————————————

“… and due to the interactions of nitrogen and 

carbon, makes the challenge of providing food and 

energy to the world’s peoples without harming the 

global environment a tremendous challenge,”….

——————————————-

        Web address:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080515145419.htm

Excessive Reactive Nitrogen in Environment Alarms Environmental Scientists

ScienceDaily (May 18, 2008) - While human-caused 

global climate change has long been a concern for 

environmental scientists and is a well-known 

public policy issue, the problem of excessive 

reactive nitrogen in the environment is 

little-known beyond a growing circle of 

environmental scientists who study how the 

element cycles through the environment and 

negatively alters local and global ecosystems and 

potentially harms human health.

Continue Reading »

From AAAS EurekAlert : Atmospheric Science

http://www.eurekalert.org/bysubject/atmospheric.php
Go to the URL above for lengthier, more detailed versions of the blurbs below:

Public Release: 24-Apr-2008
Australasian Science

Scientists urged to make a stand on climate change

Scientists must work harder at making the public
aware of the stark difference between good
science and “denialist spin,” according to a
professor of climate change.

Contact: Professor Barry Brook
barry.brook@adelaide.edu.au
61-883-033-745
University of Adelaide

———————————————————————————

MEDIA RELEASE
March 21, 2008

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
675 Mower Road
Chambersburg, Pennsylvania 17202
www.celdf.org

For Immediate Release

Nottingham and Barnstead, NH Join Growing List of Communities
Recognizing Rights of Nature

Nottingham NH passed The Nottingham Water Rights and Local Self -
Government Ordinance at Town Meeting on Saturday, March 15th. The
ordinance establishes strict liability for culpable corporations and
government entities that permit and facilitate the privatization and
corporatization of water within the town.

The ordinance also strips corporations of constitutional protections
within the town. The Town of Nottingham thus becomes the 11th
municipality in the nation to refuse to recognize corporate
constitutional “rights,” and to prohibit corporate rights from being
used to override the rights of human and natural communities.

The vote in Nottingham was 175 to 111 for the ordinance.

When a few people at the end of the meeting, attempted to use RSA
40:10:2 to recall the vote in seven days, after over 75% of the
voters had left, the action was defeated by over 60% of the people
remaining. These two significant votes proclaim Democracy is alive
and well in Nottingham.

At Town Meeting on the same day in Barnstead, voters amended their
Water Rights Ordinance; which was passed almost unanimously at their
Town Meeting two years ago; to include the Rights of Nature.

Barnstead, NH , became the 12th municipality in the nation to
recognize the Rights of Nature. Barnstead voted overwhelmingly on
Saturday, March 15th, to add the Rights of Nature to their ordinance
which has been in place since March 2006, when they became the first
municipality to deny corporate assumed privileges to corporate
entities withdrawing water for resale, within the town.

Ben Price, Projects Director for the Legal Defense Fund, had this to
say, “The people have asserted their right and their duty to protect
their families, environment, and future generations. In enacting this
law, the community has gone on record as rejecting the legal theory
behind Dillon’s Rule, which erroneously asserts that there is no
inherent right to local self-government. The American Revolution was
about nothing less than the fundamental right of the people to be the
decision-makers on issues directly affecting the communities in which
they live. They understood that a central government, at some
distance removed from those affected, acts beyond its authority in
empowering a few powerful men -privileged with chartered immunities
and rights superior to the people in the community - to deny
citizens’ rights, impose harm, and refuse local self-determination.

The peoples of the Towns of Nottingham and Barnstead have acted in
the best tradition of liberty and freedom, and confronted injustice
in the form of a state-permitted corporate assault against the
consent of the sovereign people.”

CELDF’s New Hampshire organizer, Gail Darrell, spoke to the success
of the amendments on Monday.

“The People of Barnstead have agreed to acknowledge that the natural
world needs an advocate - that advocate is us. The water which we all
share is now protected by all of us who live here. We have decided
that protecting the essence of all life is a good way to protect the
health, safety and wellbeing of the community.”

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, located in
Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, has worked with communities resisting
corporate assaults upon democratic self-governance since 1995. Among
other programs, it has brought its unique Daniel Pennock Democracy
Schools to communities in 26 states in which people seek to end
destructive and rights-denying corporate acts routinely permitted by
state and federal agencies. In Pennsylvania alone, more than 100
municipalities have enacted ordinances authored by the Legal Defense
Fund. Three municipalities in NH have adopted these rights - based
laws and more towns across the state are looking at the possibility
of drafting one of these local ordinances within the next year.

——————————————————————–

Publications Navigation

Current Rising Tide Publications	False Solutions Reading Room	Graphic, Art, and Music Library	Slideshows and Videos	Many more publications from our allies

1 ——————————————-
“Our results indicate that future reductions in Arctic sea ice cover could
significantly reduce available water in the American west….”
——————————————-

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
VOL. 31, L06209, doi:10.1029/2003GL019133, 2004
Copyright 2004 by the American Geophysical Union.

Disappearing Arctic sea ice reduces available water in the American west

Jacob O. Sewall and Lisa Cirbus Sloan
Earth Sciences Department, University of
California, Santa Cruz, California, USA

ABSTRACT - Recent decreases in Arctic sea ice cover and the
probability of continued decreases have raised the question of how
reduced Arctic sea ice cover will influence extrapolar climate. Using
a fully coupled earth system model, we generate one possible future
Arctic sea ice distribution. We use this ”future” sea ice
distribution and the corresponding sea surface temperatures (SSTs) to
run a fixed SST and ice concentration experiment with the goal of
determining direct climate responses to the reduction in Arctic sea
ice that is projected to occur in the next 50 years. Our results
indicate that future reductions in Arctic sea ice cover could
significantly reduce available water in the American west and
highlight the fact that the most severe impacts of future climate
change will likely be at a regional scale.

2 —————————————————————————
“Although the results reported in this study were derived from an
ensemble of regional climate simulations driven by a global climate
model that displays low climate sensitivity compared with most other
models, climate change was found to significantly affect water
resources in the western U.S. by the mid twenty-first century.”
———————————-

Climatic Change 62: 75-113, 2004

MID-CENTURY ENSEMBLE REGIONAL CLIMATE CHANGE
SCENARIOS FOR THE WESTERN UNITED STATES

L. RUBY LEUNG, YUN QIAN, XINDI BIAN , WARREN M. WASHINGTON,
JONGIL HAN  and JOHN O. ROADS

Abstract: To study the impacts of climate change on water resources in
the western U.S., global climate simulations were produced using the
National Center for Atmospheric Research/Department of Energy
(NCAR/DOE) Parallel Climate Model (PCM). The Penn State/NCAR Mesoscale
Model (MM5) was used to downscale the PCM control (20 years) and three
future (2040-2060) climate simulations to yield ensemble regional
climate simulations at 40 km spatial resolution for the western U.S.
This paper describes the regional simulations and focuses on the
hydroclimate conditions in the Columbia River Basin (CRB) and
Sacramento-San Joaquin River (SSJ) Basin. Results based on global and
regional simulations show that by mid-century, the average regional
warming of 1 to 2.5 ? C strongly affects snowpack in the western U.S.
Along coastal mountains, reduction in annual snowpack was about 70% as
indicated by the regional simulations. Besides changes in mean
temperature, precipitation, and snowpack, cold season extreme daily
precipitation increased by 5 to 15 mm/day (15-20%) along the Cascades
and the Sierra. The warming resulted in increased rainfall at the
expense of reduced snowfall, and reduced snow accumulation (or earlier
snowmelt) during the cold season. In the CRB, these changes were
accompanied by more frequent rain-on-snow events. Overall, they
induced higher likelihood of wintertime flooding and reduced runoff
and soil moisture in the summer. Changes in surface water and energy
budgets in the CRB and SSJ basin were affected mainly by changes in
surface temperature, which were statistically significant at the 0.95
confidence level. Changes in precipitation, while spatially
incoherent, were not statistically significant except for the drying
trend during summer. Because snow and runoff are highly sensitive to
spatial distributions of temperature and precipitation, this study
shows that (1) downscaling provides more realistic estimates of
hydrologic impacts in mountainous regions such as the western U.S.,
and (2) despite relatively small changes in temperature and
precipitation, changes in snowpack and runoff can be much larger on
monthly to seasonal time scales because the effects of temperature and
precipitation are integrated over time and space through various
surface hydrological and land-atmosphere feedback processes. Although
the results reported in this study were derived from an ensemble of
regional climate simulations driven by a global climate model that
displays low climate sensitivity compared with most other models,
climate change was found to significantly affect water resources in
the western U.S. by the mid twenty-first century.

