• Forests

California’s Cap and Trade Offset System Created A Market for Forest Preservation

• California
• cap and trade
• carbon offsets
• conservation
• market
• trees

The Wall Street Journal published an eye-opening piece yesterday by Ryan Dezember (with beautiful photos and video by Brett Carlsen) that describes a burgeoning national market in carbon offset credits created by landowners promising to leave trees on their land standing.  The buyers are “investing” in trees and holding the credits — and it’s not […]

• Forests

Deforestation and Climate Change Driving Old-Growth Forest Loss

• climate change
• deforestation
• Forests
• old growth forests
• trees

As Sustainability Times wrote, the planet has been losing much of its forest cover, especially in tropical regions. Over the past three decades, some 420 million hectares of forest have been lost worldwide through deforestation. But deforestation along with numerous other environmental stresses have affected forests in a multitude of ways. A new global analysis reveals […]

• Sustainability

One Green Thing: Lessons From the Garden

• birds
• clean air
• COVID-19
• garden
• trees

The pandemic has upended most of our lives, but it has also made us more aware of our environment — clean air, birds in our neighborhood, and how much we love being outdoors.  We are also appreciative more appreciative of the green spaces in and around our homes — whether it’s indoor plants, the tree […]

• Forests

Scientists Perfect Technique to Harvest Metals from Trees

• mining
• Rare Earth Minerals
• trees

While metallic soils often kill plants, scientists have been studying certain species of trees that are able to thrive in these soils and store metals–like nickel–in their tissue and seeds as a result. As the New York Times recently wrote, “This vegetation could be the world’s most efficient, solar-powered mineral smelters. What if, as a […]

• Forests

Australia’s Burned Forests Pose Immense Economic Risk

• Australia
• biodiversity
• Forests
• trees
• wildfires

Australia’s wildfires have been devastating for wildlife and people alike but there’s another casualty that’s been largely overlooked in media coverage: its forests.

Why This Matters: Forestry groups worry about the immense economic/ecological impact of the burned forests.

• Forests

Top Stories of 2019: Forests on Fire All Over the World

• carbon emissions
• carbon sink
• climate change
• Fire
• trees

This year will be remembered for searing images of the Amazon burning at an unprecedented rate (there were so many fires you could see them from space), with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro alternating between downplaying the severity of them and then sending in Brazilian military troops to fight the tens of thousands of fires burning there.  As we reported, world leaders and environmental organizations — even the Pope — pushed Brazil to take action — and the worst part was most of the fires were started by people who wanted to clear land for agriculture and other development.  But fires were bad all over the planet — from the Arctic tundra in Greenland, Alaska, and Siberia, to Australia, and of course, California.