In our “climate” section, Treesource.org will cover all aspects of forest, climate and weather interactions, from drought-stressed forests and their susceptibility to insects, diseases and wildfires to the upheaval caused by an overabundance of water. We’ll examine how hurricanes, tornadoes, ice storms and other severe weather can affect forests and how forests can mitigate those impacts. Finally, we will explore how forests and climate change interact, including urban forests, forest reserves and forests that produce wood for commercial use.
Forests and wood products can help mitigate some of the effects of fossil fuel use and contribute to a more sustainable society. Creating appropriate economic incentives to sustainably manage forests through reforestation and timber harvest is important to preventing the conversion of forests to other uses.
Economics is what drives people to clear forests to raise cattle or soy beans or palm oil or houses. Therefore, an important solution is for people to see economic value in forests, whether that is provided through wood products, tourism/recreation, edible crops from the trees or a combination of all of these.
This article from The Nature Conservancy is a good example of the stories that Treesource will aggregate and curate, and then synthesize with our own original work.
We will also explore the steps needed to help forests adapt to our changing climate; how to make them more resilient to drought, wildfire, insects; how nature has adapted to climate changes in the past; and what we can learn from those evolutionary adaptations.
Leave a Reply