New sustainable packaging developed by UBC and Wet’suwet’en First Nation

Published on Nov. 15, 2022
Isabella O'Malley, M.Env.Sc

WEATHER NETWORK

 Reporter

  

Researchers have turned waste wood from Wet’suwet’en First Nation into a “biofoam” that can biodegrade within weeks VIDEO

Despite the growing evidence that plastic pollution is extremely hazardous to human health and the environment, landfills continue to grow in size. Up to 30 per cent of global landfills consist of styrofoam, which can take over 500 years to break down.

To address this issue, a collaboration between Wet’suwet’en First Nation and a University of British Columbia (UBC) research team was formed to create an innovative packaging foam made entirely from waste wood.

Finished biofoams including packing peanuts and other forms. (Lou Bosshart/ UBC)

The inspiration for the “biofoam” came from the need to design alternatives to plastic packaging materials like styrofoam, said Feng Jiang, assistant professor at UBC and the Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Functional Biomaterials, in an interview with The Weather Network.

“Our biofoam breaks down in the soil in a couple of weeks, requires little heat and few chemicals to make, and can be used as a substitute for packaging foams, packing peanuts and even thermal insulation boards,” Jiang stated in the UBC press release.

The waste wood, which is sourced near Burns Lake, B.C., is ground down to its fibres and then constructed into a biodegradable foam that has a similar density and thermal insulating profile to styrofoam.

Gathering wood that will be used to create the biofoam.

 (Reg Ogen)

The project was also inspired by a desire to address unsustainable forestry practices. According to Jiang, less than 50 per cent of harvested trees end up being used in the wood industries and the rest is discarded in the forest where it could become a potential fuel for wildfires.

“We were thinking about how we can utilize 100 per cent of the trees instead of just 50 per cent,” explained Jiang.

See also: How diverted forestry waste in the Yukon generates clean energy

The collaboration with Wet’suwet’en First Nation began after Jiang met Reg Ogen and Joe Wong, both who are executives at Yinka Dene Economic Development Limited Partnership Inc., at an event hosted by the Ministry of Forests’ Innovation, Bioeconomy and Indigenous Opportunities Branch.

Ogen, President & CEO of Yinka Dene Economic Development, told The Weather Network that the biofoam is made out of trees from the Nation that were damaged by mountain pine beetles.

“We've been talking about a bioeconomy for six or seven years now. We got an opportunity to work with UBC and, with some provincial grant funding, we're able to put together a program to look at how we can make an idea become a reality,” Ogen told The Weather Network.

Wood waste used to make the biodegradable foam. (Lou Bosshart/ UBC)

Exporting the raw materials for the biofoam will create long-term sustainable job opportunities within the Nation and revenue generated from the project will go towards homes, infrastructure, and language and cultural programs.

“We have an opportunity to really do something neat for our community, province, Canada, and potentially the world,” said Ogen.

The research team states that their collaboration with Wet’suwet’en First Nation is an example of equal and true partnership and hope that they inspire more initiatives like this across Canada. The next steps for the project involve designing a business model and opening a pilot plant in B.C.

“We need to learn from First Nations. We need to see how we can use their wisdom and resources for research and product development,” said Jiang.

“We're really optimistic about where this is going to lead us. I think it's a great opportunity for Indigenous groups to latch on to these types of opportunities that creates change for our Mother Earth,” concluded Ogen.

Thumbnail image: UBC postdoctoral fellow Dr. Yeling Zhu shows samples of the biodegradable foam. (Lou Bosshart/ UBC)

What is lake-effect snow? A climate scientist explains

Published: November 18, 2022
THE CONVERSATION
 

Canadian winds pick up moisture over the Great Lakes, turning it into heavy snowfall on the far shore. NOAA


It’s hard for most people to imagine more than 4 feet of snow in one storm, like the Buffalo area was forecast to see this weekend, but these extreme snowfall events happen periodically along the eastern edges of the Great Lakes.

