Only about 4% of the world’s oceans remain undamaged by human activity, according to the first detailed global map of human impacts on the seas.

A study in Science says climate change, fishing, pollution and other human factors have exacted a heavy toll on almost half of the marine waters.

Only remote icy areas near the poles are relatively pristine, but they face threats as ice sheets melt, they warn.

The authors say the data is a ‘wake-up call’ to policymakers.

Lead scientist, Dr Benjamin Halpern, of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, US, said humans were having a major impact on the oceans and the marine ecosystems within them.

‘In the past, many studies have shown the impact of individual activities,’ he said. ‘But here for the first time we have produced a global map of all of these different activities layered on top of each other so that we can get this big picture of the overall impact that humans are having rather than just single impacts.’

(Via BBC News)

A group called Corporate Accountability International has been pressuring bottled water sellers to curb what it calls misleading marketing practices.

Aquafina, from Pepsi, is the single biggest bottled water brand, and its bottles are now labeled “P.W.S.” The new labels will spell out “public water source.”

Surprised? They’re now after Coca Cola.

Premier Peter Beattie and his deputy Anna Bligh announced the government has scrapped its controversial plans for a $10 million referendum on the issue, involving 18 councils.

Mr Beattie said south-east Queensland residents would get recycled water as the drought and subsequent low dam levels had left the government with no choice but to introduce treated sewage.

He said the fact Wivenhoe-Somerset Dam system’s water levels currently was less than 23 per cent had convinced him and Ms Bligh to abandon the March 17 plebiscite.

“Inflow to the dam system is currently 20 per cent lower than the worst on record,” Mr Beattie told reporters in Brisbane.

The city’s total rainfall for 2006 was just 343mm, well below the long-term annual average of 619mm, Weatherzone meteorologist Matt Pearce said.

This made it driest year on record, with significantly less rain than in the previous driest year, 1979, when 390mm fell.

“The very dry conditions can be largely put down to the El Nino pattern which was in place during the second half of 2006,” Mr Pearce said.

It has also been exceptionally dry in Launceston – but not as dry as in 1972.

Some Northern centres, like Burnie, have received only 40 per cent of their average annual rainfall.

“2006 will stand out in the record books,” Bureau of Meteorology spokesman Ian Barnes-Keaghan said.

“For instance, about 250mm of rain would need to fall in Ulverstone over the next 10 days to even meet that town’s previous driest year on record.

Measured by the land area that can support human habitation, the earth is shrinking.

Mounting population densities, once generated solely by the addition of over 70 million people per year, are now also fueled by the relentless advance of deserts and the rise in sea level.

The newly established trends of expanding deserts and rising seas are both of human origin.

The former is primarily the result of overstocking grasslands and overplowing land. Rising seas result from temperature increases set in motion by carbon released from the burning of fossil fuels.

The heavy losses of territory to advancing deserts in China and Nigeria, the most populous countries in Asia and Africa respectively, illustrate the trends for scores of other countries.

China is not only losing productive land to deserts, but it is doing so at an accelerating rate. From 1950 to 1975 China lost an average of 600 square miles of land (1,560 square kilometers) to desert each year. By 2000, nearly 1,400 square miles were going to desert annually.

Scientists at Rice University in Texas say that particles of iron oxide can bind themselves to large amounts of arsenic in water. When mixed into contaminated water, the tiny crystals became coated with the poison and began behaving like iron filings.

When a strong magnet is placed above the particles, they clump together and are simple to remove.

If confirmed it could help nearly 60 million people in Bangladesh who drink water with dangerous arsenic levels.

The researchers from Rice University’s Centre for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology report their work in the journal Science.

Tamsyn Jones has written an evocative cover story for the latest issue of E/The Environmental Magazin which succinctly argues that our future depends on our looking after it. [The photograph is an outtake from the cover photoshoot by Jon Moe.]

“It’s one of nature’s most perfect contradictions”, says Tamsyn, “a substance that is ubiquitous but unseen; humble but essential; surprisingly strong but profoundly fragile. It nurtures life and death; undergirds cities, forests and oceans; and feeds all terrestrial life on Earth.”

“It is a substance few people understand and most take for granted. Yet, it is arguably one of Earth’s most critical natural resources—and humans, quite literally, owe to it their very existence.From the food we eat to the clothes we wear to the air we breathe, humanity depends upon the dirt beneath our feet.

“Gardeners understand this intuitively; to them, the saying “cherish the soil” is gospel. But for the better part of society, dirt barely gets a sideways glance.

“To most, it’s just part of the background, something so obvious it’s ignored.

“Even among the environmentally minded, soil sags well below the radar of important causes. But the relationship between soil quality and other aspects of environmental health is intricately entwined.

“What’s more, it’s a relationship that encompasses a vast swath of territory, from agricultural practices to global climate change, and from the well being of oceans to that of people.

“Despite humankind’s long relationship with soil, the stuff remains a mystery.
Even our language manages to maligns it. Somehow, “dirt” has acquired a bad reputation. And it’s been codified in some of our most common idioms, with people described as “dirty rotten scoundrels,” “poor as dirt” or “dirtbags.”

“The modern word “dirt” itself descends from the less than complimentary Old English word “drit,” meaning “excrement.” Instead of marveling at the mystery of soil, we have mocked it, by dredging and paving; desiccating and polluting; and working it to exhaustion.

“Now our poor husbandry of this essential resource is catching up with us, in the form of disconcertingly rapid erosion and loss of farmland, widespread agricultural pollution, damage to fisheries, and alarming levels of pesticides and other chemicals building up in our bodies.

“The subject of soil is rarely billed as glamorous or sexy, but it should be. From its remarkable properties to its critical ecological importance, the dirt under our feet is a goldmine of scientific wonderment, and it’s about time people got excited about soil.”

Dig deeper into her fascinating story about soil at E/The Environmental Magazine

TAMSYN JONES is a recent graduate of the University of Missouri at Columbia, currently pursuing further study in Tasmania.

Of all the water on earth, only 2.5% is fresh, and less than 0.007% is readily available to people through rivers, lakes, and streams.

As worldwide populations surge, temperatures rise, climates changes, and diseases spread, clean water will become ever more essential (and ever more rate).

In 2000, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned that national rivalries over water could harbour “the seeds of violent conflict.”

Are Water Wars coming? This infographic, below, from the International Networks Archive puts it all in perspective.