Scott K. Johnson: WI Cutting and Censoring Science→

Ars Technica:

“Since taking office in 2010, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has reshaped the state’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR). He appointed a former state senator and critic of the agency to be its secretary and hired an outside “deer czar” in response to hunters’ complaints about the state’s management of the deer herd. Gov. Walker also re-wrote state mining regulations to clear the way for an ill-fated iron mine proposal that was finally abandoned last month. Several days ago, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that the mining company’s lobbyist and spokesman had been considered for appointment as the DNR’s deputy secretary—until officials realized there was a federal law specifically preventing that kind of thing. (He was, instead, hired for a job in another agency.)

Now, the DNR has come under the budget knife. Among other changes and position cuts, the agency’s science bureau faces a 30 percent reduction in staff. Now, Wisconsin Watch reports that the DNR is considering eliminating the science bureau altogether, shuffling remaining staff into other divisions.”

I don't like to post on politics, but it is sad to see natural resource management agencies, like the WI DNR, discounted and their valuable work reduced.

Julie Buntjer: Minnesota Governor Dayton Talks about Buffer Initiative→

Governor Dayton at Worthington

“An estimated 200 people, including farmers from more than a 12-county area of southern and western Minnesota, packed inside the Worthington Fire Hall Thursday morning to ask questions and voice concerns about Gov. Mark Dayton’s proposal seeking to require 50-foot buffer strips along all lakes, rivers and streams across the state.

Arriving a few minutes behind schedule to a standing-room-only audience, Dayton acknowledged immediately that there will be disagreements and everyone is entitled to an opinion. He listened to question after question and occasionally offered responses on his bipartisan bill (HF1534/SF1537) for nearly two hours.

Dayton’s proposal seeks to create an additional 125,000 acres of water quality buffer strips statewide, and he wants to see the initiative under way before his term expires in another three and a half years.

The idea for added buffers came from the governor’s first-ever Minnesota Pheasant Summit late last year. Since then, it has evolved to focus not only on additional habitat and space for pollinators, but also on improving water quality.”

More Information

Adam Nagourney, Jack Healy and Nelson D. Schwartz: California Drought Tests History of Endless Growth→

New York Times:

“For more than a century, California has been the state where people flocked for a better life — 164,000 square miles of mountains, farmland and coastline, shimmering with ambition and dreams, money and beauty. It was the cutting-edge symbol of possibility: Hollywood, Silicon Valley, aerospace, agriculture and vineyards.

But now a punishing drought — and the unprecedented measures the state announced last week to compel people to reduce water consumption — is forcing a reconsideration of whether the aspiration of untrammeled growth that has for so long been this state’s driving engine has run against the limits of nature.”

Great pictures and a story that asks difficult questions challenging our paradigm of technical solutions to limits of nature. 

Bobby Magill: Alternatives to Keystone XL are Moving Forward→

Quartz:

“There are myriad other projects on the table designed to do exactly what Keystone XL was designed to do: transport Canadian tar sands oil to refineries. Those pipelines, both in the US and Canada, are being designed to move the oily bitumen produced from the tar sands to refineries in Texas and eastern Canada, and to ports on the Pacific Coast where the oil could be shipped to Asia.

Combined, the pipelines would be able to carry more than three million barrels of oil per day, far in excess of the 800,000 barrels per day that TransCanada’s Keystone XL is designed to carry.
Canada is sitting on about 168 billion barrels of crude oil locked up in the Alberta tar sands northeast of Edmonton—a trove of carbon-heavy fossil fuels bested in size only by oil reserves in Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. Today, the roughly two million barrels of tar sands oil produced each day in Alberta is sent to refineries in the US and Canada via rail or small pipelines, none of which are adequate to carry the 3.8 million barrels of oil per day expected to be produced in the oil sands by 2022.”

Also from Quartz: 

Matt Phillips: The simple GIF that explains a giant shift in the global economy

Nadia Prupis: EPA Restricts Some Pesticide Use→

CommonDreams:

“The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday announced restrictions on new or expanded uses of harmful neonicotinoid pesticides that may pose risks to honey bees and other pollinators, but environmental groups say the moratorium—while welcome—does not go far enough...

The EPA told companies using neonicotinoids that the agency will halt granting permits for those pesticides until it can assess the threats they pose to pollinators. The widespread use of certain herbicides and pesticides has come under increased scrutiny in recent years after a noted decline in bee populations, which play a crucial part in food production.

