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Protecting The Amazon Rainforest | Earth Wise

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The Amazon rainforest absorbs one-fourth of all the carbon dioxide absorbed by the land of the Earth.  It is by far the world’s largest rainforest, bigger than the next two largest – in the Congo Basin and Indonesia – combined.  Nearly two-thirds of it is found in Brazil but the more than 2 million square miles of rainforest includes portions in 8 countries.

The amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by the Amazon rainforest is 30% less today than it was in the 1990s as a result of deforestation, to a great extent driven by cattle ranching as well as other agricultural activities.

In early August, the leaders of the eight countries that are home to the Amazon River basin agreed to work together to conserve the rainforest.  The agreement, called the Belém Declaration, provides a roadmap to stave off the rampant deforestation. 

The agreement provides coordination between the countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela to establish law enforcement to combat illegal mining and logging as well as to pool development funds for conservation and sustainable employment.  Despite the unity portrayed at the meeting, many of the governments in South America are in a precarious position because of various economic and political struggles

Apart from its critical climate impact, the Amazon rainforest is a haven for biodiversity and further deforestation would be disastrous for tens of thousands of species and could transform it into a net emitter rather than absorber of greenhouse gases.  Some parts of the region have already reached that point.

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Amazon Countries, Led by Brazil, Sign a Rainforest Pact

Photo, posted October 17, 2016, courtesy of Yeoboya via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Endangered Plants And The Changing Climate | Earth Wise

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Plants are a critical resource because of the countless ways they support life on Earth. Plants release oxygen into the atmosphere, absorb carbon dioxide, and provide food and habitat for humans and wildlife.  Plants are also used to produce fibers, building materials, and medicines. 

Plants form the backbone of natural ecosystems, and absorb about 30% of all the carbon dioxide emitted by humans each year.  But plants are struggling to adapt in a human-dominated world.  Even though they are easier and cheaper to protect than animals, plants are often overlooked in conservation efforts.

Ironically, conservation efforts appear to be overlooking a key threat to endangered plants.  According to a new study led by researchers from Penn State University, all plants and lichens listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act are sensitive to climate change, but there are few plans in place to address that threat directly. 

The threat that climate change poses to endangered plants and lichens had not been thoroughly evaluated in more than a decade.  In the study, which was recently published in the journal PLOS Climate, the research team adapted existing assessment tools used to examine the threat of climate change for wild animals and applied them to 771 endangered plant species.  The researchers found that all endangered plant and lichen species are at least slightly threatened by climate change, and little is being done to protect the listed species from that threat.

The researchers hope their findings will be used to aid future conservation planning.  After all, plants can live without humans, but humans cannot live without plants.

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Climate change threatens 771 endangered plant and lichen species

Photo, posted June 12, 2014, courtesy of Mark Freeth via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The Value Of Seagrass | Earth Wise

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Seagrasses are found in shallow salty and brackish waters in many places around the world, from the tropics to the Arctic Circle.  They get their name from their long green, grass-like leaves.  They are not seaweeds at all but are more closely related to flowering plants on land. 

We hear a lot about threatened ocean ecosystems and most of the attention is on coral reefs and coastal mangrove forests.  Seagrass meadows get much less press, but they in fact provide wide-ranging services to society and store a great deal of carbon.

A new study by the University of Michigan demonstrates that seagrass ecosystems should be high up on the global conservation agenda.  The study puts a dollar value on the many services – which include storm protection, fish habitat, and carbon storage – provided by seagrasses in the Caribbean.  The numbers are enormous.

The researchers estimate that the Caribbean holds up to half of the world’s seagrass meadows by surface area, and it contains about a third of the global carbon storage by seagrasses.  They calculated that the Caribbean seagrasses provide about $255 billion in services to society each year, which includes $88 billion in carbon storage.

In the Bahamas alone, ecosystems services provided by seagrasses are valued at more than 15 times the country’s 2020 gross domestic product.

Blue carbon is the name used to describe carbon stored in coastal and open-ocean ecosystems.  The idea of selling blue carbon offset credits, which monetize the carbon stored in this way, is gaining traction.  For many Caribbean nations, this is likely to provide impetus for protecting seagrass ecosystems from human impacts, including nutrient pollution and overfishing.

