Human Activity Is Making Forests Shorter and Younger, Study Finds

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Human Activity Is Making Forests Shorter and Younger, Study Finds
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Olivia Rosane
May. 29, 2020 09:04AM EST Climate
Green living spruce and gray dead spruce in the Harz mountain region on May 7, 2020 near Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany. Jens Schlueter / Getty Images
More than a third of the world's old growth forests died between 1900 and 2015, a new study has found.
In the study, published in Science Friday, nearly two dozen scientists used satellite data combined with more than 160 previous studies to show that deforestation and the climate crisis are killing off older, taller trees and leaving forests younger and shorter, National Geographic explained . And the trend is likely to continue.
"We will see fewer forests," University of Wisconsin forest ecologist and study coauthor Monica Turner told National Geographic. "There will be areas where there are forests now where there won't be in the future."
— PNNL (@PNNLab) May 28, 2020
The study was led by Nate McDowell of the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), who explained why this change was such a big deal.
"A future planet with fewer large, old forests will be very different than what we have grown accustomed to," he said in a PNNL press release . "Older forests often host much higher biodiversity than young forests and they store more carbon than young forests."
Old growth tree loss is being driven by a number of factors, many of them linked to the climate crisis in some way. Warmer temperatures limit photosynthesis, both stunting and killing trees. Increased droughts both kill trees directly and lead to attacks by insect pests. Wildfires and infestations by insects, fungi and choking vines are all on the rise. Humans have also killed old growth trees more directly by chopping them down.
These factors combine to alter forest makeup, PNNL explained:
Known as deforestation, the phenomenon has led to an imbalance of three important characteristics of a diverse and thriving forest: (1) recruitment, which is the addition of new seedlings to a community; (2) growth, the net increase in biomass or carbon; and (3) mortality, the death of forest trees.
"Mortality is rising in most areas, while recruitment and growth are variable over time, leading to a net decline in the stature of forests," McDowell said.
While previous scientists had predicted increased carbon dioxide would lead to more tree growth, McDowell's team found this was only the case in younger forests with lots of nutrients and water. Otherwise, he explained to National Geographic, hotter temperatures reduce moisture, causing trees to shed leaves and close pores to retain water, which makes it harder for them to absorb carbon dioxide.
"[It's like] going to an all-you-can-eat buffet with duct tape over their mouths," he said.
Tree loss is truly a worldwide problem. In the Western U.S., Canada and Europe, where data is most abundant, the rate of tree death has doubled in the last four decades, and older trees have disproportionately been affected. Worldwide, humans have cut down 12 percent of the world's forests since 1900, and the proportion of the world's forests that are more than 140 years old has declined from 89 to 66 percent during that time, The Guardian reported .
The study spells bad news for trees' ability to help combat the climate crisis.
"When old trees die, they decompose and stop sucking up CO2 and release more of it to the atmosphere," McDowell told National Geographic. "It's like a thermostat gone bad. Warming begets tree loss, then tree loss begets more warming."
However, professor Simon Lewis of University College London, who was not involved in the study, pointed out that while forests are getting younger on average, some crucial old growth forests are actually increasing their area.
"The world's intact tropical and boreal forests are both globally important as carbon sinks, and are getting larger," he told The Guardian. "The world's forests currently slow climate change, and while future mortality trends could reverse this, the ideas in the new report don't change what the world needs to do: stabilise the climate by quickly driving fossil fuel emissions to zero and protect the world's forests."
From Your Site Articles
A former Federal Reserve board of governors member on Thursday called on her former colleagues to stop using Covid-19 relief funds to bail out the "dying" fossil fuel industry. Douglas Sacha / Getty Images
By Eoin Higgins
A former Federal Reserve board of governors member on Thursday called on her former colleagues to stop using Covid-19 relief funds to bail out the "dying" fossil fuel industry, calling the decision a threat to the planet's climate and a misguided use of taxpayer money.
