364 Forest-type / World-wide

–Dry land forests: 28) Survival of 250 million people living in dryland forests questioned
–Tropical forests: 29) 15 million hectares of tropical rainforest lost every year
–World-wide: 30) Earth’s Bad Hair day, 31) Much more important to our well-being than we realize. 32) Changes we made since we started agriculture, 33) Market incentives reward deforestation,
Dryland Forests:

28) The survival of more than 250 million people living in the drylands of the developing world is being threatened by a chronic problem — land degradation. Drylands cover about 41 per cent of the earth’s surface. The poor in the drylands depend mainly on rainfed agriculture and natural rangelands for their survival. Their livelihoods are at risk due to land degradation, which is exacerbated by increasing population growth that is putting considerable pressure on fragile land resources.However, science-based innovations can be mobilised to help arrest land degradation. The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) near here addresses the problem of land degradation through Sustainable Land Management (SLM) techniques.According to ICRISAT Director General William Dar “investing in SLM to control and prevent land degradation in the wider landscape is an essential and cost-effective way to deliver other global environmental benefits, such as maintenance of biodiversity, mitigation of climate change and protection of international waters”. ICRISAT is the executing agency and coordinator of the Desert Margins Program (DMP) funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF). DMP is a collaborative initiative among nine sub-Saharan African countries – Botswana, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mali, Namibia, Niger, Senegal, South Africa and Zimbabwe, which are assisted by five Centres supported by the Consultative Group of International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and three advanced research institutes. The DMP focusses on better understanding of land and biodiversity degradation and finding ways to counter them. http://forests.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=101785

29) About 15 million hectares of tropical rainforest are being lost across the world every year, posing a direct threat to human life, according to University of Adelaide research. Corey Bradshaw, from the university’s school of earth and environmental sciences, says the world is losing the battle over tropical habitat loss. He said tropical forests supported more than 60 per cent of all known species but those species were now being lost at a rate 10,000 times greater than would randomly occur without the impact of humans. “This is not just a tragedy for tropical biodiversity, this is a crisis that will directly affect human livelihoods,” Professor Bradshaw said as the lead author in a study published online today by the Ecological Society of America. “This is not just about losing tiny species found at the base of big trees in a rainforest few people will ever see, this is about a complete change in ecosystem services that directly benefit human life. “The majority of the world’s population live in the tropics and what is at stake is the survival of species that pollinate most of the world’s food crops, purify our water systems, attenuate severe flood risk, sequester carbon and modify climate.” Prof Bradshaw’s study found the world was “on a trajectory towards disaster” and called for an immediate global conservation approach to avert the worst outcomes. “We must not accept that all is well in the tropics, or that the situation will improve with economic development, nor use this as an excuse for inaction on the vexing conservation challenges of this century,” he said. “We need to start valuing forests for all the services they provide and richer nations should be investing in the maintenance of tropical habitats.” http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23920350-1702,00.html

World-wide:

31) No, that is not Earth having a bad hair day. If you are already on an anti-depressant, continue to the next article. If you want a really good idea how much of the earth’s forests have disappeared, get Google’s new Earth Layer KLM file by David Tryse and cringe. The best and worst areas have blocks of green and red jutting straight up from the country or geographical area. The chart for each country begins with a row showing the amount of original forest (if any) that existed in that country. Then it breaks it down further into non-frontier forests and frontier forests. The original forest is defined as the percentage of land that would have been covered by intact forests (no roads, no settlements, no waterways) about 8,000 years before humankind started to have a major impact on the land. Frontier forests are forests that are intact ecosystems fully able to support their biodiversity. These forests have been minimally disturbed by humans. Non-frontier forests are all other intact forests that don’t qualify as frontier forests. A second chart shows the change in primary forests, natural forests and all forests both by kilo-hectare and percentage for 1990, 2000, and 2005. The largest red blocks extend out from Brazil, Indonesia and the Philippines. Brazil has lost 33% of its original frontier forest leaving 42.2% of this forest in tact. Percentage wise, Brazil lost only 8.3 percent of its overall forest cover between 1990 and 2005, but the amount of actual forest destroyed is staggering. Between 1990 and 2005, Brazil lost 44,623 kha of the 460,513 kha of primary forest. Since Brazil has the largest remaining intact primary forest in the world, losing large chunks of it has world wide implications. Indonesia and the Philippines tied for the highest percentage loss of 25.6% each. Indonesia lost 28,072 kha of forest out of 116,567 kha between 1990 and 2005. The Philippines lost 3,412 kha of forest out of 10,574 kha. The most surprising finding was that China’s forests have actually grown by 19.6%. There has been no loss of primary forest in the 15 years covered and China has added 40,149 kha to the 157,141 kha of forest land that existed in 1990. http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2008/06/22/googles-new-earth-layer-may-depress-you/

