Nature Newsforestry experts have warned again that climate change could transform forests from sinks to sources of carbon.
The carbon storing capacity of global forests could be lost entirely if the earth heats up 2. 5 °Celsius above preindustrial levels, according to a new report1.
The analysis by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) is a synthesis of existing information.
It is the most thorough assessment of the negative and positive effects of climate change on the world's forests.
The report examines how four different forest types boreal temperate, tropical and subtropical would be affected under four climate-change scenarios:
Under these two scenarios, forests will have difficulty adapting to climate change. Droughts, insect invasions, fires and storms would cause widespread forest destruction.
The impacts of these fires and pest infestations will lead to an additional release of carbon into the atmosphere,
In a warmer world, subtropical and southern temperate forests such as those in the western United states, northern China
'The coniferous forests of Canada, Finland, Russia and Sweden that make up the boreal region are expected to experience more warming than forests in the equatorial zone.
Although warmer temperatures could initially fuel a northward expansion of the forest, the short-term positive impacts would be cancelled out by damage from increased insect invasions, fires and storms.
The mountain pine beetle has devastated the forests of western Canada. The outbreak currently covers 14 million hectares roughly 3. 5 times the size of Switzerland,
says Allan Carroll, an insect ecologist with the Canadian Forest Service in Victoria, British columbia. By 2020, the projected end of the outbreak, about 270 megatonnes of carbon will have been emitted to the atmosphere3.
The report stresses that sustainable forest-management practices urgently need to be put in place around the globe to reduce the vulnerability of forests to climate change.
This could, for example, include changing forest management practices to allow controlled burning of woodland. To date, fire-prevention policies in regions such as western North america have sought to suppress forest fires altogether leaving forests more susceptible to large-scale fires and insect attack.
So few forests are being managed sustainably particularly in tropical regions, and there is little being done to monitor the impacts of climate change on forests,
says John Innes, a forestry expert at the University of British columbia in Vancouver, and one of the report's authors.
The report will be presented at the United nations Forum on Forests, which meets in New york from 20 april to 1 may.
Buck says the report could have an impact on future climate negotiations, including the Copenhagen climate conference in December.
The climate convention is focused on reducing emissions from deforestation, but it has considered not adequately the problem of adaptation.
mainly because these parts of the forest are more accessible. But there were always far fewer fires near roads inside reserves than outside them.
An ongoing paving project will cut a swathe straight into the heart of the forest, according to study author Marion Adeney.
and some states are hoping that a market for carbon credits based on retaining forests will make them money.
and they think that their legacy will be an economy based on a forest economy. Protected areas shouldn't be the only way governments tackle deforestation,
Attempts to preserve world's forests falling short: Nature Newssufficient efforts are not being made to protect 10%of the world's forests by 2010 as agreed under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) according to a new analysis1.
The study is the first attempt to work out how much of the globe's 20 major types of forest are safeguarded.
It shows that only 7. 7%are protected currently according to categories established by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN),
The work is based on the United nations'Food and agriculture organization's definition of a forest that is an area of land more than 0. 5 hectares in size with more than 10%canopy cover.
He says that it is recognized now that protecting forests is also important for efforts to stabilize climate change
The study found that the level of protection offered to different forest types varied greatly,
ranging from a low of just 3. 2%for the world's temperate freshwater swamp forests to a high of 28%for temperate broadleaf evergreen forests.
The analysis also looked at the level of protection afforded to forests in the world's 825 ecoregions,
Breaking down the forest types into ecoregions is useful because the rainforests in Brazil contain different species from those in the Congo,
The study found that 65%of the ecoregions have less than 10%of their forests protected.
The highest level of protection with more than 50%of forest protected was found in ecoregions in parts of the Amazon, Southeast asia and Alaska.
on average, 10.2%of the forests in areas designated as biodiversity hotspots by the CI were protected.
about 7%of the Guinean forests of West Africa are protected, whereas 17.7%of the forests in the mountains of Central asia are protected.
Burgess says it is good news that many of the most important areas for biodiversity are being protected at a level above the 10%target.
of global forest cover from the United nations Environment Programme's World Conservation Monitoring Centre in Cambridge,
John Healy, a forest ecologist at the University of Wales, Bangor, says that the study is important
because it looks at forest protection in ecoregions and by forest type, rather than just total forest cover.
