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Sunday, October 24, 2021

The climate project that changed how we understand extreme weather

The heatwave in the US and Canada this year would have been 'virtually impossible' without climate change — The heatwave in the US and Canada this year would have been 'virtually impossible'

When a handful of scientists tried to publish rapid research into the role of climate change in record rainfall that lashed Britain in 2015, they were told their high-speed approach was "not science".

Fast forward to 2021.

As extreme heat scorched North America, the same scientists from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group concluded that the record-shattering temperatures would have been "virtually impossible" without human-caused climate change.

This time people paid attention.

The finding made headlines worldwide and news stories replaced vague references to the impact of global heating on extreme weather with precise details.

And that was exactly the idea of WWA, a network of scientists who wanted to shift understanding of how climate change impacts the real world.

"We wanted to change the conversation, but we never expected that it would be so successful," said climatologist Friederike Otto, who conceived WWA with Dutch scientist Geert Jan van Oldenborgh in 2014.

In September, Otto and van Oldenborgh, who worked for the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute (KNMI), were among Time magazine's 100 most influential people of 2021.

Their work "means that people reading about our accelerating string of disasters increasingly get the most important information of all: it's coming from us", Time said.

The team found that climate change made heavy rain more intense and flooding more likely in Western Europe in July.

Before he died from cancer last week, van Oldenborgh responded with characteristic modesty.

"We never aimed to be influential, just give scientifically defensible answers to questions how climate change influences extreme weather," he tweeted.

Otto said van Oldenborgh, who would have been 60 on Friday, had a "very strong moral compass" to do science for the good of society, particularly for those most vulnerable to climate change.

"I would be really hard pressed to think of anyone of his generation who has done more, and more important, science," said Otto, a lead author in the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"But he was so laid back and did not have an inflated ego that I don't think many people recognise this."

Frustration

The WWA's revolutionary approach allows scientists for the first time to specifically link an individual weather event to manmade warming.

The beginnings of extreme weather attribution can be traced back to 2004, when a British study in the journal Nature found that the punishing European heatwave the previous year was made more likely by climate change.

In 2018, WWA found that Cape Town water crisis was made three times more likely because of global heating.

But by the time this type of research passed peer review for publication, it was often months after the event.

So when confronted with an extreme heat wave or ferocious storm, scientists and the media were reluctant to blame it specifically on human-caused heating.

It was "very frustrating", said Otto.

In one of their earliest studies, the WWA team looked at record rainfall in Britain from Storm Desmond in 2015 and found climate change aggravated the flood hazard.

But their subsequent paper submitted to a scientific journal was rejected.

"There were lots of people in the scientific community saying 'this is too fast. This is not science,'," she said.

A few years later they revisited the research and were able to publish it with the same numbers.

Off the scale

To investigate whether climate change plays a role in an event, WWA compares possible weather today—after about 1.2 degrees Celsius of global warming since the mid-1800s—with a simulated climate without that heating.

Rain from Storm Desmond in 2015 flooded thousands of homes in northern England.

They also work with local experts to assess exposure and vulnerability and decisions on the ground, like evacuation orders.

The Red Cross was an early partner, as was the US-based science organisation Climate Central, which provided some funding.

WWA has now published peer-reviewed methods and showed that rapid attribution can be an "operational activity" said Robert Vautard, also an IPCC lead author and director of France's Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute.

"You don't publish a paper each time you do a weather forecast," he told AFP.

But when it came to a heatwave in western Canada and the northwestern US in June, temperatures went "off the scale", he added.

The Canadian village of Lytton was almost completely destroyed by fire days after it set the national temperature record of 49.6C.

WWA concluded that in today's climate, it was a once-in-a-thousand-year event.

There are lingering questions, such as whether some new effect made the heatwave so extreme.

Intense heat and drought sparked dozens of wildfires.

"Crossing a tipping point, if you like," said Sarah Kew, who oversaw the research with fellow KNMI scientist Sjoukje Philip.

At the time, van Oldenborgh said the heatwave was something "nobody thought possible".

