Vineyards, Sheep, and Ecosystem Health

Agriculture, Rather Than Contributing to Climate Change, Can Provide Drawdown Solutions

Regenerative agriculture, the basis of which is soil health, eschews plowing, diversifies crops, shifts from annual to perennial varieties where possible, uses cover crops, integrates animals, and incorporates productive trees. It achieves impressive results in varying degrees: biological diversity, human and animal health, plant vigor, and pollinator viability. Instead of producing greenhouse gases (one-sixth of global emissions arise from the farm sector), it sequesters carbon. Increasingly, farmers are transitioning to regenerative practices to retain more water in their soils, lower their costs, stop erosion, and get out of debt.

An innovative and promising example of regenerative agriculture is the 7,600-acre Paicines Ranch in San Benito County, California. In just one small corner of the ranch, a 25-acre organic demonstration vineyard was planted in 2017. It includes native perennial grasses and sheep. The aim is to combat climate change by sequestering carbon, minimizing water usage, and increasing healthy mycorrhizal soil fungi while making fruit to produce exceptional wine.

An increasing number of grape growers have stopped tilling for weed control; tilling exposes bare earth, releasing carbon into the atmosphere while heating and drying out the soil. Many even bring animals to control grasses and weeds and as a natural source of fertilizer, but only after the grapes have been harvested. The Paicines Ranch allows sheep among the vines even during the growing season. This practice is normally avoided because sheep can eat leaves, buds, and grapes.

To counter this risk, the owners designed the Paicines vineyard to have animals among the vines. Instead of training vines on wires near the ground within easy reach of grazers, their vines are trained onto higher trellises out of reach of sheep. The extra energy the plants need to push sap higher up is more than provided by the healthier soil. Another slightly older vineyard in Northern California’s Alexander Valley, following similar practices with integrated animals, recorded a 98 percent reduction in irrigation use together with significantly higher yields.

The first wine from the young Paicines vineyard is showing encouraging results. Some critics were impressed by the complexity from only four-year-old vines. The wine quality is critical to draw maximum attention to their unconventional farming methods.

Perhaps most important, the increased soil health and moisture retention from regenerative agriculture offer more of the resilience that farmers will need in dealing with increasingly volatile patterns of rainfall and drought. Industrial agriculture and overgrazing have increased heat, desiccated lands, and raised surface temperatures. Regenerative agriculture cools its environs. Records show surface temperatures can be as much as 2 degrees Fahrenheit lower. Soil temperatures can be many degrees lower when compared with bare soil.

The carbon-capture potential of regenerative agriculture is underappreciated. The quantity of retention is not fully known. A farm in Carroll, Ohio, had less than 0.5 percent carbon in its soil in 1978; today, this regenerative farm holds 8.5 percent carbon. Most regenerative farms don’t even get tested.

Floodplain Restoration

In Response to Climate Change, California Is Looking to Nature’s Patterns

Water policy in the Western U.S. has always been a contentious issue. Changes in water management, however, are slowly happening. For example, an increasing number of dams are being deconstructed where environmental, safety, and Indigenous-cultural impacts outweigh the benefits of hydropower, flood control, irrigation, or recreation. Dams across the U.S. have an average age of more than half a century, and many pose a growing safety risk. Power production from dams is becoming less economically viable as costs of solar- and wind-generated electricity fall. 

More recently, the issues of water wastage and flood control from dam removal are being offset by allowing rivers to return to more natural flow patterns. Floodplain restoration is occurring along the Mississippi River and in Washington State, but California is rethinking how rivers flow even more broadly and leads with an additional emphasis on ecological health as climate change alters the environment. Carefully selected types of woody trees and shrubs are being planted in restored floodplains to enhance wildlife habitat and attract native species. 

California’s largest floodplain restoration project, the 2,100-acre Dos Rios Ranch Preserve in the Central Valley (at the confluence of the Tuolumne and San Joaquin rivers), is removing levees so that when heavy rains occur, the rivers can overflow their banks and revert to their historic floodplains.

The state is prioritizing these types of projects to lower risks to homes and property while boosting wildlife habitat, improving water quality, and potentially recharging groundwater supplies. As climate change leads to higher temperatures, mountain snowpack that typically trickles into the watershed will likely increase river flows and flooding. The growing risk to cities like Sacramento and Stockton, both built in floodplains, is alarming experts. Not only are California’s dry periods getting drier, but scientists are expecting wet periods to get wetter.

The update to the Central Valley Flood Protection Plan, just being released, puts a premium on floodplain restoration to reduce risk to 1.3 million people who live in floodplains. Unlike in the contentious world of most California water policy, there is wide agreement on the value of restoring floodplains, which can also reduce one concern attached to dam removal projects. There is good funding news: The Biden infrastructure bill earmarks $1.75 billion for projects designed to reduce flood risk.

