DOCSLIB.ORG

Pleistocene Park

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Pleistocene Park Welcome to Pleistocene Park Welcome to Pleistocene Park In Arctic Siberia, Russian scientists are working to turn back time by resurrecting an Ice Age environment complete with lab- grown woolly mammoths. Pleistocene Park is a radical geoengineering scheme whose goal is to combat climate change. It’s named for the geological epoch often known as the Ice Age, which ended 12,000 years ago. At that time, huge sections of the earth were covered in grasslands. When the Ice Age ended, many of the grasslands disappeared, along with most of the giant species who called them home. The purpose of Pleistocene Park is to slow the thawing of the permafrost. Research suggests that grasslands reflect more sunlight than forests, which causes the Arctic to absorb less heat. In winter, the short grass enables the season’s freeze to extend deeper into the Earth’s crust, cooling the frozen soil. Large herbivores are needed to test these landscape-cooling effects. While Pleistocene Park is currently home to bison, musk oxen and wild horses, hundreds of thousands of woolly mammoths are necessary to keep the trees back. Mammoths are cold-adapted members of the elephant family. Geneticist George Church is working on editing the genomes of Asian elephants and switching in mammoth traits. In 2016, he had succeeded in editing 45 of the Asian elephant’s genes, and he hopes to deliver the first woolly mammoth to Pleistocene Park within a decade. While it might seem like the stuff of mythology, Pleistocene Park provides us with the chance to bring another era back to the Arctic and may even have a shot at saving the planet. Q1 Choose an alternative title for the text. A Ice Age Is Not Just a Cartoon for Kids B Saving the Planet, One Mammoth at a Time C Russians Try to Reenact the Jurassic Park Movies D Should We Freeze the Planet Again? Q2 Why did the grasslands give way to the forests? A with the extinction of mammoths, trees could grow again unhindered B the warming of the planet helped the forests grow C the softening of the permafrost allowed for larger roots to take hold D all of the above Q3 What is one possible way in which these attempts may not go as planned? A the cooling of the Earth might lead to the extinction of species that adapted to the new environment B the reintroduction of mammoths may disturb the balance of the ecosystem C researchers and scientists may not be able to keep Pleistocene Park under their control D all of the above www.english.best 1 / 3 Welcome to Pleistocene Park Q4 Which of the following is not true, according to the text? A elephants and mammoths share similar DNA B during the Ice Age, forests dominated the Arctic area C the thawing of the permafrost has accelerated in the past twelve millennia D herbivores are more important than carnivores in the park www.english.best 2 / 3 Welcome to Pleistocene Park ANSWERS: Welcome to Pleistocene Park Q1 Choose an alternative title for the text. B Saving the Planet, One Mammoth at a Time Q2 Why did the grasslands give way to the forests? D all of the above Q3 What is one possible way in which these attempts may not go as planned? p D all of the above o h s Q4 Which of the following is not true, according to the text? t/ B during the Ice Age, forests dominated the Arctic area s e .b h s li g n e m ro f F D P is th t e G www.english.best 3 / 3.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • This Article Appeared in a Journal Published by Elsevier
    (This is a sample cover image for this issue. The actual cover is not yet available at this time.) This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues. Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier’s archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit: http://www.elsevier.com/copyright Author's personal copy Quaternary Science Reviews 57 (2012) 26e45 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Quaternary Science Reviews journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quascirev Mammoth steppe: a high-productivity phenomenon S.A. Zimov a,*, N.S. Zimov a, A.N. Tikhonov b, F.S. Chapin III c a Northeast Science Station, Pacific Institute for Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences, Cherskii 678830, Russia b Zoological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Saint Petersburg 199034, Russia c Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK 99775, USA article info abstract Article history: At the last deglaciation Earth’s largest biome, mammoth-steppe, vanished. Without knowledge of the Received 11 January 2012 productivity of this ecosystem, the evolution of man and the glacialeinterglacial dynamics of carbon Received in revised form storage in Earth’s main carbon reservoirs cannot be fully understood.