Lauren Coad, a forest scientist at the Environmental Change Institute University of Oxford, UK, and another of the paper's authors, says that the 10%target is arbitrary but politically important.
and land developers move deeper into dense regions of the forest, a new study suggests.
Researchers have analyzed Brazilian deforestation data from 2001-2007 in an effort to quantify emissions as deforestation moves from the forest outskirts to the interior,
where forests contain less biomass, says co-author Greg Asner, a scientist with the Carnegie Institution of Science in Stanford, California.
Now people are moving north and west into the higher biomass forests. The results underscore the danger posed by deforestation,
Asner says the study serves as a reminder that monitoring forest cover will not be enough in the future.
what scientists know about both forest carbon and the drivers of deforestation. It makes perfect sense,
Forest growth studies begin to turn up the heat: Nature Newsacross the United states, researchers are firing up experiments to determine how rising temperatures could reshape the nation's forests.
The studies encompass the pines and maples of eastern forests in Massachusetts and North carolina, the spruce and fir of northern Minnesota,
and the alpine tundra ecosystem above the treeline in the Rocky mountains in Colorado. Technology to warm soils is more than a decade old,
but altering the temperature above ground remains challenging, particularly in a forest. People criticize just warming the soil,
Researchers have tended to shy away from forests. But as the US Department of energy phases out a number of large-scale forest experiments designed to look at the effects of elevated carbon dioxide levels (see Nature 456,289;
2008), researchers are clamouring for the next generation of experiments to incorporate temperature control. For now, the technology available limits such projects to seedlings and young trees on relatively small plots of land.
open-topped heating chambers in Harvard Forest, located in Petersham, Massachusetts, and Duke Forest, which spreads across several counties in North carolina.
Meanwhile, in Minnesota, Peter Reich, a forest ecologist at the University of Minnesota in St paul,
and his colleagues switched their heaters on in April. Measurements on 1, 500 of the 10,000 seedlings his team has planted suggests that a rise of 2-4 °C causes seedlings to put out shoots
which increased temperatures can alter the balance of power in a forest. Later this summer an experiment in the Rocky mountains led by Lara Kueppers, an ecologist at the University of California,
Merced, will begin heating three sites one in the alpine tundra above the treeline, one at the edge of the treeline and a lower site within the forest.
really knows whether the way that we're warming will have some effects that might be different from the way that nature will warm forests in the future.
and you would be saving a lot of forest, especially if better systems mean you do not move your crops on to new land every two or three years.
Forest definition comes under fire: Nature Newsthe health of the world's forests and their capacity to lock away carbon could be jeopardized by logging
if the United nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) definition of a forest is changed not,
a study warns. A future climate deal could see developing countries financially compensated for preserving their forests.
The UNFCCC defines a forest as an area of land 0. 05-1 hectare in size,
of which more than 10-30%is covered by tree canopy. Trees must also have the potential to reach a minimum height of 2-5 metres.
Countries participating in the UNFCCC can choose how they want to define a forest from within those ranges.
in Brazil a forest is defined as an area of land greater than 1 hectare, with more than 30%canopy cover and a minimum tree height of 5 metres.
By contrast, Ghana defines a forest as an area of land greater than 0. 1 hectare,
Nophea Sasaki, a forest ecologist at Harvard university, and an author of the study, says that woodland could be degraded severely
but still be classified as a forest under the current UNFCCC definition. Our main concern is that people will take it as a threshold
and keep logging until they reach it, he says. So even though the region could lose a lot of biodiversity and a large proportion of its carbon stock,
it would still be regarded as a forest. Sasaki says that loggers tend to target the bigger, more mature tree species,
In a case study of an evergreen forest in Cambodia, Sasaki and his co-author Francis Putz from the University of Florida in Gainsville use inventory data for plots of trees with trunks wider than 5 centimetres to estimate that the forest
%yet the forest would still be considered a forest under the UNFCCC definition, the study says.
and that natural forests should be differentiated from plantations. His proposed threshold for canopy cover he says,
is based not on calculations that show forest degradation would be avoided at these levels, but rather on the definition used by the Food and agriculture organization of the united nations,
%Sasaki is concerned also that forest degradation will be disregarded in the post-Kyoto agreement on climate change due to be negotiated in Copenhagen in December.
