BBNJ Agreement: High Seas Biodiversity as a Common Heritage (of Mankind)?

The Common Heritage of Mankind: Past, Present, and Future

Ethnobotanical Importance of Orans - As a Means Of Conserving Biodiversity

Special sites or areas that have one or more attributes which distinguish them as somehow extraordinary, usually in a religious or spiritual sense, are called sacred places. They tend to evoke a feeling of some awesome, mysterious, and transcendent power that merits special reverence and treatment. Sacred groves are stands of trees or patches of forest that local communities conserve primarily ...

Urban expansion as a driver of biodiversity loss: Integrating biodiversity in urban planning in African context

Africa has high biodiversity and is rapidly urbanizing. However, there is limited understanding of how urban expansion in Africa is likely to affect its habitats and biodiversity. Little urban ecological research has been done in Africa. This study needs to think ahead as Africa move into the “urban age” it is critical to inform the public on the importance of urban environment...

Status of Marine Biodiversity of the China Seas

China's seas cover nearly 5 million square kilometers extending from the tropical to the temperate climate zones and bordering on 32,000 km of coastline, including islands. Comprehensive systematic study of the marine biodiversity within this region began in the early 1950s with the establishment of the Qingdao Marine Biological Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Since that time sci...

Untapped Bounty: Sampling the Seas to Survey Microbial Biodiversity

0371 Being invisible to the naked eye, microbes managed to escape scientifi c scrutiny until the mid-17th century, when Leeuwenhoek invented the microscope. These cryptic organisms continued to thwart scientists' efforts to probe, describe, and classify them until about 40 years ago, owing largely to a limited morphology that defi es traditional taxonomic methods and an enigmatic physiology tha...