Air Pollution Global Change And Forests In The New Millennium

The chapters in this book present a snapshot of the state of knowledge of air pollution effects at the beginning of the 21st century. From their different disciplines, a distinguished collection of authors document their understanding of how leaves, trees, and forests respond to air pollutants and climate change. Scenarios of global change and air pollution are described. The authors describe responses of forests to climate variability, tropospheric ozone, rising atmospheric CO2, the combination of CO2 and ozone, and deposition of acidic compounds and heavy metals. The responses to ozone receive particular attention because of increasing concern about its damaging effects and increasing concentrations in rural areas. Scaling issues are addressed - from leaves to trees, from juvenile trees to mature trees, from short-term responses to long-term responses, and from small-scale experiments and observations to large-scale forest ecosystems. This book is one major product of a conference sponsored by the International Union of Forestry Research Organizations, the USDA Forest Service Global Change Northern Stations Program, the Arthur Ross Foundation, NCASI, the Canadian Forest Service, and Michigan Technological University. The conference, held in May 2000 in Houghton, Michigan, USA, was appropriately titled "Air Pollution, Global Change, and Forests in the New Millennium". The Editors, David Karnosky, Kevin Percy, Art Chappelka, Caroline Simpson, and Janet Pikkarainen organized the conference and edited this book.

The chapters in this book present a snapshot of the state of knowledge of air pollution effects at the beginning of the 21st century. From their different disciplines, a distinguished collection of authors document their understanding of how leaves, trees, and forests respond to air pollutants and climate change. Scenarios of global change and air pollution are described. The authors describe responses of forests to climate variability, tropospheric ozone, rising atmospheric CO2, the combination of CO2 and ozone, and deposition of acidic compounds and heavy metals. The responses to ozone receive particular attention because of increasing concern about its damaging effects and increasing concentrations in rural areas. Scaling issues are addressed - from leaves to trees, from juvenile trees to mature trees, from short-term responses to long-term responses, and from small-scale experiments and observations to large-scale forest ecosystems. This book is one major product of a conference sponsored by the International Union of Forestry Research Organizations, the USDA Forest Service Global Change Northern Stations Program, the Arthur Ross Foundation, NCASI, the Canadian Forest Service, and Michigan Technological University. The conference, held in May 2000 in Houghton, Michigan, USA, was appropriately titled "Air Pollution, Global Change, and Forests in the New Millennium". The Editors, David Karnosky, Kevin Percy, Art Chappelka, Caroline Simpson, and Janet Pikkarainen organized the conference and edited this book.--[Source inconnue].

Globalization, population growth, and resource depletion are drawing increased attention to the importance of common resources such as forests, water resources, and fisheries. It is critical that these resources be governed in an equitable and sustainable way. The Commons in the New Millennium presents cutting-edge research in common property theory and provides an overview and progress report on common property research. The book analyzes new problems that owners, managers, policy makers, and analysts face in managing natural commons. It examines recent findings about the physical characteristics of the commons, their complexity and interconnectedness, and the role of social capital. It also provides empirical studies and suggestions for sustainable development. The topics discussed include the role of financial, political, and social capital in deforestation, community efforts to gain political influence in Indonesia, the Maine lobster industry, outcomes of the implementation of individual transferable quotas in New Zealand and Iceland fisheries, and design of multilateral emissions trading for regional air pollution and global warming.

Contemporary societies expect a range of services (including of carbon sequestration) to be supplied from forest ecosystems. Their growing societal importance is clearly reflected in policies. The conceptual framework for the states that people are integral parts of ecosystems and that a dynamic interaction exists between them and other parts of ecosystems. This approach encompasses social, economic and environmental interactions, and the dynamics and cross scale issues that have multiple outcomes. However, forest multifunctionality is a challenge since the combination of multiple ecosystem services may be very different and dependent on a high number of factors. Stakeholder priorities with respect to individual ecosystem services may be variable, as may be a range of stakeholders. Reflexive, participatory and multilevel governance, in a continuous process of its adjustment, needs therefore to be developed to enable forestry decision-makers to consider existing opinions and behavioural patterns of the diverse stakeholders who drive the forestry change and respond to it. In such a retrospective, numerous questions have arisen, among which the integration of carbon sequestration into multifunctional forestry is among priorities. Carbon forestry enables society to buy time for development of low carbon and decarbonisation technologies; while its integration into multifunctional land use offers innovation, employment and new markets, with locally and regionally oriented value chains. This particularly concerns remote areas where forestry could foster socio-economic development and combine it with the enhancement of nature and rural landscape. However, the question: how to multiply synergies and balance trade-offs merits attention. Fostering resilience of forestry systems to climate change necessitates the establishment of an appropriate framework, because, although multipurpose afforestation may result in lower rates of carbon sequestration, it is expected to be more attractive to people as it will provide additional benefits and will promote sustainable development.

This book examines the importance of air pollution for the forests of rapidly industrialising countries and regions. Its geographical coverage includes South and Central America, Africa, and Asia, including Siberia, China and Korea. The problems presented by air pollution are placed within the more general context of sustainable development within these regions and the historical legacy that they are attempting to deal with. Attention is drawn to the very serious problems associated with poor air quality in cities such as Mexico City and Chongqing, China. Air pollution in these areas is amongst the worst in the world. Several chapters examine the importance of forest fires as a source of air pollution, with particular reference being made to the Southeast Asian fires in recent years. The available information about the effects of this pollution on the surrounding forests is reviewed, and recommendations are made for a better understanding of the impacts. A final chapter reviews the recent developments in air pollution control policies in the different regions covered by the book.

There are significant pressures from climate change and air pollution that forests currently face. This book aims to increase understanding of the state and potential of forest ecosystems to mitigate and adapt to climate change in a polluted environment. It reconciles process-oriented research, long-term monitoring and applied modeling through comprehensive forest ecosystem research. Furthermore, it introduces "forest super sites for research for integrating soil, plant and atmospheric sciences and monitoring. It also provides mechanistic and policy-oriented modeling with scientifically sound risk indications regarding atmospheric changes and ecosystem services. Identifies current knowledge gaps and emerging research needs Highlights novel methodologies and integrated research concepts Assesses ecological meaning of investigations and prioritizing research need

The adverse consequences of pollution impact on terrestrial ecosystems have been under careful investigation since the beginning of the twentieth century. Several thousand case studies have documented the biotic effects occurring in contaminated areas. However, after more than a century of research, ecologists are still far from understanding the effects of pollution on biota. Only a few generalisations have been made on the basis of extensive monitoring programs and numerous expe- ments with industrial contaminants. The need to reveal general patterns in the responses of terrestrial biota to ind- trial pollution and to identify the sources of variation in these responses became obvious more than a decade ago. At about that time, our team initiated a quanti- tive research synthesis of the biotic effects caused by industrial pollution, based on 1 a meta-analysis of published data. All meta-analyses conducted so far (covering diversity and abundance of soil microfungi, diversity of vascular plants, diversity and abundance of terrestrial arthropods, and plant growth and reproduction) c- sistently showed high heterogeneity in the responses of terrestrial biota to industrial pollution. At the same time, they demonstrated an unexpected shortage of infor- tion suitable for meta-analyses, as well as a considerable influence of methodology of primary studies on the outcome of the research syntheses. To overcome the identified problems, we designed a comparative study, the results of which are reported in this book.