CLIMATE science for CHANGE
SUMMER 2023
Fire and water Two opposing forces, essential to healthy ecosystems, are being thrown out of balance by a warming world. Resilient partnerships Sustaining climate research has necessitated strong partnerships with Indigenous communities, passionate recreationists, and scientists.
Contents 01 /
From the President & CEO
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Updates and insights
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A “fireside chat” with Woodwell’s fire and climate experts Fire suppression deployed in Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge to protect carbon
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Old growth standing guard
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Projects marking 20 years of field research
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CLIMATE science for CHANGE
Indigenous-led climate research station rebuilds after October wildfire Climate change is opening the drain on Arctic lakes Colorado River water crisis a symptom of greater climate crisis
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Networking the rivers
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Final images from the field | Science on the Fly
Climate Science for Change is published by Woodwell Climate Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Woodwell Climate Research Center conducts science for solutions at the nexus of climate, people and nature. We partner with leaders and communities for just, meaningful impact to address the climate crisis. PRESIDENT AND CEO
Dr. R. Max Holmes CHIEF COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER
Dr. Heather M. H. Goldstone SCIENCE WRITER
Sarah Ruiz GRAPHIC DESIGNER
Julianne Waite COPY EDITOR
Elizabeth Bagley IMAGES
Monica Caparas, Allie Cunningham, Linda Deegan, Mason Dominico, Illuminati Filmes, Greg Fiske, Bibiana Garrido, Nigel Golden, Miles Grant, Torre Jorgenson, Eric Lee, Anna Liljedhal, Marco Montemayor, Brendan Rogers, Christina Shintani, Susan Tessier, Joëlle Voglimacci-Stephanopoli, Daniel White, Dale Woitas, Sebastian Zavoico, Scott Zolkos WOODWELL CLIMATE RESEARCH CENTER
149 Woods Hole Road Falmouth, MA 02540 Email: info@woodwellclimate.org Website: woodwellclimate.org COPYRIGHT
Fires (orange) and smoke (grey/lavender) in Siberia during the 2020 fire season, shown on a
satellite image from the Sentinel-2 multispectral Instrument (https://sentinel.esa.int). Siberia’s fire season was more extreme than usual due to abnormally high spring temperatures— more than 8° C higher than averages of the previous 15 years. Overall, 25.5 million hectares burned including 15,000 individual fires in Siberia in 2020. / NASA image sourced by Stefano Potter, colorization by Christina Shintani
Aerial view of wildfire burning through the boreal and permafrost landscape as it approached the Scotty Creek Research Station, September 2022. / photo by Mason Dominico
All material appearing in Climate Science for Change is copyrighted unless otherwise stated or it may rest with the provider of the supplied material. Climate Science for Change takes care to ensure information is correct at time of printing. Woodwell Climate Research Center is located on the traditional and sacred land of the Wampanoag people who still occupy this land, and whose history, language, traditional ways of life, and culture continue to influence this vibrant community.
From R. Max Holmes, President & CEO
“There is too much good news to justify despair” As climate scientists we are often asked how we keep at it, day after day, week after week, year after year, when progress against climate change has been so frustratingly slow. My own answer has varied, but the truth is that it can be a struggle. We have largely known what needs to be done for many years now, including transitioning away from fossil fuels and protecting, managing, and restoring Earth’s forests and soils. And yet, each year greenhouse gas emissions increase, atmospheric CO2 concentration climbs, and the goal of a healthy, just, and sustainable planet seems to slip further out of reach. What people really want to know, I suspect, is whether there is still hope. In considering this question, I was reminded of the following quote by the late environmental scientist Donella Meadows, not specifically about climate change but certainly applicable:
“There is too much bad news to justify complacency. There is too much good news to justify despair.” It is all too easy to focus on the bad news side of the story, with complacency or despair being understandable outcomes. This is reflected in the rise of “climate doomerism,” which in some ways is replacing climate denialism. Climate doomers understand the causes and consequences of climate change, they just can’t see the path to a positive future. Or if they see the path, they don’t think it will be followed. Counter to this narrative, I am increasingly hopeful about the future. How can that be, given all the climate impacts we are already seeing? Part of the answer is related to the fact that the climate change conversation has gone mainstream. The number of Americans who say they personally have been affected by climate change has doubled since 2010, and climate
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From Max Holmes, President & CEO
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change went from being barely mentioned in the 2016 election to being a defining issue in 2020. In other words, climate change is here, the impacts are already significant, and that is now broadly appreciated. The extent of this shift was made clear to me in January when I was invited to speak in Davos, Switzerland during the World Economic Forum. I was surprised and pleased that climate change was a central organizing theme of the conference, with much of the emphasis being on how the business community can help drive climate solutions. This was my first time in Davos, but in talking with long-time attendees it became clear that the intense focus on climate was new. The shift was further illustrated to me in March, when I spoke at CERAWeek in Houston, Texas. CERAWeek is the world’s premiere energy conference, attended by thousands of fossil fuel executives from around the world—not our usual network. As with Davos, I was surprised and pleased by how central climate change was to the discussions. True, I heard CEOs of some of the world’s largest oil companies discuss how they planned to increase production, but just as many spoke clearly about fossil fuels’ numbered days and the necessity of a rapid transition to sustainable energy sources. The topics of my own panels—preserving the Amazon, and the feasibility of staying below 1.5°C warming—were also surprising for an energy conference that historically had been dominated by the fossil fuel industry. As with Davos, longtime CERAWeek attendees described how climate change had only recently become a prominent theme at the conference. Obviously, we need more than words at conferences. We need urgent action. And we are seeing growing momentum. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provides an unprecedented $369 billion in funding and incentives to fuel the transition we need and, importantly, support natural climate solutions. Global wind and solar energy production is growing faster than predicted, and is expected to more than double over the next five years, according to the International Energy Agency. None of this is to say that the battle against climate change has been won, or to suggest that a positive outcome is inevitable or even likely. But the battle has not been lost and the path to a positive future is becoming clearer, and Woodwell Climate will continue to do everything in our power to chart the course to that destination. Onward.
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Updates and insights
Impact updates JANUARY Woodwell Climate President and CEO Dr. R. Max Holmes, Board Vice Chair Tod Hynes, and Arctic Program Director Dr. Sue Natali traveled to Davos, Switzerland, site of the World Economic Forum, where they keynoted the Green Accelerator Davos, sharing the need for urgent climate action with nearly two hundred government officials, business leaders, and investors in attendance.
FEBRUARY
Eric Lee
Woodwell’s Director of Government Relations Laura Uttley, External Affairs Analyst Natalie Baillargeon, and Alex Goldstein of 90West met with staff and senior advisors to several key federal legislators to discuss how the next Farm Bill can enable producers to further develop natural climate solutions.
MARCH President and CEO Dr. R. Max Holmes featured in two events at CERAWeek—a premier energy conference hosted by S&P Global. He was paired with former Columbian President Iván Duque Márquez to discuss the importance of preserving the Amazon, then joined an expert panel addressing the feasibility of climate targets set in the Paris Agreement, and the need for greater ambition for a positive climate future.
APRIL The Biden administration released a new, first-of-its-kind inventory of mature and old growth forests on federal lands, as had been mandated by President Biden’s Earth Day executive order one year ago. Woodwell Climate scientists have been deeply involved in both the science behind this essential tool and its development, and plan to provide public comment on expected forest protection proposals building on this inventory.
