Urbanisation of the cassowary: impacts and economics

source: Reef and Rainforest Research Centre
"The Southern Cassowary (Casuarius casuarius johnsonii or 'cassowary') is a significant keystone species to the natural environment of the Wet Tropics. The cassowary is a major and often sole disperser of seeds for over one hundred species of rainforest trees and vines (BioTropica Australia 2005). Because of the importance of the cassowary to the overall biodiversity of the Wet Tropics, research into the refining, tailoring and application of a market based instrument (MBI) to manage for environmental conservation in developing areas will use a viable cassowary population as the objective of any instrument mix analysed."

Border Ranges rainforest biodiversity management plan

Source: Dept. of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts
"The Border Ranges Rainforest Biodiversity Management Plan constitutes the formal national regional recovery plan for threatened species and communities of the Border Ranges North and South (Queensland and New South Wales) Biodiversity Hotspot. The Plan considers the conservation requirements of rainforest and closely related species and communities in the Border Ranges region of NSW and Queensland, which is centred on the McPherson Ranges. It also addresses other species of conservation significance so as to manage the area’s biodiversity in a holistic and cost-effective manner."

Woodchipping our water

source: ACF
"This report, Woodchipping Our Water, assesses how the logging of mature forests in the Goulburn River catchment threatens the enormous water production and carbon
sequestration potential of the region. The Goulburn River is one of Australia’s most important and degraded river systems. It supplies water to many regional towns and cities, including Shepparton, Bendigo and Ballarat. The Goulburn also supports Victoria’s major irrigation industries and its flows are vital to the health of the Murray River system. The report finds that if logging in the study area stopped tomorrow, an additional water yield of 3,807 gigalitres would be delivered into the Goulburn River over the next 100 years. This is more than six times Melbourne’s annual average water use and around 165 times the amount of water the City of Bendigo uses in a single year. The economic value of this water would be $1.68 billion."

Forests NSW Riverina environmental impact statement

Source: NSW DPI
"An Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for Forests NSW’s operations in the state’s south-west has found there is unlikely to be a significant impact on most threatened species, or endangered ecological communities or their habitats. The EIS assesses Forests NSW’s timber harvesting and associated road works in south-western NSW, an area that includes both red gum forests and white cypress forests. The assessment considers matters associated with timber harvesting and related roadworks such as sustainable timber supply, flora and fauna, air quality, noise, cultural heritage, water quality, traffic and transport, and socioeconomic impacts. However, the EIS has been met with criticism by the National Parks Association of NSW, with spokesperson, Georgina Woods, saying the EIS “has utterly failed to provide a proper assessment of the environmental impacts of logging”. The National Parks Association says the EIS fails to address the impact of logging on nationally significant wetlands, and undertakes almost no surveys for threatened species."

Management principles and strategies to guide biodiversity conservation in private native forests

Source: RIRDC
"This report outlines a series of ecological principles for guidance on how forestry on private land might best achieve biodiversity conservation. A checklist of on-ground management strategies aimed at operationalising these principles is described. A discussion of the meaning of ecologically sustainable forest management, together with an outline of problems associated with biodiversity conservation “short-cuts” is given to provide suitable context to the description of the principles and associated checklist. The focus of this paper is on existing areas of native forest rather than exotic plantations (including eucalypt plantations) or farm forests that have been established on former grazing lands."

Soil carbon management and carbon trading

Source: AFFA
"The purpose of this science for decision makers brief is to investigate the role of soil in capturing and storing (or sequestering) carbon emissions."

Soil carbon for carbon sequestration and trading: a review of issues for agriculture and forestry

Source: AFFA
"This review looks at factors that may influence organic soil carbon and issues facing its inclusion in a carbon trading scheme in the future. In order for organic soil carbon to be included in an enterprise-level carbon trading scheme, it must be measurable in an efficient and inexpensive way and at scales small enough to be applicable at the farm level. The review highlights areas where further information is needed."

Littoral rainforest and coastal vine thickets of eastern Australia

source: Dept. of the Environment, Water, Hertitage & the Arts
"This brochure is designed to assist land managers, owners and occupiers to identify, assess and manage the Littoral Rainforest and Coastal Vine Thickets of Eastern Australia, an ecological community listed under the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act). The brochure is a companion document for the listing advice which can be found at the Australian Government’s species profile and threats database (SPRAT)."

Estimates of carbon mitigation potential from agricultural and forestry activities

Source: U.S. Congressional Research Service
"In the United States, the agriculture and forestry sectors account for less than 10% of current estimated total U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions annually. Combined, these sectors are estimated to emit nearly 600 million metric tons CO2 equivalent (MMT CO2-Eq.) each year, most of which is emitted from the agriculture sector. Current estimates of the combined amount of carbon sequestered by the agriculture and forestry sectors is reported at about 800 MMT CO2-Eq. per year, most of which is attributable to carbon stocks and uptake by trees in the forestry sector. Numerous studies estimate the additional GHG mitigation potential of farm and forestry activities. Among these, two commonly cited studies are those conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)."

Australia's forests at a glance

Source: Bureau of Rural Sciences
"Australia has 147.4 million hectares of native forest and 1.97 million hectares of forestry plantations. Together these cover about 19% of the continent. This report contains up-to-date facts and figures about our forests and their management and shows – at a glance – the key features of Australia’s forest industries, including their size, location, contribution to the economy and export markets."

Widespread increase of tree mortality rates in the western United States

Source: US Geologcial Survey
"Tree death rates have more than doubled over the last few decades in old-growth forests of the western United States, and the most probable cause of the worrisome trend is regional warming, according to a U.S. Geological Survey-led (USGS) study published in Science on January 23. The study found that the increase in dying trees has been pervasive. Tree death rates have increased across a wide variety of forest types, at all elevations, in trees of all sizes, and in pines, firs, hemlocks, and other kinds of trees."

