When I went to the forest the wild plants looked healthy and gorgeous Roossinck said.
In the forest the plants are full of microbes: viruses fungi and bacteria whereas in crops farmers try to eliminate the microbes.
Indeed one plant virus that was found frequently in the forest was also found in nearby melon crops.
The type of feedstock also contributes to stability with wood being more stable than grasses and manure.
or crops grown on abandoned land that has reverted not to forest. On the other hand biochar production that relies on forest ecosystems may result in a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions they cautioned.
Net-negative farmingeven large agricultural systems can be net negative. The GCEP report cited research by Jose Moreira of the University of Sao paulo.
#Scientists develop improved fire management tools for Africas savannasscientists at the Nairobi-based World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)
The key to fighting fire with fire is said robust science Cheikh Mbow senior climate change scientist with the World Agroforestry Centre.
They worked with Senegal's Forestry Service to torch 231 prescribed 10-by-10 meter plots (an area roughly the size of three football pitches) in Senegal at the end of the 2010 rainy season.
what forest managers attempt to mimic in order to limit dangerous fuel build up. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by World Agroforestry Centre.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length h
#Next generation soybean breeding: The potential of spectral analysisused in everything from baked goods to trendy edamame and livestock feed to cooking oil the huge array of uses for soybeans has scientists looking for the most efficient ways to grow them.
Yet despite an abundance of seething swamps and flooded forests in the tropics ground-based measurements of methane have fallen well short of the quantities detected in tropical air by satellites.
Deborah Gordon a biology professor at Stanford and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment has been studying a particular population of harvester ant colonies in southeastern Arizona for 28 years meticulously recording
so could be useful in managing invasive ant species predicting crop yields and understanding the ecology of tropical forests.
#Southwest regional warming likely cause of pinyon pine cone declinecreeping climate change in the Southwest appears to be having a negative effect on pinyon pine reproduction a finding with implications for wildlife species sharing the same woodland ecosystems says a University
Wildlife biologists say pinyon-juniper woodlands are popular with scores of bird and mammal species ranging from black-chinned hummingbirds to black bears.
In addition to the climate-warming trend under way in the Southwest the 2002-03 drought caused significant mortality in pinyon pine forests Redmond said.
The die off triggered by the drought from 2000-2003 is estimated to have affected up to 17%of Colorado aspen forests.
Forests store about 45 percent of the carbon found on land remarked William. Widespread tree death can radically transform ecosystems affecting biodiversity posing fire risks
In a previous study the brothers with colleagues looked at two competing theories for how forest trees die during a drought.
This study is a milestone in linking plant-level physiology measurements with large-scale climate to predict vulnerability to climate change in these forests.
The Asian needle ant is moving into forests and urban environments at the same time Spicer Rice says.
Asian needle ants also appear to be driving out native ant populations in forests--including native species that play important roles in ecosystem processes such as dispersing seeds.
and geriatric medicine at Wake Forest Baptist Medical center and research director of its Sticht Center on Aging is the principal investigator in a National institutes of health-funded study into the effectiveness of insulin administered through the nose in treating individuals with mild cognitive impairment
and cures said Craft who joined the Wake Forest Baptist faculty in October after 18 years at the University of Washington in Seattle.
That position is echoed by Ronny Bell co-director of the Maya Angelou Center for Health Equity at Wake Forest Baptist.
One of the most important ways you can contribute directly to science is by volunteering to participate in studies said Christina Hugenschmidt an instructor in gerontology and geriatric medicine at Wake Forest Baptist.
The above story is provided based on materials by Wake Forest Baptist Medical center. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length h
#11,000 elephants slaughtered in national park once home to Africa s largest forest elephant populationthe Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced February 6 that a national park once home to Africa's largest forest elephant
Gabon contains over half of Africa's forest elephants with a population estimated at over 40000.
Instead they should encourage more kinds of plants in fields and woods as a buffer against sudden ecosystem disturbance.
and ecosystem stability said many ecosystems are at a tipping point including grasslands that may easily become either woodlands or deserts.
whether tropical forests are absorbing carbon dioxide or releasing it--and this in turn depends on whether the tropical climate was warmer and dryer than usual or wetter and cooler.
