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dnem

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #150 on: December 15, 2019, 01:41:48 PM »
Nanning, understanding that pre-industrial civilizations were already imbued with the human tendency to control and manipulate their environment to help them thrive really has little to do with whether or not they are "better" than us.  They are us, just before industrial society.  No one disputes that smaller numbers of humans living in a pre-industrial manner had a lighter footprint on the planet. But they were  very smart animals looking to gain whatever advantage they could to thrive, grow and increase their numbers.  It's what animals do. 

El Cid

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #151 on: December 15, 2019, 01:57:19 PM »
Hypothetical situation:
"I can't handle this. It must not be true that only civilisation is destroying all the forests, all life. I must find ways to water down all the good talk about those wild savages. To convince them that the savages are not better than us! Aarrgg. CAN'T be better than us. Impossible! I must convince them that us is all there is. Aaarrgg! it can't be trueee!"
hypothetical situation:

"Oh no! It can't be! I want to believe that there truly was a Golden Age, when man and all the beasts of this world lived in harmony in the Garden of Eden. What is this guy saying? He is destroying my butterfly-filled dreams! I know that modern industrial civilization is evil, and it was perfect during the great old days, when half of babies died before age 5 and expected lifespan was 35 years at most. Oh yes, those were the days. I won't let anyone spoil the glorious past when there still was balance in the Force!"

nanning

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #152 on: December 15, 2019, 05:11:51 PM »
Quote from: dnem
They are us, just before industrial society
Sorry dnem but I strongly disagree. "us" was still the same violent conquering civilisation. From the cancerous mediterranian tribe that spread all over Europe, conquering everything with mass violence. "They" are not like that. All historic "They"'s were conquered by civlisation and saw their culture erased. Living nature degraded.
The Amazon indiginous nature tribes can tell you all about the difference: "We only eat when everyone has something to eat".

This video is about the San tribes from southern Africa and even though the narrator wears 'civilisation-glasses', there's loads of really very good information. I think I got it from this forum. Many thanks to the poster.
(27m06)
"It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly" - Bertrand Russell
"It is preoccupation with what other people from your groups think of you, that prevents you from living freely and nobly" - Nanning
Why do you keep accumulating stuff?

Juan C. García

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #153 on: December 20, 2019, 08:38:53 PM »
Quote
Top scientists warn of an Amazon ‘tipping point”

Continued deforestation and other fast-moving changes in the Amazon threaten to turn parts of the rainforest into savanna, devastate wildlife and release billions of tons carbon into the atmosphere, two renowned experts warned Friday.

“The precious Amazon is teetering on the edge of functional destruction and, with it, so are we,” Thomas Lovejoy of George Mason University and Carlos Nobre of the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, both of whom have studied the world’s largest rainforest for decades, wrote in an editorial in the journal Science Advances. “Today, we stand exactly in a moment of destiny: The tipping point is here, it is now.”

Combined with recent news that the Arctic permafrost may be beginning to fill the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, and that Greenland’s ice sheet is melting at an accelerating pace, it’s the latest hint that important parts of the climate system may be moving toward irreversible changes at a pace that defies earlier predictions.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/top-scientists-warn-of-an-amazon-tipping-point/2019/12/20/9c9be954-233e-11ea-bed5-880264cc91a9_story.html?utm_campaign=news_alert_revere&utm_medium=email&utm_source=alert&wpisrc=al_news__alert-hse--alert-national&wpmk=1
Which is the best answer to Sep-2012 ASI lost (compared to 1979-2000)?
50% [NSIDC Extent] or
73% [PIOMAS Volume]

Volume is harder to measure than extent, but 3-dimensional space is real, 2D's hide ~50% thickness gone.
-> IPCC/NSIDC trends [based on extent] underestimate the real speed of ASI lost.

kassy

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #154 on: December 21, 2019, 05:39:03 PM »
Amazon Forest Regrows Much Slower Than Previously Thought

The regrowth of Amazonian forests following deforestation could be much slower than previously thought, a new study shows.

The findings made significant impacts on global climate change predictions due to the ability of secondary forests to ingest carbon from the atmosphere. The study, which monitored forest regrowth over 20 years, shows that global climate change, and therefore the broader loss of forests, might be hampering regrowth within the Amazon.

Secondary forests are a crucial tool in combatting human-caused global climate change by taking large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. However, the examined secondary forests held only 40 percent of the carbon in forests that had not been disrupted by human interactions. If current trends continue, it'll take more than a century for the woods to completely recover, meaning their ability to assist in fighting global climate change are vastly overestimated.

 The study, published within the journal Ecology, also shows that secondary forests take less carbon from the atmosphere during droughts. Yet, global climate change is increasing the number of drought-years within the Amazon.

continues on:
https://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/43012/20191221/amazon-forest-regrows-much-slower-previously-thought.htm
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #155 on: December 23, 2019, 05:34:22 PM »
Elon Musk-Backed Tree-Planting Campaign Meets $20 Million Goal
Quote
Team Trees
In October, YouTuber Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson publicly launched Team Trees, a campaign to raise enough money to plant 20 million trees at a dollar a pop(lar).

Within days, the campaign secured a million dollar pledge from Tesla CEO Elon Musk, which was soon followed by a pledge of a million and one dollars from Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke.

Now, less than two months later, the tree-planting campaign has announced that it’s officially surpassed its $20 million fundraising goal.

Global Growth
According to the Team Trees FAQ page, the Arbor Day Foundation will oversee the planting of the trees, which will begin in January 2020 and wrap up no later than December 2022.

“Due to the sheer volume of trees planted (20 million), they will be planted in a variety of forests on public and private lands in areas of great need,” Team Trees wrote, adding that the aim is to “plant trees on every continent not named Antarctica!” ...
https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-tree-planting-meets-goal
People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

sidd

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #156 on: December 27, 2019, 10:48:27 PM »
Restore natural forests to sequester carbon: monocrop plantations are no answer

"The regular harvesting and clearing of plantations releases stored CO2 back into the atmosphere every 10–20 years. By contrast, natural forests continue to sequester carbon for many decades[4]."

"To combat climate change, the most effective place to plant trees is in the tropics and subtropics"



PDF version
Two workers handle tree saplings being grown to reforest burned areas of Indonesia

Reforesting of burnt areas in Kalimantan province, Indonesia.Credit: Kadir van Lohuizen/NOOR/eyevine

Keeping global warming below 1.5 °C to avoid dangerous climate change1 requires the removal of vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, as well as drastic cuts in emissions. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggests that around 730 billion tonnes of CO2 (730 petagrams of CO2, or 199 petagrams of carbon, Pg C) must be taken out of the atmosphere by the end of this century2. That is equivalent to all the CO2 emitted by the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and China since the Industrial Revolution. No one knows how to capture so much CO2.

Forests must play a part. Locking up carbon in ecosystems is proven, safe and often affordable3. Increasing tree cover has other benefits, from protecting biodiversity to managing water and creating jobs.

The IPCC suggests that boosting the total area of the world’s forests, woodlands and woody savannahs could store around one-quarter of the atmospheric carbon necessary to limit global warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels2. In the near term, this means adding up to 24 million hectares (Mha) of forest every year from now until 2030.

Policymakers are sowing the seeds. For example, in 2011, the German government and the International Union for Conservation of Nature launched the Bonn Challenge, which aims to restore 350 Mha of forest by 2030. Under this initiative and others, 43 countries across the tropics and subtropics where trees grow quickly, including Brazil, India and China, have committed nearly 300 Mha of degraded land (see Supplementary Information, Table S1). That’s encouraging.

But will this policy work? Here we show that, under current plans, it will not. A closer look at countries’ reports reveals that almost half of the pledged area is set to become plantations of commercial trees (see Table S1). Although these can support local economies, plantations are much poorer at storing carbon than are natural forests, which develop with little or no disturbance from humans. The regular harvesting and clearing of plantations releases stored CO2 back into the atmosphere every 10–20 years. By contrast, natural forests continue to sequester carbon for many decades4.

