In the context of a study in the forests of Central Guyana a team of scientists from the Senckenberg Research Institute in Dresden investigated this very question
and by chance found a previously undiscovered species of frog that only exists in a very confined area of the so-called Iwokrama Forest.
The region accounts for more than 25 percent of the world's tropical rain forests and is one of the four remaining extensive pristine forested areas left in the world (Amazon Congo Papua new guinea and Guiana Shield.
whether conservation of amphibians and ecotourism can be reconciled in the forests of Guyana. The investigations are being carried out in close co-operation with the international not-for-profit organization Iwokrama International Centre for Rain forest Conservation and Development.
Their idea is to test the concept of a truly sustainable forest where conservation biodiversity safeguarding environmental balance
and economic use can be mutually reinforcing. Beside forms of sustainable forest management ecotourism concepts are also being tested.
This is also true of the project area Turu Falls at the foot of the Iwokrama Mountains in the so-called Iwokrama Forest of Central Guyana.
The original aim of the study was to investigate the populations of Hoogmoeds harlequin frog (Atelopus hoogmoedi)
Even though the forests of the Guiana Shield have had among the lowest deforestation rates of the world with very little change over the past decades rapid economic and social changes are posing increasing pressures on these relatively wellconservedforest ecosystems.
The Guianas are at a crossroads concerning decisions and tradeoffs among utilisation conservation and preservation of their forests and thus substantial parts of the region's biodiversity.
Authors are Tim Davenport of the Wildlife Conservation Society Katarzyna Nowak of the Udzungwa Elephant Project and Andrew Perkin of the Tanzania Forest Conservation Group.
The analysis revealed more than 60 important primate areas including national parks game reserves forest reserves conservation areas and currently unprotected landscapes.
and Jozani-Chwaka Bay) one nature reserve (Kilombero) and two forest reserves (Minziro and Mgambo) totaling 8679 square kilometers (3350 square miles) would protect all 27 of Tanzania
However Tanzania has the second highest rate of forest loss in Sub-saharan africa despite considerable conservation investment and a large amount of land nominally under protection.
#Damaging nonnative forest pests at home in northeastern U s. Beginning with early colonists who landed in the New world loaded with dreams grit
and perhaps the continent's first alien forest pests and continuing today with the expansion of global trade the northeastern United states has been ground zero for damaging nonnative forest pest invasions.
and Distributions U s. Forest Service researchers Andrew Liebhold Laura Blackburn Susan Frankel and partners used spatial data to demonstrate that the distribution of invasive forest pests is focused highly with a particularly large
As the landing place for early American colonists and continuing with the industrialization and proliferation of cargo imports the Northeast has been receiving invasive forest insects far longer than anywhere else in the nation.
The earliest record associated with the 79 invasive forest pests used in the analysis dates back to 1794 and 19 species were detected before 1900.
Seventy-five percent of the invasive forest pests included in the study were detected before 1940.
In terms of invasive forest insects tree species diversity works against Northeastern forests. The Northeast has an abundance of diverse hardwood tree species
and 65 percent of the insect and pathogen invaders included in this study colonize hardwood tree species said Liebhold a research entomologist with the U s. Forest Service's Northern Research Station.
Had these nonnative insects disembarked in a forest that is predominately pine for example most wouldn't have survived to become the damaging nonnative forest pests that they are today.
Industrialization and forest susceptibility to invasion also contributed to alien pests'ability to spread. In the most populated corner of the United states inadvertent human assistance has enhanced greatly insects'ability to spread from the initial point of invasion throughout a region.
While the study illustrates a concentration of alien forest pests in the Northeast it also shows that forest pests are taking a toll throughout the nation.
There are plenty of highly-damaging invasive species in Western United states forests such as sudden oak death and white pine blister rust according to Frankel a plant pathologist with the Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station.
The study is based on data from the Alien Forest Pest Explorer a web tool that gives users a county-by-county look at geographical distributions of damaging forest invasive pests throughout the nation.
The above story is provided based on materials by USDA Forest Service-Northern Research Station. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences University of British columbia the University of Nevada Las vegas the University of Western Greece Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
In the heart of Missouri's Ozark forest cooler temperatures usually make snakes less active than in the edge of the forest or in smaller pockets of woodland.
