Nurdles: The Marine Menace

Posted on January 22, 2013 by izzy

I remember the first time I heard about the Pacific garbage patch, and, days later, my shock when I examined the shoreline of a reasonably remote Scottish island for nurdles. There were so many of them. You could pick up any handful of sand and be sure to find tens of them. I really do find it incredible that so few people are aware of the extent of this problem.

I won’t write too much here. The video on the link above does a much better job than I could ever do.

A handful of nurdles. From Wikipedia.

Canadian Oil Fields and Lake Pollution

Posted on January 18, 2013 by izzy

Yes, its another note from Canada.

The Alberta tar sands are the base for the biggest energy project on the globe – they currently produce 1.5 billion barrels of oil a day. They are held accountable for contributing to a wide range of environmental and social problems, including the direct greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the release and burning of oil, large scale deforestation, oil leaks and displacement of First Nation communities. It is, in all, a well known and intensively documented process.

Recently, attention has been drawn to the pollution of lakes with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). John Smol (one of the sciences heroes) has used Palaeolimnology to show that the concentration of PAHs in Alberta’s lake sediments began to increase steadily from the 1970s, and are now as much as 23 times higher than they were in 1960. These dates correlate with the beginning of operations on the oil sands. This is of major concern, because PAHs are carcinogenic and present a real public health danger.

So that’s the direct impact on people covered. But are there many indirect impacts? A quick literature search reveals that there are a couple of papers about the effects on moose and caribou, but nothing about the in-lake effects (I am, of course, happy to be proved wrong on this point). I am left wondering why not, and the only reason that I can come up with is the usual misunderstanding of the extent of the in-lake ecology as a driver for water quality. This is definitely a topic that intrigues me, and that I am vowing to investigate further.

Loving The Landscape – A Case Study From Canada

Posted on January 10, 2013 by izzy

In a previous post, I featured this quote:

“One of the many penalties of an ecological education is that one lives in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite visible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.”

Aldo Leopold, “Round River”.

At the time of posting, my hope was that the belief of the community was slowly changing. However, I was somewhat skeptical. After spending my Christmas holiday in Alberta, Canada, my faith in the capacity of humans to think about the environment has been boosted.

Albertans recognise that they live in an extraordinarily beautiful part of the world. Many of those whom I spoke with were climbers, skiiers, mountaineers, rafters, etc. etc. Many were foreign ex-pats. For them, the aesthetics of the environment were at least part of their reason for being there. They were proud of their lakes, their mountain slopes, their salmon streams and their grizzly and brown bears. Indeed, one of the two main sources of income that I observed for the area seemed to be tourism. The second was forestry.

Herein, therefore, lies a local community that is highly reliant on the quality of its environment for income. The industries on which it relies – forestry and tourism – can both be detrimental to such an environment. Therefore, numerous schemes for environmental protection have been put into place. Within striking distance of my hotel were at least three separate national parks – Banff, Yoho and Kootenay – covering a total of 5,280 sq miles. Within these national parks, all activities that are considered potentially destructive (e.g. Heli-skiing, snowmobiling, forestry) are carefully monitored and trails are managed to cause minimal impact. However, the most important strategy within these parks is maintaining contact with the people who use the environment, welcoming them and making sure that they are able to make contact with and learn about the environment. This ‘up close and personal’ strategy aims to educate both locals and visitors on the importance of the environment (see management plans at the Parks Canada website).

Both inside and outside of the parks, the movement of wildlife towards these protected areas is assisted through wildlife corridors. And these are not like the British wildlife corridors, where a healthy river floodplain is considered enough – these are specifically built to direct flora and fauna to move towards and between the interconnected national parks. My heart was warmed when one of the locals proudly pointed out the ‘wildlife bridges’, built with gentle, irregular slopes to replicate the landscape, that cross the Trans-Canada highway at regular intervals. He understood the concept of landscape connectivity fully, and was highly aware of all of the surrounding issues.

A wildlife bridge over the Trans-Canada highway.

Clearly, environmental education is having a huge impact in the Canadian national parks, and people truly love their surroundings and understand both the impacts and the benefits of their presence – both from the environment to themselves and vice-versa. Since humans are, essentially, a part of nature, it seems natural that such an understanding should exist. So why do we struggle to achieve that here in Britain?

Climate Change – When Science Is Not The Answer.

Posted on October 3, 2012 by izzy

My fiancee Kate (a computer scientist) and I often have long rambling debates about the nature of science. She believes that good science should lead to good policy – and therefore change - and that this is a simple and obvious progression. She becomes enraged when this is not the case. I see the logic in this argument, but believe that the link between science and policy can never be that easy. I believe that they are so inextricably entangled that it is sometimes impossible to distinguish them.

Here, I am going to step into the world of climate change. It is a) possibly the most complicated example I can think of (!) and b) it is a topic that we are both familiar with and debate over often.

