Six Degrees Could Change the World

I watched National Geographic Channel's "Six Degrees Could Change the World" last week and still have it very much on my mind. It is powerfully graphic with estimates of what could happen to the natural systems on the planet after each degree rise of Earth's average temperature up to six degrees warmer.

At one degree rise, scientists predict the plains of the western US will become hyper arid, wiping out grazing and dry land farming in the region. At two degrees, the Midwest would be a dust bowel. As the average temperature rises, areas of the world that are now productive agricultural land will see great reductions in productivity and areas such as northern Canada will become the new breadbaskets to the world. It hasn't been until recently that science has had computers powerful enough to develop models that could help in predicting the consequences of global warming, but knowledge of the fundamental principle of heat trapping emissions and their influence on Earth's temperature has been around since 1896.

One degree, or even six degrees doesn't seem like it could impact something as complex as nature. I certainly can't discern the difference between 50 and 51 degrees from one day to the next and our daily temperatures can fluctuate nearly one hundred degrees in a single day. But we are talking averages here, and in the case of climate change, scientists use air temperatures on land and the temperature of the ocean in determining the average degree of the earth, which is calculated on the Celsius scale. I never took a class in statistics, but in reasoning through what I learned way back in high school, when dealing with a lot of numbers it takes major change in many of the numbers to change the average significantly. Also, while air temperature fluctuates wildly on a daily basis, water requires significant amounts of energy to raise its temperature, especially when you are considering the volume of water Earth's oceans contain. I'd love to see a mathematician's explanation of just how big a change it takes to move the average temperature one degree.

Reliable data concerning global temperatures has only been available since the late 1800's. Since that time Earth's average temperature has changed just about .8 degrees--in part because the industrial revolution caused humans to start burning fossil fuels in large amounts. The last time it changed that much in my region, it took thousands of years to change, but the results were the same--the desertification of the western plains. When the earth's temperature changed as much as six degrees during the age of dinosaurs, it caused their extinction and required hundreds of millions of years for the Earth to sequester the increased amount of carbon from its atmosphere to create the environment with which humans are familiar. So temperature change isn't unprecedented on our planet, but the rapidity of change is. More information is available on the website of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

NGC's program made a profound impression on me because it translated an obscure set of statistics into concrete possibilities. Ever increasing severity of weather could cause massive starvation and relocation of hundreds of millions of people, the extinction of thousands of plants and animals, along with the economic and political fallout that results from the ensuing turmoil. It's not the kind of world I wish upon my daughter and her descendants. You can read about some of the schemes to reverse global warming here--all of which would cost billions and have potentially serious unintended consequences.

For anyone unable to watch the program--it is available on cable's National Geographic Channel (check times for your area here)--I will send a copy on DVD to anyone pledging to show it to at least ten people and am happy to send multiple copies to anyone who feels inspired to expose greater numbers to this information. Just email me with your mailing address at dryideas AT gmail DOT com. With the election coming up in November, it's important to understand the immediacy of this problem and work to ensure elected officials place a priority on climate change.

Photo: Thanks to catchke2ro

Too Much of Waste From Landscapes in Landfills

Despite efforts by many communities to divert the organic waste generated by landscapes away from the municipal landfill, tons of such waste ends up there every year. How many tons, you ask? Enter your best estimate in the comments below, and I'll do a little sleuthing to find out just how much natural nutrients we are throwing away.

Photo: Thanks to Maddie Digital.

Impervious Surfaces Channel Pollutants Into Rivers, Lakes and Oceans

Non-point source pollution is the major source of water pollutants in the United States and landscapes play a major role in the nutrient loading that causes eutrofication. Fertilizers and plant debris (mostly grass cuttings) get spread onto hard surfaces,then get washed into the storm sewer, where they are combined with runoff from acres of roads, sidewalks, parking lots, and driveways and dumped into our waterways--most often untreated--accounting for more pollution than manufacturing facilities and wastewater treatment. It seems innocuous, but all those substances combine for one great big mess. How big? Stay tuned for the skinny on how damaging NPS has been to the larger environment, or better yet check out Best Management Practices (BMPs) for nonpoint source pollution.

The Economics of Natural Services

Coming Soon--the real skinny on the economic value of natures services. The journal Nature has an article estimating the value of natures services to human society at somewhere around $33 trillion.

Top Six Reasons Our Landscapes Blow Chunks

Regurgitating aside, shouldn't we be doing a better job of creating landscapes that give back what we've inadvertently taken away in the process of making the world comfortable for humans? Here's my first stab at what's wrong with our landscapes. Add your own gripes in the comments section below.

