Category Archives: Impacts & Adaptation

Check it out: New Resource for Healthy Soils and Climate Resilience

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By Gabrielle Roesch-McNally

Hand holding a clod of soil full of roots and worms

Healthy soils can build greater resilience and reduce risks in the face of more extreme and variable weather. Photo: Aaron Roth/NRCS under CC BY-ND 2.0.

Climate change is expected to increase the vulnerability of our agriculture and natural resource systems. In the face of more extreme and variable weather, there are a suite of soil health management practices that land managers can adopt to build greater resilience and to reduce risks in their agricultural operations (examples of strategies in Figure 1).

Through engagement with land managers and those who work with them, including Extension, Natural Resource Conservation Services (NRCS), and Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) professionals, it became clear that many of them were interested in soil health and its linkages with climate change adaptation and mitigation. As a result, Oregon NRCS and the USDA Northwest Climate Hub partnered to develop a resource to aid advisors and land managers in discussing soil health and climate resilience together. Continue reading →

What Does Winter Wheat Decomposition Have to Do with Climate?

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by Georgine Yorgey

Managing crop residue is essential to reduced and no-till farming systems. These farming systems store more carbon than conventional farming systems, thereby mitigating climate change, enhancing soil health, and reducing soil erosion. In work described in a recent project report, Arron Carter and colleagues have been working to make it easier for growers with diverse needs across the Pacific Northwest to manage wheat residues. While the work is still in progress, it is an illustration of the kind of creative, applied work that is needed to make reduced-tillage systems easier to manage, and more widely adopted across the region.

Wheat growing in a field, with residues remaining from last year's harvest between the rows.

Wheat residue in a field in early July near Bickleton, WA. This area is part of the drier winter wheat-fallow area, where slower decomposing residues are preferred. Photo: Hilary Davis.

Growers in different parts of the dryland Pacific Northwest are seeking different residue characteristics. Continue reading →

What can the Pacific Northwest Oyster Aquaculture Industry do about Ocean Acidification?

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Market with baskets of shellfish for sale, and boards with prices in the background

Oysters for sale at Taylor Shellfish Farms in Samish Bay, WA. Photo: Brian Katz

By Thamanna Vasan and David M. Kling, Department of Applied Economics, Oregon State University

Chances are that, when you go to a restaurant for oysters in the Pacific Northwest, you’ll come across a menu that features the Pacific oyster. Also known as the immigrant oyster, the Pacific oyster made its way to the Northwest in the early 1900s from Japan, and has remained a staple in aquaculture in the region due to the ease with which growers can produce the oyster and the value it holds in markets.

Over the past decade the oyster industry in the Northwest has taken a hit. Due to rapidly changing ocean conditions, a growing process that once ran like clockwork has been experiencing major glitches, and public enemy number one is ocean acidification. Continue reading →

Check it out: Extreme Winter Weather Severely Impacts the Dairy and Cattle Industry

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By Laurie Houston

Person walking through snow to a car buried in a drift which completely covers the fence behind it.

The February 9, 2019 blizzard in eastern Washington dumped 2-3 feet of snow, and winds created drifts that fully covered ditches and fences. Photo: Washington State Department of Transportation under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

If you live in the Northwest, you either experienced first-hand or certainly heard about this past week’s blizzard in eastern Washington State.  This area does not usually get much precipitation over the course of a year.  During the winter, they may typically get a few inches of snow in any given storm. This storm, however, took many people by surprise and dumped 2-3 feet of snow in parts of eastern Washington, while bringing in winds from the east and temperatures in the low teens. Over 1,600 dairy cows were killed in this freak blizzard. At an estimated $2,000 per head, that is a loss of $3,200,000, spread over a little more than a dozen farms. That is huge unforeseen expense for struggling farmers to absorb, and a large amount of dead animals to dispose of safely.

Continue reading →

Check it out: New Publication – Cultivating Climate Resilience on Farms and Ranches

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By Gabrielle Roesch-McNally

Sunset over a flooded agricultural landscape.

