Wednesday, April 01, 2020

Ocean deoxygenation: A silent driver of coral reef demise?

by University of Technology, SydneyOcean deoxygenation: a silent driver of coral reef demise?
Coral reefs are constantly under threat from environmental stress. Credit: David Suggett
The existence of coral reefs, in all their abundant biodiversity and beauty, relies largely on a complex symbiosis between reef-building corals and microalgae. This finely tuned, fragile, partnership is constantly under threat from environmental stress—most notably the twin effects of warming waters and ocean acidification caused by climate change. But scientists say a third driver, that of ocean deoxygenation, could pose a greater and more immediate threat to coral reef survival. 
A perspective paper published in Nature Climate Change brings together existing biological, ecological, and geochemical evidence to consider the broader role for  deoxygenation in global coral reef degradation. The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) led study has found that the threat of ocean deoxygenation to coral reefs has largely been ignored and remains unaccounted-for in predictions about future reef health. This is despite reef-building corals underpinning both the ecological and economic value of the world's coral reef ecosystems.
Lead author, Dr. David Hughes, a Research Associate at the UTS Climate Change Cluster, said that measurements taken over the last 50 years showed oxygen levels in the world's oceans have already declined by around 2% "largely due to the dual forces of global  and coastal pollution caused by nutrient runoff."
"Our oceans are slowly suffocating and although we have some understanding about deoxygenation in the open ocean this process has been largely overlooked in coastal tropical reef systems.
"Although oxygen is a relatively easy environmental variable to measure, there is surprisingly very little data available for coral reefs," he said.
The authors, who also include scientists from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark and University of Konstanz, Germany, say this lack of data makes it very difficult to assess what normal  are on coral reefs or the dissolved oxygen threshold at which areas might become "dead zones."
"We simply don't know what constitutes lethal or sub-lethal oxygen thresholds within coral reefs or the role such thresholds will play in determining what future reefs will look like," Dr. Hughes said.
Associate Professor David Suggett, senior author and leader of the Future Reefs Research Program at UTS said it's likely that understanding the impact of deoxygenation for places like the Great Barrier Reef "holds the key to being able to more accurately predict the future for ."
"Oxygen fundamentally sustains reef life.
"It's possible that declining oxygen availability has amplified, and will continue to amplify, the impact of catastrophic events such as heat-wave driven mass coral bleaching. Capacity for organisms to resist stressors is severely compromised under reduced oxygen availability. It's why we give oxygen to humans under trauma," he said.
"Identifying thresholds of low oxygen tolerance and how they vary across coral reef-associated species and environmental history is arguably the key step in understanding
how reef communities will respond to continued ocean deoxygenation," Associate Professor Suggett said.
The authors say that unlike the deep knowledge gained over the past 30 years around the twin impacts of temperature and pH levels, there wasn't the same depth of knowledge about ocean deoxygenation and, therefore, how this will shape reef ecologies.
Suggett and Hughes say establishment of an oxygen sensor network on the GBR would be a good place to start and could help develop an oxygen inventory of the  to enable new approaches and management practices.
A positive outcome from the study is the sign that local management is crucial to preventing further  in coastal waters.
"The resources being mobilized to improve agricultural and catchment management on the GBR are good examples of practices to ensure the  stocks of coastal reefs," Associate Professor Suggett said.
"Everyone has a role to play to ensure our reefs don't suffocate further," he said.
Coral reefs: Centuries of human impact
More information: David J. Hughes et al. Coral reef survival under accelerating ocean deoxygenation, Nature Climate Change (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41558-020-0737-9
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A World Alive: Green Politics in Europe and Beyond
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MARCH 2020
This edition maps the different worlds of green politics today, exploring the movements and ideas driving its development. Zooming out, the edition asks what wider changes in politics and society mean for political ecology as it faces interlocking environmental and social crises in the 21st century.

As much as a way of understanding the world as a movement to change it, political ecology is on the rise. A reckoning with our society’s position in a wider ecological system is taking place. Faced with irrevocable damage that makes life everywhere more insecure, from Italy to Finland, people are organising for a change of course at the ballot box and through insurgent street protests. From concepts such as ecofeminism and the Green New Deal to questions of narrative and institutional change, this edition maps the forces, strategies, and ideas that will power political ecology, across Europe as around the world. The 2020s can be a decade of change for the better, or the worse. Every political force will have something to say on what were once green issues. A diverse movement with a unique approach to society and politics, as this edition shows, Greens will be central to the fight for a sustainable and just future.

Articles in this edition

11.03.2020

Facing Our Future
BY Laurent Standaert
Time is running out, but political ecology has the answers. A different world, a good life for all.

