These Americans may become ‘climate refugees’
Climate change has forced Shishmaref, Alaska residents to confront the prospect that they may have to relocate their entire village before it disappears.
Categories
Month: March 2017
Pumping oxygen into the bottom waters of Southwest Virginia’s drinking water reservoirs can reduce treatment costs and help fish and other aquatic life, according to an interdisciplinary research team with the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech.
The team has installed oxygenation systems in three reservoirs that serve Roanoke and surrounding county residents — Carvins Cove, Falling Creek, and Spring Hollow — and are monitoring them to see how increased oxygen levels affect the amount of metals in the water.
The Appalachian region’s geology results in high levels of iron and manganese in sediment that lines the bottom of the reservoir. If these metals are released from sediment into the drinking water, they can cause taste, staining, and odor issues.
However, pumping additional oxygen into the bottom waters of the reservoirs can keep these metals safely locked up in the sediment, even in warmer temperatures.
“Climate change is causing natural waters to warm, and warm water can’t hold as much oxygen as colder water can,” said Cayelan Carey, an assistant professor of biological sciences in the College of Science. “We’re testing these oxygen systems to see if they might provide an effective way to combat warming temperatures and provide people here with the best water possible in the future.”
The team — which includes ecologists Cayelan Carey and Quinn Thomas, an assistant professor of forest resources and environmental conservation in the College of Natural Resources and Environment, geoscientist Madeline Schreiber, environmental engineer John Little, and their students — recently received a seed grant from the Global Change Center to purchase a weather station for the project.
The station, located at Falling Creek Reservoir, allows them to plug real-time weather data into their models, which are constructed to pinpoint the best time to oxygenate the water. Previously, the team had relied on data from the weather station at the Roanoke-Blacksburg Regional Airport, which is 11 kilometers away, subject to different wind currents, and at a different elevation.
“Our seed grant program is designed to facilitate new interdisciplinary collaborations among faculty from all corners of campus” said Bill Hopkins, director of the Global Change Center. “The water reservoir team has been able to use their seed funding to launch a highly successful ecosystem-scale manipulation that is providing benefits to both the environment and society. They are now positioned to solve even bigger, more complex problems related to water resource management that have global implications.”
The oxygenation systems have already been a great investment, according to Jamie Morris, water production manager at the Western Virginia Water Authority (WVWA). The technology has reduced the amount of chemicals the authority has to apply to the water to treat it, which saves consumers money.
“We are really excited about our strong partnership with Virginia Tech on this project,” said Morris. “Not a lot of water utilities and agencies are looking at this, and certainly not in the form of the detailed information we’re getting from Virginia Tech. We’re grateful to receive this information, and also happy to help the students with their research projects.”
Approximately 10 students are working on the project.
Mary Lofton, of Crozet, Virginia, a doctoral student in Carey’s lab, is involved with assessing how phytoplankton in the water are responding to aspects of climate change, such as temperature change and increased storm intensity. She helps develop lake model scenarios with a focus on predicting future phytoplankton community dynamics.
“To me, it’s really powerful to see the research we conduct at Falling Creek Reservoir getting communicated to the water authority to inform their management decisions on a weekly basis during field season,” said Lofton, who is also an Interfaces of Global Change Fellow. “Our partnership has taught me what water quality information is most helpful from a reservoir management perspective, and how best to communicate our research so that the water authority has the tools they need to make good management decisions going forward.”
The water authority has partnered with Virginia Tech since the 1990s, when Little and his students first designed the oxygenation systems and placed them in Spring Hollow, Carvins Cove, and Falling Creek reservoirs. Former doctoral student Paul Gantzer ’08 even went on to start a company, Gantzer Water Resources Engineering LLC, based on the technologies he helped develop as a student at Virginia Tech.
“We have developed models for each of these systems and use them to improve the design and operation of these systems in the WVWA reservoirs as well as in other reservoirs around the world,” said Little, the Charles E. Via Jr. Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the College of Engineering.
