Logging for Water
A battle is brewing over whether cutting down trees will increase California’s water supply.
By Will Parrish
Clear-cuts in Battle Creek Watershed, with Mount Lassen in the background, give the area a look like leprosy on the skin. Photo by Zeke Lunder.
The day after an unseasonal June rain swelled the streams of the northern Sierra Nevada, Marily Woodhouse steered her 2003 Dodge Dakota through 65 miles of winding mountain roads near Mount Lassen. Woodhouse first traversed the area on horseback shortly after moving here 25 years ago. Back then, the land was lush with life, and its towering conifer forests furnished refreshingly cool air on days that were blistering hot beyond the canopy’s shade.
Now, acre after acre of land of the Battle Creek Watershed is parched as far as the eye can see. Nonnative plants like star thistle and mullein compete to cover bare ground that was once studded with pines, firs, and cedars. Rather than finding sanctuary in the forests, Woodhouse now collects data that she says demonstrates the epic damage that has been wrought by the state’s largest timber corporation, Sierra Pacific Industries, or SPI.
Nearly every week, for more than seven years, Woodhouse has stopped at the same 13 stream locations in the watershed. At each spot, the founder of the environmental group Battle Creek Alliance uses specialized equipment to examine and record water temperature, water pH, soil temperature, and “turbidity”: a measure of individual particles that are generally invisible to the naked eye, similar to smoke in the air.
In 2012, the Ponderosa Fire torched 27,234 acres in the watershed. But Woodhouse says SPI inflicted much greater harm through post-fire “salvage logging,” which involved removing virtually every large- and medium-sized tree in the burned area—both living and dead—and deep-ripping the denuded soil to a depth of three feet with heavy machinery in order to accelerate the growth of newly planted trees.
“I used to think clear-cutting was the worst thing, but it’s not,” Woodhouse said regarding the salvage logging. “They took everything down to bare dirt. The water quality went crazy bad.”
SPI officials have repeatedly defended their logging practices in Battle Creek and elsewhere, and have even argued that they eventually improve the health of forests and streams.
For decades, environmentalists have countered that industrial logging, in fact, damages watersheds because it involves removing vegetation that anchors hillsides and constructing logging roads that cause chronic erosion that chokes streams and rivers with sediment.
However, during the past year, a growing chorus of academics and conservationists has given comfort to the state’s logging industry by arguing that California would actually benefit from more logging, especially after years of punishing drought.
At the heart of the debate is the increasing realization that forests throughout the Sierra, Klamath, Siskiyou, and Coast mountain ranges—like the forests that once stood in Battle Creek—are important components of California’s water system. Not only do the trees store and filter huge amounts of water, but they also provide shade for the mountain snowpack so that it will melt gradually to fill the state’s reservoirs with a steady, year-round supply of water.
Marily Woodhouse, founder of Battle Creek Alliance, measures the water quality of the Battle Creek Watershed. Photo by Will Parrish.
Center for Biological Diversity’s Justin Augustine doubts upsides for water users. Photo courtesy Justin Augustine.
Katherine Evatt, an expert on the Mokelumne, has logging concerns. Photo courtesy Katherine Evatt
And an expanding number of scientists and environmental groups are now arguing that many of California’s forests, because of years of fire suppression and other unsound ecological practices, have become overcrowded with trees and that these forests are holding too much water in the soil. Cutting or thinning the trees, they say, will release the groundwater into streams and rivers so that California’s dams and reservoirs can capture it.
A leading proponent of this thinking is UC Merced chemical engineering professor Roger Bales, chairman of UC’s Sierra Nevada Research Institute. The institute operates 1,300 sensors that measure the geochemical balance of water in the Sierra Nevada’s forests, meadows, and streams. “Our groundwater is our largest storage reservoir,” Bales noted in a May presentation at Yosemite National Park. Given that 60 percent of the water supply used in California comes
from the Sierra Nevada alone, Bales encourages people to think of the iconic mountain range as “California’s water tower.”
Another proponent of logging for water is the environmental group the Nature Conservancy, which is helping to bankroll Bales’ work. Last year, the group caused a stir in the state’s environmental community when it published a report called “Estimating the Water Supply Benefits from Forest Restoration in the Northern Sierras.” The report mainly focused on how thinning national forests impacts the forest’s ability to store snow and use water more efficiently.
“The broad point we are making is that the Sierra Nevada and other forested watersheds are the source of most of California’s water,” said David Edelson, co-author of the report and the Nature Conservancy’s Sierra Nevada project director, in an interview. The report concluded that, if the current rate of forest thinning in the Sierra Nevada increases three-fold, there could be up to a 6 percent increase in the average annual streamflow for some watersheds that supply the state’s reservoirs.
But many environmentalists reject the idea of cutting down more trees in order to increase water supplies. While some do not oppose thinning forests that are dense with young trees, many agree that the claims of increased water runoff via more logging are greatly exaggerated, and that such an approach could wreak havoc on forests and river systems alike.
“Saying that more logging produces more water is Orwellian ‘lies are truth’ speak,” Woodhouse said.
“It’s amazing that this idea has cropped up again,” said veteran hydrologist Jonathan Rhodes, referring to logging for water. “I’ve seen it come and go throughout my career, and it always ends up thoroughly debunked.”
Earlier this year, Rhodes and fisheries biologist Christopher Frissell released a comprehensive study that found the Nature Conservancy’s report to be deeply flawed. Rhodes and Frissell’s study—which was commissioned by the private environmental foundation Environment Now and drew on roughly 230 scientific research citations—concluded that in order to substantially increase the state’s water supplies, California would have to do much more than thin forests. “If people really want to take the approach of creating more water runoff through logging, we will be looking at draconian levels of forest removal in this state,” Rhodes warned in an interview.
Nonetheless, the logging-for-water idea has recently gained traction in Sacramento and among some other environmental organizations. The conservation group Pacific Forest Trust is currently sponsoring legislation, Assembly Bill 2480, written by Assemblymember Richard Bloom, D-Hollywood, that could increase forest thinning in certain watersheds to release more water for the state’s reservoirs.
The state Assembly has approved AB 2480, and it’s scheduled for another hearing in the state Senate later this summer. It if passes, it would head to Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk.
Many of the state’s municipal water agencies oppose the bill, however, because it could require ratepayers—California consumers—to pick up the tab for forest thinning. “Our principal concern is the financing methods,” San Diego County Water Authority representative Glen Farrell noted at aJune 28 state Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee meeting.
Environment Now director Doug Bevington said in an interview that it’s crucial for municipal ratepayers to scrutinize claims being made by logging-for-water proponents. “Bay Area water users are being asked to subsidize damaging logging to the Sierra Nevada and won’t see any supply benefits,” he said. “They may even have to pay more later on to address the damage to watersheds from all that logging.”
The theory of thinning or clearing forested areas in order to significantly increase water supplies has been around since at least the 1950s, and has always enjoyed timber industry backing, environmentalists say. Bevington, the author of the 2009 book, The Rebirth of Environmentalism, compares the logging-for-water theory to the logic used by deer hunters as they contributed to the extinction of wolves in the American West.
“The claim that cutting more trees would get us more water is similar to the old idea of slaughtering wolves to improve deer hunting, which actually wound up messing up deer populations,” he said. “In both notions, a simplistic mindset ignores natural complexity, leading to harmful results.”
Over the years, the logging-for-water arguments never gained widespread acceptance, in part because of the deepening recognition of logging’s monumental impacts on watersheds.
A case in point is the primary watershed serving the East Bay. The Mokelumne River is the main water source for 1.4 million East Bay residents, including those in Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond, and Alameda. The river’s headwaters are in the Stanislaus National Forest in the central Sierra Nevada, and a major reservoir—the Pardee—traps the Mokelumne’s water before releasing up to 325 million gallons per day into the 95-mile-long Mokelumne Aqueduct, which conveys it to the East Bay Municipal Utility District’s distribution system. Research suggests that 60 percent of the Mokelumne’s flow comes from water stored in the Sierra soil, as opposed to snowmelt.
According to Katherine Evatt, one of the state’s leading experts on the Mokelumne, historic logging has damaged the watershed through road-building and soil compaction. Logging roads are the main source of soil erosion and landslides in disturbed forests, and they also alter runoff patterns and permanently disrupt subsurface water flows. Further damage comes from the use of heavy logging machinery, the cutting of trees, and then dragging them out of the forest. Burning leftover brush and applying herbicides create even more havoc.
In the late-1990s, Sierra Pacific Industries purchased approximately 78,000 acres in the Mokelumne watershed. And SPI has conducted a considerable amount of clear-cutting in the area, which Evatt said has greatly increased the amount of sedimentation in EBMUD’s reservoirs—a cost that is ultimately passed onto utility ratepayers, because it reduces the reservoirs’ storage capacity.
But it’s not just the Mokelumne and Battle Creek watersheds that have experienced these impacts. From 1997 to 2014, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection approved more than 512,000 acres of clear-cutting in the state, or about 800 square miles: an area approximately as large as Alameda County. And SPI has completed most of these clear-cuts.
