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Creating Community Forest Canopies

November 9th, 2017|Tags: alcoa, corporate partners, urban forests|0 Comments

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By Dylan Stuntz, American Forests

This is part of an 11-blog series on our work with Alcoa Foundation. Learn more here!

Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County has lost over 10,000 acres of tree cover over the last 5 years, much of which has been caused by pests such as the emerald ash borer, as well as residential and commercial development.

“We learned recently that our city has dropped 5 percent in tree canopy over the last 5 years despite all of our best efforts to plant trees,” says Danielle Crumine, executive director of Tree Pittsburgh. “Emerald ash borer [and] development — we’re up against all of these challenges, so we have to work extra hard, we have to work smarter, and that really takes partnerships, as many as we can find.”

American Forests has partnered with Tree Pittsburgh to try and reverse that trend.

The partnership is a result of our ongoing work with Alcoa Foundation, a 3-year effort working to increase diversity and combat climate change by working with local partners in 11 locations around the globe. Tree Pittsburgh is one of those partners, and they will be planting 2,000 trees over the course of those 3 years.

Volunteers work to plant trees along the Audubon Greenway, as part of a previous American Forests project with Alcoa Foundation and Tree Pittsburgh in 2016.

The goal of the project is to revitalize partial areas of Allegheny County, and engage in partial restoration of the forest canopy of the Quaker Valley School District, as well as enhance interest in conservation and create recreation spaces for residents of Allegheny County.

During the 3-year period, plantings are planned every spring, with 1,000 trees planned for the spring of 2018, and then 500 in 2019 and 2020. Not only will the plantings restore areas affected by EAB, they also present a unique opportunity to engage with the public.

The areas planned for the plantings are used by sports teams from the local Quaker Valley School District, so there is not only an engagement opportunity, but also an educational one. Both American Forests and Tree Pittsburgh hope to teach students, parents and educators about the benefits of tree planting, as well as create outreach for volunteer opportunities.

Tree Pittsburgh is an 11-year-old nonprofit dedicated to protecting, restoring, advocating for and educating about the urban forests in and around the city of Pittsburgh. Through this project, Tree Pittsburgh is also working with local partners Quaker Valley School District and the Quaker Valley Recreation Association.

“Partnerships are key to Tree Pittsburgh achieving its mission,” says Director Crumine. “Without organizations that bring us volunteers, without organizations that have additional expertise, space to plant trees, we could never plant the thousands and thousands that we need to plant every year.”

American Forests has partnered with Tree Pittsburgh before on several endeavors, the most recent being a project resulting in the planting of 2,670 seedlings along the Audubon Greenway, transforming what had previously been agricultural land.

The post Creating Community Forest Canopies appeared first on American Forests.

Revitalizing America’s Oak Populations

November 8th, 2017|Tags: American ReLeaf, green jobs|0 Comments

Across the Eastern United States, oaks have sustained us and shaped our way of life. But now they need our help.

If you like a glass of wine, whiskey or bourbon, your drink was probably aged in white oak barrels made in America. Oak is also one of the most valuable woods for making furniture and other wood products, supporting an important slice of the 2.4 million jobs in America’s forest products industry.

Oak forests dominate some of our most important landscapes for water and wildlife, too. The lush mountain headwaters in heartland states like Kentucky and Missouri flow from oak forests. Oaks are also an unusually productive source of food for wildlife thanks to the abundance of acorns. In fact, those same acorns were once a source of food for people!

Oak forests are under pressure from many directions: lack of natural, low-intensity fires, too many deer, and new pests and diseases. If we want to sustain oak forests as a resource for our country, we have work to do.

Oak Restoration in Action

American Forests is working with diverse partners to meet this challenge by restoring and revitalizing oaks across America, stretching from Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee to Virginia and West Virginia. In response, American Forests established the Oak Restoration Fund.

The Oak Restoration Fund goes directly into planting and restoring oak forests for our future. These dollars pay for reclaiming abandoned mine land to be replanted as oak forest, planting seedlings, and managing forests to support native oak stands. This fund brings future oaks to life and sustains the benefits that they provide us.

To kick-start the Oak Restoration Fund this year, Independent Stave Company is providing up to $50,000 in matching funds to support over $100,000 in restoration projects. As the Fund matures, additional projects will be implemented throughout the areas where oak populations are suffering.

To join this effort and contribute to the Oak Restoration Fund, please contact Jennifer Broome, Vice President of Philanthropy at jbroome@americanforests.org or 202.370.4513.

The post Revitalizing America’s Oak Populations appeared first on American Forests.

