Biologists: Greening Arctic not Likely to Offset Permafrost Carbon Release

As the frozen soil in the Arctic thaws, bacteria will break down organic matter, releasing long-stored carbon into the warming atmosphere.
At the same time, plants will proliferate, nurtured by balmier temperatures, more nutrients from decomposing soil and the increasing abundance of the greenhouse gas they depend on for growth.
These connected but contrasting changes have raised a question for scientists who study the causes and consequences of global climate change: Will the shrubs and incipient forests spreading across the Arctic compensate for the permafrost's rising release of carbon, blunting its impact on a warming planet? Or, with twice as much carbon locked up in the permafrost as now present in the atmosphere, will the lush growth become overwhelmed — like a kitchen sponge put down to stem a water main break?
Researchers led by a University of Florida ecologist may have an answer. In a paper set to appear May 28 in the journal Nature, the team reports experimental results suggesting tundra plant growth may keep up with rising carbon dioxide initially.
But if thawing continues in a warmer world, the permafrost will spew carbon for decades, and the plants will become overwhelmed — unable to sop up the excess carbon despite even the most vigorous growth.
“At first, with the plants offsetting the carbon dioxide, it will appear that everything is fine, but actually this conceals the initial destabilization of permafrost carbon," said Ted Schuur, a UF associate professor of ecology and lead author of the paper. "But it doesn't last, because there is so much carbon in the permafrost that eventually the plants can't keep up."
Schuur noted most of the 13 million square kilometers, or roughly 5 million square miles, of permafrost in Alaska, Canada, Siberia and parts of Europe remain frozen. However, thawing already occurring around its southern edges is expected to expand this century.
Should that occur, this study suggests the permafrost could lose in the range of 1 gigaton of carbon, or 1 billion tons, per year - about the same order of magnitude as being added by current deforestation of the tropics, another large biospheric source, Schuur said.
While burning fossil fuels contributes considerably more carbon, about 8.5 gigatons annually, that process can at least in theory be controlled - whereas once the permafrost thaw begins, it sets up a self-reinforcing loop far from human activity and potentially difficult to stop.
That highlights the urgent need to address human-caused emissions now, Schuur said.
"It is not an option to be putting insulation on top of the tundra," he said. "If we address our own emissions, either by reducing deforestation or controlling emissions from fossil fuels, that's the key to minimizing the changes in the permafrost carbon pool."
Researchers from UF used hand-built, automated chambers to trap and measure carbon dioxide losses in Alaska year-round from 2004 through 2006. Thawing at the research sites near Denali National Park, in central Alaska, varies considerably, with some plots much more extensively thawed than others.
The researchers determined how long each spot had been thawing using long-term data from permafrost-monitoring instruments combined with historical aerial photographs. With a total of 18 of the automated chambers, they measured the release and uptake of carbon between the tundra and the atmosphere. This resulted in a measurement of net ecosystem carbon exchange - the total carbon each spot lost, or gained, due to thawing permafrost.
The results were clear.
Tundra sites that had thawed for the past 15 years gained net carbon, as increasingly verdant plant growth was greater than the permafrost's carbon losses. However, radiocarbon dating of carbon dioxide showed that old carbon from the permafrost was already being released in higher amounts due to thaw - signifying that all was not well with the permafrost carbon even in that time period. The site that began thawing decades before gained net carbon emission to the atmosphere, revealing that more thaw caused significantly more old carbon loss — despite greening of the vegetation, including more shrubs.
Said Jason Vogel, a UF postdoctoral associate and author of the paper: "The plants are still growing faster in the extensively thawed area, but that's not enough to keep up with the greater microbial activity releasing old carbon from deeper in the soil."
As a result, even as the Arctic greens, its escalating old carbon loss "could make permafrost a large biospheric carbon source in a warmer world," according to the paper.

