Spending time in nature has always been important, but now it’s an essential part of coping with the pandemic

Shutterstock/Sunny studio, CC BY-SA

Catherine Knight, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

Time spent in green spaces has been shown to mental and physical well-being.
Shutterstock/vsop, CC BY-SA

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of green spaces and urban parks, especially during periods of lockdown.

Even a short walk, an ocean view or a picnic by a river can leave us feeling invigorated and restored. There is now a growing body of evidence establishing the link between such nature encounters and our mental and physical well-being.

In my new book, I explore these nature benefits and put out a challenge to urban planners and decision makers to include more green spaces in our towns and cities.

Nature’s fix

One of the earliest studies to draw a conclusive link between time spent in nature and well-being was published in 1991. It found a 40-minute walk in nature, compared with walking in an urban space or reading a magazine, led to significant improvements in mood, reduced anger and aggression, and better recovery from mental fatigue.

In more recent studies, exposure to nature or urban green space has been associated with lower levels of stress, reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety, and improved cognition in children with attention deficits and individuals with depression.

Research also suggests the benefits of growing up with access to lots of green space has a lasting effect into adulthood. A Danish study in 2019 found children who grow up surrounded by green spaces are less likely to develop mental disorders as adults.

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Nature exposure has also been shown to boost immunity. Studies found that forest excursions boost the activity of natural killer cells (a type of white blood cell that plays a vital role in the body’s defence system, attacking infections and tumours) and elevate hormones that may be protective against heart disease, obesity and diabetes, at least over the short term.

No exercise required

Researchers have been careful to factor out the beneficial effects of energetic physical activity when designing their studies of nature exposure. They asked participants to sit quietly or take a gentle walk.

This is good news for those of us who prefer a stroll to strenuous exercise. What’s more, researchers have found that just 20-30 minutes in nature delivers optimal benefits. After that, they continue to accrue, but at a slower rate.

Even a gentle stroll delivers health benefits.
Shutterstock/Ian Woolcock, CC BY-SA

There’s even better news. To provide these benefits, nature does not need to be remote or pristine. A leafy park, a stream-side walkway, or even a quiet, tree-lined avenue can provide this nature fix.

New Zealand’s lockdowns have made more people appreciate the importance of green spaces for walking, cycling or just getting some fresh, tree-filtered air. During the strictest lockdown in April 2020, citizen science apps such as iNaturalist reported an upsurge in usage, indicating people were getting out into nature in their neighbourhoods.

The nature destruction paradox

Our appreciation of nature at this time of crisis is not without irony, given the destruction of pristine forests, rapid urbanisation and population growth are all at the root of the pandemic, bringing wildlife and people into close contact and making animal-to-human transmission of new diseases increasingly likely.

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Read more:
UN report says up to 850,000 animal viruses could be caught by humans, unless we protect nature

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A recent World Wildlife Fund report describes COVID-19 as a clear warning signal of an environment out of balance.

The report presents strong evidence of the link between humanity’s impacts on ecosystems and biodiversity and the spread of certain diseases:

Along with maintaining our natural systems, action is needed to restore those that have been destroyed or degraded, in a way that benefits people and restores the fundamental functions that biomes such as forests provide.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, we think of ourselves as a country rich in nature, but here too we have managed to destroy large swathes of indigenous forests and ecosystems since the first Polynesian navigators and then European settlers arrived.

Most people live in cities, which often lack green spaces.
Shutterstock/krug, CC BY-SA

Most of our surviving forests and pristine waterways are concentrated in our mountains and hill country, preserved not as a result of careful stewardship, but rather an accident of history: it was too hard to develop and economically exploit these rugged, inaccessible places. Our lowland landscapes are largely bereft of any forests, wetlands or any nature in its original form.

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Read more:
3 ways nature in the city can do you good, even in self-isolation

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Yet, 86% of us live in cities and towns, which are in coastal and lowland areas. So if we are going to ensure that everyone is able to benefit from spending time in nature, we need more nature spaces in our cities.

This does not necessarily mean more parks. With the right care and investment, neglected stream corridors, weed-infested gullies, flood-prone areas unfit for development and even road verges can provide valuable green spaces for people. As an added benefit, they create a network of habitat for insects, birds and reptiles that keep our natural ecosystems functioning.

In my book, I put out a challenge to all New Zealanders, especially urban planners and our decision makers, to strive for a more nature-rich future – an Aotearoa where every New Zealander can benefit from being in nature, every day of their life.

