Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Agriculture and Forestry
Issue No. 44 - Evidence - Meeting of March 19, 2018 (afternoon meeting)
VANCOUVER, Monday, March 19, 2018
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met this day at 2:02 p.m. to study the potential impact of the effects of climate change on the agriculture, agri-food and forestry sectors.
Senator Diane F. Griffin (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: I welcome you to this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry. I’m Senator Diane Griffin from Prince Edward Island, chair of the committee, and I’m going to start by asking the senators to introduce themselves. I will start with the deputy chair, Senator Maltais.
Senator Maltais: Senator Ghislain Maltais, Québec.
Senator Gagné: Raymonde Gagné from Manitoba.
Senator R. Black: Rob Black from Ontario.
The Chair: This afternoon the committee is continuing its study on the potential impact on the effects of climate change on the agriculture, agri-food and forestry sectors.
On this panel, we have Dr. John Church, British Columbia Regional Innovation Chair in Cattle Industry Sustainability, in the Faculty of Science at Thompson Rivers University; Dr. John Innes, BC Chair in Forest Management, Faculty of Forestry, UBC; Dr. Che Elkin, FRBC Slocan Research Chair in Mixed-Wood Ecology, University of Northern British Columbia; and Dr. Sumeet Gulati, Associate Professor, Faculty of Land and Food Systems, Food and Resource Economics Group, University of British Columbia.
Thank you, folks, for accepting our invitation to appear. The clerk has instructed you on the amount of time for your presentations. We have an hour and a half in total, and senators will also have a number of questions for you.
We will start with Dr. Church.
John Church, Associate Professor and Cattle Research Chair, Faculty of Science, Thompson Rivers University, as an individual: Thank you. I am excited to talk to you today. I’m going to talk to you about something that I haven’t really heard discussed much in Canada, and that’s what I believe to be the impact of climate change on our country’s cattle in general.
I’m a cattleman, probably the fourth generation of my family to raise cattle. This is a picture of my grandfather from around 1910. He ran the community pasture in Saskatchewan. I’m a professor at Thompson Rivers University. It’s in the Interior by Kamloops. We’re celebrating our fiftieth anniversary, and we have been doing research about 30 years, with real emphasis on applied research that’s relevant to the community.
It’s been going back a few years, but especially in July of 2017, a massive number of animals died in California, and it’s happened at least three times that I know of. It was so bad that the state declared a national emergency. They’re dying of hypothermia. What’s expected, what’s coming, and what we’re seeing in California we’re probably going to see by about mid-century, maybe even a little sooner, in 20 years. Depending on the scenario, if you believe the IPCC 2014, we’re looking at 0.3 to 0.7 Celsius. I don’t think that’s happening. It’s more likely we’re going to be looking at 2.6 to 5 Celsius. Then there’s an upper scenario that I didn’t bother to put down.
To die of hypothermia is the extreme. Long before the cattle die, you are going to have big disruptions in terms of average daily gain, getting pregnant; things like that. I guess the important thing is that, no matter what emission scenario we look at, temperature is going to rise. So, what can we do about that? Well, there are management strategies. Using things like shade or sprinklers, and some of that has been done in other places like Australia. However, to be able to adapt our agriculture long term, we’re going to have to look at both heat-tolerant traits and maybe even heat-tolerant breeds.
The first breed that would jump to mind would be this guy here, Bos indicus. I don’t know if any of you senators have seen Star Wars, but my students joke that this is like Jar Jar Binks from Star Wars having sex with a cow. It’s got really big ears and all these flaps. That’s what they use in Brazil and countries like that, in tropical countries. You will see them in the southern U.S. The problem is these animals don’t have a winter hair coat. When you hit minus 20 it’s a huge winter challenge, and we’re still projected to see minus 10, minus 20 in the winter.
I’m 50 years old. When I was 10 years old, my father was a cattle veterinarian and we would go to the auction markets. People were badly discounted for black cattle. If you brought black cattle to market, you got badly discounted, whether it was a Black Baldy or a black white-face. Nobody wanted them. Today it’s the opposite. Seventy to 80 per cent of our herd has been selected for black, mostly because of fashion. People like to say “Angus.” The Angus marketing people have done a tremendous job. That’s great, that we have selected the animals, all black, just in time for catastrophic climate change.
On the right, if you get to the slide that says “Genetic Adaption,” I think we have a made-in-Canada solution that will help us for a little while. This is our newest breed, the Canadian Speckle Park. It’s a novel breed, lighter coat, heat tolerant, and we’re talking here about the albedo effect. There’s a reason we don’t go outside with black T-shirts on. Black absorbs the heat. White reflects. I’ve got a picture here of a drone. You can see the Canadian Speckle Park is white exactly where it needs to be on the back, and the white reflects the heat.
We have asked the question, are lighter variants more heat tolerant? If you look, there’s a picture of a drone and an infrared camera. We can fly over these animals and take temperature measurements of them. What we saw really stunned us. On a 20-degree day, if you get to the slide with the infrared pictures, Canadian Speckle Park cows are averaging 31 degrees Celsius. The Black Angus cows were 36.4, almost 5 Celsius higher. It’s the same thing with the calves. When it was noon, when the sun was right at the top part of the day, through solar loading, we had 28.5 Celsius measured from above, and 45.3 Celsius on the little black calf.
What to do about this?
There’s another species that we raise in Canada, and they’re in the back. You can see I’ve got a picture there from Beringia, and there are a lot of woolly mammoths and Przewalskis, horses and camels, and snub-nosed bears and lions, but in the back there’s bison. Bison have been on the planet a long time. They have already survived a 6-degree temperature warming. The interesting thing is, they have been finding animals like the steppe bison that are tens of thousands of years old. When they extract their DNA they’re finding, genetically, they’re not that different from today’s bison. They’re epigenetically different.
I have a range of bison, and one has really long horns. I don’t know why that’s the case. I don’t have the scientific proof for this, but the phenotypic differences, or why they look different, is likely due to epigenetics as opposed to genetics. Epigenetics is how the environment interacts with the DNA to change what are called epigenetic switches. What’s amazing is bison can do this, probably at one to two generations. We have two examples right now. We have wood and plains bison in Canada. Most of the people that raise bison have plains bison. There was a small population of wood bison that were geographically isolated, and they looked very different. They keep trying to prove that they’re different genetically when they’re really not; they’re epigenetic.
I’m not saying we want to go back and rebreed our cattle with buffalo. We tried that in the 1960s. What I am saying is that it’s going to be darn hard to milk bison. As a people, we can probably get away with not eating beef, but it’s going to be damn hard to give up dairy. What I’m saying is we probably need to figure out how bison can adapt to the climate within one to two generations, and they do this through epigenetics. A student at Texas A&M has got bison farms on a straight line, all the way up to the top, to northern Saskatchewan, and they’re about a third different in body size. They can, like I said, change. So, I think that’s a big secret. We know cattle can interbreed.
Basically what I am saying is the heat is coming, we’ve got a short-term, made-in-Canada solution already available with Canadian Speckle Park. We can get that into these Angus quite quickly. Long term, we’re going to have to look at things like how bison adapt to the climate and try to get those characteristics into our international beef herd.
Thank you very much for your time.
The Chair: Thank you very much. That’s great.
Dr. Innes, you’re next.
John L. Innes, BC Chair in Forest Management, Faculty of Forestry, University of British Columbia, as an individual: Thank you, senators, for the opportunity to present here. I didn’t put together a PowerPoint presentation. I have some speaking notes which I have circulated.
I’m often asked, what should I plant, which trees species, given that we have climate change ahead of us? The problem in answering that question is that we have no idea what the climate is going to do in the next 100 years. We have a lot of model predictions, but those model predictions are based on assumptions. There are scenarios that will tell us what will happen to the climate under a given set of emissions. When we come to the local scale, it becomes even more complex. We actually could say, for example, what might happen with a particular set of assumptions at a global scale. When we’re dealing with a situation like Western Canada, where we have ocean, mountains and a continental land mass, it becomes very much more difficult to forecast what might happen in the future. As well, we don’t know what Canada, or the U.S.A., or China, or India, will do in the next 50 years to combat climate change. We’re dealing with a lot of uncertainty.
What we do know is that the climate is clearly changing, and it’s changing very rapidly in this part of the world. The measurements that are available indicate that, in the Yukon, winter temperatures in the last 50 years have risen by 5.7 degrees Centigrade. In the Mackenzie District, they have risen by 5 degrees. In Manitoba, Saskatchewan, the northern forest there, they have risen by 4 degrees. Everywhere is rising with the exception of the Maritimes. They have not been rising to the same extent. So, we know temperatures are rising. Rainfall and snowfall are much less clear, and wind patterns are also much less clear, but they are also critical for forestry.
One of the difficulties that we have as a forester is that trees don’t generally respond to mean temperatures, but that’s what all these models talk about. The 5.7 degrees is the mean winter temperature rise that’s occurred in Yukon and northern British Columbia. Trees, on the other hand, respond to extremes, and extremes are much more difficult to predict. For example, they respond to extreme frosts. They respond to droughts. They respond to very dry conditions related to fire. We have responses to extremes and, as I said, we have difficulty modelling these.
We believe that species ranges will shift northwards, which is fine in an area like British Columbia, where we have trees to the south of us. It’s a lot more complicated if what you have to the south of you are the Prairies, where there are no trees. What trees are going to occur there? We believe is that we are going to see some fairly major changes in our forests, and it will vary from one place to another, so we can’t generalize.
