Urban Sprawl: Environmental Bane for Our Times

For a long time, Earth with all her pristine resources remained by and large free for humans and other species. But since the advent of the Industrial Revolution coupled with an unprecedent growth in human population and the accompanying urbanization, now Earth with her resources face a probable ecocide of a larger scale.

Urban Sprawl is the bane for our times. What is an Urban Sprawl? Urban Sprawl is defined as the exploitation of agricultural land and forests to build residential areas for human consumption. The space revolution with its satellites orbiting our Earth brought home the perilous truth of population explosion and its concomitant urban sprawl that threatens global well-being. What first began to happen in developed countries slowly began to be copied by the less developed/developing countries.


After World War II, urban residents sought more free space cum greenery and moved out into sub-urban regions. One described it then as sub-urban expansion of cities. But, before long, real estate developers began their land-hunt in the rural areas  in their bid to citify them. No sooner, along came industrial development, automobiles, shopping malls and other building structures gobbling up farm lands and forests. Development has been intense in some countries leaving more than 70% of the agricultural land into complex urban structures, points out Environmental Issues Network (EIN).


Urban sprawl has many characteristics that have cast an ominous spell of permanence. Once agricultural lands or forest territories are taken over for urban development, all the other concomitant 'killer grab' of land ensures that the expansion is cancerous: habitats are fragmented, water percolation is impacted, aquifers disappear, forests vanish, species endangerment. Its long time impact on the environment is never accounted for in the neo-liberal model of growth economics. When complex urban structures are developed by cutting down trees, we naturally have more polluted air. "The intensity of pollution further increases from smoke emitted by automobiles, industries and room heaters. Hazardous gases emitted by these complex machines worsen the air pollution," points out EIN.

One of the major crisis is energy depletion. With the urban model of economic growth, the consumption of energy is faster than any replenishable probability as long as the base is fossil fuels. Nuclear energy with its scary waste disposal issue is not necessarily an ample solution for now. Besides, the urban lifestyle per se is energy-consumptive. With agrilcultural lands getting urbanized, food crisis is real problem in a number of developing countries. Urban sprawl has led to a 'car-dependent' community. Air pollution, health illnesses, traffic gridlock and parking  space crisis are 'downlights' of the car-dependent community.

Job-sprawl is a twin issue born with the increasing urban sprawl. Now workers tend to travel longer distances for their job locations leading to extensive commuting. Often people tend to use automobiles more often opt for public transport. Further, expanding citification also has led to an ever increasing cost of living for even necessary food materials have to be delivered over longer distances. Prices in the sub-urban cities always exhibit a tendency to spike in a never-ending spiral on account of transportation costs.

EIN depicts a gloomy scenario given the rate of urban sprawl around the globe: "Urban Sprawl definitely is taking its toll on nature, destroying wildlife and agricultural land. It is believed that several thousands of plant and animal species will come to an end by the end of 21st century if urban sprawl is continued at this rate. . In many developing countries, energy crises are a major problem in the developed suburbs. Needless to say, this trend will severely damage our ecosystem, our natural resources for food and water around with many other things."

We have been hearing the initiatives of governments around the world to curb the urban sprawl, but given the flawed neo-liberal economic model which posits a technological substitution for probable crises without a realistic assessment of its devastating impact on the eco-systems, it is far important to realize that we need to uproot our 'static material growth' models which are not in tune with eco-sytemic recyclable services of the Nature.

Great Pacific Garbage Patch

"The garbage patch barfs, and you get a beach covered with this confetti of
  plastic."
                                                                                           - Curtis Ebbesmeyer -

The world's largest rubbish dump - covering an area twice the size of the continental United States - is afloat across the Pacific Ocean. This plastic soup of debris stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan. In the American oceanographer Charles Moore's - who discovered the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" - guesstimation about 100 million tons of flotsam are circulating in the region!

The Alguita Marine Research team had set out to investigate for a month in 2008 just how much plastic waste was floating in the ocean, how this plastic affected marine life, and how this might affect humans that eat fish found in the area known as the North Pacific Gyre. They discovered that a soup of plastic debris was afloat in the Pacific Ocean and was increasing at an alarming rate. Marcus Eriksen, a research director of the US-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, which Mr Moore founded, said: "The original idea that people had was that it was an island of plastic garbage that you could almost walk on. It is not quite like that. It is almost like a plastic soup. It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States"- to quote from the article 'The world's rubbish dump: a tip that stretches from Hawaii to Japan' by Kathy Marks with Daniel Howden for The Independent-Green Living.

It was a chance encounter for sailor Marcus Eriksen in 1997 when he had steered his craft into the "North Pacific gyre" – a vortex where the ocean circulates slowly because of little wind and extreme high pressure systems. Usually sailors avoid it. He was taken aback that so much rubbish surrounded his craft day in and day out thousands of miles off land. This vast expanse of plastic flotsam is held in place by the swirling underwater currents that it is also referred to as 'trash vortex.' The "soup" is actually two linked areas, either side of the islands of Hawaii, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches. About one-fifth of the junk – which includes everything from footballs and kayaks to Lego blocks and carrier bags – is thrown off ships or oil platforms.The rest comes from land, wrote Kathy Marks and Daniel Howden.

