Study finds severe climate jeopardizing Amazon forest

Terra Daily: An area of the Amazon rainforest twice the size of California continues to suffer from the effects of a megadrought that began in 2005, finds a new NASA-led study. These results, together with observed recurrences of droughts every few years and associated damage to the forests in southern and western Amazonia in the past decade, suggest these rainforests may be showing the first signs of potential large-scale degradation due to climate change.

An international research team led by Sassan Saatchi of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., analyzed more than a decade of satellite microwave radar data collected between 2000 and 2009 over Amazonia. The observations included measurements of rainfall from NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission and measurements of the moisture content and structure of the forest canopy (top layer) from the Seawinds scatterometer on NASA's QuikScat spacecraft.

The scientists found that during the summer of 2005, more than 270,000 square miles (700,000 square kilometers, or 70 million hectares) of pristine, old-growth forest in southwestern Amazonia experienced an extensive, severe drought. This megadrought caused widespread changes to the forest canopy that were detectable by satellite. The changes suggest dieback of branches and tree falls, especially among the older, larger, more vulnerable canopy trees that blanket the forest....

Bamboo and ferns in the Amazon, shot by Tadd and Debbie Ottman, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Mixed forests – a missed opportunity?

Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences News: Modern forestry is largely based on monocultures—in Sweden usually pine or spruce—mainly because it is considered more rational. However a forest contributes more ecosystem services than timber production, such as biological diversity, carbon storage, and berries. A new study from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and Future Forests shows that mixed forests, in comparison with monocultures, have positive effects on several different services, including production.

“Many people have suggested that high diversity of tree species has a favorable impact on processes in the ecosystem, but until now this connection has primarily been studied in terms of one process or ecosystem service at a time,” says Lars Gamfeldt from University of Gothenburg, who directed the new study.

The study, performed by an international research group, is based on material from the Swedish National Forest Inventory and the Swedish Forest Soil Inventory. By examining the role played by the occurrence of diverse tree species for six different ecosystem services (tree growth, carbon storage, berry production, food for wildlife, occurrence of dead wood, and biological diversity), the study demonstrates that all six services covary with the number of tree species.

Different trees contribute to different services. For example, the amount of spruce is related to high tree growth and the amount of pine to berry production, while carbon storage was found in plots with more birch. In order to attain more of all services, forestry may thus need to make use of different tree species. Other studies of forests in Central Europe, the Mediterranean region, and Canada support these findings.

The study also investigated the relationship between the various ecosystem services. For example, high tree growth appears to be negatively related to the production of both berries and food for wildlife and to the occurrence of dead wood. On the other hand, food for wildlife was positively associated with both berry production and biological diversity in ground vegetation....

A pine forest in Sweden, shot by r AB Tetra Pak, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Tobacco farms drive major deforestation in Tanzania

Kizito Makoye in AlertNet: Cutting of trees for firewood to cure tobacco over the last few decades has been a major driver of deforestation and worsening extreme weather in Tanzania’s central western Tabora region, experts say.

But efforts to persuade tobacco farmers to adopt other crops is proving an uphill battle, not least because tobacco remains profitable and a major source of income in the region.

Emmanuel Mihambo, a peasant farmer from Usenge village in Tabora has been growing tobacco since the 1980s when his late father acquired a four hectare farm there. Over the years he has watched the forest that once surrounded his village gradually turn into barren ground.

 “The situation has changed a lot. Imagine that valley separating Usenge and Ntalikwa village used to be covered by a dense forest. You could often spot wild animals such as antelopes. But all the forest is gone,” he lamented

Today firewood is harder to come by, and a local group calling itself IGEMBE NSABO is urging small-scale farmers to abandon tobacco and turn instead to alternative crops such as sunflower, cotton, groundnut and maize....

