Wanka Puriy is a deeply spiritual man in his late thirties. Originally from the Philippines, he moved to Manitoba, Canada where he studied to become a soil engineer, and then worked as one for several years. After reaching a low point, however, a physical therapist encouraged him to visit a man named Antaurko, a Quechuan man living with his Canadian wife and five kids, who could lead him through traditional Quechua plant medicine rituals like Ayahuasca, in order to bring about inner healing and peace. This begun Wanka’s walk of spirituality. Indeed, his name is a given one which roughly translates from Quechua into “walking altar.” After more than one hundred Ayahuasca experiences, and deconstruction of colonial ways of relating to the natural world, he realized he could no longer tolerate the dissonance of knowing more compassionate and reciprocal ways of relating to landscapes while continuing to conduct engineering projects detrimental to them. He removed himself from these harmful projects, insisted he only be put on restoration projects, and even denounced his license. After a couple years of working unlicensed, he removed himself entirely, all the way to Peru.

Antaurko is descended from a long line of people native to the Andean puna, or high mountain community and landscape. He and Wanka dreamed up a plan to turn Antaurko’s childhood home into a knowledge center where people from all around the world could commune to learn and share traditional knowledge. As a part of this plan, Antaurko hosts volunteers through World Wide Opportunities for Organic Farming (WWOOF). This is how I came to the space.

A few days before leaving for Peru, I was driving back from my friend’s White Elephant party, thinking to myself oh god why am I doing this to myself again? A year prior, I had booked plane tickets to spend three weeks in Thailand. I had an awkward gap between internships, a chunk of savings, and a restlessness burning a hole in me. It was my first time traveling internationally alone and I was petrified in a way that told me I was making the right choice. I had the skeleton of a plan mostly inspired by travel influencers online and a friend who had also spent a month traveling Thailand alone.

Before this, my primary experience traveling in the Global South was a gap year spent in rural Senegal. I was anticipating an experience similar to this, where English does not get you far, schedules are unreliable if they exist, and the internet is useless. I was very, very wrong. Thailand’s economy runs on tourism; almost everyone speaks English. They have their own version of Uber and Lyft. Buses, hostels, restaurants, can all be found online. The challenge I was anticipating of navigating a foreign country was all but nonexistent. Even the challenge of three weeks alone was nowhere to be found. I was in a playground for Western tourists. I met groups of Germans, French, Dutch, and Israelis who invited me to visit national parks, hike to temples, get lunch, get dinner, go out to clubs, and watch Muay Thai fights. The anticipated loneliness of being alone was replaced by that of fleeting relationships. I met so many incredible people whom I longed to be friends with, only to part ways after a few days, never to see each other again. It all felt like a blur of one tourist attraction, one Western-centered conversation, one booze-filled evening, after another. The exception was a fellow US-American I met in southern Thailand, who seemed equally interested in meaningful connections and slower paces. Together we kayaked around fjords, explored limestone caves, ate many bowls of tofu green curry, walked the back roads of a jungled island, talked about books, floated in the warm ocean. The juxtaposition of these experiences taught me that what I wanted out of travel was immersion, slower paced engagement with the culture I had come all that way to see, and to be stunned by foreign landscapes. Yet here I was with a round trip ticket to Lima and no plans.

It was nearly midnight. I made a WWOOF account, selected Peru and struck gold. Among the list of volunteer opportunities I found Inti Nan’i YachayWasi, (Knowledge Center of the Path of the Sun), a high-plains shepherding operation where the hosts spoke English. The other listings were comprised of cacoa, coffee, or other garden crop operations requiring proficiency in Spanish, which I do not have. Besides, after months in Senegal and Alaska, I already had an abundance of experience working on vegetable farms, and I wanted something a bit different. Moreover, for the past few years I have worked as a rangeland ecologists studying grassland plant communities under grazing pressure in Wyoming, California, and Colorado. I thought it would be enriching to witness how grazing was done in a different culture, with different animals, on a different landscape. I sent a message to the hosts and went to bed with high hopes.

The next day we began planning my visit via WhatsApp. I decided to sandwich my time at Inti Nan’i YachayWasi between two backpacking treks. I started my time in Peru in Cusco. Beginning with touristy things like a guided hike up Rainbow Mountain, and a tour of the Sacred Valley, and ending with a self-guided trek along the Salkantay trail, hiking and camping for four days end ending at Machu Picchu. My visit to this Wonder of the World reminded me of Disney World - at every step of the way, there is an option to pay more money: a paid ticket into the site, an option to pay a bus to take you to the entrance, a tour guide, and vendors at the entrance offering beverages and snacks for purchase. I had made reservations for 6am, thinking I wanted to beat the crowds, not thinking the whole thing would be shrouded in clouds that early during the rainy season. The loop was completed in about 10 minutes and all I saw were clouds and crowds of people who were content to spend more. This reminded me of my visit to the Grand Canyon, which I had done as part of my solo road trip through the Southwest. All around me I saw collections of people: couples, families, and groups who had been brought together by the chance of booking the same guided trek along the Inca or Salkantay Trails. It was the first time I felt lonely in Peru. I sat on a rock and waited for the clouds to clear. I walked another loop then sat on a rock then walked another loop. After two hours in the cold mist, I was feeling the hunger of having walked 45 miles in three days and the loneliness of having no one to wait with. I felt guilty for coming all this way and paying for my entrance and wanting to leave early. I was wrestling with myself: kicking myself for not heeding prior experiences of feeling disappointed at visiting big tourist attractions alone only to look at it and leave, while knowing I couldn’t come all this way and not go see one of the Wonders of the World, while also reminding myself that the main point of this was the Salkantay Trek, anyways. These thoughts churned as I walked down the slippery stones. A pair of young German men chastised me for leaving early, not waiting for the clouds to clear. A lone French man was also making his way down, without having seen anything other than clouds. He was also on a solo backpacking trip; our shared thinking comforted me. Maybe I would just have to come back another time.

Over the next two days I travelled from Machu Picchu to Huaraz. After a day spent doing laundry and errands in Huaraz, I met Antaurko’s son, Lanson, for dinner, where he debriefed me and another volunteer on our upcoming workstay. The next day we met to take an hour bus from Huaraz to Catac, and then a 40 minute taxi ride from the bus stop to the house. Turning onto the gravel road, watching the grassland expand before me at the base of Caullaraju, an 18,642ft mountain, I was reminded of Wyoming landscapes. I had been warned of this. As fabled as the grassy steppes of places like the Andes are, they share close lineage, even many of the same genuses, as places like Wyoming. I half laughed to myself, thinking of the absurdity of traveling across half a hemisphere only to be reminded of a landscape a few hours’ drive from my home. The pale inflorescences of a sea of bunch grasses, swaying in afternoon gusts comforted me, like meeting someone who reminds you of an old friend.

We rested for the rest of the day. The house, after all, is located more than 13,500ft above sea level, and it felt like too much to ask us to jump right into working. Our first real day was Tuesday the 23rd of December. We began with a Qare ceremony, sitting around a stone altar, gifting qintos (four coca leave) to each other, and then ourselves. And then we gave offerings using an assortment of grains, seeds, fruits, and flowers. The purpose of this was to introduce ourselves to the Apu, or mountain spirit, nearest to us. In traditional Quechua practices, every snowcapped mountain has a distinct Apu. In introducing myself, the Apu could know me, protect me; I would not be a stranger trudging upon its territory, but a known, welcome guest. The ceremony also serves to set an intention, sort of like a prayer. We did this at the stone altar just outside of the front door of the house. And then the work began.

I was reminded of how difficult it is to just exist in places like this. Disconnected from the rest of the world, with no wifi and only the whisper of cell service on the top of a couple of hills, the work of running a household is the only work that matters. Electricity comes via solar panel, providing access to one outlet during the daytime, and sporadicly successful light switches. There is literal running water from a small stream diverted from the large river of melting glacier. We wash dishes on the banks of this stream, and it must be boiled before drinking. The house is made of carved stone, mud, and a metal roof held up by branches. We touch up the new kitchen with handfuls of mud, and move things into it from the old kitchen. We weave reeds into a door for the new outhouse. We work to construct a roof for the outhouse out of reed, collected grass, and rope made from spun llama wool. In collecting grass, I am sure to offer qinto to the grassland, thanking it for providing building material. As I collect, I am sure to move around, never collecting too much from any one area. I think of Braiding Sweetgrass, how Kimmerer teaches of never collecting more than half of what is available. As I move about, honoring this idea, residual thoughts of am I wandering too close to the neighbors? Am I allowed to take this much from an area so far from the house? US-American thoughts of private property. But this is an instance where the puna is divorced from the capitalist governance of the lowlands. One takes what what needs from the abundant landscape, trusting that neighbors will do the same, trusting that the Apu provides and the grass will persist for horses, cattle, sheep, llama, and people to continue to use; there are no thoughts of profit. As I sit for hours twisting llama wool into meters of rope, I think what a different pace of life this is, to spend afternoons making rope in lieu of access to a store to buy it from within minutes. A chasm between this measure of productivity and the one I usually live by.

On Christmas Day, Wanka leads us up into the hills at the base of the mountain. We make a Qare there. When it is my turn to go, I present myself on the altar as a pile of oats - here I am, flour, seed of the earth, make me into something whole - surrounded by black eyed peas - thank you for the water and ice and soil and minerals and grass and rain and thunder. Kernels of red corn pushed into the oats - planted seeds within me that I may be a good scientist, a good friend, have good luck and strength and health. Flowing out from the center of the board and then wrapping around me, yellow flowers and slices of apple, a reminder that abundance and goodness and sweetness flow everywhere within and around and from and back to me. I suddenly understood the ritual of sacrifice. Of trusting in the Earth’s or the Apu’s or God’s or the community’s ability to provide and sustain to the point of giving some of it away, gratefully, because you know it will return.

For so long I have been plagued by a scarcity mindset. I have been playing a zero sum game. If someone has a skill or trait that I want, I feel a competitiveness, as if it’s impossible for us both to have it. I felt the sudden urge to rid myself of this. I excused myself from the altar and walked down to the icy river. I submerged myself once - that I may be cleansed of this competitiveness. I submerged myself twice - that I may be blessed with an abundance I can have faith in. Three times - that I may know that this abundance comes from walking with authenticity. Four times - that all will be made whole.

In those days on the puna, I felt a spiritual oneness with the mountains and the plains. I felt a desire almost like a calling to traverse mountains, not as a way to conquer them, but to commune with them. In coming back down to the city for 36 hours, I wondered how holy it really was to live so far removed. It’s easy to meditate and practice spirituality and kindness when all is quiet and slow and without internet connection. The real challenge is maintaining that current in civilization with a job and rent and a network of relationships to manage. Another real challenge is chasing the dream of communing with the mountains.

After a quick turnaround in the city, I made my way via two buses and a taxi to Llamac, a village at the gateway to Cordillera Huayhuash, a mountain range which includes six peaks over 6,000m tall (19,685ft). There is a 80 mile circuit (with over 21,000 feet of elevation gain) through the range, generally considered a bucket list multi-day trek. Most people hire guides and porters to complete this hike in eight to ten days. Hubris in hand, I set off to complete it self-supported in six days (not recommended!). While I succeeded at this, it was the hardest thing I have done (so far). Almost all of this trail is above 14,000ft, with the lowest point being the starting/ending point in Llamac (10,827ft) and the highest point being the Punta Cuyoc Pass (16,405ft), with several other passes well above 15,000ft.

Carrying with me all I had learned at the puna, I made qinto to the Apus so they would know and protect me as a traversed. The weather, and thus I, was miserable with persistent clouds, afternoon rain, hail, snow, and earth-trembling thunder storms. There are few things worse than putting on your cold wet shoes first thing in the morning, or trying to find a way to scrape the mud off your rain pants. There were many undignified and terrifying moments where I was reduced to climbing, crawling, sliding, and gripping shrubbery as the steepness, altitude, mud, night, and rain combined to make hiking impossible. Alone and betrayed by my stomach, I was fueled in large part by panic. Mid-morning of my sixth day, I made it back to Llamac. I finally succumbed to the sobs my adrenaline had been stifling. Overwhelmed by how much more difficult the trek was than I had anticipated, my ego was shattered. My dreams of being a mountain athlete, of understanding landscapes I loved by way traversing through and with them were faltering. I still have a lot to reconcile with. The Apus had given me the experience I needed, even if it wasn’t the one I wanted.

