Humboldt Bay’s Climate Change Vulnerabilities Detailed Tonight – May 30, 2012
SOUTH G STREET – In honor of Wetlands Month, the Arcata Marsh Interpretive Center presents a talk by Aldaron Laird, the only person to have walked or kayaked all 102 miles of Humboldt Bay’s shoreline and sloughs.
Laird, an environmental planner, specializes in getting permits for wetland enhancement projects and doing historical studies of rivers and tidal waters. He produced the Humboldt Bay Historical Atlas in 2007.
This year he is completing work for a California Coastal Conservancy grant to inventory the Bay’s shoreline and “ground truth” GIS data on the shoreline’s attributes–part of a statewide effort to map areas that will be affected by sea level rise.
During his epic walkabout, Laird discovered that acres of diked farmland are currently ill-equipped to hold back the rising sea. Our last native salt marsh ecosystems are also at risk of being drowned out by sea level rise.
Laird’s presentation, “Humboldt Bay Shoreline Inventory, Mapping and Sea Level Rise Assessment,” will include some of his 14,000 stunning photographs taken during the project.
Laird will speak at the Arcata Marsh Interpretive Center, 569 South G Street, Arcata, on Wednesday, May 30 at 7 p.m. Seating is limited so please call (707) 826-2359 or e-mail eservices@cityofarcata.org for reservations and information.
The lecture will be videotaped and aired at a later date on Suddenlink/Access Humboldt Channel 10 and will be available for on-demand viewing online at cityofarcata.org.
