Himalayan Herbs and Climate Change

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Climate change and Nepal fires

The forest fires that flared unusually viciously in many of Nepal's national parks and conserved areas this dry season have left conservationists worrying if climate change played a role.
At least four protected areas were on fire for an unusually long time until just a few days ago.
Nasa's satellite imagery showed most of the big fi

res were in and around the national parks along the country's northern areas bordering Tibet.
Active fires were recorded in renowned conservation success stories like the Annapurna, Kanchanjunga, Langtang and Makalu Barun national parks.
The extent of the loss of flora and fauna is not yet known.
Press reports said more than 100 yaks were killed by fire in the surrounding areas of the Kanjanchanga National Park in eastern Nepal.
Trans-Himalayan parks host rare species such as snow leopards, red pandas and several endangered birds.
Carbon source
More than the loss of plants and animals, the carbon dioxide emitted by the fires was a matter of concern, according to Ghanashyam Gurung, a director at WWF's Nepal office.
Some of the national parks in the plains bordering India were also on fire, but those caused less concern among conservationists and forest officials.
"Fires in the protected areas in the plain lands can be controlled easily because we have logistics and manpower ready for that - and that is what we did this time," said Laxmi Manandhar, spokesman for Nepal's Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation.

"But in the national parks in the Himalayan region, we could hardly do anything because of the difficult geography. Nor do we have facilities of pouring water using planes and helicopters."
Forest fires in Nepal's jungles and protected areas are not uncommon during the dry season between October and January.
Most of the fires come about as a consequence of the "slash and burn" practice that farmers employ for better vegetation and agricultural yields.
But this time the fires remained out of control even in the national parks in the Himalayan region where the slash and burn practice is uncommon.
In some of the protected areas, the fires flared up even after locals and officials tried to put them out for several days.
High and dry
So, why were the fires so different this time?
"The most obvious reason was the unusually long dry spell this year," says Mr Gurung, just back in Kathmandu from Langtang National Park to the north of the capital.
"The dryness has been so severe that pine trees in the Himalayan region are thoroughly dry even on the top, which means even a spark is enough to set them on fire."

For nearly six months, no precipitation has fallen across most of the country - the longest dry spell in recent history, according to meteorologists.
"This winter was exceptionally dry," says Department of Hydrology and Meteorology chief Nirmal Rajbhandari.

"We have seen winter becoming drier and drier in the last three or four years, but this year has set the record."
Rivers are running at their lowest, and because most of Nepal's electricity comes from hydropower, the country has been suffering power cuts up to 20 hours a day.
Experts at the department said the severity of dryness fits in the pattern of increasing extreme weather Nepal has witnessed in recent years.
Had it not been for recent drizzles, conservationists say some of the national parks would still be on fire.
They point to "cloud burst phenomena" - huge rainfall within a short span of time during monsoons, and frequent, sudden downpours in the Himalayan foothills - as more examples of extreme weather events.
"Seeing all these changes happening in recent years, we can contend that this dryness that led to so much fire is one of the effects of climate change," said Mr Rajbhandari.
Anil Manandhar, head of WWF Nepal, had this to ask: Are we waiting for a bigger disaster to admit that it is climate change?
"The weather pattern has changed, and we know that there are certain impacts of climate change."
Gaps in the record
However, climate change expert Arun Bhakta Shrestha of the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) was cautious about drawing conclusions.
"The prolonged dryness this year, like other extreme events in recent years, could be related to climate change but there is no proper basis to confirm that.
"The reason (why there is no confirmation) is lack of studies, observation and data that could have helped to reach into some conclusion regarding the changes."
Indeed, there has been no proper study of the impacts of climate change on the region: not just in Nepal but in the entire Hindu Kush Himalayas.
This is the reason why the region has been dubbed as a "white spot" by experts, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Limited studies have shown that temperature in the Himalayas has been increasing on average by 0.06 degrees annually, causing glaciers to melt and retreat faster.
The meltdown has been rapidly filling up many glacial lakes that could break their moraines and burst out, sweeping away everything downstream.
In Nepal and neighbouring countries, these "glacial lake outburst floods" and monsoon-related floods resulting from erratic rainfalls are at present the most talked-about disasters in the context of climate change.
If conservationists' and meteorologists' latest fears mean anything, forest fires may also be something that would be seen as one of the climate impacts.
In the wake of the 2007 United Nations climate change conference in Bali, Nepal has been preparing to join an international effort known as Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD).
But if the forest fires it saw this year became a regular phenomenon, the country will instead be emitting increased carbon dioxide into the atmosphere - a case of climate science's not very aptly-named "positive feedback".

