Link:
***
18/07/2022
14/07/2022
Declarada Situação de Alerta - Alert Situation Declared.
Alert Situation Declared.
The declaration
of the Alert Situation was extended due to the risk of rural
fire until 23:59 on 17 July 2022 for the entire continental territory.
Link:
https://cm-lousa.pt/prorrogacao-da-declaracao-da-situacao-contingencia-17-julho-2022/
Know what agricultural work you can do by July 15
July 7, 2022
The Ministers of National
Defence, Internal Affairs, Health, Environment and Climate Action and
Agriculture and Food, in view of the weather forecasts for the coming days,
which point to a significant worsening of the risk of rural fire, today, 7
July, the Declaration of the Alert Situation throughout the territory of the
continent.
The Alert Situation
covers the period between 00:00 hours on July 8th and 11:59 pm on July 15th.
Burns and burning, the execution of work in forest spaces using any type of machinery
and work in other rural spaces using motorizers of blades or metal discs,
cross-cuts, destroyers and machines with blades or front shovels are thus
prohibited.
The Declaration follows the
elevation of the Special Alert State of the Integrated System of Protection and
Relief Operations (SIOPS) to the Special Rural Fire Fighting Device (DECIR) in
all districts of the continental territory, the ANEPC - National Emergency and
Civil Protection Authority in a statement.
And explains that this
Declaration "stems from the need to adopt preventive and special measures
to react to the high, very high and maximum fire risk provided by the IPMA in
all districts of the continent in the coming days".
In the context of the Declaration
of Alert Situation, provided for in the Basic Law of Civil Protection, the
following exceptional measures will be implemented:
Prohibition of
access, circulation and permanence within forest spaces previously defined in
the Municipal Plans for The Defense of the Forest Against Fires, as well as in
forest paths, rural paths and other roads that cross them;
Prohibition of burning and
burning of exploitation leftovers;
prohibition of
carrying out work in forest spaces using any type of machinery, with the
exception of those associated with rural fire fighting situations;
Prohibition of
carrying out work in other rural spaces using motorizers of blades or metal
discs, cross-bushes, breakers and machines with blades or front shovel
Total
prohibition of the use of fireworks or other pyrotechnic devices, irradiation
of combustion, as well as the suspension of authorisations which have been
issued.
08/07/2022
13/06/2022
AVISO À POPULAÇÃO – PERIGO DE INCÊNDIO RURAL – MEDIDAS PREVENTIVAS NIVEL AMARELO DE ALERTA ATÉ DIA 14
WARNING TO THE POPULATION - DANGER OF RURAL FIRE - PREVENTIVE MEASURES YELLOW ALERT LEVEL UP TO 14th june
published on 9 June 2022
SITUATION
According to the information provided by the
Portuguese Institute of Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA), it is expected that hot and
dry weather is expected to continue for the coming days, expected to last
until June 18, highlighting:
2. EXPECTED
EFFECTS
3. PREVENTIVE
MEASURES
4. OPERATIONAL
DETERMINATIONS
Source:
https://cm-lousa.pt/aviso-populacao-perigo-incendio-rural-medidas-preventivas-2/
07/06/2022
.JPG)
02/06/2022
Notice 23/2022 - AIGP Serra da Lousã
Notice
23/2022 - AIGP Serra da Lousã
|
Document 1 Jun 2022
https://cm-lousa.pt/autarquia/executivo-municipal/editais/
_EDITAL%20CM%20Lous%C3%A3%2023-2022_page-0003_%20-%20C%C3%B3pia.jpg)
The Municipality of Lousã (CM Lousã) made public, through an Edict, that the Integrated Landscape Management Area Serra da Lousã, - AIGP Serra da Lousã, is constituted pursuant to Order No. 70109-A/2021 published in the Diário da República on July 16, 2021.
The municipality is the promoter of the Serra da Lousã AIGP.
According to the Notice the calendars are:
By September
2022, the municipality should boost all actions with the
constitution of the future Management Entity.
until September 2023 work will take
place to identify the
land structure, its
owners and other ownership
rights holders.
The following is the preparation ofthe proposal for a OIGP...
