World takes big step to protect biodiversity at COP15; will governments & corporations follow it with action?

LONG READ

Alife sized ice sculpture of a polar bear was recently living in downtown Montreal. As the bright sun beat down on it, the bronze skeleton underneath slowly became visible. Each drop of water that slid off the bones represents a portion of polar ice that is melting away. On December 19, the last day of the COP15 biodiversity conference, the entire skeleton was exposed.

That was the plan.

The jarring visual represents an unsettling reality. Without fast action the vulnerable polar bear population will be lost.

The rapid increase in global temperature over the past few decades has dramatically shrunk the polar ice caps, which regulate so much of the Earth’s major oceanic and air systems.

This mass-scale loss of ice, especially the Arctic cap, has the effect of changing the entire planet: the ice and snow reflect between 50 and 70 percent of the sun’s solar radiation, while oceans absorb about 95 percent; the loss of ice is rapidly warming the oceans, putting millions of species, including oceanic plant life, at risk; while sea level rise threatens coastal habitats where humans and millions of other plant and animal species exist.

From increased atmospheric temperature, to an epochal shift in climate patterns and weather systems, carbon emissions continue to alter the Earth’s giant ecosystem, and almost all organic life as we know it is being impacted.

According to the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC), as of May, 841 wildlife species were in various risk categories including endangered, threatened, special concern and extirpated, in Canada alone. Scientists have been using the phrase the ‘sixth mass extinction’ to describe the looming crisis. Humans and our activities are the main drivers.

The UN Environment Programme reports the following:

As COP15 came to a close in the early morning hours on December 20, a decision was reached. After two years of delays due to the pandemic, nearly 200 nations sealed a deal to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. The Kunming—Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), as the decision is called, was ratified under the headline 30 by 30, meaning 30 percent of Earth’s land, oceans, coastal areas and inland waters will be protected by 2030.

The agreement, being trumpeted as a landmark deal to help avoid planetary catastrophe, already has its critics.

The decision was not reached without its challenges. Developing nations accused more developed nations of setting lofty ambitions without offering enough monetary support for all countries to achieve them. Some African, Latin American and Asian countries wanted a new dedicated biodiversity fund, while countries like Canada and Western European nations preferred to use the existing Global Environment Fund (GEF). Eventually, a compromise was reached to create a new dedicated biodiversity fund within the GEF.

“It was difficult to reach this agreement and it is a good one to start from so overall I am glad the parties were able to agree on it on time,” said Flavio Affinito, a PhD candidate in the Department of Biology at McGill University who spent the majority of his week as an observer at the COP conference.

While challenges like those surrounding the funding issues, prolonged the negotiations, the Kunming—Montreal GBF was ratified. The agreement sets out 23 targets for protecting biodiversity under overarching global goals: to maintain and restore natural ecosystems and the genetic diversity that lives within them for current and future generations; appropriately sharing resources amongst Indigenous and local communities for digital sequence information and traditional knowledge; and ensuring equitable access to financial resources, capacity building and scientific cooperation.

The main highlight of the decision is the 30 percent protection of natural areas by 2030. Currently, 17 percent of the world’s terrestrial and 10 percent of the world’s marine areas are under protection. Other highlights of the decision include reducing to near zero the loss of areas of high biodiversity importance, cutting global food waste in half, reducing the risk from chemicals and pesticides by half, mobilizing $200 billion annually in private and public funding for biodiversity, raising the flow of funds from developed to developing nations to $20 billion per year by 2025 and $30 billion by 2030, preventing the introduction of invasive species and requiring large and transnational companies to assess and disclose risks on the impacts on biodiversity through their operations.

According to the UN State of Finance for Nature Report, current finance flows for nature-based solutions are at $154 billion USD per year, less than half of the $383 billion needed by 2025 and a third of the $484 billion needed by 2030. The Global Biodiversity Framework from Kunming—Montreal allocates $200 billion for biodiversity and aims to reduce subsidies that harm biodiversity by at least $500 billion by 2030.

Affinito agreed that funding could be higher, especially in the amounts given to developing countries to help support biodiversity.

“Thirty billion a year is great but about triple as much would have been a good starting point,” he said.

The world erupted in celebration following the signing of the decision with some claiming the planet had been saved.

“I am quite surprised that people agreed to the 30 percent,” said Peter Arcese, Professor in the Department of Forestry and Conservation at the University of British Columbia. “I was very heartened, because my understanding is that the negotiations were really quite difficult.”

Arcese said he fully believes the 30 by 30 goal is achievable. He pointed to the example of the Serengeti conservation area in Tanzania where he used to work. The area is surrounded by Indigenous lands that have been dangerously mismanaged by the government for profit. Recently, the sensitive ecosystems have slowly been directed to be co-managed with the local population.

“Because many of those local people utilize the land in ways which are consistent with conservation, there is every reason to think that we might actually not just improve outcomes for conservation by pursuing the 30 percent goal, but improve outcomes for human wellbeing, particularly people who have traditionally been left out of that discussion,” he said.