"These concessions to the fossil fuel industry are a risky investment in the past," Sarah Bloom Raskin wrote in a New York Times op-ed. "The Fed is ignoring clear warning signs about the economic repercussions of the impending climate crisis by taking action that will lead to increases in greenhouse gas emissions at a time when even in the short term, fossil fuels are a terrible investment."
 
Raskin's opinion piece sparked praise from climate campaigners like 350.org co-founder Jamie Henn.
"This should cause some waves," Henn tweeted .
Henn on Thursday penned an opinion piece for Common Dreams arguing that Mike Sommers, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute (API), is spewing lies to the public when he claims the industry doesn't want—and hasn't actively pushed for—a bailout from the Fed.
As Henn wrote:
The truth is that despite Sommer's best efforts to spin a fairytale about oil companies tightening their belts and lifting themselves up by their bootstraps, corporate socialism is exactly what API wants. In fact, the fossil fuel industry, and the American Petroleum Institute in particular, have been at the forefront of corporate efforts to profit off the coronavirus pandemic and government relief efforts.
Climate advocacy group Friends of the Earth program manager Lukas Ross, in a statement Wednesday, also rejected Sommers' protestations.
"Oil lobbyists are spewing blatant lies, and we have the receipts," said Ross. "Big Oil has already nabbed $1.9 billion in giveaways thanks to corporate tax cuts from the last stimulus."
"If polluters want to deny the existence of the ongoing bailout," Ross added, "Congress should swiftly repeal these blatant corporate tax giveaways and make fossil fuels ineligible for stimulus lending programs."
 
The bailout is presenting taxpayers with a burden, Raskin wrote, citing the industry's debt and unsustainable business model.
"For taxpayers, shouldering these liabilities is a bad deal," wrote Raskin. "Buying this bad debt is not likely to support the creation of jobs or even ensure that existing jobs survive."
Friends of the Earth agreed .
"Trump's administration has been exploiting this pandemic to bailout Big Oil companies that have been struggling long before coronavirus," the group tweeted.
The pandemic, wrote Raskin, "provides an unexpected opportunity to build an economy that is stronger in the long term."
"The decisions that the Fed makes today will go a long way to determining whether tomorrow's economy is one that remains susceptible to more chaos and vulnerability or builds economic security and resilience," she wrote.
Reposted with permission from Common Dreams .
From Your Site Articles
This summer, the global emergence of the novel coronavirus and COVID-19 is presenting a whole new set of challenges for diagnosing Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses. fhm / Getty Images
By Jory Brinkerhoff
Summer is field season for ecologists like me , a time when my colleagues, students and I go out into fields and woods in search of ticks to study the patterns and processes that allow disease-causing microbes – primarily bacteria and viruses – to spread among wildlife and humans.
That field work means we're also at risk of getting the very diseases we study. I always remind my crew members to pay close attention to their health. If they get a fever or any other signs of sickness, they should seek medical treatment immediately and tell their doctor that they may have been exposed to ticks.
When summer flu-like illnesses develop in anyone who spends time outdoors in areas where ticks are common, tick-transmitted diseases like Lyme disease should be considered a likely culprit.
This summer, however, the global emergence of the novel coronavirus and COVID-19 is presenting a whole new set of challenges for diagnosing Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses.
Lyme disease shares a number of symptoms with COVID-19, including fever, achiness and chills. Anyone who mistakes Lyme disease for COVID-19 could unknowingly delay necessary medical treatment, and that can lead to severe, potentially debilitating symptoms.
Delaying Medical Treatment Can Be Dangerous
As we move from spring into summer, and into the peak period of tick activity in much of the Northern Hemisphere, time spent outdoors will increase, as will risk of tick-transmitted disease.
In some cases, there are key symptoms of a tick-transmitted disease that can help with diagnosis. For example, early Lyme disease, which is caused by the bite of an infected black-legged tick, sometimes called the deer tick, is commonly associated with an expanding "bull's-eye rash." Seventy percent to 80% of patients have this symptom .
