Green Logging and Our Rare Galaxy

Green Logging

Eleven environmentalists have developed new techniques for determining forest ecosystem health based on the energetics of plants, trees, birds, mammals, and insects living within tropical forests in Malaysian Borneo. They compared measurements from five old-growth, unlogged forests with those from four selectively logged forests and one palm oil plantation. These environmentalists found that wise selective logging of forests maximizes possible lumbering income while simultaneously optimizing the forest ecosystem and maximizing global warming mitigation.

Our Rare Galaxy

Our Milky Way galaxy is not unusual when it comes to size, but astronomers continue to find ways that it’s unlike the vast majority of other galaxies in the universe. The latest example relates to how large the Milky Way is when accounting for the unusually small velocity dispersion of galaxies in our local neighborhood. Simulations reveal that we have to look outside a box nearly 600 million light-years on a side to expect another galaxy matching the Milky Way’s size and velocity dispersion.

Links and Resources:

• Logged Tropical Forests Have Amplified and Diverse Ecosystem Energetics
• The Unusual Milky Way–Local Sheet System: Implications for Spin Strength and Alignment