3
——————————————————————————-
“The atmospheric modeling results of 1998-2002 suggest an increased
risk for severe and synchronized drying of the mid-latitudes if Š”
———————————————————-

SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org
VOL 299
31 JANUARY 2003

R E P O R TS

The Perfect Ocean for Drought
Martin Hoerling  and Arun Kumar

Abstract:
The 1998 -2002 droughts spanning the United States, southern Europe,
and South- west Asia were linked through a common oceanic influence.
Cold sea surface temperatures (SSTs)in the eastern tropical Pacific
and warm SSTs in the western tropical Pacific and Indian oceans were
remarkably persistent during this period. Climate models show that the
climate signals forced separately by these regions reacted
synergistically, each contributing to widespread mid-latitude drying :
an ideal scenario for spatially expansive, synchronized drought.

From concluding remarks:
It is an open question whether such tropical oceanic forcings will
become more prevalent during the 21st century. Because of deficiencies
in coupled ocean-atmosphere models, little confidence exists with
regard to projections of the future statistics of ENSO (such as its
duration and amplitude) or of the regional pattern of mean tropical
SST change itself. The atmospheric modeling results of 1998-2002
suggest an increased risk for severe and synchronized drying of the
mid-latitudes if the tropical mean SSTs or their interannual
variability increase the ocean’s west-east contrast over the
equatorial Pacific.

4 ———————————————————————–
“Future projections of drought in the twenty-first century … show
regions of strong wetting and drying with a net overall global drying
trend. For example, the proportion of the land surface in extreme
drought is predicted to increase from 1% for the present day to 30% by
the end of the twenty-first century.”
——————————-

JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY
OCTOBER 2006

Modeling the Recent Evolution of Global Drought and Projections for the
Twenty-First Century with the Hadley Centre Climate Model

ELEANOR J. BURKE, SIMON J. BROWN, AND NIKOLAOS CHRISTIDIS
Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, Met Office, Exeter,
United Kingdom

ABSTRACT

Meteorological drought in the Hadley Centre global climate model is
assessed using the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), a commonly
used drought index. At interannual time scales, for the majority of
the land surface, the model captures the observed relationship between
the El Niño-Southern Oscillation and regions of relative wetness and
dryness represented by high and low values of the PDSI respectively.
At decadal time scales, on a global basis, the model reproduces the
observed drying trend (decreasing PDSI) since 1952. An optimal
detection analysis shows that there is a significant influence of
anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gasses and sulphate aerosols in
the production of this drying trend. On a regional basis, the specific
regions of wetting and drying are not always accurately simulated. In
this paper, present-day drought events are defined as continuous time
periods where the PDSI is less than the 20th percentile of the PDSI
distribution between 1952 and 1998 (i.e., on average 20% of the land
surface is in drought at any one time). Overall, the model predicts
slightly less frequent but longer events than are observed. Future
projections of drought in the twenty-first century made using the
Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) A2 emission scenario show
regions of strong wetting and drying with a net overall global drying
trend. For example, the proportion of the land surface in extreme
drought is predicted to increase from 1% for the present day to 30% by
the end of the twenty-first century.

—————————————————————————–

Jacob O. Sewall and Lisa Cirbus Sloan. “Disappearing Arctic sea ice reduces available water in the American west.”  GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH
LETTERS, VOL. 31, 2004

In the climate science community, long-distance connections like the one described by Sewall and Sloan,  above,  are called “teleconnections” and there’s plenty of need for more wake-up calls about them. So remember the Sewall and Sloan article when reading the University of Washington news release below.
Lance

University of Washington       Public release date: 12-Dec-2007

Contact: Sandra Hines
shines@u.washington.edu
206-543-1580

Without its insulating ice cap,  Arctic surface waters warm to as much as 5 C above average

Record-breaking amounts of ice-free water have deprived the Arctic of more of its natural “sunscreen” than ever in recent summers. The effect is so pronounced that sea surface temperatures rose to 5 C above average in one place this year, a high never before observed, says the oceanographer who has compiled the first-ever look at average sea surface temperatures for the region.

Such superwarming of surface waters can affect how thick ice grows back in the winter, as well as its ability to withstand melting the next summer, according to Michael Steele, an oceanographer with the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory. Indeed, since September, the end of summer in the Arctic, winter freeze-up in some areas is two months later than usual.

The extra ocean warming also might be contributing to some changes on land, such as previously unseen plant growth in the coastal Arctic tundra, if heat coming off the ocean during freeze-up is making its way over land, says Steele, who is speaking Wednesday at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

He is lead author of “Arctic Ocean surface warming trends over the past 100 years,” accepted for publication in AGU’s Geophysical Research Letters. Co-authors are physicist Wendy Ermold and research scientist Jinlun Zhang, both of the UW Applied Physics Laboratory. The work is funded by the National Science Foundation.

“Warming is particularly pronounced since 1995, and especially since 2000,” the authors write. The spot where waters were 5 C above average was in the region just north of the Chakchi Sea. The historical average temperature there is -1 C - remember that the salt in ocean water keeps it liquid at temperatures that would cause fresh water to freeze. This year water in that area warmed to 4 C, for a 5-degree change from the average.

That general area, the part of the ocean north of Alaska and Eastern Siberia that includes the Bering Strait and Chukchi Sea, experienced the greatest summer warming. Temperatures for that region were generally 3.5 C warmer than historical averages and 1.5 C warmer than the historical maximum.

Such widespread warming in those areas and elsewhere in the Arctic is probably the result of having increasing amounts of open water in the summer that readily absorb the sun’s rays, Steele says. Hard, white ice, on the other hand, can work as a kind of sunscreen for the waters below, reflecting rather than absorbing sunlight. The warming also may be partly caused by increasing amounts of warmer water coming from the Pacific Ocean, something scientists have noted in recent years.

The Arctic was primed for more open water since the early 1990s as the sea-ice cover has thinned, due to a warming atmosphere and more frequent strong winds sweeping ice out of the Arctic Ocean via Fram Strait into the Atlantic Ocean where the ice melts. The wind effect was particularly strong in the summer of 2007.

Now the situation could be self-perpetuating, Steele says. For example, he calculates that having more heat in surface waters in recent years means 23 to 30 inches less ice will grow in the winter than formed in 1965. Since sea ice typically grows about 80 inches in a winter, that is a significant fraction of ice that’s going missing, he says.

Then too, higher sea surface temperatures can delay the start of freeze-up because the extra heat must be discharged from the upper ocean before ice can form. “The effect on net winter growth would probably be negligible for a delay of several weeks, but could be substantial for delays of several months,” the authors write.

=================================================

What does Food Sovereignty have to do with Climate Change?

Industrial Agriculture, Climate Change and the Necessity for Food Sovereignty

By Jessie
Rising Tide North America

Before we let the energy companies colonize our agricultural land touting questionably climate friendly solutions like agrofuels, lets look a little at some of the deep seeded issues within our current food system that are not only perpetuating climate change but will be impacted and taxed greatly as the climate changes.

