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Hurricanes/Tropical Cylone Recovery Is Not Easy

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Hurricanes/Tropical Cylone Recovery Is Not Easy

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"Your visit to our islands is more important now than ever. By coming to the Caribbean you will be contributing to our assistance to our fellow islands who are still recovering." So writes Allen Chastanat, prime minister of St Lucia, on the dedicated post-hurricane website caribbeanisopen.com.

As the region, which receives more than 25 million tourists a year, enters peak holiday season, authorities are reiterating the message put out immediately after September's devastating hurricanes: that the Caribbean is open for business. Hurricanes Irma and Maria tore across the northern Caribbean causing devastation in 12 out of 32 countries. "The message is partly geographical: 70% of islands were unaffected," says Verne Augustin, operations manager, Caribbean Tourism Organisation.

In most of the 12 affected countries, including Antigua, St Kitts and Nevis, the Turks and Caicos, the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic and Cuba, recovery has been speedy and hotels are back up and running. But things are different on those islands that took the full brunt of the storms, where the clean-up operation and rebuilding will take months or, in Barbuda's case, more than a year. This is how the worst-affected islands are faring:

Anguilla

"Hurricane Irma pressed the pause button, but we aren't on pause," reads the message on irma.ivisitanguilla.com. The island will be open for Christmas, but not at full capacity. Around 30 small hotels, apartments and guesthouses have reopened (or are planning to) ahead of the peak winter and Christmas season. The island's iconic resort, Belmond Cap Juluca, is closed for a year of renovations.

Barbuda

The worst-hit island: more than 90% of buildings were destroyed and the majority of evacuees have yet to return. It's estimated the clean-up will take a year, minimum. With just 100 hotel rooms, the tourism impact for the region was minimal.
* caribbeantravelupdate.com

British Virgin Islands

Its 64 tropical islands took a catastrophic hit from Hurricane Irma, crippling the tourism industry. Since then, the BVI has lost $16m in government revenue. A huge salvage operation is under way but most accommodation won't open until 2018. As a sailing destination, the islands have worked tirelessly on replacing fleets after 80% of its boats were destroyed. The country's biggest boat charter businesses, Sunsail and The Moorings, are due to reopen on 9 December.
* bvitourism.com

Dominica

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Aerial view of Roseau, capital of the Caribbean island of Dominica, showing destruction on 21 September, 2017, three days after the passage of Hurricane Maria. Photograph: Lionel Chamoiseau/AFP/Getty Images

Hurricane Maria left 85% of homes damaged and 25% destroyed, but some hotels have reopened and the island has launched a voluntourism scheme through Cobra Tours ( cobrayachtagent@gmail.com) and Cool Breeze Tours ( coolbreezetours9@gmail.com) to restore major attractions: the Indian River and the Waitukubuli national trail. 35% of reefs at the island's dive sites were damaged and dive businesses remain closed. The government has declared Carnival, Mas Domnik 2018, open (12-13 Feb).
* dominicaupdate.com

Puerto Rico

The recovery effort continues. The main airport is operational and other airports have a limited service. According to the Puerto Rico Tourism Company, 72% of hotels are open.
* puertoriconow.seepuertorico.com

US Virgin Islands

The islands were hit by both hurricanes and damage on two of the three main islands (St Thomas and St John) was extensive. On St John, work to restore infrastructure and reopen the Virgin Islands national park has started. The Buccaneer hotel on St Croix is accepting guests and the first post-storm cruise ship has berthed. The recovery process continues.
* usviupdate.com
More information at caribbeantravelupdate.com The CTO Relief Fund, gofundme.com/hurricane-relief-fund-cto
The Caribbean Tourism Recovery Fund, tourismcares.org/caribbean

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Caribbean travel update: after the hurricanes - how the worst-hit islands are recovering

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"Your visit to our islands is more important now than ever. By coming to the Caribbean you will be contributing to our assistance to our fellow islands who are still recovering." So writes Allen Chastanat, prime minister of St Lucia, on the dedicated post-hurricane website caribbeanisopen.com.

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But most changes happen so slowly we don't notice them at all. The continents slowly creep across the surface of the Earth at an average speed of eight centimeters a year. Over hundreds of millions of years, mountains form, and then slowly erode away.

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When Antonio Vicente bought a patch of land in São Paulo state and said he wanted to use it to plant a forest, people called him crazy. It was 1973 and forests were seen by many as an obstacle to progress and profit.

Brazil's then military government encouraged wealthy landowners to expand by offering them generously subsidised credit to invest in modern farming techniques, a move the ruling generals hoped would boost national agriculture.

