Sentences with phrase «rain forests»

As rain forests are destroyed by humans, deserts expand.

Polytheism is prevalent among tribes in the Amazon basin (the Sherenti, Mundurucu, and Tapirape) and in the rain forests of Africa (the Ndorobo), New Guinea (the Keraki and Ulawans), and Southeast Asia (the Iban of Borneo and the Mnong Gar and Lolo of Vietnam).

Do Rain Forests Make Rain?

«This theory could explain why continental interiors with huge rain forests remain so moist,» says Wildlife Conservation Society researcher Douglas Sheil, who in an April Bioscience paper revived the biotic pump model, originally proposed in 2006 by Anastassia Makarieva and Victor Gorshkov, both at the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute in Russia.

From these various anthropological approaches, a basic dichotomy has emerged between two types of societies from very different ecosystems: societies born in rain forests and those that thrive in deserts.

Long underappreciated, puny motes of natural dust turn out to have a tremendous influence on climate, cloud formation, and the fertilization of oceans and rain forests.

Rain forests are always pretty wet, but they have dry seasons, and those dry seasons turn out to be a limiting factor on the survival of flora and fauna.

We are living in an era with one of the greatest extinction rates in recorded history, which began with wholesale slaughter of entire species for food and has progressed as we have dismembered a large part of what was the dominant incubator of life on earth, the rain forests.

An analogue to the Chilean rain forests exists in the United States.

«In tropical rain forests, the seeds of 80 to 90 percent of trees and lianas are dispersed by animals.

Murals painted by the Maya and other pre-Columbian cultures often contain a distinctive blue pigment that somehow manages to last for centuries in humid rain forests, as has this mural from Cacaxtla in Mexico.

Tracking the movement of nitrogen is much harder, but Armesto and Weathers believe that the nitrogen transported by fog is also critical to the survival of Chile's coastal rain forests.

Understanding these pocket rain forests and how they sustain themselves in the middle of a rugged desert has become the life's work of a small cadre of scientists who are only now beginning to fully appreciate Fray Jorge's third and deepest surprise: The trees that grow here do more than just drink the fog.

This is one reason why the fogborne nutrients, particularly nitrogen, are so important to Chile's pocket rain forests.

According to the analysis, new climates would be most dramatic in the rain forests of the Amazon and Indonesia, but would extend as far toward the poles as the American southeast.

Satellite images, for example, of rain forests, are a «collective vision».

Elephants that dwell in Africa's rain forests were shown to be a different species from those that roam the savanna.

2 There are more than 2,500 varieties of mosquito (some entomologists claim 3,000) whining from the Arctic tundra to the tropical rain forests.

The plants favor hot, dry conditions and hence are unlikely to threaten rain forests.

These trends would further desiccate many of the world's great deserts like the Sahara and the Arabian (both in the northern subtropics), whereas tropical rain forests like those in Amazonia and Africa straddling the equator and the southern tropic zone would get wetter.

At the end of the 19th century, canals on Mars were the rage, and well into the 20th, serious scientists imagined swampsand rain forests on Venus.

Coral reefs have been called the rain forests of the ocean because of their vast biodiversity and genetic wealth.

Of the 56 known species, many live in remote habitats like marshlands and rain forests, and some are endangered.

Iron - rich sediment from deserts feeds plankton blooms in the ocean and plants in the upper canopy of tropical rain forests.

Their numbers have fallen drastically over the past two decades largely due to the bush meat trade, clearing of rain forests and diseases such as Ebola.

Saving chocolate Because the threats to cocoa production come from pests, disease, climate change and poverty, work must be done on all these issues to raise yields without tearing down rain forests to gain arable land.

Yet farming and ranching already exact a daunting toll on the environment: burn down rain forests to create more arable land, dump fertilizers onto fields that run off and choke life in rivers and oceans, emit volumes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, use up vast stores of freshwater for irrigation.

University of California, Berkeley, herpetologist Jim McGuire was slogging through the rain forests of Indonesia's Sulawesi Island one night this past summer when he grabbed what he thought was a male frog and found himself juggling not only a frog but also dozens of slippery, newborn tadpoles.

An extensive study led by a researcher at Lund University in Sweden has mapped the effects of small farmers on the rain forests of Southeast Asia for the first time.

Too often such areas are overlooked in favor of the more «fashionable» rain forests.

He also rules out soybeans and grasses and even sugarcane in places such as Brazil because rain forests are being destroyed solely to grow the fuel crop.

Monkeypox, a cousin of smallpox previously found only in the rain forests of central Africa and West Africa, made a surprise appearance in the Midwest in May.

Lacking competition from other elk species in North America, they spread widely across many habitat types, from Pacific Northwest rain forests to sagebrush deserts.

The clearing of rain forests is done mainly to accommodate livestock, so getting rid of cattle would help protect biodiversity.

Specifically, anger at the effect global warming is likely to have on the rain forests of the Atherton Tablelands of Queensland.

Analyses of temperate rain forests located on the central coast of British Columbia, Canada suggest that for centuries, humans have intentionally used fire to manage plant - life.

Destruction of tropical rain forests, however, would significantly increase the concentration of carbon dioxide — the most important greenhouse gas — in the atmosphere by 26 percent.

«Coral reefs are referred to as rain forests of the sea,» said Marcelino, a research assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering.

«I think Australia would have been a challenging place once you started to break up the vegetation covers, break up the rain forests.»

(Even the State Department has become involved, holding a conference call this morning to highlight funding in its budget for assistance on energy and programs to protect rain forests abroad.)

Because if we have polluted seas, no whales, no rain forests, fewer trees, we'll never breathe oxygen, we'll never be able to drink the water.

Efficiency is one of the reasons that clearing rain forests is shortsighted: The nutrient cycles in rain forest ecosystems are so tight that the soil is usually very poor for farming.

The rain forests in Brazil and Indonesia are drying and, increasingly, burning.

Of course the best part of being an ecologist means that your «office space» sometimes requires you to hike through rain forests, navigate uncharted rivers, or visit exotic locations most people only dream about.

And because of the looming threats created by global climate change, what he is uncovering in these remote rain forests could have far - reaching consequences.

And we need to pull up our socks and realize that we still have a chance to prevent the loss of all sharks, coral reefs, and rain forests and to stabilize our atmosphere and the acidification of our oceans.

Scientists believe that dust has profound and somewhat mysterious influences on atmospheric chemistry, solar heat exchange and nutrient supply to the oceans and rain forests.

In some older specimens — including some species such as Sequoia, Pseudotsuga menziesii and many species in tropical rain forests — the canopy is 100 meters or more above the ground!

The tropical rain forests contain a pool of genetic diversity for important food crops, a source for vital new strains that can be hybridized to fight pests and diseases.

The planet's rain forests currently function as a «giant «utility,»» according to Andrew Mitchell, director of the Global Canopy Program.