It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, August 03, 2021
WATER IS LIFE
Egypt could face extreme water scarcity within the decade
All Giza Pyramids in one shot. Credit: Ricardo Liberato/Wikipedia
Egypt will import more water than is supplied by the Nile, if the population and the economy continue to grow as projected—according to a new study from the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
The study published in Nature Communications shows a historical reconstruction of where the water supply in Egypt is going under conditions of population growth and a developing economy.
The research also provides recommendations of ways Egypt can sustain and leverage water supply for a more sustainable future.
Agriculture is an important sector of the Egyptian economy and for millennia the Nile supplied Egypt with more water than needed. Approximately 90% of the water from the Nile goes towards Egypt's agricultural production, but as the population grew and the economy expanded, demand on water also increased.
"When you have more people, you need more food, but also as the economy gets better and trade connections improve, the nature of people's diets also changes," says Catherine Nikiel, Ph.D. student in Civil and Environmental Engineering and lead author in the study. "You have people who might start consuming more meat and consuming just different things than they did in the past, which impacts their agriculture."
The historical reconstruction allowed the researchers to take a granular view into the past and future trends of consumption to see where the water demand is increasing.
Starting in the 1970s, once Egypt started using all the water the Nile could provide them, they started importing more food. A large proportion of their crops of wheat and maize are really water intensive to grow, need a lot of area, and can't support efficient irrigation methods. Egypt eventually started importing as much corn and wheat as they grew. The researchers then began to see how much Egypt is importing versus how much they are using to project that within the decade, they will be importing as much virtual water as they're pulling in from the Nile.
"We know that their imports are rapidly increasing so at what point does that balance shift, where they're actually more dependent on external water than on internal water," says Nikiel.
The researchers also present recommendations on how Egypt can leverage water resources.
"By shifting production from high water use low-cost crops such as corn, maize, and wheat to higher value lower water requirement crops like fruits and vegetables, which are very profitable on the market, and better suited to really high efficiency irrigation methods and selling those for profits to import maize and wheat, they can potentially shift that balance even further," adds Nikiel.
The researchers illustrate that the future of water in Egypt is reliant on external cooperation with its neighbors and its own ability to optimally manage internal demand and use of water. The study claims, "Adaptations are ultimately in Egypt's best interest, as they allow for continued growth and prosperity with more careful management of resources. Egypt has the chance to be an example for other developing water scarce nations, and a leader in the Nile Basin. If changes are not made it will soon serve as an ecological cautionary tale with implications for the entire region."
More information: Catherine A. Nikiel et al, Past and future trends of Egypt's water consumption and its sources, Nature Communications (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-24747-9
An ORNL team added new plant data to a computer model that simulates Arctic ecosystems to help scientists better predict how northern vegetation will respond to climate change. Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy
Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory added new plant data to a computer model that simulates Arctic ecosystems, enabling it to better predict how vegetation in rapidly warming northern environments may respond to climate change.
Plants impact the environmental cycling of nutrients, water and carbon dioxide, making them vital components of Earth system models. To improve an Arctic ecosystem model that included only a few shrubs and grasses, ORNL integrated data about lichens, moss and shrubs collected from Alaskan field sites.
The expanded model incorporated the growth patterns of the added plants, showing that tall shrubs will grow more under warming conditions than low-growing plants.
"The ways plants respond to climate change will affect what happens to the large quantities of carbon in the Arctic," said ORNL's Benjamin Sulman. "Our model should allow us to make more accurate predictions about what those whole ecosystems will do."
More information: Benjamin N. Sulman et al, Integrating Arctic Plant Functional Types in a Land Surface Model Using Above‐ and Belowground Field Observations, Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems (2021). DOI: 10.1029/2020MS002396
Some areas of mangrove trees in Everglades National Park show signs of regrowth in 2020, several years after Hurricane Irma. Credit: David Lagomasino / East Carolina University.
When Hurricane Irma hit southern Florida in September of 2017, the storm buffeted coastal mangrove forests with winds over 116 mph—strong enough to rip off leaves, break branches, and snap tree trunks in half. Of the mangrove forest damaged by Hurricane Irma, about 83% recovered after the first year. But the rest didn't, leaving scientists wondering why some trees didn't bounce back.
