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Overnight News Digest: 20 years of effort by the Yurok Tribe is undamming the Klamath River [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-11-25  

This week’s science news roundup looks at two major infrastructure projects in California that set new standards—the largest dam removal in history in NorCal (and it’s impact on Yurok, Karuk and other tribes) and the largest wildlife crossing in SoCal, a visionary project that will span 10 lanes of freeway and reconnect two pieces of a fractured ecosystem. In addition, a new discovery in the “until now it was assumed” category, and a matched set of stories dealing with cosplay: A clever study design involving cape-wearing termites. Also, a bioblitz/cosplay combo. Climate change news tonight is addressed in carbon sequestration studies (spoiler: it’s the cows) and a nature photographer’s thoughts on why cooperation needs to be fostered, and more science news.

The largest dam removal in history stirs hopes of restoring California tribes’ way of life — la times

The Yurok Tribe is putting back together the pieces of their biome that colonists broke apart. Eleven California condors have been released in Yurok ancestral territory since March 2022, and the tribe plans to release birds every year for at least the next two decades. After 20 years of strategizing and pushing, the Klamath River dams are being dismantled.

x The largest dam removal in history stirs hopes of restoring California tribes’ way of life https://t.co/iIpRJFrO9X — Andy Imparato (@AndyDRC) November 24, 2023

For members of the Yurok, Karuk and other tribes who have been immersed in the struggle for much of their lives, the undamming of the Klamath represents an opportunity to heal the ecosystem and help fish populations recover by opening up hundreds of miles of spawning habitat. They say the coming changes hold promise for them to strengthen their ancestral connection to the river and keep their fishing traditions alive. “This river is our lifeline. It’s our mother. It’s what feeds us. It’s the foundation to our people, for our culture,” Hillman said. “Seeing the restoration of our river, our fisheries, I think is going to uplift us all.”

‘What the heck is going on?’ Extremely high-energy particle detected falling to Earth — the guardian

x Since we already have the OMG particle, surely this should be called the WTF particle. https://t.co/FmEkTsO6M3 — Tim O'Brien (@ProfTimOB) November 24, 2023

Astronomers have detected a rare and extremely high-energy particle falling to Earth that is causing bafflement because it is coming from an apparently empty region of space. The particle, named Amaterasu after the sun goddess in Japanese mythology, is one of the highest-energy cosmic rays ever detected. Only the most powerful cosmic events, on scales far exceeding the explosion of a star, are thought to be capable of producing such energetic particles. But Amaterasu appears to have emerged from the Local Void, an empty area of space bordering the Milky Way galaxy.

This project already is inspiring infrastructure design decisions that respect the needs of wildlife.

In October 2022, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law that requires the agency to prioritize wildlife crossings when building roadways. The Safe Roads and Wildlife Protection Act is intended to both reduce collisions between cars and animals and also enhance connectivity. Building the 101 fractured the landscape, Pratt says, turning the Santa Monica Mountains into an ecological island where genetic isolation and inbreeding are already having an effect on the local mountain lion population. “Islands are we’re species go to die,” Pratt said, “and we made the Santa Monica Mountains an island. And so this is reconnecting it ecologically to the rest of the world. And we know we need that can ecological stitch for the Santa Monica Mountains to be resilient and thrive.” Her work isn’t over. It’s a promise she made to P-22, whose face is tattooed on her left shoulder. “You know, when I got to sit with him the day before he died, which was…one of the most profoundly sad moments of my life,” she recalled, “I told him we would not stop and I’m going to honor that promise.” To that end, the National Wildlife Federation just launched the P-22 Legacy phase of the Save LA Cougars campaign — to raise the additional $15 million needed to finish the final aspects of the Wallace Annenberg Wildlife Crossing and fund some other connectivity projects.

largest wildlife crossing in the world needs your vote to become a lego set

x How cool would this be?🤩 A Lego set of the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, the largest nature bridge of its kind in the world that @Caltrans is building right now in LA! If it gets 10K votes on Lego site, it'll happen. Pls vote✅ & pass it on!📲 https://t.co/IxgHoikrf5 pic.twitter.com/ghluvvNFjO — Wade Crowfoot (@WadeCrowfoot) November 19, 2023

Wildfires are thawing the tundra — high country news

x "Research published last month found that methane hot spots on the tundra are more likely to be found in places where wildfires burned recently...'Fires are an important influence on increasing emissions [in the Arctic tundra].'" https://t.co/HyC3mo7I6n — Evan Frost; wildwoods @ bsky.social (@EFrost_Wildwood) November 20, 2023

Chunks of carbon-rich frozen soil, or permafrost, undergird much of the Arctic tundra. This perpetually frozen layer sequesters carbon from the atmosphere, sometimes storing it for tens of thousands of years beneath the boggy ground. The frozen soil is insulated by a cool wet blanket of plant litter, moss and peat. But if that blanket is incinerated by a tundra wildfire, the permafrost becomes vulnerable to thawing. And when permafrost thaws, it releases the ancient carbon, which microbes in the soil then convert into methane — a potent greenhouse gas whose release contributes to climate change and the radical reshaping of Northern latitudes across the globe.

