#ClimateDiary Storm #Henk has turned out to be quite bad. A fatality, storm damage and flood alerts across the country. #Floods and ongoing rain in Germany too, and maybe elsewhere? We will have more and more of all this, of course.
@NatureMC yes - it is all more extreme, less evenly distributed. I don’t know whether we will manage to “adapt”, or what this even means, given it is all going to get more and more extreme. Maybe new ways for storing water and redistributing it over larger regions and longer seasons will be developed? I have no idea what’s possible, or what’s already planned or discussed. #Water#Infrastructure#ClimateAdaptation#Aquaplanning (just made up this word, but maybe it exists 😊 )
@pvonhellermannn "Aquaplanning" is an excellent word, and it is exactly what will be necessary. Managing floodwaters and storing/treating excess for use when there's a shortage is going to be key.
@Judeet88@pvonhellermannn Weren't people talking about either redoing all the river straightening things that were done a hundred years ago (here at least) or letting water out into channels to slowly evaporate instead of allowing to flood everything in a smaller area?
@sahqon@pvonhellermannn There are some areas in the UK where such plans are afoot, plus tree planting way upstream. I'm talking more generally and thinking about France where huge floods are affecting some areas yet there are those areas where there are still water shortages in the aquifers etc. Ditto for some areas in the US. Massive water management will be key in the future.
@Judeet88@pvonhellermannn I sort of remember that there was some plans to re-green some deserted area... in the Sinai peninsula? I think. The idea was that if they manage to green up smaller parts of it, it will attract rain and make the green part grow. So I imagine that the more arid a place is, the more they need to green it up to make it attract rain lol.
But while we do know that drying up marshes will make the area get less rain, there's also some talk about how the rain that was supposed to fall in Spain is flooding Germany, because of the dry areas in Spain that don't force it down there. So I think this will be one field where the beefy supercomputers will come in handy to calculate out where in Spain they'll need to change stuff so GERMANY doesn't flood. Butterfly effect in action.
But this is both not my expertise and way above my paygrade, just what I read about online... Sure sounds complicated, and not just technically, but also politically.
@sahqon@Judeet88@pvonhellermannn yeah, as a complex system it would basically be impossible to predict the outcome of a change, even with a hugely powerful machine. The chain of a butterfly type affect is only visible in hindsight. Plus at that scale you couldn't probe to system to see how it responds, which is what you'd normally do in a complex system. Returning all areas to a more natural state will highly likely increase their resilience though.
As it happens I have just been reading this article, about ecosystem responses to increased "drivers" and "noise". I do get the gist of it but don't really understand the methods and overall language well enough to comment on it. It doesn't sound too good.
@pvonhellermannn@sahqon@Judeet88 I'll have a proper read but from a quick skim, yeah, that's the problem - complex systems like ecosystems are way more entangled than we've traditionally (in the "modern Western" world) viewed them as, so our general model for understanding changes isn't very suited to them. Which can result in some scary situations because we don't intuitively "get" them as much, and so tipping points are hard for us to comprehend.
@pvonhellermannn@sahqon@Judeet88 Dave Snowden, plus various indigenous thinkers such as Tyson Yunkaporta and more recently Robin Wall Kimmerer have been my biggest "teachers" in this broad area in the last few years. Plus moving into the field of rewilding and learning more about ecosystems themselves.
A belated thank you for this! Really interesting webinar series and overall work. Very much relates to discussions and indeed projects with @RadicalAnthro, about indigenous/marginalised/environmental knowledge here in UK and the West in general
“we invented a thought experiment called Schrödinger's wombat to examine the idea of interconnected living systems as expressions of First Law…Schrödinger asks you to imagine a poisoned cat in a box. You can't see the cat, but must decide whether it is alive or dead. Until you see it, the cat must be alive and dead at the same time.
Schrödinger's wombat is like the expansion pack for that psychotic thought experiment. This is how it works. A wombat is in a hollow log, and we have to decide whether it is alive or dead. However, because the log is not an enclosed system, we are aware of the thousands of exchanges of energy, matter and information between the log and the surrounding country. We see what the insects are doing, the fungi on the log and surrounding trees, how the wombat behaves in that particular season. We see its fresh scat on a nearby rock. We feel the wind direction and the recent tracks that tell us about the animal's behaviour and condition. We see no sign of recent snake activity (although you're never more than ten metres away from a snake in the bush). We see a thousand things and know that the wombat is alive and inside the log. We see this because we are not only thinking about the log and what might be inside. Rather, we are an integral part of the dynamic system of that country, which is observing itself through our relationship. So we share in the exchange of energy and information in that system and are therefore not intervening in the system from the outside.”
@NatureMC I remember being shocked the amount of non-stop arrosage of maïze, which wasn't even for human consumption down in the Dordogne/Charente and sud-ouest. They'd put in masses of new pipes in during the late 90s because the summers were hotter, drier and more stormy.
Indeed. The French Geological Survey has a fantastic website (available in French + English). This page shows very clearly the ground water recovery so far this autumn. (Pas-De-Calais can go ahead with any geothermic projects!!)
@pvonhellermannn@NatureMC Intact #Forests can store and redistribute a lot of water - they can also buffer heavy rainfall events in summer because the rain reaches the ground with a time delay, giving the soil more time to absorb the water.
