Biomimicry

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Economic Valuation of Ecosystem
Services Thursday, May 28 Friday May 29 May
28, 5-6 PM Evening Keynote and Reception PGE
Distinguished Lecture Professor Richard Norgaard,
University of California-Berkeley "Ecosystem
Services Prospects and Pitfalls for the
Implementation of a Metaphor" May 29 All-day
Conference Program Session 1 Ecology and
Identification of Ecosystem Services
Session 2 Economic Valuation of Ecosystem
ServicesMethodology and Applications
Session 3 Creating Markets for Conservation
Policy and Ecosystem Protection
Urbanlab Martin Felsen, Eco-Boulevard
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Ecological asset mapping in a grassland model
ecosystem.
Justin BorevitzEcology EvolutionUniversity of
Chicagohttp//borevitzlab.uchicago.edu/
Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore
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Why is this ecologist interested in Energy and
Economics?

• Colleagues are sounding an alarm on Planetary
  health and threat to biodiversity

Man-made pollution is raising ocean acidity at
least 10-20 times faster than previously thought,
a study says. Tim Wootton
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Iowa 2008, Fargo 2009
www.uni.edu/ceee/foodproject/mud.jpg
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Global Soil Degradation
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Nielsen and Hole, 1963
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Total Carbon (LPJ)
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Carbon in Vegetation (LPJ)
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Carbon in Soil (LPJ)
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Outline

• Grasslands Intro
• Ecological Succession
• Ecosystem growth and development - Soil
• Ecosystem Services
• Breeding for Natural Selection
• Grassland Diversity experiment
• Policy Ideas/Discussion

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Short Mixed
Tall Grassland Prairie
Prairie Model Ecosystem
Breed for Natural Selection Farm Ecosystems
Services
Tall Grass Prairies. 99.9 plowed under long term
survival is in danger
http//climate.konza.ksu.edu/
464 species declined 328 (71) endemic
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Soil is more than dirt

• We covered the biotic part
• food web of a healthy soil
• But what about the abiotic part?
• Mineral, rock, clay, sand, loam, loess, humus
• mollisols prairie soil
• C deep grass roots
• Black and rich
• in warm moist
• tall grass prairies

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Genotype
Environment
Phenotype
http//farm1.static.flickr.com/7/9927631_aa10584e0
a.jpg
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Ecosystem services

• Definition The benefits that humankind receive
  from natural ecosystems
• Clean air and water
• Food agricultural soil, pollination, fisheries,
  grazing
• Fuel and fiber
• Decomposition of waste

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Prairies - Sustainable ecosystems

• Regularly Disturbed
• Fire, grass, large herbivores
• Ecosystem services
• Prairie hay biofuel
• Carbon Nitrogen sequestration
• Oxygen generation
• Ground water recharge
• Erosion prevention
• Biodiversity, wild life habitat

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Roots and ecosystem services
Marram grass, Indiana Dunes foredunes
Mount Baldy, Indiana Dunes
Wheatgrass roots
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Diverse Prairies Remove Store Carbon
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Multiple Ecological Services of a Tree

• Makes oxygen
• Sequesters carbon
• Fixes nitrogen
• Distils water
• Accrues Solar energy as fuel
• Makes complex sugars and food
• Creates microclimates
• Changes colors with the seasons
• Self replicates
• Knock it down and use it in the bathroom.
• William McDonough, Cradle to Cradle

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Breeding for Natural Selection

• Identify genetically distinct varieties across
  region and midwest
• Map on to microclimate, soil, and habitat
  variation
• Select diverse seed mix for ecosystem
  reconstruction
• Monitor establishment of pioneer varieties
• Long term genetic testing for environmental
  filtering and optimal selection compatible
  genotypes and species

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Breeding for Natural Selection

• 1) Target Foundation Prairie Species
• Next Gen expressed gene sequencing
• 250k sequences, 10,000s SNPs
• Macro and Micro evolutionary importance
• 2) Landscape Genetics
• Sample 1000s of genotypes across tallgrass region
• Identify population structure and diversity mix
• 3) Use Diversity Mix for Restoration
• Monitor local adaptation, genetic/community level

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Plant cover and erosion
Dune Park, Indiana c. 1910
From China dust bowl TIME 2008
Mt. Baldy, Indiana Dunes 2008
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Prairie grasses as bioenergy crops

• Formerly dominant in grasslands throughout North
  America
• Widely-adapted to different soil types and
  moisture levels
• Highly productive, above and below ground, in
  marginal soils

