scientificamerican--2020-08-27--Luna-25 Lander Renews Russian Moon Rush

Luna-25 Lander Renews Russian Moon Rush

There is a multicountry moon rush in progress .
NASA is orchestrating the Artemis program of robotic and human lunar exploration , due to launch human explorers in 2024 at the earliest .
China is preparing to hurl a sample-return mission to the moon this year , joining a Chinese lander and rover that are now on the lunar far side .
Other nations , such as Japan and India , as well as private spaceflight firms , also have future lunar exploration in their crosshairs .
Now an “ old-timer ” is joining the celestial fray .
Russia ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ early August that flight units of scientific instruments for its Luna-25 moon lander had been delivered from the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences ( IKI ) to the Lavochkin Scientific and Production Association ( which is part of Roscosmos ) .
The flight is scheduled to launch in October 2021 .
“ The Luna-25 space project opens a long-term Russian lunar program , which includes missions to study the moon from orbit and surface , the collection and return of lunar soil to Earth , as well as , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a visited lunar base and full-scale development of our satellite.
, ” according to a statement from Roscosmos officials .
Russia is no stranger to going the lunar distance as part of the former Soviet Union .
Though it did not succeed in putting people on the lunar surface , the latter nation chalked up noteworthy space race firsts from the late 1950s to the 1970s .
The Soviet Union was the earliest to send a spacecraft to the moon , perform a flyby of its far side , make a soft landing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ around it and return a circumlunar probe back to Earth , as well as to robotically return lunar samples .
And the nation landed the first rover to wheel across the natural satellite ’ s landscape .
In July Russia ’ s moon-bound scientific instruments reached the factory floor .
The Luna-25 mission and a subsequent moon lander on the books are a partnership between the country and the European Space Agency .
Experts say the ambitious Russian return-to-the-moon program is on track so far , but it faces risks , both technical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all been waiting a long time ” for Russia ’ s reactivation of its moon exploration program , says David Parker , director of human and robotic exploration at the European Space Agency .
Luna-25 ’ s eight Russian science instruments are starting to come together under the auspices of IKI , he says .
The lander , headed for the moon ’ s south pole , is part of a new multinational quest to explore the lunar polar regions and appraise the nature of ice deposits there and their potential as resources @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s Luna-25 takeoff “ is about re-creating capability that [ Russia ] had before moving on to more ambitious missions , ” Parker points out .
Roscomos and the ESA are “ learning about each other .
Very different organizations and different decision-making approaches .
There ’ s a very hierarchical approach on the Russian side and a high amount of pragmatism on the European side .
It ’ s a very positive working relationship.
” The ESA is on the hook for delivering a small Pilot-D demonstration camera for Luna-25 .
A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a precision-landing-and-hazard-avoidance system that the European agency is producing for Russia ’ s Luna-27 , due to launch in 2024 .
Luna-27 will also carry the ESA ’ s Prospect drill and a miniature laboratory that , together with another Russian instrument , will search for water ice and other chemicals under the moon ’ s surface .
“ It is very exciting to anticipate Russia ’ s return to the moon , ” says James Head , a space scientist at Brown University .
Work on Luna-25 appears to be progressing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with no work stoppages reported so far .
After nearly 45 years have lapsed since its last foray to the moon , the Russian space program seems ready to finally mount a return , says Brian Harvey , an independent space analyst and author who diligently tracks that program .
“ I have a sense that setting the date [ of launch ] was an attempt to force the issue and make sure it would happen—a psychological self-incentive , as it were.
” “ Right off the bat , I have to snicker @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jay Gallentine , an independent space historian who is sharply focused on robotic solar system exploration .
That designation makes it sound like the lander is the latest iteration of a continuous line of moon missions , he says , when , in fact , Luna-24 , the previous venture , launched in 1976 .
Space experts blame the long lag between moon missions on a legacy of intermittent funding , as well as management and quality control issues .
There is now a stronger , more effective direction from Russian top officials @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Harvey says .
“ Partnering with ESA is a definite attempt to spread costs and bring stability , ” he adds .
“ The Russians have always kept their side of a deal .
And once they sign up for something with Europe , it will happen.
” Harvey says the Russians will work hard to get Luna-25 off the ground .
“ The things that might stop them would be if they uncovered problems during testing or rocket problems , ” he says .
“ In the past couple of years , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were not right .
But this is a good thing , because they are applying quality control more effectively.
” Software reliability is Gallentine ’ s primary concern about the Luna-25 mission ’ s success .
“ History has shown that spacecraft designers always go through a post-launch period where they are learning how to operate the very machines they built .
The Russians do not have a favorable track record with computers and software , ” he emphasizes .
The stakes for Luna-25 are high , says Asif Siddiqi , a professor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Russian space exploration .
“ Luna-25 is quite paramount .
If it fails , I think that will have a domino effect on many other things , ” he says .
Alternatively , if it is triumphant , the mission could pave the way for a new era in the country ’ s space program .
The forthcoming Luna mission is the first demonstration of that program in a deep-space capacity in decades , Siddiqi says .
“ I think people are really nervous about it in that sense , ” he adds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and corruption , along with Russian space ruminations that never match up with the needed rubles , for the long delay .
“ There ’ s such a hangover from the Soviet Union times that people are still living the dream of an amazing global space program .
But resources and management just [ aren ’ t ] there , ” he says .
“ Historically , Russia was a great space power .
But there ’ s an awareness that that ’ s in the past .
”

