8 page report:
Tridacna maxima used for adze blades
The nature of shallow aquifers and the impacts of seawater intrusion in small islands within the Pacific Ocean are reviewed. Many Pacific islands rely on shallow fresh groundwater lenses in highly permeable aquifers, underlain and surrounded by seawater, as their principal freshwater source. It is argued here that, in small islands, the nature of fresh groundwater lenses and their host aquifers coupled with frequent natural and ever-present anthropogenic threats make them some of the most vulnerable aquifer systems in the world.
Water resources sustainable management is a vital issue for small islands where groundwater is often the only available water resource. Nauru is an isolated and uplifted limestone atoll island located in the Pacific Ocean. Politecnico di Milano performed a feasibility study for the development of sustainable use of groundwater on the island. This paper focuses on the first phase of the study that concerns the conceptual site model development, the hydrogeological characterization and the 2D model implementation.
Establishment of the corporation, purposes, functions and powers.
The vegetation and flora of Nauru are among the most impoverished, degraded, disturbed and displaced in the Pacific islands. Long habitation, almost a century of opencast phosphate mining, continuous bombing, destruction and displacement of the people during World War 11, rapid urbanization and the abandonment of agriculture and subsistence activities have arguably produced one of the most severely modified nautral and and cultural floras on earth.
The indigenous floras of the raised phosphatic limestone island of Nauru and the atolls of the Gilbert Islands are among the poorest on earth. Long settlement, widespread destruction during World War II, monocultural
expansion of coconut palms, and more than 75 yr of open-cast phosphate mining in the case of Nauru have led to serious vegetation degradation, disturbance, and displacement. The floras of Nauru and the Gilbert Islands consist of
Ten composite soil samples (0-15 cm depth) were collected from abandoned phosphate-mined sites on Nauru Island (Central Pacific) and analyzed for % organic C and % N. The samples represent a temporal sequence (chronosequence) of soil development spanning < 55 yr. The increase of% C and % N was fairly rapid.
The environment of Nauru, a raised atoll located in the central Pacific Ocean (0° 32′ S, 166° 56′ W), was
devastated by mining of phosphate “rock” during the twentieth century. Some 100 million tonnes of
phosphate material has been removed, leaving more than 80% of the island as a dolomite
pinnacle–dominated karrenfeld. Based on fieldwork examining sites unmined at that time, laboratory
studies on undisturbed profiles, aerial photographs, and old mining maps, a picture of what the soil
Radio Interview:
Alex Feary is a NZ ecologist that undertook his Masters dissertation on field work in Nauru. The masters was for Victoria University, New Zealand. He particularly noted the abundance of invasive species and the need to manage them.
The restoration of Nauru’s mined areas is fundamental to the future wellbeing of the people and ecosystems of Nauru. Extensive open cast phosphate mining on Nauru over the last 100 years has led to soil losses and landscape degradation to the extent that over 70% of this South-Western Pacific island state is now uninhabitable and almost all productive land has been lost.
The avifauna of Nauru has received scant attention over the past nearly 130 years since
Otto Finsch reported the five species he observed on 24 July 1880 (Finsch 1881). Pearson
(1962) recorded at least 16 species over a period of six months in 1961, and he stated that
Finsch’s work comprised ‘the only previous ornithological literature available concerning
Nauru’. King (1967) and Garnett (1984) merged seabird records from Nauru with those
from the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati), without stating which may have pertained only to the
Provide images and an insight into the life of Nauruans during the early period of contact with outsiders.
Journal article: Journal of Geography (1951) vol. 50
Government Report to UNCCD - prepared by the Dept. Economic Development and Environment. 2003
Report by the Nauru Historical Committee
Article
An essay by Nancy Viviani
9 page report to the UNCCC
Project Administration Manual (Report)
Copy of a paper published in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews.