Atmospheric river storms can drive costly flooding – and climate change is making them stronger


Tom Corringham, Postdoctoral Scholar in Climate, Atmospheric Science and Physical Oceanography, University of California San Diego

Sun, December 12, 2021

Satellite photo showing a river of moisture extending from Hawaii to Calfiornia, Oct. 24, 2021. NOAA

Ask people to name the world’s largest river, and most will probably guess that it’s the Amazon, the Nile or the Mississippi. In fact, some of Earth’s largest rivers are in the sky – and they can produce powerful storms, like the ones now drenching northern California.

Atmospheric rivers are long, narrow bands of moisture in the atmosphere that extend from the tropics to higher latitudes. These rivers in the sky can transport 15 times the volume of the Mississippi River.

When that moisture reaches the coast and moves inland, it rises over the mountains, generating rain and snowfall. Many fire-weary westerners welcome these deluges, but atmospheric rivers can trigger other disasters, such as extreme flooding and debris flows.

In the past 20 years, as observation networks have improved, scientists have learned more about these important weather phenomena. Atmospheric rivers occur globally, affecting the west coasts of the world’s major land masses, including Portugal, Western Europe, Chile and South Africa. So-called “Pineapple Express” storms that carry moisture from Hawaii to the U.S. West Coast are just one of their many flavors.

My research combines economics and atmospheric science to measure damage from severe weather events. Recently I led a team of researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Army Corps of Engineers in the first systematic analysis of damages from atmospheric rivers due to extreme flooding. We found that while many of these events are benign, the largest of them cause most of the flooding damage in the western U.S. And atmospheric rivers are predicted to grow longer, wetter and wider in a warming climate.

Rivers in the sky

On Feb. 27, 2019, an atmospheric river propelled a plume of water vapor 350 miles wide and 1,600 miles long through the sky from the tropical North Pacific Ocean to the coast of Northern California.

Just north of San Francisco Bay, in Sonoma County’s famed wine country, the storm dumped over 21 inches of rain. The Russian River crested at 45.4 feet – 13.4 feet above flood stage.

For the fifth time in four decades, the town of Guerneville was submerged under the murky brown floodwaters of the lower Russian River. Damages in Sonoma County alone were estimated at over US0 million.

Events like these have drawn attention in recent years, but atmospheric rivers are not new. They have meandered through the sky for millions of years, transporting water vapor from the equator toward the poles.

In the 1960s meteorologists coined the phrase “Pineapple Express” to describe storm tracks that originated near Hawaii and carried warm water vapor to the coast of North America. By the late 1990s atmospheric scientists had found that over 90% of the world’s moisture from the tropics and subtropics was transported to higher latitudes by similar systems, which they named “atmospheric rivers.”

In dry conditions, atmospheric rivers can replenish water supplies and quench dangerous wildfires. In wet conditions, they can cause damaging floods and debris flows, wreaking havoc on local economies.

Helpful and harmful

Researchers have known for some time that flooding due to atmospheric rivers could cost a lot of money, but until our study no one had quantified these damages. We used a catalog of atmospheric river events compiled by Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes, and matched it to 40 years of flood insurance records and 20 years of National Weather Service damage estimates.

We found that atmospheric rivers caused an average of .1 billion in flood damages yearly in the western U.S. More than 80% of all flooding damages in the West in the years we studied were associated with atmospheric rivers. In some areas, such as coastal northern California, these systems caused over 99% of damages.

Our data showed that in an average year, about 40 atmospheric rivers made landfall along the Pacific coast somewhere between Baja California and British Columbia. Most of these events were benign: About half caused no insured losses, and these storms replenished the region’s water supply.

But there were a number of exceptions. We used a recently developed atmospheric river classification scale that ranks the storms from 1 to 5, similar to systems for categorizing hurricanes and tornadoes. There was a clear link between these categories and observed damages.

Atmospheric River category 1 (AR1) and AR2 storms caused estimated damages under million. AR4 and AR5 storms caused median damages in the 10s and 100s of millions of dollars respectively. The most damaging AR4s and AR5s generated impacts of over billion per storm. These billion-dollar storms occurred every three to four years.
A moister atmosphere means worse storms

Our most significant finding was an exponential relationship between the intensity of atmospheric rivers and the flood damages they caused. Each increase in the scale from 1 to 5 was associated with a 10-fold increase in damages.

Several recent studies have modeled how atmospheric rivers will change in the coming decades. The mechanism is simple: Greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere, warming the planet. This causes more water to evaporate from oceans and lakes, and increased moisture in the air makes storm systems grow stronger.

Like hurricanes, atmospheric rivers are projected to grow longer, wider and wetter in a warming climate. Our finding that damages increase exponentially with intensity suggests that even modest increases in atmospheric river intensity could lead to significantly larger economic impacts.

Better forecasting is critical

I believe that improving atmospheric forecasting systems should be a priority for adapting to a changing climate. Better understanding of atmospheric rivers’ intensity, duration and landfall locations can provide valuable information to residents and emergency responders.

It also is important to discourage new construction in high-risk areas and help people move to safer locations after major disasters, rather than rebuilding in place.

Finally, our study underlines the need to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. These storms will keep coming, and they’re getting stronger. In my view, stabilizing the global climate system is the only long-term way to minimize economic damage and risk to vulnerable communities.


This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Tom Corringham, University of California San Diego.

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Tom Corringham receives funding from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation; the California-Nevada Climate Applications Program (CNAP), a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments team; the Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center (SWCASC), a U.S. Geological Survey National Climate Adaptation Science Center; and the Multi-Campus Research Programs and Initiatives through the University of California Office of the President.

