A pioneering global study has found deforestation and forests lost or damaged due to human and environmental change, such as fire and logging, are fast outstripping current rates of forest regrowth.
Angeline Chen, president of the coral reef-nonprofit Global Coralition, ended the Wednesday keynotes at GreenBiz’s VERGE 22 event by asking everyone to take two deep breaths.
“The first one came from the oceans and the second came from the forests,” she said.
It’s unusual for land, forestry and agriculture to be top of mind at a tech conference, yet nature can be as powerful a tool as engineered technology in the fight against climate change. However, the methodologies have been lacking in terms of guidance and investment in this particular type of tech, derived from natural systems.
Forest conservation is the practice of planting and maintaining forested areas for the benefit and sustainability of future generations. The conservation of forest also stands & aims at a quick shift in the composition of trees species and age distribution. Forest conservation involves the upkeep of the natural resources within a forest that are beneficial to both humans and the environment. Forests are vital for human life because they provide a diverse range of resources: they store carbon &act as carbon sink, produce oxygen which is vital for existence of life on the earth, so they are rightly called as earth lung, help in regulating hydrological cycle, planetary climate, purify water, provide wild life habitat(50% of the earth’s biodiversity occurs in forests), reduce global warming, absorb toxic gases & noise, reduce pollution, conserve soil,mitigate natural hazards such as floods& landslides & so on. But now-a-days, forest cover is depleting rapidly due to many reasons such as an expansion of agriculture, timber plantation, other land uses like pulp and paper plantations, urbanization, construction of roads, industries, constitutes the biggest and severe threat to the forest causing serious environmental damage. Thus, there is need of public awareness. This paper offers various strategies for the conservation of forest & awareness to people, which plays a vital role for maintaining a proper balance of environment. So, we must get involved in this national task.
Global environmental change is having a profound impact on ecosystems around the globe, with complex interactions at the interface of global change processes and ecological systems. Many of these changes, including climate change, resource exploitation, urbanization and disruption of biogeochemical cycles, are a direct result of human activity. Research on the ecological impacts of such changes is essential for safeguarding biodiversity and maintaining healthy ecosystems which provide crucial services, foundational to sustainable development and human well-being.
Tropical forests are vital ecosystems in the fight against both climate and ecological emergencies. The research, published today in Nature and led by the University of Bristol, highlights the carbon storage potential and the current limits of forest regrowth to addressing such crises.
“Part of the difficulty is that this is actually the [forestry, land and agriculture] sector that needs to go to net zero the fastest,” said Martha Stevenson, senior director of forestry research and strategy at the World Wildlife Fund, during a panel talk on science-based targets for food, ag and forestry. “Land use change and forestry emissions need to go to zero by around 2030 if we want to keep 1.5 [degrees Celsius of warming] on the table. And then this is also the sector which is the last to get the guidance on how to do the accounting.”
The Offshore Oil & Gas industry, shipping and the ocean resource development industries play a vital role in the development of a country. The harsh marine environment and the need to explore for hydrocarbons in deep and ultra-deep waters has put in place technology and specialized marine support vessels to explore and produce hydrocarbons from below the ocean bed. The specialized vessels engaged in such operations have to maintain a fixed position in relation to a fixed point at the ocean bed despite the harsh vessel position deviating forces of sea currents, waves and wind acting on the floating vessel as little change in the position may lead to accident in the sea. So by the method of “Dynamic Positioning” the vessel is kept stationary in the sea and then oil and gas is extracted by using drilling vessels or drill ships. This method also allows other vessels like crane vessels, shuttle tanker, dredging and rock dumping vessels, pipelay, cable lay and cable repair vessels to remain stationary in sea so that extraction process takes place efficiently.
Through the open sharing of research and data, we can better understand the implications of global change for natural and human-modified ecosystems at local, regional, and global scales. Full transparency of research will support the development of evidence-based approaches to addressing critical problems and help to influence more effective policy changes which seek to address these issues.
This gateway aims to provide researchers, policymakers and practitioners with a dedicated space to openly discuss and share work related to all areas of ecology and global environmental change. This research includes a broad range of sub-topics and interdisciplinary areas, such as:
The findings showed degraded forests recovering from human disturbances, and secondary forests regrowing in previously deforested areas, are annually removing at least 107 million tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere across the tropics. The team of international researchers have quantified the rates of aboveground carbon stock recovery using satellite data across the world’s three largest tropical forests.
Stevenson was referring to the recently released Forest, Land and Agriculture (FLAG) Science Based Target Setting Guidance set by the Science-Based Targets Initiative. This sector contributes to 22 percent of global emissions each year, which corporations have had a hard time incorporating into their climate strategies and goals because they are not strictly “climate,” she said.
According to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the major drivers of nature loss are land use change, pollution, invasive species, climate change and direct exploitation of the natural resources. Climate is not a clear link to four out the five, with climate change as the outlier.
