Word: forest
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...land can be murder on flora and fauna, and both are taking a bad hit. Wildfires in such regions as Indonesia, the western U.S. and even inland Alaska have been increasing as timberlands and forest floors grow more parched. The blazes create a feedback loop of their own, pouring more carbon into the atmosphere and reducing the number of trees, which inhale CO2 and release oxygen...
...Those forests that don't succumb to fire die in other, slower ways. Connie Millar, a paleoecologist for the U.S. Forest Service, studies the history of vegetation in the Sierra Nevada. Over the past 100 years, she has found, the forests have shifted their tree lines as much as 100 ft. upslope, trying to escape the heat and drought of the lowlands. Such slow-motion evacuation may seem like a sensible strategy, but when you're on a mountain, you can go only so far before you run out of room. "Sometimes we say the trees are going to heaven...
...changes are mowing down other flora too. Manzanita bushes in the West are dying back; some prickly pear cacti have lost their signature green and are instead a sickly pink; pine beetles in western Canada and the U.S. are chewing their way through tens of millions of acres of forest, thanks to warmer winters. The beetles may even breach the once insurmountable Rocky Mountain divide, opening up a path into the rich timbering lands of the American Southeast...
MISTLETOE The limber pine dwarf mistletoe is proliferating throughout western forests in North America, thanks to heat and drought-weakened trees that act as perfect hosts for this botanical parasite. It's not unlike what happens in your body, says researcher Connie Millar of the U.S. Forest Service: "When your system is stressed, you're more vulnerable to all kinds of things that want...
Meanwhile, the opportunities to offset emissions are growing. Conservation International, for instance, helped Mitsubishi and Pearl Jam funnel their offsetting funds into rain-forest protection in Madagascar. And Coldplay did more than enough to offset its last album, X&Y, by protecting forests in Mexico and Ecuador. Internet ventures with names like TerraPass, myclimate and Drive Neutral enable commuters and air travelers to calculate their emissions and neutralize the damage. Some even aim to turn a profit...