#New england's'Lost'Archaeological Sites Rediscovered Take a walk in the New england woods and you may stumble upon the overgrown remains of a building's foundation or the stacked stones of a wall.
After European settlers arrived in the 17th century thousands of acres of forest were cleared to make way for much more intensive agriculture than that practiced by indigenous people.
In the 19th century people began leaving for industrial towns allowing the forests to overtake their former farms.
Lidar has revealed also a lost city beneath the Cambodian jungle (near Angkor) as well as evidence of Ciudad Blanca a never-confirmed legendary metropolis hidden by Honduran rain forests.
Its activities will remove more than half of a particular type of unique coastal forest. Around 1665 hectares will be affected.
But my analysis shows that the project will still result in a net loss of forest.
You could preserve 1000 hectares of forest while 1 hectare is destroyed elsewhere which sounds impressive.
Say a company is about to restore 1000 hectares of forest over the next 50 years.
For example how threatened is the forest and how much did the offset investment actually avoid being destroyed?
If it s not for example if a forest restoration project fails or a conserved forest is cut down in the future then the mining impacts have not been properly offset.
Existing projects don t tend to consider these risks. Then there is the question of how to measure the impacts at a mine site and the gains at the offset site.
Rio tinto for example chose to measure only the vertical structure of the forest as an indicator of its intactness.
#Dino-Killing Impact Remade Plant kingdom, Too The killer meteorite that extinguished the dinosaurs also torched North america's forests and plants.
The harsh conditions after the impact favored fast-growing flowering plants nudging forests toward a new pecking order a new study reports.
As a result today's forests would baffle a Brachiosaurus. Most of the slow-growing trees and shrubs munched by dinosaurs are minor players in modern forests
because the plants couldn't adapt to post-impact climate swings researchers report today (Sept. 16) in the journal PLOS Biology.
When you look at forests around the world today you don't see many forests dominated by evergreen flowering plants lead study author Benjamin Blonder said in a statement.
Dinosaurs stomped through forests ruled by evergreen angiosperms which never drop leaves. Angiosperms are flowering plants grasses
Other plants in the ancient forests included beeches cycads gingkoes ferns and palm trees. See Photos of a Fossilized Forest in the Canadian Arctic Fossil records show that angiosperms of all kinds thrived before a meteorite
or asteroid crashed into Earth 66 million years ago. That stupendous blast charred vast woodlands that had grown from Canada to New mexico.
In North america about 60 percent of plant species went extinct according to earlier studies After the blaze deciduous angiosperms
And potentially this also tells us why we find that modern forests are generally deciduous and not evergreen.
Well in a case known as the humongous fungus#a single clone (individual) of the honey mushroom (Armillaria ostoyae) has been shown to cover more than 900 hectares in Malheur National Forest in Oregon USA.
while scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the US found the same Malassezia-like species from the Peru Trench in the Pacific ocean.
Wild ostriches live in the dry hot savannas and woodlands of Africa. They once roamed all over Asia Africa
Loggers cut down forests; farmers clear land for crops and hunters kill chimps for food. People have argued that these increasing human impacts could also be putting more pressure on chimpanzee populations leading to more chimpanzee violence Wilson said.
Into the woods Many of the researchers including Dave Morgan a research fellow with the Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study
And when danger threatens some even leap to the forest floor fluttering to the ground like so many dead leaves.
Svenson discovered the new mantises part of a group called bark mantises in museum collections and in tropical forests.
and blend in with the detritus on the forest floor. The 19 newfound species triple the previously known diversity of this group.
and new research suggests the apes prefer a firm bed made from stiff resilient wood.
High up in the forest canopy the animals interlace strong stems and foliage into a basketweave creating a thick springy mattress that sinks in the middle.
There seem to be several advantages to snoozing high off the forest floor. In 2011 one intrepid Cambridge researcher who slept in wild chimpanzee nests for six nights reported that the nests kept her warm and relatively free of bug bites;
whether chimpanzees are picky about the type of wood they use for their nests. Anthropologists David Samson of the University of Nevada Las vegas and Kevin Hunt of Indiana University in Bloomington examined 1844 chimpanzee nests in western Uganda's Toro-Semliki Wildlife Reserve.
Fire suppression this year has cost the U s. Forest Service and U s. Department of the interior $200 million more than the agencies budgeted.
