Category: Ecosystems
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Should There Be A ‘Save The African Savanna’ Movement?
These savannahs conjure up visions of vast open plains. The reality is that from an original area a third larger than the continental United States, only 25 percent remains
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Maybe Palm Oil Plantations And Biodiversity Don’t Need To Be At War
Conservation science can help protect the variety of living things in tropical landscapes even if they are being turned into oil palm plantations, new research argues.
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When Hornbills In Asia Are Disturbed Forests Disappear
Hornbills are facing extinction in many places and the loss of hornbills would have cascading negative effects on the seed dispersal of plants dependent on them in future.
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Drought And Fire May Permanently Change Western Forest Landscapes
The result is bad news for forests here, in the West and around the world. A planet with fewer trees is less able to fight climate change, because trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as part of photosynthesis. “The future in a lot of places is looking shrubbier.”
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How Deforestation, Desertification, and Climate Change Spur Migration
Increased land degradation is also one of the factors that can lead to migration and it is being exacerbated by climate change
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Tiny Plants On Ocean Surface Found To Affect Weather
Microscopic plants that grow on the thin surface of the ocean can influence cloud formation miles above. The discovery gives scientists a better understanding of how clouds are made in some parts of the world. It also could improve their forecasts of how global warming will affect cloud cover. (Click on title for full story.)
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Unprecedented Logging Of Africa’s Forests Devastates Bird Populations
Our most disturbing finding was that more than half of all understory birds had vanished in only 15 years,
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Ancient Tree Stumps And New Science Reveal Fire Ecosystem’s Secrets
Today, land managers actively burn the landscape to restore and mimic the natural cycle. But there’s a problem — we don’t actually know when or how often the pinelands burned, and there’s a distinct lack of “natural” pinelands left to provide clues. We have a lot of anecdotal and ideas about how these systems used to burn, but we need direct evidence. The trees are the answer.
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Study Declares Agriculture In Deforested Amazon Will Fail
As a final word, large-scale agriculture expansion in Amazonia may introduce climate feedbacks that would reduce precipitation, leading agriculture expansion in Amazonia to become self-defeating: the results of this study suggest that the more agriculture expands, the less productive it becomes. This would be a no-win situation, in which we all lose. Therefore, agriculture expansion in Brazil should prioritize land already converted and must be accompanied with comprehensive forest conservation to counteract externalities of this process.
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Restoration Ecology: Are Natives The Only Answer Or Just The Answer We wish For?
Many ecosystems have been degraded or modified, and these are the sorts of systems you target for restoration. But when a system has been altered so much the original species might not be the best choice to bring it back to health.