The Ghosts of Warmia-Masuria 
Demons and Spirits from Polish-German Folklore

Przekrój
Warmia-Masuria is the home of the Polish lake district and a popular holiday destination. 
2020-04-21  Marcel Kruger

Illustration by Igor Kubik


Imagine it is winter, and you are late for an appointment. You wanted to make a shortcut through the old park that had been in the centre of the town since Prussian times, but now it’s getting dark and the paths all seem to be longer and more winding than you expected; there are not enough street lamps to light the falling dusk. In the bare trees around you, crows are sitting, cawing menacingly. You cross the small bridge that leads across the lake in the centre of the park, and suddenly there is movement in the water, strange motions under the surface – too many to be those of fish. You stop and lean over the railing to see what it might be. Then you see two eyes staring back at you.

The Polish province of Warmia-Masuria is a wonderful place, full of pleasant rolling fields and wooded hills, hundreds of deep lakes and rivers, big and small. This is a pleasant holiday destination and extremely popular with summer visitors who flock here for swimming, kayaking and sailing; who can enjoy the amazing food of this mostly agricultural area, namely fresh fish, mushrooms, blueberries and the delicious local beers brewed here.

When the summer visitors are gone, however, this is a very different place, especially in the autumn and winter. Dark, cold, the lakes frozen over and the trees on the shores no longer giving shade, but instead resembling menacing scarecrows. In between the rolling hills sit dark moors; the rivers no longer gurgle pleasantly, instead taking on a threatening air. It is a landscape that demands respect in all seasons, and the people living here have always known this. In winter, they hide inside to weather out the snowstorms, like they have done for centuries. The time spent inside is a good opportunity to retell the stories about the moors and lakes and the ghosts that inhabit them – folklore dressing danger as the supernatural to make it palatable for children, perhaps. No wonder, then, that this landscape breeds spirits and demons.

Maybe the inhabitants make this place special. Warmia and Masuria have seen many people make it their home. The original inhabitants (who gave their name to Warmia and Prussia itself) – the pagan Prūsai, Pruzzen or Old Prussians – were conquered by the German Teutonic Order of knights in the 13th century. The knights, who had slaughtered many of the Old Prussians, then in turn brought in German settlers from the West and Polish colonists from the region of Masovia, who became locally known as Masurians, Mazurzy. The myths and beliefs of the Old Prussians in nature deities merged with the new population over the centuries. Across a period of almost 200 years, the region saw various partitions, displacements and population exchanges, most recently when the borders of newly-independent Poland were drawn following the German defeat in World War II. During and after the war, almost all of the German population of Masuria either fled or was relocated to Germany. Yet many of the Warmian and Masurian families here – who spoke a Polish dialect and were often active in the cultural activities of the Polish minority before 1939 – stayed on and mixed with the newly-arriving Polish expellees from the East.

And so the old stories live on, the myths of Germans, Slavs and Old Prussians all intertwined. Little wonder, then, that a large part of Warmian and Masurian folklore to this day paints a dark, almost demonic picture of the landscape. Natural phenomena are demonized and appear as places of unpredictable dark forces. The horror of dark woods, black and menacing moors, of the frightening deep of the lakes is present in many folk tales. Ghost stories about wood spirits and the spirits of the dead that wander around the villages and haunt or lead the living astray is another popular theme in the local folklore. Here are some of the creatures (with their names given first in Polish, then in German) that you might want to avoid the next time you visit Warmia-Masuria:

Topnik or utopiec; Toppich – the drowned demon

The spirits of human souls that died drowning, residing in the element of their own demise, always looking for fresh victims. It is horrible to spend eternity alone as a topnik, the tortured spirit of one who has met a watery death – and so with a desire for company in its suffering, it waits for unsuspecting walkers in its quiet pond or moor, before grabbing and pulling them below the surface, where it holds them tight while the last bubbles of air and life escape from their lungs… According to some stories, the topnik can take the form of a child or a child-sized man in soaked, muddy clothes. It sometimes wears a red cap, which it can also use to draw its victims in by hanging it on on a tree branch or bush. Whoever wandered by and plucked it off would be grabbed by the demon and pulled to a watery death. It can also take on a more terrifying look: a hairy human torso supporting a red head.

Zmora; Smora – the life-sucking demon

Vicious half-demonic creatures. They draw energy from the living by feeding on their vital forces, but aren’t able to kill them directly. A zmora is a person alive or dead, such as a sinful woman, someone wronged, or someone who died without confession. They can take a variety of living and non-living forms: human, cat, dog, frog, and even threads, straws or apples. Activities such as going out to the stable with damp hair or washing dishes on Thursday after dinner might result in a zmora being brought into the house. Other signs of someone being a zmora include being the seventh daughter, having one’s name pronounced wrongly while being baptized, or having multi-coloured eyes. If a woman was promised to marry a man, but he then married another, the spurned woman could also become a zmora during the night.