Official costs only part of the story According to the Western Forestry Leadership Coalition a partnership between Western forestry professionals and government leaders the true costs of wildfires tend to be between two and 30
Northern Arizona University (NAU)' s School of Forestry estimates that Arizona's previous record holder of acres burned the 462000-acre (1870 square km) Rodeo-Chediski fire in 2002
In comparison preventative methods such as thinning the forests in the area of the Schultz Fire would have cost only $15 million.
How prevention treatments help economically According to the Ecological Restoration Institute (ERI) at NAU forest treatments in Arizona typically thin 30 percent of an area at a cost of between $500 and $1000 per acre.
Jaguars typically live in forests or woods but they are also found in desert areas such as Arizona.
They tend to stay close to water and they like to fish. Jaguars will dip their tails into the water to lure fish much like a fishing line.
In 2011 the Dollar Lake fire burned more than 6000 acres (about 2400 hectares) of the Mount Hood National Forest.
According to satellite data and the U s. Forest Service the Dollar Lake fire hit the slope between Sept. 11
According to a 2012 U s. Forest Service study they are occurring more rapidly and dramatically than imagined a decade ago.
Since my last visit the Forest Service estimates the beetle has killed more than 4. 5 million whitebark pine trees in Montana alone.
#New Website Tracks Deforestation in Near Real-time Forests around the world are disappearing at an astonishing rate.
A new map and website called Global Forest Watch provides the first near-real-time look at the planet's forests using a combination of satellite data
The website's developers hope that Global Forest Watch will help local governments and companies combat deforestation and save protected areas.
More than half a billion people depend on forests for their jobs their food their clean water said Andrew Steer the CEO of the World Resources Institute (WRI) which launched the website today (Feb 20.
More than half of all terrestrial biodiversity lives in forests. But humans are failing to preserve these crucial ecosystems Steer told reporters before the launch.
See Images of the New Deforestation Map Monitoring forests Until now there has been no good way to keep track of this rapid forest loss leaving governments
The new Global Forest Watch will update monthly at a medium resolution with data from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra and Aqua satellites.
Each pixel of Landsat data is roughly equivalent to a baseball infield said Nigel Sizer the director of the WRI Global Forest Initiative.
Monitoring Forests in Near Real-time Mapping deforestation The fine-grained map comes from the work of Matt Hansen a geographer at the University of Maryland
Before Global Forest Watch no one had access to that information Sizer said. The site also has a section for stories
The goal is to continue improving Global Forest Watch with more frequent data updates and algorithms that can differentiate between native forests and plantations.
We now have the possibility of doing something that would have been absolutely unheard of 10 years ago Steer said which is near real-time data delivered to everybody who has a laptop or a computer or a smartphone in the world.
The forest cobra is the largest true cobra reaching 10 feet (3 m) and Ashe s spitting cobra is 9 feet (2. 7 m) making it the world s largest spitting cobra.
but are also found in deserts grasslands forests and farming areas in Africa and Southern Asia.
and in water and are found in the rain forests and plains of India southern China and Southeast asia.
#Amazon Rainforest Breathes In More than It Breathes Out Pristine Amazon forests pull in more carbon dioxide than they put back into the atmosphere according to a new study.
The findings confirm that natural Amazon forests help reduce global warming by lowering the planet's greenhouse gas levels the researchers said.
These natural carbon sinks such as forests absorb and store carbon dioxide helping to lower the greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.
For example in the Amazon forest huge swaths of trees can die at once which can't be accounted for by test plots.
In 2005 a single storm killed half a billion trees in the Amazon forest. Amazon Photos:
And the big storms that blow down millions of trees at once barely budge the forest's carbon output the study found.
The researchers compared the situation to growth trends in forests. In a young forest plants tend to grow at a relatively close range to one another.
But over the years vegetation thins in a self-regulating process so that mature trees have enough space
#Ancient'Big Freeze'Rapidly Wiped out European Forests A major cold age that descended On earth nearly 13000 years ago is linked with a widely studied
New research shows that forests throughout Europe vanished within two centuries of the onset of this frigid time.
Puzzling delay Analysis of fossils also revealed that after this cold began maybe half of the forests in certain locations in Europe were gone replaced by grasslands Sachse said.
and the dramatic effects seen on forests in Europe. However it was uncertain whether this delay was real it might have been due to dating methods'unclear results Sachse said.
When combined these two lines of evidence confirmed that changes seen in Europe's forests occurred about 170 years after the chilling started. 7 Ways the Earth Changes in the Blink of an Eye To learn more about this delay Sachse
As a result forests vanished and grasslands grew. Rapid change Prior studies found that 170 years after the onset of cooling North Atlantic winter sea ice reached southward enough to channel dry polar air into Western europe
and are not related to the more diminutive forest elephants that live in the jungles of Central africa.
