Rainforest Problems
Slash and Sprawl: U.S. Eastern Forests Resume Decline
Trees once covered almost the entire eastern seaboard of the U.S. Vast forests supported a rich ecosystem, including flocks of the extinct passenger pigeon big enough to blot out the sun. But by the 1920s at least half of this forest was gone—a victim of tree-clearing for farming, forestry or fossil-fuel extraction.
Then, the forest rebounded for several decades as once-farmed fields were left fallow. But a new study reveals that since the 1970s eastern forests have begun to diminish again; roughly 3.7 million hectares of forested land—an area larger than the state of Maryland—have been transformed into subdivisions, tree plantations and lunar-esque landscapes resulting from mountaintop removal mining. In fact, the latter activity alone eliminated 420,000 hectares of woodlands in the past two decades.
"Human land use is a primary driver of environmental change," says geographer Mark Drummond of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), who collaborated on the study in the April issue of BioScience with USGS Earth observation scientist Thomas Loveland. "The cumulative footprint of human activities on the land surface is causing a significant net decline in forest cover."
Traumatized Trees: Bug Them Enough, They Get Fired Up
The area burned by fire each year is expected to double -- or even triple -- if temperatures increase by about 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit (2 C) in our region, according to University of Washington and USDA Forest Service research. Such temperature increases could occur in as little as 40 years, according to projections from the UW's Climate Impacts Group.
"I'm not a doom-and-gloom kind of guy but this is a great concern," said Dave Peterson, a UW professor of forest resources and a biologist with the Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station.
Fuels built up after a century of rushing to suppress fires have long been pointed to as the reason for growing numbers of wildfires. That's indeed a major factor, Peterson said, but starting in 1993 UW's Jim Agee, now professor emeritus of forest resources, was the first to point out that climate was probably a contributing factor.
$6B forest conservation plan lacking in transparency, indigenous participation, say activists
The process to establish REDD+, a proposed climate change mitigation mechanism that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by funding conservation and sustainable management of tropical forests (REDD+), is lacking in transparency and failing to include civil society organizations and indigenous peoples, say activists across forty NGOs.
On Tuesday, organizations led by the Rainforest Foundation UK, Friends of the Earth (USA & France), Global Witness and The Wilderness Society issued a statement criticizing the Paris-Oslo Process — which aims to establish a forests deal outside of a broader climate agreement — for "lack of genuine consultation in the drafting of the agreement" and "failing to take into account underlying issues that need to be tackled in the fight against deforestation." The groups fear that lack of transparency in the decision-making process and allocation of the $6 billion in "fast-start" financing so far pledged to REDD+ could undermine the effectiveness of the forest conservation initiative as well as the overall progress on addressing climate change.
Low success from rainforest revegetation investment
A project to investigate the outcome of large government investments in community based rainforest revegetation has found that only about half the area reported as revegetated was actually forested after six to 11 years. About half of this forested area was in poor or very poor condition – often due to a lack of monitoring or maintenance.
Project leader, Associate Professor Carla Catterall of Griffith University, says that despite the expenditure of tens of millions of dollars on replanting rainforest vegetation, and the dedicated enthusiasm of many community members, only about one per cent of previously cleared rainforest in tropical and subtropical Australia has been replanted with rainforest trees.
Certified sustainable palm oil sales reach record level
Sales of palm oil certified under the green criteria set by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) reached a record high in March, climbing nearly 8 percent over February 2010 to 136,000 metric tons, reports the RSPO in its monthly bulletin.
RSPO says that 95 percent of certified sustainable palm oil (CSPO) produced during the first quarter of 2010 was purchased. Overall about 700,000 tons of the 1.8 million tons CSPO produced since 2008 have been purchased.