Using NASA data collected before and after Hurricane Irma, researchers found thatstorm surgeand trapped seawater—not wind—ultimately caused the trees to die. Trees survived in places where salty ocean water brought in by thehurricanewas able to drain, they write in a paper published June 28 inNature Communications. But in areas where the saltwater was trapped in low lying areas without enough drainage, the mangroves couldn't recover. The findings suggest that improving the flow of water near submerged mangroves or flushing them with freshwater could help restore mangroves after a hurricane.
Mangroves have adapted to live along the coast. These forests act as a barrier to protect inland areas and coastal communities during a storm. Some species have a network of above-ground "prop roots" that support the tree while others have roots that look like long fingers poking out of the ground, providing extra support to stabilize the tree and provide oxygen to the root system. These semi-submerged root networks are also an important nursery habitat for fish and other marine species.
"Even though mangroves are hardy, sturdy trees, they still need certain conditions to maintain that protective barrier. And if environmental conditions change even a little, it can have a huge effect and lead to complete die off in entire regions, which could leave those coastal regions even more vulnerable to the next storm," said Lola Fatoyinbo, a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Snapshots Before and After the Hurricane
In the spring of 2017, the team set out to document how mangrove forests change and grow over time. When Hurricane Irma passed over their study sites several months later, the scientists saw an opportunity to see how the mangrove forests would respond.
They repeated the measurements they had done before the hurricane hit, flying an airplane carrying a high-resolution camera and other scientific instruments over large swaths of the Everglades. The data collected using Goddard Lidar, Hyperspectral and Thermal Imager (G-LiHT), which includes a laser that emits pulses that bounce off the top of the tree canopy, the ground, or anywhere in between before returning to the sensor, provided snapshots of the structure of these mangrove ecosystems before and after Irma. That allowed the scientists to get a three-dimensional view of the tree canopy–and compare how it had changed after the hurricane.
According to the G-LiHT and Landsat satellite data, 62% of mangroves in southwest Florida suffered canopy damage from Hurricane Irma. The team mapped the dead and damaged areas and compared them to places with high wind speed, high storm surge, taller trees, land elevation and other factors to see if there was any overlap. NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office provided a model of wind speeds during the hurricane; storm surge data came from Louisiana State University's Coastal Emergency Risks Assessment and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The new Mangroves4SGDs website by NASA Goddard provides researchers with a resource in studying the trees and how they fit into the United Nation’s larger Sustainable Development Goals. Credit: Mangroves4SGDs / NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Storm Surge: A Salty Assault on Mangroves
The team found that Hurricane Irma killed over 10,000 hectares of mangrove forest in southwestern Florida—about the size of 24,700 football fields. During the storm many areas were under nearly 10 feet of water, however, most of the dead trees were in areas where salty ocean water came in during Irma and never drained away, submerging mangrove forests for months. The trees in these areas—often at low elevation or with bowl-shaped topography—hadn't recovered three years after Irma.
"The wind is doing damage, but the nail in the coffin is storm surge," said David Lagomasino, a coastal geomorphologist based at East Carolina University's Outer Banks Campus. Excess salt and water from trapped storm surge may choke roots, change microbial communities, break down the soil and kill other vegetation, Lagomasino says, which could lead to tree death.
Storms on the Horizon for Mangrove Forests
The problem will likely worsen as climate change alters the behavior of hurricanes. Storms are becoming larger and intensifying more rapidly. More storms are also moving slowly and stalling over an area, dumping torrential rain and bringing high winds and storm surge.
"What we're seeing is that more and more of the mangroves aren't able to recover, and that's what's scary," said Fatoyinbo. "Even though mangroves are so tolerant of these extreme conditions, they're still really vulnerable."
