Great Lakes Echo (https://greatlakesecho.org/tag/forests/page/7/)
A Wisconsin forest was among the test sites where scientists found that warming temperatures will more rapidly release carbon dioxide stored in soils.
Such an increase of the greenhouse gas could make the climate heat even faster.
With every gas-powered car and every traditional wastewater treatment plant, a little nitrogen pollution gets released into the atmosphere. Scientists say it settles into the soil and may even lead to toxic algae blooms that kill fish.
By Jon Gaskell
Capital News Service
LANSING — Michigan can expect more wildfires this year, officials warn. The state’s Department of Natural Resources is predicting a greater number of forest fires and more acres burned as a result of an unusually warm winter. To make matters worse, long-term shrinking of firefighting resources has reduced the state’s capacity to quell blazes, according to department Director Rodney Stokes. The department’s fire supervisor Scott Heather said Michigan is already seeing blazes much earlier than usual. “Usually for the Lower Peninsula, the season for fires begins around the third week of March,” Heather said.
The population of Michigan’s state tree has reduced drastically the past two centuries.
But ecologists are trying to repopulate it despite significant hurdles.
Following on the heels of an Emerald Ash Borer infestation that wiped out millions of ash trees, a new disease, dubbed Thousand Cankers Disease (TCD), has been decimating black walnuts in the western U.S. — and now it’s spreading east.
Some Great Lakes power companies are looking to biomass to lower their carbon footprint while keeping the lights on. But critics are leery of cutting down forests to power refrigerators and say biomass is only carbon neutral in a political sense.
By Caitlin Costello
Dec. 12, 2009
LANSING, Mich. – A 40-foot crate is packed with northern Michigan white cedar panels and siding ready to be shipped to Korea by Boyne Falls-based Town & Country Cedar Products. The company started exporting a year ago to expand its customer base after economic downturns forced the industry to “look at changing the way they do business in order to survive,” said national sales manager Mike Rathbun. Strong personal business relationships are important for international marketing.
(IN) The Post-Tribune – Stories of mangled trees, inadequate notice and little communication from NIPSCO peppered testimony on tree-trimming practices at a public field hearing on Wednesday night at Merrillville High School. The Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission is conducting a series of hearings across the state on the tree-trimming practices of electrical utilities. More
(MI) Ann Arbor News – Several residents on Ann Arbor’s west side are angry a massive silver maple tree they believe was healthy was cut down by city foresters. More distressing, they say, is that the 4-foot diameter tree on Charlton Street in the Virginia Park neighborhood was a casualty in a larger pattern. The group believes trees are being removed by default, rather than after efforts to save them. More
(MN) Minneapolis Star-Tribune – Chain saws and experts are converging in the Twin Cities in the fight against the emerald ash borer. In St. Paul, foresters identified eight more infested trees Tuesday as workers continued to remove dozens of others fatally damaged by the bug that, first found in St. Paul May 13, threatens the state’s 900 million ash trees. So far, 67 trees have been either taken down this week or targeted for removal in an effort officials hope will thwart the insect that has killed tens of millions of trees across the Midwest and southern Canada in the past seven years.