There's New Evidence Representing the Start of the Anthropocene

PROJECT EARTH
TIM RADFORD
6/12/17

Israeli researchers claim to have pinpointed the first permanent geological change made by humankind, the moment when humans first altered the planet’s geology.

They have identified a set of erosion processes made 11,500 years ago in the Dead Sea Basin. This would represent the first hint of what increasingly has been called the Anthropocene, a geological era in which the planet’s characteristics are defined by just one species, Homo sapiens.

The evidence comes from the Dead Sea Drilling Project, which provides a sedimentary record of the last 220,000 years. And the scientists have found that erosion rates in the Dead Sea Basin during the Neolithic were, they say, dramatically at odds with the known tectonic and climatic regimes of the period under review, less than 12,000 years ago.

“Human impact on the natural environment is now endangering the entire planet,” said Shmuel Marco, of the Tel Aviv University school of geosciences.
Agriculture’s mark

“It is therefore crucial to understand these fundamental processes. Our discovery provides a quantitative assessment for the commencement of significant human impact on the Earth’s geology and ecosystems.”

That is an academic’s way of conceding that the discovery is of only academic importance: archaeologists have known for more than a century that human civilisation began, roughly 12,000 years ago, in the Fertile Crescent with the end of the last Ice Age.

Stone Age nomad hunter-gatherers began to domesticate animals, cultivate grains and pulses and plant fruit trees and vines, and then build first small villages, and ultimately great ancient cities.

“Natural vegetation was replaced by crops, animals were domesticated, grazing reduced the natural plant cover, and deforestation provided more area for grazing,” said Professor Marco. “All these resulted in the intensified erosion of the surface and increased sedimentation, which we discovered in the Dead Sea core sample.”
Human footprint

The scientists report in the journal Global and Planetary Change that they measured a threefold increase in the fine sand carried into the Dead Sea by seasonal floods, and indicated changes in human activity that coincided with, and made possible, the exponential growth of humankind over the last 11,000 years.

The 100 centuries since the end of the last Ice Age have been known as the Holocene. Geologists argue that human-wrought change has altered the Earth so much that it warrants a new name: they propose a new epoch called the Anthropocene.

Humans have burned fossil fuels at such a rate that they could warm the planet to levels not seen for many millions of years. In doing so, they have altered the climate of the planet so dramatically that there is no fear of any return of the Ice Ages.

They have built, produced and destroyed on such a scale as to create a geological stratum that will survive as a permanent record of human existence long after Homo sapiens is extinct.

So the Dead Sea evidence is just an indicator of when the era of permanent change may be said to have begun: long before the first bronze or iron tools, humans made their mark with stone adzes, stone sickles and fire, and changed a landscape.

The sediments from the Dead Sea core have already evidenced periods of lush growth and extended drought, and serve as a reminder that the region is still affected by climate change.

Right now, the region is experiencing the worst drought in 900 years. Climate change could deliver even harsher things to come, according to a new study last year.

So the discovery by the Tel Aviv scientists represents a possible starting point: the story of human civilisation and human-induced climate change had a beginning that has now been identified in the sands of time 11 millennia ago at a depth of 457 metres under the Dead Sea.

The ending has yet to be written, but that too will be recorded, ultimately, in geological strata.

This story was originally published by Climate News Network.

Eight views of Canada’s water woes

THE GLOBE AND MAIL

Jun 11, 2017

A comprehensive review of Canada’s freshwater ecosystems reveals rising threats from pollution, overuse, invasive species and climate change among other problems. Yet, the biggest threat of all may be a lack of information that hinders effective regulation, Ivan Semeniuk reports

With a mere 0.5 per cent of the world’s population, Canada has jurisdiction over 20 per cent of the global water supply – a vast and valuable resource that is largely taken for granted by those who depend on it.

Yet, according to the first national assessment of Canada’s freshwater ecosystems in decades, there is plenty of cause for concern. Each of the country’s 25 major watersheds is facing multiple environmental threats, while the data needed to track changes and guide policy makers are surprisingly inaccessible or simply non-existent.