“Working within an interdisciplinary group has allowed us to learn how each of our disciplines affects the reservoir ecosystem,” said Schreiber, a professor of geosciences in the College of Science. “And personally, it’s been incredibly rewarding to apply fundamental knowledge on ecological and biogeochemical processes to help improve drinking water quality for our region.”
Related
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Story by Lindsay Key, Communications Director, Fralin Life Science Institute
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Categories
Kids vs. Climate Change
“Biggest Case on the Planet” Pits Kids vs. Climate Change
By Laura Parker
Levi Draheim is a nine-year-old science geek. He founded an environmental club as a fourth grader and gives talks about climate change to audiences of grown-ups. His home is on a slender barrier island on Florida’s Atlantic coast, 21 miles south of Cape Canaveral and a five-minute walk from the beach. By mid-century, his sandy childhood playground could be submerged by rising seas. He will be just 42.
Nathan Baring is 17 and a high school junior in Fairbanks, Alaska—120 miles south of the Arctic Circle. He loves cold weather and skis. The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. Now winter snows that Baring once celebrated as early as August in Fairbanks can hold off until November.
By 2050, Arctic sea ice will have virtually disappeared, and temperatures in the interior, surrounding Fairbanks, will have risen by an additional 2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit, altering the boreal forest ecosystem. Nathan will be 50.
“I can deal with a few days of rain in February when it’s supposed to be 40 below,” he says. “But I can’t deal with the idea that what my parents experienced and what I have experienced will not exist for my children. I am a winter person. I won’t sit idly by and watch winter vanish.”
Baring and Draheim so lack confidence that they will inherit a healthy planet that they are suing the United States government for failing to adequately protect the Earth from the effects of climate change. They are among a group of 21 youths who claim the federal government’s promotion of fossil fuel production and its indifference to the risks posed by greenhouse gas emissions have resulted in “a dangerous destabilizing climate system” that threatens the survival of future generations. That lapse violates, the court papers argue, their fundamental constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property. The lawsuit also argues that the government violated the public trust doctrine, a legal concept grounded in ancient law that holds the government is responsible for protecting public resources, such as land and water—or in this case, the climate system—for public use.
The kids’ lawsuit was joined by acclaimed NASA climate scientist James Hansen, who began studying climate change in the 1970s and whose granddaughter, Sophie, is among the 21 young plaintiffs.
“In my opinion, this lawsuit is made necessary by the at-best schizophrenic, if not suicidal nature of U.S. climate and energy policy,” he told the court.
Last fall, U.S. District Court Judge Anne Aiken agreed with the youths’ claim. Her sweeping 54-page opinion laid the foundation for what looks to be a groundbreaking trial later this year. In her ruling, Aiken established, in effect, a new right for these children and teens: a right to expect they could live in a stable climate.
“I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society,” Aiken wrote. “Just as marriage is the foundation of the family, a stable climate system is quite literally the foundation of society, without which there would be neither civilization nor progress.”
She made clear that “this lawsuit is not about proving that climate change is happening or that human activity is driving it. For purposes of this motion, those facts are undisputed.”
And Aikens added: “Federal courts too often have been cautious and overly deferential in the arena of environmental law and the world has suffered for it.”
Mary Wood, a University of Oregon environmental law professor who pioneered the concept that the atmosphere should be treated as part of the public trust, calls the lawsuit “the biggest case on the planet.”
“This claim challenges the government’s entire fossil-fuel philosophy. The whole thing,” Wood says. “The scientists, on the other hand, are saying if we continue on our path without drastic cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, we are going to leave a barren planet that will not support broad human survival. You could not get claims more grave than that.”
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A Virginia Tech graduate student is living in one of the hottest and driest countries in the world this semester so that he can study how climate change, land management, and other human-caused phenomena impact a community of animals known as the cavity guild.
Composed of birds, reptiles, mammals, amphibians, and invertebrates, the cavity guild, biologically speaking, is a group of animals that depend on holes and crevices in trees for their nesting sites.
