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mindblowingscience · 4 months

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Hubert Reeves once wrote that "on the cosmic scale, liquid water is rarer than gold". And what is true for the universe is even truer in the Sahel, the name given to the vast, arid belt that skirts the Sahara and stretches across Africa from east to west. Since 3,000 BCE, the peoples of this region have invested tremendous effort into coming up with myriad ways to capture and control this remarkably scarce resource. Faced with the poor distribution of water across space and time, they have had to resort to intelligent, thrifty methods to make the most of even the tiniest drop. Overlooked for many years, the secrets of the Sahelian landscape are starting to pique the interest of researchers and decision-makers.

#Science #Enviroment #Agriculture #Biology #Ecology #Global Warming #Climate Change #Plants #Africa

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rebeccathenaturalist · 9 months

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This ties into one of the big conundrums of restoration ecology. When trying to decide what plants to add to a restoration site, should we add those that are there now, even if some of those species are increasingly stressed by the effects of climate change? Or do we start importing native species in adjacent ecoregions that are more tolerant of heat?

Animals can migrate relatively quickly, but plants take longer to expand their range, and the animals that they have mutual relationships with may be moving to cooler areas faster than the plants can follow. Whether the animals will be able to survive in their new range without their plant partners is another question, and that is an argument in favor of trying to help the plants keep up with them. We're not just having to think about what effects climate change will have next summer, but also predict what it's going to look like here in fifty years, a hundred, or beyond. It's an especially important question in regards to slow-growing trees which may not reproduce until they are several years old, and which can take decades to really be a significant support of their local ecosystem.

For example, here in the Pacific Northwest west of the Cascades, western red cedar (Thuja plicata) is experiencing increased die-off due to longer, hotter summer droughts. Do we continue to plant western red cedar, in the hopes that some of them may display greater tolerance to drought and heat? Or do we instead plant Port Orford cedar (Chamaecyparis lawsoniana), which is found in red cedar's southern range, and which may be more drought-tolerant, even though it's not found this far north yet?

Planting something from an adjacent ecoregion isn't the same as grabbing a plant from halfway around the world and establishing it as an invasive species. But there is the question as to whether the established native would have been able to survive if we hadn't introduced a competing "neighbor" species. Would the Port Orford cedars and western red cedars be able to coexist as they do in northern California and southern Oregon, or would the introduced Port Orfords be enough to push the already stressed red cedars over the edge to extirpation?

There's no simple answer. But I am glad to see the government at least allowing some leeway for those ecologists who are desperately trying any tactic they can to save rare species from extinction.

#restoration ecology #ecology #habitat restoration #climate change #global warming #anthropogenic climate change #nature #wildlife #plants #botany #trees #endangered species #extinction #environment #conservation #environmentalism #science #scicomm #science communication

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hope-for-the-planet · 1 year

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“Experts are calling time on the fossil age as new analysis shows wind and solar power produced a record amount of the world’s electricity last year.The renewables generated 12 per cent of global electricity in 2022, up from 10 per cent the previous year, according to the report from clean energy think tank Ember.And while a small increase in coal burning pushed electricity emissions up to an all-time high, analysts predict this will be the peak of pollution.”

#clean energy #renewable energy #green energy #solar energy #wind energy #hope #good news #energy #environment #climate change #global warming #ecoanxiety #ecogrief #environmental grief #ecological grief #climate anxiety

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vegan-nom-noms · 3 months

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Can’t be vegan? Go vegetarian.

Can’t be vegetarian? Do meatless Mondays.

Trying your hardest (whatever that may be) to help animals and the environment is far better than sitting on the sidelines and watching it burn.

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useless-catalanfacts · 3 months

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A new record: temperatures are so high, that yesterday Gavarda (a town in the Valencian Country) registered the highest temperature ever recorded in Europe in January: 30.7°C (87.26°F). This would usually be the expected temperature in early May. The previous record was set in 2021 (29.8°C in Alacant). We are record after record, and it's not good.

