ALBANY, N.Y. - A crystalline Adirondack lake once held up as an example of a “dead” lake devastated by acid rain has now become a symbol of nature’s ability to heal itself once pollutants are curbed.
As the name implies, Brooktrout Lake teemed with trout before air pollution from faraway cities began to change the chemistry of lakes and soils in the 6-million-acre Adirondack Park. In 1984, biologists found that Brooktrout Lake and hundreds of others in the rugged region were completely devoid of fish.
Now there are signs of recovery. After the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990 tightened emissions limits on Midwest coal-burning power plants, acid rain decreased significantly. As expected, the pH levels of Adirondack lakes began to rise, becoming less acidic. The surprising thing was how fast it happened.
7/01/2009
Fair Trade gains ground in Jammin' Java, Eagle's Nest
Fair Trade coffees and teas have no competition at the Eagle's Nest and Jammin' Java this year.
Earlier this summer, Sodexho leadership decided to sell only Fair Trade coffees and teas in those locations and to provide Fair Trade coffee in the Dining Commons.
"The decision was made to accommodate the students' request," general manager Mike Kenis said.
Previously, Fair Trade products had been sold only at the Jammin' Java alongside the regular coffees and teas. Specialty drinks did not have Fair Trade options.
Members of SPEAK, a social justice group on campus, worked last semester to get Sodexho to go all Fair Trade and said they are pleased with the switch this year.
"It's a step forward in the process of how Eastern engages the world," senior SPEAK leader Dan Leonard said.
Sara Frymoyer, fellow senior SPEAK leader, said that she was thrilled about how much Sodexho was able to accommodate their request. For example, Sodexho retail supervisor Steve Jacke was able to find Fair Trade teas, even though that was not a request SPEAK had made, she said.
Sodexho also provided refillable mugs that can be purchased and used to get discounts at the Jammin' Java and Eagle's Nest. SPEAK had simply asked if there was a way to cut down on disposable cups, according to Frymoyer.
"They went above and beyond what we asked," she said.
The one remaining area of disagreement between SPEAK and Sodexho is the presence of the Maxwell House machine in the Dining Commons. Maxwell House is not a Fair Trade company, according to Leonard and Frymoyer.
According to Jacke, Sodexho needs a machine that can brew large amounts of coffee quickly. Maxwell House coffee, he said, comes as a liquid concentrate that has no brew time, while Fair Trade coffee comes in regular grounds and must be brewed.
Because Sodexho does catering, and because coffee use in the Dining Commons varies, Jacke said it is necessary to keep the no-brew coffee on hand.
Kenis agreed.
"We haven't found a machine that is convenient for us to use," he said. "We're looking."
Both Leonard and Frymoyer said that dialogue with Sodexho will most likely continue over the Maxwell House machine.
"It's still an issue," Frymoyer said. "We'd be willing to openly dialogue about it."
Students seem glad to have Fair Trade in the Dining Commons.
"Since we're a school that focuses so much on justice, it's only right we act on it," senior Gina Macchia said.
Sophomore Brian Campbell agreed.
"It's part of going to Eastern," he said. "We're justice-minded, and we're living that out in a small way with the coffee."
Earlier this summer, Sodexho leadership decided to sell only Fair Trade coffees and teas in those locations and to provide Fair Trade coffee in the Dining Commons.
"The decision was made to accommodate the students' request," general manager Mike Kenis said.
Previously, Fair Trade products had been sold only at the Jammin' Java alongside the regular coffees and teas. Specialty drinks did not have Fair Trade options.
Members of SPEAK, a social justice group on campus, worked last semester to get Sodexho to go all Fair Trade and said they are pleased with the switch this year.
"It's a step forward in the process of how Eastern engages the world," senior SPEAK leader Dan Leonard said.
Sara Frymoyer, fellow senior SPEAK leader, said that she was thrilled about how much Sodexho was able to accommodate their request. For example, Sodexho retail supervisor Steve Jacke was able to find Fair Trade teas, even though that was not a request SPEAK had made, she said.
Sodexho also provided refillable mugs that can be purchased and used to get discounts at the Jammin' Java and Eagle's Nest. SPEAK had simply asked if there was a way to cut down on disposable cups, according to Frymoyer.
"They went above and beyond what we asked," she said.
The one remaining area of disagreement between SPEAK and Sodexho is the presence of the Maxwell House machine in the Dining Commons. Maxwell House is not a Fair Trade company, according to Leonard and Frymoyer.
According to Jacke, Sodexho needs a machine that can brew large amounts of coffee quickly. Maxwell House coffee, he said, comes as a liquid concentrate that has no brew time, while Fair Trade coffee comes in regular grounds and must be brewed.
Because Sodexho does catering, and because coffee use in the Dining Commons varies, Jacke said it is necessary to keep the no-brew coffee on hand.
Kenis agreed.
"We haven't found a machine that is convenient for us to use," he said. "We're looking."
Both Leonard and Frymoyer said that dialogue with Sodexho will most likely continue over the Maxwell House machine.
"It's still an issue," Frymoyer said. "We'd be willing to openly dialogue about it."
Students seem glad to have Fair Trade in the Dining Commons.
"Since we're a school that focuses so much on justice, it's only right we act on it," senior Gina Macchia said.
Sophomore Brian Campbell agreed.
"It's part of going to Eastern," he said. "We're justice-minded, and we're living that out in a small way with the coffee."
INTRODUCTION
An international congress "Deep-water Circulation: Processes & Products" being organized in Baiona (Pontevedra, Spain) on 16, 17 and 18 June, 2010. You are cordially invited to participate in this exciting congress. We aim to provide a scientifically stimulating and socially enjoyable forum to meet and discuss results and ideas related to the conference theme. The meeting should be of interest to both academic and industrial participants, and although the meeting is focused on Deep Water Circulation: Processes & Products, the congress is open to discussion of shallow water and even lacustrine drifts.
An international congress "Deep-water Circulation: Processes & Products" being organized in Baiona (Pontevedra, Spain) on 16, 17 and 18 June, 2010. You are cordially invited to participate in this exciting congress. We aim to provide a scientifically stimulating and socially enjoyable forum to meet and discuss results and ideas related to the conference theme. The meeting should be of interest to both academic and industrial participants, and although the meeting is focused on Deep Water Circulation: Processes & Products, the congress is open to discussion of shallow water and even lacustrine drifts.
Deep Water Circulation
Deep waters are "formed" where the air temperatures are cold and where the salinity of the surface waters are relatively high. The combinations of salinity and cold temperatures make the water denser and cause it to sink to the bottom.
The Gulf Stream carries salt into the high latitude North Atlantic where the water cools. The cooling and the added salt cause the waters to sink in the Norwegian Sea. This is the formation of Atlantic Deep Water
Places where the water is cold enough and salty enough to form bottom water.
Hutan Hujan Tropis Kalsel Terhindar Dari Kebakaran
Kapanlagi.com - Hutan hujan tropis yang ada di wilayah Kalimantan Selatan terhindar dari bencana kebakaran hutan dan semak belukar musim kemarau tahun ini.
Kepala Dinas Kehutanan Kalsel Ir.Sony Partono ketika dikonfirmasikan ANTARA di Banjarmasin, Selasa menyatakan belum ada satu laporan pun mengenai terbakarnya hutan hujan tropis.
Kebakaran hutan di Kalsel memang terus meluas musim kemarau sekarang ini, tercatat jumlah titik api sudah sebanyak 5351 titik api yang menyebar hampir di seluruh kabupaten/kota se Kalsel.
Namun kebakaran tersebut hanya melanda kawasan semak belukar, padang alang-alang, perkebunan, lahan pertanian dan hamparan lahan gambut yang mengering, sementara yang melanda kawasan hutan hanya 20%.
Jumlah hutan yang terbakarpun bukan di areal hutan hujan tropis yang selama ini dianggap menjadi paru-paru dunia, tetapi hutan biasa, karena di hutan tropis basah yang luasnya tercatat 700 ribu hektare di Kalsel memang agak sulit untuk terbakar.
Lokasi hutan hujan tropis, atau sebutan lain hutan tropis basah ini, berada di puncak-puncak Pegunungan Meratus yang berada di Kabupaten Hulu Sungai Selatan (HSS), Hulu Sungai Tengah (HST) dan Kabupaten Kotabaru.
Dia menyatakan bersyukur areal hutan tropis basah ini terhindar dari kebakaran, karena di areal hutan yang langka ini terdapat ribuan spicies tanaman hutan seperti ratusan spicies anggrik, dan spicies satwa langka, termasuk kijang kuning, serta bekantan (nasalis larvatus).
Ketika ditanya diareal hutan dan semak belukar
yang terbakar ia menyebutkan memang terdapat spicies tanaman dan satwa, kalau spicies tanaman tak bisa terhindar dipastikan ikut terbakar, sementara untuk spicies satwa agaknya tidak akan terbakar.
Biasanya naluri binatang itu sudah tahu adanya lahan terbakar sehingga sebelum sampai ke lokasi dimana binatang ituy berada ia terlebih dahulu menjauh dari lokasi kebakaran untuk menyelamatkan diri, kata Sony Partono.
Berdasarkan informasi hutan hujan tropis merupakan hutan yang mengalami hujan sepanjang tahun, karena hutan tersebut menyimpan kandungan air yang tinggi.
Selain itu, kerapatan vegetasi hutan sangat tinggi, baik di bagian atas, tengah maupun dasar hutan, sehingga mustahil terbakar, kecuali jika hutan tersebut mengalami kerusakan.
Dalam hutan hujan tropis tersebut konon selalu berair dan terdapat banyak sumber mata air di dalamnya, sementara berbagai tanaman memang mengandung banyak air, seperti tanaman jenis rotan, tanaman merambat yang disebut masyarakat setempat sebagai akar-akaran. (*/lpk)
Negara Pemilik Hutan Tropis Hujan Hargai Prakarsa RI
New York ( Berita ) : Negara-negara pemilik hutan hujan tropis menghargai inisiatif pemerintah Republik Indonesia untuk mengkonsolidasikan negara-negara pemilik hutan hujan tropis di dunia, guna melestarikan kelangsungan paru-paru dunia itu.
Pernyataan itu dikemukakan Juru Bicara Kepresidenan, Dino Patti Djalal, kepada wartawan seusai mendampingi Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono membuka forum pertemuan tingkat tinggi negara-negara pemilik hutan hujan tropis yang dilakukan di sela-sela sidang umum ke-62 PBB di New York, Senin petang waktu setempat atau Selasa [25/09] pagi waktu Indonesia.