He continued to work even from his hospital bed, Kew said. He wanted to pass on his knowledge.

With extreme events accelerating, WWA scientists insist they will continue the work.

"Everyone knows that we have a big gap now," said Philip.

"But everyone is also willing to try to fill this gap together."

Dutch climate scientist Geert Jan van Oldenborgh dies at 59

Journal information: Nature

DNA shows Japanese wolf closest relative of domestic dogs

A team of researchers affiliated with several entities in Japan has found evidence that the Japanese wolf is the closest known relative of domestic dogs. The team has published a paper describing their genetic analysis of the extinct wolf and its relationship with modern dogs.

The Japanese wolf is a subspecies of the gray wolf and once lived on many of the islands of what is now Japan. The species was declared extinct in 1905 after hunters and landowners killed them off, but many tissue and bone samples were preserved. In this new effort, the researchers extracted DNA from tissue in bone samples from several museums in Japan.

By comparing the DNA of the Japanese wolf with the DNA of other wolves and dogs and species such as foxes, the researchers found that it resides on a unique evolutionary branch of wolves—one that arose sometime between 20,000 and 40,000 years ago. They also noted that some of those ancient wolves evolved into Japanese wolves and others evolved into dogs.

Prior research has shown that modern domestic dogs evolved from a type of gray wolf that does not exist today. This new work suggests that scientists are getting closer to learning more about that unique wolf. The new DNA evidence suggests that it lived in East Asia (not the Middle East or Europe as has been widely suggested) and its wolf line migrated later to Japan. It is still unclear, however, what happened to the line that evolved into dogs. The DNA also showed that there was some interbreeding between the wolf line and the dog line. A prior study has shown that approximately 2% of the DNA from a sled dog that died 10,000 years ago was from the Japanese wolf. The researchers suggest such interbreeding appears to have occurred prior to the Japanese wolf making its way to Japan; thus, it does not appear likely that dogs made their way there until much later. They also note that New Guinea singing dogs and dingoes have the highest amount of Japanese wolf DNA of any modern species, suggesting the wolf migrated great distances.Our bond with dogs may go back more than 27,000 years

More information: Jun Gojobori et al, The Japanese wolf is most closely related to modern dogs and its ancestral genome has been widely inherited by dogs throughout East Eurasia, biorxiv (2021). DOI: 10.1101/2021.10.10.463851

The impact of coastal hardening on local ecosystems

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in New Zealand and Australia has created a model to forecast coastal hardening around the world in the coming years. In their paper published in the journal Nature Sustainability, the group describes collecting and analyzing satellite data to build their model.

Coastal hardening happens when humans build structures on or near the edges of the ocean. What were once marshes, for example, could be replaced by hotels and casinos. In this new effort, the researchers looked at the extent of coastal hardening, its impact on local ecosystems and where it is likely to happen in the near future.

As the researchers note, when natural soft coastline is replaced with hard materials, the geography becomes simpler, which leads to changes in the ecological community that can favor invasive species. Putting up seawalls or similar structures reduces the number of creatures that can live around them, the researchers note, pointing out that the decrease in diversity has been well documented for many major cities around the world located close to the ocean, such as New York. Prior research has shown that there are common factors that lead to coastal hardening, such as tourism or shipping. Cities that serve as shipping hubs are also much more sensitive to invasive species becoming entrenched.

To learn more about the extent of coastal hardening, the researchers obtained and scrutinized satellite maps for 30 cities around the world. They found that more than half of the coastline in these areas has been hardened. They then gathered shipping, demographic and economic data for the same cities and used it to create an AI model that could predict hardening of coastal areas in the future.

The model can be used to study likely coastal hardening for specific regions over a specified number of years. They used it to learn more about likely increases in coastal hardening in New Zealand over the next 25 years, as an example—the model showed 243 to 368 kilometers of shoreline near urban areas experiencing new coastal hardening.

