How your daily coffee can help tropical forests grow back
Researchers find that the coffee pulp is valuable in its own right.
The coffee beans that keep us going don't grow on the vine in bean form. They grow as coffee "cherries," skin and pulp inside of which resides the precious beans. Before coffee beans can be fermented in water as many are, the cherries pass through a machine that extracts the bean from the skin and pulp. Miraculous as coffee beans are, new research suggests that their typically discarded pulp is even more amazing. It can restore tropical forests.
Researchers from ETH-Zurich and the University of Hawaii have found that this waste from coffee manufacturing is a fantastic growing agent after testing it out on some agriculturally depleted land in Costa Rica.
"The results were dramatic," reports lead author of the study Rebecca Cole. "The area treated with a thick layer of coffee pulp turned into a small forest in only two years while the control plot remained dominated by non-native pasture grasses."
Pulp non-fiction
Coffee pulp arrivesCredit: Rebecca Cole/British Ecological Society
The researchers delivered 30 dump trucks full of coffee pulp to a 35- by 40-meter parcel on Reserva Biológica Sabalito in Costa Rica's Coto Brus county. The land, previously part of a coffee plantation, is in the process of being reforested.
Starting in the 1950s, Costa Rica experienced rapid deforestation followed by coffee-growing and farming that resulted in a 25% loss of its natural forest cover by 2014.
Before spreading out the coffee pulp into a half-meter-thick layer for their test, the researchers measured the nutrients in the soil. They also catalogued the species living nearby, and made note of the size of woody stems present. The amount of forest ground cover was recorded, and drones were sent aloft to capture the amount of canopy cover.
Reforestation in the blink of an eye
(A) Coffee pulp layer; (B) control area after two years; (C) coffee pulp area after two years; (D) overhead view of canopy in control area, above the red line, and the coffee-pulp area, below the red lineCredits: A, B, and C: R. Cole. D: credit R. Zahawi/British Ecological Society
At the end of the two years, the control area had grown forest covering over 20% of its area. In contrast, 80% of the coffee-pulp section was canopied by trees, and these trees were four times the height of those in the control parcel.
The researchers analyzed the nutrients available in the soil and found significantly elevated levels of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorous, all vital agricultural nutrients. Curiously, potassium, also important for growth, was lower in the coffee-pulp area than in the control section.
The researchers also found that the coffee pulp eliminated invasive pasture grasses that inhibit reforestation. Their removal facilitated the reemergence of tree species whose seeds were introduced by wind or animal dispersal.
A much-needed growth agent
According to Cole, "This case study suggests that agricultural by-products can be used to speed up forest recovery on degraded tropical lands. In situations where processing these by-products incurs a cost to agricultural industries, using them for restoration to meet global reforestation objectives can represent a 'win-win' scenario."
Promising as coffee pulp may be, Cole cautions: "This study was done at only one large site, so more testing is needed to see if this strategy works across a broader range of conditions. The measurements we share are only from the first two years. Longer-term monitoring would show how the coffee pulp affected soil and vegetation over time. Additional testing can also assess whether there are any undesirable effects from the coffee pulp application."
In addition, she notes, the experiment only documents the value of coffee pulp on flat land when delivery of the substance by truck is fairly simple. "We would like," Cole says, "to scale up the study by testing this method across a variety of degraded sites in the landscape."
Just as exciting is the possibility that other such agricultural waste products may be good for reforesting depleted areas. Cole mentions orange husks as a material worthy of investigation.
"We hope," Cole concludes, "our study is a jumping off point for other researchers and industries to take a look at how they might make their production more efficient by creating links to the global restoration movement."
- Roman Krznaric, philosopher and author of the book "The Good Ancestor: A Radical Prescription for Long-Term Thinking," says that there are two parts of the human brain that are driving our decisions and ultimately determining what kind of legacy we leave behind for future generations.
- Short-term thinking happens in the marshmallow brain (named after the famous Stanford marshmallow test), while long term thinking and strategizing occurs in the acorn brain. By retraining ourselves to use the acorn brain more often, we can ensure that trillions of people—including our grandchildren and their grandchildren—aren't inheriting a depleted world and the worst traits that humankind has to offer.
- "At the moment we're using on average 1.6 planet earths each year in terms of our ecological footprint," says Krznaric, but that doesn't mean that it's too late to turn things around. Thinking long term about things like politics and education can help "rebuild our imaginations of what a civilization could be."
