scholarly journals Community Forests Prepare for Climate Change

Eos ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Courtney Peterson ◽  
Leslie Brandt ◽  
Emile Elias ◽  
Sarah Hurteau
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Tree Planting ◽  
Community Forests ◽  
Urban Tree

Cities across the United States are feeling the heat as they struggle to integrate climate science into on-the-ground decisionmaking regarding urban tree planting and management.

scholarly journals Estimating economic damage from climate change in the United States

Science ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 356 (6345) ◽  
pp. 1362-1369 ◽  
Author(s):  
Solomon Hsiang ◽  
Robert Kopp ◽  
Amir Jina ◽  
James Rising ◽  
Michael Delgado ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Economic Damage ◽  
Global Mean Temperature ◽  
Flexible Architecture ◽  
Econometric Analyses ◽  
Business As Usual

Estimates of climate change damage are central to the design of climate policies. Here, we develop a flexible architecture for computing damages that integrates climate science, econometric analyses, and process models. We use this approach to construct spatially explicit, probabilistic, and empirically derived estimates of economic damage in the United States from climate change. The combined value of market and nonmarket damage across analyzed sectors—agriculture, crime, coastal storms, energy, human mortality, and labor—increases quadratically in global mean temperature, costing roughly 1.2% of gross domestic product per +1°C on average. Importantly, risk is distributed unequally across locations, generating a large transfer of value northward and westward that increases economic inequality. By the late 21st century, the poorest third of counties are projected to experience damages between 2 and 20% of county income (90% chance) under business-as-usual emissions (Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5).

Assessing Potential Urban Tree Planting Sites in the Piedmont of the United States: A Comparison of Methods

2013 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krista Merry ◽  
Jacek Siry ◽  
Pete Bettinger ◽  
J. M. Bowker
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Tree Planting ◽  
Comparison Of Methods ◽  
Urban Tree

scholarly journals The Prevalence and Rationale for Presenting an Opposing Viewpoint in Climate Change Reporting: Findings from a U.S. National Survey of TV Weathercasters

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin M. F. Timm ◽  
Edward W. Maibach ◽  
Maxwell Boykoff ◽  
Teresa A. Myers ◽  
Melissa A. Broeckelman-Post
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Public Perception ◽  
Response Rate ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Weight Of Evidence ◽  
Equal Weight ◽  
Reporting Practices ◽  
Differences Of Opinion

AbstractThe journalistic norm of balance has been described as the practice of giving equal weight to different sides of a story; false balance is balanced reporting when the weight of evidence strongly favors one side over others—for example, the reality of human-caused climate change. False balance is problematic because it skews public perception of expert agreement. Through formative interviews and a survey of American weathercasters about climate change reporting, we found that objectivity and balance—topics that have frequently been studied with environmental journalists—are also relevant to understanding climate change reporting among weathercasters. Questions about the practice of and reasons for presenting an opposing viewpoint when reporting on climate change were included in a 2017 census survey of weathercasters working in the United States (N = 480; response rate = 22%). When reporting on climate change, 35% of weathercasters present an opposing viewpoint “always” or “most of the time.” Their rationale for reporting opposing viewpoints included the journalistic norms of objectivity and balanced reporting (53%), their perceived uncertainty of climate science (21%), to acknowledge differences of opinion (17%), to maintain credibility (14%), and to strengthen the story (7%). These findings show that climate change reporting from weathercasters sometimes includes opposing viewpoints, and possibly a false balance, but further research is necessary. Moreover, prior research has shown that the climate reporting practices among weathercasters are evolving rapidly and so the problem of false-balance reporting may already be self-correcting.

scholarly journals Tree planting has the potential to increase carbon sequestration capacity of forests in the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (40) ◽  
pp. 24649-24651 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grant M. Domke ◽  
Sonja N. Oswalt ◽  
Brian F. Walters ◽  
Randall S. Morin
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Carbon Sequestration ◽  
Climate Change Mitigation ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Forest Inventory ◽  
Wood Products ◽  
Tree Planting ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Change Mitigation

Several initiatives have been proposed to mitigate forest loss and climate change through tree planting as well as maintaining and restoring forest ecosystems. These initiatives have both inspired and been inspired by global assessments of tree and forest attributes and their contributions to offset carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Here we use data from more than 130,000 national forest inventory plots to describe the contribution of nearly 1.4 trillion trees on forestland in the conterminous United States to mitigate CO2 emissions and the potential to enhance carbon sequestration capacity on productive forestland. Forests and harvested wood products uptake the equivalent of more than 14% of economy-wide CO2 emissions in the United States annually, and there is potential to increase carbon sequestration capacity by ∼20% (−187.7 million metric tons [MMT] CO2 ±9.1 MMT CO2) per year by fully stocking all understocked productive forestland. However, there are challenges and opportunities to be considered with tree planting. We provide context and estimates from the United States to inform assessments of the potential contributions of forests in climate change mitigation associated with tree planting.

