Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Climate scientists are worried a beaver boom may be helping to melt the Arctic ice.
Beavers gnawing away at the Arctic permafrost
by Alfred Wegener Institute
JUNE 30, 2020Alaska’s beavers are profiting from climate change, and spreading rapidly. In just a few years’ time, they have not only expanded into many tundra regions where they’d never been seen before; they’re also building more and more dams in their new homes, creating a host of new water bodies. This could accelerate the thawing of the permafrost soils, and therefore intensify climate change, as an International American-German research team reports in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
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This has already affected the water balance. Apparently, the rodents intentionally do their work in those parts of the landscape that they can most easily flood. To do so, sometimes they dam up small streams, and sometimes the outlets of existing lakes, which expand as a result. “But they especially prefer drained lake basins,” Benjamin Jones, lead author of the study, and Nitze report. In many cases, the bottoms of these former lakes are prime locations for beaver activity. “The animals have intuitively found that damming the outlet drainage channels at the sites of former lakes is an efficient way to create habitat. So a new lake is formed which degrades ice-rich permafrost in the basin, adding to the effect of increasing the depth of the engineered waterbody,” added Jones. These actions have their consequences: in the course of the 17-year timeframe studied, the overall water area in the Kotzebue region grew by 8.3 percent. And roughly two-thirds of that growth was due to the beavers.
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Read more: https://phys.org/news/2020-06-beavers-gnawing-arctic-permafrost.html
The abstract of the study;
Increase in beaver dams controls surface water and thermokarst dynamics in an Arctic tundra region, Baldwin Peninsula, northwestern Alaska
Benjamin M Jones1,6, Ken D Tape2, Jason A Clark2, Ingmar Nitze3, Guido Grosse3,4and Jeff Disbrow5
Published 30 June 2020 • © 2020 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd
Beavers are starting to colonize low arctic tundra regions in Alaska and Canada, which has implications for surface water changes and ice-rich permafrost degradation. In this study, we assessed the spatial and temporal dynamics of beaver dam building in relation to surface water dynamics and thermokarst landforms using sub-meter resolution satellite imagery acquired between 2002 and 2019 for two tundra areas in northwestern Alaska. In a 100 km2 study area near Kotzebue, the number of dams increased markedly from 2 to 98 between 2002 and 2019. In a 430 km2 study area encompassing the entire northern Baldwin Peninsula, the number of dams increased from 94 to 409 between 2010 and 2019, indicating a regional trend. Correlating data on beaver dam numbers with surface water area mapped for 12 individual years between 2002 and 2019 for the Kotzebue study area showed a significant positive correlation (R2 = 0.61; p < .003). Beaver-influenced waterbodies accounted for two-thirds of the 8.3% increase in total surface water area in the Kotzebue study area during the 17 year period. Beavers specifically targeted thermokarst landforms in their dam building activities. Flooding of drained thermokarst lake basins accounted for 68% of beaver-influenced surface water increases, damming of lake outlets accounted for 26%, and damming of beaded streams accounted for 6%. Surface water increases resulting from beaver dam building likely exacerbated permafrost degradation in the region, but dam failure also factored into the drainage of several thermokarst lakes in the northern Baldwin Peninsula study region, which could promote local permafrost aggradation in freshly exposed lake sediments. Our findings highlight that beaver-driven ecosystem engineering must be carefully considered when accounting for changes occurring in some permafrost regions, and in particular, regional surface water dynamics in low Arctic and Boreal landscapes.
Read more: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab80f1
Let us hope scientists find a way to mitigate the damage done by the exploding beaver population before it is too late.
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I’m.always thinking about beavers.
stop it
Where I live the beaver population has been decimated. There are hardly any left !
Aren’t they going to take one hell of a climate pounding?
I’m new to this game, being of UK upbringing.
Me thinks the beaver predators may enjoy munching on a few extra of them.
You too, stop it with the projection
Move to Russia, there’s a glut of beavers
I was thinking , will I or wont I ? and there it is, comment No 1 🙂
Great minds run in the same channel.
