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Monday, November 01, 2021

For tribes, 'good fire' a key to restoring nature and people

by John Flesher

Elizabeth Azzuz stood in prayer on a Northern California mountainside, arms outstretched, grasping a handmade torch of dried wormwood branches, the fuel her Native American ancestors used for generations to burn underbrush in thick forest.

"Guide our hands as we bring fire back to the land," she intoned before crouching and igniting dead leaves and needles carpeting the ground.

Others joined her. And soon dancing flames and pungent smoke rose from the slope high above the distant Klamath River.

Over several days in early October, about 80 acres (32.4 hectares) on the Yurok reservation would be set aflame. The burning was monitored by crews wearing protective helmets and clothing—firefighting gear and water trucks ready. They were part of a program that teaches Yurok and other tribes the ancient skills of treating land with fire.

Such an act could have meant jail a century ago. But state and federal agencies that long banned "cultural burns" in the U.S. West are coming to terms with them—and even collaborating—as the wildfire crisis worsens.

Wildfires have blackened nearly 6,000 square miles (15,540 square kilometers) in California the past two years and more elsewhere amid prolonged drought and rising temperatures linked to climate change. Dozens have died; thousands of homes have been lost.

Scientific research increasingly confirms what tribes argued all along: Low-intensity burns on designated parcels, under the right conditions, reduce the risk by consuming dead wood and other fire fuels on forest floors.

To the Yurok, Karuk and Hupa in the mid-Klamath region, the resurgence of cultural burning is about reclaiming a way of life violently suppressed with the arrival of white settlers in the 1800s.

Indigenous people had their land seized, and many were killed or forced onto reservations. Children were sent to schools that forbade their languages and customs. And their hunter-gatherer lifestyle was devastated by prohibitions on fire that tribes had used for thousands of years to treat the landscape.

It enriched the land with berries, medicinal herbs and tan oak acorns while killing bugs. It opened browsing space for deer and elk. It let more rainwater reach streams, boosting salmon numbers. It spurred hazelnut stems and bear grass used for intricate baskets and ceremonial regalia.

Now, descendants of those who quietly kept the old ways alive are practicing them openly, creating "good fire."

"Fire is a tool left by the Creator to restore our environment and the health of our people," said Azzuz, board secretary for the Cultural Fire Management Council, which promotes burning on ancestral Yurok lands.

"Fire is life for us."

PERSECUTION AND PERSEVERANCE

Nine years ago, Margo Robbins got a facial tattoo—two dark stripes from the edges of her mouth to below her chin, and another midway between them. It once was a common mark for Yurok women, including her great-grandmother.

"I got mine to represent my commitment to continuing the traditions of our ancestors," said Robbins, 59, whose jokes and cackling laugh mask a steely resolve.

She would become a leading voice in the struggle to return fire to her people's historical territory, much under state and federal management. The more than 5,000-member tribe's reservation courses along a 44-mile (70.8-kilometer) stretch of the Klamath.

Since 1910, when infernos consumed more than 3 million (1.2 million hectares) western acres, federal policy had considered fire an enemy. "Only you can prevent forest fires," Smokey Bear later proclaimed in commercials.

"They considered tribal people arsonists, didn't understand the relationship between fires and a healthy forest," said Merv George, 48, a former Hoopa Valley Tribe chairman who now supervises Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest in Northern California. "I heard stories of people getting thrown in jail if they were caught."

But when George joined the U.S. Forest Service as a tribal relations manager in 2008, western wildfires were growing bigger and more frequent; officials knew something needed to change.

Two national forests—Six Rivers and Klamath—joined a landscape restoration partnership with the Karuk tribe and nonprofit groups. It released a 2014 plan endorsing "prescribed," or intentional, burns.

A year earlier, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, had approved a small cultural burn on Yurok land.

It was a victory for Robbins. As a young girl of Yurok, Hupa and Irish descent, she learned the basketry fundamental to her native identity. Tribes use baskets for gathering food and medicinal plants, trapping eels, ceremonial dancing, cradling babies, even prayer.

"Weaving is really, really soothing. It's kind of like medicine for your soul," she said, displaying finely crafted baskets at a Yurok firehouse near the village of Weitchpec.

But weaving materials had become scarce, particularly hazel wood. Burns in bygone days helped the shoots grow straight and strong. Under no-fire management, hazel was stunted by shrubs, downed trees, matted leaves.

