Trump Moves to Shrink Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments

Swamp Stomp

Volume 17, Issue 47

President Trump recently confirmed with lawmakers in Utah that he is planning to shrink the size of two national monuments in the state, according to a press release from the office of Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch (R). The announcement comes in response to the recommendations laid out by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who in April was tasked by President Trump via executive order with reevaluating all national monuments over 100,000 acres in size designated since 1996.

Currently twenty-seven such monuments across the country, including several marine parks, are on Secretary Zinke’s list for proposed policy changes or boundary modifications. “We believe in the importance of protecting these sacred antiquities,” Hatch said in response to the announcement. “But Zinke and the Trump administration rolled up their sleeves to dig in, talk to locals, talk to local tribes and find a better way to do it. We’ll continue to work closely with them moving forward to ensure Utahns have a voice.”

The two national monuments in Utah, Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears, were both designated by executive order, the former by President Bill Clinton in 1996 and the latter by President Barack Obama in 2016. Both national monuments have been objects of intense controversy in Utah state politics.

Critics of the monuments, including Sen. Hatch, have argued that the designations represent federal overreach into the state’s affairs and that they unfairly restrict land use, such as mining and grazing, that could otherwise bring money into the state. In the case of Grand Staircase-Escalante, extractive industries hoping to mine the estimated 30 billion tons of coal on the monument’s Kaiparowits Plateau were particularly put off by the designation.

“It sounds like the voices of western communities are finally being heard and the promise to preserve grazing inside monuments might finally be kept by the federal government,” wrote Ethan Lane, director of the Public Lands Council at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, in an email to The Washington Post. “This action would be a win for any western community that depends on ranching to stay afloat.”

Supporters of the monuments, including many Native American tribes from the region, argue that the designations are justified for both environmental and culture reasons; not only are Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears breathtaking sights of natural beauty rich in biodiversity, but the land encompassing the Bears Ears monument in particular is considered sacred by many southwestern tribes, including the Diné (Navajo), Hopi, and Ute, from whence the state of Utah gets its name.

“It was always and has been a spiritual place,” said Al Yazzie, a tribal member of the Navajo Nations’s Low Mountain chapter, about Bears Ears. “It’s the white people that came and tried to nullify that. And we had to fight to get it – to play the game the Western way, the government way, to have it reestablished as a national monument, as a sacred place for us.”

Despite President Trump’s proposed cuts, it is not yet clear if the president has the power to modify national monuments without permission from Congress. Under the Antiquities Act of 1906, the president may act to preserve lands that are scientifically, historically or culturally significant, yet it says nothing about the ability to rescind formerly designated monuments and natural parks.

The last president to modify natural monument boundaries was president John F. Kennedy, who in the 1960’s rearranged the borders of the Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico. However, this occurred before the passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, which legal experts say may bar the president from reducing or abolishing any preexisting designation.

“The president simply does not have the authority to modify these land and ocean treasures,” said Peter Shelley, a senior counsel at Conservation Law Foundation. “More than 120 legal scholars agree that the purpose of the Antiquities Act is clear: to protect areas of scientific, cultural or historical value – not to decimate them.”

A number of environmental organizations and businesses, including the Wilderness Society, Southern Utah Wilderness alliance and outdoor gear companies Patagonia and REI have threatened to bring legal action against the Trump administration should any changes to the monuments be made.

At the heart of this issue over public lands in the west, which has been raging for decades, is how much power the federal government should have in deciding how a state’s lands are allowed to be used. This is of critical concern in western states because, compared to eastern states, a greater percentage of their land’s are federally owned; no state west of the Rocky Mountains except Hawai’i has less than 29% of their land owned by the federal government. In the east, the state with the most federally owned land is North Carolina at only 11.8%.

Even as President Trump and Secretary Zinke move forward with the monument amendments, it could take five to six years to fully effect them, according to legal experts. “This process will be very legally vulnerable because it will have to deal with all the scientific, environmental and social conclusions produced during the first round of management plan creation,” said Randi Spivak, public lands program director of the Center for Biological Diversity. “This would be a massive hurdle for the administration.”

