We're seeing the trees and not the forest or how to do things and not why to do things.
#Madagascar sells first forest carbon credits to Microsoftthe Government of Madagascar has approved carbon sales with Microsoft
The carbon credit sales will support the Government of Madagascar's REDD+Project (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation plus conservation) in the Makira Natural Park and mark the first sale
and Zoo Zurich and join us in this effort to conserve Madagascar's unique biodiversity through the sale of future carbon credits said Pierre Manganirina Randrianarisoa the Secretary general of the Ministry of Environment and Forests.
Supporting forest conservation and community building projects like Makira is an important part of Microsoft's strategy to reduce its environmental impact support sustainable economic growth improve health and education and address societal challenges.
In addition Makira's forests serve as a zone of watershed protection providing clean water to over 250000 people in the surrounding landscape.
Last September the Government of Madagascar and WCS announced that 710588 carbon credits had been certified for sale from the Makira Forest REDD+Project.
REDD+is an international framework that assigns a financial value to the carbon stored in forests offering compensation to developing countries for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation while investing in low-carbon paths
REDD+additionally includes the role of conservation sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.
In Madagascar burning for agricultural land and extraction of wood for household energy leads to around 36000 hectares (139 square miles) of natural forest being lost each year.
and the Forest Herbarium (BKF--Thailand) discovered a new species of Stone Oak in the Ton Pariwat Wildlife Sanctuary in Thailand.
During our field survey we found only one individual tree located on a gentle sloping section of closed dense forest explains one of the authors Dr. Strijk.
The unique species composition high diversity and relatively intact forest structure underscore the importance of strengthening ongoing and future conservation measures at Ton Pariwat Wildlife Sanctuary as a key element of wider
#Continued decline of African forest elephants, study showsnew data from the field in Central africa shows that between 2002 and 2013 65 percent of forest elephants were killed.
This new data marks an update to an earlier paper in the online journal PLOS ONE on the status of forest elephants across Central africa published by the same scientists.
and that elephants occupied only a quarter of the forests where they once roamed. The update released at the United for Wildlife symposium today in London was made by adding new data from 2012 and 2013
These new numbers showing the continuing decline of the African forest elephant are the exact reason why there is a sense of urgency at the United for Wildlife trafficking symposium in London this week said Dr. John Robinson WCS Chief
or the African forest elephant will blink out in our lifetime. United for Wildlife which is headed by The Duke of Cambridge is determined to work together to turn back these numbers.
At least a couple of hundred thousand forest elephants were lost between 2002-2013 to the tune of at least sixty a day or one every twenty minutes day and night.
The results show that the relatively small nation of Gabon has the majority (almost 60 percent) of the remaining forest elephants.
Historically the enormous Democratic Republic of congo (DRC) would have held the largest number of forest elephants. The current number and distribution of elephants is compared mind-boggling
About 95 percent of the forests of DRC are almost empty of elephants. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Wildlife Conservation Society.
#Biodiversity in production forests can be improved without large costsforest management is based on recommendations that are supposed to maximize economic revenues.
¤The group studied a production forest landscape encompassing 68 square kilometers of land and more than 30000 forest stands in Central Finland.
The research project aimed at revealing the potential of a forest landscape to simultaneously provide habitats for species and produce economic returns.
Many forest-owners are interested in getting money from harvesting their forests but simultaneously retaining recreational values and habitats for species says Mikko MÃ nkkã nen.
and benefits people may get from forests. For example forests capture and store carbon from the atmosphere and thereby counteract climate change caused by human carbon emissions.
All in all it is important to reconcile alternative uses of forests as they are not necessarily in a very strong conflict as our study shows.
The team projected forest growth 50 years into the future with alternative management regimes. The management regimes were compared from the point of view of six forest species such as the capercaillie hazel grouse flying squirrel
and two woodpecker species. Also habitats for six groups of dead-wood dependent red-listed species groups were examined.
The research aimed at finding economical ways to maintain species habitats in a forest landscape
Compensating forest owners with the METSO fundingachieving an optimal solution requires a combination of management regimes
Providing dead-wood associated species with more habitats tended to be more expensive because this would involve some refraining from harvesting.