From overhead images, such as those from Google Earth, the checkerboard pattern of clear-cuts in watersheds like the Mokelumne gives the land a disturbed appearance reminiscent of leprosy on human skin. Other large timber firms, such as Seattle-based Green Diamond Resources Company, which owns more than 400,000 acres of mainly redwood and Douglas fir forestland in Humboldt, Del Norte, and Trinity counties, also rely heavily on clear-cutting.
“If you walk in a more natural forest, you’ll hear birds, insects, see evidence of small mammals, feel moisture in the soil—it looks, feels, sounds, and smells like a forest,” said Evatt. She is also president of the environmental group Foothill Conservancy, which is dedicated to protecting the Mokelumne River and its watershed. “But when you walk into a clear-cut or young plantation, it’s nearly devoid of life—dry and hot.”
The main architect of SPI’s success is Archie Aldis “Red” Emmerson, who, according to Forbes magazine, is worth $3.6 billion. Emmerson’s son, Mark Emmerson, argued during a 2011 presentation to the UC Berkeley School of Forestry that his company’s techniques are helping restore forests over the long run and are essential in the fight against climate change. “In the next 70 years, we will triple the inventory in our forest,” he said. “Our tree size will go up from 17 to 30 inches in diameter. We will have pulled 500 million tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.”
But critics say SPI’s claims are based on scientific models that are calculated to put a happy face on the company’s activities, which they say are permanently degrading the forests through converting them to plantations. Healthy forests are layered, with multiple canopies, small openings where the sun shines through, and darkened hollows where it does not. Different plants and animals thrive in the different habitats.
“SPI is very good at growing trees,” said Calaveras County resident Susan Robinson of the conservation group Ebbetts Pass Forest Watch. “But they are also very good at turning forests into something more like cornfields or almond orchards.”
SPI is the state’s largest private landowner and controls more than 1.8 million acres of forestland. Roughly 80 percent of California’s timber production currently comes from logging on private lands, with 20 percent of logs sourced from national forests. Thirty years ago, however, it was the reverse: 80 percent of logging occurred in national forests.
The timber industry has relentlessly lobbied to open up more logging on public lands. According to critics, that is partly because of the pace at which many logging companies are decreasing forest stocks on property they own.
Currently, there is little disagreement over the fact that national and private forestlands have sustained enormous damage from logging practices and from a century of fire suppression. Numerous forests today are more crowded with trees than ever before. And many of the trees are approximately the same age, an unnatural condition resulting from clear-cutting and other harvesting methods known as “even-aged management.”
Some proponents of forest thinning, including UC Merced’s Bales, see a synergy between removing trees to guard against fire and extracting more water from mountain runoff. “From a water-resources perspective, there is a sweet spot in between too many and too few trees,” Bales wrote to The East Bay Monthly in an email.
The ideal forest pattern, Bales argues, involves creating openings in the forest that are big enough to allow snow to pile deeply, while leaving a sufficient number of large trees to shade the snow and extend the melting season until late summer.
In June, during a presentation to the California Senate Committee on Water and Natural Resources concerning AB 2480, Laurie Wayburn, president of the Pacific Forest Trust, made a similar assertion to that of Bales. She argued that “overly dense, even, closed-canopy forests” had altered runoff patterns in the national forests, and that thinning—followed by the reintroduction of prescribed fires—would be a means of restoring “more water-rich forests.”
At the June 28 meeting, committee chairwoman state Sen. Fran Pavley, D-LA, said Wayburn had given a “fantastic presentation” showing that increasing water supply through improved forest management would be a cost-effective measure.
But the Center for Biological Diversity’s Justin Augustine contends that such claims are fodder for “a get-rich-quick scheme” that will ultimately benefit timber companies like SPI, rather than watersheds and downstream water users. And Hydrologist Rhodes and fisheries biologist Frissell, who wrote the Environment Now report, say the benefits of logging for water are vastly overstated, and that proponents are omitting its enormous downsides.
“The idea is that if you aggressively cut timber, then you’ll have a bigger timber supply, more water, and less fires,” Rhodes said in an interview. “Well, only one of those things is true.”
Overall, Rhodes and Frissell’s report found that “the effects of logging on water flows are often negligible, nonexistent, or negative, and even in the more optimistic scenarios, the potential effects are small, transient, and ill-timed.” The report concluded that during drought years, water supply increases from logging would be minuscule.
In addition, logging produces substantial environmental harms: Rhodes and Frissell identified nine types of damage that result from logging-for-water projects, such as increased water pollution from logging and erosion from logging roads.
These effects can also be expensive to the downstream communities using the water, Frissell and Rhodes wrote. According to their report, numerous scientific studies have also concluded over the years that sustaining increased runoff through tree removal would mean clearing large areas of forest at a high frequency—as much as 25 percent of a watershed area every 10 years. The physical principle involved is straightforward: When forests are thinned, the trees that remain tend to consume whatever water becomes available. As a result, loggers would have to fell large numbers of trees in order to substantially increase water runoff, Rhodes noted, and that runoff would invariably be heavily polluted with sediment because of the amount of logging involved.
Many environmentalists have a mixed view of the ideas touted by the Pacific Forest Trust and the Nature Conservancy, as well as of AB 2480. The bill, for example, calls for reducing the number of rural roads through forests, a move that all involved agree would be beneficial to watersheds. But it also includes language that could pave the way for logging-for-water projects.
Environmental groups’ divided positions on the bill are reminiscent of the political battles concerning the 2014 state water bond, Proposition 1, which earmarked hundreds of million of dollars for environmental restoration projects but also furnished $2.7 billion for new water storage projects, a compromise that many fear will lead to the construction of new dams in California.
Izzy Martin, CEO of the Nevada City-based Sierra Fund, supports the ideas on which AB 2480 based. She labels it a great starting point for restoring forests through thinning, though her organization has not taken a position on the bill due to concerns that it may finance ineffective projects.
John Buckley, executive director of the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center, said he is withholding support from AB 2480 because it focuses only on five watersheds, rather than addressing the totality of California’s forests, and also because the bill doesn’t address logging practices or other impacts to watersheds. He supports the idea of thinning to enhance watersheds, but said he would rather the bill create incentives for selective logging practices that thin out overly crowded forests, resulting in “lower levels of bare soil, greater protection for watersheds, and significant other ecological benefits.”
Martha Davis, who helped lead the campaign to restore Mono Lake in the eastern Sierra in the 1980s and ’90s, has promoted stronger links between forest restoration and water supply planning as an adviser to state agencies during the last decade. But while she has not taken a public stance on AB 2480, she said that some of the ideas about increased water yield through logging are far too one-dimensional. “Some of the studies I’ve seen so far are treating watersheds like a dam, such that if you just tweak the knob, there could be more water coming out of these systems,” said Davis, now the policy director for the Inland Empire Water Agency in Riverside County. “That’s not the way it works at all.”
Evatt of the Foothill Conservancy has supported a new collaboration by the U.S. Forest Service and the Amador Water Agency to thin forests to reduce wildfire risk, protect water quality, and improve water yield. But she says legislation like AB 2480 is dangerous, because it would fund forest-thinning projects specifically for a single purpose: increasing water yield. “Watershed management and restoration approaches should be more holistic, not focused on a single output or commodity, whether that’s timber products, recreation, or more water,” she said.
Given what opponents describe as AB 2480’s vague language, which promises funding for projects that improve watersheds, some fear that companies like SPI may receive public financing for damaging projects that they claim are beneficial. The Feather River is one of five watersheds that would get special attention under AB 2480. Others are the Trinity, Pit, McCloud, and Sacramento river watersheds.
In total, these watersheds encompass some 7 million acres, about 62 percent of which is publicly owned, mainly by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. SPI also owns a considerable amount of land in the watersheds, and the company is the largest purchaser of logs from logging on public forests in those areas.
Battle Creek is a 350-square-mile drainage fed by water from melting snow that drips down the western slope of Mount Lassen. It’s also one of the most critical watersheds of the northern Sierra. Because of the creek’s ample year-round flow of cold water, state and federal wildlife managers have deemed it the most welcoming area in California for the reintroduction of endangered Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon. Baby Chinook must have cold water to survive.
As a result, Battle Creek is the focus of an ongoing $128 million state and federal restoration effort that involves dynamiting hydroelectric dams and constructing fish ladders. The Battle Creek Salmon and Steelhead Restoration Project is one of the most expensive aquatic species restoration programs ever undertaken on the West Coast. Only the removal of two dams on Washington’s Elhwa River in 2014 entailed a bigger investment.
But critics say the fisheries agencies’ progress in restoring the winter-run Chinook has been persistently undermined by SPI’s destructive logging practices upstream. In addition to the salvage logging, the company has clear-cut thousands of acres of Battle Creek’s forests in 20-to-40-acre swaths since the 1990s.
The impacts from erosion in the area have been dramatic. Jim Smith, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is one of numerous state and federal agency employees administering the Battle Creek Salmon and Steelhead Restoration Project. “Since the fire, we’ve seen an extremely high level of sediment input into the watershed,” he said. “Some of our deep pools in the south fork, which were some of the best areas for the salmon, just aren’t deep anymore.”
