Climate assessment team holds open house

Group sees plenty of conservation, economic opportunities in Monroe County

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In the face of climate change, Monroe County needs to build a more resilient landscape.

That was the message experts from the Climate Readiness and Rural Economic Opportunity Assessment project team imparted to a crowd of few dozen people last Wednesday during its open house at the Sparta American Legion.

Monroe County was chosen to be the pilot county for the project, which is being conducted to identify conservation-based economic opportunities in the effort to address climate change and apply those in other parts of the state. It held its first meeting in early May.

The assessment is being led by Fred Clark, executive director of Wisconsin Green Fire, a non-profit focused on science, conservation and natural resources.

He has assembled a core team of experts including water scientists, hydrologist, geologists, agronomists and other experts who have been working alongside the Monroe County Climate Change Task Force. Other partners in the project include an array of Wisconsin and federal agencies and non-profits.

Some of the goals of the project include:

  • Projecting future climate risks
  • Developing strategies to reduce those risks, especially to infrastructure
  • Identifying agricultural land, forests and conservation land that are most vulnerable to future climate change impacts
  • Recommending strategies and practices to increase climate resiliency on the landscape
  • Identifying carbon offsets opportunities and other eco-system services that represent new revenue streams for producers that can not only drive conservation practices but also pay for them.

At last Wednesday’s open house, Clark shared some of the project’s findings and some initial ideas for climate readiness.

“We want to be ready to recommend strategies and practices that will be the best investment you all can make to help prepare for some of the things we know are coming as well as some the uncertainties that we also can be sure of happening in the future,” he said.

He added there are a lot of opportunities to keep farms and forests productive and economically viable while producing benefits like clean air and water and the ability of the land to help mitigate the effects of climate change.

“And ultimately to keep our rural areas and rural communities viable,” he said.

Rob Montgomery, a consulting engineer who headed up the project’s climate sub-team, laid out the “big picture” of climate in Wisconsin. He said temperatures in Wisconsin have steadily increased over the past 70 years with the average winter temperature rising the quickest –  four degrees.

With that has come a 20% increase in precipitation along with increasing incidents of intense rainfalls. He pointed out the impetus for the climate assessment project in Monroe County was the 2018 flood, where 10 inches of rain fell in parts of the county. He referred to it as an “off-the-charts storm.”

Montgomery said the future will be warmer yet, particularly in the winter, and extreme storms will become even more intense. He said data from the Wisconsin Initiative on Change Impact Center for Climate Research predicts a 10% increase in 100-year storms by 2050, and that extraordinarily large storms will be more likely in the future.

Christina Anderson, a climate specialist with Wisconsin Land and Water, heads the agriculture and farmland sub-committee. She said Monroe County has about 300,000 acres of farmland, which makes up about 50% of land use.

Her sub-committee is tasked with finding ways to help farmers limit impacts on lands while contributing to the effort of building a resilient landscape.

“If you’re a farmer in this group you understand that climate is driving every single piece of your entire business so whether it’s an extreme event today or hot temperatures tomorrow, or drought down the road, you have to be ready for that,” she said. “We need to build a more resilient landscape whether or not you believe how fast it’s changing or what’s happening day to day.”

Anderson said it comes down to some simple steps: limiting soil disturbance (no-till), creating healthier soil, diversifying crops and incorporating more trees. All those practices also help with carbon sequestration.

She added that ag is the only industry that can both mitigate the effects of climate change as well as adapt to them.

Monroe County’s other big asset is its forest land, which covers about 297,000 acres and produces around 12 million cubic feet of wood per year.

Clark said conservation and economic opportunities exists in the county’s forests, one of them being carbon offset credits – paying timber growers money for unharvested trees which sequester carbon.

 While those credits are not available yet, he said, they can be expected and can become a driver for better forest management.

Clark said the group is still working on its recommendations, which will be just that – recommendations. It will be up to the county and its residents what they do with that advise, he added.

The group will be holding three listening sessions in October. The first is at the Cashton Community Hall on Oct. 14 from 6-7:30 p.m. That will be followed on Oct. 21 with a session at the Wilton Community Hall from 4-5:30 p.m. and another at the Tomah High School cafeteria from 6:30-8 p.m.

Climate Readiness and Rural Economic Opportunity Assessment

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