An Assessment of the Impact of Climate Change on Human Health in New Hampshire

Climate change threatens human health in many ways. The negative impacts of climate change on human health are likely to increase in both magnitude and frequency as the climate continues to change in response to ever increasing global emissions of heat-trapping gases released from a variety of human activities.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Building Resilience Against Climate Effects (BRACE) framework provides guidance to states and cities to develop strategies and programs to confront the health implications of climate change. This report serves to address Steps 1 and 2 of the BRACE framework via an assessment of past and future climate change across New Hampshire combined with an assessment of the impact of climate change on human health. A key component of the BRACE framework is building resilience. In public health, resilience is a measure of a community’s ability to utilize available resources to respond to, withstand, and recover from adverse situations. More generally, people think of resilience as the ability to recover, persist, or thrive amid change. The New Hampshire Climate and Health Workgroup has tentatively developed the following definition: Resilience is the ability and capacity to anticipate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from significant threats with minimum damage to human health and well-being, the economy, and the environment. The importance of the way we plan our built environment—including land use, transportation, and water management decisions, as well as how we interact with our natural environment and preserve its life-supporting functions—must be emphasized as pivotal points of intersection as we develop climate adaptation strategies. Notably, a resilience-based approach to climate change adaptation should align with New Hampshire’s transformative State Health Improvement Plan. That plan underscores the importance of cross-sector collaboration and coordinated strategies to address the social and environmental determinants of health. These strategies not only support healthy communities for all New Hampshire residents, but they are also critically important for reducing health care costs and reducing the burden of disease

The Characterization of Riparian Vegetation in Agriculture Drains Impacted by Phragmites australis and Drain Management: A Southwestern Ontario, Canada Case Study

Agricultural drainage systems are important components of regional ecosystems and play key roles in ecosystem functioning. Biodiversity is a service provided by drains which is not fully understood in agriculturally dominated areas and is disrupted consistently by drain management, specifically in drains invaded by Phragmites australis. The objective of this thesis was to characterize the contribution of regional vegetational biodiversity provided by drainage systems, across sites representing a gradient of management frequencies. Drains were separated into management categories: Low (managed +5 years ago), Medium (managed every 3-5 years), or High (managed yearly). Plant abundance was measured and biodiversity indices (Species Richness, Simpson’s, and Shannon-Wiener) were compared across the management gradient. In total, 133 distinct plant species were reported across spring and late-summer growing season surveys. Plant identifications were confirmed by local experts using a structured expert elicitation protocol. A number of environmental variables were visualized using non-metric multi-dimensional scaling (NMDS), principal component analysis (PCA), and redundancy analysis (RDA). Community composition differed across management categories, with sites under high levels of management dominated by graminoid (grasses) species. Community composition varied significantly across management categories. Biodiversity indices differed significantly across management categories, with low management sites having higher levels of biodiversity. Environmental variables did not have a strong correlation with community composition, however RDA analyses found management intensity to be the only significant variable relating to community composition. This thesis provides the first known baseline of vegetational community composition for agricultural drains across Windsor Essex. Vegetational biodiversity was dampened by regular drain management and this insight will be useful in exploring the multifunctional roles of drains in supporting biodiversity and ecosystem functions locally and regionally

Automatic detection of airborne pollen: an overview

Pollen monitoring has traditionally been carried out using manual methods frst developed in the early 1950s. Although this technique has been recently standardised, it sufers from several drawbacks, notably data usually only being available with a delay of 3–9 days and usually delivered at a daily resolution. Several automatic instruments have come on to the market over the past few years, with more new devices also under development. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of all available and developing automatic instruments, how they measure, how they identify airborne pollen, what impacts measurement quality, as well as what potential there is for further advancement in the feld of bioaerosol monitoring.</p

How do ecological restoration treatments affect understory plant communities in dry conifer forests of the Colorado Front Range?