The question is how much of it has to do with the 2012 Ponderosa Fire versus SPI’s logging practices. Smith, as with other state and federal employees, pins most of the blame on the fire. And SPI Research and Monitoring Manager Cajun James asserted in a report that her company’s salvage logging actually reduced soil erosion, contending that sites in Battle Creek “disturbed only by fire produced substantially more water runoff and soil erosion than did sites that received post-wildfire salvage logging.”
However, most studies of fire-induced erosion show that it dramatically declines a year later, once grasses and forbs grow back. By contrast, the use of heavy equipment in post-fire logging compacts the soil, and the application of post-fire herbicides prevents vegetation from re-establishing itself. Without adequate vegetation to anchor them, hillsides erode into roads, ditches, and culverts for years afterward.
Woodhouse has hired Jack Lewis, a retired statistical hydrologist from the U.S. Forest Service, to analyze the data that she collects on her weekly trips through the watershed. His findings strongly support her claims, pointing to significantly increased erosion in areas impacted by salvage logging and clear-cutting.
Following a 2011 Sacramento Bee investigation of SPI’s logging in Battle Creek, the California Natural Resources Agency directed four state agencies, including the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, to study the impact of clear-cutting on creating sediment-filled runoff, but reported finding “only one instance of low-magnitude sediment delivery (less than 1 cubic yard) directly associated with a clearcut.”
Woodhouse said the study’s participants failed to find any evidence of logging-induced erosion because they conducted their study at the worst possible time: early fall, before winter rains that would have begun washing sediment into the creek basin. In an email, which was obtained via the California Public Records Act, Cal Fire forester Duane Shintaku later wrote to SPI executive staff members asking permission to conduct further studies, which, he said, “would provide the evidence we need if anyone questions the validity of the Task Force’s findings.” Despite the friendly nature of this entreaty, the SPI staff turned down the request.
The 1973 California Forest Practice Act was designed to strengthen protections against streamside logging and compel timber companies to harvest selectively. And in a 2009 letter to the Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, a nine-member governor-appointed board that is the policymaking branch of state forestry, Deputy Attorney General Anita E. Rudd opined that the 1973 law “requires the [b]oard to adopt regulations that include . . . measures for soil erosion control, water quality and watershed control, [and] flood control.”
But many environmentalists say this isn’t really happening in California, and the main reason is the pro-timber bias of the state Board of Forestry. The board includes three representatives of the timber industry, and over the years, a majority of the board’s members have had some association with logging. Currently, two of the seven members of the board have worked for SPI—company forester Richard Wade and Stuart Farber, now of the timber consulting firm Beatty & Associates—while two other members currently or formerly have worked for other timber companies
Under California law, a lumber company must submit a timber harvest plan—a sort of scaled-down version of an environmental impact report—to the state before logging a forest. The so-called “lead agency” for reviewing timber harvest plans is Cal Fire. In an interview, Russ Henly, assistant secretary of Forest Resources Management for the California Natural Resources Agency, said he thinks Cal Fire staffers are “doing a very good job” with their timber harvest plan review responsibilities. “I know they give a hard look to the cumulative impacts of logging as part of the harvesting plans,” he said.
But critics contend that Cal Fire is uniquely favorable to the industry it regulates and that it routinely rubber stamps logging companies’ plans. The agency’s approvals also greatly aid the industry when environmentalists attempt to challenge timber plans through litigation.
“In court, it’s not about who gave the better argument, but rather about whether an agency—in this case, Cal Fire—simply has some basis in evidence for their conclusion,” said Augustine of the Center for Biological Diversity. Augustine has been involved in several lawsuits against SPI timber harvest plans. “That’s a very low bar, unfortunately, that allows agencies to do bad things and still get away with it.”
If organizations like the Nature Conservancy are keen on protecting the state’s water supply, some say, they should be advocating for reforms of the Board of Forestry and Cal Fire. Instead, the Conservancy has teamed up with the state’s main timber-lobbying firm—the California Forestry Association, or CalForests—to promote logging-for-water proposals.
Shortly after the release of the Conservancy’s 2015 report, CalForests Chairman David Bischel and the Nature Conservancy’s Edelson co-authored an op-ed in the Mercury News, calling for an increase in “the pace and scale of fuels reduction in [national] forests as an important part of the state’s water strategy.”
The fact that SPI also claims that clear-cutting helps restore forests—and, thus, improves the health of watersheds—worries opponents of logging for water, like Environment Now’s Bevington: “SPI’s promotion of clear-cutting is a particularly audacious example of a disturbing trend in which harmful logging projects get repackaged to seem like they are somehow beneficial to forests, when, in fact, they are not.”
He says that the Nature Conservancy’s collaboration with CalForests is roughly akin to collaborating with SPI itself. SPI CEO Mark Emmerson is the board chairman of CalForests. And according to CalForests’ financial statements, SPI gave $71,500 to the organization from 2011 to 2015, more than any other company.
Given that avenues for increased forest protection are largely blocked at the state level, environmental activists have sought other options to build momentum for change, including an effort to create a groundswell for reform in cities and counties. In 2015, the city of Berkeley became one of seven California cities to call on the state Legislature to enact a ban on clear-cutting, joining San Francisco, Daly City, Davis, Menlo Park, Monte Sereno, and Brisbane. The resolution cited Berkeley’s desire to protect its water supply from sedimentation and pollution caused by SPI.
“We’ve talked to lots of legislators,” said Sierra Club volunteer Karen Maki, who is an organizer of the campaign for a statewide clear-cutting ban and a resident of Los Gatos. “They’re sympathetic, but they aren’t doing much yet. We figured if we got a lot of cities to pass the resolutions, it would start to have some influence.”
Maki acknowledges that a ban on clear-cutting is not a cure-all. But it is an important step, she said, in terms of protecting California’s water supply and quality alike, and one that most environmentalists should be able to rally around. In 1990, a ballot initiative called Forests Forever that would have banned clear-cutting throughout the state lost by only three percentage points.
Menlo Park City Councilmember Catherine Carlton presented her city’s resolution calling for a clear-cutting ban to the League of California Cities annual convention in 2014, and she said she received a strongly favorable response from other city councilmembers and mayors. “It’s an idea that makes sense, so I’m sure it will keep coming up,” she said.
The municipal resolutions call attention to another aspect of forest degradation: climate change. The Berkeley version asserts that the timber industry accounts for roughly 10 percent of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions.
According to scientific predictions, global warming is causing more variability in California’s climate, with more intense storms, longer dry periods, and less snowpack, with more precipitation falling as rain instead of snow.
Hydrologist Rhodes says the renewal of logging-for-water claims is particularly frustrating given that there are lower-cost ways of restoring these watersheds on public lands that don’t involve logging. Three of these methods include the reduction or cessation of livestock grazing near streams and meadows in headwaters, reductions in the extensive network of logging roads in national forests, and the restoration of beaver populations, which helps to slow water on its course downstream so that it trickles into the ground.
But Bevington said it’s not surprising that the logging-for-water claim has gained renewed attention in California during the recent intense drought.
“In desperate times, people are more susceptible to believing promises of easy water, rather than looking closely at the problems with those claims,” he continued. “But if EBMUD or other utilities end up subsidizing logging in the Sierra Nevada and other mountain ranges, Bay Area residents are likely to see no significant benefits in terms of water flows.”
Will Parrish is an independent journalist who specializes in investigative and environmental reporting and lives in Ukiah. His work also appears in the Anderson Valley Advertiser, East Bay Express, North Bay Bohemian, and Counterpunch.
Author adminPosted on August 22, 2016 November 10, 2016 Categories Environmental Impacts, Logging Impacting watershed, Main Article Archive, Preservation Issue
Previous Previous post: Last Stands


Polish Open Badminton
Polish Open live stream
*You must have a funded Sports account or have placed a bet within the last 24 hours in order to view bet365 streams | Geo-Restrictions apply | T&Cs apply
Watch Live Polish Open Badminton Streaming
Watch Polish Open badminton live stream and follow the action from one of the oldest badminton tournaments in Eastern Europe.The inaugural tournament was held in 1975 and until 1990 Polish Open was one of the few tournaments held in the Eastern Bloc countries.During the years, the tournaments took place annually, except for 1989 and 2001, when we didn't see any competition.
Domestic players enjoy much success in the tournament. They won the title in every contest, and Przemyslaw Wacha is one of the most successful players here, with three titles in men's singles competition. However, Czech Michal Maly was even more successful, with four titles in men's singles.
In women's singles, Monika Hasens from East Germany dominated during the early years, by conquering first six tournaments, from 1975 to 1980.
In 2017, Tan Jia Wei from Malaysia won the title in men's singles, while Japanese Yui Hashimoto won the title in women's singles competition.