There have been some assumptions that if it gets warmer it’s going to be better for Canadians. That is an assumption that I would question very strongly. We are likely to see more pest outbreaks. We’ve already witnessed the mountain pine beetle. We now have the spruce beetle here in British Columbia; spruce budworm, forest tent caterpillar, are all major pests. Insects in 2016 damaged 176,000 square kilometres of forest in Canada. To put that in perspective, forest harvesting covered 7,700 square kilometres. That’s a huge difference. We also have fires to think about. In 2015, in Canada, 38,000 square kilometres burnt. We also have to consider disease outbreaks. We have Dothistroma, which is occurring because of a change in climate in northern British Columbia. We have invasive species, and we have droughts. Droughts we need to consider in the West primarily, although they will be important elsewhere, and we also need to consider them in urban forest situations.
What we are likely to see is a changing composition of our forests. Conifers are likely to decrease in favour of early successional species, species that come in after disturbances, so aspen, birch and jack pine, and those are much less valuable than the existing trees. Our forests will become younger because of the disturbances. We will see reduced productivity, not increased productivity, and reduced biomass because of that young forest.
In terms of operating, we will run into difficulties. We currently rely on the winter operations in many parts of Canada, and that occurs because of snow on the ground and frozen ground. If the winters are shorter and warmer, our operating times will decrease, and we have already seen that occurring.
We will also see impacts on biodiversity, and those are going to be very, very complex and difficult to understand. We will see relationships between caribou and forest changing. We will see a discoupling of ecological processes. What I mean by that, for example, if an insect hatches at the same time as leafs flush, it’s got a food source. If the leafs flush earlier than the insects hatch, then the leaves build up resistance and the insects won’t be able to feed. We don’t know what the impacts of that are in the long term. We suspect we will see some species moving into different food sources. We have already seen, for example, the mountain pine beetle beginning to be more effective in jack pine than it has been in the past. We will also see melting permafrost in many areas. I don’t know if any of you have actually had the pleasure of going to somewhere like the Yukon and seen what are known as the drunken forests, where trees are falling over because they’re no longer supported. Finally, we will also see effects on the human communities. We will see increased occurrence of diseases, such as Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain fever, West Nile virus.
It is really important to stress that these effects will not be uniform across the whole country. We will see more drought-related problems in the West, we will see more fires in the middle of the country, and I don’t know actually what’s going to happen in the East. I think there is a lot of uncertainty there.
I would just like to finally remark that we have got fairly good ideas of what might happen in terms of some of the effects, but we are very reliant on modelling. I notice that among the people whom you will be talking to in the next couple of days you have a lot of modellers. We have tended to move away from actual observations. We’re not doing the sort of monitoring that we used to do 10, 15 years ago, such as the Forest and Insect Disease Survey run by Natural Resources Canada. Much of that has been delegated to provinces and the provinces aren’t doing it.
We have also got problems with research funding. As an academic, I hate having to say this, but though NSERC has actually shown an increase in budget, thanks to the Government of Canada, it is very difficult to get money to do forestry or agriculture research. In the discovery grants committees, for example, there is not a committee dealing with either forestry or agriculture. I find that absolutely amazing for Canada. Instead, we have to compete on things like the ecology and the evolution committee, which means we have to change the emphasis of the work that we do in order to try and get funding.
It’s perhaps ironic: I work on climate change and forests, my funding today entirely comes from China, not from Canada, and I’ll finish on that point.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Professor Innes.
Professor Elkin.
Che Elkin, Associate Professor, University of Northern British Columbia, as an individual: Thank you very much to the committee for giving me this opportunity to again speak to this issue.
My background is in forest ecology and my evaluation of climate impacts on our forest systems and the forest sector is really through this lens of the biological impacts, the ecological impacts. So, much on the evolutionary ecology side that John just touched on.
My work over the past decade has really focused on asking the question: How will our forests respond to changes in temperature, in precipitation, looking at it through a lens of the empirical data that we can actually get? I am a modeller, coming from the modelling side, and looking at it from the impacts at the stand level up to the landscape level.
Some of the key findings from this work are: When we think about the actual potential impacts of climate change on forest systems, one of the most important things that we need to try to identify is where, within the environment, are we actually expecting the changes to occur; and equally important, when, during the coming decades, over the next half century, do we actually expect to see those large changes in our forest systems, and by extension in the ecosystem services that we derive from those forests.
When we’re thinking about this, it’s very complex and there’s a range of issues that are going to inform where these climate impacts will be observed first. I would like to highlight for the committee today four of the main issues that really drive these questions and should be informing our thinking about forest management and forest preparation going forward.
The first is that forests are inherently variable. This is not a surprising statement. Forests are heterogeneous. As John alluded to, this factor is going to strongly influence how those forests respond to changes in precipitation, temperature, changes in the extremes that they will be subjected to. This heterogeneity, or this variability, is something we need to recognize, and we also need to recognize where the drivers are coming from. At a very basic level, it’s going to involve differences in species-specific responses to climate change. Species that have historically been adapted to drier conditions are much less likely to be negatively influenced by increased drought events going forward. In contrast, other species that are very sensitive to changes in precipitation or changes in water availability are likely where we’re going to see big shifts in the future. We need to recognize that we often need to expand beyond individual species-specific responses to actually thinking about the forest communities that maintain the productive ecosystems that maintain our forest sector.
The other thing that is going to drive this is obviously landscape position. We would expect much different climate impacts at 2,000 metres compared to 600 metres, and we need to recognize that those forests at those different elevations will respond differently. Again, where this will be important will be depending on whether we’re talking about the Central Interior in British Columbia here, or the coastal range.
The third thing that I would like to highlight, that’s important for this variability, and something that I frankly feel we don’t focus on enough, is the actual management implications of the susceptibility of forests to climate change. In British Columbia, we’re still in the situation where, at a very broad level, we can make a dichotomy between the forests that have not previously been harvested, and evaluate their resilience to climate change; and contrast that to our secondary forests, the forests that we have harvested, planted, and how they’re likely to respond.
Finally, at a more regional level, a lot of this variability should also be viewed through the lens of, are we looking at species that are right in the middle of their distribution range, or are we looking at species at the boundaries? The vast majority of work suggests that it is those species that are at the boundaries, or areas where the species are at their boundaries that the biggest impacts will be observed first.
Similarly, this isn’t something where we should just focus on the trees, we should also ask the same type of question for the forest communities. The transition zones, as you are moving from one forest type to another forest type, will likely be the regions that exhibit the biggest responses to changes in climate; and also, those will be the areas where we’re likely to see these changes first. That’s the first thing that I wanted to highlight.
The second thing — again, it touches on what John was mentioning — is that when thinking about the climate impacts on forests, we often think about how changes in temperature, changes in precipitation drive growth rates, mortality rates, recruitment rates for individual trees, individual species. We often then think secondarily about how these shifts in our climate will influence some of the landscape-level disturbances which we know are, at least in near history, the major drivers of what we actually observe on our landscape, and the challenges there that our forest sector faces. I would argue that we need to think about those as being linked. When you have increased temperature, decreased moisture, causing stress, reducing trees’ growth rate, this is also going to alter those trees’ susceptibility to many of the biological agents that are causing these large landscape-level disturbances; and, secondarily, also alter the resilience of those forests to some of these landscape-level disturbances, such as fire.
The third point that I would like to raise here is that when we’re thinking about forests, we recognize these days that we derive a large number of ecosystem services from our forests. This can be timber production, fibre sourcing, maintenance of biodiversity, carbon storage, recreational opportunities. Similar to the fact that different forests are going to show different sensitivities to climate change, we are also expecting that different ecosystem services, forest-derived ecosystem services, will also show different sensitivities to changes in our forests that are driven by climate. At a very broad level, this can be made quite simplistic where, if we think about those forest ecosystem services, they are dependent on individual species or individual forest structures being maintained on the landscape, and this can be things like timber production for specific species, or maintenance of biodiversity. It is those ecosystem services that we expect to be influenced the greatest and influenced in the shortest timeframe. In contrast, if we’re looking at services that simply require having a forest landscape cover being maintained on the landscape, those are likely to be much more resilient to future forest changes.
The last point that I would like to highlight to the committee is that, when we think about climate impacts on forest systems, we need to be very careful about not just considering a climate increase of 2 degrees, 3 degrees, of pushing our forest ecosystems along latitudinal gradients, elevational gradients or ecological gradients. So, in a very simple case, if we are likely to see a 2-degree increase in climate over the next 30 years, will that simply mean that the forest community that we see at 600 metres above elevation moving up to 800 metres? The evidence these days is strongly suggesting that that’s not the case.
The impacts on the species are going to be species specific, the migration rates of the different species that make up those forest communities are going to be different, and there’s going to be fundamental shifts in the disturbance regimes that in many ways structure our forests and have structured our forests. Because of these different factors coming together, we likely will see new forest complexes arising in the future This is something that we need to be preparing for today. Given the timeframe that forestry acts on, we should be preparing for the type of forests that we have 2060, 2080, with our management actions today.
Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Gulati, our final speaker.
Sumeet Gulati, Associate Professor, Faculty of Land and Food Systems, Food and Resource Economics Group, University of British Columbia, as an individual: Thank you for inviting me. I’m honoured to be here.
I have spent most of my career studying policy that influences the environment. Recently, over the last decade, it’s been carbon policy. So I’m going to focus more on the impact of policy on agriculture and forestry, not so much about the impact of climate change in agriculture and forestry. Also, I have little direct experience studying agriculture and forestry, so I am going to draw on my insights from how human behaviour adapts to climate policy. I have studied mostly automobiles, adaptation of private automobiles, and the adaptation of households in Canada to climate policy. Before I do that, I’m going to also make a few assumptions around the carbon policy that I have seen so far in Canada and that I expect in the future.
The first main assumption I will make there is that the majority of the greenhouse gasses that are associated with farming or with forestry will remain unpriced. I do not expect direct emissions, like, nitrous oxides, methane, or any other sort of direct emissions that come from farming or forestry to be in any future provincial or federal government carbon policy.