Menurut Dino yang mendampingi Kepala Negara dalam petemuan “High-Level Meeting on Climate Change” dan pertemuan khusus Tropical Rainforest Countries di Markas Besar PBB di New YoNew York, inisiatif Indonesia mengadakan pertemuan dan forum negara-negara pemilik hutan hujan tropis sangat dihargai negara-negara anggotanya.
Pada kesempatan itu Dino juga menjelaskan forum tersebut merupakan inisiatif penting karena dilakukan tiga bulan sebelum konferensi Bali tentang perubahan iklim pada akhir tahun 2007, dimana sedikitnya 10.000 anggota delegasi diharapkan hadir.
Kehadiran Brazil dalam forum itu juga disebut Dino sebagai hal yang penting secara politis, karena merupakan perkembangan positif dan kemajuan yang dapat diukur untuk mengkonsolidasi negara-negara pemilik hutan hujan tropis.\
Sebelumnya forum negara-negara pemilik hutan hujan tropis yang digagas Indonesia ini bernama Forestry Eight (F-8). Namun, belakangan tiga negara lain bergabung. Yang paling menggembirakan adalah kehadiran Brasil.
Bukan saja selama ini Brasil enggan ikut dalam forum serupa, melainkan terutama mengingat posisi Brasil sebagai pemilik hujtan hujan tropis terbesar di dunia. Kini, anggota forum ini menjadi 11 negara. Mereka adalah Brasil, Kamerun, Kolombia, Kongo, Kostarika, Gabon, Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua Nugini, dan Peru.
Pertemuan 11 negara itu dilakukan dengan tujuan untuk menyusun suatu proposal guna memperkuat peranan hutan dalam mengurangi pemanasan global.
Sementara itu dalam pidatonya, Kepala Negara menyebut mengenai upaya Indonesia untuk berusaha menjembatani perbedaan kepentingan negara berkembang dengan negara maju dalam melihat masalah perubahan iklim dengan mengajak mereka untuk mencoba `berpikir di luar kotak`.
Usaha tersebut tergambar dari pidato yang disampaikan Presiden Yudhoyono pada pertemuan tingkat tinggi tentang Perubahan Iklim dengan tema khusus mengenai mitigasi, yaitu upaya meminimalisasi dampak perubahan iklim.
Seperti yang masih terjadi saat ini, masalah perubahan iklim masih disikapi secara hati-hati oleh negara-negara berkembang.
Banyak di antara negara berkembang yang menganggap bahwa negara-negara majulah yang harus lebih bertanggung jawab mengatasi perubahan iklim karena merekalah yang menyumbangkan emisi dalam jumlah besar sehingga berpengaruh terhadap pemanasan global.
Secara khusus, Presiden mengajak negara-negara berkembang untuk berbuat yang sesuatu yang lebih dalam upaya mengurangi pembuangan gas rumah kaca.
Menurut Kepala Negara , negera-negara berkembang perlu menciptakan kelompok-kelompok yang membentuk strategi inovatif dan berpikiran jauh ke depan menyangkut mitigasi dan adaptasi. ( ant )
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Pernyataan itu dikemukakan Juru Bicara Kepresidenan, Dino Patti Djalal, kepada wartawan seusai mendampingi Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono membuka forum pertemuan tingkat tinggi negara-negara pemilik hutan hujan tropis yang dilakukan di sela-sela sidang umum ke-62 PBB di New York, Senin petang waktu setempat atau Selasa [25/09] pagi waktu Indonesia.
Menurut Dino yang mendampingi Kepala Negara dalam petemuan “High-Level Meeting on Climate Change” dan pertemuan khusus Tropical Rainforest Countries di Markas Besar PBB di New YoNew York, inisiatif Indonesia mengadakan pertemuan dan forum negara-negara pemilik hutan hujan tropis sangat dihargai negara-negara anggotanya.
Pada kesempatan itu Dino juga menjelaskan forum tersebut merupakan inisiatif penting karena dilakukan tiga bulan sebelum konferensi Bali tentang perubahan iklim pada akhir tahun 2007, dimana sedikitnya 10.000 anggota delegasi diharapkan hadir.
Kehadiran Brazil dalam forum itu juga disebut Dino sebagai hal yang penting secara politis, karena merupakan perkembangan positif dan kemajuan yang dapat diukur untuk mengkonsolidasi negara-negara pemilik hutan hujan tropis.\
Sebelumnya forum negara-negara pemilik hutan hujan tropis yang digagas Indonesia ini bernama Forestry Eight (F-8). Namun, belakangan tiga negara lain bergabung. Yang paling menggembirakan adalah kehadiran Brasil.
Bukan saja selama ini Brasil enggan ikut dalam forum serupa, melainkan terutama mengingat posisi Brasil sebagai pemilik hujtan hujan tropis terbesar di dunia. Kini, anggota forum ini menjadi 11 negara. Mereka adalah Brasil, Kamerun, Kolombia, Kongo, Kostarika, Gabon, Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua Nugini, dan Peru.
Pertemuan 11 negara itu dilakukan dengan tujuan untuk menyusun suatu proposal guna memperkuat peranan hutan dalam mengurangi pemanasan global.
Sementara itu dalam pidatonya, Kepala Negara menyebut mengenai upaya Indonesia untuk berusaha menjembatani perbedaan kepentingan negara berkembang dengan negara maju dalam melihat masalah perubahan iklim dengan mengajak mereka untuk mencoba `berpikir di luar kotak`.
Usaha tersebut tergambar dari pidato yang disampaikan Presiden Yudhoyono pada pertemuan tingkat tinggi tentang Perubahan Iklim dengan tema khusus mengenai mitigasi, yaitu upaya meminimalisasi dampak perubahan iklim.
Seperti yang masih terjadi saat ini, masalah perubahan iklim masih disikapi secara hati-hati oleh negara-negara berkembang.
Banyak di antara negara berkembang yang menganggap bahwa negara-negara majulah yang harus lebih bertanggung jawab mengatasi perubahan iklim karena merekalah yang menyumbangkan emisi dalam jumlah besar sehingga berpengaruh terhadap pemanasan global.
Secara khusus, Presiden mengajak negara-negara berkembang untuk berbuat yang sesuatu yang lebih dalam upaya mengurangi pembuangan gas rumah kaca.
Menurut Kepala Negara , negera-negara berkembang perlu menciptakan kelompok-kelompok yang membentuk strategi inovatif dan berpikiran jauh ke depan menyangkut mitigasi dan adaptasi. ( ant )
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Manado Tua Simpan Hutan Hujan Tropis
SALAH satu yang harus dilindungi badan dunia yaitu hutan hujan tropis. Kawasan ini ada di atas puncak Manado Tua yang menjadi tempat tinggal macaca nigra atau monyet hitam. Pulau ini berbentuk gunung klasik dengan memiliki luas daratan 1.040,66 Ha. Dikatakan klasik karena mempunyai kawah dengan ketinggian mencapai kurang lebih 800 m dan kemiringan antara 25 -45 .
Fasilitas wisata yang bisa dilakukan di sini yaitu tracking, pengamatan burung, dan wisata budaya desa. Bisa juga menikmati terbit dan tenggelamnya matahari, diving, dan snorkling.
Fasilitas wisata yang bisa dilakukan di sini yaitu tracking, pengamatan burung, dan wisata budaya desa. Bisa juga menikmati terbit dan tenggelamnya matahari, diving, dan snorkling.
Konservasi Bodhicitta Mandala Lakukan Kampanye Penyelamatan Hutan Hujan Tropis Sumatera di Taiwan
Konservasi Bodhicitta Mandala atau KBM sebagai salah satu lembaga yang konsisten melakukan upaya penyelamatan hujan Sumatera pada bulan oktober 2007 melakukan kampanye penyelamatan hutan-hutan di Sumatera khususnya Sumatera Utara. Acara ini dilakukan dalam segmen Internasional Workshop On Global Enviromental Governce yang dilakukan di 4 (empat) kota di Taiwan dari tanggal 26-30 Oktober 2007. kegiatan ini merupakan program dari Departemen Pendidikan bagian teknologi dan ketenagakerjaan dimana pelaksananya adalah Transworld Institute Of Technology, Jurusan Pengelolaan Sumber Daya Lingkungan Taiwan, Penanggungjawab kegiatan Asosiasi Perlindungan Lingkungan Taiwan dan di dukung oleh Asosiasi Ekosistem Taiwan, Asosiasi Perlindungan Lingkungan Tainan, Yayasan Kebudayaan dan Pendidikan Geng Xin, Yayasan Weita Lu. lokasi penyelenggaraan konfrensi berada dikota Thaichung, Tainan, Taipei dan Yunlin dengan menggandeng NGO baik lokal maupun internasional setempat seperti Greenpeace China, Taiwan Inviromental Protection Unit, Transworld Institute of Technologi Taiwan.
Kegiatan ini juga mendapat sambutan sangat baik bagi setiap peserta konfrensi dikota-kota tersebut. Adapun tujuan dari kampanye ini adalah meraih dukungan internasional terhadap laju kehilangan hutan di Sumatera dan dukungan untuk membantu berbagai usaha penyelamatan hutan Indonesia khususnya Sumatera. KBM yang berada di Sumatera Utara diwakili oleh Bhiksu Nyanaprathama selaku pendiri dan penasehat KBM, Armawati Chaniago sebagai Project Manager KBM dan Lismaidi Darjo Malao sebagai Asisten Lapangan penelitian keanekaragaman hayati mencoba mempresentasikan hasil survey dan dokumentasi kegiatan survey biodiversity di kawasan Tapanuli Selatan dan bagaimana hutan Indonesia dari tahun ke tahun menjadi rusak dan hilang.
Berbicara tentang kondisi hutan Sumatera bukanlah berbicara tentang Sumatera atau Indonesia tetapi berbicara secara global karena keutuhan dan kepunahan hutan Sumatera akan berdampak pada perubahan kondisi lingkungan secara global. Selain itu laju kehilangan hutan-hutan di negara tropis dipicu dengan tingginya permintaan kayu oleh negara-negara maju sehingga tanggung jawab menyelamatkan hutan Indonesia merupakan tangggung jawab bersama.
Dalam kegiatan ini KBM mendapat banyak masukan dan dukungan untuk pentingnya menyelamatkan hutan Sumatera. Tetapi juga tidak sedikit pertanyaan yang kritis tentang apa perlunya menyelamatkan hutan yang jauh di Indonesia.
