#Agroforestry can ensure food security, mitigate effects of climate change in Africaagroforestry can help to achieve climate change mitigation
Scientists at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) say agroforestry--which is integrated an land use management technique that incorporates trees
and shrubs with crops and livestock on farms--could be a win-win solution to the seemingly difficult choice between reforestation
In a special issue of Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability scientists say that in most parts of Africa climate change mitigation focuses on reforestation
and forest protection however such efforts to reduce deforestation conflict with the need to expand agricultural production in Africa to feed the continent's growing population.
This mixture shows the role that agroforestry can play in addressing both climate mitigation and adaptation in primarily food-focused production systems of Africa says Dr. Cheikh Mbow Senior Scientist Climate Change
and Development at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and lead author of the article. It has been demonstrated by science that
if you develop agroforestry it has the potential to buffer the impact of climate change.
so agroforestry is a good response to develop resilience of agrosystems to the challenges brought about by climate change he says.
Agroforestry is one of the most common land use systems across landscapes and agroecological zones in Africa but need much more adoption in order to increase the impact on food security.
With food shortages and increased threats of climate change interest in agroforestry is gathering for its potential to address various on-farm adaptation needs.
The failure of extension services in poor African countries limits the possibility to scale up innovations in agroforestry for improved land use systems.
The scientists conclude that agroforestry should therefore attract more attention in global agendas on climate change mitigation because of its positive social and environmental impacts.
The above story is provided based on materials by World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
#Deer proliferation disrupts a forests natural growthby literally looking below the surface and digging up the dirt Cornell researchers have discovered that a burgeoning deer population forever alters the progression of a forest's natural future by creating environmental havoc in the soil
and disrupting the soil's natural seed banks. The study Deer Browsing Delays Succession by Altering Aboveground Vegetation and Belowground Seed Banks was published online March 7 in PLOS ONE.
In fact the deer are preventing forests from establishing says Anurag Agrawal Cornell professor of ecology
As forests normally mature their grasses give way to herbs and shrubs and then new trees eventually take root.
If deer leave the forests alone such trees as cottonwood locust and sumac can sprout
They found the soil cores from outside of the exclosures contained many more seeds from nonnative species. Deer select forests for their trees
so disrupt forest system growth trajectories concludes the study. It's obvious that the deer are affecting the aboveground species
Our research was carried out on semi-captive Asian elephants working in timber camps in Myanmar. As religious icons in Southeast asia and a key species of the forest ecosystem their decline is of serious cultural and ecological concern.
Our results will enable the management of captive and semi-captive elephants to be tailored to maximise fertility reducing strain on the wild population.
and far away from supplementary feeding sites located in the forest for ungulates such as deer and wild boar researchers found that those nests in the vicinity of feeding sites were depredated twice more.
Hundreds of tons of food are thrown every year in the forest without thinking on the collateral effects
poplar wood and corn stover into biofuels. The technology could also supply a source of renewable jet fuel required by recent European union aviation emission regulations.
The latest evidence for antedating the eruption was supplied by a study from Denmark that used radiocarbon dating (14c dating) to examine olive wood from the period of the eruption.
However an international team of researchers led by Paolo Cherubini from The swiss Federal Institute for Forest Snow
The scientists show that 14c dating of individual pieces of olive wood enveloped by volcanic ash is too unreliable for precise dating.
Olive trees produce many pseudo-tree ringspaolo Cherubini has investigated wood from many olive trees in southern Europe
Consequently a piece of olive wood dated as being 72 years old could instead be just 30 years old.
By way of a'blind test'Cherubini recently asked 10 experts in five tree-ring laboratories in various countries to date the same wood samples from olive-tree branches.
%This unreliability alone makes precisely dating a piece of wood from the period of the eruption seem unrealistic.
This leads Cherubini and his team of authors to conclude that using 14c dating to calculate the age of an olive wood branch has to be taken with caution.
The above story is provided based on materials by Swiss Federal Institute for Forest Snow and Landscape Research WSL.
A research group of the Universidad Politã cnica de Madrid (UPM) led by Luis GÃ mez a professor of the Forestry School
and other ways of abiotic stress that have applied an interest for forestry. This work is a continuation of a project started by of a research team of the UPM a decade ago.