Our current food system relies heavily on fossil fuel derived fertilizers and pesticides, gas guzzling farm machinery, and transporting farm inputs and products over long distances. The average food item bought at a supermarket has traveled on average over 1,500 miles. The modern agricultural system is completely unsustainable as the climate continues to change due to the excessive burning of fossil fuels by humans.

No one knows exactly what will happen as climate change takes shape, but we can predict that climate change will have an affect on how, what, and where we grow food. Many areas will be plagued by drought or floods or both and the acreage of the earth suitable for agriculture will shift, perhaps dramatically.

Industrial agricultural is reliant on very few crops with very little genetic diversity within each crop such as corn, wheat, rice and soybeans. Industrial agriculture also relies on infrastructure that is completely reliant on fossil fuels to transport food from farms, processing plants, supermarkets, and eaters.

One of the simplest things we all can do to reduce our own contribution to climate change and to prepare for the impending climatic changes yet to come is to eat local food. Saving heirloom seeds and diverse varieties of crops will prepare us for growing food in different conditions. One of the reasons that caused the Irish potato famine in the 18th century was growing only one type of potato. There are thousands of varieties of potatoes that have been developed over centuries to withstand different kinds of blights as well as different growing conditions from droughts to flood.

We must also lower the amount of energy we use in preparing and refrigerating our food as 31% of the energy used in the food system is from home refrigeration and cooking. Going back to our roots, literally with learning about how to preserve our food in root cellars and other forms of non-electric food storage such as drying, canning, salting, and fermenting will help us transition to a sustainable food system that will be less vulnerable to changes in climate and global food supply and transport.

We can no longer rely on super highways, airplanes and ocean-liners to bring food to us. We need to grow food in our communities and support small local farmers growing food sustainably. We need to build up our topsoil by using sustainable agricultural practices and composting biomass and food waste. Improving the quality of our soil will help us grow food for generations to come.

Given the severity of climate change we must ask ourselves what is an appropriate response to climate change? In terms of climate change and how we feed ourselves the appropriate response is a complete overhaul of our food system from a centralized fossil-fuel dependent framework to a decentralized local food system where there are many people growing a wide variety of food everywhere, spanning urban and rural areas.

How do we do this??
Currently our food system is controlled by agri-biz giants such as Monsanto and Cargill whose aim is to control all aspects of our food system. Fortunately, this corporate power is countered by a growing resistance of grassroots groups that is emerging as a world-wide social movement demanding food sovereignty. The term “food sovereignty” was coined by the international peasant movement Via Campesina in the mid 1990s to assert the right for people to determine their own food and agricultural policies. This includes the right to grow food, access to land, natural resources, biological diversity and access to local markets. No one should be able to own the air, water or biological diversity of the planet. It is our life support system and it belongs to all life on earth, present and future!!!

Demanding food sovereignty means that we must challenge the large agribusiness who control our food supply. In the shadow if impending climatic doom we must take our food system and agricultural lands back from the grain cartels like Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland and Bunge, the seed snatchers like Monsanto and Delta-Pineland, the processed food gluttons like Coca-cola, Kraft and Unilever and the bottle-neck control of retailers like, WalMart and other supermarket chains.

We need more action in solidarity with the global movement for food sovereignty. This can take shape in international days of action, as well as other strategic actions consisting of a wide variety of direct actions, civil disobedience, creative street theater, workshops, education, banner hangs and much more!

So what does food sovereignty looks like??
Food Sovereignty looks different everywhere. Solutions come from indigenous knowledge of how to live and grow food sustainably in a particular bioregion as so many communities have been doing for thousands of years. It looks like seed saving and preserving food for the winter in a variety of ways that are culturally and locally appropriate. It looks like farmer’s markets, farm stands, and direct farmer to eater transactions. It looks like urban gardens and community supported agriculture programs. It’s linking urban and rural communities and it’s shortening the distance of production and consumption.

There are some very challenging obstacles that we need to overcome to actualize food sovereignty. We need more farmers, and more support for new farmers. We need access to more farmland.

Responding to climate change means reacquainting our diet with the seasons, delving into the rich agricultural history that exists everywhere and celebrating the cornucopia of food grown where you are. Every time we bypass the supermarket and shop instead at the farmer’s market, road-side farm-stand or pick up a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) box we are helping to build a stronger local food economy that is preparing and responding to the burgeoning threat of climate change and we are also connecting to the global movement for food sovereignty. And even better is when we begin to grow our own food and share the surplus with our family, friends, and community.

For more information email jessie@risingtidenorthamerica.org

by Cahal Milmo

BP, the British oil giant that pledged to move “Beyond Petroleum” by finding cleaner ways to produce fossil fuels, is being accused of abandoning its “green sheen” by investing nearly £1.5bn to extract oil from the Canadian wilderness using methods which environmentalists say are part of the “biggest global warming crime” in history.

The multinational oil and gas producer, which last year made a profit of £11bn, is facing a head-on confrontation with the green lobby in the pristine forests of North America after Greenpeace pledged a direct action campaign against BP following its decision to reverse a long-standing policy and invest heavily in extracting so-called “oil sands” that lie beneath the Canadian province of Alberta and form the world’s second-largest proven oil reserves after Saudi Arabia.

Producing crude oil from the tar sands - a heavy mixture of bitumen, water, sand and clay - found beneath more than 54,000 square miles of prime forest in northern Alberta - an area the size of England and Wales combined - generates up to four times more carbon dioxide, the principal global warming gas, than conventional drilling. The booming oil sands industry will produce 100 million tonnes of CO2 (equivalent to a fifth of the UK’s entire annual emissions) a year by 2012, ensuring that Canada will miss its emission targets under the Kyoto treaty, according to environmentalist activists.

The oil rush is also scarring a wilderness landscape: millions of tonnes of plant life and top soil is scooped away in vast open-pit mines and millions of litres of water are diverted from rivers - up to five barrels of water are needed to produce a single barrel of crude and the process requires huge amounts of natural gas. The industry, which now includes all the major oil multinationals, including the Anglo-Dutch Shell and American combine Exxon-Mobil, boasts that it takes two tonnes of the raw sands to produce a single barrel of oil. BP insists it will use a less damaging extraction method, but it accepts that its investment will increase its carbon footprint. Continue Reading »

Don’t worry about global “warming,” rapid climate change is all the buzz
now.

——– Original Message ——–
** Experts warn of ‘abrupt’ warming **
A UN panel agrees a landmark report on tackling climate change, warning
of “abrupt and irreversible” impacts.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7098902.stm

EurekAlert! AAAS

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Public release date: 15-Nov-2007

Contact: Lynn Chandler
lynn.chandler-1@nasa.gov
301-286-2806

Forests damaged by Hurricane Katrina become major carbon source

With the help of NASA satellite data, a research team has estimated that Hurricane Katrina killed or severely damaged 320 million large trees in Gulf Coast forests, which weakened the role the forests play in storing carbon from the atmosphere. The damage has led to these forests releasing large quantities of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

The August 2005 hurricane affected five million acres of forest across Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama, with damage ranging from downed trees, snapped trunks and broken limbs to stripped leaves.

Young growing forests play a vital role in removing carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, from the atmosphere by photosynthesis, and are thus important in slowing a warming climate. An event that kills a great number of trees can temporarily reduce photosynthesis, the process by which carbon is stored in plants. More importantly, all the dead wood will be consumed by decomposers, resulting in a large carbon dioxide release to the atmosphere as the ecosystem exhales it as forest waste product. The team’s findings were published Nov. 15 in the journal Science.

“The loss of so many trees will cause these forests to be a net source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere for years to come,” said the study’s lead author Jeffrey Chambers, a biologist at Tulane University in New Orleans, La. “If, as many believe, a warming climate causes a rise in the intensity of extreme events like Hurricane Katrina, we’re likely to see an increase in tree mortality, resulting in an elevated release of carbon by impacted forest ecosystems.”