OIGP - Integrated Operations of Landscape
Management
A "Guide" was published on the website of the Directorate-General for the
Territory on 11 April 2022:
Advisory Document for the
preparation of Integrated Operations of Landscape Management (OIGP): OIGP -
Reference Framework for Support to the Preparation of Proposals (27 pages).
This Reference Framework for
Supporting the Preparation of Proposals has, as the name implies, all technical
information, as well as the applicable legislative framework, in a logic of
active collaboration of the Directorate General of the Territory with all
partners involved in the implementation of Integrated Landscape Management
Operations.
The "Guide" is intended
to support the managing entities of the Integrated Landscape Management Areas
(PGA) in the development of their OIGP proposals, identifying the 5 key
components to be presented in the framework of an Integrated Landscape Management
Operation:
- Design of the transformation
and enhancement of the landscape, its transformation matrix, and the
fundamentals that underpin the options, including the characterization of the
fire regime, its causality and risk analysis, before and after future landscape
proposal;
- Programming of execution, including operating model;
- Investment and financing, including sources of
available support;
- Models of management of the OIGP and contractualization
of the actions to be carried out with the owners;
- Program for monitoring the implementation of actions
and evaluation of results;
THE GPA and PGOs are territorial
management instruments, integrated into the Landscape Transformation Program,
with an integrated approach focused on responses to landscape planning and management
and increased forest area managed on a scale that promotes resilience to fires,
the valorization of natural capital and the promotion of rural encomia.
Sources:
https://www.dgterritorio.gov.pt/Operacoes-Integradas-de-Gestao-da-Paisagem-OIGP
***
27/05/2022
Save the bees!
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"Save the bees!" — these calls to action usually come with a quote attributed to Albert Einstein: "If the bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live."
Problem is, there's no
evidence Einstein ever said that. And that statement also simply isn't true. If
all the bees died tomorrow, we would still be able to grow food — just maybe
not the sort you'd like.
Why's that?
It comes down to how
different plants are pollinated. Wind-pollinated crops such as wheat, rice, and
corn would continue to thrive, whereas you'd have to say goodbye to flowering
crops, which includes most fruits and vegetables.
And here comes the
honeybee, right?
When we talk about
bees, we often only think of the honeybee - but there are some 20,000 other bee
species around!
Well... honeybees do, of course, pollinate flowers. But they're not the stars of the show.
"The general
public confounds bees with the honeybee," said Isabelle Dajoz, a
pollination ecology researcher and professor at the Sorbonne University in
Paris. "It would be the same situation if, for example, you were talking
about birds and people think that when you talk about birds, you talk about
chicken, or you when you talk about mammals, people would think only of
sheep."
There are around
20,000 different species of bees. Yes, you read that right. Most are wild,
solitary, and highly specified to certain plants, which make them much better
at pollinating. Bumblebees, for example, perform buzz pollination — while
holding onto the flower they, you guessed it, buzz loudly to release the
pollen, something honeybees can't do. And it's not just bumblebees that are so
good at their jobs.
Even though we can't
accurately measure the value of this wild bee pollination, crops around the
world would suffer without it. Yields in the United States are already lower
due to wild bee decline, and a recent study found that globally, we may have
already lost a quarter of wild bee species. This also has major implications
for life at higher trophic levels.
"Lots of animals depend on diverse plant
communities for their food, for their nesting habitat. For example, lots of
birds, lots of little mammals will eat the fruits or seeds of plants,"
said Dajoz. There's no telling how devastating wild bee loss is to both our
food security and the stability of ecosystems.
Honeybee colonies are
definitely suffering losses due to climate change and intensive agriculture,
but the idea that they are dying off is only partially correct, according to
German Beekeepers Association DIB. Because they are managed by humans and
receive veterinary care, they are comparatively safe.
What can I do if I
want to help?
Source
DW Environment
https://www.dw.com/en/dying-bees-whats-the-big-deal/a-57572721
RANGE
There are over 20,000
bee species worldwide, including the honey bee, which originated in Eurasia and
has been imported around the globe as a domesticated species. Wild bees species
live on every continent except Antarctica. In North America there are approximately
4,000 native bee species occupying ecosystems from forests to deserts to
grasslands.
DIET
Bees feed exclusively
on sugary nectar and protein-rich pollen from flowering plants, unlike the
carnivorous wasps from which they evolved.
