woods

NASA has made available to the scientific community a map of the height of forests around the world with a spatial resolution of about one kilometer. The image will be a very useful tool to study the effects of climate change on forests and calculate the total carbon accumulated in vegetation globally.

The American biologist Daniel H. Janzen has received the Frontiers of Knowledge award from the BBVA Foundation in the category of Ecology and Conservation Biology. The scientist has spent decades studying the ecological processes of tropical forests and fighting for their conservation. In addition, he has participated in the development of such innovative techniques as parataxonomy, which uses genetic markers to describe and classify species.

Did you know that tropical forests cover 23% of the earth's surface, but they disappear at a rate of 4.6 million hectares per year? And that 20% of the total CO2 emissions produced in Spain, about 80 million tons, are absorbed by forests?

2011 has been declared the International Year of Forests by the United Nations General Assembly recognizing that these ecosystems and their sustainable management contribute "significantly" to development, poverty eradication and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

Coinciding with the International Climate Change Conference held in Cancun (Mexico), Google has launched the online platform Google Earth Engine, which contains a number of current and historical satellite images, many of them unpublished.

5% of the world's forests are in Europe and its trees absorb a total of 0.5 gigatons (Gt) of CO2 per year, compared to the 5 Gt emitted by European industry, and directly employ 350,000 workers, according to the Green Book on Forest Protection and Forest Information presented yesterday in Valsaín (Segovia) within the framework of the European Conference on Forest Protection.