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News stories about "forests," with punchlines: http://apocadocs.com/d.pl?forests
Related Scary Tags:
climate impacts  ~ rain forest depletion  ~ global warming  ~ invasive species  ~ carbon sinks  ~ ecosystem interrelationships  ~ deforestation  ~ massive die-off  ~ anthropogenic change  ~ smart policy  ~ carbon emissions  



Fri, Jan 29, 2016
from PhysOrg:
Landscape pattern analysis reveals global loss of interior forest
Between 2000 and 2012, the world lost more forest area than it gained, according to U.S. Forest Service researchers and partners who estimated a global net loss of 1.71 million square kilometers of forest--an area about two and a half times the size of Texas. Furthermore, when researchers analyzed patterns of remaining forest, they found a global loss of interior forest--core areas that, when intact, maintain critical habitat and ecological functions.... Their analysis revealed a net loss of 3.76 million square kilometers of interior forest area, or about ten percent of interior forest--more than twice the global net loss of forest area. The rate at which interior forest area was lost was more than three times the rate of global forest area loss. All forest biomes experienced a net loss of interior forest area during the study period. Across the globe, temperate coniferous forests experienced the largest percentage of loss, tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests lost the most area of interior forest, and boreal forests and taiga lost interior forest at the highest rate. ...


There are so many trees in heaven....

ApocaDoc
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Thu, Jan 7, 2016
from Washington Post:
U.S. wildfires just set an amazing and troubling new record
Last year's wildfire season set a record with more than 10 million acres burned. That's more land than Maryland, the District and Delaware combined.... Lawmakers base their funding on the average cost to fight fires over the previous decade. But that doesn't account for wildfire seasons that now run from April through December instead of June to September. ...


We sure know how to put the wild in wildfires!

ApocaDoc
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Sat, Aug 22, 2015
from Science, via Vice Motherboard:
Every Forest Biome on Earth Is Actively Dying Right Now
Forests are ecological superheroes--they ventilate the planet, nurture the most biodiverse habitats on Earth, and regulate global climate and carbon cycles. From the poles to the equator, our survival is completely dependent on healthy woodlands. But according to the latest issue of Science, which is devoted to forest health, every major forest biome is struggling. While each region suffers from unique pressures, the underlying thread that connects them all is undeniably human activity.... "The health of the immense and seemingly timeless boreal forest is presently under threat, together with the vitality of many forest-based communities and economies," the researchers said. Temperate forests aren't faring much better, according to another study from the issue written by US Geological Survey ecologists Constance Millar and Nathan Stephenson. Temperate forests are primarily composed of deciduous trees that shed their leaves seasonally, and are common in mid-latitude regions around the world.... ...


If a tree falls, and then its forest, and everyone pretends not to hear it, does it make a sound?

ApocaDoc
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Sun, Nov 9, 2014
from TED Global, via WeatherNetwork.com:
The Sound of a Dying Ecosystem
When sound engineer Bernie Krause first visited the Lincoln Meadow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1988, the lush land vibrated with natural soundscapes -- a sign of a healthy, thriving ecosystem. This is what it sounded like when Krause turned on his gear to capture the environment before selective logging began... One year later, he returned to record once more from the same spot. This time, all birds had gone, with the exception of one lonesome woodpecker who appears halfway through the recording.... "When I began recording over four decades ago, I could record for ten hours and capture one hour of usable material good enough for an album, a film soundtrack or museum installation," said Krause, on the TEDGlobal stage. "Now, because of global warming, resource extraction and human noise, among other factors, it can take up to 1,000 hours or more to capture the same thing." ...


Climate change is just hearsay.

ApocaDoc
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Wed, Sep 24, 2014
from New York Times:
Companies Are Taking the Baton in Climate Change Efforts
With political efforts to slow global warming moving at a tortuous pace, some of the world's largest companies are stepping into the void, pledging more support for renewable energy, greener supply chains and fresh efforts to stop the destruction of the world's tropical forests. Forty companies, among them Kellogg, L'Oréal and Nestlé, signed a declaration on Tuesday pledging to help cut tropical deforestation in half by 2020 and stop it entirely by 2030. They included several of the largest companies handling palm oil, the production of which has resulted in rampant destruction of old-growth forests, especially in Indonesia... Several environmental groups said they were optimistic that at least some of these would be kept, but they warned that corporate action was not enough, and that climate change could not be solved without stronger steps by governments. ...


I thought government and corporations were the same thing.

ApocaDoc
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Mon, Sep 8, 2014
from CBC:
Canada's degradation of pristine, intact forests leads world
The world's precious few remaining large forests are fragmenting at an alarming rate, and the degradation in Canada leads the world, a new analysis shows. The degradation of such pristine "intact" forests threatens species such as Canada's woodland caribou and Asia's tigers that rely on huge unbroken expanses of natural ecosystems in order to survive, said Nigel Sizer, global director of forest programs with the World Resources Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based research institute focused on resource sustainability. ...


We also lead the world in tar sands!

ApocaDoc
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Mon, Jul 14, 2014
from TrueActivist.com:
Forest, Trees; Choose Two
In this fascinating video, UBC Professor Suzanne Simard explains how trees are much more complex than most of us ever imagined. Although Charles Darwin assumed trees are simply individual organisms competing for survival of the fittest, Simard demonstrates just how wrong he was. In fact, the opposite is true: trees survive through mutual co-operation and support, passing around essential nutrients "depending on who needs it". Nitrogen and carbon are shared through miles of underground fungi networks, ensuring that all trees in the forest eco-system give and receive just the right amount to keep them all healthy. This invisible web works in a very similar way to the networks of neurons in our brains, and when one tree is destroyed it has consequences for all. ...


Now they'll declare forests a socialist threat.

ApocaDoc
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Sun, Jun 8, 2014
from University of Edinburgh:
Saving trees in tropics could cut emissions by one-fifth, study shows
Reducing deforestation in the tropics would significantly cut the amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere -- by as much as one-fifth -- research shows. In the first study of its kind, scientists have calculated the amount of carbon absorbed by the world's tropical forests and the amounts of greenhouse gas emissions created by loss of trees, as a result of human activity. ...


Treeific!

ApocaDoc
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Sat, Mar 1, 2014
from BBC:
Smell of forest pine can limit climate change - researchers
New research suggests a strong link between the powerful smell of pine trees and climate change. Scientists say they've found a mechanism by which these scented vapours turn into aerosols above boreal forests... The scientists say that having a clear understanding of the way in which forest smells become aerosols will improve the accuracy with which they can predict the ability of these particles to limit rising temperatures. ...


A giant, geoengineering-scale air wick, anyone?

ApocaDoc
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Sun, Feb 23, 2014
from American Live Wire:
Google Joins Deforestation Fight By Launching Global Forest Watch Website
The Global Forest Watch website produced by the search giant Google itself is about to change all that. It is an online forest monitoring system available to anyone with an Internet connection around the globe. World Resources Institute partnered with Google to create the site and system along with a team of more than 40 other partners. The website will make use of the technology that includes Google's own Earth Engine and the Maps Engine to track forests around the world with the help of satellite imagery. It will also detect changes taking place in forests in close to real-time. All the information will be made available for free to the general public through the World Wide Web. ...


This'll help us find the sweetest spots to mow down!

ApocaDoc
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Sat, Nov 23, 2013
from BBC:
'Signature' achievement on forests at UN climate talks
Forests in Peru Countries with forests will have to provide information on safeguards for local communities. Nations meeting in Warsaw at UN talks have agreed [to] a significant step forward towards curbing emissions from deforestation. A package of measures has been agreed here that will give "results-based" payments to developing nations that cut carbon by leaving trees standing. One observer told the BBC that this was the "signature achievement" of these talks. Deforestation accounts for about 20 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide. Earlier this week the UK, US, Norway and Germany agreed a $280m package of finance that will be managed by the World Bank's BioCarbon fund to promote more sustainable use of land. ...


I can't see the deforest for the detrees.

ApocaDoc
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Tue, Jul 30, 2013
from RTCC:
Alaska forest fires 'worst for 10,000 years'
There have always been fires in the cold forests of Alaska. Periods of burning are part of the ecological regime, and fires return to black spruce stands of the Yukon Flats at intervals of tens to hundreds of years. But recent evidence suggests that fire is about to come back with a vengeance - or, in the language of science, "a transition to a unique regime of unprecedented fire activity". ...


It seems that many things are "unprecedented" and part of a "unique regime." Goddamn it.

ApocaDoc
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Sun, Jul 14, 2013
from The Independent:
Ancient wood to be felled for quarry
An area of ancient woodland the size of 16 football pitches in Kent will be destroyed to make way for a ragstone quarry after the government ruled that the commercial benefits of the development outweighed the habitat loss. In a ruling that raises fears for the future of more than 300 ancient woods around the country, local government secretary Eric Pickles yesterday waived through an application to extend a ragstone quarry into the 400-year old Oaken Wood near Maidstone. The resulting deforestation is thought to represent the largest loss of ancient woodland in the UK in the past five years. It would destroy about a sixth of the sweet chestnut coppice, which supports a range of plants and rare animals but is best known for two bat species - the Common Pipstrelle and the Natterer's bat.... "With just 2 per cent of ancient woodland cover remaining, we cannot afford to lose any more," she added, saying that the cover has been steadily declining in the 15 years since her group started recording the woodlands at risk from development. ...


It's not as if stuff isn't getting older every day!

ApocaDoc
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Want more context?
Try reading our book FREE online:
Humoring the Horror of the Converging Emergencies!
More fun than a barrel of jellyfish!
Wed, Jul 3, 2013
from Climate Central:
The Climate Context Behind the Deadly Arizona Wildfire
The deadly Yarnell Hill Fire continued to rage out of control on Monday, a day after the flames fanned by erratic winds and temperatures topping 100Ā°F overwhelmed a team of elite firefighters, killing 19 of the 20-member crew. The fire has burned about 200 homes and has burned through at least 8,400 acres -- more than quadrupling in size since it began on June 28, according to news reports.... And projections show that the West may be in for more large wildfires in the future. Climate models show an alarming increase in large wildfires in the West in coming years, as spring snowpack melts earlier, summer temperatures increase, and droughts occur more frequently or with greater severity. ...


Can't we develop flame-resistant trees?

ApocaDoc
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Tue, Apr 23, 2013
from Sydney Morning Herald:
Indonesian forest open for mining, logging
A mining company has boasted of an Indonesian government decision to free up 1.2 million hectares of virgin forest in Aceh for commercial exploitation. The announcement to the Canadian stock exchange late on Tuesday was met with disbelief by environmental groups worried about endangered orang-utans, Sumatran tigers, rhinos and elephants across the heavily forested region. But Ed Rochette, chief executive of Canadian mining company East Asia Minerals, celebrated the ''good progress and positive news for mineral extraction in the area''. The company's announcement quotes Anwar, chairman of the Aceh government's spatial planning committee, as saying the Indonesian forestry ministry had accepted ''almost 100 per cent of the province's new spatial plan'' that would ''zone large blocks of previously protected forest for mineral extraction, timber concessions and oil palm plantations''. ...


"Orangs and Tigers and 'phants, oh my!"

ApocaDoc
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Thu, Feb 14, 2013
from Scientific American:
Where Few Trees Have Gone Before: Mountain Meadows
... with a warming climate, snow has begun melting earlier and growing seasons have lengthened; that extra time with little or no snow cover has given trees a boost. As a result, tree occupation rose from 8 percent in 1950 to 35 percent in 2008, reports a U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service-funded study published last October in Landscape Ecology. At a time when so many forests are threatened, aren't more trees something to celebrate? Not necessarily, say the authors of the new study. These tall trees block light that meadow grasses, shrubs and wildflowers need to survive. Once trees become established, the surrounding seed banks of native grasses tend to fade away. The meadows' "biodiversity value is much larger than the amount of area they occupy," explains lead author Harold S. J. Zald, postdoctoral research associate at Oregon State University, who hatched the idea for the study while backpacking in the Cascade Range. The researchers do not yet know which plant or animal species would be endangered. ...


Apocaiku:
Not too cool for school./ Never have mountain meadows/ been made in the shade.

ApocaDoc
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Tue, Nov 27, 2012
from Agence France-Press:
Bitsy beetle warms Canada: study
An army of rice-grain-sized beetles, attracted by warming weather, has moved into Canada's western forests, where its tree massacre is causing the mercury to rise yet further, a study said Sunday. The voracious horde of mountain pine beetles has invaded about 170,000 square kilometres (65,000 square miles) -- a fifth of the forest area of British Columbia, Canada's western-most province, a research team wrote in the journal Nature Geoscience. The beetles lay their eggs under the bark of pine trees, at the same time injecting a fungus that protects their offspring but kills the trees with the help of the larvae eating their insides. As trees are felled, the cooling effect of their transpiration, similar to human sweating, is also lost. ...


A perfect, self-perpetuating loop of total annihilation!

ApocaDoc
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Thu, Oct 4, 2012
from PhysOrg:
Deforestation in snowy regions causes more floods
New research suggests that cutting down swaths of forest in snowy regions at least doubles - and potentially quadruples - the number of large floods that occur along the rivers and streams passing through those forests.... But deforestation shines a new - and glaring - light on this water source. While ordinarily the trees keep the melting under control by shielding snow from the sunlight, "as soon as you get rid of the trees, the snow melts faster," said Green. "It's that simple."... The analysis showed that, in all four waterways, deforestation turned 10-year floods into three-to-five-year floods. Twenty-year floods recurred every 10 to 12 years. Most dramatically, in 240 Creek, 50 year floods happened every 13 years, almost four times as often. ...


All part of the plan to refill the aquifers. Fast.

ApocaDoc
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Tue, Sep 4, 2012
from Discover:
The Pheromone That Could Save Pine Forests From Oblivion
...Until recently there was virtually nothing landowners could do to protect even small parcels of forest from bark beetles. But after a half century of detective work, a small group of scientists has come up with a novel and surprisingly effective means of defense: hijacking the beetles' sense of smell. Like ants and honeybees, beetles communicate via scented chemicals called pheromones, one of which warns the insects to stay away from particular trees. Now researchers are dispersing this pheromone, called verbenone, placing a molecular shield over thousands of acres of hardy green pines in western ski resorts, nature reserves, and campgrounds... ...


The beetles may consider this ... unfair.

ApocaDoc
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Fri, Mar 30, 2012
from The Independent:
Up in smoke: ecological catastrophe in the Sumatran swamps
Fires raging unchecked in an Indonesian peat swamp forest could wipe out the remaining Sumatran orang-utans which live there, conservationists are warning. The forest is one of the last refuges of the great apes. The illegal fires, started by palm-oil companies clearing land to plant the lucrative crop, are believed to have killed at least 100 orang-utans -- one-third of those living in the Tripa swamp, on the west coast of Sumatra's Aceh province. The rest could die within weeks, according to Dr Ian Singleton, conservation director of the Sumatran Orang-utan Conservation Programme. "The speed of destruction has gone up dramatically in the last few weeks... This is obviously a deliberate drive by these companies to clear all the remaining forests," Dr Singleton said. "If this is not stopped right now, all those orang-utans... will be gone before the end of 2012." Only 6,600 Sumatran orang-utans are estimated to be left in the wild, and the Tripa swamp -- where they are most densely concentrated -- is considered crucial to the species' survival. But less than one-quarter of the peat forest remains; the rest has been converted to palm-oil plantations.... Satellite imagery showing 92 fires over the past week has horrified conservationists, who are awaiting a court ruling with far-reaching implications for the protection of wildlife habitats in Indonesia. ...


It'll grow back.

ApocaDoc
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Sat, Mar 24, 2012
from Greenpeace, via Mongabay:
Greenpeace calls for zero deforestation in Brazil by 2015, globally by 2020
Greenpeace reiterated its call for an end to deforestation in Brazil by 2015 and globally by 2020 during its launch of an awareness-raising expedition down the Amazon River aboard the Rainbow Warrior. "Brazil is now the sixth largest economy in the world, the largest meat exporter and second largest grain exporter. Brazil's rise to become the world's sixth largest economy coincided with consecutive years of decline in deforestation in the Amazon,ā€¯ said Kumi Naidoo Greenpeace International Executive Director. "Brazil must lead as an example of sustainable development without forest destruction for other forest countries like Indonesia and the Congo.ā€¯ ...


Protecting the future means never having to say you're sorry.

ApocaDoc
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Tue, Mar 20, 2012
from Wits End:
A Hike Through Hell - The Union of Concerned Scientists Exposes "Pernicious" Corruption...and Nobody Notices
A stunning visual and intellectual meander through a dying forest. Heard of ground-level ozone? Nope, but you are breathing it, just as all the trees and plants are... and suffering for it. Gail at Wit's End tirelessly, artfully, and personally documents what ozone is doing to our forests and trees. Read it, weep, and then read more of her stuff. She's a treasure. ...


O, zone.

ApocaDoc
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Wed, Mar 7, 2012
from Colorado Independent:
Forestry budgets sapped by scourges of warming climate
The warming climate is breeding more beetle-ravaged forest and prolonged fire seasons, U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell testified before a Senate committee on Tuesday, as he fielded questions about the White House's proposed agency budget for fiscal year 2013.... The wildfire risk is heightened as beetles make their way through the forests, sucking the life from trees and leaving dead, dried wood in their wake. The expansion of bark beetles "has started to slow a little bit," [Tidwell] said, but "we're still seeing about an additional 600,000 acres infested each year, so we're going to have to continue to maintain this focus for the next few years." ...


Bark beetles sound sooooo vampiric!

ApocaDoc
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Wed, Feb 29, 2012
from Los Angeles Times:
Global warming feeds bark beetles: Are they unstoppable?
Hear the sound of chewing out in our vast forests of lodgepole pine, spruce and fir, the chewing that's already destroyed half the commercial timber in important regions like British Columbia? That's the sound of climate change, says biologist Reese Halter. Global warming in the form of a bark beetle... As winters grow warmer and summers drier, the West's evergreen forests are being eaten alive. And the infestation is not showing any signs of slowing. The most disturbing part? Halter puts the blame squarely on climate change, of which the infestations are not only a symptom but a cause -- a feedback loop. ...


"Feedback loop" has multiple meanings here.

ApocaDoc
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Mon, Jan 30, 2012
from Wit:
Dead Trees, Dying Forests
Since the mid-20th century, scientific research has demonstrated conclusively that tropospheric ozone is toxic to vegetation, entering plants through stomates in foliage and needles as they absorb CO2 to photosynthesize. Naturally occurring stratospheric ozone is beneficial, it protects the earth's surface from too much solar radiation. By contrast ground-level ozone is formed through complex chemical reactions when volatile organic compounds react with precursors from burning fuel, reactive nitrogen from agriculture, and methane in the presence of UV radiation from the sun...and it's poisonous to all forms of life.... That trees are dying is empirically verifiable by a cursory inventory. The photos here and on the blog exhibit characteristic symptoms readily located in any woods, suburban yard, park or mall; and include stippled, singed foliage with marginal burn (on the edges) and chlorosis - a loss of normal pigmentation from reduced photosynthesis producing chlorophyll; yellowing coniferous needles; thinning, transparent crowns; cracking, splitting, corroded, oozing and stained bark; early leaf senescence; loss of autumn radiance; holes; cankers; absence of terminal growth; breaking branches; rampant lichen growth and ultimately, death. ...


If a forest dies and nobody screams, does it make a sound?

ApocaDoc
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Tue, Jan 3, 2012
from Associated Press:
Chile battles 3 huge forest fires; 1 elderly man killed
Firefighters in Chile battled three huge wildfires Monday that have burned about 90 square miles (23,000 hectares) of forest, destroyed more than 100 homes and have driven away thousands of tourists while causing millions of dollars in losses. The fires also claimed their first victim: an elderly man who refused warnings to leave his home. Chile's normally rainy southern regions are suffering from a nationwide heat wave, on top of a drought that makes fires increasingly likely. The country was battling 48 separate fires on Sunday alone, and red alerts were declared for the regions of Magallanes, Bio Bio and Maule. ...


Too bad Chile ... isn't.

ApocaDoc
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You're still reading! Good for you!
You really should read our short, funny, frightening book FREE online (or buy a print copy):
Humoring the Horror of the Converging Emergencies!
We've been quipping this stuff for more than 30 months! Every day!
Which might explain why we don't get invited to parties anymore.
Mon, Dec 26, 2011
from Oregon State University via ScienceDaily:
Forest Health Versus Global Warming: Fuel Reduction Likely to Increase Carbon Emissions
Forest thinning to help prevent or reduce severe wildfire will release more carbon to the atmosphere than any amount saved by successful fire prevention, a new study concludes. There may be valid reasons to thin forests -- such as restoration of forest structure or health, wildlife enhancement or public safety -- but increased carbon sequestration is not one of them, scientists say... even in fire-prone forests, it's necessary to treat about 10 locations to influence fire behavior in one. There are high carbon losses associated with fuel treatment and only modest savings in reducing the severity of fire... ...


We may be forced to thin the herd instead.

ApocaDoc
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Thu, Dec 22, 2011
from Reuters:
Texas drought kills as many as half a billion trees
The massive drought that has dried out Texas over the past year has killed as many as half a billion trees, according to new estimates from the Texas Forest Service. ...


Trees just cause pollution anyway.

ApocaDoc
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Tue, Nov 22, 2011
from Seattle Times:
State scrambles to fight massive tree die-offs
So many pine, fir and spruce trees in the Northwest are riddled with bugs and disease that major tree die-offs are expected to rip through a third of Eastern Washington forests -- an area covering nearly 3 million acres -- in the next 15 years, according to new state projections. Because Washington's forests are deteriorating so quickly, the state commissioner of public lands last week said he'll appoint an emergency panel of scientists and foresters to seek ways to stabilize or reverse the decline. ...


What will I hug when the trees are gone?

ApocaDoc
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Thu, Oct 27, 2011
from Oregon State University via ScienceDaily:
Production of Biofuel from Forests Will Increase Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Study Finds
The largest and most comprehensive study yet done on the effect of biofuel production from West Coast forests has concluded that an emphasis on bioenergy would increase carbon dioxide emissions from these forests at least 14 percent, if the efficiency of such operations is optimal. The findings are contrary to assumptions and some previous studies that suggest biofuels from this source would be carbon-neutral or even reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In this research, that wasn't true in any scenario. ...


Fueled again!

ApocaDoc
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Mon, Oct 3, 2011
from New York Times:
With Deaths of Forests, a Loss of Key Climate Protectors
From the mountainous Southwest deep into Texas, wildfires raced across parched landscapes this summer, burning millions more acres. In Colorado, at least 15 percent of that state's spectacular aspen forests have gone into decline because of a lack of water. The devastation extends worldwide. The great euphorbia trees of southern Africa are succumbing to heat and water stress. So are the Atlas cedars of northern Algeria. Fires fed by hot, dry weather are killing enormous stretches of Siberian forest. Eucalyptus trees are succumbing on a large scale to a heat blast in Australia, and the Amazon recently suffered two "once a century" droughts just five years apart, killing many large trees. Experts are scrambling to understand the situation, and to predict how serious it may become.... Scientists have figured out -- with the precise numbers deduced only recently -- that forests have been absorbing more than a quarter of the carbon dioxide that people are putting into the air by burning fossil fuels and other activities. It is an amount so large that trees are effectively absorbing the emissions from all the world's cars and trucks. ...


You mean there might be a reason to hug a tree?

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Wed, Aug 10, 2011
from Guardian:
Russian forests burn for second successive year
Only a year ago Russia was overwhelmed by an exceptional heat wave, triggering hundreds of fires that destroyed thousands of hectares of woodland. Burning peat bogs around Moscow stifled the city in a thick cloud of bitter smoke. Now, Russia is burning again. Since the beginning of this year more than 1m hectares of forest have gone up in flames, or are still burning, outstripping the disastrous record of 2010. But the affected areas are more sparsely populated and far fewer people have been evacuated. The far north of Russia is among the areas that have suffered the most. During the last week of July, Arkhangelsk and the Komi republic had temperatures exceeding 35C. More than 80 fire outbreaks were reported..... Greenpeace claims that the government is playing down the situation. "Official reports indicate 93 hectares of land on fire in the Amur area; in fact it is more like 50,000 hectares, as can be seen from satellite images," says an NGO spokesperson. The Russian authorities have not so far asked for outside assistance. More than 5,000 fire-fighters have already been deployed, backed by 800 specialist units, some equipped with aircraft. Current, more favourable, weather conditions may make life easier, with temperatures dropping to more usual levels all over Russia. ...


The Russia is coming. The Russia is coming!

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Thu, Jul 21, 2011
from Mother Jones:
Get Used to New Weather Extremes
We're seeing records fall in all directions this year--wettest, driest, warmest, coldest, snowiest, stormiest, fieriest--across the globe. In the US alone, in the month of July alone, 1,079 total heat records have been broken or tied. That's 559 broken, 520 tied...so far. The map below, generated today at NOAA's US Records page, shows how records have fallen nationwide, including in Alaska and Hawaii.... In fact, every state except Delaware has broken heat records so far this month. In Iowa yesterday, the heat index exceeded 130deg F/54.4deg C--an extremely rare occurrence in this part of the world. According to Jeff Masters, writing at his Wunderblog, the only place where a 130 deg F heat index is common is along the shores of the Red Sea in the Middle East.... According to the National Interagency Fire Center, the number of wildfires in the US as of the beginning of July this year is 36,424...and counting. These wild lands blazes have burned 4.8 million acres. That's an average of 132 acres per fire--which, by the way, is the largest burned acreage ever recorded in the US during this time period.... ...


I think that's called "unnatural variation."

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Wed, Jul 20, 2011
from Washington Post, via DesdemonaDespair:
Whitebark pine tree faces extinction threat, agency says
The Fish and Wildlife Service determined Monday that whitebark pine, a tree found atop mountains across the American West, faces an "imminent" risk of extinction because of factors including climate change. The decision is significant because it marks the first time the federal government has identified climate change as one of the driving factors for why a broad-ranging tree species could disappear. The Canadian government has already declared whitebark pine to be endangered throughout its entire range; a recent study found that 80 percent of whitebark pine forests in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem are dead or dying.... In its determination, the agency said that it found a listing was "warranted but precluded," meaning the pine deserved federal protection but the government could not afford it.... However, she added, "we've got definitely a limited amount of budget and a limited amount of staff to address all these species. There are other species that are worse off than whitebark pine." ...


I think we call that priority determination "treeage."

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Fri, Jun 10, 2011
from Reuters:
Rising forest density offsets climate change: study
Rising forest density in many countries is helping to offset climate change caused by deforestation from the Amazon basin to Indonesia, a study showed on Sunday. The report indicated that the size of trees in a forest -- rather than just the area covered -- needed to be taken into account more in U.N.-led efforts to put a price on forests as part of a nascent market to slow global warming. "Higher density means world forests are capturing more carbon," experts in Finland and the United States said of the study in the online journal PLoS One, issued on June 5 which is World Environment Day in the U.N. calendar.... And in Africa and South America, the total amount of carbon stored in forests fell at a slower rate than the loss of area, indicating that they had grown denser. And some countries still had big losses of carbon, including Indonesia and Argentina. The study did not try to estimate the overall trend, saying there was not yet enough data. ...


See? Proof that we can grow our way out of trouble.

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Mon, May 30, 2011
from Reuters:
Ice melt to close off Arctic's interior riches: study
Global warming will likely open up coastal areas in the Arctic to development but close vast regions of the northern interior to forestry and mining by mid-century as ice and frozen soil under temporary winter roads melt, researchers said. Higher temperatures have already led to lower summer sea ice levels in the Arctic and the melting has the potential to increase access for fishermen, tourists and oil and natural gas developers to coastal regions in coming decades.... But the warming also will likely melt so-called "ice roads", the temporary winter roads developers now use to access far inland northern resources such as timber, diamonds and minerals, according to a study published on Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change. "It's a resource frontier where we don't even know what all is there and I'm beginning to think we never will," Lawrence Smith, a professor of geography at the University of California Los Angeles and a co-author of the study, said about the Arctic interior.... Oil and natural gas developers could lose access to some inland drilling, but the industry would gain access to coastal drilling and would benefit from easier shipping routes. Timber and metal mining, however, would suffer far more because it would be cost-prohibitive to build permanent roads leading to these resources. ...


The boreal forests, somewhat protected by slush.

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Wed, May 25, 2011
from Yale Environment 300:
By Barcoding Trees, Liberia Looks to Save its Rainforests
Nearly two-thirds of West Africa's remaining rainforests are in the small but troubled nation of Liberia. That is a small miracle. A decade ago, Liberia's forests were being stripped bare by warlords to fund a vicious 14-year civil war that left 150,000 dead. In 2003, the United Nations belatedly imposed an embargo on Liberian "logs of war." Revenues crashed and, coincidentally or not, the war swiftly came to an end. Now the elected government of Harvard-trained President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has signed a deal with the European Union to place timber sales on a permanently legal footing. The deal, agreed to this month, makes use of a unique national timber-tracking system that requires every legally harvestable tree and every cut log to carry a barcode that will enable it to be tracked from its origin to its final destination. ...


It's gonna take someone named Sirleaf to save the trees.

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Wed, Apr 27, 2011
from EnvironmentalResearchWeb:
Siberia's boreal forests 'will not survive climate change'
The boreal forests of Siberia are a vast, homogenous ecosystem dominated by larch trees. The trees survive in this semi-arid climate because of a unique symbiotic relationship they have with permafrost - the permafrost provides enough water to support larch domination and the larch in turn block radiation, protecting the permafrost from intensive thawing during the summer season. This relationship has now been successfully modelled for the first time, revealing its sensitivity to climate change. Ningning Zhang and colleagues from Nagoya University, Japan, have predicted that the larch trees will not be able to survive even the most optimistic climate change scenario of a 4 degree C increase in summer temperature in Siberia by the year 2100. "We found that the larch-dominated boreal forest-permafrost coupled system in Siberia would be threatened by future warming of 2 degrees C or more," Zhang told environmentalresearchweb. "However, our simulations also show that, even with 4 degree C warming, some tree species can still survive, but with considerable loss of biomass." ...


Sounds like a great place for a palm oil plantation!

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Thu, Apr 21, 2011
from EnvironmentalResearchWeb:
"Epidemiological" study demonstrates climate-change effects on forests
An 18-year study of 27,000 individual trees by National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded scientists finds that tree growth and fecundity - the ability to produce viable seeds - are more sensitive to climate change than previously thought. The results, published tomorrow in the journal Global Change Biology, identify earlier spring warming as one of several factors that affect tree reproduction and growth. They also show summer drought as an important but overlooked risk factor for tree survival, and that species in four types of trees - pine, elm, beech, and magnolia - are especially vulnerable to climate change.... "The problem is, the models scientists have used to predict forest responses focus almost solely on spatial variation in tree species abundance - their distribution and density over geographic range."... "Trees are much more sensitive to climate variation than can be interpreted from regional climate averages." ...


This is a classic case of judging the forest by its trees.

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Mon, Apr 4, 2011
from Edmonton Journal:
Mountain pine beetles could infect forests across Canada
Mountain pine beetles have successfully made the species jump from lodgepole pine to jack pine, increasing concerns that the pest could infect forests from British Columbia to the East coast, according to a University of Alberta-led research team. The group of U of A tree biologists and geneticists discovered that, as the mountain pine beetle spread eastward from central B.C., it successfully jumped species from its main host, the lodgepole pine, to the jack pine. Jack pine is the dominant pine species in Canada's boreal forest, which stretches east from Alberta all the way to the Maritime provinces.... "Mountain pine beetle is not (native) to the boreal forest and therefore should be considered an invasive species and managed as such. Forest ecosystems in North America have already been challenged with numerous pest invasions that represent a considerable threat. When we factor in climate change, the vulnerability of ecosystems such as the boreal forest to disturbance is further increased putting an extremely important ecosystem in jeopardy." ...


Some days I feel like I'm being borealed alive.

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Tue, Mar 29, 2011
from The Daily Climate:
Shift in boreal forest has wide impact
Vegetation change underway in northern forests as a result of climate change creates feedback loop that prompts more warming, scientists say. Boreal forests across the Northern hemisphere are undergoing rapid, transformative shifts as a result of a warming climate that, in some cases, is triggering feedback loops producing even more regional warming, according to several new studies. Russia's boreal forest - the largest continuous expanse of forest in the world - has seen a transformation in recent years from larch to conifer trees, according to new research by University of Virginia researchers.... "The climate has shifted. It's done, it's clear, and the climate has become unsuitable for the growth of the boreal forest across most of the area that it currently occupies," said Glenn Juday, a forestry professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. ...


I wish that durn scientist wouldn't beat around bush.

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Mon, Mar 21, 2011
from Mongabay:
UN: Want water? Save forests
The UN-backed Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF) is urging nations to conserve their forests in a bid to mitigate rising water scarcity problems. "[Forests] reduce the effects of floods, prevent soil erosion, regulate the water table and assure a high-quality water supply for people, industry and agriculture," said the Forestry Department Assistant Director General, Eduardo Rojas-Briales, with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). "Forests are part of the natural infrastructure of any country and are essential to the water cycle." In addition, forests reduce the impact of droughts, while preventing desertification and salinization, while loss of tropical rainforests has been shown to decrease local rainfall. In addition, cutting-edge research has even established a link between forest cover and winds delivering rainfall, one that remains quite controversial.... According to the UN, within 15 years 1.8 billion people could suffer from 'absolute water scarcity', while two-thirds of the global population could see water scarcities. Currently, 20 percent of people in the developing world don't have access to clean water. ...


No thanks. I'll just drink beer.

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Sat, Feb 19, 2011
from ScienceDaily:
Frequent, Severe Fires Turn Alaskan Forests Into a Carbon Production Line
Alaskan forests used to be important players in Mother Nature's game plan for regulating carbon dioxide levels in the air. It's elementary earth science: Trees take up carbon dioxide and give off oxygen. But now, American and Canadian researchers report that climate change is causing wildfires to burn larger swaths of Alaskan trees and to char the groundcover more severely, turning the black spruce forests of Alaska from repositories of carbon to generators of it. And the more carbon dioxide they release, the greater impact that may have in turn on future climate change. "Since the proliferation of black spruce, Alaskan soils have acted as huge carbon sinks," says Evan Kane, a research assistant professor in Michigan Technological University's School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science. "But with more frequent and more extensive burning in recent decades, these forests now lose more carbon in any fire event than they have historically been able to take up between fires." ...


All right! A new justification for clear-cutting!

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Fri, Feb 4, 2011
from London Guardian:
Communities not getting a say in how forests are managed
Governments have been accused by grassroots groups and scientific researchers of reneging on commitments to give communities a say in how forests are managed, and doing little to address the causes of worldwide deforestation. The charges came as the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, declared 2011 to be the international year of forests, and politicians from around the world meet in New York for the high level segment of the UN's ninth forestry forum (UNFF). Non-government groups released a report showing that indigenous peoples and forest communities have done a much better job at conservation than governments. ...


When are going to go ahead and declare an international year of panic!!!

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Thu, Feb 3, 2011
from Discovery:
Amazon Drought of 2010 Sign of Forest Fatigue
The tropical forests of Amazonia may be giving up their role as buffers against the continuing buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, scientists report, a circumstance that could accelerate climate change. The warning comes in the new issue of the journal Science, where an international research team reports that the drought in the Amazon during 2010 was even worse than what scientists called the "once-in-a-century" drought of 2005.... "The two recent Amazon droughts demonstrate a mechanism by which remaining intact tropical forests of South American can shift from buffering the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide to accelerating it," the scientists write. Growing trees absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. Dying trees give it back. ...


How can a carbon sink become a carbon faucet?

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Mon, Jan 17, 2011
from Science, via Mongabay:
Amount of carbon absorbed by ecosystems each year is grossly overstated, says new study
According to a new paper published in Science, current carbon accounting methods significantly overstate the amount of carbon that can be absorbed by forests, plains, and other terrestrial ecosystems. That is because most current carbon accounting methods do not consider the methane and carbon dioxide released naturally by rivers, streams, and lakes. This new paper suggests that rivers, streams, and lakes emit the equivalent of 2.05 billion metric tons of carbon every year. (By comparison, all the terrestrial ecosystems on the world's continents are thought to absorb around 2.6 billion metric tons of carbon each year). This is, as the lead author of the paper said, is a "major accounting error".... Previous papers have suggested that freshwater ecosystems may also be storing large quantities of carbon dioxide--perhaps as much as 600 million metric tons. There is an urgent need for further study, as precise measurements of natural carbon sources and sinks are vital for shaping policies on conservation, deforestation, and other issues. ...


"Major accounting errors" usually precede bankruptcies.

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Mon, Jan 10, 2011
from CBC:
China bans logging in largest forest reserve
China has banned logging in its largest forest reserve area for 10 years in a bid to combat climate change. The official Xinhua News agency reported Monday that logging will be prohibited until 2020 in the Great and Lesser Hinggan Mountains in the northeast.... China is trying to increase the size of its forests by 40 million hectares to help reduce greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. The forest reserve in the Hinggan mountains spreads out over 430,000 square kilometres across Heilongjiang province and into neighbouring Inner Mongolia. ...


Don'tcha hate it when one-party rule makes democracies look like dilly-dallyers?

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Mon, Dec 27, 2010
from NPR:
Small Beetles Massacre The Rockies' Whitebark Pines
The Whitebark pine trees in the high-elevation areas of America's Northern Rockies have stood for centuries. But these formerly lush evergreen forests are disappearing at an alarmingly fast rate; what remains are eerie stands of red and gray snags. Warmer climates have sparked an outbreak of a voracious mountain pine beetle that is having devastating consequences for whitebarks and the wildlife that depend on them... As entomologist Jesse Logan looks up at snow-covered slopes speckled with skeletons of dead trees, he says the massacre is happening faster than even he expected. More than a decade ago, Logan predicted that with global warming, these tiny, ravenous beetles would start to thrive here. At the time, other insect experts were skeptical. But in recent years, winter cold snaps haven't been nearly as brutal as usual. ...


This, my friends, is the Age of Skeptics Are Usually Wrong.

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Mon, Dec 6, 2010
from University of Guelph, via EurekAlert:
Northern wildfires threaten runaway climate change, study reveals
Climate change is causing wildfires to burn more fiercely, pumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than previously thought, according to a new study to be published in Nature Geosciences this week. This is the first study to reveal that fires in the Alaskan interior - an area spanning 18.5 million hectares - have become more severe in the past 10 years, and have released much more carbon into the atmosphere than was stored by the region's forests over the same period. "When most people think of wildfires, they think about trees burning, but most of what fuels a boreal fire is plant litter, moss and organic matter in surface soils," said University of Guelph professor Merritt Turetsky, lead author of the study. "These findings are worrisome because about half the world's soil carbon is locked in northern permafrost and peatland soils. This is carbon that has accumulated in ecosystems a little bit at a time for thousands of years, but is being released very rapidly through increased burning."... "This includes longer snow-free seasons, changes in vegetation, loss of ice and permafrost, and now fire, which is shifting these systems from a global carbon sink toward a carbon source."... "Over the past 10 years, burned area has doubled in interior Alaska, mostly because of increased burning late in the fire season," said co-author Eric Kasischke, a University of Maryland professor. ...


Statistically, don't most runaways return home?

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Tue, Nov 30, 2010
from Mongabay.com:
Consumer goods industry announces goal of zero deforestation in Cancun
While governments continue to stall on action to cut greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, global corporations are promising big changes to tackle their responsibilities. The Board of Consumer Goods Forum (BCGF) has approved a resolution to achieve net zero deforestation by 2020 in products such as palm oil, soy, beef, and paper. Announced yesterday at the UN Climate Summit in Cancun, the BCGF has stated the goal will be met both by individual actions within companies and collective action, including partnerships with NGOs, development banks, and governments. With such giants as Walmart, Unilever, Carrefour, and General Mills, BCGF is made up of four hundred global consumer goods manufacturers and retailers totaling over $2.8 trillion in revenue. ...


And in the meantime, maybe we can do our part by not consuming so much crap!

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Sat, Nov 27, 2010
from AP, via PhysOrg:
Reserve saves trees but not monarch butterflies
This small patch of mountain fir forest is a model of sorts for the global effort to save trees and fight climate change. The problem is that saving trees has not saved the forest's most famous visitors: Monarch butterflies. Millions of Monarch butterflies migrate here from the United States and Canada every year, but their numbers declined by 75 percent last year alone, apparently because of changing weather and vegetation patterns. The Monarch butterfly reserve shows how complex the battle against climate change has become, as the world prepares for a United Nations climate conference in Cancun next week. The conference is expected to focus in part on how best to preserve forests, with questions about who should pay and and how to treat communities who already live in the jungles and forests of developing countries.... While the Monarch Butterfly Reserve is a success story, trees alone won't keep it going. If the butterflies disappear - and by all accounts they are doing badly - interest in the forest could quickly evaporate. The REDD program has been improved to take into account the importance of biodiversity in forests. While experts aren't really sure what has been battering the butterflies, changing weather patterns are clearly taking a toll. Last year, clusters of butterflies covered a total area equal to only about 1.9 hectares (4.7 acres), compared to about 8 hectares (almost 20 acres) in the 2008-2009 winter season. Experts say it is still too soon to estimate figures on this year's migration. Monarch expert Lincoln Brower cites climate swings of wet and dry weather, storms that damaged the reserve, and the crowding out of the only plant the Monarchs lay their eggs on, the milkweed, by genetically-modified crops. ...


Without a Monarch, what will happen to the kingdom?

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Sat, Nov 20, 2010
from USA Today:
Kimberly-Clark rolls out tube-free Scott toilet paper
On Monday, Kimberly-Clark, one of the world's biggest makers of household paper products, will begin testing Scott Naturals Tube-Free toilet paper at Walmart and Sam's Club stores throughout the Northeast. If sales take off, it may introduce the line nationally and globally -- and even consider adapting the technology into its paper towel brands. No, the holes in the rolls aren't perfectly round. But they do fit over TP spindles and come with this promise: Even the last piece of toilet paper will be usable -- without glue stuck on it.... The 17 billion toilet paper tubes produced annually in the USA account for 160 million pounds of trash, according to Kimberly-Clark estimates, and could stretch more than a million miles placed end-to-end. That's from here to the moon and back -- twice. Most consumers toss, rather than recycle, used tubes, says Doug Daniels, brand manager at Kimberly-Clark. "We found a way to bring innovation to a category as mature as bath tissue," he says. ...


And if sales don't take off, maybe you can just do the right thing anyway?

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Tue, Oct 26, 2010
from Telegraph.co.uk:
New species discovered in the Amazon every three days
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) counted the number of new discoveries between 1999 and 2009 to highlight the one of the most diverse areas on Earth. The report Amazon Alive! found some 1,200 new species of plants and vertebrates have been discovered in the area over ten years, a new species every three days. The new species include 637 plants, 257 fish, 216 amphibians, 55 reptiles, 16 birds and 39 mammals, confirming that the Amazon is one of the most diverse places on Earth. Among the findings are the first new species of anaconda identified since 1936, a frog with a 'burst of flames' on its head, a parrot with a bald head, a pink river dolphin, a bright red blind catfish and a tiger-striped tarantula. Sarah Hutchison, WWF-UK forest programme manager for Brazil, said all the species were at risk of deforestation. She pointed out that in the last 50 years humankind has caused the destruction of at least 17 per cent of the Amazon rainforest, an area twice the size of Spain. ...


If we hadn't destroyed 17 percent, then we might be finding a new species every 2.49 days.

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Wed, Sep 15, 2010
from EnvironmentalResearchWeb:
NASA satellites reveal surprising connection between beetle attacks, wildfire
While it may look like autumn has come early to the mountains, evergreen trees don't change color with the seasons. The red trees are dying, the result of attacks by mountain pine beetles. Mountain pine beetles are native to western forests, and they have evolved with the trees they infest, such as lodgepole pine and whitebark pine trees. However, in the last decade, warmer temperatures have caused pine beetle numbers to skyrocket.... The idea that beetle damaged trees increase fire risks seems a logical assumption - dead trees appear dry and flammable, whereas green foliage looks more moist and less likely to catch fire.... Their preliminary analysis indicates that large fires do not appear to occur more often or with greater severity in forest tracts with beetle damage.... green needles... contain high levels very flammable volatile oils.... wildfires are less likely to ignite and carry in a forest of dead tree trunks and low needle litter. ...


Thank goodness. I guess.

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Tue, Aug 31, 2010
from Herald Scotland:
Pakistan: A land left to drown by the 'timber mafia'
The warnings regularly given by all manner of experts had been ignored for decades. If Pakistan's authorities continued to allow the country's timber mafia and a benighted and oppressed peasantry to strip the country's forests at a faster rate than anywhere else in Asia, as is happening, floods of Biblical proportions would be inevitable. They would not be acts of God. They would be man-made catastrophes. And so it came to pass - as August began - that heavier than usual, but not unprecedented, monsoon rains fell.... "Other than landslides, soil erosion and the occasional homes and crops being swept away, it [the forest denudation] was not considered a disaster and hence didn't make the headlines," wrote Ayesha Tammy Haq, a columnist with the Pakistan daily Express Tribune newspaper.... This year's monsoon lashing northern Pakistan with unusual intensity would historically have been absorbed by extensive forests, much like multiple layers of blotting paper, allowing the rains to run off more sedately than in modern times. But this month the mud and water deluge cascaded off the tree-bare mountains and hills with exceptional force and barrelled down towards the plains in mammoth fury. ...


Hey, a guy's gotta eat. Capiche?

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Thu, Aug 26, 2010
from Sydney Morning Herald:
Declining trees spell gloom for planet
LESS rainfall and rising global temperatures are damaging one of the world's best guardians against climate change: trees. A global study, published in the journal Science, shows that the amount of carbon dioxide being soaked up by the world's forests in the past decade has declined, reversing a 20-year trend. It diminishes hopes that global warming can be seriously slowed down by the mass planting of trees in carbon sinks. Although plants generally grow bigger as a result of absorbing carbon-enriched air, they need more water and nutrients to do so, and they have been getting less. ...


There's always kudzu.

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Wed, Aug 4, 2010
from Guardian:
Ecuador signs $3.6bn deal not to exploit oil-rich Amazon reserve
Ecuador, home of the Galapagos Islands, the Andes mountain range and vast tracts of oil-rich rainforest, yesterday asked the world for $3.6bn not to exploit the Ishpingo-Tiputini-Tambococha oil block in the Yasuni national park. A knockdown price, it said, considering the oil alone is worth more than $7bn at today's prices. The 407m tonnes of CO2 that would be generated by burning it could sell for over $5bn in the global carbon markets. But neither the oil block nor the park is for sale, and under the terms of a unique, legally binding trust fund set up yesterday by the government and the UN, the oil and the timber in Yasuni will never be exploited. Instead, donor countries, philanthropists and individuals around the world are being invited to pay the money in return for a non-exploitation guarantee.... Conservation groups have been staggered by the biological riches in the park, which is situated at the intersection of the Amazon, the Andes and the equator. It was recently found to have 650 species of tree and shrub within a single hectare - the highest number in the world and more than in the whole of north America. In addition, it has more than 20 threatened mammal species, including, jaguars, otters and monkeys, and several hundred bird species. ...


Yeah, but are any of those trees and shrubs valuable?

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Mon, Jun 7, 2010
from TreeHugger:
Reforestation & Biochar: Two Geoengineering Methods That Won't Cause More Harm Than Good
Geoengineering has been a slow burning controversy for some time now, with some truly wacky ideas proposed, as well as some which take a more sober look at the prospect of intentionally tinkering with the climate to stop the effects of human activity disturbing it in the first place. Let's look at a couple of those geoengineering methods which won't cause more harm than good: Biochar and Reforestation/Afforestation.... Biochar is essential using charcoal made through pyrolysis of biomass and then burying it mixed in with the soil. It has a long history of use in Amazonia, where it's known as terra preta, for its benefits in making soil more fertile. In regards to long-term carbon storage potential, biochar can work on a millennial scale with, in most cases, no negative soil side effects. Some estimates show biochar having the potential to sequester one billion tons of CO2 each year. ...


That's no way to grow the economy!

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Wed, May 19, 2010
from Toronto Globe and Mail:
With newly protected boreal forest, the caribou are smiling
Two old foes in Canada have made peace to conserve some of the world's most precious natural resources. The Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement, signed by most of the Canadian forestry industry and environmental activists, is nothing less than historic. It will result in a real and internationally significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, and it serves as a model of non-governmental co-operation. The agreement commits all participating companies (which cover some 70 per cent of Canada's boreal forest) to the most advanced sustainability practices in forestry: practices that "start with the science" and make the protection of species-at-risk paramount. Canada's woodland caribou, and other less photogenic species that traverse the boreal forest, are among the greatest beneficiaries. ...


Caribou are smiling... and by extension we presume the clams are happy!

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Thu, Apr 29, 2010
from Telegraph.co.uk:
Mysterious new disease threatens oak trees
Acute oak decline (AOD) causes ancient native trees to bleed extensively, cutting off the supply of water and nutrients, and killing them within a few years. Since it was first identified five yeasrs ago, the disease has been spotted on thousands of trees across the country and it is feared many more are infected. But scientists are at a loss to explain its cause. What concerns them most is the speed at which decades-old trees are killed off. The outbreak is one of a number of threats to Britain's ancient trees. A separate disease, sudden oak death, has spread across the country, killing beach, larch and ash as well as oaks since it was introduced from abroad 10 years ago.... "We're looking at a disease that has the potential to change our landscape even more than Dutch elm disease, and nothing is being done about it," he said. "We can't afford a repetition of what happened then. Action is needed now." ...


The mighty oak from a tiny acorn grows/'til felled for reasons no-one knows.

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Tue, Apr 6, 2010
from Oregon State University, via EurekAlert:
Forest epidemic is unprecedented phenomenon, still getting worse
The Swiss needle cast epidemic in Douglas-fir forests of the coastal Pacific Northwest is continuing to intensify, appears to be unprecedented over at least the past 100 years, and is probably linked to the extensive planting of Douglas-fir along the coast and a warmer climate, new research concludes. Scientists in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University have also found that this disease, which is affecting hundreds of thousands of acres in Oregon and Washington and costing tens of millions of dollars a year in lost growth, can affect older trees as well as young stands - in some cases causing their growth to almost grind to a halt.... "We can't say yet whether climate change is part of what's causing these problems, but warmer conditions, milder winters and earlier springs would be consistent with that." Another key suspect, scientists say, is the planting for decades of a monoculture of Douglas-fir in replacement of coastal forests, which previously had trees of varying ages and different species. ...


Biodiversity is so messy. Monocultures are at least consistent.

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Sat, Mar 13, 2010
from Associated Press:
Meeting on deforestation boosts morale, budget
A conference bringing together more than 60 nations Thursday added $1 billion to the fight against deforestation and boosted the morale of those hoping to save the world's forests -- a key defense against global warming. Three months after a morose ending to climate change talks in Copenhagen, the one-day ministerial meeting in Paris attended by heavily forested countries such as Indonesia and those in the Amazon and Congo basins amounted to a confidence-builder for nations wondering what comes next in the battle against deforestation, many delegates said. ...


I hope there weren't too many handouts.

ApocaDoc
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Mon, Mar 1, 2010
from Sydney Morning Herald, from DesdemonaDespair:
Rampant logging 'destroying Papua New Guinea'
Brother Jim Coucher worked in and near Vanimo on the north-west coast of PNG for 43 years until five years ago. Just returned from his first visit since, he was utterly horrified at the changes, he said yesterday, the speed of destruction caused by logging and corruption, and the plight of the local people.... ''I don't think anyone has an idea of the extent of logging, and I don't think anything can be done,'' Brother Coucher said. He does not want his religious order identified for fear of reprisals against members still working in Papua New Guinea.... The landowner, a sub-clan chief, said loggers destroyed a creek that had provided fish for his villagers. They bulldozed breadfruit trees, sago and coconut palms, and built a wharf in the harbour that meant villagers could not fish. They hired almost no villagers, he said. Instead, they brought in unskilled Asian workers. ''Malnutrition is rampant. It is horrible to see young mothers who are skin and bone. There is no sanitation, no running water -- it is a time bomb,'' the landowner said. ''They are logging Vanimo to its death.'' ...


Gotta make a profit, right? What's the point otherwise?

ApocaDoc
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Tue, Feb 16, 2010
from BBC:
Fog decline threatens US redwoods
Scientists in California say a drop in coastal fog could threaten the state's famed giant redwood trees. Their study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, says such fog has decreased markedly over the past 100 years.... "Fog prevents water loss from redwoods in summer and is really important for the tree and the forest," said research co-author Professor Todd Dawson.... Dr Johnstone thinks drought stress could affect the growth of new trees and the plants and animals that depend on the redwoods. But he notes that the negative impact on the tree population is, as yet, unproven. "We're concerned for certain, we expect some impact on the ecology but we don't have clear evidence that the redwoods are about to go extinct in the near term." ...


"Near term" may mean something different to us than to two-thousand-year-olds redwoods.

ApocaDoc
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Wed, Feb 10, 2010
from Earth Institute, via EurekAlert:
Urbanization, export crops drive deforestation
The drivers of tropical deforestation have shifted in the early 21st century to hinge on growth of cities and the globalized agricultural trade, a new large-scale study concludes. The observations starkly reverse assumptions by some scientists that fast-growing urbanization and the efficiencies of global trade might eventually slow or reverse tropical deforestation. The study, which covers most of the world's tropical land area, appears in this week's early edition of the journal Nature Geoscience.... "The main drivers of tropical deforestation have shifted from small-scale landholders to domestic and international markets that are distant from the forests," said lead author Ruth DeFries, a professor at the Earth Institute's Center for Environmental Research and Conservation. "One line of thinking was that concentrating people in cities would leave a lot more room for nature. But those people in cities and the rest of the world need to be fed. That creates a demand for industrial-scale clearing." ...


Yummy!

ApocaDoc
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Fri, Feb 5, 2010
from SolveClimate:
Studies Find Faster Tree Growth as Climate Changes, Potential to Drive Further Warming
Forests in the eastern United States appear to be growing faster than they should be, and increases in temperature and carbon dioxide are the likely culprits.... First, local measurements taken over 17 years showed a 12 percent increase in CO2 levels in the area. Temperature measurements from the nearby Baltimore-Washington International Airport over about 100 years indicated a significant increase, as well, and the growing season -- based on first and last frosts of the winter -- has grown by about seven days.... He did say, however, that "if this is a widespread generality that this extra growth is going on, it may well have contributed to slowing the increase in atmospheric CO2." The "metabolism" of the forest seems to have sped up, he said, and it is certainly possible that some negative effects could be associated with such a process.... And even if the increased carbon dioxide could be adding mass to certain forests, there are well-documented negative effects that climate change is having on forests as well. The most striking of these may be the ongoing invasion of pine bark beetles over vast swaths of the Rockies, where millions of trees are being consumed by the beetle infestation. In British Columbia alone, an area bigger than Ireland has already been largely destroyed, and the unprecedented beetle swarms have been linked to warming temperatures.... "It's not just some easy thing that you can say, 'well, temperature will go up so that will be positive for these people, and this will be negative for those people.' It's just very complicated, and the effects will be disruptive. ...


Wait -- you're telling me it's not simple?

ApocaDoc
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Sat, Jan 23, 2010
from Durango Herald:
Spruce beetle outbreak keeps growing
Beetles killed 70,000 acres of spruce trees last year, mostly in southern Colorado's high-altitude forests. Meanwhile, the mysterious die-off of aspen trees appears to have stabilized, according to a yearly survey of forest health that the Forest Service released Friday. Forest scientists now believe the aspen die-off was caused by last decade's drought. Aspen decline peaked in 2008 and increased very little last year, according to the annual aerial survey of Colorado forests. The spruce beetle epidemic, however, is growing with no signs of abatement. "There's really nothing to stop it," said Susan Gray of the U.S. Forest Service. "The winter temperatures continue to be very mild compared to a decade ago." ...


"Spruce things up" now means, apparently, "there's no hope."

ApocaDoc
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Thu, Dec 10, 2009
from CGIAR, via EurekAlert:
Disagreement over what constitutes a forest is Achilles' heel of REDD plan
Disagreement over what constitutes a forest could undermine an agreement to protect forests, which is expected to be one of the bright spots at the UN climate change meeting in Copenhagen, according to an analysis by the Alternatives to Slash and Burn (ASB) Partnership for Tropical Forest Margins.... "Countries can clear massive amounts of forest and still claim that deforestation had not occurred," said Peter A Minang, ASB Global Coordinator, who has extensive experience working with the REDD initiative. For example, replacement of tropical rainforests by oil palm plantations in Southeast Asia would not be considered 'deforestation' because the plantations meet the definition of a forest. Lands that have been clear cut or burned, but which remain under control of forest institutions, are also still considered forest. ...


We can't see the forest for the nomenclature.

ApocaDoc
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Thu, Nov 12, 2009
from Mongabay:
Boreal forests contain more carbon than tropical forest per hectare
A new report states that boreal forests store nearly twice as much carbon as tropical forests per hectare: a fact which researchers say should make the conservation of boreal forests as important as tropical in climate change negotiations. The report from the Canadian Boreal Initiative and the Boreal Songbird Initiative, entitled "The Carbon the World Forgot", estimates that the boreal forest -- which survives in massive swathes across Alaska, Canada, Northern Europe, and Russia -- stores 22 percent of all carbon on the earth's land surface. According to the study the boreal contains 703 gigatons of carbon, while the world's tropical forests contain 375 gigatons.... Researchers explain that while tropical forests store most of their carbon in vegetation, boreal forests store vast amounts of the greenhouse gas deep in permafrost soil and peatlands in addition to its trees. Cold temperatures prevent the complete breakdown of dead biomass in the boreal, so that carbon is accumulated over time, sometimes even millennia. Scientists have found carbon that has been locked away for 8,000 years. ...


All right! We can still burn rainforests for palm oil plantations!

ApocaDoc
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Thu, Nov 12, 2009
from Georgia Institute of Technology, via EurekAlert:
Reducing greenhouse gases may not be enough to slow climate change
"Most large U.S. cities, including Atlanta, are warming at more than twice the rate of the planet as a whole -- a rate that is mostly attributable to land use change. As a result, emissions reduction programs -- like the cap and trade program under consideration by the U.S. Congress -- may not sufficiently slow climate change in large cities where most people live and where land use change is the dominant driver of warming." According to Stone's research, slowing the rate of forest loss around the world, and regenerating forests where lost, could significantly slow the pace of global warming.... Stone recommends slowing what he terms the "green loss effect" through the planting of millions of trees in urbanized areas and through the protection and regeneration of global forests outside of urbanized regions. ...


Hot time, weather in the city, back of my neck's gettin' dirty and gritty.

ApocaDoc
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Wed, Oct 21, 2009
from Daily Climate:
Forest's death brings higher temps, researchers suspect
Forests of dead beetle-kill could be speeding regional climate change, increasing temperatures and decreasing rainfalls across the American West.... [Tony] Tezak has watched in horror the past three years as mountain pine beetles have infested an estimated 900,000 acres of lodgepole pines in the forest. "The threat shows no signs of abating," he said. The infestation turns the pine needles brittle and leaves the dead trees pockmarked with hundreds of tiny boreholes where the beetles tunneled in to lay eggs and eat the moist inner bark. Tezak estimates more than a third of the national forest's 3 million trees could be dead by the time the current outbreak subsides. But there might be a more consequential impact to the carnage: The beetle kill could be accelerating regional climate change by increasing temperatures and decreasing rainfalls in Colorado, Wyoming and northern New Mexico. ...


Yesterday... all our troubles seemed so far away...

ApocaDoc
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Fri, Oct 16, 2009
from Wall Street Journal:
Aspen Trees Die Across the West
[A] mysterious ailment -- or perhaps a combination of factors -- is killing hundreds of thousands of acres of the trees from Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona through Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and into Canada, according to the U.S. government and independent scientists.... That phenomenon was named Sudden Aspen Decline, or SAD, but scientists say they don't fully understand it. It could get worse. "SAD is progressing at an exponential rate," said Wayne Shepperd, who led research into aspen decline at the U.S. Forest Service before retiring to teach at Colorado State University. And it has left many locals reeling. "My God, it was a sad year," said landscape photographer Richard Voninski. ...


Great acronym, guys!

ApocaDoc
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Fri, Oct 2, 2009
from University of Royal Holloway London via ScienceDaily:
Ancient Rainforests Resilient To Climate Change
Climate change wreaked havoc on the Earth's first rainforests but they quickly bounced back, scientists reveal. The findings of the research team, led by Dr Howard Falcon-Lang from Royal Holloway, University of London, are based on spectacular discoveries of 300-million-year-old rainforests in coal mines in Illinois, USA. Preserved over vast areas, these fossilized rainforests in Illinois are the largest of their kind in the world. The rocks at this site - in which the rainforests occur - contain evidence for climate fluctuations. During cold "ice ages", fossils show that the tropics dried out and rainforests were pushed to the brink of extinction. However, rainforests managed to recover and return to their former glory. ...


Let's try and kill 'em off for good this time!

ApocaDoc
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Thu, Oct 1, 2009
from Riverhead News-Review:
When dead trees attack
The woods along Flanders Road are filled with dead trees, and transportation and environmental officials worry that motorists may not be as fortunate in the future when trees collapse. The Pine Barrens Commission estimates that 14,000 acres of the 100,000-acre Central Pine Barrens region, which covers parts of Southampton, Riverhead and Brookhaven, are covered with dead trees. "There's something wrong with the trees and it's extensive," said Eileen Peters, a spokeswoman for the Sate Department of Transportation.... Cornell believes multiple factors have contributed to the oak die-off.... ...


Looks like we're not at fault! Just a natural phenomenon. Whew!

ApocaDoc
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Thu, Sep 24, 2009
from Washington Post:
Environmentalists Seek to Wipe Out Plush Toilet Paper
It is a fight over toilet paper: the kind that is blanket-fluffy and getting fluffier so fast that manufacturers are running out of synonyms for "soft" (Quilted Northern Ultra Plush is the first big brand to go three-ply and three-adjective). It's a menace, environmental groups say -- and a dark-comedy example of American excess. The reason, they say, is that plush U.S. toilet paper is usually made by chopping down and grinding up trees that were decades or even a century old. They want Americans, like Europeans, to wipe with tissue made from recycled paper goods. It has been slow going. Big toilet-paper makers say that they've taken steps to become more Earth-friendly but that their customers still want the soft stuff, so they're still selling it. ...


If we in the US don't make this change, I daresay we are -- literally -- assholes.

ApocaDoc
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Tue, Sep 22, 2009
from Wyoming Tribune Eagle, from Desdemona Despair:
Beetle attack to change our [forests and] world
The tree looks alive, but it probably won't be for long. The brown cadavers of lodgepoles past stand among smaller, greener pines, testifying to the unavoidable truth: Change -- big change -- is coming. "The general feeling is this will end when the food supply runs out," Frost says. Looking out on the variegated landscape of greens, reds and browns, two things become clear. One: This is one of the biggest ecological changes we have ever seen. It's daunting and scary and -- for the experts -- exciting all at the same time. A plague of beetles, including one that just now is taking its turn, is cutting a swath through the national forests in north-central Colorado and into Wyoming. At the low end, it's possible that just 10 percent of large lodgepole pines will be left. It's also possible that they all will be gone. But other and smaller trees suddenly are being chewed up as well. Where that leads remains to be seen. The implications of all this are impossible to pin down, but they could affect each and every one of us. They possibly include an increase in global warming, large-scale wildfires and big changes in water supply. And then there is this fact: These forests will never look the same again. Two: This change is inevitable. Try as we might, there's no stopping it. ...


What a lot of carbon-offsets waiting to be planted!

ApocaDoc
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Fri, Sep 11, 2009
from IRIN News (UN):
MALAWI: Mayi Chambo, 'We have destroyed a lot in a short period'
Degradation of the environment is reaching alarming levels in Nkaya in southern Malawi, where people have to walk ever greater distances to collect firewood and water. Mayi Chambo, a village head in Nkaya, blamed charcoal makers for the deforestation. This is her story. "In the 1980s we had lush forests here. The rains used to come in time, the soil was fertile and water was not a problem. It was after 1994 when we started experiencing problems that have to do with the environment. People from other areas began settling here in search for fertile soil and products from our forests. "Soon the trees started to disappear -- people wanted rafters for their newly built houses. Even the demand for fuel wood increased because the population had also increased. People began to clear forests for new fields.... "They are lured by the money they generate from selling charcoal in the cities, especially in Blantyre [Malawi's second city]. But should we let these people destroy everything because of a bag of charcoal that costs K500 (US$3.57) only? That is not acceptable.... "If we continue to destroy our forests at the pace we are going, we will soon have a desert here. The signs are already showing. We do not get the rains in good time, and when we have the rains they are always associated with flooding. The soil needs a lot of fertilizer for the crops to produce, but how many families can afford fertilizer here? Most of us are poor. "We have destroyed a lot in a short period of time and we are paying heavily for that." ...


Microcosms within microcosms...

ApocaDoc
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Sat, Aug 29, 2009
from Chronicle Herald (Canada):
Bugs, fire twin threat in a warming world
"As far as the eye can see, it's all infested," forester Rob Legare said, looking out over the thick woods of the Alsek River valley. Beetles and fire, twin plagues, are consuming northern forests in what scientists say is a preview of the future, in a century growing warmer, as the land grows drier, trees grow weaker and pests, abetted by milder winters, grow stronger. Dying, burning forests would then only add to the warming.... While average temperatures globally rose 0.74 degrees Celsius in the past century, the far north experienced warming at twice that rate or greater. And "eight of the last 10 summers have been extreme wildfire seasons in Siberia," American researcher Amber Soja pointed out by telephone from central Siberia.... American forest ecologist Scott Green worries about a "domino effect."... Flannigan worries, too, that future fires smouldering through the carbon-heavy peatlands that undergird much of the boreal region would pour unparalleled amounts of carbon dioxide, the main global-warming gas, into the skies, feeding an unstoppable cycle. ...


"What are you, a doomer?"
"Nope, just thinking it through."

ApocaDoc
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Tue, Aug 25, 2009
from University of Adelaide, via EurekAlert:
World's last great forest under threat: New study
The world's last remaining "pristine" forest -- the boreal forest across large stretches of Russia, Canada and other northern countries -- is under increasing threat, a team of international researchers has found.... The researchers... have called for the urgent preservation of existing boreal forests in order to secure biodiversity and prevent the loss of this major global carbon sink.... The boreal forest comprises about one-third of the world's forested area and one-third of the world's stored carbon, covering a large proportion of Russia, Canada, Alaska and Scandinavia.... "Much world attention has focused on the loss and degradation of tropical forests over the past three decades, but now the boreal forest is poised to become the next Amazon," says Associate Professor Bradshaw, from the University of Adelaide's Environment Institute. ...


I'm not liking that comparison at all.

ApocaDoc
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Mon, Aug 17, 2009
from University of Virginia, via EurekAlert:
Agricultural methods of early civilizations may have altered global climate, study suggests
Massive burning of forests for agriculture thousands of years ago may have increased atmospheric carbon dioxide enough to alter global climate and usher in a warming trend that continues today, according to a new study that appears online Aug. 17 in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.... He said that early populations likely used a land-clearing method that involved burning forests, then planting crop seed among the dead stumps in the enriched soil. They would use a large plot until the yield began to decline, and then would burn off another area of forest for planting. They would continue this form of rotation farming, ever expanding the cleared areas as their populations grew. They possibly cleared five or more times more land than they actually farmed at any given time.... Humans continue to add excessive levels of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, contributing to a global warming trend, Ruddiman said. ...


At least now we can blame our progenitors instead of ourselves!

ApocaDoc
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Tue, Aug 11, 2009
from Environmental Research Web:
Scientists expect wildfires to increase as climate warms in the coming decades
In their pioneering work, Logan and her collaborators investigated the consequences of climate change on future forest fires and on air quality in the western United States. Previous studies have probed the links between climate change and fire severity in the West and elsewhere. The Harvard study represents the first attempt to quantify the impact of future wildfires on the air we breathe. "Warmer temperatures can dry out underbrush, leading to a more serious conflagration once a fire is started by lightening or human activity," says Logan. "Because smoke and other particles from fires adversely affect air quality, an increase in wildfires could have large impacts on human health." ... Using a series of models, the scientists predict that the geographic area typically burned by wildfires in the western United States could increase by about 50 percent by the 2050s due mainly to rising temperatures. The greatest increases in area burned (75–175 percent) would occur in the forests of the Pacific Northwest and the Rocky Mountains. ...


If you can't stand the heat, get out of... um...

ApocaDoc
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Tue, Aug 11, 2009
from CBC:
Acid rain falling on Saskatchewan from Alberta oilsands, says lobby
The Saskatchewan Environmental Society issued a news release Monday to say that data, obtained by the society from the Saskatchewan environment ministry, reveals that rain falling in the La Loche area of the province's far north has a pH level that falls under the definition for acid rain. The generally accepted threshold for normal rain is a pH of 5.6. Environment Canada has determined any value less than five may be termed acid rain. Ann Coxworth, a spokeswoman for the environmental society, said data from the Saskatchewan government shows the average pH level for rain and snow in the La Loche area is 4.96. "We have now a combination of that region being the most sensitive forest soil in Canada, most sensitive to damage by acid precipitation and an increase in the acidity of the precipitation," Coxworth told CBC News on Monday. "So it seems to us that is a situation that really needs to be attended to." ...


In Canada, such politeness might get results!

ApocaDoc
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Mon, Aug 3, 2009
from United States Geological Survey via ScienceDaily:
Large Trees Declining In Yosemite National Park, U.S.
Large trees have declined in Yosemite National Park during the 20th century, and warmer climate conditions may play a role. The number of large-diameter trees in the park declined 24 percent between the 1930s and 1990s. U.S. Geological Survey and University of Washington scientists compared the earliest records of large-diameter trees densities from 1932-1936 to the most recent records from 1988-1999. A decline in large trees means habitat loss and possible reduction in species such as spotted owls, mosses, orchids and fishers (a carnivore related to weasels). Fewer new trees will grow in the landscape because large trees are a seed source for the surrounding landscape. Large-diameter trees generally resist fire more than small-diameter trees, so fewer large trees could also slow forest regeneration after fires. ...


Say it ain't so, Sam!

ApocaDoc
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Wed, Jul 29, 2009
from Mongabay:
Burning by Asia Pulp and Paper contributes to haze in Indonesia, Malaysia
One quarter of fire hotspots recorded in the Indonesia province of Riau on the island of Sumatra in 2009 have occurred in concessions affiliated with Sinar Mas Group's Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), according to new analysis by Eyes on the Forest, a coalition of environmental groups. The fires are contributing to the "haze" that is affecting air quality and causing health problems in Malaysia. The analysis of NASA satellite imagery by Eyes on the Forest reveals that APP continues to clear forest in the Giam Siak Kecil-Bukit Batu, a block of which was recently declared a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.... "Between 1996 and 2007, APP had pulped 177,000 hectares -- 65 percent of all natural forest lost in the ecosystem," added Nursamsu of WWF-Indonesia.... APP plans to clear up to 200,000 hectares of Bukit Tigapuluh. ...


Hey, can we get to that "paper-free office" anytime soon?

