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Global Reforestation: How Likely Is It?
By The Editors Forests are plant communities dominated by trees and, because of their nature, rely on dynamic associations of living organisms that undergo constant change – deforestation may be easily followed by reforestation, either natural or man-driven. How likely is it that global reforestation will occur? According to a recently published study entitled “Outlook on a worldwide forest transition“, it is not likely. Results of the study indicate that — unless we substantially boost agricultural production or we consume less food — the forest cover of the planet will continue to decline over the next two centuries until it stabilizes at 22% of global land cover and 1.4% of wild pasture. In…
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Central Asia Large Mammals: Victims of (Cashmere) Fashion
By Roberta Attanasio One thing here affects something else there. This is the principle at the basis of The Global Fool’s mission — To raise awareness of environmental problems and their global nature. Last month, a team of international researchers published the results of a study entitled “Globalization of the Cashmere Market and the Decline of Large Mammals in Central Asia”. As the title suggests, the results of the study show a disturbing link between the global cashmere trade and declining native wildlife species in India, Mongolia and China’s Tibetan plateau. In other words, there is a link between Western world fashion (one thing here) and native wild animals in Central Asia…
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Large Animal Extinctions and Soil Fertility
By The Editors During the final millennia of the Pleistocene Epoch, roughly 100 genera of megafauna became extinct worldwide. In other words, between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago, the large majority of animals weighing more than 100 pounds died out Examples of these extinct animals are mammoths, the saber-toothed tigers, Diprotodon (an Australian marsupial the size of a hippopotamus) and Coelodonta (a woolly rhinoceros found in Europe). Hotly debated theories have been proposed to explain why megafauna died out. These are the overill (died because of diseases), overchill (died because of colder temperature caused by climate change), and overkill (died because of human hunting) theories. Now, results from a new…
