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| News
2008 |
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28/11/2008
Telespazio presents the Love Planet Earth 2009 calendar dedicated to the theme of water
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Telespazio, a Finmeccanica/Thales company, presents the third edition of the Love Planet Earth calendar, dedicated in 2009 to the theme of water and the environmental disasters associated with it.
Combining six satellite images with the same number of photographs, Telespazio explores the theme of the new environmental disasters associated with this basic resource, encompassing the pollution of seas and freshwater sources, its intensive and often indiscriminate use in agriculture, the effects of global warming on the glaciers that feed the great rivers and the drastic changes to the marine ecosystem.
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Water is the primary resource that mankind looks for on faraway planets, but protects poorly on Earth. One person in eight in the world today has no access to water. And according to the UN, by 2025 two-thirds of the world’s population will face this problem.
With the aid of the six satellite images produced by Telespazio, we can observe some of the effects of this disaster.
The calendar opens with an image of the
Baltoro Glacier, which
like other glaciers in the Tibet and Quinghai
regions, supplies millions of people with
freshwater but has been hit by the effects
of climate change. The Gulf of Tonkin,
surrounding Weizhou island, paints an alarming
picture: a thin, continuous stream of oil
is poured into the sea from oil platforms,
reaching the coast of southern China. The
photograph of a boat in the middle of what
remains of the Aral Sea
between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, which
50 years ago was the fourth largest lake
in the world, bears witness to what the
UN considers one of the greatest environmental
disasters caused by man.
And the image of the Barents Sea
in Norway, as seen from space, reveals luxuriant
phytoplankton, the first level of the food
chain, whose delicate equilibrium is threatened
by pollution. The satellite image of pivot
crops along the banks of the Columbia
river in the US aids our understanding
of how the increase in cultivated areas
in semi-arid zones can cause the degradation
of water resources. The calendar closes
with an image of the Red Sea
coral reefs: here global warming and the
resulting increase in sea levels is putting
one of the most important eco-systems in
terms of bio-diversity under considerable
stress.
From today, you can download the Love Planet
Earth calendar and individual images to
your PC desktop from Telespazio’s website
( www.telespazio.com/calendar09),
where you will also find an extensive section
dedicated to these environmental topics,
together with news and in-depth reports
from a range of sources.
Nota stampa
Press release
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