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Pierre Schaeffer

Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer ( English pronunciation:, ; 14 August 1910 – 19 August 1995) was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist, acoustician and founder of Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète (GRMC). His innovative work in both the sciences—particularly communications and acoustics—and the various arts of music, literature and radio presentation after the end of World War II, as well as his anti-nuclear activism and cultural criticism garnered him widespread recognition in his lifetime.

Schaeffer is most widely and currently recognized for his accomplishments in electronic and experimental music, at the core of which stands his role as the chief developer of a unique and early form of avant-garde music known as musique concrète. The genre emerged in Europe from the utilization of new music technology developed in the post-war era, following the advance of electroacoustic and acousmatic music.

Schaeffer's writings (which include written and radio-narrated essays, biographies, short novels, a number of musical treatises and several plays) are often oriented towards his development of the genre, as well as the theoretics and philosophy of music in general.

Today, Schaeffer is considered one of the most influential experimental, electroacoustic and subsequently electronic musicians, having been the first composer to utilize a number of contemporary recording and sampling techniques that are now used worldwide by nearly all record production companies. His collaborative endeavors are considered milestones in the histories of electronic and experimental music.

Early life and education
Schaeffer was born in Nancy in 1910. His parents were both musicians (his father was a violinist; his mother, a singer), and at first it seemed that Pierre would also take on music as a career. However, his parents discouraged his musical pursuits from childhood and had him educated in engineering. He studied at several universities in this inclination, the first of which was Lycée Saint-Sigisbert, located in his hometown of Nancy. Afterwards he moved westwards in 1929 to the École Polytechnique in Paris and finally completed his education in the capital at the École supérieure d'électricité, in 1934.

Schaeffer received a diploma in radio broadcasting from the École Polytechnique. He may have also received a similar qualification from the École nationale supérieure des télécommunications, although it is not verifiable as to whether or not he ever actually attended this university.

Early experimentation
Later in 1934 Schaeffer entered his first employment as an engineer, briefly working in telecommunications for the Postes et Télécommunications in Strasbourg. In 1935 he began a relationship with a woman named Elisabeth Schmitt, and later in the year married her and with her had his first child, Marie-Claire Schaeffer. He and his new family then officially relocated to Paris in 1936 where began his work in radio broadcasting and presentation. It was there that he began to move away from his initial interests in telecommunications and to pursue music instead, combining his abilities as an engineer with his passion for sound. In his work at the station, Schaeffer experimented with records and an assortment of other devices—the sounds they made and the applications of those sounds—after convincing the radio station's management to allow him to use their equipment. This period of experimentation was significant for Schaeffer's development, bringing forward many fundamental questions he had on the limits of modern musical expression.

In these experiments, Pierre tried playing sounds backwards, slowing them down, speeding them up and juxtaposing them with other sounds, all techniques which were virtually unknown at that time. He had begun working with new contemporaries whom he had met through RTF, and as such his experimentation deepened. Schaeffer's work gradually became more avant-garde, as he challenged traditional musical style with the use of various devices and practices. Eventually, a unique variety of electronic instruments—ones which Schaeffer and his colleagues created, using their own engineering skills—came into play in his work, like the chromatic, sliding and universal phonogenes, François Bayle's Acousmonium and a host of other devices such as gramaphones and some of the earliest tape recorders.

Beginnings of writing career
In 1938 Schaeffer began his career as a writer, penning various articles and essays for the Revue Musicale, a French journal of music. His first column, Basic Truths, provided a critical examination of musical aspects of the time.

An ardent Catholic, Schaeffer began to write religiously based pieces, and in the same year as his Basic Truths he published his first novel: Chlothar Nicole — a short Christian novel.

Club d'essai and the origin of musique concrète
The Studio d'Essai, later Club d'Essai, was founded in 1942 by Pierre Schaeffer at the Radiodiffusion Nationale (France). It played a role in the activities of the French resistance during World War II, and later became a center of musical activity.

Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète
In 1949, Schaeffer met the percussionist-composer Pierre Henry, with whom he collaborated on many compositions, and in 1951, he founded the Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète (GRMC) in the French Radio Institution. This gave him a new studio, which included a tape recorder. This was a significant development for Schaeffer, who previously had to work with phonographs and turntables to produce music. Schaeffer is generally acknowledged as being the first composer to make music using magnetic tape. His continued experimentation led him to publish À la Recherche d'une Musique Concrète (French for "In Search of a Concrete Music") in 1952, which was a summation of his working methods up to that point. His only opera, Orphée 53 ("Orpheus 53"), premiered in 1953.

Schaeffer left the GRMC in 1953 and reformed the group in 1958 as the Groupe de Recherche Musicale[s] (GRM) (at first without "s", then with "s").

In 1954 Schaeffer founded traditional music label Ocora ("Office de Coopération Radiophonique") alongside composer, pianist, and musicologist Charles Duvelle, with a worldwide coverage in order to preserve African rural soundscapes. Ocora also served as a facility to train technicians in African national broadcasting services.

Over the years, Schaeffer mentored a number of students who went on to have successful careers, including Éliane Radigue and the young Jean Michel Jarre, who called his mentor the first disc jockey. His last "étude" (study) came in 1959: the "Study of Objects" (Études aux Objets).

Later life and death
Schaeffer became an associate professor at the Paris Conservatoire from 1968 to 1980 after creating a "class of fundamental music and application to the audiovisual."

In the aftermath of the 1988 Armenian earthquake, the 78-year-old Schaeffer led a 498-member French rescue team to look for survivors in Leninakan, and worked there until all foreign personnel were asked to leave.

Schaeffer suffered from Alzheimer's disease later in his life, and died from the condition in Aix-en-Provence in 1995. He was 85 years old. He is buried in Delincourt in the green Vexin region (55 minutes from Paris) where he used to have his countryside property.

Schaeffer was thereafter remembered by many of his colleagues with the title, "Musician of Sounds".

Musique concrète

The term musique concrète (French for "real music", literally "concrete music"), was coined by Schaeffer in 1948. Schaeffer believed traditionally classical (or as he called it, "serious") music begins as an abstraction (musical notation) that is later produced as audible music. Musique concrète, by contrast, strives to start with the "concrete" sounds that emanate from base phenomena and then abstracts them into a composition. The term musique concrète is then, in essence, the breaking down of the structured production of traditional instruments, harmony, rhythm, and even music theory itself, in an attempt to reconstruct music from the bottom up.

From the contemporary point of view, the importance of Schaeffer's musique concrète is threefold. He developed the concept of including any and all sounds into the vocabulary of music. At first he concentrated on working with sounds other than those produced by traditional musical instruments. Later on, he found it was possible to remove the familiarity of musical instrument sounds and abstract them further by techniques such as removing the attack of the recorded sound. He was among the first musicians to manipulate recorded sound for the purpose of using it in conjunction with other sounds in order to compose a musical piece. Techniques such as tape looping and tape splicing were used in his research, often comparing to sound collage. The advent of Schaeffer's manipulation of recorded sound became possible only with technologies that were developed after World War II had ended in Europe. His work is recognized today as an essential precursor to contemporary sampling practices. Schaeffer was among the first to use recording technology in a creative and specifically musical way, harnessing the power of electronic and experimental instruments in a manner similar to Luigi Russolo, whom he admired and from whose work he drew inspiration.

Furthermore, he emphasized the importance of "playing" (in his term, jeu) in the creation of music. Schaeffer's idea of jeu comes from the French verb jouer, which carries the same double meaning as the English verb play: 'to enjoy oneself by interacting with one's surroundings', as well as 'to operate a musical instrument'. This notion is at the core of the concept of musique concrète, and reflects on freely improvised sound, or perhaps more specifically electroacoustic improvisation, from the standpoint of Schaeffer's work and research.

Influences on music
In 1955, Éliane Radigue, an apprentice of Pierre Schaeffer at Studio d'Essai, learned to cut, splice and edit tape using his techniques. She then went on to work as an assistant to Pierre Henry in 1967. However, she became more interested in tape feedback and began working on her own pieces. She composed several works (Jouet Electronique [1967], Elemental I [1968], Stress-Osaka [1969], Usral [1969], Ohmnht [1970] Vice Versa, etc [1970]) by processing the feedback between two tape recorders and a microphone.

Pierre's GRM student Jean Michel Jarre went on to great international success. Jarre's 1997 album Oxygene 7-13 is dedicated to Schaeffer. Pierre Henry also made a tribute to the man, composing his Écho d'Orphée, Pour P. Schaeffer alongside him for Schaeffer's last work and second compilation, L'Œuvre Musicale. His other notable pupils include Joanna Bruzdowicz, Jorge Antunes, Bernard Parmegiani, Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux, Armando Santiago, Elzbieta Sikora.

In the early 1980s, Pierre Schaeffer distanced himself from the contemporary musical scene after criticizing the avant-garde of the 1950s, which intended to break with tradition. Schaeffer recognized the virtuoso Otavio Henrique Soares Brandão as his most faithful disciple, who under his guidance performed a reading of his work "Traité des Objets Musicaux". This reading aims to create an innovative piano and musical instrumental technique that does not break with tradition. Pierre Schaeffer wrote four texts on the topic: "Apropos de la Transcription pour Piano par Otavio Brandão de l'Étude aux Objets" (1988); "Réponse à Otávio", in text of the program of the Soares Brandão concert at Salle Pleyel in honor of Schaeffer's eightieth birthday (1990); "Declaration de Pierre Schaeffer sur Ibis et Otavio Soares Brandão" (1990); and "Déclaration de Pierre Schaeffer (Porte Parole)" (1993).

Many rap albums, such as It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back by Public Enemy and 3 Feet High And Rising by De La Soul take ordinary sounds and use them to create a finished product.

Other
The Qwartz Electronic Music Awards has named several of its past events after Schaeffer. Pierre himself was a prize winner at the awards more than once.

