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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.
All of those losses of forest are very different:
* After wildfires, trees naturally re-grow.
* Some deforestation is replaced with new trees, but not all.
* After development, trees are usually planted - sometimes where there used to be no trees. What is the net gain/loss of trees across ALL development, not just development taking place in a forest...
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.
Pretty much any time nowadays someone wants you to panic, you should look very closely at the message they are trying to sell you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
An Australian-led analysis of satellite data has found the amount of carbon sequestered in plants has risen by almost four billion tonnes since 2003, reflecting a surge in the biomass of global flora — possibly the first such increase since the Industrial Revolution..........
http://www.weeklytimesnow.com....
I don't understand how you can label Canada as losing all that forestation without mentioning MPB and other outbreaks which are on the rise.
Do they not realize that many of those forest fires wouldn't have happened outbreaks were less severe? This is ignoring the wildfire suppression that happened in the first place which contributed to the destruction being seen in the last few years.
Interesting to think that suppressing wildfires might actually contribute to climate change.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Oklahoma was a tall grass prairie 150 years ago, with very few trees. Now there is considerable forestation. Much of this is due to human activity (for example, tree seeds being spread through cattle poop when being driven to market). Should we cut them all down and plant grass?
So is this the new metric of large square footage, the way Libraries of Congress have become?
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
RTFA:
"The World Resource Institute, which coordinates Global Forest Watch, notes that the loss is both of the permanent, human-driven varietyâ"razing for agriculture and developmentâ"and the cyclical; from fires, logging, harvesting, and natural tree death. In the case of the latter, forests can take decades to be restored. In the former, they are gone for good"
According to TFA, most of the loss was to natural wildfires, especially in Canada and Russia. But TFA doesn't say what a "normal" amount of wildfires is, and whether 2013 had more or less than normal, or even whether the total amount of deforestation is going up, or down. Factoids should have context. This a a good example of bad journalism.
I live near some of this area. There has been no fire or logging in the area and yet it is marked pink.
I'm also seeing a lot of areas that are pink that don't seem very likely to be involved in logging or forest fires. I mean, look at rural alaska.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
After wildfires, trees naturally re-grow.
They will eventually, but in the amount of time it takes for them to regrow, drastic environmental impacts may happen which destroy their habitat and make it no longer a fit for that particular plant. A simple example would be mountain flooding after a wildfire. When conifers burn, they will leave a sheet of wax on top of the dirt. When snow runoff season begins (or there are heavy rains, as seen in Colorado in 2013) the ground is not as good at sponging up the moisture and releasing it slowly down-river over the course of the season. Instead it beads off the surface and heads straight to the bottom, causing runoff to be more violent and increasing the risk of flash-flood events.
With those increased events, the habitat can be altered dramatically, possibly to the point where the trees that loved living there no longer find it suitable. Willows, dogwoods, cottonwoods, etc will all suffer as they are plants that would have increased risk (since they like living right next to the river). To compound the issue, there might be other plants that are now able to grow in areas where they couldn't before. The result of that is increased monoculture of forest species, which of course leads to increased risk of disease.
Can you begin to see the feedback loop? Increased disease, increased fire risk, increased flood risk, increased environment destruction, increased monoculture, and repeat.
The problem with wildfires now is that too many years of fire suppression has led to these situations where instead of smaller fires burning and replenishing areas periodically, we have massive fires that destroy massive areas and make it more difficult, if not impossible, for the area to recover.
Some deforestation is replaced with new trees, but not all.
I'm not sure I understand their definition of "deforestation". Is that only man-made, or does it include the work of insects, blight, and other maladies that wipe out huge swaths of forest?
Pretty much any time nowadays someone wants you to panic
Do you think that might be related to the increasing number of things that are totally fucked on our planet? I totally understand that hyperbole and sensationalism sell and that we are fed a steady diet of both, but don't throw the baby out of a moving car with a glass of water ... or whatever that saying is.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
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.
They will eventually, but in the amount of time it takes for them to regrow, drastic environmental impacts may happen which destroy their habitat
Forests are very optimized to handle fires, because fire is a natural occurrence that forests must deal with. Over time, some forests even require fire to thrive (like bristlecone pines which use the heat from fires to activate seeds in cones).
The main problem with fires is if there has (ironically) been too much prevention, then there is a lot of dead undergrowth and the fire burns hotter than normal.
So, again, which is it? Were these fires that have been monitored normal forest fires, that the landscape will deal with? Or were they more harmful for some reason?
Can you begin to see the feedback loop?
