Global Deforestation Demoed In Google Earth

eldavojohn writes "On Google's official blog, they claim a 'new technology prototype that enables online, global-scale observation and measurement of changes in the earth's forests.' Ars has more details on what Google unveiled at Copenhagen. If you have Google Earth installed, you can find a demonstration here. Many organizations and government agencies are on board with this initiative to put deforestation before the eyes of the public. If only satellite data of North America existed before the logging industry swept in!" It's interesting to contemplate the implications for intelligence gathering of Google's automated tools to compare satellite photos.

Comments

soooo

[Sunda666]

no need for satellite data from back then, just assume it was mostly green.

Re:soooo

[Mikkeles]

Actually, it was just a wasteland of trees that needed to be removed to reveal the view ;^)

Re:kdawson has a tiny penis

[Anonymous Coward]

Me chinese. Me play joke. Me go peepee in your coke.

Looks like BadAnalogyGuy is trolling again.

Trees

[arizwebfoot]

Interestingly, before the white man appeared in North America, there were an average of 8 trees per acre and now there are an average of 220 trees per acre in the US alone.

Just saying...

Re:Trees

[rock_climbing_guy]

Remain exactly where you are! THINKPOL is on the way to take you to MINILUV for rehabilitation.

Re:Trees

[rfelsburg]

Damn White men, always putting trees where they don't belong. Honestly, planting trees, what's wrong with you!

Re:Trees

[AlphaBit]

Exactly, the logging industry (as related to paper production) uses farmed trees. This means that the paper/logging industry has led to an increase in the number of trees growing in North America, while at the same time no longer contributing to deforestation. I believe almost all of our paper comes from these farmed trees.

Of course, increased forest cover could be just as bad as decreased forest cover. It's more about balance than maximization.

Re:Trees

[Anonymous Coward]

that _might_ be true, but those 8 trees were a heck of a lot larger than the forests we now have. Way back in the day, the entire state of Pennsylvania was clearcut for timber. The pine trees didn't regrow and the forests in PA are now predominately composed of hardwood trees that flourished naturally.

Re:Trees

[Tekfactory]

8 Trees per acres sounds about right for centuries old trees in pristine forest.

I have a quarter acre with 5, 30-40 year old maples on it, we also have 2 Japanese Cedars and a Cherry tree.

200 trees in an acre would be pretty closely spaced young trees, maybe like an orchard or nursery.

Now what we should be looking at is not how many trees we have per acre, but how many of those are young AND carbon absorbing trees, compared to carbon producing trees from decomposition. Forests have a carbon life cycle, and their balance shifts during that cycle, also some species of tree are better absrbers than others.

Re:Trees

[maxume]

Farming probably isn't the best analogy (tree plantations are a bit more fire and forget than a corn field), and if you measure in terms of the volume of timber (not just the number of trees, but the actual volume of wood fiber) standing on a given acre, there are plenty of landholders that have seen pretty big decreases over the past 50 years.

Re:Trees

[Tekfactory]

Obviously they are trying to ruin the environment, don't you read Nature?
http://www.iema.net/news/envnews?aid=10949

All kidding aside though, the type of trees matter, even palm oil plantations aren't the same ecosystem as the native rainforest they replace. Though the Palm Oil plantations are seen as the greener alternative to soy bean farms which is what a lot of rainforest is being cut down for.

Re:Trees

[geekoid]

[Citation needed]

Re:Trees

[HornWumpus]

Forests and Jungles are generally carbon neutral.

Every atom of carbon that a plant absorbs is naturally released when the plant decomposes.

A natural Forest or Jungle is a collection of plants in all parts of their life cycle. Simple math tells me that they don't absorb net carbon.

Unless we're talking about a swamp that is in the process of storing young hydrocarbons (there's a word for them, IIRC the Okefenokee is a rare example). The carbon has to go somewhere.

Tree farms on the other hand 'sequester' carbon in the form of building material and paper. Neither of which are going to last any significant geological time. Then again if we continue to build new McMansions faster then the old ones fall down there should be a carbon sink in the 'burbs.

Step 1. City makes a law that all new construction use more wood then the structure it replaces.
Step 2. Sell carbon offsets for the net increase in Carbons share of wood weight
Step 3. Profit!

I'm doing that wrong. That's an actual business model, the only thing missing is customers dumb enough. This is America. Viola, an actual business model (we will sell to the French).

How do you say 'Lumber Waster Carbon Credit' in frog?

Re:Trees

[dkleinsc]

It's important to note that the North American forests were not "pristine" when the white folks showed up. The people who had lived there for a few thousand years had practiced some fairly sophisticated forest management. For instance, they would regularly clear undergrowth to make it easier to travel and hunt, and put significant effort into managing herd sizes. They also cleared some spaces for agriculture, which the Pilgrims in particular took advantage of when they went to set up their own colony.

Re:Trees

[Anonymous Coward]

A roughly one acre section of my yard has about 1 tree per 10 ft radius. All of the trees are about 75 feet tall or larger and the only branches are the ones clear at the top as each tree fights for direct light, they look like telephone poles with a small canopy top. The new comers are all about 5-10 feet tall and stragly looking things and grow EXTREMELY slow. Around the edge is some pines and the deciduous ones near the edge are all twisted and angled or only have branches on the light side as they fight with the pines.

Where am I going with this story? Not sure. I have spaced out older larger trees in other areas of my yard that are extremely large and round and although they are single trees, they take up much more "leaf space" then probably 10 of the really tall ones packed in i have in the other part of my yard.

Re:Trees

[piltdownman84]

[Citation needed]

Not the op, but the number I have is: Natural Density in California is 60 trees per acre, but it currently is at 273 per acre. From "Green House Gas Emissions From Four California Wildfires: Opportunities To Prevent and Reverse Environmental and Climate Impacts" (PDF)

Re:Trees

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but they chopped down almost all the big ones.

Re:Trees

[Anonymous Coward]

That's one tree for every 198 sq ft. That's a pretty small tree. I wonder how big those previous 8 trees were?

Re:Trees

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean Voila (there it is) not Viola, a chubby violin.

Re:Trees

[ksd1337]

That may be, but the species diversity of the trees planted has to be taken into account as well. 8 trees of a different species each are more valuable to the ecosystem than 220 trees of only 2 or 3 different species.

Re:Trees

[nature_geek]

I don't know whether your numbers are correct. However, even assuming that they are, turns out that the "number of trees" is a terribly poor metric for describing the value of the ecosystem services provided by a forest or a landscape. Larges trees are more valuable than small trees. Dead trees, snags and fallen logs remaining in the forest (which rarely exist in post-logging landscapes) are often structurally more important to the forest than half of the living trees remaining there.

Just saying...

Re:Trees

[HornWumpus]

You will never catch me using the french language correctly.

Re:Trees

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, you're one of those guys still saying "Freedom fries!" How are the other three?

Re:Trees

[Anonymusing]

Question... I've seen some old-growth trees in New York's Adirondack Mountains (and elsewhere) that are 200+ years old ... their diameter is more than the reach of my arms. Meanwhile, all the trees in more recently-logged areas, which are maybe 50 or 80 years old, or less, are much, much smaller. Do the bigger, older trees do more for the environment? Or do the smaller trees make up for it in volume?

Re:Trees

[Anonymous Coward]

The cause is less about planting trees than it is about preventing forest fires. Prior to effective fire fighting there was more of a balance between prarie and forest. Fires would burn back trees and the area would quickly turn to prarie. Over the next hundred year or so the tree canopy would be dense enough stop sunlight and choke out the undergrowth.

Most of the forest in the US was logged at one time or another. Much of it poorly. Our most extensive forests are all relatively new, so the trees are relativelty small, so they remain tightly spaced.

Re:Trees

[datapharmer]

trees != forest. Tree farms growing slash pine in rows for pulping don't create the same sort of environment as natural forests that have 300+ year old trees where the trees themselves have their own micro-ecosystems. Don't be ignorant.

Re:Trees

[tmosley]

Yes, but that is California, which is mostly mountains and desert. There are more trees now because water is being diverted there from elsewhere. Check the numbers and you'll probably see a greater decline in tree populations in neighboring states.

Of course, I agree with the thesis of the article. I saw pictures of my hometown from a hundred years ago, and there wasn't a tree in sight, but now it's like living on Kashyyyk. There are huge pine trees everywhere where the land isn't kept clear. I'm sure that 200+ years ago you probably couldn't even walk though the area for the thick undergrowth and close-growing trees. I also know that the paper and logging companies have a lot to do with that, as they long ago instituted a policy of planting two trees for every one they felled. Due to that policy, they have become a lot wealthier.

Re:Trees

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.fia.fs.fed.us/slides/Trend-data/Web%20Historic%20Spreadsheets/1977_2002_Live_trees_dbh.xls

Re:Trees

[_Sharp'r_]

"We are not running out of trees or forests. America has three-and-one-half times more forest land today than it had in 1920. America is growing 22 million new acres of forest annually while harvesting but 15 million acres, for a net gain of 7 million acres each year."

A quick google search reveals this quote from '92.

I'm sure it wouldn't take much more searching to find other comparable numbers. I'm guessing that 1920 in the quote was picked because it is a low point, but still, it's not like we currently have a big deforestation problem in the US, now is it? "Fully 87 percent of our paper stock comes from trees that are grown as a crop specifically for paper production."

Re:Trees

[mdarksbane]

They also practiced the same slash and burn agriculture that is now devastating the rainforest, their populations were just never high enough for it to catch up to them in the same way.

Re:Trees

[Ziest]

Bullshit. Cite your references

Re:Trees

[haruchai]

It wasn't just a matter of population - they had to do it all with hand tools. Let me tell you, if you haven't tried it - clearing
dense growth by hand is very hard work. I did it several times a year for about 4 years and I would rather freeze and starve
to death before I'd do that again.