Kegiatan ini juga diliput oleh beberapa media baik media massa maupun media elektronik dan presentasi ini mendorong banyak media untuk mempublikasikan kondisi hutan Indonesia baik di Taiwan sendiri dan ke dunia luar.
Di Taipei, KBM bersama para mahasiswa dari Transword Institute Of Tehnologi Taiwan melakukan kampanye dengan teater terbuka tentang perburuan satwa orangutan dan harimau di Indonesia dan bagaimana banyak orang masih peduli dengan keberadaan satwa dan hutan Indoensia. Kampaye ini diliput oleh stasiun TV local Taiwan. Selama di Taiwan KBM mendapat dukungan penuh dari Huang, Hsin-Chuan selaku fasilitator antara KBM dan Taiwan, Dan professor lingkungan di Transworld Insitute Taiwan.
Selama di Taiwan Tim KBM juga melakukan kunjungan ke berbagai pusat perlindungan satwa dan habitat di Taiwan dan melakukan berbagai diskusi dengan NGO lokal dalam rangka pertukaran pengalaman pengelolaan lingkungan hidup.
Kegiatan ini juga mendapat sambutan sangat baik bagi setiap peserta konfrensi dikota-kota tersebut. Adapun tujuan dari kampanye ini adalah meraih dukungan internasional terhadap laju kehilangan hutan di Sumatera dan dukungan untuk membantu berbagai usaha penyelamatan hutan Indonesia khususnya Sumatera. KBM yang berada di Sumatera Utara diwakili oleh Bhiksu Nyanaprathama selaku pendiri dan penasehat KBM, Armawati Chaniago sebagai Project Manager KBM dan Lismaidi Darjo Malao sebagai Asisten Lapangan penelitian keanekaragaman hayati mencoba mempresentasikan hasil survey dan dokumentasi kegiatan survey biodiversity di kawasan Tapanuli Selatan dan bagaimana hutan Indonesia dari tahun ke tahun menjadi rusak dan hilang.
Berbicara tentang kondisi hutan Sumatera bukanlah berbicara tentang Sumatera atau Indonesia tetapi berbicara secara global karena keutuhan dan kepunahan hutan Sumatera akan berdampak pada perubahan kondisi lingkungan secara global. Selain itu laju kehilangan hutan-hutan di negara tropis dipicu dengan tingginya permintaan kayu oleh negara-negara maju sehingga tanggung jawab menyelamatkan hutan Indonesia merupakan tangggung jawab bersama.
Dalam kegiatan ini KBM mendapat banyak masukan dan dukungan untuk pentingnya menyelamatkan hutan Sumatera. Tetapi juga tidak sedikit pertanyaan yang kritis tentang apa perlunya menyelamatkan hutan yang jauh di Indonesia.
Kegiatan ini juga diliput oleh beberapa media baik media massa maupun media elektronik dan presentasi ini mendorong banyak media untuk mempublikasikan kondisi hutan Indonesia baik di Taiwan sendiri dan ke dunia luar.
Di Taipei, KBM bersama para mahasiswa dari Transword Institute Of Tehnologi Taiwan melakukan kampanye dengan teater terbuka tentang perburuan satwa orangutan dan harimau di Indonesia dan bagaimana banyak orang masih peduli dengan keberadaan satwa dan hutan Indoensia. Kampaye ini diliput oleh stasiun TV local Taiwan. Selama di Taiwan KBM mendapat dukungan penuh dari Huang, Hsin-Chuan selaku fasilitator antara KBM dan Taiwan, Dan professor lingkungan di Transworld Insitute Taiwan.
Selama di Taiwan Tim KBM juga melakukan kunjungan ke berbagai pusat perlindungan satwa dan habitat di Taiwan dan melakukan berbagai diskusi dengan NGO lokal dalam rangka pertukaran pengalaman pengelolaan lingkungan hidup.
Kaktus Cantik Asal Hutan Hujan Tropis
Ternyata kaktus tak hanya dapat ditemui di padang pasir. Di hutan hujan tropis pun, kaktus bisa ditemui. Sosoknya tak kalah menawan.
Banyak orang mengenal kaktus yang satu ini dengan sebutan holiday cactus. Pasalnya, kaktus berbunga cantik ini seringkali dijadikan hadiah pada hari Natal. Ada pula yang menyebutnya dengan Zygocactus. Sekarang flora tropis ini dikenal pula dengan sebutan Schlumbergera.
Sama seperti kaktus padang pasir, holiday cactus juga memiliki batang sukulen. Bentuknya pipih, keras, dan tak berdaun. Dalam pertumbuhannya, kaktus hujan tropis ini biasanya membentuk semak. Satu hal yang akan membuat orang terpikat akan kaktus ini adalah bunganya.
Bunga Holiday cactus biasa muncul di ujung batang. Warna-warna cerah membuat bunga ini menarik perhatian. Bunga-bunga ini muncul dalam beragam jenis warna. Mulai dari merah muda pucat, magenta, oranye, scarlet (merah menyala), dan putih.
Pada habitat aslinya, "Kaktus Hari Libur" ini bersifat epifit (tumbuh menumpang pada batang pohon). Untuk dikonsumsi sebagai tanaman hias, kaktus ini bisa ditanam pada media tanam yang memiliki nustrisi tinggi dan porositas yang baik.
Holiday cactus menyukai panas matahari, tetapi bukan sinar matahari langsung. Untuk menghindarkannya dari paparan sinar matahari langsung, gunakan paranet. Atau bisa juga meletakkannya di teras atau dekat jendela, yang terlindung atap.
Untuk penyiraman, tidak perlu terlalu sering dilakukan. Kaktus cantik ini menyukai media tanam yang tidak terlalu basah dan tidak terlalu kering. Untuk perbanyakan, bisa dengan menanam bibit atau dengan stem cutting (stek).
Banyak orang mengenal kaktus yang satu ini dengan sebutan holiday cactus. Pasalnya, kaktus berbunga cantik ini seringkali dijadikan hadiah pada hari Natal. Ada pula yang menyebutnya dengan Zygocactus. Sekarang flora tropis ini dikenal pula dengan sebutan Schlumbergera.
Sama seperti kaktus padang pasir, holiday cactus juga memiliki batang sukulen. Bentuknya pipih, keras, dan tak berdaun. Dalam pertumbuhannya, kaktus hujan tropis ini biasanya membentuk semak. Satu hal yang akan membuat orang terpikat akan kaktus ini adalah bunganya.
Bunga Holiday cactus biasa muncul di ujung batang. Warna-warna cerah membuat bunga ini menarik perhatian. Bunga-bunga ini muncul dalam beragam jenis warna. Mulai dari merah muda pucat, magenta, oranye, scarlet (merah menyala), dan putih.
Pada habitat aslinya, "Kaktus Hari Libur" ini bersifat epifit (tumbuh menumpang pada batang pohon). Untuk dikonsumsi sebagai tanaman hias, kaktus ini bisa ditanam pada media tanam yang memiliki nustrisi tinggi dan porositas yang baik.
Holiday cactus menyukai panas matahari, tetapi bukan sinar matahari langsung. Untuk menghindarkannya dari paparan sinar matahari langsung, gunakan paranet. Atau bisa juga meletakkannya di teras atau dekat jendela, yang terlindung atap.
Untuk penyiraman, tidak perlu terlalu sering dilakukan. Kaktus cantik ini menyukai media tanam yang tidak terlalu basah dan tidak terlalu kering. Untuk perbanyakan, bisa dengan menanam bibit atau dengan stem cutting (stek).
The Disappearing Rainforests
We are losing Earth's greatest biological treasures just as we are beginning to appreciate their true value. Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6% and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years.
One and one-half acres of rainforest are lost every second with tragic consequences for both developing and industrial countries.
Rainforests are being destroyed because the value of rainforest land is perceived as only the value of its timber by short-sighted governments, multi-national logging companies, and land owners.
Nearly half of the world's species of plants, animals and microorganisms will be destroyed or severely threatened over the next quarter century due to rainforest deforestation.
Experts estimates that we are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every single day due to rainforest deforestation. That equates to 50,000 species a year. As the rainforest species disappear, so do many possible cures for life-threatening diseases. Currently, 121 prescription drugs sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. While 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less that 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.
Most rainforests are cleared by chainsaws, bulldozers and fires for its timber value and then are followed by farming and ranching operations, even by world giants like Mitsubishi Corporation, Georgia Pacific, Texaco and Unocal.
There were an estimated ten million Indians living in the Amazonian Rainforest five centuries ago. Today there are less than 200,000.
In Brazil alone, European colonists have destroyed more than 90 indigenous tribes since the 1900's. With them have gone centuries of accumulated knowledge of the medicinal value of rainforest species. As their homelands continue to be destroyed by deforestation, rainforest peoples are also disappearing.
Most medicine men and shamans remaining in the Rainforests today are 70 years old or more. Each time a rainforest medicine man dies, it is as if a library has burned down.
When a medicine man dies without passing his arts on to the next generation, the tribe and the world loses thousands of years of irreplaceable knowledge about medicinal plants.
The Wealth of the Rainforests
The Amazon Rainforest covers over a billion acres, encompassing areas in Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia and the Eastern Andean region of Ecuador and Peru. If Amazonia were a country, it would be the ninth largest in the world.
The Amazon Rainforest has been described as the "Lungs of our Planet" because it provides the essential environmental world service of continuously recycling carbon dioxide into oxygen. More than 20 percent of the world oxygen is produced in the Amazon Rainforest.
More than half of the world's estimated 10 million species of plants, animals and insects live in the tropical rainforests. One-fifth of the world's fresh water is in the Amazon Basin.
One hectare (2.47 acres) may contain over 750 types of trees and 1500 species of higher plants.
At least 80% of the developed world's diet originated in the tropical rainforest. Its bountiful gifts to the world include fruits like avocados, coconuts, figs, oranges, lemons, grapefruit, bananas, guavas, pineapples, mangos and tomatoes; vegetables including corn, potatoes, rice, winter squash and yams; spices like black pepper, cayenne, chocolate, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, sugar cane, tumeric, coffee and vanilla and nuts including Brazil nuts and cashews.
At least 3000 fruits are found in the rainforests; of these only 200 are now in use in the Western World. The Indians of the rainforest use over 2,000.
Rainforest plants are rich in secondary metabolites, particularly alkaloids. Biochemists believe alkaloids protect plants from disease and insect attacks. Many alkaloids from higher plants have proven to be of medicinal value and benefit.
Currently, 121 prescription drugs currently sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. And while 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less than 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.