But water, or an impending lack of it, was Vicente's concern as he worriedly watched the expansion of cattle grazing and industry, the destruction of local forests, and the growth of the population and the rapid urbanisation of the state.

One of 14 children, Vicente grew up on a farm where his father worked. He'd watched him cut down the trees at the owners' orders, for use in charcoal production and to clear more land for grazing cattle. Eventually the farm's water springs dried up and never returned.

Maintaining forests are essential for water supplies because trees absorb and retain water in their roots and help to prevent soil erosion. So with some donkeys and a small team, he worked on his little patch - 31 hectares (77 acres) of land that had been razed for grazing cattle - and set about regenerating.

"The area was totally stripped," he says, demonstrating by pointing to a painting of the treeless land in 1976. "The water supplies had nearly dried up."

His neighbours, who were cattle and dairy farmers, used to tell him: "You are dumb. Planting trees is a waste of land. You won't have income. If it's full of trees, you won't have room for cows or crops." But what started off as a weekend gig has now become a full-time way of life. More than 40 years later, Vicente - now 84 - estimates he has replanted 50,000 trees on his 31 hectare Serra da Mantiqueira mountain range property.

"If you ask me who my family are, I would say all this right here, each one of these that I planted from a seed," he says.

But Vicente is working against the national trend. After several years of successive falls in deforestation in Brazil's Amazon - the world's largest tropical forest - numbers are beginning to rise again.

Nearly 8,000 hectares (19,770 acres) of rainforest were destroyed between August 2015 and July 2016, equivalent to an area 135 times the size of Manhattan, a 29% from the year before and the highest increase since 2008, according to Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE), and while deforestation levels are still nowhere near their peak in 2004 when more than 27,000 hectares (66,720 acres) were removed, the upward trend is still worrying.

There are a number of reasons behind the rise, not least the introduction of the controversial 2012 Forest Code which gave amnesty to property owners who committed illegal deforestation.

"This sends a very wrong signal, of impunity. People think: "If I get one amnesty, who knows? In another few years from now I might get another," says Cristiane Mazzetti, Greenpeace Amazon campaigner.

If you ask me who my family are, I would say all this right here, each one of these that I planted from a seed

Antonio Vicente

She also points out that: "The last government headed by Dilma Rousseff didn't issue hardly any conservation areas of demarcated indigenous territory. These are good instruments for fighting deforestation."

In her last days in office, Rousseff issued a few conservation areas, but alarmingly, politicians from Brazil's Amazon caucus have expressed interest in reducing these by 35%, a move experts say would open up the reserves to deforestation, land grabbing and illegal gold mining.

And Brazil, reeling from economic and political crisis over the last few years, has had less capacity for monitoring due to budget constraints. Attention is being directed to the drama in Brasília where an unprecedented corruption investigation threatens the political establishment.

Vicente's own home state, São Paulo, has seen some of Brazil's worst deforestation. The richest state in Brazil, São Paulo is responsible for a third of the country's GDP and is the biggest economy in South America, with industry and agriculture being two of the biggest contributors. For many decades, as the region grew in economic importance, so did the destruction of the local environment.

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A view of Antonio Vicente's Pouso do Rechedo guesthouse. Photograph: Tommaso Protti for the Guardian

During the last 30 years, while Vicente was planting his forest, 183,000 hectares (452,200 acres) of Atlantic forest in São Paulo state were cut down to make way for farming and expanding cities. According to a study by SOS Atlantic Forest Foundation and INPE, Atlantic forest originally covered 69% of São Paulo state, but only 14% of this total remains today. The deforestation may have been an aggravating factor in a two-year water crisis in São Paulo state that ended in 2016, alongside water-intensive industrial and agricultural production in the state and poor management of the state water company.

Today, local government initiatives in the region give a small monthly payment to farmers who protect the water supplies by planting and maintaining trees. São Paulo is currently managing to achieve almost zero deforestation. (Although that is, at least partly, because there is so little forest left to be cut down.)

Nationally, there are signs of a fightback. In 2015, Brazil committed to replanting 12m hectares (29.6m acres) of deforested land by 2030, as part of the Bonn challenge, a target that was derided by many as unrealistic.

Much of this deforested land lies on private property and so engaging property owners like Vicente is fundamental to meeting the challenge.

The Alliance for the Restoration of the Amazon, a collection of government bodies, NGOs, private sector initiatives and universities bodies, was launched in January to meet this monumental challenge and is undertaking studies in the field.

"If everyone followed Vicente's example, our task would be a lot easier," says Rodrigo Medeiros, vice president of Conservation International Brazil, one of the organisations in the coalition. "The scale of restoration that we are dealing with here is unprecedented in the history of Brazil. Without forests, water, food and a pleasant climate are basically not possible."

