[MCN] A quiz question, and a mini-anthology on the likes of heat and drought and fires and such

[Lance Olsen]

Which is true?

A) There’s a carbon footprint with every dollar we spend
B) There’s a biodiversity footprint with every dollar we spend
C) All the above, or
D) None of the above

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“The changes experienced by the biosphere over the past century ... have raised concerns about the possibility of rapid shifts from green to desert states.”

Sole. Scaling laws in the drier. Nature 13 September 2007

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 <https://www.ecowatch.com/el-nino-weather-2023.html>

“Our results indicate that terrestrial ecosystems are highly sensitive to temperature change and suggest that, without major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere, terrestrial ecosystems worldwide are at risk of major transformation.”

Nolan et al. Past and future global transformation of terrestrial ecosystems under climate change. 
Science 31 August 2018 

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“We contend that traditional approaches to forest conservation and management will be inadequate ... in the 21st century. New approaches ... acknowledge that change is inevitable and sometimes irreversible, and that maintenance of ecosystem services depends in part on novel ecosystems, i.e., species combinations with no analog in the past.”

Forest Ecology and Management 360 (2016) 80–96 
Review and synthesis 
Achievable future conditions as a framework for guiding forest conservation and management 
S.W. Golladay,, K.L. Martin, J.M. Vose , D.N. Wear, A.P. Covich, R.J. Hobbs , K.D. Klepzig , G.E. Likens , R.J. Naiman  A.W. Shearer 

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“Climate-driven forest die-off from drought and heat stress has occurred around the world, is expected to increase with climate change and probably has distinct consequences from those of other forest disturbances. We examine the consequences of drought- and climate-driven widespread forest loss on ecological communities, ecosystem functions, ecosystem services and land–climate interactions. Furthermore, we highlight research gaps that warrant study. As the global climate continues to warm, understanding the implications of forest loss triggered by these events will be of increasing importance.”

William R. L. Anderegg et al. Consequences of widespread tree mortality triggered by drought and temperature stress. Nature Climate Change. PUBLISHED ONLINE: 9 SEPTEMBER 2012 | DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE1635

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"Future projections of drought in the twenty-first century ... show regions of strong wetting and drying with a net overall global drying trend. For example, the proportion of the land surface in extreme drought is predicted to increase from 1% for the present day to 30% by the end of the twenty-first century."  


JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY
OCTOBER 2006 

Modeling the Recent Evolution of Global Drought and Projections for the Twenty-First Century with the Hadley Centre Climate Model

ELEANOR J. BURKE, SIMON J. BROWN, AND NIKOLAOS CHRISTIDIS
Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, Met Office, Exeter, United Kingdom


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“Under RCP8.5, droughts exceeding 40% of analyzed land area are projected by nearly half of the simulations.”

Christel Prudhomme et al. Hydrological droughts in the 21st century, hotspots and uncertainties from a global multimodel ensemble experiment.
 
PNAS  9 March 11, 2014
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1222473110
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/9/3262.abstract <http://www.pnas.org/content/111/9/3262.abstract>


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North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center - Webinar: The Increasing Role of Drought in Ecological Transformation



Join this webinar to learn more about the results of an interdisciplinary science synthesis that focused on how the risk of transformational drought is changing in the 21st century. This will include a broad overview of the phenomenon of transformational ecological drought, including the diverse pathways by which it leads to transformation, highlighting mechanisms and case studies relevant to the North Central region. It will take place on February 9 at 1 pm ET. 

Learn more>> <https://lnks.gd/l/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJidWxsZXRpbl9saW5rX2lkIjoxMTAsInVyaSI6ImJwMjpjbGljayIsImJ1bGxldGluX2lkIjoiMjAyMzAyMDguNzEyMjU2MjEiLCJ1cmwiOiJodHRwczovL2N1Ym91bGRlci56b29tLnVzL21lZXRpbmcvcmVnaXN0ZXIvdEp3c2YtMnBxVElpRzlZZTUtRE5pcFFRb1ZqZ0p1Q2tBWlRVIn0.CpIYl_gUHfXzbm3y5qNZPLoEFCvQDPxZaC1s55lxGyU/s/2592756084/br/154193350352-l>

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“Droughts of the twenty-first century are characterized by hotter temperatures, longer duration, and greater spatial extent …. This situation increases the vulnerability of ecosystems to drought, including a rise in drought-driven tree mortality globally (Allen et al. 2015) and anticipated ecosystem transformations from one state to another—for example, forest to a shrubland (Jiang et al. 2013). When a drought drives changes within ecosystems, there can be a ripple effect through human communities that depend on those ecosystems for critical goods and services (Millar and Stephenson 2015). …. Despite the high costs to both nature and people, current drought research, management, and policy perspectives often fail to evaluate how drought affects ecosystems and the “natural capital” they provide to human communities. Integrating these human and natural dimensions of drought is an essential step toward addressing the rising risk of drought in the twenty-first century. 

Crausbay, et al. Defining Ecological Drought for the Twenty-First Century. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. December 2017.

Open Access
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-16-0292.1 

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Death toll rises as Chile reels from wildfires driven by heatwave - Al Jazeera <https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/2/4/death-toll-rises-as-chile-reels-from-wildfires-driven-by-heatwave&ct=ga&cd=CAEYACoUMTAyNzM1OTQ2NjgyODMwMDc1MzcyGmJmNmVmOTBmZDkxYzExY2E6Y29tOmVuOlVT&usg=AOvVaw3c32TsWNHufxG1lrjMUkJM>
Al Jazeera
The fires have been exacerbated by a nearly 13-year-long drought in the country, as well as a heat wave. Many of the fires are concentrated in the ...


