globalresearch--2019-08-12--Our Vanishing World Rainforests

Our Vanishing World: Rainforests

Rainforests are a crucial feature of Earth’s biosphere. Apart from being critical to Earth’s climate and vital carbon sinks, the major player in Earth’s hydrological (water) cycle, a massive producer of oxygen and home to most of the world’s species, rainforests are the home of a large indigenous human population. They are also the source of many vital resources, including medicines, used by humans around the world.  However, the vast range of ecological services that rainforests have provided ongoingly for the 400 million years of their existence, and which have been critical to the survival of homo sapiens since we first walked the Earth 200,000 years ago, are not measured and valued by accountants and economists: Have you ever seen a balance sheet or set of national accounts that includes an entry for ‘Value of ecological services taken from nature and on which life and our entire production of goods and services depend’?  Because these services have been available without the need for human management or intervention, and given the primitive conception of accounting and economics that humans use, the ecological services of rainforests are given no monetary value. Hence, essential ecological services are treated as worthless by virtually everyone in the industrialized world. As a result, modern industrialized humans have decided to systematically destroy the rainforests in order to extract a vast amount of short-term profit for the benefit of a few and the temporary satisfaction of many. So if we do not value ecological services such as oxygen and water generation as well as climate and weather-moderating capacities, what is it that we do value by destroying rainforests?  A small proportion of rainforest is logged to provide attractive rainforest timbers – such as teak, mahogany, ebony and rosewood – for a variety of decorative purposes, including making furniture, which can last hundreds of years.  However, a much wider range and vastly greater quantity of rainforest trees are cut or burnt down for purposes such as the following: acquiring timbers used in construction, clearing land to establish cattle farms so that many people can eat cheap hamburgers, clearing land to establish palm oil plantations so that many people can eat processed (including junk) foods based on this oil, clearing land to establish palm oil and soy bean plantations so that some people can delude themselves that they are using a ‘green biofuel’ in their car (when, in fact, these fuels generate a far greater carbon footprint than fossil fuels), mining (much of it illegal) for a variety of minerals (such as gold, silver, copper, coltan, cassiterite and diamonds), and logging to produce woodchips so that some people can buy cheap paper, including cheap toilet paper.  In essence then: We trade the essential life-giving and sustainably-available ecological services of Earth’s rainforests, also home to indigenous peoples and countless wildlife, for hamburgers and other processed junk foods, carbon-intensive ‘biofuels’, paper and some building and furniture materials, as well as some minerals. Obviously, some humans are far from clever at ‘making deals’.  But if you think that is bad, consider this: ‘by one estimate, a hectare of livestock or soy is worth between $25 and $250, while the same hectare of sustainably managed forest can yield as much as $850’ harvesting, depending on the location, such products as medicinal plants, rubber, nuts and fruits while benefitting from a range of ecotourism services and research opportunities. See ‘Rainforest on Fire: On the Front Lines of Bolsonaro’s War on the Amazon, Brazil’s Forest Communities Fight Against Climate Catastrophe’. Of course, you have to know how to manage the forest sustainably to yield this much income but that sort of intelligence is rare and invariably escapes those focused on destruction for short-term profit.  So how bad is this rainforest destruction? Well, worldwide we are currently destroying rainforests for these unsustainable and mainly short-term products at the rate of 80,000 acres each day. See ‘Measuring the Daily Destruction of the World’s Rainforests’.  Moreover, beyond the devastating impact this has on indigenous peoples, forcing increasing numbers of them to leave their destroyed homes in the rainforest to try to survive elsewhere, this rainforest destruction is also the key driver of species extinctions globally with one million species of life on Earth threatened with extinction. As reported in the recent Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services researched and published by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) – the scientific body which assesses the state of biodiversity and the ecosystem services this provides to society – ‘Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history. The IPBES Global Assessmentranks, for the first time at this scale, the 5 direct drivers of change in nature with the largest global impact. So what are the culprits behind nature’s destruction?’ Number 1. on the IPBES list is ‘Changes in land and sea use, like turning intact tropical forests into agricultural land’.  Let me briefly illustrate the nature and extent of this destruction by discussing rainforests in just three locations (the Brazilian Amazon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Indonesia/West Papua) where the destruction of rainforest was greatest in 2018 – see ‘The World Lost a Belgium-sized Area of Primary Rainforests Last Year’– and which are representative of elsewhere around the planet where even World Heritage listed areas are ongoingly under threat.  IBAMA operation against illegal loggers in the Brazilian Amazon, courtesy of IBAMA.  While the Amazon in South America occurs in several countries, two-thirds of it lie within the borders of Brazil. Unfortunately, since his fraudulent election in 2018, the neofascist, corrupt and insane president Jair Bolsonaro – see the definition of sanity, which Bolsonaro does not come close to meeting, in ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’– has promptly eliminated years of painstaking effort by committed indigenous and environmental activists to convince previous governments to protect the Brazilian Amazon from the worst corporate and other depredations.  For just a taste of the documentation on Bolsonaro’s actions in accord with elite interests and to the detriment of indigenous and environmental well-being, see ‘Bolsonaro Caps Natives’ Lands, Pleasing Farmers in One of First Acts’, ‘Rainforest on Fire: On the Front Lines of Bolsonaro’s War on the Amazon, Brazil’s Forest Communities Fight Against Climate Catastrophe’, ‘Bolsonaro’s Clearcut Populism. “The Barbarism has Begun”’, this report from Amazon Watch: ‘Complicity in Destruction II: How northern consumers and financiers enable Bolsonaro’s assault on the Brazilian Amazon’ and ‘Amazon Deforestation Accelerating Towards Unrecoverable “Tipping Point”’.  The key drivers of rainforest destruction in the Amazon are soy production and cattle ranching. Brazilian soy accounted for 14.3% of the country’s total exports, generating $31.0 billion in 2017, while cattle exports accounted for about $5.4 billion. Because Brazil leads the world in exports of both of these commodities, it is the world market for these products that is driving these industries to aggressively expand activities to the detriment of the rainforest and indigenous peoples.  But the Amazon is huge, you might say: Does it matter if we destroy some of it for soy and cattle farming? Well, one recent study suggested that deforestation of 20–25% of the Amazon would be the tipping point beyond which it would cease to be a functioning rainforest ecosystem and this, as you might expect, would be catastrophic. Moreover, recent severe droughts appear to be ‘the first flickers of this ecological tipping point’ suggesting that it is already imminent. See ‘Amazon Tipping Point’.  So, to reiterate, the key driver of rainforest destruction in the Brazilian Amazon is consumer-generated demand for certain products in other parts of the world. And while the US and European countries play critical roles in destruction of the Amazon, China is the largest importer of agricultural products from Brazil so its government and consumers are complicit too. For example, as China’s demand for Brazilian soy surges due to the trade war between the United States and China, ‘it could drive further ecological catastrophe: 13 million hectares (50,000 square miles) in the Amazon and Cerrado could ultimately be cleared to meet this additional demand.’ See ‘Complicity in Destruction II: How northern consumers and financiers enable Bolsonaro’s assault on the Brazilian Amazon’.  The point then, is this: governments and ordinary people (in their role as consumers) in other parts of the world can play a vital role in defending the Amazon and its indigenous peoples – see, for example, Brazil’s Indigenous People Articulation– by choosing what they buy from Brazil. Boycotting rainforest timber, beef and soy bean products are powerful options to consider. But don’t forget, there is no point simply identifying and boycotting Braziliantimbers, beef and soy beans. If you want impact on the total market (to prevent one country’s timber, beef and soy beans being substituted for another’s), then you must boycott them all (unless you can clearly identify the source of the product as local and sustainable). Obviously, this takes commitment. The future of the Amazon depends largely on enough of us making that commitment.  The Democratic Republic of the Congo in Central Africa  The rainforests of the Congo Basin in central Africa are the second largest on Earth. Much of this rainforest lies within the borders of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, crippled by corrupt government for decades and a new president elected earlier this year who has inherited a corrupt and inefficient state apparatus. See ‘Democratic Republic of the Congo: Overview of corruption and anti-corruption’.  Unfortunately, therefore, rainforests in the Congo have long been under siege on several fronts. With rebel soldiers (such as the Rwanda-backed M23), miners and poachers endlessly plundering inadequately protected national parks and other wild places for their resources, illegal mining is rampant, over-fishing a chronic problem, illegal logging (and other destruction such as charcoal burning for cooking) of rainforests is completely out of control in some places, poaching of hippopotami, elephants, chimpanzees and okapi for ivory and bushmeat is unrelenting (often despite laws against hunting with guns), and wildlife trafficking of iconic species (including the increasingly rare mountain gorilla) simply beyond the concern of most people.  The Congolese natural environment – including the UNESCO World Heritage sites at Virunga National Park and the Okapi Wildlife Reserve, together with their park rangers – and the indigenous peoples such as the Mbuti (‘pygmies’) who live in them, are under siege. In addition to the ongoing mining, smaller corporations that can’t compete with the majors, such as Soco, want to explore and drill for oil. For a taste of the reading on all this, see ‘Virunga National Park Ranger Killed in DRC Ambush’, ‘The struggle to save the “Congolese unicorn”’, ‘Meet the First Female Rangers to Guard One of World’s Deadliest Parks’ and ‘The Battle for Africa’s Oldest National Park’.  Unfortunately too, as with rainforests elsewhere, ‘What Happens in the Congo Basin Doesn’t Stay in the Congo Basin’: it impacts on regions across Africa playing a part, for example, in recent droughts in Ethiopia and Somalia causing millions of people to depend on emergency food and water rations. See ‘Congo Basin Deforestation Threatens Food and Water Supplies Throughout Africa’.  