The phenomenon is called “lake-effect snow,” and the lakes themselves play a crucial role.

It starts with cold, dry air from Canada. As the bitter cold air sweeps across the relatively warmer Great Lakes, it sucks up more and more moisture that falls as snow.

A lake-effect snowstorm in November 2014 buried Buffalo, N.Y., under more than 5 feet of snow and caused hundreds of roofs to collapse.

  Patrick McPartland/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

I’m a climate scientist at UMass Amherst. In the Climate Dynamics course I teach, students often ask how cold, dry air can lead to heavy snowfall. Here’s how that happens.

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How dry air turns into snowstorms

Lake-effect snow is strongly influenced by the differences between the amount of heat and moisture at the lake surface and in the air a few thousand feet above it.

A big contrast creates conditions that help to suck water up from the lake, and thus more snowfall. A difference of 25 degrees Fahrenheit (14 C) or more creates an environment that can fuel heavy snows. This often happens in late fall, when lake water is still warm from summer and cold air starts sweeping down from Canada. More moderate lake-effect snows occur every fall under less extreme thermal contrasts.

How lake-effect snow works and why western New York get such powerful storms.

  Image from 'The AMS Weather Book' by Jack Williams. © 2009 by the American Meteorological Society. Used with permission.

Wind direction is important too. The farther cold air travels over the lake surface, the more moisture is evaporated from the lake. A long “fetch” – the distance over water – often results in more lake-effect snow than a shorter one.

Imagine a wind out of the west that is perfectly aligned so that it blows over the entire 241-mile length of Lake Erie. That’s close to what Buffalo was experiencing the weekend of Nov. 18, 2022.

Wind directions from a storm in 2016 shows how lake-effect show piles up. NOAA

Once the snow reaches land, elevation contributes an additional effect. Land that slopes up from the lake increases lift in the atmosphere, enhancing snowfall rates. This mechanism is termed “orographic effect.” The Tug Hill plateau, located between the lake and the Adirondacks in western New York, is well known for its impressive snowfall totals.

In a typical year, annual snowfall in the “lee,” or downwind, of the Great Lakes approaches 200 inches in some places.

Residents in places like Buffalo are keenly aware of the phenomenon. In 2014, some parts of the region received upwards of 6 feet of snowfall during an epic lake-effect event Nov. 17-19. The weight of the snow collapsed hundreds of roofs and led to over a dozen deaths.

Lake-effect snowfall in the Buffalo area is typically confined to a narrow region where the wind is coming straight off the lake. Drivers on Interstate 90 often go from sunny skies to a blizzard and back to sunny skies over a distance of 30 to 40 miles.
The role of climate change

Is climate change playing a role in the lake-effect snow machine? To an extent.

Fall has warmed across the upper Midwest. Ice prevents lake water from evaporating into the overlying air, and it is forming later than in the past. Warmer summer air has led to warmer lake temperature into fall.

Models predict that with additional warming, more lake-effect snow will occur. But over time, the warming will lead to more of the precipitation falling as lake-effect rain, which already occurs in early fall, rather than snow.

Author

Michael A. Rawlins
Associate Director, Climate System Research Center, UMass Amherst
Disclosure statement
Michael A. Rawlins receives funding from the Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Science Foundation.

Buried: Why the Great Lakes produce some of the world’s heaviest snow

Dennis Mersereau

WEATHER NETWORK
Digital Writer

Thursday, November 17th 2022, 8:42 pm - Cold winds blowing over a warm lake can produce some of the most dramatic and efficient snowstorms anywhere in the world.

VIDEO Lake-effect snow, how and why it happens

Snow gushed from the sky for three days straight.

Cold winds blowing up the length of Lake Erie set in motion a catastrophe that would damage hundreds of homes and businesses, shut down entire cities for days on end, and even force a mother-to-be to give birth at a fire station because no vehicles could get her to a hospital.

PODCAST: A state of emergency was called for the Great Buffalo Blizzard of 2014

A solid band of lake-effect snow rolled into western New York on November 17, 2014. This unwavering squall was as torrential as it was tenacious, producing whiteout conditions that wouldn’t finally cease until the 19th.

