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1.
What is Global Systems Science?
Archive
of Past Articles for Chapter 1
6 November 2006 NASA
SUPPORTS UAS FIRE MAPPING EFFORTS
ON CALIFORNIA FIRE From NASA
Earth Observatory. A
team led by NASA and U.S. Forest
Service scientists recently collected
real-time, visible and infrared
data from sensors onboard a remotely
piloted aircraft over the Esperanza
Fire in Southern California.
Archive
of Past Articles for Chapter
1
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Chapters
- What
is Global Systems Science?
- A
History of Forest Use in the Pacific Northwest
- Case
Study: The Headwaters Controversy
- Field
Trip to Wind River
- Losing
Tropical Rainforests
- Towards
a Sustainable World
Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Nature's
Voice Online.
Forest Magazine
|
2.
A History of Forest Use in the Pacific Northwest
Archive
of Past Articles for Chapter 2
24 April 2007. Researchers
Probe Fossilized Rain Forest. By THE
ASSOCIATED PRESS. Excerpt: …coal
miners working south and west of Georgetown
have unearthed, chunk by fossilized chunk,
what has revealed itself over the past few
years to be the remains of a fossilized
rain forest. It covers about 15 square miles,
all more than 200 feet below ground, and
probably is the largest intact rain forest
from that period ever studied, according
to Scott Elrick of the Illinois State Geological
Survey…..''We
never encountered one whole forest preserved
in one shot like this,'' Elrick said Monday.
''The fossils just didn't stop.'' ...Elrick
and researchers from the Smithsonian Institution
and the University of Bristol in Great Britain
started working in the mines a few years ago,
driving deep underground in armored vehicles
and then walking along miles of 7-foot-high
passages. ...People who live in eastern
Illinois may occasionally long for a few more
trees, but they'd find the land that now sits
just above the miners' heads a tough place to
call home during the Pennsylvania Age, Elrick
said....Elrick and the other researchers
plan to continue documenting what's above the
Vermilion County mines, drawing and taking pictures
and notes. But that's all they'll do, he said……The
area deep underground isn't suitable for preservation.
...''Unfortunately,
it will never be a visitable museum kind of
piece,'' Elrick said. ''We try to document to
the best of our ability what we see, and take
notes ... It's sort of like asking people to
go to New York City and describe every store
front in a day.''
California Forest Products Commission -- http://www.calforests.org
Temperate Forest Foundation -- http://www.forestinfo.org/
Maine Forest Service
Global
land-use database -- an historical global land-use
inventory that chronicles the massive impact humans have
had as they've remade the global landscape since the 17th
century.
International
Canopy Network
http://www.evergreen.edu/ican/
The Forest Canopy Lab at Evergreen State
College
http://www.evergreen.edu/canopylab/
National Geographic "Branching Out" Project
http://www.geocities.com/canopylab/
eForest is
a collaborative effort between researchers and forest resource
managers integrating satellite technologies into forest
inventory and field methods.
Forest
Magazine
http://www.forestmag.org/
Journal
of G. Allen Burrows
when he was
a fire lookout in Idaho in 1916
Rainforest
web
http://www.rainforestweb.org/
Tree Identification
website -- http://forestry.about.com/cs/treeid/a/tree_id_web.htm
Archive
of Past Articles for Chapter 2
|
|
Chapters
- What
is Global Systems Science?
- A
History of Forest Use in the Pacific Northwest
- Case
Study: The Headwaters Controversy
- Field
Trip to Wind River
- Losing
Tropical Rainforests
- Towards
a Sustainable World
Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Nature's
Voice Online.
Forest
Magazine |
3.
Case Study: The Headwaters Controversy
Archive
of Past Articles for Chapter 3
20 January 2007. Pacific
Lumber leans Company in Headwaters
deal files for bankruptcy, citing
logging restrictions. Tom
Abate, San Francisco Chronicle
Staff Writer. Excerpt: The Pacific
Lumber Co. has filed for Chapter
11 bankruptcy protection, saying
that environmental restrictions
are preventing it from cutting
enough redwoods to continue making
payments on the roughly $714 million
debt that Texas financier Charles
Hurwitz incurred more than 20 years
ago.... Pacific Lumber has been
an environmental lightning rod
in California ever since Hurwitz,
aided by junk bond king Michael
Milken, bought out the company
in 1986 and more than doubled its
cutting of old-growth redwood trees.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein brokered
the 1999 Headwaters Forest deal
in which Hurwitz's Maxxam Corp.
agreed to sell about 10,000 acres
of old-growth forest for $480 million
to the government, which turned
it into a park. It simultaneously
agreed to a habitat conservation
plan that obliged it to follow
a strict set of logging rules on
more than 200,000 remaining acres.
... In a statement Friday, Feinstein
said she believes "Pacific
Lumber is required to meet the
obligations of the Habitat Conservation
Plan whether or not they are in
bankruptcy." ...Pacific Lumber
... In December ...filed a lawsuit
in a state court in Fresno charging
that the state has not lived up
to its part in the Headwaters deal.
...The forestry department and
the California Department of Fish
and Game signed the Headwaters
deal. But the State Water Resources
Control Board did not, and environmentalists
have persuaded it to limit Pacific
Lumber's tree cutting to prevent
more silt from fouling streams.
Pacific Lumber says these additional
restrictions were unforeseen, unnecessary
and costly, while environmentalists
have pointed to obvious silt deposits
downstream of logging sites and
argued successfully that state
law requires the company to clean
up its operations.
...Arnot, the Pacific Lumber spokeswoman,
said the bankruptcy filing should
not immediately affect the 538
people who work for the company.
But its workforce has been shrinking.
