Hide transcript Show transcript
Trying to fix that. But we will start at a minute past. Okay we are at a minute past. So we will start and hopefully people will join us as we're doing the introductions. Or I see that Jamie is in. Great. Glad you could get in Jamie, Sorry about that. So everybody, Welcome. We are really happy to have you here with us. here are some group norms up there. So just read that and as we're doing some introductions, what I would like you to share where you're Zooming from which classes you teach and one thing that brings you joy. So today is the third workshop in our series of four online workshops on climate science. And we're very happy that you could be here with us today. You are probably all Zoom experts by now. So I will not go through these, but if you have any questions, of course, please feel free to let us know. And now I will hand over to Kara to tell you who we are and what we do for those of you who are new to us and Kara before you can do that, can you please also start recording? Yes, I have started recording do you want to click forward one slide. There we go. So welcome everybody. We get so used to seeing familiar faces, which there's many on here today. But just for folks who haven't participated in the KBS K12 partnership before. Joelyn and I work for the Kellogg Biological Station, which is Michigan State University's largest off-campus Education and Research Center. And we're based down there and Southwest Michigan. Raise your hand if you've if you've visited before, we'll get, we'll get back to it someday. So it has a beautiful place. One of our largest outreach initiative is what we call the K12 partnership. And it started back in 1999. In the K12 Partnership, offers student experiences related to the science at KBS and teacher professional development experiences. And I'll throw a couple links into the chat to some of our current initiatives, including a whole new set of online programs just for students that we'd love for you to check out. So invite us into your, your classroom virtually, please. And all of this work is, is grant funded mostly from a large national Science Foundation grant for the long-term ecological research project. at KBS. So that supports teacher stipends, materials for programs and all the hospitality we get when we're on-site at KBS. So, so that's a little bit about our programs and I'll put some links in the chat. Thanks, Joelyn. All right, so Kara spoke about the partnership team. Right now, we're a group of five You've just met Kara. I am Joelyn. I am a science education and outreach fellow. And we have two other fellows with us this year as well, , and that's Kyle and Elizeth And Misty is the fifth member of our team and she is our community outreach assistant. Without wasting any more time. I would like to introduce you to our speaker for today, who is Dr. Bruno Basso who is an MSU Foundation Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences And hopefully he will show us some things he has learned today with this cool toys. You see one of his really fancy toys is right there in the picture with them. And I will hand it over to you now. And could you please start by introducing yourself and telling us one thing that brings you joy. So I'm going to stop sharing. Yeah, that's done. You’re still muted Bruno You are muted Bruno. Okay. Got it. Yeah. This is the sentence the year you're muted. Yeah. Anyway, so well, it's a pleasure to be here with you today. Let me just make sure you see the screen. Presentation mode. You do. Okay. Well, good afternoon everyone. My name is Bruno Basso. I'm MSU Foundation Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, as well as the Kellogg Biological Station. Like Kara, and Joelyn. Today, the sun brings me joy and sincerely, I am very happy to speak with you today because I value these types of Seminars and Communication. I again, put some effort in trying to make complex systems like the one that you'll be hearing about today, to make it as simple as possible. And so what I was asked to share with you was one of the critical aspect of deforestation in the context of climate change. But also bring you some positive at least, you know, solutions and technologies that could help us at least mitigate and adapt to climate change, climate variability and change. As you have learned so far from the previous speakers. I also wanted to bring you a perspective that it's very important. I had the pleasure to spend time pleasure in a sense, or be able to see a very useful component of research and in life in helping people that they are less fortunate in developing world as I lived in India. for a year, I go to Africa often as well as, less. I spent time at a summit and one of these United Nations centre's trying to again transfer the technology from all the things that we learn, whether a more advanced institution and make it available. So this sort of statement here, it says, you may have seen it, but it is, it is very real and problematic because it is, it's a paradox about how much food we have to produce under less water and the effect of climate change. Just want to give you a perspective again by walking you through deforestation, land use pattern. But how is our land covered? So 11 percent, which is about 1.5 billion hectares of the globe land surfaces is used for crop production. Arable land can play including also permanent crop. The, the world will need to to produce more food than has ever been produced in the last 10 thousand years. Just to give you some tangible results, agricultural uses, 70% of the global water withdrawals. So that's another aspect that even though we're focusing on the impact of climate, climate has such, a strong connection with all the other pieces of the system. And water being one of quantity as well as quality. And so in the sector or how much we