That days-long lake-effect snow event produced as much as 165 cm of snow near Buffalo, New York, burying some homes up to their second floors and immobilizing the area for days.

Western New York’s lake-effect snow disaster underscored one basic fact of living near lakes during the cold season: snow squalls are nothing to sneeze at.
Lake-effect snow and summertime thunderstorms are cousins

Lake-effect snow lands its characteristic punch because it’s born from the same process that creates a towering thunderstorm on a humid summer afternoon.



Snow squalls off the lakes are a product of convection. We experience most lake-effect snow during the fall and early winter months because there’s still a sharp temperature difference between the surface of the lakes and the much chillier winds blowing over the water.

DON'T MISS: Why does your long-range forecast change so often?

Some of that air comes in direct contact with those warmer waters, heating up that shallow layer of air like a camper holding their hands over a fire to stay warm. This air becomes warmer than its surroundings, allowing it to begin rising through the atmosphere.

A bigger difference between the temperature of the lake and the atmosphere above will cause the air to rise even more quickly, feeding the formation of snow showers similar to the way we’d see thunderstorms bubble up on a hot July day.

WATCH: How lake-effect snow forms over a warm lake

How warm lakes help create snow showers on a cold day

Lake-effect snow takes cold winds blowing over warm waters.

A dangerous game of fetch

If you can’t stand snow, you don’t want to make fetch happen.

Fetch is the distance that wind travels over open water. A longer fetch means that wind spends more time and travels more distance over the water, a key ingredient to the formation of lake-effect snow.

Stiff winds blowing across the water organize these snow showers into bands, blowing them over the lakeshores and bringing us the rounds of lake-effect that are so familiar during the leadup to the holiday season.

Meteorologists closely watch the direction of the wind for clues about where bands of snow will set up and how heavy they could grow.

A short fetch leads to multiple but narrow bands of snow that can cover a large area with a modest blanket of accumulation. A long fetch, on the other hand, leads to single, thick bands of snow.
The Great Lakes are king, but it’s a widespread problem

The size, depth, and location of the Great Lakes makes this region prime real estate for lake-effect snow, but this phenomenon is possible across Canada and around the world.



Lake-effect snow is common in southern Manitoba during the early fall before the lakes freeze over. Sea-effect snow—which forms through the same process, just over the ocean instead—is a regular sight throughout the cold season across the Atlantic provinces.

We even see lake- and sea-effect snow around the world. Sapporo, Japan, is one of the snowiest cities in the world due to sea-effect snow burying the city of nearly two million people with metre after metre of powder each season.

Prevailing winds make certain parts of the Great Lakes more prone to these blockbuster snow events than others. Northwesterly winds blowing across Lake Huron and Georgian Bay leave communities like Kincardine, Goderich, and Barrie open to heavy bands of snow.

Lake Erie and Lake Ontario are infamous for their firehose-like bands of snow dumping on the Niagara region, eastern Ontario, and western New York because southwesterly winds achieve an exceptionally long fetch along the entire length of these lakes, feeding intense bands of snow that can last for days.

WATCH: Why snow squalls are so difficult to predict

Storm Hunter explains why snow squalls are so difficult to predict
Mark Robinson has the details

Frightening intensity meets a knife’s edge

Those legendary bands of snow can produce some of the most intense wintry conditions you’ll ever experience on the planet, akin to a vigorous wintertime thunderstorm.

The most powerful lake-effect events can produce snowfall rates that exceed 10 cm of snow an hour, overwhelming the ability for plows to keep roads clear for more than a few minutes at a time. Convection strong enough to produce that kind of ripping snowfall often leads to vivid lightning and loud claps of thunder.

Multiple feet of snow cover the New York State Thruway near Buffalo, New York, during the lake-effect snowstorm in November 2014. (New York State Police/Facebook)

What’s scarier than the hours-long whiteouts and prolific thundersnow is the fact that these bands can be notoriously hard to predict.

