EarthwEEk: Diary oF a Changing World

For the week ending Friday, June 14

Plant Extinction

Human activities have caused almost 600 plant species to go extinct over the past 250 years, according to scientists from Britain’s Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew and Stockholm University. They also say the loss is occurring up to 500 times faster than the rate plants would naturally disappear. Their research found that plants have gone extinct twice as fast as birds, mammals and amphibians since 1753. The loss has been highest on islands, in the tropics and in regions with a Mediterranean climate.

EarthquakEs

The Cleveland area was jolted by a rare tremor, centered beneath Lake Erie. Earth movements were also felt in Azerbaijan, Bali and New Zealand’s South Island.

Sardinian swarms

Locusts are devouring crops across the Italian island of Sardinia in the worst such invasion seen there in 70 years. While the ravenous insects are often seen on the Mediterranean island during the summer, farmers say they are now greater in number than at any time since World War II because of extreme weather swings in the past two years. “We had droughts in 2017 and a lot of rain in 2018, the ideal climate for locusts to emerge from fallow land and then move to cultivated fields to eat,” Michele Arbau from the agricultural association Coldiretti Sardinia told Reuters.

Indian cyclonE

Hundreds of thousands of residents along India’s Gujarat coast were evacuated as Category 2 Cyclone Vayu intensified just offshore in the Arabian Sea. The 100-mph storm was veering away from the Indian mainland late in the week.

Ebola crisis

The World Health Organization called an emergency meeting after Congo’s protracted Ebola outbreak spread to neighboring Uganda. Congo has already recorded more than 2,000 Ebola cases in the east of the country during the past 10 months, with about two-thirds of them fatal. The WHO says climate change, emerging diseases, a highly mobile population with weak governments and armed conflicts are making Ebola outbreaks far worse and greater in scale than in the past.

HEat and dust

A searing heat wave across India that brought Delhi its hottest-ever temperature of 118 degrees has killed dozens of people and severely affected wildlife. Officials say as many as 36 people have died in the heat this year. At least one troop of monkeys died from suspected heatstroke, or from violent conflicts with other monkeys over dwindling water supplies. Similar deadly conflicts among the human population have also been reported. Tigers that are dying from thirst in parched forests have been observed moving into communities in search of water.