Re:Trees

[EvilBudMan]

Citation, please? 220 don't sound right. Even 8 seems like a lot.

Re:Trees

[MobyDisk]

I'm glad the natives cataloged these statistics for us.

Re:Trees

[gblackwo]

Perhaps Voici would be better, you ever think of that punk?

Re:Trees

[pixie.pt]

Out of curiosity where this numbers come from?

Re:Trees

[Hadlock]

Most "farmed forests" are full of wildlife. It's not like they burn everything to the ground after they clearcut an area, and they don't clearcut areas right next to each other. I'm not sure what kind of clearcut operations they're doing in Gainesville, FL but I can promise you I've driven through the "Farmed" areas in Washington State, and it's not uncommon to see deer and yes, even bald eagles from the road. Animals in the forested area migrate about a mile from the clearcut area, and after a year or so new animals relocate to the land they used to call home. The forest (both plant and animial) grows back incredibly fast. Every spring and summer we'd spend three days cutting back the forest that kept encroaching upon our back yard... there was about a 10' boundary where our yard met the forest, and every spring we'd clear it out, and by the end of summer it'd need clearing again. Wyerhauser (the main logging company in WA) is in the business of making money, and they've been foresting the area for probably 100 years with negligible problems with wildlife. Most wildlife problems in forest come from overhunting/fishing, not logging.

Re:Trees

[Anonymous Coward]

[citation needed]

  Where, who, how many, how large the area, at what times. Otherwise this is just mythical FUD about "noble Indians"

Re:Trees

[cffrost]

Paleface plant too many trees... Fuck up natural vista.

Re:Trees

[drinkypoo]

Where, who, how many, how large the area, at what times. Otherwise this is just mythical FUD about "noble Indians"

Actually, the term is "noble savages", and you are an incompetent troll.

I live in Lake County, California, where the Pomo people lived in peace for 10,000 years or more. They built basket-like houses to ride out the winter, and then burned them down in the summer, producing yearly burns that kept down the undergrowth without harming old growth, with which the county was covered until the US Government paid the influx of whites money to cut them down and plant Black Walnuts. You can live on Oak acorns, but you can't live on black walnuts, which forced anyone they didn't outright kill to live the lifestyle of the white man, and buy his food. These people were almost entirely independent of agriculture; there was more than plentiful food available for the taking, and the land was thick with game. The coast is just a day's walk away, and it was once rich with shellfish.

In fact, I live in Kelseyville, named after a man who enslaved a large number of Pomo people, forcing them to labor and raping a number of women. I often tell people it's a bit like living in "hitlerville" but most of the dumb rednecks around here don't see my point. Kelsey's wife apparently grew so tired of his behavior that she poured water in the men's gunpowder, opening them up for an old-fashioned indian massacre which they wholly deserved. Then the US' 1st Cavalry came up here and went genocidal on an entirely different band of Pomo, killing everyone on the island now known as Bo-No-Po-Ti, or "Bloody Island". Well, except for one little girl, hiding in the reeds. I have her account here someplace, but I cannot locate it ATM to quote it (it's on paper, and under some other stuff I guess. But I'll dig it out later if someone makes a request... someone less cowardly than you.

Re:Trees

[dkleinsc]

Where: Coastal New England
Who: Wampanoags, Massachusetts, Narrangansetts, Pequots, and several other groups
How many: Not entirely clear, but most evidence is that there were something like 50,000-100,000 residents of the area before European contact.
How large: At least most of present-day southern New England (Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts.
At what times: Not entirely clear when it started, but what was clear from reports from early explorers and settlers is that it was easy to walk around, there was beautiful agricultural land available (due to a very large percentage of the population being wiped out by smallpox and other plagues in the late 1500's), and they never really described it as pristine woodlands.

It's not a matter of "noble Indians", just Indians who were capable of basic science. They're livelihood was based around hunting in woodlands and cultivation of corn, beans, and squash. They experimented and figured out ways of making that process easier. That's not a far-fetched hypothesis in the least.

Re:Trees

[datapharmer]

according to the usda's own website, in the pacific northwest salmon are doing very poorly.

The first reason they list is logging, which causes silt runoff into rivers and streams. This is just one example of many problems caused by logging.

This isn't to say we shouldn't cut down trees, but to replant entire forests as tree farms and call it unaffected is disingenuous. Just because there are deer and eagles doesn't mean there are the same levels of diversity and same types of animals in farmed forests as there would be in the native forests of that area. In fact the two animals you mentioned are probably a result of the ecosystem being out of whack. Deer love farmed forests because they have large straight runs to travel and plenty of underbrush to hide in. The eagles love to nest in the couple large trees that get left and like to be well above their surroundings.

Many slower growing fungi and other vital parts of the ecosystem are destroyed by clear-cut operations and can take hundreds of years to reestablish themselves. If the forest gets cut every 15 to 25 years they never have a chance and the ecosystem is permanently changed. Mosses, Fungi and Lichens don't just go across the road to another patch of land and then hop back when the cutting is done like deer and rabbits (especially since logging companies often spray pesticide and herbicides to keep the paths between the trees clear), but believe me, we'd all be in a heap of trouble if all of them were wiped out.

By the way, it is Weyerhaeuser, not Wyerhauser. At least get the name right if you are going to use them for your argument (by the way, I've seen Weyerhaeuser lands, they are no forest by any stretch of the imagination' i've seen more wildlife in a corn field.

Re:Trees

[Hurricane78]

Yeah, because you know exactly how many trees were in all of North America, before we arrived there!

Just saying...

Re:Trees

[Anonymous Coward]

This is absolutely incorrect, at least in north america. Our productive forests are mostly wild, but harvested in a way to support and encourage growth. So your point is correct about increase in the number of trees, but your statement about farming is wrong.

So?

[Anonymous Coward]

And how will those who have previously already seen immense evidence of deforestation, countless images of destroyed forests, be affected by this?

North American Reforestation.

[tjstork]

The original poster wishes he could see North America before the logging industry swept in. Around 30-50 years ago, his intuition would have been rewarded. But, for the last decades, much of the United States has actually been reforested, rather than deforested. The reasons for this are complex and mixed, but some factors include the original mills going out of business in the Northeastern USA, adoption of better forestry practices, a reversion of farmland to homesites - which invariably means planting even more trees, and so on.

Indeed, Americans have been catching something of a break as they have planted so many trees that North America would be a net carbon sink, if they didn't also drive so many cars. This picture changes as all the new trees mature and their carbon uptake decreases. But, the important lesson here is that while Americans might be bad about CO2 emissions, they have, in their own way, also showed how areas can be reforested, that were once barren.

Re:North American Reforestation.

[Sunda666]

good to know. OTOH, here in the south the chainsaws are always busy. cheers

Re:North American Reforestation.

[geekoid]

Trees don't remove CO2 from the atmosphere in any permanant way.

Half the CO2 the take in during the day is put back out at night, and the rotting foliage put it's CO2 back into the air.

That said, it's not like planting trees in the US will compensate for the rainforest's loss. Thats like saying poking holes in your body make up for the loss of your lungs.

Re:North American Reforestation.

[IndustrialComplex]

Trees don't remove CO2 from the atmosphere in any permanant way.

If you go from 0 trees, to 1 tree that you replant every time the old one dies then you have removed 1 trees worth of carbon from the air as long as you keep a tree growing.

If you go from 0 trees to 1 tree that you harvest every time it is fully grown and use the wood in building a house or some other permanent structure and keep replanting that tree every 10-15 years then you are removing 1 tree's worth of carbon from the atmosphere every 10-15 years.

It is only if you plant a tree and let it die and decompose and plant no additional trees that your example holds.

Re:North American Reforestation.

[tjstork]

That said, it's not like planting trees in the US will compensate for the rainforest's loss. Thats like saying poking holes in your body make up for the loss of your lungs.

Planting trees in the USA could compensate for the rainforest loss, if we did indeed plant enough. This would be a massive terraforming project in the Southwestern USA, for sure, but, it certainly could be done.

Re:North American Reforestation.

[Dalzhim]

I can easily have the amount of trees grow in my own yard when I use wood chopped down from my neighbour's trees to keep my fireplace filled up. The point being, we don't care about the amount of trees in the US alone if the amount of trees worldwide is declining.

Re:North American Reforestation.

[khallow]

That said, it's not like planting trees in the US will compensate for the rainforest's loss. Thats like saying poking holes in your body make up for the loss of your lungs.

That's a dumb metaphor and you should know it. It's a modest compensation. It's more like losing a million bucks, then getting a few tens of thousands of it back. It's replacing some part of what is lost.

As an aside, I wonder how much reforestation goes on in the tropics. As far as I know, there isn't a lot of deliberate reforestation, but there is a bit of letting the land go back to jungle.

Re:North American Reforestation.

[MikeV]

Most if not nearly all of the dry weight of trees is carbon. As the tree grows, it increases weight, which is carbon. There is a portion of the carbon that cycles as the tree loses and grows leaves, but the benefit is in the sequestering of the carbon in it's woody structure that will remain sequestered for centuries if not millennia. If the tree falls down and rots, the released carbon will get re-sequestered in the wood of the seedlings that will replace that tree. If the tree is cut down and milled into lumber, that is countless tons of carbon sequestered within the very walls of the homes we reside in - some lasting for decades, others for hundreds of years. Scrap from construction as well as from demolished homes that get stuffed into a landfill will remain there without noticeable decomposition for centuries. We may not be balancing out the carbon released from coal fired power plants and vehicles and, of course, from natural phenomena that releases the lions share of carbon, but the forestry cycle and increasing forested is helping at least and certainly not hurting.

