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Social Implications of Arctic Melting

Published by Garry Peterson on March 8, 2008 in Adaptation. 2 Comments

An article Arctic Meltdown in Foreign Affairs by Scott G. Borgerson discusses the political and economics consequences on a ice-free summer Arctic:

The shipping shortcuts of the Northern Sea Route (over Eurasia) and the Northwest Passage (over North America) would cut existing oceanic transit times by days, saving shipping companies — not to mention navies and smugglers — thousands of miles in travel. … Taking into account canal fees, fuel costs, and other variables that determine freight rates, these shortcuts could cut the cost of a single voyage by a large container ship by as much as 20 percent — from approximately $17.5 million to $14 million — saving the shipping industry billions of dollars a year. The savings would be even greater for the megaships that are unable to fit through the Panama and Suez Canals and so currently sail around the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn. Moreover, these Arctic routes would also allow commercial and military vessels to avoid sailing through politically unstable Middle Eastern waters and the pirate-infested South China Sea. An Iranian provocation in the Strait of Hormuz, such as the one that occurred in January, would be considered far less of a threat in an age of trans-Arctic shipping.

Arctic shipping could also dramatically affect global trade patterns. … As soon as marine insurers recalculate the risks involved in these voyages, trans-Arctic shipping will become commercially viable and begin on a large scale. In an age of just-in-time delivery, and with increasing fuel costs eating into the profits of shipping companies, reducing long-haul sailing distances by as much as 40 percent could usher in a new phase of globalization. Arctic routes would force further competition between the Panama and Suez Canals, thereby reducing current canal tolls; shipping chokepoints such as the Strait of Malacca would no longer dictate global shipping patterns; and Arctic seaways would allow for greater international economic integration. When the ice recedes enough, likely within this decade, a marine highway directly over the North Pole will materialize. Such a route, which would most likely run between Iceland and Alaska’s Dutch Harbor, would connect shipping megaports in the North Atlantic with those in the North Pacific and radiate outward to other ports in a hub-and-spoke system. A fast lane is now under development between the Arctic port of Murmansk, in Russia, and the Hudson Bay port of Churchill, in Canada, which is connected to the North American rail network.

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Climate Change May Transform Fire Regime in Tundra

Published by Garry Peterson on March 6, 2008 in Regime Shifts. 0 Comments

arctic tundraPhilip Higuera and collaborators suggests that based on paleo-ecological analysis of past fire regimes, climate change could lead to abrupt shifts in tundra fire frequency as climate change vegetation shifts from herb to shrub dominated tundra.

In their article (Higuera PE, Brubaker LB, Anderson PM, Brown TA, Kennedy AT & Hu FS. 2008 Frequent fires in ancient shrub tundra: implications of paleorecords for Arctic environmental change. PLoS ONE DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0001744) the authors write:

… paleorecords from northcentral Alaska imply that ongoing shrub expansion and climate warming will result in greater burning within northern tundra ecosystems. The geographic extent of fire-regime changes could be quite large, as shrubs are expected to expand over the next century in both herb and low shrub tundra ecosystems, which comprise 67% of circumpolar Arctic tundra [10], [15] (Fig. 1). Over this same period, annual temperatures in the Arctic are projected to increase between 3–5°C over land, lengthening the growing season and likely decreasing effective moisture (in spite of increased summer precipitation) [8]. How long might it take for the current shrub expansion to trigger a significant change in fire frequencies? Within the chronological limitations of our records, past shrub expansion and fire-regime changes at each site occurred within a few centuries (Fig. 2). The duration of this shift is consistent with the estimated rate of shrub expansion within a large area of northern Alaska [0.4% yr−1 for ca 200,000 km2; 10]. Based on a simple logistic growth model and the assumption of a constant expansion rate, Tape et al. [10] hypothesize that the ongoing shrub expansion in this region started roughly 125 years ago and should reach 100% of the region in another 125 years. Thus, if fuels and low effective moisture are major limiting factors for tundra fires, we predict that fire frequencies will increase across modern tundra over the next several centuries.