As with the Amazon, you have some powerful options to consider if you want to save the Congolese rainforests and their indigenous peoples. Again, refusing to buy rainforest timbers, conflict minerals and wildlife products is a good start but remember that key minerals in your computer and mobile phone are illegally sourced from the Congo so your thoughtful consideration of minimizing how many of these devices you own can play a part too. For a fuller account of this exploitation and its destructive impact on the rainforests and its indigenous peoples, with references to many other sources, see ‘500 years is long enough! Human Depravity in the Congo’.  Indonesia has the most extensive rainforest cover in Asia – and is home to hundreds of distinct indigenous languages and over 3,000 animal species including Sumatran tigers, pygmy elephants, rhinoceros and orangutans – but the forests are being systematically degraded and destroyed. Rainforest cover has steadily declined since the 1960s when 82 percent of the country was covered with forest; it is less than 50 percent today. The rainforest is being destroyed by logging, mining, large-scale agricultural plantations (especially for palm oil), colonization, and subsistence activities like shifting agriculture and cutting for fuelwood. Much of the remaining cover consists of logged-over and degraded forest although large areas, including of the island of Kalimantan/Borneo (shared with Malaysia and Brunei), have been stripped bare.  Logging for tropical timbers and pulpwood (to make paper) is the biggest cause of rainforest destruction in the country where as much as 75 percent of the logging is illegal. Indonesia is the world’s largest exporter of tropical timber, which generates more than $US5 billion annually. And more than 48 million hectares (55 percent of the country’s remaining rainforests) are concessioned for logging. Destruction of the rainforest in Indonesia has opened up some of the most remote places on Earth to development: as rainforests in less remote locations have been decimated, timber corporations have stepped up practices on the island of Kalimantan/Borneo and the occupied West Papau, where great swaths of forests have been cleared in recent years. In fact, 20 percent of Indonesia’s logging concessions are in West Papua, despite ongoing resistance by West Papuans.  Unfortunately, the fastest and cheapest way to clear rainforests for plantations is by burning. Hence, every year ‘hundreds of thousands of hectares go up in smoke as developers and agriculturalists feverishly light fires before monsoon rains begin to fall. In dry years – especially during strong el Niño years – these fires can burn out of control for months on end, creating deadly pollution that affects neighboring countries and causes political tempers to flare’. See ‘Indonesian Rainforests’.  Mining operations, including for coal, also have a devastating impact on the rainforests and their peoples. See ‘New report exposes World Bank links to destructive coal mining in Indonesia’.  By far the worst of these projects, however, is the gigantic gold, silver, and copper mine in occupied West Papua, run by Freeport-McMoRan. As widely documented, the mining company has dumped appalling amounts of waste into local streams, rendering downstream waterways and wetlands ‘unsuitable for aquatic life’. Relying on large payments to Indonesian police and military officers, the mining operation is ‘protected’; this has resulted in many West Papuans being killed.  The waste from the mine, estimated by Freeport at 700,000 tons each day, covers several square miles and Government surveys have found that tailings from the mines have produced levels of copper and sediment so high that almost all fish have disappeared from vast areas of wetlands downstream from the mine.  Like other powerful corporations in Indonesia (and elsewhere), Freeport-McMoRan is well aware that there is little official interest in its abuses of local people and the environment as long as corrupt officials are given sufficient incentive to ignore them. As elsewhere in many parts of the world, therefore, corporate access to resources includes serious human rights abuses and persistent conflicts between companies and local communities which is ignored by corrupt politicians. See ‘Indonesian Rainforests’.  Apart from the rainforest itself and the millions of people who live in them, destruction of the rainforest threatens the habitat of iconic species like Sumatran tigers and orangutans, as well as many others, and plays a part in destroying the climate too.  But the damage does not stop with the issues noted above. Forests across the world are being destroyed to make fabrics for clothing we wear every day. Fabrics like rayon, viscose and modal are all made from trees and, every year, more than 120 million trees are cut down to make clothing. This is done by companies such as Forever 21, Under Armour, Foot Locker, Prada Group and Michael Kors. You can join the Rainforest Action Network in campaigning to get these laggard companies to adopt responsible sourcing policies for their forest-based fabrics. See ‘Does your clothing contain rainforest destruction?’  Bizarrely, while its incredible rainforests, along with its coral reefs and beaches, play a part in attracting tourists from across the world to see Indonesia’s charismatic native species – such as orangutans, Sumatran tigers, Komodo dragons, whale sharks, sea turtles and manta rays – and to experience its adventure and dive destinations, this tourism also contributes significantly to the destruction as rainforests make way for tourist facilities.  So, as with Brazil and the Congo, you can boycott rainforest products from Indonesia and other countries where rainforests are being destroyed. Along with suggestions made earlier, responsible choices about the clothing you wear and the tourist destinations you choose (or boycott) will all make a difference.  The ‘Big Picture’ Fight for the Rainforests: What can we do?  A great deal. Halting rainforest destruction might be a complex undertaking but it is imperative if we are to have any prospect of preserving life on Earth. So I hope that you will consider the many options I have offered above and those I mention now and do as many as you can, even if you are already working on other critical issues such as the climate and the struggle to end war and the threat of nuclear war.  If you want easy options, you can support the campaign efforts of organizations that defend rainforests, indigenous peoples and wildlife such as the Rainforest Action Network, the Rainforest Information Centre, the Rainforest 4 Foundation and Rainforest Rescue which work closely with indigenous and local communities while campaigning against the governments and corporations destroying rainforests, as well as the banks and insurance companies that support this destruction.  If you recognize the pervasiveness of the fear-driven violence in our world, which also drives the massive over-consumption of resources by people in industrialized countries – see ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’ – then consider addressing this directly starting with yourself – see ‘Putting Feelings First’ – and by reviewing your relationship with children. See ‘My Promise to Children’ and ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.  If you want to understand and address the fundamental cause of violence in our world, see ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.  If you wish to campaign strategically in support of indigenous peoples and local communities in their struggles to halt the destruction of Earth’s rainforests. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy.  The governments and corporations that profit from the destruction of the rainforests are deeply entrenched and not about to give way without strategically focused campaigns to make it untenable and unprofitable for them to do so. This will include convincing key personnel, whether company directors of corporations involved in rainforest destruction, cargo ship owners, trade unionists (in many industries) and the many other agents involved in the rainforest destruction-to-customer supply chain, as well as ordinary consumers of rainforest products, to make conscious choices about the products they supply, use and/or buy. So strategy is imperative if we are to get corrupt and/or conscienceless governments and corporations, as well as people further removed from the source of the destruction, to end their role in rainforest destruction before it is too late.  The big deforestation drivers are timber, palm oil, cattle and soy while mining, oil drilling, clothing and dam construction all play significant roles too, depending on the country. And, as reported by the CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project): ‘The ABCD (The Archer Daniels Midland Company [ADM], Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus Company) trader companies have a large impact on countless commodity supply chains. For example, they represent up to 90% of the global grain trade. With a wide array of clients that go from Nestlé to McDonald’s, their role in managing deforestation risk is crucial’ and, so far, grossly inadequate. See ‘Revenue at risk: Why addressing deforestation is critical to business success’ which contains a long list of hundreds of companies (on pages 39-46) which are making zero effective effort to end their rainforest-destroying business practices.  Given the strategic sophistication necessary to tackle this complex problem effectively, if you want to view a 15 minute video of (or read a couple of short articles about) the inspirational Melbourne Rainforest Action Group (MRAG) that successfully led a national campaign from 1988 to 1991 to halt imports of rainforest timber into Australia, you can view it here: ‘Time to Act’.  In those cases where corrupt elites control or occupy countries, such as those controlling Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and West Papua, it might be necessary to remove these corrupt governments as part of the effort – see Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy – thus helping to restore the political space for local populations to defend rainforests and their rights.  You might also consider joining the global network of people resisting violence in all contexts by signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.  But if you do nothing else while understanding the simple point that Earth’s biosphere, including its rainforests, cannot sustain a human population of this magnitude of whom more than half endlessly over-consume, then consider accelerated participation in the strategy outlined in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’.  Or, if none of the above options appeal or they seem too complicated, consider committing to:  Out of love for the Earth and all of its creatures, and my respect for their needs, from this day onwards I pledge that:  I wish I could, in all sincerity, offer you that option. If it were still 1990, I would. But the time for simple actions to make a difference is long past and time is now incredibly short. See ‘Human Extinction by 2026? A Last Ditch Strategy to Fight for Human Survival’.  In essence, you have a choice: understand and act on the crucial importance of rainforests before we destroy their integrity and lose them completely. Or help to accelerate the human rush to extinction as a consequence of failing to do so.  Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.  Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is [email protected] and his website is here. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.