They found that climate models that predicted tropical forest dieback under climate change also had a very large year-to-year variation in carbon dioxide concentration while models in
so that overall forests are expected to continue to accumulate carbon. The researchers are however certain that tropical forests will suffer under climate change
if carbon dioxide doesn't fertilise tree growth as strongly as climate models suggest. Co-author Chris Jones of the Met Office said:
The long-term health of tropical forests will depend on their ability to withstand multiple pressures from changing climate and deforestation.
and rainfall are affecting the survival of elephants working in timber camps in Myanmar and can double the risk of death in calves aged up to five new research from the University of Sheffield has found.
The elephants in the database are semi-captive animals working in the timber industry by pushing and dragging logs.
The above story is provided based on materials by Swiss Federal Institute for Forest Snow and Landscape Research WSL.
#When mangroves no longer protect the coastlinethe mangrove forests in the Guyanas (French guiana Surinam and Guyana) which spread across the Orinoco
and waterways and over-harvesting of plant and animal species. The study was led by Dr. Leandro Castello a research associate at the Woods Hole Research center (WHRC) in collaboration with scientists from various institutions in the United states and Brazil.
Science and policy in the Amazon have focused largely on forests and their associated biodiversity and carbon stocks.
and established a network of protected areas largely designed to preserve forests and their biodiversity.
Adequate protection of Amazon freshwater ecosystems requires broadening the forest-centric focus of prevailing environmental management
and terrestrial ecosystems effectively protecting the Amazon river-forest system. The Amazon watershed spans six countries with Brazil Bolivia and Peru accounting for most of the area.
if land currently covered in non-forest vegetation was converted into deciduous forest. This equates to more than a doubling of forest in Poland Czech republic Denmark Northern Ukraine Northern Germany and France.
But in already heavily forested countries such as Sweden the increase is smaller at less than 10%.
However even in these areas forest cover can provide localized benefits by making the surrounding air moister
the bipedal human ancestor or the grassland encroaching on the forest? A new analysis of the past 12 million years'of vegetation change in the cradle of humanity is challenging long-held beliefs about the world in
Among other things one theory dating back to 1925 posits that early human ancestors developed bipedalism as a response to savannas encroaching on shrinking forests in northeast Africa.
The researchers including two Spanish biologists have been studying the forests of Central and Southern America for ten years and they have published now their results in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.
A ten-year study in forests of the American continent has resulted in the description of 24 new insect species from the Quichuana genus that are also known as'flower flies'.
and one of the authors of the study the species of the Quichuana genus are not well known as they live in tropical forest areas where insect studies are scarce.
Numerous studies in these forests have been carried out in the last ten years that aim to understand
In our lifetimes we're watching Caribbean coral reefs die kelp forests die and salt marshes and sea grass beds being decimated.
and forestry to improve the resistance of plants to insect pests he said. In the short term though this is basic research that is driven by the curiosity of ecologists to understand nature better.
#Spring may come earlier to North american forests, increasing uptake of carbon dioxidetrees in the con ti nen tal U s. could send out new spring leaves up to 17 days ear lier in the com ing cen
Scientists from the U s. Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station (PSW) and the Pacific Southwest Region collaborated to monitor the distribution of fishers across a 7606-square-mile area in the southern Sierra nevada.
They used baited track-plate stations--an enclosure where the fisher leaves a sooted track print as it walks through--at 223 locations across three national forests.
The forest-dwelling fisher (Martes pennanti) once lived throughout most of the mountains in northern California and the Sierra nevada and in the Rocky mountains Cascades and Coast ranges.
or declined due to commercial trapping and clear-cut timber harvesting. Fishers have been reintroduced at a few locations in the western U s
Zielinski noted that given the short time period of this study the effects of Forest Service management actions to protect fishers
The above story is provided based on materials by USDA Forest Service-Pacific Southwest Research Station. Note:
#Shedding light on role of Amazon forests in global carbon cycleearth's forests perform a well-known service to the planet absorbing a great deal of the carbon dioxide pollution emitted into the atmosphere from human activities.
in order to understand the role of forests in the global climate system. Tropical old-growth forests may play a large role in this absorption service yet tree mortality patterns for these forests are understood not well.
