Rick Berg

I am excited to share a new manuscript just published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) exploring water quality / fisheries tradeoffs in a changing climate and their implications for adaptive ecosystem-based management! https://lnkd.in/gEM9qC2X In this work, we reconstruct historical hypoxic extent in Lake Erie for the past century and relate it to nutrient loading into the lake, springtime temperatures and fishery harvests. We then explore the tradeoffs between nutrient management for hypoxia versus for fisheries, under present and future climate conditions. We find that controlling hypoxia while sustaining fisheries will become more difficult under warmer conditions and will require more aggressive nutrient management. The hypoxia model published here builds on previous work from Dario D. Del Giudice that we had published back in 2018: https://lnkd.in/gB8XsV4W Also, while in this work we use nutrient loading as an input into the model, it is important to remember that nutrient loading itself is also highly sensitive to climate variability, via changing rainfall patterns and warming temperatures. We have explored this in previous work as well, such as here: https://lnkd.in/g-fXvG9Z and here: https://lnkd.in/gKw_CZVe Thank you also to Matt Davenport, who put together an excellent press release summarizing this work! https://lnkd.in/g9vc2gJq This paper grew out of a long-term collaboration with University of Michigan's Don Scavia and a newer collaboration with The Ohio State University's Stuart Ludsin. This paper is especially meaningful to me, as it includes as co-authors two previous PhD students as well as a recent postdoc, all of whom have since gone on to start their own academic research groups. Daniel Obenour graduated in 2013 and is now Associate Professor at North Carolina State University; Yuntao Zhou also graduated in 2013 and is now Associate Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University; Gang Zhao was a postdoc until 2022 and is now a research scientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It’s incredible to sit back and watch group alumni charting their own scientific course, and yet have the occasional opportunity to reconnect and continue to do great science together!

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Excited to share the "Baseline Allocation for Assessed Risk" (BAAR) Model, a novel baseline setting tool for nature-based solutions projects! The model: 🌳Offers a consistent approach to setting nested baselines for nature-based solutions projects 🌍Accurately maps deforestation risk to help ensure finance reaches the areas it is most needed 🌳Enhances market integrity with a model capable of providing early, reliable baseline data, building confidence for investors, project developers, and local communities 🌍Integrates advancements in remote sensing and carbon market policies.

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Anyone involved in government climate/environmental justice data rescue efforts? Have had a number of folks asking about what might be happening / have datasets that they want to make sure are still publicly accessible. Reach out if you are working on this or have tips to folks that are! #climate #environmental #ej #data

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High quality soil carbon data starts with collecting your samples the right way. 🌱 At Agricarbon we’re all about high quality measurements. Why do it if you’re not doing it the best you can? To properly determine soil carbon stocks, it’s crucial to sample to depth and know the soil mass and that’s exactly what we do! The Environmental Defense Fund’s new research highlights the importance of doing this to ensure high quality data. #soildata #soilcarbon #carbonmeasurements #soilhealth

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Cannabis folks: I have been saying this for 5 years - (a) cultivation capacity in excess of demand leads to price crashes; (b) the state regulators should be publishing data to inform prospective cultivators of demand (with a conversion of canopy to estimated production in grams) and currently licensed canopy; (c) Massachusetts needs to follow the regs and reduce canopy for any cultivator selling less than 70% of production (below); (d) and people need to understand that when prices crash, at a micro level, cultivators should maximize production. It might not make sense, but as long as a producer can sell for more than their variable cost of production, micro economics dictate they continue to produce to try to offset as much of their fixed costs as possible. From a macro view, the regulator should be reining in production. That limiting will never happen in an open and competitive market because it requires industry-wide coordination, which is illegal in U.S. markets. Only the regulator can do that. I wonder if the MA Cannabis Control Commissioners ever read these sorts of postings. Beau Whitney - good article! see 935CMR500.50(2)(d) Tier Relegation. In connection with the license renewal process for Marijuana Cultivators, the Commission will review the records of the Marijuana Cultivator during the six months prior to the application for renewal for an indoor cultivator or during the harvest season prior to the application for renewal for an outdoor cultivator. The Commission may reduce the Licensee's maximum Canopy to a lower tier if the Licensee sold less than 70% of what it produced during the six months prior to the application for renewal for an indoor cultivator or during the harvest season prior to the application for renewal for an outdoor cultivator. https://lnkd.in/eKWHk3Hb

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There’s still time to register for the CLF California Carbon Report webinar! 📆 June 27 at 2 PM ET 📚 Check out the report here: https://lnkd.in/gq9NC8Wg The CLF recently published the California Carbon Report which explored the magnitude and timing of embodied and operational carbon emissions for 30 real building projects in California. This study included estimating the whole life carbon impacts of buildings over time, exploring variability across different projects, and identifying top contributors to carbon emissions. Please join the authors of the report for a webinar on June 27th at 2PM ET, where they will share more details about the methodology used, additional findings, and how this research can support the design and policy communities towards decarbonizing real-world buildings. 🔗 Register here: https://lnkd.in/grhuFKun Let us know if you have any questions in the comments 👇

