Land/Sea Use adaptations
|Adding Rock Dust to Soil Can Capture Carbon
The hemp field experiments go beyond testing which amendments increase yields and sequester carbon and examine how much rock dust should be applied for best results. Some sections got 20 tons of rock dust per acre, while others got 40, allowing the researchers to get a more fine-tuned picture of the relationship between the dust, the soil, and the crops. The research adds to a growing body of scientific work showing the potential for these soil amendments to become one of the many measures needed to help solve our climate crisis.
Largest Farm to Grow Crops Under Solar Panels Proves to Be a Bumper Crop for Agrivoltaic Land Use
[ https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/agrivoltaics-of-solar-power-and-farming-are-a-big-success-on-this-boulder-farm/?fbclid=IwAR2ALVAfvTZo8u-RCd9A6GO6-6uhp285hVPGFtPjZNk53AMBhPy9rqO6ptY by Andy Corbley Nov 2021]
Exciting researchers, farmers, and solar businesses, alike, is the fact that when planting crops under solar panel arrays, the plants grow better and need less watering, while the panels produce more electricity.
‘Dangerous blindspot’: why overlooking blue carbon could sink us
When the ambitious plan to allow sea water to flood over the Steart peninsula in Somerset was completed in 2014, critics called it a waste of money. Floods had recently blighted the nearby area, and some local people argued the £20m spent on creating a new 250-hectare (617-acre) salt marsh would have been better spent on other flood-prevention projects.
The Enormous Hole That Whaling Left Behind
by Ed Yong 11/31/2021 The Atlantic
Their iron-rich poop acted like manure, fertilizing otherwise impoverished waters and seeding the base of the rich food webs that they then gorged upon. When the whales were killed, those food webs collapsed, turning seas that were once rain forest–like in their richness into marine deserts. But this tragic tale doesn’t have to be “another depressing retrospective,” Savoca told me. Those pre-whaling ecosystems are “still there—degraded, but still there.” And his team’s study points to a possible way of restoring them—by repurposing a controversial plan to reverse climate change.
Ocean CO2 Capture by William Hall
Supplying these trace elements in micronutrient quantities seems to be sufficient to make these areas literally bloom. It remains to the 'farmers' to seed the fertilized areas with optimum mixes of phytoplankton and zooplankton to maximize the carbon captured; and then to add and manage suitable suites planktivores and higher order predators to package the captured carbon in fecal pellets and carcases that will rapidly sink to the ocean floor before the captured carbon can be recycled into CO₂.
This 2-Acre Vertical Farm Is Managed by AI and Robots and Uses 99% Less Land
My Modern Met Samantha Pires on December 29, 2020
The company’s farm is yielding enough produce to fill 720 acres of typical farm land, but they are doing it with just two acres of vertical farming. Plenty says their farm produces around 400 times more food per acre than the traditional farm. Aside from the impressive food production, they are also managing production with robots and artificial intelligence.
An ancient people with a modern climate plan
Washington Post By Jim Morrison NOVEMBER 24, 2020
The tribe has responded with an ambitious, multipronged strategy to battle climate change and improve the health of the land and the water and the plants, animals and people who thrived in harmony for generations. In 2010, the Swinomish became one of the first communities to assess the problems posed by a warming planet and enact a climate action plan. An additional 50 Native American tribes have followed, creating climate strategies to protect their lands and cultures, ahead of most U.S. communities.
The Swinomish see the tasks beyond addressing shoreline risk and restoring habitats. They look at climate adaptation and resilience with the eyes of countless generations. They recognize that the endangered “first foods” — clams, oysters, elk, traditional plants and salmon — are not mere resources to be consumed. They are central to their values, beliefs and practices and, therefore, to their spiritual, cultural and community well-being.
California and Australia look to Indigenous land management for fire help
September 01, 2020 · 12:45 PM EDT By Anna Kusmer <embed>https://www.pri.org/stories/2020-09-01/california-and-australia-look-indigenous-land-management-fire-help?fbclid=IwAR162wzDYDYnOiW4Ps0MqfQ-WUdB4w8YttBFViq4_nBcFjHRBItmG4ESAZI</embed>
Hankins says he has contemplated the benefits of cultural burning — a form of traditional fire management passed down through generations among Indigenous people in fire-prone landscapes — for most of his life.
