All this warm rain at a time when it should be snowing is spoiler alert not a good thing! While it is largely a symptom of anthropogenic climate change, the scale of these impacts are closely related to how well we have stewarded the lands on which we live.
Every river has a different flow regime, or pattern of high and low flows based on where the water in the system comes from, which determines the way that each river has evolved to handle these flows, which impacts how different species utilize these rivers and the broader ecological function of the watersheds. Pluvial, or rain dominated systems tend to have peak flows during the fall and winter time when storms that come through drop a lot of rainwater that moves through system quickly. Nival systems, or snowpack dominated systems, tend to have higher flows in the spring through early summer when all that snow melts, and glacial dominated systems have the majority of their flow occurring when ice starts to warm up in late summer.
Currently, this warm weather system is not only bringing a ton of rainwater, but the warm temps are melting much of the snow in the mountains, which is causing an excessive amount of water to flood through this river system that it hasn’t adapted to handle this time of year, and as result, there are numerous lasting effects that we’ll be able to witness.
First off, this river channel and the surrounding riparian floodplain hasn’t evolved to accommodate this high level of flows and that, combined with the fact that many of these lands were heavily clear-cut logged and thus have reduced ecological function despite having younger trees growing back, means that these abnormally high flows create a lot of erosion and destruction of riverbanks as well as landslides. This creates sediment deposition downstream and freshwater habitat destruction, while also making it more difficult for those riparian forests to grow, succeed and restore the ecological function they serve.
Then up in the mountains, the lack of mature complex canopy cover in the forests thanks again largely to clear-cut logging and improper forest management exposes fallen snow to more sun and rain, which increases the rate at which it melts off. This rapid early melt-off of snow means that there will be a reduced flow for this river in the spring and summer when that snow would normally be melting, which not only impacts future water availability and human uses, but also the survivability of different salmonid species in these freshwater ecosystems that depend on that regularity, and thus the terrestrial species that depend on them in these surrounding forests.
And then on a larger bioregional scale, that lack of snowpack and melt through the spring and summer means that the surrounding forest lands here are going to get much hotter and drier much more quickly than they would normally, leading to drought and higher risk of catastrophic wildfires in the summer months, so brace yourself for yet another Smokey summer filled with water restrictions and evacuation orders!
These are incredibly complex interconnected issues and while the progressive shift of these weather patterns is, as agreed upon by nearly 100% of scientists worldwide, the result of anthropogenic climate change, the impact that those changes are having on these specific ecosystems is very directly linked to the way we have improperly stewarded these lands in the last 200 years or so. The lack of mature, complex riparian forest ecosystems to mitigate these swelling floodwaters creates lasting widespread problems for the future health of these watersheds, and the lack of complex forest canopy at higher elevations significantly contributes to faster snow melt and runoff. So while addressing the root causes of anthropogenic climate change is a crucial part of slowing the rate of change occurring, preserving the remaining intact ecosystems we have left, ending clearcut logging and working to restore the biological and ecological complexity and function within our watersheds plays a major role in mitigating these impacts to create a healthy, livable planet in the future.
Like this vid? Support Nerdy About Nature on Patreon to make more engaging videos like this possible!
|| SUPPORT THESE VIDEOS : / nerdyaboutnature
Subscribe to Nerdy About Nature for more engaging fun-facts to make your next jaunt into the outdoors more rad!
|| SUBSCRIBE : http://www.youtube.com/NerdyAboutNatu...
|| IG : / nerdyaboutnature
|| FB : / nerdyaboutnature
|| http://www.NerdyAboutNature.com
__________________________________________________
Produced & Directed by Ross Reid
~ I'd like to acknowledge that this video was filmed on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples–Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm Nations. ~
__________________________________________________
Информация по комментариям в разработке