The Millennium Seed Bank Project

The Millennium Seed Bank is based in Kew Gardens and aims to protect and conserve the world's plant species which are most threatened by extinction and are most useful to humans in the future.

Why conserve seeds?
Plants are the most valuable things on our earth: they provide us with resources for food, materials and medicines; they help maintain the complex ecosystems on earth; the air we breathe and the water we drink is purified and sustained by plants. However, this is being threatened. Deforestation, over-exploitation, introduction of alien-species, are just some of the human activities which are endangering the future of our valuable plants.

How the seed bank works:
- They collect seeds from all over the world by working with partners from over 50 countries (see a map of collection projects here) which help the seed bank workers to decide which plant seeds are of the most priority because they are at use to the country and are most endangered. Seeds are taken from a number of plants in the species to ensure genetic diversity.
- When they get to the seed bank, the seeds are labelled and dried to remove for a length of time to remove moisture increase their lifetime. They are then cleaned to remove bacteria and separate from plant material.
- Seeds are then sealed in containers and frozen and stored at around -20'C so the seeds are dormant. It is estimated that for every 5'C under 0, the seeds' lifetime is doubled. Seeds' lifetime varies from seed to seed but some seeds can be stored for a few hundred years!
- Extensive research is carried out on all plant seed species to work out how best to store the seeds. Seeds are germinated regularly to test their viability and to test the environmental factors that help the chances of a seed's germination. 
- A database of accurate information about every single seed species stored at the bank and the details of their collection so we can understand the nature of each species.

Facts:
- The seed bank now holds an estimated 10% of the world's plant species and aims to increase this to 25%  by 2020.
- It is estimated that the global value of nature's services is  £11–37 trillion - this is why the kew seed bank is so vital to us!
-They tend to collect seeds from alpine, dryland, coastal and island ecosystems, as these are most vulnerable to climate change
- The seed bank at kew is the largest ex-situ collection of seeds in the world!
- The building itself covers an area of 5,000m² and cost £17.8m to construct.

You can read more about the seedbank project here: http://www.kew.org/science-conservation/millennium-seed-bank-partnership

More Than Human - Tim Flach photography

Biodiversity on our planet has never before been so threatened, with 15,589 species are currently threatened with extinction – 1 in 4 mammals and 1 in 8 birds. This number is increasing as habitats are continually diminished and degraded. Photographer Tim Flach's incredible animal portraits are such an inspiration to help conserve the beautiful life on our earth. some of my favourites:

Ozone Depletion

What is the ozone layer?
The ozone layer in the stratosphere is vital for life on earth because ozone (O₃) absorbs the sun's high energy UV-C radiation (100-280 nm) and some UV-B radiation before it reaches earth. This UV radiation can damage life on earth by causing:

• DNA mutation by breaking hydrogen bonds
• skin cancer (due to dna mutation)
• Cataracts
• Crop failure (due to dna damage and interaction with plant growth regulators) 
• Sunburn/ Epidermal hypoplasia

How is the ozone being depleted?
Human activity, in particular since the industrial revolution, has caused an increase in ozone depleting compounds in the atmosphere, including CFCs and NOx .

Chlorofluorocarbons are compounds which are highly unreactive in the troposphere due to their very strong C-Cl and C-F bonds (polar bonds with high enthalpy). This makes them useful in things like: aerosols, refrigerant coolants, electrical circuit cleaning solvents etc.

However, it is because they are so unreactive that makes them so harmful!

The C-Cl bond has too high an enthalpy to be broken down in the troposphere, but when they reach the stratosphere, uv light can break this bond homolytically which produces chlorine radicals.

catalytic destruction of ozone

The chlorine radicals can then go on to catalyse the destruction of ozone (it is a homogeneous catalyst because it provides an alternative route for the reaction to take place and is regenerated). 

 It is estimated that one chlorine atom can destroy over 100,000 ozone molecules before it is removed from the stratosphere by termination.
This means that more UV light is not absorbed by the thinner ozone layer and reaches earth.

Why is there a hole over the Antarctic?
Ozone is depleted over the antarctic in it's spring because sunlight falls on the polar stratospheric clouds (containinh chlorine radical reservoir compounds eg. HCl and ClONO₂.) which are formed and trapped in the cold air (-80'C) in the polar
vortex in the winter. When sunlight falls on these clouds, ozone destruction is able to 
happen, which forms a hole in the ozone during the spring.

Can the ozone ever recover?
Since the Montreal Protocol in 1987, many industrialized countries have fazed out the
use of ozone depleting compounds such as CFCs (apart from vital uses such as asthma
inhalers) and stratospheric chlorine levels have been continually dropping. Ozone can 
replenish itself however this takes time; moreover, it takes decades for CFC compounds
to be completely destroyed so it will take time before the ozone layer completely recovers.

Carbon Dioxide levels in atmosphere reach 400ppm

 Photograph: Richard Vogel/AP 

In may 2013, the highest ever recorded greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere was reached, according to Hawaii's Mauna Loa observatory, where record CO2 increases are being documented.  

An article in the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/may/10/carbon-dioxide-highest-level-greenhouse-gas?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

I will do a blogpost about the impact of rising CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions soon, but in short:

CO2 in the atmosphere is important to maintain the earths temperature because it's molecules absorbs some of the earth's re-emitted infrared radiation and emits it in all directions and heats up the atmosphere by increasing their bond vibrational energy and kinetic energy. Too much CO2, as is scarily the case, and too much of this infrared is absorbed and stays in the earth's atmosphere, leading to certain global warming and climate change.

Welcome to my blog

Welcome to my blog :)
I'm an a-level student and I want to go into world development or environmental sciences at uni so I'm going to blog about:
- development projects around the world
- climate change and our atmosphere
- conservation issues and projects
- chemistry industry developments
- amazing pictures of our world

Let me know if you have any suggestions/ questions or advise
** I'll try to be as factually accurate as possible but if you're an a-level student please don't rely on information on here! **