Scientists studying microplastics in Antarctica discover... it almost all came from their ship


Will Bolton
Sun, December 12, 2021

Ship paint fragments were found to make up most of the samples the scientists found - SWNS

Scientists studying the origins of microplastics in Antarctica have discovered that 89 per cent of the samples they analysed came from the paint on their own ship.

The researchers had initially been shocked to find such large concentrations of microplastics in such a remote expanse of water in the Southern Ocean.

However, when they studied the samples in a laboratory they were able to confirm that a large percentage came from flakes of paint from their own vessel.


Microplastics are small plastic pieces, less than five millimetres long, and are known to be extremely harmful to ocean and aquatic life.

The team of researchers, from the University of Basel and the Alfred-Wegener Institute (AWI) at the Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, were studying water from the Weddell Sea.
Area where Endurance got trapped

It is the same area where, in 1915, Ernest Shackleton’s ship, Endurance, got trapped and crushed by pack ice.

Over the course of two expeditions with the research vessel Polastern during 2018 and 2019, the researchers took a total of 34 surface water samples and 79 subsurface water samples.

They then filtered about eight million litres of seawater and discovered microplastics in it - albeit in very small quantities.

Earlier studies of microplastics in Antarctica were conducted in regions with more research stations, shipping traffic and people, but this one solely focused on a remote body of water.

The research team, led by Professor Patricia Holm and Dr Gunnar Gerdts from the AWI, thought that the remote Weddell Sea would have substantially lower concentrations of microplastics.

Prof. Dr. Patricia Holm (left) and Clara Leistenschneider on the research vessel Polarstern - SWNS

However, their measurements showed that microplastic concentrations were only partially lower than in other regions in Antarctica.

Clara Leistenschneider, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Environmental Sciences, said: "Establishing that microplastics are present in a given region is one thing.

"But it's also important to know which plastics appear, in order to identify their possible origin and in the best case to reduce microplastic emissions from these sources."

In order to find out where these plastics came from, the team analysed the composition of the particles.

The team found that a significant proportion of the particles were in fact microplastics that were used as a binding agent in marine paint.

Other microplastic particles were identified as polyethylene, polypropylene and polyamides. These were used in packaging materials and fishing nets, among other things.

More than half of all the sample fragments were also visually similar to the ship paint on the vessel on which the team was travelling.

Identifying paint fragments

At the Centre for Marine Environmental Sciences (Marum) at the University of Bremen, the researchers analysed these fragments in more detail, by X-raying fluorescence (XRF) to identify pigments and fillers.

They were analysed in forensics, along with their plastic content, in a process normally used to identify cars in hit and run-type accidents.

In a circumstance like this one, paint slivers left at the accident site are the same as a vehicle's fingerprints.

The analysis showed that 89 per cent of the 101 microplastic particles that were studied in detail came from the Polastern.

The remaining 11 percent came from other sources.

Ms Lesitenschneider added: "Developing alternative marine paint that is more durable and environmentally friendly would make it possible to reduce this source of microplastics and the harmful substances they contain."

The findings were published in the journal Environmental Sciences and Technology.

How can the climate crisis enable terrorism?

Sam Hancock
Sat, December 11, 2021

(AFP/Getty)

Climate change is “an aggravating factor” for terrorism, the United Nations secretary-general has warned, adding that the world’s environmental decline puts any unstable or combative region at greater risk of security threats.

Antonio Guterres told a meeting of the UN security council this week that countries most vulnerable to the climate crisis are also the ones that “suffer from insecurity, poverty, weak governance and the scourge of terrorism”.

Painting a bleak picture, he said that when the impact of climate change leads to the loss of livelihoods and leaves populations in despair, “the promises of protection, income and justice – behind which terrorists sometimes hide their true designs – become more attractive”.


This goes a step further, Mr Guterres said, when climate disruptions hinder the ability of government institutions to provide public services, “fuelling grievances and mistrust towards authorities”.

Calling on the 15 council members present to protect the most “vulnerable” communities around the world, the UN chief laid out ways to sever the link between climate and terror-related issues – including making sure developed countries stick to their all-important net-zero targets.

Where in the world is this an issue?

Africa

Citing multiple African regions, Mr Guterres said it was essential for peace missions across the continent to be given the funding they need to fight terror groups and their growing influence.

Around Lake Chad, the jihadist group Boko Haram has been able to gain new recruits, “particularly from local communities disillusioned by a lack of economic opportunities and access to essential resources,” he told the UN security council.

Meanwhile, in central Mali, terrorist groups have exploited the growing tensions between herders and farmers to recruit new members from pastoralist communities – “who often feel excluded and stigmatised,” Mr Guterres said.

Charcoal production in Somali has also become a source of income for the al-Shabab extremist group, he told members, pointing to the global need for a reduction and eventual ban on manufacturing fossil fuels.

Middle East

In both Iraq and Syria, the militant group Isis has “exploited water shortages and taken control of water infrastructure to impose its will on communities” Mr Guterres said on Thursday.

What can be done to stop it?

The UN boss called for collective action to address the root causes of insecurity, stressing that “conflicts and terrorism do not take place in a vacuum”.

Instead, he said, each are the result of “deep fractures” in society such as poverty, human rights violations and poor governance.

It is only by addressing these issues, in addition to the well-documented steps needed worldwide to curb the effects of climate change, that the exploitative relationship between the climate crisis and terror groups can be annulled.

Mr Guterres laid out four key preventative measures to do this:

Increase investment in adaptation and resilience

Citing the recent Cop26 conference in Glasgow, Scotland, he reminded the council that developed countries must keep their promise to provide at least $100bn (£75.3bn) per year to developing countries for climate action.

Better analysis and early-warning systems

The UN chief stressed that understanding and anticipating the cascading effects of climate change strengthens all efforts to bolster peace and security.