Arcese is confident the same principles can be applied globally.

Others are a bit more skeptical about the potential of the 30 by 30 agreement. Thomas Burelli, a professor in the Faculty of Law and Co-Director of the Centre for Environmental Law and Global Sustainability at the University of Ottawa, said the purpose of the conference was to create a global framework so we should not be surprised that we now have one. He stressed the importance of remembering that this conference was originally supposed to happen in 2020 so we are now two years behind on achieving these goals.

“Before celebrating, saying it’s victory and saying it’s amazing, I would wait to see the results,” he said.

Part of the apprehension comes from historic patterns that show globally we have failed to reach the environmental targets that we have set for ourselves. In 2010, over 190 countries signed onto the Aichi Biodiversity Targets which aimed to reduce pressure on biodiversity, restore ecosystems and encourage the sustainable use of biological resources. In 2020, the United Nations (UN) reported that the international community failed to fully meet any of the targets and only met six in part.

cbc.caCOP15 delegates nearing draft proposal to save world’s species
2:35

DailymotionHistoric biodiversity deal reached at the COP15 summit in Montreal
1:05

cbc.caCOP15 delegates sign historic deal to protect nature
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“In 2010, with the Aichi targets, people were like ‘yeah, it’s a new era for nature. We’ll live in harmony with biodiversity now’,” Burelli said. “Twelve years after, we didn’t achieve them and we still have the same kind of speech.”

Arcese and Affinito both argue that there is a sizable difference between the Aichi deal and Kunming—Montreal. According to Arcese, Aichi did not have a lot of “mechanism”, which he refers to as the types of funding and engagement that are explicitly mentioned in the Kunming—Montreal Decision. Engagement looks like the inclusion of women, Indigenous peoples and other minorities and local communities in conversations and actions.

Another problem with the Aichi targets was its language which was very ambiguous, making it unclear when a target would have been achieved. According to Affinito, many of the targets that are part of the Kunming—Montreal decision are clear enough that progress toward them can be measured effectively. However, some of the targets still leave them open to interpretation.

“Reducing environmental damage to ‘close to zero’, how close is close enough? One percent? 10 percent? 15 percent?” Affinito questioned. “These values mean very different things for ecosystems and the people and species relying on them.”

He added he also would have liked to see stronger language and more clarity around the mentioning of subsidies.

“The language surrounding their reduction and phasing out is so weak that it leaves a lot of room for countries to argue their way out of doing what needs to be done,” he said.

Burelli is leery that countries only have eight years to meet the targets.

“It's important to have healthy skepticism about that timeframe. But at the same time, people are busy doing it,” Arcese said.

He alluded to the example of parkland in British Columbia. Parks in the province make up approximately 15 percent of the landscape. The BC Parks Foundation recently received $100 million to acquire 25 new properties by 2025. This is just one initiative that Arcese said will help bring the western province closer to the 30 by 30 goal.

“My confidence comes from the knowledge of active engagement, which is already underway,” he said. He also said that while these examples don’t give him a sense of certainty, they do give him confidence.

Burelli is cautious, but not pessimistic. He agreed that while Canada did not meet the targets set out in the Aichi agreement, we did make some progress.

Canadian Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault went as far as to call the Montreal deal the Paris Agreement of biodiversity. The comparison has puzzled many as the world is currently failing to meet the targets set out in Paris, and Canada’s performance has been described as an embarrassment.

Only action, and consequences for failure that force real change, will make the signing of the Montreal deal a success, experts say.

“You are referring to one moment when the international community came to an agreement,” Burelli said. “But I don’t care about the agreement, I prefer to care about the intention of it.”

“The Government of Canada demonstrated at COP15 that it understands what it takes to be a leader in the global fight to protect, halt and reverse nature loss,” Melanie Snow, Ecojustice legislative affairs specialist, said in a press release. “The federal government must now translate the ambition and commitment it had on display on the international stage into concrete, meaningful action at home.”

The Kunming—Montreal agreement is not legally binding, meaning there will be no sanctions or other consequences for nations who fail to meet the targets within the given timeframe. The signing of the agreement is essentially symbolic. The public has to hold leaders to their promises.

“A stated commitment is better than nothing at all,” Affinito said. “If we don’t even sign these agreements then business as usual is a guarantee and there is no doubt anymore that business as usual will lead to catastrophic consequences for people worldwide. This agreement, if nothing else, signals to non-state actors, like companies, that nations are demanding that biodiversity be taken seriously.”

He said individual signatories can choose to enshrine all or part of the decision into their national laws. Minister Guilbeault has suggested that he is considering this avenue. Whether he does so, remains to be seen.

For Burelli, enshrining the decision into Canadian law is not the most important action. While Canada does not have a Biodiversity Act, he said there are parts of this agreement that are already within Canadian laws, for example the Endangered Species Act which, according to the government of Canada website, is “a key federal government commitment to prevent wildlife species from becoming extinct and secure the necessary actions for their recovery”.

