December 21 (AFP) – Ecologists have warned production of frankincense, one of the three gifts the Wise Men gave to the baby Jesus in a key part of the Nativity story celebrated at Christmas, is in dramatic decline. A research team from the Netherlands and Ethiopia says a new study has shown numbers of the […]
White dots indicate documented localities with forest mortality related to climatic stress from drought and high temperatures. Background map shows potential environmental limits to vegetation net primary production (Boisvenue and Running, 2006). Only the general areas documented in the tables are shown—many additional localities are mapped more precisely on the continental-scale maps. Drought and heat-driven […]
By Jim Forsyth; Editing by Corrie MacLaggan and Greg McCune20 December 2011 SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) – The massive drought that has dried out Texas over the past year has killed as many as half a billion trees, according to new estimates from the Texas Forest Service. “In 2011, Texas experienced an exceptional drought, prolonged high […]
By Tilo Arnhold, tilo.arnhold@ufz.de Phone +49 341 235 163516 December 2011 Chicago/Leipzig (UFZ) – Large forest regions in Canada are apparently about to experience rapid change. Based on models, scientists can now show that there are threshold values for wildfires just like there are for epidemics. Large areas of Canada are apparently approaching this threshold […]
By Rachel Cernansky16 December 2011 Over the last decade, more than 200 million hectares of land in developing countries have been sold off in large-scale land transactions that tend to benefit “national elites” while harming the world’s poor and rural populations, according to a new report from the International Land Coalition (ILC). The group calls […]
By Rhett A. Butler, www.mongabay.com 16 December 2011 Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) continues to mislead the public about its role in destroying rainforests and critical tiger habitat across the Indonesian island of Sumatra, alleges a new report from Eyes on the Forest, a coalition of Indonesian environmental groups including WWF-Indonesia. But APP is sharply […]
By JUSTIN GILLIS12 December 2011 Scientists trying to understand the future of forests on a warming planet have a strange problem: They do not know how to kill trees. I don’t mean the trees in their backyards. I would bet that the average climate scientist, especially one who studies forests, is better with a chain […]
By MARTIN FACKLER6 December 2011 FUTABA, Japan – Futaba is a modern-day ghost town — not a boomtown gone bust, not even entirely a victim of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that leveled other parts of Japan’s northeast coast. Its traditional wooden homes have begun to sag and collapse since they were abandoned in March […]
By Captain Locky MacLean10 December 2011 When one thinks of world-class diving, the tiny Republic of the Maldives immediately comes to mind. Keen divers travel from all corners of the globe to this Indian Ocean island nation. They come to marvel at the biodiversity its atolls and islands shelter under their shores. The Maldivian islands, […]
November 23 (mongabay.com) – A peace accord has been announced to resolve a long-running conflict between a giant state-owned plantation company and local communities on the Indonesian island of Java. The Forest Trust (TFT), an international NGO that works to improve the environmental performance of companies’ supply chains, says it has negotiated a deal under […]
