Climate and Conflict It’s not hard to see that climate change is hitting every part of the globe. Hurricanes are intensifying. Wildfires are worsening. Glaciers are receding. Coastlines are flooding. Coral reefs are bleaching. And, permafrost is melting in the Arctic. The evidence of climate change is indisputable, according to a group of Lehigh experts. Yet, climate change is widely disputed and dismissed by many—which has positioned it as one of the most contentious issues of our time and one of the most difficult to address. “The debate around climate change is highly politically charged,” says Breena Holland, a political scientist and environmental policy expert. “A lot of people are eager to discredit the science and fuel doubts about this issue.” So, how do individuals, the government and the global community tackle such a pressing issue when conflict is such an integral part of it? Lehigh researchers across disciplines weighed in on the state of climate change and the conflict surrounding it. They offered insights about what exactly is transpiring on the planet and in policy discussions—and have shared here what’s at stake if the conflict persists. The Proof Is in the Peat “Climate change is the major global challenge facing humanity,” says Bob Booth, a paleoecologist who researches how climate change has impacted ecosystems over time. Booth, professor of Earth and environmental sciences, has seen plenty of evidence of climate change in the Arctic and believes the science speaks for itself. The boreal forests are creeping north, new shrubs are sprouting up, and patches of peat are spreading into the tundra—all fueled by warming temperatures. Booth and his graduate student, Alexis Stansfield, are collaborating with a group of scientists from several different institutions to investigate the recent changes with peat growth in the North American tundra. “On the north slope of Alaska, peatlands are rapidly forming and expanding, and we are trying to understand if they will continue to expand across the Arctic,” he says. “While melting permafrost releases carbon to the atmosphere, expanding peatlands would sequester more carbon from the atmosphere.” This is because peatlands are what’s known as a “carbon sink,” which means they store more carbon than they release and help counteract the carbon dioxide overload in the atmosphere. The research team hopes to better understand these recent changes and the implications for the net carbon balance of the region. To investigate what’s happening with peat, Booth, Stansfield and their collaborators are collecting cores of moss peat from the north slope of Alaska and two other sites in the Arctic. They then analyze these cores to obtain information about when peat started growing in this terrain. “Almost all of it has happened in the last several decades,” Booth says. “Most of the peat is quite young, which suggests that we’re in middle of what could be a widespread ecosystem transformation.” Like other recent ecological changes in the tundra, the expansion of peatlands correlates with the rising temperatures in the Arctic. One hypothesis that the team is exploring is that the growth of peat across the Arctic is due to a longer growing season. Snow is melting earlier in the year, thanks to the warmer weather, and the earlier snowmelt jumpstarts the process of photosynthesis and the accumulation of plant matter—and the growth of more peat. “Higher latitudes like the Arctic are seeing really significant warming, even faster than the rest of the planet,” he says. The peatlands project is just one recent example of where Booth has seen evidence of rapid ecosystem change due to climate change. He has conducted a number of other research projects around the world where he turns to sediment preserved in peatlands and lakes to examine the record of environmental EMILY HALNON Lehigh researchers examine the realities of climate change and the resulting social and political struggles ILLUSTRATIONS BY SIMON PEMBERTON COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 15
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