topic: Drought

topic: Drought

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‘Weather whiplash’ cycles of floods & droughts imperil Nigerian farming
- Farmers in Nigeria — and other regions, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa — are suffering huge losses due to extreme weather shifts in quick succession, a phenomenon that researchers refer to as “weather whiplash.”
- Research shows a connection between poverty and weather whiplash, and farmers in poorer regions are five times more exposed to drought-downpour cycles than people in wealthier regions.
- In April, the independent SciLine service for journalists hosted a webinar with agricultural scientists who discussed these extreme weather cycles, the impacts of climate change on agriculture in different regions and the need for homegrown approaches to support agriculture resilience.

An ancient Indigenous lagoon system brings water back to a dry town in Ecuador
- The town of Catacocha, located in the south of Ecuador, is in a province known for being almost a desert: dry forest, barren soil and rains that only appear two months in the year.
- A historian discovered the water collection system long ago used by Palta Indigenous people and persuaded locals in Catacocha to apply it.
- By building 250 artificial lagoons, the inhabitants of this region have succeeded in managing rainwater.
- The change that has happened in nine years is visible: They sowed 12,000 plant,s and UNESCO has included the area in its list of ecohydrology demonstration sites.

Drone cameras help scientists distinguish between drought stress & fungus in oaks
- Scientists have used remote sensing, spectroscopy and machine learning to detect sick oak trees and distinguish between drought stress and oak wilt, a fungal disease.
- A recently published study describes how researchers established a link between physiological traits of trees and light reflectance to monitor the progression of symptoms in trees afflicted by oak wilt and drought.
- They used the data to build a predictive model that can identify symptoms and detect sick oaks 12 days before visual symptoms appear.
- Oaks are vital for climate regulation and carbon sequestration; however, the trees face threats to their survival because of a fatal fungal disease as well as the worsening impacts of climate change.

Climate change could drive mammal extinction in Brazil’s Caatinga, study warns
- According to a new study, 91.6% of terrestrial mammal communities in the Caatinga will lose species by 2060, with 87% of them being deprived of their habitats if the temperature in the region increases by at least 2°C.
- Small mammals will suffer the strongest impact, and some species may disappear from the biome, such as the giant anteater and the giant armadillo.
- In addition to more drought and rising temperatures, deforestation caused by wind farms also threatens some species, such as the jaguar.
- In a previous study, the same researchers had warned that 99% of plant communities in the Caatinga will lose species by 2060.

Rainwater reserves a tenuous lifeline for Sumatran community amid punishing dry season
- Kuala Selat village lies on the coast of Indragiri Hilir district on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
- In the first half of the year, residents of the village arrange buckets and drums to collect rainwater to meet their daily needs.
- They will then stockpile water to last through the dry months from June-September, but a longer dry spell has led to an acute shortage of water.
- Residents say they believe the water crisis in the village was linked to bouts of diarrhea, and that many fled the village during an outbreak.

Agroforestry project sows seeds of hope in drought-hit Honduras
- In response to longer and more intense droughts, Indigenous Tolupan farmers in Honduras are turning to agroforestry and agroecology strategies to adapt to the changing climate.
- The strategies include diversifying their crops, building water storage systems, introducing methods to better conserve water in the soil, and building up banks of native seeds.
- Although Honduras wasn’t among the 22 countries that declared a drought emergency in 2022 and 2023, severe heat waves and El Niño events are hitting harvests hard, leading to an exodus of young people out of rural areas.
- Locals participating in the adaptation initiative say it’s starting to bear fruit and give them hope — a precious resource in a dry land.

Critics fear catastrophic energy crisis as AI is outsourced to Latin America
- AI use is surging astronomically around the globe, requiring vastly more energy to make AI-friendly semiconductor chips and causing a gigantic explosion in data center construction. So large and rapid is this expansion that Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI, has warned that AI is driving humanity toward a “catastrophic energy crisis.”
- Altman’s solution is an audacious plan to spend up to $7 trillion to produce energy from nuclear fusion. But even if this investment, the biggest in all of history, occurred, its impact wouldn’t be felt until mid-century, and do little to end the energy and water crises triggered by AI manufacture and use, while having huge mining and toxic waste impacts.
- Data centers are mushrooming worldwide to meet AI demand, but particularly in Latin America, seen as strategically located by Big Tech. One of the largest data center hubs is in Querétaro, a Mexican state with high risk of intensifying climate change-induced drought. Farmers are already protesting their risk of losing water access.
- As Latin American protests rise over the environmental and social harm done by AI, activists and academics are calling for a halt to government rubber-stamping of approvals for new data centers, for a full assessment of AI life-cycle impacts, and for new regulations to curb the growing social harm caused by AI.

Brazilian youngsters discuss how they are tackling the climate emergency
- Affected by drought, pollution, high waters and floods, young people from different Brazilian states describe how climate change is impacting their routines and causing illness, malnutrition, displacement and school disruption.
- According to a UNICEF report, 2 billion children and adolescents in the world are exposed to risks arising from the climate emergency; in Brazil, there are 40 million affected children and adolescents — 60% of Brazilians under 18.
- According to experts, the climate crisis is a crisis of the rights of children and adolescents, as it affects everything from the right to decent housing and health care to education and food, leading to problems in child development and learning abilities.

Sumatra firefighters on alert as burning heralds start of Riau dry season
- On the northeast coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island, the first of two annual dry seasons led to a spike in wildfires in some peatland areas in February.
- In the week ending March 2, Indonesian peatland NGO Pantau Gambut said 34 hotspots, possibly fires, were identified by satellite on peatlands in Riau province.
- Emergency services in the province have been concentrated to the east of the port city of Dumai, where a fire started in the concession of a palm oil company, according to local authorities.

Harsh dry season sours harvest prospects for Java coffee farmers
- Indonesia is the world’s fourth-largest producer of coffee, after Brazil, Vietnam and Colombia, but the archipelago’s farmers are less productive than their competitors.
- In East Java province, farmers have seen yields plummet as a protracted water deficit shrinks fruit and introduces pests.
- Total output is expected to drop by more than 20% this season, while increasingly frequent extreme weather may pose challenges to the viability of some smallholders in lowland areas of Indonesia.

Megafires are spreading in the Amazon — and they are here to stay
- Wildfires consuming more than 100 square kilometers (38 square miles) of tropical rainforest shouldn’t happen, yet they are becoming more and more frequent.
- Because of its intense humidity and tall trees, fire does not occur spontaneously in the Amazon; usually accidental, forest fires are caused by uncontrolled small fires coming from crop burning, livestock management or clear-cutting.
- Scientists say the rainforest is becoming increasingly flammable, even in areas not directly related to deforestation; fire is now spreading faster and higher, reaching more than 10 meters (32 feet) in height.

Climate change, extreme weather & conflict exacerbate global food crisis
- Global food insecurity has risen substantially since pre-pandemic times, exacerbated by extreme weather, climate change, war and conflict.
- What the U.N. World Food Program calls “a hunger crisis of unprecedented proportions” plays out differently around the world.
- In this story, three of Mongabay’s Y. Eva Tan Conservation Reporting Fellows detail the local situation in their region – from rising inflation and flooding in Nigeria to diminished local food production in Suriname and the environmental and socioeconomic effects of commercial food production in Brazil.
- “If we do not redouble and better target our efforts, our goal of ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030 will remain out of reach,” write the authors of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 2023 report on global food security and nutrition.

Climate change made 2023 Amazon drought 30 times more likely, scientists say
- A new report from World Weather Attribution (WWA) estimates that climate change increased the likelihood of the 2023 Amazon drought by a factor of 30.
- Both El Niño and climate change contributed to the lack of rainfall in the region, but climate change also led to extremely high temperatures and increased water evaporation.
- In a world 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) warmer than preindustrial levels, similar or worse droughts will likely occur in the region every 10-15 years.

Maluku farmers sweat El Niño drought as Indonesia rice prices surge
- Rice prices surged across Indonesia during the second half of 2023 as the effects of El Niño led to widespread crop failures.
- In December, President Joko Widodo ordered military personnel to help farmers plant rice in a bid to boost domestic production, and curb food price inflation.
- On Buru Island, Mongabay Indonesia spoke with farmers who described risks of conflict as water scarcity forced farmers to queue for access to water.

Extreme drought in western Pará pushes family farmers into agroforestry
- Lost crops, reduced fish numbers, low water levels in rivers and difficult access to potable water have all led to a state of disaster declared in many municipalities in the state of Pará.
- Severe drought, the result of increasing climate changes and El Niño, is resulting in a more flammable Amazon rainforest. Farmers and technicians are seeking out more sustainable alternatives to the traditional slash-and-burn system.
- Agroforestry systems (AFS) and native honeybee apiculture cooperatives are increasing in the region.

The year in rainforests: 2023
- The following is Mongabay’s annual recap of major tropical rainforest storylines.
- While the data is still preliminary, it appears that deforestation declined across the tropics as a whole in 2023 due to developments in the Amazon, which has more than half the world’s remaining primary tropical forests.
- Some of the other big storylines for the year: Lula prioritizes the Amazon; droughts in the Amazon and Indonsia; Indonesia holds the line on deforestation despite el Niño; regulation on imports of forest-risk commodities; an eventful year in the forest carbon market; rainforests and Indigenous peoples; and rampant illegality.

With half its surface water area lost, an Amazonian state runs dry
- Water bodies across the Brazilian state of Roraima have shrunk in area by half over the past 20 years, according to research from the mapping collective MapBiomas.
- Today, locals are facing even drier times amid a severe drought in the Amazon, which has led to record-low levels of water in the rainforest’s main rivers.
- Since 1985, Roraima’s agricultural area has grown by more than 1,100%, with experts pointing to crops as one of the state’s main drivers of water loss.

Detailed NASA analysis finds Earth and Amazon in deep climate trouble
- A NASA study analyzed the future action of six climate variables in all the world’s regions — air temperature, precipitation, relative humidity, short- and long wave solar radiation and wind speed — if Earth’s average temperature reaches 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, which could occur by 2040 if emissions keep rising at current rates.
- The authors used advanced statistical techniques to downscale climate models at a resolution eight times greater than most previous models. This allows for identification of climate variations on a daily basis across the world, something essential since climate impacts unfold gradually, rather than as upheavals.
- The study found that the Amazon will be the area with the greatest reduction in relative humidity. An analysis by the Brazilian space agency INPE showed that some parts of this rainforest biome have already reached maximum temperatures of more than 3°C (5.4°F) over 1960 levels.
- Regardless of warnings from science and Indigenous peoples of the existential threat posed by climate change, the world’s largest fossil fuel producers, largely with government consent, plan to further expand fossil fuel exploration, says a U.N. report. That’s despite a COP28 climate summit deal “transitioning away from fossil fuels.”

Thailand tries nature-based water management to adapt to climate change
- With an economy largely underpinned by irrigated crops like rice, water is a crucial resource in Thailand. But as climate change exacerbates floods and droughts in the country, sustainable water management is an increasing challenge.
- Nature-based solutions that incorporate the natural processes of the country’s abundant rivers, floodplains and watershed forests are beginning to be trialed via various projects at large and small scales.
- A new report assesses the efficacy of two nature-based approaches to water management in Thailand, which represent a step away from the country’s typically top-down, hard-engineering approach and present several benefits to the environment and communities.
- However, environmental and societal tradeoffs, complex policy frameworks, and the need for greater understanding and expertise around the concept, design and implementation of nature-based approaches are barriers to their widespread implementation.

Salty wells and lost land: Climate and erosion take their toll in Sulawesi
- Coastal erosion on the west coast of Indonesia’s Sulawesi Island is so advanced that seawater has penetrated the groundwater supply that tens of thousands use for drinking water.
- The communities have yet to be served by utility water provision, so families are resorting to costly supplies of water from private distributors.
- Research shows that rising seas and more frequent and powerful storms will accelerate coastal abrasion, raising burdens shouldered by the world’s coastal communities.

Last of the reef netters: An Indigenous, sustainable salmon fishery
- Reef net fishing is an ancient, sustainable salmon-harvesting technique created and perfected by the Lummi and other Coast Salish Indigenous people over a millennium.
- Rather than chasing the fish, this technique uses ropes to create an artificial reef that channels fish toward a net stretched between two anchored boats. Fishers observe the water and pull in the net at the right moment, intercepting salmon as they migrate from the Pacific Ocean to the Fraser River near present-day Washington state and British Columbia.
- Colonialism, government policies, habitat destruction, and declining salmon populations have separated tribes from this tradition. Today, only 12 reef net permits exist, with just one belonging to the Lummi Nation.
- Many tribal members hope to revive reef net fishing to restore their cultural identity and a sustainable salmon harvest but face difficulties balancing economic realities with preserving what the Lummi consider a sacred heritage.

Fish out of water: North American drought bakes salmon
- An unprecedented drought across much of British Columbia, Canada, and Washington and Oregon, U.S., during the summer and fall months of June through October could have dire impacts on Pacific salmon populations, biologists warn.
- Low water levels in streams and rivers combined with higher water temperatures can kill juvenile salmon and make it difficult for adults to swim upriver to their spawning grounds.
- Experts say relieving other pressures on Pacific salmon and restoring habitat are the best ways to build their resiliency to drought and other impacts of climate change.

Forests hold massive carbon storage potential — if we cut emissions
- A new study finds forests could potentially store 226 billion metric tons of carbon if protected and restored, or about one-third of excess emissions since industrialization.
- Nearly two-thirds of this potential lies in conserving and letting existing forests mature.
- The authors say that restoring deforested areas through community-driven approaches such as agroforestry and payments for ecosystem services is essential.
- Planting trees can’t replace cutting fossil fuel emissions, as climate change threatens forests’ carbon uptake.

The Cloud vs. drought: Water hog data centers threaten Latin America, critics say
- Droughts in Uruguay and Chile have led residents to question the wisdom of their governments allowing transnational internet technology companies to build water-hungry mega-data centers there.
- As servers process data, they need lot of water to keep them cool. But if demand grows as expected, the world will need 10-20 times more data centers by 2035, and they’ll be using far more water. Many will likely be built in economically and water-challenged nations already facing climate change-intensified droughts.
- Latin American communities fear that this “data colonialism” will consume water they desperately need for drinking and agriculture, and are critical of their governments for giving priority treatment to transnational tech giants like Google and Microsoft, while putting people’s access to a basic human necessity at risk.
- Surging digital data use by 2030 may cause each of us in the developed world to have a “digital doppelganger,” with our internet use consuming as much water as our physical bodies. But much of the stored data is “junk.” Critics urge that nations insist on tougher regulations for transnational companies, easing the crisis.

Amazon drought: Much damage still to come (commentary)
- The Amazon Rainforest is being hit by three kinds of drought at once: an “eastern El Niño,” a “central El Niño” and an “Atlantic dipole.”
- Together, these drought conditions extend to almost the entire Amazon, and they are expected to last until at least mid-2024.
- These phenomena are all aggravated by global warming.
- This is a commentary and does not necessarily reflect the views of Mongabay. It is an updated translation of a text by the authors that is available in Portuguese on Amazônia Real.

People and nature suffer as historic drought fuels calamitous Amazon fires
- The state of Amazonas, the largest in Brazil, recorded 3,181 fires from Oct. 1-23, an all-time record for this month, according to monitoring by Brazil’s space agency, INPE.
- Surrounded by fires, Manaus, the state capital, has been shrouded in a thick layer of smoke, increasing the number of medical emergencies for respiratory problems.
- Researchers writing in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution say fires have become the main factor in the degradation of the Brazilian Amazon, threatening to undo the results of environmental protection policies.
- Water levels in the Solimões, Negro, Madeira and other great Amazonian rivers have dropped to unprecedented levels, forcing families to live on boats and drag themselves through the mud in search of water and food.

The Amazon’s archaeology of hope: Q&A with anthropologist Michael Heckenberger
- A professor at the University of Florida, Michael Heckenberger has been visiting and studying Indigenous peoples at the Upper Xingu River for decades and says the Amazon is already facing its tipping point: “It’s a tipping event.”
- In this interview for Mongabay, he tells how he and his colleagues have been practicing an “archeology of hope” — helping the Indigenous peoples in the region to prepare for climate change, using ancestral knowledge pulled out from archaeological research.
- “It should be the default, not the exception, to assume that there were Indigenous people living or dwelling in some way on almost every inch of Brazilian land,” he says about the marco temporal thesis, which aims to limit new Indigenous territories, now being discussed in Brazilian Congress.

Battling desertification: Bringing soil back to life in semiarid Spain
- Southeastern Spain is experiencing the northward advance of the Sahara Desert, leading to declining rainfall, soil degradation, and climate change-induced droughts, threatening agricultural lands that have been farmed for many centuries.
- Local farmers recently began adopting regenerative agriculture practices to better withstand long, persistent droughts punctuated by torrential rains and subsequent runoff.
- Many farmers in the region have formed a collaborative group called Alvelal to address encroaching desertification, depopulation, and the lack of opportunities for youth.
- Alvelal members manage more than 15,000 hectares (37,000 acres) of farmland using regenerative agriculture techniques and aim to expand further, conserving more farmland against the onslaught of climate change, while restoring natural corridors and promoting biodiversity.

Despite severe drought, Amazon deforestation continues to slow
- Despite a severe drought, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is still on the decline, according to data released today Brazil’s national space research institute (INPE).
- INPE’s near-real-time deforestation monitoring system, DETER, detected 629 square kilometers of forest clearing in September, a 57% drop from last September.
- This decline in forest loss has occurred despite a severe drought that is affecting vast swathes of the Brazilian Amazon, drying up rivers and worsening the spread of agricultural fires.

Sumatran province hangs on for late rain as El Niño fires bring heat and sickness
- Wildfires have returned to Indonesia as the country enters its dry season amid an El Niño year.
- In Palembang city, new respiratory infections will likely soon eclipse the total diagnosed in 2022.
- Meteorology officials expect the monsoon to begin in parts of Sumatra and Borneo islands in October, but warn dry conditions will persist in much of Indonesia until November.