Source:http://www.clas.ufl.edu/events/news/articles/20090527-permafrost.html

Plant Fossils give First Real Picture of Earliest Neotropical Rainforests

A team of researchers including a University of Florida paleontologist has used a rich cache of plant fossils discovered in Colombia to provide the first reliable evidence of how Neotropical rainforests looked 58 million years ago.
Researchers from the Smithsonian Institution and UF, among others, found that many of the dominant plant families existing in today’s Neotropical rainforests — including legumes, palms, avocado and banana — have maintained their ecological dominance despite major changes in South America’s climate and geological structure.
The study, which appears this week in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examined more than 2,000 megafossil specimens, some nearly 10 feet long, from the Cerrejón Formation in northern Colombia. The fossils are from the Paleocene epoch, which occurred in the 5- to 7-million-year period following the massive extinction event responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs.
“Neotropical rainforests have an almost nonexistent fossil record,” said study co-author Fabiany Herrera, a graduate student at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus. “These specimens allow us to actually test hypotheses about their origins for the first time ever.”
Herrera said the new specimens, discovered in 2003, also provide information for future studies that promise to provide an even stronger understanding of the plants that formed the earliest Neotropical communities.
Many previous assumptions and hypotheses on the earliest rainforests are based on studies of pollen fossils, which did not provide information about climate, forest structure, leaf morphology or insect herbivory.
The new study provides evidence Neotropical rainforests were warmer and wetter in the late Paleocene than today but were composed of the same plant families that now thrive in rainforests. “We have the fossils to prove this,” Herrera said. “It is also intriguing that while the Cerrejón rainforest shows many of the characteristics of modern equivalents, plant diversity is lower.”
The site, one of the world’s largest open-pit coal mines, also yielded the fossil for the giant snake known as Titanoboa, described by UF scientists earlier this year.
“These new plant fossils show us that the forest during the time of Titanoboa, 58 million years ago, was similar in many ways to that of today,” said Florida Museum vertebrate paleontologist and biology professor Jonathan Bloch, who described Titanoboa but was not part of the rainforest study. “Like Titanoboa, which is clearly related to living boas and anacondas, the ancient forest of northern Colombia had similar families of plants as we see today in that ecosystem. The foundations of the Neotropical rainforests were there 58 million years ago.”
Megafossils found at the Cerrejón site made it possible to use leaf structure to identify specimens down to the genus level. This resolution allowed the identification of plant genera that still exist in Neotropical rainforests. With pollen fossils, specimens can be categorized only to the family level.
Researchers were surprised by the relative lack of diversity found in the Paleocene rainforest, Herrera said. Statistical analyses showed that the plant communities found in the Cerrejón Formation were 60 percent to 80 percent less diverse than those of modern Neotropical rainforests. Evidence of herbivory also showed a low diversity level among insects.
The study’s authors say the relative lack of diversity indicates either the beginning of rainforest species diversification or the recovery of existing species from the Cretaceous extinction event.
The researchers estimate the Paleocene rainforest received about 126 inches of rainfall annually and had an average annual temperature greater than 86 degrees. The Titanoboa study, which used different methods, estimated an average temperature between 89 and 91 degrees. Today the region’s temperatures average about 81 degrees.
Herrera is now comparing fossils from the Cerrejón site to specimens from other Paleocene sites in Colombia to see how far the early rainforest extended geographically. He is also examining fossils from a Cretaceous site to determine differences in composition before and after the extinction event.

Source:http://www.clas.ufl.edu/events/news/articles/20091021-neotropical.html

South Asia Taps Tourism Potential for Inclusive and Sustainable Growth

Efforts by Nepal, India and Bangladesh to take advantage of the tourism potential of their rich natural and cultural attractions, including many of the world’s major Buddhist sites, are getting support from the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