We are in a time crunch and, to Burelli, it is more important that we work toward these targets using the resources and laws we already have rather than spending our time creating new laws. Trying to enact new legislation within this framework would take cooperation from all three levels of government and could take years to complete, if it’s even doable given the current schism between Ottawa and some of the provinces, including Ontario, when it comes to climate change and the protection of our natural world.

“We already have a framework in place to keep increasing the percentage of protected areas,” he said. “So we don’t need to adopt a completely new framework for these targets.”

“These targets will be very hard to achieve. And when I say this I'm very cautious because I'm already ready to bet that we won't achieve it.”

Affinito said the decision required the consensus of over 190 nations who have various cultural and geographic settings. Therefore, he said it is important to remember that an agreement requiring multinational cooperation will be a baseline and does not stop individual countries from being more ambitious in their own efforts.

“Don’t forget that this agreement is a minimum, a floor below which states should not be falling,” he said.

Rather than having a disincentive of consequences for failure to achieve, the incentive for achieving these targets is the knowledge that we are protecting and conserving biodiversity.

“I think what we've found is that it's more a change of habit,” Arcese said. “And changing the habits and how we use resources is not necessarily a backwards thing to conservation and economy.”

Affinito agrees that the attitudes of people toward biodiversity need to change. We need to stop viewing the world as ours to use and rather see ourselves as a small part of a much larger whole.

“We need a shift in mindset away from profit first, to people and planet first,'' he said. “The best way to incentivize countries to change is for people to shift their focus too.”

Humans are by nature selfish beings. So we need to understand that protecting biodiversity is good for us as well. It is important for governments to recognize the economic viability in these solutions, which appeals to more individualistic priorities.

“The number one thing to keep in mind is that we have power when it comes to the future,” Affinito said. “It isn't just about the pandas and polar bears, it’s about the air you breathe and water you drink and make sure that it becomes a number one priority where you live.”

“Thousands of local scale improvements can lead to a healthier biosphere.”

Email: rachel.morgan@thepointer.com

Twitter: @rachelnadia_

Rachel Morgan, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Pointer

Indigenous conservation funding must reflect Canada’s true debt to First Nations, Inuit and Métis

Story by Zoe Todd, Associate Professor, Department of Indigenous Studies, Simon Fraser University • Yesterday 


The United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) wrapped up in Montréal on Sunday. The ratification of the so-called 30x30 proposal to protect 30 per cent of the Earth’s territories by 2030 was a central focus during the 12 days of negotiations at the international summit.


Protesters interrupt a speech by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — demanding that the government stop invading Indigenous land — during the opening ceremony of COP15, the UN conference on biodiversity, in Montréal, on Dec. 6, 2022.© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson

Canada is an enthusiastic supporter of the global 30x30 plan, which is championed by a host of nations and international environmental NGOs like The Nature Conservancy and the World Wildlife Fund.

However, in order to achieve its national targets, Canada is relying heavily on Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs) — all under the guise of “federally-supported Indigenous-led conservation”.

As a Red River Métis person and a researcher on freshwater fish futures and Indigenous sovereignty, I believe that these top-down targets and public-private partnerships could do more harm than good to First Nations, Inuit and Métis here, who deserve honest and true recognition of our sovereignty across Canada.

Funding with strings attached

In a report titled We Rise Together, the Indigenous Circle of Experts define IPCAs as “lands and waters where Indigenous governments have the primary role in protecting and conserving ecosystems through Indigenous laws, governance and knowledge systems.”

According to the report, IPCAs can be governed under a spectrum of approaches ranging from one that fully affirms the sovereignty of First Nations, Inuit and Métis as sole rights-holders of a territory to so-called partnership approaches that include hybrid, crown-Indigenous or industry-Indigenous partnerships.

At COP15, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced $800 million in funding for four Indigenous-led conservation projects over seven years to signal Canada’s commitment to Indigenous-led conservation. This is in addition to $340 million in funding for Indigenous-led conservation announced in 2021.

This federally sanctioned Indigenous-led conservation work — championed to help Canada meet its 30x30 targets — relies heavily on partnerships between Indigenous nations, industry and environmental NGOs.



Behind the scenes

Canada’s combined funding of $1.14 billion for Indigenous-led conservation — and its vocal support of the 30x30 plan — seems progressive, until we look at the federal government’s other investments.

The federal government has simultaneously invested billions in resource extractive industries in Canada, including the $4.5 billion spent to purchase the Trans Mountain pipeline in 2018.

Internationally, $188 billion of Canada’s $273 billion in mining assets support extensive resource extraction abroad, including mining in Indigenous lands in the Global South.

Canada also works closely with industry to criminalize Indigenous land defenders who are fighting resource extractive projects across the country.