MAY Woodwell Climate returned to Mountainfilm in Telluride as the non-profit partner. Center leadership and scientists appeared in multiple events alongside climate activist and author Bill McKibben, North Face Mountaineer Conrad Anker, Protect Our Winters founder Jeremy Jones, and others.
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Updates and insights
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Fund for Climate Solutions awards four new grants From soil carbon to tropical fires, the 2023 winter cohort of FCS projects tests out a diverse array of natural climate solutions The first round of the 2023 Fund for Climate Solutions awardees has been announced. This competitive, internal granting mechanism supports early-stage and high-risk, high-reward research with breakthrough potential. This latest cohort of grantees includes four projects testing the viability of natural climate solutions across various ecosystems, from forests to wetlands, to agricultural fields.
Global hotspots and hot moments of nitrous oxide emissions Project lead: Dr. Jacqueline Hung Collaborators: Dr. Marcia Macedo, Kathleen Savage, Dr. Yushu Xia, Dr. Christopher Neill Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a prevalent, powerful—and understudied—greenhouse gas. Soils are the largest contributors of N2O emissions, but understanding of N2O fluxes is limited by lack of real-time monitoring technology. Given our broad geographic coverage and long history of innovation in measuring greenhouse gases, Woodwell Climate is well-positioned to address this gap. This award will support the purchase of cutting-edge field equipment for instantaneous N2O measurements, as well as the development of a laboratory system for measuring multiple greenhouse gases in soil experiments. Together, these will enable advances in understanding how changing soil conditions around the globe—from permafrost thaw to wetland restoration, rangeland management to tropical deforestation—affect the balance of nitrous oxide.
Can forest harvesting contribute to natural climate solutions (NCS) while maintaining economic viability? Project lead: Kathleen Savage Collaborators: Dr. Wayne Walker, Dr. Richard Birdsey, Zoe Dietrich, Emily Sturdivant Trees accumulate carbon as they grow, making them critical climate assets. However, many forests are also commercial sources of timber and wood fiber. Forest harvesting is generally assumed to result in a net release of carbon, even after accounting for the carbon stored in wood products. As the search for practical climate solutions intensifies, a central question is whether this either-or thinking could be reframed as both-and. In other words, whether commercial forests could be managed to meet multiple goals—providing wood and paper products, creating economic returns from natural resources, and sequestering carbon? The proposed work builds on our longstanding research at the Howland Research Forest, addressing whether shelterwood harvesting can be both an economically viable harvest practice and a natural climate solution.
Dr. Christopher Neill surveys the site of a cranberry bog restoration to natural wetland in Massachusetts. / photo by Miles Grant View from the carbon monitoring tower in Howland Forest. / photo by Miles Grant
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Shallow or deep: Can cover crops make soil carbon stick?
Mapping carbon stocks across native Cerrado and Amazon ecosystems with a known history of fire disturbance
Project lead: Dr. Taniya RoyChowdhury Collaborator: Dr. Jonathan Sanderman
Project lead: Dr. Manoela Machado Collaborators: Dr. Marcia Macedo and Dr. Wayne Walker
Cover crops have the potential to enhance carbon uptake and stability in agricultural soils and, under the Inflation Reduction Act, the USDA is poised to invest billions of dollars in adoption of cover crops as a climate-smart practice. However, current understanding of the effectiveness of cover cropping to deliver climate benefits is lacking a key consideration—microbial processes. Soil microbial communities are key regulators of soil carbon dynamics, and may determine whether a given land management practice results in net loss or gain of carbon. This work will characterize microbial processes and their role in soil carbon stabilization in surface and deep soils in dynamic, mixedspecies cover-cropping systems. The result will be enhanced understanding of the outcomes of cover-cropping practices, with potential policy relevance.
The Amazon and Cerrado biomes hold vast carbon stores that are threatened by fires associated with both land clearing and a warmer, drier climate. However, the long-term responses of fire-impacted areas within these ecosystems could be dramatically different. While Amazon forests have not evolved with fire as a pressure, transitional forests and the Cerrado are adapted for—and dependent on—regular fire for sustaining their structure and function. Understanding the effects of fire disturbance on carbon dynamics and the potential pathways of recovery in these ecosystems is critical. By mapping carbon stocks in fire-disturbed ecosystems and creating larger-scale scenarios, this work will provide a rich picture of what future carbon storage could look like under a range of possible fire disturbance/recovery dynamics.
Woodwell scientists conduct sampling in a field cover-cropped with oats. / photo by Sarah Ruiz Firefighters in Brazil combat a blaze. / photo by Bibiana Garrido
By the numbers INSIGHTS FROM RECENT WOODWELL CLIMATE PUBLICATIONS
Resolution of real-time forest carbon mapping using latest methods
17.3 %
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-20-1537-2023
https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.rse.2023.113483
https://doi.org/10.1038/ s41597-023-02041-1
Tg
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meters
Carbon calculated to have been emitted by tundra wildfires in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, AK in 2015
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0.91
Fraction of total global warming since 1851 attributable to U.S.
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A “fireside chat” with Woodwell’s fire and climate experts Drs. Machado, Rogers, and Zobel talk about the links between fire and climate change
We see the same headlines every year now. Fires—in the Arctic, in the Amazon rainforest, edging dangerously close to human communities. Forest fires play an important role in the climate change story—as both a symptom of warming temperatures and a cause of them. Woodwell Climate Science Writer, Sarah Ruiz, recently sat down with three of the Center’s leading experts on climate and fire to unravel that relationship—covering topics including the way fire differs between ecosystems, what is “fire weather,” how is climate change altering fire regimes, and how do we combat the issue to keep carbon locked away in forests and soils. Below is an excerpt from that conversation. SARAH RUIZ Brendan, you work primarily in boreal forests, where fires are a natural part of the landscape, correct? DR. BRENDAN ROGERS Yes, that's right. So even though boreal forests are in the north and they're cold and damp for a lot of the year, the surface vegetation in the soil, the soil organic matter, can dry out pretty dramatically in the summer. This fuel, the term for it in fire science, often just takes one single
ignition source to generate a pretty large wildfire. Humans certainly ignite fires, but still most of the burned area in boreal forests is coming from lightning ignitions. Fire is also an important natural process in boreal forests. Many of the fires are what we call stand replacing—meaning they're high intensity, they kill most of the trees, at least in Alaska and Canada. This initiates the process of forest succession, with often different types of vegetation, and tree species playing pretty key ecological roles. But fire regimes are changing and intensifying with climate change, taking us outside the range of what we would consider our natural variability that we've seen in these systems for millennia. SR Now, Manoela, you work in the Amazon rainforest, where fire is never a natural part of the landscape. Can you explain what kind of role fire plays in a tropical rainforest? DR. MANOELA MACHADO The Amazon biome did not evolve with fire pressure selecting for strategies of survival, which means that the plants are not adapted to this disturbance. Fire is a very powerful tool used to transform the landscape and has been used for millennia. Traditional and Indigenous communities still use it for agricultural purposes, but that's not the fire that we see on the news, making headlines of “fire crisis in the Amazon.”
Those catastrophic events with lots of smoke in the atmosphere, they're normally related to deforestation fires,
First large scale fire of the dry season in Pantanal, Brazil, August 2022. / photo by Illuminati Filmes Summer 2023
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which are fires used after clear cutting to clear out biomass and use the land for cattle ranching and other agricultural purposes. Those fires can escape into forest areas. So the ignition sources are always human—there are no natural ignition sources in the Amazon forest.
to dry out quicker); relative humidity (the lower the humidity, the more rapidly vegetation can dry out); precipitation, both backward looking (“has it rained a lot recently?”) and today; and wind speed, because once a fire starts, if the wind is adequately high, that's when it's going to spread.
