SAVE THE DATE!
UPP “affiliates” (PSU and USGS researchers) gathering:
Thursday, January 19, 2-4pm
Vanport Building (1810 SW 5th Ave, Portland 97201), Room 268
Toast Dar Crammond (Director of the USGS Oregon Water Science Center) on his retirement,
learn about the future of the UPP, and network with colleagues.
Details to follow!
UPP Publications:
In this Bulletin, we take a closer look at an article on peatlands and carbon emissions. UPP affiliate and professor in Environmental Science and Management, Dr. Jennifer L. Morse, recently published an article in Carbon Balance and Management on impacts of climate change on peatlands in the southeastern US.
In “Response of soil respiration to changes in soil temperature and water table level in drained and restored peatlands of the southeastern United States,” the authors examined factors such as changing precipitation, soil and air temperatures, and water tables, and their relation to the ability of peatlands to absorb carbon. Peatlands can be enormous carbon sinks, as they produce enormous amounts of green vegetation which is inundated with water, creating anoxic conditions. These anoxic conditions slow the rate of decay of organic material to below what is being produced. Thus, peatlands are an important part of climate regulation.
However, Dr. Morse and team found that under current climate change scenarios, peatlands are changing from carbon sinks to carbon sources as they dry out and start to decompose. This is a problem because peatlands store large amounts of carbon, and a large portion of the greenhouse gasses produced from peatlands are more potent than CO2, such as methane, which stay in the atmosphere for longer and have a bigger impact on global climate than CO2 alone. This paper examines how that process is occurring, and what factors can potentially be changed to turn peatlands back into carbon sinks.
In “Virtual Water and Agricultural Exports During Recent Drought in California”, UPP affiliates Dr. Alida Cantor and Dr. Heejun Chang examine agricultural water use on the West Coast of the United States from 2010 to 2019 and incidents of “Virtual Water” exports. Virtual Water, sometimes called a water footprint, is the amount of water that is physically contained in a product, and the amount of water it took to produce that product. Dr. Alida Cantor and Dr. Heejun Chang examine how California’s agricultural exports during times of drought are maintained through regulatory systems designed to protect agriculture exports, even though these lead to unsustainable groundwater withdrawals. This system of exporting and groundwater withdrawal is being described as a climate maladaptation in the face of climate change.
“Changing Flows: Sociotechnical Tinkering for Adaptive Water Management,” by UPP affiliate Dr. Alida Cantor and others, examines how agricultural systems such as ditches and irrigation systems are maintained, changed, and updated by the community. Dr. Alida Cantor and the research team behind this paper explore the relationships between land, people, and climate by examining networks in agricultural communities and how they “tinker” with formal and informal agricultural irrigation systems. In these agricultural communities, water availability can change rapidly and negatively impact crops or irrigation systems, so “tinkering” with the water delivery systems can help mitigate water distribution in the region. Measuring how communities and networks interact with their irrigation systems is important in understanding the adaptive capacity and flexibility of the water system in Arizona.
Conference Deadlines:
The GSA is hosting the Penrose Conference on the Role of Outburst Floods in Earth and Planetary Evolution from June 5-9, 2023, at Camp Delany in WA. Dr. Jim O’Conner, a USGS researcher and UPP affiliate, is one of conference organizers. Attendance is limited to 75 people, all of whom are expected to present at the conference. The deadline to apply/present is January 27. The link for the application is here. For more information about the Penrose conference, please visit their website here.
The Interagency Conference on Research in the Watersheds conference (ICRW8) will convene June 5-8, 2023, in Corvallis, OR. Abstracts for oral or poster presentations are due January 16, 2023 by 11:59 PM PST. Late abstracts will not be considered. For more information, visit: https://icrwatersheds.org/.