Newsletter ~ February 2018 by Woodwell Climate Research Center

MONTHLY NEWSLETTER FEBRUARY 2018

Woods Hole Research Center The moral crisis of climate change Dr. Philip B. Duffy President & Executive Director

It is often said that the impacts of climate change are greatest on the poor and disadvantaged, who contribute relatively little to the problem. Perhaps the most extreme examples of this are low-lying island states, whose greenhouse gas emissions are negligibly small, yet whose existences are threatened by rising sea level caused by other nations’ emissions. These island states also have very limited resources to cope with this problem, which in many cases will ultimately mean fleeing. Cases like this are why a long-standing theme of the UN climate negotiations has been claims by developing countries that they should be compensated by more developed countries for “loss and damage.” Disproportionate harms to the poor also occur within (as well as among) countries. Impacts on human health, air quality, food and water scarcity, and so on, all affect the poor more than the wealthy, and as always the poor have fewer coping resources.

The moral dimension of climate change also has an intergenerational component. The decisions we are making now—whether actively or by default—will impose possibly horrific consequences on future generations, who of course have no voice in those decisions. If and when they are forced to undertake the abandonment of major coastal cities, our descendants will be justified in wondering what we could have been thinking when we set in motion the process to necessitate that. As the science of climate change has become more and more clear, our deficient climate policies become less and less justifiable. As former NASA scientist James Hansen points

out, our parents’ generation did not know the consequences of deforestation and burning fossil fuels, but “we can only pretend that we don’t know.” At this point, after decades of increasingly frightful warnings from the scientific community, it is simply inexcusable that all of us (and our descendants) are knowingly placed at risk by a small minority who benefit economically from the status quo and who wield disproportionate political power.

The importance of these moral aspects of climate change is one reason why I have long sought to join forces with faith leaders to address the problem. Earlier this month WHRC took a big step on that direction by convening a gathering of faith leaders and climate scientists to discuss forming a coalition to work together. (There’s more about this gathering inside.) I am excited about this venture because the added value of this partnership is powerfully simple: for these two groups, which don’t agree on many issues, to work together on climate change speaks volumes about the importance and urgency they attach to the problem. Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman from South Carolina and a good friend of WHRC, says that climate change is not just a head issue, it’s also a heart issue. By working with faith leaders, we have the moral and intellectual authority to address both elements.

WHRC is an independent research institute where scientists investigate the causes and effects of climate change to identify and implement opportunities for conservation, restoration and economic development around the globe. In June 2016, WHRC was ranked as the top independent climate change think tank in the world for the third year in a row. Learn more at www.whrc.org.

Holdren issues call for urgent climate action Speaking to a full auditorium at Brown University on February 15, Dr. John Holdren delivered a comprehensive assessment of the enormous scale of “climate change disruption” and called for immediate action to avoid significant human suffering.

“In my opinion we passed dangerous some time ago. The question is not whether we can avoid dangerous. The question is whether we can avoid catastrophic. Serious harm is already occurring in many different forms. Serious harm is here now,” Holdren said. “We are seeing around the world increases in floods, droughts, wildfires, heat waves, coral bleaching, coastal erosion and inundation, the power of the strongest storms, permafrost thawing and subsidence, expanding impacts of pests and pathogens.”

Holdren was President Obama’s chief science and technology advisor and the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from 2009 to 2017. Prior to joining the

Photos by Peter Goldberg Photography

Obama administration, Holdren was president of the Woods Hole Research Center. He is currently a senior advisor at WHRC and a professor at Harvard University’s Belfer Center.

Climate change “is rapid compared to the capacity of both ecosystems and societal systems to adjust,” Holdren said. “Seventeen of the 18 hottest years in the record all occurred from 2001 to 2017. Statisticians among you can figure out what the odds are that that would happen by accident.”

The event was held to celebrate the new partnership between WHRC and Brown that will focus on finding a balance between tropical forests and expanding agriculture in the Amazon. Both institutions have longstanding and complementary research legacies in the region.

In introducing the partnership, Brown Provost Richard Locke called climate change “one of—if not the most—challenging issue that faces us today.” “The aim of this agreement— this partnership—between Brown and the Woods Hole Research Center is really to bring together students, and faculty and researchers to engage in policy relevant research,” Locke said. “To

News Briefs Dr. Paulo Brando was a co-author on an article in New Phytologist titled “Drivers and mechanisms of tree mortality in moist tropical forests.”

On January 19, Dr. Foster Brown, who coordinates WHRC’s research on climate change and land use in Acre, Brazil, received an award meant to recognize a person or entity that personifies citizenship and dedication from the Public Ministry of Acre. He was the winner of the “Personality” category of the Ministry’s “Attitude Award – Small Actions Transform the World.”

create pathways that turn research into impact. And ultimately what we want to do is not only understand the incredible challenges that we face as a result of environmental change, but try to work on solutions.” Holdren echoed that call for solutions, saying that humanity has three options: mitigation, adaptation, and suffering.

