Open Space Council's Blog

Be Our Guest: Farms at the Urban Edge

Our partners at California Climate and Agriculture Network recently released a report on the importance of protecting farmland from development. We thought that you - our members, partners, vendors, funders - might find their findings helpful as you make the case for preserving farms at the urban edge. The following is reposted from their blog.

A new CalCAN report says that California’s farmland is at risk from traditional pressures like urban sprawl and new ones including large-scale solar energy projects and oil and gas exploration. Despite mounting evidence showing the climate change benefits of protecting farmland and curbing greenhouse gas emissions related to transportation and energy use, California farmland is under threat of being paved over.

Triple Harvest: Farmland Conservation for Climate Protection, Smart Growth and Food Security describes the many essential services provided by California farmland and current development threats. It outlines policy recommendations for protecting agricultural lands to ensure their climate, food security and other benefits.

“California’s existing farmland protection policy tools are outdated and underfunded,” reported CalCAN’s Policy Director Jeanne Merrill at the summit. “They must be strengthened, especially at the boundaries of our cities where farms can provide the greatest benefit to avoiding greenhouse gas emissions.”

As California aims to reach its mandate of reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, both smart growth planning and urban edge farmland protection will be crucial. For example, a 2012 study by UC Davis researchers found that in Yolo County, urban development generates 70 times more greenhouse gas emissions than irrigated cropland.

Triple Harvest summarizes the following pressures on farmland:

• California has lost an average of 50,000 acres of farmland each year for the past 30 years. New development pressures put farmland in the state at additional risk of development.
• Instead of accommodating larger populations with smart growth, infill development, public transit and greenbelt protection, cities and counties have permitted suburban and ex-urban sprawl and the fragmentation of farmland. A 2013 American Farmland Trust report found that 61 percent of all development in the San Joaquin Valley is taking place on high quality farmland, mostly along the Highway 99 corridor.
• As of January 2012, 45 large scale-solar projects were approved to cover about 17,570 acres the San Joaquin Valley’s most productive farming and grazing land, and an additional 59 were under consideration.
• The state’s new “fracking” boom means oil and gas companies are purchasing subsurface mineral rights of farms, putting agricultural land and water at risk.

The report’s recommendations include:

1. Clarify mitigation requirements for loss of farmland under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)
2. Develop farmland mitigation requirements based on cumulative impacts of infrastructure projects, including the impact on future greenhouse gas emissions.
3. Direct a portion of AB 32 cap-and-trade revenues to farmland conservation, targeting the creation of easements on farmland most at risk of development

Click here to download a copy of Triple Harvest.

 

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Be Our Guest is a series we run periodically that highlights the work of our members and partners. Scroll through past guests here. 

 

Santa Claus and the Melting North Pole: Is Christmas in Danger?

By Silver Cherryblossom, Junior Wood Elf Correspondent to the North Pole

ATTENTION HUMAN CHILDREN: This message is from Elf Central in Muir Woods. We have been trying to reach you, but you might not have heard from the Muir Woods Elves before because we have had trouble getting our elf-mail (elf e-mail, which smells like peppermint) to transmit to human e-mail (which doesn’t smell like anything at all). If you get this message, then we’ve finally gotten the tinsel wires untangled. I hope this message gets to you, and it smells OK.

Regarding your first worry: How are Santa Claus and His Elves Doing with Climate Change?

Firstly, Santa Claus says he is “fine, thanks for asking.” As long as humans continue to give each other gifts from the heart, he will be in good shape and Christmas will come on schedule, ice or no ice.

Secondly, the Ice Elves are very organized. They are really good planners – that’s how they are able to make your presents on time every year.  So, they started planning for climate change a long time ago. 

Of course, they have gotten really good with technology by making all your electronic toys.  So, if anyone can figure out what to do about climate change at the North Pole, the Ice Elves can.

The North Pole, by mrafael on Flickr

I know what you're thinking.  If Christmas will be okay, is there anything that Santa and the Ice Elves are worried about?

Well, someone gave me a copy of Executive Memo XMAS-11-001 “On Climate Change and Its Effects RE: Santa’s Workshop Activities,” about the North Pole Workshop’s preparations for climate change.

I’m still just a Junior Correspondent, so I hope I don’t get in trouble for sharing this! (If I do, it might be a while before you get a message from me again!) The memo says it is “classified,” but I don’t know what that word means, so I hope it means that I should share it with everyone.

 

CLASSIFIED
Executive Memo XMAS-11-001 “On Climate Change and Its Effects RE: Santa’s Workshop Activities”
By Junior Science Elf Frostbottom

Climate change is causing a lot of problems at the North Pole.  The three big ones are ice melting under the Workshop, getting fresh, non-salty water for the Workshop, and our neighbors who rely on ice—animals and humans— losing their homes.

PROBLEM 1: Ice melting under the Workshop.

With the ice melting, it’s like the ground is moving!  The Workshop floor is already tilting where Mrs. Claus stores the old exercise bicycles (which are very heavy). This is only going to get worse as the ground gets warmer.

There used to be a LOT of ice up here which NEVER melted, and the ice prevented anybody from sailing a ship anywhere near the North Pole. We found a group of scientists skiing near the Workshop in 2009, and they said the North Pole might be a free-flowing ocean as soon as 2030. (That’s when today’s toddlers will be graduating from college)!

PROPOSED SOLUTION: Move the Workshop to an abandoned oil platform. We can call it Workshop Island. The reindeer might need their own platform for grazing and playing reindeer games.

QUESTION FOR SENIOR SCIENCE ELF: How can we generate electricity on Workshop Island? At the Workshop we have plenty of room for solar panels and windmills, but not on the oil platform. Can we use tidal and wave energy? We need to make enough energy for making toys AND gingerbread.