"It moves around like a big animal without a leash," claimed oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer - an authority on oceanic flotsam.When that animal comes close to land, as it does at the Hawaiian archipelago, the results are dramatic. "The garbage patch barfs, and you get a beach covered with this confetti of plastic," he added with eloquence. To boot, Research Triangle Institute (US) chemist Tony Andrady pointed out: "Every little piece of plastic manufactured in the past 50 years that made it into the ocean is still out there somewhere."

The UN Environment Programme reveals that plastic debris causes the deaths of more than a million seabirds every year, as well as more than 100,000 marine mammals! Syringes, cigarette lighters and toothbrushes have been found inside the stomachs of dead seabirds, which mistake them for food.  Plastic is believed to constitute 90 per cent of all rubbish floating in the oceans. The UN Environment Programme estimated in 2006 that every square mile of ocean contains 46,000 pieces of floating plastic! Hundreds of millions of tiny plastic pellets, or nurdles – the raw materials for the plastic industry – are lost or spilled every year, working their way into the sea. These pollutants act as chemical sponges attracting man-made chemicals such as hydrocarbons and the pesticide DDT. They then enter the food chain. "What goes into the ocean goes into these animals and onto your dinner plate. It's that simple," said Dr Eriksen. 

In the ocean, "Degraded plastic pieces outweigh surface zooplankton in the central North Pacific by a factor of 6-1. That means six pounds of plastic for every single pound of zooplankton" informs past studies. The need to obtain "a full accounting of the distribution of plastic in the marine ecosystem and especially its fate and impact on marine ecosystems," as called for by oceanographer David Karl at the University of Hawaii the sea of rubbish is all the more urgent considering that the 'rubbish' is translucent and lies just below the water's surface consequently not detectable in satellite photographs./

 tXtrEf: The world's rubbish dump: a tip that stretches from Hawaii to Japan by
             Kathy Marks and Daniel Howden in The Independent-Green Living, 2008./
             Environment News Network story on the topic.2008.

IoS Green List: Britain's top 100 environmentalists

The little-known John Stewart, who leads the onslaught against a third runway at Heathrow, soundly beats far more high-profile figures to take the top-environmentalist honour. He does so in the wake of an important breakthrough for his campaign – the announcement by the Conservative Party that it plans to scrap the runway in favour of high-speed rail links that would supplant short-haul flights.
So began The Independent on Sunday (IoS) Green List of Britain's top 100 environmentalists three years ago.

John Stewart was not a high-profile environmentalist if one were to compare him with Jonathon Porritt or Sir David Attenborough but he was the top of the first comprehensive list of Britain's most effective greens. The runners-up were also unconventional choices, not normally found heading such lists: Professor Robert Watson, the chief scientist at Defra; Jane Davidson, the Welsh environment minister; the broadcaster Monty Don; and the polar scientist Peter Wadhams.They, and other greens, were selected on the criterion of impact of their campaign/activity rather on the basis of fame.

Judges were bent on identifying environmentalists who really made a difference 'either directly or by altering public perceptions' rather than those who 'made most noise.'  So, naturally, it should not be a real surprise when the honor was bestowed on John Stewart.

"Mr Stewart, who is also chair of the Campaign for Better Transport, took up aviation and Heathrow more than a decade ago after winning a successful campaign – as head of the pressure group Alarm UK – against the then Conservative government's plans for a road-building drive hailed as the biggest since Roman times. Of an original 600 schemes, only 150 remained when John Major lost office in 1997, and the incoming Labour government cut those down to 50. By then Mr Stewart had presciently begun to switch targets, forming a group called ClearSkies, then merging with, and radicalising, the gentlemanly Heathrow Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise (Hacan). His campaign has been so effective in getting the third runway to the top of the agenda that the judges unanimously selected him to lead the list even before the Conservatives' announcement," to quote The Independent - Green Living.

Professor Robert Watson - the outspoken veteran campaigner against ozone-gobbling chemicals - clinched the number two slot. His gathering of scientists in his campaign-bid to save the ozone did prove efficacious that  he was a pivotal force behind the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change – too much so for the Bush administration, which had him removed as chairman – and to lead definitive, groundbreaking assessments of the state of the world's wildlife and agriculture. He was an inspired, if unexpected, choice last year to become chief scientist at Defra.

The judges were: Nicholas Schoon, editor, the 'ENDS Report', Britain's leading specialist environmental journal; Alex Kirby, former environment correspondent of the BBC; David Randall, assistant editor, 'IoS'; and Geoffrey Lean, environment editor at The IoS.

In the subsequent postings, I intend to reproduce The IoS' brief profiles of each of the top 100 environmentalists in Britain. Though the List was published in 2008, my idea of recollecting is to propagate the 'list' as knowledge resource in the domain of environmental care. In a way, the issues and personalities, not necessarily all would be known outside Britain except some, could make us understand the unifying connectivities that matter in our efforts to save the environment.