The Cash Back report published by the Yellowhead Institute, an Indigenous-led research and education centre, revealed Alberta’s $200 billion debt to the First Nations in the province. This shows that the federal and provincial debt owed to First Nations, Inuit and Métis in Canada far outpaces the pittance offered to support their land protection and to remunerate Indigenous land protectors.

Conservation at a cost

Canada’s heavy reliance on officially-supported Indigenous-led conservation to meet its targets further complicates things as these targets could significantly impact human rights.



Some of the world’s most marginalized communities, including Indigenous and local communities in Africa and Asia, face threats of dispossession, lack of access to their rightful natural resources and further impoverishment.

Canada’s reliance on IPCAs to meet its 30 per cent targets, could risk aiding land grabs and human rights violations in the Global South.

On the eve of COP15, a consortium of non-governmental organizations representing Indigenous Peoples in the Global South issued a damning plea about the 30x30 plan, urging policymakers not to fetishize a quantified protected area approach. They pointed out that this would come at the cost of addressing the underlying drivers of biodiversity loss, including colonial capitalist extraction and overconsumption.

Tackling the underlying drivers of biodiversity loss

IPCAs in Canada are a potential antidote to the traditional fortress conservation or protected area model employed by eurocolonial parties here in the past. According to these models, biodiversity protection can be achieved only by creating protected areas where ecosystems can function in isolation from human disturbance, thus resulting in the eviction of forest-dwelling communities and Indigenous Peoples.

This being said, we must ensure that these IPCAs are not weaponized by states and environmental groups to silence the concerns about the 30x30 plan from Indigenous communities in the Global South who are not necessarily guaranteed the same legal protections that the federally-supported Indigenous-led conservation in Canada pledges.

At a time when public-private partnerships are facing scathing scrutiny in Canada and internationally, the conservation approaches and policies offered to First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities by the government also need to be scrutinized.

These approaches and policies should fully acknowledge the sovereignty of Indigenous communities without pressure to exchange autonomy for limited funding and partnership support.

Canada is built on lands and waters procured through dispossession and displacement of First Nations, Inuit and Métis. The government must, therefore, compensate our communities for the losses incurred across every stretch of this country.

We deserve better than 30x30. We deserve our land back. We deserve honest and true recognition of First Nations, Inuit and Métis sovereignty across Canada.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

Read more:
Views from COP27: How the climate conference could confront colonialism by centring Indigenous rights

COP15’s Global Biodiversity Framework must advance Indigenous-led conservation to halt biodiversity loss by 2030

 

COP15
As the world negotiates international deals, Indigenous Peoples navigate a space ‘somewhere in the between’

Yesterday 

Indigenous Peoples may not have had an official vote in the world's recent landmark deal to protect nature, but years of organizing across borders have given nations around the globe more of a voice in international negotiations.

For many years, Indigenous Peoples remained isolated and disempowered in the “straitjacket” of nation states, Lars-Anders Baer, a longtime Indigenous activist and advocate for the Saami Council, said in an interview.

But once they began to co-operate, both at the national and international levels, things slowly started to change, Baer said, including in his home in Scandinavian Europe.

“Now, we are recognized as a peoples.”

At the United Nations’ COP15 biodiversity conference, Indigenous Peoples did not have a seat at the negotiating table or voting power, but they were in the room to hear nation states discuss the final COP15 agreement. Because it was an international deal, Indigenous Peoples could use the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity to lobby UN-recognized nations to include their rights and territories in the final agreement. It was a victory, although with some caveats.

For Vyacheslav Shadrin, chief of the Yukaghir, an Indigenous Peoples in Siberia, more work needs to be done. Indigenous Peoples still only hold “conciliatory status” at negotiations like COP15, which must change given Indigenous Peoples' oversized role in stewarding biodiversity, he said.

Eighty per cent of the world’s biodiversity is on Indigenous lands, despite Indigenous Peoples only making up five per cent of the global population, according to the UN.

“The voice of Indigenous Peoples is the voice of nature … which is why our voice must be equal to other parties,” Shadrin said.

It’s a slow process, but the pathway to greater participation for Indigenous Peoples is possible at the UN, even if they are not completely on the same footing as countries. Indigenous nations are seeking a role that allows them to talk, suggest and negotiate as peers with nation states at high-level conferences like COP15, Baer said.

For now, it remains an ongoing challenge for Indigenous Peoples to find their footing in the system.

At COP15, Indigenous Peoples relied on civil society groups or, if they were lucky, their nation’s official delegation to communicate their views on the negotiations. Canada recognizes its Indigenous populations and their rights, but not all countries do, Baer said, citing Russia, China and Taiwan as examples.


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As distinct peoples, Indigenous Peoples have a right to speak and make decisions for themselves, Baer said.

“We are somewhere in the between now,” he added. “But it is on the way.”

Baer describes the gains Indigenous Peoples have made as “sneaking into” the UN system. It’s incremental progress at the international level that involves making headway where they can but not pushing too hard to upset some states, he said.

