world weather attribution
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| Siberian wildfire north of the Arctic Circle. Photo by Pierre Markuse. In the first six months of 2020, Siberia experienced a period of unusually high temperatures, causing wide-scale impacts including wildfires, loss of permafrost, and an invasion of pests. Story here. |
Nature
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| The Great Egret in a wetland in southwestern Manitoba, Canada. Canadian populations are said to be declining. For decades, the egrets have had to contend with major habitat loss and degradation, as well as threats like contaminated runoff from farm fields. A PinP photo. |
Restoring 30% of the world’s ecosystems in priority areas could stave off more than 70% of projected extinctions and absorb nearly half of the carbon buildup in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution.
As the world focuses on dual crises of climate change and biodiversity loss, a landmark report in Nature pinpoints the ecosystems that, if restored, give us the biggest "bang for our buck" in terms of both climate and biodiversity benefits.
Despite being shown to be beneficial, shelterbelts are being systematically
destroyed by modern farmers. A PinP video.
Returning specific ecosystems in all continents worldwide that have been replaced by farming to their natural state would rescue the majority of land-based species of mammals, amphibians and birds under threat of dying out while soaking up more than 465 billion tons of carbon dioxide. Protecting 30% of the priority areas identified in the study, together with protecting ecosystems still in their natural form, would reduce carbon emissions equivalent to 49% of all the carbon that has built up in our atmosphere over the last two centuries. Some 27 researchers from 12 countries contributed to the report, which assesses forests, grasslands, shrublands, wetlands and arid ecosystems.
“Pushing forward on plans to return significant sweeps of nature to a natural state is critical to preventing ongoing biodiversity and climate crises from spinning out of control,” said Bernardo Strassburg, the study's lead author. “We show that if we’re smarter about where we restore nature, we can tick the climate, biodiversity and budget boxes on the world’s urgent to-do list.”
By identifying precisely which destroyed ecosystems worldwide should be restored to deliver biodiversity and climate benefits at a low cost, without impact on agricultural production, the study is the first of its kind to provide global evidence that, where restoration takes place has the most profound impact on the achievement of biodiversity, climate and food security goals. Restoration can be 13 times more cost-effective when it takes place in the highest priority locations.
The study focuses on the potential benefits of restoring both forest and non-forest ecosystems on a global scale. “Previous research has emphasized forests and tree planting, sometimes at the expense of native grasslands or other ecosystems, the destruction of which would be very detrimental for biodiversity and should be avoided. Our research shows that while reviving forests is critical for mitigating global warming and protecting biodiversity, other ecosystems also have a massive role to play,” said Strassburg.
The new report in Nature builds on the UN’s dire warnings that we’re on track to lose 1 million species in coming decades and that the world has mostly failed in its efforts to reach globally-set biodiversity targets in 2020, including the goal to restore 15% of ecosystems worldwide. Nations are re-doubling efforts to stave off mass extinctions in the leadup to the Convention on Biological Diversity COP15 in Kunming, China, in 2021. That's when a global framework to protect nature is expected to be signed. This new report will inform the discussion around restoration and offer insight into how reviving ecosystems can help tackle multiple goals.
Researchers assessed almost three million hectares of ecosystems worldwide that have been converted to farmland. Of these, over half were originally forests, one-quarter grasslands, 14% shrublands, 4% arid lands and 2% wetlands. They then evaluated these lands based on animal habitats, carbon storage and cost-effectiveness to determine which swathe of lands worldwide would deliver the most benefits for biodiversity and carbon at the lowest cost when restored.
Researchers were further able to identify a global-level, multiple-benefits solution—unconstrained by national boundaries—that would deliver 91% of the potential benefit for biodiversity, 82% of the climate mitigation benefit, and reduce costs by 27% by focusing on areas with low implementation and opportunity costs.
When researchers looked at the benefits if the restoration were to take place at the national level—which means that each country would restore 15% of its forests—they saw a reduction in biodiversity benefits by 28% and climate benefits by 29%, a rise in costs by 52%.
