How sea level rise could sever a vital transport link in Canada | Climate News
How sea level rise could sever a vital transport link in Canada | Climate News #sea #level #rise #sever #vital #transport #link #Canada #Climate #News Welcome to NaijaLanded, here is the new story we have for you today:
This story was produced with support from the Internews Earth News Network.
Isthmus of Chignecto, Nova Scotia, Canada – Seven years ago, the sun, moon and earth combined to create tides in the Bay of Fundy, pushing the sea within a few centimeters of the national rail line that connects eastern Canada’s Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
The slap of water on the edge of the train track marks the culmination of an 18-year astronomical cycle that will repeat for about a decade – and has sparked fears among locals of the ever-present risk of flooding.
Today, even a major storm could inundate the slender Isthmus of Chignecto, a 21-kilometer-wide (13-mile) land bridge on the edge of the Bay of Fundy, an important economic corridor that generates about $27 billion in annual trade (PDF) . The Bay of Fundy already has some of the highest tides in the world, and by 2100 sea levels in the region will rise by about a metre (3 ft) – possibly more than doubling in extreme cases – this narrow strip The size of the land at risk for the strip has never been greater.
“This is probably the most vulnerable place in eastern Canada,” said David Cogon, mayor of Amherst, Nova Scotia, on the southern border of the Isthmus. Rising sea levels could submerge a third of his town by 2100 and cut off the only viable transport link between the province of one million people and the rest of the country.
“The province was born out of the sea, centered on our sea front…so sea level rise will be a problem,” Kogon told Al Jazeera.
In Nova Scotia, coastal communities are grappling with their unusual vulnerability to climate change, as rising water levels threaten to deplete more and more land. With coastal erosion affecting many towns and cities, the provincial government passed legislation in 2019 to regulate what can and cannot be built along the 13,000-kilometer coastline, while local bylaw rules govern how high elevation new buildings must be built (PDF).
The Chignector Isthmus, which connects Amherst to the northern town of Sackville, New Brunswick, is in particular danger: Experts have long warned that uncontrolled sea-level rise could one day completely flood the stretch of land land, turning Nova Scotia into an island. While the Isthmus itself is sparsely populated, a major flooding event could directly affect thousands of people in both towns and have economic impacts nationwide.
Protected by a system of earth dykes originally constructed in the 1600s to facilitate agricultural development, the Isthmus holds important utilities and transportation infrastructure, including the Canadian National Rail Line and the Trans-Canada Highway. The Chignecto Corridor is also the only route in and out of Nova Scotia for wildlife such as bobcats and endangered moose. According to The Nature Conservancy of Canada, many birds that depend on these forest wetlands are at risk, and the isthmus is an “important transit point” for migrating waterfowl.
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