wetlands
"Blue Carbon" and marine wetlands: New guidelines, methodology
09/06/11 10:10
Blue carbon is the term of art for a movement to store carbon that has been removed from the atmosphere in wetlands sediments. The idea is simple, largely borrowed from the forest carbon movement (often called REDD or REDD+ or even RED++). In a perfect world, using ecosystems to store carbon is an elegant solution to combine climate change mitigation (greenhouse gas atmospheric concentration) and climate change adaptation (managing responses to climate change impacts) approaches. You could save species, ecosystems, and often livelihoods and communities by protecting natural carbon storage mechanisms. But the issue is complicated and associated with a lot of specialized language. And because the climate is shifting and ecosystems are evolving in response, there are likely to be complicated feedback mechanisms that might end up damaging those pools of carbon and releasing greenhouse gases you thought had been locked up. And in effect your storage system might have made the global problem worse.
Thus, although the Ramsar Convention (see below) and IUCN have just put together a methodology for supporting blue carbon storage and sequestration, the technical aspects are far from settled. Read More...
Thus, although the Ramsar Convention (see below) and IUCN have just put together a methodology for supporting blue carbon storage and sequestration, the technical aspects are far from settled. Read More...
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Amazon 2010-11 drought: detectable from space
08/04/11 10:54
In the image: red and orange identify areas where satellite measurements indicated reduced greenness of the Amazon forest during the 2010 drought. (Green patches are areas of enhanced greenness.) The maps differ only in the method used for determining vegetation greenness from optical data.
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New! Video blog entries
08/07/09 15:43
I’ve started teaching a distance learning course with Dr. Bruce Dugger at Oregon State University on wetlands. Read More...
New Sundarbans Adaptation Center & Disaster Risk Reduction
04/04/09 08:14
A significant number of the hits to this blog are from South Asia, mostly directed at a 2008 entry on the Sundarbans islands that sit on the coast of Bangladesh and northeastern India. These islands are home to millions of very poor people, have one of the largest coastal mangrove forests in the world, and are the major refuge for the remaining Bengal tigers. These island exist in a balance between accruing sediment flowing down the Brahmaputra-Ganges rivers, the ability of the mangroves to capture the sediment, and the erosive action of the Indian ocean. A 1970s-era sediment-capturing dam upstream in combination with rising sea levels have caught the islands in a dangerous vice: sediments are no longer accumulating at sustainable levels, while tropical storm frequency and severity seem to be increasing — on top of accelerating sea-level rise. According to Arjan Berkhuysen, an expert on climate adaptation in river deltas and estuaries with WWF-Netherlands, “These problems are similar in deltas all over the world.... [We’re] looking for natural solutions that respect the dynamics of the system while helping people towards sustainable development in the face of climate change.” Happily, we have some good news about the Sundarbans: a regional Climate Adaptation Center has just been founded on Mousuni island on the Indian side on 29 March 2009.
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Wetlands 1: The Real Estate Crisis in Protected Areas
03/10/08 04:51
This entry will be the first in a series over the coming weeks. I have a series of talks and will be attending a number of unrelated events that are focusing on wetlands as a theme, so I will in turn inflict some of these thoughts on you, gentle reader. A serious contradiction exists with protected areas — places likes natural reserves and parks — and climate change. On one hand, these places have been designated because they are “special” and unusual parts of the landscape, having qualities that make them distinct from other places and thus worthy of being a protected area (or PA). Think of this as the spatial element of a PA. On the other hand, these areas are generally special because some mixture of climate, geology, and biological history combine to make them distinct during some window of time. At a different period in either of those three elements, the special qualities may exist in a very different combination at that place, or even over a different range of places. Think of this as the temporal element of a PA. Of all the most common types of PAs found worldwide, wetlands may be the most climate sensitive. And that has very important implications for how we define and protect wetlands PAs everywhere. Read More...
Wetlands in the Air
25/05/08 16:09
A study late last week suggested that atmospheric methane emissions are way up. This is disturbing on a number of levels that should have a lot of people very worried. Read More...