Music
Commercial release of Schaeffer's work was limited at best; Schaeffer released his work to the public primarily to disseminate a new and avant-garde form of music. The original production of his marketed work was done by the "Groupe de Recherches Musicales" (a.k.a. GRM; now owned and operated by INA or the Institut national de l'audiovisuel), the company which he initially had formed around his creations. Other music was broadcast live (Pierre himself being notable on French radio at the time). Some individual tracks found their way into the use of other artists, with Pierre's work being fronted in mime performances and ballets. Now after his death, various musical production companies, such as Disques Adès and Phonurgia Nova have been granted rights to distribute his work.

Below is a list of Schaeffer's musical works, showing his compositions and the year(s) they were recorded.
 * Concertino-Diapason (1948; collaboration with J.-J. Grunenwald)
 * Cinq études de bruits (1948)
 * Suite pour 14 instruments (1949)
 * Variations sur une flûte mexicaine (1949)
 * Bidule en ut (1950; collaboration with Pierre Henry)
 * La course au kilocycle (1950; radio score, collaboration with Pierre Henry)
 * L'oiseau r.a.i. (1950)
 * Symphonie pour un homme seul (1950; collaboration with Pierre Henry; revised versions in 1953, 1955, and 1966 (Henry))
 * Toute la lyre (1951; pantomime, collaboration with Pierre Henry. Also known as Orphée 51)
 * Masquerage (1952; film score)
 * Les paroles dégelées (1952; music for a radio production)
 * Scènes de Don Juan (1952; incidental music, collaboration with Monique Rollin)
 * Orphée 53 (1953; opera)
 * Sahara d'aujourd'hui (1957; film score, collaboration with Pierre Henry)
 * Continuo (1958; collaboration with Luc Ferrari)
 * Etude aux sons animés (1958)
 * Etude aux allures (1958)
 * Exposition française à Londres (1958; collaboration with Luc Ferrari)
 * Etude aux objets (1959)
 * Nocturne aux chemins de fer (1959; incidental music)
 * Phèdre  (1959; incidental music)
 * Simultané camerounais (1959)
 * Phèdre (1961)
 * L'aura d'Olga (1962; music for a radio production, collaboration with Claude Arrieu)
 * Le trièdre fertile (1975; collaboration with Bernard Durr)
 * Bilude (1979)

Broadcast narratives
Apart from his published and publicized music, Schaeffer conducted several musical (and specifically musique concrète-related) presentations via French radio. Although these broadcasts contained musical pieces by Schaeffer they cannot be adequately described as part of his main line of musical output. This is because the radio "essays", as they were appropriately named, were mainly narration on Schaeffer's musical theories philosophies rather than compositions in and of themselves.

Schaeffer's radio narratives include the following:
 * The Shell Filled With Planets (1944)
 * Cantata to Alsace (1945)
 * An Hour of the World (1946)
 * From Claudel to Brangues (1953)
 * Ten Years of Radiophonic Experiments from the 'Studio' to the 'Club' d'Essai: 1942–1952 (1955)

Selected writings
Schaeffer's literary works, fiction and non-fiction, span a range of genres. He predominantly wrote treatises and essays, but also penned a film review and two plays. An ardent Catholic, Schaeffer wrote Chlothar Nicole (French: Clotaire Nicole; published 1938)—a Christian novel or short story—and Tobias (French: Tobie; published 1939) a religiously based play.

Novels and short stories

 * Chlothar Nicole (1938)
 * The Guardian of The Volcano (1969)
 * Prelude, Chorale and Fugue (1981)

Plays

 * Tobie (1939)
 * Secular Games (1946)

Non-fiction

 * America, We Ignore You (1946)
 * The Non-Visual Element of Films (1946)
 * In Search of a Concrete Music (1952)
 * Traité des objets musicaux (1966)
 * Solfège de l'objet sonore (1967)
 * Music and Acoustics (1967)

title: Pierre Schaeffer


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World Brain

World Brain is a collection of essays and addresses by the English science fiction pioneer, social reformer, evolutionary biologist and historian H. G. Wells, dating from the period of 1936–1938. Throughout the book, Wells describes his vision of the World Brain: a new, free, synthetic, authoritative, permanent "World Encyclopaedia" that could help world citizens make the best use of universal information resources and make the best contribution to world peace.

Background
Plans for creating a global knowledge network long predate Wells. Andrew Michael Ramsay described, c. 1737, an objective of freemasonry as follows:

"... to furnish the materials for a Universal Dictionary ... By this means the lights of all nations will be united in one single work, which will be a universal library of all that is beautiful, great, luminous, solid, and useful in all the sciences and in all noble arts. This work will augment in each century, according to the increase of knowledge."

The Encyclopedist movement in France in the mid-eighteenth century was a major attempt to actualize this philosophy. However, efforts to encompass all knowledge came to seem less possible as the available corpus expanded exponentially.

In 1926, extending the analogy between global telegraphy and the nervous system, Nikola Tesla speculated that:

"When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain ... Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do this will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket."

Paul Otlet, a contemporary of Wells and information science pioneer, revived this movement in the twentieth century. Otlet wrote in 1935, "Man would no longer need documentation if he were assimilated into a being that has become omniscient, in the manner of God himself." Otlet, like Wells, supported the internationalist efforts of the League of Nations and its International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation.

For his part, Wells had advocated world government for at least a decade, arguing in such books as The Open Conspiracy for control of education by a scientific elite.

Synopsis
In the wake of the first World War, Wells believed that people needed to become more educated and conversant with events and knowledge that surrounded them. In order to do this he offered the idea of the knowledge system of the World Brain that all humans could access.

World Encyclopedia
This section, Wells's first expression of his dream of a World Brain, was delivered as a lecture at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, Weekly Evening Meeting, Friday, 20 November 1936.

Wells begins the lecture with a statement on his preference for cohesive worldviews rather than isolated facts. Correspondingly, he wishes the world to be such a whole "as coherent and consistent as possible". He mentions The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1931), one of his own attempts at providing intellectual synthesis, and calls it disappointingly unmatched.

He expresses dismay at the ignorance of social science among the Treaty of Versailles and League of Nations framers. He mentions some recent works on the role of science in society and states his main problem as follows:

"We want the intellectual worker to become a more definitely organised factor in the human scheme. How is that factor to be organised? Is there any way of implementing knowledge for ready and universal effect?"

In answer he introduces the doctrine of New Encyclopaedism as a framework for integrating intellectuals into an organic whole. For the ordinary man, who will necessarily be an educated citizen in the modern state:

"From his point of view the World Encyclopaedia would be a row of volumes in his own home or in some neighbouring house or in a convenient public library or in any school or college, and in this row of volumes he would, without any great toil or difficulty, find in clear understandable language, and kept up to date, the ruling concepts of our social order, the outlines and main particulars in all fields of knowledge, an exact and reasonably detailed picture of our universe, a general history of the world, and if by any chance he wanted to pursue a question into its ultimate detail, a trustworthy and complete system of reference to primary sources of knowledge. In fields where wide varieties of method and opinion existed, he would find, not casual summaries of opinions, but very carefully chosen and correlated statements and arguments. [...] This World Encyclopaedia would be the mental background of every intelligent man in the world. It would be alive and growing and changing continually under revision, extension and replacement from the original thinkers in the world everywhere. Every university and research institution should be feeding it. Every fresh mind should be brought into contact with its standing editorial organisation. And on the other hand its contents would be the standard source of material for the instructional side of school and college work, for the verification of facts and the testing of statements—everywhere in the world. Even journalists would deign to use it; even newspaper proprietors might be made to respect it."

Such an encyclopedia would be akin to a secular bible. Universal acceptance would be possible due to the underlying similarity of human brains. For specialists and intellectuals, the World Encyclopedia will provide valuable coordination with other intellectuals working in similar areas.

Wells calls for the formation of an Encyclopaedia Society to promote the project and defend it from exploitation (e.g. by an "enterprising publisher" trying to profit from it). This society would also organize departments for production. Of course, the existence of a society has its own risks:

"And there will be a constant danger that some of the early promoters may feel and attempt to realise a sort of proprietorship in the organisation, to make a group or a gang of it. But to recognise that danger is half-way to averting it."

The language of the World Encyclopedia would be English because of its greater range, precision, and subtlety.

Intellectual workers across the world would be increasingly bound together through their participation.

Wells wishes that wise world citizens would ensure world peace. He suggests that a world intellectual project will have more positive impact to this end than will any political movement such as communism, fascism, imperialism, pacifism, etc.

He ended his lecture as follows:

"[W]hat I am saying ... is this, that without a World Encyclopaedia to hold men's minds together in something like a common interpretation of reality, there is no hope whatever of anything but an accidental and transitory alleviation of any of our world troubles."

The Brain Organization of the Modern World
This section was first delivered as a lecture in America, October and November 1937.

This lecture promotes the doctrine New Encyclopedism described previously. Wells begins with the observation that the world has become a single interconnected community due to the enormously increased speed of telecommunications. Secondly, he says that energy is available on a new scale, enabling, among other things, the capability for mass destruction. Consequently, the establishment of a new world order is imperative:

"One needs an exceptional stupidity even to question the urgency we are under to establish some effective World Pax, before gathering disaster overwhelms us. The problem of reshaping human affairs on a world-scale, this World problem, is drawing together an ever-increasing multitude of minds."

Neither Christianity nor socialism can solve the World Problem. The solution is a modernized "World Knowledge Apparatus"—the World Encyclopedia—"a sort of mental clearing house for the mind, a depot where knowledge and ideas are received, sorted, summarized, digested, clarified and compared". Wells thought that technological advances such as microfilm could be used towards this end so that "any student, in any part of the world, will be able to sit with his projector in his own study at his or her convenience to examine any book, any document, in an exact replica".

In this lecture Wells develops the analogy of the encyclopedia to a brain, saying, "it would be a clearing house for universities and research institutions; it would play the role of a cerebral cortex to these essential ganglia".

He mentions the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, an advisory branch of the League of Nations, and the 1937 World Congress of Universal Documentation as contemporary forerunners of the world brain.

A Permanent World Encyclopedia
This section was first published in Harper's Magazine, April 1937, and contributed to the new Encyclopédie française, August 1937.

