Great Lakes Echo (https://greatlakesecho.org/tag/forests/page/7/)
The Globe Elevator is a piece of Great Lakes history and a source of old growth Eastern white pine. Wisconsin Woodchuck hopes to preserve both, claiming that destroying the elevator would have environmental consequences.
Drug traffickers have been conducting business deep within the lush canopy of Michigan’s forests since at least 2008. After five years of eradication efforts, police say the problem shows no signs of going away.
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