The MacGyver session at the annual American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference is full to the brim with scientists showing off blinking circuit boards and 3D-printed mechanisms. Research Assistant, Zoë Dietrich, stands in front of her poster and a plexiglass cube sprouting wires. As she speaks, a whizzing sound emanates from the box as it lifts itself up on one side, holding itself open long enough to flush the interior with air from the room. A laptop screen reads out numbers from the sensors in the box, detailing changes in the concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane within.
Dietrich constructed this device herself. It’s a low-cost, autonomous, solar-powered chamber designed to float on water and measure the flow of carbon into and out of the water. Dietrich has spent the past 1.5 years testing and troubleshooting various prototypes, and has already begun deploying models at research sites in Brazil and Alaska. Now she’s sharing her work with the broader scientific community in hopes of encouraging others to build their own versions.
“One of the goals of the chamber project is to make the construction very accessible so that scientists like me, without formal engineering training or background, can build the chambers pretty easily,” says Dietrich.
This was good news for Grand Valley University masters student, Jillian Greene, and her professor Dr. Sean Woznicki, who encountered Dietrich and her chambers at AGU. Though neither of them had experience with mechanical or electrical engineering, they knew immediately a device like Dietrich’s could be invaluable to their research.
Greene’s project involves sampling carbon emissions at drowned river mouth estuaries connected to Lake Michigan. She and Woznicki will then correlate that data with other ecological characteristics gleaned from satellite imagery. There are over one hundred of these freshwater estuary-like features around the region, and Greene and Woznicki are hoping to paint a complete picture of their cumulative role in carbon cycling.
“Originally, I was going to manually sample and quantify with a gas chromatograph,” Greene says. That’s a time-consuming process that limits the amount of data one team can collect. With the chambers, however, Greene can collect emissions data every 30 seconds—greatly expanding the amount of data she’ll be able to incorporate into her models.
“This is going to make our model a lot more robust and hopefully applicable to other drowned river mouth estuaries in the region,” says Greene.
Greene and her research team have already created and deployed 6 chambers. Since AGU, she has been in contact with Dietrich, troubleshooting issues as they arise and learning an entirely new set of skills as she goes.
“[the team] has learned how to solder, how to interpret the circuit diagrams, problem solve, and adjust for our kind of unique systems that we’re looking at,” says Woznicki. “It’s really been exciting to use Zoë’s design as a learning experience for masters and undergrad students.”
Dietrich has had other groups at Colgate University and the University of California, Berkeley reach out to her as well, and she is planning to publish a paper this fall that will include detailed instructions for anyone else to construct their own chambers. She’s already shared preliminary drafts of the step-by-step instructions, including photos, diagrams, and tips, as well as programming and data-processing code and a specific materials list with the other research groups. In turn, they have provided her with helpful revisions and ideas for new modifications. Dietrich is excited about the prospect of the designs being implemented by more people. More chambers means more data, which benefits the entire scientific community.
“Our sampling of carbon right now is limited by expensive instruments and where people can go and who has access to these resources,” says Dietrich. “But the goal of this project is to be low cost and more accessible to a broader set of researchers. The chambers are autonomous, and so are accessible to places and times that aren’t otherwise being sampled right now. And taking that a step further, we need to make them accessible to be built by anyone.”
Fire bans not effective as the Amazon and Pantanal burn, study says
In August 2019, the number of fires in the Brazilian Amazon skyrocketed, making international headlines and prompting protests in cities like London, Paris and Toronto. While the global community was shocked by images of burning trees and animals, in Brazil, the arrival of the smoke in the country’s business capital and largest city, São Paulo, made the urban population suddenly wake up to the problem.
The crisis also drew the attention of the scientific community, which has since invested more effort into creating tools and data to understand the dynamics of fire in the Amazon, a biome not naturally adapted to burning. “All this caused a stir among researchers, who began to ask themselves, ‘What is going on?’” Manoela Machado, a researcher with the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford, told Mongabay.