Sources:

  • Barringer, Felicity and Geoff McGhee. “Tracking Proposed Monument Reductions in the West.” Public Lands & The West Blog. The Bill Lane Center for the American West, Stanford University, 21 September 2017. Web. 28 October 2017.
  • Eilperin, Juliet. “Environmental and outdoor groups vow to fight national monument reductions.” The Washington Post. The Washington Post (WP Company LLC), 18 September 2017. Web. 18 November 2017.
  • Friedman, Lisa, Nadja Popovich and Matt Mccann. “27 National Monuments Are Under Review. Here are Five to Watch.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 16 August 2017. Web. 28 October 2017.
  • Friedman, Lisa and Julie Turkewitz. “Interior Secretary Proposes Shrinking Four National Monuments.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 24 August 2017. Web. 18 November 2017.
  • Yachnin, Jennifer. “National Monuments: Angry greens promise lawsuits if Trump acts on Zinke memo.” E&E News PM. E&E News, 18 September 2017. Web. 28 October 2017.
  • Yachnin, Jennifer. “National Monuments: Trump to slash Bears Ears, Grand Staircase – Hatch.” E&E News PM. E&E News, 27 October 2017. Web. 28 October 2017.

New Steps Being Taken To Combat Deadly Bat Disease

Swamp Stomp

Volume 17, Issue 46

I recently visited Craters of the Moon National Park in Idaho and was really excited to explore these unusually landscape as well as the extensive caves. You can imagine my surprise when I was asked if any of the clothing I was currently wearing had been worn while I was in any other cave since 2005. It was explained to me about how a lot of bat species around the world have been affected by a fungus that causes white nose syndrome which is deadly to bats and they were trying to prevent the spreading of the disease. When I got back I knew I had to include an article in the newsletter and I am so happy to be able to include one about what is being done to try and help the bats.

It was announced on July 17, 2017 that the Fish and Wildlife Service has increased their efforts to fight a devastating fungal disease that is threatening the U.S. bat population. They are creating grants that total a little over $1 million for state-level programs targeting white-nose syndrome.

The total dollars going to these grants is $1,016,784. The grants are being spread across 37 states and the District of Columbia. The size of the allocations going to individual states ranges from $12,440 for Arizona to $30,000 each for several states including Kentucky, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

“Bats are beneficial in many ways,” Jeremy Coleman, national white-nose syndrome coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said in a statement. “While state natural resource agencies are on the front lines of bat conservation, many have limited options for responding to this devastating disease without these funds.”

Some of the money for the grants is coming from the FWS’s “Science Support” component, which the Trump administration’s fiscal 2018 budget proposal would get rid of.

A fungus called Pseudogymnoascus destructans is the cause of white-nose syndrome, which affects most but not all bat species. It was estimated that more than 6 million bats have died from the disease through 2012, and officials say many more have died since then.

White-nose syndrome has been found in more than 30 states and five Canadian provinces, endangering the insect-gobbling animal that’s helpful to farmers. It has also captured the attention of Congress, with lawmakers holding hearings, touring caves and using past budgets to direct funding for research (Greenwire, April 6, 2012).

The fungus was not discovered in U.S. until the winter of 2006-2007, when it was located in New York. Since the discovery, the FWS has distributed some $7 million in related grants. The funding is part of what the agency describes as “a Service-led, cooperative, international effort involving more than 100 state, federal, tribal, academic and nonprofit partners.”

“Funding from the Service provides state fish and wildlife agencies with critically important support to manage and mitigate the spread of the disease to new areas of the country,” Nick Wiley, president of the Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies and executive director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said in a statement.

Nick Sharp, a biologist with the Alabama Division of Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries, added that “we simply would not have the capacity to do this work” without the federal funding.

More bats were discovered earlier this year to have white-nose syndrome. These bats were the Southeastern bat population in a cave in Shelby County, Ala. With this new species discovered, a total of nine hibernating bat species in North America are known to be afflicted by the fungus. The Endangered Species Act protects three of the nine species.

FWS and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation have created the Bats for the Future Fund, a competitive grant program to fund research.

Source: Doyle, Michael. “Devastating Bat Disease Targeted by New Federal Grants.” Greenwire. E&E News, 17 July 2017. Web. 17 July 2017.

FERC Approves Atlantic Coast Pipeline

Swamp Stomp

Volume 17, Issue 45

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has given the green light to the construction of the contentious Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a multi-billion dollar energy project designed to transport fracked natural gas from the shale-rich Marcellus basin in West Virginia to Virginia and North Carolina.

This comes less than a month after North Carolina governor Roy Cooper and the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality rejected the ACP’s environmental plan submitted by regional energy companies Dominion Energy, Duke Energy, Piedmont Natural Gas and Southern Company Gas on the grounds that it did not meet the state’s erosion and sediment control requirements.

Under the Clean Water Act, states have the right to deny permits to large-scale projects if they deem them a threat to their water quality, though FERC has the authority to override the states’ decision. The energy partners have 15 days after receiving the letter of disapproval to resubmit the plan with additional information required by the N.C. DEQ, or 60 days to challenge the agency’s decision and request a court hearing.

The FERC’s decision, while consistent with its past record of approving the majority of pipeline proposals it reviews, was not unanimous. In a surprise dissenting vote, Obama-appointed commission member Cheryl LaFleur, who had never voted against any proposal in her previous seven years of working on the commission, determined that the ACP developers had not provided sufficient evidence that the pipeline “as proposed is in the public interest.”

The proposed 600 mile pipeline is set to pass through thousands of streams and creeks, many of which feed into the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia and into North Carolina’s coastal wetlands. The proposed route also passes through West Virginia’s Monongahela National Forest and Virginia’s George Washington National Forest in addition to 2,900 private properties in all three states.

Dominion energy and their partners argue that the ACP will “support 17,240 jobs during construction and 2,200 operation jobs” in the economically depressed areas that the project will pass through, and highlight that the project is necessary to support the growing natural gas demand from public utilities, small businesses and a growing population in Virginia and North Carolina.

Yet many prominent environmental groups and companies say that the economic benefits of the pipeline are exaggerated; the Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that only 39 permanent local jobs will be created by the project’s construction, and PJM, the company charged with managing the mid-Atlantic region’s electric grid, projects that demand for natural gas will remain flat for the coming decade as sources of renewable energy become cheaper.

Of particular concern to landowners in the path of the ACP, many of whom are minorities who rely upon agriculture for a living, is the potential for Dominion Energy to exercise eminent domain over their lands now that the FERC has deemed the pipeline “in the interest of the public.” Dr. Ryan Emanuel, a member of the Lumbee Tribe in North Carolina and professor of forestry and environmental resources at North Carolina State University, highlights the issue in a letter to Science magazine, writing that “the Atlantic Coast Pipeline developer’s preferred route disproportionately affects indigenous peoples in North Carolina. The nearly 30,000 Native Americans who live within 1.6 km of the proposed pipeline make up 13.2% of the impacted population in North Carolina, where only 1.2% of the population is Native American.”

As of now, due to the permitting set backs from the N.C. DEQ, Dominion Energy and partners have pushed back the Atlantic Coast Pipeline’s starting date from late 2018 to late 2019. Unless the FERC eventually decides to override North Carolina’s decision, however, the future of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline remains unclear.

Sources:

Puerto Rico’s National Forest Devastated by Hurricane Maria: Long Recovery in Sight

Swamp Stomp

Volume 17, Issue 43

After being devastated by hurricane Maria last September, Puerto Rico’s El Yunque National Forest, the only tropical rainforest in the United States Forest Service system, may take a long time to fully recover according to ecologists from the International Institute of Tropical Forestry and the US Forest Service.

El Yunque, pronounced “el jun-kay”, is a 28,000 square acre forest on the eastern side of the island that was almost completely defoliated by Maria’s 155 mph winds. It is home to 240 different species of trees, 23 of which are only found in Puerto Rico, as well as 50 species of birds including the endemic and critically endangered Puerto Rican Parrot.

In past hurricanes, bird populations have suffered temporarily as the fruit bearing trees that they rely upon for food struggle to regrow. After Maria, however, ecologists surveying the forest found scores of dead birds lying on the ground, suggesting that they had been killed by the hurricane’s vicious winds rather than by starvation.

This population reduction could in turn hinder the proper regrowth of the forest; as pollinator species, birds, as well as bats, assist in plant reproduction and forestation by consuming fruit and dispersing their seeds via excrement to other parts of the island. If these pollinator species’ populations sustained large enough losses during the hurricane, the natural process of seed dispersal could be compromised, ultimately taking the forest longer to recover.