As climate warms, bark beetles march on high-elevation forests

Terry Devitt in the University of Wisconsin-Madison News: Trees and the insects that eat them wage constant war. Insects burrow and munch; trees deploy lethal and disruptive defenses in the form of chemicals. But in a warming world, where temperatures and seasonal change are in flux, the tide of battle may be shifting in some insects’ favor, according to a new study.

In a report published today (Dec. 31, 2012) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison reports a rising threat to the whitebark pine forests of the northern Rocky Mountains as native mountain pine beetles climb ever higher, attacking trees that have not evolved strong defenses to stop them.

The whitebark pine forests of the western United States and Canada are the forest ecosystems that occur at the highest elevation that sustains trees. It is critical habitat for iconic species such as the grizzly bear and plays an important role in governing the hydrology of the mountain west by shading snow and regulating the flow of meltwater.

“Warming temperatures have allowed tree-killing beetles to thrive in areas that were historically too cold for them most years,” explains Ken Raffa, a UW-Madison professor of entomology and a senior author of the new report. “The tree species at these high elevations never evolved strong defenses.”

A warming world has not only made it easier for the mountain pine beetle to invade new and defenseless ecosystems, but also to better withstand winter weather that is milder and erupt in large outbreaks capable of killing entire stands of trees, no matter their composition....

A stand of aspens, with pines in the background, in the Rio Grande National Forest in southern Colorado, U.S. Department of Agriculture

Severe drought has lasting effects on Amazon

Hannah Hoag in Nature: A study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences sheds light on the long-term effects of drought on the Amazon rainforest — giving clues about how the rainforest might be affected by global warming in the future. The researchers report that the severe drought that hit the rainforest in 2005 had lasting effects on the forest canopy, such that it remained damaged at least four years later.

The effects of the 2005 drought have been debated since 2007, when researchers reported in Science that photosynthesis within the canopy had increased, leading the Amazon basin to ‘green up’ during the dry period. But in 2010 another group reported that they were unable to reproduce the results using the same data3.

“The ‘green-up’ is a short-term response and a bit of a red herring,” says Oliver Phillips, a tropical ecologist at the University of Leeds, UK. But the latest study “transcends that debate”, he says. “The question of the underlying health of the forest is much deeper than the instantaneous response.”

A drawback of the method used in the earlier studies — which used satellite measurements to estimate forest greenness using reflected solar radiation — is that the data can be muddied by clouds and atmospheric aerosols. So for the latest study, Sassan Saatchi, a remote-sensing expert at the California Institute of Technology Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, studied the forest’s microwave ‘silhouette’, showing its contours instead of its greenness. To look at canopy structure, he and his colleagues used microwave satellite data, which are unaffected by clouds, from a NASA probe. When it passed over lush canopy, the satellite sensor recorded a smooth signal. Bare branches, thinned leaves and missing trees showed more roughness.

The researchers found that more than 70 million hectares of rainforest in the western Amazon — an area nearly twice the size of California — were hit by the drought. And the canopy’s recovery dragged on long after the drought ended, with its biomass and fullness still below pre-drought levels in 2009 when the satellite suffered a mechanical failure. In 2010, an even stronger drought hit a larger swathe of the Amazon....

Aerial view of the Amazon, shot by lubasi, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Cloud forest trees drink water through their leaves

Robert Sanders in the University of California-Berkeley News Center: Tropical montane cloud forest trees use more than their roots to take up water. They also drink water from clouds directly through their leaves, University of California, Berkeley, scientists have discovered.

While this is an essential survival strategy in foggy but otherwise dry areas, the scientists say that the clouds the trees depend on are now disappearing due to climate change.

“The study highlights the vulnerability of this rare and already endangered ecosystem to climate change,” said Todd Dawson, senior author of the study and UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology. Changes in cloud cover have already been correlated to declines and disappearances of cloud forest animal populations, such as frogs and salamanders.

The new study will be published next year in the journal Ecology Letters and is available online this month.

In tropical montane cloud forests, leaves are constantly bathed in clouds, making them wet. The leaves of the most common cloud forest trees drink this cloud water when water from the soil just isn’t enough, said Greg Goldsmith, lead author of the study and a graduate student in Dawson’s lab.

“Many cloud forests experience an annual dry season when the primary water source isn’t rain, but rather, the moisture from the clouds,” he said. “This is when the trees are most likely to draw water in through their leaves.”...

Graduate student Greg Goldsmith in the montaine cloud forest of Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve, Costa Rica. Photo courtesy of Drew Fulton (Canopy in the Clouds)

Indigenous biodiversity 'crucial' to forest futures

Talent Ng'andwe in SciDev.net: Forestry experts are calling for an increase in the use of native tree species in reforestation projects, arguing that they are better for biodiversity and can slow the pace of global warming.

The recommendation appears in a report published by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) that was presented during the UN climate change conference in Doha, Qatar, earlier this month (2 December).

It was written by 60 leading forestry experts, who assert that forests are more than just carbon warehouses: they also shelter most of the world's plant and animal species, and supply impoverished communities with food, fuel and as much as 59 per cent of their incomes.

John Parrotta, an international forest-science policy analyst with the US Forest Service and chair of the committee that prepared the report, says that deforestation and forest degradation must be checked to boost biodiversity and help remove carbon from the atmosphere.

He explains that, although it is costly, tree planting may be necessary for reforestation in certain places and should be targeted at areas where the restoration of forest cover will yield multiple benefits for communities. These include improved water quality, soil erosion control, crop pollination services and the provision of timber and non-timber products....

From 1867: Ulysses S. Grant, 71 Feet in Circumference, Mariposa Grove, Yosemite, No. 87. Albumen silver print, 51.6 x 39.7 cm. The seated individual is Eadweard Muybridge. Shot by Carleton Watkins

Tracking invasive cheatgrass role in larger, more frequent Western fires

PhysOrg: New research that relied in part on satellite images suggests that cheatgrass, an invasive species brought west by settlers in the 1800s, is one cause for the larger, hotter and more frequent range fires experienced recently in the Great Basin of the American West. The arid region covers about 230,000 square miles (600,000 km) over much of Nevada and parts of Utah, Colorado, Idaho, California and Oregon.

Bethany Bradley, a biogeographer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, brought her expertise in remote sensing and spatial analysis to the study, which was led by fire expert Jennifer Balch of Penn State University.

Bradley used data from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectoradiometer from 2000 to 2009 to detect burned areas to create the first land cover map for the Great Basin area. With it, the two researchers and their colleagues combined data sets, matched fire dates and perimeters with land cover data to reach their conclusions, reported in the current online edition of Global Change Biology.

Bradley, Balch and colleagues say that over the past 10 years, cheatgrass fueled most of the largest fires, influencing 39 of the largest 50. Also, fires in grass-covered lands were on average significantly larger than the average fire size on lands dominated by other types of vegetation such as pinyon-juniper, montane shrubland and cultivated areas. Data also suggest that cheatgrass plays a role in more frequent fires.

"From 2000 to 2009, cheatgrass burned twice as much as any other vegetation," Balch says. "Although this result has been suspected by managers for decades," the authors note, "this study is the first to document recent cheatgrass-driven fire regimes at a regional scale."...

A 2007 fire outside San Diego, US Navy photograph

Climate models project increase in US wildfire risk

NASA: Scientists using NASA satellite data and climate models have projected drier conditions likely will cause increased fire activity across the United States in coming decades. Other findings about U.S. wildfires, including their amount of carbon emissions and how the length and strength of fire seasons are expected to change under future climate conditions, were also presented Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

Doug Morton of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., presented the new analysis of future U.S. fire activity. The analysis was based on current fire trends and predicted greenhouse gas emissions.  "Climate models project an increase in fire risk across the U.S. by 2050, based on a trend toward drier conditions that favor fire activity and an increase in the frequency of extreme events," Morton said.

