Earth Day 2016: Soil and Sand

Fig.1. Earth Day promotes efforts to protect the planet and the life it holds, from microbes on a plate to huge ecosystems (Credit, left to right, top to bottom: Julia Stevens, Christine Zenino/2009, 
Laura Cochrane/Mills Park Middle School, Acropara/2011)

On April 22, 1970, a celebration of the first Earth Day kicked off the modern environmental movement. Now, 46 years later, we are dealing with some of the hottest months on record, melting ice sheets, bleaching corals, and more.

However, recent and ongoing research projects offer hope for mitigating climate change challenges. Researchers are using scientific collections - from sediment cores to coral fossils - to understand ancient changes in our planet’s atmosphere and surface. This past year, our blog has highlighted efforts by earth scientists to use lessons from our past to preserve Earth’s future. Read to learn more about these studies and how people around the world are working hard to protect the planet:

Seeds for the End of the World

Fig.1. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault sits in the island Spitsbergen in the Svalbard archipelago, about midway between continental Norway and the North Pole (Credit: Mari Tefre, Global Crop Diversity Trust, via Flickr)

The lonely island of Spitsbergen in northern Norway is an unlikely home for agriculture’s last resort. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, nestled 130 meters into the permafrost, holds the seeds of tens of thousands of varieties of essential food crops, such as beans, wheat, and rice. While the Global Seed Vault operates mainly as a safety net for other seed banks around the world, such repositories are centers of research to protect biodiversity and address world hunger.