[Coral-List] Invitation to contribute to the Encyclopedia of Earth
John Bruno
jbruno at unc.edu
Mon Jan 21 09:11:32 EST 2008
Hello Coral Listers,
I am writing to invite you to contribute to the coral reef collection
in the Encyclopedia of Earth (http://www.eoearth.org/). EoE is a new
electronic reference about the Earth, its natural environments, and
their interaction with society-sort of Wikipedia for the
environment. The EoE is a free, fully searchable collection of
articles written by experts who collaborate and review each other's
work. The articles are written in non-technical language and will be
useful to students, educators, scholars, and professionals, as well
as to the general public. The EoE is just over a year old and
already gets over 10,000 unique visits each day. Its use, content,
and visibility are growing exponentially. For more info about the
EoE, go to: http://www.eoearth.org/eoe/about
There has been a lot of chatter on the coral list about educating the
public about reef ecosystems and the threats they face. I think this
is a great way to do so. The advantages are that we can reach a very
large number of people around the world, the entries can be updated
easily and regularly to keep up with scientific advances, reef-
related entries are essentially a collaborative project that all of
us can contribute to (so the burden does not fall on just one person
or group) and the entire endeavor is supported by the excellent EoE
staff and the professional-looking interface.
Associated with the EoE is the Earth Portal where various
environmental and economic issues are covered in greater detail. This
week, coincident with the official launching of the Year of The Reef,
the EP is featuring Coral Reefs and Climate Change: http://
www.earthportal.org/
Contributions can range from short entries of ~ 250 words to longer
in depth articles of 5,000 words. If you are interested in
contributing, go here: http://www.eoearth.org/eoe/contribute and
contact me directly about possible topics (I can let you know of
someone else is already writing a given entry). You can also edit
and add to existing entries. For example, the zooxanthellae entry
(http://www.eoearth.org/article/Zooxanthellae) needs an image.
There are now over 100 coral reef related entries in EoE but we are
missing even very basic topics like coral bleaching. Some examples
of what we have posted so far include:
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Coral_reef
http://www.eoearth.org/article/
Coral_degradation_through_destructive_fishing_practices
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Corals_as_endangered_species
http://www.earthportal.org/?p=597
Our colleagues that have already contributed or agreed to write an
entry include Joanie Kleypas, Peter Edmunds, Bill Precht, Ove Hoegh-
Guldberg, and Andrew Baker.
We can organize all the coral content as a collection (http://
www.eoearth.org/article/Coral_reefs_%28collection%29) or ebook
(http://www.eoearth.org/article/EBooks) like Bob Constanza is doing
for Ecological Economics (http://www.eoearth.org/article/
An_Introduction_to_Ecological_Economics_%28e-book%29). Some
materials will come from organizations like the ISRS which just
agreed to become an official content provider. You can basically
post your content as is in the EoE, allowing a much greater number
and range of users to access it. For example, we are in the process
of posting the ISRS position papers and the EoE also includes lots of
useful documents like the IPCC reports.
Please contact Laura De Angelo at the EoE (laura.de.angelo at gmail.com)
or me if you and/or your organization are interested in contributing
and want more info on possible topics, how to do so, style and
format, etc.
Sincerely,
John
John Bruno, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Marine Science
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-330
jbruno at unc.edu
www.brunolab.net
More information about the Coral-List
mailing list