• Home |
• About OCCIAR |
• Contact Us |
• Links

Project: Community Adaptation Initiative

The Ontario Centre for Climate Impacts and Adaptation Resources (OCCIAR) and the Clean Air Partnership (CAP) have been selected to coordinate an outreach project on climate change.

Funded by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, the Community Adaptation Initiative is a project to help communities address the challenges of climate change. This initiative will work with private and public sector groups, conservation authorities and non-governmental organizations to become more resilient to climate change and its effects.

Webinars

• OCCIAR Webinar: The Future of Our Boreal Forests
  

  By Tim Lynham
  
  Click here to view the presentation.
  

  Mike Flannigan and Tim Lynham of Natural Resources Canada Canadian Forest Service will discuss the projected impacts of climate change on the Boreal forest. Canadian boreal forests have been around for thousands of years but are the health and survival of these forests now reaching a tipping point? Recently, our climate has been warming due to increases of radiatively active gases (particularly carbon dioxide and methane) as a result of human activities. This altered climate as modelled by General Circulation Models (GCMs) may have a profound impact on Canadian forests. Historically, the boreal forest has survived and even thrived in a changing climate but the projected rate of warming may stress our forests beyond a threshold. This stress on the forests will come from the direct influences of an altered climate in the form of drought, wind storms, ice storms and excess heat or cold. However, the most rapid and possibly most significant impacts of climate change may be through altered disturbance regimes such as forest fires and insects. This interplay between climate change and disturbance regime has the potential to overshadow the importance of the direct effects of global warming on species distribution, migration, substitution and extinction. Such a scenario suggests that the rate and magnitude of change induced by the disturbance regime could greatly exceed anything expected due to atmospheric warming alone. Recent work suggests that fire activity in Canada may double (Figure 1) by the end of this century. The future of our boreal forests will be discussed in terms of global warming and a disturbance regime that will be induced by climate change.
  

  
  Figure 1. The ratio of 3xCO2/1xCO2 area burned by Ecozone using the Canadian GCM.
  
  

  Tim Lynham is a Forest Fire Research Project Leader for Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service (CFS) in Sault Ste. Marie, ON. From 1980-1981 he worked as a remote sensing Image Analyst at the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing (CCRS) in Ottawa. Since 1981, he has been with Natural Resources Canada where he conducts research on fire ecology, fire behaviour modeling, and remote sensing applications for fire science. Tim works with satellite remote sensing data to monitor Canadian wildfires for national carbon accounting. He was also a member of the recent Far North, Science Advisory Panel to the Ontario Minister of Natural Resources. He represents the Canadian Government on the Fire Implementation Team under the UN Global Observation of Forest Cover Project.
  
  

• Webinar: Climate Change Science and the Adaptation Imperative
  

  By Dr. David Pearson
  
  As part of the Community Adaptation Initiative, Dr. Pearson (co-chair of Ontario's Expert Panel on Climate Change Adaptation and co-Director of Laurentian University's Science Communication Program) presented a webinar entitled Climate Change Science and the Adaptation Imperative. In his presentation Dr. Pearson addressed:
  

  • The science of climate change and its evolution over time
  • The Impacts of climate change, both locally and globally
  • Global climate modeling and projections based on greenhouse gas emissions
  • The importance of adaptation
  • Limits to adaptation
  • Climate change communication

  Click here to view the presentation: http://mirarco.acrobat.com/p39935292
  Click here to download the presentation recording: FLV file (if your video player does not support .flv files, you can download a free player here)
  
  

Workshops

• Moving Towards Adaptation
  

  October 27-28, 2010 - Sudbury
  

  Moving Towards Adaptation was held in Sudbury on October 27 and 28, 2010 and was attended by city staff, conservation authorities, government ministries, agencies and consultants. The first day of this capacity building workshop focused on presentation on the science of climate change, climate data to aid community adaptation planning, agriculture, forests and forestry, Indigenous climate change adaptation, tools and frameworks and a special session highlighting climate change adaptation initiatives in the City of Greater Sudbury. The second day of the workshop consisted of an interactive Risk Management session. During this facilitated session, workshop participants were introduced to the Risk Management process and taken step by step through the process to teach them how it could be used to help identify and prioritize risks associated with climate change.
  

• Cataraqui Region Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Workshop
  

  February 8, 2011 - Little Cataraqui Creek Conservation Area Outdoor Centre
  

  With an emphasis on tourism and municipal infrastructure, the Cataraqui Region Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Workshop facilitated discussions around how climate change may be affecting their region now and into the future, and what adaptation tools are available to help prioritize what needs to be done to adapt to the changes that are coming to Eastern Ontario. The workshop was attended by the Catarqui Region Conservation Authority, City of Kingston, County of Frontenac, City of Brockville, Ministry of the Environment, and local environmental groups.
  

• Climate Change Adaptation Workshops in the Northeast Clay belt District of Ontario
  

  August 29, 2011 - Hearst, Ontario
  October 27, 2011 - Kapuskasing, Ontario
  October 28, 2011 - Smooth Rock Falls, Ontario
  November 7, 2011 - Cochrane, Ontario
  

  In order to communicate the latest science pertaining to climate change and gain an understanding of the challenges facing communities in Northern Ontario in the context of changing weather and climate, OCCIAR held a series of Climate Change Adaptation Workshops in the Northeast Clay Belt District of Ontario. At this series of interactive workshops, held in Hearst, Kapuskasing, Smooth Rock Falls and Cochrane, attendees not only heard about climate change impacts and adaptation, they were invited to response to specific questions about their experiences with changing weather and climate. Specifically, the workshops:

  • presented and discussed the drivers of climate change at global, national and local levels;
  • discussed local climate change, impacts that have been experienced, how the community may be vulnerable to climate change and variability and what effect climate change will have on the various sectors within the community;
  • and discussed adaptive responses and their effectiveness in the context of climate change.

• Adaptation Planning in Eastern Ontario - A climate change workshop
  

  February, 2, 2012 - Carleton Place, Ontario
  

  OCCIAR, in partnership with the Mississippi Valley Conservation (MVC) and the Community Stewardship Council of Lanark County present "Adaptation Planning in Eastern Ontario - A climate change workshop". The objectives of this capacity building workshop are:

  • to provide a forum for attendees to communicate their interests and activities in the area of climate change impacts and adaptation
  • to hear from a variety of experts conducting work and research in the field of climate change impacts and adaptation
  • to initiate the development of a watershed/regionally-based adaptation discussion group
  
  DRAFT AGENDA