“These results highlight the critical importance of international cooperation in meeting these goals. Different countries have different, complementary roles to play in meeting overarching global targets on biodiversity and climate,” Strassburg said.
Responding to fears that restoring ecosystems will encroach on the land needed for crop production, researchers calculated how many ecosystems could be revived without cutting into food supplies. They found that 55%, or 1,578 million hectares, of ecosystems that had been converted to farmlands, could be restored without disrupting food production. This could be achieved through the well-planned and sustainable intensification of food production, together with a reduction in food waste and a shift away from foods such as meat and cheese, which require large amounts of land and therefore produce disproportionate greenhouse gas emissions.
“As government officials gradually refocus on global climate and biodiversity goals, our study provides them with the precise geographic information they need to make informed choices about where to restore ecosystems,” said Robin Chazdon, one of the report authors.
The approach developed is already supporting implementation at national and local scales. It’s attracting the attention of policy makers, NGOs and the private sector due to the substantial cost-benefit increase of restoration efforts. “We intend to help restoration achieve massive scales by aligning socioecological and financial interests, simultaneously increasing impacts for nature and people while improving returns and reducing risks for investors,” said Strassburg.
Overall, the study provides compelling evidence to policymakers seeking affordable, efficient ways to meet United Nations goals around biodiversity, climate and, additionally, desertification, that restoration, when well-coordinated and carried out in combination with the protection of intact ecosystems and the better use of agricultural lands, is an unmatched—though currently underused—solution.
“Our results provide very strong evidence of the benefits of pursuing joint planning and implementation of climate and biodiversity solutions, which is particularly timely given the landmark meetings planned for 2021 of the associated UN conventions on climate biodiversity and land degradation,” Strassburg said.
“The study also demonstrates a crucial but hitherto-unexplored application of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species,” noted Thomas Brooks, Chief Scientist at the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and a co-author of the study. “It will inform discussion next year at IUCN World Conservation Congress and fifteenth CBD Conference of the Parties regarding implementation of policy commitments, including the Bonn Challenge, the UN Decade of Restoration and the Sustainable Development Goals.”
“A new focus on prioritizing multiple outcomes of restoring ecosystems beyond forests, and beyond country level area-based targets, calls for intensifying international cooperation to realize globally important benefits of restoring the Earth’s precious ecosystems. We need to stimulate action for the sake of a healthy planet,” said Chazdon.
The following letter appeared in the Saturday, Oct. 10th edition of the Winnipeg Free Press, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. (Photo added by PinP.)
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| Sows like this spend much of their lives in tiny steel cages. |
Re: Changes needed to protect farms, animals (Opinion, Oct. 5)
As a former executive director at the Winnipeg Humane Society, I feel compelled to respond to Bill Campbell’s op-ed on the need to protect farms and animals. After starting at the Humane Society in 1994, I quickly came to learn that some of the most egregious suffering imposed on animals by humans occurs in the industrial barns of today’s animal agriculture.
I am not speaking of the few remaining family farms, but rather the large industrial-style buildings that house thousands of animals in small confined spaces with no access to the outdoors. These operations treat the animals more like cars on an assembly line, as they do not allow the animals to fulfill natural instincts and limit their movement severely. In short, the millions of animals raised for food in Canada are enduring lives of chronic suffering due to the very conditions that are allowed under our laws.
Anyone can check the facts by looking at the Animal Care Act of Manitoba. At first glance, it’s reassuring to see that animals shall not be confined with inadequate space, unsanitary conditions, or without opportunity for exercise. But just move down to the next section and you will see the list of animals that are exempted from the above requirements, and agricultural uses of animals are at the top of the list.
So, recent moves to bring in “ag-gag” laws are by no means aimed at bringing further protection to animals, but rather to keep the barn doors tightly locked so the public will not be able to see how the pigs and chickens providing food for us are actually living. In my view, industrial animal agriculture is unethical and, as a society, we should be working to ensure that animals raised for food are treated humanely as living creatures, not assembly-line parts.
