Sources Contact Advanced Search Tutorials

An Interest In:

Web News this Week

Search Archive

Some of Our Sources

View All Sources

Help Webnuz

Referal links:

November 22, 2019 02:41 pm

One-Third of Tropical African Plant Species at Risk of Extinction

A third of plant species in tropical Africa are threatened with extinction, a new study suggests. Plants are crucial to many ecosystems and life in general, providing food and oxygen, as well as being the source of myriad materials and medicines. However, human activities including logging, mining and agriculture pose a major threat. From a report: While the extinction risk of animals around the world has been well studied, the risk facing many plants remains unclear: 86% of mammal species have been assessed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) for its Red List, compared with only 8% of plant species. Now experts say they have come up with a rapid approach to give a preliminary classification. "Our approach can help to prioritise either species or regions on which proper IUCN Red Listing should focus," said Dr Gilles Dauby of the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development and a co-author of the research. He said the list was recognised as an authoritative source, and was crucial to planning projects that could affect the environment. The new study is the latest to throw the plight of plants into the spotlight. Earlier this year, scientists completed the most thorough analysis to date of plant extinctions, finding that 571 species had been wiped out since the start of the industrial revolution -- a figure they say is likely to be an underestimate. Writing in the journal Science Advances, Dauby and colleagues report how they focused on two IUCN Red List criteria -- one relating to population size reduction and the other to habitat decline -- to develop a computer algorithm to automatically classify the conservation status of plants.

Slashdot

Slashdot was originally created in September of 1997 by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. Today it is owned by Geeknet, Inc..

More About this Source Visit Slashdot