Tropical Rainforests Regrowing?

There
was an interesting article on the regrowth of the tropical
rainforests on the Environmental News Network’s website today. It was
quite interesting, not to mention informative. A lot of people don’t
seem to know about the Environmental News Network’s website, so
hopefully after reading the article that I am sharing with you today
from their website you will not only be informed on the regrowth of
the tropical rainforests but also take a look at Environmental News
Network’s website from time to time.

Here
is the article from their website that I wish to share with all of
you:

“Tropical Rainforests are regrowing. Now what?

The
world’s tropical rainforests are making a comeback, but young
vegetation may not be able to sustain as much diverse wildlife
or lock up nearly as much climate-warming carbon dioxide as old trees
did, scientists report.

The rainforest debate has raged publicly for decades, and more
recently has been the subject of behind-the-scenes ferment among
conservation scientists. It is the main topic of a Smithsonian
symposium on Monday at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural
History in Washington.

These discussions are taking place as the international community
is trying to figure out how to stem global warming. Because tropical
forests sequester the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, they are
considered an essential part of the solution.

About 135,000 square miles (350,000 square kilometers) of the
original forested areas that were cut down by humans are growing
back, according to Greg Asner of the Washington-based Carnegie
Institution, a presenter at the symposium. That is only 1.7 percent
of the original forest.

This regrowth is relatively quick, with
the shady forest canopy closing in after just 15 years as trees grow
taller and denser, offering habitat for creatures adapted to just
this environment, such as birds
with huge eyes able to see in the leafy gloom.

The basic question –
will rainforests survive? — has been complicated by research by
Joseph Wright of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in
Panama and Helene Muller-Landau of the University of Minnesota.

RAINFORESTS RETURN AS PEOPLE LEAVE

These two scientists reported that the future of tropical forests
may not be as bleak as other conservation experts warn, mostly
because people who once lived in or near these forests are moving
away, mostly toward cities, allowing vegetation to grow.

Using United Nations projections of population growth, Wright and
Muller-Landau predicted in a 2006 journal article that “large
areas of tropical forest cover will remain in 2030 and beyond, and
thus that habitat loss will threaten extinction for a smaller
proportion of tropical forest species than previously predicted.”

Keeping a wide range of tropical rainforest species is important
as a source for potential pharmaceuticals and disease-resistant
crops. The prevailing scientific prediction is that up to half of all
species may be lost in the coming decades.

But these young forests can’t support what the old-growth forests
did, said William Laurence, also of the Smithsonian Tropical Research
Center.

From the Amazon in South America to the tropical woodlands of
Africa and Southeast Asia, human beings have destroyed as much as 4.6
million square miles (12 million sq km) of rainforest, about half of
the original tropical forests on the planet.

These forests are disappearing at the rate of 50 football fields a
minute, or 32 million acres (13 million hectares) a year, Laurence
said in a telephone interview before the conference.

“There’s just no way that secondary forests are going to
capture a lot of the biodiversity and critical ecosystem,”
Laurence said. “They’re also much more vulnerable to fire.”

Laurence also argues that people used to
clear rainforest for small-scale farming,
but this is being supplanted by more destructive large-scale
industrial agriculture, logging and mining.

(Editing by Philip Barbara)”

To view the article
on Environmental News Network’s website click here.

jennl | My Bio & Articles

Jennifer is a freelance writer, and has written for various health and environmental blogs, which includes running her own green living blog. Currently she is studying to become a C++ Programmer.