Our cities need more trees, but some commonly planted ones won’t survive climate change

Australian cities could lose some of their most common trees to climate change.
Jamen Percy/Shutterstock

Alessandro Ossola, Macquarie University; Hugh Munro Burley, Macquarie University; Leigh Staas, Macquarie University; Linda Beaumont, Macquarie University; Michelle Leishman, Macquarie University, and Rachael Gallagher, Macquarie University

We need trees in our lives. This past summer, Adelaide experienced the hottest temperature ever recorded in an Australian state capital, hitting 46.6 degrees on January 24. Trees beautify otherwise grey cities and cool our suburbs during heatwaves. But different species have different levels of tolerance of heat, lack of water and other threats posed by climate change.

In a newly published study, we investigated likely climate change impacts on 176 of the most common tree species planted across Australian cities. Our analysis showed more than 70% of these species will experience harsher climatic conditions across Australian cities by 2070. Some of the most commonly planted trees are unlikely to survive these conditions.

The golden wattle might struggle in our northern cities if they get hotter and drier.
Dryas/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

So which tree species are best suited to particular places? Which species are more likely to thrive, rather than just survive, under a changing climate? Which of our beloved tree species won’t make it?

Tree species growing in warmer cities are more likely to be affected than those in cooler cities. Some species, such as the golden wattle (Acacia longifolia) or the prickly paperbark (Melaleuca styphelioides), might not make it in northern cities, unless we invest precious resources – such as water – to maintain these civic assets. Other species, such as the native frangipani (Hymenosporum flavum) or the tuckeroo (Cupaniopsis anacardioides), will likely become more suitable for planting in southern cities.

---

Read more:
We’re investing heavily in urban greening, so how are our cities doing?

---

Why do cities need trees?

Trees are wonderfully effective at improving the microclimate of our cities, which makes tree plantings an effective and efficient way to adapt to climate change. The leaves of trees absorb and dissipate much of the sun’s radiation.

Trees cool air and land by several degrees compared to areas of concrete and asphalt. Swipe the heat map below to see how effectively trees cool down our cities. (Red indicates hotter areas, blue cooler areas.)

Swipe the map to see how much trees cool urban areas. Red indicates hotter areas, blue cooler areas. This temperature map was collected during a heatwave in Adelaide, South Australia, on February 9 2017 by AdaptWest over the cities of West Torrens, Charles Sturt and Port Adelaide-Enfield.
Used with permission of AdaptWest Adelaide (https://www.adaptwest.com.au/mapping/heat-maps)

---

Read more:
Building cool cities for a hot future

---

Governments recognise the importance of trees and have developed vital initiatives, such as the national 20 Million Trees program and the 5 Million Trees program in New South Wales. These are important first steps to increase urban tree cover across Australia. But the question arises: are we planting the right tree species?

What does the science say?

Australian cities are blessed with a higher diversity of tree species compared to other cities globally. However, the 30 most commonly planted species make up more than half of Australia’s urban forests.

This poses a great risk for our cities. If we were to lose one or two of these common species, the impact on our urban tree cover would be immense. Consequently, our best insurance is to increase the diversity of our trees.

Species composition of Australia’s urban forests across 60 local government areas. The size of each word is proportional to the number of tree stems recorded for each species.
Alessandro Ossola

Our quest to find climate-ready tree species is only just beginning. Supported by Hort Innovation Australia, the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, and the Commonwealth government, our team embarked on a project called Which Plant Where in conjunction with researchers at Western Sydney University. Our mission is to find the best plant species for urban landscapes that will be resilient to climate change.

We work with the nursery industry to provide evidence on species’ resilience to extreme heat and drought by testing plants to their limits in research glasshouses. Our work with plant growers and nurseries will inform them on how to adapt their business, by identifying the new challenges posed by climate change, as well as selecting highly diverse palettes of climate-ready species. We advise landscape architects, designers and urban planners about not only the best planting choices, but also how to increase the biodiversity of our cities.

---

Read more:
For green cities to become mainstream, we need to learn from local success stories and scale up

---

You can help!

We are committed to do more science in coming years, but you can start making a difference today. Australia’s National Tree Day will be celebrated again this year on Sunday, July 28. It’s a great opportunity to teach our families, communities and businesses about the importance of tree planting and environmental stewardship as key elements of adapting to climate change.

An old Chinese adage says:

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

This weekend is your time. The game is simple – head to your closest plant nursery. Ask your local grower about which tree species are suitable for the local growing conditions and pick one you like. Then, plant a tree in your yard, or join one of the many planting events across Australia.

Teach your kids, family and friends about the difference they can start making today – for their future and our common good – one tree at a time.

A plant nursery growing a diverse range of tree species for the upcoming planting season.
Alessandro Ossola

Alessandro Ossola, Research Coordinator Centre for Smart Green Cities, Macquarie University; Hugh Munro Burley, Spatial analyst, Macquarie University; Leigh Staas, Associate Director for Engagement & Research Partnerships | Smart Green Cities, Macquarie University; Linda Beaumont, Senior Lecturer, Macquarie University; Michelle Leishman, Distinguished Professor, Head of Department, Macquarie University, and Rachael Gallagher, , Macquarie University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Advertisement

Common products, like perfume, paint and printer ink, are polluting the atmosphere

We need to measure the volatile compounds that waft off the products in our homes and offices.

