From NASA’s Earth Observatory News an article on the diversity of Agricultural Patterns produced by farming. The images show the striking impacts of property rights and farming systems on land use patterns.
Category Archives: General
Using Tera Preta increase soil resilience
A Nature News article Black is the new green (10 August 2006) explains research that aims to reinvent Terra Preta, anthropogenic highly productive charcoal rich soils, to improve soil for agriculture while sequestering carbon.
New ways of producing biofuels can to produce charcoal that can be used to enrich soil. This carbon is stored in the soil, and may be able to produce carbon negative fuels in a way that can boost agricultural productivity. From the Nature News article:
New ways of producing biofuels can to produce charcoal that can be used to enrich soil. This carbon is stored in the soil, and may be able to produce carbon negative fuels in a way that can boost agricultural productivity. From the Nature News article:
…[a group met at the] World Congress of Soil Science. Their agenda was to take terra preta from the annals of history and the backwaters of the Amazon into the twenty-first century world of carbon sequestration and biofuels.
They want to follow what the green revolution did for the developing world’s plants with a black revolution for the world’s soils. They are aware that this is a tough sell, not least because hardly anyone outside the room has heard of their product. But that does not dissuade them: more than one eye in the room had a distinctly evangelical gleam.
The soil scientists, archaeologists, geographers, agronomists, and anthropologists who study terra preta now agree that the Amazon’s dark earths, terra preta do índio, were made by the river basin’s original human residents, who were much more numerous than formerly supposed. The darkest patches correspond to the middens of settlements and are cluttered with crescents of broken pottery. The larger patches were once agricultural areas that the farmers enriched with charred trash of all sorts. Some soils are thought to be 7,000 years old. Compared with the surrounding soil, terra preta can contain three times as much phosphorus and nitrogen. And as its colour indicates, it contains far more carbon. In samples taken in Brazil by William Woods, an expert in abandoned settlements at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, the terra preta was up to 9% carbon, compared with 0.5% for plain soil from places nearby
…Take the work of Danny Day, the founder of Eprida. This “for-profit social-purpose enterprise” in Athens, Georgia, builds contraptions that farmers can use to turn farm waste into biofuel while making char. Farm waste (or a crop designed for biofuel use) is smouldered — pyrolysed, in the jargon — and this process gives off volatile organic molecules, which can be used as a basis for biodiesel or turned into hydrogen with the help of steam. After the pyrolysation, half of the starting material will be used up and half will be char. That can then be put back on the fields, where it will sequester carbon and help grow the next crop.The remarkable thing about this process is that, even after the fuel has been burned, more carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere than is put back. Traditional biofuels claim to be ‘carbon neutral’, because the carbon dioxide assimilated by the growing biomass makes up for the carbon dioxide given off by the burning of the fuel. But as Lehmann points out, systems such as Day’s go one step further: “They are the only way to make a fuel that is actually carbon negative”.
Day’s pilot plant processes 10 to 25 kg of Georgia peanut hulls and pine pellets every hour. From 100 kg of biomass, the group gets 46 kg of carbon — half as char — and around 5 kg of hydrogen, enough to go 500 kilometres in a hydrogen-fuel-cell car (not that there are many around yet). Originally, Day was mostly interested in making biofuel; the char was just something he threw out, or used to make carbon filters. Then he discovered that his employees were reaping the culinary benefits of the enormous turnips that had sprung up on the piles of char lying around at the plant. Combining this char with ammonium bicarbonate, made using steam-recovered hydrogen, creates a soil additive that is now one of his process’s selling points; the ammonium bicarbonate is a nitrogen-based fertilizer.
update: WorldChanging has a bit more on the article
Endless Forms Most Beautiful
The closing words of Darwin’s Origin of Species are probably the best known passage in all of biology: “There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved”.
Darwin deliberately contrasted predictable cycles with the endless change of biological systems. How does novelty arise in evolution? Genetic variation alone seems insufficient. How do the nearly-identical genomes of bonobos, chimpanzees and humans give rise to such different organisms? The answer, as Darwin himself suspected, lies in the dynamics of development of organisms from embryos to adults.
In Endless Forms Most Beautiful (Norton, 2005), University of Wisconsin biologist Sean Carroll explains the mechanisms of animal development with breathtaking clarity. Some of the key discoveries come from his own work on developmental differentiation of the striking patterns of butterfly wings.