The analysis by Morton and colleagues used climate projections, prepared for the Fifth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to examine how dryness, and therefore fire activity, is expected to change.

The researchers calculated results for low and high greenhouse gas emissions scenarios. In both cases, results suggest more fire seasons that are longer and stronger across all regions of the U.S. in the next 30-50 years. Specifically, high fire years like 2012 would likely occur two to four times per decade by mid-century, instead of once per decade under current climate conditions.

Through August of this year, the U.S. burned area topped 2.5 million hectares (6.17 million acres), according to a fire emissions database that incorporates burned area estimates produced from observations by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instruments on NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites. That is short of the record 3.2 million hectares (7.90 million acres) burned in 2011, but exceeds the area burned during 12 of the 15 years since record keeping began in 1997. This and other satellite records, along with more refined climate and emissions models, are allowing scientists to tease out new information about fire trends....

Video Repository on Forest Commodification

Forests are facing immense challenges from the increased commodification of their resources. Some incoming policies may worsen these challenges dramatically. To highlight the lived experiences of communities affected by forest commodification, the Global Forest Coalition has launched a repositoryof videos gathered from a variety of organisations and contexts. The repository has been launched as government representatives gather for the 18th Conference of Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to highlight the results of commodification and the dangers of policies that ignore or intensify commodification processes. The repository organises the videos into three key thematic areas: exporting commodities; carbon: schemes, scams & cowboys; and rights and resistance.

The repository can be accessed here.

Ghana to get $50 million for sustainable management of forests

Modern Ghana: Ghana and Burkina Faso have received endorsement of their far-reaching plans for sustainably managing their forest sectors as part of their goals for climate-resilient economic development.

The endorsements came from the Forest Investment Programme (FIP), one of the four programmes of the US $7.2 billion Climate Investment Funds (CIF), with support of the African Development Bank (AfDB) and other partners including the World Bank Group.

Under the Forest Investment Program (FIP), Burkina Faso was allocated US $30 million and Ghana was allocated US $50 million for sustainable management of their forests, through activities under programs for reducing deforestation and forest degradation and instituting sustainable forest management (REDD+), and including agro-forestry and sustainable agriculture.

...In Ghana, where timber exports account for nearly 20 per cent of the country's export base, forest cover has been reduced from 8.2 million to 4.9 million hectares over the last century. In response, Ghana is one of the first countries in Africa to institute a REDD+ strategy to address sustainability in its forest sector....

The Volta Region of Ghana, shot by Erik Kristensen, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Indonesia's forests under renewed threat

Thin Lei Win in AlertNet: Indonesia’s dwindling forests and an ambitious plan by the country’s president to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the world’s third largest emitter are under threat due to the struggle between national and local governments for authority over precious forest land, environmental activists told AlertNet.

In February, Indonesia’s Constitution Court struck down a controversial clause of the Forestry Law, saying it was unconstitutional for the central government to designate forest zones without proper mapping, after six plaintiffs, including five district heads (known as “bupatis”) from Central Kalimantan, a province in the Indonesian portion of Borneo, asked for a review of the law.

This has left everyone wondering what would happen to millions of hectares of land that have been designated as forest zone but have not been mapped. Currently, only 14.2 million of some 130 million hectares are adequately mapped.

Among the questions being asked are: Are these areas now considered non-forest zones and will local governments be able to issue licenses at will to companies to turn them into mines and palm oil plantations? Would that lead to further degradation of forests and increased social conflict in a sector not noted for its transparency as the government busies itself trying to map millions of hectares of land?

Is this another nail in the coffin for Indonesia’s tropical rainforests, the world’s third-largest, which President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has vowed to save in order to cut greenhouse gas emissions, which drive climate change?...