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Caribbean seagrasses provide services worth $255B annually, including vast carbon storage, study shows

Photo, posted June 27, 2023, courtesy of Daniel Eidsmoe via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Fungus And Carbon Storage | Earth Wise

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It is well-known that plants and trees store enormous amounts of carbon.  What has not been common knowledge is that the vast underground network of fungi across the world’s lands stores billions of tons carbon, roughly equivalent to 36% of yearly global fossil fuel emissions.

These mycorrhizal fungi form symbiotic relationships with almost all land plants.  The fungi transport carbon, converted by sugars and fats by plants, into soil.  They have been supporting life on land for at least 450 million years and form sprawling underground networks everywhere – even beneath roads, gardens, and houses – on every continent on earth.

An international team of scientists analyzed hundreds of studies looking at plant-soil processes to understand how much carbon is being stored by fungi on a global scale.  The findings, published in the journal Current Biology, revealed that over 13 billion tons of CO2 is transferred from plants to fungi each year, more than China emits annually.  This process transforms the soil beneath our feet to a massive carbon pool and constitutes the most effective carbon storage activity in the world.

Given that fungi have such a crucial role in mitigating carbon emissions, the researchers are recommending that fungi should be considered in biodiversity and conservation policies. More needs to be done in protecting the underground networks of mycorrhizal fungi. The UN has warned that human activities are degrading soils and that 90% of the world’s soils could be degraded by 2050.  Not only would this obviously be very bad for the productivity of crops and plants, but we now know this could be catastrophic for curbing climate change and rising temperatures.

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Fungi stores a third of carbon from fossil fuel emissions and could be essential to reaching net zero

Photo, posted May 28, 2023, courtesy of Geoff McKay via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Chasing The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker | Earth Wise

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The ivory-billed woodpecker is or was the largest woodpecker in the United States. The last unassailable sighting of the bird was in 1944.  Since then, there have various reports of glimpses of the bird or of hearing its distinctive sounds.  But there has not been anything resembling proof that the bird still exists.

Despite this, the ivory-billed woodpecker has been legally protected under the Endangered Species Act.  There has been a proposal to end that protection and formally declare the species extinct.  Because of the controversy surrounding the bird, a final ruling on its status has been repeatedly delayed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Very recently, a peer-reviewed study in the journal Ecology and Evolution makes the case that the ivory-billed woodpecker still exists and that it is premature to declare it extinct.  The study cites visual encounters by expert observers, audio recordings, tree-damage, and rather grainy video evidence.  The authors claim that there is intermittent but repeated presence of birds that at least look and behave like ivory-billed woodpeckers.

One might ask:  why does it matter whether this bird is declared extinct or not?  The answer is that there are limited federal funds for conservation efforts, and they should be spent on saving genuinely endangered species and habitats.  The authors of the new study say that removing federal protection would be bad for any remaining ivory bills, which may be living in some swampy old-growth forests in Louisiana.  Other scientists consider conservation resources expended on the ivory-billed woodpecker to be chasing a ghost.

As is the case for several other notorious objects, one really clear photograph of an ivory-billed woodpecker could solve a long-standing mystery.

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A Vanished Bird Might Live On, or Not. The Video Is Grainy

Photo, posted October 19, 2014, courtesy of James St. John via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

A New Deep-Sea Reef In The Galapagos | Earth Wise

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Like in many other places around the world, ocean warming has mostly destroyed the shallow-water reefs in the Galapagos Islands.  The islands are some of the most carefully protected places in the world, but they can’t escape the effects of a warming planet.

Recently, however, scientists have discovered a healthy, sprawling coral reef hidden deep under the sea in the Galapagos.  More than 1,300 feet underwater, the reef extends for several miles along the ridge of a previously unknown volcano in the Galapagos Marine Preserve.

The reef is pristine and is teeming with all sorts of marine life including pink octopus, batfish, squat lobsters, and a variety of deep-sea fish, sharks, and rays.

The expedition that discovered the new reef was led by the University of Essex in the UK.  Prior to this discovery, scientists thought that coral reefs were all but gone from the Galapagos.  A period of ocean warming in 1982 through 1983 wiped out more than 95% of the corals in the archipelago.  Only a few reefs in shallow waters remained.  The newly discovered reefs are sheltered deep under the sea and would have been protected from the deadly heat.

