#forests

elegance@socialhome.network

DimLand

In an attempt to shake off her melancholy, a young woman escapes the city to her family's country cottage only to rediscover a world she'd long forgotten and the old friend who may convince her to leave reality behind.


The journey through DimLand is unique, mystical, and eye-opening; nothing else quite like it exists in the world, and it’s possibly exactly what is needed right now. It can’t be said enough how powerful the message is and how the stellar performance of Brown brings the director’s vision to life. Campbell’s feature-length debut is unlike anything you’ve seen before, and Campbell and Brown’s brilliance is the centerpiece of its success. (Kyle Bain)


Interesting film, though, quite likely not for the masses and instead for those who enjoy quieter films with minimal dialogue. Some wonderful concepts to contemplate.

#movies #film #fantasy #Peter-Collins-Campbell #nature #forests #forest-spirits #childhood #imaginary-friend

indieshade@diasp.eu

"We protect 80% of the planet's biodiversity, yet we are the most vulnerable."

In the run-up to the ground-breaking Our Land Our Nature congress, we asked leading experts and activists from around the world to explain just what’s wrong with “conservation.” Watch, then help us stop the biggest land grab in history, from those who are least responsible for the climate crisis – Indigenous Peoples, who protect 80% of the world’s biodiversity, and other local peoples.

Nancidalia Ramírez Domínguez, coordinator of the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests' Youth Movement, claims the key role of indigenous peoples and local communities around the world as protectors of biodiversity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVUKlD9-2WM

#film #video #message #survival #international #indigenous #peoples #conservationism #nomoregreenlies #ourland #ournature #land #nature #nancidalia #ramirez #dominguez #mesoamerican #alliance #forests #youth #movement #biodiversity #world #protection #local #conservation #planet #planeta #landgrab #climate #crisis #apocalipse

olddog@diasp.org

Image

Sizing Up How Agriculture Connects to Deforestation

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/148674/sizing-up-how-agriculture-connects-to-deforestation

Sizing Up How Agriculture Connects to Deforestation
Sizing Up How Agriculture Connects to Deforestation

2001 - 2020
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Every year, scientists at the University of Maryland publish new data about the state of Earth’s forests based on observations from Landsat satellites. As has often been the case in recent years, the update for 2020 painted a bleak picture. In that one year, Earth lost nearly 26 million hectares of tree cover—an area larger than the United Kingdom.

The raw numbers can tell us how much and where forests were lost, but they do not explain what was driving those losses. How much deforestation was due to wildfires? Food production? Forestry management? An ongoing effort by researchers from The Sustainability Consortium and the World Resources Institute (WRI) attempts to answer such questions with maps and datasets that categorize and quantify the major drivers of annual forest losses. In doing so, the researchers have put a spotlight on the impact that food production has on forests, particularly in the tropics.

In 2020, for instance, Earth lost about 4.2 million hectares (16,000 square miles) of humid tropical primary forest—an area about the size of the Netherlands. Nearly half of that, their analysis shows, was due to food production, and half of that was due to commodity crops. In recent years, commodity crop production has pushed rates of forest loss to record levels.

The map above, based on an analysis of Landsat data by The Sustainability Consortium and WRI, highlights several key drivers of forest loss. Shifting agriculture (yellow) typically involves the clearing of small plots within forests in Africa, Central America, and parts of South America. The clearing is done by subsistence farmers, often families, who raise a mixture of vegetables, fruits, grains, and small livestock herds for a few years and then let fields go fallow and move on as soil loses its fertility. The practice is especially common in Africa, and has become more so since 2000 due to increasing human populations.

In South America and Southeast Asia, commodity crops (tan on the map) have become the dominant driver of forest loss. Common commodity crops include beef, soybeans, palm oil, corn, and cotton. They are typically grown on an industrial scale and traded internationally. Unlike the temporary forest clearings associated with small-scale agriculture, commodity-scale production often involves clear-cutting and results in significant impacts on forests (like the Indonesian palm oil plantation below).

“In many cases, commodity-driven deforestation is essentially a permanent change compared to shifting agriculture,” explained Christy Slay, a conservation ecologist and the senior director of science and research applications at The Sustainability Consortium. “These areas will likely never be forests again.”

In contrast, forests cleared for forestry management or by wildfires generally grow back over time. In the U.S. Southeast, for instance, managers maintain certain ecosystems and animal habitats by periodically burning and planting forests to mimic natural cycles of burning and regrowth. Likewise, forests in the Pacific Northwest and Europe are often managed for timber in ways that cycle between periods of forest clearing and periods of regrowth.

Note that food production was once a major driver of deforestation in North America and Europe, but much of the clearing happened a hundred or more years ago. Since many forests in these areas were already gone by 2000, their absence does not register as forest loss. Nor does the map capture the impact of large-scale conversion of natural grasslands to agriculture, a common practice in both North and South America.