The U.S. National Cancer Institute has identified 3000 plants that are active against cancer cells. 70% of these plants are found in the rainforest. Twenty-five percent of the active ingredients in today's cancer-fighting drugs come from organisms found only in the rainforest.
Vincristine, extracted from the rainforest plant, periwinkle, is one of the world's most powerful anticancer drugs. It has dramatically increased the survival rate for acute childhood leukemia since its discovery.
In 1983, there were no U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturers involved in research programs to discover new drugs or cures from plants. Today, over 100 pharmaceutical companies and several branches of the US government, including giants like Merck and The National Cancer Institute, are engaged in plant research projects for possible drugs and cures for viruses, infections, cancer, and even AIDS.
Rainforest Action
Experts agree that by leaving the rainforests intact and harvesting it's many nuts, fruits, oil-producing plants, and medicinal plants, the rainforest has more economic value than if they were cut down to make grazing land for cattle or for timber.
The latest statistics show that rainforest land converted to cattle operations yields the land owner $60 per acre and if timber is harvested, the land is worth $400 per acre. However, if these renewable and sustainable resources are harvested, the land will yield the land owner $2,400 per acre.
If managed properly, the rainforest can provide the world's need for these natural resources on a perpetual basis.
Promoting the use of these sustainable and renewable sources could stop the destruction of the rainforests. By creating a new source of income harvesting the medicinal plants, fruits nuts, oil and other sustainable resources, the rainforests is be more valuable alive than cut and burned.
Sufficient demand of sustainable and ecologically harvested rainforest products is necessary for preservation efforts to succeed. Purchasing sustainable rainforest products can effect positive change by creating a market for these products while supporting the native people's economy and provides the economic solution and alternative to cutting the forest just for the value of its timber.
The following has been excerpted from the book, The Healing Power of Rainforest Herbs (Square One Publishers, Inc. Garden City, NY 11040, © Copyrighted 2004) By Leslie Taylor
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE RAINFOREST
The beauty, majesty, and timelessness of a primary rainforest are indescribable. It is impossible to capture on film, to describe in words, or to explain to those who have never had the awe-inspiring experience of standing in the heart of a primary rainforest.
Rainforests have evolved over millions of years to turn into the incredibly complex environments they are today. Rainforests represent a store of living and breathing renewable natural resources that for eons, by virtue of their richness in both animal and plant species, have contributed a wealth of resources for the survival and well-being of humankind. These resources have included basic food supplies, clothing, shelter, fuel, spices, industrial raw materials, and medicine for all those who have lived in the majesty of the forest. However, the inner dynamics of a tropical rainforest is an intricate and fragile system. Everything is so interdependent that upsetting one part can lead to unknown damage or even destruction of the whole. Sadly, it has taken only a century of human intervention to destroy what nature designed to last forever.
The scale of human pressures on ecosystems everywhere has increased enormously in the last few decades. Since 1980 the global economy has tripled in size and the world population has increased by 30 percent. Consumption of everything on the planet has risen- at a cost to our ecosystems. In 2001, The World Resources Institute estimated that the demand for rice, wheat, and corn is expected to grow by 40% by 2020, increasing irrigation water demands by 50% or more. They further reported that the demand for wood could double by the year 2050; unfortunately, it is still the tropical forests of the world that supply the bulk of the world's demand for wood.
In 1950, about 15 percent of the Earth's land surface was covered by rainforest. Today, more than half has already gone up in smoke. In fewer than fifty years, more than half of the world's tropical rainforests have fallen victim to fire and the chain saw, and the rate of destruction is still accelerating. Unbelievably, more than 200,000 acres of rainforest are burned every day. That is more than 150 acres lost every minute of every day, and 78 million acres lost every year! More than 20 percent of the Amazon rainforest is already gone, and much more is severely threatened as the destruction continues. It is estimated that the Amazon alone is vanishing at a rate of 20,000 square miles a year. If nothing is done to curb this trend, the entire Amazon could well be gone within fifty years.
Massive deforestation brings with it many ugly consequences-air and water pollution, soil erosion, malaria epidemics, the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the eviction and decimation of indigenous Indian tribes, and the loss of biodiversity through extinction of plants and animals. Fewer rainforests mean less rain, less oxygen for us to breathe, and an increased threat from global warming.
But who is really to blame? Consider what we industrialized Americans have done to our own homeland. We converted 90 percent of North America's virgin forests into firewood, shingles, furniture, railroad ties, and paper. Other industrialized countries have done no better. Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil, and other tropical countries with rainforests are often branded as "environmental villains" of the world, mainly because of their reported levels of destruction of their rainforests. But despite the levels of deforestation, up to 60 percent of their territory is still covered by natural tropical forests. In fact, today, much of the pressures on their remaining rainforests comes from servicing the needs and markets for wood products in industrialized countries that have already depleted their own natural resources. Industrial countries would not be buying rainforest hardwoods and timber had we not cut down our own trees long ago, nor would poachers in the Amazon jungle be slaughtering jaguar, ocelot, caiman, and otter if we did not provide lucrative markets for their skins in Berlin, Paris, and Tokyo.
THE BIODIVERSITY OF THE RAINFOREST
Why should the loss of tropical forests be of any concern to us in light of our own poor management of natural resources? The loss of tropical rainforests has a profound and devastating impact on the world because rainforests are so biologically diverse, more so than other ecosystems (e.g., temperate forests) on Earth.
Consider these facts:
A single pond in Brazil can sustain a greater variety of fish than is found in all of Europe's rivers.
A 25-acre plot of rainforest in Borneo may contain more than 700 species of trees - a number equal to the total tree diversity of North America.
A single rainforest reserve in Peru is home to more species of birds than are found in the entire United States.
One single tree in Peru was found to harbor forty-three different species of ants - a total that approximates the entire number of ant species in the British Isles.
The number of species of fish in the Amazon exceeds the number found in the entire Atlantic Ocean.
The biodiversity of the tropical rainforest is so immense that less than 1 percent of its millions of species have been studied by scientists for their active constituents and their possible uses. When an acre of topical rainforest is lost, the impact on the number of plant and animal species lost and their possible uses is staggering. Scientists estimate that we are losing more than 137 species of plants and animals every single day because of rainforest deforestation.
Surprisingly, scientists have a better understanding of how many stars there are in the galaxy than they have of how many species there are on Earth. Estimates vary from 2 million to 100 million species, with a best estimate of somewhere near 10 million; only 1.4 million of these species have actually been named. Today, rainforests occupy only 2 percent of the entire Earth's surface and 6 percent of the world's land surface, yet these remaining lush rainforests support over half of our planet's wild plants and trees and one-half of the world's wildlife. Hundreds and thousands of these rainforest species are being extinguished before they have even been identified, much less catalogued and studied. The magnitude of this loss to the world was most poignantly described by Harvard's Pulitzer Prize-winning biologist Edward O. Wilson over a decade ago:
"The worst thing that can happen during the 1980s is not energy depletion, economic collapses, limited nuclear war, or conquest by a totalitarian government. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired within a few generations. The one process ongoing in the 1980s that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly that our descendants are least likely to forgive us for."
Yet still the destruction continues. If deforestation continues at current rates, scientists estimate nearly 80 to 90 percent of tropical rainforest ecosystems will be destroyed by the year 2020. This destruction is the main force driving a species extinction rate unmatched in 65 million years.
THE AMAZON RAINFOREST . . . THE LAST FRONTIER ON EARTH
If Amazonia were a country, it would be the ninth largest in the world. The Amazon rainforest, the world's greatest remaining natural resource, is the most powerful and bioactively diverse natural phenomenon on the planet. It has been described as the "lungs of our planet" because it provides the essential service of continuously recycling carbon dioxide into oxygen. It is estimated that more than 20 percent of Earth's oxygen is produced in this area.
The Amazon covers more than 1.2 billion acres, representing two-fifths of the enormous South American continent, and is found in nine South American countries: Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, French Guiana, and Suriname. With 2.5 million square miles of rainforest, the Amazon rainforest represents 54 percent of the total rainforests left on Earth.
The Amazon River
The life force of the Amazon rainforest is the mighty Amazon River. It starts as a trickle high in the snow-capped Andes Mountains and flows more than 4,000 miles across the South American continent until it enters the Atlantic Ocean at Belem, Brazil, where it is 200 to 300 miles across, depending on the season. Even 1,000 miles inland it is still 7 miles wide. The river is so deep that ocean liners can travel up its length to 2,300 miles inland. The Amazon River flows through the center of the rainforest and is fed by 1,100 tributaries, 17 of which are more than 1,000 miles long. The Amazon is by far the largest watershed and largest river system in the world occupying over 6 million square kilometers. Over two-thirds of all the fresh water found on Earth is in the Amazon Basin's rivers, streams, and tributaries.
With so much water it's not unusual that the main mode of transportation throughout the area is by boat. The smallest and most common boats used today are still made out of hollowed tree trunks, whether they are powered by outboard motors or more often by human-powered paddles. Almost 14,000 miles of Amazon waterway are navigable, and several million miles through swamps and forests are penetrable by canoe. The enormous Amazon River carries massive amounts of silt from runoff from the rainforest floor. Massive amounts of silt deposited at the mouth of the Amazon River has created the largest river island in the world-Marajo Island, which is roughly the size of Switzerland. With this massive freshwater system, it is not unusual that life beneath the water is as abundant and diverse as the surrounding rainforest's plant and animal species. More than 2,000 species of fish have been identified in the Amazon Basin - more species than in the entire Atlantic Ocean.
Largest Collection of Plant and Animal Species
The Amazon Basin was formed in the Paleozoic period, somewhere between 500 million and 200 million years ago. The extreme age of the region in geologic terms has much to do with the relative infertility of the rainforest soil and the richness and unique diversity of the plant and animal life. There are more fertile areas in the Amazon River's flood plain, where the river deposits richer soil brought from the Andes, which only formed 20 million years ago.
The Amazon rainforest contains the largest collection of living plant and animal species in the world. The diversity of plant species in the Amazon rainforest is the highest on Earth. It is estimated that a single hectare (2.47 acres) of Amazon rainforest contains about 900 tons of living plants, including more than 750 types of trees and 1500 other plants. The Andean mountain range and the Amazon jungle are home to more than half of the world's species of flora and fauna; in fact, one in five of all the birds in the world live in the rainforests of the Amazon. To date, some 438,000 species of plants of economic and social interest have been registered in the region, and many more have yet to be catalogued or even discovered.
