boreal forests contribute to warming, cut more trees down . -- The Environmental Lounge

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Subject: boreal forests contribute to warming, cut more trees down .

Author:
larry

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Date Posted: 11:25:56 04/13/07 Fri

darn trees you can not live with them or with out them.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanId=sa013&articleID=DCA231BA-E7F2-99DF-3105874539B83ECB&modsrc=most_popular

In all three regions, forests dutifully perform their task of sucking carbon dioxide from the air, but light absorption and evotranspiration vary wildly. In tropical zones, forests have a significant, overall cooling effect. The soil is very wet and, so, via evotranspiration, the trees are covered by low-lying clouds that create a small albedo (power of light that is reflected by a surface). In nontropical areas, Caldeira explains, "the real significant factor is whether there's snow on the ground in the winter." If a forest covers a snowy expanse, "that has a strong warming influence," he notes, because of little cloud cover resulting from less efficiency in evaporating water. The poor cloud formation coupled with the intense absorption of light by the trees "far overwhelms the cooling influence of the carbon storage," he says.

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