The Three Tribes of Political Ecology
BY Pierre Charbonnier
A call for the convergence of struggles between green socialism, the radical critics of modernity, and elite technocracy.
EN FR READ MORE


Hooked on Growth: Rewiring Institutions for Wellbeing
BY Éloi Laurent, Laurent Standaert
A new policy paradigm needs to emerge that is capable of thinking broadly and ecologically about wellbeing, sustainability, and justice.
EN FR READ MORE

A Green Deal for a Geopolitical Age
BY Roderick Kefferpütz
The European Green Deal is being pursued as an economic matter. In a geopolitical world, it needs to be geopoliticised.
EN PL READ MORE

The Return of the Green New Deal: Ecosocialism in the USA
BY Alyssa Battistoni, Daniel Aldana Cohen
In the USA, the inequality and climate crises are increasingly seen as one and the same and the Left has seized on the Green New Deal as the answer.
EN PL READ MORE

Another State Is Possible: Greening the Levers of Power
BY Lucile Schmid
Modern states were not built to protect the environment but today are essential institutions for building a sustainable future.
EN FR READ MORE

Notes from a New Europe
BY Edouard Gaudot
What if the Green Wave of 2019 kept on going? What if the Greens become a major player in political majorities?
EN FR READ MORE

All Ground Is Fertile Ground: Attitudes to Ecology across Europe
BY European Data Journalism Network
Selected infographics offer a data-driven snapshot of ecological perceptions and realities and across Europe.

From the Street Up: Founding a New Politics in Spain
BY Cristina Monge, Esteban Hernández, Florent Marcellesi
Is political ecology able to push for real transformation and to offer a convincing narrative that transcends class lines?
EN ES READ MORE

Breaking Hard Earth: A Social History of Green Politics in Poland
BY Adam Ostolski
Green politics has long been part of Polish politics and, despite its ups and downs, it certainly has a future.
EN READ MORE

A Step Up for the German Greens
BY Peter Unfried
How the Greens managed to become a key player in German politics. Part of our four-part "Green Wave" series.
EN READ MORE

The Wild World of Belgian Politics
BY Luc Barbé

Understanding where Belgium's two Green parties, Groen and Ecolo, sit in a divided political landscape. Part of our four-part "Green Wave" series.
EN READ MORE

The Greens in a New Ireland
BY Dan Boyle
With government negotiations still up in the air, we hear how the Irish Greens bounced back in 2019 and 2020. Part of our four-part "Green Wave" series.
EN READ MORE

A Polarised Finland
BY Simo Raittila
Where do the Finnish Greens stand after entering a progressive coalition government in 2019? Part of our four-part "Green Wave" series.
EN READ MORE

Building Blocs in Northern Europe: The Greens in Government
BY Jenni Karimäki, Sanna Salo, Simon Otjes
In political systems based on cooperation, determining who to ally with and when always raises critical questions of identity, tactics, and strategy.
EN READ MORE

The Carbon Divide: The Material Basis of Polarisation
BY Jamie Kendrick, Mark Blyth
Far-right populism and green politics are now rivals in opposite corners of a polarised political ring.
EN READ MORE

Resettling Villages, Unsettling Lives
BY Hannah Porada, Paula Castro
Villagers have mobilised to fight both for their homes and for more ambition in German energy policy.
EN READ MORE

United We Stand: The Green Industrial Revolution in Italy
BY Francesca Re David, Lorenzo Marsili
Unions and new ecological movements need a frank exchange to find elements of synergy and mutual growth.
EN PL READ MORE

United We Stand: Labour Environmentalism and the Climate Movement
BY Lorenzo Marsili, Stefania Barca
Looking at the climate crisis in class terms means reframing class conflict in terms of capital versus life.
EN READ MORE

After Industrialism: Reviving Nature in the 21st Century
BY Reinhard Olschanski
Ecological thinking situates the human in the modern world far more accurately than old industrialism ever did.
DE EN READ MORE

A Legal Revolution for the Rights of Nature
BY Valérie Cabanes
A legal system that prioritises the conservation of the living world over private property would be a powerful tool for ecological transition.
EN FR READ MORE

The Melodrama of Climate Change Denial
BY Cara Daggett
Melodrama is the genre of choice of the far right, through which it pays special attention to fights with environmentalists, feminists, and minorities.
EN READ MORE

Threads of Political Ecology: A Review
BY Annabelle Dawson, Cyrielle Chatelain, Edouard Gaudot, François Jarrige, Roderick Kefferpütz
The Green European Journal has put together a selection mapping some of the major currents that have shaped political ecology in recent years and which continue to do so.
EN READ MORE

BY Dirk Holemans
After 40 years of neoliberalism tearing at the social fabric, what form will the 21st-century counter-movement take?
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GREEN TRANSITION
The Return of the Green New Deal: Ecosocialism in the USA

As it stands, the United States will effectively withdraw from the Paris Agreement on November 4th 2020, one day after the upcoming presidential election. Thankfully, in the US as around the world, resistance to fossil capitalism is growing. In a country where three billionaires – Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett – own more wealth than half the population, the inequality and climate crises are increasingly seen as one and the same and the Left has seized on the Green New Deal as the answer. We spoke to Alyssa Battistoni and Daniel Aldana Cohen, two of the authors of A Planet to Win 1, about their vision for a better, healthier, more equal way of life in a post-carbon society.

