TIPPING POINT: THE AMAZON

Link TV

CCTV America explores Brazil, South America's largest nation and home to the world's largest tropical rainforest.

Amazonas

Amazonas | Imagining Equality
In this captivating series of portraits, photographer Felipe Jacome profiles nine indigenous women who exercised their strength, voice, and power in order to defend the Ecuadorian Amazon against oil exploitation. 

9 Maps that Explain the World's Forests

9 Maps that Explain the World's Forests

Tar Sands Threaten World’s Largest Boreal Forest

Tar Sands Threaten World’s Largest Boreal Forest

Graphic: Destroying Rainforests

Plant Productivity

NASA
Published March, 2013

Global Warming and Livestock: Making the Links

Global Warming and Livestock: Making the Links

Fact-sheet by Climate Change 911

• From local to global, livestock is one of the top contributors of serious environmental problems
• Land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, loss of biodiversity, extinction
• Agriculture is the leading cause of forest destruction and a major contributor to climate change (1)
• Animal products, both meat and dairy, require more resources and cause higher long-term greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than plant-based alternatives
• Meat from cows cause about 40 times higher GHG per kilogram of protein compared to beans, and around 10 times higher compared to chickens (2)
• A UN report in 2010, "Priority, Products, and Materials", puts agriculture's global GHG emissions at 14%
• This means that agriculture is responsible for more GHG emissions than all forms of transport combined
• Agricultural CO2 emissions may double in 50 years to 13 Gton in 2070, compared to 7.1 Gton in 2000. (2)
• 70% of agricultural GHG emissions come from livestock, cows, sheep and other animals.
• The U.S. and the European Union have the highest meat consumption per capita in the world – and it continues to rise.
• In low- and mid-income countries, meat and dairy consumption increases along with income levels. (1)
• A World Watch Institute report suggest that GHG emissions from livestock and their by-products may be much higher than 14% (up to 51%)
• Livestock contribute about 40% of methane emissions in agriculture
• Livestock production is projected to increase substantially over the next decades (1)

• If we acknowledge the need to address climate change, then we cannot carry on with intense GHG activities like eating meat and dairy that are causing the damage in the first place
• Adopting a plant-based diet is as important as renewable energy and energy conservation
• In fact, eliminating all carbon dioxide emissions from the energy and transportation sectors is not enough because GHG from food and agriculture, mainly nitrous oxide from agricultural soils and methane from livestock, will continue to cause global warming (2)
• Halting the increase of greenhouse-gas emissions from livestock could curb warming fairly rapidly
• A University of Aberdeen study found that a worldwide adoption of a vegan diet would reduce CO2 emissions by a massive 7.8 gigatonnes
• Making our food system more efficient and eating healthier food can reduce annual carbon emissions from global agriculture by as much as 50 to 90 percent by 2030 - the equivalent of removing all the cars in the world (1)

1 Dickie, A., Streck, C., Roe, S., Zurek, M., Haupt, F., Dolginow, A. 2014. “Strategies for Mitigating Climate Change in Agriculture: Recommendations for Philanthropy.” Climate Focus and California Environmental Associates, prepared with the support of the Climate and Land Use Alliance. agriculturalmitigation.org

2 Fredrik Hedenus & Stefan Wirsenius & Daniel J. A. Johansson. "The importance of reduced meat and dairy consumptionfor meeting stringent climate change targets." Climatic Change (2014) 124:79–91. Published online: 28 March 2014

It's simple. If we can't change our economic system, our number's up

'The mother narrative to all this is carbon-fuelled expansion. Our ideologies are mere subplots.' Photograph: Alamy

It's simple. If we can't change our economic system, our number's up
It's the great taboo of our age – and the inability to discuss the pursuit of perpetual growth will prove humanity's undoing

George Monbiot, 27 May 2014 The Guardian

Let us imagine that in 3030BC the total possessions of the people of Egypt filled one cubic metre. Let us propose that these possessions grew by 4.5% a year. How big would that stash have been by the Battle of Actium in 30BC? This is the calculation performed by the investment banker Jeremy Grantham.