BEHAVIOR
As they forage, bees
perform the critical act of pollination. As a bee enters a flower to feed on
nectar and gather pollen, some of the pollen sticks to the bee’s body. When the
bee flies on, it deposits some of that pollen on the next flower it visits, resulting
in fertilization, allowing the plant to reproduce and to generate the fruits
and seeds so many other wildlife species rely on as a food source. In fact,
bees pollinate a staggering 80 percent of all flowering plants, including
approximately 75 percent of the fruits, nuts, and vegetables grown in the
United States.
Though all female bees
can sting, they only do so when threatened. Honey bees, with hives filled with
honey and larvae that need protecting, are generally more aggressive and likely
to sting when disturbed than solitary native bees.
LIFE HISTORY
Bees begin life as
eggs, which hatch into larvae the feed and pupate and eventually emerge in
their adult form, where they visit flowers to feed on and gather nectar and
pollen.
Unlike the hive-forming
domesticated honey bee or wild bumble bee species, most bees are solitary
nesters. They don’t form hives, create honey, or live a communal lifestyle.
Instead, they lay their eggs in a series of tiny chambers in tunnels in the
ground, in hollow plant stems, or in decaying wood. Unlike hive-forming bee
species, which collectively care for their young, female solitary bees
provision their eggs with a ball of nectar and pollen and leave them to grow
and pupate on their own with no parental care.
However, some species
do not build nests at all. These “cuckoo bees" will lay their eggs in
nests built by other species. Cuckoo bees will sometimes kill the host species’
larvae to ensure their own eggs will have enough food to grow to adulthood.
Queen bumble bees can
live for a year and workers for a month. Solitary bees also live for about a
year, with the majority of that time spent developing in their nesting chamber
where they hatch, pupate, and often overwinter. Their adult lives, during which
they are active, lasts approximately three to eight weeks. Females tend to live
a bit longer, as they need to build a nest and lay eggs.
CONSERVATION
Both domesticated honeybees
and many native bee species are in decline. In fact, some species, such as the
once-common rusty patched bumblebee, are now listed as endangered in the U.S.
Potential causes of these declines include habitat destruction, disease,
agricultural and lawn and garden practices, use of pesticides, habitat
fragmentation, changes in land use, invasive species, and climate change.
Pollinators, notably
native bees, are critical to the survival of North America’s native plants,
other wildlife, and people alike. The National Wildlife Federation (USA) maintains
and supports several initiatives that support pollinators.
SOURCES
The National
Wildlife Federation
https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Invertebrates/Bees
https://thebeeconservancy.org/why-bees/
do your part to #Savethebees
Here are some actions
you can take to help preserve bees and other pollinators:
· - Plant
nectar-bearing flowers such as marigolds or sunflowers for decorative purposes
on balconies, terraces, and gardens
· - Buy honey
and other hive products from your nearest local beekeeper
· - Raise
awareness among children and adolescents on the importance of bees and express
your support for beekeepers
· - Set up a
pollinator farm on your balcony, terrace, or garden
· - Preserve
old meadows, which feature a more diverse array of flowers, and sow
nectar-bearing plants
· - Cut grass
on meadows only after the nectar-bearing plants have finished blooming
· - Use
pesticides that do not harm bees, and spray them in windless weather, either
early in the morning or late at night, when bees withdraw from blossoms
SOURCE
https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/why-bees-are-essential-people-and-planet
Thank you also to:
https://www.gov.si/en/registries/projects/world-bee-day/
09/05/2022
The Dirty ‘Renewable’ Energy Increasingly Heating Swiss Homes
The Dirty ‘Renewable’ Energy Increasingly Heating Swiss Homes
A protection forest near Toffen that was logged in 2019
LUCIE WUETHRICH
Lucie Wuethrich’s activist journey started when her neighbor came to her crying. They lived below a protection forest near Bern, the Swiss capital, yet logging created a risk of rocks crashing onto their property. Her neighbor’s driveway had already been pelted with a massive boulder.
In response, Wuethrich started investigating why trees were being cut down in a protected area. She learned that this type of logging was allowed for forest maintenance, but “what shocked me enormously was to discover that 95% of this would be burnt.”
