el amigo

I like Mongabay, they are very professional, here is another great story from them:

33,000 square miles (85,500 square kilometers) or 2.8 percent of the Amazon rainforest burned between 1999-2010 finds new NASA-led research that measured the extent of fires that smolder under the forest canopy.

The research, published April 22 in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, used satellite data to show that in some years, understory fires burn a far larger extent of forest than the area deforested for agriculture and cattle pasture. Yet the study found no correlation between understory fires to deforestation.

"You would think that deforestation activity would significantly increase the risk of fires in the adjacent forested area because deforestation fires are massive, towering infernos," said lead author Doug Morton of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in a statement. "You make a bonfire that is a square kilometer in size, throwing ash and live cinders and preheating the adjacent forest. Why didn't we have more understory fires in 2003 and 2004, when deforestation rates were so high?"

The answer lay in humidity data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite. Understory fire frequency coincides with low nighttime humidity, which allows the low-intensity surface fires to continue burning. In other words, climate conditions seem to be the most important factor in the area affected by understory fires.

Therefore areas with low deforestation may experience high rates of burning, according to the Morton.

"You can look within an indigenous reserve where there is no deforestation and see enormous understory fires," Morton said. "The human presence at the deforestation frontier leads to a risk of forest fires when climate conditions are suitable for burning, with or without deforestation activity."

Researchers for the first time mapped the extent and frequency of understory fires across a study area (green) spanning 1.2 million square miles (3 million square kilometers) in the southern Amazon forest. Fires were widespread across the forest frontier during the study period from 1999-2010. Recurrent fires, however, are concentrated in areas favored by the confluence of climate conditions suitable for burning and ignition sources from humans. Caption photo credit: NASA's Earth Observatory

While small fires may seem unimportant if they aren't correlated with deforestation, other research has shown that these fires can have a significant impact on forests by reducing their resilience.

"When a forest burns for the first time flame heights rarely exceed 30-40 cm, and the fire moves slowly through the leaf litter," Jos Barlow, an Amazon researcher unaffiliated with the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B study, told mongabay.com. "Although these fires appear relatively innocuous, they are actually very destructive as most rainforest trees have a low tolerance of heat, and their slow speed means that flames stay in contact with trees for long periods of time. As a result, even low-intensity fires kill up to 40 percent of trees. They are also the first step in positive feedback cycle, where the dead trees act to open up the canopy and add fuel to the forest floor, making the forest more flammable and increasing the severity of any additional fire."

Once-burned forests are twice as likely to be deforested as unburned forests, largely because subsequent fires burn with increased velocity and intensity and cause higher tree mortality.

The new findings thus have significant implications for forecasting the future of Amazonian forests. With climate models projecting drier conditions across large swathes of the Southern Amazon, the incidence and extent of small surface fires may increase, exacerbating the effects of climate change-induced drying. The result could be increased carbon emissions from burned forests.

"We don't yet have a robust estimate of what the net carbon emissions are from understory fires, but widespread damages suggest that they are important source of emissions that we need to consider," Morton said.

Emissions from fires in dry years in the Amazon Basin can sometimes rival emissions from some of the world's largest countries. For example, a 2011 study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters estimated that the epic 2010 drought in the Amazon triggered the release of nearly 500 million tons of carbon (1.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide), or more than India's annual greenhouse gas emissions.

Source: mongabay

Rainforests in South America have endured three previous extreme global warming events in the past, suggesting they will survive a projected 2-6 degree rise in temperatures over the coming century, reports a study published in the Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Science.

The research, published by Carlos Jaramillo and Andrés Cárdenas of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama, reviewed some 3,800 published estimates of temperature over the past 120 million years and compared them to the existence of tropical plants in the fossil record. They found that tropical rainforest plant diversity actually increased during previous global warming episodes, including the mid-Cretaceous period 120 million years ago when temperatures in the South American tropics rose 9-12 degrees (5-7°C), the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum 55 million years ago when tropical temperatures rose by 5-9 degrees (3-5°C) in less than 10,000 years, and another period of warming 53 million years ago.

Jaramillo and Cárdenas said that a concern raised by other tropical researchers — that increased incidence of drought in the tropics will be detrimental to tropical forests — may be overblown, citing research by STRI scientist Klaus Winter that some tropical trees can endure short-term exposure to temperatures up to 122-127 degrees (50-53°C). The researchers added that trees use less water when CO2 concentrations increase.