According to the scientists from the expedition, the newly discovered reef potentially has global significance because it represents a site that can be monitored over time to see how such a pristine habitat evolves with the ongoing climate crisis.  Reefs like this are clearly very old because coral reefs take a long time to grow. Finding this one means that it is likely that there are more healthy reefs across different depths that are waiting to be discovered.

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Pristine Deep-Sea Reef Discovered in the Galápagos

Photo, posted March 28, 2009, courtesy of Derek Keats via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Seaweed On The Way | Earth Wise

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A type of seaweed called sargassum has long formed large blooms in the Atlantic Ocean.  It gets its name from the Sargasso Sea in the western Atlantic.  Since 2011, scientists have been tracking massive accumulations of the stuff each year that starts out off the coast of Africa and works its way across the Atlantic to end up in the Gulf of Mexico. 

The amount of sargassum present each year can shift depending on factors like changes in nutrients, rainfall, and wind conditions.  But since the 1980s, nitrogen content in the Atlantic has gone up by 45%.  This is likely due to human activities such as agriculture and fossil fuel production dumping materials into the rivers that feed into the ocean.

According to recent observations, the mass of seaweed now heading for Florida and other coastlines throughout the Gulf of Mexico may be the largest on record.  The giant blob of sargassum spans more than 5,000 miles in extent.  It is moving west and will pass through the Caribbean and up into the Gulf during the summer.  The seaweed is expected to become prevalent on beaches in Florida around July.

The seaweed provides food and protection for fishes, mammals, marine birds, crabs, sea turtles, and more.  But unfortunately, when sargassum hits the beaches, it piles up in mounds that can be difficult to walk through and eventually emits a gas that smells like rotten eggs.

Tourist destinations in the Caribbean region have their work cut out for them to remove seaweed that can pile up several feet deep.  For example, in Barbados, locals were using 1,600 dump trucks a day to clean their beaches.  Caribbean and Florida resorts spend millions of dollars each year to remove sargassum seaweed.

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A 5,000-mile-wide blob of seaweed is headed for Florida, threatening tourism across the Caribbean

Photo, posted February 24, 2020, courtesy of Bernard Dupont via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Protecting Wetlands | Earth Wise

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Wetlands are distinct ecosystems that are flooded or saturated by water, either permanently or seasonally.  They include mangroves, marshes, swamps, forested wetlands, bogs, wet prairies, and vernal pools.   The feature that most wetlands share is soil or substrate that is at least periodically saturated with or covered by water.

Wetlands are some of the most threatened ecosystems in the world.  While wetlands can be affected by a variety of natural stressors, including erosion, droughts, and storms, human activities have been the major driver of wetland decline. 

But according to a new study by researchers from McGill University in Canada, the global loss of wetland areas since 1700 has likely been overestimated.  The research team calculated that the area of wetland ecosystems around the world has declined 21-35% since 1700 as a result of human activities – far less than the 50-87% decline estimated in other studies.  The study’s focus beyond regions with historically high wetland losses and its avoidance of possibly misleading extrapolations likely resulted in the lower estimate.      

According to the study, which was published in the journal Nature, more than 2.1 million square miles of wetlands have been lost during the past 300 years – an area roughly the size of India.  The five countries with the highest wetland losses are the United States, China, India, Russia and Indonesia. 

But discovering that fewer wetlands have been historically lost than previously thought gives researchers a second chance to protect wetlands.  The findings of the study will help researchers prioritize global conservation and restoration actions.

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A second chance to protect wetlands

Photo, posted February 2, 2005, courtesy of Jan Tik via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Assessing The Planet’s Most Unique Birds | Earth Wise

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Birds come in a huge variety of shapes, sizes and plumages.  The physical attributes of birds are adaptations that have taken countless millennia to develop, and physical attributes are closely related to the roles birds play in their environment.   

According to a new study led by researchers from the University College London in the U.K., bird species with extreme or uncommon combinations of traits have the highest risk of extinction.  Losing these bird species and the unique roles they play in the environment, including seed dispersal, pollination and predation, could have severe consequences on the health of ecosystems.

In the study, which was recently published in the British Ecological Society journal Functional Ecology, the researchers analyzed the extinction risk and physical attributes of 99% of all living bird species.  The research team used a dataset of measurements collected from living birds and museum specimens.  The measurements included things like beak size and shape, and the length of wings, tails and legs.  The researchers combined this data with extinction risk, and then ran simulations to see what would happen if the most threatened birds were to go extinct.