REACCH Advances in Dryland Farming Webinar Mini Series

The CLN is teaming up with the Regional Approaches to Climate Change (REACCH) Coordinated Agricultural Project (CAP) to present findings and advances from REACCH’s 5 year effort to enhance sustainability of Pacific Northwest cereal systems and contribute to climate change mitigation. This 6 part series will present topics from the REACCH Advances in Dryland Farming in the Inland Pacific Northwest Handbook.

Currently planned webinars:

November 13th, 11:00am EST (8:00am PST) Climate Considerations for Dryland Farmers Dr. Liz Allen and Dr. Katherine Hegewisch
November 20th, 11:00am EST (8:00am PST) Insect Pests and Pathogens in Dryland Cereal Systems Dr. Sanford Eigenbrode and Dr. Tim Paulitz
December 11, 11:00am EST (8:00am PST) Tillage and Residue Management Systems and Impacts on Soil Health in Drylands Dr. Prakriti Bista and Dr. Rakesh Awale

Future webinars:
Nov. 27, 11:00amEST/8:00amPST – Crop Rotations and Cropping System Diversification (Bill Pan, WSU, and Isaac Madsen, WSU)

Dec. 4, 2017 11:00amEST/8:00amPST – Nutrient Management and Precision Application (Tabitha Brown, WSU/Latah SWCD, and Erin Brooks, UI)

Dec. 18, 2017 11:00amEST/8:00amPST – Weed Management (Ian Burke, WSU)

Check back on this page for updates to the schedule

O Say can you See Ice…

Some concerns about continued monitoring of sea ice by remote sensing were raised this week in Nature News an article in the (UK) Observer: Donald Trump accused of obstructing satellite research into climate change. The last headline is not really correct, but the underlying issues are real.

What is this about? Since the late seventies, there have been almost continuous observations of polar sea ice by passive microwave sensing on multiple polar-orbiting satellites. This is the preferred technique since microwaves from the surface can penetrate clouds (which are abundant in the polar regions) and can be detected during the day and night – again, important for the wintertime at the poles.

The current workhorse satellites for this measurement are the (aging) DMSP F-series (managed by the UASF). There are two currently operational for sea ice retrievals, F-16/18, which are 14 and 8 years old respectively. Another, F-17 is still in orbit, but may not be usable on its own for sea ice (. The design lifetime was nominally 5 years. A replacement satellite, F-19 failed completely in October, but in fact had not been useful for sea ice since February 2016. The last satellite in the series (F-20) was built two decades ago and kept in storage, but was decommissioned finally in November 2016 after a decision in Congress to no longer fund it in the FY16 budget. This was after the election, but before the inauguration of the Trump administration.

[Note: A comprehensive (though not always up-to-date) resource on satellite capabilities (OSCAR) is available from WMO if you want to navigate this for yourself.]

While many instruments can be used to detect sea ice, the continuity required for long-term climate monitoring makes it vital that the different products are cross-calibrated and have similar characteristics to be useful. The closest instruments to the those on the DMSP satellites are the radiometers (MWRI) on the Chinese Feng Yun-3 series of satellites. Unfortunately, again because of Congress, NASA collaborations with China are restricted and since the sea ice work at NSIDC is funded by NASA, that might prevent this source of data being used in the US (though presumably non-US colleagues would not have this problem).

Another possibility is the Japanese satellite GCOM-W1 which has a more advanced AMSR2 instrument (in space since 2012, and has also passed it’s design lifetime), but the merge of this data with the DMSP satellites is still a work in progress. This is being used for the Bremen University sea ice maps though.

Differences in views from passive microwave instruments (SSMI vs. AMSR2) via Arctic Roos.

Unfortunately, the next scheduled passive microwave sensor to be launched is not until 2022 on the European Space Agency’s 2nd Generation MetOp satellite, and will need a year’s overlap with an existing satellite to be optimally calibrated. Thus the likelihood of a gap in the record developing before then is very high.

Other measures of sea ice will be possible – IceSat2 is launching next year will have an active laser altimeter to measure sea ice height, satellites with visible or infrared capabilities are able to see ice when it’s not dark or cloudy, but cross calibration into a homogeneous record will be hard.

To be clear, people have been warning about this looming lack of capability for a while – in April and May 2016, as well as more recently. Unfortunately, new satellites and new instruments take a long while to develop, build and launch, and possibly we’ve been taking them for granted.

That probably needs to stop.

Note. Thanks to Walt Meier at NSIDC for chatting about these issues with me.

