Wetland Destruction – Another AGW Puzzle Piece

Wetlands, understood to be an essential ecosystem in promoting biodiversity and flood control, is also another key element in slowing climate change – as wetland destruction potentially accelerates global warming.

As reported in Science Daily, leading scientists are now meeting in Brazil at the 8th International Wetlands Conference, discussing actions to better understand, protect and manage this key global resource.

How big a deal are the wetlands?

Covering just 6% of Earth’s land surface, wetlands (including marshes, peat bogs, swamps, river deltas, mangroves, tundra, lagoons and river floodplains) store 10-20% of its terrestrial carbon. Wetlands slow the decay of organic material trapped and locked away over the ages in low oxygen conditions.

So how much carbon are we talking about?

These waterlogged (either seasonally or year-round) areas contain an estimated 771 gigatonnes (771 billion tonnes) of greenhouse gases — both CO2 and more potent methane — an amount in CO2 equivalent comparable to the carbon content of today’s atmosphere.

Put another way:

Drained tropical swamp forests release an estimated 40 tonnes of carbon per hectare per year. Drained peat bogs release some 2.5 to 10 tonnes of carbon per hectare per year.

That’s significant. Of course it all depends how quickly, particularly the Methane, is released. And like the disappearing forests, disappearing wetlands hold a double whammy for climate change – as another carbon sink becomes a carbon emitter.

The preciousness of wetlands goes beyond carbon capture, of course:

“Wetlands act as sponges and their role as sources, reservoirs and regulators of water is largely underappreciated by many farmers and others who rely on steady water supplies,” says Prof. Junk. “They also cleanse water of organic pollutants, prevent downstream flood inundations, protect riverbanks and seashores from erosion, recycle nutrients and capture sediment.”

Typically high in nutrients, wetlands also offer rich habitats for small organisms which feed fish and other water life, which in turn nourish mammals and birds. Many wetlands feature biodiversity comparable to that of rainforests or coral reefs.

What’s our track record in protecting this invaluable resource you might wonder?

Some 60% of wetlands worldwide — and up to 90% in Europe — have been destroyed in the past 100 years, principally due to drainage for agriculture but also through pollution, dams, canals, groundwater pumping, urban development and peat extraction.

So what to do now?

German expert Wolfgang Junk says…”Lessening the stress on wetlands caused by pollution and other human assaults will improve their resiliency and represents an important climate change adaptation strategy,” he says. “Wetland rehabilitation, meanwhile, represents a viable alternative to artificial flood control and dredging efforts that may be needed to cope with the larger, more frequent floods predicted in a hotter world.”

Prof. Junk, of the Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Biology, notes that maintenance of wetlands is much cheaper than rehabilitation and that poorer countries will have fewer means to rehabilitate their wetlands to cope with climate change. Wetland-friendly development alternatives must be elaborated in developing countries, therefore, to minimize losses of their many benefits, he says.

Like a deforested northern hemisphere asking the tropics to save their forests, this familiar dynamic is unavoidably playing out with wetlands:

He notes too that while pressure on wetlands in poorer countries has risen dramatically in recent years, they have not suffered nearly as much damage as those in the developed world.

In fact the conference is taking place in Cuiaba on the edge of the Pantanal wetlands: “…spanning 160,000 square km, is confronted by increasing development pressure. Its catchment area straddles Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay, while Uruguay and Argentina are downstream.”

A bit of good news here in the U.S., since there’s been so little, should be noted: Not only has the U.S. largely stopped wetland destruction, it is undergoing significant wetland restoration, most notably in the Florida Everglades:

The US will spend $700 million over two decades to revive the Florida Everglades. It will include six artificial wetlands (“storm water treatment areas”), to receive and cleanse excess nutrients from neighbouring farm districts.

And the most threatened?

…those around the Mediterranean, where for two millennia the population has been draining wetlands and floodplains for agriculture — and more recently for urban areas, tourist developments, and to eradicate malarial mosquitoes.

Wetlands destruction is also a slow positive feedback. As we warm, the rising temperatures will destroy further wetlands. So far it is estimated that wetlands damage due to rising temperatures has been minimal, but according to UN University scientists: “…a warming of 3° to 4°C could eliminate 85% of all remaining wetlands in the world.”

Saving and restoring wetlands, like stopping deforestation and promoting reforestation, must be a top-shelf climate change fighting effort.

Rainforest Destruction – Greater and More Concentrated

Deforestation is not only unabated, it’s accelerating around the globe. The problem is growing bigger, yet it is also becoming more concentrated.

Just how concentrated has the problem become? Previously Brazil was thought to account for 27% of worldwide deforestation – per the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Now it is understood to be a whopping 48%.

This news comes from a new study in the 7/8/08 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by Matthew Hansen – as reported by Mongabay.

