Climate Change: The Science of Impacts

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As warmer, shorter winters lead to a drying of the West, wildfires burn hotter and longer and can result in forest-damaging crown fires. National Park Service photo.

Drought and climate change are causing extensive forest dieback in the U.S. West as well as worldwide. This photo shows dead ponderosa pines in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico killed by a combination of drought stress and attacks by bark beetles on weakened trees. USGS photo by Craig D. Allen.

USGS ecologist Jill Baron and field technician Austin Krcmarik prepare a stream gage for another season of measuring discharge in the Loch Vale watershed, Rocky Mountain National Park. Dr. Baron and colleagues are conducting research to understand and predict the potential impacts of climate change in mountain ecosystems in the U.S. West. Photo by Manuel Toro, University of Madrid. Courtesy of Jill Baron, USGS.

For many years, investigators at the USGS Fort Collins Science Center (FORT) have led ongoing research projects that address climate change and its direct and indirect impacts on living resources. Climate change involves long-term alteration in the characteristic weather conditions of a region, such as changes in precipitation and temperature. Recent studies have found not only that climate change has its own particular impacts, but that temperature changes can exacerbate the effects of more traditional disturbances, like air pollution, drought, or habitat loss stemming from land-use changes. A summary of the recent report to the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, Preliminary Review of Adaptation Options for Climate-Sensitive Ecosystems and Resources¹, encapsulates these interactions as follows:

Ecosystems and their services (land and water resources, agriculture, biodiversity) experience a wide range of stresses, including pests and pathogens, invasive species, air pollution, extreme events, wildfires, and floods. Climate change can cause or exacerbate direct stress through high temperatures, reduced water availability, and altered frequency of extreme events and severe storms…. Climate change can also modify the frequency and severity of stresses. For example, increased minimum temperatures and warmer springs extend the range and lifetime of many pests that stress trees and crops.²

Our Role: Understanding and Forecasting Climate Change Impacts

FORT science is largely driven by the needs of our clients and partners in the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) and other agencies. With change agents such as warming temperatures and the attendant complications described above, managers have their hands full as they strive to keep ecosystems functioning and native species from becoming listed or disappearing altogether, while balancing this with other human needs and activities. The scientists and other specialists at FORT have the breadth and depth of expertise to meet managers’ ongoing needs and new challenges brought about by the cascading effects of climate change. For example:

• Drought and climate change are causing extensive forest dieback in the U.S. West as well as worldwide. FORT scientists are working nationally and internationally to identify trends and causes, through both their own investigations and their leadership within the Western Mountain Initiative.
• The interplay of climate warming and agriculturally driven environmental change modifies conditions and habitats for breeding, migrating, and wintering avian species across prairie, plains, and wetland landscapes. Understanding the relations among bird populations, agricultural practices, changing climate, and water quality and availability is necessary for the protection of migratory bird species. FORT investigators are combining syntheses of scientific literature, predictive modeling, and field research and monitoring to build a broad framework for understanding the complex and far-reaching conservation challenges faced by managers of prairie and plains wetlands and the bird species they support.
• As humans find themselves sharing more space with the natural world, large-scale shifts like climate change can have a significant impact on their social and economic systems. It is important to understand the socioeconomic considerations and societal implications of climate change in order to help managers better understand how they can make beneficial contributions and communicate effectively about these impacts. FORT social scientists provide the human dimensions aspect that often must be considered in increasingly complex resource management decisions.
• In the arid/semi-arid interior of western North America, native riparian plant species are being replaced by exotic shrubs and trees. Tamarisk, the most abundant invasive, has become the dominant riparian woody species in much of the southwestern United States; Russian-olive and Siberian elm are also important invasive species throughout much of the West. These vegetation changes have been associated with decreased streamflows and increased water loss, and rising average temperatures would only exacerbate these effects. FORT researchers are examining how environmental factors such as climate change and flood regimes influence the susceptibility of a river to invasion by these exotic plants.

Our Priority: Prepare Now for Coming Challenges

The USGS 10-year strategic plan, Facing Tomorrow’s Challenges:  U.S. Geological Survey Science for 2007–2017, lists climate change as one of its mission areas for scientific research. The complexity of the Earth’s climate system presents challenges that require an integrated, interdisciplinary approach. FORT biologists, working collaboratively with their USGS counterparts in hydrology, geology, and geography, are conducting investigations that can deliver credible documentation and forecasts of ecological and biological responses to climate change. DOI partners and other natural resource managers will continue to benefit from the resulting wealth of USGS data, predictive models, and decision-support capabilities as they face the challenge of adapting to or mitigating the impacts of climate change on ecosystems and human communities across the Nation and around the world.

¹Climate Change Science Program. 2008. 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. [Julius, S.H., J.M. West (eds.); J.S. Baron, L.A. Joyce, P. Kareiva, B.D. Keller, M.A. Palmer, C.H. Peterson, and J.M. Scott (Authors)]. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 873 pp. Available at http://www.fort.usgs.gov/Products/Publications/pub_abstract.asp?PubID=21971

²Climate Change Science Program. 2008. Climate change and ecosystems: Summary of recent findings, p. 1. Available at http://downloads.climatescience.gov/sap/sap4-4/sap4-4-brochure-FAQ.pdf.