globalresearch--2019-08-27--What Everybody Needs to Know About the Amazon Rainforest

The Amazon Rainforest biome has an extension of about 6.7 million square kilometers shared between Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guyana, Surinam and the French Guyana. Some 62% of it is in Brazil, where 84% of its original area at the time of the arrival of the Portuguese in 1500 A.D. are preserved. This mostly untouched area is about the size of France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Holland, Italy, Spain and Portugal together; if it were a country, it would be the world seventh in extension, larger than India.  The Amazon Rainforest must not be confused with the Legal Amazon (Amazônia Legal), a geographical region delimited for the purpose of establishing special tax regimes in order to encourage economic activities in the nine Northern Brazilian states. These states comprise 61% of the national territory but harbor less than 13% of the country’s population, and account for less than 8% of Brazil’s GDP. Their low living standards can be assessed by the fact that only 13% of its urban inhabitants have access to sewage systems; a great part of the 4 million Brazilians who do not have a simple toilet at home live there. The region also holds significant parts of other two Brazilian biomes, the Cerrado (savannah) and the Pantanal (wetlands). The Legal Amazon has 5.1 million sq.km; the Brazilian part of the Rainforest, 4.2 million sq.km.  The Rainforest is not the “lungs of the world”; its vegetal and animal biotas consume all the photosynthesis-generated oxygen in their process of respiration (yes, plants do breathe), so the net budget is near zero. (And lungs do not produce oxygen, after all.)  It is not a functional “carbon sink” either, because as a stable climax ecosystem its net carbon budget is also close to zero (except when it burns). Anyway, if people are worried about carbon, they should support the clearing of the forest and its replacement by the secondary regeneration vegetation (called “capoeira”) instead, that captures the atmospheric carbon during its growth, indeed. By the way, between 2008 and 2012, the area of “capoeiras” increased twice and a half faster than the area of cleared forest (there aren’t more recent data). (Disclaimer: I’m not suggesting this course of action.)  The Rainforest is obviously relevant for the biogeochemical cycles of the biosphere but it does not have any significant impact upon the world climate. Its chief contribution for the atmospheric dynamics is to recycle some half of the rainwater coming westwards from the Atlantic Ocean back to the atmosphere by means of evapotranspiration, forming a water vapor flow that is partly re-directed southward. This process is important for the Rainforest itself and its surroundings but its influence can hardly be regarded as being global.  The much-ballyhooed projections about a feared “tipping point” of deforestation beyond which the Rainforest would supposedly suffer an irreversible “dieback” are just products of mathematical models without factual evidence. These models may be useful as academic drills but should not be the turf of policymaking. If other biomes are useful for comparison, the Atlantic Forest (Mata Atlântica), with a biodiversity similar to the Rainforest, covered 1.3 million sq.km of the Brazilian territory along the coast in the 16th century, and has lost over 80% of its original area since but it has not suffered such a “dieback” so far. The hypothetical deforestation “tipping point” for the rainforest is 20%, a number that grants appealing apocalyptic forecasts and shocking media headlines but does not fit with the hard facts and the common sense.  The annual deforestation rates in the Legal Amazon have been decreasing steadily since the last decade, and are now well under 10,000 sq.km a year. Taking into account that much of this deforestation occurs in the Cerrado, a hypothetical linear projection using such rates suggests that it would take well over 400 years to clear the Rainforest entirely – an absurd scenario that is unimaginable by anyone in their right mind except some delusional and uninformed radical environmentalists, anyway.  Much of the deforestation occurs in private properties and government-sponsored settlement areas for small family farmers, meaning that it is legal. The Brazilian 2012 Forest Code allows that 20% of the property areas in the Rainforest and 50% in the Cerrado be cleared for economic use. Unfortunately, the deforestation rates regularly trumpeted in the media do not make this needed distinction.  The number of fires in the Legal Amazon (including the Cerrado) has also been falling since the record years of 2004-05; the projections for 2019 point that they will reach half or so the numbers of those years. A good deal of such fires occurs in private properties where people have been using fire as a method of cleaning the terrain for centuries; it’s not the best method but it is what they have access to. It’s relevant to notice that most of the fires are not located in the Rainforest itself but in its Southern transition zone to the Cerrado and in the Cerrado itself, as can be seen in the Fire Information for Resource Management System website (See this – the Rainforest is roughly delimited by the huge dark green and light green area north of parallel 15oS). Incidentally, one can also observe that Brazil is far from being alone in the current worldwide fire season.  There are over 25 million people living in the Legal Amazon, most of them in precarious socio-economic conditions. The vast majority of people who cut trees or make use of fire are not criminals but do it because they need to eke out a living somehow (of course, there are criminals that manage to avoid the law enforcement and the due punishment, like everywhere else). Keeping in mind the respective proportions, nobody but some stubborn environmentalists is regarding the Germans as environmental criminals because the remnants of the Hambach Forest near Köln are intended to be felled by the RWE energy company, in order to get the lignite in the subsoil needed to fuel thermoelectric plants, after chancellor Angela Merkel ordered the closing of several of the country’s nuclear plants for purely political reasons.  Brazil is a developing country and is still struggling to find its way towards the full development of its human and natural resources. For the Amazon region, the path is not “preserving” it as a gigantic combo of botanic garden and zoo, as many people seem to think naively. It must begin with the long overdue tasks of land rights regularization, ecological-economic zoning, adding value to the local productions and resources with the best techniques available, improving and expanding the infrastructure needed to enable quality of life gains for the local populations and a massive effort of research and development of its vast biodiversity resources, combining research institutions, private enterprises and the precious traditional knowledge of its inhabitants. In short, a kind of an Industrial Amazon 4.0, an impulse capable of bringing most of its inhabitants to the levels of wellbeing permitted by the 21st century knowledge. All this can and must be done with the needed care for the environment and, hopefully, we will be able to put this rational agenda in practice but a fundamental prerequisite for this is to dispel the myths and hysteria about the region and its development.  So, people, including foreign leaders and personalities, should inform themselves better before ridiculously blaming Brazil of “threatening the world climate”, or asking for sanctions against the country (mostly motivated by political and economical reasons). And the same goes for many Brazilians who are always willing to reverberate any criticisms against the country coming from abroad, regardless of their seriousness or lack thereof.  Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.  Geraldo Luís Lino is a Brazilian geologist, former environmental consultant and co-founder and director of the Ibero-American Solidarity Movement (MSIa – www.msiainforma.org); e-mail: [email protected].


npr--2019-02-13--Hungry Deer May Be Changing How Things Sound In The Forest

Hungry Deer May Be Changing How Things Sound In The Forest  Hungry deer in the northeastern U. S. are likely changing the acoustics of their forests by eating up bushes, small trees and other leafy plants that normally would affect the transmission of natural sounds such as bird calls.  "The deer are very, very over abundant," says Megan Gall, an ecologist at Vassar College who studies how the environment shapes animals' senses. "It's much lusher when there are fewer deer around, and so that's a big change in the structure of the environment."  She got intrigued by the possibility that deer might affect the soundscape after talking with a couple of colleagues who were studying how browsing deer could transform a forest ecosystem by munching through the entire lower level of leafy plants.  Gall already knew that sound travels differently through open fields than through the woods. She also had previously studied how human-generated noise can impact wildlife communication. To see how deer might change what other animals hear, she decided to do some experiments in a couple of forested areas that her colleagues had set up for their deer studies.  One area was fenced off in a way that kept out the deer. The other area was marked off but left open so that deer could enter and graze. Gall and two students, Timothy Boycott and Jingyi Gao, set up audio equipment around these areas. They broadcast different sounds and checked to see how those sounds changed after traveling through each environment.  Rather than using specific bird calls, the researchers played a series of pure tones, white noise and trills. "All of these things are found in different kinds of animal sounds," Gall says. "We wanted to have sort of a very broad palette of sounds to look at." They checked sounds that they sent through the lowest level of the forest, in the middle-level of the forest and at angles going from the ground upward.  The results, published in the journal PLOS One, show that the overall loudness didn't change much — which didn't really surprise the researchers, since they were measuring only over short distances of 36 feet or less. But the structure of a sound changed a lot when it was propagated through a lush, green understory that the deer hadn't snacked on.  "When deer were browsing, we actually found that the sound was clearer," Gall says, "and that's probably because there was less vegetation in the way. You don't have as many sounds bouncing off of leaves and sticks and things like that. When deer are browsing, the sound actually has higher fidelity as it moves through environment."  Bernard Lohr, a biologist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who did not work on the study, says this is an intriguing finding.  "In one sense, I kind of think, why hadn't anyone thought of doing this before?" he says, noting that human activity has resulted in an explosive growth in deer populations. "That should have obvious implications for the acoustics of the habitat."  Lohr says you'd expect the resident birds to adapt their songs. "Something like this should change the acoustic structure of the signals, especially learned signals which evolve culturally," he says, "and so that can happen quite quickly."  Birds could start using higher frequencies that don't normally transmit well in forests, Lohr says, adding, "Some of that acoustic niche may be opened up to them."  Birds' communications could change in other ways, as well. Gall says that many times, birds aim their message toward another specific individual and would rather not be overheard by rivals, predators or other eavesdroppers.  "If you're a very territorial species, like a cardinal for instance, having your signal propagate in a way that's more efficient could be bad for you," Gall says, "because you might end up in a lot more altercations."  On the other hand, she says, social birds such as chickadees could benefit from more clarity as they flock together in the winter and alert each other to dangers.  Lohr thinks researchers could look to see whether bird songs have a different structure in areas that haven't been cleared out by deer.  "The challenge is to find places that have not been browsed," he says, "to see if any of these changes have already occurred. Deer are so pervasive. You'd really have to look hard to find areas that have not been browsed."