Indigenous peoples undersupported on frontline of hotter, drier, fiery world
- It’s official: This has been the warmest June-July-August on record, and much attention has focused on the urgent need to achieve climate resilience in impacted urban areas. But how are rural Indigenous communities around the world living with these new extremes?
- Indigenous peoples — from Africa to the Arctic to Central America — report unprecedented heat waves, droughts, storms and wildfires, extremes that are impacting the wildlife they hunt, the plants they gather, crops they grow, livestock they raise, and their very survival.
- Given that many Indigenous peoples live close to the land and depend directly on local resources, they’re especially vulnerable to the massive changes now sweeping our planet.
- But while Indigenous peoples are considered by many researchers and activists to be Earth’s best land stewards, their communities aren’t receiving the funding or resources necessary to adapt to a hotter, drier, stormier, fiery world, often due to the lack of access to their traditional lands.

Transgenics contaminate a third of Brazil’s traditional corn in semiarid region
- A new study identified the presence of up to seven transgenic genes in single seeds of traditional, or “creole” corn from more than 1,000 samples collected in 10% of the towns in Brazil’s Caatinga.
- The results indicate cross-contamination in the fields; it is estimated that pollen from transgenic corn can travel up to 3 kilometers, contaminating nearby traditional corn crops.
- The loss of agricultural biodiversity due to contamination by transgenic plants leaves Brazil vulnerable to climate change and food insecurity. Farmers have put their faith in community creole seed banks.

A tale of two biomes as deforestation surges in Cerrado but wanes in Amazon
- Brazil has managed to bring down spiraling rates of deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest in the first half of this year, but the neighboring Cerrado savanna has seen a wave of environmental destruction during the same period.
- The country’s second largest biome, the Cerrado is seeing its highest deforestation figure since 2018; satellite data show 3,281 hectares (8,107 acres) per day have been cleared since the start of the year through Aug. 4.
- The leading causes of the rising deforestation rates in the Cerrado are a disparity in conservation efforts across Brazil’s biomes, an unsustainable economic model that prioritizes monocultures, and escalating levels of illegal native vegetation clearing.
- Given the importance of the Cerrado to replenish watersheds across the continent, its destruction would affect not just Brazil but South America too, experts warn, adding that the region’s water, food and energy security are at stake.

Can land titles save Madagascar’s embattled biodiversity and people?
- Through its Titre Vert or Green Title initiative, the Malagasy government is opening up a path to land ownership for its most vulnerable citizens in the hopes it will help tackle hunger, internal migration, and forest loss.
- The state is using the initiative to lean on potential migrants to remain in the country’s deep south, where five years of failed rains have left 2 million people hungry, instead of migrating north, where they are often blamed for social tensions and for destroying forests.
- This March, the Malagasy government started work on a Titre Vert enclave in the Menabe region, a popular destination for migrants from the drought-hit south, to dissuade them from clearing unique dry forests to grow crops.
- Critics say the government is holding people back in a rain-starved region without providing enough support; in Menabe, backers of the project hope to provide ample assistance to get migrants out of the forests and onto their feet.

Drought cycles erode tropics’ ability to absorb CO₂, study finds
- A recent study finds that tropical carbon sinks have become increasingly vulnerable to water scarcity since 1960, and are consequently less able to absorb carbon dioxide.
- These findings suggest that tropical ecosystems are less resilient to climate change than previously thought.
- While the study doesn’t necessarily make projections for the future, the findings suggest that an acceleration of climate change, which is very likely to bring more drought, could further limit the ability of tropical ecosystems to absorb carbon dioxide, which, in turn, would worsen climate change.

The climate is already changing in the Matopiba, Brazil’s new agricultural frontier
- Collecting data from the last 40 years, researchers have observed increased temperatures and more severe droughts in the Matopiba region, which encompasses parts of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia states.
- A transition zone between the Cerrado and the eastern Amazon, the Matopiba is the largest area of contact between forest and savanna in the tropics; in the last two decades it has become one of the main fronts for the expansion of grain cultivation in Brazil.
- According to the researchers, the increased frequency of hot and dry days in the region results from an interaction between global climate change and the advance of deforestation.
- In the near future, environmental changes can harm agribusiness itself, putting Brazilian food security at risk.

Deforestation linked to less rainfall, study shows; El Niño could make it worse
- A new study shows concerning links between deforestation and reduced precipitation in tropical regions, which can in turn lead to reduced agricultural yields and food security issues.
- Now, researchers are concerned about the potential for another El Niño, which typically brings hotter, drier conditions to tropical regions, particularly in Southeast Asia, and can compound the effects of deforestation and reduced rainfall.
- The 2015-16 El Niño triggered crop losses, disease outbreaks, malnutrition and food insecurity, livestock deaths and other hardships that affected 60 million people globally; researchers say these trends signal the need for greater climate resilience in local communities.

Study shows Kenyan elephant shrew may be adapting to human disturbance, drought
- The endangered golden-rumped elephant shrew has seen its population in a Kenyan forest reserve increase by 52% in a decade, upending researchers’ fears of extinction due to hunting and habitat loss.
- The latest population survey credits the rabbit-sized mammal’s high adaptability to human-disturbed landscapes, including plantations of exotic tree species.
- They also appear to be thriving amid Kenya’s long-running drought, which has caused trees to shed their leaves in large volumes, thus creating the thick carpets of leaf litter that are the animal’s favored habitat.
- Researchers say the increase may also reflect the gains made by conservation measures within the forest reserve, including a community-based conservation system known as participatory forest management (PFM) that has the support of NGOs and the government.

Not all parts of the Amazon will survive future droughts, study says
- A recent study found that the western and southern Amazon will struggle to survive against increasingly extended periods of drought brought on by climate change, which will reduce the areas’ ability to store carbon.
- Researchers sampled more than 540 trees across 129 species at 11 separate sites in the western, central-eastern and southern Amazon, covering Brazil, Peru and Bolivia.
- Trees in the southern part of the Amazon show the greatest degree of adaption to cope with drought but will also face harsher conditions than other areas, which will lead to higher mortality rates.

Drying wetlands and drought threaten water supplies in Kenya’s Kiambu County
- Prolonged drought in Kenya has caused a water crisis, threatening local livelihoods and biodiversity; one of the badly affected areas is Kiambu County, a region normally known for its high agricultural productivity.
- Human activities such as dumping, encroachment and overgrazing coupled with dire effects of climate change exacerbate the degradation of wetlands, worsening the water crisis.
- Scientists say that conservation efforts must center around local communities to ensure the restoration of natural resources and combat the impacts of climate change.

Chile communities defy the desert by capturing increasingly scarce water
- The inhabitants of a rural community on the expanding frontier of Chile’s Atacama Desert are able to harvest around 500,000 liters (132,000 gallons) of water per year, thanks to fog nets installed 17 years ago.
- This water has allowed them to revive their mountain region’s vegetation and launch new businesses to improve their quality of life and adapt to drought.
- Other initiatives in the region, aimed at making the most use of the less frequent rains, help retain water for livestock and prevent soil erosion and mudslides.
- But these initiatives are pilot projects, with no funding or political support to sustain them over the long term, which the community says are what are needed the most.

Ancient fires may be helping the Amazon survive droughts – modern ones, not so much
- Areas of the Amazon forest with higher concentration of soil pyrogenic carbon, a material produced by the burning of vegetation centuries or millennia ago, show an enhanced resistance to droughts, a new study says.
- Regions richer in pyrogenic carbon appear to have higher soil fertility and water-holding capacity, helping the forest to get through dry periods without enduring the usual damage.
- While the underlying mechanisms aren’t yet understood, the authors hypothesize that species substitution after ancient fires, which brings in trees with lower wood density, might play a role.
- Modern fires, which have become more intense and frequent in recent decades, are unlikely to produce similar effects.

At the U.N. Water Conference, food security needs to take center stage (commentary)
- This week at the United Nations Water Conference, the growing level of global food insecurity from a lack of water should be addressed.
- “We urgently need a worldwide evaluation of water-related food risks that offers immediate and practical solutions,” a new op-ed argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.

‘During droughts, pivot to agroecology’: Q&A with soil expert at the World Agroforestry Centre
- As the unabating drought in Kenya persists, pastoralists in the region are struggling as millions of their livestock perish and vast swaths of crops die. About 4.4 million people in the country are food insecure.
- International food agencies are calling it a dire humanitarian situation and highlight the vital need to build communities’ resilience to adapt and cope with drought.
- Mongabay speaks with David Leilei, a Kenyan soil biologist at the World Agroforestry Centre, on the agroecological techniques and strategies pastoralists and the government can use to restore healthy soils to promote productive farming.
- Mary Njenga, a research scientist at the World Agroforestry Centre who works with 1,200 households in northern Kenya, also speaks with Mongabay on climate-resilient strategies.

Herders turn to fishing in the desert amid severe drought, putting pressure on fish population
- As Northern Kenya’s unabating drought continues, a growing wave of pastoralists are finding it challenging to keep their livestock alive and are switching to fishing in Lake Turkana, the world’s largest desert lake.
- However, environmentalists, fishing authorities, and some fishers worry that potential overfishing and increased pressures on fish populations will cause a collapse in fish stocks and the lake’s ecosystem.
- Authorities are also concerned about the rampant use of illegal fishing gear, such as thin mesh nets that catch undersized fish in shallow breeding zones, and an illegal tilapia smuggling network draining the lake by the tons.
- Though no studies have yet been done to assess fish populations, some environmentalists and fishers are calling for better enforcement of regulations to keep livelihoods afloat.

Extreme heat takes a toll on tropical countries’ economies
- Extreme heat costs tropical countries more than 5% of their annual per capita GDP, new research shows, while more prosperous mid-latitude countries lose only about a 1% of GDP due to heat waves, which can even bolster economic growth in some instances.
- Poorer tropical countries suffer the worst effects of heat waves despite being least culpable and least economically capable of adapting.
- The effects of extreme heat and drought can hit hard in local communities, such as among Kenyan families who rely on cattle they can no longer feed.

Climate crisis puts Indigenous Amazonians’ Quarup funeral ritual at risk
- The inhabitants of the Xingu Indigenous Territory have had to adapt their Quarup funeral ceremony to avoid fires and guarantee enough food for all visitors.
- The climate crisis has left the forests drier and more flammable: over the past 20 years, 1,890 square kilometers (730 square miles) of protected forest in the Xingu have been lost to fires.
- Deforestation because of soy and corn monocultures in neighboring regions has muddied rivers and caused wild pigs to invade traditional vegetable gardens.
- The loss of rivers makes it difficult to properly store the pequi fruits needed during Quarup, while drought and wild pigs are damaging yucca harvests, also threatening a staple serving for the ceremony.

Brazil’s Pantanal is at risk of collapse, scientists say
- Though the Pantanal is 93% privately owned, this vast Brazilian tropical wetland remains a stronghold for jaguars and untold other species, and connects animals with the Amazon, Cerrado and other biomes.
- A confluence of human activities in Brazil and worldwide — including deforestation and climate change — are heating and drying this watery landscape, threatening the entire ecosystem with drought, wildfires and habitat loss.
- Now, a plan to dredge and straighten the Paraguay River that feeds the Pantanal could serve as the death knell for this vast wetland ecosystem.
- There’s hope that president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who campaigned on an environmental platform, will initiate stewardship that stops Pantanal deforestation and the waterway project, helping curb greenhouse gas emissions.

In Brazil’s agricultural heartland, rivers run dry as monoculture advances
- The Paraná River Basin has suffered an unprecedented drought since 2021, affecting hydropower generation, river-borne food shipments, and freshwater supplies for 40 million people across Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay.
- In Brazil, the prolonged drought has hit some of the region’s most important reserves, including Várzeas do Rio Ivinhema State Park, which houses one of the last slices of forest in Mato Grosso do Sul state and acts as a refuge for hundreds of species.
- The drought has drained lagoons in the park, made parts of the reserve more prone to wildfires, and disrupted the breeding cycles of native birds.
- Environmentalists blame the advance of large-scale monoculture in the region, which has cleared most of the forests and ushered in changes in rain patterns and droughts.

Wildfires are climbing up the snowiest mountains of the western U.S.
- Forest fires are getting larger and hotter in the western U.S., shrinking the mountain snowpacks vital to communities and ecosystems.
- When a wildfire burns on mountain slopes, snow that falls later in the winter is more exposed to sun and wind, making it melt or evaporate faster and earlier than ever before.
- Burned land is recovering more slowly as the region warms, leaving less water for trees and plants to regrow and increasing the risks of erosion and flooding.

Climate change is hammering insects — in the tropics and everywhere else: Scientists
- A new review paper finds that climate change is pounding insects in a wide variety of ways all over the world.
- Because insects are so sensitive to temperature change, climate change is impacting them directly, including potentially decreasing their ability to breed.
- But climate change is also causing insects to change their behavior as it shifts seasonal beginnings and ends, risking that insects will act out of sync with the rest of the environment on which they depend. Climate change-intensified drought, extreme precipitation, lengthening heat waves, and fires are also harming insects.
- The best way to protect insects? Combat climate change and safeguard micro-habitats.

Blue jeans: An iconic fashion item that’s costing the planet dearly
- The production of blue jeans, one of the most popular apparel items ever, has for decades left behind a trail of heavy consumption, diminishing Earth’s water and energy resources, causing pollution, and contributing to climate change. The harm done by the fashion industry has intensified, not diminished, in recent years.
- The making of jeans is water intensive, yet much of the world’s cotton crop is grown in semiarid regions requiring irrigation and pesticide use. As climate change intensifies, irrigation-dependent cotton cultivation and ecological catastrophe are on a collision course, with the Aral Sea’s ecological death a prime example and warning.
- While some major fashion companies have made sustainability pledges, and taken some steps to produce greener blue jeans, the industry has yet to make significant strides toward sustainability, with organic cotton, for example, still only 1% of the business.
- A few fashion companies are changing their operations to be more sustainable and investing in technology to reduce the socioenvironmental impacts of jeans production. But much more remains to be done.

In Chile, drought and human expansion threaten a unique national park
- La Campana National Park in Chile is home to threatened species of plants and animals, many found nowhere else.
- The region has been suffering a 12-year drought, and in spite of rains this year, experts say it’s too early to say whether the climate trend has been reversed.
- The park also faces pressure from expanding farmland and urbanization, including the conversion of native vegetation to fruit monocultures, and the encroachment of domestic animals that can spread disease to wildlife.

American agroforestry accelerates with new funding announcements
- “There is a windfall of federal money entering the agroforestry sector. After 30-plus years of work on agroforestry in the United States, the sector’s moment has arrived,” a source tells Mongabay.
- In mid-September, USDA unveiled the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities funding program, investing up to $2.8 billion in 70 projects, which includes over $60 million to advance agroforestry.
- Agroforestry is the most climate-conscious form of agriculture, sequestering an estimated 45 gigatons of carbon globally while providing habitat for biodiversity, boosting water tables, and building soil.
- This intentional combination of woody perennials like shrubs and trees with annual crops like grains and vegetables also increases farms’ resilience to drought, heat, and deluges, by providing shade, windbreaks, and deep root systems capable of absorbing excess water.

Lebanese research preserves heat-adapted seeds to feed a warming world
- In Lebanon, the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) is preserving crops’ genetic diversity and helping breed climate-resilient varieties of seeds.
- Varieties selected for their adaptation to local conditions, resilience to drought and heat can thrive without the use of expensive hybrid seeds and agrochemicals promoted by agribusinesses — boosting farmers’ finances and food security — and can improve production on sustainable farms based on the principles of agroecology.
- “Big companies like Monsanto are after profit, they are trying to find ways to make the farmers dependent on buying seeds from them. For us it’s not about profit, it’s about improving livelihoods and promoting agricultural practices that don’t harm the environment,” an ICARDA researcher tells Mongabay.

How close is the Amazon tipping point? Forest loss in the east changes the equation
- Scientists warn that the Amazon is approaching a tipping point beyond which it would begin to transition from a lush tropical forest into a dry, degraded savanna. This point may be reached when 25% of the forest is lost.
- In a newly released report, the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) estimates that 13.2% of the original Amazon forest biome has been lost due to deforestation and other causes.
- However, when the map is divided into thirds, it shows that 31% of the eastern Amazon has been lost. Moisture cycles through the forest from east to west, creating up to half of all rainfall across the Amazon. The 31% figure is critical, the report says, “because the tipping point will likely be triggered in the east.”
- Experts say the upcoming elections in Brazil could have dramatic consequences for the Amazon, and to avert the tipping point we must lower emissions, undertake ambitious reforestation projects, and build an economy based on the standing forest. Granting and honoring Indigenous land tenure and protected areas are also key strategies.

More droughts are coming, and the Amazon can’t keep up: Study
- Up to 50% of rainfall in the Amazon comes from the forest itself, as moisture is recycled from the trees to the atmosphere.
- In severe droughts, when the forest loses more water to evaporation than it receives from rain, the trees begin to die. For every three trees that die due to drought in the Amazon rainforest, a fourth tree, even if not directly affected by drought, will also die, according to a new study.
- As trees are lost and the forest dries up, parts of the Amazon will rapidly approach a tipping point, where they will transition into a degraded savanna-like ecosystem with few to no trees.
- The southern and southeastern Amazon are the most vulnerable regions to tipping. Here, deforestation and fires are at their most extreme, driven largely by cattle ranching and soy farming.

On the frontlines of drought, communities in Mexico strive to save every drop of water
- Sixteen Indigenous Zapotec communities in Mexico have created over 579 water infrastructure projects, including absorption wells, small dams and water pans, to conserve water in the Oaxaca Valley – a region impacted by recurrent droughts.
- Significant success in harvesting water has been realized, however, farmers still struggle to have enough water due to lack of rain – making water conservation efforts largely fall to dust.
- Last year, the Mexican government recognized their efforts and gave communities a concession to manage water resources locally. Communities are still waiting to know when they will officially receive the concession.
- Just a few women hold leadership positions in these communities, including Josefina, Esperanza and María. They have been involved in water conservation projects since a severe drought hit the region 17 years ago and hope to enhance gender equality in the region.