Some of the bird species that are both most unique and most threatened include the Christmas Frigatebird and the Bristle-thighed Curlew.  Kiwis were excluded from the study because the researchers viewed them as extreme morphological outliers.

While most unique birds were also classified as threatened on the Red List, the research was unable to show what links uniqueness in birds to extinction risk

The research team warns that if more isn’t done to protect these threatened species and avoid extinctions, the functioning of ecosystems will be dramatically disrupted.

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Planet’s most unique birds at higher risk of extinction

Photo, posted June 25, 2012, courtesy of Kristine Sowl / USFWS via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Reef Insurance | Earth Wise

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Coral reefs around the world face multiple dangers from warming waters, acidification, human activity, and more.  Powerful storms often cause tremendous damage to reefs.  When possible, snorkelers and divers are deployed to try to repair damage to reefs.  But philanthropy and government grants are basically the only resources available to fund such actions.

Three years ago, tourist businesses and the government in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo purchased an insurance policy to offset costs of protecting the local parts of the Mesoamerican Reef.  The environmental group the MAR Fund later took out an insurance policy on the rest of the reef in Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras. 

With this precedent, the Nature Conservancy recently purchased an insurance policy on behalf of the state of Hawaii to help offset repair work on its coral reefs.  It is the first U.S. coral insurance contract.

Coral reefs are more than just hosts for marine life.  They provide barriers against ocean storm surges, which is a major financial incentive for protecting them and hence an incentive to invest in insurance.

The new Hawaiian insurance policy has a premium of $110,000 a year and will provide $2 million in protection.  Payouts occur when wind speeds go above 50 knots.  No further proof of damage is required.

The Nature Conservancy has created teams called ‘Reef Brigades’ composed of snorkelers and divers who recover reef fragments, store them in ocean or shore-based nurseries, and then re-attach them when conditions are safe.  It can be very expensive to do this sort of work, particularly when new corals grown in a nursery are required.

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Analysis: First U.S. coral insurance marks the rise of the reef brigades

Photo, posted September 14, 2011, courtesy of Greg McFall/NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Rainforest Promises | Earth Wise

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The recent UN climate summit in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt brought with it lots of pledges for action.   Among them was a promise from the three countries that are home to more than half of the world’s tropical rainforests to try to do something to protect them.

The ministers of Brazil, Indonesia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo signed an agreement pledging cooperation on sustainable management and conservation, restoration of critical ecosystems, and creation of economies that would ensure the health of both their people and their forests.

The plan has no financial backing of its own.  The countries are pledging to work together to establish a funding mechanism that could help to preserve the tropical forests that both help regulate the Earth’s climate and sustain a wide range of animals, plants, birds, and insects.

That such an agreement has come about at all is a result of the election of Luiz Lula da Silva as Brazilian president, replacing Jair Bolsonaro, who was famously an opponent of any and all environmental conservation or protections.  President Lula addressed the attendees of the climate summit promising that “Brazil is back.”   He described his country as having been in a cocoon for the past four years under his predecessor.  He declared that going forward, Brazil will be a force to combat climate change.  Given the importance of the Amazon rainforest, that is critical for the success of the world’s efforts.

Like all other issues on the table at the climate summit, the real challenge is not to come up with meaningful pledges on climate action, it is to be able to follow through on those pledges.  If past summits are any indication, that is not an easy task.

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Brazil, Indonesia and Congo Sign Rainforest Protection Pact

Photo, posted September 15, 2013, courtesy of Moises Silva Lima via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Carbon In The Congo Peatlands | Earth Wise

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The Congo peatlands in central Africa are the world’s largest tropical peatlands complex, occupying an area of 65,000 square miles, about the size of the entire state of Florida. Peatlands represent a huge store of carbon and therefore are important to the stability of the climate.

A study by scientists at the University of Leeds and University College London found that around the time that Stonehenge was built – about 5,000 years ago – there was an extended drying period in central Congo and the peatlands started emitting carbon dioxide rather than storing it.  Over the course of time, the climate in the area got wetter again and over the past 2,000 years, the Congo peatlands have been a place that takes large amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere.