MUST SEE: Why Ontario’s ‘snow snake’ caught many–including forecasters–off guard

Snow squalls are often so narrow that a couple of kilometres means the difference between a serene wintry scene and a nightmarish disaster that shuts down entire neighbourhoods for days at a time.

Just a tiny shift in wind direction or a tiny wobble in the band itself can shift those mammoth snow totals right along with it. The mounds of snow that fell south of Buffalo in 2014 would’ve hit the centre of the city itself if the band had wiggled just a few kilometres farther north.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Pixabay.

Interactive | Watch How World’s Population Rose From 3 Billion in 1960 to 8 Billion in 2022

 

There are 8 billion people on Earth. But that isn't causing climate change, scientists say

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It's not the number of people, but 'how we live,'

says Nature United's Katharine Hayhoe

CBC Radio · Posted: Nov 16, 2022 

Canadian atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe attended COP27, the United Nations climate conference, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. (Nariman El-Mofty/The Associated Press)

With Earth's population hitting a projected eight billion, it's easy to draw the conclusion that climate change is the result of too many people consuming energy.

But scientists say it's not that simple. Climate change, they say, is more a matter of overconsumption than overpopulation. And there isn't a neat correlation between between the two.

"As a climate scientist, I know that it's not the number of people that matters. It's how we live," Katharine Hayhoe told As It Happens host Nil Köksal.

Hayhoe, chief scientist at the international environmental organization Nature United, says there's plenty we can do to fight climate change. But reducing the global population isn't a key component. 

"We know that this planet can carry eight billion people, but not if they all live like Canadians. We need to be more efficient with our energy," she said.

"We need to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy. We need to engage in climate-smart agriculture. And we need to remember that we are not only a citizen of this country; we're a citizen of the world, and we all share this home."

Population and emissions don't go hand-in-hand

Hayhoe's arguments are echoed by many of her peers — some of whom have changed their tune over the years.

The Sierra Club, for example, is an an environmental non-profit that used to promote efforts to control the world population. But they shifted gears when they looked more closely at the science, the group's president, Ramon Cruz, told The Associated Press. 

He said when they dived deeper, they found problems of overconsumption and fossil fuel use would be the same "at six billion, seven billion or eight billion" people.

Climate Interactive, a group of scientists who run intricate computer simulations, came to a similar conclusion. The group compared United Nations population projections scenarios of 8.8 billion people and 10.4 billion people, and found only a 0.2 degrees C difference.

But the difference between having no price or tax on carbon, versus taxing it at $100 US, a ton was 0.7 C.

Pakistan contributes about 0.8 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the World Population Review. But in 2022, the country faced brutal and unprecedented flooding. (Fayaz AzizAziz/Reuters)

"The question is not about population, but rather about consumption patterns," climate scientist Bill Hare said.

The key to understanding climate change, scientists say, is to look at who is consuming the most — and who is suffering because of it.

For example, many of the countries with the fastest growing populations are in Africa. Yet, those same countries are facing the brunt of the climate crisis.

• Richer nations, including Canada, inch closer to paying for climate damage

• Global South prepares a major push for climate compensation at COP27

According to The Associated Press, Africa has 16.7 per cent of the world's population, but historically emits only three per cent of the global carbon pollution. The United States, on the other hand, has 4.5 per cent of the planet's people, but since 1959, has put out 21.5 per cent of the heat-trapping carbon dioxide.

The average Canadian, Saudi and Australian, meanwhile, put out more than 10 times the carbon dioxide into the air though their daily living than the average Pakistani, which has experienced massive and deadly floods that have been linked to climate change.

"It is the rich, industrialized, high-emitting countries that are largely responsible for this problem," Hayhoe said. "Not only countries, though. Companies [and] cities as well."

Loss and damages

Hayhoe spoke to CBC as she was leaving Egypt, where she was attending COP27, the UN's global climate change conference. She says not enough has been done to combat climate change since last year's conference.

