Planting Seeds
Here’s a bit of a head scratcher – there are multiple forms of deforestation. Wait? Isn’t deforestation just about cutting down trees? You’d think so, but it isn’t necessarily that simple. Deforestation isn’t simply loggers cutting down trees to be turned into houses, furniture, and paper. It is also clearing out trees for farms, both crops and cattle. Cattle farming for instance accounts for a lot of the deforestation occurring in the world, especially in Brazil. The crops the forest might get cleared out include rubber trees and cocoa plants, both of which are major cash crops in South America where much of the world’s rainforest is located. All of it takes away a significant part of the world’s oxygen producing trees.
There have been lots of victories though. There are people who remember that once upon a time, vast swaths of forest were cut down, with no plans to replenish them. Back in the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, it’s easy to see how Europeans would see the vast forests of this seemingly endless continent and act as though the supply of wood were endless. As we know, we learned differently. Fortunately, most logging companies in the West have some sort of replanting program. It takes time to replenish, especially when cutting down full grown oaks and other slow growth trees. They can take forty years or more before reaching full growth. Various pines grow faster but the wood isn’t as desirable for a variety of reasons. Some of those plans were not the best either. Part of FDR’s New Deal was a number of government programs designed to get people back to work.
One of those programs was a replanting effort. One of the areas that it helped reforest was Northern Michigan. While it certainly accomplished that goal, anyone who has spent any time there will tell you a lot of the forests aren’t all that pretty. They’re full of jack pines planted almost in rows or scattered and clustered in ways you don’t see in an old growth forest. That’s because the people doing the planting didn’t know what they were doing. They were either throwing seeds randomly on the ground or trying to plant them in a mechanistically efficient way. The results aren’t what one would hope.
Still, all of those replanting initiatives – government and business alike - were a step in the right direction and it came about at a time when it was possible for environmentalists, businesses, and government to find middle ground. The environmentalists could be made to understand that trees meant homes for people and the businesses could be made to understand the need for replanting, and governments and businesses could be made to see that doing things like cutting all the trees next to a river led to problems later as erosion accelerated immensely without the tree’s root systems to both use the water and hold the soil.
Unfortunately, times are different now. The positions are more extreme and every side is more intractable than ever. Yet, it is clear that some kind of middle ground has to be found. As vast as the South American rainforests are, they are not infinite. We have to figure out some way to get the resources we need to house, feed, and clothe nearly 8 billion people while still leaving something for future generations. Part of that will likely be simply consuming less. Rather than buying a new piece of furniture, it might be worth refurbishing what you have. Or build new out of scrap like pallet wood. A few less hamburgers wouldn’t hurt either. That means less forest is cut down to make room for more cows.
Finding the best solutions that will keep people working and not living in a van down by the river while also protecting the planet as a whole will not be easy, it will take a lot of data. Data that you can share and purchase on TARTLE. Data on what conservation efforts are most effective, data on the effect of various practices and policies, data that can point the way to solutions for everyone.
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In line with TARTLE’s mission to promote climate stability, one of its Big 7, James and Alex welcomed Suzanne Simard to the podcast.
Suzanne, who is a Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia and the author of Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering The Wisdom of the Forest, explores the significance of emphasizing data-driven action on climate change — particularly on the old growth forests of British Columbia.
She offers an eye-opening perspective on the deterioration of these old growth forests and the colossal amount of environmental data with untapped potential. Throughout their discussion, she also drew plenty of thoughtful parallels between big data and the fight against deforestation.
The complex data networks making up a bulk of the tech systems we are heavily dependent on today are eerily similar to the interactions of trees in old growth forests.
Suzanne realized that trees are in constant conversation underground. This is made possible with the help of sophisticated fungal networks that link one tree to the rest of the forest. However, this large-scale communication network is displaced when the old forests are cut down — and even when plantations are created, the network “goes silent for a little while.”
