Sharing the geo-Referenced Results of Climate Change Impact Research

The Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative (PARC) has implemented an Internet Map Server (IMS) at the PARC web site (www.parc.ca) to 1) disseminate the geo-referenced results of PARC sponsored research on climate change impacts and adaptation, and 2) address data, information and knowledge management within the PARC network of researchers and partners. PARC facilitates interdisciplinary research on adaptation to the impacts of climate change in the Canadian Prairie Provinces. The web site is intended as a platform for sharing information and encouraging discussion of climate change impacts and adaptation. The IMS enables scientists and stakeholders to apply simple climate change scenarios to geo-referenced biophysical and social data, and dynamically create maps that display the geographic distribution of potential impacts of climate change. With a limited capacity for spatial analysis, most geo-processing and the climate impact modeling is done offline within a GIS environment. The IMS will serve the output from climate impact models, such that the model results can be customized by the web site user and be most readily applied to the planning and analysis of adaptation strategies.     

A harvest failure approach to assess the threat from an invasive species

We present the idea of using potential infringements on annual allowable harvest targets as an approach to estimate threats from invasive species to the forest products sector. The approach uses present-day harvest levels as a reference level to estimate when and where the impact of a nonnative forest pest could become economically damaging. We use a generic model that simulates spread and damage by nonnative invasive species, basic harvest and forest growth through time. The concept is illustrated with a case study of a new nonnative invasive pest, Sirex noctilio Fabricius on pine resources in eastern Canada. Impacts of invasion on wood supply, in particular, the point at which present-day harvest levels are not attainable, were identified for 77 non-overlapping geographical regions that delimit the primary wood supply areas around large mills and wood processing facilities in eastern Canada. The results identify the minimum area of a pest outbreak that could trigger harvest shortages (approximately 12.5–14 M ha of pine forests in Ontario and Quebec). Beyond this level, the amount of host resource available for harvesting in any given year declines rapidly. The failure to sustain broad-scale harvest targets may be an attractive and intuitive indicator for policy makers and regulators interested in developing control and “slow-the-spread” programs for non-native forest pests.     

N2O emissions: modeling the effect of process configuration and diurnal loading patterns

The objective of this research was to develop a mechanistic model for quantifying N2O emissions from activated sludge plants and demonstrate how this may be used to evaluate the effects of process configuration and diurnal loading patterns. The model describes the mechanistic link between the factors recognized to correlate positively with N2O emissions. The primary factors are the presence of ammonia and nitrite accumulation. Low dissolved oxygen concentrations also may be implicated through differential impacts on ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) versus nitrite-oxidizing bacteria (NOB) activity. Factors promoting N2O emissions at treatment plants are discussed below. The model was applied to data from laboratory and pilot-scale systems. From a practical standpoint, plant configuration (e.g., plug-flow versus complete-mix), influent loading patterns (and peak load), and certain operating strategies (e.g., handling of return streams) are all important in determining N2O emissions.