Young forests are valued as carbon sinks, which remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in growing vegetation and soils. In the aftermath of a storm as intense as Katrina, vegetation killed by the storm decomposes over time, reversing the carbon storage process, making the forest a carbon source.

“The carbon cycle is intimately linked to just about everything we do, from energy use to food and timber production and consumption,” said Chambers. “As more and more carbon is released to the atmosphere by human activities, the climate warms, triggering an intensification of the global water cycle that produces more powerful storms, leading to destruction of more trees, which then act to amplify climate warming.”

Chambers and colleagues from the University of New Hampshire in Durham, N.H., studied Landsat 5 satellite data captured before and after Hurricane Katrina to pull together a reliable field sampling of tree deaths across the entire range of forests affected by Katrina. They found that some forests were heavily damaged while others like the cypress-tupelo swamp forests fared remarkably well.

The NASA-built Landsat 5, part of the Landsat series of Earth-observing satellites, takes detailed images of the Earth’s surface. Chambers combined results from the Landsat image sampling with data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite to estimate the size of the entire forested area affected by Katrina. The instrument can detect minute changes in the color spectrum on the land below, enabling it to measure differences in the percentage of live and dead vegetation. This helps researchers improve their estimates of changes in carbon storage and improves their ability to track the location of carbon sinks and sources.

The field samples and satellite images, along with results from computer models that simulate the kind of vegetation and other traits that make up the forests, were used to measure the total tree loss the hurricane inflicted. The scientists then calculated total carbon losses to be equivalent to 60-100 percent of the net annual carbon sink in U.S. forest trees.

“It is surprising to learn that one extreme event can release nearly as much carbon to the atmosphere as all U.S. forests can store in an average year,” said Diane Wickland, manager of the Terrestrial Ecology Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Satellite data enabled Chambers’ research team to pin down the extent of tree damage so that we now know how these kinds of severe storms affect the carbon cycle and our atmosphere. Satellite technology has really proven its worth in helping researchers like Chambers assess important changes in our planet’s carbon cycle.”

###

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/archives/2007/katrina_carbon.html

Written by:
Gretchen Cook-Anderson
Goddard Space Flight Center
========================================

13/11/2007

Primary rain forest is irreplaceable

As world leaders prepare to discuss conservation-friendly carbon credits in Bali and a regional initiative threatens a new wave of deforestation in the South American tropics, new research from the University of East Anglia and Brazil’s Goeldi Museum highlights once again the irreplaceable importance of primary rain forest.

Working in the north-eastern Brazilian Amazon the international team of scientists undertook the single-largest assessment of the biodiversity conservation value of primary, secondary and plantation forests ever conducted in the humid tropics. The study was partly funded by the UK Government’s Darwin Initiative and their findings are reported in the latest edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Over an area larger than Wales, the UEA and museum researchers surveyed five primary rain forest sites, five areas of natural secondary forest and five areas planted with fast-growing exotic trees (Eucalyptus), to evaluate patterns of biodiversity.

Following an intensive effort of more than 20,000 scientist hours in the field and laboratory, they collected data on the distribution of 15 different groups of animals (vertebrates and invertebrates) and woody plants, including well-studied groups such as monkeys, butterflies and amphibians and also more obscure species such as fruit flies, orchid bees and grasshoppers.

“We know that different species often exhibit different responses to deforestation and so we sought to understand the consequences of land-use change for as many species as possible,” said Dr Jos Barlow, a former post-doctoral researcher at UEA.

At least a quarter of all species were never found outside native primary forest habitat - and the team acknowledges that this is an underestimate. “Our study should be seen as a best-case scenario, as all our forests were relatively close to large areas of primary forests, providing ample sources for recolonisation,” said Dr Barlow.

“Many plantations and regenerating forests along the deforestation frontiers in South America and south-east Asia are much further from primary forests, and wildlife may be unable to recolonise in these areas.

“Furthermore, the percentage of species restricted to primary forest habitat was much higher (40-60%) for groups such as birds and trees, where we were able to sample the canopy species as well as those that live in the forest under-storey.”

These results clearly demonstrate the unique value of undisturbed tropical forests for wildlife conservation. However, they also show that secondary forests and plantations offer some wildlife benefits and can host many species that would be unable to survive in intensive agricultural landscapes such as cattle ranching or soybean plantations.

“Although the protection of large areas of primary forest is vital for native biodiversity conservation, reforestation projects can play an important supplementary role in efforts to boost population sizes of forest species and manage vast working landscapes that have already been heavily modified by human-use” explained Dr Carlos Peres, who leads the UEA team.

But, when carbon-credits from Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDDS) are tabled for the first time at the Bali meeting next month, decision makers should beware of seeing fast-growing exotics such as eucalyptus as a carbon sink solution to the world’s emissions problems. If agreed upon by world leaders REDDs offer an extraordinary opportunity to generate funds to support the long-term protection of large areas of intact forest habitat

Pristine forests are home to over half of all terrestrial species in the world and their loss would impoverish the planet. Far better to save primary forest from deforestation in the first place,” added Dr Peres. “That way we maximize both the biodiversity and carbon value of whole landscapes.”

For years now, skeptics have tried to blame all global heating on variations in solar output. And, yes, fluctuations of solar output can make a real difference.

But the real story here is that we’ve made increases in solar output more dangerous than ever before because, now, they will come in addition to heating that we’ve forced upon ourselves by our consumption of fossil fuels and forests.

Lance Olsen

——————————————
University of Colorado at Boulder
Public release date: 13-Nov-2007

Satellite shows regional variation in warming from sun during solar cycle

SORCE satellite.

A NASA satellite designed, built and controlled by the University of Colorado at Boulder is expected to help scientists resolve wide-ranging predictions about the coming solar cycle peak in 2012 and its influence on Earth’s warming climate, according to the chief scientist on the project.

Senior Research Associate Tom Woods of CU-Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics said the brightening of the sun as it approaches its next solar cycle maximum will have regional climatic impacts on Earth. While some scientists predict the next solar cycle–expected to start in 2008–will be significantly weaker than the present one, others are forecasting an increase of up to 40 percent in the sun’s activity, said Woods.

Woods is the principal investigator on NASA’s $88 million Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment, or SORCE, mission, launched in 2003 to study how and why variations in the sun affect Earth’s atmosphere and climate. In August, NASA extended the SORCE mission through 2012. The extension provides roughly $18 million to LASP, which controls SORCE from campus by uploading commands and downloading data three times daily to the Space Technology Building in the CU Research Park.

Solar cycles, which span an average of 11 years, are driven by the amount and size of sunspots present on the sun’s surface, which modulate brightness from the X-ray to infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. The current solar cycle peaked in 2002.

Solar activity alters interactions between Earth’s surface and its atmosphere, which drive global circulation patterns, said Woods. While warming on Earth from increased solar brightness is modest compared to the natural effects of volcanic eruptions, cyclical weather patterns like El Nino or human emissions of greenhouse gases, regional temperature changes can vary by a factor of eight.

During the most recent solar maximum, for example, the global mean temperature rise on Earth due to solar-brightness increases was only about 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit, said Woods. But parts of the central United States warmed by 0.7 degrees F, and a region off the coast of California even cooled slightly. A paper on the coming decade of solar activity by Woods and Judith Lean of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., was published online Oct. 30 in the scientific newsletter, Eos.

“It was very important to the climate change community that SORCE was extended, because it allows us to continue charting the solar irradiance record in a number of wavelengths without interruption,” Woods said. “Even relatively small changes in solar output can significantly affect Earth because of the amplifying affect in how the atmosphere responds to solar changes.”