Re:North American Reforestation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, Americans have been catching something of a break as they have planted so many trees that North America would be a net carbon sink, if they didn't also drive so many cars.

To me that sounds like "Americans have recently planted a lot of trees, but not enough to make up for their car emissions."

Re:North American Reforestation.

[Temujin_12]

It is interesting to drive through certain areas in the northwest US and see entire forests which were clear cut a few decades ago but were replanted and now look just like a fully-grown forest (however you define that).

Re:North American Reforestation.

[adamchou]

If you go from 0 trees to 1 tree that you harvest every time it is fully grown and use the wood in building a house or some other permanent structure and keep replanting that tree every 10-15 years then you are removing 1 tree's worth of carbon from the atmosphere every 10-15 years.

Yea, but every time you take a tree, you don't restore the nutrients in the ground. So its unlikely the cycle will continue to be 10-15 years. It will grow to be longer and longer as it takes more time to replenish the nitrogen in the ground.

Re:North American Reforestation.

[FredThompson]

Yes, the OP is a fool. Trees are plants which are FARMED.

Re:North American Reforestation.

[Hadlock]

So then why are trees still growing in Washington state after 3-5 clearcut cycles in the past century? How is it even possible for new trees to grow at all in clearcut old growth forests? Aren't all the nutrients "used up"? How come forestry companies don't fertilize their forest crops every year? Where have you ever read this be the case?
 
[citation needed]

Re:North American Reforestation.

[adamchou]

I never said that trees won't grow again. It just takes much longer for nutrients to replenish... case studies

Re:North American Reforestation.

[adolf]

Wooden houses are not permanent CO2 sinks, either. They eventually (all of them) decompose and rot. Regular maintenance preserves the integrity of the structure, but frequently (in the decades- and centuries-long time frames worth discussing when the word "permanent" is bandied about) results in old wood being replaced by new wood. The old wood is typically either burned or buried, and in either case will release its carbon back to the environment. And the maintenance, itself, is not devoid of its own carbon footprint -- contractors drive trucks, use power tools, and work with materials which are also delivered from their source by means of fossil fuels.

I have no citations or studies. These are just my experiences in life, having lived in old, wooden houses for most of it.

Re:North American Reforestation.

[drinkypoo]

Half the CO2 the take in during the day is put back out at night, and the rotting foliage put it's CO2 back into the air.

Well, until it becomes anaerobic (e.g. the duff piles high enough.) Then it starts putting out methane :)

Oregon

[fwarren]

We have more trees here in Oregon now than were here 100 years ago or even 200 years ago. (Unlike nature, we don't let forest fires burn them down.)

We plant them all over the place and take care of them. Every time we cut one tree down, we plant 3 to 10 more of them.

We really are not deforested to the west of the Mississippi. Now east of the Mississippi is a different story. But no one is talking about deforestation on the east coast. They only talk about it out west where we have plenty of trees to go around.

School kids went out 30 years ago on filed trips here in Oregon to plant trees. Why? As a reminder that most of the income in this state came from logging, and that timber was a renewable resource. If we plant trees today, then in 20 years when you are old enough to work a timber job, there will be plenty of trees to cut down.

I live in a county that has been devastated by the loss of 80% of the logging industry. We have as many trees now as we had 30 years ago. The only difference is we have 15% unemployment and we can't cut and replant trees to actually make a living.

Earth first -- we will log the rest of the planets later

Re:Oregon

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time we cut one tree down, we plant 3 to 10 more of them.

Sounds rather Maddox-ian.

Re:Oregon

[MaWeiTao]

I'd say east of the Mississippi is pretty heavily forested too. I can't help but wonder how much carbon dioxide is being removed from the atmosphere because of forests. I wonder if there are any metrics because it seems like any news posted about the environment is invariably negative.

Re:Oregon

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in the Wash DC area, we cut down woods for housing developments and new highways. Clearing away acres of woods, and then replanting a dozen or so new trees here and there, doesn't mean we have more forests. I'm glad that trees are being replanted, but I think people are playing around with the definition of what constitutes a "forest".

Re:Oregon

[geekoid]

"The only difference is we have 15% unemployment and we can't cut and replant trees to actually make a living"

what does that mean?

Also, forest fires don't burn down forests.

"Every time we cut one tree down, we plant 3 to 10 more of them."

Cite needed.

"They only talk about it out west where we have plenty of trees to go around."
there is a reason for that, it's called 'shifting baseline'. Basically it mean that people who grow up where there aren't trees have no reference to go by to realize there should be trees.

In Oregon people cans ee the fantastic forests, and when they start to diminish they say something.

Careful citing logging industry stats, they ahve a tendency to be massively incorrect.

For example, According to the Labor dept.there are only about 8000 worker in the logging industry, but they would have you believe there are 100K +.

Re:Oregon

[bill_kress]

Forests don't remove as much as you might think--although it is significant for above the surface, most of the work is actually done by sea life as I understand it.

Re:Oregon

[Tekfactory]

Actually under Carbon Emissions restrictions passed in Europe, coal burning plants are burning wood pellets that are seen as carbon neutral. Many of the wood pellets burned in Europe come from the SouthEast US. The author of the BBC article I was reading this in wondered how long the united states will continue to ship wood pellets to Europe when it enacts its own Cap and Trade restrictions.

The wood pellets can be made from young or old trees, sawdust, trimmings, scraps, wood pulp, anything.

Likewise China has severe restrictions on logging, in China. Furniture made there now is made from wood harvested legally and illegally in other Asian countries.

Re:Oregon

[bill_kress]

Another interesting point, a vast majority of loggers have been removed by the logging industry itself by optimizing them out through automation. While the price of wood keeps going up, they keep trimming work practices to improve their margins.

If anyone really cared about putting loggers to work, they would found a company that used selective logging as opposed to creating the giant swaths of clear-cutting you see throughout Washington just outside the shallow strip of trees they leave beside the road. (just look at a satellite photo for evidence).

Re:Oregon

[DeadDecoy]

We have more trees here in Oregon now than were here 100 years ago or even 200 years ago. (Unlike nature, we don't let forest fires burn them down.)

Well, it helps that Oregon has rain 60% of the time throughout the year. In California the state has to do controlled burning to limit the damage a wildfire might cause. Plus Oregon's heavy rain system makes it easier to grow plants there; the only other place I've seen that has the same capacity have been the Hawaiian islands. Those benefit from frequent rains and fertility from volcanic soil. But, overall you make a good point. Planting more trees than you cut down leads to a more sustainable and pretty environment.

Re:Oregon

[dkleinsc]

Actually, a lot of the area east of the Mississippi is doing pretty well on that front as well. Thanks in no small part to the conservationist types and Teddy Roosevelt, while most of the old growth forests are gone, a lot of new forests have grown up. For instance, New England went from almost completely forested to 30% forested, and is now 80% forested.

Re:Oregon

[VoxMagis]

Actually, speaking from my own life here in Oregon, there are so many complexities to this issue.

I once truly believed we should stop clear-cutting and only allow select cut. I still do to some extent, but then the question becomes where do we sell that wood? The forestry industry has changed their cutting and added more machines and less men not just because of the cost (including liability, which is HUGE) but also to be able to compete with cheap lumber from around the world.

Then you go to Coos Bay and watch them dump wood chips into container ships for Asia and wonder where the mill jobs are.

I don't have a good answer. I know that this state was dependant for it's livelihood on timber at one time, and those times are gone. I just don't really know if we have enough left of anything else. It's sad - I consider it a beautiful place to live, yet we may be paying too much of a cost.

Re:Oregon

[fwarren]

What does it mean?

It means that when the big "spotted owl" controversy of the early 90's happened and the temporary injunctions on logging went into place, logging stopped and mills shut down.

If the mills had not shut down and went out of business due to the lack of trees and those mills were still in place, we would have an unemployment rate down below 5%.

I am going to college to improve my skills. Almost everyone else there over the age of 30 is someone who has lost their job due to layoffs in the logging industry due to reductions in logging OR are people who were loggers, lost their jobs 10, 15 or 20 years ago, were retrained in some other professions and lost those jobs due to the market.

I am not going to spend an hour googling out reports, old articles, etc. When I make a statement like "most users I have introduced to linux like it better than windows", it is a statement of personal experience and may not apply elsewhere or is a good indicator that Microsoft will die overnight.

However, when I say back in 1989 the town I lived in had 4 mills, and between 1989 and 1994 that number dropped to 1 mill and that it was related directly to the ban on logging related to the "spotted owl" nonsense. That is a different story. I don't feel compelled to prove there were 4 mills.

There are more than 8000 workers in the logging industry. It is not just people cutting down trees (loggers). The trukers who haul those trees. It is all the mill workers who cut the wood, the workers who keep the equipment going, etc. It is why we refer to it as "The Timber Industry"

Re:Oregon

[cmiller173]

Every time I see "Spotted Owl" I think of this: http://www.wendmag.com/blog/2008/10/06/politically-incorrect-dinner-spotted-owl-helper/ I actually have a box of this.

Re:Oregon

[Anonymous Coward]

Simply counting the numbers of trees misses the point somewhat. An area of farmed forest is vastly different than a natural, old-growth forest. The unique ecosystems that develop in old-growth forests don't get replicated in managed, farmed forests. Maybe it evens out in terms of carbon footprint and CO2 emissions, but it certainly doesn't measure up in terms of biodiversity. The logging industry doesn't take heat from most people for using farmed forests, they get heat for having virtually eliminated old-growth redwood forests and the assocaited habitats.

Re:Oregon

[Anonymous Coward]

"Every time we cut one tree down, we plant 3 to 10 more of them."

Cite needed.