There is a multicountry moon rush in progress. NASA is orchestrating the Artemis program of robotic and human lunar exploration, due to launch human explorers in 2024 at the earliest. China is preparing to hurl a sample-return mission to the moon this year, joining a Chinese lander and rover that are now on the lunar far side. Other nations, such as Japan and India, as well as private spaceflight firms, also have future lunar exploration in their crosshairs.
Now an “old-timer” is joining the celestial fray. Russia’s federal space agency Roscosmos announced in early August that flight units of scientific instruments for its Luna-25 moon lander had been delivered from the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IKI) to the Lavochkin Scientific and Production Association(which is part of Roscosmos). The flight is scheduled to launch in October 2021. “The Luna-25 space project opens a long-term Russian lunar program, which includes missions to study the moon from orbit and surface, the collection and return of lunar soil to Earth, as well as, in the future, the construction of a visited lunar base and full-scale development of our satellite.,” according to a statement from Roscosmos officials.
Russia is no stranger to going the lunar distance as part of the former Soviet Union. Though it did not succeed in putting people on the lunar surface, the latter nation chalked up noteworthy space race firsts from the late 1950s to the 1970s. The Soviet Union was the earliest to send a spacecraft to the moon, perform a flyby of its far side, make a soft landing on its surface, send an orbiter around it and return a circumlunar probe back to Earth, as well as to robotically return lunar samples. And the nation landed the first rover to wheel across the natural satellite’s landscape.
In July Russia’s moon-bound scientific instruments reached the factory floor. The Luna-25 mission and a subsequent moon lander on the books are a partnership between the country and the European Space Agency. Experts say the ambitious Russian return-to-the-moon program is on track so far, but it faces risks, both technical and managerial.
Re-creating Capability
“We’ve all been waiting a long time” for Russia’s reactivation of its moon exploration program, says David Parker, director of human and robotic exploration at the European Space Agency. Luna-25’s eight Russian science instruments are starting to come together under the auspices of IKI, he says. The lander, headed for the moon’s south pole, is part of a new multinational quest to explore the lunar polar regions and appraise the nature of ice deposits there and their potential as resources for future missions.
Next year’s Luna-25 takeoff “is about re-creating capability that [Russia] had before moving on to more ambitious missions,” Parker points out. Roscomos and the ESA are “learning about each other. Very different organizations and different decision-making approaches. There’s a very hierarchical approach on the Russian side and a high amount of pragmatism on the European side. It’s a very positive working relationship.”
The ESA is on the hook for delivering a small Pilot-D demonstration camera for Luna-25. A similar camera will be a key piece of a precision-landing-and-hazard-avoidance system that the European agency is producing for Russia’s Luna-27, due to launch in 2024. Luna-27 will also carry the ESA’s Prospect drill and a miniature laboratory that, together with another Russian instrument, will search for water ice and other chemicals under the moon’s surface.
Flagship Mission
“It is very exciting to anticipate Russia’s return to the moon,” says James Head, a space scientist at Brown University. Work on Luna-25 appears to be progressing well despite COVID-19, he says, with no work stoppages reported so far.
After nearly 45 years have lapsed since its last foray to the moon, the Russian space program seems ready to finally mount a return, says Brian Harvey, an independent space analyst and author who diligently tracks that program. “I have a sense that setting the date [of launch] was an attempt to force the issue and make sure it would happen—a psychological self-incentive, as it were.”
“Right off the bat, I have to snicker at the name Luna-25,” says Jay Gallentine, an independent space historian who is sharply focused on robotic solar system exploration. That designation makes it sound like the lander is the latest iteration of a continuous line of moon missions, he says, when, in fact, Luna-24, the previous venture, launched in 1976. Space experts blame the long lag between moon missions on a legacy of intermittent funding, as well as management and quality control issues. There is now a stronger, more effective direction from Russian top officials than at any time since 1991, Harvey says. “Partnering with ESA is a definite attempt to spread costs and bring stability,” he adds. “The Russians have always kept their side of a deal. And once they sign up for something with Europe, it will happen.”
Harvey says the Russians will work hard to get Luna-25 off the ground. “The things that might stop them would be if they uncovered problems during testing or rocket problems,” he says. “In the past couple of years, Russia has delayed missions when these things were not right. But this is a good thing, because they are applying quality control more effectively.”
Software reliability is Gallentine’s primary concern about the Luna-25 mission’s success. “History has shown that spacecraft designers always go through a post-launch period where they are learning how to operate the very machines they built. The Russians do not have a favorable track record with computers and software,” he emphasizes.
Corruption Quagmire
The stakes for Luna-25 are high, says Asif Siddiqi, a professor of history at Fordham University who studies Russian space exploration. “Luna-25 is quite paramount. If it fails, I think that will have a domino effect on many other things,” he says. Alternatively, if it is triumphant, the mission could pave the way for a new era in the country’s space program. The forthcoming Luna mission is the first demonstration of that program in a deep-space capacity in decades, Siddiqi says. “I think people are really nervous about it in that sense,” he adds.
Siddiqi cites a quagmire of mismanagement and corruption, along with Russian space ruminations that never match up with the needed rubles, for the long delay. “There’s such a hangover from the Soviet Union times that people are still living the dream of an amazing global space program. But resources and management just [aren’t] there,” he says. “Historically, Russia was a great space power. But there’s an awareness that that’s in the past.”


scientificamerican--2020-08-26--Hubble Captures Close-Up of Comet NEOWISE

The Hubble Space Telescope turned its powerful eyes to a celestial visitor to our skies—Comet NEOWISE , which put on a stunning show in the Northern Hemisphere earlier this summer .
On Aug. 8 , the famed telescope obtained images of the comet ’ s coma , which is the cloud of gas and dust bleeding off the icy comet as the sun ’ s energy strikes the surface .
At 27 million miles ( 43 million kilometers ) from the camera , Comet NEOWISE was a triple milestone for Hubble ’ s imaging capabilities .
“ This the first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this brightness at such resolution after this close of a pass by the sun , ” NASA said in a statement , adding that the nucleus managed to stay together even after the swing past our nearest star .
“ Hubble has far better resolution than we can get with any other telescope of this comet , ” Qicheng Zhang , a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology who led the imaging campaign , said in the same statement .
“ That resolution is very key for seeing details very close @ @ @ @ @ @ @ see changes in the dust right after it ’ s stripped from that nucleus due to solar heat , sampling dust as close to the original properties of the comet as possible.
” While Hubble has powerful eyes gazing out from its perch in Earth orbit , the telescope does not have enough resolution to spot the nucleus directly ; the team estimates the nucleus is only 3 miles ( about 5 km ) across .
But the image does show the gigantic cloud of gas and dust stretching around the nucleus , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) .
Hubble also saw two jets spewing out from the nucleus in opposite directions , which fanned into curves as the heart of the comet rotated .
Just like the coma , the jets are formed by the sun ’ s energy striking the comet ’ s surface .
In this case , however , the jets shoot out at higher velocity as the ice changes directly from solid to gas beneath NEOWISE ’ s surface .
The images of NEOWISE could help researchers learn more about dust in the early solar @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leftovers of the solar system ’ s youth , studying these small bodies reveals much about how our current neighborhood came to be .
Researchers hope to pinpoint the color of NEOWISE ’ s cometary dust and analyze how the colors change as the comet continues to fly away from the sun and the inner solar system .
These properties are expected to show how the heat of the sun changes the composition and structure of dust in the comet ’ s coma .
As for NEOWISE , it continues to fade from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the outer solar system , with an expected return to the sun in about 7,000 years .
It was the brightest Northern Hemisphere comet since Hale-Bopp , which appeared in 1997 .
Copyright 2020 Space.com , a Future company .
All rights reserved .
This material may not be published , broadcast , rewritten or redistributed .

The Hubble Space Telescope turned its powerful eyes to a celestial visitor to our skies—Comet NEOWISE, which put on a stunning show in the Northern Hemisphere earlier this summer.
On Aug. 8, the famed telescope obtained images of the comet’s coma, which is the cloud of gas and dust bleeding off the icy comet as the sun’s energy strikes the surface. At 27 million miles (43 million kilometers) from the camera, Comet NEOWISE was a triple milestone for Hubble’s imaging capabilities.
“This the first time Hubble has photographed a comet of this brightness at such resolution after this close of a pass by the sun,” NASA said in a statement, adding that the nucleus managed to stay together even after the swing past our nearest star.
“Hubble has far better resolution than we can get with any other telescope of this comet,” Qicheng Zhang, a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology who led the imaging campaign, said in the same statement. “That resolution is very key for seeing details very close to the nucleus. It lets us see changes in the dust right after it’s stripped from that nucleus due to solar heat, sampling dust as close to the original properties of the comet as possible.”
While Hubble has powerful eyes gazing out from its perch in Earth orbit, the telescope does not have enough resolution to spot the nucleus directly; the team estimates the nucleus is only 3 miles (about 5 km) across. But the image does show the gigantic cloud of gas and dust stretching around the nucleus, spanning roughly 11,000 miles (18,000 km).
Hubble also saw two jets spewing out from the nucleus in opposite directions, which fanned into curves as the heart of the comet rotated. Just like the coma, the jets are formed by the sun’s energy striking the comet’s surface. In this case, however, the jets shoot out at higher velocity as the ice changes directly from solid to gas beneath NEOWISE’s surface.
The images of NEOWISE could help researchers learn more about dust in the early solar system. Since comets are considered icy leftovers of the solar system’s youth, studying these small bodies reveals much about how our current neighborhood came to be.
Researchers hope to pinpoint the color of NEOWISE’s cometary dust and analyze how the colors change as the comet continues to fly away from the sun and the inner solar system. These properties are expected to show how the heat of the sun changes the composition and structure of dust in the comet’s coma.
As for NEOWISE, it continues to fade from our view as it rockets back toward the outer solar system, with an expected return to the sun in about 7,000 years. It was the brightest Northern Hemisphere comet since Hale-Bopp, which appeared in 1997.
Copyright 2020 Space.com, a Future company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


scientificamerican--2020-08-26--Can Redwoods Survive the Devastating California Wildfires?

