hot goss

August 26, 2024 5:02 AM

Conventional wisdom about heat islands — urban areas that are hotter than nearby rural areas because of the way the built environment absorbs and reemits heat from the sun — suggests that cities work to restore parks, trees and vegetation to keep things cool. But scientists and urban planners have found that another approach is even more beneficial to Dhaka’s predicament: conserving wetlands [mongabay]

urban dictionary

posted by HearHere (3 comments total)

This feels like one of those things that will become a horrible case study in 20 years time, when the deaths from something mosquito-bourne are counted. Not to say it shouldn’t be tried, but “wetlands” is a small word for a lot of complexity.
posted by DangerIsMyMiddleName at 5:25 AM on August 26 [1 favorite]

Back when they were called 'swamps,' the US basically got rid of wetlands whenever possible. And now the restoration effort has been underway for thirty years. There were some occasional running about zika, but the benefits have far outweighed the costs. Wetlands help buffer flooding, improve water quality, provide vital habitat for a wide range of species, improve recharge rates for shape aquifers, and sequester piles of carbon as peat. Wetlands are the one type of habitat where bird population are up since the seventies, while populations have declined catastrophically overall.

Figuring out how to coexist with wetlands is a vital part of figuring out how to be humans in the anthropocene.
posted by kaibutsu at 5:52 AM on August 26 [13 favorites]

Fortunately we have other ways of controlling invasive mosquito species now, beyond draining swamps. The more aggressive gene-drive proposals haven’t been widely deployed, but many countries have already released millions of sterilized mosquitoes, which can rapidly drive down local populations. Multiple countries have also eliminated malaria using combinations of mosquito nets, rapid testing, and highly effective medicines.
posted by mbrubeck at 7:52 AM on August 26 [7 favorites]