Time Travelling to Alberta’s Past and Future Under a Changing Climate

Presenter: Richard Schneider, Nature Alberta Executive Director

In this presentation, Dr. Richard Schneider will take us on a journey through time. We’ll begin 6,000 years ago, when Alberta’s climate was roughly 2 °C warmer than today, to see how our grasslands, boreal forest, and other major ecosystems were distributed under moderately warmer conditions. We’ll then jump forward to 2123 to explore how Alberta’s ecosystems are likely to shift in the future under best-case and worst-case warming scenarios. We will also spend some time at ground level, examining how changes in climate drive these large-scale ecosystem shifts. To wrap up, Dr. Schneider will discuss the implications of ecosystem changes for biodiversity conservation efforts.

Richard Schneider is a conservation biologist who has worked on species at risk and land-use planning in Alberta for the past 30 years. A new open access version of his book, Biodiversity Conservation in Canada: From Theory to Practice, is now available at: openeducationalberta.ca/schneider/ . He currently serves as the Executive Director of Nature Alberta.