Once again California is ablaze .
A combination of hot , dry weather and a relatively rare lightning storm sparked hundreds of fires in the northern half of the state in recent weeks .
Several of them exploded into major conflagrations—the kinds of intense , destructive fires that some research suggests will become more likely as temperatures rise and create more conducive conditions for a longer portion of the year .
The current fires , which include the second- and third-largest in the state ’ s history , have collectively burned more than one million acres .
They have blanketed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ air unhealthy to breath , destroyed hundreds of homes and other buildings and—to widespread dismay—burned through Big Basin Redwoods State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains south of San Francisco .
Images of scorched bark and fires burning inside holes in the massive trees—which can grow to hundreds of feet and live for hundreds of years—spread on social media .
Kristen Shive , a fire ecologist and researcher at Save the Redwoods League , has worked in Big Basin and studied the effects of blazes on landscapes across California .
Scientific American spoke @ @ @ @ @ @ @ likely to fare and how that outlook could potentially change in the future because of the impacts of global warming .
[ An edited transcript of the interview follows . ]
What makes redwoods well adapted to fire ?
And how do we know the answer ?
We understand their adaptations to fire from what we ’ ve been able to observe directly .
They have this incredibly thick bark that insulates them from the heat of the fire .
When they do burn pretty severely—where , say , the whole crown is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ d be goners .
But redwoods have the ability to sprout from their trunks , and they come back .
They ’ ll look a little bit beat up for a while , but they do survive .
The research that ’ s been done on other wildfires has shown that most of them tend to make it , even if they have that more severe damage .
But we also know that they are fire-adapted because we do have tree-ring records that have documented frequent fire , more or less throughout their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to date trees , and then some of those rings will have fire scars .
And then scientists can quantify how often this forest may have burned in the past .
One thing that ’ s interesting about coastal redwoods is that if you look at the scale of the entire range , what you see is : it ’ s highly variable as to how frequent fires were in the past .
And the reason is : even now there ’ s not a lot of lightning on the coast .
Most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , were lit by Native Americans tending the land .
Where those folks were living and managing the landscape influences how often things were burning .
They primarily burned grasslands and oak woodlands , and we think that then fire would periodically end up going through a redwood stand .
Most of what they were trying to manage were plants—for food and for basketry .
But , also , fires were probably [ used ] to clear out the underbrush to facilitate hunting and presumably to reduce fuels around their own communities—much as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ [ Learn more about how prescribed burning works . ]
But some areas—for example , the farther south you are , the warmer it is in the range—and fires were more frequent in the record there .
We do have one fire history study that was done in the Santa Cruz Mountains , and on average , fires happened every 40 years .
But if you look at individual sites , sometimes they were much more frequent than that even .
So these places have evolved with a lot of fire .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a century in most of these places [ by aggressively putting out wildfires ] , so there has been fuel accumulation since then , and that can change how fires are burning .
But , like I said , even if there were some more fuels on the surface , and it burned a little bit hotter than it would have , because they have such significant fire adaptations , the trees are going to really be fine—most of them .
How might the trees in Big Basin have fared ?
There ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ second growth .
And the second growth are in areas that have been logged and are recovering , so they ’ re young stands of redwoods .
But in the old growth , you have these big , kind of open stands .
In those areas , a lot of the trees have been around for several hundred years , maybe up to a couple thousand years old , and so they sustained fire damage from all these fires that used to burn through .
In some cases , there are places where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the middle of the tree—there ’ s one called the Chimney Tree—and they can cumulatively get a little bit of injury from each fire .
Eventually , that could cause enough structural damage that they fall over or their crown snaps off or something like that .
And I suspect where we get mortalities , especially in the old growth , is mostly going to be there .
The [ question of the survival of the ] second growth , it feels like , is a little bit more open .
We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ burned at pretty low severity , but we don ’ t know that yet .
We haven ’ t been out there .
But it ’ s a little bit more of a concern because when you cut coast redwoods , they sprout from their base .
Then they are similar-sized , and there are a lot of them—because where one big , ancient redwood maybe fell over , there might be 10 sprouts now coming up .
So those areas also hadn ’ t burned in a long time , but they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which could be more contiguous fuel for the fire .
But even in that case , it sort of depends on how old they are .
In areas that were logged more than 100 years ago , I would expect that they are starting to have bark thick enough to have pretty good defenses from fire .
Because that thick bark that insulates them from fire can be up to a foot thick on the old growth , it takes some time to develop that , [ so younger trees may not have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But even in these extreme cases , where it burns so hot that the tree isn ’ t even sprouting back along its trunk , you ’ d still probably get sprouting from the base .
It ’ s sort of like the individual would still persist .
How is climate change potentially affecting redwoods , both broadly speaking and more specifically in terms of how it might influence fire behavior ?
We have a project called the Redwoods and Climate Change Initiative .
The lead researcher is Steve Sillett at Humboldt State @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been tracking growth patterns in coast redwoods all across the range .
What he found is : at the core of the range—up in Humboldt County , where the old growth is right on the coast—they have been thriving , even as a climate has warmed in recent decades .
Even through the recent drought , I think , they barely noticed it .
But having said that , on the edges of the range ( the eastern edge or the southern edge , some of which is burning now ) , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the drought .
That makes sense from what we know about population distribution—that ’ s sort of the edge of where they ’ re in their ideal habitat .
Those are the places where there could be some level of environmental stress that makes it more difficult for them to recover from wildfire .
[ And then ] , in the very long run , even though the trees live to be superold , you have to think about “ How does the population perpetuate itself ?
” And that ’ s through @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whatever the range of climate conditions is that they can survive once they ’ re established , it is usually broader than the conditions they need to regenerate .
Because those little seedlings are much pickier .
So in the really long run , are we going to stop seeing seedling regeneration at those parts of the range [ that are marginal ] ?
That ’ s a really long timescale , though , because mostly they regenerate through sprouting .
When they sprout from their roots , they have a lot of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s also going to make them a little bit more resilient than trees that can only regenerate by distributing a seed and then coming up from the soil .
So I ’ m a little bit less worried about them than , say , their giant sequoia cousins or some other tree species .
But the other thing is : yes , as we get more hotter and drier days , climate change will influence wildfire .
The fires that are burning on the coast right now , they ’ re not burning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we ’ ve had hot days in the past .
But what I think is of concern is that we do know fire seasons are getting longer and that we ’ re having more heat waves .
If we keep having more of those , we ’ re going to be more fire-prone in these areas .
I feel like this really triggers a management question : All these [ tree ] communities are fire-adapted .
We live in a fire-prone place , so we have to decide how we ’ re going @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could be to reintroduce more fire safely and do prescribed burning and get these stands into a resilient condition so that when we start having more and more conditions that are ripe for fire , these forests are ready for it .
They ’ re true survivors , so most likely they ’ ll probably make it anyway .
But I think a good example might be with the old growth : if we would rather see them persist—not have to lose their entire crowns and sprout back to life—if we think that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can have a more low-severity fire and have fire more regularly , I just think that ’ s going to set us up better for when they do burn in the future .

