By Irina Zhuravskaya:
Risks are on the rise
Coincidentally, our trip to Point Blue Conservation on November 9, 2018, to participate and discuss Climate-Smart Restoration practices occurred just one day after the start of the Butte County Fires. There is a dire need to enhance our preparation for the consequences of climate change when planning for restoration, and the events that were carried out this day strengthened that notion for me. It has been unanimously asserted by many scientific groups that the global climate is shifting towards a warmer climate, however at what rate we can’t predict. As the hazy toxic smoke loomed over the town for the remainder of the day, similarly my racing thoughts created a noxious sense of overwhelming impending doom on how we are going to deal with such uncertain factors.
Point Blue paving the way
Point Blue has organized this event to provide practitioners with an infrastructure to help restoration teams develop climate-smart projects, emphasizing coastal and watershed protection as well as cooperating with farmland owners to encourage and promote restoration on rangelands.
In addition, Point Blue has designed seven “Climate-Smart Restoration Principles” available on their website under “Tools and Guidance” for public access. These tools can guide scientists to plan for more effective modeling of climate scenarios within their restoration site. Creating multiple projections can result in better adaptive management strategies, as uncertainties mean that we are dealing with plausible features rather than predictions, nor do they delay mapping appropriate actions to respond to the current risks of climate-change impacts.
Education is key to building resilient communities in the face of climate change
Point Blue considers education to be one of the main components of implementing climate change resiliency. This is initiated through the STRAW (Students and Teachers Restoring a Watershed) program. It is a collective of students and teachers who lead their own communities to restore their ecosystems and simultaneously act as a partnership in doing restoration work, which is almost always hard to “fund” by. What is more important, is that this program does an excellent job of integrating and promoting the human element into restoration, by creating a community of mutual-learning and holistic stewardship for generations to come.
Time to Brainstorm
The activity portion of the workshop was to split into four groups for an assigned restoration project. My groups’ project site was San Pablo Bay. Previously a centennial marsh, the Bay had accumulated large amounts of sediment, loss of habitat and vegetation as a result of being cut off from tidal flow after extensive hydraulic mining operations. The solution to this loss was the construction of a channel to reconnect the tidal flows and creating a transitional zone from the marsh to a levee. After reading the project description, the group discussed the following vulnerabilities and actions for the site:
- Rhizome density
- Stout diversity
- Reduction in levee erosion
- Protection of communities
The most important aspect of the discussion was to plan for ways to make sure that the restoration project will be able to withstand future climate projections such as sea level rise, increase in extreme weather events and extended drought periods.
Takeaway
This activity created a collaborative and engaging think tank that allowed me to put my ideas forth and also discover the groups’ outlook based on their own experiences in fields such as land use law and environmental policy. Point Blue’s workshop inspired a sense of hope for the future within me. I believe that it would be necessary to develop tools such as the ones brought forth by Point Blue to not only plan for subsequent uncertainties but to eventually provide these tools to all walks of life, giving people the ability to manage environmental functions and develop a sense of human value, responsibility and intrinsic reward in restoring ecosystems.
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