Giving up silvicultural thinnings turned out to be a cost-effective measure to improve habitats for numerous species in production forests.
According to the Finnish government's decision 180 million euro will be spent in 2008-2016 (the METSO program) on maintaining biodiversity in mostly privately owned southern Finnish forests.
MÃ nkkã nen suggests that a potentially efficient way to use the METSO funding would be to compensate forest-owners for economic losses from not thinning their forests.
One field edge site was located near a forest and alfalfa field. The old field was an acre plot near Penn State's Russell E. Larson Agricultural Research farm.
This program is developed by the research group of Forest Physiology and Genetics and the cooperative group of Support to Forestry Development of the Universidad Politã cnica de Madrid (UPM.
For years these two research groups have been collaborating with Forestry Research center and the St mary's College and supported by Ence
and the Council of Alcorcã n. Also they are working on providing the Ethiopian highlands with tools and knowledge for better forestry management.
The great demand for forest products to use for agriculture by the population of the Ethiopian highlands has resulted in the deforestation of a region with the lowest human development rate in the world.
and hard survival due to frost and drought the early results give an idea of the potential of forest improvements to increase eucalypt productivity.
Also this would support the emerging wood local market. The eucalypt research was possible thanks to a nursery setting for the production of eucalypt and its native plant.
The outcome was the reforestation of 140 hectares of degraded land owned by 286 families of farmers and also the setting of 25 hectares of experimental tests.
Also a Forest Centre was build to support the development of activities the area. Meanwhile a eucalypt national congress was held
the impact of the animal provided services on the harvest was equally good in all three cultivation systems even in the unshaded plantations. â#oewe put this down to the mosaic landscape structure on Mount kilimanjaro with its gardens forests
NASA study points to infrared-herring in apparent Amazon green-upfor the past eight years scientists have been working to make sense of why some satellite data seemed to show the Amazon rain forest greening-up during the region's dry season each year from June to October.
Now a new NASA study published today in the journal Nature shows that the appearance of canopy greening is caused not by a biophysical change in Amazon forests
and interannual changes in Amazon forests and other ecosystems. Scientists who use satellite observations to study changes in Earth's vegetation need to account for seasonal differences in the angles of solar illumination
or Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer sensors that fly aboard NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites make daily observations over the huge expanse of Amazon forests.
Numerous hypotheses have been put forward to explain why Amazon forests appear greener in MODIS data as the dry season progresses.
which can provide an independent check on the seasonal differences in Amazon forest structure. The team next used a theoretical model to demonstrate how changes in forest structure
or reflectance properties have distinct fingerprints in MODIS and GLAS data. Only one of the hypothesized mechanisms for the green-up changes in sun-sensor geometry was consistent with the satellite observations.
We think we have uncovered the mechanism for the appearance of seasonal greening of Amazon forests--shadowing within the canopy that changes the amount of near-infrared light observed by MODIS Morton said.
By September around the time of the equinox Amazon forests at the equator are illuminated from directly overhead.
At this point the forest canopy is shadow-free highly reflective in the infrared and therefore very green according to some satellite vegetation indices.
This seasonal change in MODIS greenness has nothing to do with how forests are changing. In fact accounting for the changing geometry between the sun
Scaling our knowledge of forest canopies from measurements of individual leaves to satellite observations of the entire Amazon basin requires a deep understanding of both forest ecology
In their research paper published online in Geophysical Research Letters the researchers carried out studies in tropical rain forests in Peru measuring tree roots across different sites of varying altitude--from the warm Amazonian Lowlands to the cooler mountain ranges
in order to calculate the likely contribution of mountain forests worldwide to global weathering rates. The researchers then calculated the likely amount of carbon to be pulled out of the atmosphere through weathering
#Forest emissions, wildfires explain why ancient Earth was so hotthe release of volatile organic compounds from Earth's forests
Using sophisticated Earth system modeling a team led by Nadine Unger of the Yale School of Forestry
because so much more of the planet was covered in forest. Those reactive compounds altered Earth's radiation balance contributing a net global warming as much as two to three times greater than the effect of carbon dioxide according to the study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
and the role of forests in climate protection strategies said Unger an assistant professor of atmospheric chemistry at F&es.
