Crawford Lake: What the past can teach us about urban living today
Retrieved on:
Wednesday, July 19, 2023
Plutonium, Royal Ontario Museum, Global, Human, Noise, Anthropocene, Tree, Survival, Allan, History, Carbon, Creativity, Biodiversity, Plant, Climate change, Acquisition, Golden spike, Collection, Time, GSSP, Century, Bowl game, Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point, City, Ecosystem, Environment, Air pollution, Dust, Dust Bowl, Lake, Animal husbandry, Aquaculture, Civil engineering, Dredging, Agriculture, Road, Hunting, Seaweed, Crawford Lake Conservation Area, Lake Ontario
Further, as a limnologist studying inland waters I have long understood that lakes are sentinels of climate change.
Key Points:
- Further, as a limnologist studying inland waters I have long understood that lakes are sentinels of climate change.
- Small changes in environmental conditions can lead to larger changes in a lake’s physical, chemical and biological processes, impacting the ecosystem services they provide.
- And what, if anything, can it teach us about how we interact with our environments?
A local history of environmental change
- This varving allows for particularly accurate historical dating of environmental events.
- But even beyond its status as a Golden Spike candidate, Crawford Lake’s sediments tell a powerful story of human history that is both local and global.
- Thus, in one continuous sediment core, we witness Indigenous and colonial local histories, as well as the global signature of an inflection point in Earth systems due to human activities.
The impacts of intentions
- Ultimately, Crawford Lake’s sediments teach us that humans have always — and will always — change our environments in some way.
- But it is our cultures, discourses and attitudes towards our environment that ultimately determine what this change will look like.
- It’s easy to focus on the negative impacts that humans can have on the environment.
Reversing urban impacts
- As we are — for the first time in human history — a predominantly urban species, it is now more important than ever to design our cities to help ensure our urban areas create net positive outcomes to local biodiversity and climate impacts.
- The possibilities are as diverse as the landscapes where the cities are situated, compounded with the collective creativity of their inhabitants.
- Toronto, the largest urban area close to Crawford Lake, might adopt measures being undertaken by other cities around the world, for instance creating wildlife habitat corridors connecting its existing ravine systems, and expanding the efforts of locals using their private yards as refuges for native plants.
- We can tap into the best that our species is capable of, improving our quality of living along the way.