However during abnormally hot years even the interior of the forest increases in temperature. Since snakes are cold-blooded warmer temperatures make the reptiles more active
Small fragments of forests in the rest of the state do not support successful bird reproduction
and Assistant professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Andrew Richardson however has found that forests across the globe are becoming more efficient than expected.
Using data collected from forests in the northeastern US and elsewhere around the world Keenan and Richardson found increases in efficiency larger than those predicted by even the most state-of-the-art computer models The research which was done in collaboration with researchers from the Harvard's Department of Earth
and Planetary Sciences the USDA Forest Service Ohio State university Indiana University and the Karlsruhe Institute of technology in Germany is described in a July 10 paper in Nature.
While increased atmospheric carbon dioxide may benefit forests in the short term Richardson emphasized that the overall climate picture would remain grim
To test whether such a carbon dioxide fertilization effect was taking place in forests Keenan Richardson
This method which relies on sophisticated instruments mounted on tall towers extending above the forest canopy allows researchers to determine how much carbon dioxide
With more than 20 years of data the towers in the Harvard Forest--which have the longest continuous record in the world--are an invaluable resource for studying how forests have responded to changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
When Keenan Richardson and colleagues began to examine those records they found that forests were storing more carbon
When the researchers in Michigan Tech's School of Forest Resources and Environmental science started looking at the question of how nitrogen--widely used as an agricultural fertilizer--affects root growth in plants their goal was to find ways to produce plants that require less nitrogen.
Scientists at the World Agroforestry Centre who have been studying land conversion in Sumatra say they have identified this third group of local land investors who operate outside the government system making them potentially more difficult to regulate.
About half of the fire'hot spots'in Riau province are on land with legal permits for large-scale operations (industrial timber oil palm and logging.
The above story is provided based on materials by World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length h
#Even slight temperature increases causing tropical forests to blossoma new study led by Florida State university researcher Stephanie Pau shows that tropical forests are producing more flowers in response to only slight increases in temperature.
and rainfall affect the number of flowers that tropical forests produce. Results showed that clouds mainly have an effect over short-term seasonal growth
but longer-term changes of these forests appear to be due to temperature. While other studies have used long-term flower production data this is the first study to combine these data with direct estimates of cloud cover based on satellite information.
Tropical forests are thought commonly of as the lungs of the earth and how many flowers they produce is one vital sign of their health said Pau an assistant professor in Florida State's Department of Geography.
which forests can get too warm and flower production will decrease. We're not seeing that yet at the sites we looked at
and year-to-year flower production in two contrasting tropical forests--a seasonally dry forest on Barro Colorado Island Panama and an ever-wet forest in Luquillo Puerto rico. The seasonally dry site according to Pau
and overall growth of the forests and because there is long-term data on flower production available Pau said.
The amount of sunlight reaching tropical forests due to varying amounts of cloud cover is an important factor just not the most important
Clouds are a huge uncertainty in understanding the impacts of climate change on tropical forests Pau said.
Even so we're showing that these tropical forests are still really sensitive to small degrees of change.
A team of researchers headed by Benjamin Perlman at Wake Forest University in the United states filmed juvenile largemouth bass
flood regulation pasture and freshwater supply all went together as did forest recreation soil retention carbon storage and surface water quality.
and losses of policyin the past decade China has sunk some impressive numbers to preserve its forests
$15 billion to ban logging encourage new forests; $32 billion to persuade 32 million rural households to return 8. 8 million hectares of cropland back to forest.
The group examined both the people and the environment from as big a picture as trends of the forest from decades of land cover maps to surveying individual households to understand how their behaviors changed as policies were introduced.
Payments for ecosystem services programs--programs in which people were given incentives to change their behavior so the forest around them could recover--have been an enormous effort in China and worldwide.
The work found that China's offering people incentives to change how they live to boost the environment did benefit the forest
and the environment--but not without a toll on the people who live there. The article emphasizes the importance of integrating local conditions
Disequilibrium will become the norm in the plant communities of the futurethe forest we are used to looking at is not at all in equilibrium.