More information: David Lagomasino et al, Storm surge and ponding explain mangrove dieback in southwest Florida following Hurricane Irma, Nature Communications (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-24253-y
The remobilisation of pollutants from sediments during severe flooding is a so far underestimated consequence of extreme events. Credit: DOI: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2021.126691
Sediments are regarded as a river's long-term memory. They mainly comprise particles that are eroded from the ground, ending up at some point in river deltas or the sea. However, sediments can also remain stable for a relatively long time—and bind pollutants which, for example, have entered the rivers through mining or industrial wastewater. As a consequence, many old river sediments contain pollutants as "chemical time bombs," such as heavy metals or dioxins and dioxin-like compounds that are not easily degradable.
During flood events in the more industrial regions of Europe, North America and Asia, old sediments can be churned up as a result of the high speeds at which the water is flowing. In the process, the pollutants bound in them are regularly released in one go and contaminate flooded areas. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from Goethe University, RWTH Aachen University and the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, along with other partners, has compiled a review of previous scientific studies on this topic. In it, the researchers, headed by junior research group leader Dr. Sarah Crawford in Frankfurt and Canadian researcher Professor Markus Brinkmann, show, for example, which pollutant loads were measured after various flood events, which test systems were developed for different pollutants and how different sediments behave when water flows at high speeds. It describes the risks for drinking water production, the influence of temperature onpollutantintake by fish and methods for assessing the economic costs associated with the remobilisation of pollutants.
Despite the many years of research on this subject, Henner Hollert, professor of environmental toxicology at Goethe University and senior author of the publication in hand, is greatly concerned: "I have the impression that the problem of pollutants from old sediments is greatly underestimated in Germany and also in Europe as a whole. One reason for this could also be that to date there have been practically no studies at all on the economic consequences of this problem, as we've been able to show. However, contaminated sediments are a ticking time bomb that can explode each time there's a flood. What we need now is good river management across the board that not only looks at immediate hazards for humans, animals and infrastructure but also at the long-term consequences resulting from pollutants in the riverbeds. It's imperative, for example, that we examine flooded areas used agriculturally for river-specific pollutants so that these do not end up on our plates in the form of meat and dairy products."
In an interdisciplinary approach, researchers from Goethe University Frankfurt, in collaboration with RWTH Aachen University, the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig, the Institute for Social-Ecological Research (ISOE), the Senckenberg Institute, the LOEWE Centre for Translational Biodiversity Genomics and many other partners, are also studying the recent extreme flood events in Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia in terms of hydraulic engineering and the biological, ecotoxicological, ecological, geoscientific but also the social-ecological and economic consequences. These studies are embedded in the new research cluster RobustNature at Goethe University, which is examining the robustness and resilience of nature-society systems in the changing Anthropocene and aims to contribute to knowledge-based transformation research using the examples of biodiversity and water—that is, from knowledge to action.River sediments, a dynamic reserve of pollutants
More information: Sarah E. Crawford et al, Remobilization of pollutants during extreme flood events poses severe risks to human and environmental health, Journal of Hazardous Materials (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2021.126691
Harmful algal bloom becomes detectable along western Lake Erie
by Miriam Marini
Credit: CC0 Public Domain
Nearly a month into bloom season, a harmful algal bloom has been detected along Lake Erie's shores by the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science.
Thebloomstretches from Toledo to Port Clinton, near the lake's west end, according to satellite images from the agency. Harmful algal blooms are the rapid growth of microscopic algae that can negatively impact human and animal health, according to the organization.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and researchers are forecasting this summer will see a smaller harmful algal bloom this summer, similar to last year—marking the first time in more than a dozen years that mild blooms have occurred in consecutive summers.
This year's bloom is expected to measure a 3 on a severity index developed by the NOAA and other researchers, but could range between 2 and 4.5. The largest algae blooms since the problem returned to Lake Erie in the late 1990s were at 10 and 10.5 on the severity index, in 2011 and 2015, respectively.
The microcystis cyanobacteria bloom was first detected by officials this week. Weekly advisories have been issued throughout harmful algal bloom season, which began in July.
According to NCCOS, "Harmful algal blooms (HABs) occur when colonies of algae—simple plants that live in the sea and freshwater—grow out of control while producing toxic or harmful effects on people, fish, shellfish, marine mammals, and birds."
The bloom on Lake Erie's west end has an area of approximately 40 square miles and is patchy with some scum in calm waters. Officials warn that if you see scum, you should stay out of the water.
