Nature can’t be seen and analyzed linearily. It’s always more complex. That’s why we must look at how the cycles of carbon, water and energy are closely coupled. Here is a draft sketch of mine to show this.
Tomorrow, 18/10/22, the Climate Landscapes Conference, https://climate-landscapes.org, will look into this in more detail. Come and join us!
And check out my presentation “Planting water”.
Countdown for our Climate Landscapes Conference, https://climate-landscapes.org, with one day to go. We’ll bring together scientists and practitioners from around the world under the (sub)title “Working with plants, soils and water to cool the climate and rehydrate Earth’s landscapes“. Come and join us!
Rising temperatures and weather extremes such as droughts and floods threaten the Earth and the human population, besides biodiversity loss, land degradation and other major issues. However, it seems we have a solution for many of these issues right before us: We can work with plants, soils and water to cool the climate and rehydrate and restore Earth’s landscapes.
With our “Climate Landscapes Conference“, we want to draw attention to the interrelationships and potentials of vegetation, soils, water and climate to cool the climate and rehydrate earth’s landscapes. A combination of scientific presentations, enterprise engagements and best practices will show
Our conference aims to provide a forum for people from different fields of science, practice, politics, administration, business and media. You will have the chance to learn about the interwoven natural relationships from world-renowned speakers and participants, discuss the appropriate solutions, create new networks and find ways for the next urgent steps.
For more information and registration please check out our website.
Model results show that photosynthesis and evapotranspiration increase significantly in the Amazon during the dry season when plants are allowed to redistribute soil water. Plants draw water up and deposit it into the surface layers, and this water subsidy sustains transpiration at rates that deep roots alone cannot accomplish. The water used for dry season transpiration is from the deep storage layers in the soil, recharged during the previous wet season. We estimate that hydraulic redistribution (HR) increases dry season (July to November) transpiration by ~40% over the Amazon. Our model also indicates that such an increase in transpiration over the Amazon and other drought-stressed regions affects the seasonal cycles of temperature through changes in latent heat, thereby establishing a direct link between plant root functioning and climate.
And, hey, join us for the Climate Landscapes Conference, 18.-19.10.2022.
It’s (almost) all about forests and water: An investigation of naturally occurring water recycling in rainforests finally marries the results of global climate models with observations. Alarmingly, it also suggests that deforestation can greatly reduce tropical rainfall.
Join us next week for much more insights in our Climate Landscapes Conference.
We have reworked the agenda for our upcoming Climate Landscapes Conference. We have over 20 fascinating speakers lined up, all with deep knowledge in their fields, showing you how vegetation, soils, water & climate are interconnected, and how we can successfully cool the climate and rehydrate Earth’s landscapes. Don’t miss these incredible insights for creating a better world!
Under the (sub)title “Working with plants, soils and water to cool the climate and rehydrate Earth’s landscapes” we are inviting you to the upcoming online Climate Landscapes Conference, 18.-19.10.2022.
Rising temperatures and weather extremes such as droughts and floods threaten the Earth and the human population, besides biodiversity loss, land degradation and other major issues. However, it seems we have a solution for many of these issues right before us: We can work with plants, soils and water to cool the climate and rehydrate and restore Earth’s landscapes.
With our “Climate Landscapes Conference“, we want to draw attention to the interrelationships and potentials of vegetation, soils, water and climate to cool the climate and rehydrate earth’s landscapes. A combination of scientific presentations, enterprise engagements and best practices will show
Our conference aims to provide a forum for people from different fields of science, practice, politics, administration, business and media. You will have the chance to learn about the interwoven natural relationships from world-renowned speakers and participants, discuss the appropriate solutions, create new networks and find ways for the next urgent steps.
For more information and registration please check out our website.
Judith Schwartz’ book “Water in Plain Sight” is a really great read on all these interconnections between vegetation, soil, water, atmosphere and climate. If you haven’t read it yet, go for it.
The publisher agreed to make available the chapter “Missing the Water for the Trees” in PDF format, as this subject becomes more and more attention, and is so important for cooling the climate. So, here you go with the chapter. Enjoy!
And join as at the Climate Landscapes Conference, online, 18.-19.10.2022 in order to learn from experts from various fields and discuss with others.
Rising temperatures and weather extremes such as droughts and floods threaten the Earth and the human population, besides biodiversity loss, land degradation and other major issues. However, it seems we have a solution for many of these issues right before us: We can work with plants, soils and water to cool the climate and rehydrate and restore Earth’s landscapes.
