2024 Switzer Fellowships awarded to environmental change-makers / 02
Tanguro Science Symposium displays 20 years of Amazon research / 03
Alaska Native Yup’ik among Indigenous cultures represented at international hearing on human rights and climate / 05
DIY methane chamber designs inspire research groups across the country / 06
In the news: highlights / 07
Natalie Baillargeon chosen as a recipient
Natalie Baillargeon works with the Government Relations team, supporting Woodwell Climate’s policy analysis and government relations. She manages and contributes to various projects, including identifying opportunities for climate policy in the 2023 Farm Bill, improving climate resilience in the National Flood Insurance Program, and accounting for permafrost emissions in global carbon budgets.
Twenty environmental leaders have been chosen as 2024 recipients of the Switzer Environmental Fellowship, a program of the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation that awards graduate students a $17,000 cash award and leadership training to support their education and career development at 12 universities in New England and California. The 20 fellowships total $340,000 in awards.
During their fellowship year, Switzer Fellows cultivate their personal leadership skills toward advancing social equity, build relationships, and expand their networks through shared learning and professional development activities. Switzer Fellows receive support throughout their careers to pursue interdisciplinary and collaborative work, positioning them for leadership in the nonprofit, government, philanthropic, private, and academic sectors. The competitive fellowships are awarded based on leadership potential and commitment to environmental problem-solving. Switzer Fellows demonstrate innovation and collaboration, as well as commitment to advance social equity as a fundamental part of their environmental work.
The 2024 Switzer Fellows join a network of over 750 Switzer Fellows working across the United States and around the world.
“The Switzer Foundation believes that talented and committed individuals can make change in the world, and we invest in supporting their continued leadership and professional development,” says Executive Director, Sarah Reed. “As lifelong members of the Switzer Network, the new fellows will be able to
increase their impact as environmental leaders through shared learning, collaboration, and mutual support. We are thrilled to welcome these environmental and social change-makers to our community as 2024 Switzer Fellows.”
Robert and Patricia Switzer established the foundation with a belief in the power of individuals to make positive change in the world, and to support and encourage people dedicated to solving applied environmental problems. The 2024 Switzer Fellows come from diverse social, academic, and economic backgrounds and bring an impressive breadth of expertise on topics including agriculture, agroecology, avian ecology, environmental justice, environmental policy, environmental remediation, food systems & access, forestry, holistic land management, housing decarbonization, public health, renewable energy, tribal sovereignty, and urban planning.
The Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation identifies and nurtures environmental leaders to create positive environmental change. The foundation awards academic fellowships and project grants, sponsors professional development activities, and fosters a vibrant network of more than 700 Switzer Fellows who are environmental and social change leaders working across academia, non-profits, government, philanthropy, and the private sector.
More information about the 2024 Switzer Fellows, and links to their profiles, is available on the foundation website at: https://www.switzernetwork.org/ fellowship/meet-2024-switzer-fellows
Bibiana Garrido, Camila Santana, Mariana Abuchain IPAM
Climate change was the center of the debate between rural producers, scientists, public authorities and indigenous peoples at the Symposium celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Tanguro Field Station, which took place in Brasília from June 10–12, 2024. The event highlighted the dialogue between the groups as a key to socio-environmental and economic transformation in favor of a possible future for life on Earth.
Functioning as an open-air laboratory, the Tanguro Research Station is located in the city of Querência, in Mato Grosso, in the southeastern Amazon. It was founded by IPAM (Amazon
The plurality of experiences and knowledge shared at the symposium was highlighted by Dr. R. Max Holmes, President and CEO of the Woodwell Climate Research Center, an institution that has been working alongside IPAM for thirty years.
“Bringing together this group of experts from science, civil society and from different places gives me hope and optimism. The challenge for all of us is to take forward the big ideas around the climate solutions discussed. Climate conferences are opportunities to continue to make progress on these incredibly urgent issues, which can only be solved in partnership,” Holmes said.
