Why do we need to know how much wood is in the forest and how much carbon is in that wood? More than a century ago, foresters managing for timber harvests developed measurement methods to estimate how much merchantable timber they would get from a forest harvesting operation so that they could calculate how profitable it would be before investing time and money. While forests are still being managed for harvesting wood and other products, they are also now starting to have significant economic value as repositories of carbon. As long as the forest is left standing and in good shape, then the carbon – which makes up about half of the dry weight of the wood – will remain there and not go into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, where it would further exacerbate the growing problem of climate change. Some industrialized countries and corporations are willing to pay other countries to keep their forests standing in order to avoid carbon dioxide emissions, but they want to know how much carbon bang they are getting for their buck. Therefore, knowing how much carbon is in the forest is now becoming economically and politically important.

If we only needed to know about the amount of carbon in a few forests, that would be easy enough. We would send out trained crews to make the measurements. Instead, we need to know how much carbon is in an entire country’s forests, or in the forests of several countries, and how that carbon is distributed across those countries. Making that many measurements on the ground is often impossible, especially in places like the middle of Congo or the Amazon. For that reason, we need to find proxies for on-the-ground measurements, which satellites orbiting the Earth provide. We have known for a long time how to map deforestation using satellite imagery, although the process is not trivial. Satellite data have to be calibrated and corrected for consistency so that comparisons can be made through time, from one year (or decade) to the next. Mapping deforestation also requires substantial computational capabilities and data storage, particularly with newer and higher resolution imagery. However, mapping where the forests are present, or not, is only a start. Estimating the amount of carbon as it varies in forests across the landscape is equally important and, in some ways, trickier.

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The Good News About Carbon Storage in Tropical Vegetation.

A study published in Nature Climate Change today finds that tropical vegetation contains 21 percent more carbon than previous studies had suggested. Using a combination of remote sensing and field data, scientists from Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC), Boston University, and the University of Maryland were able to produce the first “wall-to-wall” map (with a spatial resolution of 500 m x 500 m) of carbon storage of forests, shrublands, and savannas in the tropics of Africa, Asia, and South America. Colors on the map represent the amount of carbon density stored in the vegetation in a continuum fashion (Figure 1 below). Reliable estimates of carbon storage are critical to understanding the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere by changes in land cover and land use.

Tropical deforestation is considered a major source of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, releasing as much as 1.1 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year. Based on new data in this study, researchers believe that current models may overestimate the net flux of carbon into the atmosphere due to tropical vegetation loss by 11 to 12 percent. For countries trying to meet their greenhouse gases reporting requirements under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), these new data are particularly important.

Lead author Alessandro Baccini, an assistant scientist at WHRC, explained that the new data set provides a spatially and temporally consistent estimate of carbon stock and a stronger foundation for estimating carbon emissions by better characterizing the carbon density of the forest that has been lost. “For the first time we were able to derive accurate estimates of carbon densities using satellite LiDAR observations in places that have never been measured,” said Baccini. “This is like having a consistent, very dense pantropical forest inventory.”

In many developing nations, deforestation is the largest source of emissions of greenhouse gases. In order to reliably report emissions to the UNFCCC, and to participate in international schemes such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), which provides compensation for avoiding deforestation, these countries need an accurate way to calculate stored carbon and to track deforestation and reforestation. “We worked closely with collaborators in 12 countries around the tropics to collect the field data needed to calibrate the satellite measurements and ensure relevance for their national reporting,” said co-author Nadine Laporte, a WHRC associate scientist, who coordinated field measurements in Africa.

“The paper is important for two reasons,” said co-author and WHRC senior scientist Richard A. Houghton. “First, it provides a high-resolution map of aboveground biomass density for the world’s tropical forests. Previous maps were of much coarser resolution and yielded wildly different estimates of both regional totals and spatial distribution. Second, the paper calculates a new estimate of carbon emissions from land-use change in the tropics.”

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Richard A. Houghton, a Senior Scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) since 1987, has been elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.

Dr. Houghton is an ecologist who has spent most of his career studying the role that terrestrial ecosystems play in climate change and the global carbon cycle. He is holder of the George M. Woodwell Chair for Global Ecology, and he coordinates the Center's efforts to understand the global carbon cycle, especially the role that forests play in affecting the rate of increase in atmospheric CO2. His area of expertise has been the documentation of changes in land use and determination of historic and current sources and sinks of carbon resulting directly from human activity. Dr. Houghton has held positions as Assistant Scientist at the Ecosystems Center of the Marine Biological Laboratory and as Research Associate at Brookhaven National Laboratory. His doctorate is in ecology from SUNY at Stony Brook.

“We are delighted with this news,” said Eric Davidson, Executive Director of WHRC. “Dr. Houghton’s mild mannered, unassuming, ever restrained and polite demeanor belies his status as a world-renowned expert. This honor adds to an accumulating list, including his part in the Nobel Prize awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007. The world benefits greatly from his unique experience and insights.”

To be elected a Fellow of AGU is a special tribute for those who have made exceptional scientific contributions. Nominated Fellows must have attained acknowledged eminence in the Earth and space sciences. Primary criteria for evaluation in scientific eminence are major breakthrough/discovery and paradigm shift. This designation is conferred upon not more than 0.1% of all AGU members in any given year. New Fellows are chosen by a Committee of Fellows.

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New study evaluates impact of land use activity in the Amazon basin.

A new paper published today in Nature reveals that human land use activity has begun to change the regional water and energy cycles - the interplay of air coming in from the Atlantic Ocean, water transpiration by the forest, and solar radiation - of parts of the Amazon basin. In addition, it shows that ongoing interactions between deforestation, fire, and climate change have the potential to alter carbon storage, rainfall patterns and river discharge on an even larger basin-wide scale.

The research was led by the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC). Lead scientist Eric Davidson (WHRC) and 13 Brazilian and US colleagues from universities, government and the NGOs, all of whom participated in the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in the Amazon (LBA), produced a framework by which the connections among climate change, agricultural expansion, logging, and fire risk can be evaluated. The framework considers changes in greenhouse-gas emissions, and energy and water cycles. Using it they found signs of transition to a disturbance-dominated regime in the southern and eastern portions of the Amazon basin. Co-author Jennifer K. Balch adds: “One strong sign of a new disturbance regime is the high number of recent large-scale wildfires, which are a by-product of intentional fires in Brazil’s ‘arc of deforestation.’” These fires are frequent, occurring every few years, compared with every couple centuries in the past.

