Magazine ~ Summer 2022

CLIMATE science for CHANGE

SUMMER 2022

Permafrost Pathways An Audacious new initiative connects science, people, and policy for Arctic justice and global climate.

Future of food Heat and drought are driving up the risk of crop failures in the world’s breadbaskets, from India to Brazil.

Contents 01 /

From the Acting President

02 /

Updates and insights

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Woodwell launches new project monitoring, combatting the effects of permafrost thaw

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Following Woodwell’s ‘North Stars’

16 /

Tagging salmon on the Ninilchik

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CLIMATE science for CHANGE

Are Alaska’s streams getting too hot for salmon?

Agriculture and food security threatened by warmer, dryer world Despite centuries of successful Indigenous management, the Xingu’s fire regimes are changing

Climate Science for Change is published

by Woodwell Climate Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

Woodwell Climate Research Center is a leading source of climate science that drives the urgent action needed to solve the climate crisis.

ACTING PRESIDENT & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Dr. R. Max Holmes CHIEF COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER

Dr. Heather M. H. Goldstone SCIENCE WRITER

Sarah Ruiz GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Julianne Waite

Unequal heat

COPY EDITOR

Elizabeth Bagley

Snapshot from the field

IMAGES

cover: Summer in Alaska, as seen from space. An Alaska satellite image composite of cloudfree summertime pixels from the Sentinel-2 multispectral Instrument (https:// sentinel.esa.int).

The years used in the composite were 2019 to 2021. The data is courtesy of the Copernicus program of the European Space Agency. / map by Greg Fiske

Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Natalie Baillargeon, Paulo Brando, Carl Churchill, Greg Fiske, Alma Hernandez, Madeleine Lee, Chris Linder, Sarah Moore, Susan Natali, Fred Palmer, Bianca Rodrigues-Cardona, Sarah Ruiz, John Schade, Divino Silvério, Emily Sturdivant, Jennifer Watts Woodwell Climate Research Center 149 Woods Hole Road Falmouth, MA 02540 Email: info@woodwellclimate.org Website: woodwellclimate.org NEWSLETTER

Subscribe at woodwellclimate.org/newsletter COPYRIGHT

All material appearing in Climate Science for Change is copyrighted unless otherwise stated or it may rest with the provider of the supplied material. Climate Science for Change takes care to ensure information is correct at time of printing.

Woodwell Climate Research Center is located on the traditional and sacred land of the Wampanoag people who still occupy this land, and whose history, language, traditional ways of life, and culture continue to influence this vibrant community.

From Acting President Max Holmes

Where do we go from here?

“The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health. Any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.”

So ends the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) Working Group II Summary for Policymakers, published in March 2022.

Read that quote again.

It is a remarkably strong, stark statement, particularly given that IPCC Summaries for Policymakers are adopted by consensus.

Any nation could have weakened the statement. None did. The scientific evidence is too strong and the stakes are too high.

The first IPCC Assessment Report was published in 1992. Each report synthesizes vast amounts of scientific research, and in each report the evidence becomes stronger, the uncertainty is reduced, and the call to action grows louder.

As I read and reread the above quote, I’m left wondering how future IPCC Assessment Reports will conclude. AR6’s warning is remarkably clear and urgent. Though the scientific evidence will continue to accumulate, it seems to me that there is little room left to turn up the volume on the call to action.

“Any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity.”

As climate scientists we are blessed and cursed with the knowledge of what the future holds if society doesn’t act with great urgency “to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.” This knowledge creates responsibility. Morality demands action.

At Woodwell Climate Research Center, we recognize the urgency and understand that we must be willing to take bold steps to combat the climate crisis. That is why we are launching new initiatives to accelerate climate progress, redoubling our efforts to understand and protect Earth’s most consequential environments, and deepening our commitment to making the path forward more inclusive and equitable.

We are able to take bold steps in part because of the Fund for Climate Solutions, Woodwell’s internal funding mechanism which allows us to chart our own course and set our own priorities. Combating climate change requires all hands on deck, and we are extremely grateful to all of our partners and supporters who make it possible for us to undertake this vital work.

“To secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.”

This is the work of Woodwell Climate Research Center. This vision is what drives us, what keeps us going, why we stay in the fight in spite of what sometimes feels like long odds and frustratingly slow progress. This is what I think of when I look at my children and think of their futures, and what I think of when I travel to remote communities around the world who bear little responsibility for climate change yet face the worst of its impacts.

We at Woodwell Climate can see the possible futures. Together with our partners and supporters, we will do everything possible to motivate and enable the urgent action needed to successfully pass through the “rapidly closing window of opportunity” to meet the climate challenge.

Finally, as I near the end of my time as Acting President of Woodwell Climate Research Center and look forward to Phil Duffy’s return from his position as climate advisor in the White House, I want to thank all of you who have supported me and Woodwell Climate during this remarkable year. I never could have imagined—nor do I feel worthy of—being on a list that includes George Woodwell, John Holdren, Skee Houghton, and Phil Duffy, all brilliant and visionary leaders. Regardless, I’ve given it my all, and will keep doing so.

Onward.

Summer 2022

Climate Science for Change

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Updates and insights

Fund for Climate Solutions awards four new grants New awards leverage unique data and advance carbon markets

The Fund for Climate Solutions is a competitive, internal granting mechanism that supports early-stage and high-risk, high-reward research with breakthrough potential. The latest round of awards leverages Woodwell Climate’s long-standing work in tropical forests and river systems around the globe, and advances efforts to develop effective, equitable financial mechanisms to incentivize forest conservation.

Making NCS work: Improving adoption of climate smart technologies in the DRC by including subsistence farmers technology preferences in the policy design process Project lead: Glenn Bush Collaborators: Kathleen Savage, Joseph Zambo, Samantha Bonelli (Woodwell-Tufts student), and Fitalew Taye (Griffiths University) Climate smart agricultural techniques have an important role to play in avoiding or reducing greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining or enhancing food production and economic development. Previous FCS-funded research showed that System of Rice Intensification (SRI) is a viable climate smart technology for communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), with the potential to increase yields by up to 30%. However, to design effective policy to incentivize adoption, we must understand the social and economic trade-offs between business as usual and the novel technology.

This project aims to develop a social, cultural, and economic assessment method to understand SRI’s potential for adoption by subsistence farmers in the DRC. While the method will be developed and tested in DRC, it will be broadly applicable, with the potential to inform the design of policies to promote natural climate solutions.

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Integrating long-term global rivers data to enhance understanding, identify new research directions, and improve watershed management in a changing climate Project lead: Marcia Macedo Collaborators: Michael Coe, Linda Deegan, Anna Liljedahl, Christopher Neill, and Jonathan Sanderman Climate change is altering river flows, temperatures, and chemistry globally, with impacts on ecosystems and human communities. But the changes vary widely, and there are few comprehensive, global datasets from which to extract a broader perspective. Woodwell’s Water Program is uniquely positioned to address this challenge. Decades of work by Woodwell researchers and their partners at hundreds of sites around the world has resulted in an incredible array of data— global yet detailed, diverse yet comparable. By funding the first Woodwell Climate Postdoctoral Fellowship to analyze this data in an integrated framework, this project aims to expand the diversity of perspectives on Woodwell’s science staff, consolidate our understanding of the threats facing global rivers, and identify cross-cutting research priorities moving forward.

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Summer 2022

Promoting primary forest conservation as a key NCS strategy in the tropics; helping states enter the global carbon market Project lead: Michael Coe Collaborators: Glenn Bush, Wayne Walker, and Joseph Zambo Standing forests, particularly tropical forests, are capable of providing almost a quarter of the cost-effective climate mitigation needed by 2030, yet they receive less than 3% of available finance. A truly functioning carbon market that could correct this imbalance has yet to develop, and a key reason is the lack of a uniform, global rating standard to guide suppliers, reassure investors, and generally ensure carbon credits are what they claim to be. Other FCS-funded work is underway to develop a Forest Carbon Rating Standard (FCRS). This project will build on that, developing model cases of adoption of the standard by state-level jurisdictions in Mato Grosso, Brazil and Equateur and Tshopo provinces in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This work has the potential to accelerate capital flows into programs that can keep primary tropical forests standing.