I will also assume that the carbon policy that we will see, there may be some exceptions, will overall raise the price of fuels that are used on the farm or in the forest. So things like natural gas, heating oil, gasoline, diesel, electricity, these prices will rise. It will influence inputs. If farms are using a lot of fertilizers, which are energy intensive, it will influence their prices, but then there will be some interaction with international trade. So, when you have direct fuels, you’re just going to face the higher prices. I will assume that’s what’s going to happen with carbon policy. The way we see it now, that seems to be true. I will assume that those you can’t evade, but if you can buy these inputs from abroad you might be able to evade them.
One of the insights that I feel will sort of show itself is that, as carbon policy is more widely accepted, we will see a reduction in direct fuel use. Direct fuel use is not a huge part of farming greenhouse emissions, but we will see a reduction in direct fuel use on the farm or in forestry operations, and some of this will be a combination. My research says this will be a half-and-half combination roughly. The first half will be direct reduction on the farm. For example, on the farm, you will use instead more inputs that are not priced by carbon policy. So, you might hire someone to help you streamline the way you prepare and harvest your output so that you use less fuel. The other half will be, from what I understand, mostly from upgrading equipment that’s used on the farm or in the forest that uses fuel.
The other thing that the farmers might do is actually start looking at the crops they produce and whether they are highly energy intensive. If you look at the kind of crops we grow in Canada, oil seeds are probably the most energy intensive in terms of direct fuel use. As a result, you might see the acreage and production of those crops declining as carbon policy ramps up.
Like I said, fuel-intensive inputs will likely cost more, and if they are importable, they will be imported in greater numbers. We will see the cost of producing these inputs rising in Canada. We may see production of them falling in Canada if we don’t have corresponding border tax adjustments for the import of these inputs from abroad.
The other thing I see is in carbon pricing. We have already seen some of this in Alberta, and maybe some of it will show up in Québec and Ontario. We will see the development of carbon credit markets, and I believe forestry and agriculture will play a large part in these carbon credit markets. I expect these markets to mature. We have heard about some issues with them in the past, but I expect them to mature. I expect there to be many more traders who will go out and act as intermediaries aggregating and putting together and guaranteeing these credits that are then sold to people who will trade in the final carbon markets.
The last thing I want to say is that as carbon policy evolves, expect big differences across provinces. Like I said, fuel prices will rise. How much fuel prices will rise will vary, not just because some provinces will have carbon taxes, some provinces will have cap and trade, but there are also differences in the way electricity is made in different provinces, and that will make a difference to the price changes. There’s also a difference in the mix of the natural gas across different provinces. There are differences in infrastructure where some people have to use heating oil versus natural gas. If we don’t understand them, we won’t know exactly how these fuel prices will change across provinces and how carbon policy will impact agriculture and forestry across provinces. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you. Those were four very different presentations. As you will have noted, this is not a theme-based panel, but those were all very interesting viewpoints. I suspect we will have lots of variation in the questions.
Basically, for the senators, we will just go around the table. Because we have four people and the questions may apply to more than one, could I get you to just pick your top two questions in the first round, and then we will give you more time in the second round?
Senator Maltais.
[Translation]
Senator Maltais: Thank you, Madam Chair.
I would say you don’t belong to the optimist club, but you do convey the reality. You painted a very realistic, not to mention serious, picture of the climate change situation. I will start with Mr. Church, if you don’t mind.
You raise cattle. You showed us all the research you had done, in terms of adaptation and evolution, to arrive at a so-called creature that is able to withstand the impacts of climate change. Are other places in the world facing the same problem that we are?
[English]
Mr. Church: Actually, Australia has faced something very similar. In other parts of the world, they tend to focus on this Bos indicus.
There are two types of cattle. There are the humped cattle, and the problem is when you want to go to eat them. It’s akin to eating my boot. Places like Brazil aren’t known for their beef; whereas, in Argentina, they raise Bos taurus, like us, the non-humped cattle, which are the more traditional breeds we see in Canada. Ninety-nine per cent of our beef animals are all Bos taurus. We just keep a few Bos indicus because they’re wild as march hares and used like rabbits.
I got thinking about these Canadian Speckle Park while I was down in Uruguay. I was getting off the plane and getting my bags off from the luggage turnstile. I noticed that everybody speaks Spanish and they’re packing AR-15s, and I was feeling a little nervous down there as a Canadian. Then I saw some folks from Australia, and thought that I would hook up with them. One of them said to me right away, “Oh, you’re from Canada, mate,” and I said, “Yes, that’s right.” He said, “Do you have those Canadian Speckle Park where you are?” I said, “No, why do you ask?” He said, “Oh, we’re really crazy about them in Australia. We’re using them in the Outback.” I said, “You’re using Canadian cattle out in the Outback?” “Oh, yeah,” he says, “We throw Angus out there to breed with our Bos indicus and they’re dead in four weeks, but these little Canadian Speckle Park,” which came from Maidstone, Saskatchewan, near North Battleford, “they’re hardy and tough as nails.”
I go to the Western Agribition which is outside of Toronto. It’s the big agricultural show, and it seems like every second person you meet is from Australia. They’re buying up all of the embryos and all of the semen that they can get their hands on, and they’re moving it to Australia. Certainly California is grappling with the same problem.
Bison were spread over a very wide geographic area, whereas cattle come from a very small area. Short term, we can use this made-in-Canada solution that other countries are already tapping into. We just have to get the awareness out there.
I applaud the approach from the panel in the sense that I can’t find a credible scientist anywhere in the world, I’ve actually looked, that would say climate change isn’t happening, which is a good thing. The climate deniers, I mean, there’s still a few PR firms, Friends of the Environment, that are all backed by Exxon, that are making us pretend that there’s doubt, but it’s almost undeniable. Now, we’re getting to the point where we need to start really looking at adaptation. So to answer your question, yes, Australia has been looking at it. California is faced with it.
[Translation]
Senator Maltais: Would it be fair to say that global warming is more present in large territories like Canada — and you mentioned Australia, Brazil and Argentina — than, say, in European countries, which, despite having sizable herds, span a smaller amount of territory? Have you observed the same problem we have here, in Canada, there?
[English]
Mr. Church: I think the larger countries have bigger problems because cattle tend to be more outside. In a lot of European settings, especially if the beef production is integrated with dairy, more of their cattle tend to be indoors, so there are more opportunities to provide them shade. In more extensive areas, like parts of the United States, Canada, Australia they’re outside.
With the fires around Kamloops, we probably would have broken 40 Celsius in the Interior, but the smoke actually brought us down to about 38 degrees. When you start getting to 42, 43, 44, 45 Celsius, that’s getting incompatible to our Bos taurus, at least the cattle that we raise, which are beef cattle, which are primarily Angus or Angus type, or on the dairy side, Holstein.
[Translation]
Senator Maltais: Very good. Thank you. I may pick up on that in the second round. I haven’t finished with you yet.
Now, I have a short question for Mr. Elkin. Do I understand correctly that forests are plagued by the same problem facing cows and calves? In other words, is it present only in countries with extensive territory, large countries, or do small countries face the same problem?
[English]
Mr. Elkin: I can address that directly because before coming back to Canada three years ago I was working in Switzerland for six years. We may not call Switzerland a tiny country, but it is smaller. And there, almost in contrast, they’re dealing with impacts of climate change on forests as severe, if not more so, simply because their population base is that much closer to the forests. So, you have many small villages that are living in heavily forested valleys, where the forests are not only providing timber, it’s not only providing biodiversity, but it’s actually providing protection from some of the major gravitational hazards, like snow avalanches or rock fall.
This goes back to what I was mentioning, that we get a range of different ecosystems services from our forests, and we need to actually evaluate how those different ecosystem services will be impacted by climate change. There, if we just say, “Well, how is climate going to impact your timber production,” then to some degree, I think you’re right. There isn’t as big of an input, because it is a smaller land base where it’s not contributing as much. But if we can consider the whole range of values that the forests provide to that type of smaller country, then I would argue that, yes, they’re experiencing the same type of challenges with respect to climate impacts on forests that we do in a country as massive as Canada.
[Translation]
Senator Maltais: If we compare Canada with Scandinavian countries as a whole, how are they faring?
[English]
Mr. Elkin: That’s actually, in some ways, a much better comparison because we’re dealing with more boreal/sub-boreal forests that are equivalent to the type of conifer forests that we have in northern British Columbia. They are facing the same type of challenges with the caveat that the projected climate that they will be experiencing over the next 50, 60 years, will be slightly different than what we are expecting here as well. However, I’m seeing expected change of an increase in temperature. It’s really precipitation, and this goes back to what John was mentioning. The precipitation in many of these systems is key. If we see an increase in 2 degrees, that can actually increase the growing season, increase the growing degree days, the forest, and may be potentially beneficial, but it will also increase the evapotranspiration. It will cause more negative drought stress. Therefore, the exact specifics there are going to be different, depending on the climate that the Norwegians or the Finnish are going to be experiencing in the future, but it is comparable. They are facing the same challenges.
Senator Maltais: Thank you.
Senator Gagné: Mr. Innes, you mentioned that crop diversity is certainly very important, realizing that we get 80 per cent of our calories from 12 crop species, and we probably get 90 per cent from 15 crops. That comes from Rob Dunn’s book, Never Out of Season. I don’t know if those are the statistics from the States, but the fact is that there’s a lack of crop diversity in Canada. We want to feed the world, and have been focusing a lot on productivity and increasing production. Because of that lack of crop diversity, I think we’re very vulnerable to widespread destruction by disease or pests.
What challenges actually does climate change pose to Canada in terms of identifying diseases and different species of pests that are probably going to be moving up north and invading our crops?