“I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

With your one wild and precious life?”

The Summer Day, Mary Oliver

I have been in the process of applying to PhD programs for the past few months. I have received a lot of advice - unsolicited and not. I have also learned a lot about myself. In the process of consolidating my research interests into one or two articulate, albeit run-on, sentences, I have learned that my research interests are quite specific, but span quite a breadth. Theories of plant communities ranging from coexistence to thresholds to networks. Romanticized visions of data collected in mountains, steppes, and prairies. Grass and flowers and butterflies. I have also realized that in distilling my experience to an 800-word statement it appears my career trajectory was set at the age of seventeen, and has not wavered since. Is this a normal thing? To feel so drawn to something that it organically sticks? Or am I missing something? A fork in the road emerges: to get a Master’s first, tackle one or two of my interests, and leave the rest for a later dissertation; to go for the PhD, but select a department with enough drive, collaboration, and expertise to accommodate my interests; to wait another year or so to gain clarity before beginning; to abandon a PhD and pivot altogether. And then there is the ever-present question of geography: where to be for any of these options?

I moved four times last year: Eugene, OR to Fort Collins, CO then a brief interlude in Thailand before returning to my parents’ house in Maryland, then back to Fort Collins, before moving just an hour south to Boulder, CO. With a one year job offer and lease, I felt an unfamiliar sense of stability and I let myself be grateful, even relieved about it. I put up posters. Admittedly, the stability is only halfway there as I spend a lot of time imagining what it might look like to get a Master’s Degree in Spain or a PhD in Nevada, for instance. Indeed, I this draft was written as I flew to Peru for five weeks. I just can’t seem to be still (clearly the tattoo on my arm commanding me to do so is not enough).

Annual grasses have shallow roots. They complete their entire life cycle within one growing season and thus expend their energy growing big enough to reproduce, and then doing so. Perennial grasses have much, much deeper roots. Some reach as far down as several meters. They can live for dozens of years, and at the end of their growing season will pool their energy towards fortifying their large, deep root systems which in turn allow them to survive the stress of winter, drought, fire, and grazing. The paradox of my life thus far is that stability sounds so nice. Roots down, durability, resilience, community. And so scary. In this great big world, where is one to put down their roots? The loneliness of this paradox is pervasive. With ephemeral roots come ephemeral connections, lacking in an emotional depth I find myself desperate for. Yet the bureaucracy of perennial roots is Kafkaesque: how many hours I have lost in the past year navigating signing and breaking leases, applying for health care across different states, packing and unpacking boxes, starting and restarting and adapting routines, meeting and unmeeting potential friends? Last week I registered my car in Colorado. Next month I will get a Colorado drivers license. A few hundred dollars and some skin in the game. The paperwork and receipts proof that I have roots down, at least for the time being. I felt disgusted that my one wild and precious life is this: a lease, health insurance, car registration, a new license. In systems such as these, is this the cost incurred for the squishy meat of life that actually matters? Is a job contract and car registration just the cost of admission for a stability that allows for personal growth, routines that build resilience, community that expands a world view, and friends which are the raison d’être?

Are all things like this? Is “settling” into a career the price of admission to the life of that career? My issue is that I do not want to see the world, I do not even want to inhabit it, I want it to inhabit me. I have always struggled with the grief of only having one life, of constant opportunity costs. So when I think about choosing a career in ecological research, I think about what emotional landscape it might give me access to. Intellectually stimulating, rewarding, and potentially very meaningful work alongside other people who value these things. New projects, indoors and out, interdisciplinary applications of many things I love: data collection, coding, writing. The trade-offs are rigidity in geographical location, many years spent making not very much money at all, and a life revolving around developing proposals and applying for funding. Easily handled if the granted access to a life of joy and community and actualization feel achievable.

I first landed in Colorado five Octobers ago on an invitation and a whim. A friend from my gap year invited me to live with her as she started college. Our friendship quickly and catastrophically dissolved. I was so panicked for months that winter is truly a blur. I sought refuge in going to University in Oregon. At last, a landing place. The leg work of moving, finding housing, and starting at an institution presented a sunk cost fallacy so intense I stayed for two years despite an almost immediate sense of incongruence, failure, and regret. I vowed to never ignore myself like that again. I returned to Colorado a little over a year ago, due to equal parts luck and merit. I had scored a spot in a competitive internship program. Inertia carried me from there: I connected with a previous supervisor at the USDA in Fort Collins, and cold-emailed a professional connection in Boulder. I have survivor’s guilt from dodging the job market. The momentum was and is intoxicating. One coveted research position after another, I have built myself quite a resume and I would be lying if I said that it didn’t feel good to be commended on this by every potential graduate school advisor I reach out to. I am terrified that to let up now would feel once again like I had squandered potential, become a failure. Regret may rush in. Would people that have poured so much time and resources into my success feel disappointed?

But how much of my current position is due to this inertia? How intentional was any of it? If this is what I am going to do with my one wild and precious life, then I want it to be an intentional choice, not just the path of least resistance. I am afraid of my restlessness, that it will never allow me to feel all the way home in one decision. Years ago I had hope that seven months in rural West Africa would scratch this itch enough to open room for a craving for stillness. A season in Alaska, several solo continental road trips, three weeks in Thailand, and a pending month in Peru later, I know better than to hope for this. What I am hoping for now is clarity, direction, and good stories.

This spring and summer I worked as a research assistant with the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) in Fort Collins, CO. I was hired primarily to work on an experiment using targeted grazing to mitigate and reverse the spread of cheatgrass. Cheatgrass is a horribly invasive annual grass in the American West and has a phenology wherein its growing period is offset a couple months prior to that of native grasses. Because of this temporal difference in “green up” periods, cattle can be used as a tool to control it as they graze it hard in the spring and shift the competitive balance in favor of native grasses. This is just one of the many ways I have expanded my understanding of cattle on the land to be a mechanism of conservation and restoration. But nevertheless, this year, in a turn of events that only 2025 could bring, there was not enough cheatgrass to graze in the spring.

Due in large part to a cold and dry winter and early spring, this horribly invasive plant is all but nonexistent in the study area. I joke that the proprietors of this multi-year experiment have “restored to close to the sun.” So instead of monitoring vegetation cover, cheatgrass density, and the progression of its maturation at a research station in Cheyenne, WY, I have instead been given a litany of tasks for myriad projects. I enjoy being helpful, having variation in my work weeks, and not being thrown into the deep end of field work, so I don’t mind. One of the largest tasks I’ve been given is to sort bags of collected and dried biomass.

When the task was being introduced to me, Katie, a long-term research technician for the lead scientists with the unit, handed me a bag of dried biomass and explained how I was to sort it by functional group. She pointed to some resources in the room to help me with any difficult-to-discern specimens, assured me that it would be a tedious and slow task, but that I would get the hang of it, and that I should always ask her if I was ever in doubt. All while she explained, my eyes were transfixed on the label on the bag of biomass I was to be sorting. It was my handwriting.

In the spring of 2023 I was rounding out my penultimate year of college and had an inkling that I wanted to be a research ecologist. But I didn’t really know what that meant. So I applied to a handful of research ecology jobs to test out my theory. The only offer I got was for a job in eastern Wyoming. I was surprised I had been offered the job, given how thoroughly I believed I had bombed the interview. I convinced myself that I had only been given the job because there wasn't exactly a ton of competition for spending a summer in rural Wyoming.

Nevertheless on my 22nd birthday I woke up in Bill, Wyoming to the outstretched hills of mixed-grass prairie dotted with big sagebrush and blooming wildflowers. I was in love. Thunder Basin National Grassland is one of the last remaining remnants of old-growth prairie in the world. It hasn’t been developed into strip malls or churned into row crops. And that summer I got to see so much of it: swales crowded with riparian flowers; hill tops wafting ponderosa pine; bleach-white gaping gulches; wetter areas with grass almost my height; drier areas baring ancient rocks. I felt so lucky to see it. I felt so curious about why some areas looked different than others. Why homesteads had failed and what those people’s stories were. How current political decisions were shaping the way these plants showed up. How water and fire and grazing commingled to stress and provide for plant communities. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was that captured my imagination and curiosity. That ineffability has kept me entranced.

My first week on the job we were doing density counts for a multi-year precipitation variability experiment. This entailed kneeling on metal scaffolding that suspended us over the study plot, peering into a 1x1m central focal plot, and counting each individual of each species. Even in quartering the square amongst the four of us, it was not uncommon to reach numbers in the hundreds. It was a surreal experience to spend hours staring and silently counting, and it was an excellent way to quickly master identifying dozens of species. I remember being enthralled by the poeticism of focusing on the very littlest of things in order to better understand an extraordinarily vast landscape. I imagined a lab technician somewhere in an office in Colorado on a bright February afternoon manually entering all of these numbers into a Microsoft Excel sheet. I did not envy this technician. I knew that if I wanted to have a career as a research ecologist one day, that I would be that technician for someone at some point. I hoped my handwriting was legible. I wondered what visuals would be produced with this data, what the title of the research paper would be, what the results would mean, and who would read them. I wondered what kind of generalizations about this ecosystem an ecologist can make from knowing that there are 102 Vulpia octoflora (six-weeks fescue) specimens in a clayey-soil plot with excess precipitation and only 13 specimens in a loamy-soil plot with control treatments.

But while I could recognize that two very similar looking grass species could be distinguished and named by close examination of their ligules (a small membrane between the leaf blade and sheath of a grass) or lack thereof, I didn’t really know the importance of the presence of one species as opposed to the other. I was reminded of an excerpt I had read years before:

“he insisted I should know names of extinct species as though taxonomy ever meant preservation / telling someone who they are instead of asking is where extinction gets its start.” -

- CAConrad, from "Impaled By Sharp Points Of Wonderment," We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics, eds. Andrea Abi-Karam & Kay Gabriel

Botanists concern themselves with the identities and names of plants based on genetics and speciation. Plant ecologists concern themselves with the relationships between plants. There is often overlap, as it’s important to name plants when researching them. But what makes relationships between plants interesting is the traits each constituent in the relationship possesses and expresses in community with each other. It’s less important to know that if the small yellowish-green graminoid with narrow thread-like leaves has a ligule it’s called Poa secunda, not Carex filifolia, than it is to know that they are both early-season drought-resistant plants, but that P. secunda is the fire-resistent one of the two.

As I sat in the windowless room of Building D at the Fort Collins Science Center sorting biomass that I had collected nearly two years previous, I kept my mind occupied with podcasts and audiobooks. One of these books was Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. A theme threaded throughout the book is one of language. The importance of what things are called. How language reflects the respective culture’s priorities. I thought about how in Wolof, the indigenous language I learned during my gap year in Senegal, one says “Mangi fii” (“I am here”) in response to the question “Nanga def?” (“how are things going?”) - thus centering one's presence rather than feelings or doings. Also in Wolof, the word “dox” refers to walking, as a mode of getting from one place to the next, but “doxantu” refers to going for a walk, savoring the motion of one foot in front of the other, usually to relish in visiting neighbors. Many words referring to more modern inventions, such as cars and phones, do not exist in Wolof and are instead borrowed from French, reflecting a sort of plateau in the linguistic innovations within Wolof. I don’t claim to be fluent by any means, but in my experience, Wolof was and is a viscous language, reflecting a culture that emphasizes presence, community, hospitality, patience, and being.

Plant names, being exclusively latin or latinized versions of other words or names, embody a European perspective. Many plants “discovered” by European botanists bear the name of that botanists, despite the fact that indigenous peoples already had names and intimate relationships with these plants. While I believe the choice of latin is archaic and pseudo-colonial, a standardized naming convention is certainly necessary for global communication. Robin Wall Kimmerer imagines a scenario in which an indigenous botanist and Carl Linneaus (the Swedish botanist who invented the latin binomial convention) trek together, converse, and share about plants from their differing perspectives. She also reflects:

“I’ve noticed that once some folks attach a scientific label to a being, they stop exploring who it is.”

