Innovation Anthology #149: Founder and President
Most climate change models consistently predict a three degree increase in Alberta’s temperature over the next half century.
This means the hot dry weather of Medicine Hat will one day extend to Grande Prairie and Fort McMurray.
Ecologist Dr. Rick Schneider has been analyzing climate change models for the Integrated Landscape Management program at the University of Alberta.
Dr. Schneider’s research indicates the grasslands will double, while the northern forests will shrink by 20 percent. Knowing this, he says, should help us plan now for future land use.
DR RICK SCHNEIDER: If you knew that an area was going to really struggle in terms of regenerating forest, you could say well you know we’re fighting a losing battle here. Some of the paleontology data from a period in our past about six thousand years ago when it was about three degrees warmer, that whole boreal region was parkland. Maybe we should start to plan for that and say, well some areas night not be a priority for forestry anymore. Maybe it’s going to be something else. And over the years, I think we can start looking at some actual, on the ground changes like planting a different kind of tree, or going to an agricultural system that is structured differently, those kind of things.
Thanks today to the Chair in Integrated Landscape Management.
FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY,
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
Guest
Gregg Oldring,
Mailout and Inkdit, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada,
Sponsor
NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Integrated Landscape Management
The Integrated Landscape Management Chair is developing a toolkit for ecologically informed land use planning. At the heart of this toolkit is a suite of models capable of integrating multiple land use activities over large areas and long time scales to explore the future impacts of todays land use decisions. The models do this by linking human actions to indicators of ecological, economic, and social condition. They are constrained by their ability to adequately represent the dynamics of complex systems, and our current research emphasis aims to reduce the uncertainties over the impacts of invasive organisms on species at risk in Canadas boreal forest.
The ILM Chair is an initiative of the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alberta, with sponsors and collaborators in academia, government, and the private sector.
Program Date: 2008-07-08