Minding the Carbon Store PDF Download

Author: Mark C. Trexler
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Atmospheric carbon dioxide
Languages : en
Pages : 100

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Author: Nobukazu Nakagoshi
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 443154819X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
This book focuses on three major means of achieving a low carbon society: conservation of the ecosystem complex, changes of arrangement of landscapes, and creation of biodiversity. There are specific countermeasures to be taken for carbon absorption in the three types of landscapes—urban, cultural, and natural—because their carbon balances differ. Urban landscapes are promising sites because they have the potential for greening and the creation of biodiversity. Cultural landscapes in the tropics had not been actively researched until recently, but this book now presents a collection of several cases focused on those areas. Natural landscapes had existed in abundance in developing countries; later, nature protection areas were designated to coexist with development. Now, however, developmental pressure has penetrated into those nature protection areas, and landscape ecological projects are urgently required to preserve them. As a result of global warming, abnormal weather phenomena including super typhoons have occurred frequently in recent years. The major underlying cause is the higher concentration of greenhouse gases released by human activities. As well, major natural absorbers of CO2 such as forests, wetlands, and coral reefs are shrinking, and the human impact is causing the ecological balance to deteriorate. Controlling CO2 emissions and expanding the CO2 absorbers are keys to reducing total CO2. Low carbon societies can be established by maintaining the original CO2 balance through integration of multiple tools, with contributions from diverse fields such as physics and chemistry, physiology and humanities, and education. On the basis of an international consensus, the environment must be protected no matter what sacrifices are required. As this book demonstrates, achieving a low carbon society is a top priority, and landscape conservation is the first step in ecological research toward that goal.

Author: Brendan Mackey
Publisher: ANU E Press
ISBN: 1921313889
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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The colour of carbon matters. Green carbon is the carbon stored in the plants and soil of natural ecosystems and is a vital part of the global carbon cycle. This report is the first in a series that examines the role of natural forests in the storage of carbon, the impacts of human land use activities, and the implications for climate change policy nationally and internationally. REDD ("reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation") is now part of the agenda for the "Bali Action Plan" being debated in the lead-up to the Copenhagen climate change conference in 2009. Currently, international rules are blind to the colour of carbon so that the green carbon in natural forests is not recognized, resulting in perverse outcomes including ongoing deforestation and forest degradation, and the conversion of extensive areas of land to industrial plantations. This report examines REDD policy from a green carbon scientific perspective. Subsequent reports will focus on issues concerning the carbon sequestration potential of commercially logged natural forests, methods for monitoring REDD, and the long term implications of forest policy and management for the global carbon cycle and climate change.

Author: Michael J. Apps
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642611117
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 455

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Globally, forest vegetation and soils are both major stores of terrestrial organic carbon, and major contributors to the annual cycling of carbon between the atmosphere and the biosphere. Forests are also a renewable resource, vital to the everyday existence of millions of people, since they provide food, shelter, fuel, raw materials and many other benefits. The combined effects of an expanding global population and increasing consumption of resources, however, may be seriously endangering both the extent and future sustainability of the world's forests. About thirty chapters cover four main themes: the role of forests in the global carbon cycle; effects of past, present and future changes in forest land use; the role of forest management, products and biomass on carbon cycling, and socio-economic impacts.

Author: Joe Wisniewski
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401119821
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 677

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Towards the Balance and Management of the Carbon Budget of the Biosphere The current state of misunderstanding of the global C cycle and our failure to resolve an issue that has been debated for 100 years (Jones and Henderson-Sellers, 1990) speaks loudly about the limitations of modem science when faced with the complexity of the biosphere. Efforts to understand and balance the global C budget have gone through several phases. First was a holistic view of the C budget as part of efforts to understand the geochemistry of the Earth (e. g. , Clarke, 1908). Next, came a period of data collection and sythesis which focused on the diversity of sectors of the biosphere. This phase culminated in the early 1970's with the realization that humans were greatly impacting the global C cycle as measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory (Keeling et al. , 1973). New syntheses of the global C budget emerged at this time (Woodwell and Pacan, 1973; Bolin et al. , 1979). The next phase was one of controversy and intense focus on particular sectors of the biosphere. The controversy rested on discrepancies about the role of the terrestrial biota in the global C cycle and the failure to account for sufficient C sinks to absorb all the C emitted by land-use change in the tropics (Woodwell et al. , 1978, 1983; Houghton et al. , 1983).

