Friday, March 3, 2023

New paper on gender equity

In case you missed it in my February 2023 science summary, a new paper I co-authored on gender equity came out recently (James et al. 2023). Here's a quick summary:

James et al. 2023 asked over 900 science & conservation staff of The Nature Conservancy about their careers and influence, and how they perceived their gender as impacting that. We found that women had less influence, experienced many barriers to their careers (including harassment, discrimination, and fear of retaliation for speaking out), and that men overestimated gender equity. Only have 5 minutes? Skip to the recommendations on page 7 (you need to read the text for this list to make sense, but we ask orgs to: show public leadership on equity, improve transparency and accountability, diversify teams and improve career pathways for women, be flexible, include training and mentoring as part of broader change, help women connect, address sexual discrimination and harassment, and consider intersectionality). 

If you have 15 minutes more, read the quotes in Table 2 (p5-8) because they're really compelling and illustrative. Or if you're with the half of men and 3/4 of women in our sample who think we have more to do on gender equity (rather than that we've already "gone overboard" or that it's not an issue as some men reported), just read the whole damn paper because there's a lot of interesting detail and nuance in the results. If you're a man and don't think this is an issue at your organization, it's probably worth asking a few female colleagues about their experience to see if there's anything you're missing that you could help to improve. I learned a ton while helping out on it, and I'm excited to start advocating for the recommendations. 

You can read it at: https://bit.ly/TNCgenderpaper and there's a short blog at at https://blog.nature.org/science-brief/gender-bias-holds-women-back-in-conservation-careers/



Wednesday, March 1, 2023

March 2023 science summary

Vader trying to play while I work

Happy March!

A paper I'm an author on just came out (James et al. 2023) and I'm super excited about it. It looks at how science and conservation staff at The Nature Conservancy perceive gender equity in their work, and I learned a lot while working on it. Please check out the summary below, and read the whole paper if you have time, or at least read this blog overview.

Also, many of you were intrigued by the use of ChatGPT last month, so I thought I'd try another AI tool to highlight what it does well and what it's limitations are. It's part of elicit.org and it's called "TL;DR papers" (for too long; didn't read). I first read about it here. Elicit does many cool things, but I tested just one feature: uploading a science article and getting: 1) a 1-sentence summary of the abstract, 2) key info about the paper's design and methods, 3) critiques of the paper if it finds them, and 4) the ability to ask specific questions about the paper. I put what I did and the results below under "AI RESEARCH TOOLS." The TL;DR is that I highly recommend the "detailed abstract summary" over the default ones. I also like this guide to things to use AI for (thanks to Bob Lalasz for sending it).

If you know someone who wants to sign up to receive these summaries, they can do so at http://bit.ly/sciencejon (no need to email me).

GENDER AND CONSERVATION:
James et al. 2023 asked over 900 science & conservation staff of The Nature Conservancy about their careers and influence, and how they perceived their gender as impacting that. We found that women had less influence, experienced many barriers to their careers (including harassment, discrimination, and fear of retaliation for speaking out), and that men overestimated gender equity. Only have 5 minutes? Skip to the recommendations on page 7 (we ask orgs to: show public leadership on equity, improve transparency and accountability, diversify teams and improve career pathways for women, be flexible, include training and mentoring as part of broader change, help women connect, address sexual discrimination and harassment, and consider intersectionality). If you have 15 minutes more, read the quotes in Table 2 (p5-8) because they're really compelling and illustrative. Or if you're with the half of men and 3/4 of women in our sample who think we have more to do on gender equity (rather than that we've already "gone overboard" or that it's not an issue as some men reported), just read the whole damn paper because there's a lot of interesting detail and nuance in the results. I learned a ton while helping out on it, and I'm excited to start advocating for the recommendations. You can read it at: https://bit.ly/TNCgenderpaper or a short blog at https://blog.nature.org/science-brief/gender-bias-holds-women-back-in-conservation-careers/ 


AI RESEARCH TOOLS:
I decided to test out Elicit.org on some papers I'm an author on (to make it easy for me to judge how good or bad the info was). I picked my 5 papers that have the most citations (I'm a minor author on all but one of those), the paper which has generated the most response outside of academia (Fisher / Wood / Bradford / Kelsey 2020), and the two most recent papers I've worked on (James et al. 2023 and James et al. 2022). I used the "upload PDFs" option and uploaded all 8 PDFs at once. I pulled info from the summaries, and for each paper asked Elicit one question that I knew the paper had a good answer to. AFTER I was done I discovered Elicit has "detailed summaries" which you get by clicking in "search for paper information", so I went back and added those in with brief comments. I list direct output from Elicit in italics.

Bradford et al. 2019. Soil carbon science for policy and practice. PAPER BLOG
Elicit summary: "Controversy about the role soils might play in climate change mitigation is undermining actions to restore soils for improved agricultural and environmental outcomes."
Jon comments on summary: We had a 2-sentence abstract, and this is the key one. I wish it had the other key message of the paper (we know how to build soil C, and that it can help farmers) but that wasn't in our abstract so that's on us.
Elicit detailed summary: "This paper discusses soil carbon science for policy and practice. It argues that controversy about the role soils might play in climate change mitigation is undermining actions to restore soils for improved agricultural and environmental outcomes." I really like this summary.
Jon comments on other findings: They classified the paper as a literature review, but it's a 'comment' so more opinion although it draws on literature. It flagged we didn't mention our funding which surprised me but it was correct! It was interesting that they said the paper had "0 citations" (it has 88) but then it did list the text from a few papers citing this paper which was cool.
Jon's open question: "What does building soil carbon do?" 
Answer: "Building soil carbon increases yields and reduces erosion." That is pulled from the paper and is accurate.

Fisher et al. 2018. Impact of satellite imagery spatial resolution on land use classification accuracy and modeled water quality. PAPER BLOG
Elicit summary: "The choice of spatial resolution affected the estimated return on investment in watershed conservation for the municipal water company that finances much of this conservation."
Jon comments on summary: I struggled with this one, but have to agree that is the most important sentence from the abstract. I really wish they hadn't cut the 2nd half of the sentence though: ", although it is unlikely that this would have affected the company's decision to invest in the program." My TL;DR would be something like "Using free coarse imagery reduced the accuracy of our water quality modeling, but the coarse data sufficed for the purposes of the intended decision maker (a water treatment company)."
Elicit detailed summary: "This paper compares the impact of satellite image spatial resolution on land use classification and water quality modeling. It finds that higher resolution data is more accurate but also more expensive." This is the key result, but the more interesting implication is how that wouldn't have affected the decision the research was meant to inform.
Jon comments on other findings:
The test and outcomes were good, the answer to "who were the participants" was "Brazil" which isn't right. It even successfully pulled the funding source from the paper's main text (this is the only article that worked for). It listed four "possible critiques" of the paper which I was excited to see and evaluate! All four papers basically echoed some of our findings so it was interesting to see they showed up as critiques (they were not): it's a ton of work to use very high resolution data (need to do lots of precise ground references, long analysis times, etc.), data resolution choice can affect your results, and one time when high resolution imagery makes sense is to classify small and heterogeneous features.
Jon's open question: "When is it good to use low resolution data?"
Answer: "The paper concludes by saying that there are key criteria to assist in choosing an appropriate spatial resolution for different contexts, so it depends on the context." This is true, but Table 5 has a summary of what those criteria are, so I was bummed it didn't pull from the list of 12 answers we had to the question like: low budget, large study area, larger patches, need for frequent updates, etc.

Fisher / Wood / Bradford / Kelsey 2020 (we had equal contributions). Improving scientific impact: How to practice science that influences environmental policy and managementPAPER BLOG
Elicit summary: "Scientists who want to improve the impact their research has on decision-making should identify and understand the audience."
Jon comments on summary: Oh boy, this is a case where shorter is not better. We had 4 steps and it cut off the last 3. Here's the sentence it pulled this from "We outline a set of practical steps for scientists who want to improve the impact their research has on decision-making: (a) identify and understand the audience; (b) clarify the need for evidence; (c) gather 'just enough' evidence; and (d) share and discuss the evidence"
Elicit detailed summary: "This paper outlines a set of practical steps for scientists who want to improve the impact their research has on decision-making. These steps include: (a) identifying and understanding the audience; (b) clarifying the need for evidence; (c) gathering "just enough" evidence; and (d) sharing and discussing the evidence." Yup - that's a good summary albeit almost a direct quote!
Jon comments on other findings
: N/A (nothing was interesting enough to discuss)
Jon's open question: "Why should scientists read this paper?"
Answer: "The paper provides advice on how to make sure that 1's research has the desired impact." OK, it's weird to say "1's" for "one's", and I was hoping for noting how much research goes to waste, but this is not a bad answer.

