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national oceanic and atmospheric administration

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How does climate change affect coral reefs?

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Natural disasters such as hurricanes, tropical storms, tsunamis, and landslides have the potential to be the source of a tremendous amount of marine debris. High winds, heavy rain, storm surge, and flooding associated with these disasters can pull large structures, household products, and outdoor items into surrounding waters.

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A new study led by a Stanford researcher shows that more than 80 percent of the new farmland created in the tropics between 1980 and 2000 came from felling forests, which sends carbon into the atmosphere and drives global warming. But the research team also noted that big agribusiness has largely replaced small farmers in doing most of the tree cutting in Brazil and Indonesia, which may make it easier to rein in the trend.

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Global agricultural expansion cut a wide swath through tropical forests during the 1980s and 1990s. More than half a million square miles of new farmland - an area roughly the size of Alaska - was created in the developing world between 1980 and 2000, of which over 80 percent was carved out of tropical forests, according to Stanford researcher Holly Gibbs.

"This has huge implications for global warming, if we continue to expand our farmland into tropical forests at that rate," said Gibbs, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Environmental Earth System Science, who led the study.

Gibbs and colleagues at several other universities analyzed Landsat satellite data and images from the United Nations to reach their conclusions. Theirs is the first study to map and quantify what types of land have been replaced by the immense area of new farmland developed across the tropical forest belt during the 1980s and 1990s.

While this huge increase was happening within the tropics, agricultural land in the non-tropical countries actually decreased in area.

The study was published this week in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that to keep pace with increasing demand, global agricultural production will have to keep increasing, possibly even doubling by 2050. That would likely lead to millions of additional acres of tropical forest being felled over the next 40 years.

Direct impact on carbon released into atmosphere

"Every million acres of forest that is cut releases the same amount of carbon into the atmosphere as 40 million cars do in a year," Gibbs said.

Most of the carbon released comes from burning the forests, but even if the trees are simply cast aside, the bulk of the carbon from the plants makes its way into the atmosphere during decomposition, she said.

Gibbs and her colleagues found that about 55 percent of the tropical forests that had been cut between 1980 and 2000 were intact forests and another 28 percent were forests that had experienced some degradation, such as some small-scale farming, logging or gathering of wood and brush for cooking or heating fuel.

"The tropical forests store more than 340 billion tons of carbon, which is 40 times the total current worldwide annual fossil fuel emissions," Gibbs said. "If we continue cutting down these forests, there is a huge potential to further contribute to climate change."

The increasing demand for agricultural production stems in part from the ever-growing number of people on the planet, who all want to eat. Additionally, members of the growing middle class in emerging economies such as China and India are showing interest in eating more meat, which further intensifies demand. And incentives to grow crops for biofuel production have increased.

But Gibbs and her colleagues also observed some encouraging signs. The patterns of change in the locations they analyzed made it clear that during the 1990s, less of the deforestation was done by small family farms than was the case in the 1980s and more was done by large, corporate-run farms. Big agribusiness tends to be more responsive to global economic signals as well as pressure campaigns from advocacy organizations and consumer groups than individual small farmers.

In Brazil, where a pattern had developed of expanding soy production by direct forest clearing and by pushing cattle ranching off pastureland and into forested areas, a campaign by Greenpeace and others resulted in agreements by key companies to rein in their expansion. Instead, they worked to increase production on land already in agricultural use.

'Seeing positive changes'

"These farmers effectively increased the yield of soy on existing lands and they have also increased the head of cattle per acre by a factor of five or six," Gibbs said. "It is exciting that we are starting to see how responsive industry can be to consumer demands. We really are seeing positive changes in this area."

Along with wiser use of land already cleared, Gibbs said, improvements in technology and advances in yield intensification also could slow the expansion of farming into the forests.

Other studies that analyzed land use changes between 2000 and 2007 have shown that the pace of cutting down the tropical forests has begun to slow in some regions.

But as long as the human population on the planet continues to grow, the pressure to put food on the table, feed in the barnyard and fuel in the gas tank will continue to grow, too.

"It is critical that we focus our efforts on reducing rates of deforestation while at the same time restoring degraded lands and improving land management across the tropics," Gibbs said. "The good news is that pressure from consumer groups and nongovernmental organizations combined with international climate agreements could provide a real opportunity to shift the tide in favor of forest conservation rather than farmland expansion."

In addition to her position at the Department of Environmental Earth System Science, Gibbs is affiliated with Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment. Jon Foley, a professor of ecology, evolution and behavior, and director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, was Gibbs' PhD adviser when the research was begun. He is a coauthor of the paper.

Initial funding for the project was provided by NASA. Gibbs is currently funded by a David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellowship.

Media Contact

Dan Stober, Stanford News Service: (650) 721-6965, dstober@stanford.edu

Louis Bergeron, Stanford News Service: (650) 725-1944, louisb3@stanford.edu

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Most new farmland comes from cutting tropical forest, says Stanford researcher

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A new study led by a Stanford researcher shows that more than 80 percent of the new farmland created in the tropics between 1980 and 2000 came from felling forests, which sends carbon into the atmosphere and drives global warming.

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Herbert Hoover - U.S. Presidents - HISTORY.com

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Find out more about the history of Herbert Hoover, including videos, interesting articles, pictures, historical features and more. Get all the facts on HISTORY.com

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In the Roaring Twenties, a surging economy created an era of mass consumerism, as Jazz-Age flappers flouted Prohibition laws and the Harlem Renaissance redefined arts and culture.