ANSWER FROM SENIOR SCIENCE ELF:  Click here for more information from the U.S. Department of Energy on getting power from the ocean.

***NOTE TO SANTA: Look at this! A sea adventure resort built on an old oil platform! 

PROBLEM 2: Getting water for the workshop.

Mrs. Claus needs the best-tasting fresh water for her delicious peppermint hot chocolate.  Right now, she uses melted ice.  Once the ice is gone, there will be nothing but salty sea water around us.

PROPOSED SOLUTION: Maybe… build a plant that removes salt from water (desalinize the water)?

NOTE FROM SENIOR SCIENCE ELF:  This creates a new problem, because removing salt from sea water takes a lot of energy and leaves behind icky salt sludge. What if instead, we collect rainwater and use less water? We should ask the Island Elves how they do it.

Click here to learn about how kids, elves and reindeer can collect rainwater and use less water at home. 

***NOTE TO SANTA:  Can you take shorter showers?

 

PROBLEM 3: Our neighbors who rely on the ice— animals and humans— are losing their homes.

After all the ice melts, some animals who make the ice their home— like polar bears and walruses—  might have nowhere to go. Do they want to stay at the North Pole on their own abandoned oil platforms? We asked, and they said, “No, thanks, those are too small for us.” Do they want to live in zoos? They said, “No, thanks, we don’t want to give up our freedom.”

Our other neighbors at the North Pole are the people who have lived on the ice for centuries. These are the people humans often call Eskimos, even though there are actually many different nations living around the North Pole, including Inuit, Evenk, Yupik, and many others. We asked if they want their own abandoned oil platforms, and they said, “No, thanks, those are too small for us.” Do they want to move south to other lands? They said, “No, thanks, our culture is built on ice and snow: this is our home.”

These are our neighbors, and like any neighbors, we’ve always helped each other out when things have gone wrong… we should try to help them if we can.

PROPOSED SOLUTION: I don’t know. We need to keep talking to our neighbors and asking how we can help.

QUESTION FOR SENIOR SCIENCE ELF: Can we save the ice?

ANSWER FROM SENIOR SCIENCE ELF:  We can’t stop the ice from melting, but we can slow it down if we change how we do things. Can we get humans to slow climate change?

***NOTE TO SANTA: When you are traveling around the world, can you please tell the human children about ways to slow climate change so they can teach their parents? Maybe you can tell them to check these out:

• Super awesome U.S. Environmental Protection Agency climate change site: A Student’s Guide to Climate Change.   
• Spiffy U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Climate Kids  site (and they talk about sea ice!).
• Global Warming Kids, an information portal presented by science museum docents at the University of California, Berkeley. Full of useful resources, including videos of human children talking about climate change.
• Free Lesson Plans from the North American Association for Environmental Education for pre-K to Grade 12— to help teach about nature, including climate change.
• The book The North Pole Was Here: Puzzles and Perils at the Top of the World  (by New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin, 2006, for grades 6-9), about how a group of scientists studied the relationship between climate change and the loss of ice at the North Pole.

The North Pole by digitalwarrior on Flickr

So, there you go, human children. Remember: don’t worry about Santa’s Workshop. The Ice Elves have it under control. Also:

1. Keep learning about climate change and thinking of ways to slow it down. Ask your teachers about it!
2. When you write your letter to Santa this year, also think about writing to the politicians who represent you in human government to tell them about the people, polar bears, and walruses who depend on the ice at the North Pole, and ask them to help them any way they can. (Get addresses for your representatives here: for the U.S. House of Representatives; for the U.S. Senate).
3.  Try to use less water and electricity in your home. (How many ways can you think of to save energy around your house?) You can help your parents save money and slow down climate change at the same time!

And the next time you visit Muir Woods, keep an eye out for elves and say hello if you see me (I’m the elf with my pointy ears tucked into my park ranger hat).

Merry Christmas!

 

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Endnote: On Talking About Climate Change with Children

This is a note for adults talking to children (or, adults talking to their inner child) about climate change.Climate change is an overwhelming and scary problem: it can make you feel helpless. A 2010 UC Berkeley study showed that it is dangerous to be too apocalyptic when talking about climate change, inspiring denial instead of action. When talking to children about climate change, try to focus on positive actions they can take to improve the situation. The future is not written in stone, and the children of today may yet dream up solutions we adults haven’t even considered yet!

The piece above is intended for children ages 10-13 (they might have stopped believing in Santa, but are still entertained by the idea). If you have younger kids, consider reading parts of it out loud to them and using it to open a conversation where they can ask questions and brainstorm their own solutions.

Here are some tips about talking to children about climate change:

1. Talk about positive actions that they can do now.
2. Try to keep it simple. It is a complex problem with a lot of dispute about the definition of the problem, its causes and solutions, but you can bottom-line it: scientists have shown us that the earth is warming, and it is changing our environment.
3. Emphasize that we are all a part of the problem and the solution. Even people who question the reality of climate change are asking hard questions that can make our solutions better!

About the author: Silver Cherryblossom (AKA Sara Moore, of the blog Pacificadaptation.blogspot.com), Junior Wood Elf Correspondent to the North Pole, is stationed at Elf Central in Muir Woods. She researches and writes about climate change adaptation. While she has never seen Santa Claus in person, the Ice Elves reliably send peppermint-scented elf-mail keeping her updated about Santa’s plans for dealing with the melting ice at the North Pole. She thanks all her friends who pitched in to help write this article.

Sara Moore wrote a series here on this blog about climate change which you can read here. 