Even when the forest begins to rebuild, it would take decades — if not centuries — for these areas to regain the same complexity that they once had when they interacted as a society of trees in an old growth forest.
Beyond the impact of this loss to local biodiversity, there is much to be said about how clearcutting these old growth forests is akin to cutting off entire societies from communicating with one another. This, inherently, is an injustice to our environment and a setback at our attempt to become true stewards of the earth.
Suzanne introduced the importance of selective harvesting, a regenerative method that allows trees to grow back without trouble. While this is the best step forward, most companies in status quo prefer to clearcut entire forests because of the reduced cost.
One particularly harmful practice of clearcutting is the harvest of “mother trees” — big, old trees that are both the most ecologically valuable in the forest and the most profitable.
When corporations use clearcutting to profit from forests, they set back the local environment in five distinct ways. The first is the loss of biodiversity; the second is the loss of carbon, an element that’s important for sustaining life; next is a rise in water levels, a change in soil temperature, and an increased rate of decomposition.
For many people, it’s easier to focus on the problems that are directly in their sight instead of trying to grasp the bigger picture. Regretfully, this decision becomes a matter of survival in some situations: low-income families depend heavily on the sachet economy to get by, tech-challenged SMEs in rural areas still rely on paper documentation to keep track of their business, and the shift to renewable products can often be difficult because these items have a higher upfront cost.
We are challenged to think of the environment in two ways: first, to look beyond the concerns that plague our day to day activities; and second, to help others who are not as fortunate or as privileged as us get the access to look beyond as well.
There is a massive network of corporations, institutions, and individuals that enable the pace at which our climate is dying. It’s going to take a whole new level of mindfulness before we start changing how this works on a noticeable level — not just for ourselves and our loved ones, but for our communities as well.
Suzanne points out that humanity’s relationship with the environment has evolved significantly. On a continuum, foresting started off as an exploitative practice; but as we realized that we only had a finite amount of resources to work with, we made an attempt to regulate and then manage these harvests.
In the ‘80s and ‘90s, the US entered a period of science-based management. It was here, she explains, that the big leagues understood the connection between deforestation, climate change and big data.
But despite our progress, we have yet to reach a stage where we can accurately call ourselves stewards of the environment. This title calls for us to be proactive about the land and to hold ourselves accountable for climate change, not just as a present concern but also as a part of our intergenerational ethic.
This time, it’s not just a question of what your data is worth. How much is our collective data, as aspiring stewards of this planet, worth?
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Have you ever noticed how you stop and listen almost every time a bird sings? Even if you don’t stop, you still listen as you keep going. In fact, it might seem like you can’t help it. The truth is, you can’t. We’re literally genetically hardwired to pick up on the sound of birds. That and a rising or setting sun are things we can’t help but notice whenever we encounter them. Why might that be?
In the case of birds, we can hazard a guess or two. Birds of prey and scavengers let us know that there is likely food in the area. The birds themselves of course would have been a source of food back in the early days of humanity. Not to mention, the presence of a lot of birds means there aren’t a significant amount of predators around, meaning the area is safe. The sound of a bird also lets you know there is probably water nearby. Our ancestors may have also learned to associate the presence of many different kinds of birds with good farmland. A diversity of bird species means there is a diversity of other sorts of life in the area. Plants of different kinds provide homes as well as insects and small mammals to provide food for the birds. And lots of insects and plants means the soil is likely fertile. Those are just educated guesses though. One thing we do know for sure in the modern day is that the presence of birds correlates with human happiness.
How so? Well, on one level, it could be the birds themselves. Who doesn’t enjoy listening to the sound of a robin or nightingale? Or even just watching a hummingbird hovering outside the window? It certainly brings a little smile to my face. Or maybe it’s the fact that where there are birds, there are natural areas. If there are birds around there are trees, streams, flowers, and tons of other beautiful and relaxing things. About the only bird you hear in the city is a pigeon. And even there, people often sit on benches and throw bits of bread to attract the birds. We are literally happier wherever there are birds (except maybe seagulls, nobody likes seagulls). As for whether or not the correlation between happiness and birds is because of the birds themselves or because of the natural areas they tend to be in – it doesn’t matter much. The birds and the natural areas are almost always a package deal anyway.