Mr. Innes: Well, I can talk to forests, not to agriculture. I’m not familiar with agricultural pests and diseases. With the forest pests and diseases, we have, firstly, a huge increased risk of invasive species coming in that are being transported, in part, by humans, in cargo, but also are being enabled by climate change. We are seeing areas of forests that are stressed already, and we have an insect or a disease come in. It may not have been particularly effective when the trees were very healthy, but as soon as they start stressing from drought, in particular, they become very susceptible to species. For example, in the California drought recently, which is believed to have killed over a hundred million trees, those trees were largely killed by beetles. We don’t have those particular species of beetle here, but we could do.
Another thing that we’re finding, particularly with beetles, is that their life cycle is changing. So, in the past, we might have had one brood per year. Now we’re seeing two broods by some species. So they’re completing a life cycle twice within a particular year, instead of just once. That means that they can infect or basically do twice as much damage.
In terms of diseases, we have seen some diseases that are spreading, and we believe may be related to climate change. It may be related to better recognition. A good example of that is phytophthora, which is a disease which affects a variety of trees. We have not had any major problems in Canada yet, but we saw, for example, in the U.K., almost the entire population of larch wiped out by this disease. It is a disease that pathologists are very concerned about. They have seen it go rampant in some places, like Chile, where it’s been affecting the radiata pine plantations. If we had that disease here, and it’s certainly as far north as Oregon and Washington, and there’s every likelihood that it will come up here, we’re going to have some problems.
We also have, as I said, the diseases that are being spread in part by the way we move plants around ourselves, or plant products. We saw problems in the U.K. with an ash disease, ash dieback. We have seen problems in our Arbutus trees here. It was very apparent when I first came to Canada in 1999, and I asked Natural Resources Canada, “What’s going on?” And they said, “Oh, it’s all drought.” I said, “Well, I know enough about disease to know that these trees are suffering from a pathogen.” It turns out it was a pathogen that came on Persian walnut into California, and jumped from Californian walnuts into the Arbutus, and then spread all the way up, and that’s why there’s been a lot of mortality of Arbutus trees here. And it took a PhD student in University of Washington to work that one out. I think we will see more of those.
The difficulty is we just don’t know what is going to be coming, because sometimes the diseases are morphing, sometimes they’re jumping from one species to another species that we have never seen them on before, and we’re only really today beginning to understand some of these diseases better, thanks to genomics and genetic analyses that are enabling us to separate the different species and work out what is affecting what and where.
Mr. Church: If I might add, most everything that John talked about in forestry really applies to agriculture too. It’s more or less the same story.
Mr. Elkin: To support what John is saying there, what we really need to do is start thinking about how we can actually support forest systems that are going to be more resilient. Given all the issues that you are talking about there — the transmission, the susceptibility — if we’re trying to build up systems that are going to be more resilient to an uncertain future in which we don’t know what the pest is going to be, how it’s going to really impact our forests, one of the easiest ways to do that is to build complexity primarily by not focusing on a single species, but really broadening out the species that are part of our forest systems.
Mr. Gulati: I know you guys are coming to UBC tomorrow, and Sean is one of the people who is going to talk to you. He’s thinking a lot about how to deal with agriculture in the face of climate change. I don’t think he’s thought so much about pests, but we could find you someone if you are interested. There are a few entomologists who have thought about pests and agriculture.
Senator Gagné: What recommendation would you like us to bring back to the Government of Canada?
Mr. Innes: I would like to see a stronger and more comprehensive pest and disease monitoring system. We used to have one of the best in the world, the Forest and Insect Disease Survey that I mentioned. As I said, that has been delegated to the provinces, who have been spotty at best in how they have implemented it. To me, this is actually a Canada-wide issue. I think it’s something that the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers needs to address. I think the Government of Canada could encourage the provincial ministers to implement what is already known more effectively, and ensure that there is good coverage of the whole country, and that we understand what’s happening and where those diseases and insects are spreading.
Mr. Church: Another thing, and it is more or less one of the legacies of the former Harper government, is there was really an alignment with research that was industry led, or industry driven, or partnered with industry, and that only works in a paradigm where we accept that industry knows what’s needed. I can see that we’re going to have a big train wreck here and when the heat stress reaches a certain threshold and we have hypothermia and cattle dying in the pastures, but my colleagues out in industry don’t really see this as a problem. If they were to talk to you, they would say things like, “Oh, well, we raise cattle more efficiently,” and “We use implant technology,” and “Instead of 7 pounds of grain per pound of beef, we raise 1 pound of beef on 5 pounds of grain.” That’s not what we’re talking about. That’s not what’s going to get it done.
The scary thing for me is that I’m already seeing huge instances of heat stress throughout Western Canada, but if I talk to my ranching colleagues, “Oh, really?” “You see, when they’re panting open mouth, that’s not normal.” One of the problems is that we lined everything over the last few years. The pendulum really swung from industry must know best and it’s got be the relevant to industry. I mean, maybe economically it might make some sense, but if you want to make big breakthroughs or make big changes or do things quickly, it’s actually almost an impediment the way we have set things up.
Mr. Gulati: I have two recommendations. One is that we embrace carbon policy and pricing in agriculture and forestry. I think the lowest cost emission reductions are in those sectors, and if we could leave them out. We also lose the opportunity to reduce the cost of meeting our climate goals and we reduce the opportunity of creating good credit markets that may actually help supplement revenues from these sectors.
The other one is that I want to echo what John said. I feel that it is the same in the social sciences. There’s research funding that is not geared towards applied sectors, like, agriculture and forestry. The same thing in SSHRC, as you said, and then NSERC Another recommendation would be that we think more about how we can get research funding to applied sectors like agriculture and forestry.
Mr. Elkin: If I could just add to that, I commented that diversification from ecological/biological perspective can be a way of trying to mitigate or reduce the climate impacts. The same type of argument goes to the forest sector as well. If we can actually see more diversity in terms of how we use our forests, in terms of the baselines for how it’s managed, we’re likely to set ourselves up to be more resilient in the future as well. That has the dual impact that, right now, we have an industry, at least in Western Canada — and it’s hard to talk about forestry as being uniform across Canada – that has been designed, over the past 50 years, to do it one way, basically clear-cut, and we’re still in that mindset. We need to move away from that in order to think about a range of different products that we can get from our forests, but also how to manage them, to maintain diversity more.
Senator R. Black: Mr. Church, at the outset you said you are the only one talking about this, or there are very few. Who else is talking about it and how do we make it a bigger issue?
Mr. Church: In Canada, I’m probably one of the first. My mentor is a woman by the name of Temple Grandin. She really got me worried that we’re starting to see more open-mouthed breathing and things like that. Even up here in Canada, there’s also Cynthia Daley and Cassandra Tucker in California, where they certainly have that problem.
As to your question of how do we raise the level of awareness, I hope when the committee meets with the Beef Cattle Research Council or Canadian Cattlemen’s Association — and I know that’s later on in the agenda — you ask them about that. “What do you guys think?”
What else? It’s difficult to know what kind of pulpit we could get on to raise this concern.
Senator R. Black: Mr. Innes, you talked about a discoupling of ecological processes. Could you just explain that to me one more time?
Mr. Innes: What we see in a lot of ecological processes is connections between different organisms, and they are driven by temperature, they’re driven by moisture, they’re driven by daylight.
To give an example of when something goes wrong, last year we had a very cold spring, unusually cold. When you looked at maps of Canada, the blue was actually over British Columbia, not over Toronto where it normally is. That resulted in some very strange things. In my garden, as an example, the rhododendrons were flowering. Normally when a rhododendron flowers, you see the flower, and then shoots appear after the flower dies, and they develop, and then the buds form and so on. Last year, the shoots actually developed before the flowers came out, and that’s because the shoots are controlled by daylight, the flowers are controlled by temperature. If you start finding your temperatures are cold, or hot, whatever you are looking at, and it’s disconnected with daylight, then you get these strange things happening.
The most significant effects are when, for example, you have, not a forest example or an ecological one, but migratory birds that are moving north. They arrive at certain places timed for certain food sources. If those food sources aren’t available, those birds will die. If hummingbirds come back too early and there are no flowers, they will die.
It’s this tying in of the, what’s called the phenology, when we actually see these different organisms that depend on particular food sources and timing for breeding their young to take advantage of those food sources are disturbed, that’s when we start seeing problems. If birds arrive in the Arctic, I mean migrate there, and it’s still covered in snow or ice, they have got serious problems.
Mr. Innes: That’s what I mean by a discoupling of these ecological processes.
Senator R. Black: I appreciate that.
Sumeet, one of your recommendations was to embrace carbon pricing. How do we embrace carbon? Let’s take it the next step. How do we do that?
Mr. Gulati: Currently we have thought about carbon pricing in a simple fuel-based method only, and we’re not talking about direct emissions, and it’s hard to measure them but that’s the way these things are done. Direct emissions from agriculture, like methane, will not be a part of it. Once we bring those direct emissions in, which we’re trying to do, for example, in Alberta. They’re looking at flaring, and British Columbia is planning to include flaring in their emissions. If we can start doing some of that, looking at emissions that aren’t fuel based, we will get emissions reductions that are at a much lower cost, in manufacturing especially.
Senator R. Black: Thank you.
The Chair: I have one question related to Canadian Speckle Park. Was this breed developed specifically to be prepared for climate change, or was that a coincidence?
Mr. Church: I think it’s a coincidence, but it’s also a function of where they came from. This place, Maidstone, Saskatchewan, is close to North Battleford. It’s minus 40 there in the winter and there’s not much shelter, and it gets plus 40 in the summer. So, I think it was really a group of people in the 1930s who decided that this was a good breed. They really liked them and they were kind of dedicated. They are kind of a closed herd, but I think it was more a function of it being a harsh place to live.
I apologize if anybody is from Saskatchewan. I was born in Saskatoon, but, man, being out on the bald prairie when it’s minus 40 and the wind’s howling, it’s not a good place to be.
