Forests
-
Sammy Fretwell of The State has published two related stories this week on the growth of very large farms which are replacing forests in South Carolina. In one article it says that “In the past four years, out-of-state agribusinesses have purchased nearly 10,000 acres in the Edisto River basin, chopped down forests and established mega…
-
With the return of drought conditions to parts of the Southeast, the number of wildfires is on the rise, especially in Florida. The fires are particularly bad in the southern part of the Florida peninsula where the drought is growing, but the fires are being seen in other parts of Florida as well as some…
-
The Warnell School of Forestry at UGA published a story about the impacts of the current drought in northern Georgia on pine trees there. Here is an excerpt from the story describing how drought impacts the trees: “Drought stresses and weakens trees, making them more likely to be attacked by bark beetles. Under drought, trees…
-
Here are some detailed global images of vegetation health, including several drought indices, fire danger and soil saturation maps as derived from the Suomi-NPP satellite. In addition to global maps you can view each variable by country. The detail is amazing! You can find out more about them at Climate.gov at https://www.climate.gov/maps-data/dataset/global-vegetation-health-images or go directly to…
-
Growing Georgia published a report by Tim Daly this week discussing the impacts of the recent drought on landscaping plants. In spite of the recent rains, the drought caused a lot of damage to coniferous plants as well as other plants. I know I have a dead pine in my yard this year that I…
-
ScienceAlert.com posted an article this week on a huge crater that has formed in the Siberian permafrost region since the 1960s and is rapidly growing. As it does, it has revealed ancient forests, carcasses of mammoths and ancient horses, and what could be 200,000 years of climate records. The records come in the form of…
-
NASA posted a new photo of fires that are burning around the Southeast. Many of these fires are prescribed burns for people clearing land in preparation for field work. Others are wildfires which have grown due to recent dry conditions. You can read about the latest photo and view it at https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2017/fires-in-southeast-united-states-both-wild-and-prescribed.