New meta-analysis shows engineered hard shorelines are a threat to ecosystems

More information: Oliver Floerl et al, A global model to forecast coastal hardening and mitigate associated socioecological risks, Nature Sustainability (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41893-021-00780-w

Journal information: Nature Sustainability

Study says tech firms underreport their carbon footprint

Large technology companies such as SAP, IBM and Google are underreporting their greenhouse gas emissions at a time of heightened scrutiny over the role of corporations in driving climate change, a study released Friday claimed.

Research published in the journal Nature Communications found inconsistencies in the way companies declare their carbon footprint, a measure that is increasingly considered important for investors.

The study, conducted by researchers at the Technical University of Munich, examined so-called scope 3 emissions that account for a large share of corporate carbon footprints, such as business travel, employee commuting and how companies' products are used.

Focusing on 56 companies in the tech industry, they found that on average these failed to disclose about half of their emissions.

Christian Stoll, one of the report's authors, said some companies—such as Google's parent Alphabet—were found to have been consistent in how they reported their carbon footprint, but excluded some emissions that should have been counted.

Others, such as IBM, had reported their carbon footprint differently depending on the audience and excluded emissions that should have been included.

Neither Google nor IBM immediately responded to requests for comment.

The authors suggested ways in which companies can improve their emissions reporting.

Laura Draucker, senior manager of corporate greenhouse gas emissions at nonprofit business research firm Ceres, said she agreed with the Nature paper's conclusion that companies' emissions disclosure needs to improve.

"However, we cannot wait for perfect data," said Draucker, who wasn't involved in the study. "Companies can use estimates and screening tools to identify hot spots for climate risk along their value chain, and they can set goals and take actions now to meet those goals—while at the same time, working to improve data collection and quality."

Ceres' own research showed many of the largest U.S companies lack ambitious climate goals, she added.Data suggests oil giants are not looking very hard to find ways to reduce their carbon footprint

Journal information: Nature Communications

Data suggests oil giants are not looking very hard to find ways to reduce their carbon footprint

A small team of environmentalists from the London School of Economics and the Political Science Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development has published a Policy Forum piece in the journal Science highlighting the lack of effort by the world's largest oil and gas companies to reduce their carbon footprint. In their paper, the authors claim that of 52 companies they looked at, just two of them have established science-based climate targets.

One of the biggest contributors of greenhouse gas emissions is the gasoline-burning vehicle. Cars and trucks the world over spew billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere every day. And most of that gasoline is provided by oil and gas giants such as BP and Exxon Mobil. In recent years, these companies have been pushed by consumers and government alike to come up with plans to reduce their carbon footprints by reducing the amount of carbon-based product they sell to consumers. In this new effort, the authors suggest that the oil and gas giants have not responded to pressure as might be expected, and instead appear to be mostly turning a deaf ear.

To learn more about how the big oil and gas companies have been responding to calls for a response to global warming issues, the authors obtained and analyzed data from 52 of the largest companies looking for evidence of a response. They found that just two of the companies had made any public announcements regarding plans to help reduce emissions to meet the goals of the Paris Climate Accord. Occidental Petroleum announced it had plans to help reduce emissions to meet the 1.5 degree Celsius benchmark, and Royal Dutch Shell announced it had plans to help prevent reaching the 2 degree Celsius limit.

The authors also looked at emission intensities, the CO2 emissions from operations and use by customers, noting that only 23 of the companies listed numbers for customer use, which is, of course, the biggest contributor to emissions. They also looked at future emission intensity projections for all of the companies and found that just over half had released estimates. Those that did list them had unambitious goals, say the authors.

Overall, the authors found that the vast majority of large oil and gas companies are doing little to assist the effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which in the end could be their undoing. As the world moves to alternative fuel sources, these giants could find themselves without customers.