By the numbers

1°C

Degrees of warming held back by combined carbon storage and biophysical effects of tropical forests.

Summer 2022

Climate Science for Change

Intensification in the world’s largest agricultural frontier: The impacts of land use transition on local climate and crop yields Project lead: Ludmila Rattis The Brazilian Cerrado, the world’s most biodiverse savanna, is key to regulating water availability and atmospheric moisture over South America. It is also where Brazilian agriculture is expanding the most. As a result, more than half the region has been deforested and deforestation continues at a rapid pace, with potential impacts on local temperatures and water availability. The relationship between deforestation and local climate has been well-studied in the Amazon region, but not in the Cerrado. The goal of this project is to model land use transition impacts on local climate and consequently, on crop yields in the Cerrado agricultural frontier. The results will provide new scientific insights into prospects for future food production in the Cerrado and have the potential to greatly strengthen our policy approaches to ending deforestation.

INSIGHTS FROM RECENT WOODWELL CLIMATE PUBLICATIONS

$12

Estimated cost of avoiding one ton of carbon emissions through suppression of fires in boreal forests.

6+ft

Depth at which some Amazon soils store nitrogen, preventing it from running off into nearby waterways.

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Updates and insights

continued

Impact updates DECEMBER Earth Emergency, a documentary about the natural feedback loops amplifying global warming, debuts on PBS, narrated by Richard Gere and featuring several Woodwell Climate scientists.

READ MORE

woodwellclimate.org/earth-emergency-documentary

Vladimir Pushkarev

JANUARY A NOVA episode, Arctic Sinkholes, features Woodwell Arctic Program Director, Dr. Sue Natali, alongside other prominent climate scientists working to better understand how climate change is impacting the Arctic.

READ MORE

woodwellclimate.org/arctic-sinkholes-documentary-methane-craters

Fred Palmer

FEBRUARY Woodwell Climate partners with the Massachusetts Office of the Attorney General and New York University State Energy and Environment Impact Center to convene a webinar series exploring how climate risk data can be used to improve public and private decision-making.

READ MORE

woodwellclimate.org/perspectives-on-climate-risk

MARCH Senior Scientist Dr. Jon Sanderman and colleagues at EDF propose a regional approach to improve verification and equity in soil carbon markets, published in the journal Science.

READ MORE

woodwellclimate.org/a-regional-approach-is-essential

APRIL Woodwell Climate, GreenRoots, and the City of Chelsea, MA, brief the Massachusetts legislative delegation on their partnership and resulting climate risk assessment.

READ MORE

woodwellclimate.org/chelsea-risk-assessment

MAY Woodwell Climate provides public comment on the SEC’s proposed rulemaking mandating climate risk disclosure, calling for stronger measures to ensure rigor and transparency in risk assessments.

READ MORE

woodwellclimate.org/public-comment-on-climate-risk-disclosure

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Climate Science for Change

Summer 2022

Woodwell launches new project monitoring, combatting the effects of permafrost thaw A $41 million grant through The Audacious Project funds Permafrost Pathways work Summer 2022

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 

Permafrost cores show ice locked in the soil that thaws rapidly once exposed. / photos by Chris Linder A section of coastline slumping into a bay. / photo by Chris Linder

It’s a big idea—a pan-Arctic monitoring network for permafrost emissions—but big ideas are exactly what The Audacious Project was created to foster.

Permafrost Pathways will develop more complete data on permafrost carbon and deliver that research into the hands of those poised to decide how we deal with the warming Arctic.

This April, Woodwell Climate Research Center was awarded 41.2 million dollars through Audacious to not only build such a network, filling gaps in our understanding of how much carbon is released into the atmosphere from thawing permafrost, but also to put research to work shaping policy and helping people.

Permafrost Pathways is led on the Woodwell side by Arctic Program Director Dr. Sue Natali and Associate Scientist Dr. Brendan Rogers, who have both been researching permafrost carbon for years. Dr. Natali found her way to the Arctic through a desire to work in a place significant to the global carbon story. The rapid changes she has witnessed in the past decade have underscored the Arctic as ground zero for climate change.

The new project, called Permafrost Pathways, combines scientific prowess from Woodwell with policy, community engagement, and Indigenous knowledge from the Arctic Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, the Alaska Institute for Justice (AIJ), and the Alaska Native Science Commission.

Carbon emissions from permafrost thaw are one of the biggest areas of uncertainty in global climate calculations. Thawing permafrost is expected to release between 30 and 150 billion tons of carbon by 2100, the higher estimates on par with or even exceeding the United States’ cumulative emissions if allowed to continue at current rates. Yet permafrost is not accounted for in carbon budgets and international agreements.

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Big problems require big solutions

“I’ve seen dramatic changes from one year to the next in the places where I work, and Arctic residents have been observing these changes for decades,” Dr. Natali says. “You can measure something one year and then the ground there collapses the next. The physical changes across the landscape are really startling to see.”

Drs. Natali and Rogers have seen eroded hillslopes, research trips abandoned due to wildfire, community meetings with Arctic residents whose homes are sinking—every experience reinforced the fact that there was still much more to learn

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about how thawing permafrost feeds into climate change and is impacting Arctic communities.

The Audacious grant will allow Drs. Natali and Rogers to pull together the threads of their prior research into a project that starts to tackle the issue on a grander scale.

“When you’re focused on individual problems or hypotheses, you’re not able to really think big about something like monitoring across the Arctic,” says Dr. Rogers. “Opening up a funding source like this lets you think at a scale that matches the problems we face.”

The project is thinking really big, with the goal of installing 10 new eddy covariance towers—structures with instruments that measure carbon flux—in key areas where data is currently lacking. Pathways will also maintain existing key towers that would otherwise be decommissioned, and augment others to measure carbon fluxes year-round.

“There are a lot of existing towers that are either not running through the winter, or they’re not measuring methane, or they’re on hold for instrumentation upgrades or lack of funding,” Dr. Natali says. “We will get even more new data by maintaining old towers than constructing new ones.”

In parallel, Woodwell will work with a team at University of Alaska Fairbanks to develop a novel permafrost model that fully harnesses the data, accounting for important but currently neglected processes, and ultimately delivers more accurate projections of permafrost emissions to inform policy makers and Arctic communities.

Projected permafrost loss by 2100 under high emissions (RCP 8.5)

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Climate Science for Change

‘It’s an awful decision’ While the science team ramps up new data collection, AIJ will be breaking down the issue of adaptation. The Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth, and it is not waiting for exact measurements to make the consequences known.

The land upon which many Alaska Native communities are located is destabilizing in the face of usteq—a Yupik word for the catastrophic ground collapse that occurs when thawing permafrost, erosion, and flooding combine to pull the ground out from under them. In many places the formerly solid cornerstones of villages—houses, roads, airports, cemeteries— have had to be picked up and moved to more stable ground.

“It is an awful, awful decision that communities are being faced with because the land on which they’re living is becoming uninhabitable,” says Executive Director of AIJ, Dr. Robin Bronen.

On top of the trauma of watching their villages sink into the Earth, there is no clear path for Arctic communities deciding they must completely relocate.

“It’s become painfully clear that we in the United States have no institutional or governance structure to facilitate this type of movement of people,” says Dr. Bronen. There is no standardized way for people displaced by the climate crisis seeking resettlement to apply for funding and technical assistance for a community-wide relocation.

Projected permafrost coverage (dark) shows the extent of loss (light) due to climate warming. Note the massive loss of permafrost when human carbon emissions are unmitigated.

Derived from Karjalainen et al.

(2019). / map

by Geg Fiske

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TIMELINE FOR

Summer 2018 Dr. Natali receives a Fund for Climate Solutions grant to install an eddy covariance tower in the YukonKuskokwim Delta.

