Apr 19, 2012 - precipitation and temperature regimes with great global variability. Wetlands that are ... http://profmandia.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/climate-change-impact-on-freshwater-wetlands- lakes-rivers/ .... to climate change. Websites ...
Symposium: Best Management Practices for Climate Change Adaptation: A Wetlands Perspective Room 556 B Rhode Island Convention Center Chair: Joy Marburger Co-Chair Marcia Berman
What is the Difference between Climate Change Resiliency and Adaptation?
Ecological resilience, as used here, is the natural adaptive capacity of systems to selforganize in response to change. Novel ecosystems via “new trajectories” may result. Adaptation as defined by the IPCC is the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects on the environment. In natural or human-made systems, human intervention may facilitate this adjustment. Fundamentally there are only two parts to adaptation science: • calculating the probability of a future event;
• creating contingency plans for events most likely to materialize, with the greatest vulnerabilities. (Nitschke and Innes 2008; Martin-Breen and Anderies 2012; IPCC 2014)
A Warm Time in the Past – The Mid-Pliocene: about 3.3 to 3.0 Mya Proxy for Future Climate Environment in Late 21st Century The Mid-Pliocene - mean global temperatures were substantially warmer for a sustained period (estimated by GCMs to be about 2°C to 3°C above pre-industrial temperatures; Chandler et al., 1994; Sloan et al., 1996; Haywood et al., 2000; Jiang et al., 2005), Under current pledges and commitments, the world could reach 4°C degree warming by the end of the century and 2°C warming as early as 2040 (IPCC Fifth Assessment, 2013).
Greenland WAS green 3 mya (Bierman et al. Science 25 April 2014)
If all the polar melted... If theice Greenland ice sheet melted completely water levels could rise 5-7 m (16-23 ft)…
From National Geographic, NOAA
The Landscape During the Early to Mid-Pliocene 3 MYA
Science 9 Sept 2011
Much of the earth was covered with vegetation with very little ice at the poles. But there isn’t an analog climate representing the future.
Rapid Increase in Atmospheric CO2 and Temperature in the Last 150 yrs
Vegetation Biome Tension Zones 49% of the Earth’s land surface area will be undergoing plant community changes.
©BONAP Bergengren et al. Climatic Change , 2011, Volume 107, Issue 3-4, pp 433-457
BONAP=Biota of North America Program
Number of days where temperatures are expected to exceed 90 degrees F are increasing.
Sea level rise from 0.7 to 2 meters by 2100 is projected to impact numerous coastal counties.
32 000 km2 of total land area, larger than Maryland, lies less than one vertical meter above the high tide line in the coastal contiguous US. 1.9 million housing units occupy this land with 3.7 million people, or 1.2% of the national population.
County populations under 1 m TIDEL. (Strauss et al. 2012. Environ. Res. Lett. 7 014033 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/7/1/014033 U.S. EPA)
Increased Flooding and Drought
2012 2005
Tidally adjusted estimates of topographic vulnerability to sea level rise and flooding for the contiguous United States projected for 2100 and beyond. Benjamin H. Strauss et al. 2012 Environ. Res. Lett. 7 014033 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/7/1/014033
The Challenge of Climate Change: The New Normal
Will organisms be able to adapt to increased climate change velocity?
Colonize Tolerate Evolve Become Extinct
What is the “tolerance niche” of a species? Sax, D., R. Early, and J. Bellemare. 2013. Niche syndromes, species extinction risks, and management under climate change. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 28:517-523.
Wetland climate change research and adaptation models are presented by the speakers in our symposium.
WI
MI RI
IN VA
GA
State of the Science: Climate Change Adaptive Management Tools for Wetlands Joy Marburger Purdue University North Central Westville, Indiana
Climate Change Impacts on Wetlands: Drought, Flooding, Warming Water, Soil Carbon Storage
Vulnerable Wetlands
Wetlands cover 6% of the world’s land surface and contain about 12% of the global carbon pool (IPCC 1996). Climate change will affect the hydrology of individual wetland ecosystems mostly through changes in precipitation and temperature regimes with great global variability. Wetlands that are most vulnerable to projected changes include:
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depressional wetlands with small watersheds;
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boreal peatlands, and bogs - dependent on the frequency and timing of precipitation and drying events, as well as duration of snow cover;
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shallow or high groundwater wetlands such as forested, shrub and fresh meadow, seasonal or temporary wetlands;
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coastal wetlands impacted by flooding and storm surges - One potential impact of global warming is the inundation of the Earth's low-lying coastal areas by rising sea level
Other anthropogenic Influences Interacting with precipitation and temperature impacts. http://profmandia.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/climate-change-impact-on-freshwater-wetlandslakes-rivers/
Plan for Change Vs. Business as Usual
Wetland adaptation activities should be described as measures taken to manage, conserve, and protect coastal and inland wetlands and their functions in order to support key services: • Water quantity management – flood storage, groundwater storage and recharge; • Water quality protection – filtering out pollutants as part of buffering against increased storm runoff and larger precipitation events; • Hazard management and flood abatement – shoreline stabilization, storm surge buffering;
• Habitat/wildlife protection – including sustaining habitat corridors and maintaining biodiversity, and • Carbon sequestration – reducing greenhouse gases and protecting wetland soils.