Soil with Life: Winogradsky's Clostridium

"Soil is a young substance."

- Peter Farb -

We walk on the surface of the Earth every day but hardly wonder how come the soil was born. To boot, our feet are insulated from the contact with the bare soil given our urban lifestyle. So, naturally we do not give a second thought to the soil under our feet except while washing it off our feet after an outing; leave alone the invisibile colony of organisms that inhabit the soil and their feedback loop in the eco-systemic services.

Nature's weathering and earthquakes. Rocks splinter. Roll down, crash and break down into pieces. After millenia of action, tiny worn out fragments settle down. Microscopic in dimension. A mantel of smooth iotaic layer on Earth's surface still is not soil! For 3/4rth's of geologic time there was no soil on Earth. 'There is no soil without life', wrote Peter Farb.

How did first life get into the soil? In ancient times, spores ought to have held tight after a tidal wash onto the skeletons of the soil nudging deeper nibbling or gobbling the micronutrients lodged between minuscule crevices leading to the first conversion of particle minerals into true soil - transmorphing soil into a nursery bed for life. Weathering gave pottasium and phosphorus - two vital ingredients for plant growth. But, nitrogen - though relatively abundant in the atmosphere - did not exist on the parent rock material! So, how did the soil obtain its first repository of nitrogen?

Was it lightning or microbes? Scientists debated for years till around 1890 when Ukranian-Russian Sergei Winogradsky, a brilliant cum perservering soil biologist, established the fact that microbes fixed nitrogen in the soil. His method demonstrated that some microbes can take nitrogen from the atmosphere and convert it into nitrogen compounds. He was hunting for organisms that manufactured nitrogen compounds on their own in the absence of those nitrogen compounds. So, as chief of the division of general microbiology of the Institute of Experimental Medicine, he identified the obligate anaerobe Clostridium pasteurianum. He prepared arrays of cultural dishes containing every nutrient for growth except nitrogen. He added pinches of soil to the dishes and soon nitrogen got fixed. Only three kinds of bacteria survived this starvation diet but they were interlocked together that Winogradsky was not able to find out which of the three bacteria or whether all three fixed nitrogen. After a disheartening series of experiments, Winogradsky managed to separate the three bacteria "but now none of them - if grown alone - could fix nitrogen," wrote Peter Farb. But when Winogradsky combined the bacteria, nitrogen got fixed!

Now, Winogradsky employed a novel technique: he deprived the bacteria of all air except nitrogen. Two of the bacteria died and the third bacterium - Clostridium - thrived. Clostridium thrived only because it was an anaerobe - a bacterium that only functions in the absence of oxygen. Yet it begged an answer as to how it managed to separate nitrogen when the air itself is over 1/5th part oxygen? "Here was explained the two interlocking bacteria: they insulate Clostridium against the atmosphere, themselves absorbing the oxygen and leaving only nitrogen!" explains ecologist Peter Farb.

Winogradsky went on to prove much about the nitrogen bacteria in the soil, and so thorough was his work that "after nearly 70 years little new information has been added," observed Farb in 1963. Now we know that actually very few free-living bacteria are able to convert atmospheric nitrogen, but that it is a very common trait among the blue-green algae. Yeasts and fungi too have joined the nitrogen-fixers' club.

Today the free-living bacteria fix but small amounts of nitrogen found in the soil; most of the repository of nitrogen compounds comes from other bacteria which live on the roots of certain plants and are called legume bacteria. But the free-living nitrogen bacteria, or forms with a similar ability, were perhaps among the first inhabitors of the earth when the seas receded, writes Farb, 'for they would have had to build up vast amounts of nitrogen in the soil before other forms of life could gain a foothold.'

"It will no doubt always remain an unsolved problem, for no record of this event has been left to us," wrote Peter Farb in his 1953 classic Living Earth; and undoubtedly, questions continue to linger at subtler levels even as soil chemistry has advanced a great deal in the intervening year. Winogradsky is best known for discovering chemoautotrophy, which soon became popularly known as chemosynthesis, the process by which organisms derive energy from a number of different inorganic compounds and obtain carbon in the form of carbon dioxide.

Sergei Winogradsky also was the microbiologist who pioneered the cycle of life concept. He discovered the first known form of lithotrophy during his research with Beggiatoa (bacteria that relish life in sulfur-rich environment) in 1887. He reported that Beggiatoa oxidized hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) as an energy source and formed intracellular sulfur droplets. This research provided the first example of lithotrophy, but not autorophy. His research on nitrifying bacteria would report the first known form of chemoautotrophy, showing how a lithotroph fixes carbon dioxide (CO₂) to make organic compounds. The Winogradsky column - a simple device for culturing a large diversity of microorganisms - remains an important display of chemoautotrophy and microbial ecology demonstrated in microbilogy lectures around the world./