SR With climate change, these dynamics are shifting in many places, as drier and hotter conditions make it easier for fires to spark. Zach, could you talk to us a little bit about what makes a forest susceptible to fire, and how climate change might be affecting that?
We take those variables out of the climate models, and we model it—what it looks like historically, versus what it's going to look like in the future. And what we find is that in several fire regimes, in most of them actually, these “high fire risk days” are starting to rapidly increase.
DR. ZACH ZOBEL Fire weather is a given set of atmospheric parameters that indicate—if there was an ignition source—fire would be able to grow and spread rapidly. What we do is we model what is known as the fire weather index. This index consists of four different atmospheric variables, and those are: temperature (the hotter it is, the more likely vegetation is going
We see it especially in the Mediterranean, Brazil, eastern Australia, the Western United States, in several parts of Africa. Over the next 30 years, we think these high fire risk days are going to increase on the order of a couple of weeks in some locations like the Western US, to upwards of one to two months in the Mediterranean and Brazil. And that's pretty significant, when you think about how historically these days only occurred maybe one week a year.
Dr. Brendan Rogers studies the vast expanses of boreal forests and Arctic tundra across Earth’s northern high-latitudes. His work focuses on understanding how these systems impact—and are impacted by—global climate change. He is particularly interested in changes to permafrost ecosystems, including feedbacks to the global climate system through greenhouse gas emissions, as well as impacts on Arctic residents. Dr. Rogers uses his science to inform natural resource management and policies for improved climate mitigation, adaptation, and ecosystem protection.
SR So what are some of the risk outcomes posed by those more frequent, intense fires, globally?
Dr. Manoela Machado studies fire risk in the Amazon forest and its drivers, including climate change and human activity, such as deforestation and selective logging. She hopes to develop a better understanding of the spatial and temporal patterns of fire under a changing climate. Dr. Machado’s current work aims to identify the gaps between fire-related data and key people working on the ground making firefighting decisions. By speaking with firefighters from different regions and Indigenous communities in Brazil, she is trying to bridge those gaps—facilitating the search for data and suggesting strategic methods to prevent fire in the Amazon. Dr. Zachary Zobel set out to become a television meteorologist, but quickly discovered a different audience with a pressing need for climate science: decision makers. He uses high-resolution climate models to quantify projected changes in temperature and precipitation extremes, with an emphasis on societal impacts in the next 10 to 30 years. His work has produced insights into the shifting risks of deadly heat waves in the Middle East, flooding in Houston, air quality in India, and wildfires in California.
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BR More frequent intense fires are changing the ecology of many boreal forests, and in some cases, leading to transition from forest to grassland or shrubland, which of course impacts the resident animals. But there are also large impacts on humans. The smoke from large wildfire seasons is a direct threat to human health, and rural and especially Indigenous communities often feel the largest impacts. Additionally, in areas of permafrost, which is ground that is frozen year after year, fires can lead to permafrost thaw for many years. That can often destabilize the ground leading to ground collapse, presenting a hazard to people that are living in these areas. MM I think the Amazon has many similarities with the Arctic, despite being very different environments. Aside from not being natural, fires have become a recurrent issue that coincides with the dry season, which then creates what we call the burning season. Any fire is damaging to an environment that is not adapted to it. So there's the immediate release of huge amounts of carbon when that biomass is burning, and there's the delayed mortality that understory fires cause, so emissions of carbon continue after a fire as well. That can cause a shift in species composition.
And fire also begets fire, which means that forest canopy that is disrupted allows more wind and sun to penetrate the forest, which creates drier microclimates. And tree mortality increases the fuels on the forest floor as well. So a degraded forest becomes even more vulnerable to future burning. As Brendon mentioned as well, there are several studies linking the burning season with higher hospitalization rates of people with respiratory illnesses as well.
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Burned black spruce forest in Alaska. / photo by Brendan Rogers SR How much of the fire headlines we have seen in recent years—the 2019–2020 Australian wildfires, the incredibly destructive Camp Fire in California—is on par with what fire weather models have shown? ZZ When we talk with our partners, we always show them how rapidly the climate models are viewing this increase in fire weather days, but we definitely caveat it by saying, “Here's what the observations are showing us. The climate models aren't even keeping up with how quickly wildfire risk days are increasing.” This is the best case scenario for the next 30 years, and the best case scenario is scary enough…
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Increased fires not only have immediate ecological and safety impacts, they also represent a significant and growing risk to our ability to achieve our climate goals, which would bring fires back to a manageable level. Forests are one of our most valuable carbon sinks and keeping them healthy and standing is essential to curbing warming. LISTEN
To hear the full interview and learn more about the fire management solutions the team at Woodwell Climate is working on, scan the QR code or visit woodwellclimate.org/fire-and-climate-audio-story
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Fire suppression deployed in Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge to protect carbon Fighting fire in remote boreal forests could be a cost-effective way of combating climate change Sarah Ruiz
Science Writer
Data: Brandt, J.P. 2009. The extent of the North American boreal zone. Environmental Reviews 17:101-161; Brown et al. 1997; USFWS
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Located in Eastern Alaska, the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge is larger than many U.S. states. It’s a roadless landscape of rocky mountain outcroppings, flat meadows, treeless tundra, and dense spruce forests, bisected by the Yukon River and dotted with thousands of lakes and wetlands. Several Alaska Native communities call the refuge home and subsist off of its natural resources. This diverse, expansive wilderness is well adapted to fire, and it’s not uncommon to see pink fireweed blooms or young grass and seedlings sprouting from burn scars.
formed during the last ice age. Thawing Yedoma is a significant source of carbon dioxide and methane emissions to the atmosphere. Fire, made more intense and frequent by climate change, threatens to accelerate that thaw. In an effort to preserve carbon stores, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently dedicated 1.6 million acres of the Yukon Flats refuge to piloting a new firefighting regime, one designed to protect carbon, in addition to human lives and property.
But the relationship between fire and land here—as in many places—has been changing as the climate warms. Yukon Flats sits atop ancient, ice-rich ground, called Yedoma permafrost,
This decision was, in part, influenced by research led by Dr. Carly Phillips, during her time as a research scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, alongside Woodwell Climate Senior Science
Science builds the case for policy change
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New plant growth after the 2020 Isom Creek
Fire in a recovering area of Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge. / photo by Dale Woitas, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service map by Christina Shintani
Aerial view of a recent burn scar in Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge. / photo by Torre Jorgenson
Policy Advisor, Dr. Peter Frumhoff, and Associate Scientist, Dr. Brendan Rogers. In a 2022 paper in Science Advances, the group quantified the threat boreal forest fires pose to climate goals. Wildfires in boreal North America alone could, by mid-century, use up 3% of remaining global carbon dioxide emissions associated with keeping temperatures below the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C limit. This is a conservative estimate—the authors suggest the true numbers could be even larger as the accelerating effect of fires on permafrost thaw, and the release of other greenhouse gases, were not included in the analysis. The study also examined the costeffectiveness of combating those fires as a potential climate solution. Molly Elder, an economics and public policy Ph.D. candidate at Tufts University, performed an analysis of data from across Alaska’s fire management zones and found that actively suppressing boreal fires could cost less than 13 dollars per ton of carbon dioxide emissions avoided—putting it on par with other carbon mitigation solutions like onshore wind or utility-scale solar. “The work we did in this project proved and quantified what the management community already knew, which is that
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management is effective at reducing burned area when fires are actively suppressed,” says Elder. Combating boreal fires could provide much needed mitigation, and at a low cost, but there are some logistical obstacles between the hypothetical model and actual implementation. Typically, in Alaska, boreal forest fires are left to burn unless they present a risk to human life or property. This is partly because these forests are fireadapted, but also partly due to the sheer vastness of boreal wilderness. With limited resources, it is not always practical or possible to track down and put out a fire, especially in a place without roads like Yukon Flats. Firefighters are already stretched thin with lengthening and increasingly highintensity fire seasons.
their plate,” says Dr. Phillips. “However, after discussing the implications of our research, and the ambition that additional funding would come with any mandate, we got more buy-in.” Fire suppression: It’s not a dirty word The other concern managers raised was whether fire suppression would ultimately be successful in achieving their goals. Historically, fire suppression efforts in the US have been counterproductive to protecting forests.
