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An Environmental Victory In Cameroon | Earth Wise

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The Ebo Forest in Cameroon is one of the last intact forests in central Africa and is a biodiversity hotspot, home to hundreds of rare plants and animal species, including tool-using Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees, western gorillas, forest elephants, red colobus monkeys, and giant goliath frogs.  The 600 square miles of mountain slopes and river valleys are covered by thick tree canopies that shelter a fascinating array of species.

This past July, Cameroon Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute signed a decree that turned half of the Ebo Forest into a so-called forest management unit, meaning that the government could begin to sell logging concessions.

However, on August 11, Ngute, at the direction of President Paul Biya, withdrew the decree, suspending any logging plans.  President Biya also ordered a delay to reclassify an additional 160,000 acres of the Ebo, which might have opened up even more forest for logging.

Apart from its rich biodiversity, the Ebo Forest is culturally and societally important for the Banen Indigenous people, who consider it to be their sacred ancestral home.  The Banen were ousted from the forest in the 1960s but took up settlements just a few miles from its borders.  They still rely on the forest for food and medicines.  Meanwhile, the proximity of the forest to big cities makes it an easy target for bushmeat poachers.

Both conservation groups and indigenous leaders welcomed the withdrawal of the decree but remain concerned about the future of the Ebo Forest.  Conservation groups hope that the international community will seize the opportunity to work with the government of Cameroon to make the Ebo Forest a permanent showcase for long-term conservation in harmony with very challenged communities.

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Cameroon Cancels Plan to Log Half of the Ebo Forest, a Key Biodiversity Hotspot in Central Africa

Photo, posted September 17, 2005, courtesy of Salva le Foreste via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Disappearing Rainforests | Earth Wise

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Forest loss is a major contributor to climate change, and it is continuing at a rapid pace.  The tropics lost about 30 million acres of tree cover in 2019, a third of which was within humid tropical primary forests, which are especially important for biodiversity and carbon storage.  To put that loss in a human-scale perspective, it is the equivalent of losing a football field of primary forest every six seconds for the entire year.

The losses last year were 2.8% higher than in the previous year, and these losses have continued over the past 20 years despite worldwide efforts to halt deforestation.  

Brazil single-handedly accounted for over a third of all global loss of humid tropical primary forests. Bolivia experienced record-breaking tree cover loss due to fires.  The losses in its forests were 80% greater than in any previous year.  The fires were often started by people who were trying to clear land for agriculture but had the fires go out of control. Several countries in Africa’s Congo Basin also experienced sustained or worsening forest loss. 

Indonesia, often the focus of the world’s attention for its deforestation activities, actually saw a 5% reduction in primary forest loss in 2019.  It was the third year in a row for lower losses.  The now-permanent moratorium on clearing forests for oil palm plantations and logging seems to be working.

Going forward, the coronavirus pandemic poses additional threats to the world’s forests in the near future.  There may be a tendency to sacrifice forests in pursuit of economic recovery, which will only lead to future complications for the health and livelihoods of millions of people around the world.

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We Lost a Football Pitch of Primary Rainforest Every 6 Seconds in 2019

Photo, posted February 7, 2011, courtesy of Chad Skeers via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Animals And Social Distancing | Earth Wise

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As the spread of COVID-19 continues throughout the U.S. and around the world, health officials continue to ask people to keep physical space between themselves and others outside their homes.  It’s an important and effective way to slow down and prevent the spread of disease. 

But it’s not just humans who can benefit from social distancing.  It turns out that animals can, too.

Microorganisms living on or inside our bodies are important for both our health and for the development of disease.  Researchers from the University of Texas at San Antonio have found evidence for the importance of social distancing to minimize the spread of microbes among individuals.   The researchers studied wild monkeys to find out what role diet, genetics, social groupings, and distance in a social network play when it comes to the microbes found inside the gut.  The gut microbiome refers to all the microorganisms living in the digestive tract. 

The research team studied the fecal matter of 45 female colobus monkeys that congregated in eight different social groups in a small forest in Ghana.  The researchers observed major differences in gut microbiomes between the eight social groups.  But individual monkeys from different groups that were more closely connected to the population’s social network had more similar gut microbiomes.  The findings, recently published in the journal Animal Behaviour, indicate that microbes may be transmitted between monkeys during occasional encounters with other monkeys from different social groups.