Now scientist Jeffrey Chambers and colleagues at the U s. Department of energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab have devised an analytical method that combines satellite images simulation modeling
This new tool will enhance understanding of the role of forests in carbon sequestration and the impact of climate change on such disturbances.
but the details of those processes and how they will respond to a changing climate are understood inadequately particularly for tropical forests Chambers said.
To develop a better estimate of the contribution of forests we need to have a better understanding of forest tree mortality.
By linking data from Landsat satellite images over a 20-year period with observations on the ground they found that 9. 1 to 16.9 percent of tree mortality was missing from more conventional plot-based analyses of forests.
which need to be included in forest carbon budgets Their findings were published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
If these results hold for most tropical forests then it would indicate that because we missed some of the mortality then the contribution of these forests to the net sink might be less than previous studies have suggested Chambers said.
An old-growth forest has a mosaic of patches all doing different things. So if you want to understand the average behavior of that system you need to sample at a much larger spatial scale over larger time intervals than was appreciated previously.
You don't see this mosaic if you walk through the forest or study only one patch.
You really need to look at the forest at the landscape scale. Trees and other living organisms are key players in the global carbon cycle a complex biogeochemical process in
which carbon is exchanged among the atmosphere the ocean the biosphere and Earth's crust. Fewer trees mean not only a weakening of the forest's ability to absorb carbon
but the decay of dead trees will also release carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. Large-scale tree mortality in tropical ecosystems could
The Amazon forest is hit periodically by fierce thunderstorms that may bring violent winds with concentrated bursts believed to be as high as 170 miles per hour.
The storms can blow down many acres of the forest; however Chambers and his team were able to paint a much more nuanced picture of how storms affected the forest.
By looking at satellite images before and after a storm the scientists discerned changes in the reflectivity of the forest
which they assumed was due to damage to the canopy and thus tree loss. Researchers were sent then into the field at some of the blowdown areas to count the number of trees felled by the storm.
The researchers estimated that hundreds of millions of trees were destroyed potentially equivalent to a significant fraction of the estimated mean annual carbon accumulation for the Amazon forest.
and forest ecosystems becomes ever more important. We need to establish a baseline so we can say how these forests functioned before we changed the climate Chambers said.
This new tool can be used to assess tree mortality in other types of forests as well.
Chambers and colleagues reported in the journal Science in 2007 that Hurricane Katrina killed or severely damaged about 320 million trees.
Disturbances such as Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Katrina cause large impacts to the terrestrial carbon cycle forest tree mortality and CO2 emissions from decomposition in addition to significant economic impacts.
Besides understanding how forests affect carbon cycling the new technique could also play a vital role in understanding how climate change will affect forests.
So what's going to happen to old-growth tropical forests? On one hand they are being fertilized by some unknown extent by the rising CO2 concentration
#New control strategies for bipolar bark beetlespopulation explosions of pine beetles which have been decimating North american forests in recent decades may be prevented by boosting competitor
Bark beetles are the most destructive forest pests worldwide. Management and climate change have resulted in younger denser forests that are even more susceptible to attack.
The new research by Dartmouth scientists and their forester colleagues could provide the means to limit this seemingly bipolar dynamic keeping the bark beetles at the lower stable population level.
Leaving more dead trees in forests can provide habitat for competitor beetles that rarely kill tree
More than 90 percent of the lemurs'forest habitat has already been cleared for logging farming and grazing.
Meredith Barrett is now a postdoctoral scholar with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars Program at the University of California at San francisco and Berkeley.
