Research Task: 8327CMY.2.0
Task Manager: Craig Allen
Mountain ecosystems of the western U.S. provide irreplaceable goods and services such as water, wood, biodiversity, and recreational opportunities, but their potential responses to anticipated climatic changes are poorly understood. The overarching objective of the Western Mountain Initiative (WMI) is to understand and predict the responses—emphasizing sensitivities, thresholds, resistance, and resilience—of western mountain ecosystems to climatic variability and change. Objectives of this task include (1) elucidating centennial- to millennial-length shifts in past vegetation and fire regimes; (2) determining responses of fire to short-term (annual to decadal) climatic variation; (3) elucidating long- and short-term climatic controls of tree mortality, including thresholds for dieback; and (4) determining the effects of climatic variability, fire, and land use on watershed runoff and erosion processes. FORT scientists also will continue documenting rapid and extensive climate-induced vegetation mortality, begin assembling information on global patterns and processes of massive forest dieback, and continue conducting long-term research and monitoring in Bandelier National Monument, including the Frijolito Watershed.
For more information contact Craig Allen
U.S. Department of the Interior | U.S. Geological Survey
URL: http://www.fort.usgs.gov/Research/research_tasks.asp
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