Environmental Research Institute) in partnership with the company Amaggi and the Woodwell Climate Research Center in the United States. In its two decades of existence, the results of this joint initiative add up to more than 180 high-impact scientific publications and bring together researchers from seven countries studying the environment and agriculture.
“The revolution in the countryside cost almost 50% of the Cerrado and 20% of the Amazon—this model is no longer sustainable,” said André Guimarães, executive director of IPAM.
“It is necessary to ask questions to companies, as they will also have to adapt services to a new climatic condition,” he added. The director recalled that the assumption of the work at the Tanguro Field Station is to bring agricultural production closer to nature conservation.
The meeting of different sectors around the socioenvironmental and economic discussion comes at a time when studies show the loss of natural functions of tropical forests due to the global burning of fossil fuels, and, in Brazil, mainly due to deforestation, degradation and fire.
Ecosystem services, as the benefits produced by nature are called, maintain all forms of life, ensuring air quality and the availability of water and food, for example. They contribute to pollination, pest control and local climate regulation, providing adequate rain, humidity and temperature for agricultural production.
“How do we build a land use solution so that people understand that it is possible to reconcile forest with conservation, development with job and income generation from a better use of what we have already cut down? This is Brazil’s challenge. That is why we have sought a partnership with IPAM. That is why we created, in the State of Pará, the State Policy on Climate Change and the Amazon Now program,” said Helder Barbalho, governor of the State of Pará, present at the event.
“We don’t know what the world will be like going forward, we just know it can’t be the same. We have a lot to learn and build with each other. Climate change is real and the producer realizes it, but if he does not feel he belongs in the conversation about what needs to be improved, it is difficult to engage,” said Juliana Lopes, director of ESG, Communication and Compliance at AMAGGI.
From 2022 to 2023, agriculture grew by 15.1%, influencing GDP performance, but still putting pressure on Brazilian biomes.
The Tanguro Field Station develops studies to understand the influence of the forest on agriculture and vice versa, in order to subsidize environmentally and socially sustainable production and conservation strategies.
“Results of Tanguro’s research socialized with us are important to see new perspectives and develop agriculture, ensuring food security,” added Ângela Conceição, president of Federation of Agricultural Workers of the State of Pará (FETAGRI).
Juliana Lopes endorsed the recognition: “The partnership with IPAM was the way that AMAGGI found, with researchers, to make an assessment of how we can ensure continuity in agricultural production, investing in the conservation of biodiversity and native areas.”
Knowledge generation
Storing half the carbon emitted on the globe, tropical forests provide climate stability. This stockpile capacity is being hampered by climate change caused by human activities. “Our challenge is to find ways to maintain that service and, at the same time, growth and prosperity,” said Woodwell Climate Research Center researcher Dr. Michael Coe.
And how to find an answer to this challenge? The solution may lie in nature itself. Data presented by Dr. Wayne Walker, Senior Scientist at Woodwell, shows that nature-based solutions have the potential to deliver 37% of the emissions reduction needed to limit global average temperature rise to less than 2°C. “Land is more than just a carbon store. We need to implement these solutions in a scalable way, ensuring capital flows with equity and sustainability,” he commented.
and Woodwell Climate Research Center. On the positive side, when the forest is maintained, it helps in production. Bianca Rebelatto, a researcher at IPAM, recalled that 90% of Brazil’s agriculture is not irrigated and that forests protect crops against heat waves and reduce future climate challenges.
Responses presented by the sectors to avoid more extreme events, reduce damage to the environment, and promote responsible ways of living include, in addition to sustainable production, the bioeconomy of natural products from the Amazon and Cerrado.
IPAM researcher Dr. Filipe Arruda pointed out that environmental disturbances have been occurring more intensely with climate change. “The impact on the habitat modifies the animal and plant species on site, changing everything from temperature control to pest control within the forest and in agricultural areas.”