D'Odorico said that in most cases where land has been acquired there is a switch from natural ecosystems--such as forests
#Paradise found for Latin americas largest land mammalwildlife Conservation Society scientists have documented a thriving population of lowland tapirs--the strange forest
Tapirs are found throughout tropical forests and grasslands in South america. However they are threatened by habitat loss and especially unsustainable hunting due to their large size low reproductive rate (1 birth every 2-3 years) and ease of detection at mineral licks in the rainforest.
and habitats from lowland tropical forests of the Amazon to snowcapped peaks of the High Andes.
the Beneficia Foundation the Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund Woodland Park Zoo and other generous supporters.
and fragmented by human activity--primarily the clearing of forest for cattle raising. It shows that increases in howler monkey'travel time'--the amount of time needed to find requisite nourishment--are leading to increases in levels of stress hormones called glucocorticoids.
As forests are fragmented the howlers become cut off isolated on forest'islands'that increasingly lack the fruit
Determining the full relevance of our results for the conservation of primates living in forest fragments will require long-term studies of stress hormones
#Curious interaction in regeneration of oak forests: Voles know which acorns have insect larvaeresearchers at the UPM have observed as voles are able to distinguish the acorns containing insect larvae from those that have not.
This fact determines the dispersion and germination of acorns and therefore the regeneration of forests of oaks.
The Haedo de Montejo (Madrid) is preserved a well mixed forest of oak and beech. This is the place where researchers at the School of Forestry from the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid have carried out a research on scattering patterns of acorns for voles
and found that when seed are attacked by insects the fact that larva is or not inside of the acorn can modify the dispersion pattern and consequently the regeneration of these types of forests.
The acorns are produced the fruits by oaks holm oaks and cork oaks that perpetuate their species move
The fact that the larva was resulted still inside definitive for the near future of the acorn and therefore the future of oak forests.
and how our forests should be protected. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by madrimasd.
The survey was carried out around the Sundarbans mangrove forests of southwestern Bangladesh home to one of the world's largest remaining tiger populations.
Although there are no human inhabitants of the Sundarbans eight sub-districts with a total population of around 1. 7 million people lie directly adjacent to the forest boundary.
#Climate changes effects on temperate rain forests surprisingly complexlonger warmer growing seasons associated with a changing climate are altering growing conditions in temperate rain forests
but not all plant species will be affected negatively according to research conducted by the U s. Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station.
Research featured in the January 2013 issue of Science Findings--a monthly publication of the station--reveals a complex range of forest plant responses to a warming climate.
Although the overall potential for growth increases as the climate warms we found that plant species differ in their ability to adapt to these changing conditions said Tara Barrett a research forester with the station who led the study.
Barrett and her colleagues explored trends in forest composition in southeastern and south-central Alaska home to the bulk of the world's temperate rain forests.
Individual species within the rain forest however differed--western redcedar biomass increased by four percent while shore pine declined by almost five percent.
As forest managers consider climate impacts like these in the management of their forests scientists including Barrett
The above story is provided based on materials by USDA Forest Service-Pacific Northwest Research Station. Note:
We've known for some time that environmental stresses can cause trees to naturally develop a slightly modified'reaction wood
and that it can be easier to release sugars from this wood. This is an important breakthrough our study now shows that natural genetic variations are responsible for these differences
because they show that some willows respond more to environmental stresses such as strong winds by changing the composition of their wood in ways that are useful to us.
#Severe climate jeopardizing Amazon forest, study findsan area of the Amazon rainforest twice the size of California continues to suffer from the effects of a megadrought that began in 2005 finds a new NASA-led study.
These results together with observed recurrences of droughts every few years and associated damage to the forests in southern and western Amazonia in the past decade suggest these rainforests may be showing the first signs of potential large-scale
and structure of the forest canopy (top layer) from the Seawinds scatterometer on NASA's Quikscat spacecraft.
or 70 million hectares) of pristine old-growth forest in southwestern Amazonia experienced an extensive severe drought.
This megadrought caused widespread changes to the forest canopy that were detectable by satellite. The changes suggest dieback of branches and tree falls especially among the older larger more vulnerable canopy trees that blanket the forest.
While rainfall levels gradually recovered in subsequent years the damage to the forest canopy persisted all the way to the next major drought
which began in 2010. About half the forest affected by the 2005 drought--an area the size of California--did not recover
by the time Quikscat stopped gathering global data in November 2009 and before the start of a more extensive drought in 2010.
