| Abstract/Description or Keywords |
Glaciers serve a variety of critical physical, hydrologic, and biogeochemical functions for mountain watersheds. Continued glacier retreat and disappearance in many alpine environments could affect species distribution, composition, diversity, primary productivity, nutrient fluxes, and water quality. Since 1985, glaciers have declined by 15% in the Columbia Basin of Canada, and recent studies indicate that most glaciers in western Canada and the US will disappear by the end of this century. We currently lack a fundamental understanding of how climate change will affect water resources and there is little to no information on the biogeochemical and water quality effects of glacier recession in the Columbia Basin of Canada. We are embarking on a research project that will employ space-for-time substitution and retrospective analysis using lake sediment cores to evaluate how aquatic ecosystems, geochemistry, and hydrology varies according to percent glacier cover. Our research will further help guide water sustainability management decisions by providing an analogue to the changes that will occur more broadly in the next 100 years. We are collaborating with the Ministry of Forests, Lands, and Natural Resource Operations, and the Columbia Basin Trust to ensure our results are both valuable to regional land managers and disseminated to the broader public. Working closely with all levels of government will enable the development on decision support tools needed for the consideration of ecosystem services in water management required by the new BC Water Sustainability Act. Specific issues explicitly addressed include changes in ecosystem services such as water supply, habitat, nutrient cycling and, biodiversity. The baseline data collected here can be used in a broader context of evaluating climate impacts in western North America, and will form the basis for other hydrologic and biogeochemical studies in the region. The work is supported through an NSERC fellowship to Janice Brahney and through generous donations by Columbia Basin residents, the provincial government, and the BC Conservation Foundation. However, funding is still limited and we hope to find additional resources to continue this important work. We are also seeking community volunteers / citizen scientists to help with data collection. Please contact [email protected] for more information. |