Moore Foundation approves a $2.4M grant for 50 months for the Arctic Carbon Monitoring and Prediction System. This grant solidifies Woodwell’s partnership with the Arctic Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School.

An application is submitted to The Audacious Project and is not successful in moving to the next round.

2017/2018

February 2020

September 2020

Drs. Sue Natali and John Holdren discuss an Arctic monitoring program. A draft concept is written.

Applications are submitted to The Audacious Project for the Arctic and Amazon projects.

The February application shows promise: “We are intrigued by your idea and are pleased to invite you to submit a Round Two application.”

“If policy changes aren’t made nationally, then a lot of communities in the United States are going to be experiencing this incredible disconnect between making the decision that they are ready to leave, but having no resources to implement that decision,” says Dr. Bronen.

Permafrost Pathways will be working with Arctic residents to help them adapt to their rapidly shifting landscape. Through AIJ and the Alaska Native Science Commission, the project will connect with communities, collaborate to generate data they can use in their decision making and, if they make the choice to move, work with them to secure the resources needed for relocation.

Factoring permafrost thaw into our global future Permafrost Pathways isn’t the first to tackle these issues but, Dr. Natali says, it does represent a unique combination of expertise that could push forward both carbon mitigation and climate adaptation policies.

Leader of the Arctic Initiative, professor, and Senior Advisor to Woodwell’s president, Dr. John Holdren understands the value of connections in making lasting change; he has been speaking to top policy makers in the U.S. and abroad for much of his career.

MORE

Learn more about Permafrost Pathways at permafrost.woodwellclimate.org Learn more about The Audacious Project at www.audaciousproject.org

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August 2019

“All of us at the Belfer Center have been linking science and policy for a long time and communication is important to that,” says Dr. Holdren. “In my view, it’s going to remain important to have personal connections at high levels.”

Working through these connections, Permafrost Pathways will put the project’s science into the hands of policymakers to impress upon them the issue’s urgency.

“All the news coming out about permafrost carbon has been bad news,” says Dr. Holdren. “I think what we are going to find is that the high estimates are much more likely to be right than the low estimates. We’ve got to get that factored into the policy process.”

For Dr. Natali, the most important outcome of Permafrost Pathways is a future in which the threats presented by permafrost thaw are taken seriously by governments.

“I want to see permafrost thaw emissions accounted for,” says Dr. Natali. “I want to see the national and international community actually wrestle with the effects of permafrost thaw and to take action to respond to the climate hazards.”

Dr. Rogers says he hopes the collaborative nature of this already-big project will have even larger, rippling effects— paving the way for new partnerships and policy change.

“There’s the critical work that we will be doing, and then there are the new doors that a project of this scope opens,” says Dr. Rogers. “And we aren’t reaching our end goal without those open doors.”

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January 2021

September 2021

The Arctic project makes it to the short list, which means: “Your project proposal is being shared with our donors for their feedback and is undergoing further review over the next three to four weeks.”

Drs. Natali and Brendan Rogers, project co-leaders, are informed via Zoom that although $35M was asked for, the project is being awarded $41M (which included a $1M gift as a precommitment from a board member).

September 2021 – January 2022 Grant agreements through The Audacious Project are finalized.

March 2021

April 11, 2022 Dr. Natali delivers her TED talk in Vancouver!

March 1, 2022 Quadrature Climate Foundation awards $3M over 3 years to complete the funding needed for the Moore Foundation work.

Woodwell officially becomes 1 of 10 finalists for The Audacious Project among thousands of applicants. This means that there could be “meaningful support” for the project, with notification not until September.

Official start date of Permafrost Pathways at Woodwell.

Parts of an eddy flux tower

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1 Methane analyzer: measures the density of methane in the air 2 Sonic anemometer: measures wind direction and speed in three dimensions, used to determine fluxes of methane and carbon dioxide

3 Carbon dioxide analyzer: uses infrared technology to measure carbon dioxide

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and water vapor density in the air (attached to the angled arm)

4 Radiation shield: houses air temperature and relative humidity probes, with a shield that protects the probe from precipitation or direct sunlight that would

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impact the measurements

5 Precipitation gauge: measures the amount of rain and snow 6 Lightning rod: discharges any lightning strikes that hit the highest point of the

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tower and prevents electrical surges or damage to tower equipment

7 Processing center: the main “brain” of the flux tower that reads data from other instruments, processes them, and centralizes the output

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8 Additional processing: houses the “brain” of additional environmental measurements like soil temperature and soil moisture, from probes buried in the ground at various depths

9 Pump and washer fluid: used to keep parts of the methane analyzer (#1) clean 10 Net radiometer: measures incoming and outgoing radiation

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11 Photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) sensor: measures the amount of plant-usable light for photosynthesis Since this tower was constructed, satellite communications have been added for real-time data from the flux tower, and to allow check-in on the performance of the various sensors and instruments.

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Climate Science for Change

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Following Woodwell’s ‘North Stars’ Science, policy, mentorship—women of the Polaris Project have charted unique career paths The Polaris Project began in 2008 as a way to shepherd a new generation of Arctic and climate scientists into their careers. Each summer, Woodwell has selected a cohort of capable and motivated students, bringing them on a two-week field excursion guided by leaders in the field of Arctic science. Students explore the landscape, design a research project, and collect data, before returning to the Center to analyze their results.

In the United States, women make up only 28% of the STEM workforce—a trend that is reinforced by

Dr. Blaize Denfeld POLARIS YEARS 2009, 2010

Throughout her career, Dr. Blaize Denfeld has made her decisions based on spark.

“I feel like every step of the way, something I’ve done has sparked something in me that I realize, ‘maybe this is the next step that I want to pursue.’ So it’s been an interesting journey starting with the Polaris project to today,” says Dr. Denfeld.

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lack of support for women and girls to explore a career in science. Polaris aims to combat this. For the women of Polaris, the experience has provided valuable mentorship, built confidence in their skills, and sparked their motivation to forge ahead into their future as scientists. Alumnae of the Polaris Project have gone on to pursue doctorate degrees in climate research, influence climate policy, and some have even returned home to the Center. Here, we meet just a few of the impressive women of Polaris.

After completing the Polaris Project and her undergraduate studies, she applied for a Ph.D. program in Sweden, thinking “I was in Siberia for a month and a half, I can live in a foreign country for a few years.” It was there she felt a spark for the aspects of science that involved collaboration and coordination, so she accepted her next position at NASA’s Earth science division. After NASA, she felt the spark for combining science and policy and moved on to the US Global Change Research Program, and finally, her current position as Deputy Director of the Swedish Infrastructure for Ecosystem Science (SITES). SITES runs nine ecological research stations across Sweden that monitor the Arctic and Boreal environment. Some of the stations contain ice records that extend back to the 1940s, which Dr. Denfeld says provide a powerful image of just how much the climate is changing.

coordinates scientific collaborations across all SITES’s research stations.

For Dr. Denfeld, the best part of her position, and of all the jobs she’s held, has been her fellow scientists.

“I think for me it always comes back to the people and the collaborations.

Of all the positions I’ve had, the thing I enjoy the most is getting to work with passionate people that are really intelligent and have really good ideas,” says Dr. Denfeld.

Dr. Denfeld says that, whatever direction her career takes next, she hopes to be a model for other women in STEM. “As my career has progressed, I’ve benefited from really strong women in science, and so I feel a stronger passion now for paying it back for all the female scientists that helped me get to where I am now.”

In her current role, Dr. Denfeld

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Sturdivant recalls the days of field work alternating between chaos and tranquility.

Emily Sturdivant POLARIS YEAR 2011

Emily Sturdivant joined the 2011 Polaris expedition to Siberia with an interest in GIS and an open mind about where the experience might lead. Her project involved collecting data on carbon fluxes with a homemade flux chamber that she would later use to ground truth satellite data observations.

