Caitlin Fletcher

#ICYMI: The EPA awarded $4.3. billion in funding to help states and municipalities advance climate initiatives to reduce pollution, spur economic growth, and create local jobs in communities across the country. Here are some of the programs we're excited to see get off the ground:    The Colorado Decarbonization Accelerator will implement projects aimed at tackling climate pollution across multiple sectors including buildings, clean power, industry, transportation, and waste.   https://lnkd.in/drdH5q2N    The New England Heat Pump Accelerator will fund projects in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island to rapidly accelerate the adoption of heat pumps in more than 500,000 single-family and multifamily residential buildings.  https://lnkd.in/dHqGnBPz    Illinois will fund measures focused on building and industry decarbonization, freight electrification, climate-smart agriculture, and renewable energy deployment. https://lnkd.in/d-9xQXHN    Michigan will use its grant to accelerate siting, zoning, and permitting of renewable energy to help spur the adoption of renewable energy at the scale and pace needed to reach Michigan's newly passed 100% clean energy law.   https://lnkd.in/dxc2eMyX    The Minnesota Climate-Smart Food Systems project will focus on food system decarbonization to improve public health and well-being.  https://lnkd.in/dZAX6vEt    New Jersey, in partnership with Connecticut, Delaware, and Maine will build out a medium and heavy-duty charging corridor along Interstate 95 through the Clean Corridor Coalition.   https://lnkd.in/dheRHb-3    The Atlantic Conservation Coalition is a regional approach among North Carolina, Maryland, South Carolina, and Virginia to achieve carbon sequestration of coastal, wetlands, peatlands, forest, and urban forests  https://lnkd.in/enrTsrPY    Oregon will work to reduce climate pollution from multiple sectors including buildings, transportation, and waste. https://lnkd.in/gwn9epkG    The RISE-PA grant will reduce climate pollution in the industrial sector through a competitive grants program and incentives for small-, medium-, and large-scale decarbonization projects. https://lnkd.in/dcnZZixF    Virginia's Priority Methane Reduction Projects grant will help reduce methane pollution by establishing a competitive grant program for projects at coal mines and landfills.  https://lnkd.in/dNTiT3qe 

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Controversial Statement, but let me preface it with: I respect and appreciate the individuals* who work for federal land agencies. However, as history and present day continually show us, the prevalent culture in the Forest Service & Friends is not one we can rely on to secure the health or security of our future. They are not working in service to our forests or wildlands; they are working in service to logging and extraction companies. Yes, they have the Multiple Use Sustained Yield act, but that was enacted far too late and with too few guidelines or weighted values. Our forests are being managed as Timber Reserves, aka, Tree Farms. That's why modern thinning projects still leave an inappropriate amount of biomass uncut. The USFS was founded on European "forestry" practices that had left swathes of Europe devoid of its old growth forests, and now those practices have been running amuck on North and South America. Before Discovery and Colonization, almost half the country was old growth forest (excluding southwest desert states and central great plains). Now we're overrun with surplus crops and weeds, and we wonder why our fire cycles are so unbalanced. We wonder too, why windstorms, hurricanes, and floods are stronger and more destructive. We seem to have forgotten the critical buffer provided by mature, healthy forests. I can't help but wonder how they might have helped us with carbon emissions post-Industrial revolution. We know how fire regimes would look if we were managing forests for ecological value, rather than timber sales. But we'll never know how our ancient forests might have saved us from ourselves. We can certainly attempt to quantify our ecological losses in terms of water quality, animal population, available habitat, erosion, pollution, etc. But I doubt anyone has the research money to model how things could be if we restored critical habitat, or if we had prioritized 'health and wilderness for all' over the 'profit for a few.'