Why is this important? Humans have been part of the Amazon basin forest-river system for thousands of years, but the expansion and intensification of agriculture, logging and urban development, and their synergistic impacts are beginning to stress the natural integrity of the ecosystem. As co-author and professor of environmental physics at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, Paulo Artaxo says, “Tropical forests are big players in the global balance of climate and carbon, and the Amazon is the biggest of the lot.” Dr. Artaxo adds, “We wanted to build a scientific base from which to learn how the region could be developed sustainably.” Since the Amazon River produces about 20% of the world’s fresh water discharge and the Amazon forest holds about 100 billion tones of carbon (10 years’ worth of global fossil fuel emissions), it is important that economic development in the region proceed along sustainable paths that do not degrade the ecosystem services provided to local, regional and global communities by the forests and rivers of the region.

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New report reviews U.S. nitrogen pollution impacts & solutions.

The nitrogen cycle has been profoundly altered by human activities, and that in turn is affecting human health, air and water quality, and biodiversity in the U.S., according to a multi-disciplinary team of scientists writing in the 15th publication of the Ecological Society of America’s Issues in Ecology. In “Excess Nitrogen in the U.S. Environment: Trends, Risks, and Solutions,” lead author Eric Davidson (Woods Hole Research Center) and 15 colleagues from universities, government, and the private sector review the major sources of reactive nitrogen in the U.S., resulting effects on health and the environment, and potential solutions.

Nitrogen is both an essential nutrient and a pollutant, a byproduct of fossil fuel combustion and a fertilizer that feeds billions, a benefit and a hazard, depending on form, location, and quantity. “Nitrogen pollution touches everyone’s lives,” said Davidson, a soil ecologist and executive director of the Woods Hole Research Center. “This report highlights the latest understanding of how it’s harming human health, choking estuaries with algal growth, and threatening biodiversity, such as by changing how trees grow in our forests.” Its authors, a diverse mix of agronomists, ecologists, groundwater geochemists, air quality specialists, and epidemiologists connect the dots between all of the ways that excess nitrogen in the environment affects people, economics, and ecology. They argue for a systematic, rather than piecemeal, approach to managing the resource and its consequences. “We’re really trying to identify solutions,” emphasizes Davidson.

There is good news: effective air quality regulation has reduced nitrogen pollution from U.S. energy and transportation sectors. On the other hand, agricultural emissions are increasing. Ammonia, a byproduct of livestock waste, remains mostly unregulated and is expected to increase unless better controls on ammonia emissions from livestock operations are implemented. Additionally, crop production agriculture is heavily dependent on synthetic nitrogen fertilizer to increase crop yields, but approximately half of all nitrogen fertilizer applied is not taken up by crops and is lost to the environment.

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Now that we have nearly a month of perspective after the closing of the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in December 2011, was it the disappointment that most had expected, or did it actually make some unexpected progress?

Taking a step further back, I think that we have to conclude that the UNFCCC process has produced very disappointing results since its inception at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Greenhouse gas emissions are continuing to increase and we are on a trajectory towards the upper end of warming projections. Already, the record of extreme weather events is accumulating, along with the disastrous economic, human health, and environmental impacts that accompany storms, floods, and droughts (see my blog of 10/26/11: http://whrc.org/about/blogs/blog102611.html). Would it have been even worse if there had been no UNFCCC? Perhaps, but that is little solace to the billions of people now facing increased risks of food insecurity and disease as a consequence of climate change.

It became clear at the 15th COP in Copenhagen in 2009 that many of the world’s political leaders were not yet ready to sign on to the kind of binding international agreement on emissions controls that is needed to stabilize the climate. One of the main sticking points was that developing countries, especially China, India, Brazil, and Indonesia, were insisting that the developed countries fix the problem created mostly by their historical emissions, while these developing countries are allowed to develop economically without restrictions on emissions. In that light, the recent Durban meeting made an important breakthrough. Both developed and developing countries have now agreed to negotiate a single emissions agreement that will apply to all. But here is the catch – they won’t finish those negotiations before 2015 and the new agreement won’t take effect until 2020. Nor do we know whether this future agreement will have any more teeth or effectiveness than what we’ve had for the last 17 years. It is tempting to conclude that this progress is simply too little too late.

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Once again in our 2011 Annual Report we have included a calendar for the coming year, with each month highlighting WHRC scientists and their research. Because so much of our work is done on the ground around the globe, this year we have included field notes to give you a sense of how we work. By the end of the year we hope that you have learned a little bit more about who we are, what we do, why our work is important, and how your generous support allows us to make a difference around the world.

In addition, we have a special web version with videos of each scientist discussing the highlighted work.

Click to see videos...

Negotiations in Durban have entered the stage of all-night, closed-door sessions during which Parties draft and refine the texts that will be used by ministers to negotiate an outcome later on this week. With consideration of technical and procedural issues concluded last week, before Parties now are those outstanding political and policy-related matters that must be decided in order to take a decision on the future of the Kyoto Protocol and to determine the next steps towards a global agreement that includes all major emitters. So, no small task!

There are currently no less than 27 distinct working groups under the two negotiating tracks working to develop text, and that number likely doubles or trebles when you consider all the sub-groups, informal drafting groups, and informal informal groups. Negotiators who cover more than one topic area often find themselves using every available minute of every possible hour, working through the night and stopping only when exhaustion forces them back to their hotels. I often wonder about the extent to which international climate policy is influenced by the sleeping habits of the people responsible for negotiating it.

Long-term finance for the results-based phase of REDD+ is one of the many issues on the agenda this week under the Ad-Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA). REDD+ negotiators worked through the night on Tuesday to draft a decision on the types of finance (e.g., public, private, market-based) that could be used for full-implementation of the global mechanism. However, they were unable to reach consensus and we are currently without agreed upon decision text with three days to go. On a positive note, most countries acknowledge the importance of maintaining momentum on REDD+, and we have faith that Parties will reconvene today with renewed enthusiasm to hammer out an agreement. Maybe after they’ve all taken a nap.