The Chair: I’m from Prince Edward Island. My brother is a beef producer, and I was in 4H Club when I was a kid. So it’s a new breed. I had not heard of it before, so that’s why I was wondering if it was an accident that it was bred for this purpose.
Mr. Church: It’s only the second beef breed ever to be developed in Canada. So, I think it’s unique. It’s nice that we have this made-in-Canadian solution already sitting in the wings but I think, long term, we’re going to have to look to bison.
You could look at the same principle in plants. Usually plants evolve in an area over a broad geographic distribution, and all my plant colleagues say, “Yeah, this makes sense.” Cattle evolved in relatively smaller geographic areas. I think it makes a lot of sense. We know that they can interbreed. What we need to do is figure out how bison can so rapidly change. I can see that it’s going to get worse in California, and then it’s going to start creeping up here. I talked with the top climate scientist in the U.S., and he told me, “If you want to know about what’s going to happen in Canada, just watch what’s happening in places like northern California. That’s going to be British Columbia in 20 years.” So when the cattle are dying like crazy in California, then that says to me, “Holy cow, where I live in Kamloops, where it’s already 40 degrees Celsius in the summer, when we start hitting 45 this is going to start getting serious.”
The Chair: Thank you.
On the second round, Senator Maltais.
[Translation]
Senator Maltais: I’d like to come back to you, Professor Elkin. As you know, forests are under provincial jurisdiction. The federal government contributes to their management through transfers, under the Canadian Constitution. Now, it is up to the provinces to assume their forest responsibilities. Climate change is a different kettle of fish. As you know, it has costs attached. For proof, just look to Mr. Church, who works in the cattle industry. He knows that beef from Western Canada is the only beef not subject to traceability measures because producers don’t want to pay the cost. You know that. It’s a clear and specific case. Change, therefore, is costly, for both producers and government. Clearly, there are no easy answers. Right now, though, the fact that Canadian beef is not subject to traceability is hurting us when it comes to free trade agreements. Producers don’t want to pay, but it’s mandatory in provinces like Quebec and Ontario. They have no choice.
To come back to the carbon tax, I would say the situation is the same, Mr. Elkin. The provinces are going to collect a carbon tax. Are they going to put the revenue towards research? What do they plan to do with it? Provinces already collecting the tax, through their own legislative and regulatory mechanisms, are required to invest it in research, whether it be in the transportation, agriculture or forestry sector. Is British Columbia ready to get on board with that tomorrow? I am asking you.
[English]
Mr. Gulati: I will start with the carbon tax question. I think you asked about what the revenue from carbon tax will be used for, and it’s different across different provinces, like you said. It’s, again, a provincial mandate. The provinces are setting carbon policy, but we have a push from the federal government, and I think the push from the federal government is also about whether there is uniformity across different provinces, and the federal government has leeway in determining what makes a comprehensive carbon tax and what doesn’t, because they have the ability to do that.
When it comes to revenue, different provinces are doing different things. British Columbia started with the revenue-neutral carbon tax where it wasn’t so much for research or transportation, but we just gave all the money back in terms of reductions in income tax, corporate tax, and I think low-income tax credits. So, those were returned. I would say that’s the reason why our carbon tax has survived. If it didn’t have a revenue recycling component with it, if it was expensive to research, the carbon tax would have been gone in the second election we had.
[Translation]
Senator Maltais: I understand. What you’re saying is true. However, the tax revenue has to be put towards research and development in order to have an impact on reducing GHG emissions, and that flows from provincial statutes and regulations. It’s well and good to charge farmers a carbon tax that is used to fund social services. I have nothing against that, but it’s likely to raise the ire of farmers and does nothing to solve the GHG problem. What needs to happen, then, is for the revenue from the carbon tax to be used specifically for research. It doesn’t matter whether the research focuses on the forest, agriculture, transportation or shipping industry; it simply matters that the revenue be used to fund your work, as researchers, not postage stamps. I think that is the duty of the provinces.
Of course, the Canadian government has a duty to ensure as much consistency as possible across carbon tax policies, but since Canada is a massive country with very different regions, each with specific needs, be it the Maritimes, Newfoundland and Labrador or Victoria, the situation isn’t the same. Today, it’s 3 degrees here, but in Ottawa, it’s -27 with the wind chill. Do you see what I mean? Even though we are all in the same country, the temperature isn’t the same throughout. Today, the people in Ottawa want to feel the effects of global warming.
What’s important, then, is to ensure consistency across the regimes. That is the duty of the Canadian government. What would you recommend the Canadian government do to deliver that consistency and uniformity across carbon tax policies?
[English]
Mr. Gulati: That’s really hard to say. What’s the recommendation for the uniformity of the carbon tax? I think one way to measure it would be to see what the cost is of a unit of carbon reduction, and that I think is what the government is trying to do. They’re trying to measure the cost of a uniform reduction of carbon, per ton of carbon, and they’re trying to determine whether it is constant across different provinces. I think there’s a lot of lobbying here; this will be a hard negotiation. As long as we have a pan-Canadian carbon policy agreed upon, that may be a first step. Then we can get to more uniformity in the next step.
Going back to what you said about research, I think it’s a great idea if we can direct some of the carbon tax revenue toward academics, but I’m not sure if that’s politically such a great idea. What’s happening in northern parts of British Columbia is we have said that carbon policy is regressive and costs more per person in the rural parts of our country than in the urban parts of our country, I mean, per unit of income. I think what we can do is return more of it and target it more to the rural areas where the impacts are the largest. It’s similar to what you are saying. Instead of research, I think we can maybe target social services or refunds to the hardest hit areas from the impact of the policy.
The Chair: I’m not seeing any other hands. I assume people have had their questions answered. I would like to thank the panel. This was a very interesting presentation and it was great to have you here with us.
We will now hear from our next panel of witnesses. Thank you very much, folks, for being with us. I’ll start by introducing Dr. Karen E. Kohfeld, with Climate, Oceans, and Paleo-Environments Laboratory, Simon Fraser University; Dr. Craig Nichol, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of British Columbia in Kelowna; and Dr. David Scott, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of British Columbia in Kelowna.
The clerk has briefed you about making presentations, and then senators will have questions for you. We will do as many rounds of questioning as we need to, to get the job done.
Dr. Kohfeld.
Karen E. Kohfeld, Professor, Climate, Oceans and Paleo-Environments Laboratory, Simon Fraser University, as an individual: Thank you very much for this invitation.
I would like to start off by explaining a bit about my background. My field is earth systems science, and I study the effects of natural and anthropogenic, or human-induced climate change; and carbon cycling. The time period I study has traditionally been the last 100,000 years. I work now in a school of resource and environmental management, and most of my students who come out of the program work with a lot of agencies at the federal, provincial and municipal levels. When I design projects with them, they tend to want to work on things that have happened a little more recently. Therefore, my research program has expanded to cover a lot of topics. I still cover that time period, and my interest is understanding the processes of climate change and carbon cycling, but I’m also, with these students, working with these agencies to explore historical changes in extreme weather events and wind behaviour, specifically in the province. I work with Parks Canada to look at fire behaviour over the last 10,000 years and into the present. A lot of our work now, with a lot of students, is on coastal carbon cycling. I’m going to talk in a minute about what blue carbon is; and also some of the impacts on our coast of ocean acidification, which I won’t talk about today. I will focus more on the blue carbon.
As you can see, because of my position, my research interests are very broad. What I have chosen to talk about today are two very specific topics, and one is about changes in a project that I have done with Charles Currie, who is at the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium; and a student that we shared who was looking at the impacts of climate change on the relationship between wind speeds and runoff. The goal in this project was really to understand, when we have periods of drought, where we can look in the province for wind speed behaviour that is higher than normal. If there is a low in hydropower, where can we look for wind speeds that are going to be sufficient to help buffer those changes and allow us to look and be more reliant on renewable energy?
That was the purpose of that project, but for this committee, which is focused on agriculture and forestry, I thought it would be most pertinent to talk about the changes in runoff. For our simulation, we looked at Canadian Regional Climate Model simulations for the Province of British Columbia, and we did simulations from 1979 up to the end of this century. The main result that I wanted to let you know about was a change in runoff in essentially all of the sites in the province. The period of peak runoff, the spring freshet, will have shifted by one month earlier in the spring by the time we reach the end of the century. Every year we have a peak runoff as the snowpack melts, and high amounts of water go into the watersheds. That normally occurs in the months of May and June, and our simulations show a shift in that peak runoff to earlier in the season, although the peak end runoff that happens in the fall stays at the same time. The implication is that we’re seeing a longer dry season. The time period between the two time periods of peak runoff is getting longer.
The implication is that we can expect a longer dry season during those spring/summer months in British Columbia, and I think that has implications for water resource management and availability in communities and agricultural areas. It also has an implication of, especially when we couple it with warmer temperatures that we expect by the end of the century, a longer dry season. That is the main point of that first study that I wished to share with you. I can emphasize that other studies are showing similar things that are happening today and have projected similar types of changes in their simulations of the future.
The second area of research that I wanted to talk about is something called “blue carbon,” and this is work that I have done with collaborators from Parks Canada and Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and a large group of students who are interested in this. First, what is blue carbon? It is carbon stored in vegetation, biomass and soils that are locked in seagrass meadows, mangroves and salt marshes in coastal areas. What has been shown in studies just over the last 10 years, is that these areas have a substantial ability to store a lot of carbon, and not just to store that carbon, but to sequester it. In some cases the suggestion is that the burial rates are higher than boreal forest carbon sequestration rates. So this strong carbon storage has been touted in a lot of contexts as a possible target for climate change mitigation.
My laboratory, with Parks Canada and my colleague who is now at DFO, were funded by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation to look at and actually quantify what those rates are on the Pacific Coast, because when looking at the global maps, there essentially were no data points in this area to confirm whether or not this storage rate was high or low.
What is shown in figure 3 are locations where we sampled to try and quantify these changes. We sampled seagrass meadows and salt marshes around the area, Boundary Bay and out in Pacific Rim National Park specifically. Our question was could blue carbon storage could be considered as a co-benefit to complement all the other ecosystem services that these coastal ecosystems provide.
I’ll start with the mangroves. We don’t have them. And then I’ll move on to the seagrass meadows. We do have them, and we did find that they had higher carbon storage than places nearby that had no vegetation, but when we compared those rates with the global rates that were measured from the tropics and the subtropics, we essentially found that the rates were so low, three orders of magnitude lower than anything that’s been recorded in other places around the globe. This suggests that when we consider things like blue carbon for climate change mitigation, we need to do site-specific studies to make sure that we are investing our energies and our choices in the right places. I should add, of course, that seagrass meadows have many other benefits, but carbon storage is not necessarily a large one.
When we looked at salt marshes though, we did find that their sequestration rates per unit area are comparable and, in fact, higher than rates that have been published for British Columbia forests. If we were to zero in on a salt marsh area, we would see that their accumulation rates of carbon are actually quite high. The caveat on that is to consider that the area of salt marshes is very low in Canada and the area of boreal forests is very high. If we consider the actual size of the forests, they’re of course going to be bigger sinks. But I think that when we think about the salt marshes and we get into thinking about climate change mitigation at municipal levels or smaller-scale levels, and we start to make choices at those levels, this carbon sinks could become important.
One of the things we know is that with climate change sea levels are expected to rise substantially around the globe, and this puts salt marshes in a particularly difficult situation that we call “coastal squeeze.” As that sea level rises, our salt marshes on this coast are being squeezed up against hard infrastructure. They don’t really have a place to go. They’re being constrained.
The implication here is that, as the sea level rises, we’re going to have to make important choices about what’s done with farmland on the coasts. We have dikes that are there presently, and we’re trying to protect some of these farmlands. I think what needs to be put into that equation is what’s going to happen to these marshes, because as that sea level erodes them, we’re losing the stock there, and we’re also losing the carbon sequestration value that it provides to us.
With that, I’m open to questions. I just want to emphasize that we have quantified these changes and thereby tried to create the ability to look at what those values are.
The Chair: Very concisely done. Thank you.
Dr. Nichol, you are next.
Craig Nichol, Associate Head, Senior Instructor, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of British Columbia, as an individual: I would like to thank Madam Chair and the other senators for inviting me here today.
A little bit of background about myself. I’m a geologist and a hydrogeologist by training. So I study groundwater, water wells and water resources. I have done work also on regional water resources in the Okanagan area, and have worked with colleagues from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, looking at water in soils, irrigation; as well as doing projects on measuring greenhouse gas emissions from irrigated agriculture. Our family also operated a seed potato farm in the Pemberton Valley for 30 years.
My focus today is going to be on that water piece. I had the opportunity to be involved with the water community in the Okanagan since 2006 when I moved there, and have seen both the research side and the operational side, and I want to bring to your attention two things: one, a climate risk in the sense of climate data; and the second, one opportunity for adaptation in the opportunities afforded by groundwater.
The second map on the second page shows a picture of the Okanagan Basin. The Okanagan Basin is about 200 kilometres long, 40 kilometres wide. It forms part of the traditional territories of the Syilx or Okanagan peoples. The green there represents the uplands, around it, the forested areas, whereas I will be speaking more to the sort of lighter brown areas in the centre which represent the valley floor where most of the agriculture occurs.
The Okanagan is known for its long, hot summers already, and under climate change, they’re expected, like everywhere, to get a bit warmer. There are the large lakes, and probably agriculture known outside of British Columbia would be the fruits and wine industries. If you look at the bottom of the page, you’ll see a little bit of an indication of some of the other sectors in the agricultural sector in the Okanagan, and that those emblematic orchards and vineyards are only part of it. Common to all of these, however, is that they all rely upon irrigation. The Okanagan summers mean that some of these agriculture activities simply wouldn’t exist without sufficient water for irrigation.
On the third page, you’ll see at the top an example of stream flow from Mission Creek, which is the largest input to Okanagan Lake, which flows through Kelowna. You’ll see what has been discussed regarding spring snowmelt contributing to a large spike in flow during the May to July period. I would like to draw your attention more to the low, flat blue line there, which represents the very low-flow conditions through the Okanagan for most of the later summer during peak irrigation demand, and then over the wintertime.
Moving down below that you’ll see a pie chart that shows the distribution of water usage in the Okanagan. Okanagan water is managed primarily by the province, but the Okanagan is somewhat unique in having the Okanagan Basin Water Board that was formed in the 1970s to provide some regional management of water on behalf of the three regional districts. Between 2006 and 2010, they conducted a supply and demand study and these are some of the overall results from that. You can see that agriculture there, the big slice of the pie is at 55 per cent. It represents the largest water user in the valley. Outdoor residential irrigation also forms 24 per cent.
The Okanagan dry summers and those low flows in the summer are already under challenge with the current climate and the current needs. There are places where water is fully licensed and there’s no further surface water, and there are substantial efforts going on now to try and define what are called “environmental flow needs,” or the low flows that are needed to keep the ecosystem happy.
Down at the bottom, you can see a little bit on some of the results from an agricultural demand model put together by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the BC Agriculture, and that shows that there are some opportunities with climate change, that land use may be able to change. There may be the ability for new crops or new land brought under irrigation, but that comes with it a warmer and drier climate. There is some opportunity to try and make irrigation more efficient, but overall, there are predictions of about a 30 per cent need or increased demand for agriculture irrigation by 2040. The picture above shows that there isn’t 30 per cent more water in the valley.
On page 4 is the first of two kind of paradigm shifts that I would like to bring to the committee’s attention. The first is around the way that management decisions are made. At the operational level, it used to be that you could collect climate data, and then what was used for management purposes was a look backwards at the climate norms, or the averages over the last 30 years. Now at the operational level, on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month basis from the provincial to the local levels, people are now looking forward to between three days to 80 years. So, there are, in the Okanagan regional water supply models, regional agricultural demand models, there’s a number of lakes in the valley and rivers that are dammed and operated through the use of various different runoff models. At the local level, for individual watersheds, local governments and other water users are looking to the future to try and manage this balance between increased demands and the environmental flow needs.
The graph that I have provided there at the top is something collected at the global scale, and it shows that familiar picture of temperatures increasing across the globe. If you were to add another half a degree to that, out to year 2040, that would likely capture what could be expected in the Okanagan. Underneath that is, unfortunately, what is collected for climate data in the Okanagan. It rose after the 1960s to a peak between probably the 1970s and the early 1990s, and then it’s been on a steady downward trend ever since. Currently there are approximately 10 climate stations collecting data in the Okanagan. The takeaway message would be that you can’t manage what you don’t measure. Those who are working in the Okanagan, there’s a large pool of very talented and dedicated individuals looking to manage things on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis at the operational scale, and they’re finding increasingly that those models are difficult to calibrate, difficult to train towards current conditions so they can have confidence in future conditions.
I believe there’s a need for recognition of that paradigm shift in how the day-to-day work is done. There needs to be a renewed commitment to the collection of basic climate data, and in particular, that climate data is designed with those operational models in mind. They’re looking forward. When, or if there can be new climate data collection, it will be focused toward improving those forward-looking models.
Moving on to the fifth page, I wanted to address one possible option for climate change adaptation, seeing that there’s a long summer period that, under climate change, is likely to get longer and drier. At the top are the three areas of storage within the valley that are currently there: the snowpack, and we see there’s perhaps increased need for measurement of snowpack; reservoir storage, which really falls outside my area of expertise, but you may see a written submission from others in the Okanagan; and then in groundwater. Currently, it forms about 22 per cent of the supply for the Okanagan. Prior to 2014, groundwater was not licensed, and perhaps incorrectly was seen as this additional supply of water that could be tapped into.
Part of the research that I’ve done with my group was looking at groundwater discharge across the Kelowna aquifers, and what we discovered is that groundwater represents a relatively small flow across those aquifers, but what it does represent, as a potential for climate change adaptation in the future, is a massive amount of water storage. However, that requires additional knowledge around aquifer mapping, again, perhaps with a slight change in focus from the past.
Understanding that natural storage that’s in there, there are efforts on now between the province, the Okanagan Basin Water Board and local governments to try and better map some of the aquifers in the Kelowna area. In working with some of those individuals who are helping with that, what makes it difficult is a need for an understanding of the bigger regional glacial context. People are able to examine the local area but are missing that bigger glacial context. Much of that mapping was done in the Okanagan through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, but there has been a reduced amount of that basic geological mapping at the regional scale to help, again, the province and local scales do more operational work at the smaller scale.
There is an opportunity in groundwater. We’re used to seeing dams, we’re used to seeing canals, we’re used to manipulating surface water flows to help us manage water across the year, and that hasn’t been the paradigm with groundwater up to now. It’s been used more in a natural way, to pump water out of it from a single location. There are opportunities within groundwater, although there may not be a large extra flow there as an extra resource, to engage it as part of a larger designed and engineered water supply system.
There are two phrases listed there, “conjunctive use” and “aquifer storage and recovery.” Conjunctive use represents using groundwater to help supplement surface water flows in periods where the stream flow is deficient; and aquifer storage and recovery actually represents taking surface water flows, perhaps during the freshet, or times when there is sufficient flow, and purposefully injecting it into the ground, storing it in that groundwater storage and then withdrawing it later in the year when it’s needed.
