Western Mountain Initiative: Response of Western Mountain Ecosystems to Climatic Variability and Change: Colorado

Research Task: BB06DN7.2.1
Task Manager: Jill Baron

Climate warming is affecting mountain ecosystems in the U.S. West, both directly through changes in water dynamics and indirectly through altered disturbance regimes. The Western Mountain Initiative team explores the effects of climate change on ecological disturbance, responses of forest vegetation, mountain hydrology, and the coupled hydroecological responses that determine vulnerability of these mountain systems to change. Extensive data sets, empirical studies, surveys, and monitoring programs are linked via models to hindcast and forecast the effects of changing climate on a number of factors, including hydrologic changes and glacier dynamics and the consequences of an altered water cycle for terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and chemistry. This task investigates the extent to which climate drivers are mediated by regional- or watershed-scale controls on ecosystem processes, thus quantifying vulnerability to climate change in mountain ecosystems. Research objectives focus on ecohydrologic responses in subalpine systems. Objectives of the FORT task include (1) developing vulnerability indices of select western mountain regions in Colorado, New Mexico, Montana, Washington, Oregon, and California to current climate variability and future climate changes using the spatially explicit ecological/hydrologic model RHESSys; (2) continuing long-term ecological research and monitoring (now in its 30th year) of the Loch Vale watershed, a high-altitude catchment in Rocky Mountain National Park; (3) conducting ecohydrological studies in the Loch Vale watershed, to quantify hydrologic conditions across a gradient in soil moisture availability; (4) studying the processes involved and the geographic extent of biogeochemical changes to headwaters ecosystems of the western U.S. in response to glacier and rock glacier melt; and (5) conducting workshops for public land managers to help them develop and implement resource management measures that promote ecosystem adaptation to climate change and reduce the risk of undesirable environmental outcomes.

 For more information contact Jill Baron

Related Products

Publications

• The interactive effects of excess reactive nitrogen and climate change on aquatic ecosystems and water resources of the United States
• Global change and the world’s mountains: research needs and emerging themes for sustainable development
• A synthesis of the ecological effects of air pollution from nitrogen and sulfur in the U.S
• Inland surface water [Chapter 18]
• Empirical critical loads of atmospheric nitrogen deposition for nutrient enrichment and acidification of sensitive US lakes
• Northwestern forested mountains [Chapter 8]
• Synthesis [Chapter 19]
• Effects of nitrogen deposition and empirical nitrogen critical loads for ecoregions of the United States
• Response of western mountain ecosystems to climatic variability and change: A collaborative research approach [Chapter 8]
• Loch Vale watershed long-term ecological research and monitoring program: quality assurance report, 2003–09
• Adaptation strategies for public land managers to climate change
• Options for National Parks and Reserves for adapting to climate change
• Climate-induced changes in high elevation stream nitrate dynamics
• Western Mountain Initiative: Predicting ecosystem responses to climate change
• Some guidelines for helping natural resources adapt to climate change
• Spatial patterns of simulated transpiration response to climate variability in a snow dominated mountain ecosystem
• Preliminary review of adaptation options for climate-sensitive ecosystems and resources - A Report by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research
• Response of western mountain ecosystems to climatic variability and change: the Western Mountain Initiative
• Response of western mountain ecosystems to climatic variability and change: the Western Mountain Initiative

Web Sites

• Riverine science at the Fort Collins Science Center