 

 

Be Our Guest: Generation Hot

Planning for Climate Change: Cool Responses to Prepare for Generation Hot

By Sara S. Moore, MPP/ MA, Research Consultant on Climate Change Adaptation.

Environmental correspondent for The Nation Mark Hertsgaard recently coined the term “Generation Hot,” which he describes as:

“…the 2 billion people worldwide who were born after June 23, 1988, the day NASA scientist James Hansen's testimony to the U.S. Senate put the world on notice that man-made global warming had begun and threatened to make Earth uninhabitable.” (From How climate change will hit home, Oct. 30, 2011, Sacramento Bee.)

Generation Hot in California will likely see problems familiar to Californians (heat, flood, fire) changing their timing and intensity, and also see novel challenges like new disease vectors and new kinds of violent weather events. On our correspondent’s mind especially is the problem of the levee system protecting Sacramento: 100-year-old dirt mounds, and the only thing between high water and the 454,000 people living at the bottom of Sacramento’s watershed. This leaves the city “less protected than New Orleans had been before Hurricane Katrina” (Stein Buer, the former executive director of the Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency, as quoted by Hertsgaard).

So what are we as Californians doing to prepare ourselves for the new future facing Generation Hot?

From the CA Department of Water Resources.

California Has a Plan

Right now, the only official state policy document outlining California’s priorities and intended approach to climate change is the 2009 California Climate Adaptation Strategy. It presents a summary of the science of climate change as it is accepted by the state government, and a set of strategies for adapting to impacts, broken down by sector (water, public health, transportation, etc.).

Following the launch of this state strategy, the on-line tool for visualizing the impacts Cal-Adapt was launched, a set of vulnerability studies were begun (due to be published Spring 2012), and a plan to create a California Adaptation Policy Guide was set in motion (due out also in 2012). I contributed to the vulnerability studies, and am currently serving on the Adaptation Policy Guide Advisory Committee, so my take on the state’s adaptation effort is biased. I see first-hand the level of commitment among our state agency workers and university researchers, and I think our state continues to do an impressive job tackling climate change head-on, especially in the face of flagging public support and slashed budgets.

But What is Being Done to Actually Adapt to Coming Impacts?

Most of what is being done to prepare for climate change in California (and elsewhere in the country) is establishing baseline data and preparing theoretical courses of action. Some concrete actions which will help us adapt are in motion, but the governmental budgetary chill is holding back progress. For example, Hertsgaard points to Gov. Schwarzenegger’s 2007 flood control plan that authorized repairs for about 30% of California levees, including those protecting Sacramento, but the current Republican-led House of Representatives in D.C. is blocking funding for the Army Corps of Engineers (opposing it as “earmarks”), delaying the work.

Some work can be done even in a bad economy, though. Measures which have significant benefits even in the absence of climate change are called “no-regrets” measures, and they are relatively popular with governments. (Read the UK Climate Impacts Programme explanation of “no-regrets” measures in its 2008 manual for governments “Identifying Adaptation Options,” page 15. Also, for more on their popularity with U.S. government planners, see the 2009 report “Good Morning, America! The Explosive U.S. Awakening to the Need for Adaptation” by Susanne Moser.)

Better water and energy efficiency are primary “no-regrets” measures in California, and the state’s initiatives on those counts can be tallied in the column for concrete preparation actions. For example, in February 2010 the Department of Water Resources and a host of other agencies launched a “20x2020” plan “a statewide road map to maximize the state’s urban water efficiency and conservation opportunities between 2009 and 2020,” in particular trying to reduce urban water demand by 20% per capita by 2020 (read the 20x2020 final plan here). (Using less water in California’s agribusiness would do even more good, since that sector uses 80% of the state’s water resources.)

But what is being done to improve preparedness at a local level in California?

Fresno and San Luis Obispo counties have created their own climate change adaptation plans, with support from the Geos Institute (read Fresno’s plan here; read San Luis Obispo’s plan here). These are starting points which were created with the assistance of scientists and with buy-in from both government agencies and elected officials, so they have the promise of political viability.

Another approach to local preparedness that I’m excited about is the Model Forest Policy Program’s “Climate Solutions University” training program. This program was launched last year, awarding grants to six natural resource-dependent communities to begin a process of building a team of stakeholders to develop a model climate change adaptation policy. The program follows the community through a year-long training curriculum (meeting once a month through long-distance learning) and through the second year, supporting the client community in implementing that policy within its local government. I interviewed the coordinator for the 2010 model policy for Bellingham, Washington, and was impressed with her account of the process. It is not designed to address every impact to the nth degree, but it puts a community in touch with scientists to provide scientific grounding to planning, and then provides a framework for creating a steering committee to develop a plan that can address the worst of the impacts. It seemed like an excellent starting point, with both a sustainable and community-based approach (as opposed to the model of flying in a team of outside experts for a three-day conference that establishes wham-bam both the science background and the priorities for planning, as done by some other consulting organizations). This year’s client communities include the far-northern rural California community of Hayfork, in Trinity County, which is 85% public land.  I look forward to following that community’s progress as it grows from the grassroots a plan for the future of “Generation Hot” in the remote evergreen forests of California.

 

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This is Part Four of Four that Sara Moore shared here on the Open Space blog.  Part One can be read here.  Part Two is here.  Last Monday's Part Three is here.  

One of our strategies is to serve as the central hub for the Bay Area land conservation community.  To that end, we invite others to share their stories here on our blog and amplify them to people around the region who care about this place we call home.  

About the author: Sara S. Moore, MPP/ MA, Research Consultant on Climate Change Adaptation. Sara most recently worked at the Zavaleta Lab, UC Santa Cruz, on a component study of the California State Climate Vulnerability Assessment. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a Master of Public Policy and an MA in International and Area Studies with a focus on government climate adaptation policy. Previously, she worked for Pacific Environment as a Russia Program Associate, helping communities protect their local environment in Siberia and the Russian Far East.