With grandchildren on the way, Robbins wanted them carried in traditional baby baskets. She needed tribal forests to produce high-quality hazel once more. That meant fire.

After the state-sanctioned Yurok small burn, Robbins and other community members established the Cultural Fire Management Council to push for more.

They allied with Karuk and Hupa activists and The Nature Conservancy to create the Indigenous Peoples Burning Network, which conducts training burns that have drawn hundreds of participants from across the U.S. and other countries. It has expanded into Oregon, Minnesota and New Mexico.

"It's really exciting and gives me a lot of hope that the tide is changing," Robbins said. "We revived our language, our dances, and now, bringing back fire, we'll restore the land."

'FINALLY BEING HEARD'

To prepare for the one this month in the Klamath region, Yurok leaders studied weather forecasts, scouted mountainous burn areas, positioned water tanks, uncoiled fire hoses, equipped and drilled 30-plus crew members.

As Azzuz finished her ceremonial prayer, the wormwood that coaxed the first flames was replaced with modern "drip torches"—canisters of gasoline and diesel with spouts and wicks. Team members moved quickly along a dirt trail, flicking droplets of burning fuel.

Smoke billowed. Flames crackled and hissed. Tangles of green and brown foliage were reduced to ash. Young Douglas firs that squeeze out other species were another target.

But larger trees—oaks, madrones, conifers—were largely unscathed, aside from patches of scorched bark.

"It's beautiful and black," Azzuz exulted. "By next spring, there will be a lot of hazel shoots."

Hour by hour, torch bearers moved down the slope, igniting swaths of forest floor. Co-workers in radio contact watched firebreaks, ready to douse or beat down stray flames.

There were young and middle-aged, native and non-native, novices and veterans—some from area tribes, others from far away.

Jose Luis Dulce, a firefighter in his native Spain and Ecuador, said he wanted to help revive Indigenous techniques in Europe and South America. Stoney Timmons said his tribe—the Robinson Rancheria Pomo Indians of California—wants to host its own training session next year.

"I'm getting some good lessons to take back," Timmons said.

The exercise was especially satisfying for Robert McConnell Jr., who spent years with Forest Service wildfire crews, attacking from helicopters and driving bulldozers. Now a prescribed fire specialist with Six Rivers National Forest, he works with fire instead of against it.

"I get to feel like I'm Indian again when I get to burn," he said. "It's encoded in my DNA. It's like there's a spark in my eye when I see fire get put on the ground."

As shadows lengthened, cheery yips gave way to shrieks: "Log! Log!" A chunk of flaming timber jounced down a sharply angled slope, smacked onto a two-lane road and hurtled into a thicket below, igniting brush along the way.

Although crew members quickly extinguished the flames, the runaway log was a reminder of the job's hazards.

Nick Hillman, 18, his face glistening with grimy sweat, was unfazed. "I know my ancestors want me to be doing this," he said.

When Yurok forestry director Dawn Blake helped light the hillside, she felt a connection with her grandmother, who wove baskets and set fires in the area long ago.

"We've been talking and begging about doing this for so long, just spinning our wheels," said Blake, 49. "It feels like we're finally being heard."

BIGGER AMBITIONS

But tribes want to go beyond training exercises and "family burns" on small plots. They're pushing to operate throughout the vast territories their ancestors occupied.

"My ultimate goal is to restore all this land back to a natural state," said Blaine McKinnon, battalion chief for the Yurok Fire Department and a leader of the recent cultural burn.

Relations with federal and state authorities have improved, but complaints persist about permits denied, burns postponed and heavy-handed oversight.

Cultural fire leaders say pledges of cooperation from agency higher-ups aren't always carried out by local officials, who fear dismissal if fires get out of hand.

It's a fair point, said Craig Tolmie, chief deputy director of Cal Fire, which struggles to balance the tribes' desires for more fire with opposition from a jittery public.

"People have really been traumatized and shocked by the last two fire seasons," Tolmie said.

Under state laws enacted this year, tribal burners and front-line regulators will work more closely, he said. One measure requires his department to appoint a cultural burning liaison and provide training and certification for prescribed fire "burn bosses."

Another makes it easier to get liability insurance by raising the bar for requiring burn professionals to pay for extinguishing out-of-control fires—a rarity but always a risk. Lawmakers also budgeted $40 million for a prescribed fire insurance fund and tribal burn programs.