With mounting concern over the alteration of Earth’s surface and atmosphere by humans, it is increasingly important to understand natural “forcings” on the sun-Earth system that impact both climate and space weather, said Woods. Such natural forcing includes heat from the sun’s radiation that causes saltwater and freshwater evaporation and drives Earth’s water cycle.

Increases in UV radiation from the sun also heat up the stratosphere–located from 10 miles to 30 miles above Earth–which can cause significant changes in atmospheric circulation patterns over the planet, affecting Earth’s weather and climate, he said. “We will never fully understand the human impact on Earth and its atmosphere unless we first establish the natural effects of solar variability.”

SORCE also is helping scientists better understand violent space weather episodes triggered by solar flares and coronal mass ejections that affect the upper atmosphere and are more prevalent in solar maximum and declining solar cycle phases, said Woods. The severe “Halloween Storms” in October and November 2003 disrupted GPS navigation and communications, causing extensive and costly rerouting of commercial “over-the-poles” jet flights to lower latitudes, he said.

Woods also is the principal investigator on a $30 million instrument known as the Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment, or EVE, one of three solar instruments slated for launch on NASA’s Solar Dynamic Observatory in December 2008. Designed and built at LASP and delivered to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland last September, EVE will measure precise changes in the sun’s UV brightness, providing space weather forecasters with early warnings of potential communications and navigation outages.

About one-third of the annual SORCE budget goes for commanding and controlling the satellite, roughly one-third for producing public data sets and one-third for analyzing how and why the sun is changing, he said. “CU-Boulder students are our lifeblood,” said Woods. “They are involved in all aspects of the SORCE mission, from uploading commands to the spacecraft to analyzing data.”

###

A podcast on SORCE featuring Woods can be accessed on the Web at:

http://www.colorado.edu/news/podcasts/.

For more information on SORCE, visit the Web at:

http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/news_letter.html.
========================================

Scientific American
October 26, 2007

The World Is Not Enough for Humans

Humanity’s environmental impact has reached an unprecedented scope,
and it’s getting worse.

Since 1987 annual emissions of carbon dioxide-the leading greenhouse
gas warming the globe-have risen by a third, global fishing yields
have declined by 10.6 million metric tons and the amount of land
required to sustain humanity has swelled to more than 54 acres (22
hectares) per person. Yet, Earth can provide only roughly 39 acres
(15 hectares) for every person living today, according to the United
Nation’s Environmental Program’s (UNEP) Global Environment Outlook,
released this week. “There are no major issues,” the report’s authors
write of the period since their first report in 1987, “for which the
foreseeable trends are favorable.”

Despite some successes-such as the Montreal Protocol’s 95 percent
reduction in chemicals that damage the atmosphere’s ozone layer and a
rise in protected reserves of habitat to cover 12 percent of the
planet-humanity’s impact continues to grow. For example:

Biodiversity-The planet is in the grips of the sixth great extinction
in its 4.5-billion-year history, this one largely man-made. Species
are becoming extinct 100 times faster than the average rate in the
fossil record. More than 30 percent of amphibians, 12 percent of
birds and 23 percent of our own class, mammals, are threatened.

Climate-Average temperatures have climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit
(0.76 degree Celsius) over the past century and could increase as
much as 8.1 degrees F (4.5 degrees C) over the next unless “drastic”
steps are taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from, primarily,
burning fossil fuels. Developed countries will need to reduce this
globe-warming pollution by 60 to 80 percent by mid-century to stave
off dire consequences, the report warns. “Fundamental changes in
social and economic structures, including lifestyle changes, are
crucial if rapid progress is to be achieved.”

Food-The amount of food grown per acre has reached one metric ton,
but such increasing intensity is also driving rapid desertification
of formerly arable land as well as reliance on chemical pesticides
and fertilizers. In fact, four billion out of the world’s 6.5 billion
people could not get enough food to eat without such fertilization.
Continuing population growth paired with a shift toward eating more
meat leads the UNEP to predict that food demand may more than triple.

Water-One in 10 of the world’s major rivers, including the Colorado
and the Rio Grande in the U.S., fail to reach the sea for at least
part of the year, due to demand for water. And that demand is rising;
by 2025, the report predicts, demand for fresh water will rise by 50
percent in the developing world and 18 percent in industrialized
countries. At the same time, human activity is polluting existing
fresh waters with everything from fertilizer runoff to
pharmaceuticals and climate change is shrinking the glaciers that
provide drinking water for nearly one third of humanity. “The
escalating burden of water demand,” the report says, “will become
intolerable in water-scarce countries.”

The authors-388 scientists reviewed by roughly 1,000 of their
peers-view the report as “an urgent call for action” and decry the
“woefully inadequate” global response to problems such as climate
change. “The amount of resources needed to sustain [humanity] exceeds
what is available,” the report declares.

“The systematic destruction of the earth’s natural and nature-based
resources has reached a point where the economic viability of
economies is being challenged,” Achim Steiner, UNEP’s executive
director, said in a statement. “The bill we hand our children may
prove impossible to pay.”

========================================

The Age (Melbourne, Australia)
November 14, 2007

Vital facts ‘deleted’ from UN report on climate change
By Charles Clover, London

A MAJOR United Nations report on climate change has been watered down
as a result of influence from government officials from countries
opposed to taking radical action, conservation group WWF claims.

It says “vital facts” have been cut from the report’s summary,
including a warning of more destructive hurricanes, the warming of
the upper Pacific Ocean and the loss of glaciers in the European Alps.

The group fears that the report will play down the need for deep cuts
in emissions.

The report, which will be released on Saturday, will say that almost
a third of the world’s species will face extinction if greenhouse gas
emissions continue to rise.

A draft copy of the report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) also warns that if temperatures rise by more
than two degrees - now expected before 2050 - 20 per cent of the
world’s population will face a great risk of drought.

With that level of temperature rise, other parts of the world will
face increased flood risk from rainfall and there will be a decrease
in cereal harvests in some regions.

There will also be a rise in flooding, particularly around deltas in
China and Bangladesh and low Pacific islands.

The report is the focus of talks between the UN panel and government
delegations at a meeting in Valencia, Spain, before next month’s
UN-sponsored meeting in Bali that will start negotiations on a new
climate change treaty.

It was compiled by the UN panel of 2500 climate change scientists,
which this year won the Nobel peace prize with the former US
vice-president Al Gore.

It says that most of the increase in global average temperatures
since the mid-20th century is “very likely” to be the result of
greenhouse gas emissions.

Otherwise, global temperatures might have been expected to decrease.

The scientists will say it is possible to halt global warming if the
world’s greenhouse gas emissions start to decline before 2015.

This is highly unlikely. Emissions are projected to increase by up to
90 per cent by 2030 on present estimates, according to the report.

The study will warn that if emissions continue to rise without action
being taken until 2050, then global average temperatures would rise
by up to five degrees.

Such an average rise would cause “significant extinctions” around the
world, a decrease in cereal harvests everywhere and the flooding of
about 30 per cent of coastal wetlands.

The chairman of the Nobel prize-winning IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri,
called the Valencia meeting a watershed for the group.

Mr Pachauri said the UN panel scientists were determined to “adhere
to standards of quality” in the fourth and final report to be issued
this year.

The comment was an indirect barb at the political delegations, which
environmentalists have accused of watering down and excluding vital
information from the summaries of earlier reports to fit their own
domestic agendas.

The WWF claims that the report will also not contain worrying
evidence published in the past year that the Southern Ocean has
started to take up less carbon dioxide from the atmosphere,
accelerating the pace of global warming.

TELEGRAPH, AP
========================================

The first edition of our Educational Undertakings menu of workshops and trainings is now available!

Menu of Workshops and Trainings

Download the booklet, look through it to make your selection, and give us a holler at education@risingtidenorthamerica.org to start setting up a workshop or training.

