Climate Change
The Chesapeake Bay region is one of the most vulnerable areas in the nation to sea level rise induced by climate change. The effects of sea level rise and periodic storm surge include shoreline erosion, coastal flooding, salt water intrusion of freshwater resources, and inundation of some coastal areas. The watershed has 11,684 miles of coastline along the main Bay and tidal tributaries, with many historic and natural areas at risk of permanent or periodic inundation from sea level rise and storm surge. The Conservation Fund and its partners recently produced a map and website and provided a professional training course on this topic.
Bay waters are already rising due to climate change and land subsidence. The combination increases the relative rate of sea level rise in the region: during the last century, the relative sea level has risen approximately one foot in the Chesapeake, nearly twice the global average. Scientists predict that the Bay’s relative sea level could rise anywhere from 1.3 feet (0.4 meters) to 5.2 feet (1.59 meters) by the end of this century. Of greater immediate concern is flooding from tropical storms, hurricanes and nor’easters. Storm surge associated with extreme weather events will threaten both natural and human infrastructure in the Bay.
Natural resource managers, conservation partners and decision makers are grappling with the scope of this problem and are working to develop strategies to adapt to future predicted changes to improve community and environmental resilience. Using the best available science, computer modeling system and visualization tools, The Fund and a consortium of some of the most highly regarded partners in the country, including the National Geographic Society, recently produced a new state-of-the-art map and website to help visualize several future scenarios in the Bay, so that we can help protect the Bay’s natural resources and public infrastructure.
The project is also featured in A Sustainable Chesapeake: Better Models for Conservation, a new book from the Fund, edited by David Burke and Joel Dunn, which provides conservation strategies for government agencies, community groups, businesses and others involved in the restoration of the Chesapeake Bay.
To help educate the next generation of citizens, scientists, environmentalists and community leaders, 25,000 copies of the map are being distributed to schools in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. National Geographic’s Education Division is currently developing lesson plans to accompany the map and website. The education products were also part of a professional training program conducted by The Conservation Fund, NOAA, National Geographic, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and others that demonstrated how communities can effectively use green infrastructure planning as a tool for developing effective climate change mitigation and adaption strategies.
About the picture:
This is a picture of the last remaining structure on Holland Island, which at the turn of the 20th century had as many as 360 residents. In October of 2010 the abandoned house finally collapsed into the ocean. The fate of Holland Island*#8212;and this house—is not unique in the area. Other islands have either already disappeared or await a similar fate. Sea level rise resulting from climate change is the cause. Read about the history and fate of Holland Island in this article from the Washington Post.
Bright Idea: If every American replaced one incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent bulb next year, the decrease in pollution would be equal to taking nearly one million cars off the road.
Record Breakers: Can’t remember a summer (or a winter) as warm as this? You’re not alone. Every year since 1992 has ranked among the 20 warmest years on record.
Spring Forward: In the northeastern United States, the frost-free start of early spring now comes 11 days earlier than it did in the 1950s. If current climate trends continue, the frost season could be shortened by a full month by 2050.
Disappearing Act: Scientists calculate that climate change could drive more than a million species of plants and animals to extinction by 2050. The main culprits: temperature changes and fragmented habitats.
Fish Kill: Record temperatures in Yellowstone National Park’s Firehole River killed a thousand trout—the largest death toll in the park’s 135-year history. Up to 50% of Rocky Mountain trout habitat could vanish if warming continues through the 21st century.
Spruce Under Siege: Since 1987, nearly 4 million acres of white spruce forest on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula have been lost to an exploding population of spruce bark beetles. Warmer temperatures year-round have helped the destructive beetles survive and mature faster than ever before.
Land of the Lost: Rising temperatures over the past 60 years are robbing Glacier National Park in Montana of its namesake. Scientists at the park predict that all of its glaciers may disappear by 2030.
Flood Zone: Climate change could cause sea level to rise between seven and 23 inches by 2100. A two-foot rise in sea level would drown 2,200 miles of major roads and 900 miles of railroad in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and the District of Columbia.
Stronger Storms: As the oceans heat up, we may see more devastating storms like 2005’s Hurricane Katrina on the U.S. Gulf Coast. A recent study shows that the number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes worldwide has nearly doubled in the past 35 years.
Money to Burn: Hotter temperatures, severe droughts and more lightning strikes are setting the American West ablaze more often. The U.S. Forest Service now spends up to 45% of its annual budget on firefighting and fire prevention—a 20% increase since 2000.
Unhealthy Heat: Dangerous heat waves in American cities could become more deadly if climate change continues unchecked. The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that heat-related deaths may jump from 700 per year to between 3,000 and 5,000 per year by 2050.