Dam beavers…
So is my teenage son.
I wonder if any changes in beaver hunting/trapping rules might have contributed to the rise in population.
I have initial indications that the increase in beaver population is due to the increase in atmospheric CO2 but more money is needed to get a better understanding of this important field of research.
The beavers are mostly just moving back into the locations they were trapped out of, and there are no longer as many trap lines active (dramatically reduced market for the pelts). We have had an explosion of beavers her in PEC and across most of Ontario, so why would a spurt in Alaska be a such a surprise?
“The beavers are mostly just moving back into the locations they were trapped out of,”
More likely, the beavers ate themselves out of house n’ home …… and moved on to a greener woodlot. Their dam deteriorated and the lake was no more …… and new growth sprung up in the old lake bed.
“DUH”, if the location selected by the beavers is a site of a former lake, …… then guess what?
That former lake was also surely created by beavers.
PETA’s propaganda has destroyed the market for natural skins and furs and caused an explosion in the populations of these animal. See beaver, nutria, fox…
Need to revive the use of beaver felt to make the hats for the British Royal Guards. The greens, PETA and others have forced the demise of the fur trade. Thus no incentive for the indigenous, and other trappers to make the effort to trap, skin and prepare beaver pelts.
So decline of permafrost may become an unintended consequence of attacking the native fur trade.
The Busby is a bear skin hat
No David, the Busby and the Bearskin are two different types of headgear. The Busby is the shorter type as worn by the King’s Troop RHA and , God forbid, now made of nylon fur. The Guards battalions still wear the taller Bearskins. There are no beavers in the Guards.
No beavers in the Guards ….?
Have you checked out the RHA and Guards recently ….?
RHA and Household cavalry , ie horse guards , have different headgear and entry criteria, to the foot guards. There are no beavers, of any kind , in the foot guards.
Nylon fur? Surely an oxymaroon.
Wildlife in peril. oh no! Wildlife thrives, oh no! The doomsters are relentless.
+100
Here’s the solution: I went to Oregon State University, where the mascot was Benny the Beaver, and the school motto was “Eat a Beaver and Save a Tree”. OK, it wasn’t the official motto, but it was more popular.
At MIT, the saying was, “The beaver is the engineer of the animal world, and the Techman is the animal of the engineering world.” The school mascot was, of course, a beaver.
“Climate scientist” outsmarted by beavers …
😉
So, if I understand the article correctly, beavers are making lakes out of what were previously lakes and so the world is going to end.
Makes you wonder if they are to stupid to think, what cause the lake to be here before and why did it drain out. My guess was at one time there were beaver there and something change to drive them out like to cold or trappers. Again a paper written to support the climate change narratives, which is half baked.
Beat me to it. + 10
Just where did these large lakes, lakes large enough to leave a massive flat “plain,” go? I beleive it would take centuries for silt to build up into a massive flat plain. Worse, it had to be warm enough back then to have a lake! And for the lake to drain between then and now. Where is the history of this warm period?
Hidden to support the agenda?
Once abandoned by the beavers the lake will drain out in a few years. The beaver dam requires constant maintenance.
Really, you should not jump to conclusions, imagine all the money to be spent finding out you are right.
Correct.
The permafrost line has moved from about the US-Canada border to near the Arctic Circle over the last 80 centuries due to general warming since the last glaciation. Just enough for a human being to notice a small change over a lifetime and blame it on something that has also occurred such as beaver population increase. In reality, the result has been millions of acres of boreal forest sprouting up consuming CO2. What’s a greenie got to complain about? The only detrimental effect seems to upon southern style structures that foolish people build on top of permafrost.
“What’s a greenie got to complain about?”
Oh, he’ll think of something–a microaggression, or something he thinks someone else should be incensed about; something “unequal” that really merely reflects envy on his part; a molehill he represents as a mountain; some tiny imperfection that he believes is cause for destroying the entire system; something “unfair” caused by lack of effort or previous government intervention, or, if all else fails, a clever lie that he promotes as truth.
