Welcome everyone to this new webinar on preventing and mitigating land degradation. Let me introduce myself. I'm Christina Petraki and I had the FLO eLearning Academy. So this international technical webinar is one of a series of webinars that we organize together with Agrinium and with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific. So this is a partnership that we have created to deliver these webinars. The thematic areas that are covered in the webinars are the ones related to the global challenges humanity has and needs to face basically. And the thematic areas are also the ones covered in our FLO eLearning Academy courses, because as you know, we offer over 350 multilingual eLearning courses on various thematic areas, such as nutrition, sustainable food systems, water management, and also of course land restoration and also prevention and mitigation of land degradation, which is the thematic area that we are going to cover in today's webinar. Today we have the pleasure to have with us two senior experts. The first one is a colleague of mine from FLO, Louis Boquel, who is a policy officer. And the other one is Julien De Menouin, who is a senior scientist of CIRAD. So we are very pleased to have them with us. And without further ado, I will give the floor to Louis Boquel. Louis, the floor is yours. You have about 20 minutes. Thank you. Thank you. So I'm going to share my screen right now. Okay. So we're going to discuss some three aspects of the subject. The first is an interrelation between the FLO second. Sorry, Louis, to interrupt you. We cannot see your screen. You can't see my screen. Okay, now something is being shared. Okay, now you can click on your presentation. Yes, thanks. Okay, thank you. So we have three parts which are going to be covered by this presentation. The first one is the interrelation between the FLO sector and climate change. The second one is an exact tool. I'm going to do just an introduction because time is limited. And the third part is on nutrient turnover strategies for mitigating land degradation. So first on interrelation, what we can say for the agriculture, climate, agriculture forestry and other land use is for sure it's written by climate change. It's also available for one fourth of total greenhouse gas emission. And it has a huge potential to cost effectively mitigate. It's concerning three types of greenhouse gas CO2, methane and nitrous oxide. It's concerning both. Mitigation is concerning both the decrease of greenhouse gas source and the increase of sinks. Within the agriculture forestry and overland use change, 70% of agriculture mitigation potential which is in developing countries. The three greenhouse gas which are concerned are quite covering the full land use and the full forestry. You can see in this picture which is illustrating the complexity of all these flows of greenhouse gas. We see that we have the methane coming from rice, aquatic rice from the soil or from the livestock. We can see also the nitrous oxide which is coming here and there. What we can see also is that obviously with solar energy with a main carbon fixing mechanism, which is transforming with a photosynthesis, the CO2 from the air in a chain of carbon within the biomass. We have a two main stock within the Afulo sector with all the biomass and all the soil carbon. All these elements appear on the picture somewhere. What we can also say is that we have a vicious circle which is ongoing with the land degradation which leads to carbon loss from the soil. And which is speeding up the climate change and its impact, which is increasing the poverty of land users and weakens the ability to protect the land, which is again moving on supporting causing worse land degradation. And this process is quite, this process is quite advanced. Currently we have the part of the forest land degraded at the planet level, which is about 50% of the forest area to be added to the shrub land, which is also degraded forest. So we have already on the planet 31.5 million square kilometers of degraded forest. And in terms of farmland, we have about 33% of the world farmland, which is directly to highly degraded. And that is about 17 million square kilometers. So we have through this very simple to data we have the feeling that we have already a huge degree of degradation of both forest and farmland, which is on the same time constituting a huge potential for rehabilitation. The high level of degradation is coming notably from negative impact of tillage based agriculture practice. We can say that intensive agriculture has contributed to the loss of about 30 to 50% of soil organic in the last decade of the 20th century. We know also that a loss of soil organic is going with loss of water storage, and it's going with emission of CO2. Here an example is 3% of loss in soil organic for some soil is going with 432 cubic meter of water storage loss per hectare and 400 ton of CO2 per hectare emitted. Such loss of soil organic carbon and water holding capacity is due to a range of practice that we know quite well now it's about the emission of perennial ground cover repetitive cultivation and tillage continues grazing bear fellows removal of crop residues or grass land burning. For the more intensive monoculture combining high use of external input has been an approach where farmers have moved to a production of energy intensive, I mean it has required the production of energy intensive mineral fertiliser and pesticide. And these are major sources of greenhouse gas emission. So some way we we see that we have a quite negative elements here, but there is a way to turn this positively. We can look at how do low carbon contribution or do low carbon auction contribute to agriculture productivity and food security. Here we've mitigation in agriculture with increased carbon in soil with decreased greenhouse gas emission. We can at the same time increase agriculture production and productivity with more biomass more residue more production and better than management. And that that can drive to reduce also poverty and food security and improve food security with additional value for farmers community society and more employment. So that can also some way support climate adaptation. We have potentially a series of things which can be improved, we have reached a high level of degradation on land management, but we have a huge potential of rehabilitation. We have this 31 million square kilometers of degraded forest and 17 million of farmland which are making about something like seven gigaton per year for the next 30 years in terms of a reduction of emission which could be equivalent of 14% of total greenhouse gas emission. So now we are going to look at slightly what is exact tool. So exact tool is an Excel managed tool which has been developed by FFO. It's a partnership of three divisions in FFO investment center policy support service with no no existing and and as a, and it was with an external partnership of ERD. And the series of donors, starting with World Bank, EFAD and IFD, which have supported the development of this tool. Exactly the FFO tool to estimate the mitigation impact of agriculture and forestry projects, and it support decision making for agriculture and forestry planning policies and investment projects. So what is exactly exact? It's an Excel based tool to quantify the amount of greenhouse gas released or sequestered from activity in a food sector. It requires activity data on agriculture practices, resources and land use change, and it's calculating estimated greenhouse gas impact in terms of CO2 equivalent. So the main logic of exact takes into account a series of activity like deforestation, reforestation, other land use change, forest degradation, restoration of grassland, livestock cultivation of annual crops of perennials, all what is about input and fertilization of crops, all what is energy used in farming and so on, and all what is installation of building and of irrigation system. And so looking at the impact of, you know, in terms of greenhouse gas flux, in terms of emission and sink for CO2, methane and nitrous oxide. And it's looking at the evolution of stock changes from and to different carbon pools, including above on biomass, below on biomass, soil, litter and deadwoods. And so we are looking at both greenhouse gas emission carbon stock change in carbon and we move to a carbon balance in terms of equivalence CO2. If this carbon balance is positive, there is more emission that is bad. If this carbon balance is negative, there is less emission that is good that is mitigation. So now let's go a bit inside the tool. What you see up is a screen up in the screen is the menu of the tool. It's covering description, land use change, crop production, grassland management degradation coastal wetland inputs and fisheries. This exact tool is using the IPCC coefficient, and it's using about 10,000 coefficient coming from international panel of climate change. And they are used as default coefficient. And this coefficient, in order to select them for a specific continent, for a specific climate, for a specific soil type, we have to say to the tool where we are, what is the climate where, what is the moisture regime where, and what is the type of soil on which we are for the project we are working on. We have also to specify the implementation phase, the number of years of the project, and the number of years of the capitalization phase. Because when we do the exact analysis, the carbon balance analysis, we should work on a recommended period of about 20 years, which is adding implementation phase and capitalization phase. Now, after having specified localization, soil and climate, we move to the technical module of exact, which are my job categories with land use change, crop production