Drivers of CO2 along a mangrove-seagrass transect in a tropical bay: Delayed groundwater seepage and seagrass uptake
Drivers of CO2 along a mangrove-seagrass transect in a tropical bay: Delayed groundwater seepage and seagrass uptake
08 February, 2019
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Water-to-air carbon dioxide fluxes from tropical coastal waters are an important but understudied component of the marine carbon budget. Here, we investigate drivers of carbon dioxide partial pressure (pCO2) in a relatively pristine mangrove-seagrass embayment on a tropical island (Bali, Indonesia). Observations were performed over eight underway seasonal surveys and a fixed location time series for 55 h. There was a large spatial variability of pCO2 across the continuum of mangrove forests, seagrass meadows and the coastal ocean. Overall, the embayment waters surrounded by mangroves released CO2 to the atmosphere with a net flux rate of 18.1 ± 5.8 mmol m-2 d-1. Seagrass beds produced an overall CO2 net flux rate of 2.5 ± 3.4 mmol m-2 d-1, although 2 out of 8 surveys revealed a sink of CO2 in the seagrass area. The mouth of the bay where coral calcification occurs was a minor source of CO2 (0.3 ± 0.4 mmol m-2 d-1). The overall average CO2 flux to the atmosphere along the transect was 9.8 ± 6.0 mmol m-2 d-1, or 3.6 × 103 mol d-1 CO2 when upscaled to the entire embayment area. There were no clear seasonal patterns in contrast to better studied temperate systems. pCO2 significantly correlated with antecedent rainfall and the natural groundwater tracer radon (222Rn) during each survey. We suggest that the CO2 source in the mangrove dominated upper bay was associated with delayed groundwater inputs, and a shifting CO2 source-sink in the lower bay was driven by the uptake of CO2 by seagrass and mixing with oceanic waters. This differs from modified landscapes where potential uptake of CO2 is weakened due to the degradation of seagrass beds, or emissions are increased due to drainage of coastal wetlands.
Forests are key to combating world's looming water crisis, says new GFEP report
Forests are key to combating world’s looming water crisis, says new GFEP report
19 July, 2018
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Rain clouds hover over a forest in Yen Bai, Vietnam. Photo by Rob Finlayson/ICRAF
The world is facing a growing water crisis: already, 40 percent of the world’s population are affected by water scarcity, and climate change threatens to increase the frequency of both floods and droughts in vulnerable areas around the world.
Forest and Water on a Changing Planet: Vulnerability, Adaptation and Governance Opportunities presents a comprehensive global assessment of available scientific information about the interactions between forests and water, and was prepared by the Global Forest Expert Panel (GFEP) on Forests and Water, an initiative of the Collaborative Partnership on Forests led by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO).
“In the assessment, we focused on the following key questions: Do forests matter? Who is responsible and what should be done? How can progress be made and measured?” said panel cochair and Meine van Noordwijk of the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) – a member of IUFRO – and Wageningen University, Netherlands. Van Noordwijk is also a former research leader at the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA)
The role of forests in the water cycle is at least as important as their role in the carbon cycle in the face of climate change. In addition to being the lungs of the planet, they also act as kidneys.
Xu Jianchu of ICRAF noted that, “while public attention has tended to focus on forests’ potential as carbon sinks, from a local perspective water is often a greater priority.”
An agroforestry area is pictured in Sierra Leone. Photo by ICRAF
Carbon-centered forestation strategies could have significant consequences on water resources; in some cases, efforts to increase carbon storage using fast-growing trees have had a negative impact on local water supplies.
According to Xu, who contributed to several chapters in the report, looking at the climate-forests-water-people system as a whole could help formulate policies that address both local priorities and global targets such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
For example, water-sensitive land management policies in the Hindu Kush and Himalayas have successfully revived natural springs which are a critical source of water for local communities.
As noted by panel co-chair Irena Creed of the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, “natural forests, in particular, contribute to sustainable water supplies for people in the face of growing risks. And it is also possible to actively manage forests for water resilience.”