Green European Journal: How did the Green New Deal (GND) get back on the agenda in the US? How have different social movements come together around this vision?

Alyssa Battistoni: A resurgent left-wing politics and an increasingly militant climate movement had been operating on parallel tracks for a few years in the US. The climate movement was focused on “keeping it in the ground” and stopping new fossil fuel extraction projects in places like Standing Rock or along the Keystone XL pipeline, while the Democratic Socialists of America [a socialist organisation active inside and outside of the Democratic Party] and the trade unions concentrated on political projects away from the climate. But over the past year, these forces have come together in quite an organic way. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), probably the politician most associated with the GND, ran for office because she went to Standing Rock and was inspired by the Sunrise Movement. Immediately after she was elected in November 2018, she joined Sunrise Movement protests and opened up a new discourse around the GND. Its revival allows the growing Left to flesh out a broader programme that’s not just about stopping carbon-intensive infrastructure but thinking about what to build in its place.

Daniel Aldana Cohen: The Sunrise Move­ment consciously fuses two strands of American social movements: structured movements like labour unions and community groups, and explosive street protests such as Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter. Sunrise’s effort to combine the strengths of each tendency has paid off. In two or three years, they’ve come out of nowhere to become one of the most important movements in the country.

Environmental movements in the US have not always done a great job of working with other social movements. Sunrise, in comparison, has taken it upon itself to be an ally to labour and racial and community justice groups. When Sunrise occupied Nancy Pelosi’s office in November 2018 and AOC gave the GND worldwide publicity, Sunrise was there with green jobs signs, not pictures of wind turbines or solar panels. It shows an increasing sophistication of political alliance-building.

How does this revived GND differ from the left-of-centre promise of green jobs that has been around for years?

Alyssa Battistoni: The core idea is the same, but the differences are scope and commitment. The GND would see the federal government guarantee a green job to anyone that wants one. Renewing the Civilian Conservation Corps from the original New Deal programme, a job guarantee would give people the opportunity to work in nature, on soil conservation or building hiking trails, to become a care worker, expanding the idea of a green job, or to work traditional green jobs in the energy sector. A large-scale commitment to jobs combats labour’s justified suspicion that green jobs will never materialise. Employment in green energy has been rising in the United States but the government has never been prepared to commit to more than the retraining offered under Obama. Fossil fuel workers that lose their jobs need retraining, but most importantly they need jobs. A federal commitment to major infrastructural spending and public works will generate those jobs at scale.

What role does housing play in the GND?

Daniel Aldana Cohen: Eviction from your home and climate breakdown are the two existential threats of our times for many people. Housing is the most expensive line item in most people’s budgets. Housing is responsible for a sixth of the emissions in the US and transportation by car, mostly to and from homes, is another sixth. Our overall vision is to reduce the use of energy and other resources while improving the quality of people’s lives. The idea is of housing as temples of public luxury: rebuilt infrastructure that will physically and concretely improve and decarbonise lives in the same places and at the same time.


A story about an affordable, comfortable, more modern, and better located home is inspiring.

Housing is not usually considered as a key piece of climate policy in the US but, once explained, it is an intuitive story that people can connect to. Concrete is responsible for 8 per cent of global emissions, but describing the most egalitarian way to decarbonise cement production will not strike an emotional chord. A story about an affordable, comfortable, more modern, and better located home is inspiring. For the third of Americans or the almost half of black Americans who cannot afford their energy bills, the GND for housing would make an immediate improvement to everyday life. To avoid future dependence on mining and extraction, the house, the home and where homes are located are central to a less resource-intensive version of prosperity.

The Republicans in the US and the Tories in the UK have built winning coalitions based outside of big cities. Can the GND appeal across the country and in rural areas?

Daniel Aldana Cohen: Quantitatively the Left has already won, as with the popular vote in the US, so geography is now the key: we have to win outside our urban strongholds. The result of the last UK election wasn’t so good, but the Left has the same basic problem of needing to do better with working-class people in disinvested regions outside cities. Building a more geographically extensive coalition will require concrete proposals and negotiations with the people who live in these places. The benefits of GND policies will extend beyond cities. Care work is a placeless concern. Housing matters in towns, suburbs, and rural areas as well as in cities. Flexible public transport that works outside of cities could overcome the fetish for denser modes of living and help people in rural areas move around in a far less expensive way, freeing up their mobility. And moving beyond a top-down model could help to overcome the resistance of rural communities to clean energy developments, which is a pressing political issue in the US.

Alyssa Battistoni: The GND plan for infrastructure spending will hit the ground across the country and the effects will be felt everywhere. The GND can also be used to imagine green sustainable agriculture and how federal funds can support that vision rather than subsidising environmentally destructive practices. Planting prairie grasses, for example, is critical for carbon absorption and the huge potential of the Midwestern states could be a boon for farmers.

