Succulent Karoo to benefit from $8 million in grants
...t diversity and unique species rival those of rain forests yet its biodiversity is decreasing at an alarming rate," said Jorgen Thomsen, CEPF executive director and Conservation International senior vice president. "The time to act is now. Our investment will empower and enable local people to get involved i...Plant pathologists find growing number of plants affected by sudden oak death
..., the greater its potential impact on California's forests and ecosystems. Says Garbelotto, "SOD's reproducti...y make it able to persist indefinitely in infested forests and may affect the success of future regeneration and restoration efforts." While these new developm...Wild ape population undergoing 'catastrophic' decline
..."bushmeat." In addition, logging roads have opened forests to organized groups of hunters who have "transformed hunting from a subsistence activity to a commercial enterprise," the researchers wrote. "In the few areas where it's been seriously addressed, strong law enforcement has cut down on poaching," Wal...Transgenic trees hold promise for pulp and paper industries
...od more efficiently on less land, allowing natural forests to be managed less intensively for habitat conservation, aesthetics and recreational uses." Citing the Forestry Department's Industry-Cooperative Tree Improvement Program working to improve plantation productivity, adaptation and disease-resistance...Forest fragmentation may increase Lyme disease risk
...se is concentrated in areas where people live near forests with blacklegged ticks. To find out whether forest...ected toward decreasing fragmentation of deciduous forests of the northeastern United States into small patches, particularly in areas with a high incidence of......vore diversity throughout much of the broad-leaved forests of Europe and North America, said Lill. For caterpillars that live in shelters, the drop in available leaf-ties led to an overall reduction in their numbers. The numbers of other insect species, including beetles and non-shelter abiding caterpillar...Humongous fungus a new kind of individual
...ndings are already giving us new insights into how forests work, and causing us to rethink fundamental ideas like, what is an individual, and what is a species?"...Best chance to protect giant pandas
...he giant panda's range has shrunk from the lowland forests of southeast China, northern Vietnam and northern ...Conservation Program, logging is banned in natural forests until 2010; and second, the Grain-to-Green policy is restoring forests on steep agricultural lands. ...Fire frequency determines forest carbon storage
...rom saplings to 130 years old in Canada's northern forests have discovered that the period since a fire last ...ess biomass or plant material. Boreal or northern forests account for close to 25 percent of total carbon stored in vegetation and soils in the Earth's biosph...Chimpanzees with little or no human contact found in remote African rainforest
... the nearest village through dense forests and swampland to get there, have disco...r study site other than her own in the forests of the Gombe National Park. Goodall was curious to see the naive chimpanzee...Rainforests at risk: Where theres smoke, theres even more fire
...lize whats happening. If frequent burning of these forests continues, well end up with a very different ecosystem. Cochrane studied satellite images and explored tropical rainforests and surrounding areas of human encroachment in Latin America. Other research has shown that fires pose similar threats in ...Larger nuts end up further from tree
...ng to the biologist, protecting animals in managed forests is important for tree regeneration. That has hardly happened up until now. For example, once logging has taken place the tracks for this are used by hunters who are after rodents and other important seed dispersers....What to plant when the fires go out
...gressive invaders," Dunne says. "We could lose our forests and rangelands to weeds if we target our scarce resources incorrectly. To date, no substantial effort to improve the weed fighting ability of natives has been mounted, nor do I know of such a priority being considered." Dunne and Vogel question the ...Tropical deforestation and global warming
...ing produced by the razing and felling of tropical forests each year. This estimate is considerably lower th...ical forests. The study assumes that regenerating forests on abandoned lands will re-absorb large amounts of atmospheric carbon. In fact, such forests are of...USDA Forest Service publishes wildland-urban interface assessment
...essing issues of sustaining healthy and productive forests in the South, and identifies critical research and information needs. One of the primary driving issues that led to the WUI Assessment was the major wildfires in Florida in 1998. The complex challenges the 1998 wildfire season presented to the peopl...UNC ecologists find floodplains particularly vulnerable to invasion by exotic plant species
... By scouring North Carolina's southern Appalachian forests and examining the plants and conditions found there, UNC researchers have discovered that species diversity is significantly greater for both native and exotic plants in floodplains than in the higher areas. One reason appears to be that floodwater w...Forests of the continental U.S. continue to fragment
... researcher Kurt Riitters shows that although U.S. forests are still connected over large regions, fragmentat...rests," said Riitters. "Most of the large interior forests in the U.S. are publicly owned, or unsuitable for agriculture or urban development. Historic pattern...SRS research highlights from the Red-Cockaded Woodpecker Symposium
...depressingly minimal." Populations on the national forests of the four-state region have increased only 12 pe...1@fs.fed.us . *The fire-maintained shortleaf pine forests that once grew in the Ouachita Mountains of west-central Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma supported pop...Forest fragmentation may increase lyme disease risk
...d toward decreasing fragmentation of the deciduous forests of the northeastern United States into small patches, particularly in areas with a high incidence of Lyme disease," say Keesing and her colleagues. "The creation of forest fragments of less than five acres should especially be avoided."......threatened Mexican spotted owl lives in coniferous forests in the Southwest and Mexico. In Utah, the birds nest, roost and hunt almost entirely in steep, narrow canyons. Hiking and other recreational activities along the canyon bottoms are highest from March-October, which overlaps with the owls' breeding se...