Envisioning future histories of the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence River Basin in the face of a changing climate

Ann Arbor, Mich. — The climate of the Great Lakes-St Lawrence River basin has been changing for several decades, and projections show that the basin will continue to warm, particularly in the winter, and precipitation will become heavier but less frequent. Not only is it important to reduce our influence over these changes, but also to plan and adapt our built environment and economies in the face of these changes.

This article examines climatic trends over the past fifty years and projects those trends fifty years into the future. But more significantly, it imagines three possible future scenarios based on what conservation, mitigation, and adaptation steps are taken now and in the next decades. The status quo condition finds the basin continuing on the current path of doing a little bit, but not a lot, and the changes to the environment and society are not positive ones. The dystopian future imagines an all-too-real scenario where politics stagnate progress and the environmental changes fulfill the worst climate projections.

“We would prefer to see the utopian future, where the diverse communities of the basin come together to enact significant conservation and efficiency measures to save the environmental and economic heritage of the basin,” said coauthor Ardith Hurst.

Recommendations to reach a utopian future require immediate actions, including improvements in energy conservation, efficiency, and generation; curbs to emissions; preventative infrastructure upgrades and investments in maintaining and monitoring a healthy ecosystem.

Original Publication Information

Results of this study, "Climate change as a driver of change in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin," are reported by Alana M. Bartolai, Lingli He, Ardith E. Hurst, Linda Mortsch, Robert Paehlke, and Donald Scavia in Volume 41, Issue S1 of the Journal of Great Lakes Research, published by Elsevier, 2015. This special issue is titled Great Lakes Futures Project.

Contacts

For more information about the study, contact Ardith E. Hurst , 901 Saint Vincent, Irvine, CA 60208; [email protected].

For information about the Journal of Great Lakes Research, contact Stephanie Guildford, Scientific Co-Editor, Large Lakes Observatory, University Minnesota Duluth, 2205 East Fifth Street, Duluth, Minnesota, 55812-2401; [email protected]; (218) 726-8064.