The report also calls for nuance in both scientific assessments of forests and policy-making. Rather than simply classifying land cover as ‘forest’ or ‘non-forest’, for example, the publication emphasizes the need to pay attention to forest quality and how trees are arranged within a watershed.
In Vietnam’s Huong River Basin, the intensification of traditional swidden-fallow systems from 1989 to 2008 was not an explicit change in land use but it still had major consequences for water flows. Over that same period of time, forests in the headwaters of the basin recovered and expanded, which would ordinarily be expected to mitigate the risk of floods. Yet intensification of the swidden systems overwhelmed these effects and in fact exacerbated flooding.
The report concludes by identifying a clear policy gap in climate-forest-water relations and calls for a series of regional or continental studies to complement and extend the current global assessment.
Filling this gap will not be a simple process, and the authors highlight the fact that any process for managing the trade-offs inherent in forest management must fully consider the wellbeing of local, indigenous and other vulnerable communities. To that end, social and environmental justice must be integrated into climate-forest-water policies, and stronger participatory approaches are needed to ensure that policy goals are sustainable and equitable.
By Andrew Stevenson, originally published at ICRAF’s Agroforestry World.
The IUFRO-led Global Forest Expert Panel initiative of the Collaborative Partnership on Forests established the Expert Panel on Forests and Water to provide policy makers with a stronger scientific basis for their decisions and to specifically inform international policy processes and discussions on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the related Sustainable Development Goals.
The International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) is the only world-wide organization devoted to forest research and related sciences. Its members are research institutions, universities and individual scientists as well as decision-making authorities and others with a focus on forests and trees.
Estimating water user demand for certification of forest watershed services
Estimating water user demand for certification of forest watershed services
11 April, 2018
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Eco-certification is one solution to the common problem of verification of delivery of services in payment for ecosystem services (PES) schemes. Certification incurs costs, which may limit uptake, so it should be able to benefit users of certified services for it succeeds. In part to inform a project targeting expansion of the Forest Stewardship Council’s forest management certification to include ecosystem services, we tested market demand for a potential certification scheme for watershed services. Using choice experiments among end-users of water subject to an existing PES scheme in Lombok, Indonesia, we assessed potential business values of certification. Our results suggested that preferred business values included credible information disclosure on improved water quality, reduced flood risk, environmental safeguards, and/or social safeguards of the upstream forests. These preferences indicate potential demand for a certification of forest watershed services designed to provide such information to end users.
Climate change is a reality and, for those most affected by it, it is often experienced as a change in the most basic commodity: water. Drawing on the insights of farmers and local communities, this session examines the role of forests in regulating the water cycle.
New research suggests that vegetation plays a critical role in the frequency and intensity of rainfall. This discussion forum will explore the implications on the many areas affected by these effects — land restoration, water management and climate change adaptation — toward an integrated approach for land/water and climate for the SDGs.
The discussion forum will build on a successful online symposium that took place in May 2017. The discussion will also discuss highlights of the current Global Forest Expert Panel (GFEP) on forests and water, which is expected to issue a policy relevant global assessment report in the first half of 2018.
Integrated natural resource management as pathway to poverty reduction: Innovating practices, institutions and policies
Integrated natural resource management as pathway to poverty reduction: Innovating practices, institutions and policies
03 November, 2017
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Poverty has many faces and poverty reduction many pathways in different contexts. Lack of food and income interact with lack of access to water, energy, protection from floods, voice, rights and recognition. Among the pathways by which agricultural research can increase rural prosperity, integrated natural resource management deals with a complex nexus of issues, with tradeoffs among issues that are in various stages of denial, recognition, analysis, innovation, scenario synthesis and creation of platforms for (policy) change.
Rather than on a portfolio of externally developed ‘solutions’ ready for adoption and use, the concept of sustainable development may primarily hinge on the strengths and weaknesses of local communities to observe, analyse, innovate, connect, organize collective action and become part of wider coalitions. ‘Boundary work’ supporting such efforts can help resolve issues in a polycentric governance context, especially where incomplete understanding and knowledge prevent potential win-win alternatives to current lose-lose conflicts to emerge. Integrated research-development approaches deal with context (‘theory of place’) and options (‘theory of change’) in multiple ways that vary from selecting sites for studying pre-defined issues to starting from whatever issue deserves prominence in a given location of interest.
A knowledge-to-action linkage typology recognizes three situations of increasing complexity. In Type I more knowledge can directly lead to action by a single decision maker; in Type II more knowledge can inform tradeoff decisions, while in Type III negotiation support of multiple knowledge + multiple decision maker settings deals with a higher level of complexity. Current impact quantification can deal with the first, is challenged in the second and inadequate in the third case, dealing with complex social-ecological systems. Impact-oriented funding may focus on Type I and miss the opportunities for the larger ultimate impact of Type II and III involvements.
Accurate crop yield predictions from modelling tree-crop interactions in gliricidia-maize agroforestry
Accurate crop yield predictions from modelling tree-crop interactions in gliricidia-maize agroforestry
22 August, 2017
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Agroforestry systems, containing mixtures of trees and crops, are often promoted because the net effect of interactions between woody and herbaceous components is thought to be positive if evaluated over the long term. From a modelling perspective, agroforestry has received much less attention than monocultures. However, for the potential of agroforestry to impact food security in Africa to be fully evaluated, models are required that accurately predict crop yields in the presence of trees.
The positive effects of the fertiliser tree gliricidia (Gliricidia sepium) on maize (Zea mays) are well documented and use of this tree-crop combination to increase crop production is expanding in several African countries. Simulation of gliricidia-maize interactions can complement field trials by predicting crop response across a broader range of contexts than can be achieved by experimentation alone. We tested a model developed within the APSIM framework. APSIM models are widely used for one dimensional (1D), process-based simulation of crops such as maize and wheat in monoculture. The Next Generation version of APSIM was used here to test a 2D agroforestry model where maize growth and yield varied spatially in response to interactions with gliricidia.
The simulations were done using data for gliricidia-maize interactions over two years (short-term) in Kenya and 11 years (long-term) in Malawi, with differing proportions of trees and crops and contrasting management. Predictions were compared with observations for maize grain yield, and soil water content. Simulations in Kenya were in agreement with observed yields reflecting lower observed maize germination in rows close to gliricidia. Soil water content was also adequately simulated, except for a tendency for slower simulated drying of the soil profile each season. Simulated maize yields in Malawi were also in agreement with observations.
Trends in soil carbon over a decade were similar to those measured, but could not be statistically evaluated. These results show that the agroforestry model in APSIM Next Generation adequately represented tree-crop interactions in these two contrasting agro-ecological conditions and agroforestry practices. Further testing of the model is warranted to explore tree-crop interactions under a wider range of environmental conditions.
Gendered Responses to Drought in Yunnan Province, China
Gendered Responses to Drought in Yunnan Province, China
21 August, 2017
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Vulnerability to and perceptions of climate change may be significantly affected by gender. However, in China, gender is rarely addressed in climate adaption or resource management strategies. This paper demonstrates the relevance of gender in responses to climate change in the mountainous province of Yunnan in southwest China.
Based on surveys undertaken during a record-breaking drought, the paper explores how women and men in a village in Baoshan Prefecture differ in their perceptions of and responses to drought, and how the changing roles of women and men in the home and the community are influencing water management at the village level.
Our results show that despite the increasingly active role of women in managing water during the drought, they are excluded from community-level decision-making about water. The paper argues that given the importance of gender differences in perceptions of and responses to drought, the lack of a gender perspective in Chinese policy may undermine efforts to support local resource management and climate adaptation.
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Wet season view across the Madre de Dios river, Puerto Maldonado, Peru. Photo by Kate Evans for Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).
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By Kate Evans, originally published at CIFOR’s Forests News
Marking World Water Day on 22 March, we are highlighting the essential links between forests and water. For more on this topic, check in to the live stream of the virtual symposium ‘Cool insights for a hot world’, hosted on 21-22 March 2017 by the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA).
