Magazine ~ Fall 2023

CLIMATE science for CHANGE

How the work gets done From the forest floor to the halls of government, this is how climate science makes change.

People power The individuals, communities, and organizations moving us forward.

FALL 2023

Contents 01 /

From the President & CEO

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Updates and insights

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09 / 14 /

16 / 20 /

Google grant to advance artificial intelligence methods in Center science

CLIMATE science for CHANGE

Think like an ecosystem Climate scientists and cattle ranchers meet at High Lonesome Ranch Center | Where the work gets done Adaptation workshop brings together Alaska Native communities and federal agencies

Climate Science for Change is published

by Woodwell Climate Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

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Futures forged in trust

Woodwell Climate Research Center conducts science for solutions at the nexus of climate, people and nature. We partner with leaders and communities for just, meaningful impact to address the climate crisis.

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Bridging the gap between science and policy

Dr. R. Max Holmes

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Endowment gifts ensure the future of climate research Final image | Artistry of maps

PRESIDENT AND CEO

CHIEF COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER

Dr. Heather M. H. Goldstone SCIENCE WRITER/EDITOR

Sarah Ruiz DESIGN DIRECTOR

Julianne Waite COPY EDITOR

Elizabeth Bagley IMAGES

Linda Deegan, Abby Fennelly, Greg Fiske, Darcy Glenn, Heather Goldstone, Nick Hagen/TED, Nolan Kitts, Jonathan Kopeliovich, John Le Coq, Eric Lee, Chris Linder, Andrew Mullen, Sue Natali, Sarah Ruiz, Aquanette Sanders, Lindsay Scott, Christina Shintani, Tessa Varvares, Scott Warren WOODWELL CLIMATE RESEARCH CENTER

 Cover and above: Summer PEP student Avion Brown and Senior Research Scientist Kathleen Savage collect and analyze soil samples at Howland Research Forest, Maine.

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In June, Brown and Savage conducted a research excursion to measure methane fluxes at Howland, accompanied by PEP student Jonathan Kopeliovitch, who documented the trip.

Howland contains both dry forests and wetlands, making it an ideal location to study the dynamics of methane production in different soil types, and how those dynamics might be changing alongside the climate. / photos by Jonathan Kopeliovich

The Woods Hole Partnership Education Program (PEP) is a program of the six Woods Hole scientific institutions and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, designed to provide summer research experiences for college students from underrepresented backgrounds.

MORE

Learn more about work at Howland Forest: https://www.woodwellclimate.org/howland-forest-maine-methane-monitoring

149 Woods Hole Road Falmouth, MA 02540 Email: info@woodwellclimate.org Website: woodwellclimate.org 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 R. Max Holmes, President & CEO

Seeing the forest for the trees George Woodwell recognized decades ago that there is no solution to climate change without protecting tropical forests. That is why Woodwell Climate scientists have focused on forest ecology since we were founded in 1985, and why to this day we maintain active research and policy programs in Earth’s great tropical forests, including the Amazon and the Congo. For a livable climate, it is absolutely essential that the vast quantity of carbon contained in tropical forests—built up over centuries through the process of photosynthesis pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere—stays in forests and out of the atmosphere.

While progress has been made, the reality is that tropical deforestation continues, threatening climate as well as biodiversity, water cycling, and the rights and livelihoods of local and indigenous people.

I have long wished that people would recognize and appreciate the intrinsic value of tropical forests—their beauty, their majesty, their biodiversity—and that would motivate them to protect these incredible landscapes.

Talk of “valuation of ecosystem services” and the like, essentially trying to put a dollar value on the priceless, felt degrading to me.

Begrudgingly, my view has changed. I’ve come to accept that as long as more money can be made cutting trees down than keeping them standing, the future of tropical forests—and hence global climate—is bleak. I’ve also come to better appreciate the challenges of some of the people deciding the fate of tracks of tropical forests, be they poor farmers in the Amazon struggling to feed their families, or government officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo trying to balance forest conservation with the need for economic development.

If we all benefit from tropical forests, who then pays the bills? In other words, where could the money come from to overcome the short-term economic incentive to cut down tropical forests? Philanthropy can and does help, but the scale of the need greatly exceeds the capacity of global philanthropy. International monetary

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From R. Max Holmes, President & CEO

continued

commitments brokered through the United Nations also help, but there is a long and checkered history of lofty commitments followed by broken promises. So the chainsaws and bulldozers continue their work, and tropical forests continue to disappear.

Where do we go from here? How can it become more profitable to preserve tropical forests than to destroy them?

The most promising possibility, I believe, lies in the potential of carbon markets to unlock massive amounts of private investment to protect, manage, and restore tropical forests. As businesses around the world are making net zero pledges, they need to aggressively reduce their emissions. This won’t happen overnight, and not all emissions can be eliminated with current technology. So there is both a short- and long-term need for carbon credits to offset remaining emissions. And one of the largest potential sources of carbon credits comes from nature-based climate solutions such as protecting or restoring tropical forests.

Anyone following the evolution of carbon markets will recognize that they are a mess. Over the past several months, numerous exposé news stories have highlighted the challenges and failings of the current state of the market, without doing the harder work of trying to figure out the path forward. This has shaken market confidence (which was already shaky), threatening the viability of the market and shrinking the investments that are essential for the future of tropical forests and global climate.

At Woodwell Climate, we believe that carbon markets can be a force for good for forests, for forest-dependent local and indigenous people, and for global climate. And we believe that our science has a critical role to play in charting the path forward.

Over the coming months, you’ll hear more from us about this exciting, controversial, and challenging topic. It is the focus of one of our three strategic initiatives: Unlocking Landscape Opportunities for Climate Solutions (UnLOCS).

We will leverage our deep on-the-ground experience in the Amazon and the Congo rainforests with our worldclass expertise in satellite remote sensing, big data, policy engagement and public communications, to bring transparency and credibility to carbon markets in service of climate, nature, and people.

As George Woodwell wrote in 1998, “The forests of earth constitute a capital asset that sustains the world’s population.” Our task now is to figure out how to incentivize the owners of those assets to maintain their forests for the greater good. Carbon markets offer a way of doing so.

Onward.

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Updates and insights

Impact updates JULY

Nick Hagen/TED

Dr. Ludmila Rattis takes the stage at TED Countdown Summit, becoming the second Woodwell Climate scientist to give a TED Talk. Her story about the power of tapirs to restore tropical forests is due out in early 2024.

AUGUST

Greg Fiske

Six Alaska Native communities host Permafrost Pathways team members to discuss community needs and conduct initial field work to inform and advance community-led climate adaptation planning and decision-making.

SEPTEMBER

Sarah Ruiz

Dr. Alex Naegele and colleagues from the Center for Climate and Security brief staff from Congressional offices and federal agencies on two new climate security case studies—Iran and Türkiye.

OCTOBER

Chris Linder

Grist quotes Dr. Marcia Macedo extensively in coverage of severe drought in the Amazon, highlighting impacts on river and forest ecosystems and local communities, as well as the risk posed by climate feedback loops.

NOVEMBER

Eric Lee

Laura Uttley, Director of Government Relations, participates in the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s fall advisory committee meeting, which focused on how to improve coordination, infrastructure, data, and integration of climate services.

DECEMBER

Heather Goldstone

Woodwell Climate and the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ministry of Environment release a first-of-its-kind report on climate risks and policy pathways to secure financing for forest conservation and climate resilience.

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Updates and insights

continued

Fund for Climate Solutions awards five new grants From floods to fire, the 2023 summer cohort of FCS projects seeks scalable climate solutions The second round of 2023 Fund for Climate Solutions (FCS) awardees has been announced. The FCS advances innovative, solutions-oriented climate science through a competitive, internal, and crossdisciplinary funding process. Generous donor support has enabled us to raise more than $10 million towards the FCS, funding 58 research grants since the campaign’s launch in 2018. This latest cohort of grantees includes five projects working toward a range of scalable solutions to address climate impacts around the globe, from boreal and tropical forests, to heat-impacted cities, to much-discussed and still-struggling carbon markets.

Boreal fire management to protect permafrost and carbon Project lead: Dr. Brendan Rogers Collaborator: Dr. Peter Frumhoff As the climate changes, wildfires in boreal forests are intensifying and putting tremendous amounts of carbon at risk of accelerated release from trees and soils to the atmosphere.