To stem global warming, deforestation must stop. And restoration programmes worldwide should return all degraded lands to natural forests — and protect them. More carbon must be stored on land, while recognizing competing pressures to deliver food, fuel, fodder and fibre.

We call on the restoration community, forestry experts and policymakers to prioritize the regeneration of natural forests over other types of tree planting — by allowing disturbed lands to recover to their previous high-carbon state. This will entail tightening definitions, transparently reporting plans and outcomes and clearly stating the trade-offs between different uses of land.
Misdirected efforts

To combat climate change, the most effective place to plant trees is in the tropics and subtropics — this is where most forest-restoration commitments are found. Trees grow and take up carbon quickly near the Equator, and land is relatively cheap and available (see go.nature.com/2ogmbmz and ‘Restoration potential’). Establishing forests has little effect on the albedo (reflectivity) of the land surface, unlike at high latitudes, where trees obscure snow that would otherwise reflect solar energy and help to cool the planet. Well-managed forests can also help to alleviate poverty in low-income regions, as well as conserve biodiversity and support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals — notably, goals 1 (no poverty), 6 (clean water), 11 (sustainable communities), 13 (climate action) and 15 (life on land).

Source: https://go.nature.com/2ogmbmz

"So far, just over half (24) of the countries in the Bonn Challenge and other schemes have published detailed restoration plans, covering two-thirds of the total pledged area (Table S1). Nations are following three main approaches. First, degraded and abandoned agricultural land will be left to return to natural forest on its own. Second, marginal agricultural lands are to be converted into plantations of valuable trees, such as Eucalyptus for paper or Hevea braziliensis for rubber. Third is agroforestry, which involves growing crops and useful trees together."

"Natural regeneration is the cheapest and technically easiest option. Just over one-third (34%) of the total area allocated is to be managed in this way. Protecting land from fire and other human disturbances allows trees to return and forests to flourish, building carbon stocks rapidly to reach the level of a mature forest in roughly 70 years [4]"

"plantations are the most popular restoration plan: 45% of all commitments involve planting vast monocultures of trees as profitable enterprises. "

"plantations hold little more carbon, on average, than the land cleared to plant them. Clearance releases carbon, followed by rapid uptake by fast-growing trees ... But after such trees are harvested and the land is cleared for replanting — typically once a decade — the carbon is released again by the decomposition of plantation waste and products "

"if the entire 350 Mha is given over to natural forests, they would store an additional 42 Pg C by 2100 (see ‘Which strategy?’). Giving the same area exclusively to plantations would sequester just 1 Pg C or, if used only for agroforestry, 7 Pg C. Furthermore, we find, on average, that natural forests are 6 times better than agroforestry and 40 times better than plantations at storing carbon (sequestering 12, 1.9 and 0.3 Pg C per 100 Mha by 2100, respectively"

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01026-8

sidd

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #157 on: December 31, 2019, 10:15:11 AM »
Illegal tin mining leaves trail of ruin in protected Brazilian rainforest


Floresta Nacional de Altamira (Flona de Altamira) spans some 724,965 hectares in the state of Pará, and is home to a rich diversity of plants and animals, including several species threatened with extinction.
Recently, an influx of illegal mining has led to rampant deforestation and the sullying of rivers. The miners are targeting the mineral cassiterite, the main ore of tin. Illegal ranching and road construction are also causing deforestation in Flona de Altamira.

...

Like in much of Brazil, the mining fever gripping Flona de Altamira has its roots in the broader development of the Amazon region in the 1970s and 1980s. The construction of the BR-163, a behemoth highway stretching thousands of kilometers from the south of Brazil through the heart of the Amazon Basin, served as a catalyst: the eventual paving of the road in the 1990s brought a flood of people scouring the unexplored region for gold and other minerals.

...

But unlike gold mining, extracting tin ore is less costly and difficult, making the activity particularly attractive to speculators, according to local sources. Illegal miners – many of whom are impoverished, illiterate men – have flocked to Flona de Altamira with the hopes of striking it rich.

Across the Brazilian Amazon, there are more than 450 illegal mines in the Brazilian Amazon, according to the Rede Amazónica de Información Socioambiental Georreferenciada (RAISG), a consortium of civil society organizations. Thousands of illegal miners toil away at these sites, extracting resources like tin, gold and nickel.

...

In Flona de Altamira, local sources point to the surge in mining activity as a key contributor to the stark deterioration in the water quality of Rio Aruri.

While some tin ore can be found in ground rock, most easily accessible deposits are concentrated in streams and along river banks. When forest and topsoil are removed from shorelines for mineral extraction, soil and mining waste run unobstructed directly into the river when it rains.

Tin ore mines also use water from nearby rivers for hydraulic extraction and then dispose of the waste in mining ponds and tailings dams nearby. Research has linked highly toxic tin ore waste stored in tailings dams to dramatic pollution of soil, vegetation, surface water and groundwater.

In the case of gold mining, where mercury is often used in the extraction process, the impact on human and animal health can be devastating.

Full details + pictures on:
https://news.mongabay.com/2019/12/illegal-tin-mining-leaves-trail-of-ruin-in-protected-brazilian-rainforest/
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sidd

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #158 on: January 03, 2020, 08:44:38 AM »
Laudato si : theology in forests

To see the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower, indeed.

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/cathedral-not-made-hands

sidd

Aporia_filia

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #159 on: January 03, 2020, 11:44:55 AM »
Thanks a lot Sidd. I take communion with all it says, and you know I'm an atheist.
This is why I decided living in an old forest trying to be the less disturbing animal in it. (Rather difficult!)

Ranman99

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #160 on: January 03, 2020, 01:55:36 PM »
Very noble (as a concept). It is a way. It is all connected right? It is not a metaphysical thing so much as just the way it is all connected. We could work in that but as a herd we keep barreling for the cliff.

What a human thinks about himself or herself is just what they think and most of that is not so much thinking like when you write it down and puzzle it out over a few days. Like a meta stream of random flotsam and jetsam on top or among what is. Memory is cool. The human creature uses a lot of different types of memory. The type we seemingly see / hear with our awareness is a very small portion and the stories that thing tells us are mostly whacked becuase of the influence of culture etc. ;-)

The human creature (flotsam and jetsam) does not like NOT getting what it wants. It does not always get what it wants however!!!

I spent a few hours speaking with an old school chum a few days ago that I stumbled across and have not seen for years and years. He is a bank VP and I thought he was in tune to what we are facing based on things I had heard from another friend over the years.

I was sadly mistaken and though he knows most (almost all) main stream media is propaganda he had such a weird mix of beliefs as to not be helpful in any way to what could be a chance for folks to change some directions. He wields a certain power in approving massive amounts of commercial lending in Canada.

Wow I say ;-) We are the deluded species!!! Good job the squirrels aren't confused and really control everything!!! I'm enjoying the entertainment but if it gets physically painful then hmmm.






😎

wdmn

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #161 on: January 04, 2020, 07:44:02 PM »
Bushfires devastate rare and enchanting wildlife as 'permanently wet' forests burn for first time

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-27/bushfires-devastate-ancient-forests-and-rare-wildlife/11733956?pfmredir=sm

The rainforests along the spine of the Great Dividing Range, between the Hunter River and southern Queensland, are remnants of Gondwana, the ancient supercontinent that broke up about 180 million years ago.

....

The forests are mountaintop islands that have been "permanently wet" for tens of millions of years.

But now, some of these forests are being burnt for the first time.

....

Beyond the koalas are many rare and fascinating creatures whose lives and homes have been destroyed, or remain threatened.

"The fauna in these landscapes requires permanently wet conditions, and many of the fauna species in these landscapes simply have no tolerance to fire," Mr Graham says.

...

"Friends. Shit is getting well-serious.

"I am at my place at the very top of the Bellinger Valley. Smoke has completely saturated everything for days now.

"Most of this evening I have heard the wind absolutely roaring on the escarpment above. These beasts are inexorably heading for Point Lookout and New England National Park — the biggest and healthiest chunk of Gondwana.