Put another way:

…Brazil accounts for nearly half of global deforestation, nearly four times that of the next highest country, Indonesia, which makes up about an eighth of worldwide forest clearing.

A corollary of sorts being that African deforestation may not be as critical as once thought:

“Africa, although a center of widespread, low-intensity selective logging, contributes only 5.4 percent to the estimated loss of humid tropical forest cover. This result reflects the absence of current agro-industrial scale clearing in humid tropical Africa.”

Interestingly this greater concentration has the benefit of potentially making the problem more manageable.

Matthew Hansen says:

…the geographic concentration of deforestation, coupled with the shift from subsistence-driven to enterprise-deforestation forest clearing, may hold unexpected benefits for conservation: it may be easier for environmental groups to target their campaigns on major forest-destroying corporations and industries.

A sliver of good news to be leveraged for sure.

Previously the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) provide the authoritative analysis on deforestation. But its data was largely based on individual countries self-reporting. And the new estimates?

…produced by analysis of a combination of satellite imagery from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Landsat programs. The researchers say the integrated methodology offers a more accurate way to track change in forest cover.

A bit of detail on the newly revealed concentrations:

…55 percent of total tropical humid forest clearing occurs within only 6 percent of the biome area, indicating the existence of deforestation “hotspots,” especially for Brazil and Indonesia where rates of forest loss — 3.6 percent and 3.4 percent, respectively — far exceed regional deforestation rates (1.2 percent for the rest of Latin America, 2.7 percent for the rest of Asia).

Other hotspots revealed:

“Latin American hotspots include northern Guatemala, eastern Bolivia, and eastern Paraguay. As a percentage of year-2000 forest cover, Paraguay features the highest areal proportion of change hotspots, indicating an advanced, nearly complete forest clearing dynamic…”

And:

“…Riau province in Sumatra has the highest indicated change within Indonesia. Hot spots of clearing are present in every state of Malaysia, and clearing in Cambodia along its border with Thailand is among the highest of indicated change hot spots…”

What does the future hold?

“The pattern of deforestation in the humid tropics for the current decade indicates concentrated areas with high rates of deforestation in Latin America and southeast Asia,” study co-author Ruth DeFries, a professor at the University of Maryland’s Department of Geography and Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center, told mongabay.com. “With skyrocketing demand for biofuels and agricultural commodities, we can expect that deforestation in the future will be increasingly driven by large-scale industrial agriculture rather than small-scale landholders.”

Deforestation like coal is top-shelf climate villain. And as new coal power plant construction must be stopped so must we also stop rainforest based industrial agriculture.

Let’s capitalize on the sliver of good news. To find out more about what you can do to help, large and small, visit:

• Rainforest Action Network
• Rainforest Alliance
• Rainforest Coalition
• Greenpeace – USA – Forests
• Sign EU Greenpeace Petition – (per Juliette’s comment)
• Fair Trade Resource Network
• Adopt an acre of rainforest.
• And for all things rainforest, I encourage you to visit Mongabay’s Rainforest Page.

You Thought The Sunburn Was A Problem

In Air travel in the tropics is worse for climate New Scientist reports on a new study that should give us all pause before booking our next winter travel plans:

As well as producing carbon dioxide and contrails, planes also produce nitrogen oxide, which triggers both the creation of the warming gas ozone, and the destruction of another greenhouse gas, methane (Journal of Geophysical Research…).

In mid-latitudes, these ozone and methane reactions cancel each other out and you get zero net warming from nitrogen oxide emissions, says Keith Shine of the University of Reading, UK. But the brighter sunlight in the tropics is very efficient at converting nitrogen oxide to ozone – in fact it creates ozone five times faster than in the air of mid-latitudes, according to Shine’s calculations – whereas methane destruction only increases marginally. Worryingly, the warming effects of ozone are particularly strong at a plane’s typical cruising altitude of 35,000 feet, he adds.

The research raises the question of whether future attempts to control aircraft emissions should consider extra penalties for flights in tropical countries where air travel is booming. India, for instance, has the fastest growing airline fleet in the world.

For now aircraft emissions are excluded from international treaties on curbing greenhouse gas emissions. But the European Union has plans to control aircraft emissions from 2011.

Not to worry you say? You bet Sir Richard Branson is working on a scheme right now to fix the problem? That’s what I’m afraid of.

Tropical Rainforests: Bad to Worse

Pushed from center stage by the expected record arctic ice and permafrost melt, tropical rain forest destruction has been elbowing it’s way back through the smoke and into view.

Papua New Guinea’s rain forests disappearing faster than thought is one such look:

Previously, the article states, the forest loss was estimated at 139,000 hectares per year between 1990 and 2005. But now?