A forest bridge in Sumatra, around 1915. From the Tropenmuseum Collection via Wikimedia Commons

Forest communities in Cameroon cannot adapt to climate change alone

CIFOR's "Forest News" blog: Rural communities in Cameroon rely heavily on forests for everything from their nutritional and medicinal needs to fuel for cooking and will be unable to adapt to climate change without significant outside help, a new study found.

....The Center for International Forestry Research’s (CIFOR) Congo Basin and Climate Change Adaptation (CoFCCA) project was developed in 2008 to increase public and policy awareness about the heavy reliance both rural and urban areas have on animal and plant products coming from the second largest continuous tropical rainforest in the world. It also looked at ways in which to protect communities – as well as the natural resources – as the world experiences dramatic shifts in precipitation and temperature.

A key lesson was that, no matter how pertinent, local knowledge was not enough, said Denis Sonwa, one of the authors of a paper resulting from the study, focusing specifically on Cameroon. 

Sonwa’s team looked at the most vulnerable sectors in Cameroon, including energy derived from fuel wood. They focused on charcoal production and consumption, interviewing everyone from the producers and transporters to sellers and consumers to find out how each stakeholder perceived climate change and how it affected their activities.

“They were all concerned about the unpredictable rainy and dry seasons which affect levels of production, consumption, and earnings,” said Patrice Metenou, a post-graduate researcher involved in the project, adding that all were vulnerable to climate change but at very different levels....

Ngoila, East Province, Cameroon, looking south toward the Republic of the Congo, shot by Amcaja, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Ugandan communities plant trees to avert disaster

British Red Cross: The Red Cross has responded to a call from the Ugandan Ministry of Disaster Preparedness to provide 50,000 tree seedlings, which will help reforest parts of the Mount Elgon region.

The tree-planting project is part of a new Uganda Red Cross programme, launched in September 2012, to reduce the impact of disasters in the Elgon region. The majority of families depend on the land for their survival, putting pressure on natural resources.  Environmental degradation in this region is one of the factors causing more frequent floods and landslides over the last few years.

Karen Peachey, British Red Cross representative in east Africa, said: “Such disasters are only going to become a greater threat due to a rapidly growing population, continuing environmental degradation and climate change, which is predicted to increase both the dry spells and intense rains. The programme, which is supported by the British Red Cross, will help communities be better prepared, saving both lives and livelihoods.”

The Uganda Red Cross is helping 30 communities in the districts of Bududa, Bulambuli, Manafwa and Bukedea. William Kimanai, a 34-year old community volunteer in Wanga village, Bulambuli district, said: “We’ve been given a number of tree species including mangoes, guavas, oranges and eucalyptus. The trees conserve moisture and that is why we plant them along the river banks. We encourage every household member to plant at least three trees.”...

Mount Elgon, shot by Kristina Just, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Norway fund tightens rules to protect forests

Reuters: Norway's $650 billion sovereign wealth fund has started asking companies it invests in to minimize their impact on rainforests, green groups said on Friday, welcoming a shift they hoped would make it rethink some deals. The fund, one of the world's biggest investors, made the changes to its guidelines in September without fanfare.

"We hope this will mean Norway stops investing and pulls out of many companies that are damaging rainforests," said Nils Hermann Ranum, spokesman of the Rainforest Foundation Norway.

Environmentalists have in the past accused Norway of investing uncritically in industries that threaten forests, such as palm oil, oil and gas, cattle ranching, logging, pulp and paper and hydropower dams. A central bank official did not comment on the specific accusations but said the fund, which manages the country's surplus oil revenue, had a long-running policy of not investing in companies that damaged the environment.

The fund's guidelines, posted online, said Norway "expects companies to manage risk associated with the causes and impacts of climate change resulting from greenhouse gas emissions and tropical deforestation."

The companies had to provide information on the impact of their work on forests over time and how it complied with international standards to protect forests, according to the rules. The fund's guidelines had referred to global warming in the past, but it was the first time they had mentioned rainforests, said the green groups....

A foggy forest in Telemark, shot by Ernst Vikne, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license