"There are no words that can describe the significance, enormity and horror of what now looks highly likely to happen … Rain, RAIN … RAIN …"

Tom_Mazanec

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #162 on: January 04, 2020, 09:15:50 PM »
Of course all this burning wood is pumping out CO2...

kassy

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #163 on: January 05, 2020, 05:27:53 PM »
But the tragedy is losing all these places with unique life forms. We will not get them back because they exist no where else.
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Aporia_filia

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #164 on: January 08, 2020, 11:15:00 AM »
Another silent tragedy...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/08/violence-escalates-as-romania-cracks-down-on-illegal-timber-trade

"But still, a report commissioned by the government said 20m cubic metres of timber is disappearing from the forests each year, a number bigger than the total amount of legal logging, signifying both a huge hole in the government budget and a potential climate disaster.

“The situation is out of the control of the central authorities. They don’t know what’s happening in these forests. They don’t use satellite images, they don’t use smart tools,” said Ciprian Găluşcă, of Greenpeace Romania."

sidd

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #165 on: January 14, 2020, 02:12:13 AM »
Ross at newyorker on bristlecones: post apocalypse trees

"Bristlecones are post-apocalyptic trees, sci-fi trees. They can be seen as symbols of our own precarious future."

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/01/20/the-past-and-the-future-of-the-earths-oldest-trees

sidd

kassy

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #166 on: January 14, 2020, 01:49:16 PM »
Nice article!

More on old trees:

Secrets of '1,000-year-old trees' unlocked

Scientists have discovered the secret of how the ginkgo tree can live for more than 1,000 years.

A study found the tree makes protective chemicals that fend off diseases and drought.

And, unlike many other plants, its genes are not programmed to trigger inexorable decline when its youth is over.

...details on:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51063469
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Tor Bejnar

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #167 on: January 15, 2020, 04:18:31 PM »
Incredible, secret firefighting mission saves famous 'dinosaur trees'
By Peter Hannam
January 15, 2020 — 4.24pm (eastern Australian time zone) - Sydney Morning Herald
Quote
Desperate efforts by firefighters on the ground and in the air have saved the only known natural grove of the world-famous Wollemi pines from destruction during the record-breaking bushfires in NSW.

The rescue mission involved water-bombing aircraft and large air tankers dropping fire retardant. Helicopters also winched specialist firefighters into the remote gorge to set up an irrigation system to increase the moisture content of the ground fuels to slow the advance of any fire.
...
While most of the Wollemi National Park has been burnt by the huge Gospers Mountain fire north-west of Sydney, specialist remote-area fire crews managed to ensure the so-called "dinosaur trees" survived.

"Wollemi National Park is the only place in the world where these trees are found in the wild and, with less than 200 left, we knew we needed to do everything we could to save them,” Mr Kean said.

The National Parks and Wildlife Service, backed by the Rural Fire Service, kept their efforts largely a secret to avoid revealing the location of the Wollemi pines.
...
"When the pines were discovered in 1994, you might as well have found a living dinosaur," Mr Kean said.
...
While one population of a couple of trees was lost [to fire], the remaining 200 made it.
...
Professor Brack said evidence from researchers who have visited the trees' secret location suggests the pines were able to withstand fires in the past. That said, "these fires have been abnormally hot and large", he added.

Saving the area was not only important for preserving the pines, which have now been propagated by nurseries at home and abroad since their discovery a quarter of a century ago.

"The entire ecosystem may be as old and as amazing as the Wollemi pines themselves," Professor Brack said.

The Gospers Mountain fire alone burnt through more than 512,000 hectares before crews contained the blaze in recent days.

Started by lightning on October 26, the fire may be assessed as the largest ever fire known to have started from a single source, the Herald reported last month.
...
I actually was wondering what their fate was.  (I've known about them for about a decade.)
Arctic ice is healthy for children and other living things because "we cannot negotiate with the melting point of ice"

gerontocrat

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #168 on: January 19, 2020, 02:52:48 AM »
'This is not how sequoias die. It’s supposed to stand for another 500 years'


https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/18/this-is-not-how-sequoias-die-its-supposed-to-stand-for-another-500-years-aoe

https://soundcloud.com/user-880618252/dr-christy-brigham-sees-lazarus-for-the-first-time

Quote
Giant sequoias were thought to be immune to insects, drought and wildfires. Then the unthinkable happened: trees started to die – and scientists began the search for answers

The fable of the giant sequoia tree is an enduring tale of America’s fortitude. Standing quietly on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada, the Californian giants can survive almost anything – fire, disease, insect attack, cold years, hot years, drought – so the story goes.

The largest living organisms on the planet can grow over 90 metres (300ft) tall. When they do die after 3,000 years or so, the oldest trees, known as monarchs, usually succumb to their own size and collapse. Their giant trunks will rest on the forest floor for another millennia.

But the miraculous story of the near-indestructible giant trees that millions of Americans tell their children is no longer true.

When Dr Christy Brigham, who is responsible for the welfare of the ecosystems in Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks, saw Lazarus for the first time, all she could do was weep.

“This is a tree that has lived through 2,000 years of fires, other droughts, wet years, dry years, hot years, cold years. It’s been here longer than Europeans have been in this country and it’s dead. And it shouldn’t be dead. This is not how giant sequoias die. It’s suppose to stand there for another 500 years with all its needles on it, this quirky, persistent, impressive, amazing thing, and then fall over. It’s not supposed to have all of its needles fall off from the top to the bottom and then stand there like that. That’s not how giant sequoias die,” she says, standing next to the skeletal Lazarus as the occasional tourist wanders past.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/18/beetles-and-fire-kill-dozens-of-california-indestructible-giant-sequoia-trees-aoe

"Para a Causa do Povo a Luta Continua!"
"And that's all I'm going to say about that". Forrest Gump
"Damn, I wanted to see what happened next" (Epitaph)

nanning

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #169 on: January 19, 2020, 06:45:23 AM »
^^
That is ominous for all other living nature. To me it seems an effect of ecosystem collapse: Some unknown essential is removed.
"It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly" - Bertrand Russell
"It is preoccupation with what other people from your groups think of you, that prevents you from living freely and nobly" - Nanning
Why do you keep accumulating stuff?

gerontocrat

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #170 on: January 24, 2020, 04:44:37 PM »
If the US gets 4 more years of Trump, there is a lot of irreversible environmental degradation in the works.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/24/trump-administration-wildfire-science-promote-logging-california-emissions
‘Blatant manipulation’: Trump administration exploited wildfire science to promote logging
Quote
“As wildfire experts have repeatedly explained, you can’t log or even ‘rake’ our way out of this mess,” O’Neill said. “The Trump administration and the interior department are pushing mystical theories that are false in order to justify gutting public land protections to advance their pro-industry and lobbyist dominated agenda.”
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Tom_Mazanec

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #171 on: January 24, 2020, 10:27:13 PM »
Catastrophic Amazon tipping point less than 30 years away: study
https://news.mongabay.com/2020/01/catastrophic-amazon-tipping-point-less-than-30-years-away-study/
Quote
The Amazon rainforest generates half its own rainfall, but deforestation threatens to disrupt this cycle, shifting large parts of this ancient forest to dry, savanna habitat. Passing such a “tipping point” would have disastrous knock-on effects for climate and weather patterns regionally and globally.
A recent study modelling the impact of proposed roads, hydropower and mining developments in the Amazon basin suggests that 21-43 percent of the Amazon’s original extent will be lost by 2050, putting it close to, or beyond, the tipping point for a biome shift in large parts of the region.
Although development is not currently proceeding at the rapid rate predicted under various ambitious government initiatives, experts say that, even with no new Amazon infrastructure, continued deforestation could drive the biome to the tipping point in the next 15–30 years.
A quick transition to zero deforestation is the only way to avert catastrophic change to the Amazon, say experts. But conservationists fear the political will is lacking as the Bolsonaro administration continues to slash protections. Backing indigenous land stewards could offer a solution.

kassy

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #172 on: January 30, 2020, 08:09:39 PM »
Joe Rogan with mycologist Paul Stamets talking about all kinds of cool fungus related stuff.