Microcystis, which is the most common bloom forming genus of cyanobacteria, can form a layer of green scum in Lake Erie and releases a toxin called microcystin. The scum can clog the coolant systems of boat engines and microcystin can can pose a risk to drinking water, cause skin irritation, and negatively affect wildlife, pets and livestock.
Black and white anglerfish hybridise producing viable descendants
by AZTI
Anglerfish (Lophius piscatorius) is caught by researchers during monitoring cruise in the North Sea onboard German research vessel Walther Herwig III. Credit: Randel Kreitsberg/CC 4.0
Black and white anglerfish have always been considered to be two separate species. Morphologically, they are mainly distinguished on the basis of the color of the peritoneum, the epithelium lining the intestinal cavity (black for black anglerfish and white for white anglerfish). However, a new analysis led by the AZTI technology center, member of the BRTA, questions the effectiveness of this identification method and has also discovered the existence of thus far unknown hybrids, resulting from the mating between white and black anglerfish.
"We have shown for the first time that black and white anglerfish hybridize, and that these hybrids can reproduce and have viable offspring; furthermore, the percentage of hybrids in some areas is very high, up to 20 percent," explains marine genomics expert Naiara RodrÃguez-Ezpeleta.
To carry out the study, developed within the framework of the GECKA project and published in the scientific journal Evolutionary Applications, AZTI researchers analyzed hundreds of anglerfish samples that were assigned to white or black anglerfish based on the color of the peritoneum. The samples were collected across the species distribution area in the Atlantic by collaborating institutes.
"When analyzing in the laboratory samples identified as white anglerfish, we realized that some of the specimens were genetically black anglerfish, so we came to the conclusion that the color of the peritoneum is not a reliable characteristic to assign species," explains the researcher. The study has also shown that there is hybridization between black and white anglerfish.
"We also saw that there are hybrids that arise from the mating between black and white anglerfish, but also between hybrids and white or black anglerfish, so we can ensure that hybrid anglerfish are viable and can reproduce, which could have consequences on the conservation of the species in the medium and long term, as it could lead to the disappearance of the black and white anglerfish if the hybrids outperform them," adds RodrÃguez-Ezpeleta.
Thus, it is crucial "to find out if hybridization has occurred recently and, although research has not yet been able to determine the reasons for it, it is possible that climate change has increased the coexistence of both species in the same area and, therefore, induced the existence of hybrids."
Impact on fisheries management
White anglerfish inhabit the Mediterranean Sea and the Northeast Atlantic, where they are managed by the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES) as three management units: North Shelf, North and South. Previous studies carried out to assess the population of this species in the Atlantic found no genetic differences between the management units, but this had to be confirmed through the analysis of a large number of genetic markers, such as in the study now developed by AZTI.
"By discarding hybrids and misassigned individuals, we focused on the white anglerfish and analyzed whether or not there were genetic differences between the management units. We found that the white anglerfish constitutes a single genetic population throughout the Atlantic, a crucial knowledge to inform fisheries management of this species and calculating Total Allowable Catch (TAC) recommendations," says the AZTI expert.
Therefore, the results obtained by AZTI are also relevant for the assessment of the biomass of white anglerfish and the management of the species, since the discovery opens up the possibility of managing the white anglerfish in the Atlantic as a single unit from now on, prioritizing biological characteristics over political and administrative considerations for management unit definition, and thus providing greater accuracy when establishing the natural population of the species.
In addition, the study adds important information for the economy of the fishing sector and consumers, and it may have consequences on the price of black and white anglerfish, which is now different for each species.
"According to the data recorded by our fisheries assessment team, looking at the last two years, the price of white anglerfish in the first sale is usually about €4 or €5 per kilo, and that of black anglerfish, about €6 or €7. If you cannot visually distinguish both species, these prices shouldn't be different, either," adds the AZTI researcher.
The next objectives of the research, this time with the financial support of the General Secretariat of Fisheries of Spain, will be to study the impact of hybridanglerfish on the evaluation and management of the species, including the economic impact of the potential decrease of the spawning biomass due to hybrids, and the species mixing.
