Protected forest areas may be critical strategy for slowing climate change

"Deforestation leads to about 15 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, more than all the cars, trucks, trains, ships, and planes on earth. If we fail to reduce it, we'll fail to stabilize our climate," said Taylor Ricketts, director of World Wildlife Fund's science program and lead author of the study. "Our paper emphasizes that creating and strengthening indigenous lands and other protected areas can offer an effective means to cut emissions while garnering numerous additional benefits for local people and wildlife."
The authors highlight analyses showing that since 2002, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has been 7 to 11 times lower inside of indigenous lands and other protected areas than elsewhere. Simulation models suggest that protected areas established between 2003 and 2007 could prevent an estimated area of 100,000 square miles of deforestation through 2050. That is roughly the size of the state of Colorado, representing enough carbon to equal 1/3 of the world's annual CO2 emissions. Within these efforts, location matters; protected areas in regions that face deforestation pressures would be most effective at truly reducing emissions.
"This study reinforces the wisdom behind global investments in protected areas," says Gustavo A.B. da Fonseca, co-author of the study and Team Leader Natural Resources of the Global Environment Facility (GEF). "In addition to protecting globally important species and ecosystems, the 2,302 protected areas supported by the GEF alone span over 634 million hectares and together store an impressive 30 billion tons of CO2"
International policies for compensating forest nations for REDD are under active negotiation. To access the resulting funds, developing countries will need to develop programs and institutions to reduce forest emissions. "Protected areas represent a valuable component of national REDD programs since they already contain the necessary institutions and infrastructure to handle funds, strengthen protection and generate results," said Claudio Maretti, Conservation Director, WWF Brazil. "Establishing protected areas usually clarifies land tenure and the associated carbon rights, which has been a sticking point in some negotiations."
In addition, the study estimates that the cost of creating and better managing protected areas is lower than many other options to reduce emissions from deforestation. Completing and managing a network of protected areas in the developing world might require $4 billion USD annually, which is roughly 1/10 of the capital that could be mobilized by international REDD policies.
According to the study, forest nations can strengthen the role of protected areas in their REDD strategies by:
Identifying where Indigenous Lands and Protected Areas would most effectively reduce deforestation rates and associated emissions;
Establishing national monitoring to measure deforestation rates and quantify carbon emissions reductions;
Establishing insurance mechanisms for illegal logging or forest fires;
Providing indigenous groups and local communities the information and capacities they need to participate;
Distributing payments transparently to reward those responsible for reducing emissions.
Protected forest areas may be critical strategy for slowing climate change