But a number of national and state-based environmental groups have called on the EPA to expand its protection of pollinators to include a ban on products already on the market.

”It’s welcome news that EPA is finally beginning to address the threat that neonics pose to the nation’s bees and other pollinators, but given the threats to the nation’s food and farming system, more is needed,” Kristin Schafer, policy director at Pesticide Action Network North America, said in a press release. “Numerous bee-harming neonics and their cousin products are already on the market, and seed coatings in particular have led to a dramatic surge in use over the last few years. EPA should go further to place a moratorium on existing products.””

EPA Announcement and EPA Letter

Scott K. Johnson: How Land Use is Reducing Species Richness→

Ars Technica:

“When we think about good wildlife habitat, we generally picture lands undisturbed by human construction or agriculture. Given that humans use roughly half the planet’s land area for such purposes, Earth’s “good habitat” ain’t what it used to be.

But what effect, exactly, has the loss of habitat had on all the species not named Homo sapiens? That’s a big, and therefore difficult, question to answer precisely. Plenty of effort has gone into estimating the number of species we’ve driven to extinction—we’ll eventually become the Sixth Mass Extinction event if we keep up at our current clip—but that can obscure the local details that tell us how the ecosystems around us are functioning.

A huge group of researchers led by Tim Newbold of the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre and Lawrence Hudson of London’s Natural History Museum have now focused in on those local details. The researchers compiled the results of 378 published ecology studies of over 11,000 sites around the world, including observations of almost 27,000 species—vertebrates, invertebrates, and plants. The goal? To find ecological communities living on lands with varying human impact and see how they’re doing.

Unsurprisingly, croplands, pasture, and urban lands were associated with fewer species, fewer organisms, and smaller organisms than undisturbed areas. Agricultural lands, for example, hosted 20 to 40 percent fewer species, on average. On the positive side, they also found that areas allowed to recover after human disturbance—like reforested lands—scored about as well as areas that hadn’t been touched.

On average, the researchers found that human land use has reduced local biodiversity by nearly 14 percent and reduced the abundance of organisms by almost 11 percent. That varies quite a bit from place to place, though, as can be seen in the map below, which shows estimates based on applying local study results to global land use patterns.”

Global effects of land use on local terrestrial biodiversity

by Tim Newbold et al.

Abstract

Human activities, especially conversion and degradation of habitats, are causing global biodiversity declines. How local ecological assemblages are responding is less clear—a concern given their importance for many ecosystem functions and services. We analysed a terrestrial assemblage database of unprecedented geographic and taxonomic coverage to quantify local biodiversity responses to land use and related changes. Here we show that in the worst-affected habitats, these pressures reduce within-sample species richness by an average of 76.5%, total abundance by 39.5% and rarefaction-based richness by 40.3%. We estimate that, globally, these pressures have already slightly reduced average within-sample richness (by 13.6%), total abundance (10.7%) and rarefaction-based richness (8.1%), with changes showing marked spatial variation. Rapid further losses are predicted under a business-as-usual land-use scenario; within-sample richness is projected to fall by a further 3.4% globally by 2100, with losses concentrated in biodiverse but economically poor countries. Strong mitigation can deliver much more positive biodiversity changes (up to a 1.9% average increase) that are less strongly related to countries' socioeconomic status.

Rachel Sussman: What a 9,000 year old Spruce Taught Me→

Nautilus:

“The Oldest Living Things project was motivated not by a narrow interest or a traditional scientific question, but by the idea of something called deep time. Deep time is not a precise demarcation in the way that geologic eras and cosmological epochs are. Rather, it’s a framework in which to consider timescales too long for our shallow, physical experience, and too big for our brains to process meaningfully. And why should they be able to? The earliest modern humans had a life expectancy of around 32 years. What evolutionary need would they have had to comprehend what 10,000 years felt like? What I wanted to do was to find or forge something relatable, something to help process and internalize deep time in a meaningful way: to feel expanses of time that we were not designed to feel...

One of my primary goals with this work was to create a little jolt of recognition at the shallowness of human timekeeping and the blink that is a human lifespan. Does our understanding of time have to be tethered to our physiological experience of it? I don’t think so. Deep time is like deep water: We are constantly brought back to the surface, pulled by the wants and needs of the moment. But like exercising any sort of muscle, the more we access deep time, the more easily accessible it becomes, and the more likely we are to engage in long-term thinking. The more we embrace long-term thinking, the more ethical our decision-making becomes. It is not the job of traditional science to interpret and translate its findings. Art, on the other hand, is a great mediator.”