Go on, take a guess. Ten times the size of the pyramids? All the sand in the Sahara? The Atlantic ocean? The volume of the planet? A little more? It's 2.5 billion billion solar systems. It does not take you long, pondering this outcome, to reach the paradoxical position that salvation lies in collapse.

To succeed is to destroy ourselves. To fail is to destroy ourselves. That is the bind we have created. Ignore if you must climate change, biodiversity collapse, the depletion of water, soil, minerals, oil; even if all these issues miraculously vanished, the mathematics of compound growth make continuity impossible.

Economic growth is an artefact of the use of fossil fuels. Before large amounts of coal were extracted, every upswing in industrial production would be met with a downswing in agricultural production, as the charcoal or horse power required by industry reduced the land available for growing food. Every prior industrial revolution collapsed, as growth could not be sustained. But coal broke this cycle and enabled – for a few hundred years – the phenomenon we now call sustained growth.

It was neither capitalism nor communism that made possible the progress and pathologies (total war, the unprecedented concentration of global wealth, planetary destruction) of the modern age. It was coal, followed by oil and gas. The meta-trend, the mother narrative, is carbon-fuelled expansion. Our ideologies are mere subplots. Now, with the accessible reserves exhausted, we must ransack the hidden corners of the planet to sustain our impossible proposition.

On Friday, a few days after scientists announced that the collapse of the west Antarctic ice sheet is now inevitable, the Ecuadorean government decided toallow oil drilling in the heart of the Yasuni national park. It had made an offer to other governments: if they gave it half the value of the oil in that part of the park, it would leave the stuff in the ground. You could see this as either blackmail or fair trade. Ecuador is poor, its oil deposits are rich. Why, the government argued, should it leave them untouched without compensation when everyone else is drilling down to the inner circle of hell? It asked for $3.6bn and received $13m. The result is that Petroamazonas, a company with a colourful record of destruction and spills, will now enter one of the most biodiverse places on the planet, in which a hectare of rainforest is said to contain more species than exist in the entire continent of North America.

Yasuni national park. Murray Cooper/Minden Pictures/Corbis

The UK oil firm Soco is now hoping to penetrate Africa's oldest national park, Virunga, in the Democratic Republic of Congo; one of the last strongholds of the mountain gorilla and the okapi, of chimpanzees and forest elephants. In Britain, where a possible 4.4 billion barrels of shale oil has just been identified in the south-east, the government fantasises about turning the leafy suburbs into a new Niger delta. To this end it's changing the trespass laws to enable drilling without consent and offering lavish bribes to local people. These new reserves solve nothing. They do not end our hunger for resources; they exacerbate it.

The trajectory of compound growth shows that the scouring of the planet has only just begun. As the volume of the global economy expands, everywhere that contains something concentrated, unusual, precious, will be sought out and exploited, its resources extracted and dispersed, the world's diverse and differentiated marvels reduced to the same grey stubble.

Some people try to solve the impossible equation with the myth of dematerialisation: the claim that as processes become more efficient and gadgets are miniaturised, we use, in aggregate, fewer materials. There is no sign that this is happening. Iron ore production has risen 180% in 10 years. The trade body Forest Industries tells us that "global paper consumption is at a record high level and it will continue to grow". If, in the digital age, we won't reduce even our consumption of paper, what hope is there for other commodities?

Look at the lives of the super-rich, who set the pace for global consumption. Are their yachts getting smaller? Their houses? Their artworks? Their purchase of rare woods, rare fish, rare stone? Those with the means buy ever bigger houses to store the growing stash of stuff they will not live long enough to use. By unremarked accretions, ever more of the surface of the planet is used to extract, manufacture and store things we don't need. Perhaps it's unsurprising that fantasies about colonising space – which tell us we can export our problems instead of solving them – have resurfaced.

As the philosopher Michael Rowan points out, the inevitabilities of compound growth mean that if last year's predicted global growth rate for 2014 (3.1%) is sustained, even if we miraculously reduced the consumption of raw materials by 90%, we delay the inevitable by just 75 years. Efficiency solves nothing while growth continues.