Forests are not just trees. They live with the fungal network and that is huge compared to the trees.
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kassy

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #173 on: January 30, 2020, 08:55:22 PM »
Land degradation is globally recognised as a major contributor to global warming. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) estimated in 2018 that 10% of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions derive from deforestation alone.

Even this is probably an underestimate: soils are disturbed during and after deforestation, and the carbon previously stored in the soil is subsequently released in the form of CO₂, further driving global warming. Soils are capable of holding three times as much carbon as the atmosphere; they are fundamental to mitigate climate change.

Given the high potential and importance of soils and woody biomass to store carbon and offer numerous ecosystem services that are vital to all life, planting trees is often advocated as the most cost-effective way to keep global warming under 2°C and an urgent priority to prevent, reduce and reverse land degradation and to avoid conflict and migration. There is much support for this approach from national policymakers.

...

In China, for example, an enormous investment has been made by central and local governments to plant trees since the late 1970s. Today, China plans to increase its forest coverage rate to 23% by 2020, to 26% by 2035, and to 42% by 2050. This is not just a state effort: private companies, Alibaba and Alipay, the e-commerce giant and global leader of mobile payment, aims to invest US$28 million into tree-planting projects.

As a result, total forest area in the Asia-Pacific region has been increased by more than 17 million hectares over 25 years owing to afforestation: the establishment of new forests. These new forests are mostly in China due to the country’s afforestation investment strategy. In a targeted area the size of France – the Loess Plateau – the forest cover doubled from 50,000 to 100,000 km² between 2001 and 2016.

But while China becomes greener, the health of freshwater system deteriorates. A recent study my colleagues and I conducted on China’s afforestation effort provides evidence that replacing natural grass vegetation with unmanaged artificial black locust plantations – a fast-growing non-local species – for soil conservation and carbon sequestration has significantly changed the water availability as well as whole water cycle.

Black locust plantations – which make up the bulk of the China afforestation – are much more thirsty than natural grassland. They use 92% of annual rainfall (700mm in a wet year) for biomass growth, leaving only 8% of annual rainfall for human uses. As a result, not enough water remains to recharge groundwater or flow into rivers and lakes. We found that deep percolation (the water moving from root zone into groundwater) in years with average or lower-than-average rainfall can be expected to be close to zero.

Full details see:
https://theconversation.com/planting-trees-must-be-done-with-care-it-can-create-more-problems-than-it-addresses-128259

The takeaway message is that you have to replant proper trees. Proper local trees. They might yield a much slower biomass gain but it is probably more sustainable.
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kassy

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #174 on: February 11, 2020, 04:16:46 PM »
Forests are amazing until you kill them.


Quote
The Amazon Is Nearing the Point of No Return

In 1975, the Brazilian scientist Enéas Salati made an astonishing discovery: the Amazon rainforest doesn’t just receive an unusual level of precipitation but actually creates half its own rainfall. The moisture contained in air masses crossing the Amazon basin, he showed, cycles through five or six phases of precipitation and evaporation before it reaches the high wall of the Andes Mountains. There, it rises, cools, and rains down one last time in a mighty deluge that suffuses the Amazon River system with water.

Previously, scientists had regarded vegetation largely as a consequence of climate. Forests, they believed, responded to their climatic environments but didn’t actively shape them. Salati showed to what extent plants and soil hold water and distribute it across large, evaporative surfaces—leaves, in particular—powering a hydrologic cycle that sustains the rainforest climate. His findings raised the possibility that deforestation might eventually degrade the hydrologic cycle to such an extent that the region’s climate would change. And in the decades after his study, as development and deforestation ravaged huge swaths of the jungle, scientists concluded that there is in fact a tipping point after which the Amazon will no longer generate sufficient rainfall to maintain forest cover in much of its southern and eastern regions.

So that is 45 years of knowing something and not acting on it.

Quote
That tipping point is now at hand. Approximately 20 percent of the Brazilian Amazon has been stripped of its trees, and the Brazilian government’s recent rollback of rainforest-protection laws and programs has accelerated the pace of environmental destruction. Between July 2018 and July 2019, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon soared to an 11-year high—wiping out a total of 3,789 square miles of forest, an area larger than Yellowstone National Park in the United States. But the problem goes beyond Brazil. Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, and other countries that extend into the Amazon have deforestation problems, as well.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/americas/2020-02-10/amazon-nearing-point-no-return

I really cannot fathom why we live in a world were we actually ignore such things as this.
As in i don´t know how we got that stupid.
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nanning

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #175 on: February 11, 2020, 06:32:00 PM »
^^
"I really cannot fathom why we live in a world were we actually ignore such things as this.
As in i don´t know how we got that stupid."

Those three 'we's denote three different groups of people.
You and I belong to the first 'we' but not to the second and third 'we'.
In a well designed human language those ambiguities would not be possible. It's about the quality of communication. And therefore of thought.


The Amazon rainforest is lost I think. If not via deforestation and tipping points, then by the effects of +5°C GMSTA.
"It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly" - Bertrand Russell
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Why do you keep accumulating stuff?

kassy

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #176 on: February 12, 2020, 02:16:22 PM »
Deforested parts of Amazon 'emitting more CO2 than they absorb'

...

Results from a decade-long study of greenhouse gases over the Amazon basin appear to show around 20% of the total area has become a net source of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

One of the main causes is deforestation.

While trees are growing they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; dead trees release it again.

Millions of trees have been lost to logging and fires in recent years.

The results of the study, which have not yet been published, have implications for the effort to combat climate change.

They suggest that the Amazon rainforest - a vital carbon store, or "sink", that slows the pace of global warming - may be turning into a carbon source faster than previously thought.

Every two weeks for the past 10 years, a team of scientists led by Prof Luciana Gatti, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE), has been measuring greenhouse gases by flying aircraft fitted with sensors over different parts of the Amazon basin.

What the group found was startling: while most of the rainforest still retains its ability to absorb large quantities of carbon dioxide - especially in wetter years - one portion of the forest, which is especially heavily deforested, appears to have lost that capacity.

Gatti's research suggests this south-eastern part of the forest, about 20% of the total area, has become a carbon source.

"Each year is worse," she told Newsnight.

"We observed that this area in the south-east is an important source of carbon. And it doesn't matter whether it is a wet year or a dry year. 2017-18 was a wet year, but it didn't make any difference."

...

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51464694

Well this is no huge surprise but it ticks me off.

So we lost the arctic permafrost as a sink and this is already a large part of the Amazonian one.

Most of the climate models don´t factor in our voracious appetite even as a line of reducing carbon sinks (whereas long term effects due to warming seas are modelled for example).

Having saved those areas as sources would have helped...

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vox_mundi

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #177 on: March 04, 2020, 08:20:18 PM »
Tropical Forests' Carbon Sink is Already Rapidly Weakening
https://phys.org/news/2020-03-tropical-forests-carbon-rapidly-weakening.html

The ability of the world's tropical forests to remove carbon from the atmosphere is decreasing, according to a study tracking 300,000 trees over 30 years, published today in Nature.

The global scientific collaboration, led by the University of Leeds, reveals that a feared switch of the world's undisturbed tropical forests from a carbon sink to a carbon source has begun.

The new analysis of three decades of tree growth and death from 565 undisturbed tropical forests across Africa and the Amazon has found that the overall uptake of carbon into Earth's intact tropical forests peaked in the 1990s.

By the 2010s, on average, the ability of a tropical forest to absorb carbon had dropped by one-third. The switch is largely driven by carbon losses from trees dying



Asynchronous carbon sink saturation in African and Amazonian tropical forests, Nature (2020)
« Last Edit: March 04, 2020, 08:46:40 PM by vox_mundi »
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

kassy

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #178 on: March 05, 2020, 02:09:50 PM »
The Congo rainforest is losing its ability to absorb carbon dioxide. That’s bad for climate change.

...

