The power of tapirs to restore Amazon forests / 02
Google.org Fellows accelerate expansion of Permafrost Discovery Gateway / 03
Drought in Panama is disrupting global shipping. These 7 graphics show how. / 04
A love letter to the River / 07
In the news: highlights / 09
2024
Dr. Ludmila Rattis’s newly released TED talk connects biodiversity, forests, and climate
We’re proud to share the TED Talk by Dr. Ludmila Rattis on the power of tapirs to restore Amazon forests.
Last summer, Woodwell’s Dr. Ludmila Rattis took to the stage at the TED Countdown Summit 2023 to champion a surprising climate solution: tapir poop.
Tapirs are large mammals—cute or ugly, depending on whom you ask, but definitely charismatic—who roam Amazon forests eating plants and fruits, then depositing the seeds as they wander. Importantly, because they are large, they can spread large seeds that become large trees. And because they prefer mosaic landscapes, they disperse three times more seeds in degraded forests than in undisturbed forests. That makes them a powerful force for forest regeneration.
We know this thanks to research that has taken place at Tanguro—an active farm turned field research station at the Brazilian agricultural frontier. Dr. Rattis leads efforts there as Tanguro’s general coordinator.
For twenty years, our work at Tanguro Field Station has generated important, actionable insights into the relationships between agriculture, forests, biodiversity, and climate—including the key role that tapirs and other large mammals can play in restoring degraded or destroyed forests.
We invite you to watch Dr. Rattis’s playful and informative talk at: ted.com/talks/ludmila_rattis_how_ poop_turns_into_forests
Learn more about Woodwell Climate’s work at Tanguro: woodwellclimate.org/project/ woodwell-tanguro
Top to bottom: Dr. Ludmila Rattis on the stage at TED Countdown Summit in Detroit, Michigan, July 2023. / photo by Jasmina Tomic/TED; Lowland tapir at Tanguro Research Ranch. / photo by Chris Linder; tapir poop in the forest. / photo by Paulo Brando
PDG team launches public webinar series, welcomes 15 Fellows to help develop the data platform.
Margaret Lin Communications Manager Sarah Ruiz Science Writer/EditorSix months ago, Woodwell Climate Research Center received a $5 million grant from Google.org to put advanced computing to work to track permafrost thaw in near-real time. Now, the Permafrost Discovery Gateway (PDG) project has begun convening experts in remote sensing, machine learning, process modeling, artificial intelligence, software engineering, design, and computing to build upon the existing PDG platform and create a resource hub for Arctic landscape data.
The Arctic is warming fast—up to four times faster than the global average—and as a result, the ground upon which many Northern communities are built has begun to thaw. 3.3 million Arctic residents live in settlements where models suggest permafrost could degrade and ultimately disappear by 2050, presenting
an urgent need for accurate and reliable information to inform community adaptation and preparedness.
PDG was designed to use remote sensing data to identify and map permafrostrelated hazards, like erosion and abrupt thaw events. Previously generated data on these features had either been coarse resolution or spanned only small areas within the Arctic. Collaborators on PDG from nine organizations improved and expanded on available data, mapping over a billion ice-wedge features across the Arctic landscape. Now, with the new Google.org funding, the team has goals to develop additional datasets, and make the resource accessible for communities.
“I feel like we have a pretty good grasp of how the PDG can help researchers working on permafrost-related topics, both in creating and in doing their
science,” says Dr. Anna Liljedahl, Woodwell Associate Scientist and PDG project lead. “Now it’s time to dive deeper into the needs of the public—specifically, people living and working in the Arctic and that are dealing with ice-rich permafrost thaw hazards.”
As part of the award, Woodwell Climate also received the support of 15 Google. org Fellows—talented software engineers, user-interface designers, and product managers—most of whom are dedicated full-time to the project between January and June of 2024. The fellows’ expertise will bolster the project’s activities gathering geospatial data, refining machine learning models to detect permafrost thaw features, and designing the platform’s user interface to meet the needs of communities and decision makers.
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“The Fellow support from Google.org is an award in itself,” says Dr. Liljedahl. “In addition to all the skills the Fellows bring, we’ll have a large team of people who will work full-time on just this project, which is very rare in academia. So this fellowship is a huge boost to the project, and also an opportunity for the Fellows to gain and grow from the collaboration.”
To inform this new phase of work, the PDG team hosted a workshop in November, 2023. The event convened developers of the PDG and end-users including GIS consultants, permafrost and road engineers for a conversation about what data and tools are needed to support communities affected by permafrost thaw.
The workshop highlighted basic information needs for the project—the value of detailed datasets that show the expanse of ice-rich permafrost, alongside the importance of including land ownership information and detailed descriptions of each dataset to provide a more complete understanding of the data. For Dr. Liljedahl, these insights were invaluable.
“We have mapped a billion ice-wedge polygons across the entire Arctic, but we have no map of Alaska trails, which are such an important infrastructure for Alaska’s communities as most are located off the road system. This kind of information will help us build a platform capable of serving community needs,” said Dr. Liljedahl.
