Ancient Indigenous ‘clam gardens’ could be modern-day climate solution | 24CA News

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This week:

• Ancient Indigenous ‘clam gardens’ might be modern-day local weather resolution
• Diving into an underwater artwork exhibit
• Is a forest with quite a lot of tree species higher at preventing local weather change?

Ancient Indigenous ‘clam gardens’ might be modern-day local weather resolution

For near 4 centuries, “clam gardens” on seashores on the west coast of B.C. have offered First Nations with a provide of not simply clams however different forms of seafood.

In the aftermath of the brutal 2021 warmth dome on the West Coast, there’s renewed curiosity on this historical aquaculture method. 

Five days of stifling warmth killed a whole lot of individuals and billions of sea creatures. But scientific experimentation by researchers from Simon Fraser University, in collaboration with Coastal Salish First Nations, signifies clam gardens assist sea life keep cooler.

The analysis goals to indicate how historical Indigenous practices supply a modern-day resolution to dealing with local weather change. 

SFU grasp’s scholar Emily Spencer wished to know whether or not the clam gardens, with their regular provide of cool water, may assist hold shellfish cooler and shield them from future episodes of maximum warmth. 

Ken Thomas was greater than prepared to show the age-old practices of sustaining clam gardens on a latest go to to Russell Island, which lies near the better-known Saltspring Island, off the southeast coast of Vancouver Island. 

He’s intimately concerned with the analysis being carried out right here. A tall, broad-shouldered man in his 50s, Thomas is answerable for fisheries, wildlife and pure sources for the Penelakut First Nation.

He picked up a three-pronged rake and started “tilling” the sand. As he pulled the rake down, he defined that it helps hold the seashore from changing into “hard and dormant.” It additionally revealed small clams and crabs residing near the sand’s floor. 

When the concept of reconstructing a clam backyard on this seashore was broached a number of years in the past, Thomas wasn’t satisfied. Elders directed him and others to choose up massive rocks from increased up the shore and prepare them to kind a tough seawall near the low tide line.

“At first it was, ‘OK, yeah, I’ll go move rocks, whatever,'” Thomas informed What On Earth. But one thing shifted in him as he heard the elders inform tales from the previous. He started to know and recognize how a way so outdated may work so effectively for him and his youngsters. 

“It really touched me in a way that I can’t explain,” Thomas mentioned. “Every time I moved a rock and placed it on the wall, I was like, wow, my ancestors touched these rocks, and here I am putting it back, restoring it back to what it was meant for.”

The rock wall is a few metre and a half tall and runs the size of the seashore, about 750 metres. It ensures that ocean water recedes slowly because the tide goes out, sustaining a cool, moist setting till the tide comes again in. That makes the seashore a form of shelter or refuge — or pantry, based on Thomas’s forebears.

“To this day, you still hear our elders saying, ‘When the tide’s out, the table’s set. Go get your food.'”

Working with Thomas to make sure Indigenous information and practices are revered, Spencer designed an experiment that used Ikea chairs, propane torches and non-flammable materials to recreate the circumstances of the warmth dome on the seashore. “We created little saunas for the clams,” she mentioned. 

At low tide, they erected a collection of those small tents with the clams inside. They did this for 5 days straight — replicating the size of the warmth dome. After that, the clams had been scooped up and brought to labs for evaluation.

Spencer’s outcomes — to be submitted for peer overview within the coming months — discovered the gardens stored the clams cooler even with the added warmth.

This impact suggests the gardens are greater than a technique to create and preserve a meals supply. They may be a local weather adaptation technique for a complete ecosystem.

Spencer’s supervisor at SFU, marine ecologist Anne Salomon, is worked up concerning the prospect.

“We’re desperately looking around the world for climate solutions, and here’s one that is at least 4,000 years old,” Salomon mentioned. “It works. It’s a very simple process, and so I am very optimistic about the future when I see examples like this.”

For Ken Thomas, it is affirmation that his folks knew how you can use the sources responsibly for millennia. That’s one purpose he so readily agreed to go forward with Spencer’s experiment. 

“Just last night, we had a nice pot of steamers, manila clams and little neck clams [to eat]. So you know, we still utilize it and we still love it and we want it around forever.”

– Laura Lynch

Old problems with What on Earth? are right here. The 24CA News local weather web page is right here. 

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The Big Picture: An underwater art exhibit

June 8 is World Ocean Day, when we reflect on the ecological importance of our oceans and raise awareness about the measures needed to protect them from climate change and biodiversity loss. British artist Jason deCaires Taylor is marking the day with an ethereal exhibit down inside Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the largest coral reef in the world. Rising temperatures related to climate change have led to a number of mass bleaching events in the reef, which have greatly damaged the coral. 

