#Amazon

The Big Picture

/ PK Read / 1 Comment
A vast dust plume blows off Northern Africa. Photo: NASA/USGS

A vast dust plume blows off Northern Africa.
Photo: NASA/USGS

The dust of the Sahara is one of the world’s great transport methods for depositing minerals around the world. An estimated 60 – 200 million tons of mineral dust per year gets blown from the Sahara to points all across the globe, fertilizing the Amazon, affecting the weather, causing hazy skies, blanketing land and sea alike while providing the phytoplankton of the Mediterranean Sea with nutrients and adversely affecting the growth of coral reefs.

It’s a major global phenomenon that I only mention here and now because of this: The dust of the Sahara on our car in eastern France.

Photo: PK Read

Photo: PK Read

On everyone’s cars, on all the plants and furniture outside, on the solar panels, on the windows and swirling on the streets.

At least I can feel a part of something much larger while I wait in line at the car wash.

 

 

Global Forest Map

/ PK Read / 1 Comment

A gorgeous new tool for assessing gain and loss in global forests was released this week by University of Maryland researchers, the result of a five year, broad-based collaborative project. The interactive map of Global Forest Change is powered by Google’s computing cloud will offer a means to establish forestry baselines around the world, with a great amount of detail.

Animation showing forest loss in Riau, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Much of this deforestation was to establish plantations for pulp and paper, timber, and palm oil production. Click image to enlarge.
Source: Mongabay.com

This excellent Mongabay.com article quotes the project’s lead author Matthew Hansen on the map and accompanying study (published in Science): “This is the first map of forest change that is globally consistent and locally relevant. Losses or gains in forest cover shape many important aspects of an ecosystem including, climate regulation, carbon storage, biodiversity and water supplies, but until now there has not been a way to get detailed, accurate, satellite-based and readily available data on forest cover change from local to global scales.”

It didn’t surprise me that Brazil and Indonesia are among the top five countries with the highest level of deforestation since 2000. The policies of those countries favor development of heavily forested, biodiverse areas.

Global Forest Map The red areas indicate net forest loss. Click on the image for the interactive map. Source: Earth Engine Partners

Global Forest Map
The red areas indicate net forest loss.
Click on the image for the interactive map.
Source: Earth Engine Partners

As an Indonesian palm oil representative once told me, we shouldn’t worry about the loss of rainforest because it was mostly all cut down already, anyway. In its place, palm oil plantations. “Trees are trees, so we have offset deforestation with sustainable new forests.”

The new Global Forest Change tool accounts for this as well, with layered levels of data allowing users to see whether the forests in question are old growth, diverse habitats, or newer second-growth utility forests.

It did come as a surprise that Russia has lost more forest than any other nation, and that the top five are rounded out by the United States and Canada.

From Mongabay.com, “Improved understanding of the state of forests through tools like these should boost the ability of decision makers — from lawmakers to business leaders — to establish policies that better protect forests.”