“We also need to build on existing expertise in disaster risk reduction and integrate climate risk into all economic and financial decisions”, he said.

Development of partnerships and initiatives

He urged countries to make the best use of on-the-ground expertise, while drawing on the political, technical and financial capacities of regional and international actors.

“[Our] regional strategy for the stabilisation, recovery and resilience of the Boko Haram-affected areas of the Lake Chad basin region is a good example,” Mr Guterres said.

Jointly developed by the African Union, the Lake Chad Basin Commission, the UN and other partners, the strategy integrates humanitarian action, security, development and climate resilience, he explained.

Sustained investment

Finally, he warned that African peace missions in places such as the Sahel and Somalia often have limited room to manoeuvre and are faced with great funding uncertainties.

He asked the council to provide predictable funding “guaranteed by assessed contributions”.

“I urge you to consider this matter again as soon as possible”, he told ambassadors, insisting this would be key to ensuring terror groups can no longer exploit communities already succumbing to the effects of climate change.

Op-Ed: Climate migration will worsen the brutality and chaos on the Mediterranean


Ian Urbina
Sun, December 12, 2021

In July 2018, an Italian-flagged oil supply ship called the Asso 28 that was crossing the Mediterranean Sea encountered a stalled rubber raft carrying 100 desperate migrants. Trying to make the dangerous journey from Libya to Europe, the migrants had reached international waters when the supply ship rescued them. But the ship’s captain opted not to take the migrants to a port of safety in Europe, as required by law, but back to a gulag of migrant detention facilities in Libya where the United Nations and others have documented systematic torture, rape, extortion, forced labor and death.

In October, the captain of that supply ship, Giuseppe Sotgiu, paid a heavy price for his decision: An Italian judge sentenced him to a year in prison for violating humanitarian law. The painful irony of this conviction is that Sotgiu will be jailed for what European Union officials have been doing on a far grander scale for several years — pushing migrants back to a place of extreme human rights abuses.

Since at least 2017, the EU, led by Italy, has trained and equipped the Libyan coast guard to serve as a proxy maritime force, whose central purpose is to stop migrants from reaching European shores. Frontex, the EU border agency, locates migrant rafts, then alerts the Italians, who, in turn, inform the Libyan authorities. Once captured by the Libyan coast guard, tens of thousands of these migrants are then delivered into a dozen or so detention centers run by militias.

For the EU, and for the ship captains working the Mediterranean, the challenge of handling desperate migrants fleeing hardships in their native countries is only going to grow more pronounced.

Climate change is expected to displace 150 million people across the globe in the next 50 years. Rising seas, desertification and famine will drive the desperate to places like Europe and the U.S., testing the moral character and political imagination of countries better prepared to survive an overheated planet. The men and women working commercial ships in the Mediterranean will increasingly find themselves in an impossible bind. Even captains who abide by humanitarian law and decide to bring the migrants to Europe will sometimes face dire consequences.

In August 2020, for instance, the crew of a Danish-flagged oil tanker called the Maersk Etienne rescued 27 migrants, including a pregnant woman and a child, at the request of Maltese authorities. Malta then denied the Maersk ship entry to its port to offload the migrants, leading to a long and costly standoff that ended only after the migrants were handed over to a humanitarian organization. Italian prosecutors later alleged that Maersk had paid the organization more than $100,000 to take the migrants in a possible violation of immigration laws. Maersk called the payment a donation meant to help cover the costs of assisting with the migrants.

But most migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean never make it onto merchant ships because they are instead caught by the Libyan coast guard. Though it routinely opens fire on migrant rafts and has been tied to human trafficking, the coast guard continues to draw strong EU support. This year, the EU shipped six new speedboats to the coast guard, which uses them to capture migrants.

Even though the EU denies directly financing the abuse of migrants in Libya, an investigation by the Outlaw Ocean Project showed that EU money, typically flowing through humanitarian aid agencies, was nonetheless essential to the operation of both the coast guard and the detention centers where the migrants were kept.

I had long been interested in reporting on Libya’s gulag of migrant jails. A month before I was to head to Libya in May, I saw a tweet from an aid group about a shooting in one of Libya’s most notorious detention centers, Al Mabani, or “The Building,” located in the heart of the capital city of Tripoli. The victim was a young migrant from North Africa named Aliou Candé, who had been captured and sent there a few weeks earlier.

Through interviews, I learned that Candé was 28 and grew up on a farm near a remote village in Guinea Bissau, a place without plumbing or electricity. He was a fan of soccer and music, and in addition to speaking French and English, he was learning Portuguese in hopes of joining a brother in Portugal. He had a reputation as a dogged worker, who avoided trouble of any kind. “People respected him,” his brother Jacaria said.

But Candé would become a climate migrant — droughts in Guinea Bissau had become more common and longer; flooding became more unpredictable and damaging. His crops — cassava, mangoes and cashews — were failing and his children were hungry. Milk production from his cows was so meager that his children were allowed to drink it once a month. The shift in climate also resulted in more mosquitoes, and with them more disease.

But there was another way to survive — go to Europe. His brothers had done it. His family encouraged him to try. In the late summer of 2019, Candé set out for Europe. He took with him 600 euros, two pairs of pants, a T-shirt, a leather diary and the Quran. He told his wife he was not sure how long he’d be away, but he would be back.

Candé traveled by car across central Africa to Agadez, Niger, once called the Gateway to the Sahara. In January 2020, he arrived in Morocco, tried to pay for passage on a boat to Spain and learned that the price was 3,000 euros, more than he had. Eventually, he made it to Libya, where he heard he could take a cheaper raft to Italy. In February of this year, he and more than 100 other migrants pushed off from the Libyan shore aboard an inflatable rubber raft.

Roughly 70 miles from Libya, the Libyan coast guard rammed the migrants’ raft three times, then ordered them to climb a ladder to the ship. The migrants were taken back to land, loaded by armed guards into buses and trucks, and driven to Al Mabani.

Hundreds of detainees have died in these jails, subjected to deplorable conditions and violence by guards. Candé was killed in April when guards opened fire into part of the prison to stop a fight among detainees. He was buried in a migrant cemetery in Tripoli, more than 2,000 miles from his family in Guinea Bissau.

In Tripoli, I interviewed dozens of other migrants who had been imprisoned with Candé. They told me of cells so crowded the detainees had to sleep in shifts. They spoke of a special room where migrants were sometimes beaten while hung upside-down from ceiling beams. They shared with me the audio message that Candé recorded on a cellphone secreted into the jail where he made a final plea to his family to send the ransom he needed to be set free.

No one was punished for Candé’s death. EU officials called for an investigation, but then went silent. It all felt like one latest example of the impunity with which Libyan officials deal with some of the world’s most vulnerable people.

And then I got my own taste of Libyan impunity. A week into my reporting on Candé’s killing, I was abducted in my hotel room, and held for almost a week by Libya’s intelligence service, run by a militia called Al Nawasi. I was blindfolded, two of my ribs were broken, and I was held incommunicado for five days before my release. My crime? Reporting on migrants. Our four-person team was later forced at gunpoint by our captors to sign a confession document made out on the Libyan government’s official letterhead.

But some form of accountability from the EU and its partnership with Libya might be approaching. The conviction of the ship captain in October points to a growing discomfort with the illegality of delivering migrants back to Libya. Two cases were brought this year by migrants against Frontex, Europe’s border agency, before the Court of Justice of the European Union. The cases allege Frontex’s agents and its officials either ignored evidence of human rights abuses perpetrated by EU member states or themselves participated in the illegal turning back of migrants seeking asylum.

Of course, the EU is not alone in trying to outsource the dirty work of containing migration. In the last decade, the U.S. government has sought to reduce the flow of Latin American migrants to this country by pressuring Mexico to stop migrants at its southern border before they reach the U.S. So-called “remote vetting” for those seeking asylum also enables U.S. immigration authorities to avoid the quandary of what to do with people whose applications were denied but who come from places that lack deportation agreements. Migrants in detention centers in Mexico face extremely poor conditions, including overcrowding and lack of healthcare services, according to the Global Detention Project, a human rights organization based in Geneva.

Countries surely have a right and a duty to manage their borders, but the way the U.S. and the EU are handling waves of these migrants is ineffective and inhumane. Putting merchant ship captains in the middle of this crisis is hardly the solution. Worse still is outsourcing the problem to failed states like Libya where human rights abuses are a foregone conclusion.

Ian Urbina is an investigative journalist and the director of the Outlaw Ocean Project.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Nature's unsung hero, the humble fungus, could be the key to solving climate change


Evan Bush
Sun, December 12, 2021

Vast networks of microscopic, underground fungi serve a crucial role in Earth’s ecosystems — and there’s a lot we don’t know about them.

More than a quarter of Earth’s species live in soils underground, including the fungal networks that help store huge quantities of carbon, provide most plants with the majority of the nutrients they need to survive and allow the plants to receive important signals from others.

Now, a team of scientists is launching a first-of-its-kind effort to map the world’s mycorrhizal fungi, a process they hope can identify fungal biodiversity for conservation, grow understanding of how these species interact within ecosystems and keep more carbon in soil.

“These fungal networks have been a global blind spot in conservation and climate agendas. People haven’t woken up and realized there is this ancient life support form below our feet,” said Toby Kiers, an evolutionary biologist and professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, who co-founded SPUN, the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks.

“We need to know where biodiversity hot spots are. Where are the Amazon forests of the underground?” Kiers said.

Most of these fungi are underground and too small to see without a microscope — but they are plentiful. A handful of soil contains networks of tubular fungi that would span 60 miles if they were stretched out, Kiers said.

Confocal 3D-image of a fungal network with reproductive spores containing nuclei. (Vasilis Kokkoris)

Gardeners might recognize mycorrhizal fungi — pronounced my-core-eye-zal — as the white filaments that extend from the roots of trees and other plants, clinging to dirt clods like stringy, ancient hair. Combined in layers, they are massive networks of fungal threads called mycelium.

Kiers described tangles of mycorrhizal fungi as a “continuous pipe system” that branches, fuses and flows with nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus.

“We follow them as if they are a river,” Kiers said, adding that the nutrients can flow in more than one direction.

The networks — which typically share a mutually beneficial relationship with the plants to which they connect — are fundamental to how forests and other ecosystems work.

“The fungi massively extend the trees’ root systems,” said Colin Averill, a co-founder of SPUN and a senior scientist at ETH Zürich. Some help decompose dead plants and animals and recycle nutrients.

The way scientists talk about the creatures can sound like fables.

Without mycorrhizal fungi, plants might never have reached land. Hundreds of millions of years ago, all flora were aquatic until a partnership with mycorrhizal fungi allowed them to settle on land, Kiers said.

Plants can receive chemical signals through the networks, which helps them share resources, learn from neighbors about pests and get warnings about competitors, recent studies suggest. The pioneering work by Canadian scientist Suzanne Simard and others has upended the idea that trees are solitary competitors duking it out for space, water and sunlight in the forest.

Instead, through fungal networks, “trees may really be cooperating as a family unit,” Averill said. More research is needed to better understand the nature of the relationships.

SPUN aims to map the world’s fungal networks by using machine learning to identify where biodiversity hot spots might exist and then work with local scientists to collect samples in remote locations where they’ve never been gathered before.

