Climate changing management rainfall runoff.
Storm water management in an age of climate change could see the use of more “soft behaviours” along with hard pipes, says a Sarnia engineer.
Philip Keightley, an engineer and project manager with Sarnia-based MIG Engineering, spoke Thursday about the challenge of climate change at the third annual Sarnia-Lambton Water Symposium, at the Lambton College Event Centre.
“We’ve basically practiced storm water management in some form or another since we started to urbanize,” said Keightley.
Since the 1970s, when he began working in engineering, that management focused on trying to get water, falling as rain or snow, away from urban areas.
That led to taking another look at storm water management practices including the use of “soft” approaches, he said.
“It you’re in a city, it’s all hard surfaces,” he said.
“We need to look at a different approach when you’re looking at climate change,” Keightley said.
“We know with global warming we’re seeing more extreme events.” It has led to looking at approaches to development that seek for ways to mitigate the effect of increased runoff and storm water pollution, by managing the runoff as close as possible to where it originates, he said.
The symposium also showcases Sarnia-Lambton’s capacity in the areas of the water and waste water research, as well as provides an opportunity for partnerships to form between industry and researchers, he said.

As coastal ecosystems feel the heat of climate change worldwide, new research shows the humble mussel and marsh grass form an intimate interaction known as mutualism that benefits both partner species and may be critical to helping these ecosystems bounce back from extreme climatic events such as drought.
The study, led by the University of Florida, finds that when mussels pile up in mounds around the grass stems, they provide protection by improving water storage around the grass roots and reducing soil salinity.
Mussels protect grasses from drought by improving water storage around the grass roots and reducing soil salinity.
With mussels’ help, the study found, marshes can recover from drought in less than a decade.
"It’s a story of mutual benefit between marsh grass and mussels," said Christine Angelini, an assistant professor of environmental engineering sciences in UF’s Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering and lead author on the paper.
They found that wherever there were clusters of mussels embedded in the mud around the base of the grass stems, the grass survived; in fact, grass growing in mussel clusters had a 64 percent probability of surviving versus a 1 percent probability in areas where there were no mussels.
One of the research team’s marsh study sites was in the backyard of Dale Aren of Charleston, South Carolina.
After noticing the marsh behind her home was dying, she did some online research and found a paper about that very problem written by Angelini’s colleague, Brian Silliman, an assistant professor of biology at UF and a co-author on Angelini’s paper.
"We were worried," Aren said.
"The Spartina [grass] is beautiful and the increasing area of mudflats were very unattractive and did not look healthy."

This week, we have alarming evidence that at least one of those goals – Sustainable Development Goal 6, to reach everyone everywhere with access to water and sanitation – is already in peril.
The UN Water Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water (GLAAS) report produced by the World Health Organisation (WHO) has revealed a huge gap in financing with over 80% of developing countries reporting that they have insufficient resources to meet their national targets.
Globally, the World Bank estimates that as much as £114 billion is required annually, around three times current levels – to meet the UN Global Goals’ ambitions to reach everyone, everywhere with safely-managed water and sanitation.
Soberingly, new aid commitments from donors for water and sanitation have fallen by 21% since 2012, from US$ 10.4 billion to US$ 8.2 billion in 2015.
Closing this financial gap will require increased levels of domestic and international finance for water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), from both public and private sources.
This is all the more important given the additional challenges faced by many developing countries from growing populations, rapid urbanisation, water scarcity and climate change.
Among other findings in this regular report card on water and sanitation financing: • Sub-Saharan Africa is home to half of the world’s people living without access to clean water, yet they received only US$1.7 billion, or 20% of all water and sanitation aid, in 2015.
However, aid commitments to these three regions were only 48% of global overseas development aid for water and sanitation in 2015.
Yet we see by the GLAAS report’s findings that the majority of developing countries do not have enough money to achieve their targets on water and sanitation access and that aid commitments are actually falling.
Progress is possible: in 2000, around 18% of the world’s population, or one billion people, had no access to even a basic, improved source of water.