MASSIVE FOREST DIEBACK

ALLEN, CRAIG D.
U.S. Geological Survey, Jemez Mountains Field Station, Los Alamos, NM 87544

In coming decades, climate changes are expected to produce large shifts in vegetation distributions, largely due to mortality. However, most field studies and model-based assessments of vegetation responses to climate have focused on changes associated with natality and growth, which are inherently slow processes for woody plants-even though the most rapid changes in vegetation are caused by mortality rather than natality. This talk reviews the sensitivity of western montane forests to massive dieback, including drought-induced tree mortality and related insect outbreaks. This overview illustrates the potential for widespread and rapid forest dieback, and associated ecosystem effects, due to anticipated global climate change.

Climate is a key determinant of vegetation patterns at landscape and regional spatial scales. Precipitation variability, including recurrent drought conditions, has typified the climate of the Mountain West for at least thousands of years (Sheppard et al. 2002).

Dendrochronological studies and historical reports show that past droughts have caused extensive vegetation mortality across this region, e.g., as documented in the American Southwest for severe droughts in the 1580s, 1890s to early 1900s, 1950s, and the current drought since 1996 (Swetnam and Betancourt 1998, Allen and Breshears 1998 and in press). Drought stress is documented to lead to dieback in many woody plant species in the West, including spruce (Picea spp.), fir (Abies spp.), Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii.), pines (Pinus spp.), junipers (Juniperus spp.), oaks (Quercus spp.), mesquite (Prosopis spp.), manzanitas (Arctostaphylos spp.), and paloverdes (Cercidium spp.).

Drought-induced tree mortality exhibits a variety of nonlinear ecological dynamics. Tree mortality occurs when drought conditions cause threshold levels of plant water stress to be exceeded, which can result in tree death by loss of within-stem hydraulic conductivity (Allen and Breshears-in press). Also, herbivorous insect populations can rapidly build up to outbreak levels in response to increased food availability from drought-weakened host trees, such as the various bark beetle species (e.g. Dendroctonus, Ips, and Scolytus spp.) that attack forest trees (Furniss and Carolin 1977). As bark beetle populations build up they become increasingly successful in killing drought-weakened trees through mass attacks (Figure 1), with positive feedbacks for further explosive growth in beetle numbers which can result in nonlinear ecological interactions and complex spatial dynamics (cf. Logan and Powell 2001, Bjornstad et al. 2002). Bark beetles also selectively kill larger and low-vigor trees, truncating the size and age distributions of host species (Swetnam and Betancourt 1998).

The temporal and spatial patterns of drought-induced tree mortality also reflect non-linear dynamics. Through time mortality is usually at lower background levels, punctuated by large pulses of high tree death when threshold drought conditions are exceeded (Swetnam and Betancourt 1998, Allen and Breshears-in press). The spatial pattern of drought-induced dieback often reveals preferential mortality along the drier, lower fringes of tree species distributions in western mountain ranges. For example, the 1950s drought caused a rapid, drought-induced ecotone shift on the east flank of the Jemez Mountains in northern New Mexico, USA (Allen and Breshears 1998). A time sequence of aerial photographs shows that the ecotone between semiarid ponderosa pine forest and piñon-juniper woodland shifted upslope extensively (2 km or more) and rapidly (< 5 years) due to the death of most ponderosa pine across the lower fringes of that forest type (Figure 1). This vegetation shift has been persistent since the 1950s, as little ponderosa pine reestablishment has occurred in the ecotone shift zone.

Severe droughts also markedly reduce the productivity and cover of herbaceous plants like grasses. Such reductions in ground cover can trigger nonlinear increases in erosion rates once bare soil cover exceeds critical threshold values (Davenport et al. 1998, Wilcox et al. 2003). For example, in concert with historic land use practices (livestock grazing and fire suppression), the 1950s drought apparently initiated persistent increases in soil erosion in piñon-juniper woodland sites in the eastern Jemez Mountains that require management intervention to reverse (Sydoriak et al. 2000). Thus, a short- duration climatic event apparently brought about persistent changes in multiple ecosystem properties. Over the past decade, many portions of the Western US have been subject to significant drought, with associated increases in tree mortality evident. GIS compilations of US Forest Service aerial surveys of insect-related forest dieback since 1997 show widespread mortality in many areas. For example the cumulative effect of multi-year drought since 1996 in the Southwest has resulted in the emergence of extensive bark beetle outbreaks and tree mortality across the region. In the Four Corners area piñon (Pinus edulis) has been particularly hard hit since 2002, with mortality exceeding 90% of mature individuals across broad areas (Figure 1), shifting stand compositions strongly toward juniper dominance. Across the montane forests of the West substantial dieback has been recently observed in many tree species, including Engelmann spruce (Picea engelmanni), Douglas-fir, lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta), ponderosa pine, piñon, junipers, and even aspen (Populus tremuloides).

A number of major scientific uncertainties are associated with forest dieback phenomena. Quantitative knowledge of the thresholds of mortality for various tree species is a key knowledge gap-we basically don’t know how much climatic stress forests can withstand before massive dieback kicks in. Thus the scientific community currently cannot accurately model forest dieback in response to projected climate changes, nor assess associated ecological and societal effects. More research is needed to determine if warm minimum temperatures over the past decade+ are exacerbating the effects of droughts and insects on tree mortality, as: 1) warmer temperatures result in greater plant water stress for a given amount of water availability; and 2) relaxation of low temperature constraints on insect population distributions and generation times may be allowing more extensive and rapid buildup of outbreak population levels. It is thought that substantial and widespread increases in tree densities in many forests and woodlands as a result of more than 100 years of fire suppression also contributes to current patterns of mortality, due to competitive increases in tree water stress and susceptibility to beetle attacks; however, more research is needed on the effectiveness of mechanical thinning and prescribed burning as protective management approaches.

Substantial uncertainties exist about the relationship between massive forest dieback and fire behavior. Although severe (crown) fire activity has apparently increased in some overdense forest types in the West, in some areas forest dieback is reducing the vertical and horizontal continuity of a key crown fire fuel component (live needles in tree crowns) as needles drop from dead tress, and that reductions in the spatial extent of uncontrollable crown fires may result. Feedbacks between forest dieback and fire activity (ignition probabilities, rate of spread, severity, controllability) need more work.

Recent examples of massive forest dieback illustrate that even relatively brief climatic events (e.g., droughts) associated with natural climate variability can have profound and persistent ecosystem effects. The unprecedentedly rapid climate changes expected in coming decades could produce rapid and extensive contractions in the geographic distributions of long-lived woody species in association with changes in patterns of disturbance (fire, insect outbreaks, soil erosion) (IPCC 2001, Allen and Breshears 1998). Because regional droughts of even greater magnitude and longer duration than the 1950s drought are expected as global warming progresses (Easterling et al. 2001, IPCC 2001), the scale of forest dieback associated with global climate change (Figure 3) could become even greater than what has been observed in recent years (National Research Council 2001). Since mortality-induced vegetation shifts take place more rapidly than do natality-induced shifts associated with plant establishment and migration (Allen and Breshears-in review), dieback could easily outpace new forest growth for a period of years to decades in many areas. Further, as woody vegetation contains the bulk of the world’s terrestrial carbon, an improved understanding of mortality-induced responses of woody vegetation to climate is essential for addressing some key environmental and policy implications of climate variability and global change (Breshears and Allen 2002). Thus it is important to more accurately incorporate climate-induced vegetation mortality and the complexity of associated ecosystem responses (e.g., insect outbreaks, fires, soil erosion, and changes in carbon pools) into models that predict vegetation dynamics.

References Cited

Allen, C.D., and D.D. Breshears. 1998. Drought-induced shift of a forest/woodland ecotone: rapid landscape response to climate variation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 95:14839-14842.