The research group worked with the fire management community in Alaska, facilitated by the Alaska Fire Science Consortium, to better understand the needs of firefighters and demonstrate the co-benefits of fire suppression in addition to preserving carbon.
In the late 1800s, lack of understanding of the ways Indigenous communities in Western states have used fire to maintain healthy forests resulted in decades of near-total suppression of fire in the region. In many western US forests, (adapted to what Dr. Rogers calls “high-frequency, low-intensity” fire) suppression allowed highly flammable, dry vegetation—which would normally be periodically burned away—to build up. When fires did spark, they were then capable of growing to a size and intensity that could damage, rather than activate, the forest.
“Many of the fire managers expressed how stretched their resources already were and resistance to the idea that yet another mandate would be added to
But in boreal Alaska and Canada, it’s just the opposite. The spruce-dominated forests are adapted to high-intensity fires that only return every hundred or
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so years. As climate change speeds up the return of fires with hotter and drier conditions, boreal forests have begun to suffer major losses.
was detected in Yukon Flats, it would be monitored by the Alaska Fire Service, but not suppressed, except when presenting a threat to human communities.
“The frequency of boreal fires, ultimately, is increasing. In many places we're seeing more reburning and larger burned areas,” says Dr. Rogers. “Climate change and human actions are shifting that fire regime out of its historical range into this new realm. So the whole idea of fire suppression in the boreal is to keep fires closer to historical levels, to which the systems and fauna are adapted. Suppression can help delay permafrost degradation, limiting carbon emissions and buying us time to reach our climate targets.”
“This pilot project is a new twist to a long-standing partnership between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Alaska Fire Service. For select areas of the Refuge, now if a fire start is detected, we ask the Alaska Fire Service to only send a crew if they are confident in 100% containment within three days,” says Yukon Flats Refuge Manager, Jimmy Fox.
Past missteps with fire suppression have made fire managers cautious, though. Lisa Saperstein, Regional Fire Ecologist with U.S. Fish and Wildlife, notes that, with limited resources, priorities in intense fire seasons will have to shift to protecting human settlements over carbon and permafrost. But, given the co-benefits of keeping fire activity to historic levels—and the urgency of reigning in emissions in any way we can—managers in Yukon Flats were willing to try. “This type of shift in values is always difficult, especially when the outcome is uncertain. Support from leaders of fire management organizations, in addition to land managers, has been a key factor in this effort moving forward,” says Saperstein. If a fire starts in the woods, how do you fight it?
This change in tactics won’t mean that every fire that ignites will be put out— both impractical and unhelpful from an ecological perspective—but it will mean more aggressively targeting fires when they arise. Since the 1980s, when fire
The suppression teams will target fires that they judge as “quick fixes”, curbing the potential for them to grow into large, stand-replacing sized blazes. If a fire becomes too big to fight quickly, the teams revert to the old tactic of simply monitoring. “If a crew is deployed, we ask that they cease suppression and return to base after three days, regardless of containment status,” says Fox. “This request is grounded in concern for the Alaska Fire Service having resources available if communities become threatened from other fires.” Fox says refuge management and Alaska Fire Service members will stay flexible as the pilot project unfolds so they can respond to changing conditions. “In conservation, we tend to focus on the technical aspects of a challenge and avoid the difficulties that come with asking ourselves to adapt,” says Fox. “This pilot project is both adaptive and technical. It has required me to stay curious and listen. It has required me to learn new information, and share it in a way that is comprehensible. It’s required being comfortable with uncertainty, and yet standing in purpose. It has been a learning journey so far, and will continue to be.”
Putting models to the test On the research side, the team at Woodwell Climate hopes this new strategy will present an opportunity to study the practical implementation of fire suppression as a climate solution. “This is the proof of concept,” says Dr. Frumhoff. “This is the opportunity to really see in a rigorous way whether we can apply this solution at a meaningful scale and gain meaningful carbon benefits with relatively modest cost. And it's directly traceable to the conversations that the research team had with fire managers.” The 1.6 million acres slated for fire suppression are small compared to the 8.6 million that comprise the entire refuge, or the 5.6 billion acres of permafrost in the northern hemisphere, but it’s a very important start. Research and analysis of the effectiveness of this solution could aid its expansion to other regions of the Arctic. “It’s a big moment, because, while it's obviously a relatively small area compared to all of Alaska, 1.6 million acres is still a lot of land,” says Dr. Rogers.” We’re hoping that it's a jumping off point and can translate to other refuges and other agencies with the addition of proper funding and staffing.” And each summer, the case for protecting permafrost and boreal carbon, while working to dramatically reduce emissions from fossil fuels, continues to grow. “Every year that goes by, as fires intensify and climate change gets worse, this message might resonate just a little more,” says Dr. Rogers. “Because it’s a problem that’s not going away if we do nothing about it. And we can do something about it.”
A State of Alaska firefighter walks a fire break on the Isom Creek Fire at Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge in 2020. / photo by Dale Woitas, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Thawed Yedoma permafrost and burnt trees after a fire in Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge. / photo by Torre Jorgenson Summer 2023
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Old growth standing guard A forest is a complex ecosystem, interacting with natural and anthropogenic forces in diverse ways. In the face of climate change, healthy, mature forests are some of the most resilient ecosystems on earth, providing crucial services and buffering against the worst effects of warmer temperatures, all while continuing to pull carbon out of the atmosphere. Carbon Although younger forests sequester carbon at faster rates, older forests store more accumulated carbon in the wood and bark of trees, as well as continue to stow away carbon beneath the ground in plant roots and soils. Fire Mature forests are often more resiliant to large disturbances like fires. Older, more established trees—often having thick bark—are less likely to be killed in a blaze and a healthy forest can regenerate much more quickly than one that is already degraded. In the boreal region, where forests are adapted to fire, an area of burned forest regenerates quickly as seeds from nearby mature trees drop and sprout in the fertile ground. Water and temperature Mature forests also provide important ecosystem services, especially the regulation of temperature and the filtration of water. Through the process of evapotranspiration, forests transport water vapor to the atmosphere, causing regional cooling, and preventing drought and vegetation dry-out that could make an area susceptible to fire or disease. An established forest ecosystem is also a water treatment plant responsible for filtering out pollution from the watershed. Studies have shown even a small strip of forest along a body of water—called a riparian buffer—can prevent excess nutrient and sediment runoff from damaging the aquatic ecosystem. How old is mature? What defines a “mature forest” is up for debate—age, tree diameter, and ecological stage all play a role in what makes a forest mature. One recent study led by researchers at Woodwell Climate assessed the maturity of 13 national forests in the United States using a combination of tree diameter and a metric called Culmination of Net Primary Productivity (CNPP), or the age at which tree canopy closure reaches 100% for a tree species.
