Category:

“Evapotranspiration is necessary but not sufficient to empower the forest and affect hydrology in general and floods and droughts in particular. This can only be revealed through a probabilistic framework. Thinking like a system means you do not make decisions at the site scale. It is not about a particular stream reach or cross-section, or a bridge or a culvert. You need to step back and look at the big picture. You need to look at the entire stream network and what these flows are doing OVER TIME…AND IN THE LANDSCAPE OF THE WATERSHED,” stated Younes Alila.

“The Vancouver Island Community Flow Monitoring Network supports groups who are interested in monitoring flows along the east coast of Vancouver Island. For the most part these are volunteer-led, community stewardship groups. The groups operate the stations. We provide training, do site visits for as long as needed until they feel comfortable doing it on their own. They just need a bit of help. That is where we come in with tools, resources and training to break down barriers. Our goal is to get high quality data for publication in the provincial database,” stated Ally Badger.

“Canada already has the expertise, technologies, industries and research capacity to make good on a commitment to water sustainability and universal achievement of the UN’s water goals for all Canadians. But it needs leadership to advance research and practice to expand our existing strengths, and export these internationally,” wrote Corinne Schuster-Wallace. “Canadian research institutions have a role to play in bringing the country together by showing Canada and the world the solutions and benefits of achieving these goals.”

“We found that most of the world’s major deltas will receive less river sediment by the end of the century, regardless of the environmental change scenario. Our results suggest that many deltas – already significantly stressed – will become sediment starved, further compounding the risks of rising relative sea levels,” stated Frances Eleanor Dunn. “Some of the most severe reductions will be found in major Asian deltas such as the Ganges (81% less sediment) and the Mekong (77%).”

“Everyone is asking the ultimate question: what form will climate change take over the rest of this century, and how can we manage or conserve natural ecosystems to minimize these effects. If we understand how ecological processes are linked to the climate, we can also discover how to combat climate change through specific types of land use, for instance,” stated Thomas Crowther. “Worldwide reforestation could ultimately capture two thirds of human-made carbon emissions.”

“Engineered solutions are quite expensive to maintain which means unless there is constant investment they won’t be as effective as they should be in stopping floods,” stated Dr. Tobias Torborg. “However, there are also more natural, non-concrete options called blue and green infrastructure which focus on building vegetative river banks and wetlands – a system of plants and water – and more green areas to reduce flood risk and potential flood impact – because it means rainwater can enter the ground more easily.”

“The watershed is the base unit of ecology, certainly on Vancouver Island,” stated Domenico Iannidinardo. “Over 80% of the Englishman River watershed is dedicated to forest management. Applying a landscape level approach makes a working forest work for multiple values. Hydrology and ecology values are managed through conservation agreements, land sales, and cooperation with researchers and communities. A guiding objective is to keep sediment out of streams.”

“Metro Vancouver studies predict that we’ll see a 56 percent decrease in snow on our mountains by 2050,” stated Uytae Lee. “That means we’ll have much less of that backup supply of water on our mountains. At the same time the region is expecting another 1 million people by 2050. We’re going to need more water. Metro Vancouver predicts that we could see a water supply gap by 2030. What that means is that (water shortage) emergencies, like the drought of 2015 won’t just be rare events, they’ll be the norm.”

Long stretches of warm weather this spring and too few rainy days are raising alarms about drought across British Columbia. Drought levels have been raised already for parts of the province and Dave Campbell says the current forecast points to drought conditions province-wide in the coming weeks. In an average year, Campbell says the drought map of B.C. would be the colour green, the code for normal. But most of the province is a bright yellow, the code for dry.

At the University of Pennsylvania, Ian McHarg taught a campus-wide course titled “Man and Environment” that brought luminaries like Loren Eisley, Margaret Mead, Lewis Mumford, and Julian Huxley into the department of landscape architecture. These courses gave McHarg the grist he would need to write Design With Nature. It arrived amid a national environmental awakening and immediately became part of the zeitgeist, giving planners, designers, and urbanists a manifesto for their frustrations with America’s lax land use and environmental regulations.