However, other symptoms of Lyme disease – fever, head and body aches and fatigue – are less distinctive and can be easily confused with other illnesses, including COVID-19. This can make it more difficult to diagnose a patient who did not notice a rash or was unaware that they ever had a tick bite. As a result, Lyme disease cases can be misdiagnosed . Nationally, Lyme disease may be undercounted to the point that only one in 10 cases is reported to the CDC .
Business
A Tyson plant in Wallula, Washington that has also seen a coronavirus outbreak. David Ryder / Getty Images
A Tyson Foods pork plant in Storm Lake, Iowa announced it would close Thursday after more than 20 percent of its workforce tested positive for the new coronavirus .
The closure comes about a month after President Donald Trump issued an executive order for meat processing plants to stay open despite virus outbreaks at several slaughterhouses. Those outbreaks led to the closure of around 20 plants in April, Reuters reported .
Tyson Foods announced the closure late Thursday, hours after the Iowa Department of Public Health (IDPH) had confirmed 555 coronavirus cases at the plant out of a workforce of 2,517, the Des Moines Register reported .
"I honestly feel like the company has failed its employees," Storm Lake League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa Vice President Mayra Lopez told the Des Moines Register. "With 555 cases confirmed, that seems pretty steep."
Lopez, who has friends and family among the plant's many minority workers, said that she had heard of employees waiting up to a week for coronavirus test results.
"By the time they get the results, it could be too late and they've passed it on to someone else," she said.
Tyson Foods said that the closure was due to a delay in testing results and the absence of employees due to quarantine. It said it would stop slaughtering and finish all processing over the next two days.
"Additional deep cleaning and sanitizing of the entire facility will be conducted before resuming operations later next week," the company said in a press release reported by the Des Moines Register.
The incident has added to concerns about employee safety in meatpacking plants forced to remain open despite the fact that crowded working conditions make social distancing difficult. Tyson said it implemented wide scale testing at the Storm Lake plant and required employees to wear masks, but the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) said that meat companies and the Trump administration could do more to protect workers, Reuters reported. More than 3,000 U.S. meatpacking workers have tested positive for COVID-19 and 44 have died, the union said.
"Too many workers are being sent back into meatpacking plants without adequate protections in place, reigniting more outbreaks in the plants and our communities," Nick Nemec, a South Dakota farmer who is part of an advocacy group that works with UFCW, told Reuters.
Previously, coronavirus outbreaks had forced Tyson Foods to shutter plants in Waterloo, Columbus Junction, and Perry, Iowa, as well as in Dakota City, Nebraska; Logansport, Indiana; and Pasco, Washington, according to the Des Moines Register. However, most of those plants have since reopened, The Hill reported .
In April, Tyson Chairman John Tyson warned that "the food supply chain is breaking." The warning preceded Trump's executive order by two days.
However, a recent Food and Water Watch report has cast doubt on industry claims of shortages. It found that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that cold storage of beef, pork, chicken and turkey was up 2.1 percent in April 2020 compared with April 2019. Further, meat exports have been on the rise in May.
At the same time, plants have persisted in switching to the New Swine Inspection System, which allows fewer inspectors and faster slaughter speeds. Plants that have switched to this system have seen increased coronavirus cases. One such plant in Guymon, Oklahoma reported 440 cases, the most in the state.
"The USDA itself is showing that industry claims of impending food shortages are hogwash — meat exports are actually increasing and cold storage stockpiles of meat are growing. Meanwhile, the numbers of workers in deregulated plants are proving for us the importance of meat slaughter line speed caps and federal meat inspection," senior government affairs representative for Food & Water Action Tony Corbo said in a statement. "USDA should take a long, hard look in the mirror and reverse course immediately by forcing industry to cap line speeds, follow federal inspection guidelines, mandate worker safety protocols, and keep plants closed as long as necessary to prevent the spread of COVID-19."
From Your Site Articles
Politics
Brian Sims ranted in a Facebook Live video that went viral about the hypocrisy of Republican lawmakers who are pushing to reopen the state even though one of their members had a positive COVID-19 test. Brian Sims / Facebook
Brian Sims, a Democratic representative in the Pennsylvania legislature, ranted in a Facebook Live video that went viral about the hypocrisy of Republican lawmakers who are pushing to reopen the state even though one of their members had a positive COVID-19 test.