However, Namibia receives only 2-24 inches of rainfall annually, leaving the landscape devoid of large trees. To exacerbate the problem, trees that are able to survive and grow in such a water-scarce environment are subject to removal for charcoal production, a common energy source in Namibia.
“Species in this community are especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change due to their habitat needs,” said David Millican, of Greensboro, North Carolina, a doctoral student in the Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Science. “Weather in Namibia is highly variable, with yearly droughts occurring in unpredictable intervals. This variation in weather may likewise cause extreme variations in community dynamics, with some species opting not to breed in years of extreme drought and others altering the timing of their breeding in response to the altered rain schedule.”
The goal of Millican’s research is to provide critical information on how the cavity guild community is structured.
Topics of interest include what tree species are most utilized by cavity nesters, the most important processes of cavity formation, and the intensities of the competitive interactions between species. Answers to these questions will help ensure the preservation of the community and its members.
While in Namibia, Millican partners with the Cheetah Conservation Fund, an international nonprofit organization based just outside of Otjiwarongo. As a visiting researcher there, he has access to research facilities and the center’s farm properties for fieldwork. Currently, he is searching for and monitoring tree cavities in 20 sites, each approximately 40 acres in size.
“David’s work continues our lab’s tradition of conducting basic research with conservation applications and of studies of cavity guilds around the world,” said Jeff Walters, the Harold Bailey Professor of Biological Sciences in the College of Science and co-director of the Interfaces of Global Change graduate program. “He is seeking to determine how connections between cavity resources and the species who use them, and interactions between those species, determine the abundance and diversity of cavity-dwellers. That knowledge can inform forest-management practices in order to integrate conservation with the needs of the people that depend on these habitats.”
As an Interfaces of Global Change Fellow, Millican received a grant from Virginia Tech’s Global Change Center to add a social science component to his fieldwork this semester. Each year, the center, which is housed in the Fralin Life Science Institute, accepts proposals from graduate students to support interdisciplinary research and research-related travel that address both basic and applied aspects of global change science.
“David’s proposal stood out because he seeks to engage Namibian indigenous communities so that they can be part of the solution to this incredibly complex environmental problem. Most conservation issues require engagement of local stakeholders to be successful, and David is determined to make this a team effort,” said Bill Hopkins, the center’s director. “To this end, David has also surrounded himself with faculty expertise in ornithology, ecology, and social science, representing the type of interdisciplinary research that the center seeks to promote.”
To best prepare himself for engagement with stakeholders, Millican teamed up with Ashley Dayer, an assistant professor of human dimensions in the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation in the College of Natural Resources and Environment. Dayer, a social scientist, teaches a graduate course called Human Dimensions of Fisheries and Wildlife that educates students about how current domestic and international issues can be addressed through an understanding of human thought and behavior.
“Dr. Dayer and I are keen to understand the wildlife perceptions of communities throughout Namibia, including private landowners and tribal communities,” said Millican. “Namibia is a very diverse country, composed of communities with many different African tribal origins as well as European origins. To understand and incorporate the values of these unique communities into conservation outreach campaigns, we plan to hold focus group interviews with indigenous groups. Our goal is to understand how these different indigenous regions overlap and differ in their perceptions of wildlife to identify flagship species that could unite people in conservation action.”
Flagship species, as students learn in Dayer’s class, are an umbrella species for conservation of a habitat type or suite of species that are chosen for a conservation campaign based on their importance to people, rather than their ecological role. Flagship species are used to attract the attention of stakeholders to raise awareness and funds for conservation and to change people’s behaviors to promote conservation.
“Working with Dave on this research project is just one of the rewards I’ve experienced as a faculty member affiliated with the Global Change Center,” said Dayer. “He’s one of several Interfaces of Global Change Fellows that I’ve had the opportunity to teach in my class. Their passion for integrating social and ecological science inspires me; I am sure that this generation of conservation scientists is going to make a real difference in this world.”