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For this week's Carbon Connection podcast, we're excited to share a conversation with Isaac Kastama and Tom Wolf about a crucial topic that will impact climate initiatives in Washington state and influence compliance cap-and-trade programs. Initiative 2117 (I-2117) on the Washington state ballot could fundamentally alter the state’s approach to climate policy. I-2117 seeks to prohibit state agencies from implementing any form of carbon tax credit trading, including cap-and-trade/invest programs, and would repeal significant portions of the landmark 2021 Washington Climate Commitment Act. Isaac and Tom speak with Lauren Napuck about potential consequences of I-2117, what it means for Washington’s climate goals and investments and the implications it will have beyond the state. Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/gHs9kZq9 #carbonmarkets #climatesolutions

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Wildlife Works is thrilled to announce a publication, ‘A novel deforestation risk and baseline allocation model for the next generation of nested REDD+ projects’ in Nature Portfolio’s Journal, Scientific Reports, from a team of scientists that includes members of our own staff. This paper was authored by PhD researchers and forestry scientists that include team members from Wildlife Works and Everland : Emily Dangremond, Will Gochberg, Ph.D., Jeremy Freund and Maren Pauly. The BAAR model builds on over a decade of work by Wildlife Works in preparing its NBS projects for nesting into National REDD+ programs in multiple countries including Cambodia, Colombia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The method enables the standardization of nested project baselines and ensures they are consistent with the jurisdictional programs’ climate goals, while still reflecting the risk of future deforestation accurately for each project. Risk-adjusted baselines enable governments to attract higher investment to highly threatened forests, without the risk of inflated project specific baselines that could jeopardize the integrity of jurisdictional programs. “Wildlife Works has used the BAAR approach for more than 10 years, and we are now making this work publicly available to enrich the current discussions on how best to design jurisdictional programs with nested projects as the carbon market for NBS is rapidly advancing,” said Jeremy Freund, Chief Technology Officer at Wildlife Works and co-author of the paper. This achievement underscores our commitment to in-house expertise, which is critical for ensuring high-quality projects and for effectively leading the voluntary carbon market towards higher integrity. There is an urgent need to scale REDD+ projects across jurisdictions; however, methodologies for allocating national baselines have not been standardized nor tested. This new research represents the first time a risk allocation model has been tested, providing a tool for jurisdictions to standardize how they set baselines. Efforts are already underway to improve BAAR. The next version will use more advanced satellite data to include not just complete deforestation, but also forest degradation, among other advantages. Learn more in our latest blog: https://lnkd.in/g64YeqcF Read the full paper here: https://lnkd.in/gUkPVvWA

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Soil carbon plays a critical role in mitigating climate change; unfortunately, with the length and complexity of the carbon protocols, understanding how to measure and calculate carbon stocks can seem overwhelming, especially to the general audience. As such, I've decided to provide some information on the topic, a 3-part blog series to guide you through some of the essentials of soil carbon stocks. The first post offers a general primer designed for anyone curious about how carbon is stored and measured in soil. 3 Takeaways: 🤷‍♂️ What are soil carbon stocks? Understanding the basics of soil carbon and its significance in agriculture and environmental management is the first step to making a difference. 🌾 Why carbon stocks matter: Soil health, crop productivity, and climate mitigation are deeply connected to the levels of carbon stored in soils. 📏 How to measure carbon stocks: From bulk density methods to carbon fraction analysis, there are practical ways to determine soil carbon levels, setting the stage for participation in carbon programs like Verra or BCarbon. Curious to learn more? Please check out the first post here, and don’t forget—each blog in this series contains a link at the end to the next post, so you can follow this one through parts 2 and 3. These latter series go into much more detail regarding sampling, testing, and calculating. I hope you find the information useful! #soilhealth #soilcarbon #soiltesting #organiccarbon #soilscience #carbonsequestration #whyward

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Soil fumigants are used extensively in California, and a significant proportion of these fumigants escape into the air where they can pose a health hazard. My colleagues and I published this paper describing a way to predict the emissions of one of those fumigants, chloropicrin. There are huge data gaps in the literature which make it challenging to develop effective regulations based on field data alone. The paper shows that chloropicrin emissions depend on myriad factors including applicator practices and environmental conditions, and common assumptions like the linear scaling of emissions with application rate may be invalid. Tools like this can be useful in developing lower-emission application methods or regulations to mitigate potential human health and environmental impacts. https://lnkd.in/gRFjAWQi