Many German and Polish folk myths often describe the zmora as sitting on a sleeping person’s legs or chest, thereby causing sleep paralysis or breathing problems. The zmora would also harass animals, especially horses or cows. A horse visited by a zmora at night would be sweaty and visibly exhausted in the morning. To keep it away from the stable, you should place an axe under your doorstep. People can also protect themselves from zmora by fumigating the bedroom with special herbs, keeping holy water close to the bed, or going to sleep with an axe or another sharp metal object closeby. In an old tale from Hohenstein/Olsztynek (recorded in Superstitions in Masuria by the German folklorist Max Toeppen and printed in 1867), two travelling journeymen discover that the three daughters of the keeper of the inn where they are staying are all zmora, as the women are sleepless and can be overheard talking about their hard fate of being forced to draw life energy from humans, cattle and trees. They are healed by their father baptizing them again, which draws out the evil.

Mamuna or dziwożona – the swamp demon

Another swamp demon – a female one this time, but again a human soul turned monster. Most at risk of becoming a mamuna after death are midwives, old maids, unmarried mothers, pregnant women who die before childbirth, as well as abandoned children born out of wedlock.

The mamuna lives in thickets near rivers, streams and lakes, and can take the form of an ugly, old woman with a hairy body and long straight hair. However, she is also a shape-shifter and can appear as a beautiful nymph capable of luring men to their watery deaths. She often kidnaps human babies just after birth and replaces them with her own changeling offspring. A changeling can be recognized by its uncommon appearance: it has a huge abdomen, a head that is too small or too big, a hump, thin arms and legs, a hairy body and long claws. Mothers can prevent their children being abducted by the mamuna by tying a red ribbon around the child’s hand, placing a red hat on its head, or shielding its face from the light of the moon.

Diabeł; Teufel – the Devil

As Christianization approached the region, it needed another fiend, so it’s no wonder that the devil (diabeł or Teufel) makes an appearance in many Warmian-Masurian folk tales, too. A story about him was recorded by Priest Groß in Klaussen/Klusy in 1786, referring to older church records: in 1640, during mass, Pastor Wisniewski expelled the devil from a local woman who was possessed by it. The fiend appeared on the church threshold as a horrible shape, and was finally forced to flee when Wisniewski accused him of his sins, over which the devil became so irate that he shouted, “I have stopped torturing the woman, but as true as I am the devil, you should have a souvenir from me!” before slamming his crooked foot down on the threshold. To this day, four human toes and the heel of a rooster can be seen in the stone.

The news of this exorcism, in connection with the imprint of the devil’s foot, prompted the Poles and Tartars not to burn this church when they invaded in 1656. When the church was rebuilt in 1754, the stone was removed from its previous location in front of the church door so that pregnant women no longer had to step over it.

Kłobuk; Kaubuk – the benevolent chicken spirit

Speaking of chicken, the kłobuk is a benevolent spirit; a household deity like the Russian domovoy, and very popular in Warmia to this day. Instead of looking like the little old man that is the domovoy, the Warmian kłobuk is feathered and is said to mostly resemble a large chicken (or other birds, such as the magpie or duck). A kłobuk can be brought into the house, which it will then accept as its own if tempted with food – including its favourites, boiled eggs and noodles – or through the owners hugging a chicken. It is also possible to ‘grow’ a kłobuk, by burying a miscarried fetus under the threshold of the house, which after seven days, seven months or seven years will turn into the chicken-like spirit. The kłobuk ensures that the possessions of its homeowners will multiply, but does this mostly through stealing from neighbours. It can be extremely irksome and tenacious though, meaning that those living with a kłobuk should tread carefully. If they offend the creature, it might unexpectedly leave the house, or take revenge on the owners by setting fire to their abode.

Kautek; Kobold – the minuscule house spirit

Another friendly house spirit, but not in chicken form this time. These creatures have the appearance of men only a few centimeters tall, sometimes dressed in red clothes or wearing a red hat. The name allegedly derives from the Old Prussian language, where kauks means ‘the devil’. Yet despite its name, the kautek is actually quite benevolent once it picks a house to live in – it will do many small household chores overnight while the humans are asleep.

Like the kłobuk, it is somewhat capricious and has a darker side: it usually likes to play pranks on neighbours, and might bring illnesses to certain family members. It might even swap one of its own children with the babies of the host, leaving a changeling to grow up as a human child.

The landscape of Warmia-Masuria has left an imprint on its people and their imagination, both in the past and modern times. Indeed, up until this day, its inhabitants playfully and respectfully engage with their mythology: there are kłobuk statues made from wood strewn around many villages here, the Olsztyn arts magazine VariArt dedicated a whole issue to its artistic representation, and last year a topnik-themed exhibition took place in Olsztyn, where Polish artists not only engaged with monsters from folklore, but also with the German experience of flight and expulsion. The demons and spirits have seem to have finally found a less threatening place in the artistic culture of Warmia-Masuria, no longer luring people into the moors.