"Since the Glasgow COP a year ago, there has been over $6 trillion worth [in] U.S. dollars  in subsidies to the oil and gas industry," Hayhoe said. "We know that something has to change."

Indian climate activist Disha Ravi holds a placard as she takes part in the Fridays for Future strike during the COP27 climate summit, in Sharm el-Sheikh. (Emilie Madi/Reuters)

The issue of inequality has been front and centre at COP27, she said. Many of the climate activists in attendance are calling for an international agreement based on the concept of "losses and damages."

That means the world's biggest emitters — both countries and corporations — should fund climate change mitigation efforts in the nations most affected by it. 

"It's simple.... If you are the one hurting something, it's your responsibility to fix it," Indian climate activist Disha Ravi told As It Happens from COP27 on Friday. 

"So here, when we ask them to give us climate financing, we ask them to give it to us in the form of loss and damages finances — adaptation funds, mitigation funds. It is to ensure that we are in a place where we can actually, not just survive, but have a livable present and a future."

But figuring out who should pay what could be a complex — and tense — process, reports CBC News's Chris Brown. For example, China is currently the word's greatest emitter of greenhouse gasses. But historically, no country has emitted more carbon than the U.S. 

• Q&A
  Pakistan's 'biblical' floods should be a wakeup call for the world, says climate lawyer

• International aid for Pakistan flood relief should not be seen as charity, expert says

Canada has said it's open to discussing loss and damage funding. Hayhoe says it's a concept that reflects the fact that "climate change is profoundly unfair," and she hopes it be reflected in any new international agreements.

"I've spoken with so many people and heard so many stories of people who come from islands in the Caribbean where they're facing drought and warming seas and depleting fisheries. Or Bangladesh, where they're facing repeated floods and then droughts," she said.

"If it [a loss and damages agreement] doesn't come, what does that say to those countries? It says we don't care. We don't even think that you share the same planet. It doesn't matter to us what's happening to you."

But despite the uneven effects of climate change, Hayhoe warns that nobody will emerge from this crisis unscathed.

"There's no way to build walls up to the top of the atmosphere around our country or any other country to protect ourselves from climate change while the rest of the world suffers," she said.

"We all share this home together, and we know the science is clear. The faster we reduce our emissions, the better off we will all be."

With files from The Associated Press. Interview with Katharine Hayhoe produced by Kate Swoger. 

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8 billion people: how different the world would look if Neanderthals had prevailed

Published: November 16, 2022 

THE CONVERSATION

Neanderthal reproduction in Trento Museum of Natural History. 

Luca Lorenzelli/Shutterstock

In evolutionary terms, the human population has rocketed in seconds. The news that it has now reached 8 billion seems inexplicable when you think about our history.

For 99% of the last million years of our existence, people rarely came across other humans. There were only around 10,000 Neanderthals living at any one time. Today, there are around 800,000 people in the same space that was occupied by one Neanderthal. What’s more, since humans live in social groups, the next nearest Neanderthal group was probably well over 100km away. Finding a mate outside your own family was a challenge.

Neanderthals were more inclined to stay in their family groups and were warier of new people. If they had outcompeted our own species (Homo sapiens), the density of population would likely be far lower. It’s hard to imagine them building cities, for example, given that they were genetically disposed to being less friendly to those beyond their immediate family.
Based on estimates by the History Database of the Global Environment and the UN. Max Roser, CC BY-SA

The reasons for our dramatic population growth may lie in the early days of Homo sapiens more than 100,000 years ago. Genetic and anatomical differences between us and extinct species such as Neanderthals made us more similar to domesticated animal species. Large herds of cows, for example, can better tolerate the stress of living in a small space together than their wild ancestors who lived in small groups, spaced apart. These genetic differences changed our attitudes to people outside our own group. We became more tolerant.