“We don’t know the facts,” said David Miller, president of World Wildlife Fund-Canada, the environmental advocacy organization that conducted the assessment. “It’s a recipe for inaction.”

Mr. Miller added that spotty and unco-ordinated monitoring coupled with the widespread image of a pristine Canadian wilderness has left the country ill-prepared to track and respond to the growing pressures that its aquatic ecosystems are now facing.


Four years in the making, the assessment is intended to provide a national snapshot of the state of Canada’s water by assembling and comparing data on 167 subwatersheds. Because such information is neither centralized nor maintained in a systematic way, the organization had to search out scores of disconnected datasets from federal, provincial and municipal sources, water boards, conservation authorities and private companies. The result is a patchwork mosaic that reveals high levels of disturbance to water in about one-third of the subwatersheds, roughly corresponding to regions of highest population density, agricultural activity and resource development.


More surprising is a general lack of information on four key health indicators, including flow, water quality, fish and bottom-dwelling organisms that are sensitive to environmental change. The assessment finds that the data are too deficient in 110 out of the 167 subwatersheds to form a baseline picture of ecosystem health, including in some relatively populated areas where freshwater is essential to communities, such as in southern Manitoba, Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley or the Bruce region of Ontario.


The situation reflects the glaring absence of a standardized national water-monitoring program in a federal system where water has traditionally been regarded as a provincial or local matter. Yet, Canada’s watersheds are clearly interconnected and facing threats, from climate change to invasive species, that pay no regard to political boundaries. The assessment includes recommendations for filing in the knowledge gap including a community based “citizen science” approach to data gathering. Yet, it also makes clear that there is a clear need for co-ordination and oversight at a national level,


“If this can inspire the federal government to take a leadership role, that would be a good thing,” said Allen Curry, scientific director of the Fredericton-based Canadian Rivers Institute and an adviser on the project.


Canada’s balkanized water-management system makes it especially difficult to obtain data on freshwater that researchers say should be available to the public. Bureaucratic and proprietary barriers to access was the largest obstacle that the assessment’s authors faced in assembling their water report card.


“Despite living in the era of Google, we literally had to phone or e-mail or just beg people to send us data,” said Elizabeth Hendriks, who co-ordinated the WWF-Canada effort.


David Schindler, one of Canada’s most highly regarded freshwater scientists and a professor emeritus at the University of Alberta, said the assessment highlights the problems that stem from Canada’s lax regulation of its freshwater assets.


“We need standards, not guidelines, with some penalties for non-compliance,” he said.


Three years ago, Dr. Schindler was among the experts involved in a review of freshwater monitoring in the United States, a national program, managed by the U.S. Geological Survey, that he suggests Canada would do well to emulate. If things continue as they are, he said, freshwater ecosystems are likely to face unprecedented change while Canadians are left in the dark about what is happening to their country’s most important resource.


“Water – despite its theoretical abundance – is probably the biggest looming problem in Canada,” he said.


WATER COLOURS


A detailed breakdown of 167 subwatersheds reveals the environmental pressures that different parts of Canada’s water system face. Here’s what the indicators mean


Map legend




Table of contents


Overall stress level • Pollution • Alteration of water flow • Water use • Habitat loss • Fragmentation of ecosystems • Invasive species • Climate change

1. OVERALL STRESS LEVEL




The national assessment breaks Canada’s water system into 167 subwatersheds and finds that nearly all of them are currently the subject of some form of environmental disturbance, with multiple threats at play in some of the most affected regions. Areas at greatest risk tend to match up with population density, farming and heavy industry. Two regions – Eastern Lake Huron and the Lake Ontario and Niagara Peninsula subwatershed – share the dubious distinction of being the most disturbed in Canada because of a combination of seven threat factors, including high pollution levels, water use and fragmentation, among others shown in the accompanying maps.


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2. POLLUTION




Pollution remains the most serious threat to freshwater in the short term. The assessment combines data on a variety of pollution sources to reveal a high degree of stress across nearly the full length of Canada’s southern border. In many regions, point source pollution including wastewater effluents, industrial discharges and urban runoff are the largest contributors while agricultural contamination, including nitrogen, phosphorus and pesticides, dominates in the Prairies and Southwestern Ontario. Two other sources – pipeline incident and pollution from transportation mishaps – mainly account for why the zone of very high stress reaches up into northern Alberta.


