The poor ignorant savage even apologized to a tree for having to
cut it down and had sacred groves and woods he left standing—
homes of the gods or of his fellow creatures—whereas his successor,
who ungodded nature, ravages the heights and brings floods,
dustbowls and salt pans into the once fertile lowlands. Or worse,
defoliates to facilitate hunting down his brother man.
- Jacob Trapp, The Light of a Thousand Suns, 1973
Showing posts with label issue: deforestation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label issue: deforestation. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Limits on Logging Are Reinstated
Limits on Logging Are Reinstated By FELICITY BARRINGER July 16, 2009
Link to full article below
In a move to protect endangered species, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Thursday that his department had reversed a Bush administration decision to double the amount of logging allowed in and around old-growth forests in western Oregon.
Skip to next paragraph
Associated Press
A northern spotted owl, which is considered endangered.
Veering between swipes at “indefensible” moves by the Bush administration and pledges to step up noncontroversial timber sales, Mr. Salazar said in a conference call with reporters that he was reinstating a compromise reached 15 years ago to limit logging with the goal of protecting watersheds, trout and salmon fisheries and endangered birds like the northern spotted owl.
“Today we are taking action to reform the Department of Interior and correct mistakes by correcting legal shortcuts the late administration made at the end of its tenure,” Mr. Salazar said.
The Bush policy, challenged in the courts by environmentalists, would have allowed timber companies to cut up to 502 million board-feet of lumber annually from 2.6 million acres of forests in the region, or about double the amount allowed under the Northwest Forest Plan, which was adopted in 1994 under President Bill Clinton.
To read the full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/science/earth/17forest.html?_r=2&emc=tnt&tntemail0=y
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Link to full article below
In a move to protect endangered species, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Thursday that his department had reversed a Bush administration decision to double the amount of logging allowed in and around old-growth forests in western Oregon.
Skip to next paragraph
Associated Press
A northern spotted owl, which is considered endangered.
Veering between swipes at “indefensible” moves by the Bush administration and pledges to step up noncontroversial timber sales, Mr. Salazar said in a conference call with reporters that he was reinstating a compromise reached 15 years ago to limit logging with the goal of protecting watersheds, trout and salmon fisheries and endangered birds like the northern spotted owl.
“Today we are taking action to reform the Department of Interior and correct mistakes by correcting legal shortcuts the late administration made at the end of its tenure,” Mr. Salazar said.
The Bush policy, challenged in the courts by environmentalists, would have allowed timber companies to cut up to 502 million board-feet of lumber annually from 2.6 million acres of forests in the region, or about double the amount allowed under the Northwest Forest Plan, which was adopted in 1994 under President Bill Clinton.
To read the full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/
If you enjoyed this, would you please make a donation?
Even $1 or $5 helps us to serve you.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Environment Blamed in Western Tree Deaths
Environment Blamed in Western Tree Deaths
By MIREYA NAVARRO
January 23, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/us/23trees.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/us/23trees.html
Rising temperatures and the resulting drought are causing trees in the West to die at more than twice the pace they did a few decades ago, a new study has found.
The combination of temperature and drought has also reduced the ability of the forests to absorb carbon dioxide, which traps heat and thus contributes to global warming, the authors of the study said, and has made forests sparser and more susceptible to fires and pests.
The scientists, who analyzed tree census data collected in 1955 and in later years, found that the mortality of trees increased in 87 percent of the 76 forest plots studied. In some plots, the die-off rate doubled in as little as 17 years; in others, it doubled after 29 years, the study found.
“Summers are getting longer,” said Nathan L. Stephenson, of the United States Geological Survey, a leader of the study with Phillip van Mantgem, also of the geological survey. “Trees are under more drought stress.”
The study will appear in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.
The scientists analyzed the effects of higher temperatures on old-growth temperate forests in three regions: the Pacific Northwest (including southwestern British Columbia), California and inland Western states. The average temperature in those regions rose by more than one degree Fahrenheit from the mid-1970s to 2006.
Precipitation and snowpack runoff decreased over the same period.
The higher mortality rates held regardless of tree size or type or elevation at which it grew. The fact that birth rates remained unchanged among the nearly 60,000 pines, firs, hemlocks and other trees in the study indicates that forests are losing trees faster than they are replacing them, the authors noted.