npr--2019-09-09--Saving Californias Kelp Forest May Depend On Eating Purple Sea Urchins

Saving California's Kelp Forest May Depend On Eating Purple Sea Urchins

A favorite dish for purple sea urchins living off the coast of California is kelp. Problem is, those kelp forests are shrinking dramatically and that's hurting the marine ecosystem. So a group of scientists ran an experiment to see if these sea urchins can themselves become a top menu item.  Just off the Monterey Peninsula, a boat sways in the ocean. Three divers get ready to jump in. They're students from Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, a graduate school for marine scientists. The assignment: Count purple sea urchins.  "Catch you on the flip side," says Shelby Penn.  Their professor, Luke Gardner, waits on deck. He expects they'll find plenty of urchins. And that's not a good thing.  "What they do is they just eat everything in sight," Gardner says.  These spiny creatures are mowing down California's kelp forests. Kelp is a vital part of the ecosystem. It provides food and shelter for numerous animals, including abalone, rockfish and sea otters.  The problem began around 2014. That's when Gardner says warmer ocean temperatures began affecting the reproduction of kelp. It's also when a disease killed off sunflower sea stars, a predator of purple sea urchins. The purple sea urchin population skyrocketed.  "So with the increase in purple sea urchins, what we've seen is a dramatic reduction in kelp cover, primarily in Northern California. But it's slowly creeping further south. And now we're starting to see a fair bit of it on the Central Coast," Gardner says.  Urchin barrens are areas that used to be full of kelp and are now full of urchins. One of these is below the boat. Diver Daniel Gossard takes video of it with a GoPro camera. The video shows rocks covered in spiny, ball-shaped creatures that can fit in the palm of your hand.  "The kelp was nonexistent," Gossard said on the boat ride back.  The divers didn't come up empty-handed. They bring Gardner some purple urchins.  "They've just got a bunch of spines, bright colors," says Gardner.  What's inside is the part we eat, the uni — a part of the sea urchin considered a delicacy in Japanese cuisine. (You might have encountered it on the menu at a sushi restaurant.) Commercial divers have been harvesting urchins in California for decades — primarily red sea urchin, because they're bigger. Gardner says we should be eating more of the purple ones.  "The problem with these guys is that when you open them up ... there's nothing in there," he says. Since the urchins have eaten up their food supply, they're basically skeletons.  Enter aquaculture, or the farming of aquatic organisms.  Gardner is also an aquaculture specialist with the California Sea Grant, a state and federal partnership that uses science to help coastal communities solve issues. So he had his students run a research trial on this problem. The goal was to make these urchins valuable by turning them into a delicacy.  Graduate student Katie Neylan helped run the experiment. She and her classmates removed 500 purple sea urchins from the ocean and transplanted them into big, blue tanks at the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories Center of Aquaculture.  "We came out and fed them every three to five days. We had red algae that we fed them, called ogo or Gracilaria pacifica. We fed them kelp, which is just giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera," Neylan says.  The ones eating ogo reached market size faster, in just eight weeks. Neylan says it showed how ogo is more nutritious than kelp.  The proof is in the eating  Then, it was time for the taste test.  On a typical foggy day in Carmel-by-the-Sea, the class crowds into the kitchen of Michelin-starred restaurant Aubergine. Here, Executive Chef Justin Cogley serves uni from around the world.  He uses tweezers to open up the purple urchins, revealing the orange uni inside. His favorite is the ogo-fed.  "Honestly, it's rich and buttery. I think this one might be a touch [cleaner], tastes a little bit cleaner," Cogley says.  "It's a great story and everyone's trying to do their part to save the ocean, too," Cogley says.  He prepares the uni on a fried potato with a sweet soy glaze for everyone to try.  It's a tasty end to the project. But this could be just the beginning. A company called Urchinomics has been selling its ranched urchins in Japan. Now, it is working to secure a site in California. It's all in an effort to save the state's dwindling kelp forest and help the thousands of animals that depend on it.


sottnet--2019-06-26--Extinct creatures found alive deep within Honduras rainforest

'Extinct' creatures found alive deep within Honduras rainforest

A team of scientists have discovered an ecosystem filled with rare and endangered species, including species that were thought to be extinct, in a "lost city" deep within a rainforest in Honduras., in the Mosquitia rainforest and found a diverse hub of wildlife, including hundreds of species of butterflies, bats and reptiles.Scientists also rediscovered three species that were thought to be no longer living in Honduras:Trond Larsen, the director of Conservation International's Rapid Assessment Programme (RAP), said they were "shocked" to discover such a rich environment of rare species."The 'White City' is one of the few areas remaining in Central America where ecological and evolutionary processes remain intact," he added.The RAP also discovered 22 species that have never been recorded in Honduras before, such as the endangered Great Green Macaw, and a livebearing fish that researchers believe is new to science.Mr Larsen said the diversity of the area's wildlife made it a high priority for conservation."One of the main reasons we found such high species richness and abundance of threatened and wide-ranging species (e.g., peccaries) is that, unlike much of the region," he said."This makes the area a high conservation priority for maintaining the broader landscape connectivity that is essential for the long-term persistence of biodiversity through Central America."Explorers have searched for decades to find the White City, which is thought to have been home to an ancient civilisation in the pre-Columbian era.Due to the lack of infrastructure in the region, scientists had to be flown in by helicopter and guarded by armed soldiers to protect them from drug traffickers and predators in the area.Mr Larsen said the biggest threat to the region was illegal deforestation for cattle ranching, despite the "lost city" being officially protected by Honduras' president in 2015.Dr John Polisar, a member of the RAP expedition team, called for strong protection to allow the newly-discovered wildlife to thrive."We have been doing field work in the indigenous territories of La Moskitia for 14 years, and this site stood out as being simply gorgeous," he said."Because of its presently intact forests and fauna the area is of exceptionally high conservation value. It merits energetic and vigilant protection so its beauty and wildlife persist into the future."


theguardianuk--2019-01-08--Voice of the forest George the snail last of his kind dies at age 14

'Voice of the forest': George the snail, last of his kind, dies at age 14

As New Year’s Day broke in the Hawaiian Islands, one rare creature was not there to emerge from his shell and greet it: George, the last snail of his kind and a local celebrity, was dead at age 14.  The passing of George, a member of the Achatinella apexfulva species and a tree snail who fed on tree fungus, algae and bacteria, epitomizes the decline of biodiversity on the Hawaiian islands, where climate change and invasive predators have taken a heavy toll on native animals and insects. Snails like George also played a part in the songs and stories of native Hawaiian culture, which holds that snails make sounds and are “the voice of the forest”.  George, who never lived in an actual forest, was still a mascot for endangered Hawaiian snails. After a pathogen outbreak in the lab where he lived, he became the only surviving member of his species and was visited by hundreds, if not thousands, of schoolchildren. Despite his celebrity status, George wasn’t the prettiest snail to look at. David Sischo, the snail extinction prevention program coordinator for the Hawaii Invertebrate Program, described him as “old and grizzled” and said that George was also “bit of a hermit”, who would stay in his shell at times when most other nocturnal snails emerge. Although scientists had hoped that George, a hermaphrodite, would have offspring, his solitary life ruled out that possibility.  Snails like George used to be ubiquitous throughout the Hawaiian islands. In fact, the Achatinella apexfulva was the very first snail species to be written about by non-native scientists, said Sischo. In the 1780s, when British captain George Dickson arrived in Hawaii, he was given a lei made with the shells of George’s ancestors. Back then, the snails hung from trees in giant clusters, easy pickings for scientists and collectors. “In a few minutes I collected several hundred specimens, picking them from trees and low bushes as rapidly as one would gather huckleberries from a prolific field,” a collector named DD Baldwin wrote in 1887.  At that time, Hawaiian land snails existed in a mind-boggling 752 varieties – about as many as exist in the mainland US and Canada combined. The snails likely arrived by hitchhiking on sea birds that came to the islands millions of years ago, where they thrived and developed into different species – many of which are only found in a single area of one forest on one island. They had no natural predators, and even after the Polynesians brought rats to the island, still lived in abundance. But when Europeans began arriving, that all changed.  By the early 1900s, many of the species were “collected” to extinction. Then came the wolfsnail. Like numerous other destructive invasive species, the rosy wolfsnail was introduced to Hawaii on purpose. In 1955, it was brought to the islands in hopes of controlling populations of the giant African snail, a foot-long, “sex-crazed” species with shells that can pierce tires and which had been released there by accident. It didn’t. Instead it binged on native snails. Unlike Hawaiian snails, which eat decomposing leaves or the fungus that grows on trees, the wolfsnail eats other snails by tracking their slime and attacking with brutal efficiency.  When Michael G Hadfield, an emeritus professor of biology at the University of Hawaii, began studying Hawaiian snails in the 1970s, he was stunned by their incredible diversity. He and other scientists began making trips into forests on Oahu and other islands where they would mark out a five by five-meter patch of forest, study and label the population of snails with a fine-pointed pen and some waterproof lacquer. They would return a month or so later to see how the snails were doing, and soon amassed information about the snails’ lifespans, behaviors and the role in the ecosystem, where before they had only been appreciated for their attractive shells.  Notably, Hadfield studied a population of Achatinella apexfulva – the same species as George – living in the Waianae forest on Oahu for years. The snails were unusual in that they gave birth to large offspring measuring 4 to 5mm in length, but didn’t begin reproducing until they reached the age of five, and then only a handful of times a year. On trips to visit the Achatinella apexfulva and other snails, Hadfield often witnessed a foreboding site: rosy wolfsnails hunting for prey.  The longer Hadfield worked, the more destruction he saw. He and other scientists would often arrive at a study site to find a scattering of empty shells, like little tombstones.  “We were just watching snails disappear, disappear, disappear,” Hadfield said. “We could see them vanishing before our eyes.” By the early 1980s, Hadfield and his colleagues had begun bringing snails into their laboratory to preserve preserving them. In 1997, a group of about 10 Achatinella apexfulva was brought to the lab. Two of them were George’s parents.  Despite the sad fate of the Achatinella apexfulva, Sischo said that the Oahu lab he works in now has thousands of native snails in residence, and that scientists have begun re-introducing some of the adults into remote forests where they hope they will thrive. So far, the locations have been kept secret, in part, Sischo said, so that humans don’t go trampling around looking for them.  As for George, his shell and body are being preserved, along with a two millimeter live sample of his “foot” which was sent to San Diego’s Frozen Zoo with the goal of one day cloning him and reviving the species. No funeral will be held, scientists said.


