So how, exactly, does global warming kill forests?

Posted on April 18, 2016 by GarryRogers

More than half our woodland trees have died in some areas of the Southwest.

Global warming has killed half a billion trees across the U.S.

Global warming is killing forests around the world. @bberwyn photo.

Staff Report

Scientists tracking massive forest die-offs say a new study may help forest managers learn how to predict which trees will succumb to global warming — and what the implications are for the global carbon balance.

“There are some common threads that we might be able to use to predict which species are going to be more vulnerable in the future,” said University of Utah biologist William Anderegg, explaining that recent tree-killing droughts in the western U.S. were marked more by elevated temperature than by a lack of rainfall.

“These widespread tree die-offs are a really early and visible sign of climate change already affecting our landscapes,” Anderegg said.

More stories on global warming and forests:

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Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859)

Posted on February 28, 2016 by GarryRogers

Humboldt’s Importance

Alexander von Humboldt was the most influential man of his age. His contributions helped unify our understanding of nature and how human alterations could lead to dangerous changes. Heads of government, scientists, engineers, artists, and authors were inspired by and consulted with him on a range of topics. Around the world, there are more cities, parks, mountains, and rivers named for Humboldt than anyone else that ever lived.

Dr. Ulloa Ulloa (front, left) and field assistants at the Humboldt statue on Chimborazo in 2009.

Humboldt’s strengths were his curiosity, his tireless desire to record his experiences, his ability to see connections, and his ability to write about objective facts with lyrical prose. He described nature as a web of life, noting and mapping the plant and animal changes with elevation on Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador a century before C. Hart Merriam mapped life zones in central Arizona. He invented isotherms, the lines on maps connecting areas of equal temperatures, and he warned that human destruction of nature was having widespread consequences. He described the drop in stream flow, lake level, and general climate change resulting from cutting forests and diverting streams for monoculture farming. Humboldt influenced and inspired Goethe, Darwin, Hooker, Bolivar, Thoreau, Muir, and many more. Without Humboldt’s books, Darwin might never have gone to sea, South America might have remained a slave-holding Spanish colony for another century, and nature conservation might have lagged even farther behind human alteration of the land.

Humboldt’s zonal flora and fauna map of Chimborazo.

I am delighted to report that my grandson born in October, 2014 bears the name Alexander. Alex’s birthplace is just 15 miles west of my home in Humboldt, AZ.

The essay introduced below provides links to some the books by and about Humboldt. The one by Andrea Wulf is one of my all-time favorite biographical works.

Humboldt and Bonpland’s Essai sur la géographie des plantes and its significance

By: Randy Smith, Image Technician | Metadata Librarian. Peter H. Raven Library, Missouri Botanical Garden

“Over 210 years after Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland’s work titled Essai sur la géographie des plantes was published, climate science, book conservation, and botanical research have converged around this 1805 work. This book was digitized and made available in 2008 by the Missouri Botanical Garden for the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Modern science meets historic data

“In 2015, scientists published a paper detailing their findings as they retraced the path that Humboldt and Bonpland took on their ascent up the dormant volcano, Chimborazo, in Ecuador. The paper, “Strong upslope shifts in Chimborazo’s vegetation over two centuries since Humboldt,” utilized the data and map contained in Essai sur la géographie des plantes and presented modern data from the same locations as detailed in Essai to reveal the effects of climate change on the volcano.

“As Stephen T. Jackson writes in the 2009 book, Essay on the geography of plants, the significance of Humboldt and Bonpland’s work describing their ascent up Chimborazo lies in the detailed data they collected at various elevations. Jackson and historian Andrea Wulf have noted that while most people have forgotten Humboldt, his significance in unifying early scientific disciplines into an inter-connected web of life cannot be understated. Measurements taken on Chimborazo include light intensity, temperature, barometric pressure, and gravitational force. Descriptions of the flora and fauna at various levels of Chimborazo were described and illustrated on the map contained with Essai sur la géographie des plantes.” Continue reading.