Once again California is ablaze. A combination of hot, dry weather and a relatively rare lightning storm sparked hundreds of fires in the northern half of the state in recent weeks. Several of them exploded into major conflagrations—the kinds of intense, destructive fires that some research suggests will become more likely as temperatures rise and create more conducive conditions for a longer portion of the year.
The current fires, which include the second- and third-largest in the state’s history, have collectively burned more than one million acres. They have blanketed the region in smoke that makes the air unhealthy to breath, destroyed hundreds of homes and other buildings and—to widespread dismay—burned through Big Basin Redwoods State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains south of San Francisco. Images of scorched bark and fires burning inside holes in the massive trees—which can grow to hundreds of feet and live for hundreds of years—spread on social media.
Kristen Shive, a fire ecologist and researcher at Save the Redwoods League, has worked in Big Basin and studied the effects of blazes on landscapes across California. Scientific American spoke with her about how the redwoods are likely to fare and how that outlook could potentially change in the future because of the impacts of global warming.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
What makes redwoods well adapted to fire? And how do we know the answer?
We understand their adaptations to fire from what we’ve been able to observe directly. They have this incredibly thick bark that insulates them from the heat of the fire. When they do burn pretty severely—where, say, the whole crown is consumed—in most other conifers, they’d be goners. But redwoods have the ability to sprout from their trunks, and they come back. They’ll look a little bit beat up for a while, but they do survive. The research that’s been done on other wildfires has shown that most of them tend to make it, even if they have that more severe damage.
But we also know that they are fire-adapted because we do have tree-ring records that have documented frequent fire, more or less throughout their range. Scientists can use tree rings to date trees, and then some of those rings will have fire scars. And then scientists can quantify how often this forest may have burned in the past. One thing that’s interesting about coastal redwoods is that if you look at the scale of the entire range, what you see is: it’s highly variable as to how frequent fires were in the past. And the reason is: even now there’s not a lot of lightning on the coast. Most of the past fires, we think, were lit by Native Americans tending the land. Where those folks were living and managing the landscape influences how often things were burning. They primarily burned grasslands and oak woodlands, and we think that then fire would periodically end up going through a redwood stand. Most of what they were trying to manage were plants—for food and for basketry. But, also, fires were probably [used] to clear out the underbrush to facilitate hunting and presumably to reduce fuels around their own communities—much as we do now with prescribed burning.
[Learn more about how prescribed burning works.]
But some areas—for example, the farther south you are, the warmer it is in the range—and fires were more frequent in the record there. We do have one fire history study that was done in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and on average, fires happened every 40 years. But if you look at individual sites, sometimes they were much more frequent than that even. So these places have evolved with a lot of fire. And then we excluded fire for more than a century in most of these places [by aggressively putting out wildfires], so there has been fuel accumulation since then, and that can change how fires are burning. But, like I said, even if there were some more fuels on the surface, and it burned a little bit hotter than it would have, because they have such significant fire adaptations, the trees are going to really be fine—most of them.
How might the trees in Big Basin have fared?
There’s what we call old growth and second growth. And the second growth are in areas that have been logged and are recovering, so they’re young stands of redwoods. But in the old growth, you have these big, kind of open stands. In those areas, a lot of the trees have been around for several hundred years, maybe up to a couple thousand years old, and so they sustained fire damage from all these fires that used to burn through. In some cases, there are places where fire might burn out a good hole in the middle of the tree—there’s one called the Chimney Tree—and they can cumulatively get a little bit of injury from each fire. Eventually, that could cause enough structural damage that they fall over or their crown snaps off or something like that. And I suspect where we get mortalities, especially in the old growth, is mostly going to be there.
The [question of the survival of the] second growth, it feels like, is a little bit more open. We’ve heard reports that it primarily burned at pretty low severity, but we don’t know that yet. We haven’t been out there. But it’s a little bit more of a concern because when you cut coast redwoods, they sprout from their base. Then they are similar-sized, and there are a lot of them—because where one big, ancient redwood maybe fell over, there might be 10 sprouts now coming up. So those areas also hadn’t burned in a long time, but they also had higher densities of trees, which could be more contiguous fuel for the fire. But even in that case, it sort of depends on how old they are. In areas that were logged more than 100 years ago, I would expect that they are starting to have bark thick enough to have pretty good defenses from fire. Because that thick bark that insulates them from fire can be up to a foot thick on the old growth, it takes some time to develop that, [so younger trees may not have as much of a defense]. But even in these extreme cases, where it burns so hot that the tree isn’t even sprouting back along its trunk, you’d still probably get sprouting from the base. It’s sort of like the individual would still persist.
How is climate change potentially affecting redwoods, both broadly speaking and more specifically in terms of how it might influence fire behavior?
We have a project called the Redwoods and Climate Change Initiative. The lead researcher is Steve Sillett at Humboldt State [University], and he has been tracking growth patterns in coast redwoods all across the range. What he found is: at the core of the range—up in Humboldt County, where the old growth is right on the coast—they have been thriving, even as a climate has warmed in recent decades. Even through the recent drought, I think, they barely noticed it. But having said that, on the edges of the range (the eastern edge or the southern edge, some of which is burning now), the trees did show signs of stress during the drought. That makes sense from what we know about population distribution—that’s sort of the edge of where they’re in their ideal habitat. Those are the places where there could be some level of environmental stress that makes it more difficult for them to recover from wildfire.
[And then], in the very long run, even though the trees live to be superold, you have to think about “How does the population perpetuate itself?” And that’s through new seedlings. For most trees, whatever the range of climate conditions is that they can survive once they’re established, it is usually broader than the conditions they need to regenerate. Because those little seedlings are much pickier. So in the really long run, are we going to stop seeing seedling regeneration at those parts of the range [that are marginal]? That’s a really long timescale, though, because mostly they regenerate through sprouting. When they sprout from their roots, they have a lot of energy stored below, so that’s also going to make them a little bit more resilient than trees that can only regenerate by distributing a seed and then coming up from the soil. So I’m a little bit less worried about them than, say, their giant sequoia cousins or some other tree species.
But the other thing is: yes, as we get more hotter and drier days, climate change will influence wildfire. The fires that are burning on the coast right now, they’re not burning super uncharacteristically, in the sense that we’ve had hot days in the past. But what I think is of concern is that we do know fire seasons are getting longer and that we’re having more heat waves. If we keep having more of those, we’re going to be more fire-prone in these areas. I feel like this really triggers a management question: All these [tree] communities are fire-adapted. We live in a fire-prone place, so we have to decide how we’re going to live with fire. One way could be to reintroduce more fire safely and do prescribed burning and get these stands into a resilient condition so that when we start having more and more conditions that are ripe for fire, these forests are ready for it. They’re true survivors, so most likely they’ll probably make it anyway. But I think a good example might be with the old growth: if we would rather see them persist—not have to lose their entire crowns and sprout back to life—if we think that by keeping fuel loads lower that we can have a more low-severity fire and have fire more regularly, I just think that’s going to set us up better for when they do burn in the future.


scientificamerican--2020-08-26--Why the United States Is Having a Coronavirus Data Crisis