theguardianuk--2019-11-16--Reforesting the UK: 'Trees are the ultimate long-term project'

“This whole area wants to be a wood,” says Edward Milbank, sweeping his arm across the former hill farm in Northumberland. Small saplings of birch have invaded the cleared ground, but many more trees are being pushed into the soil by hand.  The bracken and rhododendron that had overrun the hillside took heavy machinery three months to rip out. “When you disturb the soil, it becomes a wood very quickly,” says Milbank.  “But the Forestry Commission forced us to put in Scots pine as well. The entire area could be birch without spending a penny, but you have to be seen to be doing something to justify the [planting grants].”  This former sheep and cattle farm, Doddington North, is being converted into England’s largest private new woodland in 30 years, with 680,000 trees being planted over the 350 hectares. Moving down the hill, Milbank points and says: “The reason we were able to raise the investment is that – sitka spruce.”  The commercial timber tree will occupy 40% of the land, with native broadleaf trees such as birch, alder, aspen and oak on about a third and the rest managed as open grassland. Milbank, whose company Pennine Forestry is running the project, hopes it will encourage more wildlife, such as the red squirrels that live in an adjoining wood, and the kestrels that already fly overhead searching for the shrews that dart between tussocks.  The UK needs 1.5bn more trees, according to the government’s official climate change advisers, to suck up carbon dioxide and help restore wildlife. But the question of how they will be delivered – private or public, commercial or wild – remains open, despite the pioneering effort at Doddington North, which should be completed this winter.  James Trayte, who leads the team of planters, has done more than most. He reckons he has planted more than 2m trees in his 12-year career. Out since dawn, he has planted about 2,000 so far today, plucking the two-year old sitka saplings from bags around his waist, then prodding them into the hole he makes with a deft twist of the planting spade.  “It was pure love at the start, getting paid to walk around on the hillsides, battling the weather.” After 12 winter seasons, the best time to plant trees, he is more blunt about the motivation. “It’s a brutal job and my elbow is going. What brings me back now is the money.”  Milbank says: “Most local people have been incredibly supportive of the project, but not everyone. They thought we were taking away good agricultural land to put in trees.” But, if the national tree target is to be met, he says: “There will have to be some land that comes out of agricultural production and goes into forestry.” Much of the timber – and the carbon it contains – gets locked up in new buildings, he points out.  All the saplings planted are UK grown, but global heating is already exerting an influence. “We take them from nurseries in the south of England, as that will be the climate we have here in the north in the future,” Milbank says. Very few plastic guards are used, though that has meant killing deer that would destroy the saplings and putting up fences. “It will be lovely to have deer back in here in 10 years”, when the trees are established, he says.  Milbank is clear that management is essential to create and maintain woodland, such as removing some trees to let light through the canopy, a task that large wild herbivores would have done in the past. He thinks rewilding 25% of the nation, as proposed by Rewilding Britain, is unrealistic: “I can’t see land just being left – we are too small an island, with 66 million people.”  Rebecca Wrigley, at Rewilding Britain, says: “We are not suggesting people are taken off the land across the country and that everything is fully rewilded. We’d like to see a mosaic, maximising rewilding but also production where that is necessary. Rewilding has to work for people and nature, economy and ecology.”  But she thinks management is a forestry mindset and often not necessary: “Woodlands have been doing OK for millions of years without human management, though obviously you need fully functional ecosystems.”  The government is not far off track in delivering the 11m trees over five years in England that it promised to fund in 2017: 3.6m were planted in the last two seasons, about 2,300 hectares. But, overall, planting in England fell in 2019.  There was a jump in UK figures, thanks to Scottish planting, but only to 13,400 ha. That is well below the 20,000 ha target set for 2020 by the government advisers, the Committee on Climate Change. It wants 27,000 ha a year by 2030, a level not seen since the 1970s, when huge monoculture plantations fuelled by tax breaks earned forestry a bad name.  “It is wildly optimistic,” says Milbank, but not impossible. “If the incentives are there, farmers will follow.”  Mark Bridgeman, the new president of the CLA, the Country, Land and Business Association, and whose Fallodon Estate is near Doddington North, agrees. “Right now it is not going to happen. It’s about creating a market for timber,” he says, noting that the UK imports 80% of its timber. “That is ludicrous – we have one of the greatest climates for growing trees.”  But both say the government now has a perfect opportunity for change with the proposed post-Brexit subsidy regime potentially providing public money for public goods, such as carbon removal, flood protection and cleaner air – all things that trees can deliver.  “Trees are the ultimate long-term project,” says Bridgeman. Sitkas double their weight – and carbon removal – between the ages of 30 and 40, but the cost of planting is upfront, creating a financial obstacle. A new £50m government scheme launched last week makes a start on tackling that, with people planting trees able to get regular payments for carbon storage.  Another obstacle is the cost of getting permission to plant trees. “It was blooming hard to get Doddington North through,” says Milbank, whose company spent £125,000 and 18 months preparing the planning application. “There should be a presumption in favour of planting,” not against it, says Bridgeman.  John Tucker, at the Woodland Trust, a charity that has planted 10m native broadleaf trees in the past two years, agrees. He supports the Doddington North project, despite its commercial timber component, saying: “We need more trees, full stop – of all sorts.” All projects now have to meet the UK Forestry Standard, he adds, meaning no monocultures or ugly clear-cutting.  Back on the chilly Northumberland hillside, Milbank is confident there is change in the air, “Climate change is now at the forefront of people’s minds and I think the political will is there,” he says. “It will be easier to plant trees in future.”


theindependent--2019-02-16--Massive restoration of worldaposs forests would cancel out a decade of CO2 emissions analysis sug

Massive restoration of world's forests would cancel out a decade of CO2 emissions, analysis suggests

Replenishing the world’s forests on a grand scale would suck enough carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to cancel out a decade of human emissions, according to an ambitious new study.  Scientists have established there is room for an additional 1.2 trillion trees to grow in parks, woods and abandoned land across the planet.  If such a goal were accomplished, ecologist Dr Thomas Crowther said it would outstrip every other method for tackling climate change – from building wind turbines to vegetarian diets.  Lack of accurate information meant for years experts severely underestimated the number of trees on Earth.  Combining data from ground-based surveys and satellites, Dr Crowther and his colleagues arrived at a figure of three trillion – over seven times more than a previous Nasa estimate.  The same approach, using machine learning and AI to analyse the enormous data set, allowed the researchers to predict the number of trees that could feasibly be planted in empty patches around the world.  Dr Crowther said undervaluing trees means scientists have also been massively underestimating the potential for forests to combat climate change.  Project Drawdown, a group that compares the merits of different emission-cutting techniques, currently places onshore wind power and improved recycling of fridges and air conditioners at the top of its list.  If rolled out on a realistic scale, each of these techniques would cut over 80 gigatons of emissions, while growing forests languishes in 15th place with a saving of just 18 gigatons.  New research undertaken by Dr Crowther has used the 1.2 billion figure to estimate the potential scale of carbon capture that could be achieved by planting trees, and reveal their true potential.  “There’s 400 gigatons now, in the 3 trillion trees, and if you were to scale that up by another trillion trees that’s in the order of hundreds of gigatons captured from the atmosphere – at least 10 years of anthropogenic emissions completely wiped out,” he said.  While the exact figures are yet to be released, he said trees had emerged as “our most powerful weapon in the fight against climate change”. Dr Crowther discussed his findings at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in Washington DC.  Full restoration of all sites identified is clearly unrealistic, but tree planting is increasingly being recognised as a critical activity to preserve life on Earth.  The United Nations initially ran a project known as the Billion Tree Campaign, but in light of Dr Crowther’s findings this has been renamed the Trillion Tree Campaign. It has already seen 17 billion trees planted in suitable locations around the world.  “We are not targeting urban or agricultural area, just degraded or abandoned lands, and it has the potential to tackle the two greatest challenges of our time – climate change and biodiversity loss,” said Dr Crowther.  “It’s a beautiful thing because everyone can get involved. Trees literally just make people happier in urban environments, they improve air quality, water quality, food quality, ecosystem service, it’s such an easy, tangible thing.”


