Watershed Health & Climate Change
A watershed is the land area drained by a river, stream, or creek. It includes both natural wilderness areas; areas that have been modified for human use such as industry, agriculture, transportation and communication corridors; and urban areas that accommodate streets, houses, stores, schools and parks.
What
Determines Watershed Health?
Is Climate Change Impacting on Watershed Health?
Is Climate
Change an Immediate Threat?
How Best to Reduce the Impacts of Climate Change?
What Determines Watershed Health?
The overall health of the watershed is determined by the impacts of nature and human activity on every square foot of that land, as well as on the water bodies within the watershed.
This includes the amount and quality of the water in the lakes, rivers and streams; the contaminants and pollutants that enter them from precipitation, run-off, and stormwater; the health of the wetlands and shorelines that border those water bodies; and the human activity as we produce goods and services, grow our food, move from place to place and enjoy our recreational and leisure time.
Forests also play key roles in determining watershed health. Healthy, well-managed forests:
§ reduce erosion and help to prevent soil from
washing into streams,
rivers and lakes;
§ increase the amount of water stored in the soil,
reducing peak stream
flows, deliver a more consistent and dependable source of
surface
and ground water supplies;
§ filter pollutants, such as nutrients and
phosphorus, before they enter
waterways, helping protect drinking water supplies, and
§ strengthen biodiversity by providing needed
habitat for fish and
wildlife.
Is Climate Change Impacting on Watershed Health?
There is a growing consensus among scientists that melting ice packs, rising sea levels, severe coastal flooding, increased weather extremes, crop failures, and damaged infrastructure are among the likely general impacts of a changing climate.
Other studies indicate additional impacts, including new threats to human health and biodiversity and increased instability in some regions, posing significant threats to the world’s peace and security.
Studies related to the impact of climate change in the Great Lakes basin and, more particularly in Muskoka and neighbouring regions, indicate higher evaporation rates from water bodies that experience shorter seasons of ice cover, more weather extremes, increased precipitation levels particularly during the winter season, and significant changes in forests and natural areas.
All of these impacts have the potential to increase the stress on watershed health.
Is Climate Change an Immediate Threat?
The majority of current scientific evidence indicates that stopping the increase in carbon emissions within the next decade is essential, with significant real reductions required by 2050 if the planet’s ability to sustain life as we know it is to continue.
More recent studies suggest the need is more urgent and call for action no later than 2015.
How Best to Reduce the Impacts of Climate Change?
Greenhouse gases include a mixture of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, hydrocarbons and halocarbons.
The essential first and most important step is to reduce the production of greenhouse gases through changes in lifestyle. This means reducing our use of carbon-based fuels, identifying and implementing cleaner alternate energy sources, and developing new technologies that will increase our ability to sequester carbon and further reduce the flow of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
However, realizing the benefits of doing all of these things will require decades if not centuries. Practical strategies to reduce the vulnerability of our economic and ecological systems to the impacts of climate change in the shorter term are also essential.
While we await new technologies and new sources of energy, we can offset some of our emissions.
When we produce carbon dioxide by driving our cars, taking air flights or heating our homes, we can offset it by funding a project that will eliminate or absorb an equivalent amount of carbon elsewhere.
Because the effects of greenhouse gases are global, and emissions released in one place can be counterbalanced somewhere else, we are free to fight climate change wherever we can do the most good.
Offsetting can have a real impact, not only on the overall volume of greenhouse gas in our atmosphere, but in helping change the fundamentals that caused the problem in the first place.
Offsetting puts a price on carbon. Placing a monetary value on the reduction or elimination of an amount of carbon means accepting that environmental impact must be a factor in our economy.