“The reality is that we’re already doing some of each. We are doing some mitigation. We are doing some adaptation. We are doing some suffering. What is up for grabs, what is at stake, is the future mix of those three. And if we want to minimize the amount of suffering we can only achieve that by doing a lot of mitigation and a lot of adaptation,” he said. “So we need enough mitigation to avoid unmanageable climate change. And enough adaptation to manage unavoidable climate change.” Watch the video on YouTube at: youtube.com/watch?v=GfdUextQLt4

Dr. Marcia Macedo served as a mentor in an event called Duke Blueprint on February 2-3. The conference had students focused on “ideating” solutions to big environmental challenges. This year’s theme was “developing technology to stabilize and restore ecosystems.”

On February 2, Dr. Chris Neill was appointed to serve on the Massachusetts Audubon Council. His role will be focused mostly working with their science subcommittee to incorporate more science and climate change information into the organization’s activities, for both conservation and advocacy.

Scientists and religious leaders gather to address ‘moral crisis’ of climate change More than fifty religious leaders and scientists from around Massachusetts gathered early this month to discuss ways that they could cooperate to make progress on climate action. The gathering was organized by WHRC and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, and was held at the Archdiocesan headquarters in Braintree, Massachusetts. Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the leader of the Boston archdiocese, opened the event by noting the unusual alliance and praising the attendees for finding common cause in an urgent issue. O’Malley noted that it had been almost three years since Pope Francis had published his famous climate change encyclical, which called for “protecting our common home and the dignity of the poor.”

“We wanted to explore the potential of forming a coalition of leaders drawn from the religious and scientific communities in Massachusetts to advance those concepts,” O’Malley wrote in his blog after the event. “While there have been scientific advisers to religious organizations, and scientists who seek religious inspiration, this would be a unique coalition with the goal of bringing the combined intellectual and moral authority of both groups to the task of caring for our planet.” The idea for the event was developed by WHRC President Phil Duffy and

Dr. Mark Silk, director of the Leonard Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Connecticut. O’Malley issued a letter inviting religious leaders to attend and it was well received. A wide array of faiths were represented, including a full spectrum of Christian denominations, Islam, Judaism, and Bahá’í.

Duffy spoke after O’Malley and acknowledged that the religious and scientific communities do not see eye-to-eye on many issues. He said, however, that climate change is both a scientific challenge and a moral crisis. While society already has much of the technology available to address climate change, there is a lack of political will or urgency, according to Duffy. He said that it will take both groups – science and religion – to prompt widespread and effective climate action. The event also featured the Rev. Mariama White-Hammond, the associate minister for Ecological Justice at Bethel AME Church in Boston. WhiteHammond reminded the gathering the group that climate change will have the harshest impact on the poorest and

Left to right: Cardinal Sean O’Malley, WHRC President Hil Duffy, Rev. Mariama White-Hammond

most vulnerable in society. Dr. Robert DeConto, a climate scientist at the University of Massachusetts, explained the potential for sea level rise from melting ice sheets.

The Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, an Episcopal priest who serves as the Missioner of Creation Care for the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts, called the event an “extraordinary conversation.” “Discussion was lively. We shared insights, ideas, and hopes,” she wrote. “I live in hope that something new is indeed being born right here in Massachusetts as people of science and people of faith come together to unite head and heart and to work together to protect our common home.”

Photos by Gregory L. Tracy

WHRC awarded grant from the U.S. Department of Defense The 125,000 acres that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) manages in Alaska may pale in comparison to the 77 million acres that the Fish and Wildlife Service own there, but due to training exercises and weaponstesting, these military lands have some of the highest fire-ignition rates in the region. This month, scientists at the Woods Hole Research Center and Northern Arizona University received a multiyear grant from the DoD to investigate the resiliency and vulnerability of boreal forests to fires and climate change across military-owned lands in interior Alaska. The environmental dynamics at play across this landscape provide scientists with a preview of what they expect to see in the coming decades if climate change continues unaddressed.

Dr. Scott Goetz, a professor at NAU and a distinguished visiting scientist of WHRC, is leading the project with WHRC’s Dr. Brendan Rogers, a boreal forest ecosystem and wildfire expert. NAU’s Dr. Michelle Mack, a specialist in Arctic and boreal ecology and postdisturbance recovery, is also involved in the research. The team will be collaborating with geospatial analyst Dr. Matt Macander of Alaska Biological Research, Inc. The group will combine field measurements, remote sensing, and modeling to develop a web-based platform that land managers can use

to forecast the area’s vulnerability to climate change. A major component of the analysis will depend on their novel approach to detecting early warning signals of tree mortality in boreal forests using long-term satellite data. This research was recently accepted for publication in the journal Global Change Biology. “Nobody has done this before” said WHRC scientist Dr. Brendan Rogers. “This DoD grant provides us a unique opportunity to apply our science to a question that has far-reaching implications for the management of boreal lands.”

While their project builds on prior documentation of vegetation change in the arctic and boreal region, nobody has used a statistical model to connect the dots between satellite remote sensing and tree mortality in order to explain the observed patterns, and to say something about what may happen. This will all be wrapped up into a web interface tool that military officials can use to gather adaptive natural resource management strategies. In addition to the intense fire regime on these lands, Alaskan land managers are also interested in how insect outbreaks can be better managed. In the early 1990s, for example, a massive spruce bark beetle outbreak spread over 1.3 million acres and caused over 80 percent of white spruce on the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson to die.

