Climate Change Is Already Affecting

According to the draft report of the U.S. National Climate Assessme eleased by the U.S. climate change research program, climate change is already affecting Americans. The 1,000-page report, which was written by 240 leading climate experts in the government and from universities, contends that certain types of weather events have become more frequent and intense — including “heat waves, heavy downpours, and, in some regions, floods and droughts.” Beyond weather changes, sea levels are rising, oceans are becoming more acidic, and glaciers and arctic sea ice are melting.” One of the scarier statements in the report: “Because of the influence of human activities, the past climate is no longer a sufficient indicator of future conditions.”

 

Since 2000, U.S. law requires the group to release a report every four years. The last report was issued in 2009. No reports were done under the administration of George W. Bush. To put U.S. emissions in context, the U.S. accounts for around 20 percent of total global emissions. U.S. carbon emissions are actually down to a 20 year low, in large part due to the transition away from coal to natural gas. Despite the positive trends domestically, global emissions just keep increasing, with this past year the worst on record.

 

Interestingly, the authors admit that some effects of climate change could have positive benefits — such as longer growing seasons — but the vast majority of changes will be “disruptive to society,” because institutions and infrastructure have been designed for the “relatively stable climate of the past, not the changing one of the present and future.” Furthermore, natural ecosystems that we all rely on will be put under enormous stress.

 

The report confirms what many of us have noticed: that temperatures are getting hotter, year by year. “U.S. average temperature has increased by about 1.5°F since 1895; more than 80 percent of this 21 increase has occurred since 1980.” This past year was the hottest on record. And in 2011, a deadly heatwave swept across the U.S., with temperatures pushing 110F.

 

Unfortunately, it doesn’t like there will be much relief. After reading the report, The Guardian wrote that “future generations of Americans can expect to spend 25 days a year sweltering in temperatures above 100F (38C).” The report goes on to say overall temperatures will also rise, “with the next few decades projected to see another 2°F 26 to 4°F of warming in most areas.” There will also be less relief at night, as night-time temperatures also increase.

 

The health of many American is expected be affected. “Climate change will influence human health in many ways; some existing health threats will intensify, and new health threats will emerge. Some of the key drivers of health impacts include: increasingly frequent and intense extreme heat, which causes heat-related illnesses and deaths and over time, worsens drought and wildfire risks, and intensifies air pollution; increasingly frequent extreme precipitation and associated flooding that can lead to injuries and increases in marine and freshwater-borne disease; and rising sea levels that intensify coastal flooding and storm surge.”

 

The elderly, children, poor, and sick are particularly vulnerable. Still other populations are vulnerable simply because of where they are located. People in floodplains, coastal zones and some urban areas are threatened, along with those in the arid Southwest. The report seems to say climate change then has major implications for the health care system: “maintaining a robust public health infrastructure will be critical to managing the potential health impacts.”

 

Changes will have economic implications. As an example, industries that rely heavily on water, like agriculture, will have to make do with less of it: “Surface and groundwater supplies in many regions are already stressed by increasing demand for water as well as declining runoff and groundwater recharge. In many regions, climate change increases the likelihood of water shortages and competition for water among agricultural, municipal, and environmental uses.” Extreme heat is also expected to impact crops and livestock.

Infrastructure, particularly aging systems in coastal cities, will be hard-hit, given they are expected to be taxed by nature more often. As the report authors point out with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, infrastructure damage is already happening and the repairs are expensive. “Sea level rise and storm surges, in combination with the pattern of heavy development in coastal areas, are already resulting in damage to infrastructure such as roads, buildings, ports, and energy facilities.” As a result, landscape architects and others have been calling for increased use of green infrastructure systems to boost resiliency.

 

Nature herself will also change with the climate. “Climate change-driven perturbations to ecosystems that have direct human impacts include reduced water supply and quality, the loss of iconic species and landscapes, distorted rhythms of nature, and the potential for extreme events to eliminate the capacity of ecosystems to provide benefits.”

 

Climate change, along with human-imposed changes to landscapes and ecosystems, also makes those ecosystems even more vulnerable to “damage from extreme events while at the same time reducing their natural capacity to modulate the impacts of such events.”

The natural infrastructure systems we rely on, “salt marshes, reefs, mangrove forests, and barrier islands,” to defend coastal ecosystems and infrastructure, including roads and buildings,” are being further weakened by “coastal development, erosion, and sea level rise.”

 

Furthermore, extreme weather events can also degrade the effectiveness of wetlands, whether natural or man-made. “Floodplain wetlands, although greatly reduced from their historical extent, absorb floodwaters and reduce the effects of high flows on river-margin lands. Extreme weather events that produce sudden increases in water flow, often carrying debris and pollutants, can decrease the natural capacity of ecosystems to process pollutants.”

 

The report authors call for communities to “proactively prepare for climate change” and begin aggressive adaptation planning programs. Smart adaptation, of course, will also work to mitigate carbon emissions. Think of urban forests that not only cool and clean the air, but also store carbon.

Perhaps President Obama will get the report’s message, too. Current efforts by the administration were described as “not close to sufficient.” Obama has said that climate change is one of his top three priorities for his next administration. The president may even host a bipartisan summit at the White House early in his new term to launch a “national climate action strategy.” Apparently, Democrats in Congress will also try to pick up climate change legislation but focus it on efforts to strengthen coastal communities against future “superstorms,” reports The Guardian.










Rethinking Our Relationship with Rivers

 

In 2011, the Mississippi River reached record levels. Massive floodgates had to be opened to divert water away from Baton Rouge and New Orleans, where the river rose to within feet of the tops of flood protection levees. Just one year later, droughts in the Midwest have dropped the river to a dangerously low level, threatening both the feasibility of freight transport and, due to rising salinity levels, the viability of New Orleans’s water supply. For the residents of Baton Rouge and New Orleans, however, the record flood of 2011 and low water of 2012 were barely perceptible events. After all, each city is largely divorced from the river, separated by the levee wall. The river has been engineered out of the daily lives of the people that live along it. Even more imperceptible is the massive environmental damage to the surrounding region that has resulted from human modifications to the river.

The Mississippi River is an extreme case of a condition facing many urban rivers, where engineering for the benefit of one use (typically commerce/industry) has come at the expense of other human and natural systems. A new book, River.Space.Design. by a team of European landscape architecture professors, says we must rethink our single-use, massively engineered rivers, offering multi-dimensional strategies for riverside design that benefit river ecology, improve flood protection, and expand human amenities. These strategies are laid out in the form of an extensive catalog that documents numerous design ideas abstracted from successful projects across Europe. These strategies for multi-functional river design are presented in a language that is intended to be comprehensible across a range of relevant disciplines: landscape architecture, ecological science, engineering, and planning. Indeed, the book states that it “can serve as a handbook for interdisciplinary teams and a basis for reaching mutual understanding.”

 

 

This design catalog forms the bulk of the first volume River.Space.Design. The book’s second volume consists of case studies documenting the sites from which the design catalog draws. The two-volume format is a unique and critical aspect of the book. Connected only by the book’s outer cover, these volumes are intended to be opened and used simultaneously: each design concept references relevant case studies and each case study references relevant design concepts.

 

 

 

River.Space.Design.’s meticulous organization and graphic design makes this cross referencing easy and natural. For instance, in the design catalog I read about the utility of floating islands in overcoming hard river edges. This entry references a case study in the second volume, which describes a project on the river Leine in Hanover, Germany. In this example, a private businessman has established a café floating on pontoons, accessed by a walkway bypassing the fortified bank of the river.

 

 

 

 

Being able to view this case study — documented through relevant maps, photographs, and narrative — while simultaneously viewing its abstracted design elements in the design catalog is incredibly useful. This format allows for a seamless transition between the conceptual and the concrete. Because we can clearly see the source of the design principles, they do not come across as prescriptive or limiting, but instead function as they should: a catalog of good ideas, derived from successful projects, that may have application in other projects.

 

With its clear language and impeccable organization and design, River.Space.Design. serves not only as a great resource for design ideas and examples, but also as a challenge to how we consider rivers in an urban context. The book does not view river design in terms of an idealized notion of what a river should be, but instead bases its strategies on dynamic river processes.

 

Dynamic river processes are not seen as something to repress or obscure, but instead as opportunities to enhance ecology, flood protection, and aesthetics. In the book’s introduction, the author writes, “What has been lacking up to date is an overview that presents the wide diversity of design possibilities for urban river spaces in a systematic and transferable way. This book aims to fill this gap and serve as a primer and reference for designers of urban spaces.” River.Space.Design. is absolutely successful in this regard and will hopefully inspire designers to find ways new ways to engage their community’s rivers.