Publication archives

In tree-friendly Portland, lots of people figure green is good. How good? The city has put a dollar figure on it. After months of data crunching, the City Nature Urban Forestry division of Portland Parks & Recreation concludes that the theoretical replacement value of Portland's public and private trees would be at least $5 billion.

Here?s a thought: use a World War II-era nerve gas can launcher to fight hillside erosion. That?s what the Minnesota Department of Transportation has employed to repair three roadside shoulders in Winona and Houston counties where dirt washed away in the Aug. 18-19 flood.

Last year?s Indian summer fires in Montana were so intense, so awesome in their fury, that they even spooked veteran firefighters. Pilots dumping retardant on the Jungle Fire southeast of Livingston, Mont., reported flames jumping 500 feet above the tree line. For comparison, imagine a wall of flames leaping over the Washington monument.

WASHINGTON - U.S. Forest Service officials and experts agreed Monday that forest managers must take into account the complex relationship between global climate change and increased wildfires when setting policy.

U.S. researchers travel to Canada next spring to study simulated global warming involving about 2,000 sugar maple tree seedlings. Northern Illinois University Professors Lesley Rigg and David Goldblum have been awarded a $260,000 National Science Foundation grant to simulate global warming on sugar maple seedlings now growing in Canada?s Lake Superior Provincial Park.

Guyana's first local Community-Owned Conservation Area (COCA) was officially established with the signing of an agreement between the Wai Wai community of Masakenari and Minister of Amerindian Affairs, Carolyn Rodrigues on Wednesday.

In Africa's Kalahari Desert as well as some areas around the Mediterranean, trees and bushes grow in clumps scattered in seemingly random locations across an otherwise barren landscape. Two new studies have discovered a fractal pattern in this seeming randomness, and they offer a novel explanation of how it comes about.

VARGINHA, Brazil -- Rafael de Paiva was skeptical at first. If he wanted a ''fair trade'' certification for his coffee crop, the Brazilian farmer would have to adhere to a long list of rules on pesticides, farming techniques, recycling and other matters. He even had to enroll his children in school.