Scarring and Loss of Diversity
Once a vast sea of tropical forest, the Amazon rainforest today is scarred by roads, farms, ranches, and dams. Brazil is gifted with a full third of the world's remaining rainforests; unfortunately, it is also one of the world's great rainforest destroyers, burning or felling more than 2.7 million acres each year. More than 20 percent of rainforest in the Amazon has been razed and is gone forever. This ocean of green, nearly as large as Australia, is the last great rainforest in the known universe and it is being decimated like the others before it. Why? Like other rainforests already lost forever, the land is being cleared for logging timber, large-scale cattle ranching, mining operations, government road building and hydroelectric schemes, military operations, and the subsistence agriculture of peasants and landless settlers. Sadder still, in many places the rainforests are burnt simply to provide charcoal to power industrial plants in the area.
THE DRIVING FORCES OF DESTRUCTION
Commercial logging is the single largest cause of rainforest destruction, both directly and indirectly. Other activities destroying the rainforest, including clearing land for grazing animals and subsistence farming. The simple fact is that people are destroying the Amazon rainforest and the rest of the rainforests of the world because "they can't see the forest for the trees."
Logging for Tropical Hardwoods
Logging tropical hardwoods like teak, mahogany, rosewood, and other timber for furniture, building materials, charcoal, and other wood products is big business and big profits. Several species of tropical hardwoods are imported by developed counties, including the United States, just to build coffins that are then buried or burned. The demand, extraction, and consumption of tropical hardwoods has been so massive that some countries that have been traditional exporters of tropical hardwoods are now importing them because they have already exhausted their supply by destroying their native rainforests in slash-and-burn operations. It is anticipated that the Philippines, Malaysia, the Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and Thailand will soon follow, as all these countries will run out of rainforest hardwood timber for export within five years. Japan is the largest importer of tropical woods. Despite recent reductions, Japan's average tropical timber import of 11 million cubic meters annually is still gluttonous. The demand for tropical hardwood timber is damaging to the ecological, biological, and social fabric of tropical lands and is clearly unsustainable for any length of time.
Behind the hardwood logger come others down the same roads built to transport the timber. The cardboard packing and the wood chipboard industries use 15-ton machines that gobble up the rainforest with 8-foot cutting discs that have eight blades revolving 320 times a minute. These machines that cut entire trees into chips half the size of a matchbox can gobble up more than 200 species of trees in mere minutes.
Logging rainforest timber is a large economic source, and in many cases, the main source of revenue for servicing the national debt of these developing countries. Logging profits are real to these countries that must service their debts, but they are fleeting. Governments are selling their assets too cheaply, and once the rainforest is gone, their source of income will also be gone. Sadly, most of the real profits of the timber trade are made not by the developing countries, but by multinational companies and industrialists of the Northern Hemisphere. These huge, profit-driven logging companies pay governments a fraction of the timber's worth for large logging concessions on immense tracts of rainforest land and reap huge profits by harvesting the timber in the most economical manner feasible with little regard to the destruction left in their wake.
Logging concessions in the Amazon are sold for as little as $2 per acre, with logging companies felling timber worth thousands of dollars per acre. Governments are selling their natural resources, hawking for pennies resources that soon will be worth billions of dollars. Some of these government concessions and land deals made with industrialists make the sale of Manhattan for $24 worth of trinkets look shrewd. In 1986 a huge industrial timber corporation bought thousands of acres in the Borneo rainforest by giving 2,000 Malaysian dollars to twelve longhouses of local tribes. This sum amounted to the price of two bottles of beer for each member of the community. Since then, this company and others have managed to extract and destroy about a third of the Borneo rainforest - about 6.9 million acres - and the local tribes have been evicted from the area or forced to work for the logging companies at slave wages.
Fuel Wood and the Paper Industry
In addition to being logged for exportation, rainforest wood stays in developing countries for fuel wood and charcoal. One single steel plant in Brazil making steel for Japanese cars needs millions of tons of wood each year to produce charcoal that can be used in the manufacture of steel. Then, there is the paper industry.
One pulpwood project in the Brazilian Amazon consists of a Japanese power plant and pulp mill. To set up this single plant operation, 5,600 square miles of Amazon rainforest were burned to the ground and replanted with pulpwood trees. This single manufacturing plant consumes 2,000 tons of surrounding rainforest wood every day to produce 55 megawatts of electricity to run the plant. The plant, which has been in operation since 1978, produces more than 750 tons of pulp for paper every 24 hours, worth approximately $500,000, and has built 2,800 miles of roads through the Amazon rainforest to be used by its 700 vehicles. In addition to this pulp mill, the world's biggest pulp mill is the Aracruz mill in Brazil. Its two units produce 1 million tons of pulp a year, harvesting the rainforest to keep the plant in business and displacing thousands of indigenous tribes. Where does all this pulp go? Aracruz's biggest customers are the United States, Belgium, Great Britain, and Japan. More and more rainforest is destroyed to meet the demands of the developed world's paper industry, which requires a staggering 200 million tons of wood each year simply to make paper. If the present rate continues, it is estimated that the paper industry alone will consume 4 billion tons of wood annually by the year 2020.
Once an area of rainforest has been logged, even if it is given the rare chance to regrow, it can never become what it once was. The intricate ecosystem nature devised is lost forever. Only 1 to 2 percent of light at the top of a rainforest canopy manages to reach the forest floor below. Most times when timber is harvested, trees and other plants that have evolved over centuries to grow in the dark, humid environment below the canopy simply cannot live out in the open, and as a result, the plants and animals (that depend on the plants) of the original forest become extinct Even if only sections of land throughout an area are destroyed, these remnants change drastically. Birds and other animals cannot cross from one remnant of land to another in the canopy, so plants are not pollinated, seeds are not dispersed by the animals, and the plants around the edges are not surrounded by the high jungle humidity they need to grow properly. As a result, the remnants slowly become degraded and die. Rains come and wash away the thin topsoil that was previously protected by the canopy, and this barren, infertile land is vulnerable to erosion. Sometimes the land is replanted in African grasses for cattle operations; other times more virgin rainforest is destroyed for cattle operations because grass planted on recently burned land has a better chance to grow.
Grazing Land
As the demand in the Western world for cheap meat increases, more and more rainforests are destroyed to provide grazing land for animals. In Brazil alone, there are an estimated 220 million head of cattle, 20 million goats, 60 million pigs, and 700 million chickens. Most of Central and Latin America's tropical and temperate rainforests have been lost to cattle operations to meet the world demand, and still the cattle operations continue to move southward into the heart of the South American rainforests. To graze one steer in Amazonia takes two full acres. Most of the ranchers in the Amazon operate at a loss, yielding only paper profits purely as tax shelters. Ranchers' fortunes are made only when ranching is supported by government giveaways. A banker or rich landowner in Brazil can slash and burn a huge tract of land in the Amazon rainforest, seed it with grass for cattle, and realize millions of dollars worth of government-subsidized loans, tax credits, and write-offs in return for developing the land. These government development schemes rarely make a profit, as they are actually selling cheap beef to industrialized nations. One single cattle operation in Brazil that was co-owned by British Barclays Bank and one of Brazil's wealthiest families was responsible for the destruction of almost 500,000 acres of virgin rainforest. The cattle operation never made a profit, but government write-offs sheltered huge logging profits earned off of logging other land in the Brazilian rainforest owned by the same investors. These generous tax and credit incentives have created more than 29 million acres of large cattle ranches in the Brazilian Amazon, even though the typical ranch could cover less than half its costs without these subsidies. Even these grazing lands don't last forever. Soon the lack of nutrients in the soil and overgrazing degrade them, and they are abandoned for newly cleared land. In Brazil alone, more than 63,000 square miles of land has reportedly been abandoned in this way.
Subsistence Farming
This type of government-driven destruction of rainforest land is promoted by a common attitude among governments in rainforest regions, an attitude that the forest is an economic resource to be harnessed to aid in the development of their countries. The same attitudes that accompanied the colonization of our own frontier are found today in Brazil and other countries with wild and unharnessed rainforest wilderness. These beliefs are exemplified by one Brazilian official's public statement that "not until all Amazonas is colonized by real Brazilians, not Indians, can we truly say we own it." Were we Americans any different with our own colonization, decimating the North American Indian tribes? Like Brazil, we sent out a call to all the world that America had land for the landless in an effort to increase colonization of our country at the expense of our indigenous Indian tribes. And like the first American colonists, colonization in the rainforest really means subsistence farming.
Subsistence farming has for centuries been a driving force in the loss of rainforest land. And as populations explode in Third-World countries in South America and the Far East, the impact has been profound. By tradition, wildlands and unsettled lands in the rainforest are free to those who clear the forest and till the soil. "Squatter's rights" still prevail, and poor, hungry people show little enthusiasm for arguments about the value of biodiversity or the plight of endangered species when they struggle daily to feed their families. These landless peasants and settlers follow the logging companies down the roads they've built to extract timber into untouched rainforest lands, burning off whatever the logging companies left behind.
The present approach to rainforest cultivation produces wealth for a few, but only for a short time, because farming burned-off tracts of Amazon rainforest seldom works for long. Less than 10 percent of Amazonian soils are suitable for sustained conventional agriculture. However lush they look, rainforests often flourish on such nutrient-poor soils that they are essentially "wet deserts," easier to damage and harder to cultivate than any other soil. Most are exhausted by the time they have produced three or four crops. Many of the thousands of homesteaders who migrated from Brazil's cities to the wilds of the rainforest, responding to the government's call of "land without men for men without land," have already had to abandon their depleted farms and move on, leaving behind fields of baked clay dotted with stagnant pools of polluted water. Experts agree that the path to conservation begins with helping these local residents meet their own daily needs. Because of the infertility of the soil, and the lack of knowledge of sustainable cultivation practices, this type of agriculture strips the soil of nutrients within a few harvests, and the farmers continue to move farther into the rainforest in search of new land. They must be helped and educated to break free of the need to continually clear rainforest in search of fresh, fertile land if the rainforest is to be saved.
Leading the Threat: Governments
Directly and indirectly, the leading threats to rainforest ecosystems are governments and their unbridled, unplanned, and uncoordinated development of natural resources. The 2000-2001 World Resources Report put out by the United Nations reported that governments worldwide spend $700 billion dollars a year supporting and subsidizing environmentally unsound practices in the use of water, agriculture, energy, and transportation. In the Amazon, rainforest timber exports and large-scale development projects go a long way in servicing national debt in many developing countries, which is why governments and international aid-lending institutions like the World Bank subsidize them. In the tropics, governments own or control nearly 80 percent of tropical forests, so these forests stand or fall according to government policy; and in many countries, government policies lie behind the wastage of forest resources. Besides the tax incentives and credit subsidies that guarantee large profits to private investors who convert forests to pastures and farms, governments allow private concessionaires to log the national forests on terms that induce uneconomic or wasteful uses of the public domain. Massive public expenditures on highways, dams, plantations, and agricultural settlements, too often supported by multilateral development lending, convert or destroy large areas of forest for projects of questionable economic worth.