Sims, the first openly gay person elected to the Pennsylvania legislature, raged against the callousness of Republican members of the state House who control the legislature and demanded in-person committee meetings in Harrisburg to argue that businesses should reopen even though they knew they had been exposed to the virus.
Sims notes that the Republicans did not let the Democrats know that they had been exposed to the virus, arguing that such a revelation would hurt their argument to reopen the state.
The issue at hand is that Republicans have been arguing to reopen businesses in Pennsylvania and reopen the state legislature while knowing that Republican representative Andrew Lewis had tested positive for COVID-19. Lewis posted a Facebook Live video as well, saying that he did not share his diagnosis because he wanted to protect his family's privacy and the people around him.
"Out of respect for my family, and those who I may have exposed, I chose to keep my positive case private," Lewis said in a statement, as NBC News reported.
Lewis said he tested positive on May 20 and quickly informed health officials and the people he was in contact with when he was last at the capital on May 14.
That did not sit well with Sims, who said he donated a kidney recently to one of his neighbors who was suffering renal failure.
"I didn't donate my kidney to save someone else's life so I could die at the hands of Republicans who are being callous liars," Sims said in his 12-minute tirade.
He was particularly stung that the Republicans had kept the revelation of the diagnosis to only their members.
"Every single day of this crisis this State Government Committee in Pennsylvania has met so that their members could line up one after one after one and explain that it was safe to go back to work," said Sims. "During that time period they were testing positive. They were notifying one another.
"And they didn't notify us. I never ever, ever knew that the Republican leadership of this state would put so many of us at risk for partisanship to cover up a lie. And that lie is that we're all safe from COVID."
As NBC News reported, the state house Democratic Caucus accused Lewis and some of the Republican colleagues who knew about his status of keeping colleagues in the dark.
"While we are pleased to learn that this House member seems to have recovered, it is simply unacceptable that some House Republicans knew about this for more than a week and sat on that knowledge," Democratic Leader Frank Dermody of Allegheny said in a statement Wednesday night.
Sims, on the other hand, believes their actions are worthy of a criminal investigation.
"Any member of leadership that has known what's been going on, any member of Republican leadership that knew that members were testing positive, that other members were being quarantined, and did not tell those of us that were exposed to those members needs to be investigated by the attorney general and I think that they needs to be prosecutions," he said.
He also noted the callousness of the secrecy, considering there are members in the House who have immune-compromised children at home.
"I'm in a building right now surrounded by members who can't go see their kids, that are having to call their husbands, having to call their wives, saying 'honey, I might have exposed you and everyone I love in this world because one of my colleagues tested positive but he was protecting his family and not protecting mine. And Republican leadership protected him,'" said Sims.
"How dare you put our lives at risk, Sims added. "How dare you put our families at risk and pretend it was about looking out for your own."
From Your Site Articles
Politics
Wolf pups with their mother at their den site. Design Pics / Getty Images
In another reversal of Obama-era regulations, the Trump administration is having the National Park Service rescind a 2015 order that protected bears and wolves within protected lands.
The new rule, remarkable in its cruelty, will allow hunters to shoot bears, wolves, along with their cubs and pups while the animals are in their dens in the popular Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. It also puts ends a ban on some nefarious practices like luring bears with doughnuts, according to The Guardian .
Jesse Prentice-Dunn, policy director for the Center for Western Priorities, told The Guardian that the rule change is "amazingly cruel" and said it was "just the latest in a string of efforts to reduce protections for America's wildlife at the behest of oil companies and trophy hunters."
The National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued separate statements that their actions are designed to align federal and state law, according to the Anchorage Daily News . The National Park Service manages 10 preserves in the state, including Denali National Park and Preserve. The Kenai National Wildlife Refuge lies west of the park.
NPS Alaska spokesperson Pete Christian told Alaska Public Media that although practices like killing bears and wolves in dens go against the Park Service's mission, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which created or expanded many of Alaska's national preserves, grants the state management authority.