Learning how microorganisms pass among monkeys can help researchers understand how diseases spread.  Understanding how diseases spread can help guide decision making during this pandemic and any future disease outbreaks. 

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Even animals benefit from social distance to prevent disease, research shows

Photo, posted January 10, 2007, courtesy of Silke Baron via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Conservation In Vermont | Earth Wise

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In recent times, Vermont and neighboring states have been losing forest land to development at a rate of almost 1,500 acres per year.  With forest fragmentation gaining ground across New England, conserving land for future generations of people, wildlife, and plants has become both increasingly important and increasingly difficult.

According to a new study published by researchers at the University of Vermont, the state has already protected a third of the highest priority targeted lands needed to protect and connect valuable wildlife habitats and corridors.  The protected lands amount to 1.3 million acres.

Most of the currently conserved lands are forested.  However, there are high-priority targeted surface water and riparian areas – ponds, rivers, shorelines, and wetlands – and not nearly enough of these have been protected.  (Many animals require zones along waterways in which to travel between the habitats they need to survive).

The state of Vermont and a number of partners have laid out a comprehensive and thoughtful vision that would ensure that Vermont remains a good place for all forms of life in the future.  The new study provides a crucial benchmark of current levels of forest protection to help prioritize future conservation actions. 

Three groups dominate in responsibility for the state’s protected lands:  the federal government, the state government, and private non-profit organizations.  (Each of these account for roughly a third of existing protected lands).

Going forward, Vermont’s nonprofits will play an increasingly important role in land conservation, especially in continuing to protect those areas that are rich with species diversity.  Nonprofits are engaging more and more deeply in restoring wetlands that were previously degraded, planting new forests along river shores, and protecting unique natural communities while also protecting working forests and farmland.

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Vermont Has Conserved One Third of the Land Needed for an Ecologically Functional Future

Photo, posted June 15, 2014, courtesy of Wesley Carr via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Working Forest Buffers | Earth Wise

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More than 100,000 miles of U.S. rivers and streams are polluted by nitrogen and phosphorus, mostly from agricultural runoff.  In the past, forests grew naturally alongside these waterways and helped stabilize stream banks and decrease flooding while trapping and filtering pollutants.  But most of these forests have been cut down to make way for towns, cities, livestock, and crops.

Farmers are reluctant to retire valuable farmland with non-productive buffer planting.  But in Pennsylvania, there is an innovative program that encourages farmers to plant cash crops in waterway buffer zones that can help stabilize stream banks and clean up the waterways.  These plantings are called working buffers.

Strips of streamside land are replanted with native floodplain trees and shrubs.  These are known as riparian forest buffers.  Pennsylvania has instituted a grant program under which farmers and landowners plant these buffers and turn a profit.

Many of these buffers have three zones.  A conventional forest buffer that can be just 15 feet wide is composed of native woodland and stabilizes the bank with tree roots and enhances wildlife habitat.  A second zone, some 20 feet wide, is planted with trees and shrubs that can tolerate periodic flooding.  Apart from slowing floodwater and taking up nutrients, this zone can provide profits by planting trees like black walnut, hazelnut, persimmon, and elderberry.  Only hand harvesting is allowed.  A third zone, adjacent to conventional crop, can contain blueberries, raspberries, and decorative woody florals.

How many farmers can be enticed to create these riparian buffers remains to be seen, but they do represent a way to help farmers to reduce pollution and turn a profit along the way.

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A Movement Grows to Help Farmers Reduce Pollution and Turn a Profit

Photo, posted March 19, 2010, courtesy of the USDA via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Forest Regrowth In The Amazon | Earth Wise

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The Amazon is the largest tropical rainforest in the world.  It covers an area approximately equal in size to the lower 48 states, and is home to an estimated 10% of the world’s biodiversity and 15% of its freshwater.  These so-called “lungs of the planet” provide many important global ecological services, including carbon storage, and regulating air quality and climate.