The role of forests is essential for climate change mitigation and biodiversity preservation amongst others.
and consequently to mitigate the current pressure on forests. This research group has funding from the National R&d Plan the Activity Program of the Research Groups from the Community of Madrid and the LIFE+Programmeof the European union.
#Central Hardwoods forest vulnerabilities, climate change impacts reviewed by reporthigher temperatures more heavy precipitation and drought.
and the Missouri Ozarks according to a new report by the U s. Forest Service and partners that assesses the vulnerability of the region's forest ecosystems
More than 30 scientists and forest managers contributed to the report which is part of the Central Hardwoods Climate Change Response Framework a collaboration of federal state academic and private partners led by the Forest Service's Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science (NIACS).
Central Hardwoods Ecosystem Vulnerability Assessment and Synthesis: A Report from the Central Hardwoods Climate Change Response Framework Project was published by the U s. Forest Service's Northern Research Station
and is available online at: http://www. nrs. fs. fed. us/pubs/45430people often think of climate change as being distant
But we don't have to wait until these changes wreak havoc on our forest habitats.
We can start managing for the future today by nudging our forests towards species adapted to withstand future climates.
and ensure that the benefits that forests provide are sustained into the future said Michael T. Rains Director of the Northern Research Station and the Forest Products Laboratory.
Forest Service science is delivering tools and data that will help managers in the Central Hardwoods
The above story is provided based on materials by USDA Forest Service-Northern Research Station. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length h
and browsers of the past created a mosaic of varied landscapes consisting of closed and semi-closed forests and parkland.
Dung beetles recount the nature of the pastthe biologists behind the new research findings synthesized decades of studies on fossil beetles focusing on beetles associated with the dung of large animals in the past or with woodlands and trees.
One of the surprising results is that woodland beetles were much less dominant in the previous interglacial period than in the early Holocene
which shows that temperate ecosystems consisted not just of dense forest as often assumed but rather a mosaic of forest and parkland says postdoctoral fellow Chris Sandom.
Large animals in high numbers were an integral part of nature in prehistoric times. The composition of the beetles in the fossil sites tells us that the proportion
As a result of this the countryside developed into predominantly dense forest that was cleared first when humans began to use the land for agriculture explains Professor Jens-Christian Svenning.
what can this tell us about how we interact with forests? The answer involved climbing into the Amazonian canopy resulting in the discovery that the forest's chemical portfolios form a rich mosaic that varies with elevation and soil content.
Their work is published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of March 3.
The team focused their work in the western Amazon a swath of forest stretching from the Andean tree line down to the Amazonian lowlands.
and analyze foliage from 3560 canopies across 19 forests throughout Peru. They found that canopy chemical traits are organized in a large mosaic controlled by changes in the underlying soils and by elevation.
and survival strategies that express how these forests assembled over evolutionary time. We discovered that this incredible region is a patchwork mosaic of trees with chemical signatures organized into communities to maximize their growth potential given their local soils
Forest canopies are notoriously difficult to study given the extreme difficulty of accessing them. Thousands of samples had to be collected from the upper limits of the canopy to ensure they all had equal exposure to sunlight
and laboratory-based effort to determine the relationship between function and biological diversity of plant species in tropical forests.
I view the results as a wake-up call that we are shaking up a special tropical region full of chemically unique forest communities that have undergone millions of years of evolution
#Spanish forest ecosystems: Carbon emission will be higher in second half of centuryspanish forest ecosystems will quite probably emit high quantities of carbon dioxide in the second half of the 21st century.
This is the conclusion of a report that reviews the results obtained from the implementation of the forest simulation model GOTILWA+a tool to simulate forest growth processes under several environmental conditions
and to optimize Mediterranean forests management strategies in the context of climate change. The report was published on the latest issue of the ecology
and environment journal Ecosistemas edited by the Spanish Association of Terrestrial Ecology. Peer review was led by professors Santiago Sabatã and Carlos Gracia of the Department of Ecology at the University of Barcelona (UB) and the Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (CREAF) and the expert Daniel Nadal of UB
's former Department. The study analyses data obtained from the simulation forest growth model GOTILWA+(Growth Of Trees Is limited by WATER) based on ecophysiological processes.