theindependent--2019-05-21--Arctic kelp forests Expanding thanks to climate change

Arctic kelp forests: Expanding thanks to climate change

Did you know that there are forests in the Arctic?  Lush underwater forests of large brown seaweeds (kelps) are particularly striking in the Arctic, especially in contrast to the land where ice scour (scraping of sea ice against the sea floor) and harsh climates leave the ground barren with little vegetation.  Kelp forests have been observed throughout the Arctic by Inuit, researchers and polar explorers. The Canadian Arctic alone represents 10 per cent of the world’s coastlines, but we know little of the hidden kelp forests there.  Today, climate change is altering marine habitats such as kelp forests on a global scale. In western Australia, eastern Canada, southern Europe, northern California and eastern United States, kelps are disappearing due to warming temperatures. In other areas, kelps are being heavily over-grazed by sea urchins. Coastal conditions in the Arctic are changing dramatically and the region is warming faster than the rest of the world, but these changes could actually be good for kelp.  Yet we know little about kelp forests in remote Arctic regions. Our latest research, published in Global Change Biology, uncovers the distribution of Arctic kelp forests and explores how these important ecosystems are changing with the climate.  Proliferation of kelps in the Arctic  Kelps currently occur on rocky coasts throughout the Arctic. The longest kelp recorded in the Arctic in Canada was 15 metres, and the deepest was found at 60-metre depth (Disko Bay, Greenland). Many find it surprising that marine plants can grow so well in harsh Arctic environments.  Kelps have adapted to the severe conditions. These cool water species have special strategies to survive freezing temperatures and long periods of darkness, and even grow under sea ice. In regions with cold, nutrient-rich water, they can attain some of the highest rates of primary production of any natural ecosystem on Earth.  Kelps function underwater in the same way trees do on land. They create habitat and modify the physical environment by shading light and softening waves. The underwater forests that kelps create are used by many animals for shelter and food. More than 350 different species — up to 100,000 small invertebrates — can live on a single kelp plant, and many fish, birds and mammals depend on the whole forest. Kelp forests also help protect coastlines by decreasing the power of waves during storms and reducing coastal erosion. A lot of kelp break off or are dislodged from the rock they attach to and end up in nearby habitats where they fuel deep food webs.  As waters warm and sea ice retreats, more light will reach the sea floor, which will benefit marine plants. Researchers predict a northern shift of kelp forests as ice retreats.  Genetic evidence reveals that most kelps reinvaded the Arctic from the Atlantic Ocean quite recently (approximately 8,000 years ago, following the last Ice Age). As a result, most kelps in the Arctic are living in waters colder than their optimal temperature. Ocean warming will also move conditions closer to temperatures of maximum growth, and could increase the productivity of these habitats.  However, other changes are happening in the Arctic that complicate this picture. In Canada, Alaska, Greenland, Norway and Siberia, permafrost soils that have been frozen for thousands of years are receding by half a metre per year. Thawing permafrost and crumbling Arctic coasts are dumping sediments into coastal waters at alarming rates, which blocks light and could limit plant growth. The run-off from melting glaciers will also lower salinity and increase turbidity, which impacts young kelp.  The Canadian Arctic is the longest Arctic coastline in the world. The earliest scientific records of kelp in the Arctic are from Canada during expeditions in search of the Northwest Passage. In Hudson Bay and eastern Canada, kelp forests have been scientifically documented between Ellesmere Island and Labrador, and along coasts in Lancaster Sound, Ungava Bay, Hudson Bay, Baffin Bay and Resolute Bay.  In the northwestern Canadian Arctic, lack of rock substrate and a harsher climate support smaller, fragmented kelp forests. However, baseline measures of the extent of kelp communities are missing in many areas. Unfortunately, lack of information has already made it difficult to tell how kelp forests are changing.  Today, a number of researchers in Canada have partnered with northern communities and organisations to study kelp in the Arctic. The five-year ArcticKelp Project, for example, explores future changes and opportunities these ecosystems could provide. At the same time new technology (underwater lasers) is being developed in collaboration with Inuit fishers to map kelp forests in the Arctic. This is important, because knowledge on Arctic kelp forests could help northern communities and societies anticipate and benefit from these valuable changing ecosystems.  Kelp forests throughout the world play an important role in coastal economies, supporting a broad range of tourism, recreational and commercial activities. Kelp is making its way onto the plates of North Americans, and the kelp aquaculture industry is growing at a rate of seven per cent per year for the last 20 years globally (kelp is a coveted food source in many countries, full of potassium, iron, calcium, fibre and iodine). In the Arctic, Inuit traditionally use kelp as food and wild harvest numerous species.  Arctic kelp forests provide a key example of the diverse responses to climate change. Predictive models and experiments suggest that Arctic coasts are in line to become one of the most impacted environments in the world under changing climate. Yet the possible expansion of kelp forests should provide new habitats for fish and other marine organisms, and enhance a suite of valuable ecosystem services along Arctic coastlines.  This expanding resource may provide needed income to northern communities whose livelihoods are threatened by climate change and other impacts. Anticipating these changes and understanding these new ecosystems will be a key priority for Arctic nations. Just because you cannot see the forests growing in the Arctic does not mean we should not appreciate them and recognise the crucial role they play in the ocean.  Karen Filbee-Dexter receives funding from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the Australian Research Council, and the Norwegian Research Council. This article first appeared on The Conversation.


theindependent--2019-08-23--Amazon rainforest fires and deforestation approaching disastrous irreversible tipping point scienti

Amazon rainforest fires and deforestation approaching disastrous irreversible tipping point, scientists warn

As fires ravage massive areas of the Amazon, the vital rainforest is nearing a “tipping point” in which a third of its ecosystem could be irreversibly decimated, experts have warned.  The loss of such huge areas of the forest would result in the eradication of species, many of which are yet to be studied, but would also unleash vast amounts of stored carbon.  Such devastation could spell catastrophe for the planet due to the implications for climate change.  Thousands of fires are racing through the Amazon, with Brazil recording more than 75,000 individual forest fires in the first eight months of the year.  In July, the rate of deforestation equated to roughly an area the size of Manhattan every day, or the size of Greater London every three weeks.  Professor Thomas Lovejoy of George Mason University, who has studied the Amazon since 1965, told The Independent there are signs it is on course for further extensive deforestation which will soon stretch beyond human control.  The previous research of his colleague Carlos Nobre indicates further razing could break the Amazon’s hydrological cycle, whereby it generates half its own rainfall. If a critical amount of trees are felled, the ecosystem will degrade to the point of being unable to support the rainforest.  But speaking to The Independent on Friday, Professor Lovejoy said things have since become much worse.  “When we were first worried about it, the amount of deforestation was small,” he said. “But then these other things started to interact – the impact of deforestation and the effects of climate change became apparent, and the extent of the use of fire [for clearing land] became apparent.  “The reason we believe the tipping point is so close is because we’re seeing historic droughts in 2005, 2010, and 2016. And satellite images in the north central Amazon also show forests remote from everything are beginning to convert into grassland. That’s yet another symptom.  “These are not little droughts – boats cannot get up some of the river’s tributaries, because they’re so dry.”  Professor Lovejoy said such a conversion from rainforest to savannah and scrubland would be the wider effect if a tipping point is reached.  “You’d have extensive parts of the southern and eastern Amazon and parts of the central converting to savannah, and maybe to even drier conditions.”  As well as the catastrophic loss of the rainforest as a massive carbon sink, Professor Lovejoy said losing swathes of the Amazon would result in a huge loss in the planet’s biodiversity.  “People don’t really grasp that the biodiversity in one part of the Amazon is very different to that in other parts,” he said.  “So if you have regional loss, you’ve having actual total loss of that biodiversity. It’s the largest terrestrial repository of biodiversity on the planet, so all that will impact the future of Brazil, the economy, for the future of the world, vanishes.  “We tend to live in the delusion we don’t depend on the biology of the planet, but we do. Agriculture, forestry, medicine, all of that has a major biological base. Scientists are revealing new potential all the time. But you can’t do that if the species isn’t there to study. It’s like book burning on a very grand scale.”  He added: “The standing forest is absorbing carbon on an annual basis, but its even greater importance is in the total amount of carbon stored in the forest itself. Tropical rainforests store more carbon per unit area than basically any other kind of habitat. So it’s folly in the end.”  Asked if he thought Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro was a threat to the future of life on our planet, Professor Lovejoy said: “He certainly is, and he’s also a threat to Brazilian agriculture.”  But he said judging by the amount of public concern in Brazil, he believes things can change, despite Mr Bolsonaro’s policies.  “When there’s so much smoke in Sao Paolo, the street lamps come on at three in the afternoon, it’s clear there’s a problem.  “The world doesn’t expect Brazil to manage this all completely on its own, the world would like to help. And we hope we will be welcomed into some kind of partnership.”


