With an entire coastline facing the Atlantic Ocean, the province of Nova Scotia has ordered its municipalities to prepare for the effects of climate change.
The picturesque town of Lunenburg, a UNESCO world heritage site, and home port of the famous Bluenose schooner, is one of the towns very concerned about the future.
Towns are being given monies to prepare plans for dealing with affects from rising sea levels, and storm surges.
Lunenburg has many of its scenic and heritage buildings right on the shore.
Eric Rapaport, an associate professor at Dalhousie University, has studied the potential affects of climate change on Lunenburg and surrounding areas. He said models are predicting a sea level rise of one metre over the next century.
He said the town is already vulnerable to storm surges of the type seen ten years ago with Hurricane Juan which caused widespread damage, adding that infrastructure and community layout must take changing future realities into planning.
Some of the early evaluation work in Lunenburg has been done with up to date aerial photos of the shoreline and lidar mapping to establish accurate contour maps.
Rapaport points out that planning has to start now. “We can’t do this overnight and we’re talking about a lot of investment and intergenerational costs that will be endured by the current generation and the next generation in order to prepare for such things.”
(with files from CBC)
For reasons beyond our control, and for an undetermined period of time, our comment section is now closed. However, our social networks remain open to your contributions.