Clipping Board » Environmental Pollution & Change ─ How dirty the human heart is, how dirty the environment will be...
Update Date: 2008/07/21 18:11
Excerpt translated from an ENS report on July 16, 2008, Rome, Italy; compiled by Wu Cuihui; reviewed by Cai Liling.
A global remote sensing survey conducted by the United Nations on the Earth's forests aims to further understand changes in land use, including deforestation, reforestation, and the natural expansion of forests.
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), this assessment will cover the entire land surface of the Earth, including 9,000 samples, with the FAO leading the project.
Jan Heino, Assistant Director-General of the FAO Forestry Department and coordinator of the survey, stated: "The rate of forest loss continues at an alarming rate of 13 million hectares per year." The annual loss of 13 million hectares (130,000 square kilometers) of forest is equivalent to the entire land area of Greece.
Global concerns extend not only to deforestation but also to the loss of carbon stored in forests and the role of forests in climate change, making the protection of forests and the monitoring of carbon emissions from deforestation increasingly important.
Heino said: "The need to improve national forest monitoring is unstoppable, and the demand for related information has reached an unprecedented scale. National policy processes are also striving to address issues intertwined with forests, such as poverty alleviation and food security."
The FAO and its partners will use the survey results in the next edition of the "Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA)" to be published in 2010. This comprehensive global forest status dataset is intended to enhance the ability of all countries to monitor their forests.
Heino stated: "Combining remote sensing technology with collected field survey data allows us to improve the quality of both methods, providing more accurate information on forest trends and new insights into the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation."
The FAO supports countries in monitoring their forests through a network of forest monitoring experts from 176 countries, facilitating the sharing of information and experiences. To address increasingly intense forest fires due to climate change, many meteorologists and fire scientists from 25 countries gathered at a UN conference in Canada.
During the three-day conference that began on July 14 in Edmonton, participants focused on improving fire danger indicators and the prediction and monitoring of smoke. Michel Jarraud, Secretary-General of the UN World Meteorological Organization, who helped organize the conference, said: "Our goal is to produce operational guidelines for fire meteorology in agrometeorology by 2009."
The development of forest fires is primarily controlled by meteorological and climatic factors. Prolonged periods of low rainfall, low humidity, and high temperatures can increase the flammability of vegetation. Fire scientists noted that in just the first seven months of 2008, 118% of the average 10-year-old forest area in the United States was burned, while approximately 83% of the average 10-year-old forest area in neighboring Canada was also affected by fires.Source: http:/ / tw. news. yahoo. com/ art……rl/ d/ a/ 080721/ 109/ 13n3u. html
Global Forest Alert: Annual Loss Equivalent to Greece's Land Area
Excerpt translated from an ENS report on July 16, 2008, Rome, Italy; compiled by Wu Cuihui; reviewed by Cai Liling.
A global remote sensing survey conducted by the United Nations on the Earth's forests aims to further understand changes in land use, including deforestation, reforestation, and the natural expansion of forests.
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), this assessment will cover the entire land surface of the Earth, including 9,000 samples, with the FAO leading the project.
Jan Heino, Assistant Director-General of the FAO Forestry Department and coordinator of the survey, stated: "The rate of forest loss continues at an alarming rate of 13 million hectares per year." The annual loss of 13 million hectares (130,000 square kilometers) of forest is equivalent to the entire land area of Greece.
Global concerns extend not only to deforestation but also to the loss of carbon stored in forests and the role of forests in climate change, making the protection of forests and the monitoring of carbon emissions from deforestation increasingly important.
Heino said: "The need to improve national forest monitoring is unstoppable, and the demand for related information has reached an unprecedented scale. National policy processes are also striving to address issues intertwined with forests, such as poverty alleviation and food security."
The FAO and its partners will use the survey results in the next edition of the "Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA)" to be published in 2010. This comprehensive global forest status dataset is intended to enhance the ability of all countries to monitor their forests.
Heino stated: "Combining remote sensing technology with collected field survey data allows us to improve the quality of both methods, providing more accurate information on forest trends and new insights into the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation."
The FAO supports countries in monitoring their forests through a network of forest monitoring experts from 176 countries, facilitating the sharing of information and experiences. To address increasingly intense forest fires due to climate change, many meteorologists and fire scientists from 25 countries gathered at a UN conference in Canada.
During the three-day conference that began on July 14 in Edmonton, participants focused on improving fire danger indicators and the prediction and monitoring of smoke. Michel Jarraud, Secretary-General of the UN World Meteorological Organization, who helped organize the conference, said: "Our goal is to produce operational guidelines for fire meteorology in agrometeorology by 2009."
The development of forest fires is primarily controlled by meteorological and climatic factors. Prolonged periods of low rainfall, low humidity, and high temperatures can increase the flammability of vegetation. Fire scientists noted that in just the first seven months of 2008, 118% of the average 10-year-old forest area in the United States was burned, while approximately 83% of the average 10-year-old forest area in neighboring Canada was also affected by fires.Source: http:/ / tw. news. yahoo. com/ art……rl/ d/ a/ 080721/ 109/ 13n3u. html