Environment

The Amazon rainforest experienced its worst drought on record in 2023. Many villages became unreachable by river, wildfires raged and wildlife died. Some scientists worry events like these are a sign that the world’s biggest forest is fast approaching a point of no return.

As the cracked and baking river bank towers up on either side of us, Oliveira Tikuna is starting to have doubts about this journey. He’s trying to get to his village, in a metal canoe built to navigate the smallest creeks of the Amazon.

Bom Jesus de Igapo Grande is a community of 40 families in the middle of the forest and has been badly affected by the worst drought recorded in the region.

There was no water to shower. Bananas, cassava, chestnuts and acai crops spoiled because they can’t get to the city fast enough.

And the head of the village, Oliveira’s father, warned anyone elderly or unwell to move closer to town, because they are dangerously far from a hospital.

Oliveira wanted to show us what was happening. He warned it would be a long trip.

But as we turn from the broad Solimões river into the creek that winds towards his village, even he is taken aback. In parts it’s reduced to a trickle no more than 1m (3.3ft) wide. Before long, the boat is lodged in the river bed. It’s time to get out and pull.

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In Minnesota alone, authorities in 2017 found elevated levels of nitrates in 80 public water systems. In Iowa, 55,000 drinking water wells were contaminated with elevated nitrate concentrations, according to 2017 data. Private water wells serve about one-third of Wisconsin families; state authorities in 2022 found 10 percent of them exceed the 10 ppm nitrate safety limit.

The U.S. Supreme Court court recently struck down the EPA’s definition of waters of the United States, or WOTUS, the term for what waters and wetlands the federal government had authority to regulate under the Clean Water Act.

My conclusion: these people are beyond help.

How's the air in your area? Eastern Iowa is gross at the moment.

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/607801

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In a meta-analysis published June 5 in the journal Current Biology, scientists estimate that as much as 13.12 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) fixed by terrestrial plants is allocated to mycorrhizal fungi annually—roughly equivalent to 36% of yearly global fossil fuel emissions.

Because 70% to 90% of land plants form symbiotic relationships with mycorrhizal fungi, researchers have long surmised that there must be a large amount of carbon moving into the soil through their networks.

"We always suspected that we may have been overlooking a major carbon pool," says author Heidi Hawkins, research lead at Conservation South Africa and research associate on plant-soil-microbe interactions at the University of Cape Town. "Understandably, much focus has been placed on protecting and restoring forests as a natural way to mitigate climate change. But little attention has been paid to the fate of the vast amounts of carbon dioxide that are moved from the atmosphere during photosynthesis by those plants and sent below ground to mycorrhizal fungi."

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Would it be more Eco Friendly to get an old, extremely rusted bicycle serviced up properly, or to just buy a new bicycle?