Argument 1 – The Communication of Uncertainty

The main scientific reference points for those engaging with climate change policy are the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) synthesis reports (see here). Much of the science represented in these reports is based upon climate modelling, which is based on several sources of predictability that exist within the climate system – Milankovitch cycles, for example. However, predictions can never be made with 100% accuracy because the climate is a chaotic system. Global climate oscillations like ‘the El Nino affect’ (more correctly known as the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO)) cannot be predicted. When creating a climate model, this means that any single set of conditions put into a model may produce a wide range of different outcomes.

Now, it took me quite a long time to make the above as short and simple as possible. It still contains links to systems explanations which I felt were beyond the limits of this argument, and I feel that I have not done the problem justice, or come anywhere near to it. The more detailed information presented in the IPCC report consists of 4 volumes. As a politician attempting to understand all of the implications and inaccuracies of climate science and synthesizing them into a message to convey quickly and effectively to parliament and the general public, I would be extremely daunted.

Luckily, the IPCC has produced the synthesis report – a 104 page document crammed with single sentence summaries of each chapter of the longer document. In an attempt to present uncertainty in a non-subjective way without going into details about statistics and chaotic climatic processes, it frames statements of uncertainty using pre-defined terminology and percentages: ‘There is an 85% probability that the frequency of droughts will not increase’; ‘It is likely that heat waves have become more frequent.’ (IPCC, 2007). These statements, however, can be interpreted in different ways according to the context in which they are read. To over-simplify, take the difference between these two hypothetical neighbours: ‘Ooh, good, more heat waves! That will make summers much nicer’; ‘Aargh! Heat waves! Not more hosepipe bans!’.

By reading just the synthesis report, politicians have created a false confidence in the abilities of the IPCC to predict the future. Take, for example, the idea of climate stabilisation. The concept that there is a measurable target for CO2 emission reductions that can be derived from a maximum acceptable increase in global temperature has been grasped by policymakers, who rely on the IPCC to model what the target should be. In fact, the upper limit on climate stabilisation is often described by scientists as the ‘holy grail’, since the uncertainty in the system is so great that, in reality, it may be the case that no upper limit exists (Allen and Frame, 2007). As a result of miscommunication, climate science is now being driven by the political pressure to find the holy grail. Science and policy have thus, in some cases, been co-produced, and, due to the complexities and uncertainties within climatology, there is no direct link between science and policy.

Argument 2 – The Precautionary Principle and Differing Priorities

So, what happens to policy decisions when science cannot provide an accurate answer? Should we prepare for the worst, or assume the best and make sacrifices to climate change policy in favour of other political priorities? In these cases, governments are encouraged to follow the Precautionary Principle, outlined by the United Nations in the 1992 Rio Declaration :’ Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.’ As discussed above, science is not able to define the levels of CO2 emissions that are classed as ‘dangerous anthropogenic interference.’ The interpretation of the Precautionary Principle in this case therefore varies wildly across the world. For example, sea level rises that are considered acceptable to the US may not be acceptable to island sites like the Maldives. Furthermore, the action taken by a state in the face of ‘lack of scientific certainty’ may depend on whether they believe that scientific certainty may be provided in the future or not (Gollier et al, 2000).

Furthermore, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – the main document on climate change policies – differs from the IPCC in its definition of climate change. It includes only anthropogenic influences on climate change, ignoring all natural forces. This reflects the fact that climate change policy is focused on anthropogenic needs rather than purely on scientific predictions. This adds a new slant to policy making before it has begun. For example, the interpretation of the Precautionary Principle within the UNFCCC iis flawed because, due to its definition of Climate Change, it is unable to realise that the most cost effective management strategy for climate change may be adaption.

It is clear from this example that there is not always a direct link between science and policy. The uncertainty within climate science produces numerous different interpretations of both the science itself and the policy which is created from it. In some cases, this policy is then fed directly back into the science itself, requesting answers to specific questions which may divert the course of the investigation. It seems to me that science and policy are, more often than not, co-produced. Scientists act as policy advocates and political agendas guide their research and funding. And this is not true solely of climate change. There are numerous other environmental problems for which science alone cannot produce the answer.

Making the World Listen

Posted on August 3, 2012 by izzy

Aldo Leopold, “Round River”.

I think that this says it all. Although perhaps there is a third option: To be the nagging mother, who, for every 100 times spoken receives one improvement in the stroppy teenager’s behavior.

I do get the sense that things are changing. New policies are being put in place. Businesses are keen to appear ‘green’. Slowly, slowly, catchy monkey.

I have to have some faith.

Statistics for Conservationists

Posted on July 23, 2012 by izzy

It always surprises me how difficult it is for the average person to access decent software for statistics. I have previously had access through university computers, but am sadly unable to access them at the moment. Okay, so anyone can pull up a bar chart or scatter plot on Excel, but, more often than not, ecological data requires much more complex tools. There are so many variables that may affect any given environment (weather, plant composition, application of fertilisers and geological backdrop to name but a few) that multiple regressions, ANOVAS and ordination become the norm.

