Forests

Forests by the Chesapeake Bay are growing faster these days, researchers have found, in a growth spurt that seems linked to rising carbon dioxide in the air and warming climate. In a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a trio of scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater report that stands of hardwood trees they've been monitoring over the past 22 years along the bay's western shore have been growing two to four times faster than expected.

Calvert Hall grad Pat Blair, now a junior at Wake Forest University, has been named to the first 2012 Brooks Wallace Shortstop of the Year watch list, as announced by the College Baseball Hall of Fame on Thursday. The Wallace Award, sponsored by Mizuno, recognizes the nation's top shortstop and will be presented on June 30 in Lubbock, Texas, as part of the College Baseball Hall of Fame's Night of Champions. The Parkville native is one of 50 shortstops in the nation to be selected to the watch list and one of just four shortstops from the Atlantic Coast Conference to be tabbed.

EVERYWHERE YOU look these days, it seems like somebody's cutting down trees. A new subdivision here, a shopping center there, a highway interchange to accommodate the added traffic. In so many places, all that remains are clumps and fringes of green with a huge job to do. Woodlands play a vital role in filtering the air, protecting underground aquifers and providing habitat for wildlife. It's no coincidence that quality has declined in all three areas as vast forests that once covered much of this continent have disappeared.

Wayne Hill left Walbrook two years ago as a 5-foot-7 freshman. When Hill returned to Baltimore last fall after a year in North Carolina, Forest Park coach Greate White  was struck by a fairly obvious change in the combo guard's appearance. “He was 5-7 when he left and he came back 6-4,” said White, who coached Hill on Walbrook's junior varsity during the 2009-10 season. “I recognized him, but I was like, 'Wow, he has grown.' Once he got on the court, you could tell his game had grown and matured also.

Howard County Councilman C. Vernon Gray, saying every citizen must do his part to protect the environment, has submitted legislation that would forbid the county from buying any product made with wood cut from a tropical rain forest."

Nadia Lefcourt is saving the world's rain forests an acre at a time.Spurred by an independent environmental school project, the 11-year-old Elkridge girl raised about $200 that she will use to buy 5 acres of rain forest through a non-profit environment group called The Nature Conservancy, which is based in Arlington, Va.In return, the fifth-grader will receive an honorary land deed and regular progress reports from local land managers about their conservation activities...

RESERVE, N.M. -- Under orders from the White House to try again to put federal timber sales on a sounder economic footing, the U.S. Forest Service has proposed changes that would end logging on more than a third of the national forests by 1998.Environmental groups and other opponents of the timber sales have long argued that the government charges too little and provides too many services to companies that log national forests, at a cost to taxpayers at hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Baltimore County Executive James T. Smith Jr. announced yesterday plans to take inventory of the county's forests using internationally established guidelines known as the Montreal Process. Calling it part of a "green renaissance," Smith said that over the next few months his staff will announce other initiatives to protect agricultural land, open space and water supplies. "It complements what we're already doing in our neighborhoods," Smith said. "People want to live near these natural amenities.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - In a shift that is likely to brighten prospects for a global warming treaty, American negotiators at talks here have said the United States would be willing to limit its use of forest projects to reach its target for reducing heat-trapping greenhouse gases. The new stance, signaled in the face of mounting criticism from Europe and private environmental groups, came this weekend, halfway through a contentious two-week session aimed at writing the fine print for the treaty, called the Kyoto Protocol.

BEFORE SERMONIZING on an end to progress as we know it, let's take a moment for this sad, lovely note from a fellow tree-hugger, Helen Woods. She was responding to my column of two weeks ago about the assaults on forests in Baltimore's Woodberry neighborhood and elsewhere. She was struck by a reference to her alma mater, Salisbury University, sponsoring a talk by Julia Butterfly Hill. Hill lived in a giant California redwood for more than two years to thwart loggers, becoming a hero to those who are fed up with our senseless cutting of trees.

Antoine Myers loved the idea of learning from one of the game's best point guards of all time, making his commitment to Isiah Thomas ' Florida International program an easy decision. A week after Myers' pledge to the Panthers, however, plans to play for the NBA Hall of Famer were ended when FIU dismissed Thomas. “It was difficult,” Myers said. “I had my mind set on going to one place and then for all that stuff to happen, to reopen my recruitment and try to like another school, it was kind of hard.”  While Myers was upset with Thomas' dismissal, several mid-major programs were ecstatic that the 6-foot-3, 190-pound point guard was back on the market.