With tropical forest cover dwindling and the effect of climate change becoming more acute, some companies and consumers are trying to ensure that food production does not lead to new deforestation. In recent years, hundreds of companies have committed to eliminating or reducing products in their supply chains that cause deforestation. But ensuring that is often challenging.

“Global supply chains can be complicated and opaque,” said Slay. “You often have companies buying commodities off the spot market, such that the source regions change frequently or even daily. Retailers and food manufacturers often don't know the source of their ingredients down to the individual farm and field scale.”

By regularly collecting data on the health of forests, satellites are making it easier for scientists to untangle which commodities and regions are the biggest contributors to deforestation. Doug Morton, a forest ecologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, has witnessed a shift in the dominant drivers of deforestation.

“Forty years ago, we often saw small-scale deforestation creating roads that look like fishbone patterns,” said Morton, who monitors agricultural frontiers in the Amazon. At the time, many people were moving into the Amazon to escape drought and hunger in eastern Brazil. “By the middle of the Landsat record, we see large-scale commodity production taking hold. Today’s deforestation isn’t about individual families. It’s often tractors and bulldozers clearing large tracts of forest for industrial scale cattle ranching and crops.”

For companies trying to keep their supply chains free of deforestation, knowing which commodity crops are being grown where is critical. “If we know where deforestation is common and what crops are involved, we can go to companies and say: ‘Be careful if you’re working with suppliers that are sourcing this particular product from this particular part of the world,’ ” said Slay. “Satellite data of forest change and loss is the first step in the process.”

One recent WRI analysis combined Landsat imagery with economic and land-use data to parse the impact of seven different commodities on forests around the world. “One of the big things you notice in the data is the outsized role of cattle pastures in driving deforestation,” said Mikaela Weisse, one of the report’s authors. “Cattle pastures caused about five times more deforestation than any of the other commodities we analyzed.”

The map above shows forests being cleared for cattle all over the world, but particularly in Brazil, where deforestation has been on the rise. Large tracts of forest have also been cleared in Paraguay, Bolivia, and Peru according to WRI data.

In Southeast Asia, where deforestation rates have dropped recently, most forest losses are associated with palm oil, which is used in many types of processed foods and various health and beauty products like deodorant, shampoo, toothpaste, soap, and lipstick. Deforestation for cocoa production had a sizable impact in certain countries—notably Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire—but only represented 3 percent of total forests losses. Other commodities with similarly modest effects on global forests included rubber, coffee, and wood fiber.

While new tools are making it easier to understand where food production is intersecting with new deforestation, huge challenges remain. “Deforestation rates are going up instead of down,” said Elizabeth Goldman of WRI. “There’s a lot of work left to do.”

NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using data from Curtis, P.G., et al. (2018), data from Goldman, Elizabeth, et al. (2020), and Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Adam Voiland.

#EarthObservatory #NASA #Deforestration #Forests #Environment

ramil_rodaje@diasp.org

https://timberfestival.org.uk/soundsoftheforest/

Sounds of the Forest

Sounds of the Forest

We are collecting the sounds of woodlands and forests from all around the world, creating a beautiful soundmap bringing together aural tones and textures from the world’s woodlands.

We invite you to visit your local forest or woodland, and record for us one minute of the sounds that you hear. If you already have existing recordings of forests then we’d love to hear those too.

At the start of July 2020, on the weekend we would have been at Timber Festival, we released a soundmap of forests everywhere, listening and imagining ourselves in the heart of the National Forest with you.

The sounds form an open source library, to be used by anyone to listen to and create from. Selected artists are responding to the sounds that you gather, creating music, audio, artwork or something else incredible, to be presented at Timber 2021.

Top 10 Most Listened to Forest Sounds Revealed

https://timberfestival.org.uk/news/top-10-most-listened-to-forest-sounds-revealed/

#SoundsOfTheForest #nature #environment #trees #forests #soundmap #soundscapes #TheNationalForest #WildRumpus #PRSFoundation #TimberFestival

mhodza@diasp.org

Logging, #### is not only robbing us of clean air but also of water! The people know it must end and have known for last 10 years. I assume the gov has received and read the multitudes of reports we all have collectively sent them and now this report underlines all of that.....

And yet they keep propping up this faltering and dying industry....with our tax dollars!!!!! What gives? Is this the case in other countries?

Expert opinion: logging must stop in melbourne's biggest water supply catcment

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/the-feed/expert-opinion-logging-must-stop-in-melbourne-s-biggest-water-supply-catchment

#melbourne #water_shortage #drought #water_reatrictions #logging #water_catchments #forests #water_flows