Forests
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.
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Atlas Obscura had a fascinating story last year about some centuries-old trees found in the most unexpected place: growing out of cliffs along the Niagara escarpment. Because these trees don’t get very large due to their extreme exposure and difficult growing conditions, no one knew how old the trees were until a Canadian researcher collected tree cores…
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The latest Southern Regional Extension Forestry newsletter has been released, and it provides information on a number of opportunities for forest-related webinars, grants and some new experts that are available to help with forestry issues around the region. There’s also a new snake identification website which is discussed in the newsletter. You can read it…
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The Pine Integrated Network: Education, Mitigation, and Adaptation project, better known as PINEMAP, began in 2012 when Tim Martin, professor of tree physiology at the University of Florida, along with representatives from 11 southeastern land-grant universities and a host of other research cooperatives, proposed a five-year research project to determine how changes to climate could…