Citizen scientists are filling research gaps created by the pandemic
Participation in community science programs has skyrocketed during COVID-19 lockdowns.
The rapid spread of COVID-19 in 2020 disrupted field research and environmental monitoring efforts worldwide. Travel restrictions and social distancing forced scientists to cancel studies or pause their work for months.
These limits measurably reduced the accuracy of weather forecasts and created data gaps on issues ranging from bird migration to civil rights in U.S. public schools.
Our work relies on this kind of information to track seasonal events in nature and understand how climate change is affecting them. We also recruit and train citizens for community science – projects that involve amateur or volunteer scientists in scientific research, also known as citizen science. This often involves collecting observations of phenomena such as plants and animals, daily rainfall totals, water quality or asteroids.
Participation in many community science programs has skyrocketed during COVID-19 lockdowns, with some programs reporting record numbers of contributors. We believe these efforts can help to offset data losses from the shutdown of formal monitoring activities.
Nature's Notebook is a community-based science project that invites participants to track seasonal changes in plants and animals.
Why is uninterrupted monitoring important?
Regular, long-term tracking of phenomena such as plant and animal abundance, composition and activity is critical for understanding change. It enables researchers to see the impacts of natural disturbance events, such as wildfires, and human activities, such as construction and development. Long-term studies offer insights into patterns and processes that can't be derived from shorter studies, and help experts make better predictions about the future.
Interruptions in monitoring make it harder to accurately assess changes. If those disruptions coincide with extreme events, such as a major hurricane, experts miss opportunities to understand the full impacts of those events.
The U.S. has several long-term ecological monitoring programs, including the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), the Long Term Ecological Research Network and federal inventory and monitoring programs. Many state and local government agencies carry out similar activities. The pandemic has significantly disrupted all of these programs.
Reasons to engage the public in science
Community science is a strong complement to formal research. By engaging willing volunteers, community programs yield much more data and cover larger areas than professional scientists can achieve on their own.
We help manage two popular biodiversity-themed community science programs in the U.S.: eButterfly, a program for tracking butterfly sightings, and Nature's Notebook, a program for tracking seasonal activity in plants and animals. Scientists have used data contributed by participants in these programs to verify information collected by satellites, determine the conditions associated with flowering in different species of plants, and predict how climate change will shift plant species' ranges in the future.
Observations contributed to other community science programs have helped to document new insect species, discover exoplanets and even find cures for rare diseases. Globally, millions of people participate in thousands of projects, resulting in data valued at more than US$1 billion annually.
Community science programs also benefit participants. Joining a community science program can make people more science-literate and help pull back the curtain on how scientific work is done. It also deepens their sense of place and increases their understanding and appreciation for the plants and animals they monitor. We have frequently heard from our participants that making observations has enabled them to see and experience much more in places they know well, and to enjoy those places all the more.
Community science to the rescue
As offices and schools closed in the spring of 2020, many Americans turned to community science programs in search of stimulating and meaningful activities for children and adults alike. And despite COVID-19 restrictions, volunteer data collectors have persisted through the pandemic.
In a recent analysis of activity in biodiversity-themed community science programs during COVID-19 lockdowns, we found that participation generally held steady or increased in the spring of 2020. Two popular programs, iNaturalist and eBird, both grew. Participation in Nature's Notebook and eButterfly declined slightly, though volunteers still logged many critical observations. What's more, community science volunteers in these programs and others have kept at it even as lockdowns have relaxed.
Plant ecologist Chad Washburn explains how the Naples Botanical Garden in Florida uses citizen science research to study plant distribution, flowering times and range.
How good is community data?
One common question about community science projects is whether data collected by volunteers is reliable. This is a valid concern, since many program participants are not formally trained as scientists.
Organizations that run community science programs typically go to great lengths to ensure data quality. To avoid recording erroneous observations, project leaders provide extensive training and support materials. They also construct data entry apps so that volunteers can't mistakenly input dates in the future, and flag inconsistent reports for review. Several biodiversity-themed programs, including iNaturalist, eBird and eButterfly, engage expert reviewers to evaluate and verify reports.
According to a 2018 review by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, on average, volunteer contributors yield reliable data points about 75% of the time. For some programs, such as Nature's Notebook and eBird, accuracy is over 90%.