Millican expects to hold stakeholder meetings as early as April.
Related Links:
- Learn what it’s like to be out in the field with David on the Virginia Tech Research Blog
- Video and slideshow available at VT news
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Story by Lindsay Key
Photo by Jelena Djakovic
The Global Change Center Distinguished Lecture Series welcomes
BRIAN RICHTER
Chief Scientist, Global Water Program of The Nature Conservancy
President, Sustainable Waters
“Chasing Water in a Dynamically Changing World”
Friday, April 7, 2017, 4:00-5:00 p.m.
The Lyric Theatre
Brian Richter has been a global leader in water science and conservation for more than 25 years. He is the Chief Scientist for the Global Water Program of The Nature Conservancy, an international conservation organization, where he promotes sustainable water use and management with governments, corporations, and local communities. He is also the President of Sustainable Waters, a global water education organization. Brian has consulted on more than 150 water projects worldwide. He serves as a water advisor to some of the world’s largest corporations, investment banks, and the United Nations, and has testified before the U.S. Congress on multiple occasions. He also teaches a course on Water Sustainability at the University of Virginia.
Brian has developed numerous scientific tools and methods to support river protection and restoration efforts, including the Indicators of Hydrologic Alteration software that is being used by water managers and scientists worldwide. He has published many scientific papers on the importance of ecologically sustainable water management in international science journals, and co-authored a book with Sandra Postel entitled Rivers for Life: Managing Water for People and Nature (Island Press, 2003). His new book, Chasing Water: A Guide for Moving from Scarcity to Sustainability, has now been published in six languages.
A book-signing event will be held immediately following the public lecture.
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LECTURE ABSTRACT:
Chasing Water in a Rapidly Changing World
Water shortages are now affecting half the world’s population, disrupting food and energy security as well as urban water supplies in many cities. The overuse of water and associated drying of rivers, lakes, and aquifers has become a leading cause of freshwater species imperilment. Climate change forecasts foretell even greater challenges in many water-scarce regions. These threats to our water future can be ameliorated, but it will require bold and concerted action on the part of governments, city leaders, and farmers. This presentation will highlight the key solutions that must be implemented.
More Information:
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We are proud of IGC Fellow, Max Ragozzino, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Entomology at Virginia Tech. Max recently participated in the Center of Communicating Science’s “Nutshell Games”, where graduate students were encouraged to describe their research “in a 90-second nutshell”. Max nailed this challenge and tied with two other contestants for first place!
Congratulations, Max!
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Please join us on Monday, April 10th for “Ecologies of Injustice” — a panel discussion hosted by The Global Forum on Urban and Regional Resilience.
This panel discussion brings together scholars at Virginia Tech whose work intersects the concerns of environmental justice, with community members, and interested individuals to increase our understanding of the diffuse ways that environmental injustice is experienced in our contemporary world. The conversation encompasses political, economic, social, and environmental factors that precipitate disproportionate exposure to environmental risk or access to resources and is designed to build bridges across the Virginia Tech campus and greater-Blacksburg community.
Topics addressed include:* food justice and labor;
* technological domination;
* regulatory and legal frameworks;
* artistic spaces for environmental resistance;
* and . . . many others.
Date: Monday, April 10th
Time: 5:30 PM
Location: Solitude Room
Inn at Virginia TechCo-sponsors include: Office of International Research, Education, and Development; ASPECT; Department of History; Department of Political Science; Department of Science and Technology in Society; Environmental Coalition; Landscape Architecture Program; Coalition for Justice; School of Public and International Affairs; Department of Sociology; the Center for Leadership in Global Sustainability; the Office of Inclusion and Diversity;
and the Institute for Society, Culture, and the Environment.
Please direct any questions to Jennifer Lawrence, jennlaw@vt.edu or 540-231-4458.
EVENT FLYER
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Dr. Katherine V. Calvin will be speaking on March 24th at 11:15 a.m. in Fralin Auditorium, as part of the FREC seminar series. Her talk will be titled, “The Influence of Land on Energy, Water, and Climate”.