As a 170,000 year old species that until 10,000 years ago lived as hunter-gathers, we under-appreciate the importance of time. Some live for the moment, with little care for two generations out, while others have the curiosity to think long-term. We are lucky to have the latter.

Monica Millsap Rasmussen: Why not Transit?→

Streets.mn:

“At first glance, the question “What’s stopping others from using transit more regularly” seems to be an easy answer. Convenience. After all, a popular saying in the US used to be, “this is the best thing since sliced bread.” But is the answer more complicated than that?

Listening more deeply, and if one had the ability to converse with people who have made these statements, would we find that another theme is actually freedom to choose? After all, many people who cannot afford a car or are in a situation where they cannot obtain a driver’s license also face many of these obstacles, but due to their circumstances must face them on transit. Making mass transit more convenient would certainly improve the quality of life for users who need to take transit, but would the others take transit or still choose to drive? And would those who are currently without a car still choose to buy a car once they could afford one or obtain a license?”

Monica gets at another issue of regarding mass transit -- the need for high quality options that push out current users. In many cities mass transit is designed for those who can't afford a car. For mass transit to be more popular to the middle class and thus most politicians, it will require rail and bus use to be dominated by the non-poor. We now subsidize roads for the middle class, likely at a higher cost ($/mile) than rail, bus, or streetcar. Why? Because the preference for suburban (i.e., low-density village of our distant past) life-styles?

Matthew Fitzmaurice: Only Capitalism Can Save the Planet→

From Ensia:

“To say the world has changed a lot in the last century is a huge understatement. Industrial, medical and social progress has resulted in unprecedented growth in the world’s population and economy, and that growth has placed tremendous burdens on the planet’s resources. These burdens create problems — perhaps the most substantive problems we have faced as a species: from water scarcity and pollution to climate change, reliable access to nourishing food, and affordable energy.

Here’s the thing, though: where there are problems to be solved, there’s money to be made. And where there’s money to be made, we awaken one of the world’s most powerful forces for change: capitalism. ”

In Lakeshore Living, we write about the benefits of reconfiguring capitalism and expanding markets. We have failed to effectively price public goods, such as clean air and water. Capitalism currently does not value these goods that we all value. Reconfiguring and expanding our capitalistic economic system with price signals for ecosystem services is consistent with our values and traditions. Everybody should pay the full cost of his or her activities, and we should have markets for natural services on private property that include water filtration and purification, soil formation, nutrient capture and recycling, and flood reduction. 

James J. Krupa: Teaching Evolution→

James J. Krupa, writing for Slate:

melfoody, Flickr

“We live in a nation where public acceptance of evolution is the second lowest of 34 developed countries, just ahead of Turkey. Roughly half of Americans reject some aspect of evolution, believe the Earth is less than 10,000 years old, and that humans coexisted with dinosaurs. Where I live, many believe evolution to be synonymous with atheism, and there are those who strongly feel I am teaching heresy to thousands of students. A local pastor, whom I’ve never met, wrote an article in the University Christian complaining that, not only was I teaching evolution and ignoring creationism, I was teaching it as a non-Christian, alternative religion.

There are students who enroll in my courses and already accept evolution. Although not yet particularly knowledgeable on the subject, they are eager to learn more. Then there are the students whose minds are already sealed shut to the possibility that evolution exists, but need to take my class to fulfill a college requirement. And then there are the students who have no opinion one way or the other but are open-minded. These are the students I most hope to reach by presenting them with convincing and overwhelming evidence without offending or alienating them.”

"It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so." ― Charles F. Kettering

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” ― Daniel J. Boorstin

"The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, it’s that they know so many things that just aren't so." ― Mark Twain (?)

"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." ― Daniel J. Boorstin 

Dunning–Kruger effect and We are All Confident Idiots

Angelina Davydova: Lake Baikal Water Levels at 30 Year Low→

Angelina Davydova, reporting for Reuters:

Délirante bestiole, Flickr

“In Russia’s Siberian south, near the border of Mongolia, the world’s largest freshwater lake is shrinking. The surrounding communities depend on Lake Baikal, which contains about one-fifth of the earth’s unfrozen freshwater reserves, for their power, water and livelihoods.

But in the past four months the lake’s water level has dropped so low that experts are calling it a crisis – one they warn could lead to conflicts in Russia over water. The lake is now at its lowest level in over 30 years and experts predict it will keep dropping until melting mountain snow and spring rains begin to recharge the lake around late April or mid-May...