    [Show full text]
  • Rewilding North America Set Aside to Become the Would See the Introduction of Giant Introduction of Giant Wilderness Again
    Focus: Brave New World REWILDING NORTH One elephant AMERICA at a By Alexandra Mushegian round sloths occupy a small but was the major cause of these extinctions. time Gbeloved role in the collective Without exception, the timing of major imagination. These five-ton, seventeen- biodiversity reductions on all continents foot hamster-like herbivores, which and large islands coincides with the ar- went extinct somewhere around 10,000 rival of early humans, with many species years ago, are commonly found as dying out within a few hundred years skeletons posing in natural history mu- after humans arrived (1). seums. Populations of these animals The only continents still possessing were thriving in North America when noteworthy megafaunal diversity— humans first arrived over the Bering Africa, and to a lesser extent, Asia—are Land Bridge along with mammoths, the continents where humans coevolved lions, saber-toothed cats, twenty-pound with animals for the longest time. Now, beavers, and several species of giant due to political and socioeco- tortoise, not to mention a multitude of nomic instability in those deer and ox-like species. Shortly after regions, they are in danger humans arrived, they all died out. there too. The Pleistocene epoch, which ended Some scientists believe 10,000 years ago (in archaeological that the loss of large ver- terms, the end of the Paleolithic), was tebrate biodiversity has a golden age of animal exoticism world- graver consequences than wide. Why it ended—why this geologi- merely a reduction in worldwide cal period saw a series of massive global biodiversity. Ecological studies suggest collapses of large animal biodiversity— that large herbivores and predators are is a contentious topic.
    [Show full text]
  • Effects of Large Herbivore Grazing on Relics of the Presumed Mammoth
    www.nature.com/scientificreports OPEN Efects of large herbivore grazing on relics of the presumed mammoth steppe in the extreme climate of NE‑Siberia Jennifer Reinecke1,2*, Kseniia Ashastina3,4, Frank Kienast3, Elena Troeva5 & Karsten Wesche1,2,6 The Siberian mammoth steppe ecosystem changed dramatically with the disappearance of large grazers in the Holocene. The concept of Pleistocene rewilding is based on the idea that large herbivore grazing signifcantly alters plant communities and can be employed to recreate lost ecosystems. On the other hand, modern rangeland ecology emphasizes the often overriding importance of harsh climates. We visited two rewilding projects and three rangeland regions, sampling a total of 210 vegetation relevés in steppe and surrounding vegetation (grasslands, shrublands and forests) along an extensive climatic gradient across Yakutia, Russia. We analyzed species composition, plant traits, diversity indices and vegetation productivity, using partial canonical correspondence and redundancy analysis. Macroclimate was most important for vegetation composition, and microclimate for the occurrence of extrazonal steppes. Macroclimate and soil conditions mainly determined productivity of vegetation. Bison grazing was responsible for small‑scale changes in vegetation through trampling, wallowing and debarking, thus creating more open and disturbed plant communities, soil compaction and xerophytization. However, the magnitude of efects depended on density and type of grazers as well as on interactions with climate and site conditions. Efects of bison grazing were strongest in the continental climate of Central Yakutia, and steppes were generally less afected than meadows. We conclude that contemporary grazing overall has rather limited efects on vegetation in northeastern Siberia. Current rewilding practices are still far from recreating a mammoth steppe, although large herbivores like bison can create more open and drier vegetation and increase nutrient availability in particular in the more continental Central Yakutian Plain.
    [Show full text]
  • Climate Geoengineering Options: Practical, Powerful, and to Be Avoided If Possible Report on the 2Nd Permafrost Carbon Feedback Intervention Roadmap Dialogue
    AVOIDING PERMAFROST THAW: MANAGING TEMPERATURE Climate geoengineering options: practical, powerful, and to be avoided if possible Report on the 2nd Permafrost Carbon Feedback Intervention Roadmap Dialogue To avoid catastrophic risk from climate change, we need to limit global warming to 1.5° Celsius. And given how close we are to that limit, even the most ambitious conventional decarbonization efforts will not be enough. Negative-emission technologies or other geoengineering methods will be necessary to compensate for emissions that push us beyond that manageable limit. That statement, paraphrased from Leiden University researcher and guest presenter Oscar Rueda, probably best captures the consensus of a sometimes-fractious second dialogue (March 11, 2021) facilitated by the privately sponsored Permafrost Carbon Feedback Action Group – part of a four-session virtual symposia addressing the science, technology, economics, policy, social and ethical implications of permafrost thaw. The first dialogue (March 4, 2021) surveyed Why Permafrost Carbon Matters and garnered easy agreement: global permafrost is charged with twice as much carbon as that in all the earth’s atmosphere and, as it thaws, natural processes trigger a dangerous release of that carbon in the form of the greenhouse gases CO2 and methane, thereby reinforcing atmospheric warming. The second dialogue, Avoiding Permafrost Thaw: Managing Temperature, considered whether we have the capacity to intervene to limit permafrost thaw – and whether we should. Even the first question provoked argument. The second, however, inspired a fiercer debate, among panelists and among more than 150 leading academics, government policy makers, technology investors, climate change activists and media who had tuned in online.
