Flood Risk and Vulnerability Analysis Project - Atlantic Climate ...

Land Use Change
A pre-cursor effort to the land use change analysis was the development of digital community
flood watersheds. A community flood watershed is defined by the Water Resources
Management Division (WRMD) as a “watershed for a community / water body that has
experienced a documented flood event”. It includes all areas of the watershed upstream of the
community.
A land cover classification analysis was conducted in the thirty-nine community flood
watersheds across the island of Newfoundland. Seven (7) land cover classes were identified
from 10-meter resolution, 4-band multispectral SPOT imagery captured between 2005 and
2010. Additionally, two (2) land cover change classes, deforested areas due to development
and other deforested areas were derived from Earth Observation for Sustainable Development
of Forests data which was generated from 30-meter Landsat satellite imagery from the year
2000. The resulting nine (9) classes of land cover represent both time periods and were
summarized for each of the thirty-nine watersheds.
Across the thirty-nine community flood watersheds assessed, only one did not experience a loss
of forest cover over the assessment period, namely Hant‟s Harbour. The other community flood
watersheds experienced loss of forest cover in the range of about 4% to almost 28%.
Climate Change
Infrastructure, whether built, human or natural, is critically important to individuals and
communities. The purpose of infrastructure is to protect the life, health, and social welfare of all
of its inhabitants from the weather elements, to host economic activities and to sustain aesthetic
and cultural values. When infrastructure fails under extreme weather conditions and can no
longer provide services to communities, the result is often a disaster. As the climate changes, it
is likely that risks for infrastructure failure will increase as weather patterns shift and extreme
weather conditions become more variable and regionally more intense. Since infrastructure
underpins so many economic activities of societies, these impacts will be significant and will
require adaptation measures.
The particular time frames of interest for the climate change assessment were 2020, 2050 and
2080. Areas of focus for the climate change assessment were projected climate, hurricanes and
tropical storms, sea level rise, ocean currents, and some possible worst case scenarios.
Precipitation is anticipated to increase into the future as average temperatures rise across the
Province. Summer precipitation on the island remains basically neutral in the first half of the
century with mild increases thereafter while Labrador sees a steady rise in summer
precipitation. There is a clear steady rise in winter precipitation across all WRMD regions
through the century. The differential change in precipitation across the island‟s three WRMD
regions is very small. The West sees slightly larger winter increases while Labrador shows large
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