Rainforest News

Lotus bud

Mike — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 18:48:35 +0000

photo credit: angela7dreams

Rainforest Discovery Centre, Sandakan, Malaysia (Borneo)

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Toucan

Mike — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:33:37 +0000

photo credit: *L*u*z*a*

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New Carbon Calculator Aims To Conserve Forests

Juan — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 03:18:08 +0000

A new online carbon calculator helps people easily calculate how much they are adding to global greenhouse gases. The CI carbon calculator offers a way to offset those emissions by helping protect tropical forests from being burned and cleared.

Tropical deforestation emits at least 20 percent of total greenhouse gases that cause climate change — more than all the world’s cars, SUVs, trucks, trains and airplanes combined. The calculator determines personal or family carbon emissions from home energy, vehicle, travel and diet behaviors, or from an individual event or travel.

“Most people don’t realize that the meat and food items they eat, the soaps and shampoos they use, even some of the biodiesel and ethanol biofuels powering their cars come from cleared tropical forests,” said Michael Totten, CI’s Chief Adviser for Climate, Water and Ecosystem Services.

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Brazil Demonstrating That Reducing Tropical Deforestation Is Key Win-win Global Warming Solution

Juan — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 23:23:14 +0000

Tropical deforestation is the source of nearly a fifth of annual, human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere. Recent studies by Woods Hole Research Center scientists demonstrate that during years of severe drought, tropical rainforest fires, can double emissions from tropical forests. Now, an international team of forest and climate researchers has found that halving deforestation rates by mid-century would account for 12 percent of total emissions reductions needed to keep concentrations of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere at safe levels. This work is profiled in a recent issue of Science.

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New Image Mosaic That Will Strengthen Global Forest Monitoring

Juan — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 22:59:29 +0000

Much of the discussion at the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia, will focus on monitoring tropical deforestation and the critical role that remote sensing systems will play in the development of REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) mechanisms — policies designed to compensate rainforest nation.

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