US energy laggards still not Paris compliant: analysis

More information: Simon Dietz et al, How ambitious are oil and gas companies' climate goals? Science (2021). DOI: 10.1126/science.abh0687

Journal information: Science

Historical analysis finds no precedent for the rate of coal and gas power decline needed to limit climate change to 1.5°C

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CELL PRESS

Limiting climate change to the 1.5°C target set by the Paris Climate Agreement will likely require coal and gas power use to decline at rates that are unprecedented for any large country, an analysis of decadal episodes of fossil fuel decline in 105 countries between 1960 and 2018 shows. Furthermore, the findings, published October 22 in the journal One Earth, suggest that the most rapid historical cases of fossil fuel decline occurred when oil was replaced by coal, gas, or nuclear power in response to energy security threats of the 1970s and the 1980s.

Decarbonizing the energy sector is a particularly important strategy for reaching the goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, which is necessary in order to prevent global average temperatures from climbing beyond 1.5°C this century. However, few studies have investigated the historical precedent for such a sudden and sweeping transition—especially the decline of carbon-intensive technologies that must accompany the widespread adoption of greener ones.

“This is the first study that systematically analyzed historical cases of decline in fossil fuel use in individual countries over the last 60 years and around the world,” says Jessica Jewell (@jessicadjewell), an associate professor in energy transitions at Chalmers University in Sweden, a professor at the University of Bergen in Norway, and the corresponding author of the study. “Prior studies sometimes looked at the world as a whole but failed to find such cases, because on the global level the use of fossil fuels has always grown over time.”

“We also studied recent political pledges to completely phase out coal power, which some 30 countries made as part of the Powering Past Coal Alliance. We found that these pledges do not aim for faster coal decline than what has occurred historically,” adds Jewell. “In other words, they plan for largely business as usual.”

To explore whether any periods of historical fossil fuel decline are similar to scenarios needed to achieve the Paris target, Jewell and her colleagues, Vadim Vinichenko, a post-doctoral researcher at Chalmers and Aleh Cherp, a professor at Central European University in Austria and Lund University in Sweden, identified 147 episodes within a sample of 105 countries between 1960 and 2018 in which coal, oil, or natural gas use declined faster than 5% over a decade. Rapid decline in fossil fuel use has been historically limited to small countries, such as Denmark, but such cases are less relevant to climate scenarios, where decline should take place in continental-size regions.

Jewell and colleagues focused the investigation on cases with fast rates of fossil fuel decline in larger countries, which indicate significant technological shifts or policy efforts, and controlled for the size of the energy sector, the growth in electricity demand, and the type of energy with which the declining fossil fuel was substituted. They compared these cases of historical fossil fuel decline to climate mitigation scenarios using a tool called “feasibility space,” which identifies combinations of conditions that make a climate action feasible in particular contexts.

“We were surprised to find that the use of some fossil fuels, particularly oil, actually declined quite rapidly in the 1970s and the 1980s in Western Europe and other industrialized countries like Japan,” says Jewell. “This is not the time period that is typically associated with energy transitions, but we came to believe that some important lessons can be drawn from there.” Rapid decline of fossils historically required advances in competing technologies, strong motivation to change energy systems (such as to avoid energy security threats), and effective government institutions to implement the required changes.

“We were less surprised, but still somewhat impressed, by how fast the use of coal must decline in the future to reach climate targets,” she adds, noting that, of all the fossil fuels, coal would need to decline the most rapidly to meet climate targets, particularly in Asia and the OECD regions where coal use is concentrated.

About one-half of the IPCC 1.5°C-compatible scenarios envision coal decline in Asia faster than in any of these cases. The remaining scenarios, as well as many scenarios for coal and gas decline in other regions, only have precedents where oil was replaced by coal, gas or nuclear power in response to energy security threats in smaller electricity markets. Achieving the 1.5°C target requires finding mechanisms of fossil fuel decline that extend far beyond historical experience or current pledges.

The authors found that nearly all scenarios for the decline of coal in Asia in line with Paris Agreement’s goals would be historically unprecedented or have rare precedents. Over half of scenarios envisioned for coal decline in OECD countries and over half of scenarios for cutting gas use in reforming economies, the Middle East, or Africa would also be unprecedented or have rare precedents as well.

“This signals both an enormous challenge of seeing through such rapid decline of fossil fuels and the need to learn from historical lessons when rapid declines were achieved on the national scale,” says Jewell.