ApocaDoc
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Wed, Jul 15, 2009
from CBC News (Canada):
Pine beetles continue to infest Alberta trees
Last winter's cold temperatures did kill some mountain pine beetles in Alberta, but it wasn't enough to reduce the threat of additional infestations, according to recent field surveys. "These results show we need more than cold winters to be successful in our fight against pine beetles in our forests," Sustainable Resource Development Minister Ted Morton said Tuesday in a release.... The objective is to minimize the spread of beetles north and south along the eastern slopes, and to prevent beetles from spreading east in the boreal forest.... Mountain pine beetles threaten the health of six million hectares of pine forest in Alberta, the release states. ...


Ah, to be a pine beetle, with such a smorgasbord in front of me!

ApocaDoc
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Sun, Jun 14, 2009
from The Economist:
REDDy and waiting
THESE are critical times for trees. In some places -- like Peru, where police and indigenous folk are doing battle -- the future of the forests is being determined by lethal force. Guyana is seeking money from the rich world to help keep most of its land forested. In other places, eco-warriors merely have to hack their way through a thicket of arcane technicalities. One such place is Bonn, where diplomats from most countries in the world are haggling over financial incentives to keep trees intact... The talks are working on details of an idea known as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD): it aims to fold the saving of trees into a wider UN effort to cool the world. At the moment, the UN system offers no rewards for leaving trees alone. ...


A la Pink Floyd, sing with me: Hey, teacher, leave them trees alone!

ApocaDoc
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Wed, Jun 10, 2009
from Mongabay:
NASA photos reveal destruction of 99 percent of rainforest park in Rwanda
Satellite images released by NASA show nearly complete destruction of Rwanda's Gishwati Forest between 1986 and 2001. Deforestation of the forest reserve is largely the result of subsistence harvesting and cultivation by refugees in the aftermath of the country's 1994 genocide. Overall only 600 hectares of Gishwati's original 100,000 hectares of forest remain, a loss of 99.4 percent. "According to UNEP, the reserve's forests were largely intact in 1978, and substantial forest cover still remained in 1986. But in the 15 years that elapsed between these images -- a time that spanned the country's tragic genocide -- wave after wave of refugees arrived in Gishwati Forest and began clearing it, often for subsistence farming," wrote Michon Scott and Rebecca Lindsey on NASA's Earth Observatory site. "By 2001, only a small circular patch of native forest remained -- 1,500 acres of the forest's original 250,000." ...


I think I now need a microscope.

ApocaDoc
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Tue, Jun 2, 2009
from Bloomberg News:
Wood Is New Coal as Polluters Use Carbon-Eating Trees
Power companies are burning more trees because the renewable fuel can be cheaper than coal and ignited without needing permits to release carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming.... Industrialized nations drew 4 percent of their energy from biomass in 2006, the most recent data available from the IEA. That was the equivalent of about 1.1 billion barrels of oil. Chips of wood stumps and branches, heated to 400 degrees Celsius (750 degrees Fahrenheit) at the Novus furnace, are as efficient as coal and cheaper: European Union rules don’t require carbon-dioxide permits because the trees absorbed a like amount of the gas before harvest, making them carbon-neutral.... Trees like pine retain an advantage over wind and solar energy as being readily convertible into power, heat and transportation fuel. "We're really only at the beginning of using biomass efficiently," German Green Party member Juergen Trittin, a former environment minister and parliamentarian, said in an interview. ...


Carbon neutral is better than coal's carbon horrendous... but can we get "carbon positive"?

ApocaDoc
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Fri, May 22, 2009
from BBC:
Yosemite's giant trees disappearing
The oldest and largest trees within California's world famous Yosemite National Park are disappearing. Climate change appears to be a major cause of the loss. The revelation comes from an analysis of data collected over 60 years by forest ecologists. They say one worrying aspect of the decline is that it is happening within one of most protected forests within the US, suggesting that even more large trees may be dying off elsewhere.... Including 21 species of tree recorded by both surveys, the density of large diameter trees fell from 45 trees per square hectare to 34 trees, a decline of 24 percent in just over 60 years. White Firs (Abies concolor), Lodgepole Pines (Pinus contorta) and Jeffrey Pines (Pinus jeffreyi) were affected the most. Smaller size trees were unaffected. ...


I don't like hearing ol' Sam's voice saying "the bigger they are..."

ApocaDoc
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Thu, May 21, 2009
from Globe and Mail (Canada):
Save the birds? Save their habitat
In fact, migratory songbirds are experiencing one of the most precipitous declines of any animal group on earth. We have already seen startling declines in the populations of some species that depend on the boreal forest. The olive-sided flycatcher and the Canada warbler, once common boreal breeding species, are now listed as threatened by the Committee for the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. Trends in long-term breeding-bird surveys have revealed population declines in flycatchers, boreal chickadees and bay-breasted warblers. In fact, more than half the birds profiled in the National Audubon Society's "20 common birds in decline" list depend on Canada's boreal forest as a breeding ground.... Yet despite its global significance, just 12 per cent of Canada's boreal forest is currently protected, while almost 500 million hectares have been handed over to industry. Oil and gas exploration, logging, mining, road building and hydro development threaten to ravage boreal regions inhabited by birds and other wildlife. ...


Saving their habitat seems so... inefficient. Can't we just keep 'em in cages?

ApocaDoc
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Thu, May 7, 2009
from BBC (UK):
Wild fruit trees face extinction
The wild ancestors of common domestic fruit trees are in danger of becoming extinct, scientists have warned.... These disease-resistant and climate-tolerant fruit trees could play a role in our future food security. But in the last 50 years, about 90 percent of the forests have been destroyed, according to conservation charity, Fauna and Flora International.... "A lot of our domestic fruit supply comes from a very narrow genetic base," she continued. "Given the threats posed to food supplies by disease and the changing climate, we may need to go back to these species and include them in breeding programmes." ...


Most of my ancestors are already dead. What's the big deal?

ApocaDoc
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Sat, May 2, 2009
from US Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station via ScienceDaily:
New Southern California Beetle Killing Oaks
U.S. Forest Service scientists have completed a study on a beetle that was first detected in California in 2004, but has now attacked 67 percent of the oak trees in an area 30 miles east of San Diego. Their report appears in the current issue of The Pan-Pacific Entomologist and focuses on Agrilus coxalis, a wood-boring beetle so rare it does not even have an accepted common name. Scientists have proposed the Entomological Society of America common names committee call it the goldspotted oak borer. ...


That's too nice a name! Let's just call it an "ugly stupid bug" or something...

ApocaDoc
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Sat, Apr 25, 2009
from Daily Wildcat (Arizona):
Pinon Pine and Climate Change
Researchers at the UA Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department, successfully isolated the impact of increasing temperature on the pinon pine, one of North America's most abundant species of pine tree, and the experiment produced some worrisome results. "Widespread die-off of pinon pine throughout the southwest will occur five times faster in future droughts if the climate warms by four degrees Celsius," said Henry Adams, the lead researcher of the experiment. This equates to a 28 percent higher die-off rate than trees that were used as a control at cooler temperatures. "The increased mortality rate of pinon pines due to higher temperatures will increase the release of carbon into the atmosphere, affect erosion rates and increase the likelihood of forest fires in the southwestern United States," Adams said. ...


I'd suggest badgebuttons that read "Save the Pinon," but it'd get misinterpreted.

ApocaDoc
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Fri, Apr 17, 2009
from Agence France-Presse:
Forests could flip from sink to source of CO2: study
Forests that today soak up a quarter of carbon pollution spewed into the atmosphere could soon become a net source of CO2 if Earth's surface warms by another two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), cautions a report to be presented Friday at the UN. Plants both absorb and exhale carbon dioxide, but healthy forests -- especially those in the tropics -- take up far more of the greenhouse gas than they give off. When they are damaged, get sick or die, that stored carbon is released....Authored by 35 of the world's top forestry scientists, the study provides the first global assessment of the ability of forests to adapt to climate change. Manmade warming to date -- about 0.7 C since the mid-19th century -- has already slowed regeneration of tropical forests, and made them more vulnerable to fire, disease and insect infestations. Increasingly violent and frequent storms have added to the destruction. ...


From sink.... to sunk.

ApocaDoc
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Tue, Apr 14, 2009
from TIME Magazine:
The Dire Fate of Forests in a Warmer World
In a new study published April 13 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), scientists at UA found that water-deprived pinon pines raised in temperatures about 7 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) above current averages died 28 percent faster than pines raised in today's climate. It's the first study to isolate the specific impact of temperature on tree mortality during drought -- and it indicates that in a warmer world trees are likely to be significantly more vulnerable to the threat of drought than they are today. ...


We call it ... mortreelity.

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Wed, Apr 8, 2009
from Charlotte Observer:
New beetle enlisted in fight to save Ky. forests
An aphid-like insect no bigger than an ink pen dot has been turning picturesque hemlock forests from Maine to Georgia into grotesque collections of barren trunks and broken branches. Despite foresters' efforts to stop them, woolly adelgids have advanced south through the Appalachians like an invading army, plundering the majestic evergreens. Having seen the carnage in other states, foresters in Kentucky are taking a new defensive tack, enlisting a species of predatory beetles native to the Pacific Northwest to devour the invaders. Can the tiny beetles, barely larger than poppy seeds, save Kentucky's hemlocks? ...


And if that doesn't work, they call always bring in the cane toads!

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Sun, Apr 5, 2009
from London Daily Telegraph:
Trees are growing faster and could buy time to halt global warming
The phenomenon has been discovered in a variety of flora, ranging from tropical rainforests to British sugar beet crops. It means they are soaking up at least some of the billions of tons of CO2 released into the atmosphere by humans that would otherwise be accelerating the rate of climate change.... they would be removing nearly 5 billion tons of CO2 a year from the atmosphere... Humans are believed to generate about 50 billion tons of the gas each year. ...


Fantastic! Then let's pump out MORE carbons!

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Thu, Apr 2, 2009
from New Scientist:
Rainforests may pump winds worldwide
THE acres upon acres of lush tropical forest in the Amazon and tropical Africa are often referred to as the planet's lungs. But what if they are also its heart? This is exactly what a couple of meteorologists claim in a controversial new theory that questions our fundamental understanding of what drives the weather. They believe vast forests generate winds that help pump water around the planet. If correct, the theory would explain how the deep interiors of forested continents get as much rain as the coast, and how most of Australia turned from forest to desert. It suggests that much of North America could become desert - even without global warming. The idea makes it even more vital that we recognise the crucial role forests play in the well-being of the planet. ...


Forests may also be the earth's brain.

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Fri, Mar 13, 2009
from Toronto Star:
Unstoppable beetles to kill every city ash tree
Toronto's ash trees could be gone in as little as 10 years, killed by an unstoppable beetle that is spreading rapidly across the province, the city's forestry czar says. "It's the elimination of a genus from this part of the continent, which is absolutely staggering," said Richard Ubbens, the city's director of urban forestry. "It will wipe out all ash trees." The emerald ash borer beetle, a shimmering blue-green insect native to parts of east and central Asia, has been eroding the ash population of the northeastern United States and southwestern Ontario for years. Larvae eat serpentine pathways just beneath the bark, which slowly cut off the flow of water and nutrients within the tree; death may take years...."There's no point in even trying anymore to eradicate it," Ubbens said of the beetle, noting that by the time an infestation is noticeable, the tree is beyond saving. ...


These badboys sound absolutely demonic!

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Wed, Mar 11, 2009
from Christian Science Monitor:
Canada’s carbon sink has sprung a leak
Billions of tiny mountain pine beetles are treating Canada’s boreal forest like a 3,000-mile-long salad bar, transforming a key absorber of carbon dioxide greenhouse gas into a CO2 emitter instead. In just a decade, exploding beetle populations and a rise in wildfires have flipped Canada’s boreal forest from its longstanding role as a natural carbon vacuum – sucking up 55 million or more tons of CO2 annually – to that of a giant tailpipe emitting up to 245 million tons of CO2 each year, according to the Canadian Forest Service. That sharp about-face is raising questions about the future of northern forests worldwide that are being hit hard by global warming – including Russia’s massive boreal expanse, where wildfires have risen dramatically. ...


From Dudley Do-Right to Dudley Do-Wrong!

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Fri, Mar 6, 2009
from London Independent:
Revenge of the rainforest
It covers an area 25 times bigger than Britain, is home to a bewildering concentration of flora and fauna and is often described as the "lungs of the world" for its ability to absorb vast amounts of carbon dioxide through its immense photosynthetic network of trees and leaves. The Amazon rainforest is one of the biggest and most important living stores of carbon on the planet through its ability to convert atmospheric carbon dioxide into solid carbon, kept locked in the trunks of rainforest trees for centuries. But this massive natural "sink" for carbon cannot be relied on to continue absorbing carbon dioxide in perpetuity, a study shows. Researchers have found that, for a period in 2005, the Amazon rainforest actually slipped into reverse gear and started to emit more carbon than it absorbed. Four years ago, a sudden and intense drought in the Amazonian dry season created the sort of conditions that give climate scientists nightmares. Instead of being a net absorber of about two billion tons of carbon dioxide, the forest became a net producer of the greenhouse gas, to the tune of about three billion tons. The additional quantity of carbon dioxide left in the atmosphere after the drought - some five billion tons - exceeded the annual man-made emissions of Europe and Japan combined. What happened in the dry season of 2005 was a stark reminder of how quickly the factors affecting global warming can change. ...


So the Rainforest... is a Drainforest!

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Sun, Mar 1, 2009
from Guardian (UK):
American taste for soft toilet paper 'worse than driving Hummers'
The tenderness of the delicate American buttock is causing more environmental devastation than the country's love of gas-guzzling cars, fast food or McMansions, according to green campaigners. At fault, they say, is the US public's insistence on extra-soft, quilted and multi-ply products when they use the bathroom. "This is a product that we use for less than three seconds and the ecological consequences of manufacturing it from trees is enormous," said Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defence Council.... More than 98 percent of the toilet roll sold in America comes from virgin forests, said Hershkowitz. In Europe and Latin America, up to 40 percent of toilet paper comes from recycled products. Greenpeace this week launched a cut-out-and-keep ecological ranking of toilet paper products.... Those brands, which put quilting and pockets of air between several layers of paper, are especially damaging to the environment. ...


Here I sit / scarcely trying / while the earth / is busy frying.

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Mon, Feb 2, 2009
from New Scientist:
Drought warning as the tropics expand
California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, warned on Thursday that his state "is headed toward one of the worst water crises in its history". Now new research suggests that the three-year drought in the Golden State may be a consequence of the expanding tropics, which are gradually growing as human emissions of greenhouse gases warm the planet....the simplest and most easily tracked characteristic of the tropics lies high above, at the boundary between the troposphere, where weather systems form, and the stratosphere above it. Over the tropics, the tropopause, as this boundary is known, tends to lie several kilometres higher up in the atmosphere. The change in altitude is relatively easy to measure. "It is much more difficult to detect significant changes in the lower levels of the atmosphere and surface rainfall pattern," says Jian Lu of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. ...


The "tropopause"... Is that when the troposphere experiences menopause?

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Sun, Feb 1, 2009
from San Francisco Chronicle:
Unilever blocking deforestation for palm oil
The word came last spring at a climate change conference here. Unilever, the world's largest buyer of palm oil, would publicly call for a moratorium on deforestation by Indonesian growers of the coveted oil used in food, soaps, detergents, cosmetics and biofuel. The expansion of oil palm plantations is slowly destroying Kalimantan, the Indonesian side of Borneo and the habitat of the endangered Bornean orangutan, environmental activists say. During the past two decades, an estimated two million acres have been felled annually in Borneo, which Indonesia shares with Malaysia and Brunei, according to the environmental group, Friends of the Earth. But with Jakarta planning to more than double the acreage of oil palm trees by 2011, activists are scrambling to form new alliances with the palm oil industry to stave off more destruction. They say the potential deforestation in Borneo - which has one of the world's largest standing rain forests - amounts to a "climate bomb" in global warming from increased carbon levels released into the atmosphere by fallen trees. ...


You'd think something called "palm oil" wouldn't be so horrifying.

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Fri, Jan 23, 2009
from BBC (UK):
Climate shift 'killing US trees'
Old growth trees in western parts of the US are probably being killed as a result of regional changes to the climate, a study has suggested. Analysis of undisturbed forests showed that the trees' mortality rate had doubled since 1955, researchers said. They warned that the loss of old growth trees could have implications for the areas' ecology and for the amount of carbon that the forests could store.... "Because mortality increased in small trees, the overall increase in mortality rates cannot be attributed to ageing of large trees," they added.... "We may only be talking about an annual tree mortality rate changing from 1 percent a year to 2 percent, but over time a lot of small numbers add up," said co-author Professor Mark Harmon from Oregon State University. He feared that the die-back was the first sign of a "feedback loop" developing.... Another member of the team, Dr Nate Stephenson, said increasing tree deaths could indicate a forest that was vulnerable to sudden, widespread die-back. ...


I so was hoping it was just the Baby Boomers dying off.

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Tue, Jan 13, 2009
from Soil Science Society of America, via EurekAlert:
Forest Soil, Long After Most Acidic Rain, Remains Acidic
Following the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970 and 1990 acidic deposition in North America has declined significantly since its peak in 1973. Consequently, research has shifted from studying the effects of acidic deposition to the recovery of these aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.... The researchers believe that the observed trend in soil acidification is likely to continue until acidic inputs decline to the point where soil base cation pools are sufficient to neutralize them. Warby concluded, "Until then we are likely to see the continued sluggish chemical recovery of surface waters and a continuing threat to the health of forests, with additional declines in base status likely to increase the number of sites exhibiting lower forest productivity and or vulnerability to winter injury." ...


This tortured language means until we get the acid rain reduced lots farther, the soil and water will remain acidic, with bad consequences.
We think.

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Thu, Jan 8, 2009
from Christian Science Monitor:
As beetle invasion rages, a debate over logs
Tromping through a snowy thicket of lodgepole pine, forester Tim Love identifies the telltale signs that the trees are, in his words, "dead already but don't know it."... These are the visible scars of massive beetle destruction that now stretches from Colorado to British Columbia. Soon, wind will likely finish off the pockmarked lodgepoles, sending them crashing to the forest floor, says Mr. Love, a district ranger in the Lolo National Forest in Montana. That's a fire hazard headache for the forest service -- and, some say, a missed opportunity.... An estimated 2.4 million acres across five northern US states show visible signs of trees killed by the beetles, according to data from Gregg DeNitto with the US Forest Service in Missoula. ...


Monster fires are on the horizon...

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Fri, Dec 12, 2008
from Greenpeace, via Mongabay:
Computer hackers are helping illegal loggers destroy the Amazon rainforest
Computer hackers are helping illegal loggers destroy the Amazon rainforest by breaking into the Brazilian government's timber tracking system and altering the records so as to increase logging allocations, reports Greenpeace.... "By hacking into the permit system, these companies have made their timber shipments appear legal and compliant with the forest management plans. But in reality, they're trading illegal timber which is making the problem of deforestation worse, and a lack of control and policing in the areas they're logging means they think they can get away with it." ...


Something tells me a backdoor was left open on this system.

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Wed, Dec 10, 2008
from New Scientist:
Darfur crisis is stripping the environment
Tree cover has become so sparse in some areas that Darfuris often have to travel more than 75 kilometres from their camps to find enough wood to sell or use for fuel, the report added. "We're now seeing extreme stress on the environment around many of the camps and the major towns in Darfur," said UNEP's Sudan country director Clive Bates in a statement. "We need to plant millions of trees and introduce new technologies for construction and energy as quickly as humanly possible."... Nyala's famous Kunduwa hardwood forest had been destroyed by extensive logging from 2005 to 2007 said the report, adding "its destruction is regarded by many as a tragedy that could have been avoided". The report called for development organisations to launch environmental awareness campaigns in the region, and to pilot the use of alternative fuel sources and building materials. ...


Please let this not be a harbinger of our own desperate future.

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Wed, Dec 3, 2008
from Mongabay:
Agricultural firms cut incentives for Amazon deforestation
As grain prices plummet and concerns over cash mount, agricultural giants are cutting loans to Brazilian farmers, reports the Wall Street Journal. Tighter farm credit may be contributing to a recent slowing in deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, where agriculture is an increasingly important driver of forest clearing.... Now strapped for cash and facing rising risks in the credit markets, agricultural firms including Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., Bunge Ltd. and Cargill Inc., and equipment suppliers like Deere & Co. are reducing loans and advance cash payments to farmers at a time when production and borrowing costs are rising. "As the volatile commodities market and the global financial crisis have increased the risk and expense of doing business in Brazil, big grain companies are reining in lending," writes Etter. ...


You mean the invisible hand of the market might actually do something good?

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Tue, Dec 2, 2008
from Mongabay:
Brazil to cut Amazon deforestation by 70 percent to fight global warming
Brazil will aim to cut its deforestation rate by 70 percent by 2018 under its plan to reduce emissions from forest clearing, Environment Minister Carlos Minc. The plan will be financed by the country's Amazon Fund which relies on voluntary contributions from governments, corporations, and wealthy individuals. Norway has pledged up to a billion dollars to the fund depending on Brazil's effectiveness in reducing deforestation. Contributors are not eligible for carbon credits. ...


"Aims"? "Voluntary contributions"? "Plan"? "Reduce"? I'm not excited by weasel words.

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Mon, Dec 1, 2008
from Mongabay:
Amazon deforestation rises slightly to 4,600 square miles in 2008
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon increased slightly for the August 2007-July 2008 period, reports the country's National Institute of Space Research (INPE). The rise is the first since 2004 when 27,379 square kilometers were destroyed, but is lower than forecast. The 2008 figure is the second-lowest annual loss since 1991.... Regional climate trends indicate that large swathes of the Amazon are increasingly susceptible to drought and fire. Coupled with continued deforestation, degradation, and fragmentation, some researchers say the Amazon is approaching a critical tipping point which could see more than half of the forest damaged or destroyed within a generation. ...


Luckily, we can just grow it back whenever we want!

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Fri, Nov 28, 2008
from Reuters:
Forests under threat from climate change: study
OSLO -- Forests are extremely vulnerable to climate change that is set to bring more wildfires and floods and quick action is needed to aid millions of poor people who depend on forests, a study said on Thursday. The report, by the Jakarta-based Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), urged delegates at a U.N. climate meeting in Poznan, Poland, from December 1-12 to work out new ways to safeguard forests in developing nations. It said climate change could have impacts ranging from a drying out of cloud forests in mountainous regions of Central America -- making wildfires more frequent -- to swamping mangroves in Asia as seas rise. ...


Plus, there will be fewer trees to hug!

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Tue, Nov 18, 2008
from New York Times:
Bark Beetles Kill Millions of Acres of Trees in West
...From New Mexico to British Columbia, the region's signature pine forests are succumbing to a huge infestation of mountain pine beetles that are turning a blanket of green forest into a blanket of rust red. Montana has lost a million acres of trees to the beetles, and in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming the situation is worse....In Wyoming and Colorado in 2006 there were a million acres of dead trees. Last year it was 1.5 million. This year it is expected to total over two million. In the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta, the problem is most severe. It is the largest known insect infestation in the history of North America, officials said. ...


If a tree is bitten by a bark beetle in the forest, can you hear it ... scream?

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Sat, Oct 25, 2008
from San Diego Union-Tribune:
Drought, beetles killing forests
Bugs and diseases are killing trees at an alarming rate across the West, from the spruce forests of Alaska to the oak woodlands near the San Diego-Tijuana border. Several scientists said the growing threat appears linked to global warming. That means tree mortality is likely to rise in places as the continent warms, potentially altering landscapes in ways that increase erosion, fan wildfires and diminish the biodiversity of Western forests. ...


Treehuggers, unite! Your bosom buddies need you.

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Fri, Oct 24, 2008
from Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, via EurekAlert:
Diversity of trees in Ecuador's Amazon rainforest defies simple explanation
Trees in a hyper-diverse tropical rainforest interact with each other and their environment to create and maintain diversity, researchers report in the Oct. 24 issue of the journal Science.... It is difficult to determine the effects of climate change, habitat fragmentation and species extinctions on life's diversity without a coherent model of how communities are organized; but a unified theory of diversity patterns in ecological communities remains elusive. The most complex biological systems -- such as tropical rainforests -- are the most important testing grounds for theories that attempt to generalize across ecological communities; as they pose the greatest challenge. At Yasuni, in addition to the 600 species of birds and 170 of mammals, there are approximately 1,100 species of trees in the 25 hectare plot -- more than in all of the U.S. and Canada, combined. ...


Let's hope we can figure it out before the Amazon has been turned into cattle ranches.

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Mon, Sep 29, 2008
from Globe and Mail (Canada):
Nurseries replenishing B.C.'s forests wither on the vine
This year she grew a crop of 22 million young trees, which she harvested and sent off to market. Logging companies bought those seedlings and so did tree-planting contractors. With British Columbia's forests in a massive die-off because of a pine beetle infestation, Ms. Dawes's agri-business should be thriving. But it isn't. It is struggling to survive because of a downturn in the forest industry -- and because the federal government no longer recognizes silviculture as farming.... Silviculture operators, who until then had been covered by CAIS, thought they would simply join other farmers in a smooth transition to the new programs. Then they found out that not only had they lost their status as farmers - but they also had to pay back any funds they'd been given under CAIS, dating back to 2003. ...


When bureaucracy confronts changing reality, sometimes there is, er, a disconnect.

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Thu, Sep 25, 2008
from National Science Foundation:
Pine Bark beetles affecting more than forests
Scientists suspect they are also altering local weather patterns and air quality. A new international field project, led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., is exploring how trees and other vegetation influence rainfall, temperatures, smog and other aspects of the atmosphere.... "Forests help control the atmosphere, and there's a big difference between the impacts of a living forest and a dead forest," says NCAR scientist Alex Guenther, a principal investigator on the project. "With a dead forest, we may get different rainfall patterns, for example." ...


What? The fingerbone is connected to the footbone?

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Wed, Sep 24, 2008
from Associated Press:
Colorful study probes climate change, fall foliage
UNDERHILL, Vt. - Could climate change dull the blazing palette of New England's fall foliage? The answer could have serious implications for one of the region's signature attractions, which draws thousands of "leaf peepers" every autumn. Biologists at the University of Vermont's Proctor Maple Research Center will do some leaf peeping of their own to find out -- studying how temperature affects the development of autumn colors and whether the warming climate could mute them, prolong the foliage viewing season or delay it. ...


We could always issue rose-colored glasses.

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Thu, Sep 11, 2008
from The Economist:
Adapt or die
Two things have changed attitudes. One is evidence that global warming is happening faster than expected. Manish Bapna of the World Resources Institute, a think-tank in Washington, DC, believes "it is already too late to avert dangerous consequences, so we must learn to adapt." Second, evidence is growing that climate change hits two specific groups of people disproportionately and unfairly. They are the poorest of the poor and those living in island states: 1 billion people in 100 countries. Tony Nyong, a climate-change scientist in Nairobi, argues that people in poor countries used to see global warming as a Western matter: the rich had caused it and would with luck solve it. But the first impact of global warming has been on the very things the poorest depend on most: dry-land agriculture; tropical forests; subsistence fishing. ...


Why don't they just get a job?

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Wed, Sep 10, 2008
from Oregon State University, via EurekAlert:
Old growth forests are valuable carbon sinks
Contrary to 40 years of conventional wisdom, a new analysis to be published Friday in the journal Nature suggests that old growth forests are usually "carbon sinks" -- they continue to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and mitigate climate change for centuries.... "Carbon accounting rules for forests should give credit for leaving old growth forest intact," researchers from Oregon State University and several other institutions concluded... "Much of this carbon, even soil carbon, will move back to the atmosphere if these forests are disturbed." ...


So these carbon sinks, if disturbed, can become carbon drains.

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Tue, Sep 9, 2008
from Ohio State University:
Scientists point to forests for carbon storage solutions
The researchers' calculations suggest that carbon storage in Midwestern forests could offset the greenhouse gas emissions of almost two-thirds of nearby populations, and that proper management of forests could sustain or increase their storage capacity for future generations. Based on measurements taken between 1999 and 2005 at a forest study site in northern Michigan, the scientists have determined that similar upper Midwest forests covering an estimated 40,000 square miles store an average of 1,300 pounds of carbon per acre per year. ...


Does it offset the CO2 from my chainsaw?

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Mon, Sep 8, 2008
from Times Herald-Record:
Out of the ashes, a local forest is reborn
Touring the scorched mountaintops recently, Chapin and a group of local biologists were excited by the opportunities the spring forest fire left behind. See this sassafras, with its mitten-shaped leaves? Park staff have never seen so much. And the witch hazel and the wintergreen and the Indian cucumber root? "We have more of it than we ever did," said John Thompson, a natural resources specialist with the Mohonk Preserve. "Some species are already responding to the openings on the forest floor." The burned acreage has also attracted rare birds, such as scarlet tanagers and Canada warblers, plus porcupines, bears, bobcats and rattlesnakes. It's an influx of biodiversity that's drawn scientists to the site all summer. ...