“One of my favorite memories is of when another participant and I headed out to collect samples at a lake across the river from the barge where we were bunked. They dropped us off with an inflatable boat that, along with my bucket and other equipment, we hauled through the bushes and pumped up with one foot or the other sinking through the vegetation,” Sturdivant says. “After the chaos of setting up, drifting on the lake as we collected our measurements in the midst of the wilderness was so peaceful.”

Though Sturdivant didn’t carry on with Arctic research after graduating from Clark University, she still carries what she learned from the experience

into her work as a Research Assistant and Geospatial Analyst Consultant at Woodwell where she works on forest carbon analyses.

“That experience became an invaluable reference as I continued in science and remote sensing. Now as I work with pixel values and ground data collected by others, I understand the work and complexity involved in collecting those data,” says Sturdivant.

As she grows in her career, Sturdivant says she is looking forward to being a positive influence on all her fellow colleagues.

“I want to keep being involved in the institution and mentorship,” Sturdivant says. “As Polaris did for me, I want to help others find moments of inspiration and guidance.”

“I would go out to a patch of water, anything from a tiny stream to a lake, tip my bucket upside down onto the water and track the change in gas concentration inside the bucket as I measured wind speed and other variables in the surroundings,” Sturdivant says.

 Emily Sturdivant taking gas measurements for her project in 2011. / photo courtesy of Emily Sturdivant

Dr. Bianca Rodríguez-Cardona POLARIS YEARS 2017, 2019

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Dr. Bianca Rodríguez-Cardona was an experienced Arctic researcher by the time she joined Polaris in 2017. She had been conducting her Ph.D. research on how fires influence stream chemistry in Russia’s Central Siberian Plateau when she heard about the program from Dr. John Schade, one of Polaris’s founding

faculty members, at an AGU meeting, and he convinced her to apply.

Dr. Rodríguez-Cardona was confident in her field skills when she arrived in Alaska that summer. But the tundra of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta was different from the boreal forests of her field site in Siberia. Flowing water 11

was much harder to find and she spent days hiking in search of a stream to take her measurements. When she did eventually find one, adding the carefully measured mix of salts she uses to track how nutrients flow through the water, they slipped by so fast she couldn’t jog downstream quickly enough to take a second measurement.

“I was sitting in mud up to my elbows and just thinking ‘this can’t be happening.’ I totally freaked out,” Dr. Rodríguez-Cardona says.

“We limit ourselves in whatever we think we can do until we’re there and we have to do it. It’s either now or nothing.”

Dr. Rodríguez-Cardona says. “The Polaris Project helped to show me that I’m a lot more capable, stronger, and resilient than I think I am.”

Dr. Rodríguez-Cardona returned to Alaska as a mentor in 2019 and went on to a postdoctoral position at the

University of Québec at Montréal. She hopes to find a permanent position after her postdoc that keeps her working and learning in the Arctic.

“I never imagined I’d be an Arctic scientist, but I’ve spent four summers now in the Arctic and Boreal regions.

So, there is something to be said about chances and serendipity.”

But she had been hiking that day with Dr. Schade, who helped her calm down, reassess the situation, and figure out how to get a second measurement with the supplies she had left. She looks back on that moment as a lesson in inner strength.

 Dr. Rodríguez-Cardona sampling a stream in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. / photo by John Schade

and she soon found herself on the 2017 expedition examining greenhouse gas emissions from water bodies in Alaska’s Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.

Darcy L. Peter POLARIS YEARS 2017, 2018, 2019

The universe seemed to conspire around Darcy Peter to bring her to the Polaris Project. The application was forwarded to her by professors and friends alike

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Peter is a Koyukon & Gwich’in Athabascan from the village of Beaver, Alaska and during that summer, she noticed the Polaris Project did not have much interaction with the Indigenous communities nearby. She brought this feedback to Woodwell Arctic Program Director Dr. Sue Natali.

“I said if Polaris is going to continue for

years, we need to have a relationship with the people, and if we are going to train the next generation of Arctic scientists, we should be making sure the research questions we are forming are impacting Alaska Natives in a positive way,” says Peter.

Peter returned as a student mentor in 2018 and worked with Dr. Natali to implement changes to the program that would build stronger relationships with locals in the community of Bethel where Polaris participants stay before heading out to the field site.

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have to worry about heatstroke is not normal. It was sad and depressing.”

Natalie Baillargeon POLARIS YEARS 2018, 2019

For Natalie Baillargeon, 2018 was full of new experiences—it was her first year in Polaris, her first summer research experience, her second ever plane ride, and her first time going camping. But it was not her last. Polaris sparked her passion for ecological research. She returned again in 2019, but to a very different Arctic.

Record-breaking heat, rolling thunder, and dry lightning storms—in Bethel, the heat literally shattered the thermometer.

“There were days where Polaris leaders had to call days short due to fieldwork being dangerous,” Baillargeon says. “To be doing fieldwork in the Arctic and

Peter organized a meeting where scientists and students could listen to the concerns of community members and apply them to students’ projects.

Peter also went on the local radio station to promote the meeting and spearheaded the creation of a newsletter about the project that was translated into Yupik, the traditional language spoken in the region. She volunteered her time in 2019 to lead the community meeting in Bethel again, and joined Woodwell full-time as a Research Assistant in 2020.

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Baillargeon returned to her college studies, determined to carry the research she began with Polaris through to its conclusion. She was examining the short- and long-term impacts of wildfires on vegetation. After four long years, through transferring colleges and moving her lab twice in the middle of the pandemic, Baillargeon recently submitted her paper for publication; her results show sustained impacts of wildfire on the ecosystem.

She began working at Woodwell Climate, as External Affairs Coordinator—before she graduated—and joined full time in June of 2021. According to Baillargeon, seeing the smoke of wildfires clouding the camp, and feeling the unusual heat of 2019 clarified her desire to effect change through policy as well as science.

“I actually think that 2019 Polaris was another pivotal experience for me because it reinforced my desire to work more on climate policy. I want to help make change instead of documenting the destruction of ecosystems.”

“The first community meeting in Bethel was very impactful—seeing seasoned, more experienced scientists have questions for the community… I think it really painted the picture for a lot of the scientists traveling with us that year of the power their research has to truly help people,” Peter says.

Peter is now the face of Woodwell in Alaska, working from Fairbanks surrounded by friends and family to continue building bridges between Woodwell and Alaska Native communities and non-profits, as well

Polaris Project base camp. / photo by Bianca  Rodriguez-Cardona

 Smoke from a nearby wildfire. 2019 was

a record breaking year in Alaska for temperature and wildfire. / photo by Natalie Baillargeon

as facilitating the Center’s ongoing Arctic fieldwork. She says she intends to dedicate her career to ensuring science is conducted ethically, in a way that benefits people.

“All research has the power to effect change,” Peter says. “What good is research if it only benefits other researchers? I want to keep serving Alaska Native communities and amplifying the voices of my people and my relations, whose voices have been put down their entire lives.”

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John Schade Memorial Fund Dr. John D. Schade had a long and distinguished career in research and education, passing away from cancer on March 26, 2021. He was devoted to managing Woodwell Climate’s Polaris Project, which integrates Arctic research and undergraduate education and is an initiative the Center manages with support from the National Science Foundation.

for the health of aquatic ecosystems.

She intended to return to carry on this research in 2020, but the pandemic postponed expedition plans. Instead, Bradley graduated from Gonzaga into a world altered by COVID-19.

Ellen Bradley POLARIS YEARS 2019, 2020

Ellen Bradley’s drive to study climate science comes from her Indigenous background. She is Tlingit and was searching for research opportunities close to her homelands when she found Polaris. During the summer of 2019, she marveled at the heat and smoke of a record-breaking season, listened to the concerns of the local communities in Bethel, and played the informal role of an Indigenous educator among her fellow students. Her experience solidified her desire to not only conduct research but to add an Indigenous voice to it.

“My passion about all of this, climate research, climate communication, science communication, comes from my being Tlingit, from my Indigenous background, from my connection to the land, and knowing that the actions that have caused us to be where we are have come from colonization,” Bradley says.

“If we are going to solve something like climate change, we are going to need the assistance of the Indigenous people who have lived in these places for, in many cases, over 20,000 years.”

