William F. Laurance

"Passing by the mountain village of —a quaint, artsy town known for its Saturday tourist markets—the changed abruptly to open . Stately rainforest trees were replaced by s, s and s, with a ground layer of punctuated by large, oddly shaped . s and s, their flowers shaped like bottle-brushes, grew in dense clumps along a few meandering creeks."

"In the , alters forest–climate interactions in diverse ways. On a local scale (less than 1 ), elevated desiccation and wind disturbance near fragment margins lead to sharply increased tree mortality, thus altering dynamics, composition, dynamics and . Fragmented forests are also highly vulnerable to edge–related fires, especially in regions with periodic droughts or strong dry seasons. At landscape to regional scales (10–1000 km), habitat fragmentation may have complex effects on forest–climate interactions, with important consequences for atmospheric circulation, water cycling and precipitation. Positive feedbacks among , regional climate change and fire could pose a serious threat for some tropical forests, but the details of such interactions are poorly understood."

"Each year—as a result of , automobiles, , , and tropical —humankind spews some 8 billion tons of , , and other carbon-based pollutants into the atmosphere. The net effect, as we all know, has been an alarming rise in air pollutants—particularly carbon dioxide, which has increased by more than a third, from 280 to 380 parts per million (ppm), since the onset of the industrial era. Equally distressing is that these emissions are accelerating, because countries like the United States have failed to rein their burgeoning emissions and because rapidly developing countries like China, India, and Brazil are increasingly adopting the energy-consumptive lifestyles of industrial nations. From 1800 to 1960, for example, the average annual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations was just 0.2 ppm, but this jumped to 1.4 ppm from 1960 to 2000 and has since risen to 2.3 ppm."

"s are the most biologically diverse and ecologically complex of terrestrial ecosystems, and are disappearing at alarming rates. It has long been suggested that rapid forest loss and degradation in the , if unabated, could ultimately precipitate a wave of species extinctions, perhaps comparable to mass extinction events in the geological history of the Earth. However, a vigorous debate has erupted following a study by Wright and Muller-Landau that challenges the notion of large-scale tropical extinctions, at least over the next century."

"Humankind has dramatically transformed much of the Earth’s surface and its natural ecosystems. This process is not new—it has been ongoing for millennia—but it has accelerated sharply over the last two centuries, and especially in the last several decades. Today, the loss and degradation of natural history can be likened to a war of attrition. Many natural ecosystems are being progressively razed, bulldozed, and felled by axes or chainsaws, until only small scraps of their original extent survive. Forests have been hit especially hard: the global area of forests have been reduced by roughly half over the past three centuries. Twenty-five nations have lost virtually all of their forest cover, and another 29 more than nine-tenths of their forest ( 2005)."