Big Bluestem
Switchgrass
Panicum virgatum
Andropogon gerardii
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Habitats of the Indiana Dunes
Lakeshore Dune
Dune Flats
Blowout
Tallgrass Prairie
Oak flatwoods
Ruderal land
Black Oak Savanna
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Microclimate sensing stations

• Wireless station transmits data through cell
  network
• Temperature Soil and air
• Light
• Moisture Leaf, air and soil
• Wind speed and direction

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Microclimate stations

• 4 weather stations on ecotones
• 8 microclimate modules (2 per station)

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1
Backdune
3
4
Foredune
Blowout
Flatwoods
Lake
SG
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2
Panne
Interdune flats
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1
Backdune ridge
SG
Interdune trough
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Microclimate and plant community

• How do plants shape their own environment?
• Are particular grass genotypes found in
  particular environments?

• How, when, and where are plants stressed?
• How does this vary over the landscape?

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Microclimate effects of plant communities
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Wild population collections

• Hierarchical, georeferenced sample of 100s of
  individuals from extremely variable environments
• Interdunal flats
• troughs (sand) and swales (sandy loam)
• Wet mesic prairies
• Sandy Black Oak savanna
• Waste ground - Utility and transportation
  corridors

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Not emerged Tiller only One leaf Two leaves
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The Cedar Creek Biodiversity Experiment
High Diversity Grasslands Produce 238 More
Biofuel Each Year Than Monocultures- David
Tilman et al.
Switchgrass
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Current and future biofuels
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Carbon debt of bioenergy production
Fargione J, Hill J, Tilman D, Polasky S,
Hawthorne P. Land clearing and the biofuel carbon
debt. Science. 2008
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Sustainable Bioenergy Crop Production Research
Facility

• New 5.4-ha facility at Fermilab
• Argonne Ecology Group (Julie Jastrow Mike
  Miller)

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Installing and monitoring a perennial bioenergy
crop
Switchgrass seedlings, 3 weeks after planting
Herbicided pasture grasses, fall 2007
Switchgrass, 9 weeks after planting
Drill seeding, June 2008
Clipping harvestable biomass
Monitoring biodiversity
Obtaining soil cores
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Switchgrass diversity and bioenergy

• Bioenergy producers prefer consistent feedstock
• Can we improve biomass or other ecosystem
  services using diverse SG?
• Switchgrass diversity
• Lowland switchgrass (Kanlow - Oklahoma)
• Intermediate switchgrass (Cave-in-Rock - S. IL)
• Upland switchgrass (Southlow - Southwest MI)
• Switchgrass mix (All 3 switchgrass cultivars)
• Fertilizer treatment
• Does chemical fertilization increase or decrease
  net energy balance or net sequestration?

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High-biodiversity mixes

• Warm season grass mix
• Switchgrass mix Big bluestem mix
• Does higher grass species diversity improve
  outcomes?
• Warm and cool season grass mix
• Switchgrass mix Canada wild rye
• Does longer growing season and functional
  complementarity improve outcomes?
• Grass and forb mix
• Grasses (Switchgrass mix, Big bluestem mix,
  Indiangrass, Canada wild rye) 8 prairie forbs
  (including 3 legumes)

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Genetic diversity treatments
Mix
3-BB3-SG
Switchgrass
Big Bluestem

• Tallgrass Varieties
• Switchgrass
• Kanlow - Oklahoma (Lowland)
• Cave-In-Rock - Southern Illinois
• Southlow - South Michigan Ecopool
• Blackwell - Northern Oklahoma
• Forestburg - Central South Dakota
• Sunburst - Southeast South Dakota
• Dacotah - North Dakota
• Big Bluestem
• Southlow - South Michigan ecopool
• Rountree - West-central Iowa
• Epic - Missouri
• Bonanza - Selection from Pawnee
• Champ - Big/Sand Bluestem hybrid
• Pawnee - Southeast Nebraska
• Suther - North Carolina

6-BB
6-SG
More diversity
2-BB2-SG
4-BB
4-SG
1-BB1-SG
2-BB
2-SG
1-SG
1-BB
Less diversity
7 varieties of SG
7 varieties of BB
Cultivar diversity plots (164 X 6m2)
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Genetic variation in growth
Cave-in-Rock (S. Illinois)
Dacotah (ND)

• Genetic differences affect growth
• But does increase genetic diversity improve
  productivity?