Most research on climate change ecology is limited to the impacts of a single climate variable, such as temperature or water availability, on one trophic level at a time — and often on a single species. For instance, many studies have shown that increasing carbon dioxide levels can increase plant growth. While such studies can provide important insights, this narrow approach can also be ecologically and climatically unrealistic, according to a new paper by Yale researchers. Writing in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution, two Yale scholars make the case that overly simplistic studies or experiments avoid the inherent complexity and interconnectedness of natural systems. As a result, they can yield erroneous climate predictions, they write. “Most of the climate change ecology research out there has been picking the low-hanging fruit for many years,” said Adam Rosenblatt, a postdoctoral fellow at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES) and lead author of the paper. “Often they study the effects of one type of variable. That’s obviously useful but it’s not realistic because in nature nothing exists in isolation.” The paper was co-authored by Oswald J. Schmitz, the Oastler Professor of Population and Community Ecology at F&ES. “The tradition in experimental analysis of climate change effects on ecosystems is to focus on one variable at a time. But this leads to a rather piecemeal and fragmentary picture of ecosystem functioning,” said Schmitz. “We propose a more integrative approach. While more complex, it will, nonetheless, help to unveil a more complete and coherent portrait of how real-world climate change will…

A new comprehensive study of Australian natural hazards paints a picture of increasing heatwaves and extreme bushfires as this century progresses, but with much more uncertainty about the future of storms and rainfall.
Published in a special issue of the international journal Climatic Change, the study documents the historical record and projected change of seven natural hazards in Australia: flood; storms (including wind and hail); coastal extremes; drought; heatwave; bushfire; and frost.
"Temperature-related hazards, particularly heatwaves and bushfires, are increasing, and projections show a high level of agreement that we will continue to see these hazards become more extreme into the 21st century," says special issue editor Associate Professor Seth Westra, Head of the Intelligent Water Decisions group at the University of Adelaide.
"The study documents our current understanding of the relationship between historical and possible future climatic change with the frequency and severity of Australian natural hazards," says Associate Professor Westra.
"These hazards cause multiple impacts on humans and the environment and collectively account for 93% of Australian insured losses, and that does not even include drought losses.
The biggest risk from climate change is if we continue to plan as though there will be no change.
One thing is certain: our environment will continue to change."
• Heatwaves are Australia’s most deadly natural hazard, causing 55% of all natural disaster related deaths and increasing trends in heatwave intensity, frequency and duration are projected to continue throughout the 21st century.
• The costs of flooding have increased significantly in recent decades, but factors behind this increase include changes in reporting mechanisms, population, land-use, infrastructure as well as extreme rainfall events.
The physical size of floods has either not changed at all, or even decreased in many parts of the country.

How tequila could be key in our battle against climate change.
Agave — the cactus-like plant which forms the base ingredient of tequila — has a nocturnal ‘body clock’ which allows it to ‘breathe’ at night and withstand the driest of conditions, new research has shown.
Publishing their findings in this month’s Nature Plants, the team from Newcastle University, UK, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, reveal for the first time how the stomata — or ‘breathing’ pores — on the Agave’s leaves are kept shut during the day to minimise water loss.
Newcastle University’s Professor Anne Borland, one of the authors of the study, explains: "Photosynthesis needs three key ingredients — CO2, water and sunlight — so it follows that most plants keep their stomata open in the day when it is sunny and shut at night when it is dark.
"But for a plant living in hot, arid conditions such as the Agave, this would be disastrous.
They need to conserve every drop of water they can and leaving their stomata open during the day would result in such rapid water loss they would simply die.
"If we can harness these genes and engineer new drought-resistant plants then the potential is huge in terms of developing crops and biofuels that are able to withstand the challenges we face from a changing climate."
Sequencing thousands of genes and proteins to understand the underlying metabolic processes, the team compared the Agave — or CAM — plant with Arabidopsis, a type of cress and a typical C3 plant.
"This is a really exciting discovery and a major breakthrough in our quest to create new plants that can cope in our future environment."
The study is part of a $14m research programme funded by the Department of Energy Office of Science Genomic Science Programme.

