You need reinforced masonry steel or composite materials instead of timber and enhanced connections between walls foundations and roofs
During the early part of the era forests overran most of North america. However as the climate cooled forests died off creating open land.
Due to the widening of the oceanssharks whales and other marine life proliferated. The Great lakes that formed in the western United states during the Eocene epoch were the perfect home for bass trout
and other fresh-water species. As the forests thinned grasses began to spread out over the plains of North america
The remainder of the region was primarily farms and woodland. The Chernobyl plant used four Soviet-designed RBMK-1000 nuclear reactors a design that's now universally recognized as inherently flawed.
Shortly after the radiation leaks from Chernobyl occurred the trees in the woodlands surrounding the plant were killed by high levels of radiation.
This region came to be known as the Red Forest because the dead trees turned a bright ginger color.
Thriving populations of wolves deer lynx beaver eagles boar elk bears and other animals have been documented in the dense woodlands that now surround the silent plant.
Population pressure the conversion of forests to farmland and hydroelectric and other infrastructure projects have placed China's remaining forests at risk.
This prompted the United nations Environment Programme to list the country's forests as threatened and in need of protection.
Following closely on the heels of deforestation and agricultural development is desertification the destruction of vegetative land cover that results in a landscape defined by bare soil and rock.
Despite recent gains in reforestation and grasslands restoration the desert continues to expand each year by about 950 square miles (2460 sq km) according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF.
As vast areas of forest are cleared for farmland bamboo plantations timber and fuel wood endangered animals like pandas struggle to survive.
An expert in forest pathology and emergent infectious disease he contributed this article to Livescience's Expert Voices:
I am a forest pathologist and part-time mycologist working on among other projects Sudden Oak Death (SOD) an exotic forest disease that is forever changing the composition of coastal forests in Northern California and Southern Oregon.
In 2006 I decided to enlist volunteers to understand the fine-scale distribution of the disease.
and the validation of all samples through the lab work have generated the most extensive fine-scale map of the distribution of a forest disease in the world.
Across the West in both grasslands and high mountain forests wildfires seem to be getting worse
Rim Fire in Photos In higher-elevation forests infernos come earlier in the summer fire season he said.
Fighting the worsening infernos will likely involve combating invasive species like cheatgrass thinning forests in some areas
and if some amount of carbon is drawn down into the biosphere and soil through efforts like reforestation and more efficient agriculture.
And if all goes right their descendants will grow large one step toward creating forests and consuming carbon dioxide.
Southeastern Suriname a dense South american Eden for rain forest species. Scientists led by Conservation International's Rapid Assessment Program spent three weeks in the region in 2012 surveying animal
but never have seen I such beautiful pristine forests so untouched by humans expedition leader Leeanne Alonso now with the organization Global Wildlife Conservation said in a statement.
Southern Suriname is one of the last places On earth where there is a large expanse of pristine tropical forest.
See photos of the amazing animals of the Suriname forests New species In that expanse Alonso
After a few hearty meals the yellow-beaked parrot headed back into the forest. An important ecosystem Southeastern Suriname is important above and beyond its role as a biodiversity hotspot the scientists found.
When Patagonian pumas make a kill in the forest however they've been known to stay with it for up to a week gorging themselves
Condors cannot land in the forest however since they travel awkwardly on land and can't negotiate wooded areas.
And less timber-cutting means better water quality in nearby rivers and in the fragile Mesoamerican Reef downstream in the Gulf of mexico.
>If a snake eats a monkey in the forest and no one sees it does it make a difference?
or regurgitate act a bit like Johnny Appleseed helping forests grow by planting seeds across their territories.</
</p><p>That's the question that's been buzzing around Harvard professor Robert Wood's head for 12 years now.