New genome reveals molecular signatures of adaptation to nocturnality in moth-like butterflies (Hedylidae) — biorxiv

x Did you know? There are night-flying butterflies! We assembled the #genome of a nocturnal butterfly, and the DNA shares many similarities with nocturnal moths, such as color vision/#opsins. This is so cool! @lepidos_Rachit and YiMing Weng lead this study. https://t.co/tEyUJSrcv3 pic.twitter.com/kL2d2WpbU7 — Dr. Akito Kawahara (@Dr_Akito) November 22, 2023

Study: Mainstream Media Undermines Conservation By Promoting Fear Of Bats — forbes

x Are negative associations with bats in the news? Is it undermining bat conservation efforts?

"The study authors found that while most of the ecological articles did not present bats as a threat (97%), most news stories focusing on diseases did (80%)."https://t.co/px3PgXUmkU — Alberta Bats (@albertabats) November 22, 2023

Bats are important providers of ecosystem services, but the mainstream media often overlooks this inconvenient fact in its quest for spooky, viral, clickbait. Now that Halloween is here, this problem is even more pronounced: by repeating unfounded fantasies of flying vampires, and absurd myths of bats nesting in people’s hair, the mere sight of a bat is guaranteed to give at least some people the screams. Despite popular misinformation, bats are responsible for numerous benefits, such as the control of pathogen-carrying mosquitos or agricultural pests, seed dispersal or pollination. But by portraying bats only as a threat to human health, the media provide a skewed vision of these important animals by reinforces a culture of fear that undermines decades of bat conservation efforts. Further, it’s worth pointing out that many other animal groups, including pets, can and do transmit some diseases to humans, but they are not subjected to the same sort of media scrutiny.

Not All Heroes Wear Capes, but These Termites Did for Science — ny times (free article)

Cosplay study design *****

x This study has everything: jumping spiders; insects donning striped and solid patterns; and evolutionary lessons about predators and prey. https://t.co/2WceGRbAAm — NYT Science (@NYTScience) November 22, 2023

The researchers started by collecting plain-looking termites from the wild. Then they pasted pieces of paper to their backs that more or less looked like capes — either solid black, solid white or striped in black and white. This was not the latest effort to introduce tiny heroes to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It was an attempt to learn something about how jumping spiders, some of nature’s most widespread and canny predators, perceive their prey. In nature, most prey avoid being detected by predators by blending into their surroundings. But some species strive to stand out. Monarch butterflies, yellowjacket wasps and ruby-red velvet ants, for example, use bright or contrasting coloration to warn predators of their toxicity. [...] To determine how two species of jumping spiders react to vibrant warning signals, Dr. Taylor and her colleagues outfitted termites in capes fit for scientific cosplay and put them in a petri dish with the eagle-eyed arachnids.

Comic Con and LA Zoo biodiversity collaboration — cosplay for science

x Join The L.A. Zoo and @Cosplay4Science on our quest to record the great diversity of plants and animals that exists in Los Angeles! Learn more and RSVP at https://t.co/9R32w1cg9o pic.twitter.com/B8KT2MRkjE — Los Angeles Zoo (@LAZoo) November 22, 2023

Study of wintering sites shows bat seasonal migration is more complex than previously assumed — phys.org

x Study of wintering sites shows bat seasonal migration is more complex than previously assumed https://t.co/OlsPNquw1g via @physorg_com — Sarah Primate (@LangurLover) November 23, 2023

In late summer, some bat species migrate from northern Europe along the coastlines to their wintering sites in central and western Europe. Until now it was assumed that all bats traveled in the same direction during the migration. However, the reality is more complex.

Forests could suck up 226 gigatons of carbon if restored and protected, study argues — science

Scientists agree that forest trees sequester carbon, but that doesn’t mean that planting trees without regard to species or location is also helpful in removing carbon from the atmosphere.

x "If existing #forests were protected from logging, they could eventually absorb 138 gigatons of carbon."

Achieving "massive scale carbon capture, simply by protecting the ecosystems that we have."