Yes, it's true. A grown tree covers so much soil, that you can easily plant 10 saplings in its place (and still feel the space empty).
      However, during clearing, most of those small trees will be cut down to allow one of them to grow.
            So, you cut one grown tree, plant 10 saplings, and cut 9 of them (or they die) before the remaining sapling grows big.

Re:Oregon

[mdarksbane]

Really depends on where you're doing it. I worked for a while with a lumberjack from the Minnesota/Wisconsin area. He said most of the cutting they did around there was selective cutting by individuals.

A fair amount of timber still comes out of private woodlots where owners have trees cut in stages every few years so that they have a steadier cash flow than if they just clear cut it.

Re:Oregon

[EvilBudMan]

--Also, forest fires don't burn down forests.--

Yeah, smoking bears with guns do.

Re:Oregon

[hyades1]

And there's people who use toothpicks, too. Shouldn't they also count as employees of the logging industry?

Hey, whatever boosts your stats or makes a pretty picture, I'm all for it. Real numbers are for pussies.

Re:Oregon

[hyades1]

When people start talking about some kind of "total trees then and now" figure, let's not even get near a debate on the difference between an old growth forest and a one species tree farm. It would just get everybody upset.

Re:Oregon

[Hadlock]

Typically the exchange rate is 1 family (two adults, two 12 year old kids, a dog) == 1 adult tree (30ft high). Most every house (not including AZ, NV, UT) seems to have at least one or two trees, so that covers your biological processes; anything after that presumably would count towards offsetting your morning commute (but probably no where near all of it)

Re:Oregon

[drinkypoo]

"The Timber Industry" is one of the largest environmental devastators of all time, and working in it is as indefensible as working in offshore oil or any other dirty, destructive process. We should have stopped our timber clearing practices long ago, but instead began to run up against problems like that with the spotted owl "all of a sudden" due to a lack of foresight. Of course, the timber industry is legally protected in a zillion ways; in many places in this country, it's illegal to build your house with anything else. Without this legal protectionism we would have moved on to superior alternatives long ago.

Re:Oregon

[bill_kress]

I wonder how much of this type of work is being regulated? I know quite a few people who cut their own lots and don't seem to have trouble with it, but I'm sure that's dependent on where you are (Local laws, etc).

My biggest issue would be with clear cutting government lands--I'm not sure how this is ever acceptable. If reforestation works, why would one ever need government lands at all? There are a bunch of scarred landscapes in Washing that I'd be happy to see them replant and re-harvest at will.

before the logging industry swept in

[Anonymous Coward]

Before the beaver swept in.

Before the native americans swept in.

Before the farmers swept in.

Before the home builders swept in.

Should we go back to europe? And africa?

Pre-Logging Industry Maps

[jbeaupre]

"If only satellite data of North America existed before the logging industry swept in!"

Not from a satellites, but there are some maps. For example: http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/nercNORTHAMERICA.html

Note the complete lack of forests over most of NA about 15,000 years ago.

or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Interior_Seaway

Not much forest under the ocean bits.

Re:Pre-Logging Industry Maps

[Savage-Rabbit]

Not much forest under the ocean bits.

Kelp forest

You might not be as right as you think

[Quila]

Depending on your timeframe.

Forests covered about half the land before settlement, now about a third.

But the amount of forests have been going up in the last decade. One reason is because most of the forests belong to the evil logging industry, and they have an economic incentive to expand forestation if they want to expand their businesses. Today we have about as much forest as we did 100 years ago.

The advent of the automobile and other forms of transport, plus better farming techniques, also helped spread the forests, since we don't need so much land dedicated to feeding us and our livestock.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[PopeRatzo]

Today we have about as much forest as we did 100 years ago.

Genetically modified, fast-growing hardwood cash-crops do not equal "forest".

The things the evil logging industry (your words) wants to call "forests" do not allow for insignificant elements like wildlife, forest floor or wetlands. They are no more "forests" than cornfields are prairies.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[PrescriptionWarning]

look on the brightside, it hopefully means they'll stick mostly to cutting down their forest fields and not so much the actual forests filled with wildlife.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[mehrotra.akash]

but even these forests do photosynthesize and give out oxygen, which is a positive

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing I recall from years ago was this one company advertising itself as the tree-growing company, because it "conscienciously" planted two trees for every one it cut down. Then I learned that the natural mortality rate of young trees was 50%. This means that they weren't really making an effort to replant the clear-cut U.S. forests of yore; they were just trying to keep up with their current logging rate. Stupid. If trees are a crop, then trees need to be considered as things that will eventually deplete soil minerals; any place where they are only replanting trees will eventually fail to produce decently cuttable trees, just like any other single-crop farm. So they need to extend the cropland devoted to this crop, by replanting some of those older clear-cut areas (like most of the state of Montana) with trees. Before it is too late, and they find themselves with not enough good trees to cut, due to their own short-sighted stupidity.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[onepoint]

wait wait wait. If the paper industry needs wood, why not let them plant and reap that crop. same for the lumber industry, this way over time more and more virgin forest is left alone until one point the only crop they are harvesting is their own.

in reference to GM Woods, your right it's not a forest, it's a crop. and if you follow that crop ( which is some of the hardest data to get due to eco - terrorist burning down planted fields ), you'll find the creation of some interesting trees ( I am waiting for the 8' diameter tree with a height of 20 feet gown in 10 years to be published )

and just another note: we are seeing more responsible harvesting of forest over the last 40 years, it is progress, given it's not what I would be hoping for, but at least it's the right direction. I expect that in the next 100 years we will see more virgin type forest's and GM tree crops .

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[dlt074]

no room for wildlife in these cash crop lands? um you better go tell that to all the wild life living in them. seriously, have you ever been hunting(sorry that may offend PETA) HIKING in them? all kinds of fuzzy creatures. i assure you they don't know the difference and don't care. it is down right ridiculous to claim that just because a tree was planted for profit that it is somehow less desirable to the creatures that live in them. i like clean air and water as much as the next person but some of you have gone off the deep end and are just getting down right stupid.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[Anonymous Coward]

To what genetically modified fast growing hardwood are you referring? No such tree exists. The bulk of the logging industry is in softwoods anyway (dimensional lumber and paper).

monocultures perhaps, but your just spouting nonsense about genetically modified trees.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[Anonymous Coward]

You fuckers are always switching the goalposts. First you cry about deforrestation then when there is reforrestation that's suddenly bad too. Just fucking kill yourself and take away your footprint on nature.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[Penguinisto]

Err, GM trees? I can grok the existence of GM food crops, but somehow I'm not seeing trees as being that easily modified on a commercial scale (mostly because it takes so damned long to grow them and test the results by comparison).

Now selective 'breeding' and grafting, okay - but to be honest, both would barely qualify for the moniker "genetically modified" - Hell, Dachshunds would be better suited to the term "GM" than a selectively-bred Douglas Firs would).

If you have evidence of actual GM trees being sown and grown commercially, I'd be interested to find out where.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[guruevi]

Yes we have a lot more forests because of the automobile, you have 1 forest, so you need to put a street through it and now you have 2 forests, make a cross street and you now have 4 forests. Where I live, we have a whole jungle already.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[Penguinisto]

Depends on a lot of factors. For instance, the state of Oregon requires that a certain minimum number of trees be replanted after logging - even the "least productive areas" (their term) requires that a minimum of 100 tree seedlings per acre be replanted for every acre of logging... IMHO that's likely more than enough to cover the far smaller number of mature trees that had been cut down. They have to replant within a year of logging, and have to insure that by the fifth year, the seedlings must all be "healthy and out-competing the surrounding vegetation" (again, their term). The burden for this is on the landowner, be it a logging company or someone selling his/her timber to one.

Other states have very similar laws (see cite above).

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[jbengt]

You hiked (sorry) hunted in these forests, and you could tell by looking at fuzzy creatures that these forest farms support the same amount and diversity of wild creatures and plants? I assume you don't know the difference and don't care.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[SombreReptile]

Yes, it does depend on your timeframe. In 10 years, all of the now standing trees already killed by the pine beetle will be cleared, leaving western Canada (and I assume the US as well) deforested to a much larger degree.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[Rei]

Deforestation is myth. It's being pushed by so-called scientists who want to destroy capitalism. If you don't publish papers showing that deforestation is occurring, you lose funding. I have a petition signed by over 31,000 American scientists showing that deforestation is a lie. You should read the op-eds from a certain self-taught British viscount on the subject; he explains what the "scientists" pushing Deforestation Theory are getting wrong.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting. Too bad your links are all broken.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[Ziest]

Today we have about as much forest as we did 100 years ago

BULLSHIT. Cite your references.

When Europeans first came to this continent five centuries ago the eastern half, from the shoreline to the Mississippi river, was covered in trees. Now most of that is gone. On my Father's side I am a fifth generation New Yorker. In Great Grandfathers time northern Manhattan was still forest. My Grandfather used to tell me about going up to Harlem to buy vegetables. There are no more farms anywhere on the island of Manhattan. I have relatives living in upstate New York who remember their Fathers and Grandfathers felling trees to clear the land to farm.

Since the end of the second world war very large tracks of land have been turned into suburbs. In my own lifetime, while living in the Tidewater area of southeast Virginia, I have seen large sections of forests flattened to make room for development.
I call bullshit and ask that you cite your reference.

   

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[TooMuchToDo]

Can you explain the massive deforestation evident from satellite imagery in South America? Huge swaths of land that used to be rainforest are now used for grazing cattle and soybean/palm oil farms.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[Shotgun]

They're going to apply GM methodologies to trees just like food, because it is very profitable.

The paper and lumber industry wants fast growing trees of uniform dimension, with blemishes from blight or sickness. GM methodologies deliver that. The trees become much easier to factory harvest. The trees all reach maturity at the same time. The mill gets set up to chop up everything to the same dimensions. The experts that determine how a particular log will be cut to get the most value from it are no longer needed.

