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CANADA- Alberta’s Brutal Water Reckoning. Scientists who studied the region’s arid past warned this drought was coming. Thirst for growth won out. A Tyee special report.Andrew Nikiforuk 19 Feb 2024 The Tyee contributing editor Andrew Nikiforuk is an award-winning journalist whose books and articles focus on epidemics, the energy industry, nature and more.Alberta’s water reckoning has begun in earnest. Snowpack accumulations in the Oldman River basin, the Bow River basin and the North Saskatchewan River basin range from 33 to 62 per cent below normal. A reduced snowpack means less summer water for the fish and all water drinkers. Ancient glaciers that feed and top up prairie rivers in the late summer melted at record speeds last year, the hottest on global records. Many indomitable ice packs, such as the well-studied Peyto Glacier, are disappearing altogether, wasted by the desiccating hand of climate disorder. Fifty-one river basins from Milk River to Hay River report critical water shortages due to low rainfall and high temperatures, according to the provincial government. Groundwater levels in parts of Alberta have reached record lows. Wells in Rocky View County just outside of Calgary, for example, show steady declines and the lowest levels ever measured. Some 600,000 rural Albertans depend on groundwater. Most of the province’s water reservoirs sit five metres below their normal waterlines, boat launch docks projecting over baked earth like monuments from a lost civilization.The Oldman River Dam, a $500-million megaproject built for the irrigation industry, overlooks a desert of silt cut by a narrow canal of chocolate water. Its reservoir sits at 30 per cent capacity. Normally it ranges from 60 to 80 per cent full. St. Mary Reservoir normally was between 40 and 70 per cent full. Today, at 11 per cent capacity, it has become a ghost of a water body. The Spray Lakes Reservoir, high in Kananaskis country, reports 34 per cent of capacity. Lake Diefenbaker, from which the people of Saskatchewan get 60 per cent of their drinking water, received only 28 per cent of normal inflow last year from heat-stricken Alberta, a plummet scientists called “unprecedented.” With less water in the rivers and ground, the cottonwoods and willows that decorate the banks of prairie rivers are dying. Parched rural communities have even begun to question the huge thirst of the powerful oil and gas industry. A water commission that provides potable water to the municipalities of Innisfail, Bowden, Olds, Didsbury, Carstairs and Crossfield has banned treated bulk water supplies to the fracking industry, which permanently removes water from the water cycle. One study recently noted that water consumption by frackers “intensifies local water competition and alters water supply threatened by climate variability.” Yet the Alberta government has not declared an emergency. It says it is planning for extreme drought but hoping for snow and rain. Meanwhile Danielle Smith’s (Premier of Alberta) United Conservative Party government has appointed an advisory body with no known water experts. But it does include Ian Anderson, a promoter of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion that will transport bitumen from the oilsands to the Port of Vancouver, criss-crossing many dwindling rivers, creeks and streams as it does. Alberta’s water emergency, which is also a fire emergency, was foretold by scores of water scientists. They predicted that prolonged water scarcity would hit southern Alberta hard for stubborn geographical reasons. No one sounded the alarm more persistently and urgently than the late David Schindler, one of the world’s great water ecologists. Schindler never tired of reminding Albertans that their province has only 2.2 per cent of Canada’s renewable fresh water. Meanwhile its industries, government and residents behaved as though water came from ever-flowing taps instead of dwindling glaciers, rivers, aquifers and snowpacks. There’s another ignored reality. Eighty per cent of Alberta’s water flows north while 80 per cent of the province’s growing population lives in the drier portion south of Edmonton. “Sometime in the coming century, the increasing demand for water, the increasing scarcity of water due to climate warming, and one of the long droughts of past centuries will collide, and Albertans will learn first-hand what water scarcity is all about,” warned Schindler nearly two decades ago. Schindler explicitly forecasted that collision when he and fellow researcher Bill Donahue wrote a paper on the impending water crisis facing the Canadian prairies for the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. It appeared in 2006 with much fanfare. But extended wet periods aren’t normal on the prairies. In earlier centuries, long droughts made the land thirsty for decades at a time, and then the drought would recede like some hellish glacier. Tree ring data from 1,000-year-old limber pine shows some of the worst dry spells occurred in the 1500s and 1720s. But extended wet periods aren’t normal on the prairies. In earlier centuries, long droughts made the land thirsty for decades at a time, and then the drought would recede like some hellish glacier. Tree ring data from 1,000-year-old limber pine shows some of the worst dry spells occurred in the 1500s and 1720s. But recent instrument records upon which modern water allocations are based provide a too-small window that leaves the region’s long, dry history out of consideration.....and then there's the fast receding glaciers that feed the rivers, like the Bow......read on https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2024/02/19/Alberta-Brutal-Water-Reckoning/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=230224 ......and...... “To a water expert, looking ahead is like the view from a locomotive, 10 seconds before the train wreck.” — The late scientist David Schindler on Alberta’s looming crisis
