12.03.2009
RJA #15b: Reflection on What You Learned
12.02.2009
RJA #14: Annotated Bibliography, Part 2
Butler, Rhett A. "Tropical Rainforest Conservation." Mongabay.com. San Francisco. 20 November 2009.
Rhett A. Butler has a degree in economics/management science and has worked in management consulting, venture capital, and information technology. His passion has always been the outdoors and these days he devotes a great deal of time to biology and Earth science. The whole purpose of this article was to answer to question of, why is the Brazilian Amazon being destroyed? This article had great charts and pictures that were very helpful to my research.
"deforestation." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2009. Merriam-Webster Online. 2 December 2009.
Always a great resource for not just definitions but with help pronouncing words and finding antonyms or synonyms.
Dudley, Nigel. Death of Trees. London: Pluto Press, 1995.
Nigel Dudley is an environmental consultant and senior forest adviser to WWF-International. His book mainly focused on forest conservation, deforestation of different forests/rainforests around the globe, and soil and social impacts. This source is unique because it was written a little earlier than most books I found so a lot of the technology we have these days wasn’t mentioned in the book, which I thought was interesting because it goes to show you that with technology we haven’t solved the problem of deforestation.
Fujisaka, S, W Bell, N Thomas, L Hurtado, and E Crawford. "Slash and-Burn Agriculture, Conversion to Pasture, and Deforestation in Two Brazilian Amazon Colonies." Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment. 59. 1-2 (1996): 115.
Sam Fujisaka PhD is an agricultural anthropologist at the Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical in Colombia. In this article settlers were interviewed in two Amazon colonies about land use, and rates and causes of deforestation. Farmers in Pedro Peixoto, Acre, cleared about 2 ha per year per family, and settlers in Theobroma, Rondonia, cleared some 3 ha per year to produce first rice, which was then followed by beans, maize and cassava. Settlers then converted land to pasture not only to raise cattle, but also as a way to add substantial value to their lands for ‘improvements’—i.e. for more clearing, pasture, fencing, corrals and ponds. Analysis of satellite images of the Pedro Peixoto site agreed with data reported by farmers on rates of deforestation and improved our understanding of the dynamics of deforestation.
Griffiths, Peter. "British company barcodes trees to protect forests." Reuters 10 July 2009 [London] : 1+. Web. 19 Nov. 2009.
No additional information was found about the author Peter Griffiths. This was probably one of the most interesting articles I found while searching for information on deforestation. A British company, Helveta, is using a new technology keep track of the timber reserves it has. It is using barcodes that are stapled into the trees and handheld barcode scanners to keep track of each and every tree. This is just one way companies around the world are keeping an eye on the amount of trees being cut down by their company. I found this article very interesting and useful.
Haskins, Jeff. "New Study: Farmers protecting and growing significant amount of world's trees." Eurek Alert! 23 Aug. 2009: 1-3. Academic Search Premier. Web. 19 Nov. 2009.
The article was not written by Jeff Haskins but more by The World Agroforestry Centre, based in Nairobi, Kenya, is the world's leading research institution on the diverse role trees play in agricultural landscapes and rural livelihoods. Scientists used detailed satellite images to reveal the vital role of trees on 1 billion hectares of agricultural lands in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe.
Lamb, David, and Don Gilmour. Rehabilitation and Restoration of Degraded Forests. Gland, Switzerland: The World Conservation Union, 2003. 1-110. Print.
I was unable to find biographies for both David Lamb and Don Gilmour. Lamb and Gilmour present approaches to restoring and rehabilitating the vast area of degraded, fragmented and modified forests which cover much of the world. They argue that by applying best practice at the site level it is possible to enhance socio-economic and ecological gains at the landscape level.
Laurance, W F, M A Cochrane, S Bergen, P M Fearnside, P Delamonica, C Barber, S D Angelo, and T Fernandes. "ENVIRONMENT: The Future of the Brazilian Amazon."Science. 291. 5503 (2001): 438.
William F. Laurance is a research scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. The article firsts talks about the rapid pace of deforestation and its several causes. It then touches on a few international and domestic initiatives to help promote conservation planning and sustainable development. They also talked about major development trends and explained their models that were designed to predict the condition of the Amazonian forest in the year 2020. I thought this article was very hard to follow because of the depth it went into things; very science based.
Lindsey, Rebecca. "Tropical Deforestation." NASA: Earth Observatory (2009): 1-3. Web. 11 Nov. 2009.