The first outbreak of insect weakens the forest, leaving it sensitive to the next outbreak, which may then leave countless trees standing like tinder for an intense wildfire to sweep through and clean up. Rogers explained that the progression from a healthy patch of forest to a dead one, which often plays out over many years or even decades, has been termed the ‘spiral of tree death.’ “We have demonstrated that satellite remote sensing can be used to detect early warning signals of tree mortality and to follow this spiral. Now we have a way to assess what parts of the landscape may be undergoing gradual but often severe tree mortality from drought, pests, and pathogens.”

Last year, Trump’s Secretary of Defense James Mattis wrote that climate change is a current and future national security threat. In written statements to the Senate Armed Services Committee, he said that “climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today. It is appropriate for the Combatant Commands to incorporate drivers of instability that impact the security environment in their areas into their planning.” With this grant, WHRC can apply its science directly, and can assist planners and managers in making climate-smart decisions about how best to manage their forests.

WHRC also recipient of a one-year seed grant from the Department of Defense Climate scientists have access to a wide variety of satellite imagery, called products, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Some satellites take high-resolution pictures of the earth’s surface, but only when the sky is cloudfree. Other satellites can take lowresolution readings, but are available every day, rain or shine.

Dr. Jennifer Watts, a postdoctoral researcher at WHRC, has received a one-year grant from the Department of Defense to combine both highresolution, visual imagery with lowresolution, microwave remote sensing to identify unfolding environmental change across military lands in Alaska. In the northern high-latitudes of the Arctic, intense solar illumination and cloudiness make using high-resolution pictures alone a poor way to assess changing environmental conditions on the ground.

Watts is teaming up with the University of Montana Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group to develop methods of fusing the coarse microwave output from one satellite with the highresolution imagery from another to produce a consistent dataset for improved management capabilities. “The goal of the project is to provide land managers with a better understanding of how landscape conditions are changing across military terrains in

Central Alaska, and to provide remote sensing tools to better detect these changes.”

Watts has proposed to detect changes in the thermal conditions of the land, including when ecosystems shift from frozen to non-frozen states. She also wants to characterize water level status and flooding patterns and identify changes in drought stress and vegetation patterns like the length of the growing season. “Our approach offers an effective way to monitor abrupt and multiyear changes in landscape frozen or non-frozen status, shifts in landscape wetness and vegetation health.”

These fused datasets will be useful to scientists who are trying to determine when and where a disturbance has occurred, and to determine if that evolved gradually or suddenly, and ultimately to zero in on the cause, or driver of the disturbance – fire, insect outbreak, or drought – as well as the impact it may bring.

Rogers, along with Jinyang Du of the University of Montana at Missoula and Tom Douglas from the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Fairbanks, Alaska.

This project will provide a regional environmental change analysis for the Department of Defense lands in interior Alaska from purely a remote sensing perspective, the results of which will ideally assist Rogers’ attempt to build a tree mortality risk assessment protocol.

“This information is needed to evaluate how climate change is impacting the arctic and boreal zones of the United States so that DoD land managers can be well-positioned to mitigate risks resulting from these impacts,” Watts said.

Watts will be joined by WHRC scientists Dr. Sue Natali and Dr. Brendan

WHRC in the news Cape Cod Rivers Observatory offers stream of information. WHRC’s Cape Cod Rivers Observatory, a project run by Dr. Max Holmes, was covered in the Cape Cod Times. January 19. http://bit.ly/2FY8imr

The Arctic is full of toxic mercury, and climate change is going to release it. Dr. Sue Natali was quoted in a Washington Post article regarding a recent study that found a staggering amount of mercury in arctic permafrost. February 5. http://wapo.st/2sKQFnn

Climate change brings scientists and religious leaders together in Massachusetts. The recent and ongoing partnership to address climate change between WHRC and faith leaders was described in an op-ed in The Gazette by Mark Silk, a member of the partnership. February 13. http://bit.ly/2oqDnqO Leaked U.N. Climate Report. President Phil Duffy spoke with Heather Goldstone on WGBH and WCAI about the implications of the UNFCCC’s latest draft summary report for policy makers. February 13. http://bit.ly/2HDdDQN

Invest in the future of the Earth Please support the

Woods Hole Research Center Donate Now www.whrc.org/support

Woods Hole Research Center 149 Woods Hole Road Falmouth, MA 02540 508-540-9900 www.whrc.org

Please help us to conserve paper. To receive this newsletter electronically, please send your email address to info@whrc.org.

Sandplain grasslands are global biodiversity hotspots and often contain a disproportionate share of rare and threatened species in states where they occur. Research and management experience over the past twenty years has found that current management is inadequate for maintaining the land area and biodiversity associated with healthy sandplain grasslands. The Sandplain Grassland Habitat Network is an initiative of the Woods Hole Research Center and regional partners.