NASA data on plant ‘sweating' could help predict wildfire severity

The two leading economies are locked into a fresh conflict presently, after the US senator and the leader of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan recently.

She being someone who is a senator for almost three decades now, is an American of Italian origin, who inherited her political career from her parents, who too made their careers in politics.

So, to the people who assume that some families survive on politics only in Japan and some other Asian democracies, Nancy Pelosi is an example that it is not so. Hence at this stage, there could have been nothing else for her to grab the attention than visiting Taiwan, though President Biden did not exactly support her tour and as soon she returned made it clear that the One China-US policy still holds.

The USA and China have a robust trade relationship where they account for almost half of the total global trade. But before the Covid pandemic, it was found that both were also borrowing heavily to maintain their growth.

When the Trump administration started a trade war with China, it did not last even six months. One of the major victories for the USA was the agreement that now China will buy 25 billion dollars worth of US corn, instead of around only 19 billion dollars earlier. So, to the US farmers, who produce corn supported by the heavy subsidies of the government, the market was assured till the next conflict begins between the two biggest economies of the world.

But the loser was Brazil, which got the opportunity to sell its corn to China for six months at least, apart from a few other countries. But now Brazil and others have to wait for another trade war between the two leading economies to sell their corn at a proper price.

The corn China imports are used to produce pork or beef, which it sells mostly to the USA itself. So be it potato chips or computer chips, the two leading economies buy or sell between them only and exclude the rest of the world mercilessly.

No wonder only these two countries were growing economically and the rest of the world, including the EU and Britain, were facing recession even before the pandemic of Covid struck. Besides China has a trade surplus of a trillion dollars a year in its trade with the USA. It also has the biggest cash reserve of three trillion US dollars which is the highest outside of the USA. Also, it is the leading investor in the USA and the rest of the world. No wonder the existing scheme of things has nothing to offer to all the other members of the world economy. Their only chance is a trade war between the two leading economies to sell their products. Besides Trump, no other US administration has cared to even briefly correct this major flaw of the world economy. So Trump is more popular in the world than any other US politician in recent memory. He did his best to bring some balance or sanity to the highly skewed trade of the world. Besides, he adopted policies where no major conflict began in the world and even US relations with North Korea and Russia too improved. It seems unlikely that any other US president will follow his policies and change the paradigm of global trade where there are only two playing countries and the rest are spectators.

In a way, these two countries are the closest strategic partners too, as any spanner thrown in their design might bring down their growth for which not only the rest of the world is paying but they are also heavily borrowing.

So the Pelosi visit might not change things much, as US politics is directed by its corporate interests. Pelosi might have made her point while keeping an eye on the next elections.

The main difference between the US and Chinese economies is the fact that China has a trade deficit with almost no other country in the world, while the USA has it with most of them. Apart from Australia and Netherlands, all other countries buy fewer goods from the USA than they sell to it.

So the hold the USA has over China is even more troublesome. As, if it becomes more strict in its trade policies with other countries besides China, it could curtail buying their goods. It could further shrink their economies and they will have even lesser money to buy Chinese goods in turn.

Therefore the two leading economies are engaged in so many ways that they cannot afford a major conflict between them, as it could bring down both of them together.

Nepal imports ten times more than it exports presently. So it is somewhat in a situation like the USA in some respects. Because it is in a position to impose trade sanctions against a country which goes against its policy.

Nepalese expatriate community sends remittance every ten days which is more than the foreign direct investment which comes here in a year. Likewise, the remittance every four days exceeds the donations Nepal receives in a year.

With internal borrowing at forty percent only, Nepal is one of the best-performing economies in the world today. Only Russia is better with its borrowing at around twenty percent.

So it is now time for Nepal to have domestic policies which reflect its economic might; and hence the foreign policy, which demands its rightful place in the world of this century.

For almost four decades now Nepal has faced tremendous adversities for its survival. They were not only natural but were designed by various global powers to meet their vested interests. If Nepal has done so well during this time, it looks as if the coming days can pose no greater challenges than it has already faced. No wonder no other country in the neighbourhood or beyond is happy with Nepal as it is emerging as one of the happiest nations in the world. What is lacking is leadership which can negotiate better Nepal’s position in the world of today.

A new study uses data from the ECOSTRESS instrument aboard the space station to better understand why some parts of a wildfire burn more intensely than others.