Catherine Knight, Senior Research Associate, Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

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

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Are young trees or old forests more important for slowing climate change?

Jeremy Kieran/Unsplash, CC BY-SA

Tom Pugh, University of Birmingham

Forests are thought to be crucial in the fight against climate change – and with good reason. We’ve known for a long time that the extra CO₂ humans are putting in the atmosphere makes trees grow faster, taking a large portion of that CO₂ back out of the atmosphere and storing it in wood and soils.

But a recent finding that the world’s forests are on average getting “shorter and younger” could imply that the opposite is happening. Adding further confusion, another study recently found that young forests take up more CO₂ globally than older forests, perhaps suggesting that new trees planted today could offset our carbon sins more effectively than ancient woodland.

How does a world in which forests are getting younger and shorter fit with one where they are also growing faster and taking up more CO₂? Are old or young forests more important for slowing climate change? We can answer these questions by thinking about the lifecycle of forest patches, the proportion of them of different ages and how they all respond to a changing environment.

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Read more:
Using forests to manage carbon: a heated debate

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The forest carbon budget

Let’s start by imagining the world before humans began clearing forests and burning fossil fuels.

In this world, trees that begin growing on open patches of ground grow relatively rapidly for their first several decades. The less successful trees are crowded out and die, but there’s much more growth than death overall, so there is a net removal of CO₂ from the atmosphere, locked away in new wood.

As trees get large two things generally happen. One, they become more vulnerable to other causes of death, such as storms, drought or lightning. Two, they may start to run out of nutrients or get too tall to transport water efficiently. As a result, their net uptake of CO₂ slows down and can approach zero.

Eventually, our patch of trees is disturbed by some big event, like a landslide or fire, killing the trees and opening space for the whole process to start again. The carbon in the dead trees is gradually returned to the atmosphere as they decompose.

The vast majority of the carbon is held in the patches of big, old trees. But in this pre-industrial world, the ability of these patches to continue taking up more carbon is weak. Most of the ongoing uptake is concentrated in the younger patches and is balanced by CO₂ losses from disturbed patches. The forest is carbon neutral.

New trees absorb lots of carbon, old trees store more overall and dead trees shed their carbon to the atmosphere.
Greg Rosenke/Unsplash, CC BY-SA

Now enter humans. The world today has a greater area of young patches of forest than we would naturally expect because historically, we have harvested forests for wood, or converted them to farmland, before allowing them to revert back to forest. Those clearances and harvests of old forests released a lot of CO₂, but when they are allowed to regrow, the resulting young and relatively short forest will continue to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere until it regains its neutral state. In effect, we forced the forest to lend some CO₂ to the atmosphere and the atmosphere will eventually repay that debt, but not a molecule more.

But adding extra CO₂ into the atmosphere, as humans have done so recklessly since the dawn of the industrial revolution, changes the total amount of capital in the system.

And the forest has been taking its share of that capital. We know from controlled experiments that higher atmospheric CO₂ levels enable trees to grow faster. The extent to which the full effect is realised in real forests varies. But computer models and observations agree that faster tree growth due to elevated CO₂ in the atmosphere is currently causing a large carbon uptake. So, more CO₂ in the atmosphere is causing both young and old patches of forest to take up CO₂, and this uptake is larger than that caused by previously felled forests regrowing.

The effect of climate change

But the implications of climate change are quite different. All else being equal, warming tends to increase the likelihood of death among trees, from drought, wildfire or insect outbreaks. This will lower the average age of trees as we move into the future. But, in this case, that younger age does not have a loan-like effect on CO₂. Those young patches of trees may take up CO₂ more strongly than the older patches they replace, but this is more than countered by the increased rate of death. The capacity of the forest to store carbon has been reduced. Rather than the forest loaning CO₂ to the atmosphere, it’s been forced to make a donation.

So increased tree growth from CO₂ and increased death from warming are in competition. In the tropics at least, increased growth is still outstripping increased mortality, meaning that these forests continue to take up huge amounts of carbon. But the gap is narrowing. If that uptake continues to slow, it would mean more of our CO₂ emissions stay in the atmosphere, accelerating climate change.

Overall, both young and old forests play important roles in slowing climate change. Both are taking up CO₂, primarily because there is more CO₂ about. Young forests take up a bit more, but this is largely an accident of history. The extra carbon uptake we get from having a relatively youthful forest will diminish as that forest ages. We can plant new forests to try to generate further uptake, but space is limited.