Purpose of the Fund

The John Schade Memorial Fund was established to honor Dr. Schade’s unwavering dedication to student-led learning and scientific advancement.

The fund supports activities that reflect Dr. Schade’s passion for educating the next generation of scientists.

This may include but is not limited to: mentoring, education, leadership, equity in the sciences, advancing Arctic and environmental science to mitigate climate change, and career advancement of students.

“I know I want to keep skiing as part of my career, using skiing to tell stories about Indigenous people’s joy on the landscape and why outdoor recreation is important for our fight against climate change,” Bradley says.

The fund managers will direct funds to opportunities that have high impact potential for societal benefit and demonstrate the values that Dr. Schade shared with students and colleagues throughout his career.

She began work at Woodwell as a research assistant for the Arctic program in 2021 and she will return to Alaska in 2022 with the other 2020 Polaris students. When she looks towards the future of her career, Bradley says she wants to use the opportunities she’s had to represent Traditional Ecological Knowledge in the climate space.

“I’ve had a lot of privilege to go to school and I’m also really nerdy about science, so it just feels like the best way for me to use the tools I have,” Bradley says. “Incorporating my values into science is helpful to more than just myself and my passions. It’s a voice that has to be out there, or it won’t exist.”

Chris Linder

Bradley based her project on the concerns she was hearing from community members around fishing, and used phytoplankton as a proxy

Searching for her next step, she got involved in the winter sports community and began skiing for outdoor advocacy groups. She is an athlete for NativesOutdoors, Protect our Winters, and Deuter, as well as a ski ambassador for Crystal Mountain, Washington.

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Research Fellowship award and Woodwell’s own inaugural John Schade Memorial Fund award. Hernandez says she feels indebted to the mentorship she has received from Polaris.

Alma Hernandez POLARIS YEAR 2020

Alma Hernandez was accepted into the Polaris Project just before the world closed down due to COVID-19. In the uncertainty following lockdowns and rising cases, it became clear that the 2020 cohort wouldn’t be able to travel to the Arctic. Polaris, like everything that year, went virtual.

“There were many instances when I felt overwhelmed by the thought of not having the qualifications to apply for graduate school or fellowships. I almost gave up, but Sue [Natali] and the Polaris Alumni were all so encouraging. My success in these applications wouldn’t have been possible without their support,” says Hernandez.

Members of the 2020 cohort will be completing their field experience this summer. Hernandez is looking forward to her long-awaited trip to Alaska, excited to finally see the Arctic soils she has been studying so diligently. After that, she plans to complete her master’s degree and, perhaps after a well-earned break from school, earn a Ph.D. “I want to be able to contribute at least a little portion of knowledge to serve people in the future. My dream was always to be a researcher, and I plan to keep pursuing this goal.”

 Alma Hernandez at work in her lab at the University of New Hampshire. / photo courtesy of Alma Hernandez

Though the field components of Polaris were postponed, Hernandez was still able to join Zoom meetings with other students and project mentors. She found the meetings just as meaningful, talking with others whose passions and backgrounds differed from her own, but converged around climate and the environment. Her interests lay in the unique Arctic soil that holds a wealth of information about our Earth’s changing climate.

“The composition of Arctic soils is really unique. They are extremely affected by global warming and have long-term implications as they release more greenhouse gasses that contribute to climate change,” says Hernandez.

Since the completion of the program, Hernandez graduated from University of Texas, El Paso, and has been accepted to a Master’s program at the University of New Hampshire. She was also the recipient of the NSF’s Graduate

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Are Alaska’s streams getting too hot for salmon?

A brutal summer spurs new research into heat stress in Chinook salmon

Madeline Lee’s first year on the Ninilchik River was the year the salmon went belly up.

Lee had just joined the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, helping count fish on their way up the river. It was her first time ever working with salmon, but even so, she could tell something wasn’t right with them.

“Their behavior seemed strange to me,” she recalls—they swam lethargically, rather than surging upstream. Veteran Fish and Game techs agreed and hypothesized it was the warmer-thanusual weather.

Then reports started coming in from other rivers. Across the state that summer, locals were reporting dead salmon in the water, stranded on the gravel shallows, and washed up on the banks.

A team of scientists working on the Koyukuk River tallied 850 dead in that system alone. The true total was likely greater, as fish corpses normally sink and decompose out of view. But the real cause for alarm was the fact that, when

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the fish were cut open and examined, they were full of eggs. Their severalhundred mile return journey to their birth rivers had ended just short of the finish line, without depositing the eggs that would grow a new generation.

Across the state of Alaska, more than 100 different places saw early salmon mortality during the summer of 2019.

2019 broke Alaska’s all time temperature records “Warmer-than-usual” may be an understatement. 2019 broke Alaska’s temperature records with an alltime high of 90 degrees Fahrenheit— resulting in nearly 80 degree stream temperatures. Most Pacific salmon species surpass an acceptable temperature threshold between 60 and 70 degrees. Above that they become stressed, behave abnormally and, eventually, die.

Sue Mauger is Science & Executive Director of Cook Inletkeeper, an NGO that protects the Cook Inlet watershed, which includes the Ninilchik River. She is also a part of an interdisciplinary

project led by Woodwell Climate Associate Scientist Dr. Anna Liljedahl that will gather data on salmon for use in policy decisions on the Kenai Peninsula. Mauger has made her career out of studying water temperatures in Alaska’s streams. In 2002, she dropped her first temperature logger into a stream out of curiosity. The results—70 degrees Fahrenheit—were even surprising then.

Since then, she’s been wading through rivers, compiling data on how water temperatures have been changing. From 2002 onward, “we’ve had more warmer summers than not,” Mauger said. “And then we hit 2019, which is one we will probably talk about for most of our careers now.”

Mauger had previously conducted a five-year temperature study on Cook Inlet salmon streams and used the data to predict water temperatures 50 years into the future. Temperatures in 2019 exceeded them.

“We suddenly jumped so far ahead into the future compared to what we thought

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we would see,” Mauger said. And the consequences of that jump were made clear when salmon started dying with their eggs still inside them.

Salmon and people have a 12,000-year-old relationship in Alaska Alaska and salmon are more than interconnected—they are synonymous.

So if salmon runs are in jeopardy, many Alaskans believe Alaska is too.

Salmon start their lives as minuscule hatchlings, sheltering and feeding in the gravel beds of small streams before moving downstream to larger habitats as they grow. Once they’re large enough to hold their own, they leave their birth streams for the open ocean.

salmon completing their life cycle each year, which is why the egg-carrying corpses of 2019 had a rippling impact across the state. If you hadn’t been paying close attention to salmon before, you were now.

‘Chaperone’ protein acts as a hidden signal of heat stress Dr. Vanessa von Biela had been paying close attention to the salmon. As a research fish biologist at the United States Geological Survey’s Alaska Science Center, she was working on a paper about heat stress signals in salmon when the 2019 heatwave hit and made her research more pressing.

“It was a weird mix of emotions. I was scared to see change that fast but also it

Lee is now earning her master’s degree at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks with guidance from Dr. von Biela, hoping to answer some of those questions. Her research is part of Woodwell’s salmon project. For the past two summers, Lee has been tagging salmon and taking tissue samples to create a reference for how the fish are responding to changing temperatures.

She’s doing this by searching for a specific protein in the tissue of the fish, colloquially called “the chaperone” but scientifically referred to as Heat Shock Protein 70. When salmon get too warm, parts of their cells fall apart, breaking down normal functions. The chaperone binds to parts of the cell to keep them together and functioning in the cell.

After a few years at sea, adult salmon return home to the precise streams where they were born. Navigating using the Earth’s magnetic field and a strong sense of smell, salmon surge up streams en masse in the summer, climbing waterfalls—avoiding hungry bears, eagles, and humans—fighting for the chance to mate and lay their eggs in the gravel shallows.