The traditional view she said is that forests affect climate through carbon storage and by altering the color of the planet's surface
But as we are learning there are other ways that forest ecosystems can impact the climate.
and heat back into space than darker forests. Climate scientists have suggested that the Pliocene epoch might provide a glimpse of the planet's future
Forest cover was vastly greater during the Pliocene a period marked not just by warmer temperatures
Even the Arctic had extensive forests. Notably Unger says there were no humans to cut the forests down.
Using the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies Model-E2 global Earth system model the researchers were able to simulate the terrestrial ecosystem emissions and atmospheric chemical composition of the Pliocene and the preindustrial era.
The above story is provided based on materials by Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. The original article was written by Kevin Dennehy.
Why the Canadian lodgepole pine does better in Sweden than Canadathanks to its excellent growth the Canadian lodgepole pine has become a popular feature of forestry in Northern Sweden.
and forestry while an introduced plant spreading uncontrollably in nature can become a major concern. The reason why plants sometimes function very differently in a new environment is a question that many researchers are currently focusing on.
To meet this increasing demand forestry faces the challenge of how to intensify management of the existing production forests in sustainable ways.
An international and multidisciplinary team of scientists led by Christian Levers from the Humboldt-Universitã¤t in Berlin show that forest harvesting intensity is distributed unevenly across Europe
and harvested timber volumes were mostly well below the increment. The spatial patterns of forest harvesting intensity were explained well by forest-resource related variables
(i e. the share of plantation species growing stock forest cover) site conditions (i e. topography accessibility) and country-specific characteristics whereas socioeconomic variables were less important.
The study provides concrete starting points for developing measures targeted at increasing regional wood supply from forests
or lowering harvest pressure in regions where forests are used heavily. The research was carried out in the context of the Integrated Project Visions of land use transitions in Europe (VOLANTE) and supported by the European commission and the Einstein Foundation Berlin.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by European Forest Institute. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference n
#Clearer labels needed on drugs containing animal productsdr Kinesh Patel and Dr Kate Tatham say most medications prescribed in primary care contain animal derived products
According to lead author Dr. Jantz Maintaining connectivity of forest ecosystems provides ecological and societal benefits ensuring long-term species survival
which forests contain significant carbon stocks and are important for tropical biodiversity. Part of the study focused on the Legal Amazon where the team used economic and biological information combining species richness
For Dr. Goetz Conserving tropical forests ultimately requires prioritizing the services they provide to people in a local setting.
Because it is unlikely all remaining tropical forests can be protected the corridors defined by this study provide a way to prioritize lands in the context of the multiple benefits of tropical forest conservation.
During his first year at Wake Forest he heard about a percussion-playing robot designed by Georgia Tech researchers
With the support of a grant from the Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities (URECA) Center Lee teamed up with Craig Hamilton an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Wake Forest Baptist Medical center
At the Wake Forest Medical center doctors use replica bodies to help train surgeons to use the Da vinci system Lee said.
This April Lee will represent Wake Forest at the ACC Meeting of the Minds an event where outstanding undergraduate researchers from each ACC university gather at one member university to present their research either verbally or as a poster.
The above story is provided based on materials by Wake Forest University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length h
or territory in the United states. These cyclones--called typhoons in the western Pacific ocean--can be devastating to Guam's dense native forests.
In fact the island's forests are called often'typhoon forests 'because their health and appearance is defined inextricably by the most recent typhoons.
research scientist Wei-Shun Chang and Pulickel Ajayan the Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor in Mechanical engineering and Materials Science and of chemistry and chair of Rice's Department of Materials
In an article in the journal Science seven researchers who have done work in Central america point to growing evidence that drug trafficking threatens forests in remote areas of Honduras Guatemala Nicaragua and nearby countries.
and converting forests into agribusinesses to launder their drug profits the researchers say. Much of this appears to be a response to U s.-led anti-trafficking efforts especially in Mexico said Kendra Mcsweeney lead author of the Science article and an associate professor of geography at The Ohio State university.
and landing strips that traffickers create in the remote forests. The infusion of drug cash into these areas helps embolden resident ranchers land speculators
and timber traffickers to expand their activities primarily at the expense of the indigenous people who are often key forest defenders.