Indeed in my experience as a research assistant the past few years, critical efforts have been made to teach me and my crewmates how to identify plants. What features to look for in a leaf or a stem in order to call a plant its correct name on a datasheet. But who that plant is, why it is shaped like that, what its preferences are in terms of soil, moisture, and neighbors, is glossed over. Sure, it is not too difficult to glean some general ideas just by collecting data over the course of a grassland for the summer, but it takes some extra elbow grease and institutional access to scientific journals to really learn these things. This, by the way, is not an indictment of the scientists training us technicians. There is simply too much data to collect in too short an amount of time for detailed personality profiles of scores of plants to be provided.

Nevertheless I was hungry to learn the characters I was collecting data about, in part because I am a voraciously curious person and this is my third summer getting paid to study plants, so it’s about time I dug deeper; and in part because trait-based restoration is a common theme among scientists I admire and work for.

Community ecology theory posits that ecological communities are populated by species whose traits exploit different, sometimes overlapping niches. For example, an annual forb with a shallow root system may grow adjacent to a perennial grass with a deeper root system such that they occupy different zones within the soil. The forb might be taller and grow earlier in the season, casting shade across surrounding areas and keeping non-shade-tolerant species at a competitive disadvantage. An invasive species might make a monoculture of a region because its traits are general and/or competitive enough to replace native species. However, native plant communities can already fill niches similar to that of the invader, such that it cannot gain a foothold. In this way, plant communities can be diverse and variable across a landscape as they compete for different resources. A shift in soil type and/or slope can drastically alter the species best suited for living in a particular area.

This ocean of complexity and minutiae of community traits is where I want to swim. I am experienced enough to know that knowing the name of plants is not enough and that the reason I’m drawn to community ecology is because I am obsessed with relationships, especially under external pressures. I am lucky enough to have returned to research in the same ecosystem, allowing for these thoughts to marinate. I started writing this reflection months ago. At first I thought I would read enough papers to come to some sort of clever conclusion about plant traits in variable ecosystems. Instead I found a research question.

The process began with a whole lot of imposter syndrome and an existential crisis. I was convinced that I was not cut out to be a scientist because I didn’t know how to identify a gap in the literature or come up with a question. A very rough draft, speculative questions with coworkers during long car rides to field work, and immensely helpful feedback and advice mostly soothed these thoughts. I found myself coming back over and over again to the precipitation variability experiment I worked on with eastern Wyoming two years ago. I realized that the story of plant communities is just as much a story about water and I wanted to know how they fit together. While I couldn’t just recreate the experiment, I could ask a different question with the data. So I applied for my first grant to fund a PhD a few weeks ago, centered on exploring plant traits in response to precipitation variability.

Someone suggested to me that I start doing this. No expectations of any sort of audience; just to practice writing and put it somewhere. To have a reference point in case I ever wanted to prove to a potential employer that I could write.

So I did. I drew up a logo and started writing. And it was fun. I was enjoying the time spent dedicated to reading and synthesizing stories and articles of contemporary environmental happenings. It was exciting to witness myself getting (what I considered) better at writing.

And then life got good and I fell off. A task assigned to myself designed to challenge me to read and write about environmental news fell to the wayside as I gained direction, purpose, and fulfillment in life.

I graduated from college in June. I had finished classes in March and then immediately jumped into working as a field technician on some projects for the University of Oregon. In April, I lived at a Long Term Environmental Research (LTER) center on the western slope of the Oregon Cascades. I was helping an incoming master’s student set up houses for mason bees. We also collected some monitoring data about the early spring floral resources in the region (surprise: not much). I was simultaneously working on finishing up my undergraduate thesis. For my thesis, I analyzed bumble bee foraging networks across a gradient of canopy cover in the Oregon Coast Range. I presented this at the end of May.

I then switched from Oregon’s bee ecology lab to its plant ecology lab and spent a few weeks at the Sierra Foothills Research and Extension Center in northern California collecting grass biomass to later be weighed. These data would be put into models relating biomass to seed production to better understand how these species reproduced under myriad circumstances (pressure from other plants, grazing, drought, nitrogen deposition, etc.). We started work at 6am to avoid the 100° heat. I spent the afternoons applying for jobs, putting the finishing touches on my thesis paper, and swimming in the lake. I spent the weekends hiking at Yosemite and Sequoia. On my last Friday in California, I submitted an application for an internship with NASA DEVELOP. The next day I drove the seven hours back up to Eugene. On the following Monday, I started working on a different project with a PhD student in the same lab.

I spent the rest of the summer monitoring flower phenology, putting little bags on flowers to exclude pollinators, counting open flowers in each plot, collecting the ripe fruits, and counting seeds. I also leaned into enjoying my last summer in Oregon, applying for (even more) jobs, and thinking about graduate school. In August I learned that I had been accepted into the NASA DEVELOP internship program. I would be moving to Fort Collins, CO. But before that, I threw a going away party and crossed some hikes off my Oregon bucket list.

I moved to Fort Collins and quickly fell into a new rhythm of life. Work was demanding: I often felt as if I was fumbling in the dark as I read countless papers about satellite remote sensing and coded figures relating rangeland plant communities using satellite data in order to inform management decisions. But I loved the community I worked in; weeknights were spent at natural resource professionals happy hours or trailer running groups. I reconnected with a former boss at the USDA in Fort Collins. I spent weekends running long runs in the mountains in preparation for a 50-mile race in October.

Upon the end of the internship, I left Fort Collins. I was confident that I had secured a second one which would start at the end of January, but it was only the middle of November. I decided to kill time and my savings account by going to Thailand for three weeks, Florida for two, and Puerto Rico for one. And then I settled back into my parents’ house in Maryland to recoup said savings account.

The internship began and I thought I would revamp my substack then. But the feeling of fumbling in the dark returned. The project was difficult, and this time I was without any happy hours or trail running groups to refill my cup. I was burnt out and counting down the days to when I would return to Fort Collins.

That day came in the middle of April. The boss I had reconnected with in the fall recommended me to her colleagues and I was offered a position as a research assistant. Despite the turmoil and uncertainty in the federal government and the changes (for the worse) to my terms of employment, I was overjoyed at the prospect of returning to my community in Fort Collins. No more fumbling in the dark - I would send my summer in wide open fields hanging out with plants all day (and collecting data about them of course).

After a bee-line along I-70 I arrived in Fort Collins, I stayed with a friend I had met in the fall until I could move into my new place. We went camping in Moab to help make the most of my two inter-employment weeks. I started work on April 21st feeling rejuvenated and excited to lend a hand in researching grasslands. I felt a little out of place with my attitude as the rest of the office seemed suppressed by the uncertainty and grief engendered by DOGE’s decisions. Nevertheless, there was an air of hope fueled largely by a pervasive passion for the research we were doing.

In returning to Fort Collins, this time with community and habits and a sense of direction already built in, I felt the urge to write again. And so now we are here, revamping my substack. It will look different this time. Frankly, there are too many new things happening and un-happening and re-happening on a daily basis for me to keep up, let alone write about. Moreover, the things happening in this country (and outside of it) are atrocious and overwhelming and infrequently climate related, at least directly. So I intend to pivot to writing more longform stories and musings, and to have them be more personal and grassland-rangeland (or, as someone in my circle referred to it recently, “grangeland”) ecology-focused. After all, that’s what I spend the vast majority of my time doing and thinking about. The most pressing environmental matters in the news typically regard (1) breaking news about how climate scientists regularly realize that we are actually quite a bit more fucked than we thought we were - for instance, that even the most aggressive goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C would still be too warm for polar ice sheets, or that areas in Alaska previously protected via Biden-era legislation are poised to be drilled for oil.

- and (2) the energy transition (or lack thereof). For news and discussions pertaining to this theme, I recommend subscribing to a newsletter by Heatmap News and/or listening to the Volts podcast, as I have basically no business pretending that I actually know how to talk about these things

And with any good revamp comes a good rebrand. I’m renaming my substack from “Artemisia” to “Prairie Tales.” I like that it’s fewer syllables and more playful. I like that it better encapsulates my goal of storytelling. It also reflects my shift in ecological focus. In making Artemisia, I was inspired by the grassland-sagebrush steppe ecotone of eastern Wyoming that I had worked in in the summer of 2023. These days, however, I work anywhere from that ecotone to the mixed-grass prairie of south-central Wyoming to the short-grass prairie of eastern Colorado. In pursuing a PhD I am considering projects in any of these, and/or the tall-grass prairie remnants in Kansas and Colorado, as well as any dryer herbaceous-dominated ecosystems.

• Prairie. Isn’t that a pretty word? Rolls off the tongue like a fat little moon. Prairie must be one of the prettiest words in the English language. No matter that it’s French. It’s derived from the Latin word for “meadow” plus a feminine suffix. A prairie, then. Is a female meadow. It is larger and wilder than a masculine meadow (which the dictionary defines as “pasture” or “hayfield”), more coarse, more oceanic and enduring, supporting a greater variety of life. - Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Nevertheless, I anticipate an irregular cadence in my publishing. Longer form stories and musings, after all, take more time and only happen with a catalyst. Additionally, as much as I love telling stories, I also enjoy living them. I am no longer in the chapter of my life where projects such as these serve to fill the void left by disappointing life circumstances. I fully intend to lean into the work, people, and adventures knocking at my door this season in Fort Collins, but hope and intend to make time to pursue writing.

This project was really special to me. Patapsco Valley State Park was where I first learned to trail run. In March of 2020 it was where I turned every day to keep my body and mind occupied as the world was shut down. I had just come back from my gap year in Senegal and the America I thought I was coming back to was not the one that received me. I had spent countless hours daydreaming of all the fun I would have when I returned stateside. So much so that sometimes my host sibling would ask where I was.

• “Mangi fii,” I said. I’m here.

• “Déedéet. Tu es aux Etats-Unis,” she replied as she gently tapped my temple. No, you’re in the United States.

She was right. I spent the majority of my time in that west African village feeling bored and understimulated. My siblings went to school during the day and the farm I worked on didn’t actually require much of me. I was lonely, too. I would go days at a time without speaking any English. Any communication with people back home was disjointed due to a time-zone difference or a lack of willingness to download Whatsapp. I turned to daydreaming. About roaming around DC. About road tripping to the West I had never seen before. About backpacking through Europe. About going to college. I also turned to reading. All the books I had brought with me. All the books I traded with other people in my gap year cohort. More than 50 books in total. And then to archives of Outside Magazine online.

I read several years of back-catalogued trail running articles. I was hooked. I was lured by the idea that the thing that mattered most in trail running was the joy and adventure of it, rather than the pace and distance. So it’s the first thing I did when I touched back down in Maryland.

With the world shut down and everything I daydreamed of rendered impossible, my solace was the woods.

At the risk of sounding too try-hard poetic, this new hobby saved my life. I was grieving the country I didn’t get to return to and the one I had left too soon. I was grieving my friends I had left behind and vice versa and the college experience I wasn’t going to get to have, and the desert. I was unemployed and lonely and so, so angry about it. The prospect of exploring a new trail was often the only thing that got me out of bed.

And trail running quickly became more than that.

Like many female athletes, I had struggled with my body image for many years, and took on unhealthy eating habits as a result. Track and soccer and road running had exacerbated those feelings and habits. I was also beginning to question my gender. I had just returned from a highly gendered culture, where the traditional female roles being asked of me brought a lot of internal friction. In examining them, I realized that I had never quite felt at home in a female body and hated being assumed to be feminine, despite trying my whole life to dress as masculine as I could. But when I was out there moving through the woods on my own, it didn’t matter what my body looked like, only the places it could take me. And the forests know no gender, anyway.

In these woods I also discovered my desire to be a research ecologist. The many hours I spent running doubled as many hours spent observing plants, learning their names, and beginning to ask questions about how they related to each other. I followed this dream all the way to doing my undergraduate thesis on bumble bee foraging patterns in forest ecosystems in western Oregon. (In doing so I quickly learned I didn’t want to be a forest entomologist, after all).

In the years since I first found this hobby, it has proved to be my most valuable investment of time. From Mt. Rainier, the Oregon Cascades, the Mojave and Sonoran deserts, and beyond, I have relished in some incredibly gorgeous places by way of running through them. I have also met some of my most precious friends along the way.

So being able to return to the trails where it all started was immensely special. The idea of attempting this FKT traversing my home state park began as a way to challenge my body and mind when I was in an otherwise idle stage of life. Post-college, post-spending-all-my-money going to Thailand on a semi-whim, mid-yet-another-short-term-internship, back-in-my-parents’ house-working-remote-to-save-money kind of idle.

