Climate impacts

Disturbing the balance between carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus pools can have impacts that are both lagged and long-lasting. Increased atmospheric emissions of the greenhouse gas components of the cycles lead to their steadily increasing concentrations in the atmosphere. In other words, there are shifts in mass of carbon and nitrogen from the soil or other long-term storage pools to the Figure 6.8 Areas with elevated ammonia concentrations Source: Wikicommons (NASA).

atmospheric pool. This steady increase is small on an annual basis, but because their residence time (the amount of time that it takes for these molecules to transform into compounds that either return to the terrestrial pool or shift to long-term storage) can extend into hundreds of years, their concentrations can grow. The impact can last for a very long time.

As evident from earlier discussions, the shifts in mass from long-term storage to the atmospheric pool are primarily the consequence of mining, fossil fuel drilling, and chemical conversion (N2 to nitrate). However, a portion of the shift to the atmospheric pool is also the result of modifying the natural landscape that reduces the conversion of bioavailable and reactive material into long-term storage. Figure 6.9 shows the historical trends of atmospheric concentrations of CO2, N2O, CH4, as well as CFCs. [Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are synthetic chemicals used as refrigerants, cleaning solvents, and blowing agents.] Global efforts have succeeded in reducing the emissions of CFCs in recent years. As is obvious from the other three graphs, we have had little success with carbon and nitrogen.

Anthropogenic carbon enters the atmospheric pool as carbon dioxide where it acts as a greenhouse gas, and as methane, another greenhouse gas. Anthropogenic nitrogen enters the atmosphere primarily as nitrous oxide but also as ammonia.

Ammonia, with a very short lifespan in the atmosphere, is not considered a greenhouse gas. The carbon dioxide comes primarily from combustion of carbon-containing products, such as fossil fuels, or from the breakdown of the

Figure 6.9 NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory (2020).

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organic component of soils. The additional methane comes largely from the fossil fuel industry and leakage from natural gas transport. It also comes from livestock operations and from fields flooded for rice production. Incomplete conversion of nitrate or ammonia to N2through microbial action and volatilization of fertilizer can lead to the production of nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas. This phenomenon occurs in both soils and in nutrient-enriched wetlands, estuaries, lakes, ponds, and other similar waterbodies where water flow is impeded and rN can concentrate. What percent of total rN applied as fertilizer eventually converts to N2O is unclear, but is often estimated to be around 4% (Xiao et al., 2019).

Some thirty million tons of N2O enter the atmosphere each year, of which about 36% is the direct result of human activity (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2010). This estimate is in dispute because a growing amount in recent decades derives from melting permafrost soils of the arctic boreal regions. Some argue that any nitrous oxide emissions resulting from human-induced warming of these regions, i.e. climate change, should also be attributed to human activity (McDermott-Murphy 2019).

Because rN is a serial offender, nitrous oxide derives not just from a number of pools, but also from a number of other impacts. Oceanic and estuarine dead zones are also sources of nitrous oxide emissions, as are reservoirs behind dams.

Ironically, a dam which is intended to serve to reduce the use of fossil fuels and hence the generation of greenhouse gas emissions instead can become a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, that is, nitrous oxide, because of the concentration of nitrates and ammonia in the slow-moving waters behind the dam. This should remind the reader that even what seems to be the best solution to a problem needs to be thoroughly examined to avoid unintended consequences.

Phosphorus exists as a liquid or solid at normal environmental temperatures.

Hence, of the three ingredients of life, only phosphorus does not also have a gaseous form and thus contribute to the atmospheric pool.

6.4 SUMMARY

We humans have changed our world to exploit the benefits of its natural resources.

We have changed the flow the streams and rivers and our technological innovations have altered carbon–nitrogen–phosphorus cycling. The consequence has been that the mass in long-term storage pools has become available for human use in terrestrial pools. What was once scarce has become readily bioavailable.

We accrued the benefits upfront. The costs have been often delayed or unexpected. Neglecting to consider where water goes and the consequences of expanding the bioavailable pools of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus have led to sticky problems. The result of this neglect is increasing damages from flooding, polluted air and water, ocean dead zones, the slow and steady rise in atmospheric greenhouse gases, and falling pH levels of the oceans. Dealing with these issues poses significant, hard-to-resolve challenges.

Our intent in describing these impacts is not to depress the reader into inaction.

Rather it is to make you aware of the potential consequences of ignoring the principles that everything goes somewhere, gravity works, and natural systems will follow their rules to reestablish balance. Taking account of these principles can help you make better decisions in examining measures for action as well as evaluating the decisions of others. We all want to avoid avoidable mistakes.

It is difficult if not impossible for any one of us alone to solve the regional environmental and natural resource problems, let alone the world’s problems, that confront us. But we can make local problems that we see around us better and avoid contributing to future problems in our immediate environment. These tools should help. In any case, you should have a better understanding of the consequences of ignoring nature and its laws.

In the next chapter we present examples of how not thinking out the implications of actions have led to undesired consequences. We help the reader identify what could have been done differently to have produced better outcomes.

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Chapter 7

Putting it all together:

case studies

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly–Perhaps she’ll die! There was an old lady who swallowed a spider;

That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her!

She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.….

—Rose Bonne, 1961 The old lady of the nursery rhyme mistakenly swallows a fly and then eats a series of ever larger animals (spider, bird, cat, dog…) to‘solve’the problem of having eaten the fly. Sometimes environmental management can seem to follow the same strategy. The problem to be addressed often results from actions taken in the past.

The potential solutions to that problem need to be carefully analyzed to avoid creating a new problem that needs to be solved. To be fair, greater understanding of how natural systems function has identified some of the problems generated by previous solutions. But in a number of cases these might have been avoided had our basic principles been were followed – gravity works, everything goes somewhere, cycles balance. [Disturb at your own risk!]

So far, we have looked at and brushed up a few basic concepts you already knew, discussed cycles important for understanding environmental concerns, examined natural and human change within our world and the impacts of that change, and introduced a few tools that can be used to help account for human activity. We now present case studies whereby you can begin to test where well-intended actions to solve problems have gone awry. In other words, the action resulted in

© IWA Publishing 2021. A Guide to Understanding the Fundamental Principles of Environmental Management. It Ain’t Magic: Everything Goes Somewhere

Authors: Andy Manale and Skip Hyberg doi: 10.2166/9781789060997_0125

undesired environmental outcomes or the decline in the quality of the natural resource. These case studies illustrate what happens when the basic concepts which we introduced to you at the beginning of this book are neglected. In every case, human modifications caused disruption of the natural system, the consequences of which could have been anticipated. We encourage you to consider what individual and collective actions (public policies) can be taken to correct for these mistakes. We touch upon this subject in the next chapter.

First, we want to introduce you to the concept, important for the management of natural resources, of what is referred to in the scientific literature as‘the Commons.’ The idea relates to the science to which we have introduced you and to the circumstances in which we, as one of many sharing the planet with our fellow humans, plants, and animals, live.