 

Be Our Guest: When the Levee Breaks, Mama You Got to Go

Planning for Climate Change: When the Levee Breaks, Mama You Got to Go

By Sara S. Moore, MPP/ MA, Research Consultant on Climate Change Adaptation.

Last year I became involved in part of the California Climate Vulnerability Assessment, intended to prepare the state for climate change. Before that, I never thought of “human” and “natural” systems as different—they were one integrated system in my mind, people living in nature. However, the State of California separated the various vulnerability assessment studies into two categories—human and natural systems. Within the context of that work I began to hear experts talking about the conflict between planning to protect ecosystems versus people.

Natural system specialists (conservationists, by and large) worry that those prioritizing human communities might ignore the longer term consequences of their actions in terms of preserving the health and integrity of natural systems (which we need for people’s health, ultimately).

On the other side, people-oriented vulnerability experts, such as public health workers, worry that the natural system specialists aren’t taking into account issues of equity and existing, long-term disproportionate impacts that might be exacerbated by climate change planning decisions. They are also concerned that the conservation-oriented approach discounts the public (and very human) elements of planning, such as ensuring a transparent decision-making process and accessible stakeholder hearings. Natural system specialists may lack experience with building public trust in a planning process, and those proficient in planning for human needs may lack the long-term view of the importance of protecting natural systems.

This conflict heats up quickly in the debate of how to approach sea level rise, a problem the Bay Area is facing with these two priorities in mind: preserving human communities and preserving natural systems. We stand on the shore, a bucket of concrete and rebar in one hand, and a bucket of native wetland grasses in the other.  Should we wall out the sea or invite it in?

A levee or sea wall system is one approach, and it prioritizes human communities, but at the expense of maintaining the integrity of ecosystems. And, it might not ultimately be a safe alternative. In planning meetings the word “Katrina” is invoked. Behind this word is this question:

The Lower Ninth Ward levee break.  Wikipedia Commons.

With climate change, what if another “Katrina” happens here— will the Bay Area be prepared?

The answer is: we’ll see.

Climate change may bring the Bay Area conditions that put our communities more in danger of a “Katrina”-like scenario.  San Francisco may not face hurricanes, but as wind and storm regimes shift, and sea levels rise, it might face weather and flood conditions it has never seen before.

However, before diving for the concrete and rebar, it must be remembered what was responsible for the worst of that tragedy—not the storm— the levee failure. In the wake of that failure, an investigative article made this assertion:

“Engineers say that most structures that fail do so not because they're hit by overwhelming forces, but due to flaws that creep in unnoticed during design, construction and upkeep.” (Human Error Blamed for Making New Orleans' Flooding Worse, Dec. 11, 2005).

The question that I pose in response to the Katrina question: what if a massive sea wall system failure happens here? Can we prevent it?

Are there alternatives to relying strictly on sea wall system?

In some cases, natural systems might provide more protection, and both cheaper and more flexible protection, than a sea wall system.

For years before Katrina experts had been publishing warnings about the vulnerability of the levee system, and the need for marshland restoration to buffer the severity of hurricanes (read one article, “Drowning New Orleans,” published in Scientific American in 2001).

The SF Bay Area has options for planning for wetland migration or cultivating other natural buffers. This approach, using natural systems to reduce threats from climate change, is called ecosystem-based adaptation.

Ecosystem‐based adaptation uses biodiversity and ecosystem services in an overall adaptation strategy including the sustainable management, conservation and restoration of ecosystems to reduce the danger of climate change to people. (Read more about the Convention on Biological Diversity’s definition of ecosystem-based adaptation in this 2009 report)

This concept is usually discussed as an alternative to “hard” or engineered responses like sea walls. Hard approaches are prone to the systematic problems we saw in New Orlean’s levees,  can be more expensive to build and maintain than natural approaches, and will only protect the shoreline to a particular level of rising sea water—no further.

However, wetlands restoration and other nature-based approaches cannot be considered a silver bullet for sea level rise. In some places, like around the Bay Area’s airports, only sea walls are likely to save the existing infrastructure. Proposed plans that I have seen show a strategic use of both the strengths of wetlands restoration and sea walls to achieve our minimum necessary level of protection.

Now, a question that lingers in my mind:

What are we going to do with Ocean Beach?

In preparation for writing this post, I asked some local experts their opinion of what we’re going to do about sea level rise and Ocean Beach in San Francisco. One Emergency Services Manager at the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management, Bijan Karimi, said that San Francisco recognizes the potential impacts that climate change might have on weather-related events, with a near-term focus on the problem of flooding. However, the Emergency Management Department of San Francisco has not yet actively begun weighing the alternate paths of either retreat or increased shore armoring  to protect the people living in the projected flood zone at Ocean Beach. This encompasses two rows of houses in one high water projection (see more at the visualization tool Cal-Adapt).

The President of the Marin Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, Scott Tye, says that his organization takes an official stance in favor of a planned retreat from sea level rise, and “armoring the shore is not a viable option.” He points to the managed retreat being conducted at Surfer’s Point project in Ventura (read more about this project here). In that case the city is removing a parking lot, relocating a bicycle path, restoring a beach, and taking other “soft” ecosystem-friendly measures to anticipate future coastal erosion.

But would that work at Ocean Beach? Would homeowners agree to give up their land in return for government compensation? What about the apartment buildings in the projected flood zone which provide subsidized (Section 8) housing to seniors— how could the city ensure that those households were treated fairly?