    [Show full text]
  • Targeted Geoengineering: Conserving the Cryosphere
    Targeted Geoengineering: Conserving the Cryosphere Permafrost conservation through land-use modification - are potential solutions practicable and scalable? John Moore Photo T. Kumpula Mitigation The 3 standard Adaptation paradigms Solar Geoengineering Can anything else be done? • In some cases Targeted Geoengineering might provide partial solutions • Land surface albedo: Pleistocene Park in Siberia for permafrost • Arctic ice management for sea ice • Glacier geoengineering for sea level – by far the most realistic Pleistocene Park Courtesy N. Zimov www. https://pleistocenepark.ru/ Courtesy N. Zimov www. https://pleistocenepark.ru/ Courtesy N. Zimov www. https://pleistocenepark.ru/ The albedo of the steppe grassland is much higher than the forest or shrub lands, especially in winter Hence the Permafrost is cooler Courtesy N. Zimov www. https://pleistocenepark.ru/ Pleistocene Park Courtesy N. Zimov www. https://pleistocenepark.ru/ Pleistocene Park Target MEG density. Assuming that animal density in the mammoth steppe can be estimated from the number of bones found in the permafrost, an estimated average of 1 mammoth, 5 bison, 7.5 horses, 15 reindeer, 0.25 cave lions, and 1 wolf per 1km2 1 MEG costs $383,000 MEG growth rate. 10% / yr Assuming a constant animal introduction rate of 10 MEG/yr after 30 years, an area of 3100 km2 would be converted to grassland. 0.03% of permafrost area Conversion of 1 million km2 of Arctic tundra (10% of the Arctic permafrost zone) in 30 years would require an introduction rate of 7,000 MEGs /yr which is unrealistic. Pleistocene Park Target MEG density. Assuming that animal density in the mammoth steppe can be estimated from the number of bones found in the permafrost, an estimated average of 1 mammoth, 5 bison, 7.5 horses, 15 reindeer, 0.25 cave lions, and 1 wolf per 1km2 1 MEG costs $383,000 MEG growth rate.
    [Show full text]
  • Arctic Viewpoints to the Governance of Climate-Altering Approaches
    Arctic viewpoints to the governance of climate-altering approaches C2GLearn: Climate-altering approaches and the Arctic Visiting researcher Ilona Mettiäinen M.Sc., PhD Candidate Arctic Centre, University of Lapland What is governance? • IPCC 2018: ”a comprehensive and inclusive concept of the full range of means for deciding, managing, implementing and monitoring policies and measures” • Many levels from local to global; multilevel governance • Governments, scientific community, media, business, civil society • Rules, regulations and laws; international cooperation; market instruments; incentives, funding and support; guidelines and codes of conduct; unwritten norms The Arctic as a region • The Arctic is a home to 4-4,5 million inhabitants • 8 countries and several indigenous peoples • 10-20 % indigenous population • The Arctic has <0,05 % of the global population (7,4 billion) The Arctic Portal Google Image Search 5.9.2020 All photos on this slide © Ilona Mettiäinen ”What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic” • The Arctic is warming 2-3 times faster than the global average • The impacts of climate change are seen first in the Arctic • Keeping the global warming at 1.5 degrees would help to alleviate or avoid some negative impacts, but that would still mean 5,5 degrees warming in the Arctic (NASA) • Several tipping points in the Arctic with global consequences • Melting of the Greenland ice sheet can cause several meters’ sea level rise • Saving the Arctic by climate-altering techniques for the Arctic or for global reasons?