James et al. 2022. Gender and conservation science: Men continue to out-publish women at the world’s largest environmental conservation non-profit organizationPAPER BLOG
Elicit summary: "The proportion of women to men remains below gender parity at TNC."
Jon comments on summary: This is a great example of where truncating a sentence makes it inaccurate. While this text does appear in our abstract, it's unclear from Elicit that women are PUBLISHING less scientific articles than men, despite the fact that 45% of conservation and science staff are women.
Elicit detailed summary: "This paper looks at the number of women publishing in conservation science at the Nature Conservancy (TNC) from 1968-2019. It finds that women are underrepresented, making up only 36% of authors, 31% of first authors, and 24% of last authors." This is a good summary and includes probably the most important high level result.
Jon comments on other findings: The question "what did they test" answers "The duration is 1968-2019" (as opposed to something like "The authors tested whether women and men at The Nature Conservancy published science articles at equal rates from 1968-2019"). The outcomes (# women publishing at TNC, proportion of women:men publishing at TNC, proportion of women from the Global South publishing at TNC) are incomplete but true. It didn't find the 3 citations Google know about.
Jon's open question: "How can gender equity in science publishing be improved?"
Answer: "The paper suggests that 'specific strategies and ongoing investments' are needed to address gender diversity among authors, especially women from outside the United States and specifically the Global South." That is frustrating, because it missed that there were seven bulleted and bolded recommendations listed under a heading called "Recommendations for building gender equity in publishing." A better (longer, but actually useful) answer would be "Gender equity in science publishing can be improved via building awareness around bias and systemic barriers, men should collaborate more with women (including in the Global South), include women performing 'invisible labor' as authors, support women to focus on publishing, support women who don't speak English as a 1st language to publish, offer dedicated publishing support for women, and manage impacts of COVID on women" (some of these don't really make sense when shortened like this, though.

James et al. 2023. Gender bias and inequity holds women back in their conservation careersPAPER
Elicit summary: "Gender bias and inequity holds women back in their conservation careers."
Jon comments on summary: I mean, I'm glad it thinks the title is a good summary! But a summary of the abstract could complement the title. Maybe something like "Surveying about 900 staff of The Nature Conservancy revealed gender equity problems; the authors have recommendations to improve them"?
Elicit detailed summary: "This paper discusses how gender bias and inequity affects women in their conservation careers." I actually think the title is still about as good as this one.
Jon comments on other findings: It got the participants right, and it pulled out a few details relevant to "can I trust this paper?" It couldn't find any citations b/c the paper is so new.
Jon's open question: "What are ways to improve gender equity?"
Answer: "The paper proposes a series of recommendations to improve gender equity in conservation, which involve continual reviewing and adjusting policies, systems, and norms to create a culture that fully leverages the benefits of diversity" Again, I wanted it to know that a question like "what are ways" means I am looking for specifics, not that "ways exist." A better answer could be "The authors recommend that organizations: show public leadership on equity, improve transparency and accountability, diversify teams and improve career pathways for women, be flexible, include training and mentoring as part of broader change, help women connect, address sexual discrimination and harassment, and consider intersectionality."

Kroeger et al. 2014. Reforestation as a novel abatement and compliance measure for ground-level ozone. PAPER BLOG
Elicit summary: "Reforestation is a novel abatement and compliance measure for ground-level ozone."
Jon comments on summary: Again, this is true, but why not go beyond the title? Better to have a longer answer than to waste text by repetition: "Reforestation was predicted to abate ozone at or below the cost of conventional alternatives if land doesn't need to be purchased, and can save money if carbon offsets are generated."
Elicit detailed summary: For some reason Elicit declined to produce a detailed abstract summary for this one, I have no idea why!
Jon comments on other findings: Elicit says "no mention found of funding source" but the paper clearly states that "This analysis was done as part of the collaboration between The Nature Conservancy and Dow Chemical Company and was funded by the Dow Chemical Company Foundation." Also the one paper listed as critique this paper didn't criticize it, and just listed it as a rare case of ecosystem service valuation within industry being published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Jon's open question: "What is the national potential for reforestation to abate ozone?"
Answer: "Reforestation could be a viable, novel approach for abating ground level O3 pollution that complements conventional technology based controls." I was hoping for "Figure 2 maps the places in the contiguous United States where reforestation could be used to abate ozone."

Mcdonald et al. 2009. Urban effects, distance, and protected areas in an urbanizing worldPAPER
Elicit summary: "The median distance from a park to an urban area is already less than 50 km in many regions."
Jon comments on summary: That is not the key point. A better summary would be "A global review of how cities affect protected areas found that 2/3 of effects only apply within 50 km, but this proximity is common in many regions so cities are already having an impact."
Elicit detailed summary: "This paper looks at the effects of urbanization on protected areas. It finds that thousands of protected areas are already impacted by urban areas and many more will be impacted in the future." Not bad, I like my summary better but this is still good.
Jon comments on other findings: Again Elicit missed a partial funding statement "One of us (R.I.M.) was funded by a David H. Smith Conservation Biology Fellowship." It also couldn't access the text of any of this paper's 246 citations!
Jon's open question: "What were the most common threats cities posed to nature?"
Answer: "The most common threats cities posed to nature were "housing and urban areas," "household sewage and urban waste water," "dams & water management," and "logging and wood harvesting."." Sadly this is badly wrong. It misinterpreted a few sentences this was pulled from. To be fair, the best answer is in graphic format (Fig 3) and I don't think this tool can yet read the text of images and extract insights. A better answer would be "Invasive species, housing & urban areas, fire & fire suppression, and dams & water management / use."

Reddy et al. 2017. Advancing Conservation by Understanding and Influencing Human Behavior. PAPER  
Elicit summary: "Integrating two or more behavior change approaches that target multiple, context-dependent factors may be most successful."
Jon comments on summary: True, but a more helpful summary would be broader: "The authors review behavior change models, providing examples and guidance on how to choose an effective one for a given context."
Elicit detailed summary: "This paper discusses how behavioral sciences can help inform conservation policy. It provides a set of guiding questions for applying behavioral insights to conservation policy, including how to define the conservation problem as a behavior change problem, understand behavioral mechanisms, and identify and evaluate behavior change approaches." This is a good summary, no complaints.
Jon comments on other findings: The measured outcomes were wrong, but they got the funding source right (it was in the acknowledgments).
Jon's open question: "What kinds of behavior change interventions use incentives?"
Answer: "The paper mentions that incentives are 1 of 3 behavior change approaches." This is true and it pointed me to the text listing them (awareness, incentives, and nudges). But I was looking for something like "financial or social incentives can be used to create behavior change" as per Fig 3 and a good bit of text. But to be fair I don't think we use the same terms consistently throughout.


REFERENCES:

James, R., Fisher, J. R. B., Carlos-Grotjahn, C., Boylan, M. S., Dembereldash, B., Demissie, M. Z., Diaz De Villegas, C., Gibbs, B., Konia, R., Lyons, K., Possingham, H., Robinson, C. J., Tang, T., & Butt, N. (2023). Gender bias and inequity holds women back in their conservation careers. Frontiers in Environmental Science, 10(January), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2022.1056751 or https://bit.ly/TNCgenderpaper

Sincerely,
 
Jon
 
p.s. This is a photo of our former foster dog Vader letting me know that it was time for hand-chewing and playing, and not time for working.

Wednesday, February 1, 2023

February 2023 science summary

Gyokuro green tea on vacation

Hi all,

This month I have one article on metascience (problems with reproducibility may be worse than we think), two on people and nature, and one on wildlife connectivity.

As a bonus, I wondered how my summaries would compare to automatically generated ones from Chat GPT - take a look and decide for yourself what each one is good for and what it misses! I was interested how much the length varied (I asked for a 250 word summary for each), and how much text was devoted to describing the topic without really presenting relevant results. I'll have to play around with longer summaries and see how it compares!

I'd love to hear what others think about the ChatGPT summaries, and what your own experience playing with it has been.