No further background information was found about Rebecca Lindsey other than she is employed by NASA. This short and brief article about tropical deforestation was packed full with useful information. It featured great pictures and explanations about the impacts of deforestation. Some of those impacts included biodiversity impacts, soil and social impacts. It also briefly talked about climate impacts which I found very interesting. This was a very good article put out by NASA.
Myers, Erin C. "Climate Change and Forestry: a REDD primer." Ecosystem Marketplace 19 May 2008: 1-7. Web. 16 Nov. 2009.
Erin C. Myers is a consultant for Resources For the Future and a Master's candidate at the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management – University of California, Santa Barbara. This article was a summary of the key issues in how to tackle climate change with the role of REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). Only parts of this article were of help to me and most of the article talked about the policy and its technical issues, which I didn’t find helpful at all towards my paper. This was more of an debate over how to address these issues but was still very informative.
Myers, Norman. The Primary Source: Tropical Forests & Our Future. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1992. 1-416. Print.
Norman Myers is a British environmentalist and authority on biodiversity. In this book topics range from Bio-Ecological Background to the Impact of the Modern Man to What We Can Do. I found almost all the information in this book helpful and interesting. He discusses what progress has been made in the past decade and why it has been slow; the current status of the tropical forests; and what actions need to be taken now to save the ones we still have.
Schneyer, Joshua. "Metals: Big Business in the Amazon." Business Week 18 Mar. 2008: 1-2. Web. 18 Nov. 2009.
Joshua Schneyer is a special correspondent based in Rio de Janeiro. This article was about the leading ore mining company in Brazil, Vale and how they were struggling to keep up with growing steel demand and still be environmentally friendly in the Amazon. Vale says it seeks to minimize the environmental impact by recycling the water they use and to “reforest” the areas surrounding its mining properties. I thought this article was very good. It goes to show that there are companies out there doing what they can to help reduce deforestation.
Stock, Jocelyn. The Choice: Doomsday or Arbor Day . 04 May. 2005
I was unable to find information about Jocelyn Stock but the article she wrote was awesome. The authors seemed like experts of the subject as they went on to talk about why trees matter, population growth and deforestation, logging in conjunction with deforestation, cattle grazing, and other causes. All these cause were very well explained with a lot of graphs and pictures to go with it. Another good section of the article talked about the effects of deforestation and what they mean to us and the impact they may have on us in the future if deforestation continues to occur.
Williams M. (2001). The history of deforestation. History Today. 51 (7), 30-7.
Professor Michael Williams was Professor of Geography at Oxford University, and a Fellow of Oriel College. He discusses the history of deforestation its purposes and uses of trees, Impact of pre-literate societies on the forests, creation of non-forested patches, cause of widespread coastal and inland deforestation in Europe, and size of area cleared in Australia during the 20th century. The author provides an expert opinion and good understanding of the history of deforestation and why it started.
World Rainforest Movement. Rainforest Destruction Causes, Effects, and False Solutions. Penang, Malaysia: World Rainforest Movement, 1990.
Written by the World Rainforest Movement, an international network of citizens' groups of North and South involved in efforts to defend the world's rainforests, the book provides a cogent analysis of the causes and effects of deforestation, from the viewpoint of the leading environmental groups involved in the defense of the forests. It also points out that the "solutions" proposed by established institutions like the World Bank and the timber trade accelerate (and not reduce) deforestation. This book was very helpful in understanding the background of deforestation. I also thought it was very interesting that it was written by international group of people.
11.18.2009
11.17.2009
RJA #13a: Field Research Report–
Question
What is deforestation?
Question
Hello,
I was wondering if you could tell me how deforestation is effecting the future of our planet,
Thank you very much.
Trees also clean up water and purify it by using it and then respiring water to the environment as a gas or vapor. The water then comes back to earth as rainwater that has been cleaned up.
There are many needs and uses for forest trees which man currently exploits. This requires that more trees and plants be planted and grown to replace the ones that are harvested.
Also when trees are burned they release great quantities of carbon dioxide which wastes the tree resources and significantly adds to global warming.
In essence it is bad enough to cut the trees and use their harvested products but even much worse to see trees burn from forest fires.
Question
At what rate is the rainforest shrinking and at what point could our resources from the rainforests be depleted?
http://www.rain-tree.com/facts.htm
The current rate of deforestation of rainforest is about 1.5 - 2 acres per second--about 130,000 acres per day. Scary.