This adds on the drought that the Catalan Countries have been suffering for 3 years. We have water use restrictions and many farmers have lost the harvests for months because they're not allowed to water the fields. And there's no prospect for generous rain any time soon. Experts have been warning that for every degree Celsius that temperatures rise in the Mediterranean region, annual rain will reduce by 4%, and since we're a region that is already naturally prone to summer droughts, this will mean 20% less water resources.

The Mediterranean region is one of the places in the Earth that heats the most because of climate change. There will be 40% more days with extreme heat (days with temperatures higher than 35°C=95°F), which will have effects on health, particularly on open-air workers, and will suppose a 17% decrease in agriculture produce. That is, without counting rising sea levels.

The Mediterranean region is inhabited by 400-500 million people, out of which 150 million live on the coast. Experts calculate that the sea will have risen 1 meter (it's not out of the question that it might have risen even more if polluting emissions aren't reduced) by the end of the century. Considering that 37% Mediterranean coast is very low, on sea level, this means that this rise of the Mediterranean sea will put about 42 million people in extreme danger. One of the first victims will be (and is already suffering the early effects) the Delta of the Ebro river, a mostly-agricultural area in the South of Catalonia which is also a Biosphere reserve due to its great biodiversity.

And some people still say climate change isn't real 🤦

#actualitat #climate emergency #climate change #mediterranean #coses de la terra #delta de l'ebre #gavarda #país valencià #climate #environmentalism #europe #sustainability #ecology #earth #global warming #climate crisis #weather #meteorology #world record

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nando161mando · 8 months

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ancient-reverie · 9 months

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what if we.... treated the trees like the gods they are and make it illegal on penalty of death to intentionally harm them

#hell o void #just a thought #nature #natural world #climate change #global warming #trees #tree #plants #ecosystem #ecology #botany #eco anarchism

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entheognosis · 2 months

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#david suzuki #ecology #global warming

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probablyasocialecologist · 11 months

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Rich G7 nations owe poor ones an estimated $13 trillion in unpaid development aid as well as support in the fight against climate change, British charity Oxfam says.

Instead of fulfilling their obligations, the International Group of Seven nations and their banks are demanding debt repayments of $232m per day, the organisation said on Wednesday.

“Wealthy G7 countries like to cast themselves as saviours but what they are is operating a deadly double standard – they play by one set of rules while their former colonies are forced to play by another,” Oxfam’s interim Executive Director Amitabh Behar said in a statement.

“It’s the rich world that owes the Global South: the aid they promised decades ago but never gave, the huge costs from climate damage caused by their reckless burning of fossil fuels, the immense wealth built on colonialism and slavery.”

Developed countries promised in 2009 to transfer $100bn annually between 2020 and 2025 to vulnerable states hit by increasingly severe climate-linked impacts and disasters – but that target was never met.

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Oxfam said the G7 leaders are meeting as billions of workers face pay cuts and steep price rises.

“Global hunger has risen for a fifth consecutive year, while extreme wealth and extreme poverty have increased simultaneously for the first time in 25 years,” it said.

The G7 is home to 1,123 billionaires with a combined wealth of $6.5 trillion, and their wealth has grown in real terms by 45 percent over the past 10 years, noted Oxfam.

Carbon emissions from rich nations are estimated to have caused $8.7 trillion in losses and damage to low and middle-income countries, the charity added.

“The G7 must pay its debts. This is not about goodwill or charity – it is a moral obligation,” Behar said.

#inequality #global south #ecologically unequal exchange #capitalism #oxfam

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saddayfordemocracy · 9 months

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August 2 is Earth overshoot day 2023 !

Earth Overshoot Day (EOD) marks when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate during that year.

Today is Earth Overshoot Day 2023, the Earth Overshoot Day calculated every year by Global Footprint Network using data from National Footprint and Biocapacity Accountswhich indicates the official depletion of renewable resources that the planet is able to offer within a year.

