Contribute to the coral reef collection in Encyclopedia of Earth

From John Bruno via NOAA's Coral-List:

I am writing to invite you to contribute to the coral reef collection in the Encyclopedia of Earth (http://www.eoearth.org/). EoE is a new electronic reference about the Earth, its natural environments, and their interaction with society -- sort of Wikipedia for the environment. The EoE is a free, fully searchable collection of articles written by experts who collaborate and review each other's work. The articles are written in non-technical language and will be useful to students, educators, scholars, and professionals, as well as to the general public. The EoE is just over a year old and already gets over 10,000 unique visits each day. Its use, content, and visibility are growing exponentially. For more info about the EoE, go to: http://www.eoearth.org/eoe/about

There has been a lot of chatter on the coral list about educating the public about reef ecosystems and the threats they face. I think this is a great way to do so. The advantages are that we can reach a very large number of people around the world, the entries can be updated easily and regularly to keep up with scientific advances, reef-related entries are essentially a collaborative project that all of us can contribute to (so the burden does not fall on just one person or group) and the entire endeavor is supported by the excellent EoE staff and the professional-looking interface.

Associated with the EoE is the Earth Portal where various environmental and economic issues are covered in greater detail. This week, coincident with the official launching of the Year of The Reef, the EP is featuring Coral Reefs and Climate Change: http://www.earthportal.org/

Contributions can range from short entries of ~ 250 words to longer in depth articles of 5,000 words. If you are interested in contributing, go here: http://www.eoearth.org/eoe/contribute and contact me directly about possible topics (I can let you know of someone else is already writing a given entry). You can also edit and add to existing entries. For example, the zooxanthellae entry http://www.eoearth.org/article/Zooxanthellae) needs an image.

There are now over 100 coral reef related entries in EoE but we are missing even very basic topics like coral bleaching. Some examples of what we have posted so far include:

http://www.eoearth.org/article/Coral_reef
http://www.eoearth.org/article/
Coral_degradation_through_destructive_fishing_practices
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Corals_as_endangered_species
http://www.earthportal.org/?p=597

Our colleagues that have already contributed or agreed to write an entry include Joanie Kleypas, Peter Edmunds, Bill Precht, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, and Andrew Baker.

We can organize all the coral content as a collection (http://www.eoearth.org/article/Coral_reefs_%28collection%29) or ebook
(http://www.eoearth.org/article/EBooks) like Bob Constanza is doing for Ecological Economics (http://www.eoearth.org/article/
An_Introduction_to_Ecological_Economics_%28e-book%29). Some materials will come from organizations like the ISRS which just agreed to become an official content provider. You can basically post your content as is in the EoE, allowing a much greater number and range of users to access it. For example, we are in the process
of posting the ISRS position papers and the EoE also includes lots of useful documents like the IPCC reports.

Please contact Laura De Angelo at the EoE (laura.de.angelo@gmail.com) or me if you and/or your organization are interested in contributing and want more info on possible topics, how to do so, style and format, etc.


Sincerely,
John Bruno, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Marine Science
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-330
jbruno@unc.edu
www.brunolab.net