Deforestation in the Amazon exploded in the 1970s and remains one of its biggest threats today.  Since the 1970s, more than 20% of the Amazon rainforest has been cleared.  Cattle ranching, soy and palm plantations, logging, and climate change are some of the biggest drivers of deforestation.  

Now, according to a new study recently published in the journal Ecology, the regrowth of Amazonian forests following deforestation may happen more slowly than previously thought.  These findings could have significant impacts on climate change predictions as the ability of forest regrowth in the Amazon – so-called secondary forests – may have been overestimated.  The research, which was conducted in Bragança, Brazil and includes two decades of forest monitoring, reveals that climate change and the wider loss of forests could be hampering regrowth.    

After 60 years of regrowth, the research team found that secondary forests only held 40% of the carbon when compared with forests undisturbed by humans.  Secondary forests also take less carbon from the atmosphere during periods of drought, and climate change is increasing the number of drought-years in the Amazon.  (During their 20 years of monitoring, the researchers also found biodiversity levels in secondary forests were only 56% of those seen in undisturbed forests). 

More long-term studies are needed to better understand the impacts of reforestation efforts.  

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Amazon forest regrowth much slower than previously thought

Photo, posted September 6, 2009, courtesy of Nao Lizuka via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Trees And The Future Of Cities

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The shade of a single tree is a welcome source of relief on a hot summer day.  But even a relatively small patch of woods can have a profound cooling effect.  A new study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison looks at the role trees play in keeping towns and cities cool.

According to the study, the right amount of tree cover can lower daytime temperatures in the summer by as much as 10 degrees.  The effects are noticeable from neighborhood to neighborhood and even on a block-by-block basis.

Cities are well-known to be hot spots due to the urban heat islanding effect.  Using trees to keep temperatures more comfortable in cities can make a big difference for the people who live and work there.

The man-made structures of cities – roads, sidewalks, and buildings – absorb heat from the sun during the day and slowly release it at night.  Trees, on the other hand, not only shade those structures from the sun, but they also transpire -or release water in the air through their leaves – which helps to cool things down.

According to the study, to get maximum cooling benefits, tree canopies must exceed forty percent, meaning that city blocks need to be nearly halfway covered by tree branches and leaves.  To get the biggest bang for the buck, cities should start planting more trees in areas that are already near the forty percent threshold.  But

trees can’t just be in parks.  They need to be in places where people are active.

If we want the places where we live to be more comfortable and resilient in a warming world, we need to plant more trees.

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Study suggests trees are crucial to the future of our cities

Photo, posted May 26, 2012, courtesy of Mislav Marohnic via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Indonesian Deforestation

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Deforestation is defined as the intentional destruction of trees and other vegetation without reforesting or allowing the forest to regenerate itself. 

In Indonesia, industrial agriculture, primarily for the production of palm oil, is a major driver of deforestation.  But, according to researchers at Duke University, its impact has diminished  proportionately in recent years as other natural and human causes have emerged. Their peer-reviewed findings were recently published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

According to the study’s lead author, large-scale plantations were responsible for more than half of Indonesia’s deforestation in the late 2000s, peaking between 2008-2010 when an average of 1.5 million acres of forest was lost annually.  The expansion of the massive plantations was responsible for 57% of the forest loss. Between 2014-2016, an average of more than 2 million acres of forest was lost annually, but plantation expansion only accounted for 25% of this figure.  While the overall rate of deforestation continued to grow, other factors were responsible for most of it.

Conversions of forests to grasslands rose sharply in 2015 and 2016 when El Nino caused severe droughts and forest fires. Small-scale farming, often overshadowed by industrial agriculture, was also found to play a bigger role, accounting for 25% of all forest loss. 

Indonesia has experienced some of the highest rates of deforestation.  Its forests absorb and store vast amounts of climate-warming carbon dioxide, help prevent erosion and flooding, and provide habitat to thousands of species.  Understanding the varied causes of Indonesian deforestation should help conservationists and policymakers better address the problem.

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Palm oil not the only driver of forest loss in Indonesia

Photo, posted March 26, 2018, courtesy of Achmad Rabin Taim via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Cloning Ancient Redwoods

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During the 19th and 20th centuries, many of the world’s largest and oldest tress were cut down for their lumber.   Some of these coast redwoods were 3,000 years old and measured 35 feet in diameter.