There is no silver bullet for this problem. We stand on the shore and see the inevitable challenge coming from the sea, a bucket in each hand. What would you do?

 

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This is Part Three of Four that Sara Moore will be sharing here on the Open Space blog.  Part One can be read here.  Part Two is here.  Stay tuned for the Part Four next Monday.

One of our strategies is to serve as the central hub for the Bay Area land conservation community. We serve as an essential resource for anyone interested in land conservation in the Bay Area.  To that end, we invite others to share their stories here on our blog and amplify them to people around the region who care about this place we call home.  

About the author: Sara S. Moore, MPP/ MA, Research Consultant on Climate Change Adaptation. Sara most recently worked at the Zavaleta Lab, UC Santa Cruz, on a component study of the California State Climate Vulnerability Assessment. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a Master of Public Policy and an MA in International and Area Studies with a focus on government climate adaptation policy. Previously, she worked for Pacific Environment as a Russia Program Associate, helping communities protect their local environment in Siberia and the Russian Far East.

For background on the post's title, click here and turn up your volume.

Be Our Guest: Planning for Climate Change, Part Two

A Case Study of Impact Scenarios in Marin County 

By Sara S. Moore, MPP/ MA, Research Consultant on Climate Change Adaptation.

What is the “scenario planning” tool?

At the state’s request, we held a workshop to test-drive the “scenario planning” tool to try to develop a set of priority action steps for resource management under climate change. Scenario planning is a tool for planning under conditions of uncertainty that has been used  by the military and the business sector, and is now in use by resource managers to plan for climate change. This tool tests strategies against a range of plausible futures (scenarios) that include the most high impact—though possibly low-probability—events. Using scenarios to test strategies builds flexibility into plans, so you aren’t caught planning only for one contingency. Resource managers in West Marin are being told conflicting things by climate scientists about the future behavior of fog and rain, so they don’t want to plan ONLY for a rainier, foggier future, or ONLY for a drier future with no fog. Scenario planning allows you to plan for both.

One aspect of scenario planning that should not be neglected is that it is not intended to be used the way we used it, as a one-off exercise. If plans based on scenarios are actually intended to lead to action, they should be modified as new information on climate change is available: scenarios are supposed to be revisited and improved over time. At the end of our workshop, it was clear that participants wanted both more scientific information on climate change, and the chance to improve the scenarios on that basis. Unfortunately, our funding only provided for this one exercise.

How did we create the West Marin scenarios for climate change planning?

The National Park Service (NPS) has used scenarios to experiment with climate change planning since 2007, after a pilot workshop held in Joshua Tree National Park. I studied the pilot workshop format, collected input from the NPS workshop organizers, and, in a stroke of luck, hired the same workshop facilitator used by the NPS from the firm that pioneered the use of scenario planning in the business sector, the Global Business Network.  It just happened that the facilitator lived in Marin. We followed the GBN model for the development of scenarios. First, we selected the high-impact factors (of all kinds: climate, plus economic, technological, social, and political) in the decision-making environment. Then, we identified the factors with high certainty (“inevitabilities”), and those with high uncertainty. Then we tried to identify the uncertainties that might create nightmare scenarios, like a repeat of the 1995 Vision Fire in Point Reyes in a populated area. Based on available information on climate change in West Marin, the ten scientists and resource managers I recruited to help develop the scenarios selected the following factors for the West Marin scenarios (looking at the uncertainties, you can see that wildfire is a great worry):

Four “Certainties”

1. Temperature increasing, 
2. Sea level rising, 
3. Seasonal extremes increasing, and 
4. Biodiversity declining. 

Three “Uncertainties”

1. The onset of the dry season (earlier/ later), 
2. The direction of strong wind (more easterly/ more northerly; some discussion groups found this confusing, and replaced it with intensified La Niña or El Niño effects), 
3. The capacity to act in a resource management realm (no greater [or possibly less] capacity/ significantly greater capacity).

 

How did we use the scenarios to start planning for climate change?

On January 28, 2011, thirty-five resource managers and scientists came to the Headlands Institute to discuss these factors and the different worlds they would produce.

In the end, eight scenarios were created, interacting the three uncertainties:

“Club Marin” (earlier dry season onset, stronger northerly winds/ El Nino, high capacity to act), “Dry Sweat” (earlier dry season onset, stronger northerly winds/ El Nino, same or less capacity to act), and so on, going by the names “Fryin and Cryin,” “Leaky Boat, No Bucket,” “Lush Flush,” “Muddy Waters,” “Phoenix,” and “Playing God.” Each scenario was given a set of headlines (“Muir Woods Burns”), and possible action steps (“give penalties for overuse of water”). A few top actions were reported back for each scenario. Notably, “more collaboration” appeared in all scenarios.  

In the afternoon, we chose some criteria for taking action, evaluated our possible actions, and created a set of top ten action steps. We evaluated whether the actions were flexible, used adaptive management, were cost-effective, had clear design, or were collaborative across work sectors. Our evaluation produced ten top action steps.

Ten action steps for climate change preparation for West Marin’s protected areas

1. Create a regional and collaborative approach to adaptation. 
2. Improve fire management.
3. Improve water management.
4. Improve early detection networks to control invasive species.
5. Improve connectivity, emphasizing protecting and restoring riparian areas.
6. Create a Rapid Response Team to work on restoration after climate events or other disasters.
7. Measure change over time to inform adaptive management (e.g., improve monitoring).
8. Integrate restoration with infrastructure, making sure they work together.
9. Develop a triage framework for allocating resources.
10. Create public-private partnerships (modeled on the work of Resource Conservation Districts).

These actions are the basis of a Statement of Agreement now circulating among the workshop’s thirty-five participants, hopefully providing a basis for future collaboration. 