Carroll emphasizes three hallmarks of evolutionary innovation: (1) evolution works by modifying structures and processes that are already present, not by creation de novo; (2) structures and processes in organisms are multifunctional and partially overlapping, opening the possibility for differentiation through specializing or reorganizing the division of labor; and (3) organisms are modular, opening the possibility of changing the number of modules or the functions of individual modules. The underpinnings of modularity are modular geography of embryos, and modular genetic switches which allow evolutionary change to occur in one part of the organism, independent of other parts. He writes:
We have seen that insects, pterosaurs, birds or bats did not invent wing genes, butterflies a spot gene, or humans a bipedalism or speech gene. Rather, innovation in all these groups has been a matter of modifying existing structures and teaching old genes new tricks.
The key to innovation at the genetic level is the multifunctionality of tool kit genes. The multifunctionality of tool kit genes stems from their deployment at different times and places through batteries of genetic switches. In this manner, a protein such as Distal-less can act at one time to promote limb formation, and at another to promote eyespot development. The protein made each time is identical, so the difference in function is due to its action on different switches in these different contexts.
At an anatomical level, multifunctionality and redundancy are keys to understanding the evolutionary transitions in structures . . .The history of these structures also illustrates how “endless forms” evolve through cycles of invention and expansion. New structures open up new ways of living. The insect wing led to the evolution of dragonflies and mayflies, butterflies and beetles, fleas and flies, and more. The expansion of these groups was catalyzed in turn by a cycle of innovation and expansion by making modifications to the wings or body plan . . .
Why are existing body parts and genes the more frequent pathway to innovation? This is a matter of probability. Variation in existing structures and genes is more likely to arise than are new structures or genes, and this variation is therefore more abundant for selection to act upon.
The tool kit genes central to evolutionary innovation have been conserved through about 500 million years of animal evolution, and are found across the animal kingdom. Paradoxically, the fundamental mechanisms of evolutionary innovation have been strongly stabilized over eons of time.
Success through failure
Henry Petroski wrote a wonderful book ‘Success through failure’ on the importance of failures in the design of successful projects, buildings, policies etc. Petroski is a professor in civil engineering and history at Duke university. The book stress the importance of failures in designing successes. Building only on successes might actually lead to severe failures. Petroski discuss designs of various objects like presentations (from the cave to powerpoint), bridges, sky crapers, etc. A lot of these designs are improvements of earlier designs. Due to thinkering with previous designs, previous failures are avoided, but new ones may occur. By being open to learn from failures, robust designed objects may evolve.
An interesting observation is the regularity of major failures in the design of bridges. Every generation of engineers, a major failure occurs. Probably with a new generation, lessons from previous failures get ignored or forgotten, and less emphasis is made on double checking and testing the designs.
UNEP launches database of advertising dedicated to sustainability
The UNEP (United Nations Environment Program) has launched “The Creative Gallery on Sustainability Communications,” a website dedicated to maintaining a database of advertising which uses sustainability as a major theme. The site is, as UNEP describes it, “the first international online database of corporate and public advertising campaigns specifically dedicated to sustainability issues and classified by sustainability themes.” The Gallery is available at http://www.unep.fr/pc/sustain/advertising/ad/ad_list.asp?cat=all.
The site currently lists just over 700 public and corporate ads, which can be browsed by theme (e.g. “water”) or searched by keyword.
The goal of the project, according to UNEP, is to “… inspire and foster more and better communication on sustainability issues from all stakeholders involved in the promotion of sustainable development.” It can also has an obvious function as a source of information for research into advertising and marketing related to sustainability.
Anyone can submit an ad after registering with the database.
For a few examples, see this paper ad by AGBAR (Aigues de Barcelona) about water conservation, or this Saatchi &Saatchi tv ad for WWF’s Oceans Recovery Campaign.
Major new resilience research center funded in Stockholm
The three Swedish Resilience Alliance members (the Centre for Transdisciplinary Environmental Research (CTM) at Stockholm University, the Stockholm Environment Institute, and the Beijer International Institute of Ecological Economics at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences) have just recieved a the largest environmental research grant ever distributed in Sweden (22 million Euros) to build a new international transdisciplinary institute for research and policy dialogue on sustainable development.
From the CTM press release:
The new institute will conduct cutting edge research on how human welfare and viable ecosystems can develop together, and also act as a platform for dialogue between politicians, authorities and resource users all over the world. In this way, research results can be turned into practical solutions and contribute to sustainable societal development.
“Until now, political decision-making on the environment appears to have amounted to little more than reshuffling the deck chairs of the Titanic. In order to solve the great environmental problems of the world, we need to change course. Our hope is that the new Institute will contribute essential knowledge that is needed to steer development onto a sustainable path”, says Johan Rockström, Executive Director of the Stockholm Environment Institute and Director–to-be of the Institute.
