Is It Possible to Place "Value" on a Forest?

There is a saying: You can't see the forest through the trees. When we think of forests, I would suggest that a very specific image often appears. There are the Giant Redwood Forests of California; or the Amazon and Central African Republic's Tropical Rainforests; or Germany's Black Forest. These are popular ones to many.

The following link from the Web Ecoist: Top 20 Visually Arresting but Threatened Forests offers a list of what they consider to be to top 20, most threatened forests of the world.

The blog - Encyclopedia of Earth (to the right) - takes a practical step at placing a "value" on the Forests of the Mediterranean. While the article looks specifically at that region, it takes little thought to use its valuation process to look across each of the world's remaining forested areas - those many beyond the 20 identified in the above link - to understand that there is so much more to see about a forest than simply its collection of trees.

Value of Mediterranean Forests

Pine Needle Energy - not yet Competitive with Nuclear

Energy - demand, cost and availability - will continue to remain one of the key concerns for virtually every country. Much attention is being given to alternative energy sources to fossil fuel not simply because of their environmental impact but because of their finite supply.

Often, we simply do not appreciate the dramatic differences in energy issues between our daily lives and the lives of people in other countries; of the extreme differences between developed and developing countries.

This blog has referenced three posts (January 2010) about the interest in an ancient process called BIOCHAR. The following video will provide yet another perspective on the creation of an innovative fuel from the same process - this time, using pine needles.

Beyond the obvious subject of this video (provided to me by Dr. Reddy of BIOCHARINDIA) is a more subtle message. Many of the Bottom Billion residents of our planet have concerns that are far more serious than the price of a gallon/litre of gasoline. These residents are unable to simply go into a kitchen to boil some water for tea or coffee or turn on a light to read the latest news about such newsworthy subjects as global energy issues.

Pine Needle Charcoaling - Cooking Without Cutting Trees / INDIA

Chilean Quake Rocks / Daytime Length Rolls

It seems that the recent Chilean earthquake has had an impact on much more than simply the country of Chile. NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory research scientist Richard Gross computed that the Earth's rotation should have changed because of the massive quake.

Our days are now a bit shorter - by about 1.26 microseconds (a microsecond is one millionth of a second).

You can read this report at:

Chilean Quake May Have Shortened Earth Days