and so on. In every module we have some module like for land use change with deforestation, reforestation and other land use change, for crop production with annual crops per annual crops, irrigated rice, for pasture and livestock, with pasture, livestock, degradation with forest, and organic soil and so on. Now, if we want to see, oh, it's organizing every module, I just click here, and now we are in the crop production, and the first part of crop production is on annual system. Here what you can see is two tables. One is for the land use change on annual crops, and the second one for annual crops who are staying annual crops. And what is the information we have in, we have to enter in terms of input, what are the practice, improved practice we are using in agriculture, annual crops, and what are the number of hectares we have at start, without project and with project. So that is the type of information we are entering. Now I am back to the global presentation of exact. As far as we have entered the information within the modules, you have some results which are automatically calculated. And this results are looking at the growth and net balance in terms of CO2 due to the project. If we look at this in, what we have is a, we have here what you can see is a two column, which one is a growth, with or without project and one is a growth with projects. And on the line we have every module, which was described before, and you see that you have a number here, which is ton of CO2. So we have a result for every situation without project with project and the balance which is making with project minus with without project situation. And the result of the carbon balance analysis is appearing here, we have minus 9.2 million tons of CO2. So for this project of land rehabilitation in Africa, we are fixing 9.3 million tons of CO2 on the period of 20 years, which is specified here with 130,000 hectares. What is also specified in this result table is where we are fixed, where we, what also the result is balanced between the biomass, the soil, the other in terms of CO2 and nitrous obsidian methane. What we see here is that the main result is additional carbon in soil, about 5.3 million tons in 20 years, and about 3.9 million tons of additional carbon in biomass. So that's what we can see from a very quick overview of the tool. What we should also understand is that we are working on two scenarios, the with and without project scenario. And we are looking at the incremental results. So the difference between with project and without project, which is the benefit of the project in terms of mitigation. And in order to illustrate it, I show you here the gross result without project and with project, we have a result of 80,000 tons of emission without project and we have a result of minus 20,000 tons of emission without with project. And this result is coming with without project, 100,000 tons of emission and minus 20,000 tons of sequestration. So if we translate this in terms of figure, what we see here is the with project and the without project with with project in dark green and without project in light green. So the emission only 30 with project and 100 without project. And the sequestration is only minus 20 with a project and minus 50 with project. So the total with project is minus 50 plus 30 minus 20. And the total without project is 100 of emission and minus 20 of sequestration, so it's 80. And the difference between these two is a result. So what we do is with project minus without project is a balance and the balance is translated here in minus 100,000 tons of CO2, which is different between minus 20,000 and 80,000. No, that was a very, very quick introduction, but we have a four to five hours of e-learning in English in French and in Spanish with exercise and so on, which is available on FOE learning. And that has been developed with the support of World Bank. And it's available for you, it's free, you can use as you want. Thank you. Thank you very much. We, so there are a number of questions for you, so I invite you. Sorry, I didn't finish yet. Sorry, sorry. Let me finish. So now we have a series of studies which are available also on the web of exact, I don't go into detail on this. My third part is on nutrient turnover strategy for mitigating land degradation. What we have come, what has come out is that from what we have seen is that one of the most promising ways to mitigate climate change is through aggression and landscape climate solution. We have a huge potential of terrestrial carbon sequestration with photosynthesis and we have a series of possibilities with wide scale afforestation and expansion of agroforestry value chain, which are key strategy for reversing the relation process. One of the example could be the silent green barrier, which is really a series of opportunity for for rephrasing a big part of a sale while doing support to some value chain. And among this value chain, we have analyzed the share value chain potential for between 2020 and 2013 term of mitigation. And it's quite huge and we're currently analyzing all those gamma ruby by the chain at regional level. These two value chain being associated being beneficiary of the green barrier a force to replant Acacia trees and other trees. Another example is the rehabilitation of the cocoa value chain in Ghana and I recalls with huge plan with very ambitious planning on between 2020 and 2013. And here we have analyzed for the both country, what could be the potential of mitigation of this strategy which are very costly in fact. And we are having about 17 million tons of CO2 fixed payer, if we combine above the strategy of Ivory Coast and the strategy of Ghana. Just for Ghana it's about $900 million which are going to be invested in the coming years. So, all this to say that we have a series of solutions with several practice with co-benefit for adaptation and mitigation. And another example could be also a recent work derived from 10 years for Agroecology in Europe, Tifa, which demonstrates that scenario to was 2015 Europe based on Agroecology and land sharing approach. It could significantly mitigate with a transformation scenario which could fix up to 33% of the current gas emission for France. At European level the similar scenario could fix up to 755 million tons of CO2 payer, which is 16% of annual emission of Europe 28. So that is just to show you that the potential of AFOLO sector is huge. And to finish, we have a series of example outside this like Morocco, which has a developer also his own plan smart coming green wall strategy, transforming landscape. And we have a series of other things that I'm going to stop here because I've been saved. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So while I will give the floor to Julia, please, please look at the question and answers because there have been many questions for you. And after Julia, I will give you the floor again to answer some of the questions. So Julia, the floor is yours. You have about 20 minutes. Thank you very much. Thank you Christina. Good morning. Good afternoon and good evening for everyone wherever you are. First, I will share my screen. Okay, I hope you can see my screen right now. So it's a pleasure and an honor to participate to this important webinar and I would like to thank the organizers for their invitation. I would like this afternoon to talk about agricultural and forestry strategies to prevent and mitigate soil degradation with a special focus on nutrient turnover and carbon sequestration. My talk will be divided in three parts. The first one will be probably a reminder for most of you as I will try to address three question what is land degradation. What is the extent of land degradation and what are the challenges. My second part will be focused on potential strategies in agriculture and forestry to prevent and mitigate land degradation. And in my third part I would like to share with you an example of agroforestry project based on nitrogen fixing trees in Democratic Republic of Congo to produce sustainable charcoal and cassava and simultaneously improve nutrient turnover and carbon sequestration. So first of all, what is land degradation? Just some definitions coming from the IPBS. So land degradation refers to the many processes that drive the decline or loss in biodiversity ecosystem function of services and it concerns all terrestrial ecosystems. So I would like to highlight some of the words in this definition. So first biodiversity, I'm sure everybody knows what is biodiversity, but we can summarize it as a diversity within species between species and of and ecosystems. So if there is a decline or loss, there is land degradation about the ecosystem functions here today. So this concerns the flow of energy and materials. And for our topic today, it includes particularly the biomass production and the nutrient cycling. And about the ecosystem services. So ecosystem services are focused on the services for people like us. And it has been defined as a millennium ecosystem assessment in four categories supporting regulating provisioning and cultural. And you can see here on this slide that nutrient cycling is part of the supporting ecosystem services and climate regulation is part of the regulating ecosystem services. So those two topics nutrient cycling and climate regulations are the focus of our webinar today. So now let's have a look at the extent of land degradation and at the challenges related to land degradation. So again, the IPBS in its report related to land degradation restoration said that this is a pervasive and systemic phenomenon that occurs in all parts of the terrestrial world. And if we have a look at this map, which is I admit quite difficult in fact to understand but I will try to simplify it. We have some hotspot