African elephants In reality Asian elephants are smaller than African elephants so some historians speculated that perhaps the Ptolemies were using African forest elephants
This was contrary to some speculation that there may be forest elephants present in that part of the world.
and their natural forest habitats especially suffered from this political turmoil. Increased banditry illegal logging in national parks and nature reserves and a sharp increase in the hunting of lemurs as bush meat#has left them facing extinction.
and forest conservation at other sites across Madagascar is centred on Maromizaha Forest in the eastern part of the island.
This vast forest is rich in biodiversity including no fewer than 13 lemur species. With good transport links to the capital
While just eight visitors came to visit Maromizaha Forest in 2008 by 2011 that number had increased to 208.
This means working with individuals in the community with local groups and existing NGOS and helping authorities enforce the boundaries of forest reserves and protected areas.
Black mambas reside in South and East Africa s savannas rocky hills and open woodlands. They like low open spaces
or 5 feet (1. 2 to 1. 5 m). It is common in the forests throughout East Africa.
and cloud forests. Sloths prefer sleeping while curled into a ball in the fork of a tropical tree.
There are times of cold in the forest though. If a female gets too cold she is unable to digest food.
cottonwood and willow forests along with wetlands thick with cattail marshes. The flood was timed for the spring seed release from these trees to provide moist ground for seedlings.
Lycophytes horsetails and ferns grew to large sizes and formed Earth s first forests. By the end of the Devonian progymnosperms such as Archaeopteris were the first successful trees.
but may be related to cooling climate from CO2 depletion caused by the first forests. Although up to 70 percent of invertebrate species died terrestrial plants
For years timber harvesting has been the panda's biggest threat. But conservation programs limiting timber harvesting have chalked up wins in preserving panda habitat.
Vanessa Hull a doctoral student at 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 that she has outfitted with GPS collars.
Because horses are prohibited from grazing in designated grazing areas to prevent them from competing for food with cattle some farmers have been letting horses graze unattended in forests.
When these horse-keeping farmers need cash they track down their horses in the forest and sell them.
and Forestry highlights the most amazing species discovered in 2013. According to the institute this year's Top 10 New Species come from a field of 18000 newfound species named in 2013.
Perhaps the cuddliest is the olinguito (Bassaricyon neblina) a mini-carnivore that lives in the trees of Andean cloud forests.
There are two species of elephant in Africa the savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana) and the forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis.
#The Two Wildfires Everyone Should Be Talking About (Op-Ed) Wally Covington is the director of the Ecological Restoration Institute a Regents'professor of forest ecology at Northern Arizona University and one of the world
's leading experts on forest restoration. Covington has been studying the ecology of southwestern forests since the 1970s and his research has led to decades of improved evidence-based conservation techniques.
He contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Arizona is no stranger to megafires.
The 2002 Rodeo-Chediski Fire and the 2011 Wallow Fire were two of the country's first massive wildfires to make national headlines each burned nearly 500000 acres (2020 square kilometers) of forest.
and there is plenty of fuel in the forests left to burn. But two fires had the conditions
What largely helped to prevent that from happening was the foresight of the U s. Forest Service managers of Coconino National Forest which in years prior to the fire implemented restoration-based hazardous-fuel reduction treatments.
and burning slash and ground litter to restore natural forest conditions conditions that would not support uncontrollable crown fires the high-severity fires that burn through forest canopies
and restore a forest's natural ability to self-regulate. How a wildfire behaves when it reaches a treatment area is a good test of how those treatments work.
The dry frequent-fire forests of the West evolved with this type of fire a slow-moving low severity surface fire that would remove young trees
Due to past management practices dense unhealthy forests are overstocked with flammable debris and provide ample fuel for high-severity crown fires that kill old-growth trees.
These catastrophic fires can be difficult and costly to contain and can ignite hundreds of spot fires as far as 4 to 6 miles (6 to 10 km) ahead of a blaze in high winds.
Forest restoration vital to ecosystems and to Arizona While the San juan and Slide fires provide good examples of successful treatments they are also clear indications that Arizona leaders cannot be complacent.
In Arizona we still have 15 million to 20 million acres of forest including ponderosa pine pinyon juniper
Meanwhile typical forest-health treatments and community protection projects are just dots on the landscape They are not enough to save forests on a large scale.