The new paper predicts that by 2030, the African jungle will absorb 14% less carbon dioxide than it did 10 to 15 years ago. By 2035, Amazonian trees won’t absorb any carbon dioxide at all, the researchers said.

...

The findings contradict models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and governments around the world, which predicted that the Congo rainforest would continue to absorb carbon for many decades to come.

...

The researchers estimate that in the 1990s, 17% of the carbon dioxide pumped out of smokestacks and tailpipes when oil, coal and natural gas are burned was thought to be taken up by uncut tropical jungles rather than accumulating in the atmosphere, slowing climate change. That figure has dropped to only 6%, they say.

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/the-congo-rainforest-is-losing-its-ability-to-absorb-carbon-dioxide-thats-bad-for-climate-change

Same research above but some different quotes.
It´s a rather long article and it is the reprint of the WaPo article.
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kassy

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #179 on: March 06, 2020, 03:07:31 PM »
Protected Hungarian forest by the Tisza River destroyed

An old floodplain forest in Hungary was destroyed by unauthorized clear-cutting in a protected area near the Tisza River.

In Hungary, floodplain forests are among the most endangered forest habitats. Their area has shrunk to less than 1% of their area before river regulation, and old forests are hard to find among them. The National Directorate of Water Management did not have a permit to clear-cut near the village Tiszaug.

The forest, managed by the Hungarian National Directorate of Water Management, was about 90 years old. Irreversible damage has been done to the impacted ecosystem. The illegal cutting of the protected old poplar forest was part of the Government's "VTT River Bank Management in the Middle Tisza" river bank design concept that includes the construction of runoff routes that facilitate quick drainage of flood water. The decimation of the forest has also had a negative impact on valuable wildlife and their habitats, including the protected black stork.

...

WWF-Hungary previously opposed the river bank management concept, which prefers creating runoff pathways over other, more nature-friendly solutions. In 2017, the organization also raised its voice against the amendment of the Hungarian Forest Act, which allowed drastic interventions in protected forests for flood protection purposes.

"The clear-cutting in January 2020 draws attention to the fact that current practices for flood risk management include methods that are damaging to nature," said Péter Kajner, expert of WWF-Hungary's Living Rivers Programme.

...

It is regrettable that, while various tree planting movements are gaining attention throughout Hungary, the protection of the country's natural, high conservation value forests, which are of major ecological and climate protection importance, is still not taken seriously

https://phys.org/news/2020-03-hungarian-forest-tisza-river.html
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kassy

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #180 on: March 09, 2020, 09:44:53 AM »
A nice bit of corruption from Indonesia:  >:(

Indonesian indigenous land defenders jailed in fight with pulpwood giant

A court in Indonesia has sentenced two indigenous farmers to nine months in jail in the latest legal battle over land claimed by both the community and pulp and paper company PT Toba Pulp Lestari.

The two sides have been locked in dispute over the land in North Sumatra’s North Tapanuli district since 1992, with the Sihaporas indigenous community claiming ancestral rights to some 40,000 hectares (98,800 acres) inside the concession granted to PT TPL.

Tribal elders Jonny and Thomson Ambarita are the latest members of the community to be jailed following charges brought by the company, which itself stands accused of an assault against the community. Authorities have not pursued the Sihaporas complaints against the company.

Indigenous and land rights activists have criticized what they say was a flawed trial, and called for greater recognition by the Indonesian government of indigenous land rights.

...

The Simalungun District Court, in North Sumatra province, handed down nine-month sentences to Jonny Ambarita and Thomson Ambarita, who are elders from the Sihaporas community, for assaulting an employee of PT Toba Pulp Lestari (TPL), an RGE affiliate company.

...

The sentences, handed down Feb. 13, cap a trial sparked by an incident last September in which the company, or people claiming to represent it, appeared to be the side escalating the legal wrangling into a violent conflict.

On the morning of Sept. 16, 2019, according to the community members, a group of men claiming to be PT TPL employees arrived in their village and demanded that they cease their farming activity and leave the area. The farmers refused, and a scuffle broke out, during which the 3-year-old son of one of the community members was reportedly hit by one of the purported company representatives. The child passed out and had to be taken to a nearby public health center.

The following day, leaders of the Sihaporas community went to a nearby police station to file a report about the alleged assault on the child. But the officers refused to receive their complaint, telling them instead to file it at a different precinct office.

Officers from that larger precinct later issued a summons for Jonny and Thomson Ambarita to appear for questioning on Sept. 24. Unknown to the community, PT TPL had filed its own report with the police, alleging that the farmers had assaulted one of its employees in the earlier skirmish. When Jonny and Thomson showed up at the police station, they were promptly charged and arrested.

In the months since then, they’ve been indicted, tried, and convicted. But police have still not acted on the community’s report on the alleged attack on the child.

...

In its campaign to free Jonny and Thomson, the Sihaporas community took its case to Indonesia’s National Commission for Human Rights last October. Community elders also sent three letters to President Joko Widodo to demand state recognition of their ancestral lands and ask the government to revoke PT TPL’s permit. There have been no responses to any of those initiatives.

https://news.mongabay.com/2020/03/indonesia-indigenous-land-sumatra-toba-pulp-lestari-rge/
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kassy

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #181 on: March 09, 2020, 10:09:55 AM »
Quote
Warming ‘May Harm Rainforests Less’

LONDON – Scientists think they have found some good news for the Amazon and other tropical forests. They say they appear more able to withstand the effects of climate change than previous studies had suggested.


The research team was led by Dr Chris Huntingford from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology in the UK. He and his colleagues used computer simulations with 22 climate models to explore the response of tropical forests in the Americas, Africa and Asia to greenhouse gas-induced climate change.

They found loss of forest cover in only one model, and only in the Americas. The researchers found the largest source of uncertainty in the projections to be differences in how plant physiological processes are represented, rather than the choice of emission scenario and differences between various climate projections


“Different vegetation models currently simulate remarkable variability in forest sensitivity to climate change. And while these new results suggest that tropical forests may be quite resilient to warming, it is important also to remember that other factors not included in this study, such as fire and deforestation, will also affect the carbon stored in tropical forests.

https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/warming-may-harm-rainforests-less/

So they study a whole bunch of models and find ´good news´ for rainforests.
That would be nice but it would help if the model ensemble they studied was good over the whole range but there are some doubts about that.

And then the is no fire in them and no deforestation.

So what does the only model which shows rainforest loss say?

Quote
Acceleration of global warming due to carbon-cycle feedbacks in a coupled climate model


The continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide due to anthropogenic emissions is predicted to lead to significant changes in climate1. About half of the current emissions are being absorbed by the ocean and by land ecosystems2, but this absorption is sensitive to climate3,4 as well as to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations5, creating a feedback loop. General circulation models have generally excluded the feedback between climate and the biosphere, using static vegetation distributions and CO2 concentrations from simple carbon-cycle models that do not include climate change6. Here we present results from a fully coupled, three-dimensional carbon–climate model, indicating that carbon-cycle feedbacks could significantly accelerate climate change over the twenty-first century. We find that under a ‘business as usual’ scenario, the terrestrial biosphere acts as an overall carbon sink until about 2050, but turns into a source thereafter. By 2100, the ocean uptake rate of 5 Gt C yr-1 is balanced by the terrestrial carbon source, and atmospheric CO2 concentrations are 250 p.p.m.v. higher in our fully coupled simulation than in uncoupled carbon models2, resulting in a global-mean warming of 5.5 K, as compared to 4 K without the carbon-cycle feedback.

https://www.nature.com/articles/35041539

So not convincing...
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kassy

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #182 on: March 12, 2020, 01:50:00 PM »
Amazon rainforest could be gone within a lifetime

Large ecosystems, such as the Amazon rainforest, will collapse and disappear alarmingly quickly, once a crucial tipping point is reached, according to calculations based on real-world data.

Writing in Nature Communications (10.1038/s41467-020-15029-x), researchers from Bangor University, Southampton University and The School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London, reveal the speed at which ecosystems of different sizes will disappear, once they have reached a point beyond which they collapse - transforming into an alternative ecosystem.