What’s next for West Marin?

This summer I followed-up with some of the workshop’s participants to see if there had been any movement on climate change planning in their agencies. Besides the usual problems with lack of funds to continue current operations, resource managers are working to respond to the closure threat hanging over four Marin County state parks. However, I believe the threat of climate change impacts will not be forgotten, even with the ongoing budget crisis. The participants will probably be guided more by the continually improving climate models coming from the science community than by exercises in imagination like scenario planning workshops, but they now have a set of action steps that would be useful in a range of potential low-probability, high-impact nightmare scenarios. They have just that much more power to respond to the paralyzing uncertainty that comes with climate change planning.

 

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This is Part Two of Four that Sara Moore will be sharing here on the Open Space blog.  Part One can be read here.  Stay tuned for the Part Three next Monday.

One of our strategies is to serve as the central hub for the Bay Area land conservation community. We serve as an essential resource for anyone interested in land conservation in the Bay Area.  To that end, we invite others to share their stories here on our blog and amplify them to people around the region who care about this place we call home.  

About the author: Sara S. Moore, MPP/ MA, Research Consultant on Climate Change Adaptation. Sara most recently worked at the Zavaleta Lab, UC Santa Cruz, on a component study of the California State Climate Vulnerability Assessment. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a Master of Public Policy and an MA in International and Area Studies with a focus on government climate adaptation policy. Previously, she worked for Pacific Environment as a Russia Program Associate, helping communities protect their local environment in Siberia and the Russian Far East.  She can be reached at saramoore [at] gmail [dot] com.

 

Be Our Guest: Planning for Climate Change, Part One

How did we get here, planning for climate change instead of fighting it?

By Sara S. Moore, MPP/ MA, Research Consultant on Climate Change Adaptation.

In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made its strongest, most scientifically grounded assertion yet on the reality of the threat of climate change with the release of its fourth assessment report. Governments around the world took notice, including California’s. Scientists had been measuring climate change and its impacts in California for years, but in 2008 the state finally decided the time had come to create a climate change adaptation strategy, and begin a vulnerability assessment.  Adaptation here means taking action to take advantage of opportunities and minimize harm brought by climate change. The state vulnerability assessment, due out in 2012, will help define which of the state’s communities, life-critical resources, and natural systems might be the most sensitive, exposed, and unable to get out of the way of the harm of climate change.

Why are we planning for climate change instead of fighting it? This question is sometimes asked by people committed to averting climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and I believe it presents a false dichotomy: according to climate projections, the impacts of climate change are likely to be dire enough that it is in everybody’s interest to BOTH plan for climate change and fight it. I say this as someone concerned for our collective well-being under inevitable climate change. But, most of us are concerned about our collective well-being. How did I get here, working to plan for climate change?

  Photo by Kathryn Barnhart

The “aha” moment when I decided to work on climate change adaptation

In my last job before graduate school, I was an organizer working at the grassroots to reduce the impacts of the oil, gas and mining industries in communities in the Russian Far East and Siberia. Climate change was only a peripheral threat in my view, even though I heard first-hand about Russia’s subsistence reindeer herders sinking into the melting permafrost with their herds. Al Gore won Oscars for a PowerPoint presentation, and the battle for clean air and water next to mines and oil and gas processing plants went on. I went to graduate school, expecting to gain policy skills to later work on indigenous communities’ access to clean water.

Then, coincidentally just a week before Schwarzenegger called for a Climate Change Adaptation Strategy to be drafted for California, I went to a talk by Isabel Hilton, a journalist who presented alarming information about the melting of the Himalayan glaciers and the war she saw as inevitable between Pakistan, China and India over fresh water resources. She talked about “inland tsunamis” from glacial lakes bursting their dams, and the slowing and shifting of the global wind regime from the lack of the glacier’s cooling effect. A silence followed her presentation. Someone asked her what we could do. Her reply: “Work on adaptation.” I went home and looked up the word. I had my graduate thesis topic, and a new career goal.

In 2008, I studied the development of the state’s Climate Adaptation Strategy, looking at the implications for California’s vulnerable populations, focusing on access to clean water. This past year, I worked with natural resource managers and scientists on a study for the California Energy Commission, doing a case study in Marin County, specifically the protected areas of West Marin.

 

Why West Marin?

 My project supervisors, Erika Zavaleta (UCSC) and Rebecca Shaw (EDF), and I vetted thirteen different candidate sites for a study of planning for resource management under climate change using a particular planning tool, scenario planning. We chose West Marin’s protected areas to give us the opportunity to work with different kinds of management agencies, and on different climate change problems, from sea-level rise to wildfires. Also, this site allowed us to ask the question that would captivate any Californian: “what if Muir Woods lost its redwoods?” We called the workshop “the Futures of Wild Marin.”

  Photo by Kathryn Barnhart

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This is Part One of Four that Sara Moore will be sharing here on the Open Space blog.  Stay tuned for the Part Two next Monday.

One of our strategies is to serve as the central hub for the Bay Area land conservation community. We serve as an essential resource for anyone interested in land conservation in the Bay Area.  To that end, we invite others to share their stories here on our blog and amplify them to people around the region who care about this place we call home.  

About the author: Sara S. Moore, MPP/ MA, Research Consultant on Climate Change Adaptation. Sara most recently worked at the Zavaleta Lab, UC Santa Cruz, on a component study of the California State Climate Vulnerability Assessment. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a Master of Public Policy and an MA in International and Area Studies with a focus on government climate adaptation policy. Previously, she worked for Pacific Environment as a Russia Program Associate, helping communities protect their local environment in Siberia and the Russian Far East.

