Word: forests
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...Flying low over Lake Upemba in northern Katanga in mid-March, hundreds of people could be seen encamped on slivers of dry land in the water, with dugout canoes as their only link to the world. Thousands of others have wandered, sometimes for weeks, across the roadless landscape of forests and waterfalls, finally staggering nearly starved into small towns. There, they tell of Mai Mai fighters placing victims' heads on sticks to proclaim control; of ravenous government soldiers pillaging food stocks; and of each side burning whole villages in retaliation for the locals' suspected support for the enemy. "The rebels...
...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...
...inside plumbing, chocolate bars and ice cream you don?t have to make yourself. He discovers books other than the Bible and the jaw-dropping invention of nylons. After five months in the big city, he understandably has a great deal of trouble readjusting to life in the forest...