T.W. Crowther#Science #Ecology

⏯️https://t.co/gomMAjex0q

⏯️https://t.co/DbIcDB1cMS pic.twitter.com/KdOO3Llrop — Manuela Casasoli (@manuelacasasoli) November 23, 2023

The restoration and protection of forests worldwide could help remove about 226 gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere, according to a study published today in Nature. That’s equivalent to roughly 20 years of emissions from burning fossil fuels and other sources at current rates. Some experts say the analysis provides a more reliable estimate of the carbon-capturing potential of forests than a previous, controversial study that analyzed only the potential benefit from restoring trees to degraded land. But critics are skeptical that the new number is even remotely achievable. The findings provide “clarity and confidence around the substantive role” of forests in fighting the climate crisis, says Wayne Walker, chief scientific officer of the Woodwell Climate Research Center, who was not involved in the research. Although there’s still “much uncertainty” as to the exact amount of additional carbon that forests could take up, Walker says the evidence is strong enough to justify acting to plant, restore, and protect forests. But Joseph Veldman, an ecologist and conservation biologist at Texas A&M University, isn’t convinced by the numbers. “This new study has many serious problems,” he says. For instance, much of the carbon benefit would come from planting trees in grasslands and other areas where they don’t belong, Veldman says, which threatens biodiversity in these ecosystems.

Risk to rely on soil carbon sequestration to offset global ruminant emissions — nature

Crunching the numbers reveals that ranching is a climate change driver: Grassland carbon sequestration cannot offset the carbon releases due to ranching.

x To offset *just the methane and nitrous oxide* from today’s ranching industry, we would need to sequester nearly twice as much soil carbon than exists in all the world’s pastures.



Ranching does not fight climate change, it drives it.



New study:https://t.co/cOnsPFWCtR pic.twitter.com/dkleY0TtZu — spencer 🦈 (@Unpop_Science) November 25, 2023

Carbon sequestration in grasslands has been proposed as an important means to offset greenhouse gas emissions from ruminant systems. To understand the potential and limitations of this strategy, we need to acknowledge that soil carbon sequestration is a time-limited benefit, and there are intrinsic differences between short- and long-lived greenhouse gases. [...] About 135 gigatonnes of carbon is required to offset the continuous methane and nitrous oxide emissions from ruminant sector worldwide, nearly twice the current global carbon stock in managed grasslands. For various regions, grassland carbon stocks would need to increase by approximately 25% − 2,000%, indicating that solely relying on carbon sequestration in grasslands to offset warming effect of emissions from current ruminant systems is not feasible.

Prescribed fire increases plant–pollinator network robustness to losses of rare native forbs — ecological applications

x Prescribed fire increases plant–pollinator network robustness to losses of rare native forbshttps://t.co/daMFgOyKen#Botany — Botany One (@botanyone) November 24, 2023

...the impact of restoration activities on pollinator richness, plant–pollinator interaction network structure, and network robustness is incompletely understood. Leveraging a restoration chronosequence in Pacific Northwest prairies, we examined the effects of restoration-focused prescribed fire and native forb replanting on floral resources, pollinator visitation, and plant–pollinator network structure. We … explored three management-relevant plant loss scenarios (removal of an abundant exotic forb, removal of an abundant forb designated a noxious weed, and loss of the rarest native forb) and compared them to control scenarios.

Sexual selection for extreme physical performance in a polygynous bird is associated with exceptional sex differences in oxygen carrying capacity — biology letters

Once again, behind every successful man is a woman who made him stronger.

x New paper alert! Pectoral sandpipers are an Arctic breeding polygynous shorebird in which males compete intensely for access to females. We found that the extreme lifestyle of males has led to exceptional oxygen carrying capacity! 1/6 https://t.co/YNGzOxDuTn — Peter Santema (@peter_santema) November 23, 2023

x In our new study, we show that this extreme lifestyle has led to exceptionally high haematocrit levels (percentage of red blood cells in blood) in males relative to females. In fact, the sex difference is more than double that reported in any other bird species! 4/6 pic.twitter.com/aomf9UZxYv — Peter Santema (@peter_santema) November 23, 2023

solving the climate change crisis requires cooperation and coordination

Stephen Barlow begins his thread by noting that “I've written a lot about the obstacle of the high carbon emitting 1%, their influence, and how this demographic, has all the decision-making ability and power. But I'm not a doomer, and I am explaining this, so we know how to create change, and prevent catastrophe.

Because we're not playing on a level playing field, and proper measures to address the climate and ecological emergency, are being opposed by such a powerful demographic, we must be creative, to overcome this gross power imbalance.”

x Therefore, we need to find a way of coordinating, outside the normal spheres of influence. The biggest thing we need is to avoid division. This is why we must at all costs, avoid the grand plan of how to address the crisis, as people will disagree, and it will cause division.

4/ — Stephen Barlow (@SteB777) November 24, 2023

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