Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Wednesday, Sep 10, 2003
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Wednesday, Sep 10, 2003 |
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Agri-Biz & Commodities
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Research & Development More cropland makes for warmer climes Vinson Kurian
Thiruvananthapuram , Sept. 9 WHILE croplands may provide more food than forests, they don't offer much relief from hot tropical climes, according to a new study. A study of Santa Cruz, Bolivia, which used NASA satellites and computer models, revealed that cutting down tropical forests and converting grasslands to crops may inadvertently warm those local areas. According to the research, forest canopies create wind turbulence that cools the air, and native grasslands are better adapted to the tropics than crops in ways that also have a cooling effect. Researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) used a computer model to show that temperatures in January may have warmed on average by about one degree Fahrenheit in the last 25 years, solely because native forests and grasslands in Santa Cruz were replaced with crops. The Santa Cruz region has one of the highest rates of concentrated deforestation in the world over the last 20 years, as per results of a recent study co-authored by Mr Marc Steininger. According to the computer model, in places where tropical forest species were replaced by crops, night-time temperatures dropped slightly, while daytime local temperatures rose by two degrees Celsius. Forests have high canopies with varied surfaces, and the movement of winds over these rough surfaces creates turbulence and cools the air. When grasslands were replaced by crops in the model, warming occurred because crops were only about half as efficient with water as the drought-adapted local grasses and therefore transpired less. Transpiration is a daytime process where water evaporates from the leaves during photosynthesis and cools the air. The paper, appearing in the current issue of the Journal of Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics, used NASA's Landsat images acquired between 1975 and 1999 to provide the data.
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