However, Mazzetti from Greenpeace points out that from 1985 to 2015, while 219,735 hectares (542,977 acres) of Atlantic forest were regenerated across Brazil, much more, 1,887,596 hectares (4,664,351 acres) were cut down during the same period.

"Regeneration is a slow process, we need zero deforestation now," she says.

Others have joined Vicente in his work. Brazil's most famous reforestation advocate lives nearby - celebrity photographer and activist Sebastião Salgado, who with his wife Lélia, reforested nearly 7,000 hectares of Atlantic forest in the late 1990s on his childhood home.

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POUSO DE ROCHEDO, BRAZIL - MARCH 04, 2017: Antonio Vicente in the forest. He has spent the last 40 years reforesting his land, bringing life back to an area that was razed for cattle grazing. Photograph: Tommaso Protti for the Guardian

On Vicente's own patch, there are now eight waterfalls. He takes me out on to his land, and we hike down one of the mountain trails beside a cascading waterfall, covered by a lush green Atlantic forest canopy, stopping to take gulps of fresh water with our hands.

The trail is absolutely spotless, with no litter or cigarette butts, with a rich earthy smell and views in the distance of the Mantiqueira mountain range's rolling green valleys, the only noise the trickle of the waterfall.

Vicente has seen first-hand the devastating effects of mass deforestation. He travelled at one point to Rondonia, now one of Brazil's most deforested Amazon states, in 1986 during a drive by the Brazilian government to settle the region which proved disastrous as following mass deforestation, the land yielded poor results.

"The government were giving the land away for cheap, but the land didn't serve for anything," he says. "People cut down the trees but after 3 to 4 years, the soil turned into sand and nothing grows."

Speaking of his own project in the Mantiqueira mountain range: "I didn't do it for money, I did it because when I die, what's here will remain for everyone." He adds: "People don't call me crazy any more."
Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. Follow @GuardianGDP on Twitter.

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The man who planted a tree and grew a whole family of forests

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When Antonio Vicente bought a patch of land in São Paulo state and said he wanted to use it to plant a forest, people called him crazy. It was 1973 and forests were seen by many as an obstacle to progress and profit.

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Ocean Myths Lost City Of Atlantis

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We have all heard of Atlantis, the legendary island that sank into the sea in a single day and night. But who came up with it, was Atlantis a real place, and is there more to the story than this?

We get the story of Atlantis from the Greek philosopher Plato. Really, from two of his writings, Timaeus and Critias. The books date to around 360 BC.

In them, Plato wrote that the Greek sage Solon was given the story in Egypt by a priest. Upon his return, Solon shared the story with his relative Dropides. Then Dropides passed it down to his son Critias, who told his grandson, also named Critias, who finally shared it with the philosopher Socrates and others who were present.

This list should not be taken as historical fact but as a true account of what Plato wrote. Whether we decide to believe in the legend is our own choice, but we can probably agree that this might have been the first recorded game of telephone.

10 We Know The Location

Many books and TV shows have been made about the possible location of Atlantis. A quick Google search will show that some people say Santorini is Atlantis, while others believe that the waters off Bimini are hiding a road to the lost city. However, if we look at Plato's text, it tells us where the submerged island once stood.

The text reads that Atlantis "came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean." It goes on to say that "there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you [referring to ancient Greeks], called the Pillars of Heracles."

Today, we call these the Straits of Gibraltar, where Spain and Africa are separated by a narrow strip of sea. While not quite GPS coordinates, this narrows the island's location down from a tourist trap in the Bahamas.

In 2011, University of Hartford archaeologist Richard Freund and his team found "memorial cities," or cities that were built in the image of Atlantis. The series of cities were found buried in the swamps of Donana National Park, just north of Cadiz, Spain.

As it turns out, Cadiz sits right outside the straits. This has Freund convinced that the real Atlantis was buried in the mud flats of the Atlantic. His findings match the story's text that "the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island."

Cadiz is also said to be one of the oldest cities still standing in Western Europe. It is believed to have been built by the Phoenicians around 700 BC, but some records claim the city goes as far back as 1100 BC. Greek myth says that the city dates back even before this.

Why is this important? Long ago, the city's name was Gades. This is convenient since the text tells of an Atlantean prince called Gadeirus by the prehistoric citizens of Gades. He was given the far eastern side of Atlantis.

This part of the island would have faced modern-day Cadiz. That's why the story says that Cadiz, or Gades, was named after the prince. Of course, Plato wrote all this at least 340 years after the city's founding, so maybe he was being liberal when he was naming Atlantean princes.