Behind Mistra’s commitment lies the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a UN-led study on the world’s ecosystems which was released last year. In it, 1400 experts state that the ecosystems which are the basis for human welfare and economic development are deteriorating. Today, 60 percent of the free ecosystem services that we use are exploited in an unsustainable manner. Crucial ecosystem services such as air- and water purification, the pollination of crops and the seas’ capacity to produce fish are in serious decline. The changes are occurring so rapidly today that society is unable to adapt to the new environmental circumstances and thus cannot effectively develop strategies and frameworks for sustainable use of the ecosystems.
“We want to build a unique transdiciplinary research environment where innovative ideas can flourish. By combining new forms of cooperation with a holistic perspective, we hope to generate the insights that are needed to strengthen societies’ and the ecosystems’ capacities to meet a world which spins faster and faster”, says Carl Folke, Director of the Centre for Transdisciplinary Research and Science Director-to-be of the Institute.
“Our societies are an integrated part of the biosphere and dependent upon functioning ecosystems. That is why we need to manage ecosystems so that we can handle the future’s challenges and maintain our capacity to evolve in a positive way”, concludes Carl Folke.
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The Institute will conduct internationally leading research on how human welfare and robust ecosystems can co-develop, as well as serving as a platform for dialogue with politicians, authorities and resource users at a local, regional and international level; emphasis will be placed on the dissemination of information and communication through different media.
The Institute’s research will contribute answers to questions of the future such as: How can human societies – from a local to international level – be organized in order to meet future climate change? How can we reform agriculture so that there is enough food for a growing population? How should networks of marine reserves be shaped in order to secure the world’s future fisheries? How do we decrease the level of vulnerability in the megacities of today and tomorrow?
Congratulations Calle, Johan, Thomas and everyone else who worked on the research proposal! I hope the center will be a huge success.
Resilience networks in global environmental change science
In a new paper, Scholarly networks on resilience, vulnerability and adaptation within the human dimensions of global environmental change, Marco Janssen and others have analyzed the networks of co-authorships and citation among research on resilience, vulnerability, and adaptation in human dimensions of global change research. They analyzed co-authorship and citations among 2286 publications between 1967 and 2005 (3860 unique authors and 10,286 co-authors).
Janssen et al identified the most central scholars, publications, and journals in the knowledge domains of resilience, vulnerability and adaptation.
Figure 2 Co-author network of most productive and best connected authors with the strongest co-authorship relations. Circles denote author nodes and are labeled by the authors’ last name and first initials. The larger the node, the more publications. The darker the node, the more the co-authors. Black nodes refer to 50 or more co-authors, while white nodes refer to less than 10 co-authors. Edges represent co-authorship relations. The width of an edge represents the relative number of co-author relationships (Janssen et al 2006).
Janssen et al found that the number of publications in all domains increased rapidly between 1995 and 2005, while co-authorship increased from 1.5 authors to 2.5 authors per paper between the 1970s and early 2000s. Despite this increase in number of publications and co-authorship, the resilience knowledge domain is only weakly connected with the other two domains. However, overall there is an increasing number of cross citations and papers contributing to multiple knowledge domains.
The complete database of papers can be analyzed online, on Marco Janssen’s website. However, because this is the Resilience Science weblog, I’ve an image showing the citation network among the most cited papers on resilience (in human dimensions of global change) is shown below. Size corresponds to the number of citations.
Continue reading
Why green building has spread
The built environment is a major part of humanity’s ecological footprint. The design of buildings, the materials they use, their interaction with their environments, and how they shape human behaviour have substantial impacts on urban ecology. The growth of the human population (7-11 billion by 2050) and the reduction of household size (fewer people per house) combine to suggest that people will need to build a huge number of new buildings (perhaps the same number as those already built) to house humanity in the coming decades. In this context the spread of green building has the potential to have a major impact on humanity’s ecological footprint.
The Harvard Business Review (June 2006) article Building the Green Way explains why green building practices have entered the mainstream. This article is interesting both for its location, and that it speculates on why green building has entered the mainstream. Hopefully, other green design and consumption approaches can learn from the normalizing of green building.
In June 2005, mayors from 50 large cities around the world met at the United Nations World Environment Day conference in San Francisco and signed the Urban Environmental Accords, which set out 21 sustainable-living actions for each city to complete by 2012. As part of the accords, the mayors pledged to mandate green rating standards for all new municipal buildings in their respective cities.
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Before 2000, companies generally regarded green buildings as interesting experiments but unfeasible projects in the real business world. Since then, several factors have caused a major shift in thinking.