In December, Pacific Lumber cut
its workforce by 19 percent....See
also
Archive
of Past Articles for Chapter
3
|
|
Chapters
- What
is Global Systems Science?
- A
History of Forest Use in the Pacific Northwest
- Case
Study: The Headwaters Controversy
- Field
Trip to Wind River
- Losing
Tropical Rainforests
- Towards
a Sustainable World
Natural Resources Defense
Council (NRDC) Nature's
Voice Online.
Forest
Magazine |
4.
Field Trip to Wind River
Archive of
Past Articles for Chapter 4
Forest Fires
October 2003. Wildfires
in Southern California [1.3MB
PDF NASA Lithograph] Uncontrolled wildfire
is one of the most destructive natural forces
known to mankind. An average of 20,234 square kilometers (5 million
acres) burns every year in the United States, causing millions
of
dollars in damage. But not all wildfire is destructive; prescribed
and controlled fires can be beneficial by naturally thinning
overcrowded forests and reducing fuel supplies, preparing sites
for
seeding or planting, managing competing vegetation, and creating
varied vegetation patterns that provide diverse habitat for plants
and animals.
August 2002. MODIS
- Rapid Response [3MB
PDF NASA Lithograph] In mid-July 2002, lightning
started a fire in the Klamath Mountains
in southwestern Oregon that eventually burned
over the state line into California and consumed more
than 400,000 acres by late August.
The Biscuit fire became one of the largest in the state's history,
threatening not only human life and property, but also three
nationally designated wild and scenic rivers and habitat for
several
species of plants and animals already at risk of extinction.
Firefighters also had their hands full with other fires across
the
state, including the Tiller Complex Fire to the northeast.
Archive of
Past Articles for Chapter 4
|
|
Chapters
- What
is Global Systems Science?
- A
History of Forest Use in the Pacific Northwest
- Case
Study: The Headwaters Controversy
- Field
Trip to Wind River
- Losing
Tropical Rainforests
- Towards
a Sustainable World
Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Nature's
Voice Online.
Forest
Magazine |
5.
Losing Tropical Rainforests
Archive
of Past Articles for Chapter 5
14 January 2007. Brazil
Gambles on Monitoring of Amazon
Loggers. By LARRY ROHTER,
The New York Times REALIDADE,
Brazil - A
Brazilian government plan set
to go into effect this year will
bring large-scale logging deep
into the heart of the Amazon
rain forest for the first time,
in a calculated gamble that new
monitoring efforts can offset
any danger of increased devastation.
...The government of President
Luiz In‡cio
Lula da Silva, in an attempt to
create Brazil's first coherent,
effective forest policy, is to
begin auctioning off timber rights
to large tracts of the rain forest.
The winning bidders will not have
title to the land or the right
to exploit resources other than
timber, and the government says
they will be closely monitored
and will pay a royalty on their
activities. The architects of the
plan say it will also help reduce
tensions over land ownership
in the Amazon, the world's largest
tropical forest, which loses
an area the size of New Jersey
every year to clear-cutting and
timbering. In theory, 70 percent
of the jungle is public land,
but miners, ranchers and especially
loggers have felt free to establish
themselves in unpoliced areas,
strip the land of valuable resources
and then move on, mostly in the
so-called arc of destruction
on the eastern and southern fringes
of the jungle. But the called-for
monitoring of the loggers allowed
into the rain forest's largely
untouched center will come from
a new, untested Forest Service
with only 150 employees and from
state and municipal governments.
That concerns environmental and
civic groups ....
Archive
of Past Articles for Chapter 5
|
 |
Chapters
- What
is Global Systems Science?
- A
History of Forest Use in the Pacific Northwest
- Case
Study: The Headwaters Controversy
- Field
Trip to Wind River
- Losing
Tropical Rainforests
- Towards
a Sustainable World
Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Nature's
Voice Online.
Forest
Magazine |
6. Towards a Sustainable World
Archive
of Past Articles for Chapter 6
November
2007. The
Story of Stuff: a
20 minute video about our production
and consumption patterns showing
the connections between a number
of environmental and social issues,
and the idea of systems on planet
Earth.
14 November 2006. Studies
Find Danger to Forests in Thinning
Without Burning. By JIM ROBBINS,
NY Times.
Excerpt:
MISSOULA, Mont. - Thinning
forests without also burning
accumulated brush and deadwood
may increase forest fire damage
rather than reduce it, researchers
at the Forest Service reported
in two recent studies. The
findings cast doubt on how
effective some of the thinning
done under President Bush's
Healthy Forests Initiative
will be at preventing fires
if the forests are not also
burned. The studies show that
in forests that have been thinned
but not treated with prescribed
burning, tree mortality is
much greater than in forests
that have had thinning and
burning and those that have
been left alone. Another study,
on Blacks Mountain Experimental
Forest in Northern California,
had similar findings. The studies,
combined with other recent
research showing that climate
change is reducing snowpack
and making the fire season
longer and more intense, have
prompted researchers to urge
the Forest Service to use prescribed
fire more. "We
need fire on the ground," said
Dr. Ronald H. Wakimoto, a professor
of forestry at the University
of Montana who studies fire. "The
only thing that stops fires is
previous fire or prescribed fire."...
Archive of
Past Articles for Chapter 6
TOP
|
 |
Chapters
- What
is Global Systems Science?
- A
History of Forest Use in the Pacific Northwest
- Case
Study: The Headwaters Controversy
- Field
Trip to Wind River
- Losing
Tropical Rainforests
- Towards
a Sustainable World
The
Maine Woods--A Publication of the Forest Ecology
Network
Natural Resources Defense Council
(NRDC) Nature's
Voice Online.
Forest
Magazine |
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