The Alaska Native Village of Kuigilnguq (Kwigillingok; pronounced kwee-gill-in-gawk), a word that means “no river” in Yugtun, the traditional Yup’ik language, is a federally recognized Tribe in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta near the southwest coast of the Bering Sea.
Read more on Permafrost Pathways.
George Woodwell, 95, influential ecologist on climate change, dies
The founder of the renowned Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts, he also helped shape U.S. policies on controlling toxic substances like DDT.
George M. Woodwell, the founder of the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts and a renowned ecologist whose keen research and understanding of policy shaped how the United States controlled toxic substances and how the world confronted climate change, died on Tuesday at his home in Woods Hole, Mass. He was 95.
The research center, which Dr. Woodwell started in 1985 to study global climate change, and which was later renamed for him, announced his death in a statement.
During his long career, Dr. Woodwell repeatedly shined a light on how the byproducts of new technologies — devised to increase efficiency in the agriculture, forestry and energy industries — had endangered natural systems. His research provided early evidence of what he called “biotic impoverishment” — the steady weakening of plants, animals and ecosystems that are chronically exposed to synthetic pollutants.
Continue reading on The New York Times.
George Woodwell, leader in climate studies, dies at 95
In discussing his 2016 book, “A World to Live In,” George M. Woodwell saw possibility in the often bleak world of climate science.
“The only course at the moment is to make the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, a perfectly attractive and possible and financially attractive, lucrative transition,” he explained to Steve Curwood of the “Living on Earth” radio show. “It’s not a dream, but it is a dream world. It’s a world that everyone would like to live in, and it’s a clean world in which human rights are protected, the common property resources of air, water, and land are cherished and defended, and industries have a purpose, a primary purpose, which is the quality of the public realm.”
Known as an optimist and a visionary leader in the environmental sciences—one whose work not only advanced his own research in ecology and climate, but also launched an entirely new field of scientific discovery, George Masters Woodwell died at his home in Woods Hole on June 18. He was 95.
Read more on The Falmouth Enterprise.
FALMOUTH, MA – WED, JUNE 19th– With deep sadness, Woodwell Climate Research Center announces the passing of Dr. George Masters Woodwell, a pioneer and visionary in the field of climate science, beloved family member, friend, and mentor, and Founder and Director Emeritus of our Center. He passed away on Tuesday, June 18, 2024 surrounded by his family. He was 95.
Woodwell dedicated his career to ecological research, and to uplifting science to inform critical global policy and urgently-needed solutions to some of the biggest environmental issues of the late twentieth century—making enormous contributions to the world through his work of scientific understanding, environmental sustainability, and climate stability.
At a time when the biological sciences were increasingly focused on the molecular and cellular level, Dr. Woodwell was steadfast in his belief that ecosystem-level understanding was critical. He started and led ecological research programs within the University of Maine, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the Marine Biological Laboratory.
He worked tirelessly to bring science into the public discourse. Based on his research demonstrating the damaging effects of the pesticide DDT, he was a strong scientific voice in the push to ban it. He conducted groundbreaking research on the ecological effects of nuclear radiation. Ultimately, he turned his attention to what was at the time known as “the carbon dioxide problem.” He provided prescience testimony at the first Congressional hearing on climate change in 1986, highlighting issues—the global ramifications of Arctic warming and the importance of forests in the climate system—that have been enduring pillars of climate research since.
Dr. Woodwell also played an outsized role in building today’s ecosystem of science-based advocacy and policymaking, helping found preeminent environmental non-profits including Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, and World Resources Institute. Additionally, Dr. Woodwell was a former chairman of the board of trustees of the World Wildlife Fund US, and former president of the Ecological Society of America.
He saw the need for international policy and governance to address climate change, guided by global scientific expertise, and played important roles in the creation of what became the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was recognized in 2007 with a Nobel Peace Prize, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—the treaty that has driven and guided international climate negotiations for more than thirty years.