The model enables to explore the effects of climate change on forestry ecosystems under changed environmental conditions
and to simulate different management scenarios and compare them. Future perspectives for Spanish forestsin climate change scenarios simulated by the model GOTILWA+--within the Consolider-Ingenio project Montes
Consequently woodlands that now drain carbon will become carbon producers because plant respiration (a process in
GOTILWA+also explores the responses of different forest types to water availability. Climate change involves an increase of aridity and evaporative rates.
In this context simulations show that an increase of evapotranspiration will occur in Spanish forests; it will have a negative impact on other ecosystems for example on rivers.
The most sensitive areasthe most sensitive areas to climate change effects are Mediterranean forests of evergreen oak Alepo pine
Moreover simulations show an increase of these forests'sensitivity to aridity. For instance beech forests are particularly sensitive to a slight increase in average temperature as well as those forests located at low height so altitudinal migrations will probably occur.
Forest management: key to mitigate climate change impactin the report Gracia Sabatã and Nadal highlight that management strategies adapted to environmental changes are crucial to the conservation of Iberian forests
and the resources they provide to society. Particularly it is essential to consider that Mediterranean forest ecosystems'growth is limited already by water availability.
Furthermore authors point out that in order to solve the limitations of GOTILWA+the model is under a process of revision and innovation.
A satisfactory implementation of the model should be based on extensive knowledge on territory: weather conditions and edaphological characteristics plant physiology and main features concerning structure and population conclude researchers.
and coniferous forests--exposure to fire may initiate seed germination or enhance plant growth. Recent research has focused on the effects of smoke.
When snowpack was shoveled off sections of New hampshire's Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest to simulate the effects of a warm winter the soil was much colder--a
because they would have had wood for construction and for fires. Otherwise they would have had to use bone
For years timber harvesting has been the panda's biggest threat. Pandas have specific habitat needs--they eat only bamboo
Conservation programs that limit timber harvesting have chalked up wins in preserving such habitat. Vanessa Hull a doctoral student in MSU's Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability (CSIS) has been living off and on for seven years in the Wolong Nature Reserve most recently tracking pandas she's equipped with GPS collars.
so farmers would let them graze unattended in the forests. When funds were needed they would track the animals down
Taylor whose research typically focuses on carbon cycling in old-growth tropical forests was inspired to do the analysis by undergraduate researcher Hana Fancher who also is a co-author of the journal article.
You can just take a piece of wood and make a filter out of it. The paper's co-authors include Michael Boutilier
The wood is composed of xylem porous tissue that conducts sap from a tree's roots to its crown through a system of vessels and pores.
The xylem's tiny pores can trap bubbles preventing them from spreading in the wood.
After all the liquid passed through the researchers sliced the sapwood in half lengthwise and observed that much of the red dye was contained within the very top layers of the wood
When they examined the xylem under a fluorescent microscope they saw that bacteria had accumulated around pit membranes in the first few millimeters of the wood.
Ideally a filter would be a thin slice of wood you could use for a few days then throw it away
Forests emit large amounts of volatile organic compounds (VOC. Their reaction products form the so-called secondary organic aerosol.
which is typical for boreal forests which cover eight percent of the earth's surface. The main part of the study comprises laboratory investigations performed in a reaction chamber at the Research center JÃ lich.
Every forest visitor can recognize these compounds as the typical fir needle smell. We managed to present the first molecular evidence of a direct and ubiquitous source of ELVOCS arising from the oxidation of monoterpenes and other volatile organic compounds in the gas phase.
influence climatepine forests are especially magical places for atmospheric chemists. Coniferous trees give off pine-scented vapors that form particles very quickly and seemingly out of nowhere.
and estimates they may be the dominant source of aerosols over boreal forests. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has named aerosols generally one of the biggest unknowns for climate change.
In the new paper researchers took measurements in Finnish pine forests and then simulated the same particle formation in an air chamber at Germany's JÃ lich Research Centre.
Other types of forests emit similar vapors Thornton said and he believes the rapid oxidation may apply to a broad range of atmospheric compounds.
