Janique Goff: London Zoo’s innovative tribute to biodiversity

For environmentalists like Janique Goff, one of the best ways to spearhead conservation is through innovations in architecture. Buildings are the hub of human activity, and designing them in a way that reduces their energy consumption to the benefit of its denizens is one major leap toward sustainable living. One of these innovative buildings can be found in London’s foremost zoological facility.

Janique Goff Image Credit: Smartsaveuk.Wordpress.com

The London Zoo, the world’s oldest scientific zoo, takes pride in its appointment of leading architects to build its facilities, resulting to many interesting architectural features that are ahead of their time. Among its most ambitious projects in eco-friendly architecture is the B.U.G.S. (Biodiversity Underpinning Global Survival) exhibit. Inaugurated as The Web of Life in 1999, the exhibit represents the zoo’s efforts in educating the public about biodiversity and conservation.

Janique Goff Image Credit: Wikimedia.org

For environmentalists like Janique Goff, the B.U.G.S exhibit showcases a progressive look into architecture that tries to balance modern needs with environmental concerns. Designed to be similar to termite mounds, the building utilizes chimneys and surrounding trees to cool it in the summer while using the ground to keep it warm in the winter.

This energy-efficient building, as the name suggests, houses the inhabitants of the zoo’s former invertebrate house along with many other animals such as naked mole rats, starlings, and giant anteaters.

Janique Goff Image Credit: Freestyling.Wordpress.com

More information on the building can be accessed here and here. Updates on Janique Goff can be accessed from this blog.

Green a dream: Janique Goff and incorporating green spaces in cities

Even before environmentalists, such as Janique Goff, began extolling the need for protecting nature, there has been a widely held belief that more modern cities should be planned to incorporate open green spaces. With the rapid onset of urbanization and with its pollution, city planners in the 19th Century decided that many of the squalid slums and industrial ghettoes were not fit for human habitation.

The new industrial cities were seen as ugly and unnatural places to live, and it soon came to be that modern urban planning stepped in to ensure a better environment was created for the common resident. This is evident in the plans for modern communities, where parks feature prominently.

Janique Goff Image Credit: Blog.Startle.com

Environmentalists such as Janique Goff also add that these green spaces do more than just beautify the urban landscape and provide an oasis of green for people to momentarily escape the hurly-burly chaos of urban living. They also serve an important environmental function in making said cities more environmentally friendly. First off, large city parks provide an island home for wildlife; in fact, some cities like New York have taken steps to reintroduce wildlife that formerly made its famed Central Park home.

Janique Goff Image Credit: Focus.ca

Moreover, these islands of greenery fight air pollution in cities and contribute to the fight against global warming by taking out some of the carbon dioxide emitted from city vehicles. All in all, these contributions make city life for people even more pleasant, bringing things full circle.

Janique Goff Image Credit: www.co.thurston.wa.us

Updates on Janique Goff can be accessed on this blog.

Janique Goff: Are flex-fuel vehicles the answer?

Alternative fuels like biodiesel and ethanol are becoming more and more ubiquitous parts of life in many countries. Green technology advocates, like Janique Goff, note that these fuels have been mixed with conventional gasoline in the past few years and vehicles that use alternative fuels exclusively have been released. Moreover, specially designed flexible-fuel vehicles are experiencing renewed popularity. These vehicles are capable of running on either gasoline or biofuels (ethanol, usually) and provide the benefits of being able to run on in part on biofuels as desired or when needed.

Janique Goff Image Credit: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofuel

Flex-fuel vehicles have been around for a very long time; the Ford Model T, the world’s first commercially available mass-produced car, was capable of running on ethanol and gasoline. The flex-fuel would regain attention during the 1970s oil price crisis, when petroleum was in desperate short supply.

Janique Goff Image Credit: autoblog.com

Advocates of green technology such as Janique Goff note that different countries often utilize different designs and fuel ratios in their respective flex-fuel vehicles. Older flex-fuel vehicles in Brazil have two tanks—the smaller one containing gasoline, which is used to start up the engine faster in cold weather. Flex-fuel vehicles in Europe and the United States are optimized for up to 15% gasoline and 85% androhydrous ethanol, changing in ratio only during winter. Today, Brazil and the United States lead the world in the use of flex-fuel vehicles.

Janique Goff Image Credit: navitasadvisors.com

More updates from Janique Goff can be accessed via this Facebook page.

Janique Goff: Green living starts at home

Saving energy can be as easy as changing a light bulb. Janique Goff and other environmentalists believe that everyone can contribute to addressing global pollution by simply changing a few ways of using energy at home.

Janique Goff Image credit: SnugHabitat.com

Energy definitely helps people cope with daily chores and gives a degree of comfort and convenience. But the same energy needed to power all the systems in a home also contributes to global warming and greenhouse gas emissions that damage the planet’s ozone layer. In the United States, homes without proper insulation will need to use up more energy just to compensate for the heat lost.

