Podcast appearances and mentions of Michael W Beck

Today you'll learn about how kids' well-being can affect adult heart health, what our ears can tell us about the cosmos, and how playing music meant for oysters can help them adapt to climate change. Happy Healthy Kids “Protecting Children's Psychological Well-being Could Help Strengthen Their Hearts as Adults” by Boehm, J. K.https://www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/observer/obsonline/2022-sept-childhood-psychological-health-adult-hearts.html“Psychological Well-Being in Childhood and Cardiometabolic Risk in Middle Adulthood: Findings From the 1958 British Birth Cohort” by Julia K. Boehmhttps://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09567976221075608Hearing Data “Scientists are turning data into sound to listen to the whispers of the universe (and more)” by Jeffrey Cookehttps://www.space.com/astronomy-sonification-turn-data-to-music“Sonification and Sound Design for Astronomy Research, Education and Public Engagement” by A. Zanellahttps://arxiv.org/abs/2206.13536Oystersong “Playing sea soundscapes can summon thousands of baby oysters – and help regrow oyster reefs” by Dominic McAfeehttps://theconversation.com/playing-sea-soundscapes-can-summon-thousands-of-baby-oysters-and-help-regrow-oyster-reefs-188006“Soundscape enrichment enhances recruitment and habitat building on new oyster reef restorations” by Dominic McAfee, Brittany R. Williams, Lachlan McLeod, Andreas Reuter, Zak Wheaton, and Sean D. Connellhttps://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2664.14307“Oyster Reefs at Risk and Recommendations for Conservation, Restoration, and Management” by Michael W. Beck et al.https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/61/2/107/242615Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to get smarter with Calli and Nate — for free! Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/happy-healthy-kids-hearing-data-oystersong

An ecologist by training, Dr. Michael W. Beck had been working on more traditional ecological solutions related to marine protected areas until Hurricane Katrina, when he saw that there was a real need for understanding how natural habitats provide coastal resilience. Now his work focuses on figuring out how investing in nature and nature-based solutions can reduce coastal risk and save lives and money.   Mike is a Research Professor and Head of the Coastal Resilience Lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He's also the former lead Marine Scientist for The Nature Conservancy. According to Mike, “after Katrina, Hurricane Sandy was a second wake up call for our nation. Sandy caused a huge amount of damages. Some of it we were prepared for, most of it we were not. In the end, Sandy cost taxpayers and the federal government $50 billion in recovery funding.”  That led Mike to a non-traditional collaboration between ecologists and the insurance industry including with firms such as Guy Carpenter & Company, Lloyd’s of London, and Risk Management Solutions (RMS)– to study the role of wetlands in reducing risk. The results were astonishing.  In their study, The Value of Coastal Wetlands for Flood Damage Reduction in the Northeastern USA, Mike and his colleagues found that existing wetlands reduced the damages from Hurricane Sandy by $625 million and that salt marshes could reduce storm damages by 16% or more annually. In this podcast we talk about this work and how it can help create incentives (such as reductions in insurance premiums) for investing in nature for flood risk reduction.   Mike and his colleagues have also studied the protective role of mangroves and other natural barriers in Florida. The work of one of his colleagues, Dr. Tori Tomiczek, is featured in Season I Episode #4 of the EWN Podcast. With RMS, Mike’s team estimated that mangroves provided over a billion dollars in savings during Hurricane Irma alone, and can reduce flood risks in Florida by 25% annually. Mike and his colleagues are also studying coral reefs, which can reduce wave energy by over 97%, including waves produced during hurricanes. Their work shows that if the topmost meter of coral reefs were lost, the costs of storms would double globally.   In the podcast, we also talk about the importance of stakeholder engagement for Engineering With Nature.  Mike describes the value of developing research jointly with the insurance industry, which has been critical in the uptake of the work by key stakeholders and decision makers.  We also talk about future risks, which are rising rapidly from climate change and coastal development.   That is why it is important to put that future risk into perspective and better understand what people can do about risks. In a recently published study, Designing effective incentives for living shorelines, Mike and his colleagues found that a relatively small incentive (such as premium adjustments) could convince many landowners to invest in a more nature-based solution, such as a wetland restoration, over artificial solutions. Mike also describes how a greater proportion of government spending on recovery should be dedicated to nature-based, resilient solutions that offer not just flood risk reduction, but also other benefits such as tourism, recreation and carbon sequestration.  He wants to see nature accounted for in our national economics and is dedicated to sharing his work with government and industry policy and decision makers, along with landowners and podcast listeners, to help everyone see the benefits of doing so.     Related Links: EWN Website ERDC Website Coastal Resilience Lab and Michael Beck at UCSC Michael Beck at Google Scholar The Value of Coastal Wetlands for Flood Damage Reduction in the Northeastern USA Designing effective incentives for living shorelines as a habitat conservation strategy along residential coasts Hurricane Katrina Hurricane Sandy Hurricane Irma