Author: E. Gregory McPherson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Carbon dioxide mitigation
Languages : en
Pages : 690

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Author: Ann-Christine Duhaime
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674247728
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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The human brain evolved to prioritize short-term rewards over long-term goals. But while this adaptation served our ancestors well, it is maladaptive in the face of a slow-moving climate crisis. Luckily, brains can adjust. Ann-Christine Duhaime explores how we can reframe what we find rewarding to counteract climate change.

Author: P Mark S Ashton
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1000447936
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Protecting Watershed Areas: Case of the Panama Canal provides foresters, hydrologists, and park managers with a case study of the Panama Canal watershed area to help you make the most of your efforts in protecting ecological areas. Through this unique book, you will discover how the Carter-Torrijos treaty that will return the Panama Canal to the Republic of Panama on December 31, 1999 will affect the 2.6 million inhabitants of that area as well as this complex ecosystem. This valuable book includes a focus on both technical and biological observations in the field as well as library research to help you make the most of book learning and field research in your endeavors to protect forest reserves and other protected areas. Protecting Watershed Areas offers you insight into the Panama Canal area through informal interviews, key informants, field data, and research that focuses on both the technical and biological aspects of environmental management, such as agroforestry and reforestation, of environmental management and on policy and institutional dimensions of management to provide you with a unique perspective of the dynamics of this area. The Panama canal watershed area is one of the world?s most complex managed ecosystems and through this insightful volume, you will find new ways to deal with the myriad of problems you may encounter in ecosystem management, such as: realizing that single resource management is no longer adequate and taking a more holistic approach to management, such as taking into consideration whole ecosystems or watersheds will enable you to fully protect the area you are trying to serve discovering how the trend of privitization and nongovernmental ownership of protected areas impacts the job of managing our precious national resources understanding that for effective and stable protected area management to occur, you must have a clear understanding of the historical and social context that has shaped the particular circumstances of each site recognizing larger national and international factors in order to control the often devastating effects of tourism on protected areas creating clear directives and priorities before developing conservation programs to make program implementation easier Informative and insightful, Protecting Watershed Areas examines the most current ideas in protected areas management through a unique case study of the Panama Canal. This essential book provides you with several answers to the challenges facing Panama that you can apply to forest reserve and other protected areas programs around the globe due to the paramount importance of developing sustainable land-use systems. With Protecting Watershed Areas, you will discover how to effectively balance securing goods and services from a region, such as farming and tourism without threatening the overall integrity of the ecological systems and meeting human needs and values.

Author: Joe Wisniewski
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 940112793X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
Most of the attention with respect to the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations centers around three issues: human-generated sources of carbon, mostly from burning fossil fuels; tropical deforestation, which accelerates the production of atmospheric carbon while causting havoc with biodiversity and the economic development of tropical countries; and the temperature increase that may accompany increased atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. This is the first book to focus extensively on the reverse to emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), i.e. the sequestering of atmospheric carbon by aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Natural ecosystems are currently sequestering carbon and it is economically feasible to manage existing and additional terrestrial (forest, soil, saline land) and aquatic (coastal, wetland and ocean) ecosystems to substantially increase the level of carbon storage. The prospect of managing natural systems to absorb additional carbon should begin to change the mindset under which scientists, policy makers and society deal with the issue of further greenhouse gas increases.

Author: A.R. Wellburn
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401112940
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 410

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The study of air pollution effects on vegetation has made rapid progress in the last five years. Growing concerns about effects of future increases in temperature and carbon dioxide (C0 ) levels on plant life have altered 2 the perspective of plant biologists in the field of pollutant-plant inter actions. In many cases, it is anticipated that crops and trees will increasingly experience multiple stresses in an altered environment: an environment in which physiological processes will no longer be matched to climate. Because of this problem, a major part of the focus of the air pollution effects research has shifted since 1987. Moreover, recent advances in our understanding of plant metabolic and molecular responses to stress have made it clear that many abiotic stresses elicit similar fundamental mechanisms. Adaptation responses to drought, extremes of temperature, xenobiotics and air pollutants are now known to involve the response of both specific and common resistance mechanisms, which often include altered gene expression. The field of air pollution effects on vegetation has benefitted greatly from this unification since results obtained and advances made in allied fields are now directly relevant. The advent of molecular genetics has made possible the production of transgenic plants containing altered amounts of resistance gene products which enables the posing of experimental questions which could not be addressed only five years ago. Hypotheses concerning the relevance of specific metabolites and processes to known responses to air pollution stress can now be tested.