Scientists join forces across the world to unveil COVID-19 Lessons for the Environment and Conservation

By Richard B. Primack

“From the right point of view, every storm and every drop in it is a rainbow.”  

-Henry David Thoreau in his Journal.

In the past months, the few human visitors to city parks and streets were sometimes surprised by unexpected animal visitors, such as penguins and mountain lions. These animals were changing their behavior in response to lower levels human activity and noise.

The concurrent confinement of 4.6 billion people under the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown can be viewed as a once-in-a-lifetime chance, a “Global Human Confinement Experiment”,  to explore the impact of people on animals and the environment. People are also calling this period “the Anthropause” when people became less active.

Changes to human activity and mobility will have diverse direct and indirect impacts on biodiversity. 

From Bates et al. 2020.

To investigate the conservation and ecological impacts of the lockdown and its gradual relaxation, two marine biologists Amanda E. Bates from Memorial University (Canada) and Carlos M. Duarte from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia, and I decided to form a new international research network called PAN-Environment. Already over one hundred institutions and global monitoring programs and hundreds of scientists have already joined PAN-Environment.  

The logo of PAN-Environment

The results of PAN-Environment will provide a glimpse into a future where air pollution, noise, and other human disturbances are dramatically reduced and show what can be gained from the type of large-scale change in human society that will be needed to address the looming problem of global climate change.

In two recent articles, one led by our colleague Christian Rutz and one led by Amanda, we present a road map to deliver environmental insights emerging from the pandemic lockdown and its gradual relaxation.

Bates, A.E., Primack, R.B., Moraga, P., Duarte, C.M. 2020. COVID-19 Pandemic and associated lockdown as a “Global human confinement experiment” to investigate biodiversity conservation. Biological Conservation 248. 
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2020.108665 

Rutz, C., Bates, A.E.,Duarte, C.M. …Primack, R.B.  et al. 2020. COVID-19 lockdown allows researchers to quantify the effects of human activity on wildlife. Nature Ecology & Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-1237-z

Tropical forests can handle the heat, up to a point

By Richard B. Primack

“What though the woods be cut down, this emergency was long ago foreseen and provided for by Nature.”  

-Henry David Thoreau in his Journal.

Tropical forests face an uncertain future under climate change, but new research published in Science suggests they can continue to store large amounts of carbon in a warmer world, if countries limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Our research group contributed data from long-term forest plots in Malaysian Borneo to this international research project that evaluated over half a million trees in 813 forests across 24 tropical countries. In these plots, trees were measured every few years for their diameters and heights to determine growth rates.  This allowed our team to assess how much carbon is stored by forests growing under different climatic conditions today.

Location of plots used in this study.

We showed that tropical forests continue to store high levels of carbon under elevated temperatures, demonstrating that in the long run these forests can handle heat up to an estimated threshold of 32 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit) in daytime temperature; above this temperature, growth slows, trees die, and carbon storage declines. This carbon storage is an important ecosystem service in the fight against global climate change.

Increasing temperature results in a decline of tree growth rates.

Yet this positive finding is only possible if these species-rich forests have time to adapt, they remain intact, and if global heating is strictly limited to avoid pushing global temperatures above the 32 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit) threshold. The key actions needed are limiting the emission of greenhouse gases and protecting forests against uncontrolled logging and conversion of forests to agriculture and plantations. 

Measuring a tree for its diameter in a long-term plot at Bako National Park in Malaysia.

The paper Long-term thermal sensitivity of Earth’s tropical forests is published in Science 22 May 2020 (Embargo 21 May 19:00 BST/ 14:00 ET) (DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw7578).

Skype a Scientist

By Tara K. Miller

“Things do not change; we change.”  

-Henry David Thoreau in Walden

During the COVID-19 pandemic, teaching has moved online suddenly.  This unexpected and abrupt change gave teachers no time to plan and adjust their curricula to the remote format.  Many are now searching for online resources to find ways to engage their students.  To help out, I signed up with Skype a Scientist, a program that connects scientists with teachers and classrooms.

I virtually visited several classrooms and homes to chat with students about my research and answer their many questions.  Kids have such inquisitive minds, and they wanted to know everything from which animals face extinction due to climate change to whether plants can survive in space.

One class had been learning about plant adaptations to different environments, so I put together a picture quiz where students picked the plant best adapted to the described circumstances.

Examples from a plant adaptations quiz for students

Answers: Clockwise from top left (1, 2, 2, 2)

One 6-year-old boy taught me about ice worms!  These fascinating creatures live in glaciers and snowfields.  They have adapted to survive in cold conditions, and they eat pollen and algae in the ice. 

Ice worms next to a Canadian 10-cent coin for scale (www.arctic.uoguelph.ca)

Remote learning isn’t where most of us want to be, but we’re making the best of it for now.