New research has revealed a multitude of ways in which forests create rain and cool local climates, urging a closer look at forests’ capabilities beyond just climate change mitigation.
In a recent paper, 22 researchers from as many diverse institutions, call for a paradigm shift in the way the international community views forests and trees, from a carbon-centric model to one that recognizes their importance in cross-continental water cycles, as well as at the local scale.
“People are used to hearing the idea that forests are really important, but we now have a much deeper insight into why the loss of forest cover can have such a huge impact on water availability- especially for people downwind,” says study co-author Douglas Sheil from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences.
“The links are so much stronger than people previously thought. And if policymakers and land use planners are not aware of that, that’s a huge shortfall in decision making.”
So what exactly do we now know about forests and water?
Wet season view across the Madre de Dios river, Puerto Maldonado, Peru. Photo by Kate Evans for Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).
Forests help raindrops form
Every day, forests replenish the supply of water vapour in the atmosphere. They draw up water through their roots, and release it from their leaves via transpiration. Along with evaporation from oceans and other water bodies, this is what drives the water cycle and charges the atmosphere with water vapor.
“The process is so powerful that it can be seen from space,” says co-author David Gaveau from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). “If you look at satellite images [above] of the Amazon, central Africa, or Southeast Asia, you can see these flashes of water vapor bubbling up.”
“We use the phrase ‘lungs of the planet’ all the time, but here you can really see this natural rhythm of forests actually breathing water vapor into the atmosphere.”
Recent studies have shown that as much as 70 percent of the atmospheric moisture generated over land areas comes from plants (as opposed to evaporation from lakes or rivers) – much more than previously thought.
In addition, new research has revealed that forests also play a key role in water vapor actually forming clouds and then falling as rain.
Trees emit aerosols that contain tiny biological particles – fungal spores, pollen, microorganisms and general biological debris – that are swept up into the atmosphere. Rain can only fall when atmospheric water condensates into droplets, and these tiny particles make that easier by providing surfaces for the water to condense onto.
Some of these plant-based microorganisms even help water molecules to freeze at higher temperatures – a crucial step for cloud formation in temperate zones.
“These particles are incredibly important for the occurrence of rainfall in the first place,” says the study’s lead author David Ellison, from Ellison Consulting and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. “If they’re missing, rainfall might not occur, or will occur less frequently.”
Trees can actually increase local water availability
Though the accepted orthodoxy is that trees remove water from catchments, and that planting trees reduces water availability for local people, another “game-changing” study has turned that assumption on its head.
“In a water-short environment, where people are digging their wells ever deeper because the groundwater is disappearing, it was believed that there’s a trade-off between planting trees and the water people need,” says Sheil. “A lot of donors have avoided supporting tree-planting in arid parts of the world because they see this as a conflict.”
But research conducted by Ulrik Ilstedt from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, one of the study’s co-authors, has shown that in dry landscapes, trees (at some densities) can actually increase the availability of water, by assisting with groundwater recharge.
“What Ulrik has showed is that in the drylands of Africa, if you start planting trees you get an initial rise in the amount water in the landscape, because the trees actually use less water than the amount of additional water they allow to infiltrate through the soil,” Sheil says.
Tree roots – and the animals they attract like ants, termites and worms – help to create holes in the soil for the water to flow through.
“It’s pretty exciting,” says Sheil. “In huge areas of Africa, people can now start to plant trees. If you’re only interested in carbon, there are still lots of carbon benefits,” he says. “This is a win-win in every sense.”
Forests cool locally and globally
In tropical and temperate regions, forests cool the earth’s surface. It’s not just that they provide shade – the water they transpire also cools the air nearby.
“One single tree is equivalent to two air conditioners, and can reduce the temperature by up to 2 degrees,” says study author Daniel Murdiyarso, from CIFOR.
Maintaining tree cover can therefore reduce high temperatures and buffer some of the extremes likely to arise with climate change, the authors say.
The effect can even be seen in urban environments, says Gaveau. “We all feel it – if you go to the park on a hot day, and you go under a tree, you’ll feel the cooling effect.”
Forests may draw moisture into the heart of continents
The authors also draw attention to a recent theory that proposes that forests create winds, bringing rain into the heart of continents – and that without continuous forest cover from the coast to the interior, rainfall would drastically diminish.
The ‘biotic pump’ theory includes physical mechanisms not present in current climate models, and still hasn’t been proven, but scientists from CIFOR believe it is credible.
The model proposes that forests generate low atmospheric pressure, sucking moist air inland from the ocean, creating a positive feedback loop.
“One value of this theory is that it allows us to explain how we can get really high rainfall in the interior of continents – the Amazon Basin in South America and the Congo Basin in Africa – when the original source of water, the ocean, is so far from where the rain is falling,” says Sheil.
Another of the study’s authors, Dominick Spracklen, has previously showed that across most of the tropics, air that has passed over extensive vegetation in the preceding few days produces at least twice as much rain as air that has passed over little vegetation – showing the immediate effect of deforestation on rainfall patterns.
Forests affect water availability downwind – not just downstream
The atmospheric moisture generated by forests doesn’t just stay in the local catchment. In fact, most of it is blown by prevailing winds into other regions, countries, or even continents.
“The more that you remove forests and other vegetation cover from terrestrial surfaces, the more you damage that cross-continental water transport,” says Ellison.
That has geo-political consequences that are not yet well understood.
“We want people to start to think in terms of ‘upwind and downwind’ dynamics. Where does your water come from, and how much does the catchment basin that you’re a part of contribute to downwind rainfall?”
“If you’re a land-use planner or a water management planner, what happens if you remove forests? How does that impact people downwind? If you’re in a catchment with a declining water supply, how might you influence that through upwind interventions?”
These questions require extensive collaboration between countries, new institutional frameworks that don’t currently exist, and new ways of thinking about water catchments.
For example, an international partnership called the Nile River Basin Initiative currently only includes the countries that are part of the actual Nile catchment basin and use its water, Ellison says. But the central African countries where the rain comes from are not involved.
“So then the question becomes, who should be involved in the management of a catchment basin, if the source countries for the moisture are somewhere else? How can they be included? Can you get them to recognise that what goes on in their country may be closely connect to what happens in yours?”
“You can easily understand how this leads to dilemmas,” he says.
A call to action
The link between forests and climate is intuitive, and easily understood by everyone, says Gaveau. “When you look at the morning mist rising from a forest, you see that forests are transpiring water vapor. If you sit under a tree on a hot day in a city, you’ll feel cooler.”
“At the moment, the nexus between forests and water is sort of treated as a co-benefit to the carbon story, but it should be front and center. Carbon can seem abstract to many people, but a glass of drinking water – that’s a tangible thing.”
Given the mounting scientific evidence for just how strong this connection is, the study’s numerous authors have issued a “call to action”.
We need a new way of looking at forests that prioritizes water, they argue – even within the global climate change framework.
Protecting forests to ensure access to water will inevitably also increase carbon storage, mitigate climate change, and have other immediate benefits, says Murdiyarso.
“If you are talking about carbon, you will see the results in 15, 50, or 100 years. But we see these cycling processes of water every day.”
“Hopefully, this approach can shift the paradigm, and the course of the debate on climate change adaptation and mitigation.”
Restoration 
Plantations and tree crop commodities 
Enhanced nutrition and food security 
Biodiversity, safeguarding and conservation 
Nationally determined contributions 
Bioenergy and biomaterials 
Blue carbon and peatlands 
Climate change adaptation 
Landscape governance 
Gender 
Silvopastoral systems 
Market-based agroforestry-forestry 
Farm-forest policy interface 
Agroecology 
Livelihood trajectory modelling and assessment 
Inclusive finance and business models 
Innovating finance for sustainable landscapes 
Public and private commitments to zero deforestation 
Orphan tree crops 
Effectiveness of approaches to sustainable supply 
Quality of FTA research for development 
Sentinel landscapes 
Foresight 
Seeds and seedlings delivery systems 
Smallholder tree-crop commodities 
