Between Two Fires Pdf Free
Enrique Fats
Under the auspices of the global fight against the Islamic State (IS) group, exceptional policies have been implemented involving the indefinite and arbitrary detention of women, children and men in Al-Hol camp in northeast Syria.
Left to manage the largest camp in northeast Syria and its more than 53,000 detainees of 60 nationalities, AANES and SDF have been ill-equipped and poorly guided to manage these processes in a way that is in keeping with international standards and law. Repeated breaches of human rights and recurrent patterns of violence and exploitation have been observed in Al-Hol camp. These have an enormous impact on people living in and around the camp, affecting their safety, security, dignity and access to humanitarian aid. They also impact the providers of humanitarian aid, who are increasingly constrained and exposed to violence and criminality.
Counter-terrorism policies have trapped thousands of civilians in Al-Hol camp in a cycle of indefinite detention, danger and insecurity, which permeates every aspect of their daily lives and deprives them of their fundamental human rights. This report documents and reflects on the impact of the pervasive violence, exploitation and lawlessness in Al-Hol camp on its population through their voices and experiences. It draws on the testimonies of population of the Main Camp and Annex, the first-hand observations of MSF frontline humanitarian staff, and medical data from MSF health facilities in the camp collected between July 2021 and March 2022.
The report describes the personal experiences and accounts of our patients, the wider population of Al-Hol and our staff testimonials. Through these accounts, Al-Hol is portrayed as a detention camp, more than a humanitarian camp setting, where movement in and out of the camp is restricted, rights and entitlements are stripped from people. They lack access to livelihoods, and continue to be held in prison-like conditions with very limited access to basic services and with no way out.
Climate change, including increased heat, extended drought, and a thirsty atmosphere, has been a key driver in increasing the risk and extent of wildfires in the western United States during the last two decades. Wildfires require the alignment of a number of factors, including temperature, humidity, and the lack of moisture in fuels, such as trees, shrubs, grasses, and forest debris. All these factors have strong direct or indirect ties to climate variability and climate change.
A 2016 study found climate change enhanced the drying of organic matter and doubled the number of large fires between 1984 and 2015 offsite link in the western United States. A 2021 study supported by NOAA concluded that climate change has been the main driver of the increase in fire weather offsite link in the western United States.
Drought and persistent heat set the stage for extraordinary wildfire seasons from 2020 to 2022 across many western states, with all three years far surpassing the average of 1.2 million acres burned since 2016. Extreme fire behavior during this period shocked many wildfire managers, as several huge blazes burned for months, others incinerated entire communities, and still others erupted during nighttime wind events, when firefighters could normally count on working the fire line. In the Sierras of California and the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, flame fronts threw embers over the crests of mountain divides, across miles of rocky and inflammable terrain, one more behavior never before observed by wildfire managers.
NOAA was the lead federal science agency for the Fourth National Climate Assessment, a review of the most up-to-date climate science, which found that climate change is altering forested ecosystems and their function resulting in an increase of the area burned by wildfire. Recent field studies have found even stronger links between drought, tree mortality, and an increase of fire on the landscape outside of natural cycles, with much of the research pointing to human-caused climate change. With continued high emissions of greenhouse gases, models project that the risk of very large wildfires will increase by up to six-fold in parts of the United States by mid-century.
For my Polaris research project, I am studying plant-mediated methane flux in burned and unburned fens. Flux is basically the rate of greenhouse gas released from a known area over time. Some plants have hollow stems that forge a direct link between soil and atmosphere, which facilitates the movement of methane that is produced in soil to the atmosphere. Methane gas contributes strongly to climate change and global warming, though it is often not considered as much as carbon dioxide.
I am interested in looking at methane because in this landscape, you can step in a fen and see bubbles of gas (most likely methane) bubble to the surface as a result of your disturbance of the bottom. Seeing this effect is a good reminder that we are always changing the landscapes we are a part of and understanding how our climate is changing is an important and daunting task.
By conducting flux experiments on the same species of plant (cotton grass) in burned and unburned fens I am also able to compare how tundra fires may influence plant-mediated methane flux. When fire burns organic matter is combusted and breaks down, releasing nutrients in forms more easily accessible to plants. Runoff after a fire can also carry organic matter and nutrients into fens. I hypothesize that increased nitrogen input to fens after the burn could affect plant growth by acting as a key nutrient that allows them to grow deeper / larger roots and thus have greater access to methane at deeper depths and act as better straws thus releasing more methane into the atmosphere. Burns could also change the water chemistry of a fen in other ways that may impact the plants growing in that fen and their ability to facilitate the release of methane into the atmosphere.
Because we are lucky enough to have access to helicopters, as well, I am also including a broader component to my project. On helicopter days, I will be visiting fens in burned and unburned areas at a greater distance from our camp in order to try to classify the dominant vegetation in a fen and correlate it with GPS coordinates to try and map species dominance across different fens. I will also be taking aquatic samples in these fens to look at how plant dominance in fens effects methane concentration in groundwater.
Climate change has been a key factor in increasing the risk and extent of wildfires in the Western United States. Wildfire risk depends on a number of factors, including temperature, soil moisture, and the presence of trees, shrubs, and other potential fuel. All these factors have strong direct or indirect ties to climate variability and climate change. Climate change enhances the drying of organic matter in forests (the material that burns and spreads wildfire), and has doubled the number of large fires between 1984 and 2015 in the western United States.
Research shows that changes in climate create warmer, drier conditions. Increased drought, and a longer fire season are boosting these increases in wildfire risk. For much of the U.S. West, projections show that an average annual 1 degree C temperature increase would increase the median burned area per year as much as 600 percent in some types of forests. In the Southeastern United States modeling suggests increased fire risk and a longer fire season, with at least a 30 percent increase from 2011 in the area burned by lightning-ignited wildfire by 2060.
This graphic from the Fourth National Climate Assessment shows the growth in large wildfires throughout the West. The black lines are fitted trend lines. Statistically significant at a 10% level for all regions except the Snake Plain/Columbian Plateau, Basin and Range, and Mediterranean California regions.
These fires often burn hot enough to kill most of the shrubs, and in wind-blown conditions they can consume thousands of acres in very short order. Once burned, sensitive shrubs like big sagebrush can take a decade to return, while bitterbrush (a plant vital for many wildlife species for winter food and cover) may not come back for a generation. Depending on the intensity of the fire, grasses like blue-bunch wheatgrass can bounce back in one or two growing seasons. Others like Idaho fescue may not return for many years if burned down to the roots.
To answer that question we need to somehow grasp what the historical burn interval of fires pre- and post-European settlement was. This settlement across the West brought big changes to this environment including grazing of livestock. Many researchers are working on that very question and it turns out that the types of grass and shrubs in each landscape pre-settlement burned and recovered differently, leading to a variety of fire intervals and intensities.
Since settlement, ranchers have used some of the forage from shrub-steppe habitats for livestock. In some cases, if this grazing was not done correctly fire interval and intensity have changed, depending on whether grazing removed the fine fuels (grasses) while allowing an accumulation of woodier fuels. On the other hand, in certain cases grazing is also now being used as a tool to correct conditions that have led to increased and higher intensity fires by removing invasive plants, and or lowering total biomass through rotational grazing to affect fire intensity. Cattle are also being used to reduce fuels immediately around homes.
The key to good grazing is a plan that takes into account the life-cycle of the plants being grazed, the animals doing the grazing (whether wildlife or livestock), the timing of that grazing, allowance for rest and recovery periods, and managing consistently with natural or historical conditions. Sustainably grazed lands can maintain a diverse shrub -steppe landscape that allows for better control of wildfires.
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