There is just to much money left on the table when trying to log old growth forest.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[Shotgun]

Never went flying in a small plane have you?

Your suburbs are an insignificant pimple on the face of the Earth.

They are darned ugly from the air, though.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[carp3_noct3m]

You should try googling instead of grokking. I simple search turns up lots of info about GM Tree being used, and even more about how dangerous they are. Look this one article is from 1999! http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/GEessays/GMtrees.html

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[Penguinisto]

Your cite talks about trials and R&D, but nothing in place now (GP was claiming that the lumber industry was using GM trees commercially now).

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is why WE IN THE USA need these awesome CO2 taxes, because of deforestation in SOUTH AMERICA.
Our fault. We deserve them. We have extra money. We are guilty of our success.
We are stoopid.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[Rei]

Can you explain the massive deforestation evident from satellite imagery in South America? Huge swaths of land that used to be rainforest are now used for grazing cattle and soybean/palm oil farms.

The satellite deforestation record doesn't completely match up with the surface deforestation record, so both of them are suspect. Plus, ten years ago, a scientist made an error on a non-peer-reviewed graph that was later used as the cover of a report on deforestation.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[TooMuchToDo]

Even if the records don't match up, the fact remains that deforestation is rampant in South America.

http://www.google.com/search?q=south+america+deforestation

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[abigor]

I don't disagree that the forest industry is necessary, but to claim that a replanted forest has anything even close to resembling the wildlife and diversity of an old-growth forest is plain idiotic.

Signed, a former forestry worker

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[interkin3tic]

...somehow I'm not seeing trees as being that easily modified on a commercial scale (mostly because it takes so damned long to grow them and test the results by comparison).

I don't know much about plant science, but I would assume they could measure sprout growth speeds in a reasonable time span. They're also likely able to apply lessons learned in faster-growing plants, like corn, to trees.

I think it's a given that auxins = plants grow. I would bet that a tree engineered to express more of auxin-whatever near the shoot apical meristem would grow faster. Get that strain in however, and plant it next to a normal tree and in a month you should have a pretty good answer. Maybe not. Either way, it's not like tree growth is a big black box and you wouldn't need to wait until the tree is full grown to know it goes faster.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[haruchai]

100 years ago, we didn't have the massive amount of carbon emissions we have today - from coal burning, oil/gas, mining, and
construction (cement production is a significant CO2 emitter).
If we are going to rely on trees as a source of carbon sequestration, we'll need a hell of a lot more than we've probably ever had
in human history.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[Chris Burke]

Just fyi, she's being subtly sarcastic in parodying the arguments of the anti-AGW crowd.

(sorry for ruining the joke)

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[TooMuchToDo]

On the tubes, sarcasm is difficult to detect minus the sarcasm tag.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[chris mazuc]

I can tell you that the tree farms I have seen (northern Florida, and southern Georgia) are nothing but endless rows of fast growing pine, with absolutely nothing else. The real forests down there are so dense that during the summer you can't see but a few feet into them, and good luck trying to walk through it without a machete or a trail. I'm sorry but a tree farm is not a forest in any sense of the word.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[GodfatherofSoul]

Forests != reseeded logging plots. Forests are complex ecosystems of scores of plants and animals living symbiotically together. Many of these reseeded plots are ecological "deserts."

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[chris mazuc]

The problem is when people try to call a tree farm a forest, as the GGP did. A forest is a lot more than a bunch of trees.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[Anonymous Coward]

They are actually more healthy than a so called 'virgin' forest because of the lack of disease and bug infestations.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[Chris Burke]

Especially when the same posts in a GW article would have been made with no irony at all.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[EvilBudMan]

Deforestation is mostly taking place in the rain forests. Hell tree farms were started 100 years ago. The rain forests are where most of the trees are. The oceans are also high on the list of not absorbing as much CO2 as in the past.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[EvilBudMan]

Hmm.. then whats the problem with GM trees? I can really see the issue with corn though which IS highly GM and fed to us and burned in everything imaginable. Yuck, cheese made from corn oil and a tiny amount of milk. US housing built from spf and has always been fast growing. Paper, I am not sure, but cutting down trees in Brazil to make cane fields is way bad.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[tsm_sf]

Which was, in fact, the joke. Or meta-joke. Ok, now I'm confused.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[jurgen]

I am waiting for the 8' diameter tree with a height of 20 feet gown in 10 years to be published )

No GMO necessary, it already exists... it is called Eucalyptus, and some species will reach those dimensions in rather less than 10 years in the right climate. It is nowadays grown in vast quantities for paper and construction (although for construction they drown it in poison after harvest because most wood-eating insects seem to think it's delicious.) I live in an area of Brazil that used to be rainforest of which now only patches are left, the rest is all eucalyptus plantations owned by one large paper factory and which together cover abpout the same area as a smaller European country.

A few cycles of planting and harvesting eucalyptus in monoculture is also an excellent way to make the soil totally unsuitable for growing anything else, and lowering the water table to boot. Eucalyptus digs deep, but eventually it will bring the water table down below its own reach, then you can forget about growing /anything/ on that land for while and even your neighbors who weren't planting Eucalyptus will be suffering.

Since large scale eucalyptus plantations outside of Australia are a relatively new thing, the scope of this particular idocy hasn't hit home yet in most places, although I hear that Southern Portugal is getting close to disaster stage already.

Mind you, I love eucalyptus, I think it is a wonderful tree... after all it's not a fault that it grows so fast and is so good at extracting the resources it needs to grow even out of poorer soil. But the big thing agro-industry (and civilization, which currently depends on it) is in denial about is that monoculture is NEVER sustainable. It will always result in a lopsided depletion of "soil resources" that can't be fixed simply by adding NPK fertilizer. Monoculture is the mining of soil fertility, and eucalyptus monoculture is some very fast and efficient mining at that. :j

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[Arcaeris]

The paper and lumber industry wants fast growing trees of uniform dimension, with blemishes from blight or sickness. GM methodologies deliver that. The trees become much easier to factory harvest. The trees all reach maturity at the same time.

What? I think you misunderstand GM.

What you have stated - uniform growing, lack of blemishes, etc. - are all achievable through hybridization and selective breeding and whatnot, which humans have been doing for thousands of years. For example, the tomatoes you buy at the grocery store have been modified this way over the centuries to provide fruits of better yield, hardiness, and even color.

While technically hybridization is "genetic modification," when people talk about GM foods they specifically mean artifical genetic changes - like adding pest resistance genes from other species of plants, or genes from bacteria, animals or insects.

There's no good reason (yet) to develop GM trees, because GM work is expensive and there isn't enough of a profit motive to make trees that resist beetles or diseases in this way.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[Hatta]

Why is this modded troll? He's right. Densely planted new growth with limited biodiversity is not a forest, it's farm.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[Hatta]

Sure, and Iowa cornfields support populations of deer, rabbits, wild turkeys etc. Still not the same thing as prairie.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[shentino]

You mean like this?

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[Anonymous Coward]

also the prairies used to be tree-less seas of grass. Now there are trees all over the place due to soil conservation efforts after the 1930s.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[emilper]

Huge swaths of land that used to be rainforest are now used for grazing cattle and soybean/palm oil farms.

let me rewrite that:

Huge swaths of land that used to be mostly swamps, have a very thin layer of soil and that supported crops only by slash and burn cultivation (cutting the forest, burning the wood, planting something for a few years in the ash, letting the forest grow back) and who were so unproductive that even populations with rather sophisticated agriculture, such as the Inca, avoided them, are now used for grazing cattle and soybean/palm oil farms.

now can you spot the paradox ?

People living in "rainforest" area were mostly hunter-gatherers with a luster of agriculture because it's damn' difficult to have agriculture where rains wash away your soil, weeds grow overnight, rivers wide as Missouri change their course every year by a few kilometers and bugs growing in the swamps those people called home kill most things that don't have scales or can get close enough to a smoky fire.

I can understand cutting the rainforest for the wood, but for grazing cattle ?? Did Argentina run out of pampas ?

I am sure there are swaths of rainforest cut for planting something else, but I doubt those swaths are "huge", unless US and EU protectionism disappeared while I wasn't looking, or those evil farmers like growing crops for the fun of it. Agricultural production needs a market, you know ? Evil guys that persecute mother Gaia without looking to make money happen only in cartoons.

For your information, no evil capitalistic farmer bothers to "graze cattle": much easier and profitable to force-feed them indoors. Only poor subsistence farmers and "free range" subsidized farmers do it.

Maybe I am too old, but it used to be a time when on Slashdot people could think two moves ahead: you cannot have Mother Gaia environmentalism, free-range-ism, no-tile-agriculture, bio-fuels and protection of the environment in the same time. The same laws that keep the energy expensive (such as forbidding the construction of new nuclear reactors) are causing the "huge swaths" of cut rainforest, and for very little benefit, since a "swath" of rainforest won't stay cultivated for more than a few years no matter how much artificial nitrates or phosphates you throw at it because some thousand millimeters of rain a month will make sure that after whatever soil was created by burning and is washed away, only the rainforest (yeah, the plants growing in the rainforest are pretty tough, you need something close to a nuke to kill them) will manage to grow in the sands and clays left in place.

Want environment protection ? Donate your backyard to a "nukular" power plant, then we won't need to pester Mother Gaia for agricultural land: we'll be able to grow crops and "graze cattle" in skyscrapers. I would donate my backyard, but then I'll have the whole local GreenPeace chapter camping in the front yard, and I won't get any sleep, won't be able to work, and my government won't be able to give them the blackmail money, so they will come after my shaving cream which, you know, contains very dangerous chemicals.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[slashdotwannabe]

If the picture does not fit, YOU MUST ACQUIT!