SciStarter is a database that volunteers can use to find community science opportunities across the U.S. throughout the year.
How to get involved
Your observations can help fill critical gaps that COVID-19 closures have created. Contributions to iNaturalist, eBird, eButterfly or Nature's Notebook are welcome any time of the year, but spring is an ideal time to contribute observations to biodiversity-themed programs to help document plant and animal response to changing seasonal conditions. For example, participants in Nature's Notebook will help document whether springtime plant and animal activity is early amid the ongoing effects of climate change.
The 2021 City Nature Challenge, an effort using iNaturalist to document urban biodiversity in brief, focused events, will run in late April and early May in cities worldwide. Another event, Global Big Day – a single day focused on celebrating and recording birds worldwide – is scheduled for May 8. Even if you've never thought of yourself as a scientist, you can help scientists collect data that expand our understanding of the Earth and how it works.
Theresa Crimmins, Director, USA National Phenology Network, University of Arizona; Erin Posthumus, Outreach Coordinator and Liaison to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, University of Arizona, and Kathleen Prudic, Assistant Professor of Citizen and Data Science, University of Arizona
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Finally, a world map for bees
First picture of worldwide bee distribution fills knowledge gaps and may help protect species.
Bee diversity
Twelve different species of bees swarming a flowery meadow. Etching by J. Bishop, after J. Stewart.
Credit: Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0
How many bee species are there? Wait a minute: honeybee, bumble bee, erhm… five? Five hundred? Five thousand? Not even close: the total is well over 20,000 – which means there are more species of bees than of birds and mammals combined.
There's no shame (nor surprise) for bee civilians like you or me in not knowing that. What is surprising, is that even scientists who specialise in bees didn't quite know how those species are distributed all over the world. Until now.
By combining and filtering more than 5.8 million public records of bee occurrences, a team of researchers from China, the U.S., and Singapore have built up the very first comprehensive picture of bee diversity worldwide. And that picture presents a few surprises, both for laypersons and specialists.
Bee ignoramuses will be surprised to learn that the United States is the throbbing heart of bee diversity. The U.S. has far more bee species than any other region on Earth. And by the fact that large tracts of Africa and the Middle East remain terra incognita, in terms of apiary diversity.
Counter-intuitive distribution
Relative bee species richness in the New World. Note the low density in the Amazon Basin.
Credit: Current Biology, open access
In general, there are more bee species in the Northern Hemisphere than the Southern and—confirming previous hypotheses–more in arid and temperate climates than in the tropics.
That goes against the common pattern in biology known as the 'latitudinal gradient', which predicts that species diversity (of most plants and animals) increases towards the tropics and decreases towards the poles. Bees are an exception, with a higher species concentration away from the poles (in what scientists call a 'bimodal latitudinal gradient').
To give that difference some visual immediacy, imagine a graph with one hump in the middle (i.e. the latitudinal gradient) versus one with two humps, one on either side of the middle (i.e. the bimodal latitudinal gradient). In other words: dromedary (one-hump) versus camel (two-hump).
It seems counter-intuitive that bees would thrive better in arid deserts than in lush tropical jungles; but that's because trees–the dominant vegetation type in the tropics–provide less bee food than the plants and flowers that grow elsewhere.
Much-needed baseline
Three ways of measuring species richness in the Americas: (A) richness of polygons, (B) sPCA and (c ) turnover. All suggest a large, distinct bee fauna in the southwestern U.S.
Credit: Current Biology, open access
Also, bees don't like it too wet, unlike their cousins the ants, whose populations peak in the humid tropics. The researchers think humidity may play a role in limiting bee distribution by spoiling pollen resources.
The relative absence of bees from the tropics has consequences for pollination, which in those regions is performed by a wide variety of alternative species: wasps, moths, and even cockroaches.
Previous datasets of global bee distribution were either inaccurate, incomplete, or difficult to interpret. This world map clearly establishes that bees prefer dry and temperate zones to wet and tropical ones. For bee scientists, it provides a much-needed baseline to predict the geographic distribution of bees and interpret the relative richness of species.
While much work needs to be done to fill additional knowledge gaps, this baseline is an excellent starting point, not just for greater understanding, but also for better conservation. Because bees are not just for making honey. In many countries, they're the top pollinator species. And they typically visit 90 percent of the leading crop types.