And finally after years of testing and the invention of an all-new manufacturing technique inspired by children's pop-up books Wood
Greenland</a p><p></p><p>In June 1908 a mysterious blast occurred above the remote Russian forests of Tunguska Siberia with 1000 times more power than the Hiroshima bomb flattening trees over an area
what a human can hear in slivers of dead pine wood bathed in a hydrogel to simulate the conditions of a living tree.</
<a href=http://www. livescience. com/29177-tree-drought-sounds. html target=blank>Thirsty Wood's Distress Call Heard in Lab</a p
<a href=http://www. livescience. com/27811-creating-mini-black-holes. html target=blank>Mini Black holes Easier To Make Than Thought</a p><p></p><p>The forest really does hum
-or wasp-like insects built hive-like nests in what is called now the Petrified Forest.
or regurgitate act a bit like Johnny Appleseed helping forests grow by planting seeds across their territories.
and operating on the ground through organized rebel groups has been responsible for the loss of some three-quarters of all African forest elephants in the past decade.
Based on circumstantial evidence the most logical explanation for the elk deaths is that on their way back to the forest after feeding in the grassland the elk drank water from a trough containing toxins created by blue-green algae
Other participants in the ongoing bear research study include the U s. Forest Service the U s. Fish and Wildlife Service the Wind River tribe and the wildlife agencies for Idaho Montana Wyoming.
This post was an adaptation from his book The Genius of Dogs co-authored with Vanessa Woods (Dutton 2013.
But new research shows that these unique creatures may be vanishing as their habitats in Chile's temperate forests are destroyed.
Changing forests Native forests are being destroyed rapidly in Chile to make way for pine and eucalypt plantations
which supply the wood and paper industry. These landscape changes can have drastic effects on air temperature wind speed soil erosion
the survey showed that the remaining populations were clinging to their shrinking native forests. The researchers recommended that Darwin's frogs be listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN.
and both went extinct by the mid-1980s likely due to timber harvesting and the chytrid fungus.
#Deforestation Plants the Seed for Rapid Evolution in Brazil The deforestation of the Brazilian rain forest has created a hidden consequence:
which have devastated large bird populations in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil. With these birds which include colorful toucans
As a result seed sizes are smaller in parts of the rain forest where large birds are missing finds a new study detailed in the May 31 issue of the journal Science.
Palm trees and Lost Birds of Brazil Shrinking seeds The Atlantic Forest runs along the coast of Brazil starting at the easternmost tip of South america and continuing approximately to the country's southern border.
The region has been altered heavily by human agriculture with only about 12 percent of the original forest remaining.
or nearly vanished from much of the forest. These birds swallow fruit seeds and spread them through their droppings over many miles making the animals crucial to the forest ecosystem.
Galetti and his colleagues studied seed sizes in 22 populations of palm trees some in fragments where hardly any large birds survive
Other factors such as soil fertility forest cover and climate could not explain the change in seed size the researchers reported.
Human deforestation in the Atlantic Forest dates back to the 1800s more than enough time for the observed changes to evolve.
The only way to turn the tide against the changes Galetti said is reforestation and conservation.
First of all we have to replant the forest and put back animals that are important and stop hunting he said.
An estimated 18 million acres (7. 3 million hectares) of forest roughly the size of Panama are lost each year according to the United nations'Food and agriculture organization (FAO.
Without trees forest lands can quickly become barren land. Location Deforestation occurs around the world though tropical rainforests are targeted particularly.
For example since 1600 90 percent of continental United states indigenous forest has been removed. The World Resources Institute estimates that most of the world s remaining indigenous forest about 22 percent of its original amount is located in Canada Alaska Russia and the Northwestern Amazon basin.
The Amazon is targeted a highly area of recent deforestation. Causes of deforestation Deforestation is done typically to make more land available for housing and urbanization timber large scale cash crops such as soy and palm oil and cattle ranching.
The World Wildlife Fund reports that much of the logging industry that contributes to deforestation is done illegally (about half of it used for firewood.
which is the controversial practice of complete removal of a given tract of forest. A forestry expert quoted by the Natural resources Defense Council describes clear cutting as an ecological trauma that has no precedent in nature except for a major volcanic eruption.
Burning can be done quickly in vast swaths of land for plantation use or more slowly with the slash-and-burn technique.
Effects of deforestation Forests are complex ecosystems that are important to the carbon and water cycles that sustain life on earth.
and local populations who rely on the animals and plants in the forests for hunting and medicine.
