Fight Climate Change — by Loving Carbon?

The new book Burn says we need to rethink our relationship with carbon and embrace one of its solid forms — biochar.

Albert Bates and Kathleen Draper have done the unthinkable: They’ve written a love story to carbon. At a time when much of the world is working on strategies to rid ourselves of carbon to combat the climate crisis, they posit in a new book that we should be embracing it. Or at least some of it.

“Right now carbon is getting a bad rap. Carbon creates dirty energy. Carbon creates grit, grime and gunk,” they write in Burn: Using Fire to Cool the Earth. “Carbon should be global-warming enemy number one. But in truth, carbon is something we should all love and cherish. Carbon is life. In the right balance, carbon gives life.”

Their book focuses on the merits of one particular form of carbon, known as biochar, which a charcoal-like substance. It’s formed by taking biomass, which can come from sources such as wood, plants, crop waste, manure or solid waste, which is then heated (but not completely combusted) in a furnace with little to no oxygen — a process known as pyrolysis. The result is a stable structure that locks away carbon before it would have been emitted as those materials decay or are completely burned.

While charcoal is used mainly as a fuel, biochar instead has myriad other applications, the authors say. It’s most well-known in agricultural circles as an additive to improve soil. It’s been used for thousands of years in small-scale farming, but only more recently has it been touted to help combat climate change by sequestering carbon in that very same soil.

Sequestration of carbon is crucial in helping to address the dangers of the climate crisis, where scientists say we have to not only reduce our current greenhouse gas emissions but also create “negative emissions” by removing carbon dioxide and other greenhouses gases from the atmosphere. How we do that with appropriate technology is a hotly debated topic.

Bates and Draper say that biochar could play a role in reducing our carbon footprint, but they stop short of selling biochar as a silver bullet to fix the climate crisis. It’s presented as just one tool in the toolbox. Most research on biochar’s potential to aid in climate mitigation has looked at its use to sequester carbon in soil: Add it to soil, and it won’t break down for years, preventing the carbon from returning to the atmosphere. The authors say biochar can lock away carbon for hundreds or thousands of years, which is true under certain conditions. But not everyone is convinced: Studies have found that period can range from less than 10 years to hundreds or thousands of years, depending on soil type, the biomass used, the temperature at which the biochar was produced and other environmental conditions. And scientists have cautioned that not enough field research has been done to understand all those variables.

While there’s debate over how effective biochar will be at sequestering carbon in soil, Burn looks in great detail at other applications for biochar, whether on its own or blended with other products — a field with a lot of possibilities but also a lot of unknowns.

Both Bates and Draper have been studying biochar for years. Bates, a lawyer, scientist and teacher, has written previous books including The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook and The Biochar Solution. Draper is the editor of The Biochar Journal and is a board member of the International Biochar Initiative.

Other experts have expressed ample concern that the amount of land needed to scale up biochar production will cause more environmental problems than it solves and potentially result in land grabs. Bates and Draper though don’t recommend that we plant forests or fields for use in biochar production the way corn is grown for biofuels. Instead, they say, we should mine our existing waste streams and make use of things we don’t want — wood chips, coffee residue, hazelnut shells, poultry waste, rice husks… the list goes on. Turning waste into a resource is undoubtedly something we need to do more of and seems like it could work at a regional level, but it’s unclear how scalable the biochar industry would be relying on diffuse sources of biomass. Although Bates and Draper also describe their vision as a “buckshot” strategy where numerous projects of varying sizes could end up with cumulative impacts.

There’s also the added complexity that biochar, which can come from many sources, isn’t one exact thing with an industry standard that’s universally accepted. Different kinds of biomass will result in different kinds of biochar. Some may be useful for one application but not another. You don’t want to use a biochar made from a waste stream in agricultural soils, but maybe it’s better suited in toxic remediation.

While the book focuses on the climate potential of biochar, Bates and Draper spend much of their pages touting some other benefits that could result from various applications, although some don’t seem to be proven at the commercial level yet.

They write that biochar can help treat water through carbon filtration and can be used in wastewater plants or along roadsides to neutralize road salts and prevent chemicals from flowing into waterways.

Biochar has also been studied as a replacement for up to 30 percent of the sand, gravel and other aggregates used in cement production, which could help alleviate some of the environmental impacts and greenhouse gas emissions from mining those resources. Tests have also shown that bricks produced with certain kinds of biochar provide better thermal insulation, potentially helping to save on heating and cooling costs, they write.

Another area of possibility is in the paper industry. The authors write that biochar can be used to filter effluent at paper mills and then be added to paper packaging, where it would provide better insulation, protect electronic products from electro-magnetic fluxes, and absorb odor and condensation. It can even slow produce from ripening and reduce food waste, they explain.

Research is even underway to determine if biochar can help replace petroleum-based composite materials that are widely used in the manufacturing of thousands of products — everything from helicopter blades to fishing rods.

The authors describe one experiment they conducted that yielded a new composite material:

By melting extruded polystyrene foam packing peanuts and clamshell containers (C8H8) in an acetone bath — (CH3)2CO — and adding powdered biochar (C) until it stiffened, we produced a light, structural, fracture-resistant, char-tile that can be molded to any shape. It could be kitchen tiles, surfboards, iPhones, tennis rackets, boats or biodomes.

But wait: There’s more, they say. Biochar can also help clean up some of our messes, like aiding reclamation work at mine sites.

“If you put your biochar in concrete, asphalt, composites or electronics, you can then use carbonized municipal wastes and industrial wastes, which greatly expands both the available biomass supply and the available land area,” they write. “Carbon cascades convert problems into opportunities.”

How much of this is theoretical? So far, not many large-scale, commercially successful opportunities have taken off. Making biochar cost-competitive in the industries it can disrupt is still an uphill climb.

The authors say that biochar ventures are good candidates for climate funds and investment opportunities that are in search of “shovel-ready” projects. But skepticism remains among some in the scientific community.

Bates and Draper’s overall view that we need to rethink our relationship with carbon, though, isn’t bad advice.

“We have to go from spending carbon to banking it,” the authors write. “We have to reverse the way carbon is going, change direction and send it in exactly the opposite direction; down, not up. We have to flip the carbon cycle and run it backward.”

But is biochar the best way to do that? The book makes a good case for opportunities beyond sequestration in soil, but it seems we may be decades before it’s proven a robust climate solution — and by then we may all be charcoal.

The Surprising Clue to Reducing Human-Elephant Conflict: Minerals

Asking why elephants travel to specific areas can help us to better understand and reduce human-elephant conflict.

The increasing human population and global intensification of agriculture have had a major impact on the world’s natural ecosystems. This, as we’ve seen, has had devastating effects for populations of mega-herbivores such as African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana).

Elephants and other animals with vast home ranges have found themselves forced into increasingly smaller geographical areas, often restricted by fencing or other human activities. These smaller areas are then, in turn, under huge pressures to meet the animals’ nutritional needs. This can cause animals to alter their movement patterns and search for new sources of food, potentially causing human-elephant conflict.

