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Conservation Conversations: Pacific Northwest prairies and climate change
Prairies in the western Pacific Northwest are critically endangered ecosystems. Join ecologists Paul Reed and Sarah Hamman for a discussion about how they may be affected by climate change and how they are being restored to the landscape.
Paul Reed is a postdoc at the University of Oregon, where he also completed his Ph.D. in 2021. For his dissertation, Paul and colleagues conducted an experiment across western Oregon and Washington, including at Capitol Land Trust’s Tilley West Preserve, to understand how warming and drought affect Pacific Northwest prairies. Much of his work is in collaboration with regional stakeholders and is motivated by a common vision to improve native prairie conservation and restoration in a changing climate.
Sarah Hamman is the Director of Science for Ecostudies Institute. Her work is aimed at researching and restoring rare species habitat in Pacific Northwest prairies and oak woodlands using rigorous science and collaborative conservation principles. In this virtual event, we hear from Paul about the Heating of Prairie Systems (HOPS) experiment that he and others conducted at Tilley West Preserve.
We will also learn from Sarah about prairie restoration efforts in the South Sound region, and how plant responses to climate change may affect local prairie management in the future.
Assisted migration project
The following is an excerpt from their website:
“Continued climate warming will disrupt our forests and their ability to lessen the impact of high CO2 levels. We will lose our cool adapted evergreens and hardwoods which, in turn, will change the nature of the forest and everything in and around it. The Mousam Way Land Trust is initiating a project to plant warm-adapted southern tree species on our reserves in anticipation of this radical change. In time these southern replacements will become part of the forest and restore some balance.
You are invited to help us go one step farther by planting these replacements in your own landscape from which they will eventually spread…”
Assisted migration
Trees are adapted to specific combinations of environmental and climatic conditions that allow them to grow, thrive, and reproduce. Climate change is already altering conditions across the planet, and changes are expected to continue in the decades to come. The rapid pace of climate change may exceed the ability of many species to adapt in place or migrate to suitable habitats, and this fundamental mismatch raises the possibility of extinction or local extirpation. Assisted migration, human-assisted movement of species in response to climate change, is one management option that is available to address this challenge. This topic page will examine some of the scientific background and management considerations related to assisted migration, focused primarily on tree species.
Land conservation combatting climate change
Agricultural Stewardship Association is working to position farmers and farmland as part of the climate solution. Here’s an excerpt from their website:
ASA is dedicated to helping mitigate climate change. Here’s how:
- We are helping farm families permanently protect the most valuable and resilient land for farming and growing food.
- We are educating our community about the importance of keeping land in farming and the connection with increasing resilience to a changing climate.
- We are partnering with other organizations to help farmers adopt soil health practices and generate renewable energy in ways that are compatible with agriculture and keep productive land in farming…
Parks as part of the climate solution
As a warming planet leads to worsening risks and impacts, American cities are taking matters into their own hands. Cities are not only pledging to slash carbon emissions in the coming decades. They are also figuring out how to be more resilient. Because one thing is clear: disadvantaged communities that have been historically neglected will suffer the most as the planet warms.
Park acres, it turns out, are very good at buffering the effects of climate change. Green space has the power to lower air temperature and absorb floodwater and can be designed in such a way as to significantly enhance those climate benefits…
Our solution to climate change? Democracy.
We empower everyday people to work together on climate solutions…
Coastal Rivers takes leap towards carbon neutrality with solar array
For those who braved mud or ice to stroll the slopes at Round Top Farm this winter, they may have spotted something shiny and new in the southwest field behind Darrows Barn.
As of Jan. 3, contractors with ReVision Energy completely installed eight rows of solar panels on a one-acre parcel at the farm and are in the process of finishing the wiring on the array. ReVision broke ground on the project in the fall.
Hannah McGhee, Coastal Rivers outreach and communications manager, said the location for the panels was selected for the minimal impact it would have on the visual landscape at Round Top for the public and abutters.
Solar sharing for both food and clean energy production
Research on the performance of agrivoltaic systems for corn, a typical shade-intolerant crop.
This article concerns research conducted at a 100-m2 experimental farm with three sub-configurations: no modules (control), low module density, and high module density. In each configuration, 9 stalks/m2 were planted 0.5 m apart. The biomass of corn stover grown in the low-density configuration was larger than that of the control configuration by 4.9%. Also, the corn yield per square meter of the low-density configuration was larger than that of the control by 5.6%.
Flash drought in the making, with high temps, little rain: National Weather Service
The recent heat wave, coupled with lower than normal precipitation, has produced conditions ripe for what’s known as a “flash drought” in the Chicago area, according to the National Weather Service.
The 10-day outlook shows odds leaning toward a continued dry spell.
Summer in America is becoming hotter, longer and more dangerous
Wildfires had been burning for weeks, shrouding Reno, Nev., in harmful smoke, when Jillian Abney and her eight-year-old daughter Izi drove into the Sierras last year in search of cleaner air. The eerie yellow haze that filled the sky had brought summer to an abrupt halt, canceling all of the season’s usual delights.