CLN/CSI Webinar: The CONSERVE Program. Thursday Dec. 7 @ 3:00pm EST

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CONSERVE, A Transdisciplinary Research, Extension and Education Program at the Nexus of Sustainable Water Reuse, Food and Health

Presented by Amy Sapkota, PhD.
View Webinar Info Now (No Registration Required)

Our changing climate, escalating water demands from nonagricultural sectors, and depletion of groundwater sources by agricultural use are immediate challenges that call for the urgent need to explore and adopt safe, alternative irrigation strategies to sustain food production across the U.S. As a result, water reuse and the exploration of nontraditional irrigation sources have become national priorities with regard to agricultural water security and the sustainable production of our food supply. At the same time, the recent Food Safety Modernization Act is shifting the focus of food safety from responding to contamination to preventing it. This emphasis towards the prevention of foodborne illnesses places great responsibility on agricultural producers, who must meet stricter guidelines with regard to the quality of irrigation water used on food crops. Hence, at this critical juncture in food production, sustainable on-farm solutions are needed to enable agricultural producers to conserve groundwater and adopt safe, alternative approaches to irrigation.

To address this need, CONSERVE: A Center of Excellence at the Nexus of Sustainable Water Reuse, Food, and Health was established at the University of Maryland, School of Public Health through funding from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA). CONSERVE employs a systems approach to 1) evaluate the availability (quantity and quality) of nontraditional irrigation water sources (e.g. recycled water, brackish water, return flows) that could be used to help agricultural producers conserve groundwater; 2) identify the socio-behavioral, economic and regulatory factors that impact the use of these sources; and 3) develop, implement, and evaluate on-farm water treatment technologies for the safe and successful use of nontraditional irrigation water. We then share this new knowledge with agricultural and non-agricultural communities, and employ experiential education to teach, train, and inspire future leaders. This webinar will provide an overview of CONSERVE, as well as examples of our year 1 achievements. By the end of the webinar, participants will gain insights into the complex global picture of the potential for recycled water to become a more commonly accepted and used source for irrigation of food crops. As we move into a time of increasing water scarcity, a shift in water use strategies will be essential to sustain food production in arable land across the world.

Dr. Amy R. Sapkota is currently an Associate Professor in the Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health at the University of Maryland, School of Public Health. Dr. Sapkota received a PhD in Environmental Health Sciences from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and an MPH in Environmental Health Sciences from the Yale School of Public Health. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship with the Environmental Microbial Genomics Group within Le Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Lyon, France. Dr. Sapkota’s research interests lie in the areas of environmental microbiology, environmental microbial genomics, exposure assessment and environmental epidemiology. Her projects focus on evaluating the complex relationships between environmental exposures and adverse health outcomes. Currently, Dr. Sapkota is the Director of “CONSERVE: A Center of Excellence at the Nexus of Sustainable Water Reuse, Food and Health” which was established in 2016 through funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institute for Food and Agriculture. The mission of CONSERVE is to facilitate the adoption of transformative on-farm solutions that enable the safe use of nontraditional irrigation water on food crops, effectively reducing the nation’s agricultural water challenges that are exacerbated by climate change. In addition to CONSERVE, Dr. Sapkota is a Co-Principal Investigator within the University of Maryland/Battelle, Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science and leads a study that is exploring tobacco microbial constituents and the oral microbiome of tobacco users. To begin to expand this work to international settings, Dr. Sapkota recently completed a Fulbright Senior Scholarship in collaboration with the B.P. Koirala Memorial Cancer Hospital located in Chitwan, Nepal, where the team explored the relationships between the oral microbiome, tobacco use and lung cancer risk.

Forest Digest: November 5, 2017

November 5th, 2017|Tags: Deforestation, forest policy, science|0 Comments

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Find out what’s happened this past week in the world of forestry!

Into the woods: Horses survived mass extinction by adapting to forests – Cosmos

Gene modeling done by researchers at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México has uncovered that ancient horses survived the Pleistone-Holocene mass extinction by adapting to living in the woods 11,700 years ago. During the mass extinction, many larger mammals died out, but horses adapted to the spread of forests. Early horses were plain dwellers, and researchers hypothesize that the early horses were better able to hide from predators in the darker woodland.

Veteran Explorer of Disappearing Forests Charts New Course – National Geographic

Russ Mittermeier has visited rapidly disappearing forests and has a surprisingly optimistic outlook on the state of international forests. Read this interview with National Geographic as he talks about the potential for creating new “ambassadors for conservation.”