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NEWS RELEASE 1-FEB-2023
Western wildfires destroying more homes per square mile burned

Climate change, more buildings near flammable vegetation, and accidental human ignitions contributed to wildfires’ increased destructiveness

Peer-Reviewed Publication <https://www.eurekalert.org/releaseguidelines>
UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER

More than three times as many houses and other structures burned in Western wildfires in 2010-2020 than in the previous decade, and that wasn’t only because more acreage burned, a new analysis has found. Human ignitions started 76% of the wildfires that destroyed structures, and those fires tended to be in flammable areas where homes, commercial structures, and outbuildings are increasingly common. 

“Humans are driving the negative impacts from wildfire,” concluded lead author Philip Higuera, a fire ecologist and professor at the University of Montana, who wrote the assessment during a sabbatical at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and CU Boulder. “Human fingerprints are all over this—we influence the when, the where, and the why.” 

Most measures of wildfire’s impact—expansion of wildfire season into new months, and the number of structures in flammable vegetation, for example—are going in the wrong direction, Higuera said. But the new finding, published February 1 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences-Nexus <https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad005>, also means that human action can lessen the risks of wildfire damage.

“We have levers,” he said. “As climate change makes vegetation more flammable we advise carefully considering if and how we develop in flammable vegetation, for example.” 

During Higuera’s visiting fellowship <https://cires.colorado.edu/about/institutional-programs/visiting-fellows-program> at CIRES, he worked with several researchers to dig into the details of 15,001 Western wildfires between 1999 and 2020. 

Burned area increased 30% across the West, the team found, but structure loss increased much more, by nearly 250%. Many factors contributed, including climate change, our tendency to build more homes in flammable ecosystems, and a history of suppressing wildfire. Co-author and CIRES/CU Boulder Ph.D. student Maxwell Cook said that the forcible removal of Indigenous people from landscapes played a role, by all-but-eliminating intentional burning, which can lessen the risk of more destructive fires.

“Prescribed fire is an incredibly important tool, and we have a lot to learn about how people have been using fire for centuries,” Cook said. 

In the new assessment, the team found some just plain horrible years for wildfire: 62% of all structures lost in those two decades were lost in just three years: 2017, 2018, and 2020, Cook said. And some states had it much worse than others: California, for example, accounted for more than 77% of all 85,014 structures destroyed during 1999-2020.  

Across the West, 1.3 structures were destroyed for every 1,000 hectares of land scorched by wildfire between 1999 and 2009. Between 2010 and 2020, that ratio increased to 3.4. 

Importantly, Higuera and his colleagues also found variability among states in how much burning occurred and how many structures were lost in wildfires. Colorado, for example, doesn’t burn that much relative to how much area could burn, but the state’s wildfires result in high structure losses. Here, wildfires were dominated by human-related ignitions late in the season and near structures and flammable vegetation. The 2021 Marshall Fire, too late to be included in this analysis, exemplifies this pattern, Higuera said.

California also sees losses from wildfires, but burns much more overall. Each state could benefit from policies that address human-related ignitions, especially during late summer and fall and near developments, the paper concluded, and from policies that address fire-resistant building materials and consideration of nearby vegetation. 

States like Montana, Nevada, and Idaho, by contrast, have large areas of less-developed land, so most wildfires burn from lightning ignitions and few destroy homes or buildings. Policies in these states could focus on maintaining safe landscape burning. 

Finally, climate change mitigation is also essential, Higuera, Cook, and their co-authors concluded. Longer fire seasons—a result of climate change—mean that human-related ignitions are more consequential, leading to more destructive wildfires in the fall and early winter, for example, when they were once rare. 

JOURNAL
PNAS Nexus
DOI
10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad005  <http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad005>
ARTICLE TITLE
Shifting social-ecological fire regimes explain increasing structure loss from Western wildfires

 <https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/978427>
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 <https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/978427>
Watching for flash drought

Excerpts

It wasn’t too long ago--in 2012--that a promising-looking spring morphed into a terrible summer for the U.S. Midwest. … punishing farmers and ranchers and facilitating the loss of roughly 10% of all trees in Texas <https://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2012/07/23/the-drought-killed-texas-trees-but-not-how-you-might-think/>. 

The real shocker was how quickly drought conditions took hold further north across the Midwest in the summer of 2012, leading to the most widespread U.S. drought conditions since the 1930s <https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/historic-2012-us-drought-continues-to-expand-and-intensify>. 
“Nobody called that [in advance],” said Mark Svoboda (National Drought Mitigation Center). 

While long-term drought can emerge simply through a lack of precipitation, a flash drought is closely linked to hot summer weather. 

If the heat is strong and sustained enough, the landscape quickly dries out and a flash drought takes hold.

https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/could-the-imminent-us-heat-wave-trigger-a-flash-drought <https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/could-the-imminent-us-heat-wave-trigger-a-flash-drought>



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“Whereas any one line of evidence may be weak in itself, a number of lines of evidence, taken together and found to be consistent, reinforce one another exponentially.”

Preston Cloud and Aharon Gibor. The Oxygen Cycle. 
Scientific American, September 1970

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“As an endangered species and an endangering one, we need, collectively, all the self-understanding and self-direction that we can muster.” 

M. Brewster Smith. “Perspectives on Selfhood.”
American Psychologist, December 1978

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"Diversity will almost certainly rebound after the current extinction event; however, it may be composed of species descended from a different, as yet unknown, subset of lineages from those that dominate now, and humans will likely not be included among them."

T. Jonathan Davies, et al. Phylogenetic trees and the future of mammalian biodiversity.

Proceedings National Academy of Sciences
August 12, 2008  vol. 105

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