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3. ALTERATION OF WATER FLOW




Large dams and reservoirs serve to disrupt the flooding cycles and variations in flow levels that are natural to all river systems. Among the 12 subwatersheds with very high alteration of flows is the Churchill River in Labrador, where the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric megaproject is located. Another is the La Grande subwatershed in Quebec, home to the largest hydroelectric station in Canada. While the majority of Canada’s northern river systems are currently unaltered by dams, the picture could change dramatically in the future because of the central role hydroelectric power development is expected to play in helping Canada meet its greenhouse gas emission targets.


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4. WATER USE




Most of Canada has not seen the removal of vast quantities of freshwater from ecosystems for agricultural production and other uses. But in 17 subwatersheds, the threat posed by the overuse of water is high or very high. These are located in prime agricultural land along the South Saskatchewan and Assiniboine-Red River systems and in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence regions. Many are part of the boundary waters that Canada shares with the United States. The analysis also includes water intake for drinking water, manufacturing and mining but not the oil and gas industry.


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5. HABITAT LOSS




The assessment shows a significant loss of ecosystems in more than half of Canada’s 167 subwatersheds. In the southern part of the country, the decline is mainly due to conversion of natural landscapes into farmland while in a broad swath of the north, from the Yukon to central Quebec, the main driver of habitat loss is forestry. In residential areas, impervious, artificial surfaces such as paved roads, driveways, parking lots and rooftops disrupt natural habitats while increasing the runoff of pollutants into watersheds.


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6. FRAGMENTATION OF ECOSYSTEMS




In addition to habitat loss, structures such as dams, roads and railways serve to divide freshwater ecosystems, impede migration of fish and other species, and alter the flow of nutrients. The negative results includes a loss of genetic diversity in aquatic species. A total of 61 subwatersheds, mostly in southern Canada where roads are most numerous, show a very high loss of connectedness. In the North, logging and mining roads are the primary causes of fragmentation.


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7. INVASIVE SPECIES




A growing influx of invasive plants and animals has reduced biodiversity and changed the balance of ecological communities in a number of subwatersheds, most notably in Southwestern Ontario where native species are already under high stress due to other risk factors. This threat was among the more challenging of the seven to measure because it is easier to demonstrate the presence rather than the absence of a species that is not native. The threat level only indicates invasive species that are already known to be present in a given watershed, not those that pose likely future threats, such as Asian Carp in the Great Lakes.


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8. CLIMATE CHANGE




While climate change currently presents a low or moderate risk across most of Canada today, it is the stressor that is most likely to play a major role in watershed health in the future. Climate projections include more frequent extreme weather events such as flooding and severe droughts that will further tax water systems. More broadly, even small shifts in temperature and precipitation can translate into profound effects on flow rates and on the way ecosystems function. In terms of watershed health, climate change is expected to become important as an amplifier of other threats.


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CANADA’S WATER: MORE FROM THE GLOBE AND MAIL

What if several of the world’s biggest food crops failed at the same time?

Anthony Janetos

Jun 11, 2017


Many of the world’s major breadbaskets have experienced crop loss due to climate change


(Credit: Getty/JamesBrey)


This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Less than one-quarter of Earth’s total cropland produces nearly three-quarters of the staple crops that feed the world’s population – especially corn, wheat and rice, the most important cereal crops. These areas are our planet’s major breadbaskets.

Historically, when a crop failed in one of these breadbaskets, only nearby areas had to contend with shortages and rising prices. Now, however, major crops are traded on global markets, which means that production failures can have far-reaching impacts. Moreover, climate change is expected to generate heat waves and drought that could cause crop losses in most of the world’s breadbaskets. Indeed, failures could occur simultaneously in several of these key regions.

Pardee Center postdoctoral scholar John Patrick Connors and I are using mathematical models to study the potential environmental and economic impacts of failures in multiple breadbaskets around the world. It is already clear from our preliminary work that this is a real, near-term threat.