Similarities between modern humans and domesticated dogs, in contrast to archaic humans (here Neanderthal) and wild wolves. Theofanopoulou C PLoS ONE 12(10): e0185306, CC BY

As Homo sapiens were more likely to interact with groups outside their family, they created a more diverse genetic pool which reduced health problems. Neanderthals at El Sidrón in Spain showed 17 genetic deformities in only 13 people, for example. Such mutations were virtually nonexistent in later populations of our own species.

But larger populations also increase the spread of disease. Neanderthals might have typically lived shorter lives than modern humans, but their relative isolation will have protected them from the infectious diseases that sometimes wiped out whole populations of Homo sapiens.
Putting more food on the table

Our species may also have had 10%-20% faster rates of reproduction than earlier species of human. But having more babies only increases the population if there is enough food for them to eat.

Our genetic inclination for friendliness took shape around 200,000 years ago. From this time onwards, there is archaeological evidence of the raw materials to make tools being moved around the landscape more widely.

From 100,000 years ago, we created networks along which new types of hunting weapons and jewellery such as shell beads could spread. Ideas were shared widely and there were seasonal aggregations where Homo sapiens got together for rituals and socialising. People had friends to depend on in different groups when they were short of food.

And we may have also needed more emotional contact and new types of relationship outside our human social worlds. In an alternative world where Neanderthals thrived, it may be less likely that humans would have nurtured relationships with animals through domestication.
Dramatic shifts in environment

Things might also have been different had environments not generated so many sudden shortfalls, such as steep declines in plants and animals, on many occasions. If it wasn’t for these chance changes, Neanderthals may have survived.

Sharing resources and ideas between groups allowed people to live more efficiently off the land, by distributing more effective technologies and giving each other food at times of crisis. This was probably one of the main reasons why our species thrived when the climate changed while others died. Homo sapiens were better adapted to weather variable and risky conditions. This is partly because our species could depend on networks in times of crisis.

During the height of the last ice age around 20,000 years ago, temperatures across Europe were 8-10℃ degrees lower than today, with those in Germany being more like northern Siberia is now. Most of northern Europe was covered in ice for six-to-nine months of the year.

Social connections provided the means by which inventions could spread between groups to help us adapt. These included spear throwers to make hunting more efficient, fine needles to make fitted clothing and keep people warmer, food storage, and hunting with domesticated wolves. As a result, more people survived nature’s wheel of fortune.

Homo sapiens were generally careful not to overconsume resources like deer or fish, and were likely more aware of their lifecycles than much earlier species of human might have been. For example, people in British Columbia, Canada, only took males when they fished for salmon.

In some cases, however, these lifecyles were hard to see. During the last ice age, animals such as mammoths, which roamed over huge territories invisible to human groups, went extinct. There are more than a hundred depictions of mammoths at Rouffignac in France dating to the time of their disappearance, which suggests people grieved this loss. But it is more likely mammoths would have survived if it wasn’t for the rise of Homo sapiens, because there would have been fewer Neanderthals to hunt them.

Depiction of a mammoth at Rouffignac Cave in France. Wikimedia Commons

Too clever for our own good

Our liking for each other’s company and the way spending time together fosters our creativity was the making of our species. But it came at a price.

The more technology humankind develops, the more our use of it harms the planet. Intensive farming is draining our soils of nutrients, overfishing is wrecking the seas, and the greenhouse gases we release when we produce the products we now rely on are driving extreme weather. Overexploitation wasn’t inevitable but our species was the first to do it.

We can hope that visual evidence of the destruction in our natural world will change our attitudes in time. We have changed quickly when we needed to throughout our history. There is, after all, no planet B. But if Neanderthals had survived instead of us, we would never have needed one.

Author

Penny Spikins
Professor of the Archaeology of Human Origins, University of York

Lost and found: how a single clue led to the rediscovery of a crab not seen for 225 years


The label on a specimen of Afzelius’s crab simply said ‘Sierra Leone’. But it was enough for an expedition to track it down along with another ‘lost’ freshwater crab

Afzelius's crab, one of the species rediscovered by an expedition to Sierra Leone earlier this year. The land-dwelling species had not been sighted since 1796. 