The study utilized peat samples taken from beneath remote swamp forests to build a record of the vegetation and rainfall in the central Congo Basin over the past 17,500 years.

In a paper published in Nature, the researchers warn that if modern-day global warming produces extended droughts in the Congo region, history could repeat itself and the peatlands could once again become carbon emitters.  If that were to happen, over 30 billion tons of carbon could be released into the atmosphere.  That is the equivalent to the total global emissions from fossil fuel burning over a three-year period.

There is some evidence that dry seasons are lengthening in the Congo Basin, but it is unknown if these will continue.  In any case, the study reveals that peatlands are more vulnerable than previously thought and need to be protected.  They are some of the most wildlife and carbon-rich ecosystems on Earth.

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Congo peatlands could release billions of tonnes of carbon

Photo, posted November 5, 2016, courtesy of Roni Ziade / Forest Service via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The State Of The Birds | Earth Wise

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The U.S. Committee of the North American Bird Conservation Initiative has published the State of the Birds 2022, an assessment of bird populations in North America. The news is not good.  The report identifies 70 Tipping Point species, which are those that have lost half or more of their breeding population since 1970 and are on track to lose another half or more in the next 50 years. According to research published in Science in 2019, the United States and Canada have lost 3 billion breeding birds since 1970, which is about a quarter of the total population.

More than half of the bird species in the United States are in decline. According to the Conservation Initiative, the tipping point species in particular require proactive conservation protections to avoid becoming endangered.  Species that inhabit grasslands are declining more rapidly, while waterfowl like ducks and geese are actually increasing.  That increase is most likely a result of the investments in conservation funded by the hunting industry.

Those waterfowl gains demonstrate that when there are concerted efforts to protect and promote bird populations, positve changes can happen.  Some say that protecting birds is not a high priority given all the other crises in the world, but what is good for birds is also good for people.  For example, planting trees and other vegetation to enhance bird habitat also helps to sequester carbon, protect coastlines from storm surges, increase groundwater recharge, and reduce urban heating effects.

The loss of 3 billion birds is a major biodiversity crisis and requires action.  Bird conservation benefits wildlife, people, entire ecosystems, and our planet.

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What’s Good for Birds Is Good for People and the Planet. But More Than Half of Bird Species in the U.S. Are in Decline

Photo, posted November 4, 2020, courtesy of Tom Koerner/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The Living Planet Index | Earth Wise

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The World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London recently published the latest Living Planet Index, which is designed to measure how animal populations are changing through time.  The purpose is to provide an assessment of the health of ecosystems and the state of biodiversity.

The LPI only looks at the population of vertebrates:  birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and fish.  The latest survey looked at how populations have changed between 1970 and 2018.  The results are that populations of these animal groups have declined by an average of 69% over that 48-year period.

This result highlights a very real and very severe crisis of biodiversity loss.  However, it does not mean that there are 2/3 fewer animals today than 48 years ago.  The way the index is calculated is to look at the changes in individual populations of over 5,000 different species.  Then these individual relative declines are averaged to get the result.  

There are shortcomings in the LPI.  For example, individual species that have seen massive population declines will bring the average down.  But even removing the outliers both of a negative and a positive impact does not dramatically change the result.

There is no perfect indicator for biodiversity and ecosystem health.  The Living Planet Index is nonetheless a useful metric and indicates that many species around the world are in decline.  Policymakers and environmental advocates need to make decisions about conservation and protection measures and this index is one tool they can use.

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There’s a frightening new report about wildlife declines. But many are getting the story wrong.

Photo, posted October 12, 2019, courtesy of Visit Rwanda via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Koalas Are Endangered | Earth Wise             

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The koala is one of the world’s most iconic animal species and is widely considered to be the symbol of Australia.   Koalas are not bears; they are marsupials. 

Being iconic symbols is not sufficient to prevent koalas from going extinct.  In the 1920s, hundreds of thousands of koalas were shot for the fur trade, greatly reducing their population.

More recently, drought, bush fires, disease, and habitat loss have drastically reduced the numbers of koalas.  Since 2018, there has been a 30% decline in koala populations across Australia.  It is difficult to get an accurate count of the animals because they don’t move around much, and they live high up in tree canopies where they are hard to spot.