How to watch live badminton Polish Open streams
To add to the In-Play excitement, bet365 (18+, T&C Apply) stream over 100,000 events live to your PC every year - so you can bet as the action unfolds. Highlights include Masters Series Tennis tournaments and matches from some of the top domestic Soccer leagues in the world.To use the Live Streaming service you will need :
To be logged in and have a funded account or
To have placed a bet in the last 24 hours
Any fixture/event on our website which has the Play or Video icon next to it is scheduled to be shown via Live Streaming


Carbon Pricing Response
Home /Social Sciences /Economics / Carbon Pricing Response
Although a relatively new policy mechanism, carbon pricing has shown some very promising potential. It has been known for quite some time that certain industrial outputs can be harmful to the environment, both on a global and regional scale, but it has taken quite some time for economists to catch on and develop policy around curbing emissions. This being such a new utensil in the economic tool kit, governments should be extremely cautious in its implementation.
Like any uncharted policy territory, one must always watch out for the law of unintended consequences. Incentives to discontinue or reduce certain industrial practices that lead to pollutants aren’t any good if it causes a switch from one environmental issue to another. For example, a policy aimed at taxing carbon outputs in the energy industry may break down if producers switch to use of natural gas, for which the mining of comes with its own share of pollutants.
The goals of such a policy should also be taken into consideration when determining the proper application. If the desire is to combat global warming, odds are such policies wont have much effect. It would be as if trying to get extra memory on a hard drive by deleting the text files. In that case, it becomes difficult to properly set the price of a tax. Teitenberg also mentions the possibility of a global carbon policy. This may inflict huge damages on developing countries that cannot keep up with the costs of production.
In theory such carbon policy strategies look highly promising and extremely beneficial. In practice they show signs of promise, but there is no real long-term evidence to show that carbon policies are totally effective. The next decade should prove to be the ultimate test to carbon policies. The concerns above may need to be addressed in that time span, and carbon policy may go through dramatic transformation in order for it to be successful.
Economics / Social Sciences	6:04 pm , May 15, 2018	0
Odinity.com Copyright 2018 | Terms and Conditions | Privacy Policy


Studio Zung is a modern studio integrating architecture, design and the artistry of living.
We are a team of architects, thinkers, designers and makers inspired by a holistic lifestyle and sensuous, luxurious design.
Our approach is immersive; a fluid union of ideas and aesthetics that combines the physical and sensuous storytelling of architecture and design. We believe that every project starts with a smart, visionary idea, and ends with a beautiful, sustainable, and memorable human environment.
Studio Zung is a modern design studio integrating architecture, design and the artistry of living.
If our mind was a room
Tommy Zung | B.Arch | Principal
With over 30 years of experience in the design world, starting in hospitality management, delving into fashion, and his most recent endeavor: an eponymous architecture and design studio, Tommy Zung has transformed what it means to be a designer in today’s world. His unique and balanced perspective - a mix of professional experience countered with years spent surfing, negotiating the oceans unpredictable and formidable nature, gives rise to his commitment to an authentic and holistic lifestyle, and modern, and essential design.
+ Read More - Read Less
Zung had the privilege of growing up among some of the world’s greatest architects and thinkers. His father, Thomas T.K. Zung was a partner and friend of the visionary R. Buckminster Fuller (their firm aptly named Buckminster Fuller, Sadao and Zung Architects), in addition to working with architectural luminaries, Eero Saarinen and Edward Durell Stone. Intelligent and intuitive, Zung’s approach to architecture, and life, is informed by his unusual background, world travels, philosophy, and -- not least of all -- surfing. Ask him about his work and he’ll comfortably discourse on the humbling nature of the ocean -- as well as theories about proportion, scale, and materials.
Zung’s multi-disciplinary approach began with his early studies in Hotel and Restaurant Management, eventually leading Zung to become a key collaborator and assistant general manager of the celebrated Moomba Restaurant and Lounge in NYC.
Intent on branching out and exploring different areas of design, Zung established his own clothing label and ready-to-wear line which sold to over 300 accounts internationally. The success of the label received praise from Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Arena, L’Uomo Vogue, GQ, The Face, and i-D magazine. In addition to his clothing line, Zung designed and created clothing lines for Mitsubishi Corporation, Itochu Fashion, and Sebu as well as creating and guest hosting design segments featured on the Fox Network, F/X.
Starting his architecture firm Zung Design in 2001, Zung went on to evolve and rebrand as Studio Zung in 2013, expanding further on the design principles and environmental integrity of his godfather, Buckminster Fuller. Studio Zung, a multidisciplinary architecture, design, and holistic lifestyle studio, harnesses Zung’s hands-on experience from his various successful and creative business ventures. His architectural work focuses on boutique contemporary design, blending worldly elements with a mindful and integrated approach.
Howard Collinge | Associate
Howard Collinge was born in Hong Kong to a Chinese mother and a British father. He was raised in Australia, but has spent most of his career between London, Asia and New York City.
His advertising and branding work has garnered numerous international awards, including thirteen Gold Lions at the Cannes Festival, as well as numerous Clio’s and One Show awards. He has created campaigns for some of the world’s leading brands, including Uniqlo, Levi’s, MTV, Jetblue and Heineken. His attention-grabbing ideas have lead to a “most watched” viral video as well as an award-winning branded content series for MTV.
Howard has one of the most diverse creative and entrepreneurial portfolios in his field, founding the fashion and culture blog, The Unique Creatures, which garnered praise from the likes of Vogue, Net-a-Porter and Blackbook Media. He is also the author of Beautiful Economics: How Art, Design, Beauty & Unicorns Will Save the Universe. The book can be found in leading gallery bookstores such as The Gagosian NY, and LACMA (LA Contemporary Art Museum).
Through Howard’s multi-disciplinary cross-pollination approach, he has developed a reputation as an astute creative director across a spectrum of industries, from travel and fashion, hotels and hospitality, wellness and health.
With a passion for “beautiful economics” and environmental sustainability, Howard was invited in 2013 to become an associate of Studio Zung, a multidisciplinary architecture, design and branding firm associated with the visionary R. Buckminster Fuller.
You can view Howard's website here.
Thomas T.K. Zung | B.Arch, M.S. Design Science, AIA | Associate
Thomas T.K. Zung, president of Buckminster Fuller, Sadao and Zung Architects was a student of Buckminster Fuller. Prior to joining Fuller, he served as principal designer and project architect to the internationally renowned architect, Edward Durell Stone for many years. While associated with Edward Durell Stone, Zung worked on such notable designs as the New Orleans International Trade Mart; the Master Plan for the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland; the General Motors Headquarters building in New York; and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
Zung established Thomas T.K. Zung Architects, Inc. in Cleveland, Ohio and the following year, 1968, designed the first elongated geodesic dome in association with Buckminster Fuller Synergetics organization. Thomas T.K. Zung Architects and R. Buckminster Fuller merged to form Buckminster Fuller, Sadao and Zung Architects designing numerous Geodesic domes, tensegrity structures, vector equilibriums, museum exhibitions, publications, and Fuller’s last invention, ‘Hang It All’. A founding member of Buckminster Fuller Institute and SNEC, he is a Distinguished Senior Fellow to the Stanford University Libraries, and author/editor of Fuller’s Anthology for a New Millennium published under St. Martin’s Press.
Buckminster Fuller, Sadao and Zung Architects is a member of The American Institute of Architects.
Kupal Fontaine | B.Arch | Senior Architectural Designer
Kupal Fontaine received his Bachelor of Architecture from the New York Institute of Technology in 2010. Kupal started architectural drawing at the age of 15 and has since advanced through the field. Kupal’s assets lay in design build projects and is responsible for all aspects of schematic design, design development, and working drawings. Kupal’s exacting command of drawing enables him to simultaneously design bridging plan and section without compromising the architectural form.
Mr. Fontaine is currently pursuing his ARE to become a licensed architect.
Phillip Yang | B.Arch | Junior Architectural Designer
Phillip received his Bachelor in Architecture from the University of Southern California School of Architecture in 2017. Prior to Studio Zung, Phillip spent a semester abroad in Japan and various part of China including Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai. As a Los Angeles native, Phillip originally fell in love with painting and drafting in high school leading him to eventually pursue a path in architecture.
His past work includes large-scale installation projects to residential renovations with the Los Angeles firm Paragon Architects.
Hugues De Blignierères | M. Interior Architect
Architect of Interior & Designer (graduated from ESAG Penninghen - Excellent Mention)
Hugues went through internationally renowned agencies such as Gilles & Boissier, India Mahdavi and Joseph Dirand. With these experiences he defines the interior architecture as elegant and timeless. He motivates his creations by the perpetual search of the beautiful in order to sublimate at every moment the facts and gestures of everyday life. Fascinated by the hand of Man, his projects are part of a desire to preserve an authentic know-how.
Talley Carlston | BA | Graphic Designer
Talley received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Portland, where he studied Advertising and Graphic Design. With a strong interest for graphics and fashion, he spent a semester abroad in Paris where he studied luxury brand management developing a strong understanding of high tier branding and design. Since graduating he has worked at Baron & Baron, Laird+Partners, Love&War as well as other notable advertising agencies building his expertise as a multi disciplinary designer in branding, graphic layout, and visual design.
Mr. Carlston’s works as a graphic designer for Studio Zung through visual graphic collateral and visual brand material.


