Life Saves the Planet Blog:
Cooling Nature plays a pivotal role in cooling the Earth, with plants being central to this process. Through transpiration, they release water vapor, which cools the air and aids in cloud formation. This mechanism is crucial in countering the urban heat island effect, where non-vegetated areas like cities absorb more heat. Water itself helps to regulate temperature by absorbing heat without raising air temperatures. However, greenhouse gases trap heat near the Earth, exacerbating global warming. Reflective surfaces (albedo) help by bouncing back solar energy, aiding in cooling. Vital too are diverse ecosystems such as forests, grasslands, and marine environments, which offer benefits beyond cooling, including carbon sequestration, flood mitigation, and biodiversity preservation. Holistically nurturing these ecosystems is essential for maintaining Earth’s climate health and addressing the challenges of climate change.
Nature plays a pivotal role in cooling the Earth, with plants being central to this process. Through transpiration, they release water vapor, which cools the air and aids in cloud formation. This mechanism is crucial in countering the urban heat island effect, where non-vegetated areas like cities absorb more heat. Water itself helps to regulate temperature by absorbing heat without raising air temperatures. However, greenhouse gases trap heat near the Earth, exacerbating global warming. Reflective surfaces (albedo) help by bouncing back solar energy, aiding in cooling. Vital too are diverse ecosystems such as forests, grasslands, and marine environments, which offer benefits beyond cooling, including carbon sequestration, flood mitigation, and biodiversity preservation. Holistically nurturing these ecosystems is essential for maintaining Earth’s climate health and addressing the challenges of climate change.
Biodiversity as Climate Infrastructure: Micrometeorology, Fluxes, and the Living Earth
In Biodiversity as Climate Infrastructure, Poulomi Chakravarty explores micrometeorology—the science of small-scale exchanges of heat, water, and gases between land, plants, and air. It shows how forests, wetlands, and even animals influence evaporation, rainfall, and temperature through hidden processes that quietly stabilize our climate. The article opens a window into this overlooked science, inviting us…
Just released: “Cooling Climate Chaos: A Proposal to Cool the Planet within Twenty Years.”
This newly published book by Peter Bunyard and Rob de Laet approaches the climate crisis and its solutions from a completely different angle. “To address the climate crisis, now demonstrably causing havoc with life-killing extreme events,” the authors write, “we must not only transform our economic and societal models towards sustainability and resilience, we must…
Kick off your Summer 2024 Reading List
How can we find cool insights as we dive into a summer of heatwaves and weather extremes? It hasn’t always been this way. Many of us remember carefree summers with morning dew on the grass or a breeze by the beach or river. Everyone knows it’s cooler by the water! Nations and communities have favorite…
From Parking Lot & Lawn to Miyawaki Forests: Transforming Worcester, MA
A transformation is underway in Worcester, MA. In this mid-sized city in Central Massachusetts long known for its industrial activity, city leadership has undertaken ambitious initiatives to address some of their climate resilience goals using the Miyawaki method. Together, Bio4Climate, BSC Group, and the City of Worcester planned and created two Miyawaki Forests in the…
Journey of an Apprentice
Introduction by Jim Laurie Erling Jorgensen was a student in my “Systems Thinking and Scenario Building” course (Biodiversity 6) in the summer of 2022. He is determined to learn how life processes work and develop a scenario of restoring these processes. His goal is also to create a story that young people and adults with…
Signing on to Protect Forests
We, the undersigned organizations, are writing with the hopes of establishing a dialogue regarding the October 17, 2023 joint comment letter sent to Congress by the Outdoor Industry Association, Outdoor Alliance, and The Conservation Alliance concerning the Farm Bill.
Biodiversity Day: A Community Celebration
By Paul Barringer and Jean Devine of Native Plant Community Gardeners Our first Biodiversity Day festival was a success! On Saturday, May 4th, over 120 visitors came to Danehy Park, Cambridge, to join birding tours, Miyawaki Forest tours, learn about pollinator gardens, native plants, and ecosystem restoration from ten local environmental organizations who joined us…
Cool Forests for a Hot World
We affirm the need to restore the five billion hectares of degraded land worldwide but we have also found a way to bring the power of eco restoration home. Home to our own communities; Home to those most in need of a healing shot of nature; By planting tiny forests in urban areas, using the…