More information: Imanol Aguirre‐Sarabia et al, Evidence of stock connectivity, hybridization and misidentification in white anglerfish support the need of a genetics‐informed fisheries management framework, Evolutionary Applications (2021). DOI: 10.1111/eva.13278
Provided by AZTI
First comprehensive assessment of climate change impacts on coasts and seas across the UK Overseas Territories
Reef structural complexity provides habitat for other species such as fish and invertebrates on healthy reefs Credit: Prof John Turner
Professor John Turner and Dr. Gareth Williams of the School of Ocean Sciences were co-authors of the Indian Ocean Region Assessment which highlighted four priorities, which are the changes in coral species; changes to coral reef habitats; changes to reef islands and sandy beaches and the impacts on the provision of natural coastal protection and island resilience to sea-level rise.
Over 60 scientists and managers working with all 14 UK Overseas Territories undertook similar regional reviews, which include the Polar Territories (South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (and the British Antarctic Territory); Territories in the South Atlantic (Ascension Island, Falkland Islands, Tristan da Cunha and St Helena Island); Caribbean & Mid Atlantic (Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat, and the Turks and Caicos); Mediterranean (Gibraltar and Akrotiri and Dhekelia in Cyprus) and the Pitcairn Islands in the Pacific.
Although most territory islands are small, the UK has the fifth largest total area of ocean, and the territories contain 94% of the UK's biodiversity. The UK Government has committed to establishing a "Blue Belt' of over 4 million square kilometers of marine protected areas.
Speaking at the launch event, Lord Goldsmith, Minister for the International Environment and Climate, said: "The impacts of climate change pose a serious threat to the vital marine ecosystems of the UK Overseas Territories and the coastal communities that depend directly on them. By undertaking research, such as the reports published today, we can close gaps in our understanding and gain valuable insights that will help us to meet the global challenge of protecting and restoring the health of our ocean."
Professor John Turner stated: '"As a fully protected Marine Protected Area in a remote location, the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean provides a globally important reference site for climate change impacts that can give insights into vulnerability and resilience in the absence of other anthropogenic stressors."
Internationally collaborative research funded by the Bertarelli Foundation has shown that corals are being affected by climate change, with an increase in bleaching, caused by heat stress, as well as physical damage from storms. Several coral species are already becoming rare or significantly reduced in abundance. A reduction in reef habitat quality and structural complexity because of rising temperature, physical damage and ocean acidification, all cause impacts on other organisms, such as fish. Changes in sea level, storms and waves and large-scale ocean processes could affect reef islands and beaches, especially on eroding coasts exposed to the prevailing winds. These changes may affect the provision of critical terrestrial habitat, natural coastal protection, and island maintenance.
In this crucial year of global climate action, which includes the UN Climate Change conference COP26 in November, these assessments highlight climate challenges in the UK Overseas Territories and showcase working with nature to build resilience to climate change.
A schematic of the new modeling system. Credit: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Carbon is everywhere. It's in the atmosphere, in the oceans, in the soil, in our food, in our bodies. As the backbone of all organic molecules that make up life, carbon is a very accurate predictor of crop yields. And soil is the largest carbon pool on earth, playing an important role in keeping our climate stable.
As such, computational models that trackcarbonas it cycles through an agroecosystem have massive untapped potential to advance the field of precision agriculture, increasing crop yields and informing sustainable farming practices.
"Although modeling the carbon cycle in agroecosystems has been done before, our work represents the most comprehensive integration of models and observations, as well as rigorous validation that includes rich measurements from both field and regional scales. The modeling performance of our solution (published this month in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology) far surpasses prior studies," said Kaiyu Guan, an Associate Professor of Natural Resources & Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Guan is also a Blue Waters Associate Professor at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and Founding Director of the Agroecosystem Sustainability Center created by the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences and iSEE.
The carbon cycle in agroecosystems can be generalized into three main carbon fluxes that travel to and from the plants and soil. Carbon enters the system through photosynthesis. Some leaves the system via plant respiration and soil respiration, while carbon in the form of grain and biomass is removed when crops are harvested. In principle, the sum of these fluxes is equal to the net carbon movement through the system—and that net change, especially over long periods of time, is what contributes to change in an agroecosystem's soil organic carbon.