METASCIENCE:
Jon's summary:
Breznau et al. 2022 has some scary news about science - not only is it less reproducible than we think, we can't even figure out why results vary so much. To be fair, they note that natural sciences and/or experimental research should have less variation than social science based on existing surveys (what this study looked at). But it's still concerning! Or preliminarily concerning but waiting for many more replicas, to take their message to heart. The models the 73 teams built were: 17% positive (more immigration increases support for social policies), 25% negative (more immigration reduces support for social policies), and 58% did not find a clear effect (the confidence interval included zero, although they may have had a positive or negative average effect). 61% of researchers concluded that immigration does not reduce support for social policies, 26% concluded it DOES reduce support (the text says 28.5% but it's a typo, reinforcing the core message of the paper), and 13% concluded it couldn't be tested w/ the given data. And Fig 2 shows that not only are results and conclusions all over the place, the variation isn't explained by the variables they tracked like expertise or prior beliefs. That means researcher bias is only part of the problem. I have some questions about the metanalysis itself that make me suspect they could have explained more of the variance with different methods (ironically, that is consistent with their core findings about how small method changes can drive results). But the paper reveals two problems: 1) scientists can produce different quantitative results from the same data and hypotheses, and 2) scientists' conclusions are often not well tied to their results (this paper found only ~1/3 of variation in conclusions came from how consistent the set of models each team used were). I see a lot of #2 when I peer review papers. Let's all remain humble and skeptical, and look for more replication in 2023!
ChatGPT's summary:
The article "Observing many researchers using the same data and hypothesis reveals a hidden universe of uncertainty" published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, explores the concept of reproducibility in scientific research and its significance in understanding the reliability of scientific findings. The study conducted an experiment where multiple researchers were given access to the same data set and hypothesis, and were asked to conduct their own independent analysis and interpretation of the data. The study found that even when given the same data and hypothesis, researchers often come to different conclusions, which highlights the importance of reproducibility in scientific research. The article argues that reproducibility is crucial in determining the reliability and validity of scientific findings, and that the lack of reproducibility can lead to false conclusions and misunderstandings. The article also notes that reproducibility is not always easy to achieve, as it requires careful experimental design, sufficient sample sizes, and transparent reporting of methods and results. The article stresses on the need for scientific community to openly acknowledge and address the problem of reproducibility, as it can help in identifying the sources of uncertainty and improving the reliability of scientific research. The article concludes by emphasizing that reproducibility is a crucial aspect of the scientific process, and that it is the responsibility of the scientific community to ensure that the methods and results of scientific studies are transparent, accurate, and reproducible. The study suggests that reproducibility should be an integral part of the scientific process and should be used to identify and reduce uncertainty in scientific findings.


PEOPLE AND NATURE:
Jon's summary:
Chaplin-Kramer et al. 2022 is a great global summary of 14 ecosystem services I've been waiting to see for years! Their big finding is that 90% of nature's local contributions to people within each country come from a total of 30% of global land area and 24% of coastal waters (EEZs). Globally only 15% of those places are protected. The land and water needed is uneven by country (e.g., the US needs 37% of land and 15% of coastal waters), and protection varies too. See Fig 1 for the areas that provide the most benefit per unit area. The land required would be lower if optimizing globally, but at the cost of less equitable benefit distribution. The 2 global ones (carbon storage and moisture recycling) need 44% of land (optimized globally) to stay at 90% of current levels, mostly overlapping with the 30% (see Fig 3). Roughly 87% of the world population benefits from at least one of the ecosystem services, but benefits are not distributed equally (see Fig 2). The local services include: water quality (regulating nitrogen and sediment), crop pollination, livestock fodder, production of timber and fuelwood, flood regulation, fish harvest (from rivers and oceans), recreation (on land and oceans), and coastal risk reduction. If interested you can get combined GIS data from https://osf.io/r5xz7/?view_only=d611a688525f4ceb8db4ef4e7528b0e8 or one of the authors (Rachel Neugarten) is happy to send individual maps and data.
ChatGPT's summary:
Mapping the planet’s critical natural assets" is an article published in the journal Nature that discusses the importance of mapping and protecting the world's natural assets, such as forests, wetlands, and coral reefs. These natural assets provide a wide range of benefits to human societies, including carbon sequestration, water regulation, and biodiversity conservation. The article emphasizes that these natural assets are under increasing threat from human activities such as deforestation, pollution, and climate change, and that urgent action is needed to protect them. The article also highlights the work of various organizations, such as the Natural Capital Project and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, that are working to map and protect these natural assets at a global scale. It also covers the importance of these natural assets for human well-being, such as providing food, medicine, and livelihoods. The article also emphasizes on the fact that these natural assets are inextricably linked with human well-being, as they provide vital ecosystem services, including air and water purification, pollination of crops, and storm protection. The article states that the current rate of loss of natural assets is alarming and calls for immediate action to be taken to protect them. The article concludes by emphasizing the need for collaboration between governments, businesses, and civil society to protect these natural assets, and to invest in sustainable land use and management practices that support the conservation and restoration of these vital resources.

Jon's summary:
Salvatori et al. 2023 used camera traps in the Dolomite mountains of Italy to see how wildlife responded to human recreation (mostly hiking, mountain biking, and driving). They found that all 8 sampled wild species tended to favor visiting sites frequented by humans at times when humans weren't present (see Fig 5 - some of this is natural peak activity times, but more human presence resulted in a stronger temporal effect in wildlife). Bear, deer, and chamois (goat-antelopes) all avoided sites w/ more human visitation, while hares and red fox favored such sites. My main take-aways are that we should keep in mind how people will affect wildlife behavior, and that for big species we should probably look at where human trails are relative to key connectivity corridors to ensure wildlife aren't scared away from places they especially need to visit. Also - humans are looking for wildlife to interact with, while they are trying to avoid us.
ChatGPT's summary:
The article "Crowded mountains: Long-term effects of human outdoor recreation on a community of wild mammals monitored with systematic camera trapping" published in the journal Biological Conservation, explores the effects of human outdoor recreation on wild mammal populations. The study conducted over a period of six years, used camera traps to monitor a community of wild mammals in the Swiss Alps. The study found that human recreational activities, such as hiking, skiing, and mountain biking, had a significant impact on wild mammal populations. The study found that wild mammal populations in areas with high levels of human recreational activity were smaller and less diverse than those in areas with low levels of human recreational activity. The study also found that the presence of human recreational activities caused wild mammal populations to shift their activity patterns, leading to increased competition for resources and reduced survival rates. The study highlights that human outdoor recreation can have a significant impact on wild mammal populations, and calls for more effective management strategies to mitigate these effects. The article emphasizes the importance of monitoring and understanding the effects of human outdoor recreation on wild mammal populations, as it can help in developing effective conservation strategies. The study suggests that creating protected areas and implementing regulations on human activities in these areas could help in reducing the negative effects of human outdoor recreation on wild mammal populations. It also suggests that educating the public about responsible outdoor recreation practices can help in reducing the impact of human activities on wild mammal populations. The study concludes by highlighting the importance of balancing human recreational activities with the protection of wild mammal populations.


WILDLIFE CONNECTIVITY
Jon's summary:
Newmark et al. 2023
model how linking up protected areas could slow down species loss. They use "relaxation theory" to look at how long it takes for mammal species to go extinct within a given patch of habitat due to insufficiently large and resilient populations. Figure one shows how this works - the smaller the population, the less time it takes for them to go locally extinct. They focus specifically on carnivorans (like cats, canines, bears, weasels, etc.) even-toed ungulates, and lagomorphs like rabbits. Their model assumes that linking protected areas by removing all barriers will create one much larger patch of habitat which helps wildlife survive roughly four times as long. One catch: these aren't small linkages. The proposed linkages between Glacier and Yellowstone have double the area (~2.9 Mha) than the two parks being linked (~1.5 Mha), and would connect to another 2.8 Mha of wilderness in the region. So to reframe: increasing the connected habitat area by a factor of almost 5 helps species last over 4 times as long. The Mt. Rainier North Cascades uses a linkage about 2.5* the core park size. The paper makes a strong argument for the importance of well-designed connectivity work, but the big benefits they propose would also take a really big effort.
ChatGPT's summary:
The article "Enhanced regional connectivity between western North American national parks will increase persistence of mammal species diversity" published in the journal Biological Conservation, examines the potential effects of enhancing regional connectivity between national parks on mammal species diversity in western North America. The study used computer simulations to model the effects of different connectivity scenarios on mammal species diversity, and found that enhanced regional connectivity between national parks would lead to an increase in the persistence of mammal species diversity. The study found that enhanced regional connectivity would allow mammal species to move more freely between national parks, which would increase genetic diversity and reduce the risk of local extinction. The study also found that enhanced regional connectivity would lead to an increase in the number of mammal species that are able to persist in the region, particularly for species that are currently at risk of extinction. The study highlights the importance of connectivity for the persistence of mammal species diversity in western North America and emphasizes the need for conservation efforts to focus on maintaining and enhancing regional connectivity. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of preserving and enhancing regional connectivity between national parks for the protection of mammal species diversity in western North America. The study suggests that conservation efforts should focus on connecting national parks and other protected areas through corridors and other connectivity measures, to enhance the chances of mammal species survival. It also suggests that the management of these protected areas should be coordinated and integrated to improve the effectiveness of conservation efforts. The study highlights the importance of connectivity conservation as a way to ensure the long-term survival of mammal species diversity in western North America.