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Biomass yields
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Biomass production and geographic origin
Legend
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Productivity and genetic diversity

• Cultivar mixes had a mean yield excess of 32
  (26) g/m2 over mono-cultivar expectations

Cultivar diversity plots (164 X 6m2)
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Baseline soil carbon and nitrogen

• Do native plants increase soil fertility,
  especially in deeper soil layers?
• Does more species diversity and genetic diversity
  lead to greater carbon sequestration?

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Real Time Ecosystem Monitoring

• HPWREN
• San Diego wireless ecological data sensing.

Fermilab AmeriFlux site, provided by Timothy J.
Martin (ANL-EVS)
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Acknowledgements

• Energy Initiative post-doc Geoff Morris
• Borevitz lab
• Christos Noutsos, Paul Grabowski, Traci Viinanen
• Argonne National Laboratory, Terrestrial Ecology
• Michael Miller, Julie Jastrow
• Indiana Dunes State Park
• Ranger station staff, Noel Pavlovic (USGS)

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Policy

• Cap and Dividend
• Ecosystem services as distributed Utilities
• C tax vs cap and trade is a red herring

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Frances Whitehead James Kutyla Architecture
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City Farm Resource Center
Growing Home
Chicagos Urban Farms
Growing Power
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Environmental Shakeup

• Specialists can
• Migrate
• Adapt
• or Go Extinct
• Generalists
• are Advantaged
• Invasive species
• Bioclimatic mapping
• 32 of the European plant species in a given cell
  in 1990 would disappear by 2050
• Bakkenes et al. (2002)

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Tipping Points

• Rapid transition to warm, 100k years to recover
• Non linearity in Economic models?
• 350ppm or 450ppm, CO2 cost is relative

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Biosphere2, Arizona
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Eco CityLiuzhouMcDonough
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The Circle of Life in Secondary Succession
What degree?
What degree?
Necessary steps
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Succession Lake Michigan sand dunes
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Upper Midwest forest-savanna transition (NA0415)

• One of the three ecotonal units separating the
  vast Great Plains grasslands from the forests of
  the eastern U.S. is the Upper Midwest
  Forest/Savanna Transition Zone
• The predominance of trees in a mosaic of forests,
  savannas, and woodlands, and by differences in
  dominance of major tree species.
• oak, maple, basswood woodland, forest, and
  savanna ecosystem (Küchler 1985). The boundaries
  of this ecoregion were heavily influenced by fire
  and drought

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Protecting Meristems

• Plants need active shoot apices and other
  meristems to provide new growth or re-growth
  after harvest.
• Critical management period for grasses occurs
  during reproductive growth (after transition)
  when internode elongation elevates the shoot apex
  to a vulnerable height.
• Timothy, smooth bromegrass, and prairie grass are
  examples of grasses susceptible to mismanagement
  (untimely defoliation).
• Defer grazing or clipping until crown buds are
  ready for growth (boot stage or later).

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The Next Generation of Biofuels Greenhouse-Neutra
l Biofuels from High-Diversity Low-Input
Prairie Ecosystems by David Tilman University
of Minnesota
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Urban greenspace
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People Cause 10X More Soil Erosion Than All
Natural Processes Combined...
Human activity causes 10 times more erosion of
continental surfaces than all natural processes
combined, an analysis by a University of Michigan
geologist shows. "If you ask how fast erosion
takes place over geologic timesay over the last
500 million yearson average, you get about 60
feet every million years," Wilkinson said. In
those parts of the United States where soil is
being eroded by human agricultural activity,
however, the rate averages around 1,500 feet per
million years,
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Midwest rich in mollisols
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Variants under study

• Transgenetics 1
• Mutants 10
• Families 100
• Ancestral Populations 1,000
• Compatible Species 10,000
• Communities 100,000
• Ecosystems 1,000,000,000
• Biosphere 1,000,000,000,000

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Global Deforestation
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Planting at Fermilab
June 2008
Planting seed mixes
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The human footprint on Earth
P. Kareiva et al., Science 316, 1866 -1869
(2007)
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Productivity and diversity

• Region-specific mixtures of native perennial
  grassland plants
• Adapted to fire and herbivory so regular
  harvesting causes minimal disturbance
• Deep-rooted native perennials sequester carbon in
  soils and roots
• Potential habitat for wildlife, pollinators, and
  native plants

Cedar Creek experiments, David Tilman et al.
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Habitat for wildlife and plants
Wet prairie, Indiana Dunes
Switchgrass plots