Soil organic carbon (SOC) is exactly what it sounds like: Carbon in the form of organic molecules in the soil. Generally speaking, the greater a field's SOC, the more productive it will be. However, in the U.S. Midwest's croplands, about 30-50% of SOC has been lost since their cultivation began. This loss of SOC may enhance the risk of decreases in crop yield, especially under future climate conditions.
Members of Guan's SMARTFARM Project team used an advanced agroecosystem model named ecosys, which contains the most complex mechanisms for simulating the energy, water, carbon, and nutrient fluxes cycling in the agroecosystem. This model was originally developed by Professor of Ecosystem Modelling Robert Grant from the University of Alberta. Over the past few years, Guan's team has made continuous efforts toward building a solution to further constrain the ecosys model with massive observational data.
The researchers used an innovative "model-data fusion" approach, which integrates advanced model simulations with observational data. This approach allowed them to validate model simulation results, constrain uncertain model parameters, and ensure that the model emulates the processes driving the carbon cycle at all stages. Multiple types of datasets were used, like eddy covariance flux tower data, which is widely regarded as the gold standard for landscape-scale measures of carbon; USDA crop yield data that provides the harvested carbon; and novel satellite data that provides photosynthesis observations.
"Additionally, we used detailed carbon allocation data measured over 10 years," said lead author Wang Zhou, a Postdoctoral Research Associate. "That's the data that tells you where a plant allocates the carbon it takes in from photosynthesis—how much goes to the stem, how much to the roots, how much to the leaves."
SMARTFARM team members collecting soil samples. Credit: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
"What really makes our modeling solution exciting," Guan said, "is that we use the most advanced observations from satellites to constrain a powerful agroecosystem model, and we demonstrate that this can achieve the highest performance in estimating different carbon components." Early this year, Guan and Research Scientist Chongya Jiang developed an algorithm to estimate photosynthesis from satellite data. This newly available photosynthesis data across every corn and soybean field in the U.S. Midwest was also used to validate and constrain the model to ensure the team can accurately reproduce the observed photosynthesis from satellite and the USDA-reported crop yield, as well as their responses to environmental variability.
"Integrating satellite observations with a process-based model like ecosys is the key to ensure the accuracy of our solution, and more importantly, the potential of using our modeling solution at a new location, such as South America or Africa," Research Scientist Bin Peng said.
With so many moving parts, a huge amount of time and effort has gone into the development of this model-data fusion solution. Guan's team is proud to release the first paper on the model in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, and the researchers have a couple of other papers using this method in the works. For instance, in another recent study involving Guan's team and led by the University of Minnesota, the researchers integrated their ecosys-simulated results with artificial intelligence to estimate N2O emission from the U.S. Corn Belt. This study was published in Environmental Research Letters.
"This is state of the art for quantifying carbon budget and credit," Guan said. "We want to show people what is possible and set a high standard going forward. We let rigorous science speak for itself. I believe that's the most powerful way to say things as scientists."
Guan's SMARTFARM Project, a program funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, is focused on pioneering the technology to quantify field-scale carbon credits for U.S. farmland. The team's ambition is to use this developed model-data fusion method as the foundation to accurately quantify the carbon budget at any scale, and also support smart management at the farm scale. Through precision agriculture, they hope to help farmers not only maximize their yields, but also better sustain their land and its SOC content.
Various funding agencies have supported Guan's team over the years, including the National Science Foundation Career Award, the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, DOE Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy SMARTFARM program, NASA Carbon Monitoring System Program, and USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
In addition to Guan, Grant, Zhou, Jiang, and Peng, co-authors on this latest publication include Jinyung Chang, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Zhenong Jin, University of Minnesota; and Symon Mezbahuddin, University of Alberta.
More information: Wang Zhou et al, Quantifying carbon budget, crop yields and their responses to environmental variability using the ecosys model for U.S. Midwestern agroecosystems, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.agrformet.2021.108521
The UK continues on its path to economic recovery from COVID. According to the latest survey data from the Office for National Statistics, the proportion of companies seeing their turnover reduced by COVID in July 2021 was just 29%, compared to 65% in June 2020. That's the lowest level since these surveys started in the same month.