Today, giant stumps of these ancient redwoods dot the landscape from Oregon to northern California and are a remnant of the old-growth forest that once stretched across much of the Pacific Northwest.

An organization called the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive is dedicated to reestablishing ancient redwood forests to help combat climate change.  Coastal redwoods are not only huge but can grow an average of 10 feet a year.  One of these enormous trees can sequester 250 tons of carbon dioxide over its lifetime, more than 200 times the amount for an average tree.

While many experts thought that the giant stumps were lifeless, arborists at Archangel collected DNA from the stumps of five giant coast redwoods, all larger than the largest tree living today.  They then used this genetic material to grow dozens of saplings, which are clones of the ancient trees, in a process that takes about two-and-a-half years.

To date, the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive has planted nearly 100 of these saplings in the Eden Project garden in Cornwall, England, a couple of hundred in Oregon, and most recently, has planted 75 in the Presidio National Park in San Francisco.

According to arborists at the nonprofit organization, these saplings have extraordinary potential to purify our air, water, and soil for generations to come.  Their hopes are that the new San Francisco ‘super grove’ will be allowed to grow unmolested by manmade or natural disasters and thus propagate forever.

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Arborists Have Cloned Ancient Redwoods From Their Massive Stumps

Photo, posted April 8, 2013, courtesy of Michael Balint via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Your Children’s Yellowstone

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Yellowstone National Park was the first national park in the US and according to some sources, the first in the world.  It is the home of charismatic megafauna and stunning geysers that attract over four million visitors a year.  It is the only place in the United States where bison and wolves can be seen in great numbers.  And it is changing.

Over the next few decades of climate change, Yellowstone will quite likely see increased fire, less forest, expanding grasslands, shallower, warmer waterways, and more invasive plants.  All these things will alter how and how many animals move through the landscape.   Ecosystems are always changing, but climate change is transforming habitats so quickly that many plants and animals may not be able to make the transition at all.

Since 1948, the average annual temperature in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem has gone up by 2 degrees Fahrenheit.  On balance, winter is 10 days shorter and less cold.  The Northern Rockies snowpack has fallen to its lowest level in eight centuries. Summers in the park are warmer, drier, and increasingly prone to fire.

Non-nutritious invasive plants like cheatgrass and desert madwort have replaced nutritious native plants.  When plants like these take over, they suck moisture out of the ground early so that bison and elk cannot be sustained throughout the summer.

The behavior of elk and other animals is already changing, with many staying outside the park to nibble lawns and alfalfa fields.  In turn, wolves go where the elk go.   Forests and waterways are changing as well.

The rapid changes going on at Yellowstone mean that the park that our children and grandchildren will visit in the future is likely to be a very different one from the Yellowstone we remember.

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In Yellowstone National Park, warming has brought rapid changes.

Photo, posted September 7, 2016, courtesy of Mike Yang via Flickr.  

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Can We Remove Enough CO2 From The Air?

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As atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continue to set new records and the effects of climate change grow stronger, humanity has continued to procrastinate on reducing emissions.  As a result, it is increasingly clear that any strategy to avoid runaway climate change will have to involve the use of “negative emissions”- techniques or technologies that actually remove CO2 from the air.

There are both low-tech and high-tech methods for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and both are likely to be needed. 

On the low-tech side, afforestation (planting trees where there were none before), reforestation, changes in forest management, rebuilding the carbon backbone in agricultural soils, and the use of energy from waste biomass are all ways to take carbon out of the atmosphere.

On the high-tech side, direct air capture technologies that take CO2 out of the air and store it in the ground are making rapid progress.   Right now, they are still very expensive,but that is changing.  There is an analogy to wind and solar technology. Not very long ago, both of those technologies were quite expensive but now their costs have plummeted to the point where they are often the cheapest way to make electricity.  With sufficient development effort and deployment, direct air capture technology could become quite affordable.