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[onepoint]

yep I know about them, but they don't grow correctly for most lumber application. pulp mills love it and charcoal producers love it. I had a chance to visit a secret site once, in the middle of a field of trees, the tree grew right in front of me over the day. ( about 4 inches ). I look forward to the day that I can plant my first crop of these trees.

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[Anonymous Coward]

Forests covered about half the land before settlement, now about a third.

Not forests. Savanna. That's why there were tall straight trees for the King's masts, rather than a crowded and short-lived "mature" forest (called "old-growth forest" by those who think a hundred years is a long time).

Re:You might not be as right as you think

[ResidentSourcerer]

But what you don't get is a mature forest. Plantations will have much lower diversity.

Even in our limited northern forests in Canada compare:

* Plantation poplar will often be a single clone through the entire plantation. Natural poplar clones are typically only a few hundred feet across.

* Best results in plantation poplar are to keep bare earth underneath. Serious erosion issues. Second best is a shallow, low water usage grass such as sheep's fescue. A natural poplar grove here has an understory with wild rose, dogwood, hazelnut, chokecherry, lungwort, violets, bedstraw, thistles, nettles, bunchberry, false soloman's seal, wild clematis, harebell, dandelion...

* Plantations are done at uniform density. Wild poplar groves have edges and holes in them. Even more diversity there.

* Plantations are even aged. Most natural groves will have a distribution of ages. (Not true for fire succession species such as jack pine, and lodgepole pine.)

* Poplar plantations here are typically cropped in 8-12 years. The entire grove is clearcut. Natural poplar groves have a life span of 50-120 years, with new trees starting at the edges, and spruce taking over in the interior.

This does not mean that plantations are evil. But they are not as diverse as natural forests. They aren't planned that way, and they don't have enough time.

You won't find as many kinds of birds, kinds of mammals, kinds of bugs.

Most low diversity ecologies are unstable: Populations fluctuate wildly. Even natural systems here have low enough diversity that some animals have wild swings in population. E.g. rabbits have a 7-9 year cycle. Predators that have strong preference for rabbit show a similar cycle. This year we have a huge spike in the meadow vole population locally. No idea why.

Overall I would rather see a mixed strategy of some uncut natural forest and intense plantation rather than cutting down all the forest on a longer cycle.

I suspect that using wood for paper is a passing fad. GM versions of crops like switch grass and wheat grass may have more potential for producing cellulose. Trees have way too much lignum in their make up.

oh jeez....

[gandhi_2]

If only satellite data of North America existed before the logging industry swept in!

If you look at North America, the forests didn't disappear because of logging, suburbia expanded into, through, and right past the forests. Population growth will destroy every inch of nature.

But by all means, blame the "evil logging industry" like you don't use paper or live in a building that required wood or space to build it. And if you had over 2 kids, it really is YOUR fault.

Re:oh jeez....

[jedidiah]

Suburbia mostly gobbles up farmland.

Farmland just happens to be great for building on. If a state is settled enough to be more than just a "glorified territory" then the prime land that someone like you would claim as forest would likely already be very well established farmland. Some enterprising young chap 100 or 200 years ago would have already gotten rid of the trees.

Suburbia cuts into agriculture, not "nature".

Re:oh jeez....

[gandhi_2]

Not in Washington or Hawaii, and you're only 25% right in Utah.

Demoed?

[ground.zero.612]

Demolished or demonstrated? Maybe some Googelian combination of the two?

fwarren: I believe fighting natural forest fires has proven to be policy error. For a citation please see the burning of Custer State Park. There are no more Smokey the Bear commercials because forest fires are actually necessary to prevent catastrophic fires. From what I remember reading, the 40+ years of Smokey the Bear campaigning, and fire fighting left MILLIONS of tons of fuel in the form of old dead timber.

I guess I'm just trying to point out that while some of Oregon's other forestry programs might be a benefit, fighting forest fires for decades can and has lead to a catastrophe.

Re:Demoed?

[fwarren]

I did not say it was a good thing, I was merely siting it as a factor in why we have more trees.

I believe the longer we go not cutting down trees, and clearing underbrush and just letting forests grow and grow doing everything we can to keep from letting them burn. We should be able to log and remove old dead growth. We are just making sure that eventually we will have a forest fire so big we won't be able to stop it.

People in the timber industry want to cut down trees now (and remove the old dead ones) AND make sure there are healthy forests later so they can continue to cut down trees. It is not the timber industry that is for NOT removing that deadwood. It is the environmentalists.

Re:Demoed?

[smashin234]

The Smokey the Bear campaign still lives, although its much more minor today then it used to be. The reason is that forest fires are bad that are not planned out in advance...You see our Forestry department (which my father worked for) started their own fires to clear out fire causing underbrush, and to create fire breaks so to speak back in the day. They today also use controlled burning to further help forests along, but never do they want people to start fires....You insinuated that in your comment, and uncontrolled fires are fought very aggressively and to this day fire-fighters for the forestry department lose their lives to protect people from these fires.

There is no catastrophe as you say, and the rule is that they still fight fires to prevent them from getting too large. The reason being none other then the fact that if the fire gets too large it destroys the ecosystem whereas a smaller fire will simply plant the seeds for a new stronger and vibrant forest.

Yellowstone is also a case in point of a catastrophe, but that thought is now in the past and today fires and their benefits to nature are more understood. You find more issues with fires when people plant plants that are not native to the area, a drought occurs, and of course its prime material for a large fire around civilization. We hear about this all the time in California....

The bigger issue in Oregon and Washington is the remnants of old logging camps that left underbrush so thick that forests couldn't come back. Over the years, this has been burnt off or otherwise cleared out to make way for new forests....That is the largest issue in Oregon is bringing back those old areas that to this day are still remnants of lumbering practices back before Teddy R....

Re:Demoed?

[ground.zero.612]

I did not say it was a good thing, I was merely siting it as a factor in why we have more trees.

I believe the longer we go not cutting down trees, and clearing underbrush and just letting forests grow and grow doing everything we can to keep from letting them burn. We should be able to log and remove old dead growth. We are just making sure that eventually we will have a forest fire so big we won't be able to stop it.

People in the timber industry want to cut down trees now (and remove the old dead ones) AND make sure there are healthy forests later so they can continue to cut down trees. It is not the timber industry that is for NOT removing that deadwood. It is the environmentalists.

I agree and I think it is rather sad that those environmentalists actually believe they know how to grow a healthy forest better than nature itself. Natural fires being a part of that healthiness. In fact I know of at least 1 tree (the Jack pine) that needs a forest fire to procreate.

Can the demo this?

[dwiget001]

The global systematic destruction of human rights in so-called democracies or republics?

That would be a much more telling demo, I am quite certain.

Or, even better, the systematic economic destruction being done by central banks and the IMF?

No love for linux

[vivin]

I tried to view the demonstration.

"Google Earth Plugin is only available on Windows and Mac OS X 10.4+"

I guess I'm SOL.

Re:No love for linux

[Anonymous Coward]

how is this offtopic, mods. Maybe someone can provide a link to a video?

The evidence has been there all along

[macraig]

I can recall using Google Earth shortly after it was first released to zoom around the earth, randomly poking at it with a stick. I was looking for anything that seemed to stand out, and I found quite a number of unique things in those days: weird geologic features in Brunei/Sarawak, the salt flats in the Andes, the gold/minerals rush in the Atacama desert.

One of them was obvious overhead evidence of clear-cutting in southwest Australia. I've always had a silent fantasy about moving to Australia, believing it to be some sort of relative Utopia where things like resource mismanagement and government abuses didn't happen. The discovery of that clear-cutting FROM ORBIT was the beginning of the end of my fantasy.

Re:The evidence has been there all along

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always had a silent fantasy about moving to Australia, believing it to be some sort of relative Utopia where things like resource mismanagement and government abuses didn't happen.

Where did you come up with that rubbish? Australia has plenty of fuckwits in government. You also need to realize that Australia has lots of forest fires. The climate is usually dry and quite a few of the tree species contain an oil that will evaporate in the heat leaving a nice flammable fog in the tree tops, so when a fire starts, it can spread very fast. This results in large areas being cleared. But, this is normal and many species of plants have adapted to the point where the heat of the fire is needed to kick start the germination of seeds.

What google is doing really isn't that new. The Feds have been doing this since Landsat launched in the 70s. The big difference is that with today's storage capabilities and processing power, it can be done while sitting at home and browse around to any point on the world interactively, instead of paying a few thousand dollars for a 3'x3' poster of just one scene.

Cool!

[XxtraLarGe]

I can see my house from here!

We can fix this!

[Quiet_Desperation]

We must think BIG and GLOBAL like GOOGLE! We will launch saplings into orbit on vast arks and scattershot them into the ground, thusly reforesting the world! Mwa ha ha! We call it the Forest Continuity Project and pay for it with lumber credits and carbon back bearer bonds and the illegal unicorn horn trade out of Romania! Yes, most of the trees will shatter on impact and fail to achieve a planted state, but if just one tree saves just one child then $50 trillion is worth it! Follow me, boys, into the glorious future and let the trees rain down o'er me!

Re:We can fix this!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, getting beaned by the hypersonic saplings, I'll take the risk. But whoever gets hit by Louie, is gonna be smished. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067756/)

Re:We can fix this!

[Anonymous Coward]

We're not launching the seeds from orbit yet - check out the 'strategic seed bombs' half-way down the page, though:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/aerial-reforestation.htm/printable

Re:We can fix this!

[Anonymous Coward]

It has already begun: http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/2009/11/16/11760251-cp.html

Re:We can fix this!