However our forests take an extremely long time to adapt. For example we still have a small amount of small-leaved lime in Denmark
so we should not assume that the forest we're looking at in a given place is suitable for the climate.
The challenges we faceconsequently if you're trying to practise natural forest management with natural regeneration you may see completely different plants regenerating compared with
and if it disperses on the forest floor it may create too much shade for the existing flora on the forest floor to survive.
of forests to grass or shrub lands a report suggests. Researchers from Oregon State university concluded that moisture stress is a key limitation for conifer regeneration following stand-replacing wildfire
If forests are desired in these locations more aggressive attempts at reforestation may be needed they said. The study published in Forest Ecology
and Management was done in a portion of the Metolius River watershed in the eastern Cascade range of Oregon
A decade after this fire there was almost no tree regeneration at lower drier sites said Erich Dodson a researcher with the OSU Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society.
But at the low elevations it will be a long time before a forest comes back if it ever does.
and recruitment of new forests may be delayed or prevented--even in climate conditions that might have been able to maintain an existing forest.
While mature trees can use their roots to tap water deeper in the soil competition with dense understory vegetation can make it difficult for seedlings to survive.
Openings in ponderosa pine forests created by wildfire have persisted for more than a century on harsh south-facing slopes in Colorado the researchers noted in their report.
And fire severity is already increasing in many forests due to climate change --what is thought now of as a drought in some locations may be considered average by the end of the next century.
if maintaining a forest is a management objective the study concluded. Higher-elevation mixed conifer forests in less moisture-limited sites may be able to recover from stand-replacing wildfire without treatment the researchers said.
study findscattle grazing and clean water can coexist on national forest lands according to research by the University of California Davis. The study published in the journal PLOS ONE is the most comprehensive examination of water quality
on National Forest public grazing lands to date. There's been a lot of concern about public lands and water quality especially with cattle grazing said lead author Leslie Roche a postdoctoral scholar in the UC Davis Department of Plant sciences.
Roughly 1. 8 million livestock graze on national forest lands in the western United states each year the study said.
In California 500 active grazing allotments support 97000 livestock across 8 million acres on 17 national forests.
With an annual recreating population of over 26 million California's national forests are at the crossroad of a growing debate about the compatibility of livestock grazing with other activities dependent upon clean safe water the study
Nearly 40 UC Davis researchers ranchers U s. Department of agriculture Forest Service staff and environmental stakeholders went out by foot
and on horseback hiking across meadows along campsites and down ravines to collect 743 water samples from 155 sites across five national forests in northern California.
These areas stretched from Klamath National Forest to Plumas Tahoe Stanislaus and Shasta-Trinity national forests.
The study was funded by the USDA Forest Service Region 5. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of California-Davis. Note:
#Illegal marijuana grows threaten fishers in the southern Sierra Nevadarat poison used on illegal marijuana grows is killing fishers in the southern Sierra nevada according to a recent study conducted by a team of scientists from the U s. Forest Service's Pacific
and California endangered species acts and is considered a sensitive species in the western United states by the U s. Forest Service.
and communicates science needed to sustain forest ecosystems and other benefits to society. It has research facilities in California Hawai'i and the U s.-affiliated Pacific Islands.
The above story is provided based on materials by USDA Forest Service-Pacific Southwest Research Station. Note:
#Illegal marijuana grows threaten fishers in the southern Sierra Nevadarat poison used on illegal marijuana grows is killing fishers in the southern Sierra nevada according to a recent study conducted by a team of scientists from the U s. Forest Service's Pacific
and California endangered species acts and is considered a sensitive species in the western United states by the U s. Forest Service.
and communicates science needed to sustain forest ecosystems and other benefits to society. It has research facilities in California Hawai'i and the U s.-affiliated Pacific Islands.
The above story is provided based on materials by USDA Forest Service-Pacific Southwest Research Station. Note:
but they are threatened also in seemingly suitable forests when there is too much human activity. The smallest surviving tiger subspecies Sumatran tigers are extremely elusive
This is the first study to compare the density of Sumatran tigers across various forest types including the previously unstudied peat land.