9 Atlantis Was Named After A Demigod

Most people probably believe that Atlantis got its name from being in the Atlantic Ocean, but the text claims that it is the other way around. As the story goes, Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea, had five pairs of male twins with a mortal Atlantean woman named Cleito.

The god gave each of his 10 sons different portions of the island over which to rule. Gadeirus was the second-eldest of these sons. While he may have had a city in Spain named after him, it was his older twin, Atlas, who would have the glory of being the island's namesake.

As the firstborn, Atlas had the entire island, and even the surrounding ocean, named after him. His children would also reign over Atlantis forever. Talk about picking favorites.

8 Half The Story Is Missing

We know that Plato wrote at least two books about Atlantis. Today, we have a complete version of Timaeus, but we do not have a completed copy of Critias.

Critias ends after Zeus, head of the Greek gods, "collected all the gods into their most holy habitation, which, being placed in the center of the world, beholds all created things. And when he had called them together, he spake as follows." It ends there. Talk about a cliffhanger.

It is not known if Plato left the book incomplete on purpose or if the finished version was lost long ago. Not only are we missing the ending of Critias, but it is thought that Plato wrote, or at least planned to write, a third book on Atlantis called Hermocrates.

There are a couple of facts to support this theory. A line in Critias reads, "Critias, we will grant your request, and we will grant the same by anticipation to Hermocrates, as well as to you and Timaeus." This suggests that a third account of the story was to be given by Hermocrates.

Also, the names of the three books may contain a hidden message, especially when one looks at the order in which Plato wrote, or would have written, them. Timaeus comes from the Greek tio, meaning "to honor." Critias comes from the Greek krima, meaning "judgment."

Lastly, Hermocrates is derived from "Hermes," the messenger of the Greek gods. Timaeus honors prehistoric Athens for its heroism. Critias presumably ends with Zeus's judgment of Atlantis. But what message might Hermocrates have delivered?

The answer may lie in what we know about Hermocrates himself. He was a real-life military leader who helped to lead the successful defense of Syracuse against Athens during the Peloponnesian War. This is much like the story of Atlantis. In the story, an Athenian state from archaic times repels an attack from the superior force of Atlantis.

Maybe the message in Hermocrates would have touched on why Athens' attack on Syracuse failed and how Syracuse was able to defend itself from conquest. Unless someone finds a copy of this book, we may never know the whole story of Atlantis.

7 Atlantis Would Be At Least 11,500 Years Old

Solon was said to be the wisest of all Greek sages. The text states that the story of Atlantis was handed down to Solon in Egypt when he wanted to "draw" one of the priests to speak about their oldest of tales.

To do this, Solon decided to tell the priests about the oldest Greek stories he could recall. He spoke to them about a great flood and about the first man. After listening to Solon, one priest responded, "O Solon, Solon . . . there is not an old man among you . . . in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition."

The priest went on to say that Athens, Solon's home city, was much older than he thought it was. In the Egyptian registers at Sais [where they were], it was written that Sais was founded 8,000 years before their own time. It was also recorded there that Athens was founded 1,000 years before Sais and that the Athenians of this time fought off Atlantis.

Solon lived from roughly 630 BC to about 560 BC. If the story is true, then the fall of Atlantis occurred around 9500 BC. This would make Atlantis about as old as Gobekli Tepe, which is dated to around 10,000 BC and is considered to be the world's first temple by archaeologists today.

This would flip history on its head. But for now, it will have to remain on its feet.

6 The Story Is True . . . According To Plato

We said that no one should take this list as a historical account. In the text, however, Critias claims that his story is true. "Then listen . . . to a tale which, though strange, is certainly true, having been attested by Solon." To which Socrates responds, "Very good. And what is this ancient famous action of the Athenians, which Critias declared, on the authority of Solon, to be not a mere legend, but an actual fact?"

It is important to note that Plato discerns fact from fiction in his story. "There is a story . . . that once upon a time, Paethon, the son of Helios, having yoked the steeds in his father's chariot, because he was not able to drive them in the path of his father, burned up all that was upon the Earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt. Now this has the form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of the bodies moving in the heavens around the Earth."

Here, Plato acknowledges that some myths are symbolic in nature. However, he states in his book that Atlantis was real, not a myth. If Atlantis was Plato's fantasy, why would he assert that the story of Atlantis was true but have no problem saying that a Greek myth was created to represent something else?

Did Plato believe his own story? Did he want his readers to think it was true? Maybe he was trying to throw his readers off the trail of a message hidden deep within the story. That would be some seriously ancient reverse psychology at work.