Seven million hectares of forests have been lost in Argentina over the past 20 years

Posted on February 19, 2016 by GarryRogers

Between 1998 and 2006, the deforested surface of Argentina was of almost 3,000 hectares –the equivalent of 250,000 hectares a year or one hectare every two minutes.
A forest law was passed in march of 2007, despite opposition by some lawmakers from the largely deforested northern provinces.
The funds assigned by the Argentinian Congress for forest protection in 2016 are 23 times less than what is established by the national forestry norm. news.mongabay.com

GR: Drought here, harvest there and the forests disappear.

The beetles: eighty-nine million acres of abrupt climate change

Posted on February 17, 2016 by GarryRogers

dying forest Higher temperatures in North America have contributed to a pine beetle infestation that has decimated millions of forest acres. www.truth-out.org

GR: If you can make it through the muzzy prose, you find that we are losing our forest ecosystems. Right now.

How forest management and deforestation are impacting climate

Posted on February 7, 2016 by GarryRogers

“Two new studies reveal how altering the composition of trees in forests is influencing not only the carbon cycle, but air surface temperatures to a significant degree as well. The results highlight how human-made changes to forests hold more severe consequences than previously believed. Worldwide, reforested areas are increasingly prominent; for example, in Europe, 85% of forests were managed by humans as of 2010. Strong favoritism of foresters to plant more commercially valuable trees — such as Scot pines, Norway spruce and beech — has resulted in reforestation of 633,000 square kilometers of conifers at the expense of broadleaved forests, which decreased by 436,000 square kilometers since 1850.” www.sciencedaily.com

GR: Another look at this story.

New report assesses impacts of drought on US forests

Posted on February 3, 2016 by GarryRogers

A new U.S. Forest Service report, edited in partnership with Duke University, projects that drought will have far-reaching impacts on U.S. forests and grasslands in coming decades. phys.org

What about logging, grazing, roads, transmission corridors, and recreation?

Cause for hope: Secondary tropical forests put on weight fast

Posted on February 3, 2016 by GarryRogers

How fast tropical forests recover after deforestation has major consequences for climate change mitigation. A team including Smithsonian scientists discovered that some secondary tropical forests recover biomass quickly: … phys.org

Hope? Perhaps we would have hope if we reversed population growth and greenhouse gas emissions today.

Reporting On Fire Sends Mixed Information

Posted on January 22, 2016 by GarryRogers

One can’t know what was really said by someone in a news report–reporters do get quotes wrong–but I would agree with the Chris Topik, TNC representative, that more people are living in the forest and thus vulnerable to fire. But I disagree with his implied solution that we need more logging of the forest, rather it rests with the county governments to limit home building in these areas, and to reduce the flammability of homes not the forest. We simply cannot log our way to a fire-proof forest. www.thewildlifenews.com

GR: Whenever the U. S. Forest Service claims that forests need to be logged, you can bet there is a large corporation that is going to profit.

How Much Ice is Right? Collaboratives and forest ecosystems

Posted on January 15, 2016 by GarryRogers

“In my mind the right amount of trees, wildfire, juniper, bark beetles, is whatever exists. All of these are controlled by climate, just like the amount of ice that covered the continents and mountains was dictated by climate. Climate will decide what density of trees can grow on any particular site.

LOGGING IS NOT BENIGN

“One of the assumptions of many collaboratives, agencies like the Forest Service, and of course the timber industry is that logging emulates natural processes. There is a very small amount of truth in that logging as well as wildfire, beetles and other natural agents do kill trees. However, that is like suggesting that someone shot to death by a gun is analogous to dying from old age because in both cases, the person is dead. The sad truth is that most so-called “restoration” is degrading our forest ecosystems.” www.thewildlifenews.com

GR: Wuerthner debunks many of the forest management myths and irresponsible policies. I think his most important point is that logging, the harvest of timber, is always harmful in all its guises. The U. S. Forest Service, on behalf of timber companies, has developed numerous false arguments that support logging.

I agree that the current mass extinction would slow if we did what Wuerthner advises–just leave the forests alone. That is true, but there are other serious problems. Careful scientific analyses of global warming projections indicate that by century end, many forests will be gone. Climate is changing too fast for the trees to move to new locations or adapt to the new conditions.

Worldwide, agribusiness is clearing and replacing them with crops and pastures that supply food to the bulging human population.

We are past the point where improving land-use practices can save nature. We are at the point where our environmental writers need to attack greenhouse gas emissions, and human population.