    [Show full text]
  • Rewilding John Carey, Science Writer
    CORE CONCEPTS CORE CONCEPTS Rewilding John Carey, Science Writer America’s vast forests and plains, Siberia’s tundra, or Such a restoration would bring back vital but lost Romania’s Carpathian Mountains may seem wild and ecological processes and benefits, Martin and others full of life. But they’re all missing something big: the large came to believe. Without mammoths and millions of animals that vanished by the end of the Pleistocene Ep- aurochs and other grazers (and wolves and big cats to och, roughly 10,000 years ago. In the United States, only keep the herbivores in check), the enormously pro- bones and echoing footsteps remain of the mammoths, ductive grasslands of the Pleistocene turned into camels, massive armadillo-like glyptodonts, lions, dire today’s far less productive forest, shrub land, and wolves, and saber-toothed cats that roamed for millennia. mossy tundra, with a major loss of ecosystem com- “Without knowing it, Americans live in a land of ghosts,” plexity and diversity. “Paul realized there was a big wrote the late University of Arizona scientist Paul Martin missing ecosystem component—the megafauna,” ex- in his 2005 book, Twilight of the Mammoths: Ice Age plains Harry Greene, professor of ecology and evolu- Extinctions and the Rewilding of America (1). tionary biology at Cornell. “Everything in North Some scientists and others now argue that we America evolved with about 58 to 60 big mammals should be bringing some of those ghosts back, part of that went extinct.” a controversial movement to “rewild” parts of Europe That realization sparked a growing effort to recre- and North America, whether by reintroducing extant ate the lost past, especially in Europe.
    [Show full text]
  • A WARM WELCOME to the PLEISTOCENE PARK: a Sociocultural Approach to De-Extinction Science
    A WARM WELCOME TO THE PLEISTOCENE PARK A sociocultural approach to de-extinction science JOSEPHINE VAN BENNEKOM Master Thesis Arts and Culture A WARM WELCOME TO THE PLEISTOCENE PARK: A sociocultural approach to de-extinction science Student: Josephine van Bennekom Student number: 2375877 E-mail: [email protected] First reader: Prof. dr. R. Zwijnenberg ([email protected]) Second reader: Anna Volkmar MA ([email protected]) Specialization: Contemporary Art in a Global Perspective Academic year: 2019-2020 2 Index Index ........................................................................................................................... 3 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 4 Urgency ................................................................................................................... 6 Methods, Theories and Approaches ...................................................................... 8 Structure ............................................................................................................... 10 1. Theoretical Trends in De-Extinction Science .................................................... 11 Scientific Successes, Methods, and Projects ....................................................... 12 The Pleistocene Park ............................................................................................ 18 De-extinction: Why and Why Not? .....................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Final Report for Team 15.Py.Pdf
    Pleistocene Park Simulations Simulating Pleistocene Park New Mexico Supercomputing Challenge Final Report April 11th, 2021 Team 15 Monte del Sol Charter School Team Members: Brooklynn Martinez Isabella Martinez Kaley Martinez Project Mentors: Charles Strauss Joann Mudge Pleistocene Park Simulations Table of Contents Executive Summary…………………………………………………………………....3 Research and Context…………………………………………………………...…….4-5 Solving the Problem……………………………………………………………..……5-6 Results ………………………………………………………………………….…….6-9 In the Future……………………………………………………………………….…..9 Conclusion and Acknowledgments ………………………………………………..…10 References…………………………………………………………………………….11 Appendix A…………………………………………………………………….……..12-18 Appendix B……………………………………………………………………...…….19 Appendix C…………………………………………………………………..……….20-21 Pleistocene Park Simulations Executive summary: Climate change: a global phenomenon caused by an increase of carbon in our atmosphere that causes the Earth’s climate to change. In Siberia, a project founded by Sergey Zimov, called the Pleistocene Park, works with megafauna in order to develop, reverse and prevent the permafrost currently melting in the Arctic. During the Pleistocene Period, megafauna such as mammoths existed and inhabited the environment there. The Pleistocene Project works to re-introduce similar animals in order to de-insulate the snow and revive the grasslands. Keywords: snow patches, de-insulation megafauna, compact, climate change, global warming, Arctic Winter, simulation Pleistocene Park Simulations Research and Context: Climate Change is a global phenomenon with limited time and limited solutions. With a little over a decade to relieve the extensive C02 influx in the atmosphere, the hunt for an answer is more critical than ever. Solutions, such as the Abandoned Farmland Restorations and Efficient Aviation, explained by Paul Hawkin, an environmentalist, have been implemented in order to stall the ramifications of global warming, but not to stop it. The time to find a solution with substantial consequences is now.