Still, prescribed burns alone can't rid forests of more than a century's accumulation of woody debris, Tolmie said, arguing that many areas should be "pre-treated" with mechanical grinding and tree thinning before fires are set.

Ancient wisdom and scientific research show otherwise, said Chad Hanson, forest ecologist with the John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute in California. Regulators are "trying to extort tribes" by making cultural burns contingent on logging, he said.

Bill Tripp, the Karuk tribe's natural resources director, said the solution is empowering tribes to handle prescribed burns while Cal Fire and the Forest Service focus on suppressing wildfires.

Talon Davis, 27, a member of the Yurok tribe, holds his son, Kenneth, 2, at the end of the day following a cultural training burn on the Yurok reservation in Weitchpec, Calif., Thursday, Oct. 7, 2021. Davis welcomed the opportunity "to show the world what good fire is." He added, "this is how we're supposed to care for Mother Earth. Put fire back on the ground, bring our home back into balance." Credit: AP Photo/David Goldman
Robert McConnell Jr, a prescribed fire specialist with Six Rivers National Forest and a member of the Yurok tribe, watches for embers flying uphill from the cultural training burn area on the Yurok reservation in Weitchpec, Calif., Thursday, Oct. 7, 2021. The cultural training burn was part of a program that teaches younger Yurok and other tribes the ancient skills of treating land with fire. Credit: AP Photo/David Goldman
Raven Parkins, foreground center, a member of the Modoc tribe, and Max Brotman, left, fill gas canisters during a cultural training burn on the Yurok reservation in Weitchpec, Calif., Friday, Oct. 8, 2021. Hour by hour, torch bearers moved down the slope, igniting swaths of forest floor. Co-workers in radio contact watched firebreaks, ready to douse or beat down stray flames. Credit: AP Photo/David Goldman
From left, Max Brotman and Rhodri Wiseman, rest along with Robinson Rancheria Pomo Indians Eric Timmons and his brother, Stoney Timmons, after they finished working a cultural training burn on the Yurok reservation in Weitchpec, Calif., Thursday, Oct. 7, 2021. Credit: AP Photo/David Goldman
Margo Robbins, a member of the Yurok tribe, holds a hazel leaf while scouting an area before a cultural training burn on the Yurok reservation in Weitchpec, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2021. Tribes like the Yurok use baskets for gathering food and medicinal plants, trapping eels, ceremonial dancing, cradling babies, even prayer. But weaving materials had become scarce, particularly hazel wood. Burns in bygone days helped the shoots grow straight and strong. Under no-fire management, hazel was stunted by shrubs, downed trees, matted leaves. Credit: AP Photo/David Goldman
Marty Duncan, a member of the Robinson Rancheria Pomo Indians, prepares for a cultural training burn after waking up in a campsite in Weitchpec, Calif., Thursday, Oct. 7, 2021. Over several days in early October, about 80 acres (32 hectares) on the Yurok reservation would be set aflame. The burning was monitored by crews wearing protective helmets and clothing—firefighting gear and water trucks ready. They were part of a program that teaches younger Yurok and other tribes the ancient skills of treating land with fire. Credit: AP Photo/David Goldman
Margo Robbins shows off a baby basket she made out of hazel wood to participants of a cultural training burn on the Yurok reservation in Weitchpec, Calif., Thursday, Oct. 7, 2021. As a young girl of Yurok, Hupa and Irish descent, she learned the basketry fundamental to her native identity. Tribes use baskets for gathering food and medicinal plants, trapping eels, ceremonial dancing, cradling babies, even prayer. "Weaving is really, really soothing. It's kind of like medicine for your soul," she said. Credit: AP Photo/David Goldman
Stoney Timmons, a member of the Robinson Rancheria Pomo Indians, smells a lemon balm plant while scouting an area with fellow participants of a cultural training burn in Weitchpec, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2021. Before they were outlawed, cultural burns enriched the land with berries, medicinal herbs and tan oak acorns while killing bugs. It opened browsing space for deer and elk. It let more rainwater reach streams, boosting salmon numbers. It spurred hazelnut stems and bear grass used for intricate baskets and ceremonial regalia. Credit: AP Photo/David Goldman
Margo Robbins, a member of the Yurok tribe, talks to participants of a cultural training burn as they visit a ceremonial dance pit in Weitchpec, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2021. Robbins would become a leading the voice in the struggle to return fire to her people's ancestral territory, much of which is under state and federal management. Credit: AP Photo/David Goldman
Jose Luis Dulce, center right, a firefighter in Ecuador and in his home country, Spain, listens during a briefing before a cultural training burn on the Yurok reservation in Weitchpec, Calif., Friday, Oct. 8, 2021. Dulce said he attended the training to help revive Indigenous techniques in Europe and South America. Credit: AP Photo/David Goldman
A scorched hillside rises from the backyard of Ruth, 72, and John Bain, 76, a member of the Karuk tribe, where last year's Slater Fire destroyed a house and several antique cars on their property in Happy Camp, Calif., Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021. "They can get rid of the brush and that will save a bigger fire down the road, probably," said John. "It's gonna help because that's all going to come back in two or three years as just brush and if they can keep that under control, it could stop a big fire. I think the tribe should do it and the Forest Service should do it too." Credit: AP Photo/David Goldman
A woman fishes in the Klamath River as a mountain which burned in last year's Slater Fire stands in the background in Happy Camp, Calif., Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021. Wildfires have blackened nearly 6,000 square miles (15,540 square kilometers) in California the past two years and more elsewhere amid prolonged drought and rising temperatures linked to climate change. Dozens have died; thousands of homes have been lost. Credit: AP Photo/David Goldman
John Bain, 76, a member of the Karuk tribe, walks by his prized 1954 Chevy five-window pickup that was destroyed in last year's Slater Fire which tore through his property and the Klamath National Forest in Happy Camp, Calif., Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021. "I never seen winds like that. I never thought it would do what it did," said Bain. "I lost my little two-bedroom house and my shop, car port, a 40-foot cargo container, and the barn shed and I had four pick-ups that burned up." Credit: AP Photo/David Goldman
Talon Davis, 27, a member of the Yurok tribe, holds his son, Kenneth, 2, at the end of the day following a cultural training burn on the Yurok reservation in Weitchpec, Calif., Thursday, Oct. 7, 2021. Davis welcomed the opportunity "to show the world what good fire is." He added, "this is how we're supposed to care for Mother Earth. Put fire back on the ground, bring our home back into balance." Credit: AP Photo/David Goldman
Robert McConnell Jr, a prescribed fire specialist with Six Rivers National Forest and a member of the Yurok tribe, watches for embers flying uphill from the cultural training burn area on the Yurok reservation in Weitchpec, Calif., Thursday, Oct. 7, 2021. The cultural training burn was part of a program that teaches younger Yurok and other tribes the ancient skills of treating land with fire. Credit: AP Photo/David Goldman

