Cool communities announced in Oklahoma, Maryland - American Forests Cool Communities Program; Tulsa, OK; Frederick, MD

American Forests, Sept-Oct, 1992 by Ashley O'Neal

THE WORLD ON GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE

The latest book from AMERICAN FORESTS should be invaluable as a sourcebook for foresters, policymakers, land managers, and others. Forests and Global Change, Volume One: Opportunities to Increase Forest Cover, edited by R. Neil Sampson and Dwight Hair, assesses domestic opportunities to mitigate the effects of global climate change through land conversion, urban foresfly, and non-traditional forestry approaches.

Volume Two, expected out in late 1992, will focus on traditional forest management, its effects on biomass and terrestrial carbon storage, and adaptive strategies forest managers can use to minimize the effects of climate change on all forests.

The 290-page first volume includes the work of more than 25 researchers and represents state-of-the-art analysis. Cosponsors are the USDA Forest Service, the Climate Change Division of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the American Forest Council, and the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. --LANCE CLARK

PROTECTING BIODIVERSITY

It's clear there will never be enough dedicated forest reserves to adequately protect biological diversity, so what can be done to give greater protection to biodiversity on that vast majority of forest land that is, and will continue to be, managed for other purposes? This and related questions were the focus of a week-long conference, "Biodiversity in Managed Landscapes: Theory and Practice," cosponsored by AMERICAN FORESTS' Forest Policy Center and held in Sacramento, California, July 13-17.

Center Director Al Sample chaired sessions in which economists, policy experts, and other social scientists reviewed changes that would have to be made to existing policies and institutions to implement suggestions offered by biologists and ecologists. The information presented at the conference will be published as a book, which Oxford University Press expects to have available early next year. AL SAMPLE

HEAD COUNT FOR TREES

Everyone knows urban trees contribute to the local economy by reducing summer temperatures and controlling stormwater problems. But until now there hasn't been a way to place a dollar value on this valuable resource. AMERICAN FORESTS' Forest Policy Center is developing a nationwide inventory system to identify the size and location of urban forests. Geographic data and aerial photographs will be used, and the information will be recorded in a form suitable for land-use planners. --GARY MOLL