The Nature Conservancy’s Adirondack and Vermont Chapters have released “Climate Change in the Champlain Basin: What natural resource managers can expect and do,” one of the first efforts in North America to assess climate change on a watershed scale and offer adaptation strategies.
Climate change is no longer just a philosophical or future threat. It's a reality in the Champlain Basin, as the 42-page, peer-reviewed report outlines with a complete set of weather records from the United States Historical Climatology Network. Some changes that have already taken place in the Champlain Basin are:
- Mean temperatures in the Champlain Basin rose by 2°F between 1976 and 2005, slightly faster than the global average.
- The average level of Lake Champlain is 1 foot higher than it was prior to the 1970s, illustrating the effects of recently increased precipitation.
- The duration of ice cover on local lakes has shortened during the 20th century, with freeze-up now occurring two weeks later, on average. The main body of Lake Champlain now often fails to freeze over at all in winter.
Previous climate studies have been global or regional in scope, which has limited their applicability at the watershed, landscape or site scales, where most conservation work takes place. “Climate Change in the Champlain Basin” draws on current scientific literature and uses a new generation of analytical tools, including Climate Wizard, to focus climate model simulations on the 8,234-square-mile watershed, which lies in Vermont, New York and Quebec. More
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