Wednesday, Mar 26, 2008
It seems that people everywhere are talking about climate change. Magazines like Glamour and Cosmopolitan offer quizzes to gauge how green you are. Backpacker magazine compares your carbon footprint for a range of park destinations. In 2007, sales of the eco-friendly Toyota Prius were up 68% over the previous year (source: Forbes.com). What was once discussed with much skepticism is now ensconced in popular media.
Climate change, however, is not a new concept to national parks. In 1991, scientists in the former NPS Global Change Research Program began to examine the effects of climate change on parks. Since that time, the program has gone through many changes, including transfer to the short-lived National Biological Survey and then into the USGS Biological Research Division. Today, many of the scientists that were a part of the former NPS Global Change Research Program remain dedicated to conducting research in parks. Their focus remains on understanding and predicting ecosystem responses to climatic variability and change.
At the forefront of that research is the Western Mountain Initiative (WMI). Western Mountain Initiative scientists conduct research in many western parks, combining expertise from a range of disciplines including forest ecology, hydrology, and fire science. Glacier, Rocky Mountain, Olympic, North Cascades, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Yosemite, and Bandelier National Parks have all hosted WMI research projects. The objective of the WMI is to understand and predict the responses of western mountain ecosystems to climate, emphasizing sensitivities, thresholds, resistance, and resilience.
When data from WMI research is synthesized across sites and regions it increases our understanding of ecosystem response to climate change. The Western Mountain Initiative demonstrates the value of long-term research and monitoring in national parks to detect significant changes over time and their causes—including climate and other factors. It has linked with international efforts to monitor mountain ecosystems, contributing to a global network seeking early warnings of the effects of climatic variability and change on natural resources.
The activities of the Western Mountain Initiative permit resource managers to be better prepared for a climate altered by greenhouse gases wherever they have high-quality scientific data available to detect changes in the condition of natural resources.
Read more about the Western Mountain Initiatives work in national parks in the Summer 2006 issue of Park Science. http://www.nature.nps.gov/ParkScience/index.cfm?ArticleID=45 or visit the Western Mountain Initiative website at: http://www.cfr.washington.edu/research.fme/wmi/index.htm .
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