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We all view the world through the lenses of our own personal experiences, and that couldn’t have been truer of the panelists of a recent side event at the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties in Durban, South Africa. We at the Woods Hole Research Center had the honor of cosponsoring this event with the Green Belt Movement, a grassroots organization from Kenya devoted to helping villagers, especially women, benefit from planting trees around their villages. The trees not only provide timber and fuelwood, but they also provide fodder for goats, prevent soil erosion, and make it easier for rainwater to percolate into the soil and to feed the springs upon which the villagers depend for drinking water. Two of the speakers representing the Greenbelt Movement offered heart-felt accounts of changes in their villages because of climate change and deforestation. Mercy Karunditu, Senior Project Officer of the Green Belt Movement, spoke compellingly of how tree planting has allowed the village women of Kenya to earn money and to shorten the distances that they must walk in search of water and wood for cooking. However, climate extremes, such as floods and droughts, can imperil this progress, as described by Constance Okollet, Chairperson of Osukuru United Women’s Network, who spoke of her village in Uganda that has not yet recovered from a giant flood in 2007. That flood washed away their homes, food reserves, and livestock and was followed by several years of severe drought. They no longer have enough food, clean water, or firewood, and their harvests are poor.

Next up were WHRC scientists, Glenn Bush and Nadine Laporte. Glenn spoke of the ways in which economists try to measure how people value forests. Glenn’s presentation put into numbers the values that Constance and Mercy had expressed with their narratives. Nadine provided yet another perspective as someone who spends hours “seeing” forests through the images taken by satellites orbiting the earth, and then combining those satellite data with measurements made on the ground of tree diameters to map out the biomass of forests. Nadine also recounted the way in which her team had trained local workers and young scientists in countries like Uganda, Kenya, Bolivia, and Vietnam to make those measurements of trees and to use the resulting maps. Indeed, our co-organizers from the Green Belt Movement also helped make those measurements and are now putting them to work to help account

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On my last night in Durban I can from my open window the waves breaking on the beach (which I never made it to) and hear frogs croaking. Even with a population of 4.5 million, the busiest port in Africa seems to have reached some kind of balance between development and nature. Ever since Copenhagen, I hoped for the big surprise at the Conference of the Parties (COPs), like the US and China agreeing to a binding commitment to reduce their emissions. But I do not see strong political will to move toward a real green economy, so again I am likely to leave here only with hope that a surprise might come and national interests will follow the greater good. On the bright side, I was happy to hear good news on the REDD front, especially clarified commitments to social and environmental safeguards in the draft text issued by the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), which is likely to be agreed to by the parties. The full text of this is “Methodological guidance for activities to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries” http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2011/sbsta/eng/l25a01.pdf. Because poor tropical nations with little capacity to adapt are likely to suffer the most, it is important that these safeguards are in place. This means alot to me on a personal level too, because of all the people I work with in Africa.

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Even though they’re both taking place this week, the COP and the AGU (American Geophysical Union) annual meetings are worlds apart – not just geographically (Durban versus San Francisco) but also figuratively, practically and in just about every other aspect one can imagine. While many of our WHRC crew are at AGU, quite a few others are at the COP. I have to admit I will miss not being at AGU this year and interacting with an entire community of scientists I’ve known for years (while knocking off a few project meetings in the process) but I am confident that staff members Mike Loranty, Pieter Beck and Logan Berner will more than adequately represent our work there. That said, with each COP I attend I realize the importance of WHRC being present and represented. Science is embedded deep down somewhere in the roots of what happens here but what is most evident is the messy business of policy making and international consensus on climate change as it cuts across all sectors of society – from business and finance to the essential livelihoods that sustain the poorest of the poor and inspire local activism.

The pace of progress can seem glacial, and that can be frustrating, but with the perspective of a few years it becomes clear there is progress – even if it resembles less a bullet train and more a roller coaster (up and down as well as around and around). But there is slow and steady movement forward. On the issues that concern us regarding credit for conserving forests (for their ecosystem services as well as their role in mitigating additional climate warming) the progress this year was incremental but positive, with clear but flexible mechanisms to establish reference levels and reasonably consistent measurement, monitoring, reporting and verification. Financing based on those reference levels will be an issue for many future meetings, including the next COP, but at least we can leave here feeling progress has been made. We can also be assured that we are recognized for what we do here – bringing science to bear on these issues and pushing the envelope of technological advancement that ultimately advances to implementation (and spreading that via capacity building efforts).

I have been coming to the COPs since 2007 (COP13 in Bali), and while that is not very long compared to many others, I can see that we DO influence the process and in real ways that have advanced “systematic observation” and “methodological guidance” (in UNFCCC lingo). The focus is now broadly moving from “policy to practice” (the theme of Forest Day), and that is heavily focused on the socioeconomic aspects of REDD+. I am confident that we will be deeply immersed in those advances as well, as evidenced by Assistant Scientist Glenn Bush’s participation this year in our Workshop, our Side Event with the Green Belt Movement, and his representation of WHRC at Forest Day (leading discussions on “implementing REDD+ on the ground”). While I am not an economist or social scientist I have a great appreciation for the central role that science will play moving REDD+ forward and into implementation. I may not be attending as many COPs in the future (which means I may get to spend more time at AGU), but I am quite sure that WHRC will be in the center of the scrum, eyes on the ball, continuing to push for progress and ensuring that extensive tracks of forest will continue to regulate climate and support a diversity of life – including forest peoples. We are making a difference.

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The seventeenth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will be held from 28 November – 9 December in Durban, South Africa. A delegation of scientists, capacity-building experts, and policy analysts from the Woods Hole Research Center will be in attendance to participate in a wide variety of events ranging from technical workshops to press conferences, and to engage in ongoing climate change-related discussions and negotiations.

The Conference of the Parties (COP) is the UNFCCC’s highest decision-making authority, and is comprised of representatives from 194 countries (and one regional economic integration organization). The two-week negotiating session in Durban will also include the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP) and work under the Convention’s two subsidiary bodies, the Subsidiary Body on Implementation (SBI) and the Subsidiary Body on Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA). Please visit the UNFCCC’s website (www.unfccc.int) for more information.