REFERENCES:
Breznau, N., Rinke, E. M., Wuttke, A., Nguyen, H. H. V, Adem, M., Adriaans, J., Alvarez-Benjumea, A., Andersen, H. K., Auer, D., Azevedo, F., Bahnsen, O., Balzer, D., Bauer, G., Bauer, P. C., Baumann, M., Baute, S., Benoit, V., Bernauer, J., Berning, C., … Żółtak, T. (2022). Observing many researchers using the same data and hypothesis reveals a hidden universe of uncertainty. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(44), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2203150119

Chaplin-Kramer, R., Neugarten, R. A., Sharp, R. P., Collins, P. M., Polasky, S., Hole, D., Schuster, R., Strimas-Mackey, M., Mulligan, M., Brandon, C., Diaz, S., Fluet-Chouinard, E., Gorenflo, L. J., Johnson, J. A., Kennedy, C. M., Keys, P. W., Longley-Wood, K., McIntyre, P. B., Noon, M., … Watson, R. A. (2022). Mapping the planet’s critical natural assets. Nature Ecology & Evolution.     

Newmark, W. D., Halley, J. M., Beier, P., Cushman, S. A., McNeally, P. B., & Soulé, M. E. (2023). Enhanced regional connectivity between western North American national parks will increase persistence of mammal species diversity. Scientific Reports, 13(1), 474. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-26428-z

Salvatori, M., Oberosler, V., Rinaldi, M., Franceschini, A., Truschi, S., Pedrini, P., & Rovero, F. (2023). Crowded mountains: Long-term effects of human outdoor recreation on a community of wild mammals monitored with systematic camera trapping. Ambio. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-022-01825-w


Sincerely,
 
Jon
 
p.s. The photo shows my favorite kind of green tea (gyokuro) which is high in L-theanine, which in turn provides a strong umami taste and reportedly promotes a calm and alert state similar to meditation.



Tuesday, January 3, 2023

Best of 2022 science summary

A man (Jon Fisher) carrying a large Christmas tree at an angle using a wheeled dolly. He is wearing a green Swiss Alpine hat and smiling.

Happy New Year!


As usual, I'm resending summaries of my favorite 15 articles from 2022, but in case you missed any. This year I tried to group them by topic and subtopic rather than just alphabetical, but some could fit in multiple categories so apologies if it's confusing!


CONSERVATION PRIORITIES / 30x30:
Biodiversity
Hamilton et al. 2022 is the latest analysis from NatureServe on biodiversity in the U.S., and potential priorities for new protection. They looked at habitat for 2,216 imperiled species (G1 or G2 globally, or Threatened or Endangered nationally) across the U.S., including often overlooked species like plants and bugs. There are several interesting methodological advances here (relatively fine 1-km pixels, inclusion of overlooked species, using both range maps and habitat suitability models and showing how that changes results in Fig 4, etc.), but I think most readers will want to focus on implications for new protections and management of existing protected areas. Fig 2 shows the most important areas to protect. They use protection-weighted range-size rarity, which is a kind of rarity-weighted richness focusing on places with a) relatively high # of species that b) have relatively little habitat left nationally. Table 2 has a nice summary of how many species have the majority of their habitat managed by different groups (federal agencies, state & local, private), showing there is a lot of potential for management on existing public lands (since 43% of imperiled species have most of their habitat on public lands). It's worth reading the whole thing, but if short on time I recommend the NY Times article about this (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/03/03/climate/biodiversity-map.htm) and especially the interactive maps of their data online at https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/en/browse/?q=mobi#d=2&q=mobi%20owner%3ANatureServe&srt=name
 
Saran et al. 2022 has a good overview of biodiversity information portals, 16 global (Table 1) and 5 country-specific (from Australia, Canada, India, and the U.S., Table 2). It's a great complement to Nicholson et al. 2021 (an overview of ecosystem indicators) by providing actual data sources and some info about what each portal includes. The paper certainly isn't "comprehensive" as the title advertises, but it's a great start and I learned about some new useful resources by reading it.


Climate adaptation
Dreiss et al. 2022 identifies priority conservation locations within the contiguous US to support climate adaptation (via refugia and corridors). Fig 4c shows which climate refugia and corridors are unprotected (in gray) or underprotected (GAP 3 in orange). The bottom two rows in Table 3 shows that the best places for climate adaptation mostly don't overlap with the best places for biodiversity or carbon (~20-25% do). This means that focusing solely on biodiversity or carbon hotspots is likely to miss critical refugia and corridors to help ensure resilience to climate change.
 
Climate mitigation:
Noon et al. 2022 is a fantastic resource mapping global priority habitats for conservation to protect and/or manage to slow climate change. They focus on "irrecoverable carbon" - meaning carbon that will take 30+ years to recover after it is lost due to conversion or degradation. Fig 1 has a global map of irrecoverable carbon with a few hotspots highlighted (or use this web map which has slightly different symbology https://irrecoverable.resilienceatlas.org/map). But more useful is Fig 2 which splits out the carbon by how it's threatened (by land conversion, climate change, both, or neither) to identify where protection vs. management makes sense. Note that in Fig 2 darker colors mean more carbon within each of the four risks, but they are not consistent across the four risks (to see the highest total carbon you still need Fig 1). Fig 3 highlights how uneven irrecoverable carbon in, 50% of it is in just 3% of global land area! If you work on carbon in nature, read the whole paper. Many thanks to the authors who kindly answered my questions and sent me their data so I could make my own maps!
 
Marine
Sullivan-Stack et al. 2022 is a great summary of marine protected areas (MPAs) in the U.S., and flags that achieving 30% U.S. ocean protection by 2030 is not on track to provide sufficient benefit to marine ecosystems. The key finding that stood out to me was the need for improving both geographic representation and efficacy / strength of protection (as well as climate resilience and equity). U.S. oceans are 26% protected overall (25% fully or highly protected), but 96% of that is in the central Pacific ocean. Excluding that region, only 2% has any protection (and only 22% of that 2% is fully or highly protected). See Table 3 for a summary of how much of each region is protected and at what level (Figure 1 has a map but it's not split by protection strength). Alaska has the lowest % protection of any kind (0.7%) while OR & WA have the weakest protection (4.2% of ocean is protected, but that's all minimal protection). Skip to section 4 for their recommendations: create more effective MPAs (via new ones and strengthening existing ones), improve representation of different marine regions & species & habitats in well-connected MPAs, improve equity & access, go beyond tracking % coverage and include impact assessments, make MPAs durable and climate resilient, coordinate state MPAs, reinstate and empower the MPA Federal Advisory Committee, strengthen & fund the NOAA MPA Center, and update the U.S. National Ocean Policy for holistic ocean planning and management.


 
Multiple goals
Dreiss & Malcom 2022 is an analysis of U.S. priorities for protection under 30x30, considering hotspots of biodiversity and carbon, current protection (Fig 2), and threats. The two threats are risk of conversion (to non-habitat by 2050) and climate vulnerability (need for habitat / species to migrate elsewhere to survive, expressed in km/yr). They have two sets of hotspots, one with the top 10% of biodiversity (they calculated both imperiled species richness, and imperiled species range-size-rarity which captures how much habitat rare spp. have left), and one with the top 10% of carbon pools (not actual GHG mitigation potential, as it omits deep carbon like peat, other GHGs, and the albedo effect). Fig 3 has maps of their main results, but they're easier to see and explore in the interactive map at https://arcg.is/0SjGLK. Fig 4 highlights high conversion risk (>50%) and climate vulnerability for hotspots (top 10%) of biodiversity and carbon (4a = conversion & richness, 4b = conversion & carbon, 4c = climate vuln. & richness, 4d = climate vuln. & carbon). Upgrading all existing less strict protected areas (GAP 3) would achieve ~30% protection, but that would miss 80% of biodiversity hotspots (which are on private land). Similarly, 21% of unprotected biodiversity hotspots have at least a 50% chance of being converted by 2050. The authors didn't include political, social, or economic considerations, but there are still a lot of useful data in here.
 
