able to act as biotic pump due because of the ecological changes that occur when forest is converted into plantations. "The biotic pump theory shows that natural forests are indispensable if we want to have rainfall, and, consequently, agriculture on the land where we live. This scientific message has important economic implications," Gorshkov and Makarieva say. "First of all, people and governments worldwide should realize that economic growth cannot occur at the expense of cutting forests either in one's own country or elsewhere. It is undermining the very pillars of our civilizations existence. When water and food security are at stake, it is not possible for forest industries to focus on growth, just to increase the global production of wrapping and toilet paper. This should be the main topic of environmental campaigns." It has long been known that the world's forests provide refuge to the vast majority of terrestrial species, store massive amounts of carbon, safeguard many of the world's most important watersheds, and are home to numerous indigenous groups, yet forests continue to fall at staggering rates. If biotic pump theory proves true, it adds a new and vital ecosystem service to the world's forests: rainmakers. In a January 2012 interview Victor Gorshkov and Anastassia Makarieva describe the mechanics of the biotic pump theory, the difficulties of gaining notice in the meteorology community, the relation of the biotic pump to climate change, and how deforestation in places like the Amazon and Indonesia threaten precipitation. A NEW METEOROLOGY: AN INTERVIEW WITH VICTOR GORSHKOV AND ANASTASSIA MAKARIEVA Victor Gorshkov and Anastassia Makarieva. Mongabay: Will you tell us how the biotic pump works? Victor Gorshkov and Anastassia Makarieva: The biotic pump is a mechanism in which natural forests create and control ocean-to-land winds, bringing moisture to all terrestrial life. Winds tend to blow from areas of high air pressure to low. But how is a low pressure system created over land? Air pressure depends on the number of gas molecules. When water vapor condenses, it disappears from the gas phase; the number of gas molecules diminishes, and the air pressure falls. Therefore, if we manage to maintain the process of condensation over land, the latter becomes a persistent low pressure zone. Water vapor in Earths atmosphere possesses a remarkable physical property: it is unstable to condensation. This means if an air volume containing a lot of vapor is occasionally displaced upward, the air will cool so significantly that the vapor condenses. Due to this instability, if there is a sufficient amount of water vapor in the warm lower atmosphere condensation will occur. The green foliage and branches of trees have a much greater cumulative area than that of a tree projection on the ground. Hence, forest evaporation enriches the atmosphere with water vapor more efficiently than evaporation from an open water surface of the same area. Consequently, condensation occurs more readily over forests than over the ocean. Forests, rather than the ocean, become the low pressure zone where the moist winds converge to. Completing the cycle, moisture precipitates over the land and returns to