South Korea ’ s grip on the coronavirus faltered this month when a large church in Seoul had an outbreak—involving 915 cases as of 25 August .
The government has reinstated restrictions in the city to prevent a surge , but it ’ s also reporting details of the outbreak publicly .
For instance , it has shared that 120 people infected at the church have spread the coronavirus to people at 22 venues , including 4 call centres and 3 hospitals in Seoul .
Almost every day for the past seven months , the Korea Centers for Disease Control @ @ @ @ @ @ @ near-real-time information on local outbreaks .
The site also reports several COVID-19 statistics for every region of the country .
Data dashboards in Singapore and New Zealand offer similar windows into how the coronavirus is spreading within their borders .
This helps policymakers and citizens determine how to go about daily life , while reducing risks—and provides researchers with a wealth of data .
By contrast , the United States offers vanishingly few details on how the disease is spreading , even as people increasingly socialize and travel , and authorities reopen schools @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is frustrating data researchers , who want to help authorities make decisions that can save lives .
“ We shouldn ’ t be flying blind at this point , ” says Natalie Dean , a biostatistician at the University of Florida in Gainesville .
“ We shouldn ’ t have to speculate.
” Experts told Nature that political meddling , privacy concerns and years of neglect of public-health surveillance systems are among the reasons for the dearth of information in the United States .
Although information isn ’ t the only tool that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ South Korea ’ s attention to data correlates with its overall success at controlling the outbreak : the country has had about 3.5 cases per 10,000 people overall , and there have been around 2 COVID-19 deaths per week over the past month .
By contrast , the United States has had 175 cases per 10,000 people overall , and about 7,000 people have died of the disease every week for the past month .
South Korea owes its detailed intel to a coordinated network of public-health centres in 250 districts that send @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Disease Control and Prevention .
Sung-il Cho , an epidemiologist at Seoul National University , attributes the system ’ s success to this centralization of power—along with rapid hiring of ‘ temporary epidemiologists ’ to meet demand during the COVID-19 pandemic .
These scientists have helped to lead contact-tracing investigations that produce succinct , anonymized details such as those listed about the outbreak at Sarang Jeil Church in Seoul .
The United States isn ’ t pursuing contact tracing for COVID-19 to nearly the same extent as South Korea , but its disease @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the federal level .
For years , the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ) has used this system to follow the spread of outbreaks such as a current surge in infections with the bacterium Salmonella , and to trace them back to their sources .
However , the surveillance system has run into problems at several levels during the pandemic .
The result is that a lot of data , such as information on where people were exposed to the coronavirus , are missing .
And the data @ @ @ @ @ @ @ slowly .
The CDC and four US health departments declined to speak to Nature about how they ’ re managing COVID-19 data .
However , former scientific employees and researchers who collaborate with them offered suggestions about why data is lagging and lacking in the United States .
Some speculate that because the pandemic is politically charged , data describing the situation are guarded closely by officials in the administration of President Donald Trump .
Researchers say that investigations published in the CDC ’ s journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports have been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ after they might influence outcomes .
For example , on 31 July , the CDC reported that 260 staff members and children at an overnight camp in Georgia had been infected more than a month earlier .
Samuel Groseclose , a public-health specialist who retired from the CDC in 2018 , suggests that the reports are undergoing an unusual amount of review within the agency , and perhaps its parent agency , the US Department for Health and Human Services ( HHS ) .
The CDC was further sidelined in July , scientists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that data on COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations would be diverted away from the agency , and handled instead by a new system launched at the HHS , whose head reports directly to the president .
So far , the HHS ’ s dashboard has been up to a week behind in reporting data , and it includes information only on case counts and hospital capacity , rather than details such as the location of disease clusters .
An HHS spokesperson says that the new system streamlines reporting from 6,000 hospitals in the country @ @ @ @ @ @ @ director of the American Public Health Association ( APHA ) in Washington DC , says that rather than streamlining data collection , the change has confounded data collection further .
Some hospital administrators are now confused about which agencies to report to , he says .
He ’ s also frustrated because the US $ 10 million spent on the HHS ’ s system might have been put to better use improving public-health data management at the CDC and at the health departments it collaborates with across the country .
This outdated system @ @ @ @ @ @ @ million COVID-19 cases in the United States .
Benjamin notes that many health departments still share data by fax , which is more time-consuming than digital methods .
A lack of funds also means that overburdened staff don ’ t have enough time to analyse the data they have .
The APHA and other scientific organizations have long called for resources to improve data surveillance in the US public-health system .
In a report published last September , public-health epidemiologists described the current system as siloed , sluggish , manual and paper-based .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ over the years to build a solid information highway so that we can collect data rapidly and share it with the people that need it in a timely way , ” says Benjamin .
“ But we ’ ve never gotten what we needed.
” This long-standing neglect has been exacerbated by the lack of national leadership during the pandemic , say the researchers who spoke to Nature .
There are no nationwide requirements for the information that hospitals and testing laboratories must report to health departments .
Ranu Dhillon , an epidemic-response @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Massachusetts , who is currently treating people infected with COVID-19 in Vallejo , California , says that neither the local health department nor the CDC tells him to report where patients might have been exposed to the coronavirus .
He records these data in their health records voluntarily , but he ’ s not sure whether the state or local health department use the information , which troubles him .
He worked on the Ebola response in Guinea during the outbreak in 2015 , and says authorities there collected data on how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , to curb its spread .
“ This crucial information would help us drill down transmission further ” for COVID-19 , he says .
“ It ’ s crazy we aren ’ t collecting it.
” Amy Lockwood , a public-health specialist who left the health department in San Francisco , California , earlier this year , says that many departments would like such data , but struggle to get them from hospitals or labs providing tests .
She says some test providers don ’ t collect information such as a person ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ asking such questions will deter people from being tested .
Some hospitals , meanwhile , record this information , but don ’ t relay it to the analytical lab where samples are tested .
So when the lab shares a case with a health department , the report lacks these details .
“ Having a fragmented health-care system prevents us from understanding what ’ s going on with COVID , ” says Lockwood .
Epidemiologists at universities would like to help overburdened state and local health departments to analyse whatever data they have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an efficient coronavirus response .
Typically , health departments share disease-surveillance data with researchers on request .
But during the COVID-19 pandemic , epidemiologists have been denied access .
For instance , Steffanie Strathdee , an HIV epidemiologist at the University of California , San Diego , often requests case data broken down by parameters such as locality , race and probable exposure route , such as intravenous drug use .
“ Surveillance is done and it ’ s made transparent , and this is what we have been accustomed to , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ epidemic , things have changed.
” This year , Strathdee and other epidemiologists asked for anonymized COVID-19 data from the California department of health .
E-mails seen by Nature show that the researchers ’ requests considered the need for individual privacy with measures such as asking the state for age ranges instead of exact ages .
But the request was denied—something that had never happened to Strathdee before .
The department ’ s director , Mark Ghaly , explained in a 3 July e-mail that releasing information from people ’ s records would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of each record to determine what data fields may be made public from each individual report ” .
Furthermore , the United States is producing little information through contact tracing , a procedure that has the power to pinpoint an outbreak and how it moves , as well as to flag individuals who need to be quarantined .
Thanks to contact tracing , Singapore ’ s daily report from 25 August was able to say that 94 % of new cases confirmed in dormitories that house workers are linked to known cases , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arose in people already quarantined .
By contrast , the health department for Washington DC reported last week that only about 5 % of new cases in the city had been linked to people previously identified as infected .
Without up-to-date , reliable information on who is infected , why and where , US scientists , policymakers and the public must instead rely on media reports and independent efforts to consolidate data , such as the COVID Tracking Project from magazine The Atlantic and the COVID-19 Dashboard compiled by researchers at Johns Hopkins @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the former is not comprehensive or universally trusted , and the latter doesn ’ t detail where transmission is happening .
There is an urgent need for such information , says Caitlin Rivers , an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins , because people are returning to work , to socializing and to schools .
That means that precisely tailored interventions are more important than ever .
“ It ’ s not enough to just tell people to be cautious.
” This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on August 25 2020 @