basically how we grow things on agriculture, forestry, and land use together, depending on the different type of analysis, they emit about 19-24 percent of 52 billion tons of CO2 that we emit every year. And 18% of this cultivated land is irrigated. and where is it This irrigated land is 280 million hectares total and 200 millions or in developing world, which produce about 40% of the food harvest and 50 percent of the cereals. The problem is that in addition to all the facts, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization expects that this irrigation will expand, posing additional threats. And with expansion with 50 million hectares and in many places, water is not necessarily directly available, meaning use of energy and additional resources to be able to tap into that water. The again, just to give you a ballpark, this, I like to put the slides just to see where most of our calories come in. What are the, you know, the crops, they were highly affected as well as the percentage of the areas of the Earth covered. So cereals cover 70 percent of the planet, okay, 22 percent of corn or maize, 21 percent wheat and rice. And very little compared to the percentage of the others in terms of calorie, just to put it in perspective And those are the, really between maize and wheat , are the crops that we study the most, even here. at Michigan State and the type of research that we do in row crop agriculture. The, another fact is that unfortunately you may have heard and you’re probably familiar that 1 third of the food is wasted and that's completely unacceptable. The type of waste is different between the the more high income country which gets wasted post-processing like off the shelves versus the low-income country and developing countries where it gets spoiled. And so there is a significant amount of food waste that goes. And so the new, new trajectory is trying to bring circularity. And so you'll hear about that term in the future quite a bit more trying to make agriculture as circular as possible. And start going into the core of the talk here is that unfortunately we haven't done necessarily a good job in managing our land because this even belongs to us. We're losing some of the best lands to urbanization. It's not just in developing world. See suddenly in many places that it's because of population increase that we see, for example, I know for fact to that some of the best soils in Texas Huston and Dallas are being lost. I mean, this black deep. The best agricultural soils have been completely lost. To subdivisions. And in addition to forest fires degradation, and as you see there, palm oil and desertification, environmental threats. You'll hear more about that. You may have seen these slides in different ways, but just to tell you that if you look at on the upper corner, you see how temperature has changed. Just to see how, how big of a role we play versus natural evolution of climate. And so you can tell that clearly by the color when it was cooler, there was obviously years in the past it was really hot and not as many. And these are all the countries in the world and with the increases in temperature in any heard this from Dr. Robertson before, do you know how much temperature is changing? And I study quite a bit of that as well. And what type of temperature, the minimum or the maximum. And so you can see now all over how much of that changes in temperature are occurring. Europe being 1 of the hottest and what we have observed inMichigan, as I know you, you, you've learned about that, that even though the maximum temperature are decreasing, the minimum temperature and the night temperatures are increasing, doubled the amount. So the warming in the Midwest is coming mainly from increases in minimum temperature. I wanted to jump on in the, some of the things that I think may not be necessarily covered. Because it's interesting, as you see from, from that cycle in that graphic there about longer growing season. Well, climate with temperature increases, plays this double, double roll, which is because temperature increases as global warming, any process under higher temperature is faster. And so that will actually belong to the second, to the lower bottom where, we will have shorter growing season, okay? Because plants develop much faster. So the cycle of the same duration of cultivar, it's shorter. What is meant by longer growing season? It's the cold places have an extended season. And so, but in order to take advantage of that, you need to adapt. And adapting means, you need to choose different type of either plants or within the same plants or species different cultivars. So you could take advantage of the longer the time period. So you have, because the CO2 is increasing, CO2 as a natural fertilization, there is an increase in photosynthesis. So potentially we could see higher yield. Why are yields projected to be lower because of this actually reduction of the cycle. So unless adaptation comes in, we will not see much increase in yields. And that's really the, the, the path of the second, second part of the talk trying to bring some optimism to this major threats. And so increases in particular in precipitation as you may have heard, and not just the amount, but also the intensity. One of the tools Joelyn showed that the drone and you'll see plenty of that. But I also use satellite imagery. So if you pay attention here for just one few seconds, you basically see our planet breathing and dying so basically coming alive. You see the Northern Hemisphere getting greener, has the plants grow and go greener, greener and then when winter and fall comes. So we basically can monitor just about anything in the highest resolution from satellites. Now, this is at 100 meters pixels. But for a global, I use three meter resolution now on the ground every single day. So we can basically cover the field