Inequality Dynamics in USA
The Economist (15/06/06) has a special report on income inequality in the USA. They describe trends and a little about hypothesized drivers of these trends, but little about the consquences. They write:
Americans do not go in for envy. The gap between rich and poor is bigger than in any other advanced country, but most people are unconcerned. Whereas Europeans fret about the way the economic pie is divided, Americans want to join the rich, not soak them. Eight out of ten, more than anywhere else, believe that though you may start poor, if you work hard, you can make pots of money. It is a central part of the American Dream.
The political consensus, therefore, has sought to pursue economic growth rather than the redistribution of income, in keeping with John Kennedy’s adage that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” The tide has been rising fast recently. Thanks to a jump in productivity growth after 1995, America’s economy has outpaced other rich countries’ for a decade. Its workers now produce over 30% more each hour they work than ten years ago. In the late 1990s everybody shared in this boom. Though incomes were rising fastest at the top, all workers’ wages far outpaced inflation.
But after 2000 something changed. The pace of productivity growth has been rising again, but now it seems to be lifting fewer boats. After you adjust for inflation, the wages of the typical American worker—the one at the very middle of the income distribution—have risen less than 1% since 2000. In the previous five years, they rose over 6%. If you take into account the value of employee benefits, such as health care, the contrast is a little less stark. But, whatever the measure, it seems clear that only the most skilled workers have seen their pay packets swell much in the current economic expansion. The fruits of productivity gains have been skewed towards the highest earners, and towards companies, whose profits have reached record levels as a share of GDP
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Several new studies show parental income to be a better predictor of whether someone will be rich or poor in America than in Canada or much of Europe. In America about half of the income disparities in one generation are reflected in the next. In Canada and the Nordic countries that proportion is about a fifth.
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According to Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, and Thomas Piketty of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, the share of aggregate income going to the highest-earning 1% of Americans has doubled from 8% in 1980 to over 16% in 2004. That going to the top tenth of 1% has tripled from 2% in 1980 to 7% today. And that going to the top one-hundredth of 1%—the 14,000 taxpayers at the very top of the income ladder—has quadrupled from 0.65% in 1980 to 2.87% in 2004.
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But the scale of America’s income concentration at the top, and the fact that no other country has seen such extreme shifts, has sent people searching for other causes. The typical American chief executive now earns 300 times the average wage, up tenfold from the 1970s. Continental Europe’s bosses have seen nothing similar. This discrepancy has fostered the “fat cat” theory of inequality: greedy businessmen sanction huge salaries for each other at the expense of shareholders.
Whichever explanation you choose for the signs of growing inequality, none of the changes seems transitory. The middle rungs of America’s labour market are likely to become ever more squeezed. And that squeeze feels worse thanks to another change that has hit the middle class most: greater fluctuations in people’s incomes.
Visualizing Global Urbanisation
The BBC website has a visualization of the growth of global cities showing the growth of cities of more than 5 million people as part of their coverage of the World Urban Forum.
The coverage includes other interesting articles, such as a multimedia profile of a few of the million people who live in the slum of Dharavi in downtown Bombay, and Finding green in the concrete jungle, a look at how air pollution in cities compares in rural areas.
Fuel use, intimately connected to urban pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, demonstrates exquisitely the problems in trying to compare the ecological footprint of the rural and urban dweller.
In 2002, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) focused much of its Human Development Report on China.
“Rural residents consume less than 40% of the commercial energy used by their urban counterparts,” it concluded.
Tokyo’s population and economy have grown while air quality decreased.“However, if biomass [principally wood-burning] is included, the average person in the countryside uses nearly one-third more energy than a city dweller.”
So the rural resident apparently contributes more to global climate change than the urban citizen – but the equation hinges on how the energy is produced.
If “commercial energy” used in cities – principally electricity – is derived from renewable sources or nuclear stations, the urban dweller wins the eco-prize hands down. But if the rural citizen burns nothing but trees and always replaces them, he or she becomes “carbon neutral” and scoops the award.
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In London and Tokyo, air quality has improved over the last 50 years. In Shanghai and Kuala Lumpur, it has gone down, though there are signs of improvement elsewhere in the developing world.
“It has happened in Delhi, for example, where there has been a huge improvement in air quality by substituting liquefied petroleum gas [LPG] for diesel in vehicles,” observes John Harrington.
“Partly it is just that as cities become richer they can clean their act up, but it’s also how vocal the middle classes become, which in India counts in a way it doesn’t yet in China.
The coverage also includes less interesting articles. One disappointingly boring, and strikingly disconnected from the other articles is a collection of perspectives on the urban world in 2050 from urbanization experts. Their views of 2050 seem to more represent cities today, rather than a global view of what cities could become.