For now, the government is allowing the Irkutsk hydroelectric power station to continue drawing river water that might otherwise have supplied the lake in order to keep the region supplied with heat, power and clean water.”

NASA; Irkutsk Dam on the lake's southeast outlet, the Angara River

Yale Environment 360: Back from the Brink→

Lake Erie Water Snake; USFWS

“The Lake Erie water snake, found along the southern shores its namesake, was delisted in 2011. U.S Fish and Wildlife Service researchers determined its population had exceeded recovery goals after important habitats were permanently protected. Construction projects along the Lake Erie shoreline have also been designed to protect the snakes.”

Slideshow of more species

Never-ending conservation has rewards. For more information: USA, Canada

Ron Meador: Piping Plover Recovery?→

Ron Meador, reporting for MinnPost:

USFWS

“Piping plovers have never been terribly numerous; for a baseline natural population in the Great Lakes region, including Minnesota, Cuthbert offered the estimate of 200 to 300 breeding pairs at the turn of the last century. That would be after a certain toll taken by market hunters, who slaughtered the birds for their plumage – prized for ladies’ hats – and also, amazingly, for their meat...

The Great Lakes plovers, which numbered but 54 pairs in 2012 and perhaps 70 pairs today, can be distinguished just barely from the Plains species by genetic material in blood samples, which makes it a subspecies for some scientific purposes but not, as it happens, for separate treatment under the Endangered Species Act, which has protected all piping plovers since 1986...

As of last summer, Cuthbert said, that population stood at around 70 breeding pairs, and there’s strong evidence that there may well be more in nesting sites that haven’t yet been found. If the population reaches 100 pairs in Michigan and 50 elsewhere in the region, and holds there for five years, the piping plover stands to be classified as recovered.”

Piping Plover fact sheet , species profile , and University of MN work 

Wendell Berry: As Farmers Fade, Who Will Care for the American Landscape?→

Wendy Berry, writing for the Atlantic:

CJ Buckwalker, Flickr

“The landscapes of our country are now virtually deserted. In the vast, relatively flat acreage of the Midwest now given over exclusively to the production of corn and soybeans, the number of farmers is lower than it has ever been. I don’t know what the average number of acres per farmer now is, but I do know that you often can drive for hours through those corn-and-bean deserts without seeing a human being beyond the road ditches, or any green plant other than corn and soybeans. Any people you may see at work, if you see any at work anywhere, almost certainly will be inside the temperature-controlled cabs of large tractors, the connection between the human organism and the soil organism perfectly interrupted by the machine. Thus we have transposed our culture, our cultural goal, of sedentary, indoor work to the fields. Some of the “field work,” unsurprisingly, is now done by airplanes.

This contact, such as it is, between land and people is now brief and infrequent, occurring mainly at the times of planting and harvest. The speed and scale of this work have increased until it is impossible to give close attention to anything beyond the performance of the equipment. The condition of the crop of course is of concern and is observed, but not the condition of the land. And so the technological focus of industrial agriculture by which species diversity has been reduced to one or two crops is reducing human participation ever nearer to zero. Under the preponderant rule of “labor-saving,” the worker’s attention to the work place has been effectively nullified even when the worker is present. The “farming” of corn-and-bean farmers—and of others as fully industrialized—has been brought down from the complex arts of tending or husbanding the land to the application of purchased inputs according to the instructions conveyed by labels and operators’ manuals.”

Read more. If you read anything today read this, then read more from Wendell Berry... 

Joe Fellegy: A Look at Lakeshore and Fish Issues with Biologist-Author Paul Radomski

Joe Fellegy

Joe Fellegy, reporting for Outdoor News:

“After three decades with the Minnesota DNR, Paul Radomski can boast a longtime deep immersion into Minnesota’s diverse lake scenes, from fish and fisheries management to related aquatic and shoreland habitats.”

Read more

MN DNR: Governor's Buffer Initative

Minnesota DNR:

ScootterFllix, Filckr

“Governor Mark Dayton has proposed an initiative aimed at protecting Minnesota’s waters from erosion and runoff pollution.

Known as the Buffer Initiative, the legislation requires at least 50 feet of perennial vegetation around Minnesota’s waters. Buffers help filter out phosphorus, nitrogen, and sediment by slowing runoff, trapping sediment with these pollutants and allowing vegetation to absorb them.”