South Korea’s grip on the coronavirus faltered this month when a large church in Seoul had an outbreak—involving 915 cases as of 25 August. The government has reinstated restrictions in the city to prevent a surge, but it’s also reporting details of the outbreak publicly. For instance, it has shared that 120 people infected at the church have spread the coronavirus to people at 22 venues, including 4 call centres and 3 hospitals in Seoul.
Almost every day for the past seven months, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has updated its website with near-real-time information on local outbreaks. The site also reports several COVID-19 statistics for every region of the country.
Data dashboards in Singapore and New Zealand offer similar windows into how the coronavirus is spreading within their borders. This helps policymakers and citizens determine how to go about daily life, while reducing risks—and provides researchers with a wealth of data. By contrast, the United States offers vanishingly few details on how the disease is spreading, even as people increasingly socialize and travel, and authorities reopen schools and businesses. This state of affairs is frustrating data researchers, who want to help authorities make decisions that can save lives.
“We shouldn’t be flying blind at this point,” says Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida in Gainesville. “We shouldn’t have to speculate.”
Experts told Nature that political meddling, privacy concerns and years of neglect of public-health surveillance systems are among the reasons for the dearth of information in the United States.
Lagging and lacking
Although information isn’t the only tool that can be used against a pandemic, South Korea’s attention to data correlates with its overall success at controlling the outbreak: the country has had about 3.5 cases per 10,000 people overall, and there have been around 2 COVID-19 deaths per week over the past month. By contrast, the United States has had 175 cases per 10,000 people overall, and about 7,000 people have died of the disease every week for the past month.
South Korea owes its detailed intel to a coordinated network of public-health centres in 250 districts that send information rapidly to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Sung-il Cho, an epidemiologist at Seoul National University, attributes the system’s success to this centralization of power—along with rapid hiring of ‘temporary epidemiologists’ to meet demand during the COVID-19 pandemic. These scientists have helped to lead contact-tracing investigations that produce succinct, anonymized details such as those listed about the outbreak at Sarang Jeil Church in Seoul.
The United States isn’t pursuing contact tracing for COVID-19 to nearly the same extent as South Korea, but its disease surveillance also flows from local health departments to the federal level. For years, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has used this system to follow the spread of outbreaks such as a current surge in infections with the bacterium Salmonella, and to trace them back to their sources. However, the surveillance system has run into problems at several levels during the pandemic. The result is that a lot of data, such as information on where people were exposed to the coronavirus, are missing. And the data that do exist are made public only slowly.
The CDC and four US health departments declined to speak to Nature about how they’re managing COVID-19 data. However, former scientific employees and researchers who collaborate with them offered suggestions about why data is lagging and lacking in the United States.
Increased scrutiny
Some speculate that because the pandemic is politically charged, data describing the situation are guarded closely by officials in the administration of President Donald Trump. Researchers say that investigations published in the CDC’s journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports have been thorough, but are posted online long after they might influence outcomes. For example, on 31 July, the CDC reported that 260 staff members and children at an overnight camp in Georgia had been infected more than a month earlier. Samuel Groseclose, a public-health specialist who retired from the CDC in 2018, suggests that the reports are undergoing an unusual amount of review within the agency, and perhaps its parent agency, the US Department for Health and Human Services (HHS).
The CDC was further sidelined in July, scientists say, when the Trump administration announced that data on COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations would be diverted away from the agency, and handled instead by a new system launched at the HHS, whose head reports directly to the president. So far, the HHS’s dashboard has been up to a week behind in reporting data, and it includes information only on case counts and hospital capacity, rather than details such as the location of disease clusters. An HHS spokesperson says that the new system streamlines reporting from 6,000 hospitals in the country.
But Georges Benjamin, the executive director of the American Public Health Association (APHA) in Washington DC, says that rather than streamlining data collection, the change has confounded data collection further. Some hospital administrators are now confused about which agencies to report to, he says. He’s also frustrated because the US$10 million spent on the HHS’s system might have been put to better use improving public-health data management at the CDC and at the health departments it collaborates with across the country. This outdated system has buckled under the pressure of 5.7 million COVID-19 cases in the United States.
Benjamin notes that many health departments still share data by fax, which is more time-consuming than digital methods. A lack of funds also means that overburdened staff don’t have enough time to analyse the data they have. The APHA and other scientific organizations have long called for resources to improve data surveillance in the US public-health system. In a report published last September, public-health epidemiologists described the current system as siloed, sluggish, manual and paper-based.
“We’ve begged for money over the years to build a solid information highway so that we can collect data rapidly and share it with the people that need it in a timely way,” says Benjamin. “But we’ve never gotten what we needed.”
Data woes
This long-standing neglect has been exacerbated by the lack of national leadership during the pandemic, say the researchers who spoke to Nature. There are no nationwide requirements for the information that hospitals and testing laboratories must report to health departments. Ranu Dhillon, an epidemic-response specialist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, who is currently treating people infected with COVID-19 in Vallejo, California, says that neither the local health department nor the CDC tells him to report where patients might have been exposed to the coronavirus. He records these data in their health records voluntarily, but he’s not sure whether the state or local health department use the information, which troubles him. He worked on the Ebola response in Guinea during the outbreak in 2015, and says authorities there collected data on how people were infected with the Ebola virus, to curb its spread. “This crucial information would help us drill down transmission further” for COVID-19, he says. “It’s crazy we aren’t collecting it.”
Amy Lockwood, a public-health specialist who left the health department in San Francisco, California, earlier this year, says that many departments would like such data, but struggle to get them from hospitals or labs providing tests. She says some test providers don’t collect information such as a person’s occupation, because they fear that asking such questions will deter people from being tested. Some hospitals, meanwhile, record this information, but don’t relay it to the analytical lab where samples are tested. So when the lab shares a case with a health department, the report lacks these details. “Having a fragmented health-care system prevents us from understanding what’s going on with COVID,” says Lockwood.
Epidemiologists at universities would like to help overburdened state and local health departments to analyse whatever data they have so they can help officials to direct an efficient coronavirus response. Typically, health departments share disease-surveillance data with researchers on request. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, epidemiologists have been denied access. For instance, Steffanie Strathdee, an HIV epidemiologist at the University of California, San Diego, often requests case data broken down by parameters such as locality, race and probable exposure route, such as intravenous drug use. “Surveillance is done and it’s made transparent, and this is what we have been accustomed to,” she says. “Only for this epidemic, things have changed.”
This year, Strathdee and other epidemiologists asked for anonymized COVID-19 data from the California department of health. E-mails seen by Nature show that the researchers’ requests considered the need for individual privacy with measures such as asking the state for age ranges instead of exact ages. But the request was denied—something that had never happened to Strathdee before. The department’s director, Mark Ghaly, explained in a 3 July e-mail that releasing information from people’s records would “necessitate a careful and time-consuming analysis of each record to determine what data fields may be made public from each individual report”.
Furthermore, the United States is producing little information through contact tracing, a procedure that has the power to pinpoint an outbreak and how it moves, as well as to flag individuals who need to be quarantined. Thanks to contact tracing, Singapore’s daily report from 25 August was able to say that 94% of new cases confirmed in dormitories that house workers are linked to known cases, and that most of the new cases arose in people already quarantined. By contrast, the health department for Washington DC reported last week that only about 5% of new cases in the city had been linked to people previously identified as infected.
Without up-to-date, reliable information on who is infected, why and where, US scientists, policymakers and the public must instead rely on media reports and independent efforts to consolidate data, such as the COVID Tracking Project from magazine The Atlantic and the COVID-19 Dashboard compiled by researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. But the former is not comprehensive or universally trusted, and the latter doesn’t detail where transmission is happening. There is an urgent need for such information, says Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins, because people are returning to work, to socializing and to schools. That means that precisely tailored interventions are more important than ever. “It’s not enough to just tell people to be cautious.”
This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on August 25 2020.


scientificamerican--2020-08-26--A Proposed Storm Surge Barrier Could Protect Texas from Storms like Laura