But it’s important to separate the question of uptake from that of storage. The world’s big, old forests store an enormous amount of carbon, keeping it out of the atmosphere, and will continue to do so, even if their net CO₂ uptake decreases. So long as they are not cut down or burned to ashes, that is.

Tom Pugh, Reader in Biosphere-Atmosphere Exchange, University of Birmingham

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

Why remote Antarctica is so important in a warming world

Chris Fogwill, Keele University; Chris Turney, UNSW, and Zoe Robinson, Keele University

Ever since the ancient Greeks speculated a continent must exist in the south polar regions to balance those in the north, Antarctica has been popularly described as remote and extreme. Over the past two centuries, these factors have combined to create, in the human psyche, an almost mythical land – an idea reinforced by tales of heroism and adventure from the Edwardian golden age of “heroic exploration” and pioneers such as Robert Falcon Scott, Roald Amundsen and Ernest Shackleton.

Recent research, however, is casting new light on the importance of the southernmost continent, overturning centuries of misunderstanding and highlighting the role of Antarctica in how our planet works and the role it may play in a future, warmer world.

Heroic exploration, 1913.
wiki

What was once thought to be a largely unchanging mass of snow and ice is anything but. Antarctica holds a staggering amount of water. The three ice sheets that cover the continent contain around 70% of our planet’s fresh water, all of which we now know to be vulnerable to warming air and oceans. If all the ice sheets were to melt, Antarctica would raise global sea levels by at least 56m.

Where, when, and how quickly they might melt is a major focus of research. No one is suggesting all the ice sheets will melt over the next century but, given their size, even small losses could have global repercussions. Possible scenarios are deeply concerning: in addition to rising sea levels, meltwater would slow down the world’s ocean circulation, while shifting wind belts may affect the climate in the southern hemisphere.

In 2014, NASA reported that several major Antarctic ice streams, which hold enough water to trigger the equivalent of a one-and-a-half metre sea level rise, are now irreversibly in retreat. With more than 150m people exposed to the threat of sea level rise and sea levels now rising at a faster rate globally than any time in the past 3,000 years, these are sobering statistics for island nations and coastal cities worldwide.

An immediate and acute threat

Recent storm surges following hurricanes have demonstrated that rising sea levels are a future threat for densely populated regions such as Florida and New York. Meanwhile the threat for low-lying islands in areas such as the Pacific is immediate and acute.

Much of the continent’s ice is slowly sliding towards the sea.
R Bindschadler / wiki

Multiple factors mean that the vulnerability to global sea level rise is geographically variable and unequal, while there are also regional differences in the extremity of sea level rise itself. At present, the consensus of the IPPC 2013 report suggests a rise of between 40 and 80cm over the next century, with Antarctica only contributing around 5cm of this. Recent projections, however, suggest that Antarctic contributions may be up to ten times higher.

Studies also suggest that in a world 1.5-2°C warmer than today we will be locked into millennia of irreversible sea level rise, due to the slow response time of the Antarctic ice sheets to atmospheric and ocean warming.

We may already be living in such a world. Recent evidence shows global temperatures are close to 1.5°C warmer than pre-industrial times and, after the COP23 meeting in Bonn in November, it is apparent that keeping temperature rise within 2°C is unlikely.

So we now need to reconsider future sea level projections given the potential global impact from Antarctica. Given that 93% of the heat from anthropogenic global warming has gone into the ocean, and these warming ocean waters are now meeting the floating margins of the Antarctic ice sheet, the potential for rapid ice sheet melt in a 2°C world is high.

In polar regions, surface temperatures are projected to rise twice as fast as the global average, due to a phenomenon known as polar amplification. However, there is still hope to avoid this sword of Damocles, as studies suggest that a major reduction in greenhouse gases over the next decade would mean that irreversible sea level rise could be avoided. It is therefore crucial to reduce CO₂ levels now for the benefit of future generations, or adapt to a world in which more of our shorelines are significantly redrawn.

This is both a scientific and societal issue. We have choices: technological innovations are providing new ways to reduce CO₂ emissions, and offer the reality of a low-carbon future. This may help minimise sea level rise from Antarctica and make mitigation a viable possibility.

Given what rising sea levels could mean for human societies across the world, we must maintain our longstanding view of Antarctica as the most remote and isolated continent.