or anything. that we are interested in studying a landscape with very high resolution, with different sensors. and why can we rely on a system like this? So you'll hear a lot about the Amazon and see how it, when it's obviously gets greener or when the rest of the country goes because of the other hemisphere. But why can we use this type of sensing? Because that's an, a physical, natural principle. So you see those two lines. That's how we basically see the color and how planes reflect the light. And so this color that we monitor, blue, green, and red as the electromagnetic, and they're called the visible band. The line in black is a stressed plants. So when you see a higher reflection in the green, which means higher reflection, it's a lighter green is not as darker green. If it is a darker green, you know, is healthy, is adding full of nutrients and so on. If it is lighter, green is more pale than, and so on. We basically look at this number. And so when you get a pixel, we only look at numbers and see the difference between each of these. And so the green that is lighter shows unhealthy like the lack of nutrients of nitrogen. And also if they reflect high in the red band, that means the chlorophyll that is green. It's covered by carotenoids, xanthophylls So the reflectance is clearly showing that if it's in the middle of the season, it either annual peak(?) or it's telling us that it may be planted earlier and maybe senescing. Okay, So with this very general concept, we can separate, healthy plants from stressed plants. We also can detect the type of plants that are grown on the planet. Okay, so you will see the different type of ecosystems. You see number 12 in the Midwest crop land deciduous forest forest broad leaves on the Appalachians in the West Coast and, and the very dark green, the Amazon and the other places. Okay. We also through satellite, that's why I made that introduction of I a system scientist. So I integrate the knowledge of the environmental biophysics into what, what can we use, what tools, what can these tools do for us and how we can infer about this changes over space and time. So understanding these land use pattern and change. And this is a tree canopy from satellite. So by doing this, we can pretty much spy on anything we want to from above and we know exactly how many trees have been cut. And that's a major major issue. I see a raised hand is something that I need to answer from Jamie or is it I think that’s leftover from when I ask people to raise their hand if they had been to KBS. I see. Perfect. Okay. I just wanted to make sure yeah. As I make this talk really, really informal, I just want to make sure that people are following. So this is the picture that you would never, ever want to see. Okay? And I have I will I have a link there that I would like to share with you. I already have the thing. Open. Forests cover about 30%, just 3 minutes but please listen to it and create, play an essential role role in supporting life on Earth. The deforestation is clearing Earth’s forests on a massive scale. It at the current rate of destruction, the world's rainforests, could completely disappear within a 100 years. Why should we care about deforestation? Together, forestry and agriculture are responsible for 24 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, making deforestation a significant contributor. to Climate change, deforestation, impacts the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere in two ways first when trees are felled, they release the carbon they're storing into the atmosphere. Second, trees play a critical role in absorbing the greenhouse gases that few, global warning fewer forests mean larger amounts of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere and increase speed and severity of global warming. In addition to helping regulate the earth's climate, forests provide habitats for over 80 percent of the plants and animals that live on land. but Deforestation destroys these habitats, diminishing biodiversity. Some estimate that 4 to 6 thousand rain forest species go extinct each year. This also affects the more than 2 billion people who rely on forests as sources of food and shelter. The biggest driver of deforestation is agriculture. Farmers chop down trees in order to plant crops like soybeans, palm trees and cocoa, or to make room to raise livestock for beef. Logging operations, which provide the worlds of wood and paper products also cut countless trees each year. Forests are also destroyed as a result of growing urban sprawl as land is developed for dwellings, the effects of deforestation are grave but not irreversible. efforts such as managing forest resources, eliminating clear cutting in planting new trees to replace those removed are already being made to reduce deforestation's environmental impact on our planet. And while some plant and animal species are gone forever. Combatting deforestation can help prevent further loss of biodiversity. I just couldn't resist having such a clear message from from National Geographic. And to continue our conversation. As you have learned already, believe it or not, agriculture, which makes us really sad, is the, one of the drivers. And why is it so Because basically there is a, an interest in unfortunately not a good guidance in many ways from government. And I have another video that will cover some of those aspects. And how critical policies are, but It's basically to, these trees are cut to allow us to add additional areas for livestock And so this slide that will stay with you. It's very powerful because it will really show, it shows across the different ecosystem, across the different forest where, where are the drivers the primary causes of forest loss and the increased degradation. So you have livestock, you got large-scale agriculture. Very good example, as you will see, it's