Indigenous Peoples have collaborated internationally as far back as the 1970s, with the International Indian Treaty Council becoming the first Indigenous Peoples organization recognized by the UN. However, it wasn’t until 2007 that the intergovernmental organization adopted its Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

Co-operation among Indigenous Peoples is essential, particularly for those in Russia, which has become an international pariah for its invasion of Ukraine. Five or six years ago, Russia said it recognized international legislation like UNDRIP; now, Shadrin says, the country doesn’t.

In recent years, Russia’s crackdown on civil society has suppressed the Indigenous movement. Even Yukaghir people have fallen victim to Russian propaganda, which blames foreign meddling for their low socio-economic conditions.

Shadrin says his people are “double victims” because of the influence of propaganda and the low quality of life they endure.

“The situation is very sad, but our people don’t understand this.”

International solidarity between Indigenous Peoples helps “raise our competency,” Shadrin added. “We see and receive experiences (from other Indigenous Peoples abroad) and we try to put it into our regional legislation.”

International standards can push countries to respect and recognize Indigenous rights and territories, in addition to creating a forum for the global Indigenous movement to organize.

“That’s why all (international) decisions must respect Indigenous rights.”

Matteo Cimellaro / Canada’s National Observer / Local Journalism Initiative

Matteo Cimellaro, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Canada's National Observer

Listen to 'the bloop,' a strange noise recorded in the southern Pacific Ocean that stumped scientists for years

Paola Rosa-Aquino
Tue, December 20, 2022 

Glaciers melting in Antarctica on February 7, 2022.Sebnem Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

In 1997, NOAA scientists recorded a haunting, strange sound in the southern Pacific Ocean's depths.


Theories about the sound's origins included an undiscovered sea creature.


By 2011, NOAA scientists concluded the sound was the cracking of an ice shelf during an icequake.

In the summer of 1997, scientists recorded a strange, loud noise originating from an area west of Chile's southern coast. They dubbed it "the bloop."

While searching for underwater volcanoes, researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recorded the infamous loud, ultra-low frequency sound on hydrophones. These underwater microphones the US Navy originally developed were 2,000 miles apart in the Pacific Ocean.

The sound, which lasted for about one minute, was one of the loudest underwater sounds ever recorded. Below, you can listen to the bloop sped up 16 times

Paola Alexandra Rosa · Bloop, a mysterious sound from the deep ocean

Over the years, theories about the mysterious ocean sound's origin abounded.

Some suspected it was the sound of military exercises, ships, a giant squid, blue whales, or a new sea creature. After all, humans haven't explored more than 80% of the world's oceans.

"We considered every possibility, including animal origin," Christopher Fox, chief scientist of the Acoustic Monitoring Project of NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Lab, told The Atlantic for a short film about the sound in 2017.

An adult blue whale swimming in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

Just what created the booming noise stumped scientists for years.

It wasn't until 2005, when NOAA embarked on an acoustical survey of the Antarctic off of South America, that scientists began to understand the bloop's origins.

Robert Dziak, from NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Lab, told Insider via email that by 2011 — after gathering all the data — the agency was able to definitively explain what the bloop was.

The official ruling: It was the sound of an icequake, created by the cracking of an ice shelf as it broke up from an Antarctic glacier.

The "sounds of ice breaking up and cracking is a dominant source of natural sound in the southern ocean," Dziak told Wired in 2012. "Each year there are tens of thousands of what we call 'icequakes' created by the cracking and melting of sea ice and ice calving off glaciers into the ocean, and these signals are very similar in character to the bloop."

Cracks in an iceberg floating in Disko Bay, Ilulissat, western Greenland, on June 30, 2022.

ODD ANDERSEN/AFP via Getty Images

The icebergs that generated the bloop most likely were between Antartica's Bransfield Straits and the Ross Sea, or Cape Adare, according to NOAA.

Icequakes occur when glaciers fracture in the ocean, cracking ice. The sudden cracking produces a loud pop or booming sound. With climate change, NOAA warns that icequakes are becoming more common.

Rising global temperatures melt glacial ice, creating water that can freeze again to cause an icequake.

Israeli archaeologists excavating 'Jesus midwife' tomb






Volunteers dig at the site of a 2000-year-old Second Temple-Period burial cave designated the Salome Cave that was recently uncovered in the Lachish Forest in Israel, Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2022. Archaeologists say that the cave continued to be used in the Byzantine and Early Islamic periods, becoming known as the Salome Cave, due to a popular tradition that identified it as the burial place of Salome, the midwife of Jesus. 

(AP Photo/ Maya Alleruzzo)



Tue, December 20, 2022

JERUSALEM (AP) — An ancient tomb traditionally associated with Jesus’s midwife is being excavated anew by archaeologists in the hills southwest of Jerusalem, the antiquities authority said Tuesday.

The intricately decorated Jewish burial cave complex dates to around the first century A.D., but it was later associated by local Christians with Salome, the midwife of Jesus in the Gospels. A Byzantine chapel was built at the site, which was a place of pilgrimage and veneration for centuries thereafter.