Healthy forests help absorb greenhouse gasses and carbon emissions that are caused by human civilization and contribute to global climate change.
or otherwise removed. oetropical forests hold more than 210 gigatons of carbon and deforestation represents around 15 percent of greenhouse gas emissions according to the WWF.
Decomposing pine needles on the forest floor mix with runoff to create a pine tree tea foul tasting and smelling.
Op-Ed) Vanessa Woods is a research scientist at Duke university and the cofounder of Dognition a website that helps owners find the genius in their dogs.
Woods'most recent Op-Ed was Why Lines for Disney Rides are'Magic'The views expressed are those of the author
When confronted with a raging wildfire such as the Rim Fire now threatening California's Yosemite Valley the U s Forest Service has several weapons in its firefighting arsenal including ground crews who create firebreaks and aircraft that dump water
It looks good on television Andy Stahl executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics (FSEEE) in Eugene Ore. told Livescience.
and despite the FSEEE's contention that flame retardant is limited of effectiveness the Forest Service maintains that the chemicals are essential to controlling blazes.
When enough people in enough places say retardant helps we have to believe they're not making it up Cecilia Johnson an agency fire chemicals technical specialist told the AP. The Forest Service
and groups like the FSEEE (which is made largely up of current and former Forest Service employees) won't likely resolve their ongoing feud anytime soon Stahl's group has filed a number of lawsuits against the Forest Service
For example to minimize impacts on aquatic life the Forest Service has agreed to limit the use of flame retardant in areas within 300 feet of streams and lakes;
the agency has issued also maps showing retardant-specific avoidance areas for each national forest. The forest service has committed to not dump retardant in those areas
unless somebody's life is in danger Stahl said. Whether that will actually happen in the midst of a raging inferno
because the information about these forests before and after these events is entered into an ecological database called FFI (FEAT/FIREMON Integrated).
and forests don't have weather stations. Also no uncontrolled fires were included in the study and effects such as bark beetles or parasites on stressed trees were measured not.
Uncontrolled fires often in the upper reaches of a forest burn more intensely and kill more often he said.
but an underappreciated mechanism into how climactic change can impact forests he said. The study was published in the journal Ecology Letters
and includes participation from the U s. Geological Survey the National park service and the U s. Forest Service.
The burrowing behavior is especially weird to see in a tropical forest; most mammals that spend their winters curled up underground live in the arctic
But winters in the eastern forests of Madagascar present their own energetic challenges for lemurs.
and provided some of the earliest evidence of human species living in grassland rather than forest.
In the northern part of the U s. forests rely on a layer of litter to regulate the temperature moisture and nutrient content of the soil.
They eat up litter layers more quickly than the forests regenerate. As a consequence some tree species may not be able to survive a rapid decline in the litter layer.
which has affects on future forest composition but a lot of that may be moving deeper into the soil
Though the island was filled with a giant palm forest when Polynesians first arrived in the 13th century the first European explorers found massive megaliths on a deforested rock-strewn island with just 3000 people.
-and-burning of the forest to make way for sweet potatoes and through the rats inadvertently brought to the island that ate palm nuts before they could sprout into new trees.
and pharmacology at Wake Forest School of medicine who was involved not in the study. Because of the demands of a growing fetus pregnant women need higher amounts of nutrients.
#Elephants Vanish in Congo Reserve The Okapi Faunal Reserve was thought to be a safe haven for forest elephants in the otherwise conflict-stricken eastern region of the Democratic Republic of congo.
Before a civil war broke out in the region in the late 1990s the WCS counted about 6800 forest elephants in the reserve.
We urge the international community to support the DRC in the fight against the threat of extinction of the forest elephant.
The forest elephant is a subspecies of the African elephant which is listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
and garden-style cemeteries were established elsewhere including Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn and these led to the creation of urban parks such as Central park. The Science of Death:
#Experimental Forests Could Lessen Toll of Wildfires Experimental forests that have been groomed to slow wildfires could reduce the frequency of catastrophic fires in the future researchers say.
The project which was developed in an experimental forest at the University of California at Berkeley's Sagehen Creek Field Station near Lake Tahoe in California creates pockets of thinner trees in areas where the fire risk is high
The idea is that you coordinate treatments to change fire behavior across a landscape a big landscape said John J. Battles a Berkeley forest ecologist who helped develop the method.