 Estimates are that the koala population has dropped from between 45,000-82,000 in 2018 to between 32,000-58,000 in 2021.  The koala is now extinct in 47 Australian electorates and in many others, there are only handfuls of animals remaining.   The population decline was accelerated by devastating wildfires in late 2019 into early 2020.  Some estimates are that koalas could be extinct by 2050.  Conservation organizations around the world have been demanding greater protection for koalas for years.

Given this dire situation, the Australian government recently declared the koala an endangered species, reclassifying it from being a vulnerable species.  The government plans to adopt a recovery plan that will include new laws protecting koalas and their natural woodland environments.  The details of the plan remain to revealed.

According to the Australian Koala Foundation, however, the new status of the koala means very little in and of itself.  If the clearing of the koala habitat continues, the species has little chance of surviving in the wild.

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‘In rapid decline’: Australia has lost 30% of its koalas in just 3 years, foundation says

Australia Declares Koalas an Endangered Species

Photo, posted September 18, 2019, courtesy of Guido Konrad via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Invasive Species On Ships In Antarctica | Earth Wise

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The Southern Ocean around Antarctica is the most isolated marine environment on Earth.  Antarctica’s native species have been isolated for the last 15-30 million years.  As a result, wildlife there has not evolved the ability to tolerate the presence of many groups of species.

New research by the University of Cambridge and the British Antarctic Survey has traced the global movements of all the ships entering Antarctic water and has found that Antarctica is connected to all regions of the globe via ship activity to an extent much greater than previously thought.  Fishing, tourism, research, and supply ships are exposing Antarctica to invasive, non-native species that threaten the existing ecosystems.

In all, the research identified over 1,500 ports with links to Antarctica.  From all these places, non-native species including mussels, barnacles, crabs, and algae attach themselves to ships’ hulls.  The process is known as biofouling. 

The greatest concern is the movement of species from pole to pole.  These species are already cold-adapted.  They may come on tourist or research vessels that spend the northern hemisphere summer in the Arctic before traveling south for the Antarctic summer season.

Mussels have no competitors in Antarctica should they be accidentally introduced.  Shallow water crabs would introduce a new form of predation that Antarctic animals have never encountered before.

Current biosecurity measures to protect Antarctica, such as cleaning ships’ hulls, focus on a small group of so-called gateway ports.  The new findings indicate that these measures need to be expanded to protect Antarctic waters from non-native species.

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Invasive species ‘hitchhiking’ on ships threaten Antarctica’s unique ecosystems

Photo, posted April 12, 2016, courtesy of NOAA’s National Ocean Service via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Removing Carbon With The Oceans | Earth Wise

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There is increasing concern that reducing carbon emissions alone will not be sufficient to stabilize the climate and that technologies that actively remove carbon dioxide from the air will be needed.  There has been a fair amount of analysis of the efficacy of storing carbon in agricultural soil and in forests, but there has not been comparable studies of the risks, benefits, and trade-offs of ocean-based strategies. 

The oceans currently absorb about a quarter of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.  There are multiple ways in which oceans could be induced to store much more.  A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine looks at several ocean carbon dioxide removal strategies in terms of efficacy, potential costs, and potential environmental risks.

One approach involves adding nutrients to the ocean surface to increase photosynthesis by phytoplankton.  The approach has a medium to high chance of being effective and has medium environmental risks.

Another approach is large-scale seaweed farming that transports carbon to the deep ocean or into sediments.   It has medium efficacy chances but higher environmental risks.

Protection and restoration of coastal ecosystems including marine wildlife would have the lowest environmental risk but only low to medium efficacy.

Chemically altering ocean water to increase its alkalinity in order to enhance reactions that take up carbon dioxide would be highly effective but a medium environmental risk.

The report describes some other approaches as well.  It recommends a $125 million research program to better understand the technological challenges as well as the potential economic, social, and environmental impacts of increasing the oceans’ absorption of carbon dioxide.

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Oceans Could Be Harnessed to Remove Carbon From Air, Say U.S. Science Leaders

Photo, posted August 21, 2016, courtesy of Quinn Dombrowski via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Armadillos Heading North | Earth Wise

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Armadillos are small mammals known for their unique armor-like shell and their digging habits.  There are 21 species, primarily native to South America.  Some species have expanded northward due to their rapid breeding cycle, adaptability, and reduced number of predators.  Only one species – the nine-banded armadillo – is found in the United States.  In fact, it is the official small mammal of the state of Texas.