Greens never lack for something to divide us. They should read up on what Stalin ultimately did to his “useful idiots.”
stevem: agreed (Mark and Uzu, too). I noted they said where beavers had “never been seen before.” Seen by whom, the millions of people living in the great cities above the arctic circle? I wonder how hard they looked into whether Inuit or explorers in 1800’s saw beavers there 100 years ago, did they dig into the lake bed and find no beaver bones/fossils? My guess is they didn’t look because it would ruin the “never been seen there before” meme.
P.S. That “great cities above the arctic circle” line? IMO, like Atlantis, ruins of great civilizations are beneath the tundra, they thrived and grew until they elected democrats.
‘Where beavers had “never been seen before.” [Never] seen by whom, the millions of people living in the great cities above the arctic circle?’
Never seen by Leftist academics sitting in their ivory towers purged of all heterodoxy, and who consider statistics just a tool for proving their conclusions when the data won’t cooperate.
And they’ve yet to be incorporated into climate models!
It’s worse than we thought!
We have to persuade the beavers to stop driving SUVs.
?persuade? NO, NO, NO. FORCE them to stop driving SUVS, NOW!!!
Is there a middle ground between “persuade” and “compel”? Maybe the beavers would come around if Greta glowered at them?
How dare you beavers build your dams!
Salute!
And then there was the famous “dam” letter to the Michigan government.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dammed-beavers/
Gums sends…
It’s great to see that Beaver numbers are booming just like the Polar Bears, all the plants and the Penguins too who are benefitting from the Bounty of CO2 and the Climate improvements .
Ok, so that is pretty special.
Ok, so that is pretty special.
I wonder if beavers and their predators go through boom-bust cycles like other critters. In a few years will the greenies be wringing their hands worrying about the imminent extinction of the beaver?
They did when I was a child. They were a few in Minnesota but not at the numbers their are today.
Shave the beavers!
sorry, I meant SAVE the beavers..
Don’t know about the beavers, but the dams might go through a bust cycle if the spring rains are too heavy.
First it’s beavers, now it’s booming busts.
So prior to (1779) the North West Trading Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company (the 2 main forces wiping 95% of North America’s beavers) – what was it like without all that permafrost
(I may have not used Algebra in the last 20yrs but I do remember my Grade 6 history)
At a guess, without permafrost lots of beavers
And lots of all the rest of wildlife
Beavers create water features and wetlands attracting diverse wild life
Another win for slight warming
Indeed. What would wild life be without beavers?
Some questions.
1. What colour was the skin of the worst offending beavers?
2. What past processes caused former lakes to become former? Was it because previous beaver colonies had gone elsewhere for a while?
3. Was the study area cherry picked after looking at earlier photogrammetry?
4. Did the authors measure methane release?
5. Did the authors measure atmospheric residence times for methane in this climate?
There are more, but this is getting boring. Are the beavers boring? Geoff S
Mr. Sherrington asks, are the beavers boring? No. Beavers don’t bore; they build dams. However, the beavers’ rodent cousins, the nutria and muskrat, bore into river banks and levees and cause much damage. To throw more fat on the fire, remember Madame de Pompadour’s famous quote: “Canada is useful only to provide me with furs.” https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1175832
“Are the beavers boring? Geoff S”
No Geoff S, the beavers are busy.
And why all this focus and worry about permafrost?
Remnants of frozen earth when most people died.
Thaw it out, get back to forests and meadows and wildlife.
If the Russian permafrost thaws that will fatally damage the Russian oil industry
Isn’t that a win for greens and for the western energy industry?
A world without beavers is a world of unchecked erosion, deep gorges, arid land. If you have a running creek on your property and want to create a pond, place a poles on both side of the creek mount on one of the poles a looping mp2 player with the sound of running water and loud speaker. If beavers cross your property they might stop and … the loud sound triggers their instinct despite the visibly small amount of water, they should proceed to build a dam.
I’m not sure I understand the logic of why a shallow lake or pond – which is what beavers make – AND which will almost certainly freeze solid, has any effect at all on the permafrost.