Source:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7968745.stm

Species Under Threats

All the creatures we share the Earth with are important in some way, however unprepossessing or insignificant they may appear. They and we are all part of the web of life.
From the dawn of time, extinction has usually progressed at what scientists call a natural or background rate. Today the tempo is far faster.
Many scientists believe this is the sixth great wave - the sixth mass extinction to affect life on Earth.
We were not here for any of the previous mass extinctions, but this time our sheer preponderance is driving the slide to oblivion.
We have more than doubled our numbers in half a century, and that is the most obvious reason why there is less room for any other species.
We are taking their living room to grow our food, their food to feed ourselves. We are exploiting them, trading in them, squeezing them to the margins of existence - and beyond.
Often the choice is hard: conserve a species or feed a community, tourists' dollars or turtles' nests.
In 2003 the World Conservation Union's Red List said more than 12,000 species (out of 40,000 assessed) faced some extinction risk, including:

one bird in eight
13% of the world's flowering plants
a quarter of all mammals.

That gives you a ballpark figure. Science has described 1.75 million species, some experts estimate that there may be 13 or 14 million in the world in total - but until they are catalogued, nobody knows.

Our pillage of the natural world has been likened to burning down the medieval libraries of Europe, before we had even bothered to catalogue their contents.
Many species keep us alive, purifying water, fixing nitrogen, recycling nutrients and waste, and pollinating crops.
Plants and bacteria carry out photosynthesis, which produces the oxygen we breathe. Trees absorb carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas given off by human activities.
Pandas and microbes
Some years ago, when the global annual gross product was about $18 trillion, US researchers calculated the value of the goods and services provided by the Earth to the world economy: $33 trillion.

Tropical cone snails contain toxins which show promise for treating some forms of cancer and heart irregularities. One toxin may be a thousand times more potent than morphine for pain relief.

But millions of cone snails are now killed annually for their shells, and their habitats are under pressure.
That is the argument for utility. But the creatures we can see, and those we can use directly, are just the start of the story.
Lord May, president of the Royal Society (the UK's national academy of sciences), has said: "Most conservation effort goes into birds and mammals - creatures like the panda, a dim, dead-end animal that was probably on the way out anyway.
"Yet arguably it's the little things that run the world, things like soil microbes. They're the least-known species of all."
Complex network
And we continue to tug at the loose threads of the web of life, thinking we can split it into its separate parts.

Brazil nuts are a lucrative harvest in the Amazon. But an experiment to produce them in plantations failed, because the trees bear a good crop in the forest, but are barren in isolation.
We are not removing individual species from the Amazon: we are de

stroying the entire forest. US researchers estimate that by 2020 less than 5% of it will remain in pristine condition.
Within 15 years, about a fifth of central Africa's forests will have gone, by one estimate. And the forests of Indonesia are in headlong retreat.
Some species are bucking the trend towards extinction. In 1953 there were about 2.5bn people: today there are 6bn.
Ensuring other species keep their living space is not sentimental. It is the only way we shall survive.
Extinction, whatever Steven Spielberg says, really is for ever. The web is unravelling.