Climate Science and Climate Change Across the Curricula – Seizing Opportunities

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Holzer
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Collective Knowledge ◽  
Weather Extremes ◽  
Collective Effort ◽  
Subject Areas

<p>Challenges abound as our Earth warms, seas rise, and weather extremes become more and more common. Solutions to these challenges requires the collective knowledge of many along with transdisciplinary approaches, resulting in unique, creative, and comprehensive solutions.  In addition, these challenges come in many spatial and temporal sizes, and therefore solutions are needed at local, regional, global levels organized by small scale and larger scale groups. School systems can be a hub of ingenuity when it comes to designing and implementing solutions if guided by a clear pathway. Some states in the United States of America have adopted standards for learning that include climate science and climate change across all subject areas. In these states the vision for standards implementation parallels a vision for meeting the local and regional challenges of climate change. This presentation will outline the new roles afforded schools in our collective effort to reverse climate change and reduce its impact along the way.</p>

scholarly journals Leveraging cognitive consistency to nudge conservative climate change beliefs

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hunter Gehlbach ◽  
Carly D Robinson ◽  
Christine Vriesema
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Proof Of Concept ◽  
Cognitive Consistency ◽  
Climate Skepticism ◽  
Change Beliefs ◽  
Political Divide

People feel motivated to maintain consistency across many domains in life. When it comes to climate change, many find themselves motivated to maintain consistency with others, e.g., by doubting climate change to cohere with friends’ and neighbors’ beliefs. The resulting climate skepticism has derailed discussions to address the issue collectively in the United States. To counteract these social consistency pressures, we developed a cognitive consistency intervention for climate skeptics. We first demonstrated that most people share substantial faith in a variety of scientific findings, across disciplines ranging from medicine to astronomy. Next, we show that conservative participants who first acknowledge several general contributions of science subsequently report significantly stronger beliefs in climate science (as compared to conservatives who are asked only about their climate science beliefs). These findings provide an encouraging proof-of-concept for how an inclusive climate conversation might be initiated across the political divide.

scholarly journals An Attack on the Separation of Powers? Strategic Climate Litigation in the Eyes of U.S. Judges

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 8335
Author(s):  
Jasmina Nedevska
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
Climate Politics ◽  
The Social ◽  
Domestic Courts ◽  
Research Plan

Climate change litigation has emerged as a powerful tool as societies steer towards sustainable development. Although the litigation mainly takes place in domestic courts, the implications can be seen as global as specific climate rulings influence courts across national borders. However, while the phenomenon of judicialization is well-known in the social sciences, relatively few have studied issues of legitimacy that arise as climate politics move into courts. A comparatively large part of climate cases have appeared in the United States. This article presents a research plan for a study of judges’ opinions and dissents in the United States, regarding the justiciability of strategic climate cases. The purpose is to empirically study how judges navigate a perceived normative conflict—between the litigation and an overarching ideal of separation of powers—in a system marked by checks and balances.

Planting native trees to restore riparian forests increases biotic resistance to non-native plant invasions

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Chad F. Hammer ◽  
John S. Gunn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Ecosystem Service ◽  
Invasive Plant ◽  
Biotic Resistance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Tree Regeneration ◽  
Tree Planting ◽  
Plant Colonization ◽  
Native Plant ◽  
Native Trees

Abstract Non-native invasive plant species are a major cause of ecosystem degradation and impairment of ecosystem service benefits in the United States. Forested riparian areas provide many ecosystem service benefits and are vital to maintaining water quality of streams and rivers. These systems are also vulnerable to natural disturbances and invasion by non-native plants. We assessed whether planting native trees on disturbed riparian sites may increase biotic resistance to invasive plant establishment in central Vermont in the northeastern United States. The density (stems/m2) of invasive stems was higher in non-planted sites (x̄=4.1 stems/m2) compared to planted sites (x̄=1.3 stems/m2). More than 90% of the invasive plants were Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica). There were no significant differences in total stem density of native vegetation between planted and non-planted sites. Other measured response variables such as native tree regeneration, species diversity, soil properties and soil function showed no significant differences or trends in the paired riparian study sites. The results of this case study indicate that tree planting in disturbed riparian forest areas may assist conservation efforts by minimizing the risk of invasive plant colonization.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document