Good summary of riparian conditions across Minnesota, a collection of shoreline buffer reports, a review of the Governor's proposal, and links to the buffer bills currently being debated.

Aggressive Plan Aims to Separate Crops from Waterways→

Elizabeth Dunbar, reporting for MPR:

“That the governor and members of both parties are pushing a law requiring buffers is significant, say those who have advocated buffers for years. It’s galvanized members of conservation groups like the Izaak Walton League of America. Don Arnosti, who represents the group, called it “one of the strongest initiatives that could be in the broadest public interest in pursuit of clean water.”

The bill would require buffers in place by September 2016. Current law mandates buffers along about 36 percent of the waterways in the state, according to a state agency analysis, so the change would be significant.

Republican Rep. Denny McNamara, who chairs the House Environment and Natural Resources Policy and Finance Committee, said it faces an uphill battle at the Legislature.”

Minnesota Buffer Legislation→

Dave Orrick, writing for the St. Paul Pioneer Press:

“Gov. Mark Dayton’s vision to use wildlife habitat to protect Minnesota waters from pollution runoff and erosion is ready for action at the state Capitol.

In January, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor governor delighted and surprised conservationists by announcing he would push for a 50-foot buffer strip of vegetation along every stream, drainage ditch and river in the state. On Tuesday, a bill containing that vision — and with at least some Republican support — will be heard by an environmental committee of the Republican-controlled House.

Development of the plan, inspired by pheasant hunters seeking ways to boost the state’s declining bird numbers, is being closely watched by environmentalists and farmers alike. The plan would strengthen and close loopholes in existing state law and, at least as initially envisioned by Dayton, create some 125,000 acres of wildlife habitat along waterways that often are failing the state’s water-quality goals.

Among the beneficiaries, supporters believe, would be butterflies; pollinators, such as bees; songbirds; waterfowl; fish and other aquatic life; and degraded waters, especially in farm country. But the expense could be borne by farmers, who might be forced to take cash- producing corn and soybean rows out of production in favor of other plantings.”

Governor Dayton's quotes

Why are Developers Still Building Sprawl?→

Alana Semuels, writing for the Atlantic:

MyBiggestFan, Flickr

“LAS VEGAS—A decade ago, home builders put up thousands of new spacious stucco homes in the desert here, with marble countertops, ample square footage, and walk-in kitchen cupboards.

Then the recession hit, the values of these homes plummeted, and economists talked of the overbuilding of Las Vegas.

Now, though, developers are building once again, on projects derailed during the recession, including master-planned communities such as the 1,700-acre Skye Canyon, the 2,700-acre Park Highlands, the 1,900-acre Inspirada, and 555 acres of luxury living in an area called Summerlin.

The homes being built here and in many cities across the country look very similar to the ones built during the boom. Some, in fact, are even bigger. The average single-family home built in 2013 was 2,598 square feet, 80 feet larger than the average single-family house built in 2008, and 843 feet larger than homes built in 1978, according to Census Bureau data...

It may be surprising to hear that so little has changed in the homebuilding industry since the recession, especially in Las Vegas, one of the epicenters of the housing bust. After all, low gas prices aside, surveys suggest that both Boomers and younger generations are interested in living in more urban places where they don’t have to spend so much time in the car getting to and from work. They also don’t mind smaller homes, especially if they’re close to public transit or retail or restaurants. And studies have shown that sprawl has negative health impacts: People who live in far-out suburbs walk less, eat more, and exercise less than those who live in urban environments.”

An Invasive Plant Plays a Conservation Role→

Garry Hamilton, writing for Conservation Magazine:

“The scene at Florida’s Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge in Kings Bay last October would have been familiar to anyone who has ever engaged in the battle to control the spread of invasive plants. Eager volunteers scurried about the shoreline of this manatee wintering ground, carting large plastic bins stuffed with water hyacinth, a notorious aquatic weed that’s caused headaches on five continents. Closer inspection, however, would have revealed the activity to be anything but business as usual: instead of hauling water hyacinth out of the bay, the conservationists were putting it back in—almost 4,300 gallons’ worth by day’s end...

Ultimately, project supporters hope that yesterday’s enemy could be tomorrow’s friend. They believe the hyacinths can play an important role in a conservation strategy that also includes reducing nutrient runoff and restoring spring flows. “Since these invasive plants are here and we can’t get rid of them,” says the University of Georgia’s Evans, “I think it’s counterproductive to be killing them and not taking advantage of their functions. These are important tools. We should be using them.””