Significant drowning of LA marshes is inevitable

Wow, Discover magazine paints a pretty dire picture of the future of Louisiana's wetlands.

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.

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!

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-