Motivated by previous Woodwell Climate research, the US Fish and Wildlife Service has recently set aside 1.6 million acres of the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Reserve in Alaska for enhanced fire management to protect carbon and permafrost, and has invited our collaboration to assess the potential and cost-effectiveness of boreal fire management as an overlooked natural climate solution. This invitation is an unprecedented opportunity for actionable scientific research and timely policy impact. Supported by the FCS, the team will conduct the first-ever field study of boreal fire management for climate mitigation. Then, they will bring this work and its implications to decision makers and interest holders in Alaska and Washington, DC, positioning Woodwell Climate to expand the reach of this work within Alaska and, ultimately, to other boreal nations.

Insights and lessons from 20 years of research on forest dynamics and agricultural sustainability in the Amazon Project lead: Dr. Ludmila Rattis Collaborators: Dr. Marcia Macedo, Dr. Michael Coe, Dr. Linda Deegan, Dr. Christopher Neill, and Dr. Paulo Brando Tanguro Field Station celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2024. Since its establishment by the Amazon Environmental

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Research Institute (IPAM Amazônia), 177 research papers have been published based on work conducted there. More than 215 students and journalists have participated in activities at Tanguro and produced theses, dissertations, policy briefs, and special content in prestigious journals and news outlets. While research at Tanguro has significantly advanced our understanding of tropical regions and continues to provide valuable ecological insights, there is a pressing need to synthesize past research. This award will support the preparation and publication of a synthesis paper that consolidates the findings and key insights from 20 years of research at Tanguro to facilitate a better understanding of the complex interdependencies within tropical ecosystems. This synthesis will also aid in developing a proposal to establish a Biological Integration Institute (BII-NSF) at Tanguro to promote collaboration, interdisciplinary approaches, and knowledge sharing among researchers, policymakers, and people affected by climate change and deforestation in the region.

Detecting post-fire recruitment failure and permanent forest loss Project lead: Dr. Arden Burrell Collaborators: Dr. Yili Yang, Dr. Anna Talucci, and Dr. Brendan Rogers Extensive field campaigns in the boreal forest and the western U.S. have revealed that at an increasing number of study sites, tree species are failing to re-establish after fire destroys the stand. Such post-fire recruitment failure is increasing due to climate change, leading to a loss of both wildlife habitat and carbon storage, and reducing the area’s ability to provide ecosystem services. However, the large-scale extent of recruitment failure has not been studied—this is a key

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knowledge gap. The goal of this research is to perform a pilot study on existing sites in Yellowstone National Park to prove the feasibility of using remote sensing to detect recruitment failure, with the ultimate goal of obtaining further funding from U.S. government agencies or private foundations.

Bringing together Woodwell Climate scientists currently working on separate projects, including Permafrost Pathways, NASA ABoVE, and NSF Arctic System Science programs, this project will build on and synergize their existing research.

How climate change will exacerbate the vulnerability of people experiencing homelessness in Las Vegas Project lead: Dr. Christopher Schwalm Climate change is exacerbating the vulnerability of people experiencing homelessness in Las Vegas, NV as they face increasing extreme heat risk on the street and flood risk inside stormwater infrastructure. In the city, people experiencing homelessness cope with extreme heat by sheltering in stormwater infrastructure. During the summer of 2022, Las Vegas experienced its wettest monsoon season in over 10 years, resulting in the loss of two lives due to flooded

 New growth of poplar trees in an area of burned black spruce boreal forest. / photo by Jill Johnstone

tunnels. This award will support our partnership with local homelessness organizations to develop ways to measure projected lethal heat days and extreme flooding, informing emergency evacuations and raising awareness of climate risk. Research Assistant Monica Caparas will be the on-site scientific lead, and serve as the point of contact for all local partnerships. Because the threat of climate change to people experiencing homelessness isn’t limited to Las Vegas, this work aims to advance climate justice by creating a replicable framework and best practices for establishing and nourishing working relationships with local communities, social service organizations, and government agencies.

Advancing access to and applications of the Landscape Capital Index Project lead: Dr. Wayne Walker Collaborators: Seth Gorelik, Dr. Glenn Bush Carbon markets could be a powerful mechanism for incentivizing natural climate solutions (NCS) while at the same time enhancing the well-being of land stewards and their communities. However, these markets have faced intense criticism for a lack of transparency and integrity. The project team has been working to develop the Landscape Capital Index (LCI), an independent, data-driven tool for assessing the potential of any tract of land to deliver climate mitigation, co-benefit, and conservation outcomes. With support from the FCS, the team will develop a web-based data platform prototype for beta testing and development into an interactive solution. This future state-of-the-art platform will enable access to and engagement with the LCI. The project team will also conduct targeted validation research to make sure the LCI performs well for strategic use cases in key geographic areas, with the goal of building user confidence in the data product’s integrity.

By the numbers INSIGHTS FROM RECENT WOODWELL CLIMATE PUBLICATIONS

25.3 %

Fraction of high landscape integrity on U.S. National Forest lands found in Tongass National Forest alone

up to 2 X

Accuracy of new DiluviumDEM model compared to other elevation models used to forecast sea level rise

79.3 Tg

doi.org/10.1029/2023AV000965

doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2023.113812

doi.org/10.5194/bg-20-2785-2023

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Average annual carbon emissions from fires in North American boreal ecosystems 2001-2019 (equal to 79.3M metric tons)

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Google grant to advance artificial intelligence methods in Center science Machine learning and neural networks will help track Arctic change Maddie Rocklin Associate Vice President, 90 West Sarah Ruiz Science Writer/Editor

With advances in artificial intelligence technologies, computers can be trained to imitate human language, play chess, categorize images, solve puzzles, write college essays, and even restore damaged ancient texts. With the help of a new $5 million grant from Google.org, the tech company’s philanthropic arm, Woodwell Climate will be putting AI to yet another use—fighting climate change.

landscapes, have held us all back,” says Dr. Liljedahl. “This project will be groundbreaking in speeding up data analysis and unlocking completely new technological capabilities in how we do science in swiftly evolving landscapes, and, ultimately, what science itself can do.”

The grant will be used to expand the development of the Permafrost Discovery Gateway (PDG), an open-access resource that allows users to visualize and explore data on changing Arctic landscapes. Under the leadership of Woodwell Climate Associate Scientist, Dr. Anna Liljedahl, AI methods will help speed up data processing, allowing researchers to rapidly identify patterns and trends in permafrost thaw. The results will be essential to informing climate mitigation and adaptation strategies.

Although AI seems to be a new tool, methods like machine learning and neural networks have been used for decades for their unique talent at recognizing patterns in large datasets.

Several projects in Woodwell’s Arctic program already use AI to churn through thousands of satellite images to detect specific features in the landscape.

“Timely tracking of permafrost thaw is critical to assessing impacts and informing action, but current limitations in technology, combined with the rapid pace of change in Arctic

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AI is nothing new

Data science specialist at the Center, Dr. Yili Yang, uses AI models trained to spot retrogressive thaw slumps (RTS) in permafrost rich regions of the Arctic. Thaw slumps are features that form in response to subsiding permafrost and can be indicators of greater thawing on the landscape, but they are hard to identify in images.

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“Finding one RTS is like finding a single building in a city,” Dr. Yang says. “It’s time consuming, and it really helps if you already know what you’re looking for. Their trained neural network can pick the features out of high-resolution satellite imagery of the region with fairly high accuracy.”

Research Assistant Andrew Mullen uses a similar tool to find and map millions of small water bodies across the Arctic. A neural network was used to generate a dataset of these lakes and ponds that allows Mullen and other researchers to track seasonal changes in their area.

With the new Google grant, Dr. Liljedahl says there are opportunities to use AI not just for the data creation side of research, but trend analysis as well.

“Our goals for the Gateway would utilize new AI models to identify trends or patterns or relationships between features like ice wedge polygons and elevation, soil or climate data,” says Dr. Liljedahl.

We need speed Uncovering trends in Arctic change is critical. The Arctic is warming at up to four times the rate of the rest of the planet.

