An adult female in another colour phase. Both images by Melanie Clapham, U of Victoria, Canada. |
Thursday, November 19, 2020
Snarl for the camera! An international team of scientists and software developers use facial recognition technology to identify individual grizzlies in the wild.
Concentration Matters. Farmland Inequality on the Canadian Prairies
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
by Darrin Qualman, Annette Aurélie Desmarais, André Magnan and Mengistu Wendimu
A scene typical to the Canadian prairies - a big farm at harvest time. A public domain photo by cj berry. |
The ownership and control of Canada’s food-producing land is becoming more and more concentrated, with profound impacts for young farmers, food system security, climate change and democracy.
On the Canadian prairies, small and medium-sized family farms are often portrayed as the primary food production units. Yet, the reality of farming in Western Canada is quite different. In fact, a small and declining number of farms are operating the lion’s share of Prairie farmland and capturing the lion’s share of farm revenue and net income.
The authors analyse the extent of farmland concentration in Canada’s three Prairie provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba), where over 70 per cent of the country’s agricultural land is situated. They find that 38 per cent of Saskatchewan’s farmland is operated and controlled by just 8 per cent of farms. In Alberta, 6 per cent of farms operate 40 per cent of that province’s farmland, while Manitoba sees 4 percent of farms operate and control 24 per cent of the land. Such concentration makes it much harder for young and new farmers to enter agriculture, with the number of young farmers in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba declining by more than 70 per cent within just one generation
The persistent decline in the number of farmers, farm size expansion, growing farm income inequality, and increased land concentration have other effects as well. Rural economies, communities, businesses, and services are also affected as there are fewer farm families to patronize local shops and services, while farmers lose their capacity to democratically influence governments and legislation as their voting numbers fall. Meanwhile, non-farmers lose their connections to farms and rural culture as fewer and fewer urban residents count farmers among their family members or friends. A series of policy measures are urgently needed to counter the market forces that will otherwise drive us toward even more concentrated farmland ownership and drive half of Canadian farm families off the land in the next one to two generations.
RELATED:
Just 1% of Farms Control 70% of Global Farmland: Study Finds 'Shocking State of Land Inequality'
Tuesday, November 17, 2020
Recent research shows: More rare, endangered sharks are dying in the worldwide trade in shark fins than earlier feared.
by Larry Powell
The leopard shark (Stegostoma fasciatum). An ADV photo by Jeffrey N. Jeffords. |
New DNA tracking techniques are revealing a greater number of threatened and coastal sharks from stockpiles of intact shark and processed fins (pictured). Image credit: Paul Hilton. |
Pollution and pandemics: A dangerous mix. Research finds that as one goes, so goes the other -- to a point.
ScienceDaily
A highway project in Alberta. A PinP photo.
Are we setting ourselves up for the spread of a pandemic without even knowing it? Story here.
Wednesday, November 11, 2020
Ending greenhouse gas emissions may not stop global warming
Nature (With minor editing by PinP)
One of several steel power pylons toppled in an historic wind, snow and ice storm which swept through eastern Manitoba about a year ago. It left thousands without power in what was described as the worst power outage in the history of Manitoba Hydro. Damages are expected to exceed 100 million dollars. A Manitoba Hydro photo. |
Even if human-induced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can be reduced to zero, global temperatures may continue to rise for centuries afterwards, according to a simulation of the global climate published in Scientific Reports.
Jorgen Randers and Ulrich Goluke modelled the effect of different greenhouse gas emission reductions on changes in the global climate from 1850 to 2500. They also created projections of global temperature and sea level rises.
What do they show? Under conditions where manmade greenhouse gas emissions peak during the 2030s, then decline to zero by 2100, global temperatures will be 3°C warmer and sea levels 3 metres higher by 2500 than they were in 1850. Where all such emissions are reduced to zero during the year 2020 here's the scenario the models portray.
After an initial decline, global temperatures will still be around 3°C warmer and sea levels will rise by around 2.5 metres by 2500, compared to 1850. Global temperatures could continue to increase after emissions have reduced, as continued melting of Arctic ice and carbon-containing permafrost may increase the levels of water vapour, methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Melting of Arctic ice and permafrost would also reduce the area of ice reflecting heat and light from the sun.