The inescapable failure of a society built upon growth and its destruction of the Earth's living systems are the overwhelming facts of our existence. As a result, they are mentioned almost nowhere. They are the 21st century's great taboo, the subjects guaranteed to alienate your friends and neighbours. We live as if trapped inside a Sunday supplement: obsessed with fame, fashion and the three dreary staples of middle-class conversation: recipes, renovations and resorts. Anything but the topic that demands our attention.

Statements of the bleeding obvious, the outcomes of basic arithmetic, are treated as exotic and unpardonable distractions, while the impossible proposition by which we live is regarded as so sane and normal and unremarkable that it isn't worthy of mention. That's how you measure the depth of this problem: by our inability even to discuss it.

This scary NASA map shows how the world’s forests are going up in smoke

Forest fires around the world from May 1-10.

This scary NASA map shows how the world’s forests are going up in smoke
Hey, weren’t those the same trees that produce our oxygen?

Simeon Tegel, May 13, 2014 globalpost.com

LIMA, Peru — The world’s forests are in trouble. If you think we’re joking, then just take a look at this frightening NASA image.

Based on satellite data, it shows how much forest around the world was on fire during the first 10 days of May.

Experts that GlobalPost spoke with believe forest fires are likely now burning at record levels — at least since human beings first began walking the Earth.

No one really knows this for sure. Some nations, such as the United States and Brazil, publish detailed data, while others, such as Congo or Russia, do not.

What scientists are certain about is this: Wildfires are getting worse with climate change, in the United States and much of the world.

To be clear, the dots on the NASA map are not to scale — otherwise most of Central America (seen below) would just have burned down, and you probably would have heard about that if it were true.



Although most wildfires are caused by people, some also start naturally, by lightning. Some will even lead to new, healthier forests springing up from the ashes.

But, overall, the news could hardly be worse. A slow-burn catastrophe, if you will.

Forests provide humans with a long list of critical services, not the least of which is making oxygen. According to one conservation group, each tree exhales about 120 pounds of the life-giving gas per year.

“The rainfall patterns that are so important to the agriculture that sustains the human race around the world depend largely on forests,” says Steve Schwartzman, director of tropical forests at the Environmental Defense Fund.

It would be a “safe bet,” he adds, that without forests there would be famine.

As if that weren’t clear enough, he cites a recent study that shows that Californian agriculture would be hit by drought if the Amazon, which generates precipitation that falls in many distant corners of the globe, disappeared.

As well as warehousing more than half of all the planet's animal and plant species, forests also soak up the carbon emissions that trigger climate change.

Steven Running, an ecosystems and conservation professor at the University of Montana, says: “Forests currently absorb about a quarter of fossil fuel carbon emissions. In other words, atmospheric carbon dioxide would be rising faster if forests weren't helping us out. We better hope they keep doing so.”

Experts estimate that humans have already destroyed roughly half the Earth’s forests.

That process is continuing, from Florida to Siberia and Indonesia to Ecuador. The University of Maryland has even calculated that since 2000, we have been losing 50 soccer fields' worth of forest every minute.

With flames or chainsaws, humankind is clearing forests to make way for homes and freeways, farms and golf courses, and a host of other infrastructure.

Meanwhile, climate change is bringing higher temperatures and droughts that make forest fires, started naturally or by humans, increasingly frequent.

Maybe we should think about putting those fires out.

Multiple metrics of climate change reveal unappreciated impacts on biodiversity

Multiple metrics of climate change reveal unappreciated impacts on biodiversity

Gail Wilson, 01 May 2014

A new study has shed fresh light on how climate change will affect global biodiversity by exploring different measurements of climate change together.

Scientists use climate change metrics, such as changes in seasonality or the emergence of new climates, to predict how climate change will impact biodiversity levels. These climate change metrics are typically studied in isolation, so it is difficult to accurately predict how changes in climate might impact levels of biodiversity.

For the very first time, a study published today in the journal Science has compared climate change metrics together, instead of in isolation, on a global scale, to look at how biodiversity will be impacted.