Even in drought-stricken California, not all areas face the same degree of wildfire risk. A recent study featuring data from NASA’s ECOSTRESS mission found relationships between the intensity of a wildfire and the water stress in plants measured in the months before the blaze. The correlations weren’t just a matter of dry plants burning more than hydrated ones; some areas where vegetation had sufficient water burned more severely, possibly because fires had more fuel to consume.

The research, led by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, draws on plant water-use data collected by ECOSTRESS, short for the ECOsystem and Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station. The instrument measures the temperature of plants as they heat up when they run out of water. For this study, researchers focused on data collected during portions of 2019 and early 2020 over six areas – three in Southern California mountains and three in the Sierra Nevada – that were subsequently scorched by wildfires.

Other research has shown that wildfire season across the Western U.S. is starting earlier in the year and increasing in length and severity. In California – a state with 33 million acres (13 million hectares) of forests, much of it managed by federal, state, and local agencies – detailed insights on the relationship between wildfire and the availability of water to vegetation could help fire-management officials identify not just whether an area will likely catch fire, but how serious the damage will be if it does.

“We are in an intense megadrought – the worst in 1,200 years – and it’s creating conditions for more catastrophic fires,” said Christine Lee, a study coauthor at JPL. “Data sets like those from ECOSTRESS will be critical for advancing science and can provide information to support those who are responding to climatechange crises.”

Comparing the ECOSTRESS data with separate postfire satellite imagery, researchers found that the rate at which plants release water by “sweating” – a process known as evapotranspiration – as well as how efficiently they use water for photosynthesis, can help predict whether subsequent wildfires are more or less intense. Both measures indicate whether a plant community is getting enough water or is under stress from lack of it.

“We were trying to understand what drives differences in why some areas have severe burns and other areas don’t,” said Madeleine PascoliniCampbell, a water and ecosystems scientist at JPL and lead author of the paper. “The results show how crucial water stress is for predicting which areas burn the most and why it’s important to monitor vegetation in these regions.” Tracking Plant Stress

Like humans, plants struggle to function when they’re too hot. And in much the same way that sweating helps humans stay cool, plants rely on evapotranspiration to regulate their temperature. Evapotranspiration combines the rate at which plants lose water as it evaporates from the soil and by transpiration, in which they release water through openings in their leaves, called stomates. To avoid losing too much water, plants start closing their stomates if they get too dry. “As a result, they start to heat up because they don’t have the benefit of ‘sweating’ anymore,” Lee said. “With ECOSTRESS, we can observe these really fine changes in temperature, which are used to understand changes in evapotranspiration and water-use efficiency.” In general, slower evapotranspiration and lower efficiency signal that plants are water-stressed. Higher values indicate that plants are getting enough water.

High Versus Low Stress

In the paper, published in Global Ecology and Biogeography, researchers found that water-stressrelated variables, along with elevation, were dominant predictors of burn severity in areas struck by three Southern California wildfires in 2020: the Bobcat Fire in the Angeles National Forest, along with the Apple and El Dorado fires in the San Bernardino National Forest. Whether higher or lower stress predicted more severe burning depended on the primary type of vegetation in an area, Pascolini-Campbell said. For example, stressed pine forests tended to burn more severely, suggesting that drier conditions made trees more flammable. Meanwhile, in grasslands, lower stress tended to correlate with more burn damage, a possible indication that robust vegetation growth produced more fuel, resulting in more intense blazes. And in the Sierra Nevada regions burned by the Creek Fire, the Sequoia Complex Fire, and the North Complex Fire, results showed weaker relationships between pre-fire stress and burn severity. The study authors hypothesize that variables not captured in the analysis – wind or other weather conditions – were more influential in those burn areas.

Supporting Decision-Makers The study comes as NASA is ramping up efforts to mobilize its technology, expertise, and resources to study wildfires. The agency in May announced the formation of NASA Wildland FireSense, an initiative aimed at bringing together experts from different disciplines, along with advanced technology and analytical tools, to develop approaches that can inform and guide fire management decision-makers.

The importance of tools such as ECOSTRESS, which is scheduled to operate until September 2023, will grow as climate change drives greater wildfire risk across the Western U.S., PascoliniCampbell said. “It’s a highpriority region for using these types of studies to see which areas are the most vulnerable,” she added.