Due to their vast food consumption — as much as 600 pounds a day for an adult bull — and sometimes destructive behavior, African savanna elephants can rapidly cause significant damage to crops and vegetation and pose a risk to human life and infrastructure. When elephants and humans come into conflict like this, people may feel the need to retaliate. All too often in these conflicts, the elephant ultimately loses. Human-elephant conflict will only worsen in the coming years due to continued increase in the global human population to 9.7 billion by 2050, the associated growth of agriculture, and a predicted reduction of 200–300 million hectares of wildlife habitat worldwide.

To understand more about these conflicts — and how to prevent them — my colleagues and I conducted a review of existing research to understand how nutritional needs dictate the movements and migrations of elephants and other large species. Our paper was published recently in Peer J.

Our review highlights that the African savanna elephants (and other herbivores) consider nutritional drivers as a factor in their movement choices. Animals make decisions about their daily, seasonal and annual movements based on several factors, including availability of water, presence of human activity, social behavior and topography, which all play a role alongside nutrient availability.

We found there are many examples of elephants moving to purposefully consume certain minerals, including calcium, iodine, iron and zinc. These minerals are available to elephants from plants, water and soil and all contribute to meeting their yet-undetermined nutritional needs.

As we write in our paper, exploring this relationship further could yield new tools for predicting future animal movements and reducing conflict.

There’s a lot left to learn about this — field reports have shown African savanna elephants and other animals making travel choices based on what appear to be regional deficiencies in key minerals, but that requires more research. We also need to learn more about the nutritional requirements of elephants and how those needs differ between males and females, as well as between species.

But based on what we do know, research shows that correlating patterns of movement and availability of nutritional minerals could aid conservation managers to make informed decisions about elephant movement and thus help to mitigate human-elephant conflict. For example, national parks and fenced reserves often occupy marginalized land of poorer quality, so supplementing elephant diets could help to keep the animals from gravitating to more nutritious, mineral-heavy crops and human settlements.

Tools like that, along with better understanding of what elephants need in their daily and seasonal movements, can help to keep more elephants — and people — alive and out of trouble.

The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or their employees.

Environment Remains Under Siege Two Years Into the Trump Administration

President Trump promised massive deregulation — and although he’s lost some cases in court, his successes still threaten people’s health and the climate.

Two years into his presidency, Donald Trump has racked up some high-profile policy failures. There’s no wall spanning the length of our southern border, no denuclearization underway in North Korea, and ethics scandals have swamped his administration.

But when it comes to environmental policy changes, the administration’s record of success has been remarkable.

The Trump team has effectively stalled or reversed at least 78 major environmental rules, including broad national policies aimed at stemming and monitoring air and water pollution, curbing toxic substances in the environment, protecting wildlife, and conserving public lands.

The administration has taken particular aim at stopping or slowing Obama-era directives and regulations aimed at reducing the greenhouse gas pollution that’s altering the climate. Trump lifted the previous administration’s coal-mining moratorium on federal lands, rolled back its curbs on both smog-causing and climate-heating pollution from oil and gas operations, power plants, and other industrial operations, and threw into doubt standards that would improve the fuel efficiency of cars, pickup trucks and SUVs.

Trump squeeze — Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour

The administration has also moved to rescind California’s right to set its own, stricter tailpipe standards under the Clean Air Act.

“Fossil fuel producers are kind of at the heart of all this,” says Jessica Wentz, a senior fellow at Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change. The attacked regulations all have different goals, she says, but overall their effect would be to reduce fossil fuel consumption. “Producers do not want that.”

These environmental rollbacks have put the public’s health in danger, says former Environmental Protection Agency chief Christine Todd Whitman, both by fulfilling the anti-regulatory wish lists of polluters and by largely cutting environmental and public health advocates out of the rulemaking process.

“I find that it’s more responsive to industry than I think is healthy for us,” says Whitman.

“Industry has a right to be heard, but that’s not the only advice or input you take. You take it from the other side as well,” she says, referring to environmental and public-health nonprofits. “I never met with anyone from industry when we had an active ongoing regulatory process that particularly affected their industry,” Whitman adds.

That stands in sharp contrast to current EPA head Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, who according to CNN has “maintained the custom of his predecessor Scott Pruitt” in meeting extensively with representatives of firms or industries regulated by the agency — while at the same time ducking nonprofits. Between April and August of 2018, CNN reported recently, Wheeler met more than 50 times with industry figures and just three times with environmental groups.

Meanwhile, at the Department of the Interior, Acting Secretary David Bernhardt is presiding over several top appointees who have used their government positions to aid the industries they are tasked with regulating, as well as former colleagues and employers at ultra-conservative lobby groups that include the National Rifle Association. Their signature effort may be an attack on the Endangered Species Act that could permanently cripple the keystone environmental law.

Bernhardt is himself a longtime agriculture and fossil fuel lobbyist who was Interior’s senior lawyer during the Bush administration. After rejoining the agency under Trump in 2017, he helped tear up Obama’s multi-stakeholder deal to protect the increasingly rare greater sage grouse, a bird whose habitat overlaps with millions of acres of fossil-fuel-rich western federal lands.

Wentz says she anticipated Trump’s attacks on “big picture” Obama-era climate regulations, such as withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate pact and weakening regulations on power plants. But the “all-out attack on every component of federal climate regulation and policy and guidance” surprised her.

“A good example would be this proposed repeal of the regulation that extended light bulb efficiency standards to a broader class of light bulbs, what were considered sort of unusual or specialized light bulbs,” says Wentz. The rule would cut energy use by an estimated 80 billion kilowatt hours annually (enough energy to power around 770,000 U.S. homes, according to advocates), save ratepayers a collective $12 billion in energy costs, and significantly reduce air pollutants that cause asthma as well as climate change.

But according to the industry publication EHS Daily Advisor, a 325-member trade group called the National Electrical Manufacturers Association intensively lobbied the Department of Energy to roll back the standards, and the agency formally proposed to do so in early February.

A Bumpy Road to the Future

Environmental groups and others have taken many of these moves to court — and made a few notable wins.

But even if the rules themselves are saved, it could still be years before the federal government regains momentum on grappling realistically with climate change, says Wentz, who runs the Climate Deregulation Tracker at Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. As of Feb. 14 she has catalogued 113 anti-climate rollback actions by the administration since Trump took office.

That delay will be costly, Wentz says, because time has almost run out to avert catastrophic climate change.

“Every report we see from the IPCC and the United States’ own global climate research program [finds] that it is necessary for us to take urgent, immediate action,” says Wentz, “You have to have a very significant and rapid emissions reduction. And so the more we delay, the bigger the problem gets, and the harder it is to solve it, and the more we’re passing all of these costs to our kids and to future generations.”

