
Food & Water Watch
To honor World Water Day, community and indigenous leaders will be holding a candlelight vigil outside of Sen. Mark Grisanti’s office to pressure him to move forward a bill to ban hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” in New York State.
Each lit candle will represent an instance of water contamination from fracking across the U.S. The UN has dubbed water a human right, and widespread fracking threatens to impinge on this right—large volumes of water are mixed with chemicals and injected underground, and the process has resulted in many cases of surface water and groundwater contamination. Area residents will gather to send the strong message that they value their vital water resources and that they will not allow the oil and gas industry to risk these resources.
Fracking is the process of injecting a million-gallon mixture of water, sand and chemicals into a well to break up rock formations deep underground, releasing oil and gas to flow into the well. In most cases clean water is contaminated to make the fracking fluid. Millions of gallons of toxic wastewater are produced but treatment facilities aren’t designed to treat this waste, so it has flowed into rivers and streams. Fracking also poses long-term risks to underground drinking water supplies because much of the injected ‘fracking fluid’ stays underground indefinitely.
Recently, the Buffalo Common Council voted on a resolution to support bills S4220/A7218 for a statewide ban against drilling and fracking for shale gas. The bills would also prohibit the treatment of drilling and fracking wastes in New York. Sen. Grisanti, Chair of the Environmental Conservation Committee, has the ability to move the bill forward to ban the use of hydraulic fracturing in the extraction of oil and gas in New York, but has yet to do so. This event will start outside of Grisanti's office on 65 Court St. in Buffalo, and then move to Niagara Square.
What:
A candlelight vigil for water outside of Sen. Grisanti's office for his support on a ban on fracking in New York State, then continue across the street to Niagara Square to hear speakers.
Who:
Speakers:
Lynda Schneekloth, Sierra Club Niagara Group Chair
Charley Bowman, WNY Peace Center Director
Al White & Kit White, Cayuga First Nations Elders
Maria Maybee, Seneca Nation, Cattaraugus Creek Watershed Taskforce
Rita Yelda, Food & Water Watch and WNY Drilling Defense
When & Where:
Friday, March 23, 2012 at 7:15 p.m., 65 Court St., Buffalo, NY.
For more information, click here.
- Redwoods are the world's tallest trees.
- Now scientists have discovered they are even bigger than we thought.
- Using laser technology they map the 80-meter giants.
- Trees are a key plank in the fight against climate change.
They are among the largest trees in the world, descendants of forests where dinosaurs roamed.
Pixabay / Simi Luft
<p><span>Until recently, measuring these trees meant scaling their 80 meter high trunks with a tape measure. Now, a team of scientists from University College London and the University of Maryland uses advanced laser scanning, to create 3D maps and calculate the total mass.</span></p><p>The results are striking: suggesting the trees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">may be as much as 30% larger than earlier measurements suggested.</a> Part of that could be due to the additional trunks the Redwoods can grow as they age, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a process known as reiteration</a>.</p>New 3D measurements of large redwood trees for biomass and structure. Nature / UCL
<p>Measuring the trees more accurately is important because carbon capture will probably play a key role in the battle against climate change. Forest <a href="https://www.wri.org/blog/2020/09/carbon-sequestration-natural-forest-regrowth" target="_blank">growth could absorb billions of tons</a> of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.</p><p>"The importance of big trees is widely-recognised in terms of carbon storage, demographics and impact on their surrounding ecosystems," the authors wrote<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank"> in the journal Nature</a>. "Unfortunately the importance of big trees is in direct proportion to the difficulty of measuring them."</p><p>Redwoods are so long lived because of their ability to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cope with climate change, resist disease and even survive fire damage</a>, the scientists say. Almost a fifth of their volume may be bark, which helps protect them.</p>Carbon Capture Champions
<p><span>Earlier research by scientists at Humboldt University and the University of Washington found that </span><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112716302584" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Redwood forests store almost 2,600 tonnes of carbon per hectare</a><span>, their bark alone containing more carbon than any other neighboring species.</span></p><p>While the importance of trees in fighting climate change is widely accepted, not all species enjoy the same protection as California's coastal Redwoods. In 2019 the world lost the equivalent of <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation-and-forest-degradation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">30 soccer fields of forest cover every minute</a>, due to agricultural expansion, logging and fires, according to The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF).</p>Pixabay
<p>Although <a href="https://c402277.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/publications/1420/files/original/Deforestation_fronts_-_drivers_and_responses_in_a_changing_world_-_full_report_%281%29.pdf?1610810475" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the rate of loss is reported to have slowed in recent years</a>, reforesting the world to help stem climate change is a massive task.</p><p><span>That's why the World Economic Forum launched the Trillion Trees Challenge (</span><a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a><span>) and is engaging organizations and individuals across the globe through its </span><a href="https://uplink.weforum.org/uplink/s/uplink-issue/a002o00000vOf09AAC/trillion-trees" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Uplink innovation crowdsourcing platform</a><span> to support the project.</span></p><p>That's backed up by research led by ETH Zurich/Crowther Lab showing there's potential to restore tree coverage across 2.2 billion acres of degraded land.</p><p>"Forests are critical to the health of the planet," according to <a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a>. "They sequester carbon, regulate global temperatures and freshwater flows, recharge groundwater, anchor fertile soil and act as flood barriers."</p><p><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor">Reposted with permission from the </em><span><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor"><a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/03/redwoods-store-more-co2-and-are-more-enormous-than-we-thought/" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>.</em></span></p>EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
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