For example, once the 'point of no return' is reached, the iconic Amazon rainforest could shift to a savannah-type ecosystem with a mix of trees and grass within 50 years, according to the work.

Some scientists argue that many ecosystems are currently teetering on the edge of this precipice, with the fires and destruction both in the Amazon and in Australia.

...

Prof John Dearing from Geography and Environment at Southampton University says:

"We intuitively knew that big systems would collapse more slowly than small ones - due to the time it takes for impacts to diffuse across large distances. But what was unexpected was the finding that big systems collapse much faster than you might expect - even the largest on Earth only taking possibly a few decades."

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-03/bu-arc030920.php

OA:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15029-x
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kassy

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #183 on: March 24, 2020, 12:41:10 PM »
Extreme summer heat and drought lead to early fruit abortion in European beech

Abstract

Years with high fruit production, known as mast years, are the usual reproduction strategy of European beech. Harsh weather conditions such as frost during flowering can lead to pollination failure in spring. It has been assumed that mast is controlled by flowering, and that after successful pollination, high amounts of fruits and seeds would be produced. However, the extremely hot and dry European summer of 2018 showed that despite successful pollination, beechnuts did not develop or were only abundant in a few forest stands. An in-depth analysis of three forest sites of European beech from the Swiss Long-Term Forest Ecosystem Research Programme over the last 15–19 years revealed for the first time that extreme summer heat and drought can act as an “environmental veto”, leading to early fruit abortion. Within the forest stands in years with fruit abortion, summer mean temperatures were 1.5 °C higher and precipitation sums were 45% lower than the long-term average. Extreme summer heat and drought, together with frost during flowering, are therefore disrupting events of the assumed biennial fruiting cycle in European beech.

Open access:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-62073-0
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kassy

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #184 on: March 27, 2020, 01:16:27 PM »
Study shows why trees won't benefit much from extra CO2 in the air

The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing steadily, ... , one argued silver lining is that plants are better off due to more of their food being in the air. But a new study has dashed those hopes, finding that the more extreme heat and drought brought on by climate change would cancel out most of the benefits for trees.

...

The researchers grew a series of Aleppo pines from seeds under two different concentrations of CO2 – 421 parts per million (ppm), which is a little higher than the current atmospheric level, and an elevated level of 867 ppm.

When the trees were 18 months old, the team began testing them. For the first month, they watered one group well, while leaving others without, to simulate drought conditions. Then, they planted both groups in chambers where they could control the temperature. Over 10 days, the heat was gradually increased from a pleasant 25 °C (77 °F) to a sweltering 40 °C (104 °F), while the scientists measured the trees’ responses.

The team found that higher CO2 levels did help the trees use their water more efficiently, and lose less of it, as the heat rose. That was largely thanks to root proteins becoming more stable, and the trees closing their stomata – the pores in leaves that allow for gas exchange.

But that’s where the benefits end, unfortunately. Closed stomata meant the stressed-out trees took up significantly less carbon from the air, and the heat had a negative effect on their metabolism as well.

“Overall, the impact of the increased CO2 concentration on stress reactions of the trees was rather moderate,” says Nadine Rühr, lead author of the study. “With increasing heat and drought, it decreased considerably. From this, we conclude that the increasing CO2 concentration of the atmosphere cannot compensate the stress of the trees resulting from extreme climate conditions.”

...

https://newatlas.com/environment/trees-atmospheric-co2-effects-heat-drought/

Cute trees...see the picture in the article.

Hot drought reduces the effects of elevated CO2 on tree water‐use efficiency and carbon metabolism (OA)

https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/nph.16471
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kassy

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #185 on: April 01, 2020, 01:50:09 PM »
Why Old-Growth Trees Are Crucial to Fighting Climate Change

...

But there are also important opportunities for change beyond just cutting our use of fossil fuels. All these living things that take in carbon dioxide and turn it into biomass are protecting us through their very existence. When we destroy nature's carbon storage (should we clear-cut all that biomass at Wind River, for instance), we can turn it from a carbon sink into a source, from an ally into yet more fuel for the fires of our era. But what if we were able to help deepen the sinks—to work with nature, to lean into the curve, to help it help us out of a mess of our own making? Nature, too, is an amazing, complex, and remarkably effective technology—our biggest and most overlooked ally in the climate fight.

...

In 2010 it took Lutz and a team roughly 10,000 hours of measuring, tagging, and detailed mapping of trees to set up the plot; the annual forest census takes another 1,500 hours or so. When I ask Lutz what inspired so much effort, he explains that he was pursuing not just a discrete inquiry but “an abiding objective” that would last as long as his career did: a drive to understand the details of how an old-growth forest actually works. When and why do trees die? (“You'd think people would have worked that out by now,” he adds.) When and why do they gain or lose carbon? How does their most basic biology react as the world around them gets hotter or drier? “You have questions that can't be answered except with a large number of trees over a large number of years,” Lutz says.

...

These days, old-growth forest is itself a rare find, but even within it, the attrition of centuries means that most trees aren't actually that old. As Lutz puts it, “to grow a big tree, you need an old tree, which means a tree has to survive”—not just logging but fires and insects and diseases, and anything else that could have come along during its long life and killed it. Old-growth forest is naturally a complicated mix of ages and sizes and structures. But though truly big trees aren't the most common of the forest's residents, Lutz has learned that their role in its ability to store carbon is as oversized as they are.

...

In a 2018 paper looking at 48 different forest plots, including the one in Wind River, he found that the largest 1 percent of trees contain fully half of all the above-ground live biomass, which also means half of all the carbon, since the two are directly correlated. Young trees sequester carbon faster, packing it on in the vigorous growth of their early years, but they can't begin to compete with what large trees have been able to build into their trunks and branches through years and years of maturation. “You can't sequester a lot of carbon without big trees,” Lutz says. “You just can't do it.”

This makes old trees—and even Munger's much-hated dead trees and logs, which can take centuries to rot in the Northwest—not useless but precious. While a single-age stand would lose 1 percent of its carbon storage if it lost 1 percent of its trees, big trees are so important that a 1 percent loss of individuals in an old forest could reduce its carbon by half. And while old forests eventually begin to reach an equilibrium, at which they're not adding a lot more carbon than they're losing through death and decomposition, researchers have found that the old growth in Wind River is still sequestering new carbon each year, adding to the huge amount it already stores. “Even just putting a thin annual growth layer on such a big cylinder is a huge deal,” explains Ben Vierra, who manages NEON's research in the Pacific Northwest. Bible, deep in the grove, says: “This forest is still putting on forest. Quite a bit actually—it could give a young forest a run for its money.”

https://www.wired.com/story/trees-plants-nature-best-carbon-capture-technology-ever/

All trees are not equal so saving old growth is important and new forests we plant must be resilient and be set up to grow for centuries which is hard as it is which underlying changes.
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kassy

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #186 on: April 08, 2020, 07:44:36 PM »
Mature forest shows little increase in carbon uptake in a CO2-enriched atmosphere

Will mature forests absorb enough carbon from the atmosphere to mitigate climate change as levels of carbon dioxide increase? An experiment in a eucalyptus forest provides fresh evidence.

When atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide increase, land ecosystems take up more carbon from the atmosphere as a result of increased photosynthesis, a process known as CO2 fertilization. It has long been suggested that CO2 fertilization will slow the rate of increase of CO2 levels in the atmosphere1, potentially mitigating climate change. To quantify the effect, ecologists have conducted experiments in which the atmosphere around a confined environment is enriched with CO2 — mostly in ecosystems for which the vegetation is short in stature, to reduce costs. A small number of enrichment experiments have been conducted in young forests, but there is a paucity of knowledge about the CO2-fertilization effect in mature forests. Writing in Nature, Jiang et al.2 present results of the Free-Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE) experiment in a mature forest in Australia. Their estimate of the CO2-fertilization effect is among the lowest yet reported.