With our “Climate Landscapes Conference“, we want to draw attention to the interrelationships and potentials of vegetation, soils, water and climate to cool the climate and rehydrate earth’s landscapes. A combination of scientific presentations, enterprise engagements and best practices will show
Our conference aims to provide a forum for people from different fields of science, practice, politics, administration, business and media. You will have the chance to learn about the interwoven natural relationships from world-renowned speakers and participants, discuss the appropriate solutions, create new networks and find ways for the next urgent steps.
For more information and registration please check out our website.
Roots can help to hydrate landscapes and decrease wildfire risk: “In the semi-arid climate of the Great Basin in Utah, sagebrush grows in loam-skeleton soil, soil that sits on beds of alluvial gravel. Two ecologists, Richards and Caldwell set out to measure experimentally the hydraulic lift hypothesis – that is the assumption, that the roots of the trees bring up groundwater and spread it forth into the upper soil layer. They found that the sagebrush’s roots were indeed bringing up groundwater and spreading it around to the surrounding soil. And not only that, when they put a special isotope of water around the sagebrushes roots, they found that that isotope then spread to neighboring plants. It was curious tree behavior because one might think a tree would keep all its water to itself, and not pass any into the surrounding soil, or to other trees. Rather the ecosystem seemed to be in a state of cooperation, passing the water around to keep all species hydrated. If the whole ecosystem survives better then individual species do too. Its the concept of group selection. […] Her team calculated that a quarter of trees and shrubs in the US regularly tap into the bedrock layer for water, and in California and Texas over 50% of the groundwater used by trees comes from the bedrock layer.”
Fascinating: “Coral reefs produce a volatile substance called dimethylsulphide or DMS which oxidizes in the atmosphere to produce cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). These are tiny sulphur aerosol particles around which water vapor condenses to form clouds, and lead to precipitation. Yet Jones has discovered that even a slight rise in ocean temperatures could affect this natural process, making climate change a significant threat to clouds (and precipitation) seeded by coral reefs. What this suggests is that fewer CCN (cloud condensation nuclei) are produced over coral reefs during high sea surface temperatures and so cloud cover could be expected to be lower or non-existent during high seas surface temperatures. This is a feedback system where the warmer temperatures decrease cloud cover through shutting down the coral’s production of DMS, which in turn further warms the ocean since more sunlight reaches the sea surface. Once the sea surface temperatures exceed the coral’s tolerance level, the corals suffer bleaching, which leads to wide-spread coral stress and even mortality.
Really impressive: The installation of thousands of rock detention structures in the Turkey Pen Watershed, of the Chiricahua Mountains in SE Arizona, provided a 30-year case study to consider low tech and low-cost Natural Infrastructure in dryland watersheds. The USGS systematic study, through observation and experiment, offers verifiable data that documents their efficacy as a Nature-based Solution, that can provide climate adaptation and mitigation benefits here in the Chiricahua Mountains and beyond.
“A group of researchers have posed a fascinating — and downright mind bending — thought experiment: If a planet like Earth can be “alive,” can it also have a mind of its own? The team published a paper exploring this question in the International Journal of Astrobiology. In it, they present the idea of “planetary intelligence,” which describes the collective knowledge and cognition of an entire planet. The researchers point to evidence that underground networks of fungi can communicate to suggest that large-scale networks of life could form a vast invisible intelligence that profoundly alters the condition of the entire planet.” Source
Our approach follows the recognition among researchers that the correct scale to understand key aspects of life and its evolution is planetary, as opposed to the more traditional focus on individual species. […] We argue that explorations of planetary intelligence, defined as the acquisition and application of collective knowledge operating at a planetary scale and integrated into the function of coupled planetary systems, can prove a useful framework for understanding possible paths of the long-term evolution of inhabited planets including future trajectories for life on Earth and predicting features of intelligentially steered planetary evolution on other worlds.
Over the course of 20 years, Brazilian photojournalist Sebastião Ribeiro Salgado and his wife Lélia have transformed a barren plot of land into a thriving forest.
Interesting explanation on the why/how/if of extreme weather attribution maths: In the past two years or so we have seen many headlines about extreme weather events: floods, droughts, heat waves, hurricanes. In some cases, climate scientists claim they can “attribute” those extreme weather events to climate change. But what exactly does that mean? How does one calculate this? And how reliable are those estimates? This video is a brief intro into the young research area of extreme event attribution.