Using satellite images to reveal changes in forest cover between 1972 and 2002…Papua New Guinea (PNG) lost more than 5 million hectares of forest over the past three decades…Worse, deforestation rates may be accelerating, with the pace of forest clearing reaching 362,000 hectares (895,000 acres) per year in 2001. The study warns that at current rates 53 percent of the country’s forests could be lost or seriously degraded by 2021.

That’s an enormous increase.

Adding insult to injury – the good news as reported last Thursday in Malaysia:

PM: No clearing of forests for oil palm plantations

Abdullah, who is also Finance Minister, said the existing oil palm plantations were enough to cater to current demands and there was no need for the opening of new plantations at the moment.

Fast forward THREE DAYS:

Sarawak to open more land for oil palm

Sarawak will continue to open up more land for oil palm plantations, Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud said here yesterday.
He said this would not go against the prime minister’s directive on the clearing of land for oil palm plantation as it did not apply to the state.

Oh well, so much for Malaysia lending a hand.

As so often it seems with the climate change story, the narrative turns from bad to worse and this chapter is no exception, as we turn toward the Amazon.

It’s tough to complete with the destructive capacity of the permafrost melt, but the Amazon is making up for it in it’s willy-nilly approach to climate destruction. This recent article by Rhett Butler at environment 360 sets the scene:

Historically, the Amazon has proven resilient to climate change, human disturbance by pre-Colombian populations, and even periods of fire and extreme drought during millennial El-Niño-like events. Yet the present onslaught of forces affecting the Amazon is unprecedented. Never before has the region experienced the simultaneous impact of large-scale forest loss and degradation, fragmentation, fires, and global warming. Many scientists and conservationists are deeply worried, not only because of the loss of biodiversity that accompanies destruction of the forest, but also because the cutting and torching of this vast repository of carbon will further heat up a planet already warming at an alarming pace.

What are the numbers?

Brazilian satellite data from late 2007 show a marked increase in the number of fires and deforestation in the key soy and cattle-producing states of Pará and Mato Grosso. Both experienced increases in forest loss of 50 percent or more over the same period in 2006, coupled with a large jump in burning — in the case of Mato Grosso, a spike of more than 100 percent. The 123,000 fires detected across the Brazilian Amazon by the Terra and AQUA satellites are the most since such measurements began in 2003. Deforestation in the last five months of 2007 was expected to exceed 7,000 square kilometers, an area more than twice the size of Rhode Island.

Yes, the drivers of ethanol, soy and cattle are well documented, but as is our habit, we tempt much worse:

As demand for biofuels continues to grow, there is a very real possibility that oil palm could become a dominant crop in the Amazon — an ominous development considering that the planting of oil palm plantations has been the driving force behind the recent destruction of huge areas of rain forest in Indonesia and Malaysia. Scientists estimate that Brazil has 2.3 million square kilometers of forest land suitable for oil palm, equal to the forested areas conducive to soy and sugar production combined.

The bottom line doesn’t get much lower:

Writing in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B earlier this year, Daniel Nepstad and colleagues predicted that 55 percent of Amazon forests will be “cleared, logged, damaged by drought, or burned” in the next 20 years if deforestation, forest fires, and climate trends continue apace. The damage will release 15 to 26 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere, adding to a feedback cycle that will worsen both warming and forest degradation in the region. Nepstad says this scenario is a conservative one — forest loss and emissions could be far worse.

It’s worth repeating: 15 to 26 billion tons of carbon by 2028 – from the Amazon alone. (That’s the equivalent of 55 to 95 billion tons of CO2.)

Nepstad is saying this is conservative – it could be “far worse”. Will we see the conservative estimate? Or worse? Or far worse realized? (Hint: remember our climate change story – so far, bad to worse.)

But let’s not throw hope under the bus – in the Abstract Dan Nepstad states:

Several important trends could prevent a near-term dieback. As fire-sensitive investments accumulate in the landscape, property holders use less fire and invest more in fire control. Commodity markets are demanding higher environmental performance from farmers and cattle ranchers. Protected areas have been established in the pathway of expanding agricultural frontiers. Finally, emerging carbon market incentives for reductions in deforestation could support these trends.

Putting some numbers to this, Managing Forests for Climate Change Mitigation by Josep Canadell and Michael Raupach in the June 13th issue of Science (sub. req’d) – conveniently referenced in this Mongabay article.

The article summarizes:

Noting that 13 million hectares of forest are felled each year, releasing 1.5 billion tons of carbon, Canadell and Raupach write that reducing deforestation rates by 50 percent by 2050 and stopping deforestation when countries reach 50 percent of their current forested area would avoid emissions equivalent to 50 billion tons of carbon.

Then quoting Canadell and Raupach:

“This ‘50:50:50:50′ estimate shows that even with continuing deforestation over the next 40 years, the mitigation potential is large, in addition to protecting the sink capacity of forest for continued removal of atmospheric CO2.”

Yes, the mitigation potential is large but is our inertia larger still?