Tropical countries are among the poorest countries on Earth. Brazil alone spends 40 percent of its annual income simply servicing its loans, and the per capita income of Brazil's people is less than $2,000 annually. Sadly, these numbers don't even represent an accurate picture in the Amazon because Brazil is one of the richer countries in South America. These struggling Amazonian countries must also manage the most complex, delicate, and valuable forests remaining on the planet, and the economic and technological resources available to them are limited. They must also endure a dramatic social and economic situation, as well as deeply adverse terms of trade and financial relationships with industrial countries. Under such conditions, the possibility of their reaching sustainable models of development alone is virtually nil.
There is a clear need for industrial countries to sincerely and effectively assist the tropics in a quest for sustainable forest management and development if the remaining rainforests are to be saved. The governments of these developing countries need help in learning how to manage and protect their natural resources for long-term profits, while still managing to service their debts, and they must be given the incentives and tools to do so. Programs to redefine the timber concessions so concessionaires have greater incentives to guard the long-term health of the forest and programs to revive and expand community-based forestry schemes, which ensure more rational use of forests and a better life for the people who live near them, must be developed.
First-World capital must seek out opportunities to partner with organizations that have the technical expertise to guide these programs of sustainable economic development. In addition, programs teaching techniques for sustainable harvesting practices and identifying profitable, yet sustainable, forest products can enable developing countries to improve the standard of living for their people, service national debt, and contribute meaningfully to land use planning and conservation of natural resources.
RAINFORESTS, PHARMACY TO THE WORLD
It is estimated that nearly half of the world's estimated 10 million species of plants, animals, and microorganisms will be destroyed or severely threatened over the next quarter-century due to rainforest deforestation. Edward O. Wilson estimates that we are losing 137 plant and animal species every single day. That's 50,000 species a year! Again, why should we in the United States be concerned about the destruction of distant tropical rainforests? Because rainforest plants are complex chemical storehouses that contain many undiscovered biodynamic compounds with unrealized potential for use in modern medicine. We can gain access to these materials only if we study and conserve the species that contain them.
Key to Tomorrow's Cures?
Rainforests currently provide sources for one-fourth of today's medicines, and 70 percent of the plants found to have anticancer properties are found only in the rainforest. The rainforest and its immense undiscovered biodiversity hold the key to unlocking tomorrow's cures for devastating diseases. How many cures for devastating disease have we already lost?
Two drugs obtained from a rainforest plant known as the Madagascar periwinkle, now extinct in the wild due to deforestation of the Madagascar rainforest, have increased the chances of survival for children with leukemia from 20 percent to 80 percent. Think about it: eight out of ten children are now saved, rather than eight of ten children dying from leukemia. How many children have been spared and how many more will continue to be spared because of this single rainforest plant? What if we had failed to discover this one important plant among millions before human activities had led to its extinction? When our remaining rainforests are gone, the rare plants and animals will be lost forever-and so will the possible cures for diseases like cancer they can provide.
No one can challenge the fact that we are still largely dependent on plants for treating our ailments. Almost 90 percent of people in developing countries still rely on traditional medicine, based largely on different species of plants and animals, for their primary health care. In the United States, some 25 percent of prescriptions are filled with drugs whose active ingredients are extracted or derived from plants. By 1980 sales of these plant-based drugs in the United States amounted to some $4.5 billion annually. Worldwide sales of these plant-based drugs were estimated at $40 billion in 1990. Currently 121 prescription drugs sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources from only 90 species of plants. Still more drugs are derived from animals and microorganisms.
More than 25 percent of the active ingredients in today's cancer-fighting drugs come from organisms found only in the rainforest. The U.S. National Cancer Institute has identified more than 3,000 plants that are active against cancer cells, and 70 percent of these plants are found only in the rainforest. In the thousands of species of rainforest plants that have not been analyzed are many more thousands of unknown plant chemicals, many of which have evolved to protect the plants from diseases. These plant chemicals may well help us in our own ongoing struggle with constantly evolving pathogens, including bacteria, viruses, and fungi that are mutating against our mainstream drugs and becoming resistant to them. These pathogens cause serious diseases, including hepatitis, pneumonia, tuberculosis, and HIV, all of which are becoming more difficult to treat. Experts now believe that if there is a cure for cancer and even AIDS, it will probably be found in the rainforest.
Bioprospecting
In 1983, there were no U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturers involved in research programs to discover new drugs or cures from plants. Today, more than 100 pharmaceutical companies, including giants like Merck, Abbott, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Monsanto, Smith-Kline Beecham, as well as several branches of the U.S. government, including the National Cancer Institute, are engaged in plant-based research projects trying to find possible drugs to treat infections, cancer, and AIDS. Most of this research is currently taking place in the rainforest in an industry that is now called "bioprospecting." This new pharmacological industry draws together an unlikely confederacy: plant collectors and anthropologists; ecologists and conservationists; natural product companies and nutritional supplement manufacturers; AIDS and cancer researchers; executives in the world's largest drug companies; and native indigenous shamans. They are part of a radical experiment: to preserve the world's rainforests by showing how much more valuable they are standing than cut down. And it is a race against a clock whose every tick means another acre of charred forest. Yet, it is also a race that pits one explorer against another, for those who score the first big hit in chemical bioprospecting will secure wealth and a piece of scientific immortality.
In November 1991, Merck Pharmaceutical Company announced a landmark agreement to obtain samples of wild plants and animals for drug-screening purposes from Costa Rica's National Biodiversity Institute (INBio); the program is still ongoing today. Spurred by this and other biodiversity prospecting ventures, interest in the commercial value of plant genetic and biochemical resources is burgeoning today. While the Merck-INBio agreement provides a fascinating example of a private partnership that contributes to rural economic development, rainforest conservation, and technology transfer, virtually no precedent exists for national policies and legislation to govern and regulate what amounts to a brand new industry.
Since wealth and technology are as concentrated in most of the North as biodiversity and poverty are in much of the South, the question of equity is particularly hard to answer in ways that satisfy everyone with a stake in the outcome. The interests of bioprospecting corporations are not the same as those of people who live in a biodiversity "hot spot," many of them barely eking out a living. As the search for wild species whose genes can yield new medicines and better crops gathers momentum, these rich habitats also sport more and more bioprospectors. Like the nineteenth-century California gold rush or its present-day counterpart in Brazil, this "gene rush" could wreak havoc on ecosystems and the people living in or near them. Done properly, however, bioprospecting can bolster both economic and conservation goals while underpinning the medical and agricultural advances needed to combat disease and sustain growing populations.
The majority of our current plant-derived drugs were discovered by examining the traditional use of plants by the indigenous people who lived where the plants grew and flourished. History has shown that the situation with the rainforest is no different, and bioprospectors now are working side by side with rainforest tribal shamans and herbal healers to learn the wealth of their plant knowledge and about the many uses of indigenous plants.
UNLOCKING THE SECRETS OF THE RAINFOREST
After the Amerindians discovered America, about twenty millennia before Columbus, all their clothing, food, medicine, and shelter were derived from the forests. Those millennia gave the Indians time to discover and learn empirically the virtues and vices of the thousands of edible and medicinal species in the rainforest. More than 80 percent of the developed world's diet originated in the rainforest and from this empirical indigenous knowledge of the wealth of edible fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Of the estimated 3,000 edible fruits found in the rainforest, only 200 are cultivated for use today, despite the fact that the Indians used more than 1,500. Many secrets and untold treasures about the medicinal plants used by shamans, healers, and the indigenous people of the rainforest tribes await discovery. Long regarded as hocus-pocus by science, the empirical plant knowledge of the indigenous peoples is now thought by many to be the Amazon's new gold. Their use of the plants provides the bioprospector with the clues necessary to target specific species to research in the race for time before the species are lost to deforestation. More often, the race is defined as being the first pharmaceutical company to patent a new drug utilizing a newly discovered rainforest phytochemical-and, of course, to garner the profits.
Indigenous People, A Valuable Resource
Laboratory synthesis of new medicines is increasingly costly and not as fruitful as companies would like. In the words of one major drug company executive, "Scientists may be able to make any molecule they can imagine on a computer, but Mother Nature . . . is an infinitely more ingenious and exciting chemist." Scientists have developed new technologies to assess the chemical makeup of plants, and they realize that using medicinal plants identified by Indians makes research more efficient and less expensive. With these new trends, drug development has actually returned to its roots: traditional medicine. It is now understood by bioprospectors that the tribal peoples of the rainforest represent the key to finding new and useful tropical forest plants. The degree to which these indigenous people understand and are able to use this diversity sustainably is astounding. A single Amazonian tribe of Indians may use more than 200 species of plants for medicinal purposes alone.
Of the 121 pharmaceutical drugs that are plant-derived today, 74 percent were discovered through follow-up research to verify the authenticity of information concerning the medical uses of the plant by indigenous peoples. Nevertheless, to this day, very few rainforest tribes have been subjected to a complete ethnobotanical analysis. Robert Goodland of the World Bank wrote, "Indigenous knowledge is essential for the use, identification and cataloguing of the [tropical] biota. As tribal groups disappear, their knowledge vanishes with them. The preservation of these groups is a significant economic opportunity for the [developing] nation, not a luxury."
Since Amazonian Indians are often the only ones who know both the properties of these plants and how they can best be used, their knowledge is now considered an essential component of all efforts to conserve and develop the rainforest. Since failure to document this lore would represent a tremendous economic and scientific loss to the industrialized world, the bioprospectors are now working side by side with the rainforest tribal shamans and herbal healers to learn the wealth of their plant knowledge. But bioprospecting has a dark side. Indian knowledge that has resisted the pressure of "modernization" is being used by bioprospectors who, like oil companies and loggers destroying the forests, threaten to leave no benefits behind them.