As conservation organizations try to work towards multiple goals, Vijay et al. 2022 asks whether we can protect places that efficiently advance multiple goals at once, or if we have to pick between places good for one goal but that perform poorly for others. We (I’m an author) looked at opportunities to advance five benefits by protecting land in the contiguous United States: vertebrate species richness, threatened vertebrate species richness, carbon storage, area protected, and recreational usage. Specifically we looked at Return On Investment (ROI) meaning the benefit score compared to the cost of the land (as a proxy for difficulty of protecting it). The results are a bit complicated: this paper focused only on unprotected habitat which is predicted to be converted by 2100, and with that framing the four environmental benefits were both highly correlated overall (r 0.89-0.99) and had a lot of the "top sites" in common (the highest scoring places for one benefit often had a top score for another benefit, 32-79% of the time). Recreation had less in common with environmental benefits (r 0.5-0.52, only 7-13% of the top sites were also a top site for another benefit). That still shows a lot of opportunity for win-wins across the nation! However, if you DON'T constrain conservation to places where land use is projected to change by 2100, win-wins are harder to find (as shown in the Supplementary Information). Species richness and area were the most compatible with a high r of 0.58 and 24% of top sites in common, and area and recreation were the least aligned, with an r of -0.65 and no top sites in common. There's a lot of interesting stuff in the paper (including comparing how three hypothetical policy scenarios score on each benefit), and I've written a slightly longer summary here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sciencejon_conservation-science-goalsetting-activity-6948122284528197632-OH0S/
 



PROTECTED AREAS EFFECTIVENESS:
Sze et al. 2021 compares deforestation and degradation on protected Indigenous lands, unprotected Indigenous lands, protected non-Indigenous lands, and unprotected non-Indigenous lands. Their abstract slightly misrepresents their results, which found that Indigenous lands in the tropics typically provide modest protection against deforestation and degradation, roughly similar to formal protected areas (whether Indigenous or not). The results vary by geography; in Africa unprotected Indigenous lands do even better than protected areas by most measures, but in the Americas Indigenous lands (whether protected or not) fared worse than non-Indigenous protected areas, although still better than non-Indigenous unprotected areas. In some other cases Indigenous lands seem to offer little to no improvement over unprotected non-Indigenous lands. Just comparing non-Indigenous protected areas to Indigenous protected areas, in a slight majority of cases deforestation and degradation are higher in the IPAs (but with some exceptions being similar, and degradation in Asia-Pacific being lower in IPAs); this is surprising given the other findings and makes me think that their matching process (to control for confounding variables) didn't catch everything. Another way to look at their results is that in ~90% of cases they evaluated (the 36 dark lines in Fig 2, considering both geography and data source), both protected areas and Indigenous lands (whether protected or not) experience less deforestation and degradation than unprotected non-Indigenous areas). In the remaining ~10% of cases unprotected and non-Indigenous areas have either similar levels of deforestation and degradation to protected and/or Indigenous lands, or less deforestation and degradation. Overall, the main take-away on efficacy of Indigenous lands for protection is “promising but it depends.” Their results really depend on their matching process (since without it deforestation and degradation is actually lowest in non-protected and non-Indigenous areas in a slight majority of cases). It looks like the matching should correct for confounding factors like Indigenous areas tending to be located farther from development and on lower-value lands. Most of the differences they find are pretty small. So I end up concluding that in this paper Indigenous lands are very roughly on par with protected areas, but that it’s not definitive and depends on geography.


ECOSYSTEM INDICATORS:
You're probably familiar with the IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species - which ranks how at risk species around the world are. Comer et al. 2022 is an analysis for the Red List of ECOSYSTEMS for North America - looking at the risk of ecological collapse for 655 terrestrial ecosystems considering: current extent, how much historic extent has been lost, degradation from historic fire regime, and disruption of biotic processes (focused on invasive species and landscape fragmentation). They found 1/3 of ecosystems were threatened, and Fig 2 shows which types of ecosystems were the most threatened (like Mediterranean Scrub & Grassland, which had the highest % of extent that was threatened, and Tropical Montane Grassland & Shrubland, which had the highest % Critically Endangered). Fig 1 has a great pair of maps showing both current and historic extent of all assessed ecosystems (colored by threat level). There is also an excellent discussion of the challenges and limitations in doing an analysis like this (section 4.2). Despite these limitations, this provides a useful complement to species-focused prioritizations (like range-size rarity).

Nicholson et al. 2021 is chock full of useful diagrams and lists for ecosystem indicators. They have a number of recommendations for setting ecosystem goals (which have milestones, targets, and indicators) for a global biodiversity framework, but which can be relevant to other efforts (like 30x30). At a high level they flag the need to track not only total ecosystem/habitat area (or extent), but also changes in ecosystem integrity (including the risk of ecosystem collapse - see Box 2 for definitions). Fig 2 is a nice visual summary of how different types of targets can collectively capture different threats and ecosystem attributes that need to be addressed for long term ecosystem health. Fig 3 is a super helpful review of many different environmental indices / metrics, and what aspects of ecosystems they include and omit. Spend some time with that one - even learning about all of the indices was very helpful for me. They close with 6 recommendations for picking indicators: we need a set of them (no single one suffices), they need to reflect goals (not actions), relevance to the goal is at least as important as data availability, we need more testing and validation of indicators, we need stronger connections between global indicators and national or local policies, and we need new indicators to provide early warning of ecosystem collapse.

EQUITY:
Fire management & Race
Anderson et al. 2020 found that rich white communities who had a fire nearby tend to get additional prescribed fire (even when not needed). This is partly due to their ability to self-advocate at relevant planning meetings. It raises equity and social justice concerns about how we could instead base fire management on factors like social and/or ecological vulnerability. As context, here is a map showing how wildfire risk varies across the U.S.: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/05/16/climate/wildfire-risk-map-properties.html


Gender and Science
James et al. 2022 is an analysis of how gender relates to scientific publication at The Nature Conservancy (TNC). We (I’m an author) analyzed almost 3,000 peer-reviewed scientific publications from 1968 to 2019 with at least one TNC author. Roughly 1/3 of the TNC authors and authorships (# authors * # papers) were women, even though 45% of conservation and science staff are women. Most authorships were in the U.S. - 85% overall and 90% for women. This means men (especially men in the United States) are publishing at a significantly higher rate than women. We close with several recommendations to help shrink this gap. Some are aimed at individual scientists (e.g., self-education on bias and systemic barriers, asking men to collaborate more with women as male-led papers have far fewer women co-authors than female-led papers, and asking lead authors to be more inclusive in determining whose contributions merit being listed as an author), and others are aimed at organizations (e.g., providing more resources and support for women who wish to publish, especially for women who don't speak English as a first language). I learned a ton from both the data and my co-authors on this one, and we have another 1-2 papers on the subject coming which will get into the results of a survey the lead author did to get deeper into the experience of how gender impacts not only publication but perceptions of influence and career advancement. Note that our available data listed everyone's gender as male, female, or unknown - apologies to those who we misgendered or otherwise failed to reflect their lived experience with a relatively simple binary analysis (especially as gender diverse people appear to be even more underrepresented in science publications).
You can read blogs about the article at https://www.nature.org/en-us/newsroom/published-science-gender-gap/ and https://blog.nature.org/science/science-brief/conservation-science-publishing-has-a-gender-problem/


FRESHWATER CONSERVATION:
Higgins et al. 2021 offers a very helpful framework for how to effectively conserve freshwater ecosystems. They argue that since freshwater species are declining faster than terrestrial species, and effective durable freshwater conservation is typically harder to get right, we need more thoughtful design of freshwater protection and management. Their framework begins with key questions (about things like what you value, key ecological attributes [KEAs] to conserve, threats to ecosystems, and protection options), which is summarized in Figure 1. Table 1 is extremely useful: it outlines 5 key ecological attributes that freshwater systems need: 1) hydrologic regime / healthy flow, 2) connectivity , 3) water quality (nutrients, sediment, toxins, etc.), 4) habitat (riparian, in-stream, other wetlands), 5) species (diversity, abundance, invasives). Table 1 also lists threats, Table 2 has conservation options, and Table 3 has helpful and relatively simple examples to get you started. Doing this work is hard! But I found this article to be a great challenge to keep thinking beyond protecting the land around freshwater ecosystems, and planning for what they need over the long-term. The lead author (Jonathan Higgins) passed away last year, you can read more about his life at https://jvhiggins.com/