It’s too soon to tell whether the new wave of hearings by House Democrats will weaken the pace of Trump rollbacks, or the administration’s attempts to give them a veneer of scientific validity. As I’ve covered in my newsletter, (de)regulation nation, the White House recently scored some legal victories of its own, including a federal court ruling in February that the government can waive dozens of environmental laws to build barriers along the Mexican border. A longtime climate change skeptic, Prof. John Christy of the University of Alabama, was recently named to a top EPA science panel. Meanwhile Wheeler, the EPA’s new administrator, is an experienced lobbyist who will likely avoid the sorts of ethics violations that brought down his former boss, Scott Pruitt, and craft rollbacks more carefully to survive court challenges.

Still, Trump’s zeal for environmental rollbacks played a part in 2018’s “blue wave” of Democratic electoral victories, notes Whitman, and will likely factor into 2020’s presidential and Senate elections for Republicans as well as Democrats.

“He controls the levers of power right now within the party, so I think it’s going to be very hard,” she says. “We’ll have to wait it out and then we’ll have to get to a point where [voters] realize that they can make the changes, and that this is something they want to do.”

How to Inspire a Renaissance in Natural History and the Science of Conservation

Citizen scientists can use simple tools to study the DNA of plants and animals in their communities and help contribute to our understanding of the world.

Naturalists are quintessential parts of the countryside. With interests ranging from fossils to fungi, birds to buttercups, they’re the custodians of the living world. If a threatened plant declines or an invasive insect appears, more often than not it’s a humble naturalist who’s the first to sound a warning. In many ways they’re the front line in our battle to protect the natural world.

So what would happen if the naturalists themselves became an endangered species?

Sadly it’s already happening. In today’s world a large percentage of elderly naturalists are retiring and quickly vanishing from our wild places. Many academic biologists have lamented the decline of naturalists and taxonomists, with warnings from as far back as 20 years about the need to encourage future naturalists to enter the profession.

Their heirs apparent are a younger generation, many of whom are becoming increasingly disconnected from the natural world. A striking study in the journal Science found that school-age children could identify 80 percent of the Pokémon shown to them, while they only recognized 50 percent of local wildlife species.

It’s clear that a change is needed — a renaissance. But to bring about this rebirth of natural history, we must first understand how it’s undertaken today and how it might be revitalized in the future.

Natural history is a science based largely on observation. Although most naturalists know a great deal about many plants and animals, most favor a particular group over others. They spend time observing them and in doing so build a more complete picture of the lives these species lead and the roles they play in our ecosystems.

The unfortunate fact is that this sort of study is very time-consuming. Many naturalists spend countless years learning to recognize the tiny differences among particular species, and even more time sitting in the field observing them once they know how to tell them apart.

This is where the danger lies. As the number of known species goes up and the number of naturalists goes down, we inevitable end up with a natural history deficit — a shortfall wherein we know that a lot of species exist, but not much else about them.

Technology is helping to solve this problem. Since the start of the 21st century, DNA technology has become increasingly ubiquitous and correspondingly inexpensive. Biologists have used the technology for a range of purposes, but perhaps none is more vital to natural history than the practice of species barcoding.

Each organism has its own genome, made up of genes that are in turn made of DNA; this genome is essentially the “recipe book” used to build that species. However, some genes have more utility than simply constructing a species. Based on the speed at which these genes mutate over successive generation, they can also help tell us how distinct species are from each other. A number of these genes are what are called barcoding genes. Much like the unique barcode you find on a product in your local supermarket, these genes have a particular order that identifies the individual species to which they belong. So rather than sequencing the whole genome of a species, which is prohibitively expensive, we can examine these short sections of the barcoding genes to delineate and recognize species. Species barcoding allows biologists simply to screen the DNA of mystery organisms and quickly determine their identity, without having to spend years learning the subtle physical differences traditionally used to distinguish organisms.

Up until recently the technology required to undertake species barcoding has been too expensive for private citizens to own. In the past few years this has changed, as the equipment required has decreased in price and size. Now the average naturalist can assemble their own portable DNA barcoding lab for the price of a second-hand car. With this they can extract DNA, sequence it to get those precious species barcodes, and then compare them to the vast libraries of barcodes available online in global repositories like GenBank.

Species barcoding by citizen scientists could help spark the natural history renaissance we so desperately need, but what sorts of questions and issues could naturalists answer with the technology?

For one, the scats of cryptic or hard-to-catch species can be analyzed to yield their DNA, while smaller or less mobile organisms like plants and invertebrates can be analyzed whole to give their unique species barcodes. Through this a naturalist can determine the number of species in a given area simply by analyzing DNA in a back room or in the field. Going one step further, they can use these species barcodes to match the various life stages of animals like dragonflies, which start their lives as aquatic naiads in ponds and lakes before emerging as the adults we’re so familiar with. This can allow naturalists to study the lives of any species from beginning to end.

The diets of animals are notoriously difficult to study and require either long-term observations of feeding, detailed examination of the meagre remains in their scats, or a combination of the two. Observing feeding behavior is difficult because it’s often hard to identify all the different foods consumed by animals. Try stepping outside and trying to identify, at a distance, and to the species level, the invertebrates the little birds in your garden are preying on. It’s impossible. Identifying the contents of scats is equally challenging, and even the most accomplished naturalist cannot readily determine the contents to the level of species. Fortunately, with species barcoding it’s possible to identify, to species level, the contents of scats, and through this, the diets of those animals that produced them. This can reduce years of laborious field observation and scat examination down to a few weeks of collecting droppings, sequencing them and then matching those new sequences to known species.

Apart from diet, parasites are incredibly important to study when trying to understand an animal or plant. They are key to nutrient cycling and the regulation of some host populations. On top of this, each free-living host supports numerous parasite species that add a significant swath to Earth’s biodiversity. Naturalists trying to understand the diversity and ecology of parasites have often had a difficult time of it, owing to the great number of species, the difficulty with which they can be identified, and the often-complex nature of their life cycles. With species barcoding naturalists can begin to answer previously difficult questions like, which hosts do particular parasites live in, why are some threatened parasite species declining, and which parasites can move between domestic animals and wildlife. By examining these questions naturalists will not only help us better understand the functioning of our ecosystems but also the health of our wildlife.

Citizen scientists already contribute heavily to modern species understanding through programs such as iNaturalist, which allows users to upload photos and locations of any plants or animals they encounter. This work, which might start as a hobby and become more of a lifestyle, is becoming increasingly useful to academic scientists, as the data sets generated grow ever larger.

At this point in time we are on the edge of the democratization of DNA barcoding technology. Small devices like the iPhone-sized MinION DNA sequencer produced by Oxford Nanopore Technologies to read and record DNA sequences are already on the market for close to the same price as the latest smartphones. The first step toward the widespread use of DNA barcoding tech will likely come from community organizations and natural history societies that can leverage finds from members to set up small DNA barcoding tool kits for the collective use of members. Though increasingly cost is falling, as speed and efficiency rise we’ll see such tech spread to biology classrooms and private individuals soon enough.