5 Atlantis Was An Empire

Most of us probably think of a lush green island surrounded by deep blue ocean waters when we picture Atlantis. While the story focuses on the island, most of us probably assumed that Atlantis was no more than this. But Plato tells us that Atlantis was actually an empire ruled from this island.

"Now in this island of Atlantis, there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others, and over parts of the continent, and, furthermore, the men of Atlantis had subjected the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia."

Tyrrhenia is another name for Etruria, now known as central Italy. This means that Atlantis would have stretched as far as modern-day Tuscany in Europe and all the way to Egypt in Africa. We wish we knew how Athens beat such a big empire? Maybe Plato had no idea either, so he gave up on writing the ending.

4 Ancient Mediterranean People May Have Known About The Americas

While it is possible that Plato made up Atlantis for philosophy's sake, there is one part of the story that would have been very hard to fabricate. In the story, the Egyptian priest tells Solon, "The island . . . was the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean. [ . . . ] The surrounding land may be most truly called a boundless continent."

So there was a continent on the other side of the Atlantic that was so big that it seemed to surround the entire ocean. Could this mean that ancient Greeks, and possibly ancient Egyptians, knew about or had even been to the Americas?

In 1970, famous seafarer Thor Heyerdahl set sail with a crew of six in a reed ship named the Ra II. They sailed from Safi, Morocco, across the Atlantic, and to Barbados in 57 days.

The voyage proved that reed boats could survive ocean travel and that ancient people could actually cross the Atlantic in them. This feat had once been thought impossible by scholars.

However, this does not prove that Egyptians, or Greeks for that matter, made it to the Americas. But Heyerdahl proved that it was at least possible for them to do so.

3 Women Were Allowed To Serve In Prehistoric Athens

Every so often in America, the issue of women in the military comes up. Should we allow women to serve in combat positions? Should we make women sign up for the draft?

Although we seriously consider these questions today, they would have been laughable to Greeks 2,500 years ago. In fact, it was Plato's student, Aristotle, who once said, "Silence is a woman's glory."

And could you imagine what the Spartan warriors would have done if a woman had tried to join their ranks? We hope you ladies like being kicked into deep pits by Spartan kings with spray-on abs. Seriously, they would not have liked this.

However, this was not the case with the Athenians of 9500 BC, at least not in Plato's story. The text reads, "Military pursuits were then common to men and women, the men of those days in accordance with the custom of the time set up a figure and image of the goddess [Athena] in full armor, to be a testimony that all animals which associate together, male as well as female, may, if they please, practice in common the virtue which belongs to them without distinction of sex."

This could be Plato dreaming up his ideal state, but maybe the people of 9500 BC thought all the chatter from the new recruits would keep the enemy at bay. Just joking, ladies.

2 Plato May Have Wanted To Keep People Out Of The Ocean

If the Greeks did know what lay beyond the Mediterranean, would they have wanted other people to know as well? Maybe not, and this might have been why Plato wrote that no one could sail into the Atlantic.

"But afterward there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the Earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea." According to Plato, this caused an impassable mud shoal outside the Straits of Gibraltar.

This may have stopped some from going too far beyond the straits. Plato implied that the Atlantic was not able to be sailed into during his lifetime when he wrote, "For in those days the Atlantic was navigable."

Was Plato trying to keep people from going into the Atlantic? Did he truly believe that a shoal of mud was blocking ocean travel? Or was the Atlantic really too muddy for boats to sail across at one point? If it was too shallow for boats, why wouldn't they just walk across?

1 The Many Times Mankind Has Been And Will Be Destroyed

The Egyptian priest had told Solon that none of his stories were "truly ancient" compared to his own. According to the priest, the reason for Solon's lack of "truly ancient" knowledge is that mankind has been destroyed time and time again.

"There have been, and will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes; the greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water, and other lesser ones by innumerable other causes."

The priest explains further, "When, on the other hand, the gods purge the Earth with a deluge of water, the survivors in your country are herdsmen and shepherds who dwell on the mountains."

If the only people to survive were mountain dwellers who had no knowledge of their distant past, then it is easy to see how an entire civilization's history would be lost in time. The priest believes that Egypt survived these disasters when almost no one else did because Egypt received very little, if any, rain.

Instead, they received annual floods from the Nile River which raised enough to provide for them but not enough to destroy their world. Some places are too wet, and some too dry. But Egypt is just right, baby. Just kidding, it is really, really dry.

I do a little bit of this, but I refuse to do any of that. Just kidding, I'm all about doing it. Really, I'm just a part-time lifeguard trying to make ends meet. Freelancing is how I hope to fill the space between said ends. Enjoy my work and want a piece of it? Send me a direct order over at textbroker.com. (I told them my name was T. Durden, so be supercool and don't blow my cover. Thanks).