let's say of deforestation, which is a kind of land degradation. We have also dry land degradation, which are in light brown on this map. And we have also decreasing soil health, for instance, which is in gray on this map. So now let's have a more closer look at some of those drivers of degradation. First about forest degradation and deforestation. So to keep in mind that the rate of deforestation since 2001 is about 5 million hectare per year, which is of course a high rate. And in terms of impact of an on climate, this involves this implies in fact a release of about 1.5 gigaton of carbon each year, according to the global carbon budget. That is about 14% of the CO2 global CO2 emissions. On this map again, we saw different drivers of the deforestation. In red, we have deforestation related to the production of commodity like oil palm here in Southeast Asia, for instance. We have soybean here in South America, shifting agriculture in yellow, mainly in Africa, for instance. And also some other sources of GIG emission and forest degradation like wildfire or urbanization. Concerning the soil health degradation, a way, let's say, or kind of proxy of the soil health is the content of soil organic carbon. And as Louis said just before, there have been many assessments, especially in this report of the IPBS. They assess that since during the two last centuries about 8% of the soil organic carbon stocks were lost. In fact, on this map, this is all the areas which appeared in brown or red. This is a comparison between the situation two centuries ago and the situation in 2010. In terms of GIG emission, this is the equivalent of 176 gigaton of carbon, which were released during those two centuries in the atmosphere. And in fact, according to the expert of the IPBS, about one third of the soils globally are moderately to highly degraded. One thing I would like to emphasize or to put the focus today is the close relationship between the soil organic carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus. There are close linkages. First of all, we have to keep in mind that carbon is the main component of the soil organic matter. It's about 60% of the soil organic matter. And the carbon is strongly coupled to nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. Indeed, in a wide range of global soils, there are constant ratio between nitrogen and carbon and between phosphorus and carbon. That means that if we want to increase the soil organic stock in the soils, the availability of nutrients and in particular of nitrogen and phosphorus is a key issue. On this map, which is coming from a very recent publication by Duet Al, we have the nitrogen and phosphorus limitation of terrestrial carbon uptake. Which means that if there is not enough nitrogen or not enough phosphorus, this is a limitation to sequester carbon in the terrestrial ecosystems. Instead, you have the areas mainly in boreal region and also in the Tibet Plateau, where the nitrogen is a limiting factor. And the author says that it's about 18% of the natural terrestrial land area, which is concerned by this limitation by nitrogen. And in blue, you have the areas where the availability of phosphorus is a limitation to the terrestrial carbon uptake. And for phosphorus, the concern is much larger, I would say, because the author says that this is about 43% of the natural terrestrial land area that is concerned by limited availability by phosphorus. So there is a huge phosphorus challenge if we want to sequester more carbon on the terrestrial ecosystem and especially in agriculture and forestry. However, the situation is quite different, let's say from region to region and here I show you a map from Europe concerning the availability of nitrogen in the soil. And in fact, what we see that first of all, that there is quite high diversity of nitrogen content in the soil from high level in green to low level in brown. And in fact, the challenge in Europe or at least in some part of Europe is a little bit different than in other part of the world, I would say we have a concern with nitrogen leaching and eutrophication of aquatic ecosystem, saying so that in fact we in some areas we have too much nitrogen in the soil. So it's contrasting situation compared to what I've said just before with the global map with the nitrogen limitation. So let's go back to the IPBS and also the IPCC report, the special report on land to conclude on the extent of land degradation and the challenges. According to the two reports, they said that the well-being of at least 3.2 billion people are negatively today impacted by land degradation. So that is about one third of the total population, more or less. And this land degradation is a cost for the economy, which is assessed to be about 10% of the annual global growth project. And in fact, this land degradation is exacerbated by the impact of climate change. As we can see on this figure coming from the IPCC report from the special report on land. On this figure you have different phenomenon related to land degradation, soil erosion here, vegetation loss, wildlife damage, wildfire damage, and permafrost degradation. And the intensity of the impact of an increase of the temperature, the more the color is red to purple, the higher the impact is. And you can easily see that the impact is already here because we are here with a one degree increase right now. And the projection, the future projection are between three and four degrees in 2000. So you can easily see that the impact of climate change on land degradation are expected to be to be high, especially of course on the permafrost degradation, which is already a reality, but also on some phenomenon like soil erosion, for instance. And if I come back to the phosphorus issue, which I've mentioned just before, this issue of a water erosion exacerbated by climate change would in fact as well exacerbate the issue of phosphorus need and losses. Here is a map coming from, again, a recent publication, and they assess on this map in this publication that about more than 50% in fact of the total phosphorus losses today are due to the water erosion. And those areas where this loss of phosphorus due to water erosion is higher are in blue here on this map. So those areas in Southeast Asia, here in Northeast Africa, for instance, and some areas here in South America. So there is a real issue with phosphorus. So now let's have a look at the solutions to prevent these nutrient losses and have a positive impact on the carbon sequestration and adaptation to climate change. So this figure is coming from the IPCC report, special report on land, and they assess several options based on land management and the impact of the several options and several factors or several phenomenon mitigation and adaptation to climate change, desertification, land degradation, food security, and also the cost of implementation of those different solutions. All the solution with the blue means that it has a positive impact, and when it is red it has a negative impact. The darker the blue is, the higher the impact, the positive impact is. And we can see that there are some options which have only positive impacts on mitigation, adaptation to climate change, desertification, land degradation, and food security. And one of those options is the increase of soil organic carbon content, which is in dark blue and which is considered to have a moderate cost of implementation. So now I would like to make a focus on this increase of soil organic carbon and see how is it possible to increase the soil organic carbon. So I would like to remind that this is the core purpose of the 4000 initiative, which was launched during COP 21 in 2015 in Paris. And in fact, there are let's say two ways to increase the soil organic carbon. One way is to increase the carbon inputs in soils, and there are several strategies and management options which already exist. Agroforestry is one of it. Integrated management of soil fertility, pasture management and grazing lands. The use of organic fertilizers, especially in a substitution to mineral fertilizers or in association with mineral fertilizers. Water management, conservation agriculture, which is the application of three principle, a permanent cover, crop rotation and a limited disturbance of soil or no till. And last example is the implementation of principles of agroecology. And the second option, and the two could be combined of course increase of carbon inputs and the decrease of carbon outputs could be in some situation, a better fire management to limit the the mineralization of biomass of carbon, the control of erosion. And also the minimum disturbance of soil and especially through no TH. Now I would like through one example, which will be my last part of my presentation to have a focus on the agroforestry. So let's move to the Congo basin and especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo. So we are here. This project, the example I would like to share with you is called Manpou project. It's about 200 kilometers from Kinshasa city. And this is a large project of agroforestry with about 8000 hectares of agroforestry with the Implem, with the Acacia oriculiformis, which is a nitrogen fixing trees, which were planted between 1978 and 1992. And the type of agroforestry system is what we call the rotational wood lot system. I will come back on this. On this picture, which is a remote sensing picture you have the perimeter of the project, which, which are the 8000 hectares which are divided in wood lot of about 25 hectares per family. So this is a picture of the, of the area, the Plateau Bateke. We have, we are at an altitude of about 700 meters high, an annual rainfall of 1500 millimeter. This is a ferralic arenosol with us, which are sandy, acidic and chemically very poor. And