"It supercedes, to some extent, the NPS Organic Act and some of our regular management policies, and so the parks up here were designed to have preserve units in them which allow for hunting and trapping as per state law," Christian said.
The Park Service decision to defer to the state is the latest move in a legal conflict around who has ultimate authority over the protected lands. The conflict dates back to 2015, when the Obama administration initially banned certain state-permitted predator harvests on Alaska's preserve lands, as Alaska Public Media reported.
While the number of hunters that will actually plow ahead into the national preserve to hunt bears and wolves in their dens is probably quite small, the spirit of the practice is extreme and inconsistent with the values of the national preserve, according to Pat Lavin with the Defenders of Wildlife in Anchorage who spoke to Alaska Public Media .
"The Trump administration has shockingly reached a new low in its treatment of wildlife," Defenders of Wildlife President Jamie Rappaport Clark said, as the CBC reported. "Allowing the killing of bear cubs and wolf pups in their dens is barbaric and inhumane."
The new rule also allows hunters to shoot caribou from traveling motorboats and to kill swimming caribou, according to the CBC .
As The Guardian noted, the move is part and parcel with a pattern from Trump's Department of the Interior, which has consistently sought to expand access to public lands to hunters and fossil fuel companies. Last month, it proposed expanding public hunting and fishing access by more than 2.3 million acres on 97 national wildlife refuges and nine national fish hatcheries.
From Your Site Articles
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says this is a historic step for the group. FABRICE COFFRINI / AFP / Getty Images
By Linda Lacina
World Health Organization officials today announced the launch of the WHO Foundation, a legally separate body that will help expand the agency's donor base and allow it to take donations from the general public.
The foundation will accept funding from non-traditional sources, including individual major donors, corporate partners and the general public. Until now the WHO has been one of the few international organizations which has not traditionally received donations from the general public.
"This is a historic step," said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General.
 
The group's funding has gained unprecedented scrutiny in recent weeks after US President Trump has paused funding to the WHO.
While the group has a relatively modest budget for its scope ($ 2.3 billion , similar to a mid-sized hospital in the developed world, as explained last week ), flexible funding sources have been needed for some time, said the Director-General.
The agency's funding comprises contributions from member states, which are flexible, and voluntary contributions earmarked for fixed purposes. Whereas 40 years ago, 80% of the funding was flexible and could be used at the organization's discretion, now that share has shrunk to 20%, the Director-General said recently .
"In effect, that means WHO has little discretion over the way it spends its funds, almost 80% of its funds," he said at today's briefing. "In order to improve flexibility, we need to have additional resources and un-earmarked resources."
Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation
The foundation has been in development since February 2018 , said the Director-General, and was not created in response to the recent US funding pause. The idea surfaced through a regular 'Open Hour" session where WHO staff are encouraged to come to the Director-General and "generate crazy ideas" to transform the organization.
A COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund, launched this spring, helped serve as a proof of concept for the foundation. The fund, created in response to the coronavirus crisis, has raised $214 million USD from more than 400,000 individuals and companies in just two and a half months.
The Response Fund will continue to assist the coronavirus effort, buying lab diagnostics, personal protective equipment, and funding research and development. The WHO Foundation, meanwhile, will have a broader mission, funding all elements of WHO's public health work including: mental health, noncommunicable diseases, emergency preparedness, and health system strengthening.
"The foundation will enhance and complement the global health's ecosystem by providing agility flexibility in receiving contributions and grant making, accelerating WHO-led evidence-based interventions, and focusing on high impact intervention and partnerships," explained Professor Thomas Zeltner, a Swiss physician who serves as chair of the board of the WHO Foundation.
A WHO representative will attend foundation board meetings and report to member states on its interaction with the foundation and funds received from it.
The foundation will ultimately help the WHO focus efforts on promoting good health, rather than just grappling with disease. Additional funding can help the agency invest in some of its least funded areas such as diet or air quality.