The WWF field team collected data in partnership with the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry staff.
and gathering of forest products Sunarto said. We found a low population of tigers in these areas even
#Ailanthus trees status as invasive species offers lesson in human interactionan exotic tree species that changed from prized possession to forest management nightmare serves as a lesson in the unpredictability of nonnative species
and Thomas Jefferson imported the first ailanthus altissima--Tree-of-heaven--a tree native to China from England sometime between 1784 and 1785 and cultivated the tree on his estate the Woodlands in Philadelphia.
The deciduous tree which grows rapidly often to a height of 50 feet has become one of the biggest forest management problems especially since the 1980s according to the researchers.
In the 1980s widespread gypsy moth infestation in Pennsylvania led to the death or near death of large stands of oak trees in the state forests especially in south-central Pennsylvania.
In parts of the state forests there were no roads in areas associated with the gypsy moth devastation said Kasson.
During these timber salvage operations crews are building roads and moving a lot of soil and seed.
or two older female ailanthus trees near areas where foresters removed trees following the gypsy moth infestation
and quickly dominated these forests. Kasson said recent mining and drilling operations in Pennsylvania forests may also cause the species to expand.
New roads are being constructed into these active drilling sites said Kasson. These drilling operations could lead to future spread.
The research published in Scientific Reports revealed that woodland blue tits that were provided with fat balls as a supplementary food during the winter months went on to produce chicks that were smaller of lower body weight and
The three year study was conducted across nine woodland sites in Cornwall. During winter populations of blue tits were left unfed given plain fat balls
Nest boxes and bird feeders were distributed around the woodland study sites and reproductive success was investigated by checking the nest boxes in the spring to determine the number of eggs laid and the growth and survival of chicks.
or exceeding the carbon stored by forests and farmlands. What this suggests Mitsch says is that researchers
The new species was collected in a wide river valley near mountain mixed forests dominated by various conifer trees bushes and rhododendron.
save livesin the first effort to estimate the overall impact of a city's urban forest on concentrations of fine particulate pollution (particulate matter less than 2. 5 microns
or PM2. 5) a U s. Forest Service and Davey Institute study found that urban trees
and forests are saving an average of one life every year per city. In New york city trees save an average of eight lives every year.
and Robert Hoehn of the U s. Forest Service and Satoshi Hirabayashi and Allison Bodine of the Davey Institute in Syracuse N y. estimated how much fine particulate matter is removed by trees in 10 cities their impact on PM2
and forests said Michael T. Rains Director of the Forest Service's Northern Research Station
and Acting Director of the Forest Products Lab. This research clearly illustrates that America's urban forests are critical capital investments helping produce clear air and water;
Simply put our urban forests improve people's lives. Cities included in the study were Atlanta Baltimore Boston Chicago Los angeles Minneapolis New york city Philadelphia San francisco and Syracuse NY.
i-Tree a suite of tools developed by the Forest Service and Davey Institute was used to calculate PM2. 5 removal and associated change in concentrations in the study citiesstory Source:
The above story is provided based on materials by USDA Forest Service-Northern Research Station. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
However a new study conducted in an animal model at Wake Forest Baptist Medical center showed that fructose rapidly caused liver damage even without weight gain.
Based on this study we would say not said Kylie Kavanagh D. V. M. assistant professor of pathology-comparative medicine at Wake Forest Baptist
The Wake Forest Baptist team plans to begin a new study using the same controls but testing for both fructose and dextrose over a longer time frame.
The study was supported by Wake Forest School of medicine and grants RR019963 OD010965 and AG033641 from the National institutes of health.
Co-authors are Ashley Wylie and Kelly Tucker B. S. of Wake Forest Baptist; John Culler D. V. M. Ph d. of North carolina State university;
The above story is provided based on materials by Wake Forest Baptist Medical center. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
southeastern Brazil home to both the species-rich Atlantic Forest and major cities such as Sao paulo with its 11 million residents;
and other human related barriers according to Joshua Lawler UW associate professor of environmental and forestry sciences and lead author of a paper appearing June 19 online in Ecology Letters.