…

Despite these uncertainties, Alaskan paleorecords provide clear precedence of shrub-dominated tundra sustaining higher fire frequencies than observed in present-day tundra. The future expansion of tundra shrubs [10], [16] coupled with decreased effective moisture [8] could thus enhance circumpolar Arctic burning and initiate feedbacks that are potentially important to the climate system. Feedbacks between increased tundra burning and climate are inherently complex [3]–[5], but studies of modern tundra fires suggest the possibility for both short- and long-term impacts from (1) increased summer soil temperatures and moisture levels from altered surface albedo and roughness [24], and (2) the release soil carbon through increased permafrost thaw depths and the consumption of the organic layer [24], [25]. Given the importance of land-atmosphere feedbacks in the Arctic [26]–[28], the precedence of a fire-prone tundra biome should motivate further research into the controls of tundra fire regimes and links between tundra burning and the climate system.

Climate driven changes in vegetation cover across the most northern land surfaces on the planet will likely result in more carbon-releasing fires, according to a study published this week in PLoS ONE. Philip Higuera, currently at Montana State University, and colleagues examined charcoal and pollen samples from Alaskan lakes, which provide a historical record of plant composition and fire frequency between 14000 and 10000 years ago. Back then, the tundra was dominated by extensive thickets of resin birch Betula glandulosa, and the warming climate is likely to see its widespread return to areas currently occupied by somewhat less flammable herbs. The mass of tangled, resin-laden twigs could turn the area into a tinderbox, with the double whammy that such fires encourage vigorous birch regrowth, making it prone to further blazes. The likely consequence is that another source of carbon dioxide will enter the scene, as vegetation and long-frozen soil go up in smoke.

via SCB’s Journal Watch Online

Global and National Malaria Maps

Published by Garry Peterson on March 4, 2008 in Visualization. 0 Comments

Malaria Atlas Project used national reports, ecological and epidemological models to create a new global map of P. falciparum malaria risk. Guerra et al 2008 PLoS Medicine estimate that 2.37 billion people live in areas at risk of P. falciparum transmission. However, almost a billion people of those people live in areas with only episodic or very low risk of malaria exposuire suggesting there in substantial possibility of eliminating malaria from these areas. Almost all areas with high risk are in Africa.

Below is a small version of their global map of P. Falciparium (the most dangerous species) of Malaria risk for 2007:global malaria map

Their maps can be viewed in google earth, as country maps, or as as an ArcGrid file at 0.1 degree spatial resolution.

Carbon Neutral Universities

Published by Garry Peterson on March 3, 2008 in Adaptation and Cities. 0 Comments

Metropolis Magazine writes about the maturing and deepening of the university campus sustainability in Carbon Neutral U:

Higher education has emerged as a thrilling proving ground for a sustainable society. Schools of all statures and sizes—from the Ivies to red-state community colleges—are making the most of their fiefdoms, leveraging their educated and politically engaged populations, long-term outlooks, and self-managed (the often significant) physical footprints to make substantial changes. But with those changes comes a surprising reversal in academe’s typical stance: the mechanics of the campus are occupying the brightest spotlight. Students, administrators, and faculty are obsessing over the cleaning products the janitors use, how dining-hall potatoes are grown, and which dorms consume the least energy. Infrastructure is hot—hotter arguably than research or teaching about sustainability. It is as if the ivory tower has looked out to the world and seen a choking planet, and its first response is to look inward again at its own activities—building designs, power plants, and transportation systems. …

Schools are also looking to one another for help, increasingly collaborating in realms where they have traditionally competed. “There’s long been an incredible amount of peer benchmarking across higher education, but that’s not the same as collaboration,” says Mark Orlowski, executive director of the Sustainable Endowments Institute, the publisher of the College Sustainability Report Card 2008, which evaluated 200 schools on their environmental activities. “Collaboration, while quite widespread in the academic side of the university, has been less prevalent in operations,” he adds.
…

The range of projects is staggering. After a decade of bring-your-own-coffee-mug student environmentalism, the opening salvo of a new, more glamorous era in campus sustainability came in 2001, when the daughter of famed Berkeley, California, chef Alice Waters enrolled as a freshman at Yale. Waters’s initial disgust at the cafeteria steam tables evolved into the Yale Sustainable Food Project, which today manages an organic campus farm, directs a sustainable dining program, and serves as the base for a series of academic classes. It’s also been a lightning rod for PR—“A Dining Hall Where Students Sneak In,” crowed the New York Times—and dozens of schools have launched similar programs. More recently, as campuses have turned their attention to carbon reduction, no detail is too small: dorms are providing laundry racks for no-energy clothes drying, offering free bike maintenance as well as shared bikes, encouraging students to disconnect their dorm appliances over vacations, and recycling their organic potato French fry grease into biodiesel fuel for campus buses.

