For the past several decades there has also been a concerted effort to eliminate standing water almost anywhere practicable, in order to reduce mosquito breeding.
Good point. In Africa and southern Europe this makes sense, but in Germany and the UK and Northern France... not so much.
But clearly this is an effective way of reducing insect life.
Pretty easy(heroic estimate) to check this,
You could link a few sets of time bounded landsat images of an affected area to see if the land use change correlates with the rise in this problem.
Depending on the granularity of the data you could go pretty deep with something like quickbird images as well. Though I'm not sure how long they have been running off hand.
Very interesting... is there somewhere I can donate so someone with cheaper access to land can create a muddy pond for me?
I'd love to support biodiversity, but i've got a wife that hates bugs and space on my balcony comes at a premium... would be much more sensible to create a muddy pond somewhere outside of the city.
Re:The Silence of the Bugs
by dumbneurologist on Sunday May 27, 2018 @08:31AM
(#17166647)
that's a great hypothesis i hadn't heard. interesting to consider... and a bit less scary than insecticidal effects.
How do you deal with mosquitoes? Also, have frogs/toads also made use of the still water?
I've got two ponds in my garden, they are a source of head shaking from keen urban gardeners because they are shallow, muddy and a bit smelly - but they team with life and now, in the summer, the air is thick with insects.