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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: abuelita who wrote (11526)	11/15/2006 10:01:58 AM
From: TobagoJack	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 218145

he is well-known enough, had built a lot of toll roads and power plants and such, lost big as well, but generally a good guy but, never mind all that, i understand forests are making a come back despite 12 billion foot print and global warming ... ENVIRONMENT China and US lead forest comeback, researchers find Study result suggests prosperity is the unlikely saviour AGENCIES in Washington Prev. Story \| Next Story -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Many of the world's forests appear to be making a comeback, and some are more thickly treed than they were nearly 200 years ago, a study shows. The United States and China had the greatest gain in forests over the past 15 years, while Brazil and Indonesia lost the most, according to the study published in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research by an international team took a new look at what makes a forest. Rather than defining it simply as the area covered with trees, the scientists also considered the size of the trees - how many were large enough to be considered timber, also known as growing stock - how thickly they grew and how much atmospheric carbon was held in them. Releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere spurs global warming. Trees absorb carbon dioxide. The scientists also took into account the amount of organic material, known as biomass, present in the forest. By this standard, the researchers found that despite widespread concerns about deforestation, the number of timber-size trees increased from 1990 to last year in 22 of the 50 countries with the most forest. In the US, the transition from deforestation to reforestation first appeared in Connecticut in the early 1900s. Some states, including Texas, made the change only in 2002. "The United States is doing quite well, but we've done quite well for a period," said co-author Roger Sedjo, of the Washington-based group Resources for the Future. "Our forests have been more or less stable for the past 100 years." Other countries made the transition much earlier. Denmark's shift came in 1810, France in the 1830s, Switzerland in the 1860s, Portugal by 1870, Scotland in the 1920s and European Russia in the 1930s. Mr Sedjo said the transition often came when countries began to prosper, and were better able to preserve forested land. Almost every country with a per capita gross domestic product over US$4,600 had moved to reforestation, the study found. Co-author Paul Waggoner, of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, noted a set of events that seemed to feed on each other in forest regeneration. With protection, forests can grow. Also, when farmland is preserved, farmers are less likely to encroach on forests. In Europe, timber imports, energy technology and economic development that sent country people to the cities also played a role, Mr Waggoner said. "Without depopulation or impoverishment, increasing numbers of countries are experiencing transitions in forest area and density," said Pekka Kauppi, of the University of Helsinki. "While complacency would be misplaced, our insights provide grounds for optimism about the prospects for returning forests." The study also said that tree planting for materials such as paper was an improvement over cutting old-growth forests. Reuters, Agence France-Presse