HomeContentSpecial issues100 (Suppl.I) March 2005
MEM INST OSWALDO CRUZ, RIO DE JANEIRO, 100 (Suppl.I) March 2005
PAGES: 67-71 DOI: Full paper
Nitric oxide and the resolution of inflammation: implications for atherosclerosis
Catherine A Shaw, Emma L Taylor*, Ian L Megson, Adriano G Rossi* +
Centre for Cardiovascular Science, Hugh Robson Building, George Square
*MRC Centre for Inflammation Research, University of Edinburgh, Teviot Place, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
The ubiquitous free radical, nitric oxide (NO), plays an important role in many biological processes including the regulation of the inflammatory response. Alterations in NO synthesis by endogenous systems likely influence inflammatory processes occurring in a wide range of diseases including many in the cardiovascular system (e.g. atherosclerosis). Progression of inflammatory conditions depends not only upon the recruitment and activation of inflammatory cells but also upon their subsequent removal from the inflammatory milieu. Apoptosis, or programmed cell death, is a fundamental process regulating inflammatory cell survival and is critically involved in ensuring the successful resolution of an inflammatory response. Apoptosis results in shutdown of secretory pathways and renders effete, but potentially highly histotoxic, cells instantly recognisable for non-inflammatory clearance by phagocytes (e.g., macrophages). However, dysregulation of apoptosis and phagocytic clearance mechanisms can have drastic consequences for development and resolution of inflammatory processes. In this review we highlight the complexities of NO-mediated regulation of inflammatory cell apoptosis and clearance by phagocytes and discuss the molecular mechanisms controlling these NO mediated effects. We believe that manipulation of pathways involving NO may have previously unrecognised therapeutic potential for limiting or resolving inflammatory and cardiovascular disease.
The inorganic free radical, nitric oxide (NO), was first identified as an endothelium-derived endogenous messenger responsible for the regulation of vascular tone (Furchgott & Zawadzki 1980, Palmer et al. 1987). However, since then it has become clear that NO is the signalling molecule responsible for several diverse physiological and pathophysiological processes. Synthesised from L-arginine by three isoforms of the enzyme nitric oxide synthase (NOS), NO is now known to control vascular smooth muscle tone, inhibit platelet and inflammatory cell adhesion and activation, and to be a transmitter at non-adrenergic non-cholinergic (NANC) synapses (Moncada et al. 1991, Quinn et al. 1995). Recent studies have revealed that NO can also modulate apoptosis, or programmed cell death, in a variety of cell types, including human inflammatory cells (Taylor et al. 2003). Apoptosis of inflammatory cells is a highly regulated process whereby cellular death occurs without the disruption of the cell membrane and subsequent release of the pro-inflammatory and histotoxic contents of the dying cell (Haslett 1997, Rossi et al. 2003). Apoptotic cells are instantly recognised and ingested by phagocytes, such as macrophages, using mechanisms that down-regulate pro-inflammatory mediator release and increase the release of agents with anti-inflammatory potential from the ingesting cell (Meagher et al. 1992, Fadok et al. 1998, Liu et al. 1999). Hence, apoptosis represents a non-inflammatory mechanism to remove potentially damaging pro-inflammatory cells from the site of inflammation and is therefore critical to the successful resolution of the inflammatory response. Pharmacological manipulation of the rate of apoptosis in inflammatory cells, such as granulocytes and macrophages, may represent a potential therapeutic strategy for the treatment of chronic inflammatory disorders (Ward et al. 1999, Gilroy et al. 2004).
NO can be both pro- and anti-apoptotic, depending on local concentrations and the specific cell type in question (Quinn et al. 1995, Kim et al. 1999, Taylor et al. 2003). Current evidence suggests that lower concentrations of NO produced by the constitutive endothelial and neuronal isoforms of NOS (eNOS and nNOS) are cytoprotec-tive, whilst supraphysiological concentrations produced by the inducible NOS isoform (iNOS) trigger cell death (Nicotera et al. 1997). This paradox may be explained, at least in part, by the free radical nature of NO and hence the ease with which it will react with other radicals, particularly reactive oxygen species, present in the milieu to form various NO-related species in vivo. For example, NO combines rapidly with inflammatory cell derived superoxide anions (O2-) to form highly cytotoxic peroxynitrite (ONOO-) (Maxwell & Lip 1997).
NO AS A MEDIATOR OF INFLAMMATORY CELL APOPTOSIS
The pro- and anti-apoptotic actions of NO have been well documented in many cell systems. For example, high concentrations of either exogenous or endogenous iNOS-derived NO have been shown to induce apoptosis in murine macrophage cell lines (Albina et al. 1993, Sarih et al. 1993). However, pre-treatment with low concentrations of exogenous NO protects RAW 264 cells against cell death upon subsequent exposure to higher concentrations of NO which would normally be cytotoxic (Yoshioka et al. 2003). However, despite the apparent reduced capacity of human macrophages in comparison to murine macrophages (Albina 1995, Schneemann & Schoedon 2002), to generate iNOS derived NO (Thomassen & Kavuru 2001), human macrophages do undergo apoptosis in response to exogenous NO. For example, the NO donors, S-nitrosoglutathione (GSNO), and spermine diazenium diolate (SPER/NO) induce apoptosis in primary human monocyte-derived macrophages (von Knethen et al. 1999). Exogenously delivered NO from NO donors (e.g., sodium nitroprusside; SNP and GSNO) induce apoptosis in human neutrophils (Fortenberry et al. 1999, Singhal et al. 1999). However, it has also been established that NO may have anti-apoptotic potential in neutrophils; low concentrations of NO generated from the spontaneous NO donors, SPER/NO and DEA/NO, reduce the rate of neutrophil apoptosis (Taylor et al. 2001). In contrast, the same study showed that the oxatriazole derivative, GEA-3162, at equivalent concentrations produced no such inhibition. However, it was demonstrated that GEA-3162 decomposes to co-generate both NO and O2-, which then react to form ONOO- (Taylor et al. 2004). This suggests that the pro- or anti-apoptotic effects of NO may be critically governed by the specific NO-related species generated.
Interestingly, the production of ONOO- may be of particular importance at sites of inflammation where the concentration of reactive oxygen species is likely to be elevated (Crow & Beckman 1995). However, the precise role of ONOO- in inflammatory cell apoptosis remains to be fully elucidated. There is some evidence to suggest that ONOO- at high concentrations increases apoptosis in murine RAW 264.7 cells (Sandoval et al. 1997), whilst at lower concentrations it may have a protective effect against lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and interferon (IFN)-g-induced apoptosis in these cells (Scivittaro et al. 1997). A scavenger of ONOO-, uric acid, had no effect on apoptosis induced by the NO donors GSNO or SPER/NO in RAW 264.7 macrophages, but abolished apoptosis induced by the ONOO- generator SIN-1, suggesting that ONOO- is a mediator of apoptosis, at least not in this cell type (Brockhaus & Brune 1999).
As is the case with macrophages, there are conflicting reports about the ability of ONOO- to induce or suppress apoptosis in neutrophils. Several investigators have demonstrated that SIN-1 and GEA-3162 increases the rate of apoptosis in human neutrophils (Blaylock et al. 1998, Ward et al. 2000, Taylor et al. 2004). Conversely, Blaylock et al. (1998) reported SIN-1 produced no significant increase in neutrophil apoptosis. However, this may be due to experimental differences and the exact amounts of ONOO- present rather than a true difference in the effect of ONOO- (Taylor et al. 2003).
NO AND APOPTOSIS IN THE RESOLUTION OF INFLAMMATION
The ability of NO to induce apoptosis is particularly relevant during the resolution phase of inflammation. In a mouse model of kidney inflammation, activated macrophages have been shown to induce apoptosis in neigh-bouring mesangial cells prior to their ingestion by phagocytes (Duffield et al. 2000). The ability of these activated macrophages to induce apoptosis is greatly reduced in the presence of the NOS inhibitor N-É-monomethyl-L-arginine (L-NMMA), suggesting that macrophage-directed apoptosis of mesangial cell apoptosis occurs via a NO-dependent mechanism (Duffield et al. 2001). Similarly, several studies have demonstrated that activated macrophages infiltrating murine tumours induce apoptosis via a NO-dependent pathway in both activated anti-tumour T cells and in the tumour cells themselves (Saio et al. 2001, Chattopadhyay et al. 2002). Thus, it appears that macrophages have the capacity to induce apoptosis of nearby cells by the liberation of NO to enhance the clearance of apoptotic cells and thereby promote the resolution phase of inflammation (Figure).
MECHANISM OF ACTION OF NO
The classical pathway by which NO exerts many of its actions is via activation of the enzyme soluble guanylate cyclase (sGC) (Moncada et al. 1991) and resultant conversion of guanosine 5'-triphosphate (GTP) to the second messenger 3', 5'-cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) (Ignarro et al. 1999). However, recent studies have established that NO can also act via cGMP-independent pathways in various systems, particularly during the inhibition of platelet aggregation and regulation of inflammatory cell apoptosis (Gordge et al. 1998, Sogo et al. 2000, Ward et al. 2000, Crane et al. 2002).