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One of my favorite parts about working on nature based projects is seeing them in person after spending so many hours combing through satellite imagery and remotely sensed data. This week Kate B. and I visited several working ranches across eastern Montana as part of project verifications for our avoided conversion of grasslands program at The Climate Trust. The impact of conserving these landscapes can be felt as soon as you step out on the prairie. From the mosaic of grasses swaying in the wind, soothing choruses of birds chirping, and the curious eyes of pronghorn watching from clear across the creek, it’s not hard to see why humans have also called the Great Plains home for millennia. Especially during this time of year! Landowners today describe the challenge of maintaining multi-generational ranching livelihoods in areas where the economics of crop production and rising property values have resulted in land use conversion time and time again. In conjunction with no-till conservation easements, carbon revenue from preserving soil organic carbon (and countless ecosystem services) is providing a critical tool to support financing of long term grassland conservation initiatives. This is big country worth protecting! Check out more about TCTs grassland projects here: https://lnkd.in/gCug45Uh

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June 13, 2024 - By Scott Dance - Washington Post, "A #LaNiña pattern is expected next, which might slow global heating but supercharge Atlantic #hurricaneseason. --- The latest El Niño #globalclimate pattern is officially over, ending a year-long episode in which its planet-warming influence helped blast ocean and air temperatures far into record-setting territory. Its end is no surprise, following the typical course of an earthly phenomenon that has been observed for centuries in some parts of the world. But this time, it brings with it new uncertainties in a world heated and changed by human emissions of fossil fuel exhaust and other greenhouse gases. Scientists believe El Niño’s end could break a string of off-the-charts heat that has persisted within the world’s oceans and across the planet’s surface for more than a year. A La Niña pattern, El Niño’s planet-cooling inverse, is forecast to develop by summer’s end, and scientists say it will probably slow, but not reverse, the heating of the globe. But in a world that has warmed close to 1.5C (2.7F) in less than two centuries, that prediction isn’t guaranteed — because not even a strong El Niño can explain the scale by which global temperatures have surged recently. “Even when you factor that in … it’s surprising how warm it has been,” said Nathaniel Johnson, a NOAA: National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration meteorologist. “The degree to which we’ve shattered records recently has been surprising.” This El Niño was historically strong In a monthly update on what is known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, scientists at NOAA wrote Thursday that they know El Niño is over because unusual warmth that developed in Pacific Ocean surface waters last year has waned. #ElNiño is in place when warm waters pool along the equator in the eastern and central Pacific, triggering changes in the speed and direction of trade winds and releasing heat and moisture into the atmosphere. Those Pacific waters got as much as 2C (3.6F) warmer than normal this winter, an indication of what climate scientists consider to be a historically strong El Niño episode. During the 2015-2016 El Niño, which pushed the planet to what were then record-setting average temperatures, Pacific waters warmed as much as 2.6C (4.7F). That ocean warmth has domino effects on #weatherpatterns around the world, causing extreme #heatwaves and #drought in some areas and #flooding storms in others. The effects were evident across much of the world over the past year. For example, the hot, humid air rising from that region of the Pacific is known for sending wet and stormy weather eastward — something linked to a surge in dengue cases in Peru and to a second-straight rainy winter in California. Other extremes El Niño is known for also developed in earnest: floods in Kenya that killed scores of people and extreme heat waves across Southeast Asia. The world could soon switch to a set of opposite extremes..." #climatecrisis Continue reading

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The smaller cat species are elusive, hard to monitor and often go unnoticed as does their disappearance. Many are habitat specialists and as a particular habitat is degraded or vanishes, so do they. At the same time conservation of smaller cat species is poorly resourced, with larger cats receiving the lion's share of funding. https://lnkd.in/ehxxiH42

