Climate Change and Watershed Resilience with Les Stanfield

Les W. Stanfield is a Senior Ecologist, who has been a wealth of knowledge to the Water Rangers team! He has been at the forefront of science and decision making efforts. He has also spent the last ten years trying to understand the role of headwater drainage features in managing cumulative effects within a landscape context and how to provide tools to managers to guide subsequent decisions that will improve the sustainability and overall eco-health of communities. 

He explains in his radio interview at 99.3 County FM:

“What is happening now in Canada is that we are seeing extremes in climate for which many of our watersheds, particularly those in developed areas lack the resilience to respond to.

In fact what we are seeing is the cumulative response to climate change, poor planning that allowed development in flood plains and the dual problem of increasing the speed and volumes of water from our landscape and a loss of storage capacity of water.  The good news is that we have the technology to fix this problem and to create a more transparent and just society at the same time.  “

In this podcast Les Stanfield outlines some of  the history and science of the problem and outlines some easily attainable solutions that could help address this global challenge.

Les worked with the Ministry of Natural Resources for nearly 30 years and is now the co-founder of Ecohealth Solutions.  He developed the Ontario Stream Assessment Protocol and its associated databases and collaboratives to bring science to the challenge of quantifying the cumulative effects of disturbances on stream health.

We are planning on working closely with him in the coming year. Watch this space!