Carpenter bee (Xylocopa latipes) pollinating a flower in the Indian state of Kerala.
Credit: Charles J. Sharp (Sharp Photography), CC BY-SA 4.0
Yet over the past decades, bee populations have been crashing. In the U.S., honeybee populations have declined by 60 percent between 1948 and 2008. In Europe, 12 wild bee species are critically endangered.
That trend is potentially disastrous for agriculture. More than $550 billion in annual global crops are at risk from pollinator loss. The loss of bees as pollinators would lead to a collapse in crop yields and even entire ecosystems.
Better understanding bees increases our options for protecting them. This study will help pinpoint bee diversity hotspots in otherwise poorly examined parts of the world and help predict how bees will react to climate change–for example when certain regions will get wetter weather.
Protecting bee diversity is especially important and urgent in developing countries, where many of the knowledge gaps are located, and where many crops rely on native bee species for pollination.
Michael C. Orr et al.: 'Global Patterns and Drivers of Bee Distribution' is published in Current Biology.
Strange Maps #1060
Got a strange map? Let me know at strangemaps@gmail.com.
Isolated island group is now one of the world's largest animal sanctuaries
One of the world's most isolated island groups has just been made one of the world's largest ocean reserves.
- The small island group of Tristan da Cunha has created one of the world's largest ocean sanctuaries.
- Neither fishing nor extractive activities will be allowed in the area, which is three times the size of the United Kingdom.
- Animals protected by this zone include penguins, sharks, and many seabirds.
Tristan da where now?
Tristan da Cunha is a British Overseas Territory consisting of an archipelago in the south Atlantic. The titular island is the largest in the group at about 100 square kilometers. Those hoping to visit will have to get there by a week-long boat ride from Cape Town. The island's government gleefully notes that it takes longer to get there than it takes astronauts to get to the Moon.
The marine protection zone will cover 627,247 square kilometers (over 242,000 miles) of the ocean around the islands. It will be the "gold standard" in ocean conservation, with neither fishing nor other extractive activities allowed, often referred to as "no-take." It will be the largest no-take zone in the Atlantic, and the fourth largest anywhere in the world.
The zone includes small areas just off the inhabited islands in which sustainable fishing will be allowed, but these areas are a small fraction of the no-take area's size. Given the historical reliance of the island's economy on the sea, this consideration is quite understandable.
These protected areas join many others covered by the United Kingdoms' Blue Belt Programme of marine protection, which aims to preserve 30 percent of the world's oceans by 2030.
In a press release issued by the government of Tristan da Cunha, the chief executive of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Beccy Speight, left no doubt as to the environmental significance of this protection zone:
"This is a story two decades in the making, starting with the RSPB and Government of Tristan da Cunha commencing a conservation partnership, and culminating in the creation of this globally important protected area," Speight said. "The waters that surround this remote UK Overseas Territory are some of the richest in the world. Tens of millions of seabirds soar above the waves, penguins and seals cram onto the beaches, threatened sharks breed offshore and mysterious whales feed in the deep-water canyons. From today, we can say all of this is protected."
Speight added that in 2020, the need for these protections is greater than ever. "While Tristan da Cunha may be far away in distance it is still close to our hearts and protecting it is still the UK's responsibility. Closer to home, the crisis facing nature is also huge. So huge that our wellbeing, our economic future, and our very survival depend on the choices we make now about the natural world." Speight also used the statement to issue a call to action. "We need politicians to emulate the leadership of this small community to help us build the world we all want to live in. We hope today's fantastic announcement is the first of many more that help revive our world."
For the less romantic, there are also human-centered reasons why we ought to protect the oceans. A recent study suggests that keeping fishing boats out of a mere five percent of the ocean can raise catches everywhere else by a 20 percent. As it turns out, protecting the planet we live on provides benefits.
Most important of all, what animals are protected by this?
The now protected fish that inhabit the waters are a vital food source for many kinds of animals, all of which will benefit from not having to share their food supply with humans.
The vast area is home to many species of whales, sharks, and seals. Endangered species of albatross also drop by. Many birds that live on the islands and cannot be found elsewhere, such as the Wilkins bunting and the Inaccessible rail, also stand to benefit from the new protections.
Most adorable of all, the endangered northern rockhopper penguins make a home on one of the archipelago islands. With luck, they may not be endangered much longer.