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CANADA- Our water is under threat. A new global initiative wants to find solutionsIsaac Phan Nay | News, Climate Solutions Reporting, Urban Indigenous Communities in Ottawa | February 5th 2024 As climate change threatens global water systems, a new research initiative aims to leverage Indigenous expertise to manage cross-border water resources. Climate change puts people’s access to water in jeopardy. Extreme weather events like floods and droughts are becoming more frequent and extreme, damaging infrastructure and affecting water quality. Often, rivers, lakes and bodies of water affected by these crises cross international borders. Now, researchers across North America are coming together to help communities adapt. The new Global Center for Understanding Climate Change Impacts on Transboundary Waters is a team co-led by researchers from the University of Michigan and McMaster University. The team will work with Indigenous people to protect bodies of water that cross international lines — starting with the Great Lakes. Dawn Martin-Hill, a McMaster University researcher and member of the Six Nations of the Grand River, said for time immemorial, Indigenous people have known the environment is an important indicator of the health of the natural world. “The environment is always a metric for wellness, which health researchers are just now beginning to grasp,” she said. “Water is precious. Water isn't just water, the way the West looks at it as a resource… It impacts our lives in every conceivable way.” Last year, the National Science Foundation Global Centres— an initiative of science authorities from Canada, Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. — granted the research team $3.75 million in funding. The centre launched in January. Gail Krantzberg, a McMaster University engineering and public policy professor and centre co-lead, said the group will research how to make communities more resilient to climate change. The centre will be working closely with the Six Nations of the Grand River near Caledonia, Ont., and Red Lake Nation in Minnesota. Through previous research, Martin-Hill found that First Nations, Inuit and Métis groups often lack sensors to monitor the quality of their local water sources. The University of Michigan and McMaster University have launched a new global centre for climate change that aims to incorporate Indigenous knowledge to address water crises across the world.“There was no data. They don't have sensors for reserves,” she said. “I found that to be incredibly distressing.”....READ ON https://www.nationalobserver.
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CANADA- Our water is under threat. A new global initiative wants to find solutionsIsaac Phan Nay | News, Climate Solutions Reporting, Urban Indigenous Communities in Ottawa | February 5th 2024 As climate change threatens global water systems, a new research initiative aims to leverage Indigenous expertise to manage cross-border water resources. Climate change puts people’s access to water in jeopardy. Extreme weather events like floods and droughts are becoming more frequent and extreme, damaging infrastructure and affecting water quality. Often, rivers, lakes and bodies of water affected by these crises cross international borders. Now, researchers across North America are coming together to help communities adapt. The new Global Center for Understanding Climate Change Impacts on Transboundary Waters is a team co-led by researchers from the University of Michigan and McMaster University. The team will work with Indigenous people to protect bodies of water that cross international lines — starting with the Great Lakes. Dawn Martin-Hill, a McMaster University researcher and member of the Six Nations of the Grand River, said for time immemorial, Indigenous people have known the environment is an important indicator of the health of the natural world. “The environment is always a metric for wellness, which health researchers are just now beginning to grasp,” she said. “Water is precious. Water isn't just water, the way the West looks at it as a resource… It impacts our lives in every conceivable way.” Last year, the National Science Foundation Global Centres— an initiative of science authorities from Canada, Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. — granted the research team $3.75 million in funding. The centre launched in January. Gail Krantzberg, a McMaster University engineering and public policy professor and centre co-lead, said the group will research how to make communities more resilient to climate change. The centre will be working closely with the Six Nations of the Grand River near Caledonia, Ont., and Red Lake Nation in Minnesota. Through previous research, Martin-Hill found that First Nations, Inuit and Métis groups often lack sensors to monitor the quality of their local water sources. The University of Michigan and McMaster University have launched a new global centre for climate change that aims to incorporate Indigenous knowledge to address water crises across the world.“There was no data. They don't have sensors for reserves,” she said. “I found that to be incredibly distressing.”....READ ON https://www.nationalobserver.
