Month in Review ~ July 2023

Informing U.S. forest policy with science / 02

Woodwell Climate awarded $5M Google.org grant for use of AI to track permafrost thaw / 03

Map of Alaska wins two prestigious awards / 06

In the news: highlights / 06

Notes from the Field

Informing U.S. forest policy with science

Dr. Rich Birdsey brings decades of forestry expertise to bear on recent forest policy initiatives

Sarah Ruiz Science Writer

Woodwell Senior Scientist Dr. Rich Birdsey has contributed his decades-long expertise in forestry and climate issues to two new U.S.-based forest policy initiatives. Working on both the state and federal level, Dr. Birdsey is helping to expand the influence of science in policy planning.

Federal forest policy

On July 20, 2023, Woodwell Climate submitted a response to the U.S. Forest Service’s request for public input into how they can adapt current policies and develop new ones to support the conservation of the country’s forests and increase their resilience in the face of climate change. The push for new rulemaking within the agency is a direct response to President Biden’s recent executive order: Strengthening the Nation’s Forests, Communities, and Local Economies.

Protecting forests is a crucial emissions mitigation strategy both within the US and globally. Forests, particularly mature and old-growth stands, contain centuries-worth of stored carbon and continue to sequester more each year. Loss of these precious forests releases stored carbon and reduces future carbon sequestration.

In the public comment, Dr. Birdsey, who led the drafting effort, emphasizes the importance of protecting mature and old-growth forests, stating, “When climate benefits are explicitly considered, the research points strongly to letting these forests grow— protecting and expanding the massive portion of sequestered carbon they represent. One of the largest threats facing mature and old-growth forests in the US is logging, which is a threat that humans can reduce instantly, simply by changing policy.”

Forest protection on the state level

Dr. Birdsey has also been named a scientific expert on a

committee charged with helping draft Massachusetts’ forest policies. A new state initiative, called “Forests as Climate Solutions” looks to expand existing forest conservation activities and develop new forest management guidelines that can help Massachusetts meet its climate goal of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The science committee will be responsible for providing input into the state’s proposals and assessing their effectiveness as climate solutions.

“Forests have to be at the forefront of our climate strategy,” said Massachusetts Climate Chief Melissa Hoffer. “Trees can sequester carbon for centuries—we have a responsibility to use the best science to ensure that their potential for carbon sequestration and storage is reflected in our approach.

Dr. Birdsey’s hope is that the policies developed by the new initiative will help Massachusetts take full advantage of its naturally carbon-rich forests.

“Massachusetts forests have some of the highest carbon stocks in the Eastern U.S., and I hope that policies enacted through this initiative will strengthen protection of older forests and large trees and foster management of younger forests to attain oldgrowth characteristics, while maintaining the current level of timber supplies,” says Dr. Birdsey.

Both policy initiatives present an important opportunity to set forest management on the right track towards achieving emissions reductions in years to come.

“Massachusetts’ forests have the potential to accumulate and store enough additional carbon to compensate for as much as 10% of the State’s current emissions from burning fossil fuels,” says Dr. Birdsey. “With climate-smart forests, Massachusetts can be a national climate leader.”

Carbon-14 sampling in Harvard Forest, Massachusetts. / photo courtesy of Kathleen Savage

Woodwell Climate awarded $5M Google.org grant for use of AI to track permafrost thaw

Woodwell Climate’s Dr. Anna Liljedahl to lead expansion and enhancement of Permafrost Discovery Gateway

Maddie Rocklin Senior Associate, 90 West

On July 17, 2023, Woodwell Climate announced $5 million in grant funding and a Fellowship from Google.org, the tech company’s philanthropic arm, to support the development of a new, openaccess resource that will use satellite data and artificial intelligence (AI) technology to make it possible to track Arctic permafrost thaw in near real-time for the first time.

As the Arctic warms at nearly four times the global rate, permafrost—or ground that has remained below 0 degrees C for at least two consecutive years–that underlies much of the region is thawing rapidly, causing widespread ground collapse and infrastructure damage,

threatening Arctic communities, and releasing carbon into the atmosphere. To date, real-time analysis of permafrost thaw has been out of reach due to the limitations of remote sensing and satellite imagery analysis. This new resource—an expansion of the Permafrost Discovery Gateway (PDG)—will use AI technology to streamline the data analysis process and make it easier to rapidly identify patterns and trends in permafrost thaw datasets that will be essential to informing climate mitigation and adaptation strategies.

“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 landscapes, have held us all back,” said Dr. Anna Liljedahl, Woodwell Climate Associate Scientist and project lead. “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.”

“Nonprofits have told us that when they use AI, they’re able to reach their goals in a third of the time and at half the cost,” shared Brigitte Hoyer Gosselink, Director of Product Impact at Google. org. “The thawing of arctic permafrost is a timely issue the world needs to better understand so that we can take collective

action. Google.org is proud to support Woodwell Climate Research Center to conduct permafrost thaw analysis in near real-time; work that is now possible thanks to advanced technology like AI.”

The grant is being given to Woodwell Climate Research Center as part of Google.org’s Impact Challenge on Climate Innovation, a $30M commitment to fund big bet projects that accelerate technological advances in climate information and action. In addition to funding support, Google.org will offer access to Google’s products and the support of a Google.org Fellowship, a pro bono program that matches Google employees—engineers, user experience designers, program managers and more—with nonprofits and civic entities for technical projects, full time for up to six months.

The three-year effort, being undertaken in partnership with University of Connecticut; National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis,

University of California Santa Barbara; National Center for Supercomputing Applications; Arizona State University; Alfred Wegener Institute; University of Alaska, Fairbanks; and Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, will focus on building automated workflows for geospatial product creation, AI models capable of identifying changes, patterns and trends, as well as environmental and climatic drivers, tera to petabyte scale permafrost thaw datasets.

In particular, the technology 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 adapt this technology for other research areas and expand access to key climate data and actionable insights across a range of issues and regions of the world.

“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 for anyone looking to find and utilize them for scientific research,” said Matthew Jones, Director of Informatics R&D at National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, University of California Santa Barbara. “Using this data, we collectively have the opportunity to understand the intricate and cascading effects of permafrost on a global scale and influence the trajectory of mitigation programs.”

“We will unlock the strengths of sub-meter resolution commercial satellite imagery and AI to create pan-Arctic scale geospatial map products of permafrost landforms, thaw disturbances, and human-built infrastructure,” said Chandi Witharana, Assistant Professor, University of Connecticut and project partner.

“We are excited to be working with Google.org to improve and extend the tools and data pipelines initially developed for the Permafrost Discovery Gateway (PDG) to new use cases. Closing the time gap between remote sensing data products becoming available and permafrost data products being published, such as the pan-Arctic submeter scale ice-wedge polygon dataset developed by Chandi Witharana and team, will hopefully help scientists and stakeholders better understand permafrost thawing at the pan-Arctic scale. We also hope to generalize some of the technologies and tools being developed so that more scientists can leverage this work to develop new permafrost related data pipelines,” said Luigi Marini, Lead Research Software Engineer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).

“It is great when we can connect researchers and teams such as NCSA’s

Dr. Anna Liljedahl, Woodwell Climate associate scientist and project lead. / photo courtesy of Anna Liljedahl

scientific applications team, so that partnerships can develop to further scientific discovery,” stated Laura Herriott, Associate Director for Research Consulting at the NCSA. Herriott is also on the leadership team of Delta, co-PI on the new DeltaAI system, and co-PI for the Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS) program. Computing resources offered by the National Science Foundation via Delta and the ACCESS Allocations supported the development of the pan-Arctic ice-wedge polygon dataset, which is published today and available to explore on the PDG.

“As a geospatial scientist and an AI researcher, it is really exciting to have the opportunity to develop cuttingedge geoAI to advance Arctic science, to inform climate actions and influence policies,” said Wenwen Li, Professor at Arizona State University and project partner. “I look forward to collaborating with our wonderful team to develop physics-informed, AI-based discovery tools that incorporate big, spatiotemporal data to identify new patterns, areas of rapid changes, and make forecasts on permafrost dynamics. Permafrost Discovery Gateway will host our new findings and tools and make them publicly accessible.”

“Permafrost is a central clock wheel in the complex mechanisms driving the ecological changes resulting from climate change—in the Arctic and in the rest of the world. The Permafrost Discovery Gateway will couple the strengths of high spatio-temporal remote sensing information and Machine Learning to advance our understanding of the resilience and vulnerability of permafrost to climate change across the landscape. As an ecologist and a modeler, I cannot wait to leverage this new information to develop predictive tools of permafrost thaw disturbances, and their impacts on the landscape, the carbon cycle and the global climate system.” said Hélène Genet, Associate Professor at the Institute

of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

“Permafrost covers a huge region of the northern hemisphere land mass and its disappearance either by gradual thaw but also by rapid thaw and erosion processes 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 project partner. “New geospatial methods and data processing techniques employed in this project jointly with experts from around the world will provide a first highly detailed look at permafrost thaw and its consequences at the pan-Arctic scale.”

“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. The effort will also collaborate with and provide more accurate, timely, and complete information to Permafrost Pathways, a major initiative also led by Woodwell Climate, funded through the TED Audacious Project and in partnership with the Arctic Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School and the Alaska Institute for Justice. “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,” Liljedahl says.

