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Posts Tagged ‘Forests’

Monitoring forests: Seeing the world for the trees

December 16th, 2010 | No Comments

An international deal on deforestation makes it ever more important to measure the Earth’s woodlands

PERU’S forests cover 72m hectares of the country (278,000 square miles). That is three times the area of Britain. And Peru intends to hold on to its greenery. In 2000 its deforestation rate was 250,000 hectares a year. By 2005 that figure was down to 150,000. This year, according to Antonio Brack Egg, the country’s environment minister, it will be 90,000. In 2021, if all goes well, it will be zero.

To make sure things stay on course, Dr Brack says, the government needs to spend more than $100m a year on high-resolution satellite pictures of its billions of trees. But he hopes that a computing facility developed by the Planetary Skin Institute (PSI), a not-for-profit organisation set up by Cisco Systems, a large computing firm, and America’s space agency, NASA, might help cut that budget. …

Indonesia to scrap permits to save forests: official

May 31st, 2010 | No Comments

Indonesia will revoke existing forestry licences held by palm oil and timber firms to save natural forests under a US$1 billion ($1.4 billion) climate change deal signed with Norway last week, a government official said on Monday.

Indonesia’s president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who announced the deal last week in Oslo, said new concessions for the conversion of natural forest and peatlands would be suspended for two years. But he did not say at the time how existing concessions would be affected.

Active Directory Group Membership Report – Listing Across Domains and Forests Posted By : sarah j

April 8th, 2010 | No Comments

A user may be assigned to multiple groups in an Active Directory organization. A group member may have membership in other groups in the same domain (or) in a different domain within the same forest (or) in a different domain in a different forest.

Agriculture and climate change: Why farms may be the new forests

December 30th, 2009 | No Comments

In the war against climate change, peasants are in the front line

FOR people who see stopping deforestation as the quickest climate-change win, Copenhagen seemed a success. Although there is still work to be done on the initiative known as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), the deal struck in Copenhagen made it into a real thing, not just an idea. The notion of reducing net deforestation to zero was not explicitly mentioned, but it looks much more credible than it did two years ago.

As well as giving heart to the protectors of trees, this outcome is encouraging for people whose focus is not on forests but on fields. Climate and agriculture matter to each other in several ways. On the downside, farming is a cause of deforestation, and also emits greenhouse gases in its own right—perhaps 14% of the global total. On the upside, agriculture can also dispose of heat-trapping gases, by increasing the carbon content of soils. …

Climate change and forests: Touch wood

December 17th, 2009 | No Comments

Everyone agrees on the need to save trees, but the details are still tricky

WHATEVER else historians say about the Copenhagen talks on climate change, they may be remembered as a time when the world concluded that it must protect forests, and pay for them. In the Kyoto protocol of 1997, forests were a big absentee: that was partly because sovereignty-conscious nations like Brazil were unwilling, at any price, to accept limits on their freedom to fell.

All that is history. As the UN talks went into their second week, trees looked like being one of the few matters on which governments could more or less see eye to eye. Over the past two years, skilful campaigning by pro-forest groups has successfully disseminated the idea that trees cannot be ignored in any serious deliberation on the planet’s future. …

Wildfires on Mediterranean coast

July 27th, 2009 | No Comments

Images of the wildfires that have forced more than 1,000 people from their homes

Five held over Corsica forest fires

July 26th, 2009 | No Comments

Wildfires across southern Europe brought under control

French police are holding at least five people suspected of starting forest fires that have ravaged the Mediterranean island of Corsica as wildfires in southern Europe were brought under control.

Three large fires that started on Thursday have destroyed some 15,000 hectares in southern Corsica, including some of the area’s most spectacular forests.

More than 400 firefighters, supported by helicopters, battled yesterday in an effort to finally put out the blazes that threatened the town of AullÃ¨ne as temperatures and winds drop across the Mediterranean.

According to police, the fire at AullÃ¨ne may have started because of a spark during work on an electricity line that ignited a blaze that quickly grew out of control.

But police suspect arsonists in several fires that started in the same area in quick succession. Under French law, those found guilty of arson can be sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.

In eastern Spain, firefighters have been battling fires that have consumed forests around the ancient town of Aliaga, in Aragon, 112 miles north of the Mediterranean port of Valencia.

The hilltop resort town of MojÃ¡car woke up on Saturday surrounded by the charred remains of what had been picturesque pine forests and almond groves. Regional fire services were on standby in case of sudden flare-ups as the fires subsided yesterday.

The village of Soneja just north of Valencia had a lucky escape when fire consumed its cemetery but did not spread any further.

Six firefighters have been killed by forest fires in Spain during the week and at least 15,441 hectares of forest and farmland have been affected by flames, according to local officials.

Thousands of people, both firefighters and volunteers, and more than 30 aircraft were deployed to combat the flames.

British holidaymakers planning to visit the region have been advised by the Foreign Office to check its website before travel.

Meanwhile, Italian police said they were investigating brush fires on the outskirts of Palermo, Sicily, and in the tourist town of Monreale to see if arson was involved.

On Italy’s other major island, Sardinia, which has been particularly badly hit, authorities said it appeared fires were under control but expressed fear that shifting winds could bring back the blazes of recent days.

A shepherd was killed earlier in the week during the fires that destroyed between 15,000 and 25,000 hectares. The financial damage has been put at â‚¬80m (Â£69m).

More than 100 firefighters and 200 volunteers have been fighting forest fires in Turkey where temperatures reached 48C at the weekend.

A fire that started on Thursday evening in a landfill site in Bodrum, a holiday resort in southern Turkey, destroyed more than 15 hectares of land before the emergency services managed to bring it under control.

Fires in the Mediterranean bring destruction to hundreds of thousands of hectares of land every year.

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