Permafrost—or ground that has remained frozen for at least two consecutive years—is thawing rapidly, causing widespread ground collapse and infrastructure damage, threatening Arctic communities, and releasing carbon into the atmosphere.

The technology funded through Google will enable scientists, decision makers, community members, and other interested groups and individuals to explore permafrost thaw features that formed during the previous month, check out seasonal forecasts of permafrost thaw, predict disturbance events based on weather forecasts, estimate carbon and infrastructure loss from abrupt permafrost thaw, and analyze the shape and size of permafrost thaw features and their patterns across the landscape over time. This resource will also be applicable beyond the scope of permafrost thaw, enabling experts to

 Arctic tundra landscape. / photo by Chris Linder Fall 2023

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adapt this technology for other research areas and expand access to key climate data and insights across a range of issues and regions.

“Permafrost, often perceived as a distant phenomenon in the remote North, has broad impacts on the world that are yet not fully understood. The Arctic Data Center looks forward to preserving and sharing pan-Arctic permafrost datasets with anyone looking to find and utilize them for scientific research,” says Matthew Jones, Director of Informatics R&D at National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, University of California Santa Barbara—a partner organization on the project.

The resource will also support Arctic communities in their adaptation measures. Many communities in Alaska and Canada have already begun to feel the impacts of thawing permafrost—enduring collapsed homes and roads and in some cases being forced to relocate.

“Once frozen and resilient, the Arctic is transforming into a landscape that is thawing and fragile. The Permafrost Discovery Gateway is a resource that communities can use to access data, explore climate change impacts, and find resources to adapt in healthy ways,” said Michael Brubaker,

Director of Community Environment and Health at Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium.

“Permafrost covers a huge region of the northern hemisphere land mass, and its disappearance will fundamentally contribute to global climate change,” said Guido Grosse, Head of Permafrost research at Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, and a project partner. “New geospatial methods and data processing techniques employed in this project… will provide a first highly detailed look at permafrost thaw and its consequences at the pan-Arctic scale.”

The effort will also collaborate with Permafrost Pathways, another major initiative led by Woodwell Climate, providing data to support their carbon monitoring work.

“This funding through Google.org will allow us to take permafrost carbon modeling to the next level by including abrupt thaw and integrating AI solutions into the estimations of permafrost carbon losses, enabling us to monitor threats to infrastructure in near-real time, estimate future risk, and inform planning to help us better respond to and prepare for permafrost hazards in Alaska communities and beyond,” Dr. Liljedahl says.

How do neural networks work?

These trained models are all examples of neural network-based AI and the comparison to human brains is apt.

Neural networks are composed of interconnected, mathematical components called “neurons.” Also like a brain, the system is a web of billions upon billions of these neurons. Each neuron carries a fragment of information into the next, and the way those neurons are organized determines the kind of tasks the model can be trained to do.

“How AI models are built is based on a really simple structure—but a ton of these really simple structures stacked on top of each other. This makes them complex and highly capable of accomplishing different tasks,” says Research Assistant Andrew Mullen.

In order to accomplish these highly specific tasks, the model has to be trained. Training involves feeding the AI input data, and then telling it what the correct output should look like. The process is called supervised learning, and it’s functionally similar to teaching a student by showing it the correct answers to the quiz ahead of time, then testing them, and repeating this cycle over and over until they can reliably ace each test.

In the case of Dr. Yili Yang’s work, the model was trained using input satellite images of the Arctic tundra with known retrogressive thaw slump features. The model outputs possible thaw slumps which are then compared to the RTS labels handdrawn by Research Assistant Tiffany Windholz. It then assesses the similarity between the prediction and ground truth, and automatically adjusts its neurons to improve the similarity. Do this a thousand times and the internal structure of the AI starts to learn what to look for in an image. The organization of those billions of neurons re-configures to produce a reliable output.

Sharp change in elevation? Destroyed vegetation and no pond? Right geometry? If so, that’s a potential thaw slump.

Just as it would be impossible to pull out any single neuron from a human brain and determine its function, the complexity of a neural network makes the internal workings of AI difficult to detail—Mullen calls it a “black box”—but with a large enough training set, you can refine the output without ever having to worry about the internal workings of the machine.

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Think like an ecosystem Two long-term research projects enter their third decade, bringing new insights into ecological change Sarah Ruiz

Science Writer/Editor

 Anya Suslova on an Arctic river

research trip. / photo by John Le Coq

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It didn’t matter that she didn’t speak any English at the time, or that the American researchers who had chartered her father’s boat that summer didn’t speak any Russian, 14-year-old Anya Suslova was a quick learner. She watched them dip sample bottles into the Lena River, filter the water, and mark information down on the side of the bottle. By the end of the twoweek research expedition, Suslova had mastered the protocol and was helping Dr. Max Holmes and his fellow scientists collect water samples.

When the scientists returned to the United States, they left behind some equipment, in case Suslova and her

father were interested in sampling throughout the winter. After a year without contact with Suslova, the researchers were delighted to return to the Lena the following summer to find months of samples and a neatly organized logbook she made.

Twenty years later, Suslova is a Research Assistant at Woodwell Climate Research Center who continues to bring her expertise and unique perspective to the Arctic Great Rivers Observatory (ArcticGRO). Since 2003, participants of ArcticGRO—scientists and Arctic community members alike—have been sampling water from the six largest rivers in the Arctic: the Ob’, Yenisey,

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Lena, and Kolyma in Siberia, and the Yukon and Mackenzie in North America. It’s a rare example of a longterm research project, designed to span decades, deepening our understanding of change across the years.

We need to establish baselines The Arctic is warming, on average, at least two times faster than the rest of the planet. We need to know the implications of this, but it can be difficult to study ecosystem change across such a vast area.

Rivers can offer insights. The chemistry of a river connects environmental processes across its watershed, and the dissolved and particulate materials—like nutrients, minerals, and sediments— that are carried to the ocean can influence marine chemistry and biology.

Measuring the concentrations of these materials and how much is transported by rivers provides vital information about linkages between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and how they are changing.

“Global climate change is rapidly and disproportionately affecting northern high latitude environments,” says Dr. Scott Zolkos, a Research Scientist at Woodwell Climate and one of ArcticGRO’s lead scientists. “Monitoring Arctic river chemistry is critical for detecting trends and understanding the effects of environmental change on northern ecosystems.”

In order to uncover those trends and effects, we need to establish baselines on the key chemical constituents within rivers—organic matter, inorganic nutrients like nitrogen, sediment—to compare against future measurements.

As more data is gathered, the easier it becomes to sift out annual variability from longer term trends.

Using Arctic rivers as sentinels of ecosystem health and environmental change was the idea behind the project’s creation, but it was international collaboration and cooperation that gave

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 map by Greg Fiske the ArcticGRO its longevity. The project leaders realized that enlisting the help of trained local residents could allow for sample collection in places, and during times of the year, that the researchers themselves couldn’t access. It has also helped to build enthusiasm for the project among Arctic communities.

“I believe that ArcticGRO has been able to go for so long because it is built on trust and a shared goal between scientists and local people who collect water samples,” says Suslova.

“Amazingly the team of ArcticGRO hasn’t changed much over the last 20 years—many of the original members are still involved. It feels like a family.”

Now, 20 years after its inception, the ArcticGRO team has published a paper in Nature Geoscience on longterm trends in pan-Arctic river chemistry. The team found strong signals of environmental change for

some chemical constituents, but not in others. Alkalinity, which reflects rock weathering, increased in all rivers, while nitrate, an important nutrient for terrestrial and aquatic organisms, decreased. The authors hope the data and insights from this work will be invaluable to scientists refining models of the Arctic system.

“There’s nothing quite like ArcticGRO,” says Dr. Zolkos. “It’s unique in that it measures a comprehensive suite of chemical parameters across the Arctic’s largest rivers, uses consistent sampling and analytical methods across the rivers, and sampling occurs at the same times and locations. The consistency of ArcticGRO is increasingly valuable because it is building a dataset which allows scientists around the world to detect, monitor, and understand northern environmental change in ways that no other scientific program does.”

