Why Large Biomass and Why Indigenous?
17 May 2017
Global warming is caused mainly by gases such as carbon monoxide and dioxide in the atmosphere. This is a fact now known to everyone except only the stupidest among us. During hours of daylight, foliage captures oxides of carbon and water from the air. Chlorophyll, the substance that makes leaves green, uses sunlight to process the oxides and moisture into sugar for the tree’s food and releases the oxygen back into the air. This process is called photosynthesis.
The less carbon in the atmosphere, the cooler the earth’s temperature. That is an unalterable scientific fact. However, the process of photosynthesis slows down considerably during hours of darkness.
Read more »Labels: Climate Change, Ecology
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Invasion of the Aliens
16 May 2017
Pakistanis have the greatest knack for making the worst possible choices insofar as the natural environment is concerned. In 2016, motoring north on M-2, I was very pleased to see large scale destruction of the non-native, water-guzzling eucalyptus underway. On another trip shortly afterwards I was aghast to notice that the stumps, about a metre in height, were left standing. Today, one year on, every cut eucalyptus has transmogrified into 10 that stand about four metres tall and they are still growing. If the earlier trees were each consuming massive amounts of water per day, these new hydra growths are several times thirstier.
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| Each eucalyptus trunk left in the ground next to the M-2 is sprouting with over a dozen new trees |
The eucalyptus is not invasive and it does not cause allergic reactions among humans. However, in the early 1990s, research by Nuclear Institute for Agriculture and Biology (NIAB), Faisalabad, showed that a three-year-old eucalyptus can process upwards of 100 litres of ground water in a 24-hour cycle. In a water-scarce country such as Pakistan, threatened with a dreadful water shortage within the next half decade, eucalyptus should not be seen. Yet the provincial forest departments continue to encourage its plantation.
Read more »Labels: Climate Change, Ecology, Karachi, Lahore
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Learning From the Ignorent
15 May 2017
Forty years ago when one flew over Lahore, one saw a vast sea of green. Today one sees great dusty swathes. Two things happened in the interim. One, the agricultural land around the city has turned into housing estates. Secondly, the centuries-old native trees that adorned that land as signs of ancient wisdom have been chopped down, burned and replaced with exotic dwarf ornamental flora.
Date palm obsession in Lahore
General duty bureaucrats masquerading as horticulturists with blighted visions of water-scarce Arabian desert and California with their date palms and ornamental bushes have in the past two decades engaged in ‘beautifying’ this sorry land that same way. The result is the brown expanse one sees from the air. Sadly, this pattern has now been followed in all other cities with their ‘development’ schemes.
Read more »Labels: Climate Change, Ecology, Lahore
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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