The display, entitled Ocean Sentinels, is being hosted by the local Museum of Underwater Art and features an array of submerged statues. Made from “Earth-friendly concrete” (according to the museum), these surreal, serene objects are totems to specific scientists who have worked to protect the Great Barrier Reef. Suffice to say, the exhibition is best viewed while scuba diving or snorkelling.

This isn’t deCaires Taylor’s first attempt at aquatic art — in 2019, he sank a number of statues elsewhere off the coast of Australia for an exhibition called Coral Greenhouse. He says his intent, then as now, was to make the statues friendly to marine life, so that corals, sponges and other creatures would change them in “vibrant and unpredictable methods.”

Hot and bothered: Provocative ideas from around the web

Is a forest with a variety of tree species better at fighting climate change?

Planting trees is often a go-to action for environmental sustainability, but it turns out that it really matters what types of trees you plant — and where. 

Tree diversity, or the amount and distribution of tree species in a forested area, is critical for growth, sustaining biodiversity and building resilience to the effects of climate change.

A new study shows it also makes a big difference in the carbon cycle — that is, the balance created by carbon being absorbed by ecosystems and then returned to the atmosphere through decomposition. 

Unfortunately, tree diversity is on the decline on a global scale, and is a particular problem in Canada.

“In Canadian forests, as in comparison with temperate and tropical forests, tree variety is low,” said Scott Chang, a professor of renewable resources at the University of Alberta. 

But around the world, tree diversity “has been reducing as a consequence of human interference, international local weather change, harvesting of forests and so forth,” he added.

Tree diversity is a term used to describe three specific qualities in our forest environment, according to Chang. 

The first two qualities are species richness, which is measured by the number of trees in an area, and evenness, which Chang describes as how equally the species are distributed. 

The last factor comes down to the actual trees and the different functions they perform in a forest.

“Some of them have larger leaves, some have small leaves, and people are a measure of operate,” Chang said. 

Different species of trees have distinct physical characteristics; in turn, those characteristics give them different capacities to adapt to certain challenges. And that ensures the forest is resilient to stress, said Devon Earl, an environmental scientist and conservation specialist with the Alberta Wilderness Association. 

While maintaining forest biodiversity helps to improve resilience to climate change, diversity can also help mitigate further warming, according to a new study  published by Nature in April on carbon storage in natural forests across Canada. 

“This is the primary examine to show that tree variety can improve soil carbon sequestration in pure forests,” said Chang. 

The study looked at data over an almost 20-year period, and included hundreds of forest plots scattered across the country. 

According to the study, increasing species evenness increases soil carbon and nitrogen by 30 and 42 per cent, respectively. 

Increasing the functional diversity — that is, the variety of physical characteristics within the forest — enhanced soil carbon and nitrogen by 32 and 50 per cent, respectively.

“More numerous bushes can uptake extra carbon dioxide from the environment that can mitigate the worldwide change, and likewise it may … scale back nitrogen loss from the forest,” said Xinli Chen, a post-doctoral student and lead author on the study. 

Chen said that more diverse forests often have more biomass production. Factors like root depth and canopy height play a role in how forests grow and thrive, he added.

“They can take extra sources from the ecosystem,” he said. “So this implies they will develop higher … and it means they will take extra carbon from the environment.”

Chang said the study opens the door for embracing tree diversity as a means of climate change mitigation in Canada. He said the implications from this research should be implemented in the Canadian government’s “2 Billion Trees Commitment,” an initiative that is working to help organizations plant two billion trees in Canada over the next decade.

“If they will use a number of tree species for instructing these tree plantings as an alternative of only a single tree species, there’s a potential profit that may be gained to extend carbon sequestration,” Chang said.

According to Earl, after an area is logged, forestry companies tend to plant a single species that they want to cut again in the future. In addition, she said, companies will often use the herbicide glyphosate to suppress the growth of deciduous trees and other plants.

“They simply wish to have that one species of tree rising again that they wish to harvest once more, they usually don’t desire that tree species to have any competitors for issues like mild and soil vitamins,” she said. 

Earl explained that allowing those deciduous trees to grow in replanted cutblocks benefits the wildlife but also helps with the increased risk of wildfire as our climate changes. 

Deciduous trees such as aspen are less likely to burn, and when they do, they burn less intensely. 

“It’s actually necessary to have these bushes within the forest which might be much less more likely to burn intensely and may act as kind of a break.”

– Christy Climenhaga

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