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We never would have known A few thousand miles south of the Arctic Circle, on the marshy coastline of Massachusetts, another long-term ecological research project has entered its third decade as well. The brainchild of Senior Scientist Dr. Linda Deegan, the TIDE project is unique even among long-term studies. Rather than simply monitoring the nutrient flows in the salt marshes of Plum Island Estuary, the TIDE project has been altering nutrients in carefully controlled amounts to understand the long term impacts of human development in coastal ecosystems.

TIDE focuses on nitrogen, an element of most fertilizers and a common pollutant from developed areas in the uplands. Previous studies of nitrogen impacts indicated coastal marsh plants could absorb a lot of nitrogen with no ill effects. But that dynamic was only examined on short time scales, and in

small plots of marsh. Whether there were changes that might require many years or many acres to be detected, was unknown.

Thus, TIDE was designed to increase nitrogen concentrations in the water to mimic coastal eutrophication across three marshes in the Plum Island estuary in order to document which effects might cascade through the system. The initial grant was for five years, but Dr. Deegan and her collaborators wanted to keep the project running for at least a decade, if not more, expecting the changes might be slow to reveal themselves.

After years of observations, Dr. Deegan says she remembers the exact moment they discovered a significant change.

“Several of the senior scientists—myself included—came back at the end of a long field day each of them saying, ‘I don’t remember it being this hard to walk through the nutrient enriched

marsh when we started this project. Am I just getting older or has something changed?’ And then one of the new students said, ‘I thought that marsh was always like that’—well, it’s not like that in the other sites where we haven’t added nitrogen.”

So they followed the hunch, made some new measurements, and found the structure of the marsh had changed significantly with the added nitrogen.

The plants, suddenly awash in a necessary component for growth, no longer needed to dedicate their energy to making roots to seek out nutrients; their root systems were shallower and less dense, thus less capable of holding the marsh together. At the same time, nitrogen-consuming microbes were breaking down organic matter in search of carbon to fuel the chemical processes that allow them to take up nitrogen.

This combination made the marsh creek edges more susceptible to erosion by tides and storms.

 Linda Deegan kneels next to a slumping stream channel in a TIDE research marsh. / photo courtesy of the TIDE Project

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It took more years than most experiments are run for, but increased susceptibility to erosion steadily altered the shape of stream channels.

The ground along the edges of the streams, previously held in place by a deep network of roots, now collapsed underfoot. Chunks of marsh fell off the edges as the roots no longer held the marsh together. As the years went on, fish and other organisms that travel along stream floors to seek out food began to suffer from difficult terrain, resulting in slower growth and fewer fish.

These findings, published in Nature, upended the way people thought about the effects of eutrophication on marshes.

“And we never would have known any of that,” says Dr. Deegan. “If we hadn’t done the project at an ecosystem scale and over such a long time.”

A pipe you can turn off Over the decades, the TIDE project not only faced the challenges of running a consistent project for so long, but also of justifying making intentional changes to an otherwise healthy ecosystem.

The question lingered: If the goal is to protect ecosystems from human disruption, what do we gain from knowingly tinkering with them?

Humans have already accidentally conducted thousands of ecological change experiments across the globe. Casually inflicted pollution, deforestation, or extinction with no control group, no careful observations, no time limits or safeguards—by scientific standards these are reckless and poorly designed experiments.

In Dr. Deegan’s mind, this makes controlled studies like TIDE even more significant.



“We need to know the true impact of the changes that we are already imposing on the environment. And once

we do, we need to be able to halt those changes that threaten the integrity of an ecosystem,” says Dr. Deegan. “This is a pipe I can easily turn off. Not like when you build a housing development and then you’re stuck with all those houses and their impacts forever.”

Climate change is perhaps the most all-encompassing of these involuntary experiments. As ArcticGRO’s and TIDE’s results indicate, ecosystem responses to human disturbance, whether it is climate warming or nutrient over enrichment, are complex. Understanding and adapting to these responses will depend on continued monitoring, observation and experimentation.

A testament to the people In the world of research, rife with limited grants and time-bound fellowships, ArcticGRO and TIDE have been uniquely successful. Research Associate, Hillary Sullivan, who has been part of the TIDE project since 2012, attributes this to the dedication of the researchers, who showed up year after year to get the research done even when funding wasn’t certain or while enduring a global pandemic.

“These large scale projects are a testament to the people that are involved in the effort, and the work that goes in behind the scenes to keep it running,” says Sullivan Both ArcticGRO and TIDE plan to continue. ArcticGRO is seeking additional funding to analyze new chemical constituents and continue providing invaluable data for scientists and educators to understand how rivers are responding to a warming climate. “ArcticGRO has improved our understanding of the Arctic, and our work is just getting started,” says Dr. Zolkos. “Continuing will be essential

 Anya Suslova in the lab opening Arctic water samples returned to Woodwell Climate. / photo by Lindsay Scott

for generating new insights on climate change, northern ecosystems, and societal implications.”

TIDE has now shifted to a new phase of study—observing the legacy of the added nitrogen on marsh recovery in the face of climate change induced sea level rise. Nitrogen additions were halted six years ago and researchers hope to gain insights into marsh restoration and ways to improve their resilience to sea level rise.

Thinking in the long-term is not something humans have historically excelled at, Dr. Deegan admits. But the more we try to expand our curiosity past immediate cause and effect, the better we get at understanding nature.

If you want to understand an ecosystem, you have to think like an ecosystem— which means longer time scales and larger areas that encompass every aspect of the system.

“Nature tends to take the long view and people tend to take the short,” says Dr. Deegan. “So if you can stick with it for the long view, I think you see things in a very different way.”

Summer research assistants filling “Frank the Tank” with fertilizer for regulated dispersal through the marsh. / photo by Linda Deegan

 TIDE researchers Eric Yando and Clara Chason stand in the collapsing Sweeney Creek in 2011. / photo by Scott Warren Fall 2023

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Climate scientists and cattle ranchers meet at High Lonesome Ranch Regenerative ranching workshop explores the ways cattle ranchers can contribute to climate solutions Dr. Jennifer Watts

Senior Scientist

High Lonesome Ranch is a working cattle ranch that does things a little differently. The managers of High Lonesome Ranch employ regenerative ranching, a technique that works with natural cycles and ecological principles to restore a degraded landscape. The result is a productive ranch with healthy cows, good water retention, a diverse ecology, and—crucially for our work—carbon-rich soils. It’s an ideal location for Woodwell Climate Research Center’s second annual Rangeland Carbon Workshop.

On a beautiful late September day in western Colorado, the Woodwell Climate Rangeland Team (Dr. Jennifer Watts, Dr. Jon Sanderman, Dr. Yushu Xia, and Andrew Mullen) gathered at High Lonesome Ranch to lead the workshop in partnership with Colorado State University and Green Groups Graze. We were joined by 45 scientists, ranch managers, members of NGO communities, and representatives from government agencies, all eager to discuss rangeland health, management, and monitoring in the United States.

Conversations centered on the benefits and challenges of regenerative practices like the ones used at High Lonesome Ranch. One core tenant of regenerative ranching is the use of adaptive grazing

systems—a concept that promotes the frequent movement of livestock between pastures (whether that’s cattle, bison, goats, or another grazing animal) with short, intense, grazing intervals.

Following a grazing event, that land is given a long period of rest and regrowth.

These cycles between grazing and rest help promote robust, healthy plant communities with deep root systems.

They also keep nutrients cycling through the system, building up a store of water and soil carbon over time.

The growing interest in regenerative ranching across the U.S. (and globally) is being driven by the awareness of increasing impacts from climate change. Severe droughts, flooding, and fire have posed particular threats to ranching communities. In July 2020 the historic Pine Gulch Fire burned through a large portion of High Lonesome Ranch, as well as their grazing leases on adjacent U.S. land. The fire destroyed $1 million in ranching infrastructure and much of the forage needed for grazing that year. It also caused undesirably dense shrubs to replace diverse herbaceous plant species.

On top of climate-driven changes, many ranches in the area are simultaneously dealing with the after-effects of land degradation, lost plant cover, and

depletion of soil carbon following decades-to-centuries of misuse.

But because ranching communities directly rely on healthy lands for their socioeconomic well-being, many members of these communities are coming forward as good stewards, with the goal of improving private and public lands for the benefit of their families, their country, and future generations.

Throughout the workshop, we heard from multiple producers about how they are continuously adapting and evolving their land management practices, building up an arsenal of regenerative strategies by combining their knowledge of ecological principles with what they are observing firsthand on the land.

In response to the Pine Gulch Fire, High Lonesome Ranch is now adapting by bringing in alternative livestock (goats) to browse down the shrubs, helping to create more structurally and ecologically diverse ecosystems. They are also exploring new methods of sustainable fencing, including a virtual fencing approach where ranchers use GPS-enabled devices that electronically encourage animals to stay within designated grazing areas. continued on page 18

 Jon Sanderman leads a group discussion from a soil pit during the workshop field tour. / photo by Andrew Mullen Fall 2023

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Where the work gets done Climate change is a global issue so conducting climate science must be a global endeavor.

From field stations in the high Arctic, to the Tanguro research ranch deep in the Amazon, Woodwell Climate staff and scientists were hard at work this year, measuring carbon fluxes, engaging with communities, and influencing policy.

mai towers use ins emission and soils. Permafr Arctic commu research and l better assist th

maps by Christina Shintani, photos

by Aquanette Sanders, Eric Lee, Greg Fiske, Emily Sullivan, Abby Fennelly

YK Delta Training young scientists The Polaris Project returned to its field site on the YukonKuskokwim Delta, where students learn about the Arctic environment, develop their own research questions, and carry out experiments.

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W

A Government Re into the hands o members, scien for several briefi Climate Science for Change

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Alaska Carbon monitoring and community engagement

The Permafrost Pathways team took several trips to field stations in Alaska this year to install and intain carbon flux towers. These struments to monitor carbon sequestration from plants and rost Pathways also visited several unities, engaging them in the listening to their needs in order to heir adaptation plans.

Falmouth, MA Modeling and lab analysis Back at the Center, lab analyses of soil samples, permafrost cores, and water chemistry continue throughout the year.

Scientists also work with remote-sensing data and machine learning programs to model current and future climate-driven changes.

Amazon & DRC International collaboration Science and adaptation require strong collaborative relationships with researchers and communities across the globe. Workshops in Kinshasa and field trips to the Tanguro research ranch in Mato Grosso, Brazil built up existing relationships.

Washington, DC Policy influence

After our scientists have uncovered new insights, the elations team works hard to get that information of decision makers who can alter policy. GR team ntists, and board members headed to Washington, DC fings with congressional and executive branch staff.

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But getting to “improved management” and “healthy rangelands” means filling in information gaps. Our conversations revealed the difference between the kinds of information producers find important in making management decisions, and what information researchers and conservation groups might want to use to understand healthy rangelands.

“Producers need information on the health and vigor of the vegetation in order to make day-to-day management decisions, while conservation groups may be more interested in the broader ecosystem service benefits, such as bird biodiversity and carbon storage, that are emerging from good rangeland stewardship,” says Dr. Sanderman.

 A white board with ideas generated during group breakout discussions. / photo by Andrew Mullen

continued from page 15 We also discussed how we define the “health” of rangelands in the first place, and how to monitor changes in ecosystem health indicators over time.

The importance of monitoring ecosystem health across all U.S. rangelands recently came to the forefront after the bipartisan organization Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) released a report in late 2022, based on data from Bureau of Land Management (BLM) monitoring sites on western lands. The report revealed severe declines in the “health, diversity, and productivity” of public grazing lands, primarily driven by overgrazing. The report also emphasized a need to improve data collection and mapping efforts to track range health, while restoring ecosystems through improved management.

Our discussions at High Lonesome Ranch indicated a need for a “welldesigned, sustainable, wall-to-wall” land health monitoring system for public and private lands alike—something that could integrate producer knowledge with repeated point-based field observations and data provided through remote sensing. A tool like this could help ranchers make decisions that build up carbon storage and provide the ecosystem services that conservation groups are hoping to restore, while also keeping their businesses productive.

As part of her postdoctoral position, Dr. Xia has been constructing a tool to fill this need, aiding ranchers’ decision making around regenerative ranching practices.

“We’ve been working on developing the first version of the Rangeland Carbon Monitoring Tool (RCMT) system, which provides high resolution estimates of rangeland soil carbon and productivity,” says Dr. Xia. “This workshop presented a valuable opportunity for us to gather insights from diverse stakeholders.

Their inputs are crucial for us to improve the visualization of our tool.”

Being able to empirically show improvements in carbon storage on rangelands could also help ranchers benefit economically from soil carbon markets—a still-developing strategy for including rangelands in natural climate solutions.

“While there are a lot of debates regarding the practicality of implementing improved rangeland management for economic gains in the carbon market, there is a consensus on the necessity of improved quantification tools like the RCMT,” says Dr. Xia. “These tools are essential to reduce the uncertainty of soil carbon estimates, and thereby facilitate improved rangeland management for multiple ecological benefits.”

Throughout the workshop it also became clear that, in addition to a need for new tools like the RCMT, ranchers need more access to programs that offer community-based networking and knowledge sharing of regenerative practices, as well as support for improving ranch infrastructure to better enact regenerative agriculture.

Ultimately, ranchers would also benefit greatly from programs that provide financial payments for ecosystem services provided by healthy open spaces—a model that would allow them to prioritize biodiversity, wildlife habitat, and carbon sequestration in their decision making. Achieving these goals will require changes in programs and policies at all levels, from local to federal, to provide a much-needed investment in the well-being of our rural environments and the health of our planet.

MORE

Read our partner’s perspective: thehighlonesomeranch.com/ rangeland-soil-healthconference-recap

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A breakout session comes back together to bring the threads into the larger group discussion.

 Presentations were given by organizations and groups participating in the workshop. / photos by Andrew Mullen

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Adaptation workshop brings together Alaska Native communities and federal agencies Workshop facilitated Tribal-led conversations with government agencies focused on climate impacts in Alaska Jessica Howard

Arctic Communications Specialist, Permafrost Pathways

In September, the Alaska Institute for Justice (AIJ) hosted a “Rights, Resilience, and Community-Led Adaptation” workshop on Dena’ina homelands in Anchorage, Alaska alongside partners from Woodwell Climate Research Center, the Arctic Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School, and the Alaska Native Science Commission. AIJ has been organizing these workshops since 2016 to create a space where Tribes can share their expertise with each other and connect face-to-face with federal and state government representatives to access resources and technical assistance.

This year, the workshop was part of the Permafrost Pathways project’s ongoing efforts to support Indigenousled adaptation strategies and relocation governance frameworks for communities responding to rapid Arctic warming.

Over 65 Alaska Native community members and more than 60 representatives from state and federal agencies— including the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), the Department of the Interior (DOI), Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Denali Commission, Alaska Department of Natural Resources, and Alaska

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Department of Transportation and Public Facilities—convened for two full days of community presentations, panel discussions, and round tables to give Tribes the opportunity to share their experience of climate hazards that are threatening the health and well-being of their communities, and to discuss opportunities for federal aid and support.

“2023 has shown all too clearly that climate change is here, with intensifying and unique impacts on the environment,” Permafrost Pathways Co-Lead and Executive Director for the Alaska Institute for Justice, Dr. Robin Bronen said in a statement.

“Our support at Alaska Institute for Justice to ten rural Alaska Native Tribes is positioned to deliver on climate adaptation objectives together, while protecting the human rights of Alaskans and building a more sustainable, safe, and resilient future.”

Speaking truth to power The workshop kicked off with powerful community presentations by Permafrost Pathways Tribal partners from Akiachak, Akiak, Chevak, Golovin (Chinik), Nunapicuaq, Kipnuk, Kuigilnguq, Kwethluk, Nelson Lagoon, and Quinhagak (Kwinhagak). The

community presentations laid bare the devastating climate impacts unfolding in their villages. Presenters described how Tribes are already taking action to mitigate these threats, and identified the most urgent adaptation needs for their communities to protect themselves and their traditional ways of life.

“It’s so important to be able to tell our own story and tell these agencies the issues that we are facing, what we’re dealing with on our own in our individual communities,” Environmental Coordinator and Tribal Council President for the Alaska Native Village of Nelson Lagoon, Angela Johnson told Alaska News Source. “I also think it’s important for them to see that there are so many different communities all along the state that are dealing with almost the same exact kind of problems, and there’s not enough resources out there right now and there’s not enough policies put in place right now to help protect us. We’re basically doing this on our own, fighting for competitive funding and not getting a lot of assistance from our government.”

Johnson emphasized in her presentation that the 10 Permafrost Pathways partner communities participating in the workshop are not the only villages

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 Elders from Kwethluk show the Permafrost Pathways research team where the Kuskokuak River is eroding — threatening to inundate their community. / photo by Greg Fiske

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“Community-Driven Relocation” panel with federal agency representatives. / photo by Tessa Varvares, Arctic Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School

in Alaska experiencing severe, ongoing impacts from climate change. Seventythree communities across the state face imminent threats from permafrost thaw, flooding, or erosion, and an estimated $5.5 billion worth of Alaskan infrastructure is expected to be damaged due to climate change this century.

together in person,” said Jennifer Adleman, a community planner in Alaska for FEMA Region 10. “In that way, the workshop created a dedicated space and time to have these important community-led conversations, build upon them, and ultimately move them forward,” Adleman said.

The need for more streamlined interagency coordination in addressing adaptation needs is a challenge that both Tribes and agencies have acknowledged as an enduring barrier to progress. The new Voluntary Community-Driven Relocation Subcommittee under the White House National Climate Task Force represents an effort to overcome this issue. The working group will convene agency leaders in close collaboration with Tribal communities to facilitate pilot projects and programs applicable to climate-forced displacement. The adaptation workshop provided an essential opportunity for communities and agencies to collaborate face-to-face.

Following community presentations, a panel of agency representatives from DOI, FEMA, Denali Commission, BIA, and the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), informed workshop participants about the efforts of the new working group, current opportunities for federal aid, how agencies can support community access to available resources, and what agencies are doing to improve their approach to climate adaptation and resilience.

“One of the benefits of an event like this is that it allows focused conversations and ideas to advance faster than they would have if we hadn’t all been brought

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“We’re hearing loud and clear the call for help. That people are focused on these issues, that they have been seeing them come for decades, and that there is a need for urgent action,” said Victoria Salinas, FEMA’s Associate Administrator for Resilience. “That’s part of the reason so many federal agencies have come together to be in conversation with these communities.”

Co-production of knowledge and community-based monitoring— Permafrost Pathways leads by example Permafrost Pathways helped facilitate these conversations around adaptation and relocation. The project is working closely with Alaska Native partners and government agencies to identify the elements of a successful relocation approach, including the community relocation decision-making process, identifying and choosing relocation sites, government resources that can facilitate climate resilience, and the policy-level barriers that prevent communities from accessing them.

One of the most important themes of this work is the co-production of knowledge. A Convergence Science panel during the workshop—moderated

by Ben Baldwin, Climate Justice Tribal Liaison Director at AIJ and including Tribal Liaisons Darren John from Kuigilnguq and Morris Alexie from Nunapicuaq, AIJ’s Dr. Bronen, and Woodwell Climate’s Dr. Sue Natali—highlighted how Permafrost Pathways scientists and Alaska Native

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communities are working together to assess the environmental impacts of climate change in partner communities.

Indigenous Knowledge and on-theground observations of permafrost thaw, flooding, and erosion are integrated with Western science to inform adaptation decision-making.

“We are grateful and feel very lucky and gracious,” Alexie said. “Nunapicuaq would not be where we are today without the advice from Permafrost Pathways.”

While Permafrost Pathways is providing support, the project’s Alaska Native community partners are leading this unprecedented work and guiding federal agencies in the process. The ongoing Indigenous-led efforts in Alaska not only include developing and implementing responses to adaptation needs, but also designing a climate adaptation toolkit that will be broadly applicable to communities across the Arctic and ultimately influencing legislation and policy change.

 A flood map of Kuigilnguq produced for a hazard report that underrepresents the extent

of non-storm flooding in the community (left) next to a flood map created by Permafrost Pathways with community input.

 Former Tribal Liaison Gary Evon and Greg Fiske co-produce the new flood map that more

accurately represents the severity of non-storm event flooding in Kuigilnguq. / photo by Sue Natali

 Morris Alexie describes environmental change happening in Nunapicuaq to the Alaska

Institute for Justice’s Ben Baldwin and Woodwell Climate’s Dr. Sue Natali in Alaska this summer./ photo by Greg Fiske

 Quinhagak (Kwinhagak) satellite imagery captured July 2021, courtesy of Maxar Technologies.

Each Tribal partner was equipped with satellite imagery of their community to use as a visual aid during conversations with federal agencies about environmental changes Tribes are experiencing in their homelands due to climate change. / image by Greg Fiske

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Empowering the next generation of Alaska Native climate leaders The workshop also featured a youth and Elder panel, moderated by Permafrost Pathways partner and Executive Director for the Alaska Native Science Commission, Patricia Cochran—an Inupiaq Elder born and raised in Nome, Alaska who has been researching climate change and working with and advocating for Alaska Native communities for decades. The panel offered a special opportunity for Alaska Native youth to learn from Elders who shared their experiences growing up on the land—describing how much it has changed in their lifetime alone and how young people in their communities can contribute to the fight against climate change.

Many Alaska Native communities have been observing permafrost thaw and other environmental changes in their villages over the span of generations.

Elders hope to pass their intimate knowledge of the landscape and how

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it has changed over the years on to younger generations to see their work toward climate justice and community resilience carried into the future.

Cochran shared the importance of Elders empowering the next generation of community leaders, but acknowledged the unique challenge of emotional distress on both older and younger generations that comes with bearing witness to catastrophic environmental change in your homelands and grappling with the existential weight of an uncertain future.

“I have gone beyond hope. I have to instill belief,” Cochran said about inspiring and motivating Alaska Native youth to carry this work forward.

“Belief that things can change and that we will survive.”

The road ahead is paved with cautious optimism From the hard work of two intensive days spent sharing information and collaborating on difficult topics,

many departed feeling optimistic about the future, hoping to build on the momentum from the workshop.

Continued communication between government agencies, scientists, and Alaska Native communities will be critical for the work that lies ahead.

“Our communities are on the frontlines of climate change. Our land is falling apart and our people are doing everything we can to maintain our sense of self, to maintain our sense of community, to maintain our cultures, our language, our ways of life. It’s exhausting,” Baldwin said. “I know these topics are not easy to think about, but they are even harder to live through.

Listen to our people. Hear our stories.

Work together with us so our people can be kept safe.”

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For more news and updates from Permafrost Pathways, visit: permafrost.woodwellclimate.org

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Futures forged in trust Community risk assessments build international collaboration, expand access to climate data Sarah Ruiz

Science Writer/Editor

“There are so many cultural differences to consider,” notes Dave McGlinchey.

“From how the meetings proceed, to specific local sensitivities, even down to Congolese humor. Even if I was cracking jokes in fluent French, it would be impossible to get the tone right. That’s why having someone like Joseph was so important.”

In July, McGlinchey, Chief of Government Relations at Woodwell Climate, traveled with members of the Center’s risk team to Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo for a two-day workshop. The Center has been involved in community

work in the country for over 15 years, led in large part by Joseph Zambo, Woodwell’s policy coordinator in the DRC. This workshop represents the latest collaboration—an initial assessment of the country’s future climate risks.

Congolese professors, scientists, and government officials joined to discuss gaps in the data and to develop adaptation strategies to be included in a final report later this year.

The workshop was facilitated by Zambo who, with poignant questions, stories to recount, and a touch of humor, guided the group through the tough work of planning for the future.

Expanding access to climate risk data The community risk work in Kinshasa is one of over 20 successful risk assessments conducted as part of Woodwell Climate’s Just Access initiative. The project produces free, location-specific climate risk analysis for cities and regions both in the US and abroad. The hope is that by providing free access to quality data—something often offered by private companies at prohibitively high costs—Just Access can facilitate adaptation planning for underresourced communities.

 Participants laugh during a group session, led by Joseph Zambo (in jacket), at the climate risk workshop in Kinshasa. / photo by Abby Fennelly 24

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“With Just Access, we want to remove the barrier of cost for communities that want to understand the long-term risks they are facing because of climate change,” says McGlinchey. “Often these communities are the ones already facing climate-related challenges that will worsen as the century goes on.”

