Tag Archives: vegetation types

Deforestation Causes Cooling in northern U.S., Canada

Deforestation, considered by scientists to contribute significantly to global warming, has been shown by a Yale-led team to actually cool the local climate in northern latitudes, according to a paper published Nov. 17 in Nature.

“If you cut trees in the boreal region, north of 45 degrees latitude, you have a net cooling effect,” says Xuhui Lee, the study’s principal investigator and professor of meteorology at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. “You release carbon into the atmosphere by cutting down trees, but you increase the albedo effect — the reflection of sunlight.” (more…)

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Carbon Mapping Breakthrough

Palo Alto, CA — By integrating satellite mapping, airborne-laser technology, and ground-based plot surveys, scientists from the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, with colleagues from the World Wildlife Fund and in coordination with the Peruvian Ministry of the Environment (MINAM), have revealed the first high-resolution maps of carbon locked up in tropical forest vegetation and emitted by land-use practices.

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