###

This work was supported by the Research Council of Norway under the Analyzing Past and Future Energy Industry Contractions: Towards a Better Understanding of the Flip-Side of Energy Transitions project and by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.

One Earth, Vinichenko et al.: “Historical precedents and feasibility of rapid coal and gas decline required for the 1.5°C target” https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(21)00534-0

One Earth (@OneEarth_CP), published by Cell Press, is a monthly journal that features papers from the fields of natural, social, and applied sciences. One Earth is the home for high-quality research that seeks to understand and address today’s environmental Grand Challenges, publishing across the spectrum of environmental change and sustainability science. A sister journal to Cell, Chem, and Joule, One Earth aspires to break down barriers between disciplines and stimulate the cross-pollination of ideas with a platform that unites communities, fosters dialogue, and encourages transformative research. Visit http://www.cell.com/one-earth. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.

JOURNAL

One Earth

DOI

10.1016/j.oneear.2021.09.012

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Historical precedents and feasibility of rapid coal and gas decline required for the 1.5 °C target

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

22-Oct-2021

When and why did human brains decrease in size 3,000 years ago? Ants may hold clues

by Frontiers

The brain is the most complex organ in the human body. Now, a new study has brought us closer to understanding some of its evolution. It shows that human brains decreased in size approximately 3,000 years ago. By studying ants as models to illustrate why brains may increase or decrease in size, the researchers hypothesize that brain shrinkage parallels the expansion of collective intelligence in human societies.

Studying and understanding the causes and consequences of brain evolution helps us understand the nature of humanity. It is well documented that human brains have increased in size over the course of our evolutionary history. Less appreciated is the fact that human brains have decreased in size since the Pleistocene. When exactly these changes happened, or why, was not well known.

"A surprising fact about humans today is that our brains are smaller compared to the brains of our Pleistocene ancestors. Why our brains have reduced in size has been a big mystery for anthropologists," explained co-author Dr. Jeremy DeSilva, from Dartmouth College.

To disentangle this mystery, a team of researchers from different academic fields set out to study the historical patterns of human brain evolution, comparing their findings with what is known in ant societies to offer broad insights.

"A biological anthropologist and a behavioral ecologist and evolutionary neurobiologist began sharing their thoughts on brain evolution and found bridging research on humans and ants might help identify what is possible in nature," said co-author Dr. James Traniello, from Boston University.

Their paper, published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, sheds new light on the evolution of our brain.

A recent size decrease

The researchers applied a change-point analysis to a dataset of 985 fossil and modern human crania. They found that human brains increased in size 2.1 million years ago and 1.5 million years ago, during the Pleistocene, but decreased in size around 3,000 years ago (Holocene), which is more recent than previous estimates.

"Most people are aware that humans have unusually large brains—significantly larger than predicted from our body size. In our deep evolutionary history, human brain size dramatically increased," said Traniello. "The reduction in human brain size 3,000 years ago was unexpected."

The timing of size increase coincides with what is previously known about the early evolution of Homo and the technical advancements that led to; for example, better diet and nutrition and larger social groups.

As for the decrease in brain size, the interdisciplinary team of researchers propose a new hypothesis, finding clues within ant societies.

What could ants teach us about human brain evolution?

"We propose that ants can provide diverse models to understand why brains may increase or decrease in size due to social life. Understanding why brains increase or decrease is difficult to study using only fossils," explained Traniello.

Studying computational models and patterns of worker ant brain size, structure, and energy use in some ant clades, such as the Oecophylla weaver ant, Atta leafcutter ants, or the common garden ant Formica, showed that group-level cognition and division of labor may select for adaptive brain size variation. This means that within a social group where knowledge is shared or individuals are specialists at certain tasks, brains may adapt to become more efficient, such as decreasing in size.

"Ant and human societies are very different and have taken different routes in social evolution," Traniello said. "Nevertheless, ants also share with humans important aspects of social life such as group decision-making and division of labor, as well as the production of their own food (agriculture). These similarities can broadly inform us of the factors that may influence changes in human brain size."

