Foresters Articles
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Farmers' (local and colonists) perceptions of environmental changes in the forest frontier of the upper Amazon, Peru
Amazon ecosystem degradation profoundly impacts life supporting processes of global importance such as climate regulation, as well as local conditions for livelihoods. In Peru's highland jungle, an expanding deforestation front of forest conversion to agriculture has vastly transformed the landscape. Small–scale farming, the main driver of forest degradation, and consequently household natural ...
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A Decade After Asian Tsunami, New Forests Protect the Coast
The tsunami that struck Indonesia in 2004 obliterated vast areas of Aceh province. But villagers there are using an innovative microcredit scheme to restore mangrove forests and other coastal ecosystems that will serve as a natural barrier against future killer waves and storms. On the day that the Indian Ocean tsunami hit his village a decade ago, fisherman Hajamuddin was at sea. It was the ...
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Sustainability requires that we learn to embrace change, not fight it
Instead of engineering nature into standardized systems of production, we should look for ways to integrate our lifestyles within the cycles of the world around us. Limits to growth are a fundamental and widely accepted principle of sustainability. You might even call them the first law of sustainability. Nevertheless, as ecological economist Richard Norgaard first noted, limits make a terrible ...
By Ensia
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Palm oil: not the evil we think it is
Oil palm is a globally important crop, but our hatred of it stops us from pushing for better ways to develop it. The oil palm, one of around 2,600 species of palm, must be one of the most hated plants on Earth. Ask any self-respecting environmentalist, and his or her face is likely to turn red with anger at the mere mention of its reviled name: Oil Palm. The oil palm is the Lord Voldemort of ...
By Ensia
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Can medicinal plants alleviate poverty and protect Nepal’s fragile environment?
Farmers in the high Himalayas partner with a U.S.–based nonprofit to cultivate medicinal plants — and the environmental and economic benefits they offer. On a trip to their childhood home in eastern Nepal in the early 2000s, Nepalese staff members of the Mountain Institute — an organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., that works to protect mountain environments and ...
By Ensia
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The Role of Mangroves in Fisheries Enhancement
In 2011 humans caught and consumed 78.9 million tonnes of fish, crustaceans, molluscs and other species groups from the world’s oceans, accounting for 16.6% of the world’s animal protein intake (FAO 2012). This is projected to increase further, to over 93 million tonnes by 2030 (World Bank 2013). Global demand for fish products has increased dramatically over recent decades. Fishing ...
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How did palm oil become such a problem — and what can we do about it?
Production of this ubiquitous ingredient is devastating for the environment. Solutions are complex, but they are out there. Last August, from the window of a jet high over Sumatra, I counted nearly a dozen plumes of smoke rising from the vast jungles and plantations below. Some more than a half-mile wide, they looked like pillars holding up the sky. That week the Indonesian Disaster Mitigation ...
By Ensia
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The effects of Picea schrenkiana forest litter on snow surface albedo
In this paper, we analyze the characteristics of the snow albedo of different underlying surfaces based on measurements of shortwave radiation and observations of forest litter on snow surfaces, both in an open, unforested environment and in areas with differing forest canopy openness. The fractional litter coverage was obtained through the binarization of digital photos of forest litter ...
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A Model for Communal Forest Management
Guna Yala, an autonomous indigenous territory inside Panama, is one of the most unusual places on the planet, where the Guna people have preserved their way of life and the forest around them thanks in large part to their exceptional land rights and sovereignty. At first glance, life on Guna Yala’s dozens of inhabited Caribbean islands seems idyllic — a place without cars, with little ...
By Ensia
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Time for Trees to Pack Their Trunks?
As climate changes, forest ecosystems will need to shift to more suitable sites. Should humans lend a helping hand? During the last two springs, contract planters for The Nature Conservancy have spread out through the pine, spruce and aspen forest of northeastern Minnesota. Wielding steel hoedads, they have planted almost 110,000 tree seedlings on public land. What’s noteworthy about ...
