Water slides!

A colleague of mine told me about an interesting upcoming conference in Milwaukee (see here), and we chatted for a bit about how the city is really striving to be a focal point in the discussion of water resources.

That conversation got me curious about what else has happened in Milwaukee of late, so I did a quick Google search... Lo and behold, up came these very interesting presentations from July's Water Summit (scroll about midway down the page)...

How to help Haiti in the long-term

An interesting, brief piece on improving Haiti's environment in the long-term.

Tragedy of the Himalayas

In preparation for the Copenhagen climate talks, Time magazine put together a fascinating and terrifying glimpse into the consequences that global warming may (has begun to?) exert on water supply in Asia. I've only just seen it today since a coworker shared her copy with me. Check it out!

I tried to track down the McKinsey report referenced in the aforementioned piece and found this; I'm not sure that it's the document the author mentioned but it looks fascinating nonetheless. I also found this assessment of the economic impact of drought in China, which looks to be equally interesting.

Welcome back and Australian drought

It's been a long time since the last post -- I've been busying myself with a variety of related and unrelated pursuits.

I caught this piece on drought in Australia on the News Hour last night and it struck me as perfect S71 fodder.

Climate change and migration

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, my grandfather was the Chairman of CARE, so their new report on the relationship between climate change and migration interests me on both a personal and professional level.

Check out the key findings below, cut and pasted from the Executive Summary:

• Climate change is already contributing to displacement
and migration. Although economic and political factors are
the dominant drivers of displacement and migration today,
climate change is already having a detectable effect.

• The breakdown of ecosystem-dependent livelihoods is likely to
remain the premier driver of long-term migration during the
next two to three decades. Climate change will exacerbate this
situation unless vulnerable populations, especially the poorest,
are assisted in building climate-resilient livelihoods.

• Disasters continue to be a major driver of shorter-term
displacement and migration. As climate change increases the
frequency and intensity of natural hazards such as cyclones,
floods, and droughts, the number of temporarily displaced
people will rise. This will be especially true in countries that
fail to invest now in disaster risk reduction and where the
official response to disasters is limited.

• Seasonal migration already plays an important part in many
families’ struggle to deal with environmental change. This
is likely to become even more common, as is the practice of
migrating from place to place in search of ecosystems that
can still support rural livelihoods.

• Glacier melt will affect major agricultural systems in Asia. As
the storage capacity of glaciers declines, short-term flood
risks increase. This will be followed by decreasing water
flows in the medium- and long-term. Both consequences of
glacier melt would threaten food production in some of the
world’s most densely populated regions.

• Sea level rise will worsen saline intrusions, inundation, storm
surges, erosion, and other coastal hazards. The threat is
particularly grave vis-à-vis island communities. There is strong
evidence that the impacts of climate change will devastate
subsistence and commercial agriculture on many small
islands.

• In the densely populated Ganges, Mekong, and Nile River
deltas, a sea level rise of 1 meter could affect 23.5 million
people and reduce the land currently under intensive
agriculture by at least 1.5 million hectares. A sea level rise of
2 meters would impact an additional 10.8 million people and
render at least 969 thousand more hectares of agricultural
land unproductive.

• Many people won’t be able to flee far enough to adequately
avoid the negative impacts of climate change—unless they
receive support. Migration requires resources (including
financial, social, and political capital) that the most vulnerable
populations frequently don’t have. Case studies indicate that
poorer environmental migrants can find their destinations as
precarious as the places they left behind.

Happy World Oceans Day and more

First of all, happy World Oceans Day.

Second, some interesting news over the weekend, including:

1. A  piece in the San Francisco Chronicle about a NMFS plan to restore salmon in the Bay Delta.

2. A bit in the New York Times about green roofs in New York.

3. A short article in the Boston Globe about water use in Massachusetts.

Science in the City

Tickets for the 2009 World Science Festival became available yesterday.  Sessions of interest to water people include The Hudson Since Henry and Rising Waters in a Thirsty World.

The Hudson session will include input from Alex Matthiessen, president of Riverkeeper, Eric Sanderson, one of the folks behind the Mannahatta Project, and John Waldman, a professor of biology at Queens College whose research focuses on ecology and evolution of fishes and urban aquatic environments.

Maude Barlow, Senior Advisor on Water to the President of UN General Assembly, and Radley Horton, a climate change modeler and Climate Science Lead for the Science Policy Team of the NYC Panel on Climate Change, will present with other colleagues at the Rising Waters presentation.

As John Tierney noted yesterday, tickets sold out last summer and some programs may sell out rather quickly... so get tickets soon!

Of conflict and culture

California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is, in many ways, a useful arena in which to study the water struggles that may face the world in coming decades.  The Delta and its water are subject to competing interests: while the ecosystem supports sensitive endemic species and an array of other ecologically- and commercially-important organisms, agricultural interests and water resource management agencies seek to utilize the system to mitigate California’s dry climate and promote economic growth.  Shifting patterns of precipitation and climate change complicate the situation.  The competition for water, exotic species invasion, widespread pesticide use, and increases in stormwater runoff has caused myriad ecological impacts, including the listing of the delta smelt as a federally-threatened species.  The result has been a protracted and complicated legal battle, and pieces included in Friday's San Francisco Chronicle and Sacramento Bee suggest that despite a resolution reached in December 2008 to reduce water exports, the fight for water is not yet over.

