Category Archives: Environment

Bioengineered Eucalyptus to Replace Pine Trees?

As Steve’s Forestry Blog noted last summer:
ArborGen made a request to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to plant 260,000 flowering genetically engineered (GE) eucalyptus trees over 330 acres in seven states. USDA’s Animal Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is processing this request. Several plantations already exist in Florida and Alabama.

The tree is Eucalyptus grandis x urophylla. The plant is a cold-hardy eucalyptus that ArborGen is developing for future commercial purposes, mainly pulp for paper.

Paul Voosen writes in Scientific American that
Even given government incentives and a price on carbon, however, ArborGen must satisfy concerns from regulators and environmental groups that its engineered trees will not, especially when gifted with the ability to resist cold, spread untrammeled through forests.
It’s easy to see pollen from such trees blowing onto neighboring land and new trees growing. And, given the tactics of a certain other GM plant producer, it’s easy to see the patent owner sueing the adjacent landowner for patent theft, even though the patented plant trespassed. This is the level of assurance that that won’t happen:
“When you talk about trees, storms happen, wind blows,” he said. “The containment is not absolute. There is the chance of some spread. Is it likely to become an invasive weed? Seems unlikely to me.”
Not very reassuring. Meanwhile, the test stations continue to spread: Continue reading →

Longleaf Flood Prevention and Carbon Sequestration

dscn1384_candle_dead_leaves Instead of planting fast-growing slash or loblolly pines just to burn up in a biomass plant, how about plant the south’s iconic longleaf pine trees to capture and hold carbon from the atmosphere?
“Longleaf should be the centerpiece of land-based carbon sequestration efforts in the Southeast,” the report states, urging that national policymakers make the ecosystem as high a priority as the Everglades or Chesapeake Bay.
The report is Restoring the Longleaf Pine: Preparing the Southeast for Global Warming, Published December 10, 2009 by the National Wildlife Federation and two southeast forest conservation groups, America’s Longleaf, and The Longleaf Alliance.

People rightly worry about deforestation in the Amazon basin of Brazil, but forget or never knew that we already did that right here in the southeast: Continue reading →

Economic benefits of protecting natural ecosystems

A longleaf pine on Quarterman Road. Protecting forests is not just the right thing to do, it’s good business, says Mike De Souza, Canwest News Service, November 14, 2009, about a recent UN report:
Protecting natural ecosystems and biodiversity is worth trillions of dollars in annual economic benefits around the planet, says a new report released on Friday by the United Nations.
The actual report is TEEB for Policy Makers Report released 13 Nov 2009. The article continues, quoting one of the lead authors of the report:
“The technology of planting trees or replanting forests is thankfully free, and it has no side-effects,” said Sukhdev, who also leads the UN Environment Program’s Green Economy Initiative. “It’s powerful, it’s effective and it’s time tested. We just have to get people’s mindsets changed to start using these natural technologies that are available.”
Or just don’t cut down trees when paving roads.

Deforestation Floods Wiped Out the Ancient Nazca of Peru

News in Discover Magazine from ancient Peru:
The new study, published in the journal Latin American Antiquity, found that the pollen in the older layers of soil came almost entirely from huarango trees. But by A.D. 400, pollen from corn and cotton plants had replaced the tree pollen, suggesting that the Nazca people had chopped down the forests to make room for agricultural fields. About AD 500, a major El Niño built up in the Pacific, deluging the nearby Andes with rain. Walls of water and mud washed down the valley and over the denuded landscape, sweeping away food crops, buildings and artifacts. Beresford-Jones compared it with the 1997-98 El Niño, which left the city of Ica 6 feet underwater [Los Angeles Times]. The floods of A.D. 500 were many times worse, the researchers say.
Does this sound at all like the Georgia floods of 2009?

Nature Makes Healthy

Wide base Something to consider when planning development:
The closer you live to nature, the healthier you’re likely to be.

For instance, people who live within 1 kilometer (.6 miles) of a park or wooded area experience less anxiety and depression, Dutch researchers report.

The findings put concrete numbers on a concept that many health experts had assumed to be true.

“It’s nice to see that it shows that, that the closer humans are to the natural environment, that seems to have a healthy influence,” said Dr. David Rakel, director of integrative medicine and assistant professor of family medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

That’s Amanda Gardner, writing in USA Today. A few other points:
Children and poor people suffered disproportionately from lack of green acres, the researchers found.
And what affects the most vulnerable affects all:
More green space may also be a way for whole communities to become healthier.
The cypress pictured is much like those in the swamp on Val Del Road that the county let a developer cut down last year.

Biggest polluters in Lowndes County

The New York Times provides an interactive map of water polluters. According to that map, derived from Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.) data mostly from 2004 through 2007, the biggest offenders in Lowndes County by number of violations are:
62 Moody Air Force Base
42 Arizona Chemical Company
37 Georgia Sheriffs’ Boys Ranch
These are all way ahead of Hahira’s notorious sewer system (supposed to be fixed now) and Valdosta’s Mud Creek WPCP (supposed to be being fixed now), both with 11 violations. Moody is not surprising, due to sheer size, although disappointing. The one that surprises me is the Boys Ranch.

Of course, number of violations is just one measure, but it is an interesting one.