But Sasaki says that several prominent studies ignore the issue of degradation of forests and their long-term sustainability including a report2 from the Harvard university project on international climate agreements
and estimate the forest's carbon stock. Burgess says Sasaki's paper has not proven why its proposed definition of a forest would be optimal,
but that the more canopy cover you have, the more intact the forest is, so the more carbon it is retaining.
Working out the amount of degradation that would be tolerable in a post-Kyoto agreement would be useful.
It is the largest forest-conservation initiative in the world, and the only national programme that could demonstrate how tropical forest protection might be folded into the global-warming treaty that international leaders hope to sign in Copenhagen in December.
The Amazon Fund could be interpreted as the fundamental test case for the rest of the world
Landowners who sign up to preserve their forest would begin receiving monthly cheques, starting at around $16
says Dan Nepstad, a researcher at the Woods Hole Research center in Massachusetts. If it works, REDD will survive.
Climate negotiators in the United nations talks are looking at various ways to link international carbon markets to forest conservation,
or European companies to offset their emissions by paying for forest conservation projects in the tropics.
instead of on particular projects that might save one patch of forest while pushing loggers, developers and landowners down the road to another patch.
along with Friends of the Earth Norway, proposed to the Norwegian government that it invest in a big forest conservation initiative.
cio Lula da Silva urging the country to reconsider its opposition to directly tapping carbon markets for forest conservation.
which there is no way to protect the forest as a whole. The federal government needs to have a national vision about the problems and the solutions for the country,
Fungus genome boosts fight to save North american forests: Nature Newscanadian researchers have decoded the DNA of the tree-killing fungus found in the mouths of mountain pine beetles,
the destructive bugs that wipe out entire North american forests. Further genome sequencing of the beetle and pine tree species should help forest managers design better pest-control tactics,
the authors say. It's really getting to a systems-level understanding of the mountain pine beetle epidemic,
Mountain pine beetles (Dendroctonus ponderosae) have eaten their way through vast swathes of western North american pine forests,
says Brian Aukema of the Canadian Forestry Service in Prince George, who plans to incorporate the genomic data into landscape ecological models.
but the approach has never before been applied on this scale for an outbreaking forest nuisance.
The blue staining reduces the commercial value of affected timber but it is not clear what role the colouring plays in driving infestation.
a research associate in Bohlmann's lab. But it might offer the best strategy for containing the forest pests,
says Bart Muys, a forest ecologist at the University of Leuven in Belgium. But Hoekstra says that more thought needs to be given to variables such as where jatropha is planted
says Jeremy Woods from Imperial College London's Centre for Environmental Policy. And jatropha can play a big part in that.
But barely 24 hours later, Jairam Ramesh, India's minister of environment and forests, said that permission for its cultivation will be given only after consulting all stakeholders.
Argentina's forests dwindle: Nature Newsargentina, often perceived as a vast fertile territory, is losing its native forests.
Nearly 40%of animal and plant species in the country's arid and semiarid ecosystems are in danger from habitat loss,
by 2036 we will only have small patches of native forests left in the country,
In 1914, Argentina was estimated to have more than 106 million hectares of native forests; by 1996,
Today, the country's forests are vanishing at a rate of more than 829,000 hectares a year,
mainly where agriculture is pushing into native forests. Scientists are concerned not just about losing particular species. By losing ecosystems,
Historically, native forests haven't been regulated properly, says Octavio PÃ rez Pardo, director of the national government department in charge of soil conservation and fighting desertification.
along with social organizations, to classify forests from most to least threatened. Different programmes are being implemented in regions that have already been deforested,
whether the forests are cut down or not. In 2008, products directly or indirectly derived from agricultural
To keep intact forests economically viable, Tomasini says that one alternative would be to identify the services provided by forests, such as carbon sequestration,
that could be wrapped into the global climate agreement due to be hammered out at the United nations climate-change conference in Copenhagen in December.
which is likely to hold its own vote on provisions that have international implications, such as adaptation and forestry provisions.