Or maybe they still do – so be careful next time you walk too close to a quiet and dark Masurian lake. You never really know what lurks beneath the surface…



While researching this article, I used the following texts and resources:


Max Toeppen, Aberglauben aus Masuren [Superstitions from Masuria], 1867


Sagen aus Pommern (Ermland, Masuren) [Legends from Pomerania (Warmia-Mazuria)], online


Agnieszka Grochocka, Masuren – vom Naturparadies zum Atlantis des Nordens, 2015 [Masuria – From Natural Paradise to the Atlantis of the North]


Online Encyclopedia of Warmia and Masuria (Polish)

KOBOLD ARE MINING CREATURES FROM ROLE PLAYING GAMES

Kobold

A kobold was a reptilian humanoid, standing between 2' and 2'6" (60cm – 75cm) tall, weighing 35 to 45 pounds (16 – 20kg), with scaled skin between reddish brown and black in color and burnt orange to red eyes. Their legs were sinewy and digitigrade. They had long, clawed fingers and a jaw …

 

Kobolds are aggressive, inward, yet industrious small humanoid creatures. They are noted for their skill at building traps and preparing ambushes, and mining. Kobolds are distantly related to dragons and urds and are often found serving the former as minions. Kobolds have specialized laborers, yet the majority of kobolds are miners.

Alignment: Lawful Evil

Classes: Various

Homeland (s): Various temperate forests

Type: Natural humanoid (draconic)

Kobold (D&D) | Officialbestiary Wiki | Fandom

The Limits of Clean Energy

Jason Hickel

The conversation about climate change has been blazing ahead in recent months. Propelled by the school climate strikes and social movements like Extinction Rebellion, a number of governments have declared a climate emergency, and progressive political parties are making plans—at last—for a rapid transition to clean energy under the banner of the Green New Deal.

This is a welcome shift, and we need more of it. But a new problem is beginning to emerge that warrants our attention. Some proponents of the Green New Deal seem to believe that it will pave the way to a utopia of “green growth.” Once we trade dirty fossil fuels for clean energy, there’s no reason we can’t keep expanding the economy forever.

This narrative may seem reasonable enough at first glance, but there are good reasons to think twice about it. One of them has to do with clean energy itself.

The phrase “clean energy” normally conjures up happy, innocent images of warm sunshine and fresh wind. But while sunshine and wind is obviously clean, the infrastructure we need to capture it is not. Far from it. The transition to renewables is going to require a dramatic increase in the extraction of metals and rare-earth minerals, with real ecological and social costs.

We need a rapid transition to renewables, yes—but scientists warn that we can’t keep growing energy use at existing rates. No energy is innocent. The only truly clean energy is less energy.

In 2017, the World Bank released a little-noticed report that offered the first comprehensive look at this question. It models the increase in material extraction that would be required to build enough solar and wind utilities to produce an annual output of about 7 terawatts of electricity by 2050. That’s enough to power roughly half of the global economy. By doubling the World Bank figures, we can estimate what it will take to get all the way to zero emissions—and the results are staggering: 34 million metric tons of copper, 40 million tons of lead, 50 million tons of zinc, 162 million tons of aluminum, and no less than 4.8 billion tons of iron.

In some cases, the transition to renewables will require a massive increase over existing levels of extraction. For neodymium—an essential element in wind turbines—extraction will need to rise by nearly 35 percent over current levels. Higher-end estimates reported by the World Bank suggest it could double.

The same is true of silver, which is critical to solar panels. Silver extraction will go up 38 percent and perhaps as much as 105 percent. Demand for indium, also essential to solar technology, will more than triple and could end up skyrocketing by 920 percent.

And then there are all the batteries we’re going to need for power storage. To keep energy flowing when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing will require enormous batteries at the grid level. This means 40 million tons of lithium—an eye-watering 2,700 percent increase over current levels of extraction.

That’s just for electricity. We also need to think about vehicles. This year, a group of leading British scientists submitted a letter to the U.K. Committee on Climate Change outlining their concerns about the ecological impact of electric cars. They agree, of course, that we need to end the sale and use of combustion engines. But they pointed out that unless consumption habits change, replacing the world’s projected fleet of 2 billion vehicles is going to require an explosive increase in mining: Global annual extraction of neodymium and dysprosium will go up by another 70 percent, annual extraction of copper will need to more than double, and cobalt will need to increase by a factor of almost four—all for the entire period from now to 2050.

The problem here is not that we’re going to run out of key minerals—although that may indeed become a concern. The real issue is that this will exacerbate an already existing crisis of overextraction. Mining has become one of the biggest single drivers of deforestation, ecosystem collapse, and biodiversity loss around the world. Ecologists estimate that even at present rates of global material use, we are overshooting sustainable levels by 82 percent.