Salmon’s return migration has been foundational to Alaska Native cultures for 11,800 years. Indigenous peoples continue to steward the resource to maintain healthy populations in their home streams. For tribes, salmon is part of their individual and cultural identities—both a sacred fish and a subsistence food source. Salmon hauled in during the summer are smoked and dried to sustain communities through the winter.

Alaska’s economy also revolves around salmon. The seafood industry created $5.6 billion in economic activity for the state in 2017 and 2018, and salmon comprised the majority of that value. From commercial fisheries to sportfishing to salmon tourism, Alaskan businesses depend on the

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 Madeleine Lee searches for radio signal of tagged fish. / photo by Madeline Lee  Photo courtesy of Alaska Department of Fish and Game was a relief that somebody other than me was going to know that it was a problem,” Dr. von Biela said.

It also raised a lot more questions—is there a sharp temperature threshold after which heat stress overtakes salmon, or is it a gradual decline?

How resilient is the system to hightemperature years? What would a warmer future look like for salmon?

It’s meant to carry the salmon through warm days until they can get to cooler waters, but it’s not a permanent adaptation.

“If you’re hot and you turn on a fan, it can make a difference for a while.

It can be the difference between you being comfortable and you being uncomfortable,” Dr. von Biela said.

“But at some point, it doesn’t matter

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Streams and rivers in Alaska can get their water in one of three ways— fed by some combination of rain and snow, groundwater, or melting glaciers.

Rainfed streams tend to be warmer, fluctuating with daily air temperatures.

Glacial streams actually get colder on hotter days as more ice from the melting glacier gets flushed downstream. Over time, this diminishes the glacial ice available to cool downstream reaches.

Groundwater-fed streams, however, take on the average annual air temperature of a region. On both warm and cold days, the water temperature remains consistent. Mauger has been working with thermal imagery to track down groundwater sources that feed salmon streams on the Kenai Peninsula.

Protecting them could give spawning salmon a needed boost.

“Think of them as little cold water faucets along the stream channels.

Those places will become increasingly important as adult salmon come back up the stream. It can use these cold water stepping stones to get its way up to the spawning beds,” Mauger said.

  Capturing salmon for tagging. / photo courtesy of Madeline Lee  An example of a salmon carcass still containing eggs, 2020. / photo by Madeline Lee how high the fan is going, you’re just hot. And all of a sudden you’re uncomfortable again.”

At some point, the energy required to produce the emergency protein, combined with their body’s high demand for oxygen in warmer water, simply overwhelms the fish’s energy reserves. Add to that the fact that spawning salmon are already pushed to their physical limits during migration.

They stop eating and dedicate all their

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remaining energy to pushing their way upstream and developing eggs.

The rising heat hits them at the worst possible time.

Keeping Alaska’s waters cold Salmon’s continued success in Alaska hinges on the ability to keep streams cool, even as the climate warms. And managing stream temperature relies on managing the land around it.

These faucets can be anywhere— crossing state, federal, tribal, and private land, which makes protecting them a complicated task. It’s a problem that conservationists run into at every stage of the salmon’s life cycle, notes Kenai Peninsula Borough’s Land Manager, Marcus Mueller. From the spawning beds to the ocean and back again, salmon unwittingly cross humandrawn boundaries.

“There’s a lot of human influence on the salmon journey which becomes important when you want to see that cycle complete and turn around again and continue,” Mueller said.

‘Salmon have a people problem’ Mueller is thinking about how to incorporate the data from the project into land management decisions.

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 Data from MODIS Terra, NASA Earth Observations. / maps by Carl Churchill and Greg Fiske Cook Inletkeeper has already piloted a successful protection program for lands with groundwater sources— working with the Kachemak Heritage Land Trust to send information to landowners about the value of their land for salmon and offering to buy it in trust. Another proposed management strategy is maintaining riparian vegetation along stream banks to provide shade during the extended days of the Alaskan summer.

But these solutions are not simple to implement. The Kenai Peninsula is a county-level municipality the size of West Virginia, and the people who live in it have diverse, sometimes conflicting perspectives on Alaskan natural resources. Though the state tends towards limited government intervention, Mueller notes there have been past examples of compromise for conservation. With something as culturally important as salmon on the line, he says, people will find a way to come together to solve the problem.

“Salmon have a people problem,” Mueller said. “And the only way we can

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figure it out is through conversation.

My hope for what comes out of this project is that we move the conversation forward.”

Lee has been working to engage the Ninilchik tribe with her project, to help center their voice in the ensuing conversations. On both the Ninilchik and other rivers, Alaska Native tribes have suffered restrictions on their rights to fish because of crashing salmon fisheries, an outcome of excluding tribal input in policy decisions.

“There’s a history of extraction of knowledge that we don’t want to be a part of,” Lee said. “If we are going to progress in this project we need the tribe on board.”

Her research required access to tribal land, so she has made sure to update tribal leadership on the science, inviting members of the Ninilchik Native Association to project planning meetings and presenting her findings to their council. She also hired a Ninilchik youth intern to help collect samples in the summer of 2021.

Dr. Liljedahl hopes to grow the project through new grants to continue building relationships in the region and gathering more data on the pressure climate change is placing on wild salmon. In the end, though, the fate of Alaskan salmon will come down to the willingness of Alaskan people to work through hard conversations—first about land and fisheries management, but eventually, inevitably, about global-scale responses to climate change. Because the temperature is going to keep rising, and every degree will make a difference for the salmon.

The Salmon and People project is a multi year research project into the impacts of climate on salmon and salmon culture in Alaska. It was funded by the Fund For Climate Solutions, an internal granting program that provides resources to cutting-edge projects to get big ideas off the ground.

MORE

View the multimedia story at: woodwellclimate.org/too-hot-for-salmon

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Agriculture and food security threatened by warmer, dryer world Models predict increasing crop failures in major breadbaskets over the next three decades

Though droughts and bad harvest years are occasional risks for farmers, modern agriculture is built on the assumption of a predictable and stable climate. Rising temperatures are breaking down that assumption, leaving the future of food uncertain. Two new studies put the increasing risks in sharp relief.

Seventy-two percent of today’s staple crops—maize, wheat, soybeans and rice—are grown in just five countries, in regions of the world known as breadbaskets. From the plains of North America to the river valleys of India and China, these regions earned their distinction for supporting hundreds of years of agricultural production with their climatic suitability.

“These regions have developed this way for centuries in the same way that human settlements have developed around water, because that’s where the resource was,” says Woodwell Research Assistant, Monica Caparas.

Caparas works on agricultural risk models. Last year, she led an analysis of crop failures in global breadbaskets, projecting the likelihood of declining

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yields in the upcoming decades. Her results conjured a world where these centuries-old food producing regions may no longer be so reliable. By 2030, crop yield failures will be 4.5 times higher.

By 2050, the likelihood shoots up to 25 times current rates.By mid-century, the world could be facing a rice or wheat failure every other year, with the probability of soybean and maize failures even higher. A synchronized failure across all four crops becomes a possibility every 11 years.

If that sounds like rapid, drastic change, that’s because it is. The immediacy of increasing failures surprised even Caparas.

“The fact that by 2050—which we are almost halfway to already—there could be a wheat failure every couple of years.

It’s startling.”

One major component of crop failure predictions is water scarcity. In a warmer world, water is a critical resource. Climate change will shift precipitation patterns, drying out some regions and inundating others. Most of

the world’s breadbaskets are headed in the drier direction.

Caparas factored water availability into her analysis, finding the likelihood of crop failure much higher in water scarce sections of breadbaskets.

Wheat is especially water dependent, particularly in India where 97% of wheat crops are growing in areas already experiencing water stress.

Irrigation could make up for some lack of rain, but groundwater stores are already overdrawn in many places.

Farms beginning to feel the impacts of climate change in Brazil In Brazil, agriculture is already showing signs of declining productivity from changing precipitation. Woodwell Assistant Scientist Dr. Ludmila Rattis works in Mato Grosso, where she researches the impacts of agriculture and deforestation on the regional climate. Central Brazil is a major breadbasket for soybeans and maize— as well as cattle—and as crop demand increases, farms and ranches have advanced into the Amazon rainforest and the Cerrado, the Brazilian Savanna.