A major focus in Durban will be resolving the future of the Kyoto Protocol and its relationship to the global climate change agreement currently under negotiation. In addition to this broader political discussion, negotiations will also address operational elements under the Convention, including a framework for adaptation, the Green Climate Fund, and policy frameworks aimed at reducing emissions from land use and land-use change. The WHRC will focus on two such frameworks: the rules governing climate change mitigation in the forests of developed countries, and a global mechanism to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (REDD+).

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Understanding a phenomenon known as the greenhouse effect is a first key step in understanding how climate change is affecting our planet.

Solar radiation interacts with the surface of the earth. This interaction takes several forms: some portion of incoming solar energy is reflected back into space by the earth's atmosphere; another portion is dispersed and scattered by the molecules in the atmosphere; and a large portion penetrates through the earth's atmosphere to reach the planet’s surface. The radiation reaching the earth's surface is largely absorbed, resulting in surface warming.

Much of this absorbed energy is eventually re-radiated in longer infrared wavelengths. As it leaves the earth, it once again interacts with the atmosphere. Some of this re-radiated energy escapes to space, but much of this re-radiated energy is reflected back to the earth's surface by molecules in the earth's atmosphere. This phenomenon is similar to the warming that occurs in an automobile parked outside on a sunny day.

The molecules responsible for trapping re-radiated energy in the earth’s atmosphere are called greenhouse gases because they act like the glass in a greenhouse. The most important greenhouse gases include water (H2O), nitrous oxide (N2O), methane (CH4), and carbon dioxide (CO2). Without these gases, most life on earth would not be possible, as the surface temperature of the earth would likely be about 60°F colder.

Greenhouse gases act like an insulator or blanket above the earth, keeping the heat in. Increasing the concentration of these gases in the atmosphere increases the thickness of this insulator, therefore increasing the atmosphere's ability to block the escape of infrared radiation. Too great a concentration of greenhouse gases can have dramatic effects on climate and significant repercussions for Earth. Too low a concentration can have dramatic effects as well. Climates suitable for human existence are limited above some minimum threshold level of greenhouse gas concentration. In other words, those climates are possible only within a finite window - a limited range of greenhouse gas concentrations make life as we know it possible.

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Faced with a political stalemate at best on climate change legislation at the federal level and not much optimism for an international deal on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, some US states are leading the way in showing how greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced through affordable mechanisms. Long in the making, California has launched a Cap and Trade program to help limit its CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions. While the 10 northeastern state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) program has been successfully operating since 2008 in limiting emissions from electricity generating plants, the California program is much more comprehensive in covering more of the economy. Also, the California effort will be the first program in the US to look toward international forest conservation programs, such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD), which will be the center of much attention at upcoming international climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa, in December 2011.

The RGGI program began in 2008, has held 13 emission allowance or carbon credit auctions, and has raised a total of $912 million for the 10 states of the northeastern US (unfortunately, New Jersey's Governor Christie intends to drop out of RGGI). Each state has latitude as to how spend those monies, so some of the money has gone to financing renewable energy projects, some to weatherization projects, and some has been "raided" or appropriated by states to help balance their budgets during the recent economic downturn. RGGI's goals are to 1) promote energy efficiency and low-carbon energy resources; 2) establish a price for carbon; 3) encourage innovation and accomplish CO2 reductions at a lower cost; 4) establish a model for a national cap & trade program and; 5) provide regulatory certainty for electricity generators.

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Glaciers and ice sheets combined represent the second largest reservoir of water in the global hydrologic system and glacier ecosystems cover 10% of the Earth, yet the carbon dynamics underpinning these ecosystems remain poorly understood. Increased understanding of glacier biogeochemistry is a priority, as glacier environments are among the most sensitive to climate warming and industrial forcing.

Our recent work has found glacier derived dissolved organic matter (DOM) to be highly bioavailable to microbial communities compared to DOM in rivers that drain non-glacial terrestrial ecosystems (e.g. forests, wetlands, tundra). The biolability of riverine DOM exported from terrestrial ecosystems is often found to vary with age, with younger, relatively unaltered DOM being more easily metabolized by aquatic heterotrophs than older, heavily-modified material. The DOM derived from glacier ecosystems has been shown to be ancient in terms of its radiocarbon age, which typically exceeds ~3000 years before present. Surprisingly, the age and bioavailability of glacier DOM are positively correlated such that bioavailability increases with increasing DOM age. This is illustrated by a survey of DOM in rivers along the Gulf of Alaska that ranged in glacier coverage from 0-64%.

Age and biologically available dissolved organic carbon (BDOC) showed a strong linear correlation, with both DOM age and bioavailability increasing with watershed glacier coverage. Once exported from the glacier environment the respiration of this DOM represents a source of relic carbon to the contemporary atmosphere, analogous to carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion. Our findings also have unrecognized impacts for coastal biogeochemistry. As bacterial production in coastal river plumes can largely be supported by terrestrial inputs of DOM, our results suggest that changes in the magnitude and timing of glacial runoff to the ocean could alter carbon availability and heterotrophic productivity in marine ecosystems. These changes could be particularly pronounced in regions that currently support commercially important fisheries such as the Gulf of Alaska and the North Atlantic, the latter influenced by a 41% increase in Greenland ice sheet discharge between 1961-1990 and 1998-2003.

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Each year, as part of the pantropical mapping project, a select group of scholars from across the tropics gather at the Woods Hole Research Center to expand their skills in forest measurement and monitoring techniques through intensive training with WHRC scientists. While each of the participants has specific technical and personal objectives, they all share the common goal of slowing tropical deforestation in order to reduce carbon emissions and preserve their forests for future generations. This year, we have 15 scholars from 12 countries: Bolivia, Colombia, Gabon, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Laos, Malawi, Mexico, Uganda, Vietnam, and Zambia.

The technical sessions are aimed at providing methodologies for measuring and monitoring forest carbon, thereby providing countries with the confidence and technical autonomy necessary to administer successful forest carbon projects. Session topics include “Mapping Forest Cover Change,” “Estimating Carbon Emissions,” and “Modeling Land Use and Cover Change (Future Scenarios Modeling).” Along with the advanced technical sessions, this year we have also incorporated leadership training and workshop module development to help the participants plan and implement what they have learned once they return to their home countries. We want to expand our reach by transforming the students into teachers, giving them the confidence and technical expertise they need to be effective leaders when they return home.