The forest in the Sierra has evolved to thrive with frequent small fires that consume saplings
and brush on the forest floor. For instance giant sequoia cones are sealed by a glue that only melts in fire releasing their seeds.
because a century of fire suppression and replanting has left forests overgrown with thick underbrush
and the carbon in the soil and thus potentially changing the forest permanently. Yosemite Aflame:
or slow the spread of wildfire is to thin the forest. But old forests also provide habitat for iconic animals such as the California spotted owl and the American marten.
Many areas are too steep to reach with bulldozers to rip out trees said Scott Conway a vegetation management officer with the U s. Forest Service in the Tahoe National Forest who is also involved with the project.
Fire researchers are using models of the landscape and tree density local weather patterns and historical fire data combined with habitat information to find the areas that are likeliest to burn catastrophically.
Broad deployment The strategy has been used in a few experimental forests: at the Sagehen Creek Field Station near Truckee Calif. as well as the American River Ranger District of the Tahoe National Forest.
The method allows firefighters to actually protect critical areas Conway said. If the fire burns too hot firefighters can do very little to contain it.
More recently there was a 1997 memoir of ayoung Jewish girl who escaped the German Holocaust by fleeing into the forest where she was raised by a pack of wolves.
And in September 2011 a mysterious teenager calling himself Ray showed up at a police station in Germany claiming to have lived alone in a forest for at least five years.
Except in the most remote regions of the world (such as tribes in the Amazon jungle) certificates are issued for live births
Even if a family lived in the remote jungle and both parents died suddenly the lost infant
The destruction will only escalate scientists predict until we stop fighting fires in the forests and brush.
Prescribed burning intended to remove dead wood and fuel before fire season does help control fires in Western conifer forests like the tall giants of Sequoia National park in Northern California.
But chaparral isn't forest. It's a dense carpet of woody shrubs: chamise ceonothus and other plants that cling to steep canyons and ridges.
There's what's going on in forests and what's going on in chaparral landscapes and they're very different in terms of how to solve them.
Without fire fighters at the breaks however flames skip past the gaps found a study led by ecologist Alexandra Syphard of the Conservation Biology Institute in the June 2011 issue of the journal Forest Ecology and Management.
But because of urban sprawl and development moving out into the forest now when we get a perfectly normal fire homes burn he said.
what the Forest Service does out in the wildlands Keeley said. What I want to see change is people stop depending on the Forest Service to put out all the fires Keeley said.
I want to see homeowners and communities take greater responsibility for solving the problem. It's just wrongheaded to think the Forest Service is the only people who can solve the problem.
Reach Becky Oskin at boskin@techmedianetwork com. Follow her on Twitter@beckyoskin. Follow Ouramazingplanet on Twitterâ@OAPLANET. We're also onâ Facebookâ and Google+o
#Fighting to Save an Endangered Bird With Vomit A psychological warfare program centered on vomit could help save the marbled murrelet an endangered seabird that nests in California's old-growth redwood forests.
While breeding its back feathers morph from black to mottled brown to better match the forest.
and they have this crazy lifestyle that's like a living link between the old-growth redwood forests
and the Pacific ocean said Keith Bensen a biologist at Redwood National park. It's strange to have an animal with webbed feet in the forest he said.
Yet even though the state's remaining old-growth redwood trees are protected now the murrelets continue to disappear.
and squirrels it's having a real impact on a very rare bird nesting overhead in an old-growth redwood tree Bensen told Ouramazingplanet.
A Western bird the blue and black Steller's jays like to frequent cleared forest edges which are filled with bugs
As humans spend more time in the forest the jay's numbers are booming. Their density in campgrounds is nine times higher than in other forest areas said Portia Halbert an environmental scientist with the California State Parks.
We see this crazy overlap of jays in campgrounds because of the density of food Halbert told Ouramazingplanet.
A control batch of red speckled eggs also decorated the forest. We've been accused of being the Easter bunny in the woods Golightly told Ouramazingplanet.
This year the project included Memorial Park a county park with old-growth redwoods. Nature's Giants:
Nothing else in the forest looks like a murrelet egg. If taste-aversion training were to spread through the murrelet's range it would not be the first time a bird would require human babysitters to survive think of condors who need devoted monitoring and care..