Some have criticised the GND as productivist green capitalism, while others say that degrowth-type perspectives call for mandated eco-austerity. Is your call for “one last stimulus” an attempt to move beyond these positions?

Alyssa Battistoni: The GND has at times been used to greenwash public policy. 10 or 15 years ago, the phrase “Green New Deal” was used as a way for America to retain its economic dominance by becoming a leader in green tech. But while the more recent February 2019 GND Congress resolution does talk about developing technology, most of it is oriented towards people’s social needs and decarbonisation, not towards dominating a new growth area for capitalism.


The objective is to build a world that we want to live in and that we can live in for the long term. Then we can transition into a slower groove.

Degrowth advocates make a significant critique but it is imperative to avoid the belt-tightening green politics of sacrifice. At a time of extreme inequality, many people have been sacrificing for a long time already, while another small group of people get to live lavish lifestyles. More sacrifice to fix climate change is just not a winning political message, which is why a vision of public luxury and non-austere ways of living is important. We argue for what we call a last stimulus – that the GND will be an all-out push that will cost a lot of money, generate jobs, and stimulate industrial production. However, the objective is not to restart the post-war growth engine and re-embark on the 20th-century project. The objective is to build a world that we want to live in and that we can live in for the long term. Then we can transition into a slower groove.

Isn’t the GND a return to the 20th-century top-down bureaucracies that were often inefficient and unresponsive?

Daniel Aldana Cohen: In certain areas such as the electricity grid, the GND represents a truly national project. The most sophisticated electricity grids in the world are in Brazil and China: for decades, Brazil has been able to move the renewable energy its dams generate between regions. Managing intermittency requires national coordination and control of the electricity grid and the same is true for rail networks. But for the most part, federal investment will be targeted towards communities of colour and working-class communities through providing funds to local organisations. Democratic ownership can take many forms: worker cooperatives getting preferential contracts, local public banks, racial and community justice groups, or municipal government agencies. Fundamentally, the story is about federal financial resources feeding local self-control and autonomy as the most effective way to achieve a large expansion.

Affordability is often an effective right-wing attack line against progressive proposals. Why do you stress the importance of organising support over the question of financing?

Alyssa Battistoni: “How will you pay for it?” is an effective attack line because a wider narrative around public spending means that there will never be a convincing counter-argument, even if a plan is fully costed. Whether funded through taxes or monetary policy, spending on people’s social needs or environmental protection is always presented as impossible. But half the American federal budget is spent on the military and nobody asks questions. Let’s question that and organise around climate action to invest in communities and build resilience rather than spending billions responding to terrible disasters after they have happened.

When people think about the GND, steelworkers building windmills come to mind. Why do you emphasise organising workers in the education and healthcare sectors?

Alyssa Battistoni: We’re trying to reframe green jobs, as well as the whole growth debate, to make clear we can live good lives in ways that are less resource intensive than the status quo. Decarbonising does not have to mean that your life will get worse. Green energy cannot be ignored but, at the same time, the transition cannot only be about coal miners and oil refinery workers installing infinite amounts of wind turbines. We need to imagine the world that we want to live in once we have enough wind turbines.


The first step is getting the US’s own house in order. Climate change is a global problem, but it is too simplistic to say that the solution must be global.

Education and healthcare workers in the US have been at the forefront of a revitalised labour movement in recent years. Both sectors are low-carbon and oriented towards improving people’s lives. Teachers’ unions have been organising community support and linking traditional struggles around wages and benefits to improving services and the quality of education. The reason that Medicare for All is so popular is because America is in a crisis of care. Overdose and suicide rates are rising, and older people struggle to get the care they need. America currently has a very resource-intensive way of delivering a remarkably low quality of life to many people, and the GND is a political counter that offers a different direction.

A Planet to Win mentions that Sara Nelson, chair of the flight attendants’ union, is one of the GND’s most prominent supporters. What explains her enthusiasm for a transition that could put airline workers out of a job?

Daniel Aldana Cohen: Sara Nelson is one of the best things that has happened to the labour movement in the US in a long time. She understands the relationship between her workers, the broader working class, and the global political economy, and her arguments are all the more powerful because she is rooted in the concrete labour struggle. The next round of global investment is going to be green and she knows that. Instead of getting drawn into the long-term future of flight attendants, her response is to ask whether it will be the bosses or a movement from below that decides what that green transformation looks like.

The US does have an isolationist streak and, if it wanted to, it could impose the costs of transition onto the rest of the world. What does an internationalist GND look like?

Daniel Aldana Cohen: An internationalist GND would see the US slash its consumption of energy, both fossil and renewable, to make room for the rest of the world to enjoy prosperity. The first step is getting the US’s own house in order. Climate change is a global problem, but it is too simplistic to say that the solution must be global. Climate treaties, building on the Montreal Protocol, are based on the notion that every country could come to a sensible agreement, tweak the material substructure of energy, and everything will be fine. But the global economy cannot be reconfigured through negotiation in a room.