The cave was first found and excavated decades ago by an Israeli archaeologist. The cave's large forecourt is now under excavation by archaeologists as part of a heritage trail development project in the region.

Crosses and inscriptions in Greek and Arabic carved in the cave walls during the Byzantine and Islamic periods indicate that the chapel was dedicated to Salome.

Pilgrims would “rent oil lamps, enter into the cave, used to pray, come out in give back the oil lamp,” said Ziv Firer, director of the excavation. “We found tens of them, with beautiful decorations of plants and flowers.”

Keystone Oil Pipeline Restart Is Approved by US Regulators


Sheela Tobben
Fri, December 23, 2022 

(Bloomberg) -- TC Energy Corp. will begin the process of restarting the segment of its Keystone pipeline that goes to crude storage hub Cushing, Oklahoma, after receiving regulatory approval, the company said on its website. The restart will take several days.

TC Energy has been targeting a full return of the pipeline system on Dec. 28 or 29, according to people familiar with the matter.

The shutdown of the pipeline that carries heavy crude from Western Canada to the US Midwest has roiled oil markets, limiting supplies to the storage hub at Cushing, Oklahoma, which is the delivery point for the US benchmark.

One leg of the conduit — running from Hardisty, Alberta, to Patoka, Illinois — restarted operations at reduced flows last week, while the ruptured segment — extending from Steele City to Cushing — remains shut. TC Energy’s Marketlink pipeline connecting Cushing to the US Gulf Coast is also running at reduced rates.

--With assistance from Ari Natter.

TA project aims to better manage roadway traffic flow

Project will examine and improve traffic management at intersections in Texas

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON

 

IMAGE: TAYLOR LI view more 

CREDIT: UT ARLINGTON

A civil engineering researcher at The University of Texas at Arlington is leading a project that will aim to improve smart traffic signal management through state-of-the-art traffic signal simulation techniques and big data.

Pengfei (Taylor) Li, assistant professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, is leading the $292,010 grant funded through the U.S. and Texas departments of transportation, titled “Improving traffic signal system planning, design and management with big-data-enhanced Automated Traffic Signal Performance Metrics (ATSPM) system.”

“We want to explore adopting the forward-looking ATSPM systems for better arterial traffic management,” Li said. “We aim to bridge the gap between traffic signal planning and design and operations and evaluations by using the same criteria.

“Right now, the ATSPM can only be used to post-evaluate traffic signal systems after their deployment while most traffic signal systems are still being designed following a traditional framework adopted decades ago.”

Li’s project would develop software tools to link traffic simulation engines with forward-looking ATSPM systems, then comprehensively evaluate the performance of new traffic signal designs before they are deployed.

A commonly used traffic simulation package developed in Germany, VISSIM, will be used to generate realistic traffic data and mobility data under various traffic signal programs. Then the simulation data will be fed into multiple ATSPM systems to evaluate the traffic signal performance.

The project team will also conduct case studies at 10 to 15 intersections along Cooper Street in Arlington to demonstrate the proposed solutions’ performance for the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). Cooper Street, classified as a freight corridor by TxDOT, contains all the complicated components of urban traffic. The outcome of this project will also reshape the framework of traffic signal planning and design in the long term.

Melanie Sattler, interim chair of the Department of Civil Engineering, said Dr. Li’s work could coordinate transportation efforts to reduce travel times.

“Projects that can reduce travel times in a growing region like Texas are especially important,” she said. “This project will lead to less traffic, emissions and fuel consumptions, critical to maintaining a livable community.”

Successful hypothermia in nonhuman primate paves the way for future application in human torpor during spaceflight

by Chinese Academy of Sciences

Illustration of how preoptic neurons drive hypothermia and cold defense, together with an

 example of the potential application in spaceflight. Credit: SIAT

Hibernation is a state adopted by certain mammals as an adaptation to adverse winter conditions. Typical features of hibernation include greatly reduced metabolic activity and lowered body temperature.

As warm-blooded animals, primates (except lemurs) do not naturally hibernate or even experience torpor. But can we manipulate the body temperature of primates and make them fall into a hypometabolic state or even artificial hibernation?

A research team led by Dr. Wang Hong and Dr. Dai Ji from the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has recently reported the first reliable hypothermia in nonhuman primates caused by activating a group of hypothalamic neurons.

The study was published in The Innovation.

The researchers explored thermoregulation in the nonhuman primate Macaca fascicularis by combining chemogenetic manipulation, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning, behavioral analysis, and monitoring of a comprehensive set of physiological and biochemical parameters.

"To investigate the brain-wide network as a consequence of preoptic area (POA) activation, we performed fMRI scans and identified multiple regions involved in thermoregulation and interoception," said Dr. Dai, one of the corresponding authors. "This is the first fMRI study to investigate the brain-wide functional connections revealed by chemogenetic activation."