My first run back was bittersweet. I was surprised at how quickly I recalled the loop I had done several times a week years prior. The familiarity brought comfort as I thought about how much I had changed in less than five years. Two degrees (Associates and Bachelors), a handful of jobs, several friends, a few boyfriends, and many many many miles had come and gone. I was delighted at how strong I felt on hills that had once forced me to hike. I was also disappointed. I had spent so many years romanticizing the trails I had left behind.

When living in Alaska, Colorado, and Oregon, and disclosing that I had come from Maryland, people often remarked that I must be so impressed by the trails in my newer homes. I told them that in fact, Patapsco Valley State Park has more than 200 miles of singletrack. I told them that my parents’ house is less than a five minute drive from three different trail heads. That the hills and trees and creeks were mesmerizing. I often complained about having to drive to a trailhead, or that the trail systems were too small, or that the trails weren’t technical enough. All of these things are still true.

Yet, I still felt disappointed. It was winter, after all, so the trees were bare. They were sparser than I remembered. Many sections of trail are close to developed areas. Indeed, the FKT course traverses under I-70, under and alongside US-40, through a neighborhood, across a railroad track, on a service road, across Frederick Road in downtown Ellicott City, as well as across many smaller streets. Sections of the trail have piles of trash. Much of the park is oppressed by invasive species like english ivy and lesser celandine. All of these things felt depressing to me.

I also completed almost all of my training alone. Easy runs, speed work, lifting, cross training, and my extra-long runs - all alone. I was teetering on the edge of burnout the entire time. I was thinking about my running friends in Colorado and Oregon. I was kicking myself for moving back to Maryland.

But nevertheless, when the day came to finally attempt the record, it was perfect. I was alone and the woods were quiet. I watched the sun rise as I started down the trail along the river in Sykesville at 6:45am. I was tired from nerves ruining my sleep. But the air was crisp and the sun was beginning to peek through the clouds and bare branches. I saw a beaver and took it as a good omen.

I clipped away at the first ten miles. I was cruising much faster than I anticipated. I thought to myself that I was either going to have a really good day or I was going to blow up.

Things really began to hurt around mile fifteen. My hips and back were feeling tight and achy. But I was taking food in well.

I had completed the entire traverse in sections across four different, so I knew what I was in for. I tried to recall the turns I had missed in those long runs, and not to repeat those mistakes. It was daunting to be able to picture how much I had left in the route as I neared the twenty-mile mark: I still have to cross that train track? Do that hill? At least the service road will be easy. And then downhill through the neighborhood.

I finished at the Avalon picnic shelters at 12:45pm. I was relieved. My project - the thing that had consumed my thoughts for the past three months - was complete. Better than that, it was a massive success. I had achieved a 50k PR and squeaked under the six-hour limit I had given myself. I laid in the sun on the cool concrete parking lot.

I gave myself a moment to cry tears of joy, gratitude, and relief. I gave myself a moment to feel proud of myself. I gave myself a moment to feel these things alone, for myself. I was excited to share this experience with my friends but I wanted to be my first witness.

Along the way of chasing this FKT on my home trails, I discovered that Maryland doesn’t really feel like home anymore. While it doesn’t feel like the place where I belong, this bittersweet experience has clarified where that place might be. Attempting this FKT record felt like an appropriate way to test myself, honor my roots, and close this chapter. I had a really fun, hard, glorious day on the trails, and that’s all I could have asked for.

Heat-related death tolls in the Middle East have been especially high as nearly two million Muslims from around the world traveled across Saudi Arabia’s desert this past week as part of this year’s Hajj pilgrimage. Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam and involves traveling to Mecca, the birthplace of the prophet Muhammad and Islam’s holiest city. This year, people gathered in large crowds as midday temperatures soared to 125°F during the religious event. Every able Muslim is required to complete Hajj; many participants are those who waited until late in life to do so. This worsens the effects of extreme heat as older people are less able to cope with heat stress. Hajj is a five day event involving many hours outside walking and performing intense prayer. Many people spend their whole lives saving money and then travel for weeks from around the world in order to attend. The importance of the event can motivate some people to do more than is necessary, and thus over-exert themselves.

In recent years Saudi Arabia has implemented heat mitigation strategies such as air conditioned tents and planting trees for shade. But it hasn’t been enough. Hundreds of people have reportedly died from heat-related stress, The Associated Press reports from Mecca. The event follows the lunar calendar, so it does not always fall during the hottest part of the year. Saudi Arabia, however, is warming faster than the rest of the Northern Hemisphere in the midst of climate change. This is due in part to the burning of fossil fuels, of which Saudi Arabia is a major exporter.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., some groups are petitioning for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to treat extreme heat and wildfire smoke as a disaster and respond to it in the same way they do hurricanes and earthquakes. The petition is being led by the Center for Biological Diversity and has support from more than 30 groups, including labor unions and public health advocates. Jean Su, leader of the petition and the Energy Justice Program at CBD, believes FEMA should be responding to extreme heat as a disaster because it kills more people than other disasters. Su also says that while wildfire smoke used to be a seasonal and manageable issue, it is now much more prolific and deadly, thus warranting a greater response. FEMA’s actions are guided by the Stafford Act which lists 16 natural disasters, but whose language is designed to be flexible in order to appropriately respond to other disasters as the President sees fit. For instance, FEMA was authorized to offer disaster support and recovery during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Historically, heat has been difficult to respond to as a disaster. For one, its effects vary from region to region: temperatures deemed dangerous in Wisconsin might be empirically lower than those in Arizona, but no less deadly. Heat also rarely affects physical infrastructure the way that hurricanes or tornadoes do. And deaths from heat are often undercounted and misrepresented, as heat may exacerbate pre-existing conditions, but not be deemed the direct cause of death. So FEMA’s response to extreme heat would necessarily look different than its responses to other natural disasters. Money could be provided for cooling centers, water stations, or additional medical personnel. FEMA could also provide monetary assistance for funerals, emergency health care, or increased electricity bills during heat waves. FEMA could also support long-term resiliency plans addressing the urban heat-island effect or electrical redundancy for rolling blackout events. 

Bonus: NPR tells a great story about how a medical examiner in Pima, Ariz. is making it his mission to track heat-related deaths better. 

Still weeks away from the official start of summer, residents in many parts of the Southwest have endured triple-digit temperatures. The heat wave peaked on Thursday with many areas of California, Arizona, and Nevada experiencing temperatures 10-15 degrees above normal. Las Vegas set a new record high of 111°F, Death Valley of 122°F, and Phoenix reached a blistering 113°F, breaking its previous record of 111°F for June 6th. Fire trucks in Phoenix were equipped with large ice baths to immerse and rapidly cool the bodies of those experiencing heat stroke. Regions of the deep south from Florida to Louisiana are under similar heat advisories. With extreme heat, wind gusts, and decreased humidity, fire season started early: a grass fire broke out in Tracy, a community in California’s Central Valley. 

The Corral Fire - a grass fire near Tracy, Calif. (Justin Wilcocks, REUTERS)

As heat waves come earlier in the season, people experience greater health risks as they are less adjusted to the heat. Risks are especially high when high-pressure domes such as these trap heat in the region for extended periods such that the air does not cool overnight. Drowning risks are also increased as people, trying to cool off, flock to rivers swollen and frigid with early snowmelt. In fact, extreme heat is the leading weather-related cause of death in the U.S. This is true even as many cause-of-death statements list underlying conditions that extreme heat exacerbated. 

NYC guts congestion pricing plan.

Cities like London and Stockholm have congestion pricing in place, which forces drivers to pay to drive into parts of the city. New York City had been considering a similar system until earlier this week when Governor Kathy Hochul aborted the plan. Drivers entering Lower Manhattan would have had to pay a $15 toll the Washington Post reports. The idea behind the plan was that it would discourage people from driving in the most congested parts of the cities and that people would then opt for public transportation (which the tolls would have gone towards bolstering). Lessened congestion from diving would have also slashed carbon emissions and harmful air pollutants from cars. 

Outside of the city, some people cheered the governor’s decision, saying that congestion pricing would have been unfair to those who commute into the city for work. On the other hand, cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago now have no example to point to if/when they want to introduce congestion pricing. Moreover, agencies tasked with expanding and improving transit systems, as well as the people relying on them, have just been denied more than $1 billion/year they would have enjoyed with the congestion pricing rule.

Mexico elects a female climate scientist for president.

In 2007 Claudia Sheinbaum was a contributing author to the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. This past Sunday, she became Mexico’s first female president-elect. 

Claudia Sheinbaum, soon to be North America’s first female president. (Fred Ramos, The New York Times).

With a PhD in energy engineering, Sheinbaum has been recognized globally for her social-conscious climate expertise. As mayor of Mexico City, she electrified the city’s bus fleet, expanded bike lanes, and had a massive solar array installed. Unlike her predecessor and mentor Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), of the same party, she wants to expand renewable energy in Mexico. But she also favors public, not private, investment in renewable energy. With a cash-strapped federal budget, efforts to decarbonize Mexico’s energy grid could be severely limited by this preference. Moreover, she supports the state-owned oil company Petróleos Mexicanos, or Pemex. 

Sheinbaum is slated to take office in October. Her party, Morena, is expected to lose some of its grip in Congress, which could make it more difficult for Sheinbaum to push her policies through to fruition. Only time will tell how North America’s first female scientist president steers climate policies.

Last July, torrents inundated much of Vermont, including its capital Montpelier. Many businesses shut down and took months to rebuild, costing them income from the summer and fall season, NPR reports. Now, the state has become the first to take on Big Oil and require fossil fuel companies to take on costs associated with damage from climate change. The popular governor, Phil Scott, a Republican in a mostly blue state, allowed the bill to become law without signature. He cited concerns over being a small state taking on a big industry while acknowledging that something must be done about the toll of climate change. 

The polluter-pays model is designed after the Superfund model, with ideas to use the funds from fossil fuel companies to establish climate-resilient infrastructure such as upgraded stormwater drainage systems and energy-efficient weatherization. The newly dubbed “Climate Superfund Act” will require fossil fuel companies to either pay for the clean up themselves, or else reimburse the government for it. Costs will be based on calculations of how much climate change contributed to disasters in Vermont, and how much CO₂ companies released between the years 1995 to 2024.  

While Gov. Scott is worried about potential lawsuits, he recognizes that the stakes are too high for other states, such as Maryland, Massachusetts, and New York, as they too consider similar laws. 

New Delhi, India experiences extreme temperatures. 

Temperatures reached 126 degrees Fahrenheit in New Delhi, the capital of India, last week. The extreme heat throughout India and Pakistan could potentially persist for weeks, the New York Times reports. Dozens of people have reportedly died throughout India, and many others have been stricken with serious cases of heatstroke. Many residents suffer without reliable access to clean water, adequate housing, or air conditioning. Rolling black outs and water rationing measures have been put in place to reduce the stress on critical cooling resources. 

As many poorer citizens rely on daily labor wages to meet their most basic needs, the oppressive heat threatens both life and livelihood. Some workers retire early in the afternoon, losing half a days’ worth of wages, while others migrate to cooler cities where they work extra to afford the costs. 

This comes as a report from Climate Central, a nonprofit research group based in Princeton, NJ, reports that climate change has added an average of 26 more days of extreme heat in the past year. 

NOAA’s forecast for the busiest hurricane season yet. 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has released its hurricane season forecast - this year with the highest number ever predicted. With warming ocean temperatures and an impending La Niña season, there is an 85% chance of an above-average season. NOAA predicts eight to 13 hurricanes and as many as 25 named storms (storms get named when wind speeds reach 39 mph; a storm becomes a hurricane when its winds reach 74 mph). Changes in trade winds mean less wind shear, allowing storms to gain greater momentum. Last year’s El Niño suppressed Atlantic hurricanes despite extremely high water temperatures because it increased vertical wind shear, sinking, and atmospheric stability. This year’s La Niña will have the opposite effect. 

Anthropogenic climate change worsens hurricanes because warmer ocean temperatures provide greater thermal energy, increasing both quantity and strength of hurricanes. With warmer temperatures, hurricanes can also carry more water and move slower, thus dumping immense amounts of precipitation once they reach land. Melting sea ice and rising sea levels contribute to these effects. 