It is generally thought that lower concentrations of NO inhibit apoptosis via cGMP-dependent mechanisms, whilst higher concentrations are cytotoxic on account of cGMP-independent signalling. For example, Yoshoka et al. (2003) demonstrated that pre-treatment of RAW 264 cells with a low concentration of the NO donor SNP, inhibited cell death upon subsequent exposure to higher concentrations of NO. This protection was negated in the presence of sGC inhibitors and could be mimicked by cGMP analogues, suggesting that the cellular protection was conferred by cGMP.
Conversely, at higher concentrations, NO has been shown to induce apoptosis in rabbit macrophages _ an effect which was unaffected by antagonism of cGMP-dependent kinases and not mimicked by cGMP analogues, suggesting that the pro-apoptotic action of NO is cGMP-independent (Wang et al. 1999). The peroxynitrite generators, SIN-1 and GEA-3162, have also been shown to produce a marked concentration-dependent induction of apoptosis in isolated human neutrophils (Ward et al. 2000). Again, this induction was unaffected by inhibitors of sGC, and cGMP analogues failed to elicit a pro-apoptotic response suggesting that a mechanism independent of cGMP signalling also featured in neutrophils. Interestingly, superoxide dismutase (SOD), the enzyme responsible for converting O2- to hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), antagonised the actions of SIN-1 and GEA-3162, whilst "authentic" peroxynitrite mimicked their effects. This result may, therefore, highlight the critical importance of NO-related species in determining an anti- or pro-apoptotic response, with the final outcome depending on the balance between reactive oxygen and nitrogen species.
Atherosclerosis is a multi-factorial condition with a complicated aetiology, and, in combination with the associated cardiovascular syndromes, such as myocardial infarction and stroke, is a major cause of morbidity and mortality. However, it is now widely recognised that there is an inflammatory component to the disease pathogenesis and progression (Ross 1999a, b, Ludewig et al. 2002).
Atherosclerosis is characterised by the development of lipid-rich atherosclerotic plaques in the subendothelial space of conduit vessels, such as the coronary artery and aorta (Badimon et al. 1993). These plaques are usually eccentric, with the lipid rich core encapsulated by a fibrous, collagen-rich cap of smooth muscle cells and extracellular matrix (Davies 1997). The underlying causes of atherogenesis remain largely unknown, although a critical early stage is thought to be an insult to the endothelium, either physical or through oxidative stress. The consequences of this insult are multiple; firstly, in contrast to the situation in healthy endothelium, the injured endothelium becomes dysfunctional and production of NO by eNOS decreases, promoting vasoconstriction and platelet and inflammatory cell adhesion. Secondly, a protective inflammatory response is triggered. However, depending on the nature and duration of the insult, this protective response becomes excessive and over a period of years, comes to constitute the disease process itself (Ross 1999a, b). The inflammatory process begins with the expression of chemotactic and adhesion molecules for monocytes and lymphocytes, such as vascular cell adhesion molecule 1 (VCAM-1), on dysfunctional endothelial cells. Circulating monocytes adhere to the site of endothelial damage and translocate to the sub-endothelial space (Vogel 1997). Colony stimulating factors secreted from areas of endothelial damage induce monocytes to differentiate into macrophages, which then express scavenger receptors on their membranes, facilitating the in-ternalisation of oxidised low density lipoprotein (ox-LDL). The accumulation of ox-LDL continues unchecked as, unlike LDL receptors, scavenger receptors are not down-regulated by cells in the cholesterol-replete state (Maxwell & Lip 1997). In this lipid-laden state, macrophages are known as foam cells and it is an aggregation of these foam cells in the vessel intima which form the earliest recognisable lesion of atherosclerosis _ the fatty streak (Ross 1993). The plaque continues to grow via the accumulation of further macrophage foam cells and eventually becomes overlaid with a layer of smooth muscle cells forming a fibrous, collagen-rich cap. The cap serves to keep the highly thrombogenic contents of the plaque separate from the circulation. However, if the plaque cap is compromised and the contents exposed to the circulation, platelets are rapidly recruited and activated resulting in thrombus formation, leading to the more serious acute cardiovascular syndromes (Badimon et al. 1993).
INFLAMMATORY CELL APOPTOSIS IN ATHEROSCLEROSIS
Recruitment of inflammatory cells, particularly monocytes and macrophages, is the major driving force behind plaque growth and development. However, the plaque is dynamic and inflammatory cells are constantly turning over within the core. It is well established that apoptotic cells, particularly macrophages, are present in atherosclerotic plaques in both human and animal models of the disease. Apoptotic macrophages and smooth muscle cells have been identified by TUNEL staining in sections from human plaques by various authors (Bjorkerud & Bjorkerud 1996, Haunstetter & Izumo 1998). Because apoptotic cells are ingested by phagocytes without initiating any further proinflammatory response, it has been suggested that apoptosis may represent a mechanism to regress the plaque. NO is a particularly promising candidate for this strategy because, as well as the pro-apoptotic actions discussed above, it has several other powerful anti-atherogenic characteristics including a powerful inhibitory effect on platelet and inflammatory cell activation (Moncada et al. 1991, Armstrong 2001). Evidence is emerging in support of this hypothesis. For example, administration of L-arginine (the substrate for NOS) to hypercholesterolemic rabbits increases the number of apoptotic macrophages in intimal lesions by three fold. This increase in apoptosis was associated with a regression of the plaque, suggesting that manipulation of the NO synthase pathway may well represent a therapeutic approach to resolving the inflammatory response in the vessel wall (Wang et al. 1999). However, care must by exercised when considering this approach because NO is also known to induce apoptosis in smooth muscle cells (Labelle et al. 2004). Loss of cells from the fibrous cap during the latter stages of atherosclerosis may well be detrimental, destabilising the plaque and promoting rupture (Kockx & Knaapen 2000).
Apoptosis of inflammatory cells is a tightly regulated process whereby cells are removed from the site of inflammation without triggering a subsequent pro-inflammatory response that would instigate further tissue injury. Pharmacological manipulation of apoptosis during chronic inflammatory conditions, such as atherosclerosis, may aid the resolution of inflammation and hence halt, or delay, disease progression. The ubiquitous signalling molecule and inducer of apoptosis, NO, is a likely candidate for such manipulation and may represent a novel therapeutic target for the treatment of such conditions.
Albina JE 1995. On the expression of nitric oxide synthase by human macrophages. Why no NO? J Leukoc Biol 58: 643-649.
Albina JE, Cui S et al. 1993. Nitric oxide-mediated apoptosis in murine peritoneal macrophages. J Immunol 150: 5080-5085.
Armstrong R 2001. The physiological role and pharmacological potential of nitric oxide in neutrophil activation.Int Immunopharmacol 1: 1501-1512.
Badimon JJ, Fuster V et al. 1993. Coronary atherosclerosis. A multifactorial disease. Circulation 87: II3-16.
Bjorkerud S, Bjorkerud B 1996. Apoptosis is abundant in human atherosclerotic lesions, especially in inflammatory cells (macrophages and T cells), and may contribute to the accumulation of gruel and plaque instability. Am J Pathol 149: 367-380.
Blaylock MG, Cuthbertson BH et al. 1998. The effect of nitric oxide and peroxynitrite on apoptosis in human polymorphonuclear leukocytes. Free Radic Biol Med 25: 748-752.
Brockhaus F, Brune B 1999. Overexpression of CuZn superoxide dismutase protects RAW 264.7 macrophages against nitric oxide cytotoxicity. Biochem J 338 ( Pt 2): 295-303.
Chattopadhyay S, Das T et al. 2002. Protein A-activated macrophages induce apoptosis in Ehrlich's ascites carcinoma through a nitric oxide-dependent pathway. Apoptosis 7: 49-57.
Crane MS, Ollosson R et al. 2002. Novel role for low molecular weight plasma thiols in nitric oxide-mediated control of platelet function. J Biol Chem 277: 46858-46863.
Crow JP, Beckman JS 1995. Reactions between nitric oxide, superoxide, and peroxynitrite: footprints of peroxynitrite in vivo. Adv Pharmacol 34: 17-43.
Davies MJ 1997. The composition of coronary-artery plaques. N Engl J Med 336: 1312-1314.
Duffield JS, Erwig LP et al. 2000. Activated macrophages direct apoptosis and suppress mitosis of mesangial cells. J Immunol 164: 2110-2119.
Duffield JS, Ware CF et al. 2001. Suppression by apoptotic cells defines tumor necrosis factor-mediated induction of glomerular mesangial cell apoptosis by activated macrophages. Am J Pathol 159: 1397-1404.
Fadok VA, Bratton DL et al. 1998. Macrophages that have ingested apoptotic cells in vitro inhibit proinflammatory cytokine production through autocrine/paracrine mechanisms involving TGF-beta, PGE2, and PAF. J Clin Invest 101: 890-898.
Fortenberry JD, Owens ML et al. 1999. S-nitrosoglutathione enhances neutrophil DNA fragmentation and cell death. Am J Physiol 276: L435-442.
Furchgott RF, Zawadzki JV 1980. The obligatory role of endothelial cells in the relaxation of arterial smooth muscle by acetylcholine. Nature 288: 373-376.
