How Global Changes Affect Local Fisheries

The Future of Fisheries: Marine Protected Areas, Ecosystem Management, Climate Change and All That is the title of a free talk slated for Thursday, June 26, at 5 p.m. at the Chilmark Public Library.

Dr. Andrew Rosenberg, professor of natural resources policy and management and professor of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space at the University of New Hampshire, is the guest speaker.

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Saving the Planet, One Oyster at a Time
Rick Karney

The Copenhagen climate summit has been much in the news for two weeks and the media is full of stories about rising carbon dioxide (C02) levels, increasing acidity of the oceans, drastic changes in weather patterns, the warmest decade on record, melting glaciers, rising sea water levels and coastal communities in imminent danger of inundation. And that’s just the tip of the melting iceberg!

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Climate Changes Island Landscape
Liz Weiss

The extraordinary beauty, rich geological history and challenges for preservation of the Vineyard landscape were all topics for discussion last Wednesday evening in paleoecologist David Foster’s guest lecture at the Polly Hill Arboretum in West Tisbury.

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Experts Affirm Sea Level Rise
Mike Seccombe

Of all the various experts gathered to speak about global warming and sea level rise at last Friday’s Living on the Edge conference on Nantucket, Franklin W. Nutter, president of the Reinsurance Association of America, delivered perhaps the most disturbing message.

His insight was not related to the phenomenon itself so much as to the chances of a meaningful and concerted response. It was about politics and psychology more than environmental science.

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Oak Bluffs Plots the Future With Rising Sea in Mind
Mike Seccombe

There’s been a great deal of focus lately on the local effects of the rush by federal and state authorities to build big wind farms near the Vineyard to ameliorate climate change, but very little focus on the local effects of climate change itself.

Except in Oak Bluffs, where there is quiet work underway to prepare for the worst, including sea level rise that is expected to erase beachfront property as it is now known, and the potentially ruinous effects of extreme storms caused by climate change. And it’s all backed by a state grant.

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Global Warming Spreads Seeds of Change
Liz Durkee

With sea level rise at our doorstep and storms chomping away at the shoreline it’s time to rethink an economy based largely on seasonal, coastal recreation. Why? Because as Ginny Jones, a lifelong Islander from a farming family muses so succinctly, “We can’t eat tourists.”

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What Climate Change Means to You
Liz Durkee

That well-worn phrase — climate change. We know it’s out there, hovering over our lives like a heavy cloud. But what does it mean exactly — to you and the Island of Martha’s Vineyard?

It means striking changes in the three most critical components of Island life:

• The natural environment — the air, land and water;

• Our physical well being — our human health;

• The local economy.

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More Frequent Flooding a Serious Concern
Liz Durkee

One day last month close to five inches of rain fell on Martha’s Vineyard. In Chilmark alone it caused a five-foot wide, four-foot deep sinkhole on State Road, the collapse of a two culverts and the dirt road to Lucy Vincent Beach, the collapse of an old granite bridge and the closure of South Road near the Allen Farm due to an impassable puddle.

Suddenly it’s flooding everywhere, all over the world — and it’s no fluke.

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The Hard Facts About Sea Level Rise
Liz Durkee

Climate change is complicated; sea level rise is not. We live on an Island — a glorified sandbar — and the sea is closing in on us. It is rising much faster than anticipated. In the last century sea level rose by about a foot. In this century, due to human-induced global warming, it is expected to rise at least five feet, according to a new report by the international Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program.

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Warmer Waters No Friend to Shellfish
Liz Durkee

Clam chowder, bay scallops, fried oysters. Wampum bracelets. Shellfish are the grand bounty of the soft, sparkling salt ponds that ring the Island shore. We’d be hard pressed to find a local cultural symbol more significant than the water-worn purple and white quahaug shell. Purple — the Island color.

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