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Keeping trees in the ground where they are already growing is an effective low-tech way to slow climate change
Mature trees that have reached full root, bark, and canopy development deal with climate variability better than young trees. Older trees also store more carbon. Old-growth trees, which are usually hundreds of years old, store enormous quantities of carbon in their wood, and accumulate more carbon annually…
Soil organic carbon pools in the northern circumpolar permafrost region
The Northern Circumpolar Soil Carbon Database was developed in order to determine carbon pools in soils of the northern circumpolar permafrost region. The area of all soils in the northern permafrost region is approximately 18,782 × 103 km2, or approximately 16% of the global soil area. In the northern permafrost region, organic soils (peatlands) and cryoturbated permafrost-affected mineral soils have the highest mean soil organic carbon contents…
Some surprising aspects of climate change on eastern U.S. forests
Forest composition in the eastern U.S. has been changing quite dramatically during the last century. The main change has been an increase in shade tolerant and mesophytic (middle moisture) trees, such as red maple (the #1 increaser), followed by black birch, tulip poplar, blackgum, and others. These increases have been to the detriment of oak, hickory, and pine trees. My research has found that one of the main drivers of this change is the suppression of fire, starting with Smokey Bear legislation in the 1930s.
Greenhouse gases and climate change have impacted eastern forests’ fall colors in various ways…
Addressing climate change through land conservation and land stewardship
Kestrel Land Trust is hosting a speakers series designed to empower local action around habitat conservation and climate change.
On Thursday, March 31st at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, there will be a 60-minute online presentation followed by a 30-minute Q&A. Bring your curiosity and questions!
This program is the second of Kestrel’s 2022 Ecological Solutions for Climate Change Speaker Series.
Grasslands among the best landscapes to curb climate change
A study published Wednesday, November 14 in Science Advances by The Nature Conservancy and 21 scientific partners in the United States and Europe highlights the power of natural landscapes to resist climate change in the U.S.
Because grasslands, wetlands, forests, and other ecosystems naturally absorb and store carbon, the study shows that protecting and preserving these features of the natural world could allow for the annual absorption of one-fifth of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions — the equivalent to emissions from all U.S. vehicles…
The surprising downsides to planting trillions of trees
On November 11, 2019, volunteers planted 11 million trees in Turkey as part of a government-backed initiative called Breath for the Future. In one northern city, the tree-planting campaign set the Guinness World Record for the most saplings planted in one hour in a single location: 303,150.
Why the Huntington Beach oil spill is so harmful to wildlife
On October 2, an oil pipeline off the coast of Southern California ruptured, spewing an estimated 144,000 gallons of crude into the Pacific Ocean. The leak created a toxic, 13-square-mile oil slick off the shore of Huntington Beach, which has since spread into coastal wetlands rich in biodiversity.
While the spill is far from the scale of infamous past disasters — the BP Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010 released roughly 930 times as many gallons into the ocean — experts say it will have sweeping impacts on Southern California’s coastal wildlife, potentially for years to come.
Earth is running low on wildlife. Plants will be next.
The seeds of this story were planted in a steaming pile of elephant dung somewhere in the African savanna. Elephants love to stuff their faces with fruit, and fruit trees like marulas need a way to spread their seeds, so the two species have developed an intimate and symbiotic relationship. A single African savanna elephant is capable of dumping seeds up to 65 kilometers (40 miles) from the site of its feast, making them the most impressive seed transporters in the animal kingdom.
This map may make you feel better about the state of the planet
One problem with the onslaught of negative environmental news — extinctions, oil spills, and so on — is that people become numb to it, as Barney Long, senior director of conservation strategies at the nonprofit Re:wild, told Vox last fall.
“I’m a strong believer in flipping this on its head and really starting to talk about the positive stories,” said Long, who’s involved in IUCN’s new tools to measure recovery (but not the Restor map). We want to avoid extinction, he said, “but what do we want to achieve?”
Efforts to restore ecosystems don’t always work, of course, and it’s important to highlight failures and course corrections, Crowther said. His previous research into forest restoration helped inspire enormous tree-planting campaigns, for example, but these efforts often fail to restore forests and can even destroy native ecosystems. Restoration is also not going to stop climate change on its own, experts say…
Scientists flood forests to mimic rising seas
Using a web of PVC pipes and rubber hoses, they inundate sections of woodland half the size of a football field to study how the trees might respond to climate change and its effects — namely rising seas and torrential downpours.
It’s a local experiment, but the researchers said they hope to build a global model that will help scientists understand what events lead to the earliest stages of tree stress and when forests near coasts start converting to wetlands…