Starting February 15, PDG will host a public webinar series that will continue the dialogue started in the workshop and hopefully inform not only this project, but data science research in other fields as well.
“This project addresses a need that goes beyond just permafrost—the need for accessible, public, geospatial data,” says Dr. Liljedahl. “And the need for a dedicated community to work on these difficult issues.”
Drought, driven by a combination of El Niño and climate change, has disrupted shipping through the Panama Canal in recent months. Dropping water levels in Gatún Lake forced Panama Canal authorities to pose restrictions on the number of ships that can pass the canal, dropping from the normal 38 down to 24 transits a day by November 2023, causing long queues at nearby ports as ships wait their turn to pass. If the restrictions remain in place through 2024, there could be up to 4,000 fewer ships—with cargo ranging from children’s toys, to solar panel components, to life-saving insulin—passing the canal in 2024. Delay and disruption along shipping routes will only become a more common occurrence in a warmer world. These 7 graphics show how drought threatens serious disruptions to the global supply chain.
Panama is currently suffering a prolonged drought that began in early 2023 and has not let up. In October, rainfall was 43% lower than average levels, making it the driest October since the 1950s. For the area around the canal, 2023 was one of the driest two years since record keeping began in the country.
Panama’s severe drought is being exacerbated by the double-whammy of a strong El Niño and record-breaking global warming—2023 exceeded the pre-industrial
The drought has had a particularly profound effect on the man-made Gatún Lake, which holds the water supply that operates the Panama Canal. On January 1, 2024 water levels in Gatún Lake were lower than in any other January on record, almost 6 ft lower than January 1, 2023. Millions of gallons of water from Gatún, along with other regional lakes, are used to fill the locks that raise ships above sea level for the passage over Panama’s terrain. Insufficient water supply jeopardizes ship passage.
Not only does Gatún Lake feed the locks that power the Canal, it also supplies drinking water to millions of residents in the central region of the country, including two major cities: Panama City and Colón. As both Panama’s population and the scale of global shipping has grown, there has been greater demand on the lake for freshwater.
temperature average by 1.35 C. El Niño is a natural climate fluctuation that brings warmer-than-average air and ocean waters to the West coast of the Americas. That influx of warmth can vary in strength and last between nine and twelve months, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts it will continue into at least April of 2024.
The severity of El Niño fluctuations is linked to climate change. Climate modeling shows swings between El Niño and its counterpart La Niña have been growing more extreme, resulting in the more frequent and intense events seen in the past few decades. Under high emission scenarios, in which we don’t get warming in check, El Niño events could become 15-20% stronger.
In response to dropping water levels, Panama Canal Authorities have been forced to institute restrictions on ship passages. Ship transits are currently limited to 24 per day until April of 2024, when the authorities will re-evaluate at the start of the rainy season. The number of ship passages was 30% lower than usual by the end of 2023. The unreliability of transit through Panama has already prompted some ships to re-route. Lower water levels also restrict the size of ships that can pass through the canal, as larger, heavier vessels sit lower in the water, putting them at higher risk of running aground
in shallower waters. Large ships also require more lake water to lift them in the locks. As global shipping volume has grown, many shipping fleets have, too—relying on massive vessels that can carry more goods, but are harder to navigate through shallow waterways like the Panama Canal.
The Panama Canal accounts for 5% of global shipping, so disruptions here affect the worldwide supply chain, resulting in delayed shipments, more fuel usage, and GDP losses.
The impacts of shipping disruptions in the Panama Canal are also being compounded by political events in the Red Sea. The Suez Canal, an alternative route for ships bound between Europe and Asia, has also had shipping disrupted by attacks from the Houthis, a Yemeni military group targeting Israel-bound ships. With both the Panama and Suez Canals becoming less reliable routes, more ships will be forced to take the long way around—traveling down to the southern points of Africa and South America.
Far to the north, another waterway is being rapidly altered by climate change. As the Arctic warms faster than any other place on the planet, summer sea ice has been disappearing at a rate of almost 13% per decade. This has opened up new lanes of ice-free water that some countries are eying as potential new routes. But navigating through a melting Arctic is still dangerous, and the majority of new ship traffic in the Arctic is comprised of smaller military or fishing boats, rather than the large shipping vessels used to carry commercial cargo.
Furthermore, increased ship traffic in the Arctic has the potential to further emissions, as melting ice could open up access to new sources of oil and natural gas—perpetuating climate warming.
Though December rains saved Panama Canal officials from instituting further restrictions on ship passage, the region is still experiencing El Niño, and sea surface temperatures in
early 2024 have continued to climb higher than 2023. Each day in 2024 has recorded the highest temperatures on record for that calendar date. The only path to stabilizing global shipping lies in stabilizing the global climate.
River,
It was when you became sick that I truly realized how much you mean to me. How long I have loved you, needed you, learned from you. My entire life I have tried to be self sufficient, but now I realize how dependent I am, and always have been, on you.