Planting for the Future: Carbon dioxide emissions fuel the Earth’s warming, but one tree can absorb one ton of carbon dioxide over its lifetime.
On the Move: Edith’s checkerspot butterfly is one of many animals and plants losing ground to climate change. Formerly flying from Mexico to British Columbia, Mexican populations of the butterfly are now four times more likely to be extinct than their Canadian cousins.
Shorter Ski Season: Researchers predict that the ski season in the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California could be three to six weeks shorter by 2050, severely impacting the state’s tourism industry.
Drive 55: Vermont’s “10% Challenge” encourages motorists to drive 55 miles per hour on 65-mph highways, saving 28 pounds of climate-warming emissions per gallon of gas.
The IPCC’s most recent complete report on the scientific evidence for global climate change and its impacts around the world.
The UCS site includes several “Global Warming 101” pamphlets, along with a discussion of climate adaptation strategies and the impact of warming on specific regions of the United States.
The Global Change program includes a toolkit for understanding how climate change affects wildlife and wild lands in your region.
NSF’s user-friendly guide to the science of climate change and how the changes have affected wildlife, ocean and arctic environments.
The National Academies’ reports summarize the latest climate research and the ecological impact of climate change.
NOAA’s “Climate Literacy: The Essential Principles of Climate Science.”
The Pew Center site discusses the science, economics, and international politics of global climate change.
The World Bank’s climate change site discusses the threats of global climate change to developing nations, and adaptation strategies to cope with warming.
The EPA’s climate change page includes information on health effects of climate change, along with government programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The FWS site contains many links to climate change science basics, ways to reduce your own emission footprint, and projects to manage wildlife affected by climate change.
The famed research center offers a beginner’s guide to the science of global climate change.
This site provides accurate, unbiased and policy-relevant scientific information concerning the carbon cycle to a broad range of stakeholders.
Climate Action Reserve (CAR) is a national offsets program working to ensure integrity, transparency and financial value in the U.S. carbon market. The Fund's Garcia River, Big River and Salmon Creek forests were some of the first forests to receive verification as a source of greenhouse gas reductions under CAR's protocols.
The Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance (CCBA) website is the source for information on the CCBA—a partnership between leading companies, nonprofits and research institutes seeking to promote integrated solutions to land management around the world—including their rigorous standards for evaluating carbon projects. The Fund's Go Zero projects are validated by CCBA standards.
The Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS) provides a robust, new global standard and program for approval of credible voluntary offsets.
The steps we must take to lessen the harmful impacts of climate change on both human and natural systems. These steps can make us less vulnerable to changes that already have occurred (such as rebuilding levees in hurricane-prone regions) and help us cope with future risks (such as switching to drought-resistant crops). They also include the planned management actions that federal, state and local governments will take to help reduce the impacts of climate change on fish, wildlife and their habitats through the strategic conservation of terrestrial, freshwater and marine habitats within sustainable landscapes.
Refers to surplus greenhouse gas emission reductions and removals that are additional to what would have occurred in the absence of the project (i.e. “business as usual”).
Lowlands along streams and rivers, usually on alluvial floodplains that periodically are flooded. Establishing forest cover on these lands is an important step in ecosystem restoration. Healthy bottomland systems are important for carbon sequestration as well as providing valuable wildlife habitat, reducing soil erosion, improving water quality and preventing flooding in these low-lying areas.
A market-based system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Under a cap-and-trade program, a government agency sets a total limit or “cap” on the amount of emissions that can be produced by a group of facilities or businesses. Each member of the group receives or purchases, dependent upon the system structure, the right to emit a certain portion of the cap, and these rights can be traded or sold to other group members. In this way, governments can limit emissions while giving businesses the flexibility and financial incentive to decide how to meet the cap’s requirements.
The weather of a particular region, averaged over decades or even hundreds of years. Climate also includes the pattern of rainfall and cold and warm seasons in an area. Global climate is measured by averaging climate trends across all regions of the Earth. The global climate is undoubtedly warming; Scientists forecast that by 2100 global average temperatures may rise between 2 and 11.5 degree Fahrenheit by the year 2100.
The most important areas in the current range a plant or animal to help ensure its long-term survival. Core areas usually are chosen for protection because they contain large populations of a given species; important breeding, hatching and/or feeding areas; and may connect populations across a wider region. Climate change is shrinking the core areas for some species; other core areas are expanding.
Services provided to a community by its surrounding ecosystem. Some examples of ecosystem services are freshwater filtration and protection, safeguarding against fire and flood, production of agriculture, and habitat for wildlife that allows for pollination and hunting by the local community, among other items. As ecosystems are altered by climate change, these services may be threatened or disappear entirely.