Chris Fogwill, Professor of Glaciology and Palaeoclimatology, Keele University; Chris Turney, Professor of Earth Sciences and Climate Change, UNSW, and Zoe Robinson, Reader in Physical Geography and Sustainability/Director of Education for Sustainability, Keele University

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

Why remote Antarctica is so important in a warming world

Chris Fogwill, Keele University; Chris Turney, UNSW, and Zoe Robinson, Keele University

Ever since the ancient Greeks speculated a continent must exist in the south polar regions to balance those in the north, Antarctica has been popularly described as remote and extreme. Over the past two centuries, these factors have combined to create, in the human psyche, an almost mythical land – an idea reinforced by tales of heroism and adventure from the Edwardian golden age of “heroic exploration” and pioneers such as Robert Falcon Scott, Roald Amundsen and Ernest Shackleton.

Recent research, however, is casting new light on the importance of the southernmost continent, overturning centuries of misunderstanding and highlighting the role of Antarctica in how our planet works and the role it may play in a future, warmer world.

Heroic exploration, 1913.
wiki

What was once thought to be a largely unchanging mass of snow and ice is anything but. Antarctica holds a staggering amount of water. The three ice sheets that cover the continent contain around 70% of our planet’s fresh water, all of which we now know to be vulnerable to warming air and oceans. If all the ice sheets were to melt, Antarctica would raise global sea levels by at least 56m.

Where, when, and how quickly they might melt is a major focus of research. No one is suggesting all the ice sheets will melt over the next century but, given their size, even small losses could have global repercussions. Possible scenarios are deeply concerning: in addition to rising sea levels, meltwater would slow down the world’s ocean circulation, while shifting wind belts may affect the climate in the southern hemisphere.

In 2014, NASA reported that several major Antarctic ice streams, which hold enough water to trigger the equivalent of a one-and-a-half metre sea level rise, are now irreversibly in retreat. With more than 150m people exposed to the threat of sea level rise and sea levels now rising at a faster rate globally than any time in the past 3,000 years, these are sobering statistics for island nations and coastal cities worldwide.

An immediate and acute threat

Recent storm surges following hurricanes have demonstrated that rising sea levels are a future threat for densely populated regions such as Florida and New York. Meanwhile the threat for low-lying islands in areas such as the Pacific is immediate and acute.

Much of the continent’s ice is slowly sliding towards the sea.
R Bindschadler / wiki

Multiple factors mean that the vulnerability to global sea level rise is geographically variable and unequal, while there are also regional differences in the extremity of sea level rise itself. At present, the consensus of the IPPC 2013 report suggests a rise of between 40 and 80cm over the next century, with Antarctica only contributing around 5cm of this. Recent projections, however, suggest that Antarctic contributions may be up to ten times higher.

Studies also suggest that in a world 1.5-2°C warmer than today we will be locked into millennia of irreversible sea level rise, due to the slow response time of the Antarctic ice sheets to atmospheric and ocean warming.

We may already be living in such a world. Recent evidence shows global temperatures are close to 1.5°C warmer than pre-industrial times and, after the COP23 meeting in Bonn in November, it is apparent that keeping temperature rise within 2°C is unlikely.

So we now need to reconsider future sea level projections given the potential global impact from Antarctica. Given that 93% of the heat from anthropogenic global warming has gone into the ocean, and these warming ocean waters are now meeting the floating margins of the Antarctic ice sheet, the potential for rapid ice sheet melt in a 2°C world is high.

In polar regions, surface temperatures are projected to rise twice as fast as the global average, due to a phenomenon known as polar amplification. However, there is still hope to avoid this sword of Damocles, as studies suggest that a major reduction in greenhouse gases over the next decade would mean that irreversible sea level rise could be avoided. It is therefore crucial to reduce CO₂ levels now for the benefit of future generations, or adapt to a world in which more of our shorelines are significantly redrawn.

This is both a scientific and societal issue. We have choices: technological innovations are providing new ways to reduce CO₂ emissions, and offer the reality of a low-carbon future. This may help minimise sea level rise from Antarctica and make mitigation a viable possibility.

Given what rising sea levels could mean for human societies across the world, we must maintain our longstanding view of Antarctica as the most remote and isolated continent.