the natural vegetation is a gramea savanna with a low tree density as you can see on this picture. This savanna is periodically burnt to support hunting practices in particular. The shifting cultivation is traditionally practiced in gallery forest and since the introduction of tractors, mechanized farming occurred in savanna. And it looked like this, for instance, with the cassava production on large scale farms, for instance, on the Bateke Plateau. So since the 90s, sorry, since the 70s, there were afforestation of some part of the savanna with nitrogen fixing trees in particular to supply kinshasa with charcoal. So let's go back to the Manpu project and the agroforestry system which is implemented for now several decades. So this is a rotational woodlot system, which means that we have an alternate phase of food crop production with a phase of fallow planted with nitrogen fixing trees. So it looked like this. You have the crop production between during the, let's say the two first years of the plantation. At the same time, the tree are planted. And then for in this example, 11 years, we have a first fellow with acacia. The acacia harvested. And there is a prediction of charcoal on site. And then again, we have the crop production on the same plot. The seed from the acacia germinated especially thanks to the burning. We have a second fellow with acacia and it can continue like this for a third rotation. So on this picture you have the beginning of the crop production for instance with cassava. It's important to keep in mind that the slash residues like leaves branches bark, they are left on site. And there is also an application of the ashes of the charcoal production. And this is a follow with the trees with the nitrogen fixing trees acacia auriculiformis. And here you have after the harvesting of the acacia auriculiformis the production of the charcoal on site. So let's have a look now to the impact, let's say of this kind of agroforestry system with n fixing nitrogen fixing trees. And the above ground biomass and the carbon sequestration in the same things to the trees. So in this table we have several modalities, the afforestation, second fellow nitrogen fixing trees and a third fellow. In this column of the table we have the above ground biomass, AGB, which is more or less let's say the stock of carbon which was sequestered in the above ground biomass of the trees. The below ground biomass which also account for an important part of the potential of carbon sequestration is not presented here in this table. But what we can see in this table, not surprisingly, is that the above the above ground biomass is pretty high, especially if we would compare this with the stock in the natural savanna. And the stock is increasing with the age of the trees and with the duration of the fellow, which is not really a surprise. The second effect or impact of the nitrogen fixing trees is on the soil. So now let's have a look at the soil analysis for the zero to 20 centimeters depths. Here you have the results from soil analysis for the savanna, the original savanna with a pH, carbon, nitrogen content and phosphorus content. And here you have the results for the different modalities of the agroforestry system. We have the same colors like just before, a forestation only in green, second fellow in black and in blue, the third fellow. And what we have to keep in mind is that for the carbon content, we have a significant higher content of carbon for all the agroforestry modalities compared to the savanna, which is a control. You can see here in this column, we have the same result in fight from for the nitrogen. And for the phosphorus, there is no significant difference in the content of phosphorus in soil between the savanna and between the agroforestry system and the different modalities of the agroforestry systems. So what was the effect of the rotational wood lot in Mumpool, an increase in carbon sequestration in the above ground biomass, an increase in the carbon and nitrogen content in soil, no effect on phosphorus in soil, but no depletion it's important to to notice this. But we have several negative impact, a decrease in the pH, as you can see here, and also decreasing other soil nutrients, which is my next slide. Here we have the same different modalities with the savanna afforestation, second fellow and third fellow, and several nutrients, nutrients which were measured calcium, magnesium potassium and aluminum. And what we saw is that, due to the implementation of the afforestation of the agroforestry system, sorry. We have a decrease in the content of calcium, a decrease also in the content of magnesium, and also in potassium, and on the reverse, an increase in the content of aluminum in the soil, which is of course an issue in terms of sustainability of the system and in terms of sustainability for nutrient uptake for the agroforestry and the crop production. Those results are coming from a publication from some of my colleagues at CIRAD and this one, DBAZAL, and they made some several recommendations, in fact, to limit those negative impact of the implementation of this agroforestry system, which are summarized here. The first one is to debark the trees on site before the carbonization to increase the inputs of calcium in the soil. To return also part of the charcoal to the soil so that it will have a positive impact on the pH, which will increase and the consequence which will decrease also the saturation of aluminum, which is an issue because it will limit the uptake of other nutrients. To also increase the restitution of leaves, twigs, small branches to the soil, to increase the coming back of nutrients, and finally to have limestone amendments also to increase the pH and enhance the exchangeable calcium. Just to conclude, I would like to enlarge this example of agroforestry with just a figure coming from a meta-analysis, a paper from also one of my colleagues, which was done to revise some of the IPCC coefficients, which were mentioned by Luigi just before, and they assess the impact of agroforestry systems worldwide on the soil organic carbon stocks, and in this figure we have three kinds of situation. The first one is a conversion of cropland to agroforestry system, here in yellow. In brown you have the conversion of forest to agroforestry system, and in green you have the conversion of grassland to agroforestry system. And what they found and what they showed is that the conversion of cropland to agroforestry system or of grassland to agroforestry system has a positive impact on the carbon sequestration in the soil, which is not the case for the conversion of forest to agroforestry system. Just to finish, if you want to know more about this subject of relationship between soil and climate and climate change, I invite you to stay tuned to this webpage, because in the coming months, especially during the second quarter of 2021, there will be a massive open online course, which will be launched on the FUN platform with Agrinium and Sirad in particular. So I invite you to stay tuned if you want to know more about this topic. And also here are the list of the references I've used and mentioned during my presentation. Thank you very much. This was actually very, very clear and comprehensive. Thank you, Julien. I would like to inform all of you also that we are also planning to deliver a MOOC by the end of the year on forestry transparent data under the Paris Agreement, so that also could be of interest. I am, we are here showing thanks to Fabio, the list of our e-learning courses that might be of interest to you, which are related to exact, but also others related to the transparency framework, others related to national greenhouse gas inventories. So how do the countries prepare the inventories, how to make the calculations, but also we have courses on climate smart soil and land management, water management also and climate smart agriculture and also sustainable land management and land restoration. So have a look at the FAE Learning Academy offerings. And I would like now to give the floor to Louis answer to some of the questions. Also notes that we will be preparing a document with all your questions and the answers of the experts. And this will all be made available through the FAE Learning Academy section on webinars, where you can have access to the recordings to the materials and also to the answers of the questions you have been posing during the webinar. So, Luis, the floor is yours to answer some of the questions. Thank you. Julia, please have a look at the questions that were asked during your presentations, your presentation, because you will be asked to provide some of the answers. Louis, the floor is yours. So one of the questions was can the exact tool be used to measure the progress towards country and DC, if so, or do you determine the without project scenario. And here I can say that we are already using exact tool for NDC analysis and for NDC monitoring and we are currently organizing training for NDC team with the support of the division of climate and the university in FAO. And on the other part of the question, how do we determine the without project scenario in exact the without project scenario is an issue because it's a sort of assumption on the future. What is going to happen if we don't do anything? Usually we are looking at free options, either we have a constant situation or we have a web-based web-based as a without project scenario on the past trends. For instance, if we had deforestation for 5000 hectare per year in the last 20 years, we can see the same is going to occur in the without project scenario. And the third option is to look at future options, which could occur. And that is more difficult. But if we know that something is going to happen in the