The fracturing of a species’ habitat into smaller, disconnected areas. Fragmentation can fuel plant and animal extinctions by reducing the total amount of habitat, creating habitat “edges” that are vulnerable to fires and invasive species, and splitting species into smaller and less genetically healthy populations. Ongoing climate change and activities such as farming, logging and development are the main causes of fragmentation.
Gases in the Earth’s atmosphere that trap heat, including carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and others. Greenhouse gases are a natural part of the atmosphere, but human activities such as the burning of coal and oil have increased the concentration of these gases significantly. Burning of fossil fuels to create energy is the primary source of the greenhouse gases and the main cause of global warming.
Occurs when emissions avoided at a project site are displaced to another site. For example, if a forest preserved in one location causes trees to be cut down somewhere else.
Connections between entire ecosystems across a region over time; linkages allow species to move gradually between larger landscapes over a period of generations. Linkages may not always be geographical pathways, such as wildlife corridors. Instead, they could be links formed by an ecosystem’s food web—what eats what—and similar connections. Linkages are one of the best ways for plants and small animals affected by climate change to find new habitats.
The routes followed by animals as they move between winter and summer feeding areas, or breeding and hatching areas. Climate change can shrink or sever migration corridors, shift the latitude of the routes, disrupt the timing of migrations, and in some cases crowd the routes as more species migrate away from habitats altered by warming.
The steps we must take to reduce the pace and size of climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Mitigation policies and technology could either reduce emissions (by using energy alternatives to oil and gas, for example) or find new ways to store emissions so that they do not pollute our atmosphere (by planting new trees to act as emission “sinks,” for example); the World Bank calls mitigation “avoiding the unmanageable.”
A carbon offset is an investment in a project or activity that reduces greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere or sequesters carbon from the atmosphere in addition to what would have occurred without the project. Carbon offsets are used to compensate for greenhouse gas emissions from one’s own activities.
Range is the geographical area in which a particular species can be found. Range shifts are one of the most dramatic effects of climate change. Changing temperatures force species to seek out new areas with more favorable temperatures, rainfall, food and shelter. About 40% of wild plants and animals being studied are relocating as a result of climate change, often bringing them closer to roads and towns.
The ability of an ecosystem or species to remain whole and functioning as it copes with stress. Species that adapt to climate change by shifting their ranges are resilient, but resiliency also describes nations and local communities that successfully use new technologies and policies to lessen the disruptive impacts of warming.
Melting glaciers, ice caps and polar ice sheets, along with expansion of ocean waters due to heating, have raised the global average sea level at an average rate of 0.12 inches (3.1 millimeters) per year since 2003. Rising sea levels are already threatening wetlands, eroding beaches, overwhelming freshwater fisheries, and endangering coastal lives and property in the United States.
Areas that provide connectivity of habitat or potential habitat and that facilitate the ability of fish, wildlife and plants to move within a landscape as needed, either seasonally or longer-term. Human activities, such as building a highway or a housing development or logging, may restrict or disrupt wildlife corridors. Climate change is also expected to affect corridors. Identifying and protecting these corridors can preserve a species as its habitat and range shift as a result of changing climate and expanding human development.
The area that is of higher elevation, such as the prairie that surrounds a wetland, the mountain headwater region of a river basin, or the land next to a coastline. Uplands are usually thought to be less vulnerable to climate change than coasts or wetlands. They provide critical wildlife corridors, breeding areas and services such as freshwater filtering to adjacent lowland areas.
By Becky Ham
John Holdren, President Obama's top science adviser and climate change expert, puts it like this:
“The Earth has a fever.”
A majority of the world’s climate scientists agree that human activities like burning coal and gas have thrown up a blanket of pollution that has been warming our planet since 1750. The increase in the Earth’s average temperature is the most obvious sign of global climate change, but other symptoms such as shrinking glaciers, rising seas, and extreme changes in rainfall are affecting nations worldwide.
Climate change means something different to a ranch in Wyoming and a resort hotel in Florida. You already may be feeling the fever in your own community. Maybe your nearby forest is unraveling at its edges, shrunken by drought and fire. Or maybe it’s something as simple as missing the finches that used to migrate to your porch feeder, but no longer pay a winter visit. From wild lands to wildlife, climate change touches every backyard.
While world leaders look for ways to slow warming, The Conservation Fund is already at work in your backyard, using some of our best-tested tools to preserve your land, your water, your livelihood and your nation’s natural treasures.
