16 February 2016, The Conversation, Adapting to bushfires: a new idea of ‘fire-proof’ homes. This summer’s bushfires have destroyed homes, precious ecosystems and, tragically, lives. Fires in South Australia and Western Australia killed two and six people, respectively. On Christmas Day more than 100 properties were destroyed in Victoria, and ongoing fires in Tasmania’s wilderness have claimed ancient, fire-sensitive vegetation. Our key strategy to address this is to evacuate fire-prone areas extensively on days when fire weather is likely to present a risk. In essence, we are leaving our homes to fend for themselves, and rightly so. Homes can be replaced; lives cannot. We know the cost of fire. In a warming world, it is very likely we will see more frequent and more extreme fires. To adapt to these future fires we will need to change how we approach fire management and the safety of our homes. Fortunately there are good examples in contemporary Australia of how we might do so. Land of fire Before European settlement, Australia was a fire-adapted continent from the southern tip of Tasmania to the tropical north. Its indigenous citizens understood fire both as a threat and as a tool. Indigenous people regularly used fire to modify the vegetation so that fires could not reach an intensity that would damage to trees, animals or indigenous settlements. Unfortunately, most of Australia looks nothing like it did back then. The bush in many parts has reverted to a thick impenetrable scrub with fuel loads that can support fires so severe that agencies have no way of stopping them. Read More here
Category Archives: Ecosystem Stress
15 February 2016, Science Daily, Four billion people affected by severe water scarcity. There are four billion people worldwide who are affected by severe water scarcity for at least one month a year. That is the conclusion of University of Twente Professor of Water Management, Arjen Hoekstra, after many years’ extensive research. This alarming figure is much higher than was previously thought. His ground-breaking research was published in Science Advances. Professor Hoekstra’s team is the first research group in the world to identify people’s water footprint from month to month and to compare it to the monthly availability of water. “Up to now, this type of research concentrated solely on the scarcity of water on an annual basis, and had only been carried out in the largest river basins,” says Hoekstra. He defines severe water scarcity as the depletion of water in a certain area. “Groundwater levels are falling, lakes are drying up, less water is flowing in rivers, and water supplies for industry and farmers are threatened. In this research, we established the maximum sustainable ‘water footprint’ for every location on earth, and then looked at actual water consumption. If the latter is much greater than what is sustainable, then there can be said to be severe water scarcity.” More than previously thought Until now, it had always been assumed in the scientific community that 2 to 3 billion people were affected by severe water scarcity. “Previous research looked at the availability of water on an annual basis, but that paints a more rosy and misleading picture, because water scarcity occurs during the dry period of the year,” explains Hoekstra. In his research, he describes for each place the number of months in a year that people are affected by severe water scarcity. That varies from zero to twelve months per year. Problem areas Of the four billion people referred to, a large proportion feel the effects of water scarcity directly. Particularly in Mexico, the western US, northern and southern Africa, southern Europe, the Middle East, India, China, and Australia, households, industries and farmers regularly experience water shortages. In other areas, water supplies are still fine but at risk in the long-term. Read More here
14 February 2016, BREITBART, Some 150,000 penguins died after a massive iceberg grounded near their colony in Antarctica, forcing them to make a lengthy trek to find food, scientists say in a newly-published study. The B09B iceberg, measuring some 100 square kilometres (38.6 square miles), grounded in Commonwealth Bay in East Antarctica in December 2010, the researchers from Australia and New Zealand wrote in the Antarctic Science journal. The Adelie penguin population at the bay’s Cape Denison was measured to be about 160,000 in February 2011 but by December 2013 it had plunged to an estimated 10,000, they said. The iceberg’s grounding meant the penguins had to walk more than 60 kilometres (37 miles) to find food, impeding their breeding attempts, said the researchers from the University of New South Wales’ (UNSW) Climate Change Research Centre and New Zealand’s West Coast Penguin Trust. “The Cape Denison population could be extirpated within 20 years unless B09B relocates or the now perennial fast ice within the bay breaks out,” they wrote in the research published in February. Fast ice is sea ice which forms and stays fast along the coast. During their census in December 2013, the researchers said “hundreds of abandoned eggs were noted, and the ground was littered with the freeze-dried carcasses of previous season’s chicks”. Read more here
9 February 2016, Climate Home, Climate-linked bushfire warning as Tasmania’s ancient forests blaze. Trees 1,000 years old have been caught in the weeks-long blaze, sparked by lightning strikes in unusually dry conditions. More than 100,000 hectares have been blackened. The inferno comes as evidence mounts that human-caused climate change is raising the risk of bushfires, warned think tank the Climate Institute. “It points to the need for a two-pronged strategy,” said CEO John Connor: “To be working hard to cut carbon pollution while, at the same time, building greater resilience to bushfires caused by the global warming already locked in.” The Climate Institute drew on research by lead science agency CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology. They had found an increase in the frequency and severity of fires in more than 42% of southern Australia since 1973. With high levels of future warming, models show the number of “very high” fire days in Tasmania could more than double. It threatens world heritage forests that have not evolved to cope with cycles of fire and regrowth, unlike Australia’s hardier eucalyptus. Tasmania’s parks service, in a review of the response to severe bushfires in 2013, said dry lightning had taken over from arson as the major cause. But that should not be seen as a natural phenomenon to be left unmanaged, it argued, “if human-induced climate change is a contributing factor”. Conservationists are calling for a public inquiry into the authorities’ handling of fire risk. Michael Grose from CSIRO told the Guardian Australia human activity was making dry, fire-friendly conditions more likely. “Hotter temperatures, reduced rainfall in key seasons [and] worse fire weather, are all consistent with what is projected with climate change, particularly under a high-emission scenario,” he said. Read More here