The FLAG guidance was created to help sustainability experts inside companies translate how land use is integral to climate change to their executives, so that companies can better account for the good work they are doing on forestry or regenerative agriculture programs.
The paper approaches the applicability of operational research techniques in transportation of iron ore from multi location mines to single destination beneficiation plant. The mining industry facing environment problems related to transportation are not being adequately addressed by existing research programs. The paper focuses on air quality impacts due to iron ore transportation from mines to destination plant. Also discusses on selection of suitable mode of system for existing site condition and their environmental loads around the periphery of site and along the material conveying path. The research work illustrates the importance of implementation of transportation impact assessment for proposed projects to get clearance from authorities. In this paper, the transportation routes from the consented mines to the destination plant were optimized with the constraints of less pollution and cost effective by the use of optimization software.
Although the results demonstrate the important carbon value of conserving recovering forests across the tropics, the total amount of carbon being taken up in aboveground forest growth was only enough to counterbalance around a quarter (26%) of the current carbon emissions from tropical deforestation and degradation.
Lead author Dr Viola Heinrich, who recently gained a PhD in physical geography at the University of Bristol School of Geographical Science, said: “Our study provides the first pan-tropical estimates of aboveground carbon absorption in tropical forests recovering from degradation and deforestation.
“While protecting ancient tropical forests remains the priority, we demonstrate the value in sustainably managing forest areas that can recover from human disturbances.”
Environmental scientists at the University of Bristol worked with experts from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), which included collaborations with scientists from across the UK, Europe, and USA.
Biodiversity & Conservation
https://cuevanasupermarioflix.statuspage.io
Ecosystem Services
https://repelissupermariobrosflix.statuspage.io
Climate Change & Ecology
https://www.mikepondermusic.com/group/mikeponder-group/discussion/78fcc722-c260-410d-b71f-e3365873fa12
Macroecology
https://www.maisonadeux.be/group/give-a-5-star-rate-on-google/discussion/6a8f6b37-0fef-48ec-83da-10b383ac2076
Animal and Behavioural Ecology
https://cuevanasuzumeflix.statuspage.io
Molecular Ecology
https://repelissuzumeflix.statuspage.io
Chemical Ecology & Biogeochemistry
https://www.mikepondermusic.com/group/mikeponder-group/discussion/c851f926-ce01-4e73-a013-72a5f1738b44
Wildlife & Habitat Management
https://www.maisonadeux.be/group/give-a-5-star-rate-on-google/discussion/7b71ee1e-987e-4845-931b-ef4a15f149c9
Habitat Degradation
https://cuevanaflixevildead.statuspage.io
Invasive Species
https://repelisflixevildead.statuspage.io
Biogeography
https://www.mikepondermusic.com/group/mikeponder-group/discussion/c4a94fe4-9edf-4994-86d1-886bd9837353
Population Dynamics
https://www.maisonadeux.be/group/give-a-5-star-rate-on-google/discussion/b8511041-937c-44b3-8dd0-a355d31cf302
Ecosystem Restoration
https://cuevanaflixtresmosqueteros.statuspage.io
Land Use & Management
https://repelisflixtresmosqueteros.statuspage.io
Biological Resources
https://www.mikepondermusic.com/group/mikeponder-group/discussion/7142d6c1-976f-4da4-adb7-a1fa9e0eb8ce
Agroecology
https://www.maisonadeux.be/group/give-a-5-star-rate-on-google/discussion/c9a58f3b-1623-4261-80c5-7079c66fb52d
Conservation Policy
https://cuevanaflixelexorcistadelpapa.statuspage.io
Political Ecology
https://repelisflixelexorcistadelpapa.statuspage.io
Ecology Economics
According to Christa Anderson, director of climate science and carbon metrics at WWF, the FLAG guidance includes an Excel modeling tool for companies to account for their emissions and set a target, as well as background guidance on how to reduce emissions to meet that target, and a methodology section to understand how the guidance and accounting was created. Anderson outlined the three big buckets of emissions created by WWF: land management such as fertilizer production, flooding soil for rice, transport of biomass; carbon removals and storage; and land use change such as deforestation and forest degradation.
In order to meet the ever-increasing demands of the modern society, the mineral production in our country is continuously increasing along with the scale of mining operations. However, mineral production is often not in consonance with conservation of environment and forests, since many mineral deposits including iron, manganese, chromite, bauxite and coal etc. exist below thick forests. Mining has several adverse impacts including air, water and soil pollution, socio-economic problems and effect on wildlife population and their behaviour. There has been greater stress on surface mining for boosting the production in our country, which has a larger environmental footprint compared to underground mining. As the deposits near the surface are exhausted underground mining may become cost competitive. Moreover, the technological developments in the field of underground mining, viz. mass production equipments, roof support, communication and automation is helping the decision makers to consider underground mining practice for sustainable mining while meeting environmental concerns.
Working towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals, specifically the Life on Land and Life Below Water initiatives, the Ecology and Global Change Gateway offers rapid and transparent publication alongside access to all underlying data.
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