–Tropical Forests: 29) Deforestation summary
–World-wide: 30) How leaf veins are arranged, 31) Extinction threat far more severe than previously thought, 32) Biodiversity and Climate conference sells out,

Tropical Forests:

29) From about the mid-1800s, around 1852, the planet has experienced an unprecedented rate of change of destruction of forests worldwide. Forests in Europe are adversely affected by acid rain and very large areas of Siberia have been harvested since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the last two decades, Afghanistan has lost over 70% of its forests throughout the country. However, it is in the world’s great tropical rainforests where the destruction is most pronounced at the current time and where clearcutting is having an adverse effect on biodiversity and contributing to the ongoing Holocene mass extinction. About half of the mature tropical forests, between 750 to 800 million hectares of the original 1.5 to 1.6 billion hectares that once covered the planet have fallen. The forest loss is already acute in Southeast Asia, the second of the world’s great biodiversity hot spots. Much of what remains is in the Amazon basin, where the Amazon Rainforest covered more than 600 million hectares. The forests are being destroyed at a pace tracking the rapid pace of human population growth. Unless significant measures are taken on a world-wide basis to preserve them, by 2030 there will only be ten percent remaining with another ten percent in a degraded condition. 80 percent will have been lost and with them the irreversible loss of hundreds of thousands of species. Many tropical countries, including Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Bangladesh, China, Sri Lanka, Laos, Nigeria, Liberia, Guinea, Ghana and the Cote d’lvoire have lost large areas of their rainforest. 90% of the forests of the Philippine archipelago have been cut. In 1960 Central America still had 4/5 of its original forest; now it is left with only 2/5. Madagascar has lost 95% of its rainforests. Brazil has lost 90-95% of its Mata Atlântica forest. Half of the Brazilian state of Rondonia’s 24.3 million hectares have been destroyed or severely degraded in recent years. As of 2007, less than 1% of Haiti’s forests remain, causing many to call Haiti a Caribbean desert. Between 1990 and 2005, Nigeria lost a staggering 79% of its old-growth forests. Several countries, notably the Philippines, Thailand and India have declared their deforestation a national emergency. http://farahatiqah.blogspot.com/2008/07/de-forestation.html

World Wide:

30) Using an artificial model of a leaf, scientists have unveiled a mathematical principle underlying how leaf veins are arranged to enable water to perspire as fast as possible. Because water perspiration is closely linked to how plants absorb CO2, the findings could help researchers learn about past climates by studying the patterns of veins found on fossilized leaves. Water evaporation helps leaves stay cool and provides the pull that lets plants lift nutrients from the soil. But during photosynthesis, when plants open up the pores on the underside of leaves to absorb CO2, water escapes from those pores at an accelerated pace. “The same membranes that let CO2 inside also let water outside,” says Maciej Zwieniecki of Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum. Leaves then need abundant water flow to avoid dehydration. And the more CO2 a plant absorbs, the more energy it can take in from the sun through photosynthesis, and the more it can grow. Evolution should thus favor a distribution of veins that can carry water through the leaves at a fast pace. Zwieniecki and his collaborators write in the July 8 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that, on average, the distance separating the veins that pump water through leaves is about the same as the distance separating the veins from the leaves’ surface. This finely tuned geometry keeps water flowing quickly through the leaves, the team has found. Within species, leaf veins follow very uniform patterns, Zwieniecki says, suggesting that the geometry is a feature optimized through many generations of evolution. The team’s results are “fascinating,” comments Lawren Sack, a biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “The finding implies that leaves are optimized during evolution by adjusting not only the length of vein per area [vein density], but also the thickness of tissues.” The research could help scientists study past climate clues found in fossil leaves, Sack adds. “Venation patterns are often preserved,” he says, and could help reconstruct patterns of rainfall and availability of sunshine. The rate of evaporation from leaves is affected by humidity, and the amount of sunshine determines the energy available for photosynthesis. The patterns could also inspire engineers to design better irrigation systems, he says. Science News
June 30th, 2008

31) Some endangered species may face an extinction risk that is up to a hundred times greater than previously thought, according to a study released Wednesday. By overlooking random differences between individuals in a given population, researchers may have badly underestimated the perils confronting threatened wildlife, it said. “Many larger populations previously considered relatively safe would actually be at risk,” Brett Melbourne, a professor at the University of Colorado and the study’s lead author, told AFP. There are more than 16,000 species worldwide threatened with extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). One in four mammals, one in eight birds and one in three amphibians are on the IUCN’s endangered species “Red List”. In a study released on Wednesday by the journal Nature, Melbourne said the current models used draw up such lists typically look only at two risk factors. One is the individual deaths within a small population, such as Indian tigers or rare whales. When a species dwindles beyond a certain point, even the loss of a handful of individuals can have devastating long-term consequences, Melbourne explained. There are less than 400 specimens of several species of whale, for example, and probably no more than 4,000 tigers roaming in the wild. The second commonly-used factor is environmental conditions that can influence birth and death rates, such as habitat destruction, or fluctuations in temperature or rainfall, both of which can be linked to climate change. Melbourne and co-author Alan Hastings from the University of California at Davis argue that these factors must be widened in order to give a fuller picture of extinction risk. They say that two other determinants must be taken into account: male-to-female ratios in a species, and a wider definition of randomness in individual births and deaths These complex variables can determine whether a fragile population can overcome a sudden decline in numbers, such as through habitat loss, or whether it will be wiped out. “This seems subtle and technical, but it turns out to be important,” Melbourne said in an email. http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Extinction_risks_vastly_underestimated_study_999.html

32) In a world that is seeing the effects of climate chaos, one could hope that a conference dubbed as the First Biodiversity and Climate Summit, would attempt to solve this disaster. Instead the Conference turned to the same culprits that got us into this mess into the first place: business, industry, and market-based approaches. At their 2006 Eighth Conference of the Parties (COP-8), the CBD made their first pro-business decision, launching the “business and biodiversity initiative.” This year’s 2008 Ninth Conference of the Parties of the CBD (COP-9) was the grand unveiling of this new business-oriented conservation strategy. The new focus on attracting business to the Convention on Biological Diversity has led some to rename it the “Convention on Buying Diversity. “If we want to implement the goals of the CBD and safeguard the natural basis of life for future generation, it is indispensable to involve all spheres of society, and in particular, businesses,” said Gabriel Sigmar, the German minister of environment, president of COP-9. The CBD’s Business and Biodiversity Initiative states, the “Conference aims to visibly integrate the business sector…” The CBD made available many publications that were extremely pro-business, such as “Business.2010,” “COP-9: Business and Biodiversity in Bonn,” and “Banking for Biodiversity.” COP-9 also included numerous side events put on by business to showcase their market-driven conservation solutions. These events were quite blatant in their aims, with titles such as “Mainstreaming Biodiversity into Commodity Supply Chains” or “Biotrade Opportunities in Developing Countries.” One especially memorable side event entitled “A Dialogue on Building Biodiveristy Business: Experiences and Opportunities,” was co-hosted by Shell and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Sandy Gauntlett, chair of the Pacific Indigenous Peoples Coalition (PIPEC), said, “The parties to the CBD are fast becoming the world’s largest organization dedicated to opposing equitable social change, with industry playing an increasingly larger role in commodifying the planet’s environmental resources.” She [authors’ß note He] concluded, “Many of the parties are lining up for their slice of the cake.” http://zcommunications.org/zmag/viewArticle/18090