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Photosynthesis does not always result in wood growth, a key factor in carbon dioxide sequestration

The Senate is on the verge of taking up a bill with the Orwellian title “Fix Our Forests Act.” It is designed to do the opposite, as Dan Galpern and I describe in an op-ed published yesterday in the Boston Globe, which is copied below with permission of the Globe. The bill would result in swaths of the public’s national forests becoming “categorical exclusion” zones open to logging exempt from any environmental review. Thus, the bill would override the purposes for which national forests were set up, including “outdoor recreation, range…watershed, and wildlife and fish purposes.” This sin is rationalized under the pretense that the Act will reduce wildfire risk and improve forest health by “thinning” the forest. This is nonsense, as our op-ed discusses.

Forests have historically acted as a reliable planetary thermostat. They regulate Earth’s temperature by removing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and locking it in trees, roots and soil — carbon that is emitted if trees are cut down. In a typical year, forests and other vegetation absorb roughly 30% of the carbon that humans emit from burning fossil fuels — a vital climate service performed at virtually no cost by trees around the world, from tropical rainforests to temperate and boreal forests.

For more than three decades, Brazilian climate scientist Carlos Nobre has warned that deforestation of the Amazon could push this globally important ecosystem past the point of no return. Working first at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research and more recently at the University of São Paulo, he is a global authority on tropical forests and how they could be restored.

Brazil records 62% jump in area burned by forest fires: monitor

Donald Trump has ordered that swathes of America’s forests be felled for timber, evading rules to protect endangered species while doing so and raising the prospect of chainsaws razing some of the most ecologically important trees in the US. The president, in an executive order, has demanded an expansion in tree cutting across 280m acres (113m hectares) of national forests and other public lands, claiming that “heavy-handed federal policies” have made America reliant on foreign imports of timber.

First published in 1903, South China Morning Post is Hong Kong's premier English language newspaper and has the city's most affluent and influential readership. With a reputation for authoritative, influential and independent reporting on Hong Kong and China. The newspaper is supported with its online publication scmp.com and its Sunday edition, Sunday Morning Post.

The sudden collapse of carbon sinks was not factored into climate models – and could rapidly accelerate global heating

SAO PAULO, Aug 1 (Reuters) - The number of fires in Brazil's Amazon rainforest region surged to a record high for the month of July in almost two decades, government data showed on Thursday, amid a drought in the region fanned by climate change. The Amazon, the world's largest rainforest, plays a vital role in curbing global warming because of the vast amounts of greenhouse gas it absorbs.

Unprecedented wildfires in Canada and parts of Amazonia last year were at least three times more likely due to climate change and contributed to high levels of CO2 emissions from burning globally, according to the first edition of a new systematic annual review.

La destruction de l'Amazonie est un phénomène qui s’étend au-delà de la déforestation mais les neuf pays qui partagent cette ressource naturelle sont engagés à la protéger.

The wildfire destruction to Jasper National Park has reverberated across all of Canada.

Huge patches of forest in Tasmania have rapidly turned brown over recent months, with many trees dying after a dry summer. As climate change causes hotter and drier weather, can we expect more tree deaths in the future? 

Three brush fires burning in rural areas across Riverside county, where 1,000 homes are under evacuation orders

Carbon dioxide emissions from wildfires, which have been gradually increasing since 2000, spiked drastically to a record high in 2021, according to an international team of researchers led by Earth system scientists at the University of California, Irvine.

Past governments blamed the growing of coca – the base component of cocaine – for clearcutting, but a recent study shows otherwise

Over the past 60 years, the global forest area has declined by 81.7 million hectares, a loss that contributed to the more than 60% decline in global forest area per capita. This loss threatens the future of biodiversity and impacts the lives of 1.6 billion people worldwide, according to a new study published today by IOP Publishing in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

Agriculture has come a long way in the twenty-first century. From precision irrigation systems to face recognition in livestock to deploying drones for improved crop yield, emerging technologies are reinventing farm country. Whether it’s hyperspectral monitoring (scanning soils and plant health) or tracking cattle’s movement and health, computing advances are making new technologies – powered by data – readily accessible for agriculture. The revolution in agriculture is delivering savings along with improved productivity. It is also big business: precision agriculture is expected to grow to a $11.1 billion industry in the next five years.

When people talk about ways to slow climate change, they often mention trees, and for good reason. Forests take up a large amount of the planet-warming carbon dioxide that people put into the atmosphere when they burn fossil fuels. But will trees keep up that pace as global temperatures rise? With companies increasingly investing in forests as offsets, saying it cancels out their continuing greenhouse gas emissions, that’s a multibillion-dollar question.

The focus of the opening day of the 17th session of the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF17) was a High-Level Roundtable on the UNFF response to, role in, and expectations from forest-related multilateral developments. Members of the Forum also started providing updates on their actions in support of the three UNFF thematic priorities for 2021-2022; these will continue on Tuesday.