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The World Lost an Oklahoma-Sized Area of Forest In 2013, Satellite Data Show
merbs writes Oklahoma spans an area in the American South that stretches across almost 70,000 square miles. That's almost exactly the same area of global forest cover that was lost in a single year. High resolution maps from Global Forest Watch, tapping new data from a partnership between the University of Maryland and Google, show that 18 million hectares (69,500 square miles) of tree cover were lost from wildfires, deforestation, and development the year before last. The maps were created by synthesizing 400,000 satellite images collected by NASA's Landsat mission.
Do you want global warming?
This is how you get global warming.
Not what kind of lightbulbs you use. Not what kind of car you drive.
We've paved over Europe, North America, and Asia.
And we wonder why shit's getting hotter.
I've heard it claimed (having difficulty finding authoritative sources) that this is consequences of numerous artificial lakes changing the climate and that originally there were fewer trees.
Before humans arrived in North America, much of the great plains was covered by scrub and mixed trees and grassland, similar to the African savanna. Latter, the native America tribes regularly burned off the vegetation, wiping out many of the trees, and establishing the tall grass prairie. This created grazing land for bison and pronghorns, but could only be maintained with regular intentional burning. So the increase in trees in modern Oklahoma, is really just a return to the "natural" state.
To say nothing of; what is the natural level of variation in forest year to year? From wildfires alone you would think there would be a substantial amount.
Some of the first laws on the books in California were prohibition of setting fires, for use against natives. They set controlled burns every year which kept the understory clear and the forests healthy. But other natives set fires to clear land for Bison. The landscape of pre-America America was very much deliberately created by peoples who had, after all, some 20,000 years to transform the continent.
Pretty much any time nowadays someone wants you to panic, you should look very closely at the message they are trying to sell you.
And any time someone wants to hand-wave away economic impact, same thing.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"