Friday, April 12th, 2013
A team of African and North American scientists led by the U.S. Geological Survey and NatureServe, a conservation non-profit organization, has created a series of continent-wide ecosystem maps that offer the most detailed portrayals of Africa’s natural setting yet produced. The new maps and related data on landforms, geology, bioclimates, and vegetation can be used
Wednesday, December 19th, 2012
Plant and animal species are shifting their geographic ranges and the timing of their life events – such as flowering, laying eggs or migrating – at faster rates than researchers documented just a few years ago, according to a technical report on biodiversity and ecosystems used as scientific input for the 2013 Third National Climate
Tuesday, November 6th, 2012
Transnational corporations are now so numerous and in some cases so well capitalized that their global influence now rivals and in many cases exceeds that of governments, according to research published by the Worldwatch Institute.
Friday, September 7th, 2012
To increase the incomes of many of the billion forest-dependent people worldwide the current model for investment in forests must be turned on its head. An initiative of unprecedented scale, led by The Forests Dialogue (TFD), IUCN and the Growing Forests Partnerships (GFP), has found that optimizing the benefits and productivity of forests requires moving
Tuesday, June 19th, 2012
NASA’s Earth-observing fleet of satellites provides a worldwide and unbiased view with standardized scientific data—information crucial for tracking the health of the world’s forests. Countries like Brazil are using data from NASA satellites to track and measure their forests in advance of a United Nations effort to reduce climate change by providing “carbon credits” for
Monday, June 18th, 2012
U.S. Forest Service, Rwanda, a Brazilian coalition and indigenous groups from Mesoamerica have committed to restoring a total of more than 18 million hectares of their forest landscape. This will pump billions into local and global economies and bring a host of other benefits, according to IUCN.
Tuesday, April 17th, 2012
The partnership established in 2010 between the AFD and Astrium aims, in the long term, to freely distribute SPOT satellite images to governments, public institutions and NGOs that work for the sustainable management of forests in Central Africa. This programme for the provision of SPOT satellite images, which is financed by the AFD for a
Wednesday, December 7th, 2011
The Department of the Interior today released the first in a series of regional studies measuring the amount of carbon stored in U.S. ecosystems. Published by Interior’s U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the study examines the current and projected future carbon storage in the Great Plains region, as part of a nation-wide assessment.
Thursday, November 10th, 2011
Ecosystems such as forests, wetlands and rivers as well as pastures or cropland supply basic goods and services. These include food, fibre, energy, clean water, temperature control and flood regulation, which are critical for people’s wellbeing. However, the value of ecosystems is only accounted for in the economy when they provide monetary profits. Other ecosystem
Monday, September 12th, 2011
Conserving and Valuing Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity: Economic, Institutional and Social Challenges provides a much needed survey reflecting upon recent institutional experience yielding analysis that concludes that there exists financially rigorous rationale to justify conservation of biodiversity for economic reasons, above and beyond the usual rationale of conservation only for biodiversity, spiritual or ethical reasons.
