Global Biodiversity and Climate Change Visualization
Jon Bergengren, PhD

News & Notes

Project and Site Overview

The Biodiversity and Climate Project

Welcome to ecodiversity.org, my Biodiversity and Climate Project website.

I am a global ecologist / astrophysicist / computer modeler currently focused on the relationships between biodiversity and climate change with a goal of accelerating our journey to sustainability. It is increasingly clear that we must simultaneously conserve and restore biodiversity, preserve and restore natural habitat, and stabilize the Earth’s climate by reducing our greenhouse gas emissions to near zero. I am dedicated to achieving these goals in my lifetime as current global trends are not sustainable.

This site highlights some of my current ideas, research and projects that address these complex global environmental challenges. It’s far too easy to ignore what we can’t really see. Extinction, habitat loss, anthropogenic climate change are all just over the horizon on mostly invisible timescales. I believe that the more clearly we illuminate the primary elements of global change via powerful scientific visualizations – interactive maps, animations, movies – the faster we can awaken the human heart and mind and an ecological ethos that will propel us toward sustainable technologies and lifestyles.

The Global Biodiversity and Climate Change Visualization Website

The five primary pages of this site are:

  1. General introduction to Global Biodiversity and Climate Change Visualization
  2. Description of the Earth system focusing on biodiversity, natural habitat, and climate change
  3. The Biodiversity and Climate Project's scientific endeavors – data, modeling, and visualizations
  4. Our Earth system science and web mapping resources link library
  5. Project overview and current news, notes and sustainability ideas

Please explore this site describing my sustainability research and efforts and other related sites that you can find in the Earth system science link library on the Resources page. The more you explore, the more you will benefit from the ideas and principles and endeavors described here and on the websites in the sustainability library.

The Biodiversity and Climate Project Team

Jon C Bergengren

I am a global ecologist / astrophysicist / computer modeler currently focused on the relationships between biodiversity and climate change with a goal of accelerating our journey to sustainability. My scientific interests have evolved from cosmology and planetary detection to Earth system science, climate-biosphere interactions, and global biodiversity. This is reflected in my academic journey, from receiving undergraduate degrees in Astrophysics and Computer Science to my PhD in Global Ecology / Earth System Science to a decade of research at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

I have always been more interested in paradigm shifting than paradigm polishing. I have been at the forefront of three advancements in Earth system science:

  • Biospheric feedbacks to climate change, NCAR, 1990s
  • Ecological sensitivity, an eco-analogue to climate sensitivity, Caltech/JPL, 2000s
  • Exploring Earth system synergies of biodiversity, natural habitat, and climate change, ongoing

If you are interested in collaborating and/or funding my research, please contact me at:   global ecologist at gmail dot com.

Enjoy the site and please learn and help create a sustainable world.

On this News & Notes page, you can read a 2011 NASA press release that summarizes one of my publications describing a new metric that I developed – ecological sensitivity – the eco-analogue to climate sensitivity. The ecosensitivity maps are generated using one of my biospheric models driven by the IPCC CMIP3 AR4 SRES A1B climate change scenario, a very conservative estimate of this century’s coming climate changes. I am currently updating these results using the newer more realistic IPCC CMIP5 AR5 RCP 8.5 climate change scenario (visualized on the Science page) which portrays the world toward which we are currently headed. It’s time to launch a Project Apollo for clean renewable energy sources – solar, wind, ocean dynamics, geothermal, and nonfood biofuels.

News

2015 April 7

The new Biodiversity and Climate Project website is launched!

The evolutionary state of this site is still in beta-phase – some sections are still very brief placeholders awaiting further expansion and elucidation. Next, I have to learn how to install and configure a map server (probably GeoServer) in order to serve up our data to online (zoomable) slippy maps.

Stay tuned!

Notes

A Biodiversity and Climate Community

The self-evident focus and ultimate triangular goal of the Biodiversity and Climate Project is conserving and restoring the biosphere's endangered species and natural habitats, while stabilizing the Earth's climate system. The activities of human beings are creating the primary forces driving extinction, habitat loss, and climate change and therefore only modifications in our collective behaviors can create a sustainable world. Hence, another central guiding principle in the development of this project and our website is building a dynamic and growing community of ecologists, climate scientists, and others who are illuminating these challenges and pioneering the solutions.

The project's growing body of biodiversity, habitat, and climate maps and associated written analyses will be published online and freely available to everyone. Project members will also be able to login to the website in order to enter and edit their own biodiversity data. These data will be stored in our evolving data software system in formats that can be served up to our web mapping system. Eventually, we will also have an iOS app for easy data entry in the field.

Sutainability Ideas

Transforming Vision into Action

Scientific results and visualizations are transformed into education and policy by effective communication.

Positive change starts with vision – both kinds – a vision of what's possible and the ability to see the world of the past, present, and probable future. I am building this project and website with a vision of sustainability, a world in which both human beings and the rest of Nature are thriving.

I am working hard to transform the mostly invisible human impacts on the natural world into informative visualizations that can accelerate our journey to sustainability. The real alchemy, of course, lies in the transformation of this vision and these visualizations into effective actions of change.

The mantra for a sustainable Earth: conserve and restore biodiversity and natural habitat while stabilizing the Earth's climate. Thank you for your vision and positive actions.