Chris Fogwill, Professor of Glaciology and Palaeoclimatology, Keele University; Chris Turney, Professor of Earth Sciences and Climate Change, UNSW, and Zoe Robinson, Reader in Physical Geography and Sustainability/Director of Education for Sustainability, Keele University

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

Honeybees hog the limelight, yet wild insects are the most important and vulnerable pollinators

Szefei / http://www.shutterstock.com

Philip Donkersley, Lancaster University

Pollinating insects like bees, butterflies and flies have had a rough time of late. A broad library of evidence suggests there has been a widespread decline in their abundance and diversity since the 1950s. This matters because such insects are critical both for the reproduction of wild plants and for agricultural food production.

The decline of these pollinators is linked with destruction of natural habitats like forests and meadows, the spread of pests such as Varroa mite and diseases like foulbrood, and the increasing use of agrochemicals by farmers. Although there have been well documented declines in managed honeybees, non-Apis (non-honeybee) pollinators such as bumblebees and solitary bees have also become endangered.

There are more than 800 wild (non-honey) bee species in Europe alone. Seven are classified by the IUCN Redlist as critically endangered, 46 are endangered, 24 are vulnerable and 101 are near threatened. Collectively, losing such species would have a significant impact on global pollination.

Though much of the media focus is on honeybees, they are responsible for only a third of the crop pollination in Britain and a very small proportion of wild plant pollination. A range of other insects including butterflies, bumblebees and small flies make up for this pollination deficit.

Butterfly pollinating during monsoon season.
Hitesh Chhetri / http://www.shutterstock.com

Not all pollinators are created equal

Pollinators also vary in their effectiveness due to their behaviour around flowers and their capacity to hold pollen. Bigger and hairier insects can carry more pollen, while those that groom themselves less tend to be able to transfer pollen more effectively. Bumblebees, for example, make excellent pollinators (far superior to honeybees) as they are big, hairy and do not groom themselves as often.

Where they are in decline, honeybees suffer primarily from pests and diseases, a consequence of poor nutrition and artificially high population density. This differs from other pollinators, where the decline is mainly down to habitat destruction. It seems pesticides affect all pollinators.

An ashy mining-bee (Andrena cineraria) settles in for a snack.
Philip Donkersley, Author provided

Save (all) the bees

Curiously, the issues facing non-Apis pollinators may be exacerbated by commercial beekeeping, and attempts to help honeybees may even harm efforts to conserve wild pollinators.

The problem is that there are only so many flowers and places to nest. And once the numbers of honeybees have been artificially inflated (commercial-scale beekeeping wouldn’t exist without humans) the increased competition for these resources can push native non-Apis pollinators out of their natural habitats. Honeybees also spread exotic plants and transmit pathogens, both of which have been shown to harm other pollinators.

The European honey bee (Apis mellifera) is the most common species of honey bee.
Philip Donkersley, Author provided

Over the coming decades, farmers and those who regulate them are faced with a tough challenge. Agricultural output must be increased to feed a growing human population, but simultaneously the environmental impact must be reduced.

The agriculture sector has tried to address the need to feed a growing population through conventional farming practices such as mechanisation, larger fields or the use of pesticides and fertiliser. Yet these have contributed to widespread destruction of natural landscapes and loss of natural capital.

Limited resources and land use pressure require conservation strategies to become more efficient, producing greater outcomes from increasingly limited input.

A mosaic of different flowers: these sorts of landscapes are paradise for bees.
Philip Donkersley, Author provided

Cooperative conservation

So-called agri-environment schemes represent the best way to help insect pollinators. That means diversifying crops, avoiding an ecologically-fragile monoculture and ensuring that the insects can jump between different food sources. It also means protecting natural habitats and establishing ecological focus areas such as wildflower strips, while limiting the use of pesticides and fertilisers.

As pollinating insects need a surprisingly large area of land to forage, linking up restored habitats on a larger scale provides far more evident and immediate benefits. However, so far, connections between protected areas have not been a priority, leading to inefficient conservation.

We need a substantial shift in how we think about pollinators. Encouraging land managers to work cooperatively will help create bigger, more impactful areas to support pollinators. In future, conservation efforts will need to address declines in all pollinators by developing landscapes to support pollinator communities and not just honeybees.

Philip Donkersley, Senior Research Associate in Entomology, Lancaster University

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

Hidden depths: why groundwater is our most important water source

Deep dive: water flows from a bore in Birdsville, Queensland.
Lobster1/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Emma Kathryn White, University of Melbourne

Vivid scenes of worried Cape Town residents clutching empty water vessels in long snaking queues are ricocheting around the globe. Everyone is asking, “How did this happen?” Or, more precisely, “Can it happen in my city?” The importance of effective water management has been shoved, blinking, into the limelight.