The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) study pointed to the ample financial returns of investment in protecting natural areas such as mangroves, tropical forests and grasslands.
the government announced last week that roughly 7, 000 square kilometres of forest were cleared this year, a drop of about 45%from last year's levels.
According to two new studies, planting forests in areas that currently don't have trees a process called afforestation can reduce the local availability of water.
a forest ecologist at Colorado State university in Fort Collins who was involved not in the research.
and seven that had been planted with forests in the province of C Â rdoba, Argentina. With their deep roots and tall canopies, trees absorb
gy presented his team's results last month at the World Forestry Congress in Buenos aires. A second study presented at the conference,
in collaboration with the US Forest Service, afforested one of a pair of watersheds. The researchers observed an 18-22%drop in base flow in the afforested watershed compared with the watershed that had been left as grassland.
which once created woodland oases that lined the rivers in the otherwise desert landscape. But as Chepstow-Lusty moved forward in time through the pollen record, he found a gradual decrease in huarango pollen and a concomitant increase in pollen from agricultural sources
like cotton and maize, indicating that the Nazca were cutting down woodland to make room for farms.
because it was supported no longer by woodland. That caused erosion and made the irrigation system useless,
where people are removing the last remaining riparian forests for charcoal. Populations have exploded resulting in tremendous pressure upon water resources, agricultural production and the fragile biomes, all of
says Steve Schwartzman, who heads tropical forest policy for the Environmental Defense Fund in WASHINGTON DC. This is a major step.
as well as reforestation efforts. If we get assistance and we develop good policies here, we might get to 2020 with a maximum 40%reduction,
The government is also rethinking its position on the role of forest carbon in a future climate treaty.
the country has taken a lone stance in demanding that wealthy countries should not be able to offset their greenhouse-gas emissions by funding forest conservation in the tropics.
which they said represent a golden opportunity for sustainable development and forest conservation. That panel has proposed allowing nations to offset up to 10%of their commitment by purchasing carbon credits for avoided deforestation.
The work was done by Anthony Atala at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Winston-salem, North carolina.
many expect that it will include a mechanism allowing rich nations to offset their emissions by paying poorer countries to protect their forests
the first satellite-based estimates of the biomass contained in the world's tropical forests. Current biomass estimates for the tropics are gathered based on data by the Food and agriculture organization of the united nations (FAO),
As a result, baseline figures for biomass are some of the biggest uncertainties in calculating emissions from deforestation and forest degradation,
vegetation and soils on a given patch of land rather than relying on rough averages that are calculated across a forest.
the work provides a snapshot at 1-kilometre resolution of tropical forests as they were in 2000,
Also at Copenhagen, researchers at the Woods Hole Research center in Massachusetts presented another pantropical biomass assessment,
Like the Winrock study, it includes spectral data from NASA satellites as well as laser measurements of forest canopy height from an instrument on NASA's Ice, Cloud,
says that it is good news that multiple teams are tackling the big-picture question of tropical forest biomass.
if forests are going to be linked to international carbon markets. The new pantropical biomass maps from Saatchi and Woods Hole won't accomplish that goal,
but they can provide scientists and policy-makers with a better understanding of carbon trends. For example
Asner has found that deforestation in Brazil is moving into higher biomass areas in the interior of the forest.
Market watch Amazonian nations will be the early winners in any market for forest carbon credits,
The Forest Carbon Index, released by the environmental think tank Resources for the Future and consultancy firm Climate Advisers, both based in WASHINGTON DC, charts where governments should invest in preserving forests in developing countries.
The report says that 85%of the best places for early forest carbon returns (2013-20) are in the greater Amazon
and political will to save the forests. Investment will also depend on national policies: Brazil has asked for donations not an offset market to help avoid deforestation,
Amazon is best site for forest carbon investments: Nature Newsamazon nations will be the early winners in a future market for forest carbon credits,
which could grow to US$20 billion annually by 2020, according to a new report. It is estimated that deforestation accounts for around 12%of the greenhouse-gas emissions that cause climate change1
and there is general agreement that the next global climate deal-under negotiation next week in Copenhagen-should include a forest protection plan.
