|
By Mike Bodine
Register Staff
11-8-2008 The Owens Valley, rich in ecological and geological diversity, is once again the backdrop for a national conference on climate change.
“Climate, Ecosystems and Resources in Eastern California,” or CEREC, is a three-day symposium comprised of more than 200 scientists, researchers, resource managers, journalists, the CEO and general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and others from around the nation, “to share what they’ve learned, and hope to learn, about climate change” particularly in East-Central California.
The Sierra Nevada and western Great Basin ranges were chosen to host the conference as they are vital for supplying water over a large geographic area. And, according to the CEREC literature, as climate change accelerates, wildland ecosystems, of which water is the primary ingredient, are being directly and indirectly affected.
Wildland ecosystems are key to activities such as tourism, outdoor recreation, water export and agriculture, and as such, “the human economy of East-Central California will probably be profoundly affected.”
This is not a conference to argue the credibility of the greenhouse gas theory that greenhouse gases and other human-caused factors are changing the climate at a level unprecedented in recorded human history. Rather, it is a forum to discuss current and potential future impacts, research methods and resource management for climatic changes.
The first talk, given Thursday morning by Daniel Cayan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, focused on the topic of what effects climate change will have on water resources in the Eastern Sierra.
Cayan supplied a number of charts, graphs and models showing projected temperature and precipitation levels for the next century.
Some of these models were further broken down into worst and best case scenarios, or, “the Dick Cheney versus the Al Gore models,” Cayan said with a laugh.
The worst case scenario would mean an ever-increasing rise in greenhouse emissions and a corresponding 6 degree Celsius rise in global temperatures. The best case scenario involves only a single degree of temperature increase.
Cayan added that according to current trends and models, summer warming is being amplified, but winters are not necessarily warming up.
He displayed other models showing current precipitation trends with increases in already wet areas, like the equatorial tropics, and less rain and snow for arid regions. Some models showed decreases in precipitation rates by as much as 20 percent.
Overall, he said that average precipitation worldwide is forecast to increase, though only in concentrations in already wet climates.
“We must start thinking about a drier landscape in the future,” Cayan said.
Talks and presentations continued throughout the day.
The conference consists of morning sessions and concurrent talks on three broadly defined topics: climate, water and ice; ecosystem responses to climate; and management responses to climate change.
A talk on climate change and spring-fed wetlands was given by Don Sada of the Desert Research Institute in Nevada
Sada, who has studied springs throughout the Great Basin for 20 years, talked about the excellent opportunity that springs provide in tracking climate change because their discharge responds to precipitation and they are relatively easy to monitor.
Jordan Clark of UC Santa Barbara gave another talk on springs as a means of monitoring climate change, but was quite a bit more technical in nature. Clark’s talk was titled “Temporal Changes in Isotope Composition of Sierra Spring Waters.”
Still other talks concerned glacial development of the Palisade Glacier and Yosemite glaciers, or the indirect effects of climate change on plant-herbivore interactions.
The snow drift fences near Mammoth are used by Sharon Martin and her team from UC Santa Cruz to control snow levels in specific areas to study the indirect effects climate change has on the production of bug-produced galls on local sagebrush.
All of the talks, regardless of the topic, were based on data collected within the Sierra Nevada region or had implications that directly impact local Inyo/Mono areas.
CEREC is a joint effort between the University of California’s White Mountain Research Station (WMRS) and the Consortium for Integrated climate Research in Western Mountains.
This year marks WMRS’s fifth such symposium on climate change.
CEREC concludes at the Tri-County Fairgrounds today.
|
