In the delicate balancing act between human development and protecting the fragile natural world, sand is weighing down the scales on the human side.
In the delicate balancing act between human development and protecting the fragile natural world, sand is weighing down the scales on the human side.
A group of international scientists in this week’s journal One Earth are calling for balancing those scales to better identify the significant damage sand extraction across the world heaps upon marine biodiversity. The first step: acknowledging sand and gravel (discussed as sand in this publication) – the world’s most extracted solid materials by mass – are a threat hiding in plain sight.
“Sand is a critical resource that shapes the built and natural worlds,” said senior author Jianguo “Jack” Liu, Michigan State University Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability. “Extracting sand is a complex global challenge. Systems approaches such as the metacoupling framework are essential to untangle the complexity. They can help reveal the hidden cascading impacts not only on the sand extraction sites but also other places such as sand transport routes and sites using sand for construction.”
Read More: Michigan State University
Photo Credit: Dustytoes via Pixabay
