Tag: Climate Emergency

Is Your Neighborhood The Hottest In Peterborough?

On August 15th 2021 it was 23.9°C at the Peterborough Municipal Airport. By all respects, an average summer temperature. If you looked at a thermometer outside your house though, it might paint a much different picture. In the downtown core and areas along Lansdowne St. temperatures reached as high as 40°C. This represents over 15°C temperature difference! What is happening and how can it be stopped?

The urban heat island is a phenomenon we’ve long known about. It occurs when natural land cover such as forest or meadows are replaced with surfaces that retain heat such as asphalt, concrete or pavement. These surfaces then radiate the heat back out into the local environment, warming the surrounding area. The effect can increase the cost of heating, and put elderly or other vulnerable citizens at risk of heat stroke, and even death.

The urban heat island effect often puts the most vulnerable populations at risk. Some of Peterborough’s lowest income census areas have the highest recorded temperatures. You’ll notice on the map that areas directly south and north of the downtown which are characteristic as lower income neighborhoods, have some of the highest recorded temperatures, while some of Peterborough’s more affluent neighborhoods have much lower recorded temperatures.

  • Image #1: Downtown South Peterborough. 35% to 43% low income households. On average +15°C
  • Image #2: Monaghan Ward 1% to 5% low income households. On average, +5°C

Image #1 characterizes a neighborhood south of downtown. Census Canada considers between 35% and 43% of the population to be low income. This neighborhood is one of the hottest in Peterborough, coming in at a 15°C temperature deviation. Meanwhile Monaghan Ward represented in image #2 only recorded a 5°C temperature deviation. It is clear that land cover and tree canopy have a huge impact on temperature deviation. With the additional pressure of climate change, these deviations are likely to become more pronounced over time.

What can be done about urban heat though? Luckily we have some solutions! Planting trees is once again, a major winner in this regard. Not only does tree planting decrease average temperatures, it can lower heating and cooling bills year round for residents, overall a huge win for the climate. Removing asphalt and other “high heat” surfaces can also benefit neighborhoods, replacing asphalt with grass is even a viable solution for combating urban heat. Depave projects around the country have made major inroads in this regard, and perhaps focusing on lower income neighborhoods could have an additional impact.

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In all, reducing the urban heat island effect gives us one more incentive to restore ecosystems, plant trees, and protect our natural areas. Perhaps years from now, when you look at the thermometer outside your house, it may more accurately reflect the temperature across our city.

Data provided by USGS through LANDSAT 8.

2021-09-27 1 Comment

What Might a Nature Based Recovery Look Like in the Kawarthas?

In 2020 the coronavirus devastated economies, put millions of people out of work, all at a time of global climate and ecological crisis. 2020 was also the year we entered into the UN’s Decade on Restoration that aims to “prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems worldwide”. No matter where you sit on the political spectrum, you can agree that one way or another, we are in a time of crisis. A term that has been tossed around over the past year as a way out of the crisis is “a nature based recovery”.

Nature based recoveries are not a new idea, we can look to the past for models on what it might look like, putting millions of people to work while restoring our natural environments. One of the most ambitious conservation projects of all time was the Civilian Conservation Corps. Over the course of the program it employed nearly 3 million Americans while planting over 3,000,000,000 (Billion!) trees. A version of this program has been resurrected by the incoming Biden administration and is expected to present a plan within the next several months. It will be exciting to see it take shape over the coming years.

Embed from Getty Images

Closer to home, we can look to similar projects that helped employ masses of Canadians while enhancing our natural environment. Following the Guelph Conference and the subsequent establishment of the Ganaraska Region Conservation Authority there was a resolution to seek any practical project that would employ civilians in the post war era. The Ganaraska region had become a dustbowl due to the high rates of erosion caused by rampant deforestation and the underlying sandy soils easily being swept away by wind or rain. Restoring the Ganaraska Watershed seemed like an obvious candidate for the project. Over the next several years the Ganaraska Authority reforested over 10,000 acres of land while employing thousands of unemployed Canadians.

The benefits of these programs have extended far into the future. Today the Ganaraska watershed is a popular outdoor tourism destination, and is no longer subject to the destructive flooding it once was. Indeed, a University of Oregon study found that for every million dollars invested in watershed restoration it resulted in 16 new or sustained jobs and up to 2.5 million dollars in total economic activitiy. There are very few public sector investments that have rates of return that scale in a similar fashion.

Locally, what might a project of this scale look like that could employ many people while creating enormous ecological benefit? One such project that comes to mind is the Kawarthas Naturally Connected. The KNC is a natural heritage system plan developed over the past decade that aims to provide a linked network of conservation corridors across the Kawarthas. Perhaps a project that restores a ecological corridor from the Oak Ridges Moraine or Rice Lake in the south to the Kawartha Lakes in the north could be a great starting point? As an added benefit, perhaps a multi-day hiking trail could follow the corridor similar to the way the Ontario Waterfront Trail is used as a platform for restoring coastal ecosystems along the great lakes shoreline.

History has demonstrated that these environmental projects can have an enormous environmental and social benefit, hopefully our recovery can help lead to a sustainable future for everyone. The Kawarthas is a leader in environmental expertise and stewardship, if anyone can accomplish a nature based recovery, it is us! In 2016, the UN designated Peterborough a Regional Centre of Expertise for sustainability, lets put that designation to use and carry out a decade of restoration.

2021-02-25 Add Comment

A Little Toolkit For Confronting Climate Inaction

2019 was heralded as the year that ended climate change denialism. Enter a new era, where we must face a new threat: inaction on climate change.

Just over a week ago I published a short writeup on my twitter feed explaining how an enormous fountain in our town was an outsised contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in our city. This was due to the sheer volume of electicity used to power the monstrous pumps that spewed a steady stream of water 6 stories into the air.

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2020-01-27 1 Comment

What should Peterborough do in this Climate Emergency?

With the recent news of Kingston and possibly Guelph declaring a climate emergency, I began wondering what actions a city such as them or even Peterborough could do to begin the process of eliminating our climate emissions. Recently I came across the Drawdown proposal. It includes a list of 80 solutions that would reduce global emissions drastically while at the same time creating a better and more equitable future for humanity. All while creating a net global financial savings of nearly 50 trillion USD.

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2019-03-15 2 Comments