Just as iNaturalist helps us determine where species live, species barcoding promises to revolutionaries the way we practice natural history. It’s cheap, accurate, and can help the next generation of naturalists answer some of the most complex questions of the living world. All that remains now is for us to start barcoding and lead the world into a natural history renaissance.

The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or their employees.

Clean Water at Risk as Trump Administration Ignores Science

Scientist Ellen Wohl explains why the administration’s decision to rewrite a key component of the Clean Water Act is scientifically unsound and dangerous.

When lawmakers passed the Clean Water Act of 1972, they agreed the federal government needed stronger regulations to protect the waterways that we rely on for drinking, fishing, recreation and supporting a healthy environment.

But our watersheds are more than just major rivers — there are wetlands, ponds and small streams, some of which only contain water part of the year. And it’s in these waterways that an ongoing, unseen conversation happens between surface and groundwater.

Exactly which waters are protected under the Clean Water Act has been a source of continued litigation. Scientists say keeping our drinking water clean means protecting this vast network, but special-interest groups like developers and farmers have fought for a narrower definition.

So the Obama administration went through a long scientific review and rulemaking process to clarify the issue. The result, known as the Waters of the U.S. Rule (or the Clean Water Rule), passed in 2015 and immediately faced opposition from farmers, industry groups and some states. Two years later it became a target of the Trump administration, which has been working to repeal and replace the rule to protect fewer waters.

We talked to Dr. Ellen Wohl, a professor of geosciences at Colorado State University and an expert in river systems, about what the Trump administration’s proposed rule change would mean for the health of our waterways.

Why has it been so hard to agree on what waters are protected under the Clean Water Act?

There is fundamental disagreement between scientists’ and special-interest groups’ understanding of river networks. Scientific understanding indicates that tiny headwater streams, channels that do not flow continuously (such as ephemeral channels that flow only after rainfall and intermittent channels that flow only where they intersect the water table) and wetlands that are not connected on the surface with rivers are vital parts of a river network and significantly influence water quality, the rate of flow and the biological communities in larger rivers.

Consequently, scientists and environmental advocates who base their advocacy on scientific knowledge want these waters to be covered.

Special-interest groups as diverse as realtors, farmers and public utilities do not want these waters to be covered because it’s perceived as restricting development and land use by increasing the protected portions of river networks.

Why are disconnected wetlands and streams that don’t always flow so important ecologically?

For at least two reasons. First, even though surface connectivity is not continuous in time and space, these portions of a drainage basin can sometimes connect, such as during snowmelt or after rainfall. During these periods organisms can migrate for breeding or to reach new habitat, and the habitat diversity provided by ephemeral channels and disconnected wetlands is important to many aquatic and terrestrial organisms.

Salamanders are one example: Some species of salamanders spend much of their adult life in forests, but rely on ephemeral wetlands for breeding and nursery habitat.

Second, ephemeral channels and wetlands without surface connectivity can still be connected below the ground with other portions of the drainage basin. This has a big impact on water quality — underground is where microbes in the soil work to remove harmful nutrients like nitrates from water that will eventually return to the surface in perennial rivers.

What does Trump’s proposed rule change get wrong about the science of river ecology?

Pretty much everything. By ignoring the substantial body of scientific literature on headwater streams, temporary rivers (ephemeral and intermittent) and wetlands without surface connectivity, the proposed rule change ignores modern scientific understanding of how rivers and river networks function. And by doing so it will significantly reduce the effectiveness of the Clean Water Act and undermine the intent of the original law, which is to protect surface water quality in the United States.

There have been a lot of rollbacks of environmental regulation since Trump took office — how significant would this rule change be?

Rivers throughout the United States are already heavily compromised in their hydrological and ecological functions. We’ve built levees that block floodplains, channelized rivers and removed native land cover in many upland areas. By doing so we have significantly increased the magnitude of flood peaks and reduced the potential for recharge of ground water.

We have also increased the amount of nitrates entering our waterways — primarily from fertilizers and fossil-fuel emissions — and at the same time we’ve reduced the ability of rivers to remove nitrates. The effects of these changes appear most dramatically in the enormous increases in nitrate fluxes to nearshore areas and the resulting “dead zones,” such as in the Gulf of Mexico.

The reduced ecological function of rivers also appears in rates of extinction for freshwater species, which are much higher than extinction rates for terrestrial species.

How can we best protect our waterways? Was the current rule developed under the Obama administration sufficient?

The rule developed under the Obama administration reflects a long collaborative process between diverse stakeholders. As such, there were compromises made by both sides. As a river scientist, I don’t consider the current rule perfect, but it’s far better than the proposed changes.

Can Native American Tribes Protect Their Land If They’re Not Recognized by the Federal Government?

State laws and policies in California have made some progress possible, but many tribes still lack legal recognition and struggle to maintain their cultural heritage and the environment.

Louise Miranda Ramirez has fought to protect her ancestral lands and cultural sites for most of her 60-plus-year lifetime.

“It’s so hard to save our lands and ancestors when we’re living in areas with people who make lots of money and don’t care about us,” says Ramirez, the tribal chairwoman of the Ohlone/Costanoan Esselen Nation, known as OCEN. Ramirez and her fellow leaders have a rough task on their hands: Their traditional lands encompass Carmel, Pebble Beach, Big Sur, Asilomar and other highly coveted — and uber-expensive — communities along the Central California coast and Coast Ranges. Preserving burial sites, protecting traditional gathering areas from development and preventing villages from being bulldozed was at one time virtually impossible, as the tribe lacks federal recognition.

Nearby, the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band is addressing similar issues.

“Creator gave us the responsibility to care for Mother Earth and all living things,” says Chairman Valentin Lopez. The Amah Mutsun’s lands lie within the contemporary northern Salinas Valley, portions of San Benito County and Pinnacles National Park. “We knew that we had to find a way to exert stewardship over those lands to restore our relationship with the land.” Like Ramirez’s tribe, Amah Mutsun is also not federally recognized.

California has the largest number of non-federally recognized tribes in the United States because of a “perfect storm” of policy decisions. In 1851-52, shortly after the state entered the Union, the country negotiated 18 treaties with California tribes guaranteeing lands and other rights. But the Senate refused to ratify the treaties, leaving most California Indians without land or legal protections. Only Natives who ended up on small settlements called rancherias eventually received federal recognition, which didn’t all last. Then, in the 1950s, Congress terminated 109 tribes across the country, including 41 California tribes. Some of those tribes have never been restored. Today 55 tribes in California lack federal recognition, more than 20 percent of non-recognized tribes nationwide, according to the Government Accountability Office.

How can these tribes work to preserve their ecologies, maintain biodiversity and thus keep their cultures strong?

A Painful History (and Present)

Conflict between Indigenous peoples and federal, state and local governments over tribal cultural and environmental resources have played a major role in the history of the Western Hemisphere since Europeans first stepped onto the lands of the Americas. While tribes recognized by the U.S. government have more than three centuries of federal law to back them up, non-federally recognized tribes by and large lack the legal authority to step in when a local ecology or cultural area is threatened by development or resource exploitation.

