Years spent researching the effects rising global temperatures has on local plant and animal life landed a former Millarville resident’s findings in a prestigious publication this month.
University of Calgary researcher Dr. David Laskin, who now lives in Canmore, spent years using satellites and cameras to monitor temperatures below the Rockies’ forest canopy to track the impact temperature change has on plants like buffaloberries and its biggest fan, the grizzly bear.
Laskin attended Millarville Community School and Oilfields High School before spending his high school years at Strathcona-Tweedsmuir School, graduating in 1995.
Laskin’s findings, a 3,000 word report, was published in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change on April 15, after undergoing rigorous peer reviews by multiple experts in the field.
“Nature Climate Change is one of, if not, the top climate journals,” he said. “I was really pleased to publish in this particular journal. When you’re doing research this is how you add to the broader body of knowledge. This is the goal for academic research.”
For years, Laskin worked as a research technician on a provincial project called the Foothills Research Institute Grizzly Bear Program at the University of Calgary while completing his master’s degree in geography. The work turned into a PhD project and resulted in this published piece under the guidance of the university’s Dr. Greg McDermid in the geography department.
The program mapped grizzly bear habitat to determine population trends.
“Grizzly bears follow a seasonal schedule where they move from one food source to the next,” said Laskin. “The goal was to develop a monitoring framework to look at a species phenology – the timing of events in nature like migrations and fruit ripening.”
Grizzly bears are an indicator of overall ecosystem health due to their robust ability to adapt, Laskin said. They are good at adapting, so when they can't, you know something is wrong, he said, adding the absence of grizzlies, which once roamed the North American plains from Hudson Bay to Mexico, means they’re struggling to adapt, he said.
In recent decades they’ve flourished in the Foothills and Rockies, but Laskin said that, too, is changing.
“I grew up just west of Okotoks and we hadn’t seen grizzly bears out there for over my lifetime,” he said. “Now we’re seeing grizzlies east of Calgary. It could be related to climate change, it could be the effectiveness of our management - the Province’s move to list grizzlies as ‘threatened.' It could be shift in available food sources. It could be a lot of things, but we’re not sure.”
One of Laskin’s projections, as outlined in his article, is the advance in timing of critical caloric events for the bears, specifically the shift in ripening of buffaloberries from mid-to-late summer to only mid summer.
He estimates that by 2080 the berries will begin ripening three weeks earlier, changing the bears food focused behaviours.
With buffaloberries a major source of calories for grizzlies before hibernation - a grown male is capable of eating up to 200,000 berries a day - grizzlies are going longer without consuming the berries before hibernation and have to find other food sources to meet that need, said Laskin.
“They might move into other areas to look for other sources,” he said. “We will find them in areas we don’t expect to see them, perhaps this is why we are seeing bears further east.”
This also impacts breeding, said Laskin.
Although grizzlies breed in the spring, their eggs implant close to hibernation and only if the sow has at least 20 per cent body fat, said Laskin.
“The amount of fat they have on them plays a critical role in the reproduction,” he said. “The buffaloberry crop shifting could have an impact on their rates of reproduction.”
Laskin said climate change is affecting more than grizzlies and buffaloberries.
“Think about all the other animals, plants and pollinators that are going to be impacted by climate change,” he said. “We’re already seeing some impacts.”
In the Arctic, which studies show is warming two to three times faster than the global average, caribou are no longer giving birth when forage species are at their most nutritious due to the advance in timing of green up, Laskin said.
“Now, by the time caribou are born the optimum forage has degraded,” he said. “That has really affected their population.”
It’s also impacting the synchronized timing of insect life cycles and the hatching of bird eggs, in what Laskin calls a trophic mismatch.
“The timing of the insects are changing but the birds are laying the eggs at the same time so there’s less food for the hatchlings to eat,” he said.
Laskin has written three papers building up to this recent article while monitoring plant growth and thermal data from satellites and cameras.
“The more we learn about the impact, the better we’ll be able to deal with it,” he said.
