Extinction of Experience - part 1

As we write our paper on the walk-shops we have held at the UT, extinction of experience is a topic we need to address, as we hope to counter it through means of the walk-shops. Or at the very least, address it. 

The loss or extinction of experience refers to the decrease of human interaction with nature, and is connected to the loss or extinction of knowledge of nature.

Several studies point out that reduced experiences in with nature have negative effects. These include reduced health and well-being, and reduced desire to support biodiversity or conservation actions and policies (Gaston and Soga, 2019[1]). To understand the extent of this problem, it is important to distinguish what we mean with these terms when we try to define or measure its extent.

For this we need to describe what we mean with nature, interactions, extinction, and how a changing human experience over a lifetime can be measured validly.

For the first term, Gaston and Soga (2019) state that nature is often described as wild, ‘free from human interventions such as cultivation or domestication. This would leave nearly entire countries in coastal areas as unnatural. For instance, the global map “Last of the Wild” shows the areas in the world where the Human Footprint Index is 10 or less (Gassert 2023[2]) https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/remote-sensing/articles/10.3389/frsen.2023.1130896/full), and it does not leave many areas in the urbanized parts of the world to experience wilderness. Then again, if there were humans to experience the wilderness, the footprint would increase and they wouldn’t be considered as wild anymore. It would also mean that all forms of green infrastructure do not count as nature experience. Gaston and Soga recommend a wider range of the term nature to include cultivated and domesticated species. There is also evidence that these forms of nature also bring about the desired benefits, so why not include more ‘unwild’ forms of nature.

For the second term, interactions, Gaston and Soga state that the debate is about what counts as an interactions, when these are direct or indirect. This is at best a vague scale. For instance: animals, plants, or even weather effects could interact with our bodies or senses directly, we could observe these in our direct vicinity, we could observe these through a window, or we could look at depictions on a screen or painting etc.. It has already been found that patients recovering in hospitals who observe nature, real or ‘fake’, recover slightly faster than those who don’t (Guidolin, 2024[3]). Again, here it appears prudent to include options, but indeed to be clear about what is included. It is also linked to a further term where they distinguish between interactions and experiences. Merely interacting, but not having any reflection or follow-up emotional, spiritual, or intellectual experience is stated to also need a distinction. This I think raises a myriad of questions. If you dream of nature, was it due to a nature interaction? It is less feasible to draw such a distinction as experiences can and most often are more private and immeasurable than interactions. Experiences could be self-reported by participants if answering the research question would be strengthened by it.

The third term of extinction is also on a type of scale. When is experience truly lost (and can be regained), when extinct (impossible to regain)? Gaston and Soga include people who live in highly urbanized areas (thus excluding the less wild versions of nature), house- or bed-bound people (again excluding less wild versions and images of nature), and people who are not particularly eager to interact with nature. Perhaps here extinction is too strong of a word and while knowledge can be regained, on average, for most people, so can experience.

In alignment with Gaston and Soga's call to be more specific (2019), the type of walk-shops we have organized mainly focus on countering the loss of experiences with living organisms.

 

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[1]Gaston KJ, Soga M. Extinction of experience: The need to be more specific. People Nat. 2020; 2: 575–581. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10118

[2] Gassert F, Venter O, Watson JEM, Brumby SP, Mazzariello JC, Atkinson SC and Hyde S (2023) An operational approach to near real time global high resolution mapping of the terrestrial Human Footprint. Front. Remote Sens. 4:1130896. doi: 10.3389/frsen.2023.1130896 https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/remote-sensing/articles/10.3389/frsen.2023.1130896/full

[3] Guidolin K, Jung F, Hunter S, et al. The Influence of Exposure to Nature on Inpatient Hospital Stays: A Scoping Review. HERD: Health Environments Research & Design Journal. 2024;17(2):360-375. doi:10.1177/19375867231221559

 

Student research results - greening railroad areas

Our BSc student Joanne Ax finished her work titled "Assessing the modelled effect of greenery on Dutch railyards, A case study on the Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET) in the surrounding urban environment". In this thesis, she modeled different types of green infrastructure being added to a typical Dutch railyard and compared the temperature reduction impacts. 

The most striking finding to me was the low level of impact beyond the railyards, as the impact was negligible beyond 50 meters, while the whole railyard area, based on Hengelo as a typical standard sized railyard, is 25900 square meters, and a typical railyard zone has large surface area where vegetation could potentially be added (see figure below). There is still a high potential for improvement in future studies that include vertical vegetation, which was not taken into account in this preliminary study. As railyards often have fences and building structures, this could be included, as well as potential green roofs. 