FOOD / AGRICULTURE:
Halpern et al. 2022 is the latest paper to try and compare the global environmental footprint of almost all foods (both aquatic and terrestrial), using greenhouse gases (GHGs but excluding land use change), "blue" water consumption (from irrigation), nutrient pollution (N&P, excluding crop N fixing), and land use. Note that blue water consumption excludes rainfall, and focuses on evaporation & transpiration as opposed to "water use" (the amount pumped out) much of which returns to surface and ground water. This lets us compare the impact of different foods, look at which foods have the most total impact (and thus offer the most opportunity to improve via changes in practice or biology), and see which countries have the most environmental impact from food (India, China, the U.S., Brazil, and Pakistan - see Figs 2, 3, and especially 4). Spend some time with Fig 4, it's dense and interesting. For example, you can see that India has slightly more total impact than China, but produces substantially less food by all 3 metrics (calories, protein, and mass). Most of the data here are similar to what we've seen before, but still interesting (e.g., U.S. soy is 2.4 times more efficient than Indian soy). Reporting "cumulative" impacts can be confusing - wheat and rice have similar total impact in Fig 5, but Fig 6 shows that rice is far more inefficient per tons of protein produced). Fig 5 and 6 would be useful in looking at which crops and livestock species to focus on improved genetics or practices to have the most impact. But if you want to know "what should I eat" this paper makes it really hard to find that (Fig 6 is closest, or look at Supplementary Data 3 for country-specific "total environmental pressure" data using the food key from Table S6). So for example they find goats have a higher impact than cows, and in the US soy is the most environmentally efficient source of protein while sugar beets are the most environmentally efficient source of calories.



CLIMATE MITIGATION – PEATLANDS:
Richardson et al. 2022 estimates the potential climate mitigation benefits of rewetting drained peatlands (specifically pocosin - a bog found in the SE US dominated by trees and/or shrubs). They measured water table depth, soil characteristics, dissolved organic carbon, and emissions of CO2 & methand & nitrous oxide at 5 sites (3 drained, 1 restored, 1 natural). The drained peatlands emitted a net of 21.2 t CO2e / ha (Table 2). They conducted additional detailed measurements on the drained peatlands, and combined the data into a model to predict how water table would impact emissions. Methane and nitrous oxide were excluded since CO2 was responsible for 98% of CO2e (Fig 3). Validation found the model to be conservative and w/in 18% of measurements out of the training sample. The pocosin always emit more carbon than they absorb in fall and winter, but re-wetting peat resulted in them being a net sink in spring and summer. Rewetting from a water table 60 cm deep tp 30 cm deep cut annual net emissions by 91% (abstract says 94% but see Table 2 for the correct numbers). Rewetting from to 20 cm deep switched the pocosoins from a carbon source to a sink, sequestering 3.3 t CO2e / ha / yr. Re-wetting also reduces the risk of peat fires which would increase emissions much more. Finally, Table 3 has their estimate of how much restorable peatlands (drained peatlands currently used for agriculture or forest plantations) could be re-wetted. Note that Evans et al. 2021 earlier found that raising the water table to these levels are likely to reduce crop yields (or require a switch to different crops and cultivars), but that raising the water level to the bottom of the root zone is a clear win-win.






REFERENCES:
Anderson, S., Plantinga, A., & Wibbenmeyer, M. (2020). Inequality in Agency Responsiveness: Evidence from Salient Wildfire Events (Issue December). https://www.rff.org/publications/working-papers/inequality-agency-responsiveness-evidence-salient-wildfire-events/

Comer, P. J., Hak, J. C., & Seddon, E. (2022). Documenting at-risk status of terrestrial ecosystems in temperate and tropical North America. Conservation Science and Practice, 4(2), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.603

Dreiss, L. M., & Malcom, J. W. (2022). Title identifying key federal, state, and private lands strategies for achieving 30 × 30 in the United States. Conservation Letters, May 2021, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12849

Dreiss, L. M., Lacey, L. M., Weber, T. C., Delach, A., Niederman, T. E., & Malcom, J. W. (2022). Targeting current species ranges and carbon stocks fails to conserve biodiversity in a changing climate: opportunities to support climate adaptation under 30x30. Environmental Research Letters, 2(1), 0–31. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac4f8c

Halpern, B. S., Frazier, M., Verstaen, J., Rayner, P., Clawson, G., Blanchard, J. L., Cottrell, R. S., Froehlich, H. E., Gephart, J. A., Jacobsen, N. S., Kuempel, C. D., McIntyre, P. B., Metian, M., Moran, D., Nash, K. L., Többen, J., & Williams, D. R. (2022). The environmental footprint of global food production. Nature Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00965-x

Hamilton, H., Smyth, R. L., Young, B. E., Howard, T. G., Tracey, C., Breyer, S., Cameron, D. R., Chazal, A., Conley, A. K., Frye, C., & Schloss, C. (2022). Increasing taxonomic diversity and spatial resolution clarifies opportunities for protecting US imperiled species. Ecological Applications, 32(3), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.2534

Higgins, J., Zablocki, J., Newsock, A., Krolopp, A., Tabas, P., & Salama, M. (2021). Durable Freshwater Protection: A Framework for Establishing and Maintaining Long-Term Protection for Freshwater Ecosystems and the Values They Sustain. Sustainability, 13(4), 1950. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13041950

James, R., Ariunbaatar, J., Bresnahan, M., Carlos‐Grotjahn, C., Fisher, J. R. B., Gibbs, B., Hausheer, J. E., Nakozoete, C., Nomura, S., Possingham, H., & Lyons, K. (2022). Gender and conservation science: Men continue to out‐publish women at the world’s largest environmental conservation non‐profit organization. Conservation Science and Practice, January, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.12748

Nicholson, E., Watermeyer, K. E., Rowland, J. A., Sato, C. F., Stevenson, S. L., Andrade, A., Brooks, T. M., Burgess, N. D., Cheng, S.-T., Grantham, H. S., Hill, S. L., Keith, D. A., Maron, M., Metzke, D., Murray, N. J., Nelson, C. R., Obura, D., Plumptre, A., Skowno, A. L., & Watson, J. E. M. (2021). Scientific foundations for an ecosystem goal, milestones and indicators for the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 5(10), 1338–1349. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01538-5

Noon, M. L., Goldstein, A., Ledezma, J. C., Roehrdanz, P. R., Cook-Patton, S. C., Spawn-Lee, S. A., Wright, T. M., Gonzalez-Roglich, M., Hole, D. G., Rockström, J., & Turner, W. R. (2022). Mapping the irrecoverable carbon in Earth’s ecosystems. Nature Sustainability, 5(1), 37–46. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00803-6

Richardson, C. J., Flanagan, N. E., Wang, H., & Ho, M. (2022). Annual carbon sequestration and loss rates under altered hydrology and fire regimes in southeastern USA pocosin peatlands. Global Change Biology, July, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16366

Saran, S., Chaudhary, S. K., Singh, P., Tiwari, A., & Kumar, V. (2022). A comprehensive review on biodiversity information portals. Biodiversity and Conservation, 0123456789. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-022-02420-x
 
Sullivan-Stack, J., Aburto-Oropeza, O., Brooks, C. M., Cabral, R. B., Caselle, J. E., Chan, F., Duffy, J. E., Dunn, D. C., Friedlander, A. M., Fulton-Bennett, H. K., Gaines, S. D., Gerber, L. R., Hines, E., Leslie, H. M., Lester, S. E., MacCarthy, J. M. C., Maxwell, S. M., Mayorga, J., McCauley, D. J., … Grorud-Colvert, K. (2022). A Scientific Synthesis of Marine Protected Areas in the United States: Status and Recommendations. Frontiers in Marine Science, 9(May), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2022.849927

Sze, J. S., Carrasco, L. R., Childs, D., & Edwards, D. P. (2021). Reduced deforestation and degradation in Indigenous Lands pan-tropically. Nature Sustainability, 2. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00815-2
 
Vijay, V., Fisher, J. R. B., & Armsworth, P. R. (2022). Co‐benefits for terrestrial biodiversity and ecosystem services available from contrasting land protection policies in the contiguous United States. Conservation Letters, February, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12907


Happy New Year,

Jon

p.s. We continue to find creative ways to get by without a car. The photo shows that this year we wheeled our Christmas tree home using a dolly from a lot a bit over a mile away.

Thursday, December 1, 2022

December 2022 science summary

Victoria sunrise

Happy December,


In the spirit of the paper on gratitude below: thank you all for helping me to be a better scientist and a better person. Almost every month I get a note or two from someone who found the summary useful, or who had a question / critique / idea that I learned from. That engagement has helped me push myself to keep doing these, which in terms helps me be a bit more well-read. So thank you!