Yet charismatic flora and fauna are not the only ones who will suffer from the rainforest’s destruction. Due to the canopy’s almost complete defoliation, the moist, acidic soil of the forest floor that is normally shaded is now exposed to the sun’s withering heat for the first time in decades, desiccating the soil and potentially interfering with the ecosystem services the rainforest provides to humans.

Chief amongst these services is the capacity to absorb, filter and distribute into rivers the billions of gallons of rainwater that fall on the island annually; El Yunque is the headwaters of eight other rivers that provide drinking water to 20% of Puerto Rico’s citizens.

Yet this ecosystem service relies upon the growth of bryophyte mosses on the trunks of trees to capture that rainwater, a service now hindered after Maria stripped most of the trees’ bark bare of the moss. With only 60% of the island’s wastewater treatment centers functional and 37% of residents lacking access to clean water after the hurricane, the damage to the rainforest’s water processing capabilities only exacerbates the island’s growing humanitarian crises.

In the long term, El Yunque’s slow recovery could do harm to Puerto Rico’s already beleaguered economy, which relies heavily on tourism and increasingly on eco-tourism. An estimated 1.2 million people visit the national forest annually to hike, camp, bird watch and hang glide, contributing to the $1.8 billion the territory earns annually from tourism. As large swaths of the forest remain inaccessible by road from debris scattered by hurricane Maria’s rain and winds, the national forest remains closed to visitors for the foreseeable future.

Sources:

  1. Ferré-Sadurní, Luis. “Another Victim of Hurricane Maria: Puerto Rico’s Treasured Rainforest.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 11 October 2017. Web. 14 October 2017.
  2. Roig-Franzia, Manuel and Arelis R. Hernández. “Three weeks since Hurricane Maria, much of Puerto Rico still dark, thirsty and frustrated.” The Washington Post. The Washington Post (WP Company LLC), 11 October 2017. Web. 14 October 2017.

Planes Fly into Smoke to Figure Out What it’s Made Of

Swamp Stomp

Volume 17, Issue 42

Wildfires produce large clouds of smoke. No one knows what the smoke clouds are made of unless a sample is taken directly from the cloud and tested. This is exactly what was done during the Rim Fire in Yosemite. A NASA DC-8 passenger plane and an Alpha fighter jet each flew through the plume with in-flight labs, that scientists created to measure exactly what the fire was producing.

Though the obvious answer is that fire creates smoke, not all smoke is made up of the same gases. The only way to tell the difference is to study the particles they ferry along. “That’s what you’re actually seeing when you see a smoke plume, you know the big white smoke plume. That’s sunlight bouncing off the little particles,” says Bob Yokelson, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Montana. What makes up smoke matters to human lungs and the climate—which is why Yokelson’s team and NASA’s Alpha jet crew are busy planning their next flights for late summer.

It is not easy to make a lab fly. It can take over a year for teams of scientists to design and assemble custom gas and particle measurement systems. Not only does to these finicky, temperamental machines have to work at a range of temperatures and pressures, they also need to neatly replace a row of plane seats or get even smaller.

The Alpha jet was converted from a fighter jet in 2010. Before this could happen, it had to be quieted down for civilian airspace, and equipped with sensors to measure trace gases in the atmosphere: ozone, carbon dioxide, methane, and formaldehyde. As its two pilots follow a fire’s smoke, the sensors continuously measure the air, according to Laura Iraci, the NASA chemist who runs the experiments. After a two or three hour flight, they land back at the airstrip with data cards full of numbers to analyze.

When Yokelson and his team outfit a jetliner like the DC-8 that flew to the Rim Fire, they get to renovate the plane’s interior. “We’ll take out every other row of seats, and bolt down instruments in their place, so now you have the scientist sitting in front of an instrument and they can monitor the data as we’re sampling the atmosphere,” he says. This summer, their team is getting a C-130 jet ready for its close-up–test flights, set for September.