Organising along the supply chains of the really existing global economy is essential. Groups fighting over local energy utilities in Rhode Island in the north-eastern US need to forge alliances with the communities contesting lithium mining for rechargeable batteries in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, for example. Global solidarity campaigns such as the Via Campesina food sovereignty movement are precedents for this kind of action. Our view of internationalism is based on looking at how the economy is physically, economically, and legally organised and making interventions at every one of those points.

 FOOTNOTES

1. Kate Aronoff, Alyssa Battistoni, Daniel Aldana Cohen, and Thea Riofrancos (2019). A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal. New York/London: Verso.
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Cooperative male dolphins match the tempo of each other's calls

by University of Bristol
Cooperative male dolphins match the tempo of each other's calls
Trio of male dolphins. Credit: Dolphin Alliance Project sharkbaydolphins.org
When it comes to working together, male dolphins coordinate their behaviour just like us. New findings, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B by an international team of researchers from the Universities of Western Australia and Bristol, provide insight into the importance of physical and vocal coordination in alliance forming animals.
In humans, synchronised actions can lead to increased feelings of bonding, foster cooperation and diminish the perceived threat of rivals. Outside of humans, very few animals coordinate both vocal signals and  when working together.
The study used long-term acoustic data collected from the famous population of dolphins in Shark Bay, Western Australia, to show that allied  also match the tempo of their partner's calls when working together, and would sometimes even produce their calls in sync.
It was previously thought that only humans used both physical and verbal synchronised actions to strengthen bonds and enhance cooperative effort.
Lead author Bronte Moore, who carried out the study while working at UWA's School of Biological Sciences said: "Allied male bottlenose dolphins are also well known for this kind of behaviour and can form alliances that can last for decades.
"To advertise their alliance relationships and maintain their social bonds, they rely on synchronous movements. We wanted to know whether they would also synchronise their vocal behaviour."
The study showed that male bottlenose dolphins not only synchronise their movements, but also coordinate their vocal behaviour when cooperating together in alliances.
Such behaviour suggests this might help reduce tension between the males in a context that requires them to cooperate successfully.
Dr. Stephanie King, Senior Lecturer from Bristol's School of Biological Sciences who guided the research, added: "Male dolphins need to work together to herd a female and defend her from rival alliances, but they are also competing to fertilise her.
"Such synchronous and coordinated behaviour between allied males may therefore promote cooperative behaviour and regulate stress, as it has been shown to do in humans."
In male dolphin alliances, 'everybody knows your name'
More information: Acoustic coordination by allied male dolphins in a cooperative context, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, rspb.royalsocietypublishing.or … .1098/rspb.2019.2944
Journal information: Proceedings of the Royal Society B 
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ALL OUR RELATIONS

Chimpanzees found to age in ways similar to humans

by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

chimpanzee
Credit: CC0 Public Domain
A team of researchers from the University of New Mexico and the Kibale Chimpanzee Project in Uganda has found similarities between the way chimpanzees and humans age. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their 20-year study of chimps living at Kibale National Park and what they learned about the ways they age.
Prior research has shown that as people age, they undergo changes to their hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis—a biological system that plays a major role in how people respond to stress. One of those ways is bumping up levels of  production. Cortisol is a hormone that plays a role in regulating metabolism and blood pressure. Prior research has also shown that excess cortisol can lead to problems such as a reduction in clear thinking, a weakened immune system and inflammation—all symptoms of aging in humans. But now, it appears that chimpanzees undergo a similar process.
The work by the team was part of a large overall effort to study physical and behavioral traits of chimpanzees in a near-natural setting. As part of that effort,  placed  in the trees where the chimps reside in the park to collect urine samples from 59 adults. The team has been collecting urine samples from the chimps for approximately 20 years. In analyzing its composition, the researchers have found that the chimps also experience elevated levels of cortisol as they grow older—and furthermore, the higher levels of the hormone could not be attributed to reproductive activity or social status. They claim the increased levels of cortisol suggest chimps age similarly to humans.
The researchers found that cortisol levels were highest in the males when they were making moves on sexually receptive females. They also found that cortisol levels were highest in the females when they were sexually receptive—a time when females are under stress from competing males. They also suggest that rising  in hominids are an ancient attribute, and are thus not a byproduct of aging.
More information: Melissa Emery Thompson et al. Wild chimpanzees exhibit humanlike aging of glucocorticoid regulation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2020). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1920593117
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Cashing on cryptocurrencies