This unique comparison reveals that when multiple dimensions of climate change are studied together, different regions emerge as threatened by different aspects of climate change. For example, this new research predicts that tropical areas are set to experience novel climates, much hotter than today’s tropical climates, that are not currently experienced by species anywhere on Earth. Such climates are projected to affect up to 62 per cent of the world’s tropical areas.

Lead researcher Professor Miguel Araújo, from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London, said: “Polar regions have gained substantial attention because they are experiencing a very high temperature increase. Polar climates will shrink by up to 66% in area, providing reduced habitat for arctic and subarctic species, but climate change is more than melting ice. Warming in the tropics will create entirely novel climatic conditions, owing to increased temperatures. Whether species will be able to adapt to them is an open question. By building an overall picture of the likely changes in climate and the ways in which these changes will affect biodiversity, as we have in our new research, we can get a much more rounded insight into how the world’s species are likely to be affected.”

The researchers argue that understanding this contrasting, but complimentary, information is crucial to understanding the threats and opportunities for biodiversity. They hope this will ultimately improve natural resource management and conservation efforts.

The results published expose the complexities of climate change effects on biodiversity and the challenges in predicting and preserving natural ecosystems in a changing Earth.

To examine how changes in temperature and precipitation could impact the biological diversity of the planet, the scientists reviewed the most commonly used climate change metrics used in biodiversity assessments and applied them to 21st century climate projections using 15 climate change models used by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change). The scientists also present a conceptual framework that describes the links between climate change metrics, and their resulting climate change patterns, and expected threats and opportunities for biodiversity.

The study is the first to provide a detailed global overview of the threats and opportunities for biodiversity arising from different measurements of climate change. Raquel Garcia, the first author and a researcher from the CSIC National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid and the University of Copenhagen, said: “Climate change can be measured in many more ways than is traditionally done in studies of climate change impacts on biodiversity. For example, we can measure whether extreme events will become more or less extreme, whether given climatic conditions will become more or less available, and how far climatic conditions will move from their current locations. When we compare this variety of measurements into the future, it becomes apparent that biodiversity will experience different climatic challenges in different regions. Extreme warming and drying events, for example, are projected to mainly affect the tropics, causing a severe threat for sensitive species. When we consider how far the current climatic conditions will move, the distance is greatest in some regions of cold and polar climates. Species in such regions will thus face greater difficulties in tracking the types of climates they have adapted to.”

The results of the study emphasise that there is not a ‘one size fits all’ way to address the impacts that climate change will have on levels of biodiversity. Professor Carsten Rahbek, co-author of the paper from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London, said: “These results provide us with a much more nuanced picture of the implications of climate change for biodiversity. Although climate change is a global phenomenon, it is expressed in many different ways, varying from region to region and thus there is no single cure to apply to all areas.

“We need to consider the consequences according to the main regional effects. The good news is that the better we understand the implications of climate change, the better we can design management actions to preserve biodiversity and ecosystems,” concluded Professor Rahbek, who is also Director of the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate at the University of Copenhagen.

Professor Araújo who also holds a joint appointment with the CSIC National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid and a temporary visiting appointment at the University of Copenhagen highlights why accurate predictions are crucial for responding to changes in biodiversity: “Scientists are still far from being able to accurately predict the impacts of global environmental changes on biodiversity and ecosystems worldwide. It is extremely difficult to predict the future effects of climate change on species and ecosystems because there are so many complex factors involved. This new research will help us to better understand the complexities of climate change and what climate change is likely to mean for biodiversity on our planet.”

The study is an outcome of an international collaboration involving theGrand Challenges in Ecosystems and Environment based at Imperial College London, the CSIC National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid, and the Universities of Copenhagen, Évora, and Helsinki.

Climate, Trees, and Legacy: 03 - Lessons of Joshua Tree

Climate, Trees, and Legacy: 03 - Lessons of Joshua Tree
Published on Apr 11, 2014
In this third installment of traveling across the USA in 2014 evaluating the need for "assisted migration" of trees in a time of rapid climate change, Connie Barlow focuses on Joshua Tree of the Mojave Desert.

Her conclusions: (1) Experiment with assisted migration to learn the actual northern range limits of Joshua Tree (Yucca brevifolia) in today's climate. (2) People get possessive about their trees. (3) Value biodiversity over "native range."