In this essay, Wells explains how current encyclopaedias have failed to adapt to both the growing increase in recorded knowledge and the expansion of people requiring information that was accurate and readily accessible. He asserts that these 19th-century encyclopaedias continue to follow the 18th-century pattern, organisation and scale. "Our contemporary encyclopedias are still in the coach-and-horse phase of development," he argued, "rather than in the phase of the automobile and the aeroplane".

Wells saw the potential for world-altering impacts this technology could bring. He felt that the creation of the encyclopaedia could bring about the peaceful days of the past, "with a common understanding and the conception of a common purpose, and of a commonwealth such as now we hardly dream of".

Wells anticipated the effect and contribution that his World Brain would have on the university system as well. He wanted to see universities contributing to it, helping it grow, and feeding its search for holistic information. "Every university and research institution should be feeding it" (p. 14). Elsewhere Wells wrote: "It would become the logical nucleus of the world's research universities and post-graduate studies." He suggested that the organization he was proposing "would outgrow in scale and influence alike any single university that exists, and it would inevitably take the place of the loose-knit university system of the world in the concentration of research and thought and the direction of the general education of mankind". In fact the new encyclopedism he was advocating was "the only possible method I can imagine, of bringing the universities and research institutions around the world into effective cooperation and creating an intellectual authority sufficient to control and direct collective life". Ultimately the World Encyclopaedia would be "a permanent institution, a mighty super-university, holding together, utilizing and dominating all of the teaching and research organizations at present in existence".

Speech to the Congrès Mondial De La Documentation Universelle
This section provides a brief excerpt of Wells's speech at the World Congress of Universal Documentation, 20 August 1937. He tells the participants directly that they are participating in the creation of a world brain. He says:

"I am speaking of a process of mental organisation throughout the world which I believe to be as inevitable as anything can be in human affairs. The world has to pull its mind together, and this is the beginning of its effort. The world is a Phoenix. It perishes in flames and even as it dies it is born again. This synthesis of knowledge is the necessary beginning to the new world."

The Informative Content of Education
This section was delivered as the Presidential Address to the Educational Science Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 2 September 1937.

Wells expresses his dismay at the general state of public ignorance, even among the educated, and suggest that the Educational Science Section focus on the bigger picture:

"For this year I suggest we give the questions of drill, skills, art, music, the teaching of languages, mathematics and other symbols, physical, aesthetic, moral and religious training and development, a rest, and that we concentrate on the inquiry: What are we telling young people directly about the world in which they are to live?"

He asks how the "irreducible minimum of knowledge" can be imparted to all people within ten years of education—realistically, he says, amounting to 2400 hours of classroom instruction. He suggests minimizing the teaching of names and dates in British history and focusing instead on newly available information about prehistory, early civilisation (without the traditionally heavy emphasis on Palestine and the Israelites), and the broad contours of world history. He suggests better education in geography, with an inventory of the world's natural resources, and a better curriculum in money and economics. He calls for a "modernised type of teacher", better paid, with better equipment, and continually updated training.

1930s: World Congress of Universal Documentation
One of the stated goals of this Congress, held in Paris, France, in 1937, was to discuss ideas and methods for implementing Wells's ideas of the World Brain. Wells himself gave a lecture at the Congress.

Reginald Arthur Smith extended Wells's ideas in the book A Living Encyclopædia: A Contribution to Mr. Wells's New Encyclopædism (London: Andrew Dakers Ltd., 1941).

From World Library to World Brain
In his 1962 book Profiles of the Future, Arthur C. Clarke predicted that the construction of what H. G. Wells called the World Brain would take place in two stages. He identified the first stage as the construction of the World Library, which is basically Wells's concept of a universal encyclopaedia accessible to everyone from their home on computer terminals. He predicted this phase would be established (at least in the developed countries) by the year 2000. The second stage, the World Brain, would be a superintelligent artificially intelligent supercomputer that humans would be able to mutually interact with to solve various world problems. The "World Library" would be incorporated into the "World Brain" as a subsection of it. He suggested that this supercomputer should be installed in the former war rooms of the United States and the Soviet Union once the superpowers had matured enough to agree to co-operate rather than conflict with each other. Clarke predicted the construction of the "World Brain" would be completed by the year 2100.

In 1964, Eugene Garfield published an article in the journal Science introducing the Science Citation Index; the article's first sentence invoked Wells's "magnificent, if premature, plea for the establishment of a world information center", and Garfield predicted that the Science Citation Index "is a harbinger of things to come—a forerunner of the World Brain".

World Wide Web as a World Brain
Brian R. Gaines in his 1996 paper "Convergence to the Information Highway" saw the World Wide Web as an extension of Wells's "World Brain" that individuals can access using personal computers. In papers published in 1996 and 1997 (that did not cite Wells), Francis Heylighen and Ben Goertzel envisaged the further development of the World Wide Web into a global brain, i.e. an intelligent network of people and computers at the planetary level. The difference between "global brain" and "world brain" is that the latter, as envisaged by Wells, is centrally controlled, while the former is fully decentralised and self-organizing.

In 2001, Doug Schuler, a professor at Evergreen State University, proposed a worldwide civic intelligence network as the fulfillment of Wells's world brain. As examples he cited Sustainable Seattle and the "Technology Healthy City" project in Seattle.

Wikipedia as a World Brain
A number of commentators have suggested that Wikipedia represents the World Brain as described by Wells. Joseph Reagle has compared Wells's warning about the need to defend the World Encyclopedia from propaganda with Wikipedia's "Neutral Point of View" norm:

"In keeping with the universal vision, and anticipating a key Wikipedia norm, H. G. Wells was concerned that his World Brain be an 'encyclopedia appealing to all mankind', and therefore it must remain open to corrective criticism, be skeptical of myths (no matter how 'venerated') and guard against 'narrowing propaganda'. This strikes me as similar to the pluralism inherent in the Wikipedia 'Neutral Point of View' goal of 'representing significant views fairly, proportionately, and without bias'."

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: World Brain


text:
LZ 129 Hindenburg

LZ 129 Hindenburg (Luftschiff Zeppelin #129; Registration: D-LZ 129) was a German commercial passenger-carrying rigid airship, the lead ship of the Hindenburg class, the longest class of flying machine and the largest airship by envelope volume. It was designed and built by the Zeppelin Company (Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH) on the shores of Lake Constance in Friedrichshafen, Germany, and was operated by the German Zeppelin Airline Company (Deutsche Zeppelin-Reederei). It was named after Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, who was President of Germany from 1925 until his death in 1934.

The airship flew from March 1936 until it was destroyed by fire 14 months later on May 6, 1937, while attempting to land at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in Manchester Township, New Jersey, at the end of the first North American transatlantic journey of its second season of service. This was the last of the great airship disasters; it was preceded by the crashes of the British R38, the US airship Roma, the French Dixmude, the USS Shenandoah, the British R101, and the USS Akron.

Design and development
The Zeppelin Company had proposed LZ 128 in 1929, after the world flight of the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin. This ship was to be approximately 245 m long and carry 140000 m3 of hydrogen. Ten Maybach engines were to power five tandem engine cars (a plan from 1930 showed only four). The disaster of the British airship R 101 prompted the Zeppelin Company to reconsider the use of hydrogen, therefore scrapping the LZ 128 in favour of a new airship designed for helium, the LZ 129. Initial plans projected the LZ 129 to have a length of 248 m, but 11 m was dropped from the tail in order to allow the ship to fit in Lakehurst Hangar No. 1.

Manufacturing of components began in 1931, but construction of the Hindenburg did not commence until March 1932. The delay was largely due to Daimler-Benz designing and refining the LOF-6 diesel engines to reduce weight while fulfilling the output requirements set by the Zeppelin Company.

Hindenburg had a duralumin structure, incorporating 15 Ferris wheel-like main ring bulkheads along its length, with 16 cotton gas bags fitted between them. The bulkheads were braced to each other by longitudinal girders placed around their circumferences. The airship's outer skin was of cotton doped with a mixture of reflective materials intended to protect the gas bags within from radiation, both ultraviolet (which would damage them) and infrared (which might cause them to overheat). The gas cells were made by a new method pioneered by Goodyear using multiple layers of gelatinized latex rather than the previous goldbeater's skins. In 1931 the Zeppelin Company purchased 5000 kg of duralumin salvaged from the wreckage of the October 1930 crash of the British airship R101.

Hindenburg's interior furnishings were designed by Fritz August Breuhaus, whose design experience included Pullman coaches, ocean liners, and warships of the German Navy. The upper "A" Deck contained 25 small two-passenger cabins in the middle flanked by large public rooms: a dining room to port and a lounge and writing room to starboard. Paintings on the dining room walls portrayed the Graf Zeppelin's trips to South America. A stylized world map covered the wall of the lounge. Long slanted windows ran the length of both decks. The passengers were expected to spend most of their time in the public areas, rather than their cramped cabins.

The lower "B" Deck contained washrooms, a mess hall for the crew, and a smoking lounge. Harold G. Dick, an American representative from the Goodyear Zeppelin Company, recalled "The only entrance to the smoking room, which was pressurized to prevent the admission of any leaking hydrogen, was via the bar, which had a swiveling air lock door, and all departing passengers were scrutinized by the bar steward to make sure they were not carrying out a lit cigarette or pipe."

Use of hydrogen instead of helium
Helium was initially selected for the lifting gas because it was the safest to use in airships, as it is not flammable. One proposed measure to save helium was to make double-gas cells for 14 of the 16 gas cells; an inner hydrogen cell would be protected by an outer cell filled with helium, with vertical ducting to the dorsal area of the envelope to permit separate filling and venting of the inner hydrogen cells. At the time, however, helium was also relatively rare and extremely expensive as the gas was available in industrial quantities only from distillation plants at certain oil fields in the United States. Hydrogen, by comparison, could be cheaply produced by any industrialized nation and being lighter than helium also provided more lift. Because of its expense and rarity, American rigid airships using helium were forced to conserve the gas at all costs and this hampered their operation.