SPUN 2021 (Seth Carnill)

The DNA of each fungus species within the sample will be extracted, sequenced and then mapped to its location, giving scientists a census of which species live where. Scientists plan to combine the information with data about the surrounding climate and vegetation coverage to better understand patterns in different ecosystems.

The nonprofit organization, which recently received a $3.5 million donation from the Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham Environmental Trust, hopes to collect 10,000 soil samples over the next 18 months.

It’s work that couldn’t have been done without recent advances in genomic sequencing, which allows scientists to see the genetic makeup of these tiny species.

“We really didn’t have tools to see the diversity and types of organisms living underground,” Averill said. “Now it feels like we’re inside the soil.”

Microorganisms — including bacteria and fungi — play critical roles in the carbon cycle, and the ability to rapidly analyze what is living within soils offers a deeper understanding of our changing climate and possible solutions.

“It really is a frontier,” said Serita Frey, a microbiologist and professor at the University of New Hampshire who isn’t involved with the project. “That can’t really be overstated. There’s so much we don’t know yet about what goes on below ground.”

Frey said the mapping project could help fill out scientists’ understanding of microbial communities and help target areas deserving of conservation.

“This sort of mapping has been done for macro-organisms for a long time. The idea of mapping microorganisms is quite new and only something we’ve been able to do in the last five to eight years,” Frey said.

As the world warms, understanding how mycorrhizal fungi and other microorganisms interact with soil could be crucial to slow down warming and adapt to a new climate.

“We’re just coming to understand this outsized role microbes play in the global carbon cycle, which has important implications for climate and future climate,” Frey said. “How these microbes are managed is going to be really important.”

Fungi promote plant growth, which sequesters carbon in trees and other plant species. They also help bury and store carbon in the soil.

About 75 percent of terrestrial carbon is in soil, and the scientists want to keep it there by preserving these biodiversity hot spots.

“We’ve got this amazing carbon sink,” Kiers said. “We can’t lose it.”

They are also exploring what tweaks to the system could promote more carbon absorption or cut down on fertilizer use in agriculture, which can have environmental costs.

“There’s a threefold variation in how fast a tree grows, depending on which fungi is living in those soils,” Averill said. “Can we accelerate carbon capture in forests by manipulating which mycorrhizal fungi live in the forest soil?”

Wetlands point to extinction problems beyond climate change

Sat, December 11, 2021



It's not just climate change that's driving extinctions: Wetland mismanagement is endangering 40,000 small but vital plant and animal species, according to the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD).

A recent study by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) cited by the center found that 16 percent of all dragon- and damselfly species, among many others, are at risk of extinction from factors including pesticide misuse and sewage discharge.

Wetland ecosystems around the world "are disappearing three times faster than forests," Bruno Oberle, IUCN director general, said in a statement.

"Marshes and other wetlands may seem unproductive and inhospitable to humans, but in fact they provide us with essential services. They store carbon, give us clean water and food, protect us from floods, as well as offer habitats for one in ten of the world's known species," Oberle said.

Across the United States, 85 percent of wetlands have already been destroyed by "careless planning" that has led to the extinction of species including Bachmann's warbler and the ivory-billed woodpecker.

Wetland species face a thousandfold risk of extinction compared to others, the CBD says.

Few of the species in question are household names, but many serve as key foundations in local ecosystems, with their absence risking broader collapses.

Populations of rabbitsfoot mussel a native of the Great Lakes and the Ohio River drainage basin, which has been reduced to about half its former range, are in danger from a planned increase in sewage discharge into creeks outside Columbus, according to the CBD.

And a new dam planned for the Little Canoe Creek in Alabama risks wiping out the Canoe Creek clubshell, an endangered mollusk that depends on clean, pollutant- and silt-free water for survival, the CBD says.

Sewage discharge and dams are only one part of the problem: 41 percent of insect species worldwide are in danger of extinction due to the conversion of their habitats to agriculture and the accompanying massive rise in water-borne pesticides including glycophosphates and neonicotinoids, according to a 2019 study in Biological Conservation.

"A rethinking of current agricultural practices, in particular a serious reduction in pesticide usage and its substitution with more sustainable, ecologically-based practices, is urgently needed to slow or reverse current trends," the analysis said.

Ninety percent of U.S. streams tested by scientists carried pesticides or their toxic byproducts, according to a study this year by the American Chemical Society - with impacts that scientists stressed might be higher by a factor of ten "or more."

"The pesticide industry has conditioned Americans to believe the fiction that these highly toxic pesticides just magically vanish," Jess Tyler, a CBD scientist, said in a statement about that research.

The Trump administration weakened many restrictions on pesticide use in 2019, particularly by limiting scrutiny of the effects when rains flush pesticides into waterways - measures that were "antithetical to the plain language and purpose" of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), according to legal filings from ten state attorneys general.

The Biden administration pledged to reverse the Trump-era rollback of environmental protections, and in August passed new measures restricting use of the insecticide paraquat, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

But the current administration has also defended many Trump-era pesticide policies, including an approval of the pesticide malathion that downplayed the number of endangered species it risked wiping out from 1,284 to 78, according to nonprofit news service Investigate Midwest.

Three overlapping bills, meanwhile, aim to confront America's extinction crisis.

The Extinction Crisis Emergency Act, sponsored by Democratic Reps. Marie Newman (Ill.) and Jesús Garcia (Ill.), would declare a national emergency around wildlife extinctions and direct all federal agencies to protect species and preserve habitats.

The Recovering America's Wildlife Act, sponsored by Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), would provide funds to states and tribes to keep populations of threatened species from declining to the point that they need ESA protections.

And the Extinction Prevention Act, co-sponsored by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) would provide specific federal funding to the most-imperiled - but "least charismatic" - species in America, including butterflies, desert fish and freshwater mussels.