the reduction and deforestation of the Amazon for soybean fields in, in later and initially livestock. And soybean small-scale agriculture I have personally Participated and published work on in a project in Ghana where unfortunately they are basically. Burn and slash and burn these areas to grow both casava in yam this But those, those are really pushed for direct consumption. I mean, they need to, to eat and these are the fields that they cut there. So exploited by the resources that once, the cycle of the crop for a couple of years in a row of the same crop it doesn’t produce as much. They move, they move on to the next areas and they continue to cut those system. So our role in helping them do better on a small scale is critical. Logging, I mean, trying to, as you know, trying to recycle and use pulp in plantations for trees And there is a natural evolution even though fires will basically bring back it's more of a natural. But there are fires and charcoal and food in developing world mining infrastructure and hydro power Okay, So that gives, why are we basically doing cutting these trees. And this is a map of what are the areas under threat with the millions and millions of acres being exposed to this map of the deforestation And the, the interesting thing is that, like I said, because we can watch clearly what's happening. Look at the discrepancy, what a government reports as deforestation versus what we basically can spot from satellite and be able to see that significantly greater amount of tree cover loss. So there is a difference in there with the fires, but the rest is basically not necessarily reported 100 percent honestly. And So the why is so important you can read there forest as we all know, since, you know, little kids, they store amount of carbon, they take CO2 and release oxygen. Trees are critical in our ecosystem, but what is the impact of a loss? So the tropical forest is about 5 billion tons, close to 5 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, which is about eight to 10 percent of non-human emission of carbon dioxide. For topical forest. Again, these are additional statistics that the one that I really want to point out is that according to this analysis, the 8% of the world, the annual emissions. if we put it in the context of a country, tropical deforestation, where a country basically will be the third biggest emitter globally will be the sizes of the European Union, just from the amount of that component and again back to the 5 billion metric tons in practice because Growing middle-class population, higher request of meat consumption, and very inefficient way of producing calories. In many ways, we can not necessarily blame them. We basically used, there was our turn to eat meat Now there they having additional economic possibilities to do. And the first thing that they do from poverty is trying to eat more meat, which basically expands and requires more grains to feed the animals to the price of deforestation. The, the additional one slide back pardon. Is this other YouTube if I have I know we were gone. Maybe I could use few more minutes. Okay. Joelyn? Yeah, for sure. I found to be intriguing because people need to see what is really happening. And in South America tonight, an environmental problem of a much greater magnitude The destruction of the Amazon rainforests. A worldwide disaster. In the 1980’s the world learned that the Amazon was in danger. Trees are falling at a startling rate 77000 square miles. An area twice the size of Belgium. The size New York State. The size of California disappears. And why it was so important to save it. 20% of the world’s fresh water. Half of the species of life on earth are in these forests. An ecosystem the entire world needs for its survival By the1990's seemed like it was too late. Destruction accelerates. More than twice as fast than previously believed…virtually impossible to control.., they've already gone forever. Then something changed. The annual destruction rate of the Amazon rain forest has dropped by 70%. The lowest rate of of deforestation since since records began. Amazon could achieve the end of deforestation. Huge accomplishment. But in order to keep it safe. There is one conditional, protecting the forest is a continual process. Brazil will need to stay vigilant But it didn't. The Amazon is burning, consumed by fire, Fires have been raging thousands of fires are blazing, as more and more trees are cut down. Deforestation of the Amazon rain forest hits its highest rate in a decade. Today the amazon is being destroyed all over again. The question is can it be saved this time? The first wave of deforestation started in, in interest of time. That video, its just stunning, but it goes for 10 minutes and you could watch it on your own. I think it's very useful just because to tell you how it goes, what has changed once and they failed it. The new administration basically has allowed and pushed for these sorts of picture where basically they are allowing for soybeans in their statements that they are really scary and saying, The only Economy that is working is agriculture, we need to remove these tree so we can grow more soybeans and in really just shocking sorts of statements. And so you you can go through that. One thing that you may know or may not know right around our corner, near where we live. We do have a system and potentially some issues obviously with the way we grow the crops in. But there is quite a bit of research done to improve it how these corn and soybean rotation is grown. We are in the Midwest during the peak of photosynthesis time in the middle of the summer, the amount of CO2 fixed it out produces the Amazon. So this is a measured fluorescence. So the photosynthetic activities from nasa fluorescence satellites. And so you can see matches where corn is grown. You can basically follow the