The plan would let rich nations meet their emissions targets in part by investing in forest preservation in developing countries.
The Forest Carbon Index, released by the environmental think tank Resources for the Future and consultancy firm Climate Advisers, both based in WASHINGTON DC, aims to help investors
and policy-makers choose between forests around the world. The index is calculated based on an area's biological potential to store carbon
and the local opportunity costs of protecting forests rather than cutting them down for timber, or to clear land for agriculture and grazing.
and market its forests, the ease of business, the political stability and local governance conditions.
It's the first study of its kind to display the best places to enter the forest carbon market in such a comprehensive way,
The report suggests that 85%of the best places for forest carbon returns are in the greater Amazon
existing market capacity and political will to save the forests. The Congo Basin with its carbon-rich forests and rock-bottom prices contains around 75%of the potentially high-profit locations.
But relatively low deforestation rates, political instability and lack of capacity to bring carbon credits to market mean that the region is unlikely to garner much investment in the next decade.
who directs the Tropical forest and Climate Initiative at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington,
'says that although the index is a good overview of forest carbon opportunities, some of the global and national datasets used should be treated with caution.
head of forest services at carbon-trading company Ecosecurities, based in Dublin, Ireland. Fehse would like the index to be expanded to track progress in developing policy,
In a forest, trees remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and accumulate that as biomass. Whales take carbon out of the system through their food,
It's equivalent to 11,000 square kilometres of temperate forest, or 11,000 Hummers driving for 100 years, says Pershing.
It's also comparable to the amount of carbon involved in forest-management schemes being proposed for buying
on the fifth anniversary of the treaty's entry into force. go. nature. com/RMWXIO 1-5 march The 41st Lunar and Planetary Science Conference takes place at the Woodlands,
In another, climate policies result in a world full of forest plantations that are created solely to store the greatest possible amount of carbon, with no regard for preserving biodiversity.
People go out into the woods at night with dogs and pigs to locate them there's folklore behind it.
the truffle's spores are scattered around the forest floor. Other scents beckon the truffle fly,
Saving forests, cultures and carbon dioxide: Nature Newscreating and strengthening protected areas and indigenous lands is one of the most effective ways of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation, according to a new paper.
The study, a collaboration between forest scientists from 13 universities and research institutions, concludes that bolstering support for indigenous lands
it could slow forest loss, conserve biodiversity and preserve local cultures. Support for forest protection programmes was one of the few successes during last December's climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark,
which failed to bring about a legally binding treaty to rein in carbon dioxide emissions. During the meetings, countries agreed that developed countries would financially support poor nations in protecting their forests through an initiative called REDD-plus Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, with added benefits for local
communities and indigenous people. But although the Copenhagen meetings called for the immediate establishment of a REDD-plus mechanism
John Niles, the director of the Tropical forest Group, a non-governmental organization based in San diego, California, that focuses on forest policy, warns that funnelling support into existing protected areas through REDD may be tricky because of the ongoing debates about what constitutes a carbon saving.
Countries are rewarded generally not for the amount of forest they have, but rather the amount of forest carbon they prevent from being deforested
and released to the atmosphere a concept called additionality. So because protected areas are protected already under law
they may not qualify, says Niles. The legal additionality issue has been a problem in the past, he says.
Nature Newsa fight has broken out over attempts to drag'Ardi'-the oldest hominid skeleton found-out of the woods where her discoverers say she lived.
4 that their reports properly place what is clearly a hominid in its preferred woodland habitat.
and arms living in woodlands, but not knuckle-walking like a chimpanzee. While the opposing points of view are being argued vigorously this week in Science,
The Cerling group contends that the abundance of small-mammal fossils at the site which White's group says supports a woodland environment could be due to predators hiding in vegetation growing around water
For instance, White notes that isotopic analysis of tooth enamel of Ardi herself shows a diet from a woodland habitat.
the tooth-enamel findings do not directly support the idea that Ardi lived in woodland. In the other technical comment in Science, primatologist Esteban Sarmiento says he questions
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