June 2021 science summary

 

Hi,

Hope cicadas or other issues aren't keeping you from getting back into the world as people get vaccinated and cases are going down (in most places at least). The cicada above is super fun and ready to play!

This month I am focusing on climate change and biodiversity articles.

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BIODIVERSITY:

Ellis et al. 2021 argue that protecting untouched or unmodified habitat from people is a fundamentally flawed framing, b/c most habitat on earth has been to some degree inhabitated by (and modified by) people for thousands of years). It's a good point that what we consider 'natural' is subjective and arbitrary (e.g. the grasslands of the Midwestern U.S. are a result of thousands of years of intentionally set fires and other impacts by indigenous people), and modified ecosystems may have higher species richness or other metrics. They have great data on how much habitats and land use have changed over time (check out all the figures for that), and make an excellent case about how wrong it is to depict human use of nature as a recent despoiling of human-free places. They further argue that current biodiversity losses come from "the appropriation, colonization, and intensifying use of the biodiverse cultural landscapes long shaped and sustained by prior societies" and that the solution lies in empowering the stewardship of indigenous people and local communities. I agree that opinions about which kind of ecosystem and land use is "good" are subjective, that there are good social and human rights reasons to support local autonomy, and that typically local and indigenous people use natural areas in a way more compatible with biodiversity than how people from elsewhere tend to. I think it's also worth recognizing that even indigenous people have consistently caused some extinctions (of large mammals in particular) when they first arrived to actually uninhabitated ecosystems, and that in some cases they currently support the same kind of intensification associated with colonialism. So local autonomy will not always be a recipe for maintaining ecosystems more or less as they currently are, although there are plenty of valid opinions about which human and ecosystem outcomes conservation organizations should work to support. I'd definitely recommend reading the paper, and I realize I have a lot of listening and learning to do on the subject of indigenous-led conservation.

Blankenship et al. 2021 is a good overview of the best available data for historical vegetation / land cover in the U.S. (which comes from LANDFIRE's Biophysical Setting [BpS] model), and how it was produced. It estimates habitat prior to European settlement of the Americas (but not prior to the arrival of Native Americans so not free of human influence). A LOT of data and expertise went into this, including expected natural succession of diferent ecosystems after disturbance, estimated fire frequency and severity, and more. I've used it to identify which areas are appropriate to reforest and which weren't forested to begin with (so shouldn't be a target of restoration in most cases). One bonus aspect of these data is that the team who manages them are incredibly helpful and willing to provide advice and guidance on how to apply them. There is a lot of helpful detail, caveats, and next steps in here for people who may want to use these data.

CLIMATE CHANGE:

Evans et al. 2021 estimated how to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs) by raising water levels in peatlands which have been drained for agriculture. They found raising the water table by 10cm (re-wetting the peat) reduces net greenhouse gases (GHGs) by an average of 3 t CO2e/yr until it rises to a depth 30cm, from 30cm-8cm rising methane results in smaller net GHG benefits, and <8cm GHGs become net positive (see Fig 1). Cutting the water table depth in half globally (raising it to an average of 45cm in croplands and 25cm in grasslands) would cut emissions from drained peat by about 2/3 (from 786 Mt [aka MMT] CO2e/yr to 278 MT CO2e/yr). These are conservative estimates (leaving out N2O and reduced emissions from avoided deep fires), although the range of those estimates is huge (see Table 1). Alternatively re-wetting all peat up to 10cm would eliminate almost all peat emissions and likely even drive them slightly negative (15 Mt CO2e/yr). However, cutting water table depth in half would flood part of the root zone for most crops and regions, which would reduce yield. But raising the water table to just below the root zone could have big GHG benefits and potentially even improve crop resilience to drought. This is a big opportunity!

Lenzen et al. 2018 estimate the global carbon footprint of tourism in 2013, and is a fascinating read but looks to me like it has some big errors. They find tourism is 8% of global emissions (much higher than other estimates, b/c they look at full supply chain emissions, which means this 8% cuts across several sectors). They helpfully summarize the results both by the countries where tourists reside, and the countries they visit (see Fig 1 and take a moment to read what it all means as it's fascinating). But some of their findings don't make sense to me. For example, they report that from 2009-2013 tourism spending went up by 88% while emissions only rose 15% (which seems very odd, and Fig SI2 on p21 of the supplement looks like spending only went up ~28%). Also, Fig 1 reports Canada as the top "net origin" by emissions but in Table 1 it seems like a huge net destination (with US travel to Canada by far the biggest flow globally). If anyone knows the paper and can point out if I'm missing something I'd appreciate it, otherwise this looks entertaining but unreliable.

Lipsett-Moore et al. 2018 finds that improved fire management in savannas could reduce a lot of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, especially in Africa (which has 77% of global potential, compared to 15% in South America and 8% in Austraila & PNG). The basic idea was piloted in Australia, and involves intentional burning in the early dry season to reduce fire (intensity, frequency, and scale) later on. The pilot roughly tripled the area burned early, while cutting the area burned late by 2/3, resulting in ~1/3 less GHG emissions over 7 years. This analysis uses remote sensing to estimate fire emissions and opportunities to reduce them. In South America the total emissions potential is much lower than Africa, but the relative change is larger (75% reduction). These changes count under Kyoto so can be used for carbon credits.

Milly and Dunne 2020 predict a roughly 9% decrease in flow in the Colorado River for every degree C increase in local temperature, due to evaporation increasing more than precipitation. Much of the paper is about different aspects of the model and how they corrected for some issues, but the core point that areas expecting more rain may still see rivers dry out was notable (especially in areas where snow cover is expected to decrease).

REFERENCES:

Blankenship, K., Swaty, R., Hall, K. R., Hagen, S., Pohl, K., Shlisky Hunt, A., Patton, J., Frid, L., & Smith, J. (2021). Vegetation dynamics models: a comprehensive set for natural resource assessment and planning in the United States. Ecosphere, 12(4). https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.3484

Ellis, E. C., Gauthier, N., Klein Goldewijk, K., Bliege Bird, R., Boivin, N., Díaz, S., Fuller, D. Q., Gill, J. L., Kaplan, J. O., Kingston, N., Locke, H., McMichael, C. N. H., Ranco, D., Rick, T. C., Shaw, M. R., Stephens, L., Svenning, J.-C., & Watson, J. E. M. (2021). People have shaped most of terrestrial nature for at least 12,000 years. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(17), e2023483118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2023483118

Evans, C. D., Peacock, M., Baird, A. J., Artz, R. R. E., Burden, A., Callaghan, N., Chapman, P. J., Cooper, H. M., Coyle, M., Craig, E., Cumming, A., Dixon, S., Gauci, V., Grayson, R. P., Helfter, C., Heppell, C. M., Holden, J., Jones, D. L., Kaduk, J., … Morrison, R. (2021). Overriding water table control on managed peatland greenhouse gas emissions. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03523-1

Lenzen, M., Sun, Y.-Y., Faturay, F., Ting, Y.-P., Geschke, A., & Malik, A. (2018). The carbon footprint of global tourism. Nature Climate Change, 8(6), 522–528. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0141-x

Lipsett-Moore, G. J., Wolff, N. H., & Game, E. T. (2018). Emissions mitigation opportunities for savanna countries from early dry season fire management. Nature Communications, 9(1), 2247. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-04687-7

Milly, P. C. D., & Dunne, K. A. (2020). Colorado River flow dwindles as warming-driven loss of reflective snow energizes evaporation. Science, 367(6483), 1252–1255. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aay9187

Sincerely,

 

Jon