This is a story about how our climate models were built - how the water cycle was added to a model of air movement, how heat behavior was integrated in, and how pertinent properties of soil and vegetation were put in.
* Dr. Anna Maria Primavesi and her husband talked a long time ago (since 1960s) about microbial and microfauna in soils and its role in accumulation of water, nitrogen and carbon. She talked about the link of vegetation loss in South America to droughts and rain outpouring in the Brazilian Pantanal region;
* Dr. Ernst Götsch coined the term "Syntropic Agriculture" in which lots of trees species can share the same area with different height/cover strata, bringing efficient land usage and less stressful plant life. He uses to say "water is planted/cultivated" with vegetation cover.
Both defend the idea that it is possible to have more food productivity with lower land usage (Anna Primavesi stated that half cropland would feed Brazilian population, lessening deforestation there). With adequate mechanization, I believe that their land usage practises can reduce a lot of nitrous salt/fertilizer runoff that goes to rivers and generates algal blooms nearshore.
On the same token, I remember Antonio Nobre saying once "Forests don't follow water. Forest bring water to their land".
Fantastic exploration. Truly yeoman's work. Thank you. It is interesting how fully developed the two-legged understanding of climate (though not stated that way) was before the Charney report in 1979. I'm still trying to understand how it got lost for so long. Looking forward to part III.
Thanks, good to hear appreciations from a fellow writer, who's also been digging into all of this.... I think the research on the second leg is still being done, theres lots of climate scientists working on it, but its a small portion of the total climate scientists....Exactly why I am still figuring out, but somehow carbon got the attention, and kept getting more attention....Its partly to do with how much easier it is to model carbon versus water, partly to do with a positive feedback loop, but there's also more to it than that probably....
Amazing Explanations! My most genuine thank you for this work. I would have a humble inquiry.
"Grasslands have less evapotranspiration that forests. Paved land has less evapotranspiration than grasslands."
Is that also true relative to pedoclimatic conditions? One would imagine the deep carbon sponges of the prairies with the vast roots systems of the grasses, legumes and herbs to do a fairly good job at supplying the microbial communities that drive the NPP and the natural cycles.
It seems from a perspective of indigenous regenerative ecosystem design as laied out by Lyla June Johnston or accounts of prehistoric European ecosystems by Mattias Rupp which describe "the open-meadowed, 'park-like' forests [as i.e.] of the Ch’ooshgai Mountains" (Johnston 2022) as typical agroecosystems, it could be pointed out that the ordinal ordering of forests over grasslands at the function of evapotranspiration may be inappropriate for many agroecoystems.
There are cases where grasslands is better than forests. And you often want meadows interspersed within forests. Forests evapotranspire more than grasslands. However that is just one metric. An eco-climate system has multiple metrics that are important.
Fanstatic pair of essays.
Two more points from the permaculture front:
* Dr. Anna Maria Primavesi and her husband talked a long time ago (since 1960s) about microbial and microfauna in soils and its role in accumulation of water, nitrogen and carbon. She talked about the link of vegetation loss in South America to droughts and rain outpouring in the Brazilian Pantanal region;
* Dr. Ernst Götsch coined the term "Syntropic Agriculture" in which lots of trees species can share the same area with different height/cover strata, bringing efficient land usage and less stressful plant life. He uses to say "water is planted/cultivated" with vegetation cover.
Both defend the idea that it is possible to have more food productivity with lower land usage (Anna Primavesi stated that half cropland would feed Brazilian population, lessening deforestation there). With adequate mechanization, I believe that their land usage practises can reduce a lot of nitrous salt/fertilizer runoff that goes to rivers and generates algal blooms nearshore.
On the same token, I remember Antonio Nobre saying once "Forests don't follow water. Forest bring water to their land".
yes our land can grow more food with healthy soil... I like Gotsch's work....I hadnt heard of Primavesi, thanks for the reference
Fantastic exploration. Truly yeoman's work. Thank you. It is interesting how fully developed the two-legged understanding of climate (though not stated that way) was before the Charney report in 1979. I'm still trying to understand how it got lost for so long. Looking forward to part III.
Thanks, good to hear appreciations from a fellow writer, who's also been digging into all of this.... I think the research on the second leg is still being done, theres lots of climate scientists working on it, but its a small portion of the total climate scientists....Exactly why I am still figuring out, but somehow carbon got the attention, and kept getting more attention....Its partly to do with how much easier it is to model carbon versus water, partly to do with a positive feedback loop, but there's also more to it than that probably....
Amazing Explanations! My most genuine thank you for this work. I would have a humble inquiry.
"Grasslands have less evapotranspiration that forests. Paved land has less evapotranspiration than grasslands."
Is that also true relative to pedoclimatic conditions? One would imagine the deep carbon sponges of the prairies with the vast roots systems of the grasses, legumes and herbs to do a fairly good job at supplying the microbial communities that drive the NPP and the natural cycles.
It seems from a perspective of indigenous regenerative ecosystem design as laied out by Lyla June Johnston or accounts of prehistoric European ecosystems by Mattias Rupp which describe "the open-meadowed, 'park-like' forests [as i.e.] of the Ch’ooshgai Mountains" (Johnston 2022) as typical agroecosystems, it could be pointed out that the ordinal ordering of forests over grasslands at the function of evapotranspiration may be inappropriate for many agroecoystems.
In regenerative solidarity
Thanks glad you like these essays.......
There are cases where grasslands is better than forests. And you often want meadows interspersed within forests. Forests evapotranspire more than grasslands. However that is just one metric. An eco-climate system has multiple metrics that are important.
The right name is Mikhail Budyko (Russian climatologist), not "Budkyo"
ok thanks updated