The biggest surprise for us was that the effects appeared to persist for years after the 2005 drought said study co-author Yadvinder Malhi of the University of Oxford United kingdom. We had expected the forest canopy to bounce back after a year with a new flush of leaf growth
Recent Amazonian droughts have drawn attention to the vulnerability of tropical forests to climate change. Satellite and ground data have shown an increase in wildfires during drought years
and corresponding slow forest recovery he said. This may alter the structure and function of Amazonian rainforest ecosystems.
About 30 percent (656370 square miles or 1. 7 million square kilometers) of the Amazon basin's total current forest area was affected with more than five percent of the forest experiencing severe drought conditions.
This double whammy by successive droughts suggests a potentially long-lasting and widespread effect on forests in southern and western Amazonia.
Together these data suggest a decade of moderate water stress led up to the 2005 drought helping trigger the large-scale forest damage seen following the 2005 drought.
and penetrate into the top few meters of vegetation providing daily measurements of the forest canopy structure
and estimates of how much water the forest contains. Areas of drought-damaged forest produced a lower radar signal than the signals collected over healthy forest areas indicating either that the forest canopy is drier
or it is less rough due to damage to or the death of canopy trees. Results of the study were published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
and analyzes its likely effects on human health water energy transportation agriculture forests ecosystems and biodiversity.
Impacts are already being felt in the forests in agriculture in the Great lakes and in our urban centers said Scavia director of the Graham Sustainability Institute and special counsel to the U-M president on sustainability issues.
The composition of the region's forests is expected to change as rising temperatures drive habitats for many tree species northward.
The consequences are significant with around half of the 2. 4 million rural households in the country using wood as their primary fuel source burning between four and seven million tonnes per year.
Despite significant electrification of rural households in South africa large amounts of fuelwood are still being extracted from savannah woodlands said lead-author of the letter Konrad Wessels.
and eating facilities available to them according to a new study from Wake Forest Baptist Medical center.
Researchers from Wake Forest Baptist are the first to evaluate cooking and eating facilities in migrant farmworker camps to compare against established housing regulations.
The study which appears online in the January issue of 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
The structural sanitation and pest infestation problems documented in these kitchens are interrelated said the study's lead author Sara A. Quandt Ph d. a professor of epidemiology and prevention at Wake Forest Baptist.
The above story is provided based on materials by Wake Forest Baptist Medical center. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
study suggestsin Missouri forests dense thickets of invasive honeysuckle decrease the light available to other plants hog the attention of pollinators
a hammock forest in central Florida; an oak-hickory forest in eastern Missouri; and a tropical forest on the Big Island of Hawai'i. The hammock forest a mix of live oak cabbage palm sweet gum
and pignut hickory is being invaded by the flax lily (Dianella ensifolia). Native to Africa and Asia the lily forms dense mats on the forest floor.
Amur honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii) a mid-story shrub introduced from East asia as an ornamental and to provide bird habitat is the black hat in the oak-hickory forests.
The fire tree (Morella faya) a canopy tree from Macaronesia that boosts nitrogen levels in the soil making it inhospitable to native species
and more suitable for other invasives is the troublemaker in the Hawaiian forest. Invasives don't just sweep the boardwe counted the number of species per unit area in plots that varied in size from one meter square to 500 meters square--a quarter the size of a football field--on either side of the invasion front
and then plotted the number of species against the size of the plot Powell says.
In 1942 Leopold's notes show the woodland wildflower bloodroot blooming on April 12. In 2012 bloodroot was observed first blossoming March 17.
In a new study by the U s. Forest Service the presence of trees was associated with human health.
For Geoffrey Donovan a research forester at the Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station and his colleagues the loss of 100 million trees in the eastern and midwestern United states was unprecedented an opportunity to study the impact
The researchers analyzed demographic human mortality and forest health data at the county level between 1990 and 2007.
and Jeffrey Prestemon Andrew Liebhold Demetrios Gatziolis and Megan Mao with the Forest Service's Southern Northern and Pacific Northwest Research Stations.
The above story is provided based on materials by USDA Forest Service-Pacific Northwest Research Station. Note:
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