Airborne studies like these have highlighted that wildfires burn dirtier than the ones that are carefully lit and contained in the forest. More particulate matter is produced by the bigger logs and wetter material. Also as fires smolder longer, they can actually start to release a serious amount of methane, which traps more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

Both Yokelson and Iraci have lots more questions about what else fires dump into the atmosphere, and how the airspace changes throughout the course of a fire. Once the planes are ready again, they are headed for more smoke. The accurate field measurements are the key to good air quality and climate change models. The EPA would love to predict how wildfire pollutants might descend on neighboring cities and states. “We’re really optimistic that our data can provide sort of truth, so they can continue improving their models,” says Iraci. It may take a season or two to pump new data in, but predicting air quality around wildfires could get a lot better in the next few years.

Source: Wilhelm, Menaka. “The Tricked-Out Research Planes That Fly Through Wildfires.” Wired. Conde Nast, 25 July 2017. Web. 31 July 2017.

WOTUS Repeal Could Devastate Pocosin Wetlands

Swamp Stomp

Volume 17, Issue 41

As the Trump administration moves forward with an executive order repealing the Obama-era Waters of the United Sates (WOTUS) rule, which clarified and expanded the kinds of bodies of water the federal government is responsible for protecting from pollution, a unique yet little known wetland habitat may be endangered of being eradicated.

Pocosins, meaning “swamp on a hill” in the indigenous Algonquin language, are found from northern Florida to Virginia, though they are particularly concentrated in North Carolina. Unusual compared to other wetlands in that they are not connected to larger bodies of water and are often less than a square acre in size, pocosins are essentially peat bogs elevated on hills above the water table of surrounding ecosystems in the coastal plains of the southeast. Ecologically, they serve as refuges for endangered flora and fauna, such as white-tailed deer, black bears, and alligators, and provide a number of ecosystem services including regulation of the salinity of coastal waters, aquifer recharging, flood and erosion control, and carbon sequestration.

They are also coveted by farmers for their incredibly fertile soil, and as such have been drained to make way for farming and development since the 19th century, resulting in the loss of 70% of North Carolina’s pocosins until state legislation was enacted to protect them in 2001. Since Republicans won a supermajority of the North Carolina legislature in 2012, however, wetlands protections have been largely rolled back in response to the oil and gas, agribusiness, and real estate sectors complaints that compliance with such restrictions unfairly burdens their businesses.

Under the Obama-era WOTUS rule, which has not yet been implemented due to a stay imposed by federal courts, the federal government would have the authority to prevent “navigable waters”, as stipulated by the 1972 Clean Water Act, from being polluted in addition to head waters, tributaries, and certain wetlands, potentially including pocosins.

The rule was intended to clarify the federal government’s authority over certain bodies of water after two Supreme Court decisions regarding water protection in 2001 and 2006 created legal confusion over the jurisdiction afforded by the Clean Water Act’s “navigable waters” clause. The 2006 decision by Justice Anthony Kennedy, favored by the Water of the United States rule, found that any wetlands sharing a “significant nexus” with navigable waters were covered by the Clean Water Act, while a 2001 ruling by late Justice Antonin Scalia determined that the act’s scope only covers “relatively permanent” wetlands.

Opponents of the WOTUS rule argue that it represents an overreach of federal power into the affairs of private landowners, who would be constrained by what they could and could not do on their own property if it happens to contain a wetland covered by Justice Kennedy’s reading of the Clean Water Act. Yet if Scalia’s interpretation is implemented by the Trump administration, not only will a variety of unique wetlands lose federal protection, such as pocosins and many ephemeral streams in western states, but so will a number of tributaries and headwaters that provide drinking water to as many as one in three Americans.

As it currently stands, Mr. Trump’s executive order will not have an immediate legal effect as the WOTUS rule makes its way through the court system, a process that could take longer than Mr. Trump’s first term in office. Yet with its federal protection in legal limbo and minimal protections from the state legislature, it is unclear whether North Carolina’s remaining pocosins will be around long enough to be impacted by the courts’ decisions.

Sources:

  1. Davenport, Coral. “E.P.A. Moves to Rescind Contested Water Pollution Regulation.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 27 June 2017. Web. 4 October 2017.
  2. Richardson, Curtis J. “Pocosins: Vanishing Wastelands or Valuable Wetlands?” BioScience. Nov. 1983. Web. 6 October 2017
  3. Wittenberg, Ariel. “Clean Water Rule: WOTUS rollback seen as death blow for ‘very unique habitat.’ Greenwire. E&E News, 2 October 2017. Web. 3 October 2017.