Dr. Michael W. Beck, professor at the University of California Santa Cruz, coauthored a new paper in Scientific Reports entitled, "The Global Flood Protection Benefits of Mangroves". Today we dig into how mangroves work against flooding, their carbon sequestration potential, how to quantify their financial benefit, and how that helps make them legible to financial systems. "The Global Flood Protection Benefits of Mangroves" paper in Scientific Reports. "Research shows mangrove conservation can pay for itself in flood protection" in Phys.org. Dr. Michael W. Beck's academic profile. Coastal Resilience website.

Coral reefs are already appreciated for their beauty. But they provide another, more tangible benefit, too."Every day waves are coming ashore. And of course during storms you might have 20-foot waves. The reef is breaking those waves, essentially dissipating that energy before they hit the shoreline." Mike Beck, a marine scientist for the Nature Conservancy and U.C. Santa Cruz. "If we're to lose just a little bit of our reef—I mean we modeled just losing the topmost meter of reef—storm costs would double."Beck and his team used 30 years of wind and wave data, combined with hydrodynamic, ecological and economic models, to figure out what future floods would look like, with shorter reefs. "And you repeat that, all around the world, for all 72,000 kilometers of coral reef coastline."Overall, they found that the flood protection benefits of coral reefs save the global economy $4 billion dollars a year. Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Mexico, and Cuba are the biggest beneficiaries. The details are in the journal Nature Communications. [Michael W. Beck et al., The global flood protection savings provided by coral reefs]"National economies only account for what you take from ecosystems. That is, what you harvest every year gets included in your GDP—not the benefit of keeping it there." By pinning a number on the flood protection benefits of coral reefs, Beck says he hopes government economists will see corals as more than just a draw for snorkelers. —Christopher Intagliata[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]

Coral reefs are already appreciated for their beauty. But they provide another, more tangible benefit, too."Every day waves are coming ashore. And of course during storms you might have 20-foot waves. The reef is breaking those waves, essentially dissipating that energy before they hit the shoreline." Mike Beck, a marine scientist for the Nature Conservancy and U.C. Santa Cruz. "If we're to lose just a little bit of our reef—I mean we modeled just losing the topmost meter of reef—storm costs would double."Beck and his team used 30 years of wind and wave data, combined with hydrodynamic, ecological and economic models, to figure out what future floods would look like, with shorter reefs. "And you repeat that, all around the world, for all 72,000 kilometers of coral reef coastline."Overall, they found that the flood protection benefits of coral reefs save the global economy $4 billion dollars a year. Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Mexico, and Cuba are the biggest beneficiaries. The details are in the journal Nature Communications. [Michael W. Beck et al., The global flood protection savings provided by coral reefs]"National economies only account for what you take from ecosystems. That is, what you harvest every year gets included in your GDP—not the benefit of keeping it there." By pinning a number on the flood protection benefits of coral reefs, Beck says he hopes government economists will see corals as more than just a draw for snorkelers. —Christopher Intagliata[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]