On the state level, California has had the dubious distinction of being one of the worst offenders in historically opposing the rights of both recognized and non-recognized tribes.

One of the best-known examples of how non-recognized tribes’ rights get overrun concerns the Winnemem Wintu Tribe. The 125-member tribe in Northern California has called the McCloud River home for millennia, but saw its lands taken by the federal government in the 1940s when Shasta Dam was constructed. Many of the tribe’s village, burial and cultural sites soon disappeared under the reservoir’s rising waters — and the salmon runs, upon which much of Winnemem’s culture and food supply is centered, are gone. The Bureau of Reclamation now plans to raise the dam another 18.5 feet, endangering the remaining Winnemem sites. The small tribe has been waging a public relations war for several years to call attention to its plight, including organizing the annual Run4Salmon, holding a war dance on the dam and participating in many documentaries.

However, without federal recognition, the tribe is likely to lose its remaining sites. As Chief Caleen Sisk remarked during a recent water protectors meeting, “We’ll have to take our young people out and show them where we used to have these ceremonies.”

Native environmental activists such as Kyle Powys White are concerned that the federal government still won’t engage with these tribes on a government-to-government basis.

“It’s just really become apparent over the years how so many of the solutions that tribes have been exploring don’t pertain to state-recognized tribes or unrecognized tribes,” says Whyte, an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and a professor at Michigan State University.

“When I was on the Advisory Committee on Climate Change and Natural Resource Science, which used to be in the Department of the Interior, we oversaw several of the climate science programs,” says Whyte. “Funding and support for tribes for climate change was coming from the federal government, yet they were really focused on federally recognized tribes.” But Whyte notes that federal agencies required to serve all communities through climate programs couldn’t wrap their minds around the need to include non-federally recognized tribes in their “portfolio.” Although officials attempted to determine how to work with unrecognized and state recognized tribes, Whyte says that “the whole idea really didn’t make sense to a lot of people in those agencies who had been trained with the idea that there’s a government-to-government relationship or trust relationship.” He says that although that concept works well in other areas, climate change isn’t one.

California Makes Progress

So where does this leave tribes like OCEN, Amah Mutsun and Winnemem? Ironically enough, the tribes have turned to the state of California, which in recent years is finally making up for its history and recognizing the environmental and cultural advantages of working with all the Indigenous peoples within its borders.

The first step came in September 2011 with an executive order issued by Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. that directed all state agencies to communicate and consult with tribes, including non-recognized tribes endemic to California. The order also established a tribal advisor in the governor’s office whose duties are to oversee and implement government-to-government consultation between the administration and the tribes of California.

Then, in 2014, the California State Legislature passed A.B. 52, also known as the tribal amendments to the California Environmental Quality Act. This gave more teeth to existing Native American heritage protection laws, but more importantly it clarified what Indigenous peoples have always practiced and believed — that a project that has “a substantial adverse change in the significance of a tribal cultural resource…is a project that may have a significant effect on the environment.” A.B. 52 stipulates that such projects be evaluated as to cultural impacts, and that tribes are part of the environmental assessment process. It also outlines mitigation measures to limit or eliminate impacts on cultural areas.

State agencies such as the powerful California Coastal Commission have developed, or are in the process of developing, policies to engage with the 109 federally recognized tribes as well with the 55 California tribes and tribal communities acknowledged by the state through the Native American Heritage Commission, the agency responsible for identifying and cataloging native cultural resources.

In fact, the situation is better for tribes in California than on the federal level, says Angela Mooney D’Arcy. She’s the executive director of the Sacred Places Institute for Indigenous Peoples, an organization that advocates for Native peoples and helps them to build their own advocacy structures. As she points out there is no federal right for cause or enforcement to protect sacred sites, such as other laws like the Clean Water Act provide. For example, D’Arcy points out the Supreme Court decision Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association. This decision notes that, “as long as government policy or practice doesn’t prohibit an Indigenous person from thinking about religion, it’s not a constitutional violation of their First Amendment rights,” D’Arcy says. “That was the death knell for sacred site protection on the federal level.” Not even federally recognized tribes have been able to do much in off-reservation protections, D’Arcy notes, pointing to cases like the evisceration of Bears Ears National Monument.

“But things are different in California,” says D’Arcy, who’s Juaneño/Acjachemen. That’s because state law allows California’s attorney general to bring a case under the direction of the Native American Heritage Commission if a proposed project on state lands is likely to harm a cemetery or cause irreparable damage to a sacred site.

That’s how a coalition of Native peoples, local environmentalists and surfers were able to save Panhe, a 9,600-year-old Acjachemen village sited within San Onofre State Park in Orange County.

Panhe is the most sacred place to the Acjachemen people, and it’s also an important ecological site. Because it’s on state land, the tribe and its allies were able to use the state’s public resource code to reclaim Panhe for the tribe’s use for ceremonies, prayer and burial.

One of D’Arcy’s goals is to showcase how Indigenous peoples can similarly use state laws and policies to reclaim lands.

As an example, she points to the recent acquisition of 688 acres of coastal land by the Kashia Pomo Tribe. Even though the tribe is federally recognized, it’s a great model for other tribes to follow. The return resulted from a partnership between nonprofit organizations such as the Coastal Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land, the private landowner and the tribe.

“The private landowner wasn’t going to permit the Coastal Trail going through their land,” says D’Arcy, “but the tribe worked out an agreement to allow the segment to be constructed.” That willingness helps alleviate the state’s concerns that returning land to Indigenous peoples will impede others’ access to those lands, she says.

Another example: Ramirez, from the Ohlone/Costanoan Esselen Nation, notes that the California Coastal Commission recently acted in the tribe’s favor to require an oceanside landowner to create a 165-foot easement to preserve a tribal site; however, she notes that she had to work through the Big Sur Land Trust to get that easement. She says that recognized tribes are also supporting OCEN’s efforts to have human remains and artifacts returned, and the U.S. Army gave the tribe a cemetery plot on one of its bases.

From Landless Tribes to Land Stewards

“Because indigenous peoples have the millennial-old relationship with place and the responsibility to care for the place, I think you will actually see better care for the environment when land is returned to tribal control,” says D’Arcy.

Amah Mutsun and other California tribes have created land trusts — nonprofits that work with landowners and agencies to preserve important cultural and ecological sites — including Quiroste Valley Cultural Preserve in Santa Cruz County, part of the California state park system. And the tribe is partnering with the National Park Service to protect and nurture traditional gathering sites within Pinnacles National Park. They even conducted a cultural burn — which is a prescribed burn that’s been practiced by Native peoples for millennia to eliminate wildfire fuels, enhance food sources, support biodiversity and groom watersheds — to support plants used in traditional basket-making.

