Canada and the World
Current Events with a Canadian Perspective
Last update
21 October 2011
Charles Darwin’s
Ascension Island Experiment
A dry island was turned into a lush tropical paradise
by planting trees in a scheme that could be
a forerunner of attempts to make Mars habitable
Ascension Island (below) is one of the most isolated places on Earth. Created by volcanic action it sits in the South Atlantic, 2,250 kilometres west of South America and 1,600 kilometres east of Africa. Just over 900 people live on its 88 square kilometres.
Geoffrey Boys
Napoleon Exiled to Ascension
Until 1815, the island was used by mariners as a place to stock up on fresh meat provided by the many seabirds that made it home. But, with very little water, Ascension had little appeal as a place to live.
Its nearest neighbour was St. Helena, albeit a distant one at nearly 1,300 kilometres, to the southeast.
The remoteness of these islands struck the British as a perfect place to store Napoleon Bonaparte after he lost the Battle of Waterloo in 1815; far enough away from Europe to ensure he didn’t cause any more trouble.
And, as the Ascension Island government’s website points out, Ascension was given “a small British naval garrison…to deny it to the French. The island was designated ‘HMS Ascension,’ a ‘Stone sloop of War of the smaller class.’ ”
It has remained an overseas British territory ever since.
Darwin Visits Ascension
Towards the end of the historic voyage of HMS Beagle (below centre), the ship put in to Ascension Island on July 19, 1836.
The About Darwin website says “The island was inhabited entirely by British marines and a few liberated Africans from slave ships. They stayed at the island for four days, during which time Darwin climbed Green Hill, a volcano of 2,817 feet in height.”
Darwin was not expecting much from Ascension because, according to Syms Covington, who accompanied him on The Beagle the folks in St Helena had told him “We know we live on a rock, but the poor people of Ascension live on a cinder.”
Four Days on Ascension
Arriving on the “cinder” Howard Falcon-
He proposed the idea to his great friend Joseph Hooker to change the climate of the arid island.
“Egged on by Darwin,” writes Falcon-
So, in 1850, trees such as Norfolk Island Pine and eucalyptus were planted on the island’s Green Hill (now called Green Mountain) to capture and hold some of the meagre rainfall that the trade winds brought, and also trap moisture in sea mists.
More trees were planted in subsequent years, which increased the moisture on the island, added loam to the soil, and improved fertility.
Terraforming on Ascension
Dr. David Wilkinson is an ecologist at Liverpool John Moores University. He visited Ascension in 2003 and found plant species growing there that didn’t belong together.
In an article written for the Journal of Biogeography, Wilkinson says “Today much of the higher parts of Green Mountain are best described as cloud forest, contrasting strikingly with Darwin’s complaint of a landscape ‘entirely devoid of trees.’ ”
He writes that, “The thinking behind this scheme is strikingly similar to much more
recent ideas for creating life-
“In other words,” comments Falcon-
Sources
“The Journal of Syms Covington.” Australian Science Archives Project, August 1995.
“Charles Darwin’s Ecological Experiment.” Howard Falcon-
“The Parable of Green Mountain: Ascension Island, Ecosystem Construction and Ecological
Fitting.” Dr. David Wilkinson, Journal of Biogeography, Volume 31, page 1-
© Canada and the World, October, 2011
All rights reserved
Charles Darwin’s book On the Origin of the Species, in which he described his theory of evolution, was published in 1859. In November 2009, a rare first edition of that famous book was auctioned in England for $172,500. The copy had been found sitting on a toilet bookshelf in Oxford.
TERRAFORMING MARS
The planet Mars has often been proposed as a place to set up colonies, but there are some problems to overcome.
It’s too cold for humans with an average annual mean temperature of minus 55 degrees Celsius.
But, what if we could warm it up?
A scheme proposed by Margarita Marinova of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggests using chemicals called perfluorocarbons to form a blanket around the planet. This would allow solar radiation to hit the surface of Mars but trap in the heat causing planetary warming of the kind we are trying to reduce on Earth.
Ms. Marinova’s idea is described in an article in the January 2004 issue of Astrobiology Magazine.
“In effect, what Darwin, Hooker and the Royal Navy achieved was the world’s first
experiment in ‘terra-
Howard Falcon-
BBC News
September 2010