Cutting of the old-growth forests in the past is the primary thing that put us to this point
and other seagrasses which globally can store up to twice as much carbon as the world's temperate and tropical forests according to a separate study.
#Florida's Mangrove forests Expand with Climate Change Fewer deep freezes attributable to Earth's warming climate have caused mangrove forests to expand northward in Florida over the past three decades new research suggests.
Mangrove forests typically grow in tidal regions in tropical and subtropical climates. They serve a vital ecological function:
To see how climate changes have affected Florida's mangrove forests Cavanaugh and his colleagues looked at 28 years of satellite data from Florida's East Coast.
They found that the area taken up by mangrove forests in the northernmost latitudes had doubled over the last few decades
The new results imply that mangrove forests may expand quickly with global warming in the coming decades.
Though what this means for surrounding communities and the life that depends on the forests isn't yet clear.
#Forest Snow Can Melt Faster Than Flakes In Open Fields (ISNS)--As fresh snow turns us into grumbling commuters
Though researchers and snow enthusiasts have known long forests affect how long the fat wet piles of snow persist it wasn't clear precisely how trees made a difference.
and balmier winters the authors combed through existing research on how forests affect snow. In studies from all over the world they found a surprising connection between tree cover and snowmelt times.
Quicker melting in forests was unrelated also to the tree well phenomenon familiar to skiers the well of soft snow that forms around a tree trunk sheltered by branches.
In colder places like Colorado snow still lasts longer in forests which protect it from sun and wind according to Dickerson-Lange.
Though this study only compared areas with forest cover to those without it many other subtle effects can influence how long snow cover lasts.
One factor the team plans to analyze in future work is how well sparse deciduous forest cover compares with a dense canopy in preserving snow.
      The researchers hope these findings can help inform forest management decisions.
Forests are already being managed to improve water supply habitats for endangered species or to prevent fires and the spread of parasites.
whether we can manage forests to mitigate this impact and how will climate change come into play as we consider forest management decisions in the future.
#Forests Recover Quickly After Bark beetles Attack SAN FRANCISCO A forest ravaged by the red hand of death also known as a bark beetle attack recovers quickly with little ecosystem damage scientists said here today (Dec 9) at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
The potential effects of massive tree die offs in Western forests have been a concern since a sudden uptick in bark beetle attacks in the late 1990s.
A species called the mountain pine beetle is one of the primary culprits leaving large swaths of forest dying of a fungus carried by the tiny insects.
Forests look awful after a beetle attack but the wound isn't as terrible as it looks according to two separate studies by researchers from the University of Wyoming and the U s. Forest Service (USFS.
In Wyoming's Medicine Bow National Forest botanist Brent Ewers of the University of Wyoming examined
Photos of Destructive Invasive Species Even though bark beetles have an enormous visual impact the forest is resilient to the attack Ewers told Livescience.
In four different study sites 40 percent of older trees grew two times faster in the years after bark beetles munched through the forest Rhoades and his colleagues found.
and drink all the free water and fertilizer in the forest. On the small scale there may be local increases in stream flow carbon
Even though the bark beetle visual impact is really impressive and striking there's many things going on in that forest that makes it resilient to the attack
But at the time this grass-eating horse roamed the planet the region would have been covered in grasslands and shrubby woods rich grounds for grazing.
Most giraffes live in wooded savannas open woodlands and riparian forests in east Africa and the northern parts of southern Africa where they're protected by national parks. West african Giraffes only survive in the wild and the only known population lives in southwestern Niger.
The only remaining wild population of Ugandan Giraffes is in Murchison Falls National park Uganda. They've also been reintroduced to six sites in Kenya and one other site in Uganda.
The Western Grey Kangaroo lives in open woodlands shrublands grasslands and even pasturelands in Australia from the Indian ocean to western Victoria and New south wales.
The Eastern Grey Kangaroo lives in forests woodlands shrublands and grasslands in eastern Australia and Tasmania.
The Antilopine Kangaroo is found in monsoonal tropical woodlands in the northern part of the continent.
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