Science Partnership for Global Change Education
Solution
Human Climate Change
While there is no quick fix to the multitude of climate change impacts, there are an amazing array of ideas being explored to help us adapt to the changes that climate change brings and mitigate future impacts. We hope this section is a beacon of hope within a tough subject.
Bringing climate change issues into your classroom can be daunting since there are so many devastating ways we are affected. Wherever we look, the news about climate and weather is dire and catastrophic. Highlighting solutions and actions we can take as individuals or as a society helps change the narrative and emotions about climate change.
Our goal in this section is to provide inspiration and hope for ourselves and our students. We can solve this! And here are some things that are being done or some amazing ideas that are being researched. We hope you share these ideas with your student to empower them to be part of the solution.
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Mitigating Rising Greenhouse Gases by Increasing Carbon Sinks
Wetland Protection and Restoration
There are two main ways to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere: 1) reduce our carbon emissions or 2) increase carbon sinks (where carbon gets stored). One way to increase carbon sinks is through biologic carbon sequestration, which refers to storage of atmospheric carbon in vegetation, soils, woody products, and aquatic environments.
Wetlands (both coastal and inland) are effective at sequestering CO2 from the atmosphere through plant photosynthesis. Carbon is held in the living vegetation as well as in litter, peats, organic soils, and sediments that have built up, in some instances, over thousands of years.
The loss of an existing wetland means not only the loss of that particular carbon sink, but also that the carbon stored in that wetland will be released. When disturbed or warmed, wetlands release the three greenhouse gases that contribute the most to global warming: carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.
Protecting and restoring wetlands is a vital tool for keeping carbon out of our atmosphere and stored in natural reservoirs. There are many examples of wetland restoration around the San Francisco Bay Area most recently around the Suisun Bay,where an intentional levee break allowed the return of tidal flows. Soon vegetation will grow rapidly and the marsh will quickly become a refuge for migrating birds, spawning fish, and a carbon sink.
Click here for more info about Biologic Carbon Sequestration from the USGS.