Take silver, for instance. Mexico is home to the Peñasquito mine, one of the biggest silver mines in the world. Covering nearly 40 square miles, the operation is staggering in its scale: a sprawling open-pit complex ripped into the mountains, flanked by two waste dumps each a mile long, and a tailings dam full of toxic sludge held back by a wall that’s 7 miles around and as high as a 50-story skyscraper. This mine will produce 11,000 tons of silver in 10 years before its reserves, the biggest in the world, are gone.

To transition the global economy to renewables, we need to commission up to 130 more mines on the scale of Peñasquito. Just for silver.

Lithium is another ecological disaster. It takes 500,000 gallons of water to produce a single ton of lithium. Even at present levels of extraction this is causing problems. In the Andes, where most of the world’s lithium is located, mining companies are burning through the water tables and leaving farmers with nothing to irrigate their crops. Many have had no choice but to abandon their land altogether. Meanwhile, chemical leaks from lithium mines have poisoned rivers from Chile to Argentina, Nevada to Tibet, killing off whole freshwater ecosystems. The lithium boom has barely even started, and it’s already a crisis.

And all of this is just to power the existing global economy. Things become even more extreme when we start accounting for growth. As energy demand continues to rise, material extraction for renewables will become all the more aggressive—and the higher the growth rate, the worse it will get.

It’s important to keep in mind that most of the key materials for the energy transition are located in the global south. Parts of Latin America, Africa, and Asia will likely become the target of a new scramble for resources, and some countries may become victims of new forms of colonization. It happened in the 17th and 18th centuries with the hunt for gold and silver from South America. In the 19th century, it was land for cotton and sugar plantations in the Caribbean. In the 20th century, it was diamonds from South Africa, cobalt from Congo, and oil from the Middle East. It’s not difficult to imagine that the scramble for renewables might become similarly violent.

If we don’t take precautions, clean energy firms could become as destructive as fossil fuel companies—buying off politicians, trashing ecosystems, lobbying against environmental regulations, even assassinating community leaders who stand in their way.

Some hope that nuclear power will help us get around these problems—and surely it needs to be part of the mix. But nuclear comes with its own constraints. For one, it takes so long to get new power plants up and running that they can play only a small role in getting us to zero emissions by midcentury. And even in the longer term, nuclear can’t be scaled beyond about 1 terawatt. Absent a miraculous technological breakthrough, the vast majority of our energy will have to come from solar and wind.

None of this is to say that we shouldn’t pursue a rapid transition to renewable energy. We absolutely must and urgently. But if we’re after a greener, more sustainable economy, we need to disabuse ourselves of the fantasy that we can carry on growing energy demand at existing rates.

Of course, we know that poorer countries still need to increase their energy use in order to meet basic needs. But richer countries, fortunately, do not. In high-income nations, the transition to green energy needs to be accompanied by a planned reduction of aggregate energy use.

How might this be accomplished? Given that the majority of our energy is used to power the extraction and production of material goods, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests that high-income nations reduce their material throughput—legislating longer product life spans and rights to repair, banning planned obsolescence and throwaway fashion, shifting from private cars to public transportation, while scaling down socially unnecessary industries and wasteful luxury consumption like the arms trade, SUVs, and McMansions.

Reducing energy demand not only enables a faster transition to renewables, but also ensures that the transition doesn’t trigger new waves of destruction. Any Green New Deal that hopes to be socially just and ecologically coherent needs to have these principles at its heart.


This article was originally published on 6th September 2019 at Foreign Policy.

The Subterranean Brain of the Forest 

How Trees Communicate

Under the forest litter, trees build a network of connections that could be the envy of humans. It transports not only nutrients, but also information – about fires, droughts and environmental conditions. This speech of trees, and the relationships connecting them, were discovered by a certain persistent Canadian.

2020-10-15 Maria Hawranek, translated by Marta Dziurosz

Daniel Mróz – drawing from the archives (no. 470–471/1954)

In one of the chapters of his book The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben gives a rather enigmatic description of how it was proved that various trees species can communicate. He doesn’t, however, refer us to the research. The secret behind that mysterious experiment is an extraordinary woman and her ground-breaking discoveries from 35 years ago, which permanently changed our perception of trees. They initiated a whole range of research regarding the symbiosis of trees and mushrooms at the Faculty of Forestry (University of British Columbia, Vancouver). On Polish Wikipedia, almost every other piece of information concerning mycorrhizal networks refers to the research co-authored by the Canadian. Recently she also inspired Richard Powers, author of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Overstory. The writer used her biography to create the fictional character of the dendrologist Patricia Westerford.

Meet Suzanne Simard, who was the first to prove that trees communicate.

Simard – the granddaughter of a logger who ferried trees out of the forest using horses (which is still considered the best method for the ecosystem) – grew up in the woods of British Columbia, which take up 70% of this westernmost Canadian province. Canada has the third largest forest surface in the world, after Russia and Brazil. Incidentally, it’s worth knowing that more than half of the Earth’s forests grow in just five countries.