Wetlands Mitigate Property Damage from Hurricanes and Flooding

Swamp Stomp

Volume 17, Issue 40

As the devastation wrought by this year’s hurricanes continues to be felt in the Caribbean and the Gulf states, a recent study finds that coastal wetlands have the capacity to substantially mitigate property damage due to flooding and storms, saving taxpayers millions of dollars annually in averted losses.

The study, jointly conducted by researchers from the University of California Santa Cruz and scientists from private insurance, conservation and engineering groups, assessed the value of the ecosystem services provided by wetlands to mitigate flood damage in the northeastern United States caused by hurricane Sandy in 2012. Through the use of advanced computer modeling of storm surge flooding and a vast database of properties damaged, the researchers estimated that $625 million worth of property damage was averted due to the presence of coastal wetlands from Maine to North Carolina, with a 22% average reduction of damages for each of the 707 zip-code areas assessed in the study.

Their findings established a clear positive correlation between the presence of wetlands and the value of nearby properties, as well as between wetland area and averted losses due to flooding. This was true even in heavily urbanized coastal areas that had lost most of its wetlands, such as New York, where wetlands cover only 2% of the land yet still saved the state $140 million.

Wetlands are able to provide this service by acting like a buffer between the ocean and inland properties. As the storm surge produced by a hurricane moves onto the land, wetland vegetation significantly reduces the wave energy and height, with some wetlands attenuating surge action by up to 70 centimeters per kilometer.

Despite the profound ecosystem service value provided by coastal wetlands, only about 3% of private and public monies spent on coastal infrastructure are invested in wetland restoration while the rest is spent on “grey” infrastructure, such as concrete seawalls that can be expensive to maintain and often only redirect flood water to other areas, potentially exacerbating the damages to life and property.

Aside from damages caused exclusively by hurricanes, the researchers also measured the annual flood mitigating benefits derived from salt marshes in Barnegat Bay in Ocean County, New Jersey. They found that properties buffered by wetlands experienced an average of 16% fewer losses than those not buffered from the ocean by wetlands, suggesting that wetland restoration is a good investment even if few hurricanes make landfall in the region.

In an affiliated report by Lloyd’s Tercentenary Research Foundation, who provided funding for the wetlands ecosystem service study, strategies for funding wetlands restoration based off of the latter study’s findings were assessed.

Such strategies included investing in flood mitigating wetland restoration and conservation before a catastrophic weather event, which would reduce the price of insurance premiums and securities, allowing the resulting savings to pay for the initial costs of restoration. Then, after a natural disaster does occur, a portion of the public and private recovery and rebuilding funds would be allocated towards further wetland restoration efforts, making the coasts even more resilient and reducing flood insurance premiums further.

By quantifying the monetary value of the ecosystem services provided by wetlands, wetland conservation is made legible to politicians, investors and laypeople, increasing the likelihood that these areas will be managed responsibly both for the benefit of humans and for the benefit of the ecosystems themselves.

Sources: Narayan, Siddarth et al. “The Value of Coastal Wetland for Flood Reduction in the Northeastern USA.” Scientific Reports. 31 August 2017. Web. 26 September 2017.

Stephens, Tim. “Coastal wetlands dramatically reduce property losses during hurricanes.” University of California Santa Cruz Newscenter. 31 August 2017. Web. 25 September 2017.

A Green and Leafy Economy: UNC Students Propose Seaweed Aquaculture for Sustainable Coastal Development

The Swamp Stomp

Volume 17, Issue 39

A team of undergraduates from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are working on a proposal to build a more resilient economy and ecology on the coast of North Carolina using a versatile yet humble marine organism; macro-algae, also known as seaweed. Their plan involves starting a seaweed aquaculture farm near the Duke University Marine Laboratory in Beaufort, North Carolina, that would grow seaweed in the shallow waters off the coast using a low cost system of ropes, scaffolding and buoys that can be hoisted from the ocean to harvest the crop when it is mature.