Brains use up a lot of energy, and smaller brains use less energy. The externalization of knowledge in human societies, thus needing less energy to store a lot of information as individuals, may have favored a decrease in brain size.

"We propose that this decrease was due to increased reliance on collective intelligence, the idea that a group of people is smarter than the smartest person in the group, often called the 'wisdom of the crowds,'" added Traniello.

DeSilva concluded, "We look forward to having our hypothesis tested as additional data become available."Climate changed the size of our bodies and, to some extent, our brains

More information: Jeremy DeSilva et al, When and Why Did Human Brains Decrease in Size? A New Change-Point Analysis and Insights from Brain Evolution in Ants, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (2021). DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2021.742639

Journal information: Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution

Provided by Frontiers

Tropical rainfall pattern will increase rainfall variability in Pacific Northwest

The tropical Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) rainfall pattern brings change to non-tropical parts of the United States.

DOE/US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

The Science

The Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) is a tropical rainfall pattern that excites waves of air in the atmosphere. The MJO can have a significant effect on weather outside of the tropics. Scientists have studied how the MJO might respond to a warming climate. However, they know much less about how warming temperatures might affect the “teleconnection” that causes the MJO to affect non-tropical weather. This research shows that the MJO teleconnection pattern observed in winters in far northern regions will likely extend further eastward over the North Pacific. This change will increase the effects of the MJO on the variability of rainfall in California.

The Impact

The eastward-extended teleconnection allows the MJO to exert more influence on the Northeast Pacific and the west coast of North America. The increased sub-seasonal variability poses challenges on regional resource management. It also creates challenges for how we prepare for extreme weather in these regions.

Summary

The MJO is a slow-moving tropical mode that produces a planetary-scale envelope of convective storms. By exciting Rossby waves—atmospheric waves that span the planet—the MJO creates atmospheric linkages called “teleconnections” that have far-reaching effects on extratropical circulation and weather. While recent studies have investigated the MJO's response to anthropogenic warming, scientists know less about potential changes in MJO teleconnection patterns. This new research shows that the MJO teleconnection pattern in boreal winter will likely extend further eastward over the North Pacific. This is due primarily to an eastward shift in the exit region of the subtropical jet, on which the teleconnection pattern is anchored, and additionally contributed by an eastward extension of the MJO itself. The eastward-extended teleconnection allows the MJO to exert a greater impact downstream on the Northeast Pacific and North American west coast. Over California, the multi-model statistical mean result projects an approximately 54 percent increase in MJO-induced precipitation variability by the year 2100 under a high emission scenario.

Funding

This work was supported by Berkeley Lab Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) funding provided by the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science; the DOE Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Climate and Environmental Sciences Division, Regional & Global Climate Model Analysis program (specifically, the Calibrated and Systematic Characterization, Attribution, and Detection of Extremes [CASCADE] project); the National Institute of Food and Agriculture; the Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering; the National Science Foundation; and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

JOURNAL

Nature Climate Change

DOI

10.1038/s41558-020-0814-0

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Amplified Madden–Julian oscillation impacts in the Pacific–North America region

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

29-Jun-2020

Grant beefs up grazing initiative that benefits farmers and environment

Grant and Award Announcement

VIRGINIA TECH

Beef Cattle — IMAGE: BEEF CATTLE GRAZE ON A FAMILY FARM IN AUGUSTA COUNTY, VIRGINIA. view more
CREDIT: JOHN BENNER FOR VIRGINIA TECH

Rolling green pastures dotted with grazing cows are a common sight in Virginia. However, there’s more strategy behind those grazing cows than most people know, such as the impact on the land, water quality, and farm profitability.

In 2015 a small team of Virginia Cooperative Extension agents, farmers, and representatives from state and federal conservation agencies from Northern Piedmont and Northern Shenandoah Valley created the Graze 300 VA Initiative “to enable Virginia farmers to achieve 300 days of livestock grazing per year by facilitating better pasture management and environmental stewardship.” Since then, Graze 300 VA has grown to 30 Extension agents and specialists working together with farmers across Virginia.