We find that tropical deforestation leads to strong net global warming as a result of both CO2 and biophysical effects. From the tropics to a point between 30◦N and 40◦N, biophysical cooling by standing forests is both local and global, adding to the global cooling effect of CO2 sequestered by forests. In the mid- latitudes up to 50◦N, deforestation leads to modest net global warming as warming from released forest carbon outweighs a small opposing biophysical cooling. Beyond 50◦N large scale deforestation leads to a net global cooling due to the dominance of biophysical processes (particularly increased albedo) over warming from CO2 released. Locally at all latitudes, forest biophysical impacts far outweigh CO2 effects, promoting local climate stability by reducing extreme temperatures in all seasons and times of day. The importance of forests for both global climate change mitigation and local adaptation by human and non-human species is not adequately captured by current carbon-centric metrics, particularly in the context of future climate warming.
Lake in Chile is disappearing:
The Penuelas reservoir in central Chile was until twenty years ago the main source of water for the city of Valparaiso, holding enough water for 38,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. Water for only two pools now remains.
Normally, low-pressure storms from the Pacific unload precipitation over Chile in winter, recharging aquifers and packing the Andes mountains with snow.
But naturally occurring warming of the sea off Chile’s coast, which blocks storms from arriving, has been intensified by rising global sea temperature, according to a global study on sea temperature and rainfall deficits. Ozone depletion and greenhouse gasses in the Antarctic, meanwhile, exacerbate weather patterns that draw storms away from Chile, according to a study on variables affecting Antarctic weather.
Analysis of tree rings going back 400 years shows how rare the current drought is[…]. It is totally unrivalled for duration or intensity.
Not sure if this article is still correct after 10 years of further model refining. I presume that yes, as these water interactions are really difficult to model.
There is now ample evidence that an inadequate representation of clouds and moist convection, or more generally the coupling between atmospheric water and circulation, is the main limitation in current representations of the climate system.
Rather than reducing biases stemming from an inadequate representation of basic processes, additional complexity has multiplied the ways in which these biases introduce uncertainties in climate simulations.
This diversity of responses arises because, at low latitudes, the coupling between water and circulation is disproportionately dependent on the representation of unresolved processes, such as moist convection and cloud formation. The mid-latitudes show more robust responses because much of the energy transport is carried by baroclinic eddies; these, too, are fundamentally coupled to water, but they are much better described and resolved by modern GCMs
John Oliver discusses the water shortage in the American west, how it’s already impacting the people who live there. And what God has to say about it.
Partially comedy, but with much really interesting information.
Good read, but only focused on the consumption side. The viewpoint missing for me is that we totally mismanage the water infiltration potential.
In many places the answer is yes – if we continue as we have done. The rest of the world could learn a lot from Denmark, one of the few countries to have reduced its water consumption.
Danish water consumption today is approximately 40 percent lower than it was in 1980 (see graph 3), and it is still decreasing. Denmark managed to reduce the curve through a combination of greatly increased water prices (including green taxes), water saving campaigns, more water efficient technology in households and industry, and a reduction of water loss from the mains supply.
Great compilation of fascinating large scale earth healing projects:
Arvari river restoration, Rhajastan, NW-India, Rajenda Singh, Tarun Bharat Sangh, 375 johads, river flows perennial again after 9 years of work after being dry for the whole year for 60 years, their initial work covered 500 km2 and 70 villages; they formed a river parliament to take control of the new water resources, in following years creation of >9000 water harvesting structures, four more dry rivers have become perennial,
Chikukwa project, Zimbabwe, dehydrated landscape, use of permaculture, water harvesting structures, trees above springs, terraces, swales, fencing, water collection,
80% of households are now food self-reliant, project grew to 188 villages, 40.000 people,
Gravis Jodhpur, Rhajastan, NW-India, Tar-Desert, wells empty in the dry season, small scale water harvesting structures, ponds, rock walls, harvesting monsoon rains in the short period when they fall, groundwater refilled for irrigation, 1500 villages, 1.3 Million people,
Paani foundation, Maharastra, W-India, water cup competition, contest between villages which village can install the most water harvesting structures over a 45 days period, thousands of villages have competed since 2016, 500 billion litres of water storage capacity, water tables replenished after one single season (!), irrigation agriculture now possible with at least two harvests (instead of only one rain dependant)
Plus Loess Plateau, which is very well known.
