William F. Laurance

William F. Laurance (born 12 October , 1957) is an American-born, Australian ecologist and conservation biologist, specialising in tropical rainforests. He was elected in 2003 a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in 2015 a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, and in 2025 a Fellow of the Royal Society Royal Society of London. Quotes Passing by the mountain village of Kuranda, Queensland Kuranda—a quaint, artsy town known for its Saturday tourist markets—the rainforest changed abruptly to open Woodland#Australia woodland. Stately rainforest trees were replaced by Eucalypteae gums, Acacia wattles and Casuarina she-oaks, with a ground layer of Themeda triandra kangaroo grass punctuated by large, oddly shaped Mound-building termites termite mounds. Proteaceae Proteas and banksias, their flowers shaped like bottle-brushes, grew in dense clumps along a few meandering creeks. Stinging Trees and Wait-a-Whiles: Confessions of a Rainforest Biologist Chicago Press 2000 9780226468969 https://books.google.com/books?id=HAyV9y-EPcQC&pg=PA9 9 (196 pages) In the tropics, habitat fragmentation alters forest–climate interactions in diverse ways. On a local scale (less than 1 Kilometre km), elevated desiccation and wind disturbance near fragment margins lead to sharply increased tree mortality, thus altering Light gap canopy–gap dynamics, plant community composition, biomass dynamics and Carbon sequestration carbon storage. Fragmented forests are also highly vulnerable to edge–related fires, especially in regions with periodic droughts or strong dry seasons. At landscape to regional scales (10–1000 km), habitat fragmentation may have complex effects on forest–climate interactions, with important consequences for atmospheric circulation, water cycling and precipitation. Positive feedbacks among deforestation, regional climate change and fire could pose a serious threat for some tropical forests, but the details of such interactions are poorly understood. 29 March 2004 359 1443 345–352 Forest-climate interactions in fragmented tropical landscapes https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2003.1430 10.1098/rstb.2003.1430 Each year—as a result of Manufacturing industrial activities, automobiles, Electricity generation power generation, Portland cement cement manufacturing, and tropical deforestation—humankind spews some 8 billion tons of carbon dioxide, methane, and other carbon-based pollutants into the atmosphere.The net effect, as we all know, has been an alarming rise in air pollutants—particularly carbon dioxide, which has increased by more than a third, from 280 to 380 parts per million (ppm), since the onset of the industrial era. Equally distressing is that these emissions are accelerating, because countries like the United States have failed to rein their burgeoning emissions and because rapidly developing countries like China, India, and Brazil are increasingly adopting the energy-consumptive lifestyles of industrial nations. From 1800 to 1960, for example, the average annual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations was just 0.2 ppm, but this jumped to 1.4 ppm from 1960 to 2000 and has since risen to 2.3 ppm. Emerging Threats to Tropical Forests Emerging Threats from Climate and Atmospheric Change by William F. Laurance 7–13 University of Chicago Press 2006 9780226470221 https://books.google.com/books?id=rVPTbEycT-oC&pg=PA8 (563 pages; edited by William F. Laurance & Carlos A. Peres; quote from p. 8) Tropical forests are the most biologically diverse and ecologically complex of terrestrial ecosystems, and are disappearing at alarming rates. It has long been suggested that rapid forest loss and degradation in the tropics, if unabated, could ultimately precipitate a wave of species extinctions, perhaps comparable to mass extinction events in the geological history of the Earth. However, a vigorous debate has erupted following a study by Wright and Muller-Landau that challenges the notion of large-scale tropical extinctions, at least over the next century. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 22 2 P65–P70 February 2007 Have we overstated the tropical biodiversity crisis? https://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/abstract/S0169-5347(06)00307-7?large_figure=true Humankind has dramatically transformed much of the Earth’s surface and its natural ecosystems. This process is not new—it has been ongoing for millennia—but it has accelerated sharply over the last two centuries, and especially in the last several decades.Today, the loss and degradation of natural history can be likened to a war of attrition. Many natural ecosystems are being progressively razed, bulldozed, and felled by axes or chainsaws, until only small scraps of their original extent survive. Forests have been hit especially hard: the global area of forests have been reduced by roughly half over the past three centuries. Twenty-five nations have lost virtually all of their forest cover, and another 29 more than nine-tenths of their forest (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment MEA 2005). Conservation Biology for All Oxford biology Oxford University Press 2010 9780199554232 Chapter 4. Habitat destruction: death by a thousand cuts by William F. Laurance https://books.google.com/books?id=MxIUDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA73 73–88 (344 pages; quote from p. 73; edited by Navjot S. Sodhi & Paul R. Ehrlich) External links Category:1957 births Category:Living people Category:Academics from Australia Category:Academics from the United States Category:Biologists from Australia Category:Biologists from the United States Category:Ecologists Category:Fellows of the Royal Society Category:People from Oregon Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni