#rain forests

Милфорд Саунд (Milford Sound, маорийское название — Пиопиотахи (Piopiotahi)) – самый знаменитый фьорд в Новой Зеландии, известный на весь мир своей первозданной красотой. Милфорд Саунд, как и фьорды Северного полушария, сформировался в результате деятельности ледника 10-12 тысяч лет назад. Знаменитый английский путешественник и писатель Редьярд Киплинг побывал однажды на берегах Милфорд Саунд и под впечатлением увиденного назвал этот фьорд восьмым чудом света.

Милфорд Саунд – это вытянутый залив с высокими скалистыми берегами шириной около 3 км, который вдается в сушу на целых 16 км, а максимальная его глубина 512 м. Со всех сторон он окружен горными вершинами, увенчанные вечными снегами, высотой более 1,5 км. Нетронутые человеком густые влажные леса растут здесь практически на отвесных скалах.

Милфорд Саунд - одно из самых влажных мест на Земле, здесь за год выпадает до 7000 мм осадков. Дождь идет каждый день и это сказывается на характере леса - гигантские деревья покрыты мхом и лианами, здесь растут лишайники и папоротники, лес очень влажный. Туристы могут рассчитывать на солнце в течение нескольких часов ближе к полудню, но во второй половине дня их наверняка настигнет ливень.

Интересный факт — В дождливые и бурные дни можно увидеть потрясающий природный феномен. Водопады, которые падают вверх. Это явление вызвано географическими особенностями Милфорд Саунда. При встрече с утесом сильный ветер часто поднимается вверх, и обычные водопады, попадая в поток воздуха, кардинально меняют свое направление.

Воды Милфорд Саунд населяет множество тюленей, пингвинов и дельфинов. Исследовательская станция Милфорд Дип позволяет ученым и туристам «заглянуть» в подводный мир. При таком изобилии мелких птиц невозможно обойтись без хищников: в глубине фьорда рассекают толщу воды многочисленные акулы. Также здесь можно увидеть уникальные коралловые рифы, в том числе и самые редкие виды - черные кораллы. Вода в Милфорд Саунд настолько прозрачная, что дно видно даже в самых глубоких местах, если, конечно, его не заслоняют густые водоросли.

Milford Sound (Maori name - Piopiotahi) is the most famous fjord in New Zealand, known throughout the world for its pristine beauty. Milford Sound, like the fjords of the Northern Hemisphere, was formed as a result of glacier activity 10-12 thousand years ago. The famous English traveler and writer Rudyard Kipling once visited the shores of Milford Sound and, impressed by what he saw, called this fjord the eighth wonder of the world.

Milford Sound is an elongated bay with high rocky shores about 3 km wide, which juts into the land for as much as 16 km, and its maximum depth is 512 m. On all sides it is surrounded by mountain peaks, crowned with eternal snow, more than 1.5 km high. Dense rainforests untouched by man grow here almost on sheer cliffs.

Milford Sound is one of the wettest places on Earth, with up to 7,000 mm of rainfall per year. It rains every day and this affects the character of the forest - giant trees are covered with moss and vines, lichens and ferns grow here, the forest is very humid. Tourists can expect sun for a few hours closer to midday, but in the afternoon they will probably be overtaken by a downpour.

Interesting fact - On rainy and stormy days, you can see an amazing natural phenomenon. Waterfalls that fall upwards. This phenomenon is caused by the geographical features of Milford Sound. When meeting a cliff, a strong wind often rises upwards, and ordinary waterfalls, getting into the air flow, radically change their direction.

The waters of Milford Sound are inhabited by many seals, penguins and dolphins. The Milford Deep research station allows scientists and tourists to "look" into the underwater world. With such an abundance of small birds, it is impossible to do without predators: in the depths of the fjord, numerous sharks cut through the water. Here you can also see unique coral reefs, including the rarest species - black corals. The water in Milford Sound is so transparent that the bottom is visible even in the deepest places, unless, of course, it is obscured by thick algae.

Excerpt from this story from Anthropocene Magazine:

Lots of people are rooting for logged tropical forests to grow back. Here’s one way to jumpstart it: Add a splash of nitrogen.

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that a key component in agricultural fertilizer would help trees grow faster. But new research clarifies how much it helps and for which forests, as well as suggesting ways to give forests a boost without the ecological damage that can come with fertilizers.

It turns out that in the first 10 years of growing, fledgling forests are particularly ravenous for nitrogen. Supplementing the nutrient supply can make the vegetation explode, nearly doubling growth rates in newly abandoned farm fields and increasing growth by 48% in 10-year-old forests, researchers reported this month in Nature Communications.

“It was pretty amazing to see,” said Sarah Batterman, an ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and a co-author the new paper. “The plots with added nitrogen looked so much bigger than the ones where we didn’t add nitrogen—the trees were just huge. We were surprised at how quickly the forest grew back and how strong the effect of nitrogen was.”

The discovery emerged from 76 plots of land in Panama, ranging from ancient, intact forest to cattle pasture. Scientists left some of the areas to grow on their own. Other parcels were dosed with a combination of nitrogen and phosphorous, two nutrients needed by plants. Researchers returned over the course of four years to track vegetation growth in newer forests and for more than two decades for the old-growth jungle.

While the immediate findings are confined to a single forest, the researchers suspect young forests in many parts of the tropics confront a nitrogen shortage.