Reforming drug policies could alleviate some of the pressures on Central america's disappearing forests. The paper was authored co by Erik Neilsen and Ophelia Wang of Northern Arizona University;
and their interaction with genetic susceptibility says Jason R. Richardson associate professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at Robert Wood Johnson Medical school and a member of the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences
It's a long slow descent into mortal danger from the safety of home among the upper branches of the forest.
What is striking about this behavior is the vulnerability says Jonathan Pauli a professor of forest
and ocelots and now more and more feral dogs hunting in these forests Pauli says. A sloth on the ground is such an easy meal for them.
Why does the sloth poop in the woods? Maybe because it's hungry. Maybe to better hide among the leaves.
The article by the U S. Environmental protection agency U s. Forest Service and other organizations addresses planning practices for locations along major transportation corridors and considers options to address short-and long-term impacts
Properly designed and managed roadside vegetation can help us breathe a little easier said Dr. Greg Mcpherson research forester at the U s. Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station.
The above story is provided based on materials by USDA Forest Service-Pacific Southwest Research Station. Note:
#Rainforests in Far east shaped by humans for the last 11,000 yearsnew research from Queen's university Belfast shows that the tropical forests of South East asia have been shaped by humans for the last 11000 years.
The rain forests of Borneo Sumatra Java Thailand and Vietnam were thought previously to have been unaffected largely by humans
and excavating sites are extremely difficult in the dense forests. Pollen samples however are now unlocking some of the region's historical secrets.
Modern ecological studies show that they quickly follow burning and disturbance of forests in the region.
or rainforests as the historical role of people in managing the forest vegetation has rarely been considered.
Laws in several countries in South East asia do not recognise the rights of indigenous forest dwellers on the grounds that they are nomads who leave no permanent mark on the landscape.
Given that we can now demonstrate their active management of the forests for more than 11000 years these people have a new argument in their case against eviction.
In 2010 another 17000 acres of Patagonia burned fueling an international reforestation effort. Although the young soils of southern South america may contain high phosphorus levels the element is tightly bound to the soil offering limited phosphorus available to plants.
As a result the Chilean fire bush (Proteaceae Embothrium coccineum) a tree endemic to Chile and Argentina could have an important role in the reforestation of Patagonia.
Embothrium coccineum may have an important role in reforestation of Patagonia as an early successional species. Cluster roots have been identified in other plant species including some agronomic crops in the Cucurbitaceae.
#Ancient forests stabilized Earthâ##s CO2 and climateuk researchers have identified a biological mechanism that could explain how the Earthâ##s atmospheric carbon dioxide
When CO2Â levels became too low for plants to grow properly forests appear to have kept the climate in check by slowing down the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Forests increase weathering rates because trees and the fungi associated with their roots break down rocks
When the concentration of carbon dioxide falls from 1500 ppm to 200 ppm weathering rates drop by a third diminishing the capacity of forests to remove CO2Â from the atmosphere.
#Increase in hemlock forest offsetting effect of invasive hemlock woolly adelgid for nowdespite the accumulating destruction of a nonnative invasive insect called the hemlock woolly adelgid hemlock forests in the eastern United states appear to have held their own
for now according to new research by the U s. Forest Service. The key word is appear said Talbot Trotter the study's lead author and a research ecologist with the U s. Forest Service's Northern Research Station.
In many regions particularly in the southern Appalachians the loss of hemlock to hemlock woolly adgid has been devastating.
However when Forest Service scientists used regional Forest Inventory & Analysis (FIA) data to get a big picture view of the status of hemlock in the eastern U s. the results surprised them.
The data suggests that increasing tree density associated with the past century of reforestation and succession in the eastern U s. may have offset the negative impacts of the adelgid at the regional scale.
when the effects of infestation began to be evident in forestland within the tree's native range.
