Where the trees are.
NASA put this little map together. I believe we need to start planting more trees. Time to add that to the 2012 goals.
Over six years, researchers assembled the national forest map from space-based radar, satellite sensors, computer models, and a massive amount of ground-based data. It is possibly the highest resolution and most detailed view of forest structure and carbon storage ever assembled for any country.
Forests in the U.S. were mapped down to a scale of 30 meters, or roughly 10 computer display pixels for every hectare of land (4 pixels per acre). They divided the country into 66 mapping zones and ended up mapping 265 million segments of the American land surface. Kellndorfer estimates that their mapping database includes measurements of about five million trees.
Coal exports threaten Pacific Northwest. Watch and then visit: powerpastcoal.org
Climate change: Species climbing higher and migrating north, study says
Most interesting to me, from a land-use law perspective, is the impact on conservation easements that were written to protect certain rare species. There are conservation areas owned by government set aside to protect rare and endangered species. Well, what happens to the property when, say, a rare, protected turtle decides to move and migrate north?
The study of 1,376 species of plant, animals, and insects found that,
“…warming climate is driving species toward higher latitudes at an average of nearly twice the pace that studies indicated in 2003. And species are migrating to higher altitudes nearly three times faster.”
That is interesting as Mckibbin mentions this in his book Eaarth. Except he was talking of human migration north as parts of the planet become uninhabitable.
(via emergentfutures)
Source: climateadaptation
Bike Geek, Cancer Survivor, and geeky dad. Writes about cycling, two wheeled culture, and the bicycle industry.