 

You can read the abstract below and the full thesis through the repository.  

"Abstract
Climate change is intensifying urban heat in the Netherlands, where railyards form significant heat stress hotspots within densely populated urban areas. However, targeted research on rail infrastructure remains limited. This research aims to assess the effect of greenery on outdoor thermal comfort, expressed as Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET). A scenario-based microclimate modelling approach was applied for the railyard of Hengelo, which was selected as a case study through a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). Four scenarios were compared: baseline (S0), grass and semi-pavement (S1), shrubs added (S2) and trees added (S3). Under baseline conditions, the railyard exhibits average PET values of 49°C, classified as extreme heat stress. Results show that S1 and S2 reduce the average PET by 0.1-0.5°C, while S3 achieves reductions of 0.9-3.5°C in average PET. The cooling effect is strongly localised and becomes negligible beyond 50 metres from the intervention zone.
These findings partially confirm the hypothesis. The results indicate that shade is the dominant cooling mechanism. It identifies tree-based interventions as the most impactful, providing the biggest decrease in PET. Grass and shrub-based interventions reduce the frequency of extreme hotspots of PET, despite their limited impact on the mean PET. The results demonstrate that targeted tree planting can meaningfully contribute to climate-adaptive design in rail infrastructure."

UT Field Lab Roof update

 

We received funding from the Climate Center to do additional research in combination with our ITC faculty, meaning we can apply additional sensors to measure heat transference through the roof layers. This is scheduled to be installed by August. In the mean time, here is an update on how the different types of roofs faired during their first three months. Overall the vegetation has grown from 0 to 60 cm and attracted many insects. 

April

This first month after installation was extremely dry and therefore the blue-green roof was able to thrive the best, as it could use all the precipitation stored in its subsurface layer. The vegetation of the thicker roof, with more moisture trapped in the soil, was next best, and last was the roof with thinnest soil layer. You can also see the weather station on the control roof and some highlights of the first blooming species.

May

In May we had a sprinkler installed for the two green roof types. This clearly made a distinction in the amount of plant growth on the green roofs. Below you can see before and after, on the 1st and 28th of the month.

June

All vegetation on all roof types has grown significantly and is thriving, despite the current heat wave. I added some different perspective photos to showcase the plant height.

 

 

Show Your Stripes Day

Today is international Show Your Stripes Day. "An annual day to grow awareness about human-caused climate change, its impact, and what we as a society can do to ensure a sustainable future for the people and places we love. The Climate Stripes, or Warming Stripes, designed by prof. Ed Hawkins at the University of Reading, represent the increases in temperature seen throughout the past 150 years."

At UT this is also practiced and the stripes for the Netherlands look like this:

 

I want to point out again this video made by the Climate Talks about why it is so important to keep sharing this information with people. Here another good visual is pointed out to show what we will have to deal with even if we reach all our goals:

 

“Warning Stripes” by Alexander Radtke, which show Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 

Until 2200 the world will be hotter on average with more climate extremes, we can only hope to reduce this as much as possible. The majority can be accomplished by international collaboration and policy changes, but it still requires individual changes. As reminder, we have a workshop to help achieve the second part, as well as local information on where to go to reach your goals for e.g. second hand items or walks in the park.

 

Policy trends in river and flood management in the Netherlands since the 2010s - part 7

This part has an evaluation of the outcomes and limitations of the approaches and considers the topics of: policies for water related hazards (1), and the future of the Netherlands (2). The next part will contain two more topics.

 