Human impacts and climate adaptations encountered in California and Arizona include the world's largest Solar Electric Generating System: Ivanpah. Also, the vulnerability of Phoenix to drought that impairs the water flow within the Central Arizona Aqueduct system and that curtails electrical generation via the dams along the Colorado River.

The March 2014 AAAS climate report, "What We Know," is highlighted, along with the 2014 Working Group II report of the IPCC: "Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability."

The series host, Connie Barlow, is the founder of the citizen activist group Torreya Guardians. She is the author of "The Ghosts of Evolution" and is speaking along the 2014 route of The Great March for Climate Action (from Los Angeles to Washington D.C.).

Click on the timecodes below to advance immediately to topics:

00:45 Intro to forests and climate change
02:25 IPPC 2014 reportt "Impacts, Adaptation, Vulnerability"
04:12 trees are most vulnerable to climate change
07:15 what is / is not "assisted migration"
08:53 Lesson 3 on Joshua Tree begins
10:26 road trip in CA-AZ looking for Joshua Tree
23:22 extinction of Joshua Tree's seed disperser (sloth)
25:09 Joshua Tree lags behind in moving north
26:44 map of projected future range shift for Joshua Tree
28:44 plea to begin assisted migration experiment now
30:56 challenges of assisted migration in desert
33:01 "Leaf a Legacy" recommended action
33:38 moth pollinator must be moved north too
35:32 indehiscent v dehiscent fruits re seed dispersal
38:53 megaherbivores disperse seeds in their dung
41:43 Paul S. Martin and ghosts of evolution
43:48 some yuccas have fleshy fruit
44:40 Lesson 1: experiment with northern range now
45:25 Lesson 2: people get possessive with their trees
47:22 Lesson 3: biodiversity value trumps native range
50:39 Janzen & Martin 1982: ecological anachronisms
51:42 book "After the Ice" - Holocene migrations north
55:28 Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System
58:48 aqueducts in California and Arizona
01:00:10 Ten best and worst cities for climate change
01:02:25 AAAS report March 2014 on climate change

OTHER EPISODES in this series:

Pt 01: "Introduction" http://youtu.be/JqksZfXwO44
Pt 02: "Lessons of Torrey Pine" http://youtu.be/6MQ9smQyJ5k

Climate, Trees, and Legacy: 02 - Lessons of Torrey Pine

Climate, Trees, and Legacy: 02 - Lessons of Torrey Pine

Published on Mar 18, 2014

In this second installment of traveling across the USA in 2014 evaluating the need for "assisted migration" of trees in a time of rapid climate change, Connie Barlow focuses on America's rarest pine tree: the Torrey Pine of the foggy coast of southern California.

Her conclusions: (1) In this case, size of habitat doesn't matter; San Diegoans are so proud of their native tree that they are planting and watering it on lawns and street-sides. (2) Experience does matter — it matters greatly; though reading scientific papers is crucial for understanding the needs of trees, so is ground truthing. The venerable tradition of nature study and the kinds of simple outdoor experiments that Darwin excelled in will become increasingly important as plant zones head north faster than tree species can follow.

In addition to Torrey Pine, Connie encounters and draws lessons from Brazilian Pepper Tree, Navel Orange Trees, Cherimoya fruit trees, and California Torreya. She also reflects on the abundance of wind turbines in California and the drama of increasing drought and dwindling flows in California's aqueduct network — and thus the growing tension between residential and agricultural water demands in this most populous state.

The series host, Connie Barlow, is the founder of the citizen activist group Torreya Guardians. She is the author of "The Ghosts of Evolution" and is speaking along the 2014 route of The Great March for Climate Action (from Los Angeles to Washington D.C.).

