Not seeing the forest for the trees:The oversight of defaunation in REDD+ and global forest governance

Over the past decade, countries have strived to develop a global governance structure to halt deforestation and forest degradation, by achieving the readiness requirements for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+). Nonetheless, deforestation continues, and seemingly intact forest areas are being degraded. Furthermore, REDD+ may fail to consider the crucial ecosystem functions of forest fauna including seed dispersal and pollination. Throughout the tropics, forest animal populations are depleted by unsustainable hunting to the extent that many forests are increasingly devoid of larger mammals—a condition referred to as empty forests. Large mammals and birds, who often disperse seeds of larger more carbon-rich tree species, are preferentially targeted by hunters and the first to be depleted. Such defaunation has cascading ecosystem effects, changing forest structure and composition with implications for carbon storage capacity. Failure to address defaunation would therefore be a major oversight in REDD+, compromising its long-term viability. We carried out a desktop study reviewing REDD+ documents and national implementation efforts in Colombia, Ecuador, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Indonesia to assess the extent to which they address hunting and acknowledged the ecosystem functions of fauna. We also assessed sub-national REDD+ projects to determine whether they recognized hunting and if and how they incorporated hunting management and wildlife monitoring at the project level. Moreover, we assessed to what extent sub-national REDD+ projects addressed the long-term impacts of the sustainability of hunting on forest ecosystem function including carbon storage. We found that hunting, the risk of defaunation, and its effects have been ignored in the REDD+ policy process at both the international and national levels. At the project level, we found some reference to hunting and the risks posed by the loss of forest fauna, albeit only addressed superficially. Our results underline the fact that forest ecosystems are being reduced to their carbon content and that, despite the rhetoric of biodiversity co-benefits, fauna is not treated as a functional component of forests. This neglect threatens to undermine forest ecosystem function and service delivery as well as long-term forest carbon assimilation capacity and hence, ultimately, to compromise REDD+ objectives

Transverse Mode Revival of a Light-Compensated Quantum Memory

A long-lived quantum memory was developed based on light-compensated cold $^{87}$Rb atoms in a dipole trap. The lifetime of the quantum memory was improved by 40 folds, from 0.67 ms to 28 ms with the help of a compensation laser beam. Oscillations of the memory efficiency due to the transverse mode breathing of the singly-excited spin wave have been clearly observed and clarified with a Monte-Carlo simulation procedure. With detailed analysis of the decoherence processes of the spin wave in cold atomic ensembles, this experiment provides a benchmark for the further development of high-quality quantum memories.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Radio Occultation Bending Angle Anomalies During Tropical Cyclones

The tropical deep convection affects the radiation balance of the atmosphere changing the water vapor mixing ratio and the temperature of the upper troposphere lower stratosphere. The aim of this work is to better understand these processes and to investigate if severe storms leave a significant signature in radio occultation profiles in the tropical tropopause layer. Using tropical cyclone best track database and data from different GPS radio occultation missions (COSMIC, GRACE, CHAMP, SACC and GPSMET), we selected 1194 profiles in a time window of 3 h and a space window of 300 km from the eye of the cyclone. We show that the bending angle anomaly of a GPS radio occultation signal is typically larger than the climatology in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere and that a double tropopause during deep convection can easily be detected using this technique. Comparisons with co-located radiosondes, climatology of tropopause altitudes and GOES analyses are also shown to support the hypothesis that the bending angle anomaly can be used as an indicator of convective towers. The results are discussed in connection to the GPS radio occultation receiver which will be part of the Atomic Clock Ensemble in Space (ACES) payload on the International Space Station

Skulpturen og nærværet af det virkelige

Med udgangspunkt i nogle skulpturer af Brancusi gives der en fænomenologisk beskrivelse af, hvordan det det virkelige visersig for os, når vi forholder os kontemplativt. Det uddybes, hvordan mødet med en skulptur kan gøre os opmærksomme på det,som konstituerer det virkelige, idet det påpeges, hvordan nærværet af det immanent virkelige på en gang falder sammen medog står i modsætning til nærværet af det transcendent virkelige. På en og samme tid er vi intenst bevidste om nærværet af detstoflige og det ikke-stoflige, om nærværet af det finite og det infinite og om nærværet af det relative og det absolutte.The development of a contemplative knowledge of reality is being described, using some sculpturees by Brancusi as a starting point. Meeting a sculpture makes us aware of the constituents of reality. The presence of immanent reality is coinciding withthe presence of transcentent reality thus forming an instance of Coi'ncidentia Oppositorum: At the same time we are intensely aware of matter and non-matter, of the finite and the infinite, and of the relative and the absolute