One of the most moveable pieces in the U.S.’s march towards net-zero carbon emissions is that of the energy sector. This arena of emissions has long been dominated by conversations about developing and deploying renewable energies such as solar and wind. Over the past few decades, the U.S. has moved quickly to successfully administer these clean energies to meet rising electricity demands. The nation now faces a new hurdle: connecting these energy sources to the grid and, thus, consumers. Several solutions, including the roll out of new transmission lines, have been proposed, but often stall due to political and logistical challenges. This past week, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) made big changes to federal transmission policy for the first time in more than a decade. These changes play a pivotal role in expediting the process of bringing more transmission into the grid. Some highlights of the rule include:

1. Addressing the grid operators’ tendency to be reactive and myopic by requiring them to plan for needs 20 years in the future. This includes taking into account shifting energy mixes (proportion of coal, gas, solar, etc.) and the increasing likelihood of extreme weather events which can cause blackouts. 

2. Evaluating benefits of new transmission lines and how to split their costs. FERC prescribed a formula for splitting costs among customers in proportion to how much they would benefit from the new lines. 

3. Utilities and operators must now consider technologies such as advanced conductors which have higher upfront costs but are more efficient in the long-term. 

This new rule, however, fails to address the need to connect major energy regions within the nation with each other. It also says nothing concerning the challenges of constructing long-distance power lines. Even with this rule extremely speeding up the process, it will still be at least a couple years before its effects are realized - and likely many more before they are felt. . Actions from Biden and/or Congress may be needed to address these concerns and further expedite the clean energy transition. 

In addition to new transmission lines, the U.S.’s capacity to distribute energy can be maximized by deploying grid-enhancement technologies (GETs) such as dynamic line rating and power-flow control devices. These technologies require no additional transmission and can be added to existing transmission lines to expand their capacity and efficiency. 

New BLM rule halts new coal mining in Wyoming.

The Bureau of Land Management announced earlier this month that it would no longer allow new coal-mining leases in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, Inside Climate News reports. The Powder River Basin, located in northeastern Wyoming, boasts the greatest production of coal in the United States. The move comes in an attempt to meet the BLM’s newly outlined mission to balance land use for “multiple uses” - balancing resource extraction with conservation and recreation. Melissa Hornbein, an attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center, says the new rule will undoubtedly protect the landscape, but that motivation for the decision is most likely tied to the BLM’s assessment of health and social costs of coal-mining. The decision will necessitate a significant shift in local economies, as they currently depend heavily on taxes associated with coal-mining operations. 

Flash floods in Afghanistan have left hundreds dead and damaged thousands of homes, livestock, schools, or mosques this weekend. The death toll is expected to rise as more surveying is conducted and bodies and people are recovered from the debris and mud. As NPR reports, the provinces of Badakhshan, Baghlan, Ghor and Herat were the worst hit. 

The Washington Post reports that these flash floods after an unusually wet season have been attributed to climate change. The Taliban-led country already relies heavily on international humanitarian aid and the chronically underfunded health care system is ill-equipped to respond to the disaster. It is unclear if and how neighboring nations will respond. As of yet, the Afghani government is moving all available resources to the affected areas. 

In Kenya, too, communities are facing devastating losses from flooding across the country. As rains pummeled the country, creek beds and rivers swelled. The federal government issued a statement calling for the evacuation of informal settlements along waterways. Then city officials came and demolished the settlements before the time period that the statement had specified. Thousands of Kenyans lost everything they owned and were left to seek shelter in schools and churches. President William Ruto toured the slums, making promises for relocation and offering each family $76. But as the Kenyan government is slow to respond to other flood disasters in the country, frustration is mounting. 

An hour north of Nairobi is a market town called Mai Mahiu. In April it suffered its own deluge. Dozens of people died and a mudslide blocked the road. Without government intervention, citizens were left to search the rubble for lost community members and property. The road through the town, ordinarily connecting Kenya’s agricultural production in the west to the capital city, has remained impassable. With hundreds dead and hundreds of thousands more displaced across the nation, the government declared May 10 a national day of mourning.

In addition to these two disasters this past week, 2024 has seen several other extreme flooding events. Heavy rains in Brazil left more than 100 dead, tens of thousands displaced, and critical infrastructure destroyed. The United Arab Emirates and neighboring Oman suffered the heaviest rains in more than 75 years, disrupting more than 1,200 flights at the busiest international airport and killing more than 20 people. In the southern Chinese province Guangdong, more than 100,000 people were evacuated as sustained rains caused rivers to swell, causing severe economic disruption in the “manufacturing heartland” of China. Winter rains triggered landslides and infrastructure collapse in Pakistan, leaving dozens dead and siloing the northwestern region. Record rainfall in southern California created flash flood conditions, prompting road closures and a state of emergency. As climate change worsens, extreme weather events such as these are expected to become more common and more severe. Many nations and regions that will be worst affected, such as Afghanistan and Kenya, do not have the infrastructure or funds necessary to respond. 

Anthropogenic drivers of global change are worsening the spread of infectious diseases. 

Environmental changes driven by climate change, chemical pollution, landscape transformation, and introduction of non-native species have been found to increase the emergence of infectious diseases. A meta-analysis study published in the journal Nature last week analyzes nearly 3,000 observations and connects these four anthropogenic changes to increases of infectious diseases, while habitat loss (as a function of urbanization) is connected to decreases. The study examines disease risks for plants, humans, and other animals across all continents except for Antarctica. The researchers, led by Michael Mahon from the University of Notre Dame, identified a loss of biodiversity as the largest driver of increases in infectious diseases. 

The researchers speculate that biodiversity loss exacerbates the presence of infectious diseases because as species in an ecosystem decline, the rarer ones are the first to become locally extinct. This concentrates ecosystem resources within the most abundant species, ultimately making it easier for pathogens to find these host species. Habitat loss is seen to decrease the prevalence of infectious diseases, likely because habitat loss usually comes as a result of urbanization, and urban areas typically have better sanitation infrastructure. Thus, the lack of organisms altogether in urban areas is linked to the decline in diseases, but does not necessarily mean that organisms are healthy. 

The authors emphasize that within each category, there are subcategories with varying effects on infectious diseases. They are also careful to point out that there are many types, vectors, and life styles of infectious diseases - from bacteria to direct parasites, to complex life-cycle parasites. Thus, there are a variety of factors influencing how these categories of anthropogenic change alter the prevalence of diseases around the world. Moreover, this study isolates the effect of categories, but in reality, disease mechanisms are responding to these changes and more at the same time. Many of these changes are also intertwined with each other (e.g. introduced species and climate change both contribute to biodiversity change). Finally, the researchers encourage the study and its limitations to be used to concentrate policy efforts in the most critical areas: biodiversity loss and climate change. 

Electric vehicles are less bad than gas ones.

Electric vehicles are often touted as a “zero-emission” transportation option. That’s not entirely accurate. But they are still better than a gas car, NPR reports. Compared to a gas car, an EV has a greater upfront environmental cost. The minerals required to create the battery require intensive mining that disrupts habitats, pollutes nearby soil and water, and is fraught with human rights violations. But that cost is only paid once. For a traditional internal combustion engine (ICE), that cost is paid every gas-powered mile. The gasoline pumped into an ICE car involves habitat-reducing mining, extraction economies based in labor and land rights violations, oil spills, and propping up corrupt oil-rich regimes. Moreover, we have the capacity to recycle EV batteries as soon as enough EVs retire to initiate the supply chain. There are other compromises, too: biking or taking public transportation, buying a used car, one with a cobalt-free battery, and/or a smaller vehicle with a smaller, lighter battery.

Ecologists have studied the concept of resilience within ecosystems for decades now. They have come to define resilience as the speed at which an ecological community recovers from disturbance. It is often discussed alongside the concept of resistance, the strength that a disturbance must have in order to shift an ecological community from one state to another. These two concepts play key roles in understanding an ecosystem’s tipping points. Studies have often found that frequent and mild disturbances create more resilient communities and landscapes. A study published earlier this week in the journal Nature applies these concepts to understanding human communities. Philip Riris of Bournemouth University in the UK and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis of archaeological evidence spanning 30,000 years from 16 human societies around the world. Using radio-carbon dating techniques, they were able to distinguish the relative ages of different archaeological sites and use the changes in abundance of sites over time as a way to determine population downturns (disturbances) and recoveries. 

Their study is one of the first of its kind to focus on long-term impacts of disturbance events, whereas most past studies have narrowly focused on extreme and/or singular events. They asked two main questions:  “(1) how quickly do past populations recover after downturns; and (2) what factors mediate past resistance and resilience to downturns?”

Riris and colleagues found that the ability to withstand and recover from downturns was determined by a single factor: the frequency of these downturns. In turn, the frequency of downturns was determined by land use, with agricultural societies experiencing “significantly more downturns over time than other land-use patterns recorded during downturns.” Essentially, the shift towards society which produced their own food created both more vulnerable and, in turn, more resilient societies. 

Overall, the researchers found a mix of different catalysts for downturns. The most common cause was environmental changes, especially aridity. The second most common cause, in the cultural category, was mobility. 

Other key findings were:

1. Anecdotally, but not statistically, resilience and resistance to climate-driven downturns were lower than in response to those driven by socio-cultural challenges. 

2. Nearly all downturns examined had a duration of 50-500 years. 

3. The geographical location of the society was not a significant factor (with the exception of the Caribbean and Sicilian archipelagos). 

The New York Times reports that Riris, the lead author of the study, summed it up by saying “Over time, you will suffer less, essentially… There tends not to be wholesale collapse.” The striking parallel between the societal response of developing resilience in the face of repeated downturns and that of large-scale ecosystems such as forests or grasslands, was not lost on the researchers. Riris speculated that perhaps over time, societies developed innovations or techniques for responding to disturbances, which were then passed down or otherwise integrated as long-term cultural standards. Despite the desire to turn to the past in order to inform decisions for the future, Riris was reluctant to give advice. Afterall, it is difficult to use archaeological evidence focused on 50-500 year-long disturbance events in order to inform current policies, which tend to be necessarily myopic. 

G7 countries agree to move away from coal

Representatives from the G7 countries met in Italy this past week to develop an agreement to phase out the use of coal by 2035. The G7 nations is a group of seven of the world’s wealthiest nations: Canada, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America; the European Union constitutes a “non-enumerated member.” Coal is the most polluting form of energy and its phase out would mark significant strides towards goals of global carbon neutrality. The agreement reached is non-binding, but serves to signal to other countries, namely large coal consumers in Asia, that the time to shift to clean energy has come.

On Thursday (April 25), the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled four new rules aimed at curbing pollution from fossil fuel power plants. The first rule will force coal-fired plants to either reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by 90% by 2034 or else retire the plant by 2039. The timeline of this ruling is more ambitious than that of previous drafts. It also hinges on the adoption of carbon capture technology (CCT) whereby carbon dioxide is caught before it is emitted into the atmosphere and stored deep underground. Some environmentalists worry that CCT, which has failed to meet expectations before, will be used as a way to prop up the fossil fuel industry and avoid a true transition towards renewable energy. The new EPA rule is rooted in compliance with a 2022 Supreme Court case wherein the EPA was challenged by the state of West Virginia. The case found that the EPA does not have the authority to force a transition of the power sector at large from fossil fuels to renewable energy; it only has the authority to impose regulations on a plant-by-plant basis with reference to specific technologies. 

The second rule will reduce the amount of the neurotoxin mercury that is released into the air from coal plants. The third rule increases surveillance of coal ash, a toxic byproduct of burning coal. The fourth and final rule increases the limits on disposal of heavy metals from coal plants into nearby waterways. 

The power sector is the second largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions, after transportation. Burning coal provides only about 16 percent of the electricity in the United States, but has an outsized role in emissions as one of the dirtiest forms of energy. These new rules will significantly curb these emissions. Moreover, they will mitigate the effects of the impending increase in use of fossil gas plants being used to meet the US’ increasing energy demands, especially in the Southeast where new energy-hungry data centers are rapidly being built. 