It is funny to think that I have known you my entire life. Even though I spent most of my earlier years with your cousin Big Blue, I recall seeing you from afar. You were always drifting by our house each day to visit the cranberry bogs. You ran alongside the trails that I walked with the dogs. They swam with you afterwards to cool off, but I never joined. You always seemed busy, hosting pool parties with the swans and snapping turtles. I did not think much of you then. Honestly you were a little too intimidating for my younger self.
It was not until I went out West that I really met you. I still remember the moment. It was the end of a long day of backpacking and making camp with friends. You were in the distance and invited me to hang out. Despite feeling
tired and shy, I slowly made my way over and sat awkwardly on a boulder. I just listened to your babbling. I had no clue how talkative you were. You made me feel relaxed and at home. I felt so drawn to you. The next day, our mutual friend asked if I wanted to join him to fish. Anything to hang out with you again. He told me to stand on your banks and taught me how to cast. You then introduced me to your trout friends. We all hit it off. I kept that first fly. It brings me back to those incredible beginnings of us.
For years, we were all best friends. We would hang out with the Stoneflies and Mayflies, and jam with the Cutthroats, Rainbows, Browns, and Brooks. I would wade in your current, you would dance around me. I got to know your family members— Lake, Pond, and Creek — like they were my own. I have told you all of my deepest secrets and although I wish it was a two-way channel, it may take me many lifetimes to just understand the basics of you. You are so complex on the surface and underneath that even the simplest detail of your past and present mesmerizes me.
Eventually, I caught myself looking for you everywhere I went even if I knew it was silly to find you there. I’d search for you on the high mesas in the desert or between the skyscrapers in cities. You have humbled me and shown me how to move through life by swirling and going with the flow instead of against it; to explore deeper and make a splash, but also to be still and reflect. You make me smile, cry, and laugh more than anyone else. Falling in love with you was inevitable.
River, I need you to get better. It crushes me how sick you are. Your mood swings have intensified. The doctors warned us your future was uncertain. I did not think it would get this bad. These powerful, raging floods are a new side of you that I have never witnessed. The pressure from your water is so destructive that it makes me scared to be near you. But when I see you go into a severe drought, I just want to weep for you. For us. For our memories together. For the times of hanging out with our friends — the fish, bugs, birds — some of whom have departed permanently and others who have gone to adapt to a new home elsewhere. It is
left: Allie Cunningham / photo by John Land Le Coq right: Lake Fork of the San Maguel. / photo by Allie Cunninghamnot fair how your health has degraded to this extent; you have given so much to so many and have expected nothing in return. Why you?
Each day, I sit by your side and relish in your beauty. Oh, how lucky I am to have you. Your nurses come by often to monitor your health. Working together, we are trying to find ways to support you to bring you back to your glimmering self. Although this sickness is worse than any rapid you and I have run together, I am optimistic for your recovery. We have known you to break barriers. We have known you to keep moving forward, to continue to carve the path of least resistance. You will find your natural flow again and we will meander through this life, and many more, together.
May our love grow deeper,
Allie
Iris Ferguson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Arctic and Global Resilience, was interviewed by Wilson Center for their New Security Broadcast, and mentioned her participation in a COP28 event with Woodwell Climate and Google.
Peter Sinclair posted a video interview with Dr. Jen Francis about El Niño, global temperatures, and Earth’s mirror on his blog, This is Not Cool
Dr. Jon Sanderman was quoted by Grist in a story on soil carbon storage on farms, and the opportunities in the Farm Bill to improve our understanding of its climate benefits.
Business Insider quoted Dr. Jen Francis on the threats posed by weather whiplash. And Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published an article authored by Jen titled “What in the world is weather whiplash?”
Dr. Sue Natali and Permafrost Pathways collaborators talked to Mongabay about data gaps exacerbated by the freeze on Russian collaboration and the hope for future pan-Arctic scientific collaboration. The article also included a photo by Mitch Korolev and a map by Greg Fiske.
Dr. Sue Natali spoke with the Falmouth Enterprise about how Permafrost Pathways connects science to policy,
her appointment to the new Advisory Council for Climate Adaptation Science, and how she hopes to gain support for a nationwide climate adaptation governance framework.
Dr. Sue Natali spoke with Sierra magazine about how the Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiement has built community across disciplines and the need for more funding for the modeling community.
Cape Cod Times covered the upcoming Woods Hole Diversity Initiative programming for Black History Month, organized in part by Amanda Poston in her role as co-chair of the initiative’s Black History Month Planning Committee.
An article on The Health Care Blog about zombie viruses of the permafrost quoted Dr. Christina Schädel on the global climate ramifications of permafrost thaw.
Osservatorio Arctico published an article on the consequences of permafrost loss that mentioned Permafrost Pathways (Italian).
Wirtualna Polska referenced research by Dr. Jen Francis, and included a quote from her in an article on why record-breaking cold temperatures are important for Poland (Polish).
