🚀 go-pugleaf

At 03:34 pm -0500 12/2/97, Zsolt Sary <zsolt@VCN.BC.CA> wrote about
"Re: Photosynthesis vs Respiration in tropical rain forests":

>Is the regulation of atmospheric oxigen still trivial (by forests or
>otherwise) considering the huge amount of fossil fuel burning we
>now undertake?  Is atmospheric O2 ever likely to be jeapordized by our
>activities?  What if we not only cut down the forests, we also polluted
>the seas enough to stop primary production?
>
The real importance of forests, from a large scale perspective, is
not the production of oxigen but its role of the regulation of
terrestrial climate. You may cut all the forests and still have
oxygen for many years (in human time scale) but you will be living
in a permanent drought (read: desert) pretty soon. As examples, it
comes to mind: (1) The civilizations of antiquity such as the
kingdoms of Lebanon and Israel, Babylon, Chaldea, Egypt; (2) Haiti;
(3) the southern amazonian region in Brazil; (4) the isles of the
Malayan archipielago (Bali, Java, Indonesia, Malasya); (5) the
central Andes region; (6) the Sahara and Kalahari in Africa. All
are or were inhabited by people that overexploited their natural
resources.

>Zsolt Sary
>Golder Associates
>Kamloops, BC
>
>> BTW, the role of rain forests in regulating atmospheric oxygen is trivial
>> on human timescales.  Even if *all* forests were to be cut down, there
>> would still be plenty of oxygen for everyone for hundreds of thousands of
>> years (because there is an enormous amount already in the atmosphere).
>>
>> regards,
>>
>> Toby Tyrrell
>> Southampton Oceanography Centre
>> University of Southampton
>> European Way
>> Southampton
>> SO14 3ZH
>> UK
>>
>> email: tt@socnet.soc.soton.ac.uk
>>


--
P. Alejandro L=F3pez-Valencia
Computational Ecologist           alejolo@ideam.gov.co
                                  palopez@usa.net
                                  http://trailerpark.com/elcamino/alejo/