shapes on the map on the right. That is a recent corn growing areas and corn is the king of the crop and we have ways of reducing emissions in corn by doing the proper rotation and by some of the work down in I’m kind of, doing in the digital agricultural space by feeding the right amount of input to the crop rather than going on a blanket application of fertilizer in areas where it's not used efficiently. And so you, you may have seen this all over the media in a way I was fortunate enough to have this coverage in Forbes for the new digital agriculture where all these toys and tools like Joelyn said, they could help finding basically a way of applying the right amount or the right amount of water, the right amount of nutrients. Robotic cases coming together and the map there with the dots is a way of helping farmers getting additional sorts of income from a carbon farming. So from, from credits in addition to yields by a, by doing the right thing. So I'll go really quickly in the last few slides because I know time is short, but you need to be aware that when you we talk about agriculture there is, extreme variability, both in climate, in soils. I've listed some of them very simply. In the soil texture. One part of the field is sand, one part of the field is clay one-part of the field is shallow one is deep with the consequences of how much water and nutrients these areas can hold in topographic feature. So this is one of the fields that we work with from an image, from a drone that, that map has one inch resolution on the ground. So very variable. And we have learned that these areas could actually be managed much more efficiently and reduce greenhouse emissions, as you will see. So the, the talk now is in reducing abatement. From N2O emissions. As you heard from Dr. Robertson last week, the previous talk . One other thing is because the system is so complex as you've seen, we require system approach. We also use computer simulation models, which they are dynamic and biophysical. So there is a model that understand with all the signs in the domain knowledge. It’s in the soil And so we understand when rainfall occurs, what's the fate of the water, how, how roots grow, how they take up water on a daily basis on the computer. This, these sorts of models were actually designed several years ago. Pioneer crop model was actually from Michigan State, from the, my former PhD supervisor. And the model was actually sponsored by the US government to do some strategic work, let's say internationally and predict, trying to predict how much wheat was produced or Cs. And so with this in mind, we have sophisticated tools to be able to predict yields and understand not just yields, but the fate of the composition of the residues, emissions from decomposition and so on. So this is the map where now you are able, we're able to know how much it so you see a changing, those are the yields. Every square meter, we know how much corn was harvested in every single year. You'll see the map does not always look alike, right? So it varies and, and we have now a possibility of integrating these spatial and temporal analysis to understand how much variation occur in a field. But we also know that we can spray and we can apply inputs at such a high resolution in precise that this map here is not a Photoshop. It is, it is some, it's basically different cultivars of corn to be able to know to show how precise that the machine can basically be and the work of what we defined stability We have a knowledge of how much variability there is throughout the entire Midwest. And so I used with my colleagues, Dr. Robertson being coauthor also. Nasa Landsat imagery, common land unit. So basically the shape of the fire or the boundaries of the field. And we have learned that the areas that they always producing wealth, they take nitrogen and much more efficiently towards 75%. There's still some reduction. But the point I want to make here that this low-productivity areas, they don't use nitrogen efficiently, only about 45 So if you apply a 100, 55 kilograms are lost, meaning in the groundwater or quality impacts as well as greenhouse gas emissions. So with this in mind, now, we are able to basically know how much surplus is pretty much on any field. The cost of the surplus we know how the landscape is partitioned how much is water that effected by water deficit versus amount of areas where there's accumulation of water. And we can quantify and depending on if it's a wet year or a dry year, how much of the reduction is due to either access order of, or deficit. And we scale it across the whole midwest. And so at the moment. To conclude, we have a way of basically placing at the center profitability of the through these maps. And we know the areas that respond to nitrogen. So the graphics here, to be really simple. The box it in yellow are the low and stable zone. So these are measure studies where we put nitrogen in variable rates and low and stable zone basically, to show this is the uniform application that despite the fact that receive the same amount of the blue zone, always produce a lower amount. And so we have a knowledge now what part of these fields could go to biodiversity and bioenergy crops, alternative blend use that will bring carbon from the atmosphere, store it the soil, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That's done through what we call prescription maps. So we are the doctor writing a prescription that goes into the tractor. The tractor as it drives applies different amount of fertilizer in different areas says it’s like if you you go into a party and you see people, no one will eat the same amount of food depending on the needs needs and the sizes. And so we basically create these and distribute to a large group of farmers prescription maps. This is an example of a map that is coming up from the tractor. That's