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is stunted. Rainy seasons are also starting later, limiting the possibility for planting two rounds of crops in a single season, which cuts into farmer’s profits and encourages further expansion via land clearing.

Ideal climate for agriculture migrating north Caparas notes that increasing crop failure doesn’t necessarily mean we are headed for a world without maize or soybean. But it does mean a drastically different agricultural system—one where hard decisions have to be made about land use.

“Increasing crop failures doesn’t mean that these crops won’t ever be able to grow in these areas again, or that they should be abandoned, just that it’s going to be much harder for them to be as productive,” Capraras says. “There might be a certain threshold of losses that would lead people to leave these croplands.”

 Map based on interpreted data from AgMIP data. / map by Carl Churchill  Croplands in Brazil. / photo by Paulo Brando Clearing and burning forests not only releases carbon that contributes to rising global temperatures, it can also have drying effects on the local watershed.

In recent years, farmers in Mato Grosso and the Cerrado have reported issues with dry spells, though they would not attribute it to climate change. Dr. Rattis wanted to quantify these anecdotes to show that they were connected.

“I was trying to see why they were denying the climate changing at the same time they were feeling the climate changing. Were they feeling that in their pockets? Was it affecting the finance of their business?”

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Dr. Rattis modeled temperature and precipitation changes along Brazil’s Amazon-Cerrado frontier. Her results not only predicted that by 2060, 74% of the region’s agricultural land would fall outside of the ideal range of suitability for rainfed agriculture, they showed that nearly a third of farms already did.

The changes are affecting crop productivity. When the temperature gets warmer, plants grow faster, releasing more water vapor into the air from their leaves as a byproduct of photosynthesis. If there isn’t a steady supply of soil moisture available to replace the lost water, plant growth

There is some potential for migration of the most productive lands as northern latitudes begin to warm. Caparas’s projections showed the greatest likelihood of breadbasket migration from the United States into Canada.

However, just because the climate suitability is migrating, doesn’t mean agricultural production will shift along with it. Other factors including soil fertility or existing land uses could limit the practicality of moving to new regions, especially if it jeopardizes existing climate solutions as the case in Brazil has shown. Clearing forests is only accelerating warming, drought and declining productivity.

Future of food depends on drought resilience Shoring up food security in a changing climate will require system-wide changes to our current agricultural system. Part of that starts with

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Maize yields compared with historic baselines

adjusting farming strategies to mitigate the effects of the warming that’s already unavoidable. Dr. Rattis has begun outreach to the farmers whose land she collected data on, giving them a picture of what their farms will look like if nothing changes.

“We need to make them feel that they’re part of the research, because they are.

If we do, once we get the results, the probability of them using those results to adapt the way that they produce food will increase,” Dr. Rattis says. “They can see themselves in the historic part of the graphic and then I show them where, climatically speaking, their farm is going.”

She’s hoping these conversations will open Brazil’s farmers up to practices that leave more native vegetation on the landscape, which would help stabilize the local climate and keep the natural watershed intact.

Caparas draws hope from the fact that the outcomes of her models are not set in stone. In the planet-wide experiment of climate change, we can affect the results.

“These projections are due to changes in climate. They don’t account for adaptation strategies. The agricultural technology industry is fast-growing and so I think that there is hope, as long as adaptation techniques are implemented equitably,” Caparas says.

Much of the innovation, Caparas says, will have to involve developing drought resistant crop varieties and less water intensive agricultural processes. In the long term however, securing a productive agricultural future for the Earth’s nearly 10 billion people by 2050 will depend on securing a stable climate.

“First and foremost it always has to be getting climate change in check,” says Caparas.

 Maps based on interpreted data from AgMIP data. / maps by Carl Churchill

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Despite centuries of successful Indigenous management, the Xingu’s fire regimes are changing The first designated Indigenous land in Brazil, Território Indígena do Xingu (TIX), has been cited by studies for decades as a successful buffer against the deforestation, degradation, and fires that plague other parts of the Amazon. A recent study, co-authored by Dr. Divino Silvério, Professor at the Universidade Federal Rural da Amazônia, and Dr. Marcia Macedo, Woodwell Water Program Director, shows that fire regimes are changing in the Xingu region, leading to more forest loss and degradation.

The paper shows roughly 7 percent of the TIX has been degraded by drought and fire. Degradation is part of a feedback loop wherein damaged forests become drier and more susceptible to burning in future fires.

I remember when I started my Ph.D., a 2006 paper showed that Indigenous lands were extremely effective fire breaks— the Xingu just never saw fire.

Climate change has completely changed that story.

Dr. Marcia Macedo

 An Indigenous village in the Xingu reserve. / photo by Divino Silvério

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the paper explains, so why the increased prevalence of fire and degradation?

Understanding: Changing fire regimes

Climate change is drying out forests, making them more susceptible to escaped burning from management practices. The other factor driving degradation within the territory is growing population. Indigenous communities are becoming less nomadic, and village populations are rising, increasing the area of forest used for subsistence. Degradation was higher in areas surrounding villages.

Indigenous communities in the TIX have been managing the rainforest for centuries with finely adapted slash and burn cycles that create space for agriculture and promote the growth of natural species used in construction, medicine, and cooking. These cycles can last three to four decades before an area is burned again. Traditionally, burns were well controlled and the rainforests surrounding burned areas were healthy enough to prevent flames from escaping.

The way Indigenous people manage fire has stayed the same, but we now have a different climate. Indigenous people have been in these regions for many decades or centuries. And all this time they have had their own fire management to produce food that usually doesn’t end in these huge forest fires.

But over the past two decades, the paper observed, escaped fires have occurred more often within the reserve and the likelihood that forest is lost post-fire is rising, particularly in seasonally flooded forests. Indigenous management practices have not changed significantly,

Dr. Divino Silvério

What this means for Indigenous fire management

traditional practices to protect the forest against more frequent, intensifying fires—despite these communities not contributing to global emissions.

Previous attempts to manage increasing fires through prescribed burning have clashed with the needs of residents of the TIX. Burning at a different time of year does not cultivate the same species, and residents were concerned it was jeopardizing the growth of plants used for medicine.

Dr. Silvério is working with residents of the Xingu to understand how to integrate changes to fire management practices with traditional strategies in a way that supports community needs.

One example, he said, could be shifting the primary construction material from grasses (that grow after fire) to palms.

Indigenous people will probably need to learn how to live in this new reality, an environment with more drought and more fires.

We are trying to work in a participative way to construct solutions with them.

Dr. Divino Silvério

Climate change will force Indigenous communities within the reserve to adapt

 Burn scars in the forest of the TIX. / photo by Divino Silvério

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Unequal heat A visit to Worcester, Massachusetts in the heat of summer highlights the inequities of rising temperatures Summer 2022

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 The presence of tree cover can make a huge difference in the temperature of a neighborhood and often correlates with social vulnerability.

Here a wooded, affluent street contrasts with the hot pavement of Webster Square. / photos by Sarah Ruiz  Land use and land cover in central Worcester. / photo by Sarah Ruiz It’s a hot, humid day in late August and we’re all already sweating as Arman Bajracharya begins to tell us about his project.

Bajracharya is a second year Ph.D. student in the geography department at Clark University in Worcester, MA, where we’re standing now. He pulls out a green and orange map of the city and points to our location on one of the orange blocks that signals industrial land use and impervious land cover.

We’re standing in the sparse shade of some trees ringing the edge of an old millpond, but we had to walk across a hot, cracked parking lot to access it. The neighborhood is called Webster Square.

It is located in the southern reaches of Worcester, which was once a vibrant epicenter of the industrial revolution.

That industrial heritage is evident both on the maps Bajracharya shows us as

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well as in our surroundings. Truck beds and spare pvc piping and gravel piles rest at the edge of the water. It’s also scorching hot.

Temperature varies with land cover.