What’s the chance of meeting Paris climate goal? Just 0.1%, study says
- Under the 2015 Paris climate accord, nearly 200 countries committed to reducing the carbon emissions that fuel climate change and keeping global warming under 2˚C (3.6°F), or 1.5 ˚C (2.7°F) if possible.
- The 1.5°C goal requires global greenhouse emissions to be cut by 45% by 2030 and brought down to net zero by 2050, which is extremely unlikely to happen, a new analysis has found.
- Even if mean temperatures were held below 2°C, people living in the tropics, in particular in India and sub-Saharan Africa, will be exposed to extreme heat for most days of the year, researchers warned.
- In the mid-latitude zone, which includes the U.S. and most of the European Union and the U.K., deadly heat waves could strike every year by 2100.

Bad weather knocks down Brazil’s grain production as ‘exhaustively forewarned’
- Brazil’s agricultural GDP declined by 8% in the first quarter of 2022 due to a severe drought in the country’s south caused by a rare triple-dip La Niña.
- In Rio Grande do Sul, the nation’s southernmost state, 56% of last year’s total soy harvest was lost, harming thousands of farmers.
- Scientists warn that climate change will make Brazil’s southern region, an agribusiness stronghold, widespread crop losses more common.
- Despite warnings, climate denial in the agriculture sector is getting in the way of mitigation efforts as the government of President Jair Bolsonaro and the agribusiness lobby push an anti-environmental agenda.

Drought-beset South African city taps aquifer, shirks long-term solutions: Critics
- A major coastal city located in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province is facing a total water cutoff for about 500,000 residents, almost half its population, following a prolonged drought.
- Disaster relief hydrologists have begun drilling boreholes to access groundwater so that hospitals and schools can stay open during the emergency in Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality.
- But critics say the city administration has failed to develop a long-term plan to support water harvesting from intermittent rains and construction of desalination plants.
- They also point out that overreliance on boreholes drilled near the sea could lead to saline water intrusion into the aquifer, contaminating groundwater and rendering borehole water undrinkable.

Climate change amplifies the risk of conflict, study from Africa shows
- New research shows that climate change can amplify the risk of conflict by as much as four to five times in a 550-kilometer (340-mile) radius, with rising temperatures and extreme rainfall acting as triggers.
- Many countries most vulnerable to climate impacts are beset by armed conflicts, such as Somalia, which is grappling with widespread drought amid a decades-long civil war; the research suggests the country is trapped in a vicious cycle of worsening climatic disasters and conflict.
- Both too little rain and too much rain are triggers for conflict, the research finds: persistent rainfall failures increase instability over a broader geographic region while extreme rainfall increases the likelihood of confrontations over a smaller area and for a shorter time, the analysis suggests.
- The research underscores the importance of tackling climate change impacts and conflict mitigation together because misguided climate adaptation strategies can intensify existing tensions.

Podcast: ‘Water always wins,’ so why are we fighting it?
- On this week’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we examine humanity’s approach to harnessing water, and how the current “us-first” mindset is actually exacerbating our water access problems.
- Journalist and author Erica Gies joins us to discuss the concept of ‘slow’ solutions to water shortages presented in her new book “Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge,” and how communities can work with water rather than against it.
- Gies discusses how hydrologists, engineers, and urban planners are creating ‘slow’ water projects with traditional hydrological knowledge, which are less invasive ways of harnessing water, in places such as Chennai, India.

Beyond boundaries: Earth’s water cycle is being bent to breaking point
- The hydrological cycle is a fundamental natural process for keeping Earth’s operating system intact. Humanity and civilization are intimately dependent on the water cycle, but we have manipulated it vastly and destructively, to suit our needs.
- We don’t yet know the full global implications of human modifications to the water cycle. We do know such changes could lead to huge shifts in Earth systems, threatening life as it exists. Researchers are asking where and how they can measure change to determine if the water cycle is being pushed to the breaking point.
- Recent research has indicated that modifications to aspects of the water cycle are now causing Earth system destabilization at a scale that modern civilization might not have ever faced. That is already playing out in extreme weather events and long-term slow-onset climate alterations, with repercussions we don’t yet understand.
- There are no easy or simple solutions. To increase our chances of remaining in a “safe living space,” we need to reverse damage to the global hydrological cycle with large-scale interventions, including reductions in water use, and reversals of deforestation, land degradation, soil erosion, air pollution and climate change.

‘Lost’ Amazonian cities hint at how to build urban landscapes without harming nature
- Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a Pre-Columbian urban settlement that spans more than 4,500 square kilometers (1,737 square miles) in Bolivia’s Llanos de Mojos region, in the Amazon rainforest.
- This is the latest proof that large, complex urban societies existed in the Amazon before the arrival of the Spanish, challenging the idea that the rainforest was always a pristine, untouched wilderness.
- Some experts say we could learn from these Indigenous urban planning strategies, which, with a sophisticated land and water management system, show us how cities and the rainforest once co-existed without degrading the environment.

Can wonder plant spekboom really bring smiles back to sad South African towns?
- Botanists are working on an ambitious project to restore 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) of degraded land in South Africa that were previously covered by thickets of the indigenous succulent spekboom (Portulacaria afra).
- Farmers have stripped the land of its native thicket over the course of decades of commercial agriculture and livestock keeping, and following extended droughts, it’s now turning to desert.
- Spekboom, much praised for its ability to sequester carbon, is not only a resilient native plant, but its growth naturally promotes the recovery of other species.
- Carbon credits are one promising source of funding for restoration that could prove profitable for landowners and workers, though some critics say planting spekboom as an offset lacks a scientific basis.

Conflict over resources in Kenya hits deadly highs with firearms in play
- Increased droughts, floods and invasive species are fueling violent conflicts between pastoralists over livestock in Kenya’s central Baringo county, the intensity of which is exacerbated by the proliferation of illegal firearms in the region.
- Firearms trafficked from civil conflicts in the Horn of Africa have made their way into the hands of pastoralists who now see it as the only way to defend themselves and their cattle during raids and conflicts over grazing land.
- In 2021, there were 16 deaths from 19 livestock raids; in the first four months of 2022, there have been 39 fatalities from 24 violent clashes, half of them due to livestock raids.
- Violent conflicts in Baringo are linked to insecurity in neighboring counties, and drought along with politics only heighten the precarious situation.

Cradle of transformation: The Mediterranean and climate change
- The Mediterranean region is warming 20% faster than the world as a whole, raising concerns about the impacts that climate change and other environmental upheaval will have on ecosystems, agriculture and the region’s 542 million people.
- Heat waves, drought, extreme weather and sea-level rise are among the impacts that the region can expect to see continue through the end of the century, and failing to stop emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases could make these issues worse.
- Charting a course that both mitigates climate change and bolsters adaption to its effects is further complicated by the Mediterranean’s mix of countries, cultures and socioeconomics, leading to wide gaps in vulnerability in the region.

The world’s dams: Doing major harm but a manageable problem?
- Dam construction is one of the oldest, most preferred tools to manage freshwater for various uses. The practice reached a peak internationally in the 1960s and ’70s, but in recent years dam construction has faced increasing global criticism as the hefty environmental price paid for their benefits piles up.
- The flows of most major waterways have been impacted by dams globally. Only 37% of rivers longer than 1,000 km (620 mi) remain free-flowing, and just 23% flow uninterrupted to the sea. Natural flows will be altered for 93% of river volume worldwide by 2030, if all planned and ongoing hydropower construction goes ahead.
- This global fragmentation of rivers has led to severe impacts. Dams have contributed to an 84% average decline in freshwater wildlife population sizes since 1970. More than a quarter of Earth’s land-to-ocean sediment flux is trapped behind dams. Dams also impact Earth’s climate in complex ways via modification of the carbon cycle.
- But dams are needed for energy, agriculture and drinking water, and are an inevitable part of our future. Lessons on how to balance their benefits against the environmental harm they do are already available to us: removing some existing dams, for example, and not building others.

Indonesia’s Riau province declares state of emergency ahead of fire season
- Almost every year vast swaths of Southeast Asia are covered in toxic haze, which causes air quality to reach hazardous levels and creates major health, environmental and economic problems.
- Recorded since the early ’70s, the smoke is almost entirely a result of large forest and peatland fires in Indonesia that are often illegally started to clear land for oil palm plantations.
- The governor of Indonesia’s Riau province in Sumatra, which, along with Borneo, is a primary location of the fires, has declared an emergency alert status to increase and expedite prevention and extinguishing efforts ahead of this year’s fire season.
- A national environmental NGO says the alert status shows the government has again failed to prevent the fires, and that the existing mitigation efforts fail to tackle the root of the problem.

As the Horn of Africa heats up, the risks of insecurity are rising (commentary)
- World leaders are increasingly concerned about the complex connections between climate and insecurity, including the risk that climate disruption is a “conflict multiplier.”
- The threat is particularly acute in the Greater Horn of Africa, where populations already grappling with food insecurity and armed conflict are experiencing some of the fastest-warming conditions in the world.
- Noting that “the fortunes and stability of this region of 365 million people now look to be at the mercy of weather-driven mayhem”, Robert Muggah, Peter Schmidt, and Giovanna Kuele of the Igarapé Institute draw attention to various efforts already underway in the region to build resilience and call for stepped-up support from global powers.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.

In destroying the Amazon, big agribusiness is torching its own viability
- A new study has found that the transition zone between the Amazon and Cerrado in the northeast of Brazil has heated up significantly and become drier in the past two decades.
- The research points to deforestation in the Amazon and global climate changes as factors prolonging the dry season and warming up the region, leaving it susceptible to severe droughts and forest fires.
- Ironically, the changes being driven by the intensified agricultural activity are rendering the region less suitable for crop cultivation.
- The authors of the new study say there needs to be a balance of sustainable agricultural solutions and an environmentally focused political agenda to protect the region’s ecosystems, its economy, and its people.

‘Everything is on fire’: Flames rip through Iberá National Park in Argentina
- Fires in the central Corrientes province of northeast Argentina have burned through nearly 60% of Iberá National Park, home to protected marshlands, grasslands and forests that hosts an array of species.
- Many of the fires originated from nearby cattle ranches, and spread across significant portions of the park due to a prolonged drought.
- Conservationists are working to relocate a number of reintroduced species, including giant river otters and macaws, to places of safety.
- While experts say they expect a substantial loss to biodiversity, they add that the park should mount a rapid recovery thanks to all the rewilding work already done.

Amazon losing far more carbon from forest degradation than deforestation: Study
- Forest degradation — due to human and environmental causes — was responsible for more carbon loss than deforestation between 2010 and 2019, researchers reported at the most recent American Geophysical Union meeting in December.
- Scientists found that the Brazilian Amazon saw more deforestation in 2019 than in 2015, but lost three times more carbon storage in 2015 than in 2019. The likely source of that additional carbon in 2015: forest degradation and biomass loss, possibly brought on by intense El Niño-related drought and storms during that year.
- More research is needed to determine precisely how much forest degradation is caused by human activities, including illegal logging and fragmentation, and set fires to make way for grazing and croplands, but also environmental factors, such as drought which has been significantly intensified by human-caused climate change.
- The large amount of carbon now being lost from degraded forests in the Brazilian Amazon should, researchers say, result in an evaluation of current conservation policies which almost exclusively focus on preventing deforestation rather than on curbing degradation.

Fires threaten vital peatland in Chile’s Tierra del Fuego
- Fires that started in mid-January continue to burn through forest, peatland and grassland near Chile’s Karukinka Natural Park on the island of Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost tip of the Americas.
- Conservationists are especially worried about the damage being done to the peatlands, an ecosystem that sequesters twice as much carbon as the Earth’s entire forest cover.
- Members of the Selk’nam Indigenous group, which was expelled from the area more than a century ago and is now attempting to return, say they’re concerned about the preservation of their ancestral territory.
- Due to the logistical difficulties of combating fires in such a remote area, rangers at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) say they’re hoping for international assistance from Argentina and the United States.

Paraguay’s drought hits biodiversity, Indigenous communities the hardest
- Record-breaking heat waves in Paraguay have led to water shortages and forest fires that threaten local biodiversity and many of the Indigenous communities who steward it.
- Indigenous groups like the Aché and Ava Guaraní have lost their crops and likely face food insecurity should the drought continue throughout 2022.
- Turtles, aquatic mammals and fish that usually occupy now-dried-up wetlands have been forced into the major rivers, where they face a greater threat from overfishing.

Efforts to dim Sun and cool Earth must be blocked, say scientists
- Scientists are calling on political institutions to place limits on solar geoengineering research so that it cannot be deployed unilaterally by countries, companies or individuals.
- Long-term planetary-level geoengineering interventions of this kind are unprecedented and extremely dangerous, say the academics behind the letter, and should not therefore be experimented with outdoors, receive patents, public funds or international support.
- Solar geoengineering’s leading proposal — injecting billions of aerosol particles into the Earth’s stratosphere — could have severe, unintended and unforeseen consequences. Modelling suggests that it may cause drying in the Amazon rainforest
- In addition, if solar geoengineering were deployed, it would need to be maintained for decades. Sudden discontinuance would result in Earth facing what scientists call termination shock, with a sudden temperature rise due to existing atmospheric carbon emissions which would have been masked by cooling stratospheric aerosols.

‘Rural women in Zimbabwe are in constant contact with climate change’: Q&A with Shamiso Mupara
- According to Shamiso Mupara, founder and executive director of Environmental Buddies Zimbabwe, climate change, droughts and food shortages are having a greater toll on women than men in rural Zimbabwe, as seen in the rise of forced marriages during the 1992 year of extreme drought.
- Growing up in a rural community affected by regular periods of drought, Mupara decided to dedicate her life to empowering Zimbabwean women and increasing their financial independence with environmental campaigns and beekeeping trainings.
- Due to land degradation, Mupara told Mongabay, women are finding it increasingly difficult to farm, feed their families or engage in meaningful forest-based businesses.

Sinkholes emerge in rural Kenya after series of floods, droughts
- In recent years, a number of sinkholes have emerged in Baringo county, a geologically active region in western Kenya’s Great Rift Valley.
- According to geologists, their appearance can be linked both to the worsening impacts of climate change through floods and droughts, and local communities drilling boreholes along precarious fault lines to access more water.
- According to members of the community, the sinkholes have yet to spur the county or the government into action, with food aid currently provided by local human rights organizations.
- Increases in floods are driving human-wildlife conflict for space, and pastoralists are having difficulty adapting to environmental changes.

Small coffee farmers lay their chips on smart agriculture to overcome climate crisis in the Cerrado biome
- A long drought followed by a strong freeze in 2020 damaged the coffee harvest in Brazil, the world’s biggest producer and exporter of the crop.
- Small farmers in the Cerrado region who generally don’t use irrigation because of the area’s historically abundant rainfall were hit the hardest.
- To take on the challenges brought on by the changing climate, coffee farmers in the Cerrado have joined a climate-smart agriculture program.
- The strategies adopted for more resilient crops include agroforestry, connected landscapes, and water resource management.

As climate-driven drought slams farms in U.S. West, water solutions loom
- Drought in the U.S. West has been deepening for two decades, with no end in sight. Unfortunately for farmers, water use policies established in the early 20th century (a time of more plentiful rainfall), have left regulators struggling with their hands tied as they confront climate change challenges — especially intensifying drought.
- However, there is hope, as officials, communities and farmers strive to find innovative ways to save and more fairly share water. In Kansas and California, for example, new legislation has been passed to stave off dangerous groundwater declines threatening these states’ vital agricultural economies.
- Experts say that while an overhaul of the water allocation system in the West is needed, along with a coherent national water policy, extreme measures could be disruptive. But there are opportunities to realize incremental solutions now. Key among them is bridging a gap between federal water programs and farmers.
- A major concern is the trend toward single crop industrial agribusiness in semi-arid regions and the growing of water-intensive crops for export, such as corn and rice, which severely depletes groundwater. Ultimately, 20th century U.S. farm policies will need to yield to flexible 21st century policies that deal with unfolding climate change.

Barrage of droughts weakens Amazon’s capacity to bounce back, study finds
- In the last two decades, the Amazon Rainforest has been impacted by increasingly intense and frequent droughts, the most severe occurring in 2005, 2010 and 2015.
- A new study shows that stretches of forest affected by drought have taken between one and three years to recover their growth rate.
- With droughts expected to worsen because of global warming, scientists warn that the Amazon’s capacity for carbon absorption will be increasingly compromised.
- They highlight that efforts to stabilize the climate will depend on combating deforestation in the Amazon.

With La Niña conditions back, is it good news for tropical forests?
- La Niña conditions have developed across the Pacific Ocean for the second year in a row, according to forecasters at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.
- A phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation ocean-atmosphere cycle, La Niña heralds broadly cooler and wetter conditions across the tropics, with above-average rainfall predicted for important tropical rainforests in Southeast Asia and South America.
- Although the current conditions emerge toward the end of the fire season in the Amazon and Indonesia, experts say these biomes will benefit from wet conditions conducive to forest and peatland growth and recovery.
- Studies indicate that climate change will increase the frequency and severity of La Niña and El Niño events, which will occur against the backdrop of a warmer world, with inevitable implications for natural ecosystems and livelihoods.

For Kenyan farmers, organic fertilizer bokashi brings the land back to life
- Farmers in Kenya’s arid Tharaka Nithi county are growing fresh vegetables thanks to the use of an organic fertilizer known as bokashi.
- Made from a mix of farmyard waste, bokashi adds both nutrients and microorganisms to the soil, unlike chemical fertilizers that add only nutrients that are quickly consumed or washed away.
- The use of bokashi is one of many agroecological techniques being shared with smallholder farmers here by the Resources Oriented Development Initiative (RODI Kenya).
- While the cost of initially applying bokashi can be prohibitive for many small farmers, the need for it diminishes each year, and farmers are encouraged to make their own rather than buy it.