Source:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3667300.stm

Kinds of Carnivorous Plants

This section of the FAQ is dedicated to taxonomy (botanical classification). Th

e first few pages discuss background, general information. After that I describe aspects of each genus of carnivorous and "para-carnivorous" plants. I even throw in some information about non-carnivorous plants that folks ask me about because of tenuous or perceived connections to carnivorous plants.I warn you right now, O Gentle FAQ Reader...the geekness factor of the FAQ gets stratospherically high in this FAQ, especially where I start talking about the individual species. The joke factor is low, the fact density is high. Strap yourself in, you're going for a ride!
Introduction: carnivorous plant genera
These Latin names are pretty nerdy. Why don't you use common names?

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Economic crisis and sustainability of forestry

The global economic crisis has slowed demand for timber products and may undermine efforts to improve the environmental performance of forestry, reports the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in its biannual "State of the World's Forests 2009", released today.

"Wood demand is unlikely to reach the peak of 2005-2006 again in the foreseeable future," the report said. "Scaling down of production is widespread in almost

all countries and all forest industries, from logging to sawmilling to production of wood panels, pulp, paper and furniture." FAO said that falling demand for commodities would reduce p ressure to convert forests for croplands as well as delay the development of next-generation biofuel feedstocks derived from fiber. Lower prices for timber and agricultural products, coupled with a difficult financing environment, will sap the viability of once-profitable operations.

Bad economic not necessarily a boon for the environment

Still the news is not all positive for the world's remaining forests. FAO said that green initiatives — including sustainable forest management, timber certification, and payments for carbon sequestration in forests — would likely suffer as well.

The economic crisis could also reduce investment in sustainable forest management and favor illegal logging," it said. "Contraction of formal economic sectors often opens opportunities for expansion of the informal sector, including illegal logging. For example, a number of countries in Southeast Asia witnessed an increase in illegal logging following the 1997/98 economic crisis."

"Declining demand for high-priced wood from legal operations, reduced institutional capacity to protect forests as a result of lower budgets and increasing unemployment in the formal sector could increase illegal logging."

The report noted that declining affluence could push recent urban migrants back to the countryside and drive expansion of subsistence cultivation. Reduced remittances from abroad could further increase the need to clear forests.

"A more general concern is that some governments may dilute previously ambitious green goals or defer key policy decisions related to future climate change mitigation," the report said. "Commitment to European legislation on climate change, especially on auctioning emission allowances, is meeting obstacles."

"Initiatives such as those for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) that are dependent on international financial transfers could face similar problems.

" The report noted that a decline in travel may hurt wildlife tourism, an important source of income in some biodiversity-rich rural areas. The report includes with a wealth of forestry data, most of which was part of prior editions of the "State of the World's Forests". The next major update ̵ which is expected to include more accurate forest data — will be in 2010.

Source:http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0316-fao.html

Greenpeace and forest conservation in Indonesia

Greenpeace criticized Indonesia's plan to reduce deforestation through a market-based emissions mechanism known as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation), reports AFP.

The environmental group — which is marketing its own non-market carbon scheme ahead of December's U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen — said that REDD would allow industrialized countries to continue emitting greenhouse gases while offering few benefits to local people.

"The market-oriented draft, which focuses more on investment rather than reducing deforestation, only benefits big (industrial) companies with huge emissions," Greenpeace Forest Campaigner Bustar Maitar said.

"Under the scheme, companies can easily pay for (forest) carbon credits while still being able to pollute. This won't help to reduce deforestation in this country."

In a report released this week, Greenpeace argued that introducing tradable forest credits would cause global carbon prices to tumble 75 percent, undermining a key incentive for development of clean technologies. Carbon market analysts meeting at a climate conference in Cuiaba, Brazil, expressed skepticism about the claim, noting that no one is seriously proposing an unrestricted market for REDD.

Greenpeace is instead proposing a "hybrid" mechanism that would include a global fund, financed by industrialized countries, to pay for forest conservation projects in tropical nations.