Guided by a community’s particular concerns, Woodwell’s Risk team works with available data on key climate risks—flooding, heat, water scarcity, fire—and uses models to construct an image of how those events are likely to change as global temperatures climb. In the DRC, water is a core concern, both in its absence, causing drought and crop failure, and in its abundance.

“Heavy rains cause horrific flooding in the city of Mbandaka almost once or twice a year,” says Zambo. “In the capital, heavy rains are also destroying homes, roads, electrical structures, and internet connections.”

what information they need to make decisions, their level of technical expertise, their governmental capacity to implement changes, and in the ways they prefer to work.

So, with each new assessment, the Risk team starts from scratch, building new relationships and listening to community needs. This process takes double time on the international stage, where a history of superficial NGO and academic involvement can overshadow collaboration.

“A main goal with these reports is trust,” says Darcy Glenn, a Woodwell Climate research assistant who organized a risk

assessment and workshop for Province 1 in Nepal last year with help from connections from her master’s program.

“Building trust in the models, and trust in the methodology, and in us. That’s been our biggest hurdle when working with municipal leaders.”

Building that trust takes time. Province 1 was one of an early set of communities that worked with Woodwell Climate on risk assessments. While local leaders were interested in flooding and landslide risk information, what they really wanted was to increase the capacity of their own scientists and government employees to conduct climate modeling themselves. So the

 Completed or in-progress risk assessments as of September 2023. / map by Christina Shintani  Example maps made by Nepalese workshop participants. / photo courtesy of Darcy Glenn

The most pressing risks vary from region to region. Across the world, in Acre, Brazil, Senior Scientist Emeritus Dr. Foster Brown says, “The word here is ‘heat.’” In Homer and Seldovia, Alaska, increasing wildfire days featured heavily.

However, improvements in data availability and resolution, as well as refinements of climate models, have made it possible to replicate assessments for a variety of risks in places as distant and different from each other as Homer, Alaska and Kerala, India. Risk assessments can offer both region-wide crop yield estimates and street-level maps of flooding for a single city district to inform community planning.

It’s about building trust Key to the success of municipal-level work are relationships with people like Zambo, who can offer insights into the needs of a community that can’t be approximated from the outside.

Each community is different—in

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 Foster Brown (center) participated in Brasilia Ministry of Health’s Technical Workshop on Climate Change, Health and Equity, in which he helped to provide a climate science and Amazonian perspective to the discussions. / photo courtesy of Foster Brown

project was adapted to meet that need by tailoring a training workshop. The process took over a year to complete but Glenn says, that’s relationshipbuilding time that can’t be rushed.

on various projects for over a decade.

Without their expertise to bridge cultural and language gaps, completing projects in Brazil and the DRC would not have been possible.

It also highlights the importance of preestablished long term connections in the places we work.

Working for the future

“It’s one thing to go into a new community by yourself, it’s another to go in with someone who has been there 30 years and can help navigate,” says Dr. Brown. “You have to look for the key people who can help make things happen.”

Within Brazil, Dr. Brown is now regarded as one of these “key people.”

He has been living and working in Rio Branco for over 30 years and his credibility as a member of the community helped facilitate an assessment of extreme heat risk in the region. In the DRC, Zambo has been working with Woodwell Climate

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forest and climate initiatives, authoring an alert for the tri-national “MAP” region (Madre de Dios in Peru, Acre in Brazil, and Pando in Bolivia) about heat conditions and the implications for this year’s fire season.

After getting risk information into the hands of communities, then comes the hard work of putting it to use. For Dr. Christopher Schwalm, Director of Woodwell Climate’s Risk Program, “the goal of the risk assessments is to give communities every potential tool we can to build resilience for themselves and future generations. With access to the right information, the next step in the adaptation planning process can begin.”

He has also been introducing the information from the report to the community in other ways—teaching and speaking at events. According to Dr. Brown, widespread understanding of both near- and long-term climate risks will become more important for all communities as climate change progresses and impacts each place differently. Cities and towns will need reliable information to help them practically plan for the future.

In Rio Branco, Dr. Brown says speaking to the changes people are already noticing has helped individuals connect better to the data. He’s been using the context of heat and fire alongside information from their report to strengthen conversations about existing

“We’re trying to get people to expand their time ranges and start thinking about the future. And this report has helped,” says Dr. Brown. “Because the people who are going to see 2100 are already here. What will we be able to tell them about their future?”

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Bridging the gap between science and policy How the Government Relations team leverages Woodwell Climate’s research into policy change Morgan Florsheim Government Relations Intern

On September 13, 2023, a group of 15 of Woodwell Climate Research Center staff, scientists, and board members gathered on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. They had a big day ahead of them: on the docket were 16 different meetings with Congressional staff and Members of Congress on topics ranging from carbon markets and the Farm Bill, to water research, to assessments of climate risk.

The goal was clear across the board: share the takeaways from Woodwell’s scientific research with the very policymakers who are tasked with making decisions on climate issues.

This was Woodwell Climate’s second annual “Fly-In”—so called because it brings team members of a non-DC-based organization, like Woodwell, face-toface with policymakers in Congress. The masterminds behind the Fly-In were staff members who are part of an invaluable team at the Center: the Government Relations (GR) team.

Building a team for the greatest impact

 top (from left): Robert Litterman, Kodiak Hill-Davis (Niskanen Center), Corey Schrodt

(Niskanen Center), Wayne Walker, Natalie Baillargeon; middle: Max Holmes and Alex Naegele; above: Tod Hynes, Christopher Schwalm, and Corrie Martin

 below: Georgia Nassikas and Allie Cunningham / photos by Eric Lee

Woodwell Climate has always been involved in the policy-making process.

From its outset, the driving principle behind the Center has been carrying out scientific research to inform decision making. For many years, however, there were no team members on staff whose primary responsibility was to bridge the gap between science and policy. When Dave McGlinchey, Chief of Government Relations, came on board with the Center via the Communications team, then-president Dr. Philip Duffy was taking on much of the policy work himself. It became clear as the Center grew, that in order to realize the full impact potential of the Center’s research they needed a dedicated policy team.

Today, the GR team has four full-time members who come from a diverse set of professional backgrounds.

McGlinchey got his start as a journalist on Capitol Hill who “fell in love with

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That process starts with building relationships and trust with decision makers. As McGlinchey puts it, “You can’t show up in these policymaking settings and just expect people to welcome you in and embrace your science right off the bat.”

The GR team puts time and effort into establishing Woodwell’s reputation for producing rigorous, high-quality science and advocating for pragmatic, nonpartisan policies that foster relationships and improve climaterelated legislation. After building the organization’s credibility in government, team members take a two-pronged approach to advancing climate policy.

The first is to spot windows within existing legislation where “there could be a stronger role of climate science,” McGlinchey says.

 From left: Laura Uttley, Andrew Condia, Natalie Baillargeon, and Dave McGlinchey

 From left: Peter Frumhoff, Saskia Braden, and Abby Fennelly

the policymaking process” and felt drawn to address the severity of the climate crisis. Laura Uttley, Director of Government Relations, has been a lobbyist in DC for over ten years and was excited to join a relatively new team establishing its roots in the capital. Andrew Condia, External Affairs Manager, spent many years working in the office of a U.S. Senator as a liaison for local government officials.

He pivoted to Woodwell because he wanted a more narrow focus on a policy area he was passionate about: solving environmental problems. And Natalie Baillargeon, a Policy Analyst, was a scientist first before she realized that her passion lay in transforming that science into useful policy.

It is precisely this diversity of perspectives that makes the team so effective, Uttley says, because they are able to reach decisions by coming at problems from many different angles.

The full-time team members work alongside Senior Science Policy Expert Dr. Peter Frumhoff, and Government Relations Assistants Saskia Braden and Abby Fennelly.

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The road from research to legislation In the three years since the creation of the team, the investment in dedicated GR staff members has proven invaluable.

“In 2023, it’s no longer enough to produce good science and hope something good comes of that… What we came to realize is that we really need to get involved in shaping that policy,” McGlinchey says. “The science is not getting put to use otherwise. And if we don’t get involved in the policymaking process, other people will, and oftentimes it will be people who are not prioritizing climate stability as one of their main objectives.”

So how does the GR team shape policy?