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🗞️𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐤𝐥𝐲 𝐂𝐃𝐑 𝐇𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬 🗞️ Here's your round-up of top #CarbonDioxideRemoval News from this week (28 October - 03 November 2024): Myno Carbon received $20.4M from USDA to build a large-scale biochar CDR facility in Port Angeles, WA. tinyurl.com/2cjy8nej Treehouse California Almonds, LLC. is investing $9M in a Delano biochar facility. tinyurl.com/yc87hdmr CREW Carbon raised $5.3M to capture CO2 at wastewater treatment plants. tinyurl.com/2ja9v52h Truecoco Ghana Ltd secured $3.3M from BII for a CDR project to capture 250k MT CO2 & aid 30k farmers by 2030. tinyurl.com/47s2p4hn Homeworld Collective launched its 2nd round of Garden Grants, offering up to $1M for scalable GHG projects using biological methods. tinyurl.com/yc842t9s Climeworks proposed a $50M investment to expand its Louisiana’s DAC hub into Southwest Louisiana.  tinyurl.com/mr232kue ADAPTAVATE secured a £1M Innovate UK grant to advance its C-ve plasterboard by collaborating with the Biorenewables Development Centre.  tinyurl.com/yck9sr7e Nordbex launched its first BECCS plant in Nybro, Sweden, with 135 GWh energy production & 200,000 tons/year carbon capture capacity. tinyurl.com/5f5t2wwy Spiritus announced plans to open a Missouri facility to produce novel sorbents for DAC. tinyurl.com/s8xvy753 1PointFive partnered with Enterprise Products to build a CO2 transport network for Texas’s Bluebonnet Sequestration Hub. tinyurl.com/5x86hjvd CDR firm Travertine partnered with Sabin Metal Corporation to set up a demo plant in Scottsville, NY, converting stored gypsum & CO2 into H2SO4, green H2 & CaCO3. tinyurl.com/3jtndk2a INNOVX and NetZero partnered to accelerate biochar deployment across Global South. tinyurl.com/4422vxvk BluSky Carbon and Scotia BioChar Inc. partnered to deploy biochar pyrolysis equipment in Nova Scotia, using waste wood biomass for CDR. tinyurl.com/489338sa Origen has partnered with the Energy & Environmental Research Center in North Dakota to accelerate the commercial deployment of its limestone-based DAC. tinyurl.com/47h98bwu Aviva Investors has launched a CDR fund to achieve investment returns while supporting long-term net zero targets through nature-based & engineered CDR solutions. tinyurl.com/mswhkcpk Cascade Climate is offering grants for ERW data-gathering projects Proposal deadline: December 20, 2024. tinyurl.com/3szdkfhv Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change & the Environment & AlliedOffsets launched TRACEcdr, an interactive tool mapping MRV protocols & credit issuance to aid investors & policymakers. tinyurl.com/4dp6tadc Waterloo Climate Institute's new brief outlines Canada’s mCDR status and recommends a national strategy for its research, development, and regulation. tinyurl.com/37r4j6m5 Carbon to Sea Initiative released its 2024 Annual Report, highlighting momentum, investment & progress in evaluating OAE as a climate solution. tinyurl.com/mwfzhwu7 Updates continued in comments below:

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Methane Emissions Research Summary No.25: Investigation of U.S. landfill GHG reporting program methane emission models [Ben Stark, Kuo Tian , Max J. Krause] Main Takeaways: In subsequent years, operators select different methods and assumptions in their estimation methodologies which lead to a reduction in reported facility emissions that likely occur only on paper. Since 2010, GHGRP indicates a 20% reduction in emissions while the total mass of landfilled waste has increased by 20%. Existing models estimate methane emissions from a very dynamic and complex source using simplified coefficients that do not change over the calendar year. Without measurement methods that continuously quantify both point-source and diffuse emissions, an assessment of existing estimates’ accuracy is impossible. In general, long-term or continuous measurements of site-wide emission patterns are lacking in the literature and would be valuable to improve the models. Ground-based measurement methods are valuable to estimate emissions over various cover types and assist with model validation. This paper offers a deep-dive into the EPA’s GHGRP for landfills, investigating limitations of the current landfill methane emission estimation models, including First-Order Decay (FOD) and Collection Efficiency Assumption (CEA) models. More total tons of waste are being attributed to landfills that report declining emissions, and that decline is due to the selection of the lesser emission estimate. There is large uncertainty associated with landfill emission estimates and currently, neither approach is known to be more accurate or reflective of actual emissions. On an emission per waste-in-place (WIP) basis, the FOD approach has remained relatively constant 20 kg CO2e/tons WIP, whereas emissions estimated by CEA has declined from 15 to 6 kg CO2e/ton WIP from 2010 to 2022. Nearly 2/3rd of operators now preferentially select the CEA method over the FOD method. If only the FOD method was used, U.S. MSW landfill emissions would be 1.3-1.7 times greater than current estimates which is similar to recent extrapolations from remote sensing campaigns in the U.S. Note that aerial and satellite-based estimates only occur during daylight hours and so they naturally capture observations while daily landfill activities are occurring. Thus, it is possible that remotely sensed measurements bias emission estimates higher than if sampling were also able to occur after maintenance activities have ended for the day (e.g., after daily cover has been applied to the workface). It is likely that a combination of technologies (i.e., on-site sensors and possibly satellite or aerial platforms) are needed to better quantify annual emissions from MSW landfills. See comments for more facts related to existing methane emissions modeling methods. link: https://lnkd.in/eKPKP-mN hashtag #landfill hashtag #methaneemissions hashtag #GHGRP hashtag #EPA hashtag #climate hashtag #methane hashtag #measurement