Climate change means hunger in our communities, African women leaders at COP26
- Activists and delegates from developing countries, including many African nations, have strained but so far failed to define the debate at COP26 as one of climate justice. They emphasize that developed nations have largely caused the climate crisis, while developing nations often suffer the worst consequences.
- In 2015 when countries signed the Paris climate agreement, the per capita emissions of Madagascar, which is facing the world’s first climate change-induced famine, stood at 0.12 tons/person, compared to 16 tons/person for the United States.
- At a COP session organized by the British philanthropy Campaign for Female Education (CEMFED) this week, delegates from countries in Sub-Saharan Africa underlined the link between climate change and hunger.
- The climate talks have come under scrutiny for poor representation from African nations, some of the most vulnerable to climate impacts.

From flood to drought, Brazil’s Acre state swings between weather extremes
- Extreme weather conditions, from massive flooding to severe water shortages, have rocked cities and small communities alike in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon this year, a trend experts attribute to climate change and human actions.
- The Acre River, which crosses the state of same name in the western Brazilian Amazon, is experiencing its second-worst drought in recorded history, with water levels close to record lows.
- The water shortage comes just months after the same region experienced widespread flooding as the Acre River overflowed its banks and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.
- Brazil as a whole is facing its worst dry spell in nearly a century, which is affecting water supplies for people, agriculture and electricity generation, and is part of a global pattern of increased water stress.

Children born in 2020 will see spike in climate disasters, study says
- The study used climate modeling to determine specialized impacts by region, finding that at the current level of carbon reduction pledges, people born in 2020 will experience many more extreme climate events in comparison to those born in 1960.
- On the world’s current course, those children will experience twice as many wildfires overall, three times as many crop failures, and seven times as many heat waves.
- At a geographical scale, children born in low-income countries that are least responsible for the climate crisis will confront significantly higher spikes in extreme events than in wealthier countries.
- If the world takes a more aggressive approach to limiting warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F) by 2100, the number of climate disasters experienced by younger generations would drop substantially, with the model predicting 45% fewer heat waves, 39% fewer droughts, and 28% fewer crop failures.

New coating could help seeds survive in drought conditions
- Water is the limiting factor for agriculture in many of the world’s semiarid regions, where crops are lost to drought in their early stages of life, during germination and as young seedlings.
- Scientists have developed a new seed coating, made from biodegradable waste products and applied directly to seeds before they are planted, to help seeds survive and germinate in dry conditions.
- The new seed coating consists of two layers: an inner one containing a nitrogen-fixing bacteria, and an outer one to hold moisture, much like a chia seed.
- Field trials with the new seeds are underway, but the key challenge to their adoption will be the cost.

As populations grow, how will thirsty cities survive their drier futures?
- The world’s rapidly expanding cities are on a collision course with climate change, presenting unprecedented challenges to municipal and national governments as they work to continue providing residents with access to safe and sufficient water.
- Increasingly, calls are made to rethink the way we develop urban watersheds and the way we live in them — with water sourcing, transport, use and reuse planning key to the process. One approach, water-sensitive urban design (WSUD) entails a complete reimagining of the role and use of water in urban areas.
- WSUD embraces the water cycle, and considers the entire watershed where cities are located. It uses green infrastructure such as permeable pavements, green roofs and rain gardens, to greatly reduce stormwater runoff. Conscious design allows water to be recycled and reused repeatedly for various purposes. Waste is greatly reduced.
- Some cities are already changing their development pathways to be more resilient to inevitable future climate extremes, with Singapore and Cape Town leading the way. Future water stress can be overcome, but work needs to start now before extreme weather events, including mega droughts and floods, hit.

Scientists look to wheatgrass to save dryland farming and capture carbon
- Intermediate wheatgrass is an imported grain that has been grown in the U.S. Great Plains and Intermountain West since the 1930s; but could it be used in marginal fields in dryland areas?
- Kernza, an intermediate wheatgrass bred by the Land Institute, is being planted in eastern Wyoming, where researchers from the University of Wyoming are uncovering whether the crop can help farmers stabilize and bolster their soils, while providing a profitable crop.
- Planting perennial crops, like Kernza, can help soil health and stability, retain moisture, and cut down on planting costs and greenhouse gas emissions from annual plantings.

2015-2016 El Niño caused 2.5 billion trees to die in just 1% of the Amazon
- New research shows how a combination of high temperatures, intense drought, and human-caused fires resulted in dramatic forest loss in the Lower Tapajós Basin in the Brazilian Amazon.
- According to the authors, forest reduction meant that one of the world’s largest carbon sinks generated almost 500 million tons of CO2 emissions, an amount higher than the annual emissions of developed countries such as the U.K. and Australia.
- Due to climate change, more frequent extreme droughts are predicted to affect most of the Amazon basin in this century; in this scenario, the 2015 El Niño could be seen as a window into the future.

Mexico devises revolutionary method to reverse semiarid land degradation
- Land degradation is impacting farmlands worldwide, affecting almost 40% of the world’s population. Reversing that process and restoring these croplands and pastures to full productivity is a huge challenge facing humanity — especially as climate change-induced drought takes greater hold on arid and semiarid lands.
- In Mexico, a university-educated, small-scale peasant farmer came up with an innovative solution that not only restores degraded land to productivity, but also greatly enhances soil carbon storage, provides a valuable new crop, and even offers a hopeful diet for diabetics.
- The process utilizes two plants commonly found on Mexico’s semiarid lands that grow well under drought conditions: agave and mesquite. The two are intercropped and then the agave is fermented and mixed with the mesquite to produce an excellent, inexpensive, and very marketable fodder for grazing animals.
- The new technique is achieving success in Mexico and could be applied to global degraded lands. Experts with World Agroforestry warn, though, that agave and mesquite are highly invasive outside their region, but suggest that similar botanical pairings of native species are potentially possible elsewhere.

A world of hurt: 2021 climate disasters raise alarm over food security
- Human-driven climate change is fueling weather extremes — from record drought to massive floods — that are hammering key agricultural regions around the world.
- From the grain heartland of Argentina to the tomato belt of California to the pork hub of China, extreme weather events have driven down output and driven up global commodity prices.
- Shortages of water and food have, in turn, prompted political and social strife in 2021, including food protests in Iran and hunger in Madagascar, and threaten to bring escalating misery, civil unrest and war in coming years.
- Experts warn the problem will only intensify, even in regions currently unaffected by, or thriving from the high prices caused by scarcity. Global transformational change is urgently needed in agricultural production and consumption patterns, say experts.

Lessons from Brazil’s São Paulo droughts (commentary)
- São Paulo is increasingly facing severe droughts, as is the case in 2021. In 2014 the city came close to having its reservoirs run dry. Brazil’s agriculture and hydropower also depend on reliable rains.
- Anthropogenic climate change is increasing the fluctuations in ocean surface water temperatures, and the frequency is increasing of the combination of warm water in the Atlantic and cold water in the Pacific off the coasts of South America, a combination that leads to droughts in São Paulo.
- The trends in ocean temperatures are expected to worsen these droughts, but what could make them truly catastrophic is the prospect of this variation being combined with the impact of deforestation depriving São Paulo of the water that is recycled by the Amazon forest and transported to southeastern Brazil by the “flying rivers.” The lessons are clear: control global warming and stop deforestation.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

New index measuring rainforest vulnerability to sound alarm on tipping points
- The new Tropical Forest Vulnerability Index (TFVI) will use satellite data to assess the impact of growing threats such as land clearance and rising temperatures on forests.
- Backed by the National Geographic Society and Swiss watchmaker Rolex, TFVI aims to identify forests most at risk, to be prioritized for conservation efforts.
- Researchers combined 40 years of satellite measurements and forest observations covering tropical forests worldwide to come up with the standardized monitoring system.
- In recent years, multiple stressors have pushed forests to a tipping point, causing them to gradually lose their ecological functions, including their capacity to store carbon and recycle water, the study says.

Amazon and Cerrado deforestation, warming spark record drought in urban Brazil
- Southern and central Brazil are in the midst of the worst drought in nearly 100 years, with agribusiness exports of coffee and sugar, and the production of hydroelectric power, at grave risk.
- According to researchers, the drought, now in its second year, likely has two main causes: climate change, which tends to make continental interiors both hotter and drier, and the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savanna biomes.
- Deforestation has caused the loss of almost half of the Cerrado’s native vegetation, which helps hold vast amounts of water underground, maintaining aquifers that supply the nation’s rivers with water. In the Amazon, rainforest loss is preventing billions of tons of water vapor from reaching the atmosphere.
- President Jair Bolsonaro acknowledges neither climate change nor deforestation as sources of the drought, but attributes it instead to the country and himself being “unlucky.” The administration’s drought response so far is to reactivate fossil-fuel power plants, which pollute heavily and are costly to operate.

Hotter and drier: Deforestation and wildfires take a toll on the Amazon
- Drought and high temperatures amplify the destructive effects of deforestation and wildfires.
- Across the Amazon Basin, tree species adapted to drier conditions are becoming more prevalent, and in the Central Amazon, savannas have replaced floodplain forests in just a few decades.
- While deforestation remains a main concern, the impacts of forest degradation are becoming increasingly important.

Humanity’s challenge of the century: Conserving Earth’s freshwater systems
- Many dryland cities like Los Angeles, Cairo and Tehran have already outstripped natural water recharge, but are expected to continue growing, resulting in a deepening arid urban water crisis.
- According to NASA’s GRACE mission, 19 key freshwater basins, including several in the U.S., are being unsustainably depleted, with some near collapse; much of the water is used indiscriminately by industrial agribusiness.
- Many desert cities, including Tripoli, Phoenix and Los Angeles, are sustained by water brought from other basins by hydro megaprojects that are aging and susceptible to collapse, while the desalination plants that water Persian Gulf cities come at a high economic cost with serious salt pollution.
- Experts say that thinking about the problem as one of supply disguises the real issue, given that what’s really missing to heading off a global freshwater crisis is the organization, capital, governance and political will to address the problems that come with regulating use of a renewable, but finite, resource.

As Amazon forest-to-savanna tipping point looms, solutions remain elusive
- Leading scientists project that if an additional 3-8% of rainforest cover is lost in the Amazon, it may overshoot a forest-to-degraded-savanna tipping point. That shift could mean mega-drought, forest death, and release of great amounts of stored carbon to the atmosphere from southern, eastern and central Amazonia.
- Despite this warning, Brazilian Amazon deforestation hit an 11-year high in 2020. Government clampdowns on environmental crime greatly decreased deforestation in the past, but Brazil is now facing a political backlash led by President Jair Bolsonaro, resulting in agribusiness and mining expansion and deforestation.
- Market efforts to create incentives have been ineffective. A public-private plan to cut deforestation led by Mato Grosso state has not met its environmental targets, even as agricultural lands increased. Amazonas, Acre and Rondônia — Bolsonaro-aligned states — are pushing for the creation of a new agriculture frontier.
- Indigenous communities, because they’re the best land stewards, should be at the forefront of public policy to conserve the Amazon, say experts, but instead they face poverty and marginalization by the institutions responsible for securing their land rights. International response to the Amazon crisis has also lagged.

Dusty winds exacerbate looming famine in Madagascar’s deep south
- At least 1.27 million people need humanitarian assistance in Madagascar’s drought-hit deep south, according to a Jan. 18 request by the U.N. and the Malagasy government for $75.9 million in international aid to cope with the crisis.
- The area is also experiencing dust and sand storms, a natural phenomenon known as a tiomena that is exacerbating the crisis by smothering crops, forests, buildings and roads.
- Tiomenas may be increasingly common as southern Madagascar undergoes a long-term drying trend.
- Experts say upgrading the area’s water supply system is an urgent priority and recommend massive tree planting to provide wind breaks, protect soils from erosion and create more humidity.

Cat fight: Jaguar ambushes ocelot in rare camera trap footage
- Camera trap footage revealed a jaguar killing an ocelot at a waterhole in the Maya Biosphere Reserve of northern Guatemala.
- While this kind of killing event is considered rare, it can occur when two predator species are competing with each other over resources such as water.
- Prolonged drought, compounded by climate change, may have influenced this event by making water scarcer than usual, according to the researchers who documented the incident.
- However, other experts say that climate change wouldn’t have necessarily influenced this behavior since ocelots and jaguars have lived together for a long time.

We’re approaching critical climate tipping points: Q&A with Tim Lenton
- Over the past twenty years the concept of “tipping points” has become more familiar to the public. Tipping points are critical thresholds at which small changes can lead to dramatic shifts in the state of the entire system.
- Awareness of climate tipping points has grown in policy circles in recent years in no small part thanks to the work of climate scientist Tim Lenton, who serves as the director of the Global Systems Institute at Britain’s University of Exeter.
- Lenton says the the rate at which we appear to be approaching several tipping points is now ringing alarm bells, but “most of our current generation of politicians are just not up to this leadership task”.
- The pandemic however may have caused a shock to the system that could trigger what he calls “positive social tipping points” that “can accelerate the transformative change we need” provided we’re able to empower the right leaders.

Industrial agriculture threatens a wetland oasis in Bolivia
- An oasis within dry Chiquitano forest in eastern Bolivia, Concepción Lake and its surrounding wetland provide valuable habitat for 253 bird, 48 mammal and 54 fish species.
- However, despite being officially listed as a protected area, cultivation of commodity crops like soy and sorghum is expanding and supplanting habitat.
- Agricultural activity is also linked to phosphate pollution in Concepción Lake, and some think it may also be contributing to the lake’s dramatic drop in water level.
- While the clearing is illegal, local government sources say those responsible are simply paying fines and refusing to stop.

Top environment stories from Madagascar in 2020
- Madagascar witnessed a convergence of calamities this year, from the pandemic to surging forest fires to an unprecedented drought.
- Despite growing pressures on its forests, new species continue to be uncovered from the island, with the description of a mouse lemur, several chameleons, and even the world’s ugliest orchid.
- Protected Area management has emerged as a bone of contention between the government and NGOs that manage them, underscoring the challenges of doing conservation in a poor country.
- Here are ten key stories and trends from Madagascar in 2020.

In Madagascar’s hungry south, drought pushes more than 1 million to brink of famine
- In Madagascar’s deep south, 1.35 million people, including 100,000 children, could fall victim to malnutrition this year, as the worst drought in a decade grips the region.
- This remote region has witnessed 16 famines since 1896, eight of which occurred in the past four decades. Most were the direct result of rainfall deficits, but misguided or failed policies have deepened the distress.
- This year, with crop failures, pandemic-related restrictions curbing access to markets, and sharp increases in prices of essentials, food has remained out of reach for thousands.
- Such droughts and the attendant famines are likely to become more frequent due to climate change, producing more hunger and distress in one of the poorest countries in the world.

‘CSI Amazon’: Epic study looks at what’s killing the rainforest’s trees
- A newly published study provides insight into why trees die in the Amazon, and why the rate of tree death may be increasing. The main risk factor explaining tree death was the mean growth rate of species.
- More than half, 51%, of tree deaths observed over the 30-year study were attributed to structural damage, mostly from windstorms.
- Different regions of the Amazon showed different risk factors for trees: Overall, the southern and western Amazon had higher mortality rates; wind seemed to do more damage in the western Amazon, whereas the southern Amazon had more tree death due to water stress and drought.
- The findings have major implications for the fight against climate change, given that the Amazon accounts for 12% of land-based carbon sink, but is losing that capacity as tree mortality increases.

Chinese demand and domestic instability are wiping out Senegal’s last forests
- After a decade of intensive illegal logging, endangered Pterocarpus erinaceus rosewood trees are becoming increasingly scarce in Senegal’s southern region of the Casamance, which borders the Gambia.
- Despite logging its own rosewood to extinction years ago, the Gambia has become a major trading hub for rosewood and was China’s third-largest source of the rare, valuable timber in 2019.
- An investigation has revealed the rate of trafficking across the border has worsened over the past two years, despite an export ban enacted in 2017.
- A recent move by shipping lines to stop exporting rosewood has led to a lull in trafficking activity; however, observers expect this will only be temporary.

For global wetlands, intensifying droughts pose a ‘diabolical’ threat
- Covering almost one-tenth of the land area of Earth, places with wet soils provide an estimated $27 trillion in benefits to humanity per year, but, according to a newly published review paper, researchers still have much to learn about the effects of drought on wet soils.
- The review, which draws upon more than 200 published studies, says “drought poses a significant threat to wet soils, a threat which can be difficult to determine before an event but which poses a catastrophic risk to some sites.”
- Among the “most pressing” findings of the review are that published information on the effects of drought on wet soils is absent for most parts of the world outside Europe, North America and Australia, and that there’s very little research that can be applied to water management.
- The review also discusses the ramifications of droughts to climate change: As wet soils dry, increased oxygen content in the soil speeds up decomposition, releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

At-risk Cerrado mammals need fully-protected parks to survive: Researchers
- A newly published camera trap study tracked 21 species of large mammal in Brazil’s Cerrado savanna biome from 2012-2017.
- The cameras were deployed in both fully protected state and federal parks and less protected mixed-use areas known as APAs where humans live, farm and ranch.
- The probability of finding large, threatened species in true reserves was 5 to 10 times higher than in the APAs for pumas, tapirs, giant anteaters, maned wolves, white-lipped and collared peccaries, and other Neotropical mammals.
- With half the Cerrado biome’s two million square kilometers of native vegetation already converted to cattle ranches, soy plantations and other croplands, conserving remaining habitat is urgent if large mammals are to survive there. The new study will help land managers better preserve biodiversity.