Allen, C.D., and D.D. Breshears. (In press). Drought, tree mortality, and landscape change in the Southwestern United States: Historical dynamics, plant-water relations, and global change implications. In J.L. Betancourt and H.F. Diaz (eds.), The 1950’s Drought in the American Southwest: Hydrological, Ecological, and Socioeconomic Impacts. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

Bjornstad, O.N., M. Peltonen, A.M. Liebhold, and W. Baltensweiler. 2002. Waves of larch budmoth outbreaks in the European Alps. Science 298:1020-1023.

Breshears, D.D., and C.D. Allen. 2002. The importance of rapid, disturbance-induced losses in carbon management and sequestration. Global Ecology and Biogeography Letters 11:1-15.

Davenport, D.W., D.D. Breshears, B.P. Wilcox, and C.D. Allen.1998. Viewpoint: Sustainability of piñon- juniper ecosystems-A unifying perspective of soil erosion thresholds. J. Range Management 51(2):229-238.

Easterling, D.R., G.A. Meehl, C. Parmesan, S.A. Changnon, T.R. Karl, and L.O. Mearns. 2000. Climate extremes: observations, modeling, and impacts. Science, 289, 2068-2074.

Furniss, R.L., and V.M. Carolin. 1980. Western Forest Insects. USDA For. Serv. Misc. Publ. No. 1339. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.

IPCC 2001-a. Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report. A Contribution of Working Groups I, II, and III to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Watson, R.R. and the Core Writing Team (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 398 pp.

Logan, J. A., and J. A. Powell. 2001. Ghost forests, global warming, and the mountain pine beetle. American Entomologist. 47: 160-173

National Research Council. 2001. Chapter 5-Economic and Ecological Impacts of Abrupt Climate Change, pp. 90-117 In: Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises. Committee on Abrupt Climate Change, Ocean Studies Board, Polar Research Board, Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, National Research Council. Washington, D.C.

Sheppard, P.R., A.C. Comrie, G.C. Packin, K Angersbach, and M.K. Hughes. 2002. The climate of the US Southwest. Climate Research 21:219-238.

Swetnam, T.W. and J.L. Betancourt. 1998. Mesoscale disturbance and ecological response to decadal climatic variability in the American Southwest. Journal of Climate 11: 3128-3147.

Sydoriak, C.A., C.D. Allen, and B.F. Jacobs. 2000. Would ecological landscape restoration make the Bandelier Wilderness more or less of a wilderness? Pp. 209-215 In: D.N. Cole, S.F. McCool, W.T. Borrie, and F. O’Loughlin (comps.). Proceedings: Wilderness Science in a Time of Change Conference-Volume 5: Wilderness Ecosystems, Threats, and Management; 1999 May 23-27; Missoula, MT. USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Proceedings RMRS-P-15-VOL-5. Ogden, UT.

Wilcox, B.P., D.D. Breshears, and C.D. Allen. 2003. Ecohydrology of a resource-conserving semiarid woodland: Temporal and spatial scaling and disturbance. Ecological Monographs 73(2):223-239.

————————————————————————-

1) “The ability to move, at some stage in the life cycle, is fundamental to success in life.”

Andrew Sugden and Elizabeth Pennisi
SCIENCE VOL 313 11 AUGUST 2006

2) “Animals have no choice but to move, since their survival is at stake. Studies of more than 1,000 species of plants, animals, and insects, found an average migration rate toward the North and South Poles of about four miles per decade in the second half of the 20th century. That is not fast enough. During the past 30 years the lines marking the regions in which a given average temperature prevails, or isotherms, have moved poleward at a rate of about 35 miles per decade.

“As long as the total movement of isotherms toward the poles is much smaller than the size of the habitat, or the ranges in which the animals live, the effect on species is limited. But now the movement is inexorably toward the poles, totaling more than 100 miles in recent decades. If emissions of greenhouse gases continue to increase at the current rate — “business as usual” — then the rate of isotherm movement will double during this century to at least 70 miles per decade. If we continue on this path, a large fraction of the species on Earth, as many as 50 percent or more, may become extinct.”

James Hansen 19 October 2006
The Planet in Peril - Part I
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=8305

3) “Each 1 degree C of global warming will shift temperature zones by about 160 km (100 miles). In the northern hemisphere this means that if the climate warms 3°C, species may have to shift northward as much as 500 km (300 miles) in order to find suitable habitat under the new climatic regime.”

“Global warming may make a mockery of our attempts in all nature reserves, including Glacier National Park, to preserve natural communities and rare, threatened, and endangered native species.”

“Perhaps many of Glacier’s species will be able to survive farther north, in the Banff-Jasper area. Protection of corridors linking the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem, and parks in the Canadian Rockies may provide critical avenues for species dispersal.”

Glacier National Park Biodiversity Paper #7
http://www.nps.gov/glac/resources/bio7.htm

4) In its “Managing Mountain Parks,” the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization says, “The major challenges for the twenty-first century” include this one:

“To link together the isolated existing mountain protected areas by conservation corridors along the mountain ranges. This not only increases effective size, but provides migration corridors for gene flow and species movement. As the climate changes, poleward migration corridors in north-south ranges (e.g. the Andes) will better accommodate temperature change, and migration along the east-west ranges (e.g. the Western Tien Shan) will be a response to rainfall changes.

full FAO report at:
http://www.fao.org/documents/show_cdr.asp?url_file=/docrep/x0963E/x0963e06.htm

5) The United Nations Environmental Programme stresses the same basic point:

“Forest management responses to climate change should focus on maintaining species diversity on national or continental scales through facilitating the processes of species migration, rather than by solely preserving specific reserves.”

full UNEP report at:
http://www.unep-wcmc.org/forest/flux/executive_summary.htm

Rainforest Action Network (RAN), Coal River Mountain Watch, the Student Environmental Action Coalition (SEAC) and students (and a few Rising Tiders) from around the country shut down a Washington, D.C. Citi branch today by performing a theatrical “die-in” and delivering a bundle of coal to the financial giant. The protesters, in Washington for this week’s major youth climate conference Power Shift, called on Citi to stop funding the leading cause of global warming in the United States: coal.”There is no room for coal in America’s energy future if we are going to avoid catastrophic climate change” said Rebecca Tarbotton, director of RAN’s Global Finance Campaign. “We have better options. Citi could be a real climate leader if they directed their financing towards efficiency and renewable energy. As it stands, dollar for dollar, they’re the biggest climate criminal in the country.” Click here to watch video Continue Reading »

***For Immediate Release***

Contact: Emily Posner, Native Forest Network, Organizer–207-930-5232

Plum Creek Using Intimidation to Silence Opposition

On Friday, November 2nd a small group of volunteers from Native Forest Network-Gulf of Maine (NFN) and Rising Tide North America (RTNA) were stopped, harassed and issued citations for criminal trespassing after taking video and still photographs for a documentary project at Plum Creek’s Greenville office. NFN is an all volunteer organization that advocates for the protection and restoration of forests and wild places including organizing against Plum Creek’s development proposal in the Moosehead Lake Region. The organization is registered with LURC as an intervenor and will be participating in official hearings during December and January. NFN supports a stance of “No Compromise” in regards to Plum Creek’s proposed development, claiming, “this type of project contributes to global climate change, threatens the ecological integrity of the largest undeveloped region east of the Mississippi River, and undermines the rural heritage of the region.”

At least three public law enforcement agencies, as well as Plum Creek’s private security firm, Merrill’s Investigation and Security, were involved in detaining the group. Three members of Native Forest Network, Gulf of Maine, and one member of Rising Tide North America, were detained and questioned. Three were issued citations for criminal trespassing.

Initially, the group was stopped in the parking lot of Plum Creek’s Greenville office at approximately 4 pm while videotaping the exterior of the building. An employee of Merrill’s Investigation and Security confronted the group, accused them of trespassing, and cornered them in the parking lot with his vehicle. According to Alex Lundberg, one of the volunteers detained, the guard did not identify himself, asked the group for identification and informed them they were trespassing and, ‘In big trouble.’ The group, under the impression that the office had public business hours, and unaware that they were doing anything wrong, then informed the guard that they would like to leave the property.