Also, while they're too long to summarize briefly like I do with papers, I want to recommend the books "Think Again" by Adam Grant and "Noise" by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein. Taken together, they've given me a lot of ideas about how to get better at reevaluating my beliefs, improving how I review evidence and draw conclusions, and generate estimates. Email me if you want some notes I took on my favorite parts of each!


GRATITUDE:
As a follow-up to the Thanksgiving holiday, I wanted to share a review of a paper on gratitude by Wood et al. 2010. It's a broad review of research on the topic and fairly wonky, but I found a few things useful. I liked how table 1 lists complementary aspects of gratitude: noticing how grateful you are overall, feeling gratitude towards others, focusing on what you have (vs. what you lack), feelings of awe, expressing gratitude (internally and to others), being present, living to the fullest b/c of awareness that life is short, and feeling lucky when thinking about how things could be worse. They cover quite a lot of research on gratitude and how being more grateful is associated w/ better quality of life (although there's some question how much gratitude causes well-being vs. is just correlated). The biggest boost to feeling good came from writing a letter thanking someone and reading it to them in person, but keeping a daily diary of three things you're grateful for seems to be easier to keep up and helps you feel better for longer.


CLIMATE CHANGE
Reich et al. 2022 is an interesting experiment of how boreal forests might respond to 1.6C or 3.1C warming, using open-air heaters in an actual forest (as well as simulating reduced rainfall by covering some of the soil) to see how they respond. Conifers experienced slower growth (Fig 2) and higher mortality (Fig 1). How much varied by species, with balsam fir showing the worst impact. Compared to current conditions, warming or limited rain each reduced balsam fir growth by ~1/3, while the combination reduced growth by ~2/3. Seedling survival went down by ~40% at 1.6C, ~72% at 3.1C, and ~84% at 3.1C plus less rain. But others like jack pine had much smaller effects, and some trees like maples had similar survival rates and more growth under warming (even with less rain). So they predict that conifers will become less dominant, over the long term being replaced by deciduous trees but in the short term more likely replaced by invasive woody shrubs (since the deciduous trees aren't common enough to spread fast). There is an article about this written for general audiences at https://phys.org/news/2022-08-modest-climate-northernmost-forests.html


SUSTAINABLE RANCHING:
Santos et al. 2017 is an interesting paper on using fuzzy logic to assess beef sustainability in the Pantanal. As background - fuzzy logic doesn't mean 'sloppy reasoning' - it's actually a real thing which more or less centers on non-binary logic models. For example, old thermostats are non-fuzzy (they turn on when cold and turn off when warm enough), but newer ones are often fuzzy (adjusting fan speed, turning auxiliary heat on or off, etc. depending on performance). In this case, they take a ton of practical indicators, map each onto a 4 point scale, and combine them into a single "overall sustainability index" (see Figure 1). Check out Appendix I for the list of how well each indicator matched expert judgments.


OTTERS:
Valladares et al. 2022 used drones to figure out what kind of habitat giant otters in Peru most preferred. They found giant otters preferred oxbow lakes with the largest water surface area, the least floating vegetation (more open water), and more dense forest canopy cover along the banks of the lakes.



REFERENCES:
Reich, P. B., Bermudez, R., Montgomery, R. A., Rich, R. L., Rice, K. E., Hobbie, S. E., & Stefanski, A. (2022). Even modest climate change may lead to major transitions in boreal forests. Nature, 608(7923), 540–545. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05076-3

Santos, S. A., de Lima, H. P., Massruhá, S. M. F. S., de Abreu, U. G. P., Tomás, W. M., Salis, S. M., Cardoso, E. L., de Oliveira, M. D., Soares, M. T. S., dos Santos, A., de Oliveira, L. O. F., Calheiros, D. F., Crispim, S. M. A., Soriano, B. M. A., Amâncio, C. O. G., Nunes, A. P., & Pellegrin, L. A. (2017). A fuzzy logic-based tool to assess beef cattle ranching sustainability in complex environmental systems. Journal of Environmental Management, 198, 95–106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2017.04.076

Valladares, N. A., Pardo, A. A., Chiaverini, L., Groenendijk, J., Harrington, L. A., Macdonald, D. W., Swaisgood, R. R., & Barocas, A. (2022). High‐resolution drone imagery reveals drivers of fine‐scale giant otter habitat selection in the land‐water interface. Conservation Science and Practice, December 2021, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.12786

Wood, A. M., Froh, J. J., & Geraghty, A. W. A. (2010). Gratitude and well-being: A review and theoretical integration. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(7), 890–905. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2010.03.005


Sincerely,
 
Jon

Tuesday, November 1, 2022

November 2022 science summary

Jack o' lantern w bloodshot eyes
Greetings,

Happy belated Halloween!

This month I have four articles on different facets of climate change (drought, ecological adaptation, and mitigation through peatlands), plus one big new global paper on the environmental impact of food.

If you know someone who wants to sign up to receive these summaries, they can do so at http://bit.ly/sciencejon



FOOD / AGRICULTURE:
Halpern et al. 2022 is the latest paper to try and compare the global environmental footprint of almost all foods (both aquatic and terrestrial), using greenhouse gases (GHGs but excluding land use change), "blue" water consumption (from irrigation), nutrient pollution (N&P, excluding crop N fixing), and land use. Note that blue water consumption excludes rainfall, and focuses on evaporation & transpiration as opposed to "water use" (the amount pumped out) much of which returns to surface and ground water. This lets us compare the impact of different foods, look at which foods have the most total impact (and thus offer the most opportunity to improve via changes in practice or biology), and see which countries have the most environmental impact from food (India, China, the U.S., Brazil, and Pakistan - see Figs 2, 3, and especially 4). Spend some time with Fig 4, it's dense and interesting. For example, you can see that India has slightly more total impact than China, but produces substantially less food by all 3 metrics (calories, protein, and mass). Most of the data here are similar to what we've seen before, but still interesting (e.g., U.S. soy is 2.4 times more efficient than Indian soy). Reporting "cumulative" impacts can be confusing - wheat and rice have similar total impact in Fig 5, but Fig 6 shows that rice is far more inefficient per tons of protein produced). Fig 5 and 6 would be useful in looking at which crops and livestock species to focus on improved genetics or practices to have the most impact. But if you want to know "what should I eat" this paper makes it really hard to find that (Fig 6 is closest, or look at Supplementary Data 3 for country-specific "total environmental pressure" data using the food key from Table S6). So for example they find goats have a higher impact than cows, and in the US soy is the most environmentally efficient source of protein while sugar beets are the most environmentally efficient source of calories.


CLIMATE CHANGE & DROUGHT:
Cook et al. 2015 estimates the likelihood of summer droughts (June through August) in the American Central Plains and Southwest between 2050 and 2100. Their findings are striking, even under the RCP 4.5 climate scenario (which they put in the supplement, focusing instead on the much less likely RCP 8.5 scenario). They predict the following chances of a decadal (11 year) or multidecadal (35 year) drought: decadal ~94% Central Plains and ~97% Southwest, multidecadal ~73%  Central Plains and ~80% for Southwest (see Fig S13 on the past page of the supplement). That's pretty scary, and they further note this is drier than even the historically dry period from the years 1100-1300. However, this is a lot more pessimistic than the IPCC (as the authors acknowledge), and I'm not qualified to go deep enough in the methods to weigh in as to how likely this is. But as we have already seen out West, droughts lasting multiple years have very different implications both for communities and agriculture. Tree crops will be increasingly untenable as the risk of multi-year droughts increase, and farmers may have to switch to very different crops to make it through these dry periods.


CLIMATE ADAPTATION (ECOLOGICAL):
Moore and Schindler 2022 is an opinion piece arguing that more diverse strategies are needed to help prepare ecosystems for climate change. They argue that conservation needs to adapt to shifting ecosystems and unpredictable futures by maintaining complexity, especially by promoting enhanced gene flow and facilitating the ability of habitat to shift to new places as climate changes. Given uncertainty in climate changes and ecosystem response, they argue that refugia may not be as robust as promoting climate corridors and habitat heterogeneity. Local conservation work to address current stresses and future threats is another important aspect of improving resilience: by working on known threats we can make ecosystems more able to withstand the unknown. Finally, as ecosystems and populations shift, resource management needs to adapt to these new realities rather than sticking to long-term plans.