Photograph: Pierre A Mvogo Ndongo/re:wild


The age of extinction 
Graeme Green

THE GUARDIAN

Thu 17 Nov 2022 

Tracking down rare species believed to be extinct is never easy, but when Pierre A Mvogo Ndongo travelled to Sierra Leone in January 2021 to search for “lost” species of land-dwelling crabs, the feeling of looking for a needle in a haystack was particularly powerful due to the size of the “haystack”. For one of the species, Afzelius’s crab (Afrithelphusa afzelii), last seen in 1796, the only clue was the label on a specimen that simply said: “Sierra Leone.”

Mvogo Ndongo’s expedition was primarily looking for the rainbow-coloured, land-dwelling Sierra Leone crab Afrithelphusa leonensis, lost to science for 65 years and thought to be possibly extinct – one of the species on wildlife charity Re:wild’s 25 “most wanted lost species” list. He also hoped – but never expected – to find, Afzelius’s crab (Afrithelphusa afzelii).



Lost and found: stroke of luck that helped rediscover tiny ‘superhero’ fish

Both species are land-dwelling crabs that live in burrows on the rainforest floor. “Most freshwater crabs in Africa live in rivers, streams and lakes,” says Mvogo Ndongo, a lecturer at the Institute of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences at the University of Douala in Cameroon.

“The species of interest belong to a unique Afrotropical family that includes members that can breathe air, which has enabled them to conquer more obscure habitats in the rainforest, often far away from permanent water sources … [They] are extremely colourful compared to their river-dwelling cousins, and they can climb trees, live in rock crevices, dig in marshes, or make burrows in the forest floor,” he says.

Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia are the only countries in Africa where these crabs occur, and there are only five species known, he adds.

For three weeks, working alongside local communities in Sierra Leone’s northern, southern and south-eastern provinces, Mvogo Ndongo found only false leads and frustration.

While many scientific discoveries (and rediscoveries) are helped by the rigorous, extensive notes of other scientists who’ve gone before, that wasn’t the case here.

“Afrithelphusa afzelii hadn’t been seen for 225 years and literally the only information on where to look for it was on the specimen label as ‘Sierra Leone’ – a very non-specific locality indeed,” Mvogo Ndongo says. “We deduced it must have been collected within walking distance of Freetown, so we began our surveys in the forest in that vicinity. But this was still too vague.

The team asked local people if they had seen any crabs living on land away from rivers and streams until encountering someone who could help. “We struck lucky – one man took us to his farm on the edge of the forest where, after intense searching, the species was rediscovered,” he says.

The day after finding Afzelius’s crab, Mvogo Ndongo travelled to the forests of Sugar Loaf Mountain, south of Freetown. With time running out due to an impending Covid-19 lockdown, he searched around Guma Lake, based on a local tip.

Deep in the forest, he finally found the Sierra Leone crab. The crabs were living in burrows so deep that Mvogo Ndongo and his team had to carefully excavate them using picks and machetes, before cleaning soil from the crabs to reveal the colourful crustaceans – the first living specimens seen since 1955.
\

The Sierra Leone crab (Afrithelphusa leonensis), which is one of Re:wild’s 25 most wanted species. Photograph: Pierre A. Mvogo Ndongo/re:wild

Alongside the rediscovered Sierra Leone crab and Afzelius’s crab, two new species of freshwater crabs were also found. However, the crabs’ habitats are now threatened by the destruction of the forest for agriculture and for firewood.

“These discoveries are bittersweet because the joy of discovering lost species is mixed with the realisation that, while not extinct, they’re on the edge of extinction, and that urgent conservation interventions will be required to protect these species in the long term,” says Neil Cumberlidge, a professor in the Department of Biology at Northern Michigan University, who collaborated with Mvogo Ndongo on the expedition.

Now scientists know the crabs are there, it is hoped they can be protected.