Despite a U.S. ban on the export of helium under the Helium Control Act of 1927, the Germans designed the airship to use the far safer gas in the belief that they could convince the U.S. government to license its export. When the designers learned that the National Munitions Control Board refused to lift the export ban, they were forced to re-engineer Hindenburg to use flammable hydrogen gas, which was the only alternative lighter-than-air gas that could provide sufficient lift. One of the side benefits of being forced to utilize the flammable yet lighter hydrogen was that more passenger cabins could be added.

Launching and trial flights
Four years after construction began in 1932, Hindenburg made its maiden test flight from the Zeppelin dockyards at Friedrichshafen on March 4, 1936, with 87 passengers and crew aboard. These included the Zeppelin Company chairman, Dr. Hugo Eckener, as commander, former World War I Zeppelin commander Lt. Col. Joachim Breithaupt representing the German Air Ministry, the Zeppelin Company's eight airship captains, 47 other crew members, and 30 dockyard employees who flew as passengers. Harold G. Dick was the only non-Luftschiffbau representative aboard. Although the name Hindenburg had been quietly selected by Eckener over a year earlier, only the airship's formal registration number (D-LZ129) and the five Olympic rings (promoting the 1936 Summer Olympics to be held in Berlin that August) were displayed on the hull during its trial flights. As the airship passed over Munich on its second trial flight the next afternoon, the city's Lord Mayor, Karl Fiehler, asked Eckener by radio the LZ129's name, to which he replied "Hindenburg". On March 23, Hindenburg made its first passenger and mail flight, carrying 80 reporters from Friedrichshafen to Löwenthal. The ship flew over Lake Constance with Graf Zeppelin.

The name Hindenburg lettered in 1.8 m high red Fraktur script (designed by Berlin advertiser Georg Wagner) was added to its hull three weeks later before the Deutschlandfahrt on March 26. No formal naming ceremony for the airship was ever held.

The airship was operated commercially by the Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei (DZR) GmbH, which had been established by Hermann Göring in March 1935 to increase Nazi influence over airship operations. The DZR was jointly owned by the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin (the airship's builder), the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (German Air Ministry), and Deutsche Lufthansa A.G. (Germany's national airline at that time), and also operated the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin during its last two years of commercial service to South America from 1935 to 1937. Hindenburg and its sister ship, the LZ 130 Graf Zeppelin II (launched in September 1938), were the only two airships ever purpose-built for regular commercial transatlantic passenger operations, although the latter never entered passenger service before being scrapped in 1940.

After a total of six flights made over a three-week period from the Zeppelin dockyards where the airship had been built, Hindenburg was drafted—over Hugo Eckener's objections—for a formal public debut in a 6600 km Nazi Party propaganda flight around Germany (Die Deutschlandfahrt) made jointly with the Graf Zeppelin from March 26 to 29. This was to be followed by its first commercial passenger flight, a four-day transatlantic voyage to Rio de Janeiro that departed from the Friedrichshafen Airport in nearby Löwenthal on March 31. After again departing from Löwenthal on 6 May on its first of ten round trips to North America made in 1936, all Hindenburg's subsequent transatlantic flights to both North and South America originated at the airport at Frankfurt am Main.

Die Deutschlandfahrt

Although designed and built for commercial transatlantic passenger, air freight, and mail service, at the behest of the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda or Propagandaministerium), Hindenburg was first pressed into use by the Air Ministry (its DLZ co-operator) as a vehicle for the delivery of Nazi propaganda. On March 7, 1936, ground forces of the German Reich had entered and occupied the Rhineland, a region bordering France, which had been designated in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles as a de-militarized zone established to provide a buffer between Germany and that neighboring country.

In order to justify its remilitarization—which was also a violation of the 1925 Locarno Pact —a post hoc referendum was quickly called by Hitler for March 29 to "ask the German people" to both ratify the Rhineland's occupation by the German Army, and to approve a single party list composed exclusively of Nazi candidates to sit in the new Reichstag. The Hindenburg and the Graf Zeppelin were designated by the government as a key part of the process. As a public relations ploy, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels demanded that the Zeppelin Company make the two airships available for a tour of Germany (Deutschlandfahrt), flying "in tandem" around Germany over the four-day period prior to the voting with a joint departure from Löwenthal on the morning of March 26.

The Zeppelin Company chairman, Dr. Hugo Eckener, disapproved of this propaganda use of his craft. According to American reporter William L. Shirer, "Hugo Eckener, who is getting [the Hindenburg] ready for its maiden flight to Brazil, strenuously objected to putting it in the air this weekend on the ground it was not fully tested, but Dr. Goebbels insisted. Eckener, no friend of the regime, refused to take it up himself, but allowed Captain [Ernst] Lehmann to.  [Goebbels] is reported howling mad and is determined to get Eckener."

While gusty wind conditions on the morning March 26 threatened a safe launch of the new airship, Hindenburg's commander, Captain Ernst Lehmann, was determined to impress the politicians, Nazi party officials, and press present at the airfield with an "on time" departure and thus proceeded with its launch despite the adverse conditions. As the massive airship began to rise under full engine power she was caught by a 35-degree crosswind gust, causing her lower vertical tail fin to strike and be dragged across the ground, resulting in significant damage to the bottom portion of the airfoil and its attached rudder. Hugo Eckener was furious and rebuked Lehmann.

Graf Zeppelin, which had been hovering above the airfield waiting for Hindenburg to join it, had to start off on the propaganda mission alone while LZ 129 returned to her hangar. There temporary repairs were quickly made to its empennage before joining up with the smaller airship several hours later. As millions of Germans watched from below, the two giants of the sky sailed over Germany for the next four days and three nights, dropping propaganda leaflets, blaring martial music and slogans from large loudspeakers, and broadcasting political speeches from a makeshift radio studio aboard Hindenburg.

On March 29, as German citizens voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Rhineland re-occupation, the Hindenburg was aloft over Berlin. Later, Hugo Eckener privately mocked Goebbels by telling friends, "There were forty persons on the Hindenburg. Forty-two 'yes' votes were counted." William Shirer recorded: "Goebbels has forbidden the press to mention Eckener's name."

First commercial passenger flight

With the completion of voting on the referendum (which the German Government claimed had been approved by a "98.79% 'Yes' vote"), Hindenburg returned to Löwenthal on March 29 to prepare for its first commercial passenger flight, a transatlantic passage to Rio de Janeiro scheduled to depart from there on March 31. Hugo Eckener was not to be the commander of the flight, however, but was instead relegated to being a "supervisor" with no operational control over Hindenburg while Ernst Lehmann had command of the airship. To add insult to injury, Eckener learned from an Associated Press reporter upon Hindenburg's arrival in Rio that Goebbels had also followed through on his month-old threat to decree that Eckener's name would "no longer be mentioned in German newspapers and periodicals" and "no pictures nor articles about him shall be printed." This action was taken because of Eckener's opposition to using Hindenburg and Graf Zeppelin for political purposes during the Deutschlandfahrt, and his "refusal to give a special appeal during the Reichstag election campaign endorsing Chancellor Adolf Hitler and his policies." The existence of the ban was never publicly acknowledged by Goebbels, and it was quietly lifted a month later.

While at Rio, the crew noticed one of the engines had noticeable carbon buildup from having been run at low speed during the propaganda flight days earlier. On the return flight from South America, the automatic valve for gas cell 3 stuck open. Gas was transferred from other cells through an inflation line. It was never understood why the valve stuck open, and subsequently the crew used only the hand-operated maneuvering valves for cells 2 and 3. Thirty-eight hours after departure, one of the airship's four Daimler-Benz 16-cylinder diesel engines (engine car no. 4, the forward port engine) suffered a wrist pin breakage, damaging the piston and cylinder. Repairs were started immediately and the engine functioned on fifteen cylinders for the remainder of the flight. Four hours after engine 4 failed, engine no. 2 (aft port) was shut down, as one of two bearing cap bolts for the engine crankshaft failed and the cap fell into the crank case. The cap was removed and the engine was run again, but when the ship was off Cape Juby the second cap broke and the engine was shut down again. The engine was not run again to prevent further damage. With three engines operating at a speed of 100.7 km/h and headwinds reported over the English Channel, the crew raised the airship in search of counter-trade winds usually found above 1500 m, well beyond the airship's pressure altitude. Unexpectedly, the crew found such a wind at the lower altitude of 1100 m which permitted them to guide the airship safely back to Germany after gaining emergency permission from France to fly a more direct route over the Rhone Valley. The nine-day flight covered 20529 km in 203 hours and 32 minutes of flight time. All four engines were later overhauled and no further problems were encountered on later flights. For the rest of April, Hindenburg remained at its hangar where the engines were overhauled and the lower fin and rudder received a final repair; the ground clearance of the lower rudder was increased from 8 to 14 degrees.

1936 transatlantic season

Hindenburg made 17 round trips across the Atlantic in 1936—its first and only full year of service—with ten trips to the United States and seven to Brazil. The flights were considered demonstrative rather than routine in schedule. The first passenger trip across the North Atlantic left Frankfurt on 6 May with 56 crew and 50 passengers, arriving in Lakehurst, New Jersey on 9 May. As the elevation at Rhein-Main's airfield lies at 111 m above sea level, the airship could lift 6 t more at takeoff there than she could from Friedrichshafen, which was situated at 417 m. Each of the ten westward trips that season took 53 to 78 hours and eastward took 43 to 61 hours. The last eastward trip of the year left Lakehurst on October 10; the first North Atlantic trip of 1937 ended in the Hindenburg disaster.

In May and June 1936, Hindenburg made surprise visits to England. In May it was on a flight from America to Germany when it flew low over the West Yorkshire town of Keighley. A parcel was then thrown overboard and landed in the High Street. Two boys, Alfred Butler and Jack Gerrard, retrieved it and found the contents to be a bouquet of carnations, a small silver cross and a letter on official note paper dated May 22, 1936. The letter read: "To the finder of this letter, please deposit these flowers and cross on the grave of my dear brother, Lt. Franz Schulte, 1 Garde Regt, zu Fuss, POW in Skipton cemetery in Keighley near Leeds. Many thanks for your kindness. John P. Schulte, the first flying priest". Historian Oliver Denton speculates that the June visit may have had a more sinister purpose: to observe the industrial heartlands of Northern England.