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10 Things You Probably Don't Know About The Lost City Of Atlantis - Listverse

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We have all heard of Atlantis, the legendary island that sank into the sea in a single day and night. But who came up with it, was Atlantis a real place, and is there more to the story than this? We get the story of Atlantis from the Greek philosopher Plato.

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nasa's 20-year time-lapse shows how earth is changing

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NASA's 20-year time-lapse shows how Earth is changing

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A stunning new NASA time-lapse video crams 20 years of Earth into just a few minutes. It is helping scientists learn a lot more about global warming and how the earth is changing. Chip Reid reports.

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It doesn't pay to take your eyes off the for a second. Look away even briefly and who knows what it will get up to?

That's not how things usually seem to human beings living on the surface of the planet. The mountain that's here today ought to be here tomorrow. The river that meanders along the boundary of your state or your nation will be meandering into the future. If you were in orbit, however, things would look very different-especially if you were in orbit for a few decades at a time. Since 1972, the Landsat satellites-a rotating fleet of four different spacecraft-have kept exactly that kind of long-term vigil, circling the Earth and scanning the surface for the incremental ways the human population is changing the only home it's got. They've been aided since 2015 by the European Space Agency's Copernicus Program and its Sentinel-2A satellite.

In the years all of the satellites have been flying they've taken millions upon millions of high-definition images, which and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) have collated and assembled into something of a flip book that reveals the slow but steady alteration of our world. What the two science agencies started, the folks at Google have finished, turning the usually choppy, sometimes-hazy images into smoothly streaming videos, revealing decades of topographic changes in 10-second sweeps. (Click for source material).

Those brief glimpses belie the extraordinary amount of computer-engineering muscle that went into making the mini-movies possible. The Google Earth Engine team worked with more than 5.4 million discrete images taken since 1984, and gave each one individual attention. In some, cloud cover had to be scrubbed away; in others missing pixels had to be filled in. In all of the images, there were plenty of those pixels to attend to. The average high-definition TV image is made of about 300,000 individual points of light. The Google time-lapse images pack 3.95 trillion pixels into a single frame.

In 2013, TIME released the first round of Google time-lapse images-revealing the growing sprawl of Las Vegas, the boomtown that is Dubai, the slow death of Alaska's Columbia glacier. This year we turn our attention elsewhere. In some of those new sites, the changes have been positive ones-the expansion of the Panama Canal, say, as the greatest engineering feat of the 20th century was updated and improved for the 21st.

In other places, the story is more mixed: the new Jirau Dam, spanning Brazil's Madeira River, may be an unalloyed good for the people who will have new or improved electrical service, but it's less good for the villages that were uprooted and the 1,400 miles of jungle that were strung with electrical cables to make the project possible. Still elsewhere the story is one of disaster-as it was in Fukushima, Japan, where a 2011 tsunami deluged a nuclear power plant, endangering millions.

It's an undeniable achievement that we can keep such a close, sharp eye on our world. It will be even more to our credit, however, if that ability leads us to care more for the world too.

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Google Unveils 3-Decade Time-Lapse of the Earth

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It doesn't pay to take your eyes off the for a second. Look away even briefly and who knows what it will get up to? That's not how things usually seem to human beings living on the surface of the planet. The mountain that's here today ought to be here tomorrow.

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Species impacted by earthquakes

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The 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit New Zealand's South Island lifted up the seabed by two metres, pushing it above the ocean's surface.

Aerial photos taken by environmental engineers show large purple patches of uplifted earth on the coastline north of Kaikoura.

Side-by-side shots, taken before Sunday's devastating earthquake which killed two people, show an alarming contrast.

In Facebook photos posted by local Anna Redmond, the seabed can be seen jutting out of the sandy shore by several metres.

Close-up snaps show the rocks covered in seaweed and abalone and are a vivid illustration of the amount of ocean life threatened by the quake's impact.

Experts say the quake opened up previously unknown fault lines and this is the first time the seabed has been lifted in New Zealand.

Marine Geologist Dr Joshu Mountjoy told Stuff.co.nz he had "never seen it before during an earthquake" adding that the earthquake had a "very complex fault rupture".

The latest quake appears to have fractured along some vertical, as well as than horizontal faultlines, resulting in the Earth being pushed upwards in places.

"It will take a while before this becomes normal again," Dr Mountjoy said.

Geologists, GNS Science geologists Nicola Litchfield and Pilar Villamor, flew over the South Island's eastern coast, to observe the damage caused by the Kekerengu Fault.

