Treesearch

Current predictive tools, management options, restoration paradigms, and conservation programs are insufficient to meet the challenges of climate change in western North America. Scientific and management capabilities and resources will be sapped trying to identify risks to genetic resources and ecosystems and determine new approaches for mitigating and managing changing environments. Developing new tools will require innovative research, improvement and creation of predictive models, continuous evaluation of management outcomes, and integration with social scientists and economists.

Experimental research and species distribution modeling predict large changes in the distributions of species and vegetation types in the Interior West due to climate change. Species’ responses will depend not only on their physiological tolerances but also on their phenology, establishment properties, biotic interactions, and capacity to evolve and migrate. Because individual species respond to climate variation and change independently and differently, plant assemblages with no modern analogs can be expected in areas where novel climate conditions develop. The capacity to accurately...

The equation for slowing global warming includes decreasing carbon emissions into the atmosphere as well as increasing carbon sequestration in the biosphere. Many proposed schemes for increasing carbon sequestration, such as afforestation of nonforested lands, involve tradeoffs with other resource values, including water availability. An alternative idea is to restore native plant communities to a condition that maximizes carbon storage without the need for continued resource inputs.

The Interior West is rich in arthropod diversity because of its varied topography, which provides a wide range of elevations and levels of isolation for these small animals (Parmenter and others 1995). Some taxa are known rather well, such as butterflies and tiger beetles, but we have little information on many groups, which are known only from a few locations although they are probably more widespread. Arthropods live at large to small scales (e.g., migrating butterflies crossing countries to habitat specialists on rock outcrops or sand dunes). They may be generalists or specialists,...

The biogeography of plant species and population genetic structure within species is principally governed by climate. The association between climate change and plant distributions has been well documented since the last ice age, and recent studies have shown contemporary climate changes can create landscape-scale die-offs or movement of plant taxa. Terrestrial ecosystem conservation and restoration success hinges on understanding the vulnerabilities imposed by climate on plant taxa.

Recent research and species distribution modeling predict large changes in the distributions of species and vegetation types in the western interior of the United States in response to climate change. This volume reviews existing climate models that predict species and vegetation changes in the western United States, and it synthesizes knowledge about climate change impacts on the native fauna and flora of grasslands, shrublands and deserts of the interior American West. Species' responses will depend not only on their physiological tolerances but also on their phenology, establishment...

The recent development of an interagency strategy to monitor wilderness character (Landres et al. 2008) allows on-the-ground managers and decision makers to assess whether stewardship actions for an individual wilderness are fulfilling the mandate to "preserve wilderness character." Since nearly all wilderness monitoring data depict spatial features, a recent Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute study investigated whether these data can be combined to provide a spatially explicit understanding of the changes and trends in wilderness character over time.

Traditional mechanisms for public participation in environmental impact assessment under U.S. federal law have been criticized as ineffective and unable to resolve conflict. As these mechanisms are modified and new approaches developed, we argue that participation should be designed and evaluated not only on practical grounds of cost-effectiveness and efficiency, but also on ethical grounds based on democratic ideals. In this paper, we review and synthesize modern democratic theory to develop and justify four ethical principles for public participation: equal opportunity to participate,...

Pinus aristata Engelm., Rocky Mountain bristlecone pine, has a narrow core geographic and elevational distribution, occurs in disjunct populations, and is threatened by rapid climate change, white pine blister rust, and bark beetles. Knowledge of genetic diversity and population structure will help guide gene conservation strategies for this species. Sixteen sites across four mountain ranges in the core distribution of P. aristata were sampled and genetic diversity was assessed with 21 isozyme loci. Low species and population level genetic diversity (He = 0.070 and 0.062, respectively)...

The most unpredictable and uncontrollable wildfires are those that burn in the crowns of live vegetation. The fuels that feed these crown fires are mostly live, green foliage. Unfortunately, little is known about how live fuels combust. To understand how live fuels burn, piloted ignition experiments were performed with lodgepole pine and Douglas-fir. The thermal behavior (thick versus thin) of both live and dead needles was explored. Both live and dry needles were shown to behave as thermally intermediate solids in this apparatus. Additionally, samples were collected throughout the growing...