(Press-News.org) The globe's forests have shrunk by three per cent since 1990 - an area equivalent to the size of South Africa - despite significant improvements in conservation over the past decade.
The UN's Global Forest Resources Assessment (GFRA) 2015 was released this week, revealing that while the pace of forest loss has slowed, the damage over the past 25 years has been considerable.
Total forest area has declined by three per cent between 1990 and 2015 from 4,128 million hectares to 3,999 million hectares - a loss of 129 million hectares.
Significantly, loss of natural forested area was double the global total at six per cent, while tropical forests took the hardest hit with a loss rate of ten per cent.
Forestry expert at the University of Melbourne Professor Rod Keenan has been involved with the GFRA since 2003. For the 2015 Assessment, he headed a team of academics analysing the GFRA data for the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation.
"These are not good stats," Professor Keenan said of the latest report.
"We really need to be increasing forest area across all domains to provide for the forest benefits and services of a growing population. So there is more work to do."
Agricultural land development, by large and small scale producers, is believed to be the main driver behind the decreases, with Brazil, Indonesia and Nigeria recording the biggest losses over the past five years.
But there have also been positive signs.
While the annual rate of net forest loss in the 1990s stood at 7.3 million hectares, it has since halved to 3.3 million hectares between 2010 and 2015.
"Halving the loss is a good thing, but we need continued policy focus to ensure the trend can be sustained," Professor Keenan said.
He believes this should include regulations to stop forest conversion, funding for better forest management and incentives to increase forest area.
Brazil and Indonesia, both among the highest deforestation offenders, have significantly improved their ways - with Brazil's current net loss rate 40 per cent lower than in the 1990s.
Indonesia is also losing forested area at a rate two-thirds slower than it did between 1990 and 2000.
Professor Keenan said the study showed forest is being more rapidly lost in some of the poorest countries, including India, Vietnam and Ghana.
"In low-income countries with high forest cover, forests are being cleared for direct subsistence by individuals and families and large scale agriculture for broader economic development," he said.
"Some have policies and regulations to protect forests, but they do not have the capacity and resources to implement them."
In Australia, conservation efforts are beginning to have an impact. Australia recorded a net gain of 1.5 million hectares of forested land over the past five years, despite an overall fall from 128.5 million hectares in 1990 to 124.7 million hectares in 2015.
Much of that is attributed to natural events, such as fire and drought, as well as human land clearance for agriculture.
Significant findings:
In 2015, total forest cover is 3,999 million hectares globally (or 31 per cent of global land)
Since 1990, there has been a loss of three per cent of total forest area, six per cent of total natural forested area and ten per cent decrease in tropical forests
Average rate of loss has halved from 7.3 million hectares in the 1990s, to 3.3 million hectares between 2010 and 2015
Decline in natural forests has been offset by 66 per cent rise in planted forest, from 168 million hectares to 278 million hectares
Loss occurring more quickly in some of the lowest-income countries
INFORMATION:
Alzheimer's-disease-related proteases, BACE1 and APH1B-y-secretase, control axonal guidance by regulating growth cone dynamics
BACE1 is the major drug target for Alzheimer's disease, but we know surprisingly little about its normal function in the CNS. Soraia Barão and Bart De Strooper (VIB/KU Leuven) now show that this protease is critically involved in axonal guidance processes in thalamic and hippocampal neurons. An active membrane bound proteolytic CHL1 fragment is generated by BACE1 upon Sema3A binding. This fragment relays the Sema3A signal to the neuronal ...
Persons sleeping less than 6 hours or more than 10 hours suffer from low-grade inflammation more often than persons sleeping 7-8 hours per night. This was observed in a University of Eastern Finland study focusing on the health and lifestyle habits among middle-aged men.
"Earlier studies have found a relation between reduced sleep and low-grade inflammation," says Maria Luojus, MHSc, one of the study researchers.
Furthermore, low-grade inflammation occurs in overweight, depression and diabetes.
The study is the first to analyse the association between sleep duration ...
Results of a 20-year follow-up of the academic EORTC 22881-10882 boost no-boost trial presented as a "Best Abstract" at the European Cancer Congress 2015 in Vienna show that young age, high-grade invasive tumor, and the presence of associated ductal carcinoma in situ were all factors increasing the local recurrence rate. An earlier analysis had already shown that young age and high-grade invasive carcinoma were the most important risk factors for local relapse in this trial conducted from 1989 to 1996.
Dr. Conny Vrieling of the Clinique des Grangettes in Geneva, Switzerland, ...
A new study has confirmed that regular smokers have a significantly increased risk of tooth loss.
Male smokers are up to 3.6 times more likely to lose their teeth than non-smokers, whereas female smokers were found to be 2.5 times more likely.
The research, published in the Journal of Dental Research, is the output of a long-term longitudinal study of the EPIC Potsdam cohort in Germany carried out by researchers at the University of Birmingham and the German Institute of Human Nutrition.
Tooth loss remains a major public health problem worldwide. In the UK, 15% of ...
Malnutrition is a known complication of weight loss surgery, but findings from a small study by researchers at Johns Hopkins show many obese people may be malnourished before they undergo the procedure.
"Our results highlight the often-overlooked paradox that abundance of food and good nutrition are not one and the same," says senior investigator Kimberley Steele, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "Overweight and obese people can suffer from nutritional deficiencies, and those who care for them should be aware ...
Telecommunication networks will soon reach the physical limits of current technology and in order to overcome the current bottleneck, they will have to exploit the quantum properties of light. Roberto Morandotti and his INRS team are paving the way to this technological revolution by removing the technical barriers of quantum photonics through the use of their optical chips. Recently they directly generated cross-polarized (orthogonal) photon pairs on a chip, a first in quantum optics. Polarization will now be among the controllable parameters for harnessing light in a ...
The first images of motor proteins in action are published in the journal Nature Communications today.
These proteins are vital to complex life, forming the transport infrastructure that allows different parts of cells to specialise in particular functions. Until now, the way they move has never been directly observed.
Researchers at the University of Leeds and in Japan used electron microscopes to capture images of the largest type of motor protein, called dynein, during the act of stepping along its molecular track.
Dr Stan Burgess, at the University of Leeds' ...
Elephants born into stressful situations have fewer offspring and age faster, researchers at the University of Sheffield have found.
Scientists discovered that Asian elephants born during times when their mothers experience highest stress levels produce significantly fewer offspring in their lifetime despite having higher rates of reproduction at an early age.
The research team, from the University's Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, also found that those animals born under stress declined much more rapidly in older age, decades later.
Lead author Dr Hannah ...
Eating a Mediterranean diet supplemented with extra virgin olive oil was associated with a relatively lower risk of breast cancer in a study of women in Spain, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine.
Breast cancer is a frequently diagnosed cancer and a leading cause of death in women. Diet has been extensively studied as a modifiable risk factor in the development of breast cancer but epidemiologic evidence on the effect of specific dietary factors is inconsistent.
The Mediterranean diet is known for its abundance of plant foods, fish and ...
A new study reveals that insurance status, marital status, and county-level income may affect the chances of survival in young patients with acute myelogenous leukemia (AML). Published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the findings indicate that efforts are needed to address the social factors that impact critical aspects of health in these patients.
AML will affect approximately 20,830 and kill 10,460 Americans in 2015. Tremendous progress has been made in identifying disease characteristics that cause a patient to have ...