“Our partnership with Amah Mutsun is helping us learn how tribes care for the land,” says park botanist Brent Johnson. “It’s deepened our relationship,” he adds. “Rather than sitting in an office talking, we’re outside together and looking at the lands and plants.” However, Johnson is careful to note that because Amah Mutsun isn’t federally recognized, the park service can’t call it a government-to-government relationship. Instead, it’s more of a community partnership.

Amah Mutsun garden — Tribal Elder Michael Higuera and Chairman Valentin Lopez planting at Pie Ranch. Photo by Sally Kimmel, used with permission of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band

Non-recognized tribes are still navigating choppy waters, though. D’Arcy points out that California cities and counties are the next level of government that needs education on inherent sovereignty, and federal and state policies can come into conflict when non-recognized tribes exert their rights. And progress is needed in other states, which could learn from the steps being taken in California. Further progress, the tribal leaders tell us, will be central to the development of coordinated programs to address cultural rights, preserve lands and waters, and especially to create a united response to climate change.

Whyte says he’s met many people in government or academia who have found themselves confronted by the idea that all indigenous peoples, not just federally recognized tribes, play a role in protecting their lands around the country. Moving forward means figuring out ethical ways to collaborate with a broader range of partners, including developing trustful relationships that extend beyond the standard government-to-government policies of the past.

“That’s necessary whether you’re in California, Oklahoma, the Great Lakes or the Arctic,” he says.

The Global Water Crisis May Have a Surprising Solution

The new book The Water Paradox says poor management is preventing us from solving our water woes — and better pricing can help.

For many people a clean drink of water isn’t a certainty. Right now an estimated 1.2 billion people live in areas with chronic water scarcity, and upwards of 4 billion — two-thirds of the world’s population — experience shortages at least one month a year. This will only get worse with climate change and population growth, and as it does it will exacerbate food insecurity and inequality — in both rich and poor nations.

As bad as this sounds, it’s not an unsolvable problem, according to a new book, The Water Paradox: Why There Will Never Be Enough Water — And How to Avoid the Coming Crisis, by Edward B. Barbier.

Barbier, a senior scholar at Colorado State University’s School of Global Environmental Sustainability and a professor of economics, explains that our approach to solving water shortages with drastic measures in the moment of crisis isn’t a cost-effective strategy and won’t solve our long-term problems. Instead, he argues, we need to fix the root of the problem: not simply a lack of water but inadequate and poor management of the water we do have.

The problem is one of our own making, but it shouldn’t be surprising given our history. We’ve built our cities, designed our infrastructure, irrigated our farms and driven our energy production assuming water is abundant and easily accessible.

But today signs abound that this is no longer the case: Billions of people live in water-scarce regions, hundreds of millions lack access to adequate sanitation, groundwater stress is increasing in our most agriculturally productive areas, and our surface water in many places is often choked with pollution.

And while we’ve taken small steps to improve efficiency and conservation, we’ve yet to adequately address the scale of the problem.

“Why we continue to ignore the impending threat of a global water crisis — despite water being the most essential resource for human existence and survival — is the great water paradox facing humankind today,” he writes.

Barbier takes a hundred pages explaining the gravity of the problem and how we got to where we are today. It’s good information if you’re new to understanding the water crisis. But the most interesting part of the book, how to avoid the coming crisis, starts halfway in.

First, he says, we need better governance structures. Water is rarely managed by basin and then it can be further divided among irrigation, industrial or municipal uses. Areas that have moved toward more integrated water management — such as Canada or Australia’s Murray-Darling River basin — have done better at monitoring and managing water resources, he explains.

Secondly, and most importantly, according to Barbier, we need to charge users what water’s actually worth instead of perpetually underpricing it. One way to do this is through something called water markets, where the rights to certain amounts of water are sold or leased and move water from lower value to higher value endeavors. When done well, Barbier writes, water markets can help “facilitate water conservation and reallocation.”

Here’s one example of how water markets can come into play. If you’re a farmer and pay little for water, you may be inclined to waste the resource. But if there’s a market where you can sell some of it, you’re more likely to use it efficiently and sell what you save. Markets used by the agricultural sector often result in water going from low-value crops to high-value crops. In the wider community, markets usually mean agricultural water ends up being transferred from farms to municipal or industrial users.

But water markets are not cheap or easy to set up and are often complicated in systems where water rights are tied to land. Barbier gives three examples of areas where it’s been implemented, with varying levels of success: Australia’s Murray-Darling River basin, Chile and parts of the western United States.

Barbier touts better pricing as a solution to solving the management woes driving the water crisis, meaning markets play a major role. He could’ve dug a little deeper into how to avoid potential pitfalls when it comes to environmental concerns: Rivers don’t usually have big checkbooks, and some their “value” isn’t easily quantified. How do we make sure ecological health is protected when markets move water to the highest bidder?

There are other environmental concerns, too. The movement of water from agricultural lands to cities (so-called “low-value to high-value” uses) has resulted in the “buy and dry” phenomenon in places like Colorado where agricultural communities are drying up and water transfers are fueling more urban sprawl — creating another set of problems.

Looking beyond markets, Barbier also points to water and sanitation services that fail to cover the full price of the infrastructure and services. A better pricing scheme would involve two important components, he explains. The first is a fixed charge for all users to cover operational costs of the system; the second is a tiered rate structure in which users pay more when they use more. Economic analysis has shown that efficient pricing of water has done more to promote conservation and manage demand than regulatory efforts aimed at restricting use or requiring water-saving technologies, he writes.

Irrigation and agricultural subsidies should be removed, which admittedly is “politically difficult,” he says. Although many of the ideas in the book, like revamping water-rights systems, are also politically problematic, that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be beneficial.

The biggest takeaway, though, is that what we’ve been doing isn’t going to work to dig ourselves out of the hole we’re in currently because our institutions, water-rights systems and regulatory management structures for water were built in, and for, the days of plenty.

“In today’s economies, water use management, and its accompanying institutions, incentives and innovations, is dominated by the ‘hydraulic mission’ of finding and exploiting more freshwater resources,” he writes. “But what works in an era of freshwater abundance is detrimental in an age of increasing water scarcity.”

Mapa Interactivo: Precipitación en los 2050

¿Como afectará el cambio climático las lluvias y la caída de nieve en su comunidad? Trazamos un mapa de cómo se verá el mundo bajo las proyecciones actuales del cambio climático.

“La precipitación siempre ha sido una de las variables más difíciles de proyectar bajo el cambio climático,” afirma la Dra. Astrid Caldas, una experimentada científica del Union of Concerned Scientists, “pero hay algo en lo que los científicos están de acuerdo: las zonas húmedas probablemente se vuelvan más húmedas y las zonas áridas se volverán más áridas.”

No se trata solamente de la cantidad de lluvia lo que cambiará, sino también cuándo y cómo caerá. Caldas dice que las zonas con una precipitación total decreciente podrían enfrentar un aumento en el clima extremo — “refiriéndonos a que cuando llueva, es probable que sea una lluvia muy tupida.”