Fire burns Pantanal’s upland heart and threatens nature’s fragile balance
- After spreading for 9 months across the biodiverse Brazilian Pantanal wetlands, fires have reached the Amolar Mountains. This upland area is at the heart of the ecosystem and shelters traditional communities like Barra de São Lourenço.
- Humans and animals, who thrive on the Pantanal’s seasonal cycle of rising and ebbing floods, now see their way of life menaced by an unprecedented wave of drought and fire.
- The region’s inhabitants are already suffering from air and water contamination due to smoke and soot, and dread the fires’ aftermath. With the uplands devastated by the blazes, jaguars, other mammals and birds won’t have anywhere to flee during the next cycle of annual floods.
- “For me, being a ‘pantaneira’ is loving each stick, each tree, each bird. Is feeling part of it,” says resident Leonida Aires de Souza. But now that much of this remote area has burned, the future is uncertain.

The Amazon savanna? Rainforest teeters on the brink as climate heats up
- A new study has found that 40% of the Amazon is at risk of turning into savanna due to decreases in rainfall.
- The paper’s authors used satellite data, climate simulations and hydrological models to better understand the dynamics of rainfall across the tropics and their impacts on the stability of tropical forest ecosystems.
- The team’s simulations suggest that sustained high greenhouse gas emissions through the end of the century could shrink the minimum size of the Amazon by 66%.

Why the health of the Amazon River matters to us all: An interview with Michael Goulding
- Like the rainforest which takes its name, the Amazon is the largest and most biodiverse river on the planet. The river and its tributaries are a critical thoroughfare for an area the size of the continental United States and function as a key source of food and livelihoods for millions of people. Yet despite its vastness and importance, the mighty Amazon is looking increasingly vulnerable due to human activities.
- Few people understand more about the Amazon’s ecology and the wider role it plays across the South American continent than Michael Goulding, an aquatic ecologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) who has worked in the region since the 1970s studying issues ranging from the impact of hydroelectric dams to the epic migration of goliath catfishes. Goulding has written and co-authored some of the most definitive books and papers on the river, its resident species, and its ecological function.
- In recognition of his lifetime of advancing conservation efforts in the Amazon, the Field Museum today honored Goulding with the Parker/Gentry Award. The Award — named after ornithologist Theodore A. Parker III and botanist Alwyn Gentry who were killed in a plane crash during an aerial survey of an Ecuadorian cloud forest in 1993 — is given each year to “an outstanding individual, team or organization in the field of conservation biology whose efforts have had a significant impact on preserving the world’s natural heritage and whose actions and approach can serve as a model to others.”
- In a September 2020 interview ahead of the prize ceremony, Goulding spoke with Mongabay about his research and the current state of the Amazon.

Fires in Argentina’s Paraná Delta are burning ‘out of control’
- Hundreds of fires are currently burning through the Paraná Delta region, an important wetland ecosystem that hosts a range of wildlife in Argentina, raising concerns among conservationists.
- The Paraná River is also experiencing extremely low water levels due to a regional drought, although experts say an exact climatic reason for the drought has yet to be determined.
- Experts say most of the fires have been deliberately lit by people, but they are now raging “out of control” due to drought, lack of rainfall and low river levels.

Deforestation in the Amazon is drying up the rest of Brazil: Report
- The center-west, south and part of the southeast regions of Brazil have seen rainfall well below average in recent years.
- Agriculture is the first sector to feel the effects of the drought, with drastic losses in production. Water supply and power generation have also been impacted.
- Agribusiness suffers the consequences of drought but also causes it: Deforestation of the Amazon to clear land for livestock, farming and logging affects the rainfall regime in Brazil and other Latin American countries.
- “South America is drying up as a result of the combined effects of deforestation and climate change”, says scientist Antonio Donato Nobre.

Scientists measure Amazon drought and deforestation feedback loop: Study
- Researchers have warned about the Amazon rainforest-to-savanna tipping point for years, but a clearer picture of how this may happen is emerging with new research.
- A recent study covering the years 2003-2014 in the Amazon basin found that the deforestation-drought feedback loop accounts for 4% of the region’s drought, and 0.13% of deforestation per millimeter of rainfall lost (for example, a rainfall decrease of 200 millimeters would then trigger an additional 26% increase in deforestation).
- Experts not connected with the study say that the actual percentages could be higher, because Brazilian politics have shifted since 2003-14, leading to major deforestation, while climate change impacts have intensified. The authors agree their results may be underestimated, but say the figures are useful in setting a baseline for climate models.
- Deforestation and drying in the Amazon could cause the rainforest to spiral into becoming a degraded, dry savanna if nothing is done to deactivate the feedback loop. However, it is difficult to say how soon that tipping point will be reached.

Corn growers in Brazil’s Cerrado reap a hostile climate of their own making
- Agribusiness entities that deforested vast swaths of the Cerrado biome in Brazil to grow corn are now suffering a drop in production because of climate changes brought about by their own actions.
- That’s the finding of a new study that shows the loss of native vegetation has led to more warm nights and changes in rainfall patterns, affecting corn crops that require moderate temperatures and reliable rainfall.
- The study’s authors say everyone loses from this scenario, and call for keeping the native vegetation in place as much as possible.
- International pressure and a serious commitment from agribusiness, which is largely resistant to efforts to preserve the Cerrado, might be the way to stop deforestation, they suggest.

Forests are a solution to climate change. They’re also vulnerable to it
- Forest-based solutions play an important role in addressing climate change, but the risks to forests from climate change also need to be calculated, according to a newly published paper in Science.
- For forests to be good carbon-removal investments, they need to be relatively permanent, meaning that the plants and soil in a forest will absorb carbon and keep it locked away for decades or centuries. Climate change threatens that permanence.
- The authors lay out a road map for assessing permanence, which includes forest plot data, remote sensing, and vegetation modeling.
- The authors urge policymakers to be sure forest-based, natural climate solutions are done with the best available science. Likewise, scientists are urged to improve tools for sharing information across different groups outside of science.

One-two punch of drought, pandemic hits Madagascar’s poor and its wildlife
- Because of the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, for the first time in years poverty is rising in Madagascar, already one of the poorest countries in the world.
- Near Tsimanampesotse National Park in the southwest of the country, the loss of tourists has coincided with a disastrously dry rainy season, and restrictions associated with the pandemic are adding to rural distress; an estimated half a million people will need food aid in the coming months.
- Erratic rainfall patterns and food scarcity don’t just affect humans but also the lemurs living in the park, according to Lemur Love, a nonprofit that works in Tsimanampesotse National Park.
- The hunger crisis created by the drought and compounded by the pandemic could force people to lean even more heavily on nature; to impinge on forests and consume more wild meat to survive.

Conservation insights from an enormous aspen clone: Q&A with ecologist Paul Rogers
- Pando is the name of a 40-hectare (100-acre) aspen forest in central Utah whose 47,000 stems share a single genome. It’s thought to be the largest and one of the oldest organisms on Earth.
- In discovering that Pando might be dying, ecologist Paul C. Rogers came to realize that the problems troubling the famous giant were a microcosm of the problems troubling aspen forests across the Northern Hemisphere, and with them the highly biodiverse set of organisms they support.
- That sparked a collaboration among aspen researchers from eight countries, who propose a conservation strategy they’re calling ‘mega-conservation.’ It aims to protect common ecosystems distinguished by a species that, like aspen, supports uncommon levels of biodiversity while facing common threats.
- Mongabay spoke with Rogers about Pando, mega-conservation, and the wisdom of thinking like an aspen forest.

Green alert: How indigenous people are experiencing climate change in the Amazon
- Late rainfall, intense drought, dry riverbeds, more forest fires, less food available — indigenous communities across the Brazilian Amazon suffer social transformations due to climate change.
- Indigenous people believe that climate change has even affected their physical health: previously controlled diseases like measles and yellow fever, they say, have inexplicably reappeared in the rainforest, and even indigenous women’s menstrual cycles are beginning at an earlier age.
- Indigenous people have found many ways to take action and lessen the harm. These approaches include selecting and growing seeds that are more resistant to drought and heat, investing in frontline firefighters and even a smartphone app that offers information about climatic variations.

Soy made the Cerrado a breadbasket; climate change may end that
- The Brazilian Cerrado is a vast tropical savanna covering over 20% of the nation’s landmass. More than half the Cerrado’s native vegetation — much of it biodiverse dry forest — has been converted to agribusiness, turning it into a breadbasket for Brazil and a key source of soy for China, the EU and other international markets.
- Brazilian soy cultivation is set to expand by 12 million hectares between 2021 and 2050, with the vast majority of that expansion happening in the Cerrado and especially on its agricultural frontier — a four-state region known as Matopiba.
- However, the Matopiba region (consisting of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia states) is more vulnerable to climate change than other parts of Brazil. Researchers say global warming on the savanna is also worsened by the conversion of native vegetation to croplands and pastures.
- Extensive conversion of native vegetation (which holds moisture in roots deep underground) into a soy monocrop (which stores little water) is becoming a major problem, as little Cerrado soy is currently irrigated. Scientists argue that the conservation of native vegetation must be actively pursued to save the Cerrado agricultural frontier.

China held water back from drought-stricken Mekong countries, report says
- Eyes on Earth studied data from a 28-year period to determine the extent that dams in China on the Upper Mekong River impact natural water flow.
- While these dams have disrupted the river’s natural systems for years, 2019 saw a particularly damaging situation, as downstream countries faced a severe drought while the Upper Mekong received above-average rainfall.
- China’s water management practices and lack of data-sharing with neighboring countries threaten the livelihoods of roughly 60 million people.

Extreme El Niño drought, fires contribute to Amazon insect collapse: Study
- A recent study found that dung beetle species experienced significant diversity and population declines in human-modified tropical Brazilian ecosystems in the aftermath of droughts and fires exacerbated after the 2015-2016 El Niño climate event.
- Forests that burned during the El Niño lost, on average, 64% of their dung beetle species while those affected only by drought showed an average decline of 20%. Dung beetles provide vital ecoservices, processing waste and dispersing seeds and soil nutrients.
- For roughly the past three years, entomologists have been sounding alarms over a possible global collapse of insect abundance. In the tropics, climate change, habitat destruction and pesticide use are having clear impacts on insect abundance and diversity. However, a lack of funds and institutional interest is holding back urgently needed research.

Painting with fire: Cerrado land managers learn from traditional peoples
- Fire is a disturbance that has occurred naturally in Brazil’s tropical savanna — known as the Cerrado biome — for thousands of years. Indigenous and traditional people living in the Cerrado taught themselves to work successfully with fire, using it as an environment-enhancing land management tool.
- However, modern land managers, influenced by techniques practiced in European and U.S. forests, imposed a non-alteration “zero-fire” conservation policy for decades in the Cerrado.
- That practice allowed the steady buildup of combustible organic material, which frequently led to late dry season wildfires or even mega-fires, ecosystem harm, and conflicts with traditional peoples. But in fact, a new study shows prescribed burns in the Cerrado cause no net loss in species diversity, and even enhance some species.
- Starting in 2014, pilot projects launched by the government on conserved lands in the Cerrado have successfully utilized Integrated Fire Management (IFM), including prescribed burns — approaches learned in part from traditional communities. The result is a decrease in wildfire size, intensity and ecosystem damage.

Amazon Tipping Point puts Brazil’s agribusiness, energy sector at risk: Top scientists
- Scientists are sounding the alarm: the Brazilian Amazon is dangerously close to, or may already be hitting, a disastrous rainforest-to-savanna tipping point, with heightened drought driven by regional and global climate change, rapidly rising deforestation and more numerous and intense wild fires.
- Overshooting the tipping point would not only be cataclysmic to Amazon biodiversity and release massive amounts of forest carbon destabilizing the planet’s climate further, it could also devastate Brazil’s economy by depriving agribusiness and hydroelectric energy production of water.
- Signs of deepening drought are already evident, as are serious repercussions. The $9.5 billion Belo Monte mega-dam for example, is already seeing greatly reduced seasonal flows in the Xingu River, a trend expected to worsen, potentially making the dam economically unviable, while also threatening the proposed Belo Sun goldmine.
- Reduced rainfall and a shorter growing season are also putting Brazilian agribusiness at risk. Even as scientists rush to develop heat and drought-resistant crops, many doubt new cultivars will keep pace with a changing climate. The Bolsonaro government is ignoring the economic threat posed by the tipping point

Severe drought and other climate impacts are driving the platypus towards extinction
- According to a new study published in the journal Biological Conservation this month, severe drought conditions and heat, combined with habitat loss and other impacts of human activities, are pushing one of Australia’s most enigmatic and iconic endemic species, the duck-billed platypus, toward extinction.
- The study, led by researchers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney, examines the potential impacts on platypus populations from the range of threats the animals are facing, including water resource development, fragmentation of river habitats by dams, land clearing for agriculture, invasive species, global climate change, and increasingly severe periods of drought.
- According to the research, current climatic conditions together with the impacts of human activities and other threats could lead to platypus abundance declining anywhere from 47% to 66% over the next 50 years and cause the extinction of local platypus populations across about 40% of the species’ range.

Indigenous, protected lands in Amazon emit far less carbon than areas outside
- A new study calculates the gains and losses in carbon across the Amazon rainforest from deforestation as well as human-caused and naturally occurring degradation of the forest.
- The team found that around 70% of the total carbon emitted from the Amazon between 2003 and 2016 came from areas outside indigenous-held lands and protected areas, despite the fact that these outside areas made up less than half of the total land area.
- The researchers argue that their findings make the case for supporting indigenous communities with “political protection and financial support” to protect carbon stocks in the Amazon necessary to address climate change.

Impending Amazon tipping point puts biome and world at risk, scientists warn
- Climate models coupled with real world biome changes are causing prominent scientists to forecast that, unless action is taken immediately, 50 to 70% of the Amazon will be transformed from rainforest into savanna in less than 50 years.
- That ecological disaster would trigger a vast release of carbon stored in vegetation, likely leading to a regional and planetary climate catastrophe. The Amazon rainforest-to-savanna tipping point is being triggered by rapidly escalating deforestation, regional and global climate change, and increasing Amazon wildfires — all of which are making the region dryer.
- While models produced the first evidence of the tipping point, events on the ground are now adding to grave concern. The Amazon has grown hotter and dryer in recent decades, and rainforest that was once fireproof now readily burns. Plant species adapted to a wet climate are dying, as drought-resistant species flourish. Deforestation is escalating rapidly.
- Scientists say the tipping point could be reversed with strong environmental policies. However, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is moving in the opposite direction, with plans to develop the Amazon, including the opening of indigenous reserves to industrial mining and agribusiness, and the building of roads, dams and other infrastructure.

Rainforests in 2020: 10 things to watch
- This is Mongabay founder Rhett Butler’s annual look ahead at the year in rainforests.
- After a decade of increased deforestation, broken commitments, and hundreds of murders of rainforest defenders, the 2020s open as a dark moment for the world’s rainforests.
- Here are some key things to watch for the coming year: Brazil, destabilization of tropical forests, U.S. elections, the global economy, Jokowi’s new administration in Indonesia, market-based conservation initiatives, zero deforestation commitments, ambition on addressing the biodiversity crisis, Congo Basin, and assessment of 2019’s damage.
- Share your thoughts via the comment function at the bottom of the post.

2019: The year rainforests burned
- 2019 closed out a “lost decade” for the world’s tropical forests, with surging deforestation from Brazil to the Congo Basin, environmental policy roll-backs, assaults on environmental defenders, abandoned conservation commitments, and fires burning through rainforests on four continents.
- The following review covers some of the biggest rainforest storylines for the year.

‘The tipping point is here, it is now,’ top Amazon scientists warn
- In the past, climate modelling has indicated an approaching Amazon tipping point when global climate change, combined with increasing deforestation, could result in a rapid Amazon shift from rainforest to degraded savanna and shrubland, releasing massive amounts of carbon to the atmosphere when the world can least afford it.
- Now, scientists Carlos Nobre and Thomas Lovejoy report that researchers are seeing evidence in both the atmosphere and on the ground that this tipping point has been reached and will worsen if no action is taken immediately to reverse the situation.
- They reference a NASA satellite study revealing an increasingly dry Amazon over time, which space agency scientists say is one of “the first indications of positive climate feedback mechanisms.” A 2018 study found that Amazon tree species adapted to wet climates were dying at record rates while dry-adapted trees thrived.
- It is urgent, the scientists say, that Brazil move away from unsustainable agribusiness monocultures of cattle, soy, and sugarcane, while launching a major reforestation project on already degraded lands in the southern and eastern Amazon, actions that could help Brazil keep its Paris Climate Agreement commitment.

Paris accord ‘impossible to implement’ if tropical forest loss not stopped
- Human activity is already threatening 80% of the world’s forests with destruction or degradation. Deforestation is also putting ecosystems and 50% of the world’s biodiversity at risk, along with forest peoples.
- Atop that, dense intact tropical forests serve as vital carbon sinks. But forest loss accounted for 8% of the world’s annual CO2 emissions in 2018, while intact tropical forest loss from 2000 to 2013 will result in over 626% more long-term carbon emissions through 2050 than previously thought, according to new research.
- Zooming in on just one example, 17% of the Amazon has been cleared at one time or another. Another 20% has been degraded. In 2019, the deforestation rate there shot up 30% from the year before. The risk is that climate change combined with deforestation could lead to an Amazon forest collapse, with huge releases of carbon.
- If tropical nations, and nations consuming forest products, but had the political will, then the world’s forests could be conserved. One approach: create buffers around intact tropical forests by reducing road networks while reforesting. Also, give indigenous groups more power to protect forests, as they’re proven to be the best stewards.