Once the ice is solid, the cold just keeps on going down. Snow can insulate but it is swept off the flat surface of a pond much more effectively than off other terrain where permafrost exists anyway.
It appears to me that the beavers are only recolonizing where they lived before.
Beavers are amazing ingenious animals. So long as they can build water containment ponds deeper than the water freezes every winter, they’ll thrive.
Assumptions and confirmation bias ruining science.
How do they know there have never been beavers there before. As little as two million years ago, the arctic was forested and occupied by all sorts of critters. link It was much warmer than it is today.
To speak of two million years – or even 15,000 – to the left, with their 5-minute attention spans is futile. Just slap them upside the head, it might activate some dormant neurons. If not, it’ll still be fun.
Plus 1!
Excellent point, commieBob.
ATheo: Agreed, “never seen before” sounded like the assessment of a person who’s bias is being stroked and who never considers that beavers were there before human eyes saw it.
I agree with that thinking, paul courtney.
Combined with Tiger Bee Fly’s point that progressives impossibly believe they are the first and that the world has been static ‘forever’ just waiting for them, gives them an infinitude of self congratulation bias and smug condescension moments.
“Apparently, the rodents intentionally do their work in those parts of the landscape that they can most easily flood.” Wow. A ground-breaking discovery. How much did this amazing revelation cost?
So after reading here on a daily basis for many years and being a part of the silent majority, I must now speak. I’m a resident of Beavercreek Oregon, there are many. In fact their are many Beaver Creeks and Beavercreeks allover the United Sates and Canada. In the early to mid Nineteenth century an eradication of Beavers was inflicted on our continent. At this time they are still recovering but will never achieve those historic numbers. They don’t have a lot of effective wild predators except Homo sapiens and vehicles piloted by Homo sapiens. Obviously the environmental impact of millions of Beavers in North America is something no one has considered. In my humble opinion as a layman the climate affect of millions of beavers is irrelevant.
No discussion of the environmental impact of beavers is complete without the Argentina chapter of the story.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/07/beaver-overpopulation-tierra-del-fuego/
They tore it up.
Charles, I struggled to get myself, an assistant, and two gauchos, with horses through the terrain flooded by these busy beavers in southern Argentina. Wasn’t funny. The mosquitos and horse flys were bad enough, but the swamps behind their damn dams were mind bogging (literally).
I saw the destruction myself in 1993.
Even hiked across an extremely large beaver dam.
A year or so ago there were some DNR types snooping in my back yard. “Who are you and what’s going on?” I asked. Beaver extermination was the answer. Yes I live on Beaver Creek.
Since then I haven’t heard anything about it.
The train I on which I commuted ran for miles along swamps, creeks and lowland where beaver thrived.
Only, it was puzzling that the beaver ponds went through upkeep and deline cycles.
Then, it became public knowledge that the railroad was filing beaver nuisance complaints with the VGDIF and getting permissions to poison the beaver.
What the railroad was really upset about was their access road along the tracks. An access road that was swamped in places by beaver ponds. The railroad kept insisting that killing one beaver was insufficient since new beaver moved in almost immediately. meaning the railroad poisoned all the beavers in an area.
Public knowledge got the people who owned the land, not just a very narrow “right-of-way” given to the railroad. Landowners got involved and VGDIF subsequently stopped giving the railroad broad permits to poison beaver.
Make sure the DNR knows your feelings about the beavers on or near your land.
“Our study shows that the completely opposite results can happen, and highlights the complexity of climate change effects on wildlife,”
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/technology/ad%C3%A9lie-penguins-could-thrive-as-result-of-sea-ice-melting/ar-BB15VqRj
One thing is certain however. Uncertainty plus complexity will still equal dooming with the weather worriers.
“Beavers are starting to colonize low arctic tundra regions in Alaska and Canada, which has implications for surface water changes and ice-rich permafrost degradation”
Translation
Mommy Mommy, nature is more complicated than the simplistic earth system in our climate models.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/04/09/climate-statistics/
And I’ll bet that none of the models take beavers into account!