By Ensia
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Developing a forest naturalness indicator for Europe - Concept and methodology for a high nature value (HNV) forest indicator
Background In Europe, forests cover around 40 % of the land area (190 million ha), making Europe one of the most forest-rich regions in the world. Forests are important habitats for many species of wildlife. Yet, forestry can also have negative impacts on biodiversity as unsustainable forest operations can lead to forest degradation and loss of biodiversity. In more recent times increased land ...
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Mapping of forest cover and assessment of ecosystems and ecosystem services related to local livelihoods
The municipality of Santa Cruz del Quiché, located in the Quiché Department of Guatemala, is characterized by degraded natural resources and a population highly vulnerable to climate change impacts. As part of the Partners for Resilience programme, Guatemalan Red Cross and Wetlands International conducted a study to map the forest cover and ecosystems of the Cucubá river ...
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Why Our Buildings Should Be Made From Wood
If done correctly, using wood for buildings would have a number of environmental benefits without loss of biodiversity or carbon storage capacity. Although it may seem counterintuitive, it would be better if we built buildings from wood than from concrete, brick, aluminium and steel. We use millions of tons of these modern materials every year. They have many valuable properties, but are ...
By Ensia
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Benefits of minimum tillage case study
In Hungary, the MARGINS project is being conducted near Lake Balaton - the largest lake in Central Europe. The lake is renowned for its beauty and wildlife. Its surrounding hilly landscape is covered with rich brown forest soil. This landscape is, however, prone to soil erosion -in particular, rills develop when soil is weakened by excessive tillage and exposed to intense rainstorms. If not ...
By Syngenta
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Chicago Council lists three-decade changes in greenhouse gases and average temperature
In 2011, we wrote a column, “Global warming is happening: How should farmers respond?” (http://agpolicy.org/weekcol/549.html). In that column we began by saying, “There was a time when one could legitimately argue that there was a lack of scientific agreement over the issue of the role of humans in global warming and even whether we were in a cooling or warming period. It is ...
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The Chilean Water Allocation Mechanism, established in its Water Code of 1981
A long narrow strip of land (no more than 430 km wide) between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean, Chile stretches 4,630 km from near lat. 18°S to Cape Horn (lat. 56°S), including at its southern end the Strait of Magellan and Tierra del Fuego, an island shared with Argentina. In the Pacific Ocean are Chile's several island possessions, including Easter Island, the Juan Fernández ...
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FORMA: A Near-Real Time Alert System for Tropical Forest Loss
If you were the administrator of a protected forest, you would ideally have a staff of rangers on patrol, backed up by law enforcement and high-resolution satellite images to keep you up-to-date on the forest’s condition. In this ideal world, illegal activity would quickly be halted. Yet the reality is that many protected areas lack these resources. Updated maps of forest damage can take ...
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Bamboo: The Secret Weapon in Forest and Landscape Restoration?
In the world of forestry, bamboo doesn’t always get the credit it deserves. Dismissed as a weed or marginalized in traditional forest management, bamboo could actually play an important role in forest and landscape restoration. With adequate attention, investment, and the right standards in place, it could become a major renewable and sustainable crop—if we can update our outmoded ...
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9 Maps that explain the World`s Forests
This post is co-authored with Dave Thau, senior developer advocate for Google Earth Engine, Google's satellite image processing platform. By the time we find out about deforestation, it’s usually too late to take action. Scientists have been studying forests for centuries, chronicling the vital importance of these ecosystems for human society. But most of us still lack timely and reliable ...
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Global Forest watch - join the movement
We know remarkably little about what is happening to forests. Businesses currently have no way of determining whether or how much the soy, palm oil, or pulp and paper they use contribute to deforestation. So companies like Unilever and Nestlé, which have committed to halting deforestation in their supply chains, are unable to measure progress toward this important goal. Concerned ...
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