what how much nitrogen was applied with our technology. The how much nitrogen was saved, and how many credits of carbon were saved, and potentially how much money they can make just by saving on a market, by just reducing the greenhouse gas emissions. So we have this separation now, areas that could receive nitrogen differently or unproductive areas that will go to precision conservation. And so with that, I, I basically wanted to conclude that we can model the entire the fate of our management system. So instead of going from conventional tillage, as you heard last week from dr. Robertson about tillage in a meeting, what if I do cover crop and I do no tillage? So we can quantify through these tools and still be able to let students and keep know how much this system are able to quantify and validate what we find. And we, because of that, we can now point you find a beneficial impact of adapting what, which I started with. For example, choosing a different cultivar different kernel number because the weather is still very variable, but on a tendency by adapting, we have much more, basically possibility of increasing With this, I want to conclude that the map on the left is, the table on the left is critical for you to understand that deforestation is pushed by pressure of incomes and wrong policies. The impacts, are enormous we do have solution that wherever we grow food, we could do a better job. But the core is also in policy and analysis. So with that, all the work that I do want to recognize, obviously the funders and this really talented and committed group of people that work in my lab to make all this advancement in research possible. With that, I'll stop and I'm happy to ask any questions that you may have. Thank you so much, Bruno, That was really great. So since we are a small group, if you have any questions, just please feel free to unmute yourself and ask your questions yourself instead of putting it in the chat. But if you are more comfortable, with me reading out your questions by putting it in the chat, that is also an option. So Jamie has a question in the chat Bruno and she wanted to know more about your, or what do you think about palm oil and so how the effects of that I believe it or not had I had the pleasure and the unpleasure to visit Malaysia, which is one of the places that basically palm oil is grown. The answer, there is certainly not a sustainable business from our point of view, from a more of a global point of view. It is a very sustainable business for governments like Malaysia where they make a large amount of money. So depending on how the question is oriented, I went there actually to find alternatives of areas that they shouldn’t be basically deforested or if they had to push for certain mandatory demand of this palm oil, which areas at least were not the ones to be cut or to be used. So not prime land that could be used for alternative land use Because sometimes I think the answer again is, being able to support the right level of policies. It's very delicate Because when, when these areas generate money and feed people and becomes much, much more complex. And so the tools through satellites, That's what basically why I went there to know this is an area that anything can grow here, but not all the other crops. So if you had to do that, then potentially those are the areas that could be use proxies to palm oil. Obviously, there are several. But to tell me the truth, I mean, we like shampoos, right? We like cosmetics were like that's where it says basically used the most we can be without. It's not and we're going to boycott and we want you to do shampoo anymore. But that, that's, and I know I'm not giving you a satisfying answer, but it is a major environmental basically disaster. If you want to say that. As we are waiting for another question, Bruno, I have a question for you. You spoke about some of your work with Ghana and the farmers doing slash and burn to grow cassava. And so this is basically like what we would think of subsistence agriculture. They're doing it to feed themselves. So if we tell them not to do it, that means they can't feed their families and there's a problem there. So what sort of solutions when we get to equity, what sort of solutions might there be to such a situation? Exactly. So well, because I'm a scientist, is the solution that we were trying to offer and we published that. Was that the yam could benefit by rotating with a legume crop so you wouldn't deplete it. You wouldn't take all the nutrients from the soil. But being, because the yam and cassava are tuber roots, they will benefit from having this pigeon pea basically that could grow together and not necessarily as an, as an additional source of food throughout the year, but to return residues and beyond. So the questions with this sort of project, where can we build soil carbon can, because you have, it's the equivalent to say, do you want to teach them how to fish and not give them the fish because. So the subsidies of saying okay, here is this, then it will be infinite, right? So we wanted to make sure that the soil carbon could been built and the nitrogen from legumes. And they could understand this concept that will basically slowly resonate with them. And they could see reflected in better yields because they get a greater yield. So the answer is by getting a greater yield, you already reducing the indirect land use by going in and cutting forests because you didn't produce as much on the years before. So remember this world of indirect land use is very important because whatever you need to produce in one place, if you don't, if you're not able to do it and increase those yields, that will go someplace else. So our point was to help them manage the fields with rotations and legumes in scale that through remote sensing and modeling across the different countries the