Salmon Stories | Brooke Woods
“My parents raised their six children at fish camp right above our village of Rampart, on the Yukon River. I have very fond memories of being at camp. Multi-generation family members together harvesting salmon. Family members coming from different villages and cities to come and fish together.
For me that was a sense of peace and community, kinship and well being. Everything was fine and well when we were processing fish together.”
The great flush: Scientists weigh in
Welcome back to our wastewater series, The Great Flush. In this episode, host and producer Gilda Geist interviews three Woods Hole scientists to get to the bottom of the nitrogen problem caused by wastewater on Cape Cod.
Listen on The Upper Cape Catch.
Shaky ground
A company called Indigo is paying farmers to trap carbon in their soils. Some researchers say the climate benefits are dubious
Lance Unger has been doing things a little differently lately on his farm near the Wabash River in southwestern Indiana. After last fall’s harvest, rather than leaving his fields fallow, he sowed some of them with cover crops of oats and sorghum that grew until the winter cold killed them off. And before planting corn and soybeans this spring, Unger drove a machine to shove aside yellowing stalks—last season’s “trash,” as he calls it—rather than tilling the soil and plowing the stalks under.
Google.org awards $5 million for real-time AI permafrost thaw analysis
Woodwell Climate Research Center (formerly the Woods Hole Research Center) in Falmouth, Massachusetts, has announced a $5 million grant from Google.org for the development of open-access satellite data and AI resources to track Arctic permafrost thaw in near real time.
Timely analysis of permafrost thaw, a critical resource to scientists, decision makers, and community members helping to inform climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies, has remained out of reach due to the limitations of current remote sensing and satellite imagery analysis techniques.
Read more on Philanthropy News Digest.
Charts: The water at the tip of Florida is reaching hot tub-level highs
Come on in, the water’s fine — if you like hot tubs. The water temperature on the tip of Florida hit 100 degrees two days in a row this week. Experts say that could potentially be the hottest seawater ever measured, although there are some issues with the reading.
The buoy collecting data on water temperature in shallow Manatee Bay, which is off the Everglades and blocked off from the ocean by North Key Largo, recorded a temperature of 100.2 degrees Sunday night and 101.1 degrees Monday evening.
Continue reading on The Boston Globe.
Google teams up with climate scientists to monitor permafrost with AI
Scientists are partnering with Google’s philanthropic arm to create a first of its kind, near-real-time way to monitor thawing permafrost across the Arctic.
Why it matters: The Arctic is warming about three to four times faster than the rest of the world, causing areas of permanently-frozen soil to thaw. This could release huge quantities of planet-warming greenhouse gases.
A scientist proved climate change 170 years ago. Google is honoring her.
A $5-million grant continues legacy of “grandmother of climate science” Eunice Foote.
The fight against climate change is much older than you might think, with the seed of modern climate science snaking its way through the annals of academic history to a name you might not have even heard of: Eunice Newton Foote.
Foote was a women’s rights activist. She was the first woman to be published in a physics journal. She hypothesized what would later be the general public’s leading touchstone for measuring climate change. She was also born — perhaps shockingly — in 1819.
Most importantly, Foote’s work is strong proof that we’ve long known the Earth’s climate is sensitive to human actions.
A map of Alaska created by Senior Geospatial Analyst Greg Fiske garnered two awards—the International Cartographic Association and International Map Industry Association Recognition of Excellence in Cartography, and Cartography Special Interest Group Excellence—at the Esri User Conference in San Diego this week.
Esri is the industry leader in mapping software and the Esri User Conference brought together more than 20,000 geospatial professionals including cartographers, software developers, students, end users, and policymakers. Woodwell Climate has an ongoing partnership with Esri and has attended the conference for more than two decades.
“These awards mean a great deal as the recognition comes from two very highly acknowledged cartographic organizations and the map pool at the Esri User Conference was immense,” Fiske said. “In the case of this map, not only did I share a basemap that we’re using widely in our Permafrost Pathways project, but I also shared a high-level overview of how I created the map and the resources (in the format of data, software, tutorials, and people) needed to do the same anywhere on the planet.”
The map that won the awards shows the topography of Alaska. To the average viewer, it is beautiful, informative, and not overly complicated. But Fiske also created a storymap that breaks down the data layers, and analytical and design steps required to create the map—and it is anything but simple.
Fiske has been creating maps at Woodwell Climate for more than 20 years, and is known among colleagues—at the Center and across the mapping community—for his analytical skill, creativity and artistry, and dedication to quality.
“People are drawn to a beautiful map,” Fiske said. “Putting our work on a map takes advantage of that scenario and gives us an opportunity to spotlight our research.”