This means that today, August 2, humanity has already “finished” all the resources that Nature produces in an entire year and is starting to go into debt. Humanity, with its over 8 billion inhabitants, consumes in excessive quantities, beyond the natural regeneration (and reabsorption) capacities of the planet.

In 1973 Overshoot Day fell on December 3: we were just a few days over our annual budget. In 2003, September 12, in 2013, August 3. The date has always been getting ahead and our ecological debt has grown.

Globally we are consuming the equivalent of 1.7 Planets a year, an ominous figure that is expected to rise to two planets by 2030, based on current trends. In the last 5 years the trend seems to have stabilized, but it is difficult to establish whether this is due to the slowdown of the economy or to decarbonisation efforts. However, the reduction of our “debt” to the planet is still too slow. To achieve the United Nations IPCC goal of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions by 43% by 2030 (compared to 2010) it would be necessary to move Earth Overshoot Day forward by 19 days per year for next seven years.

According to the WWF there are many solutions that can be adopted at the community level or individually to have a significant impact on the type of future we invest in: for example if we used energy from 75% renewable sources we could move the Overshhot day by 26 days ; halving food waste would save 13 days.

“If up until the 1960s humanity was more or less in balance, the date has moved from year to year up the calendar, to arrive today at the beginning of August. This means that humanity has been in ecological overshoot for over 50 years and the debt we have accumulated amounts to 19 years of planetary production, i.e. what Earth’s ecosystems can regenerate in 19 years. The burden of this debt, which is set to increase, is starting to reduce economic options. The loss of biodiversity, the growing unpredictability of the weather and the depletion of groundwater are just a few symptoms. But overcoming itself is not inevitable. Constantly living beyond the physical possibilities of our planet is a limited possibility in time, we risk an ecological disaster: the goods and services that are the basis of our societies and economies are all produced by functioning and healthy ecosystems. We now have many targeted solutions to reverse the overexploitation of resources and support the regeneration of the biosphere in which we live”.

#human rights #humanity #global footprint #footprint #earth #overshootday #ressources #climate change #climate emergency #ecology #sustainability #sustainable

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fatehbaz · 9 months

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Nothing in the past, moreover, gave any cause to suspect ginseng’s presence so far away. Or even closer by: since antiquity, for well over a millennium, the ginseng consumed in all of East Asia had come from just one area -- the northeast mountainous lands straddling Manchuria and Korea. No one had found it anywhere else. No one was even thinking, now, to look elsewhere. The [...] [French traveler] Joseph-Francois Lafitau didn’t know this. He had been [...] visiting Quebec on mission business in October of 1715 [...]. He began to search for ginseng. [...] [T]hen one day he spotted it [...]. Ginseng did indeed grow in North America. [...]

Prior to the nuclear disaster in the spring of 2011, few outside Japan could have placed Fukushima on a map of the world. In the geography of ginseng, however, it had long been a significant site. The Edo period domain of Aizu, which was located here, had been the first to try to grow the plant on Japanese soil, and over the course of the following centuries, Fukushima, together with Nagano prefecture, has accounted for the overwhelming majority of ginseng production in the country.

Aizu’s pioneering trials in cultivation began in 1716 – by coincidence, exactly the same year that Lafitau found the plant growing wild in the forests of Canada. [...]

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Since the 1670s the numbers of people [in Japan] clamoring for access to the drug had swelled enormously, and this demand had to be met entirely through imports. The attempt to cultivate ginseng in Aizu -- and soon after, many other domains -- was a response to a fiscal crisis.

Massive sums of silver were flowing out of the country to pay for ginseng and other drugs [...]. Arai Hakuseki, the chief policy maker [...], calculated that no less than 75% of the country’s gold, and 25% of its silver had drained out of Japan [to pay for imports] [...]. Expenditures for ginseng were particularly egregious [...]: in the half-century between 1670s through the mid-1720s that marked the height of ginseng fever in Japan, officially recorded yearly imports of Korean ginseng through Tsushima sometimes reached as much as four to five thousand kin (approx. 2.4–3 metric tons).

