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SIU GEOG 300I - Deforestation

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GEOG 300i 1st Edition Lecture 14- Deforestation o Bonnie 2000o “Although societies value forests in myriad ways, traditionally the marketplace has assigned a high value to wood products and nonforest uses of forestland such as agriculture. o The marketplace often fails to value the "ecosystem services" that forests provide, such as watershed protection, biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration and the consequent reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.”o The value of biodiversity...o The rosy periwinkle o Medically used by people in Madagascar for hundreds of years, the rosy periwinkle contains two powerful alkaloids with cancer-fighting ability; vincristine and vinblastine. o Vinblastine is effective against Hodgkin’s disease, vastly increasing the remission rate to 80% from the previous rate of 20%, and vincristine provides a 90% remission rate againstchildhood leukemia. o The carbon cycleo Terrestrial Carbon SequestrationClimate change governanceo Human activities such as fossil fuel use and deforestation increase CO2 levels.o Higher CO2 levels impact global climate:o More extreme weather events;o Sea level rises;o Deterioration of coastal ecosystems.o The reason is that our individual decisions regarding energy use do not reflect the impact that our choices have on global climate. There is no market for a stable climate, nor a price to pay if we want to make choices that affect climate change.o Adaptationo Initiatives and measures to reduce the vulnerability of natural and human systems against actual or expected climate change effects. Various types of adaptation exist, e.g. anticipatory and reactive, private and public, and autonomous and planned. Examples are raising river or coastal dikes, the substitution of more temperature-shock resistant plants for sensitive ones, etc.o Mitigationo Technological change and substitution that reduce resource inputs and emissions per unit of output. Although several social, economic and technological policies would produce an emission reduction, with respect to Climate Change, mitigation means implementing policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enhance sinks.- Purvis and Myers 2008o Why focus on forests?o Because forest “conservation, unlike advanced clean energy technologies, is something the world could implement both cost-effectively and almost immediately at a global scale.”o Cost effective!o “Costs to reduce emissions from deforestation are equal to or less than costs of most other emissions mitigation strategies, although studies offer quite a range of cost predictions. o The World Bank believes the opportunity cost of forest conservation is less than $5/tCO2in several major developing countries —a small fraction of the price of nonforestry carbon securities today in Europe”- Bonnie 2000o “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that tropical deforestation was responsible for 20 to 30% of global, anthropogenic GHG emissions during the 1990s.o These data argue strongly for finding ways to reduce emissions from tropical deforestation.” - Rangel 2012o “Habitat loss, climate change, and invasive species are the main drivers of the ongoing biodiversity crisis. o These human-induced processes may have boosted the background rate of species extinction by 100 to 1000 times. However, species do not go extinct immediately when their habitat shrinks, climate changes beyond their tolerance limit, or an invasive speciesspreads. It may take several generations after an initial impact before the last individual of a species is gone.”o Remember Jackson?- Rangel 2012o The extinction debt is the increase in the extinction of species that is caused by past and present human activities.o “In the past decade, Brazil has expanded its network of protected areas. Currently, around 54% of Brazilian Amazon is under some form of environmental protection. o However, the current macroeconomic crisis is threatening Brazil’s long term economic growth. To foster growth, the Brazilian government has been pushing a rapid expansion of infrastructure in the Amazon, with the construction of over vast hydroelectric power plants in the Amazon basin. Several protected areas have been reduced in size or relocated. In addition, agricultural businesses have been strongly lobbying for a radical legislative reform to weaken forest protection.o These reforms could potentially reverse the reduction in deforestation rate of the last decade.”o Rangel discusses the results of another paper in the same issue of Science, Wearn et al., which uses scenario analysis to assess the risk of extinction debt in the Amazon. o Wearn et al. use number of species to measure the debt, and Rangel argues that that is not a perfect way to measure and can be improved upon.o However, this is a good start to assess the impact of human activities on the Amazon.o Four scenarios:  business as usual (BAU)  governance (GOV) strong reduction (SR) scenario - 80% reduction in absolute deforestation rate by 2020 end of deforestation (EOD) scenario - eliminates deforestation by 2020o Spatial patterns of absolute species loss (represented by the sizes of squares) and extinction debt (represented by colors) in the Brazilian Amazon. o Smaller squares have suffered greatest extinction, whereas redder squares have the largest extinction debts and are expected to experience the greatest future losses of species without conservation attention.o Large and red squares are intact but imperiled and are where the greatest gains could beexpected from conservation actions.- Rangel 2012/Wearn et al. 2012o Smaller squares have suffered greatest extinction, whereas redder squares have the largest extinction debts and are expected to experience the greatest future losses of species without conservation attention.o Large and red squares are intact but imperiled and are where the greatest gains could beexpected from conservation actions.- Rangel 2012o “Actions to further decrease the rate of deforestation would help to slow the rate at which additional extinction debt is accumulated. o However, reducing the rate at which extinction debts accumulate is not sufficient to preserve the Amazon’s biodiversity heritage; the existing extinction debt may eventually lead to the loss of species. o To prevent species extinctions, it is necessary to take advantage of the window of opportunity for forest regeneration. Restored


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