They assigned a graduate student named Rob Wood among others to help develop techniques to fabricate the tiny parts
There are a whole bunch of subtle things that happen Wood says. Michael told us the most important features to generate vortices and other aerodynamic effects.
By the time Wood graduated in 2004 and opened his own lab at Harvard university he had helped pioneer a way to use extremely energy-efficient exotic materials to replicate the motion of a fly s wing;
On a freezing day in 2006 Wood arrived at his Oxford street laboratory at Harvard. On the workbench sat a 60-milligram robot with a three-centimeter wingspan and a thorax roughly the size of a housefly.
Wood jumped in jubilation. It had taken him seven years to get to this point and it would take another five to reach his next breakthrough:
I didn t end up sleeping the rest of that night Wood says. The next morning we had champagne
Wood has pioneered microscale robotic flight; other researchers have used flapping-wing dynamics to reduce the size of aerial vehicles capable of carrying payloads.
They teamed up with Wood whose lab had joined since Harvard s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering
For Wood the big hurdle is power. Unlike the much larger Instanteye Nano Hummingbird and Dragonfly drones Robobees must be connected to an external power source.
Wood is using microfabrication to try to shrink onboard batteries and he s collaborating with researchers at Harvard the University of Washington
The stuff that made Rob Wood s work possible was just the basic mechanisms by
#With few hard frosts, tropical mangroves push northcold-sensitive mangrove forests have expanded dramatically along Florida's Atlantic Coast as the frequency of killing frosts has declined according to a new study based on 28 years
The mangrove forests are edging out salt marshes said University of Maryland Entomology Professor Daniel S. Gruner a study co-author.
Mangrove forests grow in calm shallow coastal waters throughout the tropics. Salt marshes fill that niche in temperate zones.
Mangrove forests are cut down for charcoal production aquaculture and urbanization or lose habitat to drainage projects.
#Field trial with lignin modified poplars shows potential for bio-based economythe results of a field trial with genetically modified poplar trees in Zwijnaarde Belgium shows that the wood of lignin modified poplar trees can be converted into sugars in a more efficient way.
which is visible through a more pronounced red coloration of the wood beneath the bark.
On the whole the ethanol yield per gram of wood is 20%higher. This in itself is positive except for the fact that the modified trees appear to grow somewhat less rapid than non-modified poplar trees.
and things to discover On earth the scientists ventured into remote jungles and descended to the bottom of the sea looked in their own backyards (California)
and highly threatened including many tropical forests coral reef communities and our own backyard California. Below are a few highlights among the 91 species described by the Academy this year.
and recent high-res images Fisher and his colleagues can identify which patches of forest are most likely to contain new species of ants based on their elevation vegetation and adjacent habitats.
If you base conservation on just vertebrates Fisher says it leads you to conclude that only the largest forests are important.
William Ripple a professor in the College of Forestry at Oregon State university and co-authors from Scotland Austria Australia
#Telecoupling science shows Chinas forest sustainability packs global impactas China increases its forests a Michigan State university (MSU) sustainability scholar proposes a new way to answer the question:
and expand its forests even as its cities and population balloon. Because China's supersized global role makes each domestic decision a world event Liu shows how China's efforts to sustain forests influences other countries
and in turn how those changes may rebound to China. He is the author of Forest Sustainability in China and Implications for a Telecoupled World.
For a long time many scientists have focused specifically on one place to understand environmental impact but that no longer is said enough Liu the director of MSU's Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability and the Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability.
In the past three decades China has succeeded in increasing its forest cover. Sweeping policies that limit logging
or encourage returning farmland to forest are credited with some of the success. Importing food such as soybean
and meat and forest products like timber or wood furniture also contributes. But that seems to have caused forests to decline in the countries selling the forest goods to China as well as a spray of other impacts.
Importing food to China can allow more land to be returned to forest in China yet
when food demand from China becomes higher farmers in other countries such as Brazil have more incentive to mow forests down
or intensify agriculture by applying more fertilizers and pesticides. Liu has introduces the telecoupling framework as an integrated way to understand how distance is shrinking
which carve into forests. Even getting smarter--and sharing knowledge and technology more freely--can benefit
or harm forests. Spreading the message of environmental protection can be a forest's friend
while spreading knowledge of technology can make powerful efficient machinery available that harvests forests more efficiently.
And telecoupling science also allows scientists to consider spillover systems--the countries that are left out of the direct equations of trade between China
and its partners in food and forest goods but who produce the machinery to harvest
and transport timber or process timber or even are home to routes for smugglers. The days of simply looking at sustainability at one place are said over Liu.
We need to understand how the world really works and acknowledge that the world isn't as big and disconnected as we sometimes treat it.
This group includes tomato apple and legumes as well as timber trees such as oak and poplar. As an evolutionary outsider to this diverse group the Amborella genome allowed the researchers to estimate the linear order of genes in an ancestral eudicot genome
New forests continue to accumulate carbon for hundreds of years. Therefore forestation projects are one way of generating'carbon credits
'which are tradable units on the carbon market. The more carbon is stored in the vegetation the more profitable such projects are.
Restoring forests should bring especially high carbon returns in areas where plants grow fast and to big sizes but where past disturbances such as deforestation fires and degradation have resulted in much of the vegetation being destroyed because the difference between
because there may be a number of constraints to setting up forestation projects to stock carbon.
when planning carbon forests. In addition it might be a good idea to consider whether there are wider benefits to setting up such projects.
which showed where carbon forests would bring high returns to ask where carbon-stocking by forestation would
and thus has a high potential for carbon stocking through forests. However it does not support as high biodiversity as some other areas
So setting aside land here to plant carbon forests would not be optimal. Rather regions of the Upper Guinean rainforests of West Africa and the Lower Guinean rainforests which are situated on the coast of Nigeria
Their findings are published online in the journal Forest Ecology and Management. We found we have a native predator that is able to detect
One woodland area being monitored lay behind Dempsey Middle school in Delaware Ohio. The researchers enlisted the help of schoolchildren to do a precise accounting of bug
but they may save the forest. Or at least save a nearby forest said Flower. The research suggests that the woodpeckers are likely slowing the spread of emerald ash borer.
Woodpeckers may not be able to snuff them out but they may be able to control them said Whelan.
Kathleen Knight and Joanne Rebbeck USDA Forest Service Delaware Ohio; and Joel Brown and Miquel Gonzalez-Meler UIC were co-authors on the study.
This research was supported by NSF grants DGE-0549245 and DEB-0919276 UIC Hadley grant and Provost Fellowship and US Forest Service Northern Research Station Civil rights Diversity
and trade-offs of investing in Malawi's tobacco industry Mandondo and his team focused on two prime tobacco growing districts in the Miombo woodlands.
and the subsequent unsustainable wood-sourcing practices in an effort to provide low-cost fuel to dry
The subsequent depletion of natural forests by smallholder wood suppliers and others combined with the increased global demand for tobacco have caused tobacco farming to spill over into neighboring Zambia and Mozambique.
#Tropical forests mitigate extreme weather eventstropical forests reduce peak runoff during storms and release stored water during droughts according to researchers working at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.
On the other hand forests released more water than grasslands and mixed-use landscapes during the late dry season pointing to the importance of forests in regulating water flow throughout the year in seasonal climates.
Evidence to support the sponge effect was lacking for tropical forests leading some to question its validity.
One of reasons why there isn't more scientific evidence for the sponge effect is that you have to take
The study is particularly relevant to land use decisions throughout the tropics where more than 50 percent of forests are now secondary forests that have grown back after logging or on abandoned pastureland.
and biodiversity conservation that decision makers will consider as they evaluate projects from forest restoration to watershed management said Jefferson Hall Smithsonian staff scientist and project director.
and undergraduates conducted the study on two talus slopes--each about 3. 5 acres--surrounded by a forest of Douglas fir western red cedar and bigleaf maple near the Gorge Trail near Wyeth Ore.
#Saving Fijis coral reefs linked to forest conservation upstreamthe health of coral reefs offshore depend on the protection of forests near the sea according to a new study by the Wildlife Conservation Society that outlines the importance of terrestrial protected areas
or timber value of forests than on any desire to protect biodiversity. Fiji's current terrestrial protected areas which cover less than 3 percent of land area in the country neither adequately protect Fiji's sensitive island habitats
Looking to support the committee's efforts to land-sea planning initiative the study authors systematically analyzed six scenarios for expanding Fiji's network of terrestrial protected area networks with the aim to uncover how well each approach did to protect different forest types
One scenario evaluated included all of the priority forests for conservation identified by the committee based on field data and rules of thumb.
We're pleased that the results of our study confirm that the forests that the committee was considering for protection can offer significant downstream benefits to coral reefs said Dr. Stacy Jupiter Fiji Country Program Director
However we were surprised to find that these priority places for management actually did not include a lot of the key threatened forest vegetation types.
We therefore recommended to the committee to add some additional forests to their national register of priority places for protection.
and additional forest areas were added to the final register of priority places for management endorsed by the Fiji government National Environment Council in October 2013.
and are able to retain expression of the inserted genes for at least 14 years a report in the Canadian Journal of Forest Research just announced.
The trees are one of the best successes to date in the genetic modification of forest trees a field that is much less advanced than GMO products in crop agriculture.
In terms of wood yield plantation health and productivity these GMO trees could be said very significant Steven Strauss a distinguished professor of forest biotechnology in the OSU College of Forestry.
Agencies are likely to require extensive studies of gene flow and their effects on forest ecosystems
Scientists compared daily activity patterns of agoutis between parts of forest with contrasting abundance of palm seeds.
They are valued for their high quality timber and they produce fragrant resin (styrax). Some species are cultivated also as ornamentals
Robert J. Moon a researcher from the U s. Forest Service's Forest Products Laboratory; and Zavattieri.
The research was funded by the Forest Products Laboratory through the U s. Department of agriculture the Purdue Research Foundation and the National Science Foundation.
and the felling of forests to grow crops for animal feed. Feed quality in the developing worldthe study shows that the quality of an animal's diet makes a major difference in both feed efficiency and emission intensity.
The above story is provided based on materials by Swiss Federal Institute for Forest Snow and Landscape Research WSL.
#Nitrogen deposition poses threat to diversity of Europes forest vegetationunless nitrogen emissions are curbed the diversity of plant communities in Europe's forests will decrease.
Atmospheric nitrogen deposition has changed already the number and richness of forest floor vegetation species in European forests over the last 20-30 years.
However levels of nitrogen deposition in Finnish forests remain small compared to Southern and Central europe.
Researchers from the Finnish Environment Institute and the Finnish Forest Research Institute (Metla) participated in this research
unless nitrogen emissions are curbed the diversity of plant communities in Europe's forests will decrease.
The number and richness of forest floor vegetation species in European forests have changed over the last 20 to 30 years due to wet and dry deposition of atmospheric nitrogen.
The largest changes in vegetation have occurred in Southern and Central European forests. Although deposition has affected not yet markedly species numbers within plant communities most new species spreading into forests during the monitoring period have been types that favour nitrogen.
Finland still has a small nitrogen loadfour monitoring areas located in Finnish nature reserves were covered by the research.
The critical nitrogen load in boreal forests is estimated to be fairly small (5-8 kg N/ha/y)
since northern forest ecosystems are highly sensitive to the effects of excess nitrogen. Such areas in Finland include nutrient-poor
and growth of nitrogen-favouring species. The effects of nitrogen deposition on Finland's forest vegetation can only be investigated with the assistance of a permanent environmental monitoring network.
According to long-term monitoring by the Finnish Forest Research Institute (Metla) tree felling is still the key factor in changes to forest floor vegetation.
This monitoring reveals a reduction in lichens throughout Finland including in unfelled forests. In Northern Finland reindeer grazing is the key factor in lichen reduction.
#Biorefinery business could put South Australian forest industry back on growth trackvtt Technical Research Centre of Finland at the request of the South Australian state Government studied the condition of the forest sector
The South Australian government invited VTT to identify ways of increasing the productivity of the region's forest
The means proposed for raising short-term productivity are more efficient use of timber resources increased production value for the construction industry
According to VTT the X-ray scanning of timber could increase yield volume by 5 per cent equivalent to extra annual sales revenue of AUD 70 million for large sawmills.
Scanning is used to analyse the inner structure of the timber and identify optimal use. Implementation of VTT's long-term recommendations requires the construction of new biorefineries for manufacturing highly refined products such as absorbing materials and membranes cellulose-based textiles bio-based chemicals
South australia boasts remarkable forestry resources: more than 340000 hectares of plantation forest. These consist primarily of pine
and eucalyptus. The sawmill industry provides work for around 35 per cent of the population in South australia's Green Triangle region.
Heaths woods and meadows are in most ways no more'natural'than suburban gardens or inner-city waste grounds.
and woodland over the last few decades has brought certainly real benefits both aesthetically and in terms of wildlife conservation More heaths downs
#Young tropical forests contribute little to biodiversity conservationa satellite image of a green swath of tropical forest does not tell the whole story.
About half the world's tropical forests are relatively young. Unless protected they are unlikely to last more than a human generation before falling to bulldozers and chainsaws.
These ephemeral secondary forests may contribute little to tree-biodiversity conservation according to a new report by scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.
Secondary forests in the tropics are normally cut within a few decades and very often in less than 10 years said Michiel van Breugel postdoctoral fellow at STRI
Even 30-year-old forests have a very low percentage of the reproductive trees essential to long-term species survival.
Perhaps the most extensive of its kind in the tropics van Breugel's study suggests that forests subjected to regular human disturbance may undergo profound long-lasting tree biodiversity loss.
Whereas fallow forests can have a surprisingly high tree-biodiversity a large proportion of tree species only occur as seedlings and saplings.
They do not reproduce before the forests are cleared again. A tree only contributes to the conservation of its species
First can secondary forests recover their original diversity through natural succession in the long-term? And to what extent can short-lived secondary forests in dynamic agricultural landscapes contribute to the conservation of a high diversity of tree species?
They randomly selected 45 secondary forest plots ranging from two to 32 years of age in
which they counted more than 52000 trees palms and lianas. To the authors'knowledge this was the first metacommunity study of its kind ever conducted in the tropics.
and determined that in forests between 18 and 34 years of age 51 percent (137 of 268 species) reached reproductive size.
In forests between two and seven years of age the figure fell to 36 percent (79 of 220 species). Importantly these included few large-canopy species slow-growing shade-tolerant understory species
and species that depend on forest-dependent animals for seed dispersal. If left undisturbed secondary forests may regain levels of tree diversity similar to those of mature forests
--but only when the surrounding landscape includes natural seed sources like protected parkland patches of old forest
and remnant trees as it did in this case. The research underscores the importance of protecting old forests to maintain the tree diversity for which the tropics are famous.
In the long term we might see a distinct shift in the functional composition of human-altered landscapes said van Breugel.
Their conservation will depend on our ability to protect large areas of old-growth forests. Story Source:
and shrubby woods in the Afar Region the scientists say. They report their findings in the November issue of Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
and analyses of their teeth indicated they relied heavily on eating grasses in the grassy woodland environment.
and fed in forests about 6 million to 10 million years ago Simpson said. The change helped the more recent horses cover long distances as they grazed
The Australian capital Canberra produces the majority of its most common food in its regional hinterland
The Copenhagen hinterland produces less than half of the consumption of the most common foods. For the first time researchers have mapped the food systems of capital cities an essential insight for future food security
Mangrove forests protect coastlines and are important for biodiversity; they are a nursery ground for many fish species
For successful management and restoration of mangrove forests good understanding of the interaction between vegetation soil and the forces of nature is required.
what factors ensure their growth to become a successful mangrove forest? To answer these questions he carried out experiments in Singapore and New zealand.
In combination with wind data and tidal time series Balke developed models for the establishment of young mangrove forests by predicting windows of opportunity:
'We now understand both the optimal conditions for successful establishment of a mangrove forest and the optimal location and optimal time to sow mangroves'explains Balke.'
#Pine plantations provide optimum conditions for natural forests to develop underneath themif there is any native forest in the vicinity tree fern
and herbaceous species typical of these forests penetrate under the pine plantations without any need for action.
That way it is possible to a certain extent for native forests to be restored thanks to the process known as ecological succession.
The work has been published in the journal Forest Ecology and Management. In many European countries forestry authorities have started to take the sustainable management of forests into consideration.
As a result greater importance has begun to be attached to the restoration and encouragement of native forests.
Forestry is currently going through a unique time as a result of the fall in the profitability of the plantations of exotic rapid-growth species says Ibone Ametzaga member of the UPV/EHU's Landscape Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services group.
Nowadays mixed native forests in other words the ones in which the predominant species is the oak (Quercus robur) occupy no more than 3%of the surface they could occupy in Bizkaia
and Gipuzkoa explained Ametzaga. However this research group has concluded that oak groves make a much more significant contribution than plantations to the well-being of society.
Besides their value in terms of leisure landscape and education forests provide food and timber fix the carbon
and thus collaborate in the regulation of global climate systems; they participate in water purification;
In these aspects native forests provide a better service maintaining local biodiversity or accumulating carbon more.
Intervention necessary to achieve restaurationas a result of the crisis affecting forestry there are many pine plantations at the end of their turnover.
or pruning the seeds arriving from the adjoining forests thrive in the conditions provided by the pine trees.
In view of these results Ametzaga proposes that in some areas pine plantations can be used to encourage the native forest by taking advantage of ecological succession.
What is more the older or more ancient the plantations are the richer the forest that develops from them is
and the more it resembles the mixed native forest. However Ametzaga indicated that when the moment comes
when the plantations are 25 to 30 years old it will be necessary to take other kinds of measures to achieve mixed diverse forests.
To equate the species composition to that of native mixed forests it will be necessary to undertake adaptive management involving the gradual removal of the pine trees
This would enable the native forest to be introduced within a short space of time. Story Source:
with a walk in the woods. I go walking in the woods with my family pretty much every day explained Daust from his home in Telkwa British columbia.
We collect Highbush cranberries to make jelly. In 2012 Daust noticed a weird disease on the plants.
Daust grew up in an off-grid cabin in the forests of central B c.;without computer access his questions came from the wildlife around him.
It is recommended that protected areas will be established for remaining old-growth forests and wetlands. Five valuable natural areas in northwest Russia have been designated pilot sites for the BPAN project.
These include Europe's largest old-growth forest wilderness in the Dvina and Pinega watershed and the old-growth intact pine forest of the Murmansk Region.
The objective is to conserve functional ecological corridors between Finland and Russia. Constructive cooperationthe BPAN project has been funded by the Nordic Council of ministers the Ministries of the Environment of Finland Sweden and Norway and the Barents sea office of WWF Russia.
Such areas include the Onezhskoye Pomorye National park on the Onega Peninsula in the Arkhangelsk Region the Kalevala National park in the Republic of Karelia and the Lapland Forest Nature Reserve in the Murmansk Region.
Environment ministers of the Barents Region highlighted importance for conservation of intact forests and mires in their meeting on 5th december.
and land conservation gainsa groundbreaking study by Harvard university's Harvard Forest and the Smithsonian Institution reveals that
if left unchecked recent trends in the loss of forests to development will undermine significant land conservation gains in Massachusetts jeopardize water quality
The scenarios were developed by a group of forestry professionals land-use planning and water policy experts and conservation groups.
What we found is that land-use decisions have immediate and dramatic impacts on many of the forest benefits people depend on said Jonathan Thompson Senior Ecologist at Harvard Forest
and experiencing rapid change--much like the broader forested landscape of the eastern U s. The results of the study show that sprawl coupled with a permanent loss of forest cover in Massachusetts create an urgent need to address land-use choices.
We know from decades of research that forests are more than a collection of trees they are'living infrastructure'that works 24-hours a day to provide climate protection clean water local wood products and natural areas for people
or erode these vital benefits depending on the choices we all make said David Foster Director of the Harvard Forest
The Forests as Infrastructure scenario shows it's possible to protect forest benefits while also increasing local wood production
Forests as Infrastructure clusters more of the development implements improvement forestry on much of the harvested land
and increases the rate of forest conservation with a focus on priority habitat. By 2060 compared to Recent Trends this scenario would:
Kathy Fallon Lambert Director of Science and Policy at the Harvard Forest and co-author of the study says the timing of the study is critical for the Commonwealth.
Not only are we experiencing this historic downturn in forest cover but the legislature is contemplating changing our zoning laws for the first time in 40 years.
recommitting to land conservation promoting sustainable forestry in the Commonwealth and redoubling land-use planning and smart-growth efforts.
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