Includes bibliographical references.2022 Fall.Ecological restoration efforts are progressing in dry conifer forests across the western United States to increase resilience to fire and other disturbances. While such treatments primarily aim to create overstory change, impacts beyond the canopy should also be considered – such as effects on understory plants. Several studies have investigated outcomes of ecological restoration thinning treatments for understory plants, but few of these have examined effects across a landscape and at a time interval long enough for plants to potentially adjust to the disturbance. Additionally, none have investigated how specific aspects of treatment and local climate might interact to modify understory responses. In this study, we investigated the effects of ecological restoration thinning treatments on understory plant communities in dry conifer forests of the Colorado Front Range using a Before/After/Control/Impact study design. We collected data at 1-2 years pre-treatment, 1-2 years post-treatment, and 4-6 years post-treatment in 156 plots distributed across 8 sites, encompassing 15 treatment units and 15 nearby untreated areas. We found 1.6 times higher native understory plant cover and 1.1 times higher richness in treated compared untreated plots at 4-6 years after treatment. Heightened cover and richness values in treated plots were not driven by a single native plant functional group, but by a large portion of the community. Short- and long-lived, forb and graminoid, and vegetatively spreading and non-vegetatively spreading native plants all grew in cover. Both lifespans, forb, and non-vegetatively spreading native plants had heightened richness. Introduced plants showed 2.3 times higher cover and 3.9 times higher richness in treated plots compared to untreated, but were still present at very low levels. Greater native plant cover and richness were associated with lower basal areas that more closely resemble historical norms for the landscape. Thirty year average climatic water deficit (CWD) was not as strong of a predictor of native cover or richness as was a short-term relative measure, final spring CWD z-score, which describes how different the spring climatic conditions of the sampling year were from average conditions. Overall, the broad longer-term benefits to the native understory plant community that were found for numerous sites across the Colorado Front Range suggest that these results may generalizable to elsewhere on this and similar landscapes

Floristic dynamics of Appalachian pine-oak forests over a prescribed fire chronosequence

Vegetation dynamics after prescribed fire were modeled on three mountains in the George Washington National Forest representing a chronosequence of conditions since burning: pre-burn, and 1, 2 and 12 years post-treatment. Vegetation structure was more affected by environmental and spatial (burn intensity) gradients than by time since burning. Significant fire effects occurred on southwest aspects and upper slopes, especially among the sapling and shrub strata. Pine and oak regeneration abundance was not affected by fire but shade tolerant tree seedlings decreased, and shade intolerant seedlings increased in importance as a result. Percent cover and richness of herbaceous species increased, partly due to the post-fire germination and growth of various forbs and graminoids. Fire did not affect the abundance of exotic invasive species, but its effects on Ailanthus altissima were inconclusive. Low overstory mortality and prolific sprouting of ericaceous shrubs suggests that understory vegetation effects from single burns are temporary

An Analysis of Invasive Species Management in the Niagara Region of Ontario, Canada: Establishment of a Database to Improve Knowledge Sharing

Worldwide, 17,000 invasive species drive biodiversity loss, and cost the global economy at least $1.4 trillion annually. The UN and Convention on Biological Diversity have declared invasive species a global initiative and requested increased data sharing on invasives. Existing worldwide and local databases focus on distribution, abundance, identification, and impacts of invasives, but not management activities. No database focuses on invasive management for the Niagara Region of Ontario, Canada. This study used sustainability science and the Ecosystem Approach Principles to guide the design of an invasive species management database. The goal of the study was to document current aquatic and riparian invasive management activities in the Niagara Region and develop a database that would become a tool to facilitate collaboration at the regional level. The objectives were to (1) inventory current invasive detection and control activities in the Niagara Region and make comparisons to recommended techniques in the literature; (2) examine perceived efficacy of control techniques; and (3) develop a database integrated with a GIS mapping component. Seventy-one organizations involved in riparian/aquatic invasive management in the Niagara Region were contacted and 16 were interviewed in-depth. In 2017/2018 there were 35 separate control efforts reported, involving 10 riparian invasives and two aquatic invasives, with most concentrated along the Niagara River. Collaboration efforts were minimal, occurring for only six specific projects. Recommendations from this study include: develop a regional invasive species plan; increase control efforts along the Welland Canal and Lake Erie shoreline; consider a wider variety of control techniques; and increase collaboration, information-sharing and resource-sharing among organizations. Overall, this database provides a baseline for the current state of aquatic and riparian invasive management activities in the Region, and can be used as a tool to identify resource-sharing opportunities, management efficacy, priority areas, areas of improvement, and future resource needs. This can help Niagara progress towards achieving Aichi Biodiversity Target 9 and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal Target 15.8