Jaramillo and Cárdenas paint a far rosier picture than some other researchers working in the region. Studies based on climate model suggest that large extents of the Southern Amazon could be increasingly vulnerable to die-off from severe droughts driven by rising temperatures in the tropical Atlantic Ocean and worsened by large-scale deforestation. Although rainfall appears to be on the rise in the Western Amazon, the Southern Amazon has seen the two worst droughts on record during the past decade. A study published last December showed that trees across large blocks of the Amazon are failing to recover as expected after extended dry periods.

"If droughts continue to occur at 5–10-year frequency, or increase in frequency, large areas of Amazonian forest canopy likely will be exposed to the persistent effect of droughts and the slow recovery of forest canopy structure and function," wrote Sassan Saatchi and colleagues in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "In particular, areas of south and western Amazonia have been shown to be affected severely by increasing rainfall variability in the past decade, suggesting that this region may be witnessing the first signs of potential large-scale degradation of Amazonian rainforest from climate change."

That concern has been echoed by a series of studies published by Daniel Nepstad of the International Program of the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, which suggests that more than half the Amazon could be destroyed or degraded by 2030 should current trends of deforestation and drought hold.

The dramatically differing scenarios throw into question forecasts about how much carbon South American forests are likely to store in the future and the role these ecosystems may play in exacerbating or mitigation climate change. The Amazon rainforest is estimated to store 80-120 billion tons of carbon at present, or up to 13 years' worth of carbon emissions at current rates.

Source: mongabay

Please read the BBC's other good article about how can help YOU:

In the past, bird-watchers and bug-hunters have been frowned upon by academics for just looking at wildlife, rather than studying it in depth.

A naturalist - previously considered an expert - is now defined as "an amateur concerned more with observation than with experiment" by the Oxford English Dictionary.

But in the 21st Century, experts are realising the potential of simple observations to provide essential data to help conserve our wildlife.

Citizen science is making an impact.

The UK-Environmental Observation Framework has recently published a guide to citizen science, which it defines as the "volunteer collection of biodiversity and environmental information which contributes to expanding our knowledge of the natural environment".

This all makes it sound very serious but the key to citizen science is enthusiasm on a grand scale.

The UK is home to the world's largest wildlife survey: the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch, held annually over a weekend in January. The public are asked to record which birds visit their garden during an hour and the results help the charity understand the health of our garden birds.

2013's survey received an enormous 590,000 records and previous results have helped to inform wide-reaching investigations, such as the State of Nature report which warned that as much as 60% of wildlife studied across the UK could be in decline.

Many of the most familiar citizen science projects are this kind of targeted survey looking at the population and distribution of particular groups, species or habitats. These take place in set time periods, often weekends, and can be repeated annually so scientists can identify longer term patterns.

For those with more time and who enjoy the added responsibility, there are also ongoing monitoring schemes of vulnerable species to accurately understand how they are faring.

One of the simplest ways to help out scientists is to conduct a BioBlitz on your green patch: counting all the life you can see within a defined square to track biodiversity. You can download a pdf of instructions on this page if you want to take part, titled 'Get involved: Garden BioBlitz 2013'.

The Bristol Natural History Consortium support organisations and voluntary groups running BioBlitz events across the country to get people closer to the wildlife around them.

"If you want to go out doing some bat surveys [at night] then you need some fairly high-tech kit but if you want to go out and investigate the wildlife in your garden... you can do a pretty good, comprehensive insect survey of a tree with nothing more than an umbrella and a stick," says Matt Postles, BioBlitz project manager.

"You can just tap on a branch, then the insects fall into your [upturned] umbrella underneath and you can take a look."

You can do a BioBlitz at any time and submit your results online. If you want to feel like part of the crowd, the mass Garden BioBlitz takes place over the first weekend in June and there are local events across the country throughout the summer where you can ask experts directly about what you discover.

"All the records that you collect as part of a BioBlitz feed into a national database which is used by all kinds of groups: whether it's for planning permission or if you want to do some conservation action on a site you can find out what's already there," explains Mr Postles.

If you're short of time, technological advances have made reporting easier and range from tweeting sightings of roadkill for Cardiff University's Project Splatter to uploading photos of diseased trees via a purpose-built app for the Forestry Commission's Tree Alert.

"There are lots of online tools where you can engage with experts and learn from them, so you don't necessarily have to be an expert yourself," says Mr Postle.

Source: BBC

Sad news again from BBC:

The destruction of tropical rainforests is having an even greater impact on the environment than was previously thought, a study suggests.

Scientists have found that deforestation in Brazil is causing trees to produce smaller, weaker seeds that are less likely to regenerate.

They believe this has been triggered by the loss of large birds from the forests, which have beaks big enough to feed on and disperse the seeds.