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Throughout my career as a scientist, I have always assumed that scientific research is conducted in the public interest. Regardless of which way political winds were blowing, science was held in high regard as promoting the public good. Science and scientists are still generally well respected, but the perception of contributing to the public good has been called into question in recent years as our society becomes more and more polarized.

In modern times, the value of science to society was described by Vannevar Bush (1890-1974), who made the case for supporting basic science in his 1945 report to President Truman:

“New products and new processes do not appear full-grown. They are founded on new principles and new conceptions, which in turn are painstakingly developed by research in the purest realms of science!”

One of the best modern examples of a technology that is transforming lives but that was developed incrementally from advances in basic research is the cell phone. When I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa 30 years ago, the subsistence farmers in my village had to wait for a truck to arrive in the village to buy their cash crops. No one knew when it would come or whether another one might come to offer a better price. If they waited, insects and rats might eat their harvest. Now, farmers in Africa and elsewhere can use cell phones to inform buyers what harvest they have to sell and to find out what prices are being offered by whom and when. This helps farmers get the best possible price and to minimize wastage to pests. Cell phones are also being used to distribute weather reports, agricultural extension advice on crop management, and availability of loans and crop insurance.

The cell phone technology did not simply appear “full-grown.” Rather, perhaps the most important push for miniaturization of electronics occurred with the Apollo mission to put a man on the moon. Ironically, our smart phones may be more powerful than the on-board computers of those days, but that exploration of space can be credited with providing the impetus for advancing the technology. I recall debate in the 1960s as to whether it was right to spend money on space exploration when people on Earth were hungry. Now, the subsistence farmers of Africa are benefiting economically and nutritionally, thanks to technology that basic science helped advance.

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Along the tributaries of the Amazon River, there are thousands of riverine communities conducting artisanal, small-scale fishing activities. These fishing activities have been poorly studied and managed even though they are responsible for most (~60%) of the total fish catch in the Amazon. These fisheries usually involve riverine families who go fishing almost every day primarily for subsistence but also for commercial purposes, thus providing them with their main source of animal protein and income. Fishing trips usually last a few hours and consist of one or two people using a wooden canoe operated by a small outboard engine (< 10 horsepower) or paddles.

We assessed the sustainability of fishery resources in small-scale fisheries in the Lower Amazon region. Our study focused on the river floodplains near the city of Santarém; where population growth is rapidly increasing pressure on fish resources and where fishing communities have been developing one of the Amazon’s most advanced systems for fisheries management. We analyzed over 20,000 household interviews of fishing activity collected between 1992 and 2007 in three typical fishing communities.

Levels of fishing pressure in the region appeared to be moderate, with observed catches below the predicted maximum limits. However, fishing in the region is highly selective of a few key (usually large, commercially-valuable) species. Even though roughly forty fish species are regularly fished, nine species contribute more than half of the total catch in weight. Five of those nine species have been reported to be overfished and even depleted in other regions of the Amazon, and in the study area they also appear to be overexploited. This is probably because of the high concentration of fishing combined with unsustainable fishing practices, such as the catch of juvenile fish.

Our studies also show that riverine communities that implement gear and size restrictions tend to have more economically valuable species with larger body sizes, something that contributes to resource conservation. These research findings are now guiding management efforts in the field through our collaborative work with local fishing communities,

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Arctic tundra ecosystems are dominated by small, slow-growing, grasses and shrubs as a consequence of short growing seasons and cold temperatures. Yet despite their small stature these tundra systems are a globally important because of the large reservoir of organic carbon currently stored in the permanently frozen soil (permafrost). This carbon has accumulated over tens of thousands of years, and is double the amount currently found in the atmosphere. However, when soil thaws this carbon becomes available to be consumed by microbes, which results in the release of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. This is just one of the many consequences of climate warming that is being observed in arctic tundra.

The warming effects of climate change are amplified at high latitudes, and tundra ecosystems are responding rapidly, acting as a harbinger of the changing climate. One of the first indications of this was the observation of widespread increases in plant productivity throughout the Arctic, including the growth of more and larger shrubs. While carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere as a result of increased productivity, counteracting climate change, the taller darker vegetation absorbs more solar radiation, leading to further warming. At the same time, widespread permafrost thaw is changing the very appearance of the arctic landscape, in addition to releasing long-frozen carbon.

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The biggest threat to the world?

Ask George M. Woodwell, founder of the Woods Hole Research Center, and he will tell you it is climate change. “It is undermining every fundamental aspect of life,” he told a group of 15 state, federal and local officials along with Falmouth citizens concerned about the topic and how it relates to the town’s wastewater efforts on Tuesday evening.

Dr. George Woodwell and Dr. Eric Davidson Mr. Woodwell went on to cite Jane Lubchenco, the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who spoke about the rise in temperature at a conference in Denver last week. There Ms. Lubchenco said that in the first half of August 5,000 heat records were broken across the United States. Of those, Mr. Woodwell noted that 2,000 were for the highest maximum temperature on a particular day and 3,000 were for the highest minimum temperature. “That means that our nights as well as our days are getting hotter,” Mr. Woodwell said. As to where change can be made, Mr. Woodwell mentioned fossil fuels, stressing that people need to stop relying on them as a source of energy. While this is a global problem, Mr. Woodwell said, “these are all local problems. They are the sum of our local actions. How we live matters. How we live in Falmouth matters.” Eric A. Davidson, executive director of the Woods Hole Research Center, said spelling out the real costs of the options, such as comparing composting toilets versus sewering, that residents will have to pay for, would make a major impact in the town’s wastewater planning.

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To a large degree, river water chemistry is a function of processes occurring in the river’s watershed. As a result, changes on land also lead to changes in river chemistry. Much as human health can be evaluated by analyzing blood chemistry, so too can watershed health be assessed by monitoring river water chemistry. Because river inputs to the ocean also impact ocean processes, changes on land are also altering the marine environment.

