Dispatches

From clothes to gadgets, cargo ships deliver. But they also contribute to anthropogenic nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions – noxious particles that are central to smog, acid rain, and ground-level ozone. Today, in Europe alone, one out of every seven NOx molecules can be traced to those vessels; in 2005, that share was only one in nine. The numbers appear in a recently published, first of its kind study (Environ Res Lett 2015; doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/10/7/074007). In the past, those interested in retrieving information on ship-based emissions had to rely on data provided by individual vessels. However, by using the Ozone Monitoring Instrument on NASA's Aura satellite, researchers from the Netherlands and France observed tropospheric NO2 columns in European shipping lanes. “The technique allowed us nuanced views of air pollution”, explains lead author Folkert Boersma (Wageningen University and KNMI, the Netherlands). Ships contribute substantially to air pollution. The team analyzed 7 consecutive years' worth of data taken over the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, the eastern Atlantic, and the Mediterranean Sea. Ship emissions increased by 15% between 2005 and 2008, dropped by 12% in 2009, and held steady thereafter until 2012. The 2005–2008 rise matches a globally growing economy with an increase in shipping traffic. But the 2009 drop, in response to the worldwide economic downturn, was proportionally much larger than a decrease in ships alone could explain. Instead, slower speeds were responsible for much of the reduction; ships in the Mediterranean that reduced speed by over 30% reduced emissions by 45%. “Slow-steaming”, as the practice is called, saves on fuel costs. Ships have continued to “go slow” since 2009, but not much else has changed. “NOx emissions from land sources have been rapidly coming down since 2005”, Boersma says, “so the relative share by ships has been growing despite slow-steaming”. As the world economy grows, especially in developing countries, vessel-based emissions are expected to increase further. “They are a major cause of air pollution in Europe”, says Sotiris Raptis of the sustainable transport group Transport & Environment (Brussels, Belgium). “We urgently need measures to control harmful emissions from the existing fleet as well as meaningful standards for new ships.” So slow is great, but experts ask for additional changes, such as installing solar panels or kite-like sails, improving vessel designs, and switching to cleaner-burning fuels. The ships may have no choice. Ports around the world are beginning to refuse access to any that fail to comply with emissions standards. Clustered around cacao's northernmost range, the Hawaiian Islands represent the only US state capable of a bean-to-bar chocolate industry. Thanks to more than 180 years of history in the Islands, Hawaii's cacao (Theobroma cacao) orchards have traces of all ten genetic cacao groups – but not all plants grow equally well. Scientists at the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources at the University of Hawaii (Manoa, HI) are supporting area growers and chocolatiers by conducting ongoing selection trials to pinpoint which cacao plants have the highest yield of harvestable pods and, ultimately, the best-tasting chocolate when grown in different microclimates. Their project, funded in part by the Hawaii Department of Agriculture, began in 2006 with the identification of ten mother trees from different genetic backgrounds. After grafting each of the plants onto reliable rootstock, four clonal replications of each were transplanted at six Oahu sites that received varying amounts of rainfall, shade, and wind. “So far, [mother tree] numbers ‘three’ and ‘four’ have good yields and produce good-tasting chocolate [in most environments]”, says project lead HC “Skip” Bittenbender. “Surprisingly, we had two commercial varieties – an Amelonado and one called ICS 95 – that just didn't do that well here…This might indicate that we have some conditions that need to be adapted to.” Following the 2013 and 2014 harvests, Bittenbender's team sent 95 fermented, dried samples of cacao beans to a chocolatier who transformed them using a standard tasting recipe. Then, the hard part: “We tasted all 95 samples and used a score sheet to rank them from zero to nine on different attributes – cocoa flavor, acidity, astringency, bitter, fruity, floral, nutty, raw, green, and another one we'll try next year called caramel…It's a somewhat subjective approach.” The selection trial needs at least one more year to gather information on the pod outputs of mature trees before the experiments will lead to any official recommendations. “I'd like to recommend varieties that are pleasant to taste, but that don't taste identical”, admits Bittenbender. “One of them might have a stronger cacao flavor and one might be more fruity, or floral.” You'll have to visit Hawaii to taste the results. With agriculture responsible for 80% of global deforestation, many countries are not examining how their agricultural subsidies – amounting to $200 billion annually worldwide –promote forest clearing. A policy brief released in early September by the United Nations collaborative initiative on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (UN-REDD) identifies how countries can address this. Entitled “Fiscal Incentives for Agricultural Commodity Production: Options to Forge Compatibility with REDD+” (http://bit.ly/1NXA15W), the UN report focuses on ways to better align agricultural goals with forest preservation policies. Along with reducing atmospheric greenhouse-gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, the REDD+ program emphasizes the role of conservation and sustainable management of forests to mitigate climate change. “Many agricultural incentives were developed to open up rural frontiers and