Levels of fire activity and severity that are unprecedented in the instrumental record have recently been observed in forested regions around the world. Using a large sample of daily fire events and hourly climate data, here we show that fire activity in all global forest biomes responds strongly and predictably to exceedance of thresholds in atmospheric water demand, as measured by maximum daily vapour pressure deficit. The climatology of vapour pressure deficit can therefore be reliably used to predict forest fire risk under projected future climates. We find that climate change is projected to lead to widespread increases in risk, with at least 30 additional days above critical thresholds for fire activity in forest biomes on every continent by 2100 under rising emissions scenarios. Escalating forest fire risk threatens catastrophic carbon losses in the Amazon and major population health impacts from wildfire smoke in south Asia and east Africa.

Trees and shrubs are important component of rural farming system in Nepal. This paper assesses tree diversity and carbon pool of trees and shrubs outside forests as well as their contribution in the rural economy of the study area. In the land use classification map derived from the high resolution ALOS Pan-sharpened imagery, random selection was made among systematic grid in the agriculture class to find out the inventory plot. The plot was designed as nested plot. Firstly, tree measurement was done and then leaves, branch samples as well as soil samples were collected from each sample plot. Structured questionnaire survey was used to assess the contribution of trees and shrubs on rural livelihoods. The biomass and soil samples were analyzed using dry combustion method to estimate the carbon content. The amount of carbon stock difference between farmland with TOF and without TOF was found 26.56 Mg (megagram) ha -1 . There was 350,714.6 Mg above ground carbon, 35,103.36 Mg root carbon and 84451.18 Mg soil carbon accumulated by total trees and shrubs on farms in the District. Hence, the total carbon pool of the District in different agroforestry systems was estimated to be 470,269.18 Mg. Homegarden system was found to be a good agroforestry system in terms of having higher species richness, tree diversity and relatively higher amount of above and below ground carbon per unit area. The results also showed that the trees on farms contributed16.4% (NRs. 3689 per household/year) and 17.1% (NRs. 2613 per household/year) of farmland income and livestock income respectively. The results, thus, indicate that trees on farms have visible impacts on rural livelihoods, harboring rich plant diversity and sequestering substantial amount of carbon.

Not available.Banko Janakari; A Journal of Forestry Information for NepalVol. 25, No. 1Page: 76-79

Not available.Banko JanakariA Journal of Forestry Information for NepalVol. 26, No. 1, Page:97-100, 2016

Ghodaghodi Lake in Far-West Nepal has been listed as a Ramsar Site due to its significance as a habitat for several endangered species of flora and fauna. The wetland and its surrounding area is facing deforestation, forest degradation and encroachment. In this case study, unsupervised and finally supervised classification of multi-temporal Landsat imagery covering the wetland area was applied. A post-classification comparison approach was used to derive forest cover change maps. The results depicted the loss of forest cover over a thirty- one year period, in three time slices. The highest rate of loss was observed in the 1990 to1999 time slice. Keywords: Change detection; forest cover; Ghodaghodi lake; Landsat DOI: 10.3126/banko.v19i2.2980 Banko Janakari, Vol. 19, No.2 2009 pp.15-19