Innovation Anthology #576:
Can you imagine Alberta with prairie extending all the way north into Wood Buffalo National Park?
That’s one of the worst case scenarios described by ecologist Dr. Rick Schneider in his recent report on climate change.
It was issued by the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute as part of a series on adaptation for the Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation.
According to Dr. Schneider, temperature changes of two to six degrees will shift southern ecosystems north.
DR RICK SCHNEIDER: There’s a tipping point, somewhere around 3 degrees warming, where we would expect a transition from forest to grassland. Now it’s not that that’s going to happen all at once, but once you get a climate that doesn’t have enough moisture there any more to support a forest, you’ll see a transition.
First you lose the white spruce. It’s unable to regenerate without enough moisture there. So aspen will hang in and we’ll see a transition from what we have is a mixed wood forest there today to a more uniform aspen forest throughout the north. And then if the warming progresse, especially under the worst case scenarios, even the aspen will begin to drop out and there will be an expansion of grasslands.
Dr. Rick Schneider compares these eco region changes to those of six thousand years ago.
Learn more at InnovationAnthology.com
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
The report is called “Alberta’s Natural Sub Regions Under a Changing Climate – Past, Present and Future”.
Guest
,
, , , ,
Sponsor
Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation
Program Date: 2013-10-22