If Hurricane Laura shifts west and lands squarely on the Texas coast , it will be the fifth deadly hurricane to strike the Lone Star State since 2000 .
That ’ s far too soon for Texas and federal partners to complete a storm surge protection system designed to shield the Lone Star State from major hurricanes .
But they ’ re hoping the multibillion-dollar project might be done in time for a sixth major hurricane .
The project , nicknamed the “ Ike Dike ” after the 2008 hurricane of the same name , is expected to cost as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an additional decade to design , permit and build .
The Army Corps of Engineers adopted the plan—known as the Coastal Texas Protection and Restoration Feasibility Study—in October 2018 .
It calls for an integrated network of sea walls , surge gates , vertical lift gates and a “ ring barrier ” around Galveston Island , as well as beach and dune restoration along 70 miles of coastline .
The plan is still in its early stages , however , with a second draft and accompanying environmental impact statement due in early October @ @ @ @ @ @ @ expected in May 2021 .
That ’ s all before any federal money is allocated by Congress to build the structures , which is expected to take until 2031 .
At the current pace , Texas could see several more major hurricanes before 2031 , based on the state ’ s storm history and scientific projections of how climate change will affect storm behavior .
Since 1851 , Texas has averaged one hurricane every three years , according to National Weather Service statistics .
Its most recent major storms—Category 3 or higher—came in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rita ) , 2008 ( Ike ) and 2017 ( Harvey ) .
A major hurricane protection system for the Texas coast was conceived after Hurricane Ike .
Elements of that initial plan , developed in conjunction with coastal engineers at Texas A & M University , Galveston , are incorporated into the broader coastal Texas study .
Its early nickname of Ike Dike has stuck around for the current version too .
Texas and the Army Corps have been working on other projects , including a risk reduction and coastal restoration project @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was scoped before Hurricane Harvey .
Funding for the roughly $ 4 billion project materialized in 2018 under the Bipartisan Budget Act .
Kelly Burks-Copes , the Army Corps project manager for the larger plan , said Laura could bring a level of storm surge the Ike Dike would protect against—though operating manuals for the system are far from complete .
“ This is the kind of [ storm ] system that this was designed for , ” said Burks-Copes in an interview .
But whether it would be activated depends on several @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the storm , its projected landfall time and place , and other conditions that could reduce or increase the risk to the region .
The coastal Texas study is one of four options considered after Ike in 2008 to mitigate property damage from future hurricanes and increase resilience along the central Texas coast , including Houston and Harris County , Galveston , the Houston Ship Channel and Port of Houston , and the region ’ s expansive petrochemical industry .
In 2017 , Texas Land Office Commissioner George P. Bush asked President @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with $ 15 billion in federal cost share that ’ s necessary to begin construction .
The money did not materialize under the president ’ s infrastructure plan .
Instead , Trump at a 2019 rally in Dallas mocked Texas officials for wanting to build “ a dam in the ocean , ” calling it a “ crazy thing that may work or it may not , ” adding the state “ made a fortune ” from federal aid post-Harvey .
Criticisms also have come from environmental groups and other coastal experts .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Storm Prediction , Education & Evacuation From Disasters Center , for example , said the first study draft failed to account for strengthening storms attributable to climate change .
The slow pace of the project is also doing little to help the region defend against hurricanes between 2020 and 2031 .
“ Our biggest concern is the length of time it will take to build , ” said Phil Bedient , director of the SSPEED Center , which has developed a smaller-scale surge protection proposal called the Galveston Bay Park Plan .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about every 15 years .
The last one was 2017 , so we could see another one before this project is complete.
” The Galveston Bay Park Plan also incorporates green features , including a new string of islands in Galveston Bay that will double as a storm surge barrier and recreational park space .
Bedient said it could be built relatively quickly and compliment a larger coastal barrier system .
But the Army Corps and Texas officials are holding firm to the original plan .
Burks-Copes said the storm surge plan as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ % of risk from future storms , particularly from a 2- to 3-mile-wide gated superstructure spanning the primary inlet between the Gulf of Mexico and Galveston Bay .
A central feature of the plan is the 70-mile-long coastal barrier and 18-mile ring barrier around Galveston Island .
The ocean barrier , which would enhance an existing sea wall , would have 15 lift gates to allow for the flow of water and commerce during normal times , but the system would be fortified as hurricanes approach .
Yet even as critics , including @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s cost and worry about its impact on the region ’ s complex coastal habitat , Burks-Copes said the Ike Dike remains the quickest and most vetted proposal to address the region ’ s rising storm risk .
“ There is no other proposal out there that has the funding to be completed in the time frame that we have , ” she said .
“ The solutions we ’ re proposing are not only innovative , but they ’ re long-lasting and can be adapted over the long term if we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the Gulf.
” For example , the study relies on simulations of 660 hurricanes of varying strengths and landfall characteristics to allow the coastal protection system to adapt to changing conditions .
“ Bottom line , the design matches the need , ” Burks-Copes said .
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from E & E News .
E & E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news at www.eenews.net .

If Hurricane Laura shifts west and lands squarely on the Texas coast, it will be the fifth deadly hurricane to strike the Lone Star State since 2000.
That’s far too soon for Texas and federal partners to complete a storm surge protection system designed to shield the Lone Star State from major hurricanes. But they’re hoping the multibillion-dollar project might be done in time for a sixth major hurricane.
Or maybe a seventh.
The project, nicknamed the “Ike Dike” after the 2008 hurricane of the same name, is expected to cost as much as $31 billion and take an additional decade to design, permit and build.
The Army Corps of Engineers adopted the plan—known as the Coastal Texas Protection and Restoration Feasibility Study—in October 2018. It calls for an integrated network of sea walls, surge gates, vertical lift gates and a “ring barrier” around Galveston Island, as well as beach and dune restoration along 70 miles of coastline.
The plan is still in its early stages, however, with a second draft and accompanying environmental impact statement due in early October, followed by a final draft plan expected in May 2021. That’s all before any federal money is allocated by Congress to build the structures, which is expected to take until 2031.
At the current pace, Texas could see several more major hurricanes before 2031, based on the state’s storm history and scientific projections of how climate change will affect storm behavior.
Since 1851, Texas has averaged one hurricane every three years, according to National Weather Service statistics. Its most recent major storms—Category 3 or higher—came in 1999 (Bret), 2005 (Rita), 2008 (Ike) and 2017 (Harvey).
A major hurricane protection system for the Texas coast was conceived after Hurricane Ike. Elements of that initial plan, developed in conjunction with coastal engineers at Texas A&M University, Galveston, are incorporated into the broader coastal Texas study. Its early nickname of Ike Dike has stuck around for the current version too.
Texas and the Army Corps have been working on other projects, including a risk reduction and coastal restoration project between Sabine Pass and Galveston Bay that was scoped before Hurricane Harvey. Funding for the roughly $4 billion project materialized in 2018 under the Bipartisan Budget Act.
Kelly Burks-Copes, the Army Corps project manager for the larger plan, said Laura could bring a level of storm surge the Ike Dike would protect against—though operating manuals for the system are far from complete.
“This is the kind of [storm] system that this was designed for,” said Burks-Copes in an interview. But whether it would be activated depends on several factors, including the size and strength of the storm, its projected landfall time and place, and other conditions that could reduce or increase the risk to the region.
The coastal Texas study is one of four options considered after Ike in 2008 to mitigate property damage from future hurricanes and increase resilience along the central Texas coast, including Houston and Harris County, Galveston, the Houston Ship Channel and Port of Houston, and the region’s expansive petrochemical industry.
In 2017, Texas Land Office Commissioner George P. Bush asked President Trump to help move the project along with $15 billion in federal cost share that’s necessary to begin construction. The money did not materialize under the president’s infrastructure plan.
Instead, Trump at a 2019 rally in Dallas mocked Texas officials for wanting to build “a dam in the ocean,” calling it a “crazy thing that may work or it may not,” adding the state “made a fortune” from federal aid post-Harvey.
Criticisms also have come from environmental groups and other coastal experts. Researchers for Rice University’s Severe Storm Prediction, Education & Evacuation From Disasters Center, for example, said the first study draft failed to account for strengthening storms attributable to climate change. The slow pace of the project is also doing little to help the region defend against hurricanes between 2020 and 2031.
“Our biggest concern is the length of time it will take to build,” said Phil Bedient, director of the SSPEED Center, which has developed a smaller-scale surge protection proposal called the Galveston Bay Park Plan. “We get a major storm in here about every 15 years. The last one was 2017, so we could see another one before this project is complete.”
The Galveston Bay Park Plan also incorporates green features, including a new string of islands in Galveston Bay that will double as a storm surge barrier and recreational park space. Bedient said it could be built relatively quickly and compliment a larger coastal barrier system.
But the Army Corps and Texas officials are holding firm to the original plan.
Burks-Copes said the storm surge plan as drafted would deflect as much as 80% of risk from future storms, particularly from a 2- to 3-mile-wide gated superstructure spanning the primary inlet between the Gulf of Mexico and Galveston Bay.
A central feature of the plan is the 70-mile-long coastal barrier and 18-mile ring barrier around Galveston Island. The ocean barrier, which would enhance an existing sea wall, would have 15 lift gates to allow for the flow of water and commerce during normal times, but the system would be fortified as hurricanes approach.
Yet even as critics, including some environmental groups, question the plan’s cost and worry about its impact on the region’s complex coastal habitat, Burks-Copes said the Ike Dike remains the quickest and most vetted proposal to address the region’s rising storm risk.
“There is no other proposal out there that has the funding to be completed in the time frame that we have,” she said. “The solutions we’re proposing are not only innovative, but they’re long-lasting and can be adapted over the long term if we see thing like climate change changing conditions in the Gulf.”
For example, the study relies on simulations of 660 hurricanes of varying strengths and landfall characteristics to allow the coastal protection system to adapt to changing conditions.
“Bottom line, the design matches the need,” Burks-Copes said.
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from E&E News. E&E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news at www.eenews.net.