In July 1936, Hindenburg completed a record Atlantic round trip between Frankfurt and Lakehurst in 98 hours and 28 minutes of flight time (52:49 westbound, 45:39 eastbound). Many prominent people were passengers on the Hindenburg, including boxer Max Schmeling making his triumphant return to Germany in June 1936 after his world heavyweight title knockout of Joe Louis at Yankee Stadium. In the 1936 season, the airship flew 191583 mi and carried 2,798 passengers and 160 tons of freight and mail, encouraging the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin Company to plan the expansion of its airship fleet and transatlantic service.

The airship was said to be so stable a pen or pencil could be balanced on end atop a table without falling. Launches were so smooth that passengers often missed them, believing the airship was still docked to the mooring mast. A one-way fare between Germany and the United States was US$400 ; Hindenburg passengers were affluent, usually entertainers, noted sportsmen, political figures, and leaders of industry. Hindenburg was used again for propaganda when it flew over the Olympic Stadium in Berlin on August 1 during the opening ceremonies of the 1936 Summer Olympic Games. Shortly before the arrival of Adolf Hitler to declare the Games open, the airship crossed low over the packed stadium while trailing the Olympic flag on a long weighted line suspended from its gondola. On September 14, the ship flew over the annual Nuremberg Rally.

On October 8, 1936, Hindenburg made a 10.5 hour flight (the "Millionaires Flight") over New England carrying 72 wealthy and influential passengers including financier and future U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom Winthrop W. Aldrich, his 28-year-old nephew Nelson Rockefeller, who became the Governor of New York and, later, Vice President of the United States, various German and American government officials and military officers, as well as key figures in the aviation industry, including Juan Trippe, founder and Chief Executive of Pan American Airways, and World War I flying ace Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, president of Eastern Airlines. The ship arrived at Boston by noon and returned to Lakehurst at 5:22pm before making its final transatlantic flight of the season back to Frankfurt.

During 1936, Hindenburg had a Blüthner aluminium grand piano placed on board in the music salon, though the instrument was removed after the first year to save weight. Over the winter of 1936–37, several alterations were made to the airship's structures. The greater lift capacity allowed nine passenger cabins to be added, eight with two beds and one with four, increasing passenger capacity to 70. These windowed cabins were along the starboard side aft of the previously installed accommodations, and it was anticipated for the LZ 130 to also have these cabins. Additionally, the Olympic rings painted on the hull were removed for the 1937 season.

Hindenburg also had an experimental aircraft hook-on trapeze similar to the one on the U.S. Navy Goodyear–Zeppelin built airships Akron and Macon. This was intended to allow customs officials to be flown out to Hindenburg to process passengers before landing and to retrieve mail from the ship for early delivery. Experimental hook-ons and takeoffs, piloted by Ernst Udet, were attempted on March 11 and April 27, 1937, but were not very successful, owing to turbulence around the hook-up trapeze. The loss of the ship ended all prospects of further testing.

Final flight: May 3–6, 1937

After making the first South American flight of the 1937 season in late March, Hindenburg left Frankfurt for Lakehurst on the evening of 3 May, on its first scheduled round trip between Europe and North America that season. Although strong headwinds slowed the crossing, the flight had otherwise proceeded routinely as it approached for a landing three days later.

Hindenburg's arrival on 6 May was delayed for several hours to avoid a line of thunderstorms passing over Lakehurst, but around 7:00 pm the airship was cleared for its final approach to the Naval Air Station, which it made at an altitude of 200 m with Captain Max Pruss in command. At 7:21 pm a pair of landing lines were dropped from the nose of the ship and were grabbed hold of by ground handlers. Four minutes later, at 7:25 pm Hindenburg burst into flames and dropped to the ground in a little over half a minute. Of the 36 passengers and 61 crew aboard, 13 passengers and 22 crew died, as well as one member of the ground crew, a total of 36 lives lost. Herbert Morrison's commentary of the incident became a classic of audio history.

The exact location of the initial fire, its source of ignition, and the source of fuel remain subjects of debate. The cause of the accident has never been determined conclusively, although many hypotheses have been proposed. Sabotage theories notwithstanding, one hypothesis often put forth involves a combination of gas leakage and atmospheric static conditions. Manually controlled and automatic valves for releasing hydrogen were located partway up one-meter diameter ventilation shafts that ran vertically through the airship. Hydrogen released into a shaft, whether intentionally or because of a stuck valve, would have mixed with air already in the shaft—potentially in an explosive ratio. Alternatively, a gas cell could have been ruptured by the breaking of a structural tension wire causing a mixing of hydrogen with air. The high static charge collected from flying within stormy conditions and inadequate grounding of the outer envelope to the frame could have ignited any resulting gas-air mixture at the top of the airship. In support of the hypothesis that hydrogen was leaking from the aft portion of the Hindenburg prior to the conflagration, water ballast was released at the rear of the airship and six crew members were dispatched to the bow to keep the craft level.

Another more recent theory involves the airship's outer covering. The silvery cloth covering contained material with cellulose nitrate, which is highly flammable. This theory is controversial and has been rejected by other researchers because the outer skin burns too slowly to account for the rapid flame propagation and gaps in the fire correspond with internal gas cell divisions, which would not be visible if the fire had spread across the skin first. Hydrogen fires had previously destroyed many other airships.

The duralumin framework of Hindenburg was salvaged and shipped back to Germany. There the scrap was recycled and used in the construction of military aircraft for the Luftwaffe, as were the frames of Graf Zeppelin and Graf Zeppelin II when they were scrapped in 1940.

Appearances in media

 * Charlie Chan was a passenger aboard the Hindenburg in the 1937 film Charlie Chan at the Olympics.
 * An image of the burning airship was used as the cover of Led Zeppelin's self-titled debut album (1969).
 * The Hindenburg is a 1975 film inspired by the disaster, but centered on the sabotage theory. Some of these plot elements were based on real bomb threats before the flight began, as well as proponents of the sabotage theory. The actual model from the movie is now on permanent display in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
 * In The Waltons 1977 episode "The Inferno", John Boy Walton is sent by a publication to cover the New Jersey landing, and is traumatized by witnessing the event.
 * Hindenburg: The Last Flight is a 2011 German TV miniseries directed by Philipp Kadelbach. Like the 1975 film, it also focuses on the sabotage theory; the plot is about a young engineer who uncovers a plot to blow up the Hindenburg while the German airship is preparing for its maiden voyage to America.

General sources

 * Airships.net LZ-129 Hindenburg
 * Airship Voyages Made Easy (16 page booklet for "Hindenburg" passengers). Friedrichshafen, Germany: Luftschiffbau Zeppelin G.m.b.H. (Deutsche Zeppelin-Reederei), 1937.
 * Archbold, Rick. Hindenburg: An Illustrated History. Toronto: Viking Studio/Madison Press, 1994. ISBN 0-670-85225-2.
 * Birchall, Frederick. "100,000 Hail Hitler; U.S. Athletes Avoid Nazi Salute to Him". The New York Times, August 1, 1936, p. 1.
 * Botting, Douglas. Dr. Eckener's Dream Machine: The Great Zeppelin and the Dawn of Air Travel. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2001. ISBN 0-8050-6458-3.
 * Davis, Stephen. Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga (LPC). New York: Berkley Boulevard Books, 1995. ISBN 0-425-18213-4.
 * Dick, Harold G. and Douglas H. Robinson. The Golden Age of the Great Passenger Airships Graf Zeppelin & Hindenburg. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985. ISBN 1-56098-219-5.
 * Duggan, John. LZ 129 "Hindenburg": The Complete Story. Ickenham, UK: Zeppelin Study Group, 2002. ISBN 0-9514114-8-9.
 * Eckener, Hugo, translated by Douglas Robinson. My Zeppelins. London: Putnam & Co. Ltd., 1958.
 * Hindenburg's Fiery Secret (DVD). Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Video, 2000.
 * Hoehling, A.A. Who Destroyed The Hindenburg? Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1962. ISBN 0-445-08347-6.
 * Lehmann, Ernst. Zeppelin: The Story of Lighter-than-air Craft. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1937.
 * Majoor, Mireille. Inside the Hindenburg. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2000. ISBN 0-316-12386-2.
 * Mooney, Michael Macdonald. The Hindenburg. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1972. ISBN 0-396-06502-3.
 * Provan, John. LZ-127 "Graf Zeppelin": The story of an Airship, vol. 1 & vol. 2 (Amazon Kindle ebook). Pueblo, Colorado: Luftschiff Zeppelin Collection, 2011.
 * Toland, John. The Great Dirigibles: Their Triumphs and Disasters. Mineola, New York: Dover Publishers, 1972.
 * Vaeth, Joseph Gordon. They Sailed the Skies: U.S. Navy Balloons and the Airship Program. Annapolis Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 2005. ISBN 978-1-59114-914-9.
 * Vaeth, Joseph Gordon. They Sailed the Skies: U.S. Navy Balloons and the Airship Program. Annapolis Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 2005. ISBN 978-1-59114-914-9.

title: LZ 129 Hindenburg


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Alpine National Park

The Alpine National Park is a national park located in the Central Highlands and Alpine regions of Victoria, Australia. The 646000 ha national park is located northeast of Melbourne. It is the largest National Park in Victoria, and covers much of the higher areas of the Great Dividing Range in Victoria, including Victoria's highest point, Mount Bogong at 1986 m and the associated subalpine woodland and grassland of the Bogong High Plains. The park's north-eastern boundary is along the border with New South Wales, where it abuts the Kosciuszko National Park. On 7 November 2008 the Alpine National Park was added to the Australian National Heritage List as one of eleven areas constituting the Australian Alps National Parks and Reserves.

