3-2: Forests and Deforestation

Pre-Class Preparation

Objectives

• To review the distribution of global forests and understand their role in the global carbon budget of the planet.
• To understand the forces that drive the process of deforestation and the consequences of past and future deforestation.

Procedure

1. Read the learning unit.

   Class images

2. Take the learning unit quiz. Quizzes are available from your portfolio. You may access your portfolio via the list of students participating in this year's course, as represented by the icon below.
   
   
3. Additional Required Reading. Although you are not ultimately responsible for content listed in this section, we encourage you to fully explore the links in order to provide a better scope on the upcoming class discussion.

   	Boreal Forest Area as a Source of Carbon Dioxide
   	Deforestation: CIESIN thematic guide.
   	New OLS Biomass Page.
   	Vegetation Applications-Agriculture, Forestry and Ecology (From the Applied Information Sciences Branch, NASA) Note: This page is still under construction.

Class Discussion

• Problem to ponder...
  

• Class Discussion Summary:

Post-Class Activities

• Participate in the electronic dialog. Use this forum for:
  • continuing class discussion;
  • posing new questions to students or the instructor;
  • responding to issues/questions raised by students in class/electronic dialog.

  Visitor Access (Visitors are welcome to participate in the dialog. Just click on the icon below)	Student Access (Students must post all dialog from their portfolio. Click on the icon below to access the student list.)

• Recommended Reading Materials

  	Deforestation Monitoring System from the Joint Research Centre and the European Space Agency.
  	Global Forest Policy. From Linkages.
  	Keeley, Jon E. and C. J. Fotheringham, 1997: Trace Gas Emissions and Smoke-Induced Seed Germination. Science 276, 1248-1250.
  	Janetos, Anthony C., 1997: Do We Still Need Nature? Consequences 13.
  	Robinson, Scott, 1997: The Case of the Missing Songbirds. Consequences 13.
  	Shukla, J., C. Nobre, and P. Sellers, 1990: Amazon Deforestation and Climate Change. Science 247, 1322-1325.
  	Vitousek, P.M., 1991: Can Planted Forests Counteract Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide? Journal of Environmental Quality 20, 348-354.

• References

  	Biodiversity Glossary of Terms
  	Forests and other wooded lands, technical atlas, from the World Food Summit homepage. (To download Adobe Acrobat Reader, go to http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html).
  	Forests as carbon sinks, Abrams, Joel.
  	New Species Created at Rainforest Margins
  	Cash, J. H. C., and C. A. Nobre, 1997: Some results from ABRACOS. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 78, 823-828