Climate change models forecast plenty of doomsday scenarios that could play out over the rest of the century and into the 2100s. Elizabeth Marino wants to make sure young Oregonians are prepared for anything Mother Nature can throw at them.

Marino — a professor of anthropology at OSU-Cascades — teaches environmental justice and social sustainability to students who aspire to become decision-makers at the local, national or even global levels. Her goal is to prepare them to manage disaster, without getting in nature’s path.

Instead of focussing on the construction of more infrastructure that was historically used to hold back nature, such as dams and levees, Marino teaches students how to analyze the social conditions of communities.

A better understanding of how communities function when faced with peril allows a society to be ready to respond to the specific needs of that area when disaster strikes.

“You can have a big hurricane with small impacts or a small hurricane with big impacts depending on what the social conditions are before the hurricane hits,” said Marino. “My students are trained to think about all the stakeholders that are going to be impacted by this (event).”

Variables can include housing density, wealth gaps, home construction standards, and ease of access to evacuation sites, among others.

Marino’s main area of study has been rising sea levels, loss of sea ice, and the impacts that these can have on communities from across the country. Last year, she was awarded a $750,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study the effects of flooding on coastal communities.

Marino’s work includes “Fierce Climate, Silent Ground” — a book that describes climate change impacts Shishmaref, an Alaskan village that is slowly being consumed by the sea.

While the threat of rising seas and disappearing beachfront property seems a long way from Central Oregon, Marino says such a catastrophe can still impact the High Desert.

Perhaps not this decade, or the next, but sometime later this century Marino believes coastal flooding could impact states beyond Florida and Louisiana — possibly rippling all the way to Central Oregon — due to migrations and economic shocks.

“Between four and 21 million people are going to be migrating by the year 2100, linked to sea level rise, flooding and inundation and other events,” said Marino. “Big migration shifts will have an impact on the entire nation. Oregon receives migration from other states and climate change may exacerbate that migration.”

Marino says future generations will need to find ways to keep migrants safe, and ensure that their movement is done in a planned way, rather than a hurried, mass migration. Human rights and dignities need to be assured, she said.

Marino’s classes take a deep dive into such migration scenarios and students learn how to deal with them from the ground up. She explains the tools needed to protect people suffering a slow-moving tragedy, as well as ways that the community receiving the migrants can help where needed.

“The next generation of thinkers — whether they be in Bend, Salem, Portland or Washington D.C. — need to understand best practices in managing environmental risk and disasters when they arrive,” said Marino. “Especially since Oregon may itself be affected.”

Preparing for challenges that could occur decades from now doesn’t mean that students can’t also apply what they’ve learned from Marino when facing today’s challenges. Many of the disaster readiness programs she advocates can be applied to other crises, such as a coronavirus pandemic.

“Training my students to solve these very complex problems at both the national, state and local levels is good for our community,” said Marino.

While Central Oregon doesn’t have a coast to be flooded, it does face climate change challenges, including warmer winters and extended drought conditions that are already impacting the area’s farming communities. Weak snowpack and early melt-offs leaves farmers short on water, resulting in fewer crops planted. 

While farmers are already feeling the impacts of water shortages, further dwindling of Central Oregon’s snowpack due to climate change could also impact municipal water supplies and fish habitats, said Scott Oviatt, snow survey supervisory hydrologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. 

“Each facet of historic water use could be impacted,” said Oviatt. “While some uses might be able to adapt to modified consumption, others could not absorb shortages.”

In case such unfortunate circumstances come to fruition in Central Oregon, Marino wants to make sure the next generation is able to step up and make the decisions based on what is best for the future residents of this area. 

“For Central Oregonians, questions revolve around water availability: who is affected, how are we affected, what are we going to do about water,” said Marino. “I think my students will be able to help answer that question.”