The new studies highlight a point with implications far beyond wetlands: Climate change is but one component in a far broader extinction crisis.

Recounting a friend's paper "about the extinction of Monte Verde golden toad," University of Arizona researcher Emily Schultz, working on a separate analysis, was left with a question: "Was it climate or was it the invasive chytrid fungus that caused frogs worldwide to go through massive die-offs? The bottom line, for the Monte Verde golden toad, was that it was an interaction between the two. The extreme drought year they had then reduced the size and number of the pools the frogs were found in. Because they were crowded into smaller pools, they transmitted the fungus more rapidly."

The way that climate and nonclimate factors stacked on top of each other suggested "that we're running out of time to save wildlife and ultimately ourselves," Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the CBD, said in a statement.

"The Biden administration has to muster the political will to move away from dirty fossil fuels, change the toxic ways we produce food, curtail the wildlife trade and halt ongoing loss of habitat. We actually can do these things," she added.

Endangered Right Whale Gives Birth While Entangled In Fishing Gear


Hilary Hanson

HUFFPOST
Sat, December 11, 2021

A female North Atlantic right whale who has been entangled in fishing gear for months has given birth to a healthy calf, but scientists fear for the small family’s welfare in the long term.

The mother whale, nicknamed Snow Cone, was first seen dragging fishing rope behind her in Massachusett’s Plymouth Bay in March, according to a Friday release from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Rescuers were able to get some, but not all, of the rope off of her before she left the bay.

Snow Cone, with fishing rope dragging from her mouth, and her newborn calf on Dec. 2. (Photo: Georgia Department of Natural Resources/NOAA Permit #20556)

More attempts were made to free her in May and June, but Snow Cone resisted their efforts and was “evasive and strong,” Mackie Greene of the New Brunswick-based Campobello Whale Rescue team told CBC News.

No one knew at the time that Snow Cone was pregnant. But earlier this month, scientists spotted Snow Cone ― still dragging thick, heavy rope from her mouth ― with a newborn calf off the coast of Georgia.

NOAA scientists were both “surprised and concerned” that Snow Cone had managed to give birth while entangled, the agency’s statement said.

The calf is healthy, uninjured and not caught in the rope, but scientists fear the baby could get entangled, too.

“My concern is [Snow Cone’s] still got two pieces of rope, about 20 feet, coming out from the left side of her mouth,” Clay George, a biologist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources biologist told the Associated Press. “If those two pieces of rope ended up getting knotted around each other and there’s a loop, you could imagine that calf could end up becoming entangled.”

Even if that doesn’t happen, the stress of the situation still poses a major threat to both the calf and Snow Cone’s health.

“Entanglement alone is a costly energetic drain and so is nursing a calf,” Barb Zoodsma, a large whale recovery coordinator at NOAA, said in the release. “The severity of her mouth and head injuries are also disconcerting. For these reasons, Snow Cone may be facing her biggest challenge yet in the upcoming months.”

She noted, however that Snow Cone’s perseverance ― her previous calf was killed in a boat collision last year ― shows that the mother whale “clearly” has “game.”

In the meantime, scientists say that, while her newborn is close by, it’s too risky to get close to Snow Cone to try again to disentangle her.

North Atlantic right whales are critically endangered, and both fishing gear entanglements and collisions with ships are major threats to the species. According to NOAA, there are fewer than 350 of the whales left, and they’re currently dying out faster than they can reproduce.




North Atlantic Right Whales Are Getting Smaller As Humans Stress Them Out



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US Interior Secretary Haaland touts solar energy in desert visit

Janet Wilson, Palm Springs Desert Sun
Sat, December 11, 2021

U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland waits to speak outside the Bureau of Land Management office in Palm Springs, Calif., on December 11, 2021.

U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland visited the California desert on Saturday to promote industrial solar farms and other major renewable projects on public lands in the West.

"The demand for renewable energy has never been greater," she said at a sun-splashed outdoor press briefing at the Bureau of Land Management's Palm Springs office. "The technological advances, increased interest, cost-effectiveness and tremendous economic potential make these projects a promising path for diversifying our energy portfolio."

Haaland said the Department of Interior is working with states, cities and tribes "to meet our goal of permitting at least 25 gigawatts of onshore renewable energy by 2025."


One gigawatt is roughly the size of two coal-fired power plants and can power 750,000 homes. There are an estimated 97.2 gigawatts in operation in the U.S. currently, according to the Department of Energy, or enough to power 18 million homes.

Haaland, along with other top federal officials, sees using portions of vast federal lands to build new renewable energy as critical to cutting fossil fuel emissions, slowing rapid climate change and boosting local economies. That includes across the Mojave and Sonoran deserts in select areas.

She said the Bureau of Land Management is currently processing 49 onshore clean energy projects proposed on public lands in the western United States, including 36 solar projects, four wind projects, four geothermal projects and five interconnect "gen tie" lines that she said "are vital" to connect to clean energy projects proposed on non-federal land.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and U.S. Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Palm Desert visit Desert Sunlight solar farm in Desert Center, Calif., on December 11, 2021.

"These projects have the combined potential to add over 24,500 megawatts of renewable energy to the western electric grid."

A megawatt can power between 400 and 900 homes. The share of electricity from solar "farms" in the U.S. that use photovoltaic panels or concentrating solar thermal power technology is still small — just over 3% — but is growing, according to the energy department.
Deflecting Concerns

Haaland didn't directly respond to a question about concerns from area environmentalists and some Native Americans about loss of critical habitat for species and possible destruction of sacred sites during construction of renewable energy facilities. Haaland, who is the first Native American U.S. Cabinet member, instead said the entire Biden administration, not just her department, has made it a top priority to consult with sovereign tribes early and often on major initiatives.