Incluso zonas en las que se tienen proyectados cambios en la precipitación relativamente pequeños pueden experimentar impactos muy grandes debido a que los cambios estarán combinados con cambios en la temperatura, la contaminación y otros factores. Como resultado, “las consecuencias pueden ser inmensas” para los cultivos y la vegetación natural, dice Caldas.

Los efectos exactos de estos cambios variarán dependiendo de donde vivan las personas, según Dargan Frierson, profesor asociado del Departamento de Ciencias Atmosféricas en la University of Washington. “Se espera que las latitudes altas y partes de los trópicos se vuelvan más húmedas,” dice. Si bien pudiera haber un alivio a corto plazo para el Mediterráneo, el sur de África y el sur de Australia, dice que “el pronóstico a largo plazo es que la sequía regrese de una forma aún más severa.”

Estas predicciones no son solamente advertencias para un futuro lejano. También son significativas para nuestras vidas hoy. Una investigación publicada este año ha vinculado el cambio climático continuo a huracanes y sequías recientes, así como otros patrones climáticos que se están volviendo cada vez más peligrosos en todo el mundo.

¿Cómo podría verse afectado? Explore el mapa que se encuentra a continuación para ver cómo se tiene proyectado que el cambio climático no mitigado cambie la precipitación media anual en su área — y alrededor del mundo — en los años 2050.

Ver mapa en navegador.

Fuentes y métodos:

Escenario del Cambio en la Precipitación Mundial en los años 2050: IPCC 5AR CIAT modelo reducido NCAR CCSM4 bajo Escenario 8.5 de CCAFS y socios.

Precipitación de referencia para el escenario de 1970-2000 de WorldClim. (Fick, S.E. y R.J. Hijmans, 2017. Worldclim 2: Nuevas superficies climáticas de resolución especial de 1 km para áreas terrestres globales. Revista Internacional de Climatología).

El cambio en precipitación fue calculado entre los niveles históricos y 2050 bajo el Escenario 8.5, el cual representa un escenario de emisiones de alta gama si las emisiones globales permanecer sin mitigar. La cantidad de incertidumbre en proyecciones incrementa a escalas geográficas menores. Si bien las amplias tendencias regionales pueden ser proyectadas de manera robusta, debe esperarse alguna variación de estas proyecciones medias en niveles locales.

Datos de límites administrativos globales por GADM.

Los datos sobre los cambios de precipitación se promediaron por límites administrativos. En algunos casos se puede ver cambios abruptos en zonas adyacentes, ya que declives naturales (ocasionados por cambios en la elevación, por ejemplo) presentes en la información no procesada son suavizados en este proceso de premediación.

Datos analizados utilizando ArcGIS Pro.

The Trump Administration Pushes to Delist Wolves — and History Repeats Itself

A look back at the circuitous, bloody history of attempts to remove wolves from the Endangered Species Act.

Wolves are in the Trump administration’s crosshairs, and it’s déjà vu all over again.

This week David Bernhardt, acting secretary of the Department of the Interior and former oil-industry lobbyist, announced a plan to remove gray wolves (Canis lupus) from the protection of the Endangered Species Act throughout the lower 48 states.

If finalized the long-rumored move would put an end to wolf recovery in the contiguous United States and open up many wolf populations to hunting, removal and expanded persecution by ranchers and farmers.

Most scientists and conservation groups don’t agree that wolves have reached a sustainable population level or have recovered after being nearly eradicated in the early 20th century. Wolves once roamed across the country, and today there are only about 5,000 of them in eight states. Yet the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which reports to Bernhardt, positioned this as a success story.

“Recovery of the gray wolf under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is one of our nation’s great conservation successes,” the Service said in a statement that was made available to the media on request but not published on their website. The agency said wolves were now “joining other cherished species, such as the bald eagle, that have been brought back from the brink with the help of the ESA.”

The wording echoes back to what we heard during earlier attempts to remove wolves from the Endangered Species Act.

“Like other iconic species such as the whooping crane, the brown pelican, and the bald eagle, the recovery of the gray wolf is another success story of the Endangered Species Act,” then-Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said in 2011 during what I recall was a particularly brief, tense press conference announcing the removal of protection from wolves in the northern Rockies and the western Great Lakes.

We heard much the same thing two years later from Dan Ashe, then-director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, who presided over a 2013 push to remove all wolves from the Endangered Species Act. “To see a species rebound from a century-long period of human persecution to flourish on the landscape again is something we’re all extraordinarily lucky to witness in our lifetimes,” Ashe said during another press conference that I covered. “Make no mistake about it we believe the recovery of the gray wolf is one of the most remarkable successes in the history of wildlife conservation.”

Ironically, what wasn’t successful was the 2013 delisting proposal — like many attempts before it. In 2014 a study commissioned by the Fish and Wildlife Service itself found that the delisting ruling did not represent the “best available science” on wolf conservation. The proposal was ultimately not approved.

But many wolves still lost protection. Over the past 12 years wolf populations in several states have lost and regained protection over and over again, in what felt like an endless yo-yo of legal and legislative aerobics.

Honestly, covering this as a journalist wasn’t easy. Protections came and went, and it seemed as though every month brought a new chapter in the story. It felt like a real-world version of Groundhog Day, where the same story kept replaying itself over and over again…only the wolves that died during this oft-repeating saga didn’t get to wake up again the next morning.

And many wolves — more than 1,000 of them — did die. During the times when wolves were unprotected, the country saw the return of rampant wolf hunting, which continues to this day. In one of the most telling examples, Idaho residents in 2009 could sign up for wolf-hunting permits for the bargain-basement price of just $11.75.

This “low-low, every wolf must go” pricing is actually completely antithetical to how we as a nation have valued wolf conservation. The United States has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on wolf protection since 1975. The most recent wolf-related expenditures aren’t available — the Fish and Wildlife Service is supposed to publish a rundown of annual expenditures related to the Endangered Species Act, but still hasn’t released numbers for the 2017 fiscal year— but the totals from the previous few years are quite telling. Between 2012 and 2016 alone the federal and state governments spent a total of $29,055,537 million on wolf conservation — about $5,800 for each of the estimated 5,000 gray wolves currently living in the lower 48 states.

That’s a lot of money, but wolves still aren’t recovered, despite the Fish and Wildlife Service claims. Their populations are still too scattered and often too small. They still face numerous threats, mostly from humans, and also from state governments that don’t do a very good job managing them (I’m looking at you Idaho, where one official declared his desire to see the species eradicated from the state). And there’s still too much bloodlust on the land from ranchers who fear wolves and hunters who are itching for the opportunity to claim their trophies. Those threats aren’t going away any time soon; meanwhile, if the Trump administration and its backers get their way, we could lose the opportunities for wolves to continue to expand their range and population numbers.