Republican and other pro-fossil fuel legislators have already threatened litigation over the new rules. These potential lawsuits are not expected to be successful. A win for Donald Trump in November, however, would spell disaster for the new rules. The former president has said he would overturn the new regulations and reverse course by reinvesting in the expansion of the fossil fuel industry. He has also falsely claimed that renewable energy “doesn’t work,” despite the fact that it provides more energy more cheaply than fossil fuels. 

The BLM puts conservation on par with extraction

Last week, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced a new Public Lands Rule to better help protect, conserve, and manage public lands, water, and habitat. The BLM manages nearly 10 percent of the US’s land. Its stated mission is to “sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations.” Previously, the BLM had the power to regulate and issue permits focused only on the “productivity” of public lands, namely oil and gas, timber, mining, and grazing. This new rule creates specific regulations and permits focused on “the conservation side” of the BLM’s mission. 

New restoration and mitigation leases will provide a specific framework and clarification for actions needed to conserve and restore public lands. Science and Indigenous Knowledge will provide the foundation for land management decisions that prioritize the health of landscapes, especially in response to climate change. Greater clarification is also provided concerning how the BLM will designate and protect Areas of Critical Environmental Concern. The new rule “puts conservation on equal footing with the rest of our uses and answers a nearly universal desire… to conserve and restore our land,” says BLM Fish Biologist Sharmila Jensen.

Grizzly bears to be reintroduced to North Cascades National Park

Earlier this week the National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced a plan to reintroduce grizzly bears into remote parts of the North Cascades National Park in northern Washington state. The park is within a region that was once home to grizzlies before they were hunted for their fur. The plan calls for trapping and transporting a founding population of 25 grizzlies from British Columbia and/or Montana. It is not expected to come to fruition for another few years.

As a keystone species, grizzlies shape their environments by turning over soil, spreading seeds, moving across a vast range, and having a large diet breadth. As generalists, they provide resiliency to their ecosystems. Farmers and ranchers in the area, already contending with wolves, express concern over potential losses due to the introduction of another large predator. Experts, however, assured that the bears would be released in far away, high quality environments where they are unlikely to stray from. Moreover, the bears are classified as a “nonessential experimental population” and legislation will be put in place allowing for federal agencies and, in limited cases, civilians to kill or relocate bears if they pose a threat to people or livestock.

On Friday (12 April), the Biden administration put the finishing touches on a landmark ruling that increases the cost of new oil and gas leasing bonds on federal lands for the first time in more than sixty years. In 1960 the price of leasing bonds was set at $10,000. Despite significant inflation and a changing energy landscape, the price has not budged until now. The new rule raises the cost to $150,000 and increases the royalty rates by more than one-third — from 12.5% to 16.7%. The rule does not prohibit new leases on federal lands. 

The increased cost paid by oil and gas companies is designed to pay for cleaning up drilling sites and plugging wells once companies have finished their extraction. Prior to this, many “orphan wells,” so-called because once abandoned, their owners are nearly impossible to track down, have gone unplugged. With a meager cost of only $10,000, the companies skirted their responsibility to clean up their sites. Taxpayers have been left to foot both the financial and environmental burdens. 

The “playbook” for how oil and gas companies orphan their wells goes like this: a large company (Exxon, Chevron, Remnant, etc.) buys a bonding lease for a new extraction site. They reap large profits until production fades, after which they sell the site to a smaller company. The smaller company repeats the process and the site is bought and resold to ever-smaller companies. Along the way, the infrastructure falls into disrepair. Regulators are helpless, as the bonds paid are too small to cover the cost of repair. The bonds are also too small for companies to mind losing them. Enough un-attended wells stack up and companies go to bankruptcy court where the process of being held accountable is delayed, the wells remain unplugged, and they are let off the hook. 

Abandoned wells leak oil, brine, and toxic and explosive gasses into local soils and waterways. They also continue to emit methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas. It is estimated that it would cost the government $153.1 billion dollars to clean up the more than 2 million abandoned wells. These numbers are almost certainly underestimations. The new ruling is designed to remedy this. 

Several fossil-fuel industry trade groups, including the American Petroleum Institute and the Independent Petroleum Association of America, expressed concerns that the new rules could disrupt the security of the U.S. energy supply and economy as the U.S. continues to rely on fossil fuels to meet its growing energy demands and in fact is now the largest producer of crude oil in the history of the world. They also expressed concerns that the dramatic increase in cost would eliminate smaller oil and gas companies from participating in the market. 

Former President Donald Trump, meanwhile, is moving in the opposite direction. He hosted a private event on Thursday with more than 20 oil and gas company executives at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida. He has also reportedly advocated for fewer drilling regulations and asked executives what they would need in order to be able to produce more oil. 

Biden expands two national monuments in California

In keeping with his goal to 30 percent of the U.S.’s land and water by 2030, President Biden has moved to expand two national monuments in California. As the Washington Post reports, previous attempts to expand these areas stalled in Congress; Biden is leveraging executive power via the 1906 Antiquities Act to circumvent Capitol Hill. The San Gabriel Mountains National Monument, east of Los Angeles, will gain 109,167 acres from the surrounding Angeles National Forest. One of the primary goals with this expansion is to grant greater access to outdoor spaces for Latino and low-income communities in eastern Los Angeles, where there are few urban parks. Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, northeast of Sacramento, will gain 13,753 acres and the area will be renamed from “Walker Ridge” to “Molok Luyuk,” meaning “Condor Ridge” in the Patwin language. Both expansions are being celebrated by conservationists and Indigenous communities. 

Fearing wildfire, Xcel Energy preemptively shuts off power in Colorado

Last weekend wind speeds reached more than 90 mph across the Front Range in Colorado. Fearing potential wildfire risks, Xcel Energy, for the first time, shut off power to more than 55,000 customers. Days later, 16,000 customers were still without power. Xcel maintains that it provided adequate warning of the intentional blackout, but many customers say they never received accurate notifications. Many homes, small businesses, and even a wastewater treatment plant were left in the dark. 

Some of the most destructive wildfires in the United States have been the result of failed utility lines during dry and windy conditions. In California, failed PG&E equipment was found liable for the 2018 Camp Fire and the 2021 Dixie Fire, the latter of which was the second largest wildfire in the state’s history. Previous fires prompted PG&E to file for bankruptcy. It was then ordered to pay a $45 million settlement following the Dixie Fire. Utility lines from Excel Energy are suspected of contributing to the 2021 Marshall Fire, the most destructive fire ever recorded in Colorado. The recent Smokehouse Creek Fire in the Texas-Oklahoma panhandle has also been attributed to downed Xcel infrastructure. Although fires sparked by utility infrastructure are uncommon, they are more destructive and difficult to control than other wildfires. 

Some experts in Colorado, frustrated with Xcel’s decision and lack of communication, say that the company was being unnecessarily cautious. It is true that wind speeds were extraordinarily high. But this is only one wildfire risk factor. It has been an extremely wet winter in Colorado, and much of the vegetation is still green, meaning that its risk of ignition is much lower than in past seasons. 

As climate change makes extreme drought and other risky weather patterns more common, episodes of wildfire risk are expected to increase. As the country shifts towards electrification in pursuit of lower carbon emissions, the amount of utility infrastructure is expected to increase. These two simultaneous patterns are likely to compound existing fire risks, unless mitigation strategies are deployed. One potential solution is intentional blackouts such as these – hopefully with better communication.

Claudia Sheinbaum is the current frontrunner in Mexico’s presidential race. She is an environmental scientist and a co-author on the 2007 Nobel-prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. As head of government of Mexico City (similar to a U.S. state governor), she led efforts to better measure the city’s air pollution and pushed policies to increase electric transportation, bicycling infrastructure, and rooftop solar. But she is not expected to carry these ideals forward as president. 

She and current president Andrés Manuel López Obrador are members of Mexico’s left-wing party, MORENO, with López Obrador serving as a political mentor for Sheinbaum. López Obrador has used his term as President to invest billions of dollars into a state-owned oil company and divested efforts from an energy sector overhaul. All this serves to bolster political power as Mexico becomes less reliant on foreign oil imports. Sheinbaum has largely been quiet on the issue of investment in fossil fuels but has maintained that she supports President López Obrador’s energy policy, and is expected to continue it. 

 Sheinbaum’s primary opponent is Xóchitl Gálvez, a member of Mexico’s new big tent political party Fuerza y Corazón por México. She was mayor of Miguel Hidalgo borough in Mexico City and a center-right Senator, though she often supported progressive platforms. Unlike Sheinbaum, Gálvez has said she will support divestments from state-owned oil refinery operations, and support investments in a shift towards renewable energy. 

The election will occur in June 2024. It comes as Mexico faces rising sea levels and increased water shortages throughout the country.

 The Rise of Renewables

Renewable energy is having its heyday. Around the country, records are falling as more regions and states report ever-increasing proportions of their grids being made up of energy from wind, solar, and hydropower. While these grids all remain dependent on fossil fuels, these broken records tell us that renewable energy sources can be rolled out and put to use quickly. But it might not be enough. 

Electricity demand is increasing, and the grid is struggling to keep up. Ironically, the increase in demand for electricity is being driven in part by a shift towards electrification as a step towards decarbonization. Electric vehicles, batteries, and solar factories all require electricity. As do the growing number of large data centers. The surge in demand for electricity is outpacing the addition of renewables to the grid. New renewable projects are saddled with hurdles such as siting and transmission limitations as well as the application process to get plugged into an existing grid. Fossil fuels are picking up the slack. New gas plants are being added and old coal plants are postponing “retirement” in order to supply electricity to data centers and EV factories, both of which demand more energy 24/7 than solar and wind are able to provide. The use of fossil fuels to meet increased demands for electricity only increases emissions and jeopardizes Biden’s 2035 decarbonization goal. Some of the effects of increased demand may be dampened by improved energy efficiencies in newer technologies.

In the early hours of Tuesday, March 26th, a Singaporean container ship named the Dali lost power as it left the Port of Baltimore. Minutes after sending out a mayday call, it struck one of the supports of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, swiftly collapsing it into the murky waters of the Patapsco River below. The call prompted authorities to halt traffic entering the bridge, but there was not enough time to clear the crew of construction workers fixing potholes on the bridge. Two men were rescued and six presumed dead and later identified as migrant workers from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras who had been living in nearby neighborhoods. 

Considerable strain is being added to already expensive shipping costs which have only just rebounded from COVID-19 pandemic related stunting. The reconstruction of the bridge is expected to be federally funded, but will take many years to complete. On average, the bridge carried 31,000 vehicles a day. Traffic must now reroute through tunnels or a 2-hour detour around the headwaters of the Chesapeake Bay. The bridge was also the only method for large container trucks which cannot use the tunnels to pass through. The rerouting of these vehicles will add costs and air-pollution to their routes. 

The Port is closed indefinitely due to the blockage created by the tangled wreckage. This halts the Port’s role as the second-largest exporter of coal and the leading “roll-on roll-off” port for heavy vehicles and other automobiles. Automakers Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, and Subaru were major users of the Port. Other ports along the East Coast, from New Jersey to Georgia, are preparing to pick up extra traffic. 

As clean-up begins, there are looming questions of environmental hazards associated with the wreckage. The added air-pollution within Maryland neighborhoods associated with rerouted industrial diesel trucks is one added hazard. The Dali was also carrying 56 containers holding 764 tons of hazardous materials, namely corrosive and flammable liquids and lithium-ion batteries. Officials say 14 of them have been damaged. The liquids are contained within extremely durable steel containers designed to prevent leakage even when damaged. The storage of the batteries is unclear. The ship also contains 1.5 million gallons of fuel and lube oil. A 2,400 feet boom has been placed near the site to absorb any leaks. At the moment, Maryland Governor Wes Moore says that there is no reason to believe that there are any active leaks that would be detrimental to the health of the Bay or the public. 

The collapse of the bridge comes amidst a decade-long effort to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. Being the largest estuary in the country and having a watershed of more than 64,000 square miles spanning six states and the District of Columbia (DE, MD, NY, PA, VA, WV, DC), the Bay has suffered ample contamination. From agricultural and industrial runoff, improperly treated wastewater, and polluted stormwater, this fragile brackish ecosystem home to more than 3,600 species of plants and wildlife and 18 million people, has seen more than its fair share of pollution. 