map by Christina Shintani 14
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Celebrating 20 years
Keeping watch on Arctic rivers In the early 2000s, analyses of long-term datasets revealed tantalizing clues about increasing flow in Arctic rivers related to climate change. However, a sparsity of measurements on pan-Arctic river chemistry hindered understanding of climate change impacts on ecosystem health. The Arctic Great Rivers Observatory (ArcticGRO) was created to bridge that gap and, by measuring chemistry in the six largest Arctic rivers every two months using identical methods, establish a critical monitoring baseline. The team comprises lead researchers from five institutions, including Woodwell Climate, and nearly a dozen essential international partners. The first samples were collected almost exactly twenty years ago, in June 2003. Since then, this unique international collaboration has analyzed nearly 600 samples each for dozens of chemical parameters; inspired more than 200 peer-reviewed publications; generated unparalleled—and unexpected—insights on Arctic ecosystems; and shaped paradigms which have helped to advance understanding of our changing planet. A synthesis of this unique dataset will be published later this year. photo by Scott Zolkos
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A truly unique experiment The TIDE Project began in 2003 with the collection of baseline data on Massachusetts’ Great Salt Marsh. The following year, an interdisciplinary research team started adding nutrients to two tidal salt marsh streams, kicking off what would become the world’s only long-term, landscape-scale fertilization experiment aimed at understanding how human development impacts one of Earth’s most productive ecosystems. Over the course of two decades, the TIDE Project has engaged a diverse group of more than 100 participants, many of them interns, research assistants, and graduate students. Led by Woodwell Climate Senior Scientist Dr. Linda Deegan, TIDE has yielded seminal insights into how coastal salt marshes respond to intersecting human impacts. A high-profile 2012 Nature paper shined a spotlight on the role of nutrient pollution in marsh loss—and highlighted the importance of TIDE, as the effect had not been seen in studies that manipulated just a few square meters. photo by Linda Deegan
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Indigenous-led climate research station rebuilds after October wildfire After Canada’s Scotty Creek Research Station was devastated by a late-season wildfire, Permafrost Pathways is helping to rebuild Jessica Howard
Arctic Communications Specialist, Permafrost Pathways
In October 2022, Scotty Creek Research Station—a prominent climate research facility in the Northwest Territories (NWT) of Canada—was almost entirely consumed by an unusually late-season wildfire. With five out of nine of the station’s buildings destroyed and an estimated two million dollars of damage to onsite housing, research equipment, solar panels, and lab space, the fire was a “gut punch” to one of the only Indigenous-led climate research stations in the world. But, with support from Permafrost Pathways, the Łíídl˛ı˛ı K�ų�ę First Nation (LKFN), who now lead the facility, are focusing their attention on rebuilding.
at Scotty Creek told CKLB Radio after being the first to witness the extensive destruction left in the fire’s wake last fall. But now, “it’s just a matter of picking up the pieces and figuring out where we go from here,” Alger said.
A cruel irony: when the impacts of climate change thwart climate research
“I can’t help but notice the irony that a subarctic research station dedicated to understanding climate change burned
The fire that destroyed Scotty Creek Research Station had been active for almost 100 days before finally reaching the camp. Usually, the area sees rain or snow for almost half of the month in October, and historically, it has even snowed as much as 12 inches with temperatures sometimes dropping as low as negative two degrees Fahrenheit (-19 degrees Celsius). But drier conditions, abnormally warm weather, and heavy winds in late 2022 led to an extended and extraordinarily active fire season in the NWT—which exceeded its 10-year average of total fires burned, with over 1.3 million acres affected by fire. “It was just heartbreaking,” William Alger, LKFN’s lead Dehcho guardian
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Climate change is making it harder to conduct climate research, a harsh reality that the fire at Scotty Creek tragically represents. The obstruction of data collection and ecological stewardship caused by frequent environmental disasters is becoming a recurring setback, presenting a daunting challenge for carrying out this work in a perpetually warming world.
down in mid-October due to a wildfire,” William Quinton, a professor at Wilfrid Laurier University and the original founder of Scotty Creek Research Station, said in an interview for CBC News. The unusual time of year made it difficult to attack the fire, as temperatures suddenly plummeted and strong winds began to pick up. For several days leading up to the weekend of October 15, the Scotty Creek team anxiously watched the fire burn closer and closer to the camp, mentally preparing for the worst but hoping for the best. Unfortunately, common techniques for combating wildfire, such as cutting fire breaks and setting up sprinklers, failed when the cold snap led to the territory's
Source: Natural Resources Canada https://cwfis.cfs.gc.ca/datamart/metadata/fm3buffered
Wildfire smoke looms over the Scotty Creek tower site, October 2022. / photo by Joëlle Voglimacci-Stephanopoli, Université de Montréal
Map by Greg Fiske
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William Alger, lead Dehcho guardian at Scotty Creek and member of the LKFN, working at the tower site. / photo courtesy of Scotty Creek Research Station
Members of LKFN holding a ceremony to celebrate Indigenous ownership of the station as of summer 2022. / photo courtesy of Scotty Creek Research Station
Scotty Creek Research Station next to Goose Lake before the 2022 fire. / photo courtesy of Scotty Creek Research Station Wildfire smoke hanging over Goose Lake and Scotty Creek Research Station. / photo by Mason Dominico environment and natural resources department removing sprinkler systems they feared would freeze— drawing criticism from LKFN—and changes in wind direction forced the early evacuation of research teams and firefighting crews helping out on the ground. Additionally, helicopters trying to combat the flames from the air were unable to pull water from surrounding water bodies that had begun to freeze over. "When we're fighting fires and protecting structures, it is highly unusual for there to be the threat of freezing temperatures,” Mike Westwick, a wildfire information officer for the territory wrote in an email to CBC News. Impacts from the burning of Scotty Creek extend far beyond the research station and will have a ripple effect on the economies of nearby communities that benefit from the droves of international researchers coming to this unique region every year to study environmental change caused by rapid warming. The visitors Scotty Creek draws to the Fort Simpson area provide steady income to local businesses
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including hotels, grocery stores, and airlines. "The loss of Scotty Creek facilities is going to have a series of impacts that will have an ongoing effect on our already delicate local economy. Our hotels, bed and breakfasts, and charter airlines will take the biggest hit. Important climate change research, youth education, and the economic activities that are part of keeping it going will now be temporarily halted” LKFN Chief Kele Antoine said in a press release. A remote research station with worldwide influence Since its founding in 1999, Scotty Creek has been a place to study the various impacts of climate change and permafrost thaw on delicate northern ecosystems in the Dehcho (“big river”) region where the facility is based. The station included an all-season research camp that doubled as an outdoor classroom and laboratory space. It established itself as one of Canada’s major northern research stations and the data collected there over
the course of decades is now used by organizations across the globe, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In the years since its founding, the Scotty Creek Research Station experienced extreme landscape change firsthand—in 2012 they relocated due to thawing permafrost threatening the facility’s infrastructure. This type of fast-paced ecological change, known all too well by communities in the Dehcho and the rest of the Arctic, is what drew researchers across environmental disciplines to Scotty Creek, sparking new lines of scientific inquiry, educating young climate scientists, and even inspiring artists like Dominik Heilig to adapt the unique history of Scotty Creek into a journalistic graphic novel. The station marked another historical milestone in August 2022, just months before the fire, when a special ceremony was held to transfer ownership of the station to LKFN—making Scotty Creek Canada’s first Indigenous-led climate research station, and one of just a few Indigenous-led climate research stations in the world.