Again, the feedback loop is part of a natural process.
I'm not sure I understand their definition of "deforestation"
Great question also. Does it include pines killed from pine beetles for example?
Do you think that might be related to the increasing number of things that are totally fucked on our planet?
Things are always changing an environmentally we (meaning the Earth) are a LOT better off now than we were back in the 60s/70s for example. Especially when the Soviets were in their heyday they were absolutely a massive force for destruction we probably will not see the like of again. The stuff going on these days is really pretty minimal in comparison, which is why some eco-groups try to drum up fear, because they care more about maintaining funding than they do the environment.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...notes that the loss is both of the permanent, human-driven varietyÃ"razing for agriculture and developmentÃ"and the cyclical; from fires, logging, harvesting, and natural tree death.
So yes, I did read that, which it was exactly what led me to wonder what the breakout was of each of those things. If it's primarily natural cyclical loss that will be restored why should I freak out again?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Because there is clearly a high level and consistent level of loss each and every year as is quite clear from the graphs.
Oh wow a graph showing a WHOLE DECADE. Of only loss, not amounts restored through regrowth... it's pretty easy to demonstrate a negative when you take away all positive parts of an equation.
If these are mostly natural forest fires (the real question at hand that all you zealots seem uninteresting in answering) the area will re-grow just fine, and in fact there will be a new rush of growth from the space opened up for undergrowth to take over for a while while new trees mature. Which in fact would sequester more carbon than old-growth forest would...
Is it even possible for you to learn anything? It would not appear so. Now THAT is sad.
Like the GW deniers do...
Since you have revealed yourself a willfully mindless cultist and thus not able to deal with reason, I'll just back away slowly and let you have the last word, so that your religious sensibilities can be satisfied. All fear the great noodlly appendages that magically destroy forest without end! In fact all the forests died over FOURTY YEARS AGO, and forest you see on the news now are all from a single sound stage in Nevada!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Are we talking metric Oklahoma's or should I be converting this into American football fields?
To be honest here in Canada we need massive wildfires to clean up the pine beetle problem. The wood can be used, usually in chipboard or paper products as long as the tree isn't fully rotten among other problems. When I was driving out through western canada a couple of years back it was a serious problem, and if you want to see what happens when a wildfire plus pine beetle infestation can do to an area, look at the slave lake fire. The fire was deliberately set, but the forest in the area is infested with pine beetles which have caused massive die offs with the trees, basically making it a perfect situation.
Anyway, once a place is burned out, harvested, and so on we plant new trees there anyway. The forestry industry here is amazingly good at creating an entire harvest, burn, plant cycle. Not forgetting that we have laws on the books that companies that harvest(anything whether it be trees, oil, oilsands, coal, etc) have to by law set aside funds for restoration. The government oversees the funds to ensure that enough is being put aside.
Om, nomnomnom...
Dumb Americans. Sensible people measure land area in Wales. How many Wales are there to an Oklahoma?
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Pretty much any time nowadays someone wants you to panic, you should look very closely at the message they are trying to sell you.
I just see some people stating some things they've measured. Not sure why you feel you should panic.
Why is it that you seem to think panicking is the most appropriate response to anything?
You're the only one talking about panicking.
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.'"
-not all trees naturally regrow after wildfires. many forests after a wildfire take decades to regenerate, assuming they ever do, as they go through the various stages of development again. wildfires in Oklahoma cause a forest to die. then grasses move in, then brush, and slowly trees, and after 20-40 years you have a forest again. that's a far different cycle than a forest of redwood trees which are adapted to fire, and actually need it for theirs seeds, and the fire clears out underbrush but leaves many of the larger older trees wounded but still alive, so the forest never really goes away like Oklahoma plains forest does.
-a forest is a far different beast than a sapling planted in a new built subdivision
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
I've walked through tree farms. They are about as close to a natural forest as a field of wheat is to a prairie.
Having had cancer and having numerous friends suffering cancer, and some who have died from cancer, it truly is a celebration to still be alive. Indeed it is much better than the alternative. Enjoy being young and hale 'n hearty, it doesn't last. Recall that joy one last time on the day when your physician tells you, "It Is Cancer".
Have a Day!
Oh, and if you want some more pictures feel free to let me know. I've got a dozen or so more. I'm not being snide or anything, but the way things are here in Canada with resource extraction are fundamentally different compared to many other countries, because we *are* a resource extraction country and know the benefits of restoring the environment when we're done stripping out whatever we need to.
Om, nomnomnom...