VICKI BURNS
Winnipeg
RELATED:
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| The sprawling Koch fertilizer plant in Brandon, Manitoba, CA. Each month, hundreds of trucks and rail cars deliver both nitrogen and methane-based fertilizers made here, to farmers in western Canada & the US. Both nitrogen & methane are more potent as greenhouse gases than CO2, the commonest one. The plant has, for many years, been the single-biggest industrial source of GH gases in MB. A PinP photo. |
Rising nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions are jeopardizing the climate goals of the Paris Agreement, according to a major new study. The growing use of nitrogen fertilizers in farming worldwide is increasing atmospheric concentrations. N2O is 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide and remains in the atmosphere for more than 100 years. Story here.
ScienceDaily
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| "Where There's Smoke There's Fire" by Western Arctic National Parklands |
Widespread wildfires in the far north aren't just bigger; they're different. Details here.
ScienceDaily
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| The Athabasca glacier in Jasper National Park, Canada. Already a shadow of its former self, many fear it will be gone altogether within a generation. A 2020 photo by Ethan Sahagun. |
Powell is a veteran, award-winning journalist based in Shoal Lake, Manitoba, Canada. He specialize in stories about agriculture and the environment. For decades, he worked for broadcast outlets in all four provinces in western Canada. This included a 5 years stint as Senior Editor for CBC Radio News in Saskatchewan.
He is authorized to receive embargoed news releases on important, global stories, through the Science Media Centre of Canada, the Royal Society, Nature Research and the World Weather Attribution Network. He's a member of the Science Writers and Communicators of Canada, the Canadian Association of Journalists and a past member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Since retiring as a full-time employee in the late 80s, Powell has been able to devote more time to deeply- researched articles about important issues of our time, such as climate change and industrial farming.
In 2012, the Manitoba Community Newspapers Association awarded his story about vanishing pollinators, Plight of the Humble Bee second prize in its environmental category.
He has reported in many media, online, print and broadcast. They include CBC Radio; CBC TV’s flagship newscast, “The National;” NACTV - Community TV, Neepawa, Manitoba; farm newspapers including The Manitoba Co-Operator and The Western Producer; the weekly newspaper, The Roblin Review in Roblin, MB; along with progressive media such as the journal Alternatives; Briarpatch; Sasquatch; Canadian Dimension; The Dominion; OnEarth; Planetsave; The Manitoba Eco-Journal; Earthkeeper and Outdoor Edge.
WORK HISTORY:
• 1989-present: Freelance writer, broadcaster, photographer, and researcher – online, print and television.
• 1979-’88: Employee of CBC Radio News in Regina, including five years as Senior Editor of CBC Radio News in Saskatchewan.
• 1972-’78: CBC Radio/TV News, Calgary AB.
• 1958-’71: News reporter/announcer/host at private radio stations at CFAR, Flin Flon, MB; CJGX, Yorkton, SK; CJVI, Victoria, BC; CHAB, Moose Jaw, SK and CFAC, Calgary, AB.
EDUCATION:
• High school diploma, Dauphin Collegiate Technical Institute, Dauphin, MB; typing and shorthand degree, Sprott-Shaw Business College, Victoria, BC along with various skills courses at CBC, including writing and interviewing.
OTHER AWARDS:
• 1990: The B’Nai Brith award for human rights broadcasting as part of a team at CBC Radio, Saskatchewan. The series, "A People Apart," chronicled incidents of discrimination and abuse against indigenous people.
• 1984: Nomination for Peabody and winner of Saskatchewan Reporters’ Asn. Award for best radio documentary.
REFERENCES & WRITING SAMPLES: On request.
INTERESTS: Blogging, reading, writing, organics, market gardening, eat-local movements, community activism, jamming with friends on my clarinet.