It remains unclear how much of the regional warming is a result of a natural climate cycle and how much results from a global trend toward higher temperatures. But Jerry F. Franklin, a professor of ecosystem analysis at the University of Washington and an author of the study, blamed global warming. “We see the regional warming as part of a much larger shift globally,” Mr. Franklin said.
The study focused on forests more than 200 years old where rapid changes in demographic rates would more likely be caused by environmental changes rather than by internal processes like self-thinning that are more common in young forests. The spike in mortality cannot be attributed to aging, fires and other events, the researchers said
Warmer weather makes trees more vulnerable to insects and pathogens that thrive in warmer conditions.
In a report last year, the Department of Agriculture said that climate change had “very likely” increased the size and number of fires, insect infestations and overall tree die-offs in forests in the West, the Southwest and Alaska, and that the damage would accelerate in the future.
The authors of the new study said in a teleconference that if tree mortality rates continued to rise, the average size of trees could fall because trees would die at younger ages. Smaller trees cannot store as much carbon dioxide as large ones.
In addition, areas could also become less suitable for some species and more welcoming for others, and existing species might begin to act in peculiar ways. “Novel behaviors on the part of pests and pathogens are the sort of thing we’ll get surprised by,” Mr. Franklin said.
But Steve Pyne, an environmental historian at the University of Texas who has studied fires in forests, said that how bad things became depended on what replaced the vegetation that was being lost.
“Part of the trick here is we don’t know,” Mr. Pyne said. “It’s like the financial meltdown. It’s the uncertainty. What’s going to replace it?”
He added, “It may make no difference; it may make a huge difference.”
By MIREYA NAVARRO
January 23, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/
Rising temperatures and the resulting drought are causing trees in the West to die at more than twice the pace they did a few decades ago, a new study has found.
The combination of temperature and drought has also reduced the ability of the forests to absorb carbon dioxide, which traps heat and thus contributes to global warming, the authors of the study said, and has made forests sparser and more susceptible to fires and pests.
The scientists, who analyzed tree census data collected in 1955 and in later years, found that the mortality of trees increased in 87 percent of the 76 forest plots studied. In some plots, the die-off rate doubled in as little as 17 years; in others, it doubled after 29 years, the study found.
“Summers are getting longer,” said Nathan L. Stephenson, of the United States Geological Survey, a leader of the study with Phillip van Mantgem, also of the geological survey. “Trees are under more drought stress.”
The study will appear in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.
The scientists analyzed the effects of higher temperatures on old-growth temperate forests in three regions: the Pacific Northwest (including southwestern British Columbia), California and inland Western states. The average temperature in those regions rose by more than one degree Fahrenheit from the mid-1970s to 2006.
Precipitation and snowpack runoff decreased over the same period.
The higher mortality rates held regardless of tree size or type or elevation at which it grew. The fact that birth rates remained unchanged among the nearly 60,000 pines, firs, hemlocks and other trees in the study indicates that forests are losing trees faster than they are replacing them, the authors noted.
It remains unclear how much of the regional warming is a result of a natural climate cycle and how much results from a global trend toward higher temperatures. But Jerry F. Franklin, a professor of ecosystem analysis at the University of Washington and an author of the study, blamed global warming. “We see the regional warming as part of a much larger shift globally,” Mr. Franklin said.
The study focused on forests more than 200 years old where rapid changes in demographic rates would more likely be caused by environmental changes rather than by internal processes like self-thinning that are more common in young forests. The spike in mortality cannot be attributed to aging, fires and other events, the researchers said
Warmer weather makes trees more vulnerable to insects and pathogens that thrive in warmer conditions.
In a report last year, the Department of Agriculture said that climate change had “very likely” increased the size and number of fires, insect infestations and overall tree die-offs in forests in the West, the Southwest and Alaska, and that the damage would accelerate in the future.
The authors of the new study said in a teleconference that if tree mortality rates continued to rise, the average size of trees could fall because trees would die at younger ages. Smaller trees cannot store as much carbon dioxide as large ones.
In addition, areas could also become less suitable for some species and more welcoming for others, and existing species might begin to act in peculiar ways. “Novel behaviors on the part of pests and pathogens are the sort of thing we’ll get surprised by,” Mr. Franklin said.