country, or if we know that we have some big investment for which will which will consume a lot of land and so on. It can be possible to have a future future scenario with based on this. Now the other question which was coming out is about, it's about the way we have managed the agroforestry model and the agroforestry model has been recently updated thanks to the support of of Sirad and we have added it and that has been done with a research work done by Sirad and which allowed to update the IPCC database on agroforestry, which was the, let's say, the weakest part of IPCC work. No, there was another thing on carbon secretion in the biomass. In some way, there is a question with what is going to happen if we are making charcoal, and how do we do we measure this, we have some assumption which have been used in exact to transform charcoal in equivalent biomass and in equivalent to translate a certain level of charcoal consumption in an equivalent of the forested area. No, where there was something else, which was on Wait, wait, I think, I think that's it for the while. Had the opportunity to have a look at the questions and if you're ready to provide some of the answers. Yeah, thank you Christina. Yeah, I had a look at the different questions. Maybe I can follow up with the last point which was mentioned by by we about the carbon secretion and the charcoal prediction. Because I think also it was linked to the presentation I made and the example I've given in the in the air Congo. In this particular example it's indeed a very important to keep in mind that without this kind of project. Usually the charcoal is produced from the from the deforestation so it's that means that it leads to direct GIG emission because of an unsustainable prediction of charcoal and unsustainable prediction of the biomass resource. So the this kind of project is in terms of charcoal predictions the effect is a is in fact neutral because the biomass is produced sustainably and so the balance between the emission due to the prediction of the charcoal and the secretion linked to the to the biomass growth are supposed to compensate each other. But it's really important to to to have in mind is that if we want to to to assess the the real impact we we need to make the balance between the emissions and the sequestration as it is done in the in the exact tool for instance. In this question there is also a question about the the evolution of the of the soil bulk densities. It's also important to to keep in mind that if we want to assess the the the soil carbon stocks we need several data we need to have information about the soil organic content but we need also to have the bulk density to convert this into a stock. In the example which I have given and in this particular publication the authors did not mention any information about the evolution of the bulk density so I cannot answer this this question I don't know how the bulk density evolved. So that means that in this particular example of the member project, maybe finally the carbon stocks in the soil, maybe they decrease or maybe they were equivalent or maybe they increase compared to the control which is a seven up but today I cannot give you the answer because I don't have the information about the bulk density. I've selected this, however, this example, especially to show you the linkages between the carbon content, the nitrogen, the phosphorus and the other nutrients. But this is also why I've chosen to to present you this my last figure with a box plot and the coming from the from the meta analysis to show you that globally speaking. There are quite good confidence about the impact of a agroforestry system on the soil organic carbon stocks. So, in the project of MAMPU right now I don't have the information but globally speaking we know that we know what are the impact in terms of evolution of soil organic carbon stocks, due to agroforestry. I saw also that maybe I can give an answer that there was a technical question about the methods of measuring carbon sequestration or let's say carbon in the soil. What is usually recommended is to use a dry combustion method in laboratory to measure the total carbon of the soil and to measure the inorganic carbon which is part of the question.  This is basically the way to measure. And again, I repeat one important thing is to have the carbon content, but if you want to measure the carbon sequestration so an evolution in the carbon stocks you will need to have to measure also the bulk density and also to measure to note the soil depths and the soil layer for which your measurements are available. Thank you very much as Julien for these answers and to the participants I wanted to mention that the answers of all the questions will be provided as a document in the Excel eLearning Academy Webinar section. So there you will be able to have access to all the materials not only of this webinar but all the previous webinars of 2020. And I would like to take this opportunity to thank, first of all, the speakers. Thank you very much for the excellent and very comprehensive presentations. I would like to thank our partners at Greenham and UNS Cup. All the my team members who are behind the scenes, Fabio Piccinic and also Aristide Bucharest, and of course, all of you, the participants, thank you very much for being part of the success of these webinars. Thank you all and stay tuned. There are many more also for 2021 and also for in November and December. Thank you very much. Bye bye.


Welcome back to our lecture series, linear algebra done openly. As usual, I'll be your professor today, Dr. Andrew Missildine. In this section 2.8, in telecoordinates, which is also the last section for our chapter two about the algebra and geometry of vectors, we're going to explore the idea of a basis a little bit more. So a basis, remember, was a linearly independent spanning set for a vector space. In this situation, let's call our vector space V. So take a basis, for example, B, and let's let it be V1, V2 all the way up to Vm. So we have n vectors in there. Now a basis is two things. First of all, it's a spanning set. So since B is a spanning set, that means there are scalars. That should be a V right there. Sorry about the typo. There are scalars C1, C2 up to Cn that belong to the field, such that x can be written as a linear combination of those vectors in the basis with those scalars. So x equals C1, V1 plus C2, V2 all the way up to Cn, Vn. That's what it means to be a spanning set. But why does, and now that kind of makes sense, right? Spanning is helpful because it means you can produce every vector in the subspace. But why is it so important we have linear independence? Well, if there was independence, that means that there's only one way to express a combination of zero. Why would that be helpful? Well, let's see. Suppose, for example, we have another linear combination of x using the vectors V1, V2 up to Vn. So let's say we have some other coefficients D1, which will times by V1, we'll add that to D2, V2 all the way up to D and Vn. Suppose that's a combination of x as well. Well, let's subtract x from itself. If we take x minus x, well, on one hand it's just going to be zero. But on the other hand, since we can express x as a linear combination of the V's in these two different ways here, right? We can express it as a linear combination using the coefficient C's and the coefficient D's. When we subtract these things, we can combine like terms, add the V1's together, add the V2's together, add the Vn's together and everyone else.  So notice what we have now in hand is we have a linear combination of our vectors V1, V2 up to Vn that adds up to be zero. Now, if we suppose our set is a basis that is it's linearly dependent, that means each and every one of these coefficients has to be zero in this combination. But if they're all zero, that would mean C i minus D i equals zero for each of the i's. But moving the D to the other side, we see that C i would actually equal D i. So what this tells us is that there is only one way you can express x as a linear combination of the V's. You have to use the C i's because any other combination will produce the same thing. So the linear independence of the vectors will give us that spans that I should say linear combinations are unique. There's only one way to express and that one way is what we're gonna call the coordinates of the vector. So again, suppose we have a basis V1, V2 up to Vn for some vector space V and let x be a vector in the vector space. Again, sorry about the typos there. x belongs to our vector space V right here. We are gonna say that the coordinates of x relative to this basis B are gonna be the scalars C1, C2 up to Cn such that x equals C1, V1 plus C2, V2 up to Cn, Vn. In other words, because x belongs to the vector space, there is a unique way to express x as a linear combination of the basis. You have to use the coefficients C1, C2, all of these Cs right? But this is a unique, these are unique coefficients. There's only one way to do it. So there's no ambiguity to this description. We call these the coordinates of x. Now these coordinates we can arrange into its own vector right? So we take C1 up to C2 all the way up to Cn. Now in this column vector, this is a genuine element of Fn and this is called the coordinate vector of x with respect to B. So we'll denote this bracket x sub B. The bracket here are indicating that this thing looks like a column vector. Even if the vectors in play aren't themselves column vectors, we have this expression right here of column vectors. That is the corner vector will be a column vector even if x wasn't. So for example, if we take the vectors V1, which we'll say is 101, V2, which will be 5, 2, 3 and x will be the vector 3, 2, 1. Let's then take the basis B to