Jim Laurie - Nature Does 90% of the Work

Biodiversity for a Livable Climate

Loss of Biodiversity: Consequences

1.Freshwater: Reduced Availability & Quality

2.Food: Reduced Availability & Quality

3.Disease Processes in Many Species (including Humans)

4.Loss of Climate Stability - Global Warming

Jim Lauriejimlaurie7@gmail.com

6th Extinction ? - Soil ?

“Big animals are like the nutrient arteries of the planet and if they go extinct it is like severing these arteries.” Chris Doughty - University of Oxford Environment Change Institute

In the late Pleistocene, 97 genera of large animals (megafauna) went extinct, concentrated in the Americas and Australia.

Nature Geoscience 6, 761–764 (2013)

“Poop Paucity Predicament” - David Biello, Scientific American

Carbon Lost / Acre?

Soil Extinction 1.MegaFauna Extinction in Australia and Americas

2.Barbed Wire - Herds Can’t Move to “Sweet Grass”

3.Plow - Fragment and Oxidize Soil “Dust Bowl”

4.Pesticides & Chemical Fertilizers

We are now inhibiting Photosynthesis by tolerating bare ground. (10 to 15 billion acres)

We are inhibiting Humificationwith agricultural chemicals.

CO2 levels rise

rapidly >>>

Loss of Polar Ice

>>>OceanAnoxia>>>H2S

bubblesout of

oceans.

“When you understand the power of self-organization, you begin to understand why biologists worship biodiversity even more than economists worship

technology.”

“Hierarchical Systems evolve from the bottom up. The purpose of the upper layers of the hierarchy is to serve

the purposes of the lower layers.”

from Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows

Places to Intervene in a System12. Numbers - “Mostly, the numbers are not worth the sweat put into them”

(I’ll skip a few.)

4. Self-Organizing Systems (John Todd & Eco-Machines)

3. Goals (What do you want? - Allan Savory & HM)

2. Paradigms (Lynn Margulis - Microbial Symbiosis)

1. Transforming Paradigms (questioning your own beliefs and paradigms)

Lynn Margulis - Symbiosis is a key to evolution.

More Poop

More Possibilities

and

More Fungi

More Future

15,000 / square mile

Greg Judy’s Goal: 25 earthworms / sq. ft.100 tons castings / acre

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6HGKSvjk5Q

http://www.greenpasturesfarm.net/

Christine Jones - AmazingCarbon.com

Long stickymolecules

outside the cell.

Humus

Glomalin

Paul Stamets

Jerrie Tipton - 1989

Thanks toPeter

Donovan

Methane?Methanogens produce

methane in anaerobic conditions.

Methanotrophs eat methane in

breathing soils.

Where Cow patties?

Dung BeetlesConcrete Floor

Wastewater Lagoons Bury 3 feet deep