Over time, armadillos have expanded their range to states in the Deep South.  More recently, the animals have been pushing further north.  Milder winters in the changing climate have allowed them to inhabit new areas, including parts of the Blue Ridge Mountains. They were first sighted in North Carolina in 2007 and their numbers have recently been growing in the western half of the state.

There are now armadillos as far north as Missouri, Nebraska, and Iowa, and there is little to halt their further advance.  They are able to hold their breath for six minutes at a time, so they can cross rivers by walking along the bottom or by inflating their intestines and floating across the top.  Their hard shell provides protection from predators.  They reproduce prolifically.  Females give birth to quadruplets multiple times over the course of their 12-15-year lifespan.

Armadillos are fun to look at, but they are a nuisance where people live.  They are prone to digging holes in lawns.  In parts of North Carolina, some people have placed bounties on the animals.  They are difficult to trap and there aren’t common repellents for them.  As the climate continues to warm, it is only a matter of time before the range of armadillos expands into other states.

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Armadillos Advance Northward As Temperatures Rise

Photo, posted May 2, 2017, courtesy of Gail Hampshire via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Sunscreen For Corals | Earth Wise

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Sunscreen from beachgoers entering ocean waters is one of the greatest threats to coral reefs and there are global efforts to reduce or eliminate the use of many of the most harmful chemicals people use to protect themselves from the sun’s rays.  However, scientists at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute have found that some corals have a natural sunscreen of their own that helps protect them from the effects of climate change.

Hawaiian blue rice corals feature a deep blue pigment that is created by chromoprotein that filters out harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun.  UV damage has harmful impacts to reproduction in many coral species, but it appears not to have the same effect on blue rice coral.

In a study published in Scientific Reports, Smithsonian researchers studied the devastating effects that bleaching had on brown rice coral in the Hawaiian bleaching events of 2014 and 2015.  During the same events, blue rice coral either recovered quickly or was not affected by the elevated ocean temperature at all.

The blue-pigmented corals had dramatically greater reproductive vigor than the brown-pigmented version.  The key factor appears to be the sun-screening ability of the blue pigment in the particular symbiotic algae that lives inside the coral tissue known as zooxanthellae.  The coral protects the algae and in turn the algae provide the coral with food in the form of sugars produced as a waste product from photosynthesis.  In the case of the blue version, the algae also produce sunscreen for the coral.

By better understanding the role UV-protective pigments play in mitigating the adverse effects of climate change and warming oceans, scientists can learn why some species are better equipped to survive in a changing environment.

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Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute Scientists Find Corals’ Natural “Sunscreen” May Help Them Weather Climate Change

Photo, posted September 28, 2009, courtesy of Matt Kieffer via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Protecting The Ocean Has Multiple Benefits | Earth Wise

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An international team of authors from 18 institutions has recently published a paper in the journal Nature that offers a solution that addresses several of humanity’s most pressing problems at the same time.  The paper provides a comprehensive assessment of where strict ocean protection can contribute to a more abundant supply of healthy seafood, help address climate change, and protect embattled species and habitats.

The study identified specific areas of the ocean that could provide all of these benefits if they were protected.  Currently, only about 7% of the ocean is under any kind of protection.  According to the study, if the appropriate 30% of the ocean was protected by the actions of the relevant countries by 2030, the cited benefits would be realized.

Safeguarding these regions would protect nearly 80% of marine species while increasing fishing catches by almost 9 million tons a year. It would also prevent the release of more than 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide by protecting the seafloor from bottom trawling, which is a widespread and destructive fishing practice.

Ocean life has been declining worldwide because of overfishing, habitat destruction, and climate change.  The study pioneers a new way to identify the places that – if protected – will boost food production and safeguard marine life, while at the same time reducing carbon emissions.  The study finds that countries with large national waters and large industrial trawl fisheries have the highest potential to contribute to climate change mitigation by protecting the carbon stored on the ocean floor.  The ocean covers 70% of the Earth and its importance in solving the challenges of our time must not be underestimated.

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Three Times the Gains

Photo, posted January 10, 2016, courtesy of Hafsteinn Robertsson via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

WAMC Northeast Public Radio

WAMC/Northeast Public Radio is a regional public radio network serving parts of seven northeastern states (more...)