The threat may be global in scope, but the Fund is a local partner when it comes to meeting the challenges of climate change. Here are some of the ways we're working on curbing the effects of climate change:
Sustainable Forest Management: Since 2004, we have purchased 40,000 acres of forest land in California’s North Coast region. The properties were among the first and largest to receive verification of its carbon offsets by the California Climate Action Registry. The towering redwoods store more carbon per acre than any other forest type on Earth. Sustainable forest management of this forest enables the storage of more than 77,000 tons of carbon emissions annually, which is the equivalent of taking more than 14,000 cars off the road every year.
Go Zero®: Our Go Zero program is planting native trees to restore the woodlands of the Lower Mississippi River Valley. The restored forests soak up carbon dioxide emissions, filter water, control flooding downstream, and create new habitat for wildlife.
Carbon Project Development: A market leader in carbon sequestration, we have restored 20,000 acres and planted 6 million trees that will capture an estimated 7.2 million tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over their lifetime.
Climate change can splinter a habitat in ways that threaten the survival of species that call it home. Our acquisition of 16,000 acres of forestlands in California’s North Coast ensures that the redwood and Douglas fir forests surrounding Garcia River, Big River and Salmon Creek will be permanently protected from fragmentation and development.
The forests of the American South shelter an amazing collection of plants and animals, equal to the variety found in a tropical rainforest. In South Carolina, we have helped preserve one of these forests in the Woodbury and Hamilton Ridge Forestlands. Development and climate change are shrinking the woodlands, but the conservation area is now a safe haven for the Kentucky warbler, rusty blackbird and others.
The South Fork of the Snake River in Idaho supports the largest native Yellowstone cutthroat trout fishery outside of Yellowstone National Park, produces half the bald eagles in Idaho, and provides a habitat for imperiled species like the Columbian sharp-tailed grouse. In 2009, we assisted with land purchases in the Fork to protect hundreds of acres for these unique animals, while opening new travel corridors for elk and mule deer that have had their migration routes disrupted by warming temperatures.
Climate change and development have reduced the historic ranges of some species to a handful of isolated populations at risk of becoming locally extinct. Projects such as our Mississippi River Revolving Fund, which helps purchase land along the main stem of the river and its important tributaries, create wildlife corridors that knit together fragmented families of Mississippi plants and animals.
As global temperatures rise, birds must find new “stopover” places along their migration routes to winter and breeding grounds. At places like Texas’ Big Thicket National Preserve—the “biological crossroads of North America”—the Fund and its partners have permanently protected more than 40,000 acres of bottomland hardwood forest and bayou as a refuge for hundreds of waterfowl and songbirds.
Thanks to warming temperatures, grizzly bears are ranging farther north than ever before. On Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front, we work with local ranchers to provide new travel corridors for the bears as they move from the mountains to the plains. In the first year of an unprecedented five-year project, the Fund and its partners protected 21,274 acres of critical migratory routes for the grizzly and other wildlife.
In 2008, we opened the Pineywoods Mitigation Bank to preserve 19,000 acres along Texas’ Neches River. Mitigation credits sold to oil and gas exploration companies through the bank will help preserve wetland areas that absorb the impact of hurricanes and seasonal floods, both of which are expected to increase in number and ferocity as global temperatures rise.
Forest fires—stronger and more frequent than in past years—are one potential impact of global climate change that will be felt at the local level. In the American South, the waxy and fire-resistant longleaf pine could insulate communities from devastating burns. We are working with America’s Longleaf Initiative to map the region’s remaining longleaf stands—and suggest ways to restore the forest across its historic range.
What to develop and what to conserve? Our Green Infrastructure program can help communities facing drought, encroaching wildlife and the loss of recreation areas brought on by climate change. In Cecil County, Maryland, we showed county officials how to build a network of natural areas to protect 94 percent of its wetlands and 75 percent of its forests. The protected areas provide clean air, water and flood control—an estimated $1.7 billion in ecosystem services each year.
The Conservation Fund offers the nation's leading carbon sequestration program.
A market leader in carbon sequestration, the Fund has restored 20,000 acres and planted 6 million trees which will capture an estimated 7.2 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent from the atmosphere over their lifetime.
• Enhance brand awareness and corporate reputation among key constituencies
• Strengthen relationships with elected officials and regulatory agencies
• Gain early understanding of an emerging market
• Advance a national conservation agenda
Proven ability to generate carbon credits at competitive rates
Sequestration rates as high as 360 tons per acre over a 100-year period; delivering tangible results within our partners’ budgets and time frames
Provides a turn-key service including site identification, land acquisition, reforestation, land management and carbon monitoring
Strengthens partners’ relationships with key stakeholders including customers, employees, stockholders, local communities and elected officials
The following organizations join with the Fund on carbon sequestration projects through restoration of America’s forests:
For additional information contact John Rogers, Carbon Sequestration Program Director
Phone: 919-967-2223
Email: jr_tcf@bellsouth.net
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