The good news is that not all of these regions respond in the same way to shocks in other places in the world. Some could bring new land into production quickly, easing stresses caused by crop failures elsewhere. But in order to make global food systems more robust, we need to know more about the most damaging consequences of multiple breadbasket failures.

A vulnerable system

In the past several decades, many of the world’s major breadbaskets have experienced shocks — events that caused large, rapid drops in food production. For example, regional droughts and heat waves in the Ukraine and Russia in 2007 and then again in 2009 damaged wheat crops and caused global wheat prices to spike by substantial amounts in both years. In 2012 heat and drought in the United States slashed national corn, soybean and other crop yields by up to 27 percent. And yields of important food crops are low and stagnating in many countries due to factors including plant diseases, poor soil quality, poor management practices and damage from air pollution.


At the same time, many experts assert that world food production may have to double by 2050 to feed a growing population and satisfy rising demand for meat, poultry and dairy products in developing countries. Global agricultural production has risen over the past 50 years, largely fueled by improvements in plant breeding and more intensive use of inputs, such as mechanized equipment, fertilizers and pesticides. This trend has eased pressure to bring new land into production. But it has limits, especially in the developing world, where the need to produce more food has been a main driver of deforestation in recent decades.

It is clear that rising demand, growing international trade in agricultural products, and the potential for weather-, climate- and soil-related shocks are making the world food production system less resilient. Global agricultural trade can mean that price spikes in one region, if they are severe enough, can be felt broadly in other regions. Minor shocks, on the other hand, could be lessened by trade and by using grain reserves.

There is increasing evidence that in very poor countries, food price increases and shortages can lead to civil unrest and worsen other social and political stresses. And more wealthy countries are not immune, given the concentration of world food production and the global nature of trade. For example, the Russian/Ukrainian heat wave referenced above led to spikes in food prices, not just in the price of wheat. However, more wealthy countries also typically have more ability to buffer price shocks by either using grain reserves or increasing trade.

Modeling potential shocks

How can we understand this risk and its potential consequences for both rich and poor nations? Programs already exist to provide early warning of potential famines in the world’s poorest countries, many of which already depend heavily on food aid. There also are programs in wealthier nations that monitor food prices and provide early warnings of price spikes.

But these programs focus mainly on regional risks, and often are not located in major food production areas. Very little work has been done to analyze risks of simultaneous shocks in several of the world’s breadbaskets.

We want to understand the impacts that shock events could have if they occur in the real world so that we can identify possible contingency plans for the largest-impact events. In order to do that, we have used an integrated assessment model, the Global Change Assessment Model, which was developed by the U.S. Department of Energy and is freely available to users around the world. Integrated assessment models have been designed specifically to simulate the interactions among Earth’s energy, economic and land use systems.

We have developed scenarios in which small shocks (10 percent crop loss) and large shocks (50 percent crop loss), averaged over five years, are applied to corn, wheat or rice in their major production regions, and then to all the combinations of one, two or all three crops in one, two or the top three production regions.

Unsurprisingly, our results to date suggest that large shocks have larger effects than smaller shocks, as measured in subsequent changes in land use, the total amount of land dedicated to agriculture and food prices. But more interestingly, not all breadbasket regions respond to shocks in the same way.

Some of these areas are quite unresponsive to shocks occurring elsewhere in the world. For example, the total amount of land in agricultural production in South Asia changes relatively little due to shocks elsewhere in the world, largely because most of the arable land is already in use.

But other regions are extremely responsive. Notably, Brazil has the ability to bring a lot of new land into production if large shocks occur elsewhere, because it still has a significant amount of potentially arable land that is not currently being farmed. However, this land currently is mostly forest, so clearing it for agriculture would add significantly to atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, and thus to global climate change.

Mapping risks

The Pardee Center has published a research agenda that discusses what we still need to know about these risks. Key questions include understanding the full distribution of risks, whether increased international trade can ameliorate risk and where the most responsive and the most sensitive regions are.

Ultimately, understanding and preparing for multiple breadbasket failures will require input from climate scientists, agronomists, ecologists, remote sensing experts, economists, political scientists and decision-makers. Mounting such an effort will be challenging, but the costs of failing to do it could be devastating.

