Volume 2 - Issue 11 | August 2022 Wrap-up:
Losing Long Valley: Another Blow to Climate Change Resiliency
By Allison Weber
The area south of Mammoth Lakes on the US 395, encompassing Crowley Lake and the Whitmore Hot Tubs, is not just a pretty area with great views. Irrigated meadows and wetlands along the Upper Owens River provide important habitat, outdoor recreation, scenic vistas, cultural history, and more. But did you know that these meadows, owned by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) and managed by local ranchers, are actually a critical tool in mitigating climate change?
Wetland habitats are one of the most important ecosystems for carbon sequestration, the process in which carbon is captured and stored in the environment. Meadows can actually sequester six times as much carbon as forests and seasonally inundated wetland types such as the wet meadows seen in Long Valley and Little Round Valley especially sequester more greenhouse gasses than they emit.
Wetland soils are low in oxygen. This slows decomposition and leads to the accumulation of organic matter, the carbon-based compounds found in nature. Carbon is held (or sequestered) efficiently in such vegetation types as grasses and shrubs, as well as all that makes up the soil ecosystem: litter (dead plant materials), peats (decayed vegetation/organic material), and sediments that have built up over thousands of years. These conditions over time make wetland habitats disproportionately large carbon stores; wetlands contain 20-30% of estimated global soil carbon despite making up less than 10% of the earth’s land surface area. The wet meadows of Long Valley have been managed by the native people of the Eastern Sierra for thousands of years. The Nüümü people, from the Mono Lake-Yosemite Region down through the Owens Valley, traditionally spread water from the Mono Lake headwaters and Owens river into the surrounding landscape, creating rich habitat in the Eastern Sierra rain shadow. Disturbing the ecosystem of Long Valley, known as Pugwihuu in the Nüümü/Paiute language of the Owens Valley, would disrupt all the values this land has built over time.
Disturbance of wetlands not only causes massive habitat loss, it also makes for significant loss of climate change mitigation. If dewatered, these ecosystems not only lose their ability to sequester carbon, they actually become carbon emitters. Healthy wetlands are some of the largest carbon stores in the world, but when they are disturbed they become emitters of the top 3 gasses which most contribute to global warming: carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. Once disturbed, it becomes difficult to regain these benefits as rainfall fails to penetrate the dried out land. Preventing dewatering in the first place preserves a multitude of values in the Eastern Sierra: habitat, recreation, culture, livelihoods, public health, etc. while preventing the change of these lands from carbon reservoirs into carbon sources.
The best practice for protecting carbon stores in wetlands remains preventing wetland drainage and other land and water management practices that lead to the dewatering of wetlands. Here in California we have already lost 90% of our historic wetlands. LADWP removing water from Long Valley and Little Round Valley leases would further contribute to this historic loss while damaging a rural area’s ability to mitigate climate change and related climate disasters such as fire and dust issues. Californians know better now; we cannot afford to throw more of our state’s natural resources away. Now more than ever we need to not only look to new solutions for climate issues— we need to steward those which already exist.
On Tour: Keep Long Valley Green's short documentary "Without Water"
Upcoming showings:
Black Rock Film Festival - August 28th - September 5th at Black Rock City Theater, Burning Man Festival. More information is available here: https://blackrockcityfilmfestival.com/
Catalina Island Film Festival - Saturday, September 24th at 9:30 a.m. at the ACC Theater, Avalon. Tickets are available here: https://catalina.eventive.org/schedule
Mammoth Trail Fest - September 24th at the Village, Mammoth Lakes. More information is available here: https://www.mammothtrailfest.com/
The aerial photos of Long Valley used in this month's edition of Every Last Drop are in coordination with EcoFlight, whose mission is to educate and advocate for the protection of wild lands and wildlife habitat using small aircraft.
Last May Keep Long Valley Green Coalition Organizer Allison Weber, Friends of the Inyo Executive Director Wendy Schneider, and Chairwoman of the Mono Lake Kutzadika'a Charlotte Lange went up with EcoFlight for a loop over Long Valley, witnessing the difference in greenery between where water flows and where it does not after a dry winter.
This trip was a follow up to a previous flight recorded in late fall, when the valley is seasonally brown. Stay tuned for some of the awesome footage from the latest spring flight!
