Monday, March 21st, 2016
The EEA report European forest ecosystems: state and trends, gives an updated health check on how our forests are coping with the many challenges they face. It assesses whether forest ecosystems can still manage to play their part providing key ‘services’ for the environment. Forests help regulate our climate and sustain watersheds, providing clean water.
Thursday, December 17th, 2015
Mountain pine beetle populations have exploded over the past decade due to warmer temperatures and drier summers, and these insects have infected and killed thousands of acres of western pine forests. Researchers have predicted that as trees died, streamflow would increase because fewer trees would take up water through their roots.
Monday, June 8th, 2015
June 8, 2015—The supply of woody biomass from the forests in the European Union can be increased significantly beyond the current level of resource use. However, this involves trade-offs with biodiversity and other services that forests provide to humans.
Friday, April 3rd, 2015
April 2, 2015—Tropical forests play major roles in regulating Earth’s climate, but there are large uncertainties over how they’ll respond over the next 100 years as the planet’s climate warms. An expansive new project led by scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) aims to bring the future of
Friday, March 13th, 2015
NEW YORK, MARCH 12, 2015—A team of investors, development organizations, conservationists, economists, and ecologists have published in the journal Science six natural science principles to ensure success of Payments for Ecosystem Services, mechanisms that have helped preserve carbon stocks stored in Madagascar’s rainforests, maintain wildlife populations important for tourism in Tanzania, and protect watersheds in
Thursday, May 29th, 2014
Information from Earth-observing satellites is being used to protect and sustainably manage our natural resources. Located in Vietnam, on the eastern slope of the Annamite mountains, the Huong Son is a tropical forest subject to logging activities. While extracting timber from the forest is important to the local economy, unsustainable logging practices can negatively affect
Friday, May 9th, 2014
Azavea, a geospatial analysis (GIS) software development company, announces the launch of OpenTreeMap, its collaborative platform for crowdsourced tree inventory, ecosystem services calculations, urban forestry analysis in Edmonton, Canada. Known as yegTreeMap , it is the first implementation of OpenTreeMap Cloud in Canada, and it already includes over 267,000 trees maintained by the City of
Thursday, March 6th, 2014
The EEA report, ‘Spatial analysis of green infrastructure in Europe‘, maps a network of natural and semi-natural spaces and other environmental features in Europe with a good capacity to deliver ‘ecosystem services’. These include air filtration, erosion protection, regulating water flow, coastal protection, pollination, maintaining soil structure, water purification, and carbon storage. The report also
Thursday, January 16th, 2014
Trees do not slow in their growth rate as they get older and larger — instead, their growth keeps accelerating, according to a study published today in the journal Nature.
Wednesday, January 15th, 2014
Responsible management of temperate forests in the United States can play an important and ongoing role in climate change mitigation at a national and international scale. This RFF Seminar, co-sponsored by Resources for the Future (RFF) and the Society of American Foresters (SAF), will delve into some of the questions that surround carbon accounting and