After taking a year off from school, former Forest Park shooting guard Quentin Judd has finalized his plans for a return to the classroom and the basketball court. Last week Judd, who averaged a team-high 19 points for the Foresters during the 2010-11 season, signed a letter of intent to attend Pensacola (Fla.) State College on a full basketball scholarship. “I'm proud to be a part of this moment. This sets the precedent for all of you to get through the door," Forest Park coach Greate White said to his team after Judd's signing.

Editor: This letter is written with regard to The Aegis article on April 6 about the PNC Bank at 140 N. Main St. in Bel Air closing this summer. The article mentions that this bank, which was originally a branch of the Forest Hill State Bank, was Forest Hill's "first expansion beyond its namesake community. " This is definitely not the case. The Forest Hill State Bank first ventured outside of Forest Hill when they opened the original Jarrettsville branch in, I believe, 1964.

While his friends and former AAU teammates embarked on their college basketball careers, Antoine Myers toughed it out at prep school and then junior college, wondering if he'd one day join the ranks of Baltimore natives playing Division I ball. “To see what they were doing and see where I was at, knowing that I could be there, it kind of hurt my feelings at first. I was down on myself,” said Myers, a 2009 Forest Park graduate who did a fifth year at Notre Dame Prep in Fitchburg, Mass., before heading to Pensacola (Fla.)

A Forest Hill man died Friday morning in a three-car crash on Route 543 near Goat Hill Road in Creswell, under circumstances similar to a crash almost two weeks ago in which three siblings died. The accident comes following one of the deadliest months on Harford roads in several years. Seven people died in motor vehicle crashes in February. Nine have died in a little more than two months this year. In addition, Maryland State Police said they will step up traffic law enforcement along Route 543 from the Bel Air area south to I-95, as the highway is becoming one of the most deadly in the county, if not the entire state.

The Dunbar boys basketball team was in unfamiliar territory midway through the fourth quarter of Saturday's Class 1A South region title game against visiting Forest Park, trailing by three points with another trip to the state tournament in the balance. That's when the No. 3 Poets leaned on a couple of constants that have played big in the team's consistent success — experience and defense — to pull out a 62-54 win over the No. 13 Foresters. Dunbar, two-time defending state champions, closed out the final 5:20 with a 19-8 run to seal the program's 18th state tournament appearance.

TREES ARE an economic miracle. They filter pollutants from air and water, provide cooling and shade in summer, protection from winter cold, wildlife habitat and storm-water control against erosion and pollution runoff, absorb carbon dioxide and retard global warming.Yet tree cover in the Chesapeake Bay watershed is rapidly disappearing, with development the prime cause. Nonurban areas are losing trees at the same rate as the highly developed Baltimore-Washington corridor.Between 1973 and 1997, high-canopy tree cover in the heart of the watershed plummeted from 55 percent to 38 percent, according to satellite maps analyzed by American Forests, a nonprofit conservation group.

WASHINGTON - As President Bush, with much fanfare, signed legislation yesterday aimed at speeding fire-prevention efforts in federal forests, his administration quietly adopted a rule that will expedite timber-thinning projects by removing a safeguard for endangered species. Under the Endangered Species Act, the Forest Service and other federal agencies are required to seek confirmation from the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service before taking any action that might adversely affect any endangered plant or animal.

As the final minutes wound down in sixth-ranked Maryland's 73-58 victory over Wake Forest in Saturday's Atlantic Coast Conference women's basketball tournament semifinals, Lynetta Kizer implored Terrapins supporters at Greensboro Coliseum to rise and join her in celebrating the moment. The senior center certainly was soaking in third-seeded Maryland's 13th trip to the ACC title game, and her performance contributed considerably to her team's fifth straight win and 12th in a row over the Demon Deacons.

NO. 6 MARYLAND VS. WAKE FOREST At Greensboro, N.C. Today, 1:30p.m. TV: ESPNU The sixth-ranked Maryland women's basketball team poured it on early against Virginia on Friday night, parlaying balanced scoring, supremacy inside and deft 3-point shooting into a 70-58 victory in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament quarterfinals at Greensboro Coliseum. The win was third-seeded Maryland's fifth in a row overall and third straight this season against the Cavaliers.