Earth Sciences Projects

Outputs from multiple global circulation models (GCMs) simulate that, with the exception of the arctic, the prairies will experience the greatest increases in temperature in Canada under continued increases in greenhouse gases, resulting in widespread impacts and the need for adaptation. This report focuses on climate change and land use management in sand dune areas located throughout the Prairie Provinces. Particular attention is given to these areas due to the sensitivity of dunes and their land uses to climatic variability and change. The purposes of the research presented in this report are: to gain a better understanding of the current climate and ecology in these dune areas, determine future climates as simulated by GCM scenarios, assess the potential impacts of this climate change, consider potential adaptation options, and evaluate existing management plans to determine whether climate change is being addressed.

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Through the support provided by Government of Canada Climate Change Action Fund (CCAF), and Prairie Adaptation Research Cooperative the Centre for Earth Observation Science (CEOS) conducted a two-day workshop on the role of Geomatics technologies in issues surrounding climate variability and change. The workshop was held June 8 – 9 at the University of Manitoba and was attended by approximately 125 invited individuals. The agenda (Appendix A) of the meeting was designed to provide information on cutting edge applications across the various sectors of Geomatics research and to solicit feedback from the attendees as to the principal technological and scientific challenges facing various sectors. The Plenary Speakers were chosen as senior representatives from the sectors relevant to climate variability and change in Prairie Canada: Hydrology, Forestry, Land Surface Processes, Atmospheres and Technology. The curriculum vitae for each of the plenary speakers are presented in Appendix B. As the conference proceeded the secretariat maintained a running summary of the presentations. The point form dialogue from these presentations is presented in Appendix C. This dialogue summarizes and salient issues discussed through direct dialogue during the workshop. A listing of the attendee database and associated email contacts concludes this final report (Appendix D). In addition to the proceedings of the conference, CEOS developed a literature review and critical evaluation of the role of Geomatics in climate change. We structured this review into the thematic areas of interest in this conference. One of the common points, which arose from the meeting, was that remote sensing data, Geographic Information Systems and numerical process models should be considered as complimentary tools. Each can ‘stand alone’ but in combination they provide a powerful suite of tools which will ultimately allow us to: 1) Measure the important climate state variables associated with processes coupling various surface-atmosphere phenomena. 2) Monitor changes in these climate state variables at a continuum of time and space scales. 3) Understand the nature of critical processes which create the Earth System. 4) Communicate the nature of points 1 through 3 (above) to the stakeholders in the climate change and adaptation sectors of Prairie Canada. We have intentionally framed this working document into hydrological, lithological and atmospheric processes. Within each of these spheres we include reviews of various sectors, including snow, sea ice, agriculture, geology, precipitation, droughts, and clouds. The framework for this review is to examine the benefits of integrating remote sensing data into GIS and numerical process models to address issues described in points 1 through 4 (above).

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The objective of this project was to assess existing land use activities in dune areas on the prairies to determine the range of adaptation strategies that may be required under conditions of climate change (this project was subsequently expanded to a full PARC project). The main focus of the Quick-start project was to provide an inventory of data on sand dune areas, which could be utilized in assessing climate change impacts and to provide background information for adaptations to these impacts.

Sand dunes are widespread in the prairies, parkland and boreal regions of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. However, prior to this project there was no concise map or inventory of their occurrence or land use activities on them. The first objective of this project was to develop a database of dune areas, land use activities and management plans in the prairies. We have identified approximately 120 dune areas with land use activities and primary stakeholders in each area. Land use activities are diverse and include cultivation, grazing, urbanization, hydrocarbon and mining activities, forestry, military activity, recreation and conservation and transportation. These cross-sectoral activities are likely to be affected by climate change impacts in these sensitive sandy areas. The project inventoried approximately 40 environmental, land use and range management plans, natural resource inventories, environmental impact and land use studies, and related web-sites to obtain information on present conditions and land management practices . These data were subsequently used in the full PARC project to evaluate land use management and climate change adaptation strategies in sand dune areas.

The second objective of this project was to determine historic trends in vegetation cover, dune activity and other impacts related to climate or human impacts in dune areas and to provide this information to stakeholders. An outreach document was prepared in hardcopy and web-site format, which describes drought impacts, historical changes in landcover and past dune activity in several focus dune areas. This report, distributed to stakeholders, highlights the sensitivity of sand dune areas to drought, disturbance and climate change and illustrates how dune areas have responded to these in the past.