different parts of the countries in Ghana. Thank you. James, would you like to ask your question? Would you like me to read it or you want me to read it? Okay. So James wanted to know that when crops are consumed, isn't the carbon eventually released? So we assume that crops trap some carbon, what happens to that? Yes. So obviously that's the way of life we produce carbon. But remember of the biomass that we produce, let's say more of a direct consumption of a, of a wheat plant that gets transformed and it becomes bread and we eat the bread. That's an, that's a net negative. It's, it's basically net you the amount that has been sequestered. It's used to, so it's not emitted. It doesn't bring more CO2 into the atmosphere because itwas pulled down at the first place. What we want to do is the part that we do not use, which is the roots and the biomass stay in the soil and they will bring soil carbon sequestration. So the biomass that's not. So if you do that, the balance, the bread that we eat yes, eventually is basically lost because we use it and it's part of the energy, but there is at the roots and the rest of the residues being pulled out as photosynthesis. And they stay in the atmosphere. They're not released back. So that the bread is net like it doesn’t increases and you have a positive sequestration by pulling this the rest of the, the, the, the, the plants basically in. So the goal of when you hear these regenerative practices, we want to grow cover crops. Cover crops. Pull nitrogen from the atmosphere and they're not used, they stay in the soil. So that's carbon that is retained and is basically builds. that'ss why there is three times more carbon in soils then plants, atmospheres, and forests, put together. Thank you Bruno Do We have any other questions? Yes JoEllen. Would you like to unmute yourself, please? I was wondering Bruno two questions. Please. What are what is the best cover crops that we know of? Well, the answer would be it depends in Michigan, then you would have a range by cover crop. We, we prefer to use the word of mixing because as a two families of the grasses, the cereals, you can certainly consider a grass to be more just, kind of easy to grow. But if you mix with a legume, then you feed, you, produce nitrogen that feeds the cover crop. So I would say mixes the temperature. We doing actually a study across the entire Midwest or the different species. So it can be cruciferous like a Brassica, could be, you know, Rye? So simply, any by cover crop is define the crop that is able to cover, to creep, keep the soil green. In fact, there's this tendency to evaluate now the way the farmers manage their land by the number of days said that their field is green. And that, that almost doesn't matter. What what are you using because as long you don't pull it out, you just basically retained in the soil. But the answer is basically mixing grasses and legumes. And along those same lines you keep mentioning cereals is it because you work for Kellogg Biological Station. Now. But you say though, the cereals, is that just figuratively when your area or you just see because it's a corn, rice and no cereals actually, it's a term that we need to clarify. Cereals defines any grain that can be stored dry . Not The cereals we eat at breakfast. Grain, cereal. This is synonymous of grasses, but they'd have to have grains that can be stored and dry. That's the proper definition of a cereal crop, but it's not that produces the food for breakfast. Thank you. You're very welcome. Thank you very much for your questions. And if you have any other questions and you all you think of any other questions, please feel free to send them to us and we will see how best we can get them answered. Before we move on, I'd like to say a big thank you to Bruno again. Thank you so much Bruno for taking this time and being with us and giving us all this information, as well as answering all the questions. I want to thank you for inviting me, but I want to thank the teachers for for teaching our kids and we're so happy of your work and please continue to do. It's just novel job and my mother, was a retired now, but was a school teacher. So I have the greatest respect, admiration. And it should just that governments should prioritize education when you know more than anything. So thanks for your work. Thank you. Thank you, Bruno, now can I go or do you need me more? We would would appreciate if you would share your PowerPoint, , if you could email it to me I will make it available to the teachers. Yes. Yes, No. I didn't know if I need to stay and you do other business. Okay. Now. Thank you for that. Thank you. Okay. I'm gonna share my screen now. I apologize that you are seeing my whole screen and not just the, not just the presentation mode, but I feel this will be a little more efficient. So as I said, I've kept saying. These workshops are to help you build confidence to Teach climate science. One of the tools that you can use in your classroom, to teach climate science is this EnROADs interactive And in the last two workshops, we showed you certain features about it. And today I will show you something else. This is not I'm not showing you how to teach using using the interactive We will do that in summer so make sure that you join us for our summer institute where we will be teaching you on how you can use this in your classroom. But this is for your information. Kara has put the link in the chat. So if you want to play along as I'm showing you, please feel free. So when you open the link, basically what you would see is this interactive. . It has two major graphs on top and the various various inputs that go into the model that decides , these predictions. Now what I'm going to do is instead of having a graph that shows me greenhouse gas emissions, I am going to change that to show the temperature change, which is