As a girl, Suzanne would lie down and watch the crowns of cedars, spruces and Douglas firs – some of the tallest trees in the world. Her playground was shaded by those giants. No wonder that she studied forestry, like her grandfather and uncles. However, she soon realized that her work contributes to the clearcutting of trees with industrial monster-machines which take seconds to topple a tree. She decided to leave the forest and return as a researcher.

At that time, a laboratory discovered that a pine root is able to send carbon to another root. Suzanne decided to check whether this also happens in a real forest. “Some people thought I was crazy, and I had a really hard time getting research funding. But I persevered,” she recalls in her TED Talk. The recording has been viewed more than a million times.

In a forest, Simard grew 80 young trees of three species: paper birch, Douglas fir and western red cedar. She covered the plants tightly with plastic bags, under which she pumped CO2 isotopes with huge syringes: the birch was surrounded by the radioactive isotope carbon-14; the fir with the stable carbon-13. After an hour, she took the bag off the birch and tested it with a Geiger counter. As expected, it beeped: the birch had absorbed the radioactive isotope. Simard approached the Douglas fir, removed the bag, moved the Geiger counter close and held her breath for a second. Then she heard the characteristic beeping again! Because both trees were covered with plastic foil, the radioactive carbon could have reached the Douglas fir only through the root system.

The counter’s buzz was evidence of the subterranean communication of trees. Simard reported: “The birch said: ‘Hey, can I help you with anything?’. And the fir said: ‘Yes, please, send me some carbon, because someone put a bag on me and I can’t photosynthesize.’.” Excited, she ran from one tree to the other, and each measurement confirmed her discovery. The Geiger counter was silent only at the western red cedar: those trees turned out to be disconnected from the network of birches and firs.

Soon various relationships started becoming apparent: the more shaded the fir was in the summer, the more carbon the birch sent it. But later, in autumn, the coniferous fir had a surplus of carbon, because it was still photosynthesizing, so it helpfully sent it to the birch, which was already losing leaves. “I knew I discovered something huge that would change the perception of trees in a forest: no longer as competitors, but also as collaborators. I found hard proof of a huge underground network of communication, a different world,” said the researcher.

This was 30 years ago. Since then, Simard and her team have published hundreds of papers. Thanks to them, we know more about what happens under the litter, where tree roots take up an area that can be many times the size of their crowns.
A network of relationships

Simard has a clear recollection of the moment when she understood that the forest is more than its visible, terrestrial part. She was with her grandfather at their allotment. Her dog fell into the hole under the outhouse, and grandpa started to dig next to it to save the animal. The young Suzanne saw twisted roots, white mycelium, reddish and greenish minerals. The dog was saved, and Suzanne became fascinated with the underground world.

Trees often connect directly via their roots, but the most important part of mass communication is played by fungi, which create so-called mycorrhizal networks. The toadstool-shaped mushrooms that we collect are just the fruiting bodies, the tips of icebergs: the vast majority of the fungus, its mycelium, extends underground and suffuses every bit of the surrounding soil. There are about 100 species of mycorrhizal mushrooms. Their hyphae create a network so dense that one tablespoon of soil could fit a few kilometres of it, and we could find a few hundred kilometres under a footprint. The mycelium works a bit like the internet; scientists have long been calling it the Wood Wide Web.

The fungus cells conduct barter with tree cells – fungi cannot photosynthesize, so they draw sugar from trees. They exchange it for nutrients, which they obtain from soil more successfully than trees. At the same time, they enable the transport of various other substances and communication. It’s not really clear why they throw in this latter service. Perhaps it is profitable to the fungus to have connections with many trees? Or maybe it’s that trees reduce the amount of sugar dispatched if the fungus does not allow them to connect with others?

What do trees give each other? It turns out that it’s not just carbon, but also phosphorus, nitrogen, water and information in the form of chemical and electric impulses. For example, they send warning signals about a pest attack, so that other trees can prepare and fend it off with defensive enzymes

At mother’s knee

The network created by fungi and trees has hubs and links. Hub trees or mother trees are the most important: the oldest and largest, connected with up to a few hundred other trees. They are the guardians of the sylvan community. They check in with their neighbours; share food and knowledge acquired throughout a long life. Thanks to the underground network, they send surplus carbon to young seedlings, which quadruples their chances of survival. What’s more, they can recognize their kin – they provide more food to youngsters with a similar genetic profile (although this doesn’t mean that they completely ignore seedlings unrelated to them). When mother trees get injured or are preparing to die, they bestow their wisdom on the next generations, especially those related to them. Although we don’t yet know which part of trees houses their memory, it definitely exists – the oldest trees remember bygone droughts and can adjust themselves and their environment to the changing climate. This is why in non-supervised forests, old stumps – which have no leaves, and hence no ability to photosynthesize – are still alive. Their neighbours nourish them via the underground pathway, because the knowledge those trunks have may be of use to surrounding plants. Tree stands behave like old human communities: they care both for the youngest members and the oldest, wisest ones.

