Can soil carbon credits benefit farmers and help the climate?
Generating soil carbon credits depends on digitalising agriculture and harvesting data from farmers. As Earthshot winner Boomitra prepares to sell its first credits, Energy Monitor investigates who stands to reap the benefits.
Dalip Ram, a rice farmer in the north Indian state of Haryana, inspects an app on his smart phone showing a satellite map of his farm. This app is the product of a San Francisco-based tech company called Boomitra that uses data about the farmer’s land to calculate how much carbon he is managing to lock into the soil of his small plot in order to generate carbon credits. Boomitra just won the Earthshot Prize – which seeks out “the most innovative solutions to the world’s top environmental challenges” – in the ‘Fix Our Climate’ category.
Here’s what upcoming winter may have in store for Massachusetts, New England
On the heels of one of the warmest winters on record last year, StormTeam 5 went to three experts in the field of long-range weather forecasting to get their take on what winter in Massachusetts and New England will be like this year.
All three cited signals that indicate a highly variable season is ahead.
What will 1.5° of warming look like?
Scientists say we’re on track to cross this climate milestone in the coming decade. Listener Julian wants to know what life will look like on the other side of that threshold.
Listen on BBC’s Crowd Science.
Will warm oceans lead to ‘weird’ weather patterns this winter?
Dr. Jennifer Francis of the Woodwell Climate Research Center joined FOX Weather on Thursday morning and explained why all bets are off when it comes to the predictability of what type of weather patterns we can expect this winter.
Alaska’s snow crabs suddenly vanished. Will history repeat itself as waters warm?
ABOARD THE FISHING VESSEL INSATIABLE – Garrett Kavanaugh grabs a fistful of freshly cooked crab and stuffs it into his mouth, a giant smile on his face, as his feet brace against the rolling sea beneath the deck of his boat.
“Oh yeah,” he says. “That’s what it’s all about.”
As the deck of his 58-foot-long boat rolls on the swells of the Gulf of Alaska, Kavanaugh, 24, cracks another crab leg between his tattooed fingers.
Rangeland soil health conference recap
Last month The High Lonesome Ranch hosted the Woodwell Climate Research Center and friends for a small gathering of great minds. The Rangeland Soil Health Conference, sponsored by the Mighty Arrow Foundation, was three days of panels, discussions, and workshops centering the role of western range management in climate mitigation strategies.
The first panel featured practitioners from large ranches in California, Colorado and Nebraska. There was a mix of production oriented producers and science oriented ranches. Each ranch had different goals in order to achieve their desired outcomes, but all recognized the various ecosystem services provided by good management of these landscapes. The speakers dove into some nitty gritty details, from how to account for elk grazing pressure to thoughts around market place offerings such as virtual fencing and carbon credits.
Continue reading on High Lonesome Ranch’s website.
New study shows surprising effects of fire in North America’s boreal forests
A new study, using a first-of-its-kind approach to analyze satellite imagery from boreal forests over the last three decades, has found that fire may be changing the face of the region in a way researchers did not previously anticipate.
Historically, fires in North American boreal forests have led to coniferous trees being supplanted by deciduous trees, which are faster growing, take up more carbon and reflect more light, leading to cooling of the climate and decreased likelihood of fire.
The study, led by Northern Arizona University and published today in Nature Climate Change, found that surprisingly, while forests do become more deciduous, they don’t stay that way; a few decades later, the same forests gradually start to shift back toward coniferous trees.
Cranberry growers are bringing wetlands back from the dead
In Massachusetts, the onetime cranberry capital of the world, former bogs are transforming into thriving, carbon-storing swamps.
When Glorianna Davenport and her husband, Evan Schulman, decided in the early 2000s to stop growing cranberries after two decades in the business, they were left with a difficult choice. They could sell their land, parts of which had been farmed for well over a century, to a developer and watch it be “chopped up into small lots,” as Davenport puts it. Or they could fight to keep it whole.
Continue reading on Reasons to be Cheerful.