What was to be done? [...] The drain of bullion was unrelenting. [...] [T]he shogunate repeatedly debased its currency, minting coins that bore the same denomination, but contained progressively less silver. Whereas the large silver coin first issued in 1601 had been 80% pure, the version issued in 1695 was only 64% silver, and the 1703 mint just 50%. Naturally enough, ginseng dealers in Korea were indifferent to the quandaries of the Japanese rulers, and insisted on payment as before; they refused the debased coins. The Japanese response speaks volumes about the unique claims of the drug among national priorities: in 1710 (and again in 1736) a special silver coin of the original 80% purity was minted exclusively for use in the ginseng trade. [...]

[T]he project of cultivating ginseng and other medicines in Japan became central to the economic and social strategy of the eighth shogun Yoshimune after he assumed power in 1716. [...]

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China and Korea were naturally eager to retain their monopolies of this precious commodity, and strictly banned all export of live plants and seeds. They jealously guarded as well against theft of mature roots: contemporary Chinese histories, for example, record that the prisons of Shenjing (present day Shenyang) overflowed with ginseng poaching suspects. So many were caught, indeed, that the legal bureaucracy couldn’t keep up.

In 1724, the alarming numbers of suspected poachers who died in prison while awaiting trial led to the abandonment of the regular system of trials by judges dispatched from Beijing, and a shift to more expeditious reviews handled by local officials. [...]

Even in 1721. the secret orders that the shogunate sent the domain of Tsushima called for procuring merely three live plants [...]. Two other forays into Korea 1727 succeeded in presenting the shogun with another four and seven plants respectively. Meanwhile, in 1725 a Manchu merchant in Nagasaki named Yu Meiji [...] managed to smuggle in and present three live plants and a hundred seeds. [...]

Despite its modest volume, this botanical piracy eventually did the trick. By 1738, transplanted plants yielded enough seeds that the shogunate could share them with enterprising domains. [...] Ginseng eventually became so plentiful that in 1790 the government announced the complete liberalization of cultivation and sales: anyone was now free to grow or sell it.

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By the late eighteenth century, then, the geography of ginseng looked dramatically different from a century earlier.

This precious root, which had long been restricted to a small corner of the northeast Asian continent, had not only been found growing naturally and in abundance in distant North America, but had also been successfully transplanted and was now flourishing in the neighboring island of Japan. […]

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Colonial Americans, for their part, had developed their own new addiction: an unquenchable thirst for tea. […] This implacable need could have posed a serious problem. [...] [I]ts regular consumption was a costly habit.

Which is why the local discovery of ginseng was a true godsend.

When the Empress of China sailed to Canton in 1784 as the first ship to trade under the flag of the newly independent United States, it was this coveted root that furnished the overwhelming bulk of sales. Though other goods formed part of early Sino-American commerce – Chinese porcelain and silk, for example, and American pelts – the essential core of trade was the exchange of American ginseng for Chinese tea. [...]

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Yoshimune’s transplantation project had succeeded to the point that Japan actually became a ginseng exporter. As early as 1765, Zhao Xuemin’s Supplement to the compedium of material medica would note the recent popularity of Japanese ginseng in China. Unlike the “French” ginseng from Canada, which cooled the body, Zhao explained, the “Asian” ginseng (dongyang shen) from Japan, like the native [Korean/Chinese] variety, tended to warm. Local habitats still mattered in the reconfigured geography of ginseng. [...]

What is place? What is time? The history of ginseng in the long eighteenth century is the story of an ever-shifting alchemical web. [...] Thanks to the English craving for tea, ginseng, which two centuries earlier had threatened to bankrupt Japan, now figured to become a major source of national wealth [for Japan] .

