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Earth Science

Beaver Ponds May Exacerbate Warming In Arctic, Scientists Say (theguardian.com) 95

Posted by BeauHD from the landscape-engineering-gone-awry dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The stream through western Alaska never looked like this before. In aerial photography from the 1980s, it wove cleanly through the tundra, thin as thread. Today, in satellite images, it appears as a string of black patches: one large pond after another, dozens of meters apart. It's a transformation that is happening across the Arctic, the result of landscape engineering on an impressive scale. But this is no human endeavor to reshape the world. It is the work of the North American beaver, and there is no sign of it stopping. Were the waddling rodents making minor inroads, researchers may never have noticed. But the animals are pouring in, pushing north into new territories. The total number of animals is far from clear, but the ponds they create are hard to miss: in the Arctic tundra of Alaska alone, the number of beaver ponds on streams have doubled to at least 12,000 in the past 20 years. More lodges are dotted along lakes and river banks.

The preponderance of beavers, which can weigh as much as 45kg, follows a collapse in trapping and the warming of a landscape that once proved too bleak for occupation. Global heating has driven the shrubification of the Arctic tundra; the harsh winter is shorter, and there is more free-running water in the coldest months. Instead of felling trees for their dams, the beavers construct them from surrounding shrubs, creating deep ponds in which to build their lodges. The new arrivals cause plenty of disruption. For some communities, the rivers and streams are the roads of the landscape, and the dams make effective roadblocks. As the structures multiply, more land is flooded and there can be less fresh water for drinking downstream. But there are other, less visible effects too. The animals are participants in a feedback loop: climate change opens the landscape to beavers, whose ponds drive further warming, which attracts even more paddle-tailed comrades. Physics suggested this would happen. Beaver ponds are new bodies of water that cover bare permafrost. Because the water is warm -- relatively speaking -- it thaws the hard ground, which duly releases methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases.

Scientists now have evidence this is happening. Armed with high-resolution satellite imagery, Tape and his colleagues located beaver ponds in the lower Noatak River basin area of north-western Alaska. They then analyzed infrared images captured by Nasa planes flying over the region. Overlaying the two revealed a clear link between beaver ponds and methane hotspots that extended for tens of meters around the ponds. "The transformation of these streams is a positive feedback that is accelerating the effects of climate change, and that is what's concerning," says Tape. "They are accelerating it at every one of these points." Because the Nasa images give only a snapshot in time, the researchers will head out next year to measure methane on the ground. With more measurements, they hope to understand how the emissions vary with the age of beaver ponds: do ponds release a steady flow of methane, or does the release wane after a decade or two? "What's happening here is happening on a huge scale," says Ken Tape, an ecologist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, who is tracking the influx of beavers into the sparse northern landscape. "Our modeling work, which is in progress right now, shows that this entire area, the north slope of Alaska, will be colonized by beavers by 2100."
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Beaver Ponds May Exacerbate Warming In Arctic, Scientists Say More

Beaver Ponds May Exacerbate Warming In Arctic, Scientists Say

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  • Now the deniers have something to blame! (Score:3)

    by JoeDuncan ( 874519 ) on Thursday January 11, 2024 @11:32PM (#64151787)
    It was the Beavers all along!!!

  • Those big toothed, hairy bastards! They shouldn't be in jail, they should be under the jail!

  • Is that Canada needs to import some more French trappers.

    • Is that Canada needs to import some more French trappers.

      That's probably not going to help the situation in Alaska, though.

  • The same thing must have happened during the glacial retreat starting 18,000 years ago. It's a bit surprising that the beavers are going north before the trees get there. But then rodents do get everywhere.

  • Early warning failure (Score:3)

    by dsgrntlxmply ( 610492 ) on Thursday January 11, 2024 @11:55PM (#64151827)
    The 2014 movie Zombeavers warned us of the dangers of deadly zombie beavers, yet we chose not to pay attention, as shown by the reported $44K box office.

  • Looks like beaver is back on the menu, boys!

  • or may not. I just love statements like this.

  • So is a beaver pond just another name for a whore house?

    So now we have to shoot Winona's Big Brown Beaver?

    I'm confused.

  • Here Come the Boas (Score:5, Funny)

    by OYAHHH ( 322809 ) on Friday January 12, 2024 @12:15AM (#64151873)

    It cannot be but just a short matter of time before the exploding boa population in FL extends to the tundra of Alaska. Thus, correcting this insidious imbalance and returning the world to perfect harmony.

  • And remember... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Temkin ( 112574 ) on Friday January 12, 2024 @12:17AM (#64151879)

    Beavers ponds are entirely non-anthropogenic... They own this via natural evolution & adaptation. Who are we as Hominids to judge their right to impact climate in this way?