This year, the Graze 300 VA movement is beefing up its mission — thanks to a grant from the Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Strategic Plan Advancement Integrated Internal Competitive Grants Program and the Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station. Out of 71 proposals submitted, 32 projects were funded. Graze 300 VA was the only one led by Extension agents.

Virginia Cooperative Extension agents Carl Stafford, Bobby Clark, and John Benner, and Inga Haugen, University Libraries’ liaison to the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, are leading the program’s efforts.

The grant will help build on existing Graze 300 VA successes, research social factors that influence farmer change, provide in-depth grazing management training, develop better educational resources for Virginia’s farmers, and broaden the use of technology, including designing a grazing app to advance the Graze 300 VA initiative.

Most farmers graze about 220 days per year, from spring until fall, and supplement with hay during the four-month cold season. Winter feeding can account for more than 50 percent of production costs due to the cost of making hay. Inflation and spikes in the cost of farm equipment, fuel, and fertilizer make traditional grazing less profitable than years past. Currently, only a handful of farmers in Virginia regularly reach a 300-day grazing season.

According to the team’s background work, if 20 percent of Virginia farmers adopt better grazing management practices and extend their grazing season closer to 300 days per year, Virginia farms could increase profitability by more than $6 million per year.

“We have collected several case studies of farmers who have successfully extended their grazing season and have become more profitable,” Benner said. “We continue to share these experiences with other farmers.”

The team said that although Graze 300 VA could have a huge impact, getting farmers to adopt the extended grazing movement won’t be easy. Farmers’ deep-seated traditions surrounding grassland and livestock management techniques are interwoven into the fabric of these communities. For example, traditions associated with hay baling and feeding hay are a rite of passage for young people in family farming operations.

To help create strategies to encourage farmers to adopt new practices, the team recruited colleagues from the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences.

“We believe there are traditional barriers to adopting this new way of farming that we don’t fully understand,” said Clark. “Thus we have engaged the Virginia Tech Sociology Department to help us better understand those factors.

"Farm profitability helps to ensure that Virginia’s rural communities are resilient and vibrant,” Clark continued. “Over the long term, farm profitability is a repetitive cycle. We teach farmers more profitable technologies, and as farmers adopt these technologies, it becomes the new normal. The net benefit of this cycle ensures citizens have a safe, affordable, and consistent supply of food.”

CAPTION

A falling plate meter is used to measure the amount of grass in a field so farmers have more precise readings in managing their grass.

CREDIT

Bobby Clark for Virginia Tech

They just need the technology to do it.

The team wants to utilize unique technologies like those developed in Ireland for improving farm and forage management. They will create similar tools that can connect with farmers and technical service providers, collect and monitor farm production data, and evaluate management decisions. This technology will integrate well with Graze 300 VA partners, the Center for Advanced Innovation in Agriculture and their SmartFarm Innovation Network (Sustainable Precision Animal Agriculture).

To create this technology, the team tapped the University Libraries’ DataBridge team to assist in scoping potential solutions and implementing a project plan. The goal is to allow Virginia cattle farmers to better capture information on their pastures and livestock and allow for more efficient use of their land and extend the grazing season further into the year. Essential data such as paddock usage to indicate cattle rotation, cattle health, and biologics will be considered for the app.

“This app can have a big impact on Virginia farmers,” said Jonathan Briganti, the manager for DataBridge. Briganti will scope “the diverse climate, cattle breeds, and workflows seen in American farms." Such an effort requires a deeply researched and carefully executed plan, which is why the principal researchers work methodically to bring the right domain experts in the room, Briganti added.

The application will assist producers tracking and managing forage output and grazing to reduce feed costs and improve environmental quality.

Extending the grazing season also has environmental and production benefits. In well-managed pastures, the sod is thicker. This reduces runoff, soil erosion, and nutrient losses. Therefore, farmers use less fertilizer. Additionally, because thicker sod captures more water in sudden rainfall events, the pastures are more productive during dry summers when occasional storms are the only source of moisture.