 

Be Our Guest: Sonoma Ecology Center and Sediment

Sonoma Creek watershed is home to a cool, green corridor of natural land that links the Sonoma Mountains on the west to the Mayacamas Mountains on the east.  A mosaic of state park, regional park, developmental center, and privately owned natural areas, the Sonoma Valley Habitat Corridor consists of forest, grassland, chaparral, riparian areas, and reservoirs.  Described by the Sonoma Ecology Center’s Christy Vreeland as “the valley’s last dark place at night,” the wildlands of the corridor have been targeted for ongoing protection as habitat for wildlife.  The corridor intersects the Sonoma Valley Landscape Unit identified for the Conservation Lands Network (developed by Bay Area Open Space Council’s Upland Habitat Goals Project) and is essential for the movement of fox, coyote, mountain lion, black bear, bobcat, and other mammals among biodiverse uplands. 

Much has been happening in the corridor lately to keep and increase its value to wildlife and for climate resiliency.  The following is the third and final guest post from the Sonoma Ecology Center.

 

Mill Creek Headwaters

By Rebecca Lawton 

Early in 2011, the Sonoma Ecology Center and California State Parks completed a project in the Mill Creek headwaters of Jack London State Historic Park in Glen Ellen. The project continued many years of collaboration between the Center and Parks, including road-to-trail conversions, mapping and trail planning, stormwater management, and environmental permitting.

One small part of the Mill Creek headwaters project: before (left, July 15, 2010) and after restoration (right, July 27, 2010).  Specialists stopped this gully from further erosion by removing its hydrologic connection to runoff from upstream.

The project was designed to re-establish the natural function of Mill Creek's source springs and headwaters area. The project site, adjacent to Camp Via and the historical orchard on the Sonoma Developmental Center campus in the Sonoma Valley Habitat Corridor, is a spectacular redwood and mixed woodland ecosystem. Mill Creek’s headwaters have degraded over time due to erosion of poorly built access roads and impacts from historical logging and wood-cutting practices.

Now that the project is completed and has cured through its first winter of wet storms, it will continue to become established.  Redirecting stream flow back to its natural beds will help keep stream habitat sediment free downstream.

The project was supported by the California Coastal Conservancy and the State Wildlife Conservation Board. The Center and Parks obtained funding for the project, designed the stream rehabilitation plan, held public and stakeholder meetings, oversaw the work done by contractors, and conducted pre- and post-project environmental monitoring.

The project reduces the cubic yards per year of sediment contributed to Mill Creek, tributary to steelhead-bearing Sonoma Creek.  For decades, Parks has been proactive in reducing the Total Maximum Daily Load of sediment supplied by its properties—frequently in headwaters areas like Mill Creek in need of repair from past, impactful land uses often predating park ownership. 

Signage for the completed project tells of improvements to aquatic and other habitat that result from road recontouring.

 

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One of our strategies is to serve as the voice of our members, a strategy based on the belief that by working together we can achieve more.  We want to raise up the stories of special places and the people who are working tirelessly to keep them special.  To that end, we will share the words of our members with guest bloggers over the next few months.  Our first guest is the Sonoma Ecology Center and we thank them for telling their stories here!

 

Be Our Guest: Sonoma Ecology Center and GIS for fish

Sonoma Creek watershed is home to a cool, green corridor of natural land that links the Sonoma Mountains on the west to the Mayacamas Mountains on the east.  A mosaic of state park, regional park, developmental center, and privately owned natural areas, the Sonoma Valley Habitat Corridor consists of forest, grassland, chaparral, riparian areas, and reservoirs.  Described by the Sonoma Ecology Center’s Christy Vreeland as “the valley’s last dark place at night,” the wildlands of the corridor have been targeted for ongoing protection as habitat for wildlife.  The corridor intersects the Sonoma Valley Landscape Unit identified for the Conservation Lands Network (developed by Bay Area Open Space Council’s Upland Habitat Goals Project) and is essential for the movement of fox, coyote, mountain lion, black bear, bobcat, and other mammals among biodiverse uplands. 

Much has been happening in the corridor lately to keep and increase its value to wildlife and for climate resiliency.  The following is the second of three projects that the Sonoma Ecology Center is sharing here on the Open Space Council blog.  

Combining Science and Geographic Information Systems to Prioritize Restoration Activities

By Deanne DiPietro and Rebecca Lawton

Sonoma Ecology Center's Research Program is working on a strategic approach to reduce the amount of sediment in Sonoma Creek caused by streambed and bank erosion by using Geographic Information Systems to analyze the best scientific information available.

Watershed maps never fail to capture the students’ imaginations in the classroom.

Sonoma Creek has been identified as having unnaturally high levels of sediment, a problem that negatively affects steelhead spawning and rearing habitat and is a sign of a watershed in distress. Creeks that are eroding their channels more rapidly than is natural are doing so in response to land use changes.  Certain changes bring an increase in speed and volume runoff, resulting in less water moving slowly through the system for use by animal and human residents of the valley. Water that remains longer in the system has a chance to seep into the ground, recharging the aquifers that feed our creeks and wells during the summer.

A plan for prioritizing sites for restoration work is under way.  The Center is using Geographic Information Systems to examine the stream network’s characteristics combined with the nature of the underlying soil and stabilizing vegetation to point out problem areas where the creek is under pressure to erode. The effort will enable restoration specialists to work more effectively on improving our watershed’s ability to support native fish and provide us all with surface and groundwater, especially important in a changing climate.

A pilot site-prioritization project funded by the San Francisco Foundation identified several headwaters sites in the Sonoma Valley Habitat Corridor in need of restoration; early grazing, logging, and woodcutting affected these uplands areas, accelerating erosion in channels downstream.  The current project will add to those sites through a watershed-wide look and intensified modeling effort.

