LadiesCorner
CPAWS Seeks to Curb Climate CHANGE with AUBRIANNA SNOW
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he effects of climate change are being felt across the world in the form of extreme weather and natural disasters. Alberta may be one of the most severely impacted provinces in the years to come. Kecia Kerr, executive director of the Northern Alberta chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) is well acquainted with the potential effects of global warming on Alberta. CPAWS is a national organization that began in the 1960s and has grown to include chapters across the country. The Northern Alberta chapter is stationed in Edmonton and conducts its business from Red Deer to
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Alberta’s border with the Northwest Territories. Society works mainly in advocating for new protected areas and good management of current protected areas and public lands, but efforts to maintain biodiversity in the face of the climate crisis is also a big piece of their work. The Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute’s Dr. Richard Schneider developed a series of climate maps for Alberta in 2013. These maps predict that Alberta may face an overall temperature increase of four degrees Celsius or above in the worst-case scenario, far exceeding the 1.5-degree threshold established by the LadiesCorner – Spring 2022
Paris Agreement. Even in the bestcase scenario, the province will still be above that mark. “Precipitation is going to change,” explains Kerr. “It’s going to change in a way that even though precipitation overall for the whole year is going to increase, it’s going to decrease in the mid to late summer months when stress due to drought is highest.” Alberta’s landscape will become much warmer and drier on the whole, according to these models. “Grasslands (will be) expanding to the north,” says Kerr. “At the hundred-year mark, we’re going to have very little left of our boreal forest.” Schneider’s
