Tag: Caribbean

Data transparency for forests in Latin America and the Caribbean

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Communications  • 
In addition to providing food, medicine, timber, and many other things people need, forests store huge amounts of carbon. Forests also have the potential to release that carbon. Carbon accounting across entire regions is an increasingly important part of climate action, particularly international agreements. A new book, now available in English as well as Spanish,…  More 

Forests Supply Water to Puerto Rico

by Jennifer Moore Myers, SRS Science Communications  • 
Puerto Rico’s forests are still recovering from Hurricane Maria. Local scientists estimate that one out of five trees in the El Yunque National Forest were lost during or after the storm. Widespread forest restoration and monitoring efforts are underway. But that work isn’t focused on just the trees in those forests — water supply is an important ecosystem…  More 

Dry Tropical Forests in the Caribbean and Latin America under Threat

by Zoё Hoyle, SRS Science Communications  • 
The climate and fertile soils of the dry tropical forests of Latin America and the Caribbean have been important to humans as areas to grow crops since pre-Columbian times. Because of this and more recent use for intensive cultivation and cattle grazing, many of these forests have been cleared, with less than 10 percent of…  More 

Burning Caicos Pine Yards

by Zoё Hoyle, SRS Science Delivery  • 
This spring found U.S. Forest Service scientist Joe O’Brien helping to set a prescribed fire in the Turks and Caicos, a small Caribbean island chain that’s a British Overseas Territory. O’Brien, research ecologist with the Forest Service Southern Research Station Center for Forest Disturbance Science, was there to help save a unique rockland pine habitat from…  More 

FIA Starts Third Inventory of U.S. Virgin Island Forests

by Zoё Hoyle, SRS Science Delivery Group  • 
Last week, the U.S. Forest Service started the process of revisiting permanent monitoring plots established in 2004 in the forests of St. John, St. Thomas, and St. Croix as part of a recurring effort to measure and monitor the public and private forest land of the U.S. Virgin Islands. Led by Luis Ortiz-López from the…  More 

A Southern Forester in Rome

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Delivery Group  • 
Since the 1940s, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has coordinated a global Forest Resource Assessment every 5 to 10 years. The assessments describe the world’s forests and how they are changing, and include information about the health and diversity of each country’s forests, as well as their productivity, ecological value, and other…  More