Biodiversity & Land Use

Tim Iverson

(10/2019) When it comes to financial management the old adage advises that you diversify your assets. By spreading investments individuals can protect themselves from losses. When it comes to ecology and the environment the same advice rings true.

The food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe all depend upon healthy and diverse communities of plants and animals. Biological diversity, or biodiversity, includes every living thing on the planet at every level, from entire ecosystems all the way down to genetics. It’s the myriad forms of life and the countless ways they all interact with one another.

Just like financial assets the diversity of our ecological assets insulate the planet and everything on it from potential impacts and losses in other sectors. A recent United Nations report on climate change, released in July 2019, paints a troubling picture for the climate at large. However, of particular note is a stark decline in biodiversity and land use issues.

Environmentalists, conservationists, and others would argue that biodiversity has an inherent value that can’t necessarily be quantified. However, biodiversity also has important utilitarian value as well. There are environmental services that are provided to humanity. Medicine, food, climate regulation, water and nutrient cycling, carbon and air purification, and countless other ways rich and diverse ecosystems provide benefits to us and the world. The dollar value of services provided is estimated in the trillions, which is double the gross-domestic product (GDP) of the entire world combined.

Forests are bastians of biodiversity. The Amazon rainforest is the largest most biologically diverse forest in the world. The amount of life contained within is unparalleled. The tragedy of their loss is unfolding in real-time. The significant loss of diversity housed within is unsettling, but worse yet are the tons of carbon dioxide (CO ) being thrown into the atmosphere. Trees not only pull CO from the air and turn it into breathable oxygen, they also lock it away keeping it out of the atmosphere.

As greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere spurring climate change this can become a vital tool for us. The US Forest Service estimates that American forests store up to 750 million metric tons of CO each year, which is about 10% of the country’s carbon emissions. Carbon sequestration is a process where CO is removed from the atmosphere and stored for an extended period of time. The carbon is stored within the leaves, stems, roots, and body of a tree.

Because trees live for so long this banks the carbon potentially for hundreds of years. Additionally, products made from wood will still contain the carbon stored within extending the sequestration period until that product either decomposes or is burned. Scientists and policy makers are trying to figure out if we can harness this ability of trees to slow or reverse climate change. By not deforesting and reforesting areas we can potentially bank excess CO for some time. Utilizing carbon sequestration may not be the solution to the climate change problem, but it may buy us some time.

Forests can help forestall long-term climate change, but they also help to regulate local climates and weather patterns too. Globally, vegetative cover accounts for about 20-30% of total land. Within forests or areas of vegetative cover plants release water vapor and absorb and emit energy used to drive weather. Forests create their own micro-climates with leaves through transpiration, or evaporative cooling, which reduces the humidity and temperature in the surrounding area. As water vapor is evaporated back into the air it condenses into clouds and eventually rain.

Livestock production is one of the leading causes of land degradation, biodiversity loss, pollution, and other climate change drivers. As forests, both locally and globally, are razed for development or livestock use (as is primarily the case for Amazonian deforestation) we are curtailing the services and biodiversity they provide. With a warming and drying climate these are all the more valuable. Additionally, land is a finite resource. We have all the land we will ever have. It can’t simultaneously grow trees, house people, and be farmed. As a society we need to seriously consider how to allocate and maximize the way we use this finite resource.

The single largest impact an individual can have to affect climate change is to reduce their meat consumption. By curtailing the production and consumption of meat (especially red meat) a person can dramatically lower their personal carbon and water footprint. Even small commitments like sticking to a single meat-free day per week or making the effort to ensure one meal a day is completely meat-free go a long way.

Additionally, by investing in natural infrastructure we can double the impact of ecological services. By investing in forested stream buffers we improve fishing and water based recreation, clean drinking water, improve the overall habitat and capacity of the Chesapeake watershed, and restore biodiverse ecosystems. The much decried "rain tax" in Maryland was established to address these same issues by managing stormwater flows. Flooding in Ellicott City has cost taxpayers and the state millions. By effectively utilizing natural and man-made infrastructure similar catastrophes could be avoided in the future.

Biodiversity is the shield that buffers any blows that disaster may bring. Large scale ecosystem diversity allows for adjustments to fires and floods. Plant and animal diversity means more types of food and sustainability. Genetic diversity helps ward off and resists the spread of disease. Over the long arc of earth’s timeline there have been a total of five major extinction events where nearly all biodiversity and life were lost. Some researchers think we could be on the precipice of a new sixth mass extinction event. With the alarming loss of habitats and species combined with the effects of a globally changing climate this could be the case. It's likely too early to make a definitive call like that, especially while our collective course could be altered.

The bottom line is that a robust and diverse ecosystem provides stability. Just as we seek financial stability climatic patterns ought to be measured and considered. The problem is real. The impact is real. The solutions are not always easy. However, the pivot towards actionable change must occur.