Recent forest loss helps predict timing and location of Ebola outbreaks – Center for International Forestry Research

New research out of the international journal Scientific Reports has found there is a significant association between loss of tree cover and incidences of Ebola outbreaks in West Africa, with outbreaks occurring within two years of the forest loss. This research not only demonstrates the value of forested land, but will also allow researchers to predict and possibly prevent incidences of Ebola outbreak.

Forest Animals Are Living on the Edge – The Atlantic

A new study from Newcastle University measures the detrimental effects forest fragmentation can have on biodiversity. “Forest fragmentation” refers to forested land not being a continuous area, but rather small fragments across a landscape. This effect can sometimes go unmeasured by certain metrics because total forest coverage will often fail to take into account forest fragmentation. Researchers looked at new ways to measure the incidence of forest edges and the effects living close to a forest edge had on wildlife. This new method of measurement will allow researchers to better understand how forest density effects biodiversity.

Brazil hopes to reward landowners for preserving Amazon forest – Reuters

In order to preserve the existing rainforest, the Brazilian environmental minister Jose Sarney Filho has floated a proposal to incentivize landowners who preserve rainforest on their land, rather than simply punishing landowners that decimate the forest. “Command and control has already reached its limit,” he said to reporters. “If we don’t immediately start to demonstrate that forest services will be fairly paid, we will have serious problems.”

The post Forest Digest: November 5, 2017 appeared first on American Forests.

Unforced variations: Nov 2017

This month’s open thread. Lawsuits about scientific disputes, the new Climate Science Special Report from the National Climate Assessment, and (imminently) the WMO State of the Climate statement for 2017.

El Niño and the record years 1998 and 2016

2017 is set to be one of warmest years on record. Gavin has been making regular forecasts of where 2017 will end up, and it is now set to be #2 or #3 in the list of hottest years:

With update thru September, ~80% chance of 2017 being 2nd warmest yr in the GISTEMP analysis (~20% for 3rd warmest). pic.twitter.com/k3CEM9rGHY

— Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) October 17, 2017

In either case it will be the warmest year on record that was not boosted by El Niño. I’ve been asked several times whether that is surprising. After all, the El Niño event, which pushed up the 2016 temperature, is well behind us. El Niño conditions prevailed in the tropical Pacific from October 2014 throughout 2015 and in the first half of 2016, giving way to a cold La Niña event in the latter half of 2016. (Note that global temperature lags El Niño variations by several months so this La Niña should have cooled 2017.)

The hot El Niño year of 1998 is comparable to 2016, since both years followed the two hitherto strongest El Niño events. And 1998 was followed by a cool 1999, only ranked #7 in the list of hottest years until then. So here is a comparison of 1998 versus 2016. Let us first look at the full time series of GISTEMP global temperature data, see Fig. 1.

Fig. 1 GISTEMP global temperature data, in 12-months running average (anomalies relative to the first 30 years). The data are available monthly and averaging over 12 months removes a considerable amount of month-to-month ‘noise’. Showing only calendar-year averages would lose some information – e.g. it would only fully show peaks in temperature if by chance the maxima aligned with the calendar year.

The El Niño peaks in 1998 and 2016 are clearly seen. It has been shown in several studies (e.g. Foster and Rahmstorf 2011) that El Niño is one of the main causes – perhaps the main cause – of short-term variability in global temperature. The following graph overlays those 2 El Niño peaks by shifting the 2016 peak back in time by 18 years and down by 0.4 °C.

Fig. 2 The two El Niño peaks in global temperature from Fig. 1, zoomed in and overlayed by shifting the 2016 peak back in time by 14 years and down by 0.4 °C. The darker red curve is the 2016 peak, as in Fig. 1.

The two peaks align very well. The first conclusion is that global temperature evolution over the last few years is very similar to that around 1998 – except the Earth is now 0.4 °C hotter. That’s 0.4 °C warming over 18 years, corresponding to 0.22 °C per decade – a bit more than expected from the long-term global warming trend since 1980, which is 0.17 °C per decade in the GISTEMP data. (So much for the “no warming since 1998” meme so popular with climate deniers.)

The second observation is that initially temperatures climbed down from the peak as fast as in 1998 – but then the cooling slowed down, and the last 12 months haven’t just been 0.4 °C warmer than in 98/99 but closer to 0.5 °C warmer. So it is clear that our planet is not cooling off as fast as after the 1998 El Niño peak. I wouldn’t over-interpret this – we’re looking at a really short interval here, so it is clearly no reason to diagnose a noteworthy acceleration of global warming. But there certainly is no sign of global warming slowing down. It will be interesting to watch how this continues over the next months; the ENSO forecast is for developing La Niña conditions again this coming fall/winter.