Warming of Indo-Pacific waters disrupting weather worldwide, report finds
- As the latest U.N. climate change summit gets underway in Madrid, a paper published in Nature has drawn attention to the disruptive impact of warming oceans on the weather.
- It examines the effect of a swath of warm water in the Indo-Pacific Ocean, which has doubled in size since the turn of the 20th century, on the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), a system of rain-bearing clouds, winds and pressure fronts that traverses eastward along the equator.
- The MJO affects the timing variability and strength of rainfall in many parts of the world, regulating among other things cyclone formation, the monsoon system, and the El Niño cycles.
- Changes in the amount of time the system lingers over a region, influenced by the expansion of the warm water pool in the Indo-Pacific, has caused disruptions in rainfall in Asia, Africa, Australia and the Americas.

Reforesting a village in Indonesia, one batch of gourmet beans at a time
- Deforestation in the village of Cibulao on the outskirts of the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, left it prone to droughts in the dry season and landslides in the rainy season.
- That changed in the early 2000s when a local tea plantation worker named Kiryono began replanting the slopes with seeds foraged from the nearby forest.
- Among those seeds were coffee seeds taken from wild coffee trees, and with training and the help of his family, Kiryono today produces some of the most prized coffee in Indonesia.
- The village is also greener now, thanks to Kiryono’s replanting efforts, and the local farmers’ cooperative hopes to expand on that work by applying for the right to manage a larger area of land.

The unrecognized cost of Indonesia’s fires (commentary)
- As Indonesia’s forests go up in smoke, the world may be losing a lot more than we currently understand, argues Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler in this commentary that was originally published in Singapore’s Straits Times on September 30, 2019.
- In one instance, deforestation in Borneo nearly eradicated a potential anti-HIV drug before it was discovered. The near-miss with the drug, Calanolide A, provides one vivid illustration of what is at risk of being lost as Indonesia’s forests are cleared and burned.
- Other local and regional impacts from continued large-scale destruction of Indonesia’s forests may include hotter temperatures, more prolonged droughts, and increased incidence of fires.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

As climate change disrupts the annual monsoon, India must prepare (Commentary)
- Over the past few decades, India’s total annual rainfall averages haven’t changed but the intensity of precipitation has increased as extreme weather events (EWEs) become more frequent and widespread. Today, the country witnesses more episodes of extremely heavy rainfall, as compared to the past’s consistent, well spread out seasonal rains.
- The nation’s meteorological department already admits that this is a clear impact of climate change. These intense storms pose a huge danger to India’s agriculture-based economy and to millions of farmers whose livelihoods still largely rely upon a consistent rainfall season. There are also periods of droughts interspersed with floods.
- The good news is that Indian authorities are aware of the change and are trying to tackle the impacts of shifting rainfall patterns and adapt to them.
- These extreme weather events are of global significance since more than 1.8 billion people live on the Indian subcontinent, and the impact in the South Asian region has economic fallout in other parts of the world. This post is a commentary. Views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Climate adaptation begins with how we manage water (commentary)
- Some 70 percent of the world’s freshwater is used for agriculture, but cities and other sectors have growing demands on the same water resources. To adapt to climate change without undermining food security and farmers’ livelihoods, we will have to fundamentally rethink agricultural water usage, our food systems, and our diets.
- A major new report from the Global Commission on Adaptation (GCA) makes this case loud and clear. The report urges us to face the fact that climate change will require ‘massive’ adaptation. It urges us to meet this challenge with urgency and resolve.
- The GCA report paints a sobering picture of our water and food security futures. We can and must adapt more quickly and effectively. Adaptive water management is an important place to start.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

A healthy and productive Amazon is the foundation of Brazil’s sovereignty (commentary)
- Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro likes to assert that foreigners deserve no say over the fate of the Amazon because it is a national sovereignty issue. In making the argument, Bolsonaro at times lays out a grand conspiracy under which a body like the U.N. tries to “internationalize” the Amazon, claiming it as the domain of the world.
- As fires rage, some on social media are raising the idea of the Amazon being the domain of the world. But this discussion plays directly into Bolsonaro’s narrative, strengthening his hand.
- Instead, concerned people of the world should talk about how a healthy and productive Amazon actually underpins Brazil’s sovereignty by strengthening food, water, and energy security, while supporting good relations with its neighbors.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Venezuelan crisis: Caring for priceless botanical treasures in a failed state
- Venezuela’s Botanical Garden of Caracas was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000. Its 70-hectare (173-acre) garden, National Herbarium and Henri Pittier Library are considered a national, and international treasure, and a vital repository of Latin American and global natural history utilized frequently by researchers.
- But a devastating drought that started two years ago, plus massive thefts of equipment (ranging from air conditioners to computers, plumbing and even electrical wiring), plus a failed electrical and public water supply, have all combined to threaten the Garden’s priceless collections.
- The annual botanical garden budget has been slashed to a mere $500 per year, which has forced staff to rely on innovative conservation solutions which include crowd funding to pay for rainwater cisterns, as well as volunteer programs in which participants contribute not only labor, but irrigation water they bring from home.
- As Venezuela’s government grows increasingly corrupt and incompetent, and as the national economy spirals out of control with hyperinflation topping 1.7 million percent in 2018, the botanical garden’s curators have no ready answers as to how to go about preserving the rare plants they tend on into the future.

As climate chaos escalates in Indian Country, feds abandon tribes
- South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Oglalla Sioux Indian Reservation is one of the most impoverished places in the U.S. But in 2018 and 2019, the reservation was struck by two horrific storms — with economic harm to their homes and livelihoods that the community’s low income residents have found it extraordinarily difficult to absorb.
- High Plains weather has been getting more variable, erratic and destructive: in 2011 came severe drought and wildfires, followed in 2012 by severe flooding. Sometimes these oscillations take the form of high-powered storms, with a rash of tornadoes in 2016, a destructive ice storm in 2018, and a bomb cyclone in 2019.
- According to the National Climate Assessment issued at the end of 2018, “Climate change is expected to exacerbate these [extreme weather] challenges.” But starting with Bill Clinton and continuing under Donald Trump, the federal government has severely slashed federal aid to Indian reservations and their low income residents.
- As a result, Pine Ridge is increasingly forced to rely on its own resources and on creative solutions, including crowdfunded local and national volunteer teams who have risen to the challenge and helped the communities repair storm damage. But as extreme weather intensifies on the High Plains, surviving there will get tougher.

Shade or sun? Forest structure affects tree responses to Amazon drought
- Large-scale satellite data has shown that while large trees expand their crown during the dry season, small trees drop leaves – possibly due to limited light availability in the shaded understory. A new study finds that tree response to dry weather is far more complex, influenced by exposure to the sun and root depth.
- Detailed measurements of leaf growth and leaf loss during the annual dry season and extreme drought events shows that small trees respond differently to water deprivation depending on their surrounding environment – shaded trees gain leaves but exposed trees tend to lose them, a possible sign of dehydration stress.
- Two novel study approaches revealed a complex pattern of leaf growth and loss in response to dry weather: ground-based lidar imaging that produced high-resolution 2D image slices of forest structure, and statistical division of data based on an understory tree’s distance from the canopy top, rather than from the ground up.
- Losing leaves could spell death for individual trees, but these small-scale changes can also impact transpiration and have consequences for regional weather patterns and regional climate change. Also, importantly, degraded forests, with many open clearings, could be less resilient to worsening Amazon drought.

Cloud seeding bears no rain in Sri Lanka
- An experimental attempt by Sri Lanka to induce artificial rain amid a prolonged drought fell short of expectations when the anticipated rain materialized a day late.
- Despite the setback, the government appears committed to exploring the technology further as it seeks to address power cuts caused by low water levels in its hydropower reservoirs.
- Scientists have called for comprehensive studies on cloud microphysics, meteorology and observational studies to ensure that such an expensive endeavor is backed by adequate scientific data.
- With no cost-benefit analysis, climatologists fear that artificial rainmaking may cause adverse impacts over the long term.

Dust and blood: Climate-induced conflict fuels migration, study finds
- The Arab Spring, was largely political in nature, and fueled an exodus of migrants from across the swath of affected countries into Europe. Now, a study published in Global Environmental Change finds evidence that a changing climate was also a factor.
- The researchers hypothesized that abnormal and extreme climate events worsen conflicts, which in turn lead to migration.
- They say their results add evidence to the intensely debated narrative that links drought, at least in part, to the political unrest of the Arab Spring and subsequent Syrian civil war.

Study identifies climate-resilient trees to help orangutan conservation
- Once written off as lost cause for conservation, Indonesia’s Kutai National Park supports one of the last intact forest canopies on Borneo’s eastern coast, a habitat for the critically endangered East Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus morio).
- An IUCN study funded through the Indianapolis Zoological Society has identified tree species native to Kutai National Park that are resilient to climate change and support orangutan populations.
- Climate change has become an emerging threat that is likely to intensify drought conditions and wildfires. Currently, land settlement and human-caused fires pose the greatest existential threat to the park’s ecosystem functions and biodiversity.
- The study authors recommended that the fire-resistant native trees they identified in the study be planted in buffer zones around fire-prone areas. They hope the study will help spur research to enable forest restoration in other parts of the world.

Termites help to protect tropical forests during drought, study finds
- Researchers studying the effects of termites in an old-growth tropical forest in Malaysian Borneo found that both termite numbers and activity increased during the El Niño drought of 2015-2016, resulting in higher leaf litter decomposition and soil moisture compared to a test plot where the termite population had been artificially suppressed.
- These improvements in soil condition also resulted in an increase in seedling survival, suggesting that termites will have an important role to play in maintaining plant diversity in the future, given that the severity and frequency of droughts is predicted to increase with a changing climate.
- Why termite number and activity increase during drought is unclear at present, but researchers think that the conditions possibly made the termites’ tunnels drier and less water-logged, making moving through the environment easier.

Research links specific 2017 extreme weather events to climate change
- According to the seventh annual special report by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS) probing the causal links between rising global temperatures and extreme weather events, issued last month, climate change made the Northern Great Plains drought of 2017 some 1.5 times more likely and greatly enhanced its intensity by driving long-term reductions in soil moisture.
- For the second year in a row, scientists were able to identify specific extreme weather events that cannot be explained without factoring in Earth’s warming global climate.
- A team of 120 scientists from 10 different countries used historical observations and model simulations to produce the 17 peer-reviewed analyses collected in the BAMS special report examining extraordinary weather events from around the globe that were made more likely or exacerbated by anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change.

The biggest rainforest news stories in 2018
- This is our annual rainforests year in review post.
- Overall, 2018 was not a good year for the planet’s tropical rainforests.
- Rainforest conservation suffered many setbacks, especially in Brazil, the Congo Basin, and Madagascar.
- Colombia was one of the few bright spots for rainforests in 2018.

Fire fundamentally alters carbon dynamics in the Amazon
- With higher temperatures and increasingly severe droughts resulting from climate change, fires are becoming a more frequent phenomenon in the Amazon.
- New research finds that fires fundamentally change the structure of the forest, leading it to stockpile less carbon even decades after a burn.
- The research also shows that the burning of dead organic matter in the understory can release far more carbon into the atmosphere than previously thought.

Common ground on the prairie (commentary)
- Good stewardship of our native grasslands is one of the best ways to survive the next weather event. Grasses are rooted in the ground, which enables the soil to absorb and retain more water. That, in turn, prevents sediment, fertilizer, pesticides, and other compounds in the soil from running off into nearby water ways. And by absorbing and storing more water, the land better withstands flood and drought alike.
- Healthy grasslands also serve as a check against climate change, pulling heat-trapping carbon dioxide out of the air and storing it in the soil. Research shows that improving grazing management practices on just one acre of grassland can pull an average of 419 extra pounds of carbon out of the atmosphere each year.
- This is an important message for the governors, mayors, CEOs and producers gathering in San Francisco for the Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS). There, they will demonstrate the progress the public and private sectors have made in reducing carbon emissions and they’ll set ambitious new goals. Land stewardship will be high on the agenda, as it should be.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Audio: The ‘Godfather of Biodiversity’ on why it’s time to manage Earth as a system
- On this episode we welcome the godfather of biodiversity, Dr. Thomas Lovejoy, to discuss some of the most important environmental issues we’re currently facing and why he believes the next decade will be the “last decade of real opportunity” to address those issues.
- Lovejoy joined the Mongabay Newscast to talk about how deforestation and the impacts of climate change could trigger dieback in the Amazon and other tropical forests, causing them to shift into non-forest ecosystems, as well as the other trends impacting the world’s biodiversity he’s most concerned about.
- He says it’s time for a paradigmatic shift in how we approach the conservation of the natural world: “We really have got to the point now where we need to think about managing the entire planet as a combined physical and biological system.”

From sink to source: Droughts are changing the Amazon rainforest
- Droughts are becoming more frequent in the Amazon rainforest, with three “100-year” droughts happening in the space of just 10 years.
- A new study finds that, on average, the most affected parts of the rainforest lost around 35 inches (0.9 meters) in the years following the 2005 drought.
- The researchers estimate that the loss of this tree cover means that drought-caused forest changes in the Amazon between 2005 and 2008 translate to 270 million metric tons of lost carbon annually.

‘Not doing anything is no longer acceptable’: Q&A with Alice Thomas, climate refugee expert
- Mongabay spoke with Alice Thomas, an expert on climate refugees, about the growing impact of climate change on the refugee crisis worldwide.
- To date, no one has been able to claim asylum due to climate change because the official definition of a refugee does not allow for climate-induced migration.
- One of the least-understood aspects of climate migration, however, is that most migrants won’t be leaving their country, but will be moving within their national borders.
- Smarter, better policies could not only mitigate such migrations, but allow communities to adapt to ongoing changes due to climate change, Thomas says.

New remote-sensing technique used to determine carbon losses in Sub-Saharan Africa
- Research published yesterday in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution finds that pressures from human activities and climate change caused the African continent to lose as much as 2.6 billion metric tons of carbon between 2010 and 2016.
- The study not only shows that there was an overall net carbon loss across sub-Saharan Africa, but also that substantial losses occurred in drylands — savannahs and woodlands that fall outside of humid zones — which lost approximately 5 percent of their total carbon stocks each year.
- In order to quantify changes in above-ground biomass-carbon in sub-Saharan Africa, an international team of scientists used a new remote sensing technique based on a satellite system that employs low-frequency, passive microwave signals as opposed to the more common high-resolution photography.

Cerrado: appreciation grows for Brazil’s savannah, even as it vanishes
- The Brazilian Cerrado – a vast savannah – once covered two million square kilometers (772,204 square miles), an area bigger than Great Britain, France and Germany combined, stretching to the east and south of the Amazon.
- Long undervalued by scientists and environmental activists, researchers are today realizing that the Cerrado is incredibly biodiverse. The biome supports more than 10,000 plant species, over 900 bird and 300 mammal species.
- The Cerrado’s deep-rooted plants and its soils also sequester huge amounts of carbon, making the region’s preservation key to curbing climate change, and to reducing Brazil’s deforestation and CO2 emissions to help meet its Paris carbon reduction pledge.
- Agribusiness – hampered by Brazilian laws in the Amazon – has moved into the Cerrado in a big way. More than half of the biome’s native vegetation has already disappeared, as soy and cattle production rapidly replace habitat. This series explores the dynamics of change convulsing the region.

Amazon forest to savannah tipping point could be far closer than thought (commentary)
- In the 1970s, scientists recognized that the Amazon makes half of its own rainfall via evaporation and transpiration from vegetation. Researchers also recognized that escalating deforestation would reduce this rainfall producing effect.
- A 2007 study estimated that with 40 percent Amazon deforestation a tipping point could be reached, with large swathes of Amazonia switching from forest to savannah. Two newly considered factors in a 2016 study – climate change and fires – have now reduced that estimated tipping point to 20-25 percent. Current deforestation is at 17 percent, with an unknown amount of degraded forest adding less moisture.
- There is good reason to think that this Amazon forest to savannah tipping point is close at hand. Historically unprecedented droughts in 2005, 2010 and 2015 would seem to be the first flickers of such change.
- Noted Amazon scientists Tom Lovejoy and Carlos Nobre argue that it is critical to build in a margin of safety by keeping Amazon deforestation below 20 percent. To avoid this tipping point, Brazil needs to strongly control deforestation, and combine that effort with reforestation. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Kenyan farmers reap economic, environmental gains from ABCDs of agroforestry
- In Kenya’s Rift Valley, rural communities are implementing agroforestry to respond to new challenges brought by climate change.
- The Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) program trains farmers in agroforestry techniques that increase their resilience and food security in the face of hotter, drier growing conditions.
- ABCD improves the economic prospects of those who implement it through diverse, year-long harvests and new markets for edible produce and wood products.
- Agroforestry is also a main facet of Kenya’s goal to reduce carbon emissions under the Paris Climate Treaty, since it sequesters a large amount of carbon in woody plants both above and below ground.

Long-term droughts are throttling growth in Hawaiian forests, finds airborne laser-based study
- Long-term declines in rainfall on the Big Island of Hawaii have added up over time to make forests shorter and less green.
- Data from satellites and airplane surveys showed that forest canopy greenness decreased twice as much in areas where annual rainfall had steadily declined since 1920.
- Long-term drying trends in other parts of the world may have far-reaching impacts on forests.

Scientists predict tree death from drought in California’s Sierra Nevadas
- A study in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California shows that remotely-measured changes in the canopy water content (CWC) of conifers can be used to forecast tree mortality.
- Water content in tree canopies can be remotely monitored using laser-based images from aerial surveys.
- Changes in the CWC in conifer forests during droughts correlate well with tree mortality.
- After estimating canopy water content from past years using a deep learning model, researchers were able to accurately predict tree death during a recent drought.

Unfair trade: US beef has a climate problem
- Across the globe, beef consumption, is seeing rapid growth, fed by cheap imports and served by an industrialized agricultural global trade model that’s been linked to a host of environmental impacts, climate change chief among them.
- Beef consumption in previously meat-light countries like Japan presents profit opportunities for the global beef industry. But scientists and activists argue that increasing beef consumption and industrial farm production go against efforts to combat climate change.
- President Trump’s recent decision to pull out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a global trade deal, upset the US beef industry’s plans of expanding into lucrative Asian markets, including Japan, calling into question if, or when, a future deal will be signed.
- TPP, like other global trade treaties, fails to acknowledge climate change or include mechanisms to curb it. Critics say TPP (which continues to be negotiated by 11 nations) and future trade deals must change radically — protecting not only business and the economy, but the environment.