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Great insight from the USDA Economic Research Service diving into conservation practice adoption across land ownership types. About 40% of the farmland in the U.S. is rented, which can add quite a bit of complexity to the conservation conversation. Benefits from many practices like reducing tillage or incorporating cover crops takes time to achieve, but if you're leasing land as a farmer, do you make those investments unsure if there will be a long-term ROI? I know this issue plagues many of our discussions around conservation practice adoption. But, this report suggests that perhaps adoption across all landownership types is a bit more similar than we anticipated. Differences in tillage intensity were not significant across farmland owned opposed to leased: "An examination of tillage practices between 2011 and 2021 as measured by the Soil Tillage Intensity Rating (STIR) values for five major crops (corn, soybeans, cotton, barley, and sorghum) showed owner-operators and renters both generally showed reductions in STIR values." However, things did get a bit murky when examining cover crop adoption: "While cover crop adoption remained low from 2011 to 2021, adoption rates increased for owner-operators and tenant farms for corn and cotton. Some farm resource regions experienced differences in adoption rates between owners and tenants." Nonetheless, this is very helpful context as we navigate promotion of conservation practices and the challenges that hold back adoption. Bonus points to USDA-ERS for including barley in this study! https://lnkd.in/g_6_sZ_8

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Another Spring and another release of EPA's annual Inventory of US Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks but take a deeper dive into Chapter 6 inclusive of forests and you will find many updates: adoption of updated national-scale tree volume/biomass models a decade in the making, inclusion of Hawaii and US territories, refined litter and soil carbon models, and updated inventory data nationwide all of which continue to point to a waning forest carbon sink strength in the US. Kudos to the FS carbon team that delivers this component of the EPA in service to improving accuracy, consistency, and inventory completeness. https://lnkd.in/eDZPKSpd

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Climate reporters need tools for investigating offsets. So do reporters who cover local politics, land management, business, and other beats that aren’t always steeped in deep climate knowledge. At CarbonPlan, we developed a tool called OffsetsDB, an open-access platform that makes it easier to find and compare data from five of the largest offset registries – more than 9,000 individual offset projects. On July 9, we’ll be leading a webinar with The Journalist's Resource that will walk reporters through the basics of how the offsets industry works and how to use OffsetsDB as a tool to aid your reporting. Research scientist Grayson Badgley and editorial lead Maggie Koerth will answer your questions and help bring some clarity to this increasingly important field. You can register here: https://lnkd.in/gixpC8PX

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Hannah Ritchie (Deputy Editor and Science Outreach Lead at Our World in Data and Senior Researcher at Oxford University) wrote recently about global food policies that, “If every country had strict environmental policies, it would be hard for any country to ‘offshore’ its burden elsewhere,” i.e., import products that are produced with impacts that are unacceptable in the importing country. As Ritchie points out, environmental impacts can be offshored by policy differences across countries. If every country had strict, enforced policies, it would be hard for any country to offshore its impacts. Even so, there will be vast differences in the number and enforcement of policies between countries. Also, many countries that have the strictest polices in place did so to redress issues and excesses from their past that were no longer acceptable. Many producers in developing countries are not using enough fertilizers or even specific pesticides because they aren’t available or too expensive. Access would increase production and improve food security and producer income. In many countries, producers need more inputs, not policies that would reduce use. What would be most helpful for developing countries would be information and analyses about key impacts and how to reduce them. Groups of companies have been doing this for years, but it would be better if governments helped developing countries obtain critical inputs, as well as information about how to avoid impacts from them. What if we address global impacts through global trade policies that reflect the current reality of producers and countries globally, which have different levels of impacts producing the same crop? If we could agree on common global metrics and measures and report disaggregated data, not averages, we would know where impacts are and what causes them. Integrating common metrics into trade can enforce them while supporting continuous improvement.

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