basically what we are interested in. We are interested in knowing how the temperature is going to change. The two lines that you see here are the lines that we don't want to cross. We basically do not want to cross that. This is a point of no return you can think of. And our aim is to try and bring this blue line as low as it possibly can. The black line indicates business as usual. I'm also going to change the graph on the left-hand side. And we will look at effects of carbon dioxide emission and removal. If you were here with us for our first talk and you were Lindsey Kemmerling had spoken to us about the two things we need to do to ensure that, you know, we are doing the best we can to fight global climate change. One is we need to stop putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And two is we need to take it out. So these two lines there the red one will show how much carbon dioxide we are putting into the atmosphere. And the blue one will show you how much we are taking out. So let's just use today's example of deforestation and see what happens to these, all these lines. So if we look at deforestation, what we want to do is of course decreasing and not increase it. If I decrease it, have a look at what is happening to the red and the blue lines in the left graph and the big blue line in the right graph. So basically what is happening is carbon dioxide emissions are coming down and the blue the temperature is also predictions are also slightly coming down. Not enough of course, but you can see the effect of this. However, at the same time, I also increase afforestation So I increase the area that is under forest. That does a little bit more to help the situation, if you were here with us last time when Phil was talking to us about carbon sequestration in the soil. As Bruno mentioned it today as well. That is what we call technological carbon removal. And if we increase the amount of carbon that is sequestered in the soil, either through our agriculture or through other means. Look at what's going to happen to the lines there. And you can see this has a much bigger effect on both the carbon dioxide removal. It decreases the carbon dioxide and decreases the temperatures as well. So these are the few things that I wanted to point out to you today. The one other thing that I would like you to go and look for yourself is if you click these three lines here and then click the I over here This gives you a lot more detail about what deforestation actually is. And this is the part that I wanted to highlight, the equity considerations, especially because of our conversation that we just had about what happens in developing countries and what the land is basically used for. So this is what I wanted to share with you. I hope you get to play with this a little bit at home when you have some time. The next thing that I want to share with you is this Padlet. I’ve shared this with you before. This is a list of resources that we have for you that can help you both teach climate science and learn more about climate science for yourself. So we have lots of lesson plans here, as well as links to books and videos that will help you educate yourself better. And Kara will put the link right now in the chat as well. Our last two workshops, if you, if you missed them for some reason we have the links to the videos here in the Padlet, so feel free to go and look at them. I will also be putting up this video as soon as it is ready to the Padlet as well, that could just take a few. It'll take a little bit. Two weeks from today. On the ninth of March, we will have our final workshop in the series. And since it is one day after International Women's Day, we thought it was fitting that a woman scientist talk to us. And so we will have Carolina Cordova talking to us about clean energy from greener crops and the registration link Kara, will be putting that in the chat right now. So if you could, if you could register for that, that will be great as well. Before we go to this, I would really want to make An appeal. Your feedback is what we use to design our programming and to justify the funding that the university gives us to have this programming. So Kara is going to put the link to the feedback form in the chat right now. And so if you could take a few minutes after we stop this to just give us your feedback, your honest feedback as to what worked, what didn't work, and any other questions. And we would really be grateful. Kara is also putting a link to a form that will help you apply for a stipend and your Continuing Education hours. If you are a Michigan in-service teacher, we will provide you with that. So please fill out the feedback form that will really help us. And if you need to apply for a stipend, please apply for that as well. We have one minute left and I'm going to give you 30 seconds right now to reflect on what you have learned today and how you might be able to use that either in your classroom or in your life. If you just want to think to yourself, that's fine. If you want to share this with us in the chat, that's fine as well. And I will just give you some time now. All right. Thank you. We really appreciate you being here. I have opened the evaluation form. I had forgotten that I had not opened yet. I've just opened it. I will we will put the link back again in the chat right now. And thank you so much for being here. I apologize for going one minute over. Thank you again. Everybody. I hope that feedback form works now. Cool. Thanks, Molly. Thanks Sean. Thank you. Wow, it's nice to spend an hour with you. Even if it’s on zoom thank you bye all Kara could you stop recording. Yeah

Climate Science Series: Climate Change Impacts on Agriculture and Natural Resources. February 23, 2021. KBS K-12 Partnership

From Kara Haas February 24th, 2021  

10 plays 0 comments

Related Media

Back
 Add a comment