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A TALE OF TWO WORLD ORDERS- One where certain members of Past Ruling Order preserved Nature and the Current one where the Ruling Order is Killing all Life) Rude magnificence’ restored: following in the footsteps of pioneering naturalist Gilbert White. More than 230 years ago the country parson celebrated the small but vital elements that gave the English landscape its ‘wild majesty’. Today, Hampshire’s farmers and volunteers are honouring his legacy by Phoebe Weston Photographs by Jill Meadt It was more than 230 years ago that the Rev Gilbert White became the first person to identify the chiffchaff, willow warbler and wood warbler as three distinct species. The Hampshire county parson was also the first to describe the harvest mouse and the noctule bat, and to tell of swifts mating in flight, something not recorded again until the 1930s. He was fascinated by his pet tortoise, Timothy, and why he needed so much sleep. White’s careful, vivid and seemingly trivial descriptions of the wildlife he encountered around the village of Selborne as he walked between parishes made him a pioneering naturalist. His Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, first published in 1789, has never been out of print. Many generations later, a group of farmers and volunteers has spent five years walking the same land and discovered 88 of the 120 bird species spotted by White as well as a number of new species, taking the total to 114. This has resulted in Farming in Partnership With Nature – a New Natural History of Selborne, the most comprehensive survey of the landscape since White carried out his own work. Its authors say it shows the value of wildlife-friendly farming and White’s approach to “watching narrowly”, by observing local wildlife in detail – however trivial it might seem. Fifteen years ago, Blackmoor estate, a few miles from Gilbert White’s house, was arable land, but the estate’s managing director, William Selborne (whose great-great-great-grandfather took the name Selborne in the 19th century) decided he wanted to return it to chalk grassland and link up two nature reserves – Noar Hill and Selborne Common. In the years that followed, and with the help of a government grant, wildlife poured out of the reserves and into the farmland. Today, the fields are alive with movement and sound – skylarks trill, quaking-grass shakes in the breeze, oxeye daisies and patches of pyramidal and spotted orchid flourish. There are so many wildflowers that a pastel-pink hue hangs above the field. Beyond are scruffy field margins made for hunting barn owls. There are four owlets being raised in the oak tree in the valley. But from the beginning, Selborne realised that “however good your farm is, you’re only as good as your neighbours. The experience made me realise that the whole could be more than the sum of its parts.”
He got in touch with one of his neighbours, Kate Faulkner, a partner in her family’s business at Norton farm, where her father-in-law, Derick Faulkner, had been an early adopter of this way of farming. Kate and Selborne started thinking about how other farmers could give over patches of land for wildlife and set about forming a “farming cluster” – one of more than 100 across England – according to the survey. Since then, they have been leading a farming network called the Selborne Landscape Partnership (SLP), which covers 5,600 hectares (14,000 acres), much of which is within the South Downs national park. It is a well-watered landscape, looking green and youthful as summer starts.LP started nearly 10 years ago and includes 30 farmers and land managers and a band of volunteers. They meet regularly to share information and ideas on a range of subjects from grassland and woodland management to articles for the parish magazine. They have been looking at old maps, finding ghost hedges and ghost ponds and putting them back in the landscape. Selborne says: “We don’t want to have a narrative of loss. You can look down the telescope a different way. You can have positive change in a landscape.” They have also been working on restoring some of the 100 ponds in the area, as well as 15 miles of hedgerows and 74 hectares (180 acr Ies) of flower-rich habitats. Some of this has been funded by government grants, including theFarming in Protected Landscapes program....
George MonbiotCan you see it yet? The Earth systems horizon – the point at which our planetary systems tip into a new equilibrium, hostile to most life forms? I think we can. The sudden acceleration of environmental crises we have seen this year, coupled with the strategic uselessness of powerful governments, rushes us towards the point of no return. We’re told we are living through the sixth mass extinction. But even this is a euphemism. We call such events mass extinctions because the most visible sign of the five previous catastrophes of the Phanerozoic era (since animals with hard body parts evolved) is the disappearance of fossils from the rocks. But their vanishing was a result of something even bigger. Mass extinction is a symptom of Earth systems collapse. In the most extreme case, the Permo-Triassic event, 252m years ago – when 90% of species were snuffed out – planetary temperatures spiked, the circulation of water around the globe more or less stopped, the soil was stripped from the land, deserts spread across much of the planet’s surface and the oceans drastically deoxygenated and acidified. In other words, Earth systems tipped into a new state that was uninhabitable for most of the species they had sustained. What we are living through today, unless sudden and drastic action is taken by us and our governments, is the sixth great Earth systems collapse. One possible outcome of the rising carbon dioxide concentrations this century is the sudden loss of stratocumulus cloud decks, causing about 8°C of extra surface heating. As in previous great Earth systems collapses, we see these impacts reflected in the loss of species. A recent paper reveals that 48% of the world’s species are declining in population size, while only 3% are rising. Far more wildlife could be heading towards extinction than previously estimated. If species loss is a symptom of systemic collapse, we might already be living on borrowed time. None of this is certain, unless we make it so. But far from stepping up to confront the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced, our governments accelerate towards the horizon. https://www.theguardian.com/
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USA- Longleaf Pine Restoration—a Major Climate Effort in the South—Curbs Its Ambitions to Meet Harsh Realities. A Public-Private Partnership Confronts the Challenges of Nature-Based Solutions, Including Urban Growth, Logging Pressures and a Warming Planet.By Marianne Lavelle, and Sarah Whites-Koditschek and Dennis Pillion of AL.com. A retired Auburn University research fellow, Kush has spent much of his life studying Pinus palustris—the longleaf pine. The state tree of Alabama, it once reigned throughout the southeastern United States, but was all but given up for dead not long ago. Beginning with European settlement, and accelerating after the Civil War, logging and resin extraction drove the sturdy, long-needled species to near-extinction. Less than 3 percent of its original 92 million acre range remained by the 1990s. Kush worked early in his career at the Escambia National Experimental Forest, in Brewton, Alabama, near the Florida state line, which produced key research on bringing back the tree that anchored one of the most extensive and biodiverse forest ecosystems in North America. Now, in what has been called one of the most ambitious landscape restoration projects in the world, Tuskegee National Forest is one of thousands of sites where forest managers have been trying to put such research into practice. As he walks the forest, Kush sees both promising signs—a cluster of baby longleaf pine seedlings—and troubling ones: patches of small hickory trees and hawthorn shrubs, woody growth that can crowd out the longleaf with shade and thick groundcover. Longleaf restoration is a struggle against such competition. It requires careful monitoring, probably herbicides, possibly the harvesting of nearby trees, and certainly fire—blazes repeated as frequently as every two years and carefully timed for both the weather and the condition of the forest. Advocates believe the effort is worth it—not just for the trees, but for society. They see restoration as an important nature-based solution for storing carbon and making the South more resilient to climate change.t will take time for new longleaf forests to pick up the slack as carbon storehouses, years during which pressure from development and competing trees is a constant threat. But the restoration effort also can generate carbon emissions, due to both burning and the cutting down of older trees to make way for young longleaf—clashing with Biden’s stated objective of protecting mature forests as carbon sinks.It will take time for new longleaf forests to pick up the slack as carbon storehouses, years during which pressure from development and competing trees is a constant threat. https://insideclimatenews.
More Articles …
- USA- Longleaf Pine Restoration—a Major Climate Effort in the South—Curbs Its Ambitions to Meet Harsh Realities.
- AGRICULTURE- We need a Roadmap for Rapid Change and to Act Swiftly
- AFRICA- Great Green Wall is Failing, But its Legacy Could Still Be A Success T
- CANADA- BC Overhauls Water Management as Scarcity Looms.
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