expand production into forests, without consideration for long-term environmental and social impacts”, says Gabrielle Kissinger, author of the report and principal of Lexeme Consulting (Vancouver, Canada). “Many countries now recognize the need for multiple benefits to come from both forests and production lands, such as increased agricultural commodity production while also increasing resilience to climate-change impacts and ensuring clean water supplies.” The UN document highlights examples from 14 countries, including Brazil, Ecuador, and Indonesia, of how policy changes, such as decreasing subsidies for inefficient practices, not only decreased deforestation rates but in some cases actually increased crop yields. A redesign of fiscal policies in Colombia, for example, has resulted in a plan to end deforestation in the country by 2020. The goal is to redirect the country's $4 billion in “agricultural and forestry working capital and investment finance” to new, low-emissions rural development projects for farmers and agribusinesses, according to the report. Colombia's palm oil and sugarcane producers have committed to a low-emission supply chain and zero deforestation. And the biofuels sector has agreed to reduce pasture areas for cattle, while still enhancing productivity. “Increasing agricultural production without increasing deforestation can occur through various means – such as increasing farmer access to finance [mechanisms] and improving crop production practices and standards – as long as it is coupled with restrictions on expansion into forests”, continues Kissinger. “REDD+ can provide an entry point for countries to bring greater coherence in their rural credit programs and fiscal policies and incentives, to support agricultural production while also safeguarding forests.” The report also provides an analytical framework that countries can use to examine and improve their agricultural subsidies. On August 31, Bahamian officials announced the protection of 18 new land, near-shore, and marine areas across the Caribbean archipelago nation. These, plus the five national parks established in April on the island of San Salvador, bring the country's total area protected to some 3 million hectares, a figure hopefully to be doubled by 2020. The newly added sites lie on and around Grand Bahama, Abaco, the Acklins and Crooked islands, Mayaguana, New Providence, Great Exuma, and Andros. Together they will help conserve reefs, seagrass meadows, mangrove nurseries, and fish spawning sites, and give protection to birds. The new 46 102-ha Joulter Cays National Park (just north of Andros), for example, possesses all these habitats in addition to extensive oolitic sandbanks – which together provide feeding grounds for sharks, conches, sea cucumbers, and sea turtles, as well as overwintering grounds for endangered piping plovers (Charadrius melodus) and redknots (Calidris canutus). Piping plovers can now look forward to safe winter vacations in the Bahamas. “In 2012, Audubon, alongside the Bahamas National Trust, discovered that the Joulter Cays provide important habitat for several declining shore-bird species, including 10% of the overwintering piping plovers that breed along the Atlantic Coast of the US and Canada”, says Matthew Jeffery, Director of the International Alliances Program, National Audubon Society (Washington, DC). “The recently announced protection is a testament to the power of strong collaboration between conservation organizations.” Tourism helps drive the Bahamas' economy, and these new sites should draw in birdwatchers, divers, and sport and fly fishermen. However, they are also important for local fishermen. The government document designating the parklands states that some sites may be “managed conservation areas” and others “no-take zones” but insists local communities will be involved in management planning. Finalizing such plans is important, comments Jim Barborak (Center for Protected Area Management and Training, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO), but so are other actions. “These include clearly defining and marking limits, zoning and establishing regulations regarding management, and working with civil society and law enforcement agencies to make sure laws and regulations are enforced –[no small task] when numerous new areas are created at once.” Marine litter represents a growing problem along Norway's 2650-km coastline and beyond – even as far as the high arctic archipelago of Svalbard. In mid-August, the Norwegian Environment Agency or Miljødirektoratet (Trondheim) announced a 2-year pilot project – scheduled to start in January 2016 – where commercial fishermen will voluntarily collect trash items captured during their normal operations at sea, based on the international “Fishing for Litter” initiative. Participating fishing boats will be given special bags in which to place marine debris that is hauled out of the ocean in trawls or on long lines. The program has a US$120 000 budget and will cover the cost of disposal ashore. Norway's pilot project is part of a region-wide effort under OSPAR, the Oslo–Paris Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (London, UK). In June 2014, OSPAR's 15 member countries endorsed a marine litter action plan that includes the collection program. Erlend Standal, senior adviser in Miljødirektoratet's marine section, explains that four collection stations will be sited along the Norwegian coast and that the directorate will limit the number of participating vessels. “There's a lot of uncertainty about how much garbage we will collect, and we might end up with more than the system can handle.” He explains that the nation's extensive coastline, the longest of the OSPAR countries, also poses logistical challenges. The directorate hopes to continue the project at a larger scale after the pilot study's conclusion. Fishing vessel crews are surprised by how much litter they collect in their nets. Just how much waste is present in Norwegian coastal waters is unknown, but cleanup efforts in 2015 along a 100-m section of beach near the outlet of Oslo Fjord yielded 37 021 items, 97% of which were plastic. Elling Lorentsen, senior adviser for the Norwegian Fishermen's Association (Trondheim), says that many of the country's 8942 full-time fishermen are eager to participate. “We believe the initiative to collect garbage that gets caught in fishing gear and delivering it ashore is a very positive thing.” In 2014, Norway had 5133 active fishing vessels. According to OSPAR deputy secretary John Mouat, a few member countries, such as the Netherlands and the UK, already have marine litter collection programs. He says the program is an eye-opener for fishing boat captains and crews. “Skippers, once they have a bag in the front of the boat, are surprised how quickly they fill it, and they realize how much trash they used to toss back.” China's capital, Beijing, faces severe environmental and social challenges, including air pollution, water scarcity, and traffic congestion. In June, the Central Government announced a plan to “deurbanize” the city, by physically moving the Beijing municipal government offices, various factories, wholesale markets, hospitals, and universities out to the suburbs over the next several years. Specific goals include a 15% reduction of the population in downtown districts by 2020 and capping the total population of the city at 23 million. Beijing's population has been growing by an average of 0.66 million people per year since 2000 and the current total population is 21.5 million. This growth would need to be reduced by 60% to reach the 2020 target. As one of the largest cities in China, Beijing has been both an administrative center and a hub for industry and business. In the future, the focus will be more on political, cultural, international, and technological innovation. The “moving out” phase has already begun, with 392 factories and 36 wholesale markets being relocated to Tongzhou District, on the eastern edge of the city, in 2014. The prestigious Heaven Temple Hospital is scheduled to shift to a site in the southwestern Fengtai District by 2017. The Chinese Government also hopes that the deurbanization plan will act as an economic stimulus to the surrounding areas. For example, Tongzhou District, currently ranked 14 out of the 16 districts in Beijing for per capita GDP in 2014, will be developed into a second city center. Environmental scientists and practitioners also see the plan as an opportunity to convert the newly vacated areas in the city into urban green spaces and parks. “Without this dispersal of businesses and people it would be impossible to find anywhere to add green space in the downtown area”, says urban ecologist Weiqi Zhou (Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing). In fact, Beijing has already initiated a mini-greening project, creating green space on 60 pockets of land – a total area of 40 ha. By 2020, the aim is to build 300 such green spaces, which would cover a total of 200 ha. Project Baseline (www.baselineseedbank.org/index.html), a 3-year, multi-university effort to create a seed bank of dozens of native and introduced species across the US, will soon be complete. The resource is a novelty in science – a time capsule for future scientists to study plant evolution in the face of environmental change. Ironically, the past 3 years have hardly experienced “baseline” conditions. In particular, the western region has been plagued by drought conditions – but 2015 was exceptional. Warm, dry conditions caused flowering to occur much earlier than usual – for example, by up to 6 weeks at locations in Montana. As a result, wildfires presented additional challenges. “Two of our California sites burned within days of collecting seeds this year, and other sites were impossible to get to because of fire”, says field biologist Heather Schneider, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) who is involved with the project. The drought had indirect impacts as well. Sites typically contained fewer individual plants, often stunted in stature. Some species simply did not produce much seed. “Some populations were choked out by invasives that germinate early and used the available water”, explains project leader Susan Mazer, an evolutionary biologist at UCSB. Still, project researchers have collected over 4 million seeds so far in the western US, and they are making the best of a bad situation – to collect valuable data that will be needed in future studies and to record the distribution of recent wildfires on maps of their collection sites. Mazer and Schneider hypothesize that shortened growing seasons brought on by drought could lead to evolution of earlier flowering. They have shown, in greenhouse studies, that early flowering is genetically correlated with traits – such as smaller, less attractive flowers – that are associated with self-fertilization, which results in genetic risks such as lower fitness. The goal now is to collect seeds following the drought. “One of the biggest challenges in this field is to capture evolution in action”, says Mazer. “We know we captured genotypes capable of growing and reproducing during a drought period, but we don't know whether these represent the entire range of genetic variation available in each species.” To that end, her team is working on securing funding to sample more broadly. The Project Baseline collection will not be tapped for at least 4 years. Mazer says the first proposal solicitations to request Project Baseline material will occur sometime after 2018. In 1906, attendees at a county fair in Plymouth, UK, were invited to guess the weight of an ox; although estimates ranged widely, the renowned statistician Sir Francis Galton demonstrated that the mean guess was remarkably accurate. 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