theindependent--2019-12-23--Ability of re-grown Amazon forest to combat climate change 'vastly overestimated', study s

Ability of re-grown Amazon forest to combat climate change 'vastly overestimated', study suggests

The capacity of re-grown areas of the Amazon rainforest to draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and combat climate change may have been “vastly overestimated”, scientists fear.  The forest is a gigantic carbon sink, drawing the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere. Cleared areas that are re-planted are known as secondary forest, and have been seen as key to fighting climate change, researchers at Lancaster University said.  But a new study has found that those areas held just 40 per cent as much carbon dioxide as sequestered by parts of the Amazon untouched by humans, casting doubt on their ability to aid in mitigating the crisis.  And at the same time, global warming appeared to be hampering the re-growth of secondary forest.  Scientists monitored forest regrowth over a period of 20 years and revealed how the Amazon was affected by periods of drought. During times of “water deficit”, regrown forests absorb less carbon from the atmosphere.  “If current trends continue, it will take well over a century for the forests to fully recover, meaning their ability to help fight climate change may have been vastly overestimated,” Lancaster University said.  Increased temperatures from global warming are in turn causing more drought-years in the Amazon, therefore limiting the capabilities of the secondary forests to help beat carbon pollution.  Led by a group of Brazilian and British researchers, the study also found that even after 60 years, regrown forests held only two-fifths as much carbon as virgin forests.  It could take more than a century for the forests to fully recover and “reduce the effectiveness of climate mitigation strategies in regions that have a long history of human occupation”.  Author Fernando Elias, of the Federal University of Para, said: “The region we studied in the Amazon has seen an increase in temperature of 0.1C per decade and tree growth was lower during periods of drought.  “With predictions of more drought in the future, we must be cautious about the ability of secondary forests to mitigate climate change. Our results underline the need for international agreements that minimise the impacts of climate change.”  Scientists also found there to be a “near-zero increase” in biodiversity within these secondary forests between 1999 and 2017.  Forests are vital habitats for threatened species and ecosystems, but results from the study show poor biodiversity relationships in highly-deforested landscapes.  “It is also likely that we are overestimating the relative recovery of biodiversity,” added the study.  Joe Barlow, professor of conservation science at Lancaster University and also an author of the study, said secondary forests’ potential to mitigate climate change was of “global importance”.  He also called for “more long-term studies like ours… to better understand secondary forest resilience and to target restoration to the areas that will do most to combat climate change and preserve biodiversity”.


thetorontostar--2019-08-10--Climate of fir German forests struggle with heat

Climate of fir: German forests struggle with heat

BERLIN - Germany’s forests — long a source of pride and national identity — are feeling the heat.  A second consecutive year of unusually dry and warm weather has left swaths of forest dead or dying, fueling fears that the woods that inspired many a Grimms’ fairytale could be heading for an unhappy end. Officials say droughts, wildfires and hungry beetles destroyed 110,000 hectares (270,000 acres) of forest in Germany in 2018 and the damage this year could be even worse.  The sight of bare trees has stoked debate in Germany about the impact of climate change and what measures this heavily industrialized nation should be taking to adapt to and prevent global warming.  A poll released Friday by public broadcaster ZDF found 62% of German voters say it’s the most pressing problem, higher than any other issue.  And while tackling climate change has broad public support across the political spectrum, the environmentalist Green party appears to be benefiting most, with the ZDF survey showing it would take 25% of the vote if there were a general election, more than doubling its result from 2017. The representative telephone poll of 1,307 voters conducted Aug. 6-8 had a margin of error of up to 3 percentage points.  The Green party, which was founded 40 years ago at a time when Germans were witnessing the effects of acid rain on their forests, has demanded drastic steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions, putting pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Union bloc and the centre-left Social Democrats, which currently form a coalition government. The Cabinet has responded by pledging to agree a package of measures next month that could include some form of carbon charge and tax breaks for rail tickets to cut domestic air travel — though proposals to raise the price of bratwurst and other meat were swiftly dismissed.  The conservative governor of Bavaria recently proposed bringing forward the deadline for shutting down Germany’s coal-fired power plants and suggested climate protection should be included in the country’s constitution.  Last week, state forestry ministers from the Union bloc called for 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) to be spent over the coming years to restore ailing forests and make them fit for a warmer future.  Meanwhile, hard-line environmentalists have pointed to the ongoing dispute over an ancient forest in western Germany that’s at risk of being destroyed for a nearby mine.  Hambach Forest sits next to a massive open-cast lignite pit operated by utility giant RWE. An expert proposal to end the use of coal in Germany by 2038, approved by the government, was meant to save the forest, but activists say RWE is endangering what’s left of the woods by pumping out precious groundwater.  Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg on Saturday visited the forest, where she met with environmentalist protesters and demanded that “our war against nature must end today,” the activist group End of Story said in a statement.  The 16-year-old, whose protest movement has mobilized tens of thousands of students across Europe each week calling on leaders to do more against global warming, said seeing the mine disturbed her deeply and that the time had come to stop talking and take action.  Thunberg, who is planning to set sail next week for a U.N. climate summit in New York, in March dedicated an award she received from German media to “those protecting the Hambach Forest and the climate activists who fight to keep the fossil fuels in the ground everywhere.”  Merkel has acknowledged feeling the pressure coming from Thunberg and her mostly young supporters, but cautioned that “we are also taking new directions, and these new directions must of course be thought through.”  Experts say whichever course the government takes, Germany’s forests are in for a change.  Spruce trees, once popular for their timber, have been suffering from rising temperatures for several years now, said Andreas Bolte, head of Germany’s Thuenen Institute of Forest Ecosystems.  “What’s new this year is that we had real problems with beech in some areas,” he said, noting that pines and oaks are also beginning to hurt.  Scientists are hoping that trees more resistant to heat, such as Douglas firs, can replace native varieties, which will continue to thrive at higher altitudes.


wakingtimes--2019-02-21--A Massive Restoration of the Worlds Forests Would Cancel Out 10 Years of CO2 Emissions

As the Earth contends with degrading ecological conditions and increasingly unpredictable weather patterns, a new study suggests that a massive global effort to replenish forests would be capable of absorbing a decade’s worth of carbon dioxide emissions.  According to new data, the Earth has room for about 1.2 trillion additional trees that can be planted in abandoned lots, woodlands and parks across the globe.  ETH Zurich ecologist Thomas Crowther estimates that such a huge reforestation push would be the most effective form of tackling our climate woes, rather than pinning our hopes on a meatless diet or renewable energy sources such as wind turbines alone.  In Crowther’s research, his lab used recent data from the Global Forest Biodiversity Initiative to gain an accurate understanding of the current global tree count. The initiative relies on the efforts of ground-level volunteers, 1.2 million monitoring locations across the globe, satellite imagery, as well as tens of thousands of soil samples.  The information, paired with machine learning and artificial intelligence, allowed Crowther’s lab to identify a figure of three trillion trees on Earth – more than seven times the amount estimated by NASA.  It also gave Crowther’s team the ability to predict how many trees could feasibly be planted across the globe.  In a description of his presentation at a recent American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in Washington, D.C., Crowther wrote:  “Using this combination of above ground and below ground data we can identify regions of high priority for biodiversity conservation. Additionally, we can finally start to understand the feedbacks that determine atmospheric carbon concentrations over the rest of the century. We now understand that, as the soil warms, carbon emissions from the soil will increase, particularly in the high-latitude arctic and sub-arctic regions.”  Crowther has criticized the scientific community’s undervaluing of trees and forests as an effective weapon in the fight against climate change and global emissions, but his newest data hints at the potential that a massive tree-planting campaign could hold.  “There’s 400 gigatons now, in the 3 trillion trees, and if you were to scale that up by another trillion trees that’s in the order of hundreds of gigatons captured from the atmosphere – at least 10 years of anthropogenic emissions completely wiped out,” Crowther told the Independent.  The United Nations is already taking heed of Crowther’s findings, and has renamed its Billion Trees Campaign the Trillion Trees Campaign. Crowther noted:  “We are not targeting urban or agricultural area, just degraded or abandoned lands, and it has the potential to tackle the two greatest challenges of our time – climate change and biodiversity loss. It’s a beautiful thing because everyone can get involved. Trees literally just make people happier in urban environments, they improve air quality, water quality, food quality, ecosystem service, it’s such an easy, tangible thing.”  **This article (A Massive Restoration of the World’s Forests Would Cancel Out 10 Years of CO2 Emissions) was originally featured at The Mind Unleashed and is re-posted here with permission.