Scientists from the Woods Hole Research Center and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have joined with numerous collaborators around the world to investigate river chemistry and land-ocean linkages in Earth’s most significant river systems. Now active in 12 watersheds around the world – with the goal of expanding to several more - the Global Rivers Observatory is measuring concentrations of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and other naturally occurring compounds in the rivers near their mouths where they empty into the ocean. Samples are also being collected from key tributaries upstream in the watersheds to investigate how chemical signatures vary regionally or in areas with differing land cover or land use.

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As the climate warms, frozen Arctic soils (called permafrost) are thawing. When the soils thaw, some of the vast quantities of ancient carbon they contain is released to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and methane. This causes additional warming, which leads to more permafrost thaw, release of more greenhouse gases, and so on.

In the video below, Dr. Max Holmes discusses a controversial experiment underway in a remote corner of the Siberian Arctic to see whether the reintroduction of mega-herbivores (including musk oxen, bison, elk, and horses) will reshape the landscape in ways that will help keep the permafrost frozen, thus slowing global warming. Although warming in the Arctic is largely driven by forces outside of the Arctic (mainly fossil fuel combustion in more populated parts of the world and tropical deforestation), the idea presented here is a novel way that actions in the Arctic could help combat global climate change.

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From June 20 through June 25, 2011, the Woods Hole Research Center staff held a workshop in Kigali and Ruhengeri, Rwanda, on methods for biomass estimation and forest cover mapping in the tropics. The five-day workshop brought together policy and technical officers from Africa and countries around the world. The policy workshop was attended by over sixty-eight participants including thirty-two from Rwanda.

The workshop began with a one day national policy workshop in Kigali on forest monitoring tools and techniques and their increasing importance in policies for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD). It continued in Ruhengeri with a smaller training workshop for technical staff focused on combining remote sensing and field based forest inventory methods to derive carbon maps. Thirty-two international participants in total including 7 Rwandan technicians from government, NGOs, and academic institutions had the opportunity to receive this advanced technical training.

The workshop featured several presentations on forest and carbon monitoring in the tropics and Africa given by the participants. It also included computer training in the generation of biomass maps integrating field measurements and remotely sensed data, computer training on forest/non-forest mapping, the use of free and open-source software and commercial GIS software (ESRI) for forest biomass estimation, data set options for producing carbon maps, and discussions of forest mapping in the context of REDD and other forest carbon financing opportunities in tropical regions.

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Field Notes

Local Falmouth, MA., teacher Celeste Cruse travels with Research Associates Kathleen Savage and Paul Lefebvre to the Tanguro Ranch (below) in Mato Grosso, Brazil to participate in the Center's ongoing research activities. The objective is to provide an opportunity for Ms. Cruse to participate in research associated with the impacts of land use and land use change in Brazil, with particular emphasis on impacts to the forest carbon cycle, plant and animal species and food webs. This opportunity will give Ms. Cruse hands-on experience in measurement techniques, which she can use with her students to compare and contrast the impacts of land use change on Cape Cod, MA. with regions in Brazil.

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Field Notes

Over half of the world's soil organic carbon is stored in arctic watersheds. The majority of this carbon is held in permafrost, which is perennially frozen ground. As northern climates warm, permafrost is beginning to thaw, deepening the soil active layer and making the stored carbon available for decomposition to greenhouse gases or for transport downstream. Rivers draining Arctic watersheds carry large amounts of this carbon to the ocean, especially during the spring flood that follows ice melt. This is also a time of year when the quality of river carbon changes due to increased overland flow and flushing of the organic rich-layers in soils. This freshly transported terrestrial carbon tends to be very reactive and can be a high quality food source for aquatic micro-organisms in streams and rivers, as well as in the estuaries that receive the flood water.

Assistant Scientist Robert Spencer, in conjunction with colleagues from the US Geological Survey, is currently at the mouth of the Yukon River Basin (Alaska) quantifying how important the spring ice break-up period is with respect to carbon export from land to ocean and also assessing the reactivity of this material. This is fundamental if we are to understand the fate of this carbon, its role as a food source for aquatic communities, and how rapidly it is respired to carbon dioxide and methane and returned to the atmosphere. This respiration of carbon back to the atmosphere may have positive feedback effects that result in further warming, thawing, and mobilization of the soil carbon stocks in permafrost.

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The Woods Hole Research Center’s Gilman Ordway Campus, in Falmouth, Massachusetts, is a model in its use of energy, water, and environmentally-friendly building materials. Currently, there are 2 buildings on the Ordway Campus.

The Center employed the firm of William McDonough + Partners for the Woodwell Building. The Woodwell Building has been the recipient of numerous awards for “green” building design, including the AIA/COTE Top Ten Green Projects in 2004, a first place in the "Places of Work: Small Buildings" category of the NESEA Green Building Awards in 2004, and an Honorable Mention in Environmental Design & Construction Magazine’s Excellence in Design Awards in 2004.

In anticipation of an expansion of staff size from 45 to 60 employees, the Center acquired an abutting property in 2008 and has undertaken a deep energy retrofit of the structure (originally built as a carriage house and later converted to a three-apartment residence), integrating that with the campus-wide energy strategy. The Center partnered with South Mountain Company (principal John Abrams), a design/build firm based on Martha’s Vineyard.

The Carriage House renovation is a logical extension of the successful approach used for the Woodwell Building. Namely, by further reducing direct HVAC loads through super-insulating the walls and ceiling, heating and cooling equipment needs are reduced. As a result of the reduced heating and cooling loads, smaller, even more efficient mechanical systems are needed, which results in further reductions in electrical usage. In addition, the overall reduced peak heating and cooling loads allow the use of air-source heating and cooling equipment, which is a simpler, less expensive system than the ground-source system needed for the Woodwell Building.

Consistent with the design intent of the Woodwell Building, an integrated design build approach to achieving very high core efficiencies was pursued by employing a super-insulated building envelope, high-performance glazing, energy recovery ventilation, low energy use lighting, and other efficiency strategies. This process resulted in the replacement of the existing oil heating system with an air-source heat pump system.

Similar strategies have been employed in the development of both buildings on the Ordway Campus. Both projects applied proven conservation/building energy design and efficiency principles to reduce energy usage so significantly that CO2-laden fossil sources could be eliminated from the campus. Those principles include: tight envelope ,high performance windows glazing and doors,emphasis on natural lighting,operable windows,heat recovery ventilation,ground source heating and cooling for HVAC loads.