We tend to create those natural areas wherever we can. For people with discretionary income, one of the things they like to do is get out into nature. Whether it’s camping, rock climbing or backpacking people will spend a lot of money just to go outside and enjoy nature. Even in the cities, wherever there is enough money to do so, parks are a feature, the most famous of them being Central Park which is practically a forest in New York City. We crave to renew our connection with nature, even if only for a little while.
One of the interesting side effects of spending time with the birds and the kinds of places that they like to live in is that it makes us more productive for the rest of our lives. Why? Simply because we are more relaxed, more at peace. After all, we are part of nature too, a fact we often forget. Getting out in it every now and then reminds us of that and recharges us in a way that no amount of modern entertainment can.
Just as data shows us that there is a correlation between happiness and birds, so too can looking at data from birds warn us of problems in the natural world. Even just superficially, birds tend to circle an area where another animal has recently died or is about to. They are amongst the first to flee from a forest fire. And of course, a drop in the diversity of bird species could be an advanced warning for the introduction of a plant disease or a new invasive species. Collecting and analyzing data on bird behavior could help devise better ways of managing and caring for the environment that we both share.
What’s your data worth?
Usually, when we think of AI, we think of Skynet or Ultron deciding to unleash war on humanity. Of course, the reality is something altogether different. What AI is in the current world is little more than algorithms that are used to curate news and entertainment feeds, strip data from digital interactions or recognize patterns in behavior and make predictions about future behavior based on that.
It’s the pattern recognition aspect that we are going to focus on today, specifically as it relates to language. We already make use of AI for human language. The predictive text on your phone is the most common example. Another is the use of AI to write simple articles about stock price updates and other rudimentary things for websites. The AI used can recognize and duplicate certain patterns in language so well it can be difficult to tell the difference in some cases. Now, imagine if that’s possible with animals.
Of course, that probably doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to use a computer to sit down and have a conversation with a flounder like a cyborg Aquaman or learn about the weather down south from a goose that just flew back north for the summer like a real-life Dr. Doolittle. Though that would be pretty cool. However, we might be getting to the point that AI could be used to decipher the languages of certain animals.
Let’s back up a moment. We know that most, if not all animals have certain forms of communication with each other. Birds know when to travel north or south as part of their migration and can somehow figure out how to change positions in their V as they fly. Even ants can somehow communicate with each other to locate a food source, or in the case of African army ants, how to cross whole rivers by working together. We also know that some can understand at least some human language. Dogs, cats, horses and a few others are capable of recognizing various commands and also developing their own ways of being understood. There is even evidence that aquatic animals have actual languages, with specific words for things and actions. Some, like dolphins and orcas even form their own dialects amongst their individual pods. So there is definitely a reason to think that there may be real, recognizable languages among at least some animals.
And it turns out that some researchers are beginning to apply AI to this question. Early analysis shows there are language-like patterns in the way these animals communicate. So, does this mean that we’ll be sitting around, holding forth with our pets using a combination of Google Translate and Alexa as an interpreter? Probably not. So what is the practical use of such a thing? Let’s speculate a bit.
If we could actually decipher animal communication, we could do things like warning them of an environmental threat. If there is a train that gets derailed in the Rockies with dangerous chemicals, a broadcast with whatever sound various animals would recognize as a warning could be put out. Or in the ocean, if an oil rig springs a leak like Deepwater Horizon a few years ago, a sonar signal could be put out that lets dolphins know they should stay away.
How could TARTLE help with this effort? If there are users who spend a lot of time in nature recording animals, they could share it with those developing this AI, giving them more data to work with. Or if other researchers got to the point of conducting experiments, TARTLE members could volunteer to take part at home with their pets. The possibilities are potentially huge.
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