The study is published in Science.

Pedro Jordano, from the Donana Biological Station in Seville, Spain, said: "One of our major surprises was how rapidly deforestation could not only be influencing the disappearance of the fauna, but to observe how deforestation could influence the evolution of the plant traits so rapidly - within a few generations."

Tiny beaks

Brazil's Atlantic rainforest was once home to a vibrant array of plants and animals.

But with the arrival of sugar and coffee plantations in the early part of the 19th Century, it was rapidly destroyed.

Today, just 12% of the original forest remains.

To assess the impact, researchers looked at more than 9,000 seeds collected from palm trees throughout the rainforest.

Those taken from areas that had suffered heavy destruction were much smaller than seeds collected in undisturbed patches of forest.

The researchers considered a wide array of factors that might have led to the shrinkage, such as the climate, soil fertility and forest cover.

"But we found no evidence for any of those effects," explained Prof Jordano, who carried out the research with Sao Paulo State University, in Brazil.

"The main factor was the disappearance of the large frugivore (fruit-eating) species."

Usually, species such as the toucan and cotinga use their large beaks to eat the fruit, eventually spreading the seeds throughout the forest.

But as the rainforest was flattened, these birds vanished, leaving smaller birds behind such as the thrush.

By evolving to produce smaller fruits, which birds with tinier beaks could handle, they were more likely to be dispersed.

However the researchers found these seeds were weaker.

"Unfortunately the smaller seed size also means a lower probability for successful recruitment in the forest," said Prof Jordano.

"Smaller seeds are less likely to germinate, they are prone to losses by desiccation and they are more quickly attacked by fungi."

He added that projected climate change could render rainforests drier and hotter, making the survival of the seeds even less likely.

The researchers said their findings were probably not limited to the Atlantic rainforest.

Prof Jordano said: "Really the story we are documenting can also be happening for many other tree species.

"Unfortunately it will also be common in other tropical areas around the world, where the large toucans, the tapirs, monkeys and other big mammals and birds are disappearing very quickly from the forest."

Source: BBC

As I do not have television lately I had to watch the whole show on the internet. Ed Stafford's Naked and Marooned is about a guy (Ed Stafford himself) who was dropped on an inhabited tropical island near the Fiji, without any tools and even without clothes.

I am a big fan of the Walking the Amazon, so I was extremely excited to watch the series, and I can tell you, it was fantastic! Ed is a Guinness record holder and the quality is high again.

Ed learned the tactics of survival before he was dropped on the island, and he started to recall the training as soon as he stepped on the sand of his new home. He looked for fresh water and food during his first days, tried to light a fire (it was a bit difficult for him, thus he ate raw meat), and got sick because of a small, raw lizard (I guess) and needed some help.

He used some plastic bottles to create fish traps (it was successful), made a bow (unfortunately it was unsuccessful) and made a small raft to look around at the edge of the reef.

He was totally alone for 60 days, built a comfortable shelter and the "cave man" moved there, hunted for goats (and caught one), smoked the meat. He planted some potato-like plants and lived a -let's say- comfortable life on his inhabited island.

I advise to everyone to watch the show, how people can adopt a situation, and build up their lives in an extreme environment. In my opinion Ed Stafford created a great show again, filmed himself for 60 days.

http://press.discovery.com/uk/dsc/programs/ed-stafford-naked-and-marooned/

I was a bit silent nowadays, but Happy Easter to Everybody!

First of all let me wish

Happy New Year (Feliz Año)

to All!

As the most of the people, I start 2013 with new plans and expectations, and as the other people I will try to improve my living standards, read and blog more about nature, rainforests, animals and traveling, so stay tuned my friends! Happy new year again!

As you may noticed I have not written too much posts because I am a bit busy nowadays, and I do not have time. But stay tuned, I will start 2013 with new powers!

Cheers!

As a system engineer I need a reliable and durable notebook every working day. I had to look for a new business category machine: 14" display, lighter than 3kg, 4-6h battery life, 4GB RAM are important options for me. I always try to be as "green" as I can, so I started to read about the topic on the internet.

Finally I found that the Lenovo ThinkPads have a new, environment friendly series. Its letter is the "L". I found the L430 absolutely perfect for my work. Yesterday we ordered one. Theoretically I get it tomorrow, so I will be able to write a detailed review about this piece of kit.

The question in the topic is quite important, if you are planning to buy a green car, or use one. Thanks to kind lady, who wrote me some lines, I can share with you a great site about the topic.

carinsurance.org/green-cars

It is worth reading the page, I suggest it to everybody. Thank you!