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Barn Owl
Pixabay

Audubon report: Climate change threatens nearly two-thirds of our birds

This is a study that could be helpful to share with people. You'll want to emphasize what people can do, as well.

First, the news that should snap all of us to attention: “More than two-thirds of America’s birds are at risk if the current pace of global warming continues,” according to the report’s foreword.

Birds we love are in peril, including the Saltmarsh Sparrow, which could lose 62% of its current winter range. Some species may be able to adapt, but others will be left with nowhere to go, and we risk losing them forever.”

“Two-thirds of America’s birds are threatened with extinction from climate change, but keeping global temperatures down will help up to 76 percent of them,” said David Yarnold, CEO and president of Audubon. “There’s hope in this report, but first, it’ll break your heart if you care about birds and what they tell us about the ecosystems we share with them. It’s a bird emergency.”

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Finch On Branch
Pixabay

Warmer nights prompt forest birds to lay eggs earlier in spring

Ecosystem change, and often imbalance, continues with climate change. If you like science (like I do), learning about what triggers the ecosystem changes is helpful. This might be good to share with folks on your social media feeds and help them connect the dots.

A recent study from the University of Edinburgh reveals that as climate change continues to cause temperatures to rise, the breeding patterns of birds such as blue tits are being altered as evenings in spring get warmer, researchers say.

Previous research has shown that warmer springs have led birds to begin breeding earlier. However, until now, scientists had not identified the key factors that cause this behaviour…

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Fall Tree Canopy
Pixabay

Why keeping mature forests intact is key to the climate fight

The tragedy in the Southeastern U.S. [where large amounts of wood for biomass burning originates] is it’s the most biodiversity-rich region in North America and has more species of animals and plants than anyplace else. That is being decimated.

For pellets, wetland, hardwood forests are preferable to the pines and the pine plantations, which don’t burn as hot, so those wetland hardwood forests are really being gone after. For a long time, the companies made the claim they were only using the residuals, the branches, and so on. An NGO down there called Dogwood Alliance documented that that isn’t true. They’re converting whole trees [into pellets]…

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Matt Russell Talks Climate Change And Iowa Farmers
Dennis Chamberlin

One man is trying to save the world from climate change by mobilizing an unlikely team: Iowa’s farmers

“In early March, just a week before the Midwest was inundated by catastrophic flooding, a dozen farmers gathered at the First Presbyterian Church in Grinnell, Iowa, for an event billed as a conversation about “Faith, Farmers, and Climate Action.” “How is God calling you to use your farm to improve the world?” asked the evening’s facilitator, Matt Russell. “We’ve got this narrowing window of time in which we can act,” he said. “When we think about climate action—are you feeling any call to that?”

Russell directs the Iowa branch of Interfaith Power and Light, a nonprofit that promotes a religious response to global warming. A fifth-generation farmer who runs a livestock operation with his husband in nearby Lacona, Iowa, the 48-year-old nearly became a Catholic priest in his twenties but then got a degree in rural sociology. Now he preaches that America’s farmers—a demographic seen as religious and conservative—are a secret weapon in the climate fight…”

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Farmer On Red Tractor
Judy Anderson

Farmers ‘understand that the climate is changing and we have to adapt’

Land trusts can join the effort to find funding for farmers to help them adapt and slow down climate change via state or federal programs.

Fred Yoder, a fourth-generation Ohio farmer, has served on President Trump’s agriculture committee and chairs the North American Climate Smart Agriculture Alliance. He raises corn, soybeans, and wheat on about 1,500 acres, and has a seed and consulting business called Yoder Ag Services. Although the climate conversation is divisive in farm country, more farmers are talking about ways to address the issue.

We reached Yoder, who has been outspoken on climate change, while he was on his tractor. He was planting a cover crop—a crop that is eventually killed off, adding nutrients and organic matter to the soil and sequestering carbon. The following is an edited version of the conversation…

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Pond Scene With Bugs At Dusk
Andrew Burton / Getty Images

Federal Judge: Pipelines Must Not Cross Streams Without Considering Endangered Species

“A federal judge upheld his April 15 ruling Monday, tossing a key permit required by the Keystone XL and other pipeline projects to cross streams and wetlands.

Montana U.S. District Judge Brian Morris affirmed that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers cannot use a blanket water-crossing permit to approve new oil and gas pipelines without considering their impacts on endangered species.

“The court rightly ruled that the Trump administration can’t continue to ignore the catastrophic effects of fossil fuel pipelines like Keystone XL,” Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) senior attorney Jared Margolis said in a press release…”

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Australia Fires
Pixabay

Disastrous wildfires sweeping through Alaska could permanently alter forest composition

Now, a new study from the Berkeley Lab finds that future summers characterized by similar record-high temperatures and extreme wildfires fueled by climate change could cause irreparable changes within the forest, pushing cold-preferring iconic evergreen conifer trees out as broadleaf deciduous trees move in.

“Expansion of the deciduous broadleaf forests in a warmer climate may result in several ecological and climatic feedbacks that affect the carbon cycle of northern ecosystems,” said study author and Berkeley Lab postdoctoral fellow Zelalem Mekonnen

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Great Lakes Google Map
NASA Earth Observatory

‘Bigger picture, it’s climate change’

“Bigger picture, it’s climate change,” said Richard B. Rood, a professor in the University of Michigan’s Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering. “There’s no doubt that we are in a region where climate change is having an impact.”

Rood said the Great Lakes basin, which holds 90% of the nation’s freshwater, can expect similar shifts in the coming decades as world temperatures increase…

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Violet-green swallow
Sean Peterson

Collapse of desert birds due to heat stress from climate change

As temperatures rise, desert birds need more water to cool off at the same time as deserts are becoming drier, setting some species up for a severe crash, if not extinction, according to a new study from the University of California, Berkeley.

The team that last year documented a collapse of bird communities in Mojave Desert over the last century—29% of the 135 bird species that were present 100 years ago are less common and less widespread today—has now identified a likely cause: heat stress associated with climate change.

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Fresh Growth In The Forest

High rates of primary production in structurally complex forests

“Structure–function relationships are central to many ecological paradigms. Chief among these is the linkage of net primary production (NPP) with species diversity and canopy structure. Using the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) as a subcontinental‐scale research platform, we examined how temperate‐forest NPP relates to several measures of site‐level canopy structure and tree species diversity…”

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