ADB Board of Directors today approved a total of $57.5 million in grants and loans for the South Asia Tourism Infrastructure Development Project, which will develop and improve infrastructure and services for key tourism sites in the three countries. It will also help increase the capacity of sector agencies to sustainably manage and protect sites, and will target increased involvement by local communities in tourism.
South Asia is one of the poorer regions of the world but has many renowned natural and cultural attractions, including the world’s highest mountain and the Sacred Garden in Lumbini, Nepal, where Buddha was born, the Rumtek Buddhist Monastery in India’s Sikkim state, and ancient monasteries and temples in western Bangladesh. Countries in the sub-region, including India, Nepal and Bangladesh have formed a working group for collective action to tap the synergies of their complementary tourism sites in order to expand tourism. However, development has been hindered by limited connectivity to sites, inadequate infrastructure, and a lack of capacity by sector agencies to develop and manage key destinations.
The project will target transport and other infrastructure upgrades and will improve water supply, sanitation and solid waste management services to enhance the environment at key sites. Support will be given to increase the capacity of sector agencies to sustainably manage and protect attractions, while steps will be taken to increase involvement by local communities in the tourism sector.
“Tourism plays an important role in the regional economy and this project will benefit around 2.4 million people through increased income and employment, health and environmental improvements, and reduced travel time,” said Gülfer Cezayirli, Principal Urban Development Specialist in ADB’s South Asia Department.
"The project features a subregional approach to tourism development that will bring wider benefits than a single country approach, and will help spread jobs and income to areas currently bypassed by existing tourism markets," added Ms. Cezayirli. "It includes a program to ensure that poor and remote communities have the knowledge and skills to take advantage of new tourism opportunities."
Along with ADB’s loans and grants, the governments of the three countries, and the OPEC Fund for International Development, will provide the balance of the project cost of $89.5 million.
India will receive a loan of $20 million equivalent from ADB’s ordinary capital resources. Nepal will receive a grant of $12.75 million, and a loan of $12.75 million equivalent, both from ADB’s concessional Asian Development Fund (ADF). Bangladesh will receive a $12 million equivalent ADF loan.
The project executing agencies are Nepal’s Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviation, India’s Sikkim State Department of Tourism, and Bangladesh’s Department of Archaeology, Ministry of Cultural Affairs.The project is due for completion by September 2014.

Source:http://finchannel.com/news_flash/Travel_Biz_News/51948_South_Asia_Taps_Tourism_Potential_for_Inclusive_and_Sustainable_Growth/

Indian engineer 'builds' new glaciers to stop global warming

Chewang Norphel, 76, has "built" 12 new glaciers already and is racing to create five more before he dies.
By then he hopes he will have trained enough new "icemen" to continue is work and save the world's "third icecap" from being transformed into rivers.
His race against time is shared by Manmohan Singh, India's prime minister who called on the region's Himalayan nations, including China, Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan, to form a united front to tackle glacial melting.
The great Himalayan glaciers, including Kashmir's Siachen glacier, feed the region's most important rivers, which irrigate farm land in Tibet, Nepal, Bangladesh and throughout the Indian sub-continent. The apparent acceleration in glacial melting has been blamed for the increase in floods which have destroyed homes and crops.
Chewang Norphel, the "Iceman of Ladakh", however believes he has an answer.
By diverting meltwater through a network of pipes into artificial lakes in the shaded side of mountain valleys, he says he has created new glaciers.
A dam or embankment is built to keep in the water, which freezes at night and remains frozen in the absence of direct sunlight. The water remains frozen until March, when the start of summer melts the new glacier and releases the water into the rivers below.
So far, Mr Norphel's glaciers have been able to each store up to one million cubic feet of ice, which in turn can irrigate 200 hectares of farm land. For farmers, that can make the difference between crop failure and a bumper crop of more than 1,000 tons of wheat.
The "iceman" says he has seen the effects of global warming on farmland as snows have become thinner on the ground and ice rivers have melted away never to return.
His own work has now been recognised by the Indian government, which has given him £16,000 to build five new glaciers. But time is his enemy, he told The Hindustan Times. "I'm planning to train villagers with instruction CDs that I have made, so that I can pass on the knowledge before I die," he said.

Source:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/6449982/Indian-engineer-builds-new-glaciers-to-stop-global-warming.html

Climate change could displace 600 million people, report warns

Climate change could force up 150 million climate refugees to flee their countries in the next 40 years, a report from the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) warns.

The EJF claim that between 500 to 600 million people, equivalent to ten per cent of the world’s population, are at extreme risk of displacement by climate change.

A day after coming to power last year, President Mohamed Nasheed declared his intentions of setting up a sovereign fund to relocate the Maldives 350,000 people if sea level rises swamped the island nation.

“We are just 1.5m over sea level and anything over that, any rise in sea level - anything even near that - would basically wipe off the Maldives, so we will be affected very quickly - and very soon,” said Nasheed to the authors of the EJA report.