Dr. Ludmilla Rattis at TED Coundown Summit

Dr. Ludmila Rattis took the stage at the 2023 TED Countdown Summit in Detroit to talk about how climate and deforestation impact natural ecosystems and agricultural production in the Amazon rainforest and Brazil’s Cerrado region. / photo by Nick Hagen/TED

Map of Alaska wins two prestigious awards

Work by Woodwell Climate’s Greg Fiske honored at annual Esri User Conference

Heather Goldstone Chief Communications Officer

A map of Alaska created by Senior Geospatial Analyst Greg Fiske garnered two awards—the International Cartographic Association and International Map Industry Association Recognition of Excellence in Cartography, and Cartography Special Interest Group Excellence—at the Esri User Conference in San Diego this week.

Esri is the industry leader in mapping software and the Esri User Conference brought together more than 20,000

See how Greg Fiske made his award-winning map at: bit.ly/alaska-map

geospatial professionals including cartographers, software developers, students, end users, and policymakers. Woodwell Climate has an ongoing partnership with Esri and has attended the conference for more than two decades.

“These awards mean a great deal as the recognition comes from two very highly acknowledged cartographic organizations and the map pool at the Esri User Conference was immense,” Fiske said. “In the case of this map, not only did I share a basemap that we’re using widely in our Permafrost Pathways project, but I also shared a high-level overview of how I created the map and the resources (in the format of data, software, tutorials, and people) needed to do the same anywhere on the planet.”

In the news: highlights

The extreme temperatures of July found Dr. Jen Francis as a highly sought-after climate expert to help make sense of the connection of the jet stream to heat and heat to the Canadian wildfires. She had 1,418 media appearances and mentions for the month of July, including: as a guest on ABC RN’s “Rear Vision” radio show; quoted by NBC News (and also featured in their “Morning Rundown”); quoted in a widely-syndicated Associated Press article where she suggested we rethink the term “wildfire”; and quoted in two CNN articles and in The Washington Post about the heat, saying “certain places are becoming uninhabitable.”

Dr. Max Holmes was quoted in the Boston Globe about how record-breaking sea surface temperatures should be a “wakeup call” for climate action.

The map that won the awards shows the topography of Alaska. To the average viewer, it is beautiful, informative, and not overly complicated. But Fiske also created a storymap that breaks down the data layers, and analytical and design steps required to create the map—and it is anything but simple.

Fiske has been creating maps at Woodwell Climate for more than 20 years, and is known among colleagues—at the Center and across the mapping community—for his analytical skill, creativity and artistry, and dedication to quality.

“People are drawn to a beautiful map,” Fiske said. “Putting our work on a map takes advantage of that scenario and gives us an opportunity to spotlight our research.”

Dr. Anna Liljedahl’s recent Google.org grant award received media attention, including coverage from Axios, ABC News, and Alaska Beacon. Philanthropy News Digest’s article on the project was the top news item in their Thursday newsletter.

Dr. Ludmila Rattis’s TED talk was highlighted in a See Good Strategy Group blog post covering their top five takeaways from the TED Countdown Summit. She was also quoted by Interferencia about the challenge of discussing climate change with farmers in Brazil.

An article from CNN on Canada’s wildfires linked to a study on the climate mitigation potential of fire management authored by Carly Phillips, Dr. Brendan Rogers, Sol Cooperdock, and Dr. Peter Frumhoff.

Bloomberg and Financial Post quoted Dr. Brendan Rogers on wildfires, thawing permafrost, and their carbon emissions.

Grist quoted Dr. Skee Houghton’s perspective on a recent Nature paper examining the carbon emissions from wood harvesting.

Dr. Foster Brown was interviewed by Varadouro about climate change and the Amazon. He also co-authored a statement of alert from miniMAP Gestión de Riesgo, a tri-national Risk Management and Civil Defense group. The alert was picked up by local news, including Notícias da Hora.

Globo’s Um Só Planeta published an article on mining soils research led in part by Dr. José Safanelli, as well

as in an eCycle article covering research that suggests solutions for decarbonizing mining by reconstructing soils. He was also interviewed by TV Cultura on precision agriculture in Brazil.

The Regional interviewed Dr. Kyle Arndt about why the rebuilding work at Scotty Creek Research Station is so significant for climate research.

Dr. Jonathan Sanderman weighed in on the USDA’s Climate Smart Commodities program in an article by Yale Environment 360 that was widely shared, including by Grist.

The Boston Globe interviewed Dr. Zach Zobel about increased precipitation in the U.S. Northeast and the connection to climate change.

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