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How does a river breathe? The answer could lead to a better understanding of global carbon cycle

Take a deep breath. Pay attention to how air moves from your nose to your throat before filling your lungs with oxygen. As you exhale your breath, a mix of oxygen and carbon dioxide leaves your nose and mouth. Did you know that streams and rivers “breathe” in a similar way?

One of the drivers behind understanding how streams and rivers breathe is a set of processes known as respiration—a collection of chemical reactions that together determine how much carbon stays put and how much enters the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

It’s important to understand whether water or sediment in rivers and streams has more respiration. To answer this, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory partnered with researchers at Washington State University and the University of Montana. The team found that in the Columbia River, most respiration is done by organisms in the water. This is likely because the Columbia River contains a lot of water in which respiration can happen.

Research has produced models and data that can help predict how to protect the nation’s streams and rivers and the communities that depend on them. The work is published in the journal Frontiers in Water. Co-authors include PNNL earth scientist James Stegen, an affiliate faculty member in the School of the Environment.

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Phys.org
Smart Water Magazine

Electric Water Wars: It’s a Dam Crazy World

More than half of the world’s lakes and two-thirds of its rivers are drying up, threatening ecosystems, farmland, and drinking water supplies. Such diminishing resources are also likely to lead to conflict and even, potentially, all-out war.

The situation is beyond dire. In 2023, it was estimated that upwards of three billion people, or more than 37% of humanity, faced real water shortages, a crisis predicted to dramatically worsen in the decades to come. Consider it ironic then that, as water is disappearing, huge dams — more than 3,000 of them — that require significant river flow to operate are now being built at an unprecedented pace globally.

[Recent] research suggests that hydro-powered dams can create an alarming amount of climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions. Rotting vegetation at the bottom of such reservoirs, especially in warmer climates (as in much of Africa), releases significant amounts of methane, a devastating greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.

“We estimate that dams emit around 25% more methane by unit of surface than previously estimated,” says Bridget Deemer of the School of Environment at Washington State University in Vancouver, lead author of a highly-cited study on greenhouse gas emissions from reservoirs. “Methane stays in the atmosphere for only around a decade, while CO2 stays several centuries, but over the course of 20 years, methane contributes almost three times more to global warming than CO2.”

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CounterPunch
The Nation

Polar bears are starving—and it’s only getting worse

Polar bears will not be able to adapt to ice-free environments and are likely to starve to death, new research has found. As safe habitats for polar bears continue to shrink rapidly due to the climate crisis’ impact on polar regions, scientists carried out a study to understand whether these majestic creatures can adapt to new environments.

Over three weeks in summer, Canadian researchers closely monitored 20 polar bears, employing collars equipped with video cameras and GPS to gain insights into their behaviour and energy expenditure when stranded on land. The results, published in the journal Nature Communications on Tuesday, reveal a grim reality for these creatures as they grapple with the challenges of a changing environment.

Despite the bears attempting various strategies to maintain energy reserves, such as resting, scavenging, and foraging, nearly all of them experienced rapid weight loss, averaging around 1 kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, per day. This weight loss occurred regardless of whether the bears were actively foraging or conserving energy through extended periods of rest, researchers from western Hudson Bay region of Manitoba, Canada, said.

Charles Robbins, the director of the Washington State University Bear Center and co-author of the study, says adapting to land like their grizzly bear relatives seems unlikely for polar bears.

“Neither strategy will allow polar bears to exist on land beyond a certain amount of time,” Mr Robbins says. “Polar bears are not grizzly bears wearing white coats. They’re very, very different.”

Some adult male polar bears opted to conserve energy by resting, and burning calories at rates similar to hibernation. Others actively searched for food, consuming bird and caribou carcasses, as well as berries, kelp, and grasses.

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MetroNews

Washington’s snowpack on track to decrease by nearly half by 2080s

The snowpack in Washington’s mountain ranges has seen up to a 60% decrease over 75 years and that trend will likely continue for the rest of the century.

Jim Smith owns and operates Snow Sports Northwest, a ski school based at Snoqualmie Pass in Washington that teaches hundreds of students every year. His father founded the company in the late 60s.  Scott Goddard was hired by Smith’s father in 1983 and has an equally long history skiing this area. Goddard now runs the Saturday school. The school’s instructors have the task of navigating the terrain with hundreds of kids, something made harder in season’s like this year. The season’s El Niño forecast has delivered. Snow totals are a fraction of normal, creating a domino effect on many industries.

A map from the EPA shows the trends in April snowpack in the western U.S. from 1955 to 2022. In Washington, most areas’ snowpack is down between 20 to 30%, with some areas decreasing as much as 50 to 60%. 

Washington State University PhD candidate Luke Reyes is based in Vancouver, Washington, and is devoting his studies to snowpack vulnerability in the western United States. Reyes and his research team recently published this study, which analyzed the snowpack during the Pacific Northwest heat dome of 2021, when temperatures skyrocketed into the triple digits for days straight and killed hundreds of people in the region.

“People would post all these before and after pictures and they’d be hiking on Mount St. Helens or Mount Rainier and there’d be snow one day and there’s nothing a week later,” said Reyes.

But when Reyes and his team looked at the numbers, they realized something huge. The heat dome is not the only reason the snow melted.

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Recent weather won’t reverse snow drought in Pacific Northwest

This week’s snowfall likely won’t be enough to pull the Pacific Northwest out of its snow drought.

Snowpacks were at a record low across the Western U.S. in early January, the National Integrated Drought Information System reported last week. The Cascade Mountains’ snowpack is 40 percent to 60 percent of normal. Record lows also extend to California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Wyoming, with the northern Rocky Mountains facing the brunt of the snow drought.

“It is kind of striking that the pattern here is so widespread,” said Luke Gilbert Reyes, a doctoral student at Washington State University Vancouver who studies snowpack.

Multiple atmospheric rivers dumped snow atop mountains in early December. However, temperatures increased and light flakes turned to heavy rain, resulting in little mountaintop snow accumulation across the West. A dry wave lingered for the rest of the month, worsening the snow drought.

If winter precipitation is constant and temperatures remain cool through March, the snowpack might rebound, Reyes said. However, the current El Niño winter — abnormally warm and dry — will ultimately lead to below-average snow accumulation, he said.

Yet this seasonal weather pattern isn’t the only contributing factor hindering snow levels.

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The Columbian