by David Bradley, Inderscience
cryptocurrency
Credit: CC0 Public Domain
Heed the words of their profits—In uncertain times, uncertain things can happen. Writing in the International Journal of Business Performance Management, a team in the United Arab Emirates asks whether cryptocurrencies, of which Bitcoin is perhaps the most infamous, might ultimately overtake conventional currencies, the fiat money.
Avaneesh Jumde and Boo Yun Cho of the Higher Colleges of Technology on Dubai Women's Campus, Al Nahda, Dubai, point out how Bitcoin made the terms "cryptocurrency" and "blockchain" familiar to financiers and investors the world over. The technological roots of these terms quickly attracting those who live by the words of their profits. At first, there was a cryptocurrency bubble, which has waxed and waned, but always in the background and barely acknowledged by the bankers and financial regulators is the idea that such forms of  might somehow usurp hard cash.
The team has now used  to hedge their bets as to which of the cryptocurrencies might eventually predominate following the proliferation of such forms of money and whether there might be a displacement of fiat money. There is, of course, the possibility that cryptocurrencies would exist in parallel with the fiat in a similar way to gold bullion existing alongside folding , for instance. They have looked at the likes of Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ether, and Ripple and compared and contrasted their characteristics against the fiat money of different countries.
At the moment, fiat money remains the main contender in the battle for dominance in terms of accessibility, utility, the ability to convert to the currency of other nations, liquidity, volatility, and even financial speculation. Fiat money is more amenable to these requirements and remains preferable for the vast majority of people. However, major uncertainty about  driven by disease, , and other uncontrollable factors, could lead to gradual or sudden change in our perception of money, its worth, and its utility.Is Bitcoin the new gold standard or another fiat?
More information: Avaneesh Jumde et al. Can cryptocurrencies overtake the fiat money, International Journal of Business Performance Management (2020). DOI: 10.1504/IJBPM.2020.106107

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Researcher offers recommendations on using remote sensing to quantify forest health

by University of Delaware

University of Delaware assistant professor Pinki Mondal recently had a paper published in the Remote Sensing of Environment Journal that shows the importance of using finer scale satellite data in protected areas to ensure they are maintaining their health and are being reported on accurately. Credit: University of Delaware

While using large swaths of coarse satellite data can be an effective tool for evaluating forests on a national scale, the resolution of that data is not always well suited to indicate whether or not those forests are growing or degrading.

A new study led by the University of Delaware's Pinki Mondal recommends that in addition to using this broad scale approach, it is important for countries to prioritize areas such as national parks and wildlife refuges and use finer scale data in those protected areas to make sure that they are maintaining their health and are being reported on accurately.

To help create an easy-to-implement reporting framework for six Southeast Asian forest ecosystems—in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka—Mondal led a study that first looked at those countries using a broad brush approach and then used higher resolution data to focus on two specific protected areas to show how the coarse satellite data can sometimes overlook or misinterpret temporal changes in forest cover.

Sustainable Development Goals

The work was conducted to develop a reporting framework that can help the countries with their Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) reporting to the United Nations.

In 2015, the United Nations General Assembly set forth 17 SDGs to serve as a blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all, with the hope to achieve these goals by the year 2030. Among these, goal No. 15—Life on Land—is to protect the world's forests to strengthen natural resource management and increase land productivity. To help with reporting SDG 15, Mondal and her research group have been using remote sensing to look at forests around the world.

Mondal, an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences in UD's College of Earth, Ocean and Environment, recently had a paper published in the Remote Sensing of Environment Journal looking at SDG 15.

Coarse Satellite Data

Most countries, especially the ones with limited access to computing resources and finer scale remote sensing data, use freely available remote sensing assets such as those from coarse-scale satellite sensors.

"Depending on the scale of a study, people tend to use coarser resolution data because generally, those satellite images have a larger footprint," said Mondal. "Only a few satellite images can cover an entire country and it's easier to use or analyze that kind of data."

The researchers used a broad-brush approach with coarser resolution satellite data to calculate vegetation trends in response to rainfall changes in the six countries.

At the country-level since 2001, the vegetation trends fluctuated and the researchers found instances of localized greening in Pakistan, India, and Nepal, and browning in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, with Bhutan showing almost no trend. The greening found in India and Nepal was more localized and the forests showed localized browning in the northeastern states of India, and parts of Nepal and Sri Lanka.

While the coarse-resolution data could indicate an overall greening trend for an area, when they looked at two specific protected areas using finer scale data, they found that there was a lot more going on.

Protected Areas

Using finer-resolution satellite data, the researchers looked at intact versus non-intact forests that were located in two protected areas, the Sanjay National Park in India and the Ruhuna National Park in Sri Lanka. Since both test cases are national parks, they are expected to host mostly intact, or undisturbed forests that would not be impacted by human populations.

"Protected areas are supposed to host and maintain quality forest. But by using this finer scale data, we were able to see non-intact forests that could be a result of factors such as fire, disease, or human activities. If we cannot maintain a healthy forest even within protected areas, then that's a problem," said Mondal.

When using a broad-brush approach, the Sanjay National Park showed an overall greening trend but when using the more in-depth data, they found almost one-third of the Sanjay National Park to have non-intact forest. In addition, they were also able to identify spots in the national parks that had no forests at all. Maintaining the balance between healthy forests and other ecosystems such as grasslands within these protected areas and minimizing degradation should be high priority for land managers moving forward.

This finer scale data allowed the researchers to generate maps of 87 percent and 91 percent overall accuracy for the Indian and Sri Lankan protected areas.