Other environmental groups are split on including forest carbon offsets under a future climate framework. The U.S. arm of WWF recently changed its stance on the issue citing the loss of more than 100 million hectares of forest since the exclusion of forestry from the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, and the Wildlife Conservation Society are all involved in forest carbon projects, while several indigenous groups have launched their own pilot projects in Brazil, where the Supreme Court just ruled that Indians own rights to carbon on their lands. Others, including Friends of the Earth and the World Rainforest Movement, have expressed deep concerns over REDD and similar schemes, fearing they will fail to reduce global emissions and could exacerbate conflicts over land, including seizure of forests used by indigenous people. Others say the top-down nature of some REDD projects could fuel corruption.

Nevertheless neither side denies the importance of rainforest conservation in helping mitigate climate change. Deforestation accounts for nearly 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities. Deforestation and degradation is the primary source of emissions in Indonesia, which in recent years has ranked as the third largest CO2 emitter after China and the United States.

Source:http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0402-greenpeace.html

Hot Tea May Raise Esophageal Cancer Risk

Drinking hot or very hot tea may make a certain type of esophageal cancer more likely.
That news appears in the advance online edition of BMJ, formerly called the British Medical Journal.
Researchers studied tea drinkers in northern Iran's Golestan province, which has a high rate of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.
That's the world's most common type of esophageal cancer. But it's not the type of esophageal cancer that's been rising in Western countries (that's adenocarcinoma of the esophagus).
Why study tea drinkers in northern Iran? Because just about everyone there drinks tea daily, and some esophageal cancer risk factors, like smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol, aren't common.
Hot Tea, Higher Risk
The Iranian tea study comes from researchers including Farhad Islami, a research fellow at Tehran University of Medical Sciences.
They interviewed 300 people with confirmed cases of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, as well as 571 healthy people of similar backgrounds.
Participants answered questions about their tea-drinking habits, including how hot they usually drank their tea (very hot, hot, warm, or lukewarm) and how long they let the tea brew before drinking it.
Nearly all participants -- 98% -- said they drank black tea daily.
Esophageal cancer was eight times as common among people who drank "very hot" tea, compared to warm or lukewarm tea drinkers. By the same comparison, hot tea drinkers were twice as likely as warm or lukewarm tea drinkers to have esophageal cancer.
The findings held regardless of other risk factors. But what's "hot" to one person may be "lukewarm" to someone else.
So Islami's team checked data from more than 48,000 local people who were served tea and indicated their preferred tea temperature, which was checked by a digital thermometer.
The findings: 39% drank their tea at temperatures less than 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit), 39% drank their tea at 60-64 degrees Celsius (140-147 degrees Fahrenheit), and 22% drank their tea at 65 degrees Celsius (149 degrees Fahrenheit) or higher.
Cooling Off Period
Observational studies, like this one, don't prove cause and effect. So it's not certain that hot or very hot tea caused esophageal cancer, or whether all hot drinks might have the same effect.
The possible link between hot drinks and esophageal cancer risk isn't new.
"In South America, especially Argentina, there is a well established relationship between esophageal cancer and drinking very hot mate, a kind of tea which is usually consumed when it is almost boiling and is sipped through a metal spoon. The problem is not the tea but the chronic inflammation from drinking it hot," Michael Thun, MD, the American Cancer Society's vice president emeritus of epidemiology, tells WebMD via email.
Islami's team notes that too-hot liquid could injure esophageal cells, paving the way for esophageal cancer.
Islami's study is "the most compelling test to date" of that theory and even though the study was conducted in a unique setting, "the findings are relevant to clinicians and researchers in many settings," states an editorial published with the study.
The findings should be replicated, but letting hot drinks cool off for several minutes is a good idea, notes editorialist David Whiteman, PhD, of Australia's Queensland Institute of Medical Research.
"It is difficult to imagine any adverse consequences of waiting at least four minutes before drinking a cup of freshly boiled tea, or more generally allowing foods and beverages to cool from 'scalding' to 'tolerable' before swallowing," Whitehead writes.
Whitehead also says Islami's findings "are not cause for alarm ... and should not reduce public enthusiasm for the time-honored ritual of drinking tea."