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Scientists at the Woods Hole Research Center have produced a high-resolution “National Biomass and Carbon Dataset for the year 2000” (NBCD2000), the first ever spatially explicit inventory of its kind. The dataset was produced as part of a project funded under NASA’s Terrestrial Ecology Program with additional support from the Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools Project (LANDFIRE). The project has generated a high-resolution (30 m), year-2000 baseline estimate of basal area-weighted canopy height, aboveground live dry biomass, and standing carbon stock for the conterminous United States.

Development of the dataset is based on an empirical modeling approach that combines USDA Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) data with high-resolution InSAR data acquired from the 2000 Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) and optical remote sensing data acquired from the Landsat ETM+ sensor. Three-season Landsat ETM+ data were systematically compiled by the Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium (MRLC) between 1999 and 2002 for the entire U.S. and were the foundation for development of both the USGS National Land Cover Dataset 2001 (NLCD 2001) and the LANDFIRE project. Products from both the NLCD 2001 (landcover and canopy density) and LANDFIRE (existing vegetation type) projects as well as topographic information from the USGS National Elevation Dataset (NED) are used within the NBCD 2000 project as spatial predictor layers for canopy height and biomass estimation. Forest survey data provided by the USDA Forest Service FIA program were made available to the project under a national Memorandum of Understanding. The response variables (canopy height and biomass) used in model development and validation were derived from the FIA database. Production of the NLCD 2001 and LANDFIRE projects was based on a mapping zone approach in which the conterminous U.S. is split into 66 ecoregionally distinct mapping zones. This approach was also adopted by the NBCD 2000 project. Data products are provided on a zone-by-zone basis.

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A new study released today in the EarlyView of Ecology Letters addresses forest productivity trends in Alaska, highlighting a shift in biomes caused by a warming climate. The findings, conducted by scientists at the Woods Hole Research Center and three other institutions based in Alaska and France, linked satellite observations with an extensive and unique tree-ring data set. Patterns observed support current hypotheses regarding increased growth of evergreen forest at the margins of present tundra and declining productivity at the margins of temperate forest to the south. This study provides a regional picture of forest productivity which did not previously exist.

According to lead author Pieter Beck, a post-doctoral fellow at WHRC, “The results provide evidence for the initiation of a biome shift in response to climate change, and indicate that some ecosystem models may be missing fundamental changes taking place in the circumpolar region.” He adds that “while the findings contrast with some recent model predictions of increased high latitude vegetation productivity, they are consistent with longer-term projections of global vegetation models.”

Scott Goetz, a senior scientist at WHRC, proposed the study and co-authored the manuscript. He says, “Most people don’t think of high latitudes forests as being drought stressed - and they are not in the traditional sense of having soils dry up and blow away - but their growth is negatively impacted by hot dry air masses and those have increased in recent years. This paper shows those drought impacts are captured in both the satellite and the tree ring record. Of course the tree rings go back in time much further than the satellite observations, which only extend about 30 years, but the changes that we observe from satellites are clearly supported not only by the tree rings but also by carbon isotope analysis of the wood.”

Beck adds that climate driven changes in the disturbance regime, which can rapidly alter forest dynamics and the ability of boreal forests to migrate into current tundra areas, will most likely shape the biome shift in the future.

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Maine’s dilemma was summarized by USM economist Charles Colgan in 2003: “We are right at, or beyond, sustainable harvest levels from the forests and oceans, and we do not have the knowledge that will get us there. The land base is shifting rapidly from resource to urban uses. We have profoundly conflicting visions of how Maine’s natural resources should be used.”

The area of protected land in Maine is now about 5,300 sq. miles, or about 17% of Maine’s land area (MeGIS, 2010). Of this, York County has only 1.2% of the total area of Maine’s conservation lands and Cumberland County has only 0.7%. The map of the protected lands of New England shows the large and obvious gaps in conserved lands in southern and central Maine (The Nature Conservancy, 2008).

Green areas indicate protected lands. Added to these challenges are, of course, the complexities brought by a climate that appears to be changing even faster than anticipated. The loss of open space is of special concern for southern Maine due to:

• Greater proximity to urban centers and higher populations nearby. As southern New Hampshire has come to reflect the demography of Massachusetts, southern Maine has followed.
• Greater biological diversity - “Southern and coastal Maine support the highest level of species diversity in the state (Me-GAP report). At the same time, these areas are among those most desirable for development. Some of the state's most rare plant communities have already been lost or altered by development in southern Maine.”
• A longer and more intense land use history with related soil and biotic impoverishment.
• Loss of farmlands and an increase in developed lands with more impervious surfaces.
• Lands in southern Maine are more expensive, making them more costly to conserve and protect.
• Ecosystem services, provided for free by remaining intact ecosystems, are even more valuable in southern Maine.
• There are more family-owned lands in southern Maine.

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Field Notes

Senior Scientist Michael Coe, Research Associate Paul Lefebvre, and Graduate Affiliate Marcia Macedo have embarked on a month-long research trip to the Upper Xingu River in eastern Mato Grosso, Brazil. While there, the team will work with our partners and colleagues at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) and Marine Biological Laboratory to install new equipment for monitoring soil chemistry and water quantity and quality.

Paul Lefebvre: I arrived in Canarana, Mato Grosso yesterday morning at 7 AM on the overnight bus from Goiânia. By 10 AM, I had caught a ride in the truck carrying this week's groceries out to Fazenda Tanguro, which we affectionately call “the ranch.” Fazenda Tanguro is the site of a tropical ecological research station run by IPAM and is home base for our work in the region. While the roads to the ranch are relatively smooth now that the heavy tandem- trailer soy trucks have finished transporting last year's harvest out to market, they are still quite muddy and severely washed out in spots, so we took it slowly.

One truly amazing change to our formerly isolated little outpost is the recent addition of internet access, via a parabolic dish and wi-fi router hanging high on the radio tower outside the kitchen. The signal is irregular but when it's good it's as fast as anything I've experienced in this part of Brazil. I've grown accustomed to the isolated simplicity of ranch life over the years and wasn't sure I'd enjoy the change, but I can already tell it's going to be a real asset. Today I sent off a request for tech support for the new equipment I'm setting up. In the past, such simple needs meant having to sacrifice an afternoon to drive into town to make contact.