Dr. Leonardo Maracahipes, Local Coordinator of the Tanguro Field Station and researcher at IPAM, presented a study on the change in tree leaves in areas of intact forest and in those fragmented by agricultural activity. “The thickness of the leaf was greater in the area of agriculture, while the size of the leaf was greater in the areas of preserved forest,” he explained, demonstrating vegetation strategies to adapt to the surroundings. In farming, the effects of nature are also the object of study: “We estimate a 6% reduction in soybean yield for every 1°C increase in temperature,” said Dr. Ludmila Rattis, a researcher at IPAM
“Land use change and climate change have already increased the chances of a catastrophic fire in the Xingu by another 10%,” explained Dr. Paulo Brando, IPAM associate researcher and professor at Yale University in the United States. “About 16% of forests in the southeastern Amazon may burn due to these factors. Fire-degraded forests seem healthy from the point of view of remote sensing, but they are much more vulnerable to extreme events such as drought, which is what is happening in the Xingu and much of the region.”
According to Brando, the Xingu region is 2°C warmer due to increased deforestation and human pressure on the natural landscape. The Xingu Indigenous Territory functions as a local air conditioner, with 5°C less than monocultures and neighboring pastures, revealed by a technical note produced by IPAM and Woodwell Climate Research Center.
While the situation is not resolved, the peoples of the Xingu continue to struggle to produce. “We have the land, but we keep buying in the city. We, from the Xingu, are still studying how we can make production on a larger scale,” said Yuri Kuikuro, a master’s student in Ecology at INPA (National Institute for Amazonian Research). “It is necessary to bring young people to train, to use technology, to try to understand how to produce to maintain our culture. Add science to figure it out,” he concluded.
above: Ângela Conceição, president of FETAGRI, speaks on a panel at the event. / photo by Lucas Guaraldo/IPAM
“First we have to think about surviving climate change: working in the collective, regardless of whether it is civil society, company, or public power, for our physical and mental survival,” said Mauro O’ de Almeida, Secretary of State for Environment and Sustainability of Pará, present at the symposium.
The climate emergency alerts to the Amazon’s point of no return, also known as the tipping point, from which the biome would lose its natural capabilities and become a type of degraded ecosystem—a “zombie Amazon.” In the Cerrado, the reality also worries scientists, given that most of the biome’s remaining native vegetation is within private rural properties.
“It is common to hear that the world will end, but it has already ended, due to climate change, for the people who died in Rio Grande do Sul,” said Rattis, referring to the extreme climatic event of rainfall in Rio Grande do Sul this year. About 175 people died and 38 are missing. More than 2 million were affected by the floods, according to the Civil Defense.
In the Amazon, the Rio Negro drought in 2023 affected all 62 cities in the State of Amazonas and affected more than 600,000 people, also according to the state Civil Defense.
“The Xingu Indigenous Territory is also being impacted by climate change. Indigenous people have been talking about this for a long time and we are not taken seriously. These extreme events are affecting all sectors, so sitting at the table with partners who were once our enemies shows how we need to be united to change the scenario we have,” said Kaianaku Kamaiurá, partnership coordinator at OURS and coordinator of the Amazônia de Pé project.
The climate commitments of Brazil and the world, to be renewed and expanded until COP30 (United Nations Conference on Climate Change) in Belém, are the necessary measure to prevent the worsening of housing conditions on the planet and prevent more lives from being lost.
“First, that the world can accelerate the change in the energy matrix to stop emitting carbon dioxide. Second, pay for the maintenance of the forest and its recovery. In the past, I remember that agribusiness was against the climate debate, but not today: it has assumed an awareness that it needs the forest. COP30 will be the great political space in the Amazon to demand from the world attention for those who are preserving,” said Paulo Teixeira, Minister of Agrarian Development and Family Agriculture.
The Tanguro Field Station 20-Year Celebration Symposium was held by IPAM in partnership with the Woodwell Climate Research Center, Yale University School of the Environment, and Max-Planck-Geselschaft.