Click on the timecodes below to advance immediately to topics:
00:44 - Summary of Assisted Migration (and the first action)
02:58 - The Great March for Climate Action
04:06 - Summary of Episode 1 three main points
11:48 - The Lessons of Torrey Pine (in California)
18:55 - Distinguishing Torrey Pine from Florida Torreya
22:39 - Cones, seeds, and fire ecology of Torrey Pine
29:26 - Lesson summary: Habitat size + Field experience
30:18 - California Torreya: importance of visits to four field sites
33:05 - Lessons of Brazilian Pepper Tree (exotic species)
36:43 - History of Navel Oranges in southern California
38:11 - Cherimoya Fruit - requires human pollination + dispersal
44:33 - Good news: Wind turbines bloom in California
45:43 - Bad news: droughts and dwindling water aqueduct flow
47:46 - Answer to Pt 1 puzzle: Townsend's Solitaire + Juniper
49:40 - Homework assignment: 2 videos to watch:
"Ghosts of Evolution - theme song by Connie Barlow"
"Strategies for Public Land Management for Adaptation to Climate Change"

OTHER EPISODES in this series:

Pt 01: "Introduction" http://youtu.be/JqksZfXwO44
Pt 03: "Lessons of Joshua Tree http://youtu.be/fZD8IlT8KU8

Climate, Trees, and Legacy: 01 - Introduction

\

Climate, Trees, and Legacy: 01 - Introduction
Published on Jan 4, 2014

Connie Barlow introduces in January 2014 a learning and action series for helping trees adapt to climate change — species by species, decade by decade. Citizen naturalists are invited to research a favorite native tree species and begin to work with others to keep up with the northward movement of forest zones by planting and monitoring small numbers of wild seeds of common species onto private forested lands well north of where those seeds were collected.

This "assisted migration" in a time of unprecedented climate shift will be increasingly necessary in the decades ahead. Foresters can create the maps to show us where species will need to move to. But we citizen naturalists will play a complementary role in ensuring that the full diversity of genotypes keeps pace with a warming and drying continent.

Importantly, human action will mimic what birds, rodents, and other native seed dispersers have been able to accomplish on their own in previous periods of Earth history, when warming occurred at a slower, more natural pace.

Note: Three tree paintings by Illinois artist Mary Southard are included, as are several still shots from the 20th-century classic animated short film, "The Man Who Planted Trees."

The series host, Connie Barlow, is the founder of the citizen activist group Torreya Guardians. She is the author of "The Ghosts of Evolution."

Learn more about assisted migration: (2-min video)http://youtu.be/uz_pN3lvh7I and annotated list of articleshttp://www.torreyaguardians.org/assis...

Learn more about the work of Torreya Guardians: (75-min video)http://youtu.be/N_9SCSB5wfM and websitehttp://www.torreyaguardians.org

Learn more about "The Ghosts of Evolution" (5-min music video):http://youtu.be/A-kYjjphxJY

Click blue timecodes to advance to TOPICS in this video:

00:01 Climate adaptation as well as mitigation

02:30 50th anniversary of The Wilderness Act in 2014

03:23 Reservation, Restoration, Resilience, and Reconciliation Ecology

03:58 The Great March for Climate Action in 2014

06:12 Climate, Trees, and Legacy

08:27 Exploring the questions

09:06 QUESTION 1: How will trees move north as climate shifts?

14:23 Founding of Torreya Guardians and first action of assisted migration

19:22 Even common tree species will need help moving north

21:48 Book by Hazel Delcourt: Forests in Peril

25:20 Connie remembers her mother's stories of the Depression

27:08 "Leaf a Legacy"

30:43 QUESTION 1 (in detail): Assist the animals who disperse tree seeds?

33:09 QUESTION 2: Will forest fires in arid west defeat assisted migration?

37:06 QUESTION 3: How will trees move into and through wilderness areas?

39:44 Homework: What do trees mean to you? (Reflect on your life stages.)

LATER EPISODES:

Pt 02: "Lessons of Torrey Pine" http://youtu.be/6MQ9smQyJ5k
Pt 03: "Lessons of Joshua Tree" http://youtu.be/fZD8IlT8KU8

More baby deer are dying in France because of climate change

More baby deer are dying in France because of climate change
Once Europe's most robust example of vertebrate success, a new study shows that the roe deer's luck is about to run out

Arielle Duhaime-Ross, April 1, 2014 theverge.com

According to a UN report released yesterday, climate change is already having an effect on human health, agriculture, and water supplies across the globe. Now, a new study released today in PLOS Biology makes the case that even one of the most robust animal populations around — the roe deer of France — are having trouble keeping up with the pace of changing temperatures.