Gilroy DW, Lawrence T et al. 2004. Inflammatory resolution: new opportunities for drug discovery. Nat Rev Drug Discov 3: 401-416.
Gordge MP, Hothersall JS et al. 1998. Evidence for a cyclic GMP-independent mechanism in the anti-platelet action of S-nitrosoglutathione. Br J Pharmacol 124: 141-148.
Haslett C 1997. Granulocyte apoptosis and inflammatory disease. Br Med Bull 53: 669-683.
Haunstetter A, Izumo S 1998. Apoptosis: basic mechanisms and implications for cardiovascular disease. Circ Res 82: 1111-1129.
Ignarro LJ, Cirino G et al. 1999. Nitric oxide as a signaling molecule in the vascular system: an overview. J Cardiovasc Pharmacol 34: 879-886.
Kim YM, Bombeck CA et al. 1999. Nitric oxide as a bifunctional regulator of apoptosis. Circ Res 84: 253-256.
Kockx MM, Knaapen MW 2000. The role of apoptosis in vascular disease. J Pathol 190: 267-280.
Labelle M, Beaulieu M et al. 2004. Integrating clinical practice guidelines into daily practice: impact of an interactive workshop on drafting of a written action plan for asthma patients. J Contin Educ Health Prof 24: 39-49.
Liu Y, Cousin JM et al. 1999. Glucocorticoids promote nonphlogistic phagocytosis of apoptotic leukocytes. J Immunol 162: 3639-3646.
Ludewig B, Zinkernagel RM et al. 2002. Arterial inflammation and atherosclerosis. Trends Cardiovasc Med 12: 154-159.
Maxwell SR, Lip GY 1997. Free radicals and antioxidants in cardiovascular disease. Br J Clin Pharmacol 44: 307-317.
Meagher LC, Savill JS et al. 1992. Phagocytosis of apoptotic neutrophils does not induce macrophage release of thromboxane B2. J Leukoc Biol 52: 269-273.
Moncada S, Palmer RM et al. 1991. Nitric oxide: physiology, pathophysiology, and pharmacology. Pharmacol Rev 43: 109-142.
Nicotera P, Brune B et al. 1997. Nitric oxide: inducer or suppressor of apoptosis? Trends Pharmacol Sci 18: 189-190.
Palmer RM, Ferrige AG et al. 1987. Nitric oxide release accounts for the biological activity of endothelium-derived relaxing factor. Nature 327: 524-526.
Quinn AC, Petros AJ et al. 1995. Nitric oxide: an endogenous gas. Br J Anaesth 74: 443-451.
Ross R 1993. The pathogenesis of atherosclerosis: a perspective for the 1990s. Nature 362: 801-809.
Ross R 1999a. Atherosclerosis is an inflammatory disease. Am Heart J 138: S419-420.
Ross R 1999b. Atherosclerosis is an inflammatory disease. N Engl J Med 340: 115-126.
Rossi AG, Ward C, Dransfield I, Haslett C 2003. Apoptosis of inflammatory cells. In NF Adkinson et al. (eds),Middleton's Allergy: Principles and Practice, Chapt 26, 6th ed., Mosby-Harcourt, p. 412-424.
Saio M, Radoja S et al. 2001. Tumor-infiltrating macrophages induce apoptosis in activated CD8(+) T cells by a mechanism requiring cell contact and mediated by both the cell-associated form of TNF and nitric oxide. J Immunol 167: 5583-5593.
Sandoval M, Ronzio RA et al. 1997. Peroxynitrite-induced apoptosis in epithelial (T84) and macrophage (RAW 264.7) cell lines: effect of legume-derived polyphenols (phytolens). Nitric Oxide 1: 476-483.
Sarih M, Souvannavong V et al. 1993. Nitric oxide synthase induces macrophage death by apoptosis. Biochem Biophys Res Commun 191: 503-508.
Schneemann M, Schoedon G 2002. Species differences in macrophage NO production are important. Nat Immunol 3: 102.
Scivittaro V, Boggs S et al. 1997. Peroxynitrite protects RAW 264.7 macrophage from Lipopolysaccharide/interferon-gamma-induced cell death. Biochem Biophys Res Commun 241: 37-42.
Singhal PC, Patel P et al. 1999. Ethanol-induced neutrophil apoptosis is mediated through nitric oxide. J Leukoc Biol 66: 930-936.
Sogo N, Magid KS et al. 2000. Inhibition of human platelet aggregation by nitric oxide donor drugs: relative contribution of cGMP-independent mechanisms. Biochem Biophys Res Commun 279: 412-419.
Taylor EL, Megson IL et al. 2001. Dissociation of DNA fragmentation from other hallmarks of apoptosis in nitric oxide-treated neutrophils: differences between individual nitric oxide donor drugs. Biochem Biophys Res Commun 289: 1229-1236.
Taylor EL, Megson IL et al. 2003. Nitric oxide: a key regulator of myeloid inflammatory cell apoptosis. Cell Death Differ 10: 418-430.
Taylor EL, Rossi AG et al. 2004. GEA 3162 decomposes to co-generate nitric oxide and superoxide and induces apoptosis in human neutrophils via a peroxynitrite-dependent mechanism. Br J Pharmacol 143: 179-185.
Thomassen MJ, Kavuru MS 2001. Human alveolar macrophages and monocytes as a source and target for nitric oxide. Int Immunopharmacol 1: 1479-1490.
Vogel RA 1997. Coronary risk factors, endothelial function, and atherosclerosis: a review. Clin Cardiol 20: 426-432.
von Knethen A, Brockhaus F et al. 1999. NO-Evoked macrophage apoptosis is attenuated by cAMP-induced gene expression. Mol Med 5: 672-684.
Wang BY, Ho HK et al. 1999. Regression of atherosclerosis: role of nitric oxide and apoptosis. Circulation 99: 1236-1241.
Ward C, Dransfield I et al. 1999. Pharmacological manipulation of granulocyte apoptosis: potential therapeutic targets. Trends Pharmacol Sci 20: 503-509.
Ward C, Wong TH et al. 2000. Induction of human neutrophil apoptosis by nitric oxide donors: evidence for a caspase-dependent, cyclic-GMP-independent, mechanism. Biochem Pharmacol 59: 305-314.
Yoshioka Y, Yamamuro A et al. 2003. Nitric oxide at a low concentration protects murine macrophage RAW264 cells against nitric oxide-induced death via cGMP signaling pathway. Br J Pharmacol 139: 28-34.
+Corresponding author. E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Received 8 November 2004


What can we learn about best practice from EU colleagues?
Simon Cadbury examines the key areas of European banking excellence, and whether innovation in digital banking alone is the key to success.
The UK has a vibrant and innovative digital banking sector, but it’s in the pack rather than leading. Across Europe, incumbents and upstarts alike continue to raise the bar when it comes to innovation. The vibrancy of the continent’s digital banking is evidenced by the Forrester 2015 Global Mobile Banking Functionality Benchmark, with five of the top 10 places taken by European players. The top spot was taken by Spain’s CaixaBank, and it was joined in the top 10 by two banks from Poland and one from Turkey. One British bank made the top 10.
What this indicates is that no one country is leading outright. The various demographic, regulatory and market conditions across Europe create a very different environment, for companies and their customers, in each country.
The UK, which many argue is the heart of the European financial services industry, leads when it comes to online banking adoption. Germany also has high levels of online banking adoption, but it’s combined with relatively low branch and mobile usage. Meanwhile, in Spain – home to two of Europe’s most innovative banks, BBVA and CaixaBank – the population remains firmly wedded to its branches.
In this article, we’ll explore what’s happening across Europe, why it’s happening, and what UK financial institutions can learn from it.
The areas of excellence and innovation seen in banks across and beyond Europe are broad, covering everything from customer experience to social media. Here, we highlight some of the most interesting and important developments.
Delivering the best possible digital customer journey is central to the success of digital banking, and across the continent banks are constantly refining their products, apps and websites. The bolder banks are starting to move beyond traditional ways of working and starting to tackle the more fundamental obstacles to full digitization. In Spain, BBVA is taking on one of the last vestiges of paper-based banking with remote signatures; legal signatures that can be applied to digital bank documents from anywhere, via the bank’s mobile app or website.
Poland’s mBank has made traditionally complicated products simple enough to fit into a mobile-first strategy: its one-click 30-second loan provides customers with near immediate access to funds via their smartphone, for example. And, after years of being the next big thing, biometrics is finally a viable option for authentication. In the UK, Barclays’ customers can authenticate themselves with finger vein recognition, NatWest and RBS customers via the iPhone’s Touch ID fingerprint sensor, and HSBC is rolling out voice authentication for all its 15 million retail customers. Digital-only Atom Bank plans to let customers choose how to log in via one of three identity credentials (face, voice and passcode).
Digital banking is changing physical branches across Europe, too. In France, BNP Paribas is stratifying its network into three layouts: Express, Advice and Projects. Each is aimed at maximizing customer satisfaction in a different range of scenarios, from self-service in the Express branch to expert consultation in the Project.