equal V1, V2 and we want B to be a basis for the subspace of R3, which we'll call W and it'll be the span of V1, V2. Now notice that V1 and V2 are linearly independent, right? If you look for example, the second component of these vectors, V1 has a zero, V2 has a two. There's no combination of V1 that can produce a V2 and therefore this set is gonna be literally dependent just the two vectors. They're not multiples of each other. So we have an independent set. It spans a subspace, which we're calling W. Therefore B is a basis for W. Now we're gonna first determine is does x belong to the subspace W? And if it does, how can we compute the coordinate vector of x relative to this basis B? And I wanna mention, why do we put this word relative into play right here? Well, because if you pick a different basis for the same subspace, the coordinate vector will change. It is dependent on the basis in play, which is why the term relative is necessary here. So if x belongs to W, if it does, then there would exist coefficient C1, C2. They're gonna be real numbers, such that C1, V1 plus C2, V2 is equal to x. So we have to determine what is C1, what is C2? Now be aware that this comes down to solving a system of linear equations, which we're gonna take a matrix whose coefficient matrix is just the basis B and we're gonna augment it with the vector x, the vector that we are trying to see is x inside the span. So if we care is x inside the span of the vectors inside this basis B, right? We have to solve this linear system. We've done this problem before. So the first column of the coefficient matrix would just be the first vector in the basis B. The second column will be just V2, the second element in the basis there. And then we're gonna augment it with the vector we're trying to figure out is in the span or not. And so if you solve this by row reduction, just doing the usual row operations, I'm not gonna worry about the details of that. You'll find the following. Now we have these two pivot positions, you get a row of zeros, which is perfectly hunky-dory. You get that in this situation, C1 is gonna equal negative two and C2 is gonna equal one. And so therefore we can verify that fact. We can verify that fact here. Sorry, there's another typo. There's too many typos in this video. Sorry, everyone, but we're gonna get, you can check that three, two, one is in fact equal to negative, negative two times 101 plus five, two, three. And let's just double check that to make sure, right? If you take the first one, you're gonna get negative two, zero, negative two. You're gonna add to that five, two and three and then just double checking, right? Five take away three, five take away two is a three, zero plus two is a two, and three take away two is a one. So that is in fact correct. So we've then found right here the coordinates of X with respect to W. The fact that this system was consistent, the fact that the system consistent tells us that the answer to the question was yes, X is in the span of B, therefore X is inside W. But in fact, the solution to that linear system, the negative two and the one, that then gives you the coordinate vector of B relative to X or the coordinate vector of X relative to B. So we find this coordinate vector by solving the system and the consistency of the system tells us that we are in fact in the subspace because if we just take a random vector from R3, it might not be obvious that X is in there, but by solving the system, we were to figure that thing out. Now I wanna mention that here, this vector X lives in R3, but since it also lives in W, we can actually get away with just describing W with just the coordinates negative two and one. And so I wanna give you some type of geometric motivation what's going on here. If we have a vector space, W, that's spanned by two independent vectors, essentially this object is a plane. And we might think of it as a plane that lives in three-dimensional space, mind you, yeah. So you see something like this, but it might be tilted, right? It might not be the XY plane or something. It might be at an angle through space, but we have these two vectors that live on this space, right? So we have our vector V1 and V2, just as an example. And these vectors essentially determine a coordinate system, right? We could extend V1 to make the V1 axis. We could extend V2 to make the V2 axis. And therefore every point in the plane, we can describe as some part of V2 and some part of V1. We get this C1 and C2 values right there. And so we get these coordinates from the situation X is equal to C1 V1 plus C2 V2. So because the plane lives in R3, it's natural to express X as this vector with three numbers. But because it lives in a plane, why can't we just describe the vector as an element of that plane for which we don't have to reference all of three dimensional space? We just have to reference these coordinates, the coordinates of the V1 axis and the coordinates of the V2 axis. And so what I'm trying to say is in this example, that even though the vectors in W are vectors in R3, they're completely determined by their coordinate vectors, which the coordinate vector belongs to R2. And thus there's a natural identification between the vectors of W with the vectors in R2. And that identification is we could just associate X with its coordinate vector X with relative to B. This mapping is in fact a one-to-one mapping. It is an onto mapping. And in fact, it is a linear transformation. So associating a vector to its coordinate vector is a one-to-one onto linear transformation. Essentially, this means that the two spaces are, they look the same. The space W, which we identify with a plane in three dimensions, is congruent to R2. That is, they're both planes and we can attach a coordinate geometry to the plane W much in the same way that we talk about coordinates in the traditional R2. So we say that W is congruent to R2 or sometimes we say that they're isomorphic. Isomorphic here meaning that they have the same shape. And that's the real benefit of coordinates that we can take any vector space and make it look like a standard vector space like R2, R3, R4.


Ginger is most famous for its role in preventing and alleviating nausea and vomiting, with so many studies now that there are reviews of reviews, not just in morning sickness, where just a half teaspoon of powdered ginger is associated with a five-fold likelihood of improvement in nausea, vomiting, and early pregnancy, but also for motion sickness, and post-operative nausea and vomiting after surgery, and preventing antiretroviral-induced nausea and vomiting during HIV treatment, and as a miracle against chemotherapy-induced vomiting. In this randomized double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial of ginger for breast cancer chemo, chemo-induced vomiting was relieved in all phases, meaning in the acute phase within 24 hours of the chemo, delayed vomiting two to three days later, and even was known as anticipatory vomiting, which occurs before chemotherapy sessions, after a few times the body knows what's coming and starts throwing up even at the thought of it approaching. This anticipatory nausea is something drugs can't seem to control, even the fancy new anti-nausea drugs that can cost 10,000 times more than ginger. Which comes in at about two pennies per dose, and in certain ways may work even better. I've also talked about ginger and pain, an eighth teaspoon of powdered ginger, one penny, found to work as well as the migraine headache drug imitrex without the side effects. And speaking of pain, ginger may also be effective as I'd be profaned for alleviating menstrual cramps. Painful periods are exceedingly common and can sometimes cause severe suffering, yet have been virtually ignored by pain management researchers and practitioners. But four randomized controlled trials have been published on ginger for menstrual pain, and all four showed significant benefit when taken just the first few days of your period. Effective doses range from about a third of a teaspoon a day to a full teaspoon a day, but since they all seem to work about the same, might as well just start with a penny a day dose. And as a side effect, side benefit, it can dramatically reduce heavy flow, which is actually one of the most common gynecological problems for young women. We know that there are pro-inflammatory foods that may contribute to heavy menstrual bleeding, so how about trying anti-inflammatory food like ginger? Heavy menstrual bleeding is defined as more than a third of a cup, or 80 milliliters. All of the study subjects started out much higher than that, but just an eighth teaspoon of powdered ginger three times a day, starting the day before their period, cut their flow in half. And it seemed to work better each month they tried it, providing a highly effective, cheap, easy to use safer treatment for menstrual blood loss and pain. So, works for migraines and menstrual cramps, but just because it's effective for many types of pain doesn't mean it's necessarily efficacious for all pain. For example, how about intestinal cramps? Is ginger effective for the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome? And the answer is yes, dropping IBS severity by over 25%, but so did the placebo. So the real answer is no, ginger is not effective for the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome. Yet, ginger is one of the most commonly used herbal medicines for irritable bowel syndrome. Silly people, don't they know it doesn't work any better than a sugar pill? Or, from another perspective, smart people using something that offers relief 53% of the time, and doesn't risk the adverse effects of some of the other drugs, some of the drugs period, with which doctors may harm one person for every three they help.