#Contribution of particulate matter from air pollution to forest declineair pollution is related to forest decline and also appears to attack the protecting wax on tree leaves and needles.
and the latest report on the North-Rhine Westphalian forest conditions confirms ongoing damage. Bonn University scientists have shown now that salt deposits on leaves may decrease the drought tolerance of trees thereby contributing to forest decline.
and that wax degradation is closely related to forest damage. Wax degradation was addressed by many studies in the 1980s
and 90s but sound explanations for both the degradation mechanism and the high correlation with forest damage have yet been missing Dr. Burkhardt reports.
Conceivable aggravation of forest decline by climate changea new type of electron microscope enabled the observation of particle deliquescence and dynamics under changing air humidity.
Recently regional forest damage has been reported in the western USA and other parts of the world.
but the newly discovered mechanism involving particulate matter might contribute to the regional forest damage.
The study conducted by researchers at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies comes out this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The above story is provided based on materials by Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. Note:
Wu Yang an MSU-CSIS doctoral student and his colleagues studied how groups in the Wolong Nature Reserve worked to participate in China's massive Natural Forest Conservation Program.
That program pays all of the 1100 rural households there to monitor the forest on which they rely to enforce logging bans intended to allow forests to recover.
or to build homes enlisting locals has been identified as the best way to increase forest cover.
Wake Forest Baptist Medical center researchers conducted a study to evaluate the heat indexes in migrant farmworker housing
and prevention at Wake Forest Baptist said the findings raise concerns about productivity and worker health.
The study which appears online this month in the American Journal of Public health is part of an ongoing program of community-based participatory research at Wake Forest Baptist in conjunction with the N c. Farmworkers Project
Haiying Chen M d. Ph d. Werner E. Bischoff M d. Ph d. and Thomas A. Arcury Ph d. of Wake Forest Baptist and Melinda F. Wiggins MTS Student
The above story is provided based on materials by Wake Forest Baptist Medical center. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length g
The thawed layer varies in depth from about 4 inches (10 centimeters) in the coldest tundra regions to several yards or meters in the southern boreal forests.
forests peatlands and wetlands. The C-23 won't win any beauty contests--its pilots refer to it as a UPS truck with a bad nose job.
Fires in boreal forests or tundra accelerate the thawing of permafrost and carbon release. Detailed fire observation records since 1942 show the average annual number of Alaska wildfires has increased
Logging may have greater impact on carbon emissions than previously thoughtusing wood for energy is considered cleaner than fossil fuels
but a Dartmouth College-led study finds that logging may release large amounts of carbon stored in deep forest soils.
and unaffected by timber harvesting. But the Dartmouth findings show deep soil can play an important role in carbon emissions in clear-cutting and other intensive forest management practices.
The findings suggest that calls for an increased reliance on forest biomass be reevaluated and that forest carbon analyses are incomplete
unless they include deep soil which stores more than 50 percent of the carbon in forest soils.
Our paper suggests the carbon in the mineral soil may change more rapidly and result in increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide as a result of disturbances such as logging said Dartmouth Professor Andrew Friedland a co-author.
Our paper suggests that increased reliance on wood may have unintended the effect of increasing the transfer of carbon from the mineral soil to the atmosphere.
So the intended goal of reducing carbon in the atmosphere may not be met. The federal government is looking to wood wind solar hydropower
Analysis of forest carbon cycles is central to understanding and mitigating climate change and understanding forest carbon cycles requires an in depth analysis of the storage in and fluxes among different forest carbon pools
which include aboveground live and dead biomass as well as the belowground organic soil horizon mineral soil horizon and roots Friedland said.
of Forest Parks and Recreation. The research was supported by awards to Friedland from the Northeastern States Research Cooperative and the Porter Fund.
A great deal of pine forest in the habitat of the moose has the same effect. These are the results of new research into how deer keds are spreading in Southeast Norway.
Madslien points to a clear positive connection between the amount of pine forest in the habitat of the moose and the infestation intensity of deer keds in the coats of the moose.
Ajayan is the Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor in Engineering and a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science chemistry and chemical and biomolecular engineering.
With fewer seeds you get less regeneration says ecologist Joshua Rapp affiliated with NSF's Harvard Forest Long-term Ecological Research (LTER) site
In low-cone years less pollen is released reaching extremely few female cones says Elizabeth Crone senior ecologist at the NSF Harvard Forest LTER site
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