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Indigenizing northern climate science to protect ancestral lands and traditional ways of life Łíídl˛ı˛ı K�ų�ę means “the place where the rivers come together” in the Dene Zhatie language, and Łíídl˛ı˛ı K�ų�ę First Nation people are the traditional keepers of the land and water of what is now known as Fort Simpson. Guided by Dene principles Learn how to and values, LKFN pronounce has committed Łíídlı˛˛ı Kú˛é˛ People to uplifting their culture through intergenerational education and building connections that respect their traditional language, elder and youth voices, and their selfdetermination as land stewards. For LKFN, taking the lead at Scotty Creek Research Station was a new way to honor that commitment. LKFN’s director of lands and resources, Dieter Cazon, told Cabin Radio that a major goal of Scotty Creek Research Station has been to foster ethical climate research that combines
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Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and western science for a more holistic, co-produced understanding of the compounding climate impacts being experienced by First Nations in the region and how to adapt to ongoing environmental change. "This collaborative work we're doing together is going to be the only way we're going to figure a lot of these answers out," Cazon told CBC News. The western scientific approach has a fraught history of unethical and disrespectful engagement with Indigenous peoples while working on their lands. At its worst, Arctic research has exploited communities for data collection that benefited their own research, without ever returning findings back to the villages where it was conducted. Other times it has ignored them altogether, failing to meet the needs and wishes of the communities and dismissing Indigenous Knowledges as a legitimate ways of knowing. “Too often in the past, scientists like me came north and then headed south without sharing the results of what they
found,” Quinton said in an interview with Yale Environment. “It led to some distrust, even pushback in some cases. Partnering with Indigenous communities has changed that. A management approach that puts them in leadership positions is also critical because it’s their land now and their livelihood that’s at stake. They can also ground-truth what we are seeing or missing.” According to Cazon, in the past, Scotty Creek has contributed to this inequity. But the transition of ownership to LKFN places Scotty Creek among a growing movement of Indigenousled research initiatives challenging this old model of science. Indigenous community members and researchers will collaboratively address the impacts of climate change in the circumpolar region, which Indigenous communities often face the brunt of. Any raw data now collected at the station is coowned by LKFN. Researchers must also demonstrate an understanding of the communities they will be working in before they arrive and uphold their commitment to respect the land and local people through ethical research practices onsite.
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From the ashes, Scotty Creek rebuilds The important research happening at Scotty Creek stalled in the months following last year’s fire, but not for long. LKFN has already begun the rebuilding process, with an eye towards improving the station’s resiliency in the face of what have become perpetual threats to the region due to climate change. “It's very unlikely that this is a oneoff. I'm sure that things are changing, and that we will see this again, and for that reason—we need to be prepared” Quinton told CBC News. Working with Dr. Oliver Sonnentag, an associate professor at the Université de Montréal and longtime researcher at Scotty Creek, Permafrost Pathways is supporting LKFN in their efforts to rebuild Scotty Creek, primarily the reinstallation of an essential carbon monitoring tower used to measure greenhouse gas fluctuations as they move between soils, plants, and the atmosphere. Woodwell Climate’s Dr. Kyle Arndt and Marco Montemayor, members of the Permafrost Pathways carbon flux network team, spent two weeks in March assisting LKFN and Dr. Sonnentag’s team with restoring the charred tower site, which has now been resurrected and is on its way to being fully operational.
monitoring gaps across the Arctic where 80% of the Arctic landscape is not currently represented by yearround monitoring sites because data collection in these environments is often challenging and difficult to sustain financially. Permafrost Pathways is strategically identifying and closing these data gaps by upgrading and installing new equipment across the Arctic to reduce scientific uncertainty in current carbon budgets and future projections. More complete data will drastically improve permafrost emissions estimates, removing a major barrier to their incorporation into climate policy and adaptation strategies. Scotty Creek Research Station is an invaluable contributor to this panArctic carbon monitoring network, providing essential data for a territory experiencing rapid environmental change across the region. Permafrost Pathways will continue supporting Scotty Creek throughout recovery and beyond so that the station can continue hosting visitors, and serving local communities and scientists.
“Another goal of the restored tower site is to get more Łíídl˛ı˛ı K�ų�ę First Nation peoples involved with maintenance of equipment and data collection,” Montemayor said. “This way, lines of communication are kept open, which allows for more data transparency and knowledge exchange while continuing to bring in diverse skill sets from members of the local community whose land this tower operates on.” LKFN hopes the station will be able to partially reopen by August 2023. Although the wildfire claimed a large percentage of the research facility, Quinton said that the flames couldn’t destroy the partnerships and connections that Scotty Creek has built and nurtured over the years. “And that's going to be the foundation on which we build and move forward.” MORE
View the multimedia story at: permafrost.woodwellclimate.org/ research-station-rebuilds
“It’s very unique and essentially unheard of to have a decade of data that predated a wildfire and then be able to rebuild in the exact same location to be able to make a direct post-fire comparison,” Dr. Arndt said. “So, to help reassemble the tower site was an exciting opportunity for Permafrost Pathways to continue supporting LKFN and the Scotty Creek Research Station. From a scientific standpoint, getting that tower site up and running again will ultimately yield really interesting data.” Keeping this tower operational will contribute to filling persistent carbon
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Sunrise over the Scotty Creek tower site in March 2023. / photo by Marco Montemayor Climate Science for Change
Summer 2023
Climate change is opening the drain on Arctic lakes Thawing permafrost is creating a capillary system that empties Arctic lakes Sarah Ruiz
Science Writer
On June 29, 2022, when Susan Tessier and her husband, Tim, went out for the day, they had a lake on their Native allotment. When they came back, it was gone. “My husband Tim and I left home in the morning and when we came back around 8:00 in the evening the whole lake had drained,” she writes in a post on the Local Environmental Observation Network site—a citizen science website where observers can report unusual changes in their local environment. “There was a hole that had blown out and it had drained into the ocean… It looked like it was blown up with dynamite.”