scientificamerican--2020-08-26--The U.S. Needs a National Data Service

The U.S. Needs a National Data Service

In early August , the Trump administration decided to end the 2020 Census count four weeks early .
We should worry , because counting , data and measurement are at the core of our democracy .
Article I , Section 2 of the United States Constitution mandates the enumeration of the population .
The Founding Fathers knew that counting the people to determine representation was essential for the governed to have a voice in their government .
But they did not foresee the fragility of our national measurement system .
That fragility is highlighted daily , and is not just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ability to count jobs and measure public health outcomes are also at risk .
So are countless important decisions that rely on data for society to function .
Good data level the playing field for businesses and individuals alike , and are necessary at every level of economy and society : to help small businesses succeed , schools serve parents and students , and central banks make sound policy .
Those data must be an accurate reflection of the people in our country .
Just as frail and threatened buildings can be buttressed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ build a set of data buttresses to support a frail and threatened infrastructure .
When our data collection and analysis systems were established in the last century , no one foresaw the unimaginable amounts of information that could be used to validate and verify official enumeration .
No one foresaw the rapid expansion of data science as a field , in which new methods and tools could be deployed to quickly answer questions of national import , and privacy-preserving techniques can protect individual ’ s data .
Now we have tens of thousands @ @ @ @ @ @ @ public good .
We have real-time data on jobs , people and spending , which is critical to our national economy .
But we can see firsthand the existential threat posed by the production of unverified data and statistics .
We can see the potential .
For example , our work for the National Bureau of Economic Research , which combines almost real-time data on economic activity from economist Raj Chetty ’ s Opportunity Insights Project with almost real-time state level unemployment insurance claim , shows that eliminating the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a 44 percent decline in local spending ; reducing it by $ 200 would cut spending by only 12 percent .
And we can do something about it .
We can build supporting data infrastructures .
We have had massive successes in the past with creating infrastructures that respond to national needs , including the Manhattan Project , the moon landing , and the establishment of the National Weather Service after the devastating Galveston hurricane in 1900 .
To fix this problem we need three separate actions : • First , support state @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of existing data , such as unemployment insurance claims , education , welfare and workforce data , and share such data across state and agency lines so there can be an effective response to local and regional imperatives .
• Second , ensure national comparability and replicability so that measures like population counts can be tested and validated just as the agricultural extension system has successfully done .
• Third , make sure that the public good is served and that privacy and confidentiality is paramount by establishing a National Lab for Community @ @ @ @ @ @ @ answered using the best science and scientists available .
Policy making already has begun moving in this direction .
The Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act was passed in 2018 .
More recently , legislation has been supported by a group of House and Senate Democrats , led by the respective chairs of the Senate and House Labor Committees , entitled the Relaunching America ’ s Workforce Act ; this has language to support state agencies to share and make use of their data .
And the nonpartisan Data Foundation just laid out a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ based on the existing National Lab system .
Congress should act now .
When speaking of the Soviet Union , President Ronald Reagan was fond of saying that the United States should always “ trust but verify.
” Let us trust and verify our data for the 2020 Census count , for the unemployment numbers and for public health .
Our democracy depends on it , and our Founding Fathers would expect no less .

In early August, the Trump administration decided to end the 2020 Census count four weeks early. We should worry, because counting, data and measurement are at the core of our democracy. Article I, Section 2 of the United States Constitution mandates the enumeration of the population. The Founding Fathers knew that counting the people to determine representation was essential for the governed to have a voice in their government.
But they did not foresee the fragility of our national measurement system. That fragility is highlighted daily, and is not just confined to counting the population; our ability to count jobs and measure public health outcomes are also at risk. So are countless important decisions that rely on data for society to function. Good data level the playing field for businesses and individuals alike, and are necessary at every level of economy and society: to help small businesses succeed, schools serve parents and students, and central banks make sound policy. Those data must be an accurate reflection of the people in our country.
Just as frail and threatened buildings can be buttressed by external supports, we need to build a set of data buttresses to support a frail and threatened infrastructure. When our data collection and analysis systems were established in the last century, no one foresaw the unimaginable amounts of information that could be used to validate and verify official enumeration. No one foresaw the rapid expansion of data science as a field, in which new methods and tools could be deployed to quickly answer questions of national import, and privacy-preserving techniques can protect individual’s data. Now we have tens of thousands of data scientists dedicated to serving the public good. We have real-time data on jobs, people and spending, which is critical to our national economy.
But we can see firsthand the existential threat posed by the production of unverified data and statistics. We can see the potential. For example, our work for the National Bureau of Economic Research, which combines almost real-time data on economic activity from economist Raj Chetty’s Opportunity Insights Project with almost real-time state level unemployment insurance claim, shows that eliminating the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC) supplement would lead to a 44 percent decline in local spending; reducing it by $200 would cut spending by only 12 percent.
And we can do something about it. We can build supporting data infrastructures. We have had massive successes in the past with creating infrastructures that respond to national needs, including the Manhattan Project, the moon landing, and the establishment of the National Weather Service after the devastating Galveston hurricane in 1900. To fix this problem we need three separate actions:
First, support state and local government agencies to make use of existing data, such as unemployment insurance claims, education, welfare and workforce data, and share such data across state and agency lines so there can be an effective response to local and regional imperatives.
Second, ensure national comparability and replicability so that measures like population counts can be tested and validated just as the agricultural extension system has successfully done.
Third, make sure that the public good is served and that privacy and confidentiality is paramount by establishing a National Lab for Community Data so that practical questions can be answered using the best science and scientists available.
Policy making already has begun moving in this direction. The Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act was passed in 2018. More recently, legislation has been supported by a group of House and Senate Democrats, led by the respective chairs of the Senate and House Labor Committees, entitled the Relaunching America’s Workforce Act; this has language to support state agencies to share and make use of their data. And the nonpartisan Data Foundation just laid out a roadmap for a National Data Service, based on the existing National Lab system. Congress should act now.
When speaking of the Soviet Union, President Ronald Reagan was fond of saying that the United States should always “trust but verify.” Let us trust and verify our data for the 2020 Census count, for the unemployment numbers and for public health. Our democracy depends on it, and our Founding Fathers would expect no less.