    • That's bullshit. They evolved alongside native human populations in the same territory. Humans who used to live in societies that were intrinsically linked to nature, and worked to keep it in balance. Removing our impact on them entirely is no more natural of a state for these ecosystems than if we were to have exterminated them instead.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sinij ( 911942 )
        OP is clearly a Gaian [wikipedia.org], the narrative of pristine nature and human despoilers is religious dogma.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Temkin ( 112574 )

        They evolved alongside native human populations in the same territory. Humans who used to live in societies that were intrinsically linked to nature, and worked to keep it in balance.

        Citation please, disputing the Beaver's 7+ million year old fossil record in North America vs. the less than 27,000 year fossil record for human habitation of North America, with appropriate discussion of glaciation during this period, and the estimated evolutionary rate of change in large rodent populations.

        Also... You fail at sarcasm.

        • Before the humans, there were more wolves. Bigger wolves. That's also in the fossil record.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Temkin ( 112574 )

            Before the humans, there were more wolves. Bigger wolves. That's also in the fossil record.

            Wolves are also non-anthropogenic. You're missing a point on complexity and assuming there's some kind of stable optimum that can be maintained. The periodic, even routine, ice ages imply there is not, and the forcing mechanisms for them are completely uncontrollable. (hint: cosmic rays from spiral arms) The Geologic record since the Archean doesn't hold a lot of clues to heat crisis derived extinctions, there are a few, mostly related to volcanic events such as the Permian-Triassic "great dying" event.

  • The rain was coming down hard, beating against the window like a thousand tiny fists. I sat in my dimly lit office, surrounded by the ghosts of past cases. The kind of cases that didn't make it to the headlines. The kind that left scars deeper than the ones you could see. This time, it wasn't a cheating spouse or a stolen heirloom. It was about the preservation of beaver habitat. Yeah, you heard me right. The conservation of wildlife had taken a dark turn, and I was about to find out just how deep the rabbi

  • leave it to beavers.

  • Mild (Score:5, Insightful)

    by eneville ( 745111 ) on Friday January 12, 2024 @03:15AM (#64152017) Homepage

    This is relatively mild compared to what industrial farming does. Maybe beavers have some impact but it's low.

    • And human built dams. they too release an ungodly amount of methane (until all that is organic has decomposed)

    • Most industrial farming doesn't release massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere. You're talking about apples vs oranges. Methane is about 28x more dangerous a greenhouse gas than CO2 is! https://energy.ec.europa.eu/to... [europa.eu] Please read TFA and stop assuming so much, especially in public. TFS/TFA is talking about beaver ponds releasing methane stored in permafrost for millennia, as climate drives the beavers further North.

  • Species makes huge effect on the environment! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by troon ( 724114 ) on Friday January 12, 2024 @03:35AM (#64152043)

    So up to 12,000 beavers have made a small change to a stream, and that's exacerbating climate change?

    The 8 billion large primates (mostly) further south have nothing to do with it?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by drolli ( 522659 )

      More beavers live in Canada than in the USA. Blam Canada!

    • No, you misread TFS: "...in the Arctic tundra of Alaska alone, the number of beaver ponds on streams have doubled to at least 12,000 in the past 20 years", and all of those streams are unfreezing the permafrost near them for several meters, releasing methane into the atmosphere that has previously been trapped for millennia.

      Presumably those beaver ponds were visible from space. No one counted beavers.

    • Shut up and pay more taxes because ... ... of the beavers.

  • It seems suspicious that literally every piece of climate research comes to the conclusion that the result of what they're studying is climate baddening. Why isn't it that some phenomena results in climate goodening? Or at least, the slowing of other baddening.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by CalgaryD ( 9235067 )
      You noticed that too? I think, it is really simple. They got some research money, they explained that they need the money to find something important about global warming. What is more important than a thing that is going to kill us all?

    • Obviously the wetlands beavers create will sink a huge amounts of carbon over their lifetimes. It’s strange these researchers have neglected to mention that. They also never seem to mention that higher CO2 concentrations increase plant growth in general, as do higher temperatures. They focus heavily on “runaway warming” and positive feedback loops, but never mention the significant sources of negative feedback. Furthermore, these positive feedback loops always seem to relate to methane, a

    • Not really, life is conservative - it thrives in stable conditions. We've introduced a shock to the system and caused a rapid change. That's going to impact everything negatively at the start, until things figure out how to adapt. So lots of bad outcomes are to be expected.

      However, you're posting this on a piece of climate research that SHOWS climate improvements. Beavers are thriving and their range has expanded. They happened to be in a niche that allowed them to rapidly adapt to the change. It's great fo

  • Compared to fracking? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Friday January 12, 2024 @04:01AM (#64152073)
    Just how much methane are we talking? How much additional methane do 12,000 beavers release into the atmosphere compared to a fracking well? (Fracking wells leak like fuck & so do the storage & transport systems). So which do you reckon is more of a problem, 12,000 beavers or fracking? - Just for some perspective.