The researchers selectively targeted excitatory neurons in the POA of the hypothalamus in the monkey brain by locally infecting neurons with DREADD-encoding viruses driven by the CAMKII promoter. "DREADD" refers to designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs. They found that activation of the subset of POA neurons by the cognate DREADD agonist Clozapine N-oxide (CNO) reliably triggered hypothermia in anesthetized and awake monkeys.

In the anesthetized experiments, surprisingly, CNO-induced neuronal activity induced a decrease in core body temperature, antagonizing external heating. This demonstrates that the evolutionarily conserved excitatory neurons in the POA are functionally conserved as well and play a critical role in thermoregulation in the primate brain.

The researchers examined the autonomic and behavioral responses to the induced hypothermia in the monkey model. In contrast with mice, which typically decrease activity and lower heart rate, monkeys defend their body temperature by a boost in heart rate, shivering of their skeletal muscles, and an increase in locomotion. All the data point to the notion that primates' thermoregulation mechanism is more complex than in mice. Anatomically conserved cell-types may diverge in their connections and functions.

"This work provides the first successful demonstration of hypothermia in a primate based on targeted neuronal manipulation," said Dr. Wang. "With the growing passion for human spaceflight, this hypothermic monkey model is a milestone on the long path toward artificial hibernation."

More information: Zhiting Zhang et al, Primate preoptic neurons drive hypothermia and cold defense, The Innovation (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.xinn.2022.100358

Provided by Chinese Academy of Sciences 

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NASA explores a winter wonderland on Mars

This image acquired on July 22, 2022 by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows sand dunes moving across the landscape. Winter frost covers the colder, north-facing half of each dune. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Cube-shaped snow, icy landscapes, and frost are all part of the Red Planet's coldest season.

When winter comes to Mars, the surface is transformed into a truly otherworldly holiday scene. Snow, ice, and frost accompany the season's sub-zero temperatures. Some of the coldest of these occur at the planet's poles, where it gets as low as minus 190 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 123 degrees Celsius).

Cold as it is, don't expect snow drifts worthy of the Rocky Mountains. No region of Mars gets more than a few feet of snow, most of which falls over extremely flat areas. And the Red Planet's elliptical orbit means it takes many more months for winter to come around: a single Mars year is around two Earth years.

Still, the planet offers unique winter phenomena that scientists have been able to study, thanks to NASA's robotic Mars explorers. Here are a few of the things they've discovered:

HiRISE captured these “megadunes,” also called barchans. Carbon dioxide frost and ice have formed over the dunes during the winter; as this starts to sublimate during spring, the darker-colored dune sand is revealed. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Two kinds of snow

Martian snow comes in two varieties: water ice and carbon dioxide, or dry ice. Because Martian air is so thin and the temperatures so cold, water-ice snow sublimates, or becomes a gas, before it even touches the ground. Dry-ice snow actually does reach the ground.

"Enough falls that you could snowshoe across it," said Sylvain Piqueux, a Mars scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California whose research includes a variety of winter phenomena. "If you were looking for skiing, though, you'd have to go into a crater or cliffside, where snow could build up on a sloped surface."
Snow falls and ice and frost form on Mars, too. NASA’s spacecraft on and orbiting the Red Planet reveal the similarities to and differences from how we experience winter on Earth. Mars scientist Sylvain Piqueux of JPL explains in this video. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

How we know it snows

Snow occurs only at the coldest extremes of Mars: at the poles, under cloud cover, and at night. Cameras on orbiting spacecraft can't see through those clouds, and surface missions can't survive in the extreme cold. As a result, no images of falling snow have ever been captured. But scientists know it happens, thanks to a few special science instruments.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter can peer through cloud cover using its Mars Climate Sounder instrument, which detects light in wavelengths imperceptible to the human eye. That ability has allowed scientists to detect carbon dioxide snow falling to the ground. And in 2008, NASA sent the Phoenix lander within 1,000 miles (about 1,600 kilometers) of Mars' north pole, where it used a laser instrument to detect water-ice snow falling to the surface.

The HiRISE camera captured this image of the edge of a crater in the middle of winter. The south-facing slope of the crater, which receives less sunlight, has formed patchy, bright frost, seen in blue in this enhanced-color image. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Cubic snowflakes

Because of how water molecules bond together when they freeze, snowflakes on Earth have six sides. The same principle applies to all crystals: The way in which atoms arrange themselves determines a crystal's shape. In the case of carbon dioxide, molecules in dry ice always bond in forms of four when frozen.

"Because carbon dioxide ice has a symmetry of four, we know dry-ice snowflakes would be cube-shaped," Piqueux said. "Thanks to the Mars Climate Sounder, we can tell these snowflakes would be smaller than the width of a human hair."

Jack Frost nipping at your rover

Water and carbon dioxide can each form frost on Mars, and both types of frost appear far more widely across the planet than snow does. The Viking landers saw water frost when they studied Mars in the 1970s, while NASA's Odyssey orbiter has observed frost forming and sublimating away in the morning sun.