California officials initiated Central Valley flood planning only a decade ago, but in this short time have established the state as a leader, if not the leader. Since the 1850s, 95 percent of Central Valley wetlands and river habitats have been lost. Restoring all of that will be impossible, but the state is starting to reclaim some of these losses.

Attacking Emissions by Removing Ocean Carbon

Simplification and Scalability Make Taking Carbon Out of Seawater Auspicious

We now realize that addressing climate change requires more than reducing our greenhouse-gas emissions to zero, a challenge that all efforts to date have been woefully inadequate in achieving. For this reason, researchers around the world are looking for effective and economical ways to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere. A number of solutions are showing promise; some are in the trial phase. A research team at UCLA’s Institute for Carbon Management is exploring a totally different approach to atmospheric drawdown.

The UCLA scientists have developed a flow reactor that takes in a continuous flow of seawater and runs it through a mesh charged at a specific electrical frequency to render the water alkaline. This kicks off a chemical reaction that combines the dissolved CO2 with naturally occurring calcium and magnesium abundant in seawater. The outcome is limestone and magnesite. This process is similar to how seashells form. The yielded minerals are durable, safe, and permanent. The seawater that flows out of the back end of the reactor is depleted of dissolved CO2 and thus ready to absorb more carbon from the skies. The only other byproduct is hydrogen, a clean fuel.

There are several key advantages to this approach. First, a given volume of seawater holds about 150 times more carbon than an equivalent volume of air. Second, it is a single-step carbon sequestration and storage (sCS2) process, unlike the multi-step atmospheric sequestering processes being explored. This simplification gives it economic and scalable benefits.

The oceans and the atmosphere work in a constant state of equilibrium. The oceans have countless plant-like organisms called phytoplankton that absorb CO2 through photosynthesis. As humans have pumped more carbon emissions into the atmosphere, the oceans have absorbed more carbon, making them more acidic and contributing to the die-off of coral reefs and threats to some shellfish.

Many approaches to sequestration are needed and soon. The economics of various approaches will be key to which becomes ascendant. Drawing down a large percentage of the 37 billion metric tons of CO2 we produce annually is daunting. The single-step simplification of the UCLA approach, its scalability, its taking inspiration from nature, and the commercialization of the solid mineral and hydrogen by-products offer a major contribution to the race to capture carbon emissions.

The 15-Minute City

Making Cities More Human, Equitable, Convenient, and Healthy

A new concept of urban planning and redevelopment is gaining popularity: the 15-minute city. All basic needs — fresh food, schools, offices, banks, gyms, health care facilities, parks, shops, and a variety of entertainment — would exist within a 15-minute walk or bike ride from your home or apartment. Paths and streets would be safe, tree-shaded, and mostly car-free. One or more public transit stops would be within this radius to connect to other neighborhoods and parts of the metropolitan region. 

C40, a network of the world’s megacities committed to addressing climate change, has adopted this planning concept as a key strategy in reducing pollution, GHG emissions, and social inequities. Portland, Madrid, Seattle, Milan, Edinburgh, and several Chinese cities are incorporating the core elements of the 15-minute city:

• Make available essential goods and services, especially fresh food and health care

• Include housing of different sizes and levels of affordability (convert former office buildings to housing)

• Locate frequent and reliable public transit connections nearby

• Invest to make walking and biking the determinant of scale, not the automobile

• Create attractive streetscapes; pocket parks; and safe, designated bikeways

• Promote mixed-use buildings, telecommuting, and digitalization of services. Strengthen access to technology to reduce the need for commuting

• Prioritize government investment in underserved and lower-income neighborhoods and encourage businesses and nonprofits to follow suit

Paris is the city that has moved the fastest and furthest in implementing the 15-minute city. It began some years ago as an early adopter of large-scale, city-wide bike sharing. In 2016, two major car arteries along the river Seine were closed to vehicles and turned over to pedestrians. Paris’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, has implemented an ambitious plan to restrict cars on many streets while increasing infrastructure for walking, cycling, and people-oriented economic development. The city is completing 1,000 kilometers of bike paths, and 60,000 parking spots for private cars are being eliminated on streets to make a bike lane possible on every street. 

Paris is increasing green spaces, encouraging urban agricultural projects, and advocating using schools, libraries, and other public spaces for multiple purposes, even during off-hours. Paris has been more people-centrist than most cities, with abundant sidewalk cafés, squares, fountains, bridges, and green spaces. Implementing the 15-minute city concepts will strengthen its mosaic of walkable neighborhoods that meet the domestic, professional, and entertainment needs of residents. A key is mixing as many different activities as possible in an area.