Any way we can do that in the ocean?

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Thu, Aug 28, 2008
from Mongabay:
Biofuels 200 times more expensive than forest conservation for global warming mitigation
The British government should end subsidies for biofuels and instead use the funds to slow destruction of rainforests and tropical peatlands argues a new report issued by a U.K.-based think tank.... [The study] says that "avoided deforestation" would be a more cost-effective way to address climate change, since land use change generates more emissions than the entire global transport sector and offers ancillary benefits including important ecosystem services.... They find that the biofuel initiative will save 2.6-3 million tons of carbon dioxide per year at a cost of ($1 billion), while a similar investment in preventing deforestation and peatland destruction could result in avoided emissions of 40-200 million tons of CO2 per year or a 50 times greater amount of avoided emissions. The savings would be equivalent to 37 percent of all UK carbon dioxide emissions for 2005. ...


Spending money to avoid something?
That would require long-term thinking.

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Tue, Aug 26, 2008
from The Scotsman:
Prize-winning author warns humans could be headed for extinction
Margaret Atwood, the novelist, has warned that the planet is at a "crisis moment" and the human race could be headed towards extinction.... The Canadian said although the "cockroaches will always be fine", humans may not.... Atwood said she thinks the crisis involves climate change, deforestation, overfishing, declines in bird populations and production of energy. ...


But for now, let's keep on partying!

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Fri, Aug 15, 2008
from UC Irvine, via ScienceDaily:
Climate Change Caused Widespread Tree Death In California Mountain Range, Study Confirms
Warmer temperatures and longer dry spells have killed thousands of trees and shrubs in a Southern California mountain range, pushing the plants' habitat an average of 213 feet up the mountain over the past 30 years, a UC Irvine study has determined. White fir and Jeffrey pine trees died at the lower altitudes of their growth range in the Santa Rosa Mountains, from 6,400 feet to as high as 7,200 feet in elevation, while California lilacs died between 4,000-4,800 feet. Almost all of the studied plants crept up the mountain a similar distance, countering the belief that slower-growing trees would move slower than faster-growing grasses and wildflowers. ...


Said the Jeffrey pine to the white fir:
"We're movin' up!

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Tue, Aug 5, 2008
from Toronto Globe and Mail:
Virgin forests more efficient at storing carbon
"Untouched natural forests store three times more carbon dioxide than previously estimated and 60 per cent more than plantation forests, a new Australian study of "green carbon" and its role in climate change says. Green carbon occurs in natural forests, brown carbon is found in industrialized forests or plantations, grey carbon in fossil fuels and blue carbon in oceans. Australian National University scientists said that the role of untouched forests – and their biomass of green carbon – had been underestimated in the fight against global warming." ...


Like a virgin... Cut for the very first time... Like a virrrgin... When your chainsaw... Makes me feel fine...

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Mon, Jul 14, 2008
from Rights and Resources Institute, via EurekAlert:
New studies predict record land grab as demand soars for new sources of food, energy and wood fiber
Escalating global demand for fuel, food and wood fibre will destroy the world's forests, if efforts to address climate change and poverty fail to empower the billion-plus forest-dependent poor, according to two reports released today by the U.S.-based Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), an international coalition comprising the world's foremost organisations on forest governance and conservation. ...


If a forest falls in the world and nobody hears it, it still won't absorb carbon dioxide.

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Thu, Jul 3, 2008
from Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research:
Giving tropical forests a helping hand
Dutch ecologist Marijke van Kuijk has studied the regeneration of the tropical forest in Vietnam. Abandoned agricultural land does regenerate to tropical forest, but only slowly. Two procedures are used to help nature along: pruning of foliage to free up space for trees and planting the desired tree species.... [T]he natural regeneration process from agricultural land to forest often stagnates at the scrub stage. Some plants and shrubs grow vigorously and become dominant as a result of which young trees do not receive enough light to grow. ...


Nurturing the forest?
Can't we just vanquish it?

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Sat, Jun 28, 2008
from Globe and Mail (Canada):
Bark Hopping: After branching out into Alberta, pine beetles take root
There were hopes that low winter temperatures in early 2008 would reduce Alberta's infestation, but in a downbeat assessment released yesterday, the officials said populations of the voracious tree pest remain high in several areas. "Pine beetles may be here to stay in Alberta," said Ted Morton, Sustainable Resource Development Minister.... "That's more or less the gateway to the boreal forest. If it progresses eastward from where it is now, it can move into Jack pine in northeastern Alberta, and from there, it's all Jack pine to Labrador," said Duncan MacDonnell, spokesman for the ministry. ...


PostApocaiku:
Hungry pine beetles
A silent, munching army
invading east, east


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Fri, Jun 6, 2008
from BioScience, via Science Daily (US):
Western U.S. Forests At Risk: Complex Dynamics Underlie Bark Beetle Eruptions
Biological interactions involving fungi as well as trees and competing insects drive bark beetle outbreaks. The processes are sensitive to a forest's condition and the local climate, but prediction is difficult because the processes turn on multiple critical thresholds.... Forest management that favors single tree species and climate change are just two of the critical factors making forests throughout western North America more susceptible to infestation by bark beetles, according to an article published in the June 2008 BioScience. ...


You mean there are trees
and a forest?

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Thu, May 29, 2008
from Institut de Recherche Pour le Développement, via EurekAlert:
Reforestation using exotic plants can disturb the fertility of tropical soils
In Burkina Faso, controlled experiments showed that the development of E. camaldulensis, the eucalyptus species most often planted in the world, outside its area of origin, significantly reduced the diversity of the mycorrhizal fungi communities essential for the healthy functioning of the ecosystem. ... also found in the soil of a Senegalese plantation ... where, scarcely a few months after its introduction, the soil’s microbial characteristics had completely changed. ... The soil sampled from areas surrounding the A. holosericea plantation had a balanced distribution of mycorrhizal fungi species, whereas [inside showed] a strong imbalance in the composition of the mycorrhizal fungi community... there is a risk that the Australian acacia might create a new ecosystem whose physical, chemical and biological characteristics will not necessarily be favourable to a recolonization of the habitat by native species. ...


Gollygosh. Again with these stories that imply that evolution is smarter than we are.

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Fri, May 16, 2008
from USDA Forest Survey, via ScienceDaily:
Window Of Opportunity For Restoring Oaks Small, New Study Finds
Communities of Oregon white oak were once widespread in the Pacific Northwest's western lowlands, but, today, they are in decline. Fire suppression, conifer and invasive plant encroachment, and land use change have resulted in the loss of as much as 99 percent of the oak communities historically present in some areas of the region.... "In areas where conifers have encroached into oak woodlands and savannas, about two-thirds of the remaining oaks were predicted to die over a 50-year period unless the conifers are removed," said Peter Gould, a research forester and lead author of the report. ...


In the slow-motion Conifer vs. Oak deathcage match, the pines are winning.

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Fri, May 16, 2008
from The Post (Pakistan):
Prince Charles urges forest logging halt
The halting of logging in the world's rainforests is the single greatest solution to climate change, Prince Charles has said, reports BBC News. He called for a mechanism to be devised to pay poor countries to prevent them felling their rainforests. The prince told the BBC's Today programme that the forests provided the earth's "air conditioning system". He said it was "crazy" the rainforests were worth more "dead than alive" to some of the world's poorest people. ...


Jolly good. Tho, the "worth" isn't to the "poorest people." No, gov'n'r, it's the richest people who benefit most from the rapine of the world's rainforests.

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Fri, Apr 18, 2008
from Science Daily (US):
"Sudden Oak Death" Pathogen Is Evolving, Restriction On Movement Of Infected Plants Urged
The pathogen responsible for Sudden Oak Death first got its grip in California's forests outside a nursery in Santa Cruz and at Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County before spreading out to eventually kill millions of oaks and tanoaks along the Pacific Coast, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.... "In this paper, we actually reconstruct the Sudden Oak Death epidemic," said Matteo Garbelotto, UC Berkeley... [the] principal investigator of the study. "We point to where the disease was introduced in the wild and where it spread from those introduction points." The study, scheduled to appear later this month in the journal Molecular Ecology, also shows that the pathogen is currently evolving in California, with mutant genotypes appearing as new areas are infested. ...


What will they do when find "oak patient zero" of this oakish HIV? Stop him from traveling?

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Thu, Apr 10, 2008
from Greenpeace:
Logging in Canada
... it finds that logging is destabilizing the Boreal Forest in ways that may exacerbate both global warming and its impacts. The forest products industry and government regulators adamantly deny that logging in Canada's Boreal affects the climate. But research shows that when the forest is degraded through logging and industrial development, massive amounts of greenhouse gasses are released into the atmosphere, and the forest becomes more vulnerable to global warming impacts like fires and insect outbreaks. In many cases, these impacts cause even more greenhouse gasses to be released, driving a vicious circle in which global warming degrades the Boreal Forest, and Boreal Forest degradation advances global warming. If left unchecked, this could culminate in a catastrophic release of greenhouse gasses known as "the carbon bomb". ...


That bomb may leave a huuuge smoking crater.

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Fri, Apr 4, 2008
from Science Daily (US):
Habitat Destruction May Wipe Out Monarch Butterfly Migration
Intense deforestation in Mexico could ruin one of North America’s most celebrated natural wonders — the mysterious 3,000-mile migration of the monarch butterfly. According to a University of Kansas researcher, the astonishing migration may collapse rapidly without urgent action to end devastation of the butterfly’s vital sources of food and shelter.... In spite of its protected status, the isolated reserve is suffering from illegal logging driven by soaring prices for lumber in Mexico. This logging, once sporadic, has increased in recent years and now is threatening the very survival of the butterflies. ...


Flutter by, my butterfly....
while you can.

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Sun, Mar 30, 2008
from Fresno Bee:
Moving to cooler ground
"The 2,000-year-old giant sequoias east of Fresno have survived warm spells lasting centuries, but in just 100 years, global warming could snuff them out -- along with many Sierra Nevada species. Why? The current episode of climate change is moving faster than any warm-up detected in the past 500,000 years, many scientists say. Many say car exhaust and other global-warming emissions from human activities may be the reason." ...


Possibly car exhaust from the Toyota Sequoia?

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Wed, Mar 26, 2008
from The Vancouver Sun:
Pine beetle infestation impacting salmon runs
"VANCOUVER - If the heat of climate change weren't enough of a danger to Pacific salmon, scientists are cataloging how the effects of the global-warming-aided mountain pine beetle infestation are adding to salmon's woes. The grain-of-rice-sized beetles have chewed through interior pine forests covering an area four-times the size of Vancouver Island, a report released Tuesday by the Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council notes. Some 60 per cent of the Fraser River watershed is affected, with loss of forest cover over salmon streams that has led to numerous impacts that "significantly alter the watershed's ecology, threatening already stressed salmon runs." ...


Hard for me to work up any sympathy for the beasts responsible for salmonella bacteria!

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Tue, Mar 4, 2008
from PhysOrg.com:
Eastern Hemlock on the ropes from invasive species
"Eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) is an aesthetically and ecologically important species of tree found from eastern Canada to the Great Lakes states and south along the entire Appalachian mountain range. Since the hemlock tends to grow alongside streams, it plays an important role in regulating water temperature, and its loss could affect the many species of fish and insect life that inhabit mountain streams. The tree is threatened by the prolific spread of an exotic insect known as the hemlock wooly adelgid (Adelges tsugae), which kills the trees in as few as four years. In the past decade, the hemlock wooly adelgid has infested more than 50 percent of the eastern portion of the hemlock's range, and the number is expected to grow because the adelgid, an introduced species from Asia, has no natural predators in North America." ...


"Where have all the hemlocks gone?"
Gone to heaven, every one...

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Tue, Feb 26, 2008
from Jackson Hole Star Tribune:
Embattled ag undersecretary makes no apologies for timber policies
"He overhauled federal forest policy to cut more trees -- and became a lightning rod for environmentalists who say he is intent on logging every tree in his reach. After nearly seven years in office, Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey still has a long to-do list. Near the top: Persuade a federal judge to keep him out of jail ... A Montana judge, accusing Rey of deliberately skirting the law so the Forest Service can keep fighting wildfires with a flame retardant that kills fish, has threatened to put him behind bars." ...


Rey's main accomplishment is the 2003 Healthy Forests Restoration Act. If he does go to jail, let's call it the 2008 Celebrating Freedom Act.

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Tue, Jan 29, 2008
from The Guardian:
Bush opens 3m acres of Alaskan forest to logging
"The US government has announced plans to open more than 3m acres (about 5,000 square miles) of Alaskan wilderness to logging, mining and road building, angering environmental campaigners who say it will devastate the region. Supporters say the plan for the Tongass National Forest, a refuge for grizzly and black bears, wolves, eagles and wild salmon, will revive the state's timber industry. The Bush administration plan for the forest, the largest in the US at nearly 17m acres, would open 3.4m acres to logging, road building and other development, including about 2.4m acres that are currently remote and without roads. About 663,000 acres are in areas considered most valuable for timber production." ...


You'd think someone named "Bush" would have more affinity for the trees.

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Tue, Jan 15, 2008
from Associated Press:
Beetles may wipe out Colo. lodgepoles
"DENVER - Strands of distressed, red pine trees across northern Colorado and the Front Range are a visible testament to the bark beetle infestation that officials said will kill most of the state's lodgepole pine trees within 5 years. The infestation that was first detected in 1996 grew by half-million acres last year, bringing the total number of acres attacked by bark beetles to 1.5 million, state and federal forestry officials said Monday. "This is an unprecedented event," said Rick Cables, Rocky Mountain regional forester for the U.S. Forest Service." ...


And the beetles shall not just inherit the earth but take it by storm.

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Mon, Jan 14, 2008
from UPI:
Invasive beetle attacks redbay trees
"Tallahassee, Fla. A beetle imported from Asia is spreading around the southeast United States, leaving dead and dying redbay trees in its wake. The redbay ambrosia beetle is believed to have entered the country through Savannah, Ga., in 2002, probably in a wood pallet or packing case. It has spread into the Carolinas and south to Florida, where it was spotted for the first time last summer in Brevard County in central Florida, Florida Today reports. The beetle produces a fungus that spreads throughout a tree, eventually killing it. The fungus nourishes more generations of beetles." ...


This redbay ambrosia beetle reminds us of the retirees who invade Florida in their RVs or build their condos, negatively impacting the local environment.

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