She said in her prepared remarks that "at every step of the way" on its renewable energy plans, "Interior will undertake ... broad engagement, including fishermen, outdoor enthusiasts, sovereign tribal nations, states, territories, local officials, agricultural and forest land owners and others to ... reflect the priorities of every single community."

That's a tall order. U.S. Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Palm Desert, who was at Haaland's side on Saturday, said that in California, the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan had been carefully hammered out during the Obama administration to ensure important areas and cultural artifacts were conserved, while other areas are bulldozed and built on.

U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, left, listens as U.S. Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Palm Desert speaks outside the Bureau of Land Management office in Palm Springs, Calif., on December 11, 2021.

BLM California Director Karen Mouritsen said at the press event that possible refinements to the desert plan are being discussed with various groups to meet its aims. In the past, for instance, biologists have noted desert tortoises, rare wild flowers or other species in areas slated for development, while not seeing them in some areas conserved for them.

Ruiz sees solar and lithium projects as critical not just to the U.S., but to the region.

"It is our signature, our competitive advantage to produce renewable energy," he said. "You can't talk about solar ... without talking about what we have going on in eastern Riverside County. The 36th district is a national leader in renewable energy, in fact we produce more solar energy on federal land than any other congressional district in the country."

Haaland and Ruiz also celebrated the recently enacted $1 trillion federal bipartisan infrastructure law, saying it would help repair aging infrastructure, get clean drinking water to children and others and modernize broadband and other critical systems.

Haaland deferred to top Interior department appointees when asked about continued drought and worsening shortages in the Colorado River system, which provides water for eight Western states and Mexico.

Rural water districts in the Coachella and Imperial valleys hold senior rights to the water under a 1922 Colorado River compact and court case law, but some say as interior secretary, she or other officials at her direction could open up the compact for new negotiations or take other emergency action. Water experts say if she did, districts that hold senior rights would probably take the matter all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Desert Sunlight Energy Center can be seen from several miles away at Interstate 10 in Desert Center, December 19, 2019.

After the press event, Haaland and Ruiz toured the 550-megawatt Desert Sunlight solar farm off Interstate 10 north of Desert Center, and visited a natural resources conservation site managed by BLM near Corn Springs. The area was a major site for prehistoric Native American Indian groups. The petroglyphs at Corn Springs are considered one of the finest examples of rock art in the Colorado Desert, covering a 10,000 year span.

The desert stops are part of a multi-day swing by Haaland across the Southwest, including attending the Western Governors Conference in Coronado on Thursday, touring a Wilmington neighborhood hard hit by pollution from oil and gas extraction and diesel trucks, speaking with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti about funds to plug abandoned old oil wells, and now heading to Las Vegas for a major water conference.

Janet Wilson is senior environment reporter for The Desert Sun, and co-authors USA Today Climate Point. She can be reached at jwilson@gannett.com or @janetwilson66 on Twitter

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: US Interior Secretary Haaland visits California desert, touts solar energy

Cherokee Nation chief optimistic about seating delegate in Congress

The principal chief of the Cherokee Nation expressed optimism in an interview that aired Sunday that it will be able to see its delegate seated in Congress.

© Istock Cherokee Nation chief optimistic about seating delegate in Congress

During an appearance on "Axios on HBO," Cherokee chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said the U.S. should make good on its treaty agreement with the tribe by seating Kim Teehee in the House of Representatives. The tribe tapped Teehee as their representative delegate in 2019, according to Axios.

"The president of the United States agreed to this 180 years ago," Hoskin Jr. said. "The United States Senate did its job 180 years ago; there's one part of the government left to take action. That's the United States House of Representatives."

The Treaty of New Echota, signed by then-President Andrew Jackson and ratified by the Senate in 1835, promised the Cherokee Nation a nonvoting House delegate.

Thousands of Cherokee tribe members died making the journey from their homelands in the U.S. states of Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee to Oklahoma in what is known as the "Trail of Tears."

Hoskin Jr. and Tehee expressed optimism about that their efforts were moving in the right direction and were gaining support.

Hoskin Jr. said that any lawmaker who campaigned for "pro-tribal sovereignty and goes back on such a basic promise, they're gonna be on the opposite side of me and they're gonna be on the opposite side of history. And there'll be a consequence for that."

"I think as long as we are willing to proactively continue to keep the ball moving, we'll get there," Teehee told Axios.

133 years of struggle: Lumbee have faced a long and winding path to federal recognition

Josh Shaffer

Sun, December 12, 2021

The tea-brown waters of the Lumber River have supported Native Americans for thousands of years, and the Lumbee tribe formed from ancestors who predate white settlers and others who sought security in the thick, swampy woods.

Even there, the native people lost land to whites and, once the Civil War began, faced the threat of conscription into the Confederate Army, which forced them to build up Fort Fisher and defend the port at Wilmington.

This led to the Lowrie War, in which Lumbee fought the Confederate Home Guard.

After the war, rising racial tension caused many natives to conceal their tribal identity, or bond together with other tribes to form a common identity and self-determination. Known then just as “Indians,” the natives around the Lumbee got their first official name in 1885 when they were recognized by the North Carolina legislature.

They were then the Croatan, and under that name, they started their long road to federal recognition. That road continues with the Lumbee Recognition Act now before the U.S. Senate.

U.S. Sen. Richard Burr counted 29 bills for recognition in the last 133 years. Here is some of that history:

1888

The tribe first asks Congress for federal recognition, having recently built its own Normal School with just $500 a year in state assistance. The tribe sought more educational money to “compensate for the state’s unequal funding.”

The federal government declined to recognize them or provide any school funds.

Dancers perform at the annual Lumbee spring pow-wow in Lumberon.