Hydrologic effects of a changing forest landscape

Source: National Academies Press
"Of all the outputs of forests, water may be the most important. Streamflow from forests provides two-thirds of the nation's clean water supply. Removing forest cover accelerates the rate that precipitation becomes streamflow; therefore, in some areas, cutting trees causes a temporary increase in the volume of water flowing downstream. This effect has spurred political pressure to cut trees to increase water supply, especially in western states where population is rising. However, cutting trees for water gains is not sustainable: increases in flow rate and volume are typically short-lived, and the practice can ultimately degrade water quality and increase vulnerability to flooding. Forest hydrology, the study of how water flows through forests, can help illuminate the connections between forests and water, but it must advance if it is to deal with today's complexities, including climate change, wildfires, and changing patterns of development and ownership. This book identifies actions that scientists, forest and water managers, and citizens can take to help sustain water resources from forests."

The Eliasch Review: Climate change, financing global forests

Source: UK Office of Climate Change
"The Eliasch Review is an independent report to government, commissioned by the Prime Minister and prepared by Johan Eliasch with the support of the Office of Climate Change. The Review aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of international financing to reduce forest loss and its associated impacts on climate change. It does so with particular reference to the international efforts to achieve a new global climate change agreement in Copenhagen at the end of 2009. The Review focuses on the scale of finance required to produce significant reductions in forest carbon emissions, and the mechanisms that, if designed well, can achieve this effectively to help meet a global climate stabilisation target. It also examines how mechanisms to address forest loss can contribute to poverty reduction, as well as the importance of preserving other ecosystem services such as biodiversity and water services."

Time for a coherent forest policy - finally

Source: Centre for Policy Development
"What can the Commonwealth do to protect Australia’s forests? Australia is sitting pretty with plantations making possible native forest protection for immediate and significant reductions in our net greenhouse gas emissions. But good policy requires proposals to cover plantations in the emissions trading scheme be immediately nipped in the bud, according to this paper."

Climate change: financing global forests (The Eliasch review)

Source: U.K. Office of Climate Change
"Urgent action to tackle the loss of global forests needs to be a central part of any future international deal on climate change. A deal that provides international forest financing could not only reduce carbon emissions significantly, but also benefit developing countries, support poverty reduction and help preserve biodiversity and other forest services. Forestry, as defined by the IPCC, produces around 17 per cent of global emissions, making it the third largest source of greenhouse gas emissions - larger than the entire global transport sector. In the tropics, it is estimated that an area of forest the size of England is cleared every year, and current annual emissions from deforestation are comparable to the total annual CO2 emissions of the US or China."

Old forests, New Management Conference

Program, abstracts and some papers from a conference held in Hobart in February.

Investigation of mangrove dieback Fitzroy River, Rockhampton

Source: QLD EPA
"The dieback of mangroves currently being observed in the Fitzroy River adjacent to
Rockhampton town centre and downstream is the result of a major flood event that occurred in the Fitzroy River in early 2008. This flood event was prolonged and lasted for approximately four (4) weeks. The prolonged flood resulted in the inundation of, and subsequent death or dieback of, the mangroves along the Fitzroy River and associated streams. Many of the mangroves subject to dieback are currently re-shooting and there is considerable seedling re-establishment within the mangrove communities. Dieback of grey mangrove has also occurred in the lower reaches of the Fitzroy River but this is most likely associated with a major flood event in 1991 and not the flood event of early 2008."

Preventing forest fires with tree power

Source: MIT
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have literally tapped into the tiny electrical current carried in trees and created a company, Voltree, to capitalize on it as a power source. People have known about this phenomenon for many years and have tried to explain it by various exotic mechanisms, said Andreas Mershin, a postdoctoral researcher at MIT who is involved in the research. "But the cause of it is a simple pH difference between the tree and the soil," said Chris Love, a senior in chemistry at MIT and Vice President of Voltree. Working with the U.S. Forest Service, Voltree has created cheap sensors that use tree power to monitor temperature and humidity conditions inside forests. The goal is to give forest managers and firefighters better tools to predict and monitor fires."

The implementation, operation and administration of the legislation underpinning Carbon Sink Forests

Source: Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport
"A number of broad issues relating to the impact of taxation incentives for the establishment carbon sink forests were examined during the committee's consideration of this legislation. These included: • the impact on prime agricultural land;
• the impact on rural communities and industries; • enforceability of carbon sequestration property rights over consecutive landowners; • the permanency of new plantings; • the requirement that plantings be contiguous; • incentives for biodiverse planting; • the potential for undesirable taxation outcomes;
• the need for the tax incentives; • Managed Investment Schemes; and • recognition of other forms of carbon stores."

Australia's transition from native forests to plantations: the implications for woodchips, pulpmills, tax breaks and climate change

Source: Agenda, vol.15,no.3 (2008)
"Deforestation and the degradation of native forests account for an estimated 20 per cent of Australia’s annual net greenhouse-gas emissions. Most of the degradation occurs via chip exports, with the plantation sector having captured 80 per cent of wood processing in Australia. Being perfect substitutes for native forest chips, Australia’s maturing hardwood plantations present a major opportunity for mitigating climate change. But this opportunity will not be realised with ‘business as usual’ forest-policy frames and policy information, which are steering Australia to perverse outcomes favouring investment in an inferior sequestration strategy (plantations) and handicapping the economically superior plantation-processing industry. A major review of the Australian forestry industry in the context of climate change is needed."