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"A century of gradual reforestation across the American East and Southeast has kept the region cooler than it otherwise would have become, a new study shows.

The pioneering study of progress shows how the last 25 years of accelerated reforestation around the world might significantly pay off in the second half of the 21st century.

Using a variety of calculative methods and estimations based on satellite and temperature data from weather stations, the authors determined that forests in the eastern United States cool the land surface by 1.8 – 3.6°F annually compared to nearby grasslands and croplands, with the strongest effect seen in summer, when cooling amounts to 3.6 – 9°F.

The younger the forest, the more this cooling effect was detected, with forest trees between 20 and 40 years old offering the coolest temperatures underneath.

“The reforestation has been remarkable and we have shown this has translated into the surrounding air temperature,” Mallory Barnes, an environmental scientist at Indiana University who led the research, told The Guardian.

“Moving forward, we need to think about tree planting not just as a way to absorb carbon dioxide but also the cooling effects in adapting for climate change, to help cities be resilient against these very hot temperatures.”

The cooling of the land surface affected the air near ground level as well, with a stepwise reduction in heat linked to reductions in near-surface air temps.

“Analyses of historical land cover and air temperature trends showed that the cooling benefits of reforestation extend across the landscape,” the authors write. “Locations surrounded by reforestation were up to 1.8°F cooler than neighboring locations that did not undergo land cover change, and areas dominated by regrowing forests were associated with cooling temperature trends in much of the Eastern United States.”

By the 1930s, forest cover loss in the eastern states like the Carolinas and Mississippi had stopped, as the descendants of European settlers moved in greater and greater numbers into cities and marginal agricultural land was abandoned.

The Civilian Conservation Corps undertook large replanting efforts of forests that had been cleared, and this is believed to be what is causing the lower average temperatures observed in the study data.

However, the authors note that other causes, like more sophisticated crop irrigation and increases in airborne pollutants that block incoming sunlight, may have also contributed to the lowering of temperatures over time. They also note that tree planting might not always produce this effect, such as in the boreal zone where increases in trees are linked with increases in humidity that way raise average temperatures."

-via Good News Network, February 20, 2024

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The fact that israel revels in the destruction of a hospital and gleefully attacks civilian centers while Iran responds to an attack on it by striking military targets, yet the former is called "restrained" and "democratically humanistic" while the latter is villified as "aggressive" and "dangerous" should tell you everything you need to know about both western liberal democratic imperialism and western media's class nature.

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Ooops Israel discovers they can't just bomb embassies in sovereign countries without repercussions

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Somebody get this in front of pmseymour

We're on a new platform with a totally different audience...we have to prove ourselves all over again...convince a totally new group of people to think we're funny and worth your attention....so allow me to drop some of my "A" material....the funniest thing I got.......here goes....... jeef berky

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We're on a new platform with a totally different audience...we have to prove ourselves all over again...convince a totally new group of people to think we're funny and worth your attention....so allow me to drop some of my "A" material....the funniest thing I got.......here goes....... jeef berky

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As it is Passover again, it is time for the annual debate as to whether the frog plague, which thanks to a quirk in the Hebrew, is written as a plague of frog, singular, rather than the plural, plague of frogs, was in fact, as generally imagined, a plague of many frogs, or instead a singular giant Kaiju frog. This is an ancient and venerable argument that actually goes back to the Talmud because this is what the Jewish people are. If we can't argue for fun about this sort of thing, what are we even doing.

In that spirit, I would like to submit a third possibility, which is that in fact it was one perfectly normal sized frog, who was absolutely acing Untitled Frog Game: Ancient Egypt Edition. One particularly obnoxious frog, who through sheer hard work, managed to plague all of Egypt.

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Oh damn the Catholics have joined in on the war against AI "art".

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this morning the United Nations Human Rights Council voted on a resolution calling for a ban on arms sales to Israel and the resolution passed. two Israeli border points opened for aid routes (they were supposedly open? lmao), Biden is calling for an immediate ceasefire, last night was the first without air attacks on Gaza.. the killing of seven foreign aid workers shook the world apparently, but oh god how late. the journey to recognising genocide for some seems to avoid acknowledging the humanity of thousands of Palestinians who have been murdered

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Me Giving a Pressed Conference: our advocacy for the disabled must include the addict, the imperfect victim, those we despise; the right to autonomy and life cannot devolve into a popularity contest

Reporter I Hate (Not Sexual Tension): Does that include all the attendees of the Bored Ape NFT event who went blind

Me: *Blood streaming from my nostrils and eyes* david, it includes everyone

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best thing tumblr ever did for me is the term "rotating it in my mind". it's really true that sometimes you think about something real hard but you can't tell what the thoughts are exactly. it's revolutionary stuff, i might even say