31) Trees are much more important to the well-being of humanity than most people know. They create energy forms and hold much of the balance on the planet, in particular, those trees that are part of a forest. These energy forms can be enormous and can keep people in balance mentally, emotionally, and, to some degree, allow people to be less affected by air pollutants. Our forests must therefore be protected. Often people feel rejuvenated when they go for a walk or run near trees or a forest; they can feel the peacefulness radiating from the trees. Trees have a certain energy content, which is not easy to explain within the context of this article. The ancient forests, in particular, preserve much of this energy structure. This energy structure is like a foundation, a building block similar to brickwork; however, the content of this “brickwork of trees” cannot be proven. Most people resonate with this wisdom and know this, as they know that trees need to be left to grow to be able to fulfill their own purpose, to stabilize the planet’s own functioning. What will be the future for humanity when there is hardly any forest left? If this deforestation continues at this alarming rate people will need to understand that the support the forests are providing for the overall life on the planet will be lost forever. The reduction of forests has far exceeded the threshold whereby forests can continue to sustain humanity and the planet. Older trees contain ancient knowledge that can have a beneficial effect on all. This ancient knowledge inherent in a tree will simply vanish, and anyone who was sustained by these energy structures will be affected. http://www.discoveryarticles.com/articles/131340/1/Deforestation-Affects-Humanity-in-Many-Diffe
rent-Ways/Page1.html

32) In many ways, obviously, the world is a radically different place than it was at the dawn of human agriculture. But perhaps the most visible change over the last 10,000 years has been in the planet’s green roof — its forest cover. There is between one-third and one-half less forest on Earth today. And in recent times, what remains has been disappearing at an alarming rate. Each year, 13 million hectares of forest is lost, according to 2005 figures. That’s an area roughly the size of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick combined. When forest regeneration is taken to account, the net annual loss is still 7.3 million hectares, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization reports. (Some environmental groups, though, dispute this number as being too low.) The good news is that the global rate is slowing. The net annual forest loss was higher during the ’90s at 8.9 million hectares, according to the FAO. And in Canada, which has 10 per cent of the world’s forests, the rate is stable — no significant gains or losses. Many countries like China, for one, have even begun a trend of “afforestation,” which means they plant more trees than they clear. That’s good news for the lungs. A single tree can take between 50 to 100 kilograms of small particles, like carbon dioxide, out of the air in a given year and produce three-quarters of a human’s oxygen needs. The clearing of forests for agriculture and industry has a long history around the world. Take the case of the eastern United States, which lost almost half of its original forest cover by the end of the 19th century as the land was settled. Today, the loss of tropical rainforest generates the most attention, and with good reason. Home to half of the world’s animals and more than 100,000 plant species, the rainforest’s biodiversity is invaluable. http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/06/24/f-vanishing-forests.html

33) In countries like Peru and Brazil, all of the market incentives reward deforestation. Increased consumer demand from the United Stated – the wood from one large mahogany tree alone is worth more than $100,000 when used in furniture and luxury wood products – has driven illegal loggers further into the rainforests, and the areas these tribes call home. William Laurance, a tropical biologist with the Smithsonian Institution, was quoted on Dot Earth as saying: “The new roads open up the frontier for waves of unplanned and illegal logging, land colonization, and land speculation that is nearly impossible for the government to control… It’s a formula for environmental and social chaos.” The problem of tropical deforestation has received increased attention recently. The cutting of forests in tropical countries accounts for about 15-25% of all of the greenhouse gas emissions. There are now discussions of how to use the emerging carbon market to slow deforestation. However, creating such a market for forest carbon is extraordinarily complicated and will take several years at best. If we are to save these uncontacted peoples, we cannot afford to wait. We have to take steps now to curb illegal logging. The United States, which alone is responsible for more than 80% of the mahogany exports from Peru, can provide real leadership. Click here to help save the Tahuamanú Rainforest, an NRDC Biogem. First, consumers here can educate themselves so they can make informed decisions about what wood products they purchase. Click here for a consumer wood guide we published. Second, the United States Government should make sure that all of mahogany and other timber trade is legal and sustainable. Finally, we need to step up our cooperation with Peru and Brazil and other key tropical countries to improve forest governance and to put an end to illegal logging. http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/jscherr/tainted_wood_illegal_logging_i.html