Healthy soils can boost food security and climate resilience for millions (commentary)
- Drylands take centre stage this week as world leaders gather in Ordos, in the Inner Mongolia region of China, for the thirteenth session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP13).
- The health of many dryland ecosystems has declined dramatically over recent decades, largely due to unsustainable farming methods, increasing drought, deforestation, and clearance of natural grasslands.
- Changing the way drylands are farmed to conserve life underground is the only way of restoring these ecosystems and the agricultural outputs they sustain.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Doubts cloud Kenya’s renewed palm oil ambitions
- Kenya is looking to increase its own production to reduce reliance on imports. Officials say producing palm oil domestically would reduce importation costs while opening new income streams for farmers.
- Kenya is also looking to cash in on the industry’s profitability and efficiency as global demand for palm oil rises.
- But critics worry that increasing palm oil production in Kenya may come at a cost. They say smallholder farmers could lose out to industrial producers, and clearing land for oil palm plantations could increase deforestation and carbon emissions.

Kenyans fear proposed Trump cuts could threaten elephants, ranger jobs
- In March, President Trump proposed cuts to the 2018 USAID global budget totaling 40 percent, a recommendation Congress isn’t required to follow, but which the legislature won’t likely vote on before October 1st.
- As a result, nations in the developing world are in limbo over cuts, and worried they’ll lose vital USAID funds. Trump’s budget is only slated to reduce USAID to Kenya by 10 percent, but officials and NGOs there still fear environmental programs will be slashed.
- They worry USAID funds to protect elephants and curb trafficking, to pay community ranger salaries, and to keep East Africa’s only wildlife forensics lab open will be lost. There are no known plans to cut these programs at present, but rumors abound, with many rangers disheartened and “losing motivation to work” according to one observer.
- An unnamed U.S. embassy official in Nairobi told Mongabay that the Trump administration has, however, taken one action that could harm environmental research, with 34 visas denied to Kenyan scientists wishing to travel to the United States.

Trump budget threatens Zimbabwe climate change resilience programs
- President Trump has threatened to cut U.S. aid to developing nations by a third. This could impact Zimbabwe which receives $150 million annually to decrease food insecurity for 2.1 million people.
- Aid to Zimbabwe is important to rural farmers, victims of escalating drought due to climate change. USAID finances dams and irrigation projects, making agriculture sustainable.
- The 2018 budget isn’t due to be finalized by Congress until October 1, 2017, leaving Zimbabwe’s people in uncertainty as to the direly needed aid.
- What seems certain is that the climate resilience program will not be expanded to meet the needs of yet to be served Zimbabwean communities.

Groundwater may play key role in forest fires
- Researchers compared groundwater dynamics to fire incidence in Borneo.
- During prolonged dry spells, groundwater levels can get so low that capillary action cannot take place, creating a condition called “hydrological drought.”
- The researchers found that when a fire occurs, almost 10 times more land is burned in a hydrological drought year than in a non-drought year.
- They write that their findings may help better predict fire occurrence and extent during El Niño events, and may provide a tool to help plan and adapt to climate change.

Drylands greener with forests than previously thought
- The new study, published Thursday in the journal Science, increases global forest cover estimates by 9 percent.
- Using very high resolution imagery, the team calculated that dryland forest cover was 40 to 47 percent higher above current totals.
- The researchers calculate that 1.1 million hectares (4,247 square miles) of forest covers the Earth’s drylands.

The Tana River, Kenya’s lifeblood, strains under development and drought
- Local fishermen say that just five years ago they could catch up to 90 pounds of fish per day – now they are lucky to get 20 pounds’ worth.
- Extensive mangrove forests in the Tana Delta — declared a protected site under the RAMSAR convention (an intergovernmental treaty on wetlands) in 2012 — are at risk.
- The Kenyan government is implementing plans for the country’s biggest dam to date, called the High Grand Falls Dam, as well as a scheme to irrigate a million acres along the banks of the Tana.
- While the dam has many downstream worried, the government has said it will be vital to Kenya’s economic development and will help the delta in times of flooding.

Murky future for freshwater fish in the Amazon floodplains
- An extreme drought in 2005 decreased many freshwater fish species abundance in areas like Lago Catalão, and many haven’t recovered yet.
- Drought overturned the ecology of the lake over time – big fish populations declined while little fish boomed.
- The shift has direct impacts on diets in the region since many local people depend on fish for protein, meaning that climate change is already influencing food reserves here.

Climate change key suspect in the case of India’s vanishing groundwater
- Since the Green Revolution, Indian farmers have depended on groundwater to grow enough crops to feed the country’s 1.3 billion people, but groundwater is vanishing in many parts of the country.
- The combination of overpumping and climate change – resulting in weaker monsoons – has resulted in social disruption in many parts of India, including violent protests and suicides.
- India won’t be able to solve the problem with just water legislation: the country also needs to take a look at climate change as well.

Significant declines in Colorado River flows likely to continue as temperatures rise
- Colorado River flows were, on average, nearly 20 percent below the 1906-1999 average between 2000 and 2014, according to the study, published in the journal Water Resources Research earlier this month.
- That’s a reduction of about 2.9 million acre-feet of water per year. To put that in context: It’s been estimated that one acre-foot of water is the amount used by a family of four in one year.
- The multi-year drought in California receives far more press, but the Colorado River drought is just as severe and will also have far-reaching impacts, note the researchers with the University of Arizona (UA) and Colorado State University (CSU) who authored the study.

The Spirit of the Steppes: Saving Central Asia’s saiga
- The Critically Endangered saiga (Saiga tatarica) once numbered in the millions. This large antelope was perhaps best known for making one of the last of the world’s remaining great mammal migrations — a trek sweeping twice per year across the steppes of Central Asia.
- Saiga populations declined more than 95 percent by 2004, according to the IUCN. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan banned hunting in the 1990s, but the horns of male saiga are highly valued in traditional Chinese medicine, and illegal trafficking is a major threat; if not curtailed the trade could doom the species.
- In the 21st century, international NGOs and regional organizations such as the Saiga Conservation Alliance (SCA) and Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan (ACBK) formed partnerships with Central Asian nations to better conserve the species. And their work was paying off, until 2015.
- That’s when disease killed over 200,000 adult saiga of the Betpak Dala population in Central Kazakhstan. At the end of 2016, the Mongolian herd was hit hard by a new viral infection, with 4,000 saiga carcasses buried so far. But the saiga is reproductively resilient, and could be saved, if the species receives sufficient attention, say conservationists.

Getting there: The rush to turn the Amazon into a soy transport corridor
- The development over the last 40 years of Mato Grosso state in Brazil’s interior as an industrial agribusiness powerhouse has, from the beginning, been hindered by a major economic problem: how to get the commodities to the coast for profitable export.
- The first route of export from Mato Grosso was a costly and time-consuming southern one, with commodities trucked on a circuitous route to Santos in São Paulo state and Paranaguá in Paraná state on the Atlantic coast.
- The paving of the northern section of BR-163, running south to north through Pará state, opened a much less expensive, faster route, with commodities now moved to Miritituba on the Tapajós River, then downstream to the Amazon, and on to Europe and China.
- New infrastructure plans call for the channelization of the Juruena, Teles Pires and Tapajós rivers, creating a 1,000-mile industrial waterway. Two railways, one over the Andes, are also proposed. These schemes pose grave threats to the Amazon rainforest, biodiversity, indigenous and traditional communities, and even the global climate.

NASA and NOAA: 2016 hottest recorded year ever
- NOAA reported an average temperature for the year of 14.83 degrees C (58.69 degrees F) in 2016 – 1 degree C (1.69 degrees F) warmer than the average for the 20th century.
- NOAA also said that, at 10.15 square kilometers (3.92 million square miles), the Arctic’s sea ice level is the lowest it’s been since 1979.
- Weather- and climate-related disasters cost the U.S. 138 lives and $46 billion in 2016.

NASA scientists find connection between fires and droughts in sub-Saharan Africa
- The Northern Sub-Saharan African region accounts for 20 to 25 percent of global carbon emissions from biomass burning.
- Just like overgrazing, fires set by herders and farmers to clear the land dries out the soil and disrupts the local hydrological system, including rainfall patterns.
- A team of researchers led by scientists at NASA used satellite records from 2001 to 2014 to analyze what impact fires had on soil moisture, precipitation, evapotranspiration, and other water cycle indicators.

‘Out of control’ wildfires damage protected areas in northern Peru
- A new analysis of satellite data describes dozens of fires that invaded protected areas throughout northern Peru in the last few months of 2016.
- The rainy season has since extinguished the fires, but not before they burned through an estimated 2,668 hectares of protected habitat
- Representatives from Peru’s National Protected Areas Service (SERNANP) say they met the fires head-on and are working on ways to mitigate similarly severe fire seasons in the future, but critics say their efforts were lacking in 2016.

New report: Brazil’s Cerrado could sidestep conversion for agriculture
- Home to almost half of Brazil’s agriculture, the country’s leaders are looking toward the Cerrado to accelerate economic development.
- The Cerrado is also home to indigenous communities and traditional societies, such as the quilombolas, descendants of escaped African slaves.
- The report argues for a more inclusive process that preserves traditional farming practices, intensifies existing large-scale agriculture and protects the Cerrado’s water, habitat and biodiversity.

Strongest drought in 25 years hits Bolivia
- An unusual drought, described by the government as the worst of the past 25 years, has 142 of the country’s 339 municipalities in a state of emergency because of the loss of crops and livestock.
- The government enacted a dozen decrees to address the emergency, primarily with the allocation of 48 million Bolivianos ($6.9 million) to provide farmers with water, seeds, forage, and balanced food for the livestock.
- Despite the government assistance, farmers still fear they will not recover in time for the summer planting season so they are asking for financial aid.
- More than 145,000 farming households have been affected.

Youth, women, indigenous group pay the price of logging in Kenya
- Members of the Ogiek indigenous group have been subject to evictions from their forest homeland as part of a government effort to restore the Mau forest, a critically important watershed where deforestation and illegal logging are persistent problems.
- Many Ogiek are impoverished, living in camps for displaced persons. Children with poor access to schooling are turning to work in the region’s thriving timber industry.
- A new law giving local communities more control over their forests may improve the situation, but advocates say it needs to go further in specifically addressing the needs of marginalized women and children.

Amid epic drought, villagers bitter over Zimbabwean ethanol plant
- The Green Fuel plant in Chisumbanje in eastern Zimbabwe became operational in 2011.
- Since then the livelihood of local farming people, already thin, has become dire. Community members and advocacy groups offer a litany of complaints against the company.
- In April, Billy Rautenbach, the owner of the companies with a controlling stake in Green Fuel, was named in the Panama Papers as having offshore accounts, prompting calls for an investigation into his financial dealings that has yet to materialize.

Study: Drought impedes tree growth, shuts down Amazon carbon sink
- The Amazon Basin stores 100 billion tons of carbon, serving as a valuable carbon sink and buffer against climate change.
- A new study finds that a major drought in 2010 hindered tree growth and caused sufficient tree death to result in the complete shut down of the Amazon carbon sink.
- That effect was temporary, and in the years between droughts the Amazon returned to being a carbon sink, with growth outstripping mortality.
- Scientists are concerned that as climate change escalates that the intensity of droughts in the Amazon will continue to increase, stalling tree growth and bringing more carbon sink shut downs.

NASA images show the Amazon could be facing an intense wildfire season this year
- Conditions created by the strong El Niño event that warmed up Pacific waters in 2015 and early 2016 altered rainfall patterns around the world.
- In the Amazon basin, that meant reduced rainfall during the wet season, plunging some parts of the region into severe drought.
- Per NASA’s Amazon fire forecast, the wildfire risk for July to October now exceeds the risk in 2005 and 2010 — the last time the region experienced severe drought and wildfires raged across large swaths of the rainforest.

10 reasons to be optimistic for forests
- It’s easy to be pessimistic about the state of the world’s forests.
- Yet all hope is not lost. There are remain good reasons for optimism when it comes to saving the world’s forests.
- On the occasion of World Environment Day 2016 (June 5), the United Nations’ “day” for raising awareness and encouraging action to protect the planet, here are 10 forest-friendly trends to watch.

An improbable future for Nicaragua’s inter-oceanic canal
- The plan involves excavating and dredging a 275-km (171-mile) swath and constructing a canal with locks from the Atlantic Ocean across the Cerro Silva and Punta Gorda Nature Reserves, through Lake Nicaragua, and westward to the Pacific Ocean.
- Scientists and project proponents agree that the feasibility of the venture rests, in part, on water quality and quantity flowing into Lake Nicaragua and the future canal. Additionally, both acknowledge that seismic activity in the region could pose dangers to the integrity of the design’s infrastructure.
- HKND, the Hong Kong-based firm with the concession to develop the canal, has sought to quell concerns about the plan’s feasibility, but scientists remain skeptical.

Haze-stricken Malaysia proposes drastic new firefighting measures
- Malaysia is experiencing a record heatwave.
- Forest and peatland fires have sent haze into Kuala Lumpur, and contaminated the air elsewhere in the country.
- Near the capital, fires are burning in a giant illegal waste dump.

Haze returns to Kuala Lumpur – but not because of Indonesian fires
- Malaysians are experiencing a damaging heatwave and drought.
- Indonesia’s Sumatra saw a spike in hotspots last week, but the number has dropped in recent days.
- Singapore issued notices to six more companies under its Transboundary Haze Law.

Abuse, displacement, pollution: the legacy of Zimbabwe’s Marange diamonds
- Eastern Zimbabwe’s Marange diamond fields, discovered in 2006, have been touted by experts as the world’s biggest diamond find in generations.
- In 2008, government forces ruthlessly drove out illegal diamond miners, killing more than 200, according to human rights groups. Since then villagers suspected of illegal mining have been subject to torture and brutal extra-judicial punishments, rights groups allege. Mine waste has polluted local water sources, and some villagers relocated to make way for the mines have been resettled in starvation conditions.
- The Zimbabwean government recently ousted from the Marange fields all but one mining company, which it owns, leaving local people’s future in limbo.

Bolivia’s second largest lake disappears, due to desertification and contamination
- Among the causes are excessive sedimentation, mining activities, the diversion of rivers, climate change, and other natural phenomena.
- One of the signs came on November 2014, when communities on the western shore of the lake noticed millions of dead fish.
- Despite its seemingly hostile setting, this ecoregion is an important source of biodiversity where 200 animal and plant species lived.

Peruvian Amazon will get wetter and experience more severe floods, threatening wildlife
- A growing body of evidence shows that climate change is having a direct hydrological impact on the Amazon.
- A new study expands on these findings by examining climate change’s direct hydrological impact at the subregional scale, specifically in the Western Amazon.
- The increased flood pulse in the Peruvian Amazon basin could impact riverine and floodplain species like the taricaya turtle.

Widespread death of evergreens predicted in American Southwest
- The U.S. Forest Service said last year that as many as 12 million trees had been killed by the drought in California alone.
- Researchers published a paper last month in the journal Nature Climate Change predicting widespread death of needleleaf evergreen trees in the Southwest United States by the year 2100 due to global warming.
- The research team that conducted the study performed field tests and studied a range of validated regional predictions and global climate models in order to reach their dire conclusion.

California’s ongoing drought threatens nearly 60 million large trees
- A report by the U.S. Forest Service released earlier this year found that as many as 12 million trees have been killed by drought in California, but did not identify how many more trees were vulnerable due to the dry conditions.
- Carnegie researchers found that approximately 10.6 million hectares of forest (about 26.2 million acres or 41,000 square miles) containing up to 888 million large trees has experienced measurable loss in canopy water content.
- Severe canopy water loss of 30 percent or more occurred across 1 million hectares (about 2.5 million acres), affecting up to 58 million large trees, the researchers found.

Amazon rainforests could transition to savannah-like states in response to climate change, new study predicts
- Scientists have developed a new model called the Ecosystem Demography Biosphere model that allows them to track the response of individual trees in forests to climate change.
- The researchers did not find any evidence supporting previous studies that the Amazon forests would either collapse, or be unresponsive, in a warmer, drier climate in the future. Instead, their results suggest that the Amazon would show varied, and gradual response to changes in the climate.
- The model found, for example, that as dry seasons become longer, high-biomass rainforests in the Amazon will transition to low-biomass dry forests and savannah-like states.

El Niño vs. the Amazon: researchers worry Brazil is not prepared
- A total of 18,716 fires were reported in the Brazilian Amazon in November alone, primarily caused by farming activity.
- Researchers on the ground say local fire control efforts are not enough to combat the blazes.
- They stress the need for global leaders to address the growing problem of tropical forest fires, to both protect wildlife habitat and improve public health.

There have been more than 11,000 fires in just one region of the Brazilian Amazon this year
- Satellite images revealed that on October 4, 2015 there were over 900 fires burning in the Brazilian Amazon at once.
- The region most affected by the fires was the northern state of Amazonas, where some 11,114 forest fires were recorded this year.
- If the Pacific El Niño continues to strengthen, researchers expect fire risk in the Amazon to increase, as well.

More drought, floods predicted for the Amazon
- It’s been estimated that the 2005 drought in the Amazon resulted in as much CO2 emissions as the entire United States emits in a year.
- New research finds that climate models project big increases in the frequency and area of drought in the Amazon.
- Climate models also predict that the rainy season will get wetter, the dry season will get drier and increased extreme precipitation are in store for the Amazon.

NASA photo shows New Guinea going up in flames
- New Guinea is experiencing widespread fire outbreaks amid a severe El Nino-driven drought across parts of the island, reveals imagery and satellite data released by NASA.
- Fire is typically used in New Guinea for land clearing by smallholders, commercial agricultural developers, and traditional hunters.
- Beyond fires, this year’s drought has been causing food shortages in parts of New Guinea, especially in poor highland areas.