wakingtimes--2019-07-25--In Just One Decade Corporations Destroyed 50 Million Hectares of ForestAn Area the Size of Spain

In Just One Decade, Corporations Destroyed 50 Million Hectares of Forest—An Area the Size of Spain

Major corporations involved with commodities like beef, palm oil, and soya pledged in 2010 to end deforestation over the next decade—but instead of fulfilling that promise, a new Greenpeace International analysis found the companies are set to destroy at least 50 million hectares of forest worldwide by 2020.  “Our message to companies is simple: evolve your business to prevent climate and ecological breakdown.”   —Anna Jones, Greenpeace U.K.That estimate—the environmental advocacy group noted in a statement announcing its Countdown to Extinction report (pdf) Tuesday—is comparable to the size of Spain.  It is also “a conservative estimate,” the group said, based on a combination of data on deforestation, tree cover loss, and forecasting through 2019. Given recent increases in tree loss cover, “the actual figure could be much higher.”  Companies named in the report include General Mills, IKEA, Johnson & Johnson, Kellogg, L’Oréal, Mars, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever.  Greenpeace released its new report as over a thousand corporate executives were in Vancouver for the global summit of the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF), a organization led by various CEOs that brings together retailers and manufacturers.  In 2010, the CGF’s board approved a resolution to achieve zero net deforestation by 2020 “through the responsible sourcing of these key commodities—soy, palm oil, paper and pulp, and cattle—so that the sourcing of these key commodities will not deplete tropical rainforests.”  The Greenpeace report, released just months away from the CGF’s deadline, details how consumer goods companies have failed to meet the deforestation goal, and the consequences of it. As Greenpeace U.K.’s Anna Jones put it, “these companies are destroying our children’s future by driving us towards climate and ecological collapse.”  “They’ve wasted a decade on half-measures and in that time vast areas of the natural world have been destroyed,” said Jones, the group’s global project lead for forests. “They should be in crisis talks right now, but they’re still trying to grow demand for products that will drive forest destruction even further.”  The CGF told The Guardian in a statement Tuesday that “members have moved substantially closer to our goal of 100 percent sustainable sourcing of the four commodity groups. But over the last nine years we have also learned that the forces driving deforestation are more complex than almost any stakeholder realized in 2010.”  Member companies, the newspaper reported, no longer see the “sustainable commodities” approach as effective, so they have spent the past 18 months working with outside stakeholders on a new strategy that will be discussed at the summit this week and unveiled during U.N. climate week in September.  As leaders of consumer goods companies have spent the past decade learning their approach was flawed from the start, the Greenpeace report explains, “the trade in high-risk commodities has boomed.”  “In the Congo Basin, we are witnessing widespread environmental and human rights violations in the name of development and the global commodities trade,” said Victorine CheThoener of Greenpeace Africa. “It’s all a kleptocracy where governments and companies collude to loot our natural resources and ordinary people pay the price.”    Meanwhile, in Brazil, “the soya and cattle industries have been trashing the Cerrado—destroying the local environment, aggravating the climate crisis, and displacing and committing violence against Indigenous and traditional populations that have occupied the territory for hundreds of years,” Romulo Batista of the group’s local chapter said. “Global brands must bring their suppliers under control.”  Greenpeace analyzed the devastation caused not only by members of the CGF, but also signatories to the New York Declaration on Forests and those that “had a cross-commodity forest protection policy, or had expressed on their websites an ambition, goal, or commitment to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains.”  Earlier this year, the advocacy group asked more than 50 traders, retailers, producers, and consumer goods companies to “demonstrate their progress towards ending deforestation,” the report says. “Not a single company was able to demonstrate meaningful effort to eradicate deforestation from its supply chain.”  The report outlines how deforestation relates to recent warnings from global scientists about the rising likelihood of climate catastrophe and devastating biodiveristy loss unless the international community works together to rapidly reform energy, transportation, and agricultural systems.  Halting deforestation and restoring the world’s forests is the cheapest and fastest way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and ensure rapid carbon uptake. In conjunction with phasing out fossil fuels, such action is essential if we are to limit global temperature rises to 1.5ºC. Some 80 percent of global deforestation is a result of agricultural production, concentrated in tropical countries whose forests store enormous amounts of carbon and are most urgent to protect. The destruction of forests and other natural ecosystems by industrial agriculture is also wiping out the Earth’s biodiversity: around 1 million species are now at risk of extinction. Preventing climate and ecological breakdown requires ‘transformative changes’ to the way forest and agricultural commodities are produced, traded, and consumed, producing and consuming less meat and dairy, and phasing out crop-based biofuels and bioplastics. Such changes would also deliver major gains for human health and the health of our planet. Companies face a stark choice: clean up the industrial food system or clear out of the global commodities trade.  With the release Greenpeace’s analysis, Jones said, “Our message to companies is simple: evolve your business to prevent climate and ecological breakdown.”  Jessica Corbett is a staff writer for Common Dreams. Follow her on Twitter: @corbett_jessica.


wakingtimes--2019-08-06--Bizarre Forest Superorganism is Keeping Dead Trees Alive Study Finds

Bizarre Forest ‘Superorganism’ is Keeping Dead Trees Alive, Study Finds

While hiking in the New Zealand wilderness, Sebastian Leuzinger of the Auckland University of Technology and a colleague made an astonishing discovery: a tree stump that should have died was being kept alive by neighboring trees. After conducting an experiment, the researchers concluded that nearby trees were funneling water and nutrients to the stump through an interconnected root system. The revelation supports the understanding that trees and other organisms work together for the benefit of a forest.  For the study, Leuzinger and his teammate decided to put continuous water monitors in the kauri (Agathis australis) stump and in two nearby adult trees of the same species. Then, they waited. After several weeks, they discovered a relationship between the water flow in the trees and the stump.  When nearby trees evaporated water through their leaves during the day, the water movement in the stump remained low. But, when the trees were dormant during the evening, the water would begin circulating through the stump. Furthermore, when it was overcast or rainy and the water flow dropped in the trees, the stump picked it up.  As NewScientist reports, water flow is largely driven by evaporation in healthy trees. But, without leaves, the stump’s water flow was dependent on the movement of its neighbors.  The finding, which was published in iScience, undermines the notion of trees as individual or separate entities. We’ve long known the symbiotic relationship between fungi and tree roots, but the new information “dramatically changes our view of forest ecosystems as ‘superorganisms’,” said Leuzinger.  He added that the networking of water makes the trees more resistant to water scarcity. However, it also increases the risk of disease spreading. This could be problematic for Kauri trees which are affected by a deadly disease called kauri dieback.  Living stumps have been reported as far back as the 1800s. But, this is one of the first studies ever on how they survive. There are several theories as to why trees help each other out. The most probable of which suggests that a leafless stump simply becomes part of the host tree’s broader root system.  According to Greg Moore at the University of Melbourne, Australia, trees are “ruthlessly efficient” in maximizing their resources. “So the fact that this stump is being supported by nearby trees tells you they are getting a benefit,” he said.  Mandy Froelich is an RHN, plant-based chef, journalist, Reiki master therapist, world traveler and enthusiast of everything to do with animal rights, sustainability, cannabis and conscious living. She share healthy recipes on my blog Life in Bloom.


wakingtimes--2019-11-23--New Satellite Data Says Amazon Deforestation At Worst Levels In Ten Years

data The data was collected by the Satellite Legal Amazon Deforestation Monitoring Project (PRODES), and documented the rates of deforestation in nine states of the Brazilian Legal Amazon. The figures were published by The National Institute for Space Research (INPE).  The data showed that roughly 9,762 square kilometers, or 3,769 square miles of rainforest have been lost in the past year. The INPE indicated that this represents a 29.5% increase in deforestation from the previous year, which is the worst rate of deforestation that the region has seen since 2008.  Many environmental activists have placed the blame on newly elected Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who campaigned on promises to allow corporations to pillage indigenous lands. Since coming into office, his administration has significantly scaled back environmental protections, essentially giving a green light to loggers, miners, and ranchers to violently expel native tribes from their lands and destroy the local ecosystem.  Furthermore, documents leaked from the Brazilian government show that the current administration planned on building infrastructure projects through the Amazon as a way of pushing back against international pressure to put protections on the forest.  A PowerPoint slide leaked from a government presentation about these infrastructure plans said that, “Development projects must be implemented on the Amazon basin to integrate it into the rest of the national territory in order to fight off international pressure for the implementation of the so-called ‘Triple A’ project. To do this, it is necessary to build the Trombetas River hydroelectric plant, the Óbidos bridge over the Amazon River, and the implementation of the BR-163 highway to the border with Suriname.”  One of the tactics listed in the document was framing the Amazon crisis as a wedge issue to divide liberals and conservatives. If the destruction of the Amazon can be reduced to a simple “political opinion,” the legitimate concerns from activists and experts can be easily dismissed as nothing more than a dissenting political opinion.  John Vibes is an author and journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture, and focuses solutions-oriented approaches to social problems. He is also a host of The Free Your Mind Conference and The Free Thought Project Podcast.