What Wuethrich had stumbled on was a corner of the biomass energy industry, in which wood is burnt as an energy source. Many politicians love it because they typically get to mark this in their environmental balance sheets as a source of renewable energy, under the premise that the trees that are logged will get replaced with freshly planted trees. So biomass helps governments meet their carbon reduction goals, even though burning wood remains a major source of carbon dioxide emissions and air pollution.
Many foresters appreciate the industry because they get a market for their so-called low-value wood, which typically can’t be used for more profitable purposes like construction. Some maintain that forests need to be periodically thinned anyway to maintain good forest health and low fire risk, so these thinnings might as well be used to heat people’s homes.
Defenders of biomass energy also contend that the industry isn’t leading to deforestation. “For years, the forest area in Switzerland has been increasing annually despite timber harvesting,” comments Nöel Graber, a spokesperson for Axpo, the country’s largest producer of renewable energy.
The Bremgartenwald forest, where increasing logging has been documented recently
And in response to the biomass industry’s point that Swiss forests are actually expanding, Wuethrich, who works with environmental organizations including Biofuelwatch and the Biomass Working Group of the Environmental Paper Network, counters that the picture varies widely by region. She’s seeing shrinking forest cover locally.
As well, the quality of forest matters. Under Swiss government definitions, Wuethrich points out, “Radically thinned/logged forests still count as forest, as indeed do forestry roads and forestry installations.”
Unlike the UK, which imports most of its wood pellets from the US, Switzerland generally logs its own forests as a source of domestic heating. Its main source of renewable energy is hydropower, and the country may have limited space for solar and wind energy. It’s long been customary in Switzerland to burn wood for heat, with little awareness of the impacts on deforestation, air quality, and human health.
Within this mix, wood burning is set to expand. Demand for tiny, uniform wood pellets, and the associated prices, are climbing. According to Wuethrich, government and industry parties are looking to increase woody biomass production by 40% or even more.
In Bern “energy wood has been called the ‘Oil of Emmental’,” says Wuethrich, referring to a central region of Switzerland. She believes that a desire for energy self-sufficiency and a diversity of energy sources, coupled with the government’s 2050 target of net-zero emissions, is driving the push for biomass energy.
“The government is very pro-biomass while the general public knows very little about it,” Wuethrich believes. “It is an uphill battle here.”
Stacks of wood destined for combustion, near Studen
LUCIE WUETHRICH
Surprisingly, some major environmental groups in Switzerland are actually encouraging people to burn more wood. One of these is myclimate, a nonprofit that provides subsidies for heat pumps (an energy-efficient form of heating) – but also for wood pellet heating systems.
According to Kai Landwehr, the head of marketing for myclimate, “we want to change the way houses get heated as soon as possible. Hence, we need to shut down and replace fossil heating systems. It is simply not possible to install a heat pump at every location. Reasons for this are, for example, noise protection regulations or because the necessary drilling is not possible. In these cases, pellet heating offers an alternative.”
myclimate promotes only automated pellet heating systems, which it argues produce less particulate matter than older models. Yet even newer models of wood-burning stoves, designated as environmentally friendly, still produce very high levels of tiny particle pollution.
So instead of incentivizing people to burn wood, Wuethrich says, “The infinite renewables such as solar, wind, hydro and geothermal energies should be promoted and further subsidized instead.”
She’s frustrated by the gap between the perceptions and the realities of forestry use. “People think of Switzerland as a green and pleasant land, but we leave disproportionally large carbon footprints thanks to our lavish lifestyles,” Wuethrich believes. To counter the image of lush and pristine forests, she has been monitoring and documenting what she calls “radical logging” of carbon-storing trees that are then sent on to wood chippers.
What Wuethrich needs is for more environmentalists and policymakers to take notice of the unsustainability of biomass energy. “That is why I am still fighting for this. I never really expected this in Switzerland.”
Check out my website.
https://www.christinero.com/
Christine Ro
https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinero/2022/03/16/the-dirty-renewable-energy-increasingly-heating-swiss-homes/?sh=515650df27a6
27/04/2022
Global Deforestation and Forest Growth over 30 Years
Global Deforestation and Forest Growth over 30 Years
Global
Deforestation and Forest Growth over 30 Years
Forests are the great carbon capturers of our planet, and they are a key source of wildlife habitats and vital resources for people around the world.