At the bottom, in order to make these efforts possible, there’s a renewed effort needed in terms of basic mapping for soils, geology and aquifer mapping, and there could be an opportunity there for federal input in guidance on the designed aquifer storage. They’re in use in other jurisdictions in the United States, in Europe and in Africa, often on much larger aquifer systems than you would find in a typical Interior valley, but there are technical, legal and social implications of using groundwater in this way. For example, the discharge of groundwater into surface water to support flows in the summer and, therefore, support fish, falls within the realm of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
The larger understanding of that glacial geology context is part of what makes the current efforts by provincial and other hydrogeologists a bit more difficult to try and understand the aquifers. So, more participation at the federal level and provincial level, in help with that regional scale understanding of the glacial context, would help at the operational scale at the local level.
The last item; we are used to spending money on engineering works for surface water, and the types of budgets that go into surface water engineering and water treatment plants are quite large. There is opportunity for savings in utilizing groundwater both for its storage capacity and for its ability to filter water.
With that, I round out my remarks.
The Chair: We move on to the third speaker, David Scott, please.
David F. Scott, Associate Professor, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of British Columbia, as an individual: Thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to present. I really appreciate it.
My background is in forestry, trained in forestry in South Africa and in Montana, and I did a PhD on hydrology in South Africa. I emigrated to Canada about 16 years ago. Half of my career was involved with looking at the effects of forestry on water supply in a water source-deficient country in South Africa. So what Craig has been just been telling you is very relevant to my experience, which is how do you manage things in a water-shortage situation. I was saying to Craig earlier, we always knew in South Africa we were short of data, and I imagined of course that things would be much better in Canada, but that doesn’t really seem to be the case.
I wanted to talk to you this afternoon about a fairly specific area to do with forestry and wildfire. Climate change models seem to be in agreement. You have heard already that we can expect earlier snowmelts in the interior of British Columbia and a longer summer period. From that we can expect a longer wildfire season and, therefore, bigger, more severe wildfires, and probably a higher frequency of wildfires.
With an increased frequency of severe wildfires, we have a risk of what’s called fire-flood-erosion sequence. What causes that is this effect of water-repellant soils. Water-repellant soils are abnormal soils that do not wet up properly as we expect soils should, or would, and result in particularly severe burns when soils are dry, and there’s a large degree of heating of the soils during wildfires.
After the wildfire there are a number of effects. You have lost the litter on the soils that used to protect the soil from erosive forces. If you have had enough heating of the soil, the soil may be more erodible. That means it’s more vulnerable to erosive forces; and then you may also have water-repellant soils, which occur beneath the surface of the soil, not on the top but underneath. With those conditions, if you get a high-intensity rainstorm then you get water leaving the watershed by different pathways from normal.
In forests we typically expect that water is, by and large, going to enter the soil profile, move through the soil, and get into the streams by subsurface pathways. That’s why we associate forests with good clean water perennial stream flow. If you have all those effects of the wildfire and a high rainfall event, then the water gets bypassed to surface pathways and gets into the stream a lot more quickly, generating higher peak flows, and you then carry that erodible material into the streams, in the floods. We saw an extreme example of that in California in January of this year. They had big wildfires in December, and then heavy rains early in January, and then we saw very dramatic debris flows affecting parts of Santa Barbara County.
We had a similar example in British Columbia in the summer of 2004 following our big wildfire season of 2003. That was a watershed north of Nelson above Kootenay Lake. It was a fairly mixed fire in the watershed, but the soils were strongly water repellant. We had a big rainfall event in August of 2004, and a debris flow which carried a whole lot of material out of that little catchment down onto one of the alluvial fans along the lakeshore.
I brought some of that Kuskanook soil to show you this afternoon. As I said, soil is meant to attract water, and in soils science we assume that that electrostatic attraction between water and soil solids will suck that water instantly into the soil. You can see that this bubble has been sitting here for as long as this session has been going on, and that water is not going anywhere. That’s an example of a water-repellant soil, and that’s the risk we have with increasing wildfires in British Columbia.
This phenomenon of fire-induced water repellency had not been reported from wildfire sites in British Columbia until we started to look around after the 2003 wildfire season, and then we saw a few dramatic erosion events off of a relatively small portion of the total burned area, but in each of those instances, there were water-repellant soils on those burned sites.
The implications of this are that we need to take this into account when we are looking at managing the fire risk. From a prevention point of view, we need to be thinking about managing down the fuel load, especially in the vicinity of urban areas where the impacts of erosion are going to be most damaging. After wildfires, we also need to be thinking about managing that risk and how we look at those sites to reduce the risk of erosion following wildfire.
That’s my fairly narrow perspective that I wanted to share with you this afternoon. I am quite willing to answer any questions. I realize I have tried to make this simple, but there are complex issues that we can perhaps address in questions. Thank you.
The Chair: We will open the floor to questions. The first will be from Senator Maltais, deputy chair.
[Translation]
Senator Maltais: As you might imagine, it’s not easy to open up a question period with top minds such as yourselves. We don’t all have your scientific pedigree.
My question is for Ms. Kohfeld and has to do with the state of the ocean. You talked about blue carbon. In Quebec, where I’m from, we call it something else: blue algae, which commonly occur in rivers and lakes, especially shallow lakes, close to urban centres. They are huge carbon emitters, and municipal and provincial governments alike are doing everything they can to clean up these waters, but it’s not an easy fix either. Back home, we often say that the lake has to die in order to rise from the ashes. It’s an odd word to use in reference to water, but, nonetheless, that is the issue. How is the Pacific Ocean faring along the British Columbia coast? What state is it in?
[English]
Ms. Kohfeld: I do not work with blue algae. My expertise is understanding the carbon that goes into the sediments. I am not really able to answer what the situation is with algal blooms that occur along the coast. I do know that in the past few years in the Pacific Ocean we have experienced something that was named by scientists “the blob” which is an area of exceptionally warm water that has been bathing the coast of the Pacific. This is an unusual event that has been occurring and it’s essentially due to higher temperatures.
One of the impacts of that increase in temperature that has been bathing the coasts has been a change in the marine ecosystems. One example is a change in the type of zooplankton called a copepod. They hold a lot of fat that is essential for higher ecosystem levels, and there has been a decrease in the populations of those particular species. I am stretching out of my area of expertise to comment that I know these sorts of temperature changes bring an ecosystem shift, and that these then are carried up the food chain, and we have seen some of those implications.
However, I’m a little bit sidestepping your direct question about blue algae, and unfortunately, I cannot answer that except to simply say that we have seen an event that has occurred recently that does result in shifts in the Pacific Ocean.
I can comment about the problem of ocean acidification in the Strait of Georgia if you would like me to.
[Translation]
Senator Maltais: No, no. It was just for information purposes.
I think I’d like to come back to Mr. Nichol. You talked a lot about what’s going on in the Okanagan Valley. What about elsewhere in British Columbia?
[English]
Mr. Nichol: On the climate data side, the two issues that I tried to bring forward on the need for greater climate information and then the possibilities and opportunities in groundwater are perhaps particularly acute in the Okanagan, given the current climate and the current water use now. Both issues are affecting other areas in the province as well, such as the eastern side of Vancouver Island. Some of those stream and groundwater systems are under similar stress. There are areas in the Lower Mainland here where there are large aquifers under Abbotsford that are under consideration. Across the province, those who are operating provincial-scale or local-scale hydrologic models are finding that their ability to calibrate those models and move forward is becoming increasingly difficult with the decrease in stations.
Senator Maltais: Thank you.
Senator Gagné: My first question is for Professor Kohfeld. How many acres of salt marsh land are there in British Columbia? How many kilometres or acres? I’m not sure if I’m using the right terms.
Ms. Kohfeld: That’s a very good question, and I was looking for that number before I came here. I don’t have a number for British Columbia. The area that we studied was 200 hectares. I do have the numbers for Canada overall, especially comparing forests and salt marshes. The salt marshes area is about 111,000 hectares in Canada. The Canadian boreal forest, and this includes both the managed and unmanaged forests, is about 270 million hectares.
Senator Gagné: Have any of the marshes in British Columbia been diked?
Ms. Kohfeld: The documentation that I have read says that 70 per cent of the marshes that used to exist have been removed. Unfortunately, I don’t know the grounding of that statement, and one of our projects that we are working on now is to actually make sure that that mapping is more accurate.
However, you bring up an interesting point about the diking. We see diking all along the Boundary Bay site where we’re working. One of the issues of diking is that it can change the salt content of the marshes. This becomes quite important because as the marshes get fresher they come to a critical point, a trigger point, and although they continue to store carbon, the biology becomes such that they start to release methane. Therefore, when one starts to consider the complete budget of those diked marshes, one also has to consider that another greenhouse gas is being emitted. We have only focused on the marshes that have salt contents above that critical level, because we were not equipped to do the full budget.
Senator Gagné: Has British Columbia developed a salt marsh management policy? Has that been developed?
Ms. Kohfeld: I am not aware of a British Columbia salt marsh management policy, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Senator Gagné: Have you worked with Nova Scotia? They have a lot of salt marshes. I think Dalhousie does research around the salt marshes, and I was wondering if there is a link there with Dalhousie.
Ms. Kohfeld: I haven’t as of yet. I have worked with people at McGill, or rather collaborated, and we’ve discussed our findings. We’re fairly new to this work on the Pacific Coast. Really it was started in 2015.
Senator Gagné: Do you have any recommendations that we could bring back to the Government of Canada?
Ms. Kohfeld: I think the main point in looking at this is that when an economic valuation of a salt marsh is done, the carbon should not be ignored. It may not be as large a benefit as a 270-million- hectare forested area. When one gets down to the scale of balancing the value of land that is right next to the coast that may be flooded anyway. One may look at the possibility of what happens as that area is flooded and marshes are restored. There are many ecosystem benefits. It buffers flooding, it’s going to increase biodiversity, it’s going to service habitat for many species, and there may be also a carbon benefit. That carbon benefit, especially as we go further toward carbon accounting within a provincial or even a municipal scale, may be enough to tip the balance in one direction. It may not, but it should be considered I think.