Ecology
Ecologically, Alpine refers to areas where the environment is such that trees are unable to grow and vegetation is restricted to dwarfed shrubs, alpine grasses and ground-hugging herbs. In Victoria this is roughly those areas above 1800 m. Below this is the sub-alpine zone, an area of open forest dominated by snow-gums, with significant areas of grasslands. This zone includes basins where cold air settles, restricting tree growth. In wetter areas these basins form Sphagnum bogs, which play an important role in the water cycle.

Water enters the alps as snow or rain. Bogs and frost hollows collect the water as snow melt and run off. A key element of these bogs is Sphagnum Moss, which acts as a sponge, absorbing up to twenty times its weight in water. These bogs then release the water over summer, ensuring creeks flow throughout most of the year maintaining the alps' creeks and streams. The greatest risk to this system is damage to the Sphagnum bogs. Trampling by feral animals (pigs, cattle, horses, humans) reduces their ability to absorb and then release water; instead of a steady release, water flows increase significantly in spring, leading to erosion and scouring of river beds, and ceases over summer and autumn, leading to localised drought. Fire can remove riparian vegetation, also increasing run-off and erosion.

Below the sub-alpine zone is the montane zone. On the alps southern fall, this exists as wet forest and rainforest, a consequence of the higher rainfall on this side of the park. Tall forests of Alpine Ash and Mountain Ash grow in deep soils while species like Mountain Gum are found in shallower soils or drier sites. The understory is usually shrubby, with a dense ground-layer of grasses, lilies, ferns and the like.

Rainforests are areas where the canopy cover is high, greater than 70%. The tree species are often specialists, such as Myrtle Beech in Cool Temperate Rainforest and Lilly Pilly in Warm Temperate Rainforest. Rainforest species are shade tolerant and able to regenerate below an undisturbed canopy or in small gaps created when a tree falls. Rainforest often merges with the surrounding, usually damp or wet, eucalypt forests. These forests are home to a diverse bird life and many mammals, some of which are restricted to a particular ecological niche within the ecosystem. This can include particular vegetation for foraging, or the presence of older trees with their larger hollows, a requirement for some arboreal mammals and birds. Rainforest species regenerate without fire and may be intolerant to fire, while other eucalypt species require fire. Fire can also affect the breeding of some mammals. Fire in Spring, for example, is considered to put juvenile Spot-tailed Quolls at risk. The montane zone on the alps drier, northern fall consists of dry forest and woodland with eucalypt species such as stringybarks, boxes and peppermints. Dry forest and woodlands also surround the wet forests on the southern side of the alps. These forests provide habitat for a wide range of species.

Dry forest and woodland abut private land in many areas and as a consequence have been subject to clearing, modification and fragmentation. Thus, the major threat in these areas is fire management (protection of private assets is a key objective and so past fire regimes may not reflect environmental needs), weed invasion and lack of connectivity between patches.

Fauna
The national park protects many threatened species, including the spotted tree frog, she-oak skink, smoky mouse, broad-toothed mouse and mountain pygmy possum.

Alpine Bogs and Associated Fens have now been listed as a threatened ecological community by the Australian government.

Bushfires
The park has been affected by bushfires with lightning strikes starting large fires in January 2003 and again in December 2006, each fire burning over 10000 km2 over a number of weeks. The largest previous fire was the Black Friday fires of 1939. While fire is a feature of most Australian ecosystems, some alpine ecosystems, such as Alpine Bogs and Fens, are susceptible due to the sensitivity of the component species. The 2003 fires created a mosaic of burnt and unburnt areas. In some areas where the 2006-07 fires burnt over the same ground, species and communities have struggled to recover. A lightning strike on the slopes of Mount Feathertop near Harrietville in January 2013 started a 35000 ha bushfire which burnt for around two months.

Agriculture
For much of the European history of the national park, agricultural activity was conducted in the park, with quotas of cattle allowed to graze on the High Plains during summer. Australia's alpine area was first used for grazing around the 1840s. Concerns about the environmental effects led various governments to remove grazing from parts of the alps over the next century. Grazing was temporarily halted in Mount Buffalo National Park in the 1920s and stopped altogether in 1952. Cattle were taken out of Kosciuszko National Park in NSW during the 1950s and 1960s due to concerns about the effect of grazing on water quality for the Snowy River Scheme. Grazing was also removed from Mounts Feathertop, Hotham and Bogong around this time, from around Mount Howitt in the 1980s, and from the northern Bogong High Plains, the Bluff and part of Davies Plains in the early 1990s, leaving about one third of the Alpine National Park – over 200000 ha – available for grazing. In 2005, the Victorian Government made the decision that cattle grazing would be banned in the remaining area of the Alpine National Park; although allowing grazing in adjacent state forest areas. When the Bracks Labor Victorian Government announced plans to end this grazing, the Howard coalition Federal Government floated the idea of using national cultural heritage powers to preserve grazing on the basis of the cultural place given to the mountain cattleman, notably through The Man from Snowy River.

For a period of over five years cattle were banned from the park, a decision which angered representative bodies of the graziers. As of January 2011 a group of cattlemen was permitted by Parks Victoria to return small numbers of cattle to fenced areas in the Alpine National Park. By 2013, fuel loads and weeds in the high plains had increased significantly and the Victorian Government sought Federal Government approval to remove the bans and commence a three-year trial to reinstate alpine grazing.

Attractions
This area is popular in summer for bushwalking, cross-country skiing, mountain biking, four wheel driving and fishing. The major drawcards are the cooler alpine weather and the stunning scenery created by the highest peaks in Victoria. Walking tracks lead to most peaks and many extended walks are possible. The Australian Alps Walking Track, which begins in Walhalla and extends 650 km north to Canberra, traverses the park. Bush camping is permitted within the park subject to Parks Victoria guidelines and seasonal restrictions.

In winter much of the area is snow-covered and only accessible on skis. Falls Creek and Mount Hotham are major downhill ski resorts adjacent to the national park from where cross-country skiers journey into the park to areas such as the Bogong High Plains and Mount Bogong.

Hunting is a popular winter activity, with the park open to stalking (hunting without dogs) of Sambar deer from mid-February to mid-December.

Major peaks
The following major peaks are located within the Alpine National Park, in order of descending elevation above sea level:

title: Alpine National Park


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Sremski Karlovci

Sremski Karlovci (Сремски Карловци, ; Karlóca; Karlowitz; Karlofça) is a town and municipality located in the Srem District of the autonomous province of Vojvodina, Serbia. It is situated on the banks of the Danube, 8 km from Novi Sad. According to the 2011 census results, it has a population of 8,750 inhabitants. The town has traditionally been known as the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the Habsburg Monarchy. It was the political and cultural capital of Serbian Vojvodina after the May Assembly and during the Revolution in 1848.

Name
In Serbian, the town is known as Sremski Karlovci (Сремски Карловци), in Croatian as Srijemski Karlovci, in German as Karlowitz or Carlowitz, in Hungarian as Karlóca, in Polish as Karłowice, in Romanian as Carloviț and in Turkish as Karlofça. The former Serbian name used for the town was Karlovci (Карловци), which is also used today, albeit unofficially. The name of the town in Serbian is plural.

Geography
The town is situated along the Danube River, about 12km from Novi Sad and 75km from Belgrade, in the geographical region of Syrmia. The town of Sremski Karlovci is the only settlement in the municipality.

Ancient, medieval and early modern history
In ancient times, the Romans maintained a small fortress at this location. The town was first mentioned in historical documents in 1308 with the name Karom. The medieval fortress of Karom was built on the ruins of the ancient Roman one. Until 1521, Karom was a possession of Hungarian noble families, of whom the most well known were Báthory and Morović.

In 1521, Turkish military commander Bali-beg conquered Karom under the Ottoman Empire's invasion of Europe. During the next 170 years, the town was part of the Ottoman Empire. The Slavic name for the town – Karlovci, was first recorded in 1532/33. During Ottoman rule, the town was still predominately Serbian in ethnicity, with the smaller part of population composed of Muslims. According to the Ottoman defterler from 1545, the population of Karlovci numbered 547 Christian (Serb) houses. The city also had three Orthodox churches and a monastery. From 1557, it belonged to Eparchy of Belgrade and Srem of the Serbian Patriarchate of Peć.

Habsburg Monarchy
Between 16 November 1698 and 26 January 1699, the town of Karlovci was the site of a congress that ended the hostilities between the Ottoman Empire and the Holy League, a coalition of various European powers including Habsburg monarchy, Poland, Venice and Russia. The congress produced the Treaty of Karlowitz. It was the first time a round table was used in international politics.

After this peace treaty, the town was considered part of the Habsburg monarchy and was included in its Military Frontier. According to 1702 data, the population was composed of 215 Orthodox and 13 Catholic houses. By 1753, the population of the town numbered 3,843 people, of which 3,110 were classified as ethnic Serbs.

The town was the spiritual, political and cultural center of the Serbs in the Habsburg Monarchy. The Metropolitan of the Serbian Orthodox Church resided here. In the early 21st century, the Serbian Patriarch retains the title of Metropolitan of Karlovci.

The town had the earliest Serb (and Slavic in general) gymnasium (Serbian: gimnazija/гимназија, French: lycée), founded on 3 August 1791. Three years after this, the Orthodox seminary of Sremski Karlovci was founded here. It was the second-oldest Orthodox seminary in the world (after the Spiritual Academy in Kyiv), and it still operates.

At the Serb National Assembly in Karlovci in May 1848, Serbs declared the unification of the regions of Srem, Banat, Bačka, and Baranja (including parts of the Military Frontier) into the province of Serbian Vojvodina. In the late 18th century, the Habsburg monarchy had invited numerous settlers from Bavaria and southern Germany into some of these regions along the Danube, in order to repopulate the area and re-establish agriculture after the effects of the Ottoman invasion and disease. The Germans, who became known as Danube-Swabians, were allowed to keep their language and Catholic religion. For more than a century, they had fairly autonomous settlements.