“Anytime the government acts, there’s an opportunity to influence policymakers, legislation, or regulations and promote or defend policies that advance Woodwell’s interests,” Uttley says. For the members of the GR team, their job is to spot those opportunities and leverage Woodwell’s science in a way that improves climate policy.

One example of this is Woodwell’s work on the Farm Bill, legislation that authorizes programs related to agriculture, nutrition, conservation, and forestry policy and must be renewed every five years. Given climate science pertains to a range of topics and policies included in the Farm Bill, Woodwell developed policy priorities, hosted a congressional briefing, drafted legislative text alongside congressional offices, and spoke with decision-makers about advancing the role of climate science in the Farm Bill.

The second approach Woodwell’s GR team takes is to build support for new initiatives. An example of this is Woodwell’s push for the development of a more coordinated system of national climate services, which grew out of one of the Center’s flagship programs: Just Access.

Just Access is a partnership between GR and Woodwell’s Risk program that provides “useful, relevant, accessible, and free of charge climate information that can help communities make forward thinking policy decisions,” says Condia, who leads this work on the GR side.

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GR team members find and communicate with partner governments around the world, providing project management while the Risk team completes the scientific assessment of risk for relevant climate factors such as heat, flooding, and drought.

Through this work, the Woodwell team has come face-to-face with the enormous gaps in delivery of climate services and information to local and regional governments. “You realize that you’re just scratching the surface,” McGlinchey laments. “You work with Chelsea, Massachusetts, and it’s important and powerful. But there are 1,000 other communities like it that I wish we could work with.”

For many communities, Condia says, “the Just Access program may be the only opportunity they have to have access to this data, to be able to understand their climate future.” This realization led the GR team to develop an advocacy framework calling for a new federal initiative establishing comprehensive national climate services.

From Chelsea, Massachusetts to the DRC Federal policy work can be a long game. For Baillargeon, working on more local projects like Just Access is exciting because “when we work with these communities, science is in the hands of decision-makers immediately.”

In many cases, communities quickly undertake steps towards protecting vulnerable residents and infrastructure identified by the risk assessments. In Chelsea, Massachusetts, city officials integrated the results of the assessment into their planning for equitable climate resilience solutions. In Charleston, South Carolina, local governments are using their risk assessment as support for a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) grant application.

It’s not just in the United States where these risk assessments have an impact.

For the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Environment Ministry, Woodwell completed a unique assessment that included an analysis of risk to forest

 DRC roadway through forested land. / photo by Nolan Kitts

carbon stocks. The risk assessment led to a request for Woodwell to support the creation of a regulatory agency for carbon markets.

For McGlinchey, this work is incredibly exciting. “This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to direct enormous amounts of funding into forest conservation efforts… and we need those forests conserved if we’re going to have a stable climate.” Voluntary carbon markets, he says, have not historically been reliable. What’s happening now in the DRC is an opportunity for Woodwell policy experts to support the creation of science-backed standards to ensure that when offsets or credits are sold there is a verifiable climate benefit. In short, “there’s a lot at stake here.”

Endless possibility for policy action The flow of opportunities for leveraging Woodwell’s research continues to build momentum. The team is rising to meet the challenge, and there is a lot they want to accomplish in the coming years.

As they take on new projects and add new team members, they will continue to stay true to the organization’s mission, never straying from the science.

Each team member was adamant about one thing: Woodwell does things differently, and it is that difference that leads to such a profound policy impact coming from such a small team.

“Woodwell exists in not a unique niche, but an unusual one,” McGlinchey says.

“We’re not a pure science organization, but we’re not a straight advocacy organization. We bring deep scientific credentials and then we get into the policymaking room and engage and try to create better legislation… people appreciate it. They appreciate that our motivations are purely focused on a stable, safe climate.” It’s what makes an event like September’s Fly-In so successful. Science, translated into policy, without the political baggage.

“Once they figure that out about Woodwell,” says McGlinchey, “they want to work with us.”

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Endowment gifts ensure the future of climate research Two $1M gifts from the Bernier and Ives families support the Center’s endowment Sarah Ruiz

Science Writer/Editor

Looking around at the crowd of friends gathered for George Woodwell’s 90th birthday party, Steve Bernier and Constance Messmer realized that the organization Woodwell had founded over 35 years ago had something special.

“It was the people. We were sitting there, watching the passion, the connection,” says Bernier. “It moved my wife and me, and made me think ‘I want to participate more actively.’”

This realization moved Bernier to commit a $1 million gift to Woodwell Climate Research Center’s endowment.

For another long-time friend of the center, Woody Ives, it was his family’s growing concern about climate change and a desire to help the Center adapt to new challenges that moved him to do the same.

“A robust endowment will help produce the climate solutions needed today and also keep the Center’s research strong to meet new climate challenges,” says Ives.

“Our whole family is concerned about climate change and we are proud to make this commitment to the future of Woodwell Climate Research Center.”

Together, these two generous gifts represent an investment in the future of research at Woodwell Climate.

Sustaining science through an unpredictable future Science can be an unpredictable process, and studying a rapidly evolving problem

Fall 2023

Climate Science for Change

like climate change requires a particular blend of nimbleness and persistence.

Finding funding for the kinds of multiyear experiments that help us better understand our changing climate can be a challenge, which is what makes contributions to the Center’s general endowment a vital source of stability.

Whereas specific grant funds are designated for particular time-bound research, general endowment funds provide the financial flexibility and stability needed to recruit and retain world-class climate scientists for the long term.

“It’s a powerful investment in the future of the Center,” says Beth Bagley, Director of Legacy Giving at Woodwell Climate. “Scientific research is a long term process by nature, so really this is an investment to ensure all of our cutting-edge work reaches completion.”

An expanded endowment will also allow research priorities at the Center to adapt as the climate crisis evolves.

“As our understanding of the impacts of climate change develops, we need the flexibility to focus our efforts on research and solutions that will have the highest impact,” says Woodwell Climate President and CEO Max Holmes. “We will face new challenges in the coming years that we couldn't have predicted in past ones, and Woodwell remains committed to meeting those challenges head on with the best possible science.”

 Steve Bernier and Constance Messmer  Woody and Elizabeth Ives, with their son, Ben Ives is pleased that his contribution will support the community of scientific skill and dedication that has been cultivated at the Center for years to come.

“There’s no quick and easy solution for a lot of these problems,” says Ives. “So I’m thinking medium and long term— thinking about tomorrow and the next day, rather than today.”

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Last image

Artistry of maps “When I look at this, especially the transition from imagery to art, I think of the future of the rivers and carbon balance in the Arctic. The brown color scheme is very fitting, as I think of all the carbon that will be mobilized with the thawing of permafrost. This extra carbon will profoundly change the Arctic Ocean. Right now the Ocean is a net sink of carbon, but how will it change in future? The name of this map art should be ‘Organic Matter.’”

— Anya Suslova, Research Assistant map imagery by Greg Fiske

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Gifts for today...

“This is a critical time for humanity, and slowing the effects of climate change is clearly one of society’s highest priorities.

Woodwell Climate Research Center is at the forefront of developing science-based solutions to our climate crisis, and the scope and quality of work they’re doing is second to none. As a former academic neonatologist at Brown University and elsewhere, I am proud to support Woodwell Climate with a recurring monthly gift.”

– Richard M. Cowett, MD, FAAP

Be a

Climate Champion Join our community of climate champions with an ongoing, monthly gift to support Woodwell Climate. It’s the greenest and most convenient way to help us address the impacts of climate change.

Become a Climate Champion at

woodwellclimate.org/ClimateChampion

...and for tomorrow Introducing a new offering from Woodwell Climate

A Guide to Legacy Giving Visit legacy.woodwellclimate.org and explore our easy-to-understand guide to estate planning including a charitable gift annuity calculator, plus tips on making a tax-smart gift to organizations you care about. You can even create your own will for free!

All legacy gifts are designated to the Center’s endowment, ensuring your legacy with Woodwell Climate will endure in perpetuity. You’ll also be invited to join our George Perkins Marsh legacy giving society.

Contact Beth Bagley, Director of Legacy Giving, at bbagley@woodwellclimate.org for more information.

149 Woods Hole Road Falmouth, MA, 02540-1644

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CLIMATE SCIENCE FOR CHANGE