"Our focus should not be in managing disease," said the Director-General, "but in preventing it from happening and in helping people to lead a healthy life."
Because of social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic, in-person sessions are less possible. Merlas / Getty Images
By Nicholas Joyce
The coronavirus has resulted in stress, anxiety and fear – symptoms that might motivate a person to see a therapist. Because of social distancing, however, in-person sessions are less possible. For many, this has raised the prospect of online therapy. For clients in need of warmth and reassurance, could this work? Studies and my experience suggests it does.
I am a psychologist and counselor at the University of South Florida. When our center named me its online assisted therapies coordinator, many of the staff initially pushed back at the notion of providing services through the screen. These negative attitudes toward telehealth should have surprised me. After all, its antecedent, telephone crisis lines, have been accepted and effective for decades.
But my field of therapy has often been disdainful of telehealth, opposed to "warm" psychotherapy work performed via a "cold" screen. Its resistance to the concept has changed little over the years.
Research suggests , however, that online therapy works just as well as traditional face-to-face therapy. Studies, looking at outcomes for clients and the quality of their relationships with therapists, found them equal across telehealth and in-person conditions. Since this meta-analysis (92 studies and 9,000 clients), many other studies have confirmed the value of teletherapy.
Telehealth Versus Traditional Therapy
Private insurance companies like Cigna and Aetna, have come around; they now provide coverage for what they see as a "legitimate" service. And surveys show consumers are receptive to telehealth counseling: no driving to an appointment, no searching for a parking space, no worries about childcare while they're away, no need to switch providers if they move, and no problem if the specialist happens to be far away.
Online therapy opens doors for clients who wouldn't otherwise seek help, particularly patients who feel stigmatized by therapy or intimidated by a stranger sitting across the room from them. Often, people open up more easily in telehealth sessions. Firsthand accounts have detailed positive experiences from consumers .
Overcoming Prejudices About Online Counseling
Now COVID-19 is forcing most traditional psychotherapists to adapt their practice to online counseling . After experiencing the medium, they are overcoming their prejudices . Many will convert some or all of their caseloads to telehealth after the pandemic ends. Most of our clients seem to be good with it: responding to a satisfaction survey, 85% of USF students strongly or somewhat agreed their telehealth experience was comparable to an in-person visit.
All this allows a continuity of care for clients that before was impossible; there is, however, a caveat. Because of the coronavirus, some of my clients at USF who live out-of-state have moved back home. That means, legally, I can no longer serve them. Even though they are still USF students, my license is valid only in Florida.
For telehealth to work effectively, our national system of licensing and regulation law needs to adapt. Although the federal government temporarily halted HIPAA regulations to promote telehealth during this time, not all states are allowing out-of-state practice. The coronavirus may not be here forever, but spring break and Christmas holidays always will. We need seamless telehealth across state lines.
That said, my own counseling center quickly transitioned to remote-only. Although most of the therapists can't wait to get back into the office, they are appreciative they can serve students in need. Certainly many clients and therapists will gladly return to face-to-face sessions, but now they know the tool of telehealth will always be available, if and when needed.
So much is changing. Now, consumers can easily access online therapy. Free e-books are available; one dealing directly with the pandemic is " FACE COVID ," by Russ Harris. Apps are around too – some free, some paid. Check out the website psyberguide.org to vet them. Asking for suggestions online will help as well.
Your insurance may allow you to talk to a licensed professional who does online therapy. Most major insurers have a list of them on their website. If you're uninsured, most communities have free or low-cost mental health clinics. Many universities have them too. Also, online directories can point you to places that offer services on a sliding scale, depending on your income, from pro bono to US$60 a session.
After years of dismissing telemedicine, practitioners are getting past their biases in barely a few weeks. Telehealth has allowed psychotherapy to continue unabated. More people who need help will now get it. I'm sad our profession needed COVID-19 to address telehealth, but the benefits will last for generations.
Nicholas Joyce is a Psychologist at University of South Florida.
Disclosure statement: Nicholas Joyce is affiliated with USF and his private practice.