    • How much additional methane do 12,000 beavers release into the atmosphere compared to a fracking well?

      You misread TFS: "...in the Arctic tundra of Alaska alone, the number of beaver ponds on streams have doubled to at least 12,000 in the past 20 years", and all of those streams are unfreezing the permafrost near them for several meters, releasing methane into the atmosphere that has previously been trapped for millennia.

      Presumably those beaver ponds were visible from space. No one counted beavers. On a 100-year timescale, methane has 28 times greater global warming potential than carbon dioxide and is 84 ti [europa.eu]

      • Apparently, the average is 4-8 beavers in a lodge but there may be more than one lodge per dam. 12,000 x 6 = 72,000 beavers! But anyway, we're talking about the ponds they make, which yes is 12,000. But still, what's the relative methane output of 12,000 ponds vs. fracking over the same area? And how much fracking compared to pond building is going on? If we're gonna give beavers a bad rap then we need to put it into perspective.

  • Sigh. (Score:2)

    by ledow ( 319597 )

    Yeah, it's all the beaver's fault.

    Obviously the worst species on the planet.

  • Blame it on the beavers. ! And how much $$$ was spent on this study ??? Let's blame the real culprits, humans !!!

  • In any landscape, beavers are a good thing. They create habitat for all sorts of other creatures. Do they sometimes inconvenience humans? Yep, life is like that.

    Trying to find climate panic in beaver dams is far fetched. The historical beaver range in Alaska has always reached up to the far north [nhpbs.org]; certainly Western Alaska has always been covered. If there is a change, it is more likely due to reduced hunting and trapping.

  • It's a transformation that is happening across the Arctic, the result of landscape engineering on an impressive scale. But this is no human endeavor to reshape the world. It is the work of the North American beaver, and there is no sign of it stopping

    But ... can't we un-perso ... I mean, un-beaver them? Refuse to process their payments? Refuse to register their domain names? Cancel their web hosting?????

  • In the 1980s, the world news told us that we needed more beaver dams as they were good for the environment. Even though they caused excess flooding and destruction to human habitated areas, the promotion was on. Why? Because it was new and something to pout about. Now, the mouth is on the other end of the torso. Where there is money to be siphoned, there will be a cause and people to do so.

  • The beavers are native to Alaska (Score:4, Informative)

    by chas.williams ( 6256556 ) on Friday January 12, 2024 @08:32AM (#64152395)
    This isn't some sort of invasion. It's a population rebound. Hunting and trapping almost eliminated the beaver in North America. Beavers even crossed the Bering land bridge to colonize Europe. Now, you want to tell beavers they can't do what they have been doing for millennia?
  • ...it's all their fault. I knew they were up to no good. Them with their dams and their ponds. Probably been planning this for decades. Planning to take out humans the best way they know how. Hoping people never see it coming.

  • Dear biologists,

    You're not scientists. You can watch what is going on because that's what you do best. Stop playing with scientific tools as if you understand them, and please never make predictions based on your misuse of those tools. Not saying you aren't smart, just that you are terribly misguided in your assessment of what you understand. Watch the beavers but stay in your lane, no predictions, no climate commentary.

    Thanks

  • More beavers moving north means less starving polar bears. Problem solved! I think that a polar bear will happily munch on both seals and beavers.
  • It reminds me of this incident in 1997. https://www.snopes.com/fact-ch... [snopes.com]

  • CAFOs (Score:2)

    by eriks ( 31863 )

    FFS, roughly a third of human-caused methane emissions come from CAFOs (feedlots for cows and pigs raised for meat) and TFA only speaks in local percentage increases, so I've no idea how much extra methane this is in absolute terms, but it's hard to imagine that it's anything more than a rounding-error compared to the impact from animal agriculture and other industries. Leave the beavers alone and buy locally-raised beef and pork instead of buying it from a big-box grocery store. It's more expensive, so y

  • Beaver-shite is deadly to humans. Beaver-dams are deadly to free-flowing trout streams.   Best kill 95% of the lil' bastards and remove the other 5% to a well enclosed engineered  commercial environment of say 800 Sq miles. Beaver-fedora  anyone ? 

  • Wear more hats.

  • So what if beavers increase CO2? They have other benefits to the ecosystem that are pretty well established. The ponds control stream flow, prevent erosion, and maintain habitats for a host of other species.

    The environmental movement has become obsessed with CO2, often to the detriment of previous goals.

    The most infamous example of this was the cutting of trees and shipping of them across oceans to feed wood-fired generating plants. Any 1970s environmentalist would have recoiled in horror at the very i

  • Canadian beavers were imported to Argentina in the 1950s, and those slippery hairy critters have been spreading so wide and fast the country now considers them to be a menace. Seriously...look it up.

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