Wait, hold on one second. We'll sing it in a higher key so everybody can sing along. Alright everyone, thank you so much for coming. Can I get a round of applause? Nice, very nice. Thank you for returning my enthusiasm. I really appreciate it. This is great. This is going to help us sing together with one another. We'll sing some simple songs. We'll sing some songs that might evoke some interesting spiritual connections with the rebona shalom with a friend. But I want to tell you something very important and there are two important messages when we daven. And also this was in last week's parasha as well. When we say the shema right before we go to sleep, one of the things that we sing and we say is The angel that redeems me from evil. We ask that Hashem protect us and in a sense he sends his agents. He sends the angels that surround us and protect us and in a way we walk at night with a sense of dignity. It now is night time. The nights are getting longer and we could tell our children or we could tell people who might be afraid of the dark that when you invoke a relationship with God you can sometimes feel the presence of the malachim, the presence of the angels around us. We'll sing the next song, which was one of the blessings that Yaakov gave to Ephraim and Menasha. And one of the blessings that we sing with our children before we put them to sleep. And we even sing ourselves because we dare to believe and we dare to know that when we serve Hashem, when we have a relationship with the master of masters, with the Lord of hosts, we walk amongst angels. The angel that redeems me from evil. The angel that redeems me from evil. It's nice that everybody can learn the words. Vishay, Jacob, but they will also be called in the name of Abraham. They'll also be called in the name of Isaac. And they will multiply like the fish in the waters. And this is a prayer that parents pray for their children and God should protect them and that they should multiply and they should be successful and fruitful, not just materially, but spiritually as well. What we ultimately end up going back to are the memories that we have from our childhood. And when I would walk home with my father every Friday night, me and all my other siblings, when we came home and this table was set for Shabbos, the lights, the candles were lit, we would all line up for my father to put his hands on top of our heads and to bless us. Yisim Chalikim Ke Frayim Mkhim Naseh. And those moments, those moments have stayed with me all my life. And I in turn do that with my children every Friday night. I bless my children and I can tell you as a parent, I don't think I am more sincere and more heartfelt in any prayer that I make than the prayer that I make for my children. And so it's possible here tonight, as we're singing these songs, to offer a silent prayer to God, asking God to watch over all of our children, all of our families, that Hashem should watch them and should guide them and lead them down the path of our forefathers. This song is a song about giving thanks to Hashem. One of the greatest things, Judy is the concept of gratitude and thanking Hashem. And the more you thank Hashem, the greater the joy you find in your life, because you start to remember all the things there are to be happy about. And that's what this song is all about.  Speaking to Hashem can be very complicated. It's not like speaking to an individual face to face. It's not like speaking to our friends or our husbands or wives or girlfriends or boyfriends. It's difficult sometimes to open our hearts and talk to Hashem. And so what Jewish law teaches us is that something that's difficult and takes time to work on requires repetition. We need to go over and over again until we internalize the message. Let me just give you a brief example, something that we can understand. When I was under the chuppah no longer than two and a half years ago, I told Lauren, my wife, that I loved her. And then I said, now Lauren, darling, since I told you I loved you under the chuppah in this most intense moment of matrimony of marriage, I obviously don't need to tell you that I love you ever again. I didn't really say that. I didn't really say that. But if you laugh then maybe it kind of gives us an idea of how even with one another we need to tell each other that I love you or you're valuable. You were created in the image of God. You have an infinite amount of self-worth and we need to hear it over and over again. And so too we need to tell one another that we love each other, that we value one another over and over and over again. This is not a performance for you. This is not. We might be singing in very good harmony and we might be getting into it but it's not going to be as great as it can be without your participation. The words are, repeat after me, Hero Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. This is the clarion call of the Jewish people. It is the supreme declaration of faith of the Jewish people. And what a beautiful time for all of us to come together here to sing it with one another, to not be ashamed, to sing out to Hashem because to Hashem it doesn't matter if your voice is a bit dry like mine is tonight, maybe it was the coffee, it doesn't matter if you feel like you can carry a tune. If you want to sing and you feel the language of the soul, which is music, move you, I invite you to sing. If you again insist on not singing, then I invite you to clap. To clap in the rhythm, okay? Let's start again. Hashem elokai, Hashem elokai, Hashem shema. I felt that. Thank you. Really, I was able to draw from it. Thank you so much. I just want to pick up on what Rabbi Shorro was saying, about saying I love you. So I got a call as a rabbi. I get calls from all kinds of people and this person calls me up and he says, Rabbi, Rabbi, I've decided to stop praying. I said, well, why would you do something like that? And so he says, Rabbi, I'll be honest with you. I get up in the morning, I eat, and then I give God a list of things that I'm asking him for. I don't feel like it. I don't feel like just asking and asking. You know what? I just don't feel it. I don't feel this is proper.  I said, what? And that's what she said. Yes, you have to tell her I love you 20 times a day. I said, why? She said, not because you need to hear it, because she needs to hear it. And what that taught me is that in relationships, it's not always about what you're feeling, but that there's another person on the other side of the relationship that needs to hear. And the same thing I told this person is true with our relationship with God. Sometimes we're not in the mood of talking to God. But if we're in a relationship with him, he's waiting. He's waiting to hear from us. And we have to talk to him because he wants to hear from us. And so I think Rabbi Shloss is 100% correct. If we want to have this true, vibrant, joyous, meaningful relationship, we've got to repeat over and over again. Hashem, I love you. Hashem, you mean so much to me. Sometimes I feel it, sometimes I don't. But we're in a two-way relationship over here. And so therefore, I'm always going to be talking to you. Would you like to introduce yourself? Okay, go ahead. So, it's really special that we're all here tonight together. And I'm standing. As Jews, there are many things that we do together. We come together for classes, for lectures. We come together for prayer services and our synagogue. And one of the things that we come together to do with Jews is we come together to sing. My wife and I got back last night after spending a month in England. And this morning, we were sharing with each other what was the highlight of the trip. My wife shared with me that for her, just about the highest, most special moment was last Friday night. We spent Shabbat with the Chabad in Bournemouth. And there was very beautiful singing going on together, very informally. The people that came together for the Shabbat meal just came together to sing. And we all probably remember growing up, I remember myself being in a campfire. And sitting around the campfire and singing was a very, very powerful moment. Because it brings people together. And we need that. There's a story about a very devout person who was a member of a congregation. And he would never miss a service. And then he stopped coming. Suddenly did not show up anymore. And the preacher was concerned and asked around, maybe this person is ill. And he was told, no, he's not ill, he's fine. He just doesn't feel he needs to come anymore. A little while later, the preacher went to pay this person a visit. And he goes to his home.  