Some people advocate geoengineering as a solution for climate change.  While removing carbon dioxide amounts to tackling the root cause of the warming climate,geoengineering would address the problem by changing the climate again in some other way.  It is at best an extremely dangerous approach.

Removing CO2 using a combination of natural and man-made techniques is an important part of mitigating the effects of climate change.

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Climate Solutions: Is It Feasible to Remove Enough CO2 from the Air?

Photo courtesy of Climeworks. 

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Bring The Wild Back Into Farmlands

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A recent study published in Science looks at the effects of maintaining at least a little bit of the wild on working lands including farmland, rangeland and forests.  The study concludes that doing so may be a key to preserving biodiversity in the face of climate change.

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Losing Forests Is Felt Far Away

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Large areas of forests in our country are vulnerable to drought, fires and disease.  When forests are heavily damaged, there are well-known local impacts:  drier soils, stronger winds, increased erosion, loss of shade and loss of habitat.

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Indonesian Deforestation Continues

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Worldwide, deforestation and land disturbance are responsible for about a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions.  The largest contributor to this problem is Indonesia and getting control of its emissions is a crucial part of meeting global carbon reduction targets.

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Tree-Planting Drones

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One of the major causes of the increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere is deforestation.   We chop down about 15 billion trees each year.  Over time, our activities have reduced the number of trees on earth by about 50%.  We do plant trees – these days, about 9 billion a year.  It is a substantial number, but still leaves a net loss of 6 billion trees annually.

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Saving The Siberian Tiger

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The northeastern part of China, wedged between North Korea to the south and Russia to the northeast, is home to two highly endangered big cats:  the Siberian tiger and the Amur leopard.   Siberian tigers, which can weigh over 600 pounds and grow to more than 10 feet in length, now number only about 500 in the wild, mostly in Russia.  Amur leopards, weighing more than 100 pounds and growing to more than four feet in length, number only about 80 in the wild.  While both species are right on the edge of extinction, both are slowly rebounding.

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The Restoration Economy

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Deforestation is one of the largest contributors to climate change.  Forests cover about 30% of the world’s land area and are a crucial sink for carbon dioxide.   Over time, we have been steadily reducing the amount of forest in the world to obtain wood and timber, open up farmland, build towns and cities, produce paper, make palm oil, and mine for minerals.

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A Carbon Loophole

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Many power plants in Europe and elsewhere are replacing coal with wood.  For example, the Drax Power Station in Britain was its largest coal-burning plant and is now using wood pellets shipped from the southern U.S. in its boilers.    According to the carbon accounting rules at the EU and elsewhere, the process is considered to be “carbon neutral.”   But is it?

The idea is that new trees are being planted in the forests where the trees are cut to be burned in power plants.  So, there is carbon neutrality.  In principle.

European countries have embarked on a massive effort to switch to generating power from renewable energy.  While there has indeed been major growth in wind and solar power in the 28 countries of the European Union, much of the new “green” power has come from burning wood in converted coal power stations.

A group of 200 scientists wrote to the EU last September insisting that bioenergy from forest biomass is not carbon neutral and that there must be tighter rules to protect forests and their carbon.  Wood burning has become a loophole in controlling carbon emissions.

There are problems with the claims of carbon neutrality.  There is no way to know whether enough new trees are actually being planted to replace those being burned.  And then there is the time lag for tree replacement.  Trees don’t grow overnight.  There are also the carbon emissions associated with harvesting, processing and transporting wood.

There are most certainly ways in which burning biomass can be carbon neutral and can represent real progress over the use of fossil fuels.  But caution must be taken to avoid exploiting loopholes in current climate rules that might actually result in increased carbon emissions.

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Carbon Loophole: Why Is Wood Burning Counted as Green Energy?

Photo, posted April 26, 2014, courtesy of Flickr.

 

‘A Carbon Loophole’ from Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Ecology Of Dust

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It isn’t something we think about very often, but dust is a connector of ecosystems around the world.  Dust carries various minerals and nutrients to places where such things are in very scarce supply.  This includes the oceans of the world as well as many forests and other ecosystems.  For example, phosphorus-bearing dust carried from the Gobi Desert is essential to the growth of giant redwoods in California’s Sierra Mountains.

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