Local environmental groups are concerned not only that the wreck will leak more pollutants into the water, but that clean-up efforts may stir up other contaminants as well. One concern is that in a rush to rebuild the bridge, environmental impacts may be overlooked. Another is that of dredging, which will stir up sediment and long-term pollutants that have settled. Top of the mind is the crabbing season beginning on April 1st. Blue crabs are the most valuable commercial fishery in Maryland. Cloudy polluted water and restricted access to waterways could put a significant damper on this year’s catch. 

Although these waters have suffered a lot of pollution, they are resilient. But they are not indestructible. 

The Colorado River dwindles for cattle

The once mighty Colorado River that carved the Grand Canyon now rarely reaches the ocean. The river supports 40 million people and 2 million hectares of cropland. A new study published in the journal Nature conducted by Brian Richter of the World Wildlife Fund and colleagues from around the country traced where the water goes if not out to sea. They found that irrigated agriculture accounts for the vast majority of all water consumption from the Colorado River; more than “three times all other direct uses combined.” 46% of this direct water consumption is used to grow alfalfa, hay, and other grasses to feed cattle. Livestock farming also produces as much as 19% of the world’s climate-warming emissions.

These findings come amidst hard-fought disputes between the states of the Upper Basin (CO, NM, UT, WY) and Lower Basin (CA, AZ, NV) over water use allocations. The states have been unable to decide who should bear the burden of cuts, and where. Current guidelines require the Upper Basin to  cut water use during years of shortages, even while the Lower Basin states continue to use far more water. It is easy to point to desert cities and golf courses and ask them to cut water usage. They have and will likely continue to. But it will make little difference. Richter, lead author of the study, says “the only dial we have to work with is irrigated farming.” 

But it’s not quite that simple to just turn away from alfalfa. It uses more water than other crops, but is also drought tolerant, needs only to be planted once, and is easily harvested by machinery. And it’s in demand for both beef and dairy cattle industries. In short, it’s a sticky situation. Negotiations over water usage might get ugly. A shift towards pre-industrial agriculture might be needed. Regional economies will likely be shaken. The Western landscape will have to change.

America’s most visited national park is in climate peril

Straddling the southern Appalachian mountains in eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina, Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited National Park in the United States. It is also the most biodiverse; home to more than 100 different endemic tree species and is the Salamander Capital of the World. But it faces a host of challenges exacerbated by climate change. Logging, acid rain, and the invasive balsam wooly adelgid have stunted the forests’ health.

 These forests are now facing risks associated with climate change. Spruce-fir forests of southern Appalachia thrive only in the climes of 5,000 feet of elevation and above. As climate change creates hotter and drier conditions, these forests are shifting upwards, where they are running out of vertical feet to climb amongst the stout peaks of the Appalachian chain. The same shifts in climate are increasing the range of deciduous trees in the lowlands, further crowding out vulnerable spruce-fir ecosystems. Meanwhile warmer temperatures increase the activity of the invasive balsam wooly adelgid threatening these forests.

Last year’s U.N. Climate Change Conference in Dubai, COP28, was the first to explicitly call for a phase out of fossil fuels. An energy conference held last week in Houston carries a different tone. Executives of oil and gas companies from around the world gathered to discuss the future of fossil fuels within the global economy. Amin Nasser, president and CEO of Saudi Aramco, referred to the prospect of phasing out oil and gas as a “fantasy.” Some companies recognize the need for an energy transition, and regard gas as one of these transition fuels. Indeed, this past year has marked record oil and gas production: more numerous and powerful data centers require immense amounts of energy, largely from fossil gas; the U.S. is now the leading producer of oil; ExxonMobil and Chevron boasted their largest annual profits in a decade. The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act provides tax cuts for companies such as these if they invest in “carbon capture,” which could further delay the transition away from fossil fuels. John D. Podesta, senior advisor to Biden on international climate policy, maintains that the “trajectory [away from fossil fuels] is clear. The question is speed and scale.”

This conference of (fingers crossed) hubris comes as the Biden administration pushes forward rules that undercut the industry in hopes of meeting the U.S.'s climate goals. On Wednesday, the EPA announced a new set of regulations that would impose the strictest limits on tailpipe emissions yet. 

The ruling was a compromise made with auto-worker unions in the midst of a critical election year. Rather than explicitly requiring a boost in electric vehicle production (this stricter rule is expected to come in 2030), the tailpipe emissions regulations are instead a work around. An automaker must meet these standards, but can do so in many ways, including by manufacturing more EVs, more plug-in hybrids, less heavy-emitting vehicles, innovating lesser vehicular emissions, or any combination they see fit. Fossil fuel companies, unsurprisingly, are threatening to sue over the loss of revenue this rule would mean for them. 

They are also proposing litigation against a different EPA rule that would require them to detect and fix their own methane gas leaks. This comes as  a study published in the journal Nature finds that current EPA methane emission estimates from oil and gas fields are nearly three times lower than actual point-source methane emissions. 

As a greenhouse gas, methane is responsible for about a third of today’s global warming. It acts faster and has 80-times the heat-capturing capacity compared to carbon dioxide. The oil and gas industry is the second largest producer of methane, after the agriculture sector. Being the main component of fossil gas, it is released by leaks in well sites, processing plants, along pipelines, and other components of the fossil extraction apparatus. Without accurate accounts of methane emissions, goals of curbing them and reaching the pledged goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C becomes all the more elusive. 

BLM moves to instate greater protections for the greater sage grouse.

The greater sage grouse is a large bird, iconic in the West for its flashy mating displays. It was once prolific across the “sagebrush sea,” but its populations have declined by as much as 80% since 1965. The decline is due in large part to habitat loss driven by anthropogenic development of the land, wildfires, an invasive grass (cheatgrass), and drought. 

An adult male puffing out its chest as part of its iconic and elaborate mating display. Photographed by Chirstopher Ciccone/ Audubon Photography Awards.

A new proposal from the Bureau of Land Management seeks to protect the bird and its habitat by limiting the activities permitted on prime habitat. It outlines six alternatives of varying restrictions and affected land areas. It is an attempt  to keep the bird off of the endangered species list, which would prompt even stricter limitations on the activities permitted within the region. The new proposal has been met with a wide array of reactions, from the president of the Western Energy Alliance criticizing its “one-size-fits-all” approach, some conservation groups celebrating, and others saying it does not go far enough. While mining and oil and gas extraction sites have long been harbingers of doom for the greater sage grouse, the new rules now also limit the areas available for deploying necessary but land-intensive renewable energy projects. Aside from its intrinsic value as a resident of the American West, scientists have long used the greater sage grouse as an indicator species for the overall health of sagebrush ecosystems. 

Grazing could improve soil’s carbon storage.

A shift in global grazing regimes has the potential to lock away 63 billion tons of carbon. A study published earlier this month in the journal Nature, conducted by Shuai Ren of the University of Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing and colleagues analyzed 1,473 soil carbon observations in relation to grazing. Soil carbon can act as both a source or sink for carbon dioxide. In fact, grazing lands have emitted 46 billion tons of carbon since the 1960s (fossil fuel emissions amount to about 10 billion tons annually). The soil carbon stored globally is three times greater than that in the atmosphere, but its stability is subject to a variety of factors including climate, soil properties, and anthropogenic land use change – including livestock grazing. Grazing, which occupies 77% of global farmland, is important for stimulating plant growth, cycling nutrients, and promoting the health of soil microbes, all of which contribute to the acquisition of carbon within soil. Overgrazing, though, can cause soil erosion, damage to plants, and emission of this carbon. 

The researchers’ analysis found that across these studies, soil carbon stock was maintained primarily by grazing intensity and temperature. They found a non-linear relationship between grazing intensity and carbon stocks such that soils subjected to light-moderate grazing intensity stored the most carbon, and past a certain threshold, the soils became emitters of that carbon. There is variation across the world as soil carbon stocks are also dependent on microbial activity, weathering, organic inputs, and plant species composition. Because of this variation, the researchers also propose a variable change in optimal grazing intensity and subsequent carbon sequestration potential. 

Regions farther from the equator, such as northern Eurasia and North America, or southern South America have greater optimal grazing intensities than that of more equatorial regions such as sub-saharan Africa and southern Asia. Carbon sequestration potential is greatest in northeast North America and southern Asia. Overall, the researchers propose that if grazing intensity was greatly reduced across 75% of the world’s grazing lands, and intensified across the rest of it, then these grazing lands could potentially store 63 billion tons of carbon. 

The authors recognize that their meta-analysis contains several limitations. For one, the nuance associated with determining causation, not just correlation, within the relationship between soil carbon stocks and grazing is difficult to parse out on a global scale. There was also a dearth of plot-level data available for large regions within North America and China. 

Another limitation, perhaps, that they did not discuss, is the geo-politics of grazing lands. It’s not exactly feasible to consolidate grazing in the regions of the world where the optimal grazing intensity is highest without regard for the capacity of the land to hold that amount of livestock or the costs (financial, carbon, etc.) for processing and transporting the livestock products from this new region to the point of consumption. But alas, this article is an environmental climate change publication, not a political ecology one. The insights into the potential benefits of low intensity grazing on soil carbon storage is excellent insight into the value of pasturelands, the future of land use, and nature-based climate solutions.

A study published last month in the journal Science reveals new information about the negative effects of chemical air pollutants on pollinating moths. The study led by Jeremy Chan and a team of researchers at the University of Washington followed the effects of ozone and nitrate (NO₃) on the nocturnal hawkmoth’s ability to pollinate native desert evening primrose plants. They deconstructed samples of the flower’s scent and exposed moths to them in order to identify which compounds the moths responded most strongly to. They synthesized these compounds, which the moths responded well to. They then introduced NO₃. With the introduction of the pollutant, the moths no longer responded to the scent. The researchers then removed the NO₃ from the chamber and introduced a sample of the scent compound that had been exposed to NO₃ outside of the experiment chamber. The moths did not respond. Thus the researchers concluded that pollutants such as NO₃ were disrupting moth pollination by muting the attractive scent of the flowers. 

Moths losing the ability to effectively find nectar and perform pollination is just another instance in the long list of anthropogenic drivers of pollination decline. Climate change, pesticides, land use change, urban sprawl, and the introduction of invasive species are common modes of habitat loss directly and indirectly harming pollinator communities. Moth populations are also negatively affected by artificial light pollution. Most research concerning pollinators, especially in the Global North, has centered around the role of social bees like honey bees or bumble bees. While bees are extremely efficient pollinators for both natural and agricultural landscapes, there is a growing body of evidence that other pollinators, such as moths, may be more important pollinators than previously thought. 

For example, researchers from the Aarhus University in Denmark developed a method of monitoring moth pollination using cameras and found that moths were responsible for as much as 34% of visits to Trifolium pratense, an important wildflower and foraging crop previously thought to only be pollinated by bees.  Another study from the University of Sussex in the UK found that although most visits to bramble flowers occurred during the day, pollination rates were higher at night, signaling that moths can actually be more efficient pollinators than other insects. Moreover, lepidoptera (the insect order containing moths and butterflies - of which moths make up the vast majority) are also speculated to be the most species diverse category of pollinators worldwide. 

Curbing pesticide use, planting pollinator-friendly native flowers, shifting agriculture and other land use practices, abiding by tailpipe emissions standards, and reducing or changing artificial light sources at night are all methods that can improve the health of pollinator communities.

New climate-related SEC requirements for Wall Street companies

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ruled on Wednesday (March 6th) that the publicly traded companies on Wall Street must begin disclosing climate-change related expenditures. These expenditures include any impact on “business strategy, results of operations, or financial condition” suffered as a result of extreme weather events spurred by worsening climate-change. They also include any expenditures related to meeting stated climate goals, as well as the greenhouse gasses that they directly emit. The SEC maintains that the objective of its new rule is merely to create a requirement that this information be disclosed to investors, but not necessarily to force companies to curb emissions. The new regulation will mean that each company must confront their contribution and vulnerabilities to climate-change as well as divulge required climate-related information, and not just the information they would opt to share. By using the same metrics for every company, it will be easier for investors and the public to compare and evaluate different companies. 

Unsurprisingly, representatives from the fossil fuels industry have responded with outrage. They reportedly feel “unfairly punished” and that this issue would be better decided by Congress. Other companies, however, welcome the ruling. Similar rules have already been initiated in other countries, including Britain, Singapore, and the European Union. The SEC’s ruling will require disclosures beginning next year. 