Anthony Janetos, Director, Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future and Professor of Earth and Environment, Boston University

Security Experts Identify 12 Likely Triggers of War as the Planet Warms

Lorraine Chow

09 June

Security Experts Identify 12 Likely Triggers of War as the Planet Warms

Climate change isn't just causing glaciers to melt, sea levels to rise and forests to set fire. It has becoming increasingly evident that Earth's rising temperatures also threatens international security.


In fact, an analysis released Friday by the Center for Climate and Security has identified 12 "epicenters," or categories, where the world's rising temperatures could trigger major global conflict.

"Any one of the climate and security epicenters can be disruptive," said Caitlin Werrell, co-president of the Center for Climate and Security and editor of the report, Epicenters of Climate and Security: The New Geostrategic Landscape of the Anthropocene. "Taken together, however, these epicenters can present a serious challenge to international security as we understand it."

The categories include eroding state sovereignty, low-lying nations going underwater, as well as the disruption in the global coffee trade that employs 125 million people worldwide.

Previous studies have identified how terrorist groups in certain regions are taking advantage of increasingly scarce natural resources such as water and food as a "weapon of war." Additionally, a U.S. military report from 2014 called climate change a "catalyst for conflict" and a "threat multiplier." President Obama once said that "no challenge poses a great threat than climate change, and it's an "immediate risk to our national security."

Meanwhile, President Trump and many top officials in his administration brush off or reject the science of climate change. Conservative media has also mocked the idea that climate change is related to the growth of terrorism. And let's not forget Trump's middle finger to the world when he dropped the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement, which has been signed by every nation on Earth except war-torn Syria and Nicaragua, which didn't think the accord was strong enough.

The Center for Climate and Security report stresses why mitigating climate change should be the highest priority for governments and institutions around the world.

"This report demonstrates the kind of cross-sectorial thinking needed to anticipate and mitigate climate-related systemic risks—risks that will be disruptive at local, national, regional and global levels," said Francesco Femia, co-president of the Center for Climate and Security and editor of the report. "Security risks thousands of miles away can have an effect on us at home. Understanding that can help advance preventive rather than reactive solutions."

These are the 12 epicenters identified by the security experts in the report:

1. Eroding State Sovereignty: An inability to absorb the stresses of a rapidly-changing climate may erode state sovereignty (Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell);

2. Disappearing Nations: Many low-lying nations are in danger of being completely submerged by rising seas (Andrew Holland and Esther Babson);

3. Conflict Over Melting Water Towers: Climate change can increase tensions and conflict among the 4 billion people dependent on mountain “water towers" (Troy Sternberg);

4. Conflict Over Fisheries: A warming ocean is driving critical fish stocks into contested waters, contributing to conflict between states (Michael Thomas);

5. Tensions in a Melting Arctic: Increased activity in a melting Arctic raises new security and geopolitical risks (Katarzyna Zysk and David Titley);

6. Weaponized Water: As climate change exacerbates water stress, non-state actors, including international terrorist organizations, are increasingly using water as a weapon (Marcus King and Julia Burnell);

7. Disrupted Strategic Trade Routes: Climate change will place strains on maritime straits that are critical for global trade and security (Adam H. Goldstein and Constantine Samaras);

8. Compromised Coffee Trade: Climate change may also disrupt critical global trading networks, like the coffee trade. which currently supports 125 million people worldwide (Shiloh Fetzek);

9. More (and Worse) Pandemics: Climate change may increase the likelihood and range of pandemics, which could threaten global security (Kaleem Hawa);

10. Flooded Coastal Megacities: Rapidly expanding coastal megacities are threatened by climate impacts like sea level rise, which can destabilize nations (Janani Vivekenanda and Neil Bhatiya);

11. Increased Displacement and Migration: Climate change is becoming a more significant driver of migration and displacement (Robert McLeman);

12. Enhanced Nuclear Risks: Climate change, nuclear security, and policies that are not sensitive to both simultaneously, can increase regional and global security threats (Christine Parthemore)

Here is a video introduction to the report: