scholarly journals Opinions on strategies for forest adaptation to future climate conditions in western Canada: surveys of the general public and leaders of forest-dependent communities

2014 ◽  
Vol 44 (12) ◽  
pp. 1525-1533 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reem Hajjar ◽  
Erin McGuigan ◽  
Molly Moshofsky ◽  
Robert A. Kozak

Two province-wide surveys of residents in Alberta and British Columbia were conducted to assess the acceptability of a range of reforestation strategies — many of which revolve around biotechnology — that could be used to aid western Canada’s forests in adapting to future climate change. The opinions of leaders of forest-dependent communities were also sought to evaluate how well they align with those of the public at large. Results show that the views of the general public and community leaders correspond. There is a low acceptance for a “do-nothing” strategy that allows climate change to run its course without any human intervention; high acceptance of replanting with local seeds; a decreasing acceptance of strategies that involve more manipulation such as breeding, using nonlocal seeds, and moving seeds outside of a species’ natural range; and a low acceptance of genetically engineered solutions. However, a high proportion of respondents changed their answers when told that a particular strategy would lead to either favourable or unfavourable outcomes related to socioeconomics of forest-dependent communities, forest aesthetics, and pest, disease, and fire outbreaks. We conclude that a meaningful and participatory dialogue on forest adaptation strategies in the face of climate change can only emerge if residents and other interested stakeholders have an adequate understanding of current forest management practices, proposed reforestation strategies, the role of technological interventions, and the values and services for which western Canada’s forests are to be managed.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Yuan ◽  
Shuang-ye Wu ◽  
Shugui Hou

<p>This study aims to establish future vegetation changes in the east and central of northern China (ECNC), an ecologically sensitive region in the transition zonal from humid monsoonal to arid continental climate. The region has experienced significant greening in the past several decades. However, few studies exist on how vegetation will change with future climate change, and great uncertainties exist due to complex, and often spatially non-stationary, relationships between vegetation and climate. In this study, we first used historical NDVI and climate data to model this spatially variable relationship with Geographically Weighted Logit Regression. We found that temperature and precipitation could explain, on average, 43% of NDVI variance, and they could be used to model NDVI fairly well. We then establish future climate change using the output of 11 CMIP6 models for the medium (SSP245) and high (SSP585) emission scenarios for the mid-century (2041-2070) and late-century (2071-2100). The results show that for this region, both temperature and precipitation will increase under both scenarios. By late-century under SSP585, precipitation is projected to increase by 25.12% and temperature is projected to increase 5.87<sup>o</sup>C in ECNC. Finally, we used future climate conditions as input for the regression models to project future vegetation (indicated by NDVI). We found that NDVI will increase under climate change. By mid-century, the average NDVI in ECNC will increase by 0.024 and 0.021 under SSP245 and SSP585. By late-century, it will increase by 0.016 and 0.006 under SSP245 and SSP585 respectively. Although NDVI is projected to increase, the magnitude of increase is likely to diminish with higher emission scenarios, possibly due to the benefit of precipitation increase being gradually encroached by the detrimental effects of temperature increase. Moreover, despite the overall NDVI increase, the area likely to suffer vegetation degradation will also expands, particularly in the western part of ECNC. With higher emissions and later into the century, region with low NDVI is likely to shift and/or expand north-forward. Our results could provide important information on possible vegetation changes, which could help to develop effective management strategies to ensure ecological and economic sustainability in the future.</p>


2016 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 1327-1342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Spyridon Paparrizos ◽  
Andreas Matzarakis

Assessment of future variations of streamflow is essential for research regarding climate and climate change. This study is focused on three agricultural areas widespread in Greece and aims to assess the future response of annual and seasonal streamflow and its impacts on the hydrological regime, in combination with other fundamental aspects of the hydrological cycle in areas with different climate classification. ArcSWAT ArcGIS extension was used to simulate the future responses of streamflow. Future meteorological data were obtained from various regional climate models, and analysed for the periods 2021–2050 and 2071–2100. In all the examined areas, streamflow is expected to be reduced. Areas characterized by continental climate will face minor reductions by the mid-century that will become very intense by the end and thus these areas will become more resistant to future changes. Autumn season will face the strongest reductions. Areas characterized by Mediterranean conditions will be very vulnerable in terms of future climate change and winter runoff will face the most significant decreases. Reduced precipitation is the main reason for decreased streamflow. High values of actual evapotranspiration by the end of the century will act as an inhibitor towards reduced runoff and partly counterbalance the water losses.


PeerJ ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. e11370
Author(s):  
Mauricio Diazgranados ◽  
Carolina Tovar ◽  
Thomas R. Etherington ◽  
Paula A. Rodríguez-Zorro ◽  
Carolina Castellanos-Castro ◽  
...  

Background The páramos, the high-elevation ecosystems of the northern Andes, are well-known for their high species richness and provide a variety of ecosystem services to local subsistence-based communities and regional urbanizations. Climate change is expected to negatively affect the provision of these services, but the level of this impact is still unclear. Here we assess future climate change impact on the ecosystem services provided by the critically important páramos of the department of Boyacá in Colombia, of which over 25% of its territory is páramo. Methods We first performed an extensive literature review to identify useful species of Boyacá, and selected 103 key plant species that, based on their uses, support the provision of ecosystem services in the páramos. We collated occurrence information for each key species and using a Mahalanobis distance approach we applied climate niche modelling for current and future conditions. Results We show an overall tendency of reduction in area for all ecosystem services under future climate conditions (mostly a loss of 10% but reaching up to a loss of 40%), but we observe also increases, and responses differ in intensity loss. Services such as Food for animals, Material and Medicinal, show a high range of changes that includes both positive and negative outcomes, while for Food for humans the responses are mostly substantially negative. Responses are less extreme than those projected for individual species but are often complex because a given ecosystem service is provided by several species. As the level of functional or ecological redundancy between species is not yet known, there is an urgency to expand our knowledge on páramos ecosystem services for more species. Our results are crucial for decision-makers, social and conservation organizations to support sustainable strategies to monitor and mitigate the potential consequences of climate change for human livelihoods in mountainous settings.