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July 17, 2024 - By USDA Forest Service - Northern Research Station, "Despite facing regional threats like deforestation and wildfires, the world's #forests continue to be a powerful weapon in the fight against #climatechange. A new study reveals these vital ecosystems have consistently absorbed #carbondioxide for the past three decades, even as disruptions chip away at their capacity. The study, based on long-term ground measurements combined with remote sensing data, found that forests take up an average of 3.5 ± 0.4 billion metric tons of carbon per year, which is nearly half of the #CO2emissions from burning #fossilfuels between 1990 and 2019. The study titled “The enduring world forest carbon sink,” published (https://lnkd.in/eMk-UZvK) in the 18-July-2024 issue of the journal Nature, highlights the critical role of forests in mitigating climate change. The study further shows that #deforestation and disturbances like wildfires are threatening this vital carbon sink.   The research is co-led by USDA Forest Service Northern Research Station Senior Research Scientist Yude Pan and Senior Scientist Richard Birdsey from Woodwell Climate Research Center and includes 15 additional coauthors from 11 countries. Key Findings: ---#Borealforests in the Northern Hemisphere, spanning regions like Alaska, Canada, and Russia, have experienced a significant decline in their #carbonsink capacity, dropping by 36%. This decrease is attributed to factors including increased disturbances from #wildfires, insect outbreaks, and soil warming. ---Tropical forests have also seen a decline, with deforestation causing a 31% decrease in their ability to absorb carbon. However, regrowth in previously abandoned agricultural lands and logged areas has partially offset these losses, keeping the net carbon flux in the tropics close to neutral. ---#Temperateforests, on the other hand, have shown a 30% increase in their carbon sink capacity. This rise is largely due to extensive #reforestation efforts, particularly in China. "Our research team analyzed data from millions of forest plots around the globe," Dr. Pan explained. "What sets this study apart is its foundation in extensive ground measurements – essentially, a tree-by-tree assessment of size, species, and biomass. While the study also incorporates remote sensing data, a common tool in national forest inventories and land surveys, our unique strength lies in the detailed on-the-ground data collection." “The persistence of the global forest carbon sink was a surprise given global increases in #wildfire, #drought, #logging, and other stressors”, according to Dr. Birdsey. “But it turns out that increasing emissions in some regions were balanced by increasing accumulation in other regions, mainly re-growing #tropicalforests and #reforestation of temperate forests. These findings support the potential for improving protection and management of forests as effective natural climate”..." #carbonsequestration Continue reading

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May 28, 2024 - By Chris Hubbuch, University of Wisconsin - Madison, "Farmland is often a battleground in the fight against #climatechange. Solar panels and energy crops are pitted against #foodproduction, while well-intended policy choices can create incentives for farmers to till up new lands, releasing even more heat-trapping gas into the atmosphere. That’s why strategies for sustainable plant-based fuels focus on marginal lands – fields that are too hard to cultivate or don’t produce good enough yields to be considered profitable.    A new tool developed by scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison could help relieve that tension.   Led by Yanhua Xie and Tyler Lark, researchers with the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC), the team used machine learning to map nearly 30 million acres of U.S. #cropland abandoned since the 1980s, creating a tool that could guide decisions about how to balance production of energy and food. Their findings, published (https://lnkd.in/eytNk_4r) in the journal Environmental Research Letters, include the most detailed mapping of previously #cultivatedland in the #UnitedStates to date and provide field-level resolution of abandoned #farmland that could be used to grow crops like switchgrass or sorghum, which can trap carbon in the soil and serve as feedstocks for biofuels and replacements for petrochemicals. “If we can understand where these lands are, what the characteristics are, we can really understand their true potential for things like climate mitigation,” said Lark, a scientist at UW-Madison’s Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment.  Lark, who studies #landusechange and its impacts on land and water resources, said that understanding could be used to direct clean energy investments where they have the least competition with other beneficial uses. “That’s a key application of this,” Lark said. “Whether it’s for #solarphotovoltaic, or #agrivoltaics, or cellulosic bioenergy development, or just restoration of natural ecosystems: These sites could be great candidates for a lot of those applications.” The study was a collaboration between researchers at UW–Madison and Michigan State University and was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. The resulting data are publicly available in the GLBRC’s interactive atlas of U.S. cropland, which also maps trends in farmland expansion and irrigation.      Higher resolution insight made possible by machine learning Researchers have traditionally relied on datasets like the USDA’s Census of #Agriculture, which provides county-level estimates of farmland at five-year intervals and can be used to estimate how much land has been taken out of production.   But there was no way of knowing exactly where that land was or when it was abandoned. “Most of these estimates have all been at the county level,” Lark said. “This is really the highest resolution...”  #croplandabandonment #conservation #landsat #ecologicalrestoration Continue reading

