Beavers are helping fight climate change, satellite data shows
As global warming intensifies droughts, floods and wildfires around the world, scientists in western United States are turning to beavers to help reverse some of the damage.
Scientists at Utah's Boise State University and Utah State University are using satellite data to identify streams where once-eradicated beavers can be re-introduced to boost vegetation. They're also recording how water abundance and vegetation bordering those streams changes once beavers return — metrics of environmental health.
"The real value of using satellite data for monitoring is that there are people on the ground working hard and implementing things like increasing water availability, increasing fish and species habitat," Jodi Brandt, an associate professor at Boise State University who leads a team using satellite data to quantify the impact of beavers on local ecosystems, said in a previous NASA statement. "The more support we can give them, the more broadly these practices can proliferate."
Beavers are "furry weapons of climate resilience," according to one New York Times article. They are innately wired to build dams on rivers and streams, a measure of protection from predators like bears, cougars and wolves. These dams, composed of materials sourced from trees, branches, twigs, stones and grasses cut by beavers' teeth, slow the flow of water that would otherwise gush through the region, according to the National Park Service. The pools subsequently created by the dams then offer a safe haven for the beaver to build their oven-shaped dens while also boosting green vegetation — in turn, this reduces the risk of forest fires and mitigating the effects of droughts and floods that have become increasingly frequent and severe in recent years due to human-induced global warming.