What makes this new proposal any different from the ones that came before it? For one thing wolf populations haven’t changed all that much since the last attempt to delist them a few years ago, nor have the risks to their recovery. More importantly, the Trump administration is packed to the rafters with opponents of the Endangered Species Act, Bernhard being at the top of the list. The acting secretary, who’s been called a “walking conflict of interest,” has a long history of lobbying against endangered species protections. At Interior, he helped craft the Trump administration’s plan to gut the Endangered Species Act and make regulations more industry-friendly. If they can’t accomplish that goal whole cloth, they’ll be happy chipping away at the protections for individual species — starting with gray wolves.

Bernhardt’s announcement this week isn’t final, so wolves aren’t on the chopping block quite yet. The proposed rule must still be published in the Federal Register, and that will kick off a public comment period — which is sure to be contentious. Meanwhile lawsuits and protests have already been announced and held (including some from the Center for Biological Diversity, publishers of The Revelator), and that’s sure to continue for months to come.

Ironically enough it’s some of Ashe’s words from that 2013 press conference that I find most resonant today. “The political rhetoric, the litigation and wrangling that we have seen in recent times around wolf management underscore how unlikely this recovery was, how severely the deck was stacked against wolves,” he said. That “recovery” that Ashe proclaimed six years ago wasn’t exactly true, and the litigation actually helped to save wolves, but the deck remains stacked. That’s the part of this story that never seems to end.

UPDATE: The official announcement about wolf delisting can be found here, and public comments are now being accepted through May 14.

A Surprising Effect of Light Pollution: It Disrupts Aquatic Insects

Many ecologically important insects spend most of their lives in streams, but new research shines a light on how humans put them at risk.

Most people I talk to about light pollution almost instantly relate to my research. They’re relieved to finally run into someone who understands just how aggravating it can be to have a bright white light shining into your bedroom in the middle of the night. However, very few people, in my experience, have thought about how those bright lights might also affect the insects, amphibians and fish living in urban and suburban streams.

You may think of insects as primarily airborne creatures, but insects such as mayflies, caddisflies and stoneflies spend the majority of their lives as larvae in streams, eventually emerging as terrestrial adults who may only live for a few days or weeks. The main way these larval aquatic insects move through their habitat is by “drifting” — detaching themselves from the stream substrate and floating with the current before swimming back down to a new patch of substrate.

Here’s where light comes into play. Drifting puts aquatic insects at risk of being eaten by visually oriented predators like trout, which will consume any objects they can see floating in the water. In order to decrease this risk, insects are more likely to drift at night, even avoiding drifting on nights with a full moon.

The levels of artificial light at night can often exceed that of a full moon, so it is perhaps not surprising that when I experimentally increased light levels near some isolated streams I found significantly lower levels of drift rates. The artificial lighting I used in my first experiments was equivalent to what might shine on a stream from an average suburban neighborhood at night — or the light glaring in your window.

Portland river at night — Portland at night by Allie Caulfield (CC BY 2.0)

Now, it’s true that a small proportion of insects do drift during the day. Sometimes it’s unavoidable — perhaps they’ve encountered a predacious insect and the benefit of escaping certain death outweighs the risk of a trout catching them. However, drifting during the day is certainly not ideal, and most insects will avoid it if they can.

So what’s the significance of all this, and what difference does it really make if the drift rates of aquatic insects changes?

Well, it comes down to the critical role those insects play in stream ecosystems. Larval insects keep algal biomass in check, help break down leaves that fall into streams, and are important components of both the aquatic and terrestrial food webs. Larval aquatic insects are a major source of food for fish and amphibians, and when they emerge from the water as adults they’re a key source of food for animals like bats, birds and lizards. An increase in predation on larval aquatic insects under artificial lights — either through fish being more active and able to see the insects at night or via a shift to daytime drift — could potentially lead to a decreased number of larvae processing algae and leaf litter and fewer adults emerging from streams. In turn that could lead to eventual decreases in populations of bats, birds and other species.

We still have a lot more to learn about all of this. After my previous experiment, I still had a big question: Could these stream-based insects acclimate or even fully adapt to that type of artificial nighttime lighting? After all, if there’s no substantial difference in the predation risk a drifting insect faces at night in a lit stream versus during the daylight, then perhaps there might be less of a difference between the rates of insects drifting at night and day in brightly lit urban and suburban streams relative to their darker and more remote counterparts.

To test this hypothesis, I used a tool called the New World Atlas of Artificial Sky Brightness to locate 11 sampling sites in western Oregon, each of which had a slightly different level of light pollution. I spent the last summer sampling aquatic insect drift rates at each site during the day and at night to see how the light might affect them.

Of course, light itself is usually accompanied by other factors that could affect insect populations. An area has light pollution because humans live or work nearby, so there could also be an increase in other things that change the quality of water, such as sediment runoff or altered flow of rainfall due to impervious surfaces like roads or parking lots. These alterations could lead to different community compositions, which could lead to a change in drift rates just due to alterations in the number of aquatic insects living in the streams, or increased dominance by species that don’t engage in behavioral drift. However, by using the ratio of night to day drift as my response variable, I hoped to eliminate most of these potential confounding variables.

I’m currently about halfway through processing my samples, and so far it’s difficult to say for certain if there’s less of a difference between night and day drift in more brightly lit areas. This is likely due to the interaction of unusually high water temperatures with the presence of light. Two of the darker streams from my experiments also had the highest stream temperatures, and those sites showed less of a difference between day and night drift. This perhaps suggests that the need for aquatic insects to seek out cooler, more favorable habitat overrides any increased risk of predation. I’m hoping these patterns will become more clear once all the samples have been counted.

One of the necessary next steps in the research will be to determine if there’s an increase in predation risk under artificial lights, and then to find if there’s a light level where it’s actually more beneficial to switch to drifting during the day.

Fortunately, the excess of light at night can easily be reversed if there’s enough political and personal will. In France new regulations went into effect this year that stipulate when outdoor lights must be dimmed or turned off, what permissible emission spectra are for outdoor lights, and what are acceptable illuminance levels, among other policies.

Lyon river lights — Lights on the river in Lyon, France. Alan Sandercock (CC BY 2.0)

People can lobby local lawmakers to adopt similar regulations in their own towns or countries, but they can also make changes themselves that can reduce unnecessary light. For example, homeowners can make sure any outdoor lights they have are motion-activated or turned off before they go to bed. They can also only use lights with a correlated color temperature (CCT) of 2700K or less. Outdoor lights should be housed in fixtures that aim light only where it’s needed and reduce glare and light trespass. The International Dark Sky Association website maintains a list of dark-sky friendly fixtures for property owners.

There’s still a lot left to learn about the effects of light pollution on the insects that live in our natural stream and river environments, and the river ecosystems themselves. My research continues, and I hope that more scientists will take up the mantle of better understanding how lights affect these little-seen but important ecological processes.

The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or their employees.

Previously in The Revelator:

Big Cities, Bright Lights: Ranking the Worst Light Pollution on Earth