Snowpack in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains at a 500-year low
- Historically low Sierra Nevada snowpack in 2015 stems from a lack of winter precipitation and record high temperatures, according to a new report.
- Researchers call 2015 snowpack “unprecedented” in the past five centuries.
- Snowpack in the Sierra Nevadas is responsible for 30 percent of California’s water supply.

U.S. Central Plains and Southwest will likely face apocalyptic drought

Researchers find 80 percent chance of megadrought in American West due to climate change this century Dust storm in Texas during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. New research finds that the American West is set to face a megadrought, worst than the Dust Bowl, in the next century due to climate change. Photo by: […]
Pollution from fossil fuels decreased rainfall in Central America

Jungle in Belize. New research finds Belize has been drying out for over a century, likely due to pollution from burning fossil fuels in the northern hemisphere which has left to a shift in the a vital precipitation belt along the equator. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Fossil fuel pollution may have caused a southern […]
How termites hold back the desert

Palm tree and termite mound: typical scenery in Okavango Delta in Botswana. Photo by Tiffany Roufs. Some termite species erect massive mounds that look like great temples springing up from the world’s savannas and drylands. But aside from their aesthetic appeal—and incredible engineering—new research in Science finds that these structures, which can stand taller than […]
Changing California forests may help us prepare for the future

A new study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examines how California’s forests have changed since the 1930s–and, according to its authors, can help us understand how forests will respond to the changing global climate in the future. Entitled “Twentieth-century shifts in forest structure in California: Denser forests, smaller trees, and […]
Top 10 Environmental Stories of 2014

The most important environmental and wildlife stories from the last year Also see our Top 10 HAPPY Environmental Stories of 2014 1. The Year of Zero Deforestation Pledges: In 2014, the unimaginable happened: companies representing the majority of palm oil production and trade agreed to stop cutting down rainforests and draining peatlands for new oil […]
Amazon rainforest is getting drier, confirms another study

The Amazon Rainforest. Photo by Rhett Butler. Parts of the Amazon rainforest are getting considerably less rain, leading trees to absorb less carbon, finds a study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research is based on new satellite technology that measures rainfall more accurately than previous approaches […]
Could California be facing a mega-drought?

Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink I moved to San Francisco six months ago and my umbrella hasn’t left its dusty sleeve yet. Scientists and politicians, everyone agrees: California is in deep trouble. As the state enters its fourth year of drought and the soil has never been drier. Some look at […]
Indonesia’s forests so damaged they burn whether or not there’s drought

Fires on deforested land trigger massive GHG emissions, haze Light haze over a drained and deforested peat forest in Riau, Sumatra in February 2014. Photo by Rhett Butler. Air pollution caused by fires set for land-clearing on Sumatra has become a regularly occurrence in Southeast Asia, spurring hand-wringing in Singapore and Malaysia over health effects […]
Climate-linked drought cutting forests’ carbon-storing ability

Climate extremes are dramatically cutting the ability of trees to sequester carbon, threatening to convert some forests from carbon sinks into carbon sources, finds a study published this month in Environmental Research Letters. Researchers led by scientists at City University of New York used data from satellites, weather stations, and carbon flux towers to assess […]
Congo rainforest losing its greenness, finds NASA

The Congo, the world’s second largest rainforest, is losing its greenness, finds a new study published in Nature. The research, based on analysis of NASA satellite data, reveals the impact of long-term drought that has affected the region in 2000. The study may help scientists forecast the Congo rainforest’s future outlook. “It’s important to understand […]
Rainforests on fire: climate change is pushing the Amazon over the edge

From 1999-2010, nearly three percent of the Amazon rainforest burned, and climate forecasts indicate dry conditions conducive to fire will only become more commonplace in the future. Scientists had long thought fire wasn’t a significant threat to rainforest health. However, a new study indicates that rainforests can be very vulnerable to fire, and it warns […]
Featured video: Showtime releases first episode of major new climate change series online

Harrison Ford with orangutan in Years of Living Dangerously. Photo from: Years of Living Dangerously/Showtime. Although Showtime’s landmark new climate change series doesn’t premiere until Sunday, the network has released an edited version of the first episode of Years of Living Dangerously to the public (see below). The nine-part documentary series is being billed as […]
How locals and conservationists saved the elephants of Mali amidst conflict and poverty

Mali elephant family group which consist of females and their offspring. They are headed by a matriarch who has decades of experience and memories to depend on, including where to find water during droughts. Photo by: Carlton Ward Jr. At a time when Africa’s elephants are facing a relentless poaching crisis—to the tune of over […]
Is Brazil’s epic drought a taste of the future?

With more than 140 cities implementing water rationing, analysts warning of collapsing soy and coffee exports, and reservoirs and rivers running precipitously low, talk about the World Cup in some parts of Brazil has been sidelined by concerns about an epic drought affecting the country’s agricultural heartland. With its rise as an agricultural superpower over […]
Drought, fire reducing ability of Amazon rainforest to store carbon

New research published in Nature adds further evidence to the argument that drought and fire are reducing the Amazon’s ability to store carbon, raising concerns that Earth’s largest rainforest could tip from a carbon sink to a carbon source. Using aircraft to capture samples above the Amazon across four sites on a bi-weekly basis for […]
Amazon rainforest does not ‘green up’ during the dry season

The Amazon rainforest. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Analysis of satellite imagery has cleared up a controversy over whether the Amazon rainforest ‘greens up’ during the dry season. The study, published in the journal Nature and led by NASA scientist Doug Morton, finds that earlier research concluding that photosynthesis increases in the Amazon during the […]
NASA picture reveals shocking impact of California’s drought

Animation: The 2013-2014 California drought. By Rhett A. Butler using NASA imagery. A pair of satellite images released this week by NASA reveal the shocking impact of California’s drought, which is now entering its third year. The images, captured January 18, 2013 and January 18, 2014 with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s […]
Amazon deforestation could cause droughts in California

Complete deforestation of the Amazon rainforest could reduce rainfall in the Pacific Northwest by up to 20 percent and snowpack in the Sierra Nevada by up to 50 percent, suggests new research published in the Journal of Climate. The study is based on high resolution computer modeling that stripped the Amazon of its forest cover […]
Deforestation may hurt U.S. agriculture, affect monsoon cycle

Unchecked deforestation will have far-reaching impacts on temperature, rainfall, and monsoon cycles in regions well outside the tropics, affecting agriculture and water availability, warns a new report published by Greenpeace International. The report, titled An Impending Storm: Impacts of deforestation on weather patterns and agriculture, is a synthesis of dozens of recent scientific papers that […]
Worst drought in 30 years threatens millions in southern Africa with food insecurity

Around 2 million people face food insecurity in northern Namibia and southern Angola as the worst regional drought in decades takes its toll, according to the UN. Two years of failed rains have pushed families into desperate conditions in a region already known for its desert-like conditions. In Namibia alone, experts estimate that over 100,000 […]
Zoo races to save extreme butterfly from extinction

In a large room that used to house aquatic mammals at the Minnesota Zoo, Erik Runquist holds up a vial and says, “Here are its eggs.” I peer inside and see small specks, pale with a dot of brown at the top; they look like a single grain of cous cous or quinoa. Runquist explains […]
Fracking sucks up all the water from Texas town

Beverly McGuire saw the warning signs before the town well went dry: sand in the toilet bowl, the sputter of air in the tap, a pump working overtime to no effect. But it still did not prepare her for the night last month when she turned on the tap and discovered the tiny town where […]
Amazon fire risk on the rise, says NASA

The Amazon rainforest is facing a higher risk of fires this dry season, warns a fire prediction system developed by researchers using NASA and NOAA data. The model is based on an observed correlation between sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic and rainfall in the Amazon. High Atlantic temperatures tend to suppress precipitation in […]
NASA: 3% of Amazon rainforest burned between 1999-2010

33,000 square miles (85,500 square kilometers) or 2.8 percent of the Amazon rainforest burned between 1999-2010 finds new NASA-led research that measured the extent of fires that smolder under the forest canopy. The research, published April 22 in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, used satellite data to show that in some […]
Water crisis widening: 4.5 billion people live near ‘impaired water sources’

The majority of the 9 billion people on Earth will live with severe pressure on fresh water within the space of two generations as climate change, pollution and over-use of resources take their toll, 500 scientists have warned. The world’s water systems would soon reach a tipping point that “could trigger irreversible change with potentially […]
Featured video: How climate change is messing with the jetstream
Weather patterns around the globe are getting weirder and weirder: heat waves and record snow storms in Spring, blasts of Arctic air followed by sudden summer, record deluges and then drought. Climate change due to fossil fuels emissions has risen the global temperature by 0.8 degrees Celsius (1.4 degrees Fahrenheit) in the last century, impacting […]
‘Suffering…without witnesses’: over a quarter of a million people perished in Somali famine

A new report estimates that 258,000 people died in 2011 during a famine in Somalia, the worst of such events in 25 years and a number at least double the highest estimations during the crisis. Over half of the victims, around 133,000, were children five and under. The report, by the UN Food and Agricultural […]
Indigenous tribes say effects of climate change already felt in Amazon rainforest

Tribal groups in Earth’s largest rainforest are already being affected by shifts wrought by climate change, reports a paper published last week in the British journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. The paper, which is based on a collection of interviews conducted with indigenous leaders in the Brazilian Amazon, says that native populations […]
Burned rainforest vulnerable to grass invasion

Rainforests that have been affected by even low-intensity fires are far more vulnerable to invasion by grasses, finds a new study published in special issue of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. The findings are significant because they suggest that burned forests may be more susceptible to subsequent fires which may burn […]
Featured video: stemming human-caused fires in the Amazon
A new series of 5 films highlights how people use fire in the Amazon rainforest and how such practices can be mitigated. Collectively dubbed “Slash & Burn” each film explores a different aspect of fire-use in the Amazon. In recent years the Amazon has faced unprecedented droughts, possibly linked to climate change and vast deforestation, […]
Innovative idea: wildlife income may help people withstand drought in Africa

Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe. Getting local people to become invested in wildlife conservation is not always easy, especially in parts of the world where protected areas are seen as taking away natural resources from local communities. This tension lies around Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe, where a growing population of livestock herders competes with […]
Climate change already pummeling U.S. according to government report

State-by-state temperature records for 2012. Last year was the warmest on record for the continental U.S. going back to the late 19th Century. Courtesy of NOAA. Climate change is on the march across the U.S. according to a new draft report written by U.S. government scientists with input from 240 experts. It documents increasing and […]
Australia reels from record heatwave, fires

Expert: unprecedented heatwave ‘responding to the background warming trend’ Fires burning in Southwest Tasmania on January 7th. Image taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. Photo by: NASA. Yesterday Australia recorded its highest average temperature yet: 40.33 degrees Celsius (104.59 Fahrenheit). The nation has been sweltering under an unprecedented summer […]
2012 was America’s warmest year on record

2012 was the warmest year on record for the contiguous U.S. according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In a report posted on its web site, NOAA said the average temperature for 2012 was 55.3°F, or 3.2°F above the 20th century average and 1.0°F above 1998, the previous warmest year on record. The […]
Amazon rainforest failing to recover after droughts

Spatial extent and severity of the 2005 Amazonian drought based on forest canopy water stress (measured by seasonal [JAS] standardized anomaly of QSCAT backscatter data). Courtesy of Saatchi et al 2012. The impact of a major drought in the Amazon rainforest in 2005 persisted far longer than previously believed, raising questions about the world’s largest […]
Top 10 Environmental Stories of 2012

Below is a quick review of some of the biggest environmental stories of 2012. The “top stories” are listed in no particular order. Scientists: we’re reaching a tipping point (Hance) Climate change, overpopulation, consumption, and ecological destruction is pushing planet Earth toward a tipping point according to a major study in Nature released over the […]
Advanced technology reveals massive tree die-off in remote, unexplored parts of the Amazon

Kaleidoscopic image revealing the biodiversity of the Amazon rainforest. Each color represents different chemical signatures, revealing information about biodiversity and growth rates. Photo courtesy of the Carnegie Airborne Observatory. Severe drought conditions in 2010 appear to have substantially increased tree mortality in the Western Amazon, a region thought largely immune from the worst effects of […]
Forests worldwide near tipping-point from drought

Rainforest in Malaysian Borneo. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Forests worldwide are at “equally high risk” to die-off from drought conditions, warns a new study published this week in the journal Nature. The study, conducted by an international team of scientists, assessed the specific physiological effects of drought on 226 tree species at 81 sites […]
World Bank: 4 degrees Celsius warming would be miserable

Hurricane Sandy on October 25th in the Caribbean. Scientists say that climate change may have intensified Hurricane Sandy with its impact worsened by rising sea levels and increased evaporation from hotter marine waters. Recent studies predict that worsening climate change will bring more intense hurricanes. Photo by: NASA. A new report by the World Bank […]
Remembering the Dust Bowl: it could happen again

“Kansas Kids,” in Lakin, Kansas, three children prepare to leave for school wearing goggles and homemade dust masks to protect them from the dust in 1935. Courtesy of Joyce Unruh; Green Family Collection. The Dust Bowl, a film by Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan, and The Dust Bowl: An Illustrated History, a book authored by […]
Obama breaks climate silence at press conference

Hurricane Sandy storm surge on the New Jersey shore. Photo by: Master Sgt. Mark C. Olsen/U.S. Air Force/New Jersey National Guard. At a news conference today, a question by New York Times reporter Mark Landler pushed President Obama to speak at some length about climate change. In his answer, Obama re-iterated his acceptance of climate […]
It’s not just Sandy: U.S. hit by record droughts, fires, and heatwaves in 2012

Hurricane Sandy storm surge on the New Jersey shore. Photo by: Master Sgt. Mark C. Olsen/U.S. Air Force/New Jersey National Guard. As the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy—killing over 100 people and producing upwards of $50 billion in damage along the U.S. East Coast—has reignited a long-dormant conversation on climate change in the media, it’s […]
From ‘fertilizer to fork’: food accounts for a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions

Children stand in sweet potato fields in Indonesian New Guinea. A new report finds that poor and small-holding farmers are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Growing, transporting, refrigerating, and wasting food accounts for somewhere between 19-29 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2008, according to […]
One in eight people suffer from malnutrition worldwide

Girl in village in Madagascar. One of the world’s poorest countries, it has been estimated that about 70 percent of Malagasy people suffer from malnutrition. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. In a world where technology has advanced to a point where I can instantly have a face-to-face conversation via online video with a friend in […]
Over 70 percent of Americans: climate change worsening extreme weather

Wind turbine in Minnesota, U.S. Photo by: Tiffany Roufs. According to a new poll, 74 percent of Americans agree that climate change is impacting weather in the U.S., including 73 percent who agreed, strongly or somewhat, that climate change had exacerbated record high temperatures over the summer. The findings mean that a large majority of […]
Climate change causing forest die-off globally

In the past 20 years, extensive forest death triggered by hot and dry climatic conditions has been documented on every continent except Antarctica, finds new review. Already facing an onslaught of threats from logging and conversion for agriculture, forests worldwide are increasingly impacted by the effects of climate change, including drought, heightened fire risk, and […]
Drought drives corn prices to record high

Drought in America’s Midwest drive corn prices to record highs on Thursday. Corn prices are up 62 percent since mid-June to due droughts and heatwaves affecting major corn-producing areas. The price of a bushel of corn now stands at $8.28. High temperatures and low rainfall last month spurred the Department of Agriculture to forecast a […]
Climate and culture: abrupt change and rapid response

As the world experiences record heat, increased drought and fires, unprecedented ice melt and similar extreme weather anomalies decades before expected, climatologists have been forced to reconsider previous climate change projections and research techniques. Less than a decade ago, scientific consensus considered warming of more than 2°C (3.6°F) and atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide near […]
Extreme heatwaves 50 to 100 times more likely due to climate change

Hitting France especially hard, the Europe 2003 heatwave left tens of thousands of people dead. A new statistical analysis argues that climate change was the cause of this and other extreme summer heat events. Image by: NASA. A recent rise in deadly, debilitating, and expensive heatwaves was caused by climate change, argues a new statistical […]
Drought pits farmers against frackers

Drought has created a standoff over water supplies in the U.S. Midwest between energy producers and farmers, reports Bloomberg. Natural gas and oil producers have been forced to seek new water sources as they mull calls from farmers and activists to recycle their water, a practice that would make ‘fracking’ more expensive. Already hugely controversial, […]
Featured video: climate change bringing on the extremes
Focusing on extreme weather events in the U.S. this summer, a new compilation video highlights the connection between climate change and increasing and worsening extremes, such as heatwaves, droughts, and floods. Includes interviews with several climatologists and other experts. While scientists say it is difficult to directly link a single weather event to climate change, […]
U.S. drought could set in motion global food crisis

The U.S. is suffering drought levels not seen in over 50 years—and drawing comparisons to the Dust Bowl—with 56 percent of the contiguous U.S. in moderate to extreme drought. Some experts fear that the drought, and resulting hikes in food prices, could propel another global food crisis like those seen in 2008 and 2010. While […]
Drought, heat, fires push more Americans to accept reality of climate change

Borneo’s forests face dire future from global warming

Dim outlook for Borneo’s rainforests? Already wracked by extensive deforestation and forest degradation, the future looks grim for Borneo’s tropical rainforests, reports a new study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Biogeosciences. Combining historical records with field observations and global climate models Tomo’omi Kumagai and Amilcare Porporato of Duke University find that an sharp increase […]
Deja vu: U.S. undergoes hottest 12 months on record…again and again

Fire scar from Waldo Canyon Fire in Colorado. Photo by: NASA. According to new data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s National Climatic Data Center, the last twelve months have been the warmest on record for the contiguous United States. This record, set between July 2011 through June 2012, beat the last consecutive […]

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