But Few Benefits for the Indigenous People
It's a noble idea-the ethnobotanist working with the Indians seeking a cure for cancer or even AIDS, like Sean Connery in the movie Medicine Man. Yet behind this lurks a system that, at its worst, steals the Indian knowledge to benefit CEOs, stockholders, and academic careers and reputations. The real goal of these powerful bioprospectors is to target novel and active phytochemicals for medical applications, synthesize them in a laboratory, and have them patented for subsequent drug manufacture and resulting profits. In this process, many active and beneficial plants have been found in the shaman's medicine chest, only to be discarded when it was found that the active ingredients of the plant numbered too many to be cost effectively synthesized into a patentable drug. It doesn't matter how active or beneficial the plant is or how long the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) process might take to approve the new drug; if the bioprospector can't capitalize on it, the public will rarely hear about a plant's newly discovered benefits. The fact is there is a lot of money at stake. In an article published in Economic Botany, Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, an economist at Yale University, and Dr. Michael J. Balick, director of the Institute of Economic Botany at the New York Botanical Gardens, estimate the minimum number of pharmaceutical drugs potentially remaining to be extracted from the rainforests. It is staggering! They estimate that there are at least 328 new drugs that still await discovery in the rainforest, with a potential value of $3 billion to $4 billion to a private pharmaceutical company and as much as $147 billion to society as a whole.
While the indigenous Indian shamans go about their daily lives caring for the well-being of their tribe, the shaman's rainforest medicines are being tested, synthesized, patented, and submitted for FDA approval in U.S. laboratories thousands of miles away. Soon children with viral infections, adults with herpes, cancer patients, and many others may benefit from new medicines from the Amazon rainforest. But what will the indigenous tribes see of these wonderful new medicines? As corporations rush to patent indigenous medicinal knowledge, the originating indigenous communities receive few, if any, benefits.
LOSING THE KNOWLEDGE
The destruction of the rainforest has followed the pattern of seeing natural land and natural world peoples as resources to be used, and seeing wilderness as idle, empty, and unproductive. Destruction of our rainforests is not only causing the extinction of plant and animal species, it is also wiping out indigenous peoples who live in the rainforest. Obviously, rainforests are not idle land, nor are they uninhabited. Indigenous peoples have developed technologies and resource use systems that have allowed them to live on the land, farming, hunting, and gathering in a complex sustainable relationship with the forest. But when rainforests die, so do the indigenous peoples.
In 1500 there were an estimated 6 million to 9 million indigenous people inhabiting the rainforests in Brazil. When Western and European cultures were drawn to Brazil's Amazon in the hopes of finding riches beyond comprehension and artifacts from civilizations that have long since expired with the passage of time, they left behind decimated cultures in their ravenous wake. By 1900 there were only 1 million indigenous people left in Brazil's Amazon. Although the fabled Fountain of Youth was never discovered, many treasures in gold and gems were spirited away by the more successful invaders of the day, and the indigenous inhabitants of the rainforest bore the brunt of these marauding explorers and conquistadors.
Today there are fewer than 250,000 indigenous people of Brazil surviving this catastrophe, and still the destruction continues. These surviving indigenous people still demonstrate the remarkable diversity of the rainforest because they comprise 215 ethnic groups with 170 different languages. Nationwide, they live in 526 territories, which together compose an area of 190 million acres . . . twice the size of California. About 188 million acres of this land is inside the Brazilian Amazon, in the states of Acre, Amapa, Amazonas, Maranhao, Mato Grosso, Para, Rondonia, Roraima, and Tocantins. There may also be 50 or more indigenous groups still living in the depths of the rainforest that have never had contact with the outside world.
Throughout the rainforest, forest-dwelling peoples whose age-old traditions allow them to live in and off the forest without destroying it are losing out to cattle ranching, logging, hydroelectric projects, large-scale farms, mining, and colonization schemes. About half of the original Amazonian tribes have already been completely destroyed. The greatest threat to Brazil's remaining tribal people, most of whom live in the Amazon rainforest, is the invasion of their territory by ranchers, miners, and land speculators and the conflicts that follow. Thousands of peasants, rubber tappers, and indigenous tribes have been killed in Amazonia in the past decade in violent conflicts over forest resources and land.
As their homelands continue to be invaded and destroyed, rainforest people and their cultures are disappearing. When these indigenous peoples are lost forever, gone too will be their empirical knowledge representing centuries of accumulated knowledge of the medicinal value of plant and animal species in the rainforest. Very few tribes have been subjected to a complete ethnobotanical analysis of their plant knowledge, and most medicine men and shamans remaining in the rainforests today are seventy years old or more. When a medicine man dies without passing his arts on to the next generation, the tribe and the world lose thousands of years of irreplaceable knowledge about medicinal plants. Each time a rainforest medicine man dies, it is as if a library has burned down.
THE SOLUTION: PROFITS WITHOUT PLUNDER
The problem and the solution of the destruction of the rainforest are both economic. Governments need money to service their debts, squatters and settlers need money to feed their families, and companies need to make profits. The simple fact is that the rainforest is being destroyed for the income and profits it yields, however fleeting. Money still makes the world go around . . . even in South America and even in the rainforest. But this also means that if landowners, governments, and those living in the rainforest today were given a viable economic reason not to destroy the rainforest, it could and would be saved. And this viable economic alternative does exist, and it is working today. Many organizations have demonstrated that if the medicinal plants, fruits, nuts, oils, and other resources like rubber, chocolate, and chicle (used to make chewing gums) are harvested sustainably, rainforest land has much more economic value today and more long-term income and profits for the future than if just timber is harvested or burned down for cattle or farming operations. In fact, the latest statistics prove that rainforest land converted to cattle operations yields the landowner $60 per acre; if timber is harvested, the land is worth $400 per acre. However, if medicinal plants, fruits, nuts, rubber, chocolate, and other renewable and sustainable resources are harvested, the land will yield the landowner $2,400 per acre. This value provides an income not only today, but year after year - for generations. These sustainable resources - not the trees - are the true wealth of the rainforest.
This is no longer a theory. It is a fact, and it is being implemented today. Just as important, to wild-harvest the wealth of sustainable rainforest resources effectively, local people and indigenous tribes must be employed. Today entire communities and tribes earn five to ten times more money in wild-harvesting medicinal plants, fruits, nuts, and oils than they can earn by chopping down the forest for subsistence crops. This much-needed income source creates the awareness and economic incentive for this population in the rainforest to protect and preserve the forests for long-term profits for themselves and their children and is an important solution in saving the rainforest from destruction.
When the timber is harvested for short-term gain and profits, the medicinal plants, nuts, oils, and other important sustainable resources that thrive in this delicate ecosystem are destroyed. The real solution to saving the rainforest is to make its inhabitants see the forest and the trees by creating a consumer demand and consumer markets for these sustainable rainforest products . . . markets that are larger and louder than today's tropical timber market . . . markets that will put as much money in their pockets and government coffers as the timber companies do . . . markets that will give them the economic incentive to protect their sustainable resources for long-term profits, rather than short-term gain.
This is the only solution that makes a real impact, and it can make a real difference. Each and every person in the United States can take a part in this solution by helping to create this consumer market and demand for sustainable rainforest products. By purchasing renewable and sustainable rainforest products and resources and demanding sustainable harvesting of these resources using local communities and indigenous tribes of the rainforests, we all can be part of the solution, and the rainforests of the world and their people can be saved.
STRUKTUR HUTAN
Ekosistem Hutan Hujan
Hutan Hujan Tropis adalah suatu masyarakat kompleks merupakan tempat yang menyediakan pohon dari berbagai ukuran. Dalam buku ini istilah kanopi hutan digunakan sebagai suatu yang umum untuk menjelaskan masyarakat tumbuhan keseluruhan di atas bumi. Di dalam kanopi iklim micro berbeda dengan diluarnya; cahaya lebih sedikit, kelembaban sangat tinggi, dan temperatur lebih rendah. Banyak dari pohon yang lebih kecil berkembang dalam naungan pohon yang lebih besar di dalam iklim mikro inilah terjadi pertumbuhan. Di atas bentuk pohon dan dalam iklim mikro dari cakupan pertumbuhan kanopi dari berbagai jenis tumbuhan lain: pemanjat, epiphytes, mencekik, tanaman benalu, dan saprophytes.
Pohon dan kebanyakan dari tumbuhan lain berakar pada tanah dan menyerap unsur hara dan air. Daun-Daun yang gugur, Ranting, Cabang, dan bagian lain yang tersedia; makanan untuk sejumlah inang hewan invertebrata, yang penting seperti rayap, juga untuk jamur dan bakteri. Unsur hara dikembalikan ke tanah lewat pembusukan dari bagian yang jatuh dan dengan pencucian dari daun-daun oleh air hujan. Ini merupakan ciri hutan hujan tropis yang kebanyakan dari gudang unsur hara total ada dalam tumbuhan; secara relatif kecil di simpan dalam tanah.
Di dalam kanopi hutan, terutama di hutan dataran rendah, disana hidup binatang dengan cakupan luas, hewan veterbrata dan invertebrata, beberapa yang makan bagian tumbuhan, yang memakan hewan. Hubungan timbal balik kompleks ada antara tumbuhan dan binatang, sebagai contoh, dalam hubungan dengan penyerbukan bunga dan penyebaran biji. Beberapa tumbuhan, yang disebut myrmecophytes, menyediakan tempat perlindungan untuk semut di dalam organ yang dimodifikasi. Banyak tumbuhan, menghasilkan bahan-kimia yang berbisa bagi banyak serangga dan cara ini untuk perlindungan diri dari pemangsaan.
Keseluruhan masyarakat organik dan lingkungan phisik dan kimianya bersama-sama menyusun dasar ekosistem pada hutan hujan tropis. Jika bagian dari hutan menjadi rusak, tumbuhan (dan satwa) terbukanya gap, yang lain menyerbu dengan persaingan; ada suatu suksesi sekunder dari komunitas tumbuhan seral, hingga dengan cepat suatu masyarakat yang serupa menjadi asli seperti semula. Ini disebut “Klimaks”. Pada permukaan tanah terbuka, contohnya, terjadi pada 1963 oleh letusan Gunung Agong di Bali, suatu suksesi primer, atau prisere, terjadi juga hingga Klimaks.
Synusiae
Suatu synusia adalah suatu kelompok tumbuhan dari bentuk hidup yang serupa mengisi relung yang sama dan berperan serupa di dalam komunitas dimana bentuknya terpisah (Richards 1952); Ini merupakan suatu bentuk hidup komunitas terpisah.
Synusiae menyediakan suatu bahan untuk menganalisa masyarakat tumbuhan yang kompleks. Richards (1952) telah memperkenalkan suatu penggolongan yang praktis untuk synusiae hutan hujan tropis:
A. Tumbuhan Autotrophic (dengan butir hijau daun)
1. Tumbuhan Independent Mekanis
(a) pohon dan treelets;
( b) herba.
