A…“Climate”…ising to Alberta in the Dawn of the Anthropocene
June 1, 2019
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Wild Lands Advocate article by: Joanna Skrajny, AWA Conservation Specialist
It was early May a couple of years ago and I was itching to get outside. The weather had been unseasonably warm, hot even, for most of April, so I laced up my boots and headed out to Banff. With sunny slopes, Castle Mountain is renowned as a good early-season hike, and I was prepared with my rain pants and long boots to wade through the snow in the underbrush.
To my surprise, I didn’t find any snow. Instead, I found throngs of people in tank tops and shorts swarming the trail, all as eager to be outside as I was. At the top, finding a lunch spot was a challenge, so I made my way over to a grassy spot a little further from the crowd. It didn’t take long to notice my pants were teeming with Rocky Mountain wood ticks. A scream nearby confirmed I was not the only one to have come across these unwelcome guests. I was suddenly very happy to be wearing long breathable layers.
Alberta, along with the rest of Canada, is experiencing climate change at a faster rate than the rest of the world. According to Alberta Climate Records, average annual temperatures have increased by 1 to 2 ˚C in the southern half of the province, with northern regions experiencing 2 to 4 ˚C warming. Winter temperatures have increased by an average of 8 ˚C, whereas summer temperatures have increased by only 1 ˚C.
This has encouraged the spread of species that previously could not have survived Canada’s harsh winters. As recently as 15 years ago, the possibility of acquiring Lyme disease from deer or black-legged ticks was not even on the radar of most Albertans. Now, a warming climate has made much of Southern Canada hospitable to species that carry the disease, dramatically increasing the number of reported Lyme disease cases from 144 in 2009 up to over 2,000 in 2017. While the disease has yet to be firmly established in Alberta, the trend suggests that outcome is inevitable.
Ticks are also wreaking havoc on wildlife, especially moose populations. Due to milder winters, ticks are multiplying at an unprecedented rate and as a result, young moose are being inundated by thousands of ticks. Studies in the United States found that up to 70 to 80 percent of moose calves now can die in a mild winter from tick-induced hair loss, blood loss and dehydration. This is compared to the 30 percent die-off typical in colder winters. These major moose die-offs can affect predator populations, the experience of hunters, and the ability of Indigenous Peoples to practice treaty rights.
As this example illustrates, we are only beginning to see how climate crisis will affect our ecosystems and ways of life. One aspect that is less discussed is the impact that climate change is having on the outdoors and the ways in which we experience it.
Take an old Canadian joke about our four seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter, and construction season. I’d like to make a slight amendment, and suggest that instead we now have almost winter, winter, construction, and smoke season.
I’m not alone in thinking that forest fires in recent years have been absolutely brutal. From the devastating fire in Fort McMurray to B.C’s record breaking wildfire seasons in 2017 and 2018, wildfires are getting larger and their impacts more pronounced. And while we certainly have had extensive forest fires in our history before, it is the frequency at which these larger fires are occurring that is creating cause for concern. Already B.C. has experienced an unusually dry spring. With May 1st snow packs generally below average levels throughout the province, there are grounds to fear that 2019 may produce another record-breaking wildfire season.
Wildfires, along with other extreme weather events, are beginning to exact a larger and larger financial toll. The Alberta Government reports that from 1983-2008, Alberta averaged $100 million/year in losses due to extreme weather events. This increased to a staggering average of $673 million/year from 2009- 2012.More recently the Government notes that “Alberta has experienced the two most costly disasters in the country’s history with the Fort McMurray wildfires at $3.58 billion and the 2013 southern Alberta floods at $1.7 billion.” Don Forgeron, President and CEO of the Insurance Bureau of Canada, pointed out that insurance companies continue “to see the devastating effects of this new era of an unpredictable, changing climate.” In 2018 the bill for insured damages in Canada amounted to $2 billion, the fourth highest total on record. And, this was a year that wasn’t marked by a major catastrophic event like the Fort McMurray wildfire. The increased probabilities of extreme weather events is likely to increase our insurance premiums.
The tolls of increased wildfires come not only in a financial form, but also damage our health and well-being. Thereprieve we once found outdoors from the cold and dark days of winter is now lost when we find refuge indoors from dark overcast skies and cloying smoke. The setting and mood in many places in Alberta and British Columbia last summer verged on the apocalyptic, with dark black and orange skies.
August was once my favourite time of year to be outside in Alberta, with the distant memories of July’s hail storms replaced by August’s picture-perfect blue skies and fluffy white clouds. I still haven’t re-calibrated to this “new August”, with sweltering heat spells and hazy smoke, only broken up by extreme wind storms and hail.