Jiang and colleagues carried out their study in a warm-temperate evergreen forest that has been undisturbed for the past 90 years, and which is dominated by eucalyptus trees (Eucalyptus tereticornis). They collected data for all the main carbon pools and fluxes in three circular plots (each 490 square metres; Fig. 1) in which the atmospheric CO2 concentration was elevated by 150 parts per million for 4 years, from 2013 to 2016. These data were compared with those from three control plots that were not enriched in CO2.

The authors report that CO2 enrichment induced a 12% increase in carbon uptake, equivalent to an extra 247 grams of carbon per square metre per year, through gross primary production (GPP; the conversion of CO2 to organic carbon through photosynthesis). Of this, 28% ended up as net primary production (NPP; the fraction of GPP that is used for biomass growth, rather than consumed for metabolic processes) and 12.8% as an increase in the total carbon pools of the ecosystem (that is, in wood and soil). Their results add more uncertainty to already highly variable estimates of CO2 fertilization from previous CO2-enrichment experiments.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00962-0

As you can see here there are all kind of different trees and ecosystems.

I don´t think that Eucalyptus forests are our saving grace.

The key is preserving what we have and strengthening that to make bigger really old growth forests (because 90 years is not really that old see post above).

Also if you make new local forests use local trees.

And that is not going to help much in Australia but we already knew that that is not the place where it is going to help most.
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kassy

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #187 on: April 16, 2020, 04:15:10 PM »
Long-living tropical trees play outsized role in carbon storage

Summary:
A group of trees that grow fast, live long lives and reproduce slowly account for the bulk of the biomass -- and carbon storage -- in some tropical rainforests, a team of scientists says. The finding that these trees, called long-lived pioneers, play a much larger role in carbon storage than previously thought may have implications in efforts to preserve forests as a strategy to fight climate change.

...

Using more than 30 years' worth of data collected from a tropical rainforest in Panama, the team has uncovered some key traits of trees that, when integrated into computer models related to climate change, will improve the models' accuracy. With the team's improved model, the scientists plan to begin answering questions about what drives forest composition over time and what factors affect carbon storage.

Most existing Earth system models used to forecast global climate decades from now, including those used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, represent the trees in a forest as all basically the same.

"This analysis shows that that is not good enough for tropical forests and provides a way forward," Farrior said. "We show that the variation in tropical forest species's growth, survival and reproduction is important for predicting forest carbon storage."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200409141550.htm
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kassy

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #188 on: April 17, 2020, 07:01:25 PM »
The Carbon We Can’t Afford to Lose

We have protected areas for wildlife; we need to protect ecosystems whose death could release massive amounts of CO2 as well

...

But in the face of today’s climate crisis, we must expand our vision of protection even further. We need to start thinking about protected areas as refuges not just for wildlife, but for carbon.

This mental shift would be subtle but profound. It would mean protecting areas that we may not have previously identified as priorities. And, as my co-authors and I found in a new paper for Nature Climate Change, it is necessary if we want to solve the climate crisis.

In addition to a rapid transition towards renewable energy, protecting carbon-rich ecosystems is one of the most effective ways we can fight climate change. For hundreds and even thousands of years, these places have absorbed carbon from the atmosphere and stored it indefinitely within trees and soil. In the process, they have created a global system of living carbon reserves.

...

Our team set out to understand the potential cost of losing these reserves. We wanted to know the extent to which human activity threatened these ecosystems, how much carbon they could potentially release and how much of that carbon we could reabsorb before 2050—when we must reach zero net emissions to minimize the impact of climate change.

What we came up with was a list of places around the world that contain “irrecoverable carbon”—carbon that, if released, we could not recover within the next three decades.

Irrecoverable carbon exists in areas that are already protected, in areas that are somewhat protected and in areas that we wouldn’t otherwise prioritize for protection. Some of them face immediate pressure from agricultural and logging interests. Others will come under threat in the coming decades.

In total, they contain more than 260 gigatons of irrecoverable carbon, equivalent to 26 times last year’s fossil fuel emissions. In other words, the destruction of these ecosystems would make our long-term climate goals effectively impossible. 

That is why we must immediately act to protect living carbon reserves, especially in the three areas with the greatest concentration of irrecoverable carbon: tropical peatlands, mangroves and old-growth forests.

and more on:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-carbon-we-cant-afford-to-lose/

Paper can be accessed via link above.
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kassy

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #189 on: April 21, 2020, 07:03:03 PM »
The linked article discusses how Canada's managed forests have recently changed from carbon sinks to carbon sources:

Title: "As Canada's forests become carbon bombs, Ottawa pushes the crisis off the books"

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/03/30/opinion/canadas-forests-become-carbon-bombs-ottawa-pushes-crisis-books

Extract:
•   "The climate crisis unfolding in Canada's managed forest lands, as they flip from much-needed carbon absorbers into super-emitters
•   How unnatural surges in insect outbreaks and wildfires are fueling the crisis
•   The troubling data showing that logging is now extracting more carbon than grows back, pushing our forests over the edge
•   And finally, the government's scramble to push the crisis, and any responsibility for it, off the books"
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Juan C. García

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #190 on: April 30, 2020, 02:22:36 PM »
In fast-warming Minnesota, scientists are trying to plant the forests of the future
Quote
“The forest can’t perpetuate itself the way it once did,” said Chris Swanston, a U.S. Forest Service ecologist and director of the Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science. Forests are always evolving, he added. “It’s just with climate change, things are changing faster and in different ways. We’re having to roll with that change a lot faster and be a much more active part of it.”

That fast change contributes to some “zombie” forests in parts of the state, said his colleague Stephen Handler, a Forest Service climate change specialist.

“There are places where climate change is already influencing forest regeneration,” Handler said. “Big, healthy trees overhead — but on the forest floor, no baby trees to fill in the gap.”

The fate of Minnesota’s forests depends in large part on humans and whether they can significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions that fuel warming trends, Frelich told state lawmakers last year, adding, “There’s still time to change the outcome.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/climate-environment/climate-change-minnesota/?itid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_climatesolutions-635pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans
Which is the best answer to Sep-2012 ASI lost (compared to 1979-2000)?
50% [NSIDC Extent] or
73% [PIOMAS Volume]

Volume is harder to measure than extent, but 3-dimensional space is real, 2D's hide ~50% thickness gone.
-> IPCC/NSIDC trends [based on extent] underestimate the real speed of ASI lost.

kassy

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #191 on: May 07, 2020, 12:31:07 PM »
Logging Fueled Last Year's Catastrophic Megafires In Australia And Could Spark Repeats

...

 a new study in Nature Ecology and Evolution (links to study on link, k) claims the influence of logging has been overlooked.

The paper’s authors are Australian, and their focus is on the unprecedented fires that ripped through millions of hectares of Australia's forests during the Southern Hemisphere’s most recent summer. However, Professor James Watson of the University of Queensland told IFLScience their conclusions apply worldwide.

“The general processes are the same everywhere,” Prof. Watson said. “When you log a forest you open up a canopy so it gets more dried out. There is moisture loss from the soil and more wind, which dries things out more.” The loss of windbreaks allows the fires to move faster and become hotter. Moreover, Watson noted in a statement, “[Logging] can leave up to 450 tonnes of combustible fuel per hectare close to the ground – by any measure, that’s an incredibly dangerous level of combustible material in seasonally dry landscapes.”

Cool season fires are lit after timber removal to reduce fuel and encourage regrowth. However, Watson told IFLScience, “This doesn’t get rid of all of it, and it just dries the soil out more,” making an area more vulnerable to future fires.

Advocates for native forest logging often claim the industry is a defence against wildfires, but Watson told IFLScience the claim never comes with evidence to back that up, or even much logic. “The only argument is that it removes some of the wood from the system, but in the process it makes what is left more flammable.” Watson notes fire-building starts with kindling, not thick logs, and an area with a thousand regrowth saplings is far more likely to burn than one with a few mighty trees, even if it has less total wood.

Fire rips through canopies of equal height easily but is obstructed by the multi-story canopies of areas untouched for centuries.