"Here, the earthquake dislocated hills, fences, roads, buildings and the river bed, some by as much as 10m horizontally. A house was also spectacularly moved off its foundations - the occupants were shaken up, but otherwise okay," they posted on the GNS website.

New Zealand was hit with two major aftershocks - one 6.3 magnitude quake centred in Cheviot and the other a 5.8 magnitude, after the initial quake at midnight on Sunday.

© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2018

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New Zealand quake lifted seabed by 2m - 9News

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The 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit New Zealand's South Island lifted up the seabed by two metres, pushing it above the ocean's surface. Aerial photos taken by environmental engineers show large purple patches of uplifted earth on the coastline north of Kaikoura. Side-by-side shots, taken before Sunday's devastating earthquake which killed two people, show an alarming contrast.

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River Erosion , Transport and Deposition

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Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

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NDSU Extension Soil Health Specialist Abbey Wick

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NDSU Extension Soil Health Specialist Abbey Wick, UMN Extension Educator Jodi DeJong-Hughes, and NDSU Extension Soil Specialist Dave Franzen talk about the process of soil erosion and how to reduce it on farm.

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Soil Erosion Round the World - Causes and Solutions | Global 3000

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Satellites orbit Earth at 17,000 miles an hour, capturing images of our world that are breathtaking, but some are bizarre. This unique perspective reveals objects that seem to make no sense & phenomena that defy explanation. Such images force the question, what on Earth is that?
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Ethiopia is the world's fastest growing economy. So when drought struck why did it need international help?

Ethiopia has been doing very well over the last 15 years or so.

Millions of people have been lifted out of poverty as the economy, jointly with Turkmenistan, has been growing faster than anywhere else in the world.

The double-digit growth is obvious from the building sites and the tower blocks rising up on every corner in the capital Addis Ababa.

The country has changed a great deal since 1984, when hundreds of thousands of people died of hunger.

Those terrible images of famine from more than 30 years ago still haunt Ethiopia.

It was a time when war and political neglect turned drought into disaster, and for a government today with grand ambitions it's still a raw wound.

Now it's a place with a confidence, only dented when the climate changes.

El Nino dried up the rainfall.

Drought once again turned the land to dust.

It's facing as bad a drought as 1984 over a much wider area.

One man I met told me this is the worst drought he has seen in 45 years.

I met Ahmed Dubet Roble at a gathering of around 1,400 families in Fedeto. He had travelled from the barren countryside to ask for help.

He has lost everything.

Also there was Khadija Aden Abtidon, sitting by her little tent of sticks and cloth.

"We lost all our livestock," she said, "so we are here to seek support.

"There's no pasture, no water. We have never seen anything like this before."

In a warehouse in Dire Dawa I saw a huge tower of white maize sacks being loaded into an aid truck by a long line of men.

The bags were emblazoned with "Ministry of Agriculture". This is food the Ethiopian government had bought abroad, imported into Djibouti, transported via its new electrified railway and was delivering to its people.

The country has already committed more than $380m (£260m) of its own money to buying aid and using its new Chinese-built railway that cuts hundreds of miles through the parched countryside from the port in Djibouti.
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But for all it has achieved, Ethiopia had to turn to the international community for help.

"The reason why we say we need support is not necessarily because everything is beyond the pale," said Communications Minister Getachew Reda, who says they will to everything to stop people dying for want of food.

"But rather, because the best way to maintain the gross trajectory and at the same insulate our people from disaster, is by working with our partners."

Ethiopia has worked hard on building its life savings - its developing economy - and by asking for help now it's trying to protect its family silver.

With so many crises around the globe tackled too late, the aid world often ends up rushing the patient to life support having missed the chance to give preventative medicine.

What is complicated is the time it takes for money to be given and for the aid to be delivered - here it can take months.

Hundreds of millions have been given by international donors, but the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says only 46% of the $1.4bn needed has been given so far.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has less than a third of the money is says it needs to keep the aid coming.

"We need more funding and very quickly - immediately," said Oxfam's country director Ayman Omer.

"We need to work simultaneously on saving lives now and preparing for the next harvest.

"Even if the rain does come March to May that will definitely help in terms of water availability, but will not immediately result in harvest. The harvest season is up to November.

"It has been controlled so far, but much more is needed, otherwise we will get ourselves into problems."

The El Nino weather pattern has worsened the drought and if the next rains also fail, far more people will be affected, and those already needing help will need it far longer.

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TONGOY, Chile (Reuters) - Residents sifted through rubble on Thursday and saved what they could from homes destroyed by a magnitude 8.3 earthquake in central Chile that killed 11 people, forced 1 million from their homes and sent giant waves crashing into coastal areas.