To prevent the projected temperature and sea level rises, the authors suggest that all GHG emissions would have had to be reduced to zero between 1960 and 1970. To prevent global temperature and sea level rises after greenhouse gas emissions have ceased, and to limit the potentially catastrophic impacts of this on Earth’s ecosystems and human society, at least 33 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide would need to be removed from the atmosphere each year from 2020 onwards through carbon capture and storage methods.
Tuesday, November 10, 2020
Where people go, there too, goes Covid-19! Surprising? Perhaps not. But, if more solid science will help to convince the doubters - here it is!
Nature
A busy London pub. Photo by Steve Parker. |
Reopening places such as restaurants, fitness centres, cafes, and hotels carries the highest risk for transmitting SARS-CoV-2, according to a modelling study based on data from the United States published in Nature. Reducing occupancy in these venues may result in a large reduction in predicted infections, the model suggests. The study also highlights disparities in infection risk according to socioeconomic status.
To assess how changes in movement might alter the spread of the virus, Jure Leskovec and colleagues use phone data (collected this spring) to map the movements of millions of people from different local neighbourhoods. They combined these data with a model of transmission. This allowed them to identify potential high-risk venues and at-risk populations. The simulations from their model accurately predict confirmed daily case counts in ten of the largest metropolitan areas (such as Chicago, New York City and San Francisco).
The level of detail of the mobility data allowed the researchers to model the number of infections occurring, by the hour, at nearly 553,000 distinct locations grouped into 20 categories — termed “points of interest” — that people tended to visit regularly. Their model predicts that a small number of these locations, such as full-service restaurants, account for a large majority of infections. For example, in the Chicago metropolitan area, 10% of the points of interest accounted for 85% of the predicted infections at points of interest. The model predicts that compared with higher-income groups, lower-income populations are more likely to become infected because they have not been able to reduce their mobility as substantially and because the places they visit tend to be smaller and more crowded, which increases the risk of infection. For example, grocery stores visited by lower-income individuals tended to have 59% more people per square foot than those visited by higher-income individuals, and their visitors stayed 17% longer on average.
By modelling who is likely to be infected at which locations, the authors were also able to estimate the effects of different reopening strategies, and they suggest that their model can inform reopening policies. For example, capping the occupancy of a venue at 20% of its maximum capacity is predicted to reduce new infections by over 80%, but would only reduce the overall number of visits by 42%.
Monday, November 9, 2020
Rivers melt Arctic ice, warming air and ocean.
An Arctic river in Alaska. Photo by mypubliclands |
A new study shows that increased heat from Arctic rivers is melting sea ice in the Arctic Ocean and warming the atmosphere. Details here.
Saturday, October 31, 2020
Manitoba’s organic sector seeing slow but steady increase: report
OrganicBIZ
An organic market garden in Manitoba. A PinP photo. |
Tuesday, October 27, 2020
A vicious circle. Global heating leads to melting ice leads to more heating.....
Nature Communications
A polar bear navigates a dwindling ice pack. Photo by Andreas Weith |
The melting of ice in polar and mountain regions around the world could lead to an additional 0.43 °C increase in global warming in the long term, according to a study published online in Nature Communications.
The loss of ice cover is known to influence air temperatures, for example through albedo changes (the amount of sunlight reflected from the Earth’s surface). Although the mechanisms that are responsible for increased warming are well understood, it isn't clear how large the contributions of different ice sheets and feedback mechanisms to global temperature changes are.
Nico Wunderling and colleagues use a simplified Earth system model in combination with different CO2 concentration levels to provide such an estimate. They find an additional median warming of 0.43°C in response to the loss of all ice sheets at CO2 concentrations similar to today's (400 parts per million). The contributions from different ice masses range from 0.05°C for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to 0.19°C due to the loss of Arctic summer sea ice.
However, these experiments do not consider changes in CO2 concentrations over time or feedback mechanisms that could have an impact on shorter time-scales. Furthermore, the authors note that this warming does not emerge over years or decades, but rather on a time-scale of centuries to millennia (although they highlight that the Arctic might become ice-free during the summer within the 21st century). Therefore, these results should be interpreted as idealized estimates of contributions of different ice sources and feedback mechanisms.
Sunday, October 25, 2020
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Are hungry kids a priority for the Harper government? by Larry Powell The forum (for the riding of Dauphin - Swan River - Neepawa) w...
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by Larry Powell Planet In Peril has sorted through some of the confusion surrounding the absence of Robert Sopuck, the Conservative M...
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Larry Powell Powell is a veteran, award-winning journalist based in Shoal Lake, Manitoba, Canada. He specialize in stories about agriculture...