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Chapter 8:
The opening quotation comes from a Scott Adam's Dilbert cartoon in The Dilbert Future, New York: HarperBusiness, 1997.
Loss of Local Climate Regulation
N. Myers in "Deforestation Rates in Tropical Forests and Their Climactic Implications," Friends of the Earth, London, 1989 estimates that the tropical deforestation rate increased by 90% during the 1980s.
The "Estimated Annual Rates of Deforestation" chart is derived from Orr, D.W., Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect, Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1994; State of the World's Forests 1997 (SOFO) published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO); and N. Myers in "Deforestation Rates in Tropical Forests and Their Climactic Implications," Friends of the Earth, London, 1989.
Natural Threats
In 1999, lava flows destroyed sections of rainforest in Cameroon (AP: "Lava from Cameroon volcano threatens rain forest," 3/30/99).
Wright, S.J. et al. ("The El Nino Southern Oscillation, Variable Fruit Production, and Famine in Tropical Forest," Ecology, Vol. 80, No. 5, (1632-1647) 1999) discuss the effect of El Niño in tropical forests of Central America (Barro Colorado Island, Panama). The paper examines the role of photosynthetically active radiation in fruiting and notes periods of famine among frugivorous mammals in years following dry ENSO events. Similar conclusions were reached in a paper by Ashton, P.S., Givnish, T.J., and Appanah, S. ("Staggered Flowering in the Dipterocarpaceae: New Insights into Floral Induction and the Evolution of Mast Fruiting in the Aseasonal Tropics," The American Naturalist Vol. 132, No. 1, July 1988. Here the authors found a strong correlation between mast fruiting of Dipterocarps and the drought conditions of ENSO events.
Brookfield, H., Potter, L., and Byron, Y., (In Place of the Forest: Environmental and Socio-economic Transformation in Borneo and the Eastern Malay Peninsula, New York: United Nations University Press, 1995) give the historical background on the section of forest in the northwestern part of peninsular Malaysia damaged by heavy winds in 1880. The study in the 1950s which found the forest had still not recovered is documented in Wyatt-Smith, J. "Storm forest in Kelantan," Malayan Forester Vol. 17: 5-11, 1954.
Markham, A. et al. ("Climate Change and Biodiversity Conservation," the World Wildlife Fund, 1996) note the projection that recovery for Luquillo montane forest from Hurricane Hugo will take at least 250 years.
The FAO definition of deforestation comes from State of the World's Forests 1997 (SOFO) published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
N. Myers breaks down the causes of deforestation in "Deforestation Rates in Tropical Forests and Their Climactic Implications," Friends of the Earth, London, 1989.
Thoenes, S ("In Asia's Big Haze, Man Battles Man-Made Disaster." The Christian Science Monitor. 10/28/97) notes that under Indonesia's transmigration program, the government has moved more than six million people from the central islands.
Brookfield, H., Potter, L., and Byron, Y., examine the Indonesian transmigration program in their work In Place of the Forest: Environmental and Socio-economic Transformation in Borneo and the Eastern Malay Peninsula, New York: United Nations University Press, 1995. |