Janique Goff Image credit: Grist.Files.Wordpress.com

But there are many ways to reduce the amount of energy used in powering homes. Janique Goff and other preservationists believe that everyone can contribute in conserving energy by doing the following useful tips that also reduce energy expenses:

1. Reducing the use of the water heater 
2. Purchasing new energy-efficient appliances
3. Designing the home to optimize daylight and ambient air for cooling
4. Using creative landscaping techniques to maximize cooling and heating in the area
5. Dialing down the thermostat reduces the temperature in the house, which lessens the amount of heating fuel used

Janique Goff Image credit: Suite101.com

Even small changes in your lifestyle can help in addressing pollution, and this can start in your own home. For more information on Janique Goff and to read more articles on environment conservation, follow this Twitter page.

Janique Goff: Reducing your "ecological footprint"

This Janique Goff blog discusses the impact that the space and resources dedicated to meeting the individual needs of a person—collectively called ecological footprint—have on the environment and the means that can be undertaken to reduce it.

Janique Goff. Photo Credit: peekpackaging.com

The space and resources needed to sustain the needs and wants of human beings are immense. The ecological footprint an individual person has varies with his or her lifestyle. To put things in perspective, scientists at the University of British Columbia estimate that the city of Vancouver—with among the highest standards of living in the world—needs 22 times its own land area to sustain itself. And this is not taking into account the costs and area needed for imported goods.

Janique Goff. Photo Credit: downeastenergy.com

Ecologists like Janique Goff note that while reducing this global footprint is a daunting task, given that many people the world over lack basic needs, there are ways that ordinary people can take to reduce both the ecological footprint and the related carbon footprint or amount of carbon dioxide emitted in the activities of daily life.

Janique Goff. Photo Credit: farm8.staticflickr.com

Among these many steps is to augment one’s diet with home-grown organic produce, thus reducing the amount of land needed to grow food and produce fertilizer. Done in a considerable scale throughout a city, home gardening and rooftop gardening can help reduce a city’s ecological footprint by growing much of the food on-site.

In addition, reducing one’s consumption habits to necessity can also help. While it may appear to be miserly, living within necessity not only helps save on Earth’s resources but also helps save one’s money for more pressing and important needs.

Follow this Facebook page for timely updates on Janique Goff.

Janique Goff: Preserving biodiversity in gardens

Janique Goff Photo credit: http://blog.green-space.org.uk

Ecologists like Janique Goff had time and again emphasized the importance of biodiversity to the wellbeing of the balance of life in the planet. Understanding this concept can prove to be beneficial for backyard vegetable growers, whose gardens can then augment both the continued survival of many different varieties of plants and a bountiful and sustainable harvest for years to come.

Biodiversity is important to human agriculture in many ways. Like in natural ecosystems, biodiversity holds the key to ecological resilience; the decline of one species would not necessarily affect the others. In this case, the failure of one crop would not cause the failure of the whole harvest.

Janique Goff Photo credit: http://environment.tau.ac.il

And much like how the lack of biodiversity can lead to ecological disasters, the prevalence of monocultures is cited by environmentalists like Janique Goff as the underlying cause of history’s great agricultural catastrophes like the Irish Potato famine of 1846.

Janique Goff Photo credit: http://seedourfuture.org

In addition, a mix of crops can help provide a means of natural pest control; by planting a few species of plants together, the pest repellant properties of one would help protect the other. Coupled with the introduction of other biological means of pest control like ladybird beetles and other carnivorous insects, the garden can play host to an ecosystem that would provide a home for native species—a form of reconciliation ecology.  

Go to this Janique Goff’s Facebook.for links to articles on ecology and environmental protection.

Janique Madison: From garbage to energy

Janique Madison Photo credit: ornl.gov

Environmentalists like Janique Madison encourage people to think before they dump. A research by Global Change Biology suggests that the world’s garbage is a viable feedstock for biofuels. With the low value and logistic availability of waste, turning it to fuel is a promising opportunity to eliminate worldwide dependence on fossil fuels and find an alternative for piling garbage in landfills. When used as replacement for gasoline, biofuels derived from global trash could cut carbon emissions by 80%.

Janique Madison Photo credit: navitasadvisors.com

Waste biomass including paper and cardboard can be processed to form a clean energy solution, while those which cannot be recycled like agriculture or forest remnants, plastics, textiles, and wood are combined with catalysts and water to turn them into products such as ethanol.

Ecologists like Janique Madison note that aside from cutting world’s addiction to oil, the production of trash-based fuels also lessens the risk for greenhouse effect. For example, the California-based Blue Fire Ethanol, Inc. makes use of cellulose in plant remains to produce cellulosic ethanol fuel instead of letting them rot in the landfill wherein the plants’ cellulose mix with microbes which thus creates methane—a greenhouse gas. Greenhouse effect is attributed to the elevation of Earth’s surface temperature.

FJanique Madison Photo credit: en.wikipedia.org

For environmentalists like Janique Madison, it truly makes sense to think twice before throwing garbage – who knows it can generate profit and save the environment? Visit Ms. Madison’s Facebook to learn more about environment preservation.