Norfolk Library talk shares struggles, successes of forest conservation

NORFOLK — Carlos Garcia Nunez, a scientist from the University of Los Andes in Venezuela, gave a detailed overview of the Andean cloud forest, the problems created by human development and how scientists are trying to mitigate the impact at the Norfolk Library Saturday, April 12.

Garcia Nunez’ talk was sponsored by Great Mountain Forest.

The Andean cloud forest is in a region with very tall mountains, up to 10,000 feet above sea level, and steep slopes. The air temperature is consistent, ranging between 55 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit with an average of 64 degrees.

It rains a lot. Garcia Nunez put the annual rainfall at between 78 to 118 inches per year.

There are two seasons: A short dry season between January and March, and the wet season, which is the rest of the year. The dry season is only “dry” when compared to the wet season, Garcia Nunez explained.

The region is consistently covered in fog and experiences high humidity.

This in turn creates an environment that is rich in biodiversity, with some 350 species of plants.

It also acts as a “net carbon sink.”

The problems come from human activity. Garcia Nunez identified three activities that encroach on the forest: Clearing forest for cattle pasture and agriculture, the infrastructure built to support those operations, and logging.

The result is an increasing number of fragmented forests — small clumps of forested land dotted between the developed land.

The fragmented forest areas cannot sustain the same biodiversity, nor absorb the same amount of carbon. Garcia Nunez said biodiversity loss in forest fragments is between 0.5% and 2.4% per year.

And the fragmented forest areas slowly give way to the developed areas.

Garcia Nunez said to understand the problem and address it it is necessary to develop an interdisciplinary approach covering landscape, ecosystem, communities — of plants, not people — populations, individual plants, and to study the entire system across levels of organization.

He provided detailed and highly technical examples of the work that has been done in recent years.

Garcia Nunez said the goals are conservation of what’s left and restoration of the affected areas. The latter goal is the source of much scientific debate.

“It is difficult to recreate the original,” Garcia Nunez said. “We try for something similar.”