HiRISE captured this spring scene, when water ice frozen in the soil had split the ground into polygons. Translucent carbon dioxide ice allows sunlight to shine through and heat gases that escape through vents, releasing fans of darker material onto the surface (shown as blue in this enhanced-color image). 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Perhaps the most fabulous discovery comes at the end of winter, when all the ice that built up begins to "thaw" and sublimate into the atmosphere. As it does so, this ice takes on bizarre and beautiful shapes that have reminded scientists of spiders, Dalmatian spots, fried eggs, and Swiss cheese.

This "thawing" also causes geysers to erupt: Translucent ice allows sunlight to heat up gas underneath it, and that gas eventually bursts out, sending fans of dust onto the surface. Scientists have actually begun to study these fans as a way to learn more about which way Martian winds are blowing.

Provided by NASA

Explore furtherMars shines high in UK skies

Scientists investigate potential regolith origin on Uranus' moon Miranda

by Laurence Tognetti, Universe Today

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

In a recent study published in The Planetary Science Journal, a pair of researchers led by The Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute in California investigated the potential origin for the thick regolith deposits on Uranus' moon, Miranda. The purpose of this study was to determine Miranda's internal structure, most notably its interior heat, which could help determine if Miranda harbors—or ever harbored—an internal ocean.

"It is unlikely that Miranda would be able to retain a subsurface ocean to the present day due to its small size," said Dr. Chloe Beddingfield, who is a scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center. "However, a thick regolith layer would act like an insulating blanket, trapping heat inside Miranda and enhancing the longevity of a subsurface ocean for some period. This trapped heat would have also promoted endogenic activity for longer periods of time on Miranda, such as the geologic activity that formed one or more of Miranda's coronae or the global rift system."

Regolith is defined as "a region of loose unconsolidated rock and dust that sits atop a layer of bedrock," and the surface material on both the moon and Mars are frequently referred to as regolith as opposed to soil much like Earth. The difference being that soil provides necessary nutrients and minerals for things to grow, whereas regolith can be considered dead soil.

For the study, the researchers analyzed craters, specifically "muted" craters, to determine the thickness of Miranda's surface regolith. These analyses included measuring the crater depth-diameter ratios, crater size-frequency distribution—also known as "crater counting," and the central mound within a specific crater, Alonso Crater. The study's findings determined three potential sources for Miranda's thick regolith, which include giant impact ejecta, plume deposits, and ring deposits from Uranus itself. The researchers state they favor the ring deposit hypothesis due to Miranda's blue color, and its regolith's large spatial extent and large thickness.

"If material from Uranus' rings were the primary source of Miranda's regolith, then that may indicate that Miranda formed out of ring material and/or that Miranda migrated through the rings in its early history," said Dr. Beddingfield. "In these scenarios, Uranus' rings may have been thicker in the past. However, future modeling work is needed to investigate these possibilities further."

Miranda was first discovered on February 16, 1948, by Gerard P. Kuiper at the McDonald Observatory in western Texas, and has only been visited by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1986. This up-close encounter revealed a chaotic and intriguing world with craters, valleys, and chasms across its surface, with scientists continuing to debate to this day the processes behind the small moon's interesting features. One such type of feature is known as "coronae," which are large deformations that scientists hypothesize were formed from tectonic activity. So, how can this research help us better understand Miranda's overall surface appearance?

"Because Miranda's thick insulating regolith would reduce heat loss and possibly enhance geologic activity, the regolith may have helped support coronae formation," said Dr. Beddingfield. "The coronae are thought to have formed from upwelling diapirs that broke Miranda's surface. Perhaps the coronae inherited their polygonal shapes when those diapirs formed along pre-existing areas of weakness in the lithosphere, formed by pre-existing faults that make up global rift system. While the existence of Miranda's regolith doesn't tell us much about the specific processes involved in corona formation, it does allow us to get a sense of the relative timing of events and shows that geologic activity likely occurred over long periods of time."

The paper stresses that follow-up studies are required to better understand the potential possibilities other than Uranus ring deposits for Miranda's thick regolith.

"Miranda's regolith could be explained by processes other than ring material accumulation including material deposition due to plume activity in the past or deposition of ejecta from a giant impact," explained Dr. Beddingfield.

"We see evidence for thick plume deposits on Saturn's moon Enceladus, which exhibits ongoing plume activity. Alternatively, if one or more giant impact event events occurred during Miranda's early history, then the resulting ejecta may have formed the observed regolith on Miranda. While we favor the ring material deposition scenario, these two other scenarios are certainly feasible and warrant investigation in future work."

Currently, Voyager 2 remains the only spacecraft to have visited Uranus and its many moons, and there are no scheduled missions to revisit this far out in the solar system.

More information: Chloe B. Beddingfield et al, Miranda's Thick Regolith Indicates a Major Mantling Event from an Unknown Source, The Planetary Science Journal (2022). DOI: 10.3847/PSJ/ac9a4e

Journal information: The Planetary Science Journal 

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