2016-12-12 General Committee - Attachment 1 to Item 6 - Biodiversity Assessment Report

                                                Noosa Biodiversity Plan – Biodiversity Assessment Report



      5.2.2      Climate vulnerability assessment
Climate change vulnerability is a function of exposure and sensitivity. The first step in understanding
vulnerability is to assess whether a biodiversity value is exposed to the effects of climate change (e.g.
low lying coastal areas are exposed to sea level rise and coastal erosion, whereas the hinterland areas
are not). For values that are exposed, an analysis of their sensitivity to climate change effects then
determines overall vulnerability, with those values that are both exposed and sensitive determined as
being vulnerable to climate change.

This assessment has been undertaken at a landscape scale for BVGs and is therefore somewhat general.
This was considered appropriate for this study to provide a ‘first pass’ of the general patterns of climate
change vulnerability within Noosa Shire and to provide direction to future in-depth studies that can be
undertaken.

For this assessment, three key features of climate change were considered – sea level rise, increased
bushfire risk and a hotter, drier climate (i.e. increased temperature and evaporation). These were chosen
as they were deemed to be the primary threats associated with a changing climate (see Section 4.1).
They were also the climate change effects for which spatial data analysis could be reliably undertaken.

Sea level rise
Exposure to sea level rise was based on the Indicative Erosion Prone Area mapping (Department of
Environment and Heritage Protection, 2015), which maps (among other factors) storm surges and erosion
risk incorporating future sea level rise prediction (0.8 m rise by 2100 based on 1990 sea levels). Figure
31 shows the spatial extent of sea level rise exposure within the Noosa Shire. Not surprisingly, these
areas are concentrated around the fringes of the coastal waterways of the Noosa River and its associated
low flow lagoon system and the Lakes Cootharaba, Cooriobah, Doonella and Weyba. As sea levels rise,
low lying vegetation will be inundated and fringing areas increasingly exposure to periodic saline
intrusions.

This mapping does not currently consider changes in the salinity profile of freshwater areas (due to lack
of reliable data), however this is also likely to be an issue.

Table 9 below provides a quantitative assessment of the total extent of each BVG type that is predicted
to be exposed to sea level rise. In terms of the proportional impact to overall BVG extents, the most
affected vegetation types are mangrove and saltmarshes, followed by paperbark woodlands. However,
BVG types most sensitive to sea level rise impacts are the saltmarshes and paperbark woodlands. Whilst
effecting a lower proportion of the BVG type, rainforests, wetlands and heath communities are
communities containing significant biodiversity values that would be significantly susceptible to saline
incursion and storm tide inundation as a result of sea level rise.




  © ECO LOGICAL AUSTRALIA PTY LTD                                                                       79