As one of the lowest-lying countries in the world, the Maldives is vulnerable to sea level rises. In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said sea level rises of up to 59cm within a century would submerge many of the archipelago’s 1,192 islands.

Around 80 per cent of the Maldives total land area is less than 1m above sea level and the highest point is 2.4m above sea level. Further, the EJA report noted that 40 per cent of the population, 70 per cent of fisheries infrastructure, 80 per cent of powerhouses and 99 per cent of all tourist accommodation is within 100m of the coastline.

The report stated that nearly one-third of countries have more than 10 per cent of their land within 5m of sea level while 11 countries are below 5m and five of these would be threatened by only a 1m sea level rise.

Sea level rises due to melt-water from glaciers and ice sheets as well as thermal expansion of water in seas and oceans will result in beach erosion, coral bleaching, coastal flooding, damaged coastal infrastructure and salinisation of freshwater sources, the EJA report adds.

Small Island Developing States, such as the Maldives, have the largest share of land in low-lying coastal zones and are home to six million people. These countries, the report notes, are disproportionately burdened with the impacts of climate change, despite being among the smallest emitters.

Further, climate change affects those countries that are least able to adapt as well as people who are both economically and socially disadvantaged. Paradoxically, the report said, many of the countries worst hit have the lowest greenhouse gas emissions per capita.

The report advised the creation of a legal term for people who migrate as a result of environmental degradation and climate change so that they are offered protection.

It added that in 2006, delegates from the Maldives government proposed an amendment to the 1951 UN Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees to extend the definition to include environmental refugees.

The EJF argues the need for a convention for environmental refugees and in the report, Professor Frank Biermann and Ingrid Boas of Vrije University in Holland, proposed five points to be included in the convention:

* Planned and voluntary resettlement and reintegration as opposed to ad hoc emergency relief responses

* Climate refugees to be treated the same as permanent immigrants

* Any convention must be tailored to an entire group of people, including entire nations

* Support for national governments to protect their people

* Protection of climate refugees must be seen as a global problem and global responsibilityThe foundation further contends a financial mechanism must be set up to ensure funding is available for climate change adaptation.The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change estimates that US$49 billion to US$171 billion will be needed annually by 2030 for adaptation to climate change.

Putting this figure into context, the report noted that in 2008, the nine biggest US banks paid US$32.6 billion in bonuses. The report comes less than a month before world leaders will congregate in Copenhagen to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

Discussions have so far stalled with the developing world arguing rich, industrialised nations must take the lion’s share of the responsibility for climate change. Meanwhile, the latter are loath to commit to drastic cuts in emissions.

Last month, Nasheed led his cabinet in the world’s first underwater dive to highlight the country’s vulnerability to rising sea levels and call for leaders to commit to cuts that will reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350ppm.

Source:http://www.minivannews.com/news_detail.php?id=7645

Fight for climate and food security may pass through agriculture

Those for food security and climate change containment are two battles that can be fought together through sustainable agriculture, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. A recent FAO report, indeed, stressed that agriculture not only suffers the impacts of climate change, it is also responsible for 14 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. But agriculture has the potential to be an important part of the solution, through mitigation - reducing and/or removing - a significant amount of global emissions, FAO says. Some 70 percent of this mitigation potential could be realized in developing countries.

"Many effective strategies for climate change mitigation from agriculture also benefit food security, development and adaptation to climate change," said FAO Assistant Director-General Alexander Müller. "The challenge is to capture these potential synergies, while managing trade-offs that may have negative impacts on food security."The report, Food Security and Agricultural Mitigation in Developing Countries: Options for Capturing Synergies was launched during the Barcelona Climate Change Talks from November 2 to 6.

The most important technical options for climate change mitigation from agriculture are improvements in cropland and grazing land management and the restoration of organic soils and degraded lands.

Other options involve difficult trade-offs, with benefits for mitigation but potentially negative consequences for food security and development. In some cases, there are synergies in the long-run, but trade-offs in the short-run.

Biofuel production provides a clean alternative to fossil fuel but can compete for land and water resources needed for food production. Restoration of organic soils enables greater carbon sequestration, but may reduce the land available for food production. Rangeland restoration may improve carbon sequestration but involves short-term reductions in herder incomes by limiting the number of livestock.