The consequences endure. “There are places in Australia that were logged a century ago and haven’t been logged since, but they are still more vulnerable to fire,” Watson said, although some ecosystems recover more quickly.

The authors urgently call for logging to be moved from native forests to plantations, and particularly for protection of forests around towns. Watson stressed that the most urgent issue is to avoid “salvage logging” of areas that burned last summer. While promoted as a way to put dead wood that would otherwise go to waste to use, Watson says it simply increases the change of a repeat. Instead, he told IFLScience, replanting with a mix of species can help provide a safety buffer.

https://www.iflscience.com/environment/logging-fueled-last-years-catastrophic-megafires-in-australia-and-could-spark-repeats/
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #192 on: May 08, 2020, 02:21:29 PM »
We need more city forests.

"Around the world, metropolitan cities are incorporating urban forestry into city architecture in order to improve air pollution & regenerate urban areas. Researchers say these carbon-hungry structures can help fight pollution & improve the mental & physical health of residents.“
https://mobile.twitter.com/pattrn/status/1257007241233870848
Image below; 1 minute video at the link.
People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

kassy

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #193 on: May 08, 2020, 10:34:12 PM »
They are not proper forests plus the plants must be limited by rooting depth. Still an interesting concept and we are getting a building like that too.

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Tom_Mazanec

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #194 on: May 09, 2020, 10:14:37 AM »
Reminds me of Oliver Wendell Douglas before he moved to Hootersville.

kassy

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #195 on: May 09, 2020, 11:20:39 AM »
Brazil's Amazon: Surge in deforestation as military prepares to deploy

Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rainforest rose sharply last month as the country prepared to send troops to try to curb illegal logging and mining.

Brazil's space research agency said the area destroyed in April was 64% bigger than in the same period last year.

In the first four months of 2020, destruction of the forest by illegal loggers and ranchers rose 55%, it said.

...

Brazil's National Institute of Space Research (Inpe) said that more than 405 sq km (156 sq miles) of the Amazon had been deforested last month compared with 248 sq km in April last year.

Between January and April, a total of 1,202 sq km was wiped out, it said.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-52595030
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #196 on: May 22, 2020, 12:29:36 AM »
Tree Deaths in Urban Settings Are Linked to Leaks from Natural Gas Pipelines Below Streets
Quote
Natural gas leaks from underground pipelines are killing trees in densely populated urban environments, a new study suggests, adding to concerns over such leaks fueling climate change and explosion hazards.

The study, which took place in Chelsea, Massachusetts, a low-income immigrant community near Boston, also highlights the many interrelated environmental challenges in a city that faces high levels of air pollution, soaring summer temperatures and is now beset by one of the highest coronavirus infection rates in the nation.   

Dead or dying trees were 30 times more likely to have been exposed to methane in the soil surrounding their roots than healthy trees, according to the study published last month in the journal Environmental Pollution.

"I was pretty blown away by that result," said Madeleine Scammell, an environmental health professor at Boston University's School of Public Health who co-authored the study. "If these trees were humans, we would be talking about what to do to stop this immediately."

The study measured soil concentrations of methane and oxygen at four points around the trunks of 84 dead or dying trees and 97 healthy trees. For trees that had elevated levels of methane in the surrounding soil, the highest concentrations were found in the dirt between the tree and the street, suggesting that the gas had leaked from natural gas pipelines, which are typically buried beneath roadways.   ...   
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19052020/tree-deaths-urban-natural-gas-pipelines
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kassy

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #197 on: May 23, 2020, 10:33:32 AM »
Amazon under threat: fires, loggers and now virus

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51300515

General article about the amazon with some interesting graphics.
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kassy

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #198 on: May 23, 2020, 10:46:53 AM »
We found 2˚C of warming will push most tropical rainforests above their safe ‘heat threshold

...

This is why scientists like us are concerned that climate change will mean death outweighs growth, and tropical forests will eventually switch to releasing more carbon into the atmosphere than they take out. Our new research, published in the journal Science, shows that tropical forests can resist small increases in temperature – but only up to a point.

Such forests are found right across the tropics and although they’re generally hot and wet, this simplification hides a lot of variation in climate. Some forests at the southern edge of the Amazon reach 35˚C in the hottest months of the year, while others towards the foothills of the Andes reach no more than 26˚C. The jungles of the western Amazon and Borneo are wet all year round, while elsewhere in Amazonia and in Africa there are “rainforests” that have virtually no rainfall in the driest months. We used this variation to understand how climate affects the amount of carbon tropical forests store, and to predict how this might change in the future.

Why did we look at variation between locations to predict changes over time? Because, since individual trees live for a long time, even decades of monitoring cannot tell us exactly how a forest will respond to climate change in the long term. For example, Amazonian forests that are drying fastest are slowly shifting towards more drought-adapted tree species, but this is only evident if we look at the youngest trees.

...

For example, we can use the difference in the amount of carbon stored by forests growing at 30˚C and 32˚C as a guide for how the former might respond over the long-term to a 2˚C increase in temperature.

So, we joined efforts with 223 other researchers. The international team measured more than half a million trees in 813 forests across the tropics. In each forest patch we recorded tree diameter, species and height. And a few years later we went back to measure how much each tree had grown, if some had died, or if new ones had established. Each tree had a numerical tag, which allowed us to track them over their lives. Overall we identified about 10,000 tree species and made two million measurements of diameter, across 24 tropical countries.

We found that tropical forests can tolerate small changes in temperatures, but only up to a point. Once annual mean daytime temperatures in the warmest part of the year hit 32˚C or more, these forests release four times as much carbon to the atmosphere per degree increase in temperature as they would below the threshold. This is mostly because hotter temperatures reduce tree growth, but it’s also down to heat combined with drought meaning trees are more likely to die and decompose, which releases carbon back into the atmosphere.

Adaptation is possible – if we act now

Our results indicate that we have an opportunity to ensure forests can adapt to climate change, but we need to act now. Firstly, we need to protect and connect the forests that remain, so that tree species are able to move as the climate warms.

But trees go from place to place very slowly: they can only “move” when animals or the wind carry their seeds somewhere else where climatic conditions are suitable. The more fragmented the forests, the less likely seeds can reach certain patches. Also, smaller patches are more affected by “edge effects” such as increased light, drier air and fire risks, creating challenging conditions for seeds to germinate and grow. Therefore, keeping forests connected is of crucial importance.

Secondly, we need to limit emissions. Even limiting global temperatures to 2°C above pre-industrial levels – already a best case scenario – will push nearly three-quarters of tropical forests above the 32°C heat threshold we identify. As each degree increase above the heat threshold releases 100 billion tonnes of CO₂ from tropical forests to the atmosphere, representing over 280 years of annual fossil fuel emissions by a country such as the UK, there is a clear incentive to avoid further warming.

https://theconversation.com/we-found-2-c-of-warming-will-push-most-tropical-rainforests-above-their-safe-heat-threshold-139071



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kassy

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Re: Forests: An Endangered Resource
« Reply #199 on: May 23, 2020, 10:52:56 AM »
Illegal logging ‘mafia’ stripping hornbill habitat in Northeast India

Illegal logging is driving the loss of forest that poses the biggest threat to rare hornbill species in the Eastern Himalayan forests of India’s Arunachal Pradesh state.

Hunting of the hornbills for their casques and meat was previously a major threat, but has been largely defused through a conservation program that engages the indigenous Nyishi community.

The Papum Reserve Forest in which the birds are found doesn’t have the same protections as India’s national parks, and suffers from logging activity that goes largely unchecked by authorities.

Indigenous activists working to protect the forest and its wildlife have come under attack from illegal loggers.

...

Over the past decade, extensive illegal logging has led to the loss of more than 20% of the reserve’s forest cover, according to the study. Satellite data and imagery show this loss has continued into 2020, with what appear to be logging roads snaking ever deeper into old-growth rainforest

...

https://news.mongabay.com/2020/05/illegal-logging-mafia-stripping-hornbill-habitat-in-northeast-india/

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