Notably, these new rules do not include requirements to disclose greenhouse gasses emitted from the companies’ supply chains, or “Scope 3” emissions. A previous proposal of this rule required that companies also disclose these Scope 3 emissions if they were thought to be “material,” or relevant to investors. The UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment reports that as much as 75% of a company’s emissions can come from Scope 3 emissions. While leaving the discretion of this reporting up to the company was not the aggressiveness that climate advocates wanted, it was still stronger than the ruling released this week. Nevertheless this ruling is another feather in the cap of the Biden administration’s historic fight against climate change.

A grass fire ignited in the Texas panhandle on Monday. The largest of four active wildfires in the region, the Smokehouse Creek Fire has burned more than 1 million acres of land, killed cattle, burned crops, destroyed more than 500 structures, killed at least 2 people, spread into Oklahoma, and is about 15% contained. Record high temperatures, low humidity, and strong winds have fueled the fire and complicated suppression efforts. These effects prompted Governor Abbott to issue a disaster declaration for 60 counties in Texas.

The native short-grass prairie ecosystem has evolved with historical fire regimes, but decades of colonial fire suppression laws have changed fire intervals. As a result, woody plants have become more prevalent and the eastern red cedar has encroached into the grassland. These woody plants pose an increased fire risk because they burn longer, throw embers farther, and contain volatile compounds that cause hotter and longer lasting fires. Climate change has exacerbated these threats. 

The good news is that this short-grass prairie is resilient to fire. The encroaching woody shrubs and trees will be cleared out. The above-ground grass biomass is not alive during the winter, the below-ground living biomass will be spared, and the post-fire charred soil will attract more solar energy to accelerate the sprouting of native perennial grasses. The bad news is that critical economic infrastructure has been severely damaged. Texas is the top producer of cattle in the US, and the panhandle contains 85% of livestock. It is “unclear how many cattle have been killed in the wildfires from either burns or smoke inhalation, the number is likely to be in the thousands,” the Associated Press report. Ranchers face the unfortunate task of scouring their burnt lands for their injured cattle, worth upwards of $2,500 each. Similar fires have also burnt fences and melted water tanks, further complicating the distribution and health of livestock. 

The unprecedented extent and early start date of the Smokehouse Creek Fire raises concerns about the future of the concept of a “fire season.” The day that the fire broke out, it was 82°F in Amarillo, much higher than the city’s 54°F average February daytime high. As more days of the year become warmer and drier due to climate change, fire seasons begin earlier and end later. Shifting fire regimes have led some insurers to increase homeowner premiums and others to withdraw from the state of Texas entirely. This is a trend seen in other US states, such as California and Florida, experiencing expensive damages due to climate-change related extreme weather events. 

New York sues an industrial beef company for “greenwashing”

New York state Attorney General Letitia James sues the JBS-USA Food Company over concerns of ‘fraudulent’ marketing campaigns touting the company’s efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions and be more conscious of its contribution to global climate change.  JBS is the world’s largest producer of beef products and is considering listing shares on the US stock exchange. While the industrial beef industry is the highest greenhouse gas emitter of any agricultural product and is the leading cause of deforestation, especially in the Amazon rainforest, JBS has marketed its “Net Zero by 2040” plan. But the company, in fact, has no plan. Experts report that even if the company had developed a plan, it “could not feasibly meet its pledge [of net zero by 2040] because there are no proven agricultural practices” to do so, and any efforts to offset emissions would be all but prohibitively costly.

The state of New York cites these fraudulent claims as a public concern because consumers are willing to pay “up to 30 percent more for products with net-zero greenhouse gas emission.” The company has profited from these misleading and illegal environmental marketing claims, which violates New York;s consumer protection statuses. James has added that consumers are motivated to make environmentally conscious purchases and these deceptive claims endanger the planet.

The company has faced previous lawsuits, including from the Brazilian state Rondônia for its contributions to illegal deforestation of large swaths of Amazonian rainforest. These lawsuits cited concerns for loss of lands belonging to Indigenous peoples, greenhouse gas emissions, and loss of biodiversity. 

Courts increase States’ power over groundwater regulation

Groundwater is a precious resource. Western states are losing it. Water resource laws are generally enforced at the state level, and policies can vary state by state. Over the past few weeks, courts in three Western states - Idaho, Nevada, and Montana - have issued rulings that enhance the respective state governments’ ability to regulate the overuse of groundwater. Similar rulings are already in place in California. Groundwater, stores of fresh water below the earth’s surface, is quickly being depleted around the country for use in industrial farms, urban sprawl, and mining operations. As groundwater levels dwindle, some communities may lose their source of drinking water while others literally sink into the ground. Rapid consumption of groundwater, especially amidst periods of regional drought, means that many aquifers are unable to “recharge” and may not ever recover.

Even amongst pushback from farmers, mining companies, and real estate developers, the courts maintained the right of the States to impose stricter regulation on groundwater pumping. The White House has also turned its attention towards the issue. A briefing held last December for the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology invited scientists from around the country to address areas where the federal government should take action. They highlighted the need for more efficient water use; improved monitoring of aquifers; improved collaboration between scientists, government, and other stakeholders; reliable funding; and better science communication.

A study published last week in the journal Nature describes an impending tipping point for the Amazon rainforest. Twenty-four researchers from around the world, led by Dr. Bernardo M. Flores at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Florianópolis, Brazil, warn that as much as 47% of the biome is at risk of compounding effects which could lead to a large-scale collapse of the ecosystem. For 65 million years, the Amazon forests have remained resilient to climate change, housed untold biodiversity, and stored billions of tons of carbon. Now it faces “unprecedented stress from warming temperatures, extreme droughts, deforestation, and fires.” Collapse from this stress would likely accelerate the warming effects of climate change as the carbon stored in the ecosystem is released and its cooling and stabilizing evapotranspiration properties diminished. It would also mean a colossal loss of biodiversity, socioeconomic values, and cultures. 

The researchers examined fragments of degraded Amazon rainforest using paleo-records and assessments of events driving the forest’s stressors in order to analyze plausible trajectories that “may lead to alternative stable states.” They cite three global change impacts that have been diminishing the forest’s resilience: regional climate conditions including warming and drought; disturbance regimes including logging and understory fires; and CO₂ fertilization which increases growth rate and leads to earlier death of trees. They also outline five drivers of a changing moisture regime: global warming, change in annual rainfall, change in rainfall seasonality intensity, increasing length of the dry season, and accumulated deforestation. Deforestation and fragmentation play a large role in the feedback cycle of regional and global scale precipitation patterns as the collective mass of trees’ evapotranspiration maintains a net cooling effect and induces rainfall across South America. The researchers emphasize the need to keep global mean temperatures below 1.5°C above pre-industrial rates as outlined in the 2015 Paris Accords, and deforestation to less than 10% of the landscape in order to mitigate the worst of the compounding effects of degradation.

This research is rooted in threshold theory, which asserts that ecosystems exist in a stable state or “basin” until there is enough disturbance to push it over the “hill,” or threshold, to an alternate stable state. These alternate stable states represent more or less the same community, in a different configuration, until another disturbance induces a transition to another state. Within the threshold theory, the intermediate disturbance hypothesis highlights that patterns of disturbance and changing stable states are important mechanisms in maintaining biodiversity within an ecosystem. When disturbances occur at a heterogeneous spatial scale and with intermediate repetition and severity, a mosaic of succession is created, allowing for coexistence of early-succession species which disperse easily and capitalize on newly available resources immediately following disturbances and then facilitate the arrival of later-successional species which have higher competitive advantages. 

The problem identified by these researchers lies in the immense spatial and rapid temporal scale of degradation by anthropogenic disturbances. Aforementioned disturbances have diminished the resilience, resistance, and carbon storage across large regions of the Amazon by kneecapping biodiversity, which ordinarily provides functional diversity, redundancy, and complementarity. These intensifying disturbances in synergy with declining resilience contribute to the “tipping point” through which self-reinforcing patterns accelerated by positive feedbacks reach a critical threshold and shift an ecosystem to a different state. The authors identify three possible alternative states that the rainforest could become: a degraded forest, a white-sand savanna, and/or a degraded open-canopy system. Descent into these systems would be rapid and unstable. The extreme degradation would make large swaths of this region unrecognizable and recovery would be “irreversible [on] the time scales that matter to societies.” The catastrophic loss of one of the largest carbon sinks and climate regulators would also exacerbate current climate change. 

Canada’s zombie fires

Last year Canada experienced its worst wildfire season on record. More than 45 million acres burned, emitting more than 410 megatons of carbon, forcing evacuations of tens of thousands of residents and shrouding large portions of North American in dangerous smoke. Anthropogenic climate change causing prolonged heat waves and drought in mismanaged forests contributed to the disastrous fires. And they are still burning. 

More than 150 fires are still smoldering throughout the provinces of British Columbia and Alberta, even under accumulated snow. This past winter has been warmer and abnormally dry, contributing to the unprecedented amount of so-called “zombie fires.” Fueled by carbon-rich peat buried underground, these fires are emitting even more greenhouse-gasses. Authorities in Canada report that these fires are under control, but express concern for their potential for growth once spring brings windier, warmer, and drier days. In fact, Alberta’s government has already declared that the fire season has started within the province - earlier than typical start dates later in March. The trend of more disastrous wildfire seasons begetting further carbon emissions and thus exacerbation and increased risk of future wildfires is another example of a positive feedback loop contributing to large-scale ecosystem degradation and collapse. 

Climate Change is a key factor in U.S. Presidential Elections

A report published last month for the Center for Social and Environmental Futures (C-SEF), led by Matthew Burgess of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado, Boulder, identifies voters’ opinion on climate change as a deciding factor in the 2020 election. The team of researchers used simulations, logistic regression, and a machine learning model to recreate the 2020 presidential election with and without the influence of voters’ personal views on climate change. They used data from The Voter Study Group in their simulations. They predicted that without the influence of opinions on climate change, the Republican party would have gained 3% more of the popular vote, and likely the presidency. 

The researchers identified that there are twice as many voters concerned about climate change as there are voters who are not - including many younger and more moderate Republican voters. They also found that opinions about climate change were especially important in deciding the vote of independents. With voters across the spectrum believing them to be more capable at finding and instituting climate solutions, the Democratic party is winning votes and maintains a 26-point advantage over the Republican party on the issue of climate change. This belief is reinforced by elected Democrats, including President Joe Biden, taking increasingly aggressive stances on cutting use and emissions from fossil fuels, investing in climate solutions and environmental restoration, and prioritizing climate justice. The report also finds that most voters want greater action by both Congress and the President in addressing climate change. However, the report finds that although most voters identify climate change as an important issue, it is listed as the single most important issue for less than 5% of voters. Yet, the researchers predict that voters are beginning to view other issues more often listed as the single most important issue, including the economy, inflation, and healthcare, as related to the climate crisis.

With more than 800,000 specimens - 60% of which are from the United State’s own biodiversity hotspot in the southeast- Duke’s is one of the largest herbariums of any US university. It is world-renowned for its abundance of moss, algae, fungi, and lichen archives. It is one of the reasons the University gained its reputation as a national leader in biological research. Herbariums are often where biological scientists of all stripes from undergraduate to post-doctorate levels train and study plant systematics. 

Now, the dean of the natural science school says that the collection has grown too large to maintain, especially with a dearth of staff to do it. Researchers from around the country have condemned the decision to close the herbarium, as well as the lack of value, and thus funding, from administrators it reflects. It would be a massive loss to the research and researchers who rely on the archive for furthering the field of plant sciences. The Director, Kathleen Pryer, has proposed solutions such as using the existing space more efficiently and giving duplicates to other institutions. These ideas have been ignored. Instead, the university has already begun to discuss where to move the specimens to. This, too, has its costs associated with shipping and integrating such a large collection with a preexisting one. But splitting up the collection poses great risk of specimens being lost.  

This move is part of a larger pattern as many other herbaria have closed in the past few decades. The systematic lack of funding poses an existential threat to the study of plant systematics and natural history. Scientists warn that in the face of anthropogenic climate change and rampant development, the biodiversity crisis and its ramifications might never be fully understood if collections such as these are diminished and baselines of biodiversity unable to be established.