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Text by: Shigehisa Kuriyama. “The Geography of Ginseng and the Strange Alchemy of Needs.” In: The Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century, edited by Yota Batsaki, Sarah Burke Cahalan, and Anatole Tchikine. 2017. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

#all kinds of fun stuff smuggling piracy biogeography medicinal tea shogunates secret orders #the irony of emerging US empire beginning relationship with china based on export of american ginseng which europeans hadnt known existed #the irony of japan quickly transitioning from almost being bankrupted by ginseng to becoming a ginseng exporter #the importance of local habitats and smallscale biogeography despite the global scale of imperial trade #the french cartographer in 1711 in manchuria who had never been to canada but correctly predicted ginseng might grow there #abolition #ecology #imperial #colonial

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mindblowingscience · 4 months

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Seasonal timings of plants are advancing an average of four times faster than insects, throwing key interactions like pollination out of sync. This is according to new findings from researchers at the University of Oxford and Chinese Academy of Sciences that will be presented at the British Ecological Society Annual Meeting in held Belfast December 12–15. A study of more than 1,500 species of herbivorous insects in Europe, spanning 34 years of data, has found that 60% of insects are already struggling to keep up with the plants they rely on because climate change is advancing key seasonal timings (phenology), such as plant blooming or insect emergence, earlier in the year, at different rates.

#Science #Enviroment #Ecology #Climate Change #Global Warming

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rebeccathenaturalist · 11 months

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So on the surface this looks like a good thing. After all, we need mature and old-growth forests as they're havens for species dependent on that habitat type, and they are also exceptionally good carbon sinks compared to younger, less complex forests. (A big, old tree will still absorb and hold more carbon than a new, quick-growing one, and in fact for the first twenty or so years of its life a tree is actually carbon positive, releasing more than it absorbs.)

However, timber industries are trying to paint mature forests as fire hazards that need to be thinned out due to an abundance of plant life. They also tend to oppose leaving snags and nurse logs in the forest as "fuel", because they'd rather salvage what lumber they can from a freshly dead tree. So of course they're trying to push for cutting down trees as the solution to climate change's threat to mature forests.

Large, old trees are generally better adapted to surviving a fire simply by sheer size. Some have other adaptations, such as deeply grooved bark that can create relatively cooler pockets of air around the tree to help it survive, and the branches of older, taller trees of some species are higher up the trunk, away from lower-burning fires. And those old trees that survive are often important for helping to restore the forest ecosystem afterward, from providing seeds for new trees to offering wildlife safe haven and food.

When timber companies come in and log a forest, even if they don't take all the trees, they leave behind all the branches and twigs and just take the trunks. This creates a buildup of fine fuels that burn very quickly (think the twigs and paper you use to start a campfire), while removing coarse fuels that take longer to catch fire. In fact, an area that is subjected to salvage logging after a fire is much more likely to burn again within a few years due to all the fine fuels left behind by salvage logging.

Another factor is that not all forests are the same, even at similar ages. Here in the Pacific Northwest, as one example, the forests east of the Cascades live in drier conditions with slower plant growth, and low-level wildfires that can clean out ladder fuels before they pile up too high are more common. In those locations prescribed burns make sense.

However, the fire ecology of forests on the west side is less understood; because lightning storms are less common and the climate is wetter, fires just don't happen as often. And west-side forests are simply more productive, with denser vegetation that grows back quickly after even large fires like 2017's Eagle Creek Fire in the Columbia River Gorge. Historically speaking, west-side forests get fewer, but larger, fires. So the prescribed burns and other strategies employed for east-side forests aren't necessarily a good fit.

Finally, mature forests are much more biodiverse, and support many more species than a monocultural tree plantation. As climate change continues to affect the planet, mature forests and other complex ecosystems are going to become increasingly crucial to protecting numerous species, to include those dependent only on those ecosystem types. Thinning may seem like a great idea at first, but even if it isn't as destructive as clearcutting it will still damage a forest in ways that will take years to restore.