    [Show full text]
  • Megafauna and Ecosystem Function from the Pleistocene to the Anthropocene Yadvinder Malhia,1, Christopher E
    SPECIAL FEATURE: SPECIAL FEATURE: PERSPECTIVE PERSPECTIVE Megafauna and ecosystem function from the Pleistocene to the Anthropocene Yadvinder Malhia,1, Christopher E. Doughtya, Mauro Galettib,FelisaA.Smithc, Jens-Christian Svenningd, and John W. Terborghe Edited by Robert M. May, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, and approved December 10, 2015 (received for review October 6, 2015) Large herbivores and carnivores (the megafauna) have been in a state of decline and extinction since the Late Pleistocene, both on land and more recently in the oceans. Much has been written on the timing and causes of these declines, but only recently has scientific attention focused on the consequences of these declines for ecosystem function. Here, we review progress in our understanding of how megafauna affect ecosystem physical and trophic structure, species composition, biogeochemistry, and climate, drawing on special features of PNAS and Ecography that have been published as a result of an international workshop on this topic held in Oxford in 2014. Insights emerging from this work have consequences for our un- derstanding of changes in biosphere function since the Late Pleistocene and of the functioning of con- temporary ecosystems, as well as offering a rationale and framework for scientifically informed restoration of megafaunal function where possible and appropriate. extinctions | trophic cascades | vegetation structure | biogeochemistry | rewilding For hundreds of millions of years, an abundance of modern, they indicate resources, danger, power, and large animals, the megafauna, was a prominent fea- charisma, but, beyond these impacts, such large ani- ture of the land and oceans. However, in the last few mals have profound and distinct effects on the nature tens of thousands of years—a blink of an eye on many and functioning of the ecosystems they inhabit.
    [Show full text]
  • From Pleistocene to Trophic Rewilding: a Wolf in Sheepls Clothing
    LETTER LETTER From Pleistocene to trophic rewilding: A wolf in sheep’s clothing Nearly 10 y ago, we (1) critiqued the idea of large tracts to bring back communities of should stop talking about trophic or Pleis- Pleistocene rewilding (2), a misguided attempt disrupted cascades is a luxury. tocene rewilding, or its next rebadging. We to resurrect bygone ecosystems. Much has As the metaanalysis of Svenning et al. (3) were criticized (5) for drawing the analogy happened to the Earth’s biodiversity over the shows, rewilding—especially when trophic to Jurasssic Park (1). However, Svenning et al. decade since the term “Pleistocene rewilding” cascades are reinstated—can alter ecosystem (3) argue for “a framework for integrating syn- was coined, most of it bad. More than half a function, often for the better, even if the thetic biology and trophic rewilding science.” billion people have been added to the world’s mechanism is incompletely understood. How- It is time to be practical, not sensational. It is population, and ecosystems continue to be ever, using proxy species when mechanisms time to move on. degraded at an alarming rate. A sixth mass are uncertain to recreate ancient ecosystems Dustin R. Rubensteina,1 and Daniel I. extinction is underway, and poaching of could have many unintended consequences Rubensteinb megafauna has increased across sub-Saharan (1). Simply repackaging Pleistocene rewilding Africa. Unfortunately, one thing that has not as trophic rewilding does nothing to change aDepartment of Ecology, Evolution and happened is any serious attempt to scientifically this fact. Without good science, such large- Environmental Biology, Columbia University, study Pleistocene rewilding.
    [Show full text]
  • Pleistocene Park: Return of the Mammoth's Ecosystem
    ESSAY GLOBAL VOICES OF SCIENCE Pleistocene Park: Return of the Mammoth’s Ecosystem Sergey A. Zimov During the last ice age, the world’s most exten- enabled scientists to chronicle the rise and fall region sive ecosystem stretched from France across of the region’s Pleistocene ecosystem. of Yakutia. the Bering Strait to Canada and from the arctic About 10,000 years ago, at the beginning We call our proj- islands to northern China. It was at the very of the Holocene epoch, this vast system, ect Pleistocene Park. The end of a more than million-year epoch, the which I refer to as the mammoth tundra- primary scientific goal is to determine more Pleistocene, during which colossal ice sheets steppe, disappeared completely. In northern precisely the role that Pleistocene animals repeatedly advanced and retreated, plowing up Siberia, mossy tundra and forest tundra played in maintaining their own ecosystem. much of northern Europe and replaced the mammoth ecosys- However, we also suspect that by learning how America. At the same time, from a tem. The only herbivores to sur- to preserve and extend Pleistocene-like grass- geological perspective, northeast- This yearlong vive were reindeer that grazed on lands in the northern latitudes, we could ern Siberia remained relatively essay series lichens and moose that fed on subsequently develop means for mitigating unscathed. There, vast dust-cov- celebrates 125 willows. The mammoths and both the progress and effects of global warm- ered plains and valleys dominated years of Science by their large animal companions, ing. The amount of carbon now sequestered in the landscape.
    [Show full text]