The practice entails carefully burning areas during the wet season to reduce flammability and vulnerability in advance of fire season. Burning also helps improve soil quality, spurs the growth of certain plant species and creates more productive landscapes.
Hankins found international inspiration back in 2003, when he flew over northern Australia, on his way to do some dissertation research, and saw small fires — set carefully and intentionally.
It was the first time he had seen Indigenous burning practices done on a landscape scale. “I could do that in California,” he thought to himself.
Coating seeds in these microbes superpowers plants’ carbon capture abilities
08-13-20 Fast Company BY ADELE PETERS3 MINUTE READ | Fast Company 8/2020
Adding a blend of microbes to crops on a farm allows plants to store carbon more effectively. In the normal carbon cycle, a plant sucks up CO2 through photosynthesis, and some of the carbon ends up traveling through the plant’s roots into the soil. But some of that carbon is still lost fairly quickly back into the air. The coating of fungi and bacteria helps instead convert the carbon into a form that can last in the soil much longer, potentially hundreds of years.
Tree planting in organic soils does not result in net carbon sequestration on decadal timescales
Nina L. Friggens Alison J. Hester Ruth J. Mitchell Thomas C. Parker Jens‐Arne Subke Philip A. Wookey First published: 14 July 2020 https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15229 <embed> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.15229?fbclid=IwAR1kROZfqryJSkrVDhp2zHvxcDQRdxtw8hfvQV8TQVgsli2vMRHj573u9_k </embed>
We hypothesize that altered mycorrhizal communities and autotrophic C inputs have led to positive ‘priming’ of soil organic matter, resulting in SOC loss, constraining the benefits of tree planting for ecosystem C sequestration. The results are of direct relevance to current policies, which promote tree planting on the assumption that this will increase net ecosystem C storage and contribute to climate change mitigation. Ecosystem‐level biogeochemistry and C fluxes must be better quantified and understood before we can be assured that large‐scale tree planting in regions with considerable pre‐existing SOC stocks will have the intended policy and climate change mitigation outcomes.
Investors say agroforestry isn’t just climate friendly — it’s profitable
By Stephanie Hanes August 10, 2020 <embed> https://www.greenbiz.com/article/investors-say-agroforestry-isnt-just-climate-friendly-its-profitable?fbclid=IwAR1JM7WCmNClSYUoLZPU1FLJYFqLfYCQ8leigFJnqUmN_LoTO1o_jjRTED0 </embed>
The trio created Propagate Ventures, a company that offers farmers software-based economic analysis, on-the-ground project management and investor financing to help add trees and tree crops to agricultural models. One of Propagate’s key goals, Steinberg explained, was to get capital from interested investors to the farmers who need it — something he saw as a longtime barrier to such tree-based agriculture.
Propagate quickly started attracting attention. Over the past two years, the group, based in New York and Colorado, has expanded into eight states, primarily in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. It is working with 20 farms. In late May, it announced that it had received $1.5 million in seed funding from Boston-based Neglected Climate Opportunities, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham Environmental Trust.
AS CLIMATE CHANGE MAKES GROWING SEASONS LESS PREDICTABLE, SCIENTISTS DIG INTO A NOVEL APPROACH TO BOOSTING CROP RESILIENCE
<embed> https://ensia.com/articles/crop-plants-resilience-climate-change-food-security </embed> Allison Gacad @allisongacad June 2020 Ensia
Epigenetic modification of plants shows promise for enhancing food security — but we still have a lot to learn Both Mackenzie and Springer are interested in the role that epigenetic mechanisms — the biological processes that activate and deactivate genes — may play in this dynamic balance between yield potential and yield stability. If breeders could enhance plants’ ability to flip the switch as environmental conditions change, it could make it possible to (for instance) activate physiological changes that enhance drought tolerance only when needed, avoiding the ding on productivity.