But Steve Pyne, an environmental historian at the University of Texas who has studied fires in forests, said that how bad things became depended on what replaced the vegetation that was being lost.
“Part of the trick here is we don’t know,” Mr. Pyne said. “It’s like the financial meltdown. It’s the uncertainty. What’s going to replace it?”
He added, “It may make no difference; it may make a huge difference.”
Forests Dying Two Times Faster, Thanks to Global Warming
Forests Dying Two Times Faster, Thanks to Global Warming
by Dan Shapely
1.22.2009
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/global-warming-trees-47012207?src=nl&mag=tdg&list=dgr
http://www.thedailygreen.com/print-this/environmental-news/latest/global-warming-trees-47012207
Study: Rate of death of Western U.S. trees more than doubled, and higher temperatures are most likely to blame.
Forests in the West are dying at twice the rate they once did, due to global warming. And that rate of death could lead to additional warming.
Trees are dying at more than twice the rate they were just a few decades ago, and rising temperatures is most likely to blame, according to a new report published in Science by federal scientists working with the U.S. Geologic Survey.
The death rate is not limited to a single species or region, but was described as "pervasive" across all forest types, all elevations, in trees of all sizes. Pines, firs, hemlocks and other kinds of trees all showed the same "worrying" decline.
The end result could be "substantial changes in Western forests," according to the report's lead co-author, Phil van Mantgem. Think more wildfires, fewer wildlife species and forests as sources of the atmospheric carbon that causes global warming, not sinks.
In other words, the very problem causing these trees to die will be enhanced by the fact of their dying. That, folks, is what scientists cause a positive feedback loop, and it's one of the most terrifying aspects of global warming. Force too many of these feedback loops, and you get a runaway global warming scenario that no carbon taxes or energy efficiency improvements will counteract.
In this case, the feeback is very tangible: Forests lose trees faster than they grow back.
And it all traces back to global warming, which in the West has resulted in a 1-degree temperature increase over recent decades -- enough to cause a longterm reduction in the snowpack, increase the length of the summer drought and create conditions hospitable to pests like the bark beetle. Those conditions, in turn, are stressing trees.
"Tree death rates are like interest on a bank account - the effects compound over time," making forests susceptible to "sudden, extensive die-back," Nate Stephenson, the lead co-author, said in a prepared statement. "That," he said, "may be our biggest concern. Is the trend we're seeing a prelude to bigger, more abrupt changes to our forests?"
by Dan Shapely
1.22.2009
http://www.thedailygreen.com/
http://www.thedailygreen.com/
Study: Rate of death of Western U.S. trees more than doubled, and higher temperatures are most likely to blame.
Forests in the West are dying at twice the rate they once did, due to global warming. And that rate of death could lead to additional warming.
Trees are dying at more than twice the rate they were just a few decades ago, and rising temperatures is most likely to blame, according to a new report published in Science by federal scientists working with the U.S. Geologic Survey.
The death rate is not limited to a single species or region, but was described as "pervasive" across all forest types, all elevations, in trees of all sizes. Pines, firs, hemlocks and other kinds of trees all showed the same "worrying" decline.
The end result could be "substantial changes in Western forests," according to the report's lead co-author, Phil van Mantgem. Think more wildfires, fewer wildlife species and forests as sources of the atmospheric carbon that causes global warming, not sinks.
In other words, the very problem causing these trees to die will be enhanced by the fact of their dying. That, folks, is what scientists cause a positive feedback loop, and it's one of the most terrifying aspects of global warming. Force too many of these feedback loops, and you get a runaway global warming scenario that no carbon taxes or energy efficiency improvements will counteract.
In this case, the feeback is very tangible: Forests lose trees faster than they grow back.
And it all traces back to global warming, which in the West has resulted in a 1-degree temperature increase over recent decades -- enough to cause a longterm reduction in the snowpack, increase the length of the summer drought and create conditions hospitable to pests like the bark beetle. Those conditions, in turn, are stressing trees.
"Tree death rates are like interest on a bank account - the effects compound over time," making forests susceptible to "sudden, extensive die-back," Nate Stephenson, the lead co-author, said in a prepared statement. "That," he said, "may be our biggest concern. Is the trend we're seeing a prelude to bigger, more abrupt changes to our forests?"
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