The team is also partnering with farmers, agribusinesses, and several agencies to improve water quality. According to Clark, extending the grazing season will improve water infiltration, nutrient use efficiency, and soil organic matter while encouraging fewer barren areas in fields. A longer grazing season also reduces the amount of sediment, nitrogen, and phosphorus that ends up in surface waters that could eventually run into streams and rivers.

“It’s economics and environment and doing what is best for the landscape," said Haugen, who was a grazing dairy farmer before she was a librarian. "A type of farming that works on flatlands, like vegetable or crop farming, might be a poor choice in the mountains. This program works with what folk are doing and helps them to be better in many areas. It benefits them and our communities that share the water, air, and soil, and then also our downstream neighbors.”

“This is the extension/outreach component of land-grant universities,” Clark said. “In this case, Virginia Cooperative Extension is helping to address three major issues across the commonwealth: ensuring a safe, affordable, and consistent food supply, helping Virginia sustain resilient communities, ensuring environmental health and stewardship, and ensuring water quality.

“This is a big deal,” Clark continued. “This initiative is improving farm profitability, environmental issues, and water quality. An enormous challenge the world faces is finding ways to have good water quality or improve water quality that do not cause a major financial burden on people or industry. In this case, we are achieving both better water quality and better farm profitability. It is a win-win situation.”

The team is seeking collaborators interested in helping with the Graze 300 VA Initiative. People interested in testing the app, learning more about grazing, supporting students in learning about data and grazing, or have questions in general are welcome to contact Haugen.

Project to study marine life in Gulf Of Mexico Reefs

Texas A&M-Galveston professor Jay Rooker will lead a $1.9 million effort to learn more about the Flower Garden Banks and the fish that inhabit the marine sanctuary.

Grant and Award Announcement

TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY

The Gulf of Mexico is one of the most important areas in the world for marine life, and especially its natural banks and reefs that provide food, habitat and shelter for numerous species. It’s also home to a key marine protected area, and a Texas A&M University at Galveston marine biologist is heading a $1.9 million project to study how fish and marine life inhabit the region.

Jay Rooker will lead a team of 13 researchers from five universities hoping to answer many questions about marine life in the Gulf, especially those related to natural banks and the fishes that inhabit them.

One key area that will be examined is the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary that was first discovered by snapper and grouper fishermen in the early 1900s. They named the banks after the corals, sponges, plants and other marine life that they could see on the brightly-colored reefs below their boats.

“Understanding how fish populations use the Flower Garden Banks and other banks in the expanded sanctuary boundaries will be the focus of our research,” Rooker said. “We will study a wide range of reef-associated fishes — including groupers, snappers, jacks, parrotfish and sharks — to determine their required habitats and how natural banks within the sanctuary are interconnected.”

The first scientific study of the area, located about 100 miles off the Galveston coast, did not occur until 1936 but numerous studies have been conducted in the area since then. Earlier this year, the sanctuary was expanded from 56 to 160 square miles and now includes 14 additional banks. Today, the Flower Garden Banks is the only national marine sanctuary in the Gulf of Mexico and is one of 14 federally designated underwater areas protected by NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.

Rooker and the team will use acoustic and satellite telemetry to track fish movements within and across banks. They will also use sound recordings to determine the timing of spawning activity to help show where the fish will end up as juveniles.

“Reef-associated fishes in the Gulf of Mexico reside in a complex mix of habitats and natural banks,” Rooker said. “The outer shelf of the northern Gulf of Mexico is characterized by a network of natural banks that extend eastward along the edge of the Texas-Louisiana shelf to the mouth of the Mississippi River. These natural banks — including the Flower Garden Banks — provide critical habitat for a variety of marine organisms. But our understanding of how fish use these natural banks is rather limited, and we hope to learn more about essential habitats of key components of this unique reef fish assemblage and improve our understanding of fish populations within the sanctuary.”

The four-year study is funded by NOAA and its National Ocean Service and National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science.