Forest management and protected areas are intertwined in addressing climate change, as proper management can enhance carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation. Protected areas play a vital role in preserving intact forests that act as carbon sinks and promote ecosystem resilience. Effective forest management within and outside protected areas is essential for mitigating climate change impacts, maintaining healthy ecosystems, and ensuring sustainable resource use.
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Global demand for palm oil has resulted in huge expansion of the palm plantations needed to produce it, causing widespread tropical deforestation and species loss. To address this, researchers planted islands of native trees among the palms in a large plantation, and showed that this approach increases ecosystem health, without affecting crop yields. The team say that while protecting existing tropical rainforests should remain a priority, tree islands represent a promising way to restore ecosystems.
Andrew Latimer joins the podcast today to discuss his work as a professor in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis. Andrew is here to address responses to fire and drought in California, and educate us on the intricacies of forest environments.
Joe & Korey sit down with Eric Olson, Consulting Forester and Owner of Legacy Forest Management, based in Wisconsin. Learn about what is involved with being a procurement forester, managing forests for habitat, recreation, and timber sales. Eric brings his many years of experience and expertise in this conversation about traditional forestry in Wisconsin!
A British company has claimed that the production and use of toilet paper is responsible for 15% of deforestation globally. We investigate the claim and ask what the true environmental cost of toilet paper is. Charlotte McDonald talks to climate change scientist Professor Mary Gagen, chief adviser on forests to the World Wide Fund for Nature, the WWF.
Brazil's president-elect, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is renewing calls to protect the Amazon and reign in the deforestation. Climate scientists are encouraged but so far there aren't a lot of specifics of how this might happen. NPR's Kirk Siegler traveled to a remote Amazonian research station that is also threatened by illegal logging and talks to host Aaron Scott about his trip.
Forests and savannahs provide a wide variety of ecosystem services. They provide food and fuel. Additionally, they clean the air, filter water, and control floods, and erosion, while sustaining biodiversity. However, over the years human beings have plundered the earth prioritizing development needs over the environment. Kenya’s Olo0lua forest an urban forest located about half an hour’s drive from Kenya’s international airport has seen years of plunder as Nairobi residents quarried stones in the quest to develop the city. As climate change bites, how has Oloolua forest’s biodiversity changed? How has the once cooler neighborhood changed? What are the communities doing to protect the remaining forest?
Indigenous people play an important role in protecting the environment. The tribals or adivasis as they are called in India depend on the forest for their survival. They have developed sustainable practices that preserve natural resources. Indigenous people are also increasingly being recognized as key partners in conservation efforts and are being included in decision-making processes related to natural resource management. But contrarily in India, many tribals are still being jailed and are being harassed says the report "Wildlife Policing- The reign of criminilization in the forests of Madhya Pradesh " by Criminal justice and police accountability project.
Learn about the importance of forests and how forests are managed in this week's episode. Casey and Sara discuss sustainable forestry certification systems, the idea of greenwashing, and how we can make more sustainable choices with our paper products.
Use this library database to search for research articles about your topic. See below for featured articles to get started on learning more about your topic.
Climate Change Impacts on Tropical Forests in Central America by
The loss of biodiversity is a major environmental problem in nearly every terrestrial ecosystem on Earth. This loss is accelerating driven by climate change, as well as by other causes including agricultural exploitation, fragmentation and degradation triggered by land use changes. The crucial issue under debate is the impact on the welfare of current and future population, and the role of humans in the exploitation of natural resources. This is of particular importance in Central America, which it is amongst the richest and most threatened biodiversity regions on the Earth, and where the loss of ecosystems strongly affects its socio-economic vulnerability. This book addresses the impacts of climate and land-use change on tropical forest ecosystems in this important region, and assesses the expected economic costs if no policy action is taken, under different future scenarios and for different geographical scales. This innovative collection utilises both theoretical approaches and empirical results to provide a conceptual framework for an integrated analysis of climate and land-use change impacts on forest ecosystems and related economic effects, offering insight into the complex relationship between ecosystems and benefits to humans. This important contribution to forest ecosystems and climate change provides invaluable reading for students and scholars in the fields of environmental and ecological economics, environmental science and forestry, natural resource management, agriculture and climate change.