“After years of work in the forest, I started to see what happens underground as the tree’s brain,” reveals Simard in a documentary entitled Intelligent Trees, where she speaks about her discoveries and observations along with Peter Wohlleben.

Priceless legacy

The dense underground network enables sylvan ecosystems to regenerate more easily and directly affects the health of the whole forest. This is why Suzanne does more than research. She also campaigns for balanced forest exploitation management, making use of ancestral wisdom and her own experiences as a forester.

Canada, so densely forested, also has one of the highest levels of tree cutting. Deforestation affects hydrological cycles, the distribution of gases and the lives of forest inhabitants. Seen from a satellite, large-scale clearcutting looks like bald spots left by alopecia, and it weakens the forest. The gaps are usually re-planted with just one tree species, frequently aspen or birch. Those forests are more prone to infections and more weakly communicated: the soil, damaged by huge machines, no longer transmits information, and there are no old trees around from which to learn. This means that a certain species of woodworm (Dendroctonus ponderosae) proliferates more freely in British Columbia than elsewhere, and there are unusually large fires. In 2014, more than three million hectares of forest burned down; it was the biggest fire in Canada’s Northwest Territories in 30 years.

Simard proposes a change in the way forests are managed. In her opinion, instead of clearcutting (completely cutting down patches of forest), it is better to leave behind a legacy: mother trees that are able to pass their knowledge on to new generations. “You can cut down one or two such trees, but there’s a critical moment: you cut down one too many and the whole system collapses,” she argues. Instead of planting one or two species, she recommends introducing diversity in new forests, and giving them time to establish their own order. She emphasizes that we need to save primaeval forests, as they are depositaries of genes. They no longer exist in Europe – apart from the Białowieża Forest in Poland. According to FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations), since 1990 we’ve lost 80 million hectares of this type of forest globally.

One of the oldest known trees, a Swedish spruce, is around 9500 years old. A healthy tree in a forest lives for around 400 to 500 years, if undisturbed. It has a chance to survive longer if it grows in a stand. Wohlleben writes that beeches which grow more densely – although they have small crowns and would seem to be rather uncomfortable – are healthier and more productive than the ones growing solo. Like people, trees growing in solitude usually have shorter lives, cut off from the live network of information and their care system.

In one of her interviews, Simard shared a personal story: “A few years ago I had breast cancer. Today I feel great. I survived it mainly thanks to my connections – the friendships I created. I felt that I’m experiencing what I study in forests. A tree is also going to be all right if only it stays a part of its own community.”

In writing this article, I used the following materials: a TED talk entitled “How trees talk to each other”, interviews with Suzanne Simard for the portal Yale Environment 360 and www.ttbook.org, the documentary “Intelligent Trees”, Peter Wohlleben’s book “The Hidden Life of Trees” and the article “It’s Not the Trees That Need Saving” at Earthisland.org.

Translated from the Polish by Marta Dziurosz

The Subterranean Brain of the Forest - Przekrój Magazine (przekroj.pl)

Jaguars robust to climate extremes but lack of food threatens species

Researchers track climate change scenarios for Amazonian wild cats

QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

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VIDEO: QUT RESEARCHERS LEAD A WORLD-FIRST INVESTIGATION INTO THE CHANCES OF WILD JAGUARS SURVIVING CLIMATE EXTREMES WITH SIX SCENARIOS MODELLING THE BEHAVIOUR, MATING, BIRTHS OF CUBS, COMPETITION, ILLEGAL HUNTING, DEATH FROM... view more 

CREDIT: QUT MEDIA

A new QUT-led study has found wild jaguars in the Amazon can cope with climate extremes in the short-term, but numbers will rapidly decline if weather events increase in frequency, diminishing sources of food.

Distinguished Professor Kerrie Mengersen and Professor Kevin Burrage led a team of researchers in a world-first investigation of the big cat's chances of survival.

The new research results have been published in Ecology and Evolution.

The jaguar (Panthera onca) is the dominant predator in Central and South America and is considered a near-threatened species by the International Union Conservation Nature.

Research main points: -

• Results are concerning for future viability of jaguar populations in Peruvian Amazon.
• Stochastic statistical temporal model of jaguar abundance considers six population scenarios and estimates of prey species.
• Jaguar diet includes white lipped peccary, collared peccary, red brochet deer, white tailed deer, agouti, paca and armadillo.
• Species exhibit some robustness to extreme drought and flood, but repeated exposure can result in rapid decline.
• Predictions show species can recover- at lower numbers - if there are periods of benign climate patterns.
• Modelling provides framework to evaluate complex ecological problems using sparse information sources.

CAPTION

Infographic describing QUT investigation on the impact of climate change on jaguars.

Professor Mengersen said the Pacaya Semiria Reserve covers 20,800 km2 in the Loreto region of the Peruvian Amazon, comprised of mostly primary forest.

"Estimates of jaguar numbers are difficult to achieve because the big cats are cryptic by nature, are not always uniquely identifiable, and their habitat can be hostile to humans," Professor Mengersen said.

The project drew on information gathered during a 2016 trip to the remote reserve, as well as a census study based on camera traps and scat analysis, jaguar ecology, and an elicitation study of Indigenous rangers in the Pacaya Samiria National Reserve.

Six jaguar population scenarios were analysed mapping the jungle creature's solitary behaviour, mating, births of cubs at certain times of the year, competition, illegal hunting, death from starvation and availability of key prey.

Professor Kevin Burrage cautioned the predicted results for the jaguars in the long-term were concerning.

"Our results imply that jaguars can cope with extreme drought and flood, but there is a very high probability that the population will crash if the conditions are repeated over short time periods. These scenarios are becoming more likely due to climate change," he said.

"The declines may be further exacerbated by hunting of both jaguars and their prey, as well as loss of habitat through deforestation."

Professor Burrage said scenario 1 estimated the jaguar population at 600-700 assuming stable prey availability while scenario 6 was an extreme case with drought and flood occurring every other year.

"In this worst-case scenario, prey levels could not recover, and jaguar populations was predicted to drop to single digits in 30 years' time," Professor Burrage said.

CAPTION

QUT's Distinguished Professor Kerrie Mengersen led a team of researchers in a world-first investigation of the big cat's chances of survival with the findings published in Ecology and Evolution.

In addition to Professors Mengersen and Burrage, researchers involved in the study included Professor Erin Peterson, Professor Tomasz Bednarz, Dr Pamela Burrage, Dr Julie Vercelloni and June Kim based at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers, and Dr Jacqueline Davis of the University of Cambridge and the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam.

A pdf of the journal paper is available.

Imagery available via Dropbox.

TPU scientists develop eco-friendly hydrogel for agriculture

TOMSK POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

Scientists of Tomsk Polytechnic University, in cooperation with the Czech colleagues have developed a new hydrogel for agriculture. It is meant to retain moisture and fertilizers in soil. The difference of the new hydrogel from other formulations is that it is made entirely of natural components and degrades in soil into nontoxic products to humans, animals, and plants. The research results are published in the Journal of Cleaner Production (IF: 7, 246; Q1).

Hydrogels are used in agriculture and forestry to retain moisture in soil, which directly affects germination. They are also used in combination with fertilizers as hydrogels reduce volatilization of fertilizers and therefore control fertilizer release.

"Due to the hydrogels, plants require less watering and fertilization. On the one hand, it is important for fresh water conservation on the planet, on the other hand, it reduces the harmful effect of fertilizers to the soil. Most of the hydrogels available on the market are made of polyacrylamide and polyacrinolintrile. They are not fully biodegradable, that is why they are considered potential soil contaminants. Even though the components themselves are not toxic, their commercial formulations contain residual amounts of acrylamide, which is a neurotoxic and carcinogen substance. We used whey protein and alginic acid as primary components in our research work. These are affordable, natural and completely non-toxic components. This is the main advantage of our hydrogel," Antonio Di Martino, one of the article authors, associate professor of the TPU Research School of Chemistry & Applied Biomedical Sciences, says.

The process of obtaining the hydrogel suggested by the authors of the research is simple: the primary components must be mixed in a solution, dried, and compressed into a tablet. In contact with liquids, the substance swells and becomes gel-like.

"We also added urea in the mixture which is a well-known fertilizer. Over time, the hydrogel degrades in soil gradually and evenly releasing the fertilizer. Moreover, the hydrogel itself degrades into carbon and nitrogen over time, while nitrogen is a widely used macronutrient in agriculture and an essential structural material for plants. The laboratory experiments showed that the hydrogel can be used a few more times after a full release of moisture," Antonio Di Martino notes.

In the future, the scientists will continue experimenting and searching for new materials for a controlled application of fertilizers in soil.

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The scientists from Tomas Bata University in Zlín (the Czech Republic), Dairy Research Institute (the Czech Republic), and Research Institute for Soil and Water Conservation (the Czech Republic) took part in the research project.

An escape route for seafloor methane

Leakage from frozen layers was a puzzle, but a new study shows how the potent greenhouse gas breaks through icy barriers.

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Research News

 

Methane, the main component of natural gas, is the cleanest-burning of all the fossil fuels, but when emitted into the atmosphere it is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. By some estimates, seafloor methane contained in frozen formations along the continental margins may equal or exceed the total amount of coal, oil, and gas in all other reservoirs worldwide. Yet, the way methane escapes from these deep formations is poorly understood.

In particular, scientists have been faced with a puzzle. Observations at sites around the world have shown vigorous columns of methane gas bubbling up from these formations in some places, yet the high pressure and low temperature of these deep-sea environments should create a solid frozen layer that would be expected to act as a kind of capstone, preventing gas from escaping. So how does the gas get out?

A new study helps explain how and why columns of the gas can stream out of these formations, known as methane hydrates. Using a combination of deep-sea observations, laboratory experiments, and computer modeling, researchers have found phenomena that explain and predict the way the gas breaks free from the icy grip of a frozen mix of water and methane. The findings are reported today in the journal PNAS, in a paper by Xiaojing (Ruby) Fu SM '15, PhD '17, now at the University of California at Berkeley; Professor Ruben Juanes at MIT; and five others in Switzerland, Spain, New Mexico, and California.

Surprisingly, not only does the frozen hydrate formation fail to prevent methane gas from escaping into the ocean column, but in some cases it actually facilitates that escape.

Early on, Fu saw photos and videos showing plumes of methane, taken from a NOAA research ship in the Gulf of Mexico, revealing the process of bubble formation right at the seafloor. It was clear that the bubbles themselves often formed with a frozen crust around them, and would float upward with their icy shells like tiny helium balloons.

Later, Fu used sonar to detect similar bubble plumes from a research ship off the coast of Virginia. "This cruise alone detected thousands of these plumes," says Fu, who led the research project while a graduate student and postdoc at MIT. "We could follow these methane bubbles encrusted by hydrate shells into the water column," she says. "That's when we first knew that hydrate forming on these gas interfaces can be a very common occurrence."

But exactly what was going on beneath the seafloor to trigger the release of these bubbles remained unknown. Through a series of lab experiments and simulations, the mechanisms at work gradually became apparent.

Seismic studies of the subsurface of the seafloor in these vent regions show a series of relatively narrow conduits, or chimneys, through which the gas escapes. But the presence of chunks of gas hydrate from these same formations made it clear that the solid hydrate and the gaseous methane could co-exist, Fu explains. To simulate the conditions in the lab, the researchers used a small two-dimensional setup, sandwiching a gas bubble in a layer of water between two plates of glass under high pressure.

As a gas tries to rise through the seafloor, Fu says, if it's forming a hydrate layer when it hits the cold seawater, that should block its progress: "It's running into a wall. So how would that wall not be preventing it from continuous migration?" Using the microfluidic experiments, they found a previously unknown phenomenon at work, which they dubbed crustal fingering.

If the gas bubble starts to expand, "what we saw is that the expansion of the gas was able to create enough pressure to essentially rupture the hydrate shell. And it's almost like it's hatching out of its own shell," Fu says. But instead of each rupture freezing back over with the reforming hydrate, the hydrate formation takes place along the sides of the rising bubble, creating a kind of tube around the bubble as it moves upward. "It's almost like the gas bubble is able to chisel out its own path, and that path is walled by the hydrate solid," she says. This phenomenon they observed at small scale in the lab, their analysis suggests, is also what would also happen at much larger scale in the seafloor.

That observation, she said, "was really the first time we've been aware of a phenomenon like this that could explain how hydrate formation will not inhibit gas flow, but rather in this case, it would facilitate it," by providing a conduit and directing the flow. Without that focusing, the flow of gas would be much more diffuse and spread out.

As the crust of hydrate forms, it slows down the formation of more hydrate because it forms a barrier between the gas and the seawater. The methane below the barrier can therefore persist in its unfrozen, gaseous form for a long time. The combination of these two phenomena -- the focusing effect of the hydrate-walled channels and the segregation of the methane gas from the water by a hydrate layer -- "goes a long way toward explaining why you can have some of this vigorous venting, thanks to the hydrate formation, rather than being prevented by it," says Juanes.

A better understanding of the process could help in predicting where and when such methane seeps will be found, and how changes in environmental conditions could affect the distribution and output of these seeps. While there have been suggestions that a warming climate could increase the rate of such venting, Fu says there is little evidence of that so far. She notes that temperatures at the depths where these formations occur -- 600 meters (1,900 feet) deep or more -- are expected to experience a smaller temperature increase than would be needed to trigger a widespread release of the frozen gas.

Some researchers have suggested that these vast undersea methane formations might someday be harnessed for energy production. Though there would be great technical hurdles to such use, Juanes says, these findings might help in assessing the possibilities.

"The problem of how gas can move through the hydrate stability zone, where we would expect the gas to be immobilized by being converted to hydrate, and instead escape at the seafloor, is still not fully understood," says Hugh Daigle, an associate professor of petroleum and geosystems engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, who was not associated with this research. "This work presents a probable new mechanism that could plausibly allow this process to occur, and nicely integrates previous laboratory observations with modeling at a larger scale."

"In a practical sense, the work here takes a phenomenon at a small scale and allows us to use it in a model that only considers larger scales, and will be very useful for implementing in future work," Daigle says.

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The research team included Joaquin Jimenez-Martinez at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology; Than Phon Nguyen, William Carey and Hari Vinaswanathan at Los Alamos National Laboratory; and Luis Cueto-Felgueroso at the Technical University of Madrid. The work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Written by David L. Chandler, MIT News Office