Leaving the property, the group proceeded as planned, climbing Moose Mountain to obtain more video footage of the region and proposed development area for the documentary project. Returning to their vehicle after their hike, the group was confronted by Officer Hartwood of the Greenville Police Department, as well as at least three Piscataquis County Sheriff’s Deputies, and two Game Wardens. “We were extremely surprised and intimidated by the show of force on the trail and in the parking lot. It was scary to have officers in full camouflage shouting at us and threatening us,” said Emily Posner, one of the group ultimately given a citation. “They also asked me if we were violent, and if I had explosives in my car,” said Posner.

Members of Native Forest Network also have been under surveillance at recent meetings of the state’s Land Use Regulatory Commission, the body responsible for approving Plum Creek’s Plan. Ryan Clarke, a member of the group who was present both at Friday’s confrontation, and the last LURC meeting says, “There was a man in an unmarked car videotaping us as we entered and left the meeting.”

“This type of preemptive action on the part of Plum Creek poses a potential threat to individuals’ constitutional rights. Intimidation and court summons discourages public participation in controversial issues. I hope that Plum Creek immediately stops using these types of tactics,” said Attorney Lynne Williams, who represents RESTORE and Forest Ecology Network, two other organizations contesting Plum Creek’s development plan .

Native Forest Network and Rising Tide North America plan to continue documenting Plum Creek’s development proposal in the Moosehead Region. Posner, Lundberg and John Waters of RTNA, the third person cited-plan to appear in court to contest the charges in January.

–
Podr�n cortar todas las flores, pero no podr�n detener la
primavera–Pablo Neruda

They can cut all the flowers, but they cannot stop the coming of Spring.

Defending Water for Life
207-930-5232
info@defendingwaterinmaine.org
www.defendingwaterinmaine.org

Meg Perry Healthy Soil Project
a program of the Common Ground Collective
www.commongroundrelief.org
504-913-5635

Continue Reading »

—–Original Message—–
From: pacificaannounce@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:pacificaannounce@yahoogroups.com]On Behalf Of Maria Gilardin
Sent: Monday, November 05, 2007 3:36 PM
To: tuc@tucradio.org
Subject: [pacificaannounce] TUC Radio: WITNESS TO THE MELTING OF GREENLAND

Here is the program for November 7, 2007
Pacifica KU Band every Wednesday 15:00 EST
Also on Audioport

ONE self- contained 29 minute program
MP3 FILE: http://www.tucradio.org/110707ithluk.mp3

Witness to the Melting of Greenland
An Inuit elder speaks
Recorded in a tent during a rainstorm
by Cien Fuegos in July, 2007
in the Valley of the Ancients on Greenland.

SUMMARY: During construction of the ceremonial fire pit for the 2008 second
circumpolar meeting of Inuits from the Arctic Circle, an Inuit elder spoke
about the accelerating changes in climate that are changing life on
Greenland. If all the ice there melts London and New York will drown.

Continue Reading »

————————-
“The biggest unknown is how far America will
overcome its aversion to arrangements that, as
some argue, compromise its sovereignty. Advocates
of a more internationalist foreign policy scored
a victory this week when the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee voted 17-4 in favour of
ratifying UNCLOS at last. But to gain the
necessary 67 votes in the full Senate, they will
still have to overcome the nay-sayers who
(however unreasonably) see ratifying the
convention as a slippery slope, leading to the
far more horrifying prospect of an international
regime on climate change.”
————————-

The Economist-Nov 1st 2007

The UN and Climate Change-The Icy Road to Bali

The UN’s quiet new boss is hoping that his
eco-tour of the southern hemisphere will
concentrate minds on the planet’s travails

BAN KI-MOON has hardly been a limelight-stealer
during his 10 months as secretary-general of the
United Nations. But over the coming days, expect
to see the cautious, camera-shy South Korean at
the centre of some spectacular snaps: watching
the glaciers vanish at the bottom of Patagonia,
flying to the finger of land that juts out of
Antarctica and then heading for the vibrant heart
of Brazil’s forest.

Think of it as a circuitous, but
carefully-planned journey to the Indonesian
island of Bali, where the outlines of a grand
global bargain on how to deal with climate change
may or may not come into view at a meeting in
December. By his own account a “harmoniser”
rather than a tub-thumper, Mr Ban will be told
some amazing and often contradictory things as he
travels round some ecologically sensitive spots
on the southern edge of the world.

Is the earth’s climatic system about to spin out
of all control, threatening the lives and
livelihoods of billions of people, or is it a bit
more robust (or at least fixable) than the
gloomiest scientists think? In Chile, Antarctica
and Brazil, he is likely to hear and observe
evidence on both sides of that argument.

As he flies south to Punta Arenas, Mr Ban will
see dozens of glorious glaciers, almost all of
them (87% by one recent estimate) retreating and
thinning. The nearer they are to the sea, the
more vulnerable they are to rising temperatures.
But not all recent alterations in the physical
landscape reflect global warming. Earlier this
year, Chilean scientists were amazed to find a
deep hole where a glacial lake used to be. Rising
temperatures were initially blamed for the lake’s
disappearance; but researchers later concluded
that it simply tipped into an even bigger lake.

Around the Torres del Paine national park, near
Punta Arenas, Mr Ban will be able to listen to
the crashing and booming of glaciers as they
“calve” into the sea: a natural process, but one
that is accelerating. Here and in many other
parts of Chile, the effects of warming are
obvious. Some time in the coming decades, the
shrinking of glaciers will cause a drop in the
level of glacial runoff, reducing the supply of
water to urban Chileans. A similar, and often
more acute, challenge faces more than 1 billion
city-dwellers in other parts of the world who
rely on glacial runoff for their water.

Apart from global warming, Mr Ban will meet
people affected by another environmental
problem-the emergence of a hole in the ozone
layer. In Punta Arenas, residents have to cope
with radiation alerts when ozone depletion is so
severe that it becomes highly dangerous to expose
skin or eyes to the sun.

But for some environmentalists, the ozone story
is on balance a tale of success. When the
Montreal protocol, limiting ozone-depleting
chemicals, marked its 20th anniversary in
September, many people hailed it as an example
that could inspire those who are trying to combat
climate change. Once the scientific evidence
became overwhelming (and frightening enough to
generate political pressure), governments and
industry worked together to reduce the ozone
“hole”: at least those were the claims made at
the agreement’s birthday party. In the case of
climate change, the scale of the problem, and the
adjustments needed, are far greater-but the
principle (that the world can work together to
mitigate environmental harm) sounds like a good
one to follow.

What about Antarctica, which along with Greenland
forms one of the principal stores of fresh water
on earth? Most of the southern continent’s icy
mass, especially the eastern half which rests on
some very solid rock, is so deep-frozen that so
far at least, it has been impervious to climate
change. Encircled by icy winds, the compacted
snow of Antarctica’s deep interior is actually
growing in volume.

That is probably just as well, because if all the
water locked up in Antarctica were to cascade
into the ocean, global sea levels could rise by
60 metres (185 feet), leaving more than a third
of the UN’s New York headquarters under water. By
comparison with the Arctic, where the North Pole
could be swirling in ice-free seas in summer by
2040, the southern polar region seems a bit more
stable-but that is no reason to be complacent,
says Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado.
Two bits of Antarctica are heating up rapidly.
The peninsula that juts out of the continent is
warming as fast as anywhere: three degrees
Centigrade in the past 50 years. And in Pine
Island Bay two giant glaciers are shrinking, and
this process is accelerating. Of the global
sea-level rise that is already taking place
(about 3 millimetres per year since 1990,
compared with an average of less than 2mm before