"INCREASED MORTALITY OF NEWBORN FAWNS."

Using population data spanning the last 30 years, researchers demonstrated that roe deer in the Champagne region of France have not been able to adjust their birthing season to face the earlier onset of spring vegetation (these food sources are now appearing two weeks earlier than they did in 1985). Jean-Michel Gaillard, a French biologist at the University Claude Bernard Lyon 1 and co-author of the study, explained in an email to The Verge that "this increasing mismatch causes increased mortality of newborn fawns," because the deer's food is running out too early. So, populations that once flourished are no longer increasing at the same pace they were just 20 years ago.

The main uncertainty of this study, Gaillard said, is whether genetics plays a role in the time at which a female deer gives birth. But the researchers didn't find statistical evidence of heritability for birth date in roe deer. Moreover, Gaillard said that there is no uncertainty regarding the role of climate change in this population. "We are confident that climate change, via earlier onset of vegetation flush in temperate forests, is the culprit of the increased fawn mortality in recent years."

"THE ONLY COMMON FACTOR BEING CLIMATE CHANGE."

According to Gaillard, a previous study on the deer population in the Chize forest, in western France, also showed increased fawn mortality. "This occurred despite markedly different environmental conditions between these populations," he said, "the only common factor being climate change."

In the 1980s and 1990s, roe deer was one of the most successful species of vertebrates in Europe. According to Gaillard, roe deer population sizes across most European countries showed at least a fivefold increase during that period. In fact, the researcher said that this boom was so striking that leading specialists wrote a book entitled "The European Roe Deer: The Biology of Success" in 1998. And now, just 16 years later, "this species cannot cope with increasingly earlier onset of spring," Gaillard said. "For ecologists, our results have clearly important consequences," because this shows that "the fate of a given species can change very quickly."

THEIR NUMBERS CONTINUE TO INCREASE, ALBEIT AT A MUCH SLOWER PACE

For now, France's roe deer are still doing well. Their numbers continue to increase, albeit at a much slower pace. But if climate change goes on for several decades, Gaillard said, we will likely see their populations decline.

Gaillard and his team will continue to study these mammals, in the hopes of finding out why the deer have been unable to adapt. He wonders, for instance, if their unusual reproductive cycle — which includes a five-month delayed implantation — might make them more vulnerable to climate change than one would expect. But regardless of the questions surrounding the study's findings, one thing remains crystal clear, Gaillard said. "It seems to me increasingly difficult to be a climate-change skeptic nowadays."

Save the Amazon Rainforest

Uploaded on Dec 13, 2011
Deforestation will destroy the Amazon rainforest, and therefore must be stopped at once. This forest provides much of the world diversity and oxygen. It is truly a gift of nature and we don't want to lose it.

Megafires Will Be the New Normal in the West

A tree appears silhouetted by the raging Rim Fire in California. The fire originated on August 17. 2013.

Megafires Will Be the New Normal in the West
By Stephanie Pappas, March 12, 2014 livescience.com

Huge, uncontrollable fires will be the new normal in the American West, a new report finds. And housing developments closer to dry forests are exacerbating the problem.

The Washington Post reports that when fire threatens, firefighters will rush to protect homes, instead of managing fires at their sources.

"The cost is going up, and one reason is the extreme amount of resources that has to be put into putting out fires near an urban interface,” study researcher Scott Stephens, a University of California at Berkeley fire scientist, told the Post. “Having those houses there … man, that gets expensive. A fire engine every four, five or six houses, and there are hundreds of houses out there.”

Climate change is also contributing to firefighting challenges, the report found. Drought is becoming more common out West, and fire suppression efforts allow for the build-up of brush that fuels megafires.

Sensitivity of carbon cycle to tropical temperature variations has doubled

The tropical carbon cycle has become twice as sensitive to temperature variations over the past 50 years, new research has revealed.