Some trade-offs can be managed through measures to increase efficiency or through payment of incentives or compensation.Many of the technical mitigation options are readily available and could be deployed immediately. But while these actions often generate a net positive benefit over time, they involve significant up-front costs.

Other barriers, such as uncertain property rights, lack of information and technical assistance or access to appropriate seeds and fertilizer, also need to be overcome. "Linking to ongoing agricultural development efforts that address these same issues is one cost effective way of doing this," said Kostas Stamoulis, Director of the FAO Agricultural Development Economics Division.A range of financing options—public, public-private and carbon markets—are currently under negotiation for climate change mitigation actions in developing countries. These could be future sources of finance for agricultural mitigation actions, the report says, as could a dedicated international fund to support agricultural mitigation in developing countries and coordination with financing from official development assistance for agricultural development.

Source:http://en.greenplanet.net/lifestyle/eco-sustainability/1104-fight-for-climate-and-food-security-may-pass-through-agriculture.html

DFID announces £50m grant to Nepal on climate change

UK government´s Department for International Department (DFID) has announced £50 million (US$ 80 million) grant assistance to Nepal for tackling climate change. The grant was provided to Nepal in view of its vulnerability to climate change impacts. Prime Minister Gordon Brown offered his support to the programme, launched less than a month before December’s crucial Copenhagen negotiations.
The Prime Minister said: "Countries right across the world need to take urgent and radical action to tackle climate change. The poorest and most vulnerable countries need our help to do so. That is why we are announcing today a £40m package of support to work with Nepal to tackle deforestation. And with less than a month to go to Copenhagen, it is time for the world to step up and make the bold decisions we need to secure a global, comprehensive and binding climate change deal.”
“Nepal is in the front line of the battle against climate change with the Himalayan glaciers melting faster than anywhere else in the world,” said UK International Development Minister Gareth Thomas, according to a statement issued here by the Department for International Development (DFID). “Deforestation is Nepal’s biggest source of greenhouse gases and we need to reverse that trend.”

“We would like to ensure participation of maximum local people in our reforestation program,” Simon Lucas, Climate Change Officer at DFID Nepal, said. DFID claims to have contributed towards reforestation in Nepal by at least 10 per cent through its various programs in the past.
“A fair and equitable deal in the upcoming Copenhagen climate change meet is vital to help ensure that the Least Developed Countries, including Nepal are given necessary funds and support to fight the devastating impacts of climate change,” read the statement.
Out of the total grant, £40 million ($ 66 million) will go towards protecting Nepal’s forests by supporting the National Forestry Programme (NFP) with other donors. The NFP aims to help increase incomes of around 1.2 million people by 50 percent. The ten-year National Forestry Programme will give Nepalese communities ownership of the thousands of hectares of forest currently under government control, helping some of the world’s poorest people to earn an income from their natural resources and put a stop to the rampant deforestation currently blighting the country. The UK will offer another £10 million to help increase Nepal’s resilience to climate change impacts. For this, measures like improving emergency warning systems, protecting the vulnerable from floods and landslides and supporting community water schemes to increase their ability to cope with drought will be taken. The DFID will be spending up to £50 million ($80 million) over the next 10 years to help tackle climate change and improve lives of the poor in Nepal.
Nepal currently has the highest per-capita carbon emissions in South Asia, at 6.6 tonnes per person per year, and the vast majority of this is caused by deforestation. The Government of Nepal does not currently have the capacity to monitor all of the nation’s forests, which cover 40% of the country, and has already handed over a fifth of Nepal’s forests to local communities to help counter this. By allowing communities to earn a living from the forests, the programme aims to increase the incomes of 1.2 million people by 50 per cent. A projected reduction in carbon emissions could also raise around £10 million on the international carbon markets.
Earlier this year, the UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown had called for an international financial initiative worth $100 billion to support developing countries to combat climate change. In response to his call, the European Union (EU) agreed to increase the figure to $135 billion. The support from DFID, which has already announced 172 million pounds to Nepal over the next three years, comes as a part of the international initiative.

Source: The Kathmandu Post, MyRepublica, DFID Press Release