New research points out that climate change will increase fire activity in Mediterranean Europe.
A recent study published in Scientific Reports, led by researchers of the University of Barcelona in collaboration with several other research institutions, shows that the direct effect of climate change in regulating fuel moisture (droughts leading to larger fires) is expected to be dominant, regarding the indirect effect of antecedent climate on fuel load and structure -that is, warmer/drier conditions that determine fuel availability.
For instance, the direct effect of climate change in regulating fuel moisture could be counterbalanced by the indirect effects on fuel structure.
In addition, the drought-fire relationship is stronger in northern regions," says Marco Turco, researcher at the Meteorological Hazard Analysis Group (GAMA) of UB, led by Professor M. del Carme Llasat.
Thus, in the forthcoming decades, and especially in northern Mediterranean regions, the direct effect of climate change is expected to be more dominant, regarding the indirect effect of the previous climate.
In the past few decades, the measured trend of the burned area in Mediterranean Europe has been generally negative, while drought conditions have been increasing.
However, keeping fire management actions at the current level might not be enough to balance a future increase in droughts.
Finally, the ability to model the link between drought and forest fires is crucial to identify key actions in adaptation strategies.
Also, according to the researchers, seasonal climate forecasts enable a more effective and dynamic adaptation to climate variability and change, offering an underexploited opportunity to reduce the fire impact of adverse climate conditions.
On the key role of droughts in the dynamics of summer fires in Mediterranean Europe.

The climatic situation has its own impact on the weather variability.
Climate variability is caused both by nature and human activities.
Thirty years ago, climate variability was a phenomena which occurs with a decade-long interval but nowadays it has been a common phenomena to face drought every two years.
At that time, due to lack of coping mechanisms, humans as well as animals used to lose their lives.
In 1985, during the Derg era, though institutionally the Aid Coordinating and Rehabilitation Commission was established in the northern part of the country, one million breathed their last helplessly due to drought.
Currently, in the Horn of Africa, due to drought more than 25 million people are at the verge of lapsing into famine.
Because of this unfolding, they pay less attention to the drought-thorn East African countries.
Their way of life is dominated by pastoral activities and when extreme weather conditions occurs humans and animals face risk.
The scarcity of water turns grazing land into barren ones and the non availability of food-stock and water leave animals to be physically weak and lose their life.
Recently, the government has announced that due to the hungover effect of El Nino and the absence of spring shower, drought has hit the eastern and south-eastern part of the country where particularly the pastoral community dwells and nearly 230 representatives from the Government, UN, NGOs and donors have visited affected communities and the assessment concluded that some 5.6 million people were in need of aid in 2017GC.

Changes in climate can rapidly impact even the deepest freshwater aquifers according to Penn State and Columbia University hydrologists.
"These aquifers are so deep, we expect it takes years for precipitation to make its way down, so if it’s not natural recharge causing the response of groundwater to changes in precipitation, then it may be coming from pumping changes."
The research, published in Nature Geoscience, sheds new light on groundwater budgets in the U.S. and better defines how water held in deep aquifers could change with the climate.
Groundwater used by municipalities and industry is almost always drawn from deep wells, which provide a more reliable source of water than shallow aquifers, especially during times of drought.
Despite the importance of these deep aquifers, no one really knows how much water they contain or how they might react to climate change.
"But we actually see a relatively rapid response."
Russo said evidence suggests that pumping represents an intermediate connection between precipitation and deep groundwater levels.
"If you look at agricultural areas where you have crop water demand changing as a function of precipitation, that is going to control pumping variability over time," Russo said.
"Pumping could be an intermediate connection between climate and groundwater — one that causes an immediate response."
Though evidence suggests pumping causes the rapid response between deep groundwater and climate, scientists were not able to conclusively link them because of a lack of pumping data across the U.S. "We need more data collection on human activities," Russo said.

According to the Food and Agricultural Organization, rice is the world’s third-largest crop after wheat and maize. It’s the staple food in large regions of the world, and with increasing demand and the perceived perils of a changing climate, the vulnerability of rice production to droughts is a growing concern. The RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science (CSRS) is developing new transgenic strains of rice incorporating a gene from the weed thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) to make them more drought-resistant. The CSRS scientists say that plants are able to adapt to drought by generating chemicals called osmoprotectants that include various forms of sugar. By increasing the concentration of the protectants in cells, they retain water better – much in the same way, to make a crude analogy, a damp salt cake dries out more slowly than a dish of water. Sick of Ads? More than 700 New Atlas Plus subscribers read our newsletter and website without ads….