SOURCES: Islami, F. BMJ, March 27, 2009; "Online First" edition. Michael Thun, MD, vice president emeritus of epidemiology, American Cancer Society. Whiteman, D. BMJ, March 27, 2009; "Online First" edition.

The Dark Side of Vegetarianism

Despite its proven health benefits, a vegetarian diet might in fact be masking an underlying eating disorder, new research suggests.

The study, in the April issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, found that twice as many teens and nearly double the number of young adults who had been vegetarians reported having used unhealthy means to control their weight, compared with those who had never been vegetarians. Those means included using diet pills, laxatives and diuretics and inducing vomiting to control weight.
There's a dark side to vegetarianism, said Dr. David L. Katz, director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine. He had no role in the research.
"Adolescent vegetarians [in the study] were more prone to disordered eating and outright eating disorders," Katz said. "This is not due to vegetarianism but the other wayaround: Adolescents struggling to control their diets and weight might opt for vegetarianism among other, less-healthful efforts."
Vegetarianism, or a mostly plant-based diet, can be recommended to all adolescents, Katz said. "But when adolescents opt for vegetarianism on their own, it is important to find out why because it may signal a cry for help, rather than the pursuit of health," he said.
Katz said he thinks a balanced vegetarian diet is among the most healthful of dietary patterns, and the study suggests some of the benefits.
"Adolescents practicing vegetarianism were less likely to be overweight than their omnivorous counterparts and, were the measures available, would likely have had better blood pressure and cholesterol, too," he said. "Eating mostly plants -- and even only plants -- is good for us, and certainly far better for health than the typical American diet."
The study's lead researcher, Ramona Robinson-O'Brien, an assistant professor in the Nutrition Department at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University in St. Joseph, Minn., agreed.
"The majority of adolescents and young adults today would benefit from improvements in dietary intake," she said. The study found, for instance, that the vegetarians among the participants generally were less likely to be overweight or obese.
"However, current vegetarians may be at increased risk for binge eating, while former vegetarians may be at increased risk for extreme unhealthful weight-control behaviors," she said. "Clinicians and nutrition professionals providing guidance to young vegetarians might consider the potential benefits associated with a healthful vegetarian diet, [but should] recognize the possibility of increased risk of disordered eating behaviors."
The researchers collected data on 2,516 teens and young adults who participated in a study called Project EAT-II: Eating Among Teens. They classified participants as current, former or never vegetarians and divided them into two age groups: teens (15 to 18) and young adults (19-23).
Each participant was questioned about binge eating, whether they felt a loss of control of their eating habits and whether they used any extreme weight-control behaviors.
About 21% of teens who had been vegetarians said they used unhealthy weight-control behaviors, compared with 10% of teens who had never been vegetarians. Among young adults, more former vegetarians (27%) had used such measures than current vegetarians (16%) or those who'd never been vegetarians (15%), the study found.
In addition, among teenagers, binge eating and loss of control over eating habits was reported by 21% of current and 16% of former vegetarians but only 4% of those who'd never followed a vegetarian diet. For young adults, more vegetarians (18%) said they engaged in binge eating with loss of control than did former vegetarians (9%) and those who were never vegetarians (5%), the study found.
Young adult vegetarians were less likely to be overweight or obese than were those who'd never been vegetarians. Among teens, the study found no statistically significant differences in weight.
"When guiding adolescent and young adult vegetarians in proper nutrition and meal planning, it is important to recognize the potential health benefits and risks associated with a vegetarian diet," Robinson-O'Brien said. "Furthermore, it may be beneficial to investigate an individual's motives for choosing a vegetarian diet and ask about their current and former vegetarian status when assessing risk for disordered eating behaviors."

Source:http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=99031