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Forests cover 31% of the land area on our planet. They help people thrive and survive by, for example, purifying water and air and providing people with jobs; some 13.2 million people across the world have a job in the forest sector and another 41 million have a job that is related to the sector. Many animals also rely on forests. Eighty percent of the world's land-based species, such as elephants and rhinos, live in forests. Forests also play a critical role in mitigating climate change because they act as a carbon sink-soaking up carbon dioxide that would otherwise be free in the atmosphere and contribute to ongoing changes in climate patterns.

But forests around the world are under threat, jeopardizing these benefits. The threats manifest themselves in the form of deforestation and forest degradation. The main cause of deforestation is agriculture (poorly planned infrastructure is emerging as a big threat too) and the main cause of forest degradation is illegal logging. We're losing 18.7 million acres of forests annually, equivalent to 27 soccer fields every minute.

Deforestation is a particular concern in tropical rain forests because these forests are home to much of the world's biodiversity. For example, in the Amazon around 17% of the forest has been lost in the last 50 years, mostly due to forest conversion for cattle ranching. Deforestation in this region is particularly rampant near more populated areas, roads and rivers, but even remote areas have been encroached upon when valuable mahogany, gold, and oil are discovered.

WWF has been working to protect forests for more than 50 years. WWF works with governments, companies, communities and other stakeholders to promote certification for responsible forest management practices, combat illegal logging, reform trade policies, protect forested areas, and more.

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Deforestation and Forest Degradation | Threats | WWF

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Forests cover 31% of the land area on our planet. They help people thrive and survive by, for example, purifying water and air and providing people with jobs; some 13.2 million people across the world have a job in the forest sector and another 41 million have a job that is related to the sector.

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The Industrial Revolution began in the 18th century, when agricultural societies became more industrialized and urban. The transcontinental railroad, the cotton gin, electricity and other inventions permanently changed society.

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Introduction

The Great Depression of the 1930s was a global event that derived in part from events in the United States and U.S. financial policies. As it lingered through the decade, it influenced U.S. foreign policies in such a way that the United States Government became even more isolationist.

The origins of the Great Depression were complicated and have been much debated among scholars. The initial factor was the First World War, which upset international balances of power and caused a dramatic shock to the global financial system. The gold standard, which had long served as the basis for national currencies and their exchange rates, had to be temporarily suspended in order to recover from the costs of the Great War, but the United States, European nations, and Japan put forth great effort to reestablish it by the end of the decade. However, this introduced inflexibility into domestic and international financial markets, which meant that they were less able to deal with additional shocks when they came in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The U.S. stock market crash of 1929, an economic downturn in Germany, and financial difficulties in France and Great Britain all coincided to cause a global financial crisis. Dedication to the gold standard in each of these nations and Japan, which only managed to return to it in 1930, only made the problem worse and hastened the slide into what is now known as the Great Depression.

The International Depression

The key factor in turning national economic difficulties into worldwide Depression seems to have been a lack of international coordination as most governments and financial institutions turned inwards. Great Britain, which had long underwritten the global financial system and had led the return to the gold standard, was unable to play its former role and became the first to drop off the standard in 1931. The United States, preoccupied with its own economic difficulties, did not step in to replace Great Britain as the creditor of last resort and dropped off the gold standard in 1933. At the London Economic Conference in 1933, leaders of the world's main economies met to resolve the economic crisis, but failed to reach any major collective agreements. As a result, the Depression dragged on through the rest of the 1930s.

Isolationism

The Depression caused the United States to retreat further into its post-World War I isolationism. A series of international incidents occurred during the 1930s-the Japanese seizure of northeast China in 1931, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, and German expansionism in Central and Eastern Europe-but the United States did not take any major action in response or opposition. When these and other incidents occurred, the United States Government issued statements of disapproval but took limited action beyond that. On a more positive note, isolationism manifested in Latin America in the form of the Good Neighbor Policy of Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt, under which the United States reduced its military presence in the region and improved relations between itself and its neighbors to the south. Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt were to an extent constrained by public opinion, which demanded that primary attention be given to domestic problems. The Hoover and Roosevelt Administrations concentrated upon rebuilding the U.S. economy and dealing with widespread unemployment and social dislocation at home and as a result international affairs took a back seat.

Rise of Fascism

As the United States turned inwards to deal with the lingering effects of the Depression, militaristic regimes came to power in Germany, Italy, and Japan promising economic relief and national expansion. While they achieved some measure of success on the economic front, these regimes began to push their territorial ambitions and received minimal opposition from the rest of the world. The lack of a strong U.S. response to Japan's invasion of China in 1937 and Germany's annexation of Czechoslovakia in 1938 encouraged the Japanese and German governments to enlarge their military campaigns. At the time, most U.S. leaders believed their decision to avoid a more active role was justified because of the domestic context, but some began to realize that U.S. inaction allowed the conflict to grow. After the fall of France in June 1940, the United States increasingly committed itself to the fight against fascism. Ironically, it was World War II, which had arisen in part out of the Great Depression, that finally pulled the United States out of its decade-long economic crisis.

The Great Depression caused the United States Government to pull back from major international involvement during the 1930s, but in the long run it contributed to the emergence of the United States as a world leader thereafter. The perception that the turn inwards had in some part contributed to perpetuating the horrors of World War II caused U.S. foreign policy makers to play a major role in world affairs after the war in order to avert similar disasters.

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Milestones: 1921-1936 - Office of the Historian