PEATLANDS - CLIMATE MITIGATION:
Richardson et al. 2022 estimates the potential climate mitigation benefits of rewetting drained peatlands (specifically pocosin - a bog found in the SE US dominated by trees and/or shrubs). They measured water table depth, soil characteristics, dissolved organic carbon, and emissions of CO2 & methand & nitrous oxide at 5 sites (3 drained, 1 restored, 1 natural). The drained peatlands emitted a net of 21.2 t CO2e / ha (Table 2). They conducted additional detailed measurements on the drained peatlands, and combined the data into a model to predict how water table would impact emissions. Methane and nitrous oxide were excluded since CO2 was responsible for 98% of CO2e (Fig 3). Validation found the model to be conservative and w/in 18% of measurements out of the training sample. The pocosin always emit more carbon than they absorb in fall and winter, but re-wetting peat resulted in them being a net sink in spring and summer. Rewetting from a water table 60 cm deep tp 30 cm deep cut annual net emissions by 91% (abstract says 94% but see Table 2 for the correct numbers). Rewetting from to 20 cm deep switched the pocosoins from a carbon source to a sink, sequestering 3.3 t CO2e / ha / yr. Re-wetting also reduces the risk of peat fires which would increase emissions much more. Finally, Table 3 has their estimate of how much restorable peatlands (drained peatlands currently used for agriculture or forest plantations) could be re-wetted. Note that Evans et al. 2021 earlier found that raising the water table to these levels are likely to reduce crop yields (or require a switch to different crops and cultivars), but that raising the water level to the bottom of the root zone is a clear win-win.

Goldstein et al. 2020 looks at peat fires in Indonesia and what causes them, especially the sub-surface fires which cause the most air pollution and can burn for a long time. Their answer: it's complicated. They essentially find three requirements for sub-surface fires: 1) drainage lowers the water table and dries out the peat, 2) fire is ignited (for one of many reasons), and 3) enough fuel is present (like tree logs) that the fire burns long enough to reach deeper layers (dry weather also has a big influence). Much of the widespread use of fire does NOT result in these deep fires, b/c either the site isn't dry enough or it burns often enough there is insufficient fuel on the surface. The authors try hard not to blame anyone for these fires, but do argue that major drainage projects are likely a dominant factor.


REFERENCES:

Cook, B. I., Ault, T. R., & Smerdon, J. E. (2015). Unprecedented 21st century drought risk in the American Southwest and Central Plains. Science Advances, 1(1), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1400082

Goldstein, J. E., Graham, L., Ansori, S., Vetrita, Y., Thomas, A., Applegate, G., Vayda, A. P., Saharjo, B. H., & Cochrane, M. A. (2020). Beyond slash‐and‐burn: The roles of human activities, altered hydrology and fuels in peat fires in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 41(2), 190–208. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjtg.12319

Halpern, B. S., Frazier, M., Verstaen, J., Rayner, P., Clawson, G., Blanchard, J. L., Cottrell, R. S., Froehlich, H. E., Gephart, J. A., Jacobsen, N. S., Kuempel, C. D., McIntyre, P. B., Metian, M., Moran, D., Nash, K. L., Többen, J., & Williams, D. R. (2022). The environmental footprint of global food production. Nature Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00965-x

Moore, J. W., & Schindler, D. E. (2022). Getting ahead of climate change for ecological adaptation and resilience. Science, 376(6600), 1421–1426. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abo3608

Richardson, C. J., Flanagan, N. E., Wang, H., & Ho, M. (2022). Annual carbon sequestration and loss rates under altered hydrology and fire regimes in southeastern USA pocosin peatlands. Global Change Biology, July, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16366


Sincerely,
 
Jon
 
p.s. the photo was my attempt to make a Jack o 'lantern w/ bloodshot eyes

Monday, October 3, 2022

October 2022 science summary

Calli & Jon on porch

Greetings,


This month I am summarizing two science articles on climate change and one on conservation prioritization

If you know someone who wants to sign up to receive these summaries, they can do so at http://bit.ly/sciencejon (no need to email me).

CONSERVATION PRIORITIES:
Belote et al. 2021 is a great analysis comparing how different ways of identifying spatial conservation priorities overlap and conflict in the lower 48 states of the US. They focus on 4 groups of vertebrates (mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles), and 4 methods of prioritizing: species richness, rarity-weighted richness, and two Zonation approaches that favor complementarity / representation (ABF favors species richness, CAZ favors rarity). Fig 1 has the most interesting maps if you want to compare the approaches, and Fig 3 highlights the places with the most agreement across models that they are in the top 30% of options. It's a great way to see how your values and methods can affect your results (but also that some places are pretty agreed on priorities). Two things to contrast with the NatureServe "map of biodiversity importacet" - that analysis includes plants and some invertebrates (this does not), and NatureServe focuses on imperiled species while this is threat-blind. One last note on the zonation approaches - these work best as a complete set; if you pick and choose among them they don't perform nearly as well, and it's rare that science recommendations are ever taken up entirely. But conversely a focus solely on richness or rarity misses lower diversity ecosystems and wide-ranging species.


CLIMATE CHANGE:
Temmink et al. 2022 is an overview of carbon storage and cycling in wetlands. They note peatlands and coastal wetlands have much higher carbon stock density than forests or oceans, and also sequester more carbon each year (see the figure in the Review Summary for a nice overview, or Fig 1 for more detail). They also focus on how healthy wetlands have feedbacks that support high productivity and/or low decomposition (see Fig 2), but that people are disrupting those feedbacks. They show how much of these ecosystems have been lost already, and how fast they are disappearing (Table 1) and estimate this amoutns to 500 million metric tons of C lost each year. They closeby arguing that keeping wetlands intact is key for climate mitigation. One caution though - they focus only on carbon, and some wetlands emit quite a lot of methane and nitrous oxide. Those are much stronger GHGs than CO2, so the net climate benefit of wetlands is smaller than you'd think from looking at carbon alone.

Law et al. 2018 is an analysis of how more trees in Oregon (planting, cutting less often, and halting cutting) can lead to more climate mitigation benefits and cobenefits of water availability (maybe, stay tuned on that). From 2011-2015, OR forests already on net sequestered the equivalent of 72% of OR's total GHGs (Fig 2), and they think that could be boosted by 56% with a series of programs. See Figure 3 for this potential, but note the bars each represent a single decade (and the lower figure is annual change within that decade), with cumulative results from 2015-2100 showing up as numbers in italics OVER the bars. This confused me pretty thoroughly, and it looks to me from the Figure like annual "net ecosystem carbon balance" (~=net carbon sequestered) by 2100 would increase by ~1.2 Tg C / yr, not the 2-3 they say in the text. They also find that using harvest residues for bioenergy would lead to a net increase in emissions (even assuming 1/2 of residues replace coal or natural gas). One thing that struck me as very odd: they propose afforesting grass crops which are irrigated but not used for food or forage, and claiming water will be freed up by doing so. But I can't figure why someone would irrigate grass if it wasn't used for food (or things like lawns or golf courses which forests wouldn't be compatible with)- maybe it's literally fields to produce grass seed sold for lawns?
Peter Ellis from TNC had this take which I found helpful (that this shouldn't be taken as having national implications): "The study is constrained to the Pacific Northwest (PNW). If you care about carbon, you can never really beat leaving a PNW forest alone. No attempts to sell the idea of mitigation through bioenergy or wood product storage are going to beat carbon storage in forests in a region where: 
•    Trees are largest in the world
•    They take forever to decompose, so coarse woody debris storage is really important.
Their proposal for Oregon’s forest actually makes a lot of sense to me: 'reforestation, afforestation, lengthened harvest cycles on private lands, and restricting harvest on public lands increased net ecosystem carbon balance by 56% by 2100'"

REFERENCES:

Belote, R. T., Barnett, K., Dietz, M. S., Burkle, L., Jenkins, C. N., Dreiss, L., Aycrigg, J. L., & Aplet, G. H. (2021). Options for prioritizing sites for biodiversity conservation with implications for “30 by 30.” Biological Conservation, 264, 109378. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2021.109378

Law, B. E., Hudiburg, T. W., Berner, L. T., Kent, J. J., Buotte, P. C., & Harmon, M. E. (2018). Land use strategies to mitigate climate change in carbon dense temperate forests. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(14), 3663–3668. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1720064115

Temmink, R. J. M., Lamers, L. P. M., Angelini, C., Bouma, T. J., Fritz, C., van de Koppel, J., Lexmond, R., Rietkerk, M., Silliman, B. R., Joosten, H., & van der Heide, T. (2022). Recovering wetland biogeomorphic feedbacks to restore the world’s biotic carbon hotspots. Science, 376(6593). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abn1479


Sincerely,
 
Jon
 
p.s. This is a recent picture of me and my neighbor's adorable snaggletoothed dog Calli on our porch (we were dogsitting).