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Eco-Friendly Agriculture

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Modern agriculture has steadily destroyed native grasslands, among other ecosystems.  In fact, farming is one of the most ecologically destructive things that humans do.  But we do have to eat.  In response, there is a growing movement for agrarian reform, from grain farming on the prairie, to agroforestry, to raising livestock more sustainably.  Efforts are accelerating to develop a kinder, gentler agriculture adapted to a changing world.

One such effort has come from the Land Institute, an organization in Kansas that works on natural systems agriculture, which seeks to retain the ecological stability of the prairie with its perennial seed plants along with a grain and seed yield comparable to that from annual crops.

After four decades of effort, the institute has introduced its first commercial grain, a trademarked variety called Kernza.  Kernza is a domesticated perennial wild grass – a so-called intermediate wheatgrass – that has a long, slender head that resembles wheat seeds.  People describe its taste as sweet and nutty.   Kernza is already being made into a cereal called Honey Toasted Kernza by Cascadian Farms.  Patagonia Provisions – a spin-off from the clothing company – is making beer from the new grain.

Although Kernza is already being grown and sold commercially, it is not yet ready for prime time.  Last year, there were only about 1,000 acres in cultivation and the yield is only a third to a tenth of the yield of wheat. 

Developing a sustainable perennial polyculture of edible plants would have major benefits such as not having to plow every year, plants developing large root systems that can reach water far beneath the surface and, without annual plowing, having soil carbon remain in the ground.

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With New Perennial Grain, a Step Forward for Eco-Friendly Agriculture

Photo courtesy of Cascadian Farms/General Mills.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Wildfires And Carbon

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This summer has been an unprecedented year for fires in the Arctic.  Major fires have burned throughout the Arctic in Russia, Canada, and Greenland.  In total these fires released 50 million tons of carbon dioxide in June alone, which is as much as Sweden emits in an entire year.

In an average year, wildfires around the world burn an area equivalent to the size of India and emit more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than global road, rail, shipping and air transport combined.

Ordinarily, this is part of a natural cycle.  As vegetation in burned areas regrows, it draws CO2 back out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis.  This is part of the fire-recovery cycle, which can take less than a year in grasslands, but decades in forests.  But in Arctic or tropical peatlands, full recovery may not occur for centuries.

A recent study looked at and quantified the important role that charcoal plays in helping to compensate for carbon emissions from fires.  In wildfires, some of the vegetation is not consumed by burning, but instead is transformed to charcoal – referred to as pyrogenic carbon.   This carbon-rich material can be stored in soils and oceans over very long time periods.

Researchers have combined field studies, satellite data, and modelling to quantify the amount of carbon that is placed in storage in the form of charcoal.  Their results are that the production of pyrogenic carbon amounts to about 12% of the CO2 emissions from fires and can be considered a significant buffer for landscape fire emissions.

Charcoal does not represent a solution to the problem of increasingly intense wildfires, but it is important to take it into account in understanding what is happening.

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How wildfires trap carbon for centuries to millennia

Photo, posted August 17, 2018, courtesy of the Bureau of Land Management Oregon and Washington via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Shifting Ecosystems

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The Great Plains ecosystem has been shifting northward over the past fifty years, driven by climate change, wildfire suppression, energy development, land use changes, and urbanization.  The ecosystem is an area historically rich with grasslands and shrub steppe and is prime habitat for grassland birds.

According to a recent study published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the northernmost ecosystem boundary of the Great Plains has moved more than 365 miles north since 1970, amounting to about 8 miles a year.  The region’s southernmost ecosystem boundary has shifted 160 miles north, or about 4 miles a year.

The study used bird distribution data as an indicator of shifting ecosystem boundaries.  The researchers analyzed 46 years of data for 400 bird species across a 250-mile-wide strip stretching from Texas to North Dakota.  They tracked how the birds’ distributions changed as a measure of how these ecosystems were shifting.

While climate change has been a major driver of these ecosystem shifts since the 1970s, several other factors such as wildfire trends, land use changes, and invasion of tree species into grassland habitat have also played a role.  Like most things in ecological systems, the changes are likely to have multiple causes.  One cannot really separate causes like tree invasions, warming climate, and wildfires, as they are all interrelated.

