July Rainstorms Change the Woods

By Richard B. Primack 

“To see wild life you must go forth at a wild season. When it rains & blows keeping men in-doors then the lover of nature must forth.” Henry David Thoreau in his Journal.
 
The heavy rains of the past two weeks have created unusual sights in the Webster Woods.  The outlet from Bare Pond is normally a gentle seasonal flow that is mostly below ground. However, during recent heavy thunderstorms, the stream became a surface torrent whipping the tannin-rich pond water into masses of foam. 
 

Foam stranded in the woods

 
 As the water receded, some of the foam was stranded in the woods.
 

A mass of foam looking like an octopus.

 
The foam sometimes took on animal-like shapes.
 

A sea-serpent of foam floats on a woodland pool.

 
 In other places the foam floated on quiet pools left behind by the flood.
 

Water spurts out from the ground.  

 
The rain was so intense that new springs started flowing.  In one place, water jetted out of the ground.

Biodiversity Science in China

By Richard B. Primack

“Almost all our improvements, so called, tend to convert the country into the town.”

 Henry David Thoreau in his Journal.

 

Over the past 35 years, China’s massive economic transformation has come at a significant cost to the environment, in terms of air and water pollution, habitat loss, and threats of species extinction  

 

China has also emerged as a leader in biodiversity conservation and research. This is important because China’s enormous human population depends on ecosystem services and because of its astonishing richness of species. 

 

A strong centralized funding and political structure in China allows national scale biodiversity projects to be organized more effectively than most other countries. For example, the Chinese Academy of Sciences organized 850 universities to assess the natural resources and biodiversity of China.  

 

Between 1980 and 2005, the number of national nature reserves (similar to national parks elsewhere) in China went from virtually none in 1980 to over 400 parks protecting close to 100 million hectares. China moved people out of these newly protected areas, and gave them economic alternatives.  

Figure 1. The area under protection in nature reserves and national nature reserves increased from 1980 to 2005, but has been stable or even declining since then (from Li and Pimm 2020).

While the capacity of China’s academic and research communjty to investigate and protect its astonishing biodiversity is increasing each year, the threats to biodiversity caused by China’s expanding economy is also increasing. Reconciling these two opposing trends is the crucial challenge faced by China’s expanding community of biodiversity scientists. 

 

To find out more, read these two references:

Primack, R. 2021.  Biodiversity science blossoms in China.  National Science Review, in press.  doi: 10.1093/nsr/nwab058 

Mi, Xiangcheng, Gang Feng, Yibo Hu, Jian Zhang, Lei Chen, R.T. Corlett, A.C. Hughes, S. Pimm, B. Schmid, Suhua Shi, J- Christian Svenning, & Keping Ma. 2021. The global significance of biodiversity science in China: an overview.  National Science Review  

doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwab032

Declining phenology observations in Japan

By Richard B. Primack 

“Do your work, and finish it. If you know how to begin, you will know when to end.”
Henry David Thoreau in Reform Papers.
 
The phenology observations being recorded by the Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA) represent one of the most outstanding phenological data sets in the world and is certainly the best in East Asia. Since 1953, the JMA has been gathering data on over 100 phenological events (involving 34 plant species and 23 animal species) at 105 weather stations spanning Japan’s large latitudinal and climatic range. 
 

Monitoring of first flowering times of Japanese cherry trees (Prunus x yedoensis, Someiyoshino) in Tokyo will be continued.

Unfortunately, in November 2020 the JMA announced plans to dramatically reduce monitoring to just 6 plant phenology stages at 9 sites and eliminating animal observations altogether.   

First singing of bush warblers (Cettia diphone), which will be discontinued if the proposed cuts are implemented.

In a recent article, we describe a new approach to maintain the program, shifting the monitoring responsibility to citizen science organizations and other government departments. Some of the phenology observation sites could be moved to nearby parks and nature reserves.  
 
Doi, H., Higuchi, H., Kobori, H. et al. Declining phenology observations by the Japan Meteorological Agency. Nat Ecol Evol (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01459-3