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Global-scale environmental changes in mountain protected areas, the CLIMET project
Daniel B. Fagre1 and David L. Peterson2
1. USGS Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center, West Glacier, MT
2. USDA Forest Service, Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Laboratory, Seattle, WA
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The CLIMET (Climate Landscape Interactions – Mountain
Ecosystem Transect) project was developed to investigate
the influence of climatic variability on a transect of
three distinct mountain bioregions, with large mountain
national parks as core research sites, from the Pacific
Coast to the Rocky Mountains. Glacier, North Cascades,
and Olympic National Parks are large,
wilderness-dominated parks that reflect a gradient of
climatic influences from maritime (Olympic) to
continental (Glacier). In each bioregion, we documented
impacts of past climatic variability on glacier mass
balance, snowpack water equivalence, hydrological
output, forest growth, invasion by trees into subalpine
meadows, and frequency and severity of wildfires. For
instance, glaciers in Glacier have been reduced from 150
to 27 during the past 150 years and wildfires in
Washington have responded to multidecadal climatic
shifts such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. The
BIOME-BGC model was used to examine spatial variability
in climate, vegetation production, water budgets, and
carbon stocks along the transect to assess impacts on
human populations now and in the future. A climate
change scenario that decreased current summer
precipitation and increased annual temperature resulted
in reduced water supplies (outflows) at mid-elevation
sites but the highest elevations, which have miniscule
spatial representation, actually increased outflow. |
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