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The project reported here examined sensitivities of prairie soil landscapes to climate change, variability and extreme hydroclimatic events. Early in the project, a review of existing climate impact assessments and methodologies suggested that most are based on an incomplete understanding of the climate forcing of geomorphic systems, especially in relation to the influence of scale on the understanding and modeling of biophysical systems. Therefore a high priority was given to developing a practical framework for the assessment of potential impacts of climate change on the soil landscapes of the Canadian plains. This framework 1) facilitates transfer of the results of scientific research to stakeholders for the planning of adaptation to soil landscape sensitivity, and 2) is spatially-explicit, unlike models and methods that lack geographic reference and thus direct application to the real world. This approach to climate impact assessment requires a spatial data model and a model of the geomorphic response to climate. Since landforms are the product of geomorphic processes, assemblages of landforms and the associated soil profiles, are the geographic expression of a geomorphic systems. The use the soil landscape as a spatial data structures expands climate impact assessment beyond the study of soil loss or and beyond the farm or field. Conventional approaches to the assessment of soil erosion risk, estimating potential soil loss from fields, will not support the integrated planning over large areas or thus the adaptation to the impacts of climate change.

The response of geomorphic systems to climate is complex. Long periods of landscape stability are interrupted by short bursts of erosion as a system responds to the forces of a hydroclimatic event that exceeds a geomorphic threshold. Irreversible landscape change can occur in response to single events. Much of what we know about the climatic forcing of natural systems is based on detailed field experiments conducted over small areas in contrast to the scale of land and water management. A "scaling down" of climate and a "scaling up" of process data is required for the study of climate impacts on soil landscapes. Most process simulation models fail to work when scaled up because of the greater complexity of larger systems and non-linearity caused by feedback among system variables, and the emergence of characteristic patterns and processes at coarser scales. Virtually all existing models of soil loss and landscape change are inappropriate for the spatial analysis of the climatic forcing of surface processes in the Canadian plains. The greatest promise for a model-based approach lies in relatively simple physically-based models, because they are more scale robust than empirical models (i.e. derived from the measurement of erosion from plots) or the data-rich analytical modelling of slope and channel processes. Models reduced to a form that capture essential or salient factors are most easily applied to assessment of soil landscape sensitivity at a regional. In fact dimensionless indices are simple and practical, yet meaningful, models of landscape sensitivity. Mapping the Aridity Index (Precipitation / Potential Evapotranspiration) for 1961-90 and the 2050s demonstrates the the area of land at risk of desertification will increase by about 50%.

In managed landscapes erosion is mostly a socio-economic issue since erosion can be prevented by soil conservation, but capability and willingness to implement soil conservations are governed by a host of social and economic factors. Even though rates of erosion are managed, land managers must realize that landscape change is a threshold process, such that the conditions that lead to land degradation are established before they are recognized. An increase in the probability of extreme erosion evens, as the result of climate change, above “once in a lifetime” may justify increased use of soil conservation.

The most practical yet rigorous methodology for assessing of the climate sensitivity of prairie soil landscapes is to “serve” a georeferenced data base such that stakeholders are able to derive maps interactively and apply simple climate change scenarios to geo-referenced data, targeting sensitive soil landscapes. This approach requires 1) definition and analysis of scale domains and thresholds that determine the relevant parameters at a given scale and also enable the scaling up from landforms to landscapes, and 2) a methodology for classifying and identifying soil landscapes according to primarily geomorphic criteria. These problems are the basis for two M.Sc. theses scheduled for completion during 2002. In the meantime, we have implemented the Internet Map Server technology that will enable us to serve the resulting database at the PARC web site. For demonstration purposes, the IMS has been applied to the existing coarse scale Soil Landscapes of Canada, to detailed soil survey and to other public-domain georeferenced databases.

Our PARC Quick-Start project has produced 1) a more thorough understanding of the conceptual and technical issues related to a rigorous and spatially-explicit evaluation of the impacts of climate change on soil landscapes, and 2) a practical framework for enabling this evaluation and the planning of adaptation to minimize the impacts of soil landscape sensitivity on agriculture, forestry and water quality. The concrete deliverable is the interactive map services available at the PARC web site (www.parc.ca), where researchers and stakeholders can apply simple climate change scenarios to geo-referenced data, targeting sensitive soil landscapes.

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