Climate change’s effects — including the disappearance of a butterfly — are already evident in the Indiana dunes region, an ecologist at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History said.
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Katherine Moore Powell, climate change ecologist, talked about a plan under development to react to those changes at a Feb. 1 meeting of the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission’s environmental committee.
The Indiana Dunes Climate Change Adaptation Plan, developed during three workshops last year, identifies climate change’s local effects and suggests ways to adapt. Workshop participants came from the region’s national and state parks, environmental groups, and NIPSCO, a major landowner in natural areas.
The draft plan is available for review, and a final plan could be coming out in March. The website is https://idnlclimateadapt.wixsite.com/idnlclimateadapt.
Now, Powell said, the challenge is: “What can we do to make it work?”
Changes seen so far in the Indiana dunes, according to the plan, include earlier springs, wetter and warmer weather, and more extreme weather conditions. Powell said the Karner blue butterfly – for a while, Northwest Indiana’s only representative on the Endangered Species List – disappeared from the region about six years ago because wetter springs and drier summers affected the plant it depended on.
The Purdue University Climate Change Research Center has predicted that by 2050, the region will experience a longer growing season, more days above 90 degrees, more rain, and fewer days of snow cover. Those changes have differing effects on plant and animal species, Powell said.
Some adapt quicker and some aren’t affected directly. And some invasive, non-native plants such as phragmites – the tall grasses with feathery tops seen in some wetlands – have thrived, crowding out native plants.
To deal with those changes, Powell said, managers of natural lands are looking for ways to create links between areas with rare or threatened plants, and they’re considering using lower-intensity fires in some natural areas than they might have used in the past.
Budget cuts also are an issue for national and state park managers. “They just don’t have the resources to do all the things they need to do,” Powell said.
Tim Zorn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.