In 1985, he founded the Woods Hole Research Center—renamed Woodwell Climate Research Center in his honor in 2020—as an independent organization dedicated to not only conducting essential climate research, but to harnessing it to inform public- and private-sector decision making at all levels of society. Dr. Woodwell led the Center for more than twenty years, was a mentor and friend to many of the Center’s staff, and remained a trusted advisor to Center leadership to the end.
“Our entire staff and community is deeply saddened by George’s passing, and our thoughts are with George’s many friends and his family today,” said Max Holmes, President of the Woodwell Climate Research Center. “What drew people to George was not just his intellect or foresight, but also his energy, wisdom, and sense of humor. His ability to sustain outrage and indignation at environmental destruction, while holding an abiding love of the natural world and a clear, positive vision of a better world for all was an inspiration for many.”
That vision was the subject of Dr. Woodwell’s final book, A World to Live In: An Ecologist’s Vision for a Plundered Planet, published in 2016. Over the course of his career, Dr. Woodwell has published more than 300 scientific papers and authored five books. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received the 1996 Heinz Environmental Prize, the John H. Chafee Excellence in Environmental Affairs Award of 2000, and the Volvo Environment Prize of 2001.
Born on October 23, 1928 to Virginia Sellers Woodwell and Phillip McIntire Woodwell, Dr. Woodwell received his bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College, his master’s degree and doctorate in botany from Duke University, and served as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy from 1950 to 1953. He was an avid sailor, and loved his family’s farm and sawmill in Maine.
He is survived by his wife, Katharine Rondthaler Woodwell, his children and their spouses Caroline Woodwell (Chris DeForest), Marjorie Woodwell (Dana Woodbury Swan), Jane Woodwell (Chris Soper), John Woodwell (Marie Hull), and his grandchildren Katharine Soper, David Soper, John DeForest, and Robert DeForest.
The family welcomes gifts in Woodwell’s memory made to the George M. Woodwell Endowed Fund at Woodwell Climate Research Center. A remembrance service will be held at the Center in Falmouth, MA in coming weeks; more details to follow at woodwellclimate.org/george-woodwell.
The rapid warming of the Arctic has caused substantial sea-ice melt, increased ice-free area, and enhanced evaporation from Arctic Marginal Seas (AMS). According to a recent study, the resulting increased atmospheric moisture and latent energy have profound implications for precipitation patterns over Northern Hemisphere land areas.
During the cold season (October to March) from 1980 to 2021, the sea-ice area in AMS declined by nearly 30% (approximately 2 million square kilometers), accounting for 32% of the increase in AMS-sourced precipitation on lands in the Northern Hemisphere land. This means that for every one million square kilometers of ice loss there was a 16% increase in the contribution of water evaporated from AMS to precipitation over land.
“The study reveals that the enhanced moisture supply has a surprisingly pronounced impact on high-latitude land precipitation,” stated the corresponding author, Dr. Qiuhong Tang. Despite AMS-sourced moisture accounting for only 8% of the total high-latitude land precipitation, its dramatic increase owing to ice loss contributed 42% to the overall precipitation increase. “This additional moisture has also contributed to increased extreme snowfall in high-latitude land areas,” added the lead author and Ph.D. candidate Yubo Liu, “which could help mitigate the impact of climate warming on melting of the Greenland ice sheet.”
“Our findings highlight the important contribution of Arctic sea-ice retreat to Northern Hemisphere land precipitation through moisture cycling, which underscores the many impacts of rapid Arctic change on the global climate system,” added co-author Dr. Jennifer A. Francis. “These insights help inform decision-makers striving to manage impacts of the climate crisis.”
Fires in Brazil wetlands surge to record start in 2024
As Jose Cleiton and Brandao Amilton ride their horses into the vastness of the Pantanal grassy wetlands of Brazil, a wall of smoke towers from the horizon far into the sky above.
The worst of the dry season is still far off, but already these Brazilian wetlands are so dry that wildfires are surging.
The number of Pantanal fires so far this year has jumped tenfold from the same period last year according to Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research (INPE).