The mid-Klamath area is ideal for a teaching center where cultural burners could "guide us into a new era of living with fire," said Tripp, who learned from his great-grandmother and was setting small blazes in his remote village by age 8.

Tribes are uniquely positioned to train younger generations about stewardship-oriented fire management, said Scott Stephens, an environmental policy professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

"We'd need literally thousands of people doing this burning to ramp it up to a scale that's meaningful," he said.

Talon Davis, 27, a member of the Yurok crew, welcomed the opportunity "to show the world what good fire is." He is Robbins' son-in-law; his own toddler has been carried in her baskets, as she wished.

"This is how we're supposed to care for Mother Earth," he said. "Put fire back on the ground, bring our home back into balance."

Native approaches to fire management could revitalize communities, researchers find

Near total loss of historical lands leaves Indigenous nations in the US more vulnerable to climate change

by Fred Mamoun, University of Michigan

In a first-of-its-kind study, a team of researchers attempted to quantify the massive loss of historical lands by Indigenous nations across the United States since European settlers first began laying claim to the continent.

They also found historical land dispossession was associated with current and future climate risks as Indigenous peoples were forced to lands that are more exposed to a range of climate change risks and hazards and less likely to lie over valuable subsurface oil and gas resources.

The study, published online Oct. 28 in the journal Science, was led by Justin Farrell of the Yale School of the Environment. Co-authors include Kyle Whyte of the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability.

"Everyone who's read history—or a true version of it—knows this story," Farrell said. "But this is the first scholarly study that has looked at the full scope of change and tried to quantify it, to systematically geo-reference it at scale."