Water is the ecosystem engineer in the Arctic. The lowland tundra landscape is a network of lakes and streams, mosaicked across an expanse of frozen ground riddled with wedges of ice. The freezing, thawing, moving, eroding dynamics of these features shape the larger landscape, and determine the habitats of fish, birds, plants, mammals—and, of course, people— living in the Arctic. Abrupt lake drainage, like Tessier described, is just one way that changes in water and ice can influence the landscape, but a recent review paper conducted by University of Florida
Postdoctoral Associate, Dr. Elizabeth Webb, and Woodwell Climate Associate Scientist, Dr. Anna Liljedahl, indicates events like this may become more common as the climate warms— overtaking lake expansion and slowly drying out the Arctic tundra. Evidence of lake drainage across the literature This new paper comes on the heels of a 2022 study that Drs. Webb and Liljedahl also authored, which came to the same conclusion: despite the processes of lake expansion and drainage continuing simultaneously across the Arctic, net
Topography of a drained lake in southern Alaska. / photo by Anna Liljedahl Summer 2023
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lake area is trending downward. The Arctic is getting dryer. The review complements the strengths of the previous study, compensating for some of the limitations of using geographically coarse remote sensing data. Synthesizing data from 139 sites across the Arctic, pulled from 57 different studies, Drs. Webb and Liljedahl were able to corroborate their own past findings. “Lake size can vary from one season to the next in response to factors like precipitation or evaporation, so if you’re only looking at a limited set of remote sensing images, that can influence a trend analysis,” explains Dr. Webb. “It’s actually really exciting from a scientific rigor perspective to have two completely different remote sensing methods showing the same result.” The review also adds weight to the idea that permafrost thaw is the primary driver in the loss of Arctic lakes. A large portion of Arctic soil is ice-rich,
perennially frozen ground called permafrost, and as the climate heats up, it has begun to thaw and destabilize. That thawing can both create new ponds, and help drain them. The review indicates that decreases in size and number of Arctic lakes are more prevalent than expected, dominating the dynamic in some areas. This contradicts another leading theory that changes in precipitation and evaporation rates—called the “water balance hypothesis”—are driving changes in lake area. Prior to Drs. Webb and Liljedahl’s investigations, the prevailing thought was that lake creation would outpace drainage rates, for at least the next several decades. Climate change is opening drainage channels in the permafrost It works like this: most Arctic lakes form when wedges of ice in permafrost melt, leaving behind a depression that fills with water. The water absorbs
and holds more heat, slowly thawing and eroding surrounding permafrost, growing from puddle to pond to lake over the years. Drainage can happen in one of two ways. The first is vertically, which occurs when the permafrost beneath the lake thaws down to the unfrozen ground beneath, allowing the water to seep out the bottom. This can take hundreds or thousands of years, depending on the depth of the permafrost. The second way is horizontally, through what Dr. Liljedahl calls “capillaries.” Ice wedges are common across the Arctic, connected by an underground network of ice that pushes the soil above them upwards as they grow, creating ridges that impede water flow. But when the tops of these wedges melt, the ridged ground above them subsides, forming narrow channels between lakes and ponds. When an expanding lake meets one of these capillary channels, the lake can drain in a matter of hours, as if the plug has been pulled on a bathtub drain.
Aerial view of the drained lake on Susan Tessier’s Native land allotment near Kotzebue, Alaska. / photo by Sebastian Zavoico Ground-level view of the drained lake. / photo by Susan Tessier Freshwater shrimp that died during lake drainage event. / photo by Susan Tessier
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“The formation of lateral drainage channels can interrupt this lake expansion process at any time, and I think that’s what’s making it override expansion and cause the net drying effect,” Dr. Liljedahl says. “The lake that took millennia to grow can be gone in a couple of hours. Fewer Arctic lakes leave communities in the lurch So what does an Arctic with fewer lakes mean? In terms of carbon, the picture isn’t clear. Since lake expansion—a common source of methane emissions— and lake drainage are happening concurrently, the net effect is not easy to discern.
“With lake drainage, it’s much less clear what the carbon consequences are. The current thinking is that lake expansion releases orders of magnitude more carbon than lake drainage, but because it’s complicated, we’re not quite sure,” says Dr. Webb. “It’s definitely an open research question.” Dr. Liljedahl notes that there is also documentation of permafrost recovering and re-growing in drained lake beds. “Over decades, they could develop new ice-wedges and vegetation on the surface. Lake beds could experience net carbon accumulation for at least a couple of decades after drainage,” Dr. Liljedahl says.
However, the ecological consequences of fewer Arctic lakes are more certain. Fish and other aquatic species will have the size of their habitat reduced and their freedom of migration restricted, as lakes drain and connecting streams dry up. Species that feed on fish or rely on wetland vegetation, like muskrats, will also be impacted. Small lakes are an important source of freshwater for Arctic communities. Tessier wrote in her post about the lake drainage she witnessed, “We are sad to lose the lake because in winter, after it froze up, we used to go cut ice chunks for drinking water. It has really clear water. If we get enough snow we can use snow water instead, but it is not as good.” As more lakes drain, clean freshwater could become harder to access. Combined with the destabilization of the ground itself as permafrost thaws, Arctic communities are facing massive changes. Dr. Liljedahl hopes that refining our understanding of water dynamics in the Arctic will aid adaptation measures. She has been awarded a three-year National Science Foundation grant to continue studying the ice wedge capillary network and its role in the Arctic hydrological system. She’ll use remote sensing to quantify the distribution of the ice wedges contributing to increased drainage. She also plans to pull data from field measurements to figure out how permanent the capillaries are, since vegetation feedback loops could help permafrost recover and return the surface to its original elevation. “We have more to do before we can feel like the models are representing a realistic scenario. We need to better understand what is happening at the sub-meter scale with water, because the presence or absence of surface water will have a major impact on how the landscape evolves,” Dr. Liljedahl says.
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Colorado River water crisis a symptom of greater climate crisis Two degrees of warming could mean dry reservoirs, year-round extreme drought Sarah Ruiz
Science Writer
Drought in the Western U.S. has plunged the largest reservoir in the country into alarming shortage conditions that have rippling impacts for the region. Lake Mead, formed by the construction of the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, delivers water and hydroelectric power to 25 million residents in the Southwest. But its viability has been pushed to the brink by intensifying drought, exacerbated by climate change, triggering emergency measures to conserve water in the basin. The region has been in a “megadrought” since 2000, but recently, Lake Mead’s water levels have been breaking ever lower lows, unearthing old shipwrecks and other long-forgotten debris and leaving a “bathtub ring” around the reservoir’s edges. The drought signals a larger trend of dwindling snowfall and longer summers brought on by the growing climate crisis.
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New water scarcity measures enacted Water usage on the Colorado River operates on a tier system. When water levels in a reservoir drop below a certain point, usage by neighboring states is restricted. Lake Mead hit Tier 1 in August 2021 after the elevation of the reservoir dipped below 1,075 feet, leading to a reduction in water supplies that largely impacted agricultural users across counties. This was the first time a shortage condition has been implemented on Lake Mead. The Tier 2 decision was
announced in August of 2022—stating that the water level would fall below 1,050 by the end of the year, triggering a more intense shortage. This emergency declaration for Lake Mead is part of a plan to increase the water levels in Lake Powell—an upstream reservoir and the second largest in the United States behind Mead. Dealing with shortages in the Colorado River Basin has required officials to weigh the needs of one region over another. The Bureau of Reclamation has indicated that at present, keeping water levels up in Lake Powell supersedes the requirements of
Lake Mead. The generators at Powell have a total capacity of 1,320 megawatts and the reservoir is considered a ‘bank account’ for the region to draw on in times of drought—which are anticipated to worsen with climate change. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, extreme droughts were rare in the historical climate—a 5.5% likelihood. In 2022 however, nearly all of the watersheds in the Colorado River experienced extreme drought. In a world warmed by 2° C, the likelihood of 12 or more months of extreme drought in the Colorado River Basin becomes as high as 40%.
Dropping water level at Lake Mead leaving “bathtub ring” of newly exposed rock. / photo by Monica Caparas maps by Christina Shintani Summer 2023
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Meeting water needs in dry times Lake Mead also serves a massive population in the lower basin, and filling demand for water even during shortages means some major cities have to turn to reservoirs on other river systems. Arizona, suffering some of the steepest cuts in their allotment of Colorado River water (21%), will draw from the Salt and Verde rivers. Other strategies include pumping groundwater and implementing more aggressive conservation and re-use strategies, which have so far helped to spare Las Vegas from the worst effects of the shortage. The Southern Nevada Water Authority also began using its low lake level intake
in 2022, which allows the state to draw water even when the elevation of the lake falls below “dead pool” status— the point at which downstream water releases are no longer possible. But this is only a temporary solution, as the water in the reservoir keeps falling. The next significant threshold for Lake Mead would be a drop to Tier 3 (1,025 feet) which some experts say could come as soon as 2024. At 950 feet, the reservoir would be considered an “inactive pool,” meaning the dam’s generators can no longer run. Energy shortages could kick off a vicious cycle, requiring backfilling with fossil fuels that would exacerbate the climate crisis and warming-driven drought conditions.