Challenges in reporting

Mondal said one of the challenges facing researchers has been developing a broad definition for a forest, as depending on a country's ecosystem, their forests can be very different.

"If you work in a country like India, it's so diverse that by definition, you can't have one uniform forest," said Mondal. "In the land change science community, we have been debating the definition for a forest, but an acceptable measure is the one with 10 percent canopy cover."

This indicator of a forest can be tracked with satellites, and researchers use satellite images over time to measure how much of a particular mapping unit is covered by forest canopy.

"If you're working in a country with a diverse landscape, the status of forest cover might change pretty rapidly over time. But you cannot capture that change with this coarse-level, broad-brush input approach, which is what most of the national level studies use," said Mondal.

Overall, Mondal said that the goal of the paper was to encourage people to realize that there is not a one-size-fits-all approach to monitoring and reporting progress toward SDG.

"Our goal is to encourage landscape managers to think more deeply about the methods they are using in terms of reporting these SDGs because depending on what data you're using, your result might look completely different than what you're reporting at the U.N. level," said Mondal.


Explore further
More information: Pinki Mondal et al. A reporting framework for Sustainable Development Goal 15: Multi-scale monitoring of forest degradation using MODIS, Landsat and Sentinel data, Remote Sensing of Environment (2019). DOI: 10.1016/j.rse.2019.111592
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Overcoming carbon loss from farming in peatlands

by Kaine Korzekwa, American Society of Agronomy
Overcoming carbon loss from farming in peatlands
In this field with histosol soil, miscanthus was added as a form of organic matter. It is a type of biomass crop they studied to see if it can add carbon to the soil. 
Credit: Jacynthe Dessureault-Rompré
In many regions of the world, farming must be done on areas of soil categorized as histosols. Histosols have a thick layer of rich organic matter, called peat.
Scientists are concerned, because farming can cause these soils to lose valuable carbon.
That's where Jacynthe Dessureault-Rompré and her team at Laval University in Canada come in. She is trying to show that histosols can be sustainably used for farming.
To do this, the research team performed a two-step experiment that involved adding different kinds of  to the soil. Their work is similar to how a backyard gardener may add compost to soil to add nutrients that have been lost.
"The first objective was to get a better understanding of plant material decomposition," Dessureault-Rompré says. "We looked at decomposition qualities of specific plant materials and how these affected long-term carbon stores in the soil. The second objective was to determine which plant performed best based on simulations of the long-term soil carbon storage."
Carbon in these soils is lost by erosion, tillage and a  called mineralization. The carbon is released from the soil as , a harmful greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.
Overcoming carbon loss from farming in peatlands
This field of histosols has willow on top that is ready to be incorporated so the researchers can study how it decomposes. Credit: Jacynthe Dessureault-Rompré
For their first experiment, the team used three common biomass crops: sorghum, miscanthus, and willow. They put plant material from these crops inside permeable bags and placed the bags directly in the soil.
Then, they analyzed which plant materials had the best decomposition characteristics. The ones that broke down slowly are the best for storing carbon in the soil longer.
"The field decomposition study gave us data on what happened to the three different plant materials over a period of 17 months," Dessureault-Rompré says. "A good candidate is a crop that will last longer in the soil because the buildup of the carbon stock will be more efficient, therefore you need less biomass applied each year. The stability characteristics of the plant material are very important."
Next, researchers used decomposition data to simulate how much each plant would help the soil over a long period of time. They found that miscanthus and willow performed much better than sorghum. They also calculated amounts of the  that would help the soils be the most sustainable.
"If you have a crop such as miscanthus that decomposes less than sorghum, the buildup over the years is much more efficient," she explains. "The simulation part added a new perspective because we were then able to see that carbon equilibrium is something that can be achieved. It was fantastic to see that adding plant material year after year allows farmers to overcome the  lost during farming in histosols."
Overcoming carbon loss from farming in peatlands
The researchers obtained the biomass crops from fields before adding it to the histosols. These are miscanthus flowers. Credit: Jacynthe Dessureault-Rompré
She adds that it is hard to estimate when these farmers could adopt this practice. However, it's possible that within the next 10 years, this new soil conservation practice could be used by farmers.
While many scientists don't think histosols should be used for farming, many of the farmers have no choice. For the agricultural community, processing facilities and distribution services to make a living, farmers must grow crops on the land available to them.
The findings from Dessureault-Rompré and her team are important for easing concerns. This research demonstrates that it is possible to farm these soils sustainably.
"I was afraid this research would be criticized because it is a very new way of looking at crop production on these very special soils," she says. "Many scientists believe that cultivated histosols should be brought back to their natural state or that the degradation process of these  is irreversible. But this project really aims to develop a sustainable way of growing high value  on these soils.
Are sinking soils in the Everglades related to climate change?
More information: Jacynthe Dessureault‐Rompré et al. Biomass crops as a soil amendment in cultivated histosols: can we reach carbon equilibrium?, Soil Science Society of America Journal (2020). DOI: 10.1002/saj2.20051
Journal information: Soil Science Society of America Journal 
]Provided by American Society of Agronomy
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Scary red or icky green? We can't say what color coronavirus is and dressing it up might feed fears

by Simon Weaving, The Conversation
Credit: Shutterstock

Images of the latest coronavirus have become instantly recognizable, often vibrantly colored and floating in an opaque background. In most representations, the shape of the virus is the same—a spherical particle with spikes, resembling an alien invader.


But there's little consensus about the color: images of the virus come in red, orange, blue, yellow, steely or soft green, white with red spikes, red with blue spikes and many colors in between.

In their depictions of the virus, designers, illustrators and communicators are making some highly creative and evocative decisions.

Color, light and fear

For some, the lack of consensus about the appearance of viruses confirms fears and increases anxiety. On March 8 2020, the director-general of the World Health Organisation warned of the "infodemic" of misinformation about the coronavirus, urging communicators to use "facts not fear" to battle the flood of rumors and myths.

The confusion about the color of coronavirus starts with the failure to understand the nature of color in the sub-microscopic world.

Our perception of color is dependent on the presence of light. White light from the sun is a combination of all the wavelengths of visible light—from violet at one end of the spectrum to red at the other.

When white light hits an object, we see its color thanks to the light that is reflected by that object towards our eyes. Raspberries and rubies appear red because they absorb most light but reflect the red wavelength.
An artist’s impression of the pandemic virus. Credit: 
Fusion Medical Animation/Unsplash, CC BY

But as objects become smaller, light is no longer an effective tool for seeing. Viruses are so small that, until the 1930s, one of their scientifically recognized properties was their invisibility. Looking for them with a microscope using light is like trying to find an ant in a football stadium at night using a large searchlight: the scale difference between object and tool is too great.


It wasn't until the development of the electron microscope in the 1930s that researchers could "see" a virus. By using electrons, which are vastly smaller than light particles, it became possible to identify the shapes, structures and textures of viruses. But as no light is involved in this form of seeing, there is no color. Images of viruses reveal a monochrome world of gray. Like electrons, atoms and quarks, viruses exist in a realm where color has no meaning.

Vivid imagery

Grey images of unfamiliar blobs don't make for persuasive or emotive media content.
A colorised scanning electron micrograph image of a VERO E6 cell (blue) heavily infected with SARS-COV-2 virus particles (orange), isolated from a patient sample. Credit: NIAID/Flickr, CC BY

Research into the representation of the Ebola virus outbreak in 1995 revealed the image of choice was not the worm-like virus but teams of Western medical experts working in African villages in hermetically sealed suits. The early visual representation of the AIDS virus focused on the emaciated bodies of those with the resulting disease, often younger men.

With symptoms similar to the common cold and initial death rates highest amongst the elderly, the coronavirus pandemic provides no such dramatic visual material. To fill this void, the vivid range of colorful images of the coronavirus have strong appeal.

Many images come from stock photo suppliers, typically photorealistic artists' impressions rather than images from electron microscopes.

The Public Health Library of the US government's Centre for Disease Control (CDC) provides one such illustration, created to reveal the morphology of the coronavirus. It's an off-white sphere with yellow protein particles attached and red spikes emerging from the surface, creating the distinctive "corona" or crown. All of these color choices are creative decisions.
The CDC illustration reveals ‘ultrastructural morphology’ exhibited by coronaviruses.
Credit: CDC/Alissa Eckert, MS; Dan Higgins/MAMS

Biologist David Goodsell takes artistic interpretation a step further, using watercolor painting to depict viruses at the cellular level.

One of the complicating challenges for virus visualisation is the emergence of so-called "color" images from electron microscopes. Using a methodology that was originally described as "painting," scientists are able to add color to structures in the grey-scale world of imaging to help distinguish the details of cellular micro-architecture. Yet even here, the choice of color is arbitrary, as shown in a number of colored images of the coronavirus made available on Flickr by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). In these, the virus has been variously colored yellow, orange, magenta and blue.
A composite of images created by NIAID. Colours have been attributed by scientists but these are arbitrary. Credit: NIAID/Flickr, CC BY

Embracing grey

Whilst these images look aesthetically striking, the arbitrary nature of their coloring does little to solve WHO's concerns about the insecurity that comes with unclear facts about viruses and disease.
Some artists’ impressions include blood platelet images. Credit: Shutterstock

One solution would be to embrace the colorless sub-microscopic world that viruses inhabit and accept their greyness.

This has some distinct advantages: firstly, it fits the science that color can't be attributed where light doesn't reach. Secondly, it renders images of the virus less threatening: without their red spikes or green bodies they seem less like hostile invaders from a science fiction fantasy. And the idea of greyness also fits the scientific notion that viruses are suspended somewhere between the dead and the living.

Stripping the coronavirus of the distracting vibrancy of vivid color—and seeing it consistently as an inert grey particle—could help reduce community fear and better allow us to continue the enormous collective task of managing its biological and social impact

Provided by The Conversation This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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