PERSONAL INFORMATION:
Box 364 , Shoal Lake, Manitoba, Canada R0J1Z0
Cell: (204) 937-0205
He publishes the blog www.PlanetInPeril.ca (PinP) - "where science gets respect," and can be e-mailed at:
PlanetWatch1@yahoo.ca
Facebook: larry.powell.9235
Common Dreams
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One of several species at risk in Canada, the small white lady's slipper, (Cypripedium candidum). Photo by Mason Brock.
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PHYS ORG
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| Millions of years ago, fire swept across the planet, fuelled by an oxygen-rich atmosphere in which even wet forests burned, according to new research by CU Boulder scientists. Story here. |
Nature
(With some minor editing by PinP.)
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| The edge of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Credit: Jason Briner |
Mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet is predicted to be higher in this century than any time in the past 12,000 years. The simulations, published in Nature, are based on high-carbon-emission scenarios and consider the southwestern region of Greenland. The findings add to a body of evidence that suggests that reducing carbon emissions is needed to decrease the contribution of the Greenland Ice Sheet to sea-level rise.
As the Arctic warms, the Greenland Ice Sheet has been losing mass and contributing to sea-level rise. That loss rate has increased dramatically since the 1990s. But are those rates and ones projected for the future unexpected? Or, are they just related to "natural variability?" To answer that question, Jason Briner and colleagues produced high-resolution simulations based on geological observations covering southwestern Greenland for the past 12,000 years that extend continuously into the future up to 2100.
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| The Greenland Ice Sheet. Credit: Jason Briner |
The simulations suggest that mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet in the twenty-first century will exceed the maximum mass-loss rates from the past 12,000 years. They find the largest losses in the past (between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago) were at rates of around 6,000 billion tonnes per century. That's similar to the estimated rates of the first two decades of this century.
However, future losses are expected to exceed those maximum rates. Projected mass losses for the rest of this century are in the range of 8,800 to 35,900 billion tonnes. Those are based on the lowest and highest greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, respectively - that is, the amount of ice losses this century could reverse 4,000 years of cumulative ice growth and exceed previous mass-loss rates by about fourfold. The authors conclude that unprecedented rates of mass loss will occur unless a low-carbon-emission scenario is followed.
By Larry Powell
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| The Sardinian warbler (Curruca melanocephala), common to the Mediterranean region. Photo by Andreas Trepte. Billions of birds like the Sardinian warbler (above) and the Blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla) have been migrating through the region for a long time. And, each year for many years, poachers on Cyprus have been trapping and killing them illegally. The slaughter is now said to have reached "industrial levels." Conservationists found 155 different bird species in trappers' nets in 2018. These included 82 listed as "conservation priority species;" Among them, the Cyprus warbler, a protected species which is a "short-distance" migrator but breeds only on the island. A study just published by The Royal Society takes aim at the devious methods the poachers use. They lure their unsuspecting prey to their deaths by playing recordings of the birds' own songs. But it has not been widely known just how well that practise works - until now. The researchers set up an experiment that would emulate the poachers methods. (In an email, the study's lead author, Dr. Alexander N. G. Kirschel of the University of Cyprus, tells PinP how it was done. "We caught birds in mist nets, banded them and released them.") What they found confirmed their worst fears. The lures worked so well, they were able to trap eleven times more of the targeted species with the birdsong recordings than without. Not only that, they attracted a higher number of "bycatch" species which the trappers would presumably not want and just throw away. And these may include species "of conservation concern." |
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| A dish of ambelopoulia. Photo by George M. Groutas. It's all part of a controversial, yet lucrative practise of satisfying the appetites of many Cypriots for ambelopoulia (above). It's a "traditional" food dish considered a delicacy there. It's made up of songbirds that may be grilled, fried, pickled or broiled. And it's still being served illegally, not just in private homes, but in some restaurants on the island, as well. |
In the words of the study, "Targeting tape lures would be a significant step in the battle against poaching. Our study has serious implications for conservation and will aid conservation practitioners in their fight to protect migrating birds from the annual massacre in Cyprus."