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💚 Want to know more about what we've been doing to tackle climate impacts on California’s Central Coast? This week, we released our 2023 Impact Report, providing a brief snapshot of how we are stepping up our investment in collective power to meet the urgency of the climate crisis and garner significant, lasting change to reverse its impacts. Learn more at cecsb.org/impact. #climateaction #protectourclimate #climateactionnow #centralcoast

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Lots to add to this article, certainly not enough space in this format! Water consumption and the general reduction of available water to the south west is a massive problem, converting agricultural land into energy production could help to curtail water usage while still maximizing land space productivity for growers. There are serious concerns with rapid development of energy projects not just as mentioned in the article around design, layout, and permanence but also infrastructure. California will need to connect sustainable energy to the grid, store that energy for a cloudy day, and be capable of distributing the energy where it needs to go. If California growers suddenly shift to solar and wind en mass, can California efficiently leverage those resources? Finally, I think there could be interesting ways to incorporate solar into agriculture. Solar panels could offer shade to cattle with space for forage to grow between them. In this way solar projects could restore natural habitats, produce energy, and offer cattle a place to openly graze. Crops can even be incorporated between panels in different configurations.

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Ducks Unlimited receives 1 Million in support of expanding wetland mitigation offsets programs. - see press release below. The conservation threats to waterfowl are immense. It's a big reason DU is focused on maintaining and expanding upon our traditional ways putting habitat on the ground (philanthropic support leveraged towards state and federal grants), while also nurturing additive conservation finance to get more habitat on the ground. DU is proud to be partnering again with the Richard King Mellon Foundation in support of wetland conservation by establishing wetland mitigation offsets in underserved landscapes in urban coastal and inland settings. Wetland protections in the US generally require more wetland habitats to be offset than developed under a permit. The Multi-user banking approaches DU will establish with this support offer ability to pool financial resources from permitees and develop larger wetland restoration projects than if each development had to provide their own offset. Through support from RKMF - DU is working in key landscapes where technical expertise or capital barriers have prevented establishment of multi-user mitigation options. The programs supported were selected based on their ability to protect and restore 1,000 acres within the support term, and become financially self sufficient programs to get more habitat on the ground on a continued basis. Read more here:

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BEYOND PESTICIDES latest Farm Bill update is up, with proposed framework from Senate GOP and approved Fiscal Year 2025 budget in the House Agriculture Appropriations subcommittee. Senator John Boozman (R-AR), ranking GOP Member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, announced the framework that mirrors Republican House language, including local preemption of pesticide ordinances and shielding pesticide manufacturers from failure to warn liability. There is one critical addition: Calling for an "efficacy study” on the Organic Certification Cost-Share program (a cornerstone of the $300 million Organic Transition Initiative) to ensure that it does “not unnecessarily and unreasonably increas[e] the cost of organic certification.” Organic farmers and advocates nationwide have welcomed this increase in funding for the cost-share, given that the certification process places undue burden on small-scale and historically undeserved farmers from going certified organic. The proposed 2025 FY budget would cut funding to USDA-NRCS, USDA-Agricultural Marketing Service, and USDA Risk Management Agency, which impacts farmers' ability to access resources and guidance to improve soil health, ecosystem services, and their bottom line. There is also language that would end funding for USDA climate hubs and prohibit funding for USDA's DEI office and initiatives. The budget will be voted on by the full committee on July 10 before a Congress-wide vote. See the article below for further analysis. #farmbill #organic #usda #climate #update #pesticides

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Today we are thrilled to launch our Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act Funding Handbook for Access to Clean Drinking Water in Tribal Communities! Unprecedented resources have been made available through the BIL and IRA, providing immense opportunities for addressing critical environmental and infrastructure needs and offering targeted funding to address the clean drinking water needs of Tribal communities. However, moving funds from the agencies into the hands of Tribes is proving to be challenging.   This Handbook will serve as a critical reference guide for Tribes seeking to access and utilize funding from the two federal acts to increase, improve, and maintain access to clean drinking water. The Handbook provides a road map to support Tribes in successfully navigating the entire funding process - from identifying water access project needs to obtaining the funds necessary for planning, designing, constructing, and maintaining essential projects. By transforming the federal approach to Tribal water access, UACW envisions a future where federal funds are effectively utilized, resources are adequately secured, and Tribal water access challenges are significantly mitigated over the next 20 years. More information is available at: www.tribalcleanwater.org.

