The Association of State Wetlands Managers (ASWM) is a great North American group that has been collating some resources on climate change and wetlands, both from climate mitigation and adaptation perspectives. I’m posting some of their material verbatim here, including a set of recommendations for managing wetlands they compiled recently. I have some issues with using wetlands as a carbon sequestration mechanism in some cases, but I’ve included those links as well. Read More...

Tags: wetlands, climate mitigation, climate adaptation

I’ve started teaching a distance learning course with Dr. Bruce Dugger at Oregon State University on wetlands. My contribution focuses on wetlands of the world and on climate impacts on wetlands, and includes making some short videos on wetlands I visit on my travels. The first installment is posted here. A new posting will be uploaded by early August for the cerrado of Brazil. Read More...

Tags: wetlands, video, conservation, travel, north america, louisiana

A significant number of the hits to this blog are from South Asia, mostly directed at a 2008 entry on the Sundarbans islands that sit on the coast of Bangladesh and northeastern India. These islands are home to millions of very poor people, have one of the largest coastal mangrove forests in the world, and are the major refuge for the remaining Bengal tigers. These island exist in a balance between accruing sediment flowing down the Brahmaputra-Ganges rivers, the ability of the mangroves to capture the sediment, and the erosive action of the Indian ocean. A 1970s-era sediment-capturing dam upstream in combination with rising sea levels have caught the islands in a dangerous vice: sediments are no longer accumulating at sustainable levels, while tropical storm frequency and severity seem to be increasing — on top of accelerating sea-level rise. According to Arjan Berkhuysen, an expert on climate adaptation in river deltas and estuaries with WWF-Netherlands, “These problems are similar in deltas all over the world.... [We’re] looking for natural solutions that respect the dynamics of the system while helping people towards sustainable development in the face of climate change.” Happily, we have some good news about the Sundarbans: a regional Climate Adaptation Center has just been founded on Mousuni island on the Indian side on 29 March 2009.
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Tags: india, climate adaptation, wetlands, mangroves, bangladesh, drr, asia

This entry will be the first in a series over the coming weeks. I have a series of talks and will be attending a number of unrelated events that are focusing on wetlands as a theme, so I will in turn inflict some of these thoughts on you, gentle reader. A serious contradiction exists with protected areas — places likes natural reserves and parks — and climate change. On one hand, these places have been designated because they are “special” and unusual parts of the landscape, having qualities that make them distinct from other places and thus worthy of being a protected area (or PA). Think of this as the spatial element of a PA. On the other hand, these areas are generally special because some mixture of climate, geology, and biological history combine to make them distinct during some window of time. At a different period in either of those three elements, the special qualities may exist in a very different combination at that place, or even over a different range of places. Think of this as the temporal element of a PA. Of all the most common types of PAs found worldwide, wetlands may be the most climate sensitive. And that has very important implications for how we define and protect wetlands PAs everywhere. Read More...

Tags: climate adaptation, wetlands, policy, climate refugia, ramsar

The BBC has a disturbing article on a big jump in methane emissions over the past year. I discuss this topic as well on the CCW Blog side of things. The U.S. National Science Foundation has just done a short press release on the subject as well that goes into more details about the implications to global trends. Read More...

Tags: news, wetlands, climate mitigation

Tags: news, playa lakes, wetlands, climate adaptation, north america

A study late last week suggested that atmospheric methane emissions are way up. This is disturbing on a number of levels that should have a lot of people very worried. Read More...

Tags: wetlands, climate mitigation, impacts, species, climate adaptation