, and the impacts will be determined by the three primary drivers: local climate, land characteristics and land management.
- Climate, land & waterWestern Australia’s agriculture sector needs access to productive soil and water resources for growth and profit. However, the sector must compete with increasing resource demands from all sectors of the community, and the pressures of a changing climate.
- WWF: Australia can transform land use to tackle greenhouse gasThe IPCC’s new report, approved overnight, calls for all nations to transform the way land is managed because agriculture, forestry and other land use produces almost a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.
Video: Antarctic Ice Mass Loss 2002-2020
April 1, 2021
The Antarctic ice sheet's mass has changed over the last decades. Research based on satellite data indicates that between 2002 and 2020, Antarctica shed an average of 149 billion metric tons of ice per year, adding to global sea level rise.
These images, created from GRACE and GRACE-FO data, show changes in Antarctic ice mass since 2002. Orange and red shades indicate areas that lost ice mass, while light blue shades indicate areas that gained ice mass. White indicates areas where there has been very little or no change in ice mass since 2002.
Areas in East Antarctica experienced modest amounts of mass gain due to increased snow accumulation. However, this gain is more than offset by significant ice mass loss on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (dark red) over the 19-year period. Floating ice shelves whose mass change GRACE and GRACE-FO do not measure are colored gray.
The average flow lines (gray; created from satellite radar interferometry) of Antarctica’s ice converge into the locations of prominent outlet glaciers, and coincide with areas of highest mass loss (i.e., Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers in West-Antarctica). This supports other observations that warming ocean waters around Antarctica play a key role in contemporary ice mass loss.
- Climate change – trends and extremesAustralian climate variability & change - Time series graphs
Books
The climate change crisis by Call Number: 363.73874 CLIISBN: 9781922084507Publication Date: 2014
Your life, your planet : what you can do right now! by Call Number: 640.28 EBBISBN: 9781921874987Publication Date: 2021
Climate change : what you can do about it : at work, at home, at school by Call Number: 363.738 HOLISBN: 9781405038782Publication Date: 2008