Forests are thought to emit exponentially more of these scented compounds as temperatures rise. Understanding how those vapors react could help to predict how forested regions will respond to global warming
A drone aircraft operated by researchers at Wake Forest University's Center for Energy Environment
Wake Forest biology professor Miles Silman and a team of researchers who are affiliated not with Duke energy used images taken from the drone to create a 3d model of the ash pond spill site.
Funding for this project was provided by Wake Forest University's Center for Energy Environment and Sustainability.
Silman Messinger and Marcus Wright a chemistry lab manger and key developer of Wake Forest's environmental drone program are also applying their drone technology to explore climate change in the Peruvian Amazon.
The above story is provided based on materials by Wake Forest University. The original article was written by Will Ferguson.
#Gauging what it takes to heal a disaster-ravaged forest: Case study in Chinarecovering from natural disasters usually means rebuilding infrastructure
and roads but the earth split open and swallowed sections of the forests and bamboo groves that shelter and feed pandas and other endangered wildlife.
Their work which is relevant to disaster areas worldwide is reported in this week's Forest Ecology and Management.
forest recovery at a finer scale than can be observed from satellites and getting a better handle on the nuances of tree species height and soil conditions.
Our study indicated that forest restoration after natural disasters should not only consider the forest itself
but also take into account the animals inhabiting the ecosystem and human livelihoods. They also noted that such efforts could benefit from more targeting of areas most favored by pandas.
That meant that some of the best assisted-forest recovery was in areas not favored by pandas.
Healthier forests could mean local residents have need less to venture into more far-flung panda-friendly forests.
and the next fruit-laden tree may be far away in the forest. Coquerel's sifakas eat mostly leaves
Just last week Wildlife Conservation Society scientists reported grim news that nearly ten percent of the world's forest elephants were killed in 2012 and again in 2013.
#Forest model predicts canopy competition: Airborne lasers help researchers understand tree growthout of an effort to account for
What their model revealed for this particular forest of hardy native Metrosideros polymorpha trees on the windward slope of Manua Kea is that an incumbent tree limb greening up a given square meter would still dominate its position two years
The model described online in the journal Ecology Letters could help generate similar predictions for other forests too.
Why track forest growth using remote sensing pixel by pixel? Some ecologists could use that information to learn how much one species is displacing another over a wide area
Others could see how well a forest is growing overall. Tracking the height of a forest's canopy reveals how tall the trees are
and therefore how much carbon they are keeping out of the atmosphere--that is as long as scientists know how to interpret the measurements of forest growth.
James Kellner assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Brown University the paper's lead and corresponding author noticed what seemed like implausibly large canopy growth in LIDAR images collected by the Carnegie Airborne
In the vast majority of pixels (each representing about a square meter) the forest growth looked normal
The forest wasn't storing that much more carbon; taller trees were growing a few meters to the side
Tracking treetopsthe model doesn't just work for this forest but potentially for different kinds of forests Kellner said
because its interpretation of the data is guided by the data itself. The model uses what seems to be the forest's normal rate of growth to determine
when evidence of vertical growth is more than plausible --and therefore a possible signal of lateral overtopping.
But in a forest with trees capable of more dramatic lateral growth that distance might end up being bigger.
In order to satisfy the growing demand for wood forestry in many countries has to be intensified. The forests of the Russian Federation are the world's largest reserve of wood for different purposes.
Intensification of forestry in Russia will result in increasing availability of wood for material and energy uses.
A doctoral dissertation completed at the University of Eastern Finland analyzed the potential of energy wood resources in the Leningrad region of Russia at regional and district levels.
However several challenges like low productivity of felling operations and technical accessibility of forests have to be solved to intensify energy wood supply in the regions.
when three scenarios of wood availability were analyzed to compare the efficiency of wood supply chains to estimate employment effects of forest chip production
and to analyze cost competitiveness of forest chips. The impact of climate change on the technical accessibility of forests and harvestable volumes of industrial and energy wood was analyzed also.