Sensitivity of carbon cycle to tropical temperature variations has doubled
University of Exeter, January 26, 2014 sciencedaily.com

The research shows that a one degree rise in tropical temperature leads to around two billion extra tonnes of carbon being released per year into the atmosphere from tropical ecosystems, compared with the same tropical warming in the 1960s and 1970s.

Professor Pierre Friedlingstein and Professor Peter Cox, from the University of Exeter, collaborated with an international team of researchers from China, Germany, France and the USA, to produce the new study, which is published in the leading academic journal Nature.

Existing Earth System Model simulations indicate that the ability of tropical land ecosystems to store carbon will decline over the 21st century. However, these models are unable to capture the increase in the sensitivity of carbon dioxide to tropical temperatures that is reported in this new study.

Research published last year by Professors Cox and Friedlingstein showed that these variations in atmospheric carbon dioxide can reveal the sensitivity of tropical ecosystems to future climate change.

Taken together, these studies suggest that the sensitivity of tropical ecosystems to climate change has increased substantially in recent decades.

Professor Cox, from the College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences said "The year-to-year variation in carbon dioxide concentration is a very useful way to monitor how tropical ecosystems are responding to climate.

"The increase in carbon dioxide variability in the last few decades suggests that tropical ecosystems have become more vulnerable to warming."

Professor Friedlingstein, who is an expert in global carbon cycle studies added: "Current land carbon cycle models do not show this increase over the last 50 years, perhaps because these models underestimate emerging drought effects on tropical ecosystems."

The lead author of the study, Xuhui Wang of Peking University, added: "This enhancement is very unlikely to have resulted from chance, and may provide a new perspective on a possible shift in the terrestrial carbon cycle over the past five decades."

Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by University of Exeter. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Journal Reference:
Xuhui Wang, Shilong Piao, Philippe Ciais, Pierre Friedlingstein, Ranga B. Myneni, Peter Cox, Martin Heimann, John Miller, Shushi Peng, Tao Wang, Hui Yang, Anping Chen. A two-fold increase of carbon cycle sensitivity to tropical temperature variations. Nature, 2014; DOI: 10.1038/nature12915

Is Brazil's epic drought a taste of the future?

Is Brazil's epic drought a taste of the future?
Rhett A. Butler, February 25, 2014 mongabay.com

With more than 140 cities implementing water rationing, analysts warning of collapsing soy and coffee exports, and reservoirs and rivers running precipitously low, talk about the World Cup in some parts of Brazil has been sidelined by concerns about an epic drought affecting the country's agricultural heartland.

With its rise as an agricultural superpower over the past 20 years, Brazil is today the world's largest exporter of coffee, sugar, oranges, soy, and cattle. That means the drought will take a bite out of the country's already flagging economic growth. But the worst may be yet to come if climate projections prove accurate: forecasts are for hotter and drier conditions going forward.

"The regions where we plant coffee today, especially the ones on lower elevations, will be getting hotter," Hilton Silveira Pinto of EMBRAPA, Brazil's government agency for agriculture, told NPR. "And many of the coffee plantations in these areas will probably have to be abandoned."

"By 2020, we will lose 20 to 22 percent of our soybean crop. It will also affect corn, cassava, many of our Brazilian crops."

Research suggests the forecasts could become even more dire if the Amazon rainforest — which plays a critical role in local and regional rainforest — tips toward drier conditions. Several studies predict that the combination of forest loss and climate change could conspire to tip large areas in the southern Amazon from rainforest toward savanna habitat, reducing rainfall. Already the region has experienced two of the most severe droughts on record — in 2005 and 2010.

"If droughts continue to occur at 5–10-year frequency, or increase in frequency, large areas of Amazonian forest canopy likely will be exposed to the persistent effect of droughts and the slow recovery of forest canopy structure and function," wrote researchers in a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in December 2012. "In particular, areas of south and western Amazonia have been shown to be affected severely by increasing rainfall variability in the past decade, suggesting that this region may be witnessing the first signs of potential large-scale degradation of Amazonian rainforest from climate change."

Further east, farmers and city residents are already feeling the pain. Some 6 million people in 11 states have been asked to ration water and temperatures in January in Sao Paulo were the hottest ever recorded.