Dr. Calvin is a research economist working at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Joint Global Change Research Institute (JGCRI) in College Park, Maryland. Her work has been featured in the latests IPCC reports and she was recently appointed to the National Research Council study team.
Her research focuses on the influence of biofuels on land-use decisions, the interaction between agriculture and climate systems, measuring the consequence of delayed climate change regulation as well as predicting future energy-economy-land-climate interactions.
At JGCRI, Dr. Calvin works with the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM). GCAM enables researchers to explore the drivers, consequences, and responses to global change, taking into account all sectors of the economy and all regions of the world.
For more information about Dr. Calvin, please see her website.
If you would like to meet with Dr. Calvin while she is on campus, please contact Ben Ahlswede (bswede@vt.edu) in the department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation.
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Categories
Scientific Facts Don’t Win Arguments
By Dr. Bruce Hull
Do you want your science to influence global change? Don’t rely on facts.
Your facts are worthless because of something psychologists call the confirmation bias. The default psychological setting for most people is to search for and remember facts that confirm initial beliefs and ignore or forget unsupportive evidence. The web makes it easy for anyone to find the support they crave—alternative facts are just one click away from your scientific facts.
Worse, facts can be counterproductive because people are also wired to practice identity protecting reasoning–IPR. People use their reasoning prowess to protect their identity when they feel under threat. As soon as scientists start to explain climate change with facts, for example, they trigger a denier’s identity protective reasoning. We say carbon dioxide or albedo and their inner voice starts thinking: experts are out-of-touch elitists, God has dominion, government is the problem, free markets are good, and your climate hogwash is threatening not only who I am but my job and my children’s future. That is, we trigger an internal monologue that helps them rehearse their arguments and fuel their concern that their identity is under threat. Our rational, wonkish, scientific explanations are not just ignored, they are completely counterproductive.
George Lakoff has a distinguished track record of public service and scholarship excellence. He has written extensively on the topic of framing, values, and language that support progressive causes. The following tips are excerpted from a blog he wrote after Trump’s nomination. Here are few key take-homes for how scientists can influence the debate:
- Know the key triggers that activate IPR: guns, gays, god and increasingly climate, expertise, abortion, immigration, media, black lives matter, bathrooms, universities, …
- Don’t activate one of those triggers. It doesn’t matter if your are supporting or critiquing the topic (be it climate, immigration, expertise, media, or Trump more generally). Once you activate it, you end up reinforcing it. (Admittedly, following this advice greatly limits the opportunity for reasoned public discourse, which is the grave danger of Trump because he is pushing more and more issues into this frame-activating, identity-protecting-reasoning space.)
- Don’t mention or critique false claims or fake news. Doing so just activates a trigger.
- Give a positive truthful story based on values you cherish: Equity. Opportunity. Safety. Justice. Freedom. Dignity. Integrity. Children. Family. Love. Respect. Health. Faith. Even environment. Progressives have powerful values (I identify with them!), but we don’t mention them enough.
- Values come first, facts and policies follow in the service of values. Facts and science matter, but only as they support values.
- For example, reframe your discussion of climate change. Start with owning that you are concerned about the security of your community, the safety and health of your family and neighbors, and the declining opportunities for your children to live productive, dignified lives. Then tell a story about what you want us to do.
- Use repetition. The more it is heard or seen, the more it is believed, regardless of what it is.
- Stop defending “the government.” Talk about the public, the people, Americans, the American people, public servants, and protecting freedom. The contribution of public resources to our freedoms cannot be overstated. Government Regulations protect freedom from pollution, abuse, discrimination, poison, and so on. Start saying it.
- Go positive. Avoid nasty exchanges and attacks. Take the high ground. Be hard on principles and problems; be soft on people. Practice civility, good humor, and empathy. Don’t protest against free speech by others, even if you disagree with them. Don’t threaten to punch them in the face, that is fascism.