1) First of all, in the Netherlands the policies and responsibilities for flood measures, both oceanic and fluvial, are well developed on a national level, but measures against the other increasingly alarming climate hazards of heat, drought, and heavy precipitation are much less developed. Measures against cascading events, involving e.g. health risks, are similarly less developed. This is proven by the detailed organizational charts and responsibilities for water quantity and quality from a European to a municipal level, which does not yet find its equal for the other hazards. A highlighted example is a new stress test for water quality, which does not get the same attention as water quantity, developed by the Foundation for applied research for water management (STOWA))[i]. A prudent approach would be to expand the current Delta Plan Spatial Adaptation to include these hazards and cascading impacts, rather than reinvent the wheel for each of these hazards. This would prevent duplicating governance networks and finance models for each separate hazard and allow for the streamlined implementation of measures. A similar challenge lies in international cooperation. This equally requires improvement, but due to the different nature of laws and policies in other neighboring countries, it is less easy to copy existing policies and organizational cooperation structures. Europe has seen an increase of over 60% of extreme weather events in the last three decades[ii]. From 2018, the Netherlands, western Germany, Belgium, and Luxembourg suffered from heatwaves and droughts, which was followed by a flood in 2021 with over 34 billion euros in damages[iii] and over 240 deaths[iv]. These type of the events, and the fact that the Netherlands is downstream of four rivers starting over a thousand kilometers abroad, traveling through four countries with each their own water management policies before it arrives at our borders, mean that greater cooperation of transboundary river basin management is required, which is why the Dutch Ministry of Water and Infrastructure have launched a new transboundary program to strengthen scientific and institutional collaboration and increasing collaborative capacity for floods and droughts. We already see this trend in response to the 2021 floods in Limburg and neighboring countries, when local stress tests were not sufficient to anticipate or respond to a regional level event, and now higher level stress tests are being developed[v]. On a more local level, the regional Dutch and German water boards are also cooperating on flood safety, prevention, drought, and water quality[vi]. On a larger scale, new policies will need to make a choice of which trend to follow for the possible future, including green infrastructure, and also need to address how to inform the Dutch public of the issues the country faces and why these decisions are being made.

 

2) The future of climate in the Netherlands is difficult to predict, but some trends will lead to inevitable impacts requiring the need for adaptive policies. Combined annual weather damages (see figure below) are heavily dependent on the number of storms hitting the country, and the subsequent deaths and number of cars subjected to water damage.

 

Figure: Annual weather damages in the Netherlands (based on Association of Insurers[vii])

 

While the current knowledge indicates the measures in the Delta program are sufficient until 2050, much like heat records, the sea level rise might also accelerate faster than anticipated. To address this for now hypothetical case, four major pathways[viii] are identified in how to deal with the most major challenges facing the West of the country. Up to 2050 about 600 billion euro worth of infrastructure investments are planned in the flood prone areas, with a life time expectation of 50-100 years, making it worthwhile to develop potential pathways of land use planning. The main consequences of sea level rise are not merely the threat to low lying land, but equally to drinking water access and agriculture, due to salt water intrusion. Based on the IPCC strategies of retreat, accommodate, and protect, the four scenarios for the Netherlands are illustrated in the image below. Protect means to conserve the current land use as much as possible, which requires increasing protective measures. It can be either to close off the connection to the ocean completely in the form of sluices, dams, and locks. It could also have a continuous open connection to the ocean, requiring all river harbors and levees inland to be strengthened. It also means inland waters become increasingly salinized. The third option of accommodate mirrors the living with water concept. This could take the form of locally raised grounds and ring levees. Due to increased flooding, millions of lives and livelihoods will be affected. Finally, in the option advance the coastline is extended into the ocean. This creates a new line of defense and would allow for the continuation of business as usual. It would allow for new land use development, but would cost 10-20 billion square meters of sand to create new land and have devastation ecological impacts.

 

Figure: Four possible scenarios for adapting to sea level rise in the province Zeeland[ix]

 

The main issue facing adaptation is that development and implementation of these types of policies takes decades, which might not be sufficient time to prepare for the changes experienced. It also calls for reserving areas that are also used for implementing plans with similar priorities: energy transition, housing, and infrastructure. This requires more coordination on a national level between ministries to align planning decades into the future.

The problem with future uncertainties is that these predicted worst case weather scenarios could happen in 2100, a2050, or tomorrow. While there is a prioritization to address the worst and most likely scenarios first, it still leaves much of the country insufficiently prepared, especially as the population still expects the government to prepare and manage everything.

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[i] https://www.stowa.nl/sites/default/files/assets/PUBLICATIES/Publicaties%202023/STOWA-2023-38-Handreiking-stresstest-waterkwaliteit.pdf

[ii] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0341816223004691

[iii] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818124001887

[iv] DOI:10.3389/frwa.2022.837688

[v] https://klimaatadaptatienederland.nl/actueel/actueel/nieuws/2024/handreiking-bovenregionale-stresstesten-gereed/

[vi] https://www.vechtstromen.nl/zoeken/@43020/gesprek-duitse/

[vii] https://www.nu.nl/binnenland/6360497/280-miljoen-euro-aan-weerschade-in-2024-veel-minder-dan-de-jaren-ervoor.html

[viii] Citation: van Alphen, J.; Haasnoot, M.; Diermanse, F. Uncertain Accelerated Sea-Level Rise, potential Consequences, and Adaptive Strategies in The Netherlands. Water 2022, 14, 1527. https://doi.org/10.3390/w14101527

[ix] DOI: 10.35248/2473-3350.24.27.640