Forestry News

United Press International: Global warming is speeding the release of carbon dioxide, a chief greenhouse gas, from underground peat in subarctic wetlands, Dutch research indicates. The research suggests rising temperatures are adding to the magnitude and velocity of global warming, Free University plant ecologist Ellen Dorrepaal and colleagues write in the journal Nature. Their research shows that raising temperatures about 1 degree Celsius accelerates total ecosystem respiration rates by as much as 60 ...

Press Association: London needs more parkland and to plant more trees to combat predicted rises in summer temperatures, an environment chief said today. Mayor Boris Johnson's environment adviser Isabel Dedring said climate projections showed average summer temperatures in London could be some 3.9C higher than today by 2080, and as much as 6C to 10C on the hottest days. The "urban heat island effect" in which buildings absorb and release heat, maintaining a higher temperature in cities than ...

Greenwire: U.S. EPA's planned toughening of health standards for nitrogen dioxide (NO2) emissions is not tough enough for some advocacy groups. The EPA proposal would set a new one-hour maximum NO2 limit to prevent spikes in air pollution. The proposal also involves setting up new monitors in locations with the highest concentrations, like major roads in urban areas. The agency is proposing to retain the current annual average standard of 53 parts per billion (ppb). The proposal's range ...

Oregonian:

Reuters: Lignite power plants belch dust and smoke into the air above the southern Greek town of Megalopolis, but residents resistant to environmental arguments have blocked a scheme to build the country's biggest solar energy project on a nearby hillside. Local game hunters, angry that an earlier plan to grow a forest on the site was scrapped, have gone to court to try to stop the construction of a 50-megawatt solar panel park. "Under no conditions will we accept sacrificing even one ...

Associated Press: Scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey said Wednesday there are fewer large-diameter trees growing in Yosemite National Park than in years past, most likely because of climate change. Warmer temperatures and smaller snow packs are creating conditions where fewer Ponderosa and sugar pines and other heartier trees can flourish, said Jim Lutz, a researcher at the University of Washington who co-wrote the study. "Most of the water that becomes available in the Sierra Nevada ...

Mongabay: Warmer, drier climate in the American West will increase the incidence and severity of forest fires, worsening air quality, reports a new study accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres. Using climate models to forecast the impact of moderate global warming on western U.S. wildfire patterns and atmospheric chemistry, Harvard University's Jennifer Logan and colleagues forecast that organic carbon aerosols would increase by about 40 percent over the ...

National Public Radio: When wildlife biologists visited a remote spot in Canada called Banks Island in the spring of 2004, they discovered thousands upon thousands of dead musk oxen. It took years to determine the cause. They called it "rain-on-snow" -- the worst case of it ever documented. Musk oxen clash horns in a battle for dominance on Alaska's Seward Peninsula. Researchers suspect that herds of reindeer, musk oxen, and other Arctic animals may face starvation as a warming climate impacts their ability ...

Greenwire: The Senate this afternoon will begin debate on a $34.3 billion fiscal 2010 energy and water spending bill as environmental groups press lawmakers to strip provisions they say will damage wetlands and fish habitat in Missouri. Overall, the Senate bill, S. 1436 (pdf), would provide $27.4 billion to the Energy Department, $5.4 billion to the Army Corps of Engineers and $1.1 billion to the Interior Department's Bureau of Reclamation. The amendment picture was not clear at press ...

Scientific American: At first glance it seems like good news: This summer the size of the Gulf of Mexico dead zone is less than half its forecasted size, measuring about 3,000 square miles, according to the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. Well, it might be smaller--but unfortunately it's more severe. Typically dead zones affect waters near the ocean floor but this year the zone extends up closer to the surface. Dead zones are waters that have become so choked of oxygen that they're ...

Reuters: Egypt is working alongside other Nile Basin countries to reach a framework on use of river water for all states but will not compromise its historic rights, the country's water minister said on Monday. Under a 1929 agreement, heavyweight Egypt has the right to veto projects upstream on the Nile that would affect its water share of 55.5 billion cubic meters a year, the lion's share of the river's total flow of around 84 billion cubic meters. Nile Basin countries have been eager ...

Reuters: The "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico, an area choked by low oxygen levels that threatens marine life, is smaller than expected this year but more deadly, the government said on Monday. The zone, caused by a runoff of agricultural chemicals from farms along the Mississippi River, measured about 3,000 square miles or about 1.5 times the size of the state of Delaware, compared with estimates that it would measure up to nearly 8,500 square miles, scientists said. "Clearly the flow ...

theage: A TIMBER industry body is being investigated over claims it misled the public by asserting that buying wood products helps the fight against climate change. The consumer watchdog has asked Forest & Wood Products Australia to respond to allegations it made two deceptive claims: that the carbon dioxide stored in trees is locked up when they are logged and converted into wood products, and that forestry is one of Australia's most greenhouse-friendly industries. The "Wood. ...

The Roanoke Times: American Electric Power, parent of Appalachian Power Co., reports that it is "the largest purchaser of coal in the Western Hemisphere." For Appalachian, coal-fired power plants generate about 98 percent of the electricity it delivers to customers in a territory that includes portions of Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee. For AEP companywide, coal fuels about 70 percent of power generation. And all that coal, an increasingly controversial fuel, helps explain the upward ...

Environment News Service: Computer models of climate change may be underestimating how much water is likely to run off the land and back into the oceans as human activities pump more carbon dioxide and ozone into the atmosphere, a team of NASA-funded researchers concludes. Runoff may be as much as 17 percent higher in forests of the eastern United States when models also account for changes in soil nitrogen levels and atmospheric ozone exposure. "Failure to consider the effects of nitrogen limitation ...

Indo-Asian News Service: Like animals, trees can camouflage themselves too, a new study has found. One tree even kept changing the colour of its leaves to protect them from a giant flightless bird. "Plants are attacked by a bewildering array of herbivores and in response they have evolved a variety of defences to deter predators such as thorns and noxious chemicals," said Kevin Burns from Victoria University, New Zealand, lead researcher of the new study. "Animals often use colours to hide from ...

Edmonton Sun: A dozen Greenpeace activists have chained themselves to a building in Quebec City housing the provincial Ministry of Natural Resources. The environmental group says it plans to disrupt ministry business today to protest what it says is the destruction of intact forests. Greenpeace dropped off a load of two-by-fours outside the building before the activists chained themselves to the doors (at 880 Chemin Saint-Foy). They also hung a banner reading: "Boreal Forest: The Destruction ...

New Scientist: Is it the final curtain for the Fertile Crescent? This summer, as Turkish dams reduce the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to a trickle, farmers abandon their desiccated fields across Iraq and Syria, and efforts to revive the Mesopotamian marshes appear to be abandoned, climate modellers are warning that the current drought is likely to become permanent. The Mesopotamian cradle of civilisation seems to be returning to desert. Last week, Iraqi ministers called for urgent talks with upstream ...

BBC: United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has been in the wilds of Mongolia, travelling over rough roads to meet a nomad family. He has attended a traditional sports festival and visited a nature reserve. Mr Ban's primary reason for visiting the north Asian country is to learn how climate change affects the far-flung corners of the globe. Desertification and deforestation are major threats to Mongolia's nomads, despite recent flooding in the capital. Child ...

Telegraph: Cultivation of a field of potatoes designed to be resistant to pests were abandoned over a year ago when environmental protesters ripped up the crop But, without alerting the public as is usual when such trials begin, the project has been restarted, prompting environmental groups to warn that local farms and nearby residents could be put at risk. The 400 plants in the field, near Tadcaster in North Yorkshire, were removed just weeks after planting in May 2008 as a result of ...