171 – SPAAC Poster Competition
Report of Climate Change in Alabama
Robert P. Norton
GASPgroup.org
Community advocates gaspgroup.org in 2020 are initiating a climate report specifically for topics affecting our citizens. We hope to connect with as many people as possible, and we feel that the availability of local information is currently small and diffuse. The report will be hosted by and updated on the gaspgroup.org website. Alabama population is closing in on five million persons, and it boasts 668,000 acres of public forest land (National Forests in Alabama - Districts, n.d.). The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) currently calculates a rise from ~60 now, to ~150 incredibly hot days per annum, in southern states by 2080. Alabama contains several large lakes, the waterways feed directly into the Gulf of Mexico, and by proxy, the Atlantic Ocean (Elmer et al., 2020). We are anxious to know how we may be thus affecting, or effected by sea level rise. Sea level rise in Mobile is a potential peril, half the mud flats, shoals and salt marsh in neighboring Florida may be lost this century. Nitrogen (N) pollution to air and water is another distinct issue with accelerated effects being observed in the Gulf Coast as red tides, also known as algal bloom (Hallegraeff, 2010). Some Alabama localities, mostly urban, have serious air quality issues to address (Murdoch & Thayer, 1988), and we evaluate the role of these in terms of Alabama climate outcomes and carbon monoxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions (Carlson et al., 2017).