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Wooden Worries

-- Adam -- 03/13/2007

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation released its 2007 State of the World's Forests publication this week. One subsection of the report discusses climate change as it relates to forestry.
"There is increasing evidence that forests will be profoundly affected by climate change. The recent outbreak of the mountain pine beetle in British Columbia, for example, appears to be related to historically high temperatures and may become the worst forest catastrophe in Canadian history."
The authors note that currently Kyoto and other climate-minded policies have had "little impact on the forest sector", with few incentives to encourage practices within the industry to mitigate greenhouse gases. A major consequence for forests is the increasing threat of wild fires as warming dries the land and lightening strikes increase. ""Forest fires may increase in severity if the global climate continues to become warmer and more variable."