And the preacher sits down opposite this man. And not a word is spoken. The preacher reaches for a tongs. And he takes one burning hot coal out of the fire. And he places it to the side. And without saying a word, they watch as the fire continues to burn brightly and strongly. But this one coal that was put to the side all by itself, starts to get dimmer and dimmer and dimmer until it goes out. The preacher did not say a word. He got up. He put on his coat. And he says to his parishioner, so will I see you at services next week? And the man looks at him and says, I'll be there. Here are the good and the bad, friends are also together. Here are the good and the bad, friends are also together. My grandmother's house. And we were watching the news. And my mother, she was just crying and crying. I couldn't understand why is she crying. And she was telling me there were Jews on the plane, there were Jews on the plane on that blockaby, on that fateful Pan Am flight. And she was crying because of their pain. And I think that memory really ingrained within me. What it means to feel somebody's pain without ever knowing them. And that's what we're singing about. He ne matavu manayim. How beautiful it is. When we as brothers can sit together, when we're there for each other, we're part of one whole. We're not fragmented, but rather we're here as one corporate entity. We're one people, one nation. And that's what this song is all about. So I think it deserves another round. Everybody just close your eyes and really get into this song. Matavu manayim. Sherevedahim gamya. Sherevedahim gamya. Sherevedahim gamya. Free bird? Let's see what other... We have all these great songs here. It's hard to sing it in a higher key. You have to start low, otherwise you won't be able to go high. Right. Hold on, let's try this. This is a story about the Baal Shem Tov. Baal Shem Tov was the founder of the Hasidic movement. And there are many legends about the Baal Shem Tov. Many people that he's met, many people he's interacted with, lives that he had changed. This story will illustrate why. And the story will disappoint you, because it doesn't have a satisfying ending. But it might help us to better understand the power that the Baal Shem Tov harnessed. The story goes like this. Are you listening? Right. One time Baal Shem Tov was traveling in his horse and buggy. Now the Baal Shem Tov had a driver who would control the horses to tell them where to go. Every time the Baal Shem Tov got on his horse and buggy, the driver would ask him where to go, he'd say, Mr. Baal Shem Tov, where do I go? Baal Shem Tov had a very, very interesting answer. Every time the Baal Shem Tov got on his horse and buggy, his driver would say, Mr. Baal Shem Tov, where do I go? Baal Shem Tov would say the following lines. This is what he would say, listen. He would say, let the horses run. He would say, let the horses run. The horses, they may let the horses. Can you guys sing this with me? Let the horses run. That would be it. That was the only instructions that he would give his driver. Which sounds so strange, because he would just tell the driver, let the horses run. And so the driver would oblige. It was the Baal Shem Tov after all. And the horses would just gallop. He would whip the horses once, the horses would winny, and they would gallop. The horses would stop to graze on grass. The Baal Shem Tov would say, ah, here is where I need to be. He would jump off his horse and buggy, and he would run into the nearest town. And it just so happens that there was someone in distress. And the Baal Shem Tov was there right in time to be the hero of the story. I'm not going to go into any details about these stories. The structure of how these Hasidic stories take place. Right? What would the Baal Shem Tov say? He'd say, let the horses run. Let the horses run. Where they may let the horses. He'd say. This would repeat itself. Every time the driver would ask, Mr. Baal Shem Tov, where are we going today? And the Baal Shem Tov would say, well, let the horses run where they may. Again, and again, and again. So let me ask you, was there need for a driver? Did the Baal Shem Tov really need a driver? Right. And how about this? Were the horses magical horses? Were the Baal Shem Tov horses imbued with some kind of mystical wisdom that we don't have? And the horses knew exactly where to go. I'm asking you, what do you think? Yes, they were. They were? That's one interpretation of the story indeed. I'd like to offer a second interpretation. They might have been. But the other interpretation is, no, a horse is a horse of course, of course. Right? They didn't necessarily know where they were going. But the Baal Shem Tov, he also didn't know where he was going, but he knew that wherever he would end up, there he was. And God was calling him wherever he would find himself. And this was the secret, the source of the Baal Shem Tov's greatness. It was the source of the Baal Shem Tov's power in that he knew that anywhere he walked, he walked with God. And wherever he was, there was a special calling that only he could answer. He'd say, anytime the driver would ask him, he needed the driver to ask him this question. The driver is asking us this question. Every single day, the driver is asking, where to? Where are we gonna go? Where to? Where are we gonna go? We'd say, let the horses run. And we'd say, let the horses run. Where they met the horses. Where they met the horses. I wanna see if you guys got the tune. It goes like this. Let the horses run. Repeat after me. Let the horses run. We'd say, let the horses run. Where they met the horses run. We'd say, let the horses run. Where they let the horses run. Where they met the horses. That tells us that no matter where we go, no matter what we do, we're always, we're always accompanied. We're always, always, always walking with protective angels, guardian angels that come along and protect us. They tell a story about a rabbi who was driving on the highway. He was driving on the 95. And he pulled over. He pulls over in one of these stop-offs over there where they sell coffee and they sell all these donkoshes' sandwiches. He walks in and he asks them if you have any orange juice or something. You know, I'm falling asleep at the wheel. I need some help. He sees an Israeli boy, an Israeli boy standing on the other side of the counter. He says to the Israeli boy, Shalom alechem. We all know when two Jews meet, we say, shalom alechem. The Israeli, knowing a little bit of diktuk, knowing a little bit of grammar, he says, rabbi, that's not how you should greet me. You should say, shalom alechem.  It should be peace unto you. Singular, shalom alechem. The rabbi without skipping a beat says, what are you talking about? He says, kim alechem, yitzav e'lach, le shvarcha bechol derechecha. Hashem commands that his guardian angels should walk with you everywhere you go. And so when I say shalom alechem, I'm not just saying peace unto you. I'm saying peace unto you and all the angels that are with you. The rabbi gets back into his car and only many, many, many, many, many years later does he bump into this guy again. And this guy says rabbi, ever since that encounter I could never rest. I wanted to eat a ham sandwich. What about the angels? They're right here with me. And that brought me back. And today I'm a fully-observing Jew. And we always need to remember that there are always angels accompanying us wherever we go. We're never alone. And open my hands. There is actually a special... Angels have a specific tafki. They have a specific job to carry out. And the names of these archangels have a very specific connotation of their job. And we can see by just examining what the names mean. So let's go for the first one. We say it this. Oh God's name, the God of Israel. Michael and Gabriel. We want to our right to be Michael. Michael is like Mi Ka'el. Who is like God? So Mi Ka'el represents God's awe. And we want this at our right side. Because we tend to associate our right side with a sense of power and might, right? A sense of awe. I'm a lefty, so it's not a problem for me. Because we ask for another angel to be on our left side. We say Mi Mi Mi Mi Ka'el and Mi Smoli Gabriel. The smaller side, the left side, usually is the weaker side. But we want that side to be protected. We want that side to be uplifted by God's might. Might in Hebrew is Givura. Gabriel is who is mighty like God. So on one side we have God's awe. The expression of God's awe as an angel flying on our right side and helping our weaker side. Helping our weaker attributes is Gabriel. God's might supporting us when we feel weak. Which means, and before me, may Uriel be present. Who's Uriel? What does Uriel sound like? Bore. Bore, lights. We want God's light to shine in front of us. To show us the way in the darkness, in the dark times, as God showed the way with a fiery cloud through the desert. When we were traveling in the desert. Umea Chorai Refael. Afterwards we want Refael. Refael is the angel of Refua, which means healing. So when we fall back and when we feel damaged, we have the angel of healing to make us feel better, to protect us and to heal us. We have everything we need surrounding us. The Al Roshi. The Al Roshi. Shachih. And above my head, and above my head, I want your divine presence. May your divine presence rest over my head. The Shane. The Shane. L-O-K-E-G-O-V-E.