The availability scenarios were elaborated taking into account different intensity of forest management. The Recent scenario reflects the potential of energy wood taking into account the intensity of fellings
and sawmilling as it was in 2004. The Allowable scenario shows the potential of energy wood assuming full utilization of the annual allowable cut based on current logging technology
and increasing sawn timber production. The''Potential''scenario shows availability of energy wood resources in the case of intensified forest management which means a significant increase in thinnings full utilization of annual allowable cut based on
cut to-length technology and the increase of sawn timber production according to available sawlog output in the region (no export).
The analysis showed that intensification of forestry in the region could significantly increase availability of energy wood.
In the scenario Allowable the availability of energy wood increased from 4. 1 to 6. 3 Mm3(+54%)compared with the scenario Recent.
In the scenario Potential the total volume of available energy wood would be 9. 2 Mm3(+124%compared with scenario Recent.
Comparable results were obtained at the district level+50%and+83%respectively. The average productivity of operations in the Russian logging companies investigated was 20%to 30%lower than that in Finland.
The reasons were the lack of experienced operators of forest machines and the bad quality of forest roads.
Therefore in the conditions of the study area forest chips were a relatively expensive fuel due to the high costs of felling
and transport operations. Forest chips were 2-3 times more expensive than natural gas and coal but cheaper than heavy oil.
The employment effect from the utilization of energy wood depended on the availability scenarios and the type of chipper used.
The number of employment positions could be increased by 84%in the scenario Potential compared with the scenario Recent.
The study showed that climate change affects technical accessibility of forests in the study area and consequently economic sustainability of the logging companies.
Already by 2015 if proper measures such as construction of all season forest roads will not be undertaken the potential losses of a typical large logging company could be about 360000.00 euros/year due to the technical
inability of entering forests. The study area has large available volumes of energy wood but their utilization is limited by technical and economic factors.
The methodology proposed in this study could help logging companies and local authorities predict economic and social effects from the utilization of energy wood.
which flooded the adjacent forest-covered alluvial soils and the slightly higher cultivated soilsâ#said U of I researcher Ken Olson.
and its primate relative Dendropithecus inhabited a widespread dense multistoried closed canopy forest. Holly Dunsworth URI assistant professor of anthropology said that the research team found fossils of a single individual of Proconsul which lived 18 to 20 million years ago among geological deposits that also contained
and even beautifully preserved fossil leaves it's possible to say that the forest was closed a canopy one meaning the arboreal animals like Proconsul could easily move from tree-to-tree without coming to the ground.
while the forest grew. According to co-author Daniel Peppe of Baylor University evidence from the forest soil suggests the precipitation was seasonal with a distinct wet and dry period.
During the dry season there was probably relatively little rainfall he said. Additionally by studying fossil leaves at the site we were able to estimate that there was about 55 to 100 inches of rainfall a year
Since 2011 the research team's work at the fossil forest site has resulted in the collection of several additional new primate fossils.
In Mississippi we've been evaluating seed treatments for about five years said Jeff Gore entomologist with the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station and MSU Extension service.
Atomic Jungle Gymimagine a child playing inside a jungle gym weaving through holes in the multicolored metal matrix in much the same way that electricity flows through materials.
This causes the jungle gym's grid-like structure to transform into an open tunnel allowing the child to slide along effortlessly.
To design an atomic jungle gym that warps just enough to form a channel scientists audition different combinations of elements and tweak their quantum properties.
because electricity can shift arsenic's electron cloud much more easily than oxygen's. In the case of the atomic jungle gym this complexity demands new theoretical models
because these behaviors increase the likelihood that her eggs will be said fertile Melody Keena research entomologist U s. Department of agriculture Forest Service Northern Research Station.
This is crucial to understand in this age of rampant forest loss and fragmentation which is slicing up the Orangutan's jungle home.
We found that although the degree of forest disturbance and canopy gap size influenced terrestriality Orangutans were recorded on the ground as often in heavily degraded habitats as in primary forests.
All age-sex classes were recorded on the ground but flanged males--those with distinctive cheek pads and throat pouches--travel on the ground more.
The capacity of Orangutans to come down from the trees may increase their ability to cope with at least smaller-scale forest fragmentation
and human-modified forests that have lost many of their original ecological characteristics. Modified Orangutan behaviour which sees them increasingly spending time on the ground
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