… For the cadre of campus sustainability coordinators, “creating a culture of sustainability” is one of the measures of success. The administrative structures for sustainability offices vary school by school, with some coordinators reporting through facilities, some through the provost or president’s offices, and some through both. But they all have the mandate to bridge the university’s operational initiatives to its teaching and research—to make the nuts and bolts count toward the big teachable ideas. With the wave of interest sweeping the students and faculty, new projects are coming from everywhere. The sustainability coordinator plays traffic cop, diplomat, and “facilitator.” As Yale’s Newman puts it, “What’s so fascinating about these positions is that we don’t directly oversee any of these functions. We have no power to do any of it. Our role is to be a sustainability generalist and then to develop questions and frameworks to understand how these systems work independently and together—so that, in the aggregate, does it lead to a sustainable Yale?”

Peverse Wildlife Conservation

Published by Garry Peterson on March 2, 2008 in General. 0 Comments

The Chernobyl disaster created a large poisoned involuntary park. Similarly, mercury pollution (as well as other persistent organic pollutants) may perversely help wildlife conservation by reducing hunting (but damaging the health and livelihoods of those who depend upon the hunting of animals they have little to do with poisoning). The New York Times writes about how Mercury Taint Divides a Japanese Whaling Town:

For years, Western activists have traveled to this remote port to protest the annual dolphin drive. And for years, local fishermen have ignored them, herding the animals into a small cove and slashing them until the tide flows red. But now, a new menace may succeed where the activists have failed: mercury.

…Dolphin meat is a local delicacy, served raw as sashimi or boiled with soy sauce. People here are used to the international scorn that accompanies the dolphin hunt and have closed ranks in the face of rising outrage — until now.Last June, laboratory tests showed high levels of mercury in dolphin and pilot whale, a small whale that resembles a dolphin, that were caught and sold here. Schools stopped serving pilot whale meat for lunch, and some local markets removed it as well as dolphin from their shelves.

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Banana Political Ecology

Published by Garry Peterson on March 2, 2008 in General. 1 Comment

Bananas are one of the world’s main food crops (4th in economic value) with over 100 million tons being produced per year, most of these bananas are a consumed in the tropics, but 15% are exported and are key exports of many poor countries. Daniel Kurtz-Phelan in the New York Times Book Review on Peter Chapman’s book Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World:

For much of the 20th century, the American banana company United Fruit dominated portions of almost a dozen countries in the Western Hemisphere. It was, Peter Chapman writes in “Bananas,” his breezy but insightful history of the company, “more powerful than many nation states … a law unto itself and accustomed to regarding the republics as its private fiefdom.” United Fruit essentially invented not only “the concept and reality of the banana republic,” but also, as Chapman shows, the concept and reality of the modern banana. “If it weren’t for United Fruit,” he observes, “the banana would never have emerged from the dark, then arrived in such quantities as to bring prices that made it available to all.”…

Throughout all of this, United Fruit defined the modern multinational corporation at its most effective — and, as it turned out, its most pernicious. At home, it cultivated clubby ties with those in power and helped pioneer the modern arts of public relations and marketing. (After a midcentury makeover by the “father of public relations,” Edward Bernays, the company started pushing a cartoon character named Señorita Chiquita Banana.) Abroad, it coddled dictators while using a mix of paternalism and violence to control its workers. “As for repressive regimes, they were United Fruit’s best friends, with coups d’état among its specialties,” Chapman writes. “United Fruit had possibly launched more exercises in ‘regime change’ on the banana’s behalf than had even been carried out in the name of oil.”

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