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🌊A new report from Pacific Institute dives into the potential of stormwater to be an invaluable resource rather than just runoff. 🌍 Amidst challenges from water scarcity, stormwater can be a key asset, offering solutions to water shortages in regions like the desert southwest. 💧 Read the full report to learn how stormwater capture projects can drive water resilience: https://lnkd.in/gtaeAarw  #Stormwater #WaterShortages #Drought #EnvironmentalSustainability #Sustainability #ClimateChange

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The America the Beautiful Freshwater Challenge: A Partnership to Conserve and Restore America’s Rivers, Lakes, Streams, and Wetlands sets a bold, new national goal to protect, restore, and reconnect 8 million acres of wetlands and 100,000 miles of our nation’s river and streams.

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"Stormwater capture offers a promising tool. It can help close the gap between water supply and demand by augmenting and diversifying water supplies. It can also mitigate impacts on communities from intensifying flooding and drought and reduce water pollution." #stormwater #stormwatermanagement #runoff #water #resilience #urbandevelopment #sustainabledevelopment

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May 20, 2024 - By Emily C. Dooley - UC-Davis, "Thawing Permafrost May Be Driving Degradation ---- Dozens of #Alaska’s most remote streams and rivers are turning from a crystal clear blue into a cloudy orange, and the staining could be the result of minerals exposed by thawing permafrost, new research (https://lnkd.in/dNWkareP) in the Nature journal Communications: Earth and Environment finds. For the first time, a team of researchers from the National Park Service, U.S. Geological Survey, the University of California, Davis, and other institutions have documented and sampled some of the impaired waters, pinpointing 75 locations across a Texas-sized area of northern Alaska’s Brooks Range. These degraded rivers and streams could have significant implications for #drinkingwater and #fisheries in #Arctic watersheds as the #climate changes, the researchers said. “The more we flew around, we started noticing more and more orange #rivers and #streams,” said lead author Jon O’Donnell, an ecologist for the NPS’ Arctic Inventory and Monitoring Network. “There are certain sites that look almost like a milky orange juice. Those orange streams can be problematic both in terms of being toxic but might also prevent migration of fish to spawning areas.” Visible from space O’Donnell first noticed an issue when he visited a river in 2018 that appeared rusty despite having been clear the year prior. He began asking around and compiling locations while grabbing #water samples when possible in the remote region, where helicopters are generally the only way to access the rivers and streams. “The stained rivers are so big we can see them from space,” said Brett Poulin, an assistant professor of environmental toxicology at UC Davis who was a principal investigator in the research. “These have to be stained a lot to pick them up from space.” Poulin, whose expertise is in #waterchemistry, thought the staining looked similar to what happens with acid mine drainage, except no mines are near any of the impaired rivers, including along the famed Salmon River and other federally protected waters. One hypothesis is that the #permafrost, which is essentially frozen ground, stores minerals and as the climate warmed, the metal ores that were once locked up were exposed to water and oxygen, resulting in the release of acid and metals. “Chemistry tells us minerals are weathering,” Poulin said. “Understanding what’s in the water is a fingerprint as to what occurred.” ...Acidic water releasing metals Some samples from the impaired waters have a pH of 2.3 compared to the average pH of 8 for these rivers. This means the sulfide minerals are weathering, resulting in highly acidic and corrosive conditions that release additional metals. Elevated or high levels of iron, zinc, nickel, copper and cadmium have been measured. “We see a lot of different types of metals in these waters,” Evinger said. “One of the most dominant metals is iron. That’s what...” #Alaska Continue reading

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