The nitrogen boost they observed could make a noticeable, though temporary, dent our climate problem. Batterman and colleagues calculated that the added growth spurt, if applied to tropical forests around the world, could pull nearly a gigaton of carbon dioxide from the air every year, equal to roughly 2% of annual human-caused greenhouse gas pollution.

Coral reefs display a comparable knack for waste management. Corals live in a symbiotic alliance with a tiny algae called zooxanthellae. Thanks to photosynthesis, the algae capture sunlight and use it to turn carbon dioxide into organic carbon, with oxygen as a waste product of the process. The coral then uses the oxygen in its own metabolic cycle. Because we're aerobic creatures ourselves, we tend not to think of oxygen as a waste product, but from the point of view of the algae, that's precisely what it is: a useless substance discharged as part of its metabolic cycle. The coral itself produces waste in the form of carbon dioxide, nitrates, and phosphates, all of which help the algae to grow. That tight waste-recycling chain is one of the primary reasons coral reefs are able to support such a dense and diverse population of creatures, despite residing in tropical waters, which are generally nutrient-poor. They are the cities of the sea.

"Outside it is thawing. The creek is breaking apart. Water seeps out of the rock canyon above me. It has been around the world... It has held sea turtles in its rocking arms.. It has come from the rain forest that gave birth to our air. 

It brings with it the stories of where it’s been. It reminds us that we are water people. Our salt bodies, like the great round of ocean, are pulled and held by the moon. We are creatures that belong here. This world is in our blood and bones, and our blood and bones are the Earth." 

Animals such as whales and fish poop nutrients into the water. These nutrients help to fuel the plankton, which make their way into smaller fish. The fish are then either eaten by seabirds which in turn deposit their own poop on land, or feed larger migratory fish.

These fish then travel up the river systems and deep inland through the vast network of waterways. They will then be eaten by predators such as birds of prey and big cats, or simply die in the rivers, and as a result spread these nutrients that originated in the oceans over the land and deep within the forests.

“In recent years, some people have estimated how degraded those nutrient systems are because of the loss of large animals, and the impact has been massive,” explains Ken. “They estimate that certain nutrient pumps may have declined by over 80%, in part because of the removal of large animals such as whales...”

I stand with the @AFrontlines

I stand with the #WaoraniResistance

💪 I invite you to join the fight and defend Pachamama, because the jungle is not for sale and should never be, the jungle belongs to everyone. show your support, sign a letter in the link or make a donation...

"A long time ago, when there was still nothing the creator grandpa made the world, did good and did evil, he created all the seas, lakes, rivers, rocks, mountains, jungles and animals, the tigers , snakes and fish, and finally gave birth to the jaguar, and the first men were born from the jaguar.

And the blood of men spread throughout the world as well as the rivers that carry their healing waters to every corner of the planet."

Growing up in South America and getting to know the members of the Wayúu tribe in Venezuela opened the doors to visit other communities in the Amazon. That is why I invite you to take five minutes of your time and donate it to support these communities that are about to lose their homes and their lands because of the greed of a few.

The Waorani tribe are part of the first tribes of America, and unlike many others they refuse to appear, for more than a year we have been tracking what is happening in the Amazon, and it is not time to sleep letting us suffer the riches of the Amazon rainforest and the biodiversity of the same for the greed of a few evil men seated in power.

The oil industry continues to destroy the heart of the jungle, thousands of unique species of fauna and flora, and the lives of more than a dozen indigenous communities are about to disappear if they do not receive enough support.

I have had the opportunity to visit the jungle of the Amazon on several occasions, and not only for religious and spiritual issues linked to the traditions of my family, I visited the Amazons and their families, I made friends and shared with many of their tribes, and this day, today more than ever they need our support.

It is not about focusing on our differences, it is not where you come from or the language you speak, it is what you can do with it, your true actions and your true intentions, it is those things that will say that you are really doing with your life and the good you are doing doing to others.

Therefore I invite you to join the fight and defend Pachamama, because the jungle is not for sale and should never be, the jungle belongs to everyone. show your support, sign a letter in bitly.com/waoaction or make a donation, or both if you can do it.

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Forest elephants in April at a marshy clearing called Langoue Bai in Ivindo National Park in Gabon. Credit: Amaury Hauchard/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

Forest elephants — the smaller, endangered relatives of African savanna elephants — promote the growth of large trees that excel at storing carbon, according to research published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Should forest elephants disappear, scientists estimated, Central Africa’s rain forest will lose about three billion tons of carbon — the equivalent of France’s total CO2 emissions for 27 years.

Over recent years, researchers have gained a more detailed understanding of the links between animals and climate. Wild grazers, for instance, can reduce the intensity and frequency of fires that emit greenhouse gases. Methane emissions from livestock significantly contribute to global warming.

Scientists have also known for decades that large herbivores such as elephants play important short-term roles in ecosystems by promoting biodiversity, recycling nutrients and dispersing seeds.

Forest elephants almost exclusively stomp down trees with a diameter of 12 inches or less, and they prefer to eat fast-growing softwood trees. By clearing the understory of vegetation, the researchers found, elephants not only alter plant composition but also affect light penetration and water availability.

This results in an ecosystem that favors large, slow-growing hardwood trees. Such species store significantly more carbon than the equivalent volume of smaller softwood trees.

Extrapolating their findings to the whole of Africa’s rain forest, Dr. Berzaghi and his colleagues found that the disappearance of elephants would result in a 7 percent loss of vegetation — the equivalent of 3 billion tons of carbon storage.

Put another way, elephants provide a carbon storage service valued at $43 billion.