Jenny Fisher, University of Wollongong and Kathryn Emmerson, CSIRO

Picture the causes of air pollution in a major city and you are likely to visualise pollutants spewing out of cars, trucks and buses.

For some types of air pollutants, however, transportation is only half as important as the chemicals in everyday consumer products like cleaning agents, printer ink, and fragrances, according to a study published today in Science.

Air pollution: a chemical soup

Air pollution is a serious health concern, responsible for millions of premature deaths each year, with even more anticipated due to climate change.

---

Read more:
Climate change set to increase air pollution deaths by hundreds of thousands by 2100

---

Although we typically picture pollution as coming directly from cars or power plants, a large fraction of air pollution actually comes from chemical reactions that happen in the atmosphere. One necessary starting point for that chemistry is a group of hundreds of molecules collectively known as “volatile organic compounds” (VOCs).

VOCs in the atmosphere can come from many different sources, both man-made and natural. In urban areas, VOCs have historically been blamed largely on vehicle fuels (both gasoline and diesel) and natural gas.

Fuel emissions are dropping

Thanks in part to more stringent environmental regulations and in part to technological advances, VOCs released into the air by vehicles have dropped dramatically.

In this new study, the researchers used detailed energy and chemical production records to figure out what fraction of the VOCs from oil and natural gas are released by vehicle fuels versus other sources. They found that the decline in vehicle emissions means that – in a relative sense – nearly twice as much comes from chemical products as comes from vehicle fuel, at least in the US. Those chemicals include cleaning products, paints, fragrances and printer ink – all things found in modern homes.

The VOCs from these products get into the air because they evaporate easily. In fact, in many cases, this is exactly what they are designed to do. Without evaporating VOCs, we wouldn’t be able to smell the scents wafting by from perfumes, scented candles, or air fresheners.

Overall, this is a good news story: VOCs from fuel use have decreased, so the air is cleaner. Since the contribution from fuels has dropped, it is not surprising that chemical products, which have not been as tightly regulated, are now responsible for a larger share of the VOCs.

Predicting air quality

An important finding from this work is that these chemical products have largely been ignored when constructing the models that we use to predict air pollution – which impacts how we respond to and regulate pollutants.

The researchers found that ignoring the VOCs from chemical products had significant impacts on predictions of air quality. In outdoor environments, they found that these products could be responsible for as much as 60% of the particles that formed chemically in the air above Los Angeles.

The effects were even larger indoors – a major concern as we spend most of our time indoors. Without accounting for chemical products, a model of indoor air pollutants under-predicted measurements by a whopping 87%. Including the consumer products really helped to fix this problem.

---

Read more:
We can’t afford to ignore indoor air quality – our lives depend on it

---

What does this mean for Australia?

In Australia we do a stocktake of our VOC emissions to the air every few years. Our vehicle-related VOC emissions have also been dropping and are now only about a quarter as large as they were in 1990.

Historical and projected trends in Australia’s road transport emissions of VOCs.
Author provided, adapted from Australia State of the Environment 2016: atmosphere

Nonetheless, the most recent check suggests most of our VOCs still come from cars and trucks, factories and fires. Still, consumer products can’t be ignored – especially as our urban population continues to grow. Because these sources are spread out across the city, their contributions can be difficult to estimate accurately.

We need to make sure our future VOC stocktakes include sources from consumer products such as cleaning fluids, indoor fragrances and home office items like printing ink. The stocktakes are used as the basis for our models, and comparing models to measurements helps us understand what affects our air quality and how best to improve it. It was a lack of model-to-measurement agreement that helped to uncover the VW vehicle emissions scandal, where the manufacturer was deliberately under-estimating how much nitrogen gas was being released through the exhaust.

If we can’t get our predictions to agree with the indoor measurements, we’ll need to work harder to identify all the emission sources correctly. This means going into typical Australian homes, making air quality measurements, and noting what activities are happening at the same time (like cooking, cleaning or decorating).

---

Read more:
Heading back to the office? Bring these plants with you to fight formaldehyde (and other nasties)

---

What should we do now?

If we want to keep air pollution to a minimum, it will become increasingly important to take into account the VOCs from chemical products, both in our models of air pollution and in our regulatory actions.

In the meantime, as we spend so much of our time indoors, it makes sense to try to limit our personal exposure to these VOCs. There are several things we can do, such as choosing fragrance-free cleaning products and keeping our use of scented candles and air fresheners to a minimum. Research from NASA has also shown that growing house plants like weeping figs and spider plants can help to remove some of the VOCs from indoor air.

And of course, we can always open a window (as long as we keep the outdoor air clean, too).