The first capital of Serbian Vojvodina was in Karlovci; it was later moved to Zemun, Veliki Bečkerek, and Temišvar. At the same time the title of the Orthodox Metropolitan of Karlovci was raised to that of Patriarch.

When Serbian Vojvodina was in 1849 organized as the new province named Voivodeship of Serbia and Banat of Temeschwar, the town of Karlovci was not included into this province. It was returned to the administration of the Military Frontier (a Petrovaradin regiment that was part of Slavonian Krajina). With the abolition in 1881 of the Military Frontier, the town was included in Syrmia County of Croatia-Slavonia, the autonomous kingdom within Kingdom of Hungary and Austria-Hungary.

An Orthodox Patriarchate of Karlovci operated in Karlovci until 1920, after World War I. At that time, the position was joined with the Metropolitanate of Belgrade to form the united Serbian Orthodox Church, in what was then the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

Yugoslavia and Serbia (1918–onward)
In 1918, the town became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (also known as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia). In the summer of 1921, the town′s former palace of the Patriarch of Karlovci was used as the residence of Russian metropolitan Antony (Khrapovitsky). Together with some refugee bishops from Russia, he organised what a few years later was instituted as the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR). (Some critics called this ecclesiastical body the Karlovatsky Synod (Карловацкий синод), or ″Karlovatsky group″, also known in English as Synod of Karlovci. )

In 1922, the town became the headquarters of Russian White émigrés under the leadership of General Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel. In 1924 he set up the Russian All-Military Union, designed to include all Russian military émigrés the world over. Many emigres went to western Europe, especially France, and to the United States. A monument to Wrangel, sculpted by Vasiliy Azemsha, was unveiled in September 2007 in Karlovci.

Between 1929 and 1941, the town was part of Danube Banovina, a province of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. During World War II (1941–1944), after Nazi Germany's invasion of eastern Europe, the town was occupied by forces of the Axis Powers. It was attached to the Independent State of Croatia. During that time its name was changed to Hrvatski Karlovci. After the end of the war, most ethnic Germans were expelled from eastern Europe. The town became part of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, Serbia.

Between 1980 and 1989, Sremski Karlovci was one of the seven municipalities of the city of Novi Sad.

In January 2021 PM Igor Mirović announced a reconstruction of the facades of historically important buildings in Sremski Karlovci.

Demographics

According to the 2011 census, the municipality of Sremski Karlovci has 8,750 inhabitants.

Ethnic composition of the municipality of Sremski Karlovci:

Economy
The following table gives a preview of total number of employed people per their core activity (as of 2017):

Politics
Until 1989 Sremski Karlovci formed one of the urban municipalities of the city of Novi Sad. After Novi Sad merged six of its municipalities into one Novi Sad municipality, the municipality of Sremski Karlovci held a referendum to separate from Novi Sad, and established a separate municipality independent from Novi Sad. Although Sremski Karlovci lies in Syrmia region, the municipality belongs in South Bačka District, and not in the Syrmia District, because of its close proximity to Novi Sad.

In the Serbian local elections held on 24 April 2016, Sremski Karlovci elected a new municipality parliament, ending the rule of the DS in the town. Nenad Milenković, of the Serbian progressive Party, was elected as the new mayor of the municipal parliament.

Schools

 * Gymnasium of Karlovci
 * Clerical High School of Saint Arsenije
 * Faculty of management
 * College of Applied Studies in Management and Business Communication

Buildings and structures

 * Educational historical buildings:
 * Gymnasium of Karlovci, first Serbian secondary school (gymnasium)
 * Clerical High School of Saint Arsenije
 * Administrative buildings:
 * Sremski Karlovci City Hall

 * Religious buildings
 * The Patriarchal Court
 * The Orthodox Cathedral of Saint Nicholas
 * The Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Trinity

 * Other buildings
 * Fountain "Four Lions"
 * The Chapel of Peace, Sremski Karlovci
 * Archives of Sremski Karlovci

Twin towns – sister cities
Sremski Karlovci is twinned with:
 * 🇸🇰 Bardejov, Slovakia
 * 🇲🇰 Karpoš, North Macedonia
 * 🇧🇦 Prnjavor, Bosnia and Herzegovina
 * 🇲🇪 Tivat, Montenegro (2007)

Reference

 * Milorad Grujić, Vodič kroz Novi Sad i okolinu, Novi Sad, 2004.
 * Slobodan Ćurčić, Broj stanovnika Vojvodine, Novi Sad, 1996.

title: Sremski Karlovci


text:
Little Desert National Park

The Little Desert National Park is a national park in the Wimmera Mallee region of Victoria, Australia. The 132647 ha national park is situated near Dimboola, approximately 375 km west of Melbourne and extends from the Wimmera River in the east to the South Australian border in the west near.

While the region is surrounded by agricultural land, the area of the Little Desert itself "consists mainly of deep sandy soils with very low fertility, interspersed with small pockets of clay soils. There are occasional rocky, sandstone outcrops and buckshot rises. Average yearly rainfall varies remarkably from the east to the west." The Little Desert "remains relatively undisturbed by human activity, even though in the earlier years of European settlement it experienced some industry in the way of grazing and woodcutting." Now the desert is a National Park, and is "broken up into three blocks": Western Block, Central Block and Eastern Block; demarcated by two north-south roads, the Nhill-Harrow road and the Kaniva-Edenhope road.

Today the National Park is an important tourist destination receiving about 50,000 visitors each year. Parks Victoria maintain multiple camping sites, walking tracks, look-outs and four-wheel-driving tracks throughout the park. Although most internal roads within the National Park are only accessible by four-wheel-drive vehicles and some are closed during winter or after wet weather.

Pre-National Park
Prior to the establishment of the park, small Aboriginal family groups camped along the Wimmera River. European activity began with grazing from the 1840s but had ceased by the 1960s. During the Second World War the Central Block was used as a bombing and gunnery range and the remains of several concrete observation bunkers are still present.

National Park
The low-nutrient sandy soil combined with low rainfalls made farming difficult. After the Second World War, the State Government considered clearing and selling land in the Little Desert region. Local opposition to selling the land for farming was intense and quickly gathered support around Victoria. The Bolte Government was initially unmoved by environmental concerns. Public outrage over the proposed subdivision resulted in the responsible minister's losing his safe seat in a by-election. The Little Desert debate galvanised Victoria's conservation movement into forming a peak body, the Conservation Council of Victoria, and the conservative Victorian government of Henry Bolte to adopt environmental policies, such as establishing the Land Conservation Council to systematically and independently review all future public land use across the state. The architect of the Land Conservation Council was the newly appointed Minister of Lands, Conservation and Soldier Settlement, William Borthwick, who supported retaining the area as a nature reserve. So in 1955 the Kiata Lowan Sanctuary was established to preserve the 'Eastern block' of the Desert and protect the local Malleefowl. In 1969 this Sanctuary became 'The Little Desert National Park' in the 'Eastern Block' and in 1986 the 'Central' and 'Western' Blocks were added.

Flora and fauna
The Little Desert receives an annual rainfall of approximately 480 mm, though there is a gradient from 400 mm in the east to 600 mm near Naracoorte. The vegetation of the park ranges from pure mallee heathland in the Eastern Block to cypress pine and casuarina woodlands in the moister Western Block. In the Western Block, there are large areas of seasonal swampland formed over claypans. Laterites are scattered throughout the sandy areas of the park and characterised by broombush. Brush-tailed possums and Grey kangaroos are common throughout the park, and lizards can be observed basking in the sun.

Birds
With over 200 species of birds the national park has been identified by BirdLife International, an international NGO, as an Important Bird Area because it supports populations of malleefowl and diamond firetails. The malleefowl is a rare bird found on the site and their protection was a contributory factor in the decision to preserve the area in 1968.

title: Little Desert National Park


text:
Talk:Deforestation

deforestation and aids
That sections reads like 1) the virus has its on will, 2) deforestation is the direct cause of the epidemic. To 1) it seems incorrect to say a virus needs a new host and therefor jumped like they made a conscious decision. Instead it seems better to say a potential new host population with very favorable biology (also primates) came into contact with a reservoir of the virus at a time that probability for further transmission in the human host population was much higher than historical. To 2) there is no proof that if deforestation would not have happened the aids epidemic would not have happened, so to state deforestation as one of the fundamental causes of the aids epidemic seems wrong. 2601:285:8180:1A10:808E:E2E9:3A6D:8B09 (talk) 21:47, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree with you and have now deleted that section. My reasoning, from my edit summary: removed speculative content, taken from primary sources, not suitable for a high level article, not following WP:MEDRS. If it was clear then it would also be in the article on AIDS Here is the deleted text:

++++

HIV/AIDS
AIDS is probably linked to deforestation. The virus firstly circulated among monkeys and apes and when the humans came and destroyed the forest and most of the primates, the virus needed a new host to survive and jumped to humans. The virus, which killed more than 25 million people, is believed to have come from the consumption of bushmeat, namely that of primates, and most likely chimpanzees in the Congo. " EMsmile (talk) 08:03, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Far too much detail on Covid-19 pandemic
The section on the links between deforestation with Covid-19 was far too detailed, was digressing and contained WP:OR. If it was so clear thing that deforestation was a "main cause" of Covid-19 then it would be included in the articles COVID-19 pandemic, COVID-19, Origin of COVID-19 but it isn't. I can see in the talk page archives there that the same editor who included it here with so much detail also tried to include it there but it was mostly removed or relegated to one small mention. Yes, covid-19 is zoonotic and deforestation causes knock-on effects on human and wildlife interactions but all the rest is speculation. It does not belong in detail in this high level article but can be mentioned in passing. Therefore, I will cut it down to just a couple of key statements. Here is the full text block:

+++++++++

According to the United Nations, World Health Organization and World Wildlife Foundation the Coronavirus pandemic is linked to the destruction of nature, especially to deforestation, habitat loss in general and wildlife trade.

In April 2020, United Nations Environment Programme published 2 short videos explaining the link between nature destruction, wildlife trade and the COVID-19 pandemic and created a section on its site dedicated to the issue.

The World Economic Forum published a call to involve nature recovery in the recovery efforts from the COVID-19 pandemic saying that this outbreak is linked to the destruction of the natural world.

In May 2020, a group of experts from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services published an article saying that humans are the species responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic because it is linked to nature destruction and more severe epidemics might occur if humanity will not change direction. It calls to "strengthen environmental regulations; adopt a 'One Health' approach to decision-making that recognizes complex interconnections among the health of people, animals, plants, and our shared environment; and prop up health care systems in the most vulnerable countries where resources are strained and underfunded", which can prevent future epidemics and therefore is in the interest of all. The call was published on the site of the World Economic Forum.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme the Coronavirus disease 2019 is zoonotic, e.g., the virus passed from animals to humans. Such diseases are occurring more frequently in the latest decades, due to a number of factors, a large part of them environmental. One of the factors is deforestation because it reduce the space reserved for animals and destroys natural barriers between animals and humans. Another cause is climate change. Too fast changes in temperature and humidity facilitate the spread of diseases. The United Nations Environment Programme concludes that: "The most fundamental way to protect ourselves from zoonotic diseases is to prevent destruction of nature. Where ecosystems are healthy and biodiverse, they are resilient, adaptable and help to regulate diseases.

In June 2020, a scientific unit of Greenpeace with University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) published a report saying that the rise of zoonotic diseases, including coronavirus is directly linked to deforestation because it change the interaction between people and animals and reduce the amount of water necessary for hygiene and diseases treatment.

Experts say that anthropogenic deforestation, habitat loss and destruction of biodiversity may be linked to outbreaks like the COVID-19 pandemic in several ways:

 * Bringing people and domestic animals in contact with a species of animals and plants that were not contacted by them before. Kate Jones, chair of ecology and biodiversity at University College London, says the disruption of pristine forests, driven by logging, mining, road building through remote places, rapid urbanisation and population growth is bringing people into closer contact with animal species they may never have been near before, resulting in transmission of new zoonotic diseases from wildlife to humans.
 * Creating degraded habitats. Such habitats with a few species are more likely to cause a transmission of zoonotic viruses to humans.
 * Creating more crowded habitats, with more dense population.
 * Habitat loss prompts animals to search for a new one, which often results in mixing with humans and other animals.
 * Disruption of ecosystems can increase the number of animals that carry many viruses, like bats and rodents. It can increase the number of mice and rats by reducing the populations of predators. Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest increases the likelihood of malaria because the deforested area is ideal for mosquitoes.
 * Animal trade, by killing and transporting live and dead animals very long distances. According to American science journalist David Quammen, "We cut the trees; we kill the animals or cage them and send them to markets. We disrupt ecosystems, and we shake viruses loose from their natural hosts. When that happens, they need a new host. Often, we are it."

When climate change or deforestation causes a virus to pass to another host it becomes more dangerous. This is because viruses generally learn to coexist with their host and become virulent when they pass to another. EMsmile (talk) 08:18, 26 September 2023 (UTC) EMsmile (talk) 08:18, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Poorly sourced content about malaria
I've also removed the content about malaria because again it's speculative, poorly sourced, not following WP:MEDRS, relying on just some select primary sources. Compare with the article on malaria (a GA article) which does not mention deforestation even once. Deforestation is causing a myriad of problems but we don't have to artificially trump up content about particular diseases here. It's a high level overview article.

++++++++

Malaria, which killed 405,000 people in 2018, is probably linked to deforestation. When humans change dramatically the ecological system the diversity in mosquito species is reduced and: ""The species that survive and become dominant, for reasons that are not well understood, almost always transmit malaria better than the species that had been most abundant in the intact forests", write Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein, public health experts at Harvard Medical School, in their book How Our Health Depends on Biodiversity. "This has been observed essentially everywhere malaria occurs".

Some of the reasons for this connection, found by scientists in the latest years:

 * When there is less shadow of the trees, the temperature of the water is higher which benefits mosquitos.
 * When the trees do not consume water, there is more water on the ground, which also benefits mosquitos.
 * Low lying vegetation is better for the species of mosquitos that transmit the disease.
 * When there is no forest there is less tannin in water. Than the water is less acidic and more turbid, what is better for some species of mosquitos.
 * The mosquitos that live in deforested areas are better at carrying malaria.
 * Another reason is that when a large part of a forest is destroyed, the animals are crowded in the remaining fragments in higher density, which facilitate the spread of the virus between them. This leads to a bigger number of cases between animals which increase the likelihood of transmission to humans.

Consequently, the same type of mosquito bites 278 times more often in deforested areas. According to one study in Brazil, cutting of 4% of the forest, led to a 50% increase in Malaria cases. In one region in Peru the number of cases per year, jumped from 600 to 120,000 after people begun to cut forests. EMsmile (talk) 08:29, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

EMsmile (talk) 08:29, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Deforestation to Meitei culture
(copied from my talk page) EMsmile (talk) 07:37, 28 September 2023 (UTC) Hello! I saw you moved some information from deforestation to Meitei culture recently. I was expecting about a discussion (regarding that if you wish) with the wikipedia community before doing such a massive change. I was pretty saddened by such a hasty personal decision. Well, btw, if you want to move, Meitei culture itself is a vast place, and I don't think it's an appropriate target. Better move it to a more specified target like Meitei mythology or Meitei folklore. And if the topic might have been about the Greek or Roman or Egyptian or other popular cultures, I don't think anyone would have such an idea to remove it from there. 🥲😔 Haoreima (talk) 21:30, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi User:Haoreima, yes I removed it, together with a lot of other content that needed removal. Sorry that I didn't start a discussion about it first but I didn't think it would be overly controversial. In my opinion it was not WP:DUE, e.g. having that long poem there. This is a high level overview article which had ballooned into an article that was digressing into all sorts of detailed side stories. Sure, no problem if you want to move that content from meitei culture back to Meitei mythology, or elsewhere. I had moved it to meitei culture because that article had been linked from that section as "main" or "further". - And if there is content that is overly Europe-centric I'd have no problem removing that either; please suggest which section should be removed. EMsmile (talk) 07:34, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Removed content about zoonotic diseases
I've condensed the information on zoonotic diseases which was overly long and drawing too much from one publication. Also, it was not specific to deforestation but all sorts of aspects. Copying it here in case you want to move it to another Wikipedia article where it might fit better, perhaps the one on zoonotic diseases.

++++++

The report presents the causes of the emerging diseases, a large part of them environmental: On page 23 of the report are presented some of the latest emerging diseases and the definite environmental cause of them: EMsmile (talk) 09:12, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 1 October 2023
MatildaMontorio (talk) 20:09, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done for now: The image you have specified does not appear to be freely licensed, so please establish consensus for the change before  before using the  template. Best, HouseBlastertalk 12:14, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Is the Bologna and Aquino study based on a false premise?
I don't understand the maths of this study at the beginning of the "On the environment" section but isn't https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7203172/ saying "if the current rate of population growth continues then ...." whereas we know from page 3 of https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/wpp2022_summary_of_results.pdf that the current rate of population growth will not continue? Chidgk1 (talk) 18:21, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

 * To be fair to them their study is 2020 whereas the UN document is 2022 so perhaps their premise was reasonable at the time of writing whereas it is not now. Chidgk1 (talk) 18:24, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Edit request - "deforestation" photo.
Could someone remove the photo incorrectly labelled as deforestation in New Zealand, thanks. You can clearly see they have planted new trees to replace the cleared ones, this is forestry, not "deforestation" as defined in the article as converting forest land to a non-forest use. 49.226.128.25 (talk) 08:51, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree with you and have removed it. I have replaced it with a palm oil photo from Indonesia. Maybe we could have a 2 x 2 image collage here. EMsmile (talk) 11:48, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: EEB 4611-Biogeochemical Processes-Spring 2024
— Assignment last updated by LynSchwendy (talk) 03:29, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

 * Just.Awale (talk) 03:51, 21 April 2024 (UTC), hello, I added a new section called "the impact of deforestation on biogeochemical cycles." this is for a class, thank you.

 * It is best for new editors to learn to edit incrementally, rather than making huge posts of new material. Your ~15 KByte post of 20 April 2024 includes topics that are already covered in other sections (example: water cycle). Editors should try to "fit" material into existing articles rather than posting their own lengthy essays. It would take other editors a huge amount of time to review your contribution, and massage parts of it into the remainder of the article. — RCraig09 (talk) 04:18, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
 * We've had exactly the same problem here with another course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Effects_of_climate_change_on_the_water_cycle . See also further discussion here. EMsmile (talk) 09:27, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I've undone the recent huge text addition. There is bound to be useful content in there but it needs to be woven into the article carefully and incrementally. Students and their mentors cannot expect the Wikipedia community to do that work for them. EMsmile (talk) 09:30, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Article too long, needs culling
I think this article is too long (75 kB (11843 words) "readable prose size") and has excessive detail one some topics which should be culled and condensed. I've started with culling some excessive detail on the health aspects, see above. I plan to do more condensing. I see it as a high-level overview article that should clearly interlink with relevant sub-articles like reforestation or deforestation and climate change. Pinging User:ASRASR who might like to comment, given he is working on desertification at the moment. EMsmile (talk) 08:33, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I plan to move almost the entire section called "reforestation" to reforestation. This long segment is currently under the section called "control" but it really isn't a control method, rather perhaps a remedy. In any case, this topic has its own article so that amount of content about reforestation here is a bit excessive. I am pinging User:InformationToKnowledge in case they don't have this article on their watchlist but would like to add it on. EMsmile (talk) 15:40, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I've done this culling/moving now. New length is now 61 kB (9538 words) "readable prose size". Still a bit on the long side but a lot better than before. EMsmile (talk) 21:56, 2 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I think the article is still took long. It has crept up again to 66 kB since I wrote my last comment six months ago. We can see above in the "section sizes" table which sections are overly long and detailed. I've just removed some sentences that I regarded as digressing or overly detailed. More needs to be done to bring this article length back down. I'd like to aim for 58 kB max. EMsmile (talk) 11:21, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Deforestation