Wetland Soils with Nutrient Rich Clays
Pine Forest Wetland Soils
Non-acidic Organic Wetland Soil
Weakly Developed Wetland Soils
©BONAP
Prairie Wetland Soils
©BONAP Loss of Wetland Soils: • Past and present loss to agriculture through drainage, diking, oxidation of peat and wetland soils • Droughts and floods exacerbated by climate change
A Drought without Respite: Soil moisture projections averaged across 17 climate models over the next century (green, red, and blue lines) compared with 1000-year drought history based on tree rings
E. Underwood, Science 2015;347:707 Published by AAAS
Wet Regions Will Get Wetter, Dry Regions Drier (Science, 13 February 2015) - which will impact wetland habitats.
Vulnerable Coastal Wetlands
Coastal Wetlands =Those wetlands (tidal and fresh) within a HUC 8 watershed that are adjacent to and drain to the Atlantic, Pacific, or Gulf of Mexico, and also in the Great Lakes drainage. More than 50% of nation’s population are concentrated along coasts where wetland biodiversity is threatened by: • floods and droughts • surface water diversions • groundwater withdrawal • sea level rise and storm surges.
Wetland Density in the Eastern Half of the US (NOAA and Sea Grant) hierarchical hydrologic unit code (HUC)
Biome Shifts in Vegetation – Temperature and Precipitation Effects
Effects on Evapotranspiration on Vegetation
http://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs/rmrs_gtr295_append.pdf
Climate Change in the Great Lakes: Projected Changes
NOAA, Lake Level Viewer for the Great Lakes
Flora and Fauna: Can They Respond to Increased Inundation Depths and Frequency Associated with Sea Level Rise (2 m End of Century)?
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Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (Multiple Agencies)
Creating Landscape Corridors on a Regional Scale
http://www.wildlifeadaptationstrategy.gov/takingaction.php
MODELS MATTER! Climate Models Combined with
LONG-TERM MONITORING/RESEARCH
Conceptual Models
Effects of Climate Change
http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/sectors/ecosystems
Quantitative Models
http://www.fs.fed.us/nrs/atlas/models/
TOOLS FOR CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION Examples: NatureServe USDA Forest Service
NASA USGS NOAA
Network (NatureServe) • helps decision-makers minimize the impacts of development on the coastal and marine realms; • source of planning and management tools in the United States and internationally; • mission is to promote healthy ecosystems and communities through the use of tools that help incorporate ecosystem-based thinking into management decisions.
Search the EBM Tools database
http://www.natureserve.org/conservation-tools/ecosystem-based-management-tools-network
Select Maps and Options for tamarack (native) Larix laricina
Current Modelled for tamarack
• •
PCM – B1 (Low, “Mild”) for tamarack
Tamarack (Larix laricina), a characteristic native tree of northern swamp and raised bog habitat; Low climate change adaptability.
http://www.fs.fed.us/nrs/atlas/tree/multi.php?spp=71
Climate Models: Soil Moisture Active Passive (NASA - SMAP)
Radar image acquired from data from March 31 to April 3, 2015. Weaker radar signals (blues) reflect low soil moisture or lack of vegetation, such as in deserts. Strong radar signals (reds) are seen in forests. SMAP's radar also takes data over the ocean and sea ice. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC; PRISM Data
USGS Groundwater and Surface Water Models
The groundwater database contains records from about 850,000 wells that have been compiled during the course of groundwater hydrology studies over the past 100 years
Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM): SLAMM Sea Level Affecting Marshes Model A Landscape-Based Model
http://coast.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/tools/slamm
The Challenge of Climate Change: The New Normal Will organisms be able to adapt to climate change velocity?
Colonize Tolerate Evolve Become Extinct
What is the “tolerance niche” of a species? Sax, D., R. Early, and J. Bellemare. 2013. Niche syndromes, species extinction risks, and management under climate change. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 28:517-523.
Managers Will Have to Deal With Novel Climate Change Challenges.
Considerations for Wetland Restoration in the Face of Climate Change •
Plan for a warmer climate, including temperature, drought, and hydrologic tolerances; develop applied research to determine plant tolerances.
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Use native wetland plants found in wide range of latitude gradients, soil types, and hydrological conditions.
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Create wetland corridors to facilitate native animal and plant migration (LCCs); reduce negative impacts of non-native wetland plants. Consider that southern species will migrate northward.
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Use wide seed sources that provide enough genetic variation for resiliency to climate change.
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Provide wetland buffer zones along coastal areas for flood protection.
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Protect refugia for rare wetland species, where they occur; facilitated relocation may be necessary.
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Conduct well-designed long-term monitoring of habitat, diseases, pests with management considerations.
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Apply advancing satellite imagery and GIS for modeling past, current, and projected hydrology, wetland vegetation, soils, etc.
Websites NOAA Digital Coast: http://coast.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/topics/list Best Practices for Climate Change Adaptation: Spotlight on Michigan Coastal Wetlands http://www.nwf.org/~/media/PDFs/GlobalWarming/2014/MI_CoastalWetlandsBestPractices_Toolkit_2014.pdf A Framework for assessing the vulnerability of wetlands to climate change http://strp.ramsar.org/strp-publications/ramsar-technical-reports/rtr-no.5-a-frameworkfor-assessing-the-vulnerability-of-wetlands-to-climate-change-2011 Restore Adapt Mitigate: Responding to Climate Change Through Coastal Habitat Restoration http://www.americaswetland.com/photos/article/rae%20climate%20chg%20report%2 04-19-2012.pdf Adaptation Database Planning Tool (ADAPT) – http:/adapt.nd.edu ClimateWizard – http:/climatewizard.org Ecosystem-based Adaptation Tools Network EPA: BASINS CAT, WEPPCAT, Stormwater CAT, CREAT: assess streamflow and water quality sensitivity to climate change
A VOICE FROM THE PAST
“It is not the strongest of species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”
....Charles Darwin