This is what you would expect with the lifting of COVID restrictions. We are seeing predictable winners and losers—international travel and high-street retail are still getting back on their feet, for example, while Amazon and other home delivery businesses roar on.
But this narrative is missing something important. For many businesses, recovery will depend on rather more than just restrictions being lifted. The ability of businesses to innovate after a pandemic can be hampered for years after—and no one seems to be talking about it.
Productivity and remote working
As part of the COVID restrictions, people were told that everyone who can work from home must do so. One important question was how this has affected productivity, which is a standard determinant of GDP growth and wages. The UK's productivity growth has been in decline for years, so anything that prevents it from getting worse would be worth pursuing.
Whether remote working would achieve this was debatable, however. Academic research published years before the pandemic pointed to clear productivity gains when people work from home. But the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) published a paper in September 2020 indicating that the overall effects would be negative, and a Bank of England working paper from December agreed. If so, it's bad news that many believe that remote working will never go away entirely.
So why would productivity be weakened by remote working? One key reason could be that productivity is affected by our ability to generate ideas. The more that businesses come up with new innovative ideas, the more a nation's economy is able to produce.
Doom by Zoom. Credit: Cabeca de Mamore
Creativity in the workplace requires not only creative people, but group thinking. Research indicates that being in a social environment affects both the amount and frequency of our ideas. This can happen anywhere from a formal meeting to knocking around ideas over a sandwich to queuing next to a colleague in the local coffee shop. The fewer the opportunities for social interaction, the poorer the ideas that we come up with.
This goes to the heart of the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter's notion of "creative destruction". It explains how economies grow as a mostly evolutionary process, in which new ideas replace old ones. If you weaken the flow of ideas, you'll get stagnation.
The threat to the UK
It might be tempting to think that ideas are overrated, and that consumer demand determines what new products come on the market. But it's often the other way around.
For an eloquent explanation of this, take a look at the famous scene below from the Devil Wears Prada, where fashion mogul Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) gives new assistant Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) a frosty lesson in how the clothing industry works. This is prompted by Sachs sniggering at the fuss being made over choosing between two belts that she thinks look very similar.
Priestly picks on her "lumpy blue sweater" by pointing out that it's not just any shade of blue, but a cerulean blue that originally came from a collection of gowns by Oscar de la Renta. He was then copied by numerous other designers before it filtered down to the high street and sold as millions of items of clothing. The point is that ideas can be replicated by a large number of firms, effectively creating a multiplier effect in terms of economic growth.
Innovation is in fact the most important determinant of long-term economic growth. Countries that host more innovative firms tend to achieve better GDP numbers.
I recently co-published a paper into how innovation is affected by pandemics. By analyzing the effect on patent applications within the world's leading economies of previous pandemics like the Spanish, Hong and Asian flus, swine flu and encephalitis, we concluded that it takes approximately seven years for innovation to recover from a pandemic shock.
It takes an average of two to three years after the pandemic for the shock to be felt on the ideas pipeline, as companies enter the pandemic with an existing list of ideas under development. From there, it remains depressed for four or five years.
More research-intensive sectors are disproportionately affected. And if this is the effect of taking people out of the workforce and preventing them from interacting in the usual way, the prospect of remote working being semi-permanent this time could make the damage even worse.
Incidentally, this should be of particular concern to the UK. According to the WIPO Global Innovation Index, the UK is currently fourth in the world in "innovation output," meaning the extent to which ideas are turned into sales.
The lifting of the restrictions is a great opportunity to get the "ideas economy" moving again. The UK and other governments would be well advised to give extra assistance to firms that are particularly important to R&D, being mindful of the timescale over which this threat plays out. They should also invest to make patent offices as efficient as possible, and to set up more spaces that are purely designed for people to come together to develop ideas.
What governments must not do is to look at the latest promising recovery numbers and think that everything is getting back to normal—they need the bird's eye view not the worm's eye view. The UK is facing a slump in the creation of ideas that will slow down economic growth, and be made worse by remote working. Getting it right is a marathon, not a sprint, and it needs to be an urgent priority.
