finland

Reindeer grazing and forest carbon

October 13, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Northern forests store a third of the world’s carbon, acting as sinks for atmospheric carbon dioxide. Forest carbon exchange is the process whereby forests sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere via photosynthesis, storing it in their wood, leaves, and roots, and releasing some carbon through decomposition and respiration. This natural cycle in forests is a critical part of the global carbon cycle and is a key factor in the mitigation of climate change.

The carbon cycle in northern forests is affected by the depth of winter snow and its duration. It turns out that other elements of the forest ecosystem play an important role as well. Researchers at the University of Oulu in Finland measured the impact of reindeer grazing and snow depth in Finland’s coniferous forests over a five-year period.

There are areas in northern Finland’s forests where reindeer grazing has been excluded for decades. In these areas, shallow snow increased carbon release. In the same locations, deeper snow decreased carbon release. On the other hand, in areas where reindeer grazed, carbon release remained stable regardless of changes in snow cover.

The researchers theorize that the substantially recovered lichen cover in the ungrazed areas influences soil temperature and moisture conditions. When combined with changing snow conditions, these factors may affect soil decomposers and, therefore, the amount of carbon released.

The essential conclusion of this work is that multiple elements of an ecosystem, such as reindeer grazing, can buffer ecosystem functions, such as carbon exchange. In this case, reindeer play an important role in sustaining the biodiversity of northern ecosystems.

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Reindeer grazing can mitigate the impacts of winter climate change on forest carbon release

Photo, posted December 17, 2015, courtesy of Eco Dalla Luna via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Bitcoin And Energy Use | Earth Wise

October 6, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

In recent years we’ve heard more and more about cryptocurrencies. They are digital currencies managed by a decentralized network of users. No country, person, or other entity controls the value of a cryptocurrency. Some people think that they will ultimately replace traditional currencies.

The eventual status of cryptocurrencies can be debated endlessly but there is one thing that is certain: in the process of simply existing as they do today, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin consume astonishing amounts of electricity.

Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, uses about half a percent of all the electricity consumed in the world. The process of creating Bitcoin consumes over 90 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, which is more than the entire country of Finland with its 5.5 million people. Where does all the energy go?

The answer is something called Bitcoin mining. It is the process by which new Bitcoins are created. It is something like playing a lottery. Miners effectively have to guess an extremely long number called the “target hash” in order to be awarded Bitcoins. There is no magic formula to finding the answer. It isn’t really advanced math; it is brute force searching among trillions of possibilities. Specialized computer equipment is designed to make as many guesses as possible as quickly as possible. The faster the electronic circuits and the more of them there are, the better the chances are of beating out other miners to win the mining lottery. As a result, the amount of power-hungry computing equipment dedicated across the globe to mining Bitcoins has mushroomed.

Whether it pays to be a Bitcoin miner is increasingly difficult, but those that are doing it are consuming extraordinary amounts of energy in the effort to make a few more digital bucks.

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Bitcoin Uses More Electricity Than Many Countries. How Is That Possible?

Photo, posted February 14, 2018, courtesy of Stock Catalog via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Record Heat Across the Globe | Earth Wise

August 4, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

While the Pacific Northwest was setting new records for high temperatures in June, many other places across the globe also experienced unprecedented heat. Places in Russia and Scandinavia, including locations above the Arctic Circle, set new records for temperature.

The heatwave in Europe was the result of a persistent northward bulge in the polar jet stream. This blocking pattern in the jet stream has been prevalent over Scandinavia this year and has contributed to unusually warm conditions there. Further east, similar conditions have created unusual warm temperatures in Siberia.

On June 23, Moscow reached a high of 94.6 degrees, the hottest June temperature on record. Helsinki, Finland set a record at 89.1 degrees, and both Belarus at 96.3 degrees and Estonia at 94.3 degrees set new records. The town of Saskylah, north of the Arctic Circle in Siberia, measured almost 90 degrees on June 20.

High temperature records have been broken in many places. The all-time record high for June for all of Mexico fell at Mexicali in Baja California on June 17 when the temperature reached 125 degrees. Palm Springs, California, while known for its desert heat, nonetheless set a new all-time high temperature of 123 degrees and also set a new record for the warmest overnight low temperature for a June night anywhere in North America at an unbelievable 105 degrees.

Stories like this have become all-too common in recent years and are undoubtedly going to occur with greater frequency as the world’s climate continues to react to the growing buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

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A Scorcher in Siberia and Europe

Photo, posted June 8, 2007, courtesy of Niko Pettersen via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Butterflies And Moths In A Changing World | Earth Wise

July 20, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Extinction is a part of life. Plant and animal species disappear all the time. In fact, approximately 98% of all the organisms that have ever existed on planet earth are now extinct. Earth’s so-called ‘normal’ rate of extinction is thought to be somewhere between 0.1 and 1 species per 10,000 species per 100 years.

But anthropogenic climate change is bringing about rapid change in nature. Put more simply, human activity is killing nature at an unprecedented rate. According to many scientists, the earth’s sixth mass extinction has already begun. Mass extinctions are defined as times when the Earth loses more than 75% of its species in a geologically short interval.

The changing climate puts immense pressure on species for change. According to a new study by researchers from the University of Helsinki and the Finnish Environment Institute, the few butterfly and moth species capable of adjusting to the changing climate by moving up their flight period and moving further north have fared the best.

In Finland, researchers compared temporal shifts in the flight period and spatial shifts in the northern range boundary of 289 moth and butterfly species, as well as changes in abundance over a roughly 20-year period.

They found that about 45% of species that either moved northward or advanced their flight period fared much better than the roughly 40% of species that did not respond in either way. On average, the populations of these poorly responding species declined. But the 15% of species that did both had the largest increase in abundance.

The ability to adapt to a changing climate is going to be vital for species survival.

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Butterflies and moths have difficulty adjusting to a rapidly changing climate

What is mass extinction and are we facing a sixth one?

Photo, posted August 16, 2017, courtesy of Tero Laakso via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Saving Costs And Reducing Emissions From Shipping | Earth Wise

March 2, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

International shipping is a large and growing source of greenhouse gas emissions. Maritime transport produces about a billion tons of CO2 annually, accounting for about 2.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The environmental impact of shipping includes air pollution, water pollution, and even acoustic pollution. In many coastal areas, ships are responsible for more than 18% of some air pollutants. Overall, there are more than 100,000 transport ships at sea, of which about 6,000 are large container ships.

In recent years, the shipping sector has had both internal willingness and external pressure to reduce emissions, but shipping is a tough, competitive business and it isn’t easy to stay competitive and help protect the environment.

A recent study at Abo Akademi University in Finland has found that improved ship utilization rates and investments in environmentally sustainable technologies for enhanced energy efficiency would significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Of equal importance, those same measures would contribute to lowering of freight costs.

If the same cargo volume can be shipped using less fuel, shipping companies will gain major savings in terms of fuel costs. Digitalization can provide valuable benefits. For example, new digital planning and booking systems would enable smarter use of routes while also diminishing traffic with half-empty vessels or even ones with no cargo aboard. Reducing such underutilization would improve the capacity utilization rate and eliminate emissions caused by so-called ballast traffic.

Global shipping continues to grow. It is essential that it becomes smarter and more efficient to protect the environment and improve its economics.

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