Requiem

 

We are currently living through a mass extinction, although it can be difficult to appreciate the magnitude of the loss given our comparatively short lifespans and frenetic daily lives. But extinction records over the last 200 years of so indicate that we are losing biodiversity at a pace that is comparable to the previous five great mass extinction events in earth’s history. This week the U.S. Government added 23 species to the tally of loss. This NY Times article describes several of the species that now can only be experienced through a few pictures, shaky videos, and scratchy sound recordings. The last time anyone saw a living Maui nukupuʻu was in 1996. The picture above is of a preserved specimen collected in the late 1800's

 

Fire on the Mountain

 

The current fires in the Pacific Northwest are one indication of a changing fire ecology of the planet that is being driven in part by climate change. Regions that have a long history of fire are facing larger, more intense, and out of season fires. Regions where fires have historically been modest or rare are now experiencing a radical shift in the scale and frequency of fires. An example of the later is the changing fire regime of boreal and arctic regions. Not only do these changes affect the ecology of the region, but they also are an important climate feedback. Check out this story from the BBC about forest fires in Siberia:

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-54165871

Forests for Food

Slash and burn agriculture used to be one of the most common ways that we farmed. We would clear a patch of forest and burn the slash to release vital nutrients before planting crops. After a few years when soil fertility declined we would move on and clear another patch of forest and let the original patch regrow back into forest. This was a great system when most farmers did not have access to other sources of plant nutrients like livestock or chemical fertilizes, and when there weren't many farmers. It worked particularity well in the tropics where soils have generally low fertility and where there used to be vast tracts of forest.

Most farmers don't practice slash and burn agriculture nowadays, but a significant few still do--- primarily in regions that also support the last remaining bits of tropical forest. In the best of years slash and burn systems just provide a meager subsistence living to people while contributing to biodiversity loss and environmental degradation.

On potential solution is to give slash and burn farmers the tools to transition into more sustainable practices based on agroforestry. There are a variety of agroforestry systems, this website describes projects based around trees in the genus Inga.
http://www.ingafoundation.org/the-inga-tree/

The video at the top of the right panel gives a brief overview of their work.

Silent sky

Several lines of evidence suggest that we are living in the middle of one of earth's periodic mass extinction events. It's the 6th one if you are keeping count of such things. The most recent previous mass extinction was about 66 million years ago when (most likely) an asteroid took out 3/4 of the plant and animal species on the planet, including most of the dinosaurs. Some of the dinosaurs did manage to escape; their decedents diversified into the myriad types of birds.

The jury is out on whether birds will manage to escape the current mass extinction---- a mass extinction that is being driven entirely by our actions. The extinction of a species is the last step on a sequence of events that begins with the loss of individuals and populations. This recently published study reports that there are 29% fewer birds in North America (in terms of abundance) than there were in 1970 (the year I was born). 
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2019/09/18/science.aaw1313

That's 3 billion less birds hopping and flying around us than when my mom and dad brought me home from the hospital. This shocking realization has gotten a lot of press. Here is one of the many stories reporting on the study from the Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/09/19/north-america-has-lost-billion-birds-years/

As that article points out, other studies in other regions have reported similiar declines, and not just for birds (check out the links in the Washington Post story).

Partly because we are living through the changes in real time, and partly because the cause of the mass extinction are actions that largely make our lives happier and easier, we are not as alarmed about things as perhaps we should be. But in biological terms, we have self inflicted our own world altering asteroid strike.

Germinal

A new wave of robotics and artificial intelligence software might be on the verge of reshaping agriculture. This story in the Washington Post looks at prototype robots being designed to pick fruit and vegetables.
 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2019/02/17/feature/inside-the-race-to-replace-farmworkers-with-robots/

Other systems are being developed that focus on other aspects of production such as applying herbicides and fertilizer.   It is far from clear when these new systems will be adopted and in what form. Even less clear is what  all this means for workers, the environment, and the broader culture of our food system.