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Ecologists have long been interested in carbon. This interest stems from several reasons. First, humans (as well as all of the other plants and animals on Earth) are made primarily of carbon. In fact, nearly 50% of our dry weight is carbon. Ecologists can learn much about ecosystems and what they do by constructing carbon budgets (or energy budgets) from measurements of productivity, food chains, and nutrient cycling.

Second, carbon, in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2), is the major greenhouse gas released to the atmosphere as a result of human activities. The continued release of greenhouse gases is raising the temperature of the earth, disrupting the climates we and our agricultural systems depend on, and raising sea-level. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has already increased by nearly 40% since the start of the industrial revolution sometime around the middle of the 18th century and will continue to increase unless society eliminates the use of fossil fuels.

Most of the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations has come from and will continue to come from the use of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) for energy, but more than 30% of the increase over the last 150 years came from changes in land use. These include, for example, the clearing of forests and the cultivation of soils for food production.

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Conserving Biodiversity and Sustainably Managing the Lower Amazon Floodplain

Regional Ecosystem through a Regional Co-Management System The Amazon varzea, the core area of the Amazon floodplain, is one of the largest and most biodiverse tropical wetland systems in the world. It has also been a major focus of human settlement and economic activity for much of the human history of the basin. Its fertile soils and abundant plant and animal resources supported some of the densest and most politically complex societies in the Amazon basin. These societies were decimated early in the colonial conquest of the Amazon, and over the next five hundred years populations of the most abundant floodplain species have been systematically depleted. In the second half of the twentieth century, pressures on the Amazon floodplain intensified with the expansion and subsequent decline of commercial jute farming and associated clearing of varzea forests, the development of commercial fishing and logging and most recently the spread of extensive cattle ranching. These activities are transforming the varzea landscape, degrading varzea forests and grasslands and depleting fisheries. If this trend continues, the Amazon varzea may follow the development trajectory of other major floodplains of the world, with the landscape transformed into a mosaic of irrigated fields and ponds, disrupting ecological processes and diminishing the many ecosystem services floodplains provide.

Beginning in the 1970s, floodplain communities, like the Rubber Tapper and Forest People’s movements of the Amazon uplands, organized to protect local fisheries, grasslands and forests from commercial fishers, loggers and ranchers, and develop local agreements to regulate access to and use of their floodplain resources. Over the last fifteen years these collective agreements have become the basis of a formal, community based co-management system for floodplain lakes and grasslands in which varzea communities and government management agencies collaborate in the design and implementation of management regulations for varzea land and resource use. Considerable progress is also being made in the adaptive management of key floodplain species, including pirarucu (Arapaima gigas), caiman (various species) and river turtles (Podecnemis species). These initiatives provide the basis for development of participatory governance institutions for the sustainable management of major regions of the Amazon floodplain. By 2003 a regional co-management system had been implemented with regional fisheries council districts created for 7 major varzea lake systems, including roughly 150 communities and a total population of 35-40,000 people.

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The Registry of Socio-environmental Responsibility (RSR) is an initiative of the Aliança da Terra (AT), the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), and the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) that unifies property owners who commit to responsible land stewardship in Brazil. Begun in 2006, the RSR creates a link between the growing demands for responsible land use practices coming from commodity markets and demands from the emerging carbon market for reductions in carbon emissions from deforestation.

The idea of a landowner’s alliance originated with John Carter, a Texas-born rancher who came to the Amazon and was shocked at the rapid rate of deforestation in the area immediately surrounding his ranch, and even more dismayed to see the scope of the problem every time he flew his small plane over the region. From his interactions in the community, he recognized that many of his fellow ranchers did care about good land stewardship and about maintaining ecological services from the landscape they depend upon. Carter realized that rather than labeling landowners as environmental villains and rallying against them and trying to stop all development, it is far more constructive to enlist them in a constructive dialog that recognizes their efforts and draws on market incentives along with scientific knowledge to inspire them to improve the way they practice stewardship and at the same time, increase their profits thru market recognition. He realized that because investments in good land management were not economically feasible for them, they would need a market incentive to help them manage their land better, as well as some guidance and education. He also realized that recognizing and rewarding good stewardship would serve as a form of peer pressure to bring other landowners on board. The main goal of the RSR is to assist responsible farmers and ranchers in resolving any conflicts between production and environmental protection.

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The circumpolar boreal forest is an integral part of the global ecosystem and has important influences on the global cycling of energy, carbon and water. Over the past 30 years, global boreal forests have experienced a significant amount of warming and drying which, if trends continue as predicted, are likely to induce feedbacks that may further influence global climate.

The goal of the Woods Hole Research Center’s work in this region is to quantify the magnitude and variability of carbon exchange, assess the mechanisms by which fire disturbance influences these processes, and characterize how changes in these ecosystems respond to and are influencing climate. By synthesizing results from direct field measurements, satellite remote sensing and ecosystem modeling, Center scientists study the processes driving changes in the boreal forest in order to inform assessments and predictions of how those changes will be expressed under a future climate regime.

Scientists at the Woods Hole Research Center are contributing to understanding the changing Arctic, and how these changes will influence the global climate system. WHRC projects are studying arctic tundra and boreal forests in Russia and North America, with the objective of learning how climate change is altering carbon storage in these globally important ecosystems, and understanding how these changes feedback on climate. Center researchers also are studying the largest arctic rivers in Russia, Canada, and Alaska, working to understand how increasing river discharge driven by global warming will influence ocean circulation and climate over the coming century. Much work remains to be done, but the Woods Hole Research Center is committed to improving the scientific understanding of the Arctic in order to better inform policy makers and the public as they make decisions impacting the Arctic and the global climate system.

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As part of ongoing projects in the pan-tropical region, Woods Hole Research Center scientists and their collaborators generated a national level aboveground dataset for tropical countries. Using a combination of co-located field measurements, LiDAR observations and imagery recorded from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), WHRC researchers produced national level maps showing the amount and spatial distribution of aboveground carbon.

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