Jessica Howard Arctic Communications Specialist
On May 18, Morris Alexie, Permafrost Pathways Tribal Liaison for the Alaska Native Village of Nunapicuaq (Nunapitchuk), traveled for three days to South America to join EarthRights International and other Indigenous leaders from around the world at the Public Hearing on the Advisory Opinion on Climate Emergency and Human Rights.
More than 150 oral and a total of 265 written testimonies were received during the seven-day public hearing held in Barbados and Brazil. Indigenous Peoples, youth, Afro-descendant, Tribal, and rural communities, among others, testified with firsthand accounts of the severe impacts that climate change is having on their communities.
Prior to the hearing, EarthRights International and 25 allied communities and organizations prepared and submitted an amicus curiae brief to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights urging the Court to prioritize the protection of Indigenous Peoples’ rights in the face of climate change. The Office of the Special Rapporteur for Economic, Social, Cultural, and Environmental Rights of the Inter-American Commission
Brazil. / video recording image
on Human Rights visited Nunapicuaq (Nunapitchuk) in 2023 to meet with the community about the environmental hazards unfolding in their village due to rapid Arctic warming.
Alaska Native communities—numbering 144—are imminently threatened by permafrost thaw, flooding, and/or erosion as the Arctic continues to warm faster than anywhere else on the planet. Many of these communities are now being forced to make difficult adaptation decisions—including community-wide relocation—to protect themselves and their cultural history and traditional ways of life.
Alexie brought powerful stories of permafrost thaw and other enduring climate and colonial impacts all the way from Alaska to the floor of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Manaus, Brazil. Below is the transcript.
“My name is Morris J. Alexie, and I am a Permafrost Pathways Liaison and former Tribal Administrator for Native Village of Nunapitchuk, which is located in Alaska in the United States. My Yup’ik name is “Chigusuk,” which means ice, similar to the ice that stabilizes my community. Our village is home to Alaska Native people of the central Yup’ik culture, which since time immemorial, our people were nomadic.
And we use the site Nunapitchuk for fishing and hunting during the spring and summer. In the early 1900s, the U. S. government built Nunapitchuk Village without consultation and surrounding nomadic people were forced to gather there under threat of imprisonment and taking our children away. For about 10 years, we have known that Nunapitchuk was not a safe place to live.
Nunapitchuk sits on top of permafrost, which is frozen ground, which is thawing because of rising temperatures. The permafrost thaw has caused our community to sink into the ground and our homes are collapsing. Our Tribal government passed a resolution to relocate to higher ground. We identified higher ground for relocation, but we cannot move because we do not have any funding sources or institutional support.
We asked the government for help, and they refused to help us, instead asking for evidence. This is a video of the government’s response, proving Nunapitchuk is unsafe. The government puts the burden on us to justify why we need to be safe. The government puts us in danger by forcing us to move to Nunapitchuk, which means the government bears responsibility for giving us healthy lives.
Quyana and thank you ”
Watch the video of Morris Alexie’s testimony and learn more about the compounding impacts of permafrost thaw and other ongoing climate hazards in the Native Village of Nunapicuaq
Research
Assistant Zoë Dietrich’s lowcost chambers are making carbon flux
Sarah Ruiz Science Writer and Editor
The MacGyver session at the annual American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference is full to the brim with scientists showing off blinking circuit boards and 3D-printed mechanisms. Research Assistant, Zoë Dietrich, stands in front of her poster and a plexiglass cube sprouting wires. As she speaks, a whizzing sound emanates from the box as it lifts itself up on one side, holding itself open long enough to flush the interior with air from the room. A laptop screen reads out numbers from the sensors in the box, detailing changes in the concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane within.
Dietrich constructed this device herself. It’s a low-cost, autonomous, solar-powered chamber designed to float on water and measure the flow of carbon into and out of the water. Dietrich has spent the past 1.5 years testing and troubleshooting various prototypes, and has already begun deploying models at research sites in Brazil and Alaska. Now she’s sharing her work with the broader scientific community in hopes of encouraging others to build their own versions.