[Hurricane78]

*hits Quiet_Desperation in the face with a log*

Breathless summary

[ceoyoyo]

The summary gets a little carried away. Google is basically offering cheap (or free) satellite imagery combined with cheap access to existing software and computing power. It's a good, socially responsible project on Google's part, but it's not the breakthrough in image processing that the summary implies.

"It's interesting to contemplate the implications for intelligence gathering of Google's automated tools to compare satellite photos."

The people who do serious, large scale, satellite intelligence gathering don't need Google's satellite imagery or their free computing capability.

Stop using trees for paper - use hemp!

[minion]

Seriously, we want to slow down deforestation? Stop using trees for paper products. The US needs to get over their high and mighty "We can't use hemp because its taboo" crap.

Re:Stop using trees for paper - use hemp!

[jbeaupre]

What taboo? It's arrest and jail time that deters most people.

Re:Stop using trees for paper - use hemp!

[fridaynightsmoke]

Seriously, we want to slow down deforestation? Stop using trees for paper products. The US needs to get over their high and mighty "We can't use hemp because its taboo" crap.

I was going to reply with a highly sarcastic rebuttal, but closer inspection shows that you may be right.

Wikipedia reckons hemp grows at 'up to' 25 tonnes/hectare/year of dry above ground matter. This gives 'up to' 13 tonnes/hectare/year for fancy 'high yield' hybrid poplar, intended for papermaking.

There is a huge amount of wiggle room with those figures, 'up to' is often meaningless (I'm going to give you 'up to' 100 billion dollars) and both sources are doubtless from organisations trying to promote their different 'crops'. Also theres the problem of how much actual paper you get from a tonne of almost-unspecified plant material respectively for each crop, and the required fertiliser and labour inputs etc etc.

I would also wich to point out that despite my name on here I'm usually very skeptical of "HEMP: The Wonder Plant!" type suggestions (even though I do approve of one particular use of certain varieties, at least).

Re:Stop using trees for paper - use hemp!

[LandDolphin]

Who is this "we' you use? In the U.S. the logging industry already replants trees to ensure that it will have trees to cut down in the future. It's not 1880 anymore.

It is outside of the U.S. where the logging industry doesn't follow this model. And often it isnt for the trees themselves, but for the land they are covering.

So I don't see how the U.S. using hemp for paper is going to have much of an affect.

Re:Stop using trees for paper - use hemp!

[istartedi]

At first I thought Flamebait was inappropriate moderation. Then I realized.... hemp... flame...

Re:Stop using trees for paper - use hemp!

[Hadlock]

For a fairly accurate back of the napkin guesstimate, you could google for an illegal outdoor marijuana growing operation article in CA, figure out what the acreage was, the total product confiscated, and then double that amount (they only sell the flowers and leaves, right?). I'd wager that a hemp plant bred for fiber could produce the same amount of weight of fibrous material as the pot plants are bred for flowering material.

Re:Stop using trees for paper - use hemp!

[minion]

Who the hell modded this as flamebait? Go look for yourself: http://www.ratical.org/renewables/

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-157158690.html

http://www.stemergy.com/news/press/?id=42

The people that mod this as flamebait are the same people that are the reason hemp and other alternatives will never see the light of day.

Show the destruction of forest fires

[Anonymous Coward]

How about before and after photos for forest fires. Then we can see that leaving a forest completely to itself can cause more harm than selectively harvesting it. It's the same reason we hunt deer in the Midwest. If we don't they'll over-populate and cause problems to the ecosystem.

Re:Show the destruction of forest fires

[AkiraRoberts]

Which is why, of course, those forests were lucky that we came along to save them from themselves. Good lord, imagine if humanity hadn't shown up? Why, we might have had a global firestorm reducing all around to barren waste within the next 2 or 3 hundred million years.

There's more to the story

[hyades1]

Just as long as people keep in mind that satellite photos don't always tell the whole story. A team of Canadian scientists went north recently in an ice breaker. Satellite imagery indicted that the pack ice had expanded rather than contracted, which was totally at odds with Global Warming models.

What they found when they actually got to the location where the satellites indicated the pack ice started, it wasn't there. It had retreated more than a hundred miles beyond where it was thought to be. The satellite cameras had been looking at a slurry of rotted ice fragments that were so broken up the ship just blasted through them at full speed without even noticing it.

Basically, the reality on the ground was very different from what appeared to be happening on cameras located a few miles overhead.

Re:There's more to the story

[cenc]

That is easy for Google Earth in South America. Most of the sat maps on Google earth are well over 10 years old. For example, my office building does not show on Google earth, and it is at least 7 years old, the mall across the street is over 10 years old and missing. The place where my house (and 100 other houses now stand), is also just a field. That is just the high resolution urban areas. The rural areas have even older and less detailed sat images. It is like they bought the discount cold war images.

They will need to just update the sat photos to really show where the deforestation has occurred over the last 10 years or so.

There's also an undocumented feature..

[billrp]

..that can show what egg will look like on alarmists' faces in a few years..

Re:kdawson has a tiny penis

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you consider all of the recent (something)AnalogyGuy accounts to be BAG trolling as well? All the best trolls get imitated, and sometimes the imitations are better than the originals.

Global Defenestration Demoed In Google Earth

[godztempus]

Was I the only one that wondered what was being thrown out a window?

Re:Global Defenestration Demoed In Google Earth

[Dutchy Wutchy]

You're not alone.

And another thing...

[hyades1]

If you update/install Google Earth, you're also going to get a semi-stealth install of the Chrome browser to go along with it...whether you like it or not. The first time I noticed Google was trying to shove Chrome down my throat was AFTER I'd already initiated an update installation of GE.

So be warned...if you don't want a little something extra with GE, you'd better skip this update.

Re:And another thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's fine. Maybe some FF users can finally get a taste of what a fast browser is like.

I hope this extends back 1000 years

[presidenteloco]

Because it is only by doing that that we will get an accurate picture of where we are at now,
and how significant any further changes one way or the other are.

For example, I'd guess three quarters of the UK, continental Europe, and the Americas were forested at
that time, with the remainder being grasslands and mountaintops.

The challenge of global environmental issues is that they are enormous in both geography
and time, and both of those scale problems make them difficult for us to plan for, understand
economically, and solve. We have no problem at all causing unintended consequences at global
and century scales, but so far have not been able to cause any intended consequences on systems
at these scales.

They are better than "Forests" for global warming

[Quila]

Lots of fast-growing trees suck up more CO2 than ancient forests.

But they are the forest industry, so they must be evil.

I hate alarmists.

[FatSean]

But single-species tree cultivation is not forest! Not even close. It's cultivation which does not tolerate all the other aspects of a forest ecosystem. You can't really compare commercially farmed trees to an actual forest. It's disingenuous.

Re:I hate alarmists.

[Hatta]

Clearly something must be done about the encroaching alarmist menace!

Re:They are better than "Forests" for global warmi

[AkiraRoberts]

No, they're not evil. In the grand scheme of things, a forest, even a mostly monoculture forest, is better than a wasteland. But, I would argue that this monoculture is not even remotely the equivalent of the diverse ecosystem that it replaced. Could it eventually become something a bit more diverse, in time? Sure. So could a corn field, if left alone long enough.

FYI

[BitHive]

The carbon is only sequestered as long as the tree is alive.

Re:FYI

[Xiterion]

Seems like quite a bit would be sequestered in the wood until it decomposes through some method.

Re:FYI

[BitHive]

Dead trees and harvested forest land release lots of CO2 from decaying root structures and the associated fungal colonies. It is always preferable to leave the forest where it is.

wtf??!!

[e-scetic]

First hundred or so responses to the OP don't seem to like his lamenting that there's no satellite data showing the forest situation in the US, are busy asserting that there are more trees than ever before (with nary a citation or link in sight to reinforce this claim, but I guess that's because there's no comparative satellite data available...?), and I get the overall impression they really don't appreciate Google putting out this capability either, or the OP reporting it. Clampdown in effect, in other words.

Citation

[fwr]

What's with all of the requests / demands for "citations?" This is Slashdot, not Wikipedia...

The crux

[zogger]

That's the crux of the matter, *employment*. This is hardly ever addressed when it comes to draconian "no you must stop this" laws and proposals as regards the vast rural areas of the world.

This is what I see all the time: Wealthy urbanites in the industrialized areas are all for "conservation" in areas they don't live, but they have pitiful to non existent whacko theories on what exactly the human beings who live in those other areas are supposed to do for a living. Can't cut down jungle hardwoods for lumber=evil, stop. Can't cut down the big trees to make row crop farms=evil. Can't cut down and replace trees with other species that have a globally useful economic function=evil. Can't raise stock animals because they emit methane greenhouse gas. Can't do row crops en masse because it requires spraying and artificial; irrigation, uses too much water. And so on, a HUGE list that wealthy urbanites have on the "you shouldn't do this" side.. Can't do anything at all on your property because one month out of the year there is a mud puddle that supports the breeding of the endangered three eyed flying newt-owl. all sorts of laws like that too, even if it means you are now instantly unemployed with not much in the way of immediate alternatives..yet the bills still come in every month, plus property taxes.

So, that's nice and all for all the well meaning urbanites, but a couple billion people around the planet are supposed to then live on "eco tourism"? For real, I see that thrown out by some of those folks as some sort of credible option. Nuts... Funny,speaking of nuts, I am not seeing any huge move for urbanites to exist entirely on a diet of imported wild harvested tropical exotic hardwoods nuts and berries either, which is the only other crop you can get from wild forest. But then, whoops, you are stealing the food that the animals need to eat too....so that's out...

That's about what is left if you can't harvest the trees and use them in manufactured articles and for construction lumber, or make some cropland. And forget mining anything, all of that is just instantly evil no matter what...