For urban areas, the #SpongeCities concept is gaining more and more attention.
When I search the internet for "aquaplanning", I only find results for "aquaplaning". 🤔😉
@NatureMC@pvonhellermannn I took over a small forest patch from my father-in-law 2-3 years ago and since then - especially last year - I've read a lot about forests, as I come from a completely different professional background. I have learnt an incredible amount in the process.
In the literature on ecologically orientated forest management, it is often said that our forests are in such a bad state because we intervene too much. 1/?
@NatureMC@pvonhellermannn Since the Middle Ages at the latest, there has always been (large-scale) deforestation and then reforestation (often with tree species from other locations) - an eternal cycle due to our high demand for wood.
As a result, there are virtually no old growth forests left in Europe, but mainly man-made or heavily influenced forests. 2/?
@NatureMC@pvonhellermannn It is said that forests in the temperate climate of Central Europe are no longer dense enough (in contrast to the fire ecosystems in warmer and drier regions that are sometimes too dense). The composition of tree species (in Germany, for various reasons, a lot of spruce and pine), the fragmentation into many small plots and the damage to the soil caused by the use of heavy machinery are also exacerbating the problem. 3/?
@NatureMC@pvonhellermannn
The good news is - and I really want to believe this, because otherwise I would just become totally depressed - that nature still has enough self-healing powers as long as we don't continue to interfere so massively. Some old trees can still adapt, or at least produce better-adapted offspring through epigenetics. Dead trees provide an excellent basis for the next generation of trees as long as they remain in the forest. 4/?
@NatureMC@pvonhellermannn Pioneer trees such as aspen and maple can restore a forest climate on open spaces or calamity areas that is important for beech, oak and many other tree species. So much for the theory.
In practice, I have observed in our area that the denser stands are actually in better condition than heavily managed/thinned areas, but of course this could also be confirmation bias. 5/6
@NatureMC@pvonhellermannn For our mini-forest, in which spruces in particular, but also pines and birches in some cases, are dying off, I definitely try to give nature as much space as possible and to give native tree and plant species an advantage in case of doubt.
So yes, I totally agree, we need a lot more sanctuaries, and for the managed forrests we need to look closely at sanctuaries to learn from nature how to do things better. 6/6
@matze74@NatureMC thank you both for this exchange. Forests and forestry are a long-standing interest of mine, too, but i know far too little about european forests - all this is very interesting!
I also cling to the belief that nature itself is working on the problem of how to cope with climate change. Here in the mid Atlantic US we have a growing problem with magnificent old oaks dying off, which is distressing. The foresters point out that trees don’t live forever, and many large trees were adapted to a marginal niche that other trees couldn’t handle.
@matze74@NatureMC@pvonhellermannn Now that those niches are changing, other trees in the understory are waiting to replace them — if the deer haven’t decimated the understory! — and perhaps some will have better adaptions. But I think places there are going to be far fewer places where trees can grow as large and as long.
@NatureMC@ClimateJenny@pvonhellermannn I think clearcuts are no longer permitted for the most part. In theory.
In practice, however, they are apparently still frequently carried out, presumably because it is easier to completely clear entire areas (with heavy machinery) than to harvest individual trees.
@NatureMC Ah OK, that's probably a completely different order of magnitude, right? And Europe's demand for wood seems to be one of the drivers of those.
This is one of the things that really frustrates me by the way: we try to replace many things - especially oil based products - with wood based products, in order to lessen the ecological impact. But doing so, we destroy forests all around the world faster and faster...
Yes, the fact that it’s all about #Renewable rather than low or #Zerocarbon energy - a legacy of #PeakOil concerns predating #NetZero - is deeply annoying and I wish more people would talk about this. Renewable does not mean low carbon, on the contrary, it’s allowed massive loophole for wood burning for energy, just about the last thing we should be doing. And biofuels. We need #LowCarbon, not renewable energy.
@matze74@NatureMC@ClimateJenny nothing new to any of you in this conversation i am sure, but it’s hardly ever talked abkut, everyone continues to use the word renewable as if
@pvonhellermannn@matze74@NatureMC@ClimateJenny I hate it when people describe trees as “renewable “ for this purpose. Sure, we can plant new trees. but at what cost and at what timescales? Also, trees don’t exactly “renew” themselves. Using this logic, you can also describe oil as renewable - just wait long enough until the Carbon is in the ground again.
To expand on that: trees don't exist in isolation. If trees are used as a renewable resource for electricity generation or for timber, that's then a tree plantation, not a forest. Their properties are vastly different with regard to water retention, biodiversity, and carbon drawdown.
@albertcardona Cheers! I find it very understandable that (most) plantations are more susceptible to fire than natural forests and thus act as net carbon sources. Not sure if the results can be directly transferred to Europe, but of course we can see that our plantation forests are burning more and more frequently as well. As said before, I think we can only try to do better and give nature more space, hoping that the forests heal quickly enough.
@NatureMC@ClimateJenny@pvonhellermannn Yes, I think most of our forests are like that. Either planted in the 19th century or after ww2. The war and subsequent reparations - which included large quantities of timber - also seem to be one of the reasons why we have so many spruce plantations (or had, as most of them are dying): spruce was apparently the tree species that was still available in larger quantities in tree nurseries etc, so it was used to reforst the destroyed or deforested areas.
Add comment