We really need to be wary of the narrative that thinning is the only way to curb climate change's effects on mature forests. It's a more complex situation than that, and we need to prioritize preserving these increasingly rare places as much as possible.

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hope-for-the-planet · 1 year

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“It all starts with the transition to clean energy, now approaching full speed with 87 countries drawing at least 5% of their electricity from wind and solar. The US hit 5% in 2011 and surged past 20% renewable electricity last year. If the country follows the trend set by others at the leading edge, wind and solar will account for half of US power-generating capacity just 10 years from now. That would be years—or even decades—earlier than major forecasts.

[...] Successful technologies follow an S-shaped adoption curve. Sales move at a crawl in the early-adopter phase, then surprisingly quickly once things go mainstream. The top of the curve represents the last people to make the transition. Even in 2022, a tenth of humanity still doesn't have electricity.

Five percent isn't a universal tipping point. Some technologies flip sooner, others later, but the basic idea is the same: Once the tough investments in manufacturing have been made and consumer preferences start to shift, the first wave of adoption sets the conditions to go much bigger."

#green energy #clean energy #renewable energy #climate change #global warming #environment #ecology #climate hope #climate anxiety #environmental grief #good news #hope #slow horses #electrify #electrify everything #hopepunk

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a-modern-major-general · 19 days

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Timing is everything in nature. From the opening notes of a songbird’s spring chorus to the seasonal percussion of snapping shrimp, every important ecological process lives and dies by a clock. Flowering. Egg laying. Breeding. Migration. It’s as true on the Mongolian steppe as it is in the Arabian Sea or a Costa Rican rainforest. Centuries of evolution honed these patterns. Now climate change is recalibrating them.

And that is reshaping life for almost everything. In every ocean and across every continent, seasons are in flux. Earlier warmth, delayed cold, and shifts in the frequency and fierceness of precipitation are toying with established rhythms in both predictable and unexpected ways.

So researchers the world over are straining to document the timing of life cycle events, a scientific discipline known as phenology. That timing is being upended by our fossil fuel emissions.

Changes are discovered almost everywhere scientists look. The timing of leaf appearance and leaf dropping has already shifted dramatically across more than half the planet. Humpback whales in the Gulf of Maine are gathering 19 days later than they once did, while jack mackerel, hake, and rockfish are spawning earlier in the North Pacific. In North Dakota’s Red River Valley, scientists found 65 of 83 bird species arriving earlier, some by as much as 31 days. South Carolina’s dwarf salamanders are arriving at breeding grounds 76 days later.

What’s harder to grasp is the severity of the consequences—for plants, animals, and us. If everything shifted in the same direction and by roughly the same amount, our new calendar might prove insignificant. As with daylight saving time, we’d muddle through together. But that’s not how nature works. “Species are not responding identically,” said David Inouye, a University of Maryland professor emeritus and leading phenology researcher.

Too many patterns are shifting at the same time, each influenced by countless others, which are themselves also in motion. It’s everything, everywhere, all at once. Even beings that don’t appear to be changing are seeing their world change around them. Snowshoe hares, Siberian hamsters, collared lemmings, and long-tailed weasels all turn white in winter as a form of protective camouflage in snow. Now they’re often out of sync with their surroundings. Many are increasingly seen with halogen-bright white bodies crouched in green forests or brown brush or on yellow tundra. That’s because snow is arriving later and melting earlier, but their color transition is triggered by seasonal shifts in daylight, which, of course, isn’t changing at all.

So what happens then, when we revamp nature’s schedule in every wild system on Earth at once, altering timing for some things but not others? Few understand the implications better than Inouye. “Study any species in isolation, and you may know if they’re changing,” he told me one June morning as we stood in a meadow in thin air near 10,000 feet. But to understand why that change is happening—and what it means—scientists must cast a wider net. “No species lives in isolation.”

#current events #climate change #global warming #environmentalism #ecology #climate #weather #phenology #botany #ornithology #entomology

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nando161mando · 5 months

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