1935

The tribe is encouraged to seek recognition under the federal Indian Reorganization Act, but they were required to be at least half-native.

Several years later, only 22 of 209 people in Robeson County qualified under the tests that Lumbee now describe as pseudoscience.
1956

Congress recognized the Lumbee as an American Indian tribe, but it held back the services and benefits that normally came along with recognition.

This “Lumbee Bill” remains an infamous moment for the tribe.

Raven Stanley, right, of Greensboro and the Lumbee tribe gets help preparing for the Carolina Indian Circle Powwow from Tabitha Jacobs, left, at UNC-Chapel Hill Saturday March 23, 2013, in Chapel Hill.

1992

A bill for Lumbee recognition died on the U.S. Senate floor. Sen. Jesse Helms had opposed the tribe’s bid for recognition, saying it should move through the Bureau of Indian Affairs rather than Congress. The 1956 bill, however, prohibited them from doing so.

1994

Another bill failed to reach the Senate floor despite support from North Carolina Sen. Lauch Faircloth, who had earlier opposed recognition.

Nicholas Wayne Locklear, 9, sits in the cab of a truck as he waits for a thunderstorm to end at the Lumbee tribe powwow at the farmer’s market grounds in Robeson County . Locklear, who is Lumbee and is from the town of Shannon, was introduced to American Indian dance by his uncle. They were both competing at the powwow.

2003

An archaeologist and UNC-Chapel Hill professor with Cherokee ties said the Western North Carolina tribe was actively working against Lumbee recognition, fearing a rival casino would eat into its own gambling funds.

“It would cut that money in half,” said Brett Riggs, a former tribal archaeologist and deputy tribal historic preservationist officer for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. “They are lobbying against it like you would not believe.”

2020

President Joe Biden, then a candidate, pledged full support for Lumbee recognition. President Donald Trump, running against Biden, pledged the same shortly afterward.

Despite this, the Lumbee were left out of a Congressional spending package.

2021

The Lumbee Recognition Act passes the U.S. House and is sent to a Senate committee, where it received favorable words from both Sens. Richard Burr and Thom Tills.

“To say the tribe has been here before would be an understatement,” Burr said in a November Senate hearing. “No other tribe in the country has been subjected to as much Congressional scrutiny.”

Sources: Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, NC Museum of History, News & Observer archives.

Nigerian Student Changes The Game When Illustration Of A Black Woman’s Womb Goes Viral

Shannon Dawson
Sun, December 12, 2021

Black Baby Illustration

Source: Courtesy of @ebereillustrate / @ebereillustrate

A medical student and illustrator from Nigeria sparked a wide conversation about the lack of diversity in medical industry textbooks from an eye-catching illustration posted to his social media account.

25-year-old Chidiebere Ibe, a first-time student at Kyiv Medical University, drew an image of a pregnant Black woman’s womb– a diagram that is rarely seen in the medical industry. Ibe’s stunning illustration quickly went viral with many people noting how most, if not all medical diagrams, appear to depict white women. Ibe’s drawing has since sparked an outpour of support from social media users and has amassed over 95,000 likes on Instagram– something the young medical student said he “never expected.”

“The whole purpose was to keep talking about what I’m passionate about –– equity in healthcare — and also to show the beauty of Black people,” Ibe told the HuffPost UK. “We don’t only need more representation like this — we need more people willing to create representation like this.”

Black social media users have been pouring into the medical illustrator’s comment section expressing their gratitude for the inclusive image. One Instagram user commented:

“I’ve literally never seen anything like this! Keep doing what you’re doing! You should make a textbook! Too much? A reference book! A pamphlet! Whatever it is, this should be produced. I’m nowhere near the medical field, but I’m an educator who loves information soooo…I’d buy it!”

Another social media goer chimed in; “This is amazingly beautiful! Thank you for sharing! As a Wombman and a Holistic Doula, I would love to share your illustration with all of my clients! Do you offer prints for sale?”

While supermodel Noami Campbell simply wrote:
“Thank You”.

The passionate illustrator, who hails from Ebonyi State, Nigeria, taught himself how to draw during the Coronavirus lockdown period. Artnet News reported that Ibe is currently the chief medical illustrator and creative director at the Journal of Global Neurosurgery. He dreams of becoming a pediatric neurosurgeon someday and hopes that his illustrations can be used to save lives.

“Textbooks are essential to medical training,” Ibe wrote on his YouTube channel. They walk medical trainees through conditions they will encounter during their practice. The skin is an important organ that protects us and can signal when something is wrong in our body. Yet, most medical illustrations are on the Caucasian skin. This lack of diversity has important implications for medical trainees and their future patients because many conditions and signs look different based on the patient’s skin color.”

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Ibe also told Artnet News that the lack of diversity in the medical illustration world could potentially lead to a misdiagnosis or insufficient treatment plan for Black people. Ibe noted that “the lack of understanding of how diseases can appear for Black patients can lead to “mortality, childbirth pains,” and “communication problems.”

According to the Association of Medical Illustrators, there are 2,000 trained medical illustrators in the world, many of whom are white and male. A study conducted by the University of Wollongong in Australia found that out of more than 6000 medical images found across 17 anatomy textbooks published between 2008 and 2013, only 36 percent of the bodies depicted were female– a majority being White. 3 percent of the drawings depicted disabled bodies and only 2 percent captured elderly people.

“Historically [medical illustrations] have always featured white able-bodied male figures and still do in the present day,” Ni-Ka Ford, diversity committee chair for the Association of Medical Illustrators told CNN. “Bias towards one body type in medical illustration marginalizes everyone else.”

Ibe has created a GoFundMe to help with his education fees and to hopefully bring more awareness to the lack of diversity and equity within the health care industry.

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