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| | | Island Ecosystems |
Maintained by NOAA
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| | Types of island ecosystems | | |  An island is a body of land, smaller than a continent, completely surrounded by water. Plants and animals of island ecosystems have many distinctive features, often related to the type of island: - old continental islands e.g. New Caledonia and New Zealand, originally part of a continent
- oceanic islands, generally volcanic and short lived e.g. Hawaii
- coral atolls (see photo of Palmyra Atoll)
- small, numerous islands e.g. red mangrove islets in the tropics, sand islets of the Caribbean and Indian Ocean, and
- barrier islands parallel and close to the mainland coast.
Palmyra Atoll, Pacific Ocean. Scripps scientists found the record of El Niño inside ancient corals washed onto this equatorial beach. Full story Photo courtesy Kim Cobb, Scripps Institution of Oceanography | | | | Island biogeography | | |  Island ecosystems have been studied because they are simpler than ocean ecosystems. Even clusters of islands are simpler to study. Islands provide natural “experiments” for research because of their number, variation in shape, size, degree of isolation and ecology. Oceanic islands near continents may have continental plants and animals. More isolated islands may have endemic species. One of the key relationships in island biogeography is the area-biodiversity curve. Generally the larger the island, the more diverse the plants and animals. To put it another way, environmental diversity is correlated with island area.
Bahia Azul, Panama, a great chaenopsid collecting site Photo: P A Hastings | | |  More recent interest in island biogeography has had an impact on conservation biology. Many features of island ecosystems are relevant to ecosystem conservation elsewhere, on land as well as in the oceans. Island ecosystems have helped our understanding of:- fragmentation (leading to insularization)
- creation of biotic communities, and
- species extinction.
Acanthemblemaria mangognatha, a recently described tube blenny endemic to Islas Revillagigedos, Mexico. Photo: D R Robertson | | | | |
 | | | | | UNESCO To Announce Global Strategy for Establishment of Tsunami Early Warning System
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| | Editorial Contact: In Mauritius : Sue Williams - Press Relations Section - tel (mobile) : +33 6 07 84 26 76 - Email 10-01-2005 6:40 pm UNESCO Director-General, Koichiro Matsuura, will announce UNESCO’s Global Strategy for the Establishment of a Tsunami Early Warning System, including the one for the Indian Ocean, during the United Nations International Meeting on Small Island Developing States, which opened here today. “One of the many lessons we must learn from the Indian Ocean catastrophe is that tsunami can strike wherever there is a coastline”, said Mr Matsuura in Paris on the eve of his departure for Mauritius. “Minimizing their impact requires cooperation and collaboration between a range of partners that go beyond the borders of any one State. Any early warning system, to be truly effective, must therefore be global in scope.” UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) initiated the tsunami warning system for the Pacific in 1968, and has been arguing the need for an alert system for the Indian Ocean for several years. However, Member States did not consider the issue urgent, given the rarity of tsunami in the region (the last one was recorded over a century ago), the lack of resources in many countries, a long list of other priorities, and the fact that 85% of the world’s tsunami occur in the Pacific. Mr Matsuura welcomed the proposal from the meeting of ASEAN leaders in Jakarta last week envisaging the establishment of a tsunami warning system in the region, and the offers made by several countries to support such a project. But, he pointed out that there are many other regions at risk, including the Mediterranean, the Caribbean and the South West Pacific. UNESCO stands ready, he said, to lend the experience and expertise gained in the Pacific over the past 40 years to the provision of a global warning system, and to ensure coordination amongst international partners to avoid duplication. Any such system goes far beyond the installation of seismic equipment to measure and pinpoint earthquakes. This equipment is already largely in place right around the globe, reminded Mr Matsuura. Experts as far away as Hawaii and Vienna knew that the earthquake had taken place off the coast of Sumatra on December 26, immediately after it had occurred. “What is missing are the communication networks, public awareness and national disaster planning that are essential to alert populations quickly, to teach people what they can do to help themselves, to rapidly evacuate threatened areas and to look after the immediate needs of the wounded or displaced,” said the Director-General. Each type of natural disaster also has its own particularities, said Mr Matsuura, and therefore requires a different response. In this regard, there cannot be a “one-size fits all” alert system, he said. “People need to know about all of the possible risks they face, and what they can do to save their lives and limit the damage when disaster strikes,” he added. “This means that governments must also understand different risks and be ready to respond to each situation.” The Mauritius International Meeting is organized by the United Nations and its agencies, including UNESCO, to review the implementation of a programme of action for the sustainable development of Small Island Developing States (SIDS), agreed upon at a global conference in Barbados ten years ago. More than 2,000 delegates from at least 110 countries, including the world’s 51 Small Island Developing States, are attending the meeting, along with United Nations partners, donor agencies, non-governmental organizations and civil society groups. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Source Press Release No.2005-04 Author(s) UNESCOPRESS |
| Jennifer Perce
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1076 Topics - 5135 Related Knowledge - 2534 Members - 34 Editors |