“One of the goals of the chamber project is to make the construction very accessible so that scientists like me, without formal engineering training or background, can build the chambers pretty easily,” says Dietrich.
This was good news for Grand Valley University masters student, Jillian Greene, and her professor Dr. Sean Woznicki, who encountered Dietrich and her chambers at AGU. Though neither of them had experience with mechanical or electrical engineering, they knew immediately a device like Dietrich’s could be invaluable to their research.
Greene’s project involves sampling carbon emissions at drowned river mouth estuaries connected to Lake Michigan. She and Woznicki will then correlate that data with other ecological characteristics gleaned from satellite imagery. There are over one hundred of these freshwater estuary-like features around
the region, and Greene and Woznicki are hoping to paint a complete picture of their cumulative role in carbon cycling.
“Originally, I was going to manually sample and quantify with a gas chromatograph,” Greene says. That’s a time-consuming process that limits the amount of data one team can collect. With the chambers, however, Greene can collect emissions data every 30 seconds—greatly expanding the amount of data she’ll be able to incorporate into her models.
“This is going to make our model a lot more robust and hopefully applicable to other drowned river mouth estuaries in the region,” says Greene.
Greene and her research team have already created and deployed six chambers. Since AGU, she has been in contact with
Dr. Richard (Skee) Houghton was interviewed on CAI for a short segment remembering George Woodwell.
KESQ covered our quarterly briefing for meteorologists and quoted Dr. Jen Francis on how climate change is exacerbating summer extremes.
Dr. Jen Francis was interviewed on NBC News for a widelyaired segment on how California’s recent wet winters have contributed to a heat dome.
Dr. Richard (Skee) Houghton was quoted in a story from Grist that covers a new Nature publication on the world’s forest carbon sink. The research was also announced on EurekAlert! with a press release by the U.S. Forest Service.
The Telegraph interviewed Dr. Brendan Rogers about the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge wildfire management pilot program to protect permafrost.
CAI interviewed Dr. Jen Francis about Cape Cod and hurricanes.
Dietrich, troubleshooting issues as they arise and learning an entirely new set of skills as she goes.
“[the team] has learned how to solder, how to interpret the circuit diagrams, problem solve, and adjust for our kind of unique systems that we’re looking at,” says Woznicki. “It’s really been exciting to use Zoë’s design as a learning experience for masters and undergrad students.”
Dietrich has had other groups at Colgate University and the University of California, Berkeley reach out to her as well, and she is planning to publish a paper this fall that will include detailed instructions for anyone else to construct their own chambers. She’s already shared preliminary drafts of the step-bystep instructions, including photos, diagrams, and tips, as well as programming and data-processing code and a specific materials list with the other research groups. In turn, they have provided her with helpful revisions and ideas for new modifications. Dietrich is excited about the prospect of the designs being implemented by more people. More chambers means more data, which benefits the entire scientific community.
“Our sampling of carbon right now is limited by expensive instruments and where people can go and who has access to these resources,” says Dietrich. “But the goal of this project is to be low cost and more accessible to a broader set of researchers. The chambers are autonomous, and so are accessible to places and times that aren’t otherwise being sampled right now. And taking that a step further, we need to make them accessible to be built by anyone.”
Dr. Marcia Macedo authored an article about the Amazon water crisis for a new multilingual platform, Boom!
Bloomberg quoted Dr. Jen Francis on how Texas has been a “weather battleground,” and how transitioning away from fossil fuels is both critically important and already underway in the area.
Dr. Manoela Machado was quoted extensively in a Mongabay article covering a study she led, which found that emergency policies like fire bans are not enough to resolve Amazonia’s fire crises.
Associated Press quoted Dr. Jen Francis on rainfall predictability in a widely-syndicated article about Olympic swimming in the Seine River, and The Boston Globe drew on her expertise to explain the climate trends behind hurricane Beryl.
The American Planning Association’s Planning Magazine recommended the LEARN tool, co-developed by Woodwell Climate, for conservation planning and urban green projects.