In Australia we’re watching somewhat nervously, grateful to have been spared the same fate – for now, at least. Experts tell us that the key is “water divestment” – that is, don’t put all your eggs in one basket (or, perhaps more appropriately, don’t get all your water from the same tap).

Perth is held up as a shining example of Australia’s success in water divestment. The city now relies partly on desalination and crucially gets almost 70% of its supply from groundwater.

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Read more:
The world’s biggest source of freshwater is beneath your feet

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Groundwater, the great salvation of parched cities and agricultural development, is the world’s largest freshwater resource. The volume of fresh water in all the world’s lakes, rivers and swamps adds up to less than 1% of that of fresh groundwater – like putting a perfume bottle next to a ten-litre bucket.

What’s more, because it’s underground, it is buffered somewhat from a fickle climate and often used to maintain or supplement supply during times of drought.

Yet caution is required when developing groundwater. Sinking wells everywhere, Beverley Hillbillies style, is unwise. Instead, robust groundwater management is required – defining clearly what we want to achieve and what are we prepared to lose to get it.

Despite the common perception of its abundance, groundwater is not inexhaustible. Its management is fraught with minefields greater and more enigmatic than those of surface waters. It is, after all, much easier to spot when a reservoir is about to run dry than a subterranean aquifer.

Subsidence can be surprisingly rapid, as in the case of this example in California’s San Joaquin Valley.
USGS

Only when aquifer depletion is already quite advanced do we begin to see the tell-tale signs at the surface: metres and metres of subsidence, huge cracks in roads, and dried-up wetlands clogged with dead trees and dried-out bird carcasses.

For the most part, however, groundwater remains out of sight, hidden beneath many metres of soil and rock. We only remember it is there when something goes wrong, such as a drought, at which point people begin raving about groundwater, location, yield, salinity, stygofauna – wait, what?

Actually hardly anyone cares about stygofauna; most people have never heard of these tiny subterranean creatures, and you will certainly never see one as a state emblem. Mound springs? What are they? Clearly being underground has left groundwater with an image problem.

There was much media coverage of water theft from the Murray River, with broadcast journalists reporting breathlessly from tinnies, and dramatic footage of huge pumps sucking swirling brown water from a sluggish river. Film of groundwater pumps sedately slurping water is much harder to get, because bores tend to be on private property, often hidden inside little tin shacks and kind of boring, really.

Groundwater just doesn’t capture the public imagination. Great reservoirs and rivers are evocative of wilderness and adventure; they almost make you want to build a little raft and float lazily away, Huck Finn style. But the thing is, groundwater feeds many great rivers, supplying base-flow, so when we suck water out of wells, in many instances we may as well be sucking out of rivers.

Despite this connectivity, in many regions groundwater and surface water are managed separately. This is akin to treating to your left hand as a separate entity to your right. Regulation of groundwater lags behind that of surface water and, in many parts of the world including the United States, China, India and Australia, groundwater is overexploited and pumped prolifically, leading to severe social and environmental impacts.

Mound springs support unique and endemic ecosystems and bubbling clear cold water, a welcome sight for dusty travellers. And as for the aforementioned stygofauna, well, what could be cooler than a blind cave eel?

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Read more:
Squeezed by gravity: how tides affect the groundwater under our feet

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Groundwater will become increasingly important as a water source as we grapple with growing cities and burgeoning populations, not to mention climate change, which is projected to reduce rainfall across eastern Australia.

It is crucial that we ensure our groundwater management is effective and robust in the face of drought. It is no longer enough just to write management plans; we must put them to the test by running our groundwater models through a range of future climate and management frequency scenarios. We need increased investment in groundwater management planning, and for management to be conducted in conjunction with surface water management.

With many cities’ water supplies drying up before our eyes, we also need to remember to think about the water we cannot see.

Emma Kathryn White, PhD Candidate, Infrastructure Engineering, University of Melbourne

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

Flying home for Christmas? Carbon offsets are important, but they won’t fix plane pollution

Roey Ahram/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

Susanne Becken, Griffith University and Brendan Mackey, Griffith University

Australia is an important player in the global tourism business. In 2016, 8.7 million visitors arrived in Australia and 8.8 million Australians went overseas. A further 33.5 million overnight trips were made domestically.