In a similar vein, PKO – owner of a network of 2,000 branches across Poland – is pursuing an omni-channel strategy that will see the three-story branches built in the 1960s and 70s replaced by two to three smaller branches. In part, PKO is responding to relentless innovation by local competitor mBank, which is pursuing a ‘light branch’ concept. The unapologetically digital light branches feature large movement and touch-responsive screens, and are sited in high consumer traffic areas such as malls, and are modeled on boutiques rather than banks.
Spain’s CaixaBank is so mobile-focused that it now has over 70 apps (available from its own app store, CaixaMóvil Store.) The bank also has a digital wallet integrated into its mobile banking app, which lets customers make contactless payments with their phones.
In Poland, mBank is thinking big and pivoting to a modern mobile-first strategy, making its mobile app the preferred gateway to all banking channels.
When it comes to social media, German bank Fidor is leading the way. It has built a community of about 250,000 users called the Fidor Smart Community. The bank invites prospects to ‘bank with friends’ and gives members financial rewards for giving and receiving knowledgeable financial advice, as well as evaluating and reviewing the financial products and services they’re interested in. Its current account offers tiered interest rates on credit balances based on the number of ‘likes’ Fidor receives on Facebook.
With over 50 million cards issued, and Apple Pay already rolled out, the UK is leading the way in deploying contactless payments, but it’s the Czechs and Poles using it the most. Mastercard reports that, in 2015, 77% of in-store transactions in the Czech Republic, and 55% in Poland, were contactless (though neither are subject to the £30 cap applicable in the UK).
The UK is also leading in Europe on peer-to-peer payments (such as Paym and Barclays’s Pingit), in part thanks to its pioneering investment in Faster Payments, but adoption is nowhere near that of services seen in the developing world, such as mPesa.
P2P payments are also a feature of Blik, a Polish mobile payment system developed by PKO, but then shared with its five largest competitors: Alior Bank, Bank Millennium, Bank Azchodni WBK, mBank and ING Bank. Blik makes it available to 80% of the market, avoiding fragmentation and establishing a de-facto standard.
Excellence outside Europe
Outside of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US stand out as hotbeds of digital banking innovation. In the US, where checks remain stubbornly popular, USAA bank was the first to deliver remote check deposits via smartphones – a move since copied by US giants such as Bank of America, Citibank, Chase and Wells Fargo.
Australasia is pioneering lifestyle apps such as CommBank’s Property App, smartphone software that can help you find a home, work out if you can afford it, and help you apply for a loan.
And in New Zealand, WestPac has released an augmented reality app that superimposes 3D balances, transaction history, spend locations and other information onto your cards when you point your smartphone’s camera at it. The concept was the winner in the bank’s recent crowdsourced Global App Challenge competition.
Broader lessons
What drives innovation?
Variations in demographics, competition, government regulation, access to talent and even luck can create different environments in which different levels and types of innovation are successful. Disruptive innovation can trigger a virtuous loop; if one bank innovates, then competitors respond in kind. This can lead to different countries specializing in particular types of innovation.
In other markets, environmental factors play a bigger part. Recent challenger banks have struggled to grow beyond 100,000 customers and match the success of mBank. Jacek Iljin, mBank’s managing director of retail banking, attributes the bank’s success in part to the favorable conditions in the Polish market when it started in 2000; interest rates and margins were high and there were “a significant number of unbanked and under-banked individuals”. The technology of the time was advanced enough to provide digital banking, but (according to Iljin) simple enough that “you could buy a banking system and have it up and running in 100 days”.
Similar conditions exist today in Turkey, and banks such as ABank are looking to demographics to give them escape velocity. Half the population is under 25, the average age is 21 and, according to ABank’s Ahmet Ertan Algan, they’re tech savvy and demanding innovation.
Across Europe, banks in mature markets are changing their culture to enhance their ability to innovate and take advantage of new opportunities, with Spain in particular playing host to a variety of different strategies:
BBVA has acquired Simple, taken a stake in Atom and is transforming itself into a ‘software company’. BBVA is on a journey that will increase the number of employees working on digital banking from 3% to 50% within five years.
Elsewhere, CaixaBank has built an internal crowdsourcing platform, where employees can enact what the bank insists is their ‘desire’ and ‘responsibility’ to innovate.
Santander has created a dedicated corporate venture fund so that it can invest in a portfolio of startups.
Fintech insurgency
When it comes to fintech, it seems European eyes are trained on London and the disruptive potential of its startups. Technologies such as blockchain, and new regulations such as PSD2, are years from playing a significant role in retail banking, but when they do they just might turn it upside down.
Jakub Grzechnik, head of mobile and internet banking at PKO, is deeply concerned that if they don’t move fast enough, “We’ll be left with costs while the profitable areas are taken up by fintech providers”. His bank is betting on creating a customer experience that’s good enough to stop customers looking elsewhere.
Others are looking to embrace the potential for disruption. Turkey’s ABank is “planning to open our systems to third parties”, while the UK’s Starling is planning to partner with fintech companies and integrate the best of its services into its own offerings, alongside its current accounts.
Other early examples of bank/fintech partnerships include:
Peer-to-peer: Santander has partnered with Funding Circle.
SME lending: BBVA has partnered with On Deck, and ING with Kabbage.
Foreign exchange: Virgin Money has partnered with World First, while Currencycloud’s clients include Mediterranean Bank and Fidor Bank.
Is innovation enough?
The pace of change in digital banking technology is relentless, and it’s easy to find competitors or peers who are piloting, prototyping or rolling out something you are not, but an advantage in innovation doesn’t always translate to a commercial advantage.
Poland’s mBank is a successful digital bank and a multi-award-winning innovator, but the much older (and more traditional) PKO remains Poland’s favorite bank. PKO isn’t as agile or innovative as its smaller rival, but it is it seems innovating enough even for a youthful and expanding market.
PKO is an unashamed copier of good ideas, a strategy known as ‘fast follower’ that, according to Gregory Carpenter from the Kellogg School of Management, can suit companies that are agile enough to do it and have deeper pockets than their upstart rivals:
“A lot of times, pioneers aren’t very well funded … They create a competitive game … competitors enter quickly and, with more resources, are able to win the game that the pioneer has created.”
Forrester says you should measure the success of every innovation from the outset using metrics such as sales through digital channels, development of new digitally enhanced products and services, customer acquisition through digital channels, cost reduction, digital customer experience, and perception of the company as an innovator.
There are organizations pushing the envelope all over Europe, but no one European market leads. Banks are watching each other (and increasingly watching technology companies outside of banking) for ideas and innovations. In today’s fast-moving environments, the benefit of being a first mover is often short-lived.
The different environments in each market trigger different types of innovation, so while there’s plenty of inspiration to be had, banks must be mindful of the conditions that made them possible – innovations do not always travel.
More significant than any one innovation, product or feature is the way banks themselves are embracing digital. The only way for traditional banks to stay on top is to embed digital from the ground up. They need an organizational structure, culture, technological architecture and appropriate KPIs that embrace digital. Only then can they call themselves a truly digital business, and more importantly be well positioned in a battle that’s set to get bloodier.
ieDigital can help your organization deploy a digital self-service platform that gives you the foundations to foster a relationship with your customer and, in time, extend and flex your value proposition. We can also work with you to better understand your customers’ needs and to prototype, test, and try out new concepts and ideas with them.
For more information, please click here to request a chat or demo.


AdvertisingBranding
Tier10 | On 20, Jun 2019
Tier10 won two awards in the 40th Annual Telly Awards competition for outstanding video creative under the Automotive category of Branded Content and Regional TV. Both entries demonstrate the full-service agency’s focus on creativity and excellence in video production.
“Acura + Precision Crafted Performance” received the Silver Award in the “Branded Content: Automotive” category. The long-form video follows Acura’s victorious return to the racetrack after an extended period of absence. Several prominent individuals connected to Acura Racing are featured in the video including, but not limited to, Acura Vice President & General Manager Jon Ikeda, and legendary racecar drivers Juan Pablo Montoya and Helio Castroneves.
Produced for the Greater Twin Cities Honda Dealers, “Driving What’s Next | Minnesota Youth Football” received the Bronze Award under the “Regional TV: Automotive” category. The commercial depicts the determination of young athletes as they train to be the best they can be, and how they are always aiming to beat their greatest opponent, themselves.
The Telly Awards honors excellence in video and television across all screens and is judged by leaders from video platforms, television, streaming networks, production companies and including Vice, Vimeo, Hearst Digital Media, BuzzFeed, and A&E Networks. Last year, The Telly Awards attracted more than 12,000 entries from top video content producers including Condé Nast, Netflix, Refinery29, RadicalMedia, T Brand Studio, and Ogilvy & Mather.
This recognition places Tier10’s creative at the same level as some of the best in the industry. In addition to the Telly Awards, the full-service advertising agency was named in this year’s Muse Creative Awards, Hermes Creative Awards, and the American Advertising Awards – DC. Tier10’s award-winning videos and more can be viewed at the agency’s Vimeo page.
Creative Awards Telly Awards
Tier10 Wins Three Davey Awards November 16, 2018 | Nikki Manning