 

Eliza Harrison, one of the four members of the team, said that the project aims to address multiple problems simultaneously. Chief among these is how to feed a growing planet with fewer resources; experts say that by midcentury, the planet’s human population could reach nine to ten billion people who will have to be fed using less agricultural land, water, fertilizers and pesticides than in the past if we are to avoid a dramatic increase in the degradation of earth’s already besieged natural areas.

 

Seaweed poses a unique solution to this problem in that it requires virtually no inputs to grow, does not take up space on land that could be used for other purposes, and is nutritionally rich in protein, vitamins A and B-12, calcium and iodine, among others. “So much of the ocean is underutilized” said Harrison in an interview, “seems like a no-brainer to waste all that space, it has such potential.” While it may seem odd to many Westerners unaccustomed to the marine vegetable to propose seaweed as a solution to global hunger, the reality is that it is already used in a variety of products that we use daily, from toothpaste to cosmetic products to pharmaceuticals to, of course, sushi.

 

Which points to the second issue the project aims to address, that of bringing jobs and a vibrant economy via seaweed aquaculture to the towns and cities of North Carolina that have historically relied upon fishing as a primary economic activity. As fishing stocks the world over have been overharvested and in some cases collapsed, fishing communities have felt the pinch as formerly stable jobs in the industry have shriveled up.

 

The seaweed market, however, is vast and in demand as an important ingredient in beauty products, in medicine as a potential anti-inflammatory agent, in grocery stores and restaurants as food items, in the renewable energy sector as a biofuel, and as a methane reducing feed for livestock. Given Harrison’s estimate that one aquaculture farm could provide four permanent and five to eight seasonal jobs, if scaled up, seaweed production could represent a sustainable boom for North Carolina’s economy.

 

Finally, seaweed serves multiple ecological functions including providing habitat for small fish and crustaceans, reducing the severity of wave action and storm surge during hurricanes, and sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere via photosynthesis. Indeed, a study found that if scaled up, seaweed aquaculture could have the capacity to absorb 1,500 tons of CO2 km2 year, enough to absorb the annual carbon emissions of 300 Chinese citizens.

 

Harrison and her team’s project, which was a finalist in this year’s National Geographic Chasing Genius contest for innovative ideas to address global problems, is currently pursuing funding for the project from the UNC School of Public Health, among other sources.

 

Source: Duarte, Carlos M. et al. “Can Seaweed Farming Play a Role in Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation?” Frontiers in Marine Science. 12 April 2017. Web. 18 September 2017.

Beavers Helpful Rebuilding Wetlands

Swamp Stomp

Volume 17, Issue 38

A new study researched in Scotland reveals beavers’ ability to engineer desolate land into thriving wetlands.

Four beavers were re-introduced to the land and observed for a decade. The observations found that the beavers created almost 200m of dams, 500m of canals and an acre of ponds. The landscape was “almost unrecognizable” from the original field, which now includes an increase plant species of almost 50% and richly varied habitats established across the 30 acre site.

The researchers say that their study is solid evidence that beavers can be a low-cost option in restoring wetlands, an important and biodiverse habitat that has lost two-thirds of its worldwide extent since 1900.

“Wetlands also serve to store water and improve its quality – they are the ‘kidneys of the landscape’,” said Professor Nigel Willby, at Stirling University and one of the study team. Earlier research by the team showed how beaver dams can slow water flows, reducing downstream flood risk and water pollution.

Beavers build dams in order to create pools in which they can shelter from their biggest predators, besides humans. These predators are bears, wolves and wolverines. The research was published in the journal Science of the Total Environment. The site was regularly surveyed and located near Blairgowrie in Tayside where two beavers were released in 2002 and began to breed in 2006. The lifespan of beavers is 10-15 years in the wild and the average number of beavers around during the study was four.

“After 12 years of habitat engineering by beaver, the study site was almost unrecognisable from its initial state,” the scientists concluded: “The reintroduction of such species may yet prove to be the missing ingredient in successful and sustainable long-term restoration of wetland landscapes.”

Alan Law, another member of the team from Stirling University, said: “We know lots about the benefits of beavers in natural settings, but until now we did not know the full extent of what they can achieve in present-day landscapes where restoration is most needed.”

He said wetland restoration usually involves ditch blocking and mowing or grazing to maintain diversity: “Beavers offer an innovative, more hands-off, solution to the problem of wetland loss. Seeing what beavers can do for our wetlands and countryside highlights the diverse landscape we have been missing for the last 400 years.”