But deforestation is threatening this natural
infrastructure, releasing carbon into the atmosphere while simultaneously
reducing wildlife diversity and making our environment more susceptible to
environmental disasters.
The State
of Deforestation by Region
Today, forests make up around 31% of the Earth’s total land area, spanning 15.68 million square miles (40.6 million km²). Over the past three decades, the world lost a bit more than 4% (685,300 square miles) of its forests, which equates to an area about half the size of India.
Europe and Asia were the only two regions which had
significant overall forest growth during this time period, while Oceania
saw no significant change and North and Central America saw a slight reduction.
Region Forest area
change (1990-2020) Percentage
change in forest area
Asia +146,718 sq
mi +6.64%
Europe +88,803 sq mi +2.34%
Oceania +1,057
sq mi +0.0015%
North America and Central America -7,722 sq mi -0.34%
South America and the Caribbean -501,932 sq mi -13.30%
Africa -409,268 sq
mi -14.29%
Global total -685,401
sq mi -4.19%
Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization
Africa along with South America and the Caribbean were the regions with the greatest amount of net forest loss, both losing more than 13% of their forests over the past 30 years. This is largely because these two regions have large amounts of forest area available, with the underlying land in high demand for agriculture and cattle-raising.
Although the overall forest loss around the world is massive, the
rate of forest loss has slowed down over the past three decades. While an
average of 30,116 square miles were lost each year between 1990 to 2000, between
2010 to 2020 that number has dropped to 18,146 square miles, showing that the
rate of overall loss has fallen by almost 40%.
The Countries and
Drivers of Deforestation and Forest Growth
Despite an overall slowing down of forest loss, certain countries in South America along with the entirety of Africa are still showing an increase in the rate of forest loss. It’s in these regions where most of the countries with the largest reduction in forest area are located:
Country Net
change in forest area (1990-2020) Percentage
change in forest area
Brazil -356,287 sq mi -15.67%
Indonesia -101,977
sq mi -22.28%
Democratic Republic of the Congo -94,495
sq mi -16.25%
Angola -48,865 sq mi -15.97%
Tanzania -44,962
sq mi -20.29%
Myanmar -41,213 sq
mi -27.22%
Paraguay -36,463
sq mi -36.97%
Bolivia -26,915 sq mi -12.06%
Mozambique -25,614 sq mi -15.29%
Argentina -25,602
sq mi -18.84%
Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization
Brazil, home to most of the Amazon rainforest, saw 356,287 square miles of net forest loss, largely fueled by farmers using the land to raise cattle for beef. It’s estimated that 80% of the deforested land area of the Amazon has been replaced with pastures, with the resulting beef production known to be among the worst meats for the environment in terms of carbon emissions.
Forests and the
Climate Crisis
It’s estimated that forests absorb around 30% of the world’s
carbon emissions each year, making them the greatest and most important carbon
sinks we have on land. When you pair this with the fact that deforestation
contributes around 12% of annual greenhouse gas emissions, the importance of
forest preservation becomes even more clear.
Preserving and
Regrowing Forests for the Future
Despite the short-term acceleration in forest loss seen in 2020, there have been positive signs about forest regrowth coming to light. A recent study found that previously deforested land can recuperate its soil fertility in about a decade, and layered plants, trees, and species diversity can recover in around 25-60 years.
Along with this, in some instances these regrowing “secondary forests” can absorb more carbon dioxide than “primary forests”, giving hope that a global reforestation effort can absorb more emissions than previously thought possible.
From better financial incentives for local farmers and ranchers to
preserve forest area to larger scale policies and initiatives like CAFI,
curbing deforestation and promoting reforestation requires a global effort.
Reversing forest loss in the coming decades is a daunting but necessary step towards
stabilizing the climate and preserving the environment that billions of animals
and people rely on.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-30-years-of-deforestation-and-forest-growth-by-country/
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Solstício de Inverno
Fontes/Links: https://g1.globo.com/mundo/noticia/2024/12/21/milhares-de-pessoas-celebram-o-solsticio-de-inverno-em-stonehenge.ghtml ΦΦΦ
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