0 comments RSS Posted by Krasugir & Co at 10:05 PM

Volatile gas could turn Rwandan lake into a freshwater time bomb

Scientists can't say for sure if the volatile mixture at the bottom of the lake will remain still for another 1,000 years or someday explode without warning. In a region prone to volcanic and seismic activity, the fragility of Lake Kivu is a serious matter. Compounding the precarious situation is the presence of approximately 2 million people, many of them refugees, living along the north end of the lake.
An international group of researchers will meet Jan. 13-15 in Gisenyi, Rwanda, to grapple with the problem of Lake Kivu. A grant from the National Science Foundation won by Rochester Institute of Technology will fund the travel and lodging for 18 scientists from the United States to attend the three-day workshop. Anthony Vodacek, conference organizer and associate professor at RIT's Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science, is working closely with the Rwandan Ministry of Education to organize the meeting.
"Rwandan universities suffered greatly in the 1994 genocide and there are few Rwandan scientists performing significant work on the lake or within the rift system," Vodacek notes. "We will work with the government to identify interested researchers."
Vodacek is convening the workshop with Cindy Ebinger, an expert in East African Rift tectonics at the University of Rochester, and Robert Hecky, an expert in limnology -- the study of lake systems -- at University of Minnesota-Duluth. Core samples Hecky took in the 1970s initially brought the safety of Lake Kivu under question.
Addressing the lake as a whole system is a new concept for the workshop participants, who will bring their expertise in volcanology, tectonics and limnology to the problem. Vodacek's goal is to prioritize research activities and improve communication between the North American, European and African collaborators.
"Most scientists are fairly in agreement that the lake is pretty stable; it's not as if its going to come bursting out tomorrow," Vodacek says. "But in such a tectonically and volcanically active area, you can't tell what's going to happen."
One of the problems with Lake Kivu is that the 1,600-foot deep lake never breathes. The tropical climate helps stagnate the layers of the lake, which never mix or turn over. In contrast, fluctuating temperatures in colder climates help circulate lake water and prevent gas build up. Lake Kivu is different from both temperate and other tropical lakes because warm saline springs, arising from ground water percolating through the hot fractured lava and ash, further stabilize the lake. Scientists at the workshop will consider how these spring inputs may vary over time under changing climates and volcanic activity.
A number of catalysts could destabilize the gas resting at the bottom of Lake Kivu. It could be an earthquake, a volcanic explosion, a landslide or even the methane mining that has recently united Rwandan and Congolese interests.
Close calls occurred in 2008 when an earthquake occurred near the lake and in 2002 when a volcanic eruption destroyed parts of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo, only 11 miles north of Lake Kivu. Although scientists were alarmed, neither event sufficiently disturbed the gas.
Vodacek likens the contained pressure in the lake to a bottle of carbonated soda or champagne. "In the lake, you have the carbon dioxide on the bottom and 300 meters of water on top of that, which is the cap," he says. "That's the pressure that holds it. The gas is dissolved in water."
When the cap is removed, bubbles form and rise to the surface. More bubbles form and create a column that drags the water and the gas up to the surface in a chain reaction.
"The question is, and what's really unknown, is how explosive is that?" Vodacek says.
Through his own research Vodacek plans to simulate the circulation of Lake Kivu. Modeling the circulation patterns above the layers of carbon dioxide and methane will help determine the energy required to disrupt the gas and cause Lake Kivu to explode.
Volatile gas could turn Rwandan lake into a freshwater time bomb

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Accelerated Melting Of Continental Icepacks Is Major Reason For Rise In Sea Level Between 2003 And 2008

This question was resolved thanks to data from the French-American Satellite Jason-1, from two satellites of the GRACE space gravimetry mission and from the buoys of the Argo system. These results have been published online on the website of the journal Global and Planetary Change.
Between 1993 and 2003, the global mean sea level, measured very accurately by the French-American Topex/Poséidon satellites and their successor Jason-1, showed a relatively constant progression of 3 mm/yr. The last GIEC report, published in 2007, showed that more than half of this rise (approximately 1.5 mm/yr) was due to sea water expansion as it warmed up (steric contribution), while 1.2 mm/yr resulted from the reduction in mass of polar ice sheets and mountain glaciers. Since 2003 however, the situation has changed; a quite rapid rise (2.5 mm/yr) in sea water levels is still observed but, over the same period, the warming of the oceans is showing a plateau, only accounting for a rise of 0.4 mm/yr.
Thermal expansion was calculated using two independent methods:
The Argo network of buoys transmits water temperature and salinity profiles across all of the world's oceans. Since 2003, the analysis of all relevant data in the topmost 900 meters of sea water resulted in a steric contribution of about 0.4 mm/yr.
This value was independently confirmed by measurements from space by calculating the difference between the water level observed by the altimeters on Topex/Poséidon and Jason-1 and the increase in the ocean volume as witnessed by GRACE. The satellites indicate a steric contribution of 0.3 mm/yr, which is very similar to the value from the Argo buoys.
Consequently, it is above all the increase in the mass of sea water rather than its heat content that is behind the rise in sea level that has been observed since 2003. The increase in the mass of the oceans is equivalent to a rise of 1.9 mm/yr of the mean sea level. What is the source of this extra water in the oceans? Melting continental ice sheets. Data from GRACE has made it possible to measure changes in the mass of the two polar ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland. These were responsible for a 1 mm/yr increase in sea level (i.e. twice as much as in the previous decade). For mountain glaciers, the most recent estimates from glaciologists show a contribution of 1.1 mm/yr (also higher than during previous years).
Thus, losses from glacial masses can easily account for why the mass of sea water is increasing and are responsible for 80 % of the average rise in sea level in recent years. Given the accelerated melting of glaciers and polar ice sheets, if the steric contribution returned to the values of the 1990s, a rise in sea level of around 4 mm/yr could not be excluded.
Notes:
LEGOS
Collecte Localisation SatelliteAccelerated Melting Of Continental Icepacks Is Major Reason For Rise In Sea Level Between 2003 And 2008

0 comments RSS Posted by Krasugir & Co at 8:58 AM