It is important to make sure our forests are in their most natural healthy condition so they too are able to endure disturbances like fire insects disease and climate change.
As forests across the West continue to burn hotter and longer than ever before it is clear we don't have much time left.
By acting quickly and at larger scales we can restore forest health and build resiliency that will better prepare forests for whatever changes may occur in the future.
Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates and become part of the discussion on Facebook Twitter and Google+.
Nevertheless 79 percent of Madagascar s original rain forest habitat has already been cleared by humans. Multifaceted Approaches A professor at Stony Brook University Wright approaches to saving Madagascar s lemurs and their forest habitat involves combining science and conservation.
You can t save what you don t understand#she says. Wright s many scientific and conservation achievements include working with the Madagascar government to create Ranomafana National park in Madagascar in 1991.
The Park protects 43500 hectares of forest including rain forests and 12 lemur species. In addition Wright is the founder of the Centre Valbio Research Station located on the edge of the Park.
and adventures in South american rain forests in High Moon Over the Amazon: My Quest to Understand the Monkeys of the Night (Lantern Books:
#Most Interesting Science News articles of the Week<p>From echos of the Big bang to the breathing of the Amazon forest we found some super cool stories in Science this week!</
><p>Pristine Amazon forests pull in more carbon dioxide than they put back into the atmosphere according to a new study.
The findings confirm that natural Amazon forests help reduce global warming by lowering the planet's greenhouse gas levels the researchers said.</
These natural carbon sinks such as forests absorb and store carbon dioxide helping to lower the greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.
We attended to provide senior zoo representatives from across the nation with an update on the forest-elephant poaching
and it was a lot colder this winter Rich Hallett a research ecologist with the U s. Forest Service told WNYC.
I really do think it helps with some of the major insect problems that we have Robert Venette a biologist with the U s. Forest Service in Minnesota told NPR.
and forestry at Michigan State university in East Lansing told the Capital News Service (CNS). Other invasive pests vulnerable to subzero temperatures include the southern pine beetle (Dendroctonus frontalis) the brown marmorated stinkbug (Halyomorpha halys) and several species of ticks (Ixodes sp.
150 million protected acres the largest tropical forest conservation project in the world global ecological impact.
Large scale forest protection. And it's the Amazon. I feel like we've won the World cup of Conservation!
and it's already starting to change These protected areas are vital to ensure that species like those spider monkeys I studied have plenty of forest habitat
Unlikely Culprits in Ozone Pollution Pollution from forests? As this map shows trees do emit compounds that can worsen ozone and increase aerosols in the atmosphere.
Formaldehyde is also a byproduct of forest and agricultural fires. The map from September 2013 shows high levels of formaldehyde in the Amazon the American Southeast and parts of Africa particularly Mozambique.
Because volatile hydrocarbon emissions from forests are so ubiquitous and because forests absorb a lot of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere slowing climate change it would make little sense to go after killer trees in the war against pollution.
It would be more effective Duncan told Earth Observatory to reduce the other side of the equation:
#New Clues to Evolution of Flowering Forests Flowering plants are the most successful group of plants On earth.
How did these 140-million-year-old shrubs eventually become vast forests? New research conducted from the top of a 131-foot-tall (40 meters) crane suggests the secret is in their leaf plumbing.
Trees That Dominate the Rain forest Researchers already knew that angiosperms had diversified and spread before the dino-killing meteorite smashed into Earth and reset life on the planet 65 million years ago.
In the new study scientists sought clues by comparing modern forests to fossil plants. The team measured leaves from top to bottom in two tropical forests in Panama and one temperate forest in Maryland.
In modern tropical forests sun-loving trees grab the most energy with tightly packed leaf veins
while trees relegated to the shade have leaves with veins spaced wider apart. This leaf vein density is a hallmark of photosynthesis
The scientists also looked at leaf litter the detritus that falls to the forest floor.
The results suggest angiosperm forests resembling today's tropical forests dominated after the meteorite impact not before.
Much of their work has taken them into the Red Forest the infamous wooded region surrounding Chernobyl where the trees turned an ominous reddish-brown color before dying.
To find out what was happening or more accurately what wasn't happening the research team collected hundreds of samples of leaf litter from forest floors that were contaminated not by radiation
and other researchers are concerned that the buildup of leaf litter on the forest floor presents a real danger.
and how much was forest and how farming affected the region. Cahokia's location near the confluence of major rivers made it a popular waypoint for some 2000 years according to Munoz's study published April 10 in the journal Geology.
