It has never been easy to get figures for actual rainforest area - and our estimates based on what we could find had settled as follows:  There were about 8.0 million square miles of tropical rainforest in the world 150 years ago, and we’re now down to around 3.0 million square miles.

Absolutely devastated former forest,
hopefully [...]

When green technology delivers decentralized solutions to water and energy - from hi-tech and low maintenance, ultra-effective septic systems to affordable rooftop photovoltaics and electrical storage systems, there are a lot of public works contractors who will be looking for something to do.

A green mega-project:
High rise agriculture for food & biofuel.
(Photo: www.verticalfarm.com)

Fortunately, we have the [...]

Definition:  “New Urbanism - the revival of our lost art of place-making, and promotes the creation and restoration of compact, walkable, mixed-use cities.”
On one of www.TreeLink.org’s posts, I noticed the tag “urban forestry is America’s frontline defense against climate change.”  I couldn’t agree more.
So how is this statement reconciled with “new urbanism” and “smart growth” that [...]

We have just published an interview with noted climate scientist Roger Pielke, Sr., a retired professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, and a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Since July 2005 he has written and maintained Climate Science, a blog that serves as a scientific forum for [...]

Now there’s a mouthful.  A relatively unheralded study released nearly two years ago by scientists at UC Berkeley explains the significance of this phenomenon on forests and climate.  In a report on the UC Berkeley news website entitled “Deep-rooted plants have much greater impact on climate than experts thought,” hydraulic redistribution is defined as the [...]

Once in a while you run across something that challenges just about everything you thought you knew.  “Terra preta” (Portuguese for “black earth”) are anomalous deposits of deep, rich soil found in large pockets of land throughout the Amazon.  Once thought to be 100% comprised of thin, fragile soil that would immediately desertify if the trees were removed, [...]

It’s appalling that the European environmentalists allowed biodiesel subsidies.  The idea we can burn our biosphere in the tanks of our cars, and that this is somehow better than using petroleum, is the death knell to tropical forests.  In turn this is the cause of droughts due to loss of transpiration, extreme weather because tropical [...]