Aftershocks shook the South American country following Wednesday's quake, the strongest in the world this year and the biggest to hit Chile since 2010. But some residents expressed relief that the destruction had not been greater.

The northern port city of Coquimbo, where waves of up to 4.5 meters (15 feet) slammed into the shore, was declared an emergency area by the government. The move gives the government a wide range of special powers. It was aimed at speeding aid to the city and allowed soldiers to patrol the streets to ensure security and prevent looting.

Large fishing boats had washed up onto the streets Coquimbo. Others vessels splintered, littering the bay with debris.

"We lost it all. It was horrible," said 79-year-old Hilda Zambra, whose home in Tongoy, a beach town some 40 km (25 miles) south of Coquimbo, was destroyed by surging waters.

"I don't know how I got out of there," she said as a shipment of Red Cross aid arrived in the normally quiet tourist destination and soldiers helped clear streets of debris. "It was dark. I jumped into some stranger's pickup truck. We left with what we had on our backs."

The homes of 610 people were so damaged that they were unable to return by late Thursday afternoon, according to government data. Some 179 homes were destroyed, 87,600 remained without electricity and 9,000 without clean water.

The government had ordered evacuations from coastal areas after the earthquake hit, seeking to avoid a repeat of a quake disaster in 2010 when authorities were slow to warn of a tsunami and hundreds were killed.

"We want to thank people for their cooperation, which allowed for a death toll that while unfortunate was not very high considering the strength of the earthquake," President Michelle Bachelet told reporters.

The latest quake also knocked out power in the worst hit areas of central Chile, although most buildings, roads and ports held up well. The quake was felt as far away as Buenos Aires in Argentina.

Bachelet, who said her government "learned a series of lessons" from previous disasters, began a tour of damaged areas in the town of La Serena, near Coquimbo.

Chile is the world's top copper producer and operations were suspended at two big copper mines as a precaution, sending prices on the London Metal Exchange CMCU3 to two-month highs in early Asian trading on concern over disruptions to supplies. Prices later dipped as concerns about long-term disruption subsided.

State copper miner Codelco [CODEL.UL] said on Thursday morning it had restarted operations at its open-pit Andina mine and its Ventanas smelter.

London-listed Antofagasta Plc () said it was inspecting installations at its flagship Los Pelambres copper mine and expected to gradually resume operations during the afternoon. Los Pelambres is the closest major mine to the quake epicenter.

Chile's state oil company ENAP [ENAP.UL] also reported that its two oil refineries were operating normally after earlier disruptions and that fuel stocks were safe.

CLEARING RUBBLE

Tsunami alerts were issued after Wednesday's quake across the Pacific, from parts of California to Japan and French Polynesia, although waves were generally expected to be small. In Chile, the tsunami warning was lifted on Thursday morning.

One port used for exporting copper and other natural resources was completely shut down on Thursday and three others closed for smaller vessels, suggesting trade flows might be interrupted.

In Illapel, some businesses began opening and heavy machinery moved in to start clearing up the rubble.

Quake-prone Chile has strict building regulations so newer buildings are able to withstand even strong quakes. Many homes in Illapel and surrounding areas are simple, adobe houses and are more prone to damage.

A makeshift altar was erected in Illapel where a 26-year-old woman was killed by a wall that collapsed when the quake hit.

Chile is due to celebrate its national holiday on Friday, but some roads between Santiago and the north remained cut off.

The quake was the latest natural disaster to roil mining in Chile, which accounts for a third of global copper output. Northern Chile was hit by severe floods earlier this year, while a volcanic eruption caused problems for residents in the south.

Chile runs along a highly seismic and volcanic zone where tectonic plates meet and often experiences earthquakes. In 2014, an 8.2-magnitude quake struck near the northern city of Iquique. In 2010, an 8.8-magnitude earthquake in central-southern Chile triggered a massive tsunami, and more than 500 people were killed.

In the hours after that quake, President Bachelet and her government misjudged the extent of damage and declined offers of international aid, delaying the flow of assistance to disaster areas.

Bachelet's government was also slow to prevent looting after the quake. Its failings hit her high approval ratings at the end of her presidential term, although she remained popular and was elected again in 2013.

Map of the quake region: link.reuters.com/zem65w

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Chileans pick through debris after powerful quake; 11 dead

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Residents sifted through rubble on Thursday and saved what they could from homes destroyed by a magnitude 8.3 earthquake in central Chile that killed 11 people, forced 1 million from their homes and sent giant waves crashing into coastal areas.