2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 625-632 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rishiraj Dutta

The analysis of this study focused on the tea growing areas of Northeast India to provide predictions for future climate scenarios and its impact on tea production by 2050. The applied methodology involves a combination of current climate data with future climate change predictions from different models for 2050 as derived by WorldClim and IPCC4 (CIAT recommended). The results showed the possibility of an increase in average temperature by 2 °C in 2050, while not much variation is observed in the rainfall pattern. A change in tea production period is also expected by 2050 making tea planters look for alternative crops as an adaptive measure to keep the industry on its feet. With such expected impacts on tea production, the planters would need to make changes in their management practices to adapt to the evolving conditions and environment. In this study, the climate data were used as input to DIVA GIS Model. Monthly climate data were fed into Cranfield University Plantation Productivity Analysis for Tea Model (CUPPA Tea Model) to simulate observed and predicted yields. The study further shows that the overall climate will become less seasonal in terms of variation through the years followed by expected variations in monthly precipitation during the peak production months.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. e0135350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary M. Langham ◽  
Justin G. Schuetz ◽  
Trisha Distler ◽  
Candan U. Soykan ◽  
Chad Wilsey

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 3885
Author(s):  
Christos Spyrou ◽  
Michael Loupis ◽  
Νikos Charizopoulos ◽  
Ilektra Apostolidou ◽  
Angeliki Mentzafou ◽  
...  

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are being deployed around the world in order to address hydrometeorological hazards, including flooding, droughts, landslides and many others. The term refers to techniques inspired, supported and copied from nature, avoiding large constructions and other harmful interventions. In this work the development and evaluation of an NBS applied to the Spercheios river basin in Central Greece is presented. The river is susceptible to heavy rainfall and bank overflow, therefore the intervention selected is a natural water retention measure that aims to moderate the impact of flooding and drought in the area. After the deployment of the NBS, we examine the benefits under current and future climate conditions, using various climate change scenarios. Even though the NBS deployed is small compared to the rest of the river, its presence leads to a decrease in the maximum depth of flooding, maximum velocity and smaller flooded areas. Regarding the subsurface/groundwater storage under current and future climate change and weather conditions, the NBS construction seems to favor long-term groundwater recharge.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camilla Andersson ◽  

<p>Biodiversity includes any type of living variation, from the ecosystem level to genetic variation within organisms. The greatest threats to biodiversity is climate change, destruction of habitats and other human activities. High-altitude mountain regions are pristine environments, with historically small impacts from air pollution, but at risk of being disproportionately impacted by climate change. We focus on three mountainous regions: the Scandinavian Mountains, the Guadarrama Mountains in Spain, and the Pyrenees in France, Andorra and Spain. We study the impact of drivers of change of biodiversity such as future climate change, increased incidences of wild fires, emissions from new shipping routes in the Arctic as ice sheets are melting, human impacts on land use and management practices (such as reindeer grazing) and air pollution.</p><p>We simulate future climate change using WRF and a convective permitting climate model, HARMONIE-Climate, with a spatial resolution of 3km. The high resolution strongly improves the representation of precipitation compared to coarser scale simulations (Lind et al., 2020). We use these simulations to develop future scenarios of air pollution load, using two well established chemistry transport models (MATCH and CHIMERE; Marécal et al., 2015). These climate and air pollution scenarios are subsequently used, together with management scenarios, to develop scenarios for biodiversity and ecosystem services. These scenarios are developed applying a process-based dynamic vegetation and biogeochemistry model, LPJ-GUESS (Smith et al., 2014). </p><p>The scenarios, representing mid-21<sup>st</sup> century, will be made available through a web-based planning tool, where local stakeholders in each region can explore the project results to understand how scenarios of climate change, air pollution and policy development will affect these ecosystems. Local stakeholders are involved throughout the project, such as reindeer herder communities, regional county boards and national authorities, and in a time of changing climate and a global pandemic we have learned the necessity for flexibility in such interactions.</p><p> </p><p>References</p><p>Lind et al. 2020., Climate Dynamics 55, 1893-1912.</p><p>Marécal et al., 2015. Geosci. Mod. Dev. 8, 2777-2813.</p><p>Smith et al. 2014 Biogeosciences 11, 2027-2054.</p>


Polar Record ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
James D. Ford ◽  
Barry Smit ◽  
Johanna Wandel ◽  
John MacDonald

Significant and rapid climate change is predicted for Arctic regions. These changes are expected to have implications for indigenous communities. This paper argues that the starting point to understand how future climate change may affect communities is analysis of past and present experience of, and response to, climate variability and change. Using a vulnerability approach, the paper provides an historical account of changing vulnerability to climate-related risks among Inuit in Igloolik, Nunavut. The research demonstrates that Inuit in Igloolik have been highly adaptable in the face of climatic stresses. This adaptability has historically been facilitated by traditional Inuit knowledge, resource use flexibility and diversity, group mobility, and strong social networks. However, societal changes, and more recently biophysical changes, have increased the susceptibility of people to climatic risks and have undermined certain aspects of adaptive capacity. The research indicates that the implications of future climate change will be influenced by the interaction between biophysical and societal changes, will vary over time in response to forces internal and external to the community, and will be differentiated among social groups.


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