Furthermore, if these tools were available, how many people would know what to do with them? I doubt that many would, since training seems to be limited mainly to universities and formal data analysts. I am thinking particularly of those brave individuals who run small environmental charities and areas of conservation. And there are many of them out there. The current political backdrop means that many of these people are expected to work at grassroots level. The charity that I worked for would not by any means be able to afford the time of, say, The Environment Agency, who are able to employ data analysts.

This leaves me wondering how well informed the managers of our many Special Areas of Conservation, Sites of Special Scientific Interest and all of the other sites dotted around the country are able to adequately inform their ongoing work. I am very much of the opinion that, without the vital tool of numerical analysis, it must be incredibly difficult.

Conservation: Time For A New Approach

Posted on February 7, 2012 by izzy

It may surprise you to learn that, as a conservationist, I hold the view that the environment is an extremely valuable resource that can, and should, be utilised by society as much a possible. This is particularly true of the freshwater environment, which has always been vital in supporting human life. Although freshwater covers <6% of the Earth’s surface, humans have a long history of reliance upon it for survival. Wetlands provide drinking water, both directly and through aquifer recharge. Their ecosystems provide fish, support agriculture and forestry (particularly for Melaleauca Spp.) and provide fuel (peat) and forage resources. They are an important mode of transportation – canals can even be seen to have fueled the industrialisation of the developed world. They are increasingly being used to create power through hydroelectric schemes. They attract vast revenues through their provision of recreational activities. Furthermore, they can help to contribute to flood protection schemes, maintain their own water quality and potentially contribute to global carbon cycling. In short, there is a lot that we have to thank freshwater ecosystems for.

In return for all of this, we have caused dramatic loss and degradation to such ecosystems, particularly over the last 100 years. We drain them for domestic water supplies or to create agricultural land. We over-fish them or contaminate them with agricultural and industrial pollutants, changing the way in which the valuable ecosystems that they support function. Over time, we have massively depleted the resources provided by such ecosystems, and left our growing population clutching the paddle whilst the creek has run dry.

This is where the conservation bit comes in. Clearly, it is vital that we do our best to conserve and restore these resources so that we may continue our reliance upon them in the future. Freshwater ecosystems do, after all, self manage when they are not over-stressed. If the ecosystems are allowed to function as nature intended, most of the resources that they provide should not be finite.

So, now onto the big question: How do we do this? I feel that, somewhere along the line, conservationists have lost sight of the bigger picture. Too much work focuses on restoring ecosystems, as opposed to restoring ecosystem services. I suspect that this is mainly due to the intrinsic link between the two approaches that I hinted at above – if we can restore an ecosystem to its ‘original’ state (and who knows what that state may be, or even if it is appropriate within the context of the present) then hopefully the ecosystem services will fall back into place. Numerous pieces of international legislation, such as the Water Framework Directive, have therefore focused on concepts such as ‘good ecological status’, and management strategies seem to have become wholly absorbed in this as an end goal. The problem is that this end goal is somewhat abstract, since defining ‘good ecological status’ in environments that have been constantly changing and evolving over time is incredibly difficult.

Things are changing. Two weeks ago, the Natural History Museum streamed a fascinating debate entitled, ‘Can we put a price on nature?’ Their focus was on The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity project, which aims to bring the concept of directing conservation efforts towards the services which an ecosystem provides into mainstream decision-making. Interestingly, freshwater ecosystems were put under the microscope numerous times within the debate due to their obvious importance and the controversies that surround them.

The debate highlighted that there are still a lot of unanswered questions around taking a resource based approach to conservation. What are the dangers of turning nature into a commodity? Will it encourage the continuation of post-colonial patterns of resource exploitation? Will the removal of current strict environmental regulation based upon ecosystem restoration be destructive in the short term? Will politicians be willing to take such a potentially risky move within the current European political climate (e.g. the pressures of the Water Framework Directive)? Do we understand enough about the more complex services, such as global carbon cycling, to properly attribute a value to them? What happens when different shareholders place different values on conflicting resources (e.g. fish farmers wishing to use nutrient-rich fish food versus water companies wishing to extract clean water that is free from algal blooms)? However, the general consensus was, albeit slightly reluctantly, that the efforts of conservation do need to be less heavily driven by generalised policies like the Water Framework Directive and more specifically targeted towards goals appropriate to the individual waterbody. Perhaps a resource based approach can provide a unified framework for this new paradigm to operate within?

I would like to finish with a link to a video that I think sums up the problem perfectly. It features the valiant efforts of conservationists working on the River Don – an urban river in Sheffield – and their battle with plans to use the river to experiment with micro-hydropower schemes. Whilst I greatly respect the work that the conservationists have put in, I am feeling sceptical and would very much like to see an environmental cost-benefit analysis for this project. Based on the little information that I have, I am inclined to be of the following opinion: Urban rivers are notoriously difficult to ‘restore’, and the value of resources gained from such work is arguably relatively small when compared to the restoration of, say, an upland fishing lake. So surely it is a perfect river on which to run some small scale experiments? Not only for the benefit of the development of hydro-power schemes, but also as a small scale experiment in the deregulation of conservation.

Freshwater Conservation

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