Using bird distribution patterns for tracking ecosystem shifts could be a useful tool for scientists and land managers in the coming decades to give them an early warning of how habitats are changing in response to rising global temperatures and therefore allow them to take action to protect vulnerable species.

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Great Plains’ Ecosystems Have Shifted 365 Miles Northward Since 1970

Photo, posted March 24, 2017, courtesy of Rick Bohn / USFWS via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

One Million Extinctions

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A group of 145 expert authors from 50 countries has produced a report based upon a review of 15,000 scientific and government sources that is the first comprehensive look at the state of the planet’s biodiversity in 15 years.  The conclusions are alarming.

Thanks to human pressures, one million species may be pushed to extinction in the next few years, something with serious consequences for human beings as well as the rest of life on earth.

Based upon scientific studies as well as indigenous and local knowledge, the evidence is overwhelming that human activities are the primary cause of nature’s decline.  The report ranked the major drivers of species decline as land conversion, including deforestation; overfishing; bush meat hunting and poaching; climate change; pollution; and invasive alien species.

The tremendous variety of living species on our plant which number at least 8.7 million and perhaps many more – biodiversity – constitutes a life-supporting safety net that provides our food, clean water, air, energy, and more.

In parts of the ocean, little life remains but green slime.  Some remote tropical forests are nearly silent because insects have vanished.  Many grasslands are becoming deserts.  Human activity has severely altered more than 75% of Earth’s land areas and has impacted 66% of the oceans.  The world’s oceans increasingly are characterized by plastics, dead zones, overfishing, and acidification.

The main message of the 1,500-page report is that transformative change is urgently needed.  In order to safeguard a healthy planet, society needs to shift from a sole focus on chasing economic growth.  This won’t be easy, but we must come to the understanding that nature is the foundation for development before it is too late.

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One million species at risk of extinction, UN report warns

Photo, posted January 1, 2014, courtesy of Eric Kilby 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.

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.

Wildfire Pollution

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California’s record-breaking wildfires this past season have been an unmitigated disaster with respect to loss of life, property, impact on human health, and in multiple other ways.  And as if all of that was not bad enough, the impact on carbon emissions into the atmosphere was equally catastrophic.  The wildfires were deadly and cost billions of dollars but were also terrible for the environment and for the public’s health.

According to estimates from the U.S. Department of the Interior, the California wildfires released emissions equivalent to about 68 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  That is equal to the emissions from generating one year’s worth of electricity in the state, or about 15% of the total annual emissions in the state of California.

It is a vicious circle in which the changes to the climate that have lengthened the fire season and shortened the precipitation season are creating additional contributions to the warming of the climate.

Over the past century, California has warmed by about 3 degrees Fahrenheit.  That extra-warmed air sucks water out of plants and soils, resulting in trees, shrubs, and rolling grasslands that are dry and primed to burn. That vegetation-drying effect compounds with every additional degree of warming.  Plants lose their water more efficiently as temperatures get higher.

The result is that wildfires are increasing in size both in California and across the western United States. Fire experts at Columbia University estimate that since the 1980s, the warming climate has contributed to an extra 10 million acres of burning in western forests – an area about the size of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined.

It’s a bad situation that is getting worse.

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California’s 2018 Wildfires Have Emitted A Year’s Worth of Power Pollution

Photo, posted October 11, 2017, courtesy of Bob Dass via Flickr. 

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Natural Climate Solutions

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The Paris Climate Agreement embodies a commitment to hold the increase in the global average temperature to less than 2 Celsius degrees above preindustrial levels.  Most strategies to achieve this goal involve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from human activities such as burning fossil fuels as well as various land use activities.  But there are also so-called Natural Climate Solutions, which relate to the storage of carbon and reduction in carbon emissions across global forests, wetlands, grasslands, and agricultural lands.

[Read more…] about Natural Climate Solutions

The Incredible Shrinking Bison

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As the climate warms, all sorts of things are happening in the environment.   We know about shrinking ice caps, retreating glaciers, strange winter weather, and so forth.  But there are other things that may happen that are unexpected and puzzling.

[Read more…] about The Incredible Shrinking Bison

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