Creatures in Costumes: Nature’s Halloween

October 31st, 2017|Tags: Holidays, insects, wildlife|0 Comments

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By Dylan Stuntz, American Forests

This Halloween season, if you can’t seem to find a costume take a page out of one of these creatures’ books. The following animals get into the Halloween spirit so much they’ll wear their costumes and disguises 24/7!

Bark-mimicking grasshopper

Credit: Fir000/Flagstaffotos via Flickr
The coloration of the bark-mimicking grasshopper can be found all over its body, even under its wings!

This insect wears a costume not to stand out, but to blend in. The bark-mimicking grasshopper acts exactly as the name implies – it disguises itself to look like the bark of trees. By remaining perfectly still, the pattern on its back melds into the tree or branch that it finds itself on. This type of adaptive camouflage allows the insect to hide in plain sight. While this may not be the best costume to go trick-or-treating in, this trick will help the grasshopper avoid becoming a predator’s tasty treat!

Octopus

Credit: Daiju Azuma
This octopus has decided to wear a clamshell for the Halloween party it’s throwing!

The octopus is a member of the Cephalopod family, and like its cousins the squid and the cuttlefish, it’s capable of some pretty incredible feats of trickery. It can contort its body into pretty much any shape, as well as having complete control over the colors that appear on its skin. An octopi’s body is covered in cells called chromatophores, which can be full of colorful pigments, allowing the octopus to switch colors quickly. The octopus is able to change color by inflating or deflating specific cells, similar to blowing up tiny balloons. These underwater creatures use their disguises to blend into the background of the ocean, so they can hide from predators and easily ambush prey.

Spicebush Caterpillar

Credit: John Flannery
The large dark spots on the caterpillar are false eyes called “eyespots,” which are enough to fool any predator that doesn’t want to mess with a potential snake.

This caterpillar uses its disguise to scare away predators, tricking them into thinking there’s a snake sitting on the branch. The Spicebush Caterpillar has false eyespots on its back end, and when threatened it will inflate its body so that it resembles a snake. It will even pattern its movement around that of the reptilian predator, moving and darting its “head” in order to maintain the disguise.

Chameleon

Credit: Oliver Ruhm
Stripes, spots and colors are no problem for the average chameleon, who can change their appearance to whatever suits their fancy.

Chameleons are tree-living lizards with the capacity to change their body’s colors. Colors can range from green, brown, blue, yellow, red to even bright orange! Some chameleons have even been witnessed displaying spots or stripes. Researchers are still not 100% certain the reason behind the change. Is it so they can hide from predators? Signal to each other? Maybe they can’t control it, it’s just an unconscious reflection of their internal processes. It could quite possibly be some combination of factors. Whatever the reason, this creature doesn’t need to wear anything else for a costume.

Mossy Leaf-Tailed Gecko

Look very closely at this photo, and you’ll be able to see that there’s actually a gecko sitting on top of the log.

This gecko has not one, but two plants in its name, rightfully so. The mossy leaf-tailed gecko has flaps of skin around its jaw and body, giving it the “mossy” moniker, and a large flat tail that can be disguised as a leaf. Like the chameleon, the mossy leaf-tailed gecko is capable of changing its skin color, but not to the same degree. It mainly disguises itself as branches or bark in order to hide from predators. If you’re trying to find the best tree costume out there, look no further than the mossy leaf-tailed gecko.

Decorator Crab

Credit: Ed Bierman
This crab has decided to wear a costume of seaweed, and it won’t take it off until the animal molts its shell, after which it will start collecting trinkets to wear all over again.

This name refers to a variety of species of crab which costume themselves with bits of seaweed and other ocean creatures. Decorator crabs will select small pieces of flora and attach them to Velcro-like bristles on their back. Some crabs will actually use other living organisms, such as anemones, to ward off other predators. Interestingly enough, when the crabs molt and leave their shell behind to grow a new one, they will take the anemones off and place them on their new shell, almost like pets! Each crab wears a unique “costume” and chooses to decorate it in its own way! Who knew crabs have been celebrating Halloween for years already?

For most people, Halloween costumes are an excuse to have fun and dress up, but not for these creatures. Out in the wild, these disguises are integral to their survival, either making sure they get their next meal, or not end up as someone else’s. If you decide to dress up, be inspired by the bounty of costumes found outside!

The post Creatures in Costumes: Nature’s Halloween appeared first on American Forests.