But all this travel comes at a cost. According to the Global Sustainable Tourism Dashboard, all Australian domestic trips and one-way international journeys (the other half is attributed to the end point of travel) amount to 15 million tonnes of carbon dioxide for 2016. That is 2.7% of global aviation emissions, despite a population of only 0.3% of the global total.

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Read more: Life in a post-flying Australia, and why it might actually be ok

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The peak month of air travel in and out of Australia is December. Christmas is the time where people travel to see friends and family, or to go on holiday. More and more people are aware of the carbon implications of their travel and want to know whether, for example, they should purchase carbon offsets or not.

Our recent study in the Journal of Air Transport Management showed that about one third of airlines globally offer some form of carbon offsetting to their customers. However, the research also concluded that the information provided to customers is often insufficient, dated and possibly misleading. Whilst local airlines Qantas, Virgin Australia and Air New Zealand have relatively advanced and well-articulated carbon offset programs, others fail to offer scientifically robust explanations and accredited mechanisms that ensure that the money spent on an offset generates some real climate benefits.

The notion of carbon compensation is actually more difficult than people might think. To help explain why carbon offsetting does make an important climate contribution, but at the same time still adds to atmospheric carbon, we created an animated video clip.

Jack’s journey.

The video features Jack, a concerned business traveller who begins purchasing carbon credits. However, he comes to the realisation that the carbon emissions from his flights are still released into the atmosphere, despite the credit.

The concept of “carbon neutral” promoted by airline offsets means that an equal amount of emissions is avoided elsewhere, but it does not mean there is no carbon being emitted at all – just relatively less compared with the scenario of not offsetting (where someone else continues to emit, in addition to the flight).

This means that, contrary to many promotional and educational materials (see
here for instance), carbon offsetting will not reduce overall carbon emissions. Trading emissions means that we are merely maintaining status quo.

A steep reduction, however, is what’s required by every sector if we were to reach the net-zero emissions goal by 2050, agreed on in the Paris Agreement.

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Read more: It’s time to wake up to the devastating impact flying has on the environment

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Carbon offsetting is already an important “polluter pays” mechanism for travellers who wish to contribute to climate mitigation. But it is also about to be institutionalised at large scale through the new UN-run Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA).

CORSIA will come into force in 2021, when participating airlines will have to purchase carbon credits for emissions above 2020 levels on certain routes.

The availability of carbon credits and their integrity is of major concern, as well as how they align with national obligations and mechanisms agreed in the Paris Agreement. Of particular interest is Article 6, which allows countries to cooperate in meeting their climate commitments, including by “trading” emissions reductions to count towards a national target.

The recent COP23 in Bonn highlighted that CORSIA is widely seen as a potential source of billions of dollars for offset schemes, supporting important climate action. Air travel may provide an important intermediate source of funds, but
ultimately the aviation sector, just like anyone else, will have to reduce their own emissions. This will mean major advances in technology – and most likely a contraction in the fast expanding global aviation market.

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Read more: Friday essay: smile and stay thin – life as a 60s air hostess

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Travelling right this Christmas

In the meantime, and if you have booked your flights for Christmas travel, you can do the following:

• pack light (every kilogram will cost additional fuel)

• minimise carbon emissions whilst on holiday (for instance by biking or walking once you’re there), and

• support a credible offsetting program.

And it’s worth thinking about what else you can do during the year to minimise emissions – this is your own “carbon budget”.

Susanne Becken, Professor of Sustainable Tourism and Director, Griffith Institute for Tourism, Griffith University and Brendan Mackey, Director of the Griffith Climate Change Response Program, Griffith University

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

Australia: NSW – Fire Ants in Sydney

The link below is to an article warning of a Fire Ant invasion of Sydney – this is a very important problem and warning for Sydney.

For more visit:
http://www.mygc.com.au/news/fire-ant-invasion-poses-higher-risk-than-sharks/

Australia: Wessel Islands – Aboriginal Art Work Discovered

The link below is to an article reporting on the discovery of some extremely important Aboriginal art work in the Wessel Islands of the Northern Territory, Australia.

For more visit:
http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/journal/aboriginal-rock-art-may-depict-first-ship-arrivals.htm

The Smithsonian Institute

The Smithsonian Institute is an important research center located in the United States. It consists of 19 museums, 9 research centres and the national zoo of the United States. It is extremely important in the international cause of conservation.

For more visit the website at:

http://www.si.edu/