I made the mistake of booking my backpacking trips in the past few years in the month of August and my health has paid the price of these mistakes. What would have been a reasonable amount of elevation gain on a clear day instead produced irritated eyes, shortness of breath and headaches. On a larger scale, wildfire smoke has been linked to increased risks of developing heart problems and certain cancers. Sales of air purifiers in Western Canada have been skyrocketing as many anticipate another summer spent indoors in order to get away from the smoke.
As larger and larger areas of our forests are burning, not all of them are going to regenerate. In Alberta’s boreal, it’s estimated that much of the southern portions will burn and be replaced by grasslands and some deciduous trees by the 2080s. This is obviously expected to cause major disruptions to wildlife populations. In particular, it’s expected to place huge, very unwelcome, new pressures on already threatened caribou. Caribou are highly specialized at avoiding predation in boreal ecosystems, with large hooves adapted to wading in deep snow, peatlands, and complex forests. Large open swaths of grasslands would stimulate increases in white-tailed deer populations, which in turn would increase wolf populations. The increased open expanses would also make it much easier for predators to hunt down caribou. Taken together, researchers estimate these changes “would severely compromise the long-term persistence of caribou in the boreal forest of Alberta.” The ability of caribou to escape from these new predation threats depends largely on the ongoing presence of peatlands on the landscape. These wetland complexes not only create unburned islands of forest, they would also act as complex refugia to harbor caribou from predators, along with other boreal species. Climate change threatens to reduce the footprint of peatlands in the boreal.
It seems likely, then, that grassland and parkland species will be the “winners” in a warming future. One would think that habitats which are adapted to periods of drought will manage to persist in the future. In truth, the ability of parkland and grassland species to successfully adapt and migrate northward depends on many factors, including the ability of native species to take over new areas. It’s easy to imagine a scenario where agricultural crops and invasive species take over where the boreal once was. It’s also difficult for native parkland species to expand into new areas when so little natural parkland habitat remains. Species that depend on prairie pothole wetlands, including many waterfowl, may soon be disappointed to no longer find breeding grounds as they move northward. Trembling aspen, which thrive in cool and wet conditions, may experience increasing dieback as hot and dry conditions make them more susceptible to drought and attacks from forest tent caterpillars. Even the composition of our grasslands is expected to shift, away from northern fescue prairies (found in moister regions) to shorter mixedgrass prairie. Farming in the Palliser Triangle, which already is nothing short of challenging, may become close to impossible.
In many ways, the actual severity of many potential climate change impacts will depend largely on the degree of “drying” we experience in the province. This is where climate modeling sends a bit of a mixed message on what we can expect in Alberta’s future. In southern Alberta, where we depend on our mountains and foothills to supply us with cool, clean water year-round, mountain snowpacks are expected to melt off earlier in the year. Coupled with increased precipitation in the spring, this is expected to cause higher spring runoff. In the summer, lower summer river flows and exacerbating droughts are expected to increase as temperatures rise, due to fewer summer rains and less snowmelt. Warmer creeks with less water volume will increase stresses on Alberta’s already threatened coldwater fish species, such as bull trout and westslope cutthroat trout. In northern Alberta, increased flash flooding events are expected as precipitation increases and mature forests are lost to an increasing number of fires.
Taking stock of these predicted impacts together, it’s hard not to paint a somber picture of our future. Are we doomed to an Alberta overrun by disease and invasive species and plagued by floods, droughts and fires? Maybe.
It’s a tragedy that this conversation doesn’t figure more prominently in the public sphere. On the day that a certain royal celebrity had a baby, the UN also released a report saying that one million species risk extinction unless we act now to save them. The first of these two events received outrageously more coverage despite the obvious fact that the health of our future depends on the actions we take on the latter. How can we even begin to have a conversation about tradeoffs if we don’t recognize and acknowledge what we are about to lose?
We don’t know exactly where we are heading, but that shouldn’t prevent us from taking action. I don’t want an Alberta without caribou, without beautiful expanses of forests. Our children shouldn’t have to be afraid to go outside, to worry about whether the air is safe to breathe, to wonder if there will be water when they turn on the taps. Yet these unhealthy possibilities are more and more plausible if we don’t do anything.
It’s also becoming clear that this is not an either-or debate between protecting our ecosystems and taking climate action. Climate change and our ecosystems are inextricably linked. If we don’t take action on our climate, our ecosystems are going to face massive challenges. Healthy ecosystems, in turn, are better able to buffer the impacts of climate change and continue to provide us with the essential services we rely on, such as clean air and water.
It’s also important to remember that we are not isolated from these changes on the environment. Albertans have already been feeling the psychological, physical, and financial burdens that climate change impacts are having on our ecosystems. So let’s have an honest conversation about where the future is taking us and what we can do about it.
I now want to turn the question to you, our readers. How has climate change been affecting your daily life? What actions have you been taking? We’re interested in hearing what you have to say. Drop me a line at jskrajny@abwild.ca or send one to our editor iurquhart@abwild.ca. We may feature a few of your stories in our next issue!