You just can't have it both ways, if these people want to just wall off huge forest areas of the planet and let them go wild forever, completely naturally, with no human use, they must first come up with viable, realistic and constructive alternatives for useful modern employment in areas that are currently at the bottom of the economic foodchain. Or offer a couple billion people a direct cash perpetual welfare subsidy to do nothing and just live there. Anything else is unfair, unrealistic, and practically speaking, unworkable.

Basically, I am for sustainable use, including managed forests, and I am *way* in favor of getting rid of the backward "environmental" laws that forbid use and harvest of all the fifty buzillion acres of dead forest land they let burn up for no reason every year in the western USA, said dead forest expanding rapidly from such things as the pine beetle. That's a huge waste, and contributes mightily to air pollution when it burns up from uncontrolled wildfires every year, with zero economic or practical benefit for anyone really. We could be using that wasted wood for vast biochar manufacturing facilities and for replacements for coal in some electricity plants for example, providing much needed jobs in rural areas, going to more sustainable energy sources, and also improving soil tilth with the biochar in established row crop lands. But no....can't do that, wouldn't be environmental, have to let it just burn up "naturally", while the runoff silts over all the creeks and wipes out the fish and stuff...

How about this proposal to solve all the environmental problems at one whack..it would work, too.. let all the big cities burn up "naturally", I mean fires break out there all the time, so just stop putting them out, which would greatly help to reduce the planet's population (those folks all want that as well, "too many people!"), most of humanity lives in big ci

Re:The crux

[Bent Mind]

So, that's nice and all for all the well meaning urbanites, but a couple billion people around the planet are supposed to then live on "eco tourism"?

No eco-tourism. It is clear that we need to encase the few remaining natural areas in a glass bubble and remove all humans. One must remember that humans, having appeared in this dimension only about 6000 years ago, are not natural. It is best to encase these humans in densely packed concrete cubes. We can call these cubes condominiums if the humans are considered well-off, or apartments otherwise. Perhaps we can feed them soylent green. It has green in the name, so it must be good.

In all seriousness, I do agree with most of your post. One thing I remember reading about though is the wild fires. It seems that fire is a necessary part of forest life. Without it, underbrush doesn't get cleared. It also helps with new trees and nutrients. The big problem with wild fires is that they were prevented for 100 or so years. Too much underbrush accumulated. This made the wild fires burn much hotter than normal. Most trees can survive a wild fire. However, in a forest where regular wildfires were prevented, when you finally did get an unpreventable fire, it was massive and hot. It burned everything down and left nothing but ash and mud. There are also a few species of tree that can't reproduce without fire. The redwood for example. So small, regular wild fires are needed.

I can't wait...

[hesaigo999ca]

There was an argument that started way back when deforestation was first discovered.
The fact that north america was quick to judge all other on going countries with deforestation problems
yet not really talking about their past deforestation leading them to dissolve most of their own plant population.

Some even went so far to say, who is USA to talk about Brazil, when Brazil could benefit from the sale of wood and lumber
and become a richer country for it, equal to the US. However, after hearing this debate, I know as with any human involved
disaster, that this will not end til the very last tree is uprooted for its sale on the market.

I can't wait till the last guy shows up with the last tree from his backyard, saying, ok now we really do have no trees left...now what?

Re:I can't wait...

[Hadlock]

What are you talking about we have more trees now than we did 100 years ago. We have so many trees here we're chopping them up for fill material and shipping that off to asia in big giant boats because it's worthless (in price) here as lumber to build houses -- have you been to home depot recently to price out a 2x4???. We're a net positive tree exporting country. Of course we're in a position to bitch about the rainforest.

they exist

[zogger]

I have my doubts how safe they are long run as well, I am not a big fan of cross species genetic modifications,(selective breeding I think is fine though) but GM and cloning of just selected individual trees is in use.

http://www.google.com/search?q=commercially+grown+GM+trees

No demo for Linux

[OFnow]

It's a pity, but once again Linux users left out. No demonstratiion on Linux
google earth... Sigh.

And its not just North America

[thatisscary]

Now if we can just see Europe and the Middle East Before civilization crept in. Or perhaps India, and China. Probably a lot of trees there thousands of years ago. Maybe we should just depopulate Europe. Make into into a great big foresty theme park. Or better yet, lets just depopulate the world and then we can all enjoy beautiful trees. You go first. I will make sure that everyone else drinks their kool-aid. I promise, I will drink mine too.

talking

[zogger]

No one is talking about it because it is is a non issue, we have plenty of forests east of the Mississippi.

Nice Demo. Send proposal. Tnx.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for your interesting demo. I appreciate the value of your product. I would now like to install and configure Global Deforestation in several regions that I control. Please send me a proposal, with pricing and support as well as system requirements, for activating a centrally managed Global Deforestation with unlimited clients.

Regards,
AC

(N.) America vs Global

[whathappenedtomonday]

I know this is slashdot, but the vast majority of posts so far are elaborate arguments about trees in the US, which is completely missing the point. Forest [...]swaths the size of Panama are lost each and every year. Most posts therefore are mere red herrings. IOW, the world / the climate does not care much about Oregon.

There's a lot more to deforestation than that: Fast Facts about Deforestation and Quick Actions to Prevent Deforestation

Re:They are better than "Forests" for global warmi

[MobyDisk]

Yes, but not if you chop down the ancient forest to do it. The new forest merely re-absorbs the CO2 released from chopping down the forest in the first place. But I can imagine some industry promoting this as a green initiative. Chop down trees, bury them, and grow new ones as a means of sequestering carbon.

Look at Haiti and DR on GE

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at Haiti and the Dominican Republic on GE if you want to see what uncontrolled deforestation does.

Re:They are better than "Forests" for global warmi

[whathappenedtomonday]

But they are the forest industry, so they must be evil.

Not per se, but the key is sustainability, and despite improvements - as others pointed out, many players in the timber industry don't want to destroy their resources completely - the industry is not acting responsibly:

"But the timber industry's Sustainable Forestry Initiative does not protect forests or deliver credible assurances. The SFI condones environmentally harmful practices including large-scale clearcutting and chemical use, logging of old growth and endangered forests, and replacement of forests by ecologically degraded tree plantations. And there's no guarantee that many products marketed as SFI have any connection to SFI certified forests. Most other forest certification systems also permit destructive logging practices. [...] If you haven't already, please consider adopting an environmentally sound wood and paper policy - and don't buy into the SFI's claims." (emphasis mine)
Forest certification can help ... depending on which certification system you choose!

Only logging and development?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if it will show the bark beetle losses in the western US?
http://solveclimate.com/blog/20090816/bark-beetle-infestation-offers-warning-delicate-workings-climate-disruption

Google Earth is useful...

[whathappenedtomonday]

and using it to track deforestation is neat and all, but a better, more comprehensive source of information is the State of the World's Forests 2009 report. And yes, it has neat and colorful maps, too.

Measured in percentage

[Quila]

Cities BTW took up very little of the forested land.

A tree releases all its carbon when it's chopped?

[Quila]

What are they, balloons?

The carbon stays until the wood is burned or decomposes.

On the flip side from suburbs

[Quila]

Extremely large swaths of land have been turned back to forests because they are no longer needed to grow crops to feed us and our livestock.

Urbanization is only about three percent of the US area, while farmland is a lot more, yet continually shrinking.

There are multiple factors, http://www.nationalatlas.gov/articles/biology/a_forest.html

"The forest cover in the U.S. has actually increased in the last 100 years - mostly due to farm abandonment in the East and fire suppression in the West."

Nice Idea for a Google earth app,

[jacks4u2]

Too bad it doesn't work for Linux.

championsgold

[Anonymous Coward]

There are two ways to get champions gold.
One is by completing the tasks to get a small amount of champions online gold.
Another is by using money to buy buy champions gold.
If you do not know how to buy cheap champions gold,
you can ask other players how to get champions money.

Wrong article!

[Snaller]

Its not if i have "google earth installed" (which I do) - its if i have their bloatware plugin installed (which I don't)

Couple of points

[RogueWarrior65]

Point #1: I can simulate anything in Google Earth too. Hell, Hollywood does it all the time. Doesn't mean it can or will happen. #2: Assuming that the premise is accurate then I submit to you that THERE is the reason for global CO2 levels rising because less carbon is being stored in trees because there are fewer trees. Who has been cutting down forests like crazy in the last 15 years or so? South America. #3: turning forest land into farm land is nothing new and it often reverses. Case in point, upstate New York has millions of acres of what was once farm land as is evidenced by stone walls everywhere. Walls don't happen by themselves. 18th century farmers cut down the forest and moved the rocks to make crop and grazing land. Now, much of that has been abandoned and is returning back to forests.

suggested reading

[presidenteloco]

regarding the difference between tree farms and original wild forest eco-systems:

"The Redesigned Forest" by Chris Maser

One point he makes is that current logging methods, which for example still include clearcutting that leads to rapid soil erosion, and slash burning that removes biomass (future soil) and makes it into CO2 and short-term fertilizer, result in a gradual depletion of the hydrocarbon biomass in the region, so that, in the tropics (where forest soils are already thin) you can only get two or three generations of regrown rainforest, and in temperate forests, you can get 5 or 6 gradually depleted tree-farm generations, then you basically have the Irish heather-covered hills (grazing range land) instead of forests.

Google's rapaciousness disguised as "good deeds"

[nsapc3f]

I won't call this evil but its certainly not a good trend even if Google's surface intentions are benign and even altruistic.

Google wants all the data in their system, in their format and for you to only use their tools. It's a big roach motel. Granted the company is solvent and isn't going anywhere but it appears that once you move your stuff into the Google cloud you can only work with it through their API/interface. I'd much rather see this data being offered and hosted in industry standard formats, run with whatever tool you want on that data because its accessible through a file system paradigm - native client, WxS services, mapreduce, whatever.