Farms and ranches are expected to face challenges as climate change leads to more extreme and variable weather. Photo: Flickr user Brent M. under CC BY 2.0.

USDA SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education) recently published a new resource for land managers and those who advise them titled, “Cultivating Climate Resilience on Farms and Ranches.” This resource outlines some of the challenges that farmers and ranchers will face as climate change leads to more extreme and variable weather. While the resource is national in scope, there is a great table that briefly explores the observed and expected changes in weather across seven U.S. regions, including the Northwest (Table 1). Continue reading →

Tools for Reducing the Increasing Forest Fire Risks

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By Chris Schnepf

Rubble of a burned house, surrounded by scorched trees

Different factors can contribute to homes burning in catastrophic fires, including climate change and where people choose to build. Photo: C. Schnepf.

It was impossible to watch all the media coverage of the California fires last year, with many homes and forests burning, and not be moved. When large destructive fires like this hit, people have a natural desire to put some meaning to it. A variety of voices spoke of the changes in climate as being the culprit. Some pointed to fuel build-ups that were heavier than those forests had historically. Others pointed to people moving into parts of the landscape that were very fire prone, and suggested it was only a matter time before homes burned in forest fires. As with so many things, all these explanations for the impact of the fires contain some truth. Continue reading →

Shared Data is a Key Part of Integrated Floodplain Management in the Puyallup Watershed

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By Jordan Jobe, Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources, Washington State University

In the Puget Sound Region, it’s clear that climate change impacts will involve changes in precipitation that will impact agriculture, especially agriculture in floodplain areas (Mauger et al. 2015). However, it’s not yet known how precipitation pattern changes will combine with changes in stormwater run-off and sea-level rise… and how these changes might differ between different watersheds. Flood risk reduction folks want this information so that they know how to properly size new culverts. Fish folks want this information to place and design salmon habitat restoration projects.

A drainage ditch very full with brown, near-stagnant water.

Nancy’s Ditch, a key agricultural ditch in the Puyallup Watershed’s Clear Creek area, is consistently slow-flowing and full of water. Photo: J. Jobe.

Continue reading →

Engaging Climate Science through Citizen Science Apps

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By Chris Schnepf

Queencup beadlily flowering on a forest floor

“Nature’s Notebook” is an app that can be used to collect phenology data such as flower timing. Photo: C. Schnepf.

Trying to understand how climate is changing, and how these changes affect the crop yields, forest growth, water from melting snowpacks, and all the other parts of our natural world, is very challenging. Increasingly, some of the primary tools for understanding these phenomena are models.

One of the biggest misconceptions about models is the idea they are not based in the real world – that they are just theoretical constructs, untethered to actual measurements. There are models like that – even philosophers are playing with models these days. But most of the models used in the natural sciences depend on empirical data – measurements of things like temperature, precipitation, crop yields, tree mortality, and many other attributes. Continue reading →

Check it out: The State of the Science on Climate Change in the Pacific Northwest

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By Gabrielle Roesch-McNally

The Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4) was just released on November 23, 2018. The Global Change Research Act of 1990 mandates that the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) provide a report to Congress and the President just about every four years. This report focuses on the human welfare, societal and environmental impacts associated with climate change and variability across 10 regions in the U.S., and across 18 topics of national significance. Many collaborators across the Northwest participated in writing for the Northwest chapter. In this chapter, we outline five Key Messages that illustrate how climate change will impact different aspects of life in the Northwest (Figure 1):   Continue reading →

Flexibility is Key to Northwest Cattle Production’s Future Success

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By Laurie Houston

The impact of climate change on cattle producers in the Northwest is not expected to be as extreme as other regions of the United States.  According to a recent study led by Shannon Neibergs and published in Climatic Change, Northwest producers have a comparative advantage because droughts will be less severe in the Northwest and they have access to feed via extensive irrigation systems than can mitigate the effects of drought. That’s compared to the rest of the United States, though. But what impacts can livestock producers expect here? Can they continue business as usual? Probably not, but there are clear options moving forward, conclude Neibergs and colleagues. Continue reading →