On a slightly different, but related, note photographer Lukas Felzmann has examined California's inland waterways, wetlands, fields, and industrial agriculture landscapes from an interesting perspective.  Check out a review of, and images from, the resulting book here and order it here.  It is phenomenal.

Polar discovery

I just found a Scientific American blog chronicling a six-week Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution research cruise to study the impacts of climate change on the Bering Sea.  Check it out, if only for the photography.  

While poking around, I found an even better site, managed by Woods Hole, documenting the expedition's travels and discoveries... again, totally amazing photography and great insight into what goes on during a six-week research cruise.

Rising Tides...

The American Society of Landscape Architects posted a blog entry today about a totally cool competition designed to stimulate discussion on how to address the challenges that rising sea levels present for infrastructure, the environment, and quality of life in San Francisco and elsewhere.  The competition forces competitors to consider, for example, how to manage wetlands appropriately, how to anticipate changes to the shoreline (check out my earlier post re: an online tool for visualizing SLR under various scenarios), and how to retrofit structures and/or areas designed to be dry to withstand inundation.   Check out the competition homepage here for more details.

Visualizing sea level rise online

Last week the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service released an internet-based tool for visualizing impacts associated with predicted climate change-related sea level rise in a number of coastal communities throughout the U.S.  It can be found here: http://www.slammview.org/. 

I've cut and pasted the press release and contact information below:

Contact: Vanessa Kauffman

703-358-2138

vanessa_kauffman@fws.gov

            Sea Level Rise Simulations Are Now Available Online

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today released a new user-friendly internet tool that allows the public to view simulations of sea level rise.  Released in honor of Earth Day, this program is designed to help people understand the potential impacts of climate change on sea levels.

The Sea Level Affecting Marshes Model (SLAMM)-View is a web browser-based application that displays map pairs of the same area, each at different sea levels. The strength of this tool is its ability to visually show the modeling of sea level rise predictions, allowing people to see the impacts in a more intuitive way.

“Sea level rise is certainly one of the most pressing issues facing many coastal communities, as well as national wildlife refuges,” said Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge Manager Lou Hinds. “SLAMM will be used by many coastal refuge managers to involve the public in discussions concerning sea level rise as part of the Comprehensive Conservation Planning process. This planning process must be undertaken every 15 years and unless something changes dramatically coastal refuges will be dealing with this issue over the next 100 years,” Hinds added.

Most sea level rise models examine inundation patterns and do not take into account the biological impacts. SLAMM also looks at sediment and organic matter accumulation on the marshes as well as erosion from tides and storms that can overtake coastal barrier beaches. In addition, SLAMM depicts how these relationships will remain coupled as sea levels rise.

The SLAMM also predicts changes in coastal wetlands and shorelines. These simulations are based on the best available science and technology. Users can select different scenarios by combining time, in 25-year intervals, at different severities, e.g., 0.5 meters to 1 meter increase in sea level.

“This new web-mapping tool can be used to educate communities on the potential effects of sea level increases,” said Leopoldo Miranda, Supervisor, Chesapeake Bay Field Office. “For nearly 20 years, the information provided by SLAMM was available only in table or static map form. SLAMM-View now provides this in a visually dynamic way that more organizations and individuals will be able to use.”

One unique aspect of SLAMM is that the dual maps are geographically-linked: zooming or panning in one map causes an identical alteration in the other map. Regional simulations have been posted on SLAMM-View for a number of important estuaries, including Delaware Bay, coastal South Carolina, coastal Georgia, Puget Sound and Chesapeake Bay. As data becomes available, more map layers and simulations will be made available to the public, including site-specific SLAMM simulations for Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge. The Viewer shows 45 possible fine-scale combinations of sea level rise scenarios with over a dozen contextual layers you can turn on or off. The visual impact of this map modeling tool makes it a reality to everyone.

The SLAMM view tool could be accessed at http://www.fws.gov/chesapeakebay/slamm and http://www.slammview.org.

The mission of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is working with others to conserve, protect and enhance fish, wildlife, plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people. We are both a leader and trusted partner in fish and wildlife conservation, known for our scientific excellence, stewardship of lands and natural resources, dedicated professionals and commitment to public service. For more information on our work and the people who make it happen, visit www.fws.gov.

                                   -FWS-

Water access in Asia

On Friday, the Asia Society released a report highlighting the risk that climate change, population growth, and urbanization pose to the continent's water resources.  The authors note that 1 in 5 Asians already lack access to clean drinking water and that, although it is the world's most heavily populated continent, Asia has the least water per person of any continent other than Antarctica.  The report concludes that decreased access to clean, stable water supplies "will have a profound impact on security throughout the region."

A Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty story released yesterday on water conflict in the Central Asian states serves as a reminder of the serious state of water politics today, even before popoulations swell, urban areas expand, and patterns of precipitation shift due to climate change.  Uzbekistan's President, Islam Karimov, has enlisted the support of counterparts in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to prevent the construction of hydropower stations in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and the associated disruptions in water supply in the three downstream nations.  Kyryzstan and Tajikistan argue that they cannot afford the prices their neighbors demand for oil and natural gas, and that hydropower is perhaps the only path toward energy independence and ending winter energy rationing.