Jenny Fisher, Senior Lecturer in Atmospheric Chemistry, University of Wollongong and Kathryn Emmerson, , CSIRO

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

New research suggests common herbicides are linked to antibiotic resistance

New Zealand researchers have found that the active ingredients in commonly-used weed killers like Round-up and Kamba can cause bacteria to become less susceptible to antibiotics.
from http://www.shutterstock.com, CC BY-ND

Jack Heinemann

Antibiotics are losing their ability to kill bacteria.

One of the main reasons for the rise in antibiotic resistance is the improper use of antibiotics, but our latest research shows that the ingredients in commonly-used weed killers like Round-up and Kamba can also cause bacteria to become less susceptible to antibiotics.

Herbicides induce gene activity

Already, about 700,000 deaths are attributable each year to infections by drug-resistant bacteria. A recent report projected that by 2050, 10 million people a year will die from previously treatable bacterial infections, with a cumulative cost to the world economy of $US100 trillion.

The bacteria we study are potential human pathogens. Seventy years ago pathogens were uniformly susceptible to antibiotics used in medicine and agriculture. That has changed. Now some are resistant to all but one or two remaining antibiotics. Some strains are resistant to all.

---

Read more: Drug resistance: how we keep track of whether antibiotics are being used responsibly

---

When bacteria were exposed to commercial herbicide formulations based
on 2,4-D, dicamba or glyphosate, the lethal concentration of various antibiotics
changed. Often it took more antibiotic to kill them, but sometimes it took less.
We showed that one effect of the herbicides was to induce certain genes that they all carry, but don’t always use.

These genes are part of the so-called “adaptive response”. The main elements of this response are proteins that “pump” toxins out of the cell, keeping intracellular concentrations sublethal. We knew this because the addition of a chemical inhibitor of the pumps eliminated the protective effect of the herbicide.

In our latest work, we tested this by using gene “knockout” bacteria, which had been engineered to lose just one pump gene. We found that most of the effect of the herbicide was explained by these pumps.

Reduced antibiotic use may not fix the problem

For decades we have put our faith in inventing new antibiotics above the wisdom
of preserving the effectiveness of existing ones. We have applied the same invention incentives to the commercialisation of antibiotics as those used with mobile phones. Those incentives maximise the rate of product sales. They have saturated the market with phones, and they saturate the earth with antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Improper use of antibiotics is a powerful driver of the widespread resistance.
Knowing this naturally leads to the hypothesis that proper and lower use will make the world right again. Unfortunately, the science is not fully on the side of that hypothesis.

Studies following rates of resistance do generally find a decrease in resistance to specific drugs when their use is banned or decreased. However, the effect is not a restoration of a pre-antibiotic susceptibility, characterised by multi-year effectiveness of the antibiotic. Instead, resistance returns rapidly when the drug is used again.

This tells us that once resistance has stablised in populations of bacteria, suspended use may change the ratio of resistant to susceptible but it does not eliminate resistant types. Very small numbers of resistant bacteria can undermine the antibiotic when it is used again.

Herbicides and other pollutants mimic antibiotics

What keeps these resistant minorities around? Recall that bacteria are very
small, but there are lots of them; you carry 100 trillion of them. They are also found deep underground to high up in the atmosphere.

Because antibiotics are so powerful, they eliminate bacteria that are susceptible and leave the few resistant ones to repopulate. Having done so, we now have lots of bacteria, and lots of resistance genes, to get rid of, and that takes a lot of time.

As our work suggests, the story is even more complicated. We are inclined to think of antibiotics as medicine and agrichemicals, hand soaps, bug sprays and preservatives as different. Bacteria don’t do this. To them, they are all toxic.

Some are really toxic (antibiotics) and some not so much (herbicides). Bacteria are among the longest lived organisms on earth. Nearly four billion years of survival has taught them how to deal with toxins.

Pesticides as antibiotic vaccines

Our hypothesis is that herbicides immunise the bacteria from more toxic
toxins like antibiotics. Since all bacteria have these protections, the use of widely used products to which they are exposed is particularly problematic. So these products, among others, might keep bacteria ready for antibiotics whether or not we are using them.

We found that both the purified active ingredients and potential inert ingredients in weed killers caused a change in antibiotic response. Those inert ingredients are also found in processed foods and common household products. Resistance was caused below legally allowed food concentrations.

What does this all mean? Well for starters we may have to think more carefully about how to regulate chemical commerce. With approximately eight million manufactured chemicals in commerce, 140,000 new since 1950, and limited knowledge of their combination effects and breakdown products, this won’t be easy.

But neither is it easy to watch someone die from an infection we lost the power to cure.

Jack Heinemann, Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Man-Made Earthquakes Becoming Common

Random Thoughts

I guess it was only a matter if time before our meddling with the earth via fracking became a major problem, or perhaps better put, a bigger problem. Man-made earthquakes are now a reality, but this article suggests they have been around a lot longer than fracking.

For more visit:
http://www.geek.com/science/man-made-earthquakes-are-becoming-a-real-problem-1576464/

View original post