U-M's Whyte, the George Willis Pack Professor at SEAS and a member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, said the new study provides important reinforcement for longstanding claims.

"The research confirms what Indigenous leaders have been calling out for years," said Whyte, who is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. "The U.S. still has not addressed the land dispossession and the suppression of Indigenous territorial governance that are at the root of why Indigenous peoples face disproportionate vulnerability to climate change impacts."

The study, published with all the data hosted and made public in collaboration with the Native Land Information System, was a Herculean effort pursued on and off over the last seven years.

The hope, according to lead author Farrell and his team, is that other scholars and members of Indigenous nations will review and improve the findings moving forward via open data and public dashboards, providing a more complete and accurate picture of the extent of land dispossession among Indigenous nations.

Among their findings was that Indigenous nations across the U.S. have lost 98.9% of their historical land base since European settlers first began to lay claim to the continent. More than 40% of tribes from the historical period now possess no federally recognized land.

Beyond this single figure, though, the researchers connected their findings to overlapping questions of climate risk and natural resource availability. How, they asked, does exposure to the effects of climate change differ between past and present? How does the agricultural suitability of historical lands compare to current lands? What about oil and gas mineral availability? Beyond the vast quantity of land that was lost, what, the researchers wondered, can be said of the land's quality?

"Obviously, the top-line finding is that, because of systematic land dispossession and forced migration under settler colonialism, Native peoples are exposed to much higher vulnerability due to climate change," said Paul Burow, a doctoral candidate at the Yale School of the Environment and a co-author of the paper.

Present-day lands endure, on average, an increased number of extreme-heat days compared to historical lands, for instance. Wildfire risks are also more severe for about half of all tribes. Findings on agricultural suitability were mixed; the oil and gas mineral value potential of modern lands is less than historical lands.

"And while this gives us a very broad understanding of climate impacts, the work really opens opportunities to derive a more nuanced understanding of effects at the local level," Burow said. "This is the beginning of a long-term, comprehensive research program that will let anybody drill down on how different climate dynamics are touching specific Indigenous peoples and the places they live."

He offered extreme heat as an example: An averaged finding on increased risk of extreme heat to the nation's Indigenous tribal groups is informative, but, at the end of the day, this risk is more meaningful to some communities than others; and so localized data on extreme heat or wildfire risk in, say, the West would be of greater value.

This project, noted Kathryn McConnell, another doctoral candidate at the Yale School of the Environment and a co-author of the paper, fits within a larger research trend linking "contemporary climate impacts to past histories."

"The goal is to bring this historical conversation into contact with the conversations around climate impacts," she said.

She also highlighted the important decision to make the data publicly available, as much of the information they collected has historically remained in the hands of academics and commercial interests.

"There is a violent legacy that persists today, and it remains critical that we try to understand it at large scales," Farrell said. "Not only for historical clarity around land dispossession and forced migration, but for concrete policies moving forward: How can we use this information so that day-to-day, lived experiences of Indigenous peoples are improved—so that the existing inequities are righted and future risks mitigated?"Professor examines new developments in mapping tribal displacement

More information: Justin Farrell et al, Effects of land dispossession and forced migration on Indigenous peoples in North America, Science (2021). DOI: 10.1126/science.abe4943

Journal information: Science

Provided by University of Michigan

Majority of U.S. hourly workers face unpredictable scheduling in absence of fair workweek law protections

by Temple University Center for Public Health Law Research

union worker — Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

The majority of US jurisdictions have not passed fair workweek laws that seek to protect workers from unpredictable scheduling practices, according to a new report published today by the Temple University Center for Public Health Law Research.

This leaves most hourly workers in the United States vulnerable to irregular and inconsistent work hours and little to no control over their schedules.

"The legal landscape is one that leaves most US hourly workers behind—not benefiting from even the most limited protections provided by Fair Workweek Laws," said Sophia Mitchell, JD, a law and policy analyst at the Center.

The report, developed with support from the TIME'S UP Foundation, explores laws at the federal level and in seven state and local jurisdictions that regulate workplace scheduling to better understand how these laws affect women in the workplace prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the seven jurisdictions that have enacted fair workweek laws, the laws typically follow similar structures and contain many of the same provisions. These include advanced scheduling notice, good faith estimates of hours likely to be worked from week to week, a stable scheduling requirement, predictability pay that requires employers to provide additional pay when changes are made to the schedule after the advance notice period, the right to rest between shifts, greater access to hours, the right to request flexible scheduling, and anti-retaliation protections.

But the details and exceptions to those protections vary widely, and the applicability of these laws is limited by the types of industries included, the size of the employers covered, and the types of employees covered, according to the researchers.

While few jurisdictions have passed laws actively addressing worker scheduling through comprehensive packages of fair workweek laws, other states have passed "standalone" laws regulating workplace scheduling, including day of rest laws that require employers to provide one day of rest in a work week; reporting pay laws that require employers to pay employees for showing up to a shift, even if that employee is sent home without working; and split shift laws that require employers to provide additional pay to workers who are required to work shifts that include a gap of unpaid time on the same day.

Other jurisdictions have not only failed to enact protective provisions but have chosen to restrict localities from passing predictable scheduling laws through state preemption. At least nine states have passed preemptive laws that prohibit local jurisdictions from passing fair workweek laws or standalone protections that regulate workplace scheduling.

Limited, early evidence identified by the researchers on the impacts of these laws show that fair workweek laws are effective at curbing unpredictable and unstable scheduling practices and improve workers' lives. However, the significant number of exceptions and loopholes, as well as a lack of resources for employers and public education, prevent fair workweek laws from having an even more positive impact.

"This research provides an innovative and necessary analysis to address how the pandemic has negatively impacted women's paid work, especially women in low-wage industries," said Stephanie Odiase, Senior Manager of Research & Partnerships at the TIME'S UP Foundation. "Research like this is integral to creating policy solutions that support an equitable economy and inclusive society, and TIME'S UP is excited to be in partnership with PHLR on this work."

The researchers also developed a Policy Brief that summarizes key findings of the full report, offers actionable policy recommendations, and establishes a research agenda for understanding the impact of laws regulating workplace scheduling on women in the workplace.

New datasets track employer-provided worker protections, show opportunities for states

More information: Center for Public Health Law Research (October 2021). "Exploring The Legal Response To Unpredictable Scheduling Burdens For Women In The Workplace." phlr.org/product/exploring-leg … dens-women-workplace

Provided by Temple University Center for Public Health Law Research

Drones show promise in speeding up communication with underwater robots for ocean surveys

Peer-Reviewed Publication

INSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL SCIENCE, THE UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO

Drones show promise in speeding up communication with underwater robots for ocean surveys — IMAGE: RESEARCHERS FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO INSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL SCIENCE FIND THAT DRONES MAY BE THE NEXT GENERATION OF COMMUNICATION BASES TO MONITOR THE OCEAN AND SEAFLOOR BECAUSE OF THEIR HIGH-SPEED POSITIONING, STABILITY, AND EFFICIENCY. view more
CREDIT: INSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL SCIENCE, THE UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO

Tokyo, Japan – To conduct ocean surveys, sensors mounted on underwater robotic devices are typically used in communication with sea-surface base stations. Researchers from Japan have found a promising way to optimize this underwater communication.

In a study published this month in Remote Sensing, researchers from The University of Tokyo Institute of Industrial Science revealed that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly referred to as drones, show promise as communication bases with robotic devices known as autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) for ocean surveys.

AUVs are commonly used for underwater survey missions and monitoring the seafloor because they can obtain detailed seafloor images and information. Sea-surface base stations are a necessary partner to the AUVs to obtain absolute positions and real-time data because ocean water weakens the transmitted radio wave signals. However, these base stations have low mobility and drift with sea disturbances. Thus, to optimize this underwater communication, researchers at The University of Tokyo Institute of Industrial Science aimed to address these limitations with devices that would be more efficient, fast, and stable.

“Because sea-surface vehicles cannot efficiently achieve high-speed observations, we examined whether UAVs could be used as a base station for underwater communication with an AUV,” explains lead author Yusuke Yokota. “UAVs can travel at 50 km/h or more and they are not affected by ocean currents or other perturbations, making them ideal candidates for this application.”

To do this, the researchers first observed whether the UAV could land on a sea surface and lift off to return to its base. They then studied the underwater communication using two UAVs (with one imitating an AUV) to find out the distance stability between the hovering and underwater devices. Finally, the researchers examined the sea-surface sway of a UAV used as a buoy.