2. Tumbuhan Dependent Mekanis
(a) pemanjat;
( b) para pencekik;
( c) epiphytes ( termasuk semi-parasitic epiphytes).
B. Tumbuhan Heterotrophic (tanpa butir hijau daun).
1. Saprophytes.
2. Parasites.
Jenis sangat berbeda hubungan taxonomic menyusun synusiae. Seperti halnya yang dipunyai bentuk hidup umum, banyak juga mempunyai physiognomy yang sangat serupa. Penyajian yang relatif ttg kelompok ekologis berbeda dalam berbagai Formasi hutan hujan tropis adalah penting definisi mereka. Mereka adalah mewakili seluruh hutan hujan dataran rendah yang hijau tropis. Synusiae terjadi sepanjang daerah tropis di mana saja Formasi ditemukan.
tsunami (pronounced soo-nahm-ee) is a series of huge waves that happen after an undersea disturbance, such as an earthquake or volcano eruption. (Tsunami is from the Japanese word for harbor wave.) The waves travel in all directions from the area of disturbance, much like the ripples that happen after throwing a rock. The waves may travel in the open sea as fast as 450 miles per hour. As the big waves approach shallow waters along the coast they grow to a great height and smash into the shore. They can be as high as 100 feet. They can cause a lot of destruction on the shore. They are sometimes mistakenly called "tidal waves," but tsunami have nothing to do with the tides.
is the state at greatest risk for a tsunami. They get about one a year, with a damaging tsunami happening about every seven years. Alaska is also at high risk. California, Oregon and Washington experience a damaging tsunami about every 18 years.
Did you know:
1964, an Alaskan earthquake generated a tsunami with waves between 10 and 20 feet high along parts of the California, Oregon and Washington coasts.
In 1946, a tsunami with waves of 20 to 32 feet crashed into Hilo, Hawaii, flooding the downtown area.
Tsunami Warning Centers in Honolulu Hawaii and Palmer Alaska monitor disturbances that might trigger tsunami. When a tsunami is recorded, the center tracks it and issues a warning when needed. Click on the camera to see photos and learn more about the buoy system.
is the state at greatest risk for a tsunami. They get about one a year, with a damaging tsunami happening about every seven years. Alaska is also at high risk. California, Oregon and Washington experience a damaging tsunami about every 18 years.
Did you know:
1964, an Alaskan earthquake generated a tsunami with waves between 10 and 20 feet high along parts of the California, Oregon and Washington coasts.
In 1946, a tsunami with waves of 20 to 32 feet crashed into Hilo, Hawaii, flooding the downtown area.
Tsunami Warning Centers in Honolulu Hawaii and Palmer Alaska monitor disturbances that might trigger tsunami. When a tsunami is recorded, the center tracks it and issues a warning when needed. Click on the camera to see photos and learn more about the buoy system.
6/28/2009
The Little Ice Age, Ca. 1300 - 1870
- 8000 BC
- 7000 BC
- 5000 BC
- 2100 BC
- 1 AD
- 536 AD
- 1000 AD
- 1350 AD
- 1650 AD
- 1750 AD
- 1800 AD
- 1900 AD
- 2000 AD
Winter severity 1000 - 1900. Note two cold periods 15th
and 17th centuries.
The Little Ice Age is a period between about 1300 and 1870 during which Europe and North America were subjected to much colder winters than during the 20th century. The period and can be divided in two phases, the first beginning around 1300 and continuing until the late 1400s. There was a slightly warmer period in the 1500s, after which the climate deteriorated substantially. The period between 1600 and 1800 marks the height of the Little Ice Age. The period was characterized by the expansion of European trade and the formation of European sea born Empires. This was directly linked to advances in technology harnessing more of nature's power and towards the end of the period fossil-fuelled power. These two hundred years also saw the specialization of agricultural regions, which produced specific products for local and international markets.
What caused the Little Ice Age?
Maunder minimum
The cause of the Little Ice Age is unknown, but many people have pointed at the coincidence in low sunspot activity and the timing of the Little Ice. This so called Maunder Minimum1 coincided with the coldest part of the Little Ice Age, in particular during the period roughly from 1645 to 1715, when sunspots were a rare occurrence, as noted by solar observers such as Galileo. A minimum in sunspots, indicates an inactive and possibly colder sun and qonsequently less energy output to warm the earth.
North Atlantic Oscillation in positive (top)
and negative (bottom) mode.
North Atlantic Oscillation
The north Atlantic is one of the most climatically unstable regions in the world. This is caused by a complex interaction between the atmosphere and the ocean. The main feature of this is the North Atlantic Oscillation (NOA), a seesaw of atmospheric pressure between a persistent high over the Azores and an equally persistent low over Iceland. This is the "normal" pattern, but sometimes the pressure cells are trading places and that has severe consequences for the weather in Europe.
When the situation reverses, called a Negative NOA (high over Iceland and Low over Azores) the westerlies weaken or even reverse and cold air is streaming over Europe, causing a cold winter here. In negative NAO winters, it is much less stormy over the North Atlantic. Any storms, which do occur, bring warm wet air from the ocean into the Mediterranean region. The small pressure difference allows northerly air to blow into Northern Europe making the winters dry and sunny but very cold here. There are strong indications that during the Little Ice Age the NOA was more often in a negative mode.
Volcanism
Volcanic eruptions are another possible cause - for example, the year after the Tambora eruption (1815) was known as the "year without a summer." But, the effect of such eruptions might be limited to only a few years so this can not have been the cause for the prolonged climatic variations associated with the Little Ice Age.
After 1870 the Little Ice Age made place for the slightly milder conditions of the 20th century.
Marginal regions
During the height of the Little Ice Age general, it was about 1 degree Celsius colder than at present. The Baltic Sea froze over, as did most of the rivers in Europe. Winters were bitterly cold and prolonged, reducing the growing season with several weeks. These conditions led to widespread crop failure, famine, and in some regions population decline.
The prices of grain increased and wine became difficult to produce in many areas and commercial vineyards vanished in England. Fishing also was bad as the cod migrated south to find warmer water. Storminess and flooding increased. In mountainous regions the tree line and snowline dropped. In addition glaciers advanced in the Alps and Northern Europe, overrunning towns and farms in the process.
Iceland was one of the hardest hit areas. Sea ice, which today is far to the north, came down around Iceland. In some years, it was difficult to bring a ship ashore anywhere along the coast. Grain became impossible to grow and even hay crops failed. Volcanic eruptions made life even harder. Iceland lost half of its population during the Little Ice Age.
Rhone glacier ca. 1860
Scandinavia was also hard hit by the colder conditions of the Little Ice Age. Tax records show many farms were destroyed by advancing ice and by melt water streams. Travellers in Scotland reported permanent snow cover over the Cairgorms in Scotland at an altitude of about 1200 metres. In the Alps, the glaciers advanced and bulldozed over towns. Ice-dammed lakes burst periodically, destroying hundreds of buildings and killing many people. As late as 1930 the French Government commissioned a report to investigate the threat of the glaciers. They could not have foreseen that human induced global warming was to deal more effective with this problem than any committee ever could.
Flourishing of European culture
Despite the difficulties in marginal regions, culture and economy were flowering in Europe. This is most visible in the way that people transformed their environment during the 17th and 18th centuries.
The Little Ice Age coincided with the maritime expansion of Europe and the creation of seaborne trading and later colonial empires. First came the Spanish and Portuguese, followed by the Dutch, English and other European nations. Key to this success was the development of shipbuilding technology which was a response to both trading, strategic but also climatic pressures.
Art and architecture also flourished, which is probably best embodied in the wonderful winter landscape paintings which can be considered a direct result of the Little Ice Age. These paintings show us skating people enjoying themselves, a sign that they were more than capable to withstand the hasher winter conditions and that they had also enough food. The latter is a key element in the success of European culture at that time.
Agricultural revolution
During the later Middle Ages., slowly but steadily farmers started to experiment with new agricultural methods, in order to adapt to increasingly unpredictable climates and also stimulated by the growth of profitable markets in growing cities and long distance trade.
This initially low technology agricultural revolution started in Flanders and the Netherlands in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Dutch farmers experimented with lay farming, the deliberate growing of animal fodder and cultivating grasslands for cattle. In addition they started systematic breeding of cows and the Frisian milk cow is probably the most famous example of this.
Another innovation was the continuous growing of specialized crops. Instead of letting valuable ground lay fallow, they planted peas, beans and especially nitrogen-rich clover, all of which provided food for humans and animals alike. The vegetables were rotated with grain, turnips and later potato for export but also for feeding dairy cattle. As a result of this system the amount of fallow land contracted rapidly until non was existent. Agriculture became an intensive activity.
The new intensive agriculture produced such a high surplus that Flanders and later the Netherlands could specialize and diversify their agricultural activity. With abundance of fodder, animal and dairy farming (think of Dutch cheese) became increasingly important. More meat, wool, and leather as well cheese cam on the market as the new agriculture broke the dependence on grain. At the same time farmers diversified into industrial crops such as flax, mustard and hops for brewing beer.
This agricultural revolution could not have succeeded when new ships to withstand the harsher climatic conditions imported large amounts of grain form the Baltic, undermining local grain production. These grain imports made the Flemish and Dutch economy independent from climatic fluctuations causing famine.
Land reclamation
Water management technology: water
windmill ca. 1600
Between 1600 and 1800, large areas of the Netherlands, England and some other countries around the North Sea were reclaimed. Notable examples are the draining of lakes in Holland and the reclamations in East Anglia.
The Dutch possessed sufficient technological expertise and a sufficient degree of organization to diffuse the worst effects of short term climatic variations. The Little Ice Age might have imposed more benefits than costs on Dutch society. Extensive land reclamation and the use of new mechanical technology, as well as the intensive exploitation of natural resources (peat) turned liabilities into assets so powerful that they helped to forge the first modern economy in Europe.
Soon the new agriculture and reclamation technologies as well as other mechanical techniques were introduced in Britain where it was all taken a step further in terms of scale and later the improvement movement would make agriculture more scientific. In addition the mechanical technology would be used to develop mechanical machines driven by steam and a new fuel: coal.
It was the start of the Industrial Revolution and the transition from natural power, mainly derived from wind and water, to fossil fuel based industries. Unlocking the power of fossil fuel would transform the relationship between human culture and the natural environment in ways the world had never seen before.
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