Trotter believes that this study which is based on forest data through 2007 may have caught hemlock at a tipping point in the balance between losses from hemlock woolly adelgid and increases due to forest regrowth.
Nonnative forest insects like the hemlock woolly adelgid are devastating on many levels because trees are so important to a region's culture
and economy said Michael T. Rains Director of the U s. Forest Service's Northern Research Station
and the Forest Products Lab. Forest Service research is working hard to more aggressively control nonnative insects
and make our forests healthier and more resistant to these disturbances. Story 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. Journal Reference e
#One tree likes seabird poop, next prefers fresh airoff the west coast of Peru seabirds deposit thick layers of guano that accumulates on the ground because of the lack of rain.
but the story digital photos tell about how forests respond to climate change could be incomplete according to new research.
Scientists from Brown University and the Marine Biological Laboratory have shown that the peak in forest greenness as captured by digital pictures does not necessarily correspond to direct measures of peak chlorophyll content in leaves
which focused on a forest on Martha's vineyard has significant implications for how scientists use digital photos to study forest canopies.
The technology provides an inexpensive way to monitor forest change closely over time an approach that isn't labor-intensive.
To find out Yang placed a camera on a 50-foot tower above the canopy of the Manuel F. Correllus State Forest on Martha's vineyard Mass.
During that same period Yang and his colleagues took weekly leaf samples from the forest
The implications are most significant for the studying how forests regulate the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere Yang says.
The researchers also compared their ground-based photos with color data from a satellite looking at the same forest over the same period of time.
Yang expects cameras will continue to play a significant role in climate and forest research.
'The study published in Nature looked at seedling plots across 36 sampling stations in the Chiquibul Forest Reserve Belize.
#Salamanders help predict health of forest ecosystems, inform forest managementwoodland salamanders are small lungless amphibians that live in moist forest habitats throughout the U s. and the world.
Salamanders often serve as vital links in forest food chains; their population size and recovery from major disturbances can help predict the health of forest ecosystems.
Now researchers at the University of Missouri have determined that salamander population size reflects forest habitat quality
and can predict how ecosystems recover from forest logging activity. MU researchers believe these findings can be translated to other species within forest ecosystems throughout the world.
One of our primary interests is in conservation of amphibians and the habitats that they utilize said Ray Semlitsch Curators'Professor of biological sciences in the College of Arts and Science at MU.
We are trying to understand how land use and particularly forest management affects the survival of amphibians on the landscape.
We also determined that salamander recovery --or the amount of time it takes for salamanders to repopulate a cut forest area--can help forest managers determine appropriate logging schedules.
Semlitsch and fellow researcher Grant Connette a graduate student in the Division of Biological sciences chose to study a forest area in the southern Appalachian mountains that has the highest diversity of salamanders in the world.
Although seldom seen in the daytime these animals breathe using their wet skin and forage at night.
The researchers conducted surveys of terrestrial salamanders which don't rely on water or streams to examine patterns of their abundance relative to timber harvest and species movement behavior.
They discovered that forests logged more than 100 years ago may still be affecting salamanders today.
Most conservation biologists study the pattern of change within a species--for example how they decline
We're finding that population fluctuations depend on the animal's behavior like their ability to disperse following a major event like logging a forest
Roughly half of all forest area in the United states is on public land where modern forest management increasingly uses alternatives to clear-cutting.
and maintaining large areas of forest at highly mature stages which may prove less disruptive to wildlife than clear-cutting.
and conservation and hopes to share this information with forest managers so they can make informed decisions about conservation and biodiversity.
Their research Life history as a predictor of salamander recovery rate from timber harvest in southern Appalachian forests U s a. was published in Conservation Biology.
and 10th centuries were forced to move away from their major ceremonial centers after a series of multi-year droughts bringing about agricultural expansion in Mesoamerica and a clearing of forests.
Much later in the late 20th century frequent droughts caused the people of Burkina faso in West Africa to migrate from the dry north to the wetter south where they have transformed forests to croplands and cut the nation's area of natural
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