Interview: Nature Improves Productivity

  • Not everyone can get out and walk along the Lake Superior coastline everyday, but researchers say any walk in a natural setting will help. They count an increase in productivity among the benefits. (Photo courtesy of Dave Hansen.)

You’ve probably heard about studies that show enjoying nature can reduce stress. Well, a new study published in the journal Psychological Science shows a walk in nature can also help you focus better. It can improve your memory and attention. Lester Graham asked one of the researchers, Marc Berman from the University of Michigan, if he was up for a walk:

Transcript

You’ve probably heard about studies that show enjoying nature can reduce stress. Well, a new study published in the journal Psychological Science shows a walk in nature can also help you focus better. It can improve your memory and attention. Lester Graham asked one of the researchers, Marc Berman from the University of Michigan, if he was up for a walk:

Marc Berman was one of the co-authors of a study on nature and focus published in the journal Psychological Science. He spoke – and walked – with The Environment Report’s Lester Graham.

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Ten Threats: Dead Zones in the Lakes

  • These fishermen at Port Clinton, Ohio, are a few miles away from the dead zone that develops in Lake Erie every summer... so far, most fish can swim away from the dead zone. But the dead zone is affecting the things that live at the bottom of the lake. (Photo by Lester Graham)

One of the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes is nonpoint source pollution. That’s pollution that
doesn’t come from the end of a pipe. It’s oil washed off parking lots by storms, or pesticides and
fertilizers washed from farm fields. Nonpoint source pollution might be part of the reason why
some shallow areas in the Great Lakes are afflicted by so-called dead zones every summer.

Transcript

In another report on the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes series, reporter Lester Graham looks at a
growing problem that has scientists baffled:


One of the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes is nonpoint source pollution. That’s pollution that
doesn’t come from the end of a pipe. It’s oil washed off parking lots by storms, or pesticides and
fertilizers washed from farm fields. Nonpoint source pollution might be part of the reason why
some shallow areas in the Great Lakes are afflicted by so-called dead zones every summer.


Dead zones are places where there’s little or no oxygen. A dead zone develops in Lake Erie
almost every summer. It was once thought that the problem was mostly solved. But, it’s become
worse in recent years.


(sound of moorings creaking)


The Environmental Protection Agency’s research ship, the Lake Guardian, is tied up at a dock at
the Port of Cleveland. Nathan Hawley and his crew are loading gear, getting ready for a five day
cruise to check some equipment that measures a dead zone along the central basin of Lake Erie.


“What I have out here is a series of bottom-resting moorings that are collecting time series data of
currents and water temperature and periodically we have to come out here and clean them off and
we take that opportunity to dump the data as well.”


Hawley is gathering the data for scientists at several universities and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab. The information helps
them measure the behavior of the dead zone that occurs nearly every year in Lake Erie…


“What we’re trying to do this year is get a more comprehensive picture of how big this low-oxygen zone is and how it changes with time over the year.”


One of the scientists who’ll be pouring over the data is Brian Eadie. He’s a senior scientist with
NOAA’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab. He says Lake Erie’s dead zone is a place
where most life can’t survive…


“We’re talking about near the bottom where all or most of the oxygen has been consumed so
there’s nothing for animals to breathe down there, fish or smaller animals.”


Lester Graham: “So, those things that can swim out of the way, do and those that can’t…”


Brian Eadie: “Die.”


The dead zone has been around since at least the 1930’s. It got really bad when there was a huge
increase in the amount of nutrients entering the lake. Some of the nutrients came from sewage,
some from farm fertilizers and some from detergents. The nutrients, chiefly phosphorous, fed an
explosion in algae growth. The algae died, dropped to the bottom of the lake and rotted. That
process robbed the bottom of oxygen. Meanwhile, as spring and summer warmed the surface of
Lake Erie, a thermal barrier was created that trapped the oxygen-depleted water on the bottom.


After clean water laws were passed, sewage treatment plants were built, phosphorous was banned
from most detergents, and better methods to remove phosphorous from industrial applications
were put in place.


Phosphorous was reduced to a third of what it had been. But Brian Eadie says since then
something has changed.


“The concentration of nutrients in the central basin the last few years has actually been going up.
We don’t understand why that’s happening.”


Eadie says there are some theories. Wastewater from sewage plants might be meeting pollution
restrictions, but as cities and suburbs grow, there’s just a lot more of it getting discharged. More
volume means more phosphorous.


It could be that tributaries that are watersheds for farmland are seeing increased phosphorous. Or
it could be that the invasive species, zebra mussel, has dramatically altered the ecology of the
lakes. More nutrients might be getting trapped at the bottom, feeding bacteria that use up oxygen
instead of the nutrients getting taken up into the food chain.


Whatever is happening, environmentalists are hopeful that the scientists figure it out soon.


Andy Buchsbaum heads up the Great Lakes office of the National Wildlife Federation. He says
the dead zone in the bottom of the lake affects the entire lake’s productivity.


“If you’re removing the oxygen there, for whatever reason, for any period of time, you’ve
completely thrown that whole system out of balance. It’s all out of whack. It could mean
irreversible and devastating change to the entire ecosystem.”


And Buchsbaum says the central basin of Lake Erie is not the only place where we’re seeing this
low-oxygen problem…


“What makes the dead zone in Lake Erie even more alarming is that we’re seeing similar dead
zones appearing in Saginaw Bay which is on Lake Huron and Green Bay in Lake Michigan.
There, too, scientists don’t know what’s causing the problem. But, they’re already seeing
potentially catastrophic effects on aquatic life there.”


State and federal agencies and several universities are looking at the Lake Erie dead zone to try to
figure out what’s going on there. Once they do… then the battle likely will be getting
government to do what’s necessary to fix the problem.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

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RECONNECTING FARMERS TO LOCAL MARKETS (Part 2)

  • Many of the crops being grown in the U.S. don't end up in the produce aisle. In fact, they usually aren't even sold to people in neighboring areas. (Photo by Rene Cerney)

Some experts think farmers could do a lot better for themselves if they changed what they’re growing. They say growing corn and soybeans subsidized by the government doesn’t do much for the farmer and almost nothing for the local economy. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports on efforts to change that:

Transcript

Some experts think farmers could do a lot better for themselves if they changed what they’re growing. They say growing corn and soybeans that are subsidized by the government doesn’t do much for the farmer and almost nothing for the local economy. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports on efforts to change that:


It can be hard to find locally-grown broccoli, milk, or beef in most grocery stores, even in the middle of farm country. In some states, ninety percent of the land is farmed, but ninety-eight percent of food people eat is shipped in from other parts of the nation or other countries.


The local farmers are growing commodities: corn and soybeans harvested for cattle-feed or processed foods, not stuff that winds up in the produce aisle. But ag economist Ken Meter wants to see that change.


“Farmers have doubled their productivity since 1969, and yet, they’re not making more money, they’re actually losing more money after doubling productivity.”


Meter has studied the economics of farm communities. In one area, he found that nearly all of the farm fields there were used to grow corn and soybeans for the commodities market, but farmers were losing money. At the same time, nearly all of the food people bought there was shipped in from other places.


“The economy we’re in right now is extremely efficient at taking any money that you or I earn in our neighborhood or in our daily lives and basically pulling it into a big global network that very efficiently takes that money and helps other people elsewhere make some value from it.”


It hasn’t always been this way. Richard Pirog is food systems researcher at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture in Iowa. Eighty years ago, he says, most farms grew a lot of different
products and processed them to be sold locally or within the region.


“Iowa back in the 1920’s had fifty-four canneries. We were the canned sweet corn capital of the world in the mid-1920’s. Fast forward to today, there isn’t a single cannery in Iowa. So that infrastructure is gone.”


Pirog says you could tell similar stories in farm areas across the U.S. Back during World War Two, the federal government encouraged farmers to grow commodities, such as corn and soybeans. The government starting paying them subsidies to grow those crops.


These days, Pirog says a lot of farmers wouldn’t even think about risking those subsidies to grow something besides corn and soybeans. Economist Ken Meter says that might be a mistake. He says many farmers don’t realize there’s a growing market for local ag products.


“All of us get focused on whatever we’re paying attention to, and as a farmer you get focused on producing quite well. I’ve spoken with farmers who’ve told me that they really didn’t have any clue that that their neighbors would be looking for different foods, because they just haven’t heard of the tremendous increase in demand we’ve had for things like organic milk or higher quality meats or fresher produce.”


There has been an organic explosion of local farm markets in recent years, because customers want to buy fruit, vegetables, milk, and meat directly from the farmers who produce them. But government policy and farm subsidies mainly still support the commodity production of corn and soybeans.


Richard Pirog hopes that changes, but it’s unclear if growing produce for the new local markets is always economically viable. No one has studied the phenomenon.


“It has to make economic sense for a community and a region. We believe it will, which is why it’s spread so rapidly. But it’s sort of like, the real numbers, the quantification hasn’t caught up with all the growth and explosion and the interest.”


Pirog says he’d like to push the process along. He says it would make more sense for the government to shift subsidies from corn and soybean production to the farms that produce food for their local communities.


For the GLRC, I’m Julie Grant.

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