- Give up identity politics. No more women’s issues, black issues, Latino issues, LBGTQ issues, Muslim issues, Autism issues… Their issues are all real, and need public discussion. But they all fall under freedom, justice, safety, equity and other values and principles. Identity politics divides us and triggers them. We are weaker and more easily conquered when divided. Twigs are stronger when in a bundle.
Many scientists worry that abandoning their science and facts weakens their credibility. I think you can be a scientist and a citizen. I think the times demand it.
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Dr. Bruce Hull is a Senior Fellow at Virginia Tech’s Center for Leadership in Global Sustainability (CLiGS), a professor in the College of Natural Resources and Environment (CNRE), and an affiliate faculty member in the Global Change Center.
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Leandro Castello, assistant professor of fisheries in Virginia Tech’s College of Natural Resources and Environment, has been awarded a marine conservation fellowship by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
Castello will use the fellowship, which supports research to improve ocean conservation and management, to determine the best way to generate catch rate data for tropical fish.
Roughly one-third of the global fish yield comes from the tropics; however, lack of data on the abundance of target stock makes managing tropical fisheries difficult. Consequently, tropical fisheries are less sustainable than fisheries elsewhere.
An affordable piece of information that could potentially be used in the management of tropical fisheries is catch rate data obtained directly from local fishers.
“If 20 years ago, fishers were routinely catching 20 kilograms of fish per day, and over time those catch rates declined, then it’s implied that the amount of fish available has also declined,” Castello said. “It’s not always that straightforward, but this type of information can make a difference in places where there is no information whatsoever.”
Castello hopes to engage local fishers in Brazil and use their expertise to develop a handbook of practical guidelines for gathering their own catch rate data and applying it in fisheries management.
“Brazil is my home country, and its fisheries are in urgent need of scientific development that can readily foster proper management,” he said.
Castello will begin by interviewing fishers about their memories of past fishing events. Their responses will then be compared with government data about the same events, allowing Castello and his team to determine the reliability of the fishers’ memories.
According to Castello, including the fishers in his research is vital.
“Fishers are a principal element of a fishery, just like the fish they harvest. Without their buy-in, our management recommendations are unlikely to succeed,” he said.
Castello, who is also affiliated with Virginia Tech’s Global Change Center, housed in the Fralin Life Science Institute, has conducted several research projects in the Amazon. In one study, he worked with Amazonian fishers to develop a method of visually counting an unusual species of fish that has to surface the water to breathe air. This cost-effective method allowed fishers to keep track of fish populations and determine fishing quotas accordingly.
The Pew Fellows Program in Marine Conservation has recognized 156 experts around the world since it was established in 1996. Each Fellow receives a grant to complete a three-year research project based on marine conservation. In addition to Castello’s work, other 2017 projects include a study on mass coral mortality due to rising ocean temperatures, an exploration of the effects of climate change on polar bear populations, and a look at African manatee populations.
The program’s goal is to engage marine scientists and other experts in solving issues affecting the world’s oceans. Project proposals are chosen based on their potential to protect ocean environments.
Castello, who began his career studying oceanography, is excited to return to his roots with the Pew fellowship.
“In addition to the challenge involved in the research, I am curious to re-engage in conservation research in coastal fisheries,” he said. “My background is in oceanography, but I ended up mostly working in the Amazon.”
Castello earned a bachelor’s in oceanography from Fundação Universidade do Rio Grande in Brazil, a master’s in public administration and environmental policy from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, and a doctorate in conservation biology from the State University of New York.
Castello’s project co-investigators include Michael Sorice, assistant professor of outdoor recreation and human dimensions in Virginia Tech’s College of Natural Resources and Environment; Priscila Lopes, associate professor of ecology at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte in Brazil; and Luis Lima, senior director of the Brazil Program of Rare, an organization dedicated to helping communities take a leadership role in local conservation.
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Story by Lynn Davis, CNRE Communications