1. Most built landscapes are “olicultures”, containing a very limited number of species of wildlife because the plant palette is no longer native.

2. Large percentages of built landscapes are impervious. Large houses on small lots with driveways and patios leave little area for precipitation to infiltrate. Endless roadways leading to miles of parking lots collect water, pollute it, concentrate it and channel it in concrete lined “rivers”.

3. Energy embodied in the leaves, grass clippings, and tree trimmings is removed from the site —hijacked and sent to the dump--not allowed to be re-incorporated back into the soil.

4. All landscapes look alike. Alien plant palettes forego native species and are used regardless of the regional aesthetic.

5. They aren’t sustainable.

6. Landscaping renders a property under-productive.

Why Nature Matters

Our lives depend upon the natural world. We can’t eat, breath, or drink without it. Yet, humanity has been fairly cavalier about keeping that natural world functioning. We’ve polluted the air and water, altered 95% of habitat, and consumed a vast amount of non-renewable resources over the ages as humans have come to dominate the earth. Global warming is being caused by human activity at a rate unprecedented in the history of the planet. We have reached a critical juncture, where it is time to modify our treatment of the natural world or face terrible consequences.

We must reel in our consumption of resources, stop polluting the air and water, and restore habitat sufficiently to sustain the web of life and the efficient functioning of natural services. No longer can we afford to disregard the environmental impact of our actions. The lives of future generations depend upon the natural world remaining intact; in order to continue to provide us with clean water, food and air we can breathe. We must learn to live sustainably—consuming no more than can be reasonably provided without destroying the natural services that sustain life on earth.

The landscape industry is in a unique position to contribute to the restoration of the natural world. We have the opportunity to position ourselves as part of the solution to restoring the full functioning of natural services or we can stand as an obstacle to that restoration. We can lead the way, establishing our profession as experts in the stewardship of precious resources, or we can drag our feet—providing roadblock after roadblock, until society legislates our industry out of existence.

One of the biggest ironies of our industry is that the current process of creating built landscape destroys the natural world. We take complex ecosystems that provide efficient services we depend upon and modify them into simplistic environments that actually tax those services. Where multi-faceted, intact natural landscapes filter precipitation, process waste, manufacture oxygen and nitrogen, sequester carbon, moderate temperature, and provide habitat for the majority of species in this world; simplistic, built landscapes contribute much less toward these functions and provide habitat for only a handful of species. Instead, we create landscapes that require constant input of resources—water, fertilizer, chemicals, and labor to keep them from reverting to their natural state.

Elsewhere, in this world, we wouldn’t tolerate such inefficiency. Businesses don’t succeed if there’s more going out than coming in. It’s time we hold landscapes up to a higher standard—requiring them to sustain plants and wildlife that in turn provide us with air to breath, water to drink, and food to drink.

The Downside of Using Alien Plants--Wildlife Habitat Loss

I'm not talking about Triffids here, but instead the large percentage of plants we use in our landscapes. Most plants used in landscapes are not indigenous to the site where they live out their lives. Non-natives from around the world have been collected and primped to become the darlings of the landscape fashion world. There are beauty contests to determine the most exquisite rose, the purplest pansy, and the reddest maple. Our landscapes have been severed from their original natural functions--cleaning water, making oxygen, moderating climate, decomposing waste, and providing habitat for the animals that are part of the web of life.

It turns out that insects (and all those other creepy things I'd like to all call insects), including soil organisms, are mostly picky eaters. Ninety per cent of herbivores are specialists, meaning they can only eat what they evolved to eat. Ten per cent are generalists, allowing them to eat multiple different species of plants they evolved to eat. Of that 10% only a few species are able to adapt to alien plants. So in a landscape there are fewer pests initially--in terms of numbers of different species and, because nearly all the native insects,et al, have flown the coop, looking for each one's (or two or three) true love--the plant of its true desire.

The longer a plant has been in the trade though, the larger the chance that someone (other than humans) will find it attractive. Either a hitchhiker from the plant's native habitat arrives to rejoin its true love or some other wildlife is able to adapt to the new culinary fare. There are many tales of woe when a plant or animal gets transplanted to another habitat and gets an upper hand or causes some unexpected consequence. Hawaii, because of its isolation from other ecosystems is a classic example of how nature twists and turns in its effort to find balance. The Galapagos Islands--Darwin's laboratory for his Origin of the Species is another case in point. Add your favorite ecosystem destruction story in the comments section below.