Word: northern
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...latest evidence for that assertion comes in a study just published in the journal Forest Ecology and Management, in which Finnish researchers looked at how the northern forests will respond as the growing season gets longer. In the current climate, says lead author Anna Kuparinen, of the University of Helsinki, pine and birch trees in the northernmost parts of Europe are stunted, in part because they have less time to grow each year than their more southerly counterparts. They've also evolved mechanisms that protect them from the harshest cold. "They actually stop growing before the frost comes," says Kuparinen...
Climate change will, moreover, lead to different effects in different parts of the world. "In northern areas," says Lobell, "you'll see an expansion of the growing season" - which, if the Finnish study is correct, won't necessarily help forests, but could be good for crops, since you can deliberately plant seeds that are suited to long summers. But in arid parts of the tropics, he says, where plant growth is limited by the availability of water, more frequent droughts could make things worse. "Large parts of the world," says Field, "are already at the warm edge of where things...
...Minister Silvio Berlusconi's administration has taken an increasingly popular anti-immigrant stance. About 1,000 of the African migrants in Rosarno were carted off to detention centers after the violence - some at their own request, the government says. Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, a member of the anti-immigrant Northern League party, said that "too much tolerance" had caused the unrest...
...farmers haven't been so lucky. According to Florida Agriculture Department spokesman Terence McElroy, a full assessment won't be known for days or weeks, but "we hear anecdotally that there has been substantial losses in tropical fish, significant damage to the fern industry, and citrus - especially in the northern counties - has sustained damage." The same is true, he says, in South Florida for vegetables like tomatoes and peppers. "Will it be 10%? Twenty percent? Forty percent? We just don't know," says McElroy, "but we are expecting serious damage to various sectors of the industry." (See pictures...
Police have 68 armed groups on a watch list; most are concentrated in long-standing election trouble spots, such as the autonomous region for Muslims on Mindanao Island and a clutch of clannish northern provinces. "Based on our estimates there are at least 200 private armed groups nationwide if you include those run by landlords, businessmen and gambling lords," says Rommel Banlaoi, director of the Philippine Institute for Political Violence and Terrorism Research. Many are small units with under a dozen members. But some - it is not clear how many - are virtual armies. The one operated by the Ampatuan clan...