In cities, the presence of impervious surfaces like asphalt, concrete, and metal trap heat, while natural surfaces— water or vegetation—can help buffer it.

The distribution of these hotspots and heat buffers in Worcester, as in many cities, is not equal. Some neighborhoods endure much higher temperatures than others during the summer months.

Bajracharya’s research during the Summer of 2021 made possible by the Edna Bailey Sussman Fund employed remote sensing and census data to

determine what features make a neighborhood more susceptible to extreme heat. He mapped temperature, land cover, and land use onto areas of greatest social vulnerability in Worcester, as well as two other postindustrial cities in Massachusetts, Haverhill and New Bedford. The results show that as climate change warms cities, the communities that have already experienced environmental inequities are likely to face more.

A gateway to the American dream Worcester, Haverhill, and New Bedford are designated as gateway cities. These places, often important centers of the industrial revolution, have served as “gateways to the American dream,” offering job opportunities and housing for many who immigrated to the region.

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Worcester began its industrial life as a mill town but soon grew into a manufacturing center for a variety of goods. It was also a crossroads of canal, and later, rail thoroughfares connecting the rest of Massachusetts with Providence and New York. Today, at the edge of the millpond in Webster Square, the remnants of an old rail bridge are still visible and active trains can be heard traveling the present day rail lines in the distance.

Industrial neighborhoods built to serve mills and factories often filled in with minority populations, and over time, wealthier families moved to quieter and more suburban areas of town. In the case of Haverhill, some communities also suffered the consequences of redlining, a discriminatory Federal Housing policy during the post-Depression era that limited financial services available

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to people, overwhelmingly AfricanAmerican and people of color, deemed “hazardous to investment,” limiting social mobility and enforcing racial housing segregation. These factors often intensified the overlap between areas of high social vulnerability and industrial infrastructure.

“In the 1930s, these practices delineated which areas were defined to be good for financial services like loans,” Bajracharya says. “Which is why there is a historical divide between which areas are favorable and which areas are not.

That can impact how we see the land being used today, especially where the greenspaces are.”

Mapping the heat Bajracharya used available satellite data to show the relationship between land cover and social vulnerability.

Examining the imagery, he created an index of relative heat in the city. Areas with high tree cover correlated with lower land surface temperatures. He then overlaid social vulnerability and environmental justice datasets that index communities in Massachusetts based on socioeconomic status, minority status, primary language, and other demographic information.

“Throughout many or most U.S. cities, neighborhoods facing greater environmental risks (such as from heat waves, urban flooding, and hazardous wastes) were historically settled by poorer families or racial and ethnic minorities,” Bajracharya says.

“And there really is a lot of evidence for communities of color, or lowincome communities, continuing to be disproportionately exposed to risk.”

According to Bajracharya, the analysis showed a startling overlap between the

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data shows how humans are interacting with an area of land. For example, an area of grassy land cover could be used for conservation, residential or commercial purposes.

When natural land covers such as trees and water bodies are present but inaccessible, it limits potential social cobenefits that green and blue spaces can offer. Beyond regulating temperature, these spaces can reduce air pollution and provide recreational opportunities.

Bajracharya and Dr. Roy Chowdhury emphasize the importance of field trips like this one, along with more in-depth work to ground truth satellite image analysis in local realities.

“There’s a really interesting mix of industrial and commercial uses interspersed with areas important for conservation and recreation, that could also potentially help in bringing down surface temperatures,” Dr. Roy Chowdhury says. “Tree cover and water are really helpful for buffering against the urban heat island, but so much more needs to be done to understand and steward such ‘ecosystem services,’ especially in underserved areas of cities.”

Building an Emerald City

hottest areas of the city and the most vulnerable. Neighborhoods classified as Environmental Justice Communities tended to have a lower percentage of green vegetation (especially tree cover), with higher average temperatures. The most vulnerable areas are clustered in the core of the city.

The satellite maps only tell part of the story, however, which is why Bajracharya and his advisor Dr. Rinku Roy Chowdhury have brought us out onto the streets of Worcester. A few blocks away from the millpond, a grassy field rolls out behind a chain-link fence.

In Bajacharya’s maps, this appears as a patch of vegetation interspersed among

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the developed land uses. The field sits under metal towers belonging to a nearby power station.

Often, Dr. Roy Chowdhury reminds us, the “green” and “blue” spaces that do exist in vulnerable areas may be inaccessible to residents, either cordoned off as private property or unsuitable for use due to safety concerns or an absence of trails or paths. The sign on the chain-link fence here warns of danger from high voltage.

This is where the distinction between land cover and land use becomes important. Land cover refers to what is currently on the land—whether that’s forest, grassland, or concrete. Land use

With climate change accelerating, every patch of green and blue on the map will become indispensable in regulating city temperatures. To prevent a crisis of infrastructure failures and heatrelated illnesses and even deaths from unfolding during brutal summers, cities like Worcester are going to have to get greener, faster—and do so in a way that benefits residents equitably.

Dr. Roy Chowdhury and Bajracharya are interested in investigating further to figure out the most promising pathways towards greener, more equitable cities.

Questions still remain around finding the best proportion and distribution of land cover and implementation strategies that will improve environmental equity and encourage citizen participation. Woodwell’s Dr.

Climate Science for Change

Summer 2022

 Mural on a structure in Beaver Brook Park depicting the city’s East-West trail. / photo by Sarah Ruiz  Land surface temperature by census block in Worcester. Bajracharya overlaid this data with data on land cover, land use, and social vulnerability to assess the city’s heat risk. / map by Arman Bajracharya and Carl Churchill

Chris Neill has been collaborating with Dr. Roy Chowdhury and Clark University over the last decade to analyze land cover and ecological structure of urban vegetation in several U.S. cities.

“Every tree makes a difference, but there are scale effects as well. What is the minimum threshold to make a difference? What’s the mix in different cities or neighborhoods? What do local residents value and want? These are really interesting and important questions to ask,” says Dr. Roy Chowdhury.

Research into the interactions between these green spaces and rising temperatures could help city planners make more conscious decisions about

Summer 2022

Climate Science for Change

climate adaptation. Baracharya’s future projects may also examine flooding risk in cities, which adds another dimension to potential inequities in climate risk.

Future research could also incorporate social interviews in different neighborhoods to understand residents’ concerns regarding their environment, climate change, and quality of life.

The last stop on our Worcester tour is Beaver Brook Park—an example of what’s possible when a city decides to reinvest in its natural spaces. The neighborhood surrounding the park was a primary destination for Black Americans moving north after the Civil War and has a history as a vibrant minority community. The titular brook had been paved over years ago, running in darkness under the city until 1990,

when it was daylighted again to serve as a central feature of the park.

The area is now a green haven for recreation in the neighborhood and a stop on Worcester’s East-West trail, which Dr. Roy Chowdhury describes as “an emerald necklace” running through Worcester—one of the ways the city and numerous environmental stewardship organizations are working towards broader greenspace protections and access.

The feel of the air here contrasts sharply with where we started the day—a hint of the power urban greenspaces hold. Despite the heat warping off the street pavement, in the shade of old oak trees by the gurgling brook, it’s easy to stop sweating for a moment and just feel the breeze.

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WHAT’S GOING ON? This is an example of a healthy multisystem small family farm project located in Bom Jesus Do Tocantins, Pará, Brazil. It shows a portion of the farm containing highly productive pasture grasses interspersed with stands of fast-growing eucalyptus. The lush pasture provides healthy sustenance, while the trees provide shade for the animals to escape the tropical heat. Under these ideal conditions, cattle and milk productivity are greatly increased.

WHY DOES THIS MATTER? Providing technical assistance to small family farms to achieve results like this is an important part of Amazon conservation goals. Small farmers are currently responsible for about 25% of deforestation. We’ve seen that making the existing deforested land more productive leads to a significant decrease in carbon dioxide emissions, an increase in carbon sequestration, and an increase in the wellbeing of the family. photo by Sarah Moore

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Climate Science for Change

Summer 2022

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