The downside to using beavers to revitalize landscapes is that it has to be carefully managed to deal with the potential impacts on farmers, who fear crops being raided by beavers and damage to embankments that protect low-lying fields and other areas from floods.

“Any species introduction, particularly if it has not been in this country for hundreds of years, can have a massive impact on the many benefits that the countryside delivers,” said Mark Pope, chair of the National Farmers Union’s environment forum. “The impact of beavers is assessed across the whole landscape considering the impacts on all land uses. This study is just one piece of that big jigsaw. We need to learn from Scotland’s experiences before any decisions are taken on the future status of beavers.”

There is also concern about the impact of beaver dams on salmon and other fish. The fear is that beavers might block migration upstream. But Wilby said: “The main conclusions from recent studies were that the overall effect of beavers was positive.” This is because greater biodiversity provides more food for the fish and the deeper pools maintain stable cool water temperatures, even as the climate warms.

“I think as long as beavers have plenty of space to form a decent number of territories, there are enormous potential benefits,” said Wliby. “Sometimes the negative views of farmers can dominate.”

Source: Carrington, Damian. “Eager Beavers Experts at Recreating Wildlife-rich Wetlands, Study Reveals.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 19 July 2017. Web. 19 July 2017.

Water on Moon Plentiful According to New Study

Swamp Stomp

Volume 17, Issue 37

Future exploration of the moon seems even more likely now that new evidence was provided that a large amount of water is trapped beneath the surface of the moon.

This brings back the question of whether a moon colony could be possible now that water has been discovered on the moon.

“A study of satellite data found ancient volcanic deposits strewn across the moon’s surface contain higher amounts of trapped water compared with surrounding areas” (Gutierrez).

The study “bolsters the idea that the lunar mantle is surprisingly water-rich,” scientists from Brown University say in a press release.

The research conducted by scientists from Brown University was published on Monday, July 24, 2017 in Nature Geoscience. They studied data from India’s Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter.

The Apollo 15 and 17 missions in the early 1970s collected volcanic glass beads from the moon and brought them back to Earth, according to Newsweek. A study in 2011 of these glass beads suggested that they contained water.

The purpose of the new study was to figure out if the beads were anomalies or representative of how much water might exist on the moon, Newsweek reports.

“By looking at the orbital data, we can examine the large pyroclastic (volcanic rock fragment) deposits on the moon that were never sampled by the Apollo or Luna missions,” Ralph Milliken, Brown University associate professor and lead author of the new study, said in a news release.

“The fact that nearly all of them exhibit signatures of water suggests that the Apollo samples are not anomalous, so it may be that the bulk interior of the moon is wet.”

Though the volcanic glass beads only contained a few hundred parts per million, if that, there is a lot of volcanic material to work with, Milliken told CNN.

Some fields of the volcanic remains cover thousands of square kilometers and could be several kilometers deep, Milliken said. “It’s more water than previously recognized,” he told CNN.

A newfound source of water on the moon could “bode well for our long-held visions of a lunar base,” notes Eric Mack for CNET.

“A source of water on the moon could add to a growing undercurrent of renewed excitement about returning to the moon. Besides Moon Express, Japan, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and even (Elon) Musk are among the other big names tossing out new lunar visions.”

The private company, Moon Express’ “first prospecting efforts will be studying pyroclastic deposits on the moon, which hold unique clues to potential deposits of lunar water and other resources,” the company’s founder and CEO, Bob Richards, told Phys.org.

“Our baseline landing site for our maiden lunar expedition is an equatorial region of the moon high in pyroclastic deposits.”

The pyroclastic deposits in the study might be easier to access than previously thought, the study’s co-author, Shuai Li, told CNET.

“Anything that helps save future lunar explorers from having to bring lots of water from home is a big step forward, and our results suggest a new alternative,” he said.

The last time man walked on the moon was in December 1972 during the Apollo 17 mission.

Source: Gutierrez, Lisa. “Moon Could Contain Lots of Water, Study Suggests, Bolstering Visions of a Lunar Colony.” The Kansas City Star. The Kansas City Star, 24 July 2017. Web. 24 July 2017.