Mackenzie’s “trick” is to use RNA interference to silence a gene called MSH1, which is found in the plant cell’s plastid — a compartment that has the ability to sense stress. She and her colleagues discovered that when they suppress MSH1 in a parent plant, epigenetic regulation kicks in, and gene expression is altered in a way that allows it to better respond to stress.
Spreading rock dust on fields could remove vast amounts of CO2 from air
<embed> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/08/spreading-rock-dust-on-fields-could-remove-vast-amounts-of-co2-from-air </embed>
The rock dust approach, called enhanced rock weathering (ERW), has several advantages, the researchers say. First, many farmers already add limestone dust to soils to reduce acidification, and adding other rock dust improves fertility and crop yields, meaning application could be routine and desirable. Basalt is the best rock for capturing CO2, and many mines already produce dust as a byproduct, so stockpiles already exist. The researchers also found that the world’s biggest polluters, China, the US and India, have the greatest potential for ERW, as they have large areas of cropland and relatively warm weather, which speeds up the chemical reactions.
Methane and Arctic Thawing
Methane and Arctic Thawing- William Hall 11/11/2019 The excellent video linked here describes the Russian effort to rebuild the Pleistocene fauna of Siberia to geoengineer the taiga to increase its reflectivity and break up winter snow cover to substantially delay melting of the permafrost and associated release of massive quantities of CO₂ and methane. The proposal makes a substantial amount of sense, and is under active scientific study to verify the validity of the approach. Time challenged as I am, I watched it through.
U.S. Farmers Plant Crops You Won't Eat in Climate Change Fight
Like most plants, cover crops convert carbon dioxide into organic material within the soil through the process of photosynthesis. Indigo is offering a payback program for farmers who regularly put land under cover crops, or use no-tillage and other regenerative practices. They’re measuring the carbon content of fields for growers, and paying them $15 to $20 a ton for the carbon they can identify. Illinois farmer Steve Stierwalt started using cover crops four years ago. Last year, they were about half the crops he planted. He hasn’t seen higher yields yet, he said, but he sees the crop primarily as "armor" for the soil, protecting it “against more intense weather -- either too much rain or not enough rain. Cover crops have made a difference that way,” he said.
Tree Planting 'has mind-blowing potential' to Tackle Climate Crisis
<embed>https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/04/planting-billions-trees-best-tackle-climate-crisis-scientists-canopy-emissions</embed>
Planting billions of trees across the world is by far the biggest and cheapest way to tackle the climate crisis, according to scientists, who have made the first calculation of how many more trees could be planted without encroaching on crop land or urban areas.
Living with Climate Change: Assessment of the Adaptive Capacities of Smallholders in Central Rift Valley, Ethiopia
<embed>https://www.scirp.org/Journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=92605</embed>
The general well-being and adaptive capacity of farmers to the prevailing climate change and variability impacts in the study area were mainly determined by the human, natural, financial, social and physical resources and how well they are looked and accessed. These resources vary across agro-ecologies. The results showed that enhancing the adaptive capacity of farmers can modulate farmers’ vulnerability to climate change risks by lowering the potential impacts. To come out with tangible solutions, adaptation intervention should pass through the process of farmers’ perception of climate change, their intention towards the change and their capacity to adapt the change.
This Sci-Fi Plan To Beat Rising Seas Could Change The Way We Live – If It Works
<embed>https://www.huffpost.com/entry/floating-cities-united-nations-sea-level-rise-climate-change_n_5cb082eee4b0ffefe3af4fd0</embed>
This floating prototype may not be as fantastical as it sounds, even in a country where pastureland stretches for miles around. As sea levels rise, and there is ever less land for a growing urban population, this farm could be a precursor to entire floating cities in the future.
Native Americans Bringing back the Bison
<embed>https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/12/how-native-american-tribes-are-bringing-back-the-bison-from-brink-of-extinction</embed>
On 5,000 hectares of unploughed prairie in north-eastern Montana, hundreds of wild bison roam once again. But this herd is not in a national park or a protected sanctuary – they are on tribal lands. Belonging to the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes of Fort Peck Reservation, the 340 bison is the largest conservation herd in the ongoing bison restoration efforts by North America’s Indigenous people.
