I think that it is time that we sat down with our history books and reflected on mankind. Cozy up with a nice cup of Tarrazu coffee, wrap up with a nice hand woven lamb blanket from a tropical island that your aunt brought back, and warm up next to a grand wood burning fireplace. As we turn the pages of our past, think about all of the accomplishments that have been achieved and all of the discoveries that have been made… The discovery of fire 1-2 million years ago, human settlements and the introduction of agriculture 10-11 thousand years ago, the internal combustion engine 300 years ago, the cloth weaving loom 200 years ago, the fi
rst power plant and gasoline-powered car engines 130 years ago, the engine-powered airplane and air conditioning 100 years ago, the first solar powered house 70 years ago and the first nuclear chain reactor 60 years ago. These are just a few of the countless of ideas that have been introduced to the world to make our lives better. To make human life better.
All of this is great but is really the best thing for us to only think about ourselves? What about the numerous animals that live amongst us? That nourish our bodies with their meat? That grow, adapt, and evolve with their surroundings? That do not speak English or any other kind of human language but still communicate with their surroundings? Who’s intelligence we have declared less superior to our own yet have somehow managed to live before us and continue to live in the presence of us? Yes we, animals alike, are different, but if you look past the reflections and the languages. We all share a common goal, to survive, to live, to thrive. What makes us all even more similar, we rely on oxygen to fill our lungs with life, to fuel our organs and muscles to function. To run, jump, swing, fly, crawl… To be.
The sad part is that none of those things are achievable unless there is adequate oxygen in the atmosphere and the air is poison free from pollutants. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change archives that 76% of greenhouse gas emissions in 2010 were identified as carbon dioxide by way of fossil fuels, forestry, industrial processes, and deforestation among other things. It is not just carbon dioxide, methane is another big player in green house gas emissions coming in at 16%. A way to combat all of these terrible things is to slow down the creation of them and to plant more trees so the carbon dioxide that has been produced can be utilized to benefit two main parties that share this planet, plants and animals. The more plants there are, the larger the amount of carbon that could be extracted from the atmosphere, by way of photosynthesis (converted into sugar, cellulose, carbohydrates), and stored inside of plant tissue and in the bark and wood of wooded plants. The stored carbon can be used for metabolic processes that the plant carries out or can be used in photosynthesis to produces oxygen (a by-product) that humans and animals use to survive. I chose the Boardwalk Trail at Lady Bird Lake in Austin, TX to do my observations of how climate change affects local areas and to focus on carbon storage specifically. The percentage of carbon in the atmosphere is slowly increasing, whether humans accept it or not.
For the past few weeks, I have been studying the correlation between climate, plant diversity, animal diversity, and carbon storage within the Lady Bird Lake parameters (between I-35 and S Pleasant Valley Road). There is the occasional family of ducks, which I found to be named the Common Loon on The Trail Foundation website, around the shore line every once in a while along, with other birds (mostly the common black bird and a few heron) looking for a quick bite. There are not many canoers/kayakers on this side of the river that I have seen, so the human disturbance in the water is low. The trail next to the river on the other hand is a very popular place. People walk, run, take pictures, sell things, and bring their dogs to the trail. There are a lot of gaps between the trees and less trees than it looks like the
re should be but the trees themselves look like they have been along the river bed for a while and have access to the water. There has not been a lot of trash that I have noticed in the recent weeks but I have noticed that people weave themselves in between trees and brush to get to not very accessible parts of the river bank. If this continues, this will be a definite example of fragmentation. The Living Planet Index states that there was a 36% drop in vertebrae species populations in temperate zones from 1970 to 2010. That was only 40 years ago. We did not have the technology back then that we do now. Forests are being cut down more rapidly. Carbon storage is decreasing faster than it is being replenished. Carbon dioxide levels are at an all time high. Fragmentation is slowly but surely decreasing biodiversity. Even the fragmentation during my observation times will eventually decrease the biodiversity around the river. An article published in Science titled “Contribution of Increasing CO2 and Climate to Carbon Storage by Ecosystems in the United States” concluded that “CO2 and land use contribute a few tenths of a petagram of carbon uptake each year in the United States”. They reported that the data that they collected was the inverse of what the Earth’s situation was as a whole. The data itself was also from 1980-1993 and I would assume would have changed if the data was taken for more recent years. However, I do believe that this study was of significance to see where we were, the United States and the world, in the carbon storage department from atmospheric CO2. At this time, we close our history book and realize that land was deforested in order to plant t
he coffee that we were drinking, to raise the lamb to sheer and make the blanket that we were using, and to sell the wood that we were burning. At this time, we put our history book back on the shelf, and pick up a blank book to write in for the future is now, and this is our story to tell.
Citations:
“Annual Energy Review.” U.S. Energy Information Administration. N.p., n.d. Web.
28 Feb. 2016. <http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/>.
“Birds of Lady Bird Lake.” The Trail Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb. 2016.
<http://www.thetrailfoundation.org/explore/birds-of-lady-bird-lake/>.
EPA. “Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data.” US Environmental Protection Agency.
N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Feb. 2016. <http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/
ghgemissions/global.html>.
IPCC. Climate Change 2014. N.p.: n.p., 2014. Print.
Living Planet Report 2014 2014. Print.
Schmiel, David. “Contribution of Increasing CO2 and Climate to Carbon Storage by
Ecosystems in the United States.” Science 287.5460 (2000): 2004-06. Print.