The 10 Least Visited National parks (Photos) All that water supplies the mighty tree's huge amount of wood and almost 2 billion leaves.
and Kings Canyon National parks. Sequoias are normally resistant to most diseases that plague California's forests.
But a 1992 U s. Forest Service study of ancient pollen from a mountain meadow in Sequoia National park suggests there were fewer giant sequoias 4500 years ago
African elephants live in Sub-saharan africa the rain forests of Central and West Africa and the Sahel desert in Mali.
Asian elephants live in Nepal India and Southeast asia in scrub forests and rain forests. Elephants eat grasses roots fruit and bark.
Loxodonta africana (African savannah elephant) Loxodonta cyclotis (African forest elephant) Elephas maximus (Asian elephant) Subspecies: ITIS recognizes:
when streams were drying up wood was becoming scarce and food supplies were at risk. Through that group Maathai paid women to grow seedlings
and wanted to conserve Uganda's forests which absorb and store carbon from the air.
and we think guenons are using their patterns to recognize different species said study lead author William Allen of the University of Hull in the United kingdom. Guenon monkeys live in the forests of Central
and contraction of the monkeys'forest habitat drove the development of their incredible facial diversity.
For example isolated groups living in far-flung forests were squeezed together when their habitat shrunk forcing them to live with different species Allen said.
Folded surface rocks (shaped by tectonic forces) dip lower than the surrounding land creating long linear valleys filled with pine forests.
In that image snow covers the fields surrounding the folds doubly highlighting the pine forests within.
which can be seen within the dark-green forest on the left side of this image. According to the region's tourism department people visit the lake's waters as well as the rich mud at the lake's bottom for healing purposes.
and managing forests to make way for food-bearing plants as early as 11000 years ago soon after the end of the last ice age a new study suggests.
Ancient people of Southeast asia didn't exactly replace their tropical forests with rows of cereal crops
Humans for example seem to have set fire to forests in the Kelabit Highlands of Borneo to clear land
Decades later these Alaska ghost forests were the clue to figuring out that the Cascadia subduction zone offshore of Washington also had a magnitude-9 megathrust earthquake in 1700.
and they lived in low-rise wood-frame buildings the most resistant to shaking. 11 Facts About The 1964 Alaska Earthquake Of the 119 deaths attributable to ocean waves about one-third were due to the open-ocean tsunami:
I live in the backwoods of Jadwin. After a while I knew I had captured my best image of the night.
Rosewood also known as bois de rose is an umbrella term for a whole group of tropical timber species mostly from the Genus dalbergia Pterocarpus Diospyros and Milletia
which all have a dark red hue and high quality timber in common. The vast majority of rosewood is imported to China where it s fashioned into luxurious highly-priced ornamental furniture in the Ming and Quing dynasty style.
Even though Myanmar s forest and hardwood stocks have been diminishing for several decades already (less than 10%of the land is forested now the rosewood logging
This amounts to one thirteenth of the estimated remaining rosewood stock of Myanmar at current logging rates Myanmar s forests will have been stripped of rosewood in just 13 years.
As Chinese hunger for the luxuriant dark red timber grows and spreads across the greater Mekong region rosewood species might face not only commercial extinction but also final biological extinction.
Forest overexploited for timber is likely to lose many species of animals its ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere deteriorates
Loggers undertake long and dangerous scouting expeditions into the forest or take the risk of timber smuggling in conflict-ridden border regions such as Kachin at the border with Yunnan province China one of the main rosewood smuggling routes.
Not every logger returns from these expeditions. Besides the fact that logging in the tropics is rated as one of the most dangerous jobs there is in Myanmar an added danger of being shot in a timber-related conflict.
Moreover loggers are rewarded often by various stimulating drugs. So why isn t Myanmar establishing commercial rosewood plantations?
Some tropical timber can indeed be mass-produced in plantations especially faster growing species such as rubberwood eucalyptus or teak.
#On April 1 this year the Myanmar government put in place a ban on raw timber export
and moved its basic rosewood processing to Vietnam effectively circumventing the raw timber export ban.
but does nothing to alleviate the pressure on the forests. Of the 33 species that pass China s strict hongmu quality standards for rosewood more than a third is deemed already vulnerable by the IUCN Red List of Threatened species
since 2011 only stricter regulations in China can save Myanmar s rosewood forests. Zuzana Burivalova does not work for consult to own shares in
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