“The results are very exciting,” says Takumi Matsuda, second author of the study. “The application of UAVs will reduce the cost of many ocean observation operations.”

In addition to the distance stability between the hovering and underwater devices, the UAV was functional as a measurement buoy under wind speeds of 5–10 m/s and wave height of ~1 m.

“Our results suggest that because of their robust hovering control, stability against sea-surface sway, and operation speed, UAVs may be a suitable communication platform with AUVs in ocean surveys up to a distance of approximately 1 km from the shore,” says Yokota. “However, further research is necessary before we can carry out more complicated work with them.”

###

The article, “Underwater communication using UAVs to realize high-speed AUV deployment,” was published in Remote Sensing at DOI: 10.3390/rs13204173

About Institute of Industrial Science (IIS), the University of Tokyo

Institute of Industrial Science (IIS), the University of Tokyo is one of the largest university-attached research institutes in Japan.

More than 120 research laboratories, each headed by a faculty member, comprise IIS, with more than 1,200 members including approximately 400 staff and 800 students actively engaged in education and research. Our activities cover almost all the areas of engineering disciplines. Since its foundation in 1949, IIS has worked to bridge the huge gaps that exist between academic disciplines and realworld applications.

JOURNAL

Remote Sensing

DOI

10.3390/rs13204173

ARTICLE TITLE

Underwater Communication Using UAVs to Realize High-Speed AUV Deployment

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

18-Oct-2021

Meanders help the climate

River beds that can shift naturally are more efficient carbon sinks than straightened rivers

Peer-Reviewed Publication

GFZ GEOFORSCHUNGSZENTRUM POTSDAM, HELMHOLTZ CENTRE

Meandering Rio Bermejo river — IMAGE: RIO BERMEJO RIVER WATER IS LOADED WITH SEDIMENT AND ORGANIC MATTER WHICH GET DEPOSITED ON THE FLOODPLAIN THROUGH MEANDER BEND MIGRATION. view more
CREDIT: KRISTEN COOK, GFZ

It takes about 8500 years for a grain of sand from the Andes to be washed across the Argentine lowlands into the Río Paraná. The 1200-kilometer journey in the river called Río Bermejo is interrupted by many stops in river floodplains, where the grain is deposited, sometimes over thousands of years, and then washed free again. The sand is accompanied by organic carbon, washed in from soil and plants. The transport in water thus gains relevance for the climate: Rivers carry the carbon, which was previously removed from the atmosphere via photosynthesis, as sediment into the sea, where it is stored for thousands of years without harming the climate.

Researchers at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences have now quantified the individual processes of the journey for the first time and report on them in the journal Nature Geoscience. An important result of the work: It is in particular undisturbed meandering sections of a river where carbon is deposited and reabsorbed, and then transported further into the sea. In river sections with straight, stable banks, on the other hand, only the suspended particle load passes through, while the carbon in the river floodplains is slowly decomposed again to CO2 by microorganisms. GFZ working group leader Dirk Sachse says, "The Río Bermejo was an ideal natural laboratory for us because it has no significant tributaries." Sachse is also director of the "Landscapes of the Future" topic in the Helmholtz program "Changing Earth – Sustaining Our Future." He says, "This means that natural river courses that have space to erode floodplains can remove more carbon from the atmosphere than straight river sections. In this respect, straightening of rivers by humans could also contribute to the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration. What's exciting now is answering the question of whether we can help the climate by giving rivers more space again and not impeding natural river meandering."

CAPTION

Collecting suspended sediment samples by boat on the Rio Bermejo, March 2017.

CREDIT

Marisa Repasch, GFZ

CAPTION

Rio Bermejo floodplain erosion.

CREDIT

Marisa Repasch, GFZ

The international team led by first author Marisa Repasch of GFZ studied the processes in the river and its floodplains with a diverse set of instruments. Analyses of cosmogenic beryllium-10 content, for example, indicated the duration of sediment transport. Dating based on the unstable carbon isotope 14C, in turn, allowed conclusions to be drawn about the age of the particles of organic origin. During fieldwork in Argentina, samples were taken from the river at multiple stations along the source-to-sink pathway. "Naturally meandering rivers erode material from floodplains and transport it to the sea, where it remains for a long time," says Marisa Repasch, summarizing the results, "in contrast, artificially stabilized river courses are far less effective carbon sinks."