Ecological Footprint by
The only metric that tracks how much nature we have - and how much nature we use Ecological Footprint accounting, first introduced in the 1990s and continuously developed, continues to be the only metric that compares overall human demand on nature with what our planet can renew -- its biocapacity -- and distils this into one number: how many Earths we use. Our economy is running a Bernie Madoff-style Ponzi scheme with the planet. We use future resources to run the present, using more than Earth can replenish. Like any such scheme, this works for a limited time, followed by a crash. Avoiding ecological bankruptcy requires rigorous resource accounting -- a challenging task, but doable with the right tools. Ecological Footprint provides a complete introduction, covering: Footprint and biocapacity accounting Data and key findings for nations Worldwide examples including businesses, cities, and countries Strategies for creating regenerative economies Whether you're a student, business leader, future-oriented city planner, economist, or have an abiding interest in humanity's future, Footprint and biocapacity are key parameters to be reckoned with and Ecological Footprint is your essential guide. AWARDS SILVER | 2020 Eric Zencey Prize SILVER | 2019 Nautilus Book Awards: Ecology & Environment FINALIST | 2019 Foreword INDIES: Ecology & Environment
Finding the Mother Tree by
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER * From the world's leading forest ecologist who forever changed how people view trees and their connections to one another and to other living things in the forest--a moving, deeply personal journey of discovery "Finding the Mother Tree reminds us that the world is a web of stories, connecting us to one another. [The book] carries the stories of trees, fungi, soil and bears--and of a human being listening in on the conversation. The interplay of personal narrative, scientific insights and the amazing revelations about the life of the forest make a compelling story."--Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass Suzanne Simard is a pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence; her TED talks have been viewed by more than 10 million people worldwide. In this, her first book, now available in paperback, Simard brings us into her world, the intimate world of the trees, in which she brilliantly illuminates the fascinating and vital truths--that trees are not simply the source of timber or pulp, but are a complicated, interdependent circle of life; that forests are social, cooperative creatures connected through underground networks by which trees communicate their vitality and vulnerabilities with communal lives not that different from our own. Simard writes--in inspiring, illuminating, and accessible ways--how trees, living side by side for hundreds of years, have evolved, how they learn and adapt their behaviors, recognize neighbors, compete and cooperate with one another with sophistication, characteristics ascribed to human intelligence, traits that are the essence of civil societies--and at the center of it all, the Mother Trees: the mysterious, powerful forces that connect and sustain the others that surround them. And Simard writes of her own life, born and raised into a logging world in the rainforests of British Columbia, of her days as a child spent cataloging the trees from the forest and how she came to love and respect them. And as she writes of her scientific quest, she writes of her own journey, making us understand how deeply human scientific inquiry exists beyond data and technology, that it is about understanding who we are and our place in the world.
Forest Talk by
Trees are essential. They provide water, shelter, and food for millions of plant and animal species, including humans. They deliver proven health benefits, and they capture and store carbon, which combats climate change. Yet trees are in trouble. Forests are struggling to adapt to climate change, and deforestation is a major threat. Recently, researchers and citizen scientists made the surprising revelation that trees communicate with each other through an underground system of soil fungi and other methods. Complex social networks help trees survive and thrive by transferring resources to each other, sending defense signals, communicating with their kin, and more. Meet the tree scientists and learn more of their fascinating discoveries.
Masculinities in Forests by
Masculinities in Forests: Representations of Diversity demonstrates the wide variability in ideas about, and practice of, masculinity in different forests, and how these relate to forest management. While forestry is widely considered a masculine domain, a significant portion of the literature on gender and development focuses on the role of women, not men. This book addresses this gap and also highlights how there are significant, demonstrable differences in masculinities from forest to forest. The book develops a simple conceptual framework for considering masculinities, one which both acknowledges the stability or enduring quality of masculinities, but also the significant masculinity-related options available to individual men within any given culture. The author draws on her own experiences, building on her long-term experience working globally in the conservation and development worlds, also observing masculinities among such professionals. The core of the book examines masculinities, based on long-term ethnographic research in the rural Pacific Northwest of the US; Long Segar, East Kalimantan; and Sitiung, West Sumatra, both in Indonesia. The author concludes by pulling together the various strands of masculine identities and discussing the implications of these various versions of masculinity for forest management. This book will be essential reading for students and scholars of forestry, gender studies and conservation and development, as well as practitioners and NGOs working in these fields. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780367815776, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Political Ecology of REDD+ in Indonesia by
Indonesia's commitment to reducing land-based greenhouse gas emissions significantly includes the expansion of conservation areas, but these developments are not free of conflicts. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of agrarian conflicts in the context of the implementation of REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) and forest carbon offsetting in Indonesia, a country where deforestation is a major issue. The author analyzes new kinds of transnational agrarian conflicts which have strong implications for global environmental justice in the REDD+ pilot province of Jambi on the island of Sumatra. The chapters cover: the rescaling of the governance of forests; privatization of conservation; and the transnational dimensions of agrarian conflicts and peasants' resistance in the context of REDD+. The book builds on an innovative conceptual approach linking political ecology, politics of scale and theories of power. It fills an important knowledge and research gap by focusing on the socially differentiated impacts of REDD+ and new forest carbon offsetting initiatives in Southeast Asia, providing a multi-scalar perspective. It is aimed at scholars in the areas of political ecology, human geography, climate change mitigation, forest and natural resource management, as well as environmental justice and agrarian studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com/doi/view/10.4324/9781351066020, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Rainforest by
Rainforests have long been recognized as hotspots of biodiversity--but they are crucial for our planet in other surprising ways. Not only do these fascinating ecosystems thrive in rainy regions, they create rain themselves, and this moisture is spread around the globe. Rainforests across the world have a powerful and concrete impact, reaching as far as America's Great Plains and central Europe. In Rainforest: Dispatches from Earth's Most Vital Frontlines, a prominent conservationist provides a comprehensive view of the crucial roles rainforests serve, the state of the world's rainforests today, and the inspirational efforts underway to save them. In Rainforest, Tony Juniper draws upon decades of work in rainforest conservation. He brings readers along on his journeys, from the thriving forests of Costa Rica to Indonesia, where palm oil plantations have supplanted much of the former rainforest. Despite many ominous trends, Juniper sees hope for rainforests and those who rely upon them, thanks to developments like new international agreements, corporate deforestation policies, and movements from local and Indigenous communities. As climate change intensifies, we have already begun to see the effects of rainforest destruction on the planet at large. Rainforest provides a detailed and wide-ranging look at the health and future of these vital ecosystems. Throughout this evocative book, Juniper argues that in saving rainforests, we save ourselves, too.