[MCN] Trend: US losing forests to expanding urban areas

[Lance Olsen]

USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station
Educating Future Engineers about Cities and Trees

As the U.S. loses more of its forests and natural 
resources to the expansion of urban areas, it is 
important to provide information about the 
benefits of trees, forests, and natural areas to 
city planners and the engineers who design our 
cities. Quantifying these environmental services 
can help these professionals better understand 
their value in urban areas.
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/compass/2016/03/16/educating-future-engineers-about-cities-and-trees/


-- 
---------------------------  Outlook for "world's 
most exceptional ecoregions" 
---------------------

"The current rate of warming due to increases in 
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is very likely 
unprecedented over the last 10,000 y.   .... 
Extensive evidence has linked major changes in 
biological systems to 20th century warming. The 
"Global 200" comprises 238 ecoregions of 
exceptional biodiversity. We assess the 
likelihood that, by 2070, these iconic ecoregions 
will regularly experience monthly climatic 
conditions that were extreme in 1961-1990. .... 
The entire range of 89 ecoregions will experience 
extreme monthly temperatures with a local warming 
of <2 °C. Tropical and subtropical ecoregions, 
and mangroves, face extreme conditions earliest, 
some with <1 °C warming.   ....  These results 
suggest many Global 200 ecoregions may be under 
substantial climatic stress by 2100."

Linda J. Beaumont, Andrew Pitman, Sarah Perkins, 
Niklaus E. Zimmermann, Nigel G. Yoccoz, and 
Wilfried Thuiller.  Impacts of climate change on 
the world's most exceptional ecoregions. 
PNAS vol. 108 no. 6,  2306-2311, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1007217108
http://www.pnas.org/content/108/6/2306.abstract?sid=b2edf147-77c8-428a-bcc5-2d06313ef9ae

This article contains supporting information online at
www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1007217108/-/DCSupplemental
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"Controlled capitalism Š had been a truly 
colossal success. From the end of the Second 
World War until the mid-1970s the American and 
European economies were uplifted by many years of 
rapid growth, bringing affluence from the 
relatively few to almost all."

"In the late 1970s the tendency to control capitalism was abruptly reversed."

" Š the most striking feature of our 
turbo-capitalist times, the hollowing-out of 
democratic governance over the economy."


Edward Luttwak, Turbo-Capitalism.
1998 in Great Britain by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
1999 in the U.S. by Harper Collins.
ISBN  0-06-019330-1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Also when faced with ecological stress so that 
goods of greatest and immediate utility become 
scarce for a prolonged period, people will change 
the decision strategies they employ with close 
kinsmen. The shift is from concern with long term 
maximization of such payoffs as children, lineage 
solidarity, enhanced prestige, and the like, to 
concern for immediate survival. People now seek 
to maximize goods, especially foodstuffs, of the 
most immediate utility. With return to relative 
affluence, people again become concerned with 
long term maximization."

Chapter Three: "Adaption and Survival in So: A 
Diachronic Study of Deprivation," by Charles D. 
Laughlin, in Extinction and Survival in Human 
Populations. Charles D. Laughlin and Ivan A. 
Brady, eds.  Columbia University Press. 1978
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