Reversing the drought in the Colorado River Basin will ultimately depend on snowfall in the Rocky Mountains, which will ultimately depend on getting the climate crisis under control. Experts estimate there would have to be several consecutive heavy snow years in the mountains to make back the current deficits further downriver. 2023 is currently experiencing above average snowpack, but if temperatures keep rising, that will be a less likely annual occurrence. Water rights and resource usage will have to adapt rapidly to support residents as reservoir levels continue to drop, but pulling out of emergency scarcity measures for good will require curbing the greater impacts of global climate change.
Lake Mead, Colorado River Basin / photo by Monica Caparas 28
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Networking the rivers
For four years, Science on the Fly has nurtured a community science network to study distant rivers Allie Cunningham
Director of Science on the Fly
In a world plagued by rapid change and challenges, many of us are asking the question: “How can I help?” As individuals, it can be hard to find a way to give back and help steward the natural resources we rely on. But, for those who love fly fishing—anglers—Science on the Fly offers a path to do just that. Science on the Fly engages the enthusiastic and passionate fly-fishing community, in the U.S. and abroad, as community scientists. Members of the fly-fishing community have close relationships with their local rivers—from having a favorite fishing hole, to knowing the seasonally anticipated flows of the river and when certain bugs are hatching. They are also more aware than most people of the impacts of climate change on local fisheries. In states like Colorado and Montana, anglers have given up the opportunity of even casting a fly rod at some points in the summer season. Why? The trout are too stressed and lethargic due to the droughts and rising water temperatures. Crowdsourcing climate data Fly-fishing community scientists are excellent resources for data collection and observation of climate trends to create a clearer picture of how rivers are changing over time. With their help, the number of rivers subject to long-term studies of water quality and watershed health can be increased. Since Science on the Fly was founded in 2019, data on nutrients and organic compounds has been collected from over 350 river sites across the United States each month. The science collection process is straight-forward and easy. Sample locations are chosen for their accessibility and interest to fly-fishing volunteers, who are responsible for collecting a small bottle of sterile river water from each location once a month, as well as data on air and water temperature. They then freeze the bottles and bulk ship them back to Woodwell Climate Research Center one or two times a year. In Woodwell Climate’s environmental chemistry lab, the samples are analyzed for concentrations of nutrients such as nitrate, phosphate, silica, ammonium, dissolved organic carbon, and total dissolved nitrogen. All data is shared
Science on the Fly team trip to Alaska. / photo by Allie Cunningham Summer 2023
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publicly, and after a year’s worth of data has been collected, a report is written on the state of the river for those sampling locations. A rapidly expanding network This project got to where it is extremely quickly. A year after the program was founded, it had grown from two community scientists to 140 enthusiastic river activists. Over the course of four years, more than 7,000 bottles have been placed into the hands of empowered community scientists. It is easy to see how the program got here so fast; when a free tool-kit is offered to the passionate angler that can help them give back to their watershed, they want to get involved. While a kit isn’t necessarily cheap to put together, at a cost equaling $100 per bottle, it is an extremely effective way to add novel data to the climate science dataset on many watersheds—information that wouldn’t otherwise be gathered. Science on the Fly is now exploring how best to integrate its water quality sampling and community scientist model with Woodwell Climate’s important research in the Alaskan Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region. Located at the lowest section of the permafrost belt, this region is experiencing rapid thaw as the climate warms. Could water quality collection be done in a way that tells the story of the rivers over time? Could anglers floating down these remote rivers provide samples in a timely manner? The answers found are yeses, but it has taken some practice to get there, and the region presented unique challenges that haven’t encounter in other regions.
Processing water samples in Woodwell Climate's lab. / photo by Lindsay Scott Map by Greg Fiske 30
A collection of filtered water samples from Telluride, Colorado. / photo courtesy of Science on the Fly
The Science on the Fly core team now rafts, researches, and fishes vulnerable and wild rivers in this region—including the Arolik, Kanektok, Kisaralik, Kwethluk, and the Goodnews—each summer season. Each morning of the trip, the teams gear up and take a variety of samples and water quality
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measurements—including the collection of 60 mL sterile river water samples. Water temperature monitoring sensors are also installed or retrieved in the watershed, which provide river temperatures from the entire year. Some samples collected during the trips are used directly for the Science on the Fly program, while others help collect data for different research projects associated with Woodwell Climate or other organizations. Building partnerships to sustain science These research trips are only answering some questions, however. Data on the rivers’ nutrient concentrations throughout the summer season would also help answer questions—not just when team members are there for ten or fewer days a year per river. Like most science, it’s not inexpensive. It’s also not easy to logistically coordinate a river research trip—all the gear, travel, food, science supplies, safety equipment, and qualified team members to float—from afar. PapaBear Adventures in Bethel, Alaska has solved the logistics coordination challenges. PapaBear is an operation that helps the adventurous outdoors person get to the headwaters of remote rivers, and gives them the tools they need to float the rivers on their own. They have been instrumental in meeting the transportation needs of other Woodwell Climate projects like the Polaris Project, and now they are helping Science on the Fly get anglers out to the rivers throughout the summer season. Beyond working with PapaBear on transportation, Science on the Fly now stations a team member—Joe Mangiafico or Allie Cunningham, for now—at PapaBear for the summer months. This team member preps the research team’s trips, making sure they are properly prepared to go down the rivers with all materials needed. But the main goal is to encourage other PapaBear clients
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and their groups to be involved in the sampling. Pre-made kits are handed out to groups floating these rivers. After the groups get off the rivers, a Science on the Fly team member retrieves the filled sample kits and freezes them for shipping back to Woodwell Climate. The data that has returned from these endeavors is already exciting. In summer 2021, the Science on the Fly research team sampled two rivers, the Kwethluk and Kisaralik, and by a lucky ask to some passing groups of anglers, the Kanektok and Goodnews Rivers were sampled as well. There were a total of 45 samples collected that summer. The following summer, the combination of Science on the Fly research teams and new efforts to increase engagement with volunteer community science groups, allowed an increase of collections to 248 sample bottles. Data collection on the other rivers of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta were successfully increased, and the Arolik was added to the list. The hope is to accomplish even more in years to come.
Four years of Science on the Fly has shown that community scientists and community science programs can be a powerful way to collect data, conduct research, and educate the public through our reports. Now that a solid project structure has been built, with data coming in consistently, there is beginning to be more focus on making an impact with report writing and affecting policy—all while continuing to add to the growing body of water and climate science. Community-collected data will be used to create tangible reports for anglers to better understand their watersheds. These reports will then be used to help make an impact on policies, with the goal of creating or maintaining healthy watersheds, especially in the face of climate change. Science on the Fly looks forward to continuing to give back to community scientists and to the rivers. MORE
Visit the Science on the Fly website at: scienceonthefly.org
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Science on the Fly relies on its network fly-fishing guides, outfitters, and individual anglers who act as community scientists, committing their time and energy to monthly collection of water samples from the rivers they love. photos courtesy of Kara Armano, Pablo Castro, Rod Cesario, Allie Cunningham, Jeff Gabel, Kate Hasterlik, Ivy Hunt, Kacie Ross, Jacob Sherwood, Daniel White
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149 Woods Hole Road Falmouth, MA, 02540-1644
woodwellclimate.org @woodwellclimate #climatescienceforchange
CLIMATE SCIENCE FOR CHANGE