Senator Gagné: Professor Nichol, I believe that recommendations were a part of your presentation. Would you have anything to add as a recommendation we could bring back to the Government of Canada over and above what you have presented?
Mr. Nichol: There are the two issues of water that managed to squeak in the seven to ten minutes that are given.
The third issue that I could potentially speak to is greenhouse gas emissions from irrigated agriculture. In the Okanagan area, we looked at some of the newer irrigation strategies that are designed to save water, in conjunction with different ways of adding carbon to the soil by adding a mulch, or different amounts of fertilizer, different timing. We were looking at what may happen to those greenhouse gas emissions as you move toward these more efficient irrigation systems, and whether there are recommendations that could be made there, and the takeaway was yes there are. There are potential water savings related to moving to these irrigation types. We found that there are some places where you could perhaps reduce nitrous oxide emissions by about 30 per cent by deciding between micro-irrigation types or the way they’re operated.
We had one other finding from processing the data primarily from the nitrous oxide emissions. This is nitrogen from fertilizer or natural nitrogen in the soil that under certain conditions will be released as nitrous oxide. We discovered that it’s about 300 times more persistent and powerful than carbon dioxide. So agriculture is a major emitter of that. We found that adding carbon mulch from bark mulch did reduce those nitrous oxide emissions.
I guess this would fall under the second of the questions from the committee, surrounding sort of greenhouse gas emissions and agriculture. There’s a carry-on study to that now and it is looking at when you take that forest bark mulch and add it to the agricultural sector do you see a benefit in nitrous oxide emissions. Obviously that bark mulch itself is emitting carbon.
What that study by Nathan Pelletier at UBC is looking at now is how does that carbon fit into a bigger regional context? If you’re taking carbon from the forest, you could have left it in the forest and helped grow forest trees which sequester carbon. You could have composted it and added it to the soil in the forests and stored carbon that way. You could have brought it out of the forest down to the valley floor and used it for heating, and that would have had a certain carbon emission. You could have brought it to the farm and used it as mulch.
In moving forward in looking at pricing and policy around carbon emissions, there are some aspects of carbon emission reductions or greenhouse gas emission reductions that could be realized on a single farm, or within a single agricultural sector, but I think it’s important to keep in mind that bigger picture. If there are policies or rewards in place for certain behaviours, they should be able to include movements of carbon or carbon savings between the forestry sector, the agricultural sector and the heating sector. Some suggestions have even looked at using some of that carbon material to replace fuels in the cement kilns.
I understand the committee may have some representation from PCICs and PICS, Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium and the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions. I understand they have been doing some provincial-scale carbon tracing and tracking. My one other takeaway message on the greenhouse side would be to allow whatever taxes or policies that are put in place consider all of the potential players in the whole cycle.
Senator Gagné: Mr. Scott, you probably have something to say pertaining to investments.
Mr. Scott: In my submission I point out the deficiencies in our understanding in Canada, but if you ask any university professor, they will always tell you, “We need more money for research.” I do think it’s true nonetheless.
Senator Gagné: Coming from a president of a university, I can understand that comment, professor.
Mr. Nichol: I was going to say, in our experience on doing the Greenhouse Gas Emission Study, we were very fortunate to benefit from research money, but it simply would not have been possible without the researchers of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. I’m continually astounded by what they manage to get done and how well they do it. They really have that partnership with the local growers. Universities are very nimble, very creative, and they tap into that enthusiasm and creativity, but fundamentally, our people leave. Being able to partner with organizations like BC Agriculture or Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada allows that long-term memory and talent to build up, and also very much helps in communicating with the local growers and the people who are going to uptake some of those new methods.
Senator Gagné: I have a short question for Professor Scott. What would it take for this drop of water to be absorbed by the ashes? Those are ashes or a mixture of ash?
Mr. Scott: This is soil from beneath the area that is really affected by the fire, so from beneath the ash area. If you exposed the soil long enough it will eventually wet up. The effect that I was talking about is driven by rainfall, large rainfalls in the dry season or in the summer. We don’t really expect this to be an issue with snowmelt runoff, because the snow would have been sitting on the soil for a long time, and slowly melting and slowly wetting up the soil. This effect is seen very clearly when the soil is dry. It’s a dynamic phenomenon. It reappears every time the soil dries out, but when the soil has been wet up slowly due to the snowmelt season, then the phenomenon is not very conspicuous.
Senator Gagné: Do post-fire management policies exist? Is there such a thing as post-fire management?
Mr. Scott: British Columbia spends a lot of money on fighting fires. The Americans spend something like 10 per cent of what they spend on fighting fires on rehabilitating the sites afterwards. In British Columbia, the money is restricted to repairing the damage caused by the wildfire, by the firefighting activities. We need to be looking at rehabilitation of sites after wildfires. That’s where the shortcoming is.
Senator Gagné: Thank you.
Senator R. Black: On to that water again, or that bubble. I need to be clear. That’s created when there’s a fire? It’s not naturally occurring?
Mr. Scott: No, it’s a naturally occurring phenomenon and it only occurs —
Senator R. Black: After a fire?
Mr. Scott: Yes. There will be some degree of it before the fire as well. But what we believe happens is that it is made much more severe by wildfire, though not every wildfire and not every fire. If the soils are moist, or if there’s a good layer of damp duff sitting on top of the soil, it protects the soil from extreme heating. We think that when the soils are really dry in the worst wildfire seasons is when you are going to see this phenomenon developing.
Senator R. Black: Can we know where that is ahead of time? Do you have a map of British Columbia soils to show where that is?
Mr. Scott: No, that’s why we need the research money.
Senator R. Black: Or data.
Mr. Scott: That is something that we still need to look at. Some soils, like more coarse soils, granitic soils, seem to be particularly susceptible, but we don’t really have a good understanding of that. It is also influenced by vegetation type. We don’t have a good handle on that either.
Senator R. Black: Craig, does designed aquifer storage — and I gather that’s, as you’ve pointed out, storing groundwater in the aquifer — pose a risk for contamination, or how do we mitigate for that?
Mr. Nichol: Certainly that’s one of the issues that comes up in these storage systems. In some cases, you can artificially recharge the aquifer by having soak-away basins, so diverting some of the water towards a large basin where it sort of naturally filters into the ground, similar to the way natural recharge would happen. In some of the larger systems in the southern United States, they actually treat water, inject it into the ground in the wet season and then recover it in the dry season. You wouldn’t recover everything you have pumped in.
Particularly in those jurisdictions, one of the significant differences is that when building a dam you have to borrow the money and pay for it upfront— and you have to build that dam to meet your needs 30 years or 40 years from now. Whereas with these aquifer storage and recovery schemes, you can gradually build out as the need arises. What they found is that, in certain cases, they can be significantly cheaper than the alternative of creating additional surface impoundments.
Certainly that’s one of the places where more research is needed. Those systems tend to be in bigger, more regional aquifers. The B.C. Interior tends to be these smaller, constrained glacial valleys. There are issues potentially around the changes in chemistry, as you would put it, into an aquifer and draw it back out. Then there’s the whole link that if this is being stored and withdrawn for certain purposes, or to be used directly, or stored and withdrawn to augment surface water flows, it raises issues around the chemistry of the water and the suitability for fish if you’re supplementing surface water flows. That’s that conjunctive use, jointly using groundwater to support surface water at some times, and perhaps withdrawing from surface water to store it in the groundwater at other times.
Senator R. Black: My next question is for Dr. Kohfeld. This blue carbon area is just fascinating. Can we grow those for mitigation purposes?
Ms. Kohfeld: In the United States, near Cape Cod, I don’t know if they’re actually growing them, but one of the things they are doing is reclaiming marshes that have been converted to freshwater. They’re reflooding them with saltwater, so that the effect of the methane release is completely gone, thereby beginning to restore carbon at a higher rate. The trick in growing them in most cases, I think, is probably a question of restoring marshes where they used to be.
Senator R. Black: Old marshes, not building new ones so to speak?
Ms. Kohfeld: Right. You asked a question about what policies there are. I know that many marsh restoration plans are in place. Again, the key, the trigger is salinity, the salt content.
Senator R. Black: And old marshes.
Ms. Kohfeld: Yes, and restoring old marshes.
Senator R. Black: You talked about peak runoff being in the spring, and you also talked about a fall runoff, fall peak. Where is the fall peak water coming from?
Ms. Kohfeld: It’s really a fall/winter, a resuming of the winter season. It’s occurring around October/November and it’s when the rains pick up again.
The Chair: I don’t know if it’s a question or a comment. It’s related to salt marshes. Of course, there are salt marshes on the Atlantic Ocean, too, and over the years a huge number have been lost to infilling for other uses. When some conservation groups, like Nature Conservancy of Canada, buy a property that has a salt marsh, it also tries to get enough upland for eventual migration. I’m assuming that eventual migration would be a long-term process. Even though the flooding may occur earlier, given the fact that salt marshes build up a depth of organic matter over so many years, that build-up is not going to happen overnight on the upland areas.
Ms. Kohfeld: That’s correct. On the Pacific Coast, we have large mountains. When I talk about hard infrastructure on the West Coast, in some cases it’s actually a mountain. In those areas, the squeeze is such that there’s not a whole lot that can be done.
You are correct about the long-term storage. Again, a lot of the information has been collected on the East Coast. They have actually used these marshes to reconstruct how fast sea level has risen, because they keep up with sea level rise.
The Chair: Are there any further questions?
You have answered all our questions. Thank you for appearing here today. We greatly appreciate it.
(The committee adjourned.)