The Center’s Research Program is drawing on its long history of studying Sonoma Creek as well as the work of other experts who are advising us as we build the data necessary to help us prioritize restoration sites. Optimizing opportunities for improving habitat is another criterion that will go into planning our strategic approach, making scarce restoration dollars go as far as they can!

 

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One of our strategies is to serve as the voice of our members, a strategy based on the belief that by working together we can achieve more.  We want to raise up the stories of special places and the people who are working tirelessly to keep them special.  To that end, we will share the words of our members with guest bloggers over the next few months.  Our first guest is the Sonoma Ecology Center and we welcome them to this space.  

Be Our Guest: Sonoma Ecology Center and 3.53 acres

Sonoma Creek watershed is home to a cool, green corridor of natural land that links the Sonoma Mountains on the west to the Mayacamas Mountains on the east.  A mosaic of state park, regional park, developmental center, and privately owned natural areas, the Sonoma Valley Habitat Corridor consists of forest, grassland, chaparral, riparian areas, and reservoirs.  Described by the Sonoma Ecology Center’s Christy Vreeland as “the valley’s last dark place at night,” the wildlands of the corridor have been targeted for ongoing protection as habitat for wildlife.  The corridor intersects the Sonoma Valley Landscape Unit identified for the Conservation Lands Network (developed by Bay Area Open Space Council’s Upland Habitat Goals Project) and is essential for the movement of fox, coyote, mountain lion, black bear, bobcat, and other mammals among biodiverse uplands. 

Much has been happening in the corridor lately to keep and increase its value to wildlife and for climate resiliency.  The following are just a few projects the Sonoma Ecology Center is working on, with partners, in and around the corridor.

Stuart Creek Run, Glen Ellen, California

By Sheri Cardo, Director of Communications, Sonoma Land Trust, and Rebecca Lawton, Director of Programs, Sonoma Ecology Center

Stuart Creek Run in Glen Ellen, California is a testament to the power of the annual conference of the Bay Area Open Space Council to help grow partnerships.  This project, a collaboration of the Sonoma Ecology Center and the Sonoma Land Trust, grew in part out of discussions that took place at the 2010 conference.  Over lunch with the California Coastal Conservancy, the Center brought the barrier-removal and stream-restoration project site to the attention of Sonoma Land Trust.  The Center requested the Land Trust's assistance in acquiring it from landowners Toni and Jeff Piccinini, who favored a conservation outcome.

Stuart Creek Run includes a one-third mile stretch of Stuart Creek, which supports a stable run of federally threatened steelhead trout. Removal of this barrier has been identified as one of the highest priorities for recovering steelhead in the Bay Area by the Center for Ecosystem Management and Restoration. The Sonoma Ecology Center had already invested time and energy holding discussions with fish experts at CEMAR and NOAA-NMFS, preparing funding applications to California Department of Fish and Game, collaborating on project design with CEMAR and Prunuske-Chatham, Inc., and holding design review meetings with consultants assembled by San Francisco Bay Joint Venture.  

The Land Trust visited the property with the Center, became immediately enthusiastic about its potential, and, thanks to a generous supporter who was willing to lend the Land Trust the purchase amount, moved to acquire 3.53-acre property near the intersection of Highway 12 and Arnold Drive in Glen Ellen.

"Even in an era of threatened park closures, we could not pass up this opportunity," said Ralph Benson, Land Trust executive director. "With the help of the community, Stuart Creek Run will open up Stuart Creek for the steelhead, and will also eventually make a splendid addition to the public amenities of the Sonoma Valley."

Along with its value as a steelhead run, the property’s location adjacent to the Sonoma Valley Habitat Corridor places it in proximity to the Land Trust's Glen Oaks Ranch and Secret Pasture Preserve, Sonoma Valley Regional Park, Bouverie Preserve, Quarryhill Botanical Garden, and Jack London State Historic Park.

"With the Land Trust taking ownership, we can now restore this special part of Sonoma Valley to once again provide safe passage for native fish and wildlife," said Richard Dale, executive director of the Sonoma Ecology Center. "After years of planning and negotiation, we are thrilled with this acquisition and excited about our partnership with SLT on this highly significant project."

Most of the fisheries habitat in the Stuart Creek watershed has been largely inaccessible to steelhead for decades because the stream under a small bridge on the property has eroded so deeply that steelhead can no longer make the jump. The degraded bridge also threatens to fall into the creek, with the potential to supply tons of polluting sediment directly into the stream.

An old bridge leading to the new Land Trust property on Stuart Creek poses fish-passage and sediment-pollution issues.

Along with reestablishing the creek's historical channel pattern to give steelhead access to 14 miles of high-quality spawning habitat, Stuart Creek Run offers an ideal spot for a charming roadside park where residents and visitors to the valley could enjoy a tranquil picnic, take a leisurely stroll, and learn about fish and creek restoration.

Now that the property has been protected, the Land Trust's first priority is to secure sufficient private donations to pay back the loan used to purchase the parcel. The Sonoma Ecology Center can move forward in partnership with the Land Trust to restore Stuart Creek's riparian and fish habitat and create a park on the property. The team will revisit plans, acquire permits, and begin restoration of the property, including removing the steelhead migration barrier, stabilizing the stream channel, and rejuvenating the riparian habitat. Private and public funding will be sought for this phase of the project.

 

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One of our strategies is to serve as the voice of our members, a strategy based on the belief that by working together we can achieve more.  We want to raise up the stories of special places and the people who are working tirelessly to keep them special.  To that end, we will share the words of our members with guest bloggers over the next few months.  Our first guest is the Sonoma Ecology Center and we welcome them to this space.