“The new data generated by the expedition will allow us to reassess the red list status of each of these species this will probably be ‘critically endangered’, ie close to extinction,” says Cumberlidge. “The next step is to devise a species action plan and implement protective measures in the field with Sierra Leone conservationists to save these species from extinction.”

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow the Guardian’s biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on Twitter for all the latest news and features

The Arrival of Tree Roots May Have Triggered Mass Extinctions in The Ocean

PLANTS COLONIZE 

THEIR NATURE IS IMPERIALISTIC

NATURE15 November 2022

ByCARLY CASSELLA

(NK08gerd/Getty Images)

The first land plants to evolve penetrating root systems, around 400 million years ago, may very well have triggered a series of mass extinctions in the ocean.

The expansion of plants onto terra firma was a big moment on Earth, completely restructuring the terrestrial biosphere. According to researchers from Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) in the US and University of Southampton in the UK, the consequences for our oceans might have been just as profound.

During the Devonian Period, which stretched from 360 million to 420 million years ago, the marine environment experienced numerous mass extinction events. A particularly destructive event towards the end of this period resulted in the extinction of up to nearly 60 percent of all genera in the ocean.

Some scientists think trees were the root cause of these losses.

As plant life moved away from water sources, they dug ever deeper for new sources of nutrients. At some point their roots would have begun to pull phosphorus from minerals locked up underground.

Once the tree decays, those nutrients within its biomass dissolve more easily into groundwater, which eventually winds up in the sea.

In the Devonian, as root systems grew more complex and moved further inland, more and more phosphorus would have been dumped into the marine environment.

A new timeline of these nutrient pulses speaks to their destruction. The data is based on the chemical analysis of stones from ancient lake beds and coastlines in Greenland and Scotland.

"Our analysis shows that the evolution of tree roots likely flooded past oceans with excess nutrients, causing massive algae growth," explains IUPUI earth scientist Gabriel Filippelli.

"These rapid and destructive algae blooms would have depleted most of the oceans' oxygen, triggering catastrophic mass extinction events."

While scientists have suspected tree roots of playing a role in Devonian mass extinctions before, this study is one of the first to calculate the magnitude and timing of phosphorus delivery from land to water.

From site to site, researchers found differences in how much phosphorus was present in the lake environment, but overall, most cases suggest there were large and rapid changes during the Devonian.

The fact that rising phosphorus levels in the ocean largely lines up with major extinction events during this time suggests the elevated nutrient played a role in the crisis.

Peaks of phosphorus exportation did not necessarily coincide in time or magnitude at each site studied, but the authors say that's to be expected. The colonization of land by plants was not a "single punctuated event", they explain, "but likely staggered geographically, peaking at different times in different parts of Euramerica and other parts of the Devonian Earth."

The phosphorus on land depleted at varying rates depending on the location, leading to marine extinction events that lasted many millions of years. Although the precise processes behind the nutrient absorption, plant growth, and decay more than likely varied, an overall trend seems apparent. During drier periods, researchers found phosphorus delivery to lakes shot upwards, suggesting that tree roots might decay if not enough water is available, leading to the release of their nutrients.

Today, trees aren't nearly as destructive for marine life as they were when they first arrived on the scene. Soil on land is now much deeper, allowing mineral-bound phosphorus to hide far beyond the reach of roots to leave organic molecules containing phosphorus to cycle more easily through the ecosystem.

That said, what is happening today shares worrisome patterns with what occurred hundreds of millions of years ago.

During the Devonian, atmospheric carbon dioxide and oxygen reached similar levels to those of recent years, but back then the changes were, in large part, due to the slow advance of plant life, as opposed to rapid changes through human activity.

Pollution from fertilizers and organic waste doesn't require tree roots to make it out to sea. It is pumped there by us, and it's triggering 'dead zones' of low oxygen in many important marine and lake environments.

"These new insights into the catastrophic results of natural events in the ancient world may serve as a warning about the consequences of similar conditions arising from human activity today," says Fillipelli.

The study was published in GSA Bulletin

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