PS If you have links to the BLM videos mentioned at the end of the episode, I would love to see that as I've been focused on understanding the opportunities for regreening in the context of BLM grazing allotments.
Hi Alpha, In the last few days, I listened to your conversations with Rodger Savory and Andrew Millison and I'm captivated by the question of the minimum scale of regeneration required to improve precipitation. I'm curious if you have a sense from the totality of your conversations to date what the state of the art is in predicting the impact of regreening on precipitation. With enough data and computational power, are we at a point where we can make meaningful predictions that would have value in deciding where to intervene at regional and continental scales? When listening to Rodger Savory's proposal to focus in the Imperial Valley on a single site at 150,000 acre scale, I'm immediately thinking this is of limited value. I suspect the common refrain we'll hear from land managers is "this will not work in my context." To overcome that headwind, I'd much prefer to see 150 trials at 1000 acre scale covering a wide variety of contexts occurring in parallel. If a large number of small trials are happening in parallel across a plethora of contexts, the successes stand a better chance of spreading to neighboring areas when more land managers are within X distance of a trial. There is the opportunity to be very strategic in how the geographic distribution of trials is defined. And what hypotheses are being tested with each trial, from ecological, social, and economic point of views. The development and testing of social influence strategies never seems to receive enough attention, and at the end of the day, if we can't find a way to articulate pathways toward greater abundance for the land stewards we're seeking to influence, our theories are of little value. Thank you again for your work. I look forward to hearing your reflections.
Hi Chris, The key factors in generating rain are the amount of humidity in the air, and if the extra evapotranspiration from the ground will push it over the saturation point so clouds can form. So this will be very different in arid, semi-arid and tropical areas. There are rain belts at 0 degrees and 60 degrees latitude approximately. And a non-rain belt 30 degrees latitude approximately. Creating rain in the rain belt and non-rain belts are different.... Also how fast the wind is matters because if the wind is too fast it will carry the rain far away. How fast the air is rising is important because if it doesnt rise fast enough then it wont reach heights where it can cool to form clouds. Mountains in the area are a factor too, because they can block the wind. So if they are around you need a much smaller area before you get rain.... There are weather simulations that work on these smaller scales, I dont know which ones can simulate all these factors yet. i can keep a look out....
In terms of whether more trials at 1000 acre are useful it would depend on likelihood that amount would create rain. It seems possible it could create then maybe that is good, because the word can spread and that would be great..... In terms of Rodgers project, larger scale can be good because we need a lot more regreening to bring down rain in flatter arid environments. And that can also possibly shift rains enough to change wildfire risk and water scarcity issues in California. I am not sure smaller plots would be enough to change humidity to reduce wildfires far away.... But possibly strategically putting effort in 150 x 1000 acre project might be a better use of effort if one were to choose a project..... That being said someone else could do the 150 x 1000 project while rodger savory did his project....
Thank you for all those reflections. It definitely helps clarify the presence of a multitude of factors that integrate into an acreage threshold. And undoubtedly explains why there are a wide range of figures out there. The answer that Andrew Millison shared with you is along the lines of what I would expect.
I think in sharing my thoughts regarding Rodger Savory's project, I left out a key assumption on my part. My hunch is that increasing precipitation will not be the story that motivates the adoption of any particular regreening approach at the scale we need. Rather, it will be another motivation that aligns the ecological and economic dimensions. While our highest motivation may differ from those that adopt, we can be aligned in outcome. So precisely understanding the economic benefits to enable the widest possible adoption across populations with a range of value sets feels particularly important.
PS If you have links to the BLM videos mentioned at the end of the episode, I would love to see that as I've been focused on understanding the opportunities for regreening in the context of BLM grazing allotments.
Hi Alpha, In the last few days, I listened to your conversations with Rodger Savory and Andrew Millison and I'm captivated by the question of the minimum scale of regeneration required to improve precipitation. I'm curious if you have a sense from the totality of your conversations to date what the state of the art is in predicting the impact of regreening on precipitation. With enough data and computational power, are we at a point where we can make meaningful predictions that would have value in deciding where to intervene at regional and continental scales? When listening to Rodger Savory's proposal to focus in the Imperial Valley on a single site at 150,000 acre scale, I'm immediately thinking this is of limited value. I suspect the common refrain we'll hear from land managers is "this will not work in my context." To overcome that headwind, I'd much prefer to see 150 trials at 1000 acre scale covering a wide variety of contexts occurring in parallel. If a large number of small trials are happening in parallel across a plethora of contexts, the successes stand a better chance of spreading to neighboring areas when more land managers are within X distance of a trial. There is the opportunity to be very strategic in how the geographic distribution of trials is defined. And what hypotheses are being tested with each trial, from ecological, social, and economic point of views. The development and testing of social influence strategies never seems to receive enough attention, and at the end of the day, if we can't find a way to articulate pathways toward greater abundance for the land stewards we're seeking to influence, our theories are of little value. Thank you again for your work. I look forward to hearing your reflections.
Hi Chris, The key factors in generating rain are the amount of humidity in the air, and if the extra evapotranspiration from the ground will push it over the saturation point so clouds can form. So this will be very different in arid, semi-arid and tropical areas. There are rain belts at 0 degrees and 60 degrees latitude approximately. And a non-rain belt 30 degrees latitude approximately. Creating rain in the rain belt and non-rain belts are different.... Also how fast the wind is matters because if the wind is too fast it will carry the rain far away. How fast the air is rising is important because if it doesnt rise fast enough then it wont reach heights where it can cool to form clouds. Mountains in the area are a factor too, because they can block the wind. So if they are around you need a much smaller area before you get rain.... There are weather simulations that work on these smaller scales, I dont know which ones can simulate all these factors yet. i can keep a look out....
In terms of whether more trials at 1000 acre are useful it would depend on likelihood that amount would create rain. It seems possible it could create then maybe that is good, because the word can spread and that would be great..... In terms of Rodgers project, larger scale can be good because we need a lot more regreening to bring down rain in flatter arid environments. And that can also possibly shift rains enough to change wildfire risk and water scarcity issues in California. I am not sure smaller plots would be enough to change humidity to reduce wildfires far away.... But possibly strategically putting effort in 150 x 1000 acre project might be a better use of effort if one were to choose a project..... That being said someone else could do the 150 x 1000 project while rodger savory did his project....
Hi Alpha,
Thank you for all those reflections. It definitely helps clarify the presence of a multitude of factors that integrate into an acreage threshold. And undoubtedly explains why there are a wide range of figures out there. The answer that Andrew Millison shared with you is along the lines of what I would expect.
I think in sharing my thoughts regarding Rodger Savory's project, I left out a key assumption on my part. My hunch is that increasing precipitation will not be the story that motivates the adoption of any particular regreening approach at the scale we need. Rather, it will be another motivation that aligns the ecological and economic dimensions. While our highest motivation may differ from those that adopt, we can be aligned in outcome. So precisely understanding the economic benefits to enable the widest possible adoption across populations with a range of value sets feels particularly important.